In this enlightening conversation, I was joined by Dan Chapelle, a clinical psychologist and bonafide philosopher with a deep interest in religion and meditation. Our discussion ranged widely, from the nuances of Eastern and Western philosophies to practical approaches for a more contented life. Dan shared insights from both his personal journey and his books, providing a rich tapestry of ideas centred around the necessity of unhappiness and the power of meditative self-care.
What You'll Learn:
The Intersection of Philosophy and Psychology:
Discover how psychology and philosophy intertwine through the works of Freud, Jung, Nietzsche, and Eastern philosophies such as Buddhism and Daoism.
Learn how these disciplines explore the complexities of the human mind and our quest for understanding and contentment.
Importance of Unhappiness:
Uncover why Dan views unhappiness as a crucial aspect of life rather than a condition to be overly medicated or avoided.
Engage with the ideas from figures like Buddha and Job, emphasising the necessity of accepting life's inherent challenges.
Meditative Self-Care:
Learn about the practice of meditation as a tool for attention training, self-awareness, and the acceptance of reality.
Discover practical insights into how meditation can help balance emotions and redirect attention from negative thought patterns.
Attention and Intention in Everyday Life:
Explore the concept that attention is the most critical tool we possess, shaping our experiences and responses.
Understand how directing our attention and refining our intentions can alter our perception and experience of the world.
Key Takeaways:
- Life's Challenges: Embrace the understanding that life is inherently difficult, and by accepting this, we can find deeper contentment.
- Meditation: Use meditation as a practical method for managing your attention and fostering acceptance.
- Philosophical Insights: Philosophical and psychological teachings from the East and West offer valuable perspectives on human experience and the nature of reality.
- Unhappiness as a Teacher: Viewing unhappiness as a part of life encourages personal growth and fosters a more profound fulfillment.
- Attention Control: Directing attention wisely influences emotional health and can lead to a more balanced life.
Resources:
Books by Dan Chappelle:
"A Minimalist Ethic for Everyday Life"
Explore Dan's insights further and access more resources on MeditativeSelfCare.com.
By embracing these philosophies and practices, you can cultivate a more profound sense of contentment and understanding in everyday life. Each step you take towards accepting life's difficulties can open the door to new perspectives and inner peace. If you're interested in diving deeper into these themes, I highly recommend checking out Dan Chapelle's works—let them guide you towards a more mindful and fulfilled existence.
Support and Share:
If you found this episode enlightening, please consider subscribing, rating, and leaving a review on your favourite podcast platform. Your support helps us continue to bring expert insights to a wider audience. Share this episode with someone who might benefit from the discussion around hormesis and its life-enhancing potential.
00:27 Journey into Psychology and Philosophy
01:28 Exploring Phenomenological Psychol
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Doctor Don Chappelle. Welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Thank you, happy to be here.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
So we have a Belgian living in the States talking
to an Irishman living in Australia.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
This could be quite an interesting journey for people.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Yeah, yeah, should we call somebody in Kennedy emergency or yeah?
Speaker 3 (00:34):
So Dad, you are a You've got a really interesting background.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
So you're background kind of you're.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
A clinical psychologist by trade, but also a bona fide
philosopher who's interested in religion as well. So you you
have a really interesting journey. Tell us, first of all,
how did you get into what was the what was
the first driver of your study? Was it philosophy, was
(01:03):
it psychology or was it kind of a dual interest
right from the get go?
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Yeah, it was probably It started off with psychology. I
discovered a book on psycho analysis when I was in
my teens in my father's library and I tried to
read it. Of course, didn't understand much of it, but
I kept reading, you know, unlike many of my friends
who sort of gave up on those things. You know,
they you know a lot of people I think they
(01:29):
say philosophy, I don't know. I can't get into it. Well,
I just didn't give up. I kept on reading, and
so eventually I developed simultaneous or you know, equal interest
in psychology and philosophy, with the initial emphasis on depth psychology,
you know, psychology of the unconscious Freud and Young, and
(01:51):
then archetypal psychology that means anything. And I was I'm
a student of James Hillman, who was a primary student
of care Jung and so wow, yeah, so I got
into archetypal psychology and what we called and what is
still called phenomenological psychology, that is to say, trying to
(02:15):
understand human experience from the basis of human experience itself,
not from models from physics or from physiology or biology,
but sort of straight from direct experience and to sort
of make a great leap already into the connections with philosophy.
I think the original phenomenologist and phenomenological psychologist was the
(02:41):
Buddha of all people. And this was, you know, the
West didn't have something called psychology until about the sixteenth
or seventeenth century. The Buddha spelled out two thousand and
five hundred years ago a very comprehensive, sophisticated psychology of
everyday life. And so the other person who is much
(03:06):
closer to home for us, who is I think also
a phenomenological philosopher and psychologist, is Nietzsche. So to make
sort of a kind of a long journey long story short,
I went from Freud and company, you know, Young and Helen,
to Nietzsche, and from Nietzsche I went to, of all people,
(03:26):
the Buddha, and from the Buddha I eventually ended up
with a Taoist, you know us, first Confucius, and then
a Laudza who is very well known in the West,
and then someone who's not at all known in the West,
which is a philosopher who came a couple of generations
after Laudze. And his name is Zwangzhu, and he's a very,
(03:54):
at least when you first encounter him, very bizarre sounding guy.
Like all these these ancient Chinese philosophers, they operate in
a very different way from the way we do. You know,
we are essentially Greeks by origin in philosophy, and we
(04:16):
became you know, first you were Greek philosophers, then we
became European philosophers, and then on top of that we
became Christian philosophers. And it's all very discursive. You know,
one thing follows from another, one thing argues for another
from another, and the Chinese are very different in style,
and that takes some serious getting used to. They'll start
(04:39):
with a little anecdote to figure off. Let's say two
men fishing in the river and they have a conversation
that is no more than one page long, and you go,
what so, it takes quite some introduction. But once you
get past that, and you need help getting past that,
you know, help from from western skul of uh Chinese philosophy,
(05:02):
then you begin to see, like some very bizarre and
shocking things, Like one of the things you discovered is
this Chinese philosopher Zumangzhu. He is, in more than just
one way, a kind of a Nietzschean philosopher before Nietzsche,
two five hundred years before Nietzsche. And you go, what so,
(05:24):
once you begin to see these connections, that opens up
a world so wide and the windows so wide that
it is just unbelievable. And so that's that's the that's
that's the the ground that I plow, so to speak,
you know, the area that I work in. And so
(05:44):
my last book, which is called a Minimalist ethic, a
minimalist ethic for everyday life. It is, it's it goes.
It starts with Socrates and it ends up all the
way with the Chinese, and it includes things like the
celebration of the Sabbath and and and Buddhism and Taoism
(06:07):
and what have you. And you begin to see I
I am. Originally I was sort of an academic type,
but I got away from academia and being a practicing psychologist,
I had to learn to talk the language of people
with whom I said, need to need so to speak.
That's very different from it. It's very different from an
academic audience. And so I write for that audience. And
(06:32):
this last little book is my shortest, but I think
my best and actually most important and most original book,
which is that that minimalist ethic from for everyday life.
I don't know if you're familiar with somebody named it's
a Scottish person, Ian McGilchrist.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
Ian McGilchrist, yes, yes, yes, says he's a neuroscientist, isn't
he Yeah?
Speaker 2 (06:56):
Neuroscientists, psychiatrist, philosophy, literary critic, you name it, he does
it all. He wrote this book two major works, the
last one is a two volume thing. It's too big
to publish in one volume. It's like sixteen hundred pages
or something like that. But he covers very similar kind
of ground, but he does it in a very different way.
(07:19):
He starts off with a critique of Western habits of
philosophying from what he calls the left brain type approach.
And it's not a simplicity.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
Can you explain what you done? Can you just explain
what you mean by that to people?
Speaker 2 (07:36):
Yeah, okay, left brain, right brain. All animals, all mammals
have their brains are made of two parts, the left
side and the right side, and the different parts control
different parts of our functioning. For example, the left brain,
am I pointing at my left rain. Now we're in
(07:58):
reverse here. The left brain controls the muscles of the
right side of the body, and the other way around,
the right side of the brain controls the left side
of the muscles of the body. But there's not only that.
The more important part is that the left brain and
the right brain they're sort of phenomenologically different. They do
(08:21):
different functions. The left brain is more the analytic, rational, focused, scientific, argumentative,
logical kind of approach to things. It's the thing that
with which we focus our attention on something that's right
under our nose, you know, like under the microscope. The
(08:44):
right brain knowledge has to do with a more comprehensive
knowledge of the entire world around. It's not so focused
on one specific thing or and it's sort of more
comprehensive in the sense that it involves like intuitive ways
of knowing, in the effective importance of the elements of
(09:04):
knowing and so on. And these two brain hemispheres they
work together. You can't be if your one side of
your brain is seriously damaged, and then one side of
your personality so to speak, is damaged as well, doesn't
function as well. So his critique being a neurophysiologist, which
(09:26):
I am not at all. I'm like the Buddha, you know,
the Buddha never heard of the brain, so to speak,
but he did very well for himself. Nonetheless, you know,
he wasn't a scientific researcher, but he came up with
this fantastic, fantastically sophisticated psychology. This guy, Ian McGilchrist would
(09:48):
absolutely worth checking out. He sort of argues that our culture,
largely since the Enlightenment, has focused has has sort of
given the rain of governing our lives and our decisions
and whatever to the more left brain part of our person.
(10:10):
And again, you can't be too literal or too simplistic
about these things, because these these two brain hemispheres, they overlap,
they work together, they compensate for each other, and what
have you. But anyway, his argument is, and there's no argument,
no arguing with that argument, that ever since the Enlightenment,
we've become like super weighted on the side of rationalism scientism.
(10:36):
Religion is out the window. Religious experiences, bull religious dogmas,
certainty out of the window, you know, introspection, you can't
rely on it. Really, So it's behavioral science is what
we want. And that's how a psychology is how we
got where we are too, because all of science is
sort of in that sense. And his argument, and it
(10:59):
is mine, well, although I commented very differently, and I
ad I skipped the brain altogether, so to speak. But
his argument is that the whole person we need to
develop the right side of existence more. That's why I
think so many people are into yoga and meditation and
(11:22):
spirituality and and uh earth, you know, earth awareness and
so on. That's that's more right, brain kind of stuff.
It's funny here I am talking about McGilchrist's book instead
of my own. But the point is that we end
(11:43):
up in the same place. And I actually recently wrote
to him and I hope that I'll hear back from him,
is that, you know, we both end up with what
he calls and what I also call religious experience, direct
religious experience, you which is different from religion. Hume has
(12:03):
a fantastic line which says, religion is a defense against
religious experience. You know, religion is the stuff handled with
left brain materials, you know, Catholic theologian arguments and you
will believe this and dogma in whatever. That's a defense
(12:25):
against the directness of phenomenological experience because you know, very
few of us are really interested in religious dogma, but
all of us are interested in what we might call
religious experience. And that doesn't have to be something fantastic, great,
you know, something biblical, although you know, biblical literature, of course,
(12:48):
is full of the material of religious experience. You know,
like people allow Dawkins and whatever who poo pooh religion.
I think they're missing the boat entirely. They they think
that religions is about gods. You know, like these supernatural
things which are easy to to do away with, you know,
(13:10):
with some clever, you know arguments. But the point of
real religion, a real religious study, is not it's not
about God, it's about who we are. It's about humans.
Religion is about what it is like to be human.
And so these people they forget that day sort of,
you know, Dawkins, you know, they they think they do
(13:32):
away with religious religious dogma, and they have thereby done
away with all of religious tradition and religious experience, which
is of course not true. And so my book ends
up the little one, you know, the medal, the minimalists,
I think in everyday life ends up in the with
(13:56):
with with the Sabbath. I'm not Jewish. You don't have
to be you don't have to be Jewish, you don't
even have to be religious to really get the idea
of what the Sabbath is, you know, in the mythology
of Judeo Christian tradition, in Genesis, the Book of Creation,
(14:17):
you know. And again you don't have to believe these things,
but they nonetheless they say something about something, and what
you hear them say depends largely on how you tend
to listen. And so in any case, we all know,
we all grew up learning that it took God six
days to create the universe and the world, and then
he saw that it was all good, very good. And
(14:39):
then on the seventh day, what does he do? Nothing?
Now he leaves at the west then and we do
a pretty good job. So he rests and he says,
you know, it's all good, it's very good. And I
think the Sabbath is that capacity to rest, to come
to a place rest in your own life after all
(15:01):
the week, the week of the kind of work that
you do, and you come to a Sunday or a
rest day, or a day on the golf course or
whatever it may be, mountain climbing, where you reach a
point where you say, ah, this is what it's all about.
