Tami Simon: You’re listening to Insights at the Edge. Today, my guest is Lama Surya Das. Lama Surya Das is one of the foremost Western Buddhist meditation teachers and scholars, as well as one of the main interpreters of Tibetan Buddhism in the West. He has spent over 45 years studying Zen, Vipassana, yoga, and Tibetan Buddhism with the great masters of Asia—including the Dalai Lama’s own teachers. Lama Surya Das is the founder of the Dzogchen Foundation and the author of many books, including Awakening the Buddha Within and Awakening to the Sacred, as well as a new book from Sounds True—Make Me One with Everything: Buddhist Meditations to Awaken from the Illusion of Separation.
In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Lama Surya Das and I spoke about what it means to be “with it” and not “against it.” We also talked about inter-meditating in nature, inter-meditating with difficult emotional experiences, and even inter-meditating with people we could call our enemies. Finally, as a theme running throughout this entire conversation, we talked about what it means not only to let things go, but let things come—and how when we let things go and let things come, we learn how to let things be. Here’s my conversation with Lama Surya Das:
Good Lama—you know, that’s one of my nicknames for you. I have so many. It’s good to be with you. Thank you for joining Insights at the Edge.
Lama Surya Das: Thank you. And you too, Tami.
TS: You’ve written this new book, Make Me One with Everything: Buddhist Meditations to Awaken from the Illusion of Separation. In it, you write about something you call “inter-meditation.” So, let’s begin: what do you mean by “inter-meditation?”
LSD: Well, this work is really about a new-ish phase of teaching that I’ve been doing lately to my students and practices I’ve been developing for busy people to make everything interwoven, like a co-meditation—an inter-meditation, being with whatever it is rather than against it. Moving from “I” to “we,” and from me-ditation to we-ditation.
So, inter-meditation—it’s like Thich Nhat Hanh’s inter-being, [which is] recognizing our inseparability with everyone and everything. We could talk technically about the inseparability of self and other, or subject and object, but just more practically how we we’re not as separate as we think or feel—and how happiness or well-being or completeness is not just a matter of how we momentarily feel, but an attitude, a fullness, an embracing.
This is the point of this kind of shared meditation—shared spirituality, or inter-meditation. Co-meditation. We-ditation, not me-ditation.
I’m really enjoying this because it’s so easy to include our pets, and I know you just lost your beloved dog Jasmine. You’re co-meditating with her right now when you feel like she’s with you and with your partner. That’s so true. I still feel my late parents or my late gurus.
But also, inter-meditating with nature—let’s say “externally”—or internally, with our own feelings, not rejecting them or being against them. Just experiencing them fully and integrating them healthily, and then choosing how, when, and if to respond—what to make of them.
So, it’s really a shared spirituality. It’s an opening to oneness. It’s a way of making “we” the new “I.”
TS: Tell me what you mean by that—making “we” the new “I.” That’s beautiful.
LSD: Well, if you were a New Yorker, you would understand that life is fashion and appearances. [One] who’s heard the Mahamudra teachings might agree everything is mere appearance.
So, we’re always talking about what is the new black. Recently, orange was the new black. So, now I’m saying we is the new I. I believe this for our increasing interconnected and interdependent age—our shrinking globe, our global economy, our intermeshed socioeconomics and information era, and our global environmental situation, where we are obviously all in the same boat. We all rise or fall, sink or swim, together.
So, from I to we—from selfishness or self-help to awakening together, to shared spirituality, to seeing through the illusion of separateness—the tyranny or cocoon of ego. Letting down the drawbridge—as Trungpa Rinpoche might say—of the moat surrounding our egos, castle keep, or bastion-fortress—and letting others in and out. With every breath—as I’ve written about in this book—taking [the Tibetan practice of ] Lojong (attitude transformation; so-called mind training) and riding the breath as a good practice for exchanging self and others. [This is] feeling what others are feeling, resonating with them, empathizing and connecting through Lojong and Tonglen, giving and receiving, breathing in and out to open up this armor, to cross this moat, to lower the drawbridge, to be more vulnerable. Not hypersensitive, but open and vulnerable—as well as fortifying our inner strength.
Let’s say, in principle, mental strength or mental discipline as well—not just mind, but spiritual inner strength.
TS: So, LSD—you know, that’s one of my other nicknames for you—you mentioned briefly the Lojong. I think a lot of our listeners may not be familiar with that. Tell them what you mean by that.
LSD: Lojong, as I said, is a Tibetan practice of mind-training or attitude transformation. Spiritual refinement—Lojong. It’s a way of reducing selfishness—of transforming our selfish attitude, our childish/teen independence—or self-seeking, or self-help mentality into a more universal responsibility, as the Dalai Lama would call it. Bodhichitta, as the Buddhists call it. Caring for all as if they’re ourselves.
So, this is the attitude transformation of opening to a bigger view—opening our hearts and minds inclusive and not exclusive. Less selfish, less-self-help, and more helpful, generous, altruistic, and compassionate.
So, that’s the Lojong practice. It’s a Tibetan—it’s a Mahayana Buddhist or universal vehicle, big vehicle, big path kind of way of thinking. Not just thinking about one’s own individual happiness over time and momentary feelings, but of the others—including others as well. Our mates, our families, our colleagues. And of course, by extension, our neighbors in our neighborhood; our town; our community; our environment; our world. And all beings—not just human beings, if we’re widening out the view of this Mahayana Buddhist vision and this Lojong practice of attitude transformation, of mind training. Heart-mind training. Or bodhichitta training.
TS: Now, let’s say somebody’s listening and, of course, they’re with you in principle. But, let’s say it’s somebody who doesn’t always feel competent empathizing with other people—but they want to. What would you suggest?
