The Dalai Lama has said that Buddhism and science are deeply compatible and has encouraged Western scholars to critically examine both the meditative practice and Buddhist ideas about the human mind. A number of scientists and philosophers have taken up this challenge. There have been brain scans of meditators and philosophical examinations of Buddhist doctrines. There have even been discussions of Darwin and the Buddha: Do early Buddhist descriptions of the mind, and of the human condition, make particular sense in light of evolutionary psychology? This course will examine how Buddhism is faring under this scrutiny. Are neuroscientists starting to understand how meditation “works”? Would such an understanding validate meditation—or might physical explanations of meditation undermine the spiritual significance attributed to it? And how are some of the basic Buddhist claims about the human mind holding up? We’ll pay special attention to some highly counterintuitive doctrines: that the self doesn’t exist, and that much of perceived reality is in some sense illusory. Do these claims, radical as they sound, make a certain kind of sense in light of modern psychology? And what are the implications of all this for how we should live our lives? Can meditation make us not just happier, but better people? All the features of this course are available for free. It does not offer a certificate upon completion.
Extra Office Hours 3
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Philosophy, Psychology, Mindfulness, Meditation
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IP
Dec 23, 2018
This is a great effort which should be appreciated. Just because at a time like this, some are curious to know about the Buddhism, & with the psychological background, which adds more value for this.
AS
Feb 08, 2018
Acquired huge amounts of insight from this course and enjoyed reading the various perspectives when marking papers in the peer marked assessments. Thank you for providing such a wonderful course!
從本節課中
What is Enlightenment?
教學方
Robert Wright
Visiting Lecturer
[BLANK_AUDIO].
Hello.
Welcome to office hours.
That is a shot of Frasier sleeping.
You may notice that he's not in his accustomed position.
On the throne.
He seems to have surrendered that to, Milo who is, who is on the throne.
And that's not, that's not because Milo de, deposed him.
I think it's because ever since since Frasier
started following the Dharma he's grown less attached.
To status I assume.
Anyway, so he's found himself a new, a new less conspicuous, less prominent place
to do his sleeping, often at least, and Milo is
more than happy to to pick up the slack there.
Thank you for that Milo.
We really appreciate that, so it pains me to say
this, but this is the final office hours for this course.
In prominence being the pervasive
feature of reality that it is, and.
You know, there is, there is a chance of rebirth, as they say
in Buddhism, I guess that is to say that I'll teach this course again.
However, it would the lectures themselves would be basically the same.
They would be the same lectures, I would do new office
hours, but since you, most of you pre, presumably seen the lectures.
A new version of the course, I suspect, would be of limited interest to you.
The especially since, by the way, if you don't know, if your not aware
of this, you can download the the lectures from the course site,
and since the site is going to close in a few days when the,
when the course comes to a formal end, you might want to do that.
If you, if you think, you know, you're
life just won't be complete without, without being able
to to review my, my rendition of the,
the concept of not self, or something like that.
now, a number of people have flatteringly.
Not too many people, but a few people have, have asked if we could in some
way sustain the contact that is embodied in these office hours.
For example, Kevin Tibet's asked on Facebook, he
says, this may be to much to ask.
I really appreciate the insights from the office hours discussions.
Perhaps there's an opportunity for you
to continue these discussions, maybe on YouTube?
It's not too much to ask.
It's just too much for me to say yes to it right now, because
I have to get a lot of other stuff done including writing a book.
That discourse was based on her finishing the book, it's about half done.
My publishers been very gracious and extending my deadline
but at some point I really should deliver, and
you'd be surprised at how much time it takes
to do even a mediocre job of office hours.
So, office hour per se will not be happening, that
does not mean that there's no way we can sustain, contact.
So, although the course site will be closing.
On this Friday.
Facebook page will stay open, so will the Twitter feed.
And on the Facebook page I will be sharing things periodically, I hope fairly often,
I mean things I find that are relevant
to Buddhism, Psychology, the connection between the two.
