Ever wonder what it would be like to quit everything to find more meaning and purpose? Our first guest, Jay Vidyarthi (@jayvidyarthi), did just that when he and his wife abandoned their city life and moved into a monastery. They came back with some life-altering surprises.
Jay is an award-winning UX or “User Experience” designer and researcher. Named by Forbes as one of the “top 10 world-renowned meditation tech experts”, Jay specializes in using a human-centred approach to creating useful products, services, and systems. He led the design behind Muse, a brain-sensing headband that introduces mindfulness through real-time neurofeedback. Jay helped launch A Mindful Society – an annual conference in Toronto where leaders discuss how to integrate mindfulness and compassion into society.
Highlights:
- Living with Intention
- Experience of Monastic Life
- Questioning Our Inner Stories
Resources:
- Jay’s blog article: How the Scottish Highlands Inspired Us to Leave Toronto for a Residential Mindfulness Centre
- Monastic Academy
- Shinzen Young
We hope you enjoy!
Listen:
Clear Space: a poem by Thal (inspired by this episode):
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Adrian
Welcome Jay. Welcome to the show.
Jay
Thanks for having me.
Adrian
Yeah it was really tempting to come up with a bunch of questions, since it’s our first one we’re nervous, and to have some structure behind this conversation but somehow we both kind of withheld that urge and we want to keep it pretty open and it’s exciting because I think there’s just a lot of overlap in terms of your interests and ours. And for the show you know just sort of the intentions behind it but maybe a good place to start is to kind of go back to the beginning of a very interesting journey you’ve been on a few months ago. Talk about the genesis of it, how you were inspired to embark on this journey and give us some colour as to what’s been happening to you.
Jay
Yeah. Um so let’s go to the Isle of Skye in Scotland. It’s a beautiful island and my wife and I lived in Toronto decided to go on a vacation there’s something about Scotland was calling to her. I don’t know. I had done a lot of travel to like tropical places but it’s a bit more rugged up there and I’ve been to Scotland before but mostly to like Edinburgh and the city you know going there for work and obviously the work is in the city. So we flew right into Inverness which is like that kind of the capital of the Highlands took off to the Isle of Skye directly which is what people usually do as a day trip and we just got a cabin on the Isle of Skye for a week and we just sort of lived there amongst… I mean this overwhelming feeling that almost every day at some point this feeling that this is one of the most beautiful things I’ll ever see in my life you know and I’ve done a decent amount of travel and there’s not a lot of places where I feel that power and I think part of it was that it was a little bit underpopulated like there was no it wasn’t overrun with tourists. Maybe there’s a couple over there hiking once in a while but mostly pretty abandoned I remember this one moment we’re walking the coral beach. This is the beach made of corals. There was like a rainbow. And you know the clouds are so close to the earth. So you’re seeing these like rays of sunlight over the ocean and I’m watching the sun not set but like it’s the sun is behind the clouds. The sun is coming out from behind the clouds just as it’s about to set. So there’s like a little strip of visible sky between the land and the clouds and the sun is like coming out and setting at the same time and I’m watching this and there is no one else around and I’m like it just in awe of the sheer beauty of this and that night we went back to our cabin had a glass of scotch and we put the fire on and we were watching the fire the way we may be watched TV in Toronto and we’d sort of come home put the fire on and just sit there and watch it with a glass of scotch and we were looking at it and I don’t remember if it was my wife or me but someone was like just in just in a moment like what the fuck are we doing in Toronto!?
Just you know like this is so much beauty in the world. And that conversation spiralled into realizing we came to Toronto for certain reasons that were no longer certain opportunities that were no longer a part of our lives. And now we’re living in this ridiculously fast pace city. Working jobs we don’t necessarily like that much to pay for the rent to live in this city and generally are quite stressed and overwhelmed and there was just this moment where we were you know we came back from that trip and it was so clear to us that we needed to leave we need to do something different. And then the mission became well let’s figure out what to do. Do we quit our jobs what do we do about money. How do we make this work. But from that trip onward it wasn’t a question that we were going to leave it was just now logistical. It was like OK do we… Where do we go? What do we do? But we knew we were going to mix things up and so you know I think I owe a lot to that beautiful sky. You know it’s a well named island the ‘Isle of Skye’ because it truly the sky is just epic. Every day there like we saw rainbows just sheep prancing the fields and it was just unbelievable.
Adrian
So walk us through those five months so you got this inspiration from just the sheer beauty of Scotland. And now you’re back in the city and back to your normal lives at the time. So what was going on in your heads and how did that conversation continue until you finally deciding to make a move?
Jay
So there’s definitely self-doubt and a desire to sort of keep that fire burning and at some point I realized that the job that I was in was really not a fit and… I don’t know my wife might see it differently. But for me it was like if I just quit this job then I have to do something because I won’t be able to… I have savings and stuff. But the way I think about money it’s like if money’s not coming in it’s very irresponsible to be spending it. So if I just quit this job I’m just going to make space and this is something I’ve experienced in my life before that. Often we have all these ideas of things we want to do but we don’t make space for them to grow. You know I feel like a very powerful metaphor is the way plants grow in a garden which is that like if you don’t clear that space for a new flower to bloom then nothing’s going to bloom. And so we often just fill our days up and then say oh but love to read that book but like there’s no time. So I knew that if I just got rid of that job it would just you know light a fire under our asses and we’d have to figure shit out. [Laugh] Pardon my French but we would have to so I just quit.
So I went in and and my wife had more doubt than I did at this moment but I was just like no we have to we have to do this. And so I quit. And like she had doubt but she also kind of really didn’t like her job at the time so she was also really excited at the idea that we might do something and then as we actually started to take the steps she became very very excited about like what the possibilities were now that we had space to explore them.
Adrian
So you were the first one that made the move so you quit before she did?
Jay
Uh… I think so yeah I think that’s right. Though we do things together. So like I mean I wouldn’t have done it without her blessing. I certainly was like I won’t get into specifics but there was some stuff going on at that job that I was like I needed to get out. So I was like yes I need to do this right now. And she’s like well I’ll slowly make my decision. But yeah I was pretty quick to it.
Thal
It’s just it’s amazing because there are a lot of people out there that are working jobs that they don’t like and have a hard time making that decision. So it’s like it’s amazing to hear your rationale behind it and how you overcame that self-doubt.
