 Who is the thinker of my thoughts? Who is feeling my feelings? Am I my mind? Am I my emotions? Do I even exist? Does the practice of meditation help us answer some of these questions? These are the topics I'm discussing on the 71st episode of Patterson in Pursuit. Hello my friends and welcome to another episode of Patterson in Pursuit. This episode is like a rocket ship so strap yourself in because we start comfortably with our feet on planet Earth talking about the basics of the practice of meditation and then by the end of the conversation we have rocketed into outer space talking about some of the most important and difficult questions in the entire world like what is the nature of the mind? The self. Can you have thoughts without a thinker? I'm very lucky to have an experienced meditator on the show Mr. Oren J. Sofer who's going to help me try to answer some of these questions. I started practicing meditation just a couple of months ago while I was traveling in Japan and I really loved it so far. In fact the sponsor of the show for the past several episodes has been a meditation app called 10% Happier Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics which I'll tell you more about in just a minute. Oren Sofer has been practicing meditation in the Terravata tradition for the last 20 years. He even spent some time practicing in India and living for a couple of years at Buddhist monasteries. If the name sounds familiar that's because Oren is one of the individuals that's interviewed and has his own segment on the 10% Happier Meditation app. So I reached out to the creators at the app to see if I could get an experienced meditator on the show and they delivered. So thanks guys. If you want to try out meditation for yourself either before or after this interview head over to stevedashpatterson.com slash meditate. You can get a free one month trial of the app that my wife and I try to use every day. 10% Happier Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics. If you like the Socratic style of this podcast my guess is that you'd like the Socratic style of that series as well. So I hope you guys enjoy this episode and if by the end you're doubting your own existence don't fret. Just keep asking yourself who is it that is doubting whose existence. You might find yourself there after all. So first of all Mr. Oren Sofer I really appreciate you taking the time to talk with me about something that I know you're rather advanced in and I'm very new in so I'm gonna have some elementary questions for you but thanks for talking to me about meditation today. Absolutely Steve the elementary questions are often the best ones. Well that's what I found you know not just in meditation but other areas of thought and other things recreational things I've tried to learn. I discovered that the basics are pretty much the most important that's where you should spend 90% of your time then once you sort them out you can get to more advanced stuff so what I where would a start is really with the most fundamental basic of question that when we're talking about meditation what are we talking about what exactly is going on when people are meditating because from the outside it looks like they're just sitting but often times when people talk about meditation it comes with very spiritual or even mystical ideas that maybe there's something inside that's really deep or they're clearing their mind or it's kind of confusing so I've only been doing it for a couple of months but what I've discovered I think is not what I expected but I want to hear from you what what is the actual meditation process what's happening. Sure yeah it's a good question there are actually a few a few questions all rolled up in there. So the first thing I'll say is there are a lot of different kinds of meditation so that word can refer to any number of practices or ways of using one's mind and one's attention so the kind of meditation that I'm trained in which is sometimes referred to as insight meditation more more recently its form of it has become known as mindfulness meditation is probably the most popular widespread form in the public what's meant by that a really good translation or way of talking about it is as mental training so if you go back to the original Buddhist texts which is where not all but a lot of the modern meditative techniques of mindfulness stem from one of the words that's most commonly used that we translate as meditation is a word called Bhavana and quite literally Bhavana means cultivation so we can understand the process of meditation as a process of cultivating our own mind and heart so what are we actually cultivating well put simply we're cultivating healthy positive states of mind so right when you say that that correlates with my two month experience in meditating is that's actually the phrase that I use unknowingly is it's mind training that's what it feels like and so how from the outside it's sitting so how do you go from somebody just sitting on a cushion to mind training where's the bridge there right yeah so so so two further refinements before I answer that question explicitly so the first it's really important for me to clarify that sitting is only one of several postures that we can use for meditation and I'm sure you know this but all of your listeners might not it's probably the most the one that gets the most press but it's not always the one that's the most helpful or the most useful for individuals or even for the same person at different times of day so we can do standing meditation walking meditation and we can meditate in a posture that's lying down or reclining so it has nothing to do with the posture that we're in it has to do with what's going on inside our mind okay the next point I want to make and again just to kind of be clear in our use of language because really when you look at meditation it's a it's a pretty ambitious project to try to teach someone to meditate because you you don't you know no one can know what's going on in someone else's mind right you and I can talk about riding a bike or lifting a weight or baking a cake and they're very clear tangible observable behaviors that we can both look at objectively and say well you know am I following your instructions the way you intended meditation practice I can't look into your mind so I can and I'm using I'm limited by language to try to describe to you a certain