Happiness Buffet 🍱😋 From Bad Boy to (Jedi) Meditation Master | Delson Armstrong

It's happening. Yes, we are on. So happy to have you here, Delson. I'm so excited. Hi, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Happiness Buffet. Today we are very honored to have a happy chef, Delson, but I'm not going to reveal his identity. It will come up throughout this podcast and you will see. Just see it for yourself. And when we were catching up right before this, we had some very interesting news, let's say, to share with you. So maybe we'll talk about it in the end in case I get too excited.

So welcome, happy chef Delson. Thank you. Thank you. It's good to be here. Great. So, what do we like to do at Happiness Buffet? We want to start with a practice just for happiness that people can take home in case people are driving. I thought it's nice to do it just in the beginning. And if you're driving, you can skip to five minutes later to listen to this. So, is there any practice you would want to share with us? That's only at most five minutes. That's easy, bite-sized, people can take home when they need a happiness boost.

Yeah, I think one of the best ways for experiencing happiness internally and to experience also a lot of joy and contentment is to do a gratitude practice. So maybe we can spend some time doing that. Do we want to do this with open eyes or closed eyes, or how do we want to do it? Because you said people might be driving listening to this. So obviously we don't want them to do it while they're driving. Yeah. Let's do open eyes, because that's actually something I want to convey too. Even for meditation, you can do active meditation as well sometimes, easier to be less distracted. But please don't close your eyes if you're driving. So let's try open eyes this time.

We always did the closed eyes before, so that would be fun. Okay, in that case, it's just making sure you're sitting in a comfortable place. And if you are in a place where you can close your eyes and be still, then you can close your eyes. But if you're doing something which requires you to operate some machinery, then you should probably keep your eyes open. One of the things I like to tell people is to have a small smile on your face all the time, because that is a way of bringing presence of mind to the moment. So bring a smile to your face.

And if you can just take a deep breath. And exhale. And feel your entire body relax as you exhale. We'll do it a couple more times. Breathe in. And breathe out and relax. Breathe in. And breathe out and relax. Notice any tightness or tension anywhere around the body, from the top of your head to the tips of your toes, and just make a conscious effort to soften and relax that tension.

And now, once you've relaxed the body, bring your attention into the heart center, in the chest, and start to say in your mind, thank you. Just these two simple words. Thank you. And you may say that a few times and then see what comes up in the mind or in the heart. Thank you for this body that I have. Thank you for the health that I currently have. Thank you for my eyes through which I can see, or my ears through which I can hear.

Thank you for my brain and the functions that it does for my interaction with the world. Thank you for my heart that pumps blood throughout the body, providing it necessary oxygen and nutrition. Thank you for my muscles that help me to move and interact with the world. Thank you for the organs in my body that bring balance.

that provide all the things that I need in order to function in the world. Thank you for my limbs. Thank you for my arms and hands. Thank you for my legs that I'm able to walk around and go from place to place. If those are belonging to you, that's wonderful. If you have whatever is in your body that allows you to function, functioned for that being there.

And then bring your attention to your smile. Thank you for allowing me to smile. Thank you for allowing me to have joy in my life. Thank you for the people that are there, whether it's my parents or my siblings or my relatives. Thank you for my friends, for my partner or spouse. Thank you for the people who support me. Thank you for the people that interact with me and provide me with the things that I need, whether that's food or shelter or money or giving me knowledge. Our teachers, our elders, our mentors. Thank you for them.

Thank you for the drinking water that we have. Thank you for the food that we have. Thank you for the shelter that we have. Thank you for the clean air that we may be in, for the environment that we may be in. Just keep thanking for things. The more you bring up things that bring you that gratitude, that bring you that awareness of all of the things that you have in your life, you can actually do this practice for an extended period of time.

And you will see that naturally, there's joy and contentment available to us. So let's spend a couple of minutes to just internally start thanking the world and ourselves and the people around us for what we have. Let's just spend a couple of minutes in silence doing that. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, and I think now we can bring your attention back into the body and bring your awareness back to whatever is happening here. And if you have been closing your eyes, let's say, in stillness,

You can open your eyes now. Thank you, Delson, for granting you the rampage. Thank you, YouTube. Thank you, Internet, for us to experience the happiness for free. It's a modern miracle. Like in older times, people had to worry about being chased by a bear or whatever, and be grateful with internet. Absolutely. Yeah, this is so great. Do you also do gratitude practices yourself? When I can, I try to do it as best as I can, first thing in the morning, and it's really nice to do that, because you wake up and you're like, oh, it's another day. Thank you for being able to breathe. And then I just get started. And sometimes it's only five minutes.

Sometimes it's only 10 minutes. But there's so much to be grateful for. And there used to be times when I would do a gratitude practice for 15, 20 minutes at a time, or even just spend a whole 30 minutes in meditation doing that. And the amount of joy that comes up is just so wonderful and so harmonizing, like you're floating when you're walking around. So I would really recommend everyone to do it at least two to five minutes the first time, the first part of the day, or maybe just different parts of the day throughout the day. Maybe you have a timer for before lunch or after lunch, or before you go to sleep, or when you get back home, whatever it is. It really just elevates the mind and softens the edges of whatever we've been doing throughout the day.

Yeah, that's wonderful. I totally resonate. I do gratitude for you. Actually, that's funny. I swear I didn't know you were going to do a gratitude practice, but look, on the same table I have a gratitude journal. I want to just, oh my God, I want to show you this, because I have a rainbow gratitude. Oh, wow. That's right. I just love cute and beautiful things. I use a different color for each gratitude. I write the 10s. I have 10 colors. And when I left my last work, my ex-co-worker also gave me colorful pens because they know I like this. And it's funny. After years of practice, this became a really automatic thing.

So I don't do it daily anymore. But this morning, I woke up and suddenly I had a thought that bothered me, that's why I went to here. This is real, literally happened today. Then I just wrote it down, 10, with my colorful pen, and I'm all better. It's actually even more magical in the darkest times, but that is the time that's the most difficult to do. That's why we try to do it consistently. When you have your gratitude muscle, then during dark time, that's where you are going to shine. Yes, absolutely. I feel like gratitude practice is a good way of getting out of that darkness also. Exactly. I like to use a journal as well.

So when I journal, and I don't really keep it that often, but when I do, remember to have a journal with me, usually on my bedside. I'll just write after some practice, some reflections and insights that might've come up, and then kind of list out things that I'm grateful for. They can be anything from, like, my health, and my relationships with my family, with my friends and teachers, and so on. And then kind of go into the things that I have in terms of the qualities that I have, that I'm able to have. Yeah, you feel so powerful. Sometimes I'm grateful for things that haven't even happened yet.

I just feel it's gonna happen. I thank for something in the future. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's a powerful process. That's wonderful. Yeah. Oh, can I tell you something funny? Remember last retreat? Oh, see, this came up. I went to a retreat with Delson last year. So, one identity revealed. Remember, I was saying I felt so powerful and I took out my glasses because I wanted to heal my vision.

