Alan Wallace Public Talk: Mindfulness

0:05 Welcome Alan and welcome to everyone here tonight. We're delighted to see so many people coming along to this, what will be a wonderful lecture with Alan Wallace. Alan has taught Buddhist meditation and philosophy worldwide for over 35 years. He's a leading meditation teacher, scholar and author. He trained as a Buddhist monk for 14 years. Report an error in the passage at 0:05 Highlight the passage at 0:05

0:34 And has served as interpreter for His Holiness the Dalai Lama and many other Tibetan scholars and contemplatives. After earning his undergraduate degree in physics and the philosophy of science from Amherst College, he went on to earn a doctorate in religious studies at Stanford University. He is the founder and president of the Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies. Report an error in the passage at 0:34 Highlight the passage at 0:34

1:01 Vajrayana Institute have been very fortunate to have Alan speaking at our conferences since the very first conference in 2005 and also leading regular meditation retreats with us for the past five years, I think. Report an error in the passage at 1:01 Highlight the passage at 1:01

1:21 Alan will be back to lead a... A retreat on the four immeasurables in spring this year. That's going to be in late October and he'll also be speaking at our Mind and Its Potential conference in October. So if you enjoy this tonight, you can get more then. Thank you very much, Alan. Lovely to have you back. Thank you, thank you. Report an error in the passage at 1:21 Highlight the passage at 1:21

1:45 So delighted to be back with you all again. And one correction, I'm going to be having a conversation on the way out to the retreat tomorrow morning with Tony Steele. to discuss a bit further what the topic will be for Report an error in the passage at 1:45 Highlight the passage at 1:45

2:01 It may be an introduction to Dzogchen, it may be the seven-point mind training. And what I suggested to Tony is perhaps, I don't know how feasible this is, maybe Badriani Institute could simply send out email to people who've attended previous retreats and say, what would you like? Because I'm happy to teach whatever people would like to listen to and practice. So, vote! Report an error in the passage at 2:01 Highlight the passage at 2:01

2:28 So, delightful to be back with you again and this evening to talk about a very important, very relevant, very current topic, mindfulness, which is enormously important in Buddhist theory and practice, but also this term has become quite a catchphrase, a catch term, in over the last 10, 15, 20 years. Report an error in the passage at 2:28 Highlight the passage at 2:28

2:52 As it's made its way into mainstream psychology, John Kabat-Zinn's marvelous work in mindfulness-based stress reduction. John Kabat-Zinn, Mark Williams, John Teasdale, Zendel Siegel are working in this whole field of mindfulness-based cognitive behavioral therapy. Very smart, very effective. So it's made its way into mainstream psychology. There have been now scores of different scientific studies of what has been called mindfulness meditation. Report an error in the passage at 2:52 Highlight the passage at 2:52

3:20 So it's very mainstream. Just this morning I was reading an article in Newsweek magazine, a very mainstream journal in the United States, by Sharon Begley, a science writer for that journal, and Richard Davidson, a very prominent neuroscientist in the United States, on the efficacy of mindfulness meditation, that is referred to, the efficacy of mindfulness meditation for treating depression. Report an error in the passage at 3:20 Highlight the passage at 3:20

3:44 And so it's all over the place. It's really very much in vogue. Mindfulness and when we see it in this popular context, that is in mindfulness meditation and mindfulness based this, that and the other thing, the quite uniform definition of mindfulness in this modern, let's say popularized and also secularized context is the one that Jon Kabat-Zinn writes about repeatedly and by the way he's a very dear and old friend of mine, we've known each other for 20 years now. Report an error in the passage at 3:44 Highlight the passage at 3:44

4:14 And that is his definition is moment by moment non-judgmental awareness of whatever arises in the present moment. So it's been clearly demonstrated, I think beyond all reasonable doubt, that cultivating that quality of very mindful attentiveness to whatever's arising, both in terms of one's engagement with other people, the environment, your body, your own mental states, it's very good for you. Report an error in the passage at 4:14 Highlight the passage at 4:14

4:37 And psychologically, physiologically, it's very good for alleviating stress and so forth. And as John so eloquently and poignantly points out, if you're not practicing mindfulness, you are practicing mindlessness, which doesn't sound like it would be very good. And so that said, and I say all of that with utter sincerity, this definition... Report an error in the passage at 4:37 Highlight the passage at 4:37

5:00 I'll give it again. Moment by moment, non-judgmental awareness, whatever arises in the present moment, as useful as it is, and as commonly as mindfulness meditation is presented as a type of Buddhist meditation, in fact there's no basis for either one in any classic Buddhist treatise for the last 2,500 years. Report an error in the passage at 5:00 Highlight the passage at 5:00

5:20 And that is this definition of mindfulness is something that's been created. Within the last few decades and nowhere, I think, in any traditional Buddhist literature will you find any references to mindfulness meditation. It's nowhere to be found. And this quality of moment by moment, not general awareness, is not shamatha, which is a classic. Report an error in the passage at 5:20 Highlight the passage at 5:20

5:43 of Buddhist meditation. It's not shamatha because it's not selective. It's whatever comes up. You'll never develop single-pointed attention by being open to whatever comes up. You know, spasms in your knee and a sound and a thought and then a bird chirping and then something visual and so forth. That's not... Report an error in the passage at 5:43 Highlight the passage at 5:43

5:57 And so it's quite interesting. It's very useful. But as the Dalai Lama, when he first learned about this back in 1992, no, it was 1990, When John Kabat-Zinn himself came and presented in one of the Mind and Life Institute's meetings, for which I was co-interpreting, with Tutumjimba, His Holiness heard about this and was asked, what is your evaluation of this? Report an error in the passage at 5:57 Highlight the passage at 5:57

6:22 He said, very good, just don't mistake this for Buddhism. So what I'd like to do this evening, and I hope you see that at no point am I speaking with sarcasm. I mean to say this is very good and it's not Buddhism, it's not sarcastic. It's simply that if you're going to call something Buddhism, you should be able to point to something within the Buddhist tradition for the last 2,500 years that gives you some basis for making that statement. Report an error in the passage at 6:22 Highlight the passage at 6:22

6:45 If you imagine, for example, a Christian who becomes very enamored of the writings, psychological writings and insights of Freud, and certainly there are some, quite a few, and a Christian embracing this, but embracing it so deeply that he says, you know, according to Freud's theory, the human psyche is made up of three elements, the id, the ego, Actually four, four elements. The id, the superego, the ego and the id, superego and ego, right? Report an error in the passage at 6:45 Highlight the passage at 6:45

7:18 And the Holy Spirit. If you should say that, you say, wait a minute, wait a minute, that's not Freud. That fourth one, ego, superego, id, got that, Holy Spirit, Freud never talked about that. You can't say that's Freudian. And you say, yes I can, because I like Freud. Report an error in the passage at 7:18 Highlight the passage at 7:18

7:40 And I'm a Christian. You just can't do that. Because if you're going to say something is Freudian psychology, you have to be able to point to something in Freud's writing that justifies saying that this is Freudian. And likewise, if you're going to say something is the Buddhist definition of mindfulness, then you have to be able to point to something before you said it that actually justifies calling that the Buddhist definition of mindfulness. Report an error in the passage at 7:40 Highlight the passage at 7:40

8:04 If it's good for Freud, it's got to be good for Buddha. So what I'd like to do tonight is to unpack. To examine the nature of mindfulness and the implications of mindfulness both in a classic Buddhist context as well as in modern scientific and see how in many respects they are in fact complementary. Report an error in the passage at 8:04 Highlight the passage at 8:04

8:22 So this is not a dogma war. This is not right versus wrong. And of course there is no right definition of mindfulness. That's ridiculous. To say that Jon Kabat-Zinn's definition is wrong. Wrong compared to what? If you say it's a Buddhist definition, no that's not right because there's no basis for that. Report an error in the passage at 8:22 Highlight the passage at 8:22

8:39 But is that a valuable definition, a valid definition of mindfulness in the secular context? Sure, why not? Who's the language police that says, no, no, God said that's not the definition of mindfulness or Buddha said, no, no deal. So words are fluid. The definition of words change over time and they always have. Even within Buddhism, of course, this evolution is not static. Report an error in the passage at 8:39 Highlight the passage at 8:39

9:03 So let's jump right in. Mindfulness, we're looking at Buddhist and scientific views, if we can have the second slide. So what I'm saying here is that if we are to speak of mindfulness in the Buddhist context, say this is the Buddhist meaning of mindfulness, it's not to say that it's static, that we have to go back to some ancient text and say that's the only right meaning, but it is to say that if you're going to speak of the Buddhist meaning of mindfulness, you should be in dialogue. Report an error in the passage at 9:03 Highlight the passage at 9:03

9:27 With the teachings of the Buddha in dialogue with the last 2,500 years of tradition and not just ignore all of that and make up your own definition with no dialogue, with no connection at all. So let's go right back to the Buddha. One of the earliest sources, here's the Buddha himself and he does in fact define this mental process, his faculty of mindfulness or sati, it's called in Pāli. Report an error in the passage at 9:27 Highlight the passage at 9:27

9:48 And he says, oh and what monks is the faculty of mindfulness? Here amongst the noble disciple has mindfulness. He is endowed with perfect mindfulness and introspection. He is one who remembers, who recollects what was done and said long before. Report an error in the passage at 9:48 Highlight the passage at 9:48

10:04 So here in the Pāli Canon, really the most authoritative and widely accepted body of teachings attributed to the Buddha, he's clearly... Report an error in the passage at 10:04 Highlight the passage at 10:04

10:15 Pointing out, highlighting an aspect of mindfulness which is really that of retention, of recollection, of remembering and the opposite of that is forgetting. Report an error in the passage at 10:15 Highlight the passage at 10:15

10:25 Forgetting. It is that very faculty of recollecting and what was done and said long before. It's memory, it's recollection. So the notion that mindfulness has to be only in the present and not dealing with the past, of course, is completely contrary to what the Buddha had to say. It's just incompatible with what he said. Now we're going to start there. It doesn't mean that's the final word. Report an error in the passage at 10:25 Highlight the passage at 10:25

10:44 It does mean that's the initial word. We should be in all further discussions of the Buddhist meaning of mindfulness. We shouldn't be turning our backs on that because that's actually what the Buddha said, right? But now that's not the end of the story. That's in the Pāli Canon. But that's where we start, that mindfulness means bearing in mind, holding in mind, not forgetting. Report an error in the passage at 10:44 Highlight the passage at 10:44

11:07 So there's kind of, you plant your stake there and say, okay, now how do we develop that? How do we develop that? So let's go to the next slide and see now how this evolves over time. We jump up to the 4th or 5th century. One of the great patriarchs, great scholars, contemplatives in the Mahāyāna tradition, Asanga, he defines mindfulness in his Abhidhamma Samacaya, a great classic text from Mahāyāna Buddhism. Report an error in the passage at 11:07 Highlight the passage at 11:07

11:31 He said mindfulness, he defines this, this is the non-forgetfulness of the mind with respect to a familiar object having the function of non-distraction. So now it has a bit more nuance. It's not contradicting what the Buddha said. It's unpacking it. It's bringing more nuance, more texture to it. So it's a non-forgetfulness. So he's now clearly in dialogue when the Buddha said it's recollecting, bearing in mind, retaining. Report an error in the passage at 11:31 Highlight the passage at 11:31

11:56 Okay, well that's the non-forgetfulness with respect to a familiar object. Something that you knew before, you're not forgetting it. So clearly there's a real continuity here. But now he brings this other aspect and that is having the function of non-distraction. That is not losing your mind. Not forgetting, not veering away, not getting caught up, not getting carried away. So for example, if you're practicing mindfulness of breathing, and the Buddha certainly made many references to mindfulness of breathing, that's not so much recalling breaths of the past. Report an error in the passage at 11:56 Highlight the passage at 11:56

12:29 It's an ongoing flow of recollectedness, of non-forgetfulness, non-entropy. non-distraction of the mind in the present moment, so you're maintaining an ongoing flow of recollectedness of the in-breath, the out-breath, the in-breath, the out-breath, which should imply that you're also remembering the instructions. Report an error in the passage at 12:29 Highlight the passage at 12:29

12:50 What were the instructions you heard when you learned about mindfulness of breathing as a practice, whether as a shamatha practice for developing attention skills, whether as an insight practice? Vipassanā practice. What are the instructions? They're a little bit different. So if you're practicing mindfulness, that attentiveness to the in and out breath, are you doing it as a shamatha practice, which is really just about attention skills? Report an error in the passage at 12:50 Highlight the passage at 12:50

13:12 Are you doing it as a vipassanā practice, really to gain insight? Either case, you have to recall what were the instructions, which means mindfulness not only of the sensations of the breath, but also recollection. What were the instructions? What am I doing here? So there's a good start. Shantideva, we're now writing from the 7th or 8th century, another of the greatest, many of you probably know the name, greatest contemplatives, scholars, poets of the whole Mahāyāna tradition. Report an error in the passage at 13:12 Highlight the passage at 13:12

13:40 In his classic text, the most widely studied and practiced and taught text in all of Tibetan Buddhism, but of course it stems from India. In this text, he writes in the 5th chapter, In terms of mindfulness now, introspection. It's called Sampradjani in Sanskrit. It's often translated in various ways from the Pāli tradition or modern Theravāda, sometimes translated as clear comprehension, as full mindfulness, as vigilance, different translations. Report an error in the passage at 13:40 Highlight the passage at 13:40

14:07 But I'm translating it as introspection based upon Shantideva's definition. Look at the definition. In brief, this alone is the definition of introspection, the repeated examination of the state of one's own body and mind. In other words, you can practice mindfulness with respect to any familiar object, outside, inside, stars, planets, elementary particles, your kneecap, anything that you can attend to and then bear in mind, you can practice mindfulness of that. Report an error in the passage at 14:07 Highlight the passage at 14:07