I may, you know, just share articles I find or videos I
find, and sometimes I will be sharing you know, things, I do.
Including things in video, I think there will tend not
to be like monologist the way these office hours are,
but rather, they will be more along the lines of
the dialogues that, that I showed clips from during the course.
So conversations with, with Buddhists, with
psychologists, with people who have things to
say that are, in some other sense, relevant to our kind of mission here.
And when I have those when I do those, I will, put clips of them
on Facebook and also, I'll, I'll, I'll tweet about them, and
that will include the URL you can click on to go see the entire dialogue.
Now, the downside of that is that both Facebook and
Twitter are a little it's easy to miss stuff on both.
In the case of Twitter, that's because you may not be looking at your Twitter.
your, your, your Twitter feed at any given time and something will just fly by.
With Facebook it's because the, the stuff that Facebook puts in the main news feed
is, is governed by some mysterious algorithm that
I don't think any of us really understand.
So they don't show you everything on, on the kind of regular news feed, at least.
The, there is a complete version news feed somewhere,
I think, that people tend not to look at.
In any event, what I'm, what I'm getting around to is
although I encourage everyone to sign up to Facebook
so that you will have a chance of seeing these
things I share there's a more straightforward way of staying
in touch with what I do on video at least.
That may be of particular interest to people who live
in countries where Facebook is banned, and there are some.
and, and so here's, here's what I recommend for you.
You know, all the video dialogues are going to be on bloggingheads.tv.
Okay, that's this website that I started with a couple of friends, some time ago.
If you over, overwrite here, there's a list of kind of regular, well actually
few of them are regular, list of irregular programs on value heads TV.
If you click on at the very bottom there's one that says
the right show, and if you click on that what will happen?
What should happen is you'll go to this page.
Yeah.
That is the right show, and in fact, if you, if
you could see, you'd see that a number of these you've seen.
You, you've seen parts of the ones with Rodney
Smith, with Jed Brewer, Leda [UNKNOWN], and so on.
And then, if let's see, if you click like
there, it'll show you how you could sign up
to get an email notification of of every
time there's one of my, one of my things appear.
Okay, now the downside of this.
And just review, I'm not sure I caught that on camera, okay.
But what you would click is, well really if you
any one of these there's an, oops, no don't click there.
Never mind I screwed up.
But, I think you got the basic idea.
The downside of this, you may see it as a downside, is that, you, you, you
know I do a number of kinds of
conversations on Blogging Heads,
international relations, various other things.
and, and, and the feed you'll get if you subscribe to the right
[INAUDIBLE], I mean the email notifications you'll
get; will include all kinds of things.
[COUGH] I think a fair fraction of those will
be related to this course in one sense or another.
Either Buddhism, Psychology or more vaguely meaning of lifeish,
or spiritual, or philosophical, or something, but I should warn
you that you'd be signing up for the entire, the
entire me and not just the the psychology, Buddhism me.
Okay, I hope I didn't eat up too much time.
Talking about that, but I do, you know want to stay in touch.
And I'm going to try and find the time to keep the
Facebook thing fairly active and generate stuff you'll be interested in.
So, that's, the do sign up for the Facebook or, or do, just, just
go to Facebook page, and click Like if you're so inclined, and then you'll.
You know, get the feeds to the extent that anyone gets the
feeds as, as determined by Facebook's mysterious algorithm.
Okay, but thank you for asking, Kevin.
And I really am honored by people who, who who would like to see office hours going.
I wouldn't say there's millions and millions
of you out there, clamoring for it.
But, everyone makes me, each one makes me feel good.
Okay, now later, I'm going to hope to show
you Frasier and Milo eating mindfully.
But if I showed you that now, you would just like tune out.
You would have gotten what you came for and
you would, you would leave without me saying anything more.
So I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to hold that.
Gregory Laco.
Could be Laco, L-A-C-O on Facebook says, hi Dr Wright,
you mentioned that you meditate most mornings for 40 minutes.