And it happened. It's not like a magical, like, I suddenly have a 2020 vision. But ever since I put my thought into it, I was feeling gratitude for my eyes that I can see clearly. I went from just a few months ago, minus 2.75, to minus 2.25. And now I feel it's even better. So I haven't checked yet, waiting for my insurance next year to check. But it feels already getting better and better. It's magical.

Gratitude for future. Yeah, cool. So just to give people some faith that this can actually work in real life, I did another plan on this. So another thing I want to ask you is, I really want to ask our guests to share their happiness journey. Just if you zoomed out from a third person perspective on thousands live, how happy were you throughout in practice? What are some practical tools that you applied to yourself, or whatever, that you found helpful during different phases in your life?

Yeah, yeah. Reflecting on my life from an expanded horizon view, I would say that, when I was a child, very young, I had a very happy early childhood for the most part. I was not so, like many children, not so aware of maybe the problems that were happening around me, with, let's say, finances or maybe parents struggling with jobs or something like that. That was not in my awareness. I was more happy to be playing with friends. And it was very easy. If you guys remember when you were kids, it's very easy to make friends with people. You just go on the playground and suddenly this person is your friend.

Yeah. You're like, and then you say bye and you never see them again. It's just beautiful. So that joy was natural as a child to me. And the ability to connect with people that way was very natural. I think, like many people, as you enter your teenage years, it can be challenging. Depending on the things that you like, you can start to be more aggressive or more confused or more passionate, and the sense of the I as an ego comes up even stronger in the teenage years, because you're taking in more information. With the change in the hormones and puberty and everything else, there's a lot of perspectives that are taken. So I think my teenage years were quite tumultuous, and I didn't really have much of a practice to deal with it, except I can say that around the age of 12 or 13 I was introduced to yoga by a family friend.

And that was the first hatha yoga session that I did, for about maybe an hour, 45 minutes to an hour, in a studio with this family friend. And what I remember is coming out of it, my mind was so blissed out. It was so much happiness, so much relief that was there. And I asked him, how do you do this? How can you recreate this possibility?

And he gave me a book, like a compendium of different hatha yoga postures and breathing techniques and things like that. So I took it to a whole level where every day I would practice. And then sort of meditation came into the picture. Now, my first time meditating was around the age of, I would say, seven or eight years old. And the only reason was because I was inspired by Star Wars. Big Star Wars fan, huge Star Wars fan. So when I saw those scenes where Luke Skywalker is meditating with Yoda and, you know, using the force, I said, is this possible in real life? And so I would just sit down and focus on, nothing actually. I would just sit and notice my thoughts.

And then I read online about focusing on the breath. So I started doing that at the age of seven or eight. I've been a big internet user since I was like five years old, by the way. So very cutting edge. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And it was a very voracious reader also. I loved reading, so I took a lot of information in, and I was one of those children who, if you asked about what specific encyclopedia and what page, like, where is this written on, what? Wow! So I had a very good sort of ability to absorb information. Anyway, my teenage years, I started practicing a lot of yoga.

And it wasn't until around the age of 16 that I became more disenchanted with the world around me. And I was like, I don't know if I really want a, you know, quote unquote, standard life, where it's just like you graduate and you do this and you do that and so on. I mean, it's wonderful that people do it, but I realized that wasn't really my path.

I got expelled from school around the age of 16 or 17. There was a teacher there who was a drama teacher, a teacher of theater and dramatic arts. I had done drama with him and done a lot of different plays, and wrote different plays with him. But he was also like a yogi. So after I got expelled, we stayed in touch. He took me to the Himalayas, where I learned more sort of philosophical components to yoga, and then things like Vedanta and Sankhya, and talking more about the mechanics of meditation, learning the different types of meditation, and learning how to live a life as a wandering ascetic.

So that was what I was doing in those years after 16 and 17, just depending on people's generosity and learning different things from many different sadhus and sages in India. And I got sick after that, and I was in the hospital for many months, like a skeleton. I was almost on my deathbed, basically. So I learned how to be more religious and more spiritual and connect with something that was more mystical. And so that kind of amplified my interest in the mystical stuff.

And as I started to become better and convalesced at home, I continued the yoga practices and then other things. And then later on, I learned things like Kriya Yoga and Dzogchen and Mahamudra from Vajrayana Buddhism and practiced that. And at some point I started deeply studying the Yoga Sutras. So all throughout my time in my early to mid 20s, I was in San Diego, where I was learning about gratitude and other meditation practices from my mentor at that time. And also learning how to deal with the challenges of life and how to have a good time. Like my mentor was always about being able to squeeze the moment as much as you can, like squeeze the juice of every moment and live life with complete zest and relish.

And I was learning how to do that by letting go of my ego, letting go of a lot of things. And it was challenging, very challenging. But it was really helpful also to know what worked and what didn't work. And then afterwards, I started deepening my practice of the Yoga Sutras and studying that and practicing a lot of different techniques there. And then I came across something about loving kindness practice, which I then learned about through YouTube of all places, about a teacher who taught this. And I did an online retreat from one of his students.

And then from there, I kind of took that as my main practice because it was so beautiful and so easy to get into these states of loving kindness and compassion and joy and equanimity. And I continued with my work and I kind of practiced on and off for about like four or five years. And then it was later that I kind of became more engrossed in the mechanics of what does happiness mean? What is the idea of awakening and all of these things? And I had a lot of beautiful experiences because of it. And now I've been helping to get people to see that for themselves in different ways.

Beautiful. I have many questions. I'm curious, when you were seven or eight, you were just mimicking Star Wars, right? That's how you started meditating. So did you feel any difference in your childhood? Did you feel the force or anything different when you were practicing that as a child? Yeah. When I reflect back on my childhood, what I realize is children, for the most part, or at least this is my experience, have a sense of like a flow about the world. There's not a lot of concepts that are there in the mind of a child, and so they're able to be very curious about things, without holding on to and comparing this versus that. And I think just because of the way my mind was built, the ability to take in information and observe and watch and witness what's going on.

My internal experience as a child, for the most part, my early childhood until the age of seven, was very, maybe seven, eight, nine, was very kind of introverted. And I don't mean introverted in the sense of I was shy. I was more introverted in terms of I was more interested in knowing how I could use the force or I could do different kinds of things like that. So just being able to be aware about the world and around the world. And what I did feel was like my mind was more stable. Like I was able to be more focused and more attentive towards things.

And I was not interested in the same things as maybe kids my age at the time, but, you know, as I started, because my practice at the time at seven or eight was very inconsistent, I just did it for maybe some time, and I went back to being a kid again. So playing and trading cards and going cycling in the summertime, playing basketball, all kinds of things like that. So I'll tell you an interesting experience I had around the age of 10, where I had my first sort of near-death experience. I was playing in the street with my friends and we were playing tag. So somebody tagged me, and I was chasing after them across the road, and I didn't see the car, and I think the car didn't stop in time, so it hit me, and I kind of just went, like, flying on the pavement, and then hit my head, my chin, onto the concrete, and what I remember was like there was this like

sudden opening that happened. And then I kind of got up and there was a big gash on my chin. I didn't know at the time. And all my friends were there and they were like, are you okay? And they went to go get my mom. And I said, none of this is real. You guys are here, none of this is real. This is not real. This is all just like a dream. I don't think I'm actually here in this world, in this reality.

