Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: So, yeah, I'm just trying to think, what are we doing here? What's going on?
[00:00:07] Speaker B: You're the one that called this meeting.
[00:00:08] Speaker C: You're the master.
I don't even remember doing that.
The universe.
[00:00:16] Speaker A: We are fucked.
[00:00:17] Speaker B: Oh, God.
Oh, God.
[00:00:23] Speaker A: So, yeah, man. So it's just like.
Just. Time is a funny thing, right? Because I met Lisa in multicultural counseling class at University of Buffalo in 2006 or 2007.
[00:00:40] Speaker C: Was that the initial meeting?
[00:00:42] Speaker A: Yes, that was ground zero.
[00:00:46] Speaker B: That's a good way to put it. That was ground zero.
[00:00:49] Speaker C: That's fascinating. Really.
[00:00:51] Speaker B: Rich, where did you and I meet?
[00:00:53] Speaker C: Oh, please.
Epic events. How could I forget?
We met in the perfect place. Right. A philosophy class.
[00:01:03] Speaker B: Perfect. Existential philosophy class.
[00:01:07] Speaker C: Exactly.
Doesn't get any better.
[00:01:12] Speaker A: Perfect.
[00:01:13] Speaker B: Yes. I have my buddha that I got. Florida. Remember the trip? We were together?
[00:01:18] Speaker C: Oh, my.
Yeah.
[00:01:21] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:01:23] Speaker A: Very cool.
[00:01:25] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:01:25] Speaker B: All right, Joel, what you got for us, baby?
[00:01:29] Speaker A: I got not a fucking clue.
[00:01:32] Speaker C: Joel, with the synergy in this group, that it would just spontaneous profundity would spontaneously emerge, right.
[00:01:41] Speaker B: Or spontaneously combust.
[00:01:45] Speaker A: Am I supposed to do something? I didn't know I was supposed to do something.
[00:01:49] Speaker C: This is the happening. This is the really Zen way to have a profound conversation, I think what's on everybody's mind, you guys seem to be sort of blossoming, seriously, in the spiritual vital realm.
Unlike me, wasting away here in obscurity. Dying by centimeters in comparison.
[00:02:12] Speaker B: Rich, you always say that.
[00:02:15] Speaker C: I guess so. Well, I mean, the existentialism connection, right?
[00:02:20] Speaker B: Annihilus, are we?
[00:02:21] Speaker C: Yeah. Well, I don't know about that.
A disillusioned romantic. How does that sound?
[00:02:27] Speaker B: Okay, yeah, that sounds appropriate, actually. That sounds appropriate, rich, in this day.
[00:02:32] Speaker A: And age, to be anything else would be delusional.
[00:02:37] Speaker C: Good point, man. How about that? Do you guys think that.
I've been thinking about that a lot lately?
Not only personally, because. Right, of all the events that are unfolding in the country and around the world and everything else, but I do a radio show, and I have the website, and I'm doing another book right now, as a matter of fact, which, every time I talk to lisa, I tell her I'm not going to do any. This is the last thing I'm writing. And every time she talks to me, I'm writing something.
Just. I've just been wondering, do you think that we're being Pollyannas, or do you think we're really living in an age, in a climate of spiritual.
I want to say decline. I don't know what that would. Malaise. Whatever.
[00:03:29] Speaker A: No, in terms, in buddhist cosmology, theology, philosophy.
It is always spoken in terms of there are times of dharma decay and there's times of maybe, like the word is maybe dharma renewal. Definitely in a time of dharma decay.
[00:03:48] Speaker C: Right now, you both really sense that.
Because I've always racked with self doubt, of course, but I really am. Maybe it's self examination. Maybe I'm being prudent. I don't know. But I'm always wondering, is it really me? I know we get older and stuff like that. Things change. Things aren't the way it was when we were younger, really. The world changes.
Sometimes I wonder, is it just me sort of not understanding and not appreciating what's going on and the necessary transformations that are going on in the world that everybody's.
