Selfless and Happy

Sunday 31 October 2010 6:00PM

Aspiring to be a bestselling novelist made David Michie miserable, until he realised the ego he was feeding didn't really exist. In his latest book on Buddhism, Enlightenment to Go, David draws on the medieval Indian monk, Shanti Deva, for the secret of happiness and an ethical life. Also in the program, Buddhist scholar at Cardiff University, Geoffrey Samuel, explains the importance of health in Tibetan Buddhist practice.

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Rachael Kohn: Does your ambition outweigh your talents? Does that make you cross and depressed? A medieval Buddhist monk might have some answers for you. Here's a word of wisdom from Shantideva:

Although wishing to be rid of misery,
They run towards misery itself.
Although wishing to have happiness,
Like an enemy they ignorantly destroy it.


Rachael Kohn: We certainly know how to manufacture our own misery! But there are ways to avoid it, which we'll learn shortly from my first guest today, David Michie, a follower of Tibetan Buddhism who's written Enlightenment to Go. More about him in a moment. On the other hand, is long life something we can determine, or is it just written into our DNA? Professor Geoffrey Samuel has been studying the long life practices of Tibetan Buddhists and he'll join me later.

David Michie was born in Rhodesia, today's Zimbabwe, he lives in Perth, and he's a communications consultant specialising in strategic planning. So he's no hippy-dippy Buddhist, but he is a follower of Tibetan Buddhism, specifically the Tibetan Buddhist Society established by Geshe Acharya Thubten Loden. David's written a couple of books on Buddhism, which were not quite the kind of writing he expected to be known for.

David Michie, welcome to The Spirit of Things.

David Michie: Good morning Rachael, thank you.

Rachael Kohn: You've written Buddhism for Busy People, and now Enlightenment to Go. You're definitely a man in a hurry.

David Michie: I think most of us are, and what I really wanted to try and do is get across the point that even though we are busy people running hectic lives and may think that the precious teachings of Buddhism which really are so desirable in many ways, we may think that they are totally unavailable to us because of our hectic lifestyle, but the point I'm trying to make with the titles, which I admit are very flip, is that we can embrace them and include them as part of our daily life.

Rachael Kohn: But seriously, isn't the idea of presenting Buddhism, this grand old tradition with very many practices and beliefs, as a 'quick fix' sort of counter-productive?

David Michie: I understand the point you're making and that's why we have these rather perhaps flip titles, but the subtitles hint more about the content of the book. So for example, with Enlightenment to Go the subtitle is The Classic Buddhist Path of Compassion and Transformation. And I hope that hints at the fact that despite this fairly jaunty title, there is actually some substance behind it.

Rachael Kohn: And it certainly isn't a short book either. But David, do you think it's time that people don't have enough of, or is it patience?

David Michie: Probably both. I think motivation is also something that's seriously lacking. There's been an interesting lot of research done recently showing that in order to really perfect an ability of some sort, people need to apply themselves for, say, 10,000 hours. If you want to be a concert pianist that's the amount of time that you need to spend to practice. That's not to say you can't achieve real progress with much less time, but to achieve that kind of level, that is the application that's required. And yes, you might say, well, I don't have 10,000 hours to spend meditating and therefore I'm not even going to bother starting, but that would be an unfortunate thing to say because even with a small amount of time...and this is the key thing, because science has shown that even a small amount of time devoted to meditation can actually dramatically improve our physiological and psychological state of being.

Rachael Kohn: In your book, Enlightenment to Go, you focus on the 8th century Tibetan Buddhist...well, actually he was an Indian Buddhist, wasn't he, Indian monk, Shantideva. Who was he exactly?

David Michie: He was a rebel and a very interesting chap. He was brought up in quite a wealthy family and he was supposed to take over from his dad as the head of the royal household and he decided to abandon this literally on the eve of his coronation because he just couldn't bear the thought of continuing this existence that he'd always had.

I liken this to an heir of a multi-billion-dollar empire just deciding as he is about to take over the reins that no, he can't bear the idea of this and he is instead going to go to Africa and be an aid worker or something. It was a dramatic turnaround for him to do. And I think you have to question, well, why was he willing to give up all the wealth and status which would have made his life very comfortable, instead to go and live as an impoverished monk, but he did because he realised that there was more to life than the life that he had led up to that point.

And so what he did is he went to Nalanda Monastery where he continued in his rebellious ways except this time he was rebelling against the order of the monks. They used to spend a lot of time in teachings and debating and learning of scriptures, and he used to spend all his time sleeping, or at least so it appeared. He used to in fact practice at night secretly. And they got really, really fed up with him because Nalanda was a very prestigious organisation, I guess it's a bit like an Ivy League university, and they decided they were going to set him up and get rid of him. What they did was they said, right, we're all meeting at the monastery and we want you to present us with your teachings, a discourse, and everyone is going to be there. And they thought, well, he'll never cut the mustard because he hasn't been doing any studying.

Little did they know, the big day arrived and he took his place on the teaching throne and he started speaking, and within a very short space of time people realised this is the most unbelievably articulate, incisive and beautiful teaching they'd ever heard. And in fact those other teachings, Shantideva's Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life, those other teachings on which my new book is based, they're the teachings the Dalai Lama for the last 30 to 40 years has always recommended people read as a kind of basis for understanding how to apply Buddhism in daily life. They are the most remarkable core teachings and have been revered ever since the 8th century.

Rachael Kohn: He seems to address the problems we ascribe to modernity, like materialism and impatience, not enough time. But perhaps they are just endemic to the human condition.

David Michie: Without question. Actually in the book I say it's kind of interesting how in the 8th century he would have been writing a parchment, trying to ignore the flicker of his butter lamp, and here we are sitting with our laptops and computers trying to ignore the little icon popping up with your in-tray, you know, 'you've got mail'. But in another sense nothing has actually changed, the human condition is still identical, and these, as you rightly say, are exactly the things that he deals with. He gives us very, very useful antidotes, that's the key thing about Shantideva's work that makes it so useful, because they are very useful tools or techniques or antidotes to address the problems that we all face.

If someone dropped a sword during battle,
They would immediately pick it up out of fear.
Likewise if I lose the weapon of mindfulness
I should quickly retrieve it, being afraid of Hell.


