Want Nothing

Sometimes, in the midst of anxiety or a desire for things to go our way, the thought, “want nothing” can stop the mind and quell the anxiety. Catherine acknowledges that our lives are filled with desires and preferences but that there are also times when we can dip into “the well of nothingness,” as Poonjaji called it, free of burning desires and mental ruminations.

Transcript

Welcome to In the Deep.

I'm your host,

Catherine Ingram.

The following is from a Zoom session broadcast from Australia on July 4th,

2021.

It's called Want Nothing.

Last Saturday,

I had to give a talk,

A public talk,

And it was a TED talk.

And I have given many public talks in my life,

But this one was different.

And my cohorts,

The other presenters,

All but one of them were also public speakers.

And we were all nervous.

We were nervous in the lead up.

We met on six Monday nights prior to the event and practiced with each other.

But a TED talk is a different animal,

I must say.

So everyone was nervous on the day.

Even one of our cohorts who has his own television show on ABC TV here,

A national show,

He has a couple of shows.

Even he was nervous.

It's a different thing.

So I was calming myself down with all kinds of memories about different tricks along the way.

And I thought a lot about Patti Smith when she was accepting the Nobel Prize for Literature on behalf of Bob Dylan.

And she picked,

Blowing in the wind,

The song to sing,

Which has like,

I don't know,

100 stanzas or something.

She practiced it for months and months.

And she couldn't,

She kind of didn't remember her place several times during the performance in front of the Nobel Assembly,

And also the world that was watching.

And at one point,

You could tell she was so nervous.

And at one point,

She stopped and apologized to the audience.

And she said,

I'm just so nervous.

And of course,

The whole audience burst into claptor in support of her and into,

Into acknowledging the vulnerability of being in a circumstance like that.

So of course,

This was nothing quite like that.

But in our own way,

It sort of was in terms of pressure one might feel.

And on the day of,

I'm waiting in this area where you get miked up.

And we couldn't get miked up actually,

Until the person in front of us came back off stage.

And it had to be really fast.

While the curator of the event is introducing you,

You're getting miked up.

But just before that,

I was sitting in a chair waiting.

And,

You know,

I had done what I considered to be a good job in writing the talk.

I felt my intention in the talk was to be supportive to people in these troubled times.

It was called courage and acceptance in troubled times.

And so I had done,

I had really thrown my my good intentions into the words that I was about to say.

But I was still very nervous.

And suddenly,

These ancient Dharma words that I first heard as a young Buddhist student a long time ago,

Floated through my awareness.

And those words were want nothing.

Want nothing.

I had already done in a way my job.

And the final piece was to be standing in front of an audience.

And what I was feeling nervous about was things like,

What if I don't,

You know,

What if I don't perform this well?

What if I forget a lot?

What if I have to look down a lot at the notes?

What if they don't like it?

You know,

What if it doesn't ever go anywhere on the TED platform?

All those kinds of things that were creating nervousness,

Because I wanted something.

I wanted something out of this,

Even if it was just this approval on the day from the 260 people that were in the audience.

But in these words want nothing,

Everything got quiet.

Everything got quiet.

And I was able to,

To be calm while I was on the stage.

I walked out there and suddenly it just felt like I was just hanging out with my friends.

Now,

Obviously,

It's too much to ask of us to just want nothing from the world.

It's too much.

We do want some things.

We want some circumstances.

We can't help it.

But there are also times when it's just going to be stressful to be in a wanting mode.

It's just going to be stressful,

Especially in situations where you can't get what you want.

And in other situations,

As I've just described,

Where you have some kind of agenda about how it might go.

And you're not in control of that how it goes.

So it's a good little mantra for certain.

It's a good tool to have a good little mantra to have sometimes.

It's not,

I wouldn't recommend that you wake up in the day and just start saying want nothing all day.

But there are moments when they're just the perfect words.

Yeah,

The perfect words,

Especially when there might be some kind of ego involvement that's making it uncomfortable.

There's an old cartoon that used to go around.

It's the Dalai Lama's birthday.

And he's opening up a package.

And the package is empty inside.

And the Dalai Lama says,

That's what I've always wanted.

Nothing.

Hi.

I was listening to an interview the other night on the public radio with Michael Pollan.

I forget who he's being interviewed by.

He's written a number of books.

