Psychotherapist and meditation teacher Bill Belanger — founder of Mixed Contemplative Arts — shares his journey through Tibetan Buddhism, his decade-long training under Dr. Daniel P. Brown, and how Western Dharma can evolve beyond rigid dogma by focusing on pragmatic, reality-tested results—an approach he compares to Mixed Martial Arts (MMA). We also explore the balance between direct-awareness practices (Mahamudra and Dzogchen) and traditional preliminaries, the nuances of bringing mindfulness into corporate and clinical settings, and Bill’s impactful work introducing meditation and mental health programs to incarcerated individuals on prison tablets.
Connect with Bill Belanger: https://mixedcontemplativearts.com
Approximate Chapters:
00:00 – Introduction & Bill Belanger’s Background
01:17 – Encountering Buddhism & Studying with Dr. Daniel P. Brown
04:24 – Preliminary Practices (Ngöndro) vs. Direct Awakening
08:00 – Adapting Dharma to the West & Monastic Systems
12:15 – Monastic Debate vs. Guru Devotion Culture
17:40 – Dr. Dan Brown’s Innovations in Teaching Mahamudra & Dzogchen
20:30 – The Wandering Mahasiddhas & Life as the Path
26:50 – Mixed Contemplative Arts: The MMA Analogy for Dharma
32:30 – The Kalama Sutta: Valuing Truth Over Dogma
36:18 – Critiquing “McMindfulness” & Therapy vs. Awakening
40:02 – Ethical Dilemmas of Mindfulness in Corporate Settings
44:25 – Trauma, PTSD & Working with Veterans
50:12 – Bringing Meditation & Wellness to Incarcerated Populations
53:30 – Garchen Rinpoche & Awakening in Prison
58:55 – Scaling Reach vs. In-Person Relational Depth
1:00:45 – Current Projects, Upcoming Book & Final Thoughts
Some resources mentioned:
Books & Texts
- Masters of Enchantment by Keith Dowman (stories of the 84 Mahasiddhas / wandering yogic tradition). https://keithdowman.net/list-of-books.html#legends-of-the-mahasiddhas
- The Kalama Sutta (AN 3.65) – cited for the Buddha’s pragmatism and encouragement to test teachings against direct experience.
- The Prayer of Kuntuzangpo (Kuntu Zangpo Mönlam) – a Nyingma/Dzogchen aspiration text recited and practiced in Tibetan Buddhism https://www.lotsawahouse.org/tibetan-masters/rigdzin-godem/prayer-of-kuntuzangpo
- Jack Kerouac’s writings – referenced as an early introduction to Buddhism through Beat literature.
Programs, Projects & Practices
- Houses of Healing – a prison emotional literacy and healing program combining therapeutic exercises, yoga, and meditation.
- Prison Tablet Programs – mental wellness, mindfulness, and PTSD support courses provided directly via tablets in correctional facilities https://www.mixedcontemplativearts.com/prison-program
- Internal Family Systems (IFS) & Parts Work – therapeutic techniques mentioned in the context of personal coaching and integration.
- Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) – discussed regarding its clinical and secular applications for stress and chronic pain relief.
- MDMA-Assisted Psychotherapy – clinical trauma/PTSD research and therapy protocols for veterans.
- https://www.drdanielpbrown.com
Films & Documentaries
- The Dhamma Brothers (by Dr. Jenny Phillips) – a documentary following an intensive 10-day Vipassana meditation retreat inside a high-security prison.
Audio: What Can Western Buddhism Learn From MMA? Psychotherapy, Dzogchen And Prison Dharma With Bill Belanger
Cleaned up by ai transcript from Youtube:
Chapter 1: Introduction & Bill Belanger’s Background
Hey wholeness, welcome. This is Josh of Integrating Presence and Inner Scout and today I have Bill Binger with me. Bill, how’s it going?
Good. Yeah. How are you? Oh, doing okay.
I’ll just start with this question and since we haven’t talked or we don’t know each other too much, this will be pretty much new for me. Who’s Bill? What kind of work does he do?
Yeah. So, I was trained as a psychotherapist. So I’ve been in the mental health field for a little over a decade but mostly in the corporate world. So making mental wellness courses, psycho education and then we connected because of our shared interest in Buddhism but I come at it from a different tradition. So I’ve been practicing mostly in the Tibetan tradition for about 20 years. So yeah, that’s the the short and sweet answer.
Yeah, I guess so. Uh so this is a primarily Buddhist podcast now integrating presence. I thought we’d talk about that. You you did mention something about a prison program too. So let’s I don’t know much about vajriana and Tibetan traditions. So we’ll have to wade into that. We we wanted to talk also about like intersections of where things were. One of the things when I meet Dharma friends and Dharma acquaintances, one of the first things I like to ask them is like how did you first encounter dharma dharma? I think it’s a good place to start.
Chapter 2: Encountering Buddhism & Studying with Dr. Daniel P. Brown
Yeah. I I don’t know why but I was really curious about it from a very young age. So the first book I got was at age 14 from the Tibetan tradition. I I don’t think I really understood much of it at the time, but I was just intrigued and I just was curious for years and got introduced to mindfulness and I eventually did a trip to Bhutan in India where we studied Tibetan Buddhism.
Then after graduating college, I returned to Asia. So I did India, Nepal, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, but I did a long retreat in Nepal in the Galuka School of Tibetan Buddhism. But I I really spent years kind of searching for the right tradition. And when I came back to Massachusetts, I practiced at a Zen center. And then I eventually met my main teacher. I’m bad with dates. So it must have been around maybe 2010, 2011 or something. And pretty quickly, like on the first night I met him, I was like, “Okay, this is the teacher I’ve been searching for.”
Um, and I studied with him until his passing, which was about maybe four years ago, so for about a decade. And he was a really fascinating figure. His name was uh Dr. Daniel P. Brown. So, he was a psychologist at Harvard. He’s just like probably the only true genius I’ve ever met. Was just like a truly brilliant man. But he also was a lineage teacher in Tibetan Buddhism and translate Tibetan and Sanskrit. But we we talked before we started the beginning of like how to even approach sariana and it’s so esoteric and there’s so much ritual and cultural baggage and I think without him I would have wouldn’t have had a clue. Um but he was enormously gifted at kind of making it accessible presenting it in psychological language demystifying it.
So yeah that has been the most influential of any of the practice I’ve done but you know in the meantime done a lot of other retreats and worked with other teachers but he’s definitely been the head teacher.
Well right on. So I’ll ask about practice here, but I think another convergence question to start this is you’re you said psychotherapy, right?
Mhm. So like if you if if someone were to wander off the streets and just start uh talking without any kind of context or reference about certain you know I I don’t know exactly in that school but I know that there’s some um there’s some stages right with with deity practices in some of the schools and some uh you know wild visualizations. I would say if somebody just walked in and started talking about something that it it may be similar, you know, in the wrong context without the right support and stuff, people might think, well, this guy’s a little bit off his rocker, right?
