Everyday Buddhism 118 - The End of Suffering with Ani Lodro Palmo

Interactive Transcript

Speaker A This podcast is made possible by your support and your donations. Thank you. And by the purchase of my book called Everyday Real Life Buddhist Teachings and Practices for Real Change. I will post an affiliate link to the book on Amazon in the show notes and if you've already read it, please take a minute to rate and review and also consider purchasing it again for a friend or family member as a gift. Welcome to Everyday Buddhism Making Every Day Better by applying the proven tools found in Buddhist concepts Welcome to episode 118 of Everyday Buddhism Making Every Day Better. A quick note before we start the episode, don't forget to listen to after the podcast conversation. Please hang around listen to after the podcast conversation for some new things happening over at the Everyday Buddhism Patreon, where more offerings are available to public Patreon members and all tiers of the Everyday Buddhism Patreon community. But now to the episode. It's a pleasure to share a conversation with Ani Lodro Palmo, an ordained Tibetan Buddhist nun, director of the Vajra Vidya Monastery in Crestone, Colorado, and a spiritual teacher and author with more than three decades of monastic experience. Ani has devoted her life to spiritual practice and shares her understanding of the Dharma as an author of the books all that Appears and Exists, the Buddha's Teachings to Awaken the Heart and Turn Suffering into Joy, and her most recent book, the End of Suffering, Finding Love, Self, Compassion and Awakening in a Chaotic World. As a recognized teacher of Tibetan Buddhist philosophy and meditation, Anilodro's insights are deeply rooted in the unbroken lineage of Buddhist wisdom through the Karma Kagyu lineage of the venerable Kenshin Throngu Rinpoche. Although Ani has decades of monastic experience within Tibetan Buddhism, she teaches how the frustrations and dissatisfaction of our everyday lives can be understood and transcended through wisdom and compassion. She writes and speaks in an accessible way with the gentle encouragement of a friend that is helpful to both new seekers and and seasoned practitioners alike. Her teachings are available through retreats, online sessions and publications. In our conversation we talked about a wide range of things, including how we tend to misunderstand what suffering is gurus and reincarnation as a part of Tibetan Buddhism, but but not a necessary part the Four Noble Truths as a path to awakening and taking the mystique from Karma as Ani writes, quote, transforming it from an enigmatic doctrine into a practical guide for conscience conscious existence rooted in intention and behavior. Unquote, we talked about the her teachings of the Seven Simple Truths to end suffering and roughly they are one Thoughts are nothing, they Are no things. Two, labels and thoughts create our reality. Three, when we look for our thoughts, they aren't there. And number four, your beliefs are not truth. Number five, dropping attachments is the fastest way to end suffering. Six, you can't focus on helping others and be miserable at the same time. And seven, you don't need your mind as much as you think. And we talked about so much more. I know you will enjoy Ani Lodro's easy and relatable style of teaching and conversation and be inspired by what she has to say. The conversation starts now. Hello, Ani. Thank you for joining me on the podcast.

Speaker B Thank you, Wendy, for inviting me. It's an honor. And I've been looking forward to really speaking with you.

Speaker A That's great. Yeah, we did have a little back and forth in email, so we got to know each other a little bit. But that's not the same as talking. And that's the wonder. The wonderful world of being a podcaster is talking to people that you would love to talk to and would never have the opportunity to talk to. So I feel. I feel very blessed always to talk to my guests. So let's start with, you know, the typical sort of what about you? And so I. My first question to you is, can you take us on a journey from a girl from New Jersey ending up as a Tibetan Buddhist nun? And I'm going to add another couple of offshoot questions to that and see if you could remember those. If not, ask me. And what did prompt you to take a big step to being a monastic? And did you go from a practitioner to a monastic, or did you just jump into the monastic lake whole hog? And the other question is, and feel free not to answer this if you don't want to, but I think it's a question I've heard a lot of people ask monastics, and I've had a couple on from the Titan from Plum Village who left the monastic life to become an everyday sort of person. But do you ever have any, like, regrets or wondering if you missed anything in life? I mean, we all have done that at one time or another. Like, what if? So, yeah, there you go. It's okay.

Speaker B Well, can I start at the end first with that? With the question?

Speaker A Yes, you can start. Yeah. Because it's the last one in your mind. Sure. Go.

Speaker B Okay. I kind of did things a little bit in reverse, as, you know, contrasting to other monastics where I came into the monastic life. I didn't start my spiritual journey until I was 35 years old. So in my 20s and, you know, for about a good 15 to 20 years, I had a pretty wild life. I was like, you know, you hear.

Speaker A About Jersey Girls and, oh, boy, this sounds fun.

Speaker B And in some ways, I was that kind of cliche where I was looking for all the kinds of explorations in life that would be thrilling, right? So I did all the things that, you know, were really. Actually, I feel now, when I look back, I'm very happy. I lived the way I lived because I got all of those kind of desires, you know, human desires, sexual desires, emotion, you know, all of those things. I played all that out for about 50, 15 years. And at the end of that 15 years, I was not really very happy. And I just thought, wow, like, I'm pursuing these things that society has told me, you know, I should pursue. And here I am, and I really feel empty inside. So I think, you know, in that way, I've heard a lot of people speak to me that, you know, I'm a counselor. A lot of people I work with come and say, you know, I've done all these things. I've created this wealth for myself. I have this house and cars and blah, blah, blah. But I feel empty. I don't feel that my life is joyful for me. I don't feel joy in my life. And that was me. You know, I had pretty much. I'm from Italian descent. You know, my grandparents were all, you know, came to Ellis island from Italy. So we had, you know, Italians can be kind of tribal, I would call them. Oh, yeah, yeah. And we had. So I had a pretty kind of healthy upbringing in terms of, you know, we were. Italians tend to be raised by a village a little bit. You're, you know, your cousins, and you have tons of cousins and aunts and uncles, and they're always coming over your house, and you're always going over their house. So you're raised in kind of an atmosphere where you're subjected to a lot of different personalities and you get a good sense environmentally of family, and there's a lot of really deep ties. In that way, I was kind of moving along in a pretty lucky, healthy way. And then I write this as a very short essay in my book. But it was really a very kind of difficult part of my journey where I went to college, came out of college and got engaged, moved to California, fell in love in college, college sweetheart, that whole story. And then I was out in California, in LA for about two years. Our house got broken into. My fiance was killed. He was shot and killed. And you know, it was such a. For me, you know, we talk about like events that pull the rug out from under you, but it was kind of, you know, even more than I could even describe in terms of how devastated I was because I was so, you know, conditioned to think, here's going to be my life, I'm going to marry this person, have this house and have these, you know, and all of those things that were kind of delusional if you think about it. You know, we're kind of handed this, here's the life you should have. And then we take that on and say, okay, let me go create this. And that didn't happen. And so at the age of 24, you know, or 24, 25, I lost the uncle that had been living with us. I lost my mom and I lost my fiance. So I had somewhat of an emotional mental breakdown.

Speaker A Somewhat. I imagine it's more than somewhat. Yeah, that would be a lot for anybody, especially at that age. I can't even imagine, really.

Speaker B Yeah, I was very young. I was a young 24 year old. I didn't have the maturity, I didn't have the emotional maturity or the skills, the coping mechanisms to deal with grief and loss and change. So I played out, you know, of course there was, you know, a certain kind of rebelliousness in me that something had been taken away from me and I wanted that thing back. I wanted my mom back. I wanted the life that I had decided was going to be my life and that just wasn't going to happen. And in this kind of cycle of rebelliousness, I kind of railed against all the things that I had said, you know. Well, that's not really my, you know, my thing, like drugs isn't my thing and alcohol is not my thing. My thing is this. Right. I was like more of a good girl kind of person. So all that got reversed and I went down these, these dead end roads, really. You know, I did a lot of drugs, I drank a lot. I had all types of relationships, some of which were very, you know, damaging. They weren't beneficial to me, to my emotional or spiritual or personal growth. Um, so at the end of that whole cycle, I was, you know, at the end of my 20s and you know, 20, 29, 30, 31. That whole time things just seemed to keep falling apart. It was almost like, you know, I had played out this kind of wild life and at the end of it, I had nothing to show for it in terms of, you know, being a better person for it. I was not a better person for It. And I had ended up alienating friends, family. And so all this was coming into very clear view in my early 30s. I ended up trying to fix things through getting married to a friend, which was a bad idea. I've learned we should not marry our friends. And so that didn't really last long. So, you know, at the very. At 34, I had a broken marriage. I had alienated myself from my family. I was somewhat alcohol and drug addicted. I had a lot of things going on that were worrisome. You know, it was kind of like, you know, when you go into AA and you're at the bottom of the, you know, you bottom out. Basically, that was me. And it was at that point that I just said, you know, I had this insight. And the insight was, basically, this is not the life I want to have. You know, I have done a lot. You know, it was like instead of blaming outside of myself, which I normally did for a moment, I looked inside and said, okay, there's something going on with me. It's not anybody's fault. It's not my ex husband's fault. It's not my family's fault. This. I have to look at this for myself.

