RockneCAST
Thich Nhat Hanh and the Practice of Mindfulness (#242, 28 Aug. 2024)
In this episode we learn about the insight gained by stopping, calming, resting, and healing through the work of the great Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh and his book The Heart of Buddha's Teaching.
Mindfulness allows us to control and influence our positive and negative habit energies.
Thich teaches us how to do achieve this control through the practice of mindfulness.
- Broadcast on:
- 28 Aug 2024
- Audio Format:
- other
What is going on, dudes of the rugby cast? For this episode, I'm going to discuss the work of an amazing man, Tic Nhat Hanh. In particular, his views on mindfulness, which I think is one of the most simplest, but yet most powerful aspects of the Buddhist tradition, this simple thing has the power to completely transform your life and to remove so many of the sources of misery that put us on a path that can lead to substance abuse, stress, anxiety, all of those different things. Because friends, life is beautiful. If you know how to see it, feel it and touch it in the present moment, if you want to understand the practice of mindfulness and the practice of Buddhist teaching, look no further than the heart of Buddhist teaching by Tic Nhat Hanh. This book has this one book, if you read this and practice it, most importantly, you have the ability to completely transform your life and soak up every beautiful moment of this precious gift called your life. And so for this episode, we're going to cover the work of Tic Nhat Hanh. And his views on mindfulness as he understands it through the Buddhist tradition. Now, mindfulness, I don't know about you, but mindfulness is something, it's kind of a term that I kind of run away from. And I did for a long time because, you know, for whatever reason, a lot of the people that end up practicing Buddhism, at least that are very public about it, are, you know, they're kind of like vegans and they kind of look like with a distant look in their eye. Like mindfulness, yeah, I got to be mindful. Or no dude, like when you're trying to approach a woman, say like, Hey, I'm really mindful of my joys and my suffering. It's kind of a turn off. It seems kind of weak, but yet I think this mindfulness is such a powerful tool in your life. I'm writing the book right now on lawyer wellness. Lawyers as a group, we've got all sorts of issues. In fact, there are so many wellness issues associated with lawyers that they literally make us take a mindfulness, continuing education to address it. But in a lot of cases, the presentations that I've gone through or gone to get no further than go see a counselor, it's okay if you need to get help call 1-800-Cousler and don't chop off of bridge, but that doesn't help us, that doesn't help us. Yeah, it does if we get a really good counselor. But if you don't, you're still finding yourself into the same position of misery because one of the interesting things about humanity is beautiful as the world is. We have these negative emotions that yes, to some degree, may serve a purpose. But for the most part, excessive amounts of stress, not good, excessive amounts of anger, not good, lack of focus, not good, anxiety, not good because that though, these the types of emotions that can actually impede your ability to unlock your inner power, what you are put on this earth to do, and that's why mindfulness is so important, but more importantly, take not Han in the heart of Buddhist teaching defines the concept and wants you to find something that allows you to see it very clearly. But most importantly, like all the Buddhist tradition, there's actually a concrete set of practices that are associated with Buddhism and these practices that are associated with Buddhism are designed to allow you to see very clearly what's going on within you. And that's why that's so important. It's not like I love Christianity. So Kevin, I'm not bashing Christianity, but one pet peeve I have with Christianity is it's all about just worship the Holy Spirit and pray to God and hopefully your questions will be answered. Go to church and you will feel the fruits of the Holy Spirit. Celebrate Easter and you'll feel really good, but it gets almost nothing in terms of the particulars of how of how this is to be achieved and how you are to listen to God and how you are to pray. I mean, yeah, there's the Lord's prayer, but how are we supposed to sit? How are we supposed to kneel? What are the techniques that we need to be able to experience the beauty of Christianity? One book that I'm going to be reading and we will be doing a episode on this is called Jesus is the question, the 307 questions that Jesus answered or that were asked of Jesus who only answers three, only three questions. And so that I think a lot of times when people, you know, questions are very important, but a lot of times people want answers in their own life. And if they don't get their answers, it can be an absolute formula for misery. Well, let's get into the deep work of tick because this book is so powerful, you need to be able to read it and absorb it. So let's get into how tick defines mindfulness and how tick explains you