Standing At The Edge with Roshi Joan Halifax

(upbeat music) Welcome to Synchronicity. Last week had a little break. July 4th. No daycare. You know what happens. Means I don't get to do anything. But I will say, I had a lovely time with my son Eli. What a beautiful little boy he is. Anyway, I got to take that opportunity to say that because I have a podcast. That's pretty cool. Today's guest is Roshi Joan Halifax. Truthfully. I paused before I say this because I'm going to say one of my favorite people which is, I know I say that a lot. I'm trying to figure out the right words to qualify and quantify why Roshi is one of my favorite people.

I've known her now for about six years. I did some work for a few years with her amazing Zen Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Yupaya. Just an awesome place. Anyone who's interested in Zen Buddhism, the real deal, check that place out. It is not for someone who's, you can go to a thing, but if you're really serious about getting involved in Zen Buddhism or finding out some of the cool things that are going on there, go to Yupaya.org. I know that is something that is always close to her heart and certainly worth your time checking out. Why Roshi, though, she walks the wall for lack. There's no other way I could put it. There are a lot of people in the spiritual world, the Buddhist world, the new age world, the occult world, the self-improvement world, whatever you want to call these things.

There are a lot of people who have amazing aphorisms, amazing platitudes, amazing wisdom that has been around for thousands of years that they've packaged into some nice glossy glossy thing. But when push comes to shove, they're still kind of doing the same things as you and me. There's nothing wrong with that, just to be clear. I don't want to come off as overly aggressive to people who package what they're doing in a certain way. There is a business sense that is a company, a company is all of this stuff in the West. So there's nothing I'm not judging you in a negative way for doing that, but clearly we can observe and discern that there's a distinction, right? When they go home, whatever they're doing is going to be not too much different from us. They're stuck in this kind of materialistic society, maybe with relative degrees of awareness on the spectrum.

That's okay. Roshi, on the other hand, is someone who has truly spent almost her entire life entirely service to serving other people, to helping other people, whether it's the nomads clinic where she helps people in Nepal. Every year, she travels all around the globe, not just to give lectures and sermons and hang out at cool places. Also, she does do some of that too, but to go into communities and to work with caregivers and caretakers and people who really experience some of the most despicable atrocities in the world are just front and center. And some of these atrocities also aren't man-made, right? Natural disasters, things like that, but dealing with those types of people, really being one of those types of people, understanding things like burnout over empathy, not over empathy, but destructive empathy, if it's hurting you.

All of these things, she has written a book called "Sanding at the Edge," she refers to as "edge states." And you'll hear in this podcast, I'm not going to go into the whole deal of what an edge state is, but I think it's incredibly, incredibly powerful and potent for this particular moment in history. And I reckon to say if you're listening to this, unless it's way in the future, you know, when we're recording this in mid-2018, this will remain incredibly important, because this is the type of shit we have to deal with. Yes, we can be ostriches, we can stick our heads in the sand and pretend everything is great, and nothing is going on, or we can face this head-on, understand how do we allow ourselves to deal with the suffering of the world and the clear injustices, you know, head-on without losing our own shit in the process.

And also recognizing when do we get involved? So what's cool about this episode, I mean, I didn't plan it like this, but obviously everything that's been going on in the United States, recently in terms of how we're treating immigrants, asylum seekers, members of our own community, is getting distinctly or well in. And for people who think I'm being hyperbolic, you're not paying attention. Like, there is crazy shit going on. I'm not freaking out. I'm not running through the streets screaming. Oh, the sky is falling. But, you know, a few more notches towards where we're heading, things are going to feel a lot different really quickly.

How do we deal with that? These are the questions that I asked Roshi, because I want to know these things too. I mean, I have my own inkling of how to deal with this. I mentioned in this episode that I'm a big subscriber to the work on yourself before you go out into the world and try to help other people. But are those things mutually exclusive? Is there a degree of helping that you can do? Whether it's donating, getting active in your community? And these are the things this conversation centers around, but also some people who just discovered magical things like synchronicities and all of these wonderful kind of unreal things that can happen in our lives can get all struck with these, right?

