Addiction Economy Talk

Welcome to the Addiction Economy. They aren’t trying to get your attention anymore because they already own it.

This addictive highjack fuels everything. When I talk to people in the treatment world, they say it’s getting worse. We thought we were moving the needle in the early 2000s, but the delivery system has changed. You used to have to go to a dangerous neighborhood to get drugs; now, it’s everywhere.

The modern collective mind is already addicted, whether to devices, bad food, or whatever else. We are swimming in the water at this point.

Transcript

I don't know that we're going to have a lovely practice today because of the topic is a little bit charged. Mindfulness in the addiction economy. So I do have a little bit of a public service announcement that you are already all aware of anyway. I'm just going to put it in stark terms. And so what I'll do is I'm just going to kind of give you a little bit of an overview about the topic. Then we'll do a guided meditation and then I'll do a talk and then we'll have some questions and answers. I can't guarantee there'll be any answers but I hope there'll certainly be some questions. And in fact at the end of our time today I hope you leave with more questions than answers. That tends to work better for most of us actually. So where to begin. So there is an idea in Buddhism I just want to point to that I generally don't teach but I think it's relevant here. It's sometimes called the two truth theory. The idea that there's an ultimate truth and a relative truth. The main reason I don't teach that is all of the Dharma teachings that I teach are generally rooted in what's called the Pali Canon or the Pali text which is really early Buddhism which is very pre-Theravada actually. And the idea around the two truths really emerges in the Abhidharma and really much more so in the Zen tradition. And then we see a lot of it in the Theravada because of the work of the Vasudhi Magga. I want to just kind of offer a reframe on this one because I think it's interesting. I think it's unhelpful when we start making level systems and experience like there's the ultimate and the relative and it kind of can be a way to control people. Those who have access to the ultimate truth. And also the word truth can be unhelpful because nobody seems to have the, Nobody really knows what the truth is. It's very kind of a moving target isn't it. But this idea of what I would call the two world theory I want to introduce to you today that comes more from philosophy and modern philosophy is that we kind of play on the movie The Matrix. We kind of live in two worlds right. There's the world, The world that which is really out there. Loka in Buddhist terms. Loka the world of society, The world of different countries. You know the world, The world that mostly comes to us through this little digital device which I happily don't have in my possession at the moment. You know there's a world that which is really out there. And you know I'm not denying that that is out there. I believe that. But I think what happened is we're a little bit addicted to that to that world, World two I would call. And then there's world one which is kind of the Vipassana world or the Dharma world which is the world of lived experience. The world of present time awareness. The world of the four foundations of mindfulness. The world of the body. The world of feelings. The world of mental states. The world of ideas. Now when we practice insight or any kind of Buddhist meditation frankly, We're really trying to tune into that first world experience that I'm sitting in my office. I'm breathing. I'm in my body. I feel actually pretty comfortable at the moment. I probably drank too much coffee so I'm a little bit excited. And that's really what's going on. So my kind of general assessment or encouragement today is that I think all of us would do a lot better if we really tried to take more care of the first world experience. Taking care of our hearts. Taking care of our minds. Taking care of ourselves. And it's really hard to do that because we get addicted. We get sucked into this other thing. We get sucked into society. We get sucked into politics. We get sucked into polarization. You know we get sucked into all kinds of things that we for the most part don't even know probably much about. Because you know we've also are confused in the modern times. We confuse information with knowledge. We are inundated, Inundated with endless amounts of information. Which honestly, Pardon my language, Most of it's probably total bullshit. And so we're swimming in this digital ocean of bullshit. And you know, And I don't know about you, But I get caught up in it. This is like half my practice is trying to not get caught up in all of the he said, They said, They did, They're gonna do, Oh god, Oh my god, This chicken little, This guy is falling. And it's really, Really hard actually. I have to work really hard to kind of put that aside. And I'm not dismissing it. I'm not saying that's not important. I'm just saying it's exhausting. And also the truth of the matter is I really can't do much about it. The