Hello, and welcome back to a better world.
This is your host Mitchell, J Raven and we're very glad you're
joining us again today. Today, we're going to have
another very interesting show we have with us.
Catherine, Ingram, who is the author of this book?
Passionate presence and Catherine goes around the world.
Actually teaching, she conducts, Dharma dialogues, wherever she
goes all over, Europe, Asia the United States and sits in a room
and very, simply speaks. People about the nature of self
and the nature of being which is what this book is about.
And I encourage you to get it and take a look at it for
yourselves and connect to the energy that's within it.
Hello Catherine. Hello Mitchell.
This is wonderful to see you. Good to have you.
So first of all, what is it that everyone gets involved in sort
of a spiritual Endeavor, or path, for different reasons.
It may have some underlying Being similarity, but what was
it? Feel better.
Yeah. Right.
Hoping to get out of suffering. Yes, right?
Yeah. Is that what it was for you?
That was what it was for me. I would say it was, it was to
try to come to terms with the kind of suffering that I was
feeling in through my, you know, young adulthood having had a
very difficult childhood and wanting to make sense of life
and of this world and raised within a particular.
Religious tradition. Not exactly.
No, my grandmother was Catholic, but she died when I was seven.
And then my parents were really not very religious.
So I, when I was about 12, I Came Upon the notion of
agnosticism, which simply means don't know.
Sure. And that made a lot of sense to
me. So I thought for a while I was
an agnostic had a group that belong to.
Yes, I had her, I had a label and but it did.
Have much in the way of explanation of anything.
So I kept going, kept seeking, I didn't ever really particularly
connect with Christianity as a form, and I began to study more
in the Asian traditions in my later, teens having read be
here. Now, by Ram Dass and I was very,
I was very influenced by that, and he had more of many were.
Yeah, and sold a million copies, and I did end of be here.
Now, there was a book Just suggested reading list that he
had put together, and I went out and got every single book on
that book list, really, and read most of them.
Some of them didn't quite click, but I read almost all of them.
So, and that launched me into this whole again seeking a more
of a teacher to, to Really train with, which a process that
eventually led me to naropa Institute in 1974, where Host
of, you know, credible roster of teachers where there and I met
my first teacher, about their Buddhist teacher, began
practicing Buddhist Meditation which I did for 17 years and
helped start a center and helped set up Retreats around the world
in the Vasa training. Yes.
And teacher was Joseph, that was Joseph Goldstein.
Wonderful, wonderful teacher. Yes, the bush order we.
All right, and then after a long time of practice, though, I came
to a point of discontent, And things weren't really, again,
weren't making sense in a way and practice began to Fall Away
the notion of practice began to fall away.
But for a while I gather that it provided you with some sense of
meaning. Yes, some sense of purpose,
immunity Ernie connectedness, yes to community.
But also to life itself. Yes, it's so very much so it was
definitely a rich and And beautiful time, those many, many
years of being with my Buddhist crowd, and training and
wonderful, places often in Asia, just living a life in which we
considered these things on a daily basis and often were in
Deep Quiet Retreat. So that was, that was wonderful.
But then the context though, was there, a sense of direction of
it. Relative to the idea of samadhi
or Nirvana or yes, everyone weakening.
There was a there was definitely an emphasis on progressing on
the path. Yes.
And this became more and more problematic for me and yet
within it. And within the teachings of, you
know, Buddhist Traditions. There's this idea that wakeful
mind is with us all the time. Yes.
It's a paradox. It's like right.
Nowhere to go. Nowhere to progress.
In fact, right? It, which is much more appealing
to me. Yes, I gather that's why I was
just outlining this. Yes.
And so within the structure itself, emits a strange thing to
say because we are the living teaching anyway so it's not.
There isn't some kind of church. You go to and belong to its
yourself. Yeah.
So called within the discipline. Yes.
That's right. Yeah.
But within whatever Community you were in, I'm gathering.
You did not connect to that idea of this is it?
Well, I didn't that wasn't so much emphasized.
Actually, you know that we were very much in a progressive.
You know, you keep practicing. Keep practicing, certain things
will certain - mind stays will eventually fall away.
Well, they weren't falling away. I mean fact, the more that I
looked at them, the worst they seem to be because I could see,
they were so clear. All right.
Exactly, there was no distraction from them.
So so I became very discouraged and kind of all notion of
spiritual practice, just fell away, and it began to look like
my father had always said like a big waste of time.
