#26: From Crisis to Meaning with Shinzen Young
Welcome to our season one finale! On this episode, we talk to Shinzen Young about mindfulness within the context of the modern meaning crisis. Shinzen is a renowned meditation teacher and neuroscience research consultant. We met with him in Toronto after he had just finished leading a meditation retreat. Shinzen first became fascinated with Asian culture as a Jewish teenager growing up in Los Angeles in the 1950s. As he likes to describe himself:
“I’m a Jewish-American Buddhist teacher who got turned on to comparative mysticism by an Irish-Catholic priest and who has developed a Burmese-Japanese fusion practice inspired by the spirit of quantified science.”
We discuss happiness, enlightenment and his current new project which involves using brain stimulating technology that may dramatically accelerate meditation gains. He is the author of The Science of Enlightenment: How Meditation Works.
Highlights:
- Why is Mindfulness everywhere?
- Meditation to Optimize Happiness
- Co-evolution of Science and Mindfulness
Resources:
- The Science of Enlightenment by Shinzen Young
- Shinzen’s Periodic Table of Happiness Elements
- Julianna Raye
- Unified Mindfulness
- SEMA Lab
- Jay Sanguinetti
Listen:
Poem Inspired by This Episode
Full Transcript
Thal:
Welcome Shinzen to the show.
Shinzen Young:
Thank you.
Thal:
Thank you for agreeing to come on. Thank you.
Adrian:
I think a neat place to begin this conversation is to ask how you see your role as a meditation teacher within, what we’re calling the meaning crisis, within the context of the modern meaning crisis. How do you see your role and how that relates to the bigger scale problem that we are, you know, sort of experiencing as a collective.
Shinzen Young:
So I like to answer questions by first asking a bunch of questions and I appear on, you know, a number of podcasts and usually they have a direction or an interest. And so by finding out how the person that’s interviewing me sees the theme, the broad theme of the podcast, I apply my dimensional analytic skills to getting an idea of what they’re talking about and then I can relate it to my areas. So I’ll begin by asking you folks a question. There’s three words: modern, was it meaning?
Thal:
Meaning
Shinzen Young:
And crisis. I’m interested in how you think of what those words mean. Um, when does modern start? What is a crisis in meaning? Uh, so I’ll let you folks talk first.
Thal:
Wow.
Adrian:
Yeah, no, that’s… Yeah, I love it.
Thal:
Yeah, sure. I’m, the way I see it is, um, sort of maybe the breakdown of the old way of seeing things, thinking about the world. Old paradigms. Um, it’s very hard. It’s not that black and white, it’s not really breaking down, but there’s this energetic shift that’s happening where just the old way of doing things is no longer working. And so we’re seeing that institutions, religion, politics, it’s just no longer working, the old way of doing things. And so then all these questions are coming up and they’re, um, along with those questions, there’s this anxiety around what’s going to happen and um, and sort of being lost in a way and grasping for meaning and a worldview.
Shinzen Young:
And would this be among the younger people? A certain generation? Do you have an age demographic that tends to listen to your podcast? And be in the meaning crisis?
Adrian:
I would say yeah, to a degree. It’s relating to a generation that we belong to. Sort of that millennial generation that I would consider myself part of.
Shinzen Young:
That would be called millennials part of, yeah. How old do you have to be? What’s the range of millennials?
Adrian:
I don’t know what the hard cutoff is. I mean, I was born in the mid eighties.
Thal:
I was born in ’82. I think. I think I’m like the older side of the spectrum.
Shinzen Young:
Well, I was born a long time before that. So, I actually belong to, um, some would say Boomer, but I’m at the very earliest part of the boomer. Boomer was supposed, I believe is taken to be post World War Two when the Vets came back. But I was born while my father was off fighting the Japanese in the Pacific. I was born during World War II. Um, as I, you know, that’s, that’s a long time before Boomer. Uh, okay..
Adrian:
For me, the meaning crisis at an individual, personal level was when I, towards the mid twenties was when I started really recognizing just a lack of fulfillment in my life. You know, having success from a career perspective, but just not feeling like this is what I’m supposed to be doing. I’m not fulfilled. I don’t feel, I don’t feel happy. I, you know, and the chasing doesn’t seem to be filling that, that experience that I was expecting…
Shinzen Young:
So that’s fulfillment.
Adrian:
To me it is, yeah.
Shinzen Young:
So what I’ve got so far is old things, the old ways of working. Um, and there’s rapid change. And there’s fear and a sense of unfulfillment. So yes. And maybe particularly for the millennial type, but of course it’s a Zeitgeist or spirit of the time kind of thing that would apply to any age demographic. Yeah. Well there’s a lot of relevance. Um, so you described me as a mindfulness teacher, which is an accurate description. Although the fuller description I would say is that I am a teacher of, but also a researcher in the field of what I would call Modern Mindfulness. So I’m all about dimensional analysis and careful use of words. Um, I think you guys speak Chinese, right?
Adrian:
Cantonese.
Shinzen Young:
Not so good.. [chuckle] in Cantonese. But Confucius said this idea of “Cheng-ming”, which is translated rectified names, I’m sure it’ll be pretty similar in Cantonese. So that was an early influence. It’s like, “oh yeah, it’s important to be careful about how we say things”. So I’m all about careful definitions and axial, you know, dimensional analysis of phenomena. So for me, Modern Mindfulness is a set term. I define it in a certain way. Obviously other people may use “mindfulness” or other related words in different ways. But for me, Modern Mindfulness is what some people call “secular mindfulness” or some people call “mainstream mindfulness”. But I don’t like either of those words for various reasons, but we need a name for it. And what the “it” is, is a contemplative practice co-evolving with science. So the reason that mindfulness is found all over the world now within the therapy setting, within the corporate setting, within the medical setting, even within the military. The US trains mindfulness. When Jon Kabat-Zinn and Saki Santorelli, who are sort of the heads of the MBSR approach, when they went to Beijing, there were members of the PLA, the Chinese national army there. And Saki told me that he thought the reason that they were there taking the seminar on MBSR was that they knew that the US military was using it. And I don’t know if that’s really true or not, but I think if you pardon my French, is pretty fucking amazing right?
Adrian:
Competitive advantage.