Speaker A And then that's a great level of maturity to hit, to come to that realization when you were at the bottom. But maybe if you were in aa, maybe that helped trigger that understanding. I don't know. But, you know that I. I'm kind of amazed that you did that after all of that.

Speaker B Yeah, well, when I kind of hit bottom and people told me, they said, you should go to aa, you know, you should go to Narcotics Anonymous, alcohol, anonymity, you need to do these things. And I listened. I actually, you know, because they're. When you bottom out, it's experience because, you know, there's. There's nothing. There's no hope in a certain way, kind of like evap, you know, the hope has evaporated in a certain kind of way, and you're not really interested in the things that were actually got you to where you are. So you're kind of like at a loss. You feel lost. And so I started with aa and one of the things that was very clear when I started AA is that we need to be accountable. Right? We need to be responsible, and then we create our own life type of thing. And that was what helped me have that insight. So it kind of, you know, hopefully I'm not talking too much, but that's.

Speaker A How I ended up. No, no. Well, that's actually, I think that's Excellent. People. People need to understand. I think people want to. They don't need to, but they want to understand. Because I think a lot of people. I know a lot of people that I've met over my years in Buddhism, both in Tibetan Buddhism, mostly in Tibetan Buddhism, what were. But. But also in the, in the tradition I. I was inducted as a minister in. Is a lot of people like, kind of like, oh, I wish I could just like go to a monastery and just get out of this rat race. You know, it's kind of like that, that kind of escape thing. And clearly yours was not. You were pushing yourself towards the positive rather than escaping, because the escaping is much more of the behavior you had before or the behavior many of us have about looking outside. Right, okay. Because I'm a mess now, but if I went to a monastery, I'd be okay. Right? Everything would be all right. So it wasn't that. And that's, I think, a great insight into, you know, how you got to where you are.

Speaker B Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It was around that same time that I also enlisted a therapist and that, you know, therapy, I tell people all the time and I share my story of, you know, my journey with my therapist. Because Buddhism, you know, this is kind of an aside. I don't know if you want to edit this out, but Tibetan Buddhism does not deal with Western societies mental emotional struggles, you know, in terms of our level of collective self esteem, our level of self criticism, the attitudes that are conditioned into us through our society, Tibetan Buddhism is not equipped to deal with. With Western views, you know. And so for me, because I had. I had three years, three or four years of therapy with one person, I was seeing her a few times a week at one point, and she was very clear and very able to walk with me through that path. Of all the things that I had done that were emotionally painful and had left scars in me and find my way out of that through accountability, basically.

Speaker A Which, you know, is similar to the Dharma path of practice, of intention and, and, and commitment and, you know, gratitude and devotion and all the things that we emphasize in walking the path of Dharma. And, you know, I'll touch on it reminded me what you said about to Tibetan Buddhism isn't set up to deal with all our Western issues. And I remember the llama saying, you know, with Americans, we've not. We don't ever see this in Tibet. You, all of you have such a problem with self esteem and self loathing that it actually is very narcissistic, really. And I remember them saying, that and I, that stuck in my head. And I remember a lot of people was on a retreat that I remember one saying this and, and it seemed like all the people who were on the retreat were kind of insulted by it. But you, you know, it was sort of accusatory, but I got it, man. And I, and it's like then when I started studying Japanese Mahayana Buddhism, Zen and Shin and I stuttered, studied Eastern therapy, like Eastern psychology, like Merida therapy and stuff. I'm not sure if you understand, know that like Nikon and those sort of practices which are mostly studied within Japanese Mahayana traditions, but they're, they don't do Western psychology, but they get you into a much better place because they don't do Western psychology. Right. You know, it's much more about using sort of the Dharma principles are all there, you know, So I, I, I get, I get that totally. I mean, and, and I'm so glad you brought up psychotherapy because so many people think that somehow Buddhism's going to, if you got some junk you got to take care of that somehow it's all going to go away when you start seeing, studying Buddhism. Well, that is not true. And it can get you into a lot of trouble. I mean, there's, you know, there's been a few instances of Buddhist teachers that ended up in a real bad place. Some of them dead because they kept avoiding the therapy and the, and the, the help that they needed for drug addiction or bipolar or, or whatever. So, yeah, I, I do emphasize that I went through it and I'm not going to go in there, but I went through trauma. I found out that I was diagnosed with chronic PTSD or complex ptsd, which I did not know I had. And it came to the fore during the pandemic. Um, I think a lot of people had issues that sort of surfaced during that time because it was a struggle for our, our way we look at the world. Even though I, I, I knew that things were, change was part of the deal and impermanence was part of the deal. And, but you may know that and you may practice it, but when it hits on a global scale like that, it can, can upset your world. And I, I immediately got therapy and it did help me quite a bit. So I'm glad you emphasized that. That's very good. So, yeah. Did we get to where you became a monastic or.

Speaker B We're just at that turning point.

Speaker A Okay, why don't you, why don't you take us along the journey? Because I, I tend to get off the Track sometimes, yeah, I, I, I.

Speaker B Do the same thing. Yeah. So I, you know, it was at that point, after a few years within therapy, aa, and my therapist had started recommending books. Codependent no More, you know, many of the books that are now classics. The Road Less Traveled, the Art of Loving, or Carl Jung. And I just, there was a spiritual thread running through many of those books. And then I became interested in spirituality, and that's how I became. I want to know more about this. This is what I'm interested in. And so I ended up moving to California and I started working with different teachers. I was working with one teacher pretty closely who was more of a yogini. She was a Hindu practitioner, and I was working with others as well. The one that I was working with closely, she asked to be kept kind of anonymous, so I don't really spread her name. But I was also working with, like, Muji in Portugal, Ganglaji, you know, a lot of the big names that we know. And where you're like, well, who's the teacher? And you go, and these are the, you know, these are the ones that are kind of on the circuit, I guess.

Speaker A Oh, definitely. It's, it's in a lot of people's spiritual history, I think. Chronology. Yeah.

Speaker B Yeah. So I was working with multiple teachers and kind of more on the Hindu side. Advaita. No, Self dissolution of the ego. And I was very committed and I was very committed to selfless service. I understood in some, you know, there must have been some innate part of me that understood that very well. If you, if I wanted to, you know, accumulate merit, that was going to be through karma yoga. It was going to be through selfless service. It was going to be through caring about other people so I could get my attention kind of out of the narcissistic.

Speaker A Right.

Speaker B World. I was kind of, that I was kind of in. So that, that went on for 10, 20 years. I was with one, you know, my, my close teacher. I was with her for 19 years. I actually lived with her.

Speaker A Wow.

Speaker B Yeah. And I stayed in service and we did community service. We did a lot of meditation. I would be considered on, in, in Hindu tradition, I would be considered kind of a bhakti.

Speaker A Sure. Yeah. Bhakti yoga. Yeah. It's like, that's a, it is very appealing to people who have that selfless service impulse, I think. Yeah. The devotional aspect, which is pretty hard to nurture in, in Western personalities. It is you, I think you either have it or you don't or something. I mean, it's it's, it is hard to nurture because most people, you know, goodness forbid that they would even like go prostrate in front of a Buddha statue, you know?

Speaker B Yes. Yeah. And that's one of the things that I'm dealing with a lot now in my teachings because so much of my unfolding and kind of moving into states of happiness and joy and, you know, purifying these kinds of obscurations or negative emotions came through the Bhakti practice and Karma Yoga practice. But in my teachings now, you know, my students are Westerners. Yeah, yeah. They're more interested in the intellectual aspects of Buddhism, which tends to move into mind training. Right. All these things that we're.

Speaker A Yeah, yeah.

Speaker B So I'm kind of blending that with the parameters.

Speaker A Yeah, you sneak them in whenever you can. Right, That's. I totally get that. It's because, like, I always tell my, my coming to Buddhism story is, is. I came to it because of. I call it the mental bling. I love Tibetan Buddhism for all the systems and philosophy because I was a philosophy major. So it was like, it was just. I was just so attracted to the mental bling. But when I left Tibetan Buddhism, although I never feel it left me, I. It's still way part of me. I left it and went to the Japanese Mahayana and it, the Shin. In this, it was Shin and Zen and the Shin path is so self effacing and no, it's not mental. And don't even go there. Don't even. We're not about that. And it's like, even though they are kind of. There's a lot of systems behind it. It was like that took me so long to train that. And that is so graspy. You know, the intellectual pursuit part is so graspy. And it was like when I was studying through my ministry training, it was like it was very hard for me to give that, give that up and become empty, become a foolish being, which is what they call it in, in. In Shin Buddhism is like a, a foolish being. So. Yeah, it's, it's, it's a, it's a very, it's a very different thing working with Western students because, because I am one is, is that there's, there's nothing in our culture that turns you that way unless you go to maybe social work or something.

Speaker B Yeah, yeah, I would agree with that. A lot of, A lot of our Sangha, you know, members of our kind of Buddhist congregation for our monastery and then my own Sangha that come to my teachings and retreats, many of them Are counselors, therapists, teachers. They tend to gravitate towards those vocations because those vocations are very fulfilling and enriching on a. On a personal level. Yeah. So I find that to be true. And so many times when I'm doing teachings, I'm not only doing teaching as like, I'm the teacher. I'm doing teachings as like, in every single role we have, you know, in our vocations, we are all actually teachers. We're all role models. How we're showing up is really speaks more than what we're preaching to people, you know, so, yeah, the show.

