Transcript: Episode #171: Tempel Smith, Part 1
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Tempel Smith 00:01
As the way our hearts enliven when we see the happiness or good fortune of others, or even ourselves. So when that happens in your heart, the old Pali word for that is mudita. And like all of these qualities, they're actually natural to your heart, we've all felt it, you can see little children having these qualities of heart. So it's not something we have to import from the outside in. But once again, navigate within and see if we can find where it's already been in our heart where it's already living in us, or we've already experienced that's a starting place.
Host 00:45
Whether one is listening to this in Myanmar or from outside the country, we know what is a very difficult time for those of us who hold the golden land and its people in our hearts and trying times like these, we can all use a bit more care and compassion in our lives. So on behalf of the team here at insight Myanmar, I would like to say in the traditional way meta is offered, may you be free from physical discomfort, may you be free from mental discomfort, may You not meet dangers or enemies, May you live a peaceful and happy life and May all beings be free and come out of suffering. And with that, let's move on to the show.
01:25
A man's hunger for money has led to the hunger of millions What is there to hold on to when even your body has an expiration date?
01:53
A
02:01
ha ha ha ha ha ha ha I.
Host 02:36
Really pleased for this episode of insight Myanmar podcast to be joined by temple Smith talking about his experiences meditating and learning a bit about Buddhist Burma. So temple. Thanks so much for taking the time to join us.
Tempel Smith 02:50
Oh, it's great. Thanks for inviting me.
Host 02:53
So before we get into where you went to Burma, and how that influenced you, if you could just take us back talk a bit about where you came from, and your family growing up in your early Inklings into spirituality and eventually Buddhism.
Tempel Smith 03:08
Yeah, so I was born in Providence, Rhode Island. And my family were professors at Brown University. And I grew up on the east side of Providence for those listeners who know about them Brown University in RISD, and that neighborhood of Providence, it's really a beautiful little city, I grew up there in sort of middle class, upper middle class background, with, again, a strong relationship to Brown University in the background of my life, because both my parents were professors there. And, and then, you know, I've reflected a lot upon the story of how I got into the Dharma. And one thing, it's, I can't tell how much of it's just my mind making meaning. But my, my parents got divorced when I was four. And I've actually looked back at that as being one kind of crack in the conventional story that you could get married and be happy, because there was quite a contentious divorce. And so by the time I even started to have coherent memories around three or four, I remember a lot of family tension. And then we sort of went into this divorce proceedings. So I can kind of look back and see some very formative experiences that led me to going so deep into the Dharma, and I can't tell if I'm just seeing something is or isn't there, but my parents divorced early on, and kind of put me outside the dream and my belief that there was a way to live your life and get this happiness that society promises. So that's one. And then both my parents had grown up in different Christian churches. But they both had left them, my dad gently and my mom more forcefully. So that by time, my brother sister and I were growing up, there was sort of an implicit rejection of religion, and is not a source of truth, not a source of constant constellation. Not a way to be oriented. So, religion was kind of outside of our immediate family home, I had relatives that were more religious, and you could see the religious activity of the world around you. But it wasn't inside our home, growing up. So what was inside our home, which is also I think a leading into my future Dharma pursuit was that my dad was a professor of German, but he really got into Marxist understanding of how society shapes the people within it. And my mom became a neuroscientist. And so while growing up if they were, if there was a kind of a religion to our family, which I think sometimes these very strong academic families, sometimes their own belief systems can take on a religious worldview, because they get so deep into their topic, that there was a strong filter of seeing things through Marxist lens from my dad's, and then seeing things through genetic determinism and neuroscience with my mom. And a funny thing about that is they're both very Deconstructive. There's not sort of this is how things are, you just take things take life and just move forward as things are, there's a lot, there's kind of a strong belief system, of how things are created, how people are created, how society is created. And so for my mom, it was this biological determinism. And she loves the book, The Selfish Gene, and everything is just about genetic replication. And then my dad, for my dad, it's centuries of human history, ruled by economics and class conflict. And so as I was growing up and asking questions about the world, those are two very strong filters. And because they'd gotten divorced, they had a bit of an argument that they were passing through the kids about, was it nature? Or was it nurture? And what were the actual forces of that created human society. And so to grow up with that, in our around our kitchen table, or to know, their friends was to be around a lot of that way of thinking, seeing things through this neurobiological lens, or seeing things through this very strong and impassioned Marxist lens. And for both of those, there was also kind of the undermining of the sense that you could just live your life and that you were being driven by strong forces, usually, to the individual unconscious. So even that actually shaped a lot, the way that I started philosophizing about the world when I was a teenager. So I count those three things as being very formative, my parents divorce, my dad's Marxism, and my mom's neuroscience. And And the fourth thing that ended up being a very big player in all this is that when I was 12, I got to go up to this very intense Newing Wilderness Camp is called a camp. But we would go for weeks at a time, sometimes six, seven weeks, out into the Canadian wilderness. Not see other people this six canoes going for a long time. And for my teen years, those were the happiest months of the year, being out there in the wilderness. And what I saw every time I went there is that I would get happier, I would get a sense of calm coming over me. I would feel both humbled by being out there, but also a sense of inner strength. And there's a lot of we all noticed it. Those people who really love to go on these Wilderness Canoe trips, and so I would go every year And then I would come back and go into my school year and feel a kind of decay of that strength kind of decay of that simplicity, and start to get entangled again, in conventional norms. And so something awoke in me, in those Wilderness Canoe trips, where I knew that no matter how tangled up by God, during the school year, I could go and live in the wilderness. And those tangles would break apart. And as a young as a teenager, I was trying to figure out how not to get re tangled when I came back from the wilderness. And then how else could I untangle myself besides going on a canoe up to the far north and leaving everything behind, I didn't really want to leave everything behind. But I didn't know how to stay connected with people and not find myself entangled again, and insecurities or split attention. And going to that Wilderness Canoe camp actually became my first sort of committed spirituality. And the funny thing is, I was very anti religious because of the neuroscience and Marxism. So this deep spirituality came in this side door, became very important to me, but I never knew that it was spiritual, or that it was religious, or people could make a religion of wilderness living, because nobody around me interpreted those experiences that way. So I felt like I was the first person who had ever discovered this, I tried to talk with people about it, nobody else had the experience. And so it was a very private, but powerful way of understanding myself of kind of growing myself of solving some of my inner insecurities. And I became very passionate about it, but all people thought was I had this strange obsession with canoeing, but they didn't see how globally these experiences were impacting me. So if, if they had thought that it was going to lead to a deep spirituality, they might have been more concerned about it, but no tracking, that I was having these, these deep revelations that were early experiences of non self emptiness, the past interconnectivity, those are very common experiences out in the wilderness that I was having as a teenager, right? Back and nobody could talk about it with me.
