https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=IeziyBT_Utg
Welcome to Meditating with John Brevicki. We do this every weekday morning at 930 a.m. with Mondays alternating between New Lesson Dharma Day, today is Dharma Day, against the White Board, and then a review of the whole ecology of practices that we call Paya Day. If you’re joining us for the first time, you’re very welcome. I strongly suggest you go to the links in the description of this video and do Lesson 1 right away. You can continue meeting with us and do one or two lessons every week and then you’ll catch up with us. There’s about almost, I think, close to a hundred classes that’s all about meditating and contemplating and Qigong and meditative movement, mindfulness-based movement practices. So those are all from the Eastern tradition. We are now going to shift over to the Western tradition to create a more diverse and I think a richer and powerful ecology of practice reservoir. Please like this screen to increase its visibility in the YouTube algorithm. I’m trying to help as many people as I can. In some sense, the fact that we’re now into this more ongoing endurance aspect of the crisis has its own different and also difficult kinds of challenges for people. So please help me to help as many people as possible. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, as we start making our way through this wonderful book, The Wisdom of Ipasha, we will be going a little bit longer on Monday, Wednesdays, and Fridays in general. Unfortunately, this material is a little bit more, like a little bit more complete안 e than necessary. So if you read it, do think about the amount of mid childhood practice you have of vacation, more philosophical, more general questions might occur to you. Please come to the general live Q&A on YouTube at 3 p.m. Eastern Time, the third Friday of every month. It will be August the 21st of this month. Okay, so let’s get started. So how we will do this is when we’re going through the Dharma aspects is I will do, like I said, a bit of a lesson. Then we will sit and then we will do, as always, we’ll still visit Shanty, we’ll still visit this etc. So we’re doing the Western tradition and the pivotal figure for that tradition is Socrates. So just as the Buddha was the touchstone as we were going through the Eastern, we call it the theology of practices tradition. Socrates will be the touchstone. All of the groups that we’re going to take a look at in the wisdom of Hypatia, the Epicureans, the Stoics, and the Neoplatonists are deeply influenced by Socrates and they use Socrates as an exemplar. There’s, of course, just like the Buddha, just like Jesus of Nazareth, there are many different interpretations of Socrates. I’m not going to try and offer you a single interpretation because that’s not the point of what we’re doing here. This is not a history class. What we’re trying to do here is to figure out the best interpretation of Socrates relative to the individual movements that rose in response to him and those movements were to put the zero on about zeroing up on them is how they generated ecologies of practices for the cultivation of wisdom. Okay, so Socrates is a pivotal figure. He’s an Athenian philosopher. If you go to episode four of Awakening from the Meeting Crisis, there’s an extended discussion of Socrates there. The person we want to take a look at is somebody who was influenced by him, which is Epicurus. Right away we have to pause here because the term that is coming to our language describing someone who follows Epicurus is Epicurean. The problem with that is it has gone through significant decadence so that most people when they hear Epicurean, they hear hedonism, they hear the pursuit of pleasure largely through self-indulgence and largely around associated with food. Now while Epicurus has a lot to say about pleasure, he is not advocating that kind of decadent That’s not what Epicurus is about at all. So I need all of us to put aside the standard meaning of Epicurean of today. We need to retrieve the ancient meaning because our job here is to try to retrieve the ancient ecology of practices. Okay, so Epicurus, as I said, everybody takes Socrates as the touchstone and what really impressed Epicurus about Socrates was Socrates’ capacity for what, and this is a phrase that Epicurus is going to make famous, ataraxia. Now that term is hard to translate. Ataraxia is often translated as tranquility. That’s what the canon does. Sometimes it’s translated as equanimity. So this is, in Greek, this is the opposite, the negating. So an atheist is someone who doesn’t believe in God, so this negates. What this basically means is it means turmoil or tumult, and so this means a lack of turmoil, a lack of tumult. And so you know now what Epicurus is actually on about, we have this phrase, and it’s also not as rich as