In conversation: Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo and B. Alan Wallace at Mind & Its Potential 2014

but what do you do so I will start this off by first of all saying that when I heard that I might have had an opportunity to sit and simply have a conversation with Justin Tenzin palmo I said definitely yes doesn't matter what we talk about how does that simply be able to sit with it we could talk about the telephone booth and I'll be hanging on by hanging on her every word but I think we'll have more important things to talk about then telephone books because the issues are very important the distinction between pleasure and happiness so I'd like to begin with a question and then we'll simply see how things roll we have nothing choreographed no no agenda here except to talk about meaningful thing and so as a person who's been practicing with for several decades like Jetta mom the question comes up when one is really very drawn to meditation you Buddhist you Buddhist you talk about attachment being a real problem but aren't you getting attached to meditation isn't this more just more of the problem you know shouldn't use it kind of lose meditate when you feel like it don't feel like it don't meditate but don't be attached you know so here is the venerable nun who spent what was at 12 years in meditation retreat that sounds like a lot of attachment to be like you really attached to her cave attached to being a non attached to meditation sound like really problem yeah so just a my please clarify for me why is that not just a big problem um yes so of course that when the problems is our language that although on one level English is an extraordinarily rich language so vast I mean the dictionaries are this big or they get several volumes yet on some very really crucial terms the language turns out to be very impoverished we were discussing the word desire your desire for ice cream the desire for enlightenment same word the word for love love for ice cream love for the Guru love for the practice and and the same is true for the word attachment in Tibetan it's it's very specific the word doja has the connotation of of a grasping clinging mind which is inherently negative that it is not one doesn't feel it's not the same word as the word for wishing for enlightenment wishing to practice one's devotion to the Lama and so forth it's a very different word with a very different in mind as one says the word the word Deutsche is one of the mental defilements and is never used together with the idea of desiring virtue or yearning for higher realizations and understandings so therefore I think attachment isn't this grasping mind which which holds on and and identifies with in a way which for meditation for example it's in order to learn how to let go I mean one of the main points of practicing and understanding the various levels of the mind is in order to arouse a sense of open spaciousness and and release freedom which is the very opposite of grasping and clinging and holding on tightly this word grasping is very closely related to the this word attachment with the Dutch ah there's a very famous very short aphorism in Tibetan zymogen that bow one may if the if grasping is occurring you don't have the view you're not viewing reality authentically if there's attachment then by the very definition of this in Tibetan you've objectified something you've reified it which means you've kind of solidified it and then you're seeing that thing that object of the mind is that's going to make me happy that as you're looking at it it could be a person an object even something abstract like reputation or people view all kinds of things but soon you latch onto something some object of the mind you reify it as being something separate from yourself you say that's going to make me happy that's going to make me happy that's attachment so it's possible and we think we've both seen this happen people get ideas of what meditation is if I meditate you know what meditations like you go into a meditative straight right and you experience bliss all the time that's the idea you know I want to meditate is I wanna have a meditative stage and that I'm just gonna be sitting there like oh it's so nice I want to meditate and we have this crystallized notion of that's what meditation is like so could attachment to rise to that definitely yeah but that's not meditation right that's some kind of silly concept and so when I'm reading the media I'm really quite amazed in the popular media all over global media even scientific media we've talked about the impoverishment of thing or you mentioned the impoverishment of this immensely rich English language but when it comes to these things it is so for superficial and look at the popular media the word meditation is being used often equivalent to mindfulness if you're practicing mindfulness you know mindfulness mindfulness tation meditation and basically the essence of all meditation is being mindful and then I've seen this many times and when you enter the meditative state as if was your meditation if you meditate it's all going to one thing called the meditative state it's very naive it's finding we come up with some crisp crystallized abstract notion reified and then simplify the richness of meditation throughout multiple schools of Buddhism and then let alone Hinduism dollars and so forth so as we mature as we ripen this interface between this ancient wisdom heritage or tradition of Buddhism and bringing this into the modern world we know that when it comes to science the terminology is incredibly sophisticated detailed precise and so forth and I think what is not really clear yet to scientists who are studying meditation let alone to journalists at large is Buddhism is about six times as a as old as science and that's six times the period of engaging in rational precise meticulous