Jay
There’s two things you should know about me. One is that I’ve jumped off cliffs before and they have been very challenging and not necessarily quote “successful” in the way society deems success but they’ve been personally successful that they have transformed me. I dropped out of university to go touring with a band once. I quit a cushy consulting job to go to graduate school and those were both things where like my finances went to the toilet and my future prospects went to the toilet. But I grew as a person and ended up putting myself in a better position in the end. So that’s one thing. And then the second thing is that I’m very fortunate I’m just very lucky to have a safety net so I’m able to operate in a place where I am not at dire risk of like I don’t end up I’m not going to end up on the street. I have family that I could go in with and that allows me and enables me to do these things but it also I also feel like I’ve reached a point where I feel like it’s a responsibility. My father immigrated from India and grew up in a rural village with nothing and you know he he brought our family here and built so much for us and I’m so grateful to him to have his opportunities but also I feel like it would be a total waste of all his effort for me to just work for some bank and help the bank get richer or just you know indulge myself by starting bands and not doing anything productive with it. So I feel this kind of motivation to say well I’ve got this amazing opportunity and I’m very grateful to have it. How do I make best use of it to impact others in a positive way. And so it’s a mixed blessing.
Adrian
Jay, So you wrote some of this in a blog and I remember reading the story about being inspired to go on this adventure. Remind me what were some of the big questions that you guys were asking? They sounded sort of existential in nature. Yeah talk about what were those conversations you had with your wife and how it guided you.
Jay
Yeah we got very tactical about values like we weren’t satisfied for some reason. At the time we were pretty convinced it’s because Toronto was fast paced and this life was just a loop. We were working jobs we didn’t like to pay for a lifestyle that was very fast paced. And as we got older it’s not like we were spending every night out at the pubs. So like why do we need to live on Queen Street. [Laugh] Right? So we were trying to have these value questions so we actually broke out like I’m a designer by trade so I kind of think in terms of design problems. So we broke our values out on the wall. We took a wall of our condo and broke our values out and said here’s what we value in life, at least as far as we can tell. You know we’ve got things like family, connection to nature, meaningful work, music and culture. I’m a musician so that’s like a part of it. So anyway we wrote these all out and then we said let’s look at the ways we can live our life and how they mapped to these values, right? So we just kind of took a pretty conceptual approach and said what is it about a certain lifestyle that makes… in one example close connection with family but no connection with nature and understanding that way. And as a designer we wanted to sort of explore a wide range of challenging ideas because for some reason this wasn’t working. And the real nugget of that conversation actually was that we again had moved to Toronto because she wanted to go to graduate school and there was a certain job both those things were now over. And so we were like we’re no longer living with intention we’re just here in Toronto now and we’re sustaining this lifestyle for no reason other than to sustain it. There’s no higher purpose or a reason you know. So let’s bring intention back into our lives. Let’s make an intentional decision of this next chapter and try to maximize the values that we’re trying to live with. And those are both personal values, things we enjoy and our loved ones but also external values, meaningful work and contribution to society and the world in a way that matters. So that was kind of the shape of a conversation and we literally did map it on the wall like yeah.
Adrian
Yeah the exercise sounded very rational it had quite a sort of logical approach to coming up with an answer. Was there an answer? Did you have sort of a single easy way to be like this is our new intention? Did you walk out sort of with several?
Jay
Yeah I think the emotion took place in Scotland and then it was that design thinking methodology that said I know how quickly those moments of inspiration can fall. So we might get inspired and we want to do something make some change in our lives and then three days later we’re just like you know back to looking at our phone, right? [Laugh] But that’s something I’ve learned as a designer that I work with a team and we have a moment of inspiration and I said let’s get operational about this. That’s how we’re going to actually take this inspiration and actually have an impact. So we walked away from that workshop with a couple of insights like I don’t think we had it. I think we had a bit of an answer. So one of the insights we watched is that Toronto was a place of extremes for us that in some ways it was nailing our values and in other ways it was completely abysmally failing. So that explains why we actually really liked Toronto. We love the city but somehow we’re feeling unfulfilled. We had a sense that Montreal might be a really really interesting place to go next. We love Montreal and it maps to a bunch of our values. But part of the exercise was to take extreme cases. So one of the things we put on was staying in Toronto and that’s why we explored the values of Toronto. Another extreme case we put in was moving for ideal nature. So like what if we move to that cabin in the Isle of Skye? Another thing that we put in was (were both mindfulness practitioners and meditators and I worked in that space too) was like What if we’d just like a band in this life entirely and like became monks? Just put that out there and see what that looks like. And so we started going and having these discussions and we did a little bit of meditation too like we were actually trying to visualize our lives in these areas and closing our eyes and imagining you know what who would we see? Who would the friends that we’ll see? Let’s picture their faces and see how that makes us feel and and try to answer these questions. Uh, moving for ideal nature was not a fit because we care about our friends and family and we care about meaningful work too much and like as much as we might be on the Isle of Skye and just be like “let’s move here oh let’s move here, we can just drink Scotch and look at the sky all day”. But the reality is I’m not going to be fulfilled farming. I have a certain intention of making the world a bit more mindful and a bit more compassionate and I’m working towards that in my career and I’m not ready to abandon that and we care so much about our family and friends that the isolation almost wouldn’t be worth it. You know I’m reminded of the quote the end of the book Into the Wild that the that the character writes there where I can’t remember the exact words but he just says you know like all the beauty in the world it’s not worth anything if you don’t have anyone to share it with. And so there’s this sense of like we could move to the Isle of Skye but who you know I would never see my nephews so not worth it. But the big surprise was the idea of living like monks was like stellar for our values. Because even in values like meaningful work or like starting a family which was something that we were thinking about as a potential future value we were like There’s no question that intensive mindfulness practice will better suit us for meaningful work it will equip us to navigate this complex world and try to produce meaningful impact it will better equip us to be good parents and we were just like kind of sitting back looking at that wall we had created and being like uh-oh [laugh] there’s this row here that it’s terrifying but if because of this rational approach it’s hard to deny that that amongst life like exploring a more monastic lifestyle is something that is a question we both have that aligns with our values that we’ve never really explored I mean we’ve been on short retreats, a week or two, but we’ve never really explore that. And so that was kind of like our answer in the moment.
Adrian
So was that the first thing you guys did then? You decided the monk’s life? That’s sort of the first one to experiment with?
Jay
I think it gave us a good like operational plan to actually get out of this because it’s hard to just pack your things up and just go. So having at least some direction helped us actually follow through. So once we did that we actually I think lost a lot of the self-doubt. We became more confident and we went through the plan. You know my wife Krista she quit her job we put our stuff in storage. We told our landlord we were moving out. I remember our landlord was like so where are you moving? We were like We don’t know, [laugh]. She was like “What!?” I was like “don’t ask, [laugh]” but we actually started to get operational and then I start to feel real and the momentum of it was clear because we just knew that we needed something and we had a direction to go and I had I been aware of a certain monastery that was kind of a good fit through my work and so we started a conversation with them and it started to happen and it was like a bit like “Are we really doing this? Are we really just abandoning everything?” Like we don’t have jobs now with our apartment expires at the end of the month. All we have is like our car and some suitcases like are we really going? And then we did and we left.