Dalai Lama speaks to this in great detail in his book Beyond Religion, Which is a book on secular ethics, Where you know when you ask him how do we change the world? How do we change these big political systems and climate change and systemic racism and all the problems of the world that were just really out there? It's one person at a time. It's one person at a time, Which I know is probably not a very exciting idea. It's going to probably take a long time. But it's one person at a time. And it starts with us. It starts with you. It starts with me. It starts right here. It starts right now. How can we become more kind? How can we become more generous? How can we embody these Dharma qualities that we all totally feel connected to? And on a generosity tip, And we'll do a practice, I promise I won't rant the whole time. You know, Especially here in America, If like 25 people had a Grinch moment and a change of heart, If 25 people or so like decided to be generous, Like we could save the world tomorrow. You know? And so the power of these practices is really, Really good. And the world right now does not need more suffering people. And so as practitioners, For those of us who hopefully take the Dharma seriously, We really sometimes have to rethink about why we're doing this in the first place. And really, I'll talk about this in the talk, How do we and are we willing to really take full responsibility for our experience, Take full responsibility for my own reactivity, For what's going on inside of my body, My mind, My heart, Taking care of this, Instead of blaming the struggle that I'm experiencing internally on external circumstances, Which right now is real easy to do. And I'm not on my high horse here. I do, This is like the reason I want to talk about this. This is my, Welcome to my mind. This is the stuff that I deal with every day. So I thought it would be, I want to do a practice that's generally called metta vipassana, Which I've done here many times, Which is really about insight practice, But more about starting with this kind of kindness, This metta, This sense of ease, And then bringing that into kind of an insight practice. So that way we can really have this internal experience of ease, Of well-being, Dare I say, And that this well-being, This ease, What the Buddha called nibbana, Is available all the time. You know, Liberation is under your nose 24-7, You know, And that's a really, I think, Encouraging idea right now. You know, The freedom that we're looking for in the Dharma, It's never really that far away. So as we talk about this mindfulness in the addiction economy, I want to just kind of start off simple, And that is pointing to something that actually comes right out of the mindfulness teaching in the refrain. Some of you probably know that the mindfulness teachings are usually taught as the four foundations of mindfulness, Body, Feelings, Mental states, And ideation. And they're rooted in a discourse called the Satipatthana Sutta, In which many books have been written. A lot of people have been studying this teaching for quite some time. It's kind of the bible of the insight tradition at this point. It's quite good, But there's a kind of a request that the Buddha makes, That he makes in the refrain, Which he's kind of restating it, Which he says, To put aside your desires and your discontents in regards to the world. Now, When he uses the world, The world, He's using the polyterm loka, Which isn't the world of direct experience, Isn't what's happening in my direct mind-body system. The world is that which is really out there. It's Crete, It's Los Angeles, It's Vancouver, It's Colorado. We're all in different parts of the world. I believe you are all out there, But he's saying to put, He's not saying to repress it, He's not saying to get rid of it, He's not saying that it doesn't matter, He's just saying put it aside. Because if you don't put aside your desires and discontents about the world, You're not going to be able to practice. Now, How many of you noticed in the last 25 minutes during the practice, When you attempted to do that, That you noticed thoughts that were desirous, Things I want from the world, Things I'm unhappy about the world? I mean, That's basically what we think about. And that's the general position we take. Happiness, Well-being, The delusion we're sold is accomplished through me getting what I want and avoiding what I don't want. And most people wake up every day and that's their strategy for life. How do I get what I want? How do I avoid what I don't want? And the sad tragedy of this operational mechanism is there's a lot of people out there who are willing to do some pretty horrible things to other people to get what they want and to avoid what they don't want. And so when we put that aside, We can really tune in to what's going on in our direct experience and take this radical responsibility for our lives, For our actions, For our beliefs, For our behaviors, Through the words that we choose to use, Taking this responsibility, Which is really the ethical sila dimension of dharma practice. And I like this because it's not lightweight. This is pretty, The