You know, some an experience that that that adds to
(15:22):
the usual. You know, you can have good food on
a daily basis, but that does not really satisfy. There
are a few things in our life that satisfy us,
and the Sabbath is one of those. And that's God's invention.
And again I'm not a religious person. I'll talk about
Einstein about that, but I've lost my train of thought
(15:47):
here that also comes.
Speaker 3 (15:48):
With you were you were talking about this, that the
concept of the Sabbath.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Yes, it's the it's it's God inventing. And I learned
it from a a friend of mine, acquaintance rabbi. He said,
on the seventh Day, God doesn't rest because he's tired.
It's not like the rest of us, you know, or
because he's gotten lazy or something. On the seventh Day. No,
he discovers or he creates the felt sense of the sacred,
(16:18):
the felt sense of holiness. He looks at the whole creation,
that all that has come into being, and he says,
pretty good, you know, amazing. And that's what celebrating or
keeping the Sabbath, as they put it, is about that.
It's about finding ways through ritual behavior or through any
(16:39):
other behavior. Buddhists do it through meditation. They reach that
point of shedding all their usual thoughts, you know, and
coming to a place of profound peace. Not peace after war,
not peace when you make up with your spouse, but
a piece that is that income is the whole world,
(17:02):
and that is what the Sabbath is, and that is
what meditation aims at, you know, similar to God, the creator.
There's the legend of the Buddha. Has it that when
he reached the enlightenment, you know, he had been meditating
for six years and then one day he wasn't getting
where he wanted to get. One day he decided, I'm
(17:23):
not leaving this seat here until until I'm enlightened. And
guess what he got enlightened haliloja. And so what happened
after that is he took I think it's seventy four
days forty seven days of complete rest. He didn't do anything,
(17:43):
and he said, everything has done nothing else needs to
be done. That's the same thing that God said on
the seventh day. Everything has good, everything has done nothing else.
We don't need to worry about anything else that has
to be done. And that's the kind of experience that
all of us are capable of in the smallest ways perhaps,
(18:04):
but the essential dimension is the same. You know, Like
one time I wrote that in one of my books,
I think, or in two. Well, one day I fell
in love with a paper clip. Excuse me, Yes, I
did some moment where all of a sudden the paper
(18:24):
clip struck me. I wasn't just using it, although I
needed a paper clip or whatever. But when I reached
for the paper clip, it struck me as a wonderfully
miraculous little thing. What an invention it, what a humble
job it does, but how well he does it? And
I didn't think all those words with it. When you
(18:44):
start adding words to your experience, you're done. You know
your experience done. That's sort of like trying to explain
a poem. If you have to explain a poem, you've
lost a poem. And the same thing with my paper clip,
And distinctly remember that day when I fell in love
with that darn little paper clip, And so small things
(19:06):
like that, A moment of quiet, of like real silence
can do the same thing, and.
Speaker 3 (19:13):
So donad But can I just I want to take
this into a practical application perspective, right, And so the
Western for me, Western thought in general, Western society is
overly focused on the idea of happiness and and for
(19:38):
me often not always, but but some types of modern
psychology I don't think are helpful because I describe it
as the psychology of.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
Me, me, me, me, me, absolutely right.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
So so both Nietzsche and and the Buddha they talked about.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
I mean, if you think of the.
Speaker 3 (19:57):
First noble truth of Buddhism life is suffering, which I
think is a bit of a misquote, isn't it that
that I give duca is kind of better translated of
life is hard to do.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
Yes, that's what I learned. After decades of practicing psychology,
I learned life is difficult.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
Yes, And for me this needs to be the fundamental
thing that every person is taught. Life can be amazing,
but it's also hard, and it was never meant to
be easy. And he ever told you that life was
meant to be easy and you're entitled to happiness.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
I'm sorry, but they've lied to you.
Speaker 3 (20:40):
And to talk about the importance because I know you're
a fan of that as well as unhappiness as necessary
living absolutely, rather than a pathology that has to be medicated.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
Hello, yep, yeah we're still here.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
Yeah, yeah, we're still here.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
So so so please talk to us about this idea
of unhappiness is necessary absolutely.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
First of all, starting with the Buddha he you know,
as you pointed out, you know, his first novel, noble
truth is life is unhappiness. That's not sort of like
a simple complaint or being sort of in a bitchy
mood or something like that. It is a fact that
the things we pursue in life, none of those will
(21:32):
ever deeply truly satisfy us. That's all he meant that
what whatever we pursue, it's not going to make us happy.
The best career in the world, the best fortune in
the world, the best test line in the world, the
best wife. You know, none of it is going to
make you happy. That's a realization you have to make,
(21:55):
and a lot of us don't make that until we're
like in the middle of our life. You know, when
you're young, you think, oh, you're going to do it.
It's sort of like it applies to other people, but
not to me. You know. One popular teacher of Buddhist teachings,
he was at a conference and he talked about that,
and he said, you know, we have to start here
(22:18):
with the idea that life is sort of unsatisfactory as
they also call it, instead of suffering, you know. And
he said, well, there will be some people here who
say will say, well, yeah, that applies to most people maybe,
but not for me. I just got a new girlfriend.
I'm as happy as one can get. And he said,
(22:40):
I'll see you next year, you know. But it is true.
So I did write a book about that, the Necessity
of Unhappiness, and it talks about you unhappiness of four figures,
first the Buddha, secondly Nietzschee, who also realized that he
as a philosopher, he noticed that everybody was after truth,
(23:03):
you know, all traditional Western philosopher daring the truth. He says,
one not other tru one not rather untruth or even
illusion or something else. And he said, the basis, you know,
we have to start with the fact that existence is
very tough, very hard. It's difficult. It is you know,
it's suffering, you know, and we're not made for this
(23:26):
sort of you know, one day we'll have land, the
perfect job will be happily. Ever after no, he said,
you know, happiness is Unhappiness is necessary. And I have
a third figure, which is the Book of Job, from
the biblical figure of the Book of Job. Also he
I don't know if you listeners are familiar, but Job
(23:50):
is sort of a saintly figured like a real good.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
What is it Old Testament Job?
Speaker 2 (23:57):
It is Old Testament. Yes, it belongs with the Testament,
although it appears also in other non Jewish traditions. It's
older than the Jewish tradition, I think, but it is
an essential part of the wisdom writings in Judaism. Job
who is, you know, perfect perfectly devoted to his God.
And one day his God plans, you know, decides to
(24:20):
test him, and he inflicts all kinds of pains on him.
He burns down his holdings, he kills all his workers,
and he kills all his children, and you know, when
there's nothing left to take away from him, he inflicts
him with boils that are untreatable, incurable. But at the
(24:41):
same time he won't let him die or commit suicide.
So he's stuck there, you know. And so he goes
from being the most devoted person you know, to being
the most blasphemous person more than nietzs you and Nietzsche.
Everybody knows God is dead. We have murdered him. That
is niets you he's famous or from his line, Job
does some he says something far more blasphemous. He says,
(25:05):
once he really can't handle his suffering anymore, he gets
enraged and he yells out. He says, goddamn, the day
I was born, let it never have been If you
look carefully at that is goddamned today I was born.
Let it not have been. Let it never have been.
That is sort of a counter creation myth, you know,
(25:29):
wishing not to have been created, which of course none
of us can do. If you're wishing not to have
been created, you too late, because you're already fully involved
in life. If you you say you wish you know,
I wish you had died at birth, too late again,
because you're, you know, by the time you realize that
you're you're you're too old, you know, to be dying
(25:51):
in her as a baby, and and so on. And
so Job goes through all these faces, and each of
those makes him feel even worse. And so he says, God,
damn the day I was born. And then he goes
on blaspheming so called blasts feaming. I don't think it's
blest feeming at all. And actually, at the end of
(26:13):
the book of Job, God himself comes out and he
says to Job, you have spoken the truth about me
and your friends who said you must have done something wrong,
otherwise God wouldn't have punished you. They were absolutely wrong.
So God sides with Job. And so what Job does.
Then what God does is he gives them like a
(26:35):
panoramic overview of all of creation. He says, look around,
you know, bird feathers, the wind, you know, seasons. How
does the cow know when it's time to have her calf?
Where is the wind when it doesn't blow? Who tells you?
Who calls the lightning for you? And Job is sort
(26:57):
of it's some people describe that's one of some of
the best nature literature ever written. And so after that, God,
you know, these are all things we can see it
on an everyday basis, all of us, you know, even
on the worst day of our lives, just as it
was the case for Job. And when he sees that
and he remembers, yeah, he realizes, yes, it is true.
(27:21):
This is this is amazing stuff that we're born into.
And then he becomes silent. He stops complaining, stops swearing,
stops complaining, and he says, you know, I've heard of
you with my ears, but now I've seen you directly.
So what he has seen is nothing but things that
we can see on an everyday basis, the wind, trees, leaves,
(27:45):
you know, on trees, and so on. So that's the
third figure in that book on the necessity of unhappiness.
Is the figure of Job, because then the book ends
by saying and Job then lived content for the rest
of his life, which is like one hundred and fifty
years or something like that, and he died content deeply content.
Speaker 3 (28:09):
Contentment is different to happiness, right yes, And I think
this is a critical part of all of this.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
Right we go, I aim for contentment, not happiness, because
New Mercedes or whatever, you know. Content And because what's
interesting about Job here is that of all the hundreds
upon hundreds of people measure mentioned in the Bible, both
new and old, you know, Jewish and Christian, there's only
(28:38):
a handful of people of whom it is said that
they died content. And Job, of all people, is one
of those. The most unhappy guy in the world becomes
one of the few who ends up dying content. And
then the fourth figure in my book on the necessity
of unhappiness is The Catcher in the Rye, which is
(28:59):
a very famous American novel. It's a superbly well written novel.
If you ever have a chance, it's an easy read.
It's written. It came out in nineteen fifty or thereabouts.
You know. The Catcher in the Eye very one of
the best novels of that century. And it describes a
(29:19):
young man, an adolescent, you know, who has been already
kicked out of three prep schools, and he's about to
be expelled from the fourth, you know, like adolescent going downhill,
you know, pure and simple. And he also he's the
most wretchedly unhappy adolescent you can imagine. But it is
so beautifully written that it speaks to you, you know,
(29:41):
like you. And he also has to go through all
his misery before he can come to the end and
begins to see like something turn around. You know. He's
alienated everybody, he's pissed off everybody. He has no friends,
he's drifting, he's totally desperate. And then he sits in
(30:03):
a psychiatrist's office at the end and he starts telling
his story. And that's the whole book, is the telling
of his story. And then at the end he says
heribed after he has described a scene where he has
some kind of argument with his friends in school, high
school or whatever, and he makes this amazing discovery and
(30:24):
it's very easy to read over it. He says, it's funny.
He says, don't ever tell anybody anything, because if you do,
you start missing everybody. And this comes from the mouth
of the most cynical, you know, sharpest tongued adolescent you've
(30:45):
ever read about. And he says at the end, it's funny.
Don't ever tell anybody anything, because if you do, you
start missing everybody. So something has melted, you know. And
it's just like the one line is the beginning of
the turnaround for him, just like it is for Job.
You know, you have to read thirty seven of the
(31:06):
forty two books of Job before you the turnaround begins,
you know. And the same thing with the Buddha. Six
years of meditation, after multiple many, many endless rebirds, you know,
and six years of meditation, and then finally it's like bang,
you know, and then he says, nothing else needs to
be done. Everything is done. Six days of creation, artwork,
(31:30):
you know, serious business. And then there's a seventh day. Oh,
this is beautiful. That's where psychology, I think, has to go,
and that's where my writing goes, and that's where McGilchrist goes.
And again I'm putting in plugs for McGilchrist. It's almost funny.
Speaker 3 (31:48):
But is this similar to the Japanese psychology concept of arugamama,
which is basically an acceptance of what is so, but
it's it's not a passive acceptance. It's a you know,
(32:09):
shit happens, that life happens.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
It is what it is.
Speaker 3 (32:13):
But it's also the second part of aurugamama is what
needs to be done. So it's not what you get
focused on external stuff. This just happens. The universe happens.
You'll get a shit sandwich. But it's about that acceptance
and then thinking about what needs to be done with
all of that going on.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
Yeah, I'm not familiar with the Japanese term that you mentioned,
but I am very familiar with the idea of radical acceptance,
which is of course part of you know, a lot
of Japanese culture generally, and Zen in particular. Yes, it
is pure Zen. It is also pure Buddhism. Of course
Zen is Buddhism, you know, and it is that you know,
(32:56):
it is also Yeah, absolutely it's radical acceptance. It's calls
it a more fattyue love, more fat love of fake
love of everything that has been, everything that is, and
everything that will be, and that is.
