Episode description

Who doesn’t want a little peace and calm?

In this episode of Peripheral Thinking, I speak to Martin Alyward. Martin is a long established Buddhist meditation teacher - my teacher, as it happens.

As humans, we create drama - our needy, greedy, crazy, lazy minds need no invitation. We obsess about what we did or didn’t say, did or didn’t do. We wander around dreaming, lost in thought. As if life wasn’t stressful enough: businesses crashing, the systems on which we’ve depended for 50/60(/000 years) crumbling, the very earth wilting.

And we wonder why we struggle to sleep or to find peace and calm. I spoke to Martin about Buddhism, its relevance and usefulness today, given the myriad challenges and worries we face.

Sit back and enjoy and let Martin point you to a journey of ‘waking up’; worry not, caves, robes and renouncing your family not obligatory. Rather, instead, follow your internal signals and worry less about what you’re ‘supposed’ to attain.

Links

• Awake Where You Are: The Art of Embodied Awareness – Martin’s book
• Martin’s website
• Follow @martinaylward on Instagram
• Moulin de Chaves
• Sangha Live

Welcome to Peripheral Thinking a series of conversations with

entrepreneurs, advisors, activists, academics, intending to inspire you

and maybe challenge you, with ideas from the margins, the periphery.

Why?

Cuz that's where the ideas which will shape tomorrow are hiding today

on those margins, the periphery.

This week.

I was very pleased to have a conversation with Martin Aylward.

I've known Martin for quite some time as my own meditation teacher and guide

Martin has been practicing meditation for well, over 30 years now, practicing and

teaching for a very considerable time.

He's got a great story.

It's worth checking out his website.

Martin disappeared off to Asia age 19 with a one way air ticket, I believe.

And then began to very immersive and deep journey into Buddhist

life and Buddhist practice.

It's taking him from Southeast Asia.

Like I said, Thai monasteries, Himalaya, monasteries, living with gurus up in the

mountains, incredible inspiring story.

And he shares his teaching generously and with real great humor.

So we're super thrilled to have him on I hope you enjoy the conversation.

Martin, thank you for joining us on Peripheral Thinking.

Hi, Ben.

Nice to see you.

So I guess I might describe you as teacher advisor creator, because that's

the sort of the various kind of realms in which I know you, but how might you

better or more useful intro yourself?

How might, well, rather than listing the various things I do, I would describe

myself maybe somewhat surprisingly as a kind of hyperactive, almost compulsive

doer who somehow to my great, good fortune stumbled into the contemplative life.

Not really certainly not expecting that, not really looking for it.

And found that amidst the busyness of loving being engaged in the world and

doing stuff in the world and creating things in the world, but somehow there

was this to actually be able to rest in the center of that and meet my

own mind and meet the busyness of my mind and the compulsions of my mind.

And then it turned out, oh, well the neuro all the neurosis of my mind and

the fixations and the bad habits of my mind, was a, was a complete revelation.

And so I don't really feel like my, if I were to give you my CV, I would

look like a natural contemplative, you know, but I don't really feel

like a natural contemplative.

Uh, It is like the contemplative part of my life is a kind of blessed compensation

for the general tendency to be what my parents used to call a blue assed fly.

You know, which meant somebody who kept buzzing around without stopping.

yeah, I can definitely identify with the blue ass fly tendency.

I'm really interested in the role of Buddhism in a world where

there is a mindfulness everywhere.

Cuz of course mindfulness is all over.

We see it in apps, we see it in services.

We see it in business.

We see it in companies.

We see it in books.

I was reading a thing which is sort of unrelated, but I guess

points to a similar thing.

A writer who writes on about stoic books.

And he was saying that now there is a new stoic book published

every day on kind of Amazon.

And I think that sort of talks to some sort of bigger sort

of trend that was going on.

And so today is very much this kind of relationship between

Buddhism, what role for Buddhism in a world, which is mindfulness.

And I guess in a sense uh, it talks a little bit to my kind of own journey,

which I've explored practice with you and with we've kind others over the last sort

of 15 years, and trying to kind of find ways of sort of being able to articulate

the value, the benefit of that for other people, and knowing that, you know, lots

of good friends of mine and listeners and all sorts have dabbled with mindfulness.

And I was really keen to understand or, and to explore, you know,

what's the value of Buddhism in a world where everybody, or lots of

people are dabbling in mindfulness?

Let's I would start by what do we mean by Buddhism, because you know, Buddhism

could mean lots of different things to lots of people, would mean different

things in different Buddhist cultures.

Some of which wouldn't recognize what I do, particularly as being very Orthodox

Buddhism, but bud means awake, right?

So Buddha is one who's awake.

So Buddhism means awakism.

So if we just make that translation right?

Rather than, you know, being, trying to explore what it might mean to be Buddhist,

cuz then we hear the IST part and we have associations with exotic temples or Asian

or be robed, shaven headed monastics or something, Buddhism really means awakism.

So the practice and the understanding and the exploration of the most

fundamental aspect of being human, which is that we're awake.

You know, we are conscious.

We're and we're not just conscious, but we're, we are self-conscious.

We can actually, you know, right now you can be listening, whoever's

listening to this and you can know that you're listening.

You can reflect on the listening.

You can explore the listening.

You can recognize the mind that's doing the listening.