They can get all struck and also overwhelmed. And that's something that I see happens to a lot of people, you know, their hearts will open, their minds will open, and then all of a sudden what comes rushing in, all of the suffering of the world, all of the injustices, all of the horrible things, the immense, just tremendous, palpable feeling of suffering around us in any culture, truthfully, right? And that can be really just the difficult thing to deal with, right? I mean, that's how do you process that? I know people go through that often. And so what Roshi has done in this book is address a lot of these noble, engaging edge states, right? Things that are good for us, like altruism, respect, integrity.

These are things that we obviously need in the world, but also their flip sides. And this is a very Tibetan Buddhist. She's not a Tibetan Buddhist, but it's a very Tibetan Buddhist concept where they're all of the positive qualities of our life can also become poisoned, right? And this is also kind of like an etching thing, right? When you get to the maximum level of one quality, it flips over on the next level, next turn to the opposite, its own opposite. So it's important to be mindful of these things. It's also how do we deal with this stuff when we're on social media, when we're just plugged into the matrix of the web, and we're just getting blasted over and over again with bad story after bad story after bad story after.

And like, I'm not saying they're not bad stories. I think a lot of us have a tendency to kind of either get disillusioned or tuned out, or even worse, apathetic, just not caring. And that is, to me, almost more disconcerting than some of the things that we're seeing going on being put into action. If you become apathetic in these times, that is going to probably do more harm. Like you have to remember, I think Roshi even brings this up in the episode, you know, as much as we like to just lump all Germans together and say, yeah, yeah, they were all Nazis. Something happened in that country. Those people weren't immediately enraged with other people. All of a sudden something happened.

So we have these historical contexts to look at. We have all these things. I'm going to kind of wrap this up because Roshi really just does a phenomenal job of letting us know what's going on. I also drop in. I asked her if she knew who Jordan Peterson was, and it was a reminder for me to look at how much am I engaging with someone like Jordan Peterson and his ding dong followers, or, you know, as Roshi know about it. Of course, she doesn't know about Jordan Peterson. She's got better things to do that pay attention to leave it to people like me to battle the Jordan Peter Sony and people and Jason Louve.

I've really taken a, taken a shine to on, on Facebook and Twitter. If you don't follow Jason Louve, go follow him. He's great counterculture warrior here, but Roshi just is chock full of wisdom, a lovely person. If you don't hear it, I am honored to know her and be friends with her. And so it's funny. I know people through different areas of life who know Roshi personally as well. And those people who I know who know Roshi are also some of the greatest people. So that should tell you something. It tells me something. So without further ado, let's get right to the episode. All the other stuff. And without further ado, here's Roshi.

Hi, Roshi. Hey, how are you? How are you? I'm good. I'm super happy to be able to speak to you. You don't have to apologize to me. It's no big deal whatsoever. I'm really happy to be able to speak to you today. I'm also completely mindful of your time and schedule. So I don't want to take up and waste any of it. But I'm super excited to talk about your book. And then I thought, you know, obviously it's very timely thing. And I thought we could really delve into maybe some social activism. And then, of course, kind of the flip side to things like altruism, empathy, you know, your edge states, all of them. So, you know, I think it's going to be a productive conversation. Again, I appreciate your time.

Wonderful. Cool. Totally looking forward to it. Let's go for it. All right. Awesome. Thank you again for coming on. I want to start right away with your new book that came out in May, standing at the edge, finding freedom, work, fear, and courage. You meet for obviously a lot of reasons. One, a podcast is a good thing to talk about a new book. But more importantly, kind of what the message behind the book and some of the topics that addresses, I think, are incredibly critical for what we're facing collectively as a species, as, you know, a consciousness. However you want to define it, it seems like right now, more than ever, at least, you know, looking back in recent memory. Some of the things you speak about in this book are really important. So I would love to hear, I guess, you know, your quick kind of, if you could in a nutshell, sum up what the book is about.

And then maybe we could look at that. Some of the kind of current situation politically, culturally, those things through the lens of the book. I thought that would be pretty cool. Great. So I wrote the book because I've over the past many years encountered many people who are involved in work that is truly in service to others, and that includes educators and clinicians, politicians, CEOs, and people in humanitarian organizations. And in spite of our best motivation, our best efforts, people often, in their endeavor to serve others, suffer greatly. And listening to people who are, you know, out there in the front lines, down in the trenches, really in a hand-to-hand relationship with others who are suffering.