Buddha's kind of position is pretty staunch, Where he's really saying, We're making a claim that I actually like, Is I refuse, I'm refusing to let my internal sense of happiness be dictated by external demands. That I can only be happy if the external world is arranged in such a way that I feel good about that. That's going to be a long time. That's a long waiting room. And he's saying to put that aside and to see, I'm going to take full responsibility for this, For what's going on inside my direct experience. And not only that, I refuse to let my happiness be dictated by that, But I also refuse to let my suffering be dictated by that. And again, It's not this cold, I don't care. It's not apathy. It's not indifference. It's just going to be more helpful to me and the people I come into contact with if I can become a beacon or I can become a possible, That you can live in the world, You can live in this messy world and actually be okay. Because let's be clear about one thing, The world that the Buddha lived in in ancient India was not a peaceful place. There was genocide, There was the caste system, There were tyrant leaders doing horrible shit all the time. The world of ancient India was, Especially towards the end of his life, The Buddha had to leave and get away. People were being murdered and there was genocide. It was totally falling apart. It was kind of worse than what we're dealing with on many levels. And he was still making this, You can still practice in the context of that. In many ways, We could say that this is kind of business as usual. If you look at world history, It's not rated, It's not a Disney movie, You know what I mean, By any stretch. And so how do we practice with that? We practice with that by trying to cultivate these inner qualities in and of ourselves. And the whole, What a school of Buddhism that you practice, I think the whole training, The whole Dharma training is really an anti-addiction cognitive exercise. There's nothing more anti-addiction than Buddhist meditation. And so what do I mean by that? Well, The first thing that we deal with, And this is true in all forms of Buddhist meditation and really all different systems of psychology, Is it's really about attention. It's about training one's attention. And that just needs to happen. So one thing the Buddha's clear about is whatever you do with your mind, You're going to have to train it. You can't just let your mind do what it wants to do. You're going to have to really train this thing to behave appropriately. And a lot of us, We have different ways of doing that. Everybody's mind is a bit different, But I have found it to be pretty difficult. So we train the attention, And then we see that we actually can do that. So just to give you an example, I was just sitting here with you, And I've been doing this for 30 years, And I try to put my attention on the rise and fall of my in and out breath, Or I try to tune into a heart-based object, Trying to feel into my wish or desire to be free, And I can do that pretty good. And then I do that for a little while, But I can only do that for a certain amount of time. What happens is world two shows up. My desires and discontents about the world show up, And they hook into my attention, And they sweep me away. It's almost like a scroll. They scroll me out, And I get caught up in whatever that is. And we can kind of talk about that in a polite way, Like, Oh, The mind is wandering, And we think about the past, And we think about the future. But I'm sorry, Man, That is addiction. I mean, To me, The most fundamental addiction I have is that to my thinking mind. I haven't been able to give that one up forever. I mean, We just sat for 25 minutes. I probably relapsed 17 times. You know, I'm always getting in, So that's a really strong stream. And I'll tell you what, If I let it go on for too long, It rarely takes me anywhere good. You know, There was an article, Actually, They've debunked it now, But there was an article written in early 2000s that said a wandering mind is an unhappy mind. And for most people, Mind wandering, Whether it goes on for 5 minutes or 12 minutes or 20 years, When we get to the end of whatever you get to the end of, You just end up feeling kind of bad, Because it doesn't really go anywhere. Because what happens? You pop out of it, And there you are, It's just you again, Sitting in your home, Doing this little mindfulness drill. And so that's really what kind of gets us caught up. Now, For years and years, There used to be, In Silicon Valley, For those of you who are, I'm sure everybody's familiar with this invention called the internet. And so a lot of this came out of Silicon Valley. And they used to have this really, I almost would dare I use the word evil mechanism that was what they used to call the attention economy. Now, The attention economy is a math equation where you have, Let's use America, You have 350 million people, Times 1440 minutes a day, Times however, 60 seconds. So you do this little math equation, And you get this gigantic number, That's like, Okay, There's, You know, 400 trillion moments of attention every day. And how do we