Rachael Kohn: Is the practitioner meant to simply repeat those phrases?

David Michie: Not so much repeat them but definitely meditate on them. I'd like to make a distinction here between knowing something intellectually and knowing it directly and not conceptually, because this is a very, very important distinction that many people are a bit hazy about, and it's only thanks to the kindness of my teacher that I understand the difference.

When you know something intellectually, it's an idea, it's a thought, and in my view we all know everything we need to know to lead happy, peaceful, well adjusted lives. We all know, for example, that you shouldn't sweat the small stuff, that you should stop and smell the roses, that you should live every day as your last, and if life hands you lemons, you should turn them into lemonade. We all know these things, but when do we actually do them, that's the interesting point. And the point is that although they are ideas to us that we are aware of, we haven't necessarily integrated them at the deepest part of our conscious because we haven't realised them.

A realisation in Buddhism is when our understanding of the subject has deepened to the point that it actually changes our behaviour, that's what's meant by a realisation. And to give you an example, I saw this documentary of cocoa plantation workers, and they'd been picking these cocoa beans for years and they didn't quite understand why there was such a demand for it because they knew it was turned into chocolate but chocolate was something they'd never seen or tasted. They heard about chocolate, they knew it was sweet and that the Europeans loved to eat it and that it came in a foil wrapper and you bit it and it melts in your mouth, but they never had actually tasted it until the day that this documentary team arrived with their TV cameras and they actually had bars of chocolate.

They gave them to these workers. The expression on these workers' faces are an absolute picture as they bit into the chocolate, the point being that at that moment they realised why there was an insatiable demand for chocolate because they had tasted it directly, first-hand, non-conceptually, it didn't require any further explanation. And much the same with some of these precious teachings in Buddhism; it's all very well to know them, knowing them actually is the easy part. The difficult part is integrating that knowledge at a sufficiently deep part of your own consciousness that it changes your behaviour.

Rachael Kohn: I get the feeling from your book Enlightenment to Go that your own life experience as an aspiring novelist took you down the road of Buddhism precisely because you realised you'd become something of a prisoner of your own emotions and you wanted to change them.

David Michie: Without question. Attachment is one of the classic Tibetan Buddhist delusions. There are two main ones; attachment and anger. It's the other end of the spectrum essentially, aversion or attachment. I was very, very attached to an idea and the idea was that I should be a major international bestselling novelist, and although I did have some success getting novels published, they weren't flying off the shelves in the required manner. It was only too apparent that my dream and reality were very, very far removed from each other, and I was making myself very, very miserable. Of course I didn't see it like that at the time, I thought it was everyone else's fault, and that's generally what we do, we look for causes outside of ourselves to blame for our own unhappiness.

But it was really thanks to the teachings I received from my teacher that I came to learn that in fact all the things that we feel are a result of our own mind, and its own interpretation of reality which is causing unhappiness, it's not the outside world itself. This is actually something which is very common in cognitive behavioural therapy, it's exactly the same concept, if not the world that's the cause of the problem, it's the way we are experiencing the world.

And so through Buddhist teachings I was able to little by little remove myself from that powerful sense of attachment to the point that I could make peace with the fact that I wasn't in fact a major international bestselling novelist and instead just value the fact that I already have the most unbelievable good fortune, just when I look at my life compared to most beings on this planet, and that's what we all are encouraged to do. We have amazingly privileged lives. And so the point is that we are already in the top few percent of the world's population, why are we niggling about...

Rachael Kohn: But David, we are all raised to be goal orientated, and if you are goal oriented, how can you not be attached to the outcome of your actions?

David Michie: As every sales manager knows, if you really, really want to sell a product, a very vulnerable position to be in is to have to be desperate to make that sale, to close that sale. If you, for example, are failing woefully to meet your sales target and you need to go out and bash on ten doors, your vulnerability is going to betray itself to everyone that you meet, and the likelihood of them buying what you want is very, very low.

The point is that it's all very well to aspire to have certain goals and to really want to achieve them, but it's also important to be confident and comfortable. If, by contrast, you really don't care whether people buy your product or not, you've got every confidence in the product, but if they want it or not that's entirely up to them, that confidence tends to be communicated.

And so similarly it's all very well to have goals, in fact everybody in Buddhism would encourage you to do that, however it's what goes with it that matters. And having that sense of non-attachment is very, very important. And I agree that it's a kind of maybe bewildering concept to Westerners in that we think, well, we should set goals and we should strive our utmost and put our heart and soul into getting it, but in fact that can be a very negative thing to do. Yes, have goals, yes, try to strive and achieve them, but realise that in the grander scheme of things actually the achievement of those goals is not terribly meaningful.

Rachael Kohn: So is enlightenment, the enlightenment that's in the title of your book, really about overcoming one's emotions?

David Michie: It's overcoming attachment and overcoming our aversion. Those are the two principal delusions that we suffer from. And the means by which we overcome them is to recognise in fact that what underpins them both is a lack of understanding about the way that things really exist. It's what is sometimes called the superstition of materialism, the belief being that things themselves have the power to give us happiness or unhappiness.

For example, in my case, thinking that if I became a major international bestselling novelist I would be happy. The proof of the insanity of that was already evident to me because my literary agent, for example, once introduced me to a very well-known household-name author who was her worst client because she said he's so miserable to deal with, he lived as a tax exile because he was completely fixated on money, and he was just a very miserable individual.

And so the thing is if we look at people who already have what we have or what we aspire to have, we quite frequently find that they're not in fact any happier than ourselves. So it's totally superstitious to believe that having something or avoiding something is going to produce happiness.

Why be unhappy about something
If it can be remedied?
And what is the use of being unhappy about something
If it cannot be remedied?


Rachael Kohn: A wisdom saying of the medieval Indian monk, Shantideva, read there by David Michie who's written Enlightenment to Go which is a guide to the tools of Buddhist practice, with chapters like 'Breaking the Cycle of Dissatisfaction.'

Later, we'll find out from the recent visiting scholar at the University of Sydney, Geoffrey Samuel, whether he thinks Tibetan long life practices can really work.