Speaker 3 (33:14):
N's go and and talk to us from from a
psychologist perspective, like like, how do you when when someone
is is rocking up, or or are people listening who
are struggling with their thoughts and struggling with their emotions
and wanting to change their reality in their heads and
(33:36):
talk to us about this this concept Nietzsche's am more fatty,
which is very similar to that that job.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
So so.
Speaker 3 (33:47):
Like, how do you How do you get that across
to people?
Speaker 2 (33:52):
Not easily so or with difficulty, But that's why, that's
why God invented Yes.
Speaker 3 (34:03):
For me, it is absolutely key to accept that you
cannot control reality. And I think so many people get
in trouble psychologically when they when they are wishing for
things to be different, right, right.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
No, You're absolutely right. It is key. It is the
central objective almost of Buddhist meditation. It is what is medita,
What is Buddhist meditation. It is simply watching how your
mind does what your mind does, and not fighting with it,
not saying oh I shouldn't have thought that, or why
(34:39):
is my mind wandering again? Or am I still having
doubts about this or that? It is accepting the way
your your mind is. Eventually you discover that your mind
is not your mind, it's not your property, but it's
sort of mind playing itself out in this space of
life that we call me. You know, I'm you know,
(35:01):
you're in Melbourne, but you're also in a different way
in your own life. And I'm in Massachusetts, but I'm
also in a in a space that is not geographic,
but that is sort of the all the stuff, all
the place where all my all my Dan Chapelle stuff happens,
(35:21):
you know, and yours is where all your pall stuff happens,
you know, and it is it requires there are different
levels of different ways of understanding. First of all, if
you study Nietzsche, it's important to understand that this is
an essential that is essential part of Nietzsche. It's aphorism
(35:43):
two seventy six of his book The Gay Science, where
he spells that out. And you can actually sum up
Nietzsche in three aphorisms if you like. The First one
is aphorism three hundred and forty one from from well
(36:08):
The Gay Science, Aphorism three forty one, Aphorism two seventy eight,
also from The Gay Science, and then section fifty six
from his book called Beyond Good and Evil and Beyond
Good and Evil fifty six is a boy I haven't
been in that place. I haven't visited this area of
my writing and thinking in a while, but you brought
(36:30):
it up because of your awareness that almorphati is such
an important point, you know. Section fifty six and beyond
good and evil is a place where Nietzschee talks about
discovering that all the things you thought were actually bad
(36:52):
in your life were They were not at all bad.
They were just who what your life is. And it
has to do with one thing that coming to a
point where you can see that, hey, this is good,
like seventh Day, you know, kind of this is good,
this is very good. Where your life, even the ship
(37:14):
in your life is good, very good. You find the
same idea in Saint Augustine, who says somewhere he has
a prayer in his confessions, and he says, and again,
you don't have to be religious for these things to
make any sense for you. But he says to his
(37:38):
he prays to his God, and he says, in your creation,
in your in what you've done or whatever, there's some
things which we human beings think think are good, and
some things which we think are not so good, but totalent,
but the totality of all things is even better than
the best of the good things. So it's a kind
of an amorphattigue, is the totality of things, the acceptance
(38:03):
the way things are. We don't have to make them good,
they already are, you know. And this this.
Speaker 3 (38:10):
Kind of aligns with the historic philosophy idea that that
that nothing is either good or bad, but it's rather
our judgments of them that bad. Right, And and that
that then if we if we then come into psychology
and neuroscience, it's really our emotional responses. I think, I
(38:31):
think that's what the stoics we're talking about, the emotional
responses that you have that then shape your judgments on things.
And so so talk to us a little bit about that,
because this is kind of central to all of this, right,
is that that amorphatty, that understanding that that that stuff
(38:52):
is neither good or bad.
Speaker 1 (38:53):
It's our judgments on that. Like how do you help people?
Speaker 3 (38:58):
And to kind of get into that head space, is
there any techniques or strategies or is it just an
understanding of that concept that like a real guttural understanding
of it.
Speaker 2 (39:11):
It helps to start with an intellectual philosophical understanding, but
that's not enough. You need something more practical. And the
more practical way is the long process of meditation. That's
where you learn to recognize that things are as they are,
and that your unhappiness has a lot to do with
(39:33):
your wishing that they were different from the way they are.
If you're constantly fighting with everything in your life, if
you stop fighting, your life will stop fighting with you.
And so that's meditation is a long, long approach, and
there's no better approach to this then meditation, I think
(39:53):
if you want to approach it on an experiential, really
lived level, not just intellectual stuff to talk about, not
academic lectures to talk about behind the podium. I don't
do podiums, you know. I sit with people, need to need,
as I said, you know, and my language isn't always
(40:15):
you know, kouth maybe I think that's the word in English, right, yes,
But my language is everyday language, which is a very
fine language, I'll have you know, because that's where we suffered,
that's how we suffer, that's how we fight with our
spouses or lovers or whatever, you know. So it's a
very good language. And the Buddha, the Buddha too spoke
(40:39):
a very vernacular language, whatever it was that he spoke
because he was always talking about images from nature from
you know, he lived in an agricultural culture and he
had images of that all over the place. So he
was not an academic standing up behind the podium either.
(41:02):
And so I figured, if it's good enough for the
budd it's probably good enough for the rest of us.
But so meditation is something I have. My two favorite
books are the little one that I mentioned already, which
is a minimalist ethic for everyday life, and the one,
(41:25):
the practical one about meditative self care, which is also
the name of the website meditative self care dot com.
That's where we make our get our hands dirty, why
sticking them in our own experiences, you know, in our
own see how our own minds work and so on.
So those two books for people who are listening who
(41:48):
might be interested in, you know, what do I do
now or is there something I can do? Those two
little books, they're both very cheap.
Speaker 3 (41:58):
And talk to us about the the thing I've been
thinking about more and more, and I think this is
what brings kind of neuroscience and philosophy and experience all together.
Speaker 2 (42:13):
For me.
Speaker 3 (42:14):
Attention is really key around all of this stuff. And
again I'm want to borrow from Japanese psychology. It is
all about attention.
Speaker 1 (42:25):
Attention.
Speaker 3 (42:25):
Yeah, So in Japanese psychology they say there.
Speaker 1 (42:30):
Was a guy Greg Greg Creach.
Speaker 3 (42:31):
My wife is a practitioner of Japanese psychology, her mentor
Greg Creach. I interviewed him and he said that a
key thing in Japanese psychology is about the flashlight of
your attention.
Speaker 1 (42:45):
And they say that is the most important thing in
that you have control of.
Speaker 3 (42:50):
And I kind of love that as the neuroscientist in me,
because whatever you pay attention to your brand commits sales
to it. And for me, attention precedes emotion and all
of this.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
Stuff, right, And so talk to us, and I think.
Speaker 3 (43:09):
That that meditaition can sometimes be interpreted as attention training.
Speaker 2 (43:14):
Absolutely, absolutely, yeah.
Speaker 3 (43:17):
So just talk to us about your experience around attention
or what how people should start to think about their attention.
Speaker 2 (43:26):
Attention is probably the most important thing we do, you know,
it is the most important thing because everything else that
we do or think or feel follow us from attention. Again,
back to McGilchrist, you know, he also speaks about the importance,
the cardinal importance of attention, and you find it throughout
(43:47):
the ages. You know, like there's one person whose name
I forgot. He said, attention is our natural mystical prayer.
How about that? Huh? Interesting, right, is natural mystical prayer?
And yes, indeed, meditation starts with attention, learning to to
(44:10):
tame your attention. You know, like the meditators, the Buddhist
they talk about monkey mind. You know, like our minds.
We all have sort of adhdal. You know, our minds
are like monkeys, jumping from one thing to another. And
the first thing you learned to do in meditation is
to to train the mind to stay put on You say,
(44:31):
I'm going to focus on that, put my attention on
this and keep it there. That's how you started meditation.
And then the second what happens is you learn I
can't do that in my mind jumps to something else
all the time. And they said, aha, look what you're learning.
What your mind is doing. You got monkey mind. We
(44:53):
all have monkey mind. And so meditation begins with bringing
attention back again and again and again to the topic
on which you placed it or want to place it.
So and then also you begin to you begin to
see what else your mind is always doing, is bringing
up stuff, and you're chasing after your mind. Another little
(45:18):
story or analogy that they use in the Buddhist us,
they say is attention is like if you throw a
stick in front of a dog, the dog chases after
the stick, and you know, keep chasing after it, says.
But on the other hand, if you what they call
the lion gaze as opposed to the dog's chasing, the
(45:40):
lion gaze is if you throw a stick in front
of the lion, the lion looks at the origin of
the stick, but doesn't run after the stick. And this
is sort of like you develop the lion's gaze by
you watch your mind and you see things coming up,
but you don't chase after all of them. You watch
(46:02):
that mind, you know, kicking up, throwing up all kinds
of sticks, and you don't run after them. That's the
beginning of meditations, and.
Speaker 3 (46:14):
That brings in self awareness obviously into the peace, but
to really then dig into a little bit deeper in this.
You know, if we think about as you'll be well aware,
our mental health, particularly in developed in our brackets nation,
is is just going down the gurglar. But if we
(46:38):
think the two major ones anxiety and depression, If we
think about people with depression, their attention often is rooted
in the past and lamenting on the past and anxiety.
Their attention is future focused, and there's strong concern about
the future. But the whether attention is absolutely key to
(47:01):
their pathology.
Speaker 2 (47:02):
Isn't it absolutely? Absolutely? The little book on meditative self
care begins or is centered around this one idea. We
suffer from who we think we are. I love that,
you know, and we're always thinking we're somebody or other,
you know, like somebody in front of you, what a
(47:23):
cash register is taking too much time, and then you
get irritated because you know you've got important things to do,
you know, more important spend in your life. You know,
the universe revolves around me exactly. So we suffer from
who we think we are. And as you become more
aware by paying more attention to how your mind works,
you catch yourself at your irritability and at your whatever,
(47:48):
your hostility, and you begin to see, Jesus, I'm a
horrible person. Well you're not a horrible person. You're just
a regular guy, you know. But this is how our
minds work, and this is how it produces our unhappiness.
Because if you think you're going to you're special. You're
going to be very disappointed because you know, so we
(48:10):
suffer from who we think we are, and we're always
thinking with somebody. It's not just like one thing. I
am professor so and so, well you're that, Yeah, sure
everybody can see that, but you see many other things.
You know, you're an old letcher who's drooling over all
your young female students or something, you know, and you're
(48:32):
you're and at home you're like a you know, a
door mat, you know, and and you're afraid of your
children so you avoid them. You know, you're all those
things as well. You know. So we suffer from who
we think we are. That's the core issue of the
Meditative Self Care book. So if you put those two together,
(48:54):
then I think you cover all the bases. You know. So,
but attention that.
Speaker 3 (49:01):
Yeah, sorry, I wanted to today and talk a little
bit about karma.
Speaker 1 (49:07):
So, so you a very good.
Speaker 3 (49:10):
Job of connecting the East to the West and and
and I guess explaining it better. So, so this idea
of karma is often misunderstood in in the West, So
so talk to us about the real impact of what
really karma is and how it can be used in
(49:31):
our lives.
Speaker 2 (49:31):
Yeah, first, but it isn't What it isn't is all
the things we think it is in the West, you know,
like some sort of magical force of the universe that's
going to get you for bad things you did. You know,
like what goes around comes around that kind of you know,
that's not what it is. What it is is it's
an understanding. It's a psychological understanding of why our lives is,
(49:56):
why our lives is as it is, and why we
suffer from what we suffer and while we experience what
we experience. And you know, it has to do with
becoming more aware on a moment to moment basis of
all your intentions. You know, like if you find yourself
(50:18):
drooling again over this young female student in your classroom,
catch yourself at that and see where that leads you.
It's going to disappoint you because you're an old geezer.
You have no business chasing after young women, you know,
and so your karma is going to be that they're
going to laugh at you. That's not something that is
(50:41):
regulated by the stars or the heavens. It's just your
own psychology. If you act like a in a pretentious manner.
People are going to take a distance from you, you know,
because you're a cold person, cold fish or something like that.
And so that's all it is. That sounds very simple.
