Dharma PhD (the podcast) Episode 9: Everything is Included in Dhamma Practice

Greetings, Friendlies!

Episode 9 is ready for your enjoyment. This one’s a bit of a divergence; we talk about the experience, from a Dhamma Practitioner’s standpoint, of watching a Zombie Apocalypse television series (HBO’s The Last of US).

The effect of suffering on experience (First Truth/Task), using an Anattā (not-self) practice to sooth the after-effects of the violent images, whether or not the Third Precept could skillfully be brought to bear on a television series, and the Western-minds collating of Love and Clinging.

Would love to hear your thoughts re: the same.

With friendliness!

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AI Produced, Human Corrected Transcript

Welcome

[00:00:00] Shannon: Greetings friendlies. Welcome to Dharma PhD. Conversations about the science, philosophy and culture of mindfulness and secular Buddhism. I’m your host Shannon M Whitaker. Joined once again by the fabulous co-host Jeff Street. Welcome, Jeff.

[00:00:13] Jeff: Hello. It’s a pleasure to be here.

[00:00:14] Shannon: It’s a pleasure to have you. How you doing?

[00:00:17] Jeff: I’m doing fine. the sun is shining today. Yeah. Um, prospects are bright. who knows. Who knows what will happen the rest of the day. It’s opening up before me. appointments are canceling left and right, so it’s gonna be great.

[00:00:29] Shannon: Like finding a $20 bill in your pocket.

[00:00:30] Jeff: like finding a 20 bill pocket. Yeah, and I’ve got another pocket that I haven’t checked yet. It’s gonna be great.

Intro

[00:00:35] Jeff: So with that energetic, sendoff, what are we gonna talk about today?

Shannon: I would like to talk about the experience of, from a dhamma practitioner’s standpoint, of watching a zombie apocalypse television series. Specifically the H B O TV series, the Last of Us, which came out early in the spring. 

[00:00:52] Jeff: Okay.

[00:00:53] Shannon: I do wanna highlight that we spent all this time talking about John Peacock holding forth on Scholastic Buddhism and what Gotama may or may not have been thinking about or talking about, and the pop culture and all this, to this, what might be considered extremely unskillful way of spending one’s time, which is engaging with a zombie apocalypse story 

[00:01:19] Jeff: So the other end of the spectrum? 

[00:01:23] Shannon: One of the reasons that I thought about talking about this topic is that I wanted to highlight that everything is included in dhamma practice. We can get into a mode where dhamma practice is only when I’m in the third jhāna. You know, when I’m on retreat, dhamma practice is only when I’m on the cushion.

[00:01:45] Jeff: Chanting has to be happening.

[00:01:46] Shannon: Yeah.

[00:01:46] Jeff: Okay. 

[00:01:47] Shannon: Um, It’s only when I’m. Quote unquote, doing it right somehow, even if I’m on the cushion and my mind is wandering, I’m not doing it right and it’s not dhamma practice. and I want to highlight the fact that actually, if we bring the right state of mind, the right approach, then yes, it is part of dhamma practice again. 

Anattā (Not-self)

[00:02:09] Shannon: The first thing I should say is spoiler alert, there will be spoilers in this podcast. So Jeff, I hope you’re okay with spoilers. Okay, great. Cuz otherwise this is gonna be a very short podcast,

[00:02:21] Jeff: I’m not planning to engage with this TV show beyond, this podcast episode.

[00:02:24] Shannon: Excellent. 

Getting Started

[00:02:26] Shannon: I don’t remember why I watched the first episode. Probably, let’s be honest, because one, Pedro Pascal playing the main protagonist. 

So I watched this first episode it’s violent and, so sad and just a heartbreaking and awful and violent and people being really nasty to each other.

 After watching it, I was like, oh, I’m done with that. That was terrible. I am super not watching this 

[00:02:57] Jeff: Yeah. I’m surprised you watched it.

[00:02:59] Shannon: And that night I had nightmares. I had nightmares of zombies and I had nightmares of people killing each other. 

I was laying in bed and my brain was, replaying cuz my brain doesn’t know that there’s not actually a zombie apocalypse. It’s hey, that looks really scary and I need to remember the survival mechanisms that people were using.

[00:03:16] Jeff: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Practical, practical things. 

