[Music] hey fellow G and tear those of us who like our spirituality with a Twist So Daniel and I are doing a series of episodes on this thing called the nine obstacles it's a Dost idea and you know what occurred to me Daniel we haven't even talked that much dosm of all the stuff we have to talk about well we started a little bit last week true we we kind of got the ball rolling a little bit it was a little bit more confusion ISM based but was a kind of a relational discussion on the two dosm confusion ISM it just hit me you know because so what we ended up doing last episode is we were going to talk about family and potentially relationships and these kinds of things as obstacles and then the conversation when zipy doing in this other direction which was kind of great right and it was our exploration of uh form and energy right what would that meant to both of us um yeah so we're in the midst of these episodes and in theory then I guess we would be starting back up again talking about relationships and family and things but I asked Daniel for a favor as we sometimes do I asked if we could come back to those episodes a little bit later on because fellow gean teers I'm just going through a lot of very deep things where I'm being really deeply affected by these things now and uh last week I was probably a little bit more wrestling this week I'm pretty happy but um I'm just going through things that are really changing me in really profound ways inside myself yeah and um I'm being very very deeply affected so I thought you know what I want to just I just want to take a little time you know and maybe come back to it because I'm obviously I'm having profound experiences very meaningful things very deep things for me very touching things for my heart and spirit and uh and I thought well okay I'll come back to it and someone very dear to my heart might say I'm processing so I'm processing stuff and like I'm I'm processing like a house on fire as they might say in England back in the day meaning very well very intensely with a lot of like meaning and uh uh uh I guess you'd say what like passionate desire to learn so I'm processing a lot so I just asked Daniel hey can we push this back a little bit and Daniel was cool about and said hey yeah let's wait we'll come back to that one later on so thanks Daniel for that we'll get it like uh after I go through this a little bit more um you know what did occur to me though was that you know we record these episodes we do some things that are pretty personal and it's also true that we're in all kinds of moods when we're recording these things you know sometimes like we're having good days sometimes we're having bad days sometimes we're having good times of life sometimes we're not having good times of life and we still do this thing and I don't know does that ever Cur you I just thought you know we've had times when we've done this that we'll have our pre-con conversation and like it's not necessarily the easiest time for either one of us maybe it's sometimes but we still do this thing you know we do this thing and and you know we we're not trying to put on like a happy face for the sake of doing it but I try and enter into this as neut as neutral or excited you know neutral is like on the bad end and excited is you know on certain topics or if we have certain people on I definitely get excited to talk about them you know um but generally speaking I try and take everything naturally meaning I want to be who I am which is who I say the person that who the person who we say that we are on here is the person who I try and B I try and hold myself to those kinds of standards and so if I say that like it's very important to take your life as a teacher then I have to do that and I have to take the things that are occurring to me as the the way in which those lessons are being provided for me to learn through and then try and transmute them into something that's maybe valuable for myself to repeat or process here with you or you know to that's worth sharing you know in that way that's interesting because you know like as someone who's we're both clinicians were both teachers and like you you just get your game face on and you just do stuff yeah you know but um probably yesterday like you know so anyways it's I'm just I thought okay let me let me go through what I'm going through here and then we'll come back to this subject right and I'm gonna see it like even probably with deeper and fresher eyes because it's very close to my heart anyways you know we talked a lot of episodes about this I think it's really a powerful thing How Deeply people can affect one another but I also I'm being affected I'm seeing things kind of through a deep prism so so that means we were going to go on and talk about the next these obstructions which is or obstacles which is fine because we got like five more to do or whatever not gonna run out of them one of the nine things that'll [...] up your life as we nine things will [...] our life that's the title of our book we Daniel have the idea of like writing a book around these things so this one was interesting because we both kind of took it in different directions yeah so I took it as money material Goods power success ambition these kinds of things I think the book says being drowned by Fame and Fortune yes so I took some of that stuff but then I also went in slightly different directions when we were talking off mic about this than maybe you did but so it'll give like a probably a really big you might say round perspective on this thing or something like that yeah yeah yeah yeah so um I guess in the power success Fame and Fortune things did think of the the whole Buddhist theory of like the different types of beings we've done I I did I did too but we should we should give the paragraph Eric here if you want to do it but I'm definitely gonna rip it but yeah go ahead yeah no that's fine yeah yeah so so just from the from the the translation from this this book The the da of Health and Longevity and immortality the teachings the teachings of the Immortals Chung and love translated by Eva Wong which is the the text that we're reading off of and I put it up on camera for those who are wanting to hear it and I'll post a link in the description just in case we can you know get Eva some Book Sales this book is super interesting book um we will do a a kind of a dosm for dummies episode here at some point coming up just so that you know we give a little bit more context for what it is that we're doing but anyways at the end of the book they talk about these things called monsters and obstacles we've kind of been working on these over the last couple months um and so this is the fourth obstacle as they call it and I'll I'll read it here but it'll also be in the introduction of the podcast so you're hearing and again just to remind you when you are rich and Powerful you will find it difficult to give up material goods and fame not content with what you have not sorry not content with what you have you will always want more being drowned by Fame and Fortune this is the fourth obstacle I had to laugh because we were talking about our attempts to create more and more content I think the word was like hovering around in both of our minds yeah for sure right yeah yeah yeah I like I easily see why that would come into mind because we were just talking about that whole issue yeah yeah so I mean I guess we'll see where we we I Rift it for sure you Rift it in your own way yeah it's true in the Buddhist thing that they have these things they call the jealous Gods yes right and so in you know buddh thought we did these episodes about this they have these multiple levels of being right sometimes they call them Realms but I know you weren't into that word right you like more like planes or something right yeah aspects or something like that yeah so you know they can be like basically like whole little universes within a Multiverse or something like that if you want to get big picture yeah but the thing we were talking about in the episodes that we did and I teach to students when I do uh classes on Buddhism on campus you know when I teach these things is that you can see this