internal process right so so being clear with terms for me is very important when we when we when teaching and talking about meditation so that the other term that I want to clarify is the term mind and I know that you had some questions about this which maybe we'll get to but again when you go back to the origins of these practices there's not a separation between what we would refer to today as our heart and our mind the emotional heart and the more cognitive intellectual mind these two are one in the same they're just different aspects of the same capacity we have as human beings to feel to think to perceive to be aware so we're training not just our mind but also our heart which is which is why we can actually cultivate more positive states like patience or gratitude or kindness or balance these are these are states that involve an experience of emotional attunement and also physical presence so all of that is included when we talk about training the mind so then your question was what okay what's what actually makes sitting still or using any of the other postures you know what what makes that meditation right first just sitting somewhere with your eyes closed yes so what is this internal experience that you're talking about or the internal training what's if I were to just sit next to a Buddhist monk and they were just sitting what's the how could you describe the differences of the internal experience going on depends on who you're sitting next to and and and when you're sitting next to them yeah so so those are two different ways of getting of getting at the question so maybe I can answer the question about sitting next to somebody who's in a you know more advanced meditator I think that some of the differences that one would see or experience if you're able to kind of look into both person's minds or one the person who has more training in meditation their mind is going to be clearer the awareness is going to be sharper so if you imagine looking through a set of binoculars or a telescope two things are going to be different there number one the focus itself is going to be a little bit sharper so what's actually being experienced is will be clearer more distinct in the mind and the magnifying power of the lens is going to be stronger so that what so that actually what's being seen there's a lot more that's actually being noticed so that's one that's one domain which is going to be different another domain that's going to be different which is important is the response to what's being experienced generally will be less automatic and less reactive so for example if something repulsive happens to emerge in the view of that pair of binoculars to go further with the analogy so some thought or memory emerges in one's mind someone with less training in meditation there's going to be a reaction with a certain in level of intensity and a certain immediacy of being repulsed of pulling away of recoiling and discussed and that's going to have an emotional affect in the body it's going to have a physical effect in the body they're going to be neurochemical effects in the body in the mind in the meditator who's who's trained their mind depending on the level of their training and depending on the the current state of concentration and awareness that happens to me in which that experience happens to arise there's going to be less of a reaction it will it will if there's a reaction at all it will be less intense and last for for a shorter period of time then the third so so there's so we're talking about the clarity in depth of focus we're talking about a reduction in the intensity frequency and duration of reactivity and then the third thing I think that would be different is the is the presence so there's there's an absence of certain things right there's an absence of reactivity but there's also a presence of other more positive healing healthy states of mind like compassion or kindness or steadiness and balance so that's that's how it's going to we could say look different in the mind of someone who is untrained in meditation and someone who is more trained in meditation that's that's the continuum the the that begs the question and we can get into this if you want but love like well what's the how how do you get from me right what is the actual training right so let me a wall I'll ask a couple of questions and then we'll get right into that question so when I think about my limited experience here I spent a lot of time in my professional practice and philosophizing I spent a lot of time in thought thinking and I enjoy that I'm comfortable with that state what I found when I started meditating a couple months ago is that the thoughts are totally dominating so when you're talking about the experience meditator and you know not reacting as strongly or not getting caught up in the thoughts or the emotions that's something I had no idea how much I was doing until I kind of saw it so I sit down and I just you know I'm trying to focus on one thing my breath and before I noted but before I am aware of it my mind is chasing different trains of thought and then going from here to there and playing with this theory and that theory and I become aware of it I go whoa I'm just trying to just focus on my breath or something like that so that makes a lot of sense that through the practice of that training you you are less like a dog chasing cars then I feel like when I'm sitting down so then yes the next natural next question is how how does that happen what is the actual process so the basic novice like myself I catch myself in a chasing the car like I'm a dog and I go okay right good thing back to the breath is that is that what the practice is is that what the training is is just trying to rein in your your emotions your your trains of thought how are these how how do you advance in this practice yeah it's an important question so I think it's more nuanced than just trying to rein in one's thoughts and you've probably experienced yourself as many of your listeners probably have as well that it doesn't really work or it's limited you know the degree to which just trying to control one's mind actually works so the process of meditation is is more more subtle and nuanced it begins with a certain level of intentionality it begins with a certain exertion of will you could say that you know what we sit down to meditate and yeah absolutely one needs a certain