I was so moved over these many years to discover that there's a way to transform the experience of stress that people experience in service to others through the medium of compassion. And so there were maybe five different areas, Noah, that became very obvious to me in interacting with others, that stood out as what I turned edge states. And these are states that are really important for our psychosocial health, but at the same time, they have a fraught side. They have a shadow. And those states include altruism and the shadow side of that is pathological altruism. Empathy and the shadow side of empathy is empathic to stress.

Integrity, the shadow side is moral suffering. Respect, the shadow side is disrespect and engagement, and the shadow side is burnout. So, for example, let's just take altruism. Altruism, I don't think any of us would be alive, save for the altruism of our mothers and fathers. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, and I do. I wouldn't be alive, save for the goodness of countless others, and I think it's just really true of all of us. And yet it is fascinating to consider that, for example, we as altruists can actually harm ourselves in ways that are really bad as we actualize altruism in our lives. So, for example, we can harm ourselves physically. We can experience burnout in the process of trying to end the suffering of others.

We can harm the people that we're trying to help, trying to serve by really disempowering them or being completely unskillful. We can harm the institutions that we're serving in, or we can harm those institutions or nations that we're endeavoring to serve. So, I haven't really thought about pathological altruism. You know, as a kind of area until I started reading about it in the psychosocial literature, and I went, "Oh, I have some of that in me too." You know what I'm saying. And also, you know, what we deem to be pathological altruism could also be just our point of view. So, you know, or what we deem to be altruistic, like, you know, the story of Wesley Autry, this man who jumped into, you know, in front of an oncoming subway to save another man who was having a seizure.

And he realized he couldn't pull him from the tracks. His two little girls were standing there on the subway platform. All of these other people were there. They didn't jump in. He jumped. Fortunately, he was, you know, an athletic, had been in the military, and he just held the seizing young man down. And the subway passed over his head, braising his hat. Now, that was an act of spontaneous altruism. It was, he was the person who jumped. He was the person who saved the life of the young man who was having a seizure. And yet, if the subway had killed him or killed both of them, it probably would have been evaluated that he was a pathological altruist.

Right. The outcome and perspective. I see, I see. It all took us on our, you know, a hinges on our point of view. But it's good to know about this is really important, Noah, because we have to see, you know, what, what we'll really serve here. And what we'll serve here also includes. You know, what we'll serve here. Also, we need to take our own situation at some level into consideration. And not harm ourselves to the extent that we become disabled. Right. Which is such a common thing, I think, for people who really do have that pull to help. And it's something that I know you've probably come into contact almost always.

It would probably feel like is one of the things you mentioned where the, what is the term you use for the negative state of empathy? Empathic distress, yes, yes, empathic distress, which is something that I first really came across early in, you know, exploring psychedelics with other people. But also when I was doing social media for a lot of these organizations, Ramdas and other prominent teachers, people would reach out. And a very common question would be, I'm open, my heart is open now. I feel all the suffering of the world. I don't know what to do. It's overwhelming. What do I do? And I'm sitting there and I'm like, I kind of have been through that. Here's what I did.

But it's a clear problem that still I hear people just from this podcast reach out to me and say this all the time. And it's just, I love that, you know, much in kind of the Tibetan, I know you're Zen Buddhist, but in the Tibetan way there's these poisons and flip sides that can emanate from any of these very noble things. These very noble, you know, pursuits, right? Nothing is wrong with being empathetic, but if it turns into this overwhelming feeling. And I love that you cover that because that seems to be where amongst this very divisive and polarizing climate we live in with seemingly everything, you know, it's seeped this way until almost every single aspect of life.

And if we don't acknowledge what those shadow sides are and we don't reconcile those within ourselves, we almost have no chance of really making meaningful headway. So I love that you kind of address these in that in that manner. Yeah, I think empathy is such a powerful experience. I mean, without empathy, we're kind of dead to each other. And yet if we over-identify, if we fuse too much with the experience of another, we can lose, for example, our moral compass, like what happened in the Third Reich in Germany. You know, perfectly wonderful German people suddenly began seeing out through the eyes of Hitler, or we can be with a person who's suffering from pain, and we experienced the pain so acutely ourselves that we become disabled.