Speaker A Yeah, I'm glad you used the phrase showing up. I think it is all about showing up, actually. And, you know, when we. When we became ministers in our tradition, our teacher, our mission that he gave us, he gave us a mission statement. And it was, your job is not to be teachers, but to become better students. Right. And that's it. I mean, that really is it. And because. And I had a llama once tell me that it's like, be careful. Everyone's a Buddha. You know, it's the same. It's the same. The same concept. But I. We're keep interrupting your. Your chronology. We're right at the time you're. I think you're about to enter the monastery, right?

Speaker B Yeah. So about, you know, after about 19 years in Hindu practice and I was reading Mystical Christianity, I was so interested, was kind of like I was a fish in water now. This was kind of like I had found home in a certain way right in my heart. So at that point, there were a couple of things, transitions. The teacher I had been working with kind of was closing her ashram. Things were changing, and I was going through so much transformation myself. And it was kind of the transformational. I think a lot of us as students and practitioners, we're hearing about this thing called emptiness and these states of consciousness. And for years we're like, that's not happening to me. You know, when is this thing going to happen? Maybe it will never happen. And then actually, it does start to happen. You do start to find yourself happy, joyful, but not because of anything that's going on outside of you. There's an innate joy that's arising, and that was happening to me. And so I just could see that it was time for transition. My teacher was kind of not teaching anymore. And so I'll make this a very short story, but I had a dream of the Dalai Lama. And the Dalai Lama said to me, in the dream, come to this Monastery in Crestone, Colorado. I didn't even know Crestone was on the map. And he showed me some kind of, you know, signs that I would be in the right place. And he's told me that when to do it, the timing to do it, and this really happened. And so I had this dream, and it was so real. It was so, you know, physically felt in my being, emotionally felt in my being. So I listened to the dream. I followed the dream. I packed. I took a flight to Colorado. I drove down to Crestone. I found the monastery he was talking about in the dream. And it was almost like coming to this monastery, Vajravidya and Crestone was a coming home in a way I had never experienced before. It was like, I know this tradition. I know these people. I know the head of this lineage, Rinpoche, trauma Rinpoche. And there was such kind of a visceral experience. And I was, you know, I had planned, okay, I'm going to listen to this dream. Maybe it's, you know, some delusion, some delusion that's happening with me. So I'll give it a couple of weeks, and then I'll go somewhere else and I'll find something else. But I never left. I ended up being here within, like a month. I had asked. I was asked to become staff, and then I was asked to become kitchen manager. Then I was asked to build a house for the llamas. Then I was asked to. To complete a wing that would complete the construction of the full construction of our monastery. And then I was asked to become the director for the monastery itself.

Speaker A Well, did you start that? Did you ordain as a nun right away, or were you there as a practitioner for a while?

Speaker B I. I started as a practitioner for a few years. And so about six years ago, I ordained. And but because of my Hindu background, when I came here, I'm not. This is a more difficult thing, I think, for even me to process now. But I was almost treated like a Tibetan maybe because so much had happened in that 19 years, so much purification. And I was just showing up as, you know, in car, in service, with. With a certain level of bhakti attitude. And those kinds of things are very Tibetan.

Speaker A Oh, they are. Yeah. They are there, yeah. Yeah.

Speaker B So I was treated as a Tibetan. And that, I think, led me to understand and really have self confidence, have the confidence in, okay, this. There's something more going on here. There's been past lives with this tradition, with these teachers, and I just trusted that. So everything that unfolded was just A matter of me saying yes to what was being offered to me.

Speaker A Wow, that's quite the story. I mean, really quite the story. You know, we'll. We'll explore your new book in, in in detail, but let's start talking about Buddhism, the dharma, Tibetan Buddhism. One of the things. Let's, let's jump into the deep end here right away. Sorry to do that to you, but let's. Let's talk about what I refer to as in my podcast as the bad news of Buddhism or suffering. Both of your books contain the word suffering and either the title or the subtitle, and rightly so, because the Buddha said, you know, I come here to teach only one thing, suffering in the end of suffering. And that certainly is the bad news of Buddhism. I tend to believe people, though, don't think in life, you know, as a student of people, as you get to be when you do this sort of thing is as, you know, you probably have that too. Most people, honestly, in our culture don't think. Think they're suffering because they don't look at it from, like we talked, like we've been talking about from inside out. They look at it from outside in. They just, you know, so unless they're dealing with some major illness or injury or trauma or. Or some profound loss or grief, they honestly, I think. This is my opinion. Okay. But I honestly think most Americans, or maybe Westerners, but definitely Americans, think they're just dealing with life. Right. Sort of in that sort of life sucks and then you die kind of way. That's cynical. Yeah, I mean, that's really what I see with people. And I think much of the problem, of course, as we. It's always, it's discussed all the time. It's from what I consider and what most people consider the mistranslation of dukkha. The Sanskrit dukkha is translated typically as suffering, which it is. It's not at all really like that. It's way more nuanced. So as a brief overview of your teaching insights, how.

Speaker B How would you.

Speaker A And I want it to be like a, Like a. If you were going to create the tagline for your teaching style, right. You're, you know how there's like a tagline and every buddy's marketing statement. If you're going to take the tagline, how, how do you see suffering? How do you teach suffering? And how do you teach the emp. The. The. The getting rid of suffering or transcending.

Speaker B Suffering that is at the core of my teaching, actually, what you just spoke and your Questions. So, you know, there's many different ways we can explore this, and I could speak about it. The way I would. Would start is to say that.

Speaker A In.

Speaker B The awakened state, there's an arising of joy, and that joy becomes established so that no matter what's going on around us, we have an innate inherent experience of feeling safe, feeling what I call love, and that love never leaves us. Now, I would contrast that with Western culture, which is a pursuit of desires, which I believe at the core of these desires is the deep need to experience love and feel loved. So we were going to go just like, cut to the chase. We as a humanity want love. We want to feel love. We want to feel the experience of love. And the experience of love is the experience of connectedness, interconnectedness, connectedness with others. I think phrased or created the word interconnectedness.

Speaker A Inter being.

Speaker B Inter being, that's right.

Speaker A Sorry about that.

Speaker B Being as a way to kind of characterize or give a better understanding of. Of how isolated we really do feel.

Speaker A Right.

Speaker B Which we are not even aware of. Right.

Speaker A Our.

Speaker B The way that we live, where we have this belief system that we are all separate and individuals and independent. We need to take care of ourselves and we need to, you know, fend for ourselves. I would say that's a Western attitude. Buddhism teaches that that is a misconception of a greater truth. Right. And the greater truth is we are interbeing, we are all interconnected, that we do not have to treat ourselves in such a harsh way so that we can cope with life. And kind of coming back to your. To your point, which is, you know, the Western view would might say, well, I'm not suffering, you know, and Buddhism is kind of a downer because, like, it's like they're saying, well, you're suffering, but I'm not suffering. And what Buddhism, I think saying really is we're numb to our own suffering. We are suffering, but we're numb to it. In the awakened, more awakened state, right? Where we clear our obscurations and we're connected to our Buddha nature in that state, we're sensitized to suffering. So if we're speaking with other people and they have a level of anxiety, of stress, of, you know, separation, they. They feel isolated, they feel lonely, even on subtle levels, in a more awakened state, we can feel that too, because we're empathic when we awaken. So we are not. We're no longer numb to suffering. And, you know, of course, some people, this might trigger them to say, we as Westerners are numb to our own suffering. But that is actually, if we kind of go down the path of Buddhism or really any true tradition, we're going to need to uncover that for ourselves. How isolated do I feel? Do I feel unloved? Do I have self love? Do I love myself? Do I have confidence in who I am as a being and my entitlement to shine my light here in the world? Most people would say, no, I don't. Most people dim their light instead of shining their light. That's a pointer to a level of suffering in my characterization of what suffering is.

Speaker A Yeah, I like that. And you know, my last, my last podcast guest, Henry Schucman, is a Zen master. Lovely, lovely, lovely guy. And he's in a tradition that's, it's an interesting tradition because it's, his lineage combines both Soto Zen and Rinzai Zen. And Soto is just sitting or Shikantaza. And Rinzai is the practice of Cohen's study, which is wonderful. I love Cohen's study. And, but the thing is, he, his new book is called Original Love.

Speaker B That's right. I know this book.

Speaker A Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's a beautiful book. And, and it's kind of a book on meditation, but it's, it's all based on that concept of original love. And so I asked him, what did you, would you, what did you mean by original love? And what do you mean by love? You know, because that's a, that's kind of a, would be very. A misunderstood word in the application. People who are used to reading Dharma books, you know, it's like. But, but what you just said is exactly, essentially what he described. It's what I. And, you know, he said he used the term original love as a creative play on original face. The Cohen what's your, you know, original face before your parents were born? But he used original love. And I thought he, when I first got, when I first found out about this book, I thought he was doing a play on original sin. So instead of original sin, original love, which to me was indicative of our innate perfection, our Buddha nature, you know, and, and, and he said, well, it's that too. And because that's really what we're, we're looking for. And that's what we arrive at when we start to get glimpses of awakening as we go through our practice. So just thought that was so interesting that these, you know, that you said essentially the same thing. He said.