clear intention and focus to say okay you know for the next 20 minutes or however long you're gonna meditate for my intention is to just feel my body sitting and breathing I don't need to worry about yesterday I don't need to think about or plan or work out anything about later today or tomorrow you know just gonna be here so that's really important to have that kind of clear intention the process of meditation is about learning how we respond with what happens next so when we sit down we have that kind of intention and then we begin to see basically the the patterns and the habits of our mind in a way that we may have never really noticed before and what's so beautiful about the the practice of meditation is that our mind is is built to learn it's built to absorb whatever we put it in you know it's like it's like a massive sensitive advanced sponge that's you know just a learning machine for patterns and and relationships of things so the very first thing that we start to notice is that it doesn't do what we want it to do and then the next thing we start to notice is that the more we struggle to try to force it to do what we want it to do the less we enjoy that and more it kind of rebels so it's it's a little bit like ending up in a room and the walls you know are at odd angles or gravity isn't functioning because all of the many of the ways we've learned to accomplish tasks in life get from A to B you know you just put effort and energy in and you you push and then you get there those tend to backfire in meditation so it's a different kind of learning we actually we start to notice oh well what happens if I if I just try to relax and let go when I notice that the mind is thinking for the tenth time about what I'm gonna have for dinner or why I have to call that person and so what we what we learn is through the feedback of how stressful it is to attempt to control experience I'm gonna say that again through the feedback of that we get about how stressful it is to try to control our inner experience the mind begins to learn by itself how to relax how to let go how to settle and be present so so our job becomes less one of doing something and and much more of a subtle paying attention feeling sensing what's happening I love it I love it and this again I think the listeners are gonna appreciate you know I'm talking about my experiences being so new at this because I know a lot of them are probably tiptoeing into it as well but what you said to kind of made me laugh you said you know I'm just gonna sit down and you know feel my body sitting and breathing that seems like the simplest of tasks like you're right sit down and feel your body I what okay you just aware of the sensations your body well if you've never done that it is incredibly difficult for the first time and it is stress-inducing I remember I still am and dealing with this especially the first time when I try to sit down and meditate my anxiety levels go up the stress level goes up and then I go what am I doing I got to do these other things I'm just sitting down not accomplishing I'm not accomplishing my goals and I get I get flustered and I literally feel tension in my chest and then the then the mind starts racing more and then I don't know for what reason if I can get through if I can break through that kind of level of anxiety then I relax and then I get into a more aware state that that that anxious part kind of shuts down a little bit it's a remarkable phenomenon that comes from the most simple of tasks which is just feeling what you feel right yeah so a couple things I would I would put it a little bit differently and see if you agree with me paying it sitting feeling your body paying attention and feeling your body sensations are feeling your breathing is actually quite easy it's not difficult for a moment yes right what's difficult is doing it for any any length of time it's the continuity of it that's that's difficult because right now you know you or I can pause for a moment and just feel your body sitting your butt on the chair the weight the pressure the heaviness not hard at all right there you know so why does that become such an excruciating task that's that's the question it's very easy to do for a moment so the other thing that I would be curious to explore with you is this experience that you have around saying it seems stress inducing rather than rather than stress reducing and what's going on there so it's it's a really fascinating thing to study and it's it's kind of at the at the heart of meditation to see like why am I so stressed out like I'm just sitting here right you know like there's nothing going on you know what's keeping me from just being able to chill right so it can seem like oh I was fine before I started meditating now I'm a total stress case what's going on there my my experience myself and and working with students and my understanding of the way this practice works is that in general it's it's not actually creating or producing any stress that what's what's happening is usually one of two or three things the most common thing that's happening is we are moving through our life with a certain level of you could say low-grade anxiety sometimes high anxiety and stress there's a certain momentum in our nervous system that's just that that's just the baseline but as long as we're engaged in activities that occupy our mind as long as we're talking to someone eating something reading something listening to something watching something typing something you get the idea we don't actually notice how we're feeling because our attention is occupied by the activity that we're engaged in now what happens when you remove the distraction of continual activity well all of a sudden the baseline level of activation in our nervous system becomes very apparent so one of the analogies that I like to use is it's it's like it's just a certain kind of inertia so if you if you think about say spinning a wheel and that's what kind of what we're doing all the time with our mind and our body is every impulse to act every everything that we do we we add a little bit of of energy to the system we add a little bit of spin to that wheel we push it it spins more we push it it spins more and it keeps going now just because you stop pushing it is it going to stop spinning no it's going to keep spinning a little bit for a while depending on how fast it's been going and how