Derek and Julian discuss the literary influences and yogic practices that led them to yoga in the first place, while also discussing what spirituality in a post-pandemic world could look like.
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Thank you.
One of the highlights of my career in mythology and religion was at a 2006 conference in Atlanta called Mythic Journeys.
I spoke at both editions and that one I got to speak with Al Huang who wrote the Zen book with Alan Watts.
And he was awesome.
So just being able to be on stage with someone who worked with Watts was super meaningful.
One name that came up in our back and forth about these bonuses we're doing together was Jack Kornfield.
And he's been recommended to me so many times.
And I have to say, I have just never read him.
And there's no real reason.
It's just something that I never picked up and actually went through.
But he was pretty influential to you, I see.
Huge, huge.
The teacher trainings, I probably taught about 15 teacher trainings and it was one of the required texts for every single one of them from the very beginning.
He wrote a book called A Path With Heart in 1992 and I feel like he sort of He's kind of the grandfather of a really practical attempt to integrate Eastern and Western psychology.
So where there's a lot of emphasis, especially in Buddhist meditation, on a kind of transcendence of self or finding equanimity, right?
Any of the things that we associate with the Buddhist path that can sometimes be a little, they can sometimes trend in the direction of like denying the world or denying relationships or denying, you know, your desires, seeing, seeing life as suffering, et cetera.
Any of the sort of hardcore things that we know come from the, the, the yoga tradition that are sort of otherworldly or dualistic.
Cornfield softened all of that and brought, you know, Cornfield was one of those, that generation of boomers who went to the East when hardly anyone was doing that and went and studied and spent long periods of time, years of time in these, in these Buddhist ashrams.
And when he came back to the US, the way he tells his story, he realized he didn't know how to live his life.
He didn't know how to tie his own shoes.
He didn't know how to balance a bank account.
He didn't know how to be a husband.
He didn't know how to raise his kids.
He didn't know how to work for a living.
And then he went and got his PhD in clinical psychology.
And so at the time that I found his work, he wrote the book in 92, I probably found it about 95, 96, I was just sort of realizing that my spiritual bypass, and my spiritual bypass wasn't New Agey, I was super critical and dismissive of the New Agey stuff, but it was self-transcendence.
It was that I could be stoic, that I could rise above indulging in various kinds of Vulnerable emotions or or human needs and that I could find this sort of non-dual Clarity where I realized that everything was you know perfect the way that it was Not in an idealized romantic, but way, but in a way where any kind of emotional opinion about things was sort of something to be transcended and
And I realized at some point, and to some extent, you know, Anna Forrest helped me with this, that there was another layer of personal work to be done around really addressing my emotional life.
And that's when I found Kornfield.
And Kornfield was saying, hey, here's this piece of Buddhist wisdom, here's how it ties back to what we know about the psyche from psychological theories and research.
And all the way through, he just really encourages the reader to engage in a meditation practice that is also psychologically compassionate.
And that really changed my life.
And I would say every single person I've ever recommended that book to me has thanked me for it and bought it for other people.
It's interesting, and it will be interesting to see coming out of the pandemic, the sort of spiritual books that are produced.
Because I think there's still going to be a market, especially right now, with the get-rich-quick manifestation ideas that just continually proliferate.
I don't think that's going away.
When I'm thinking about the boomer generation and the different avenues that people took, for example, I did spend a good amount of time with Krishna Das when I was writing my first book.
He was around New York with Dharma Mitra, and that was my studio at the time.
Just spending time interviewing him and hanging out, he's someone who's so authentic.
And down to earth, and so grounded.
I really don't like kirtan, but I loved being in his kirtans, and I felt fully comfortable in there.
100% with you.
100%, exactly the same.
And then you get someone like Bhagwan Das, who had the same guru, and was with Krishna Das in India.
There was a whole cohort of people there at the time.
I remember he was one of the worst interviews I ever did.
He just totally talked about how women should love him and have sex with him in the interview.
And I was like, what is going on?
I swear, I talked to him for like an hour and I got like 200 words of usable quotes from him.
It was that bad.
And they come from the same guru.
So, you know, it amazes me how different people, like how much can Can your teacher actually give you, compared to who you are and what you do with it?
Yeah, yeah.
Temperament is huge.
Genetic temperament is huge and what people bring to the table.
And I believe Bhagavan Das makes an appearance early in Be Here Now, doesn't he?
Yes.
I think Ram Das comes across him and is sort of blown away by like, who is this guy who is assimilated into this, being this kind of kirtanwala, right?
Yes, yes, very much so.
And you know, Mike D or one of the Beastie Boys produced one of his records.
He was very much in the scene, but it's just a whole different thing.
But at some point, you came across neuroscience, as did I. Do you remember when that was?
It's hard to say exactly when it was.
I mean, one thing that I'll say is that Jack Kornfield has a student who's not that much younger than him, named Rick Hansen.
And Rick Hansen wrote an extraordinary book called Buddha's Brain.
He's written other books that are wonderful too.
And Rick Hansen's great.
I've interviewed him.
I've had lunch with him.
He's a really, really lovely, smart, just open human being.
And that book took what Cornfield was doing with Buddhist meditation and psychology and sort of up-leveled it into, into let's also talk about what we've now learned from neuroscience and the piece that has sort of become very popular in a watered down and sometimes distorted way around neuroscience and trauma and how practices of mindfulness and embodiment can really help
to resolve trauma through an understanding of the autonomic nervous system.
I don't know when I first started getting into it.
It was probably a BBC documentary about Professor Vilayanur Ramachandran called Phantoms in the Brain or something like that.
I rented it on VHS from Vidiots at Pico and Third and I was just spellbound by that and so every time after that I ever came across him or got the scent of him I was hunting down whatever he was doing.
He's incredible.
The Telltale Brain is how I found him and then went back and read all of his catalog and his lectures.
You mentioned Rick Hansen.
I love Buddha's Brain.
I like his work a lot.
It reminds me of Mark Epstein's work too.
The trauma of everyday life.
Uh, thoughts without a thinker.
I do really love people that can frame Buddhism specifically, because that was my ultimate focus in my academic study and my life study, I would say, is also very Buddhist related.
So anyone, Stephen Batchelor is another one, who can take Buddhist ideology and thought, but Modernize it in a way, especially leaning towards the atheistic side of it, because Buddhism can be extremely devotional, but it can also be extremely critical.
They often go together, but I think for more secular Americans like me, the atheistic side of the Buddhist morals and philosophy just make a lot of sense.
Buddhism Beyond Belief is just like this, this incredible, like just experiential.
He just takes you right into the phenomenological process of like, here is, here's what the Buddha is talking about in terms of studying your own awareness, becoming intimate with your own mental patterns and possibilities.
It's so good.
Yeah, I also noticed you cited Van Der Kolk, who I very much loved his work as well.
Talk about a non-metaphysical way of talking about how your body holds trauma and moving through your patterns.
I think that's what I mostly, The Body Keeps the Score, that's what I mostly got out of that book.
It's generational, it's genetic, but it's physiological and it's real, and it's emotional.
He really got into all of those aspects of the ways that trauma affect us