Thal
So before we go into that, it sounds like the key word here is intentionality. That was the thing that stood out even though and it’s like mapping out your values that’s very important. Something that I always read is if you’re stuck in life go back to your values and that should be your driving force. But even behind that there is the intention of life that you’ve got you both were on the same page in that way. And so it doesn’t matter if you didn’t know where you’re going to move as long as you know that you want. Your aim is to live that intention of life. And also something that stood out is you had mentioned that living in solitude was not the answer because you didn’t want to isolate from family. So another key thing is how to be in solitude but still be amongst people. That’s it you know so. So what happened in the monastery?
Jay
Exactly that we experienced solitude amongst people.
Thal
Amazing.
Jay
That’s what monastery life is like. It’s … a lot you know a lot of the people there live like that. That’s their life, you know. We’re visitors. We’re coming to live with them for a few months. Some of the people there had been there for years and the lifestyle is quite dramatic. Hours and hours of silent solitary meditation every day. Everyone takes care of the monasteries. We do chores but in typical Zen fashion the chores are also a meditation which was big for me personally. I have had a bad relationship with chores my whole life so I truly am not exaggerating at all when I said I had an epiphany the day that I absolutely had a blast cleaning a toilet and I was just like “this was so fun!” And it was just an epiphany for me. I was just like it’s really just me that makes this such an annoying chore. My ideas and stories about the toilet being dirty and just being gross and I have better things to do. But like if I can really just go and clean the toilet and like you know after a month of meditation and just relaxing and just you know removing the stories and the control they have on your life through these methodological practices that have basically been explored in every major cultural tradition. And so this in this particular example doing these mindfulness type practices and then going into that toilet. And this isn’t the first toilet that I cleaned. I had complained to my way through many toilets at the monastery already but to have that one time where I was just like full of energy and smile on my face and just kind of dancing a little bit as I cleaned and just looking at it and really taking a moment to look at that clean toilet and recognizing a job well done. And also the attention to detail that I put into something and then washing over me was this feeling that everyone else was going to get to use this really clean toilet that this monastery had become this metaphor for the world that these 15 people… that’s who I clean this toilet for! And it kind of dawned on me that that was the point of this practice in some sense (if there is a point) but at least a positive outcome was that I realized that the trick to enjoying cleaning a toilet was doing it for someone else. And you know I don’t even think I have to fill the space with all the implications that has the allegory for life in general that the the true flow and beauty of living for other people can be experienced with a toilet but can also be experienced with your job and with your role as a parent and your role as a human being.
Adrian
Remind me again Jay so where was this monastery and sort of what what was the traditional or were they teaching you what sort of practices were you engaging in?
Jay
So this is the Monastic Academy which is part of the Center for Mindful Learning. It’s a monastery on a mountain in Lowell Vermont. So maybe like an hour out of Burlington Vermont and it’s a non-denominational modern monastery. So the practice there focuses on two main values awakening and responsibility. And so awakening is all about the practice itself and exploring one’s self. Self-inquiry, mindfulness, compassion, those types of practices and then the responsibility aspect is in fact these monks when they’re not in intensive retreat they’ve got laptops and phones and they’re engaged with the world they’re speaking at events. They’re they’ve got a program for the school system in Vermont where they’re bringing mindfulness to the school system there. They do a Sunday sit in Burlington where a bunch of the monastics drive out to Burlington and lead meditations for the community at large. So there are sort of an engaged community. The head teacher there is a monk in the Rinzai Zen tradition but he’s also practiced with the Lakota tribe which is an indigenous people of the area. He’s also done some practice in India and Nepal I believe or maybe Nepalese practice or something like that. Some Asian more South Asian practices as well. And the whole idea of the monastery is that there is no belief system required to do these practices that in fact it’s really just sort of a psychological emotional non-denominational spiritual faith and sometimes a very well known American Buddhist teacher who’s also non-denominational named Shinzen Young comes. And so he’s had some influence on the monastery too. Mostly in terms of the language we use to talk about different techniques. So it was a really interesting place like I think the best example of of why it truly adheres to these values is the people there are all from very different walks of life different ages you know and everyone is sort of meeting together at this idea that we just need to explore awakening and responsibility in the world will be a better place.
Adrian
So what other types of people were there that you’ll meet?
Jay
Oh it’s tough to categorize people. But…
Adrian
What reasons brought them to the monastery?
Jay
Yeah it’s tough to answer on their behalf, you know? I get the sense you can sort of see some themes like there are the reactive who are like dealing with something that there is something that has happened and they’re searching for meaning in response to some event and then maybe sort of the more self exploratory proactive types of reasons where you’re like I actually just there’s got to be more to this I want to… This is this is probably more my category that I fall into like I just got to be more I want to find more in life so I’m going to go and do this exploration. But all of that dissolves away once you show up then the reasons are irrelevant because we’re all just sitting in a room with her eyes focused or closed and trying to practice.
Thal
So yes it’s interesting that you mention that contrast that you know there are those who are reactive. And then there are those who are looking for meaning and that all that dissolves in there in the monastery. So that’s yeah amazing.
Jay
It’s just a lot more than that dissolves. For us, the whole journey up to there you know two months in the in the monastery.
Thal
So what dissolves?
Jay
Yeah made all of those questions we had look very different. All those questions about Toronto about Montreal about Isle of Skye about life about jobs about meaningful work. All of those. Everything sort of looked very heady. You know after two months of practice I just saw my you know my parents have gifted me with this very conceptual mind which has served me well in some respects but I just saw these stories I was telling myself and you know who were we to map different lifestyles against values? These values are just fabrications and ideas of what we think is important. Our mapping of Montreal was just some illusion of what Montreal was like like when we went to college there and like you know there’s just so much so many assumptions and stories we’re making that have no bearing on reality. And so that all dissolve to everything dissolved so the stories that we tell ourselves and a lot of times we tell stories that are that do not serve us in a positive way.
Thal
Do you recall the moment that that dissolving happened? Is there a specific moment where you a specific meditative state or was it in that toilet? [Laugh].
Adrian
Dissolving in the toilet. [Laugh]
Jay
To be clear I wasn’t in the toilet!