And therein is like a portal to the endless mysteries of consciousness.

Both the sort of philosophical mysteries of what is it to be human,

to be conscious, to be awake, but also the more Peric mysteries of

like, how come I just keep getting tripped up by my own thinking?

You know, how come I keep getting into these circular loops?

How come oh, I can't sleep at night because of worry or stress?

How come I keep getting lost in replay versions of the past and why it was like

that and how it could have been different, even though I can never make it different?

How come I keep, you know, projecting endlessly into a future that

I can never actually organize?

Cetera, et cetera.

So that's what the awake I would say of Buddhism is pointing.

Everything from the immediate mysteries of what it is to me be confronted with my own

existence and my own habits to the more kind of wide open mysteries of like wow.

Consciousness.

And I guess that's that's interesting.

I know we've spoken on it for this kind of idea that maybe people find

their way to it because they're trying to wrestle with their own minds.

And in a way I think I was probably so wrestled with my mind.

I didn't even realize it was the mind, which was the kind of issue.

I identified the things you were talking about, like, you know, being awake at

night, playing over things, being stuck in the same loops, the same worries,

the same kind of habits, the same problems in a sense following me around.

So I guess that's essentially what we mean by the kind of wrestling with your mind

is that is the source material in a way.

And that's the point at which people get interested, right?

Whether it's Buddhism or whether it's headspace or some other kind

of contemplative process, there's a prior stage to that where one's

not interested in those things.

One's just interested in the sort of outer problems.

You know, if I could solve that problem, then I wouldn't be

stressed and I'd sleep well.

Oh, you know, you're so caught up in, why did that happen?

And why did they say that?

And why did I do that?

Then you don't start to consider that your mind is generating all that drama.

You know, you're just so absorbed in the drama.

And then at some point people get it like, oh, I'm creating.

And that's a painful realization in a way that one can't just keep blaming everybody

else in the world for oneself, you know, but you have to take responsibility.

It's painful to see that.

And yet it's also the place where possibility opens up.

And that's where people say, okay, well maybe some meditation app, maybe some

contemplative practice, maybe there's some real useful nurse to me actually training

my mind and getting to know my habits and therefore starting to understand

and free myself from those habits.

What is it then do you think, which is happened over the last 20, 30, 40,

50 years, which has seen this kind of mushrooming of interest in well,

I guess we would say the interest is in contemplation is the interest

in meditation, you know, what is of happening, which meant, which

has you know, driven all of this sort of apparent change happening?

I think there's two particular currents.

One of them is that we live in the heavenly realms, you know, and what that

means is cuz many people might not think their life resembles the heaven realms,

but we live in a degree, not all of us, of course, very far from, but you know, let's

face it, probably most of us listening to this, we live in a degree of material

convenience and comfort that you get to the end of the materialist delusion.

So for a while, one really thinks if I had that, if I could organize the outer

systems and circumstances of my life to be com fully convenient and fully

comfortable, then I'd really be okay.

And then you realize, oh, well actually I've managed to make things fairly

comfortable and fairly convenient, and I'm still stuck with my own mind.

And that's exactly the same condition of north and India, two

and a half thousand years ago.

You know, they're very fertile endo G plane food scarcity ceased to be an issue.

People were living really well.

And then this whole big what's called the axial age all across Asia and the middle

east where there were these very sort of stable and bountiful material conditions,

this great philosophical and artistic age developed because you're not so worried

about the meaning of life when you're hungry and the you've got no shelter.

So once those things are well established, that there's a sort of the deeper

longings of the human heart come out.

Both, you know, whether that's artistic, longings, philosophical,

longings, spiritual longings, et cetera.

So I think that's one that we, you know, in some ways it's very

different than Northern India, two and a half thousand years ago.

But that similarity of us being in a degree of kind of material

stability and plentitude, that then gives rise to a deeper questioning.

And then the other current is actually the sort of loss of meaning that's happened.

The religions used to provide a discourse of that gave us a sense

of meaning of what's my place.

Why am I here on earth?

It's God's plan, etcetera.

And they, those religious narratives just don't speak to people anymore.

And they may speak to some of you, you know, listening to this, but

they just, they're just increasingly irrelevant in the wider social discourse.

And it turns out that some longing for meaningfulness, for a life

that my, so that my life feels like grounded in something, you know,

with a certain depth and certain richness, that's really important.

It's a fundamental human need, like, you know, food and

medicine and shelter, et cetera.

Um, we, we, we somehow long for depth and connection and we're in

an age where the traditional sources of depth and connection have run

out, they've become irrelevant.

Their stories are out of date.

And so I think what we're seeing with mindfulness and et cetera, is a secular,

you know, as a culturally appropriate secularized version of that search for

depth and meaning, and we tend to do it through apps, partly cuz they're

the technology of the day, et cetera.

But also because we live in these very individualized societies.

And so we're more likely to engage even those, these are traditionally

taught in a more communal setting.

You know, people living together, practicing together, exploring together.

We live in very individualized ways, and so we tend to engage in individualized

forms of practice, which, you know, suits our individual lives, but also

has its in its limitations, which we might get into as we continue talking.

Yeah, absolutely.

So we'll just call it Headspace as the shorthand for, for the apps, which

obviously there are other apps available.

So those things a response to our searching for meaning, a searching

for depth searching for connection.