So being able to distinguish self from other is a really important process. And, you know, one of the powerful ways that we learn to regulate empathy is actually through meditation practice, where we have to understand, you know, how that works. You know, in the sort of early phase, there's a meditation practice. It's a kind of top-down process where you understand, "I feel this person's pain. I am not this person." But in a more advanced meditation practice, one would drop into a place of emptiness. All right. And if you're feeling, if you're able to get in, can you explain this concept of emptiness too? I'd love to hear it from you. I've obviously read and studied, and I know the various different, you know, philosophies, how they're outlook on it.

But what is emptiness? When you speak of emptiness, what does that word mean for you? You know, I like the way Tic Mount Han puts it. He says, "Empty of an inherent self." And that, for me, just sums it up phenomenologically. Right? It just lays it out there brilliantly. You know, but another way of characterizing it, no, is we can have -- this is talking about a quality of mind. And when we say emptiness, it's not a mind that is just void. Right, right. Actually, it's characterized by this quality of boundlessness, boundless connections, myriad connections, and also boundless space. And so, you know, that's a little more challenging for people to put their arms around, but it's really important.

Yeah, and I think that's something that can be -- can bring up. I mean, speaking of where fear and courage meet, that's something that can really be a shock for kind of our normal waking consciousness or ego constructs that emptiness is this boundless, infinite kind of space. It's not this void of nothingness that maybe should be approached with trepidation, obviously a healthy respect, but nothing to -- that you're not going to be kind of obliterated into nothingness in the conventional sense. Now, egoically, that might happen. I'm not denying that possibility, but, truthfully, that there is something kind of -- it's a very subtle distinction I think you're talking about there.

I also -- I have a question about something I've noticed for a lot of these burnout, and I see people getting more and more riled up on social media for various reasons. Myself included. I have to include myself there. Where do you think kind of comedy and humor fit into some of these states or the negative states that can kind of be on the flip side of the positive aspects of the edge states? Like, where does that fit in for you? Well, I think that one of the ways that we express moral outrage, which is also, you know, when our integrity is violated, we can be experienced a lot of disgusted anger, and moral outrage can come out through the medium of comedy.

Comedy is also an incredible defense. It's also a bridge. So, you know, personally, I like humor. I use it quite a bit myself, but humor has two sides. One side is really enhances connection. It's a tremendous release. It often comes from seeing things very realistically, and you just nailed it. The other side is it's a defense. It's cool. It's unkind. It's coming from a sense of lack of agency. Yeah, and that I was going to say that lack of agency, that seems to be a quality that I'm seeing more and more that is kind of either disheartening or, you know, and we know some of this could potentially even be fomented by, you know, intrigue, international intrigue, but what do you feel about that, that this kind of, the sense of not being able to do anything about all these horrible things that are happening in the world, because I know you're someone who doesn't just sit back and lament.

You're the walking, living, breathing, antithesis of that idea. So, what can you say about for people who just feel like they don't know what to do? I've had people again reach out as I've spoken more about kind of what's going on with the immigration situation on this podcast. People have been like, you know, I've been doing the spiritual thing. I haven't been tuning into the news. And I'm like, that's kind of a mistake. So, what would you, what is something you could say about that, that kind of lack of agency? I love that term. Something, no, I think that one of the things that, and I've just written actually a big piece on it is how we view hope. And I just want to, I want to just read you this beautiful thing.

Let me see if I find it. It's not what I've written, but I included it. Let me just, let me just dig it out. Yes, of course. So, you know, so I ask in this piece that I've written, I call it the strange case for hope. And I, so what is it to be hopeful and not optimistic? The American novelist Barbara King solver explains it this way. Quote, I've been thinking a lot lately about the difference between being optimistic and being hopeful. I would say that I'm a hopeful person, although not necessarily optimistic. Here's how I would describe it. The pessimist would say it's going to be a terrible winter, we're all going to die.