I remember my parents, right, and they said they were sure the world was going to hell because of then, you know, their parents said the same thing and everything else. So I just wonder sometimes, how do we know it's not us?
[00:04:42] Speaker B: And it's really, I think when I was in India, they were also talking about, we're in the Kaliyug, right?
So that's kind of the end of a long epoch. And this is sort of agreed upon, I think, by people that are far more wise than, you know. There is this sense of, I guess, you know, in the way that Joel described it. Yes, it's a decline, but I think my own feeling about it is actually very optimistic.
I might not see it in my lifetime. In fact, we probably won't. But I have a very strong, deep sense of this kind of the falling away is really critical for something much more, I think, enlightened to emerge. I feel that very strongly. And I think that as the only feminine femme female on the panel, that I think as women, we're very in touch with it. Almost all of my female friends, we are deeply, deeply in touch with it. We feel it in a very profound way.
Yeah.
[00:06:01] Speaker A: When you speak about impending or coming enlightenment and enlightenment, what does that look like for you? What are you articulating in your own vision of that?
[00:06:16] Speaker B: I don't have a vision of what it looks like, but I do have a vision, ironically, of what it feels mean. I think within my own lifetime, as you both know, I've been through periods, know kind of an ecstatic building and then kind of a falling away. So I feel like in my lifetime, and certainly, Joel, I know that's been true for you.
Like, we've had these big upswings and then kind of these lower times of things falling away. And maybe because I had thought, I guess, rich, like you, that I had thought, oh, this is my own experience, and I'm projecting it onto the world. But because I've had those ups and downs, however, other people especially, like I said, women particularly, who haven't had those large ascents and descent, they're also sensing it as well. And so what does that mean? I think what the sensing is is that kind of all of the bullshit is going to start falling away. And I think we can already see that.
So, like I told Joel the other day when we were talking about, what's the theme of this? That, you know, what's up for me right now is, like, relationship, the purpose of relationship, the meaning of relationship. And because I'm straddling many different kinds of relationships, I feel like I have my finger in a lot of different perspectives. And what I'm noticing in those realms is that there is a sense of a real not knowing everybody is just sort of like, I want something, but I don't know what it is, where I think for our parents, or even when I was in college, whatever, that it was like, oh, I want to get married, I want to have kids, whatever, which was not true for me, but I did sort of still have that sense of security and monogamy and stability. And what I see, definitely, obviously, living in San Francisco, and I think we're often on the cutting edge of relationships. We're often on the cutting edge of a lot of social evolutions. And one of the things that I notice is that there is a longing for connection, but not in the same way of going back. The two traditional, like, I want a partner, a monogamous partner. I want the house and the kids.
[00:08:55] Speaker D: There's something.
[00:08:56] Speaker B: And to me, if you start seeing social relationships fundamentally changing, I think that's a good barometer that something bigger is happening.
[00:09:06] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:09:10] Speaker C: That makes sense.
When you say social relationships are changing in a good way.
[00:09:24] Speaker B: I think I prefer it this time not to judge it whether I think it's good or bad. I just look at it objectively and observe what I see happening.
I have a 20 year old daughter, and in her reality, even for most of her friends, that paradigm doesn't exist. They're not about wanting to find the partner to get married. That's not the focus, especially for Asha. I think that she feels very strongly that there is this sense of, I want my life to have meaning and purpose, and a relationship is a part of that. But I don't get my meaning and purpose through my relationship, where I think for many women especially, we often did identify in that way. Right.
And I definitely see a shift in that. And that also seems to be true among her cohort as well.
[00:10:23] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:10:24] Speaker C: Maybe it's that the concept of. Maybe it's not so much that they're not looking for relationship, but the concept or their experience of relationship is expanding in ways that you're right, that previously the concept didn't encompass. So people want a relationship in a broader sense than they're very narrowly prescribed ones, categories they used to be, have to fit those relationships into, and they want a deeper, more profound, more open relationship with everything, with the universe, ultimately. I mean, I don't know if many people are thinking that far, but it seems to be. That's what it's broadening, too, at least in that direction.