But but it’s really interesting then how if there’s like a lineage and and a whole bunch of people doing certain things in certain contexts for certain reasons, it’s now uh it’s now not quite the same thing. I mean, we I guess even the crazy wisdom traditions I I guess from what little I know, you know, that’s well, that’s a whole another thing, but like so so how do you uh how do you use first off talk about your practice a little bit because I don’t even know really much of any of the preliminary stuff and there there’s so much commonality though between like samatab fasa from what I understand across a lot of the additions in Yeah, I mean maybe I can just speak very broadly about it too because Dan’s approach was unusual.
Chapter 3: Preliminary Practices (Ngöndro) vs. Direct Awakening
um and and I think in a good way. So when I first did the Tibetan retreat in Nepal, so it was 30 days and then I stayed for another week after, but it’s more in the preliminary practices. So the way that they think of it is I I actually I I it was a long time ago, but I think in that 30 days I think we barely even talked about mindfulness just to show you how much they emphasize the preliminaries. So from their perspective, you don’t just jump into some of those practices, you have to train the mind and get it ready. So, it’s almost like if you’re going to go do an intense sport, you need to stretch, you need to get ready, you need to get pliable. So, there’s a lot of different preliminaries, but a lot that they focused on is more on really it’s on changing your thoughts. It’s on changing thinking patterns and your perspective. The way Dan talked about is like they’re essentially motivational practices. So, the most impactful was the contemplation on death. So you basically uh you know in a meditative state you remind yourself remind yourself that one day you’ll die that you have no control over that and all these things you take so seriously are just going to vanish. Um but you do it over and over and over and you start to really see things differently and so like talking with people who had left that retreat people are you know they quit their jobs they made all these life changes because it’s it puts things in perspective. So from the Tibetan perspective you do that at the beginning to like have really good motivation to practice so that it’s not just something you go in and out of that it’s like a it’s like a 180 in how you view life. So there’s a lot of practices like that.
There’s a lot of visualization practices, you know, again, I I I tend to really look at it more through a psychological lens now. And I think a lot of them are helping really develop a a healthy sense of self, to do attachment work, to develop positive affect, these things that kind of stabilize the self structure before you go to these other practices that could destabilize it potentially. Now, within Tibetan Buddhism, there’s four schools. You could say five if you count Bon, which is the indigenous religion of Tibet. They all have very different flavors. So the Galuka is the newest which is really I think 1300s 1400s is the Dalai Lama school. They’re the most academic and they talk about the preliminary practices the most in my experience. You know frankly they can be a little rigid in too which I I didn’t always resonate with. What Dan did is he didn’t really do that. He we did a little bit of it but he more wanted to jump in the deep end because his critique was that especially with westerners you can spend decades doing those practices but you don’t really ever in his words get a taste of awakening or really experience like what this tradition is about. So what Dan taught is more mahammudra and zogchan which are considered like the pinnacle of Tibetan Buddhism which have much less ritual. You’re not really doing all that visualization and DD practice and it’s about working with awareness really. So again, those resonated with me a lot. I I still appreciate the visualizations and those other practices, but yeah, I I think they’re they’re really prep they’re kind of preparing you for the more advanced things. In my opinion,
it’s really well put and I I do see, you know, Zchin and uh more so even than Mahammudra with with folks I encounter and and teachers and stuff that are familiar with these. and I I don’t necessarily practice this, but I I’m familiar with these a little bit or the you just walk me through the instructions and oh yeah, I’ve I’ve I’ve considered this. I’ve in integrated this in parts of my practice and along the way or things like this. So, and you bring up another good point of when introducing just Buddhism in general, which is a huge thing. You know you got
Chapter 4: Adapting Dharma to the West & Monastic Systems
basically terra Mahayana and then Vajriana or Tibetan Buddhism and in the west here in America which is basically a new country an experiment it’s basically an experiment at this point I would think compared to kind of more the old world and how do we bring it here and we’ve heard that pretty much every time it’s exported or since it’s left India it’s it’s it’s what we label as Buddhism which I think is kind of a western thing to put an ism on it you know it’s adapted to where it’s gone, you know, in in various ways. And I think we’re we’re still figuring that out in America. I don’t really think there’s a a typical American Buddhism. I mean, there’s there’s been a lot of things that’s happened. You know, I think probably where it first, like you said, took off. And I’ve talked to so many more old-timers, old schoolers that their first exposure was books. You know, mine was the Beats. My dad told me about Jack Carowwak. when I got into the beats was probably the not most skillful and wholesome way but it you know it was a foot in the door. It was a starting place and uh so so yeah this this notion of Zen and then we have you know the the ethical foundation which I think with for all the bells and whistles that uh Buddhism can offer to begin with which is great you know in my own practice it took me some more mindfulness and awareness to realize how important like the precepts are and how much that uh I’ve been causing myself trouble and causing others trouble and I didn’t even realize the importance of this and it was it a rude awakening but one that was needed and that foundation is so important I think and there’s a huge emphasis in in ter briefly you know they say the the vinear vanaya the the monk’s rules went to Thailand the sutas which were the kind of the general teachings of the Buddha went to Sri Lanka and then the abidama the higher psychological teachings went to Burma Myanmar so yeah so that you have you have that going on there’s as far as uh and then so many different things within terabatada even you know you’ve got so so all those and then Mahayana is a whole other thing and I’ve studied a little bit of Korean Zen retreat in in South Korea it was completely different than I’m used to and I still haven’t really got into Tibetan Buddhism but I think what kind what do you see um have you what do you see as far as America goes with this spending a little time in the east and it’s it’s mainly on the west the east and west coast I mean the Midwest is kind of even more frontier territory with with Dharma as well. Maybe start there.
Yeah. No, it’s definitely something is a question I’m kind of obsessed with.
Yeah. I mean, I can say for Tibetan Buddhism actually something that I’ve been really interested in is this like what has been given what has come to the west and what has been left out and some of the problems with that. And I again I guess on in terms of a spectrum of being much more conservative and being more radical, more and more I find myself on that radical end of the spectrum um and questioning a lot of the dogma from these traditions and trying to really get at the essence of what they’re all about. And I think the forms can be pretty radically different. But you know in Tibetan Buddhism for example um there was another article that came out recently about another guru that is having all this drama and community issues. So that’s an that’s something we can look at whereas the guru relationship within the context of Tibetan Buddhism is very important but I think people forget how different Asian culture is than western culture and really it’s from these things are in in Tibet are rooted in preodern cultures that are very very very different. So just because that guru student relationship worked well in like medieval Tibet, it doesn’t mean it will work well in the west and it’s something where I think that there’s there’s a lot there. I think it’s a viable way to work but I don’t think it’s the only way. So in terms of like the things that I’ve got this is an example that have come to the west some teachers are really big on the guru thing and even even the tool system where you recognize reincarnations and all these really weird things from a western perspective but ironically the other things from the Tibetan tradition that I like like
Chapter 5: Monastic Debate vs. Guru Devotion Culture
debate you don’t see. So when I stayed at the Galupa school, the monks debate every day. So we would walk by and watch them Yeah. debating. And it reminded me of my friends growing up where we’d play sports and we love each other and we care about each other, but we’re trying to kill each other when we’re playing.