Shinzen Young:
I mean, are we gonna have um… Yeah, I don’t mind a Mindfulness Arms Race! Okay. That’s like a cold, that’s a Cold Peace as opposed to a Hot War. [Chuckling] Uh, but anyway, why is this everywhere? Okay. How did this happen? Well, Jon was able, Jon Kabat Zinn, spelled J-O-N, was able to put this South-east Asian Buddhist practice within the framework of clinical science. And okay. You know, you have pain, we give you these techniques. It may not make the pain go away, but youy perceived suffering goes way down. And we can use different psychometrics to make that a credible claim. So modern he linked it with science. Jon was originally a molecular biologist, which is pretty hard-nose quantitative science, but he was also a long time practitioner. So doctors started to send chronic pain patients to him because that’s a huge problem in clinical medicine. It’s an intractable problem, really. I mean everyone talks about this opioid epidemic or whatever, but I mean it has various causes, but one of them is, you know, these painkillers have these bad effects. So in any event, he got results and then it took off. So if we generalize what… MBSR stands for mindfulness based stress reduction. So if we sort of generalize what he did, um, which would have come online just about the time you folks were getting born. I would say he did two things. He abstracted the attentional skill training from the cultural doctrinal, religious, philosophical matrix of Asia. So that you didn’t have to believe in reincarnation or whatever, uh, you know, in order to do these practices. And then what he also did is he validated it by the standard cannons that are used in medicine. And it worked. It performed. It outperformed. So to me, what that represents is taking the spirit of science and modifying, in this case an essentially South-east Asian contemplative practice, um, making something that’s culturally universal and logic and evidence-based. But we can generalize that further because South-east Asian Buddhist practice is a proper subset of World Buddhist practice, but World Buddhist practice, in other words, quote “Buddhist Meditation” is a proper subset of world contemplative practice. As you folks know. There’s Christian, you have a Sufi path you have a Muslim name. So I’m guessing Muslim. Yeah, there’s contemplative tradition in Islam and Judaism, Christianity. So I’d like to take an even larger view. I talk of contemplative practice worldwide. So if we take contemplative practice, we can improve it by bringing in the spirit of science. But it works the other way. The science is… yes, it’s a cultural meme, but it’s also a human experience. It’s the experience of doing science. Whether it’s high school science or whether it’s professional level you’re shooting for a Nobel prize science. There is the doing of science, which is a human experience and experience of thought and emotion. And if the scientists take on a contemplative practice, they will be much happier human beings and therefore much more effective scientists. Um, so we can imagine a positive feedback loop moving forward in time.
All we need to do is somehow get past the next century or so, I would say without a catastrophic collapse of civilization, if we could somehow squeak through. I would expect that as contemplative practice becomes improved through interaction with science and as the scientists become improved through taking on contemplative practice, which then allows them to do better science, et Cetera, that a positive feedback loop could develop where they co-evolve. It’s a notion of course, from evolutionary biology. Sometimes species co-evolve. Sometimes they co-evolve to fight each other, but sometimes they co-evolve to cooperate with each other. And I see that as a viable possibility. Now, the reason that Buddhism sort of plays a big role is that of all the contemplative traditions of the world, or of all of the religions of the world, contemplative practice is most central in Buddhism. It’s what it’s all about really. Secondly, in the Buddhist tradition, there’s been very systematic and comprehensive analysis of what meditation practice is. It’s already proto-scientific in the way that it has been described historically. So there is a reason why Buddhism is central to this, but I see it as really a broader thing. But if we think of Buddhism or meditation practice as done in Asia, to me that represents the pinnacle of Asian civilization. It’s what Asia did better than anyone. And therefore the whole world should pay attention to that in a little bit of a special way because they did it right. They did it proto-scientifically, actually. Um, so if we wanted to somehow say, well, modern science is sort of a European thing. I mean, before the renaissance, other parts of the world, including the Islamic world actually was the center of science, but in the modern period, it’s been the west that took off. So my thing was, well, what might happen if the best of the East and the best of the West cross-fertilized? There would be some hybrid vitality. Some “wunderkind”, some wonder child perhaps born from that. So to get back to how I think about myself, so I’m essentially a researcher in Modern Mindfulness. So you need to know about two things. Since it’s these two worlds. You have to have an experiential background in contemplative practice. And you have to have scientific chops. You have to be good at math and a bunch of other things that make you a good scientist. So I decided to devote my life to developing those two directions within one person so that I could be in an ideal position to help the modern mindfulness movement. So I would say that’s how I think about myself.
So you’re asking a teacher and a researcher of Modern Mindfulness what about this rapid cultural change? What about the fear of the future? What about the sense that the old things aren’t working? Uh, what about this pervasive unfulfillment? And yeah. Hell yeah!
Thal:
[Laughing]
Shinzen Young:
A modern mindfulness researcher would have a lot to say about that. Actually it’s pretty much just a couple of things that cover all of the above actually. Um, if I had to pick, of the different things, if I had to pick the first dimension that I would respond to in terms of how you define the modern existential crisis, I would say unfulfillment or not broadly, deeply and intensely happy. A lack of being broadly, deeply and intensely happy might sum it all up. In the sense that fear is a form of being unhappy. It’s an uncomfortable inner state. So it’s a form of suffering. And certainly part of happiness is reducing suffering. The sense of the difficulty managing change and particularly unpredictable change. Um, well that’s actually a form of suffering also. Um, so really that managing change is part of being happy. So I still put it under the rubric of Happy. It’s interesting when you said the first thing that Thal said was the old ways aren’t working anymore. So, you know, the first thing that came to my mind is “the old ways never worked”. That was the first sentence that came up in talk space. The old ways never worked. Ever, actually. East, west, ancient, modern, they sort of worked. And sort of worked is okay, but I think we can do a lot better in the modern era, the information era. I don’t want to say things that might offend people, but I seem to end up doing it anyway.
Adrian:
Do it anyway.
Thal:
Please, go ahead.