LSD: Well, that’s exactly why I’ve written this book and why I’m developing these teachings in original, fresh ways of inter-meditating and co-meditating, Tami. Co-meditation’s for busy people, and inter-meditation [is] for people who think they can’t concentrate, be quiet, and meditate. It doesn’t take very long to breathe in and breathe out, or breathe in and breathe out together, or practice eye-gazing with a partner, or to share spirituality together intentionally—to have a nature walk or an intimate embrace in silence. Or some practice practically where you start to feel with other rather than separate from or against or competitive or—worse—anxious about what they’re thinking or worried or preoccupied. [Rather,] being very mindful and heartful and soulful in that moment, soul to soul.
That helps us learn to empathize. That’s the point that of this Tonglen—this breathing in and breathing out together, exchanging self and others. Tonglen practice: giving and receiving. Tonglen, in Tibetan.
So, we start to resonate with them. So, we start to get on the same wavelength like tuning forks, attuning and vibrating together. Then we’re naturally more feeling-ful and feeling what the other feels—[as well as] being more focused and centered and present, unless we’re distracted. Then we’re better listeners. Then we’re more tuned in together with the “other.”
And I’m saying the “other” in quotes because the other isn’t always a person. It could be a pet. We covered that. It could be with a nature element—like I like to co-meditate with water of any kind. I am naturally still and centered and non-moving, but flowing. Some people like the fire element or the earth element.
So, nature is the essence of a natural, organic meditation or co-meditation. Nature and mysticism: a very practical backyard. Nature merging.
This is not our usual idea of meditating, where people think of closing their eyes and trying to concentrate and not think—which, of course, is not the point. Meditation is about awareness of thoughts and feelings and perceptions, not eradicating them—but being more aware, mindful, and wise about them.
So, in this sense, I feel it’s very important for us in these days where people are busy. We’re in a secular age where people are not necessarily interested in the religious framework. To be able to—as the great Tibetan Kagyu master Gyalwang Drukpa says—”Everything must be meditated.” It’s not meditated on, but with, in—within. Not separate from. That’s this notion of co-meditation and empathizing—which is the root of compassion, by the way. By feeling what others feel, we naturally feel closer to helping them. Or, let’s say, treating others as we would be treated, they’re more like we are. We can feel that, rather than an unknown or something to fear.
So, everything can and even must be inter-meditated because it really is [that] subject and object are inseparable. Everything is so subjective. It’s not what happens to us, but what we make of it that makes all the difference. So, we find freedom and peace in this buoyancy, and a transparency.
TS: Well, let’s get specific, Lama Surya Das. So, you’re talking about how you enjoy co-meditating with water. So, tell me specifically: how do you do it?
LSD: OK. And I’ve written about this, because my books are like workbooks, the way I see it, with practical exercises. So, I point out that I used to sit by the ocean or walk by the ocean, and try to meditate, close my eyes, concentrate on my breathing or mantras. You know—traditional Buddhist or yogic Samadhi kind of meditation.
Then, I realized I was struggling to concentrate over thoughts. Actually, what I really wanted to do and really felt to do and what was really happening was I was hearing the waves and the wind. It itself was washing everything away. I could relax. I didn’t have to try to concentrate on the breath. I could just watch the waves and hear the wind. That was the breath of life—of the Earth. I could co-meditate with the ocean, and it washed everything away. There was no me and it, and there was no me trying to relax. It was just the flow.
I see this so often. People have a sacred zone or a way of being in their life where they’re naturally one with things. For example, a parent who comes home from work late and goes in to check up on their children in their bedroom. There’s no point in sitting there, closing your eyes, and going inward to try to meditate. All you have to do is sit there and watch the child breathe, and it’s as if all the angels are in the room. You have a total, divine co-meditation “with the child,” with the angels—because it’s a hard opening, separation, dissolving, natural, loving experience.
That’s what I call inter-meditation or co-meditation. I’ve written about it in this book, Tami. I coin the term “mom-itation” for that because I’m not a very politically correct person. Of course, a father might be able to experience this too, but I call it “mom-itation.”
So, in a way, you’d be breathing with your child but not making a big deal about it. But, it will naturally happen, just watching their little chest rise and fall, and just letting go of the day and your worldly preoccupations. Resting, dissolving, being in the heart of love—in the now-ness, awareness—really inseparable. That’s the big love. That’s real love. That’s unconditional love, beyond the duality—beyond the polarities of like and dislike. That’s the real love.
And I think that’s what these kind of co-meditations help us arrive at and get used to and help us see through the illusion of separation day to day. Not just with our child, but with other children, all God’s children, all creatures—eventually.
TS: Now, LSD, in addition to breathing with—whether it’s the rising and falling of your child’s breath in mom meditation—
LSD: Mom-itation.
TS: Mom-itation. Or, being at the ocean. Is there anything else that you might say are pointers for how I engage in inter-meditation when I’m in an experience like being with the ocean or a lake?
LSD: Well, I’m trying to break it down to make it so simple that you can’t miss. I think that’s an important principle. Of course, there’s many other tips and pointers that I could mention that are in the 300 pages of my book, or that come up every time I teach it. Or, if somebody has something different like, “How can I do it while I’m exercising? How can I do it while I’m working with my hands on a craft project or at my workplace?” And so on. Or even, “How can we do this while we’re arguing with somebody or with a difficult person or an enemy?”
But in general, I think the important point I want to make here is: rather than just adding on, I’d like to strip it down to the most simple. [This] is breathe, relax, and let go—which means letting come and go, letting be—and smile and relax into it. That’s the basic way of centering, of arriving, and of loosening the grip of dualistic consciousness or of grasping and clinging—however you want to define it, if you want to talk of theory.
Of course, there’s many other things we could discuss. You know—what position to be in or what situations are more or less conducive to you. For some, it might be nature. For others, it might be music or some other beautiful thing that overawes the ordinary thoughts—and moves you or transports you beyond the bubble-like confines of yourself into the oceanic oneness of this kind of inter-being [or] inter-meditation.