Now back to my conversation with David Michie, but first here he is with another of Shantideva's teachings:

Although enemies such as hatred and craving
Have neither any arms nor legs,
And are neither courageous nor wise,
How have I, like a slave, been used by them?


Rachael Kohn: It seems to me he was all about wanting to live a wholesome life, which you interpret as an ethical life. And like today, it seems it was as hard to convince people back then in the 8th century to live in a way that's not only beneficial to themselves but also to others.

David Michie: Yes, you're quite right, it's a timeless theme, and in fact there's a wonderful verse Shantideva uses which I'll quote if I may, it is just four lines, and he says:

So if, when having found leisure such as this,
I do not attune myself to what is wholesome,
There could be no greater deception,
And there could be no greater folly.

And the fact is that most of us and most of the people listening to this program, I expect, are in a position that we do have ethical choices and we can choose to do the wholesome thing and not the unwholesome thing. And there are many beings on planet Earth who have no such choices because they live in conditions where it is dog eat dog, quite frankly. And so the point that Shantideva is making is that we do have a precious opportunity, and we don't often think of ethical choices as being opportunities but Shantideva is saying that's precisely what they are.

And of course his and the Buddhist notion would be that there is such a thing as karma or action and reaction, and if we create positive causes for positive effects, that puts us in a very privileged position. Also practising generosity; if we come up to a charity collector in the street, that is an opportunity from a Buddhist perspective to create wealth because giving is a cause for wealth, giving material things is a cause for material well-being. And so that is the Buddhist way of reframing our experiences; instead of seeing them as kind of difficult-to-make choices, they are seen as wonderful opportunity for us to actually improve our future not only for our own sake but for the sake of those around us.

Rachael Kohn: I must say that that is one of the things that I am not sure about in respect to Buddhist compassion. I can't help feeling uncomfortable about the idea that to be compassionate toward others is really good for oneself, one's karma, one's own happiness. Is that a true ethical stand or is that just another example of saying 'it's really all about me'?

David Michie: I hear what you are saying. That's a really tricky question and it's very well asked. I think the way that Buddhists tend to approach this is by looking at two different aspects. One is looking at the benefit for self, and the other one is looking at the benefit for other. And in fact the two are not unrelated, although they may seem to be, and the Dalai Lama often talks about this phrase, being 'wisely selfish'. And what he says is that if you want to advance your own personal interests then you should do so by advancing the interests of those around you. Basically what he is saying is that there is a certain level of integration there, and to me this is the clever part about Buddhism.

When we start out along the path, most of us unfortunately are very, very self-cherishing. We think about me, myself and I from the moment we wake up to the moment we go to sleep. And what Buddhism says is that if you want to advance the interests of this precious 'I' that you keep thinking about, then you should advance the interests of those around you. As you progress down that path you begin to realise that this 'I' is actually an illusionary entity, it doesn't in fact exist, but that's almost like a parallel discovery, and the more that you start to realise the truth of that, the more that you realise in fact the only thing worth doing is helping other beings make that same realisation.

So it's a kind of a strange way in which you kind of...sometimes the illustration is used as a fire that burns its own material, like a trunk that's maybe burning and the wood eventually gets used up in the fire, that sort of self-cherishing gets burned away by a motivation which starts off as a very self-centred one but ends up being very altruistic.

Rachael Kohn: I must say too that the whole concept for Westerners that there is no self is also very confronting. The idea that one is just a conglomerate of biochemical elements can be pretty shattering if you don't have a whole other value system to replace your view of yourself, and that's obviously what Buddhism gives.

David Michie: Yes, absolutely. I would just say it's not only biochemical, there's mind and there's body, and so you're quite right, on the body side very much we are many different component parts, but there are also mental components as well. And yes it is, it is the most confronting...because we are all basically brought up to believe in this real me, this self that resides in us, and there's nothing in the outside world which ever encourages us to think any different. And then you come to Buddhism and you suddenly realise actually there is some truth in this and you start to meditate and look for the self that we spend all our time protecting and looking after, and when you can't find it, that is an amazing discovery.

The thing is that it's an amazingly liberating discovery. In fact all our unhappiness, every single bit of our unhappiness is caused because we have this false sense of me, of myself, of I. And the moment we can get away from that and realise what we really are, and what we really are is a primordial mind that is boundless and radiant and formless and beginningless and endless and blissful, and to experience it in meditation is the most wonderful experience you can possibly have. Once we start to get glimpses of that, we realise, well, why am I wasting so much time and energy trying to prop up this false creation, this acquired personality et cetera, which is definitely going to disappear when I die anyway, and which has no real value to me because what has real value is the true state of being which is something I can experience whenever I meditate.

Rachael Kohn: Let's talk about one of those emotions that can be pretty divisive but I don't think is always a bad thing, however in your book and certainly in Buddhist and certainly in Buddhist writing, anger comes across as a very bad emotion. Shantideva talks about it as self-destructive to inner peace. But is the alternative to be a doormat, to be a pushover to anyone who assails you or attacks those who you care about?

David Michie: I don't think that that is a correct understanding in the sense that being a doormat is certainly not something that Tibetan Buddhists would recommend, and in fact if you have the good fortune to meet Tibetan Lamas you will quickly realise that they are the opposite of a doormat or a pushover, they're very, very feisty. But it always boils back to what's in here rather than what's out there. It's not so much the way you present yourself to the outside world that is being talked about, it's more your own inner feeling.

In Buddhism there is also this concept of wrathfulness which is where you may portray anger and fury, and in fact if you go to any Tibetan Buddhist temple you'll see wall hangings or tankas with the most ferocious and wrathful looking entities displayed or Dharma protectors displayed, and this is because Buddhists do understand the value of putting on this front of wrathfulness in order to protect themselves against evil and hatred and negativity.

So the point is more a question of what's going on inside rather than what's going on externally, and the thing is that what Shantideva is saying is that we don't get anything at all out of feeling angry, and we all know ourselves, when we feel angry it destroys our mental well-being, and when we express anger to others it makes them extremely unhappy, and there is very little to be gained from that is the teaching.

However, just as you as a mother or somebody as a person may have expressed anger towards their children or wrathfulness towards their children when they're not really angry, like if a child goes near a pond or something you might shout at it and appeared to be angry, you're not really angry but you're doing it for the benefit of that child. In the same way you might express wrathfulness or appear to be wrathful but the reality is inside you're not. So I think it's important to make the distinction between anger and wrathfulness.