We’re trying to compete. We want to win and afterwards we’re all, you know, laughing and hugging. But you’re ch at least, you know, most of these traditions are still more male-based, but it’s a healthy channeling of that intense masculine energy because a lot of these are young men, you know, like there’s just like tons of young men at this monastery. There’s no females around except for the Westerners. They have all this intense energy and you’re channeling it into something that’s really positive, but it’s not so much of like you just blindly accept everything. You have to really grapple with some of this stuff and debate it. And then even within Tibet, the history of Tibet, there was these really kind of amazing debate traditions where different schools would debate each other for like year. They’d have these year-long events of debate. It’s I think it’s the Sier debate was the biggest one where it was basically the gradual school versus instantaneous school, but literally the loser like has to forfeit everything and they have to give up and uh they have to almost convert to the other person’s school. It’s like pretty dramatic, but it encourages like debate and you’re trying to figure things out, but like I don’t really see that in any any western centers and I don’t even mean in terms of like doing formal debate, but just the kind of that spirit gets a little bit lost in some of these centers where it’s like well you just worship the guru and you do the rituals. So again, I think sometimes like some communities and some of us are missing the point.
But just that’s just one example of the student teacher relationship which has just been a disaster I think in the west and I think people need to be a little bit more radical of questioning it and saying maybe it worked really well in this other context. But it’s it’s ironic to me too especially within the Buddhist tradition of this understanding of emptiness and this understanding of things depending on other things that you can’t just pluck something out of one context and throw it in another context that these things were born in this unique context. So yeah, there there’s a whole other rabbit hole we can go down, but more and more I do think that I the way that I look at it, I think the first generation of Western teachers, it was really just like a literal translation of we don’t know what any of this is. We’re trying to translate it into the English language. We’re trying to preserve it because a lot of these like Tibet especially is a refugee culture after 1959. And in refugee societies, it’s all about preservation, which is appropriate. That’s what you need to do.
But I think we’re kind of getting into this other stage where it’s like, okay, well, how do we translate it culturally? We have the texts, we know what the rituals are, but what do they really mean? What is the psychological essence of them? And how do westerners find their own way? So, I yeah, that that’s something I’m really passionate and interested in, and I I still think it’s a very much open question, but like I said, I’ve been in the space for a long time, and more and more I find myself kind of having more radical views on some of this stuff. But the the the main thing you mentioned and I I I found that I find this really fascinating the debate. Now I’m not really I mean yes I know the the well I don’t I I’ve seen these things and I’m familiar with the idea to me I’m not so much interested in debate but I do value the truth and getting at the truth. I don’t necessarily have to be right but it’s about dharma and what is real and what is true to the the extent that we can get to with our understanding with uh with well in the context of debate there are certain logical things I do think that some of the stuff let’s just put it this way the the the the more depth and practice there is and the more realization there is then the the more understanding and wisdom there is and it’s not really necessarily to prove it but what this container does it seems to me is is um uh just like if you’re you rightly put it with sports and what I found when the little sports that I did the more I could go up against people that were way more advanced and skillful than me and let’s just say better then that improved me right it makes us this is just kind of obvious we don’t need to rehash this but I I guess the question here for you would be why don’t you think something like this or some kind of flavor favor implementation or translation of of the benefits of that that bring people why hasn’t that been implemented or has it and why would why will it work or why will it not work?
Yeah, I mean I I think I think yeah it’s a long it’s a long answer but I I feel like there have been teachers that have experimented some with success and some with some pretty big failures. I think that there’s always a tension in any tradition between the conservative element and the radical element. And I think that’s good. I think that’s a system level thing. You need both to kind of balance it because these systems are dynamic and they’re they’re not stable. They’re they’re always moving.
So I think you need people that want to preserve and do things exactly the same way and people that want to innovate. That’s a healthy tension. And again, I think in the first generation because at least I I know more about Tibetan Buddhism, so I I can’t speak as much about the Terravadan tradition, but again, it was a refugee thing and they you have to that the the stage appropriate thing is to preserve because some of those things could have gotten lost. I think you know just as an example, I’ll tell you one of the things that Dan I think really innovated on. So
Chapter 6: Dr. Dan Brown’s Innovations in Teaching Mahamudra & Dzogchen
it’s this idea with before Mahammudra and Zokchen, you do these preliminary practices. So usually there’s five different practices. you have to do them 100,000 times each. It takes years and years and years and years to do that.
So, and that’s dogma within that tradition. So, there there’s teachers and students who if you even question that will get very upset. But it’s funny because Mahammudra and Zukchan predate the preliminary practices by like 500 years. So, people were doing those practices for a really long time before the preliminary systems were developed.
And if you look at it historically, the preliminary systems became really popular when these great monasteries were built. So, you know, Dan would talk about it, some of it was like the institutionalization of meditation where at least in the Tibetan tradition, a lot of this was more relational. It was more you would have a teacher, there was a few students, they would adapt it and personalize it. So, it was really intimate. It was it was more akin to psychotherapy where it’s this relational approach. But when you had these monasteries with hundreds or even a thousand monks all practicing, that kind of got lost. So it became almost like a meditation boot camp where everybody has to do these same things because it’s it’s a function of the institution. You can’t personalize something for a thousand monks. You know, anytime you have a thousand young men together, it’s it’s a you have to be careful with that energy, right? It’s it that can go wrong very quickly.
So again, that was a dogma. it came to the west and now everybody has to do the exact same way but they kind of missed the function of it. So Dan was somebody who decided to teach Mahammudra and Zou Chen without doing that which was very uncommon but he was pretty compelling where a lot of these old Tibetan masters ended up doing watching him do these retreats and agreed with him and would teach these advanced practices without requiring the preliminaries. Um, so I think there were some of these Tibetan masters who were open-minded enough to question that dogma and say actually this is working. Maybe we don’t have to do it. Again, that’s not a very popular view. But in my tradition, like I think it worked much better and it made a lot more sense. So there there’s other examples like of trunk ripe who I have very mixed opinions on who did some experimentation. Some I think worked, some I think was a disaster. So I I think sometimes, you know, experimentation means you fail.
Sometimes it won’t all be pretty. But yeah, I mean I’ll pause here. I I have a whole philosophy of what I think should happen, which probably doesn’t mean much, but we could chat about that. But I I have a kind of a theory of a different model, but yeah, we I can pause there for a second. Yeah, I would love to to to hear that just for my own background and listeners that are already familiar, they can fast forward this part, but I just can you just give me like a brief nutshell history of how the preliminaries or at least some of them were uh created and and why?
Chapter 7: The Wandering Mahasiddhas & Life as the Path
Yeah. And again, this is a some people will probably disagree with me and I’m not a scholar by any means. This is just my own understanding of it. But the way that Dan taught, there’s a tradition called the wandering mahasidas. There’s a book by Keith Dowman. I might even have the title somewhere over here.