much momentum it has so there's a certain dimension or aspect of meditation practice that's this this kind of non doing where we study the way our mind keeps reacting keeps pushing keeps getting involved keeps resisting keeps trying to control experience and each of those pushes stirs things up more and when we're able to just let things be let things be let things be slowly the momentum starts to work itself out on its own and that might be what you're experiencing you reach this threshold after 15 or 20 minutes or something where the mind just tires itself out this is the momentum that you've gathered over the last day or you know whatever it's been just settles out on its own and then the mind becomes a little bit more peaceful or quiet or calm that's a I would definitely buy that theory and it's a little bit scary to think of that I might be carrying around that level of anxiety and it's really interesting to me because if you were to ask no are you a stressed person Steve are you anxious I would say no I'm actually cool as a cucumber most of the time but it's also the case that my mind is always occupied and tell the moment I fall asleep right moment I wake up I'm thinking about other things so it's it's very possible that there's just a kind of constant numbness and distraction that's taking place I would definitely buy that theory because the other day I had an interesting insight when I was doing meditation and I was feeling that anxiety I was feeling what it feels like like in my chest I felt mainly my chest and then I realized part of the anxiety in my mind is trying to avoid the anxiety it's like this is an uncomfortable feeling and that stresses me out which makes me more uncomfortable which makes my mind want to wander and then a few times I've been able to say don't run from it Steve like you're anxious that's fine it's there it's not going away it's like just embrace it and then literally almost instantly like within a matter of three seconds I can feel the anxiety go away it's like it surfaces up and I accept it and then it kind of disappears I'm assuming this is a this is a normal thing that people experience as they're learning meditation practice absolutely and it's a really important experience and it's not always the case that the anxiety goes away completely but but what we want to notice is when that when that resistance lets up inside the anxiety will often reduce at least some and even if it doesn't reduce the experience of it will be less stressful you know it's like when we stop tightening or resisting around it it's not as much of a problem and that that shift it's like we've landed in in the in the right orientation for meditation it's like if you're learning to ride a bike and for a few moments you are you're actually balanced and you're not wobbling anymore about to fall that's that's that's the the balance of meditation that you're that you're feeling I want to I want to respond to what you said around like it seems like that theory is plausible I can imagine that's going on because it's not the only thing that could be happening and you pointed to another way that the stress could be happening and so I want to kind of lay out at least a couple of other options for the what could be happening why there's so much stress when somebody sits down to meditate so the one that you mentioned is that the stress is a little bit self-generated through the resistance and reactivity and trying to control what we're experiencing in the moment so we might sit down and we're not actually that stressed out but we're trying to pay attention to the breath and then the mind wanders and so we get a little bit frustrated so we try to pay attention to the breath a little bit harder and then we and then because we're trying so hard we start to get a little bit tired and then the mind wanders more and then we try even harder and we get ourselves really wound up and tight and after 20 minutes we're like exhausted and a nervous wreck and we were fine before so so does that mean that meditation is causing stress I would say it's more like learning to meditate we might have to go through spinning our wheels a little bit and understanding that we're not meditating properly it's meditating incorrectly that's that's producing the stress because we're trying too hard and then we're judging ourselves and reacting when what we think should be happening isn't occurring I want to give an analogy because I see this principle come up everywhere and everything that I've tried to learn it's about relaxation there's a so I do Brazilian jiu-jitsu and there's a my favorite choke is called the triangle choke and it's where you you are choking somebody with your legs and the triangle choke only works when you have a measure of relaxation if you're super tense and you're trying to force it you're going to be like necessarily keeping that rope from getting snug so yeah the more the harder you struggle if you're if your legs aren't in the right position then you're just not going to be locking in the triangle once you've relaxed once it's there then you can squeeze and it's fine but it's it's like that that tension is literally preventing you from accomplishing the thing that you're trying to accomplish right and I would I went I went to one or two BJJ classes and decided it was not for me but I can extrapolate and I would I would imagine that in the analogy you're using that it's not a complete and total relaxation that there's a certain amount of tone that's actually required to the muscles right yes you don't want to be a limp fish exactly and so it's the same thing in meditation the kind of relaxation that we need is not a collapse so most people hear the phrase I said before about well there's an aspect of meditation that's about non-doing and they think oh great I you know I can just totally you know be a complete like you said limp fish here and just not do anything that's actually not what's meant by non-doing it's a very it's a much more subtle kind of relaxation with a certain tone to the mind and one of the analogies that's given that I like from the early texts is like it's like holding a bird in your hands so if you're if you imagine a holding a bird in your hands a small bird if you squeeze too tight what's gonna happen you're gonna squish it that's right we know you're gonna crush that bird but if you don't if you don't have any tone in