14:35 But introspection is always reflexive. I can't practice introspection to anything outside of this body-mind that I identify with. I can't practice introspection or samprajanya with respect to the outer environment, other people, things, the future, the past and so forth. Introspection is always reflexive. So it's this monitoring of one's own, the state of one's own body and mind and that includes one's own speech, which is an expression of one's body and mind actually. Report an error in the passage at 14:35 Highlight the passage at 14:35

15:07 So introspection, so now these two, these two mental faculties of mindfulness and introspection, they turned out to be absolutely central. Like the left hand and the right hand for all kinds of Buddhist meditation without exception, bar none. So we have a definition, great sources, authoritative sources, and now we see them put together, a saṅgha again in another text, and that is mindfulness and introspection are taught. Report an error in the passage at 15:07 Highlight the passage at 15:07

15:34 For the first, namely mindfulness, prevents the attention from straying from the meditative object, while the second, namely introspection, recognizes that the attention is So another word for introspection in modern psychology would be metacognition or meta-awareness. And that is, it is our ability to monitor as we're practicing, let's say, mindfulness of breathing, for example. Report an error in the passage at 15:34 Highlight the passage at 15:34

16:01 How do you know whether your mind is getting distracted, caught up and carried away by thoughts? How do you know whether your mind is getting lax, dull, spaced out, falling asleep? Not by being mindful of the breathing. But actually by monitoring the flow of your attention, monitoring the flow of your mindfulness and that faculty by which we monitor our own minds, the degree of agitation, calmness, clarity, stability and so forth, the faculty by means of which we monitor our own mental states and processes, it's called introspection. Report an error in the passage at 16:01 Highlight the passage at 16:01

16:34 We can monitor not only laxity and excitation and then applying the antidotes, but also our emotional states. Our desires, introspection is rather like, introspection is to the mind what the dashboard is to a driver driving a car. Report an error in the passage at 16:34 Highlight the passage at 16:34

16:56 Looking at the dashboard, you can say how fast you're driving, whether the car is overheating, what are the RPMs, whether any of the doors are open and so forth and so on. It tells you what's going on under the hood or beyond what is obvious in the car itself. And likewise, you can know what's going on in your mind without having to observe your behavior. Report an error in the passage at 16:56 Highlight the passage at 16:56

17:14 Which a behavioral psychologist will do, try to draw inferences about your mental states. Paul Ekman's work, for example, this careful scrutiny of facial expressions and on the basis of very detailed observation and analysis of muscle groups and contractions of muscles in the face, then drawing very sound, very brilliant inferences about the person's emotional state by examining facial expression. Report an error in the passage at 17:14 Highlight the passage at 17:14

17:39 Also, highly trained behavioral psychologists may also listen to tone of voice, the speed with which you're speaking, and of course what you're saying, but also body language and so forth, and then draw a number of very sound inferences based upon these behavioral expressions, inferring what's going on in your mind, your emotions and so forth. Report an error in the passage at 17:39 Highlight the passage at 17:39

17:58 It's good science. It's good science. So that they do with mindfulness directed outwards, but we don't have to rely on these outward manifestations. A yogi sitting quietly with a face like this, just calm and relaxed, and no behavior at all. Report an error in the passage at 17:58 Highlight the passage at 17:58

18:18 He's not giving the behavioral psychologist much to work with. Just sitting there, just sitting there, just sitting there, just sitting there. Not much data, or a lot of the same data. Whereas while outwardly just sitting there, sitting there, sitting there, the meditator, having honed the faculty of introspection, May note a wide variety of desires, emotions, imaginations, ruminations, dullness setting in, boredom setting in, excitement setting in, joy setting in, sadness setting in, all kinds of stuff, and yet that might not flit across the face and certainly not come out in speech or in body language. Report an error in the passage at 18:18 Highlight the passage at 18:18

18:56 So we do have privileged access to our own minds. Now, introspection is fallible, of course, but the really good news is that through training, our introspective or metacognitive faculty can be refined, can be honed, so that we can rely upon it with greater and greater confidence. So there we are. There are the two pillars of Buddhist meditation relevant to both shamatha and vipassanā. So it's utterly a mistake, completely a mistake, to equate mindfulness with vipassanā. Report an error in the passage at 18:56 Highlight the passage at 18:56

19:29 That's ridiculous. It's why people really don't know what they're talking about. Because that would imply that mindfulness doesn't play a role in shamatha. But without mindfulness there is no shamatha. So that's completely ridiculous and a very widespread misnomer by people, I guess, that just haven't bothered to study Buddhism. So that's okay, but then don't call it Buddhist, right? Report an error in the passage at 19:29 Highlight the passage at 19:29

19:48 So let's go to the next slide and see what's up. Now there's a closely related mental faculty, not the same as mindfulness, not the same as introspection. It's samādhi, which has now become an English term as well. You'll find it in many English dictionaries. Samādhi, or one-pointed attention, highly focused attention. Report an error in the passage at 19:48 Highlight the passage at 19:48

20:07 So now, once again, let's look at a traditional definition. This is a very, very prominent, very widely used term in Buddhism as it is in other Indian traditions, such as the yoga tradition of Hinduism and so on. So here, from a manual of Abhidhamma, a very, very fine Theravāda Buddhist scholar, he writes, one-pointedness or concentration on one object, namely samādhi, or focusing the mind on one object, is like a steady lamp flame in a windless place. Report an error in the passage at 20:07 Highlight the passage at 20:07

20:35 It is like a firmly fixed pillar that cannot be shaken by the wind. It is like water that binds together several substances to form one concrete compound. This mental state prevents its adjuncts, that is, its concomitant mental factors, from dissipation and fixes them on one object. In other words, one of the translations of samādhi is mental unification. It is a composure, a collectedness. Report an error in the passage at 20:35 Highlight the passage at 20:35

21:01 ...of your whole heart and mind, so whatever you're attending to, whether it's your child who's just come home from school, whether it's the traffic during rush hour, whether it's while out on a bird-watching adventure, whether it's studying the data from a particle accelerator, whatever it may be, that you're wholly present, totally focused, whether it's something very minute or something vast, but it's a unification. Report an error in the passage at 21:01 Highlight the passage at 21:01

21:27 So it is this quality of awareness that... prevents the mind from dissipation and fixes the whole mind upon one object. This one-pointedness is one of the five jhāna factors. I won't give all the other four right now, but in other words, it is a factor or a quality of awareness that is cultivated through the practice of shamatha, eventually leading to jhāna, which is a very high state of mental stabilization or samādhi. Report an error in the passage at 21:27 Highlight the passage at 21:27

21:53 When it is developed and cultivated, it is called samādhi. It is the germ or the seed of all attentive, selected, focused or concentrated consciousness. So it plays this enormous role, a pivotal role in Buddhist meditation altogether. And once again, there's a rather common and utterly mistaken notion floating around that somehow mindfulness is incompatible with samādhi. Report an error in the passage at 21:53 Highlight the passage at 21:53

22:22 That Hindus practice samādhi, but that's very tunnel-visioned and rigid and locked in and highly focused, whereas mindfulness is open and spacious and good. Report an error in the passage at 22:22 Highlight the passage at 22:22

22:32 That's a crock. Complete crock. There's absolutely no basis for that whatsoever. And that is, this should be obvious just from the one phrase, Ānāpānasati samādhi. It is the samādhi that is achieved by way of sati of the anapana. It is samādhi achieved by mindfulness of the in and out breath. That's the Buddha's for a practice that he taught more commonly than any other practice. Ānāpānasati Samādhi. Samādhi of mindfulness of breathing. Right? Well, they wouldn't call it Samādhi by way of mindfulness if the two were So again, that's one more. If you ever hear it, just throw it away in the dumpster because it's just ridiculous. It's just sectarian, I don't know, foolishness. Report an error in the passage at 22:32 Highlight the passage at 22:32

23:14 So we move on to the next one. But now we move into the modern world. I'm going to come back to a person I've quoted often right here in this room over the last several years, one of my intellectual heroes, William James, one of the, I think, really the greatest pioneer of modern psychology, at least American psychology. Report an error in the passage at 23:14 Highlight the passage at 23:14

23:31 And he wrote, oh, what would this be, about 120 years ago? He wrote, everyone, so now we come back to attention, but in a modern context, but modern as 120 years ago. But I think we have a number of psychologists in the room. What he's about to say about attention, I think the psychologist here. We'll say, well, this is not alien, bizarre, antiquated. Okay, let's see what he says, see how sensible it is. Number one, everyone knows what attention is. Report an error in the passage at 23:31 Highlight the passage at 23:31

23:57 I mean, it's not some esoteric word we learned in graduate school in psychology. It is the taking possession by the mind in clear and vivid form of one out of what seems several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought. So we're directing our attention. Focalization, concentration of consciousness are of its essence. Report an error in the passage at 23:57 Highlight the passage at 23:57

24:18 In other words, attention is selective. By its very nature, it is selective. It implies withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others and is a condition which has a real opposite in the confused, dazed, scatterbrained state which in French is called distraction and zertreutheit in German. Report an error in the passage at 24:18 Highlight the passage at 24:18

24:41 So, a lot of consensus there. So, even though it's under 20 years ago, quite contemporary, good definition. Very sensible and we can all relate to it in terms of our own experience. So I think it's a good place to start as I began with the Buddha, with the Buddhist tradition. Why not begin with William James, writing 120 years ago as one of the great pioneers of psychology and established the first neuroscience institute in North America in the same year that Wilhelm Wundt established one in Germany, in Leipzig. Report an error in the passage at 24:41 Highlight the passage at 24:41

25:10 So there we start. But now we can see, all right, could we have a conversation here? Between modern psychological notions of attention and the Buddhist, as we've seen in the preceding slide about concentration or single-pointed attention, this is close enough. We can definitely have a meaningful discussion here and see how perhaps we can learn from each other, how perhaps the views will be complementary and in some ways when perhaps there's some incompatibility between modern science and Buddhism. Report an error in the passage at 25:10 Highlight the passage at 25:10

25:37 We have to be open to all possibilities. So let's move on. Now we look at Some of the implications, ramifications and applications of mindfulness. And here's one point where you'd have to say classical Buddhism, and this is from the Theravāda Buddhist tradition, have to say, well, now there's a point of incompatibility, or at least seemingly so. Report an error in the passage at 25:37 Highlight the passage at 25:37

26:03 And that is in this modern secularized version of mindfulness that I've cited a couple of times now, very strong emphasis on non being non-judgmental, non-judgmental. Report an error in the passage at 26:03 Highlight the passage at 26:03

26:14 And on the face of it, that sounds really good, to be non-judgmental. Because if I turn to any of you here and say, you're being so judgmental. Report an error in the passage at 26:14 Highlight the passage at 26:14

26:25 What do you think? Is that a nice thing to say? Did I just praise her or did I disparage her? You're being very judgmental. Everybody knows, down on her, right? Not good. She's so judgmental. On the other hand, if I turn to the person right next to you and say, you've exercised very good judgment. Report an error in the passage at 26:25 Highlight the passage at 26:25

26:46 One gets the noun, one gets the adjective. Yes with a noun, no with the adjective. That's strange. But we know what it means. This is contemporary English. Being judgmental, opinionated, biased, arrogant, probably condescending. One can be judgmental towards oneself, giving rise to low self-esteem, self-condemnation, maybe self-hatred, and then serve up the same for other people. Report an error in the passage at 26:46 Highlight the passage at 26:46

27:12 Same stuff comes up. Condescension, contempt, repudiation, dismissal. I'm so judgmental. You're so judgmental. You've just blown that person up, written that person off. That was so unkind of you. So judgmental, right? And so in this, and we know this is a very common characteristic and we also know that low self-esteem, self-hatred, a lack of self-worth. Report an error in the passage at 27:12 Highlight the passage at 27:12

27:36 And we have many more terms, like the Eskimos have for snow. We in the modern world have a lot of words for this. Self-contempt, self-hatred, low self-esteem. Oh, the words go on and on, all referring to basically the same bundle attitude of putting oneself down. The attitude of one puts it in really moving English. Report an error in the passage at 27:36 Highlight the passage at 27:36

27:54 If people knew me better, they would like me less. Report an error in the passage at 27:54 Highlight the passage at 27:54

28:02 So one thinks, this is painful. This is really painful. We do this and then we turn it to other people and then it just creates disharmony in our relationship with other people, to our children, creates disharmony there and so forth. It's bound to, if we start being two spouses, start being judgmental towards each other, that's going to start disintegrating the relationship. Lack of respect, contempt and so forth. Report an error in the passage at 28:02 Highlight the passage at 28:02

28:26 Two of the major indicators that a marriage is going to dissolve, contempt, disrespect. And it's got a slippery slope, probably six months is generally the... The prognosis for a marriage when contempt becomes very dominant in a marital relationship. So it's quite clear that being judgmental, this adjective, is something that's very detrimental whether it's self-directed or other-directed. Report an error in the passage at 28:26 Highlight the passage at 28:26

28:50 So no wonder that people in this modern Vipassanā movement, people teaching mindfulness meditation, people defining mindfulness as Jon Kabat-Zinn does, and he didn't make that up by himself, he's tapping into this modern Vipassanā movement. No wonder they emphasize that, for good reason. That, you know, for once, give it a rest and without always judging every impulse, every thought, never give, you know, this super ego and steroids, never giving yourself a break, you know, judging everything, making yourself miserable, this kind of like this awful dad or awful mom sitting in the bleachers of your mind, always ready to pound you whenever you step out of line or even maybe step out of line. Report an error in the passage at 28:50 Highlight the passage at 28:50

29:31 No wonder they want to emphasize this. So I applaud that. It's good and they're doing it for very good reason. A lot of mental unhappiness, depression and so forth comes from being judgmental towards oneself and others. So thumbs up on that. Now, what about discernment? What about exercising good judgment? Report an error in the passage at 29:31 Highlight the passage at 29:31