Thal
Flushed it all away! [laugh]
Jay
I don’t know if there was I mean if there was a specific moment it was it was sort of a gradual process. There were many moments you know there are many moments. It’s just. But at some point I did have a 48 hour period into sort of a very dark place like they got into a really negative spiral. So you know we’re doing some days we’re doing like 14 hours of meditation a day. And it’s it’s just you know how these monks are tough. Like you have to be. You just confront yourself and all your stories. Like forget my stories about Toronto. Like my story was just “What am I doing here? We should just leave”, you know. “I’m bored. This is stupid. We’re not doing anything. This is a waste of time”. Like all these stories in the moment. And so once the things started to progress and I started to achieve a sort of balance with the fact that the monk’s life was so hard that I felt like I could even wake up at 4:00 in the morning and actually not hate it like that took that alone took four to six weeks right. But then there was this moment where I was being guided by the teacher. He’s an expert and you know as an aside one of the things I realized is that working one on one with an experienced meditation teacher is a huge huge experience that I had been kind of ignoring practicing more on my own. And and he helped me sort of dissolve this sense of of I guess algorithmic technique like which meditation techniques should I do. And he helped me just kind of recognize these stories were all related that the stories I was telling myself about why I was here what I was trying to do. We’re dissolving and then I was left with this emptiness this feeling of just hollow meaninglessness. Like everything like he’s right. This is just a story. Why am I here. Everything is just a waste just wasting my time. Nothing I can do matters. Big waste. And then I would get really emotional about that I’d feel bad. So I’d be like forget all these deep practices I’m going to go back to what I was doing before the monastery which is just focusing on my breathing, right? So I would do that and I’d be like this is just a technique to like this is all just like why isn’t it just selfish for me to just pay attention to my breathing. And so it was almost like this computer virus or something like anything I turned to appeared meaningless and then and I was really like freaking out about it because I was like I can’t even. You know my wife’s there and what we are in a silent retreat. I wasn’t able to talk to her and I’m just like it’s just meaninglessness everywhere. Like I don’t understand what to do about this. But at some point there was if if there is a moment there was a moment where I realized that this was not a bad thing. That in fact like you said the stories we tell ourselves are often holding us back, so what if I take this, you know, ray gun of meaninglessness and pointed back to Scotland back to Toronto, back to all of these questions I’m asking myself, and then I just had this incredible euphoric 48 hours of just shattering through all of these meaningless stories that had been holding me back and guiding my behavior that, sure, it was very heartbreaking to see the meaninglessness of some of the things that I held dear, but it was also empowering to shatter the meaninglessness of some of the illusions that I’ve been holding for years.
Adrian
Jay, you mentioned, so during the 48 hours of that dark period you, you consulted the teacher, um, was there something that he shared that you remember that kind of helped move you towards the epiphany?
Jay
In the monastic lifestyle, you consult the teacher every day, sometimes twice a day. And so, um, he generally was pointing to… I mean, I’ve done a fair bit of meditation before this and he’s very, he was very skillful and not saying anything. So it’s hard to like, like it’s not like something that he said, it was about the kind of long progression of noticing what I was doing and helping me point that out and you know, I don’t know if it’s the school system or modern society or whatever, but part of my ego or my pride comes from like being good at something. I remember being on the soccer field as a kid. Like you get rewarded when you do well and you get kind of ignored when you don’t. And so everyone’s trying to do their best and, and the reason we’re trying to do our best is we want to be acknowledged. We want to be acknowledged. And he slowly started kind of turning a mirror on the fact that I wanted him to acknowledge me. And the way he did that was by directly acknowledging and then saying, so what? You know, so not in not so many words. He’s like, great, you’re here, you’re at a monastery, good job. You’re meditating, good job. So what? What does that matter? And I’m like, here’s this guy that’s supposed to be like so happy with me that I’ve like come to meditate, like I’m coming. And he was like, so what? Who cares? He’s just sort of pointed. There’s got to be more than that. Is that all there is? And so he’s helping me like kind of cut through these stories about why I’m practicing and that I think is what, what sort of generated the spread. But like as I started to realize that just practicing meditation for meditation’s sake is meaningless. That sort of spread into everything else. Like none of this is really meaningful unless you apply it to some other end and as again, to follow that theme. Once I shattered the things I held dear and the things that were holding me back, all I was left with, with space, just open space and potential. And the natural human, at least in my, the natural human instinct to fill that space is with love and compassion. Why is this meaningful? Because I can use this to be a better husband. I can use this to be a better person. I can use this to be a better family member. I can use this to… I can employ these things, right? They call it a practice for a reason. You’re practicing for something and if you’re just doing that for its own sake, that would be like going to soccer practice every week and never playing a game. You’ve got your practicing for something, you’re making space for something and then the question is what are you making space for it? I think the answer is different for everyone, but that was a big turning moment and, and he was really instrumental in helping break the stories of why I was meditating, which then spread into breaking all the other stories too.
Adrian
So what motivated you guys to leave the monastery? When did you know you’re ready to get going?
Jay
Yeah, so we, at first we were gonna leave after about a month or so, and there was this the sense of should we leave or not? And during one of the times where we weren’t silent, my wife and I were talking about it and we were kind of like flip flopping like we should go, but it would be good to stay. And in reality this is just really, it’s a really hard lifestyle, just like really, you’re literally, you know, six days a week you’re waking up at 4:30 in the morning and just starting to meditate. And we were there in the winter and there was a blizzard up on the mountain in Vermont. And so there’s an hour exercise period and from 5:30 to 6:30 morning, 6:30 to 7:30 in the morning, something like that. And normally you might go do some yoga or hit the exercise bike or something. But the blizzard was snowing in on the mountain. So one of the monks which has come in and be like, hey for exercise period we’re all shovelling. And so there was a week or so on a silent retreat. We’re meditating, you know, 12 to 14 hours a day. And in our one hour period where I normally would have tea and do yoga and just like try to collect myself, I’m strapping on my winter gear at six in the morning with a shovel and getting out there in a blizzard and clearing, not like a, like a suburban driveway. Like this is a mountain, like a, a huge road from like the top of the mountain down to the entrance of our area and there’s just 14 of us shovelling and it’s just dark still and you know, it’s hard. So like, you know, we would came out of that retreat and we were a little bit just like some of it was like we’re done with some of the heart shift to in. Well it was kinda like, no, it was more, it was funny, it was more like self congratulatory. It’s like we did it, we did the retreat, let’s go. But like underlying was this like fear? And at some point I kind of realized that I was trying to run away and I was like no, I’m going to, should we should be confronting this. And my wife and I have a bit of that dynamic. We’re a good team, like I’m pretty adventurous and she’s able to sort of pull me back when a little too adventurous and she’s very emotional, emotionally intelligent. And so she’s able to notice when I’m… She notices that I’m stretching myself before I know, but then sometimes that allows her to be a little bit like I’m introverted so she, she’ll turn inward and be like, no, we should go and she won’t really explain why. And so we had a conversation with one of the head monks there and we said, yeah, we’re thinking about leaving. And he was like, yeah, but you know, you should stay, but it’s up to you. And then, um, so we had another conversation about it. We decided, listen, we gotta leave, we’ll go do something else. This has been amazing experience. Glad we experienced it, but we’re not going to be amongst the rest of our lives. I think that’s clear. So it’s time to go. So we’re like, okay. And then we had planned another conversation with a monk. We show up with a monk and he’s like, so what did you guys decide? And then my wife was like, “I think we’re going to stay” like in the middle of conversation. I was like, what!? And then when she said that, and I remember looking at her, I didn’t know where it came from and that was the kind of point where I realized like, wow, she is really transforming too, as a part of this practice, the way I’m going through all this. So is she. And I’m like so curious to like have some time to really explore that with her and like share our journals a little bit. But anyway, she was like, what? Stay? And I was like, yeah, okay. So we decided to stay the second month and stayed for another whole silent retreat period, which was very intense.