[00:11:07] Speaker B: I think so. And I think that also, it's sort of a paradox, right, that can you have more sustaining, fulfilling relationships if you're not married, if you're not monogamous, if you're not sort of hemmed in by some sort of social structure?
And I think that remains to be determined. I don't have an answer for that. But what I see is that we're at the sort of precipice of that exploration, and it feels different than sort of the 60s, like, anti establishment hippie movement, because that was going against something. Right. That was like, we're anti establishment, we're anti patriarchy.
We're making a political statement through our relationship status to kind of say, fu to the man. But I don't see that anymore. It seems more like we're moving towards something, even if yet we don't quite have that defined what it is. But I see the vast openness of the exploration.
Yeah.
[00:12:14] Speaker C: Makes sense. And yet, as we were saying, there are so many forces right now that are acting against that sense.
[00:12:23] Speaker B: But isn't that the way it is, though?
[00:12:26] Speaker C: Yeah.
You mean in the sense that the yinyang dynamic becomes more and more pronounced? What did blout write?
At the point of ultimate decay comes the turning point.
[00:12:42] Speaker B: And also, we both know my dear friend Beatrice. And Beatrice and I just talked a few weeks back, and she had also said, too, whenever the light starts to emerge, that's when kind of the forces start pushing in against, I think, and even just thinking about that, why is that, right? Why is our universe sort of set up that way? Because I think it's like testing a muscle, right?
Okay, you've got this, and then you're pushed to how much more light can I bring, how much more goodness can I bring? How can I see? And the darkness, I think, brings out things that I didn't see. Like, oh, my gosh, I didn't even realize that that was there lurking. And me being a light and shedding a light on that brings that into awareness.
Obviously, we're personifying darkness and light, but I think that there does seem to be that energy dynamic. I don't know if you guys have experienced it too, but I know for sure that's been a felt experience of mine.
[00:13:56] Speaker C: You're definitely so attuned to that. Much more than. Much more than I am. And I would like to feel that, and I get intimations of that, but then I'll doubt them because then you look at, it's easy to look at, just take one small shift in perspective and it just looks plain, like everything's just going to hell.
Instead of all the, oh, it's just testing a muscle.
Ultimately, it's a necessary step to something greater. So I don't know.
[00:14:30] Speaker B: And maybe that's part of my, I mean, one of the things that I know that even people that I briefly encounter, they just experience me as being very optimistic and hopeful and happy.
That is maybe just a dispositional thing that the way that I look at the world in this, I guess I try to, and maybe that's from being a teacher, I don't know. But seeing a student that's having a pretty rough day, and rather than sort of getting at the behavior that's coming out in that moment, oh, shit, the kid threw their pencil or they ripped up their homework or whatever it is, right? Whatever, acting out, there's something underneath that. And I think I've always tried to be, not always, but more so as I've gotten older, to be more cognizant of, yes, there's the behavior, but what's going on underneath? So I think it's the same way with this light and dark, right? That, yes, I feel these pressures coming in.
The rise of Trump. I think that's a very good example.
What was the immediate result of Trump getting elected? Immediately? Women came out all over the world, right? I mean, that was an immediate reaction. It woke women up, right? We're like, oh, my gosh. So to me, that's, I think, a very good real world example of that happening right before, we were like, oh, Obama, he's great and everything's fine and we can just continue with our lives. But Trump getting elected, I think, really forced us, particularly as women, but certainly many people all over the world, like, oh, wait a minute, wait a minute. We cannot be complacent. And I think that's another part of it, is I do not see this as a time of complacency, that I feel very strongly this is not a time of complacency. We need to be paying extreme attention to what is happening around us and really identify. By identify, I mean, to the core of our being, understand what our purpose is in it.
