In this episode, Noah Rasheta explores how to stop making hard things harder as they discuss the Buddhist parable of the two arrows: the first is the pain life brings, and the second is the suffering we can add through our reactions. He also talks about when it helps to interrupt a familiar thought loop, when to let a feeling run its course, and why he sets alarms at random times to notice what he’s been overlooking. You’ll come away with a simple way to pause in the middle of a hard moment and ask what might help.
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Key Takeaways:
- How noticing your habitual reactions gives you more room to choose what you do next
- What the Buddhist parable of the two arrows teaches about the suffering we add to pain
- How curiosity can help you see another option when your usual response keeps making things harder
- When to interrupt a thought loop and when to let a difficult thought or feeling be there
- How meditation trains you to notice what’s happening in the middle of everyday life
- How Noah uses random phone alarms as prompts to pause, pay attention, and find moments of gratitude
Noah Rasheta is a Buddhist teacher, best-selling author, and host of the Secular Buddhism podcast. He teaches mindfulness and Buddhist philosophy in workshops and retreats worldwide, making these teachings practical and accessible. His work has reached millions and has been shared with organizations like Apple and PwC. Noah led his first sold-out retreat at Drala Mountain Center in 2025 and returns this year with an expanded program exploring self-acceptance, inner peace, and the wisdom of letting go. When he’s not teaching, he enjoys paragliding and spending time with his family.
Connect with Noah Rasheta: Website | Instagram | LinkedIn
If you enjoyed this conversation with Noah Rasheta, check out these other episodes:
Steve Hagen on Perception and Conception
Miguel Chen on Punk Rock and Buddhism
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Episode Transcript:
Noah Rasheta 00:00:00 When we increase our awareness about our propensities or tendencies, then we can act more skillfully and stop doing things that may be unskillful.
Chris Forbes 00:00:17 Welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out or you are what you think ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don’t strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don’t have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it’s not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf.
Eric Zimmer 00:01:02 I’ve joked that if you boiled down everything I teach, you’d get one line. Stop making things worse. When I said that to Noah Rashida, he told me it’s a fair summary of the Four Noble Truths in Buddhism. Life is difficult, and we don’t need to make it any more difficult than it already is. And so much of what we do does exactly that. Noah hosts the Secular Buddhism podcast, and this is a crossover episode, so it’s more a conversation between him and I than just an interview. We talk about the two arrows, about why he sets alarms to go off at random a few different times a day. I’m Eric Zimmer, and this is the one you feed.
Eric Zimmer 00:01:48 Hi, Noah.
Noah Rasheta 00:01:49 Good to see you again, Eric.
Eric Zimmer 00:01:50 Good to see.
Eric Zimmer 00:01:51 You. This is a special.
Eric Zimmer 00:01:53 Episode in which you have a podcast called Secular Buddhism, which is a great podcast. I have a podcast, The One you feed, and we’re going to release this in both of our feeds, and it’s just going to be more of a conversation than it is an interview. So I’m excited to do that. But we talked before and said that we would still start with the parable of the Two wolves to allow you to sort of give your thought on that.
Eric Zimmer 00:02:16 So in the parable, there’s a grandparent who’s talking with their grandchild, and they say, in life there’s two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops. They think about it for a second. They look up at their grandparent and they say, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I’d like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do.
Noah Rasheta 00:02:50 Well, it’s a great parable. I think anyone who encounters that story, it resonates because that really is how things are, right? We’ve got these opposing forces that seem to be at odds with each other at all times. On all things, should I go to the gym? Should I not go to the gym? Should I be nice? Should I say something mean? And I love the point of that story where he says, the one that you feed and the way that relates to me when I think about it and the work that I do, I understand that we have propensities.
Noah Rasheta 00:03:28 And let’s take just the idea of having habitual thought patterns versus more deliberate thought out thought patterns. And in a very similar way, the one that you feed, the one that you continually do, becomes reinforced and more natural and more easy over time. So if you want things to be different, you have to do them differently. So that’s what comes to mind when I hear that parable with those two wolves.
Eric Zimmer 00:03:58 I love the phrase you just use their propensities, because I often think about how do we talk about these things that are recurrent in us, and yet we don’t want to go so far as to go so far as to say like, that’s who I am, or even what I am or how I am all the time, because that’s not the way it is, right? We’re not like that. And yet there is a a way in which these things are sort of they show up again and again. A word I often use is tendencies. We have tendencies toward something. But I also like propensities.
Eric Zimmer 00:04:35 Right. We’re speaking to this idea that, yeah, there are ways in which we are more habitual, and something that has become habitual can become habitual. You can unwind the habit.
Noah Rasheta 00:04:48 Yes, yes. Of course. When I first encountered that word propensities, it really spoke to me as well, because I recognize that part of our habitual tendencies may be learned societal norms, upbringing. But there’s also the genetic component. And my wife and I were actually just talking about this the other day, and how she and I both have very different propensities for certain things based on genetics. Procrastination is actually what we’re talking about, where for her, it’s just it’s come so natural to delay, delay, delay until she’s forced to do it. And I tend to want to get things done a little bit earlier and avoid the rush at the end. But I think there’s something to that, that the idea that we do have propensities, some of which are learned or inherited or genetic and others that we have to put in the the effort and time and energy if we want to change those propensities in ourselves.
Eric Zimmer 00:05:46 Out of curiosity, how did you guys arrive at your style of getting things done and her style of getting things done, being genetic. Like, in what ways did you unwind that from all the other things that it could be? Right. All the conditioning and learning that we’ve had in life.