29:51 What about recognizing which impulses, desires and so forth, thoughts, intentions and so forth that arise in one's mind stream, which are wholesome, conducive to one's own and others' well-being, which are unwholesome, Report an error in the passage at 29:51 Highlight the passage at 29:51

30:04 to one's own and others' well-being, which are ethically neutral. As we're being nonjudgmental, shall we also throw out common sense? If we want to do that with our own mind, whatever the mind is dishing up from moment to moment, desires, intentions and so forth and so on, if we are to suspend sound judgment, refuse to make wise evaluations, Of what's being dished up in the mind from moment to moment, shall we exercise a similar lack of discernment, lack of judgment, sound judgment, when we go to a cafeteria and we're looking at food that's being offered and just eat any old thing, irrespective of whether it's healthy, whether it's rotten, whether you're allergic to it, whether you can digest it and so forth. Report an error in the passage at 30:04 Highlight the passage at 30:04

30:58 Wait a minute. No, no, we have to be right. We're supposed to be, we're a materialistic society. We know about watching diet. Eating healthy food, balanced diet, that calls for being very discerning, exercising sound judgment. The food you eat, that you give your family, your children, and so forth. So if exercising sound judgment, being very discerning, this food is a bit off, this food I can't digest, no, that one you're allergic to, this is too fattening, that's too much of that, too little of this. Report an error in the passage at 30:58 Highlight the passage at 30:58

31:23 We're exercising sound judgment all over the place for food, which is having direct impact on the body. Shall we exercise any less sound judgment? In terms of what the mind is dishing up from moment to moment. Or shall we just say, ah, I'm going to be non-judgmental. Or the sappiest new agey baloney is embrace everything. Report an error in the passage at 31:23 Highlight the passage at 31:23

31:46 Hatred, malice, pettiness, selfishness, greed, stupidity, anxiety. And so it's all part of me. Oh, give me a break. We're just taking leave of our senses when doing that. That's absurd. So we go from one absurdity, one tragic absurdity of being... Report an error in the passage at 31:46 Highlight the passage at 31:46

32:06 How do you say? Abusively judgmental towards ourselves to trying to embrace everything? That's compounding, that's remedying one kind of delusion with another delusion. Really. So how about something in the middle? How about common sense? Recognizing some impulses are really harmful, some are really helpful and some are just neutral. Report an error in the passage at 32:06 Highlight the passage at 32:06

32:27 So in Buddhist practice, in the active cultivation of mindfulness, Then, exercising sound judgment plays a crucial role, which is almost entirely overlooked in the modern definition, the modern scientific studies, the modern practice of mindfulness meditation, where they're always uniformly adamant, not judgmental, not judgmental, not judgmental. Report an error in the passage at 32:27 Highlight the passage at 32:27

32:51 And the Buddhist tradition says, exercise good judgment, good judgment, good judgment. Here's a major source, Nagasena, in his maybe the first East-West dialogue between a Buddhist and a representative of Western civilization. It was King Menander, called in Pāli Melinda, what was it, second century before the Common Era, I think it was, a long time ago. Report an error in the passage at 32:51 Highlight the passage at 32:51

33:12 He was a leftover from Alexander the Great's invasion of India and he appointed his generals to become governors of different provinces of North India that he took over and give it a couple of generations and you have these people left over and they're still of Greek heritage, Greek families, just like the Romans all over Europe. Report an error in the passage at 33:12 Highlight the passage at 33:12

33:29 But now they are living in India and they're becoming princes, they're becoming governors of provinces and king or kings and King Melinda was Greek and he invited this Buddhist monk to his court, a wise man from the east and they had a dialogue. The king was asking Nagasena, an arhat, a liberated being, a Buddhist monk, fundamental questions about the core teachings and practices of Buddhism and one of the questions he asked him was what is mindfulness? Report an error in the passage at 33:29 Highlight the passage at 33:29

33:59 So this is again A very authoritative answer by an arhat, a person who should really know what he's talking about. And Nagasena replied as follows. He said, mindfulness has both the characteristic of calling to mind and the characteristic of taking hold. So we see again this evolution, not just parroting what the Buddha said in the Pāli Canon, but letting it unfold, unfold, letting it evolve. Report an error in the passage at 33:59 Highlight the passage at 33:59

34:22 He explained further, mindfulness when it arises calls to mind wholesome and unwholesome tendencies with faults and faultless. Inferior and refined, dark and pure, together with their counterparts, and that is their concomitant mental factors, desires, emotions and so forth, mindfulness when it arises follows the courses of beneficial and unbeneficial tendencies, recognizing these tendencies are beneficial, these unbeneficial, these tendencies are helpful, these unhelpful, thus one who practices yoga rejects unbeneficial tendencies and cultivates beneficial tendencies. Report an error in the passage at 34:22 Highlight the passage at 34:22

35:00 So this is not dogmatic. It's not just appealing to lists of virtues and non-virtues or just an appeal to authority. The Buddha said, therefore this is ethical. The Buddha said, therefore this is unethical. No, he's appealing to your own immediate experience. Check for yourself through your exercise of mindfulness to observe the tendencies that arise in your own mind and to observe the consequences, the impact of different... Report an error in the passage at 35:00 Highlight the passage at 35:00

35:24 So emotions, desires, intentions, memories, thoughts and so forth, when they arise, which of these are conducive to your own well-being? Which undermine your own well-being? Which, if acted upon through speech or physical behavior, give rise to disharmony, conflict, injuring others, undermining others' well-being? Report an error in the passage at 35:24 Highlight the passage at 35:24

35:44 In other words, look, these mental states, they have consequences. Observe carefully and for your own sake and for the sake of those around you. Exercise sound judgment. There's no reference to being non-judgmental here. That is completely incompatible with what he's saying here. He's saying exercise sound judgment. Don't be judgmental. Report an error in the passage at 35:44 Highlight the passage at 35:44

36:02 Be smart. Take care of yourself. And in so doing, take care of those with whom you interact that you'll not be harming them. By expressing, almost like sneezing when you have swine flu, you're contagious. So there are times when it's better to not express. When you see your mind is dominated by some afflictive tendency, some unwholesome tendency, well, I've had swine flu. The best thing is, okay, I have to suffer, but at least I don't have to give it to anybody else, right? Report an error in the passage at 36:02 Highlight the passage at 36:02

36:34 So when anger dominates the mind, greed, selfishness, pettiness and so forth, it hurts, it afflicts the mind, it's very troublesome and you're suffering from it. But you don't necessarily have to make anybody else suffer. You can quietly remove yourself. In the midst of conversation, you might say, I have to go now, my mind is afflicted. Report an error in the passage at 36:34 Highlight the passage at 36:34

36:55 But I'll come back when I've restored my sanity. Go into your room, lock the door and wait until the fit passes. You remember Shantideva. I'm just interjecting here. What is he saying? When you see that your mind is dominated by any of these afflictive tendencies, remain like a piece of wood, like a piece of wood until it passes. Report an error in the passage at 36:55 Highlight the passage at 36:55

37:17 And then once it's passed and your mind is restored to balance, then say whatever feels you feel would be helpful, but not when your mind is screwed up. So it's mindfulness. Mindfulness, this discerning, intelligent, exercising self-judgment, awareness of what's going on in the mind and attending to also the consequences of these mental states. Report an error in the passage at 37:17 Highlight the passage at 37:17

37:41 So enormous ethical import or implication of classic Buddhist mindfulness that's been completely teased out, dropped, forgotten. Report an error in the passage at 37:41 Highlight the passage at 37:41

37:51 Not only in the definition, but I've seen there's a very major test of mindfulness. It's a whole questionnaire. I've looked at it carefully and I've critiqued it in one chapter of my latest academic book called Meditations of a Buddhist Skeptic where there's a whole section and I've seen the questions and the questions are all about being non-judgmental and that is never even ask yourself whether your perceptions are sound. Report an error in the passage at 37:51 Highlight the passage at 37:51

38:16 Never ask yourself. It's really implying a total lack of sound judgment, a suspension of sound judgment and just... I don't know, it looks like an invitation to ethical dementia. And yet it's said to be a plus. If you're really homogenous, exercising being non-judgmental in the most myopic kind of way. Report an error in the passage at 38:16 Highlight the passage at 38:16

38:41 So I'm really astonished that anybody thinks that's something that you should score high on. So I've had a lot of conversations with the scientists with whom I've engaged in the Shamada Project. Report an error in the passage at 38:41 Highlight the passage at 38:41

38:52 Don't evaluate my students based on that. I don't want my students to score well in being non-judgmental in that way. Because that means they're not doing the practice I've been teaching them because I'm teaching Buddhism. So there it is. There's a good start. Let's move on. But there's ethics in mindfulness. Report an error in the passage at 38:52 Highlight the passage at 38:52

39:10 Now let's move on. What is ethics all about? Well, we saw that in the quote from Nagasena. What's the point of cultivating mindfulness? So that we can cultivate the beneficial. Not that we're just always non-reactive. As if whatever the mind is dishing up, it just doesn't matter. We're being non-judgmental. Report an error in the passage at 39:10 Highlight the passage at 39:10

39:28 There's a subtext there. It doesn't matter what comes to mind. One Vipassanā teacher said, oh, after all, in Buddhism there's no good or evil. I thought, you made that one all by yourself, did you? You've just ignored 2,500 years of Buddhism. You're making new Buddhism. Why don't you just call it your name-ism? It's very bizarre. But what they're doing here is they're, I think, frankly, I'm being a bit harsh perhaps, but I think they're pandering, wanting to be accepted, wanting to have people applaud them, wanting to be accepted. Report an error in the passage at 39:28 Highlight the passage at 39:28

40:03 They're pandering to the lack of ethics in modern psychology where notions of virtue and non-virtue don't get talked about much. Report an error in the passage at 40:03 Highlight the passage at 40:03

40:16 And I've questioned Martin Seligman right here in Sydney a few years back when he was talking about positive psychology, positive psychology. And I said, oh yes, and where's the role of ethics in positive psychology, genuine happiness, authentic happiness he calls it. And he said, we scientists, we are value free. We are value free. We don't talk about ethics. Report an error in the passage at 40:16 Highlight the passage at 40:16

40:38 We only talked about facts. I thought, oh, well, we need to talk. Because science, in fact, has never been value-free. That's a myth. And the notion that you can have genuine happiness that is irrelevant to the way you behave is simply crazy. Report an error in the passage at 40:38 Highlight the passage at 40:38

40:56 That's nuts. The notion that the way you behave has no significance, no consequences for your own or others' well-being is just idiotic. So when Nagasena is saying mindfulness is there to enable us to detect, to discern, To recognize what going on in the mind is conducive to our own and others' well-being and what is injurious. That's all about finding genuine happiness. Report an error in the passage at 40:56 Highlight the passage at 40:56

41:22 Not the pursuit of hedonic pleasure which just arises independence upon stimulation like really tasty ice cream, a fun movie, great music and so forth and so on. You don't need ethics for that. You don't need ethics to be stimulated in a pleasurable way. Everybody knows that. But he's not talking about just getting pleasurable stimuli, whether from the front door by way of the senses or by the back door, by alcohol, cocaine, etc., etc. Report an error in the passage at 41:22 Highlight the passage at 41:22

41:50 You can come in the back door by way of drugs to get one type of meaningless happiness, or you can come in the front door and get it with mere sensory stimulation and have another type of meaningless happiness. Report an error in the passage at 41:50 Highlight the passage at 41:50

42:03 But the ancient wisdom of the West, going back to Socrates, Aristotle and so forth, Ancient wisdom of Buddhism and other wisdom traditions around the world is that that's only one type, rather superficial type of happiness that's simply stimulus driven, hedonic well-being, but there's a much deeper kind of well-being, genuine happiness, that arises not independence upon pleasant stimulation, but arises independence upon what you bring to the world, the quality of your mind, the quality of your behavior. Report an error in the passage at 42:03 Highlight the passage at 42:03

42:31 And so forth. So in this regard, the pursuit of genuine happiness, meaningful happiness that arises from within and not just in response to good things happening to you. It's with this in mind that His Holiness the Dalai Lama makes this statement, a rather strong statement, which one finds echoed in the Taoist tradition, the Hindu tradition, the Christian tradition, in Aristotle. Report an error in the passage at 42:31 Highlight the passage at 42:31

42:51 It's really all over the world, East and West, ancient and modern, the very meaning of life. Well, he addresses this. He said, I believe that the very purpose of our life is to seek happiness. Report an error in the passage at 42:51 Highlight the passage at 42:51

43:02 Whether one believes in religion or not, whether one believes in this religion or that religion, we're all thinking something better in life. So I think the very motion of our life is towards happiness. Report an error in the passage at 43:02 Highlight the passage at 43:02

43:14 Well, when speaking of this as the meaning of life, he's not talking about how much ice cream you can eat, how much music you can listen to, how much sex you can have and so forth. Talking about something deeper. He's a Buddhist monk. Talking about something deeper. Genuine happiness. So let's unpack that briefly. The next slide. Report an error in the passage at 43:14 Highlight the passage at 43:14

43:33 Where does it come from? And is he in dialogue with the Buddhist teachings or is this something the Dalai Lama dreamed up by himself? And in fact, no, the Buddha himself addressed this. He encouraged his disciples to find out what really constitutes true happiness and based on this understanding to pursue it. Report an error in the passage at 43:33 Highlight the passage at 43:33

43:53 So Joseph Campbell, isn't it? Follow your bliss. Follow your bliss. Well, I don't think Joseph Campbell either was a lightweight, just saying, smell some good fragrance and, you know. Follow it and then eat as much as you can. I don't think so. No, he was talking. He's not a trivial man. And so Joseph Campbell, when he says, follow your bliss, follow the fragrance of genuine happiness and trace it to its source. Report an error in the passage at 43:53 Highlight the passage at 43:53