A lot of people may be familiar with Botany of Desire,

Omnivore's Dilemma.

And the most recent one was a book called How to Change Your Mind.

And it has to do with the use of psychedelics and psychotherapy,

Among other things.

But he made this comment or he told this story,

Which I thought was really great.

Apparently,

He was being interviewed by Stephen Colbert on his show some time ago.

And he went through the whole story about historical and current uses of psychedelics and psychotherapy and for recreational purposes.

And he talked about the ego and how the ego under some circumstances will dissolve when you're under the influence of some of these substances.

And there proceeded to be a discussion about the ego and how it can get people into trouble.

And Stephen Colbert looked at him and said,

Well,

Maybe the ego should be the controlled substance,

Which I thought was just perfect.

For myself,

I find I'm very reluctant to admit it,

But it's the ego that often gets me into tight spaces or into places of being not cognizant of what's going on around myself.

I've mentioned this,

I think,

In a silent retreat a few years ago that maybe about the third or the fourth day,

I used to get very sad in silent retreats.

And I never understood,

But I was always like,

Okay,

Here's the third day.

I'm going to be sad or depressed for a bit.

And what I came to realize was that it was my ego that was slipping away and I missed it.

I like my ego,

It's who I am.

I've invested all this time and energy into it.

And so fortunately,

The fourth or fifth or sixth day,

Then it's like,

Oh,

It's okay if the ego isn't running the show for a while.

And it's such a relief to be in silent retreats and to just be in that space of the ego is taking a backseat for a change.

Yes.

Yes.

Well,

I think everything you just said is probably quite familiar to all of us,

Just the ways that it does get you into trouble,

Get you into sort of tight spots of feeling knotted up inside sometimes.

I mean,

It's often,

Especially unless someone's physically hurting you,

Lots of the hurts we experience from other people are really stings to our own ego and,

You know,

Or just frustrations that are,

You know,

We think we know better and it should be a different way.

So yes,

I second everything you said.

And it's very interesting though that you get a little sad when yours is slipping away.

And just to be clear,

What we generally mean when we say this word,

It's not as if there's some entity living inside of us,

But it's just that the sense of somebody and the referencing to the somebody is usually what I mean when I speak about ego,

The hard bordered sense of self rather than a soft border,

You know,

A very kind of strong sense of me and my opinions and my desires and my story and my history and my whatever,

Those kinds of thought formations that dictate how one behaves and how one perceives.

Yeah,

That gets lightened up in a retreat and you pretty,

You know,

And as we all who have experienced these silent retreats,

You know,

As we've known that in the dissolution of the hard border,

You start to perceive differently,

You're not filtering everything through the me story.

And therefore you see things as far as I can tell far more clearly without this constant filtering of how does this affect me?

Like the old Bette Midler joke,

Enough about me,

Tell me what you think of me.

So,

You know,

It's sort of this constant directing all information back to this central focus of your primary star of your soap opera.

And when that that quiets,

It's very freeing and very clarifying.

It's,

It's nice to be here.

This is the first time I've participated in in a discussion led by you,

Catherine.

So and the reason that that prompted me to look at your website and sign up to participate is I have read several times and forwarded to friends the Facing Extinction essay and YouTube narrative.

And it,

I mean,

It really spoke to me.

It's something I've felt for many years,

The notion of planetary hospice,

When I retired hospice,

Hospice nurse myself,

And I've been with many,

Many patients and my first wife when she died nine years ago.

But this week,

With the the heat dome,

Which sounds like bad science fiction,

And the 121 degrees up in British Columbia,

Almost 50 degrees Celsius,

It just,

You know,

I've always in conversation said,

Oh,

Yeah,

I think we're beyond all the tipping points.

But somehow the combination of this unreal heat at these northern latitudes,

And our four and a half year old granddaughter visiting us from Colorado,

I live in Massachusetts,

We haven't seen her for a couple of years and see this beautiful little girl.

There's just such a sense of sadness that that things are moving and as has been the case now for years,

Moving much faster than any of the projections.

And while it's not a shock to me,

It's just it's just a deep sadness of sitting with the anticipatory grief and and the current grief.

So I knew that the people attending this would understand.

Yes,

It's not something we always talk about.

And I don't know that everyone is on that page.

I think a lot of people who come to these sessions have not read the essay,

Which is fine.