And then they were like wondering what I was saying. And then my mom came. And then as soon as I saw my mom, I started crying. So I became a kid again. And so it was, yeah, it was a very interesting experience. Wow. So before you saw your mom, you didn't know where the message came from. That's just what you felt at the time was the truth. You just spoke that out to other kids.

Yeah. Yeah. That's so interesting. So, were you aware? Was there awareness seeing you doing this? Yeah, yeah. It was like, it was like, if you remember the Avatar movies, it's like this body was my Avatar. Yeah, yeah. I could look at my hands like this and be like, this isn't real. This isn't mine. And then looking around and looking at my friends. There was one friend of mine, Patrick. I said, Patrick, you're not real. That's not who you are. He looked at me and everybody else was freaking out. But I just remember I wasn't freaking out at the time. I was more like in this very deep space of awareness.

And it was like, there was no fear. There was nothing. It was just being in this floating dream-like space. Wow. I don't know. I hope he's fine. Like in the sutta, sometimes they hear the word, they suddenly are enlightened. They go into the stream and train. Maybe not Patrick, too young. I don't know. Well, if Patrick is saying this, hi, Patrick, and I hope you're doing fine. Yeah, hi, Patrick. Maybe you can come on our podcast too.

That reminded me of something very interesting. So Winston, from Harvard. Yang, he was on our podcast last episode, actually, he was telling me because he's a neuroscientist. In science, kids actually are not supposed to develop this metacognition, meta-awareness, the awareness of the awareness of whatever you're doing until later. But he had a similar experience, not near death, but when he was a kid, he could also detach from it. And in the playing, see, Winston is playing. So he also had this. Apparently, it's true, it's possible. I didn't have that. I was such a normal person. Until later, I came to meditation way later. But it seems many, many practical experiences from people that humans are just so powerful.

And you never know, right? Science can only learn this much. But there's people, always some people who have way more. And we don't know what's the full potential. It's literally unlimited. Humans are so interesting. Yeah. So that's seven, eight. And then later on, your first yoga experience sounds super interesting. I want to know, because you kind of hit the jackpot. Did you have experience with yoga before? Like, no yoga practice whatsoever, just doing your fourth practice, until just one yoga class, and that worked really well for you? Yeah, yeah. It's an interesting thing, because around seven or eight, I was doing a little bit of that practice of just seeing my thoughts and maybe watching the breath afterwards. Yeah. But that was the very first time I actually did any kind of yoga, in terms of, oh, asana practice or breathing practices. The entire, it's one hour, whatever it was, was going through a flow of different asanas or postures or positions, and then doing a little bit of breathing.

And I remember doing very, very complicated asanas with a little bit of help from the teacher, but very easily. So asanas is what, the posture? It's like the different postures that we might do, like bending postures or sitting postures or inverted postures. So some of the postures I did were headstands for a long time, shoulder stands. So I think that also opened up something for me, maybe just extra flow of oxygen to the brain because of the blood flow. Maybe that was it. But I just remember, and then there was a little bit of a guided meditation in the very end where we were all lying down on the mats with our eyes closed.

I felt very happy. So my happy feeling or my happy place was being in sort of like the forest where there was a nice waterfall, crystal clear sort of lake and very green trees, red flowers and colorful animals and things like that. And then I just remember, throughout the day, I was so chill and content and happy, very different from what I was when I was 12 or 13, where I was a very sort of excitable, agitated, let's do this, let's do that, even just frustrated about things. And so for me, that complete change was like, how do I, how can I replicate that again?

And that's the interest that started, helping me to generate more practice. And then I remember like, in the mornings, would just sit for 30 minutes or 45 minutes, or for an hour, not doing anything, just watching the breath or just watching the thoughts again. So, the age of like 12, 13, 14, so right after the hatha yoga practice, as I started doing the practice, I was like, let me get more into meditation practice. So I did that, and then I had this idea and I said to myself, wouldn't it be cool, the age of 18, that I can just sit for an entire year and not do anything but just sit? Like that was a goal in my mind. Was like, I want to just go somewhere and be able to sit for a long time. And that seemed to manifest, at the age of like 17, 18, 19.

Wow, that's so cool. That also shows it in person. You didn't have a choice. If I forced myself to choose to have this goal, that wouldn't happen for me. We all have different inclinations. That's so interesting. I'm just so glad you actually listened to this voice. Sometimes we have this inclination, intuition, but there's too much noise from the world. You're supposed to do this, oh, how can you not do this? Then we ignored it, and that voice goes softer and softer until maybe some moment it starts screaming loudly. You cannot ignore it anymore. But for you as an I'm just so happy for you that you can follow that. And that unfolds a whole path, as we saw, that you could never expect or predict, or plan for.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I'm still on that yoga experience because most of our listeners are beginners. So I'm very, very interested in the very first opening, how to get people there because later on is autopilot. As you said, also same in my experience, you saw you cannot ignore it. It's irreversible. Of course, you are motivated to practice because you were so sad before and suddenly everything changes, right? And in your first yoga session, you even did the handstand. And because sometimes in yoga, if you never had a background, were you a flexible child or what? Because do you have physical pain? Because sometimes the pain can distract you from going deeper.

And how was that for you? It just sounded too good to be true if you didn't have experience before. Yeah, it's very interesting. Yeah, I think I was a very flexible child. First of all, I think, in school, in middle school, we had a great gym program, a physical education program that had us do cartwheels and somersaults and all kinds of things, right? So that was there. So talented. But I think, yeah, I probably had the flexibility.

And because I had a good instructor who was able to soften, softly get me there, gently get there, not push it, was very important. And I think also the lack of fear. Sometimes people get nervous about, if I'm standing on my head, right. My head is basically completely upside down on the ground and my whole body is this way.

What will happen? I didn't really have that idea. I was just like, let me try this, let me see what happens. Also, you don't have to do that. I'm not saying everybody has to do a headstand. Yeah, it's just about having awareness of what you can do and cannot do, and do the things that you can do to get you to a place where you can be more focused, more relaxed, and more happy, obviously. So I think, but yeah, I also think the ability to have gone and done that was very karmic in nature, in the sense of, there was some internal seeds of karma that were my inclination.

Everybody's born with certain inclinations in their life. And those interests that come up when you're five, six or seven years old. Yeah. You should start going back and seeing what were the things that really interested you. Because I think there's something karmic about that and following that. Yeah, that's so true. Maybe people forgot, but we all had those inclinations when we were kids. Yeah. There's a funny thing. When I was six years old or something, I came across this word, tycoon. Tycoon. Tycoon, T-Y-C-O-O-N, tycoon.