Host 12:48
Yeah, that's, it's really interesting. I've had a number of these conversations. And I realized that a commonality that runs through it is this kind of pre meditate pre formal meditation, pre Buddhism, whatever you want to call it, of people who earlier in life have some really profound experience that they just always want to get back to, or extend or develop. And then somehow the memory of that experience leads them into, into wanting to do something more formal and more focused and, and gathering which I'm sure we'll get to in a moment, with your story. But just to pause at a moment, and that place, it reminds me of a number of things going on in my mind, of course, I have a number of my own thoughts from my childhood of those those kinds of special moments were where I, when I started doing meditation, I realized, oh, this was this experience in nature, this experience by myself that this is similar to now this formal experience. It also makes me think of others. I think of Blanca and of his. There's a tree in Mandalay, where he references that he sat down with his grandfather, who was one of his great influences in life. And I don't know if he actually, I don't know how deep his experience was if he went and do a jhana or if he was just casually practicing on apana. But he just described this immense peace that he felt under this tree with his grandfather observing his breath. And then the experience in Mahamuni temple as well and the Mandalay and the experience of, of peace there as well, which led into these greater, more and more formalized meditation experiences. I also have to laugh because I think the funniest story I've ever heard of these kinds of pre meditation experiences that just give you a snippet of what's possible, is a story that was relayed to me about someone who was practicing some kind of psychedelics LSD or something and had this this this grand hallucination where he was just in this some kind of fantasy land, some kind of forest just so incredibly peaceful and the he sat down out there. And then this giant sat down next to him. And they were both just sitting there, this this man and this giant. And the giant turned to him and said, Well, this, this is pretty peaceful, isn't it? And the man that was on LSD said, yes, it's pretty incredible. And the giant said, Well, this experience will never again be access to you unless you put in 1000s of hours of meditation. And he snapped his finger and the whole hallucination went away. And from that day onward, that guy stopped doing drugs and became a meditator, because that was the advice the hallucinogenic giant had given him of that snippet, but it's just, it's really, I think you could probably it's, it's making me think you could probably do a collection of stories right here of, of not of not even going on to the spiritual biography that one develops, but just categorizing all these kinds of pre meditation moments of just something that happens sometime in childhood or adolescence, or even in youth, that, that, that one doesn't really know or understand or know how to conceptualize what it is, but keeps wanting to get back to and that somehow becomes an impetus for the path.
Tempel Smith 16:09
Yeah, absolutely. And I would imagine, many people have that pre cognition or that pre sense of things ripening in them, that even had them start searching. Again, if you're a Western, late in life convert, or you start exploring in your 20s, or later, something is spring that and so in hindsight, you can probably identify what those things were, it makes me think a little bit of the Buddha sitting down under the rose apple tree and having a very clean relationship to absorption. That wasn't part of a formal tradition. So later, when he trains in absorptions, it comes with a whole cosmology and, and a whole belief system. Whereas when he's 12, he just has a drop into the first jhana. And because it's so clean with concepts, it's so easily accessed without taking on a whole training, than it does have a lot of innocence. And I think about some of my earlier experiences, because they weren't connected with my parents, they weren't connected with with my dominant culture, that they would grow. They had a certain cleanness to them. But they were very happenstance, when they would happen, I didn't know how to train in them. But that there were these huge experiences happening and no language for it also kept them clean from putting them into context. And so a lot of the context I've added is after the fact, but in that even in early practice, when you don't understand what's happening, or you don't understand the map, you're being shown, you can actually have some great experiences early on that don't get tangled up in matching them against some, some map nap. And I think
Host 18:03
that's also where the challenge comes in balancing this, because pre formal meditation experience, there's no as you say, there's no real roadmap or teacher understanding. But there's certainly a danger, which I definitely fell into in my practice of, once you get in that formal system, there could be a kind of rigidity, and a kind of focus on the rules. And an attention of this is the practice and what I should do. And I, I just remember one time in a retreat where I was trying a silent retreat, I was trying so hard to follow my breath. And it was just getting harder and harder. And I was getting so lost and confused and didn't understand why I couldn't do it. And I was sitting in my were in tents at the time and Massachusetts, and I was sitting there in the tent waiting for the formal session to began. And suddenly I realized that I was completely aware and, and mindful of the sound of rain on the tent. And it was just such a beautiful, wonderful thing. And so I started to contrast what it was like having this natural awareness without trying of the rain. And this forced awareness that was driving me crazy with the breath. And as I started to become more aware of the sound of the rain falling, and started to bring that awareness to that I felt that same tightening, you know, that same kind of like, what was and suddenly the natural awareness of the rain sounding which I was so in touch and present for suddenly became this chore and this judgment and this, you know, this effort and I always kind of remember that moment, not as providing me any real answers, but kind of posing that question of what it's like to have that natural awareness of things just happening, while also a regard for the formal practice and the path and the teachers who came before. But not being stuck too rigid. I think that's probably a razor's edge that we all have to walk.
Tempel Smith 19:54
Exactly. And I think it's especially hard for Westerners. to approach those teachings and those teaching methodologies as practice methodologies, because we just have different armies, different cultural armies, and that type of drive, and concentration through willpower that didn't have willpower. I'm not sure I saw so many Burmese people practicing that way. But the few that did stood out as being very serious, but I still think that they had a cultural balance that they might not even been that conscious of, because they were submerged in it, but not having any of that type of faith. The Burmese approach to practice is so patient, because they're their marriage making just by being in the monastery, there's a lot. So unless they have some type of personal drive a lot of the culture around doesn't push people like that. And so you can, those teaching methodologies of going good Mahasi and how they push really hard because I think that there is cultural ease that's being supported by faith. And then Westerners I think, have to work really hard to understand relaxation, your plus effort, and then what's reverent, but what then gets too locked up right? In the system?