Shinzen Young:
A lot of the old ways, not all, but at least the old ways in terms of post Neolithic humans, maybe Paleolithic or whatever proceeded that. That may be a different conversation, but, and this isn’t all of the old ways, but a lot of the old ways were ways of being happy. So they sort of worked. I mean they sort of make you happy. Um, you’ll notice I mentioned three dimensions of happiness, for an individual. How broadly happy they are, how deeply happy they are and how intensely happy they are. There could be a fourth dimension, which is the scope of happiness. How many individuals are to what degree broad, deep and intensely happy? And that would be of course a universal metric for happiness on this planet. Without loss of generality. Well, actually maybe with some loss of generality. So we’re going to just limit the conversation to human happiness. Happiness of nonhuman species is important, but that’s complicated to say nothing of speculations about other types of sentient beings in the Verse, the multiverse, whatever, however big this thing really is, which is I’m guessing probably much bigger than we can currently imagine. But in any event that’s speculative. So just limiting to humans on this planet. Basically we’ve got four dimensions to happiness. And so I warned you I have this dimensional way of thinking about things. By the way, that’s an example of what happens when you’re thinking process is profoundly informed by the spirit of science. That’s one of the skills you learn as a scientist is how to look at a complex phenomenon. And diagonalime the Matrix, find the eigenvalues, find the basic atoms, components, primes, canonical dimensions, whatever you want. These all mean the same thing essentially in science. Well prime is in number theory, but it’s analogous. So in any event, the goal is to optimize happiness. And I would claim that Modern Mindfulness as I describe it, is key to optimizing happiness. So that means the greatest number of people with the greatest intensity, breadth and depth of happiness, that’s what we want. So I mentioned that “Cheng-ming”, I try to be very precise about names. So I have a Periodic Table of Happiness Elements. You can find it on the Internet, although I revise it from time to time. It’s not as big as a periodic table of chemical elements, but it is actually amazingly similar in some ways. So one dimension I call how broad your happiness is. And there’s five sort of basic columns and then there’s four rows and they measure what I call depth of happiness. But as with any technical term, you shouldn’t associate breadth, depth, intensity with what they may mean elsewhere. They have to be defined, you know, within the particular scientific theory.
Adrian:
Contextual.
Shinzen Young:
So easiest to understand how broad your happiness is by specific example. So my sort of five pillars of heaven are “relief from suffering”, “increase in fulfillment”, um “understanding yourself at all levels” and we’ll get into the levels in a minute. “Mastering behavior, mastering actions” that could be sort of performance skills. But in the Buddhist tradition, they have an interesting thing. They use the word “skill” to refer to a one’s character. You have skillful character skills, or you have a skillful character, unskillful character. It’s what other traditions would call good and bad. A good actions, bad actions. But another way to think of it is skillful unskillful. It’s ort of the same thing. So I riff on the Buddhist ambiguity of skill to include both things like academic skills, performance skills, artistic skills. Um, those are forms of mastery of action. And there are how you, there’s how you carry yourself in the world. What kind of person you are in your interpersonal interactions. Were you an admirable person by your own cannons or the canons of the culture that you identify with. So all of those are mastery of object of actions. You’ll notice that the first three pillars sort of represent experience, right? Uh, experiencing physical, mental, emotional pain with less suffering. Experiencing physical, mental, emotional pleasure with more fulfillment. Um, understanding yourself at all levels from the biographical to the transpersonal. These are all sort of might be described as on the sensory side of experience. But I believe that how we act in the world is also a valid dimension of happiness. I have a lot of backup on that starting with Aristotle and actually most of the religions of the world. So acting skillfully or mastery of action, that’s dimension number or that’s column number four. Column number five is “service”. Maybe not everyone thinks of that first. Uh, you know, if you’re in chronic pain, all you think about is the first aspect of happiness. It’s all you care about. That’s why people get, have problems with drugs. Problems with drugs are action in the world. Now that’s mastery of behavior. So in any event, um, service, if you’re in chronic pain, being of service to others may not be the first thing that jumps up unless you’re really an extraordinary person. And every once in a while you get that. Someone that you know, that’s how they cope with it. But as people mature, they will come to see that it’s quite natural for a human being to derive immense happiness from serving others, in various ways. I would want for myself and for anyone else that we can check off all those columns that we couldn’t give them a way of reducing suffering, elevating fulfillment, understanding themselves at all levels, and making positive behavior changes. And ultimately a happiness based on a larger identity that one serves. So that’s the dimension of how broad, it’s a kind of qualitative dimension in a sense. Um, and I believe a complete positive psychology needs to take into account all those aspects. What I call level is not what you might think. It’s not how strong. It is how obvious a certain form of happiness is. The most obvious form of relief from suffering it is get rid of the condition that’s causing the suffering. But what if you can’t do that? Well, maybe I can cover over the symptoms somehow. So without loss of generality, uh, if I have pain, it’s caused by a disease, well, cure my disease. Good. We’ve taken care of the situation. Oh, you can’t cure my disease. Okay, well then give me palliative care that covers it over. Good. Now, no problem. Still still have the object of condition, but my perception of uncomfortable body-mind experience has been removed. Oh, the drugs cause addiction and eventually don’t work. Doc, what can you do for me? I’m afraid what they’re going to say is learn to live with it. Which may not be a very satisfying answer. Try not to get addicted and learn to live with it. Um, there are deeper levels of relief that are not obvious to people and entail mindful awareness skills. You have to have mindful awareness skills to get those less obvious forms of relief.
Analogously, there are less obvious forms of fulfillment, less obvious forms of self knowledge, uh, less obvious forms of service, et cetera, et cetera. So the deepest part of my grid is the least obvious. Those also happen to be the ones for which mindfulness skills are critical. Can’t get them without mindfulness skills. And they also are the ones that work when nothing else works. It’s the heavy guns. So how intense a person’s happiness is, well if you imagine this sort of two dimensional grid, then each box, you know, as a certain height, creating a three dimension, uh, sort of a two dimensional, um, profile. Right? How happy am I? How intense is my happiness? Oh, I should back up just to make it tangible with what I mean. The deepest level of relief is the ability to escape into the pain, be it physical, emotional, mental, or all three at once. The ability to escape into it is the ability to experience it with perfect concentration, clarity, and equanimity. And we can train you to that ability. By you, I mean anyone who’s willing to put in the time and energy. We can train you to a level where, even if the discomfort is very intense, the suffering is manageable. So it’s not obvious to the general public that that’s a viable option. But Modern Mindfulness says absolutely. And it’s just a click away. Well, maybe I’m not in pain, but I’m not deeply fulfilled. Well, the obvious, uh, if I want more fulfillment, what’s the obvious? Well, more wealth, more power, reputation, sexual prowess, just you name it. Something in the object of world, um, status, the mate and rate. Now that’s a legitimate dimension of happiness. There’s nothing in my value system that says it’s wrong to passionately pursue success in the world. So these are obvious. Of course what happens? I see this all the time because being in the science field, we interact with wealthy people of the Silicon Valley ilk. And the reason they’re interested in people like me is they’re millionaires, sometimes billionaires, and it really didn’t make them that much happier. And it’s like what’s next? So there’s a next! But it’s not obvious. And mindfulness skills to it, concentration, clarity, equanimity, trainable attentional skills, turn out to be key to that deeper aspect of fulfillment. So the normal paradigm is, what I want is intensity, variety, and duration of pleasure that’s going to fulfill me. So actually that’s not entirely incorrect. It’s just not complete. What you really want is to have complete experience of pleasure. Um, I’m going to define complete experience of pleasure to be completely analogous to complete experience of pain. Just a different category of sensory phenomenology. So when you escape into the pleasure, um, you bring so much concentration, clarity and equanimity to it that it provides you with the maximum perception of fulfillment. So I sometimes talk about the Imelda Marcos phenomenon. So she was, uh do you know?