(51:01):
The point of it is it has to do with
becoming aware of intention. You know, you say attention is
the most important thing. Attention and intention. Attention is where
you put your your consciousness. Intention is where do you
want to go from here? You know you want to
cut off, you want to cut off the guy in
(51:21):
front of you, or you want to get even with
the guy who cut you off in traffic, or you know,
that's intention. And you know if you're the guy, if
you want to get even with the guy in the
car next to you, you're an angry guy yourself, and
guess what you're going to experience. You're going to experience
a lot of anger. Don't be surprised if you do.
(51:41):
That's karma and which is completely perfectly understandable as is
the result of your intention. Karma means the word karmen
sounds great. Karma means action. Doing Karma is simply what
you do, what you know, your intention in what you do,
and and what you the price you pay for that intention.
(52:07):
If you isolate yourself from people, you're going to be
a lonely person. You know, if you're if you're above people,
you know, they're not going to come and comfort you
when you need it. Um, that's that's very simple. Karma. Well,
it gets I mean it gets complicated also, of course,
but it is it's a very down to earth you know.
(52:29):
The Buddhists say, we think that karma is maybe a
part of your life. The Buddhas said, no, Karma isn't
part of your life. Karma is your whole life, everything
you do, from moment to moments. You know, it's a
very typical Buddhist expression, from moment to moment because nothing
ever stays the same. You don't ever stay the same
(52:52):
for two moments in rome and everything. What happens is
what shifts is your intention. Your attention shifts and your
intentionship and your intention is going to point to where
you're going to end up. You know.
Speaker 3 (53:07):
It seems to me, you know, as you talk about
this and Dan, it's kind of adding to my thinking
of it. And it seems to me that if if
most people could master those two things, their attention and
their intention, then I think life would just be so
much better.
Speaker 2 (53:27):
Without absolutely absolutely, you're absolutely right. The yeah, the little
book on ethics, you know, for ethics, for an ethic
for everyday life, it's largely about intention. It is larger,
(53:52):
it's it's actually and i'll tell you a little secrets
of the book. It's a it's a negative ethic, you know,
the Judeo Christian ethics as love your neighbor as yourself,
which is not a bad idea, but have you ever
tried it? It is way harder than we mortals can
actually do, because there's so many more negative emotions that
(54:13):
we have and impulses and whatever. So there's a Chinese
philosopher Confusions. Instead of saying love your neighbor as yourself,
he says, don't do to other people what you don't
want done to yourself. That sounds like the same thing,
except formulated differently. One in a positive fashion, but you
must do the other in negative. What you shouldn't do
(54:35):
what you don't do. And actually, in reality, it is
easier to avoid doing something than it is to positively
do something. It's easier to you know, none of us
can generate loving feelings all the time. I certainly can't,
you know, we spend our whole life trying those of
(54:56):
us who try a little bit, you know, but you can't.
But what you we can always do is say no
to ourselves. Don't do this, don't do what you just
intended to do. And again that's where you know you
have to pay attention to your intention. Socrates said famously,
(55:19):
I know I don't know anything except for one thing.
The one thing I know is that I know nothing.
And he wasn't being just humble, you know, or pretending
to be humble. What he meant was he followed the
dictates of what he calls his namon. His inner namon
is you know the voice that talked to him, and
(55:43):
the voice always told them, no, don't do this, don't
say that, don't believe that. And so I start with
in my book with Socrates as a person who says,
you first have to cultivate the doing no and saying
no in leaving though, which means you have to get
to a place where you tell yourself, well, I really
(56:06):
don't know about this situation, instead of saying, oh I
got my opinions about it. Every situation you mean that
I don't know, Or you reach a point in your
so called knowledge to where you can say, where you
can realize that you really don't understand it. You know.
That's what he did with his audience with his students.
(56:27):
You know, he always made him feel not so much
dumb as he brought them to a point where they said,
you're right, I really don't know what I'm talking about.
And they were intelligent, well meaning persons, you know, and
he wasn't just making fools of them. You have to
come to a point of not knowing. That's where you
(56:47):
start from. And the essential element in not knowing is
don't believe what you think. The psychologists also have discovered
that in cor to behavior therapy. They say, don't believe
everything you think. You know, you know, I think, I
(57:08):
think like nobody's gonna love me. I'm not worth loving
all this. Don't believe everything you think. The Buddhists go
like a thousand miles further. They say, don't believe anything
you think. Talk about being radical, you know, and that's
how you become aware of what you actually think, and
then you can refrain from that thinking instead of chasing
(57:30):
after it like the dog chacing after his stick. You know,
you go like whoa I wasn't aware of that. I
didn't know that I even thought that, even though I
never really thought it in so many words or in
English or in complete sentences. But in some level, some level,
I really that's what I believed, you know. And then
you can do away with it. You can then go
(57:52):
of it, which is the great the Buddha's great form
of saying. No. You know, Socrates his dam and said,
don't don't believe this, don't say that, don't do that.
The Buddha said, let go of everything. Don't believe anything
you think that, no attachment, right, No, exactly exactly. So
(58:17):
I don't know how we got here to this point, but.
Speaker 3 (58:19):
No, and I I want to I want to kind
of end where we started, right and and and talk
about God from from two people who are who are
not religious.
Speaker 1 (58:31):
I so so my kind of journey.
Speaker 3 (58:33):
I'm I'm a recovering Catholic, as I describe it, from
Northern Ireland, got put off and I really got put
off religion from from my upbringing. And I remember being
in church and chapel one day listening to a gospel
and I just thought, actually, I don't really believe what
(58:53):
they're telling me. So I started looking at other things.
I started reading other religions and philosophy. That's or I
in first encountered Buddhism and Stoic philosophy, and and then
I got really interested in Daoism and at the same
time had this interest in physics and quantum physics. And
(59:16):
I remember reading a book called The doll with Physics
or The tawas it's spelled The taw with Physics by.
Speaker 1 (59:22):
Free Joff Capra.
Speaker 3 (59:23):
I think, and and and what that kind of journey
laid me into realizing that lots of hardcore scientists like
Capra and and other and even Einstein ended up going
full circle around God, and that that always fascinated me.
(59:46):
But for me, I'm certainly not religious, but I would
call myself more spiritual. And for me, Daoism, that essence
of the universe linked to quantum physics and energy is
the kind of thing thing that that I think is
is that that connects everything.
Speaker 1 (01:00:05):
So why there's so many quantum.
Speaker 3 (01:00:08):
Physicists and end up in the sea in place that
the Daists ended.
Speaker 2 (01:00:13):
Up because I think they sort of understand they're getting
a better understanding of the nature of reality, which is
a very pretentious concept the nature of reality. You know,
how can we possibly know the nature of anything, let
alone the nature of reality? But these people have done
their homework and they studied knowledge itself. How do we
know anything? And by the way, about Einstein, you'll like
(01:00:37):
this one, he said, he's supposed to have said, I am.
He makes the distinction like the way that Jung does,
between religious experience and religion. Einstein said, I am a
deep religious, deeply religious non believer. I don't like that.
Speaker 1 (01:00:58):
I do like that.
Speaker 2 (01:00:59):
You can chew on that for a little bit, you know, yes,
deep little And that's I think what all these people
end up being, you know, like this McGilchrist again, the
one that I refer to many times in the beginning,
is the same thing. The end of his book, of
his six hundred sixteen hundred page book is about the
experience of the sacred. And I like that. This is
(01:01:22):
a psychiatrist, neuroscientist, philosopher. Yeah, you know, and so no,
you're right, I think coming full circle in some fashion.
Speaker 1 (01:01:36):
Yeah, and so so tell me this. Then I'm going
to throw a last question with you.
Speaker 3 (01:01:42):
So, I mean, I remember, particularly Zen Buddhism used to
really hurt my head in good ways, right in trying
to grasp and understand the concepts and the little sort
of dip into Nietzsche really hurt my head as hell, right,
(01:02:03):
And I think this stuff is supposed to you, But
for somebody who has dug so deeply into all of
this stuff, and is there one insight or concept that
continues to challenge you personally after even decades of study
(01:02:23):
and practice.
Speaker 2 (01:02:26):
Yeah, it is the difficulty of putting these things into
everyday life, you know, into practical everyday life. It's like
studying Buddhism. You know, it's a long process. It's never done.
You know, Buddha reached the point where you could say
(01:02:47):
there's nothing else for me to do here. Well, I
can't say that, you know, But that's okay. I don't
mind that as long as I keep, so to speak,
keep the faith. Although it's the word I hesitate to use,
but it's the best thing I could possibly do, is
to just keep practicing these things. And I'm very happy
with that. I have my moments and periods of doubt,
(01:03:11):
no question about it. But I think if I didn't
have any doubt, I would I would be suspicious of myself,
you know, it's like, don't ever trust a priest who
doesn't doubt you know, his priesthood. You know, they become
louder and meaner, but not more kindly or compassionate or
(01:03:33):
more religious. But for me, it's it's it's a thing
that continues and I am what I can say a
good thing, a positive thing that I can say now
is when I look back at my whole life. I
was not born a happy camper. You know, you were
born Irish in an Irish Catholic upbringing, being from Belgium.
(01:03:57):
I'm much more aware of that than most Americans might be,
and I appreciate all that I had my other my
own sort of form of not being a happy camper.
And so I've been searching for my whole life. Essentially.
I started off I mentioned in my teens, you know,
(01:04:17):
when I discovered psychoanalysis and stuff like that. But like job,
I can now say, I am large. I'm seventy three,
I'm coming to the end of my life. I'm not
too worried about that, and I feel like pretty content
with the way, you know, like again that word content,
(01:04:39):
which is not just sort of an everyday kind of experience,
you know, like you can be content after a full meal,
and you say I got a full belly, I'm content.
Well that's nice, but that's not the content I mean.
And I know you know that. But it is all
these things, you know, like the company that I have
kept of all those people, some of whom I've mentioned here,
(01:05:01):
has been a great company. You know. I'm not a
social butterfly. I you know, don't have massive networks of
friends and big family and stuff like that. But those
are my people, so to speak, you know, all these
all these dead people, you know. And so I can
say that I'm content if I keep practicing the stuff
(01:05:28):
that I have learned, that I've learned to understand, that
I've learned to talk about to some degree, and that
I've written about so especially in the last in the
two little books that I mentioned, those are the other
books are They do their own job. But it's more
like my first book was on Nietzsche and psychoanalysis. It's
(01:05:50):
a you know, a pretty decent academic book, you know,
as those things go. But it's I consider it some
sort of engineering work, like the engineer building the basement
of a building. You know, it's an engineering job, you know,
scholarly engineering is what I thought of it, you know,
whereas the last stuff is really conversational, and I've had
(01:06:13):
some very positive reviews about the tone in which it
has written, Like people can't believe that I was able
to spell out these very difficult, sometimes complex, subtle issues
in everyday language, and people go, yeah, of course, I
know that. You know that has given me a great
(01:06:34):
deal of pleasure.
Speaker 3 (01:06:36):
Yeah that I think that content and I think that
that's the same conclusion that I came to with my
sort of amateurist double into a different philosophies, is that
the goal of life is certainly not happiness, but more contentment.
But I remember, I think I was in my early
twenties reading a book called Zen in the Art of
(01:06:59):
Motorcycles inter you know that, you know, the one by
Robert Persik, And there's a bit in there where he's
talking about us trying to get to the top of
the mountain and always looking for the top, And there.
Speaker 1 (01:07:12):
Was a just a few words that.
Speaker 3 (01:07:15):
He wrote that has stuck with me forever. Sometimes it's
better to travel than to get there.
Speaker 2 (01:07:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:07:22):
And and it's that whole thing of actually embracing life
as it is, and and actually enjoying the journey rather
than always you want to be somewhere, achieve something and
and and that is your focus. And when I do this,
I'll be happy. It's really just about slowing down and
enjoying the journey, the exploration of of all of this stuff,
(01:07:45):
the shitty stuff, the good stuff, and and just more
fatty right.
Speaker 2 (01:07:50):
Right, right right, absolutely, Yeah, it's keep going, yes, just.
Speaker 3 (01:07:57):
Keep going and and just and and and take it
all as it is and do what needs to be done,
doctor Don Chappelle.
Speaker 1 (01:08:05):
So where can people go you?
Speaker 3 (01:08:07):
So you talk you've written I think it was seven
books of different levels of complexity, but really I think
from somebody who has a very deep understanding of philosophy,
and there's also a clinical psychologist, I would, without even
having read your books, would certainly point people in that
direction because I think that's more of a I would
(01:08:30):
describe you more of a procademic than an academic, right,
a procademic of life. So tell us where people can
go to access your books, and I know you've got
some courses as well.