Host 21:30
Right, I realized we're taking some detours on your biography. And I want to take just one more detour of something you said in the first few minutes before we we get on with where you started the formal practice and came to Burma. But I just don't want to let this pass too long, because I find it so interesting. And I want to get your thoughts on. This is Marxism. And specifically, the intersection between Marxism, communism and Buddhism. Being someone who's read about the history of Burma in the 20th century, specifically, when the communists started to be prevalent in the 1950s, the Burma Communist Party, as well as the Russian and the Chinese influence, and in the context of the growing, cold war that was developing, and American and Western influences and Vietnam and Korea. All these things were kind of coinciding in Burma and not a very well known story. But there were, there were a lot of questions about how communism and Buddhism either supported each other or pushed against each other. And actually, the book that came out cold war amongst a few years ago, researched how the CIA was actually secretly putting money into traditional orthodox monastic initiatives in Burma because they felt that a strong conservative religious backing of the monks would be a strong bulwark against communism, and, and then in the country as well, there was some of the who knew and they win and some of the leadership there were expressing grave concerns that communism was a real threat to, to Buddhism and you know, seen as a threat to religion everywhere. Others saw others have seen and have written about the incredible similarities between communism and Buddhism, and anarchism as well and how they support one another. Just to throw a final bit of spice in the mix. There's this incredible book about it's a biography Autobiography of a KGB agent in the Russian Embassy in Burma, in the 1950s, at the height of the Cold War, that defects in Burma, and there's not he wrote an autobiography called I think it's called out inside a Soviet embassy that details his time as a KGB officer in Burma and his decision to defect. And he has this one line that really stood out in that book that said, how was it it said, Well, you know, we have this opposition at this present moment between these two types of governance, communism and capitalism. And both of them are relying on different interpretations of materialism and how they understand that to be whereas in this author's view, Buddhism and his experience in Burma has transcended materialism, to chart a new pathway for it altogether. It's probably a bit reductionist and, and an exotic and his his simple understanding of it. But just to say all of this from the, the background of what's already been discussed, what's been some of the factional groups that have put out their own theories, but as someone who grew up with a father who studied who was a Marxist scholar, and then went on to be profoundly impacted by Burmese Buddhism yourself, what what are your thoughts on this intersection between these two theories?
Tempel Smith 24:49
You know, it's, it's endlessly fascinating. I just listened to a podcast that took three years to walk through European history in the eight to hundreds that led to the Russian Revolution. And it's so heartbreaking to see the idealism really not have the right approach. And that they were, you can be empathetic up to a point. And then you can see how their own way of thinking undercut what they were trying to do. And down at its core, I do think that the good version of say Burmese monasticism, or the local monastery and villages, their relationship is so at least the ideal version of it, the possibility of it is so beautiful in the generosity, the interconnection, the village life, the monastic life, people flowing back and forth, and those identities getting temporary ordained, or I know a young Burmese students, when her father died, she spent a year insides a monastery doing walking meditation until she caught up with the grief of it. So I didn't actually I do sense that Buddhism, this monastic form connected with a village system, really this and as a possibility, where you could actually train the greed, hatred and delusion out of the ordinary mind to where you could start running more idealistic societies. And yet, firma is also a great example of how you can't or the doing of it, which I love about Burma and really appreciate about it, and then seeing it sometimes like it's showing you what's possible. And there's still alcoholism, there's, there's social dysfunctions that the Dharma doesn't quite get his angle in on and, but I do think that, that Marxist and anarchist intuition that you could overcome greed, and get more collaborative, more cooperative, and have shared prosperity, where all needs, all basic needs are taken care of, and then maybe even uplifting, through the Dharma, more beautiful qualities of heart and really dealing with some of the intense animalistic and unconscious human intentions that I think screw up a lot of ideal projects. So as a funny note, and this this may cap, we may return to this. My dad loved it whenever I did anything that was unconventional because it was proof that I hadn't been co opted, or that part of my life was self chosen versus, you know, bought at Kmart, or Walmart. But I actually got him to sit a retreat, and for a while he got into Zen, and we had these conversations, like, Buddhism obviously has a history of becoming a national religion and therefore, possibly losing its spiritual core and becoming something more institutional. But when he tasted the inside of what Zen could offer, and then I would ask him, like, as a trained Marxist, do you think that this training could have helped with what went wrong or at derailed in all the socialists attempts? And he was open to it, you know, he's, he didn't go in as deeply as I did. But I think he did sense that there needed there was something missing from the socialist movements that led them to either reproduce dominant power structures, or be corrupted by external forces. It's like what could you put inside those movements that could actually train people to be less susceptible to how many Marxist initiatives have fallen apart? And I do actually think that retreat training, the way that Ooba Qin was able to bring in retreats, and he saw that he was able to deal with some corruption inside of Burma. Because of the way the retreat would bring in, presents with strengthen good qualities, bring in mindfulness bring in sila, that I feel like if the Marxist movements don't have heart transformation, along with them, you'll succumb to insecurities, power struggles, frustration. And then you start using really heavy handed tactics to try to you so believe your view, but the methodology is violent or the methodology can't realize that you I in my younger, idealistic self, I saw a lot of promise of how Dharma especially like a nine day retreat or longer could be the missing element of what has not worked out in more idealistic social forms.
Host 30:09
That's really interesting. It also brings up this dynamic between the change on the level of the human heart and the individual striving towards liberation and of suffering and the societal level, because the example you bring of Rubicon is really fascinating when you start to unpack, not just the conventional story that has reached most of us meditators in the West, but unpack the context of what was really happening in Burma at that time and the wider issues, because who was the Prime Minister then and who knew was a very devout Buddhist, and I think he put into motion various initiatives that I think Western meditators would cheer for, you know, frankly, speaking, not really knowing the nuance of he, he famously said that, if one member of every household in the country becomes a passionate practitioner, that that will create a sense of prosperity, he undertook his own intensive meditation retreats, even at one point he was doing a 45 day self course when the current insurgency it made it all the way to the edges of Yangon, and then still wouldn't be disturbed because he was putting priority on his retreat. He provided all kinds of state funding for meditation centers and search committees to identify monks who had attained some level that would then be in a teaching position to be able to uplift the nation, and on and on, but getting to Uber, Ken, Uber, Kim was only able to start his mission, because there was a government mandate, according to this very pro Buddhist prova, passionate understanding of who knew to to be able to teach Buddhist theory in in government workspaces. And so Uber can had a shrine he had Buddhist monks and other speakers come and give talks, there was refuge taken there. And I think as meditators, these are all things that one might celebrate within your tradition. But when you move beyond that, that kind of singular perspective of looking, you realize, well, what's going on with church and state here and what's happening to those who might not want to do this or might come from other backgrounds. And, of course, when new new declared Buddhism is the state religion, the kitchens revolted, because they were Christian, and they did not they were not having the Shaun's weren't happy, because it was Bomar Buddhism, that was the state religion. And so this whole mission that who became developed, and that would then spread around the world. And as you say, very rightly so would stamp out corruption. This is it's very messy and nuanced to try to understand this, because some of these outcomes were probably very positive. And yet, the initiatives that led to these outcomes were, were not necessarily good governance and might have might have made and actually did make, we know from historical record a lot of people very uncomfortable. And so it, it really calls to question, to go on an individual retreat and have these very powerful, transformative experiences, and then feel, how wonderful would it be if society as a whole, were to also experience this? Well, that's what new was trying to do to take a rather reductionist view than he was in an era of the 1950s that were extremely turbulent. Yet at the same time, he was a very dedicated practitioner who became leader of the country and tried to bring the wisdom he had gained and the transformation he had gained into a system of governance, and it was an absolute failure. It might have had good results, like an Uber kin case, but society wide, it led to a lot of damage. And so that think that really makes us as individual meditators reflect on like, what is the role of this in life and practice in society? And, you know, in making laws like maybe alcohol is against is drinking alcohol might be against the precepts. But should there be a law restricting alcohol? Yeah, this is a little murky. Right, right. Prohibition does prohibition work? I don't know.