it needs to be, when we talk about peace of mind, that freedom from inner turmoil, inner conflict, you know what it’s like when we’re suffering. Now Epicurus is famous, in fact, for saying, call no man a philosopher who has not alleviated the suffering of others. This was the central concern of his philosophy. It wasn’t about indulgence. It was about the alleviation of suffering. Now, the suffering caused by a lack of ataraxia, the suffering caused by inner turmoil, inner tumult. Let’s remember that suffering primarily means a loss of agency. You are no longer the author of your experience and meaning. Things have overtaken you. That’s why we often use another metaphor for when we’re in turmoil. We talk about the loss of agency. When we’re in turmoil, we talk about being upset. We’re upset because now we’ve lost control. We’ve lost being centered. We’ve lost being balanced. And this is related to an important model, disease. We get our word disease from this, which is a lack of ease, which is not quite the same as things being easy. So ease is more like a fluency, a flow with reality. All right. So Epicurus was really interested about trying to, he saw himself almost like the physician of the psyche. He’s very much the model of being a doctor, almost like a psychotherapist is today. And so what Epicurus was interested in is, well, what’s the disease and what’s the cure? And now you can see how we’re right getting into an ecology of practices. So for Epicurus, the reason why we are diseased, reason why we are in inner turmoil, the reason why we’re upset is because we have, we’re uneducated about our relationship to pleasure and pain. We’re socialized by our culture, but that’s not the same thing as what Epicurus is talking about. What Epicurus is talking about is that we often are deeply confused about pleasure and pain. So one way of putting it that is not inaccurate is Epicurus wants us to bring a lot more mindfulness and reflective discernment to our relationship to pleasure and pain. See Epicurus isn’t about maximizing pleasure. Epicurus is about trying as much as possible, as much as possible, to get you into right relationship with pain and pleasure. Okay. So why are we confused? Well Epicurus was actually deeply influenced by the atomic model. That was a model that was at the time that all the reality was made up of atoms in motion, which is going to be the basis of scientific theory. He was very scientifically oriented, so it’s completely appropriate that we use the best science of today to try and supplement to try and supplement Epicurus. So what do we know? Well, we know that the way we pay attention to our pleasure and the way we get pleasure and pain of things is affected by how salient something is to us, how much it stands out to us, because when things stand out to us, they arouse us. Okay, so here’s a basic feature that we need to understand about how things arouse us. So let’s say this is time. So this is the present and this is the future and this is how intense how salient something is to us. How salient something is to us. And all organisms show this graph. This is called hyperbolic discounting. Very rapidly, as something that we’re thinking about becomes more in the future, it loses its salience to us. This is why we procrastinate, because a present pleasure can override, right? So here’s a pleasant pleasure. It’s not very important, but because it’s in the present, it gets magnified. Here’s a very future pain, but because it’s in the future, it gets minimized. So one of the things we have to do is we have to learn to widen our frame. We’re going to talk about that, not today, we’ll talk about that later in the week. We have to learn to widen our frame. This is a mindfulness exercise. It’s like a contemplative practice, because we need to do stuff to counteract this on a regular basis. Okay, so we tend to therefore do what? We tend to confuse intensity with importance. We tend to confuse intensity with importance. And one way you can think about what Epicurus is trying to get us to do is he’s trying to get us to invert that. He’s trying to get us to train ourselves so that we find the important most intense. You see, that’s a powerful inversion. Normally, we confuse how intense something is with how important it is. But what if you could train yourself to make the important more intense? That’s sort of the key, one of the key moves that we’re trying to achieve here with Epicurus. Okay. So in the wisdom of Vipatia, McClendon is recommending a couple of basic practices that you take up right from the beginning. Right? And one is self-examination. So Socrates, remember the pivotal figure, Socrates famously said the unexamined life is not worth living. How much do we examine the processes and the patterns of our pleasures and pains? How much self-examination do we engage on? McClendon also