SPEAKER_01: 0:00

Welcome back. We're here again. We are here again. I'm Milgan Sinim, here with... I'm Dr. Ruben Lambert. And today's episode is... First of, for us, it's a fan mail episode. Ooh, sounds fun. Yes. Can't wait to hear. We've invited everyone to either comment, and we have some comments on the YouTube, but the Buzzsprout, which is where we host the audio version of the podcast, obviously it's available on all the other platforms, platforms, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, et cetera, et cetera. But the Buzzsprout has a little thing where you could send us fan mail. And so we've had some people commenting how much they're enjoying it, how enlightening it is, et cetera, et cetera. And one listener asked if we could address a particular topic, namely how a person can bring the practice of to the world in their own lives. So. That's a very thoughtful question. It's a thoughtful question. It's broad. Obviously the practice, we're suspecting the practice to be the practice of meditation, but also the practice of philosophy and psychology and the whole thing. We're all practicing what we call sometimes You know, it's actually not very appropriate if we want to get into the nitty-gritty for me to say, I am Myunggan Sinim, right? So in Korean tradition, Sinim is this honorific kind of name. language thing, and for one to call oneself such is a little pompous. But that's the title that we used. We're in

SPEAKER_02: 2:22

America. We excuse you for that. Thank you. It's okay. Well, we're also teaching and educating everyone because a lot of people don't know how to refer to a Korean Zen monk, so that helps to inform them. When they address a Zen monk, they should use sunim always in addition to the name, never just the name

SPEAKER_01: 2:42

alone. Never just the name, yeah. Right. And another way that we perhaps refer to ourselves, it's maybe more appropriate, will be I am a suhengjia. And suhengjia is a practitioner, really. And so this question, how a person can bring the practice to the world in their own lives, it's fitting, of course, for all of us.

SPEAKER_02: 3:14

So yeah, I think what we do is we take, we're like scuba divers, right? We take a deep dive and then we come back to the surface and we try to offer some practicality. So I think this question can allow us to explore those two things there, right? Go in depth into a topic, but then offer some advice as to how they can use that in their day-to-day life.

SPEAKER_01: 3:39

Yeah, and practical is the operative word here. Practical. Practice. Practical. I would say the very first thing that a person, I think, needs is what we would refer to as yom. And yom is... I really refrain from using the word mindfulness as all of our members and I think majority of our participants here at the Zen Center know. I find it... to have been hackneyed. I find it.

SPEAKER_02: 4:16

Yeah, it's like an old car tire.

SPEAKER_01: 4:19

The thread

SPEAKER_02: 4:20

has been worn out and used. It's slipping and sliding all over the place.

SPEAKER_01: 4:24

Yes, and I also use in our Dharma talks, and I use largely Korean terminology to introduce it for people to perhaps become more familiar with the Korean Zen tradition. But Yom essentially is mindfulness. I refer to it as wakefulness more than I do mindfulness. Wakefulness.

SPEAKER_02: 4:52

I was thinking remembrance, like a deep, profound remembrance. Right. But wakefulness is

SPEAKER_01: 4:58

nice. Wakefulness in that, you know, a little bit of a cliche thing, we are dreamwalking, sleepwalking through our lives largely. Zombies. And to be wakeful... to be awake in is to participate in this very moment in ways that are intentional. The sleep walking, if you will, means that we are almost governed and controlled by a remote control and that being perhaps our karma largely, our fixed perspectives, our upbringing, et cetera, et cetera. And of course, those things are parts of who we are. But we ought to be awake and intentional and conscious in how we govern our lives and what steps do we take Sometimes that means literally what steps, so there's walking meditation, right? Really kind of feeling the earth or the ground under your feet, feeling the change of the weight, the movement, which toe is participating, which foot is participating, which muscle is participating. So it's not just mindfulness in the sense of I am aware of the thing, but we have to go deeper. So it's wakefulness and sort of inspection almost. So this is the first, if we were to go to the practical step-by-step thing, I would say firstly, a state of wakefulness is a requirement. Having said that, easy said, not so easily done.

SPEAKER_02: 6:57

Yeah. Even that phrase is a cliche. Sure. It's almost... It's almost like an excuse. Easier said than done. That means, oh my goodness, that's not for me. That's so out of my reach. Well, that's where I think then we have to refer back to the concept of suheng, as you referred to earlier, suheng jiao. So even for the practice of yong, wakefulness and remembrance or mindfulness, you have to set the intention in your mind. And so this is the starting place. This is the ground in which you plant that seed that will direct you towards a, it's purposeful action versus mindless action. And that is something that completely changes your world. And I love to give examples where people just observe any random act, let's say another person shaking another person's hand or another person eating or another person tapping somebody's back. Just because you see that action, two different people can be doing the same exterior action, but the inner world, is completely and totally different.