So unfortunately I was unfit for the world at this point.
I mean, I really didn't feel that, I could just go out and
just try to, you know, play the power game or the money game.
Or the romance game, or whatever happened to be?
It was this though. I had just seen too much and I
fell into depression and, you know, during this period, if I
went into a grocery store and there were just normal people
about in that, which they're usually would be, you know, in
Marin County where I was living at the time, I couldn't be in
there. 45 minutes, I would have to just leave without the
groceries. I just felt like an alien in
this world. Because the Dharma had been my
life and now that wasn't so much you know, appealing to me or I
wasn't connected to whatever I had known and I didn't feel that
I fit in the in the ordinary kind of endangered the
day-to-day. The, you know, the progressive
game of get more, have more, be more.
Be somebody all those things. I wasn't had no interest in that
either. So we're to progressed along the
path. I had.
I was I had deconstructed so much some part of me eating,
right? And some part of me knew that I
was not going to be relaxed and any of those games because they
all looked very temporary and fraught with, you know, all
kinds of problems. So at this point, I then began.
Well, after this two-year depression, there was an
openness You know, I think depression can lead you either
into madness or into into a whole radical shift and there
was this openness and I began to hear about a teacher, an Indian
named bujji very unusual. Indian teacher, who really was
just offering his own direct life experience, really without
a teaching per se But what his message was was that there's
nothing to seek and nothing to do and nothing to get and really
just relax into this sweet taste of true self or true nature,
relax into it. The route relax into what is
right now here with no improvement and When I went and
met him and said in front of him, his confidence in that
relaxed. Sense of presence was
contagious. He'd been had been relaxed like
that a really long time so it was very it was just contagious
the the certainty that he had and the way that it exuded in
everything he said and did and that was the turning point out
of this depression and into really I would call the
mystical, the truly mystical experience of life, where you
are, sitting comfortably in your own skin, in your own self and
you're feeling a connectedness to all that.
You feel, you feel in sitting here right now, a connection to
your own self self on to self, he used to call it, not Mitchell
and Catherine so much, but sell fun to self even though Mitchell
and Catherine are honored. And And coexist and coexisting
in our conversation conversation but that really, it's the
underlying feeling of being and belonging which you feel more
strongly when you're sitting in the center of your being.
And that's where you're hanging out.
And that's what then you begin to feel.
And notice in every other thing, even if you're looking in the
eyes of reptiles, you see it there shining, you know, and in
anything it's active, or So many people, but often people might
feel a kind of alienness, you know, that would be a typical
natural response of biological response.
Your biology will tell you probably to run away but in
fact, another and that might be appropriate in many cases but
another another coexisting awareness can be going on which
doesn't see any Alienness necessarily but sensing being
yes, sensing being exactly right and sensing being animals
interestingly are an incredible expression?
Yes, not beautiful. Russian Russian.
Yes, yes. Because what do they do?
And they're hanging out. Yes.
Well, like I said the other night at, yeah, session.
You know, that the quote I had started the thing with was I
hoped someday to become the person my dog thinks I am.
And I was pointing out that maybe the dog is actually seeing
the real. You, you know, right now, not
someday but actually now relating to that, which is just
here. As far as we know, right, that
dog just does not have a mind full of thoughts and, you know,
plans? Yeah, and he's not doing a whole
one up. One down judging thing, and all
the things that we that we do that.
Give us a feeling of separation. Ocean with each other.
So this perspective really bypasses.
That sense whereby you're much more interested in feeling
family like with someone rather than proving to that person.
Something about yourself or trying to get that person to
prove something about themselves to you.
It is so simple. Yes, it's so right here, yes,
right. And I remember Tropa, since we
were talking about some of this before in his cutting through
spiritual materialism which for me remains at Major classic, you
know. Yeah.
Speaking about the whole idea of spiritual credentials.
Yes. And one of the things Catherine
that I gather in your speaking and writing is that that just
utterly completely Flies out the window, where it belongs.
You know, there's no such thing as that.
There's only being and your your relationship to it.
Yes. Right.
Will act point out in the book and passionate presents.
I outlined seven qualities. That emerge naturally.
When one on when one is sitting in this presence and they're
very simple qualities, that we all already know in our hearts.
Could you spell those outfits? They are tenderness, you know,
we don't everyone understands what tenderness means
discernment, the, the awareness becomes sharper because you're
not constantly on some Personal Agenda that has to be gotten for
you, right embodiment, which is the recognition that you live in
an environment. In an ecosystem, you're an
embedded part of that ecosystem. You have a body.