Tempel Smith 34:11
Well, yeah. And I think that's my more mature self. Me. That's why younger people say don't trust anybody over 30. Or at least one, you know, 60s activists would say that is that you start to see that idealism, and then you start to actually see it and applied. And then you start seeing more complex layers that you hadn't really accounted for. And then when you really like what actually gets at the root of these things, and it's so much more complicated than you might have idealistically thought and then you start to see not only is it complicated, but then you start to see embedded in your good intention is actually forces that are violent, like, Oh, I know how we should live. It's like Get your colonizing mind out of North America, you don't know how we should live? It's like no, no, I have a solution. So anytime you think you have a solution to apply it, that very application might be well intended from your own perspective. But it it's not, doesn't have enough view to see. Or maybe to learn and adapt. Like, I'm really touched even here that who knew. Sounds like he wasn't just doing it for show, which is always the anxiety about the generals is that when they give donations, it's purely for show and that they are actively evil, and to get these donations and build these pagodas. But you know that they're just steeped in evil all the time. And it's like, it actually is more complicated than that, and ignorance, and thuggish SNESs doesn't. It's more complicated than that, you start digging into it. And that's where every now and then I just feel my knees buckle like Oh, Saara. It's like the end of the movie Chinatown where they're trying to figure out all these forces have money and power and the lead detective Jack Nicholson is, is getting the picture of it. And he's trying to articulate and his friend says, Leave it alone. It's Chinatown. You've never been here, which is a white person's perspective of Chinese neighborhood. But still, there's a sense like it's samsara. Like, every time you think you're doing a good thing. Is it actually grounded, which isn't amazing about the Buddha's teachings or anybody who begin something that actually has such good and insight inside of it. And seeing it thing, I guess I'm biased, but a benevolent force, but then you actually look into it and see how much power can use even a good thing, and how the ignorance can even use a good thing. And think maybe it's even doing the right thing. But it's actually steeped in its own ignorance of what it's even attempting. So every now and then I do feel a little bit like samsara is broken. It's a Sisyphean task to roll the boulder up the hill, and you have to do and yet you actually cannot work out the forces of greed, hatred, delusion, in a type of global universal way, and the rock will crumble. But you do have to push the rock. Because otherwise greed, hatred, delusion, don't have anything pushing it against them.
Host 37:41
Right? True, true. Well, I want to get back on your track. This has been a really lovely detour of a lot of important ideas that came up during your, your early discussion of your childhood. But take us to so you left off on your path where you were talking about these powerful canoe trips, you took in isolation in the Canadian wilderness and wanting to extend that somehow beyond the experience of just the outdoors trip. Take us from there into the next steps and stages of your spiritual development.
Tempel Smith 38:11
Yeah, and so I graduated high school on the East Coast, I was very good at science and math, which is I don't think I ever understood Marxism very well, it wasn't my intellectual strength. But my dad was very good at describing it. So I didn't impact on me, but I was much more of a science math person. And I ended up moving to Portland, Oregon, to go to Reed College, and become a physics major. And at that time, material science was my cosmology. And I was using it to simplify my understanding of the world that everything could be broken down into its molecular structure. And once we had done that, we would have worked out a lot of the confusion of the world and my that mapped onto my mom's belief system. So I was kind of steeped into that. And again, still having these profound experiences. I had no word score happening every summer but as far as my own way of understanding myself inside society, I was a scientist. And so I moved out to Reed College and pursued a physics degree in an intensive training in the sciences. But what I met at Reed College, it has a reputation of being a very radical progressive college and Portland being a place of very intense forces of old Oregon conservativeness plus a lot of new culture possible in Portland. And I was very taken with that never seen anything like it on the east coast. So while going to college out there, some things opened up and one of the things that opened up was seeing radical activism. And so I got to participate in student led initiatives to live out are believes in it, it engaged. My heart didn't want to think about these things but want to act on them. So I started getting involved in environmental actions and an abortion clinic has been blown up. There was a bomb set off inside an abortion clinic. And so I started volunteering every Saturday to stand between the protesters and the women seeking abortions or, and I loved the fact that people were doing something about it. And people were making great sacrifices, along with their values. And this became sort of a definition in my own mind. Whereas when I grew up on the East Coast, there's a lot of discussion, but there weren't people that I knew that were as passionately engaged. And so was, that was a spiritual awakening to see that level of commitment, that level of sacrifice that level of value, living, uncompromised, and not just tucked around in a cafe high on a latte. But actually, people getting arrested and meeting Catholic activists, Quaker activists, Jewish activists, atheists, activists, meeting, native peoples meeting off, it was just incredible how much activism and then seeing some activism give themselves permission to be violent. But some activism took on a harder task, I think, to be nonviolent, in their direct action. And so that caught my heart really quickly lined up with my wilderness intuition, is that you can sacrifice very deeply, but you don't want to grow the hatred that you're trying to overcome. And so, I got pulled into this peace activism and peace demonstrations, and that drew me down to the demonic nuclear test site. And this, all of everything I'm saying does lead to my first meditation retreat, but to know the forces that were alive in me and that Buddhism had to contend with, because if it didn't get it all, its, it wouldn't have gotten all of me. And so I went on to Nevada nuclear tests, I did a 10 day protest there of getting arrested every day doing. They said you can't overcome nuclear bombs until you've overcome the society that makes your bombs. And so across from the nuclear test site, this main gate where people would block the workers going in on their buses or get arrested. There was a learning camp, and they would have nonviolent communication, anti racism workshops, they would have feminist insight on gender and inclusivity. And on sexual orientation. And there was a time to create good culture and deconstruct bad culture, in like 5000 people camping in the desert, along with this big protest, where they were testing nuclear bombs. And what moves me most again, was to see this wasn't even just a Saturday afternoon protest. But I met people who had been practicing who had been processing since the 60s, they are now in their late 60s or 70s. Now this is late 80s, for me, and I met these incredible people were was their life's work and their spirituality, to live on the front line of their values. And they received a smattering of support that they had donated to them. But they would live live out these truths. And I met Quaker activist and Catholic activist, I'd never met progressive Christians who were that bright a light. And so that was very eye opening. And I remember getting arrested and seeing the violence of the resting police officers. And then try not to act on the violence inside my own heart while getting arrested. And as like, Okay, I I see it, but when I look at the older people, they have a love and a competence and a peace and a brightness. And my young 20 year old as I guess I would say 20 At that