kind of echoed in the human world right there are people who are these jealous gods of the human world and the whole idea of them is they're interested in power right Fame wealth accumulation of material Goods power and so on those kinds of things and so you know that's an allc consuming kind of a thing for some people right and you know obviously in the you know the Buddhist world that's considered to be really bad because it creates a whole bunch of negative karmic things because you just end up like plowing over other living things yeah in the uh in the pursuit of these things and you fight with other people who are powerful you can think of like politicians and business people you know Elon Musk fighting with uh Zuckerberg or something or whatever you know these people fighting with another they're in their own Universe you know yeah they do things and it just kind of like washes over the rest of the living things around them and just things are like constantly getting tossed around in their wakes so anyway is that how you thought about it too that part of it yeah that had the same thought actually I'm just I'm looking for the names of those episodes but so we can but yeah okay yeah make the reference to it yeah yeah yeah exactly anyways that was like one part of it and obviously you could see what they're criticizing ing is people who are overly overly affected by that and that means you'll be drawn to these kinds of negative behaviors and uh I guess suppose it's a waste of the positive and the development of the negative or something like that but I mean you might have more to say on that part before I take it in a different direction I know you're multitasking that's okay I'll find it I'm blah blah bling but um uh in the interum but like I was going to go to other levels but I think you had more to say about this part before I shift right before we shift right yeah so okay so you know you will find it it says when you are rich and Powerful you will find it difficult to give up material goods and fame so I didn't you know not everybody's rich and Powerful so I I I think the obstacle in itself um I don't know I don't have any other different translations of it but so we'll just you will take this for what it is for people who do not have who are not rich and famous which is the majority of people you know um how is this still relevant well I I took Fame and I just did a little synonym for fame which I use as recognition and that made it far more tangible for me in that people absolutely desire recognition and this can come in many different forms the the most obvious one probably is that on social media who doesn't want to have a large following or who doesn't want to have all of their pictures liked or their you know comments commented on or shared or you know I mean who doesn't want to be a quote unquote you know influencer or whatever you know who doesn't want to be heard something like this but this is a desire for recognition you know and I don't know how you want to Define recognition for yourself but I I think without you I'm not going to look it up because who cares really at some point but we'll do the Mary K thing and provide you know definition a working definition but recognition is the the kind of like in in my my view for this conversation uh a deep desire to be seen you know to be observed to be felt to be connected with such that you do not feel like you're alone whether that be physically mentally or psychologically alone and so when other people like what it is that you are like right uh like what you are doing you don't feel as if you're out on an island by yourself and so this kind of attachment or drive for recognition is absolutely an obstacle in in in a couple different ways the first part is that you might palor how it is that you feel in order to link up with how others feel or change the way that you feel based on how other people feel so that you uh remain in the same Groove you know what I'm saying and then this is the this is where we get tribalism from this is where group think comes from this is where you know you not having your own takes moves you into areas that you might not even realize that you're moving towards now it's not to say like I don't have the same I have a lot of the same viewpoints as you that I've gotten to on my own and that's okay there's you know there's whatever right but I think what I'm referring to is like this desire to be seen so therefore I am going to either say things that I don't necessarily believe in to get a rise out of somebody or I'm going to wave a flag that I only halfway believe in because those other people believe in what I believe in therefore I want to stay within their good graces and I think this kind of mentality is antithetical to what it is that we are Our intention in this podcast and within our work in our life in empowering students patients friends family member loved ones lovers you know all all the the people does that does that kind of make sense yeah it's interesting like you took it in I didn't think of it that way you know but I'm glad that you did that makes sense to me for sure the way like what I was hearing in the way that you were talking about is also that you're framing it in kind of a compassionate way too like there's a kind of a desire in people to get acknowledged right you know and it's a sort of a a longing and so this is sort of a maybe an artificial way of getting that longing met yeah right uh so I thought that was like kind of like framing it again compassionately or something okay there's a kind of a this feeling of lack and trying to fill this emptiness through this route or something you are saying that part too right I think you framed it passionate way but it leads to something that is obviously negative in the sense that you can go through and end up again trying to tailor tailor tailor your identity to get that kind of attention right and inevitably when you do that you end up sort of truncating yourself yeah and creating something kind of artificial right definitely it's weird going back to the episodes we did on Eric FR way way back when we were talking about his Art of Loving yeah I want to say Art of Loving I think is what he calls it either way it sounds like it should be more Saucy than what it is but it's not about sex it's about love you know and he does talk about that danger in the culture you know and he's talking about that way way back I mean I kind of that comes to mind occasionally when we have these conversations was already saying like there's a like a marketing element in the culture that's so deep that people will feel like they have to Market themselves yeah all kinds of ways to get those attentions and sometimes it's even in really intimate relationships people are still in marketing mode right yeah but you know then you're also talking about like just in the World At Large you know we've never done something unlik neoliberalism we've been hinting we've been joking about it for some time you know yeah maybe we got to do that neoliberalism and you watch out something like that yeah you know so I mean okay it's a weird philosophy but it basically says like everyone is participating in the Market at every single moment of your life you're in the market right and all life is just markets and so you're constantly on the cell right you're constantly selling yourself and like I was listening to one of the guys I like talking about this he's a professor at uh Notre Dame he was saying well you look at the social media thing it's like the perfect example of that because you're selling yourself absolutely and then the market will give you feedback if you get enough likes and whatever you know then the market will say you did the right thing you know yeah that's right and your whole personality is supposed to be devoted to like getting the proper number of Market responses but they kind of frame it like that's a good thing right right because it's just realistic to think of yourself as a participant in the market no matter where you are in every single thing which is obviously what from is trashing the 1950s and 60s or whatever it was he wrote that book but it's OB been a problem for