In this special crossover episode, we launch The Way Between Podcast from within The Living Conversation.

Adam introduces The Way Between as a more flexible, long-form space to explore East–West philosophy in a story-driven way: how thinkers like Socrates, Confucius, Laozi, and Hui Neng emerged, how their ideas shaped cultures, and how their influence still reaches our lives today.

From there, Adam, Anthony, and guest Dr. Nick Egan dive into:

• Socrates’ image of the wise sea captain and why philosophy is the “art of navigation” in life
• How Adam’s Philosophy 101 class planted the seed that led him to change his major and devote his life to this work
• The Tibetan Buddhist framework of view, path, and result—and how “view” quietly shapes everything we do
• Dr. Yi Wu’s integral life philosophy and his triangle of reality, practice, and theory
• Zen stories of Hui Neng and how a single exchange between teacher and student can become the most important moment in the universe
• Nick’s experience of a Zen Roshi responding, “This is Nirvana,” and how that answer cracked ordinary thinking
• Tibetan pointing-out instructions on the nature of mind, and why we may glimpse it many times without recognizing it
• How our “story” about reality locks us into patterns—and how Socratic questions can loosen that story
• Adam’s time teaching freshman philosophy, planting the first seeds of “examining your life” in students who may not even know what philosophy is yet
• Jung’s sense of the hero’s journey and the challenge to actually cultivate the soul in ordinary life

Along the way, they explore Zen, Tibetan Buddhism, Confucianism, and Western philosophy as different ways of pointing toward the same question:

How should I live?

And they return again and again to the idea that philosophy is not just a subject—but a daily practice of view, conversation, and self-cultivation.

Connect with our guest:

• Dr. Nick Egan – nickeganphd.com
• Shift Leadership Group – shiftleadership.group

Connect with the hosts:

• Adam Dietz – “The Way Between” on Substack (search: The Way Between Substack)
• Email Adam: dietzadam@gmail.com
• Anthony Wright – theonaut.com

If this conversation resonates, you can follow The Way Between Podcast on your favorite podcast app and keep listening to The Living Conversation on 'Attunement' on KWMR and wherever you get your podcasts.

Foreign.

I'm Anthony Wright and I'm your host today along with my co host.

And this is a living conversation and we are here with our guest, Nick.

And.

Forgive me, Nick, what is your last name?

Egan.

I was just going to put it on the.

On my profile here.

Okay.

Yeah.

All right, so, and Adam and I were talking about that Adam is going to begin a podcast that is a little bit more flexible than the radio format that we're in right now.

So why don't you talk a little bit about that to get us started, Adam?

Yeah.

Thank you.

So also welcome everyone to the first episode of the Way Between Podcast, the crossover episode.

And basically, I just honestly enjoy speaking with you guys a lot and felt like I had the bandwidth to do a little more on it.

And I know you guys both are swamped, so I figured I would take the lead on the.

The Way between podcasts where we can do, you know, I can.

I can host it.

It's a little bit more of a long form where we can get more in depth, I think, on certain things and do a little more storytelling.

A lot of times here we, in a fun way, bounce around from ideas to ideas.

We have to take those quick breaks and whatnot.

So on the podcast format, we'll have a little more time and we'll hopefully have Anthony and Nick on quite often and explore philosophy in a story format where we're looking at different philosophers and philosophies, how they developed over the years, how they began, what are some key points that we can use even now in our life today.

So a lot of things that we look at here on the Living conversation, but just in a little bit more of an in depth format, I would say.

And that's exciting.

Congratulations.

Congratulations.

That's going to be available on the Apple podcasts.

Yes.

That'll be available on Spotify and Apple and everywhere else that you might want to get your podcast from.

Definitely.

All right, well, what's up, you guys?

Anybody want to start?

I'll let.

Adam.

Adam, you can start.

Yeah, you tell me.

Yeah, I mean, the.

The different kind of things that we'll be looking at.

You know, I, as you guys well know, I have a manuscript out working on, trying to get different eyeballs on.

Originally I had it titled Be a Short and well, now I changed it.

It's called the Art of Living.

But it was.