Noah Rasheta 00:06:04 Well, I should say for this specifically, I don’t know if it’s genetic, but it came to mind as we were talking about her family members and her siblings. And then she was saying, yeah, my dad always and I think certain tendencies could be genetic. I wonder if, if this is a genetic one, there are others. The ones that we have talked about that are genetic. She has a very fast metabolism, and I have a very slow metabolism. And we know that that doesn’t have to do with our lifestyle or eating, because we have the same lifestyle and we eat the same things. So we know that one’s genetic.
Eric Zimmer 00:06:37 Yeah. I think it’s interesting on one hand what sort of genetic and what’s not.
Eric Zimmer 00:06:42 And, and ultimately kind of unknowable in many ways. And I also don’t think it’s ever as clear, you know, epigenetics seem to be sort of showing us it’s not as clear as like something that’s genetic or not, because different genes get turned on by different things that happen in the environment. And I’m oversimplifying a very complicated process, but it’s ultimately sort of unknowable.
Noah Rasheta 00:07:03 Yeah, I think the important thing out of this discussion is, and it ties into the parable, when we increase our awareness about our propensities or tendencies, then we can act more skillfully and stop doing things that may be unskillful. In our case, for example, there are certain foods that I try to avoid. If I have a slow metabolism, I don’t need to slow it down anymore. You know, I’ll make sure I consume fiber and drink a lot of water, or things that she may not have to think about or worry about. And I think that fits well with this idea of when you understand more about yourself, you can feed that portion of you that the wolf that needs more fiber versus the wolf that doesn’t.
Noah Rasheta 00:07:46 And again, that’s oversimplifying it, but I think that’s at the heart of that parable that we can feed the version of us that could lead us down a path to become more this way versus more that way.
Eric Zimmer 00:08:01 My partner, Jenny, and I both wore a continuous glucose monitor for a little while. That sort of shows what different foods do to your blood, and it was fascinating how, like a certain food would make her blood sugar spike in a way that it wouldn’t for me. Like, for whatever reason, brown rice for her was really a problem. Like, it really caused a huge increase in blood sugar and in my case, not so much. We’re all so different. Let’s change directions here and talk about your podcast. It’s called Secular Buddhism. I’m kind of curious what was the path to discovering Buddhism, maybe recognizing that you wanted to think of it from a secular perspective and then and then starting the podcast. What was that like?
Noah Rasheta 00:08:45 Yeah. You know, it’s interesting. Over time, the idea of secular Buddhism has become more irrelevant to me.
Noah Rasheta 00:08:52 Buddhism already being secular in nature or non theistic in nature. But the reason that it came about that way, I had emerged from a faith tradition that was very black and white in thinking there was the one correct path and every other path was incorrect. And I had a crisis of faith. And as I was going through this, deconstructing my belief system, deconstructing my faith, I was searching for a school of thought that would resonate for me and Buddhism did. But with knowing just enough about it to start to get familiar with it, but not enough about it to know that it was already secular in nature. I was very concerned with getting involved with another ism in my life, and I didn’t want that. And I had encountered the term secular Buddhism through Stephen Batchelor, and he wrote a book, confessions of a Buddhist Atheist. And that’s where I was introduced to this notion of secular Buddhism. And the more I learned about it, the more I wanted to share what I was learning and people would ask me.
Noah Rasheta 00:10:09 So when the time came for me to feel like I could start to share concepts and ideas from Buddhism, I knew that people like me, emerging from a faith transition, might not know that Buddhism is not really like a lot of the other religions. So I decided to present it as secular Buddhism to make it very clear for those who really have no knowledge of Buddhism, to not feel threatened, that this is something that they need to consider. Hey, I’m going to become a Buddhist. In fact, I start my podcast every time with the quote or the expression that you don’t need to use what you learn from Buddhism to be a Buddhist. You can use it to be a better whatever you already are. So I heavily emphasize that, and I think the name helps to carry that idea across, that you don’t have to make this more than what you might what you think it is.
Eric Zimmer 00:11:04 Yeah, I agree with you that a lot of the ways of the core thinking of Buddhism is sort of secular in that there’s not a theistic God, and yet there are ways in which certain flavors of Buddhism do become more than secular in, for example, believing in reincarnation.
Eric Zimmer 00:11:23 That takes a little deeper faith, belief. Right. Or, you know, certain Tibetan schools where they’re talking about different demons and different. It’s hard to know how literal to take all that. So I think it’s actually useful to sort of say secular. I mean, I, like you, was drawn to Buddhism because at least the Buddhism that was presented to me, which is obviously what I would get, which is Buddhism presented to a Westerner, was very I would call it almost psychological in the way that it talks about things. And you mentioned Stephen Batchelor. I mean, one of the first books I read, which was so hugely influential to me was Buddhism Without Beliefs that he wrote. That’s an old book at this point, but wow, what a great book.
Noah Rasheta 00:12:04 Yeah, same. That was one of the most influential books for me early on studying Buddhism.
Eric Zimmer 00:12:11 So when you and I were talking yesterday, you were bringing up the idea that more and more you’re getting back to the basics and the core ideas of Buddhism.
Eric Zimmer 00:12:22 Share a little bit about what those are to you. Like what’s the core promise of Buddhism as you understand it?
Noah Rasheta 00:12:30 For me, the core of Buddhist teachings, concepts, ideas always center around the notion of suffering, anguish, dissatisfaction, difficulties. It’s hard to peg it on one specific word. We use suffering most commonly as the translation of words that are used in the Buddhist teachings. But really, it’s that flavor of discontent that arises at times with recognizing, hey, life is hard. And I think the promise of Buddhism is that the relationship we have with that suffering, with that anguish, can be improved. Will we continue to experience suffering and life? Yes, but the way that we relate to it has a very big impact in quality of life. For me, that’s what it always comes back to. It’s what relationship do I have with suffering and not just suffering with my thoughts and feelings and emotions. When I feel strong emotions and I have an aversion to the emotion I might be feeling, what relationship do I have with anger? Rather than thinking, how do I not be angry? To me, it keeps going back to that the relationship that we have with suffering.