How effective are they kind of satisfying that need?

Well, it, they're extremely effective for some people, less effective for others and

completely ineffective for others still.

You know, just, it just depends.

So I have a meditation app as well.

I live in France and I have a French language meditation app

with about 600,000 downloads now.

So it's you know, it's got a certain momentum in France.

And for instance, this is the story I tell often of this guy, Vincent,

who was on a flight to Hong Kong.

And our app is integrated in all Air France, long haul flights so that

people can anyway, he came across this stuff and the back of his seat TV.

He'd never thought about meditation.

He wasn't looking for meditation, but he thought, oh, maybe this

will help me relax on the flight.

And he started to put the headphones on, listen to the meditation instructions.

And it was like a revelation.

It was like, like I just said, oh my God, I can train my attention.

I can explore consciousness.

When he landed in Hong Kong, he downloaded the app, started using it, and a couple

of months later, he came along to see me in Paris when I was teaching a weekend

there, and a month after that, he came to the retreat center where I live and

sat a week long silent retreat with me.

And a few months after that, he gave up his, whatever that corporate

job was that had taken him to Hong Kong, and he retrained to work

for a non-government organization doing humanitarian work in Africa.

So, you know, he started off with, you know, the simplest of access to an app

and it utterly transformed his life.

So it's not really about what the app does.

I think it's more to do with the readiness or the interest

of the person in the moment.

So I think the apps can be a brilliant entryway to some simple

meditation technique, one thing.

And then second thing to that sense of possibility.

Oh, I can engage with my mind just rather than just being at its mercy.

On the other hand, because the apps want to be really accessible and they

don't want to carry too much Buddhist baggage or other cultural baggage,

they can be a little over secular and it, and actually end up underselling

the possibilities of meditation.

Because in wanting to make it accessible, they're sort of selling

the sort of less stress, better sleep, uh, uh, nicer relationships and, you

know, good digestion or something.

And okay, maybe those things are happy side effects, but really it's about a

radical, a, or at least the possibility of a radical shift in the way one understands

one's self and reality, a radical shift in the way one inhabits, you know, one's

own sense of self and reality, a radical shift in one's priorities, you know, from

having getting, doing, becoming, to well, sounds a cliche, but to, to being, you

know, to recognizing that this moment is all we've got, that one's whole quality

of life, really, and this is true for everyone listening to this right now, that

your whole quality of life is dependent on how you're meeting this very moment.

And that's always true.

And we can see that we're pathologically wired towards fussing about all kinds

of other moments and other places and other situations and other possibilities.

And that really just, that drives us along in a, in a general state of

anxiety, dissatisfaction or hope, you know, but hope is a hope is actually

a painful condition, even though it can be charged with enthusiasm,

oh, I'm looking forward to that.

Oh, that's gonna be great, you know, there's a certain kind of when one really

sees into that is that there's a certain painful kind of postponement in it.

You know, like the carrot and the donkey, you know, pursuing this elusive sense

of bear there at the cost of, oh here.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, it's interesting when you, the thing that was coming up as you, you

were mentioning there, that journey that Vincent went on, you were talking about

where his life is on one track and then the, you know, the kind of cascading

things that happen so effectively the life the, about turn off his life, and I wonder

whether there was a thing around the kind of apps or the kind of secular thing,

which obviously feels a bit safer because actually, like, as you were talking there,

is one of the kind of resistances or obstacles then to people engaging with the

deeper practice is the fear potentially?

Is gonna turn my life upside down?

And all of the kind of anxiety that might come with that.

Yeah.

And of course what it may be that one's quite struggling with and dissatisfied

by one's life, the right way up, and yet one still, you know, fearful of

the unknown quantity of having the ones life turned upside down as it were.

But it seems to me, you don't actually, if I'm really honest,

you don't get to choose that.

You know, it, some people, they have some sort of awakening, right?

Bud Buddhism awake.

They have an awakening, which just despite them wishes and preferences

and ideas precipitates a radical change in their circumstances.

But, and for other people, there can be a radical change within their circumstances.

Another student of mine, who's a very senior cardiologist in Sweden,

huge responsibility, you know, spends his life with his hands in people's

hearts, you know, life and death very busy as a senior consultant.

And.

Started to meditate came on retreat with me, had some really, you know,

extremely important and radical and deep shifts in understanding and

his relationship with his life and his understanding of things, nothing

changed whatsoever in his outer life.

He continued to do the work he was doing uh, continued in his family

life in the same way, but somehow the way he was experiencing all

of that opened up in all kinds of, you know, beautiful, amazing ways.

And then for still other people, because I don't want suggest that it

should be, or it has to be a radical shift either of circumstances,

or even within circumstances.

For other people it's not so radical, but it's a sense of, oh, you know, and

it's like finding an inner orientation.

where, whereas before all I had were these outer signposts called career

and you know, various ideas of success and how I thought my relationship

or love life should be et cetera.

And I trying to follow all these outer signposts you, and they tend

to, you know, they lead to either round and round, or they lead us

to ever receding destinations.

You know, where we're never, there is no perfect relationship.

There is no perfect success, et cetera.

And so for others, it's not that radical shift, but it's like,

oh, learning to find and follow.

Inner signposts, you know, just an orientation of this is a wise direction,

a useful direction, a sane direction.

And so there's nothing radical seems like it's happened.