One, to be aware of it, and two, what is my purpose in this? What awareness can I bring with my perspective? And that's what I feel my work is kind know, settled on now. Yeah, Joel. Sorry. Go.
[00:17:08] Speaker A: No, not at all. But Lisa, because we're having this conversation, and it's definitely intimate and it's definitely with the three of us, but when we talk about mission and purpose, I'm just wondering, with the understanding that we're going to be offering ourselves to a wider audience, I was wondering if you could speak a little to how do we do that? How do we find our mission and purpose?
How have you found where you are at now?
I couldn't be more certain that you have an expertise in this of examination.
How have you arrived at whatever level you are at with your own mission and purpose?
What do you attribute you having those insights and revelations and arrivals?
[00:18:00] Speaker B: I think it boils down to, and both of you know me well enough to, I think, agree with this. If you disagree, please disabuse me of my own misperceptions. I am pretty fearless, and I'm also a risk taker. And so for me, I haven't had that sense of, like, oh, yes, this is it, right? I mean, I think that, especially going back to when rich and I met 30 years ago now, my gosh, that I was just at the very nascent stages of, like, there's something here. I don't know what it is. I don't know if it's me, if it's something outside of me.
But I think since that time, and I think, like I said, both of you, I think, can attest to this, that I've been pretty fearless in terms of going after something, even having no idea what I'm doing. And I think that a certain amount of faith in the universe surrendering to. Okay, it looks like this opportunity has presented itself. Let me go and see.
I think it's been through this very trial and error basis that this has happened for me. However, when I say that, I say it somewhat cautiously, because I think that everybody has a different path that's been my journey. I think other people, like, I look at my daughter, she knows, like, I've known exactly what I wanted to do since I was eight years old, nine years old. And she has been consistently on that path where Arin is also kind of in that, hey, I'm going to try this and try that and see what fits and see what works. I don't think that there's a prescribed answer. I think everyone has their own particular journey, and you have to be in alignment with the kind of person that you are.
For me, doing something in a linear way, that's like, oh, I'm going from point a to point b. I don't think that would work very well for me. But for other people, I could see where that would be a beautiful way. Know, continue to.
How about. How about you answering that? Like, what's your experience of that?
[00:20:28] Speaker A: Yeah, I want to answer that. I'm just wondering if we could place it before. Rich, real quick. And then I definitely answer it. Rich, do you have thoughts or things you want to share regarding your own exploration of mission and purpose and meaning in life?
[00:20:46] Speaker C: Man, I am like, figured I am the last person anybody would ever want to. There's several topics, right? Ethics, personal ethics, professional ethics, work ethic, and an example for finding meaning in life. I don't know.
I can't say I have a plan, that's for sure.
[00:21:09] Speaker A: Well, let's start here.
Let's start here. Do you feel like you search or long for meaning, mission and purpose, understanding that, do you feel like that's a.
[00:21:19] Speaker C: Part of your curiosity, the search for meaning?
[00:21:23] Speaker A: Search for meaning, mission and purpose?
[00:21:25] Speaker C: Yeah, that's probably way too much. The entire spectrum of my concern, if.
[00:21:37] Speaker A: We here collectively understand that maybe where we rest our curiosity and our energy and our intention, because that is the totality, the raison dash, the full force of what you are and that energy that you put out, what has returned to you in maybe insight and understanding regarding that?
[00:22:04] Speaker C: Gosh, I don't know.
I don't know. I don't know if I'm any farther along.
[00:22:09] Speaker A: Hold on. Let's start here.
What is your academic investigations, your studies, your area of interest academically.
[00:22:25] Speaker C: Sort of professionally, within the philosophical field of philosophy and history?
The nature of consciousness.
The big one. The biggest big ones, right? The nature of meaning. The nature of ultimate truth, the nature of the universe, comparative themes in science and religion, the nature of consciousness. That's basically what the book that I'm writing about right now is.
[00:22:52] Speaker D: I.