It was meant to be in the first place, a story of philosophy east and West.

It was meant to describe different philosophers and how they influenced their societies, how they developed their ideas.

And how their influence still trickles down all the way to us today, how their influence helped shape institutions east and west, how their influence helped shape hearts and minds east and West.

So that's going to be a big focus on the way between podcasts, for example, looking at the origins of Socrates or Confucius or Lao Tzu or Hui Ning from the Zen tradition, making sure we give a real thorough description of how their ideas arose, maybe a little bit about their biography.

And that'll be the jumping off point to some conversations about how their philosophy can influence us today, how their philosophy can help us in.

In the art of living, in the art of living.

Well, help us navigate life.

Basically, we talked about before on this podcast about how Socrates, one of the first things that hit for me in philosophy was in my Philosophy 101 class as a freshman, where philosophy Socrates is trying to show the power and the value of philosophy.

And his argument is that, you know, if you're going out to see, wouldn't you want a wise, experienced sea captain or would you want an ignorant one?

Which one will give you better luck?

Same thing with a doctor, same thing with a general.

So he says the argument is, then why in the world would you, would you not value philosophy as the highest good?

Why, why in the world would you not seek the art of wisdom so you know how to navigate this life with.

With the best luck?

So that's one example of what we're looking at, you know, most famous philosophers, most influential philosophers and how they, they can guide us in a lot of ways.

So when I first heard that story I mentioned before, that was it for me.

I went straight to registration and changed my major.

I said, I agree with you, Socrates.

I want to learn how to.

Yeah, it reminds me in, in Buddhism, specifically in Tibetan Buddhism, there are a lot of formulations, a lot of almost like, well, they're just lenses with which to view the entirety of spirituality.

And one of the most famous, one of the most foundational is view path and then results.

So it's like the view is philosophy in one way.

It's also like my meditative view.

It's how I'm thinking about myself and others and it informs then path, right?

So the view is the foundational component of path and then that will lead to ideally like the outcome of enlightenment, which would be the result.

So that view piece is so important and it just reminds me as you were talking, Adam, it wasn't until, you know, early, I won't say modern times, but kind of pre modern times, that Philosophy was divorced from the path element.

And especially in the west, in the east, not as much.

Right.

Philosophy was always a component of the path.

It still is.

And so it was like a modernization of philosophy as its own discipline, but then also lost elements of the path component from at least my perspective, definitely.

Anthony, you may remember this as well where Dr. Wu had a similar type of outlook on this.

We always mentioned Dr. Yi Wu from our studies at California Institute of Integral Studies on this show.

We often mentioned him as a mentor for, for all three of us really in so many ways.

But he had a.

Developed a system of integral life philosophy.

So the Institute of Asian Studies where we studied was renamed the California Institute of Integral Studies.

The Institute of Asian Studies was co founded by Alan Watts and Haridas Chaudhary from India.

And there's a little backstory.

Hari S. Chaudhary was a student of Sri Aurobindo.

The Sri Aurobindo developed, I think it was integral yoga.

Yes.

And that was where you were using yoga to bring, I would say maybe bring spirituality into this world.

And his student Hari Deschaghary developed integral philosophy.

And as Dr. Wu began working in the early 80s, I think it was at the Institute of Integral Studies he developed a theory of integral life philosophy.

So integral life philosophy is that all philosophy should influence daily life.

And as he developed the system more and more, the reason why I mentioned this is because he developed a triangle of integral life philosophy.

So when Nick's mentioning view, path and results reminds me of Dr. Wu's triangle.

The top point of the triangle had reality, reality like okay, Dao in, in, in Daoism or heaven and Confucianism or maybe you could substitute with humanity and Confucianism.

Then the base of the triangle had your practice and your theory, your words.

This was his triangle of integral life philosophy.

Nick, could you say something about maybe how you would look at that in terms of view and path and results?

Well, that would be.

So result in that formulation would be considered Dao or humanity, if you wanted to take a Confucian bent to it.

So it's interesting because there's sort of a circular notion to it because ultimately within, certainly within Buddhism, the view creates the path which then creates the result.

But from one another perspective the result is already self existent.