44:18 And that's what the Buddha is talking about. What is true happiness? What is genuine happiness? And then pursue it. Saying the same thing the Dalai Lama says 2,500 years ago. That's actually the meaning of life. We're really onto something there. It's not just pleasure. It's not just titillation. It's not just brain chemistry. Report an error in the passage at 44:18 Highlight the passage at 44:18

44:34 Getting the right amount of endorphins and dopamines and so forth. No, we're talking about something actually meaningful. Chemicals are not meaningful. Chemicals are chemicals. Happiness may be meaningful or it may be trivial. It depends on where it stems from. And so in this regard then it's very crucial to draw a clear and precise distinction between two types of happiness. Report an error in the passage at 44:34 Highlight the passage at 44:34

44:53 We may call them mundane happiness and genuine well-being. And in short, mundane happiness stems from what we get from the world. Report an error in the passage at 44:53 Highlight the passage at 44:53

45:03 From sensory pleasures, from people praising us, respecting us, from enjoying power, fame, wealth, prestige and so forth that we get from the world. And once we've got it from the world, sensual pleasures and all the rest, fame, power, prestige, wealth and so forth, as soon as you know you've got it from the world, then you know the world can take it away. Report an error in the passage at 45:03 Highlight the passage at 45:03

45:30 And not only can, but will. It's only a matter of time. So there's a lovely aphorism from Buddhism that I really, I love. And that is, whenever you find yourself really attached to something that makes you happy, that you get it, it could be another person, a place, physical acquisition, something intangible like fame or prestige, honor, recognition, acknowledgement. Report an error in the passage at 45:30 Highlight the passage at 45:30

45:55 As soon as you grab onto something with attachment, feeling, this makes me happy, this I'll hold on to, this is the keeper. So you found something like that, you're holding on. Now there's only one of two things will happen and there's no third option. As you're holding on to it for dear life, it will disappear. Report an error in the passage at 45:55 Highlight the passage at 45:55

46:14 That's door number one. Door number two is, as you're holding on for dear life, you disappear. There's no other third option. Report an error in the passage at 46:14 Highlight the passage at 46:14

46:25 And the Buddha said this in very succinct terms. He said, whatever you obtain, you will lose. It's part of a quartet. Whatever's born dies. Whatever's acquired will be lost. Whatever rises, as in status, power and so forth, will fall. Whatever goes up comes down. And wherever there's meeting, there will be parting. Four universal truths. Report an error in the passage at 46:25 Highlight the passage at 46:25

46:52 So get real. Get real. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with pursuing hedonic pleasures. Just know that whatever you acquire, you will lose it. It's only a matter of time. Guaranteed. So there's one. So I liken that to the hunter-gatherer phase of human civilization where people, kind of assuming they have nothing at home, There's nothing in your tent, nothing in your wigwam, nothing in your yurt, nothing in your tribal compound. There's nothing there. You'll starve to death if you stay there. Report an error in the passage at 46:52 Highlight the passage at 46:52

47:22 Therefore, venture out as a nomad and hunt and gather. Find good stuff, kill it, gather it and bring it home and then chow down. And as long as you're living in very low population density and you have pretty good hunting ground, gathering ground around you, well... Human beings survive like that for thousands upon thousands of years. For about the last 10,000 years, we've discovered another way for people to be able to live together, even in high density, like Sydney. Report an error in the passage at 47:22 Highlight the passage at 47:22

47:53 And that's called the cultivator phase of human civilization. And this is an analogy I use for genuine well-being, which stems not from what we get from the world, but stems from what we bring to the world. In terms of our modes of behavior, we can derive satisfaction, a sense of well-being, from how we engage with the environment. Report an error in the passage at 47:53 Highlight the passage at 47:53

48:11 That was a good day. Today was meaningful. That was a good day. I offered something significant. Somebody really benefited from my presence, my activity here. Exactly who's going to take that away from you? Since you didn't get it, nobody can take it away from you. You already offered it. So then nothing be taken. So quality will be very different. The two are not incompatible. Report an error in the passage at 48:11 Highlight the passage at 48:11

48:57 All of us, whether you're a Buddha or whether you're a dog or an aphid, we all need, let's just stick with human beings. So with time being, we need food. That's hedonic. We need clothing unless you live in the tropics. We need shelter of some kind. And we need medical care when we're injured or we are ill. Report an error in the passage at 48:57 Highlight the passage at 48:57

49:18 Those four, they're pretty crucial. And that's true for yogis and lamas and monks and nuns and lay people and so forth and so on. They're not insignificant. And I'm going to express an opinion. To my mind, it is the responsibility of every civilized society to see that it takes care of everyone, that everyone has the opportunity. Report an error in the passage at 49:18 Highlight the passage at 49:18

49:39 To have food, shelter, clothing and medical care. They have that opportunity. Society cares for each other. They care for its members. They don't leave anybody out. If it's a society that says, well, never mind you, you're too poor, you're not our business, then I would say, well, that's a society but it's not a civilization. Report an error in the passage at 49:39 Highlight the passage at 49:39

50:03 Hedonic well-being is crucial. It's very hard to meditate if you're really, really hungry. So the two are not incompatible. But, and this is universal wisdom. Thomas Aquinas, one of the most brilliant minds in the Christian tradition, said the whole point of the political life, and he referred not just to politics but to the pursuit of mundane pleasure, governance, education, medicine, business, agriculture, the whole thing, the mundane life, he said the whole point of the political life is the contemplative life. Report an error in the passage at 50:03 Highlight the passage at 50:03

50:35 And that is once you've attended to your own and others' basic needs, their mundane welfare, their well-being. Food, shelter, clothing, medical care. Once you've attended that, and there's enough that's adequate, people are taken care of. Now you hit a fork in the road. Now you have enough. Report an error in the passage at 50:35 Highlight the passage at 50:35

50:54 What will you do now? Very few people are satisfied. It almost defines us as human beings, that when we have enough, we still want something more. Dogs, maybe not. They're ready to roll up into a little ball and take a snooze until they're hungry and want to play again. But so many of us human beings, when we have enough, Then we're looking around. Okay, what's up? What's up? Something more? Something more? That's when you hit a fork in the road. That's where you either have an imagination deficit disorder or you actually have an imagination. Report an error in the passage at 50:54 Highlight the passage at 50:54

51:29 Imagination deficit disorder says, now that I've got enough, good, I want twice as much of the same. I want more money, bigger car, bigger house, more houses, more stuff in the houses, more, more stuff. More, more money. More, more, more, more. More, more, more, more. Report an error in the passage at 51:29 Highlight the passage at 51:29

51:53 Never enough. And the data are in. Once you had enough, once you really, you've gone beyond the anxiety level, once you know that, okay, for myself, my family, those who depend upon me, we have enough. We're okay. No need to be anxious now. Up to that point, there's a clear parallel of your increasing happiness and your increasing wealth. Report an error in the passage at 51:53 Highlight the passage at 51:53

52:18 More wealth, get to that point where you no longer have anxiety and so forth, you're happier. It's hard to be happy when you're wondering whether you can even feed your kids, whether they're getting an education. If they get ill, whether they have medical, it's hard to be happy. Hard to be happy, for good reason. But once you have enough for yourself, for those who depend upon you, if you get twice as much, 10, 100, a million times more than you need, as some of the wealthy people in the world do have, it's a complete parting its ways of your happiness index and your wealth index. Report an error in the passage at 52:18 Highlight the passage at 52:18

52:49 No relationship. And yet you have this, you're beset with this imagination deficit or you don't even notice. You're just thinking, I'm worth more. I'm worth more. I used to be worth only 100,000 and I'm worth a million. I'm a self-made man. I'm worth 10 million. That's 10 times as much as I was worth before. Report an error in the passage at 52:49 Highlight the passage at 52:49

53:09 And I'm worth 100 million and a billion. And if you're Carlos Slim, 60 billion. 60 billion. Billion, the richest man in the world in a country where 60 % of the people live in poverty. Boy, doesn't that make you happy. That was a bit of sarcasm. Report an error in the passage at 53:09 Highlight the passage at 53:09

53:28 So it's getting wise. It's exercising good judgment. If the meaning of life is to find happiness, then get real. Just having more power, more fame, more wealth doesn't do it. Report an error in the passage at 53:28 Highlight the passage at 53:28

53:44 All you have to do is interview anybody who has an enormous amount of fame, power or wealth. Do a survey. and you'll find they're not the happiest people in the world. Often they're taking cocaine or they're dependent on drugs just miserable they're mean-spirited or they're eccentric. And yet if you have no imagination, you'll figure... Report an error in the passage at 53:44 Highlight the passage at 53:44

54:17 Well, I was happy when I got this far and I must be happier when I get... And then I did not even notice. So we often speak of religion. Religion is often condemned or at least severely criticized for all of its empty rituals. I get it. I really don't like empty rituals. They take up time. They take up time and they give nothing in return. Report an error in the passage at 54:17 Highlight the passage at 54:17

54:39 Empty rituals. I'm not saying rituals. I'm saying empty rituals. We're going through an outer display. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right? Report an error in the passage at 54:39 Highlight the passage at 54:39

54:48 The acquisition of excessive wealth is an empty ritual. It looks like that person must be so happy, able to take care of the body, they get all the manicures, the makeovers, they can have the personal trainer, they can get their hair dyed and the face lifted and oh boy, he looks so good, must be so happy. Report an error in the passage at 54:48 Highlight the passage at 54:48

55:06 Empty ritual. Empty ritual. So materialism, the ersatz religion of materialism has its own empty rituals every bit as much as any religion on the world. So let's move on. So, where does this genuine happiness come from? I've mentioned before, it comes from the ground level. It's not some esoteric, abstract, something we may one day perhaps achieve in the future, but something we may have experienced today. Report an error in the passage at 55:06 Highlight the passage at 55:06

55:32 You probably experienced over the last week, the last year, and that is a sense of well-being that arises from the way you engage with the world. It can be the way you engage with other human beings, other sentient beings, but also if you're tending a garden, if you're being conscientious about recycling your waste, if you're being attentive to the environment, if you're buying a car that doesn't use a whole lot of fuel, not one of those gas guzzlers for no reason whatsoever, if you're really being conscientious, ethical with respect to the environment, to other people, to other sentient beings, there's a level of satisfaction, of contentment, of feeling okay, good life, genuine happiness arising from ethics. Report an error in the passage at 55:32 Highlight the passage at 55:32

56:09 social environmental well-being and then move into that whole realm and classically it's called samādhi but it's a cultivation of exceptional mental balance through meditation for example Report an error in the passage at 56:09 Highlight the passage at 56:09

56:21 Cultivating the heart, cultivating the mind, mindfulness, introspection, samādhi, cultivating qualities of the heart, loving kindness, compassion, empathetic joy, equanimity, cultivating the heart and mind, such that Even when you're not behaving, even when you're not being a social creature, not engaging with other people, you're sitting alone in a cave. You're sitting alone in a room by yourself for hours at a time, maybe days and months at a time, living in total solitude, happy, not Report an error in the passage at 56:21 Highlight the passage at 56:21

56:57 dependent on your behaving, arising right from the wellspring itself, a quality of well-being arising from your own mind. And it's a quality of well-being you can bring out into your social interactions, your interpersonal relationships, but it's there before you engage. And it's because you've cultivated your heart and mind. Report an error in the passage at 56:57 Highlight the passage at 56:57

57:15 You've tapped into the inner resources of well-being within your own mind stream. That's deep. So the notion, and I've read this in the popular media, human beings are social creatures. We can't possibly be happy in isolation. We can only find happiness by social engagement. What a crock. Report an error in the passage at 57:15 Highlight the passage at 57:15

57:36 It's by people who've never learned how to be alone and they're writing as journalists. They're taking their own limitations and making the universals very too bad because we in the modern world were so fixated on the notion of being social creatures and doing and doing and doing and doing. All of that's very valuable. But then we miss, hey, we're also single individuals. What about that? We're born alone, we die alone and on many, many occasions throughout the course of the life we find there we are. Report an error in the passage at 57:36 Highlight the passage at 57:36

58:06 So who are you? Here's a universe, here's you. What's up? So that has its role. And then what another great sage in the Christian tradition called a truth-given joy, and that was St. Augustine. A truth-given joy, the type of well-being, of joy, of even bliss that comes from knowing reality as it is. In Buddhism, liberation is gained not through simply faith or obedience or even compassion. Report an error in the passage at 58:06 Highlight the passage at 58:06

58:36 Liberation, enlightenment is gained through insight, through knowledge. Through knowing, discovery and giving rise to it even deeper beyond the common domain of what we generally regard as psychology, we're moving into the contemplative, into the noetic, into the gnostic of a type of well-being that comes from knowing reality as it is. Report an error in the passage at 58:36 Highlight the passage at 58:36

58:56 Knowing central features of reality like who you are, just for starters. So multiple dimensions, three to start with. Genuine well-being arising from ethics, from mental balance, from wisdom. There lays... Therein lies a framework for the cultivation of genuine happiness. So then we move on. Back to mindfulness and ethics, but this time in the modern context. Report an error in the passage at 58:56 Highlight the passage at 58:56

59:18 Back to modern psychology. Modern as in 120 years ago again. And that is William James. In what does a moral act consist when reduced to its simplest and most elementary form? It consists in the effort of attention, or what we might nowadays call mindfulness. It consists in the effort of attention. By which we hold fast to an idea which but for that effort of attention would be driven out of the mind by other psychological tendencies that are there. Report an error in the passage at 59:18 Highlight the passage at 59:18

59:52 In other words, how do we behave ethically, especially when we're tempted to do otherwise? And not just in accordance with some set of laws that God or somebody outside said, but we have our own sense of right and wrong. It's not infallible, but often it's pretty good. If I should do this. This over the long term, I hope nobody finds out. If nobody finds out, it'll be probably okay. And I really want to do it. Report an error in the passage at 59:52 Highlight the passage at 59:52