And yet the life feels different because it feels like I'm actually

able to tune into and follow the inner compass of my heart.

If you like.

And that there's some sense of kind of depth and realness to that where

I'm no longer just pulled around in this, trying to live up to what

I think the world expects of me.

If you bring the awakism, awakeness into your life, that actually one

of the transformative effects is the work that you are doing will need

to become more service oriented?

Cuz I'm just kind of curious with somebody like the, you know, like the cardiologist,

that work is service, isn't it?

Like you say, he has hands in hearts.

Uh, so he has, he has life and death at his kind of fingertips.

There is something implicitly service oriented about it.

And I'm curious whether, you know, if you kind of open the door to this

journey that we're talking about, whether that is inevitably one of the

things that comes, so to we'll get you to think differently about your

work, to shift to that direction?

I think in some ways, one you can't explore your inner life

without confronting or, and questioning your values, you know?

And so it's not to say that people will inevitably give up their and

their life and go forth to become charity managers or doing some kind

of particularly noble sounding work.

But.

if you've gotten, if anybody's gotten to the place where they're interested,

even in meditation and let's face it, someone not interested, if you're

not interested at all, please turn off this podcast and go and find

something more interesting to listen to.

really, I don't have the view that people should be interested in this.

You can't force that, but if someone's got to the point where if they are

still listening now, well, let's assume that you are somewhat interested

then, you know, you can't separate out one's, one's moral explorations and

one's personal and one's psychological, one's emotional explorations.

So a lot of people, that might be one of the catalysts.

They come to something like meditation, cuz they're looking for some meaning

because their working life maybe feels like it's in the service of values that

don't really give them that meaning, you know, you just feel like you are, you're

generating more of the same in society.

You're selling stuff to people that you're not really convinced they actually need,

or that you really want to be pushing on them for example, or whatever that

might be or actively participating in the commercialization of products or

of services or of of materials that, you know, feel unhealthy in some way.

So it's not that there's any kind of moral D picture here that you should be

doing one thing or another with your life.

But if people are starting to have those kind of questions, even though,

again, it can be uncomfortable, right?

It's uncomfortable to really enter a place of transition and change

and questioning, but in the end, it's much more uncomfortable to not

enter that and to stay in something that you actually don't feel good

about, that you feel compromised on.

And that you're something that you're always trying to turn your attention

away from the acknowledgement that this doesn't feel okay.

So yes, change is uncomfortable, but not changing is more uncomfortable.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so, with that, do you think I would embark on that same change

journey if the extent of my kind of relationship was with a a kind of

Headspace, secular type guidance?

What do I not get?

If that's the extent of my engagement?

I mean, I'm not so familiar with all the dimensions of Headspace and I don't

want to, I don't want to be critical of it cuz Hey, it's a great it's a

great practice tool for people, but essentially I think what those apps

are doing is they're giving people some basic meditative tools and techniques.

And that then serves to further the interest for those who, for

whom it does and the, the wish to know more, explore more, et cetera.

And then there are a lot of other resources for that.

You know, whether it's committing more to meditation teachings and there's, you

know, I can give you lots of propaganda for various things that I do in that

space or or exploring in one's reading or just staying close to one's experience.

That's actually the most natural outflow of meditation isn't necessarily

meditating more or meditating all day, but it's what one's training in sitting

quietly and, you know, keep bringing your attention to just the feel of

sitting here and the feel of breathing.

It's not that you're learning to sit and breathe, right?

It's that you are learning to stay close to your experience rather than

just bouncing around in, in, in your.

Reactions.

And so therefore you get up from your cushion and you

stay close to your experience.

And so you start to actually notice during the day where your mind is, what your

intentions are, whether you are actually relaxed and open and engaged with what's

happening in a simple way, or whether you're tight and reactive and creating

all kinds of drama out of the situation.

And that's the actual, it's not so much what you do, whether you go on this

or that retreat, or whether you adopt this or that practice, I would say the

techniques of meditation secondary, it's the process, of the willingness to

explore and the deepening capacity to explore the growing interest to explore

that's what really starts to yield.

Awakening to yield transformation, whether that's radical transformation or gradual,

whether it's transformation within the work and the life circumstances that

one has or, you know, something more more wild than that, that, like I say,

I don't think you really get to decide.

You, you are one's opportunity is to keep taking this step.

And you keep on taking these steps and then you find out where the.

where those steps lead.

You really can't plan in advance.

And I think that's true just anyway, in ordinary life.

If anybody listening to this again, if you just look back from 10 years ago,

and maybe if you were went on a very particular career trajectory you trained

to be a doctor and you were a GP, but you wanted to specialize and then you

trained in that, okay, that aspect maybe of your life, you could see going forward.

But really most of the aspects of your life could you have really

mapped them out in advance?

You know, could you have planned to get to where you are now?

No.

We retrospectively apply that logic.

We say, oh, I decided to do this, you know, as if I was actually running

the show, but actually we are just responding to circumstances or reacting

to circumstances, to opportunities and to hopes and to fears and to

neurosis and to that, which we are drawn by and that which we are wary of.

And along the way, our life happens and we end up taking the credit

for having constructed our life.

But actually it's not really like that.

It's much more like life is living through us rather than we are in charge

of the life we think we're living.

What you're talking about there, that kind of raises really fundamental questions

about the kind of story that we believe.