a long time and the social media thing that you're talking about is just like even a more revved up example of that right absolutely super [...] toxic yeah I know people who who will who have said like I had to get off of it yeah people who I know who are good people like smart people who like like I had to get off of it because it's just it has a bad effect on my personality you know I'm not maybe just because of my age range I I this isn't a thing for me you know my kids I can see it right you know my son gets like does a comment on some chess video and he gets a lot of likes he gets super hyped and I I'm like I don't care dude yeah you know in that I don't have the emotional response to it you know what I mean because I didn't go through it other things I can respond to from having the experience more emotionally I can kind of get it from afar but I can't totally get what that feels like inside to him you know what I mean but being being meta right be we'll go one one we'll do the Deadpool thing we'll break the fourth wall fourth wall is broken you know we we we do it on here I mean I fourth wall isn't isn't like obliterated in this thing it's oit we've obliterated the fourth wall I have you know yeah um yeah go ahead yeah I mean with with with this Venture here our you know our podcast we we do love to get feedback we like when our our work gets shared we like when people watch or when they listen or when they email us at Jin and Tantra gmail.com or when they leave a like or they comment or subscribe on the you know no but but but it's true right you know I mean I don't necessarily like I I don't have a good day because more people watch or less people watch it doesn't affect me like that but it does feel as if what we're doing is is being consumed and therefore if it's consumed it has value right and I think that's the part about being recognized for something now granted you know a picture of your lunch um being liked by your you know it's not exactly quality content that you're trying to to to put out but it's the people you happen to go to high school with or something like that exactly your your home economics teacher enjoyed your Mac that you made the other day you know like yeah well I suppose like that maybe what I would hope the differen is in this is like I think it's true for both of us that we kind of we try really hard to be genuine on this thing yeah for sure really trying to do that so yeah so hopefully it's not coming across in a way that's fake or something right like we're trying really hard I was even in the intro to an episode like this I'm like well listen this is where I'm at folks right so you know trying to like we talked to like before we started the episode and I was like well I'll say something maybe about this you're like we don't have to bother we'll just go on to the next thing but I was like nah I'll do it that I'll go through it just to be yeah trying to be genuine about this [...] so yeah that's the uh that's the fame part the recognition part that's fing the recognition part like in a way that would be more relatable to people obviously right yeah I know how was it I mean in the age that we're at we didn't see this but my daughter had this thing called streaks there were streaks and I think it was on Instagram but you had to go through and you had to like like a certain number of things and always keep it going you know and she would get so neurotic about this [...] it was crazy she was like in fourth and fifth grade it was a whole deal like people would post things and you had to make sure that you caught every post and if you didn't you broke the streak some like weird thing for you know gen Z kids would get it you know what I mean yeah and so you know again it's was it's hard for me to totally like she'd be super anxious about it it'd be hard for me to totally relate because I never went through it but like J you're talking to another gen Z or they would know that what that was they probably would know it yeah mean being you know my age you know Millennial I grew up with technology you know what I'm saying and so like I'm like right at the right at the cusp of it as as it's being integrated I'm like oh cool new thing oh cool new thing oh that's a cool thing look at that that's new you know what I'm saying um but I think for like your daughter's Generation The jenz Ear The techn it's already here it's already a staple in life they didn't have to grow up with it it's already a thing you know like yeah the phones are better and you can do this or whatever but since she was young she's already had uh all of the things that she would have wanted was already in the phone whereas when I my phone my first phone in high school there was no text messaging in that phone you know what I'm saying like I had to put it in my backpack phones used to be phones right yeah like just make call like it made a call you actually talk to somebody it was really bizarre yeah strange you know I mean like wasting my time I don't want to hear your voice send me an emoji talking to an actual human whoa yeah so it was so so I have a little bit of appreciation for it as it's been implemented into society because I remember a time when it wasn't there but then also I could see how it is and I but I can I can only imagine it now where it's like a this is just this is just how it is it's a staple and to me it's like uh a toilet flushing you know what I'm saying like all the shit's eventually going down it's just how many streaks is it going to be on the bottom of the Bowl before it gets gone yeah that's very it's really interesting because from the very first episode you've always had your eye on this prize right yeah so whenever it comes up you're always like hey look at this look at this your life look this in your life even the very first interview we did with samit yeah Kamar right it was like this is like a thing we go to watch how this is affecting people and probably in a way that like I would say I got it on some level but I don't think I really fully got it I mean I was paying attention to the psych literature and I knew it was bad but you were talking about it from a much more intense kind of understanding of like the dark place associated with this right absolutely darker places yeah yeah okay so that was part of how you went with it I went to again I think the idea when you just talk about the huge part of this being drown by Fame and Fortune well most of us aren't so it was what you were talking about like well how do I make this relatable what is this really about yeah and so I took it a little bit more into the world of work especially me when I looked at these nine obstacles I felt like that one wasn't the place where that one was most accurately represented to me seemed to be here you know and if the whole idea these are things that can kind of consume your life in negative ways so I mean they obstacles I think they're also I mean I think the word consuming would be good for them too right they can kind of eat away your life yeah and so I thought okay what a lot of people seem to get consumed by is their work they may never get Fame and Fortune out of it right but it's whatever their successes are within the Realms of that part of their life sure it starts to consume or lack of or lack of success then it like obliterates you in another way right yeah yeah yeah I hear what you're saying so when I was thinking about it I I just thought of people that I know in my life I thought are consumed by work you know where it just kind of eats them up yeah and I thought you know again I don't want to mention any people personals because that wouldn't be so good but you know people I know who who are eaten up by this and I thought what really does happen is something really similar to what you're talking about though this idea of either recognition or I would say probably like self-esteem again I would in a number of episodes self I would say identity even at at its at its end yeah at its full maturity or immaturity it's it's definitely identity yeah yeah yeah I could see that too the idea of like I identify so much with this particular part of myself this is the core of who I am if I don't have