SPEAKER_01: 8:03

Right, I say that in meditation classes all the time. Someone could walk into the meditation class and they see a group of people sitting and a person would say, look at all these people meditating. Right. They're sitting down. They're looking on externally speaking, they're looking like they're meditating. But what is going on in their minds and their thoughts and the actual state of their mind, are they meditating or are they sitting around meditating? just watching their pond they're watching their mind noise do what it does so this state of wakefulness is a trained state and like you said remembrance we have to remember to initiate it so frequently throughout the day because it's not necessarily something that we are accustomed to it's also different than sort of self-awareness in in that um anxiety-forming thing. You focus on yourself too much and the whole world's watching me. It's not that. The wakefulness really means intentional movement of the body, intentional movement of the thoughts, of the mind, of the mouth, et cetera, et cetera, to as much a degree as we can. With a purpose and a goal. With a purpose and a goal, right.

SPEAKER_02: 9:30

If you have those steps, right, and you're, let's say, going to deal with a child or whatever. We can talk about so many different things or go to work and deal with a difficult colleague or an employee that's under your supervision. When you mindlessly engage in that interaction, all that's going to do is it's going to start triggering bells and whistles in your mind. And then you're going to plunge into that conversation. tornado of anxiety. So all the things that you just talked about are lost. And so you can then try again. Sort of like a video game, right? Like Super Mario Brothers or something like that. You have many lives. So the next time, if you engage in this type of practice, there has to be pre-work though. It's not just show up. You can't just show up. You have to train. Then that same experience is not the same. With that intention and purpose-driven behavior towards a goal, then you can extract something from that moment. And I think that's what we're trying to do here, is teach people how to extract lessons from the day-to-day moments in their lives.

SPEAKER_01: 10:38

And you bring up a very important point. This idea of extracting from life. Extraction, I love that. That's a great word. Extraction from life. That is to say, nothing that the spiritual world has to offer exists outside of the realm of the day-to-day, for the lack of a better word, minutia. I mean, after all, lotus being the symbol of Buddhism and its main symbolism is that of it growing out of the muck, the... the filth, if you will, and the stinky, smelly mud, and which then it uses, digests, and reorganizes as the nutrient for enlightenment. That's why the saying, no lotus, no enlightenment, it's a very appropriate. No mud, no lotus. Right, no mud, no lotus, no lotus. No lotus, no enlightenment, right. And so the... Wakefulness being this sort of step one. Step two, dependent on the state of wakefulness, is that if we are awake, if we are participating in our life in this very moment, we then have a chance to create a little bit of a space between those, what we call

UNKNOWN: 0:00

,

SPEAKER_01: 12:11

the fixed, means It's the same. It's a sort of awareness or the mindfulness, if you will. The mindfulness on things which we cannot, they're so rigid and so fixed in our minds that we don't know or are difficult, sometimes rather almost nearly impossible when it comes to untrained mind to free ourselves from them. They hold us. as opposed to us being able to do a thing, they kind of rule us. And so the

UNKNOWN: 0:00

.

SPEAKER_01: 12:52

If we are awake in this very moment, a thought comes, a response comes, we could cleave some space between that and so less reactionary. And more purposeful. Before you go into

SPEAKER_02: 13:02

that, because that's a very good point, because I just hear in my mind some of the things that some of my patients say, right? This hijacking or this reaction, because some people, will read a step-by-step plan on how to relax or how to not, or to react, and they'll think to themselves, well, that's easy. Or the next time I encounter someone that's gonna trigger me, I'll just do step one, two, and three. And it's almost like these moments, like you said, the

UNKNOWN: 0:00

,

SPEAKER_02: 13:32

there's a magnetic pull there. That an untrained mind, if they go into that situation, it's not as easy as you think.