1:00:20 But if anybody finds out, oh, that'll be trouble. But then I get to bear in mind after that, if I've done it, if I succumb to the temptation, then I get to bear it in mind. I hope nobody finds out. There's one problem I already found out. Report an error in the passage at 1:00:20 Highlight the passage at 1:00:20

1:00:36 So when we're tempted to do something, tempted to do something, we know it's harmful. It's not right. It's not wise. It's not good. It's not beneficial. This is harmful. But we're tempted to do it anyway for the immediate gratification because it feels good. We're anticipating how good it would feel. When we're there, when we're right there at the fork in the road, to do or not to do, what will tip the scale? Report an error in the passage at 1:00:36 Highlight the passage at 1:00:36

1:01:04 What will direct us to the left or to the right? Attention. If you can get your mind off of it, direct your attention willfully, effortfully, get your attention off of it. Stop dwelling on it. Stop savoring it. Stop imagining it. Stop anticipating all the pleasure you'll get from it. Give it a break. Get your attention off. He wants to come to it. Report an error in the passage at 1:01:04 Highlight the passage at 1:01:04

1:01:27 If you keep on coming like iron findings back to the magnet, keep on coming back, coming back, coming back, you'll probably give in. So he's saying that's what a moral act consists of. Focusing your attention, keeping your attention, gaining control of your attention. Then he relates this to education. He says in education, the power of... Report an error in the passage at 1:01:27 Highlight the passage at 1:01:27

1:01:47 Voluntarily attending is the whole point of the procedure. And so in other words, he's suggesting that education should have something to do with ethics, that we should actually educate our children to know what types of behavior are beneficial and which are not beneficial. It's not a novel idea. That's why I like to go back to him as one of the founders of modern psychology. It seems like we've forgotten as much wisdom as we gained. Report an error in the passage at 1:01:47 Highlight the passage at 1:01:47

1:02:09 That's some of the wisdom we've forgotten. Just as a balance turns on its knife edges, so upon it our moral destiny turns. The power of voluntarily attending, that is mindfulness, right? Voluntarily attending and staying, not forgetting, bearing in mind, calling to mind wholesome and unwholesome tendencies, Nagasena all over again, but now by way of William James, writing about 110 years ago. Report an error in the passage at 1:02:09 Highlight the passage at 1:02:09

1:02:36 So then coming back to the Buddha, mindfulness leads to well-being gained through maintaining pure ethical conduct and to well-being derived from restraint of the senses. So William James is reflecting something very much along those lines. The Buddha beat him to it by 2,500 years. So we move it on. Now we come to medicine and to therapy. Report an error in the passage at 1:02:36 Highlight the passage at 1:02:36

1:02:58 We'll start with William James again, but then come to a colleague of mine who's a neuropsychiatrist at the University of California at San Francisco. But we start with William James again. He said, I suspect that neither the nature nor the amount of our work is accountable for the frequency and severity of our breakdowns. Report an error in the passage at 1:02:58 Highlight the passage at 1:02:58

1:03:19 Breakdowns, nervous breakdowns, which were very, very common in New England, very high intensity, very educated, very driven part of the United States. Victoria, New England, 1880s, 1890s, very intense place. He was part of that. But he says it's not just the nature or amount of work that accounts for the frequency and severity of our breakdowns, our nervous breakdowns, our getting totally stressed out, having nervous collapses, but rather that their cause lies. Report an error in the passage at 1:03:19 Highlight the passage at 1:03:19

1:03:47 Rather, in those absurd feelings of hurry and having no time, in that breathlessness and tension, that anxiety of feature and that solicitude for results, that lack of inner harmony and ease. Report an error in the passage at 1:03:47 Highlight the passage at 1:03:47

1:04:02 So that was 110 years ago. And I don't know if it's possible to make a more contemporary statement than that. If we consider the pace of life now compared to what it was in New England 110 or 120 years ago, if it was true then, then all the truer now. And then we go to David Galen. The loss, and he comments in this academic paper, he said, the loss of the ability of self-monitoring, which we're calling metacognition or introspection, the loss of that is more damaging to the personality, to your overall sense of well-being, than the loss of the sensory faculty or motor functions. Report an error in the passage at 1:04:02 Highlight the passage at 1:04:02

1:04:39 A very strong statement, but I think it's kind of obviously true. And that is if you know anyone who's physically impaired, maybe in a wheelchair, or has lost a leg, what have you, paralyzed. Do you know anybody like that who actually has a high sense of well-being, who's really flourishing? Yeah, of course. Why not? It takes some adjustment when you first become crippled or challenged. Report an error in the passage at 1:04:39 Highlight the passage at 1:04:39

1:05:02 That's difficult. It takes some adjustment. Then people generally do adjust and then afterwards say, well, this is just life. This is normal. I get around in a wheelchair. Likewise for people who are blind. Are there any blind people out there who are happy or are they all just miserable? I'm blind. I'm blind. Report an error in the passage at 1:05:02 Highlight the passage at 1:05:02

1:05:18 Of course, there's some very, very happy and likewise the deaf. Perfectly happy people, very happy people, but they can't hear. Okay, whatever. That's why I have sign language. You know? So yes, but if you said, if you can't monitor, if you have an impaired faculty to monitor your own mental state, you can't even notice when afflictive mental tendencies, desires, intentions, emotions arise. Report an error in the passage at 1:05:18 Highlight the passage at 1:05:18

1:05:39 You don't even notice whether they're wholesome or unwholesome. There's no editing, there's no censorship, there's no exercise of sound judgment from your mind coming out your mouth, coming out in your physical behavior. Well, that's really detrimental. You're screwed. To think you're going to have really a lot of genuine happiness with that type of impairment, that's much more serious than being in a wheelchair, blind or deaf. Report an error in the passage at 1:05:39 Highlight the passage at 1:05:39

1:06:03 Empirically valid statement. Strong one. So easily overlooked in this modern materialistic society where everything's on the outer. So we move on. Report an error in the passage at 1:06:03 Highlight the passage at 1:06:03

1:06:14 Overall, mindfulness and mental health, now focusing in more specifically on that, we're going to go classic, first to the Buddhist tradition, back to Shantideva, 7th to 8th century. At the beginning of his 8th chapter on meditation, he writes, a person whose mind is distracted, in other words, who is devoid of mindfulness, devoid of mindfulness, a person whose mind is distracted, a person who is caught up in what psychologists call rumination, such a person lives between the fangs of mental afflictions. Report an error in the passage at 1:06:14 Highlight the passage at 1:06:14

1:06:44 In other words, your psychological immune system is shot. The mental fixings, craving, hostility, envy, arrogance and so forth, you're just ready to be chomped. Impulse comes up, you will be dominated. You will be caught in the grip of any destructive emotion that comes up because you won't even notice. You'll already be devoured, swallowed and digested before you even notice it. Report an error in the passage at 1:06:44 Highlight the passage at 1:06:44

1:07:07 David Galen's point again, if you are metacognitively impaired, you will be caught in the grip of emotions before you even notice it. Report an error in the passage at 1:07:07 Highlight the passage at 1:07:07

1:07:16 You're really damaged goods. Shantideva is making this point in the 7th, 8th century. He says, recognizing that the mental addictions are eliminated by vipassanā or insight meditation imbued with shamatha, very, very finely honed attention skills. First, seek shamatha. It makes really good sense. First, make your mind serviceable by shamatha, which entails the active and explicit cultivation of mindfulness and introspection. Report an error in the passage at 1:07:16 Highlight the passage at 1:07:16

1:07:46 Then use those abilities. In the practice of vipassanā, to explore the nature of reality and to cut the root of ignorance and delusion. Very sensible. Dujam Lingpa, one of the great Dzogchen masters from the 19th century, he says very poignantly, until you come to your senses and gain control of your mind, whatever you do, there is no way for your behavior to be anything but insane. Report an error in the passage at 1:07:46 Highlight the passage at 1:07:46

1:08:10 Good old blunt-speaking Eastern Tibetan nomad. They didn't pussyfoot around, just... If your mind's distracted, you're crazy. You've lost your mind. So again, sound like Jon Kabat-Zinn. If you're not mindful, you're mindless. So there's some classic statements representative really of the whole Buddhist tradition and we move on. Report an error in the passage at 1:08:10 Highlight the passage at 1:08:10

1:08:32 Now let's come to something that I hope we all feel passionately about because if we don't, we're uneducated. And that is the role of mindfulness, the significance of mindfulness for education. Theodor Weitz, writing in the 19th century, German psychologist. So again, one of the pioneers. Before William James, William James cited him. He said, the first and most important but also the most difficult task at the outset of an education is to overcome gradually the inattentive dispersion of mind. Report an error in the passage at 1:08:32 Highlight the passage at 1:08:32

1:09:07 He is a few decades before William James. Report an error in the passage at 1:09:07 Highlight the passage at 1:09:07

1:09:14 Note the wonder with which his wisdom has been ignored for the last 150 years. Where is there an education on planet Earth? I mean in India, North South America. Australia, New Zealand, Asia, where is there an education system anywhere on the planet that's taking that one seriously? And yet, is it not intuitively obvious that if you have an inattentive dispersion of mind, you can't get an education? Report an error in the passage at 1:09:14 Highlight the passage at 1:09:14

1:09:40 It doesn't matter who your instructor is and it doesn't matter what the topic is, you won't get it if your attention is dispersed and inattentive. It doesn't matter what the teacher is saying or what's in the textbook. It doesn't matter. Your cup is upside down. Report an error in the passage at 1:09:40 Highlight the passage at 1:09:40

1:09:54 And yet, where is the education system that teaches children, the age of three, four, five, teaches them really how to develop their attention skills? We are devoid of common sense. World global civilization has lost its sense, its sound judgment in this very simple point. And it was pointed out 150 years ago in Europe, let alone in Buddhism and so forth. Report an error in the passage at 1:09:54 Highlight the passage at 1:09:54

1:10:18 That's just forgetting education. But how about those exceptional people, geniuses? Tiger Woods finally won another golf tournament today. Report an error in the passage at 1:10:18 Highlight the passage at 1:10:18

1:10:29 Congratulations. He was and perhaps will once again be a genius at golf, right? Roger Federer, Rafa Nadal, they are geniuses at tennis. Michael Jackson, a genius at basketball. And we have our geniuses in mathematics and art, painting and sculpture. We have geniuses in music and mathematics and science. Geniuses of many, many types. William James, drawing on research more than a century ago, addressed the issue, do these... Report an error in the passage at 1:10:29 Highlight the passage at 1:10:29

1:11:04 This wide variety of geniuses in such variety from mathematics to basketball. Do they have anything in common, this wide range of geniuses? And it turns out they do. Geniuses are commonly thought to excel in the ability of sustained voluntary attention. And that is you find your genius, whether it's a Socrates or a Kant, whether it's a Newton or an Einstein or a basketball player or a golfer. Report an error in the passage at 1:11:04 Highlight the passage at 1:11:04

1:11:29 All of them, it turns out, chess players, brilliant chess players, all of them without exception. They get focused and they stay focused. You don't get to be a genius by having an annotative dispersion of mind. They all have that in common. But then the question comes, okay, chicken the egg, which comes first? William James wrote, it is their genius making them attention because they're so good at whatever it is. Report an error in the passage at 1:11:29 Highlight the passage at 1:11:29

1:11:58 Basketball or chess or mathematics or art, they are so gifted, so brilliant, so radiant, they are just so good that of course that captures their attention. They will sustain their attention just because they're brilliant at it. So he's saying this is a one-way causality. It is their genius making them attention, not their attention making geniuses of them. Report an error in the passage at 1:11:58 Highlight the passage at 1:11:58

1:12:18 That's his statement, 1890. And one can see there must be a lot of truth in that. I mean, it's kind of intuitive. But maybe it's not the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Report an error in the passage at 1:12:18 Highlight the passage at 1:12:18

1:12:33 Does every child with a genius in some area, whether it's mathematics, music or what have you, does every child that is born with a certain genius, a gift, an extraordinary gift, Report an error in the passage at 1:12:33 Highlight the passage at 1:12:33

1:12:44 Is there a guarantee that if the child is born with an exceptional gift that that will manifest through the course of the child's life? That every child born with an extraordinary gift for music will become a great musician? Every child with an extraordinary gift for mathematics, for cooking, art and so forth will become a great cook, a great artist and so forth? Report an error in the passage at 1:12:44 Highlight the passage at 1:12:44

1:13:06 The answer is obviously not. Right? No, it doesn't always work out that way. In other words, you may be born with an extraordinary gift, a talent, a genius. Report an error in the passage at 1:13:06 Highlight the passage at 1:13:06

1:13:22 old. If he is born on a farm he started singing or, know, some simple instrument to play and his dad came over and spanked his hand and said, Amadeus, stop that. That's silly. There's a cow over there. Do something worthwhile. That cow needs milking and I mean now. And if you want to go quick, quick, quick with a cute little rhythm, that's fine. But the most important thing is get real. This music goes nowhere. You'll never make a living at that. Report an error in the passage at 1:13:22 Highlight the passage at 1:13:22

1:13:50 Milking cows is a good, honest way to make a living. So get with it and do that music in your spare time, whatever. So would he ever become a great musician? Not likely. He might be really good at milking cows, but probably not because he really wouldn't want to milk cows. So clearly there can be environmental, social blockages that we can prevent. Report an error in the passage at 1:13:50 Highlight the passage at 1:13:50

1:14:12 Your native gift from manifesting of any kind, child-rearing, music, mathematics, whatever it may be. If you meet obstructing circumstances, you may have the gift and it may remain even unknown to yourself, let alone fail to flower in the world. It could happen. So I was at a conference. Where was it? It was here in Sydney a few years back. I can't remember which one. But it was one, somebody from America, I think maybe from Harvard. Report an error in the passage at 1:14:12 Highlight the passage at 1:14:12