Right.

So like we all, we don't need to fabricate nature of mind or Buddha nature or however you're thinking or you know, emptiness or interconnectedness.

Those are all terms for kind of the same thing in Buddhism, just kind of Described from different perspectives.

And so the result is already pre.

Existing.

But from the point of view of the practitioner, there's no.

You have to walk the path.

Right.

Even though you know from an outsider's perspective, an enlightened perspective, that result is already existing.

So I think it goes very nicely when you're talking about reality that aligns with what the result would be because it's not something that's created or fabricated, it's something that's discovered as an already existing.

Discovered.

Yeah, I was thinking, oh, you have to come to the realization.

But with.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

With students and clients, it's assisting them to develop the view, be able to see the.

Is that correct?

Yeah, it's interesting.

Like I would say all, all mistaken action comes from a lack of view.

Right.

So like if you are finding yourself on a path or if, if you want to say, if you're talking like more of a coaching perspective, it's like my, the patterns of behavior and belief that I have are creating outcomes that I don't necessarily want.

And so, and then it's like, well, what other patterns and beliefs, what other beliefs and actions should I have?

Because most people are so locked into their current pattern of beliefs and behavior that they don't see that there are alternatives.

Right.

They, they call it.

We call it like reality.

Right.

Well, that's just reality.

I'm just responding, you know, I mean, we've all had.

You're right, exactly.

So the first step would be just recognizing that actually that's a, that's a pattern of belief and behavior that I could potentially let go of or change or disrupt in some way.

And then that's.

So if we take like that base path fruition, that would be the, the foundation of it, right?

How, how do you assist people in.

I mean it's kind of like I've heard Alan Watts talk about, does a fish notice the water that it's in or do the birds notice the air?

Or for us, do we notice.

Mind, how do you assist people to that larger context?

That's where the dialectics come in.

Right.

So like very much a kind of a Socratic method, so asking questions about it.

So it's like, well, if there's some.

So I always start with the.

There's usually some situation or a result that they are not liking.

Right.

There's some outcome in their normal life.

And so then the question is like, okay, well you don't like X outcome, then what are the.

What are you telling yourself?

What's the.

I like to talk in terms of story and narrative.

So I say, what's the story that you're telling yourself about that?

Well, I had to do that.

Okay, well why did you have to do that?

Well, I had to do that because this person in the situation was the other way.

Okay, cool.

Yeah, you had to do that in these ways.

What might somebody else have done in that situation?

And then if they say everybody would have done the exact same thing in that exact same situation, there's no other outcome, then we can start.

I can kind of unravel that a little differently.

Most of the time, 99% of the time they'll say, well, other people might have done this, they might have done that.

And then usually what happens is people are very quick to say, oh, but you know, there's reasons why I didn't do that thing.

And it's like, okay, yeah, let's just bracket that.

So I use a lot of like phenomenological tools from psychology.

So let's bracket that.

We'll come back to it.

I'm not saying that's wrong, but if we were that person, like how might somebody else.

And sometimes like a really good way to shake it up is to use people that they don't necessarily admire, like not hero, not idealized and do the opposite.

So like use a, like if you are very liberal, you then use Donald Trump, like what would Donald Trump have done?

Or if you're very conservative, use like what would Biden do?

And then, and people are like, they laugh exactly like that.

And they're like, well, they would have done the worst thing possible thing.

It's like, okay, so there's a range of choices about how one might respond to situations and those choices will then create different outcomes.

So it kind of loosens.

It's all about just like loosening things, loosening up the grip of so called reality.

Because one of the things that I find very useful and very powerful is to assist people with a hypothetical.

Yeah, well, what would it be like if.

Yeah, but I can't.

Well, but in order to process that, you just did.

So what would it be like if we had to take a short break?

I'm Anthony.

Right.

And I am your co host with Adam Dietz on the Living Conversation.

And we are interviewing Nick.

And how can people get a hold of you, Nick?

They can go to nickeganphd.com or they can go to shiftleadership.group and it's e G A N E G A N. Correct.

Okay.

And Adam.

Yeah, you can search me up on substack free substack the way between and you can also contact me directly.