SPEAKER_01: 13:42

No,

SPEAKER_02: 13:42

it's not. The two poles, the things that you really, really love or the things that you really, really hate, it's going to blind you and pull you. It's going to overwhelm you. It's going to overpower you. Very powerful forces. Yeah. People find themselves reacting or responding, even if they tell themselves, they go in and they're like, I'm going to try this in a different manner. But arguments, for example. Yeah. I mean, time and time again, let's say in couples therapy, do I go over, dissect or analyze an argument and the stages in the argument. And what I notice is on the surface, after they nod their head and say, yeah, that all makes sense, they can engage in that kind of practice for a few minutes and that's progress, right? But once the, let's say the headspace or the cleaving happens, between you and the reaction starts to fizzle out or wear out, then it's right back to reactionary mode. And that thing that pushes your button or triggers you will then escalate you and then here we go. The downward spiral begins and now I have two people fighting. But they thought, I got this now. When she says I don't do anything at home, I now understand what that does to me. But then the next time, your guard is down and here you are.

SPEAKER_01: 15:05

This is a very fine kind of at the edge of possibly now being accused of invalidating, right? Because we do have to call to question our thinking. And this does not suggest that we dismiss somebody's emotional state and things. But we can and ought to call to question how my current perspective and feelings and viewpoint on this argument, let's say, are informed. What are they informed by? And if we inspect it, we find that they are informed by habitual behavior. thing, they're informed by the

UNKNOWN: 0:00

.

SPEAKER_01: 15:53

They're informed by a never erased list of transgression that the other side have committed against and so an argument begins at this very moment about a situation here, but it gets weaponized and the bombs and the bullets and the slings and arrows that are thrown are procured from the past. You know, last year when we did this and I asked you to do this and 13 years ago you did the same thing and it drags magically the whole past credit history of the person into this very moment and then the accusations. And then very quickly then what happens is the point of the argument if there was ever a point of argument, but trying to arrive at some understanding is forgotten because emotions are, the old dead wood is added to the fire and then a person's engulfed and they cannot make heads and tails. And of course, the emotional experience is very real at that time. We're not trying to rob anybody of the validity of the experience, but We do have to mount some defense as if in court this thought comes up, and I say, well, on what grounds? Is the prosecution presenting this case? And we could inspect it and find, as we frequently do if we do inspect it, that now the things that are informing it are such fixed things Perspectives. Rooted in something so severely that flexibility is not a thing, freedom is not a thing, the actual living of life right now is not a thing either. We are in another world.

SPEAKER_02: 18:02

Essentially, like you said, it's a dead moment, right? Because it's fixed and rigid. Something that was shaped by the past which no longer exists here in the present moment, doesn't take into account the reality, doesn't take into account the genuineness of this moment or this interaction. So it's doing a disservice on many different levels to this exchange that you're having with the person. But I also want to point out that, because some people might be hearing this and think that, oh, this might be something easy that I can take on. I just want to say, not that it's not... I don't want to say also that it's difficult. I don't want anyone to get discouraged, but I do want to point out that it does take effort. And practice and train. It's training. That's why you need that wedge that you were talking about, that suheng, because what is it? Trigger reaction happens so fast. And then you're waking up and there's a hole in the wall.

SPEAKER_01: 19:01

Right.

SPEAKER_02: 19:02

And then you're coming to and you're saying, what happened?

SPEAKER_01: 19:04

And then you trace back your steps and your knuckles are bleeding and then you realize, oh, that's my putting the hole in the wall.

SPEAKER_02: 19:12

Because it's the low-hanging fruit or there's been already, imagine a pathway through the woods that's been worked on for so many years, right? So much effort. It's there. It's clear. You can just go. And then now you learn something new. And this links to neurological pathways too. This has been supported

SPEAKER_01: 19:31

by science,

SPEAKER_02: 19:31

right? Now you want to change that habit. You don't just have a experience over here in the prefrontal cortex and say, ah, that makes sense. And then all of a sudden it's going to just, all of the wires of the brain and hormones are all just going to fall in line. No, there's going to be some resistance because now you have to carve out a new path. And again, that takes effort. Or I like to say, you have to put energy behind this with intention, with purpose, with wakefulness.

