Hello and welcome to the 10,000 things.
My name is Sam Ellis.
I'm Joe Loh.
Joe's been sitting on this topic or this quote for about a year.
So a friend in, uh, addiction recovery circles sent me this.
he has become quite a committed Buddhist and uh, yeah, and he's
also an academic, so he sent me the quote, and with full attribution and.
Also, you know, a bibliography and all this stuff.
It wasn't just like a Instagram, um, you know, quote, quote with a,
a picture behind it or something.
Yeah.
It was a fully referenced, Tibetan, Buddhist, um.
Mm-hmm.
You know?
Anyway, then I just kept reading it and rereading it every
day for about the last year.
Yeah.
And then I was hesitant to send it to you, Sam, I've sent it to you, but,
there's a bunch of stuff in here I have very little understanding of.
but maybe you should just read it and Well, that's right.
I just wanted to add this over for the interest of a little building, a
building, a little bit of suspense that you, which we have already, I guess,
but that you wait, as you said, I've got cold feet on this one and I knew.
I had this interesting choice.
I was like, eh, just be Mr.
Let it go.
Or no, I actually want to do this one and I need to find out where
the cold feet are coming from.
So I asked, oh, and then you said like, I feel like I don't have
that much to say about Buddhism.
Um, which is odd 'cause you've had more engagement with it than me and
No, the real reason for the cold feet.
Do you want me to tell you the truth?
Yeah.
Okay.
So on Friday, today's Sunday.
On Friday afternoon at work, I spoke to one of the psychiatrists
and Buddhism came up.
Ah, okay.
And she said, you know, I think Buddha had clinical depression
and I would've given him some ECT, which is electro convulsive therapy.
Convulsive therapy.
And you know, he went through that whole eating disorder phase and.
I think Buddhism is a very depressed religion and you know.
Hmm.
And I said, oh, would the Buddhists say that my kids having epilepsy?
Is that because of something that happened to them in past lives?
Or something they did in past lives?
And she said, yeah, they would say that.
And I said, ah, and I, and she's Sri Laan, this woman.
So she's been exposed to a lot of Buddhism, I assume.
Yeah.
And I thought I got a bit dark on Buddhism, Sam.
'cause I've, I've engaged a lot with the meditation practice and I've read the,
some books and stuff, but I've never really engaged with past lives or Yeah.
Karma or reincarnation or, or like, I fully believe that my
kids' epilepsy is a bio biological phenomenon that's essentially random.
Yeah.
I don't think it has any.
Meaning, and that the only, and if I started to think it had
some cursed meaning, I think it would unpick my sanity around it.
And I'm trying to be very sane about approaching the whole thing.
Mm-hmm.
So then that made me a bit dark on.
Thinking about Buddhism for a few hours and then that was when we were messaging.
So that's how sensitive my system is.
One person tells me Buddha had clinical depression, and then I'm
like, oh, well maybe fuck Buddhism.
It's true.
You are very suggestible.
It is true.
sometimes, you know why, because I think other people are smarter than me, so I
think if someone's a, a psychiatrist, well she's clearly a lot smarter than me.
Yeah.
And maybe the last.
10 years of interest in Buddhism that can all be thrown out the window
because of one, essentially, you know, joking remark about Buddhism
being a depressive religion.
Well, look, I mean, I'm not gonna, yeah, I'm not gonna speculate.
I mean, I have thoughts about.
How I think there's, there's some, there's definitely something
in what she said, like, I'm not gonna dismiss it out of hand.
And I have read articles like the problem with Buddhism or
the Dark Side of Buddhism.
There's, there's, look, there's plenty of it.
You can go and look it up, whether it's reports about a particular
ashram, which is not as cool as it may appear, or that, and, you know,
I can talk about Raga life, right?
And uh, reports of.
monks that aren't happy or, or people that have been sort of young people that
may maybe just a little bit because of a lack of economic options, have sort of
just had to take up this occupation or like, uh, and of course there's a whole
side of Buddhism, which Westerners don't usually get a look at until more, maybe
more recently you'll get a bit of this.
of the, the Buddhas and the Tuper and like, there's a lot of really interesting
kind of dark shamanic stuff in there.
Mm.
so one way to think about Buddhism is as having a animist core,
which then got layered with a, with a bit of polytheism from.
From, you know, India and then it got layered with a bit of, well, 'cause
you know, it comes up in the soil of Northern India and the mountains are
there and Tibet, Tibet is beyond those mountains to the north, appalling between.
And then you have, you know, Bhutan to the Northeast and, and you've got that part
of India called the Northeastern states, which are considered sort of Indo-Chinese.
And just beyond there, you know, we have Buddhists in.
You know, that sort of transitional part of Indochina, Burma and then Thailand,
you know, the Vietnam, what they used to call the Indochinese Peninsula.
And, and then of course China itself, uh, you know, all the way from Central
Asia to the east and then Japan beyond that with its Zen Buddhist tradition.
And so you've got all these flavors of Buddhism stretching all the
way from India to Japan, and then.
Stretching also in the, in the direction of the west.
And then fast forward to the 20th century, you've got the United
States and the UK and Western Europe, Buddhism of the kind of a sort of
missionary, slightly commodified form starts to take hold in those places.
So it is a very radically diverse set of traditions and doctrines and teachings.
There are some central scriptures that underlie all of it, but.
There are also some, I don't know, shamanic or animist,
things like buried inside of it.
And it's the same with Hinduism, and it's the same with, uh, Christianity.
Um, that it does still bear Some of its.
Animist roots and its ancestor worship roots and or where it's landed.
The people that practice Christianity have kept their ancestor worship going, and
that's gotten transferred into the Saints.
And so there's all these different, like basically religion is layers and layers
and layers like archeological, like soil sedimentation, you know what I mean?
Like you drill, you drill a core sample down into the earth.
Or or into ice.
Right.
And then look at all the pollen that's trapped in the layers of ice.
Right?
Yeah.
I mean, and that's what I find in religion.
It's, it's like this long accretion of human experience all lumped into one word.
Yeah.
The Buddhism that's come to me is the Buddhism of late 20th century,
early 21st century, so repo.
Yeah.
And the Tibetan book of Living and Dying Western, Western followers
of Dai Lamas died to happiness.
Art of Happiness, yeah.
Western followers of different, like, whether it's Aja Cha, the type, Mariana,
ADA, Buddhist, you know, like they, they generally have lineage back to lineage,
an eastern person, but it's a Western person, generally a white Western person
who's explaining Buddhism to me in a very.
Appealing form.
Well, that was the, yes.
Essentially.
Not so much as a religion, but as a psychological Yes.
System and a way to, okay.
So it's being consciously marketed in a different way to a different audience.
Right.
So we've gotta, we've gotta give some credit to people for being a
bit sophisticated and understanding the right ways to talk about it.
Certain people, the people that came back in the seventies were like Jack Kornfield.