Noah Rasheta 00:13:41 That’s what I’m trying to go back to with with all of these concepts and teachings.
Eric Zimmer 00:13:46 Yeah. I mean, that’s certainly one of the things that drew me to it in the very beginning was this acknowledgement that like, hey, like you said, life is hard. There’s a lot of difficulty and pain in life. And I just felt like somebody was like speaking the truth, right? It was like, oh, yes. Now here’s somebody who’s describing the way I understand the world to actually be, instead of pretending that it’s okay. And Buddhism’s not saying that nothing’s okay, it’s saying that there is a pervasiveness of every human is going to have some degree of suffering in life. That’s that’s a big part of what’s there. And so that really appealed to me. The idea that there was a way to, like you said, change our relationship to that. The way I’ve always phrased it was when I first read Buddhist ideas in high school, it was this idea that even if the world was a pile of shit, so to speak, it was a punk rocker.
Eric Zimmer 00:14:43 That’s probably how I would have said it then. Right. Even if the world is a pile of shit, there’s a way to be okay within that. And that’s really what’s always called to me all these years is how within a difficult world, can we be okay?
Noah Rasheta 00:14:58 Yeah. One thing I’ve really valued with this experience of adopting Buddhist practices and holding space for these thoughts and ideas, is how they relate to the everyday aspect of life. I remember at one point in my studies, I came across this notion that one of the things that we fear the most is death, and that life, in a way, is the preparation for that final event that is inevitable for each of us. And then I remember thinking, not having to take it to that extreme, that a lot of what we do in our day to day life is a rehearsal for these difficulties that are bound to come our way at some point in the future. I’m going to lose a loved one. I’m going to be struggling with a flat tire on the side of the road or whatever.
Noah Rasheta 00:15:44 The thing is. And I remember encountering this in real life when a few years ago, my dad passed away from cancer and I got to spend the last ten days or so with him. I flew to Texas, and as I was going through the full range of emotions that you go through, losing a loved one, I remember having this thought that this is what I’ve been preparing for. What relationship do I have with this experience as it’s unfolding, so that I can be fully present to it and not run away from it? On one of those moments, I was with my brothers and we were all like, holding hands and crying. And I remember the intensity of the emotion and the peace that I felt allowing myself to feel it. And I remember distinctly thinking, had I not approached it this way, this experience, I probably would have felt a strong aversion to the feelings that I have. I would have been either trying to pretend that, okay, I’m okay, this isn’t that bad or.
Noah Rasheta 00:16:45 Or distract myself, but instead I got to fully be with the experience and fully. Process the emotions. And I have zero concerns about crying in front of my. Family. And that’s when it hit me. That’s what this is all about. It’s that life is difficult. We’re going to experience difficulties. How do we relate to those experiences as they unfold? Because you only go through that once. And I remember thinking like, this is the first and last time that I’m going to lose my dad one day it’ll be it could be my mom, it could be my siblings, it could be my kids. But right now it’s this. And I didn’t feel that regret. I wasn’t fully with that moment. Instead, I felt just deep gratitude that I got to really process and be with that experience as it was happening. And again, that’s what I value in these concepts and ideas was just a a radical shift in the relationship that we have with the present moment. Instead of always looking for the future, this moment that’s going to be better than this one.
Noah Rasheta 00:17:47 You know, it’s like, no, this is what the moment is. Doesn’t matter if I like it or not, but this is what is right now.
Eric Zimmer 00:18:15 The spiritual teacher, Adi Asante once said to me, he was talking about freedom, right? And that is one of the phrases that Buddhism tosses around freedom, liberation. And he was like, it’s not freedom from it’s freedom too. And what he meant is it’s not freedom from difficult emotions. It’s freedom to actually have difficult emotions but relate to them in a different way. And that made a lot of sense to me. And as a former heroin addict, I have a default to try and find freedom from, like transcend me out of this mess. Please, por favor and a learning for me. And I think it’s a key. Learning for anybody who wants to get over an addiction is that ability to recognize, like, you don’t have to make the difficult emotions go away in order to allow them to be there. You can actually experience them, let them come and let them sort of pass in a way.
Eric Zimmer 00:19:11 And I think that’s always really resonated with me, that freedom too, versus a freedom from yeah.
Noah Rasheta 00:19:17 Oh, that’s great. I think that’s that hits the nail on the head for the benefit of the practice like that.
Eric Zimmer 00:19:23 Do you ever think about whether all this work has led me to suffer less, or has it led me to be happier? And are those the same things is by decreasing the negative, automatically increase the positive. How do you think about that?
Noah Rasheta 00:19:41 I like to think of it with the Buddhist perspective. There’s the story of the two arrows and the idea that you can be struck out of nowhere at any time by an arrow, and that arrow will cause pain. But how we relate to the experience of having been shot by an arrow will produce the pain of a second arrow. In other words, I’ve been hit by this arrow. I hate that this arrow hit me here and now I’m upset. And that’s a new layer of suffering on top of it. Maybe in our Western terminology, this would be the distinction between pain and suffering.
Noah Rasheta 00:20:18 But I think it’s along those lines, the idea that when I think of suffering as it’s what arises when I want things to be other than how they are. That is something that can go away. When I experience the gratitude to be experiencing whatever it is that I’m experiencing. It can still be unpleasant. It can still be painful. It can still be a lot of things. But it doesn’t have to be suffering in that sense. Using this example with my dad, it was that recognition that I’m crying because of the intensity of the experience. I lost someone that I love. I’m thinking of those memories. I’m mourning the time that I’ll get to be with him in the future. I won’t have that now. All of that. None of that had to be suffering. And what I was able to identify in that instance is that I’m not running away from what I’m feeling like the freedom to, like you said, the freedom to feel everything that I’m feeling in a moment like that. I think you can definitely be experiencing pain, but not be experiencing suffering in addition to that pain.