Speaker B Yeah, yeah. You know, I'll add to that, too, because I haven't read that whole book But I started reading it. I love it. And it was so close to kind of how I feel also. And my teachings. I speak about love in my teachings quite a bit for. For a Tibetan Buddhist nun.

Speaker A Well, yeah, it's in the book, too. It's in the book. Yeah. Yeah, it's that. Yeah.

Speaker B Yeah.

Speaker A And that's. And I think that's wonderful because I. I think that's, you know, when. When you talk about, like, innate perfection, all, you know, things like that, that's. It's still a little, like, conceptual and heady, and it's nice to get to the. To the point where he actually feels something. Because when you are. Like when, you know, he talks about when you're sitting in meditation and sometimes you, like if you enter absorption or even if you don't, if you're just sitting in meditation, the feeling you feel is love. That's what you feel. And it just is just there. It's in you. It's like nobody gave it to you. You. It was just there. And I think that's a very wonderful way to approach Westerners or Americans on that concept. So that I was very happy to see that. Yeah, it's. It's the. Like you said, nobody wants to say they're suffering. I, you know, I refer to. And you refer to it in your book too, the Three Sufferings.

Speaker B Yeah.

Speaker A You know, so typical Tibetan Buddhism, or. It wasn't Tibetan. It actually came from the original poly. But it's. It's the three sufferings. You know, it's like. Like, not only are we suffering, we classify it. Boy, it's like we. We have like, the suffering of suffering, the suffering of change and the suffering of conditioned existence. And you call it ordinary change, related and pervasive, which I liked. And they represent the different facets that we go through as. As walking around human beings when they're. That have this overall sense of dissatisfaction and unease. But I think that definitely touches on this nuanced view of suffering from a Buddhist perspective.

Speaker B Right. And.

Speaker A And so, so you didn't complete your tagline. How do you transcend the suffering?

Speaker B How do we transcend suffering? You know, I mean, you.

Speaker A We can go in deeper when we get into the book, but that just a sense of it is good.

Speaker B Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, traditional Buddhism would. Would speak to this by saying we. Transferring. Transcend suffering by first becoming aware that we're suffering and then looking inside to say, is this true? Am I suffering? Right. If we look at. Let's look at just Western cultures, you know, not even Eastern Asian cultures. But in Western culture, if we turn on the radio, right. Is every song, almost every single song we hear. Every. The number one genre in Amazon books is romantic novels. Right.

Speaker A We are unrequited love.

Speaker B It's everywhere. It's everywhere around us that we are in the pursuit of love. Well, we wouldn't be in the pursuit of love in the way we are if we already felt it. Right.

Speaker A Exactly.

Speaker B So of course, if we look at our culture and if we look at the contrasts between what we say and what we do, we can see that, wow, maybe the things that I want are causing me suffering. And that's the point. Are the thing. Are my desires causing me to suffer? Do I have desires? Because I feel like I don't have what I need to be happy. And that's, I think the, you know, that the seeds of that, if we really explore it, will blossom into a more honest reflection, self reflection of what's going on for us.

Speaker A Yeah. Just looking inside, which, you know, I'm always hesitant to use the words like most or whatever, but most people in our culture don't spend one second pausing to see what's going on in the head. I mean, they just don't, you know, they. Everything is. Is. A thing happens, react. A thing happens, react. A thing happens, react. Right. So. So it's like just the looking inside is such a huge step and it's the hardest step, I think, because once you start doing it, it, there's some, There's a little payoff, you know, you feel better. Right. So. But if you, you. It's very hard to, to, for people to understand that you should do it. And there, it's actually a good thing. And because it's, it's very uncomfortable at first. It's extremely uncomfortable. That's why nobody, like, that's why people always say, I can't meditate. You know, my, my mind is crazy. I can't, I can't stand to look at it. I. And it's like, I, you know, I get that. I mean, I, I meditate all the time and I have for many, many, many, many years, but I still have those days definitely where it's like, I feel like I'm going to jump out of my skin. So, so it's like, why would you start doing that if it just feels crappy, you know? But then there is a payoff if you keep doing it. You know what I think is the interesting point? And you touched on this a bit in a couple ways. One, from your original story and, and One in what we're talking about now is how many people who, a lot of people who come to Buddhism or spiritual practice in general, I mean like your, your Hindu practice or whatever is, they come there because they are feeling awful and they're trying to find a way out, to find a way to lessen the dissatisfaction and, and, and the trauma of life. And so to me, I've always thought that in a sense that is your innate perfection, your Buddha nature inherently guiding you to the right place. Right there. It's Guy, you actually had a dream from the Dalai Lama. Now, now, most of us can't, can't say anything that dramatic, but we, we, we instinctively feel the pull towards something that will make us feel better. I can't tell you how many people I've worked with when I was teaching at the, the Tibetan center or even are now people who write to me from the podcast is they come to it because, you know, somebody died or they having a big horrible breakup or they lost their job or you know, things that they just can't deal with it. So this is, Remember when I said I call the bad news of Buddhism suffering? I come to teach suffering. Well, the good news of Buddhism is, is that instead of original sin, we have original goodness. And that is pushing us to have the answer. What are your thoughts?

Speaker B I would completely agree with that. I mean, it's our innate Buddha nature that is always trying to, in my view, always try, always trying to arise, always trying to guide us. And we're doing all these other things that get in the way of that. Right? Which is called obscurations. And of course, if we, if we hear the Buddhas, you know, we read sutra, the Buddha and, and other masters, Padma Sambava, all these great masters we hear about, what they talk about is the only thing separating sentient beings from Buddha is obscurations. And these obscurations are thoughts. Basically we move our, you know, which is why there's such an emphasis on this kind of non thought, no self. Because the idea is if we can clear the mind, this personal, subjective mind with all its desires and attachments and needs and inaccurate belief systems, we can clear that out of the way. Well, then there's no separation between us and our Buddha nature. And we are Buddhas.

Speaker A That's perfect. And that is, and there is that tugging, but nobody's ever quiet enough to hear it or feel it or whatever. The thing is, as a follow up, I have a couple of questions and I think many of my listeners want me to ask this of you because I, I know a little bit about demographics, although in podcasting, it's almost impossible unless you're doing a very expensive marketing study or something. And these were the things I had trouble with when I first came to Tibetan Buddhism. Number one is gurus, okay? And this is, this is tied into looking to ourselves. So if we have Buddha nature, doesn't a dependence on a guru, whether it's a guru that's alive or dead or in nirvana, however you want to term it, isn't that a. Almost like a subtle encouragement of grasping outside of ourselves? But I know what the llamas say, the, the law. And this is very hard to, To. To explain, but, you know, they, they say, no, the. The guru is an outside of ourselves. And that's why we do Vajrayana visualization practice to, to bring the guru inside and then dissolve it and all that stuff, which I always had a lot of problems with, with, because I can't visualize for the life of me. But in the Buddha's death teaching, though, and this is something that I've always, I've asked a lot of teachers this. Sometimes it hangs them up. I have to say, in the Buddhist test teaching, he. Which is the Mahaparana Nirvana Sutra or whatever, he answered Ananda's question. He was dying, Buddha's dying, Ananda's freaked out. And everybody wants to know who's going to teach now that the. Now the Buddha's gone. And so this is a quote from him. Be islands unto yourselves, be a refuge unto yourself, and with no other refuge. Let the Dharma be your island. Let the Dharma be your refuge, with no other refuge. And how does a monk or nun dwell? As a light unto themselves, as a refuge unto themselves, with no other refuge, with the Dharma as their island, with the Dharma as their refuge, seeking no other refuge. And then the Buddha continued by saying that one dwells as a light unto oneself. By contemplating the four foundations of mindfulness. That's where the four foundations of mindfulness, one of the ways that it's referred to as networks introduced. But contemplating the body, which we've already talked about, the feelings, the mind and mind objects, it is by paying close attention to our own inner life experience, we develop our inner wisdom or our light. So before I have my next question about Tibetan Buddhism, and this is where, you know, you can push back anytime on these things, it's just, I just I. I can hear people asking these kind of questions. So if you could speak to that before I ask the next one, I'd love to hear your Thoughts? Yes.

Speaker B Okay. Well, let me ask you, because that was beautiful and I loved listening to it. But if you. What's the question in there?

Speaker A Oh, the question was the beginning is like, the beginning is if we have Buddha nature and if the. And the Buddha's death sermon was, don't seek anything outside. No, Ananda, we don't need anybody else. All you need is yourself. Right. Why do we have gurus?

Speaker B Right, right. It's a great question, and I think it's a question that needs to be asked because one of the things that Buddha emphasized while he was alive was, do not listen to me. Do not listen to anybody. Look for yourself and find out what is true. Right. That was his whole atlas is very much foundational teaching in Buddhism, which kind of flies in the face of this kind of guru principle where, you know, we have this devotion to the guru. Now, there's a lot of different teachings around this, and there's a lot of different paths. And not all paths include a guru.