Adrian:
No.
Shinzen Young:
So interesting generation thing. She was the wife of the president of the Philippines who was a dictator that was president for a long time. Marcos. I guess set up after World War 2 by the U S. Anyway, his wife was named Imelda and she became an object of ridicule. It’s really sad, um, because it’s not just her, it’s, it’s everyone. She just was extreme and it got out and, um, therefore it became sort of a thing. But, but she had thousands of pairs of shoes. All of them of the, you know, most expensive worldwide, you know, kind of thing. Um, so if I have some nice thing, uh, maybe I’m a guy, so it’s not going to be the shoes probably, but something I really liked, uh, well let’s just say, an expensive meal. So the tastes are, the actual sensory event is putatively worth a lot of money. How much fulfillment I derive from that intensity, duration and variety of pleasure that is this banquet. How much fulfillment I derive is not just a function of the sensory experience, it’s a function of how completely present I am to that sensory experience. Well, for that you need concentration, clarity, equanimity skills. You have to distinguish things. You have to stay, keep your attention on the tastes and whatever. And you have to not grasp on moment by moment to the pleasure. Because if you grasp on microscopically, you won’t be fully present for the next moment and the next moment and the next moment. So the key to fulfillment, yes, in part it relates to circumstances. Yes, in part it relates to intensity, variety and duration of pleasure. But let’s say that you have very mild pleasures. Um, good news. With mindfulness skills, you can derive enormous fulfillment from that. Bad news, if you conspicuously lacked those skills. If one pair of expensive shoes doesn’t fulfill you. So pleasure times mindfulness. If the mindfulness is zero, fulfillment equals pleasure times mindfulness to a linear approximation. It’s a much more complicated function. No doubt. I don’t want to sound mathematically illiterate. That’s my ego, my pride. To a linear approximation. We could say that fulfillment equals pleasure times mindfulness. Unfortunately, if mindfulness is at zero, that means one pair of expensive shoes gives you zero fulfillment. 10 times zero is still zero. 2,000 times zero is still zero. So there’s a bad news thing and that’s the Imelda Marcos phenomenon, which is no one taught her how to be fulfilled systematically. So for the deeper version of fulfillment, um, mindfulness skills are critical, then there’s understanding yourself. Well what’s the self? There’s the biographical self, there’s the archetypal self. You mentioned some influence of depth psychology? Would that be Freudian and Jungian idea of depth psychology?
Thal:
Mostly Jungian.
Shinzen Young:
Jungian Depth Psychology. Yeah. Okay. So that deals with what I would call the archetypal self.
Thal:
Yes.
Shinzen Young:
Or the collective unconscious. What have you. That’s a deeper level of self than the surface biography self. But I would distinguish two more levels of self understanding that are not obvious, that critically involve mindfulness skills. One is to understand yourself as a sensory system. That’s the path to enlightenment done in Theravada practice, south-east Asian practice Then there’s understanding yourself as a kind of primordial perfection. That would be your “Soulspace” to riff on the name of the podcast. So that would be the deepest level. Now that’s the paradigm for enlightenment that you get in Chan or at least some forms of Chan. Aka Zen, Tzun, Tien, different names in East Asia. Tien is the Vietnamese pronunciation. A lot of that deals with what they call the “huo-xing”, the Buddha-nature, uh, “Gou zi yuo huo xing”. You know, “gou zi” is a dog. “Yuo”, have. “huo xing”, the Buddha nature. “Yo”, or. “Wu”, not have. Would be pretty similar in Cantonese, I’m thinking. That was a famous Koan or a Zen question. Yes or no, dog have Buddha nature? So what did the Buddha nature is the Mahayana formulation for a kind of primordial perfection that is literally our soulspace. That is the deepest and broadest sense of self. So in the Mahayana and extending from that Vajrayana like Tibet, the “mi jiong”, you know, the Esoteric Tantric Buddhism, in those traditions, enlightenment, not always, but often is formulated, not in the sense of something you achieve, but something you notice. That that nature was always there. So that’s your deepest level of understanding. So we, if you untangle yourself as a sensory experience, that leads to a liberated experience of the space of self. It becomes a place to live, not a place where you are imprisoned. So that’s a South-east Asian paradigm. And we could take a Trans-himalayan slash East-Asian paradigm of well. But below that, all along there was never any need to train, um, because of the nature, the deepest sense of self. But the problem is, although there’s no need to train, there’s still a need to train because it’s just an idea until you notice it. The “it” meaning this primordial perfection. So in any event, to summarize, if we think of Modern Mindfulness, so you asked me and I’m a Modern Mindfulness researcher slash teacher. So I guess you call it faculty. I’m part of the Modern Mindfulness faculty. I teach and I do research the research. Yeah. So in any event, um, you, you asked me as a Modern Mindfulness teacher, researcher how would I respond to the crisis of meaning, etc. And then you gave me the meaning of the crisis of meaning for you. So I would summarize it by saying, um, that the old ways sort of work and we don’t even have to get rid of the old ways, but there’s a larger way that either replaces the old ways or is in some sort of detente with the old ways or maybe even a complementarity, depending. So the new way… Well we’ll contrast with the old way. The old way is, here’s a list of beliefs. Here is a list of social customs. Here’s a list and in some cases and amazingly elaborate list of what’s right and wrong. Now keep your nose clean. Follow this list. And depending on the tradition, it will be general guidelines or it could control literally every moment of your life. My background is Jewish.