empirical inquiry so to just simply review Buddhism as a religion is missing not as it's not that it's not religious being a nun devotions rituals and so forth play a very important part in Buddhism but to simply say Buddhism is a religion is missing maybe what 80% something like that because it doesn't fit in these categories of the West but is Miss really it is above all a mode of knowing it's all about knowing because the the root of suffering the fundamental root of suffering is not knowing and getting things wrong and therefore the only antidote is going to work is carefully investigating with your full intelligence your full clarity of vision to probe in nature reality because that's the only way you come over come ignorant not simply by believing being obedient and so forth but it really is a whole tradition of knowing so I'm looking forward to the day when the sophistication of Buddhism is meeting not simply with scientists studying Buddhist meditators oh can I study your brain I've heard you meditated a lot why can I do study your BIC would you like to enter this questionnaire you know like they're experts here and there all the scientists and the meditators who may have meditated for 40,000 hours over a period of 10 20 30 years they're treated like you know two-legged guinea pigs so I think we can move beyond that now to see that maybe there's some parity there might be an idea you know we could try it I'll just tell one anecdote in 1992 20 to 22 years ago I was a gooth with a group of world-class scientists there's Fransisco forever you must have known him and Richard Davidson renowned cliffs around the whole Shama to project and then Rick Simpson who these were really outstanding and with His Holiness his blessing we took about Oh backpacks full of equipment and I was the I was the liaison because I had been meditating with these monks up above Dharamsala years before and so they knew me and so I was primarily kind of the cultural liaison and the interpreter for all these scientists and they wanted to study compassion and attention the scientist did compassion and attention yeah so we hiked up an hour and a half up the hill carrying this big heavy backpacks of computers and consoles and EEG equipment and all kinds of stuff you know very high-tech and we came to one yogi been up there for about 20 years or so and the song we're all traipsed in you know we're coming we knew there was with a blessing with the Dalai Lama that we're not invading their space so everything was kosher and so these scientists then they asked they asked them I mean they're interpreted they told that they told this yogi seasoned yogi said well you know we scientists we'd really like to understand the nature of compassion and attention and so would you allow us to hook your brain up with our EEG we'd like to do some measurements on you so we can understand compassion and attention and the yogi looked with a kind of expression like tens of mammals like the word that comes to my mind is bemused like kind of like maybe like this you'd like to understand compassion and attention I'd be happy to help you I'll teach you how to meditate that wasn't actually what they wanted they wanted they wanted to study it as scientists you know but they're just like learning mathematics if you really like to learn mathematics you know what you don't do study the brain of mathematician you actually study mathematics you do mathematics and then you'll learn about mountain vegetation had a similar I think how are they getting on with all that the meditators or the scientists are the scientists we know how the meditators getting on you know well let's come right back to the central theme for this little conversation here this wonderful conversation and that's a pleasure and pleasure and happiness as in eudaimonia sand as in well being something really stemming from a deeper source what this one--that's Dalai Lama is talking about when he said the pursuit of happiness is the meaning of life as opposed to pleasure which Einstein said is the ambition of a pig so it's a pretty clear distinction there what I found is you and I both know so well that meditation really the word means cultivation of course from the Sanskrit that is all about cultivating our hearts our minds or whole way of lead by living our lives and viewing reality and engaging with others the natural environment all century being it's a massive cultivation of a way of authentic living and authentic viewing the renewing of reality and bringing forth the most wholesome and realistic momenta or Momentum's in the mind but it's really all about the cultivation and realization of genuine happiness all the way up to Buddhahood itself which for the Buddhist would say that's the pinnacle that's the the culmination of the pursuit and realization of genuine happiness that's what it's really all about and if we look at the scientific papers and they're now scores of them hundreds of them studies of meditation especially mindfulness but other types of meditation as well what I found is in the vast majority of them they are study meditation for its hedonic value yeah it's what is it good is it good for stress reduction is it good to help you make more money is it good for other health factors will help you sleep better and so forth and in having translated for His Holiness on many occasions in this regard you know if some types of Buddhist meditation can be helpful for people's health for their affluence for the interpersonal relationships overcoming stress and so forth this one and I said well the whole point of Buddhism is to alleviate suffering that's it kind of like in a one-liner point of buddhadharma the teaching and practice is to alleviate suffering and so if that's if those are the questions people are asking I'm really stressed out on my work can you teach me meditation that helped I