Speaker A Right.

Speaker B So, you know, the easy answer would be, well, if we have kind of an aversion or we don't, you know, it doesn't resonate for us to have a guru. Well, we don't need one. We. We can follow the Buddhist path without one. Yet in many of the sutra, you see this kind of, you know, understandable hierarchy where you have teachers and gurus that are supporting those that want to get to the place where they are at. Right. So, you know, in. In. In our culture, even we have the same kind of structure. If I want to learn how to paint, I'll go find someone that knows how to paint to teach me.

Speaker A Oh, of course. Yeah, yeah. Right.

Speaker B So in. In another way of looking at it. If we want to understand awakening, well, let's go find somebody that's awake and they can tell us how they got there. But that doesn't really speak to the. To the. The problems people have with the guru principle. The problems people have with the guru principle is that I now am surrendering myself to this guru. I think that is the underlying issue because we, especially as Westerners, have this understanding, have this belief system that to be autonomous, right. We cannot give our power away to somebody else. We. Right. We have a guru. We are giving our power away to another person. Right. I agree with that distinction. But what I think we're missing there is the understanding that we are always giving our power away to all of belief systems.

Speaker A To our own thoughts every minute. Exactly.

Speaker B So I think in some ways it's kind of, again, a Misunderstanding a misconception, a belief system that doesn't actually reflect our innate Buddha nature.

Speaker A Right.

Speaker B Because we are always as a culture being, especially now with social media and all the things that are going on where we're literally being brainwashed into belief systems that have nothing to do with our inner moral compass. And I think, you know, maybe this is kind of going through a backdoor way of your question. You could tell me where that is.

Speaker A No, it's actually good. And when I, when I think about this all the time is, is what you mentioned, social media, it's like in, in the last, I don't know, you know, seven to 10 years, all because of social media is all these Western gurus, quote unquote, have appeared and with many of them with questionable or no lineage in any kind of way. And they're, they just proclaim themselves somehow gurus and, and people follow them and maybe follow them, much to their dismay at the end. And in, in all cases, you have to be careful. Who are you listening to? You know, who am I listening to? My thoughts? Am I listening to some other belief system? Am I listening to? And then that's why the Buddha's teaching was absolutely right on. I mean it was, try it out for yourself and if it doesn't work, then don't do it, you know, really. But unfortunately, because I think there's been a sort of a lack of spiritual practice, a last lack of sort of belief in authority figures or, and I don't, you know, I get that you want to reject hierarchy, I get that. But then again, if we reject everything that even smells like that, then, then we are, we open ourselves up, we at, we're totally empty and we open ourselves up to susceptibility to the consumer based gurus, the transactional gurus, I call them, you know, which is very hard. But I, I liked your take on it. I just wanted to throw that out there because that's, that's really it. I remember that the first time I went when I was learning Vajriana and getting in empowerments and doing all these things, you know, I remember asking the center director, you know, if, if, if, if we're supposed to see things as they really are, see life as it is, why in the heck are we inventing this whole, this whole visualization that has nothing to do with it? It's like, and so that just goes to show you how, you know, our thinking and layered onto that kind of practice can be very, you know, what?

Speaker B Yeah, it kind of, you know, creates a lot of inner controversy. Like, I don't understand what I'm doing. And if it's supposed to look like this, why does it look like this? And if I'm supposed to do this on my own, who are all these deities and why do I have to supplicate to them and depress? You know, there's. There's a lot of analytical opportunity in Buddhism to work out these questions. I don't think Buddhism or certainly my view is that we're not allowed to ask these questions. We should be asking these questions. I think that is why it's. It's a wonderful linear unfolding to start with mind training to look at our mind first. Don't dive into deity yoga. Like, first work out unraveling all these belief systems that. That have nothing to do with our happiness and they're just, you know, thrown on us and we're burdened with these belief systems and we're where our society is reflecting that these things are true, but we know inside that they're not true for us. Right?

Speaker A Yeah.

Speaker B Like.

Speaker A Yeah, yeah. Mind training is. Is awesome. And. And it's like, you know. But I think things have changed since when I first got into. There wasn't even Internet then. You know, it's like I wanted to. I mean, there wasn't. I'm. When I first got into Buddhism, that wasn't even a possibility. So you. If you went to a center or if you. Whatever. It's like, it was like totally overwhelming. And. And sometimes it was just a bunch of Vajrayana practices or, or beginning Vajrayana practices that you could get empowerments without nundro and stuff. It's like, that is so confusing for people. And, And. And it's like I. It just. I don't think it serves any. Anybody in this culture, really, without a little mind training. It just doesn't. You know, it's. But luckily today everything is open. Right? There's no, the, there's not these, this closing up. Oh, it's a secret practice. You know, it's like there's. There are some secret passages. But the point is, is that I'm so glad that that's not the way that is anymore. We're. I'm sorry, I'm talking too much about this. So the other question is about reincarnation and tulkus. Okay. I understand the concept of tolkus, and I'm. I think most of the people who are listening to me have heard the word before, but if it's that it's people who are recognized as, as high enlightened masters reincarnated. And sometimes they recognize them as little babies. And it's kind of like the whole Dalai Lama thing. And, and, and I understand now today that may be under some scrutiny to change things a little, make it more contemporary. I think the Dalai Lama even hinted at that about his passing, but I don't think it's going to happen. But hey, whatever. So it seems like having a belief at least in reincarnation, if not tokus, just the reincarnation bit is a big part of Tibetan Buddhist philosophy. And maybe I could call that organizational think. But if you get. Because if you get involved in a center, it's like almost accepted. And then if you don't accept it, you feel like, well, where do I, where do I sink my teeth in here? So I was and am agnostic about reincarnation per se. Per se. I, I do have the mindstream thing. I get that. And I think that's kind of where it goes. But, and I had and still have great respect for my, all my teachers and llamas and everybody I learned from in my years with galup and kagu practice, which build a deep foundation of Buddhist philosophy that I absolutely cherish. But when I share through writing or, or teaching presentations, you know, and I noticed you do this too in your book. As I try to rephrase things to make it more accessible for people, especially secular types, practitioners who tend to, when they hit something like that, like they start, they throw the whole baby out with the bath water and it's so sad to me. And then it becomes this McMindfulness. You've heard the term, right? No, the McMindfulness sort of teaching. And it's all Buddhism taught in a filtered way, sort of like distilled water, where they emphasize mindfulness only without even a reference to the four foundations of mindfulness or any sutras at all. So I. Something I'm sure you'll agree with that. I, I'm sad about this because I think it's important to have an unbroken lineage of teachers. I think it's important. I think it's also important, despite what I said about gurus, I think it's important to have devotion. I mean, it's just important. Like if you don't, if you don't have devotion, first of all, if you don't have some faith in that this, like you said, that this person's going to help you by teaching you this, then you wouldn't do it at all. So if you do it and then it works Then you, you need to have a little devotion for it, you know. So sorry for the long intro, but your thoughts on that, the, the similar right to what I just said?

Speaker B Yeah. And I'm going to say something that may make me unpopular with some Tibetan Buddhists, but I do not believe that we have to believe in reincarnation to benefit from Buddhist teachings, and I feel very strongly about that. We don't have to dive into the cosmology of Tibetan Buddhism. We don't have to understand about all the Buddha realms. None of that is necessary to exit suffering, in my view. Okay. And I think that's very. It may sound like a strong position coming from, you know, Tibetan Buddhist nun, but the way. The reason I say it is because in our Western culture, I believe we need a basic foundation, and that basic foundation is going to benefit us so much that to think about, like, do I need to believe in reincarnation? It's just not necessary at the level that we are at right now as a culture where we are, you know, our planet's on fire or we're still killing each other. I mean, you don't need to believe in reincarnation to decide you don't want to kill people.

Speaker A Right. Or you don't need to believe in the hell realms if, if we're living in them right now.

Speaker B Yeah, exactly. And many aspects or many portions of the planet are. I think it's also important to remember that when, you know, Buddha arose from sitting under the Bodhi tree enlightened, what he taught was the Four Noble Truths. He didn't teach cosmology. He didn't teach. He said, here's what suffering is. Your mind and your thoughts are creating stress, anxiety, pressure on you. That is a form of suffering. There's a way to stop suffering. There's a path to stop suffering. And that was it.

Speaker A Exactly. It's the first turning of the wheel is the whole point. I think if you teach nothing else, that's it. That's all you need. Yeah, but people have to practice it. But, you know, by, by reflection and intent, good intention and all, all those things. But I think you're right. And, and, you know, good on you for taking a stance as a Buddhist nun.

Speaker B I do have, you know, I have opinion. I'm a Westerner. I understand.

Speaker A Yeah, I know, and I know, but I know from reading your book that you have a deeper devotion that goes beyond that. And, but it's, it's. But you are aware and understanding and sympathetic and you're trying to help people in A way, but by speaking to them in the language in which they can hear it. That's right. Because if you're not hearing it, it isn't going to work. Right.