Noah Rasheta 00:21:24 So, like you were saying, is it overtakes. I’m not sure that that’s how I view it. I view it as what’s absent in that moment is wanting it to be different. It’s like, no, this hurts and I feel pain and I’m going to cry. And I don’t want to feel any other way because that’s what I’m feeling. That is peace. So I like to think of peace and suffering as those opposites on the teeter totter. And I can be experiencing peace in the midst of feeling pain or anger or frustration. But it’s suffering that that I’m not feeling that that chaos of I need this to be other than how it is. That feeling is what I associate with suffering.
Eric Zimmer 00:22:08 Yeah, I’ve often joked that if you were to boil down everything that I try and teach you, you could say that, you know, it’s just about not making things worse, which is a very boring sentiment, right? On one level, you’re like, God, that is not going to sell, right? And yet, if you realize the ways in which we make everything worse, how we amplify everything that’s not quite perfect into a bigger and bigger problem.
Eric Zimmer 00:22:33 Not making things worse is a pretty useful skill.
Noah Rasheta 00:22:36 Absolutely. In fact, I think that’s actually a really neat way to frame the core. The Four Noble Truths are the essence of what Buddhism teaches. You could frame it in that exactly what you just said. Life is difficult. We don’t need to make it more difficult than it already is. And that’s, you know, that’s two through four centers around that idea.
Eric Zimmer 00:22:56 Yeah. We’ve been hovering on this idea of of suffering and difficulty. And it’s not that that’s all. Life is by no means right. There’s lots of, at least from my perspective. There’s lots of wonderful experiences in life, but even those often can get clouded over by the ways in which we manufacture suffering. Because and that’s what Buddhism is also saying. It’s not just that bad things are going to happen to you, it’s that good things are going to happen. But your desire to make sure that those good things don’t go away, or your desire to wish that they were better than they actually are.
Eric Zimmer 00:23:30 Like even those. If we’re not careful, we can mess up in our mind.
Noah Rasheta 00:23:35 Yeah, absolutely.
Eric Zimmer 00:23:36 I want to ask you about a recent podcast episode you had, which was called The Unseen Teachers Embracing Life’s Dynamic Lessons. And in it you’re talking about paragliding. So first talk to me about paragliding in general. What is it? How long have you been doing it? And then maybe share some of the lessons from paragliding that that you’ve pulled out that you think apply to broader ideas?
Noah Rasheta 00:24:00 Paragliding is is definitely my go to hobby. I just got back from a paragliding trip yesterday morning actually. So paragliding, if you can visualize what a parachute looks like. It’s a piece of fabric with strings attached to a harness that you happen to be connected to. That’s what paragliding is. It’s a it’s a fabric wing that you can inflate over your head the most traditional way. People will run off the side of a mountain And once that wing is overhead, you can soar and fly with it. You can find air that’s rising.
Noah Rasheta 00:24:37 There are different forms of paragliding. Whether you’re looking for thermal air that’s rising, or you can be along the coast, for example, and you have wind that’s come in off the water. If it hits a ridge, you can do what’s called ridge soaring, which is like surfing but in the wind. And that’s what paragliding is. It’s you, this inflatable wing over your head and the wind. And then it’s evolved. Now they have powered paragliding as well, so you can strap a motor on your back and then it can take you, you can take off from a field. You don’t need a mountain at that point. But what I love about paragliding as a hobby or as a sport is that you have the freedom to fly and go see and experience the world from from a new perspective. And yet you still have to comply with the laws of physics. You have to have the right conditions to be able to fly, or you have to be able to keep the wing over your head, so to speak.
Noah Rasheta 00:25:37 But what I love about it is it’s one of those things that it’s not for everyone. If you’re afraid of heights, I would say paragliding is probably not for you.
Eric Zimmer 00:25:46 And that’s you’re right.
Noah Rasheta 00:25:47 Over the years, I’ve realized this is something I thoroughly love. To the point where I started a school and I teach people to do it. And I recognize it’s not for everyone. And that’s also been my approach with Buddhism. And I think that’s why the secular part of it has been important to me, because I felt like it’s another tool. It’s a thing that you can do. It can bring tremendous joy to the right person in their life. But it’s not for everyone. It’s not like, hey, you have to come learn these things. You need to meditate. Could anyone benefit from it? I believe so, but not. But it’s not for everyone. And in that same way, that’s how I view paragliding. And if somebody wants to go and see what it’s like, I take him up for a tandem.
Noah Rasheta 00:26:30 If they’re like, hey, I don’t ever want to do that, or I think you’re crazy because you do that. I say, well, that’s fine too, because I am a little crazy for doing it, because again, it’s not for everyone.
Eric Zimmer 00:26:41 So it sounds like it’s similar to hang gliding in the in the overall concept, but it’s different in that you’re not sort of strapped into a hang glider or a mini plane. Instead, you’ve got this parachute sort of above you that you’re using, and you can strap a motor on your back if you want.
Noah Rasheta 00:26:58 Yeah, I mean, it’s very comparable to the idea of hang gliding. It’s just they hang gliding as a rigid wing and paragliding is the fabric wing. It’s not rigid, but the principle is the same. You’re soaring, you’re gliding. You’re looking for rising air. They can stay up in stronger conditions than we can because our wing is not rigid. But the principles are the same. And I think correlating this to my Buddhist practice and Buddhist concepts and ideas.