can't sleep very well I'm feeling a lot of anxiety can you help me with that I'd like to have a better romantic life because I keep on turning off all my would-be girlfriends you know can you help me out many things with that help none of these are trivial for the people are asking the questions nothing to ridicule here and as holiness comment here with look if you're going to leave rate suffering with Buddhist meditation that's very good if it can be very helpful for alleviating stress in a completely decontextualized way just pluck out a meditative practices out of the whole context of ethics out of the whole context of a broader cultivation of the mind out of the context of really recognizing our false assumptions preconceptions and really probing into the nature of reality and getting to the root of delusion and ignorance if you want to pluck it out of all that context you can and if you can help people and their suffering is alleviated they find a bit more pleasure it will it smoother ride in life he said that's a good thing but then he added don't mistake that for Dharma for buddhadharma because put it on is fundamentally it's about liberation it's about awakening and of course once pleasure in life does increase the pleasure of a conversation the pressure of just the beauties of nature the pleasures of watching children at play the pleasures of so many things enjoying the beauty of the day you and I were commenting what a lovely day it is outside here it is dark cold and chilly an outside why are we in here again you know but whether you're a nun or whether you're layperson like myself if you're practicing meditation a lot in fact your enjoyment your pleasure in these simple pleasures of life that rise up to moment from moment to moment can be enhanced but that's not the primary reason to meditate it's for genuine well-being that comes from inside so at that point that was kind of a laberd response to a very meaningful question I don't see that being addressed much and I don't know as well there's hardly a study I know where the scientists are approaching in the contemplatives especially if they spent years decades in practice I hardly know of a study I think I know of one worth coming with a sense what can we learn from you not what can we learn about you your brain stage your behavior and so forth and so on but you people you Buddhists Dallas Hindus Christian contemplatives you've been doing this frankly a lot longer than we've been doing what we're doing the cognitive science is about 135 years old so you've been doing might we learn from you what have you discovered once you've spent ten twenty thirty thousand hours of meditation probing in nature of the mind seeking the true roots of suffering the roots of genuine happiness share with us your insight because you may have come upon some insights and discoveries that have been replicated thousands tens of thousands of time which we scientists always looking outwards to the objective world we've not discovered yet I haven't seen that happen it's by and large we scientists we have our act together now tell us you know let us hook you up you know so hopefully here we'll see more of a parity coming up in the near future where there's a bit of kind of like respect where respect is due if I can say so but maybe sometimes when people approach meditation with these rather you know limited expectations because they have limited expectations and I'm not doing it in order to become enlightened right they might actually experience something which they were not expecting at all I mean one of the problems of people meditating is that they have expectations and it's a matter of what will I get from this and that acts as a great block to really advancing and so if you go with a very open mind just hoping it's going to lower your blood pressure or what and de-stress you a bit then it could happen I think that actually because the mind is more relaxed and not expecting anything much that something might actually happen which will then arouse a real interest in in the nature of the mind and what is this all about actually that certainly does happen I think you must have witnessed this many times and I've been engaging in collaborative research with scientists since 1992 that's when it began and knowing more secularized programs like mindfulness based stress reduction and I know the I know the founder of that Jon kabat-zinn he's a wonderful man very good hard intelligent really altruistic motivation I have a lot of affection for him and respect because if by skillful means he has plucked some methods outside of the whole context of Buddhism brought them into a clinical setting and alleviated who knows it has to be tens of thousands people alleviated suffering for so many people and so it's a good thing is that the essence of all Buddhist meditation no it's not it's meditation and mindfulness are they the same no they're not but it's a way to start and then as people start because this has been up for what thirty years now or so then just as you were saying people do a bit of this they do twenty minutes and then the questions start to change the questions start to change maybe you're coming in because too much stress or you have a pain here arthritis there or what-have-you but as you go deeper and you start getting the taste of it a little bit of an inkling of fragrance of something coming from a deeper space a sense of well-being a sense of serenity a sense of ease which is just the opposite of grasping then the first question may be may have been I'm physically kind of a mess can you help me out stress-related disorders all over the place and that's not a bet it's dukkha so why not try to do kameen suffering but then as they go deeper then deeper questions may arise and deeper questions may arise and so that does happen and so it's I think it's skillful means almost