success in this area I'm [...] right like without my work what what else what else do I do what am what am I what am I what do I do I don't know what to do without this thing yeah it's a really weird like political tangent with like Ben Shapiro who's like just a jerk right-wing jerk I don't even yeah I won't even have words or oh you have multiple reasons not to like P Shapiro multiple reasons all kinds of Reason also also I'm not that far removed from him actually the sense of age or the sense of like con yeah or you know people who know him yeah for sure do you just like avoid like any situation where you might I'm not no no no I like I'm not I'm not in in in personal proximity but I you know you know people who know yeah for sure yeah so anyways he's like you don't have to know who he is every once in a while some political figure will pop up here and like they were talking about in like uh lowering the retire like raising the retire the retirement age correct making 70s or something like that you know like Americans don't work enough long you know like we'll P put the Social Security back even more the little trickle trinkles of Social Security you get that trickle down on you occasionally that's right when you're old enough that you've been paying to your whole [...] life that you really just deserve but okay like like it's a favor to you okay and so he was just talking about and he said like he tried to make the case like if you don't work what's your identity and I many other things under the sun Ben Smart Kids philosopher that you are you should you should philosophize on bonded a little bit deeper you'll find other things but anyways simple simple-minded arguments from a simpleton privileged dripping from his necklaces empty brain Pockets full poem over that's great yeah yeah yeah so um so okay so that's so you going to Identity I mean he was basically talking about that yeah right so um so for our quote for the show you have to pull that poem out we'll just have to pop that up we're talking about having quotes from the show there you go spontaneous verse spontaneous Dan you know right it's great so so so that I do I also like was looking and I think in talking with the people I know who are consumed that I would also say the self-esteem things so probably both of those ideas right MH and they just kind of get stuck in it and then I mean I'm sure we know all know people about this where the demands of like people I know who work in Corporate America who work in these kinds of environments that have those kinds of Demands they're there like 50 60 hours a week easy right and it will just consume your whole existence and you know you get kind of dragged into these things and then really talking about partially it's the money right and I guess it goes back to the first obstacle the feeling of security that the money is supposed to insecurity that the money is supposed to assuage right yeah really does because you sort of really know at any given moment you could get bounced anyways you can the other the other part Eric is that people I've never it's not I'm gonna say never I rarely see people who live below their means you know what I'm saying even and and I work with some people who are really you know they're well Todo you know what I'm saying like even in even in that statement well to do I have a range of people who I work with who are really well to you know what I'm saying like yeah [...] you kind of like [...] you kind of money and then I have other people who are like just a normal millionaire and you're like a normal millionaire yeah normal millionaire nice home whatever not but not opulent not they're they don't have a million dollar worth of cars just chilling in their garage it's there that's not you know and they have this same thing they live within their means and if their means are their their desire and their spending expands to meet what they have the resources for and they're right on the edge yeah you know you start buying other things you know like what what what could you think of I don't know custom Cabinetry thousands of dollars thousands and thousands of dollars you know um you know whatever you could think of like this everything is more expensive the furniture is more expensive the work the the the the the carpentry in the house is more expensive the the property taxes are way more expensive all the things everything is the the trips the vacations the clothing all all of it is just it just it just inflates so if you're making 40,000 a year you spend what you spend on X that's 10% of your salary but if you make you know 440,000 a year you're going to still probably spend 10% but that number is going to be much larger you know but you're still going to live live within those means and when you are unable to make that kind of money to live within those means to for your normal spending habits you feel it you feel it even at that even at that level you feel anxious about your ability to maintain it I guess yeah yeah absolutely because to you that's normal life and that and for their you know level of of existence it is normal it is totally normal when I want to go buy a pair of pants I go to Bloomingdales why would I go anywhere else you know yeah as opposed to somebody else they're like well I have to go to like Ross or what what whatever I don't know TJ Maxx or something like this orangr rack that's that's where I go to to buy my pants but no they're going to Nordstroms you know or sax fth AV whatever I don't even know there's probably nicer stores Von Mau I'm not sure you know so basically saying is like when you're dealing with these patients you can kind of like assess clinically oh there's still this anxiety doesn't go away correct it's still there correct yeah um yeah I so yeah so interesting so we took it's it's a big thing this one it can go in all these different direction seems to be like the message of this for me right and so again like I went to like people I know who I don't have necessarily those means not your not your patients who you're talking about in that way but people who like still have again in ways their identity their self-esteem they're still being drowned by their local minimal fortune and fame right but they're trying to do for themselves to handle again that probably their own lack of self-esteem in some ways right and trying to prove themselves in these ways like I know people who are like that right and then you know again they be kind of eating up and so I guess the idea is then what does that mean sort of like psychos spiritually was sort of the next thing I was thinking about you know and there are warnings in some of these Buddhist philosophers about these things like there's Kamala Sheila and who's like one of these great kind of Buddhist philosophers practitioners Scholars you know I remember like the Dal Lama was doing a teaching on his work you know they do these things in debat where they kind of take one of these famous books and someone kind of goes through it with you you know so I had this with the Dal Lama in up in Wisconsin up in Madison and there were Parts where he was talking about this whole idea you know that your work can eat away at this there's similar idea going on there right and then you won't have the time to go through and you know do the other major spiritual things of your life right they'll be kind of like eaten away and then you again like as I guess as far as my gripe about this a lot then you're more the victim of the culture around you again which I always think is a mistake right that part like da to the Koran or contri Buddhist to the core or whatever you want to say if that starts to devour you I had like a little Tangy thing around there too I'll throw it out to you just to see what you think it's kind of related like you how the culture can do this there's a book I'm like haven't read it myself but I've been talking with someone else who's been reading it it's called the geography of Genius it's this guy named Eric Viner I like the title yeah it's interesting I want to judge that book by its title and I like it I'm judging that book by the cover totally and I'm in right yeah yeah um so he like he goes through