can address and tap in to address the issues that arise when you're able to engage in a mindfulness practice. So how does tick describe mindfulness? It gives a very clear definition. Mindfulness according to tick is the energy that allows us to recognize our habit energy and prevent it from dominating us. Dudes, if you're going on a long walk, I want you to listen to that again. This one sentence may be one of the greatest sentences that you'll ever hear, the definition of mindfulness, it's almost as good as Epictetus's first sentence of the end choridian, which is focus on what you can control and let go of what you can't. This is almost as good as that. Mindfulness is the energy that allows us to recognize our habit energy and prevent it from dominating us. So let's dive deeper into what is that and why that's so important for you and how you're going to apply this because I'm going to tell you the answer to Max is going to ask you a lot of questions. I'm going to give you the answer. So why is recognition so important? Recognition is so important because this allows us to see what is going on in terms of why we may be stressed out. So let's just take a negative emotion like stress, which is a lot of times a feeling an emotion that kills lawyers, kills a lot of people in high stress positions, damages a lot of relationships. So the question is, is with something like stress, why are so many people stressed out and what can they actually do about it? Why do they continue to engage in activities that lead to stress and why do they search out and try to cover up that stress? Well, this gets into mindfulness and mindfulness is a powerful tool that you can use in every single part of your life, health, well-being, all of it. Here he gets into the next paragraph. What is mindfulness? So sometimes it's easy to understand what something is by looking at it's opposite. Why do we engage in this activity is because we don't see we're forgetful and that's what it says, forgetfulness is the opposite of mindfulness. We drink a cup of tea, but we do not know we are drinking a cup of tea. We sit with the person we love, but we don't know that she is there. We are not, we walk, but we are really not walking. We are somewhere else thinking about the past or the future. The horse of our habit energy, I love the language it uses. The horse of our habit energy is carrying us along and we are its captive. We need to stop our horse and reclaim our anxiety. We need to shine the light of mindfulness on everything we do so that the darkness of forgetfulness will appear. Now Tech uses the word forgetfulness, but I want to focus on his word to shine the light. So what is to shine the light on us? What does that mean? It is to shine the light on things that were not currently seen within us, that are the underlying cause of these negative emotions. So let's look at something like anxiety. Now, sometimes people have a mind that is wired for anxiety. Well anxiety is something, it's a feeling where you don't know, like you have this nagging feeling that something bad could get into the future, that there could be something difficult that you may have to experience, there could be something bad. So what do a lot of people do with anxiety? Well, if you're not stopping, if you're not trying to look and see what the underlying cause is, a lot of times people do other things that don't get to the good cause, they treat the symptoms. What's one thing that people do, they avoid thinking about that they're anxious. They try to avoid looking into what's causing the anxiety. What do other people do? They drink to try to cover up the symptom, the outer manifestation of the deep inner turmoil that you may have. What's going on there and anxiety can be tightly connected as a sister emotion to stress. And these two negative emotions can cause so much damage in your life, if you're not taking time to see what's going on. So for example, with stress, what is one of the things with stress that causes stress? You have too much things to do and not enough time to do it. And so here, when you're stopping and you're looking at these things, you're looking at why don't I have enough time and keep asking those questions. I don't have enough time because I have kids soccer practice, I'm the head volunteer coach because I have a meeting that I've agreed to do previously. Because I'm on my phone all of the time, and that's preventing me from giving my work done. Because I've taken on too much and I haven't been able to focus on the things that really matter. I haven't proved the unnecessary activities outside of my life. I go to bed too late, so I can't find the time in the morning to do what I was put on this earth to do. So once you start thinking about this, what's happening, what's the magic that is happening, you are starting to see the underlying cause of these negative emotions like stress. And if stress is a function of not having enough time, and I think that is one of the key aspects of stress is that you feel like you are in a state where you have too many things to do and not enough time to do it, what do you do? You start looking for new pools of time that you can create