Why do you find that is the optimal amount of time to meditate?
I would like to hear you address the
mechanics of meditation in your last Office Hours.
Here we are, last Office Hours.
The course seems incomplete, without some advice about
how to get the most out of meditation.
How long have you been meditating, and what have you gotten out of it?
Well as for what I've gotten out of it.
I actually think it makes me a better person.
That's probably the most important thing, maybe not
a dramatically better person, but you know, every
once in awhile my wife when I'm being
particularly unreasonable, will say, did you meditate today?
You know, kind of suggesting that if I had meditated today, I wouldn't be
being as unreasonable as I am, and a surprising amount of times she's right.
Most of the time, her intuition is right.
Which is amazing, cause most days, almost all days, I do meditate.
So, we, it, it, it, if she's usually right, in guessing that I didn't meditate.
That says something.
It says that I'm more likely to be
unreasonable when I don't meditate, so there's that.
And you know, in fact, this is, maybe I'm departing a little from orthodoxy
here, because here's a quote I came across from John Cabbit Zin, who's.
Done a lot to spread awareness of
mindfulness meditation in a strictly secular context.
And the quote I came across.
This was actually in the Facebook page of the spirit rock meditation center.
Those of you on the west coast looking for
a good meditation center in the Vipassana tradition especially.
I haven't been to Spirit Rock, but everyone says good things about it.
Anyway, on that Facebook feed, John Cabot Zen said,
there was a quote from him saying, Meditation is the
only intentional, systematic human activity which at the bottom is
about not trying to improve yourself or get anywhere else.
But simply to realize where you already are.
I want to take issue with that a little.
I think it is trying to improve you, about trying to improve yourself.
I wouldn't do it otherwise.
Now, I take the point, that ironically, when you're meditating, if you sit
there and think, I want to get better, I want to get somewhere.
There will work.
But that's just an irony, that's, that's a paradox.
I still think the overarching motivation, or at least part
of it can legitimately be to make yourself a better person.
And I think that's [SOUND] probably what more than anything else, keeps me at it.
In response to Gregory's question.
As for the mechanics like why do I find
that 40 minutes is the optimum amount of time.
Well I, first of all I am not a qualified meditation teacher.
If they gave licenses to qualified
meditation teachers, I wouldn't have a licence.
But for me it just takes forever for my mind to settle.
Even when I'm meditating every day, it can take 15 or
20 minutes, before I'm really managing to focus on my breath.
So if I only meditated for 15, 20 minutes, that wouldn't leave.
You know, that wouldn't leave much time to actually,
for the fruits of meditation to settle in would it?
The so now I like to kind of get in that zone, first
it feels good [LAUGH] to get there finally, you know, to get there.
Just by what you just mean, focus.
And then also other things can happen.
You can feel bad and you can, and you better able to observe the bad
feeling, which is constructive in the long run, to observe and kind of accept it.
And this gets to the truth of course of what John Cabbots, and the saying is,
is you're not, you, you, you, you do not try to change in the short run.
This bad feeling you're having, this anxiety, this anger whatever.
You, you kind of accept it, observe it.
Ironically though, that does lead to long term change in your ability to, you might
say, manage it, if you're going to put it in class, and not deeply spiritual terms.
Anyway, I, I meditate because I like the effect it has
Not just on my kind of sense of well-being, and happiness
and serenity, although it does have that effect, but also morally.
I think it makes me a better person.
I think it makes me better at
seeing things from another person's point of view.
Which is why my wife can so easily detect when I haven't
been meditating, because I'm failing to see things from her point of view.
And I have this whole theory, which I haven't talked about in the course, that.
Kind of the root of all evil
to, exaggerate slightly is the, the, the inability
on willingness of people to put themself
in the shoes of; people other than themselves.
Especially people in very different circumstance, people from a different
culture, different socio-economic class, different ethnicity, gender, whatever.
The failure people to just understand what things look like from another person's
point of view, I think is a source of a lot of war and strife and suffering.