recommends a process that I like to call, he doesn’t call it this, I call it maximization. This is the collection of maxims, important, very pithy phrases that help to very readily bring to mind principles. Now, here’s where I can explain something to you. Why are you doing maxims? Because maxims, the goal of maxims are to open that frame up, widen the frame so that you’re not locked into the present moment. See, this is a little bit different attitude towards the present moment. You’re not locked into that hyperbolic discounting. You’re frame widening so you can get an ability to discern between intensity and importance. And so what the maxims do is they maximize your frame. They remind you important principles that open up your frame. So I just gave you one. The unexamined life is not worth living. Socrates was willing to die for that. Now, this means that if we don’t engage in a regular and reliable practice of self-examination, our lives lose most of their value to very strong plane, very strong plane. So like all these maxims, you have to sort of pick them with a little bit of reflection. You don’t absolutize them. But there’s an important insight there. So we have to engage in the self-examination of pleasures and pains. Okay, so how do we do that? Okay, so here’s the principle. Maybe this is a maxim for you, a maxim for you. What we’re engaging in is prioritization for the ease of sustainability. Prioritization for the ease of sustainability. Prioritization for the ease of sustainability. So what you’re going to do is, right, you’re going to, when a desire comes up. So we’re going to talk mostly today about desire because that’s about pleasure. And then we also are going to talk about fear because that has to do with pain. But this is for later. Today we’re concentrating on this one. Okay, so when you have a desire, and of course you’re going to also, you’ll have an associated sense of pleasure, what you’re going to do back, what you’re going to do first is don’t immediately look through the desire. And now you’re going to see something that links up nicely with what we learned from Buddhism. Step back and look at the desire. Don’t look at the world through your desire automatically. Step back and look at the desire. And then something very analogous to the labeling, categorize your desire. Categorize your desire. So there’s basically four stages you go through. You ask yourself, is a desire natural or unnatural? This is the epicuring model. What does natural mean? It means that you can honestly say to yourself, you need it, right, in order to keep alive. But there’s, right, three lives you lead. There’s your physical life. So what do you need to remain physically alive? There’s your mental life. What do you need to keep your mind healthy and vital? And your social life. What you need, because you are an inherently sociocultural being, what you need to keep that alive and healthy. So is this desire natural? You want a drink of water. That’s a natural desire. Is it necessary? So there are natural desires. They satisfy something that has to do with our physiological life, our mental life, our social life, but they can be unnecessary. So whereas I need a drink that’s necessary when I’m thirsty, I may desire a bottle of Pepsi. Pepsi is unnecessary, even though it satisfies a natural desire. So first of all, you give priority to desires that are both natural and necessary, over ones that are natural and unnecessary. See, we’re prioritizing next. Next, we consider desires that are both unnatural and unnecessary. And then what is very, so what’s an example of, according to Epicurus, of a desire that’s unnatural and unnecessary? Fame. We desire fame. And this is something I reflect a lot on, given my current context and what I’m doing. Many people live lives without fame, so fame is clearly not natural and it’s not necessary. Now you say, but I need status, social recognition. That’s a different thing. I’m talking about the pursuit of fame, celebrity status. That’s both unnatural and unnecessary. So you step back, you look at the desire, you categorize the desire. Is it natural is it necessary? Then you ask yourself, short term, long term. Can I satisfy this desire only short term or will I be able to satisfy it long term? And what you then take a look at is you engage in that, you bring the principles in the maxims, they widen your frame and you say, will the satisfaction of this desire, will it satisfy these principles? So if I keep satisfying this desire, will it actually, for example, reduce my capacity to examine myself? Well then, while I’m getting short term pleasure, I’m going to be buying long term pain. So that’s how the maximization comes in. You frame widen to see, oh, right, right. Now, then ask yourself another question. Is it a mental pleasure or a physical pleasure? And the argument of