like if you take a person who is afraid of the water into a swimming pool you come in the shallow end you don't throw them in deep end take me shallow end and as they start to see that it's not dangerous that is actually quite pleasant then you can take them step by step and actually maybe not this way so how would you understand the relationship between meditation and happiness the relationship between meditation and happiness well if we're talking about genuine happiness then that comes undoubtedly that that really comes from the mind because one can be in the most outwardly challenging external situation and yet inwardly have a sense of genuine joy as well as being in a very pleasant situation and feeling utterly miserable so if it's clear that that genuine happiness is does not really depend that much on external circumstances and so I mean as we all know Buddhism has always recognized that the reason why we suffer inwardly really is because of our mental afflictions and so meditation can help us to see these afflictions in the first place and recognize them and accept them and then learn how other to deal with by recognizing that they are not something solid not something real not something self existent or just by learning how to apply an antidote how to transform them but anyway as as the meditation obviously deepens then the mental afflictions the emotional flexions our greed and our anger irritation and our envy and our resentments and our fears and worries and all this these emotions which agitate our mind and which often we project outward to other people our external circumstances then they begin to gradually not only become more clear but also to to become more settled and eventually be replaced by much more positive feelings and as that happens then naturally the mind becomes more settled more spacious more free and one begins to become far more in in charge of what's going on inside instead of being the slave to whatever emotions happen to come up like a push button you know like you push a button and you get tea or you get coffee or whatever you know you push an emotion and up it comes and and suddenly one recognizes one doesn't have to respond that way that one has a choice how one is going to respond and that one can respond skillfully as well as unskillful ii and then gradually that gives a sense of inner space inner freedom and now and then is going to explain it all as you're as you're speaking iowa's is what came to mind was one of the central marks of existence in just foundational Buddhism that which is to say it's true for all schools of Buddhism the Tibetan is simply runs such a time Qigong Allah and that is such a time dome Allah every experience we have every expense of anything we have if it's tainted if it's contaminated filtered conditioned by our mental afflictions such as a strong sense of ego I am I am I'm really here which means that now since mama is really over there so this dualistic grasping this strong bifurcation reified absolute bifurcation of subject-object my side your side us and them that's one of the big ones and then the craving the attachment looking at some objects thinking that's going to make me happy but also and you're you're alluding to this when we get unhappy outcomes a finger why am i happy I think it's you know it's that place no it's Sydney no I think it's Melbourne no I think it's Australia I need to get out of Australia make it really makes me unhappy you know finding something out there and thinking that's what makes me unhappy that's a mental affliction pointing some objects a that's the source of my unhappiness so as long as our experience is conditioned by this delusional notion of I am absolutely over here independent autonomous separate from everybody else and that out of that Springs the craving or that makes me happy that makes me unhappy every experience we ever have there's conditioned by such mental afflictions the Buddha said and this has been echoed for the last 2,500 years that experience is going to be donor voix unsatisfying unsatisfying but we keep it getting our hopes up you know when people get into romantic relationships oh I've been looking I finally found the one who's going to really make me happy will you be with me forever my love is forever as long as you keep on delivering the goods keep on making me happy every time you will live up to my expectations want you because because like you're supposed to make me happy or the car or the job or the new location or the status or whatever it is this just gives rise to an endless stream of dissatisfaction and always we get a new girlfriend boyfriend a new job new new this new that we get an extreme makeover I don't look the way I don't like the way I look by the way I look old I don't like looking old so what can we do about that I mean I think really I got to get this die right on and it's so passe and DC ulti the wrinkles and the bags here you know it's gonna make me feel a lot better about myself an extreme makeover so I look into the mirror say now I feel much better about myself except for every time we do that it winds up being unsatisfying and when we don't learn we keep on just doing the same thing over and over and over again and never figuring out that it's not out there that's not what makes me happy and that's not what makes me unhappy they may or may not but all they do is catalyze and when we start recognizing AHA this dissatisfaction is not that person in this place with that place the dissatisfaction is the quality of mind I'm bringing to everything and when we recognize that then we say AHA this is the primary thing to do transform purify understand liberate your own mind and then wherever you go then you're bringing your Jenny habits genuine happiness with you rather than to hoping to find it there when you arrive it's fundamentally different orientation