Sharon Salzberg, um mm-hmm.
And they're still around today.
And what's his name?
Oliver?
Uh, um, he, I like him a lot.
I mean, obviously you're Alan Watts.
Well, the one that got me through COVID.
Yeah.
Thomas Merton Chang Zu.
The one that got me through COVID is a guy called Henry Shukman.
Henry Shukman, yes.
He's wonderful.
Who's, um, also a poet, so he writes beautifully.
Uh, he's a Zen Buddhist guy, so there's, I've been influenced a lot by Buddhism.
Yeah.
but without ever signing up to the precepts and the eightfold path and Yeah.
Yeah.
You never, you never took a guru.
Yeah.
I've got a friend who listens to this show, actually, who's, um,
who's just been volunteering at the local temple and has just taken vows.
Oh.
And of course, Ramdas was definitely leaning pretty heavily on the, well, yeah.
But see.
I finally let him go.
Yeah.
Let him go.
Because I said it on the show last time, like, I can't believe
what he's told me about his guru.
And later when he started talking to a dead person Yeah.
Called Emmanuel.
I just can't come at that.
so I'm trying to have some kind of weirdly rational spirituality,
which is quite a creative tension in spirituality, I've gotta admit.
Well, this is what I'm saying, like within this ja, within this very neat
sounding term, Buddhism lies a wide range of practices from just fairly kind
of fairly pure and simple meditation through to all kinds of elaborate
ritual and complicated teachings.
And like Yeah, I've mostly done simple guided meditations.
Yeah.
And read a couple of books.
That's right and, and then there's this feeling of like, amongst a lot of
people, like should I just disregard this question of harm of karma?
Because it is a bit problematic and reincarnation, right?
Yes.
Karma and reincarnation are where it gets, like they ask you to believe
things that you can't prove, and that's where religion, you know,
generally loses me as opposed to my kind of vague spirituality that I've.
Had for the last 10 years.
Yes.
And I don't think that your sort of spirituality, uh, or just the
journey you've been on and the things you've needed, I don't know
if karma was gonna add much to it.
Um, maybe reincarnation.
all right, shall we do the quote?
Let's, let's stop teasing everyone.
So abominably far too much preamble.
The quote will now make a lot more sense though, and the
preamble will make more sense.
So there's a title given to it, which is natural.
Great peace,
rest in natural, great peace.
This exhausted mind beaten, helpless by karma and neurotic thought like
the relentless fury of pounding waves in the infinite ocean of Samsara.
All right.
Can you, can we line by line it?
We're gonna have to line by line it.
So first of all, that does go attribution goes to no Kempo Jam, young Doge.
So that's from the Tibetan tradition.
Rather than say the North Indian tradition or et cetera, all the other ones,
rest in natural.
Great peace.
Okay.
So natural, great peace makes a lot of sense to me from my
experiences in meditation.
Mm-hmm.
There is a natural piece to consciousness, which was not present
for me as an adult until I started doing meditation and then I rediscovered it.
I probably had it as a child, but, uh, it was only once I started
practicing medica meditation, I found this natural great piece.
So rest in natural, great.
Peace makes sense to me.
What's the next line?
This exhausted mind.
Can you relate to that, Sam?
Oh yeah.
So, right.
But I wanna stop for a second, but I want to, both those two needs to
be talked about together, right?
And the, the question I had for you, after what you said about the first line is.
You didn't have the natural great peace maybe did as a child until you
had meditation, until you did it.
And how would you describe your experience of consciousness before that?
Well, so what I ha what I had was unnatural great peace, which was
called being drunk on alcohol.
Yeah.
So I had a lot of that before I stopped drinking.
It was only natural great peace.
I only discovered once I stopped drinking and, and was forced to meditate as
part of my addiction recovery program.
Yeah, hang hangovers are not very peaceful.
No.
But when you're actually drunk and you, you fears drop away
and like, it's been a while.
It's been over 10 years for me, Sam, but I do recall it
being quite peaceful that time.
Hmm.
Yep.
I remember finding refuge in it and just suddenly feeling a sensation.
A sensation of anxiety.
Like a stopping of something.
Yeah.
And, and feeling the thoughts slow down.
Yeah.
And things like that.
Well, even a Valium, you know?
Yeah.
Oh boy.
Valium's.
Maybe a better version of it.
I was addicted to that too.
Great stuff.
But that's not natural piece.
Don't recommend this.
That's not something I can access.
No.
The moment I wake up in the morning without putting a substance into my body.
Right.
And so of course I need to make an acknowledgement here that something there
are chemical means with that have been, you know, given proper lab trials and,
you know, trials out in the na, you know, in the population to determine whether
these are suitable and safe, et cetera.
And leaving aside all the drugs that have been approved that aren't suitable and
safe, And acknowledgement that sometimes a bit of chemical piece is the way to go.
Um, and you certainly needed some in Thailand, right?
Bit of Thorazine or something that they gave you?
Yeah.
I mean, if I'm having a full blown psychotic episode, I need to be sedated.
But at this point in my life, I would say outside of that,
I don't need to be sedated.
No, no, no.
The the, the need doesn't really arise or you have access to other means of
sedation or, or to say it like this.
You are able to self-soothe often or often enough, and.
You know, it's on the MHCP questionnaire that I found myself, um, unable to
relax or calm down or something.
Like it's one of the items on the mental health care Ah, yeah, yeah.
Plan questionnaire.
Yeah.
Never able to relax.
Yeah.
Well that's not really resting in natural great peace.
No, it's not this exhausted mind.
That's right.
And so what I found, what's the next line?
Uh, beaten helpless by karma and neurotic thought.
Oh my God.
So a major source of my interest in alcohol was trying to get
refuge from neurotic thought.
Yeah, me too.
And you still got that?
You've still got that.
I mean, I guess I've still got it too.
I could walk across the road to the ton and start drinking straight after this.
Mm-hmm.
But you've still given yourself that path if you want it.
Yeah.
yeah.
But yeah, the, I've leaned on it more lately, I'll say.
but I also happen to be, I'm aware that I can put my feet back
on the path of just not, yeah.
Yeah, I think most of the pain in my life has just been from neurotic thought
much more than whatever's happened to me.
Well, yeah, and the problems we cause ourselves, selves are in
response to the neurotic thought.
We're either, we're either trying to pursue the thought and act on it,
or we're trying to get away from it.
Either way, it's unhealthy.
Yeah.
Someone friend of the show, rainbow said to me that he thought my
fascination with LSD was because I'm a neurotic, and you know, it's
such a head game with LSD, isn't it?
It's like it can be.
That's what I've heard.
Such intellectual, yeah.
Such an intellectual trip.
I don't think it'd be good for me at all.
You never tried it?
No.
Really?
Yeah.
It would be, you'd be an amazing person to take it.