It means tycoon is like a really rich person or an entrepreneur, so somebody asked me what do you want to be when you grow up. I said I want to be a tycoon. So let's see. Let's see. Maybe you will unfold it. Yes, wait, I'm looking forward to seeing you on Forbes. Another thing I wanted to follow up on is, uh, yes, there are the karmic, uh, factor, let's say play at a play, but in your first you were already flexible, so you did not force into it with the pain. Because in my meditation, forcing never worked well. Like sometimes you want to sit down, but we see this question come up a lot: should I endure the pain or should I not? How much pain is too much pain when I'm starting out, let's say beginners who never meditated before or only 10 minutes or so? What are your thoughts on the pain, in not just a meditation or yoga, more like an attitude?

How much is it trying too hard versus the right amount, a healthy amount of motivation to survive for it? Yeah, that's a very good question because I think there's something called meditation pain, which is very different from physical pain. And sometimes when we're sitting for a long period of time, the meditation pain arises and it's actually more of a mental thing rather than a physical thing. And it's mental because when you move around in the body, the pain goes away. If you get up from the sit and you walk around, the pain goes away. If it was a physical pain, you would still feel it. So the mental pain can arise because the mind is maybe too focused or there's something going on under the surface that hasn't been let go of.

So oftentimes I will tell people, do a forgiveness practice. Look at that pain and go to the pain and say, I forgive this pain for being here. And what you'll notice is as you keep doing that, it kind of softens. And sometimes some kind of an emotional knot comes up in the form of a memory or something that the person hasn't let go of. And I'll say, redirect your attention there and say, I forgive you for being there, or I forgive this person, or I forgive myself, whatever it is, for not understanding.

And actually it works because then the pain subsides and it's like, oh, that was just mental pain. Now, having said that, I think sitting for long periods of time should happen gradually. So if a person is starting out, sitting for a minimum of 30 minutes is good. But if you sit for, say, okay, I'm going to sit for three hours, those three hours are going to be like torture because if you're not used to it, it's going to be very difficult. So you have to build your capacity up for that. And nowadays I tell people, no more than maybe four hours, three and a half to four hours, because that gives enough time for the mind to unravel.

Right. But again, for the beginners, starting with 30 minutes, extending up to like an hour over a few days, are on retreat and then having a consistent practice of sitting for that long, every morning or every evening, and then extending it day by day or week by week, is a better approach. Yeah, I totally agree. It's more about the consistency, kind of like going to the gym. You're not going to suddenly lift, I don't know, 500 pounds. That's going to hurt. Yeah, but being consistent makes it more like a lifestyle. I like to do it every day because it's a gentle reminder for me. It's no longer just about going deep or not, because conditions are different every day.

Sometimes you can go deep really fast, sometimes maybe not. It doesn't matter. It's just because of what's happening around me today or whatever, right? But it's more like I want to have a daily reminder that this is important, and to set my priorities straight and set my intention for the day. The consistency is really the magic in the practice, I think. Yeah.

Nice. Let's see. Oh, and then the disenchantment. Let's talk more about that. At the age of 16, huh? So that was in India? Yeah, that was in India. And so it was more like, I was reading a lot at that time about many different things. So from the age of 13 to about 16, I think, yeah. I was in an international school. Yeah. It's somewhere close to Delhi. And it was like a Hogwarts kind of situation. Wow. Houses. There was an earth house, fire house, air house. Oh my God. And it was 300, no, it was like, yeah, I think it was 300 acres, if I'm not mistaken. It was huge. Let's just say it was really huge.

They had an Olympic-sized swimming pool. They had a track. They had soccer fields. They had basketball courts outdoors. They had tennis courts. They had a racquetball place. There were hundreds of students there. We had a big amphitheater and a man-made lake just in front of the amphitheater, a library, a study center. So it was a complete situation, like being in Hogwarts.

So I really enjoyed my time there. And I think what really was fun for me was I was able to enjoy the subjects that I wanted. I was able to select the subjects that I wanted to do, especially English literature, drama, music, history. Those were the subjects that I really liked. I had to choose a math and a science subject. So I just chose math and science. I was really bad at math and physics.

In fact, my friend and I, what we would do after lunch is we would sneak into the teachers' rooms and get coffee with lots of sugar and then drink that. And then during the math class, we would sit in the back, tell jokes, and just be very hyped up and throw spitballs at the whiteboard. It was a whiteboard. And our teacher, you know, he knew exactly what we were up to, and he was like, these guys, they're not going to do anything, so I'm going to give up on them. It's okay. But it was fine because I didn't really like math anyway. And a lot of my English literature was a lot of reading, which I really enjoyed doing. At some point I realized that I was really good at writing essays and things like that.

So if I could just kind of know what the book was about instead of reading the whole book, I could just write an entire essay about it rather than having to read the whole book. History was really cool. History was amazing because I had a history teacher who was very, very old and he actually lived some of the history that we were studying. So it was a very interesting perspective. Yeah, this is very, it's really a strange story. But this guy actually met Hitler when he was young. In person? In person. Oh, my God. Yeah, yeah. And he talked about how unimpressed he was with Hitler. And it was like he was a different person when he spoke to large crowds and stuff.

Anyway, so I had an amazing educational kind of experience from that time. But then what happened was girls came into the picture, as they do when you're a teenage boy. And I started dating. And that's what led me to my disenchantment, actually. Oh, that's funny. No, I don't think this is, you know, because I was so into being with a person and dating them and started getting distracted from my studies. So I got disenchanted with the whole idea, because then we broke up and I went into a kind of depressed stage and I became a bad boy and did a lot of, you know, I founded a secret society, which is not so secret now because I'm mentioning it. But it was a society of vandals where they would write inspirational quotes on the walls and do graffiti and things like that.

So I did a lot of damage to the school. But for the inspiration, well, sometimes for inspiration, and sometimes out of anger or frustration. So I became a bad guy, like a bad boy, and got into fights and started missing classes, and eventually I got expelled. So my disenchantment came about when I was maybe 16. I was like, I don't think I want to live this kind of world, like live this kind of life. I remember sitting in the amphitheater and just looking at the lake and reflecting on that. And one of these teachers saw me and sat next to me and he said, what are you doing here?

Shouldn't you be in class? And I said, yeah, I'll get to it. He's like, you should think about your life because you should really do something. I was like, I don't really, I'm not really interested in having a normal life. I would rather reflect on the world and life right now as it is. The disenchantment started growing and growing and turned into the journey I had in the mountains. - Wow, that's so interesting. It's actually girls who triggered that. But when you were learning about all the subjects, that was very interesting to you at that time, at the first, right? - Oh yeah. - Yeah, then you started pondering. - You know, there was one class we had, which was a business studies class.