[00:22:53] Speaker B: Can I jump in on that?
[00:22:54] Speaker A: Joel, please.
[00:22:57] Speaker B: Rich and I have talked about this, I think, for many times over the years, is that I think one of the fundamentally different approaches that you and I have to this. I think we're both looking at the same crystal ball, right?
[00:23:13] Speaker C: Absolutely. Yeah.
[00:23:14] Speaker B: But I think that what we've sort of discovered over the years is that I used to, I think, spend a lot more time sort of immersed in the ideas of it, in the philosophy of it, in the theoretical of it. And I think that somewhere along the way, I shifted into the phenomenology of it, rather than asking the, I guess in Rilka. Right. I'm living the questions.
I'm not really asking the questions anymore. I feel like I've shifted into, away from even a questioning place into a place of surrender and into a place of, oh, this is coming up. And rather than sort of needing, for me, building a philosophical construct around it, I'm like, okay, I'm just going to live into this and see what arises.
[00:24:13] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:24:14] Speaker B: But having said that, too, I just want to reiterate kind of the previous point that I made, that all of those are necessary. We need the people to give us the theoretical frameworks. We need the people to have the lived experiences. And I think that's the multidimension that we're moving into, is that there isn't one right way.
You can't just look at, let's say, the environment. You cannot just look at the environment from a chemical process, photosynthesis. We need to see how all of these systems are interacting with other systems. How is it impacting people's lives? How is it influencing the culture of the people around them? Every single thing needs to be equally weighted and considered.
[00:25:04] Speaker C: I agree pretty much. Although almost entirely, although I would say this, I think that your living experience of truth, of wisdom, of existence, whatever you want to call it, I would prioritize over mine.
I don't know.
Between the two of us, I don't think we have that much of a contrast, obviously, because I feel this way. I don't think that sitting in studies like this, philosophizing is a primary way to approach truth, approach a deep understanding of existence.
[00:25:52] Speaker A: Let me stop you right there, though, rich. Let me ask you intuitively, what do you feel is the best way to approach truth intuitively without rational thought? What do you feel in your gut is the best way to express or address truth? Just without thinking about it, just feeling.
[00:26:08] Speaker C: Into it, just reassociating intuitively, ecstatically, aesthetically, emotionally, compassionately, passionately, those ways, all those engaging all those things in a living engagement with the world around you and the people around you and your relationships. And that is what you guys do. I really mean, this is rich.
[00:26:34] Speaker A: It's also what you do. It may not be recognized within your own personal narrative, within yourself fully. It is also.
[00:26:44] Speaker B: You also agree, actually, yeah.
[00:26:48] Speaker C: Well, I give you credit. What is it that makes you guys so much more comfortable in your own skin doing it, then? You seem to feel as though you seem to have both found a very authentic path.
[00:27:00] Speaker A: I don't know about that, but I can give you my own sort of $0.02 about your experience. My experience of your experience.
[00:27:08] Speaker C: Who's on first?
[00:27:11] Speaker A: No, but to me, it feels like you have a very deep.
You're in combat with yourself. And what is in combat with yourself is your rational construct, your rational mind, your cognition, versus your intuitive self. And so you know what you know, and the rational self will not, for some reason, allow you to accept that you know what you know.
[00:27:44] Speaker C: Spoken like a Zen master.
[00:27:46] Speaker A: I don't know about that.
I don't know about that. I think it's a heartfelt observation that it's sort of like, is it the wizard of Oz?
You're already home. All you have to do is wake up, right? You're already there. You're already there. And so for you, rich, my sense is that the only element of waking up is you could frame it through many different paths or lenses, but fundamentally, it's simply the allowance of confidence in you. It's not that you lack confidence, but you don't allow yourself to express that confidence.