Agnipurus, contrary to what popular media is, is that mental pleasures are much more important than physical pleasures. Why? Because physical pleasures are ones that are not unique to us as human persons. Mental pleasures, of course, are the pleasures that can, if properly educated, lead us to wisdom, lead us to virtue. And Agnipurus was very concerned with the cardinal virtues of wisdom and justice and softness and courage, especially when we talk about that. Okay, so is it natural? Is it necessary? Short term, long term, maximization. Now, final fourth important question to ask yourself. How easily can I obtain it? Easily can I obtain it? Because if it’s very hard to obtain, then I am putting myself at great risk of not obtaining that pleasure and of falling prey to pain and frustration. Now, you don’t start with how easy it is to obtain. You notice that? You don’t start. You answer all the other questions first, and then you ask yourself, how easy is it to obtain? Because when I answer all these questions correctly, what I’m getting is I’m trying to teach myself to prioritize those desires that seek the pleasures that are important to me. That are most easily sustainable. What does that get me to? Well, that gets me to one of the most important ways of understanding ataraxia. When we hear this, we hear this as a lack of tumult, a lack of turmoil. And that’s of course right. But it’s right technically, but it’s wrong in its connotation. Because we should be hearing this as a positive term, not as a negative term. Because what I would argue Epicurus was on about was learning to savor the pleasure of being. The pure pleasure of being. Of being alive. Again, the three lives. Being physically alive, mentally alive, and socially alive. We’re going to see how those all come together when we talk about philosophical companionships. Friendship was the most important virtue. The most important practice for Epicurus. So, how do we get to the place where we can savor, savor, almost, I want to say joy, but I hesitate because Epicurus had a different sense for the word joy. How much we can, you know, because you know that you want them either. But it doesn’t just mean sort of, it means the pleasure of being alive. That positive pleasure that gets so backgrounded as we layer and complexify our lives. So, as a practice, and this is a really important book on this kind of work, right? Savoring, a new model of positive experience. I want to teach you savoring. And what we’re going to do when we sit, we will chant, we’ll sit for a bit, a shorter meditation set, and then I’ll also talk you through the savoring practice. This is also something you should be doing, I recommend, as if you’re in a garden. So, MacLoughlin talks about, right, the Epicurans are in the garden. The, he uses porch for the sowa, that’s wrong. It’s more like a colonnade. The colonnade, right, and the grove. Doing the savoring practice while you’re walking through a natural environment is really optimal. But I’ll show you how to do it even while we’re sitting. Okay. So, I want you to think of your experience as having two features to it. First, perception. This is in cognitive psychology, music called bottom up, and what you, this is how information is coming into you. What you want to do for savoring is you want to first set, you want to get to that sense where you’re opening yourself up, trying to become more receptive, more sensitive. You guys know how to do this already. You guys are finding your flow, finding your route. Okay, this word is a little less familiar. Pre-hending. This is, so, pre-hending, it’s like comprehending, grasping with your hand, apprehending, this comes, a notion was, from Whitehead. This is basically your ability, right, to grasp patterns, to see relations. And so, that’s considered that’s considered coming top down, and the proceeding is bottom up. So, what you’re doing when you’re walking, first of all, you’re trying to not have any sentences or scenes in your mind. So, it might be good to do, you know, a few breaths of mindfulness, the past now. When I’m walking, what I’m doing is I’m taking an attitude, I’m trying to put aside all of these other complex patterns I have of pursuing things, and trying to come into a more fully engaged perception, trying to open up and make myself more sensitive. And so, I’m noticing more differences and more colors and more shapes, right? At the same time, right, it’s not just passive though, I’m also trying to do more pre-hending. I’m trying to, almost like, a little bit like, you know, a detective. I’m trying to pick up on all, I’m just trying to let my mind find all kinds of patterns. Some of those patterns will be synesthetic. It’ll be almost like I’m tasting colors. Some of them will be, you know, like synchronicities. I’ll get a sense of an outer and inner meaning, and it corresponding to each