SPEAKER_01: 20:04

Right. Yeah, it is. So, you know, the practice and the broadest meaning of that word is automatically in the world. It's meant to be for the world, in the world. The divisions that are created, this is the covert... work of our ego mind. That is to say- There's

SPEAKER_02: 20:37

that

SPEAKER_01: 20:37

little ego. There is. Check out the last episode if you didn't tune into that. Let go my ego. It is the work of it. It makes us feel that my inner world is uniquely mine. That's for one. And that my suffering is uniquely my suffering and that my experience is uniquely my suffering and my experience. That's not really the case. We are what we call living beings, and we are then capable of the broadness of the spectrum of human experience, as is the other person. Our world, namely my individual world, my life, and the world at large, are in fact no different. And if you sit in meditation, and you're training Maybe you're training, you're trying to overcome the discomfort in the body. Your legs falling asleep, your back aching, et cetera, et cetera. And so, as you sit in meditation, you have to know that the fidgeting of the body is the fidgeting of all life in the universe. And that constant wiggle and fidgeting. If you zoom out and look at the world, that is the external world. It's constantly fidgeting. And our body is constantly fidgeting. And whether it's in just simply sitting in meditation and trying to stay still, but while you're doing that, your heart is fidgeting, your lungs are fidgeting. The armies of intestinal bacteria are just having a party down there. And so much of this is internal but it is external. We have to understand that the murmur of our mind, as you're trying to sit and meditate and focus your mind on an object of your choosing, the murmur of the mind is the murmur of all minds. It is the murmur of the world constantly murmuring. And we also have to understand that if you are sitting in meditation and you are able to get some tranquility and peace, that is the Buddha. That is your Buddha. And simultaneously, that is the cosmic Buddha, the tranquility, the peace, the coil, the stillness of it. So for all this seeming separation of my practice and the world is not an accurate description of what we do. Yes, we sit and meditate somewhere in closets and basements and lofts and rooms and quiet places, seemingly tucked away from the world, but we're not. We are plugged into the world via this multitude of umbilical cords. our breathing, our thinking, our mind. We are, in a sense, the way that fish are suspended in water and they swim through it and yet not know that they're swimming through it. And as birds are flying through air and yet they don't know they're flying through air. And we too are suspended in a medium that is through which the flow of salt from one to another, we are connected. And if you throw loose electrical wires into your fish tank and all of the fish get zapped, our thinking is plugged into the collective thinking. There's no way to absolutely dive into this here in this podcast, but the idea really is, it's as if the people doing the work in the privacy of their homes, the monks doing the work in the privacies of their monasteries and zen centers and temples, and they are air purifiers. And if we are all oozing as we are some pheromones out into the world, we are also oozing out the content of our minds and our thoughts. A depressed mind pumps into the universe that and dirty mind pumps into the universe that etc etc so our thoughts pump into the collective world a certain thing and those of us and who sit and practice seemingly in in some hidden corners of the world seemingly dismissing or perhaps non-participating in the world, as sometimes it's the accusation that's flung against your practice of meditation. Oh, what good does it do for the world? It is a very limited perspective, in my opinion. We purify. Very limited. We are purifying and helping people. This disconnection, this disconnect that I am sitting here meditating and that's just good for my brain, So brain is one of, right? And it is good for me and it is good for the world at large. So it's more automatically there. The disconnect truly does not exist. It exists when our ego introduces that duality and that separation. And in that, we say, you know, there's a difference between my personal practice and the world. That is the case only when a practitioner hasn't reached the level of which the practice has permeated them sufficiently. So we're still in sort of fake it till you make it mode. We act. We act a certain way. Kind of It's not necessarily pretend, but it's almost as if we do pretend. And there's perfectly nothing wrong with it. I think it's a starting place for

SPEAKER_02: 27:24

many

SPEAKER_01: 27:24

people, right? Fake it till you make it is a perfectly perfect way to conduct yourself. If you haven't the tendency, if your character is not that of natural compassion or thoughtfulness or whatever, as we are, people have different... idiosyncrasies, fake it. Fake it, fake it, fake it, until it becomes reality. You know, we have which we could talk about perhaps another time. What you say becomes reality. What you think becomes reality. And the more we saturate our minds with a certain state of being, that radiates out of our body. It comes out of your pores.

SPEAKER_02: 28:13

But I think people in the early stages, when they're gonna practice something that doesn't come naturally to them, it's sort of like, let's say, a garden, and you only have weeds there. So if you randomly go to the garden, close your eyes, and try to pull something out of there, you're just gonna pull a weed, right? So you have to fake it in the early stages to start to plant these new seeds, to put into your mind, if your mind is a program, these new modes of operating and functioning, so that your return can be this new habit, this new way of thinking and being. But early on, it's not gonna be that way. It's not gonna be that way. So you have to start somewhere.