[00:03:19] Shannon: my brain was playing this stuff over and over again and there’s a, one of the concepts in Buddhism is the Pāli word is Anattā. And it means… that there’s not a… I’m trying to think of how to explain it to you. I didn’t think about needing to explain this concept to you. I don’t want it to sound too hocus hocus. 

[00:03:44] Jeff: Thanks for, Thanks for taking time to craft it carefully.

[00:03:46] Shannon: Yeah. You probably haven’t read a lot of David Hume, the Scottish Enlightenment philosopher?

Jeff: No, I’ve not.

Shannon: Okay. So What Hume said, in our normal, everyday experience of ourselves, there seems like there’s something, like I have a Self. In the Christian tradition, it would be the soul, right? There’s something about me that is fundamental. There is something that is fundamental about me. I, Shannon, sitting here am the same person who at three years old was living in another part of the world with a a very different skill set. 

[00:04:21] Jeff: um, some, Some continuity, some free will, some these 

[00:04:25] Shannon: There’s Some agency, there’s something about me that, that is fundamentally me-ness. 

[00:04:32] Jeff: distinguishing me from other people, distinguishing me from the environment around me.

[00:04:36] Shannon: Yes, absolutely. Distinguishing me from the universe. I am not the same as the universe. I’m not the same as the environment. I’m different somehow. 

In Buddhism that idea is said to be a fiction 

[00:04:48] Jeff: Okay 

[00:04:52] Shannon: Going back to Hume, what David Hume, the Scottish Enlightenment philosopher said, he said, when I look for myself, I can’t find myself. When I look , in, like, what, what do I think I am? What do I think I’m made of? Am I my consciousness? Well, no. Cause I go to sleep and I’m still me, Am I, my memories well, my memories change. First of all, I’m adding new memories and then I forget things, and then sometimes I make up things that become memory., I can have actual physical damage to the brain and lose some of the memories, but still be me. 

Am I, my, my, my habits, my preferences, my tastes. But those things change. I have very different tastes now than I did when I was twelve Thank goodness.So what is it about me that is so fundamentally me, This is actually a really important aspect of Buddhism, which we’re not gonna go into a ton of detail anymore. 

But one of the ways that we practice with this concept is by, whenever we experience something, saying, “This is not me, this is not mine, this is not myself.”

[00:05:52] Jeff: Okay. And this helps us to, to what is it? What does, what’s the purpose of this?

[00:05:57] Shannon: Let go of the grasping. One of the biggest insights people have when they begin mindfulness practice is when they realize, I am not my thoughts. 

[00:06:06] Jeff: Hmm.

[00:06:07] Shannon: A thought can arise and the way that many of us were raised, a thought arises and we think, oh, I’m bad because this thought arose, or this thought arose, therefore I need to act on it. Or look how pious and holy I am, this thought arose. 

[00:06:24] Jeff: It’s like, it’s like a sense of obligation almost. Yeah. About our thoughts.

[00:06:28] Shannon: It’s identity, it’s ownership, it’s obligation, it’s all these things. And one of the very first things, I think one of the major first breakthroughs that people have in mindfulness training in particular is recognizing I am not my thoughts. These thoughts just arise, and then they pass away.

[00:06:45] Jeff: I am not my thoughts.

[00:06:47] Shannon: Weird, right? So I’m lying in bed and these thoughts are coming these images are coming and they’re violent and scary and I’m, and I’m not sleeping. 

[00:06:56] Jeff: It’s a nightmare. 

[00:06:58] Shannon: And I said, okay, I’m gonna do this practice with them. And so this image would arise of this, you know, zombie face attacking with the teeth and the, grrrr! and I would say, this is not mine. This was given to me by the incredible Craig Mazen and Neil Druckman, the producers, the showrunners of the show. Um, I don’t want this, this is not mine. And it would kind of fade. And then of course another one would pop up and I would say, this is not mine. This is not me. These images, these ideas, this story was given to me and I don’t want it. 

[00:07:30] Jeff: Did you have a, did you have a hundred percent success rate with that? Was it, Was it a challenge to do?

[00:07:36] Shannon: It was absolutely a challenge.

[00:07:37] Jeff: Tell me about your experience.

[00:07:38] Shannon: It was absolutely a challenge, but the very first time I did it it worked. you know, it, it took a minute, but I said, this is not mine. This image is not mine. I don’t want it. I didn’t ask for it. I don’t want this experience. And when I relaxed, it kind of faded, and then I was like, Ah bingo. Okay. Okay. This is working. 