I think it’s called Masters of Enchantment, but it’s it’s a really cool book where they talk about this tradition. So, this was this was pre these great monasteries and it lasted about 500 years and it is kind of where that crazy wisdom tradition started. I think that whole idea of crazy wisdom got kind of perverted in the west. But the original piece of it was you had these students that had a deep relationship with their teachers and their teachers personalized the teachings for them. So there’s one story in that book of a compulsive gambler who’s gambling all of his money on dice and he’s just kind of like a a wreck and he loses all his money and his debtors find him and almost beat him to death and he hides out in a graveyard and these yogis would practice in the graveyard. So he met a yogi and the yogi basically teaches him meditation through the rent the lens of gambling and it’s all metaphors about gambling and he said you don’t have to give up gambling you can use gambling as as the path to practice. So this is like a fundamental vajriana view. You don’t really have to change your life circumstances or become a monk. You’re using your own neurosis and all trauma and everything is it’s like fuel. It’s just energy. So you’re using it to wake up. But there’s all these wild stories. There’s sex workers.
There’s rich people. There’s poor people and they’re using their life circumstances as the path with these, you know, practices that are given right to them. So this was pretty wild interesting yogic tradition and it predates these great monasteries. But when these great monasteries started getting built that’s where I think Gampopa was one of the main ones that started making these these um preliminary systems and I I don’t want to bash these at all because there’s a there’s an unbelievable logic to to some of this that makes a lot of sense. the pract I’ve spent years and years doing the practices so I’m not like saying them for them or against them but what Dan said is in his translating a lot of these texts that he was translating all these things and he found something interesting that about a couple hundred years after they instituted these great monasteries and these great preliminary systems all these texts started appearing around the problems of meditation and all the problems that can arise and he hadn’t seen that before so his hypothesis was more what it used to be student teacher relationship. The teacher is monitoring the students progress. It’s personalized. When you have a thousand people practicing without any relationship, people just start getting off course. And that’s kind of a known thing in the Tibetan tradition where there’s this misunderstanding in the west that just because someone has a monk’s robes, they’re this magnificent yogi. It’s not what it is. Like even the Daly Lama in another book kind of jokes, he literally says the phrase that half of them are garbage. I I think he’s teasing, but he’s basic. A lot of the monks it’s they’re lazy. That’s again, I’m not saying that’s what these teachers will say. They’re lazy and they hang out and they light incense and they do the the rituals, but it’s because it’s kind of an easier life than you know, a lot of them come from poverty and they don’t have a lot of opportunity. So, another ripche we knew, he was head of several monasteries and he said, “Off the record, we I only have five good yogis and from all these hundreds and hundreds of monks.” So, you know, it’s like any of these institutions. They they’re a double-edged sword. So, again, I think like the preliminaries have this great logic and there’s a lot there that I like, but I think when it gets blindly important to the West and people just do it because you think that’s the thing to do, I think it kind of gets off track.
Yeah. So, that that’s my understanding of it in a brief view.
Well, yeah. I was I was wanting to get uh more details about like an example of what the preliminary is and if you have any idea of like uh like of all the infinite things you could have chosen to keep people on track and and train them and get them ready, why did they choose that and how it fits in then into without I because I mean and then there’s a whole notion of some of these uh teachings and texts are protected. So there’s certain things that make sense to say in public and right off the bat and some things that don’t. So I understand there there may be some complications with with mentioning that real briefly and then just then you can just flow into um what suggestions you have too. I would love to hear that.
Yeah. Well, I guess like the way Dan talked about some of the preliminaries is there’s some that are like analytical meditations like the ones on death.
There’s others like karma which again it’s you’re just training the thinking patterns differently. So you realize like an example I learned it is if let’s say that you smoke a couple cigarettes a day and you’re in your 20s. It doesn’t really matter. It’s not that bad of a thing. But in the karma visualization you visualize what is that compounded for the next 50 years and how that really starts to have more and more negative effects. So something that doesn’t seem that bad actually over a long time becomes something very bad. So you you’re doing it. So in that sense you can look at some of them as behavioral change interventions to change your behavior. Some of them are motivational practices to develop motivational states to encourage you to practice. Some I think are to change the how often you have positive mental states versus negative mental states. So
if you’re doing formless awareness practices but you have really bad habits and you’re in all this negativity all the time, they don’t work as well. If you are doing states where you’re in more states of gratitude and compassion more often, even though from the ultimate view they kind of break that down eventually, it’s still relatively really helpful. Again, I think a sense of self and the sense of the external world in Mahammudra especially talks about that a lot of the their mental constructions or representations that we make and as a therapist I find that really interesting because with our own trauma and our neurosis we can have a healthy construction of what the world is and the self or an unhealthy one and on a relative level it’s better to view the world as a healthier place and safe place. I think some of the preliminary practice help balance the nervous system to get you know less of an activated state more of a calm state. So these are really wise intelligent things. So in terms of like my theory of what I would if I had a magic wand I could make western Buddhism be whatever I wanted it to be. you kind of you can tell me and I yeah I welcome your honest feedback about this but the the uh the analogy
Chapter 8: Mixed Contemplative Arts: The MMA Analogy for Dharma
that I love using now it’s like I’ve made a new website that the first project we do is the prison project but kind of sums it up the website’s called mixed contemplative arts so it’s it’s mirroring for mixed martial arts so to me mixed martial arts is like a perfect case study of what Buddhism could be so for people that don’t know you know for thousands of years all around the world there’s all these different martial arts so kung fu karate
you know, there’s a lot of them, but they kind of stayed within their dojo and had their own rules and their own dogma. And undoubtedly, if you didn’t know anything and you trained in any of these, you would be much better at self-defense. You’d be much better if you had a fight. So, they they obviously work and they have value. But the first mixed martial arts popular event of UFC 1 had this really radical question which is what if we just bring all these together and just have the minimal amount of rules and just see what works.
And what happened was Hoy Gracie who’s did Brazilian jiu-jitsu was he was like skinny and he did not look big. He he didn’t really know how to strike. He wasn’t a good striker. He entered and and the normal dogma of martial arts would say well these karate guys or these boxers are going to kill this guy. But that’s not what happened. That the jiu-jitsu guy just dominated everybody and this style that no one really knew about. So it was it was this enormously sophisticated fighting technique where you don’t care about striking. You get your opponent to the ground, you hold them down, and you submit them. And so it kind of stunned the mix the the martial arts world. And so thousands of years of tradition just got kind, you know, this dogma just got wiped out in a single night. And then, you know, it wasn’t a fluke because then the next the next mixed martial event too, this he entered and did the same exact thing. And the the footage is amazing. You have these guys that are like 250 pounds and these and he’s just dominating them. But the the way that I look at it is that these traditional martial arts follow this tradition principle where you do it because your teacher does it this way and you do it because the tradition says it to do this way. And that’s what we’re doing with Buddhism in the West. It’s if you go to a Zen and again, I’m not saying this is bad or good. It’s but if you go to a Zen center or Tibetan center, you do it the way the when I did a the Korean Zen as well, the way that they did it. If you go to the Galupa school in Massachusetts, that’s how they do it.