I mean, I'm never planning on taking another LSD trip, but I
think with me it'd be a hat on.
A hat.
Yeah.
You might just be exactly the same or, or just.
Too much.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It could get pretty weird in there like, and I mean that's obviously the point,
but like it already is very, yeah.
Labyrinth thing and it would be amazing.
The cosmic.
Yeah.
The talking and laughing, if it was a good trip would just be next level.
I'm interested in mushrooms for sure, but yeah, talking, talking and laughing.
I'm a big fan anyway.
That's big fan of that.
No, it's, this is not a side note because it's a bit of a sidetrack.
No, because you tried to find peace through LSD.
You were trying to work out some things.
You were trying to, you know, I thought for the longest time, Sam, I thought
I could think my way through life.
You thought you could engineer your way through it?
Yes.
I thought I could think things through.
Yes.
And then I would understand and then I would be okay.
And I've had to surrender and realize doesn't work.
It's quite the opposite.
I need to actually ex ignore 99% of my thinking.
Yeah.
And rest in natural great peace.
Yes.
And just do the next right thing that's in front of me.
Yes.
Uh, and there's really very little thinking that I need to act upon.
Yes.
But yeah, I mean, like the quote said, I've been beaten
helpless by neurotic thought.
You know, it's almost like, why do we even need karma in there?
Yeah, well that question, you are hopefully gonna explain karma to me.
You're gonna Sam Splain karma To me, that was what I was hoping, partly for this
quote, but what's the rest of the quote?
Okay.
It's not that long.
No.
We're nearly there.
Beaten, helpless by karma and neurotic thought like the
relentless fury of pounding waves.
So that's really just a nice metaphor to underscore the, the,
you know, this is really just an illustration of the, the nouns.
Yeah.
Mentioned in the previous line Karma, neurotic thought.
Uh, then likened to pounding waves, sort of, I guess eroding rock.
Yeah.
With their relentlessness.
And the mind is not like rock, is it?
No, it's much more like water, I would've said.
Yeah.
Um, but in the infinite ocean of samsara.
Okay.
So an appropriate metaphor to follow from the waves.
Now.
Two more interesting noun.
So the, the two ocean and samsara.
Yeah.
So the two things I need help with that.
So I love this quote and I read it every day for a year.
It's cool, I like it, but I don't really know what karma is.
I have some like, um, rudimentary understanding and I don't really know
what Samsara is, but you know, everything.
And you also mentioned, uh, great good Sam Samsara was part of the Hindu
tradition as well, was karma as well.
Yes.
So Karma and Samsara are terms you grew up with in Hari Krish
in the Hari Krishna world.
Yes.
And do they have the same meaning as in Tibetan Buddhism or similar?
Okay, well here's where I could have spent some time on Wikipedia first because,
sorry, Wikipedia is a, is a good website.
Um, but no, no, no.
I can say with the level of confidence that there will
not be a radically different.
Teaching on karma and Samsara and the, the thing I really feel bad
about not looking up, and I did know this at one point, who borrowed what?
From who?
Ah, yeah.
But that's a bit of a sidebar are Sure.
I'm trying to apply it to my life in Melbourne in 2026.
So I don't wanna get, I don't want to make any claims about.
Hinduism had this notion, then Buddhism took it.
Uh, because when you say Hinduism, it's like, well, what are we referring to here?
Are we referring to like 10, I dunno, five to 10,000 years of
evolving belief and polytheism and sort of daily ritual practice?
Or are you referring to stuff that's in the piranhas and the
Vaders and the Erford Gita?
Uh, well, yeah.
Those are all tied together some way.
but it's not that, it's like when we talk about ancient Egypt, right?
It makes it sound like a sort of several hundred year period.
Well, it's not, it's like a time span of like 5,000 years and different
things happened all through that.
So the same goes with Hinduism, Buddhism, but the two things, uh, the two.
Words have been closely tied together for a long time, and
they've exchanged ideas and they've influenced one another enormously.
So Karma came from one and was taken by the other.
And, uh, Samsara also.
So I think it's a Sanskrit word, karma and samsara, both Sanskrit words.
So I'm inclined to say it comes from, The, the Hindu side of it, but it's a
teaching that actions have reactions.
Okay.
That's pretty simple so far.
So Newtonian universe, the earth, mass, mass exerts gravity towards me, right?
But I also exert a very insignificant amount of gravity.
It's back towards the earth also.
and so in the, you know, Newtonian physics, everything's like
quite exquisitely balanced and symmetrical, and it's, it's nice.
It's what Einstein called the, you know, the, the blind watchmaker, you know,
like the ex, this exquisitely designed mechanical universe where everything runs.
Perfectly.
And then he comes and com complicates the picture with relativity and
you know, quantum stuff, right?
So ham's a little bit Newtonian in some ways.
It's like, it's very, you know, one for one.
You know, you do this sort of thing, it's gonna come back on you in more
or less inverse equal proportion.
Right.
But it may come back to you in a later life.
Mm-hmm.
So this is where it gets troubling.
So it's not just what I've done since I was born.
Mm-hmm.
Causing my life situation.
No, no.
It's past lives.
Oh yeah.
I find that hard one to come at.
This is all, look, people struggle enough with the idea that they should feel.
Any sort of responsibility towards things their ancestors did.
And by the way, I'm actually with Viktor Frankl on this one who said, you know,
in Germany where he said, no, there's nothing to be gained From the teaching
and preaching and insistence on a doctrine of collective guilt, people
will eventually become hostile to that notion and they'll reject the notion
of collective guilt for things that they weren't physically present for.
And that will get in the way of the real work, which is just to try and be
objective about what actually happened and to have an interest in how you have a
better future without like, who's with me?
Let's have a better future.
Right?
That, that's the framing, not like a kind of, um, insistence on, guilt
and, and sort of neurosis, right.
So, and practical terms, and a Hindu would say, well, yeah, Kamel
would sort it all out anyway.
And the universe is keeping track and will apportion the responsibilities.
So when they're so alright, here I, I'll reduce it to practical terms.
So right now I'm very single.
Right, right.
And I can look at.
My lifetime of actions or my adulthood at least.
So let's say 25 years of actions.
Mm-hmm.
And it's very clear, I don't know if you'd call it karma, but there's a
very clear cause and effect that has led me to be completely single without
a single prospect of going on a date.
So you've, you feel like you've earned this?
Yeah, it's completely, I can take full a hundred percent responsibility.
I have made.
This situation, which I So you're not, don't like the situation.
So you're not a grievance m mongering incel.
No.
There's, there's a reason why I'm single and it's me.
But that's different from saying there's a reason why I'm single
and it's because of what happened 300 years ago in a past life.
Well, no, I mean, the karma could be much more proximate.
Right?
It doesn't, I mean, the, so, okay, so then you have to pair it with
the idea of reincarnation, right?
So.
So it basically goes like this.