I'm not talking here about empathy in the
traditional sense of feeling or pain, that's good too.
I'm in favor of that.
But I'm just talking about understanding, I, I, what some people
call cognitive empathy as opposed to what they call emotional empathy.
Understanding how things look from their point of view.
I think to get briefly technical about this If you know
know where to non zero some game is it's a game that
can potentially have a win win outcome where both players benefit, but
can also have a lose lose outcome if they misplay their hands.
So in other words their fortunes are to some extent correlated.
So it's not like a regular, not, not like a, a, a, you know, a game
of singles tennis where one persons gain is
always matched, is always the other persons loss.
Rather in a non zero sum game some correlation of
fortunes, if they play their cards right, they can both win.
I think the most common or a very common impediment to solving non zero sum games
in the positive sum direction, you know, playing
to the win win outcome is just not understanding.
Where, where the other person is mentally.
And what their perspective is, what their interests
are, what's important to them, what's not important.
You know, just [UNKNOWN] games as mundane as just business
negotiations, you know, where there is, where there is a zone.
There is a deal that would be good for both of you [NOISE] That I think
not understanding the persons perspective, can get away,
can get in the way of that as I
said, that sounds mundane, a business negotiation but,
same is true for nuclear negations as is happening
right now with Iran, where there is a
win, win, outcome that would make both sides better.
And I think I can confidently say that there is
not, not a deal with Iran, not to get too political
here, but it will have to do with people on both sides having
not understood the perspective of the other side, okay.
I'm clearly veering too far into politics here, and I will rein myself in.
Getting back, briefly, to the mechanics of, of meditation.
When I say it takes, 15, 20 minutes for me
to just settle, I should concede, I'm a particularly problematic case.
I have, more or less attention deficit disorder.
I don't know how you exactly when to define that,
but I have a real problem concentrating, and that's why for
me, it took actually going to a meditation retreat to, to
kind of break through and convince myself meditation was worth it.
that, that there was something that could be had.
I'd never had any of what you would call, quote, success, meditating.
It never seemed worth it, I'd tried, I'd tried.
I had to go to a, an actual retreat, the, Beyond that, I'm reluctant
to get a lot of guidance because for one thing, it, it's all very idiosyncratic.
I mean, an additional fact [COUGH] that I'm not a qualified teacher.
Different things work for different people, so for
example my big breakthrough at this first meditation retreat.
And one of the big, my most spectacular experience at this retreat, not that it's
about spectacular experiences necessarily, but they're, they're
nice to have every once in a while.
And when I had that, which entailed [SOUND] finally being able to focus.
Let's see who this is.
Woodstown, New York.
I think we'll let that go.
[SOUND] I hope that's not one of you.
Or maybe that was somebody named Woodstein.
Anybody.
Anyway what had allowed me to concentrate enough to really, for interesting things
to happen at this retreat was, was, I settled into this thing where I was like.
Focusing on my breath on the, on the intake, on the
inhale, but on the exhale, instead of focusing on the breath, I
would focus on sound, because there was a, a really constant chorus
of, like, cicadas or some insects outside and the windows were open.
It was great.
Anyway, I digress.
My point is different things work for different people I recommend talking to
somebody more qualified than me, about meditation
and may be thinking about a retreat.
There's controversy about retreats.
Can you get too dependent on retreats?
You know, there is this, there is this thing you can get into where.
You go to your retreat, you come out, oh this is great, I'm going to stick with it.
You kind of don't stick with it, but you go oh well,
I'll just go to another retreat, and recharge down the road.
So in other words the, the, the kind of promise of the next retreat can be an
excuse not to focus on mindfulness on a day to day basis, don't do that.
That's a pitfall, don't focus on retreats to that extent.
And a problem is sometimes it's hard to
find a local songa, a community of fellow meditators.
It's nice if you can, if there's a group of people you feel comfortable with.
They're meditating in whatever tradition you're interested in, that's great.
Not always easy.
Increasingly there are teachers who teach online.
They're, they're just a Skype call away.