And I was not really interested in business, but I had a knack for it. Maybe that's where the tycoon thing comes in. I don't know. It all makes sense now. Yeah. But I remember we had our final exams, and I didn't really read anything. My friend and I went into the common room, the common area of the hostel that we were living in. And we just prepared, we snuck in some coffee.

We drank a lot of coffee that night and just tried to read the entire textbook from cover to cover. We were like, let's just see what happens. And I remember sleeping at six o'clock, and I got up about half an hour later from the alarm and I was late for the exam. I was getting ready and I was almost late for the exam. Made it in time. I had no idea what I was writing. I was half asleep and just wrote whatever it was, and I still managed an A plus. And I remember walking towards the hall, and the business studies teacher said, you were one of the highest scorers of that. I was like, I don't know how that happened, but it happened. Yeah, what can I say? Yeah, that's so interesting.

When you first said you had all those earth, fire, those schools, I'm like, are you learning, like, earth bending, water bending? But it's still a normal subject, but it sounds like there's more of a spiritual side based on the setting. Oh yeah, days, yeah. There was, there is. Okay, because we learned yoga there also. In the mornings we would wake up around six o'clock, and depending on the day, some days we would be doing running or track and field or sports, and some days would be just yoga and meditation. And it's really funny because I didn't have this. This was not intentional. It's like karma and the way things work, public debut on the internet was not intended.

It was unintentional because what happened was there was a film crew, a camera crew that was doing a documentary on the school, like a little sort of marketing stuff for the school. And I didn't know this, but we were sitting all outside and in meditation. And maybe because of the way I was meditating, I was very still. They panned the camera to my face.

Right, while I was meditating, and this, and the sort of, like, the caption there was, like, where spirituality meets mathematics or something like that, and I remember seeing that and I was like, wow, that's great. So that was my first public debut. Wow, that's so interesting, and the rest is history. Now we can find all about you on the internet. I'm curious, so you were still doing yoga? And you kind of had a natural talent for it. But did it help with your daily life, such as the goals and the breaking up? Because you still went through a very dark time. Did you apply your practice there? Yeah, it's a good question.

Because I remember in any school, you have bullies. And you have people who make fun of you and tease you and stuff like that. And I remember the times when I did the yoga sessions. And it was like, whatever people said just was like, I didn't really pay attention to it. I was just so happy, internally focused on that. And I think as I got distracted in the teenage life, the part of my bad boy phase was also not waking up at 6 a.m. and going to school whenever I wanted and eating whenever I wanted. So I stopped going for yoga. I stopped doing those kinds of things. I was still like kind of counseled by my drama teacher who was also a yogi.

So I was interested in those kinds of things intermittently. But I think the force of the depression, of the sadness and frustration was bigger than it kind of diminished all my interest in yoga. - I see, I see. That's very interesting. That's why sometimes when I look back, It's not about you treated like a problem to be solved, that I should apply this and that to solve it. Sometimes it has to happen for a reason because that completely changes your life's trajectory. If the intensity, the suffering, the intensity of the suffering is not big enough, you probably will still be in school, blah, blah, blah. It will be very different to life, right? It's so interesting.

Yeah, very true. Because I remember the school counselor asked me, college, because we were starting to, like, prepare for, like, not in that time but they were like, you have to start to think about that as you think about graduating high school, you know, those kinds of things. And I always wanted to go to Oxford and study, study English literature, and that was my sort of desire. So if I hadn't gotten expelled from school and done all those things, I might have ended up in Oxford and I might have become an English professor or something. Yeah. So interesting. Life just unfolds that way. Because I resonate with the story because I also had some very immense suffering that needed to happen for me to decide, strongly decide, I'm going to prioritize my well-being.

But there were always sufferings in life, and it's not strong. You know, yes, I read about this, do gratitude here and there. And, you know, it's very different whether your heart knows strongly, 'I'm actually prioritizing this.' And that's actually all there is, and that's all needed, because then it's just autopilot. You don't even have a choice once this is kind of, you know, we are getting into dependent origination. But anyway, I don't want to go too deep. But it's just not personal. And this is just causes and effects that then leads to things. Suffering, I'm like, great for you. You know, sometimes you need this. It's just needed for your life, and it will just wait for it. It will unfold a beautiful path for you. I've never heard anyone's beautiful path, like very, you know, very, very magnificent, very living, such a great life without a very big suffering. Never heard any examples like that before. Yeah, I think that's a good point. I think suffering is

important to shake a person up and be like, I have to do something about my life in a way that doesn't cause more damage to myself or to others. Yeah. Right. And so there is a decision point that's made and it's like, okay, for me, the decision point was like, I don't, I'm not interested in studies anymore. I now just know how to let go of the suffering, how to be free of the suffering.

And for people, that could be because of, you know, the death of a loved one, or it could be, yeah, you know, like they lost their job, or they're in, you know, deep sort of financial trouble, or they're separated or divorced from their partner, or something that just, you know, amplifies the suffering and the attachments. It shows where we are attached, you know, and it's like this source of attachment. And the inability to let go of that is the big component for suffering. And so we go into the journey to find what it is that we can do to let go of that. And sometimes it takes many, many years before we can actually have that wisdom and see how to let go of those things.

It's very interesting you said that because, you know, many times I've reflected on my life and look back and be like, this didn't happen, then that wouldn't have happened. If this didn't happen, then that wouldn't have happened. And I wouldn't be here. So when you're in the suffering, you don't see it. But when you come out of it after some time and you reflect, you're like, it couldn't have been any other way.

Yeah. And it seems to be universal. You know, so funny, last weekend, we went to a museum in DC called the Old Museum in Mansion. Something like that. But they have a room that's randomly playing Steve Jobs' talk about something. And then I randomly just heard, oh, I actually didn't know this. He was first kicked out by Apple in the beginning. Then he started his other, joined Pixar, then he came back, but whatever. Then he said, being kicked out was the best thing that ever happened to me in retrospect than even Steve Jobs. You know, my husband said, that sounds so much like you, Yixue. Like all the big suffering. And this is the best thing that ever happened to me.

You know, because it's true. I'm not joking. You have to reflect and see it. Then you see it enough times, then when it happens, you might actually recognize even within a week that this bad thing is the best thing that ever happened to me. Absolutely. It's just so funny. And it's just so funny. It's universal, all these things. Yeah, that's cool.

And then you went to Himalayan. Journey just unfolds until... but then you got sick. I'm curious, was that because of your more, you know, ascetic practice, like not eating well, or you should never go too extreme to any side of the practice, or what was the cause for that? I think that was part of it. I think, you know, this is a good lesson for people. There's a desire to go very extreme in many different ways, and it's not a balanced approach. We want to be centered, you know, the middle path, as we talk about. And for me, the ascetic practice is, yeah, we only ate when we were able to find a place to eat.

But I think the most, the thing that probably had a big effect was, you know, when you are in India, it's very important to have good, clean water. And I think the thing that caused the sickness most was the drinking water, because then I also developed malaria and then complications from that malaria, and then I had a swollen spleen, a jaundiced liver and hepatitis, and all of these things. I remember just shivering, and, you know, I couldn't eat anything. And then, you know, my relative said we need to take you to the hospital. They did some blood tests and they said we need to keep you here for you to recover.