get in the question becomes we need to get the most of those. So they develop all these evil, Evil little algorithms. And everybody's competing for your attention, Trying to get as many moments of attention as possible. So they can sell them to advertisers and turn them into products. So you can get a, You know, Whatever, How many times have you gotten a box delivered to your house, From something you ordered online, And you don't even remember ordering it. So you know, We're not in the attention economy anymore, When the addiction economy, The attention economy is over, We lost. And now we're just living in everybody knows us, We know this, This isn't headline news. You know, Nobody seems to want to admit to it. And nobody seems to want to take responsibility for it. But yet, You know, We all seem to kind of accept it. I know that I do. And so the reason why this is on my mind is I also spend a lot of most of my career, Not so much nowadays, Thank God, Doing Dharma work in the addiction space, Which is also the trauma space. And I was just I just did in the last month, I just did two things simultaneously. That was a kind of a big wake up call for me. And I went to Alaska to present at an addiction conference and to do some training for the state of Alaska, Which was very unpleasant. And then I went and taught a Buddhist meditation retreat at Southern Dharma, Which was very pleasant. And it just reminded me, You know, Addiction and trauma is just like, What people are just getting is the suffering is almost impossible to bear. And we really haven't made any progress. You know, We have all these sophisticated advanced methodologies and different trauma therapies and stuff that's all effective. But you know what, If you're a traumatized drug addict, If you're unhoused, You're not getting access to any of that shit. So nobody has access. And I left Alaska, I was totally depressed. Not to mention that it was just, You know, It was like, I was up there for five days, I never saw the sun, Nor I never saw the darkness. And I came back and taught my annual retreat at Southern Dharma. And it was just really, In many ways, Depressing. And also just this willingness, Or not this willingness, This unwillingness, That's really big in the States right now. And I think it happens a lot with young people. And it happens for probably good reason, So I don't want to be judgmental. But people just don't want to take responsibility for themselves anymore. You know, It's like the blaming. It's like, You know, Everything I do is because of these external factors. It's very anti-Buddhist, Actually. And it's just like, And I'm not, And it is, I think it's with good reason. But it makes me sad because, You know, We can do better than that. You know, And the one thing about Dharma practice, It's so beautiful, It's so empowering. It's such a can-do thing, No matter what you've been through. And that's one of the benefits of working in the trauma addiction space. The stories of the thing, You know, In the last 25 years I've been doing this, The stories of things that people have been through, The horrifying shit that people went through in their childhood and their teen years. I've seen so many people go through stuff that they wouldn't put in a Tarantino movie. And they come out the other side, Right? Because they get sober, Or they get a Dharma practice, Or they turn it all around. The redemption that is available to us as a result of doing a practice like this is just unbelievable. And to not feel like you have access to that, To talk yourself out of that, It just bums me out, You know? And so really trying to try to bring this message home of like, You know, We can do this. This is possible. The Buddha was not teaching big fancy ideas. But then again, It's really hard work, And you've got to do all the work. There's the other thing, Too, I think that gets confused. It's like, If you put Buddhism on a world stage with all the other religions, It sticks out like a sore thumb. Because most religions follow a salvific point of view, Which is this idea that there's something out in the universe, Call it God, Be it what you will, That will kind of save us. Which I don't like that at all. I'm not interested in that. I don't feel like I want to be saved, Because that's very disempowering. For me, Dharma practice is not, It's not about salvation. It's about redemption. It's about like, You know what, Man, I don't need, I can do this. You know, Everything I need is inside of me. I have this basic methodology for how I can uncover, And I can work through the worst of things. And that is, There's a lot of grit in that, And there's a lot of, You know, And it's also, This isn't a highfalutin idea. This can be done. People have been doing it for 2, 500 years. People go through really, Really difficult experiences, And they come out the other side by doing a practice that's seemingly, You know, Pretty simple. And so that brings me where I want to kind of give us some methodology for how this might work, Which is thinking about the Four Noble Truths in a different kind of sense. Maybe some of you are probably familiar with the work of