and he's traing on the world and he's trying to figure out what cultural conditions tend to produce explosions of like all kinds of creative work all kinds of creative people you know that's kind of the gist of the book you know it's a little bit like a travel book because he gets to go around and go to places you know where there's history of like great cultural things happening right yeah but one of his points is you know and he talks about with the Greeks and I didn't realize this but what he says about like ancient Greek culture when you're talking about like uh U you know Socrates and Plato and Aristotle and all these people like apparently they didn't value money at all you know it was actually considered to be kind of go or something like that to care about money you were supposed to care about ideas and you know everyone was kind of basically in the same relative crappy conditions in terms of money no one had a lot you know it wasn't like that you know and uh but it educed all of this cultural explosion because the values were just placed in this other place and I thought that's interesting makes sense but you know his argument the book is going around in these different places trying to make that case over and over again the more you get the money thing taking over the more uh you lose the possibility of creativity and genius because all the energy starts going in this other direction you know and at least as far as American culture he's saying I think the underlying point because he doesn't like it that much so I'm gonna be into that book or even conversations about that book because I like to be critical of these things but he's basically saying you know M American cultural things they're not genius because they're all just sort of pragat pragmatically designed to make money yes things that American culture produces that you say have the quality of Genius about it are usually technological you know and are usually ultimately a core trying to make money and his his definition of genius then kind of excludes that we could debate that I suppose right but he's using a definition that doesn't include that you know wasn't Socrates point to make money right wasn't Buddha's point to make money or L's point to make money right so my you know yoga teacher Andre would agree with that completely completely I mean he often makes the point that like tell me an idea that you have that doesn't revolve around making money or trying to make money oh he says that that way interesting how do people answer it are he's not looking it's rhetorical I guess right I should say it hey Andre I have one yeah actually here I just I really like to watch PornHub a lot I don't make any money on it at all that doesn't that wasn't what we were talking about like okay Point Counterpoint you know yeah yeah yeah but yeah he he makes that point and he has and listen y do y all talk about it afterwards though when you're sitting having lunch and food do you kick it around do people come back to it or he I mean it's you know with with Andre it's kind of like you know if you want to talk about something he'll be like what this is absolutely true you know I mean like amongst the students though is that something yall have kicked around to see how people react to it I'm kind of curious um no I think people understand it as it is I mean he'll talk about bigger points like you know if you say you don't have money for this then then stop drinking a $7 coffee every day you're gonna have money for that thing over a short amount of time you know like learn to basically what he's saying is reduce your desires red reduce your expenditure reduce your footprint and you'll have more just by the reduction of other things even if you don't make any extra you know what I'm saying well K Sheila's point is something like uh Sheila Sheila K uh his point is something like you know uh if you do that then you'll have the more mental space because you won't be consumed by that right which is exactly what he's talking about y exactly I was just yeah this is just something about Retreats so I was just referencing sometimes what will happen is you'll be on a retreat and then you'll have these downtimes during the retreat where you're just sit around and I was just something yall had talked about when you're just sitting you know uh just bsing because sometimes you have some pretty deep conversations in those times yeah for sure yeah um and the people haven't been on Retreats it's an interesting part of being on Retreat you know you meet new people and you're all these lectures and you're hanging around and you get you get the chance to kick these things you know that you've been talking about you know it's a teaching Retreat right share your experiences whatnot so anyway so okay so this is the this is geography a genius idea and he kind of goes through and he says wherever you find the taking over The Genius will probably disappear and I guess that to my mind that's related to sort of like spiritual genius too right just the podcast is kind of a spirituality that I think you know spiritual insights show geniusness obviously right oh yeah so you know the more that this takes over the less the chance you're going to have to have the space to do that you just won't have the mental space to do it right correct yeah you're you're tired you're you know you're just your your mental expenditure has been expended yeah but also like guess what Andre is saying is it consumes your mind in some way that'll be there underneath the surface right yeah you're yeah and I the thought that isn't about this you know he's basically saying it's something about how your mind is getting yeah like constructed then right the term that I use for this is habituated right I we I use this all the time right this is just because it becomes ingrained in how you see things you know and and I think people do it on a regular basis we're always I'm always anyways in engaging with the world as you know threat non-threat um doing binary thing male female you know whatever you know what I'm saying judging and I guess in a way judging or categorizing maybe is a better way of putting it but then we're like okay what are they driving oh that car sucks you know like you know what I'm saying there's there's there's a bit of this but eventually it just happen even before it hits your level of cognition and it does you I mean speaking for myself I can't speak for anybody else's thoughts but I don't imagine I'm that different than than other humans but for me I'm aware you know I see this oh look at that you know I'm going to just use cars because we we're always driving places you know in this culture you see something and all that car's beat up you know they must not care about their thing or whatever but it just it's happening this way so then I go down and I do the rabbit hole of this person doesn't care to wash their car so they're probably not concerned with the X Y or Z you know but but this kind of mentality that then gets placed in many other positions as well it's you know something that I'm working towards to not not have that as a as a thing for me it doesn't affect the way that I interact with people but I can say that the way that you do something is probably the way you do most things and so if you're in a culture that is absolutely 100% a money [...] which is what we are for sure that you're going to put those the glasses are going to be green and it's going to be dollar signs you know and it's maybe not going to be like all of the way in which you see every single part of the world but it's going to be a big part of it and with in this culture in particular man it's it's it's prevalent yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah and then that like you know based on the guy's theory in the book that works against spiritual Insight genius creativity and all these other things right so I guess you know as we get towards you know the more close cling part of the episode I was trying to think well what do you say about this then right and I happened to be having a conversation with someone today very dear to my heart and she was explaining how adamant she was in finding her work you