Noah Rasheta 00:27:28 When you start out, it’s useful to have guidance and to be able to know how does this work? How do you strap this on? How do you launch? How do you land? But where it really becomes an enjoyable experience is when you have the skill to be able to go do this safely, completely on your own. And then that’s a process that never ends. You never finish and say, I did it, I mastered paragliding, it’s like it becomes a practice. You do it all the time for however long you get to do it. But there’s not an end goal that says, hey, you did it. It’s just something that you go and you enjoy. That’s how I view Buddhism as well, like an exercise or as a practice. It’s something that I’m always trying to be better at, being better at what the relationship I have with my thoughts and feelings and emotions, understanding why I say and think and do, and the relationship I have with suffering and with the difficulties that I’ll experience in life.
Noah Rasheta 00:28:27 So I like to correlate those two. And another correlation that I’ve made when people have asked me, is it kind of like a kite? Like, what if it has a string on it? In my former worldview, that was usually an analogy that was brought up that were like kites and the wind keeps us aloft. But it’s that string that’s the vital piece of the puzzle, that that string is your connection to God or your connection to the church or whatever that is. And they would bring it up as if that string gets cut. We all know what happens to a kite once you cut the string. And now I would say, well, yeah, that’s true about a kite, but that’s not true about a bird or about a paraglider. So it’s about recognizing, am I a kite or am I a bird, or am I a what? What am I? And then saying, am I doing this skillfully because it’s unskillful to tether the bird to a string. It’s also unskillful to cut the cord on a kite.
Noah Rasheta 00:29:24 So I like to correlate all of these things into my day to day practices as well.
Eric Zimmer 00:29:31 I’ve taken up rock climbing over the last number of years. Mostly I do it indoors, but I do it outdoors from time to time, and I’ve been amazed at the number of like, analogies I can make out of rock climbing to life. Right? I mean, like the most obvious one is the first time I went outdoors, I got to the wall and I looked up and I was like, there’s no way I’m ever going to get up there. And then I started looking at the wall and I was like, I don’t even know where to, like, what am I even supposed to hold on to? Like when you go to a rock climbing gym, right? Like, here’s the holds you can use. You can use the blue ones. So you may not know which one do you use or how to use it, but you at least know like those are my choices. You look at a rock wall and you’re like, I have no freaking idea.
Eric Zimmer 00:30:13 But probably the first 10 or 15 minutes I did not go one foot. I went nowhere and I was like, there’s just no possible way I’m ever going to do this. And obviously the lesson is that at the end, I was all the way up at top of that wall. And you know how? Because I just kept trying. Right. Like, I just I thought I couldn’t and I didn’t give up. And I mean, I learned that one again and again and again. I’m partway up and I’m like, I can’t do this. I’m not going to be able to do this. And I’m sorry. All right, take a breath, relax. Just hold on and keep going. And so that’s just one. I mean, there’s been other ones about like how useful it is to climb with another person. There’s just so many that can come out of doing something physical like that, at least for me. You know, obviously I’m looking for the analogies, but they’re there.
Noah Rasheta 00:31:04 Yeah.
Noah Rasheta 00:31:04 For sure. That’s how it’s been for me with paragliding too.
Eric Zimmer 00:31:07 I want a paraglider like I absolutely want to paraglider. So we’ll have to arrange.
Noah Rasheta 00:31:12 A little experience. If you’re ever out my way, definitely let me know. I’d be happy to take you out.
Eric Zimmer 00:31:44 Check in for a moment. Is your jaw tight? Breath shallow. Are your shoulders creeping up? Those little signals are invitations to slow down and listen. Every Wednesday, I send weekly bites of wisdom. A short email that turns the big ideas we explore here in each show. Things like mental health, anxiety, relationships, purpose into bite size practices you can use the same day it’s free. It takes about a minute to read and thousands already swear by it. If you’d like extra fuel for the weekend, you also get a weekend podcast playlist? Join us at one UFI net newsletter that’s one Youth Net newsletter and start receiving your next bite of wisdom. All right, back to the show. So you mentioned a couple minutes ago.
Eric Zimmer 00:32:37 Working with our thoughts a little bit. And I’m curious about how do we work with our thoughts and emotions skillfully. And I’m going to narrow that down a little bit. You and I talked about this. Right. Because there are certain scenarios in which there are thought patterns or emotions that are going on inside of us, where we’re going to make a decision to try and change those or to intervene in some way. Like, I’m just not going to let this thought pattern run unsupervised throughout my brain all the time, right? So there are scenarios where that is generally the approach, and then there are other scenarios in which the approach is a little bit more like, I’m just going to like, let whatever is here. Be here. Right. You gave the example of being at your your dad’s bedside as he’s dying, right? You just allowed sadness to be there. That was the wise approach. You let it be. And sometimes that’s what the best thing to do with thoughts or emotions, right? You fight them and they just get stronger.
Eric Zimmer 00:33:40 So I’m curious how you think about when do I do what approach? How do I know whether this is I should just let this kind of be and do it? Or when is this something that is, as we would say in Buddhist circles, we use the term skillful or unskillful. This is an unskillful approach right now, and I’m going to try and change it.
Noah Rasheta 00:34:03 Yeah. So I think that’s a good question. The idea of knowing where that line is skillful versus unskillful. And I think the most appropriate answer, of course, is going to be it depends, because that may be different for every person and their unique circumstances, but I think one telltale sign would be having the thought is the skillful or unskillful means. There’s already the awareness that maybe there’s another way. Maybe I’m not doing this the best way that I could. So then I would say lean into that with curiosity. Why am I even thinking if this is skillful or unskillful, and then give that room to see where that goes, that where that thought goes? Because I think a common thing for a lot of us, natural human thing perhaps, is habitual tendencies.