your hands if you hold it too loosely it's just gonna fly away so so that's the kind of balance in our attention that we explore in meditation practice is this balance of tone alertness structure and relaxation and that same balance is what we what we learn to strike in our body in the very posture and I can imagine that you know having been meditating for a couple months longer now that your fear finding that there are different ways that you can hold your body upright some of which are more or less stressful and that their periods that you find where something kind of locks in the alignment is there where you're upright yes but you're totally at ease yes it's an interesting you say that uh yes I have it what I've noticed is remarkable is that it's almost as if my body does it itself because what I find is um so I don't have the greatest back and a lot of times when I'm sitting down or when I'm aware of when I'm feeling I realize oh I got bad posture I need to fix my posture and I feel that definitely when I'm when I'm meditating but every once in a while if I'm if I'm nice and relaxed it's like my lower back fixes itself and puts itself in a proper position but that feels much more comfortable that's right it's um the lower back is the key and it takes time to learn how to actually turn off those muscles in the uh in the lower lumbar region of the spine so that the tailbone softens just slightly and then that provides the kind of foundation or base for the rest of the spine to be upright and aligned and then the structure of the skeleton is actually what starts supporting the body instead of the instead of the the large muscles and and and that very balance and alignment in the body starts to support a place of real easeful presence and focus in the mind I didn't even know that was a thing um well let me so I want to ask you one quick question and then I want to get into more metaphysics we talked about the mind internal experience yeah like I I'm fascinated by this and confused by it but I really want to hear your perspective on it okay I just throw one more tangent in I don't know if we have time I uh there's one more cycle on the stress inducing thing I would love to go through if we have time yeah yeah great so I want to acknowledge there's there's there are probably more reasons that I'm not thinking of now but one other possibility uh that's very common for the stress that's experienced in meditation so so the two that we've named so far is just kind of the momentum of underlying stress that we're carrying in our life that we don't notice the second is a kind of self-created stress and frustration from trying too hard in meditation the the third it can be more of a almost an existential stress that can come either from uh being unfamiliar with whatever state of mind we're experiencing or a deeper layer of uncertainty in the psyche so what I mean by that is it's not uncommon for people in meditation practice to um actually become quite still or quite focused or calm or quiet in the beginning and this isn't everyone but it's not uncommon and that experience itself can produce a certain kind of stress it can be very unnerving you know for example I uh I was talking to my mom who has done a little bit of meditation and she was telling me that you know her she could feel uh her her heart beating and all of the blood kind of pumping through her whole body and the sensations everywhere and she said it was incredibly unnerving it was very disturbing to feel all of those sensations so that's an example of we can have an experience and because it's unfamiliar to us we can become uncomfortable or a little bit jarred by it and that and that can be stressful the other the other thing that can happen is we can actually come into a place of real openness or honesty or vulnerability inside and sense our own mortality or or or just the the reality that life is so uncertain you know we can we can feel the the vulnerability of our of our body of our skin and and that in of itself if the mind isn't prepared if we haven't familiarized ourselves with uh being that fully aware or developed the other qualities like equanimity and compassion that support our ability to be aware in those ways that can be stressful yeah and i can somewhat understand that from a philosophic standpoint that when people are unfamiliar with thinking in just an irrational way about mortality what happens when you die what are you uh thinking about those things for the first time can be very stress inducing because they realize uh some of those thoughts can be uncomfortable especially when you couple uncertainty with it which is just it's a natural segue to talking about the nature of the mind and internal experience and what we are um so i'm going to have really heavy questions for you and i have i do not have the expectation that you've got this all sorted out and here we are we're going to go away and know exactly all the true insights about the nature of the universe but i am seeing in the short time that i've been practicing this i am seeing that you can get insights about the nature of what the mind is maybe what the self is and during the practice of meditation more so than any other kind of inquiry that i've that i've seen and in fact i have quite a lot of conversations with people of the rational skeptical scientific disposition who even doubt the existence of the mind they're so i would say um unaware of sensory experiences or the the experiential nature of what what actually is going on internally that they don't even think that thing exists that when we're talking about what things feel like it's just we're talking about superstition or something like that so the first question is comes from a realization that i'm discovering in real time which is actually quite unsettling so for my whole life i have pretty much identified myself with my mind with the the kind of language going on that's happening all the time right the internal narrative the internal narrative the intellectualism i've pretty much thought well that's me when i'm talking i am talking but i'm seeing that might not actually be correct because i have a i can kind of i can see the contents of my mind as if it's not myself it's like i'm looking at the more i'm listening to them it's as if the mind is almost like another sense that you can the sense isn't you you can experience the sense but there's a