[00:08:00] Jeff: did you have to, did you have to repeat that a times to get it to work?

[00:08:03] Shannon: Oh, yeah, absolutely. Some of them were stickier than others.Some of the images were more violent. Some of the images were more shocking, more troubling. And I didn’t sleep well that night, , it wasn’t, you know, I said it three times and then, boom. I would wake up in the middle of the night and they’d be there again. Yeah. And then I’d say, okay, but , what I got from it was the confidence to recognize, this is a tool that works. I’m not gonna sleep well.

[00:08:29] Jeff: It takes a few repetitions, but it’s effective.

[00:08:32] Shannon: Yeah. I’m not gonna sleep well, but this is a tool that  works.

[00:08:35] Jeff: Okay. 

[00:08:37] Shannon: And it was so cool. It was so cool.

[00:08:41] Jeff: In a real, in a real world, situation To recognize in modern society.

[00:08:48] Jeff: That’s a useful concept because it applies not only to fictional images like we’re talking about here, but also to, real experiences that we might have as we go about our lives so that we can have some distance from those as well.

[00:09:03] Shannon: Yeah, absolutely. Whether it’s somebody saying or doing something to me, and I can say I look, I, this isn’t mine, this, this, this is, this person’s, or even if it’s something that I, if I engage in a habit that I don’t like, or that I recognize as not skillful, then I can, to some extent, in my better moments, I can recognize this isn’t me. This is just a habit. Or in Dhamma language we’d say, this is a Saṅkhāra and this is changeable. This came from somewhere, and it can go back there. It doesn’t have to stay here forever.

[00:09:42] Jeff: Yeah. That’s really, that’s a really, that’s a thing I get stuck in too, that I feel like my habits have a lot of power over me. Beyond it being mine. Kinda like I am, I am theirs. In some ways. Yeah. Okay, cool. Cool.

First Truth/Task

[00:09:57] Shannon: Another thing that happened that night was lying there and feeling how uncomfortable it was to be scared, to have these violent images, to not be sleeping. It was very unpleasant and I remember thinking, I super don’t want this. I am not watching this TV show anymore. And it was just, floop!, it was gone. The desire, the, cuz you know when a TV show ends, it’s always a cliffhanger and then you’re like, Ooh, what’s gonna happen next? And I thought, oh, I super don’t want that in my life.

[00:10:24] Jeff: Because they have, they have tools too. For creating a mental experience that draws you into the show.

[00:10:31] Shannon: Absolutely. And these two, let me tell you this storytelling is extraordinary. So you might be wondering, oh, are we only gonna talk about one episode because you said. I only watched…

[00:10:43] Jeff: ah, yes, podcast over. Well, Shannon, it’s been nice speaking with you.

[00:10:48] Jeff: how many episodes is Pedro Pascal in? That’s probably the number of episodes we’ll talk about. 

[00:10:54] Shannon: so I had this big success in the beginning. This is not me. This is not mine. Oh, these ideas, paying attention to the suffering. I don’t want this anymore. And then a week later, the second episode comes out. And I started to feel the itch because I had lost contact with that suffering.

[00:11:12] Jeff: Like It had been long enough. 

[00:11:15] Shannon: Yeah. Because I didn’t have nightmares on night,, on the second night, I slept fine., the recollection of that suffering, that had faded. So There wasn’t anything there to remind me, in that visceral way, what that suffering had been like. And it was very interesting , to see that. I was able to see it. Oh, the addiction is coming back. Like the itch, the, the wanting to see it has come back. And the reason it has come back is because I’ve lost contact with the suffering that the original thing caused.

When we learn how to hold suffering in our experience, we can use it as an extremely effective and laser focused tool. To get into our experience and to help us to sometimes to help us cut out those Saṅkhāras those habits that we don’t find skillful in our lives when we’re able to connect the suffering with the behavior.

my brain needs to have these things connected in order to be willing to accept change in its behavioral patterns.

Precepts

[00:14:02] Shannon: The next thing that I wanted to talk about was these things called the Five Precepts. We’ve spoken about them before, back in episode three.

[00:14:11] Jeff: I don’t know if I could name, I dunno if I could pull the five precepts right now. 

[00:14:16] Shannon: That’s okay.

[00:14:16] Jeff: Can you give me a quick refresher?