SPEAKER_01: 28:52

I've been pumping out this mantra to all of our practitioners, really. That is to say, when you see another person, consider we are all innately a Buddha. The nature of our mind is not what happens in the mind. So the content... is not the nature of the mind. And so we are therefore all under construction. And so when you see another person, you say, ah, under construction. Everybody's struggling with something. Everybody's dealing with something. Everybody's working towards something. Whether informed well or ill-informed, everybody's pursuing peace and happiness. If you're plunged into substance abuse, it's very easy for us to look and say, well, how is that person pursuing happiness? Look at them, their body's ruined, their mind is ruined, their life is ruining, et cetera, et cetera. But the truth of the matter is, they are doing exactly the same thing that a meditationer and a lofty, spiritual, religious person is doing. Chasing, following, pursuing peace. Right. Informed by different perspectives, different philosophies, but nonetheless still pursuing the same, ultimately the same goal. And then we say, you know, the maturity. So yeah, if you are starting off, fake it till you make it. Give it a, keep at it, keep at it, keep at it. The second part of this mantra that I've been suggesting for practitioners is as you look at the other person, you say, ah, under construction, because now There's no more horrible an ego than the spiritual ego because it's got its feet in heaven. in religious thing, right? It's- And

SPEAKER_02: 30:59

looking down from the ivory tower and just saying, look at all this schmuckery down there.

SPEAKER_01: 31:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 31:05

And so- Filthy rascals have no idea what's going on. Right.

SPEAKER_01: 31:09

And so the second portion of that mantra is you look at the other person and you say, ah, under construction. And then you remind yourself, me too.

UNKNOWN: 31:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 31:19

That is a very important step. Right, so I am working on things, I have to acknowledge that, I have to know that. They are working on things, I have to acknowledge that, and I have to know that. Everywhere is working on something. I saw a splendid way of translating, I believe it was the Hwangyong Sutra, where Chung Sang were translated as, the sentient beings were translated as, enlightening beings. And so that's a fantastic way to look at it also. You look at everybody you come in contact with as an enlightening being. They are a bodhisattva in your life. They're teaching all the time something. They're teaching your patience. Yeah, I use

SPEAKER_02: 32:07

this story often when I do workshops about Songja Dongja. And this person was a young monk who really exemplified this concept that you're talking about here right now. He took it to an extreme. Literally anything he came in contact with became a teaching. So if he saw a tree, then he bowed to the tree. If he saw a rock, he bowed to a rock. If someone came across him and cursed him out, he bowed to the person. And people would wonder, what is he doing? Why is he doing these things? Well, like you said, if a person is cursing you out, How else are you gonna develop patience? You don't develop patience swimming in a pool, eating filet mignon and caviar. You're happy there. You have to go into the world and encounter the things go against the tide, the things that are gonna push up against you for you to push back and see if you can stand up there. And it's in that resistance where there's growth. So when you encounter somebody that's challenging you, And you think, like you said, ah, this is my bodhisattva patience. This is my moment or opportunity for me to pull out the tools that I've been learning in my meditation class, in my readings, wherever it is that you're learning to try to elevate your consciousness. It's in those moments where you apply that. Even if you trip over a rock. and stub your toe.

SPEAKER_01: 33:31

I know you have- You bow to that, yeah. And say, thank

SPEAKER_02: 33:34

you, I've learned, you've taught me something. Because if you don't say thank you, you have that

UNKNOWN: 0:00

,

SPEAKER_02: 33:40

that metaphor of stubbing your toe on the table, right? Because if you don't say thank you at that moment and extract the teaching, what happens? You carry what with you? Not appreciation for the opportunity, where you harbor resentment and anger.

SPEAKER_01: 33:58

And then you go to psychotherapy for 15 years because you can't get a job in corporate world because you've stubbed your foot on the leg of a desk and your phobia of desks. And you

SPEAKER_02: 34:12

put money in my pocket. But yeah, but then there are the innocent bystanders too, right? Where the rock stubbed your toe and then you go home and you kick the cat. What did the cat have to do with it? But you're just now displacing yourself that resentment onto an innocent bystander.

SPEAKER_01: 34:30

So the practical stages, I would say, first, wakefulness. Yes. Be an active participant in your life. Just be here. Here. Now. Know what's going on. If you could do that, actually, if you could do that, you're done. If you could completely participate. Don't be like a high

SPEAKER_02: 35:01

school student in an algebra class with their head down completely snoozing. When they wake up, they're like, what in the world just happened? I have no idea what just happened.