They may charge extra money, but
that's, that's modern life maybe, I don't know.
so, there's that.
A question from Dwayne Trinczek, who I think we've heard from before.
He says, regarding the love question, I, I was
talking about how there, to an evolutionary psychologist there
are different kinds of love, and I was talking
about the difficulty of attachment, separating attachment from love.
He says regarding the love question, I think that
love is love and it is conditional at its core.
The problems develop when our expectations of others cloud
that love, and via our attachment to our expectations.
So here might be a good example of how we add form to another person
situation, et cetera, instead of loving them as they are.
I think that's a good application of the of the idea of kind of
imposing form on something that you know, th, imposing
your conception of the of, of, of the person on the person.
And your conception of what the person should do, and how they should behave
toward you, and, so on I am sure can get in the way of love.
That said, I would say that when Duane says
I think love is love, and it is unconditional
in its course, not really the way an evolutionary
psychologist would look at it as I have suggested before.
To an evolutionary psychologist, there are kind of these
different versions of the thing we call love, there's.
There's love of offspring, there's [COUGH] romantic
love, and so on, they're very different things.
And none of them would, you would expect to be purely, purely unconditional.
In other words, offspring, love of offspring
comes pretty close, but you know, even there.
We are presume, you know, you, you, you, you look
at, you know when people when parents you know, they, they
want their kids to do pursue this career track or get
better at that, or better at that, or better at that.
Which is apparent, I'm, you know, I, I plead guilty to sometimes.
Laura trying to reigning in.
It's I think that's an example of the
way natural selection kind of, didn't design us just
to love our kids, you know, it designed us to kind of manipulate them in ways that.
You know, back during a, in the ancestral environment, during evolution, might
have maximized their chances of getting their genes in the next generation.
So getting them to do things that might elevate their status, or
wanting them to have lots of friends, which can be a good
thing in itself but, these are the things that might have correlated
with, with reproductive success, and so we get kind of fixed on those.
So even with our offspring, it's really
not by nature of pure and unconditional love.
And speaking of that, so, in other words.
I mean there's a broader issue here.
It's, it's just that again, there's been a theme in the course, I think that in
many ways what Buddhism is about, is fighting Mother Nature.
You know, fighting you maybe fighting is an unproductive
word to use, when you actually sit down and meditate.
Maybe don't think of yourself as sitting down to have a fight.
Okay.
Don't do that.
But.
I think it is you know, the again, the larger aim of the endeavor is,
in many ways to to, to yeah, to fight, to fight Mother Nature.
So there's another quote somewhere.
Yeah, as long as I'm taking issue
of quotes by [SOUND] by experts of meditation.
I was listening to a podcast from the
San Francisco Zen Center, another good place, I'm sure.
I've never been there, either.
And there was, there was actually a, a, a
talk on, on mindfulness, and the person giving it said.
That in following the path you can wake up to what it is to be human.
And again, technically, I'd say, you know, to a biologist or an
evolutionary psychologist, what it is to be human is what we naturally are.
I mean, that, that's, to be a member of the species is to be this thing that is in
many ways, I would say imperfect from the standpoint of what Buddhism aspires to.
Right?
and, but I recognize that's not necessarily the prevailing
view in Buddhism, that there is this idea that, we
are, you know that, that kind of, well there's this idea.
Buddha nature and that the things we see
that are departures from Buddha natures are kind of
the results of, I don't know, you know,
kind of unnatural influences in some sense of the term.
At least that's the prevailing popular view.
I'm not sure how true that is of the early texts.
I mean, I'm generally, genuinely not sure.
But it's a common, it's a common view.
And I think it would almost be easier if that were the case but I, I, I,
I, I fear that, that no, in some cases, we're, we're
working to overcome things that are, you know, in the genes, so to speak.
I don't like the phrase hard wired because I don't think anything's hard wired.
Nothing.
You know, it's nothing you can't in some way overcome, no natural
tendency that through some combination of
therapy technology, whatever you can overcome.