[00:14:17] Shannon: Yes.

[00:14:19] Shannon: These are sometimes referred to as the Buddhist commandments. But the reason that I am able to engage with them a little bit more than I am able to engage with the commandments when I was first introduced to those is that they’re not commandments. The precepts are rules of training. We are training the mind.

[00:14:40] Jeff: Mm-hmm. Okay. That sounds better. 

Shannon: When Sariputta, who was one of Gotama’s major disciples , still early, when Gotama was establishing his community and everything, Sariputta was one of the very first monastics, not the very first, but he was in the early wave, and he recognized that there was a need for some rules. There was a need to keep, to, to lay down a couple of rules and Gotama said, no, I’m not gonna lay down rules. 

He later changed his mind. 

[00:15:07] Jeff: As we all might do.

[00:15:08] Shannon: He said there’s, there’s one, uh, there’s, I think there’s actually a technical phrase for it. I don’t remember that, but he said, there’s just this to know. Do no harm. Take up what is good. Clarify the mind. And that’s enough. 

[00:15:23] Jeff: All other things can flow from these.

[00:15:25] Shannon: All other things can flow from these. Yeah, exactly. Now there’s, 150 rules for monks and 317 rules for nuns or whatever. I’m, I don’t remember exactly what the numbers are.

[00:15:33] Jeff: Well, this is a human characteristic though,

[00:15:35] Shannon: Some of them are pretty great, some of the rules, like nuns should not throw poop over the fence.

Jeff: Agreed. In fact, if we were to just, if we were to just maybe eliminate throwing poop all together. I guess if you’re shoveling out some… a livestock, situation…

[00:15:54] Shannon: I don’t know the details of it. Martine Bachelor refers to this rule and I think it’s fantastic. So I use it, 

[00:15:59] Jeff: It seems like it could use a far side cartoon sort of t-shirt, don’t you think?

[00:16:03] Shannon: Yes. More t-shirts please. 

So the five rules of training. In Pāli, pañcasīla,

[00:16:12] Jeff: I’m gonna leave the Pāli pronunciation to you in this podcast. 

[00:16:17] Shannon: Nice alliteration. 

[00:16:18] Jeff: welcome. Thank you.

[00:16:22] Shannon: So these aren’t commandments, it’s not thou shalt, it’s this is a rule of training and the reason I’m doing it is because this rule of training helps me to not cause harm, to do what is good, and to clarify my mind.

[00:16:34] Jeff: So they’re kind of like recommendations for effective training. if you go to the gym, people will say to you, this is the way to get strong in a cardio way. Here are some recommendations. 

[00:16:43] Shannon: Right. But again, it’s not a thing about being holy, it’s just

[00:16:47] Jeff: It’s about getting it done. 

[00:16:48] Shannon: It’s a thing about getting it done. It’s a thing about how do I, how do I lay down these behavioral patterns in my mind so that I can develop these habits that are skillful, that are ethically beneficial? 

Third Precept

[00:17:02] Shannon: The thing I wanna talk about is the third precept. I’m not even gonna bother listing them cuz whatever. The third

[00:17:06] Jeff: Listeners, you’ll, you’ll find them in the show notes if you want to

[00:17:09] Shannon: Because you’ll find them everywhere. They’re all over the place it’s a whole nother podcast talking about the differences in the translations.

[00:17:15] Jeff: Great. Great Let’s do number three.

[00:17:16] Shannon: Let’s do number three. Again, in reference to this experience of engaging with a zombie apocalypse TV show. And the third precept, is often translated as, “I undertake the training precept to abstain from sexual misconduct.”

 And now you may be thinking, well, Pedro Pascal is in this, and so clearly no, no, no, that’s not…

[00:17:34] Jeff: That is, that is where I thought we were going.

Shannon: No,

[00:17:41] Jeff: Do tell 

[00:17:41] Shannon: thing I wanna talk about is, , is the Pāli is actually “kamesu” which is not sexual. It’s not sexual. It’s sensual. 

[00:17:51] Jeff: Mm. 

[00:17:52] Shannon: To do with the senses.

[00:17:53] Jeff: Hmm. It’s much broader. 

Shannon: Yes, exactly. There’s a huge difference between sexual misconduct, or sometimes people say abusing sexual energy, or sensual misconduct, abusing the senses. 