know and she was saying like well it took me longer because I had to search a little bit more and she said definitively I wasn't going to settle I wasn't going to settle until I found the thing that I found to be meaningful right which is a different which is a different yard stick of making a decision right yeah yeah and I was definitely like okay I could relate to that too and we started talking a little bit and for me you know I like even if I go back to my undergrad days I was willing to like go to do things and say nope this isn't right I gotta move on this isn't right I gotta move on so I I did that a lot and it was like it didn't thrill like my parents right people around me but I was like no this isn't it this isn't it this isn't it and I was like again I had a kind of like a similar maybe adamance to it right where I was just like no I'm not doing this so maybe that's something by way of at least a shared experience that might resonate with other people too you know yeah maybe you have to like find that part of yourself and true make it like right livelihood in the Buddhist sense I'm not going to be satisfied till I got the one that seems like I'm cool with it and even if takes some time takes some difficulty I'll keep pushing at this thing to like find it and then that would be my way of solving this problem I still have to be realistic and I have to make some money and do these things but I'm pushing until get to the thing that I feel comfortable you know with so maybe that's the piece of advice behind it I don't know what do you think I think so yeah I mean I think we we're always cognizant of the uh variety of people's life experience and so if you have responsibilities if you would have had you know children at a much younger age that might have been more difficult or taken you more time but I don't think that would have made you choose differently it would have just Tak I don't I wouldn't have done that to be honest wouldn't have done some of the things I did until I knew this was set up and I was satisfied with it you know what I mean right right well that's personal choice personal choice but yeah and sometimes things happen or what you know whatever you you have to inherit somebody's you know I had a friend of mine he raised his sister's child because she couldn't do it she was an alcoholic just you know and she had kid at a young age and so her younger brother had to raise this kid when he was he was probably 9 20 maybe when he started raising his you know what's effectively his son but it is NE so there's just some there's some circumstances that come you know that come up but I think more to your point that has to be an organizing factor in your life and even in the circumstances that you might be handed because everyone's circumstances are different that you can still make those efforts you know you can still have it in your life and so sometimes you know we got to suck it up like that's just that's just what it is you know like life gives you you know but that doesn't mean that you have to like be beaten until the point that you no longer that that flame gets extinguished you know and you're like well this is just my lot like no it's not it's not your lot like it you you'll continue like I was having a conversation with a A friend of mine and he was like oh why don't you do this type of treatment you know and I was like oh those those people make a lot of money and he goes well maybe he goes you could totally do that you know and I said that's that's not what I want to do he's like you could do what you want to do you know make a few hundred thousand a year and and and then later on you can you can go back and and do passion projects and I was like no yeah I had that personality too I don't I don't I can't I don't know you know like I I can't do that I can't I won't not only can't I could but I choose not to you know I won't I I won't I won't do that I would have gone into Finance if that was the case you know which is infinitely interesting to me but not rewarding I like uh had my best friend growing up one of my best friends growing up and when he went to went to work in Corporate America it was a very interesting thing for me to watch I think maybe we've talked about it here or there I was like I was like I'm amazed this [...] can do this this would kill me this would destroy my soul yeah but he was just la la la going along like it was nothing and I had to realize like okay we have very different personalities then right yeah they're very different personalities but if you feel this thing that like you if if you have this concern if you're if you're listening to this thing yeah you're like okay I want to work psychos spiritually and myself I'm recognizing this as a part of life that can be a problem because that's what the da seem to be saying right if we extrapolate it out yeah then maybe that's what this entails like going through and saying okay I'm gonna I'm GNA be driven in this way I'm not gonna be satisfied doesn't have to be perfect obviously Perfection is the the perfect is the enemy the the good as they say right but at least you like okay this I can believe in right and one point for one of the schools I teach Pacific College they asked me to write an essay about why I went into doing this and I was kind of inspired by the story of the Zen master amori soan so he he's a kind of interesting character he was kind of almost part of this Japanese Samurai class of people you know before World War II and in the aftermath he felt all of this shame because he felt like people like him were the things that led to like the tragedies of those of that war you know he was like I was too invested in Japanese nationalism or something like that I was too connected to it and maybe not in a way I even like wanted to be but in the way I was like blind blinded in a way you know what I mean I think that's how he talks about it I hope I'm doing full Justice to how he describes it but in the end he was like after the war he was going to commit like ritual suicide he was going to do seacu because he was just like I feel so bad about myself you know and then he had a teacher who said no you can't do that no you don't that's that's the easy way out in this no no you have to go through and you have to contribute something back right and we need people like you to do this so the best thinging thing about him was then he became a zen master he was already sort of a martial arts master you know he was involved in kind of that part of Japanese culture but then he became a university Professor he became a fine arts person I remember go seeing exhibits of his work up in Wisconsin again it wasn't the same Del Lama trip but another time going up to Madison so it became this very like sprawling kind of personality where he did all of these things and in a way they were all his work but they were also you know his pth to Enlightenment too right know sprawled and I thought okay that's fascinating too I find that inspiring you know so you know maybe I'll try to do something similar or something right where I'll go through I'll try to choose choose the work that's meaningful I'll try to make it big you know and uh and in that sense that'll be my that'll be my zen or something or that'll be my tatra right yeah in that way and I know other people find that inspiring I was inspired by that you know that that spoke to me I I I there was somebody whom I was connected with some years ago and I might have talked about her once on the podcast before but she was a yogi in the way that you would imagine she was self-taught practice every day 5:00 a.m. before work she made all of her clothes she baked bread she did you know all these things you know that she did herself and and we talked about this kind of thing you know way back when and I was like how do you reconcile your your career because she was just like um she worked admin I think at the University of Chicago and I said well how do you you know that how does that fit in you know this lifestyle that you you have and she's like it doesn't and that's the point she's like I don't have to I go to work I do whatever work there is to be done and then I'm done and I