1:14:39 Remember anybody who was there? Called The Spark. People have a spark and you want to make sure that you recognize what their spark is and nurture it, cultivate it to make sure that that spark manifests so they can really derive the full benefit from it. Well, he's speaking of your gift, your creative impulse, some spark, right? But make sure that if you're a parent that you attend to the spark, the giftedness, the talent, whatever it is in your child, make sure you nurture it, whether it's for karate, whether it's for music, engineering, building, gardening. Report an error in the passage at 1:14:39 Highlight the passage at 1:14:39

1:15:08 Being a good friend. Some people are real neat as friends. They're just such good friends. They're empathetic, they're caring, they're warm, they're affectionate and they're really good at friendship. Report an error in the passage at 1:15:08 Highlight the passage at 1:15:08

1:15:19 Make sure if you're a parent to your child, if you're a teacher to your student, keep your eyes wide open. What are the gifts of your student? Be open-minded, be attentive to, be ready to recognize gifts you've never encountered before and then nurture it. So there can be nurturing, there can also be blockages from outside. Report an error in the passage at 1:15:19 Highlight the passage at 1:15:19

1:15:38 But now let's imagine a person has a certain gift. That person also is really prone to inattentive dispersion of mind. Will that gift, will it manifest if the person is really quite prone to inattentive dispersion of mind? Maybe chemical imbalance in the brain, maybe living more likely. Number one, it could be genetic. ADHD, 70 % is genetic, passed down from parent to child. So? Report an error in the passage at 1:15:38 Highlight the passage at 1:15:38

1:16:09 It doesn't mean necessarily that 70 % of children with that kind of genetic predisposition will get ADHD. It's just that there's a certain tendency, a proclivity, a vulnerability on that part. But then there can be various interventions from early childhood on, just like getting inoculations against polio or smallpox or what have you. You have the genetic proclivity but you never get ADHD. Report an error in the passage at 1:16:09 Highlight the passage at 1:16:09

1:16:30 But now could you be in an environment? Now let's just really go wildly speculative here. Could you be in an environment in your home? In your classroom, in your town, in your community, which is wildly chaotic, multitasking, sensory bombardment, being peppered with all types of loud music, video games, entertainment, workload, traffic, shouting, television, iPod, music and all simultaneous. Report an error in the passage at 1:16:30 Highlight the passage at 1:16:30

1:17:00 Anybody live in an environment like that? And might that from your environment, your social environment, might that just naturally Report an error in the passage at 1:17:00 Highlight the passage at 1:17:00

1:17:11 Give rise to ADHD, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, because you're living in an ADHD environment. And if that's the case, could that not inhibit your gift? Because your mind is so scattered, so dispersed, so unfocused, so uncollected, that the gift never has a chance. Report an error in the passage at 1:17:11 Highlight the passage at 1:17:11

1:17:36 So, I think it's a two-way street. I think it's a two-way street, especially if we broaden the notion of genius so that we're not just focusing the Einsteins and the Mozarts and so forth of the world, the cunts of the world, but if we broaden it, be very generous, let's be very charitable in our notion of genius and say, okay, but what is your genius, your genius, your genius, your genius, and what is your gift? Report an error in the passage at 1:17:36 Highlight the passage at 1:17:36

1:17:57 Do you have any gifts at all or are you an ungifted person entirely? Nobody can say that. Do you have no gifts whatsoever? And so what is your gift? What is your talent? What is your bent? What is your talent? And then, all right, then nurture that. And how do you nurture that? Well, then I think it's clear there's a two-way street. Cultivate or counteract, let's say, this inattentive dispersion of mind. Report an error in the passage at 1:17:57 Highlight the passage at 1:17:57

1:18:22 Cultivate mental presence. Cultivate mindfulness, introspection, composure of awareness. Cultivate sustained awareness, what he calls sustained voluntary attention, and see if that doesn't nurture whatever gift, talent, genius you have. It's a two-way street. I think he was wrong. It's not just one way. Report an error in the passage at 1:18:22 Highlight the passage at 1:18:22

1:18:40 Two ways, reciprocal. But now he goes to attention, to education once again. William James, the faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention over and over again is the very root of judgment, character and will. Report an error in the passage at 1:18:40 Highlight the passage at 1:18:40

1:18:57 In other words, develop really strength of character. This is it. This is the very root of judgment, character and will and education which should improve this faculty would be the education par excellence. Report an error in the passage at 1:18:57 Highlight the passage at 1:18:57

1:19:10 But it is easier to define this ideal than to give practical directions for bringing it about. And that is, as he was writing this, this is now again 120 years ago, he had no database, he had no empirical evidence, nobody had a clue in New England in 1890 of how actually to train the attention. That is just not one of the strengths of Western civilization. So he was looking around at this very, very civilized New England society in the United States, but they didn't have a clue. Report an error in the passage at 1:19:10 Highlight the passage at 1:19:10

1:19:36 They didn't have a clue of a clue. And that's in 1890. And now it's 120 years later and we still don't have any attention training in the modern education system. So what's wrong? Which part of this didn't we understand? If we didn't get it from Theodor Weiz, was there something opaque about what William Jens said? Isn't that an invitation to, hey, let's get smart, let's start developing attention skills? Report an error in the passage at 1:19:36 Highlight the passage at 1:19:36

1:19:59 Or if we don't have them, why don't we not be ethnocentric and see if any other civilization outside of our own might have developed effective means for developing attention skills? It happens to be one of the great strengths of Indian civilization for the last 5,000 years. It happens to be one of our great weaknesses for the last 5,000 years. It's just not our strength. Report an error in the passage at 1:19:59 Highlight the passage at 1:19:59

1:20:20 Let's move on. So now we come right into Buddhism itself, classical Buddhism. Again, mindfulness is emphatically not equivalent to vipassanā. Mindfulness plays an absolutely indispensable role in the practice of shamatha, the development of attention skills. So in this regard, we need to cultivate and refine and to utilize Both of these central mental faculties, mindfulness, introspection. In the practice of shamatha, this particular mindfulness is then applied as sustained voluntary attention continuously upon a film or object without forgetfulness or distraction. Report an error in the passage at 1:20:20 Highlight the passage at 1:20:20

1:20:54 Classic definition. Introspection, and that is whether you're attending to your breath, a Buddha image, attending to your mind, looking at a candle, whatever it may be, mindfulness is that ability to sustain your attention. And introspection in this context is the ability to monitor the quality of your attention so that you swiftly recognize whether it has succumbed to either attentional imbalance of excitation or laxity or what's nowadays called attention hyperactivity and attention deficit. Report an error in the passage at 1:20:54 Highlight the passage at 1:20:54

1:21:22 You recognize it and then you are able to apply the appropriate remedy to balance your attention. And these two faculties, mindfulness and introspection, are used successively and synergistically. In the practice of shamatha to cultivate the qualities of relaxation, stillness and vividness. If you want the commentary, let's hang out for the next week. Report an error in the passage at 1:21:22 Highlight the passage at 1:21:22

1:21:42 And that's all we'll be focusing on. And what arises from this is psychological well-being, a sense of well-being that is not contingent on external or even internal stimuli. Thinking happy thoughts, reciting mantras, doing visualization and so forth and so on. It's not even dependent on that. It's qualified by serenity. Report an error in the passage at 1:21:42 Highlight the passage at 1:21:42

1:22:01 Well-being and contentment rather than excitement and arousal. In other words, it's yours. You didn't acquire it. You discovered it from within. And we move on. And then mindfulness, of course, plays a crucial role in the practice of vipassanā. And now we go to a 14th, 15th century master, one of the most brilliant minds, great monks, scholars, contemplatives in the whole Tibetan tradition, Tsongkhapa. Report an error in the passage at 1:22:01 Highlight the passage at 1:22:01

1:22:25 And he writes in one of his classic presentations of the stages of path, in order to examine... A wall tapestry in a dark room. And this, by the way, is so similar to that earlier Theravāda text from the Abhidhamma characterizing single-pointed attention. He says, in order to examine a wall tapestry in a dark room, if you illuminate it with a radiant, steady lamp, you can vividly examine the images in the tapestry. Report an error in the passage at 1:22:25 Highlight the passage at 1:22:25

1:22:50 But if the lamp is either dim or even if it is bright, it flickers due to the wind, your observation will be impaired. So he's calling for stability and clarity. Likewise, in order to fathom the nature of any phenomenon, with penetrating intelligence supported by unwavering sustained voluntary attention, you can clearly observe the real nature of the phenomenon under investigation. Report an error in the passage at 1:22:50 Highlight the passage at 1:22:50

1:23:15 So he's highlighting here the importance of, first of all, developing stability and vividness of attention, so analogous to developing a telescope for making very precise, rigorous and replicable observations of celestial phenomena, as Galileo did. He's suggesting here the Buddhist tradition frankly never developed any technology at all. I mean the best they got was a prayer wheel. Report an error in the passage at 1:23:15 Highlight the passage at 1:23:15

1:23:44 It goes around and around nice and smooth, doesn't go screech, screech, screech. I mean that's a good prayer wheel. That's about it. Tell me the Buddhist technology that's more advanced than that. Report an error in the passage at 1:23:44 Highlight the passage at 1:23:44

1:23:56 That's not where the interest was. The whole interest was on achieving enlightenment, not developing skyscrapers. So the primary use of the wheel in Tibet, and I kid you not, the primary use of the wheel in Tibet was a prayer wheel. The roads were so terrible, if you had a bicycle or a wagon, let alone a car, you couldn't drive in anywhere. You would fall and be swallowed up by the potholes. Report an error in the passage at 1:23:56 Highlight the passage at 1:23:56

1:24:20 So who needs wheels when you've got a yak? And who needs wheels when you're not in a hurry? Report an error in the passage at 1:24:20 Highlight the passage at 1:24:20

1:24:29 If we're living in Tibet and you came to my house and we had some tea together, had a nice chat, and then you leave, what's my standard greeting when you depart? And I'm bidding you farewell. What's my standard greeting in Tibetan? Kalipe. Go slowly. Report an error in the passage at 1:24:29 Highlight the passage at 1:24:29

1:24:48 Who needs wheels when you're being told every time you leave someplace, go slowly? Report an error in the passage at 1:24:48 Highlight the passage at 1:24:48

1:24:55 Of course, the connotation is go in peace. But literally, Kale means slow. Go slow, dude. Chill. Don't be in a hurry. Just what William James said was a major reason for stress and wear and tear. All this hurry and flurry, don't have time, always being beaten up by our awareness of time. Tibet was so different. Report an error in the passage at 1:24:55 Highlight the passage at 1:24:55

1:25:13 I know Tibetans who were living there in the mid-20th century when wristwatches were first coming in. Only the aristocrats have them and they'd only buy two brands. Number one, Rolex. Number two, Omega. If you're an aristocrat, you're not going to buy a Timex. You're going to get something really in this piece of jewelry. But I always chuckle when I think about the first aristocrats in Lhasa who had their very first wristwatches in Tibet, in all of Tibet. Report an error in the passage at 1:25:13 Highlight the passage at 1:25:13

1:25:41 They're probably, you know, first there was one and then there was two. They got this $1,000, $2,000 wristwatch. Have you ever thought about it? How would they know what time it is? Report an error in the passage at 1:25:41 Highlight the passage at 1:25:41

1:26:03 And if two people disagree, who's right? And if five people disagree, who's right? They didn't have atomic clocks. They didn't have Big Ben. So it was a piece of jewelry. And that's really how they took time. They took time. And that is, they really took their time. So anybody, and I know a number of you have, if you've ever engaged with traditional Tibetans and you set up dates and times, then there's a phrase I call standard Tibetan time. Report an error in the passage at 1:26:03 Highlight the passage at 1:26:03

1:26:35 And that means whenever they get around to it. Because, you know, it's just two little hands going around a circle. What's the big deal? I should be a slave to that. I mean, one's here and one's there, so big deal. Whatever. I'll show up, you know, soon. Report an error in the passage at 1:26:35 Highlight the passage at 1:26:35

1:26:54 So that's Tsongkhapa. And then we go to Wilhelm Wundt. Now we're going on the other side of the world. Hundreds of years later, one of the great pioneers of Western psychology, but this one a German, established this neuroscience lab in Leipzig, Germany. Report an error in the passage at 1:26:54 Highlight the passage at 1:26:54

1:27:07 But now he's talking about the role of mindfulness in scientific inquiry, not in vipassanā. So let's say scientific vipassanā. He says the service which it, that is the experimental method, the scientific method, can yield, the service which it can yield consists essentially in perfecting our inner observation. Report an error in the passage at 1:27:07 Highlight the passage at 1:27:07

1:27:31 That is for the study of the mind. Study of subjective mental processes, emotions, images, memories, perceptions and so forth. The experimental method, the scientific method in this context consists essentially in perfecting our inner observation or rather as I believe in making this really possible in any exact sense. Report an error in the passage at 1:27:31 Highlight the passage at 1:27:31

1:27:52 So he's suggesting that for the scientific study of the mind, your mindfulness introspection ability, your ability to make inner observations in a rigorous, sustained and replicable fashion. That is the true scientific method for the mind, which after all is invisible to all instruments of technology. So, old Vipassanā, new Vipassanā. Report an error in the passage at 1:27:52 Highlight the passage at 1:27:52

1:28:14 Let's move on. We're getting close to the end here. So in short, the role of mindfulness in Samādhi Vipassanā are sequential. Not absolutely sequential, but they are sequential. Mindfulness is essentially cultivated in the practice of Samādhi. And then this refined mindfulness is applied in the practice of Vipassanā through the careful investigation of the nature of the body, feelings, mental states and phenomena at large or the four close applications of mindfulness. Report an error in the passage at 1:28:14 Highlight the passage at 1:28:14