Stephen Batchelor, Who I think has done the best job of reframing the Four Noble Truths in a way where they're a lot more, They're more task-oriented, Rather than kind of descriptions of how reality operates. And the other thing that's also interesting about the human experience is, You know, We use terms like skillful and unskillful, Or wholesome and unwholesome, Or destructive and constructive. But in a clinical sense, The way we would think about it is that as human beings, We can develop views and opinions and behaviors that are very adaptive, And adaptive behaviors and views and opinions are ways in which we adapt to the world so that we can flourish as human beings. We are actually very adaptive human beings. The problem is, If we're not guided by some methodology, We develop not adaptive behaviors, Views, And opinions, But maladaptive. Like addiction is a maladaptive behavior. Most mental health disorders are maladaptive. They're maladaptive because they don't work. They're dead ends, As the Buddha calls them. They just go around and around. Like anxiety is really not that helpful. Depression, Not that helpful. A lot of these cycles, These cognitive disorders, As they're called, They're maladaptive because they just go around and around and they don't help us with anything. Now, Adaptive, Or we would say skillful, Kusala and not kusala, The thing that sort of makes this so challenging for many of us is the way that the Buddha articulates what's called dukkha, Which I think is a tragically misunderstood term, But the way that he talks about dukkha in the sense of the five aggregates that we have this, We basically, Another way to say that is we are human beings, We have equipment, Right? We have these bodies, We have this nervous system, We have feelings, We have affect, We have pleasure, We have pain, We have a mental apparatus that can have attitudes of greed and hatred and confusion, And we have thoughts and we have ideas that move through the world. We all have the same equipment. We all have these same five aggregates, As they're called. Now, The equipment is not inherently good or bad. So to say that people are inherently good, I think, Is a misstatement. To say that people are inherently bad is a misstatement. People are just inherently, Can go a variety of ways, Right? The system, Another way to say that is the system, The aggregate system is ethically neutral, Right? It just depends on how the conditioning, How the world goes to town on us and how we respond to that. But the good thing is, The good thing is, Is that you can teach an old dog new tricks. So a lot of people that I work with, People who have been traumatized drug addicts for 40 years, You know, They get clean, They get sober, They learn some new behaviors, And they end up having like these amazing lives. Like, You can rewrite the story at any time. Like, You have the pen. You can rewrite the story at any time. And what it boils down to, It's not and this is just kind of, I thank Stephen for this, Because I'm stealing his ideas, But it's been really, Really helpful to me as somebody who is a traumatized drug addict, Frankly, And spent most of my life living in the hell dimensions of my own mind, That dukkha, That trauma, That pain that I went through, When I come into Buddhism, And I hear that you can put an end to it, The end of dukkha, I think that's a miscalculation. It's not about whether dukkha ends or doesn't end, It's really actually a relational game. So if we just kind of keep dukkha simple, And we just call it something simply like pain, You know, What is my relationship to pain? What is my relationship to discomfort? What is my relationship to trauma? What is my relationship to all of the horrible things that I went through, All of the horrible things that I've seen, And maybe even some of the horrible things that I've done? That's all fitting in this dimension of my heart and mind called dukkha. Now, Depending on how I relate or how I adapt or maladapt around that, You know, I mean addiction, Addiction is just a maladaptive behavior, It's a dysfunctional relationship to dukkha. You know, Gabor Maté got a lot of trouble for this in his first book, But he wrote that addiction is the ultimate act of self-love. And it's because I'm in so much pain, And so much fear, And so much confusion, The only thing that I can do that gives me any relief is to stick a needle in my arm, And I get that relief, You damn well better believe that's what I'm going to do. Because when we just, Mostly it's just because we're confused, We don't know what to do with this pain and this difficult experience, So we do whatever we learn how to do, You know what I mean? We don't live in a world where people really show us how to do much, You know, We try to consume our way out of it, You know? And so this addiction, Again, Also too, Addiction gets a deservedly bad reputation, Probably because it should, But we all, Everybody here, I don't care, I guarantee you everybody here is doing something a little bit more than they wish they were doing it. Is there anything that you do in your life you're like, I gotta, I, I, I, Too much of this. For