The optimist would say, Oh, it'll be all right. I don't think it'll be all that bad. The hopeful person would say, maybe someone will still be alive in February. So I'm going to put some potatoes in the root cellar just in place. And then later on, she says, hope is a mode of resistance. And I think what she means by this Noah is hope is a mode of resistance to apathy. Often we opt for apathy because we feel futile. And, you know, we know that if we look at hope through conventional hope through the lens of Buddhism, you know, we can see that hope. And from the point of view of what I call wise hope is born of a kind of radical uncertainty that's rooted in not knowing in the unknown in the unknowable. We can't know what's going to happen in the next moment.

So, right. Vakdav Havel talks about, you know, the importance of hope from the point of view of, you know, we just show up anyway because it's the right to just the meaningful thing to do. And so that's one of the things is my, you know, you just do the best you can. And we're all going to die. This is true. Well, and I like how this kind of interlocks with something like the Bodhisattva's vow, where you're kind of, you know, staving off something that maybe, you know, all sentient beings are essentially striving for to help people or all sentient beings get to that point. And also, I like that, you know, the myth of Pandora, everyone knows, and this is bandied about in so many ways in our modern culture now, but at the bottom of Pandora's box was hope. That was actually the last thing that came out.

So I like that kind of, I love that description of what hope is because who wouldn't want to be planting seeds just in case doomsday doesn't happen. Why wouldn't you be doing that? I love it. Oh, my gosh. Well, okay, so what do you say to people also, or what someone comes to you and says, "Donald Trump, this immigration, this environment, this destroying our future, this Supreme Court, this women's rights." And it's just, you know, they're, let's say they're not someone who is getting to the point where the negative flip side, shadow side of the edge dates, which just to be clear, correct me if I'm wrong, altruism, empathy, integrity, respect, engagement, right?

Right. Okay, so let's say they're not at the point. They've kind of taken rom-dosses, you know, work on yourself before you go out into the world and make sure you're not an angry protester, just spreading more stuff. Let's say you're ready and you're hearing about this stuff. Your heart is awakened. You're not overwhelmed. You're not outraged to the point where you're just going to be screaming profanities of people. You have a healthy respect for other people's opinions, even if you feel that wrong, and you're ready to engage. What type of steps would you recommend for someone in that? You know, I think everyone is a work in progress for Buddha. You know, even as the Buddha was dying, Amara showed up. Amara represents the devil, but represents a state of mind.

So the idea that we're going to perfect ourselves in a conscious way to such an excellent degree that therefore we are a worthy vehicle of transformation or instrument of transformation. I think is, you know, maybe not realistic. I think what's important is that we create the internal conditions where we're able to see our mind, our hearts, more and more rarely, so that we can do the best that we possibly can, knowing that we can't control the outcome. And also from our very difficult experiences of failure, we learn a lot of humility. I've learned more from my failures than I have any of my successes by the way.

Yeah. Yeah. That's, I mean, that also kind of, there's a redemptive quality to that. You know, it's something that when you're in the midst of a failure, I don't think anyone or very few other people are like, "This is going to be good. This is going to teach me something that I'm really going to be happy about. It feels terrible." And I think that's kind of what I try to hold on to, that thought, that concept is when things look overwhelmingly bad. Maybe this is the, maybe I'm a hopeful person and that's what I'm explaining here, but when things look overwhelmingly bad, you know, even in the most desperate of conditions, and if you're in the Western, you know, part of the world listening to this podcast, you're probably okay, relatively speaking, things do tend to happen for a reason.

I don't know. I mean, I know there are many different ways of looking at that. We can look at free will and destiny and all of these things, but even if you don't believe in those concepts, the time of failure is just such a wonderful time for sewing those seeds metaphorically. I mean, it seems like it's the right this time, you know, and I'd be curious. I mean, you've studied with some amazing people. Let me ask, I have a question just to diverge a little bit, just because he's been on my mind for a little bit. Are you aware of Jordan Peterson? No, I don't know him. Who is it? Oh, God, I'm both honored and very dishonored to have to tell you who he is. He's a cultural psychologist who came from University of Toronto and really has been embraced by the alt right and he uses very selective studies to basically say things like there's no such thing as a gender pay gap that women are more suited for, you know, being wives and traditional sense. It's just a very ridiculous kind of mindset. But what he does is he uses mainly Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell, who I know you have a personal relationship to, he uses them to support kind of these mythic archetypes and women and body chaos and they're bad and we have to control them, but he's gained a tremendous amount of mind share over the past few years.