1:28:42 But you cultivate it as the Buddha makes very clear in the Sattvatthana Sutta, his great discourse on the four applications of mindfulness. He starts with mindfulness of breathing as a shamatha practice. And he says develop shamatha, develop dhyāna. You're developing your contemplative technology. You're not investigating anything yet, you're just following your breath, in and out, until your mind becomes serviceable, stable and clear, like that flame that is bright and unflickering. Report an error in the passage at 1:28:42 Highlight the passage at 1:28:42

1:29:09 You've done that? Good. Check. And now let's get on with Vipassanā, and now we take that mindfulness and we closely apply it to the body, to feelings, to mental states and processes, and then phenomenon at large. There's a sequence there, wildly overlooked in the modern Vipassanā movement, where they hardly even mention shamatha. Report an error in the passage at 1:29:09 Highlight the passage at 1:29:09

1:29:29 And then they equate it with mindfulness. Moving on. But now this mindfulness really is playing an absolutely critical role in Vipassanā, an absolutely central role to the whole Buddhist vision of the path to liberation. As a Buddhist states in his great discourse on the four applications of mindfulness, often called the four foundations of mindfulness, he says, he summarizes it with this statement, these four applications of mindfulness, this is the direct path, monks. Report an error in the passage at 1:29:29 Highlight the passage at 1:29:29

1:29:58 For the purification of beings, for overcoming sorrow and lamentation, for the overcoming of suffering and grief, for reaching the authentic path, for realizing nirvāṇa, namely the four close applications of mindfulness. Report an error in the passage at 1:29:58 Highlight the passage at 1:29:58

1:30:14 When he speaks of the authentic path, marga, samyak marga, authentic path, he is referring to a dedication to spiritual practice that leads to irreversible results, to purification and transformation. And not what we so often do nowadays is just do a smattering of Dharma practice. A bit of this sadhana and then that sadhana, some preliminary practices, a bit of this and then some mantra and then we do some prostrations and then we do some more of this and get another empowerment and we do some of this and then we do that and then we die. Report an error in the passage at 1:30:14 Highlight the passage at 1:30:14

1:30:51 And it's not to say that was worthwhile, not worthwhile, it was worthwhile. But where in the midst of that did the whole concept of path evaporate? Report an error in the passage at 1:30:51 Highlight the passage at 1:30:51

1:31:02 Because path implies a sequence. It implies you're laying a foundation and on that building and progressing and developing and purifying and transforming so that you don't keep on sliding back and sliding back and sliding back. Report an error in the passage at 1:31:02 Highlight the passage at 1:31:02

1:31:17 That evaporates in this hodgepodge smorgasbord approach to Dharma that is so common nowadays. Or Vipassanā with no shamatha, Dzogchen with no ethics or samādhi, Mahamudra with no samādhi. Vajrayana with no bodhicitta or realization of emptiness or shamatha, smatterings of this, that and the other thing as if we're throwing mud against a wall and see what sticks. Report an error in the passage at 1:31:17 Highlight the passage at 1:31:17

1:31:44 Whatever happened to the notion of marga, which is actually why Gautama, the prince, left home. He didn't leave home to practice dharma. Report an error in the passage at 1:31:44 Highlight the passage at 1:31:44

1:31:54 If he wanted to practice dharma, he can stay home. He had a loving dad, a loving wife, he had a healthy kid. Stay home, be a good dad, be ethical. Practice meditation. You know, an hour or two a day, be happy. Be a good king. Practice Dharma. What's the problem? If you want to practice Dharma, you can stay home and disappear into the mists of history. Report an error in the passage at 1:31:54 Highlight the passage at 1:31:54

1:32:15 One more good king. One more good dad. But he left everything behind, including his own son, feeling this is the highest, this is the only pursuit of liberation, seeking a path to liberation, of irreversible transformation and liberation. That's why he left. That's why he stayed away for six years. And that's what brought him to the... Report an error in the passage at 1:32:15 Highlight the passage at 1:32:15

1:32:39 The path to liberation from suffering and its causes. In the modern world, it seems like we've almost lost sight of the path. We're just practicing this and that and the other thing. But there is a path. It's still here. It starts with ethics. It works through shamatha and it flowers in vipassanā. And if you want to practice Mahāyāna, then augment that with bodhicitta. And if you want to speed it up, practice vadrayana. Report an error in the passage at 1:32:39 Highlight the passage at 1:32:39

1:33:11 You want to go right into the nucleus of awareness practice, Dzogchen or Mahamudra. But if you don't have the path, you don't have liberation. Report an error in the passage at 1:33:11 Highlight the passage at 1:33:11

1:33:21 So this path of mindfulness, rooted in ethics, this entails the integrated cultivation of genuine well-being or happiness and wisdom and virtue. They're all of a piece. They're not separate. They're not three independent pursuits. They're all of the same pursuit, three facets of the same jewel. And that, I would say, defines the very essence of a meaningful life. Report an error in the passage at 1:33:21 Highlight the passage at 1:33:21

1:33:44 A life that is devoted to the cultivation of genuine happiness, wisdom and virtue, that is a meaningful life. And a life that turns its back on those three is just a waste of air. Report an error in the passage at 1:33:44 Highlight the passage at 1:33:44

1:33:58 Next slide. So I keep on coming back to my refrain that we've had two great revolutions in physics, one starting with Galileo, the second starting with Max Planck, Albert Einstein and so forth, the great 20th century revolution in physics. We've had one great revolution in the life sciences, starting with Darwin, augmented by Mendel, started genetics, flowering with Crick and Watson, the discovery of DNA, modern neuroscience. Report an error in the passage at 1:33:58 Highlight the passage at 1:33:58

1:34:28 Marvelous. But we've yet had even one true revolution in the mind sciences. We're still resting in the entrenched mechanistic materialistic assumptions of the 19th century that are so outdated and so pervade modern science and the popular media. It's really tragic. It makes me weep. Report an error in the passage at 1:34:28 Highlight the passage at 1:34:28

1:34:46 And so it's time, it's ripe, when are we going to get around to it, to catalyze this first revolution in the mind sciences. And there's a way forward, and that is implement rigorous sustained training in first-person contemplative methods of inquiry to complement the extraordinary, the refined, sophisticated, magnificent methods developed by modern science through third-person observation, but this third-person observation being one for which the mind is completely invisible. Report an error in the passage at 1:34:46 Highlight the passage at 1:34:46

1:35:14 And if you are asking only physical questions about the mind, you will get only physical answers. And then we get this modern media, almost without exception, simply equating the mind with the brain. Report an error in the passage at 1:35:14 Highlight the passage at 1:35:14

1:35:26 Sheep bleating as a flock. So by integrating the first person and the third person, then we can explore the broadest possible range of states of consciousness. Not just that of the ordinary psyche, the brain damaged and the mentally ill, which is pretty much where modern psychology confines itself. But the broadest range, right up to the omniscience of a Buddha and integrating the methods of contemplative inquiry with those of neuroscience, psychology, philosophy and even bringing in physics with the role of the observer participant is a great unknown but integral feature of the modern world as understood in quantum mechanics. Report an error in the passage at 1:35:26 Highlight the passage at 1:35:26

1:36:02 So, mindfulness is significant for all of the above and I am finished. That's it. Report an error in the passage at 1:36:02 Highlight the passage at 1:36:02

1:36:22 Why don't we leave at 9 o 'clock but that gives us about 20 minutes. And unless there are no questions or comments, in which case we can split right now, or anybody who's in a hurry, you're always welcome to split at any time over the last hour and 40 minutes. But any questions, comments, or especially if I've made any errors, now is the time to correct me. Yes, please, go ahead. Report an error in the passage at 1:36:22 Highlight the passage at 1:36:22

1:36:48 Yeah, you're quite right. I will be teaching this coming week and you're exactly, yes, you're largely right and not 100 % right, but you're on the right track. And so here is a classic, time-tested, at least for a thousand years, shamatha method, not a vipassanā method, shamatha method, and it entails observing whatever arises in the space of the mind. Report an error in the passage at 1:36:48 Highlight the passage at 1:36:48

1:37:13 So it's very selective. It's not John Kabat-Zinn's mindfulness of being aware of everything, equally attentive to whatever comes up. It's selecting only one out of six domains of experience, just the mental. And it's selecting out the five sensory domains, single-pointedly focusing on the mental domain. So that already makes it somewhat different. But within that domain, From moment to moment you're attending to whatever thoughts, images, motions, desires, whatever comes up, you're attending to them without reactivity, you're not trying to modify the contents of the mind, you're not judging them, you're not labeling them, you're not liking them or disliking them, you're not editing them, you are being non-judgmental, quite true so far. Report an error in the passage at 1:37:13 Highlight the passage at 1:37:13

1:37:56 But now as you're attending to the space of the mind and whatever arises within it, with the faculty of mindfulness. You're practicing Samatha, Paramita. Then you must, if you're practicing Samatha, implement and refine another faculty of the mind, and that's introspection. Report an error in the passage at 1:37:56 Highlight the passage at 1:37:56

1:38:13 Now, introspection in this context is not observing the contents of the mind because that's the object of mindfulness. Introspection is monitoring the flow of your mindfulness to determine as quickly as possible, as like a quality control, whether your mindfulness is slipping into dullness, laxity, getting spaced out, sleepy. Report an error in the passage at 1:38:13 Highlight the passage at 1:38:13

1:38:34 Or whether it's getting carried away and distracting thoughts, excitation, agitation, mind wandering, rumination. So introspection is monitoring the flow of mindfulness and it's doing so intelligently and with sound judgment such that as soon as you recognize that your mind is tipping over into either attention hyperactivity or attention deficit, you recognize it and you remedy it. Report an error in the passage at 1:38:34 Highlight the passage at 1:38:34

1:38:58 You are being, exercising sound judgment. You're recognizing I am not indifferent as I'm practicing shamatha. I am not indifferent as to whether my mind is falling into laxity or is clear. My mind is falling into distraction, rumination, excitation or it's stable and sustained. I am not indifferent. I care. This is beneficial. Report an error in the passage at 1:38:58 Highlight the passage at 1:38:58

1:39:24 This is not beneficial. And I'm exercising. By the power of introspection, I'm exercising sound judgment and I'm acting on that basis so that when I see that my mind is falling to either of those attentional imbalances, I care and I apply remedies to intervene and to balance the mind and then that will progress along the path of shamatha. Report an error in the passage at 1:39:24 Highlight the passage at 1:39:24

1:39:43 If I am 100 % nonjudgmental, then I'll just be sitting there and I'll notice, oh, my mind's becoming dull. Report an error in the passage at 1:39:43 Highlight the passage at 1:39:43

1:39:58 I'll never exercise any judgment. And I'll just become dull, dull, duller. And as they say in the Vipassanā tradition, in that way you'll gain a nodding acquaintance with meditation. Report an error in the passage at 1:39:58 Highlight the passage at 1:39:58

1:40:13 Or you'll just sit there mind-wandering for five or ten minutes at a time and not even care because you're being non-judgmental. So you're quite right. Within the context of mindfulness vis-à-vis the contents of the mind, you're being non-judgmental. In terms of introspection, monitoring the flow of mindfulness, you're not being judgmental as a nasty adjective, but you're exercising sound judgment. Report an error in the passage at 1:40:13 Highlight the passage at 1:40:13

1:40:33 Without which you will not progress along the path of Samatha, which means your Vipassanā will never get to first base, to use a baseball metaphor. Okay? Oh yeah. Anything else coming up? Report an error in the passage at 1:40:33 Highlight the passage at 1:40:33

1:40:51 Don't tell me you agree with everything I said. That would be disappointing. Anything else? We can always take a break at this. If that did it. Report an error in the passage at 1:40:51 Highlight the passage at 1:40:51

1:41:02 Yeah. Report an error in the passage at 1:41:02 Highlight the passage at 1:41:02

1:41:09 I know it well. It's based right near my hometown in California. Sure. Report an error in the passage at 1:41:09 Highlight the passage at 1:41:09

1:41:32 Oh, I think it's a wonderful idea. And he was one of the first people to come up with it. I was never his student, but I knew him way back 40 years ago and had such appreciation and affection and respect for him. What just utterly wonderful Lama. And it was a wonderful idea and remains such. And they have a whole center right near Vajrapani Institute, Land of Medicine Buddha, where they're doing that. And that's my home state. That's where I'm raised. Report an error in the passage at 1:41:32 Highlight the passage at 1:41:32

1:41:58 My own approach is entirely contingent upon who I'm speaking to. So here I am speaking in a Buddhist center. So that doesn't mean by any means that everybody here is Buddhist, but if you really hate Buddhism and think it's a crock, you're probably not here. You're probably someplace else. In which case, if I use a word like shamatha, you won't say, oh no, not that. Or I say the three higher trainings, ethics, samādhi and wisdom. It's no problem. Report an error in the passage at 1:41:58 Highlight the passage at 1:41:58

1:42:27 Now I've lectured at Caltech, at MIT, at Cambridge University, at Harvard and so forth. Not Cambridge, Oxford University. Report an error in the passage at 1:42:27 Highlight the passage at 1:42:27

1:42:36 And at many conferences all over the world that are entirely secular, philosophical conferences in Russia, in Moscow, I spoke before the Philosophical Society, and so forth. So, and in context of education, there, then I don't even use Buddhist terminology, not even Buddhist, I just deal with the content, but no Buddhist terms as such. Report an error in the passage at 1:42:36 Highlight the passage at 1:42:36

1:42:56 I'll just say attention skills, right? Now in 19, no, no, the year 2000. In the year 2000, we had a splendid Mind and Life Institute meeting in Dharamsala, a five-day meeting. The theme was destructive emotions. It was organized by Dan Goldman, the psychologist, and myself. Report an error in the passage at 1:42:56 Highlight the passage at 1:42:56

1:43:13 And it was an outstanding meeting, really, really first-rate. And Dan Goldman wrote up the meeting in a book called Destructive Emotions, which is an outstanding book. During the course of that meeting, after we'd been maybe three or four days through the five-day meeting, Report an error in the passage at 1:43:13 Highlight the passage at 1:43:13