through a healthy lifestyle. You start focusing and ensuring that when you are working, you are engaging in maximum productivity and focus because of the diet that you're consuming, the exercise that you're getting your meditation practice. Now Tic gets into this and this allows you to see one, one of those underlying seeds and activities that bring you joy and add those worship, breath work, which is incredibly a problem. We all have the ability to breathe if we're alive, the ability to enjoy the present moment, the ability to call a friend and plan a weekend with your friend or your college roommate like I'm going to be able to do. And then once you start thinking about the ability to go to church to worship with your fellow human beings from all walks of life, finding common clines, that's the essence of worship. That's the essence of looking at these causes of things that bring you joy and these things that are negative like stress and anxiety and jealousy and other emotions such as those. What are the underlying cause of things like that? So this seems kind of obvious and Tic uses the metaphor of the horse because it is true. Think about a horse, that's a perfect metaphor to explain our emotions. When we have things like anxiety, when we have things like stress, they can absolutely dominate you. When I was drinking basically a bottle of wine a night, what was going on there? Why was I doing that? Well, that wine, here's the thing with alcohol, it absolutely works in the moment. What does it do? It just covers up the symptoms. It covers up the symptoms in the moment, but sometimes that can be helpful if you're really at a low point. But the next morning, you're not quite as sharp, you're not getting as much done. And so you really are kind of robbing Peter to pay a pull, although you experience that joy in the moment of relaxation that you're getting artificially, you're not able to then capitalize on your time the next morning, which in turn makes you more stressed out. And the other just, I think, absolutely beautiful part about the Buddhist tradition, the practice of insight is this underlying self-examination, which I think is extraordinarily important. In anything you do as to looking at the own inner things that you know you need to do to unlock the best version of you and to make sure that other things don't inhibit you being the best version of you. That takes us to shine a light on these things. So what is one really simple approach that he talks about? It can be either emotional or physical healing. It sounds so breath-hakingly simple, but he has a whole chapter called stopping, call me, resting, and those three things through the lens of mindfulness allow healing. How simple is that? You know, we talk a lot about mental health for our kids, mental health, and you've heard the social workers, they're like, you know my God, we need more school counselors, we need more psychiatrists, we need more providers, and don't get me wrong, I love my counselors. I'm not saying it can't be incredibly valuable, in fact, my counselor kind of retired and I kind of miss having to shoot the shit, Kelsey's sessions with my counselor, but I just kind of have an emotional edema, so I'm not saying that that's not important. But there are so many things within our control, let's say for whatever reason, the child, the child is not able to find a counselor that really works, there's a lot of shady counselors out there too. Well, how is the child to find emotional healing if they're checking their cell phone every other second? If they're not doing those activities that cultivate and energize the soul, if they're not taking the time to just sit and be still with their emotions, just kind of look at the underlying cause, that's one of the things that, of what's going on with this. The thing about stopping, calming and resting, it's this amazing technique that anyone can do. I don't care if you have $3 or $3 million or $10 million, anyone can stop. You can find 15 minutes so you can stop, hopefully you have pen in here so you can kind of think about what's going on there, but everyone has the ability to stop when they get up, to sit on the front porch, to just stop and find, I don't care if you've got 10 kids, you can find 15 minutes to just stop. Well, what do you do when you stop? Well, you call yourself. What's one way? I'll give you two approaches, one that is very much part of text tradition, which is to focus on your breath. Anyone can focus on your breath. And it is super simple. All you have to do, I've watched tick on how he explains how to do breath work. You know what the first thing is, is just to start breathing slowly and deeply and just be aware of the breath that you're experiencing. Be aware of the inhale, be aware of the slow exhale and as you start thinking about that homing, feeling that this breath work does and your human suggests to do the physiological side, which can sometimes kind of clear your mind, which is a deep breath in through your nose, a quick breath and a long exhale through your mouth. If you do this, you will feel a calming effect on your mind. This calming effect will allow you to clearly start seeing and