And then afterwards, um, after that second or after that next silent retreat period, we packed her stuff up and left, which was emotional.
Adrian
Yeah. I can’t imagine. Um, so like at this point it’s like stepping out of this little bubble. What was the re-entry like into non-monastic Society?
Jay
Yeah. One of the big things that we haven’t touched on about the monastic life is community. Like there are just such amazing people that I met there like people that I met for two months, but I know I will stay in touch with many of them for the rest of my life. They’re just amazing people. Very like-minded and we just got to connect on such a deep level because you’re often in this silent retreat period. But on the day off you’ve all been meditating all week and you know, I’d pull out my guitar and there was another guy down there who played guitar and another guy who was a songwriter and we would start jamming and other people would start dancing. And that was the day off at the monastery. And just like everyone is just so jubilant, you know, it’s kinda like in Canada here when the snow melts and like summer happens the first week of summer. Like the city is just alive because everyone is like, Woo, let’s wear shorts. The shirts come out exactly right, so it’s similar like you’ve been doing this retreat and then you have a day off and everyone’s like cooking for each other and taking care of each other and like connecting really deeply, like opening up emotionally about what we experienced and there’s such a strong sense of community and so part of it was like, ironically I came down from the mountain in Vermont to the city of Burlington, Vermont and felt isolated and it was like so true about our cities in general that that they’re very isolating ironically because you’re surrounded by people but you don’t have the opportunity. And again, the space to have these deep relationships form the way we did it, the monastery, so everything felt fast paced, everything felt busy and we felt a little isolated. We went to Burlington for a few days and it’s such a cute little town and we already felt a bit overwhelmed. Our plan was to go up to Montreal to confront the illusions we had about Montreal and say what is it really like in the moment? But we couldn’t because it just felt like too overwhelming. So we ended up getting a, like a bnb in the middle of nowhere, like in the suburbs. And we just spent three days. My wife and I just decompressing and trying to re-acclimatize to like society and we went for a walk in that neighbourhood and we just picked it on airbnb. But we ended up being in quite a wealthy little neighbourhood. We were in this little guest room and this little and we went for a walk and I still remember to this day we’re walking in this neighbourhood of mansions and just, it was just a ghost town and it was like, you know, millions of dollars worth of property. Maybe someone like coming out to put something in the trunk of their car. And I was just overwhelmed with this feeling like this is what the winners of our society are fighting for. To be isolated in their own little castles and kingdoms and be completely removed from having to deal with any other human being except their own family. And like I just saw the cabin fever. I saw the illusion of what wealth is supposed to bring guys. And I compared that to this, you know, one of these houses, houses the same size of one of these houses, a monastery with 15 people living in it that have nothing, no possessions really, and just full of love and community and wellbeing and balance and working on themselves actively versus this field of equivalent monasteries where one person lives in each monastery and they’re all just machines of emptiness in isolation. And it was just. I was like, this is why it’s so hard to acclimatize to the society because this is the society I’m coming back to.
Thal
And so it’s the monastic life that taught you the importance of connection and relationship. Whereas the image that we have of money, like, you know, some people have a negative image of, of a monastic life that it’s isolating. And what’s the point? And clearly you’ve addressed, um, the points and also something that comes up for me is when you, you guys were deciding whether to leave or stay. And so, um, there’s, there’s a thing there where, um, when you’re trying to make a decision in your life and move on from one phase to another, it’s like, did I learn my lesson? Is my lesson here done and is it time for me to… So, you guys were sitting with that and it’s just lovely to see the dynamic between you and your wife and your wife decided to stay. Obviously there were more lessons for you guys to learn. And so what (happened) after the monastery?
Jay
When we had talked about leaving, we had this dream of, it’s actually something we’ve talked about for years, but I’ve driving to the Atlantic Ocean, like getting out into the maritimes. But because of what you just said in the empower, the power of connection and how important it is, we actually decided to go spend quality time with family, so he came out of the monastery and in our lifestyle in Toronto working these jobs and maybe I’d go visit my parents or they’ve come up for dinner or we’d maybe go for a weekend to see Krista’s family or, or you know, visit are my brother and her sister and our little nephews, but not really any quality time. Like it was always a couple of days. So we spent like a week plus with each of our close family members in the area. So we lived like, you know, basically roommate up. And it was beautiful. We got to spend real time, we got to become part of the family a little bit and just hang out and, you know, uh, help take care of some things. And you know, like take care of the kid. Well my brother and his wife went for a movie and like, you know, and also just spend some real quality time talking about all this stuff and sharing. And, you know, just in a way that we hadn’t enough, I don’t know how else to say it and we just hadn’t enough and it’s so beautiful and I feel like we’ve been closer with all of our family as a result of this journey. And also there was this sense of like, I had this land, like I wouldn’t say this out loud, but I had this lens of just seeing again these families living in isolation in their houses and these are my family, you know, and Krista’s family living in isolation in their houses and like, and how happy a moment it was for us to come and visit and crash. And like, at first I was like, I’m sorry, we’re going to be here for like a week. We have nowhere else to go. But in fact our families were so lucky to have such willing family to host dies. And also that he really enjoyed having us there because we’re family and we love each other and it’s like, like we’re, we’ve become so strange that I was like, oh, I’m sorry. We’re crashing. Like, no, we’re family. We all, we all should be able to, to crash and like, but a part of it is that we all kind of live in isolation. Then it’s lovely to have guests and um, that was kinda part of that same understanding that it wasn’t some antagonistic, oh, these rich people in suburban Quebec. Like, no, this is me, this is how I live, this is how my family lives. We’re all in this society of isolation and that effort to put in, be put in to keep our family together, effort needs to be put in to keep our friendships strong. Um, and that’s, you know, that’s that huge lesson of connection and relationship and its importance. So after we did that, then we drove to the Atlantic Ocean. So we actually made the trip and our intention was to not plan anything ahead and so to be in the moment and to acknowledge the risk and the feelings of anxiety and uncertainty would not plan to get out. So we just drove and we had a tent and we had some camping gear and we knew with our phones and stuff we could probably book hotels as needed and we didn’t decide specifically where to go and we just drove.