SPEAKER_01: 35:13

And when we are participating, we can see the fork in the road that presents itself every moment of our lives. There's a fork in the road with multiple roads, in fact, that we can take. If we are not awake, what we end up going is down the road that is habituated, the habits of behavior, emotional habits, psychological habits, behavioral habits, whatever. So we just pulled as, you know, the tells us is the village that is swept by a flood in the sleep at night. When you're asleep, your whole, Life could be swept away by the currents of this flood, and this is how we frequently go through life, swept on the currents of our karma, of our kojong kwan yom. And so if we have the wakefulness, we are now a participant. If you are participating, you have a chance to either alter the trajectory or to at least have that cleaving of separate your... reactionary tendencies as we do have. I

SPEAKER_02: 36:32

visualize like the string of you attached to the opportunity, not opportunity, the moment that is pulling you, and you say cleave, that's like the knife coming and cleaving, cutting that tie, freeing you and releasing you from being dragged through the mud, essentially giving you freedom. And I do wanna say one more thing too, is people that are practicing this, you might not get it every single time. And then that creates another fork in the road where you have to now use wisdom. Am I gonna now think to myself, I failed again, and then what are you collecting there? Then

SPEAKER_01: 37:14

the next time. We do that in meditation, right? Like if you've lost your object of meditation, don't dwell on it. Because you could spend the rest of your life dwelling on it. Dwelling, and

SPEAKER_02: 37:26

then.

SPEAKER_01: 37:26

Where the next opportunity is available immediately the next following moment. So just like ants. If you kick over an anthill, you know, the ants won't stop. Like nothing. You know, I just built that, right? I can't believe you just, you with your big size shoe, you know. They just, it's got knocked over. And they just write to it as if nothing in a sense almost happened. And this is how we practice. It's not dwelling on it. It's not mourning. It's you just one after the other. And it prevents burnout. It prevents also, it prevents kind of ego burnout. Because look at me, I've been able to do it 17 times in a row. That's not the way also.

SPEAKER_02: 38:13

And it prevents the hammering yourself like a nail into the ground, into that place in which where this association occurred, where you associated, I wasn't able to accomplish at this moment, here I failed again. You now transformed yourself into a stake and you hammer yourself into the ground again. There's no progress. The new opportunity doesn't exist. You're just forever entrapped in that moment. So this is ultimately a very freeing experience, is what we're getting at here. And allowing new growth and development to continue.

SPEAKER_01: 38:54

And so if you have the wakefulness, and if you have applied some space, meaning it gives you a window of new life. It gives you an opportunity. Now, the thing to do is, this is where we cash in on our philosophy. This is where we cash in on the methods that we learn and study and the practices, because sometimes one thing works, today for this very same situation, but tomorrow or 10 minutes later, you have to use a different tool. It's not one type of thing. If you're building something and you have a screw, the best tool for the screw is a screwdriver

SPEAKER_02: 39:45

or

SPEAKER_01: 39:45

a screw gun. It's not a hammer. You don't hammer screws in. We have so much in terms of the philosophy that we learn. This is the situation. Which philosophy do I use to be the lens through which I look? Which tool do I use to deal with the situation? Now, here is where a new challenge arises. Because we have this vast collection, this plethora of tools that we can use now. How do you know which one to use? And this is the next, if you will, big deal thing is only, and this is where wisdom is paired with everything that we do. Compassion, you don't have wisdom paired with compassion. That's not gonna happen. Perseverance, no wisdom with perseverance. That's not gonna happen. Generosity, same thing. Everything must be paired with wisdom. Now here is the, challenging part. This wisdom cannot be found anywhere. There is in the sutra that teaches it. There is no master that teaches it. Only inside meditation is this wisdom acquired. The knowing how to apply the tools, how to use the tools, because every moment is new, bursting with new opportunity, new everything. So the combination is never the same to unlock in the moment our freedom, our happiness, to unlock the chains and the shackles that bind us. So this is where meditation for me individually gets kind of cashed in, right? You try as best as you can when you're going through life, be awake to your current moment, what's going on. You then have an opportunity to make space. When you've made a space, meaning non-reactionary, reactionary means the response is going to come out of the karmic storehouse. It's going to be the same way we've done it every single time. And the same, this is how we get into the cyclical troubles. Because situation comes and I respond. And the next time it comes, I respond the same way and the same way and the same way. And then we wonder, why can I unbind myself from certain cycles? Because we didn't have wakefulness, for one. We're just swept by the current. Or if we had wakefulness, we didn't make space. So it was reactionary. When you pause, when you have some space in your mind between the impact of the world and how you respond to it, now in that space you could find which tool is appropriate to that situation then.