The universe is on a wheel of creation and destruction, uh,
over like millions of years.
In fact, universes, remember, okay, you've got a picture of Vishnu with
these forearms lying on a bed of snakes and un shaha with a hundred
heads, reciting the vaders constantly like a snake with a hundred heads and
Lakshmi goddess a fortune is there.
That's the two, uh, uh, the sort of simultaneous male female
manifestation of the one, right?
And, uh, so God is not he or she, it's both right.
And then out of Vishnu's, pause, uh, the universe has come.
So with like every breath in and out.
The universe, the universes come in and are destroyed and then go out again.
And inside each one of those little bubbles, they were sort
of visualized as for me as a kid.
There's a Vishnu on a bed of snakes and there's a Brahma growing a Brahma
sitting in the lotus flower growing out of, uh, the navel of Vishnu.
And then sort of inside that is contained the world and inside that lotus flower and
barma is, uh, maintaining that universe.
That little universe until Shiva comes along and destroys it, raga.
And you know, the guy with the dreadlocks and the Trident.
what's that got to do with me being so single?
Well, all of this is a cycle that goes on and on and on endlessly, and that inside
of each one of those little universes.
Is a cycle of birth and death carried out by millions and millions of souls.
Continuously each one on the same wheel, the same wheel of samsara.
So samsara is sometimes characterized as an ocean of of uncertainty and.
Trouble.
It's a stormy place.
It can be calm at times.
An ocean of misery and uncertainty and suffering.
Others call it, this is get back, this gets back to what my
psychiatrist friend calling it.
Depressive.
Yeah.
It is a little religion.
It is not a super life-affirming take.
the forest fire of existence.
Others translate samsara as the forest fire of existence and
others does talk about it as the, the, the endless cycle of.
Uh, birth Karma, death, birth, karma, death.
Just on and on and on.
Yeah.
Because the goal of Buddhism is Nirvana, which means you finally get
off the cycle of birth and death, but then that's a bit depressive because
that means you finally cease to exist.
But that is, well, exactly.
So the main difference CEA to exist is the great.
That's the prize you win.
So the short cut to the end of Buddhism would be just to kill yourself.
No, no, no.
But then you incur, you incur karma for doing that.
Yeah, yeah, that's right.
Trigger.
Sorry, I'm not endorsing any of this.
I'm just letting you know what I know about it as in terms of
what the doctrine is about it.
It's a strange goal to want end the cycle of birth and death and
get off the wheel of samsara.
Well, here's the thing.
It's a strange goal.
Yeah.
Your total goal is, uh, extinction, essentially.
Extinction of a particular form of experience, which then gets
transformed into something else.
It's actually not extinction, it's just for that person.
They merged with the one and cease to have a separate consciousness,
but they, but they experience a single unified consciousness.
And is that, does that at least feel good?
I think you, you've experienced it so you can tell me.
Hmm.
Where you felt there was just one consciousness and that
there was no separate self.
Yes.
You're already kind of there if you check in with it.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Which is what we tried to talk about on the last episode.
Yeah.
I got some feedback from friend of the show Ollie as well, who said, gee.
No self is hard to talk about.
Yeah.
And uh, Ollie's gone pretty deep with it himself at times.
So yeah, the negation of the self is a pursuit of many, many of us have had.
Well, yeah, just investigating and finding no self, but it's tied up with.
Yeah, but see here's an, alright, so, so I haven't really been
able to explain why I'm single.
No, well, hang on minute.
Sorry.
I explained why I'm single without using karma.
I'm getting to that.
Right?
But, so if you wanted to use Karma as a framework for that Yeah.
It's this simple in your, so I had to say all of that about the cycle, right?
And how, because of the nature of so, so here's the real bit bastard
of a bitch, of a part of it, right?
So.
The, the problem is that because of the miserable nature of samsara, this ex,
this difficult, troubled existence we have here a, a separate to the oneness
or in the ha krishna teaching separate to the divine personality of God, Krishna to
whom all the gods will merge back into all the mortals we'll merge back into, and we
actually are all infinitely mort immortal.
But if we.
Separate our consciousness away from God and try to enjoy separately and have
independent thought and free will that we will inevitably then have to experience
suffering and temporariness and, and with temporariness comes grasping and clinging
and with grasping and clinging, come neurotic thoughts, et cetera, et cetera.
Yes.
And then, and then because of this disease state that these mortals are in.
They will do bad things to each other and then constantly incur more karma.
Okay, this is making sense.
So it's a horrible setup.
Yeah.
So if I merge with the one and realize that I am the one and there
is no separate joke, you'll stop doing bad stuff to other people, then
clinging and craving will drop away.
They won't make any sense and I won't even want to girlfriend or it will
not matter to you either way, and that you will be a being of such.
Just sort of effortless peace and benness that people will be drawn to you.
That sounds good.
Yeah.
And, and that, you know, you'll, you'll be perfectly capable of
taking up a, a, a loving, equal commitment to another human being.
Oh, this sounds great, doesn't it?
Jess?
How do I do this bit?
Well, I think it's a lot of the things you're already doing, I guess.
Meditation, therapy, um, not taking toin.
Yeah, following a, you know, consciously following a program of, of staying
sober and, and, and getting, getting the maintenance you need on a look after,
you know, look out for your own garden.
Keep that consciousness as good as you can get it, and be humble and make
sacrifices and give a, you know, live a life of service and all this because they
tell you about the karma and all that.
And then they go, well, here's the good news.
If you pray and, and, and worship and do charitable acts, well, here's the problem.
Charitable acts also incur good karma, right?
Which sounds good, except you have to then get reborn in
order to receive the good karma.
And some people get reborn just to cop a really p awful piece of bad
karma, like cystic fibrosis diet 30, uh, others are born to die
even sooner and more miserably.
You know, Richard, the third or whatever make make it to 23 and get the, get
the throne for two seconds and then.
Eat it at the next battle, right?
I often think about the sort of short lives of people in history and
the, the tormented harried existence that some of these sort of like
great figures of history actually experienced a pretty restless life.
So, so what do they say about someone who's living a long and happy life
that they've probably managed to incur?
Very little bad karma in recent lives because of the, there is one little get
out card, which is one little sliver of hope, which is that the human form of life
comes with a blessing and a curse known as consciousness, and that the experience
of consciousness is very difficult.
Animals are not troubled by the conscious, the degree of consciousness
that other species possess.
We can debate.
We may even get it, get it one day and fully understand.
But for the majority, majority of mammals ex engage in fairly predictable behavior,
and you could argue that humans do too.
But humans have this other layer, which is awareness of mortality.
Uh, they've got an ego concept.
They've got a theory of mind of others, which means we're plagued by thoughts
about what others think about us.
And we're either selfish and declare all the other minds to
just be a, an extension of our own consciousness that's called solecism.