And I remember just, like, I would eat, I wouldn't even have an appetite for most of the time. And many times I would just be, like, sleeping for many, many hours through the day. And sometimes I would put the cover on top of my head just because I didn't want light around me. And my grandfather, my step-grandfather, would come in and he thought, oh my God, he's dead, because there was a white sheet over me and I was sleeping. But even being in the hospital environment was interesting because I was in the general ward, so I could see other people who are sick. There's an old man there to my side with his children.

And the man that was in front of me, he died in the ward. So that was my first sort of experience of seeing somebody die, seeing somebody actually die. In front of you, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So, lots of suffering. Throughout that whole process, you know, illness, death, depression, everything that's there, just, yeah, kind of like the Buddha's story when he saw, after he came out of the palace, you have to see these things to trigger the motivation, right? Yeah. Wow. And then you just practice the yoga and stuff until later on, the loving kindness. That seems to be a big change for you. Let's say a milestone in your practice, sounds like?

Yeah, for sure. Okay. Can you share more about that? Because loving kindness, when we talk about the meditation, there's a lot of focus on the breath, which is great too. But not many people are emphasizing on loving kindness, but by practicing that, I see so many tangible benefits, practical benefits in my daily lives. Like people are just nicer to me, away with things or whatever, you know. So yeah, can you share more about your experience on that? How does it differ and why is that a big milestone for your practice? So, the thing is, as I was saying, this is around the age of, from maybe 24, 25, maybe after that, I was studying deeply Yoga Sutras, and the Yoga Sutras are made up of four main chapters.

And one of the chapters is all about the different meditation objects, the ways you can meditate, and what happens when your mind focuses on this object for a long period of time. So one of the sutras, one of the statements said, when one's mind engenders, or in other words, one's mind is immersed in metta or maitri, which is the Sanskrit, which means loving kindness, karuna, which means passion, mudita, which actually means empathetic joy, and upeksa in Sanskrit, which means equanimity. If one's mind is stabilized in it, then one is able to still the entire mind so that one can see the true nature of reality.

That's a big statement. And it's like, let's see how I can do that. So I was practicing all the different objects before that. And even after that. But there was something about the practice that made me feel good emotionally. Because I was already doing the gratitude practice, it felt like this was a great relative of that, like a good sort of sibling of that, which is loving kindness.

And then I kind of got interested in Buddhism from there. It's like, where did this practice actually start or develop? And the majority of links that came up were all about Buddhism, kindness. So that became very fascinating. And I thought, okay, that's interesting. Who here is teaching this kind of practice? And I kind of started looking into it, did a little bit of practice on my own, didn't really get much of it. But then I saw this monk named Bhante Vimalaramsi, who was talking about loving kindness and the instructions. And then I came across an audio recording of his where he's talking about the states of meditation and then the experience of nibbana as relief or nirvana. I said this is very, very interesting, so I said let me try it out, let me go on a retreat. I couldn't go on a retreat like a physical retreat because of my work, the way it was structured, and they had an online retreat, and David Johnson, who was one of Bhante Vimalaramsi's students, now a teacher, obviously, was offering a retreat after a month.

So I waited patiently. I said, I want to do a retreat with this guy. So I waited until I was able to get in. And it was like an email exchange of your practice. So you would write down in the form what the things were going on in your practice. And then he would come back and say, okay, do this or do that. Oh, I did the same thing with David. My first one was also David. - David, same. - Yeah, yeah, exactly. He's a great teacher. He's a very good teacher. - He's great, yeah. - So you would watch the Dhamma talks, the talks of Bhante Vimalaramsi, and then we practiced and write down your experiences.

And I remember going through what we call the jhanas, the different meditative states. And then there was this one experience that really locked in for me. That whole thing was like, maybe day five or six. Because remember, this time, I had a lot of time on my hands because of the work that I was doing. I just couldn't leave from anywhere. I had to be around for stuff that was happening. But I was able to make my own schedule. So for those nine days, I just kind of was on retreat mode. And so around day five or six, I was meditating two, three hours a day. And then at one point,

I was in this field of nothingness. It's one of the meditative states, which is called nothingness. And in that space, all of a sudden, my mind just dropped. And then I came back. I was like, what was that? Where did I go? And there was this flash of light. When you drop a pebble in the water and you see the repercussions of that. So I saw that. And I just felt a lot of relief and joy.

Very sustained joy, and I remember going outside into the backyard. We had a large backyard, and some of my friends were playing ping pong, and they said, hey, do you want to join? I said no, I'm good. And I was just... it felt like I was floating, just very serene. And I remember the sun was setting, so there was this beautiful image of the orange gold sun and purplish clouds and the blue sky, some gray. It was like a complete painting, and I remember looking at the flowers and the greenery. It was just in total happiness mode. I came back and I wrote to David. I said this is what happened. He said, oh, that's very interesting, and I think then he went to see Bhante Vimalaramsi and told him about my report, and he came back and he says, congratulations, you've gone for a little swim, you have entered the stream. I said, I don't know what that means, but great, nice. So how long did that last, that feeling?

After that was around. So it's interesting, because that was around for pretty much most of the day and night, and then I went back to practice again. Yeah, and the thing is I was able to practice to the point where I got another experience of that, which we call cessation, and just, I think every day I had a cessation at that point. So I was not looking into creating or recreating an experience, but just going deeper and deeper and deeper. So after the retreat, David was like, you just have to keep practicing, keep it consistent and do the 6R's and so on. So I kept doing that.

And then I said, is there any other practices that I should be doing? So he gave me different practices, like looking into past lives, looking into karma, looking into this. He said, now you do determinations where you can actually go into a specific jhana or into cessation for a period of time. And I think it was a matter of maybe less than two weeks. I don't remember how long, but it was a very short time. I was able to master the ability to enter and go out whenever I wanted into the jhanas for a specific time and then into cessation. So I became a master at that point. I became like a Jedi master.

Your childhood dream came true, this is so cool. So I'm curious at that point, after the retreat and mastering everything, you still have to consistently practice, and how does it change your life? Because from... I'm not a master, but after my first online retreat, at least I think for one or two months, it's a very obvious difference that I'm happier and more loving and kind. I'm curious what's your experience. Yeah, yeah. So the everyday experience after that was very interesting, because you take life less seriously. You're just seeing things unfold before you, and it's like life is sort of becoming a play, and you're just an actor in the play for the most part. Yeah, and you notice a lot of your reactions to different situations become less. They become weaker. So you have less irritation about things. You can still get annoyed, you can still get whatever, but it's very easy for you to see it and be able to let that go for the most part. And then there's a sense of, there's a sense of

Appreciation for life around you. There's a sense of understanding that what you think of yourself as a person is actually just a process. And so you're starting to see what we call dependent origination in person. You're able to see, oh, this is what makes me tick. This is what contact is. This is what makes me do this and that. And that the I or the me is a very flexible, fluid process, rather than a fixed entity or fixed structure. And that gives a lot of relief to the mind. And there's a lot of wisdom that grows from that.