little bit of distance there so what so what we're talking about that that part of the mind the the thinking the rationalizing what is that that's not us yeah good questions you know i i think these questions really go to the to the heart of any true contemplative or spiritual practice you know am i am i my thoughts am i my body if i'm not my thoughts my feelings in my body then what am i yeah right and uh the answer to those questions is a little taste of enlightenment when we when we actually directly understand uh those questions for ourselves and not in a cognitive or intellectual way that that's transformative and there's there's a there's an aspect of that transformation that's actually you know nascent in what you're describing in your own practice where you're seeing you know there's some insight like wait a minute if i can observe my thoughts then i'm not my thoughts because if i were i could observe them what's going on there right so right you know that's it's starting to unravel what we take ourselves to be the illusion that we assume we we are begins to unravel in meditation and that can be what i got myself into yeah sorry buddy you took you took the red pill so well there's still an observer right there's it seems like there's still a person that is observing even if he's not the thinker right so there's a book by mark eppstein called thoughts without a thinker and uh one of my first meditation teachers who was also happened to be one of mark's teachers used to say you know there's uh there's doing but no doer there's walking but no walker there's thinking but no thinker so the the what about observing yeah there's no observer there's just knowing there's just there's just the knowing and the awareness so that one of the questions you asked is like okay well what am i right so the the sense of self that we have that each of us walks around with exists as an experience but there's nothing um there's nothing to it that's actually solid or that uh that we can own there's nothing there's no center there's nothing actually there so it's more of a pattern a changing repeating pattern that isn't owned by anyone there's no one there owning it and those ideas can don't really make sense they sound maybe they sound interesting but until we actually see or experience it it's just kind of a neat idea um a couple of ways that i uh like to explain it one is my own the other is one of my teachers joseph goldstein so joseph talks about the big dipper analogy maybe you've heard this before so if you look up at the sky at night you know depending on the time of year and where you are on the planet you can see the big dipper and it's right there you can see it now is there really a big dipper i would say no it is a concept in our mind right okay now the next question have you ever looked up at the big dipper and tried to not see the big dipper uh yeah i suppose so and how hard is that well i suppose it's not very hard if it's not something i'm consciously thinking about okay that's great so but that that starts to get at the the shift in perspective it's like once we have a conceptual overlay of experience you know and the the sense of self is a conceptual overlay on experience that we have um reinforced billions and billions of times since you know since the moment we became self-conscious as a small infant so try to look at at phenomenal experience at conscious experience without that perceptual overlay very difficult how could that be done it seems like that the like the personal possessive quality of experience seems like it's my experience that there's a unique distinction between what's going on over here and what's going on i would say from your perspective right and there is i can't feel the sensations in your body right now i can't experience the thoughts that are in your body now no more than you can mine however um the sense of those those so those thoughts and sensations and feelings those are occurring you know within your awareness or within my awareness we could say uh but there's the sense of self the sense of it's happening to me this is mine is an afterthought there's just the experience the sense of it belonging to somebody or indicating the presence of a person is an afterthought it's it's a it's not innate in the experience and that's something that one needs to see an experience directly for oneself i mean modern neuroscience has actually done a lot and i'm not a neuroscientist i don't i don't i'm not up on all the research but from what i understand they've done some really fascinating work actually demonstrating and showing like the self as we refer to it literally from a scientific perspective and a neurological perspective does not exist and that can be verified directly through our own experience with the training of meditation okay so so i can entertain that conceptually i don't think it's a a logical necessity that the self exists but would you say that even without a self there is still a there is still a boundary of experience in the sense that there really is a unique perspective that my perspective in is some kind of objective distinction between your perspective so we still have some kind of experiential boundary between us right that makes sense to me but so two things one in response to that question i don't really know because i haven't i haven't developed the potential of my mind to its fullest capacities so i don't really actually know what's possible and i and i know i know enough which is very little but i know enough to know that there's a heck of a lot i don't know about being alive and about the pot the potential of the human mind and consciousness so i don't hold out that i don't hold out that there's no possibility that i could somehow have some insight into your experience and i think that the boundaries of separation that we create between our minds and our bodies are are much more porous and artificial than than we believe okay what i what i want to come back to though and clarify is that it's not actually correct to say that the self doesn't exist it doesn't exist in an essential independent solid way it doesn't exist in the way we believe it to exist so you know if you again if you go back to like the buddhist texts and so forth you hear a lot about oh no self there's no self well actually uh the buddha didn't say that so much and there's a few places in the early texts where someone actually