Or we become overly concerned with the minds of others and that sort of self
abandonment, Uh, or in some way we just find our own consciousness intolerable
and try to sort of wipe it out or, or blanket or deny it in some way.
And one of the ways that people deny that or try to deal with the
discomfort of their consciousness, this is the teachings I had as a kid.
They seek refuge in drugs or gambling or intimacy and just seek to use
others to make themselves feel better.
And that this, uh.
Is understandable, but unfortunately to the degree, I guess what the karma people
might say, Joe, is that to the degree you left others feeling dissatisfied that
you then had to experience that yourself.
Yeah, see I'm, I think I'm on board with karma within my one lifetime
that I can verifiably, say exists.
So that's what most people will agree to.
Yeah.
I can't, I'll own the actions I've done in this life and pay the price of them.
And that's exactly where I think I am with my, uh, dating life.
Because in your early twenties, you were a bit selfish to your girlfriends, right?
Oh, I've been an asshole the whole way through.
Yeah.
Up until, you know, a month ago you did a better job in marriage though,
than you might have thought, right?
I tried.
I tried hard and, you know, I'm, I'm having, I'm having a much, I'm having
a completely positive experience as a father with none of this shit that has
gone on with women that I've dated.
Mm.
Whereas I'm raising two daughters and doing a good job of it
to the best of my ability.
And then have a very bonded and loving relationship with them.
you know, so that is like good karma.
That is like, yeah, I think that the stuff.
The, the stuff that happens between parents and children,
it can really feel karmic to me.
I've definitely experienced that.
Whereas oth other people will say almost intergenerational trauma and
you know, you've gotta be conscious of it and like try to head it.
You know, don't, don't perpetuate stuff if you can help it and Yeah.
Well I grew up in a household where both my parents drank
every night and smoke weed.
Yeah.
And they've grown up in a household where I haven't had a
single drink in over 10 years.
You changed that.
Script.
Yeah.
Change the epigenetics.
Yeah.
Well that too, not just the script.
Yeah, the epigenetics.
Yeah.
So, and it's paying off now that they're teenagers, they, they really
like me, you know, and yeah, you've not managed to earn their contempt.
You've not managed to like earn some sort of cops and bad karma back from
them sort of thing because Yeah.
Yeah.
And it's been suggested to me by a psychologist that maybe I could extend
this person that I am as a father.
Into other areas of my life, whether it's work or dating.
Mm-hmm.
Well, this is what I was gonna say before, and she's stolen
my thunder, this new therapist.
Okay.
So, no, no, that was the old one.
That was the old one.
Well, I mean, yeah, yeah.
I agree.
But I was like, oh, I could be the way I am with my kids, with other people.
Yes.
But I don't love them unconditionally.
I don't see myself in them.
You know?
It's completely different relationship.
No, no.
Yeah, I know.
I agree.
Right on the surface, that makes sense.
So, but I'm also just want to echo your experience of finding that whatever
happened in relationships in your life that you could make sense of it and
that you were not, um, you felt no entitlement to any sense of grievance
or that it was someone else's fault.
Uh, and that you could see how and why the things you did led to where it ended up.
Right.
So that's a, that's a really good.
Place of accountability to end up at, and that gives me
a lot of hope for your future.
Now, I'll also say that I've, you know, there were times when I was on
the, I was on the miserable end of things and, you know, just feeling,
unmet needs and not heard and so on, and I had to reflect that.
Well, that's how I made others feel.
And so maybe there is something in this karma thing, but I would prefer
to just call it a metaphor for what.
The actual accountability mechanisms are, you know, well, lemme ask you
this, Sam, you're not a practicing Hari Krishna anymore, so clearly I don't
see a value in the, yeah, well, well, do you see value in the concepts of,
um, Samsara and Karma, or do you reject them now as, unscientific, uh, nonsense?
Well, I don't, it's sort of, yes, yes.
It's a, a simple answer is yes, but I would say.
it's neither here nor there, whether they're scientific.
I think the real test for me is watching the behaviors of people
that espouse these beliefs and whether that works for me or not.
And then of course, if there's, if you meet a good person that believes utterly
in calm, whereas I have, do you know what?
I'm not gonna give credit to their belief in karma.
I am gonna say that their belief in karma helps to reinforce the sort of life they
wanna live, and that it actually takes a conscious effort and their ability
to recognize that, that they deserved something that happened to them, or
that it made cosmic sense that something happened to them and that it was not
an injustice because they could point to similar ways they had failed others.
Right?
And I would say this is actually a good way to live your life,
but I wouldn't give credit.
To their, that person happening to believe in karma.
See, I think it's unfair that my kids both have epilepsy.
Yeah, that is unfair.
I think that's unfair, right?
And so Christianity has the problem of evil where it can't give a you a
reason for why that happened other than God's testing your faith.
The Hindus go, Hey Joe, we've got a really neat answer to that.
Something happened in a past life now.
No.
Now you just need to swallow the idea that we are all reborn.
Every, yeah, however many.
See, the only way I can make sense of it is it's a naturally occurring phenomenon
that can be explained by medical science.
Yeah.
Isn't that a good enough explanation?
That's the only one that I can really come at without losing my
mind, Sam, about something I'm so worried about and stressed about.
Some DNA went a certain way once upon a time, and some of it ended up in you.
Some of it ended up in Lucia, and here we are.
Yes.
That's, that's the explanation.
Yeah.
And there's no, there's no great meaning to it.
We've just gotta treat it as best we can with modern medicine.
No great meaning to anything in life.
We, we have to attribute meaning to it.
But I've always sought, meaning, I've always sought.
Meaning, I'm not saying it's a universe without meaning, but what I'm saying is
humans consciously create that meaning and we, we all need to participate
with full awareness and responsibility in this task of creating meaning for
each other and our, uh, and ourselves.
Yeah.
And, and I, you know, I genuinely believe that if I was living up near
Byron Bay and I was anti-Western medicine and I was treating them with
the epilepsy, than they are getting the, some of the world's best treatment at
the Children's Hospital in Melbourne.
I have to believe that.
And I have full faith, if you want to call it faith.
Mm.
But it's verifiable.
Yeah.
In western science.
Right.
You know, to, to address this problem.
Well, look at that.
You and Ali, not so different after all.
Me and who?
Ali.
You remember Alex from the show?
Yeah.
Why was she anti, what was she anti in pro.
Oh, no, no, no.
Just that she'll be, I think she'd be agreeing entirely with like, yeah, this
is a really, this is a really important to, to hang on to like, you know, just
try to reality test the things that pass through our minds and, you know,
try to go with evidence, the best evidence we can find as much as possible.
So then, yeah, but see, the thing is, Sam, I could pull this all apart and, Hmm.
End up with no spirituality.
No, but that, that's the thing.
This is why No, no, but hear me out.
I don't Yeah.
But why did I sit with this quote for a year and whenever I read it,
it wasn't an intellectual response.