me, It's like, You know, It's the phone or the fridge, It's looking at stupid shit online, Or eating junk food, Bullshit, Garbage, That's terrible for my body, But it's really pleasant when I'm eating it, You know? And the world is designed this way, This is all by design, You know? The system, You know, The system is kind of rigged against us to become, To become addicts, That's why it's the addiction economy, Especially here in America, The consumer capitalistic society that helps very little people, It's just, Another way to say, Capitalism is just a friendlier way to say addiction. How do we capitalize on people's dysfunctional relationship to pain? And you know what, You're doing a pretty goddamn good job, You know? And I've been doing this, I've been doing it for 30 years, And I'm still, Like, Struggling with it, Man, You know? When you have no skills or no abilities. So then when we, We can kind of strategize around this, Well, What do we do with this dukkha experience? We really just need to embrace it. And that's what it says in the discourse, Is dukkha parinya, To fully know, To fully embrace, To fully understand. Yeah, Man, Being a human being is hard, You know? There's been a lot of struggle, There's been a lot of pain, A lot of confusion, It's okay, You know? It's okay. Everybody, Everybody's got some. It normalizes it. And I think that's what the, The Buddha never speaks, Here's the other thing, The Buddha never speaks in a derogatory or pejorative tone around the word dukkha. He never speaks of dukkha as being bad or wrong or being a problem, He just speaks about it as being there. And then what it boils down to is how do we relate to that? Do we develop addictive, Maladaptive strategies around our pain? Or do we develop ways of understanding it and thriving in spite of it? Right? And so, So you, You basically end up with this kind of complicated, Kind of, Almost mathematic equation of like dukkha is the fixed term, And I either develop reaction repression, Repressive habits around it and I continue to suffer, Or I develop adaptive, Nibbanic, Skillful ways around it and I do well. Either way, I mean, Every terrible thing in my life that I've ever been through has already, It still has already happened. Still all there. You know? It doesn't go away. There's no go away. There's no all better now. There's just, How am I living in spite of that? And to me, That's a very honest assessment. I can, I can get behind that idea. I can recover. We could almost say, We could almost say that there's pain, And we can, We can, We can develop addiction around pain, Or we can recover. We can, This third noble truth, So that the real deciding factor is this, This, This Pali word, This whole territory of the second noble truth, Craving, Clinging, Grasping, Fueling, Attachment, Could all be summed up in the word addiction. That's exactly what it is. Now, Or reactivity. The other thing that makes it more complicated is, There's two sides of this addictive tendency, What's called tanha khanda upadana, Clinging to the aggregates, Is that we can react. So addiction has a reactive, Impulsive dimension to it, But for a lot of people, It's actually repressive. So we can react around our addiction, Or we can repress. People who don't fall into addiction, The workaholic, The people pleaser, The perfectionist, The people who don't react around their feelings and emotions, They smush them down. So it's almost in a way that like non-reaction can almost become a kind of reaction. Oh, My childhood wasn't that bad. Other people had it worse. We minimize, You know, We pretend like it wasn't that bad, Even though it was. So see how complicated this can get? Like we can really react around our pain, But we can also be repressive around it. And I think the people who are repressive around it pay a bigger fee for that service. The one good thing I'll say about being an addict and an alcoholic is like, The one thing about being a drug addict is, One benefit is you ruin your life pretty goddamn quick. You know, You burn it to the ground pretty fast, You know, And then you have this opportunity to have a life on the other side of that. But the repressive ones, You know, The shame, The workaholics, The people pleasers, You know, The perfectionist, That kind of repressive strategy, You can do that for a long, Long time and you can get rewarded for that shit. If you're a workaholic, Overachiever, People pleaser, You're going to get rewarded in the marketplace. The capitalistic society, Corporate America, They're going to pay you for that. You're going to get paid for that service. It's almost worse. So we really are best suited by, You know, For me, It's really all about honesty, Which is also interesting, Right? The word noble truth, Which I think is poorly translated, Aria sacca is the word, Aria sacca. Aria means noble, It's just, We can put that aside, That's just, That's actually very much a class system thing. It's actually the Buddha poking fun at religion in ancient India really is what he's doing. But this word sacca, Truth, Doesn't mean like the truth. Sacca is a virtue of truthfulness. People who are nobly, The