Noah Rasheta 00:34:57 Like this is what feels natural. I don’t need to question it being any other way, because this is what it is, and we go through life that way, unintentionally making it more difficult than it needs to be. And it might not be until you see someone else and say, well, hold on, that’s not that difficult for them. That might be the spark that makes you think, what am I doing differently? Or it could be that the pain or the suffering that one experiences is enough to make you say, hey, this is really difficult. Maybe there’s another way. To me, those are some of the signs to look for. That would make me think maybe there’s another way to relate to the thoughts, or to the feelings or to the emotions. And if that’s the case, what can I do? Can I be more skillful and then start exploring that route? I know that’s exactly how it was for me with specific instances, like I recall going through the faith crisis that I mentioned around that same time I was going through a marriage crisis as well, and it was the combination of the two that really started to get me thinking along these lines of, maybe there’s a more skillful way to to be in this relationship.
Noah Rasheta 00:36:13 And then I started exploring. Well, what if we go to marriage counseling and. And then I’m starting to read books and learned how to be a more effective communicator. None of that had to change. I could have could have gone on being just the way I’ve always been. But it was these little moments where you start to think maybe there is another way. Where is that line? I think, like I said, it depends, but I think the practice is to be open to the idea that at any given moment, there may be a better way. So always be curious. I think curiosity is the word that I like to highlight the most there. It’s like, just be curious. There might be a better way, there might be a worse way, but at least be open to that.
Eric Zimmer 00:36:57 I like what you said there, that this recognizing suffering is actually a really useful thing to recognize. Like something is going on inside of me here, right? I study a lot of behavior science, behavior change stuff.
Eric Zimmer 00:37:12 And there’s a there’s an idea of triggers, right? A trigger is something that reminds you to do something. There’s negative triggers like I’m triggered by I go into this neighborhood. It makes me want to buy drugs. But there’s positive triggers, too. An alarm clock goes off. It reminds me to do something. If we could start to use emotional based triggers, things like, oh, I’m suffering as a way of saying, okay, now that I’m triggered, what do I want to do? Like you said, recognizing there’s a different choice. And the phrase that I kept coming back to more recently, over and over is the idea of is this useful? Is this thought pattern or emotion that I’m feeling useful in some way? So, for example, if we go back to your father at the gravesite, like sadness and crying is grief, it’s useful at that moment. It’s appropriate. It makes sense. Thought patterns might be useful if I’m trying to figure something out. Right? If I’m in the middle of like, oh, okay, I’m really feeling lousy, but part of that is because I’m thinking about my marriage situation and what I could do different.
Eric Zimmer 00:38:19 That’s useful. It’s useful. But there are also plenty of times where if we were to examine, we would go, well, this is not useful. I’m thinking the same thing that I’ve thought 25,000 times before, and all 25,000 times I’ve thought it has made me unhappy. And so if that’s the case, then maybe since it’s not useful, that’s when I try and see if I can change it. I think the other thing I often think about is like what actually works? I’m generally of the belief, like if you’re having a negative thought pattern, if you can change it, that’s probably a good idea. But sometimes we recognize it. Trying to change it simply doesn’t work, in which case then I might shift into, okay, well, I can’t seem to modify this. So now my work is to let it be. I think the creators of acceptance and commitment therapy, one of them, Stephen Hayes, talked about this idea of it being like a radio that’s playing in your neighbor’s apartment.
Eric Zimmer 00:39:20 Like, you can’t turn it off. It’s not your radio. So at that point, you probably should just work on relaxing and being like, well, there’s going to be that sound in the background. You know, those are just some of my thoughts on that, that core idea.
Noah Rasheta 00:39:33 Those are great. And I love that analogy of the neighbor’s radio, because a lot of the things that bring us discomfort are things that are outside of our control. In a scenario like that. Staying with the thought of, well, maybe I can change, it is just not a useful thought because you can’t.
Eric Zimmer 00:39:52 Right. Yeah. It’s interesting. One of the core practices of Buddhism is meditation. And one of the things I think is interesting about meditation, it took me a long time to actually see what one of its core values was for me, and one of its core values was recognizing that I can’t not think, and I took that on as a real problem for a long time. I went, oh, I’ve got, I’ve got a, I got trained myself so I can control my thoughts.
Eric Zimmer 00:40:22 And it took me years to sort of go, well, what’s really interesting about this is that I’m not creating them, so I can relate to them very differently. Then if I’m like, again, back to the neighbor’s radio, right? Like the sound is just coming up, how can I relate to it? You use that word early on a lot. How do I relate to these things differently? And that insight of these things are happening on their own is one that we often find problematic, but I actually find liberating.
Noah Rasheta 00:40:55 I think it ties in well with the notion you brought up earlier, the freedom to and freedom from. A lot of times when people first encounter Buddhism or meditation specifically, they view it as this exercise that if you do it right, it’s freedom from whatever I’m experiencing. Like, here’s, here’s my life. I’m going to meditate and experience freedom from this and go to some alternate state rather than what really happens is freedom, too. It’s like, I’m going to sit here and experience the freedom to feel and experience whatever it is I’m experiencing.
Noah Rasheta 00:41:34 It might be noticing the neighbors radios playing, and I don’t like that song, and just noticing and being like, it’s okay to not like it. It’s okay to sit here with whatever you’re experiencing. But the thought that somehow I’m doing it wrong if I have not escaped this to get to that, that’s just not helpful, because that’s not how it works. But then something beautiful happens. When you change that relationship, you have to the experience you’re having. And the irony is that the neighbor’s radio is still playing. And maybe you still don’t like that song, but now you don’t suffer from it. So the relationship with that thing, whatever it is, that’s what changes. Rather than thinking. It’s the thing that needs to change, right?
Eric Zimmer 00:42:18 Because sometimes you can’t change the thing. Sometimes you can. And in which case do, but sometimes you can’t. One of the things that you and I both think a lot about is bringing this idea of practice into our everyday life. And again, with Buddhism, most people think the practice is meditation.