feeling and experiencing. And most importantly, noticing what's going on. Now, one of the reasons why so many people run against meditation is they think I can't stop my brain from thinking, I can't stop thinking, people, that's, I don't know who told you that, that's not meditation. It's not to remove all thoughts out of your mind, like until you die, we all think what that whole state of mind allows you to do is that it allows you to notice, notice the emotions that you're experiencing and to coexist with those emotions. Notice that you may be feeling anxious about a particular assignment that is due. Thinking about, as you're breathing in, what are some of these things that I could do to address this assignment today? What's the one task that I could do that will advance that assignment? What are the blocks of time over which I do have control as you're thinking about this? What are some of the things that I could do differently in terms of not losing or wasting the time in your life? Are there times where you're wasting it, where you're on your phone, you're watching TV? There was a time in my life and I still do it occasionally, so don't think I've done up the wagon, almost everything is good to some degree, like I like to watch Netflix. I'm still kind of obsessed with the equalizer, although I don't know about all of the violence a little bit too violent for me and why do I like the violence? Maybe I have to think about that in my meditation mindfulness practice. But most importantly, as you call me, what are you doing? You're noticing things. You're noticing not only those negative emotions, but if you're outside and you're out of the park bench, you're also noticing, "God, how beautiful this world is." I'm recording this podcast and I'll have to summarize. I got to see the sunrise. It's noticing how beautiful it is to start my circadian clock on the day and to think about the work that I was going to prepare for you. It's noticing that I want to do a podcast each and every day and I want to serve other lawyers and other professionals to help them be the best version of them, and to make sure that they're not dying too early, which a lot of lawyers do, because of these things called stress and anxiety and thinking about the things that I can control and my favorite philosophers. That's what call me allows me to do. The other thing that call me does allow you to do is it allows you to rest throughout the day. Now, we also need to work and if we rest all the time, literally our muscles collapse and we become very dysfunctional. I went to a monastery in I think it was the end of January and it was a great experience and I love a lot of the things that the months are doing. They have an active physical life of manual labor and I think there's a certain type of joy, but I'm not so certain that that kind of restful lifestyle where you're constantly hiding behind a castle and that's so sure that that's the formula to a happy life. But after you've called yourself, it is true that when you go to a church service, it's a form of rest. One thing I can unequivocally say about church, I've been bored of church, especially when I was young. I don't think I've ever been stressed by being in church. I don't think I've ever been stressed by going to church. I don't think I've ever stressed by doing breath work. Oh my God, I have to do some breath work. I have to do some whim health. There are ways that you can rest throughout the day that are very important that a line of reset your mind to reset so you can get back down into the present moment. A lot of the, I've never read a cart total, but as I understand some of his work, he like almost every philosopher is obsessed with the present, is obsessed with doing and observing what's going on right now, because that is where light happens right now. But if you're lamenting things that have happened in the past and you're anxious about the future, it does truly rob you of the present. You know, I think of Robin Williams in the Dead Poet Society, where he brought these young students the cusp of their life to the high school trophy case to look at past championship teams. And he asked them to look closer and he kept on saying it on Carpe diem. Carpe diem sees the day, use each day of your life to live out your holy purpose. And that's what we get with this mindfulness practice. We get, and we can do it through stopping, which all of us can do, not have the painting money to stop, calling, resting, why is resting so important? I just did a book review on resting by Alex Payne, that I had bought at the paper moon bookstore, they're not painting anything to say that, go see that in the greater Iowa if you're ever there, and tell them that Rocky Cole, the Rocky cast, sent to you. Don't tell them that I'm a Republican though, because they make you be like, Oh my gosh, Republicans, it's kind of a lefty bookstore, but most book that. There's a lot of, there's a lot of various literature that I don't particularly care for, but it is a really good bookstore and I'm just calling a spade, a spade here. But yeah, Alex talks about the power of rest, and one of the things why rest is so important, but he