Like you say basically lots of people running this, they might be running

their own organizations have created their own thing, this idea that I'm in

charge that I'm deciding what to do.

I'm kind of leading this, I'm the person sitting on top of the bus or

at the front of the bus or wherever the right place on the bus might be.

And so this kind of idea that I'm not those things of course is massively

kind of challenging and in a way then kind of raises the question, well,

you know, is a little bit of what the kind of awakism is talking about.

Is it then a passive thing or is it an active thing?

Neither beyond active and passive, I would say.

So, you know, you can get caught, like you say, just when you were

saying that I'm the maker of, I'm the creator, I'm the founder.

I'm the director.

Oh my goodness.

Sounds exhausting.

You know?

No, I'm I, for example, I've, I'm the founder and director of seven different

companies in three different countries.

So that could sound a lot.

It could sound busy.

It does sound busy to me, but if I was, if I got busy trying to, you

know, be that person or do that thing, then it would be exhausting.

But it's too much to then go the other way.

Oh, I'm not that I'm not that it's just life throwing, flowing through me.

So what I would say actually, to unhook from being active is not to go to

the other extreme of being passive.

And of course now active isn't enough.

Now we've got this new bizarre word since the last few years, proactive,

it's not now we've gotta be proactive, you know, really forcing the

issue really imposing the sense of self, you know, on, on everything.

I've gotta be proactive.

So I would say the, to wake up from the tyranny of being active

isn't to collapse into being passive it's to become responsive.

You that's the difference receptive and responsive.

So what does that mean?

Receptive is actually that medic that meditative quality right?

Open to sensing what's happening.

Like I'm receptive actually feeling what's happening, including

what's happening around me.

What's happening within me.

What stories I might be telling myself.

What tension patterns I'm subtly creating that I've are so habitual.

I don't usually notice them.

Oh receptive.

Receptive to what's going on in others, receptive to

what's going on in one's self.

And so the quality, the feel of that receptivity, which we call meditative

awareness is a kind of listening, not with the ears, but with the whole being.

Sense of listening to life, re receptive to life and the

more one sort of slows down and listens, the more one finds space.

When you first stop and listen, all you hear is the noise of your own mind, right?

Oh, I'm busy with your your hopes and fears and neurosis.

But to get used to, to being receptive so that you can actually listen,

actually feel actually sense what's going on, you know, and there's a kind

of, that's an infinite trajectory.

It's a miraculous unimaginable thing, the way that quality of

receptivity can open up, you know.

And then a rising out of that receptivity is a responsiveness that doesn't feel

like I'm doing something one doesn't have this, the impression I'm making the

decisions, I'm deciding I'm acting, I'm certainly not being proactive, you know?

And yet one might look as if one's being quite dynamic, quite busy,

quite right, because one's responding.

Receptive to what's happening and responding to what's happening.

And I find that language actually to be quite helpful, to point out a sort of

middle way between activity or proactivity or hyperactivity on the one sense, which

is, you know, pathological in our society, we hyperactive and then passivity,

which we can, you know, clearly isn't helpful that sense of a kind of collapse.

And that's often the fear.

The fear is if I stop driving myself forward, I'll collapse.

I'll never get out of bed.

My kind of inner sloth will take over and I'll just eat pizza and rot on the sofa.

What you are kind of pointed to is actually, that's not

the thing that happens.

The thing that happens with the calm, with the space, with the openness is a

receptivity and then an ability to respond and responding might mean creating, might

mean it might take many different forms.

Yeah.

And generally called UN imagin.

You know, it's unimaginable to the one whose flip flops between hyperactivity

and then collapse or passivity.

It's unimaginable.

It was to me, definitely that kind of responsiveness, but actually where there's

a, you know, it's a much more bottomless.

Well, cuz I'm not doing it.

One has the feeling one might not say this cuz it sounds a bit protectious

but one has the feeling is that.

It is a kind of life's intelligence is doing the receiving and doing

the responding, you know, and I'm not so investing in T certainly the

self-referential isn't is not there.

Whereas usually we get very, we get that sort of narcissistic duction.

We seduced by our own image, oh, look at me, I'm doing this, you know?

And when it's going, well, we can get very self-congratulatory in that.

And then when it's going badly, we can get very self condemning.

All that stuff's exhausting, you know, so receptive, responsive.

There's just no self measurement in it.

No need to be a certain way.

No push to do a certain thing, no blaming or shaming one's

self when things don't go right.

Just moment by moment.

Receptive, responsive, receptive, responsive.

Oh, very sane way to meet life.

Yeah.

So for the person who did identify with the, I'm doing all of these things, so we

kind of introduced them to the idea, okay.

This sort of aiming for this kind of middle way, this sort of third way.

This receptivity, this responsiveness, I like that too.

Has a kind of good kind of feel to it.

So these people also kind of, you know, massive planners, right?

Constantly planning this week, planning this year, goals,

targets all of this sort of stuff.

What role for any of that in the new responsive third way

that we were just talking about?

Well, I, I could kind of describe that in a way, but the, the

problem is the planning mind will try to figure its way into that.

And what would it be like then to plan if I wasn't so busy planning?

And what's that, you know, trying to plan for non planning.

Yeah.

what I could say is that we start to notice that vast majority

of our planning is neurotic.