Eric Zimmer 00:42:36 That’s the core practice, and it is one of the core trainings that that Buddhism encourages and recommends. But even if somebody were to get to the point where they’re meditating 30 minutes in the morning or an hour in the morning or whatever, let’s just assume somebody even gets to that level, which most people won’t or don’t. Right. But if they do, you get up from meditating. You’ve got the whole rest of your day. How do you find it useful to think about bringing these ideas, these ideas that could change our relationship to suffering or liberate us from a certain degree of suffering. How do we bring those into our day to day life in a way that they actually have the potential to change us?
Noah Rasheta 00:43:21 Yeah, that’s a that’s a good point and a good question. I feel like with meditation as the example here, because it is kind of viewed as the thing I have to go sit with. I sat there for 15 minutes. I wasn’t good enough, I needed to be 30, or I needed to be an hour or whatever.
Noah Rasheta 00:43:36 When the reality is I like to think of meditation in this sense, in the same way that I would think of exercise. The benefit of exercising isn’t necessarily experienced while you’re exercising. It’s for the rest of the day and the rest of the week that because I work out regularly, I’m capable of lifting this thing and putting it away or and not having my back go out. Meditation is similar. So in that sense, I like to think of meditation as it’s something that I’m practicing at any given time for the benefit of real life. That’s what I’m really after. It’s not meditation that matters. It’s my day to day lived experience that matters, right? And when they kind of become synonymous, how I meditate is how I’m going to live my life and how I live my life is how I meditate, then I don’t have to view them as these two separate things. It’s my day to day lived experience is full of meditative moments where I’m not sitting on a couch or doing anything specific that you would think of as meditation, but what I am doing is I’m fully present to the experience as it’s unfolding, whether it’s washing the dishes or talking to my kids or hearing for the 100th time the story that my kids wanting to tell me about their friend, but I’m fully present to it.
Noah Rasheta 00:45:00 That to me is meditation. And that’s why I view meditation as a beneficial practice, but I don’t like the idea of getting lost in thinking if you’re not doing it, you’re wrong or you know what I mean. Or if you’re not doing it long enough, I’d just like to think of it as a tool that helps me to be more aware of everything that’s unfolding in real time, as it’s unfolding in real time for the rest of the day. That just happens to be a moment of the day that I dedicate to practicing the art of paying attention.
Eric Zimmer 00:45:33 And so is your experience that by doing the practice of meditation, that way of relating to the world just naturally filters into the rest of your life? Or are there ways in which you try and actively make sure that it filters into the other aspects of your life?
Noah Rasheta 00:45:53 I would say it’s a little bit of both. I think from having a time of my life where these concepts were completely foreign and meditation wasn’t a thing to another stage of life where I practice meditation.
Noah Rasheta 00:46:05 I think there’s the idea that it becomes more natural and habitual to notice something that I may not have noticed before simply because I’m practicing noticing. So there’s that element with it. But then the more deliberate aspect of it I’ve had, for example, one of my meditative practices that isn’t like sitting on a cushion, it’s setting a timer. You could do this with your watch or your phone that when it goes off, you just look around and say, well, what can I notice right now that I’m not noticing? So I did this with an exercise looking for causes and conditions. This was to practice seeing things through the lens of interdependence. And what I would do is I would just look at something and then say, what did it take for this thing to be? And then thinking, thinking of all the steps that led to that thing being what it is. And I did this with my little alarm that would go off random times, 3 or 4 times a day For months and months and months.
Noah Rasheta 00:47:03 But it was one particular day I was sitting in a school bus. I’m a substitute school bus driver, and while I was waiting for the next route, just pulled off to the side of the road. That happened to be one of those moments that I started looking around and looking at all the little knobs and the dials on the dash, and as I started to think, well, what did it take for this to be what it is? And I was thinking of whoever invented it. There’s whoever made it. How did it get here? Like, my mind just connected this moment of me looking at something as simple as a little knob. I felt so connected to a vast world that I couldn’t even think of where that web ends. And then what I experienced was just tremendous gratitude that I get to be here, connected in time and space to all these people, that none of us are even aware of each other through a simple moment of observation, just to look at it and think of this differently.
Noah Rasheta 00:48:01 And that really stuck with me. And from that moment on, I would have other instances like that with people, with the person who had just honked and then cut off in front of me. And I think, what did it take to reach that moment? And I don’t know the answers. I don’t know, but I know that it was a lot. And again, I every time I do that, I just feel gratitude. So that’s an example of like being more deliberate with the practice. Yeah. But the result that I feel often through doing that is just gratitude. Like I get to be here in this moment in space and time connected to everything, and that I noticed it. I often think in those moments, what if I hadn’t noticed? I would have probably just got about my day being annoyed or upset about something insignificant. But instead I felt for even a brief moment, connected to everything.
Eric Zimmer 00:48:50 I loved that for a few different reasons. I think it’s there’s a lot of things in there that are really instructive.
Eric Zimmer 00:48:56 I mean, the first is that use of a timer or some we talked about earlier a trigger, right? Your timer is your trigger to practice something and what you practiced. Each little moment of that is sort of laughably basic, right? It’s like your timer goes off and you think about what did it take for this microphone to be here, and you do it, and if so, what? Big deal. Right. You’re done. And you move on. Right. And if you do that 3 or 4 times a day, day after day after day, it’s some juncture. What you’re describing is that something more profound will come out of that. Yeah. So this little by little approach is if you isolate these things, one of them at a time, you would go, so what? It doesn’t matter. But collectively they can turn into something really significant. And so I love that that you’re sort of bringing all that together I call it it’s a term I borrowed from someone, but I call those like still points.