Thal:
Same.
Shinzen Young:
You’re Islamic, you know.
Thal:
Yeah.
Shinzen Young:
You know what that is. So here’s the rules, here’s the customs, here’s the beliefs, join up and you’ll be happy. And it actually sort of works. Some people are freaked out by fundamentalist religion. I’m not freaked out by it. I think I understand it. To be honest, I may not like it, but I do think I understand it. Um, it sort of works. And it probably works better than the angst of the modern crisis in meaning. Okay. Relative to that, those people are happy, but it’s happiness at a price to be honest. Um, first of all, they’re not as happy as they could be. Secondly, the way they found to be happy in some cases precludes them being happier in a broader way. In some cases, not always, but the worst is, the list of rules don’t agree. The list of customers don’t agree. The list of beliefs don’t agree. So I trot out my Tanakh, the Old Testament, you trot out your Quran. The Mormons trot out the book of Mormon, which is later than both and in their claim. Therefore, the final revelation. [Chuckle] On the other hand Nichiren Shōshū will trot out the Lotus Sutra. And Pure Land Buddhism will translate and we’ll trot out the Maha-Saccaka. What is it called? Maha-Saccaka sutra anyway. It’s not just the Abrahamic religions that have scripturally based fundamentalism. You can find it in certain forms of Buddhism and it pervades Hinduism. Um, anyway, be that as it may, that sort of works. But the biggest problem is, besides the problems I mentioned, is it sometimes doesn’t agree with science and it caught, it causes an us versus them mentality. Um, that then leads to say, jihads what have you. And a lot of other problems. So it’s sorta worked and we have to respect it for working in the way that it works. But to be honest, I see a broader paradigm of happiness that number one, works better, and number two, does not necessarily preclude the old ways. Uh, I have born again, Christians. I certainly have a lot of Catholics. I have practicing Orthodox Jews that come to my retreats. I do retreats in Israel. And we have a lot of orthodox Jews that come. And no one has any problem with anything. Because it’s Modern Mindfulness, it’s not “Stealth Buddhism”. Um, so in any event, if you want to follow the old way’s fine, but if they really don’t work for you, well we’ve got a larger broader paradigm.
So the new paradigm or perhaps the extended paradigm, if we want to include the old ways, uh, it’s so cool because if the old ways really don’t work for you, then okay, well there’s another dimension and it’s consonant with science. In fact, it can coevolve with science. Um, but it doesn’t involve these lists of norms. It has some conceptual baggage, but minimum. The minimum conceptual baggag is there’s an attentional skill, or you could call it a “mind power” if you want. But that’s mind is a very ambiguous word. When I present this stuff in Chinese though, one of the…I see you have my book, the Science of Enlightenment. So we’re translating it into Chinese now. By we, I mean me and a couple people born in China. So it’s a very interesting conversation because how do you say mindfulness in Chinese? Okay. Um, for modern China, right? Uh, anyway, one of the words, we were thinking, one of the terms that we were thinking of using his “Shin Li”, which is like “Shin”, “Sum” luck? I’m guessing Cantonese here, something like that, right?
Adrian:
Yeah.
Shinzen Young:
Like consciousness strength, right? You could think of it that way, but we call them attentional skills. So there are these attentional skills and they are cultivatable. We do ask you to believe that, but that’s not a big stretch because just try and you’ll see you get better and better. And it’s just like any other strength. You do exercise, your muscles get big. You concentrate and your concentration power elevates. So there are these attentional skills: concentration, sensory clarity, equanimity. The’re cultivatable and in fact, eminently cultivatable you can, you can only get maybe twice as strong, I don’t know. But you can get 10 times as mindful. So there are these cultivatable skills and they are relevant to all types and depths of happiness. Everything on my happiness grid is impacted positively. In other words, happiness is optimized at all levels, not just the deepest level, but the mindfulness skills are related to the surface level of happiness. Also because if being a success in the world in some way is on your happiness checklist, we can show you how systematically cultivating and applying mindfulness skills will make it probable that you will be successful. So the main message here is, in a sense what might be called a bigger way to be happy or if the old ways really don’t work for you, then you would think of it as an alternative way to be happy. And what we ask is that you allocate a certain amount of time and energy to developing these attentional skills and that you also apply those skills in daily life to achieving your happiness goals. If a person does that, we can’t guarantee, but we could be like a doctor. We can say, if you establish the structure of practice, retreat, practice life, practice, you get support, you give support those are sort of my four pillars of practice. If you establish that structure in your life, it’s like a health, it’s like a fitness regimen except it’s a psycho-spiritual fitness regimen. But it’s no more demanding than a fitness regimen. That’s why you can be hopeful because there was a time when no one worked out. No one jogged. I remember the transition. I can remember buying my first pair of running shoes because as people say, everyone’s jogging now, what the hell is jogging? Well, you just run. Well, what’s the point? And then well, turns out there’s a big point to it. And no one was doing it, but then people were talking about it and so it’s like, oh, okay. I got some running shoes and I can remember running around the block and getting winded instantly. It’s like, this sucks. I don’t want to do that. But then no, you just keep doing it. You get better at it. And sure enough, in a month I was running a couple miles. Now I was in my twenties. And you can do the math on that one when that would have been, um, so there was a time when no one had systematic fitness training. Now a lot of people do. Um, it’s not unreasonable to think that there’ll be a time in the future when a lot of people have systematic mind strength training or a “mindfulness training”. Uh, so, um, the hopeful news is that if you’re willing to establish a sort of psycho spiritual fitness regimen and I would say that the single most important factor for that is to have a competent personal mindfulness coach.