Rachael Kohn: Anger turned inward seems to be the cause of anxiety and then depression, and I wonder whether people are drawn to Buddhism because they see it as a form of self-help, particularly as a way of countering depression.

David Michie: Well, I can certainly vouch for that because I have been very, very depressed in my life, and depression is not something that just disappears unfortunately, it does tend to come back and recur, but through using Dharma techniques I've been able to reduce the frequency with which I experienced depression and significantly reduce the intensity with which I experienced it. And once again it comes back to this false sense of 'I'.

The technique that I use is simply I sit and I meditate and I think to myself, right, I'm feeling depressed, okay, where it is this 'I' that is feeling depressed? Is it in fact my feet? No. Is it in my legs? No. And I go through every part of my body and every aspect of my mental functioning, and I cannot find the 'I' that is depressed. And I then remain in the single point of concentration, as far as I am capable of, focusing on the absence of the 'I' that is depressed. And it's a very, very direct and effective means of pulling the rug from underneath my depressive feelings.

Rachael Kohn: Is yours a simple garden variety depression or did it come from a catastrophic act or time in your life?

David Michie: I really don't know whether I have a tendency to be depressed as a personality type or whether there was...there was certainly a trigger in my early 20s, I was dumped by my girlfriend and I was depressed for years, but there were other things that made me depressed subsequently, so I don't know whether it was that particular event or whether I just have a tendency, but certainly I found the practice of meditation and the Dharma techniques that I've learnt to be amazingly powerful in dealing with depression.

Rachael Kohn: And I suppose oversensitivity too...does it help you kind of develop a bit of a tougher exterior?

David Michie: Well, we're just more relaxed because you realise that's there's no reason to get upset because there is nobody to be upset about because this 'I' that I'm so worried about doesn't in fact exist. Only yesterday I was sitting in a coffee shop listening to this person going on and on about how unhappy they were for about 20 minutes and I felt like turning around and saying, 'Actually, if only you thought about somebody else for a change, maybe you wouldn't be so depressed.' I know that's very politically incorrect to say but unfortunately it's the reality, and I can say that because I did it myself. When we are depressed we can't think about anybody apart from ourselves, but by contrast, when we think about the most profoundly moving and happy experiences of our lives, they are usually when we were thinking about somebody else

Rachael Kohn: That's David Michie. This is 'Enlightenment' from the CD, All the Beings.


Rachael Kohn: The 'no-self' teaching of Buddhism is not an easy one to comprehend and I asked David Michie about it.

David, this is such a paradox because I think many people are drawn to Buddhism because it seems to be much more focused on the self than, say, other religions which may be focused on a god externally, and yet you are also conveying the message that fundamentally there is no self.

David Michie: There absolutely is definitely without any question there is no self, no independent self-existent self, no, and that was Buddha's most profound discovery, and that's the basis on which Buddhism is founded, this concept.

Rachael Kohn: Let's go back to that point I mentioned earlier, it can be shattering to realise you don't have a self, and once you have come to accept that, what do you then put in its place? How do you then order your life? Because certainly Buddhism has a number of prohibitions, thou shalt call them non-virtues which I think is a very gentle way of saying it...and some fairly strong concepts about how one can gain merit and indeed gain enlightenment.

David Michie: Yes. Well, I don't see the two things as being in any way paradoxical or separate. The fact is that when we realise intellectually that there is no self-existent self and that's something that we can make quite early on at an intellectual level, but then to actually realise that...and I return to the example we used actually realise that and understand it directly is something which is going to take a very, very long time, certainly probably our entire lifetime. So in the meantime we are still stuck with the fact that most of the time we do think that we exist in this kind of illusory way. So how should we behave in this world?

Buddha was very, very astute in saying, well, people need the tools to cope in this world the way that it is, and hence giving us ethical guidelines. These ethical guidelines are identical pretty much to what you'll find in Christianity and, as far as I'm aware, in many other traditions. And I think most traditions have the same ethical underpinnings, and controversially perhaps I would argue that most traditions end up at the same point. What happens between the underpinnings and the ultimate point is very, very different, but there is the same sense of looking for wholeness, there is the same sense of non-duality, there is the same sense of transcendence of a false sense of self.

Rachael Kohn: But there is something very different, and one of the examples of it is presented by Shantideva and that is that if you are confronted with a very rocky and uncomfortable terrain, you don't need to cover the whole terrain with leather, just cover your feet. That's interesting because I think in Western traditions you would want to change the external, that is there would be a strong societal focus in trying to rectify or improve conditions, whereas the Buddhists look at just changing the way you respond to them.

David Michie: That's exactly it, and that's a beautiful verse and it's one that I use first in the book because I just think it sums up being so well. What he is basically saying is we can't control external reality, we can only control the way that we experience. That doesn't say that you shouldn't try to some extent, but the emphasis is on trying to look at the inner processes. And the thing is I think that if we look at how we spend every day of our lives, we will find that the balance is very, very much on the external. And all Shantideva and Buddhism is saying is that instead of spending all your time focusing on what's going on out there, why don't you try and focus on what's going on in here instead, in my own mind.

And that is part of the reason why meditation is such an important part of the Buddhist path, is that, to use that management adage, you can't manage what you don't monitor, and meditation is the best way we can start to monitor what is actually going on in our mind, and only once we know what's going on in our mind and recognise how in fact totally out of control it is can we start to assume some control of it and ideally to start replacing some of the negative things that we do which cause us to experience reality negatively and replace them with more positive and more accurate ways of reframing our experience of reality.

Rachael Kohn: Given meditation is prevalent in all the Buddhist schools, why did you choose the Tibetan Buddhist path?

David Michie: Gosh, I've got no idea. I suppose the answer is they were the closest group to where I was living at the time. That would be the conventional explanation. If you were to look at a karmic explanation, well, maybe I've been down this path some time in the past, in a previous lifetime, and I'm simply being drawn back to it. But I can't say that I sat and looked at Zen and Theravada and Mahayana or Tibetan Buddhism and made a choice as though I was selecting a chocolate from a tray, it was really just what was there and available at the time. I've come to know a little bit more about the other traditions since becoming a Tibetan Buddhist. I have no regrets about my choice because I think Tibetan Buddhism is quite well known for embracing the key practices of the other traditions as well as having its own. So it's an all-encompassing Buddhist tradition.