And then I actually met David in person, a few months later, in San Diego. He was coming to visit San Diego to meet some friends. And he said, Bhante Vimalaramsi is going to be doing a retreat in a few months. Maybe you want to go and see him in San Juan Bautista, to see Bhante for just the one day there, just to meet him. And we had about maybe a 40-minute conversation about different things, about dependent origination, what's happening in my experience. And he said maybe you should think about teaching this practice. And I said, with your permission I will. And he said, you have it, you have my permission to start teaching. And he said, it's like, because the way explaining your experience, people will understand or be more curious about it.

So it'll be good and you have a good understanding of the practice. So I said, okay, I could try that. So I kind of did a little bit of teaching by doing sort of the same thing of writing emails to people and receiving their reports on and off. But it wasn't until the end of 2020, beginning of 2021, that I, in earnest, became a teacher in my own right. So in between that, there was a lot of experiences that happened into understanding dependent origination in the emptiness of self and reality as we see it. And that's very sort of, these aren't practices that everybody needs to do in the beginning, but those practices just help to deepen one's wisdom.

the origination is. First of all, you can find lots of talks by Delson online, which are a lot longer. But last time when Winston was on the podcast, I challenged him to talk about it in five minutes, and I cut that part out. So there's a standalone video that Winston explains it. If people are interested, you can find it on my channel. And I also want to ask, because remember when you were a child, when you had a near-death experience, you said, okay, this is just a dream. Similar feeling, right? But when your mom came, you got kicked back to being the child adolescent. But after this experience, sounds like it does not wear off.

It cannot be undone. You never went back to that adolescent anymore. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good point. That's an interesting point, because what happened there was with the near-death experience. Yeah, I think the ability to transact and relate with the world is different now. So yes, obviously I have great devotion and love for my mother and love for my sister and my friends. But the understanding of the world is different now. that I'm not really Delson is still there in the background. Yeah. And so, it's interesting. You can still get caught up in the world. You can still get caught up in your emotions. But there's always that little Jiminy Cricket on your shoulder saying, no, no, this isn't you.

This isn't, this isn't yourself. And you're able to kind of, oh, yeah, that's right. Yeah, I relate to that. That's super interesting. Because that makes me feel maybe the near-death is more like you stumbled upon it by accident, and that does not last, kind of like maybe the psychedelic experience some people have these days, but then they want to get back to it. But it's not through years of accumulative practice where you actually see it so clearly that you can no longer ignore it. You have such a strong faith, but it's not in a religious sense. It's just a faith, as in you see there's a capybara on this water bottle. Yeah, sure.

I see it. It's there, right? Oh, look, I also have a baby Yoda, actually, speaking of this. What a synchronicity. I have to say something about that capybara, but go on. I want to say something about that capybara. Okay, now it's all about the capybara. That takes priority. Please go ahead. There is a really, so there's a good friend of mine. She mentioned to me this movie that I should watch called Flow, and if anybody's seen it, it's a really good movie. If you haven't checked it, I have. Yeah, there's no dialogue in the movie. It's the story of this cat who finds herself in a situation where she has to leave her home because things are getting flooded, and there's a flood, and then they get a boat. But there's a capybara in there who's a very chill wise guy, and my friend told me he reminds me of the capybara, she says, because he's big and brown and chill.

It's a good branding. Maybe that should be your headline. Thank you for sharing. That's so funny. I like these things. They're so cute. And you see that in Japan, they can take a bath with the citrus and seafood, and also they can be friends with anyone, is what I heard. They have very good personality. So it's a compliment, right? Yes, exactly. Yeah. So I don't, do you have a hard stop to go? No, no. Okay, then I have more, because this is very interesting to me, because it relates to my experience. Because you said you still get agitated, you get caught. But there's something there, right? There's something that will always remind you, and you get caught for a very short period of time.

But still, maybe earlier, two years ago, I would beat myself up. I would think, oh, all the practice is for nothing. I'm still getting caught. Where is my mindfulness? But now I see it's very different from before the practice. You feel so safe because you are always reminded, and you can always pull back. But actually this week, it's been very hectic for me. And I was even thinking, maybe I'm not in a happy space. Maybe I should reschedule for the podcast in case my vibe is not good, to do this podcast with Dawson. That's always the first thought. But at this point, you see this enough, you're like, is nothing, it's just a trick that comes up first. They still do come up, but you can deal with it so quickly. Even everything, sometimes very bad, quote-unquote, situations can happen. So when people ask me how's it going, I don't even know what to tell them. Like, physically sometimes it's not good, but mentally it feels really nice. Is that similar for you? Because sometimes, think about it, I think Nirodha Samapatti, and he's good.

So I'll tell you your experience. Can you just... For people who don't know what Nirodha Samapatti is, that is the determination Delson talked about. He can decide for how long he goes into this sensation state, let's say even five minutes, and he will come out for the specific time he decided. And this is just like rebooting a computer, because when you're back, everything is luminous and clear. That's a simple understanding: rebooting your brain. So yeah, I'm curious. Finally, I can ask you this question. Is that something, if you recognize you are caught and then you can just erode some apathy, then everything is fine? How is that to work for you? Yeah, it's interesting, right?

Because I think in my experience, for the most part, when I'm in the world, when I was out of the world, because there was a period of time when I was still in the forest, or the Maldives, or back in the forest again, where there's not a lot of interaction with people. So you're kind of just in that space where, oh, things are great. It's wonderful.

And I think once you start to interact with the world, you start to see the problems that come up. You start to see the agitations that come up. And I think because you still have that reminder, it's like, okay, you can choose to make this a big deal, or you can choose to let that go. Part of you wants to make it a big deal, and you just have to go through that process, but you don't have to suffer as much. You can just be like, yeah. But at some point you'll be like, this isn't worth holding on to anymore, and you can just let that go. So there's all these sort of maybe idealizations or concepts, like that means that at some point in time, when you become fully awakened or whatever, you'll never suffer at all. And some people take that to the extreme, which means you'll never physically suffer either.

But I think we live in a world where we cannot escape suffering completely. There will always be challenges. And when you're in public life also, you have many different challenges, because as a teacher you need to uphold a certain way of being so that you're containing the space for the people. And that's a big responsibility.

And sometimes people don't see that, or they see it in a different way. There's so many things that happen. And if I spent the time looking at comments of people, that's a lot of suffering. Sometimes there's wonderful comments, and sometimes there's just, what is this guy talking about? Who is he? Who does he think he is? And now you learn to laugh about it, because new situations of suffering will continue to challenge and poke you. And if you can fall back on your practice, fall back on letting go and coming back to that wisdom, then it's easier to deal with that over a period of time.