No.
I got a deep physical, and I would say spiritual response that made me
go, ah, rest in natural great peace.
Mm-hmm.
This exhausted mind.
Mm-hmm.
Like there was such a, it was like, I felt understood by this.
Tibetan monk in a way that I don't, just having a con, even having a
conversation with a psychologist, let alone having a conversation
with a friend, I don't feel quite as understood as I do by this Tibetan monk.
What's going on there?
It's not an intellectual, scientific exercise.
It's something deeper that's, it's landing with me on a deep level,
and maybe one day I'll come to fully understand and believe in.
Karma and samsara, and maybe like my friend, I'll one day go down
to my local Buddhist, temple and start volunteering and take vows and
I'll do the precepts and the like.
Maybe I'm not saying that facetiously, like maybe I will.
Wow.
I could see it happening.
But for the moment, things like reincarnation just, I
can't come at that, you know?
I don't believe that.
That seems impossible to me.
What do you, what do you make of the Christian teaching of.
You know the resurrection of Jesus?
Mm.
Well I just read a Catholic book and I can't come at that either.
Sam, I can't believe that anyone ever came back from the dead.
You, you founded a really powerful read, but yeah, same
as when I read Buddhist texts.
So I can seemingly read Christian and Buddhist texts and get a lot out of them
and get a really nice feeling in my bones.
Mm-hmm.
But I can't quite come at the resurrection.
Of a human being back to life, especially 'cause it's never happened since.
Mm.
Um, when we've all got our smartphones and could take a photo with after
we rolled the rock back or whatever.
Mm.
Um, yes.
Whereas, whereas I believe it's a miracle that I don't drink
alcohol and I'm happy about it.
Well now that's my sort of miracle.
That's a miracle I can come at.
Mm-hmm.
Because that's a miracle that I've had a personal experience with.
It's not so much the not drinking, I think I could have not drank and been a
miserable cunt, but to not drink and be happy about it is, is a miracle to me.
And if we had told you that 20 years ago, you'd have had a very,
very difficult time believing.
Yeah, well, 20 years ago I had no interest in not drinking.
Well, that's what I mean.
And then, so it would've been just a matter of just profound disbelief
and, uh, what's the skepticism to say the least that one day
you'd be like, nah, and I'm happy.
Right.
Yeah, exactly.
So, so the, the limit of the, your own point in time experience back then, right.
We can easily recognize that now.
And so then we have to have the same humility about the
present moment that we're in.
And go, there's a limit to what this consciousness can encompass
and we can do our best to expand it.
Yeah.
And we can do our best to improve the quality and clarity of it.
And, and, but what, but if you don't believe in karma and samsara anymore.
Yeah.
Why did you wanna talk about this quote on the show?
Because did it, did you vibe with it at all?
Well, I'm gonna tell you why.
Yeah, of course.
I'm gonna tell you why.
How can you vibe with it when you've ruled out the key cons,
spiritual concepts in it?
No, because, because I'll tell you what.
Look, I guess I, I'm realizing, geez, what I'm realizing is I could probably
talk or write at great length about my, just what you'd call like a, a memoir
about my experience of this word, right?
I could say a lot, and there'd be in, there'd be all these stories about
things that were explained in terms of karma and then how my, I had a simple
faith in it, and then I had a kind of more sophisticated belief in it, and.
And how it started to make sense as a philosophy to me, and that my
mother kind of inducted me into it and that I started to really live by it.
And I, what do you know?
I met lots of people who also wanted to live by it, right?
But that was not necessarily as a Hari Krishna.
And I could certainly identify with the notion of samsara and that I,
uh, I tried to write, to write about.
Uh, the profundity I saw in it, in me, like I sort of wrote songs
that were expressing that idea.
Right.
And I just don't have the same interest in it now, but it, but I understand that
for a lot of people it has a very poetic and powerful meaning these terms, right?
Because I've, uh, yeah.
I mean, so I've experienced that myself.
Yeah.
But what I am gonna say is I wanted to have a more life affirming.
Consciousness than that.
And I'm not saying Harry Christians are walking around
being grim, miserable bastards.
In fact, a lot of them are quite joyous and it seems a joyous religion from the
outside, especially when you're walking down Swanson Street clapping and singing.
Yeah.
And some of them are do or sad.
Sad sack and some.
The other key, the put us concept that I really vibe with is dka.
Yes.
D Happiness and distress.
Yes.
Like unsatisfactorily?
Yes.
Like, don't you feel that a lot of, like I, of course I know if I'm
in an infinite ocean of samsara.
Uh, well, every morning in temple, you know, art, there's a gu and, uh, you sing,
um, I think it's in the guru Samsara,
which means basically it's like the whole, it's a hymn, which is saying.
Help me out, guru.
I'm here in Samsara.
I'm here in this forest fire of existence.
Please, like, get me the fuck out of here.
Mm-hmm.
Like, uh, I, I mean, I'm drowning in this ocean.
Get me the fuck outta here.
And, and there's the chaitanya prayer, which is the only thing that that prophet
or avatar of Vishnu, if you believe that.
But he was a historical person.
Bit of a jesusy sort of figure in North India.
Northeast India and all the way down to the south, uh, around 540 or so years ago.
And he only wrote left behind one text, which is the Tya prayers.
And it's, it's very, it's beautiful poetry and it reminds me of this.
And Chaitanya just basically says, conquering this mind and conquering
the sufferings of this world is beyond what just any ordinary person can do.
And I need the help of.
The great one, and please give me, oh, like a higher power.
Yes.
And please give me that help.
I have this great intellect.
I've beaten all the great scholars, but what good did it do me?
You know, I was born in a Brahman family, high caste, but what good did it do me?
Like, I don't wanna live in a caste system.
I just want, we're all just souls suffering and we all need the refuge.
You know, we we're all just, we're all just in the ocean of distress together.
Whether we're brah, miners or untouchables, all of us are equals.
We should all surrender and we should all love one another and we should all,
uh, just take refuge in, in Krishna.
So very, you can imagine this was a powerful message, you know, like he was
proposing to abolish the caste system and to, nevermind Hindus, nevermind Muslims.
We're all just suffering in this ocean and let's help each other out.
It's kind of a beautiful message.
Um, and so I'm saying there was a positivity to the idea of the,
the, the, okay, this miserable suffering, but with it comes this
great refuge and this great hope.
And, but I just wanted something more ordinary over time.
Like the powerful poetry of like, I, I surrender and you know, I give up.
I'm helpless.
I let go.
Play me, place me as an.
Place me as one of the atoms at your feet, right?
Mm-hmm.
That's what he asks for in the final verse.
And I know, I know no one but you as my Lord and you shall remain so even
though you handle me roughly, uh, by your absence, you know, so it's, it's
this great song of longing and, well, one thing that Catholic book, I read
Richard Rohr talk, a couple of really fascinating things that I took from it.