1:43:27 The Dalai Lama turned to this handful, very small, like five or six people, of the scientists, and there was one philosopher, turned to them as the presenters in this conference, and he said, you know, these last few days have been marvelous in terms of our dialogue here, been very interesting, very invigorating, and everybody knew a book would come out of it. Report an error in the passage at 1:43:27 Highlight the passage at 1:43:27

1:43:45 We were publishing books from every meeting back then. He said, this is all very well and good, but can you people, and then he pointed to the scientists, and he actually was eyeballing Paul Ekman. Among the participants, he was eyeballing Paul Ekman, eye-to-eye contact. Can you people, can you do something practical in the world that really helps people, drawing from the wisdom, the practices from Buddhism but presenting in a secular way and integrating them with your own insights, your own theory and practices from modern science? Report an error in the passage at 1:43:45 Highlight the passage at 1:43:45

1:44:17 And can you draw from both wisdom traditions, integrate it in a secular fashion and get that out there where it can help everybody, whether they're... Religious fundamentalists or whether they're virulent atheists or materialists or secular humanists and so forth, Muslims, Taoists and so forth, can you do something secular? Report an error in the passage at 1:44:17 Highlight the passage at 1:44:17

1:44:34 By secular he did not mean anti-religious or even necessarily unreligious. He just means don't lock it into any one religion. More of the Indian notion of secular, which is not anti-religious, just means we can be even-handed here. And so as you've guessed, the person among the various scientists who was there, Paul Ekman, took that to heart, picked up the challenge. Report an error in the passage at 1:44:34 Highlight the passage at 1:44:34

1:44:54 Drafted me and then we put together this 42-hour training called Cultivating Emotional Balance. And it's been quite, how do you say, precisely studied scientifically to see what the effects are. The paper will finally come out now 12 years after the meeting and about nine years it's been excruciating how slow the wheels turned. Report an error in the passage at 1:44:54 Highlight the passage at 1:44:54

1:45:15 But in May of this year, the very long and very good scientific paper describing the results of the scientific test, The efficacy of this training will be published in the journal called Emotion, a very good peer-reviewed scientific journal, and the results are very good. And so this summer for the third time, Paul Ekman and then his daughter Eve, who's a very, very bright young woman, extremely capable, the three of us will be once again teaching a five-week, very intensive training program in Phuket, Thailand. Report an error in the passage at 1:45:15 Highlight the passage at 1:45:15

1:45:53 teacher training course to teach people to become teachers of cultivating emotional balance now i'm taking this as an example this is a pitch so i will you know so yes i'm telling about it but it is in response to your question uh but uh but i'm getting to one final point here and that is when i'm teaching people who have traveled around the world for For five weeks to immerse themselves, for two weeks in the psychological training, for the final three weeks in the contemplative training. In Samatha, the four measurables, loving-kindness, compassion, empathetic joy and equanimity, and the four applications of mindfulness. Report an error in the passage at 1:45:53 Highlight the passage at 1:45:53

1:46:27 Core Vipassanā practice, core heart practice, and Samatha, developing attention skills. Absolutely core meditative training in Buddhism. When they're coming around the world to learn this, so that they can absorb as much as they can and then teach it to others, then I have no qualms at all. About telling these people who are coming for a professional training for which they will get certification at the end, if they successfully complete the course, I have no qualms at all about letting them know where does the material come from. Report an error in the passage at 1:46:27 Highlight the passage at 1:46:27

1:46:55 So if they want to do further research, then they know my sources, that I didn't dream these up all by myself, it's not Alan Wallace-ism, and they can check out the Buddhist teachings, commentaries, Tibetan, Theravāda and so forth, and for the rest of their lives they can enrich. Through their reading, reflection and maybe receiving further training, their understanding and their practice of the contemplative elements, just as Paul Ekman and his daughter Eve, when they're teaching the psychological aspects, he's quoting Darwin, he's quoting his own research, he's quoting the research of other psychologists and their papers and so forth and so on. Report an error in the passage at 1:46:55 Highlight the passage at 1:46:55

1:47:28 He's giving the sources so they can study, do the background research for the psychological sources and including evolutionary biological sources. So we're all being very transparent there. But now when people are actually teaching it in hospitals, in schools, in businesses to athletes and so forth and so on, they never really need to mention Darwin. Report an error in the passage at 1:47:28 Highlight the passage at 1:47:28

1:47:47 They might be teaching fundamentalist Christians. Maybe they don't want to hear about Darwin. And they certainly don't need to hear about Buddhism. Maybe they're atheists. They don't like religion. They hate religion. But they really want to develop emotional balance. That's not incompatible. To despise religion for very good reasons. Report an error in the passage at 1:47:47 Highlight the passage at 1:47:47

1:48:04 And to want to be mentally balanced or emotionally balanced. So that's what I'm saying here is when I'm teaching the teachers, people wanting to become teachers, then I, like Paul, we tell all the sources. When they are passing it on to children, to school assistants and so forth and so on, then it's secular. And I taught it three times when we ran the pilot study and two clinical trials. Report an error in the passage at 1:48:04 Highlight the passage at 1:48:04

1:48:24 I taught the contemplative and a woman trained in social work and psychology, she taught the psychological aspects under Paul's tutelage. And Paul was monitoring, the very first time we did it, he was monitoring the pilot study as I taught it and his own protege taught it. And whenever I would slip into Buddhist terminology, just inadvertently, he would catch me and say, Alan, cool it with the Buddhist terminology. Report an error in the passage at 1:48:24 Highlight the passage at 1:48:24

1:48:48 He was right. He was right. You don't need to say. You don't need to give anecdotes from Buddhism and so forth. Just give the straight message and then no barriers come up. And you don't even need to use the word meditation. Some people don't like that. They think, oh no. They start freaking out. They say, oh no, we don't do meditation. We're just developing attention skills and mindfulness and emotional balance and empathy and compassion. Report an error in the passage at 1:48:48 Highlight the passage at 1:48:48

1:49:16 But we don't meditate. Skillful means. It's all skillful means. Whereas when I'm teaching traditional, but people who have a lot of faith and commitment to the Buddhist path, then I'm unleashed. I don't hold anything in reserve at all. Then I'm really dangerous. We have a couple more minutes. Anything more? Yes, one more. Report an error in the passage at 1:49:16 Highlight the passage at 1:49:16

1:49:49 I understand. I understand. Very good. I'm Report an error in the passage at 1:49:49 Highlight the passage at 1:49:49

1:50:05 so glad you asked that question. I have now on repeated occasions, and I will do so again this year, spoken just to businessmen or business people, not just businessmen, business people. Report an error in the passage at 1:50:05 Highlight the passage at 1:50:05

1:50:19 I did it last year in Copenhagen and in Helsinki. I'll do it again this coming year in multiple places. I've done it in Singapore also. And sometimes really high-level CEOs and so forth. Report an error in the passage at 1:50:19 Highlight the passage at 1:50:19

1:50:34 And number one, they... I'm not really transparent. Everybody who knows, look at my website, they know where I'm coming from, so there's no way I'm going to pretend I'm not a Buddhist. And if they don't want a Buddhist, they don't invite me. But they're not inviting me as a Buddhist, but as somebody who might know something about emotional balance and so forth. And so the way I've approached it, and I will continue to approach it because I don't see any limitation to it or any big downside, is when I'm approaching people in the business world, they tend to be business executives, CEOs and so forth, the first thing I tell them is, look, I've been invited to speak to you. You've come because you wanted to here. But I'm not coming to speak to you as business people. I have no business background. Report an error in the passage at 1:50:34 Highlight the passage at 1:50:34

1:51:15 So I'm not really prepared to speak to you as business people because I don't have any training there. I'm a human being and you're human beings. And that's how I'm approaching you. Human being to human being. And I know for myself, before I was ever a Buddhist, I was passionately in the pursuit of a more meaningful life before I knew anything about Buddhism. Report an error in the passage at 1:51:15 Highlight the passage at 1:51:15

1:51:37 I really wanted to find greater meaning in life. That's because somebody told me to. That was my inclination. I wanted to find something that would bring fulfillment, deeper sense of satisfaction, greater contentment. And if that's what you, you business people, if that's what you are also interested in, then it's that yearning that I'm responding to. And that's what I'm going to be talking about, is how you can find greater happiness, genuine happiness. Report an error in the passage at 1:51:37 Highlight the passage at 1:51:37

1:52:07 I'm not here to help you get more hedonic pleasure. For that, go to an investment counselor. Or a golf pro. Or somebody who can teach you a better hobby, a new hobby. Plenty of that. They're for sale all over the place. That's not what I teach. It's not I'm against it. It's just not, that's not my skill set. But my skill set is to help people find genuine happiness. And now we can, and then I talk about it. Report an error in the passage at 1:52:07 Highlight the passage at 1:52:07

1:52:29 The cultivator approach versus the hunter-gatherer and all of that. I unpack it. And I just point out, you know, I'm not talking about something you've never experienced. When you spend some real quality time with your children, And you show them affection, you're caring for them, you love them, you tend to them with an open and warm heart. And at the end of the day, you feel something in your heart that you've done well by your children. Report an error in the passage at 1:52:29 Highlight the passage at 1:52:29

1:52:57 That's genuine happiness. It's not something you get from your children. It's something you offer to them. And now nobody can take it away, even if your children should die. Report an error in the passage at 1:52:57 Highlight the passage at 1:52:57

1:53:06 No one can take that away because you offered your best. So you already know that. If you've been a good spouse, a loving, conscientious, caring spouse, what you've offered and the joy you get from offering your best to your spouse, you already know what I'm talking about. Friendship. You've been a good friend to someone. You've taken care of them. You've looked after them. You've protected them. You've been proving yourself to be trustworthy. There's some satisfaction in that. Report an error in the passage at 1:53:06 Highlight the passage at 1:53:06

1:53:28 You already know about that. I don't need to teach you. And so you already know about a whole dimension of genuine happiness. happiness that comes from living ethically. And it wouldn't be marvelous if there were more of that in the business world, you engage in a competitive world. But competitive does not mean dog-eat-dog, vicious, dishonest, you know, backstabbing. Report an error in the passage at 1:53:28 Highlight the passage at 1:53:28

1:53:48 And what's the other one? Blackberries. I have to pee. It's competitive, but of course they get cheaper and cheaper and they're getting better and better. That's the glory of computer technology these days. Cheaper and cheaper, better, better. It goes capitalism at its best. So that's how we introduce it, that there is such a thing as ethics, but now how do we determine whether something is ethical or not ethical? Report an error in the passage at 1:53:48 Highlight the passage at 1:53:48

1:54:22 Oh, we've got an absolutely empirical criterion, and that is when you're behaving, whether it's something going through your mind as you're doing some plans, some strategy, anticipating some activity, it's already mental, something's taking place, it is activity, it's just not public yet, right? Whether it's mental, whether it's verbal, or whether it's physical, the actual movement of your body, watch your behavior, watch what the behavior of the mind, the speech, the body, attend to your behavior, and attend to the consequences of your behavior on your own body and mind. Report an error in the passage at 1:54:22 Highlight the passage at 1:54:22

1:54:51 But especially as soon as it becomes public, observe closely what's the impact of your words and your behavior on those around you. Observe closely. And then as you're watching the repercussions on your own well-being and those around you, observe closely and attend which modes of behavior, body, speech and mind, which are conducive to your own and others' genuine happiness. Report an error in the passage at 1:54:51 Highlight the passage at 1:54:51

1:55:11 Not bottom line. Not just money. You can be a mafia or head of a drug cartel and make plenty of money. I'm not talking about that. You figure out how to make money. That's hedonic. That's another workshop. I'm talking about genuine happiness. Observe your behavior and see which types of behavior are conducive to your own and others' genuine happiness and which are detrimental to it. Report an error in the passage at 1:55:11 Highlight the passage at 1:55:11

1:55:34 And then follow that and cultivate the good and diminish the bad. And now there's no metaphysics, there's no religion, and yet it's real. Report an error in the passage at 1:55:34 Highlight the passage at 1:55:34

1:55:44 And that's not only in terms of behavior, but now it's clear that's the outer display. But now, when you're sitting quietly before you're behaving, Before you're doing anything publicly, manifesting in the world, how's your mind? How's your mind? Can you cultivate genuine happiness inside before your manifesting behavior? Report an error in the passage at 1:55:44 Highlight the passage at 1:55:44

1:56:03 Can you balance? Can you cultivate your attention? Can you cultivate mindfulness, presence of mind, inner composure, serenity, stillness, clarity? Can you do that? Is it good for you? Does it feel good or bad? Consequences, helpful or unhelpful? So, just take it from straight experience. But the North Star, the North Star, the star by which to navigate is having a clear vision that gets clearer and clearer and deeper and deeper of what genuine happiness really is. Report an error in the passage at 1:56:03 Highlight the passage at 1:56:03

1:56:35 And then you can orient your whole understanding of ethics around that without recourse to reincarnation, karma or God's will and heaven and hell and all of that. And I'm not dismissing any of that. Report an error in the passage at 1:56:35 Highlight the passage at 1:56:35

1:56:48 The Dalai Lama, when he said do something secular, he wasn't saying, of course, oh, by the way, throw out reincarnation and karma and then, you know, we're going to refute that now because we're being secular. He said, no, we're just not going to talk about that. We don't need to talk about that. If you're a Buddhist, you have faith in it, then by all means talk about it. Why not? If you believe in physics, then you talk about gravity. Report an error in the passage at 1:56:48 Highlight the passage at 1:56:48

1:57:06 But if you don't believe in physics, then don't talk about gravity. So that's how we do it. And it's real. There's traction there. The rubber hits the road. And on that note, I think it's a good note to end on. I wish you all a good night. Report an error in the passage at 1:57:06 Highlight the passage at 1:57:06