other. Some of it will be symptomatic. I’ll suddenly get a sense of theme. The way to think of this, this is from this excellent book by John Roussin, is it’s almost like he talks about the musicality of how we’re making sense at all times, and we just, we forget that. But when I’m moving around, it’s like, it’s almost like I’m listening to music, because all of, right, all of the noises, all of the textures, all the colors are coming in, but it’s not, but my mind is also sifting them and weaving them. It’s making up music. And what I get out of that is I get a sense of deep participation. Because when, when you’re, think about music as the analogy, and that’s also the analogy used, as I mentioned in Taoism. When I’m hearing music, the rhythms are both outside and within. I’m feeling the rhythms within in correspondence, in resonance with the, with the rhythms without. I’m getting that. It’s, it’s, I mean, it’s almost like I’m, it’s a moving music of my mind and my body. And so I’m participating, and it’s just in the presencing of everything. That’s the way of understanding being. Remember that being is ultimately a verb. Being is presencing. And to we find that pleasure in presencing, and it’s so, and it’s so invigorating. It’s, it’s, it’s, you can feel how it, it enlivens the body and enlivens the mind. And it already started to set you to something, to be in relationship that will enliven your sociology, your sociability, and your social life. I will review all of this on Wednesday, and we will also go through some more stuff on Wednesday, because we’ve only talked about one part of this. I’ve alluded to the fact that this is something we also need to do in groups. We have to understand what philosophical friendship is. And this was the key thing, because that’s where we find most of the courage we need in order to deal with fear. I want to point something out. I’m not going to teach every single thing that’s what I’m asking you to read. I want that to be more Socratic. My job is to try and amplify it and make it more practicable to you and integrate it with what you’ve already learned. I’m counting on all of you to ask questions that you might have from the McConnell book, and I will answer them readily and reliably. Okay, so I think that’s it for that. Let’s get ready to sit. We’re going to have a short sit for 10 minutes. And then we’ll talk about we’ll do a little bit of that presenting and then we’ll take some questions. One more time, a gentle reminder that we will be going longer on Monday, Wednesdays, and Fridays. I just have to get one thing here. All right, so let’s all sit. We’ll begin together when I say begin. Get yourself comfortable. Please put your phones on do not disturb. We will chant. We’ll have a shorter chant, shorter set, and then we’ll quickly go over just for maybe a couple minutes, just that initial so you get a sense of what savoring is like. You can also savor, and this is how I’m confused, I think, with what we mean by epicurean. You can savor when you’re eating food. You can savor anything, and that’s the point. That’s the point. All right. Let’s begin. One. Begin your silence. Slowly come out of your practice, trying as best you can to integrate what you cultivated in your practice with your everyday consciousness, cognition, character, and communities. Perhaps by reciting the five precepts to yourself. As you start to come out of doing the five promises, you’re in a very receptive state. Just look around your room. Not to have any thoughts, sentences in your head, any scenes. Open yourself up. You know this. You did it listening and rooting, but now do it on your environment, the body of the world rather than just your own body. Use soft vigilance. Let your gaze move around. Excuse me. Open up to more. As you’re opening up, you might pre-hand more, find patterns, connections, associations, almost like there’s a music emitting from the room, but also the rhythms are within. Opening yourself up to more, which is also making more connections. Opening yourself up more, making more connections. You know this. This is finding your flow, soft vigilance, finding your flow, but do it on your environment. You’re opening up more. Just be here. Just be here. Depth of it. You’ll notice that it’s not just the body of the world, but the body of the world. You’ll notice that it’s not just the body of the world, but the body of the world. You’ll notice that it’s not just the body of the world, but the body of the world. Depth of it. You’ll notice that it’s similar in some ways to Lexio Divina. Let those two talk to each other in your practice. The Lexio Divina will also often give you maxims. They’ll generate maxims from your Lexio Divina. All these things are not talking to each other more in your ecology practices. Now, the best thing to do is to savor while you’re walking in a more natural