I never sent it out publicly.

I just put it on my website and people find it.

But I'm with you on all of this.

I am paying attention to the data I have been for a very long time.

And it's going one direction,

And it's going very fast that direction,

How it is going to play out how the various forms of the changes will show up.

Will there be some places that are way better off than others,

All of those kinds of questions are in the unknowns.

But I think we're just in for a bumpy ride.

And that's why I gave that talk on courage and acceptance in troubled times,

Because we need to find inner strengths,

We need fortitude to stay sane.

And we and I really appreciate the fact that you have been a hospice worker.

So you would know very well,

How important it is in the midst of people in trauma,

In heartache,

In loss,

In grief,

In perhaps half insane in some cases in grief,

That someone is steady in the midst,

That someone is quiet,

Someone is a touchstone of sanity,

Someone is exuding calm.

And that's our job.

And I say for we who love Dharma,

This is now our job,

We have to really live what we know.

And we have to double down on it.

Even this phrase,

Want nothing,

I apply this also to all kinds of things that I anticipate will be great losses to come.

And maybe very basic things that we rely on for our functioning.

I wrote an article for the local paper,

Because I'm part of two resilient groups here in my region.

I wrote an article called What if the trucks stop coming?

What if they do?

What if the trucks stop coming?

We have to consider these kinds of things,

Not to be obsessed with these images.

And I don't recommend that at all.

But to just have one eye on some of the what ifs so that you might have some possible resilient plan,

But at the very least,

Some making friends with making finding peace in your heart.

And I'm sure you know,

Also,

You've seen how many people were able to come to acceptance in the face of their own death,

Maybe not everyone,

But probably,

Yeah,

That is part and that you know,

That it's possible you've seen it with your own two eyes,

Right.

And perhaps in many cases,

A feeling of great relief to to get to that point.

So I completely hear you about a four year old grandchild,

I have very young relatives in my family,

And my great nieces and nephew,

My niece is on the phone with us now and has two little ones.

It's this is the part that's the hardest,

You know,

For you and me.

No offense,

But you're not a spring chicken.

You're a grandfather.

And I'm getting to be pretty ancient.

And,

You know,

We've had a far longer run than most people in history.

One of our other cohorts on the day,

Who's Deathwalker,

She she guides people here in this region.

And she's getting to be quite known around the world and then certainly in our country.

But she says,

Every birthday after after 60 should be celebrated as a wake,

Which I thought was brilliant.

You know that we've had our run and and this is now icing on the cake.

But the part that's really hard is about those who have not had a long run and what's going to how is it going to be for them?

So all we can do,

We it would not behoove us or anyone to go into panic,

To go into extreme paralyzing fear,

To spread that kind of agitation around us.

As you know,

From your vast study of my essay,

It isn't just about here are the bad things that are happening.

It's about how we got here and how we might perceive and hold and go forward and be of service along the way.

That's I was really addressing that essay to people who were already understanding it fully and just wanted to know how do I how do I deal with this information?

I didn't have any interest in heralding the news.

You know,

I just wanted to talk to people who are already seeing the news and understanding it.

So yes,

To all your feelings and I there's nothing much to say except that I understand I feel the exact same.

There's a heartbreak and you live part of this living in this time of the great dying.

And let's face it,

There's great dying going on 200 species a day going extinct.

And I mean,

Great swaths of the earth now are having what are called mega droughts,

But basically it's permanent drought and they can't grow food.

And that's just going to keep going and more and more people will be displaced.

There's no way to look at this without a heartache.

And I think one of the difficulties in this time is that people,

Especially the privileged because we've we have had a great old party for decades.

We've been having a fun time tripping around the world,

Buying whatever we wanted,

The latest,

The greatest,

The newest technology,

All the shiny objects,

Just whatever,

You know,

Living like royalty.

And the crash of our psyche is in the recognition this party is shutting down.

Now we have to find ways to be happy and calm and grateful and live like people throughout history had to live with a whole lot less than how we live.

That's how everybody used to live and how most people still live actually.

So we're just joining the club a little late to the party,

But we're joining the club of doing with less and living with loss and living with heartache.

Because in older times,

Not far back,

I just looked this up the other day.

It wasn't until the early nineteen hundreds that life expectancy was beyond 40 years old.

The early nineteen hundreds.