asked him point blank and he wouldn't answer he wouldn't say yes there is a self or no there isn't a self because it's much more subtle than that what he would say and and the line of question that he would use is he would point out the very thing that you're saying is he would point out okay let's take the body is the body permanent does it last forever and not change no not the case it ages it gets sick it falls apart okay our is something that changes falls apart can't be controlled by you is that generally something that's pleasurable and reliable or is that something that's not reliable and potentially unstable and it's okay well yeah that's not so reliable not so stable probably not pleasurable in all circumstances great so is something that's impermanent changing unstable and unreliable is that something that's fit to be considered who or what you are i know and so then go through all aspects of your phenomenal conscious experience your thoughts your feelings your emotions your perceptions uh and consider are any of those worth identifying with as me or as mine they're all they're all changing they're all unstable they're all unreliable i think the contents of my experience that is i think that's true but there still seems to be a almost a inescapable possessive quality to it that that when i think about all of the past experiences that i've had that there's still me there even though i'm not having the experience i kind of have a different body my cells a lot of my cells have died that still feels like well there's the me is still there right and that's the piece to investigate that the experience of being me exists okay but but i am not real the experience the experience that we have of but it's me it's oren it's like my body and my life and my past and like that experience is actually occurring but when you look at it closely enough and deeply enough it's empty there's there's actually nothing there it's just coming and going quickly it's just like a a bubble in a stream what would you say is the the cause or the reason for that illusion because that at least in me i know some people have different layers of of like different levels of how strongly they feel like they're a person and they're past and some people don't feel like they're the same person as they were in the past for me i feel very strongly but if it's if it's illusory if there's not there's not kind of a independent object there what why would it be why is it happening uh because it's helpful to function in the world if you didn't have that you'd you'd be insane you'd be psychotic it's it's a useful distinction because we live in a world of objects and and time and place you know you and i couldn't have had this conversation if we didn't have a sense of an independent self and understand what three o'clock pacific time meant you know but if but if you look at it time is an interesting one you know where is three o'clock show me three o'clock no where is wednesday you know it's not wednesday it's monday but you know these these concepts are mutually agreed upon and they exist in the sense that we we define them but they're but when you look at it closely there's nothing there so the classic example that comes out of ancient indian thought is is the example of a chariot so we could take a car today and you can say okay you know do you do you and your wife own a car yeah okay so you have a car so now i say okay if i take the bumpers off is it still a car are the bumpers the car no right so we can go through the entire car and take the entire thing apart and say okay where is the car at what point does it cease being a car and become a bunch of parts but is there a car yes but does but does the car actually exist as something real and independent no it's it's a it's a constellation it's a changing constellation of all of its components functioning together i love that analogy that's like the ship athesias in greek philosophy very very persuaded for ordinary objects for tables and chairs and cars hundred percent there i think that a car is a concept in our mind but i do think that there's a there is an external referent in the sense that i think there are bits of matter that are in space that are located in a particular way that we reference as a car or a table or a chair so though there are fundamental bits i think out there are those that's my guess yeah that's how i doesn't quantum physics actually point to the fact that what we call matter is actually mostly empty space and probabilities and when they try to pin down an electron they find that you can't actually know its location in a specific time there one yes there's one interpretation of of quantum physics copenhagen interpretation but there are others which preserve the more about it than i do well well so so let's say it's even the case that there is no external world let's say the only thing that exists is the contents of my experience and they don't they don't refer to anything external to me that i i still maybe it's because the the strength of this illusion i can't get over this idea that it's me it's i i'm a i'm a person i'm not my i don't think i'm my mind i don't think i'm my body i think i'm like a perspective i'm like a i'm not like a like a perspective of awareness that seems to be constant do you think that's still is still a kind of a conceptual construction i do yeah so the where this and these are not questions that are unique to you and i and i'm not a philosopher i'm a meditator and so my ability to actually kind of there there are others who could go there with you and in the in the way of philosophy and metaphysics and kind of you know explore the the limits and the contradictions of certain positions right and and what's fascinating to me is the very questions you're asking if and you know again this is my this my training if you if you go back and you look in the records we have from the conversations the Buddha had with people 2600 years ago those are the very questions he's answering where you know where someone is saying okay well then am i not then this very uh uh changing experience of knowing from moment to moment you know like that question was asked multiple times and and you know the the Buddha points to it and says it says you know look and see you know what what is the result of identifying with that very awareness and so this is where this is where the the teachings uh that