Usually that confidence to cross that bridge, that you don't do that, that you don't cross that bridge, is due to an insanely meticulous examination of reality and life and existence. And so, until you've meticulously scrutinized everything, you will not allow yourself permission to accept. You are already there. And so it reminds me, actually, I'm at my place in Buffalo, New York, and I have a friend who's a nomad. He lives a nomadic life. He lives out of his car. He converted his car.
[00:29:00] Speaker C: Tell me about that guy.
[00:29:01] Speaker A: Yeah, he's out there listening tv right now. But I invited him to join us. He wanted no part of it, but he lives out of his car, and he hiked the appalachian trail. He may be doing the Pacific crest trail, but tonight we were talking, actually about someone very interesting. I don't know why it arose in me to share this with him, but I was sharing with him my fascination of the Zen teacher, Zhao Zhou or Jashu. I don't know if either of you are familiar with Shu. Jashu, to me, is probably in Chan, probably in Chinese Zen or Chinese Buddhism, the greatest, the pinnacle of Zen or Chan teaching.
He started in a monastery at a very early age and did not start teaching, although he had received permission to through several masters as he moved through China. He did not start teaching until the ripe, youthful age of 80 years old. He started in a monastery in his youth as a very young child and would not start teaching until he was 80 years old. And why do I bring this up? I can see now why that arose in me, because the correlation, the parallels between you and Joshua, your ability to give yourself permission to teach, comes from this deep, meticulous scrutiny and scrutinizing of existence in life, whether you call it Zen or through Hinduism, consciousness itself.
When you cross that bridge into yourself and realize you are already there, you will realize you are right now right where you need to be and absolutely lacking nothing. There's nothing wrong, and you already know that, but I think you don't give yourself permission to know that.
[00:30:55] Speaker C: I love about you guys only people. Every time I talk to you, it's like doing therapy, and I really mean it. I was going to say, what do I do? What did you do either, both of you, probably, to the extent that you have. What did you do to give yourselves permission to do this?
[00:31:18] Speaker B: Can I jump in on that?
[00:31:20] Speaker C: Is that okay, please?
[00:31:21] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:31:23] Speaker B: So I'm just sort of laughing at this, in my mind, at this conversation, because, rich, you were my teacher for this.
[00:31:31] Speaker C: It is ironic, isn't it?
[00:31:33] Speaker B: I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for you.
[00:31:37] Speaker D: There's no way you were the opener for me.
I think when I met you, I was 22.
[00:31:50] Speaker B: It was literally 30 years ago now.
[00:31:55] Speaker D: And I was in such a very different place. And when I met you, the meeting of you was so profound. I had never met anyone who I had felt just had such a beautiful way of being in the world.
[00:32:17] Speaker A: It feels, like, curious. Like you'd never met anyone who was so curious?
[00:32:22] Speaker B: Yes, I think curious.
[00:32:25] Speaker D: But honestly, I think for me, at that time, it was more that I saw a light in another human being that I had never seen before. And then as we got to know each other and become friends, that I really started to see that the way that I had been looking at the world was through so many veils and that I didn't have this full perception. And I think because that was so radical, that meeting you was such a Gestalt for me that I think it.
[00:33:06] Speaker B: Honestly sort of set me up for.
[00:33:09] Speaker D: A series of being ready for Gestalt.
[00:33:13] Speaker B: Because that was such a profound, life.
[00:33:16] Speaker D: Changing moment, and it was so beautiful and positive and really, truly, truly, miraculously life changing for me that I think I became more maybe aware of those opportunities in my life.
[00:33:36] Speaker B: And.
[00:33:41] Speaker D: What do I want to say?
[00:33:44] Speaker B: I don't want to say that this happened overnight.
[00:33:46] Speaker D: It was a very gradual process of coming to recognize that that might be my path is through these massive Gestalt changes. And that has become something that I've become more and more accustomed to, more appreciative of, and more open to.
[00:34:09] Speaker B: I guess.
[00:34:11] Speaker D: Is that, again, having a sense of my path being one of surrender and being open to being surprised and being open to learning, and just to kind of like.