Um, if you want one, just go to unifiedmindfulness.com. Go to support. Send an email to my main trainer, Julianna Raye, and she’ll get you set up. Um, now of course, that’s not the only game in town. There’s many, many, many mindfulness programs. But as I say, I, one of my great sources of joy is that I can say, if you want to have a personal mindfulness coach, now you may have to pay for that. You pay for a therapist, you pay for a competent workout coach. Now her people do a lot of pro bono work because this isn’t a for-profit industry, but the most important pillar is a competent personal coach. You give them your happiness list. Here’s my checklist. Here’s my sources of suffering. Here’s where I want to be more fulfilled. Do I want to understand myself psychologically? Okay, do I want to go a little, a little deeper? Okay. Um, here are the behavior changes I want, et cetera. You give them your laundry list for happiness. And then they guide you in the process of achieving that goal. Now, just as a personal health regimen, you have to keep it up your whole life. I just came from the gym. I’m 75 years old. I mean my body is very deteriorating, you know, relative to when I was 25 years old. But you keep it up for your whole life as, as best as you can. Now, the thing about physical health though is it deteriorates with time. It’s an up an uphill battle, right? That eventually you lose. You get injured, you get sick, you die. But the psycho spiritual dimension of growth works exactly the opposite. The older you get, and the more feeble your mind and body become, the more powerful your underlying spiritual vitality. Thank God because if it didn’t work that way, I’d be up Shit Creek without a paddle. So the good news is that if you’re willing to do that, and as I mentioned, you know, if I had to say one thing is get a coach because the coach knows the model, knows the turf and if they’ve been, at least, if they’ve been certified by my organization, they’re certified to a certain level. And if they can handle the levels of happiness you want, then they refer you to a coach that can. Let’s say you want classical enlightenment as per the path of purification described in Sri Lanka in the sixth century. It’s like, that’s my happiness. I want stream entry. Well, I’m not saying every, every unified mindfulness coach has the confidence to lead you there, but plenty of them do.
But that’s probably not on your happiness list. It’s probably “I just want to have less mental turmoil and less emotional distress” or “I want to do better in school” or “improve my tennis game”. So that’s where we start. We start there. But the paradigm, the perspective that we give you and the attentional skills that we impart and the focusing strategies that you can apply as you go about daily life. All of that is the same essentially, regardless of what your goals are. So you can, the incredible thing about modern mindfulness is it is a upaya for the modern age. Upaya is a Buddhist concept. How do you reach people? Most people don’t care about enlightenment. Actually, a lot of people may not even care about being a good person.
Thal:
That’s true.
Shinzen Young:
I’ve actually had students that were criminals. Professional criminals. Now I can’t, um, you know, I couldn’t affirm their lifestyle, but I taught them. I will teach them and because I’m setting the stage for possible lifestyle changes, I’m, I’m, I’m fine with that. Um, not everyone even wants to be a good person, but everyone has something they want. And whatever it is, a competent mindfulness coach… we can’t guarantee that they’ll deliver it. But we can say with time, if you keep up the regimen for the duration, it’s likely at some point in your life, likely that in fact, yeah, you’ll sort of get that. But as if that weren’t powerful enough, the same attentional skills and the same focus strategies that you would use to deconstruct your back pain, you can also use that to deconstruct your anxiety or your confusion. And so a Modern Mindfulness teacher is a kind of a device that transforms the world’s small concept of happiness as a goal to this huge concept of happiness. But the same skills and techniques are applied for all types and levels of happiness. So by the aesthetic canons of science, it is an extremely powerful and elegant system.
Adrian:
Shinzen, we’d love to hear some of the latest research that you’re involved in. You mentioned the research side. So how that blends into your current work and also just, I mean it’s the name of your book, the Science of Enlightenment. We want to hear about the path of Enlightenment. Is it for everybody? And how is that connected to the work that you’re currently doing?
Shinzen Young:
Well, enlightenment means different things to different people. I mean, if you just go to Wikipedia disambiguation page, you’ll see how many things have been called enlightenment. I mean, there’s a period in European history that’s called the enlightenment. But this is a different meaning. Um, so if we take enlightenment to mean understanding yourself at the deepest level, then I’m going to say that it’s probably relevant for most people. In the sense that if understanding yourself at all is relevant than understanding yourself at the deepest level would be relevant, I would think as a natural consequence. Because most people want to understand themselves, at least at some level, I’m just extrapolating from that. Then if we take enlightenment to simply mean the deepest level, then that’s relevant to most people because that’s just the next step after the next step of understanding yourself. It’s also relevant because sooner or later everyone dies. And you might die quickly. Like, you know, just die in bed or you know, something, an accident just takes you out. But a lot of people aren’t going to die quickly. They’re gonna go through a dying process and all the structures that they use to cope will eventually be broken down and stripped away by that dying process or at least a lot of them. In other words, a lot of the surface stuff that constitutes our identity, the surface self that’s getting ripped away in the dying process, I mean like hour by hour, day by day, minute by minute. So a lot of people are going to go through that and there’s a natural.. In all the humans that don’t die quickly really quickly. Anyone that dies consciously is going to have to go through all of the surface levels of self being majorly fucked up and stripped away. So if you have some sense of the part of you that is so deep that it is immune to that. If you have some sense of that before the dying process, then your mortality, the mortality of everyone you care about has a different context. Furthermore, of course, once you understand yourself at that level, you’re able to fully participate in life for the first time as nothing blocking. The doingness of the personality, the somethingness of the self is gone. But the underlying doingness, the verb, the dynamics space, that is the soul that is deeper than an individual’s life and death. So if you are able to have that way before you physically die, well, that’s really the deepest and most central dimension of human happiness. So I would say, yeah, it’s relevant and it’s feasible. So it’s important to realize, I repeat, enlightenment is used in different ways by different people. So here what I’m talking about is what in the Southeast Asian tradition is called stream entry. And what in East Asia is called seeing your nature “jian shin”. Could the average householder, average might not be the word, but, uh, generally a householder, someone that has family that had that has a career, job, is it feasible that in their lifetime, that level of enlightenment, uh, could be achieved? Yeah, it’s feasible. But you have to establish and maintain the psycho-spiritual health regimen that I mentioned. See as I mentioned, for physical health. It’s a losing battle. But for psycho spiritual health that older you get that the more experience you have, the closer you get to this liberation. And you can call it liberation or enlightenment. They call it enlightenment because there’s a kind of intuitive understanding that arises. But you can call it liberation because