environment, like in a garden, like Epicurus. Also savor while you’re eating food, you drink some liquid, when you touch something. It’s obviously a moment of mindfulness. It’s also a remembering. It’s a remembering of the deepest kind of pleasure that is the most sustainable pleasure. That’s the pleasure that most allows you to recover your sense of agency and being in the world. No other pleasure does that like the pleasure of being. Okay, so we’re going to have time for one question. I’ll take more questions tomorrow, a lot more. And also on Wednesday, we’ll do a review, more questions Thursday. Like I said, open this up, share questions from your practice, from the wisdom of Hypatia, but also comments, observation, connections you’re making, all the pre-hending you’re doing. Okay, so I think we have one question. One second, Jason’s just making some adjustments. Ah, so here’s a question directly related to today’s practice from Kira. How do you not worship yourself on what is necessary? So this is where I mentioned something that is crucial, which is the connection to science. So what you have to do is, I mean, for your body, you have to learn what are the things that are actually necessary for your body. What are the things that are actually needed to have a healthy sense of mind? So a couple of things that are helpful is, right, we’ve developed a lot of attention or culture to the healthy body, and we sometimes confuse that with a body of a certain image. So I won’t say too much about that. And I’m going to hold off talking about the social life, because we’re going to get that when we talk about philosophical companionship. So Kira, I’m going to concentrate on just the mental life. So this is what I propose to you. And this is not directly epicures, but I think it’s consonant with it, and I think it’s a way of extended epicureanism. What is the food of the mind? What is it we’re actually generating when we’re doing the savoring? It is meaning. I don’t mean just conceptual meaning. That’s primarily not what we’re doing. We’re doing the meaning that is the meaning, what people talk about in meaning in life, that sense that’s enhanced in the flow state, that’s enhanced in mystical experience. That’s that sense of being connected to the world, to yourself, and to each other rightly. What is needed in order to afford, to protect, produce, and promote those connections to oneself, to other people, and to the world, such that you feel that you matter, that you’re connected in a way that makes a difference? That I would post to you is the food of the mind. That is the health of the mind, meaning in life. So what is needed for us to be connected to the world? What is needed for making meaning? The thing is this is where we get most confused. This is where we confuse intensity with importance. Remember what importance means. Import. You actually take in what nourishes you. When you ask people reliably at different stages of their life, what makes your life meaningful to you? It is not the things that are often occupying us with intensity, because what makes people feel like their lives are meaningful are those experiences in which they savor that connectedness, the connectedness to themselves, to each other, and to the world. What is needed for that? That’s the food, that’s the importance for the mind that should not be confused with mere intensity. So like I said, we’re going to do much more this week. Please prepare yourself regularly. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays for the next while are going to be longer because that’s just the nature of what we’re doing. We’re following Socrates here and he’s a more talky guy than the Buddha. So we’ve got to do that. But it still has great value for us. I want to thank you all for joining. I want to thank Michael Levitz and Jason who’s running everything today and he’s doing I think a masterful job. Please subscribe to the channel to be notified of the next video. Also follow me on Twitter for any updates about this stream. Please invite others who might benefit by joining this series. Please get connected to the Discord server. I’m going to try and talk to Mark and Brett today. I’ll give them an email setting up a time where we can get a space set up so we can practice philosophical companionships, the friendship that’s so crucial to the epicurean practice. Reminder that we’re doing this every weekday morning at 930 Eastern Time. Remember that continuity of practice, connectedness is more important than sheer quantity, than sheer intensity. Don’t hold yourself to a standard of perfection. Hold yourself to a standard of virtuous friendship. We’re going to learn a lot about virtuous friendship from Epicurus. For there is no friend greater to you than your own mind and body. Take care everyone. I’ll see you all tomorrow. Keep practicing. Bye bye.