So, uh, we spent a solid maybe month or two just driving aimlessly. I across the maritimes eventually, I mean we went through northern back light revere the Lou and then down to like New Brunswick and then through Nova Scotia, down to Halifax and then out to Cape Breton and did a mix of like B&Bs and camping and explore this really challenging experience of you’re driving on the road in the middle of the country. It’s six or 7:00 PM. You don’t know even which town you’re going to stay in tonight and you’re just sort of like, let’s go this way, let’s go that way. And then like trying to make plans last minute and sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t.
Thal
And during that month when you were driving, how did you, like, were you still using social media? Were you still in touch with friends and family or did you guys just decide to…
Jay
Yeah, I generally have reduced my use of that stuff like even before the monastery, so I just sort of doubled down on not, I don’t have any of that stuff early on my phone. I can text my mom and um, I have emails so keep keep people up to date on email and we use messenger. We have a little family group on Messenger so would share some pictures and people would send some well wishes, but I wasn’t like connected to my larger social network at all. Like W, I don’t even have a facebook account really. I don’t ever use it. And uh, I do use twitter. I’m a twitter user but I wasn’t on twitter at all during this trip. Like I don’t have it on my phone so, so not really. Yeah.
Thal
I love how you mentioned staying late just before the road trip, staying with family, how that gave you a different perspective because from the outside, often especially when families are not in good relations from the outside, everybody looks like, oh, they got it together. They are okay. But staying with the family and seeing the day to day, um, you know, gives a different perspective, a more empathy.
Jay
It’s sort of all came together. It just in that experience, realizing the, the stories we tell ourselves as you put it and this conceptual way of thinking is a tool that can be used to great end. It’s a tool that can be used for evil but not every situation requires a fully conceptual approach and that not every problem needs to be thought through. And in fact, in some ways our conceptual mind’s can trick us and so going to Montreal versus trying to map the values of Montreal on my wall while I’m sitting in Toronto are two very different exercises and they had very different light on whether we want to move to Montreal or not. Driving out on a wild adventure trip with no plans and living day by day sounds like a very romantic idea, but it’s extremely challenging. The idea of living the rest of my life by the seat of my pants like that does not seem good for anybody. You know, like it’s a. It was an interesting experiment, right? Like going out to the ocean and in spending some time out there, nature is just not conceptual. It’s just isn’t and we are part of nature, except we are the conceptual part of nature. We are the storytellers and so part of it is acknowledging and loving the fact that I have this storytelling mine, but being aware that that’s just my mind’s default mode to approach a problem. You know when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. So I’m aware that my mind wants to over conceptualize every problem it confronts and just as I learned in the monastery, sometimes it’s we’re taking a step back and just feeling the wind on your skin and noticing the sway of the trees and saying, is this really a conceptual? Is this conceptual approach really serving me? Is a story that I’m telling really serving me because often the stories can lead to deep illusions about what’s really happening. Um, and that, that realization on the trip is that like, I think the way when I say it comes together, it’s because thinking back to that idea that, oh, we’re leaving Toronto because things are too fast paced or whatever. There’s so many sort of assumptions and stories like assumption that Toronto is the problem. Even though I’m living in one particular apartment with one particular lifestyle, with one particular job in one particular neighbourhood and I’ve already branded the whole city as wrong and not good for me. The idea that Montreal is so beautiful and we should move there based on some memory of how my wife and I met in Montreal back in our college days versus walking around Montreal and actually looking at potential places to live, which we did while we were there. And saying Montreal is just another city. It’s a beautiful city. It’s great, but it’s not like the answer to everything. I’m not going to move to Montreal and everything is just going to be perfect. The grass was greener, you know, and same with driving out to the country and living a vagabond-ish life, you know, and spending the road trip like living in the monastery, all of them have their ups and downs and the idea that any of them are going to be the absolute answer that’s gonna solve all my problems was just a complete illusion. And it was a complete example or maybe a perfect example of my mind’s propensity to paint things black and white.
Adrian
I love it because, I mean, you mentioned it’s so easy to romanticize this sort of an experience, you know, you read about it in novels or you watch it on, you know, in movies
Jay
…or hear about it on the podcast.
Adrian
That’s right. Yeah. Yeah. For people listening who are like “oh that sounds great, but I can never do that”. But often these insights aren’t always so profound. You know, I remember reading your article about the return, the decision to return back to Toronto and how, you know, honestly, there’s no real pearl of wisdom that you can come back with to share with people that are like dying to hear. So what’s the secret? What’s the secret of happiness and meaning? And that the acceptance of not knowing sounded like a big sort of perspective shift for you guys?