There's a material reality and Feet are on this Earth and as I
say in the book there may be some Divinity somewhere else
possibly but the only one we're going to know is through this
body and on this Earth. Genuineness or authenticity
genuineness being the the expression of your naturalness
again, without having to do a big presentation and we love
being with people who are genuine, right?
I know I do even if even if they're Wilder crazier, foolish
or whatever it is, if they're in their authenticity, there's this
they get a pass. Silence.
The the quality of Silence, which is the Silence of the
heart, which is the place that is never spoken in any of us
that deep. Well, of silence is one of the
things one comes into touch within this passionate presence.
It's there, as a quality, you can almost feel it.
Delight. Quality of delight which is the
current of joy that if you admit it, you feel, right?
I mean, usually, people are busy reciting their problems.
But underneath everybody loves to be, they still want to be
almost everybody. Very few people commit suicide.
But almost everybody's when faced with not the litany.
Yes, we're faced with not being at all.
They really like being. And if they'll just admit that I
do, Sooner than being faced with not being, then being faced with
death, they would be in touch with this joy.
That is there's really ever-present and I don't mean a
kind of giddy silly pollyannish thing.
I mean, just a current of well-being that is saying oh
yeah, it's good to be alive. Quality of wonder wonder which
set knows that we live in a mystery and that the appropriate
response to mystery is all and wonder and that gives a
freshness to our lives. It gives us a sense of Innocence
it allows us to be to live with beginner's mind as Suzuki roshi,
put it Let's see. I don't know if I've left any
out. Is that seven?
It might have been could I add one?
Yes, add beauty beauty is what actually would say, maybe that's
been woven in a bit. I have a section in the, in the
Delight chapter, in fact. Yeah, called pervasive Beauty a
subsection called pervasive Beauty and it is absolutely an
important aspect. And this sense of beauty, when
you say pervasive what it implies is that it's a shift in,
it's a shift in the perception, it's a shift in the perceiver,
rather. Right?
So that yeah, for instance, I'll tell a story, a quick ways.
When I first went to be with pooja-ji in India, he lived in a
very he's dead. Now he lived in a very polluted
Town terribly polluted. Such that the air was just dark
with we're in India, in Lucknow India and I'm nondescript town
except that it was very polluted and he was there and he was
there. And outside of his home, there
was this mound of garbage, covered, with warthogs, hairy
wart hogs, large ones, eating the garbage and you know, you're
in this darkened, polluted atmosphere and your The snorts
of these warthogs growing over garbage.
I mean, it was like a vision of hell, you know, and at first
when I went to it, yes, it was. And I first, when I went there,
I almost felt nauseous, you know, just looking at all this
stuff and smelling it. And after I had gone there and I
was interviewing him the first week I was there after our first
two hour session of one-on-one interview, I walked out of his
place and the world looked different and the Hogs looked
beautiful. And I was thinking about
warthogs. Look, really beautiful to each
other. A bit of male warthog, great to
have a female Ward honking and the fact that they were eating
the garbage was, no problem. I was happy for them that they
had the garbage there to eat and it had all lightened up in a
very strong way. Again, it was this sense of
instead of a resistance and feeling things as alien, it was
a sense of feeling it, as one's own, you know, just Yes.
It all just felt an extended sense of being.
So, in this way, I speak about pervasive Beauty in the book
that it's a shift in the perceiver, right?
What a great and graphic story because if you could shift that
much rather do something great was going.
Yeah, it's, well, there was something great going on in that
room. Yes, that's right.
Pervasive mean, I think a human Naturally tends toward the
appreciation of and being ensconced in ut.
Yes. And when he or she wakes up a
bit to the order of things. Yes.
You know, the beautiful natural order and I'll tell you, I,
maybe there's even a knife, you don't mind if I make a
recommendation co-author, a book and a few more humor.
Yes, you know, when I know when I More wakeful.
Yes, I see the inherent humor in the whole set up both the human
and the ordinary natural world. Yes, absolutely.
It's just great comic relief for everyone.
Yes, yes. And you you do you become much
more childlike. Not childish, but childlike in
that understanding and things are, you know, funny or now, it
is not. To deny the suffering of the
world at all. There is tremendous suffering in
this world. And, you know, if you if you if
you're not noticing it, you're not paying attention.
Yes. Yes.