Speaker 2 (01:08:43):
The place to go to start is the website Meditative
self Care dot com Meditative self Care dot com and
the two books on the seven books are all identified
there and described in some detail. The two books I
would recommend most is are number one is a book
(01:09:04):
named Meditative Self Care, and the second one, which is
my last book, which is a minimalist ethic for everyday life.
Those two I think they sort of go together. They
hang together. Yeah, all my books, all seven books, hang
together in some fashion. But I think they're the most accessible.
They're short, they're easy to read, and people who are
(01:09:27):
not used to reading maybe challenging ideas or philosophy or whatever,
they find themselves perfectly at home in those little books,
even people who normally don't like that kind of stuff.
You know, I have a brother, and older brother who
is totally different from me. He's very smart guy, he's
got more in the mind of an engineer, and he's
(01:09:47):
not at all interested in the things that interest me.
But the two little books that I mentioned to you,
he thought they were. He was very impressed with them,
And I consider that the best compliment that could possibly
get from someone who is naturally a critic of everything
that I you know. So, yeah, so those two books
(01:10:09):
and the website, you know, I will.
Speaker 3 (01:10:13):
I'll jump on the website myself and get them, and
I'm actually going to get the one on on on
Nietzsche as well, because I think it's probably time that
I went and revisited him.
Speaker 2 (01:10:23):
But that, yeah, I think that would be good.
Speaker 3 (01:10:30):
Thank you, Thank you for everything that you do, and
I trust that you will continue to enjoy traveling.
Doctor Don Chappelle. Welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Thank you, happy to be here.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
So we have a Belgian living in the States talking
to an Irishman living in Australia.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
This could be quite an interesting journey for people.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Yeah, yeah, should we call somebody in Kennedy emergency or yeah?
Speaker 3 (00:34):
So Dad, you are a You've got a really interesting background.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
So you're background kind of you're.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
A clinical psychologist by trade, but also a bona fide
philosopher who's interested in religion as well. So you you
have a really interesting journey. Tell us, first of all,
how did you get into what was the what was
the first driver of your study? Was it philosophy, was
(01:03):
it psychology or was it kind of a dual interest
right from the get go?
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Yeah, it was probably It started off with psychology. I
discovered a book on psycho analysis when I was in
my teens in my father's library and I tried to
read it. Of course, didn't understand much of it, but
I kept reading, you know, unlike many of my friends
who sort of gave up on those things. You know,
they you know a lot of people I think they
(01:29):
say philosophy, I don't know. I can't get into it. Well,
I just didn't give up. I kept on reading, and
so eventually I developed simultaneous or you know, equal interest
in psychology and philosophy, with the initial emphasis on depth psychology,
you know, psychology of the unconscious Freud and Young, and
(01:51):
then archetypal psychology that means anything. And I was I'm
a student of James Hillman, who was a primary student
of care Jung and so wow, yeah, so I got
into archetypal psychology and what we called and what is
still called phenomenological psychology, that is to say, trying to
(02:15):
understand human experience from the basis of human experience itself,
not from models from physics or from physiology or biology,
but sort of straight from direct experience and to sort
of make a great leap already into the connections with philosophy.
I think the original phenomenologist and phenomenological psychologist was the
(02:41):
Buddha of all people. And this was, you know, the
West didn't have something called psychology until about the sixteenth
or seventeenth century. The Buddha spelled out two thousand and
five hundred years ago a very comprehensive, sophisticated psychology of
everyday life. And so the other person who is much
(03:06):
closer to home for us, who is I think also
a phenomenological philosopher and psychologist, is Nietzsche. So to make
sort of a kind of a long journey long story short,
I went from Freud and company, you know, Young and Helen,
to Nietzsche, and from Nietzsche I went to, of all people,
(03:26):
the Buddha, and from the Buddha I eventually ended up
with a Taoist, you know us, first Confucius, and then
a Laudza who is very well known in the West,
and then someone who's not at all known in the West,
which is a philosopher who came a couple of generations
after Laudze. And his name is Zwangzhu, and he's a very,
(03:54):
at least when you first encounter him, very bizarre sounding guy.
Like all these these ancient Chinese philosophers, they operate in
a very different way from the way we do. You know,
we are essentially Greeks by origin in philosophy, and we
(04:16):
became you know, first you were Greek philosophers, then we
became European philosophers, and then on top of that we
became Christian philosophers. And it's all very discursive. You know,
one thing follows from another, one thing argues for another
from another, and the Chinese are very different in style,
and that takes some serious getting used to. They'll start
(04:39):
with a little anecdote to figure off. Let's say two
men fishing in the river and they have a conversation
that is no more than one page long, and you go,
what so, it takes quite some introduction. But once you
get past that, and you need help getting past that,
you know, help from from western skul of uh Chinese philosophy,
(05:02):
then you begin to see, like some very bizarre and
shocking things, Like one of the things you discovered is
this Chinese philosopher Zumangzhu. He is, in more than just
one way, a kind of a Nietzschean philosopher before Nietzsche,
two five hundred years before Nietzsche. And you go, what so,
(05:24):
once you begin to see these connections, that opens up
a world so wide and the windows so wide that
it is just unbelievable. And so that's that's the that's
that's the the ground that I plow, so to speak,
you know, the area that I work in. And so
(05:44):
my last book, which is called a Minimalist ethic, a
minimalist ethic for everyday life. It is, it's it goes.
It starts with Socrates and it ends up all the
way with the Chinese, and it includes things like the
celebration of the Sabbath and and and Buddhism and Taoism
(06:07):
and what have you. And you begin to see I
I am. Originally I was sort of an academic type,
but I got away from academia and being a practicing psychologist,
I had to learn to talk the language of people
with whom I said, need to need so to speak.
That's very different from it. It's very different from an
academic audience. And so I write for that audience. And
(06:32):
this last little book is my shortest, but I think
my best and actually most important and most original book,
which is that that minimalist ethic from for everyday life.
I don't know if you're familiar with somebody named it's
a Scottish person, Ian McGilchrist.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
Ian McGilchrist, yes, yes, yes, says he's a neuroscientist, isn't
he Yeah?
Speaker 2 (06:56):
Neuroscientists, psychiatrist, philosophy, literary critic, you name it, he does
it all. He wrote this book two major works, the
last one is a two volume thing. It's too big
to publish in one volume. It's like sixteen hundred pages
or something like that. But he covers very similar kind
of ground, but he does it in a very different way.
(07:19):
He starts off with a critique of Western habits of
philosophying from what he calls the left brain type approach.
And it's not a simplicity.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
Can you explain what you done? Can you just explain
what you mean by that to people?
Speaker 2 (07:36):
Yeah, okay, left brain, right brain. All animals, all mammals
have their brains are made of two parts, the left
side and the right side, and the different parts control
different parts of our functioning. For example, the left brain,
am I pointing at my left rain. Now we're in
(07:58):
reverse here. The left brain controls the muscles of the
right side of the body, and the other way around,
the right side of the brain controls the left side
of the muscles of the body. But there's not only that.
The more important part is that the left brain and
the right brain they're sort of phenomenologically different. They do
(08:21):
different functions. The left brain is more the analytic, rational, focused, scientific, argumentative,
logical kind of approach to things. It's the thing that
with which we focus our attention on something that's right
under our nose, you know, like under the microscope. The
(08:44):
right brain knowledge has to do with a more comprehensive
knowledge of the entire world around. It's not so focused
on one specific thing or and it's sort of more
comprehensive in the sense that it involves like intuitive ways
of knowing, in the effective importance of the elements of
(09:04):
knowing and so on. And these two brain hemispheres they
work together. You can't be if your one side of
your brain is seriously damaged, and then one side of
your personality so to speak, is damaged as well, doesn't
function as well. So his critique being a neurophysiologist, which
(09:26):
I am not at all. I'm like the Buddha, you know,
the Buddha never heard of the brain, so to speak,
but he did very well for himself. Nonetheless, you know,
he wasn't a scientific researcher, but he came up with
this fantastic, fantastically sophisticated psychology. This guy, Ian McGilchrist would
(09:48):
absolutely worth checking out. He sort of argues that our culture,
largely since the Enlightenment, has focused has has sort of
given the rain of governing our lives and our decisions
and whatever to the more left brain part of our person.
(10:10):
And again, you can't be too literal or too simplistic
about these things, because these these two brain hemispheres, they overlap,
they work together, they compensate for each other, and what
have you. But anyway, his argument is, and there's no argument,
no arguing with that argument, that ever since the Enlightenment,
we've become like super weighted on the side of rationalism scientism.
(10:36):
Religion is out the window. Religious experiences, bull religious dogmas,
certainty out of the window, you know, introspection, you can't
rely on it. Really, So it's behavioral science is what
we want. And that's how a psychology is how we
got where we are too, because all of science is
sort of in that sense. And his argument, and it
(10:59):
is mine, well, although I commented very differently, and I
ad I skipped the brain altogether, so to speak. But
his argument is that the whole person we need to
develop the right side of existence more. That's why I
think so many people are into yoga and meditation and
(11:22):
spirituality and and uh earth, you know, earth awareness and
so on. That's that's more right, brain kind of stuff.
It's funny here I am talking about McGilchrist's book instead
of my own. But the point is that we end
(11:43):
up in the same place. And I actually recently wrote
to him and I hope that I'll hear back from him,
is that, you know, we both end up with what
he calls and what I also call religious experience, direct
religious experience, you which is different from religion. Hume has
(12:03):
a fantastic line which says, religion is a defense against
religious experience. You know, religion is the stuff handled with
left brain materials, you know, Catholic theologian arguments and you
will believe this and dogma in whatever. That's a defense
(12:25):
against the directness of phenomenological experience because you know, very
few of us are really interested in religious dogma, but
all of us are interested in what we might call
religious experience. And that doesn't have to be something fantastic, great,
you know, something biblical, although you know, biblical literature, of course,
(12:48):
is full of the material of religious experience. You know,
like people allow Dawkins and whatever who poo pooh religion.
I think they're missing the boat entirely. They they think
that religions is about gods. You know, like these supernatural
things which are easy to to do away with, you know,
(13:10):
with some clever, you know arguments. But the point of
real religion, a real religious study, is not it's not
about God, it's about who we are. It's about humans.
Religion is about what it is like to be human.
And so these people they forget that day sort of,
you know, Dawkins, you know, they they think they do
(13:32):
away with religious religious dogma, and they have thereby done
away with all of religious tradition and religious experience, which
is of course not true. And so my book ends
up the little one, you know, the medal, the minimalists,
I think in everyday life ends up in the with
(13:56):
with with the Sabbath. I'm not Jewish. You don't have
to be you don't have to be Jewish, you don't
even have to be religious to really get the idea
of what the Sabbath is, you know, in the mythology
of Judeo Christian tradition, in Genesis, the Book of Creation,
(14:17):
you know. And again you don't have to believe these things,
but they nonetheless they say something about something, and what
you hear them say depends largely on how you tend
to listen. And so in any case, we all know,
we all grew up learning that it took God six
days to create the universe and the world, and then
he saw that it was all good, very good. And
(14:39):
then on the seventh day, what does he do? Nothing?
Now he leaves at the west then and we do
a pretty good job. So he rests and he says,
you know, it's all good, it's very good. And I
think the Sabbath is that capacity to rest, to come
to a place rest in your own life after all
(15:01):
the week, the week of the kind of work that
you do, and you come to a Sunday or a
rest day, or a day on the golf course or
whatever it may be, mountain climbing, where you reach a
point where you say, ah, this is what it's all about.
You know, some an experience that that that adds to
(15:22):
the usual. You know, you can have good food on
a daily basis, but that does not really satisfy. There
are a few things in our life that satisfy us,
and the Sabbath is one of those. And that's God's invention.
And again I'm not a religious person. I'll talk about
Einstein about that, but I've lost my train of thought
(15:47):
here that also comes.
Speaker 3 (15:48):
With you were you were talking about this, that the
concept of the Sabbath.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Yes, it's the it's it's God inventing. And I learned
it from a a friend of mine, acquaintance rabbi. He said,
on the seventh Day, God doesn't rest because he's tired.
It's not like the rest of us, you know, or
because he's gotten lazy or something. On the seventh Day. No,
he discovers or he creates the felt sense of the sacred,
(16:18):
the felt sense of holiness. He looks at the whole creation,
that all that has come into being, and he says,
pretty good, you know, amazing. And that's what celebrating or
keeping the Sabbath, as they put it, is about that.
It's about finding ways through ritual behavior or through any
(16:39):
other behavior. Buddhists do it through meditation. They reach that
point of shedding all their usual thoughts, you know, and
coming to a place of profound peace. Not peace after war,
not peace when you make up with your spouse, but
a piece that is that income is the whole world,
(17:02):
and that is what the Sabbath is, and that is
what meditation aims at, you know, similar to God, the creator.