And At the most base level, this can be things, the ways that I abuse my senses are eating too much sugar. that’s my main one. What other ones…

[00:18:16] Jeff: Like eating one’s feelings. Eating for the sensual, a bit of that.

[00:18:20] Shannon: Eating for the hedonic comfort as opposed to being hungry.

Jeff: I do that too. 

Shannon: There’s all kinds of ways that, that we can abuse our sense pleasures that have nothing to do with sexuality.

[00:18:29] Jeff: Yeah. 

[00:18:29] Shannon: And I think that is…

[00:18:30] Jeff: Certainly there are some that are to do with sexuality, but that’s subset of the whole thing.

[00:18:34] Shannon: It’s a subset of the whole thing. Watching things that aren’t skillful. Watching, I don’t know, maybe zombie apocalypse TV show, which we’re gonna get to

[00:18:39] Jeff: Watching Pedro Pascal and let’s watch this bit again. Rewind, Play.

[00:18:43] Shannon: Um, Taking, I was gonna say smelling cocaine, but that’s maybe not

[00:18:50] Jeff: I don’t know if smelling it is the problem.

[00:18:53] Shannon: I’m just trying to think of other, besides gustatory sense pleasures, what other sense…

[00:18:58] Jeff: Good word, gustatory. I think we can declare you the vocab winner of this episode right now.

[00:19:04] Shannon: So there’s all kinds of ways that we can abuse our sense pleasures or our senses rather. Or we can not use them skillfully. And I had alluded to this a moment ago, watching this zombie apocalypse TV show, I think personally could be considered abusing the sense, pleasure of sight.

I watched this, this TV show, I watched all these violent, scary images. And the very first night I got the nightmares and I should’ve just said, okay, that’s it. I’m done. But I didn’t, when the second episode came out, I was like, oh, I’ll just check it out. Just come see what’s going on. and then watched, you know, and then I did the whole thing and I actually think that was a… I don’t know if the right word is breaking of the precept, or, or it was a violation of that training rule of not to abuse the sense pleasures. 

[00:19:59] Shannon: I was using this TV show, I was watching this TV show, despite obvious adverse consequences. There was really no benefit other, than sense pleasure of watching, and the storytelling aspect, of watching the show. And it was very, very interesting to watch that go down, to watch that sort of addictive need manifest.

[00:20:23] Shannon: And I wanna, I wanna put a quick pin in this. When I use the word addiction, I’m using the word as Dr. Judson Brewer uses it. He says, addiction is continued use despite adverse consequences. So I just wanna put a pin that that’s what I mean when I use that word. 

[00:20:39] Jeff: Cool. Because that’s an emotionally charged word.

[00:20:42] Jeff: There’s a lot of discussion, at present about social media use patterns,

[00:20:47] Shannon: Yeah,

[00:20:48] Jeff: doom, scrolling, and things like this that seems like it might be a similar vein.

[00:20:53] Shannon: Yeah, totally.

[00:20:56] Jeff: Often times I’ll stay up late watching, various YouTube videos that are in this vein too.

[00:21:04] Shannon: Yeah. And it doesn’t even have to be doom scrolling. I know for me it’s often, I just want more pleasant vedanā. I just want that pleasant vedanā hit. I want that pleasant hedonic hit, not even necessarily because something unpleasant is happening. 

[00:21:16] Shannon: Sometimes just because it’s just, it’s that neutral vedanā and I just, I’m just craving that pleasant hit and so I go on and those apps are designed to feed into our dopaminergic system. To create this addictive pattern. 

[00:21:30] Jeff: Yeah. They’re working against us. They’re turning our chemicals against us.

[00:21:36] Shannon: Social media, with all due respect, is absolutely designed to create misconduct of the sense pleasures. Okay. And again, I wanna, I wanna highlight that it’s not a pious thing. It’s not oh, Gotama is frowning on me now, the Buddha is frowning on me now. No, it’s actually that when I, for me personally, When I engage with consuming too much content, I’m not doing other skillful things in my life.

[00:22:05] Jeff: Okay. Yeah, that’s a good point. 

[00:22:07] Shannon: I am being pacified.

[00:22:09] Jeff: There’s an opportunity cost to that.

[00:22:11] Shannon: Absolutely. What was the term they used to use about tv? It was…

[00:22:14] Jeff: The opiate of the masses.