gets into this, stopping, calling and resting, he uses the word healing. Healing, another word for healing is recovery, you know, if you are working out all the time and you're not allowing your body the opportunity to recover, you're not growing. If you're never allowing your mind to recover, your mind is not able to do the work that it needs to be able to do to organize itself for the next day. So that's why stopping, calling and resting are so, so important. And here we get into something about why the stopping, calling and resting is so important because it brings healing and we're in a good emotional space where we can feel our mind and our body that allows these things to grow. And when we're thinking about what causes to grow, we start noticing those activities that help us to grow. I'm going to work out today at 12 o'clock because I know that those activities are going to help enhance me, my mind, to serve my clients, to serve you, of the wrapping cast. And we're going to quote the power of true mindfulness, how it opens this world up, this gray-jury world to a world of beauty right now. And here's what Tech says, if we look deeply at the butt on a tree, we will see its nature. It may be very small, but it is also like the earth because the leaf in the butt will become part of the earth, if we see the truth of one thing in the cosmos, we see the nature of the cosmos. Because of our mindfulness or deep looking, the nature of the cosmos will reveal itself. It is not a matter of imposing our ideas on the nature of the cosmos. So this is the important thing, mindfulness allows us to see what is going on in our own lives that cause us to be powerful, dynamic, and energetic, but also disrupts the very things that we would put on this earth to do. It allows us to see, it's like a beacon that allows us to see what is going on. And that allows us to see the beauty of right now. So I'm going to close with an actual quote from Tech, and I hope you get the opportunity to look at this. And my sign for you today is to go outside and spend five or ten minutes in this evening in the evening hour just to observe what you're seeing, the trees that are near your house, the sidewalk, the sun, the clouds, just notice them and stop, call, and rest and feel. That is critical, but here's what he talks about. Mindfulness wakes us up to what is happening. When we practice mindfulness, we are in contact with life, and we can offer our love and compassion to lessen the suffering and bring about joy and happiness. Do not lose yourself in the past. Do not lose yourself in the future. Do not get caught up in your anger, your worries, or your fears, and come back to the present moment and touch life deeply. This is mindfulness. We cannot be mindful of everything at the same time, so we have to choose what we found most interested in the object of our mindfulness. The blue sky is wonderful, but the beautiful face of a child is also wonderful. What is essential is to be alive and present to all the wonders of life that are available. When we practice mindfulness, we generate the energy of the Buddha within us and around us, and this is the energy that can save the world. Look deeply, my friends. By the book, the heart of Buddhist teaching, by tick, not hun, and activate your inner power so that you can take advantage of every single gift that you've been given, as Jay Shady teaches us, to live out your Dharma, your purpose, your, as it were, your metiye, that occupation for which you are particularly suited to dudes and dudettes. That is my episode of the Rakmi cast. I hope you found this particular episode useful in lightning. I hope you found it enriching. I hope you give me positive reviews on Spotify, Apple, and all places where podcasts are heard. I should do that at the beginning of this podcast, but I figure if you hear this far, you've gotten something out of this, but most importantly, share the work, share this podcast with other people who are struggling, having a difficult time, and most importantly, share the book, the heart of Buddhist teaching, by tick, not hun, with other people in your life, and especially yourself, because it is one of the most beautiful books that I have ever read, and every single technique in this book is free. Every single one, and the consequences of not doing it are astronomically probably difficult. If you don't address some of these negative emotions within you. So that's it for this episode of the Rakmi cast. Let's keep growing, let's keep peeling, let's keep being the best version of ourselves. Let's keep spreading the good positive news of what we're trying to achieve here. Be a light to yourself and shine a light to others. So next time you and I see each other, or until next time you and I see each other on the Rakmi cast.
In this episode we learn about the insight gained by stopping, calming, resting, and healing through the work of the great Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh and his book The Heart of Buddha's Teaching.
Mindfulness allows us to control and influence our positive and negative habit energies.
Thich teaches us how to do achieve this control through the practice of mindfulness.