Rachael Kohn: Do you have any qualms about how Western it should be? I mean, you are obviously a Western person and you're not wearing robes and sandals and not living in a sangha. Do you think that platform of Buddhist life is really fairly irrelevant to where most of Westerners are and the way they want to live their lives?

David Michie: Yes, I do think it is. I don't think it is at all irrelevant in the sense that it's not something that isn't incredibly useful for the people who are able to live that life, but most of us in reality do have families, do have mortgages, do have jobs, we are on this hamster wheel, if you like, this treadmill, we can't get off it, and the question is does Buddhism have something of value for us. In my own personal case I've found without question it has become the most meaningful thing in my life, and what I'm trying to do is share some of those meaningful teachings with others so that they can cope with the same hectic stressed-out life that I do. I work as a financial PR consultant, so I have 1,000 phone calls to make every day and media releases to send out and places to go and people to see, but I've managed to extract some real value from Buddhist teachings which have really transformed my own sense of self and what myself is and my own sense of inner peace and well-being, and if I can share those benefits with others than what a fantastic outcome.

Rachael Kohn: So do you share with the Dalai Lama a desire to disseminate the ethical point of view of Buddhism to the society at large without necessarily requiring them to be Buddhist?

David Michie: Without question. The Dalai Lama has often said that the purpose of Buddhism is not to turn people into Buddhists, it's to give people tools to be happier, and if that makes you a happier atheist or a happier Catholic or a happier Jew, then fantastic. We are not trying to convert people to Buddhism. Buddhism is much more like a smorgasbord or a buffet, if you like, of all sorts of useful practices and techniques, and some of them will appeal to some people and some will not appeal to people. That's not a big deal, the big deal is to try and find something useful to help people become happier, because from a Buddhist perspective true happiness will only ever be found when we help others achieve happiness. So it's to everyone's benefit that everyone else should be happy.

Rachael Kohn: I understand that you donated your advance for Buddhism For Busy People to the Tibetan Buddhist Society. Have you done the same with Enlightenment to Go?

David Michie: Yes, I have, and I do try to support the Tibetan Buddhist Society financially as well as in other ways for the very simple reason that I wouldn't be capable of writing these books if it wasn't for the kindness of my own teacher Les Sheehy in Perth and Geshe Acharya Thubten Loden in Melbourne. Without those two beings I would be still sitting in the dark getting depressed. So the point is that they have given me so many tools which I am profoundly grateful for, and this is the best way that I can possibly repay their kindness.

Rachael Kohn: Well, it sounds like a lot of people will be very interested in the tools, in the practical tools in this book Enlightenment to Go, and I thank you so much for being on The Spirit of Things.

David Michie: Thank you so much.

Rachael Kohn: Perth-based David Michie is the author of Enlightenment to Go, which focuses on the teachings of Shantideva, and here's just one more:

Where would I possibly find enough leather
With which to cover the surface of the earth?
Yet wearing leather just on the soles of my shoes
Is equivalent to covering the earth with it.


Rachael Kohn: Western medicine has advanced in many areas, including genetic engineering and stem cell research, but surprisingly there's also been an interest in traditional Chinese and Tibetan medicine. Geoffrey Samuel, formerly a professor at the University of Newcastle, New South Wales, now teaches Buddhist studies at Cardiff University in Wales. He heads up a project called BAHAR, Body, Health and Religion, and has conducted research on Tibetan Buddhist long life practices. He was a visiting lecturer in Buddhist Studies at the University of Sydney, and I caught up with him just before he returned to Wales:

Geoffrey Samuel, welcome to The Spirit of Things.

Geoffrey Samuel: Thank you, it's a pleasure to be here.

Rachael Kohn: I know there's a lot of interest in Tibetan Buddhism these days due to the celebrity of the Dalai Lama, but perhaps not as much is known of Tibetan Buddhism's interest in long life. What is the religious significance of living long, living healthily?

Geoffrey Samuel: I think there are two ways you could look at that. There's a kind of standard answer which you would get from the Lamas which is that since Tibetan Buddhism is centred around the striving to attain enlightenment, then key long life practices are about extending your life so that you can do spiritual practice so that you can continue to strive more effectively towards enlightenment. And obviously that doesn't only mean long life, it means long life in reasonable health because there is no point in being in agonising pain so that you can't really do anything. So that would be a kind of official answer. But I think it's also clear that for many ordinary lay Tibetans, long life is a desirable goal and people think of the practices as helping to improve their health and their longevity.

Rachael Kohn: Is it important as a sign of your spiritual health that you are physically healthy?

Geoffrey Samuel: Not necessarily. A lot of famous Lamas die quite young. Life was unpredictable and at times dangerous in Tibet. But there is the idea of the Tantric attainment of power over long life as being something that can be attained through Buddhist practice, and it's not just a Tibetan theme, it is an Indian mythological theme too. So the particular practice which I mostly studied for the project that I was working on over the last three or four years was supposed to be the practice that was employed by Padmasambhava, who is the great Tantric hero of Tibetan Buddhism, and his consort Mandarava when they attained power over long life.

Rachael Kohn: So are these practices then recorded in a text that is studied and then replicated in one's life?

Geoffrey Samuel: Yes, the place of text I think can be exaggerated a bit but the text is part of the tradition of practice, and what really matters is the tradition of practice. The text by itself is dead, it doesn't mean anything, what matters is the continuing tradition of people who are working with that text or working with those practices.

Rachael Kohn: Said like a true anthropologist.

Geoffrey Samuel: Yes, but I think it would also be a very Tibetan Buddhist way to say it.

Rachael Kohn: So these practices are then undertaken and transmitted orally over time. But are they generally practised by the Lamas, the monks, or do the laypeople also practice?