But I think it’s much the this mixed contemplative arts is much more interesting, which is like which I think is it’s a fundamentally Buddhist idea of being true to reality. We’re we’re not, you know, what works because I think all these schools have these different values and some of them just have dogma that I don’t think works. So, and I’m not I’m not advocating getting rid of tradition either because if you looked what happened with mixed martial arts, it didn’t do that at all. It’s it’s the opposite. It’s that a lot of these traditions that worked. So, American wrestling and boxing, um, wet Thai from Thailand, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, they’ve blown up in popularity. So, I’m not advocating getting rid of all these traditions or making a big mush or whatever. I just think it’s the the essence of Buddhism in my opinion is like being true to reality and seeing what actually works and that’s what I think we should be faithful to. So, um, yeah, I’m I’m something I’m writing about a little bit at the moment and and experimenting with and I think it’s more philosophical than in terms of what would that actually look like. But to me, that’s the only way that Buddhism is going to kind of survive and thrive in the future is it needs to be a little bit more radical and we need to be like we can’t be rigid of well I’m just going to do this thing that has been done because it was like a thousand years because all these traditions have blind spots. So the the the the traditional the blind spot for traditional martial arts was that fighting is about striking. That’s just what everybody assumed. But the blind spot was if someone said, “Well, why not why does it have to be that? what if we just only focus on going on the ground and submitting people? So, it exposed this massive blind spot. But again, you’re you’re being true. It wasn’t, you know, it wasn’t anybody winning an argument or debate. It was reality dictates what works rather than tradition. So, uh you know, in reality too, I think a lot of Westerners kind of have this approach anyways because a lot of Westerners are experimenting with with things ranging from therapy to yoga to different Buddhist traditions. And you know ultimately they’re going to they’re going to stick with what works. But I think on a structural level we we haven’t really seen much like that yet.
I think this is uh at least America is a good container for this happening. And I I feel this is already underway. you know, of course we we do have lineages, I guess, that have come in or more established in America, right? But like for the most part, if I look around
Dharma teachers, Dharma teachers, a lot of them are already drawing on all kinds of things.
And I agree with this, but uh, one of the dangers of this is to have it become more watered down and more homogenized.
So that’s that’s the danger to this, but it doesn’t like I I don’t think it has to be that way. you know, there can be rigor, there can be more emphasis on reality and truth, you know, and cutting away what doesn’t work and also exposing blind spots and while still like you’re saying and I agree preserving traditions because if they’re not preserved, we don’t have any kind of original source to draw on, you know, because then it will become a homogeneized great blob kind of thing. So it’s it’s it’s balancing these this and re I think giving respect and and moving in and out of these or or committing to one over the you know what I mean? So all this is valuable and I think there’s there’s plenty of room for all this to go on and I if if you don’t mind I’ll just read this at the Kalama uh suta. I don’t know
Chapter 9: The Kalama Sutta: Valuing Truth Over Dogma
if you’ve heard this you’ve probably heard this already but this kind of speaks to your point and I’ll just read two little selections. Don’t go by reports, by legends, by traditions, by scripture, by logical conjecture, by inference, by analogies, by agreement through pondering views, by probability or by the thought this contemplative is our teacher. And then I dot dot dot it goes on. And when you know for yourselves that these qualities are skillful, these qualities are blameless, these qualities are praised by the wise, these qualities when adopted and carrying carried out lead to welfare and happiness, then you should enter and remain in them. And that’s a 3.65 kama suta. So yeah, you know, is it basically the background of the Clamas was like a a people or a village and they had so many teachers coming through saying, “Oh, you should do this, not do this,” you know, and then the Buddha finally came and and talked to them and that’s the advice he gave them, which I think is is great in so many areas of uh you know, guidance for what what to do, how to approach things, you know, and and to me that that attitude is what attracted me to Buddhism so much. It wasn’t dogma that, you know, the Buddha says it, therefore it’s true. there and there is some of that attitude still uh you know but I think that’s what is so unique about it and even the Daly Lama where at the monastery that I practice they were they teach amongst science like they there’s things that are contradicted this the cosmology of some of the Tibetan texts and and the early sutas have cosmology that you know I guess you could say is not we don’t see any much as much truth in it in terms in terms of like comparing it to the meditation stuff and the Daly Lama was like, “Yeah, then just you just just throw it out.” Like if they got it wrong, they got it wrong. Like if we know more about some of the science stuff, then we should they should learn that. So there is this this fidelity to reality and to truth more than tradition. And to me, that’s what makes these traditions so beautiful is that that focus rather than um you know, just do this because you’re told to do it. Basically the way that I talk about it is with in the Tibetan tradition there’s the there’s still that attitude but there’s also this like institutional dogma creep that slowly starts to creep in where stuff just gets done so long even though there are those sayings of the Buddha like in reality there still is a lot of dogma and this is how you have to do it and this is the ritual but again I I’m just more interested in what works. So does that work or does it not? If one school says X and the other says Y, the question for Westerners is
how are you supposed to know which is true?
That’s the question. And I and I think it’s you either go back to dogma or you experiment and you see what actually works and and it shouldn’t only be personal. Ideally, it would be community thing too. Yeah.
Well, that’s right. And the the Buddha was a huge pragmatist you know and he only in the ter you know terat view we have of the original teachings he he just taught suffering at the end of suffering even though he knew so much more that was the main goal and it it was the other quality of of dharma is that it’s visible here and now you know so yeah so that’s it’s really important and then when we talk about translating it to a therapeutic context you know it a lot of it works fairly fairly well from what I know and it goes way beyond that to me the therapeutic aspects, psychological, therapeutic benefits of it are like a side effect, you know, that just happens as a as you’re doing practice almost naturally. So, it’s it’s wild. Yeah. So, if you want to comment on any of that, and then if we want to let’s tell tell me a little bit more about the prison project, what you’re doing with that, what that is, and how you got involved in that space, too.
Chapter 10: Critiquing “McMindfulness” & Therapy vs. Awakening
Yeah. And just in terms of the that the psychological benefits too thing is interesting where I agree I think it’s more of a side effect and that is a concern of mine where I have very mixed feelings on the mindfulness movement and what gets criticized is the MC mindfulness movement. So to me like that’s the the water down thing that you mentioned that’s one of the big things where it’s like mindfulness is a it’s a stress reduction strategy. It’s a self-help strategy. And Dan, even as a as a clinical psychologist, was always clear, this is not a therapy tradition. This is not what these things are, you know, and at the same time, I think therapy is more appropriate for certain issues than meditation is. And there’s u I think her name is Willberry Brixton or something. I think she’s one of the the researchers that has done the most on the the problems that arise from meditation, which are not it’s not a very um common thing you’ll hear at at certain dharma centers, but there’s legitimate psychological problems that happen for meditation. So, yeah, I mean I I think both are valuable, but I think the that is I see the risk of like this mixed contemplative arts thing as more of the collapsing of the two. Um and what like so that’s kind of what I think happened with some of the mindfulness stuff. It gets you lose the ethics and you lose the focus on no self and on awakening and it gets collapsed into a personality project of making people healthier and less stress which again I have mixed feelings about because I think people have a right to that and something like the mindfulness based stress reduction to me it doesn’t really uh it can’t compare to the other traditions I’ve done like mahammudra or zokchan or or something like that but not everybody needs to do that and I think If you’re recovering from an illness or you have chronic pain or you have anxiety or depression, if a mindfulness can can help you get some relief from that, I think that’s great.