Deeds adam Gmail.com.

Great.

Well, we're going to take a short break and be right back, so stay tuned.

Foreign.

I'm Anthony Wright and I'm your host today on the Living Conversation with my co host, Adam ds And we are interviewing our guest, Nick Egan.

And before the break, we were talking about how to assist people in finding a way out of their habitual mind.

And I suggested the hypothetical what would it be like?

So in order to process that, you have to imagine doing it.

But do you have any thoughts about assisting people like that?

Adam it's very interesting that you mentioned that, because the first thing that comes to mind is that, is that, you know, especially when we were in the classroom, when we still had teaching jobs, when a student would come up and ask something, you, you don't know, for all you know, they're enlightened.

Exactly.

So you start there and, and you don't know where they want to go.

You don't know where they've been.

So it's really a blank slate and you kind of have to, I think that's where Zen comes in, where it's just moment to moment.

How can we together go to the highest level?

Huang Nang talks about this.

You know, when, when a student comes to Hui Nang, he says if they ask something very lofty with the most mundane thing, if they ask something very mundane, then he'll answer something very lofty.

So in a sense, there's the middle way in practice there, where you're, you're helping people balance out and helping people kind of snap out of it.

So the first, you know, what really strongly comes to mind when you're talking about helping people pop out of these patterns is I think Zen is the ultimate refined practice for this.

They take all skillful means they could possibly take and try and help people pop out of their mind, so to speak.

But I think that the other beautiful element that is in, exemplified in Zen is that you, it's every moment.

It's every moment, and any person that's coming up to you in that moment could be enlightened.

In the next moment, they could not be enlightened.

Hui Nang also said that when, when you know, in, in one moment, your mind can go to the highest level and be enlightened.

In the next moment, your mind can go into the lowest hell.

So when anyone's coming up, it's, it's so moment to moment.

I don't mean to be Cliche, like be in the moment type of thing.

But when you're hap.

These are in the Zen tradition.

This is very serious business in some ways.

In some ways, when a student comes to a teacher and asks a certain question, then it's like all time and space just freezes.

And they have this interaction and they both know we're speaking in a light language right now.

This is speaking of Socrates.

This is the most critical thing that could possibly happen in the universe right now between me and this student or between me and my mentor.

And if I can really lock in, I can really let my mind be completely as high as level as it can right then, then I am just doing the most important thing I could do as a human being.

I'm uniting all time and space in my own mind.

And so I think Zen, give us this example of time and time again in colons and different interactions.

Okay, stuff's about to get real.

Let's lock in.

Let's have this interaction where we.

We try to go to the highest level together, so to speak.

You know, Chongta also talked about forgetting the self.

And I look at that and, you know, bring in as a parallel the work of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in his talk about flow.

But I'm curious, Nick, about, as being a student of Tibetan Buddhism, is there a modality of this same sort of thing about where one forgets about the self or talk a little bit about the approach from Tibetan Buddhism?

Yeah, it's interesting.

I mean, there's so much there.

First, Adam, you reminded me of.

There's a great story with Kali Rinpoche, who his previous incarnation, he's now a young incarnation.

And he was a relatively well known Tibetan teacher.

And he, I think, was in the Bay Area, actually.

He met with some Japanese Rinzai teacher.

And the Rinzai teacher was there and picked up an orange and said, what is this?

And through a translator.

And Kaliminpoche just looked at him and then he said again, what is this?

You know, doing like the Zen thing, right?

And Kalinpoche.

And so he did it a third time.

And then Kali Rinpoche turned to his translator and he said, do they not have oranges in Japan?

So it's like very.

That the method of like, answering from the ultimate when asked the relative, and answering from the relative when asked the ultimate, it is a very profound tool, especially when I think the student is ready for it.

And I'll just.

I'll share like a brief.

So I actually studied Zen pretty seriously.

For three years before I migrated over to the Tibetan side.

Yeah.

And one of the most profound experiences that I had was actually in the lunchroom in the temple there.

And it was a casual time.

And so I was able to ask the Roshi a question.

Very.

He's very powerful, Roshi.

Very.