Jay
Absolutely. Like I think when we were mapping this stuff out on the wall, I mean we were, I was taking a design approach. I was trying to find a solution to some deeply emotional, spiritual discomfort that I was feeling. And um, you know, I think what I learned is that there is no answer. There’s no answer to these questions that like we are human beings, we are individuals and there are things that can help us feel more connected and help us live more meaningful lives. And there are things that challenge us and things that distract us. Lots of things that distract us. But the idea that I’m going to sit there with my wife on a white board with a bunch of posted notes and solve it, it’s just a great little visual example of the way we many of us think that we just confront an obstacle or confronts them discomfort or pain and think that, oh, I just need to. I just need to fix things up a little bit. I just need to change this, change that, and then everything will be perfect. And then lo and behold, everything isn’t perfect. Whereas what you. What happens when you’re stuck doing 14 hours of meditation a day and you don’t really know where you’re going to be sleeping at night and no one seems to be answering the phone like there may not be a solution, but that’s okay. And accepting that in the moment and facing it. Putting yourself in situations where you can face it can really train you to be more at peace and at ease and ultimately to serve others because now you realize that we’re all in this together. That it is through the community at the monastery or the lovely hosts that hosted as are incredible nice people we met on the road and our families, how amazing they were to share their lives with us. It’s through other people that we can find meaning and purpose and, and, and even as I go back into the working world now, like it’s, it’s through these incredible organizations that are trying to do amazing things that I’m able to do amazing things. It’s not a solo journey. I don’t deserve full credit for anything that I’ve done. And that realization that there is no answer if you really examine it. And I mean like not just think about it. That’s my whole point here. Not just thinking about it, but like if you really examine the fact that there’s so much unknown, the inevitable conclusion is going to be love and compassion and community. And that’s I think what the world needs more of. And I think another great example of this was while we were on the road, I was doing a little bit of kind of remote consulting and advisory for an amazing organization that’s fully value aligned. It’s in the mindfulness space and uh, and they wanted me to work full time for them and be in Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin. I’ve never even, I’ve never even been to Wisconsin before I went to go visit them. And um, it was amazing. Like my mind, I just watched my mind turned the infinite potential of a universe. Here we are in a car in New Brunswick with no apartment to our names. Our stuff’s all in storage. We can do anything. But I spent days just being like Wisconsin or Montreal, Wisconsin or Montreal, Wisconsin and Montreal. Pros and cons, pros and cons or like, let’s build a decision framework. And I just kept watching myself fall into this pattern and being like, these are not the only two options and I don’t know anything about these options. I don’t know what they’re going to be like. This is not the way to make this decision. And so the idea that I’m going to sit there in that car, in New Brunswick and be like Wisconsin! It’s ridiculous. Like I don’t know anything I need to visit. I need to go meet the team, I need to spend time in Montreal. I just think about my life and to think about my wife. I need to think about our plans and like I need to not think. I need to make space to recognize that whatever answer I come up with is not the answer, there is no answer, that I have to just use what limited perspective I have of the universe to push forward in a way that I think will serve that universe the best serve others and part of serving others is making sure I can serve myself too. So I’m in a position to serve up. So it’s like a perfect example of how I just watched the conceptual storytelling mind just take all of this wonderful exploration that we’re doing and reduce it into one or two potential options just because some job opportunity came.
Thal
This is so important to apply in our lives. Um, a lot of times we become stuck because we don’t surrender to the process and, and the biggest lesson here was that, you know, you just surrendered to the process basically.
Adrian
It’s amazing as you guys are saying that I just had this visual of you talking about the infinite choice and that expansive imagination that was available and it sounded like within like a split second, it just collapsed down to a sliver. How quickly that can just all vanish. And, and so these, these practices that you’ve been talking about, you know, how necessary it is for us to perhaps have sort of structures in our lives to ensure that we keep space open, right? So we actually sort of design into our lives to have space to keep things open, to allow it to continue fermenting before we haste to acting. Um, what I want to hear from you to sort of relate to your expertise as a designer, a user experience designer, is how you’re applying that right now in this phase of reinvention, it sounds like. And in your current career, so how are those principles showing up and what does it feel like you’re heading towards right now?
Jay
Yeah, I think the Zen tradition, they calligraphers and the Zen tradition, they draw this. I don’t know if you may have seen it like the perfect circle. It’s called like an end. So I believe and they, they take a brush and they do this perfect circle. And so I think that’s a good, good answer. If I was a zen master, I would just leave it at that perfect. But no, no, exactly. But you know, the fact that I won’t leave it at, that reflects the discovery that as you say, when you make that space, then the collapsing is very, very easy to perceive. Like you’re absolutely right. As soon as I got that email or had that conversation, I watched the universe collapsed into Madison, Wisconsin, yes or no. And as soon as that collapse happened, I saw that it was a collapse. I was like, what happened? Because I had been inhabiting the space and just that awareness allowed me to not antagonize the fact that I was thinking in this way, but just actually kind of love it, that this is who I am. I’m a human being and this is how we operate and so I’m watching myself go through that process but not getting stuck on things about like stressing out about this decision and just being open and the team there were so lovely to. They knew that I was on this journey and made a lot of space for me and we had a lot of conversations and I was open with them and they were open with us and I was like watching the universe expand and collapse over and over again from infinite potential to Wisconsin. Yes or no. Infinite potential. Wisconsin, yes or no. And I think the outcome like where I’m now is that you can’t antagonize the stories either. And so I think a lot of people are stuck in the stories and some of the stories might not be productive. I think a lot of the people that I’ve met that are on the path of trying to explore this sort of stuff are in another sticky point where they think thinking is wrong and these stories are wrong. And they sit there, for example, in meditation and every time their mind wanders, they’re like, oh shit, you know, and they’re trying to not think, um, but that’s like telling you know, the cow not to moo. It’s like that’s what we do. We are storytellers, we are thinkers. And in fact, if we can love the fact that we are storytellers, we can harness that potential and use it with intention. And so ironically, I left Toronto with this intention to completely abandon this on this journey, found that these stories were kind of meaningless. And now as I come back, I’m trying to apply that storytelling mind to make effective decisions that best serve myself and others using the storytelling mind not antagonizing it. So it’s a full circle like the zen and so..
Thal
And in many ways then it’s, it’s, um, you’ve, you’ve learned to be compassionate with yourself and that, um, that contraction and expansion was no longer contradictory for you. Um, and that, and that’s the paradox of life. And, um, and I often hear this, um, to become unstuck. You have to see that the contradiction is a paradox and to be okay with it.
Jay
That’s right. And um, we have actually decided to move back to Toronto. So if that isn’t a paradox, I don’t know what is.
Adrian
That was one of the original extreme options, right?
Jay
That was the extreme option. Right. And the idea, it’s so amazing because you could look at that fact and not hear this whole story and say, oh, it looks like they made a mistake, but we did not make a mistake and this is one of the best cliffs we’ve jumped off and we are coming back to Toronto recognizing that Toronto was never the issue. It was all these little details and intentions about how we were caught up in certain stories and that was making us do certain things and making certain choices about the way we lived our lives. Stories about what our careers were about and how we’re supposed to work. Stories about our lifestyle and our, you know, housing decisions and stories about where, what neighbourhood we need to live in and renting and buying and things like that. And so it’s not Toronto, it’s all of that. So coming back in to Toronto, except with a completely different perspective of how I want to work, a completely different perspective of how we want to live a completely different perspective of Toronto itself and what it means. And a huge part of that decision was the deep discovery of community that we were prepared to go to Montreal and Wisconsin and be so much further away from family so much further away from friends. I mean, Wisconsin would have been just, we’ve just been, we don’t know anyone there. It would’ve just been the people I met through work who were lovely by the way, but still, um, and so recognizing that like, you know, we were sitting there trapped in our minds not trapped in Toronto and that this was a, a journey to question some of the assumptions, dissolve some of the stories, form a healthy relationship with the inevitable paradox and the expansion and contraction of the mind and come back to Toronto with a completely different internal mindset. I’m reminded of that other really great zen saying, which is, you know, Chop Wood before enlightenment, Chop Wood after enlightenment. I don’t know what enlightenment is, but the message of chop wood before chop wood after is the sense that like I may be coming back to chop wood, but it feels very different on the inside. Um, there’s a lot more self love, a lot more value of community, a lot more compassionate and I know and already actually have experienced that deeper connection with family and friends as I get to spend more time and value those things more so full circle.