But I do think it's a tough, tough sledding.
Okay.
I think, I think I should, like, stop and collect my
thoughts and see if there's other stuff I wanted to say.
I've been kind of babbling.
Which, you know, not that there's anything wrong with that.
So let me stop.
Also, I do want to, I do want to try to get, get Milo and Frasier.
Oh, Milo has drifted off, out of the picture, there's Milo.
Maybe see if I can wake them up and get them.
To do some mindful eating, horse wants to eat.
Okay, I'm back.
While we are away, Milo went to
investigate a disturbance, but he's coming back now.
Hey Milo, what's, what's the story down there?
Got mailman trouble or something?
[SOUND] Milo just found something to eat.
It almost certainly is something that is not inherently edible.
Thank you Milo.
I also noticed, I, I reviewed a little of the,
The first part of the office hours, while I was away, and
I notice that I've been babbling incoherently, and I'm sorry about that.
I don't know what it is.
I think, you know, today's Memorial Day.
By all rights, I should be, I don't
know, whatever people do on Memorial Day, drinking
beer or something, and I'm not so maybe, I don't know, maybe that accounts for it.
Or maybe I was illustrating the concept of formlessness, In this
case, just a certain form, certain structurelessness in what I was saying.
But anyway, I'm sorry if, if I'm not making any sense.
The other thing I noticed is, you know, I realized in illustrating
the, the whole volume and interface thing to you, I should have.
Taking advantage of the magical you know, properties of this
amazing computer I have to actually blow things up, OK.
So, that would give us a better view.
There's this over in the homepage and bloggingheads,
B-L-O-G-G-I-N-G-H-E-A-D-S.TV, over on the side, there's this list of programs.
The final program, fittingly enough, is the right show.
And if you click it, I mean if you click any of it, then it'll work the same way,
but if you have to click this one, it'll
take you to this right show place, page, right there.
Where again you would see some some conversations oops, that you're
probably familiar with but moreover at the top you could, you know if you
want to get notified, but you could subscribe to audio podcast, just the
audio version of these things, audio, fast audio, or you could arrange to
To get a, an e-mail notification, which involves clicking where I
just clicked, and, and then going to this page where somewhere there.
Yeah, right there.
You, you sign up to get an actual e-mail.
Then you'd be notified.
Sorry to run through all that again, but I just realized that I could have.
Been clear about that, and I do you know want to
stay in touch if possible, and keep the lines of communication open.
So, enough of that.
I also noticed while I was away and I have actually talked for a long time.
Which I guess would, is what happens when you babble
incoherently, it just kind of never ends, there's no natural end point.
You know, if it's just aimless, aimless meandering, why stop?
There's no, no logical place to stop.
So I'm just going to answer just one more
question, then we'll try to get some, maybe
some mindful reading out of, of my own
Frasier or something and then call it a day.
Margo Warner.
Asks, Dr. Wright, I'd like to know, do you
personally have any doubts about the truth of naturalized Buddhism?
[SOUND] well, one I suggested right before I cut away there.
The, you know, the, if you take, one of the
tenants of naturalized Buddhism, I'm not sure I would say it
is, but a lot of people think of a Buddha nature,
in other words the, the good, goodness being our default state.
And then the way we all actually are some of the time
being some kind of corruption of the goodness, of, of the natural state.
I might take issue there.
I think, for better or worse, from a, from a Darwinian point
of view the quote natural state is not a purely good state.
It's a challenge there's that.
There's another issue I alluded to earlier in an earlier Office Hours,
about whether Aduca is truly pervasive, like every moment has, you know.
This, however you wanted to translate it, suffering, unsatisfactoriness.
It seems to me like a little bit of an exaggeration, I don't know.
You know, maybe in some sense, somewhere in there is some discontent at all times.
But I don't know.
It,
I'm, I'm not sure I'd go that far, or that I'd.