You know, even, even if it's, even if it's fired by enthusiasm,

doesn't necessarily feel neurotic.

Oh, I wanna do this.

Oh, that'll be great.

We just invest way more energy than useful than is useful or

necessary in that planning.

And you, if you wanna check if that's the case you can see, to what extent

do you get carried into that planned for moment as if it's real, so that you

actually end up investing more attention and more energy and more hope and more

in the, that imagined future scenario than you are in where you actually

are, where all the source of actual fulfillment and ease is right here.

So it's not some narrow or flaky idea of just being here and now where no

planning happens, clearly, right?

We have to plan to schedule this meeting together to speak to each other, but

planning can be done simply right?

Without the actually projecting the idea of one's self forward in time.

If that makes sense.

Thinking then about the, the secular alternative or the, the

secular route versus the ish route.

Uh, if we can say such a thing.

Because you know, the, this idea of the kind of person being on the bus, I'm in

charge of everything, I'm making all the decisions, this obsessing with the self

with me, like I'm the architect of all this, the hero, the savior, and then the

one that also gets run over by the bus.

So part of what we're talking about is a route out of that dying by self thing.

Is the kind of secular route, does that also point you out of that route

or are there limitations around that?

I don't know, you know, I mean, if I'm really honest, I'd say my sense is that

yes, that one's limited really in the sec, like I know a lot of people who

have discovered meditation in a secular form through a mindfulness class or an

app or something, and then continued in that form and have been sort of

wary you and totally understandably, sometimes wary of a kind of religiosity

of deeper practice forms, sometimes they've got their own religious trauma

in the background of ways that they, that, you know, they experience religion

in manipulative or even abusive ways.

I mean, if we look at the history of the churches, you can see, or, you

know, most religious institutions, you can see plenty of grounds for a wise

caution or weariness around religiosity.

And Buddhism's no exception right, to that.

I don't wanna suggest that Buddhism's some kind of super fabulous religion

where there's no problems, you know, any, anything that gets ossified

and institutionalized, you get hierarchies and you get power games

and, and you get, uh, corruptions, you could say just inevitably.

And yet I would also say that anybody, I know who's really gone

deeply into this stuff, and I think you are an example of that.

Ben, you know, however much one wants to situate oneself in a kind of

secular world and a secular worldview.

you just can't avoid a kind of collision with the mystical at some point, right?

Because the world, you know, the world of consciousness, the world

that one's exploring the world that's, you know, fundamentally mysterious

and vast and infinitely malleable, it can't really be squashed into a purely

materialistic or purely secular framework.

So one doesn't need to adopt the symbols or the um, language of a

particular spiritual tradition, but it seems at some point, one does need

to, to go beyond beyond the worldly.

Like our, when we say secular, what do we mean?

We mean using the language and the reference points of our contemporary

world, and those are inherently material, materialist, right?

We live in a world of material reductiviism, or reductive materialism.

I can't remember which way around.

So we live in the sort of sci.

If the religions have become the largely irrelevant the

science has taken over, right?

The science has become the cultural discourse, the cultural authority.

And in that sense, science actually fulfills the same

function as religion does.

We've got a creation mythology called the big bang.

We et cetera, et cetera.

And, you just run up against the limitations of that.

So just like religious stories have their limitations, right?

You read the Adam and Eve and the garden of Eden and that stuff.

It's like, maybe it has some poetic inspiration in there for you.

But if you really try to think about God and the world in seven days and

Adam and Eve and apples, it's like, that's, you know, you run up against

the limitations of that story.

And similarly you run up against the limitations of the

scientific materialism story.

That consciousness is somehow just a property of the brain, and we are

just here by some kind of miracle of evolving atoms that organize themselves

into a neighbors and then lizards and then monkeys, and then us, you know,

and then here we are, the pinnacle of.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

Right.

And it doesn't mean that you find a better story, which might be a

Buddhist story or something else.

It's more that, oh, to go beyond any of the stories to existing in a sort of

state of wonder at the miracle that trees grow, the miracle of being a human, the

miracle that there is consciousness, the miracle that there is anything at all.

And to be able to exist in a kind of wonder at that.

Inevitably has a sort of a mystical quality to it, a quality

that can't be reduced to to a materialist or reductive description.

So you might, you know, it might be that yours is the language of poetry, or it

might be that one adopts the language of a tradition, you know, like Buddhism,

cuz you know, Buddhism has, I think done a really good job of mapping and

describing that territory because it's so orient, it's not orientated around a set

of beliefs or a set of ritual behaviors.

It's mostly orientated around practices for exploring consciousness.

And that's what I would say that's its uSP as it were.

That's its remarkable point.

But you know, I totally understand.

I, I, myself share that same reluctance to a certain extent.

I don't want to just use Buddhist language because they can be reductive in themself.

As soon as you, oh, this is a Buddhist teaching, well, you've alienated a big

chunk of the people in our culture who might be listening to those things.

That's why I'm interested in it as awakist rather than Buddhist cuz suddenly

oh, I can get on board with that.

Yeah.

And I like what you're saying there about the mystical collision essentially.

So the thing that kind of happened with me, it happens, I for many kind of people,

at some point there kind of feeling where there is something more, or there's

something to explore or some sort of question beyond, which of course affects

our lives to the extent that it does.