noble truthers, Us, Are people who are willing and able to be honest with themselves. It's about being honest with yourself. It's not about knowing the truth. It's about, You know, How honest can I be with myself about how hard shit has been? I mean, Why do we go to therapy? Why do we pay 250 bucks an hour to go sit in the therapy office? What do we do? We just sit in there and we just give a big dissertation about all the horrible shit we went through. We got to pay good premiums for that stuff. Or we got to sit in a room and someone's got to wave their fingers in front of us. Or we got to hold these rocks that vibrate. We do all kinds of weird shit. And it's all good. I do it too. But I think there's a lot of work that can be done as an individual where we just like, Yeah, Like we just own it. Instead of trying to strategize around it. And then when we do this, Of course, We experience the third noble truth. We can be honest about the ways in which we already feel free. We feel liberated. Which I know those words sometimes are elevated too much. Like liberation for me sounds like an event that I'm not going to experience. I'm like liberation. That sounds like woo. That's how I got there with enlightenment. But the word nibbana or ceasing, It's just like when the addiction falls away. You can't keep your tantrum up forever. I noticed that when, And I'll pause here and take some questions. But I have a son who's in the other room who's six now. But when he was like two years old, I used to drive him around in my truck in the little car in the, We used to call it the little death seat in the back. Cause he'd throw tantrums in the car. Cause I'd, I'd want to, He'd want me to go left. And I went right. Or I didn't stop at the dollar store. I didn't do something he wanted. And he would freak out in his little car seat. He'd be screaming, You know, You're the worst dad ever. I hate you. It was like, You know what? But he can only keep it going for like a couple minutes. You know, Two or three minutes goes by and he like, He comes out of it. Like we, We don't keep it going forever. So we want to experience the ceasing of that. We want to experience the fall away. And we want to move into this, What's called Nibbana, This non-reactive, Non-repressive dimension of our experience. So that way we can, You know, Cultivate the faithful path. We can, We can live in the world. We can both end it. We can both understand. We can both understand that there, There's a lot of problems in the world. You know, There's a lot of horrible shit going on. You know, There's a lot of struggles that people face. Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes. And I'm allowed to be happy in spite of all that. Right. It's just like DBT skill. It's like either both and or yes and. Yes, All those things are true. And you know what? Like I'm still going to enjoy my breakfast. I'm still going to enjoy my coffee. I'm still going to take my kids to Target and let them buy a bunch of stupid shit. You know, I'm still going to live in the world because I'm not going to let that external experience rob me or steal my freedom and my happiness. And to me that, That's like very, And I'll say this, My favorite quote, I get a lot of miles out of it, But to me that, That's just a badass move. You know, That's a lot of like courage and a lot of redemption and a lot of like, You know what? I don't want to hear that. I don't want to hear the noise. You know, Albert Camus says the only way to deal with an unfree world. And I don't know about you, But the world looks pretty unfree to me right now. The only way to deal with an unfree world is to be so completely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion. So you want to be rebellious. You want to create positive change in the world. You want to be an activist, Be content, Be happy, Be kind, Be generous. That's the ultimate form of rebellion is well-being. Because I'll tell you what, I know we're not in all in America, So I'm always speaking from my limited point of view. If there's one thing corporate capitalistic America does not want is a population of content individuals. That is bad for the bottom line. So what do they do? They hack into our hearts. They come into our attention. They get it and we let them in. We fucking let them in through that phone and we get all worked up and we get all reactive. And what do we do? You end up buying some vans off the internet, Or it happens to me all the time. I always end up buying something, Which is exactly what they want. You know what I mean? As they say, I'll get off my high horse here in a minute, I'm sorry. As they say in Silicon Valley, And Tristan Harris's work, The Center for Humane Technology, If you're not familiar with the Center for Humane Technology, Check it out. They have a podcast called The Undivided Attention. If the product is free, If the app that you are downloading is free, You are the product. So think about that for a second. If the product is free, You're the product. So you think you're getting all these free apps? You ain't getting these free apps. There's no free apps. They're just selling your attention.