And it's weird because I'm seeing people who identify as liberal, you know, are certainly against Trump, but there's this weird kind of justification for not having to deal with some of the more broader social shadow aspects of this country and other things that is really kind of this. It's very, very odd. I'm glad you don't know about him because it's truthfully one of those things you don't really need to know about outside of the fact that there does seem to be this kind of vein of this that is permeating into, you know, at least my social stratosphere, which is pretty liberal. It's fascinating, but you know, he's taking myths and essentially saying that these are justifications for why the patriarchy, you know, is the dominant, you know, form of life and that we should be adhering to this and anything that upsets that is potentially going to be chaotic in a destructive way and, you know, knowing you, not as a woman, as a person who has done so much good for the world and just really walks the walk whenever someone, you know, we're talking with our mutual friend Chris, I said, you know, this is someone who legitimately across all of my traverses in this world, you really walk the walk, I'd be interested to hear what your take is where someone is basically using the words of Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung to kind of paint this narrative of, you know, women and minorities are lesser than and it's not something that sounds so, I know it sounds kind of fringe in, you know, cockamimi, but this dude has a really, really big influence on a lot of people and I'd be curious to what you, you know, I know you don't know him, but I'd be curious to hear your thoughts about that.

Well, it's fascinating and, you know, anybody's words, anybody's view can be taken by anyone else in distorted in, you know, ways that are really bad. You know, Noah, we have to go back to the quality of mind that we're cultivating in our everyday lives, both through mind trading and also that we actualize the way in our everyday life that we hate the conditions where we're not so stressed out, up regulated, over ambitious, even, you know, saving all sentient beings from suffering. You know, I mean, it's kind of awful to hear that Jung and Joe Campbell are words are being used by the alt right, so to speak.

But, you know, look, I feel that one of the jobs that I have in the world is to cultivate the quality of mind that doesn't buy into the kinds of distortions that are coming, not only from the alt right, but also just the kind of distortions that come from our media that comes over, you know, it's on our social platforms. It's as though our corporate institutions are overlords. Well, they basically colonized our attention. And so, you know, there is decolonization happening. You know, if you do a kind of meditation practice that enhances your capacity to see reality really dearly. So, you know, I am constantly having to decolonize my mind from notions that, you know, you're just walking in the airport and they're, you know, all around you are attractors that really foster greed, hate and delusion.

You've got to make a commitment and then you just work it. Yeah, I mean, I think that's where I've luckily not been drawn too much into the to the fire with a lot of these things. I'm much more of a passive observer. And you're obviously couldn't be more right. Like, if you get sucked into that. I love this idea of colonizing. They've colonized our attention. That's exactly what's gone on. And it's you can people can into it as well. It's not like something that's like, oh, they have. I'm staring at this reading this all the time. I wonder, though, at what point do we engage head on in social activism? And I'd also be curious to hear your thoughts on that. Like, at what point do you decide, you know what, I'm going in Nepal, or I'm going to this protest.

Where do you kind of draw the line between compulsive kind of pathological altruism and actual altruism, you know, an engagement where where has that been for you? I guess is probably the the fairest way to ask that. You know, I feel. I get called. I get called into things like the women's March. I couldn't. I can't not show up. You know, I would feel that I'm in violation of my values. If I don't stand with a hundred thousand other women and say, Hey, we want to live in a compassionate and just society. I also think that sending our voice writing articles, voting, working in the ghetto, working with homelessness, working with dying people has the effect of really affirming who we really are.

So, you know, I feel like all of us are called. You know, I recently was reading Howard's in and I love, you know, his words he said, descent is the highest form of patriotism. If we see things that are in violation of our values of our deepest principles of what it is to be a basically good person, then we have to dissent. We have to send our voices and even tick not Han, you know, in one of his 14 mindfulness trainings. At the end of, I think it was the ninth mindfulness training. He said something like, you know, we'll do our best to speak out about situations of injustice. Even when doing so may make difficulties for us, we're threatened our safety. I mean, you know, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, we have Malala.