So, I’m exhorting you to major in whatever is most conducive to you as your inter-meditation, your co-meditation. Of course, you can’t always control the conditions. So, I’m not always by the water. But once you learn the principle, then you start to be able to do it wherever you want.
Also, of course, nature is also within us. So, we can inter-meditate with our feelings—be with them, be inseparable from them, and embracing them rather than against them. Be with it rather than against it—that’s the principle of co-meditation. Be with it and in it, and experience it fully—and letting it be. Letting go—we often hear “letting go,” but I want to add the point that letting go really means letting things come and go. [It’s] letting be, and that’s a very important point.
This is not overly simplistic, Tami. I don’t think so. I could talk to you in Tibetan and Sanskrit about this—about tatha’i shepa, nowness awareness; and machupa, unfabricated and unaltered; and all the Dzogchen terms.
But I’m telling you it’s the carefree openness of this kind of natural meditation or organic non-meditation, really. This is the great inter-meditation that the masters eventually arrive at. That’s why the masters don’t necessarily emphasize—at least in our tradition—that advanced meditations are not about how long you do it or how many prayers you say, what posture you’re in, or if your eyes or opened or closed. [It’s] about inseparability, and a combination of dissolving and totally connecting at the same time.
TS: OK. Now, you said several things I want to unpack a little bit. In talking about letting go, you said it’s important to “let go and let come.” Most of the time, when people talk about letting go, they just talk about the dissolving, the letting go. But what is this “letting come” part of it mean for you?
LSD: Well, I think that’s the very one-sided, one-way street of the beginner meditator. People think generally letting go means “getting rid of.” But, the next thing will arise—whether it’s in your mind or from outside or in life. Life is flow, not stasis—not static.
So, letting go means letting things come and go. It means letting be—cultivating equanimity and non-attachment and truthless awareness, [as well as] being open to whatever comes. Friendly, open, even interested—being with it rather than against it. I’m repeating myself on purpose, because this is very important.
People often talk about letting go and then it becomes [talking] about non-attachment, renunciation, and there’s a tinge of suppressing emotions—or thinking less, or being calm and clear. We hear a lot about calming the mind in the meditation ghetto, but I’m not sure that that’s not a little bit what the great pioneer Trungpa Rinpoche would call “mental calisthenics”—trying to achieve temporary states of mind rather than enjoying the united state of mind, which is what I’m talking about.
[This] is a oneness beyond duality—two—or one, or any notions of oneness or none-ness. It’s wholeness and completeness and it’s so in the moment that there’s no talk [necessarily] about how long.
So, if you let things come and go, that’s the great letting be—and then more dissolved, or one with, or embraced in and embraced by the natural flow. “Natural meditation,” I’ve coined it.
I wrote about this 20 years ago in Awakening the Buddha Within. There’s a section about Dzogchen. There’s a section about natural meditation.
Now, I’m putting forward more practical applications of this in daily life, where people can find what does it for oneself or together—like spirituality for couples. We could talk about tantra—that’s a hot subject. But we could also just talk about shared spirituality, like shared intimacy and not knowing who’s doing what and dancing together as if no one’s watching, which may or may not be in bed. Just in life.
And making every moment an “I-thou”—a meaningful connection—rather than “I-it,” an object-related connection—like, “What can I get from it or from you?” But the “I-thou” connection. As Martin Buber called it, “Seeing the light of the divine in everyone and everything.” That’s like an inner core of this co-meditation or inter-meditation—a kind of converge-itation or commune-itation, if we’re going to talk about spirituality for couples. Or shared spirituality even beyond intimate lover-partners.
TS: You’re good at the wordplay, LSD. You got a lot going on here on the wordplay front. You’re really good.
LSD: Well, I’m working on it because I’m getting—first of all, this is my thirteenth or fourteenth book, Tami. Second of all, I’ve been doing this for a long time—translating and teaching and working on trying to make it fresh. [I’m trying not to] keep saying the same things like “letting go” and “lovingkindness.”
Today, there’s a new quality that everybody’s talking about, which is resilience. Of course, this included in what we used to call “flexibility” or “balance” or “resourcefulness.” But, it’s good to have some new takes on things. I really think so. It’s a very helpful quality, so that we’re not brittle.
TS: Yes.
LSD: We’re not so fixated. Resilience is very easy to cultivate through this kind of dissolving. Like the poet Basho said—back to my nature meditation theme, of co-meditating with nature. Basho—the great haiku Zen poet of Japan—famously said, “When I write a haiku about a tree, first I look at the tree. And then I breathe out into the tree and I breathe in out of the tree, until I become the tree. Then a haiku gets written.” Notice he didn’t say, “Then I write a haiku.” So, then a haiku writes itself.
So, I think this is really about the art of living in oneness or in inseparability with everything. Every moment. That’s the inter-being that Thich Nhat Hanh coined. That’s such a beautiful way of understanding what we’re talking about. Not just oneness, which seems different than some other things. But even deeper.
In Tibetan, there’s a word called zangthal—a Dzogchen word which I’m thinking about. It’s transparent, translucent, inter-penetrating, trans-real essence—is the word that I’ve coined for this. Inseparability or inter-meditation.
TS: Now, good lama, I’m pretty sure that our listeners can follow co-meditation when you talk about being at the ocean and breathing—and I think they can get that. But let’s take a harder example—
LSD: I know it’s a little abstract, but I’m also talking to you.
TS: It’s not abstract! I don’t think it’s actually abstract. I think most people have the experience when they’re by the Atlantic of the Pacific or some powerful ocean that they can do that. But let’s take—
LSD: That. Or a sunset. Or music, or something.
TS: Yes. Those are easy, though. I want to get to something that might be hard—like, now I’m going to experience the inseparability and co-meditate with somebody who has recently keyed my car, or stolen from me, or something like that. What’s your practice advice in that situation?
LSD: Yes. That’s the hard question, and we have to get to that.