Pretty much people just died young of all kinds of things,

Infections,

Childbirth,

Kids didn't make it,

You know,

Diseases,

Plagues,

Etc.

They were surrounded by death all the time.

And I assume by heartache,

People loved each other,

Loved their families and they saw a lot of death.

But we've been weirdly protected.

I mean,

Yeah,

We at our age,

We've certainly known a lot of people who've died.

But most of the people I've known,

Not all,

But most of the people I've known have died at an older age.

It's a very different thing to consider that death would be more ubiquitous around us.

But I think we have to allow for the possibility and we have to find these qualities of dharma fortitude and truth telling.

And I would imagine in the work that you've done,

You understand very deeply how if you're in your last moments and you know you're going to die,

You don't want to have to pretend around you to people who are clutching on you and begging you and saying you can still do it and all of that.

You don't want to be spending what little breath you have left having to pretend for other people.

So another piece of this is the kind of sanctuary you can offer as a truth teller of seeing what you see and not being in denial,

But moving toward acceptance and being of service along the way.

Thank you so much.

Yeah,

You're welcome.

I have listened in once and I also found you through the Facing Extinction essay.

And part of the reason I was attending today is because one of the things in the introductory information was finding solace.

And I also have a dharma practice for 30 years or so.

And so much of what you've said today has kind of resonated with me about the kind of joy of losing ego,

Which I've had fleeting moments of on long silent retreats.

But one of the things that I'm really struggling with these days is the tension between trying to live a joyful life and also being very,

Very aware of the trajectory that we're on.

But also having quite a few people in my life who are in what I would say in denial or who,

You know,

It's that wanting to tell the truth,

But not to be sort of ruining people's lives as they hear what I say.

And I struggle with feeling quite angry that other people around me seems to be having quite a nice time.

I'm feeling distraught and miserable and,

You know,

Sort of looking at the birds in my garden and thinking,

Golly,

Is that the last time I'm going to see you or noticing there are fewer bees than last year or all those those signs of where we're heading.

And it's that kind of tension between wanting to be truthful,

But also not wanting to push people into an awareness that they don't want to have.

Yeah,

And I mean,

I was I was very involved with Extinction Rebellion for about a year and a half.

One of the organisers got arrested,

Did all that stuff.

And then it just re I just I just dawned on me that it wasn't working and that people didn't suddenly flock.

You know,

I just felt like if people really knew that they would all come flocking and suddenly there would be a massive kind of uprising and the whole thing would change.

But actually it didn't.

And people turned away and they didn't really want to know.

So it's kind of trying to find that balance between being that calm person,

Which I'm not very most of the time,

And trying to have a joyful life and appreciate everything that's left.

Yes.

And be honest with people about what's happening.

Yeah,

It's it's it's I find I'm constantly kind of wrong footed by by trying to speak what I see as being true and what I can patently is patently obvious is true.

And what seems to be you know,

What other people want to hear which is not the truth from or certainly,

I mean,

People very,

Very close to me,

Some people I do have who do kind of understand,

But other people very close to me,

Absolutely don't want to know.

I understand so well.

I did go through a long phase of wanting to herald that truth and thinking mainly because it was so frustrating for me to be holding that information and have no one that I could even whisper it to like having to,

You know,

Hold this terrible,

Terrible knot,

And not having anyone that we could just even amortize that burden with,

You know,

What I've realized over the years is actually there are a lot of people waking up to this.

And I don't know if you know of certain groups,

But if if you'd like afterward,

Send me an email,

And I can put you in touch with people who are on this page and who are unpacking it in every possible which way to try to come to terms with it.

But the main thing is the Dharma,

You know,

That's really where you're going to have your best rest is to really go into acceptance.

And you know,

You probably know the Buddhist line that the Buddha said,

Allegedly,

Always speak the truth,

But only the truth that's skillful.

Now,

This is a fine line.

Sometimes one feels you have to say the truth,

Even though there may be a blowback and the other person may not like hearing it.

But in many cases,

In many,

Many cases,

We can be silent.

And to your point about people who are simply not ready for this and don't want to hear it.

I have come to see that it really doesn't matter if they hear it or not.

It would matter if there was a lot we could do.

And I don't think there is.

So it kind of doesn't matter.

It's not like we have to wake up the whole world to this.