time, there's so much brewing inside me I'm so angry at the way things are I'm so impatient. I'm trying to be peaceful, but it's all I can do is stop myself from reacting. But I be arrested next to a seven year old Quaker woman who truly loved the arresting guard. And it was a force to see them glow like that. And so I had an awakening. There's like, I know what I want my heart to look like. And these people haven't fled to the wilderness to do it. But I don't see the bridge between where I am now. And a heart that looks like that. And obviously, the people who are most bright had a convicted spirituality And the ones who didn't have that spirituality, were driven by anger. So if it hadn't become spiritually expansive for them, they were running on human willpower, and they would succumb to anger, aggression, not living up to their values that they spoke about by tearing down violence structures, you could see them try that. But then Back at the camp, they would let off steam and be as kind of petty and violent in their processing of the day, but not the spiritual activists. But I had no spirituality at that time, no recognized spirituality, I was, I was suspicious of organized religion. But that that protest in 1988, a woke something that again, would not go back to sleep, that to go back and study physics was like coming out of the wilderness, it was degrading of possibility to just be a student, or just get by or have some socially sanctified lifestyle. I saw people like broken out, but not by fleeing society, they were awake within society. And it's the very first time I had seen people who had done that, who had real love in their heart, and courage. But the courage was not aggressive. It had fuel this beauty in them that was so reliable. And so then I was really that sort of, like, not knowing how to take a step forward. But my heart knowing something again, it just so happened that I get disenchanted with the material sciences, like a disenchanted with academia, I get disenchanted with the idea that I could go on in the sciences. And not, I wouldn't, I wouldn't be growing that heart potential. And I looked at the scientists I knew, and they didn't have it, they were smart, but they didn't have that love, and that courage and conviction. And just by accident, and you look at these things, and they seem so accidental at the time. And yet you see the river of your life has to go through a certain Canyon. And there's no other way for that water to flow, I was going to keep searching for something that would have looked like a Dharma retreat until I found it. But how I actually got there seemed kind of random, my friend had gotten into Zen in college, it impacted them, I could see the impact I wanted in on that type of impact. But I wasn't drawn to Zen, I don't know what it was. But there was something attractive, but also not fully attractive. And I went back home to my family in Rhode Island. And one of our neighbors had gone to Insight Meditation Society, which was an hour and a half drive away. And she just come off at nine day retreats. And in my mind, at the time, I thought, Oh, my friends have done a five day session. But I'm going to do a nine day meditation retreat. And I'll actually go further than they've gone. So rather than being behind them, because this retreat is twice as long, it's like going out weekend backpacking versus going on. And living in the wilderness. The longer you do it, the more credit, Fred you have. So in that time of my mind, I can't see the way I was thinking was the most. The way I got into the retreat, the way I was thinking was very 20 year old, trying to figure stuff out. But I went on a nine day silent retreat at Insight Meditation Society with really no understanding of Buddhism. In fact, when they asked me to meditate with my eyes closed, I was very suspicious of why they would do that. I had no orientation to what I had just jumped into. But I tend to do that I tended to jump into things and figure it out afterwards. So I closed my eyes and then open them to make sure nobody was sneaking up behind me with chloroform, or just as an example of my own mindset at the time. And I sat through the need pain, the boredom. But what astounded me is that somebody on the stage could talk about my internal experience. And they said, Probably you've noticed this, you've noticed that, and I I was absolutely flummoxed that this teacher could describe what had happened inside my own mind and could give me tangible things to do to impact my internal experience. And I've never seen anybody even come close to do that. So that was that was that was very shocking. And then I had the day for breakthrough the day for breakthrough where your mind does like oh of swords can Conventional grip, things open up more, and you can actually start to see your mind working real time. And is on day four of that first idea retreat. I said, Oh my God, I feel like I've just done two months of canoeing. I'm more than retreat, but I feel humble, I feel present. I feel like I'm stepping outside of these insecurities. And these, these tangles I get in. And not only have I gotten here in four days, but I'm not the first person who's ever figured this out. There's actually a long history, a whole body of wisdom, there are teachers who can teach you and they've made transformational forms that are more powerful than anything, I figure it out in the wilderness. And so there was this huge, very accidental, but completely irrelevant Tory sense that this was the way I was going to address the racism in my mind, this was the way I was going to not have hatred, take over my view, this was the way to actually get to where I had seen other hearts had gotten to. But it was also the most difficult thing I'd ever done. So once I did it, I said, I love it. I'm impressed by it. I can't imagine ever doing it again. And I walked away from it. And it took me another year to do another retreat. And I saw there's nothing that had done anything like that I found to workshops, I've read books, I've talked to smart people. But nobody has a transformational model. That's as powerful as that retreat. Let me try another ones. until I figure out something better, I'll try another one. And on that secondary God, I heard the teachings a little better, I was able to practice them a little bit more stupidly, saw that I'd hardly heard the teachings the first time I had heard them, but my filters were really strong. So then I actually was able to apply them. And to have a better retreat experience, not as much doubt, I was able to stay with my breath longer, trusted that as a transformational modality and deeper insight into my mind. And then I got, I got hooked. And so my first retreat was when I was 21. And I was becoming disillusioned with science. My next issue was probably a year later. So I had to go back in and finish school, but my heart was no longer really in it. That what I wanted was to go like those Quaker activists, I wanted to go further into meditation study, I wanted my daily life to be matching my values. So something that deeply ignited around that time, halfway through college,
Host 52:59
I find it really interesting that the inspiration that you took were not from people of a certain tradition, or a certain technique or background or practice, but they were from they were so diverse. I don't think I've I've heard that before from those that have expressed inspiration for the path, it's usually then a bit more specific. And I just think it's so wonderful, really, that you're you're talking about this kind of human universal quality in the protesters. In fact, the Quaker, Jewish, Catholic, Christian, other people that you're coming in contact with and that their particular path and what is, what their specific practice might be that's cultivating some of these qualities and tendencies in the mind might be really quite different in terms of what they have faith on and how they work on it, and what their practice actually is. But there's an end result that you're not finding anywhere else. And that's what ignites your journey. And it's just so interesting that that, that these are not coming from a particular place or practice, but that it's so diverse. And yet there's a universality that that you're touching into. And I also want to follow up and just ask I'm not sure if I missed it. But did you describe the these two retreats? You did? Did you describe the actual tradition or teaching or technique of those retreats?