So, let’s take on an intermediate first, which is not just a beautiful sunset or the most conducive, or meditating and breathing with your angelic child in a quiet room at night, all protected and secure and safe. It’s sort of easy. But how about dealing with grief and difficult feelings, or anger and whatever comes up? Anxiety in the moment.
So, being with it rather than against it, as I’ve said before. Not being against it. Embracing it. Allowing it, and letting it come and go, and being in the next moment. I know this fairly common meditation instruction, but it’s still very, very important.
So, not trying to minimize it or not grieve—or shorten the grief. That’s also manipulative and ego-controlling and probably fear-based (or pleasure-seeking, which is one-sided). So co-meditating with the difficult feelings—it can be anger or whatever. It could be fear, or death and mortality.
Then, having practiced on those difficult feelings with subjects, then we get to—the classic definition or word would be “the enemy.”
TS: OK. Let’s stay with the difficult—
LSD: You know: the one that pushes your buttons.
TS: Let’s stay with the difficult feeling for a moment, because I think that can be hard for people. Let’s pick any difficult emotion—it doesn’t matter—and [very specifically] take me through how I co-meditate with this uncomfortable and challenging feeling.
LSD: Well, first of all: what do we all want to do when we feel some pain?
TS: Make it go away by taking a pill or a drink or something.
LSD: Make it go away! By different means—right. Thus, get into all kinds of habits and compensatory behaviors, some more unhealthy than others.
So, this is counterintuitive. This is like facing your fears rather than contracting or insulating yourself by a compensatory behavior. You happened to mention a few like pills or drinks or other things.
So, from the meditator’s point of view, opening to whatever is or whatever comes up in the body-mind, continuing in the present moment, and being one with it—being with it rather than against it—penetrating it, experiencing it fully, letting it come, and letting it go as all things do sooner or later. And then the next thing comes also.
So, that’s where the letting come is—not being disappointed that you have some other feeling. It might be more of the same. But if you stop fueling it and fighting with it and reifying it and solidifying it, I can tell you that when you stop putting fuel in the gas tank, the engine eventually runs down. This is really true emotionally also.
Not that we need to be without emotions. I’m just saying that if we co-meditate with difficult feelings without trying to get rid of them or avoid them—without reifying them with thinking they’re so real we’re afraid of feeling them—they lose a lot of their impact or their harmful—they don’t make us anxious. They don’t make us afraid. We just feel that and then move on. Let it come and go—and that’s what I’m talking about, Tami.
I think Thich Nhat Hanh talked about this in his teachings about “cradling anger like a child that’s throwing a tantrum”—not trying to suppress it or get rid of it as soon as possible. That’s like co-meditation: hugging the child; holding the infant while they’re having their tantrum.
I’m having the bigger view—the bigger picture—that this too will pass. I don’t like tantrums. I don’t like them barfing on my shoulder while I’m holding them—or whatever they’re doing. But, love is much bigger than polarities of like and dislike. So, that’s the co-meditating with a tantrum.
So, if you have your own inner little tantrum—various [parts] of the Mahayana mind-training we’ve been discussing [are] compassion, forgiveness, equanimity. So, I practice forgiveness and wishing the other well. Mudita: wishing them well [and] rejoicing at their success even if they’re doing it at my expense. Kind of a deep focus on my own reaction. Not trying to avoid the difficult feeling.
It’s like in the Tantric practice of chöd, which I know you’re familiar with. Facing the demon—inviting the demons of your own mind and ferreting out the demons in your closet. Looking for the boogeyman in the basement of your psyche rather than locking the door and never trying to go in the basement.
That’s what we’re talking about here. I hope that’s clear in some way.
TS: Yes. I think it is. I think you’re talking about turning towards instead of turning away, and then being with—
LSD: And non-resistance. Openness. And accepting and embracing.
Again, co-meditation means being with it rather than against it. I’m going to keep saying that, because it’s striking. It’s different. It’s not Buddhist jargon. It’s slang.
In other words: not trying to get rid of thoughts when you meditate, but being aware of thoughts. That’s called co-meditating with thoughts. Mindfulness of thoughts is meditation. Just thinking is not meditation. It doesn’t bring the great benefits of meditation.
So, co-meditating with feelings is cultivating meditation, awareness, and being more feelingful and more soulful through and through. In through penetrating—we’re back to that. Being more transparent, rather than resistant.
And then when we get to the difficult person—
TS: Yes. Let’s get to the difficult person.
LSD: Breathing them in and breathing it out. Of course, we practice this in the laboratory of our own practice—let’s say our morning practice sitting somewhere before we are in the difficult courtroom or argument or workplace. Or whatever. Home battle. Family altercation.
But that’s part of the mind-training part. We start to see that they want the same as we do, so we get from “I” to “we.” What can we do together? What do we want, rather than trying to get away from those difficulties without really facing them and going through them together? So, there’s the togetherness—the shared awakening—that is not a zero-sum argument.
Again, I think we have to break it down to something practical like breathing or eye-gazing or contact or feeling what they feel—feeling where they’re coming from if they’re fearful or if they’re agitated.
TS: I’m wondering, LSD: I think it might be helpful if you could give me an example from your own life of maybe somebody that you really got into the crosshairs with—someone that was really somehow doing something to tear you down, or something like that. How [were] you able to use co-meditation to have a breakthrough?
LSD: OK. So, without mentioning names, I’ll use exactly the example you said—somebody who was trying to tear me down. Kind of a critic and “enemy.” Things like that.
Look: I am a nice guy. I grew up being a nice guy. My family’s nice guys. We don’t have domestic violence and stuff like that in my family or in my friends. So, I grew up kind of naively thinking I’d never have enemies. My worst enemy was like the other team on the sports field—that we played together every day with [and] that we were good friends with. Those were my enemies, you know? “Kill the quarterback!” That was my enemy.