And we won't.

And the forces of greed and ignorance are so strong and powerful.

So it better and easier to move into acceptance and to find your crowd,

Find your sweethearts,

Find people who can look at this and stay steady and speak words to each other of comfort.

I've been in conversations for years now with lots of people because the essay went out in 2019.

And it's been downloaded way over a million times.

So I've had hundreds and hundreds of emails from around the world,

Many hundreds.

And I'm in this conversation and realizing so many people are grappling with exactly what you're describing.

How then do we even live?

How do we go on?

How do you have any joy in the day?

But then we would ask those who have worked with hospice people,

I bet some people in hospice actually really do know how to live those last days.

And they are no longer sweating the small stuff.

And they are just in an immersion of gratitude and love.

Some people in those moments in those last days.

And what if we could be in that now?

What if we could be in a kind of living hospice of saying,

Okay,

We don't know for sure.

We don't know for sure.

We have to allow for that.

Nobody has a crystal ball in this.

We're just looking at the trajectories.

They're all going against life.

Whether it turns around in time,

Whatever,

Who knows.

But we can't assume facts not in evidence that it's going to turn around.

Right?

What we can assume is how it's going.

That we can see how it's going.

If it changes,

That we'll see then as well.

But we have to be realistic.

And if that's the case,

If it is the case that things are becoming more inhospitable to life in general,

Not just human life,

All of life on the planet,

We will be living with the loss and the sadness of that.

We will also possibly be living with the gratitude for being here.

We will have to be living a celebration of the days that are left to us.

And even for the children,

The days that are left to them.

One of the things I can console myself with about my youngsters and my family is they all have really happy lives.

And I think to myself,

You know,

A lot of people didn't get a happy childhood.

I didn't get a happy childhood,

Actually.

A lot of people didn't get a happy childhood,

Didn't have loving parents.

And a lot of people struggled their whole life in compensation,

Trying to endure life,

Having not had,

Having perhaps had a brutal childhood whereby they lived in depression their whole life.

You know,

So another thing that I sometimes console myself with is people will get whatever portion of life they will get and may it be as happy as possible for whatever time that it is.

And let yours be starting this minute.

Let yours,

Your portion of life,

Which after all was already time limited,

You know,

Let whatever is left.

This is the moment in history we are,

This is the moment we landed in.

And there's really no blame.

In fact,

We all contributed to this,

Not just us,

But all of our investors,

Every step along the way,

We were always headed here.

Every step,

We were always headed right to where we are.

So to really free ourselves of the if onlys and the,

If only the people who are so greedy and so short-sighted and so awful and so mean and all those things,

If only they wouldn't be that way.

Well,

Good luck.

You know,

I said in the,

In the Ted talk last week,

Our behavior is a species feature.

That's how we are.

Yeah.

Some of us,

Some of us live more on the sort of bonobo end of our ancestors and some of us live more on the chimp end and we all have a bit of both.

I like the bonobo strain of our genetic ancestors and I try to hang out with them.

But we also have to see that we,

As best we can,

Have to find compassion for our species.

It's really like Jesus said,

Forgive them for they know not what they do.

And that is coming to a head.

So turn to the Dharma,

Want nothing in terms of,

Oh,

If only it could be this way.

And if only the Extinction Rebellion movement had taken real hold and frankly,

It looked very promising initially.

It did look like,

I mean,

It's getting in the major news and so on.

But I could also see that it was going to be hard to sustain because it was so solution driven and the solutions were going to be untenable to the economic powers that be.

And that in fact,

Nobody was going to be willing,

Even people who would be sympathetic to stop using fossil fuels.

I shouldn't say nobody,

But even a lot of people who would have been sympathetic,

There would have been different other types of crashes and stresses on the system and perhaps war and things like that.

So it's just how we are,

How it is.

The system is huge.

And I hear you,

It's sad.

I live with sadness.

I manage it.

I micromanage my sadness.

I do a lot of mind management.

I don't allow myself to get into moods too long.

One of my points in the essay and in my talk last week was release dark visions of the future and pace your intake of disturbing news.

And that's one of the things that I do,

Even though I do watch a lot of news and read a lot of news,

Probably far more than the average person,

But I have to pace myself or else I would be doing it even more.

And I make myself have fun and reflect on lovely things and especially go into gratitude and put myself into little projects that occupy my mind in a kind of harmless way.