SPEAKER_02: 43:02

That space grants you one very special thing that every human being loves, the possibility of making a choice. Prior to that space, It was just the illusion of choice. You were not making a choice. You were just pulled and dragged down the pathway that you've carved time and time again from many years past. And this just becomes the way in which the water flows because it's the path of least resistance. And that's just the

SPEAKER_01: 43:40

pathway in which it goes down. It's the path of least resistance that makes the river crooked.

SPEAKER_02: 43:44

But also, real quick, the tool thing, too, I kept on thinking of when the ego comes into play there. I've heard many people, let's say, that like a hammer. I like using a hammer to make nails go in. And then they think and they assume when a new... circumstance is encountered, they don't even look. They just see something sticking out and take a hammer and hit it. They didn't even bother to look to see it was a screw. And then you ask them, why did you do that? Because I like it.

SPEAKER_01: 44:16

Or even worse, because I've always done it that

SPEAKER_02: 44:20

way. Or because I've always done it that

SPEAKER_01: 44:23

way. That famous story of a roast, I think it is. And the roast is that the mom was teaching her tiny daughter how to make a pot roast, whatever. And so you tie it up and you cut off both ends and then you put it in the pan. And the little one asks, mom, why do we cut off the ends? She says, well, you know, sweetie, I've never thought about that. That's how my mom did it. We should go and ask her. So they go and ask her and it's the same story. And I don't know, that's how my mom did it. So they ask, and wherever the last living nature is, she says, yeah, we cut off the ends because at that time I just had a small pan and the roast was just too big. And so this idea, it's always been done, I've always done it that way. Yeah, that's fantastic, it worked at that time. It won't necessarily work this time. That's why each moment is a new moment, really, a new life unfolding right before us.

SPEAKER_02: 45:35

And that's where it requires the refreshing of the page, let's say. Looking at that moment with fresh eyes, applying wisdom to the situation, versus just or mindless responses that just lead you down the same problematic pathways as before.

SPEAKER_01: 45:55

Yeah, so understanding that your practice in the privacy of your home and in the privacy of your mind is already a practice for the world, in the world. There isn't a separation. I know the question was more in terms of practical... application in day-to-day lives, but it is so. It is so. Everything that we learn, we try to put it into work in our day-to-day life. If it's your meditation practice, you try to do that for you. When you do it for you, you do it for others automatically. If it's your practice of patience with your coworkers, that means it's also automatically a practice of patience for you. This One-way street thing is non-existing. I do for you, it automatically means I do for myself too. If I have an itch in my foot and I go to scratch it, after having scratched it, I don't use my other hand to applaud the scratching hand that says, well done for tending to my foot. We tend to the world. Where is the world itchy? Where is the world achy? Where is my body itchy? Where is my body achy? And in as much a natural way as we can. And there's a story that I've heard that sort of fits here. And I've heard two versions of it. One was a Zen version, and one was a version where the practitioner was a rabbi. But whoever the practitioner was.

SPEAKER_02: 47:53

You can fill in the blank with

SPEAKER_01: 47:54

whatever character speaks to you. Yes, his disciples thought that sometimes he would disappear. Because when they would go looking for him, they couldn't find him. And so they thought to themselves, they never confronted him about it, but they thought to themselves, ah, he goes to heaven. That's how we can find him in his room. And that's been sort of the perpetuated rumor for a while until one of the disciples says, you know, that's it. I'm going to expose him as a fraud. He goes to heaven and disappears. What do you mean? So he hid himself in the room of the practitioner, right? Well, I'm going to say the master in whatever master, imam you want to have or whoever, right? So he hid himself in the room of the master and he saw the master put on regular clothes as opposed to like his robes and leave. And so he stealthily followed him and he saw the master take an ax and saw the master go into the woods and shut the, chopped down a tree and cut down the tree into firewood. And then he took that firewood to a decrepit little house somewhere on the outskirts of the village. And he went there and there was an old woman who couldn't help herself to the thing she was unable to. So he did so and he would make the fire and mumble his prayers as he normally does. And then he would return to the monastery. And this disciple who's discovered this didn't want to tell the other disciples about it. And so he just, he kept it to himself. But every time he overheard the other disciples say, oh, Master's nowhere to be found. He must be in heaven. He thought to himself, in heaven, I think higher. Higher than heaven. This is where the disconnect between heaven and earth lies. Those two places usually pitched at such great distances from one another. And then we read the sutras and they say, the thinnest hair is the distance between hell and heaven. But also so is a single thought. And again, the single thought is the distance between my selfish understanding and the understanding of how my practice plugs into the world automatically. If we inhabit the teachings, if they perfume out of our bodies, and that happens by repetitive practice and training, we walk through life perfuming the world with who we are, with the state of mind that we carry, with the principles that we try to embody, and what diligent practitioner is is a practitioner that goes into the world and does not put on another face a facade that sort of supposedly needs to match. Look at me. Look at