there’s a freedom from the limited identity. So first levels of liberation enlightenment are feasible and relevant for most people, I would say. Now, full enlightenment, full liberation, that’s actually a very different critter. So I expect that a significant proportion of people that participate in my version of this training and keep it up for their whole life will get at least that initial level, but maybe not quickly and maybe not suddenly, but with time, gradually it’s probable. So that gives you a little bit of a reality check. Now, there’s full liberation. That means the full braking of the identity with the mind body process. That is a different critter. So stream entry, it’s all over the place. Uh, you’ve met, all of you have met or interacted with people, whether you knew it or not, that were stream enterers by my criteria in any way. The problem is different teachers have different criteria, right. Arhat, I mean, I spent my life in this field and I lived where it came from. Asia. Yeah. I met a few Asian masters that I think we’re in that ballpark. But that’s in 50 years and it was just a few. If you’re interested, I can give you the names, you can look up. Look them up and so forth. But complete liberation, that’s a whole other thing. But an initial taste that satisfies you for the duration, that’s feasible. Problem is, uh, you remember, I only said it’s probable and I said it might take quite a while. Um, so most people’s experience, initial experience of meditating is “I can’t do this, my mind wanders, I can’t concentrate”. Um, and very quickly they just give it up because there’s not a quick reward, in many cases. So it takes a lot of maturity to stay with it until it all starts to make sense. And you start to get some tangible… I mean, people obviously get some benefits or no one would stay with it. So we were talking about like the opioid epidemic. It’s on my mind because some of our research is probably going to be directed towards that clinical population. We’re at the University of Arizona. But we’re partnering with the major addiction recovery center in the state of Arizona. So it’s on my mind. So, heroin, man, I mean, try it two times…you know, two, three times, I guess you’re hooked, right? That’s instantly addictive. And it changes your whole life for the truly horrible in a truly horrible way. So the idea would be, well, what’s the diametric opposite of that? Something that very quickly gives you fulfillment, independent of conditions. And now, oh, I want more of that, but this isn’t an addiction. This is actually a freedom from addiction. It’s equanimity. It’s a non-grasping around pleasure. So the idea is that if we could enhance the training protocol that currently exists, which is, as I mentioned, retreat practice, life practice, get support, give support. If people want details on that, they can go to my web resources. What I mean by those things.
But if in addition to those components, people often when we start to talk about technology enhanced, whatever, they think, “oh you guys think that you can just zap people into enlightenment?” No… Not exactly. Um, but what we think is it may be possible with technology to enhance the training so that people start to get more dramatic results quicker. A lot quicker so that anyone that has an interest in this tries it a few times and it actually works. It works the way. Maybe not the way it works after 50 years. Because I’ve got 50 years. That’s, that’s a bittersweet experience. The sweet part is this shit works and yeah, everything they said would happen happened. The bitter part is you look out at the world and how many people put in 50 years of that kind of training. So if in five months, five weeks, people could get a taste of what this can really deliver, that would change the course of history precipitously for the better everywhere. Particularly if what I’m describing is folded into standard medicine. So my plot, so to speak, what is a good plot. Okay. in other words is my strategy is, uh, to um, use neuromodulation technology to not zap people into mindfulness but to induce a state of neuroplasticity where in the mindfulness training becomes more efficient and therefore the rewards are more immediate. And then it’s a global viral meme and you get it just because you visited a doctor at a hospital stay. Or you got addicted to opiates and now you’re in a recovery program. But the recovery program after we’ve detoxed you, provides you with a techno boosted mindfulness training regimen and then you maintain that to maintain sobriety. That would be one example. So what we want to do is take all of the, any major area of clinical medicine, create a techno boosted training program. Not, not some zap that we claim is going to take you into some state, but something that creates an environment wherein you can train more effectively. Um, and you get that by contact with medicine. In other words, science. Wherever you are in the world. And since medicine is medicine everywhere, it doesn’t matter whether it’s in the People’s Republic of China or under the Ayatollahs in Tehran, medicine is still medicine. And since these interventions don’t have any religious component to them, there shouldn’t be any pushback. So the idea would be to weave…to sort of enlarge what medicine does from relieving suffering by curing diseases or relieve suffering by palliating symptoms. That’s what medicine now does. So a larger view of medicine is medicine cures suffering. Or medicine allows you to be happy at the deepest and broadest formulation. Uh, and that’s what medicine delivers. So this would then make optimal happiness part of all human cultures. So that’s the dream. That’s the holy grail. Now, the trick is, are there neuromodulations that can do this? A lot of people claim that they have that. To which I say bullshit. And here’s why. If we really had that or if we have had that for a while, see, one of the things about sciences is that causes have consequences. So the kind of technology of enlightenment that I’m envisaging would dramatically change the world for the better. Look around at everything that people are offering that says, hey, this is it. I’m going to microdose you with the psilocybin. But we’re gonna do this new expensive neurofeedback. We’re going to blah, blah, blah. Okay, fine. Is it a reasonable hypothesis that knowledge of this intervention will in the next century, fundamentally change the name of the game on this planet from competition for limited resources to… Well, yeah, there’s that, but there’s also how much fulfillment you get from what you got and turns out that’s even more important. Will these technologies end war, more or less. Will they end social injustice, more or less? Will they end violence? Well I said wars, crime. Okay. Is that, it’s this super neurofeedback or this microdosing of psilocybin. Is this all we need? This plus a hundred years essentially this planet is now Heavan on earth? Extrapolate. I don’t think so! Not even remotely. I don’t know. But maybe, that plus mindfulness plus a hundred years, but maybe we don’t have a hundred years. Um, so I’m asking for something more dramatic. A lot more dramatic. We don’t know if it exists, but it’s certainly worth looking for. And if you were to ask me to make my best candidate and best candidate doesn’t mean I think this is gonna work. It’s just the best out of everything I’ve seen so far. But I’m not claiming it will work. And I’m also not claiming it’s safe, by the way. So very careful about claims because people make claims. Irresponsible claims. It really frosts my buns. But my best guess for where to start is ultrasonic neuromodulation. Low intensity focused ultrasound directed to ego hubs, grasping hubs that could perhaps relax that a little bit and create the situation where people can get dramatic results fairly quickly. That would be my best candidate. But that’s not saying Shinzen Young thinks it’s a good candidate. It’s just the most promising I’ve seen so far. We have a lab called SEMA lab at the University of Arizona that stands for Sonication Enhanced Mindful Awareness training lab. Um, and that’s what we’re looking into at this time.
Adrian:
Thank you for sharing that.