And all of those things,

A bag of tricks.

Yeah,

Thank you.

That's helpful.

I mean,

Nothing is a wonderful short thing that I just might have tattooed on my arm actually.

Yeah,

It definitely,

It has a power.

It has a power in its simplicity and it's good in certain circumstances.

It's very,

Very pithy.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

One of my old friends is on this call,

I believe.

I want him to speak to us because he has been through hell for a long time.

He,

Well,

You tell the story.

Yeah.

I haven't seen you in so long and you look amazing.

I am improving quite a bit.

Well,

The short story is that in October of 2019,

I had an event that sort of necessitated a pacemaker being put in my chest.

And a few months later,

I developed a substance infection that went body wide and nearly killed me.

I was in the hospital for 229 days last year and got out about five,

Well,

Six months ago and started doing physical therapy.

And I've gotten,

You know,

The neurologist said in the hospital when they released me,

He said,

You probably won't ever walk again.

You'd be in a wheelchair.

And this whole idea of not wanting anything.

Well,

On my bedside,

I had a picture of this beautiful place that I spent 30 years of my life creating out in the wilds of Colorado.

And daily I'd look at it and go,

Well,

I want to get back there.

I want that part of my life back.

Yeah.

And so I worked very hard at it.

And at this point,

I have a walker and a wheelchair and a cane that sit sort of over in the corner.

I don't use them at all.

Wow.

So you're walking.

You're walking.

Okay.

Oh yeah.

Climbing stairs.

Yeah.

The last time I saw you was in 2016.

We had lunch.

I remember we were talking about this train wreck that's coming at us.

And just in the last few years,

I have watched firsthand the trees on my land suffer bark beetle infestations.

And I would say a good percent of the conifers are now dead.

And this is all just in a couple of years.

So it is very sad to watch that.

Yes.

But I feel very fortunate to be here to see it.

Just the same.

Exactly.

I love that you said that.

I mean,

That's the thing.

That's the thing that we're saying in this call that,

Yes,

It is sad just as many times throughout history.

I mean,

People were,

There were plagues and babies dying.

And there was always tremendous sadness and loss.

And it's part of being here.

And I love that your spirit and I did speak to you.

I don't know if you even remember it,

Because early on you were very heavily medicated.

I was kind of out of it.

Yeah.

And I did call you a couple of times in that phase.

And from what I was hearing from our mutual friends,

I was thinking,

You know,

You wouldn't,

You wouldn't make it.

A lot of people thought that.

It's interesting that I've heard that from a lot of people.

But from my experience of it,

I never had the thought,

Oh,

This is getting close to the end.

There's always like,

No,

I'm going to come out of this.

Wow.

When I went to my first physical therapist,

He sort of talked to me and he said,

Look,

You're going to do really well in your recovery.

It's all in here.

Yeah.

Whether or not you're going to recover or not.

And he says,

I've seen lots of people that just,

They're not going to make it.

But you,

You're going to do okay.

And so,

Yeah,

I enjoy daily going out and feeding the hummingbirds.

I'm watching the little crown squirrels and chipmunks run around our yard.

We have a doe and a baby fawn that are in our yard.

And the fawn has just grown so quickly.

It's such a pleasure to see that stuff.

I'm so glad you made it back there.

Oh my God.

Yeah.

Well,

Thanks for your support.

You were a hero to me throughout because even as bad as it was,

And I did speak to you a couple of times when you were more,

You know,

Coherent and not on so much medication,

I could feel you were not,

You were not mopey.

You were not whining.

You were not,

You were just there.

You were just in a kind of clear state.

And I was so inspired.

And I think I just want to share this.

I wanted to deliberately call on you for this reason to share it.

And I want to also address your point with regard to the want nothing.

And I want to get back to my home.

The want nothing is better used when you know you can't get back.

Right.

And when you,

When the game is over or when like there I was in the tunnel of going into the talk and I,

There was nothing else I could do.

I was already as prepared as I was going to be.

And then at that point I had to want nothing more.

I had to not want an agenda for how my words were going to land or be accepted or whatever.

So it's obviously something,

It's a phrase that one would use judiciously.

And in your case,

Where it took extraordinary willpower and focus to get from where you are to where we see you sitting here right now,

Knowing you can walk around and look at the dough and so on.