[00:22:16] Shannon: The opiate of the masses. It’s an absolutely an opiate. So yeah, this addictiveness, this desire to consume this material, whether it’s doom scrolling or just looking at kittens all day, 

[00:22:27] Jeff: Yeah.

[00:22:29] Shannon: In my opinion is a… the word violation is a little strong, but it is against that third precept. I am breaking that third precept when I do that.

Jeff: Sure. Or you could, say it in a more positive light. You could say the third precept would lead you in a different direction. 

Shannon: Absolutely. Yeah. That’s a much better way to phrase it.

[00:22:47] Jeff: I agree. this makes sense to me.

[00:22:49] Shannon: And because it’s not a pious thing. it’s not sin. It’s Hey, this is just unskillful. You’re not cultivating your mind, you’re not reducing harm. You’re not taking up the good,Maybe try something else, which I love. That’s the thing I love about the precepts, is it gives you an opportunity to move away from…

[00:23:04] Jeff: They’re gentle. 

[00:23:05] Shannon: Yeah. 

Love and Clinging

[00:23:08] Shannon: I’m wondering if I need to give a little bit of a synopsis about the TV show, about, about the plot, because it may not, the thing I’m about to say, I just realized may not make sense. 

[00:23:14] Jeff: Yeah, sure. Go for it.

[00:23:15] Shannon: There’s this fungus called cordiceps and it currently exists in the world, it infects ants and causes their behavior to change. And they do things that are not normal ant like, and then the fungus eventually kills the ant and grows out of its brain and fruits and the spores go out into the world .

[00:23:35] Jeff: so spooky.

[00:23:36] Shannon: The plot of this show is that the cordiceps fungus… I almost said virus. They use the term virus. You can hear it, people snap to grid on virus. It’s a fungus.the cordiceps vi, the cordiceps fungus has jumped to humans and it spreads very quickly and turns humans into zombies and whatever. So this happens, and then the television series, , start 20 years after the initial outbreak.

[00:24:06] Jeff: Okay.

[00:24:06] Shannon: So see what has happened to humanity and to the earth, blah, blah, blah. The earth, by the way, looks great, not surprisingly,

[00:24:14] Jeff: sure

[00:24:15] Shannon: with less humans, but that’s for another podcast. 

[00:24:17] Jeff: plants doing fine. Animals great. Loving it.

[00:24:21] Shannon: We are introduced to a protagonist, this person named Joel, who at at the very beginning of the outbreak, his daughter is killed. Now he’s become this rough and rugged and tough and heartless black market dealer of various goods in this apocalyptic world. 

[00:24:40] Jeff: Sounds like Pedro Pascal to me. Yeah, that’s who I’d cast too.

[00:24:45] Shannon: He’s introduced to this young girl who’s roughly the same age as his own daughter was, and then their relationship as it changes over time and, him eventually coming to feel as her father and the ramifications of that.

[00:24:59] Jeff: Okay

[00:25:00] Shannon: In the first, in episode one of the podcast about the TV show, so not the TV show the podcast about the TV show 

[00:25:07] Jeff: Got it. 

[00:25:08] Shannon: Craig Mazen says, When we wrote that show Bible, the show Bible is an outline, on the front page it said, This is a love story and that’s not good.

[00:25:20] Jeff: Interesting.

[00:25:21] Shannon: Yeah. I thought that was so interesting. The whole series, from the writer’s perspective, and from the producer’s perspective, and even from the game when it was a game with Neil Druckman, was about love.

There are claims, one of the, one of the very evil characters in the TV show says the fungus loves. It, it multiplies, it protects its own. It’s trying to figure out how to create a world in which it can survive. That is a form of love.

[00:25:49] Jeff: That’s a way to see it. 

[00:25:50] Shannon: I’m trying to think if it’s every episode. I feel like it might be in every single episode there’s this undertone of love and how that plays out. 

But what I thought was super interesting was that in Buddhist thought, in dhammic thought, there is a difference between love and clinging.

[00:26:14] Jeff: Okay.

[00:26:15] Shannon: And for Neil and Craig the producers of this show, there isn’t a difference.

[00:26:21] Jeff: Okay.

[00:26:22] Shannon: When we are clinging because of love, that is still love to them. That is not the case in Buddhist thought.

[00:26:30] Jeff: Hmm.

[00:26:30] Shannon: And

[00:26:31] Jeff: Let’s get into it a little bit.