Tempel Smith 54:26
Well, I use the initials IMS very quickly. So inside a racial society in Massachusetts, I had taken some time off from college in Portland and I was back home doing odd jobs and trying to figure myself out. And so halfway through my junior year, I took time off. And it just happened that a neighbor of ours in Providence had just come back from Insight Meditation Society in Massachusetts, and she'd gone there many times and she loved it and but this is pre internet, so if you did And No, something you didn't know if something you had to kind of just keep asking and finding out about a meditation retreat was really, you know, there are so few people, if you didn't spark that conversation with it just happened that our neighbor had come down from IMS. And she was very positive about it. And so it seemed like okay, that's that's roughly what I was looking for. And they just happened to have a retreat starting, like in a couple of weeks. So I, I signed up for that. But I didn't know one department of Buddhism from another group hardly really even understood Buddhism at all. But because my friends had done a little bit of Zen, I was curious about it. And there was also this, this sense that. So there are two things to say, it makes a lot more sense. In hindsight, like, when you're walking across a snowy field, there's no path. And you look back, and there's only a path, there's only a very clear path. In hindsight, while I'm telling you stories about these Quaker people, I've thought about them now for 30 years. And I've thought about how impactful that was, at the time. It was very impactful, but I, I don't think I understood I was being impacted, to the degree I was. But I'd never met people like that. And then I would go back and start studying physics. I couldn't care less about what I'm doing. It's fascinating, but it's so flexible. And then think back, and seeing the role modeling of all these activists and thinking about it. And I'd already been a dedicated, young budding peace activist, but to see people doing what I only write about. And so then it starts resonating inside you for months after the fact and become something that has a lot of definition on you. But at the time, you don't actually know that that's what's happening. So I can tell you much more kind of, like, there's so many insights that come since that time, and I could recognize them happening there at the time. But if you would ask me about it, I would not have known. I know, there was also I was, I was a 20 year old. So I was also interested in so many things. But all of other things kind of fell away. And what ended up reverberating me for a lot longer was seeing the Native American activists who were very dedicated to peace. And then seeing these First Nations, people from Kazakhstan, where the Soviets were testing their nuclear weapons, they came over so they were all the way from their side of the planet. But you could tell the ones that had love in their heart, and the ones that were fueled more by anger, and then to meet these Quakers and other people. But they're also some very convincing angry activists, and they would say, No, love is so slow, let's really, let's really get in there and break up this nuclear test site. And to my 20 year old mind, I know, it was all kind of a jungle of possibilities. But in looking back, what really stayed with me, and ended up reverberating was that there was a way to be that active, but it didn't make you passive. And that started winning out over the impatient, bitter activists who were very convincing. But it was also intolerable, because they were pushing so hard, and they were kind of hard people to be around. And so then, you know, I can tell, I can see the causal stream in hindsight that I had no perspective on while it was happening.
Host 59:07
Sure, so following that causal stream, you then said these two courses at IMS, and what happens from there?
Tempel Smith 59:17
So slowly, at first, it was I sat these retreats and they were impactful. But again, I still had momentum from other parts of my life, so it slowly grew. And then it was interesting. In Portland, there was a teacher named Robert BD, who was a student of Ruth Dennison, who was a student to go back in. And he had followed Ruth into making the personal retreats. Very West Coast spiritual, psychological. So there's still as good Dharma in them but they were they Were also a part of this West Coast and hit the psychological influence events. So it's interesting, but it felt in some ways too novel, like there are too many novel things that he was experimenting with inside the meditation retreat form. So I turned out he and he is a psychologist. And he was doing his internship at Reed College. And so I actually got to know him as a student and asked some questions and some direction from him. But then I also set my first going to retreat. And that was incredibly powerful. So different from the IMS retreat, so deeply focused. And so it just drew upon strength in the way that I didn't have to practice that way at IMS. So just sitting focused in a sort of a dimly lit room, inside the body doing body scans, and then watching what happened to my mind from that deep level of practice, that evoke more of this sort of tear Vodun view that it's not about some psychological growth, and retreat by retreat, you can kind of be a little further awake than you were. But there is this incredibly powerful modality that would break down, though totally ripped down your relationship to the conventional world, very assertively, break it down, so that your attention was just inside your body, your body would dissolve into subtle sensations, the external context, there's no access to it, because you're in this dimly lit room. So you're not integrating as you go along. The Retreat itself is this incredible surgical depth of, of terrified and practice. And then I came out of that first retreat, and that was, it was very powerful and very hard to integrate with other sides of myself. So I didn't know how to integrate that, along with the peace, activism and being a functional human society. And it felt a little bit more of like going out into the wilderness, like, unplugging completely, and then being a little bit suspicious of plugging back in. Whereas the Insight Meditation Society retreats, and that Mahasi approach, there is a pointing towards depth, but they're also a sort of an integrate as you go, taste your food, walk around the trees, you can see how mindfulness is both broad and deep. And when I went on the go anchor a tree, it plunged me as to a certain intensity and depth that I hadn't experienced before. And so it's a funny thing about effort, I was a very willful person. And so I went into those nine days, like I was rock climbing up Everest, like every step was an effort of intention to apply the teachings, I had no relaxation in my approach. And so I came back to do another Goenka retreat. This is like my, in my fourth retreat, and I gave myself more permission than I thought was being offered to the students on the Quaker retreat, to approach it more in a more relaxed manner. And strangely with that balancing, and being less intentional about conquering my mind and making it stay in the protocol of just under your nose, breathing or in body sweeping, just adding a little bit more relaxation. I tumbled through the progress of insight. Again, very innocent because there was no teaching context around it, I'd never read about it. But these phenomenal experiences happened. And it was only five, seven years later that I even have a map for what had happened. And so I tumbled through these very deep tip classical Theravadan meditative steps and meditative liberate liberation practice, just by following the simple go Anka instruction. And when I went up to report to the person leading the retreat, all they would ask me is how long can I keep my attention under my nose? Could I do it for a certain length of time? And I had no language for these experiences. And so I would report like, yeah, it's sort of average, you know, like keep my attention to my nose, sometimes for several breaths, sometimes longer. And he said, good, just keep going and have faith. So I would go back and sit down, and then tumble through another stage on the progress of insight, but not make much of it. Because the whole thing was Don't get distracted by meditative anomaly. Just keep sweeping your attention through your body, which made the going through the progress, I didn't say, very innocent, and not something structured, not something I could have forced my mind to do. Because what I was forcing my mind to do was to sweep from head to toe, and not get lost in that process. So in my mind tumbled through arising and passing it tumbled through disillusion tumbled through the these, these stages, and not everyone happened, but enough of them happened in that progression. And then having a cessation moment, which I make no claims about, because if you can't measure those things, and whether it was a small cessation moment, that's indicative of a larger one that's meant to come, or that was a classical physician moment, but because my mind went through this progress of insight, and had something like a cessation moment, all I can say is that, at some level of depth, my mind went through a classical progress of insight experience. And that could have just been a