Geoffrey Samuel: I think they are practised by a fairly small number of people when you're talking about serious practice in a retreat context of a substantial period of time. There could be non-celibate, lay practitioners but they are certainly not a huge proportion of the population. The monastery, if that's quite the right word, where we were working in Kalimpong, we went to a week-long ritual practice of this particular longevity practice, was actually a community of lay Tantric practitioners. The head Lama was a monk but none of the others had taken vows of celibacy, and that's not an unusual situation for what was really a Bhutanese community although it was in Kalimpong.

Rachael Kohn: What is actually taking place in this long life meditation? Is it visualisation?

Geoffrey Samuel: I think visualisation is part of what's going on. I think it's at least as much a matter of feeling emotion, intention and for that matter you are imagining sounds as well as vision. The practitioners are transforming the world they're living in and they are transforming their relationship to the world.

For Tibetans, and I think in a rather different way perhaps for us too, the world is a slightly scary and threatening place, things can go wrong in all sorts of ways. People were very concerned about the environment as being composed of dangerous forces, the mountain gods, the gods of the lakes and rivers, and the lesser spirits of different kinds, all of which could get upset with you and attack you and cause problems.

So if the world could be seen as quite threatening, what the practice does is to transform the environment, and you transform yourself in your creative imagination, if you like, into a Tantric deity or the Tantric couple at the centre of the mandala of deities. But at the same time the entire world is made over as a very positive and supportive and health-giving environment. And if you are doing that practice then you go through that transition over and over again repetitively. I found that quite interesting, what that might mean, and there are also various questions it might lead to about what is a healthy relationship to our environment, how should we see ourselves?

The reason all this is supposed to be able to work is because you're not just imagining something which is a personal fantasy, it's more a process in which you could say you might be tuning into something that's part of the nature of the universe because Buddhahood is inherent in all beings, inherent in the nature phenomena and so on, and the deity, say in this case Amitayus who is the Buddha of long life, is an aspect of Buddhahood. So in a sense he is real or at the least he is as real as anything else...

Rachael Kohn: So is the individual actually changing the world or is the Buddha that he is visualising changing him?

Geoffrey Samuel: It's a non-dual process, as the Tibetans would say. That's quite a key element because of course Buddhism has always been a tradition that denies the self or questions the self, questions individual identity, and I think the way it works in practice in Tantric meditation is that you are constantly working across that boundary. And so quite explicitly you visualise the deity, then you invite in the wisdom being the external deity, as it were, and the two become non-dual. So the connection can be built with what you are creating and becoming.

Rachael Kohn: I know that you have established a project on Body, Health and Religion, and as an anthropologist you would have been visiting Tibetans and Tibetan communities, both in Tibet and in the diaspora. What have you seen as the result of this kind of practice? Do you think that it has effect? And if it does, how would you explain it scientifically?

Geoffrey Samuel: I think there are two levels here. There is the lay involvement, laypeople, who aren't actually doing these practices in any detail. They may actually in some cases know fairly simple versions of them but who are more likely to be going along to a big festival in the monastery and receiving various pills and liquids and so on which have been empowered in the course of these practices. And I think for them at the very least it might provide a sense of security and a positive force which is on their side, if you like, in the process of everyday living. A lot of Tibetan ritual is actually pragmatic and this-worldly at one level. I think it's one of the things that often tends to be minimised in the Western approaches to Tibetan Buddhism. It seems somewhat crude or superstitious or something that we no longer need, but for the Tibetans it's very important.

And then for people who are doing this as a serious personal practice...I'm thinking of a Lama who I met in Bhutan last year who is very involved in the particular practice I've been studying, and he is quite elderly, he has a personal mission to build this massive statue of Padmasambhava in central Bhutan. There's a whole story about that, which I won't go into here. But he was saying to me, 'The reason that I'm doing this practice now is because I want to live to see this happen.' So he was personally quite clear that he saw this as something that was going to help him live longer to attain a personal spiritual goal.

Another Lama, who I met also in Bhutan, regularly did this practice in hospitals with patients with various illnesses. So it was becoming incorporated within a contemporary medical context.

Rachael Kohn: My guest on The Spirit of Things is Professor Geoffrey Samuel, whose most recent work is The Origins of Yoga and Tantra, and it's Tantra which supplies many of the concepts of Tibetan medical practice. One of the main ideas is 'the subtle body' which as it turns out is also found in different ways in other religions.

Geoffrey Samuel: There are subtle body concepts I think that can be found in many, many different cultures. We're looking in the book I mentioned at ones in the West to some extent, say, in Neoplatonic practices and philosophy, and in Islam in the Sufi context, as well as in China and in India.

Rachael Kohn: What is a subtle body? It's not the physical material body that we see.

Geoffrey Samuel: To go back to this question of the relationship between mind and body, if you see mind as one kind of thing and body as another kind of thing, made up of a completely different sort of substance, then the subtle body ideas tend to be somewhere in-between. They have elements of consciousness, they have elements of materiality, and they are often connected with practices that are trying to somehow link the two, they're trying to link consciousness and materiality. In the Tibetan subtle body practices and in Hindu subtle body practices you are trying to control internal...I suppose 'energies' would be the word that people would use these days, within the body.

I tend to see them in terms of the operation of the central nervous system in the sense that a lot of what goes on within our reaction to the world or the way that we operate as human beings is normally unconscious, it is part of the central nervous system's functioning, and there are all these little connections that are going on within our bodies. And the subtle body maps and devices and ideas give us a kind of way to grasp hold of and get some sort of control over those processes, at least they seem to do for people who work with them. So I think there are perhaps ways of seeing what's going on here that are not particularly contradictory with modern scientific or biomedical understandings, but they may involve a bit of demythologising of the way in which they are conceived in Tibetan terms.

Rachael Kohn: Are the Tibetans comfortable with you demythologising their sacred beliefs?

Geoffrey Samuel: People vary a lot. There are Lamas for whom it's very important that the tradition be carried on in a very precise and pure way. There are others who are much more open to seeing things in other terms. Quite a few Lamas, like the Dalai Lama, who are very interested in the western science...of course many Lamas these days are trying to teach Westerners and they are involved in Western audiences, and part of trying to do that effectively is understanding the people who they're talking to. So they have some reason to try to understand Western modes. The two Lamas we were working with on the project, I think one was much more sympathetic towards this kind of thing than the other.