So, I thought I was never really going to have enemies in life. But then—it’s kind of like the beauracratic maxim, “If you don’t do anything, nobody can criticize what you do.” So, when I started to do things in the world—and even get successful or lead or be up in the radar—then I started to get some criticism and have some so-called enemies or severe critics.
I’m not going to go into the whys and wherefores, but it bothered me a lot. I can never resolve it, no matter how much I tried. I kept trying to talk to them or write to them or meet them or talk to their people or change things in some way to suit them or find a common ground or have mediation—so many things over the years. Eventually, I found I had to write my own prayer practice for this so I could do this co-meditating with them in my mind so that when I was with them, I didn’t see them as an enemy. I let go of that dead bird that I’d been carrying around my neck for years. I just moved on.
By practicing forgiveness or kind of like breathing with them, visualizing them—seeing them in front of me and putting their picture on my altar—and being with them in my daily meditation. Not just wishing well to the gurus and the saints and my late parents—or my late students who wanted their picture on my prayer table—but including them on my prayer table. And being with them in that way.
[This is] saying explicitly—and here’s the meditation—”I forgive you and set you free and wish you well in whatever you do, wherever you go. Everyone experiences and creates their own karma. It’s not my responsibility if you’re happy or sad, or like what I do or don’t do.”
This had an unbelievable relieving effect on me. Then I started to realize that there was another whole dimension of life that I could experience even when I saw those people, no matter what they said or did. But I had to practice that, kind of co-meditating with them with their picture on my altar.
TS: OK—so you have their picture on your altar. That’s very powerful. Then, tell me—
LSD: Well, you call them to mind. I’m just saying the principle is of co-meditating with them and getting used to being with them—[as well as] being in my best self with them rather than reactive to criticism or what I felt like unfair, abusive manipulation when I was with them.
Then I was just relating to them in a totally different way. My best self surged forth. I was used to being my best self with them or whatever they said or did. That freed me, which is what we’re talking about. It made me happy and content.
They no longer felt like my enemies, just like critics. Or we have different theologies. They’re like the other people believing what they believe in. OK. Be happy. It frees me.
So, this is how co-meditating with them in my mind and with their picture helped me let go, and let things come and go. Feeling the discomfiting feelings and not being so reactive to them or wish they weren’t there.
Just like, “Oh, hello old friend. It’s a bad weather day. It’s the monsoon season again. Look, because here you are.” Within that, I can enjoy the monsoon season—of those feelings.
TS: OK, LSD. One of the other things you mentioned—
LSD: I feel like you’re not very satisfied with this.
TS: I feel like I’m fairly satisfied. I mean, I was—
LSD: I just felt like it was a major thing. I don’t know if I explained it right, but I have a typed prayer practice. I have it on the visor in my car for when I start to resent those people and think about the people I hate—who I’m not going to mention. Who treat me like that and still do.
Then, it frees me. There’s like another whole part of me that I can be. I don’t have to give in to those thoughts. But I also don’t have to get rid of them. It’s like I take that and—with the forgiveness and the wishing them well—it’s like my Buddha nature surges forward. It’s like, “Of course we wish them well. They’re going to die soon. I’m going to die soon. Little man trying to build an empire and feeling competitive with little me.”
I don’t need an empire. I’m happy looking at my little pond out the window here. It’s huge breakthrough. It was a quantum leap, not a little incremental being a better person.
So, I feel like this kind of practice—of being with it rather than against it—and really dissolving or merging into everything helps me see through the illusion that we’re separate.
TS: I do feel satisfied with your answer, LSD—just for the record.
LSD: OK, good. And of course chöd is a great practice for that, but we’re not talking about that today. Putting your head in the demon’s mouth rather than trying to get away from the demons, as we usually do. Even if the demon is pain or cancer or whatever the “demon” is in our psyche.
TS: Why don’t you introduce for our listeners what chöd practice is, because they may be unfamiliar with what you’re talking about?
LSD: Well, I didn’t know if you wanted to really even get into that.
TS: Well, you could explain it briefly.
LSD: OK, so there’s a wisdom tradition practice in Tibetan Buddhism called “chöd.” It means “cutting” or “cutting through” or “ego-slaying or cutting.” It’s about, instead of habitually contracting or running away from whatever’s painful, scary, or difficult, actually pumping up the thing that we’re most afraid of. Visualizing it—imagining it even as like a demon and offering the demons to come and actually take over. [It’s] feeding them with ourselves—with everything that we’re attached to with our body, our self, with our mind, with our health, with our age, with our life, really.
In other words, when a fear comes up, you co-meditate with—you offer yourself to the demons that bring that fear. So, we do it practically—in the beginning—by going to a cremation site or a scary graveyard or a cancer ward or a bone-yard butcher place at night. In the old world, that’s what people would do. Here, cemeteries are like parks, so it’s not necessarily so scary. But whatever’s frightening—the children’s cancer ward at the hospital is pretty frightening to some of us.
And [then we] face our fears. We see that it’s not really as terrifying as we had feared. It’s like going in the basement and finding out there’s no boogeyman down there, actually, in the dark [actually]. Trying to learn how to sleep without a night light could be part of growing up.
So, in the tantric practice—and this is a wisdom practice from the Prajna Paramita tradition, actually—from the female master Mother Machig. Chöd helps us slay or cut through this ego separation between us and what comes up in our mind, like fear. Fear of outer things. Fear of death. Fear of pain. Fear of illness. Fear of loss. Fear of others. Maybe fear of public speaking or fear of being exposed in public or called on to stand up. People have all these kinds of fears [that they] talk about and hold, and what their greatest fear is.
But also, fears of the uncomfortable feelings that come up within that we try to avoid with many compensatory habits. I think we can more aware in this way and see through the schmutz—the caca that distorts the windshield. We can actually be more clear and transparent and see by our own lights where we’re going and really see through the shadows—and not be afraid of the shadowy side of our psyche.