Is that this Western enlightenment idea of progress Mm.
Is not the same as the Christian idea of suffering.
No.
Like there isn't, in Catholicism, there's no assumption of
any progress for humanity.
Well, sure.
Like yes.
And I was like, you know, like the high Christians are much the same.
They're like, we're not gonna get any better.
That's a relief when you.
Yeah, like I've grown up in this hyper uh, atheist, hyper-rational world where
we can evolve, our humanity can, things are basically getting better, you
know, like things will be sorted out.
And then essentially, well, no, that's Stephen Pinker.
Things are already getting better proper.
Yeah, I've read, I've read Proper Marxist, like I've read a bit of Pinker.
We are gonna make it better.
Yeah, I've read, I've read a few, couple of Pinker books and loved them actually.
Well, you know, he was on the island.
Um.
Yeah.
But, uh, the other idea that Richard Raw talks about is
that God suffers along with us.
Yes, that's right.
And the, that we spoke about it a bit last week with process, theology process and,
and, uh, but that, that's ground of being.
That's, yeah.
Wow.
That's a God I can believe in Sam.
Well, that's why Chean came to Earth as an.
As an incarnate.
Okay.
So Krishna incarnated themselves as Chaitanya manifesting the female
potency in a male body in North India 540 years ago, to basically for God
to incarnate themselves as their own servant and to suffer along with humans.
Yeah.
Which is what Christ did too.
So this is a very familiar story and I'm gonna accuse.
Some people in North India of taking some cues from missionaries and going, let's
refashion Hinduism here a little bit.
Yeah.
In response to some outside threats, I think that's what was going on.
So I still, yeah.
Get an aversion whenever I see the word Jesus.
Yeah.
But now that, but you see something in the idea of God choosing
to suffer alongside humans.
You see something in that.
Well, you know, I'm in, I'm in suffering with my kids at the moment.
Yes, we're all in suffering.
Ah, yes.
The parent suffers when the child suffers.
Yes.
Yeah.
So I don't see the world at the moment as a particularly
happy place in a lot of ways.
It's, it's a scary place and it's unpredictable and Yep.
There's a lot of cruel in that.
Yes.
Horrible things happen, not just, I'm not talking about
obviously in the bigger world.
Yeah.
But in our little world, it's a scary place at the moment.
Yeah.
So, but there's some solace in the idea of a God that's trying to help me, but
suffering along with me as opposed to a God who has forsaken me, who's an
all mighty or a God who doesn't exist.
That's right.
Or a God that's almighty and yet chooses not to help me.
Yeah.
Or a God that's given my kids epilepsy.
I can't come at that either.
That's right.
Like I don't want that.
God.
That's right.
Like so.
Yeah.
Anyway.
I'm not saying I'm about to become a Christian either.
I don't think I'm gonna become a Christian.
I don't think I'm gonna become a Buddhist.
I think I'm gonna stick around my addiction recovery circles and do
the secret stuff that I do there that I can't talk about on the show.
And I think I'm gonna try and find the depth there, Sam.
Mm-hmm.
'cause there it's non-denominational.
Mm-hmm.
There you can be open to Christianity and Buddhism.
And you know, there I might find some meaning and some sanity, but I, I wanted
to ask you, we should wrap it up soon.
Mm-hmm.
But I wanted to ask you mm-hmm.
You've got a very busy mind.
It's true.
I've never really seen you relax ever in the 25 years I've known you.
It's No, it's a rare occasion.
Do you ever rest in natural great peace?
Well, this is what I was gonna say, the thing I've left out, so
I hope I've tried to convey just like a sliver of my experience of
the power and majesty and, and.
Beauty and terror and, and, and po poetry of these ideas comes karma and samsara.
That to me, these were not small words.
These were big, big words.
No, that's good.
What you just said then it's really good.
Maybe I haven't absorbed it.
'cause I've been thinking about Yeah.
Catholicism while you're talking about Well, there's some power and terror
and majesty in some of those ideas too.
Yeah.
I mean, you're going into a room and there's a guy bleeding out
of his fucking hands on a cross.
Yeah.
And some motherfuckers nailed him to it.
I mean, it's pretty epic.
Like, it's quite intense.
And like the HARs are also equally intense.
Like did you see that?
Yeah.
And the, did you see that cartoon I posted on, um, Instagram?
Yeah.
The aliens come down and they see Jesus.
Yeah.
Crucified one alien says to another, we better get the fuck out outta here.
These people are crazy.
That's right.
That's true.
And that's right.
I, I'm like, to this day I've spent about.
Five minutes of my life ever thinking about Jesus.
I've just, yeah, the guy does.
It doesn't.
I read the Sermon on the Mountain.
I love what he had to say there, but I haven't ever eng because you know
there's an exoticism with the Buddhism.
So the Buddhism comes to the west.
Yes.
Through like Alan Watts and Jack Kerouac and all those figures,
and Thomas Merton in the fifties.
Yeah.
By the time I'm picking up the beats and I'm reading that, and
Carol acts really into Buddhism, there's this exoticism and it seems.
Cool.
Yes.
Buddhism has always seemed to me like a pretty cool religion.
Oh, no, no, no.
You can imagine, you can imagine how Christianity was feeling when, whereas
Christianity always seems so fucking blah.
You know, just in the background of our, like there's churches on the corner,
it's cringe, but you never go in there.
Yeah.
It's cringe.
Yeah.
The other week I was outta church run, dropping center for work and they
invited me into the worship service.
Yeah.
And I went in.
And they started singing terrible out tune songs.
And I was like, got the fuck outta there after 30 seconds.
And I went in there with an open mind, Sam, I was like, oh,
maybe I'll become a Christian.
Well, do you know what the, the gateway drug for a lot of people
into the Hari's is the food, right?
Yeah.
And for, for a lot of, for, for me, if there was gonna be a gateway drug into
Christianity, it was gonna be, you know.
Allegory Misre, the music of Thomas Tallis, you know, these beautiful hymns,
these glorious, like this is massive choirs, this chi singing to, yeah.
Anyway, I, no, no, a hundred percent we not hit about Christianity.
See?
No, no, no, no.
That's what I'm saying.
Christianity, when it's done well, has an incredible vibe.
And the Harry Christner worked really hard on the vibe, you know?
And Protestantism can sometimes lack vibe.
And then Catholicism is like, it's a multimedia, you know, like
a stained glass, incense music.
It's like, it's, it's, it's wow.
The rubes with some color and sound and aroma and it, and, and
Latin and sort of obscurantism.
And guess what?
It's a pretty, it's got something to it.
And I would, I would love to go to Cambridge.
And have even song and go to all the little chapels where the
colleges, the college choirs will sing astonishingly beautiful music.
Oh, I'd like to go to Harlem and see some of the gospel.
Yeah, and I would like, I would like to see gospel brass.
I would like to witness a proper revival.