meditation practice or at least you know the meditation practice i'm trained in of Buddhist meditation practice uh really for me really shine because they're not actually intending to create a coherent philosophy philosophical or metaphysical system even even though people were later kind of constructed one out of the the teachings that were left from the Buddha but they're meant to help us learn how to live in a way that's uh more clear balanced enjoyable kind and free and so the question comes back to looking at our own direct experience and seeing um where do i suffer where does my stress come from and what's the experience what's the actual experience on a on a moment to moment level as deeply and completely as i can feel it of being a person and my experience is that when i look very closely when my mind is still when there's just experience when there's just a flow of experience that is less stressful than when there's a flow of experience and the sense of it happening to me that that very sense of happening to me is a withdrawal and a separation from the flow of life and what happens when i separate from the flow of life when awareness uh when an aspect of awareness uh disconnects and contracts and identifies as anything even as the one experiencing then it places uh it creates a relationship to experience of control resistance and preference where the pleasant ones i'm wanting to grapple onto and the unpleasant ones i'm wanting to get away from and that in and of itself is stressful so do you think that there's a potential here for a kind of um like a a philosophic plurality in the sense that if there is no self then what you've just said is no problem either personally or philosophically the sense that there's no but no objective metaphysical entity that is the self it's just a flow of experience and this is why when you are aware of that there's no it doesn't cause any stress but is it is it also compatible with the idea that there is some metaphysical thing that we're talking about that is the experiencer but when the experiencer is experiencing and he's not thinking about himself and he's in the moment you still get the same kind of stress reduction so is there can there be a metaphysical agnosticism about this um i don't know yeah could be i think yeah i think for me um uh that that phrase of metaphysical agnosticism seems uh seems helpful to just say well you know don't know you know i think what's more important is is actually asking the question and and uh and looking deeply than uh coming with a presupposed answer so again i want to just uh i don't want uh you or your listeners to leave here with this you know puzzling uh conclusion well you know oren jay sofer was saying that uh meditation teaches us that there's no self because that's actually not what i'm saying and it's that's a really problematic position that can lead to a lot of um uh difficulties and problems actually it's one of the ways that the teachings of meditation are most commonly misapplied and misunderstood we hear something like that and so we say well my emotions don't matter because there's no self you know and my needs don't matter and your needs don't matter because there's no one there you're just creating attachment you're just you know and my actions don't really matter because if there's no one here then there's no one doing anything and those are all very very dangerous uh ideas that are actually not not in any way aligned with the uh understanding or framework of meditation as i teach and practice it and as you know those in my community do but but it's rather about a more uh a more flexible and deeper understanding of what we refer to as ourself and and what we call what we experience as ourself and being able to see that it's much more fluid than we think it is uh it's much less solid than we think it is and our preoccupation with our sense of self is one of the primary things that creates pain and suffering and difficulty in our own life in the lives of the people around us and on the planet very well put that's a wonderful note to end on i appreciate you making that disclaimer because this is also true not just with meditation with all kinds of different philosophies and you see it especially pronounced in any religious or spiritual traditions that when you when some of the basics are are wrong or some of the interpretations are wrong about just you know in this case there is no self oh is that the insight of buddhist teaching and if you run with that idea it actually can can cause personal problems you can have a kind of a screwed up world view and i would say an incorrect metaphysics so those kind of subtle clarifications i think are very important well i really appreciate your time and i i can vouch to say that there's there's definitely truth to be found here and i i wish i had discovered meditation about 12 years ago when i started really pursuing the truth um passionately because it's so clear that there's this there's insights to be gained about the mind the self the world there's there's an ability to become happier and regulate your own emotions so this has been great you're welcome steve yeah yeah i want to offer just one kind of parting quote from from my first teacher that seems quite appropriate to our discussion just going back to this understanding of meditation as a form of cultivation or mind training and he was very fond of saying if you want to understand your mind sit down and observe it yeah perfect and that's really what we're doing when we meditate is we're we're learning by observing and in order to observe there's certain things that are necessary we have to actually we keep the body still we learn how to let the thoughts settle down and we just look look closely and clearly that's a very empirical and i think open-minded i think correct approach to something as tricky and difficult as what the mind is yeah absolutely thanks oren you got it steve take care you too all right that was my interview with mr oren j sofer i hope you guys enjoyed it if you want a taste of meditation for yourself head over to steve-patterson.com slash meditate now as for answering these questions that were brought up i don't really have solid certain answers i have suspicions but i'll reserve those suspicions and analysis for a future interview breakdown all right guys that's all for me this week i hope you enjoy the rest of your day