And so to hold all of that and let it let it wash through as
the play of existence to know that.
Yes, it hurts to lose the loved ones.
Yes. It hurts to see the cruelty of
humans with themselves and every other creature on earth.
Yes. All of that.
Breaks one's heart over and over again.
You know, to the degree, you let that in and wash through is the
same degree that you can feel the joy as well.
If you're blocking it out on one end, you're not going to feel it
on the other. And you can play it safe and
wear your armor, and not feel much at all.
And be just kind of like in some neutral ground or insulated
insulated. Somehow.
Yes, you can insulate just or be an ostrich, but if you want to
really play it in a rich way. Yes.
And have you need a courageous heart to do it because you feel
a lot. Yes.
You feel so much then you're on this big spectrum of feeling the
intensity of the Suffering. The Of the joy tears.
Come easily and and quickly passed quickly, that's a
function of authenticity and genuineness.
Yes, absolutely. Yes it is.
You Catherine have very beautifully segue into the next
question that I really wanted to bring up here to you, which is
what is the relationship? And it's funny because I know
you've been a social activist in many ways in your life.
Now that you are doing what you're doing, doing the doorman,
Logs and all and I had such a wonderful time with you that
night at Tibet House. It's just very beautiful.
Thank you. And also rich with humor so I
thank you. There is so much suffering and
I'd like to kind of just frame it if I could in this way.
We live next door to each other and the person next door is very
loud and vexatious. Yes, and pollutes.
The water that is then going into my home and fouls, the air
and and disrupts the soil. So my my tomato plants can't
grow properly have the right. Sweet taste, and insured.
My life is now experiencing the suffering because it happens
that my neighbor is going through this himself because of
the tortured - that's a of his own mind, right?
Yes. And yet I'm going to expand that
micro picture to the macro. Yes.
And so we have a planet that's very beautiful.
Yeah that we love and are as you so beautifully put we are our
planet. We are our world and yet we see
elements. It's others destroying it.
Literally destroying the ecosystem.
Not to mention other humans and other sentient beings.
What is the role of someone who is more awake in handling
dealing with that reality? Yeah, well, I mean one element
of it is to see the way in which we also collude that each of Our
Lives is got an Eco price tag on it as well.
And to be very Vigilant about tread.
As Lively as possible. Even though living in frankly,
Living in America, it's very difficult to not be using
resources that a disproportionate way to the rest
of the world. But, but we can, at least have
it in our awareness and try our best to model as Gandhi.
Put it model the change. You want to see be the change,
you want to see? So that's the first part.
And the second part I would say is that we have to come from
understanding first. You know, you couldn't, you're
only going to have an appeal to somebody who you perceive to be
in ignorance. If you have some understanding
of the person and have some way of conversing with the person,
you can't do it just by violence.
You can't just beat them into submission.
It. We don't live in a world where
that's any longer possible as we're seeing.
So clearly on the political stage so this is It's a gandhian
principle and it it works for the most Or it may not always
perfectly work. But for the most part, it works
that if I come to you as a friend and I appeal to you as a
friend first with understanding, you're going to be a lot more
likely to listen to what I have to say.
That's right, there's a human heart inside.
Yes, everyone! Yes, exactly, yes.
And there may be times when you just simply have to stop someone
by any means possible. Yeah there may be those times.
But it's good to have exhausted, all of the other gentle ways.
First and just in terms of you know, just out with it, like,
really political activism in one way or another.
Yeah, and it could be that the pen is stronger than the sword.
It could be any number of ways. These things that in your heart
and your experience really have value.
Absolutely make a contribution. Oh yes, very definitely.
And especially if if they can be informed, This understanding
that we're speaking about here. Yes.
Yes, then they're very effective.
Yeah. That's it's very good to hear
because as we know, so many people on a spiritual path as
its called, yeah, you know, feel that they can sort of deny the
world and material existence in exchange for some kind of divine
experience. That puts all of this away,
right? And yet this is our world as you
one of your points of embodiment.
Yes, we're embodied. Let's use it.
Enjoy yes. And honored and respected
talking about honoring and respecting.
I want to just thank you. Thanks so much pleasure.
Good to have you here. You're doing beautiful work and
I just want to help support that travels around and you as well.
You're doing very beautiful work.
So much Wow, I hope you're awake and in turn on.
As I am, this was very beautiful.
Well, my name is Mitchell. J Raven.
Thanks so much for joining us and I look forward to seeing you
all next week.