Rachael Kohn: And is your project on Body, Health and Religion very much trying to break down or open up our kind of western notion of the body and mind split?

Geoffrey Samuel: I think the Tibetan tradition and some of the other Eastern traditions are a great resource, if only because they have approached these issues from a quite different angle and learned to operate with parts of the process that we've tended to ignore in the West, just as the West has developed things which perhaps are less developed within Tibet. I wouldn't want to be too simplistic or literal about adopting ideas from Tibetan Buddhism, that's certainly something that is happening anyway within Western culture as many people become involved with Buddhist practices.

But I think my job is a little bit different which in a way is to kind of build the intellectual and conceptual bridges such that we can make sense of what is happening when we try doing these practices perhaps, and also which might be helpful in terms of incorporating some of these ideas in a Western context. The general themes for me are very much to do with the body and the relationship between the body and consciousness, and ways in which that might be thought differently, imagined differently, understood differently, and the various kinds of practices which are used to operate in that area.

BAHAR at one level is a group of people at Cardiff, but it's also a wider network of people who get together for workshops and various kinds of things. A lot of the people involved actually have backgrounds in things like dance and movement and body work and so on, so there's quite a practical side to this, an engagement with people who are working with the body as well as thinking about it.

Rachael Kohn: Is there a move toward the practical ramifications and value of religions rather than analysing their philosophical arguments or their theologies?

Geoffrey Samuel: Oh yes, very much, at least for us there is and I would hope there is more generally within Western cultures or global cultures because this is now a rather more global situation.

Rachael Kohn: And do you have a personal interest in long life?

Geoffrey Samuel: I think the long life practices are interesting things and I've certainly tried doing some of them in various contexts. I think when you do them they actually don't necessarily become experience so much in terms of longevity in a literal sense, I think the way in which the practices function from the inside...and we were looking at this very much, I should say, in the context of the research project and is more to do with restoring a sense of vitality and positive health rather than 'can I get myself another ten years' or whatever.

Rachael Kohn: Well, vitality and positivity are pretty good things.

Geoffrey Samuel: Oh yes, I have no problems with that.

Rachael Kohn: May you have a long life and prosper. Geoff Samuel, it's been great talking to you on The Spirit of Things.

Geoffrey Samuel: I've enjoyed it very much too, thank you Rachael.

Rachael Kohn: Geoffrey Samuel is Professor of Buddhist Studies at Cardiff University in Wales. His soon to be published book is Tantra and Buddhism in India and Tibet. It seems the jury's out on whether you really can achieve long life using Tibetan practice, but there may be other benefits along the way.

Production was by me and Geoff Wood with sound engineering by Luke Purse.

Next week, it's a special guest program on The Spirit of Things with three young fellas who are in conversation with six students. They represent Jewish, Christian and Muslim views on just how far is interfaith dialogue possible, and they're a pretty good demonstration of it in action. Meet Benji, Colin and Mohammad next week on The Spirit of Things right here on ABC Radio National.


David Michie
is a corporate communications consultant. He was born in Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, educated at Rhodes University, South Africa, and lived in London for ten years. He is now based in Perth, Australia. His books include Buddhism for Busy People, Hurry Up and Meditate and Enlightenment to Go.
Geoffrey Samuel
is Professor in the School of History, Archaeology and Religion at Cardiff University. His work deals with religion in Tibetan societies, the technologies of consciousness, the relationship between consciousness, body and materiality, particularly in relation to healing, and the history of meditation, yoga and tantra in India and Tibet and other Asian medical, health and yogic practices. His books include Civilized Shamans: Buddhism in Tibetan Societies and The Origins of Yoga and Tantra: Indic Religions to the Thirteenth Century. He is joint editor of the journal Asian Medicine: Tradition and Modernity and recently established the Body, Health and Religion (BAHAR) International Research Network. In 2010 Professor Samuel was Visiting Professor of Buddhist Studies at the University of Sydney.


Enlightenment to Go
David Michie
Allen&Unwin, 2010


Semchok & Medicine Buddha
Tenzin Choegyal & TaroTerahara
Tibet: Awakened Heart
CD details: Independent Release
All The Beings
Jigme Kunga Shonu
CD details: Independent Release/ Gyalwang Drukpa

Further Information

David Michie's Homepage
Along with non-fiction books, David has written four novels including The Magician Of Lhasa.
Geoffrey Samuel's Homepage
A site that allows you to follow the research interests of Professor Samuel.
Buddhism and a Sustainable World: Some Reflections - Video
A video recording of Professor Samuel's talk at Sydney University's Sydney Ideas lecture series in 2010. He suggests that the actual practice of Buddhist societies, particularly in Tibet and the Himalayas, often engaged quite deeply with environmental and ecological issues, and that these societies have useful lessons for us today in the search for a sustainable world. DUR: 90 mins
Buddhism and a Sustainable World: Some Reflections - Article
An article by Geoffrey Samuel in Online Opinion, described as Australia's e-journal of social and political debate. 20 September, 2010.
Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society
A global leader in mind-body medicine. For thirty years, the Center has pioneered the integration of mindfulness meditation and other mindfulness-based approaches in mainstream medicine and healthcare. Directed by Saki F. Santorelli, EdD, MA, since 2000 and founded in 1995 by Jon Kabat-Zinn, PhD , the Center is an outgrowth of the acclaimed Stress Reduction Clinic - the oldest and largest academic medical center-based stress reduction program in the world.
A worldwide Buddhist portal.


Dr Rachael Kohn
Geoff Wood / Dr Rachael Kohn

Comments (9)

Add your comment

  • James :

    31 Oct 2010 9:30:11pm

    I really find it hard to wrap my head around this one.

    If David realised the ego 'he' was feeding didn't really exist, then who or what is the 'he' that realised this? Surely there has to be something that makes these realisations and how does one know that the old ego hasn't slipped in through the back door in disguise?

    If one loses their ego and self concept in the process of so called enlightenment, then where does the motivational instinct for survival go to or come from to keep the left over whatever eating, breathing and continuing?

    Does David live ego free in every moment of his life or is it simply a intellectual concept that waxes and wanes according to how 'he' is feeling at a particular point in time?