We have examples today of people who have been, you know, present in the course of our lifetime, who have stood in the name of love and justice. And the last thing I want to do is go to the grave and feel like, you know, I didn't stand in the name of love and justice. I mean, and I think you couldn't have said it any better. It's something that pulls at you, you know, in a visceral and palpable way that it's almost not. What do you say to people when you encounter them who just don't feel that they can look at something happening where children are being put in cages and separated from their parents and not even necessarily form a counter narrative for a justification for that.

But just look at it and go, I don't care. What is, do you find that, you know, wish them well internally move on, you're not going to make that much headway there, or is there a way to open up some line of discourse to make someone who maybe is hurting and they're demonstrating that way. You know, what what have in your life have you found that that's something worth pursuing or there's a method or it's just kind of like, I don't know, you know, move on to someone who is receptive to it. So, you know, every person from the point of view of what I have learned through the practice of meditation, every person has good in nature.

You know, when I was working in the prison system, no, it was really powerful. I worked on death row and maximum security. It was just so humbling to be working with people who had egregiously harmed others, but also to recognize that they're also inside of this terrible suffering. There is a human being. And I always welcome the opportunity to counter someone who violently disagrees with me. I think it's really important for us to, you know, reach cross into differences. I know that my words aren't going to change anybody. But what might help in the transformation process is me dropping into a place of radical acceptance and love.

I love it. Roshi, truthfully, I know we could go on for a very long time, but I also realized that you have a bunch of these lined up and you're, I'm going to, I'm going to give you a break. If there's something else scheduled later, and we'll just leave it at this. I love connecting, even if it's these short bursts. If you don't mind, I'm going to ask you three quick little questions, and then broader one, and then we'll wrap it up. And I just, you know, I really do. I love spending the time with you. However, we can. So here are the questions as silly as they may seem. What is your favorite color? Blue. What is your favorite number? Four. What is your favorite animal?

I love all animals, but boy do I love dogs. I know. I remember when the dog came and visited you out of the blue. That was one of my favorite things that I've seen. Last question, a practical tip that you could share with people listening that's helped you in your life. Humor. I love it. Roshi, you're the best, and God bless you for doing it. No, please, please, please, please. We'll catch up hopefully in the not too distant future. I'll have thanks to everything, but thank you so much. Thank Noah for facilitating this as well. And I'll catch you soon. Thank you. And thank you for reading my book. I think it's a radical book. It's pretty awesome and I'm going to encourage everyone else to read it too. So thank you so much. All right. Bye. Bye.

Thanks for listening to that episode. If you want to get Roshi's new book standing at the edge, please check it out on Amazon wherever you can find all the links on this episode page at sinkpodcast.com. Check it out. She knows what she's doing. She has been around the block. Go read about her if you haven't just finding out her about her for the first time, but she's the real deal. So that's it for this episode. Patreon people. Stuff is coming down the pipe. A reminder for people who are interested in cryptocurrency and are not a part of cryptosing. I do. I'm going to start doing the first one. I want to start doing live Q&A hangout sessions for cryptocurrency people. Just to be clear, I charge not a small amount of money for my clients to consult with me hourly.

This is pretty damn close to like a console session. So you can come and just flame me if you want. If you want to sign up, it's July 12 at 730 p.m. Eastern. You have to go through sinkpodcast.com. Find the crypto sync thing. Sign up for the list. There's a tab there menu item. Click on that. Sign up. You'll automatically be added to the list and I will send you an email two days before with the hangout information. That's it. If you're not interested, just disregard this. Fast forward. It's too late. You already listened. But that's it. We're going to do those just because I want people to understand that this isn't just the I know I've been hyperbolic about cryptocurrency in the past.

This isn't we're not doing this because you're going to get rich quick. We're doing it because there isn't an emerging asset class that there is opportunities that people have actually put some research and time into. It's not a Ponzi scheme. It's not a pyramid scheme. And for the people who are interested, but just don't know really where to get started or maybe have a base level interest in this stuff. So it's coming out. See if I'm full of shit. How about that? So that's it. That's July 12. You can sign up through the website. Big thanks to Roshi Joan Halifax. Big thanks to Patrick Nemczyk who continues to be an awesome patreon.

Sign up there from music and a whole host of other things that are coming down the pipe. That's it. I will see you in the not too distant future, aka next week. Bye bye.