to the pursuit of happiness or well-being as opposed to being like like I'm like a like a dog running around on a garbage dump you know looking for pleasure it's kind of sad when will we ever learn this is the question I mean this you know as you were saying yesterday after so many basically centuries millennium you this is the only thing which makes me doubt rebirth is you'd think that by now we would have got it you know and there's an answer to that though amnesia I mean if you kids there's been very good studies of this at the University of Virginia Ian Stevens check it out there are scientific studies and they're really quite rigorous of the occasional kid here are they're not in Tibet but all over the globe who start talking about their past lives and lo and behold throw out 95% of the cases it's just kids chattering but then that that anomalous one where the child actually is giving veridical accurate accounts of a previous life and they have no access to that knowledge that does raise questions but most of us are not that way most of us are not talking about our past lives we're basically talking about where's my baseball or just whatever in this lifetime so but I see a strong analogy here that is every time we do this we get reimbold a veil of me amnesia comes down you know get we get so fixated so caught up in the affairs of here and now that you know we forget back then but ignore good at an analogy it's a little microcosm whether or not you believe in reincarnation but you do believe in dreaming right and so consider this you fall asleep roughly 90 minutes later you enter into a dream cycle you have five to seven a night according to scientists 90 minutes after you fall asleep you enter your first dream cycle in your first dream do you remember where you were 90 minutes ago not usually then you fall asleep 90 minutes later you have another dream cycle but when you're in your second dream you probably don't remember who you were in the first dream and then you have your third dream you didn't remember the eve of the previous dreams you may go through five to seven dreams and finally it's comes the the alarm at seven o'clock the next morning you wake up say how you're doing did you dream no I don't think so you can't even remember that you dreamed you just went through seven rebirths and you can't even remember that you were born and you had the last one only ten minutes ago so I think amnesia characterizes samsara on the big level and on the little microcosm of the 24-hour period it's just amnesia all over the place yeah so we're stuck you know there's an antidote that you're ready it's a really cool term you might have heard of it it's called mindfulness and the word mindfulness if we go back to the classic literature of all schools of Buddhism I've checked this out the word mindfulness from the pali the sanskrit the Tibetan Mongolian Japanese and Chinese those are ones I checked out the word mindfulness has in all of these languages that have become Buddhist languages or have embraced Buddhism the word mindfulness has a primary connotation of recollection to remember to remember to not forget to not be distracted so we learn something we learn something individually but how about culturally you know I believe the ancient Greeks like people like Socrates Pythagoras Plato and so forth there is such insights incredible insights that early Desert Fathers out in North Africa these Christian monks I've read them they're pretty awesome the monks on Mount Athos on the 13th century in Greece I've read some of their practices and insights awesome and what we forgot them our own heritage the Jewish heritage the Muslim the Abrahamic religions there's so much wisdom there but we get so caught up in modernity that we forget what was known five hundred thousand fifteen hundred years ago so what I think we need here is mindfulness of the richness of our own cultural heritage the Jewish the Christian the Greek the Roman the richness of all of this and don't just be a reduction isn't say well if it was published five years ago it's probably passe what are the scientists saying today you know so mindfulness means bearing in mind not forgetting the insights we've had in the past and not assuming that only scientists have the insights they have a lot of insights but no other insights are the objective the physical unyk want viable that's whether they're good at but contempt it is for example primary insights nature of the mind nature of mind and so not forgetting these insights and bringing these together so our time is out but I think here on this point I'm here not to divide you know to set up religion I'm so utterly bored with science versus religion and so forth I mean I just yawn I fall asleep when I hear that going on but the challenges we're facing in the modern world they're so pressing they're so deep they're so important it's the time for unification for the wise people of the great religions of the world to join with the wise people of science and coming together because we have so much to share in a complementary fashion the notion of competition I am right you're wrong I think we have to be outgrowing that very quickly thank you for spending time by the time we're sixty more than ninety percent of us will have known someone close to us where suffer from some sort of a neurological disorder you all know you're not going to live forever there's only one way into this life and one way out I cannot prove to you anymore that anything is possible talk about the marvelous thing that we now understand about our brains it gets so much better

Channel: Happy & Well

Views: 67,385

Rating: 4.6846471 out of 5

Keywords: jetsunma tenzin palmo, tenzin palmo, alan wallace, b alan wallace, mind & its potential

Id: jNUyOX-yw34

Length: 32min 9sec (1929 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 19 2015