leave and I don't take it home I don't have any responsibilities I'm finished and I get to be me more off into the time that I'm not I have paid time off sick days five o'clock comes around pop I'm out of the office that's it and she's like then I don't I don't carry it with me and I had never met anybody like that before you know who who lived a a particular kind of life that would you would seem to be opposite of that and very kind of free flowing art projects and Community involvement and the work was there was chosen intentionally so that it didn't interfere with the other things that she was involved in and I appreciated that choice so while I am inspired by you know we live our Our Lives the way that we want to and I'm inspired by that those kinds of stories I also want to give this to other people who might not be able to to do that for whatever reason at this time to be able to say that like even if you can't you can still live your life inspired so long as you're doing it in a very kind of a mindful way that your work is the thing that fuels your life and and I think what we're saying is uh life is a thing that fuels your work but they're two different positions but you can end up in in similar places if you are still if you're still aiming for that goal you know you can you can still achieve it like I'm fascinated by this question like throughout the entire the entire podcast and I'll probably throw this out this is the end no one's gonna listen this long till the end of this thing well you know the top 10% 5% of people are are here all right here we go congratulations so I've been thinking about like this phrase I'll probably drop it in other episodes like the samsar ometer like the bar the meter of samsara mhm you'd have like a little Geer counter that you can oh this is samsaric it would start ticking away you know like if you reading like radioactivity or something that's samsaric this is not samsaric and the whole idea of something being samsara like you know the the Buddhist point is samsara is a place that's not going to be satisfying yeah right and we're in a samsara but you know part of what I think we're trying to do in the podcast is to say okay you can find your your pockets of spiritual meaning and inspiration in some Sara right I think that's I don't know if we've ever said that this in these exact words but this is part of the goal of this whole thing for me and trying to share with people hey maybe you can find this too this place in samsara where you can find your spots of spiritual meaning whether that's in like say a very deep and meaningful relationship with someone you know you can make it not samsaric yeah pull it back make it not samsaric and like have that be something that the two of you can share as your meaning right you can do that right do that with your work with any of these obstacles maybe what you can do is you can take them and make them nons samsaric yeah samsaric the samsar ometer pops out and starts going then you start going okay this is getting samsaric this has to get fixed yeah you know but you can use it in different parts of your life right I'm talking about here in the work thing right but you can use it maybe what we were talking about two weeks ago with your family or whatever these things are oh this is getting samsaric let me be aware of this you know I'm gonna get a sense of samsara right I'll develop an internal samsar ometer right and if something seems Sor I'll do something about that right but I mean I think it's a little bit of like a leap of faith around this in a way right yeah yeah yeah for sure but also like also like a kind of a commitment like a a commitment of the Shen a commitment of the spirit to say okay I'm gonna try this as much as I can I'm gonna go through and I'm gonna try in all of my activities which you know if we're going to live a l person's life a lot of our activities are going to overlap with these obstacles you know right but I'm make it the nons samsaric version as much as possible with the belief that I can do that right and maybe at times you can have doubts like sometimes you feel like well can I make this work in a non-s simparic way can I make the work part of my life or the relationship part of my life or the family part of my life or whatever it is can I make that work nons samsaric but I think that's the part of the goal of the podcast for me yeah what the exploration is the exploration is can we have things where we can make them so they're not like this right and then we'll make them the nons samsaric version version of this the meter won't go off right and then those will be the things that will be the ones that will help you fly right yeah they'll they'll be the ones that will help you know help the spirit sore so to speak right yeah because You' made those things and those will be edifying and I I'd like to hope my hope is in all of this you know and because we're trying to communicate this other people I'm trying to say okay this is a thing let's all believe this is a thing we can do this right we don't have to just drown in this samsara we can we can mold at least in some way through our Tantra through our Zen through our Shamanism through our Sufism through our cabala whatever it is we can this samsara to be rewarding for us yeah through through community service through you know giving yeah charity Healing Arts through whatever it is right we can make this nons samsaric it's possible Right to do this and like maybe that's like for me the closer of this was of this particular part was like yeah that really that idea really hits me right yeah and I again I think behind all of this conversations for me is this kind of goal like listen okay it's samsara got it right but we don't have to succumb to that right we can make it nons samsaric in our own ways right and throughout any of these things we can transform them we'll do the trans we'll do the we'll do the tantric transformation of these things and make them into something else I know that seemed to be like something worthwhile talking about to me at the just hit me yeah I think I think for me the other part to remember is that like moving you know just we're going to we're going to you know wrap it up here in a minute the beginning of this episode we when we started talking about this I started talking about recognition and the desire for connection and since this is you know an inevitably part of my DNA you know as as a being um I find that it's always worth reminding to people because I had this conversation around this topic in particular with many of my patients and clients and and friends and you know just in general because it's fascinating don't I don't interrup is that because people are really people are troubled by this right that's the reason you're having some of these conversations cusing a lot of trouble right like we could do another episode just on this just just and maybe we will you know well these things are gonna keep coming up right this is so so I didn't bust your flow but I was just like Yeah because it is you could just tell it's so deep for people they're struggling so much about this yeah and and I think that part of it is that we spend so much time I spend so much time people do at work and the relationships that we have at work are often times like a family and like a family there is dysfunction the difference being is that like your punishment in this case is your livelihood and ability to pay for your life or feed your family or you know whatever right depending on what part of that Spectrum you're falling on when in your requirement for work you know that that Financial dependency you have on that work you know what I'm saying but that like we don't often treat co-workers I mean some places do but we don't treat them like people who are in our life you know they're just there and what we're doing sucks so bad that they have to pay us to do it I'm saying like this is so shitty that like you have to you have to bribe me to come here and do this thing it's not that way for everybody I understand but for a lot of people it really is I remember having to explain it to my kids just going like see the reason why it was kind of like