I think it should. Mindfulness based stress reduction is a is a good example where to me it it pales in comparison to some of the different traditions that I’ve practiced. But I also think it’s done a lot of good. And if somebody has chronic pain or anxiety or depression, I think it’s wonderful that they have access to that. I guess for me the main concern is more when people like Buddhism is about to me is about awakening. That’s it’s in the very name of Buddhism. It’s not about chilling out a little bit and you know adapting to samsara a little bit better. That that’s not what the heart of the tradition is.
At the same time it’s about helping as many people as possible. And there’s many normal people who they’re not interested in Buddhism and great. You know, I don’t I’m not I don’t believe in trying to convert anybody. But if they can do mindfulness 10 minutes a day and they have less chronic pain, that’s wonderful. But I I just to me I think both are valuable. I I just am concerned when how much the Buddhist tradition gets co-opted um in service of things that I don’t think are congruent. Maybe that’s another rabbit hole, but if you want, we can go to the Yeah. before we I mean it kind of starts tying into that and maybe or I think the transition is corporate so transplanting this into the corporate world I always wondered about that and I don’t know if you have any what your level of experience is I have absolutely close to none although I was leading a group but it wasn’t your traditional corporate setting so how can that be helpful and how can it be abused because on one hand I just think okay are you just getting people to just sit in their cubicle longer and churn out more, you know, work and do, you know, keep ellay the burnout so they can just basically slave away their entire life so somebody else can get rich. You know, when they might be putting off this internal calling that’s saying, “Hey, get the heck out of here. Do something else.” You know what I mean? Uh, it’s a really crude way to put it, but I think you know where I’m going with this, right?
Chapter 11: Ethical Dilemmas of Mindfulness in Corporate Settings
Yeah. I’ve I have I’ve so I’ve been in in the corporate space for a long time, but I’ve been so conflicted about it.
We’ve I’ve focused more on mental health in the workplace, but we’ve done some mindfulness and stress reduction. I’ll tell you a story that kind of exemplifies it where I have a uh a clinical psychologist that works with me and we had a without giving any personal details away, we had a film production company that was a client and they wanted a personal webinar on stress reduction. So the psychologist I work with does something. He teaches mindfulness on the go and it’s more just like you know resilience uh stress reduction mindfulness. It’s some basic stuff. It’s like an hour webinar. So but again they this their team reached out to us because of stress. They have high stress. So great we we book the webinar and then the night before the psychologist I work with gets an email from their an urgent email from the lawyer. He wants to talk with them and they talk with them. He says, “Under no circumstances can you use the word stress in the presentation.” Like, don’t go there. So, there’s there’s some legal issues that they’re worried about. They don’t they don’t want to acknowledge that they are having such a stressful workplace because they don’t want to have liability because they’re working people 16 hours a day and they’re having all these issues. So, okay, well, you hired us to do a stress reduction seminar. We can’t talk about stress. So, you know, we’re just kind of laughing at the absurdity of it. So he he’s a smart guy. He retools it overnight. He uses the term resilience they’re comfortable with. But so it’s it’s it’s interesting because like it’s an ethical it’s an interesting ethical quagmire a lot of this stuff because in one sense you have to deal with that type of thing where the comp let me be careful how I say this. Some of the companies not all some of the companies they don’t really care about these things. The lawyer that call they’re trying to protect the company.
um they’re not really thinking about the long-term well-being of the employees.
So, are you willing to work with that, but at the end of the day, we’re the employees are just they don’t know about any of that. They’re just they’re stressed and this psychologist can give them something that will help them. So, it’s a band-aid. There’s deeper structural issues, but band-aids are helpful. I use band-aids sometimes. If I break my arm, I don’t want to use a band-aid. So, I don’t know. I mean, just honestly, I’m conflicted. I don’t have an answer. I I think it is a double-edged sword. I think there’s some bad actors in the space and I think there’s some really good people that are just we meet people where they’re at.
So, I think it goes both ways.
I I see it the same way. You know, I don’t really know what I would I think it they would do it on a case- by case basis cuz yeah, like on one hand too, you have you’re planting seeds, you know, never know how when those seeds will take root. And yeah, it’s it’s it’s I don’t think it’s a one-sizefits-all thing, too, you know, and and I can imagine it’s got to the there’s similarities and differences with veterans, you know, cuz the the veteran stuff is is wild. You have some people that are just completely I would say brainwashed. you know that it’s that they they’ve bought into something that they don’t know the full extent of and they think they’re you know doing good and maybe sometimes they are but a lot of times they’re not seeing I think that a lot of these wars and conflicts are instigated by rich people and people that want money and control and so somehow getting basically I would just say brainwashed for lack of a better word to kill strangers that they’ve never met for reasons they don’t really fully understand or they think they they for one reason, but then that’s one thing, but then when they try to get reintegrated into society, all that now has to change, almost like have to forget about all that and just go back to normal life. I mean, I’m exaggerating a little bit. And of course, it’s not exactly like that, but then at the same time, not interfere with the war machine going forward, you know, and so it’s that to me can be seems even more challenging uh particularly and what to do about that as well. And yeah, but that that will tie into the prison thing too, I think, because we have similar type because because I’ve got a buddy who’s a who is a not a warden, but a a prison guard, you know, and so the the type of people that they’re dealing with and like, you know, military people go on to be in law enforcement and things like this, too. So, but anyway, yeah, if you jump in there.
Chapter 12: Trauma, PTSD & Working with Veterans
Well, just just with the veteran thing, we’ve done a little bit of work with that mo mostly just with PTSD courses.
Yeah. Yeah, I mean another another interesting example is MDMA assisted psychotherapy who I have friends that are involved in that. The research is spectacular with working with PTSD. And I think that the people that have pioneered some of that work are so intelligent and in how they’ve done it because they could have approached it in a different way where it’s, oh, we’re doing this psychedelic therapy. it’s pretty out there, but they focused on uh
working with veterans because it’s this more conservative issue that people it kind of are more open to. So, yeah, I know people clinicians that do that work, it’s spectacular. Um, and again, I I’m just of the opinion is if you’re you have trauma, I want people to have whatever resources are going to work.
And I kind of in some sense don’t really care how you got there. I think it’s only positive if you’re traumatized, if you give someone a a a way to work out of that, it helps because when someone’s traumatized, it ripples out. It affects everybody. So, if you’re a really good person and you were seven, I know I had friends that enlisted, you could sign up at 17 if your parents signed, too. I 17 and 18. I had friends that did that and went to Iraq, got PTSD. You know, you can’t really fault a kid. They don’t know what they’re doing. And a lot of these people get brainwashed and then when they come back they are much more mature and they look at things much differently. So in that sense like the I think the more the marrier people should have access to these things. At the same time, there’s something that intuitively feels dystopian when the VA is getting involved in some of this where it’s like you you pay to send someone to go kill people and get traumatized and then you pay to give them the MDMA treatment to get over it quickly because they want something that works quickly. It’s just like uh maybe just don’t do either would be better. But, you know, I I think it’s just another quagmire as someone in this space. I can’t control these large systems. So, with the prisons thing too, I I don’t have any control over any of it. I I’m just one person. So you I think sometimes it just you’re we all have to work within systems that we don’t like. Even if you and I were, you know, let’s say we became ordained as monks and we’re super committed to the Buddhist precepts and and morality, you could make an argument even us talking on the Zoom on this call, you’re you’re where do you draw the line?