    It's one thing to say that one can live without an ego when living in an environment such as a monastery that supports it. But how can one possibly be egoless in the cut and thrust of secular living where ego dominates? I wonder how well the monastery monks would cope if they had to live and work in society like the rest of us?

    These questions and more.....

  • Son of Om :

    01 Nov 2010 11:42:21am

    David Michie spoke about detaching the mind from external circumstances to quieten it. This is not just a Buddhist idea. Shakespeare wrote, ‘There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.’ The Stoics in ancient Greece taught the same thing.

    In the West there is a tradition of developing the self as far as possible to create a well rounded human being who can live a full life. Generally, Eastern thought teaches resignation. The first ‘noble’ truth of Buddhism is life is suffering. In his works the Dalai Lama is always going on about how life is misery. Unfulfilled desire is misery, but this does not mean we have to go the Buddhist way and relinquish the self. We can develop an effective self to deal with life.

    The Buddhist no self concept is problematic. If there is no self, who follows the practice? Who gets enlightened? Buddhists believe in rebirth, but they can’t give a coherent explanation or agree on just what sort of entity is reborn. One school of thought says a disembodied consciousness is reborn. The idea of a divine or immortal soul makes more sense.

  • Philip :

    01 Nov 2010 12:21:25pm

    "No need to complicate it. This is what the mind does, and that’s why awakening becomes a dog chasing its tail.

    It’s simple. Though subtle.

    You don’t exist. There is no you to see. Just sight. There is no you to think. Just thinking.

    Look at life through this lens. You do not exist.

    You think you think your thoughts. You don’t think your thoughts; there is thinking. There is no you or your. It is not your life; there is just life. You don’t have feelings; there are just feelings. You don’t breathe; there is just breathing.

    You did not exist before life. Life was not given to you. It’s not as if you existed, and someone came and gave you a body to call yours, and gave you a mind to call yours. There never was a you."
    We were born relatively 'selfless'. . we were consciousness as infants. There was seeing and hearing and learning and playing.

    The world' through other people fed us lies. names, concepts, photos, mirror images and labels. Thoughts recursively became your thoughts. 'You' are a creation of the mind.

    "The mind is not your mind. Who’s is it? No one’s!

    The idea of you was created in your mind. Then later 'you' acquired beliefs and ideas and conditioning and this sealed in the delusion of you."

    This is the core delusion which every spiritual tradition, including Eckhart Tolle , talks about.

  • David Miller, Atheist Society :

    01 Nov 2010 12:54:20pm

    Some Buddhists imagine that they have no gods. However, in my opinion, they do have 'gods'. To that which they are attached become their 'gods', in a non-theistic and non-supernatural sense. And, as having attachments is universal, the same might apply to all of us.

    Our 'gods' are our highest values, our loftiest ideals, our peak experiences and our areas of ultimate concern. They become our 'gods' when we place them above and beyond ourselves. We give them allegiance. We serve them. We are subserviant to them. They are our masters. We are their slaves. If necessary, we are prepared to die for them. We will even kill for them.

    In return they give us meaning and purpose. They give us something with which to identify. They take us out of ourselves, beyond ourselves, to a greater purpose.

    And, of course, we are also attached to our crass desires and vile impulses. These are our 'demons'.

    Can we break these attachments? Do we really want to?

  • John :

    02 Nov 2010 1:25:12am

    The opening words are wonderful "Do your ambitions outweigh your talents ?" ... I'd have to answer most definitely yes! :-)

    The notion of self was not explained very well possibly because it's a bit hard to get a handle on.

    From my point of view it's a recognition that we live in a society of people who depend on and are dependent on each other. I commented elsewhere that our emotions are often manipulated by others, but it could just as easily be described in Buddhist notion of attachment. Buddhism, it could be argued, also makes attachments, in that it places priority on peace of mind.

    From a neuroscience point of view could be described as trying to reach the state of mind where alpha waves or whatever are generated.

    As your guest said it's not about being a door mat rather having the discipline to think calmly and clearly about what you are trying to achieve. Maybe Buddhists have a different way to explain it, but that's the way I'd describe it.

    It's a bit like the prayer:


    although I'm an agnostic/atheist so god plays no role in it. Everything has a reason, if we dig deeply enough to try and understand it. It may be complicated, but there is always an explanation.

  • Ken :

    02 Nov 2010 3:57:13pm

    Well, I have just listened to your extremely enlightening program. Thank you so much Rachael for your interview with these two truly thinking Gentlemen, David [Michie] and [Geoffrey] Samuel - And of course, your many your previous programs. Such a breath of clear thinking.
    Having been brought up as a Christian and somewhere along the way passing to agnosticism to becoming an atheist in the last few years, I am finally leaving behind a little bit of my pathetic baggage. If I can clear my mind of few more things then I might be able to re-learn and just perhaps begin to understand our wonderful brain and its being. It has taken me 60+ years to get to this point – time is running out. But that is OK I’m glad I’ve got to here.
    With my little forays into Yoga, meditation and philosophy, (not trying to sound grand), I might get some way further to understanding what matters.
    Now I want to be able to unite/ understand philosophy, Buddhism and enlightenment and perhaps understand the spirit of things.
    I wonder if, in The Spirit Of Things, there would be room to discuss/ define further what philosophy, Buddhism and enlightenment is. (The word ethic is in there somewhere as well – isn’t it?)
    Thank you again. 2 11 2010

  • Cathy Sander :

    20 Nov 2010 3:47:46pm

    These 'gods' and 'demons' are labels we put onto things, events, desires which we make a big deal. These human factors are what we are to some degree. To remove all desires is tautamount to the loss of our individuality.

    It can also be a consequence of overthinking one's ideas as bigger than they actually are. The universe is beyond language, since it is not isomorphic to words. So we should not consider ourselves to be either slaves to or masters to these ideas, since they are a tiny part of the universe's existence.

  • Cathy Sander :

    20 Nov 2010 3:52:11pm

    I don't think that the "idea of a divine or immortal soul makes more sense" is true. It may comfort those in existential angst, but apart from that doesn't satisfy our curiosity over how we human animals work.

  • theodora :

    27 Mar 2013 6:36:12pm

    Thanks for the intelligent questions, and the brilliant answers. Thoroughly enjoyed this thought provoking program.