Church experience and, um, try and fill the spirit in me.
So is, yeah.
Are you, are you solidly as religion at its best, is life
affirming and a, a place of great support and fellowship and comfort?
At its worst, it tells you your shit.
Yeah.
Where are you at the moment on the scale from agnostic to atheist to believer?
'cause you're often, you, you often get a bit stuck sitting on the fence.
Mm.
Well, I and I, I think because if I got raised with the ideas
of karma and Samsara, yeah, I think they would sit there.
'cause you know, every Catholic is a lapsed Catholic who's worried that
they're getting in trouble with God.
Yeah.
Are you worried that, you know, karma's kicking your ass or something
you've done in the past life is cursing you or no, that you're on
an infinite ocean of suffering?
Mm, I certainly don't you worry just in the back of your mind, or three in the
morning, or when No, not especially.
I mean, I think there's a lot to be said for acknowledging
that life can be difficult.
And, but adopting this posture of the, the, the, that we're basically completely
and utterly at the mercy, and we just, we just have to surrender and just take
100% unconditional refuge in the one.
I'm like, well, okay, maybe.
Also, uh, the, the idea that this world is just an unmitigated shithole, and let's
get out of here as quickly as we can.
Do, you know, down there downstairs High Street, right, there's some
graffiti and posters over it now, which I'm okay with because
everything's temporary, right, Joe?
But like, uh, it was just this simple piece of graffiti, not stylized, just,
just fairly even thickness of lettering.
Nothing fancy.
And it just said in black on a red brick wall.
Love this world.
Yeah.
And then I just looked at that so many times.
Yeah, I like that a lot.
I painted a little watercolor of it and I was like, you know what,
maybe we could call this episode.
Love this World.
I think.
I think that's right.
Okay.
Love one another.
Love this world.
It's like the Beatles said, right?
All you need is love.
Yeah, we've said that before on this show.
Yes.
That was the conclusion of all my eight hours of mental gymnastics on LSD was I
came to the same conclusion as them on their LSD, which is, all you need is love.
All you need is love all.
You ended up where Bob Marley ended up.
All this fussing and of fighting.
I want to know, Lord, I want to know.
We should really love each other in peace and harmony and, and you
know, and you, it's true though.
Oh, what's so funny about peace, love, and understanding what's so funny about it.
That's right.
Yeah, exactly.
Well, I tell you what, it is very funny when you have peace,
love, and understanding, 'cause you experience mirth and joy.
It's a wonderful thing.
Yeah.
And, and this is why I say, look, if sense, love this world, love this
world, love these people around you.
And there's actually a version of Christianity that I think is
the right one, and I think that's exactly what it's saying to do.
And not all this stuff about guilt and fear and sin.
It's like, well, yeah.
The, my understanding of sin, and I've said this a hundred times on the
pod, and I've listened to theologians try to explain this, that the real,
to me, the real meaning of sin is you, you didn't rise to the occasion.
You didn't love another human being.
The way they needed at that time, and that you may also experience that emptiness in
the relation with others because of that.
And so basically try to be, try to be loving and forbearing with one another
and you'll receive the same and, and don't try and hide your shame and don't try and.
Pretend you're perfect.
Don't put yourself above others and like let's, you know, there's
something very beautiful about that.
And the Harrys were trying to get at that too a lot of the time.
A sort of humility and fellowship, which is a beautiful thing.
But on the other hand, relentlessly focused on trashing this world
and going, this joint is shit.
Let's get outta here.
And I'm like, I just don't wanna look.
Sounds a bit like someone who wants to move to Mars.
Well, it's, it'd be it, you're right.
It's a hundred percent like that.
And a lot of those hurs that were a little on the firebrand side, a lot
of them now, uh, they love, uh, uh, a Bannons, you know, traditionalism
and let's bring back the caste system.
Right.
And let's put women in their place.
Yeah.
They've gone a bit right wing.
They've gone epically right wing.
Yeah.
Right.
Some of these, some of these people right wing horrors.
Yeah.
They're like, Krishna wants us to bring back the good old
days and the proper rules.
And it's like, bro, no.
And so.
But it is certainly true that having this really busy mind of mine has been
quite a tum ult at times, and a torment, an intolerable torment at other times.
But you know, now.
I'm able to kind of ordinarily find my consciousness a bit more.
And you chuck a few Western style medications in sort
the brain department as well.
So I've done some Western science.
Yeah, I've got some Eastern bullshit and some western science and I've,
and I've combined them and also, well, what have I started doing
again recently playing music.
And that's a great comfort and it answers so many needs in the soul
and friendship and all these things.
And I've also experienced profound exhaustion and rediscovered the
meaning of beat, you know, Jack Moriarty, the glorious elevated Wow.
And, and this state of like letting go of the distinctions between things and
all of that until you realize No, no, no.
I now have to put the distinctions between things back together.
'cause I'll need to be at work tomorrow maintaining distinctions between things.
As Jeremy, as Mark says to Jeremy, you know, in, in peep show, you
know, sometimes we need the boxes.
Sometimes people need to be in compartments.
and so that's true.
And so just to just, but I'm more content sitting with the like, okay, I can have
peace, love, and mung beans at times and I can have, uh, just do your job best
you can other times, and maybe I can bring the two together a little bit, but.
I don't want to live in that sort of like, yes, I have the neurotic mind.
It gets run down and exhausted by its own action.
Right.
And the only thing to do is to just let it beat you and just know
when you're beaten and go to sleep.
Right?
Yeah.
And to, to me, this is a poem about knowing when to quit and
just, just, ah, but you rest in natural, great peace in meditation.
You don't fall asleep.
That's right.
That's the difference.
So it, so you do need sleep in order to be able to meditate.
Well, is one thing I've heard.
But, but that also you need to cultivate consciously the ability to let go
of thoughts as they arise and Yeah.
And that's the, that's the key awareness is the sky and the thoughts
are just clouds passing through.
I think that's true.
Chat, GPT says that to me every day.
'cause I told it once that that's what I wanted to believe.
So it reminds me about that.
All the time.
Yeah.
And so I think this is it.
It tells you, uh, look, and it's good to have the reminder.
That's why people, we were told to go to church every week get the reminder.
Yeah.
But like the, it's, it's like, I think this is just a very, I think it's a nice,
powerful piece of poetry about how your, your mind is a cause of a lot of problems
and not a lot of solution to many things.
And, and that you just, you might have to just get exhausted by it.
And surrender and try to, try to actually develop peace within, uh, that's really,
it's just a, it's just a call to like attend to that and it's a song of praise
for like a process that has done so much to help this person and others.
Hmm.
So very good.
I think we should leave it there, Sam.
Yeah.
Thanks for having me in your, your apartment.
You, its rainy afternoon.
Thanks for being here.
It's been great.
It's nice here.
All right.
See you, mate.
All right.
See ya.