This is very important from the point of view of—many people are very fear-based and a lot of violence comes from fear, as we see today. I would really like to see a little more of the—I don’t know who to pick on. How about the young law enforcement guys with big weapons who are killing unarmed teenagers in the streets? A little mindful anger management or dealing with their fears and prejudices—knowing themselves better—before they’re given deadly arms and hair-trigger reactions.
So, some of this co-meditation helps us to be with the other, and be more tolerant or resilient or patient or create some space between stimulus and response. So, we don’t just have a blind, knee-jerk, unthinking, habitual reaction. This would go a long way in today’s violent climate.
And I’m all for mindful anger management, mindful emotional training, and so on. It relates to what I’m talking about, going back to traditional practices like chöd or ego-cutting.
TS: What you’re talking about—what’s happening within the law enforcement world, on the streets—brings me to another question about co-meditation that I want to ask you. Which is: what about when we encounter political injustices or other aspects of the world in which we feel it’s really hard for us to be aligned for [and] not against. How do we practice co-meditation when we encounter the injustice in the world?
LSD: Well, I think that’s exactly the point of what we’re talking about, Tami. It’s not that we’re for injustice—it’s that we’re for the “we.” The “we” and not just the “I.”
So, I grew up in the ‘60s. I know you’re a young thing. [Laughs.] But, I’m a ‘60s guy, and so we were countercultural and antiwar and so on. But, it was a little one-sided. It was sort of like being anti-everything. People dropped out because they couldn’t entirely change it. They moved to British Columbia or northern Vermont, and aren’t really engaged in the world.
But I think there’s an alternative to that. That was the letting go one-way street that I was criticizing before. But the letting come and go means that you let also come your feeling of trying to do something about the injustice—so that we can be more engaged like the bodhisattva, and step into the mess and shit-pile, and jump into the cesspool of partisan politics or the materialistic, bitten world. [We can] swim with our mouth open and swallow the whole ocean whole, like a Zen master would say.
We can really do that and not be for shit, but not be against it either. Shit’s a very important part of our life and our body processes.
So, I think it’s not just about whether you’re against it or for it. But it’s a little deeper than that. We can actually inter-be with injustice and take it on without fear that we can’t deal with it—or [be] afraid of power, or we’re afraid of getting hurt, or of not being effective. We can really take it on.
So, I don’t think this is a message of passivity. But, it is a pacifist message of non-aggression towards whatever arises—and embracing it.
TS: Again, LSD, I think it would be helpful for me to have an actual example, if you would. So, how you would inter-be or inter-meditate with a challenging crisis in the world.
LSD: Well, challenging crises in the world are a little big to take on right now. So, let me go back to the thing I said before—my critics and enemies. Rather than just avoiding them totally, which was tempting and sort of possible because many of them maybe aren’t around here. They’re not my next-door neighbor. They might not even be American, some of them.
Rather than avoiding them totally, I found a way to just be with them, be friendly and polite to them, and not expect anything from them. I’m more relaxed with them because I let come and go, I can inter-be, I can co-meditate with them. So, that’s my little war or peace prize—that I find freedom in peace and am not afflicted by their derring-do even in person.
So I think by extension, if we take that into the bigger world, then we can be less aggressive [and] less reactive, but very principled and focused and determined. We can actually accomplish more because we’re clear. We’re not so reactive. We’re not blinded by rage or self-righteousness. We can address systemic injustice and inequality and unfairness. [We can] get skillful professionally or however you engage in the world in these things—in actually making a difference.
I don’t think this is a call to be passive or indifferent, because equanimity is not the same as indifference or complacence. Not at all. It can make us more effective. We’ll be more balanced social activists or parents or citizens, rather than drop-outs.
I think this is the place to say that I think Buddha’s greatest teaching is the Middle Way, not meditation. We hear about meditation a lot, but the Middle Way—not too tight and too loose; not too much and too little; not all or nothing. This is a great touchstone for me in life. This can help us inter-be with everything, and neither avoid nor indulge, for example—and not always be an enraged Buddhist, but more like an engaged buddha or bodhisattva.
TS: Now, good lama, at the back of your new book, Make Me One with Everything, you have 28 potent aphorisms for enlightenment. There are just a couple that I thought would be really good to go over that weren’t clear to me. I thought it would be fabulous to have you explain them.
So, here’s one that I thought was very intriguing but I didn’t fully understand: “I think you have to love first and see second.”
LSD: Right.
TS: What do you mean by that?
LSD: I’m thinking. I’m thinking of the context that that appears. So, first of all, I’ve talked in this book quite a bit about this openness—this Mahayana inclusivity. It’s not, “Get away from it all,” or, “Try to suppress things.” I’ve talked about inter-meditating, co-meditating, with whatever is as it is—with others, with nature, with feelings. I’ve talked about Lojong mind and attitude transformation and Tonglen—giving and receiving, riding the breath, exchanging self and others.
The principles of that, Tami—which are encoded in the 59 Lojong slogans—I hate to translate it as mind-training. It’s an attitude transformation, I’ll keep saying. [These] slogans of Atiśa, which comes from 800, 900 years ago in Tibet.
So, I have my translation of that as Appendix A, I think. And then Appendix B is my own aphorisms, which I took from the book. One-liners like, “Don’t just let go. Let come and go. Let be.” Or, “If you’re not here now, you won’t be there then.” Or, “Take a breath. You deserve it.”
It’s not that hard to understand these, but it’s useful to remember these—like the traditional 59 mind-training slogans. Think about one a week or one a day, or put it on an index card or yellow sticky. That’s one of the practices I recommend in the book—if you take one of those, like—there’s all kinds of levels of these slogans, Tami, as you would know.
My favorite one is, “Always keep an open mind and a joyous attitude.” That’s from a thousand years ago—from Atiśa. So, he’s advocating [to] always be upbeat, or open and joyous. I think Trungpa Rinpoche really embodied this. He was always talking about being of good cheer.