Obviously that,

That is well worth it.

I mean,

I'm certainly not suggesting that we don't apply ourselves to our creative efforts and to helping out.

And all of that takes effort and energy,

But rather to disconnect from thinking that we're going to fashion the world in our,

The image that we want necessarily,

Especially when we see it's not going in that direction.

So it's just knowing,

Knowing when to hold,

Knowing when to hold and when to fold.

Yeah.

It's sort of being centered in a mindset of lack versus being in a mindset of abundance no matter where you are.

Did you feel,

You must've felt grateful to be in good hands.

You had to get airlifted out of where you are there in the wilds,

Right?

That must've been,

There's a lot of gratitude there that that was possible.

Yep.

I got flown out in a helicopter and then a few days later they flew me from Grand Junction to Denver.

Cause they said,

You know,

He's going to die if he doesn't get his back operated on.

Yeah.

Yeah.

My life is not the same as it was.

I mean,

I have a lot of limitations that I've never had before,

But I'm working on trying to improve that,

You know,

Steadily day by day trying to make it a little better.

Yeah.

Well,

Every day is a gift now,

A living wake.

Yeah.

Definitely.

It's a party.

Yeah.

So it's great to see you.

I haven't seen you for five years now.

Yeah.

And we go back a long,

Long,

Long way Steve.

Long ways back.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Many,

Many retreats.

We've shared many,

Many moments in silence.

Yeah.

My first silent retreat with you was like the doors,

The doors opening up and oh,

This is what all the Buddhist teachings were about.

You know,

Instead of lists and all that,

It was more about just a state of being.

Yeah.

Thank you for opening that door for me.

Well,

You've been such an inspiration to me.

Yeah.

Hello everyone.

I'm in Ottawa tonight.

The sun is just setting.

Catherine,

I was listening to the solace piece that you published a couple of weeks ago and it really touched me because I needed that to set that long to remember to be caring with those around me,

You know,

And the ones that I can actually help.

And it just really was very transformative moment of listening.

And I wanted to mention that I've been sick for about two years with my liver and I go to the acupuncturist and the osteopath and they say,

Your liver is not happy and doing everything to get healthy.

And I think it's the climate crisis that's making me at least in part sick because I'm in death about our planet,

You know,

And I think we all go through that.

But I'm kind of,

I'm getting better because I'm forgiving myself for not doing as much as I could,

You know.

So that,

You know,

We were talking about that earlier,

Not,

Not expecting so much.

I want to save the world because I have children and I feel I have a responsibility as a privileged person,

But then it literally is making me sick.

So there's a balance there backing off a bit.

Absolutely.

Because what,

Because what is needed at this point from my way of seeing is we don't need yet another body on the pile to take care of.

What we need are our Dharma warriors or peace ears who can handle it and who have found ways to manage the inherent sadness,

But keeping some balance of joy in your life and really going into a lot more feeling of freedom because you really should let yourself off the hook about having to fix this.

This has been a long time coming.

This has been a long time coming and it's a huge juggernaut at this point.

And even if we had a thousand Christ's and a thousand Buddhas and a thousand technical geniuses and every other kind of talent,

Not a thousand,

A million of all,

It's probably not going to change this course because they're part of the human hubris is that we think we can change it at this point.

And all we can do is possibly mitigate somewhat if we were smart,

Which we don't seem to be very smart about even mitigating.

We don't even seem to be able to do that.

But now there's so many systems there that are outside of our control.

We thought we had all this control.

Yes,

We dumped all this,

All these gases into the atmosphere and we triggered a whole bunch of other ones and we tinker around.

Oh,

If we can reduce carbon by 2030 and this and that.

Meanwhile,

There are so many tipping points that have just run over and are on their own.

They're exponentially amplifying on their own.

So there's nothing,

Any one of us at this point,

You can of course live lightly just because it's the right thing to do.

As I quoted and I quoted it in my essay,

My friend W.

S.

Merwin has a line on the last day of the world,

I would want to plant a tree,

Right?

Just you keep doing the good things,

The things you love.

You vote for life.

You celebrate life.

But really,

Really give yourself permission to find a lot of joy because that's going to give you strength and it's going to spread calm and joy around you.

That's how you can be an offering in this world.

Your life then becomes a Dharma offering and there's no better sanctuary to be found.