very shallow relationship to the progress of insight. And what would have really been liberative Is if I'd had more submersion in each one of those steps, or whether that was an actual A to Z, progress of insight with a classical cessation moment. And again, I have zero context around it, no way to think about it, no way to talk with other people. But I remember trying to describe it with the language, I had the times to my other friends on the retreat. And they just sort of costed their hands up, there's like, yeah, weird things happen. So I just moved on from that. But I look back on. And I look back on that experience, now, 25 years later. The way that impacted my mind, also, is very classical. It's so interesting, I didn't have the map. But it really did sever, a belief that my happiness could be worked out by sorting out my personality, that there was a way to sort out all these fluctuating experiences, you could get better and better at life. So that the way all this impermanence happens out of your control, you can finally be such a good conductor of all these fluctuating experiences that you could establish your happiness by getting a little bit more influence over impermanence. And then to have an experience, which I haven't repeated, to that same depth of there being absence of a reference of self. And then seeing how much self just gums up everything. And up to that point. Self is your attempt to lend some organization to the chaos. But there is a meditative step where you don't add self constructs to the flow of what's happening. And it's like an engine that's misfiring on an eight cylinder engine that's misfiring on four of its cylinders, but it's the best, you know, and all of a sudden, all eight cylinders are firing, and, you know, something that is outside of convention. And you realize the futility of trying to sort out your happiness with self in the system or personality development, or gaining sway over your sense doors and the objects you have contact with, that that whole game is fruitless. And I had that insight on that second goal anchor retreat, didn't know what to do with it, tried to go back to conventional living. And yet this reference point wouldn't go away. This reference point, kept being remembered experientially and it kept taking the steam out of my system that kept taking the same ability to participate in improving myself, developing myself, getting control getting more and more adult control of the world around me. I just couldn't buy into it. And I felt it was actually a dysfunction, I felt it was kind of my North American dysfunction that I couldn't join the dots increased agency myth that you get more and more agency as you become more and more adult. And from that kind of despair, of feeling that crumbling of agency and solidity of self that rippled from that moment, now through many months and many years, led me back to the Dharma and say, I need a longer retreat to sort this out. I can't sort out what I need to sort out. In the conventional world, it only keeps me confused. So I went on my first three month meditation retreat when I in 1995, that was a few years later. That was a straight mindfulness with pasta, never trade at IMS for a solid three months. And when I came out of it, I realized that the factors of loving kindness were not strong in my system. And if I went back to conventional living, I now knew what it was like to live in the desert of the heart that's very intellectual, very willful, but doesn't have these loving qualities as strong as they need. So the following fall, I came back and did another three month retreat, just on the Brahma viharas. Just the same the metta phrases over and over and working through the Brahma Vihara is working through the categories. And so that was a 1996 came out of that, and tried to re engage with the world and said, Yeah, this, I'm onto something here. But still, like coming back from the wilderness. It hasn't gotten Escape Velocity yet. If I don't live, close to deep retreat, I still get entangled. There's still this degradation like I can't bear because I've tasted my mind outside of the daily life insecurities and exhaustion and scattered Enos. So I need to do much more retreat. But I actually don't want to become a retreat dweller because I care about the world. And so while I was doing this, I was also volunteering in a shelter for homeless teenagers and saw my service to those teenagers became so enhanced after her retreat, my presence, my humility, my patience with them was really clean. And they responded well to it. As one of my 20s, I was starting to work out socially engaged. But as a, as a life path, I started to leave science behind, getting more convicted, that I was going to become a social worker working with homeless people going on these long retreats. And that became my kind of mythology that I developed over my 20s that I needed to go on long retreats. And when I came out of long retreats, I wanted to plunge myself into some type of direct service or activism, and freedom ticket on HANA at the time, it seemed like that's what they had discovered. And it seemed, and I had a few friends that had done that, or were interested in doing that. So that was the whole picture. For me, it was the retreats. But then being combined with direct service, and I wasn't on retreat, I wanted to be serving something, or changing something. And then when I got too tangled up and overextended from that type of work, I would come back and do another retreat. That's what led me to those first three months retreats. And then that becomes a springboard after the second three months retreat was nice. It was now the winter of 1997. I was talking to my friend Diana Winston, who's my age and we're talking about these things. And she said, yeah, that's why I'm gonna go ordain with you, bonita, I want to practice for a solid year. And we were thinking in terms of like, some type of Dharma momentum. That wouldn't wear off when you left retreat. And we tried three month retreats, but we could see that they were off. So we both thought, yeah, we'll go work with goop on data, maybe get this thing called stream entry. And maybe that the way people talk about it, then you have escape velocity. I'm not sure if that phrase makes sense to the listeners, but enough Dharma clarity momentum conviction that you don't get lost when you're out in the world, and retreats could give you a sense of that escape velocity, but then you come back and feel yourself getting kind of tangled up again.
Host 1:15:24
Right I do take any calls that momentum, he talks about the, the need to develop a sense of momentum that will carry beyond the retreat atmosphere. And then to take any of course, is also very unique in not having in Britain departing from the kind of really intensive retreats that you see with, you know, bukan, or Glencoe or Pandita, or PAOK. And, and modeling, those retreats more on, on on a very highly attuned observation of daily life. But what I want to get into before you go to Burma, which is a whole other discussion, they get into training under Pandita, being in a monastery being in in Myanmar, of course, one of the things I realized and hearing your story unfold over over this past hour, is the inherent tensions and dynamics that are there, I just jotted down some of the things that were coming to mind there's a tension between the world and the retreat to put it another way, it could be engaged Buddhism, or social activism versus one's own inner transformation. There's a clearly a tension between having developing the meta and, and having the heart be full and grow. And this kind of cold intellect that you describe between science and spirituality. There's, of course, you talk about growing up with some kind of tension between Marxism and, and neuroscience, that you're just getting into what will probably be a developing tension between the West and Burma and the different ways that these two cultures and places hold their practice and their tradition and their style. And then one tension, which I kind of suspect, but you haven't referenced. So I wonder the role of plays is the tension between techniques because you're doing a Theravada Buddhist practice, and it very well could all be coming from Burma. And yet the the way that these teachings and techniques are being disseminated could be quite distinct and quite specific in terms of the particular lineage and style that is being delivered. So just overall, I'm wondering, your thoughts on these kinds of tensions you're describing maybe tensions might not be exactly the right word that could be contrasts or tensions makes it sounds like it's, it's something that's painful, or needs to be resolved, which could be the case, but it could also be a contrast of things trying to fit together. I think some of this is definitely just a symptom and a characterization of what it's like to be a young person in your 20s. In the West, I think that that these kinds of life choices are really formulated and understood them. But beyond that more normative experience of being a young person in the west and finding one's way. I wonder if you feel like for you, these tensions or contrast might characterize a greater part of your life and path and ultimately, spirituality and what and just in general, what awareness or thoughts you have on seeing these these contrasts as they've developed in your life path.