There's the legend of the Buddha. Has it that when
he reached the enlightenment, you know, he had been meditating
for six years and then one day he wasn't getting
where he wanted to get. One day he decided, I'm
(17:23):
not leaving this seat here until until I'm enlightened. And
guess what he got enlightened haliloja. And so what happened
after that is he took I think it's seventy four
days forty seven days of complete rest. He didn't do anything,
(17:43):
and he said, everything has done nothing else needs to
be done. That's the same thing that God said on
the seventh day. Everything has good, everything has done nothing else.
We don't need to worry about anything else that has
to be done. And that's the kind of experience that
all of us are capable of in the smallest ways perhaps,
(18:04):
but the essential dimension is the same. You know, Like
one time I wrote that in one of my books,
I think, or in two. Well, one day I fell
in love with a paper clip. Excuse me, Yes, I
did some moment where all of a sudden the paper
(18:24):
clip struck me. I wasn't just using it, although I
needed a paper clip or whatever. But when I reached
for the paper clip, it struck me as a wonderfully
miraculous little thing. What an invention it, what a humble
job it does, but how well he does it? And
I didn't think all those words with it. When you
(18:44):
start adding words to your experience, you're done. You know
your experience done. That's sort of like trying to explain
a poem. If you have to explain a poem, you've
lost a poem. And the same thing with my paper clip,
And distinctly remember that day when I fell in love
with that darn little paper clip, And so small things
(19:06):
like that, A moment of quiet, of like real silence
can do the same thing, and.
Speaker 3 (19:13):
So donad But can I just I want to take
this into a practical application perspective, right, And so the
Western for me, Western thought in general, Western society is
overly focused on the idea of happiness and and for
(19:38):
me often not always, but but some types of modern
psychology I don't think are helpful because I describe it
as the psychology of.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
Me, me, me, me, me, absolutely right.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
So so both Nietzsche and and the Buddha they talked about.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
I mean, if you think of the.
Speaker 3 (19:57):
First noble truth of Buddhism life is suffering, which I
think is a bit of a misquote, isn't it that
that I give duca is kind of better translated of
life is hard to do.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
Yes, that's what I learned. After decades of practicing psychology,
I learned life is difficult.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
Yes, And for me this needs to be the fundamental
thing that every person is taught. Life can be amazing,
but it's also hard, and it was never meant to
be easy. And he ever told you that life was
meant to be easy and you're entitled to happiness.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
I'm sorry, but they've lied to you.
Speaker 3 (20:40):
And to talk about the importance because I know you're
a fan of that as well as unhappiness as necessary
living absolutely, rather than a pathology that has to be medicated.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
Hello, yep, yeah we're still here.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
Yeah, yeah, we're still here.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
So so so please talk to us about this idea
of unhappiness is necessary absolutely.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
First of all, starting with the Buddha he you know,
as you pointed out, you know, his first novel, noble
truth is life is unhappiness. That's not sort of like
a simple complaint or being sort of in a bitchy
mood or something like that. It is a fact that
the things we pursue in life, none of those will
(21:32):
ever deeply truly satisfy us. That's all he meant that
what whatever we pursue, it's not going to make us happy.
The best career in the world, the best fortune in
the world, the best test line in the world, the
best wife. You know, none of it is going to
make you happy. That's a realization you have to make,
(21:55):
and a lot of us don't make that until we're
like in the middle of our life. You know, when
you're young, you think, oh, you're going to do it.
It's sort of like it applies to other people, but
not to me. You know. One popular teacher of Buddhist teachings,
he was at a conference and he talked about that,
and he said, you know, we have to start here
(22:18):
with the idea that life is sort of unsatisfactory as
they also call it, instead of suffering, you know. And
he said, well, there will be some people here who
say will say, well, yeah, that applies to most people maybe,
but not for me. I just got a new girlfriend.
I'm as happy as one can get. And he said,
(22:40):
I'll see you next year, you know. But it is true.
So I did write a book about that, the Necessity
of Unhappiness, and it talks about you unhappiness of four figures,
first the Buddha, secondly Nietzschee, who also realized that he
as a philosopher, he noticed that everybody was after truth,
(23:03):
you know, all traditional Western philosopher daring the truth. He says,
one not other tru one not rather untruth or even
illusion or something else. And he said, the basis, you know,
we have to start with the fact that existence is
very tough, very hard. It's difficult. It is you know,
it's suffering, you know, and we're not made for this
(23:26):
sort of you know, one day we'll have land, the
perfect job will be happily. Ever after no, he said,
you know, happiness is Unhappiness is necessary. And I have
a third figure, which is the Book of Job, from
the biblical figure of the Book of Job. Also he
I don't know if you listeners are familiar, but Job
(23:50):
is sort of a saintly figured like a real good.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
What is it Old Testament Job?
Speaker 2 (23:57):
It is Old Testament. Yes, it belongs with the Testament,
although it appears also in other non Jewish traditions. It's
older than the Jewish tradition, I think, but it is
an essential part of the wisdom writings in Judaism. Job
who is, you know, perfect perfectly devoted to his God.
And one day his God plans, you know, decides to
(24:20):
test him, and he inflicts all kinds of pains on him.
He burns down his holdings, he kills all his workers,
and he kills all his children, and you know, when
there's nothing left to take away from him, he inflicts
him with boils that are untreatable, incurable. But at the
(24:41):
same time he won't let him die or commit suicide.
So he's stuck there, you know. And so he goes
from being the most devoted person you know, to being
the most blasphemous person more than nietzs you and Nietzsche.
Everybody knows God is dead. We have murdered him. That
is niets you he's famous or from his line, Job
does some he says something far more blasphemous. He says,
(25:05):
once he really can't handle his suffering anymore, he gets
enraged and he yells out. He says, goddamn, the day
I was born, let it never have been If you
look carefully at that is goddamned today I was born.
Let it not have been. Let it never have been.
That is sort of a counter creation myth, you know,
(25:29):
wishing not to have been created, which of course none
of us can do. If you're wishing not to have
been created, you too late, because you're already fully involved
in life. If you you say you wish you know,
I wish you had died at birth, too late again,
because you're, you know, by the time you realize that
you're you're you're too old, you know, to be dying
(25:51):
in her as a baby, and and so on. And
so Job goes through all these faces, and each of
those makes him feel even worse. And so he says, God,
damn the day I was born. And then he goes
on blaspheming so called blasts feaming. I don't think it's
blest feeming at all. And actually, at the end of
(26:13):
the book of Job, God himself comes out and he
says to Job, you have spoken the truth about me
and your friends who said you must have done something wrong,
otherwise God wouldn't have punished you. They were absolutely wrong.
So God sides with Job. And so what Job does.
Then what God does is he gives them like a
(26:35):
panoramic overview of all of creation. He says, look around,
you know, bird feathers, the wind, you know, seasons. How
does the cow know when it's time to have her calf?
Where is the wind when it doesn't blow? Who tells you?
Who calls the lightning for you? And Job is sort
(26:57):
of it's some people describe that's one of some of
the best nature literature ever written. And so after that, God,
you know, these are all things we can see it
on an everyday basis, all of us, you know, even
on the worst day of our lives, just as it
was the case for Job. And when he sees that
and he remembers, yeah, he realizes, yes, it is true.
(27:21):
This is this is amazing stuff that we're born into.
And then he becomes silent. He stops complaining, stops swearing,
stops complaining, and he says, you know, I've heard of
you with my ears, but now I've seen you directly.
So what he has seen is nothing but things that
we can see on an everyday basis, the wind, trees, leaves,
(27:45):
you know, on trees, and so on. So that's the
third figure in that book on the necessity of unhappiness.
Is the figure of Job, because then the book ends
by saying and Job then lived content for the rest
of his life, which is like one hundred and fifty
years or something like that, and he died content deeply content.
Speaker 3 (28:09):
Contentment is different to happiness, right yes, And I think
this is a critical part of all of this.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
Right we go, I aim for contentment, not happiness, because
New Mercedes or whatever, you know. Content And because what's
interesting about Job here is that of all the hundreds
upon hundreds of people measure mentioned in the Bible, both
new and old, you know, Jewish and Christian, there's only
(28:38):
a handful of people of whom it is said that
they died content. And Job, of all people, is one
of those. The most unhappy guy in the world becomes
one of the few who ends up dying content. And
then the fourth figure in my book on the necessity
of unhappiness is The Catcher in the Rye, which is
(28:59):
a very famous American novel. It's a superbly well written novel.
If you ever have a chance, it's an easy read.
It's written. It came out in nineteen fifty or thereabouts.
You know. The Catcher in the Eye very one of
the best novels of that century. And it describes a
(29:19):
young man, an adolescent, you know, who has been already
kicked out of three prep schools, and he's about to
be expelled from the fourth, you know, like adolescent going downhill,
you know, pure and simple. And he also he's the
most wretchedly unhappy adolescent you can imagine. But it is
so beautifully written that it speaks to you, you know,
(29:41):
like you. And he also has to go through all
his misery before he can come to the end and
begins to see like something turn around. You know. He's
alienated everybody, he's pissed off everybody. He has no friends,
he's drifting, he's totally desperate. And then he sits in
(30:03):
a psychiatrist's office at the end and he starts telling
his story. And that's the whole book, is the telling
of his story. And then at the end he says
heribed after he has described a scene where he has
some kind of argument with his friends in school, high
school or whatever, and he makes this amazing discovery and
(30:24):
it's very easy to read over it. He says, it's funny.
He says, don't ever tell anybody anything, because if you do,
you start missing everybody. And this comes from the mouth
of the most cynical, you know, sharpest tongued adolescent you've
(30:45):
ever read about. And he says at the end, it's funny.
Don't ever tell anybody anything, because if you do, you
start missing everybody. So something has melted, you know. And
it's just like the one line is the beginning of
the turnaround for him, just like it is for Job.
You know, you have to read thirty seven of the
(31:06):
forty two books of Job before you the turnaround begins,
you know. And the same thing with the Buddha. Six
years of meditation, after multiple many, many endless rebirds, you know,
and six years of meditation, and then finally it's like bang,
you know, and then he says, nothing else needs to
be done. Everything is done. Six days of creation, artwork,
(31:30):
you know, serious business. And then there's a seventh day. Oh,
this is beautiful. That's where psychology, I think, has to go,
and that's where my writing goes, and that's where McGilchrist goes.
And again I'm putting in plugs for McGilchrist. It's almost funny.
Speaker 3 (31:48):
But is this similar to the Japanese psychology concept of arugamama,
which is basically an acceptance of what is so, but
it's it's not a passive acceptance. It's a you know,
(32:09):
shit happens, that life happens.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
It is what it is.
Speaker 3 (32:13):
But it's also the second part of aurugamama is what
needs to be done. So it's not what you get
focused on external stuff. This just happens. The universe happens.
You'll get a shit sandwich. But it's about that acceptance
and then thinking about what needs to be done with
all of that going on.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
Yeah, I'm not familiar with the Japanese term that you mentioned,
but I am very familiar with the idea of radical acceptance,
which is of course part of you know, a lot
of Japanese culture generally, and Zen in particular. Yes, it
is pure Zen. It is also pure Buddhism. Of course
Zen is Buddhism, you know, and it is that you know,
(32:56):
it is also Yeah, absolutely it's radical acceptance. It's calls
it a more fattyue love, more fat love of fake
love of everything that has been, everything that is, and
everything that will be, and that is.
Speaker 3 (33:14):
N's go and and talk to us from from a
psychologist perspective, like like, how do you when when someone
is is rocking up, or or are people listening who
are struggling with their thoughts and struggling with their emotions
and wanting to change their reality in their heads and
(33:36):
talk to us about this this concept Nietzsche's am more fatty,
which is very similar to that that job.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
So so.
Speaker 3 (33:47):
Like, how do you How do you get that across
to people?
Speaker 2 (33:52):
Not easily so or with difficulty, But that's why, that's
why God invented Yes.