Eric Zimmer 00:49:55 And you could think of a still point as like a little container. And if you can stitch those into your day like you do with a timer. Or you could do it like every time I go to the bathroom or whatever it is, then you can put whatever you want into that little still point. Yours was a reflection on interdependence, which you did again and again. Or it could simply be, like you said, what is something that I can notice that I’ve never noticed before? Or what are five things that I can see right now, or a reflection on why you want to be patient with your children? It doesn’t matter what you put in there, but that consistent, regular reflection over time, it’s actually the way in which our thinking and our default reactions to life change.
Noah Rasheta 00:50:39 Yeah. And, you know, a good time to do it is when you’re having to do something that you don’t necessarily want to do, because then it’s combating the habitual tendency to feel negative. For example, washing the dishes is something that I never particularly enjoy that, but it’s one of the tasks that I’ve taken on and the dynamic in our home.
Noah Rasheta 00:51:01 And I thought, I’m going to just do this until I finally like doing it. Well, I never just started to like doing it, but when I made it part of my meditative practice that in the time that I’m washing the dishes, I’m also thinking, what is something that I hadn’t noticed or hadn’t thought about? Then it changed the relationship with the experience of washing the dishes. So now it’s not a negative one. I look forward to it as, oh, I’m going to meditate a little later when I’m washing the dishes or stopped at the red light. There’s another great one. Most people don’t enjoy being stopped. It’s like, oh dang, I got the red light. But what I noticed for me is it’s like, oh, I got the red light. Okay, good. I’ll take a few seconds here. And one of the practices I do at a red light because it’s usually the same route. It’s not like I’m somewhere new, but I’ll say, what’s something I have never noticed about this area? And it’s shocking how much we don’t notice.
Noah Rasheta 00:51:54 I can’t tell you how many times I’ll look over, look at a specific detail on a building that I had never noticed, that they had that red thing there on the corner of the building, and that’s it. That was the only goal. The light turns green. Keep going. I think it’s those little simple things that, like you said in the moment, you might say, so what? What does this matter? But it’s at some other moment in time where that propensity, that habit kicks in and now you gain an insight or something that’s actually a big deal. And you say, well, I wouldn’t have noticed this had I not been practicing it on all those little insignificant, who cares moments.
Eric Zimmer 00:52:28 Yep, yep, I love that. Before you check out, pick one insight from today and ask, how will I practice this before bedtime? Need help turning ideas into action? My free weekly Bites of Wisdom email lands every Wednesday with simple practices, reflection and links to former guests who can guide you even on the tough stuff like anxiety, purpose and habit change.
Eric Zimmer 00:52:51 Feed your good wolf at one you feed Net newsletter. Again when you feed net newsletter, we’re nearly at the end of time, but one of the things we said we would do is talk about a couple of our favorite books that we like relating to Buddhism. So we’ve already talked about Stephen bachelors work. What would you say? Confessions of a Buddhist, Atheist and Buddhism without Beliefs. What are a couple other books that have been really important to you?
Noah Rasheta 00:53:18 There have been a few, I think one that I’ve revisited over and over again is Rebel Buddha by Zog. Chin up. And for whatever reason, that one just has really resonated for me. What he presents in that he goes through the the core Buddhist teachings and ideas, but it’s all presented through this lens of being rebellious against the habitual. Like the idea of going against the stream. It’s kind of that same notion that it’s like everything that’s configured in me is hardwired to want to just take the easy route, even if it’s not the ideal route.
Noah Rasheta 00:53:59 But the rebel Buddah in me could say, hey, maybe there’s another way. Maybe it doesn’t need to be as difficult as it is. So that’s one that I enjoy. And then I always recommend any of my children’s books, but the one that I have really been enjoying from her is When Things Fall Apart. I think that’s a good one. And the reason why is because in life, like we talked about earlier, Buddhism isn’t saying life is difficult and that’s it at the end. But what it is saying is there will be difficulties in this book. She expresses it with this idea that things are always coming together and falling apart, and then they come together and then they fall apart. And that’s always happening. And that’s really stayed with me. That image that in my day to day lived experience, I see it. Things are coming together and things are falling apart and that’s not going to end. So those are two books that I highly recommend to anyone interested in these ideas.
Eric Zimmer 00:55:01 Well, When Things Fall Apart is one of my favorites.
Eric Zimmer 00:55:04 As I was going through a divorce when my son was two. It was just a brutal time for me in that book was incredibly helpful. I’ve not read Rebel Buddha, but it makes me think of. There was a teacher, Noah Levine. He wrote Against the Stream in Dharma Punx. Now, apparently there were some sexual misconduct allegations around him in his sangha, and I don’t know what his real and what is not real and what has been found. All that aside, he’s a brilliant teacher. I can’t speak to who he is as a person, but as a teacher, he’s a brilliant teacher. And I guess with my background in punk rock, I loved those books. And then there’s a book that I like called Buddhism, Plain and Simple, by a teacher, Steve Hagen. It’s a book that’s just about Noticing and seeing and that that’s the heart of the whole thing. It’s a really simple but really profound and powerful book. A path with Heart by Jack cornfield is always a classic.
Noah Rasheta 00:56:01 I’ll have to check those out.
Noah Rasheta 00:56:03 I’m not familiar with the one you mentioned.
Eric Zimmer 00:56:05 Yeah, well, no, it’s been a pleasure. I’ve enjoyed sort of doing this collaborative episode together, so thank you so much.
Noah Rasheta 00:56:12 Yeah. Thank you to for making this happen. It’s been great.
Eric Zimmer 00:56:15 Thank you so much for listening to the show. If you found this conversation helpful, inspiring, or thought provoking, I’d love for you to share it with a friend. Share it from one person to another is the lifeblood of what we do. We don’t have a big budget, and I’m certainly not a celebrity, but we have something even better. And that’s you just hit the share button on your podcast app, or send a quick text with the episode link to someone who might enjoy it. Your support means the world, and together we can spread wisdom one episode at a time. Thank you for being part of the one You Feed community.
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