Adrian
That’s beautiful. Yeah. I feel like this is probably a good place to sort of wind down. Just so many lessons here. I mean, I feel like a trip like this maybe maybe 10 years ago, 15 years ago, it would’ve been harder to relate to, but I get this sense that today, like sort of the time that we’re living in, in society right now, it’s not so trivial. I think these are actually questions that are surfacing into a lot of our consciousness and people seem. I mean, I know I’m having these conversations all the time with my closest friends and family, these big questions, you know, and they’re not meaningless. It really is important to kind of sit with it not rushing for a direct answer necessarily. I kind of holding that space like we’ve been talking about, um, and seeing what happens and how that guides us.
Jay
Yeah, I think. I think we have so many questions now. I think the world is moving in a way that’s demanding us to face these issues. I think our identity, our relationships, our worldviews, um, our health even are all being kind of strained in new ways that’s forcing us to really reflect in this way. And I think a journey like this may look very different for every individual may involve different types of practices, different journeys, different trips. But I think that the more universal point is that idea of questioning assumptions that we have the freedom as individuals to question some of the assumptions we live by and make more intentional decisions about how we want to live our lives. That we were living in kind of autopilot for awhile. And we had noticed that we had lost the intention, the intention became a Toronto was something that was driving us that was gone, and now we’re just on autopilot and I’m, I don’t know wh at force of the universe led us to just take a step back and question that and say, we don’t necessarily. We didn’t necessarily decide to live this way. Let’s do what we can to push forward. And what we faced were a lot of the challenges and realities that you know we can dream about living on the Isle of Skye. But the reality is it’s just selfish and that we love our family and that we want to be there for our family and we want to be there for others. We want to do meaningful work that would just be selfish. And so you know, you’re confronting some of these illusions, but also you’re questioning the deeper assumptions that may not even be made by you yourself. It might be assumptions that are pushed onto you by family or society at large. The collective might be putting a certain assumption of the way of life, but you as an individual can actually dissolve that. Right? There might be some. Let’s just take an example. There might be an assumption that you’re supposed to buy a house and you might have this assumption pushed on you by your parents or by society or by just the economics of it and that that might make sense for a lot of people in that might make sense for you and it might not, but if you haven’t taken a second to question in some way, whether that is actually the thing that’s right for you, then it’s worth that exploration.
And I think one of the interesting things about this journey as we were driving out to the ocean and on the way we found out that my wife is pregnant and so on. The way into New Brunswick, we sort of pulled over somewhere in Quebec I think, set up camp and got an ultrasound and met our upcoming baby at a random hospital and then kept driving and we were emailing our family doctor back in Toronto, getting blood tests in New Brunswick and getting the results sent. Driving on. Uh, my wife Krista started… thankfully it didn’t get too nauseous, but started to get exhausted. I was doing a little bit of work like she would, she had some, she was a trooper. She was like sleeping in the car while I went to a cafe to like do a meeting and like, you know, we’re doing this thing and like to add into the mix all these questions about where to build our lives. I can’t imagine a more clear signal that the direction we were moving towards towards a more community, more relationship and, and, and finding a way to live true to our values. I can’t imagine the universe sending us a signal to underline that fact in a, in a more beautiful way that it just sort of confronting that idea, that terrifying idea. And beautiful idea at the same time that this baby was on the way was like just a moment to say I’m so glad that we did this trip and we did this adventure. And so being on that journey and having that news come and saying like having that news come in a way that just confirmed what we were doing was a beautiful feeling. And I think maybe a good testament to the fact that questioning assumptions and living with intention is not only a beautiful way to support yourself, but you end up supporting yourself in a way that allows yourself to be a platform to serve others and to create connection more meaning in the world. And so it was a beautiful trip and a beautiful journey.
Adrian
Yeah, super inspiring. And any last thoughts or questions?
Thal
It is very inspiring. And I’m, what a way to end the journey is, you know, a new baby, new life. And um, and in many ways I’m in awe because, um, you, you were someone that lived that life even prior to this journey. Like you were meditating. You were someone who who cared if you care about mindfulness, you care about the intentional life and, and focusing and, and um, something that you talked about in your previous lecture is information wealth versus attention. And um, I feel like this journey sort of brought all those things in a way. You’ve, you’ve gone deeper and those teachings are sort of embodied now in you.
Jay
Yeah. I think maybe embodied is a really powerful word. The monastery, there was this moment near the very end of our stay there. We watched the transition from winter to spring and as spring kind of emerged on that beautiful land out there and the consciousness of the community was starting to recognize that like we were days away from Krista and Jay leaving. We had built such a deep connection and there was this day off and we were hanging out outside. It was not quite summer. It was spring. Like things were a little wet. Trees were still bare, but the sun was shining. And I remember this is the ground that we were shovelling at six in the morning and a blizzard, so, and I had never seen a monastery in the sunlight, you know, like that in the, in the melted snow, like I’ve never seen a green in the sunlight and we’re out there and I can’t remember how exactly it happened, but someone brought out a little speaker, put on some music and I don’t know, just like seven of us just had a ridiculous dance party like on the front lawn of his monastery, like not just like we’re moving a little bit, like we’re just flailing arms and like just dancing everything out. And I remember at the end of that just covered in sweat and thinking a little bit about like the way we as humans are meant to live together and enjoying just the basic faculties we’re afforded that we go so far for enjoyment that we fly halfway around the world. That really, if I just move my body in the sun, it’s like so euphorically positive and, and these practices allow us to be aware of it. I get the sense that with that space, you’re able to see those contractions and loved them, so if that contraction is just me being self conscious and dancing and like sharing those moments with friends and like you’re able to really witness how fun that is, that you don’t have to go halfway around the world. You don’t have to drive to the monastery, you don’t have to drive to the ocean, you just gotta put on a little music and dance or just sit there with your eyes closed and have gratitude for the fact that you’re alive and that maybe you have some people in your life you care about. Maybe you don’t, but that you have so much more than you don’t have and that you know if you can really just find the space to be grateful and notice that and not just think about it, but to actually experience the space so that you can truly get fulfillment from the simple things. That’s a step in the right direction.
Adrian
Jay, that’s beautiful. Thank you. Thank you so much for being our first guests and I don’t even know what else to say, but let’s just keep the space open even though we’re bringing this to an end. Yeah, it’s a pleasure to to witness your journey.
Thal
Thank you. We are grateful for this. Thank you.
Jay
Me too. My pleasure.