SPEAKER_02: 51:32

how high and

SPEAKER_01: 51:33

mighty I am. You do your work. You do your work. Put that work in. You do your practice. And wherever you go, that thing comes with you.

SPEAKER_02: 51:43

Sure.

SPEAKER_01: 51:43

So I would say focus on the diligent practice in your practice. headspace, if you will, in your individual life. And that will automatically, because we cannot live disconnected from the world around us. So.

SPEAKER_02: 52:02

That reminds me of one of the first organizations that we created. It was called World Peace Through Inner Peace. That's right. Right? And I think that's a beautiful little cliche statement there, right? But it falls in line with what you're saying. And also the world is like a Rorschach test. You wanna see the beauty in others, you have to see the beauty in yourself. Because these eyes look outward and you see what you feel. And so if you're in a state of turmoil, if you got so much on your plate, there's no room for anything else. It's like having sunburn on your skin. The slightest touch is gonna create deep pain. The smallest thing, is about another person who's gonna bother you. And you're not gonna be able to see their good nature. You're not gonna be able to see their Buddha nature. You're just not gonna have room for that.

SPEAKER_01: 52:52

We have so many, so many stories. There's that splendid story of a fella moving into a new neighborhood, a new town, and stops a person on the street and says, excuse me, sir, how are the people in this town? And to cut it short, eventually finds someone and says, how are the people in this town? And the person asks back, how are the people in your town? Because when he stops, people say, oh, you know, people are kind and generous and warm and helpful. And somebody says, oh, people are grumpy and selfish and angry. And so when he finally encounters some wise men and he asks, how are the people in this town? And the response comes back, oh, how are the people in your town where you come from? And he says, oh, the people in my town, they were angry and upset and this and vile and this and that. And he goes, ah, that's how the people in this town are.

SPEAKER_02: 53:53

Because it doesn't matter.

SPEAKER_01: 53:55

You bring it with

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you. Change your mind, change your life. It reminds you of The Grinch. The story of The Grinch Who Stole Christmas. That village, the whole village in that movie didn't change. Everything was as is. It's The Grinch that changed when he saw the peace and the beauty and the love in that little girl's heart. Then he saw that within himself and then everything changed after that. It was an avalanche of selflessness. Nothing changed. The work, it was the inner work where the transformation occurred and then when he came out of the depths of his soul, you come back and you see the world anew with fresh eyes and you're able to see beyond your own ego and then you're able to tap into the human nature or the Buddha nature or the Christ consciousness, the universal mind, the divine, whatever you wanna say. But all of that can only be done when you do the inner work and transform the depths of your consciousness to free yourself from the tethers of your old, rusty, stale, ways of thinking and being and acting. Cliff notes. Cliff notes.

SPEAKER_01: 55:14

Stay wakeful. Stay wakeful. Stay wakeful, my friends. Don't be a zombie. Don't be a zombie. Stay wakeful. If you have a chance, pause. Sift through the tool bag that you have and then use the appropriate tools with wisdom. Or If you're having the time for all of that, just think to yourself, ah, under construction. Me too. Until then, take care of yourselves and each other. I'm

SPEAKER_02: 55:52

Myung An Sunim. Thank you. I'm Dr. Ruben Lambert. From my heart to yours. Also, you can find me at wisdomspringwellness on Instagram and at wisdomspring.com and at wisdomspringwellness on YouTube. Please subscribe and like. Leave us some comments. And if you like what you hear, remember, spread the word. Pass it on. Thank you very much.

SPEAKER_01: 56:14

Thank you very much. And thank you for the fan mail request. Hopefully our chitchat was helpful in some way. All of these topics are so broad that it's very difficult to make them concise enough. So maybe episode one of, two of, three of, who knows? That's what we do on Fridays. Until next one, take care of yourselves and each other.