Thal:
Wow.
Shinzen Young:
Uh, you guys should have Jay on too. He’s my PI. He’s the director of the lab. I’m in charge of a protocol development.
Adrian:
It feels tangible too because you’ve also identified a timeframe, right? Like the goal of within the next century, you know, would be ideal. Um, and then also the imminent like needing to accelerate this too. There’s a sense of urgency of finding that technology to speed up what has a proven track record, the methodologies and, but then to augment it with the modern…[chuckling] We started this conversation with what modern means. But it sounds like it’s, you know, yet to be discovered. So there’s an excitement to this type of work.
Shinzen Young:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, if people are interested, they can go to youtube and find Jay Sanguinetti. And he talks about the, what the work that we’re doing.
Thal:
Um, I’m still thinking about the word enlightenment. An, is it for everyone? And is it a goal that we should all aspire to? Um, I think it’s just, I don’t have a specific question around enlightenment, but maybe how is it relevant for our generation? Uh, I really don’t have a specific question. What I’m thinking about is thinking about some friends who would listen to the word enlightened and be like, “pfff” like really? I mean, do I have to sit… Yeah.
Shinzen Young:
Hence, you don’t have to call it enlightenment and maybe we shouldn’t call it enlightenment. I called it enlightenment because that’s just what I called it. Right. But, um, when I go to the People’s Republic of China, probably this year, I’m going to just call it understanding yourself at the deepest level.
Thal:
Yes. I think that answers my question. Yeah. Understanding ourselves is part of the meaning crisis really.
Shinzen Young:
Sure.
Thal:
Absolutely. Yeah.
Shinzen Young:
So there’s your answer, right. And this word is used to translate certain Asian terms, but we can get you there without calling it enlightenment.
Thal:
Right.
Shinzen Young:
Um, I would just call it understanding yourself at the deepest level and that makes, that makes it normal. That normalizes it. So you’re right. Uh, enlightenment, even though it’s on my book is actually not a good word moving forward.
Thal:
Anything else you want to ask?
Shinzen Young:
Well you got a lot more than 70 minutes. But use it as you wish, you know, chop it up. Parcel it out.
Thal:
Yeah. The way I see it. This is an opportunity. So anything you say is our gems really. So thank you. Thank you.
Adrian:
Are there, are there any teachers like currently that you have a relationship with? Dead or alive? I was actually curious because, you know, I see you…
Shinzen Young:
Do you mean that they function as a teacher.
Adrian:
Yeah, you’re a student to them. Yeah having that relation.
Shinzen Young:
Not at this time, no. But we’re sort of co-teacher’s to each other. So in that sense, I would think the dialoguing that I do with other teachers, we’re all sort of teaching each other at this point. Um, but I don’t have a formal relationship with anyone. Neither do I think of the people that utilize my programs as being my disciples or, I mean we call them students, but, um, it’s really more of a, yeah. I don’t, I don’t have that, uh, Asian lineage thing. That is very important for cultural reasons in that part of the world. But you know, I’m not going to have successors and I encourage people to just utilize any resources that are available that are competent in this area. So I guess because I don’t look upon myself as a teacher in the sense of, you know, um, do what I say because you know, you have to sorta in some way surrender to me as your teacher. I don’t think of my students in that relationship. So I guess I don’t think I need that relationship with someone else at this point.
Thal:
Actually I have, The Science of Enlightenment in an audio book and I’ve like been listening to it on and off. And there was a story that you mentioned speaking again of, and I love the word enlightenment. You, uh, one of your teachers, you asked him to, um, I hope I’m getting this right. You asked him to teach you an advanced form of meditation. I really loved that story and maybe you can share that and, um, like the experience of like enlightenment moment.
Shinzen Young:
Um, can you, uh, refresh me on the details of the story?
Thal:
I think you were in, I don’t know, I think you were probably in Japan, I’m not sure. And and it was a zen teacher and you ask them to give you an advanced…
Shinzen Young:
Is this like I was doing breath than I wanted…
Thal:
Yes! And you wanted something more advanced and he’s like, really? There are people who have done breath for years.
Shinzen Young:
Well, there’s several parts to that story, but yeah, I was doing the breath and I was going to be leaving Japan. So oh wait, no, I’m conflating the past. Hold it just second. That’s what happens. Um, okay. No, it was not when I was about to leave. I’ve been… Yes. I’d been practicing for several months. Uh, the standard Chan breath counting. And then yeah, I went to him and I asked for a more advanced practice and because he was in, you know, there’s sort of, some of the Zen masters are ferocious. It sounds, uh, sort of, I don’t know, um, romantic or somehow interesting culturally that there would be masters who are ferocious, but I can tell you it gets old really quick, right. Really quick. But that’s a whole other thing. So anyway, yeah, he was like “there have been people who have done 40 years of zen practice…” Yes. In Japanese so it’s even more macho.
Thal:
[laughing]
Shinzen Young:
Yeah. Try to remember the original Japanese. But anyway, it was like, “who do you think you are kid? You just begun to begun to begun”. And it’s true. Now I’ve met people that spent 40 years at the tip of their nose and it worked that, that, that, you know, that did it. Um, but did you want me to say what would the more advanced practice was?
Thal:
Yes.
Shinzen Young:
Well, it wasn’t really a more advanced practice. That’s sort of the whole point. It was a different practice.
Thal:
Yes.
Shinzen Young:
It was self inquiry in the Buddhist form. Answer this question: who are you? Which is of courses, you’re being asked to understand yourself at the deepest level. So it all comes full circle, right?
Thal:
Absolutely. Yeah. It’s, um, it’s interesting because when you said it, there’s this romantic idea and it gets old really fast. I just went to a 10-day Vipassana and going through the practice everyday, they today is not romantic at all. It’s painful. So I admire your dedication and those years that you spent, I mean…
Shinzen Young:
Yeah, but I hope that you continue with formal practice or with systematic practice. You may or may not want to work in that tradition.
Thal:
Right.
Shinzen Young:
I actually lived at Mr. Goenka’s Center in India and it’s a wonderful, powerful way of working.
Thal:
Yeah.
Shinzen Young:
Okay.
Adrian:
It’s a real pleasure.
Shinzen Young:
It’s a wrap.
Thal:
Thank you.
Adrian:
Thank you.