[00:26:33] Shannon: Yeah. I think this is great . So Gotama teaches, don’t cling, don’t be attached. And many people, especially parents, I have heard say like, do you want me to not care about my kids? Do you want me to not care about my partner? And it’s not about that. 

[00:26:46] Jeff: Yeah, not the same thing. 

[00:26:48] Shannon: It’s about recognizing that we can love without clinging. Those two things can be separate. 

[00:26:55] Jeff: That’s, that’s skillful that, that, to distinguish those two.

[00:27:00] Shannon: This television series, it ends, Okay. I said there were spoilers. It ends terribly. It’s a horrible, heartbreaking, awful, terrible ending. This, this main character, Joel does something awful and terrible and horrible, okay?

[00:27:18] Shannon: In order to protect the person he loves. And what Buddhist thought would say is that thing he did is not love. That thing he did is clinging.

[00:27:30] Jeff: Interesting.

[00:27:31] Shannon: Humans don’t naturally, I think, differentiate between love and clinging and attachment.

[00:27:36] Jeff: No, I haven’t up till now. 

[00:27:38] Shannon: We think if we love something, we should be attached. We should cling to it, we should wanna hang onto it at all costs. But that at all costs thing leads to all the bad stuff that’s ever happened, really. Right. When you look at fascism, when you look at,

[00:27:56] Jeff: The Holy Wars.

[00:27:57] Shannon: The Holy Wars. Yeah, the Crusades. When you look at the Crusades, it was a, it was people taking love and using love and love of God, even, as an excuse for creating the most horrible acts.

[00:28:12] Jeff: Yeah,

[00:28:14] Shannon: Buddhism and Gotama say, no. Absolutely not. Those two things are not connected. One may develop out of another, but they are not the same thing.

[00:28:25] Jeff: Hm.

[00:28:27] Shannon: I thought this was a horrible ending, but what I thought was so interesting, Neil Druckman, again, the game producer, he said in the podcast, When we were making the game, we would play test the game. So we’d give the game to people and let them try it out and see. And then after they finished, we would ask them, what did you think of Joel’s choice? And what Neil says is that, If the person, the player, if the player of the game was not a parent, 50 50 they agreed with Joel. Some of them said absolutely not. Some of them said, yeah, I get where he is coming from. He said that if they were a parent, 100%, zero exceptions, agreed with Joel.

[00:29:03] Jeff: 100%. Wow. Wow. Crazy, crazy. 

[00:29:08] Shannon: Yeah, and that’s what that when fiction is at its best. These are the kinds of explorations that it leads us to, it’s not just about entertainment. 

Multiple View Points

[00:29:17] Shannon: Another thing that I had on the list that I don’t think we have time to talk about was how well the team at Naughty Dog, the game producers, they brought multiple viewpoints in. When you’re watching a TV show, you’re kind of watching everybody and you can drop in people, but when you’re playing a game, it’s often you’re playing a single character, but they actually mix it up and have you play different characters.

[00:29:38] Jeff: Oh wow. Cool.

[00:29:39] Shannon: So that you have to feel the emotions of trying to defend the position of a person that you hated 25 minutes ago cuz you were battling them, but now you are them and you see their background and you start to identify or at least empathize with them. sorry. Yeah. I said I wasn’t gonna talk about that, but

[00:29:57] Jeff: That’s an interesting choice.

[00:29:59] Shannon: It was absolutely brilliant 

[00:30:01] Jeff: it gives you a deeper understanding.

[00:30:03] Shannon: It gives you a deeper understanding. And what I don’t remember who said this. Oh, it was, it was on Screencrush, he said, when the two characters at the end finally come together in the battle royale and they’re gonna kill each other, you don’t want either one of them to win. You just want them to stop fighting.

[00:30:17] Jeff: Yeah, cuz you, you have been both of them. Yeah. 

[00:30:25] Shannon: You just want them to stop fighting

[00:30:28] Jeff: Well done.

[00:30:29] Shannon: mind blown, right? This has got Stephen Batchelor written all over it. When we can adopt this non-binary viewpoint, when we recognize that we only have hold of a small part of the elephant, and that other people just have hold of a different part of the elephant, and when we can empathize with them, what we want is not for somebody to win. We just want them to stop fighting.