I need to for practical purposes, I don't know that it matter that much how
pervasive you consider Duca or find it in your life, another issue,
well in that self, I would say well, again I think there's reason certainly
to doubt that the self as we naturally conceive it exists, there's that.
But the question of whether, in some metaphysical sense, the
self doesn't exist ultimately depends on how you define self.
And you can define it in such a way that okay probably the self exists.
I don't, I, I don't, I'm not that
attached to the metaphysical question in a certain sence.
I think it's, it can be very, it can be very productive to doubt
the existence of the self in the sense in which we naturally believe it.
In fact, it can be a very productive part of meditation, of, of the dharma.
So I, I, anyway, I'm not dogmatic [COUGH] about
the, the, the tenants of even naturalized Buddhism, no.
And I think it's in the spirit of at least some
of the things that the Buddhists said to have said that, we
would refine these ideas as time goes by, and new information
comes in, at the same time you know, well, I'm a little.
At the same time I respect those, who want to, who suggested maybe the,
a, a totally naturalized version of Buddhism that's devoid of
of the, the religious ritual and, and so on that's common in Asia.
Maybe it shouldn't be called Buddhism, there are people who, who,
who believe that and, and that's an interesting debate to have.
I'm not dogmatic about that either, and, so there.
So are we almost done?
[SOUND] Sad that we're almost done because this has been a lot of fun.
It's been very gratifying to get, you
know, the, the positive feedback about office hours.
But, as I said, the conversation, will go on.
One more thing I wanted to say you in, in talking about earlier I talked about how
the you know, I think the great problem with humankind is the difficulty
people have seeing things from the point of view of other people.
That's one reason I'm a big booster of mindfulness
meditation, I think it makes you better at that.
At the same time, if we're going to wait to
solve the world's major problems, and to bring an end to
war and so on, if we're going to wait until like,
everyone is doing mindfulness meditation, that could be a long wait.
Which is one reason I brought up earlier the issue of activism and Buddhism and,
and, I expressed hope that that there could be a place for a, activism.
Among people who do practice seriously cause it would just
be a shame if the people who are best, at seeing
things from the point of view of others, or who maybe
not the best but are better than average good at it.
And they didn't get out there and, and you
know, having seen things in some sense more clearly
than some people see them, didn't get out there
and, and kind of try to advance their perspective.
So that's an, that's an issue of ongoing interest to me, I just want to say.
You know, as this conversation, I hope continues on Facebook.
Blogginghead and Twitter, whatever, this is, a real
area of interest in mine, of, of of mine.
Buddhism and activism.
Okay.
So now I think we are, sadly, near the end.
I'm going to see if I can get Frasier Milo doing ninth leading.
If not, I think I've got some stock footage of
them doing ninth leading that I'll just, I'll just, stick in.
There's something, I may be alone in the view that there's
something really, really cute about Frasier eating a piece of shredded wheat.
Is it just me?
Feel free to tell me if I'm wrong.
If, if it's like, not cute.
But there's something.
I don't know some essence of Frasier thing going on here.
Okay so dogs listen.
You want to do a little Milo?
[SOUND] You want to do a mindful eating?
Huh, huh?
Want to we seeing any signs of wrestling.
Oh look it's Frasier, Frasier woke up.
Oh Frasier hi.
Hi how you guys doing.
Even though we did this last week.
But I just, I just can't enough [SOUND] I just can't get enough Milo.
Now is that really a Buddhist approach?
Thank you, that is so much better.
Thank you Milo.
He assumes the meditative posture.
Now which of you wants to go first?
I'm sure you're both just going to be falling all
over each other to insist that the other go first.
Because that's how far along [UNKNOWN] you are, right Milo?
Am I correct in that?
So when I, okay I'm going to put this in front of
you and you're going to say no please give that to Frasier instead.
Because his welfare is at least as important as mine.
That's what you're going to say.
Right Milo?
And that's why I'm so proud of you, cause
I'm very confident that that what you're going to say.
You're going to say no or maybe you're going to
put the piece of shredded wheat in your teeth.
Turn around and hand it to Frasier.