I would consider him absolutely a Bodhisattva.

And I said to him, I had actually been studying at that time for a fair amount.

And I said along the lines of, like, hey.

Because in my mind, I thought, like, well, when you die, if you're enlightened, you go to Nirvana, right?

You go to a place and.

But if you aren't enlightened, then you come back, but then you have to be a Bodhisattva, which is like a person that commits to coming back to save the world.

So I asked him, I said, hey, Roshi, when you die, you personally, are you going to go to Nirvana?

Are you going to come back, you know, know, and help us?

And I meant it.

I was.

I was serious, right?

And it was kind of like a digging question.

And he looked at me and he had this deep, resonant voice, and he said, this is Nirvana.

And I was like, wow, that.

It literally shook me for a minute.

I mean, I won't go so far as to say, like, I had a Ken show or anything, but it definitely shook me and made me stop ordinary thinking at that moment and have a deeper insight that stuck with me even to this day, you know, 20, 25 plus years later.

Yeah, well done.

Yeah, he's.

He's an amazing guy.

Anyway, they do in the closest.

So within Tibetan Buddhism, there's different kinds of vehicles, right?

So there's like, Sahaja Yana, there's Zogchen, Mahamudra, there's all these different.

Tibetan Buddhism suffers from, like, an embarrassment of riches because it was the late.

It was the last transmission out of.

Out of India to go to another country.

Right before then.

The Muslim invaders came and kind of mostly destroyed Buddhism at that time.

And so because of that, it contained the sum total of all of the practices that were in vogue at that time.

So everything from like, Vajrayana, like tantric stuff, you know, body things and working with energies and all of that.

But one of the crown jewels was called Dzogchen.

And then also Mahamudra, through different.

Two different transmissions.

And there was the shamanic tradition also that was melded with that, right?

Yeah, the shamanic tradition was existing, preexisting in Tibet and then kind of melded very nicely.

I would make the argument that like late tantra in India has all of the hallmarks of the so called shamanic tradition.

You know, there's, there's out of body experiences, there's healings, there's rhythmic things, there's, you know, prayers, there's a connection with spirit beings that are considered nature spirit.

So.

But what you're asking is about is the, the kind of non dual and what the, what the.

What is similar to that koan, what Adam was talking about, or that kind of answer that rattles you to your core and exposes the nature of mind is a mind to mind transmission called pointing out the nature of mind.

And so you and many teachers are doing it all the time.

And if you can, if you can kind of catch the vibe of it, you will have this moment of clarity.

And then what that does is, allows you to then meditate on that as a stabilizing platform.

So instead of just sitting and trying to meditate, watching your breath, your, your object of awareness becomes the nature of mind itself.

So again, the name of that, it's pointing out the nature of mind is that.

Right.

That's the, that's the moment, right, that you get, you get the clarity what Adam was talking about when there's that co on and there's that moment of clarity around what the nature of mind is.

Now the flow state is considered a different thing.

The flow state is just a samadhi, meaning like a mental absorption of a meditative object.

You don't necessarily have an example of the nature of mind at that point.

So you can have an, or a quote unquote ordinary meditative experience that has flow state that isn't necessarily the nature of mind.

So do you, this is an odd question.

Do you think that, or to take it out of the realm of thinking, do you consider it possible to be, to have, for a student to be aware of the nature of mind but not be aware of it or to have the nature.

Oh, that's.

But they aren't aware of it.

That.

Right.

That's very, very, very common.

So in, in the Tibetan tradition, they say like it's so close that you don't realize what it is.

Right.

And if we take the, the Kalachakra, like the highest Tantric traditions, they actually say that you will have moments of it.

You have about, you have a moment of it every now and then.

Right.

And adding up to a sum total of about three years during your entire life.

Oh, so you'll have like a little flash of it all, you know, regularly and we just don't realize what it is.

And unfortunately in the west, we don't even know to look for it or value it much.

Even in the, even in Tibet, this is a.

We're in rarefied territory.

I see.

Well said.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So do you have that experience with your students, Adam?

Well, the students, it's, you know, it was a 100 level course.

And I deeply empathize with freshman college students because on one hand, I was at that age.