What I want for the characters

[00:30:50] Shannon: I wanted to end by talking about what I wanted for the characters because one of the reasons I got excited, one of the reasons that I connected this, television series so strongly with my dhamma practice is I kept thinking things like, oh, I wish they would just find a copy of Bhikkhu Bodhi’s translations of the Pāli canon in the library. like they have these libraries in these cities. Why aren’t they reading all the books? 

Jeff: You know they do. They do. There’s this guy who edited his cat into Jurassic Park just recently. So this technology exists along with all this AI technology. I wonder if we could, I wonder if at some point we could do like an edit TV show that’s like the. you know, has the dharma in it,

Shannon: The problem is, it’d be so short.

[00:31:35] Jeff: I think that’d be fine for you. So I think there’s an audience for that.

[00:31:41] Shannon: I’ll check with HBO and see what they had to say. 

Everything is part of the Dhamma. Who knew even a zombie apocalypse TV show.

[00:31:50] Jeff: Even Pedro Pascal

[00:31:52] Shannon: even Pedro Pascal

Outro 

Shannon: That’s what I brought for today’s episode. We talked about this idea that our thoughts and these images that can get in our head, even our habits right, are not us necessarily. And that

[00:32:04] Jeff: That’s a really powerful idea for me.

[00:32:05] Shannon: Yeah.

[00:32:06] Jeff: Yeah. It’s, It’s an idea that I’m just engaging with a bit and haven’t fully, like you, deployed it in a very skilled way. In a very stressful situation. Yeah. Nightmare. land. Like you woke up, huh? From a nightmare. Yeah. And wow. Awesome. , I think this is a really good way to, to approach that topic. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And it was fun.

[00:32:32] Shannon: Good. And then we talked about, oh gosh, what else did we talk about? 

[00:32:37] Jeff: uh, five pillars, but really only the third

[00:32:38] Shannon: Oh yeah, the third, the third precept about how getting addicted to sense, sense, pleasure.

[00:32:45] Jeff: Yeah. Like the translation issue…

[00:32:48] Shannon: sexual versus sensual.

[00:32:49] Jeff: you’re proposing…

[00:32:51] Shannon: Well, and of course I’m proposing it because John Peacock proposed it, and so it must be right.

[00:32:57] Jeff: I’ve heard good things about that guy,

[00:33:00] Shannon: Then also this idea that it’s not just about food or sex, it can also be the pleasure of sight where we’re just watching a TV show that actually is , gave me nightmares, as you said, which I thought was really a lovely way to phrase it, the third precept would probably lead one in a different direction.

[00:33:17] Jeff: Yeah. Thank you. Using a framing like that helps me to separate this idea from the religious training that I’ve had in the past, a lot of Catholic school, in which more commandment style things were discussed. Thanks for being open to that.

[00:33:36] Shannon: Yeah, We talked about this idea that love and attachment are seen, I think very skillfully, as you said, very skillfully in this tradition, as two separate things that one can love without clinging.

[00:33:50] Jeff: that’s kind of a new idea for me, too. Certainly the wo rd clinging , is in the air around Buddhism.

[00:33:57] Shannon: You think?

[00:33:57] Jeff: …this like focused, I think you called it the near enemy.

[00:34:00] Shannon: yeah. Mm-hmm.

[00:34:02] Jeff: I hadn’t heard that framing before either. and I enjoyed it cuz it is, close.

[00:34:06] Shannon: And then we talked about, yeah, we talked about, what did you say? Doing some AI post editing of putting Bhikkhu Bodhi’s texts into TV.

[00:34:15] Jeff: Mm-hmm. Yeah,

[00:34:16] Shannon: a great idea. 

[00:34:20] Jeff: Go get ’em. 

[00:34:21] Shannon: Anything else? Uh, anything else from you?

[00:34:23] Jeff: AI, welcome. You’re welcome to this idea. Please, please do leave a comment below. Thanks. This has been an informative discussion.

[00:34:34] Shannon: Thanks for saying so. It’s nice, nice chatting with you,

[00:34:36] Jeff: Nice. chatting with too,

[00:34:38] Shannon: and listeners, I hope that you’re doing well. If you have anything to share with us, please reach out. Hello dharma phd.com. Thanks so much for listening. May you be well.

Outtakes

[00:34:52] Shannon: Do that again. 

[00:34:55] Jeff: Podcasting. Podcasting. Podcasting.