Yeah. Consistency is really the key. That's why I like to have these reminders, because the more you practice, you just need even just one second of reminder, maybe your face even. I just remember everything, then I can let it go. Otherwise, sometimes without the reminder, you can be really entrenched, because I live a very busy, worldly life. It's very nice to have these short, very short but consistent reminders. That's why I listen to your talks. It's no longer really about, I need more knowledge, I need to understand this. It's more like a reminder and a mental state thing, just to bring me back to remember, really remember, what's more important.

For me, yeah, and I think also you start to realize how important self-care is, because people can get very comfortable in their suffering. People like to kind of ruminate about what happened through the day, and if I had done this differently, or if I said this differently, or this person should be this way, or this person should be that way. No, you could choose to do that and be comfortable with that, or you can choose to let go of that. If you meditate now, this is the interesting thing: oftentimes when you meditate after such a day, your mind is going to go through repeating those things. It's going to go replaying those situations. But if you watch it like a film reel, eventually that film reel runs out and the mind gets disenchanted. It's like, why am I holding on to this? I should just let that go. I'm talking about self-care, what about, like, quote-unquote, distracting yourself with things that make you happy? I enjoy

sitting down and watching Seinfeld on Netflix, and that makes me laugh. So at the end of the day I might do that, or watch a good movie, or read a nice book, or listen to some music. You can do these things that make you happy, that make you joyful, and that takes you away from the rumination. And then you might go back to it, and it doesn't have the same energy as it might have before. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. That was also one of the misunderstandings I had before. I thought if I'm going through so many things in my head, I'm just not practicing well enough. But it's just a natural process, kind of like a fire that needs to be burned.

That's how you reach disenchantment. You cannot just say, "Hey, you need to be disenchanted now." You have to see it over and over again. So of course you are disenchanted, right? But I feel if you don't have mindfulness on, if you don't reflect, then you don't go through the burning process. Then you're always the same, which I found out. This is for myself. I feel one way to measure progress is to see how much I'm changing.

You know, it's not so much if i'm staying the same person then i may not be reflecting enough on my life i'm repeating the same patterns then you see it you are just automatically disenchanted you just reflect a little bit yeah yes and i think that's what's important about the consistency because over time your personality changes your idea about the world changes for the better if you continue to have a consistent meditation practice yeah or what you can call the happiness practice whatever that makes yeah whatever is it that makes you happy and you start to there's the fundamentals of any kind of practice especially when we talk about from the perspective of let's say buddhism it's all about reconditioning and there is this wonderful statement that my mentor in san diego reminded me of he said one of the best or most profound statements he came across was by a person named R.

Buckminster Fuller, who said, you don't change the existing reality by fighting it. Instead, you put a new model in its place so that the old one becomes obsolete. Beautiful. So that's what the practice is. The old model is the model of suffering, of ruminating, of getting upset, of thinking about it. The new model is to bring in something wholesome, bring in something that makes you happy. The old model becomes like obsolete, it's like, oh, this isn't useful anymore, and your mind automatically goes in that direction, and that's how the personality change happens. Yeah, and it's so cool, like now with all the scientific tools we already know it happens physically in your brain as well, called the neuroplasticity. For the listener who doesn't know, I can share a link. You know, Liam, the Fit of Mind, they have an article about it. I think they also interviewed a neurologist about neuroplasticity.

It just means whatever Delson said is true and it manifests in your brain physically. You can rewire it, and it can be measured even by scientific tools like fMRI machines. So, just for some confidence on this journey. Yeah, cool. Then we went over time a little bit, but this is super interesting. Today I just want to have more context, because sometimes people hear someone because they are famous or whatever, but I see if your experience really aligns, then what they went through are likely to work for you as well. So I want our guys to share more about the content and their experiences, because teaching from the experiences is the best teaching, not reading from textbooks.

But later on, there's many topics I would like to go deeper, us later for the podcast. But now it's like reintroducing you to people. And then now people know you are a meditation teacher and you are, what was the word? The Big Brown and Chill. That's your new brand. That's right. So when you go on, next time, when you go on DelsonArmstrong.com, there will be a capybara on there and it'll say Big Brown Chill. That's the word. Maybe. Maybe I should put it on the thumbnail of this podcast. Yeah, that's great.

So anything else? We didn't really have you really introduce yourself. Anything you would, based on what our conversation is, if a listener is interested in everything until here, for that particular listener, anything else you want to share either about happiness or yourself that you want them to know? Yes. Actually, maybe I will, maybe this is one takeaway for the listeners. There's an interesting little comic strip about a man sitting on a park bench.

And he seems a little unhappy. And he says, I want happiness. I want to be happy. And there's a monk who's walking by and he sees, so you can see the bubble, the bubble saying or the thought bubble saying I want happiness, and so the monk says, okay, if you want happiness, this is what you do. First you wipe out the I that is your ego, and then you wipe out the want that is your craving, and what are you left with? Happiness. So let go of the personal self and let go of the craving, and what remains is the happy mind. Wow. That's a great ending.

There's actually no more to do. You just let go and it's already there. What you are seeking. It has always been there. Yes. Yeah. That's such a great summary. I'm going to steal that story that I want. Great. Oh, the loving kindness update. Our exciting thing. Do you want to share? Maybe I talk too much. Maybe you should share. Well, you know, just before this, Ishiro and I had been talking about this really interesting idea. For those of you who will find me on my website or other places, you'll see that I do a lot of retreats.

But this is going to be an interesting one. We're still planning out the dates, and we'll finalize that in the coming weeks. Wilderness of Zambia? Zambia, yes, Zambia. It'll be a nine or ten day experience where we can actually go out on safari, see the animals, come back for meditation and for Dhamma talks, and it's an opportunity to actually do loving kindness, where you're sharing loving kindness with the animals and with each other. So I'm excited. This is something I've never done before, and we're still thinking about everything, the logistics, but it will be out there. And I hope you guys come. It'll be a lot of fun. - Yes. Nobody has done it before.

So that's why I'm excited. And we can even contemplate the deaths on the bones. I swear there's a lot of bones and dead bodies there. You don't have to go to India for the charnel ground. You have everything ready for your practice. So I'm very excited. It's a lot of planning because it's new. So we'll have a lot to discuss, but it's exciting. It will be next year. Yeah. And it will be centered around loving kindness. That's a practice we both benefited a lot from and the world needs. So, all right. Thank you so much, Delson. This has been really fun. I learned even more about you, although I listen to you a lot, but still always something super interesting and new every time.

So thank you so much for sharing this and leading the practice of gratitude. That's a very good opening. Yeah. I hope people can take that home and practice it. Okay. Thank you, Dao Sen. Thank you, everyone, for listening. We'll see you next time. You'll come back for deeper discussions, right? Yes, of course. I look forward to it. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, everyone. With you, especially during the dark times, it truly has magic power. Subscribe or follow me on LinkedIn to stay tuned with our Safari meditation retreat. Hope to see you there.