Essentially what what you are talking about is the kind of awakism offers

some tools and some guidance as a way of exploring that question.

If you say is it's it's value to, to what you were saying

there it's USP essentially.

Yeah.

And a map, of, you know, we don't have very good maps of consciousness.

Otherwise we've got good maps for career.

We've got maps of you know, and we've got really, I mean, science gives us really

good maps of, you know, for engineering.

If you wanna build a bridge or an iPhone, don't use Buddhism for that science

Well,

Use physics.

But similarly, if you wanna explore the territory of consciousness, the

exact opposite is true, you know, use the right map for the right territory.

So use physics for building bridges, but don't, I mean, you know, neuroscience

is really interesting and a lot of Buddhist get excited now because the

findings of neuroscience map very beautifully onto Buddhist understanding.

And likewise neuroscientists get excited about Buddhism and that's

a nice conversation to have.

And I don't wanna be dismissive cause I think it's a very

useful conversation to have.

And a lot of people actually have got an inter meditation because they there's this

sort of neuroscientific convincer that can show, oh, look, when people meditate,

this is what happens in the brain.

The.

Network goes quieter.

The fight flight mechanism, relaxes, you know, qualities associated with

peace and wellbeing, light up in the brain center, et cetera, etcetera.

So that's good to know that.

But personally, I don't really care about all of that, because

I'm not really interested in what's happening in my brain.

I I can't tell what's happening in my brain.

My brain's that squidgy gray thing right, between my ears.

I'm, but I can tell what's happening in my mind.

And that's different.

In our, a scientific reductionist model, we equate the mind with the brain.

We think our mind is in our brain or is in our head, but actually where's

your mind, you know, where's your mind?

And as a contemplative question, that's, you know, beautiful and

it, why is it a beautiful question?

Cause it's utterly unanswerable.

Nobody's ever found where their mind is, you know.

The best answer.

If this is the best one I can come up with.

Where's your mind?

It's here.

It's here.

So you can explore mind.

You can explore consciousness as in its subjective immediacy, right?

The feel of being here, the fact that there's experience, right?

The fact that I can hear you speaking and that I can feel my body sitting.

Oh, that can be explorable.

And the various contemplative traditions, and I would say probably most particularly

Buddhism has mapped the territory of exploring consciousness with the same

kind of genius that engineers have brought to building airplanes and That apple has

brought to building phones, you know?

So just use the right kind of genius for the right kind of job.

And the Buddhist genius is the one for consciousness.

So like taking the example then of the cardiologist you mentioned earlier,

because I guess part of the thing is, what you're saying there, you know, that

sounds kind of really enticing, but then equally I can hear a voice in my head just

going, fuck, you know, that sounds like, that requires me to go live in a cave.

I've gotta go somewhere, remove myself in its entirety, you know,

in entirety to somewhere completely different, to be able to ponder that,

that becomes the stuff of my life.

But like the examples you talking to earlier is that there is a way

of finding a kind of middle ground where there is space to explore

those and equally to be responsive to the everyday stuff of my life.

And those things can coexist.

I that's like, well, like I said, I don't think you get to choose.

You know, you, take a step and you take another step and

you see where it leads you.

And in those two examples I gave, it didn't lead either of those

people to the contemplative cave.

It led one to a radical change of circumstance and lifestyle, etcetera,

because they awoke to the fact that they weren't living in line

with what they really cared about.

And it led to somebody else, you know, a radical change in the inner

life, but no change in the outer life.

In my own case, it led to the, you know, to the more kind of archetypal

sense of just like running away from the world and going and living in the

Himalayas for a few years, you know.

But there isn't a right way or a wrong way to do that.

And the good news is you don't need to decide, right?

It, it, you, Because in each of those three cases, we weren't doing

some noble thing, we were doing the thing that felt like it became clear

was the thing that was in the led in the direction of happiness and

you know, the rightness and sanity.

So if you, you might be giving something up to follow your you know, what feels

most true for you, but the good news of that is if whatever, you're giving up,

if you're giving it up in the service of that which feels Beau deep and beautiful

and worthwhile, Hey, that's easy, then.

It's easy to give up the little petty stuff.

If you know, you're giving it up in the service of the most important thing.

The problem is most of us have no idea what the most important thing is.

No idea what really lights up our heart and soul.

What really feels like to live in accordance with our values.

And therefore the idea of giving up, oh, this comfort over here, or this

situation over there feels threatening.

Cuz it's like, you can't let go of anything if you don't

know why you're letting it go.

If you fixated, if you think that thing's really got it, you can't let go.

What's that?

There's that famous Buddhist story, of somebody running over a cliff.

And I can't remember the story number, basically run over a cliff and they

fall off and they're hanging on by a little, like a root, little tiny

root, just sticking out of the cliff.

And the root is giving away and there's down below this sharp rocks.

And suddenly the person who's never had any religious faith before gets

struck with this overwhelming, you know, calling out to God to save them

and, oh, you know, whatever Celeste you'll be, there might be out there.

Please.

If you just save me, just tell me what to do, just give me a solution

and I'll have faith in you forever more and et cetera, et cetera.

And then they hear this voice, you know, from the heavens, suddenly the evidence

of celestial, all mighty being, and the voice, you know, they're hanging

on this root, dangling from the cliff and the voice comes, just let go.