There are others, like, “Don’t pass the buck.” And there are others that are a little more esoteric, like, “Take your own conscience as guide, not the opinion of others.” Not esoteric—a little more profound.
So, I made also a list of my own. Some of them, like I said, are very easy to understand. But I think they’re worth thinking about or picking one—or making your own and thinking about it. Whatever is your touchstone. I’d be interested to hear—maybe off the record—what is Tami Simon’s favorite saying or one-liner or “mantra” that she goes to when she needs to take refuge in the moment?
Here’s one of mine: “Nobody can do it alone. Believe me, I’ve tried!” So, that’s one of my 28—I think in the book it’s 32—bite-sized buddhas.
So, what’s the one again that you asked me about?
TS: The one that I’m curious about is, “I think you have to love first and see second.”
LSD: Yes. I think what I’m saying is that if we’re going to talk about wisdom and compassion—[which,] as the Dalai Lama would say, is the essence of Buddhism—or prajna and upaya, again wisdom and compassion—I think that we got to prioritize the heart over the mind. The mind is doing fine in these [scientific] days. I want to prioritize the heart. That’s what I’m saying.
We have to love enough to be wise—not just trying to be more wise, which easily tends to become so mental. This co-meditative practice of inter-being is so loving—it’s so embracing; it’s so self-transcending or something; it’s so dissolving into the wholeness; [it’s] the bubble into the sea of which it’s never been a part in this—that I think that that’s the point that I’m making here about being more heart-centered.
What did Don Juan say in Carlos Castaneda’s books? “A path with heart. Just give me a path with heart.” That’s what I’m saying.
Of course, Buddhism is a wisdom tradition—not so much a faith or matter of belief. But give me a path with heart.
I think today I’m going to reiterate—in these [scientific] days, these technological days where we know so much but we understand so little, including about ourselves, I’m afraid. In this information era, I think leading with the heart is not a bad thing.
But again, balance. The Middle Way. So, heart and mind. Body and soul. Wisdom and compassion. The two wings of the bodhisattva bird.
So, that’s what I was thinking about that one-liner or bite-sized buddha.
My buddy Ram Dass, who you know well and is such a pioneer and mentor to us all—he’s always nagging us Buddhist teachers about being so mental. He’s advocating making the journey from the head to the heart—that that’s the spiritual path. And I’m all for it.
TS: Now, good lama, I’m sitting here and I’m thinking of what might be really hard for someone to co-meditate with. For whatever reason, I’m trying to think of what might be hard instead of what might be easy. What’s occurring to me is that one of the things that might be really hard is to really inter-be with oneself when you’re feeling really self-critical—really down on yourself.
LSD: Yes, good one. I know it well!
TS: What would be your advice in that situation? How to co-meditate?
LSD: I’ll tell you! Good question.
First of all, it helps me—but I’m a word person and an articulator; maybe somebody else feels their way into this—to name it. So, I’m going to name it “the Inner Tyrant” or “the Inner Critic.”
So, how to meditate or co-meditate with the Inner Tyrant, the Inner Critic, or the Harsh Inner Coach. These are all names that people might have for them. You know—that harsh inner voice.
So, I think at that moment, that’s the time. I used to always try to shut it out and hate and resent it and think, “Oh, damn it. That’s my football coach telling me I’m out of shape again or I’m not working out enough. That’s my parents’ voice saying, ‘You’re not good enough. Never good enough. Never be good enough.’“ I so wanted to shut them up. That’s not being with it—that’s being against it.
That didn’t work. That’s just reifying it and resisting it and running away from it. I finally found how to co-meditate—how to inter-be—with that, is to recognize that and bring awareness to it. Breathe in when I hear that, and breathe out “with them.” Notice I’m using the breath here, just because it’s a good way to slow us down and bring us into some intentional awareness rather than reactivity.
It’s really not about the breath per se. It’s about the attention. Bring it back; recollecting the moment. Re-mindfulness—to remember what we’re doing while we’re doing it. Re-mindfulness, which is here co-meditating, inter-being, inter-meditating with the Harsh Critic—and recognizing it’s just one of the many voices in the kindergarten of my mind.
I’m not one of the kindergarten kids anymore, under the thumb of that so-called authority. That’s a very out-of-date, anachronistic throwback to my childhood. It’s just one of the many voices in that kindergarten and I’m like the kindergarten teacher. I get to decide whether to listen to those voices or not.
Maybe I do need to get more in shape! Maybe I’m not good enough at—I don’t know; I’ll just pick something—writing. I need to learn to edit myself better. Maybe.
But always hearing in your mind that you’re not good enough—or whatever form it takes for you, Tami Simon; or you, our dear listener, whoever you are—you can now decide with your adult self. You are the kindergarten teacher.
So, it’s a shift in perspective. But, I don’t expect anybody to take my word for this. You can look into this to see for yourself if this is not true. Do you really have to listen? Are you still independent? Are you still under those guardians, or are you grown up now? Maybe they’re old and you’re taking care of them, and they’re like children for whatever reason. Maybe they’re dead and buried, and we’re still listening those voices as if we’re not pretty enough or whatever your critic is. You’re not doing or accomplishing enough.
Whatever your Harsh Inner Tyrant is—that harsh voice; that “never good enough;” that critic that’s always trying to make you fit into this square hole no matter what shape peg or flower you are. That’s been very freeing to me.
That also helps relate to the outer critics, again, because I’m an adult. I don’t need the approval of teacher or the parent anymore. I am the teacher and the parent.
And I’m not just saying in an ego sense. I’m saying we can learn to take our seat through this co-meditation with the Harsh Critic, with the Harsh Coach, [or] the Inner Tyrant. I sit on my buddha seat now, and then I take criticism, as constructive or deconstructive as it may be. Then I weigh it myself like an adult—like the kindergarten teacher listens to some of the children’s voices. And others—she just lets them carry on. Just play. Just chirp, chirp, chirp like little birds.