Because the the laptop I’m using probably has conflict minerals from the Congo or something, right? or are your our iPhones and you’re working with um public corporations, you’re using these services and some of those companies are causing great harm. So, you can’t ever fully remove yourself from those circumstances, I don’t think. So, I I think in a in a way the uh in the Buddhist time it was a lot more simple. If you’re living in a village and you’re a farmer, you’re not as interconnected with all these different systems. But we don’t that’s not how life is. So, you you can’t fully remove yourself from bad systems. I just don’t I don’t see a world where that’s going to happen anytime soon.
So again, the the connection dropped. I missed a little bit of that, but yeah, it it’s right. So I mean, one of the examples of uh this is is like, you know, nonharming of animals, but like there’s microbi there’s little critters in everything like kind of we eat and drink too. So you know that’s that’s right. So it’s it’s another thing that’s and then I know some monasteries that they’re not really allowed they have to get approval to go on podcasts and things like that and they’re not allowed to own their own laptop. So it’s it’s it’s it’s something that’s been given to them in ter you know to the monastery right they’re not allowed to own it so they all have to use it and stuff like that. And then we get you know do you throw it away with a conflict meal but then is that so yeah it’s uh that that’s right it’s everything is not simple easy cut and dry black and white. Um, so the other thing I just wanted before we talk about the prison thing and this will go into it because there’s a of course some brutal things that happen in prisons and things that lead up to it. Obviously we all know that. But I think even going far beyond that is something I’ve heard about recently called Ramcoa. I don’t know if you’re familiar with this acronym.
Ritual abuse, mind Yeah. ritual abuse, mind control, and organized abuse. So, I don’t know if we want to go into that, but I’ve I’ve heard these allegations and u survivor stories and, you know, and the different claims about, you know, all the strategies to say otherwise about basically programming someone through uh ritual abuse to then fracture their personality, create subpersonalities kind of like in DID in order for just business basically. you know, the like sex kitten programming, assassination type programming, information moving, and then like having a backup of omega programming to to take someone out if if if things go wrong. So anyway, really this really horrible sometimes it can be generational, I’ve heard, abuse that goes uh into this stuff. So some of this stuff is just really hard to fathom. And here are survivors that are coming forth with about how more details about how this works and more of a science of how these things are programmed allegedly and and triggered and carried out and covered up and countered and dealt with to keep it secret so to speak. So it sounds really kind of crazy and conspiratorial and you know off the deep end but I I don’t know. I just wanted to get your take if you’ve if you’ve heard any of this stuff in this space.
No, I’ve never heard that. Okay. Well, I can send you some uh some some things later uh maybe about it. So, we’ll just that’ll be easy to just go on then to the prison the prison stuff. Yeah.
Chapter 13: Bringing Meditation & Wellness to Incarcerated Populations
Yeah. The prison stuff is interesting. I can kind of talk about some of my experience with it and the philosophy behind it. And the fir I volunteered at a prison actually with a woman Dr. Jenny Phillips who did a film called the Dhamma brothers. Yeah. So, maybe you’ve heard of it. And they would
Yeah, you’ve seen it. They did vaposa retreats essentially in prison and I volunteered with her at a correctional facility in Massachusetts and we did a program called houses of healing which is like a um it’s a combination of like therapeutic type exercises and and some basic meditation and yoga. So that was one of my first exposures. It was a pretty long time ago at least 15 years ago. So I I’ve always been really interested in it. I’ I’ve had some friends that have been to prison. I probably could have made a few different life circumstances and ended up there.
And uh so it’s just something that I’ve been I’ve been drawn to. And then when I did my clinical internship, I worked with people that were either just getting out of prison and were in halfway houses or were were had court mandated therapy usually for drug and alcohol things, but often other crimes are related. So just something that I’ve been really interested in for a long time and kind of like on the side been working on this, but it just launched this year. So it’s on prison tablets and because for my my current company where we do workplace wellness, we we’ve developed for years all this mental wellness content. So we’ve started kind of doing that and make starting to make some custom content for the prison system. So it’s interesting ju just to tie this back to a Tibetan view that I I was really inspired by. There’s a text in the Ningma school of Tibetan Buddhism. It’s called the prayer of Kazankpo. So, Kunta Zankpo is it’s kind of like the primordial Buddha or Buddha nature, but it’s personified as is this deity. And I spent a week on retreat with that text uh with my teacher Dan with Rahab Tukul Rimpche, who is old school Tibetan Lama, schooled in Tibet before the 59 invasion. But it’s a really interesting text because it’s something that this the people in Ningma school read every day or recite every day, but we were taught it as a zokchan teaching and meditation. But the the basically the view is that this awakened
awareness or Buddha nature is present in all of the hell realms. So you go through the six realms of existence and in each realm that Buddha nature is present. Now granted it’s difficult for those beings to recognize it but it’s there. And so you so some of the practices in that relate to that text.
You’re visualizing yourself basically going to hell and trying to liberate these beings. So to me again it’s just so so interesting in like kind of the essence of that non-dual understanding where you think of heaven and hell. The whole idea is get the hell away from hell. Go to heaven. Hell is bad. Don’t go there. Heaven is good. And the this tradition is so different. No. If you’re a really advanced practitioner, you go to hell deliberately. And there’s stories of it like that in the Tibetan tradition of people that go to hell to help those beings. So, and then the other tangent we could go down is some of these p there’s a lot of prison stories with the uh Chinese and the Tibetans where a lot of these really
Chapter 14: Garchen Rinpoche & Awakening in Prison
advanced Tibetan teachers got imprisoned and for decades and tortured in this horrendous abuse and one in particular um Garchin Rimpchet has this unbelievable story where he was uh he was basically he he eventually got captured by the Chinese and before that he was getting inreed inreasingly angrier and angrier at the invasion because it was horrific and they were killing all the Tibetans. And at one point he was he went out and intent to kill this camp of of Chinese soldiers with an axe was going to literally go murder them. That’s how far off his anger had taken him. And in his biography, he talks about how he felt like he was the angriest person that had ever been born. Just so consumed by anger. So then he’s in prison and uh he’s basically going through all these horrendous
abuse and he’s starving to death and he want he wants to incite the Chinese guard to kill him. So he, you know, he’s kind of hanging on to life and he spits in the guy’s face. So he thinks he’s going to, you know, that’s his way of committing suicide, but for some reason it doesn’t work. And the the there’s this weird occurrence and the Chinese guard ends up having empathy for him and goes and brings him this other section and feeds him and he comes back to life.