And then the response to the person says uh, is there anyone

else up there I can talk to?

Yeah, yeah I need a different view.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So even if we, you know, that sense of we're invited to let go into that,

you know, actually even that sense of free fall in life, you know, the

relief of letting go from holding onto something that's weak actually

and unre brittle and unreliable.

But if you believe in that, if you believe in it, it's very hard to let go.

And then if you actually, when you actually start to taste some possibility,

you know, Vincent, the example, the person I get would give wouldn't say it

was hard for him to go along those steps.

It became obvious, oh, this when something really speaks to us, it's

obvious, you know, and that's always the true, you know, it's, if you

really fall in love with somebody, you don't have to second guess, oh,

well, should I go out with them again?

Do I really want to?

It's like, you know, your heart speaks for you.

You discover something that you really just see has a potential

to to deepen your understanding of life and meeting with life.

You don't really need to second guess that.

So of course, some people go along in a much more gradual way and fits

and starts and they do see some potential in meditation, but then

they also see a lot of potential in, you know, lying in the morning.

not getting up,

much more potential in that.

et cetera, you know?

So it's not that you, one should go along quickly or one should go along slowly

that there should be a radical change or there should be a gradual change.

You know, I would say it just, but if like any of the stuff we've been saying

today, if there's some flicker in there of, oh, that, that sounds there's

something that sounds right in there or something that sounds helpful in there.

Something that sounds that kind of, that you recognize as a

sense of possibility in there.

Check it out.

Check it out.

Take a step.

You don't need to, and you can't plan the path.

You take a step.

The path will make itself.

And to that path those, those steps, given the kind of potential enormity of

that, those little steps and a little step might be what, so tomorrow I meditate for

15 minutes, or 10 minutes or something.

That's a valid little first step to take or big next step to take.

And just the, the practice in that way is your route into this

potentially huge map of consciousness.

Yeah.

Yeah, because for some people like that's enough.

Well, for some people, not meditating at all is enough.

Just no interest.

That's fine for some people, you know, just you dip your toe in the

water and you knew you've use an app for a month and then that's

enough and you search to people.

Oh yeah, meditations quite good.

I did it once.

Yeah, I did it once I did it for a month or so.

Okay.

Alright.

And then for other people it's like, oh, I really see the possibility of there,

but you know, I nevertheless go on slowly and I sit for a every day for a week

or so, but then I drop it for a while.

I mean, I think I want to get back into it and you know, there's a

bit more of a sort of tortured process of in and out and okay.

You know, and then for other people, like the Vincent example

I gave it's like, bang, you know, just one discovery and that's it.

And you can't really say why people go along in those different ways.

It's not, you know, it's mysterious right in that sense.

I mean, you know, Buddhist explanation would be karma, you know, which doesn't

mean necessarily some cosmic thing related to previous lives, but just,

you know, what it is that you are ripe for or what it is that you're looking

for in a given moment is different.

And also different people's capacity.

Some people they're just, their makeup is they're very decisive.

It's like some people they decide to stop smoking and that's it.

They stub out that cigarette and they never smoke again.

And then other people are, they need programs and patches and hypnosis.

Yeah, I was thinking so, so if there is that seed of curiosity,

if there is the kind of thing, I remember a phrase you spoke of one

society of teachings and practice and teachings or the other way around.

So if there is the, if there is this seed of curiosity, if there is this

kind of this questioning this kind of interest, it's that isn't it then

teaching and practice and letting the seed go where the seed goes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

If there's the willing, if there's the wish and the willingness to explore,

then explore, Would be a shame, you know, it would be a shame to just be

pulled around by one's own uh, reactive patterns for the rest of life and then

suddenly die cause, cause that's, what's in store for us otherwise.

And so if there's the wish and the willing and the vision that, oh

there's a possibility to do things differently than Hey explore.

And how wonderful that there are apps and YouTube stuff and books, and here

we are, I can promote my books here and you know, and online platform.

So I, you know, you and I are both involved in Sanger, live this online

platform where we have live meditations, every weekday, et cetera, plenty of

ways and maybe you can put some of those resources in the show notes or something.

Yeah.

So you have a book coming out.

What's the book?

It's just came out.

Yes.

And it's called awake where you are.

Which talks to all of this and

It's.

Yeah.

It's I mean, it's, I certainly like to think it's much more than just

a, sort of how to meditate book it's got a lot of emphasis on, you know,

the fact that this is it right.

And how to attend to being here in the whole variety of situations.

So it gives a lot of attention to the stuff of life and exploring our

psychological processes and what goes on in relationship and all.

So on the other hand, it's a kind of pointer.

It's an accompaniment for contemplative life.

And on the other hand, it's gently pointing out and pointing out again,

the, this kind of vision of a free life.

Very good.

Well, we will definitely include all of that in the show notes and then

all of the other various places where people can find you just so, so, so

sang live, you've mentioned other places where people might find you?

martinaylward.com.

That's my website or @martinaylward for Instagram, et cetera, or Moulin

de Chaves, which is the center where I live and teach, you know, super intense

bootcamp retreat, a meditation retreat

for the bus drivers.

here in Southwest France, yeah.

Well, thank you very much, Martin.

Really appreciate it.

Thank you, Ben.

Nice to talk with you and hear your questions.

I hope you enjoyed that conversation with Martin Aylward.

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