So, in a way, this is the view or the “bigger mind”—the bigger picture, the bigger awareness—that’s aware of the things to come up in your mind. So, you’re “co-meditating” with them if you want to talk meditation language. You’re inter-being with them. You’re peacefully coexisting with them in the classroom.
But, it’s a figure ground-shift. You’re not one of the little children anymore. You’re the kindergarten teacher. This is just one way of structuring it, but it’s a picture that I like—that I use—that’s fairly clear to me.
That’s freed me a lot from the Inner Tyrant and the driven-ness. I wish that for others that suffer similarly, and I know many do. “I’m hearing these harsh voices inside.” You can choose now whether to listen to them or not.
And I’m not saying you should listen to me. I’m saying [that] when you do look inside, you turn the searchlight inward, when you bring this kind of introspection and contemplative awareness in—instead of looking outside for what you think you want or need—you have a whole different wealth of natural resources to explore and exploit. You start to realize your own inner beauty and [to] mine your own natural resources for change. You can be responsible and make decisions and succeed or fail on your own terms, not others’.
[You can] rely on one’s own conscience or inner truth or inner guru—not only on outer authorities. Especially outdated ones that we adopted when we were two, five, eight, ten years old—which is a long time ago.
TS: Good lama, just to finish our conversation: maybe you could tell me about this title, Make Me One with Everything—and why as the “Deli Lama” you’re particularly qualified to write such a book.
LSD: Well—the Deli Lama was a funny joke that my mother called me. She thought Buddhism was quite kosher—although at first, she didn’t quite like that I was abroad for over 20 years in the ‘70s and ‘80s, and away from my family in New York.
But, I begin with the joke—which is quite well known—about the Dalai Lama coming to a hot dog vendor and saying, “Make me one with everything,” because I’m talking about in this—obviously—the practice of from separateness—from “I” to “we”—this co-meditation and so on, as we’ve talked about before.
Everybody knows that joke. It was in my Awakening the Buddha Within book 20 years ago and it was on the Internet in those days. I didn’t make it up. But, I added a few other endings, which I’m glad to share with you, Tami, because you’re a good old friend—and our listeners.
So then the Dalai Lama is waiting. The hot dog guy hands over a hot dog laden with all the trimmings. And the Dalai Lama hands—visualize New York City, in a Brooklyn/Bronx scene; a hot dog vendor on the street. And the Dalai Lama hands over a 20-dollar bill. A sawbuck, as they call it in New York—in Long Island. Then there’s a pregnant pause, and the Dalai Lama’s looking at the hot dog vendor in his white tee-shirt. The Dalai Lama’s in his maroon and gold cleric garb. Is it a staring contest? Are they meditating? Has there been some misunderstanding, perhaps? Finally, the Dalai Lama cracks. He gives in. He says, “Is there no change?” He probably just says, “No change?” And the hot dog vendor says, “Change comes from within!”
[Both laugh.]
LSD: So, I made that up. That’s my joke. And I have a few other extra endings.
But what I’m really talking about is spirituality and oneness, enlightenment—whatever we call it—this great search for what we need and want; our highest goals and aspirations—by whatever name we call it—it doesn’t have to be intimidating. We can lighten up while we enlighten up. It’s a beautiful, joyous thing. We can make up jokes. We can joke about God, the Pope, the Dalai Lamas—or even worse, about ourselves.
We can! We can learn to laugh at ourselves and laugh together. This is so important.
I’m sure I’ve told you this: my girlfriend in the ‘70s, Tina—or “Teensy Das” as we used to call her in Mahayana Satsang, or a sangha community. She used to call me “Serious Das” because I was so serious a student of these things and practitioner.
But I’m much less serious, or I’m much younger now. How about that? I take it more lightly.
TS: I like it! You let me call you “LSD.” I like it.
LSD: What choice do I have? You’re the man. You’re the master.
TS: Oh, I like it when you call me “the man.”
LSD: You’re the most enlightened man I’ve ever met, Tami.
TS: I think you’re making my day now, LSD.
LSD: [Laughs.] Flattery will get you everywhere. I told you—we started off with, “Appearances are all.” As I say sometimes when people are meditating—you know I lead hundred-day silent retreats; I lead ten-day retreats. We have some serious practice sessions as well as other, shorter things. Sometimes I joke with people and give them instructions to sit there and try to look enlightened and as happy as they possibly can, because appearances are all.
And then people laugh and kind of relax, which is an important part of really going deeper into this subject. Not just frivolously, but having deep fun—not just cheap fun.
So, I think one of the great benefits of spiritual life, contemplative practices, and our subject here, meditation—inter-meditation and so on—is it’s a great friend with benefits. It’s really a delight. It brings so much buoyancy and delight.
So, I love it. I studied it my whole life, but I’m getting simpler and more—I don’t know—poetic or carefree in my old age.
Thank God for the Buddha! That’s what I say. It’s a dharma and sangha.
TS: And thank God for the good lama—the Deli Lama—Lama Surya Das. LSD.
Thank you so much. Thank you for this conversation on your new book, Make Me One with Everything: Buddhist Meditations to Awaken from the Illusion of Separation. Always good to talk to you, LSD. Thank you.
LSD: Thank you very much, Tami. Let me just say: thank God and Buddha for Sounds True and all who sail on it, and you, and all of your good works—and spreading the beautiful good news, and the joy of awakening together. It’s a beautiful thing. Thank you. I’ve always said that and I always will. I’m one of your biggest fans, for decades.
TS: We’re in the—you called it not “me-ditation”—
LSD: Not me-ditation—”we-ditation.”
TS: We’re we-ditating together. You and me, we’re we-ditating.
LSD: It’s all about the we-ness, not the penis.
TS: SoundsTrue.com. Many voices, one journey. Thanks for listening.