On one hand, I was making these moves to change my major and fully commit to a life of philosophy.

On the other hand, I was being a total idiot.

I was skipping class and partying and doing stupid stuff.

So, you know, especially freshman year.

So for me, no offense to my students or anything, but I know that a lot of them are busy with other stuff.

You know, some of it may be noble, some of it may be less noble, but I think that at that age and that exposure, when I empathize with them, it's that you're just first having any kind of exposure to philosophy.

I didn't know what philosophy was when in high school.

Yeah, I mean, I had, I mentioned before I had, you know, I had some moments of being like a lovesick puppy and looking for ways out, going to the library and looking up books on Buddhism, thinking that was the way out as a, as a Northern California hippie with little exposure to Buddhism.

So those were some moments where I was kind of finding my way out.

But when I went into Philosophy 101, I just happened to, to be there.

I didn't choose it.

It was part of the, you know, part of the requirement.

And it resonated deeply with me.

But, you know, my habits and my, my patterns were not academic, were not scholarly.

I, like I said, skipped class as much as I could get away with.

Honestly, that was freedom as a freshman.

So, so it was for me.

It wasn't until I came back and saw the same teacher, oh my goodness, he has another class on Far Eastern religion at a 300 level.

Then I was ready.

So I've not taught a class at the 300 level.

You know, as a, as a. I think I can call myself a Confucian.

So this all really is propriety you're doing.

I'm so lucky to have been exposed to this type of philosophy in propriety, just in the university, just going to Philosophy 101 class.

I felt like I had a 100 level understanding.

Then I went to Philosophy 3, 300 class.

I feel like a 3, 300 level of understanding true philosophy.

Then I doubled down and committed again and went to have a master's degree.

And I felt like I was, you know, somewhat a master of philosophy and then keeping sticking with it like it was a doctor of philosophy to be able to talk about it, maybe try and transmit.

So as a Confucian, I felt like I, I walked that path of level 100, just a bachelor just even hearing about it.

Level 300, okay, upper division.

Now you're kind of like a little bit more of a sophisticated bachelor and master, so to speak.

So from my, from my perspective, the students who are at the 100 level, they just simply have a little glimpse of it and then they have to make it their own or not.

They still have their choices.

It's like they're declaring their major, so to speak.

When you're at the 100 level, yeah.

But you're deciding, do you want to stick with philosophy or not?

And.

Yeah, go ahead.

Sorry.

The seeds were sown, though, at that 100 level.

I think that you can't unsee it.

Once Socrates is asking you, do you want to examine your life and have a life worth living?

You can't unsee that.

It's going to be in there your whole life.

And you can try as hard as you want to avoid it or deny it or think that that's just so mundane, but that's, that's the purpose of life.

As Carl Jung would say.

You, you know, we said mentioned before, you're on a hero's journey.

You're.

You're here in this world to experience your soul.

You're here in this world to transmit your soul or to integrate your soul into this life.

And whether you decide to take up that challenge or not is on you.

And if you don't take up that challenge, if you don't cultivate yourself, then you will stay in similar patterns and life will teach you.

Life will keep.

Keep coming at you.

It.

The principle of life is right in front of your face every day.

And if you're flowing with the principle of life, then you'll be having the deeper cultivation.

If you're flowing against the principle of life.

And it's going to keep coming at you, teaching you these lessons over and over until you find the proper way through it.

Yep.

And our proper next step is.

We have to take a short break.

I'm Anthony Wright and I'm the co.

Your co host on the Living Conversation with.

I'm Adam Deets.

I'm a co host or host on the Way between podcast as well.

In this crossover episode.

And we're here with our guest, Nick Egan.

And how can people contact you, Nick?

You can find me at nickeganphd.com or at shiftleadership.group.

And Adam, I'm on Substack.

Free Substack.

You can search me up at the way between on there on Substack and also just contact me directly.

Ds Adam.

D I E T Z Adam Gmail com.

And I'm Anthony Wright and my website is theonaut T-H-E-O-N-A-U-T.com and there is a comment panel in on the website.

So stay tuned.

We'll be right back.