Speaker 3 (34:03):
For me, it is absolutely key to accept that you
cannot control reality. And I think so many people get
in trouble psychologically when they when they are wishing for
things to be different, right, right.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
No, You're absolutely right. It is key. It is the
central objective almost of Buddhist meditation. It is what is medita,
What is Buddhist meditation. It is simply watching how your
mind does what your mind does, and not fighting with it,
not saying oh I shouldn't have thought that, or why
(34:39):
is my mind wandering again? Or am I still having
doubts about this or that? It is accepting the way
your your mind is. Eventually you discover that your mind
is not your mind, it's not your property, but it's
sort of mind playing itself out in this space of
life that we call me. You know, I'm you know,
(35:01):
you're in Melbourne, but you're also in a different way
in your own life. And I'm in Massachusetts, but I'm
also in a in a space that is not geographic,
but that is sort of the all the stuff, all
the place where all my all my Dan Chapelle stuff happens,
(35:21):
you know, and yours is where all your pall stuff happens,
you know, and it is it requires there are different
levels of different ways of understanding. First of all, if
you study Nietzsche, it's important to understand that this is
an essential that is essential part of Nietzsche. It's aphorism
(35:43):
two seventy six of his book The Gay Science, where
he spells that out. And you can actually sum up
Nietzsche in three aphorisms if you like. The First one
is aphorism three hundred and forty one from from well
(36:08):
The Gay Science, Aphorism three forty one, Aphorism two seventy eight,
also from The Gay Science, and then section fifty six
from his book called Beyond Good and Evil and Beyond
Good and Evil fifty six is a boy I haven't
been in that place. I haven't visited this area of
my writing and thinking in a while, but you brought
(36:30):
it up because of your awareness that almorphati is such
an important point, you know. Section fifty six and beyond
good and evil is a place where Nietzschee talks about
discovering that all the things you thought were actually bad
(36:52):
in your life were They were not at all bad.
They were just who what your life is. And it
has to do with one thing that coming to a
point where you can see that, hey, this is good,
like seventh Day, you know, kind of this is good,
this is very good. Where your life, even the ship
(37:14):
in your life is good, very good. You find the
same idea in Saint Augustine, who says somewhere he has
a prayer in his confessions, and he says, and again,
you don't have to be religious for these things to
make any sense for you. But he says to his
(37:38):
he prays to his God, and he says, in your creation,
in your in what you've done or whatever, there's some
things which we human beings think think are good, and
some things which we think are not so good, but totalent,
but the totality of all things is even better than
the best of the good things. So it's a kind
of an amorphattigue, is the totality of things, the acceptance
(38:03):
the way things are. We don't have to make them good,
they already are, you know. And this this.
Speaker 3 (38:10):
Kind of aligns with the historic philosophy idea that that
that nothing is either good or bad, but it's rather
our judgments of them that bad. Right, And and that
that then if we if we then come into psychology
and neuroscience, it's really our emotional responses. I think, I
(38:31):
think that's what the stoics we're talking about, the emotional
responses that you have that then shape your judgments on things.
And so so talk to us a little bit about that,
because this is kind of central to all of this, right,
is that that amorphatty, that understanding that that that stuff
(38:52):
is neither good or bad.
Speaker 1 (38:53):
It's our judgments on that. Like how do you help people?
Speaker 3 (38:58):
And to kind of get into that head space, is
there any techniques or strategies or is it just an
understanding of that concept that like a real guttural understanding
of it.
Speaker 2 (39:11):
It helps to start with an intellectual philosophical understanding, but
that's not enough. You need something more practical. And the
more practical way is the long process of meditation. That's
where you learn to recognize that things are as they are,
and that your unhappiness has a lot to do with
(39:33):
your wishing that they were different from the way they are.
If you're constantly fighting with everything in your life, if
you stop fighting, your life will stop fighting with you.
And so that's meditation is a long, long approach, and
there's no better approach to this then meditation, I think
(39:53):
if you want to approach it on an experiential, really
lived level, not just intellectual stuff to talk about, not
academic lectures to talk about behind the podium. I don't
do podiums, you know. I sit with people, need to need,
as I said, you know, and my language isn't always
(40:15):
you know, kouth maybe I think that's the word in English, right, yes,
But my language is everyday language, which is a very
fine language, I'll have you know, because that's where we suffered,
that's how we suffer, that's how we fight with our
spouses or lovers or whatever, you know. So it's a
very good language. And the Buddha, the Buddha too spoke
(40:39):
a very vernacular language, whatever it was that he spoke
because he was always talking about images from nature from
you know, he lived in an agricultural culture and he
had images of that all over the place. So he
was not an academic standing up behind the podium either.
(41:02):
And so I figured, if it's good enough for the
budd it's probably good enough for the rest of us.
But so meditation is something I have. My two favorite
books are the little one that I mentioned already, which
is a minimalist ethic for everyday life, and the one,
(41:25):
the practical one about meditative self care, which is also
the name of the website meditative self care dot com.
That's where we make our get our hands dirty, why
sticking them in our own experiences, you know, in our
own see how our own minds work and so on.
So those two books for people who are listening who
(41:48):
might be interested in, you know, what do I do
now or is there something I can do? Those two
little books, they're both very cheap.
Speaker 3 (41:58):
And talk to us about the the thing I've been
thinking about more and more, and I think this is
what brings kind of neuroscience and philosophy and experience all together.
Speaker 2 (42:13):
For me.
Speaker 3 (42:14):
Attention is really key around all of this stuff. And
again I'm want to borrow from Japanese psychology. It is
all about attention.
Speaker 1 (42:25):
Attention.
Speaker 3 (42:25):
Yeah, So in Japanese psychology they say there.
Speaker 1 (42:30):
Was a guy Greg Greg Creach.
Speaker 3 (42:31):
My wife is a practitioner of Japanese psychology, her mentor
Greg Creach. I interviewed him and he said that a
key thing in Japanese psychology is about the flashlight of
your attention.
Speaker 1 (42:45):
And they say that is the most important thing in
that you have control of.
Speaker 3 (42:50):
And I kind of love that as the neuroscientist in me,
because whatever you pay attention to your brand commits sales
to it. And for me, attention precedes emotion and all
of this.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
Stuff, right, And so talk to us, and I think.
Speaker 3 (43:09):
That that meditaition can sometimes be interpreted as attention training.
Speaker 2 (43:14):
Absolutely, absolutely, yeah.
Speaker 3 (43:17):
So just talk to us about your experience around attention
or what how people should start to think about their attention.
Speaker 2 (43:26):
Attention is probably the most important thing we do, you know,
it is the most important thing because everything else that
we do or think or feel follow us from attention. Again,
back to McGilchrist, you know, he also speaks about the importance,
the cardinal importance of attention, and you find it throughout
(43:47):
the ages. You know, like there's one person whose name
I forgot. He said, attention is our natural mystical prayer.
How about that? Huh? Interesting, right, is natural mystical prayer?
And yes, indeed, meditation starts with attention, learning to to
(44:10):
tame your attention. You know, like the meditators, the Buddhist
they talk about monkey mind. You know, like our minds.
We all have sort of adhdal. You know, our minds
are like monkeys, jumping from one thing to another. And
the first thing you learned to do in meditation is
to to train the mind to stay put on You say,
(44:31):
I'm going to focus on that, put my attention on
this and keep it there. That's how you started meditation.
And then the second what happens is you learn I
can't do that in my mind jumps to something else
all the time. And they said, aha, look what you're learning.
What your mind is doing. You got monkey mind. We
(44:53):
all have monkey mind. And so meditation begins with bringing
attention back again and again and again to the topic
on which you placed it or want to place it.
So and then also you begin to you begin to
see what else your mind is always doing, is bringing
up stuff, and you're chasing after your mind. Another little
(45:18):
story or analogy that they use in the Buddhist us,
they say is attention is like if you throw a
stick in front of a dog, the dog chases after
the stick, and you know, keep chasing after it, says.
But on the other hand, if you what they call
the lion gaze as opposed to the dog's chasing, the
(45:40):
lion gaze is if you throw a stick in front
of the lion, the lion looks at the origin of
the stick, but doesn't run after the stick. And this
is sort of like you develop the lion's gaze by
you watch your mind and you see things coming up,
but you don't chase after all of them. You watch
(46:02):
that mind, you know, kicking up, throwing up all kinds
of sticks, and you don't run after them. That's the
beginning of meditations, and.
Speaker 3 (46:14):
That brings in self awareness obviously into the peace, but
to really then dig into a little bit deeper in this.
You know, if we think about as you'll be well aware,
our mental health, particularly in developed in our brackets nation,
is is just going down the gurglar. But if we
(46:38):
think the two major ones anxiety and depression, If we
think about people with depression, their attention often is rooted
in the past and lamenting on the past and anxiety.
Their attention is future focused, and there's strong concern about
the future. But the whether attention is absolutely key to
(47:01):
their pathology.
Speaker 2 (47:02):
Isn't it absolutely? Absolutely? The little book on meditative self
care begins or is centered around this one idea. We
suffer from who we think we are. I love that,
you know, and we're always thinking we're somebody or other,
you know, like somebody in front of you, what a
(47:23):
cash register is taking too much time, and then you
get irritated because you know you've got important things to do,
you know, more important spend in your life. You know,
the universe revolves around me exactly. So we suffer from
who we think we are. And as you become more
aware by paying more attention to how your mind works,
you catch yourself at your irritability and at your whatever,
(47:48):
your hostility, and you begin to see, Jesus, I'm a
horrible person. Well you're not a horrible person. You're just
a regular guy, you know. But this is how our
minds work, and this is how it produces our unhappiness.
Because if you think you're going to you're special. You're
going to be very disappointed because you know, so we
(48:10):
suffer from who we think we are, and we're always
thinking with somebody. It's not just like one thing. I
am professor so and so, well you're that, Yeah, sure
everybody can see that, but you see many other things.
You know, you're an old letcher who's drooling over all
your young female students or something, you know, and you're
(48:32):
you're and at home you're like a you know, a
door mat, you know, and and you're afraid of your
children so you avoid them. You know, you're all those
things as well. You know. So we suffer from who
we think we are. That's the core issue of the
Meditative Self Care book. So if you put those two together,
(48:54):
then I think you cover all the bases. You know. So,
but attention that.
Speaker 3 (49:01):
Yeah, sorry, I wanted to today and talk a little
bit about karma.
Speaker 1 (49:07):
So, so you a very good.
Speaker 3 (49:10):
Job of connecting the East to the West and and
and I guess explaining it better. So, so this idea
of karma is often misunderstood in in the West, So
so talk to us about the real impact of what
really karma is and how it can be used in
(49:31):
our lives.
Speaker 2 (49:31):
Yeah, first, but it isn't What it isn't is all
the things we think it is in the West, you know,
like some sort of magical force of the universe that's
going to get you for bad things you did. You know,
like what goes around comes around that kind of you know,
that's not what it is. What it is is it's
an understanding. It's a psychological understanding of why our lives is,
(49:56):
why our lives is as it is, and why we
suffer from what we suffer and while we experience what
we experience. And you know, it has to do with
becoming more aware on a moment to moment basis of
all your intentions. You know, like if you find yourself
(50:18):
drooling again over this young female student in your classroom,
catch yourself at that and see where that leads you.
It's going to disappoint you because you're an old geezer.
You have no business chasing after young women, you know,
and so your karma is going to be that they're
going to laugh at you. That's not something that is
(50:41):
regulated by the stars or the heavens. It's just your
own psychology. If you act like a in a pretentious manner.
People are going to take a distance from you, you know,
because you're a cold person, cold fish or something like that.
And so that's all it is. That sounds very simple.
(51:01):
The point of it is it has to do with
becoming aware of intention. You know, you say attention is
the most important thing. Attention and intention. Attention is where
you put your your consciousness. Intention is where do you
want to go from here? You know you want to
cut off, you want to cut off the guy in
(51:21):
front of you, or you want to get even with
the guy who cut you off in traffic, or you know,
that's intention. And you know if you're the guy, if
you want to get even with the guy in the
car next to you, you're an angry guy yourself, and
guess what you're going to experience. You're going to experience
a lot of anger. Don't be surprised if you do.
(51:41):
That's karma and which is completely perfectly understandable as is
the result of your intention. Karma means the word karmen
sounds great. Karma means action. Doing Karma is simply what
you do, what you know, your intention in what you do,
and and what you the price you pay for that intention.
(52:07):
If you isolate yourself from people, you're going to be
a lonely person. You know, if you're if you're above people,
you know, they're not going to come and comfort you
when you need it. Um, that's that's very simple. Karma. Well,
it gets I mean it gets complicated also, of course,
but it is it's a very down to earth you know.
(52:29):
The Buddhists say, we think that karma is maybe a
part of your life. The Buddhas said, no, Karma isn't
part of your life. Karma is your whole life, everything
you do, from moment to moments. You know, it's a
very typical Buddhist expression, from moment to moment because nothing
ever stays the same. You don't ever stay the same
(52:52):
for two moments in rome and everything. What happens is
what shifts is your intention. Your attention shifts and your
intentionship and your intention is going to point to where
you're going to end up. You know.