And then when he returns to the main jail, this this older Tibetan llama is imprisoned. And this older llama is like this really intense guy, this awakened teacher. But he starts kind of like whipping all these other Tibetan teachers into shape. Like basically like scolding them like you can’t act like this. This is not what the dharma is.
and he starts teaching them Mahammudra and Zochan, but it’s secret. They’re not allowed to meditate. So, they’ll have bathroom breaks and he’ll go give him 30 seconds of instruction. But his his life story is incredible because in the midst of prison, he starts awakening more and more and more. And he starts generating compassion for the guards more and more and more. And then at a certain point, if he rats out another person, they’ll let him leave. And he doesn’t care. He decides he won’t. He stays has to stay another 12 years in prison because of it. And he talks about at that point he didn’t care. He didn’t see any difference whatsoever. And he talks about how in his his his teacher had transformed his mind so much he viewed prison as a monastery and as a retreat as extended retreat and all the manual labor he had to do was his dharma practice you know. So I think from the Tibetan tradition they basically feel this person became a Buddha and he used those circumstances as leverage to awaken. So, but there’s a lot of these really amazing stories where again it’s quintessential vajriana. You’re transforming these circumstances into the path. So, again, I think there’s a precedent for some of this stuff. So, my small little contribution that we’re doing is is bringing some of these mental health and meditation programs to tablets. It’s a new program, but we’re getting unbelievable engagement. I’m kind of blown away. And to me, I think it’s because there’s such a hunger for it, you know, like they these people are hungry to heal and to to meditate and to have some peace. And you know, the other thing that’s been a a lesson for me,
like even today, I get some messages from some people that are kind of disturbing. So you I’ll have some variation. Sometimes it’s people sending messages or handwritten letters of how much this this work has helped them and gratitude and then getting messages of people that seem like they’re in psychotic states or trying to game the system or or so it’s it’s an interesting practice for me to try to uh have compassion and do the best that I can do but realize you know I’m just one person I can’t fix everything and also of boundaries and like really that how compassion needs boundaries And especially with this population, if you don’t have boundaries, you’re going to be in trouble very quickly. So, it’s again, it’s a new project, but it’s something I’m really drawn to. And uh yeah, again, that’s again what I think Buddhism is about. It’s not about some of the communities I like and have been a part of, but when it’s, you know, rich white people, you drive your Lexus to the retreat and you take a week and you, you know, have these wonderful experiences, that’s fine. That’s okay. I just think it needs the counterbalance of like you need to be willing to go into the muck and like the the depths of suffering and prisons are basically hell realms that are like all in our communities that we mostly shut out and so
yeah fantastic thanks for sharing that and doing that just to start wrapping up here I was curious of do you is there any in-person stuff too do you do that because we hear great stories from like the San Francisco Zen Center on is it San Quinton and things like this and if there there’s prison programs like you said I mean those have got to be probably pretty challenging to do in real life and and I I it’s great the the material I don’t even know I I’m I’m assuming that uh in addition to just paper books anymore they they allow certain material to go on tablets and you’ve designed you know DAMA programs specifically tailored or just mental health stuff in general to that but like do you do you feel that you know that there needs to be some human interaction or practice or do you think it’s you know like you’re like do you think the the the downsides uh that you’re getting with with these other types of leather letters could be kind of minimized or not set straight but like dealt with if if there was like a human presence too or you know do you think that that wouldn’t matter or that there’s so yeah comment on this I think yeah my view is any of these
Chapter 15: Scaling Reach vs. In-Person Relational Depth
things that I’ve done or been involved with or or other teachers, there’s there’s pros and cons to each approach. And the pro of the approach that we’re doing on the T tablets is reach where we as of today, we’ve had like 15,000 people have engaged in one of our programs and we’re like a few months in to launching. So, it’s like ridiculous how big the reach is. You know, again, I what helps me stay humble with all those things too is I didn’t design the delivery system or the T. So, it’s like I’m a really small part of that, but it it’s it’s just being pragmatic. You it helps a lot of people very quickly and there’s not a lot of boundaries to that and people can do it confidentially. That’s the other feedback we’ve gotten where prison is not a good place to be vulnerable. So, we have some courses we’ve made uh about the importance of vulnerability, but it’s different in a prison. So, it’s it’s uh prisoners can just have their headphones on and do it at night and no one needs to know that they’re exploring it. They’re like we have a course on PTSD. No one needs to know that they’re doing that. So that’s great. The con of it is I it I I don’t think it ever goes as deep as in person work. When I think about the most influential things in my life, it’s been relational. It’s been being in therapy with therapists that I’ve had a deep relationship with.
It’s been being on retreat and having personal interaction with the other students and teachers. So it’s it’s not something that the program has yet. It’s maybe down the road. So yeah, I think it’s just always a matter of scale versus depth. So, I don’t I don’t think self-guided practices ever go as deep as like a relational approach. That’s my view. But, you know, again, it’s it’s it works and it’s getting some people help, but I do aspire at some point to maybe build some more in person, but we’re not quite there yet. Well, right on one step at a time.
Chapter 16: Current Projects, Upcoming Book & Final Thoughts
That’s right. And so, Bill, uh, thanks so thanks again so much for joining and and taking the time to speak with me today. Um, tell people how they can get in touch with you if you’re still taking on clients, uh, what you’re into. these days, what you might have be coming down the road here and what’s in the works.
Anything else you want to draw people’s attention to and then leave on a final message, please?
Yeah, I’m in transition with a lot of things right now. I’m very busy. I have a a three-year-old who takes up most of my free time, but we I have a website, Mixed Contemplative Arts, that I just built. So, the again, the first offering is a prison thing. So, we I did that intentionally where try to do something just that’s positive. We’re not making any money from it. It’s just it’s something that’s a charitable offering.
I still do do coaching. So that’s the coaching I do is integrating parts work and IFS and therapy techniques even though I’m not doing clinical therapy anymore and some meditation instruction.
Uh so people who are interested can reach out on just mixed contemplative arts.com.
I’m actually working on a book too, so that’s a subject for another day. I’ve wrote like 80% of it and then wrote one chapter that was different and was horrified to realize I think I was writing the book I didn’t want to write. So now like I’m repurposing a lot of it.
But that’s been really fun and exciting and that’s been a really big learning experience for me too of there’s some things I’ve written where I’ve realized wow I know this material way better than I thought I did and made me really confident. And there’s other things I’m like I don’t have a clue. I thought I knew this. I don’t know anything. So it’s it’s been interesting too just as a quick tangent this idea of in Tibetan Buddhism at least I don’t know if it’s in the Turvadan tradition but of the three types of learning and of hearing contemplating and meditating to me the writing is the contemplating piece has been has been really interesting I never thought of it like that but it’s it’s helping me put my own language to things and again finding the weak spots of my understanding. So yeah you know I’d encourage people to reach out. So I I don’t know if I have any grand final message or anything, but no, it’s been great chatting and uh yeah, again, I guess that this the thing that I’m really interested in is this intersection of different communities and different practices and that fidelity to what works more than just to what a tradition claims.
Totally. Yeah. And I would love to see some more of this debate culture, however you want to frame it, integrated more into dharma places and dharmic. I think it’s a fascinating idea. I was always captivated by seeing monks do that in videos and stuff and of course I I loved engaging in Dhma friends with just all kinds of different ways of practice and I don’t want to say doctrine but you know just different understandings and where there’s differences and similarities and you know what I’ll stand up for and what I won’t stand up for and things like this and and how it all applies to daily life too. So yeah, it’s a it’s a rich area that’s continually being developed. Well, thanks again, Bill, for joining.
And may everybody out there, may all beings everywhere realize awakening and be free. Bye, everybody.
Yeah. Thank you for having me. My pleasure.