Speaker B Yeah, but I didn't start out as, you know, this very deep devotional practitioner. I started out as a mess and then went to therapy and therapy. If, you know, when you look at their therapeutic modalities, a lot of what they're teaching is. Resonates with the four Noble Truths. You know, what is it that is going on in our mind and how. How are we processing that? And is there even any space between us and our own thoughts to re. To realize, hey, these thoughts are not even who I am. It's a thought.

Speaker A It's a thought. Yeah. I had a. One of my podcast guests who was a Buddhist, a Buddhist psychotherapist, and that was her. Her actual degree from the Buddhist university in. Was it Colorado? Where is it? I forgot? Naropa. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And wonderful person. And she. She said, we make thoughts our gods. I loved that. I just. That's it. That we think. If we think it, we must believe it and we must behave accordingly.

Speaker B Right, exactly.

Speaker A That's where we.

Speaker B I think that's really. That's what. What I think that is what gets us in trouble. We have a thought, it's telling us to do something, and then we do the thing the thought is telling us. Most of the time, these thoughts aren't even our own.

Speaker A Yeah, exactly. It's like I always say to my Sangha, it's like when I sit and think about, you know, look at my thoughts in meditation, half of them, if not 90 of them already are. I mean, pardon my French, but, you know, they're. They're not even true. It's like, you know. Exactly. So it's like, why, gosh, thank God I don't react to them as much anymore. Not that I don't. I do sometimes, but at least I know too. As Suzuki Roshi said, it's like you. You let it in the front door and then open the back door and let it out. Right. But don't. But don't invite it for a cup of tea.

Speaker B Exactly. As soon as we put our attention on it, start fueling it, making a story. This is what happened to me.

Speaker A That's right. Oh, poor me.

Speaker B Yeah. It goes south from there. We get.

Speaker A Yeah.

Speaker B You know, we're spinning around in some kind of mind world.

Speaker A Yeah, yeah. It is. It is like a complete fantasy. Okay. There are 16 chapters in your book the End of Suffering Finding love, self, compassion and awakening in a chaotic world. These 16 chapters illustrate key points of reflection and understanding of Buddhist teachings, Buddhist philosophy, Buddhist practice. I'll rattle off a list of some of my favorites and I've shared those with you, but I want you to elaborate on whichever ones you want to elaborate on. Everyone. Any ones that you feel like I gotta just jump in here, I gotta do this. But I thought I'd share with you the ones that really I loved because you start each one with a parable or a sutra story or some of them, it's just parables like pretty much obvious in Western culture. So it's not, they're not like out there, they're not all sutras. So it's, it's, it's like the Velveteen Rabbit and so forth. Everybody knows what you're talking about there. But. So I'm going to list my favorites just to say, atta girl, I love those. So here they are. The selfish Giant parable as a teaching of how attachment to untrue beliefs comes from our conceptual thinking. Love that. The Burning House. I think people have heard this parable and heard the typical teaching gone that related to it, but it's still a, it's a, it's still a good one. Burning House parable and the three poisons of delusion, desire and angry or hatred. The four Noble Truths is the path of awakening. Well, we already touched on that. But I, I love, love, love, love your presentation on karma. And I'll even quote you, you wrote, quote, transforming karma from an enigmatic doctrine doctrine into a practical guide for conscious existence. What a wonderful sentence. And emphasizing self awareness and responsibility, quote rooted in intention and behavior unquote. And using reflection and self inquiry as tools. You know, I always say when I teach, it's there. Everybody knows that part of the meditation practice is awareness. We're trying to open our awareness to things outside of us, to things inside of us, but mostly things inside of us, but also outside because it, it tunes our. Tunes our capability of awareness to make and also breaks down our, our skin boundaries to feel like we're part of everything. Right. But anyway, if with, if you have awareness without intention or intention without awareness, and that's the main thing which a lot of people say I intend to, and then they don't do the awareness or the practice, then it's only a wish and it won't work. So I love that you emphasize that. The other one Mustard Seed parable. I think everybody knows that. One who's been around Buddhism for more than a minute and how it highlights how we continue to deny the reality of change and impermanence. And I think the pandemic was a wonderful illustration of how people totally have denied that and they were caught unaware and lost. Lost their, their universal minds. The parameters. And your personal story of tragedy and mental suffering, which you've checked, you shared earlier. So we at least got that. But you tied it to the paramedics as your way out. Bodhichita, through the filters. This is what I love. This through the filters of Carl Rogers and Carl Jung. So that's a pretty good way to introduce Bodhichitta. Fear of death, terror management theory, contemplation on death and a Buddhist view. And then the Velveteen Rabbit as I talked about before, which kind of illustrates how to be authentic. And I love that you tagged on aging there because subject near and dear to my heart at 71. 7 Simple Truths to master our minds. That's sort of your wrap up. Do these things. This is the prescription. I'll give you the Rx. You do these things. Things will be cool after that. And then the practice of nothing wrong. So Ani, you, you, you jump in where you want to jump in. I'm just sharing what I loved.

Speaker B Yeah, thank you. That was really a beautiful synopsis. Actually, let's start with karma because that is something, I think that's dear to your heart. That's dear to my heart. It's something that I don't think you. It's almost synonymous with Buddhism. And you know, there's certain things that you hear about in Buddhism. Suffering and karma are the two labels that we get very familiar with early on if we're secular Buddhists. Also, I, I want to say about karma that some people believe that to understand karma, we have to believe in reincarnation. I do not advocate that at all. And the word karma means action, right? Just by understanding what the word is, it kind of alleviates a lot of what might be misperceptions about it. Right. And in my book, I say we shape our lives through karmic imprints and patterns and behavior. That's really the essence that we're pointing to when we talk about karma. That how we creatorize the actions, the decisions, the choices we make create imprints, right? And also reinforce patterns. If we do something again and again and again and it becomes really familiar, it's just almost autopilot to continue to do it. These are kind of the signposts where karma is allowing us to reflect or contemplation of karma is Allowing us to reflect on our behavior and ask ourselves, is this behavior really supporting my happiness, where I want to be, how I want to grow? And that I think the deeper teachings of karma, it's like an opportunity to look at what our actions are. Are these actions even mixed with awareness? Am I even aware of the way I react? Many times when I'm counseling people and they're describing an event in their lives. And sometimes you kind of read between the lines. When you're counseling people and they're telling me how they responded, I know that the way they responded was met very differently by the other people. In the circumstances, then.

Speaker A Yeah.

Speaker B And we are so blind to how we are perceived by other people, but.

Speaker A We'Re not blind to how other people are reacting. We see theirs. Great. We just don't see our own.

Speaker B We don't see our own. And it all goes through a filter, which is biased. And so then we have this, you know, we magnify other people's reactions, which might be quite neutral. Right. And then we kind of, you know, water down our own reaction. So all of this kind of stuff is going on. And this is all reflective of karma, because in karma, we really want to be honest and see again, we're talking about seeing how things really are, but we're also talking about seeing how we really are.

Speaker A Yeah.

Speaker B So I think karma is a very, very big, beautiful, reflective practice. And it's cause and effect. It means if we do this, there's a likelihood that there's going to be some type of consequence that might look like this. And taken very simply at face value, instead of adding a whole bunch of mystical stuff on top of it.

Speaker A Yeah. Dissing the woo and, and getting to. Right, exactly. Well, and also, I think it's real important that you talked about how the. The perpetuation of. Of it. It's the habit, you know, like the 12 links, which we won't go into. But. But that even if you don't believe in that, in. In a mystical or esoteric sort of way, it makes perfect sense to me. I say it the. The perfect illustration of it is if you're walking through a meadow and. And there's a path where all the grass is pushed down, you go there. You don't start your own path. So if you keep doing the same things over and over again, what is going to make you stop it? Unless you're intentional.

Speaker B Yeah. Yeah. And I guess one. One thing that makes us stop patterned behavior is that over time, the result of that pattern behavior is repeats itself just like our patterns repeat itself, the results repeat itself. So we continue to get the result we don't want. And at some point I think we have to look at, well, okay, maybe it's not outside of me or just bad luck or some, maybe it's something I am doing that is creating this result that I do not want to have. And that is an exact way to define karma.

Speaker A Yeah. Or, or as Einstein said, insanity. If you keep doing the same thing and expecting different results.

Speaker B Yeah, yeah.

Speaker A And.

Speaker B And Buddhist teachers have described humanity as insane.

Speaker A It is insane. Yeah. And. And like I always say too is like, oh, sorry about that, I'm having a Klesha attack because. Or well, it's an obscure, you know, it's like, I'm sorry, I'm just in the midst of one of my clash attacks. You know, this is not. Wouldn't be my normal response if I had thought about it a minute.

Speaker B Yeah, exactly. Which kind of also points to, you know, if we do, I know there's other points we want to get to, but just to say this also about karma, if we are able to see our behavior is not supporting us, then we can do pattern interrupts.

Speaker A Right.

Speaker B And that's so valuable and it saves so much time from continuing to go down these dead end roads.

Speaker A I'm in trouble. Right?