Speaker 3 (53:07):
It seems to me, you know, as you talk about
this and Dan, it's kind of adding to my thinking
of it. And it seems to me that if if
most people could master those two things, their attention and
their intention, then I think life would just be so
much better.
Speaker 2 (53:27):
Without absolutely absolutely, you're absolutely right. The yeah, the little
book on ethics, you know, for ethics, for an ethic
for everyday life, it's largely about intention. It is larger,
(53:52):
it's it's actually and i'll tell you a little secrets
of the book. It's a it's a negative ethic, you know,
the Judeo Christian ethics as love your neighbor as yourself,
which is not a bad idea, but have you ever
tried it? It is way harder than we mortals can
actually do, because there's so many more negative emotions that
(54:13):
we have and impulses and whatever. So there's a Chinese
philosopher Confusions. Instead of saying love your neighbor as yourself,
he says, don't do to other people what you don't
want done to yourself. That sounds like the same thing,
except formulated differently. One in a positive fashion, but you
must do the other in negative. What you shouldn't do
(54:35):
what you don't do. And actually, in reality, it is
easier to avoid doing something than it is to positively
do something. It's easier to you know, none of us
can generate loving feelings all the time. I certainly can't,
you know, we spend our whole life trying those of
(54:56):
us who try a little bit, you know, but you can't.
But what you we can always do is say no
to ourselves. Don't do this, don't do what you just
intended to do. And again that's where you know you
have to pay attention to your intention. Socrates said famously,
(55:19):
I know I don't know anything except for one thing.
The one thing I know is that I know nothing.
And he wasn't being just humble, you know, or pretending
to be humble. What he meant was he followed the
dictates of what he calls his namon. His inner namon
is you know the voice that talked to him, and
(55:43):
the voice always told them, no, don't do this, don't
say that, don't believe that. And so I start with
in my book with Socrates as a person who says,
you first have to cultivate the doing no and saying
no in leaving though, which means you have to get
to a place where you tell yourself, well, I really
(56:06):
don't know about this situation, instead of saying, oh I
got my opinions about it. Every situation you mean that
I don't know, Or you reach a point in your
so called knowledge to where you can say, where you
can realize that you really don't understand it. You know.
That's what he did with his audience with his students.
(56:27):
You know, he always made him feel not so much
dumb as he brought them to a point where they said,
you're right, I really don't know what I'm talking about.
And they were intelligent, well meaning persons, you know, and
he wasn't just making fools of them. You have to
come to a point of not knowing. That's where you
(56:47):
start from. And the essential element in not knowing is
don't believe what you think. The psychologists also have discovered
that in cor to behavior therapy. They say, don't believe
everything you think. You know, you know, I think, I
(57:08):
think like nobody's gonna love me. I'm not worth loving
all this. Don't believe everything you think. The Buddhists go
like a thousand miles further. They say, don't believe anything
you think. Talk about being radical, you know, and that's
how you become aware of what you actually think, and
then you can refrain from that thinking instead of chasing
(57:30):
after it like the dog chacing after his stick. You know,
you go like whoa I wasn't aware of that. I
didn't know that I even thought that, even though I
never really thought it in so many words or in
English or in complete sentences. But in some level, some level,
I really that's what I believed, you know. And then
you can do away with it. You can then go
(57:52):
of it, which is the great the Buddha's great form
of saying. No. You know, Socrates his dam and said,
don't don't believe this, don't say that, don't do that.
The Buddha said, let go of everything. Don't believe anything
you think that, no attachment, right, No, exactly exactly. So
(58:17):
I don't know how we got here to this point, but.
Speaker 3 (58:19):
No, and I I want to I want to kind
of end where we started, right and and and talk
about God from from two people who are who are
not religious.
Speaker 1 (58:31):
I so so my kind of journey.
Speaker 3 (58:33):
I'm I'm a recovering Catholic, as I describe it, from
Northern Ireland, got put off and I really got put
off religion from from my upbringing. And I remember being
in church and chapel one day listening to a gospel
and I just thought, actually, I don't really believe what
(58:53):
they're telling me. So I started looking at other things.
I started reading other religions and philosophy. That's or I
in first encountered Buddhism and Stoic philosophy, and and then
I got really interested in Daoism and at the same
time had this interest in physics and quantum physics. And
(59:16):
I remember reading a book called The doll with Physics
or The tawas it's spelled The taw with Physics by.
Speaker 1 (59:22):
Free Joff Capra.
Speaker 3 (59:23):
I think, and and and what that kind of journey
laid me into realizing that lots of hardcore scientists like
Capra and and other and even Einstein ended up going
full circle around God, and that that always fascinated me.
(59:46):
But for me, I'm certainly not religious, but I would
call myself more spiritual. And for me, Daoism, that essence
of the universe linked to quantum physics and energy is
the kind of thing thing that that I think is
is that that connects everything.
Speaker 1 (01:00:05):
So why there's so many quantum.
Speaker 3 (01:00:08):
Physicists and end up in the sea in place that
the Daists ended.
Speaker 2 (01:00:13):
Up because I think they sort of understand they're getting
a better understanding of the nature of reality, which is
a very pretentious concept the nature of reality. You know,
how can we possibly know the nature of anything, let
alone the nature of reality? But these people have done
their homework and they studied knowledge itself. How do we
know anything? And by the way, about Einstein, you'll like
(01:00:37):
this one, he said, he's supposed to have said, I am.
He makes the distinction like the way that Jung does,
between religious experience and religion. Einstein said, I am a
deep religious, deeply religious non believer. I don't like that.
Speaker 1 (01:00:58):
I do like that.
Speaker 2 (01:00:59):
You can chew on that for a little bit, you know, yes,
deep little And that's I think what all these people
end up being, you know, like this McGilchrist again, the
one that I refer to many times in the beginning,
is the same thing. The end of his book, of
his six hundred sixteen hundred page book is about the
experience of the sacred. And I like that. This is
(01:01:22):
a psychiatrist, neuroscientist, philosopher. Yeah, you know, and so no,
you're right, I think coming full circle in some fashion.
Speaker 1 (01:01:36):
Yeah, and so so tell me this. Then I'm going
to throw a last question with you.
Speaker 3 (01:01:42):
So, I mean, I remember, particularly Zen Buddhism used to
really hurt my head in good ways, right in trying
to grasp and understand the concepts and the little sort
of dip into Nietzsche really hurt my head as hell, right,
(01:02:03):
And I think this stuff is supposed to you, But
for somebody who has dug so deeply into all of
this stuff, and is there one insight or concept that
continues to challenge you personally after even decades of study
(01:02:23):
and practice.
Speaker 2 (01:02:26):
Yeah, it is the difficulty of putting these things into
everyday life, you know, into practical everyday life. It's like
studying Buddhism. You know, it's a long process. It's never done.
You know, Buddha reached the point where you could say
(01:02:47):
there's nothing else for me to do here. Well, I
can't say that, you know, But that's okay. I don't
mind that as long as I keep, so to speak,
keep the faith. Although it's the word I hesitate to use,
but it's the best thing I could possibly do, is
to just keep practicing these things. And I'm very happy
with that. I have my moments and periods of doubt,
(01:03:11):
no question about it. But I think if I didn't
have any doubt, I would I would be suspicious of myself,
you know, it's like, don't ever trust a priest who
doesn't doubt you know, his priesthood. You know, they become
louder and meaner, but not more kindly or compassionate or
(01:03:33):
more religious. But for me, it's it's it's a thing
that continues and I am what I can say a
good thing, a positive thing that I can say now
is when I look back at my whole life. I
was not born a happy camper. You know, you were
born Irish in an Irish Catholic upbringing, being from Belgium.
(01:03:57):
I'm much more aware of that than most Americans might be,
and I appreciate all that I had my other my
own sort of form of not being a happy camper.
And so I've been searching for my whole life. Essentially.
I started off I mentioned in my teens, you know,
(01:04:17):
when I discovered psychoanalysis and stuff like that. But like job,
I can now say, I am large. I'm seventy three,
I'm coming to the end of my life. I'm not
too worried about that, and I feel like pretty content
with the way, you know, like again that word content,
(01:04:39):
which is not just sort of an everyday kind of experience,
you know, like you can be content after a full meal,
and you say I got a full belly, I'm content.
Well that's nice, but that's not the content I mean.
And I know you know that. But it is all
these things, you know, like the company that I have
kept of all those people, some of whom I've mentioned here,
(01:05:01):
has been a great company. You know. I'm not a
social butterfly. I you know, don't have massive networks of
friends and big family and stuff like that. But those
are my people, so to speak, you know, all these
all these dead people, you know. And so I can
say that I'm content if I keep practicing the stuff
(01:05:28):
that I have learned, that I've learned to understand, that
I've learned to talk about to some degree, and that
I've written about so especially in the last in the
two little books that I mentioned, those are the other
books are They do their own job. But it's more
like my first book was on Nietzsche and psychoanalysis. It's
(01:05:50):
a you know, a pretty decent academic book, you know,
as those things go. But it's I consider it some
sort of engineering work, like the engineer building the basement
of a building. You know, it's an engineering job, you know,
scholarly engineering is what I thought of it, you know,
whereas the last stuff is really conversational, and I've had
(01:06:13):
some very positive reviews about the tone in which it
has written, Like people can't believe that I was able
to spell out these very difficult, sometimes complex, subtle issues
in everyday language, and people go, yeah, of course, I
know that. You know that has given me a great
(01:06:34):
deal of pleasure.
Speaker 3 (01:06:36):
Yeah that I think that content and I think that
that's the same conclusion that I came to with my
sort of amateurist double into a different philosophies, is that
the goal of life is certainly not happiness, but more contentment.
But I remember, I think I was in my early
twenties reading a book called Zen in the Art of
(01:06:59):
Motorcycles inter you know that, you know, the one by
Robert Persik, And there's a bit in there where he's
talking about us trying to get to the top of
the mountain and always looking for the top, And there.
Speaker 1 (01:07:12):
Was a just a few words that.
Speaker 3 (01:07:15):
He wrote that has stuck with me forever. Sometimes it's
better to travel than to get there.
Speaker 2 (01:07:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:07:22):
And and it's that whole thing of actually embracing life
as it is, and and actually enjoying the journey rather
than always you want to be somewhere, achieve something and
and and that is your focus. And when I do this,
I'll be happy. It's really just about slowing down and
enjoying the journey, the exploration of of all of this stuff,
(01:07:45):
the shitty stuff, the good stuff, and and just more
fatty right.
Speaker 2 (01:07:50):
Right, right right, absolutely, Yeah, it's keep going, yes, just.
Speaker 3 (01:07:57):
Keep going and and just and and and take it
all as it is and do what needs to be done,
doctor Don Chappelle.
Speaker 1 (01:08:05):
So where can people go you?
Speaker 3 (01:08:07):
So you talk you've written I think it was seven
books of different levels of complexity, but really I think
from somebody who has a very deep understanding of philosophy,
and there's also a clinical psychologist, I would, without even
having read your books, would certainly point people in that
direction because I think that's more of a I would
(01:08:30):
describe you more of a procademic than an academic, right,
a procademic of life. So tell us where people can
go to access your books, and I know you've got
some courses as well.
Speaker 2 (01:08:43):
The place to go to start is the website Meditative
self Care dot com Meditative self Care dot com and
the two books on the seven books are all identified
there and described in some detail. The two books I
would recommend most is are number one is a book
(01:09:04):
named Meditative Self Care, and the second one, which is
my last book, which is a minimalist ethic for everyday life.
Those two I think they sort of go together. They
hang together. Yeah, all my books, all seven books, hang
together in some fashion. But I think they're the most accessible.
They're short, they're easy to read, and people who are
(01:09:27):
not used to reading maybe challenging ideas or philosophy or whatever,
they find themselves perfectly at home in those little books,
even people who normally don't like that kind of stuff.
You know, I have a brother, and older brother who
is totally different from me. He's very smart guy, he's
got more in the mind of an engineer, and he's
(01:09:47):
not at all interested in the things that interest me.
But the two little books that I mentioned to you,
he thought they were. He was very impressed with them,
And I consider that the best compliment that could possibly
get from someone who is naturally a critic of everything
that I you know. So, yeah, so those two books
(01:10:09):
and the website, you know, I will.
Speaker 3 (01:10:13):
I'll jump on the website myself and get them, and
I'm actually going to get the one on on on
Nietzsche as well, because I think it's probably time that
I went and revisited him.
Speaker 2 (01:10:23):
But that, yeah, I think that would be good.
Speaker 3 (01:10:30):
Thank you, Thank you for everything that you do, and
I trust that you will continue to enjoy traveling.
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