why don't they pay teachers more and that's because they don't have to I was explaining people want to do nice things for kids you don't have to pay them to do that you know why don't you have to pay people in like even parts of the Healing Arts because people will do it because it it's rewarding for them they like it yeah that's right [...] that you don't want to do they have to pay you a lot of money to do it because it sucks you know rots the soul on some level anyways for sure yeah you're saying is so true yeah yeah and that like I think people forget about that the community aspect the connection aspect with their co-workers and that like it is an opportunity to to to practice interpersonal communication with people who you don't have like deep connection with you know but why why not build that thing and I can hear in my mind well you know in office Dynamics and relationships and boundaries and you know whatever but it's like why would you know I come from being in the military where you don't know anybody you know you don't know anybody and everybody comes from all these different walks of life and for the most part it's a pretty unified front you know what I'm saying and so you put down all the things that you you know have as a as a being because you're wearing the same clothing and you're dealing with people and you have to the job that you're doing is of primary importance and so you're going to work with the person who's in front of you to execute that particular thing and you get to know them in the process and you know there's always differences between people I mean not everyone's going to get along and all of that but for me it's such a missed opportunity that people skimp out on because they don't you know they just want to get it done or whatever it is why would we not take this opportunity to grow take this opportunity to learn you know to practice being openhearted or practice listening or pra whatever it is you know that that we need practice with on these people that we spend so many hours with we spend so much time with them you spend more time with people at your work than you do with your own family there's no question you know what I'm saying so like why do we drudge through it why you know and and I I don't know just to me it just never really it never really made sense in my mind that people didn't take their work opportunity to grow in a in a deeper kind of sense and and I my only thought on it is that they just don't like being there and none nobody does well this is like part of your Daniel instinctive sense of like building s not build sa everywhere why not sa being like the community of people that kind of spiritually support one another right why not build sa all around you right you know so even if it's at a workplace okay you know they didn't they didn't build that office space to build a s there but like why not why not do it why not transform that into a s why not I could say like a couple interesting things just on like a personal level about that what you're throwing out there because I think I did try to do that and I did make connections in surprising places like I worked in this very cons like right-wing conservative office when I was like in part of my undergrad and part of my grad school days was that Breitbart might as well have been honestly seriously um and I was like you know the people were nice sure you know it's that's the irony of it you you might disagree with people politically it doesn't mean they're not nice people yeah you know so um all family members we disagree with we're like that's a nice person I just we just see the world through a different prism but you know I I got along with people but I also found like Kindred Spirits there yeah right so maybe that's the way that you find your kindred spirits but I also would say one other thing about that which was that once I got into work environments that kind of suited me more it happened a little bit when I was doing my HIV work through kocani Hospital Rush Presbyterian St Luke so I had a job where I worked for a number of years I was on a grant so I was doing public health and um I was working with all HIV and age patients back in the day when that was a much more the health problems about that were much more severe right consuming and I felt tied into that place you know and probably in some ways it was because there were in a weird way there were people like really from all over the world and we bonded you know and I also felt that way when I started teaching too I felt like okay this is a community I can connect with and I would say that I met like very very dear and important people in my life like you like through those spaces yeah right yeah and so maybe the only other thing like I wasn't thinking about this you know we were planning on recording this but now that you brought it up maybe that's part of how you know you're in the right space because the people start to resonate with you like oh I'm meeting important people in these spaces you know maybe I'm being some of the most important people in my life in these spaces because we're all being drawn into the same part of life yeah yeah so maybe that's another way that you can kind of like use the Sam sirometer right or whatever you want to do with it to start measuring this okay this is probably more Where I Belong because I'm finding people that were resonating you know not everybody maybe right yeah but it does tell you like I'm probably in the right space in life yeah you know that might be another feedback thing that's a good point yeah if it feels like I I can't find the people here I can't commune with these people that might be an indication that you're not in the right space yeah yeah that's a really good point yeah I hadn't uh you know I'm glad you brought it up that whole thing of building Community because that's such a strong part of your personality right deep part of who you are right yeah but yeah like when I really thought about my when you were talking I was thinking about what is experience of this I was like yeah then I felt close with people in a very natural way going back to what you were talking about before the way that you can just be natural and have it happen yeah all right well it seems good man yeah it is good I like that good that's a good that's a good place to cap it right there yeah um yeah thanks for all the thanks for all the Deep Thoughts Daniel yeah no of course no this is yeah we're we're in a good we're in a good zone right now with this this is a good uh a good thing you know we're in a good spot so uh I appreciate the efforts my friend always thank you and we appreciate the audience you know whether you're watching us you know uh via video on YouTube if you are like comment subscribe or just subscribe or just like or comment or none whatever you know uh those work if you're catching us on on one of the other ones you know uh thank you for tuning in please you know share the work we definitely appreciate it um you know and anything that you can uh you can do in terms of leaving a comment or something like this like um it just helps the show grow so we definitely appreciate it if uh you're checking us out and you want to hit us up you know please do so uh via email Jin and Tantra gmail.com if you're uh got the Instagram things the the Jin and Tantra podcast uh you can you know hit us up there too we always like to to interact with people if you have something you would like us to cover or you know somebody you think we should interview or you know a book or something like that you know please feel free we're uh certainly not the end all be all to U all things spirituality or life uh I think the one of the other parts that we are trying to make clear is that spirituality is not just something that lives on a meditation cushion or inside of a temple or you know specific place but your life is spiritual you cannot you can only ignore it if you want to but you have to make effort and so we'd rather make effort diving into it more deeply and uh you know weaving it all together hence Tantra mean to weave Jin and Tantra we like things in twos for Eric this is Daniel we'll catch you guys in the next one deuces