Speaker B Yeah, yeah.

Speaker A So that's wonderful. Thank you for that.

Speaker B Yeah. So I think the other point about karma briefly is karma is not fixed. There's some kind of misconception that, you know, your karma has, you know, imprisoned you to have this type of destiny. I don't believe that at all. And that's not what Buddhism says. It says it's not fixed. You can change your karma quickly. So.

Speaker A Yeah, yeah, that's. Well, I do, you know, there is, it's in, in, you know, in like popular culture cameras, like one of the most misunderstood concepts. It's just, it's ridiculous, you know how, how misunderstood it is. It, it like they think it like takes away your agency and it's like, oh, this was meant to be and all this stuff and you know, maybe it was May. I don't. But who says, you know, I mean, only you say what really? So thank, thank you for that teaching other ones you'd like to chime in on.

Speaker B One of my favorite is the parable of the Burning House.

Speaker A Okay, good.

Speaker B I know that people know about this parable and I know that it may be, you know, somewhat kind of popularized in Buddhism. I, I find it to be deeply profound and I. If you read the sutra if you read the translation, the English translation, where Buddha is saying, you know, I am the father of the world, you know, I am seeing this suffering. And he's kind of pointing to. You don't see it. You don't see your own suffering because all these distractions are going on. It's like we're children, right? In another sutra, Buddhist describes our world, our humanity as an adolescent generation, which I think is very useful to consider and to reflect on. And he's not making a judgment. And Buddhism isn't really making a judgment about where we are in our spiritual growth. But what it is saying is that we are constantly distracted because we don't have mastery over our minds. We don't have a disciplined way of keeping our attention on the things that really do matter. And in another parable, which is the parable of the poisoned arrow, Buddha is basically, is saying some. Something connected to this, which is, you know, the urgent matter at hand is what needs to be seen. What is the urgent matter at hand? The urgent matter at hand is that we don't understand our minds, that we listen to thoughts that are not true, that we follow thoughts that getting us into dangerous or hurtful or harmful or suffering situations. And then at the end of this whole thing where we're spending a whole lifetime chasing after desires and distractions, we end up in a place where we're aging sickness and we're going to die. That's the urgent matter at hand. And we have no idea of how to negotiate or maneuver through the stages of death. That's kind of really what he's talking about. And he's pointing to that also in the burning house, very, very much. He says you spend your life in distractions. Well, then the end comes, which you're not prepared for. Right. And because you're not prepared for it, you're in total fear. And that is intense amount of strength. Right?

Speaker A Yeah.

Speaker B So I think that it's very important to, you know, I kind of wrote this, this note down. We have this idea that awakening, quieting the mind is going to be boring. Buddhism is boring. I have heard people tell me that to my face. I'm not going to read your book because Buddhism is boring. I've heard people say that.

Speaker A Wow, I. I never thought of it that way actually at all. But yeah, that's interesting. I've never heard that and I've never thought of that. Yeah, I never found it boring.

Speaker B Yeah, I, I hadn't either. But people have actually said that to me. Meditation is, you know, on and on.

Speaker A Well, meditation is boring. Yeah.

Speaker B Yeah. Well, a lot of people see Buddhism as meditation.

Speaker A Good point. That's all they see. Yes. Right. Okay.

Speaker B Which I think is partly, you know, not to create blame, but partly because in secular Buddhism, we're trying to simplify things, but sometimes things get watered down, so the richness of the path sometimes can be lost. You kind of pointed to this earlier and, and, yeah.

Speaker A With McMindfulness and like the distillation of the teachings, it loses all the, the, the, the heart of it, the feeling of it, you know, the, the substance, really. It, it just is like how I'm going to do this to be more productive, you know, like, like everybody's. It's been said a million times, you know, you can use mindfulness. And the army does teach mindfulness to be better killers.

Speaker B Exactly.

Speaker A So it's like, you know, that's, that's sort of, you know, it's misappropriating the whole thing in. And it turns it into something completely different. And I'm not putting blame on it either, because I understand the need for some sort of secularization for. To just attract people to the bath.

Speaker B Yeah. And I agree with that. I think we need. I think secular Buddhism is benefiting humanity, benefiting Western culture. I think it can be taught in a way that other aspects that are. That can deepen the path for people without complicating it is there's an opportunity for that. So I also, you know, say that about it. I, I think getting back to the Burning House parable, one of the things I really loved about this teaching is that it's a teaching that Buddha gives himself. And at the end, what he says is very interesting, and I'm going to paraphrase because I'm not going to read from the book or the sutra, but he says that we don't realize the level of joy that we will have when we become enlightened. We don't believe that something can be better than Samsara, actually. And I think that's so profound because if we really look at why we're not on spiritual paths or why we're not committed to our spiritual path more, it's because there's a certain level of complacency or feeling like, well, Samsar is, okay, I. I'm having fun. There's a pleasure level of it. And what he's saying is, there's so much more pleasure. There's so much more joy. There's so much more richness and love and all the things you really want in awakening, in Enlightenment. And that point in that parable is really what totally moves me.

Speaker A Yeah. And it's hard to believe for people because it's. We touched on this earlier, too. It's like, unless you. You have to. You have to go a little past the waiting in, right?

Speaker B Yes, yes.

Speaker A Yeah.

Speaker B It's.

Speaker A For any. You know, people have asked me, what's the payoff of Buddhist practice? It was like, well, in a sense, there's not a payoff, really. The practice is itself the payoff itself. You just keep practicing. But to hear something like that, that would be like saying, just go to the gym and just keep going to the gym without saying, you know, you will develop a better musculature. You know, there's got. There's. The carrot isn't obvious is what I'm saying.

Speaker B I think that's unfortunate because it's because of the carrot that I got that I became so committed to the path. I was. For some reason, I had the sense that something wonderful would happen if I was going to be. If I would stay on the path, and that something did. Something wonderful did happen. And I want everyone to understand that. So, yeah, I think.

Speaker A Well, you know, it's like what I said at the. At the beginning is like, people don't think they're suffering. They don't understand that they're suffering. It's because they're living that sort of cynical path of, you know, you know, life sucks and then you die. It's. And they really do believe that. I mean, they really do believe that. And. And it's. And it's like, it's. Most people in our culture are not idealists. No, There. There was a time, you know, when I was growing up in the 50s, there was a lot more idealism around idealism about, you know, doing better than our parents getting a good job, having a house. All that would be enough to make Samsara a little bit attractive. Right. But. But I think idealism has dried up completely. And so it's very hard to say. You clearly were more idealistic than. Than some, because most people just say, I just need, you know, give me the Buddhist pill and I'll be all better. Right.

Speaker B Also, you know, I grew up in the 60s and the 70s, and there was a lot of things going on in the 1660s and 70s. I didn't participate in those things. Like, you know, the whole Woodstock era, I didn't participate in those things. But then I kind of decided, oh, maybe that was a good road to take. And so in my 20s is when I Kind of explored all of those things that were being kind of marketed by this younger generation.

Speaker A Yeah, I was. I'm older than you by, I don't know, about eight years or something. And it's like, I, I did. I was a hippie. I grew up in that area. I was like. I lived right near Kent State University, so I saw the. The shootings. And I. I did. I was. I protested the Vietnam War. I, I. I did drugs. I loved rock and roll. I mean, it was like all of that, and I did it at that perfect time when you were like, 17, 18, 19, 20. All right. But it's. It. It is. And there was a certain amount of idealistic pursuit in that, when you think about it, because you thought that if this, like, protesting and stuff, that would get us somewhere. Well, not so much right now. Right. So we won't get political, but. Okay, go back.

Speaker B Yeah, I know we could get political. There's a lot we could probably each say about that, but. Yeah, I think the other thing to say about the parable of the burning house and that level of teaching is the urgent matter at hand is really dealing with our mind, understanding how it processes and creating some type of cessation of how the mind is driving us and controlling us. And again, we don't have to go anywhere in cosmology to look at the science of the mind, which is very, very much a foundational Buddhist teaching or.

Speaker A And you actually teach that in the Seven. The Seven Simple Truths, or whatever you called it.

Speaker B Yeah, Seven Simple Truths.

Speaker A Yeah. Yeah. You actually. That. That. That's.

Speaker B You.

Speaker A You did boil down mind training very well, I thought, in that, you know.

Speaker B I, I kind of the reason.

Speaker A Like.

Speaker B Do you want to move to that?

Speaker A Because. Yeah, let's. Because I know it was one of your favorites and that. It is my favorite, and it's one of mine, too. So. Yeah. Why don't we move to that and then. Because when. We probably should wrap it up, because I've, like, spent a lot of your time this afternoon, so.

Speaker B Well, thank you for doing that. Real joy. This is what I love talking about.

Speaker A Yeah, right. I. It's like. Yeah, exactly. I'm just doing what I love to do anyway. Right.

Speaker B Yeah. Yeah. And I have somebody to talk to about it, you know, at your level, which is, you know, I only have wonderful feelings about that.

Speaker A That's nice.

Speaker B The Seven Simple Truths. So you want me to just say what they are?