There are no other words anywhere.

There's no other philosophy.

It's the experience of being in the company of someone who is awake to the situation and is calm.

Just think about that.

I have often so many times in my life called up in my mind images of people I have known because when I was a journalist,

I really specialized in being with leaders of movements of environmental and social movements who were going,

Who were basically under attack.

Many of them were under threat all the time.

And being in their company was so empowering for me to see here's a possibility.

Here's an example of a life of people who can look at the worst of humanity and of ignorance and yet have a smile on their face and laugh and be simple and kind and generous.

So that would be your job.

That'll be your job to be a light in darkness.

The only thing I would add is I had a conversation with an Indigenous artist here in Canada who talked about the sixth extinction from the Indigenous point of view.

And she's very calm and comforting.

And she said it will pass.

It's going to be very hard,

But it will pass.

We will all pass,

Of course.

But there's something about expanding the time span that I find helpful.

Definitely.

I find that so.

I find it very helpful to expand the view,

Widen the lens,

And really understand this is evolution right now.

This is what we're experiencing is the evolution of a human animal,

Its behavior on the earth,

What it did to get us to this moment and these problems.

And now we're experiencing them.

It's just how it's just what it is,

How it plays out.

We'll see.

Interesting timing to have gotten here at this point.

Very wild timing for every one of us,

Every one of us here.

It's wild timing to be alive.

And also it can be very freeing.

You can just sit back and just say,

OK,

I'm going to just watch the show.

I'm going to try to be as bright a light in it as I can.

I just wanted to add that to me,

Part of the loss and the sadness is the disconnect between the people I'm close to and the lack of a shared understanding.

I think that's people I have been close to who are taking a different path.

And I know it's not my job to force an awareness on people.

And I've played around the edges with some people and then pulled back because I thought they don't want to hear this.

But it is that lack of a shared understanding.

That can create a loneliness,

Of course,

Which is why I suggested that the way that one can balance that out is that there are certain people in your life who are your friends and family members and so on.

Maybe they're just not ready and it's best not to lay it on them and be what they will perceive as a gloom and doom.

But it is also helpful then to find people with whom you can have the conversation.

And that actually softens and makes it more easy to be around people who simply can't or are not ready for that conversation.

So I do recognize that it can be extremely lonely if you really have no one around you to talk with.

So you are,

And some of these people who've spoken about it tonight,

Are the people that I want to hang out with because your permissions,

Like this is my once a month reality reset,

You know,

To come here and to get your perspective,

Your comfort,

Your wisdom and the permission to feel the way that I feel that there is no fix,

You know.

And instead of feeling hopeless about that,

I'm able now to translate that into gratitude and joy and making the most of the beauty that surrounds me and the relationships that I can cultivate and that help in helping others become mindful and more grounded.

I'm a week away from being a certified mindfulness instructor and I have found my calling and it's not,

You know,

To teach people anything except to be able to access that call.

Beautiful.

Yeah,

Thank you.

That's all.

That's beautiful.

That's so clear and so helpful to hear.

It's been my experience over these last few years that the number is growing.

I can see that just from my own data.

In other words,

How many more people are talking about this and are understanding it.

Back 10 or so years ago when I first started talking about it,

I sounded like Chicken Little,

The sky is falling,

You know,

But now there are a lot more people who,

A lot more people and I think more all the time.

And then,

You know,

These big warming events that are happening in the world and these huge climactic shifts that are happening become undeniable to huge regions of people where there might have been a lot of deniers at some point.

So we don't really need to wish that process would rush along,

But just by way of saying there will be more and more people.

And for those people coming onto this,

Being around people who've already been walking on this path is super helpful because you can really say to them,

Yes,

I do understand what depression is.

And there are some days when you feel overwhelmed by what's happening and anxious,

All of those things.

And yet to be able again,

To be an example of someone who is staring straight at it and is looking at the beauty and still celebrating and finding things to be grateful about and looking for ways to be helpful.

That is really consoling.

Reviews

Just so inspiring. You speak of the reality of a dying world but holding with the grace and joy and gratitude fir what we have. Want nothing. Thank you ♥️

Heart-felt, honest & for me great solace in the knowing that there are many likeminded people in our world.
Thankyou Catherine 🙏🏻

🌊🗽🙏