Tempel Smith 1:18:37
And that's a great observation, and to pick out so many of those. And they were constantly active inside of me. And if you hang out with your activist friends, where you feel that side of you met, they're really suspicious of the amount of time you're, you're indulging on the silent retreat. And if you hang out with your friends, who have just a really intense retreat on the well over you are, they're really suspicious of why you would grab up your mind and all the tensions of social strife and to see that there are these wall hugging retreat. meditators who had kind of painted themselves into a corner of tenderness and serenity. And were very suspicious of the world. And then, but I saw the good in them and I saw that good side of myself. And there was a tension of having two circles with people that didn't like getting together. And I couldn't feel like all of me what could ever be resonated with until I found other socially engaged but it's so reading tick, not Han was really helpful to get the the intuition that there, these were things did not have to be in opposition unify, we experienced them at the moment. And then to get meditative, transcendent moments where nothing felt like it was an opposition. And it all could be true at the same time. And then saying, oh, when I'm in the fog, I'm confused, and you can't figure it out in the fog. But if you wait, the fog will pass. And if you wait for those moments, it all makes sense. And then trusting that if it doesn't make sense, it's because of the content, contemporary conditions that I'm in. But saying, if I go to another retreat, it'll make sense. If I go to live in the desert, with Quaker elders, it'll make sense and I go canoeing for two months, it'll make sense. And so at times, it would all make sense, I would feel this oceanic peacefulness from all of these tensions. And then if I wasn't in those places, part of the discontent would be there just be too many blades in the blender, attacking the problems from so many perspectives, and then all being kind of an argument with each other, the Marxist say, if you have to be on the frontline of the revolution, and if you're not, you're part of the problem. And the vegetarians, like that's just craziness. And then feeling that inside myself, well, it is kind of crazy to always be rushing off to the next demonstration. But it's also a little bit limited to always feel like you need to be on retreat. And I would feel this. Any one of the polarities you described, would be crazy making. But then enough meditation would actually solve those dilemmas. Because if I could solve them in the present moment, and make the present moment, rich enough, that if it was dedicated to service, or about formal inside meditation, or if a CLS, samadhi or Panya, it all got resolved. And I think that's, you know, to have my molecular biophysical training, along with my dad's Marxist intuition. And along with my love of deep nature, it was actually Buddhism that started to resolve some of these tensions in me. And that showed me middle points that include pull the polarity of all of it. So incredible deconstruction, of the sense of self, whether it was biochemical from it from evolution, and it's just your raw animal nature, or the societally reinforced personality structures, both of that nature and nurture, neuroscience and Marxism got resolved, with enough insight on a meditation retreat. And the idea of, if service is required, and you have an option for it, it's a part of your path. And it's done so much better if you've actually just composed yourself with the breath meditation. And the breath meditation is not indulgent, because it's actually connected to your love of service. And the service is not scattering. Because it's a it's a Donna, it's sila. It's it's an expression of what your heart wants to do when it comes into its sense of wholeness. And so it became this incredible carrot and stick were not having those resolution moments was so psychologically painful. And I think I might have been in more I can't say I was in more pain than most 20 year olds, but I was in incredible distress with all of these forces inside of me. And I've seen enough 20 year olds at this point to know it's, it's common, to not know Wait, who you are and what you're meant to do, and to have all these competing forces inside. But I felt very plagued by that. And very tormented by that. And the only thing that would bring resolution was this immersive experience like being in the desert.
Host 1:24:22
This concludes part one of my interview with temple Smith. The conversation will be continued in Part Two. I know for a lot of podcast listeners, as soon as the fundraising request startup, you just kind of zone out or skip ahead till it's over. But I ask that if you're taking the time to listen to our full podcast that you also take the time to consider our spiel. Some may assume that producing a two hour episode wouldn't take much more than the conversation itself, but so much more goes into it. In advance of the interview. Our content team reviews the biography and relevant works of the app. Coming guests, and we discussed the best way to use our limited time together. After the interview is completed, the raw audio file is sent to our sound engineer who shapes it into working order. A single episode can take several full days of solid production work in the studio, which is carefully coordinated with our content team to ensure smooth listening. further edits and post production magic bring the eventual episode into your ears. Along with extensive written descriptions of each interview, which we publish on our blog and social media. Many of these steps require an outlay of funds in some way or another. We hope that each episode informs you about the ongoing crisis. And if you find it a value, we also hope that you might consider supporting our mission. If you would like to join in our mission to support those in Myanmar who are being impacted by the military coup, we welcome your contribution in a form currency or transfer method. Your donation will go on to support a wide range of humanitarian immediate missions, aiding those local communities who need to post donations are directed to such causes as the Civil Disobedience movement CDM families of deceased victims internally displaced person IDP camps, food for impoverished communities, military defection campaigns, undercover journalists, refugee camps, monasteries and nunneries education initiatives, the purchasing of protective equipment and medical supplies COVID relief and more. We also make sure that our donation Fund supports a diverse range of religious and ethnic groups across the country. We invite you to visit our website to learn more about past projects as well as upcoming needs. You can give a general donation or earmark your contribution to a specific activity or project you would like to support. Perhaps even something you heard about in this very episode. All of this humanitarian work is carried out by our nonprofit mission that or Burma. Any donation you give on our insight Myanmar website is directed towards this fun. Alternatively, you can also visit the better Burma website better burma.org and donate directly there. In either case, your donation goes to the same cause in both websites except credit card. You can also give via PayPal by going to paypal.me/better Burma. Additionally, we can take donations through Patreon Venmo GoFundMe and Cash App. Simply search better Burma on each platform and you'll find our account. You can also visit either website for specific links to these respective accounts or email us at info at better burma.org. That's better Burma. One word, spelled b e t t e r B URM a.org. If you'd like to give it another way, please contact us. We also invite you to check out our range of handicrafts that are sourced from vulnerable artisan communities across Myanmar, available at a local crafts.com. Any purchase will not only support these artists and communities, but also our nonprofits wider mission. That's a local crafts spelled a LOKCR a ft s one word a local crafts.com Thank you so much for your kind consideration and support.