Okay, let's see how this works.
You ready Milo?
[SOUND] He was pretty mindful though, and that was the main point.
And Frasier, Frasier, you know, I just cannot begin
to tell you how proud I am of you.
I mean, here we are, the shredded weed all over the place, and you,
you, you back off, so that Milo can have as much space as possible.
Milo, it's your brother, thank you.
Frasier Frasier, [LAUGH] Frasier, okay, Frasier reluctantly
agrees to do some eating cause he
knows he has to keep his energy up if he's going to be the Bodhisattva.
Frasier spends most of his time spreading
the Buddhist gospel, and saving other, hey Frasier.
And he knows he has to, has to have some nutrition for that.
Frasier.
Frasier, buddy.
Milo, excuse me but I think you just had a piece of shredded wheat.
Am I wrong?
Am I getting you mixed up with another dog?
Hey, Frasier!
Come here, come here.
Okay.
There we go.
There's Frasier and I just think, I don't
know, I think there's something super cute about this.
Okay, ready?
Here you go.
Wait I want to get a tight, I want to get a tight zoom in this.
Frazier, Frazier, Frazier, Frazier come here.
Puppy Frazier come here, come here puppy.
Milo, okay Milo, now go away.
I don't mean that in a hostile way, Milo.
Okay, Frasier, you've been so patient.
No wonder you're Bodhisattva.
Okay, there, yes, Milo, I think you'll agree that Frasier has waited long enough.
[SOUND] Well, that would be the mailman.
[INAUDIBLE].
>> Oh no, it's my daughter.
[INAUDIBLE] [SOUND] Okay, there's people home.
[LAUGH] I think I'll continue this later.
Well, that didn't go exactly as planned.
Frasier and Milo are now downstairs.
As is my, my younger daughter and her friends.
So I will just first of all, I will insert
a little stock footage of Frasier eating mind fully here.
Sit, I'd like for you to eat this as mind fully as possible okay?
[LAUGH] Okay, you can do it just like Milo did it if you want, okay.
That's fine, ri, come on now Frasier sit.
If you're going to be mindful, you can't
be like you know, running all over the place.
You got to be, be calm, focus on your breathing.
Okay,
that's pretty mindful, good job buddy.
I also want to close with, with some different.
Footage of Frasier.
But first I just want to thank everybody.
Everyone who watched any of the video lectures, or the Office Hours.
Certainly including those who, who said nice
things about them that warmed my heart.
Really, really was important to me.
And kind of kept me going.
And I hope that you will all stay tuned if you're so inclined
through the various venues I've described, Facebook,
whatever, so that the conversation can continue.
I'm not sure exactly what form it's going to take, but I
know I'm going to keep spewing stuff out there, for what it's worth.
So, hope you'll, you'll stick around.
I want to close with some video I took of
Frasier not long ago, maybe a week or so ago.
It was notably after he started following the Dharma, and I don't think
that's a coincidence, because this is a shot of Frasier dreaming.
Okay.
You know, when dogs sleep, sometimes you can tell they're
dreaming cause they have like these rapid eye movements, you
know, and and, and sometimes you can see like, you
can kind of get a sense for what they're dreaming about.
They're like, you know, they're, they're, they're kind of like, they're pauses will.
You know like, sometimes it looks like they're doing a little kind of
a, a, a constrained and modified form of like running, and chasing something.
Anyway, some days ago, again after Frasier started following Dharma.
For the first time, while watching him sleep, I noticed that
he was not only dreaming, but he was having a happy dream.
He was, it was, you can tell that Fraser was having a happy dream.
And I just thought that was great to, to be confident that Frasier
is dreaming about, eating shredded weed or
whatever pleasant thing he was dreaming about.
[SOUND] So in closing, Fraser, Milo and I.
Not to mention David an Rachele, and
everyone else associated with the course and
there were a lot of people behind the scenes who helped us a lot.
I think I speak for them all in wishing
you all happy dreams, and we'll see you around.