Speaker A Yeah, that's a good idea. Because they're really. They're simple to repeat, so they're very simple to repeat.

Speaker B And then I can talk about why they're in the book and why I think they're important and why I teach them. I have a whole retreats around this.

Speaker A That's cool.

Speaker B Yeah. So the seven simple truths are. Number one, thoughts are nothing. They don't enter anywhere and they don't go anywhere. They are no things at all. Number two, it is through our labels and our thoughts that we create our reality. Right. Number three, if we look for a thought, we actually can't find it.

Speaker A I love that one. Yeah, that's perfect.

Speaker B It's a Zosian teaching. If we look at our mind.

Speaker A Yeah, it is a Zogian teach. Exactly. It is.

Speaker B Actually, all of these are Zosian?

Speaker A Well, yes, pretty much. And. Or, you know, Advaita, the non. Dual, the. The nature of mind teachings are every. They're in Zen. They're, they're, they're. They're actually everywhere. But I was first, you know, introduced to them through Zocha, too, so.

Speaker B Yeah, that's how I was. Number four, belief systems are subjective. They are not truth. What we believe is only what we believe. That's it. That's as far as it goes.

Speaker A And. And that doesn't make it any kind of magical formula in any kind of way.

Speaker B Yeah.

Speaker A Just because it's in your head. Right.

Speaker B I mean, we tend to be very rigid about our positions because we identify with them, and then that speaks to who we think we are, which is a whole level of suffering.

Speaker A Yeah.

Speaker B Okay. Number five is if we drop our attachments, if we want to like, boil down the whole spiritual path to. One statement is when we drop our attachments, we awaken. Which is pretty incredible, you know?

Speaker A Yeah. Easier said than done, but. Yes.

Speaker B Yes. Easier said than done.

Speaker A That. Very good. In theory. In practice, a little bit challenging.

Speaker B Very much. It takes a lifetime to get there. But six is a statement about selfless service. We can't continue to be in our own misery when we're caring for, supporting, helping other people. Taking our attention off ourselves and putting it on, helping someone else is an incredibly quick way to alleviate anxiety, stress, suffering. Number seven is we don't need our mind as much as we think we do.

Speaker A I love that. Yes. Park it. You don't need it. We.

Speaker B We're like slaves to our mind. We think we need this, you know, this constant kind of like influx of information. Stimulus is always coming in through our senses, and we're constantly processing it, and it's just become such a noisy machine.

Speaker A Well, and now more than ever, I mean, it wasn't anywhere near like that when I was growing up or when I was in my 20s or 30s. Even when I first got into Buddhism, it wasn't like that because we didn't have these supercomputers what we walk around with every day, barraging us with information. And it's. And, and because they know how to build the algorithms to, to it. To make you addicted to the whole thing. You. It's, it's, it's just, it's. It's amazing any, anyone can stick with Buddhist practice these days. Although I do hear that younger people are ditching their smartphones for dumb phones. So it's like, wow, that's amazing. Awesome. Because it, you know, it's even hooked me to the point that like I told you at the beginning, I, I was attracted to Buddhism because of the mental bling. It was all that conceptual. Wow, that's so cool. All these lists. Isn't this awesome? And, and is. And it's like, you know, and I used to read like all the time. I was always reading. I can't read as much anymore because everything is all boiled down to snippets, you know, and, and scroll worthy headlines and it's like, you know, it's, it even. It got me in it and it's, it's so just amazing that we can. Any of us can weather this and get out. Yeah. You know that so. These seven simple truths are awesome. They really are. They're awesome. I think I might post that in my show notes.

Speaker B Do you mind I take any part of the book? You know, I know we have to do this copyright infringement thing, but I don't pay attention to any. I self publish. So they're my copyrights and I'm. You're welcome.

Speaker A Yeah, me too. I self published my book and it's like here. Yeah, do what you want with it. But I think the seven simple truth will attract people in the show notes and get them to listen. So I think that's a, it's a good tease because they're easy to do.

Speaker B Yeah.

Speaker A So Ani Lodra, what a wonderful conversation. I thank you so much.

Speaker B I have to just, you know, I'm all about love. I tell my students I love you.

Speaker A And I love you too. And there's so much more I'd love to talk to you about. And you know, like I said, I'll post links to the things but is before we close, is there anything you else you would like to close on to? Like your, your, your big thing. You want to leave the audience with.

Speaker B You know, what I would want to leave the audience with is to please listen to podcasts like yours. You know, we can do it.

Speaker A Well, thanks for the plug, but.

Speaker B But I truly feel that way. Like, I'm always thinking about how do we spread Buddha, Dharma? Like all these other things are being spread that are so, you know, addictive and not helpful. And then, you know, every once in a while, the way we promote Buddhism, I don't think we promote it enough. But we also. There's not money in it like Mark Zuckerberg has in Meta, so that we could put millions of dollars into promoting ourselves the way he promotes the crap that he promotes. So we're kind of like, we're. We're, you know, a little bit behind the eight ball. And I'm always thinking of ways that we can get Buddhist teachings, secular Buddhist teachings out there to help people. So I would say, you know, for people, buy a book, listen to your podcast.

Speaker A You know, there are others out there too, but, And I agree with you, that's. I mean, I told you I started the podcast when I was 65. I just felt. And I, I did it because I thought, how can I reach more people? People should hear this stuff. It would really make a difference. How. How do. How do I do that? And, you know, you'd have, you know, like, it was gutsy to, To. To. To become a monastic. I've. I was very intimidated about starting a podcast. It's very technical. It's challenging, especially when you're 65. Although I, I was an engineer before, so I do. Did have the background because I had broadcasting in my background, so. But the thing was, is that I really, like you, felt the call to be of service and be a monastic. I felt the call to start a podcast. And I wish, like you say, more people would do it because it's, It's. It's just awesome. And, you know, you're right. I don't, I don't have a begging bowl. You know, I can't. All I can do is put it out there, and whatever happens, happens. And, you know, I market it the best I can, promote the best I can. But you're right, we do need more. And, but it doesn't, it doesn't lend itself to. For people to put their all into it, especially when they're younger and trying to earn money and stuff. That's harder to do. So thank you for that little bit of advice and thank you again for your time.

Speaker B Of course. Well, I hope to see you again. I will be listening to your podcast and thank you. This has been so fun.

Speaker A That's it for a conversation with Ani Lodro. It was a wonderful conversation. There was so much depth to it. She brought so much to this conversation. So much Buddhism we can take home. So much common sense we can take home. So I hope you enjoyed it. Now a little bit of housekeeping as usual and as I plugged at the beginning, I really wanted you to hang around to listen to what's coming up. As I have talked about previously, we have opened up our community through Patreon, making it more accessible for all listeners of this podcast who might like a place to hang out with others. I hope you check out the Patreon community where we offer insight reflections, Dharma talks, everyday Sangha membership and podcast extras plus multiple areas for discussion and support. And now we're offering more on Patreon for all members members, including recordings of my Dharma talks during Sangha meetings offered to public Patreon members and Bodhisattva Tier level Patreon patrons. Plus Coming soon we will be offering post podcast episode reflections to Sangha level Patreon patrons. There are four Patreon membership tiers starting at $3 a month for the Bodhisattva level, $5 a month tier includes Sangha and community membership plus podcast extras and the $8 a month tier includes a free subscription to the Everyday Buddhism substack where you'll find my new book as serial posts my other podcast Words From My Teachers. Although new episodes are no longer added to that podcast, all 67 episodes will remain for you to listen to, plus a Zen Cohen's for every day section and other articles and practice areas. And at the $20 a month level, you can meet with me, Wendy Shino Sensei virtually through Zoom once a month for one hour to discuss your spiritual journey and practice, to ask questions, discuss Buddhism, whatever. Sort of to meet with a spiritual friend. The Everyday Sangha practices and learns together on the first Saturday of the month at 10:00am U S Eastern Time and there is also a study and sharing gathering for more Support on the third Saturday at 10:00am U.S. eastern Time. Just go to the Everyday Buddhism website and become a community member by joining the Patreon community. Go to www.everyday-buddhism.com and click on the link that says membership or you can join through patreon@patreon.com everyday buddhism. You can subscribe to my substack as part of the Patreon tier or by itself where you can find continuing chapters of Living Life as it is looking for a right view in the fog of delusion. Links to joining Patreon and Substack are posted in the show Notes I thank all of you who contribute in any way this podcast, the community and Sangha depend on your donations to continue to exist. I do not seek podcast sponsors, do not ask for financial commitments through paid podcast memberships. So my work and the cost needed to support what I do is entirely self funded except for your donations. Please consider a one time or continuing donation through Patreon or on my website's donate tab. Or just buy me a coffee using the Coffee cup link on the website. And thanks too to all of you who write in with comments and questions. Another way you can help is to rate and review the podcast on your favorite podcast platform. You know it's important to share the podcasts you love with other people. If you find them helpful in your life, let people know. So if you could take a minute to comment so people will know why you like or even love everyday Buddhism. So that's it for the announcements. Until next time. Keep finding ways to make yours and everyone's days better.

Everyday Buddhism 118 - The End of Suffering with Ani Lodro Palmo

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