Mental Health Starts Beyond Thoughts

SPEAKER_01 0:04

Yeah listeners, we spend a great deal of time thinking about mental health as something that lives in the mind in our thoughts our patterns of paws and that's real and important. But what if the health of the mind is also deeply connected to what we put on our plate? Whether we sit in the silence each morning, whether we have music in our lives and beauty and time in the presence of something larger than ourselves. And today's case dear listeners has spent decades making that case. Not with data alone, but with his whole life. And the conversation we are about to have might quietly change how you see your data. I'm your host Avik and I'm honored to bring you this conversation. And my guest today holds a PhD from UC Berkeley as a former Zen Buddhist monk and her mama pianist, uh recipient of the College of On Science Award, and the author of the Amazon number one international wrestler, the world is population creating languages. He has delivered over 4,000 presentations in all 50 US states and more than 50 countries won't write please welcome my guest.

SPEAKER_00 2:03

Thank you. Thanks, Alec. It's great to be here.

A Life Threaded By Adventure

SPEAKER_00 2:05

Thanks everyone for listening. Glad to be here.

SPEAKER_01 2:17

Like you have been reagent since 1980. Practicing musician, someone who has spent years in then monastic training.

SPEAKER_00 2:48

Oh, thank you. That's an interesting question. What is the thread going through all these various things, the music, the meditation, the vegan living? I would say probably the thread, the main thread is the sense of adventure. I I see life as an adventure where we are here to learn and to grow and to question everything. And you know, I love nature and I love going out and walking in the forest and the mountains and you know, kayaking and canoeing on the rivers and streams and swimming and just, you know, get I think you know, the natural world is always beckoning, and animals I think have a tremendous amount to offer us in terms of their beauty and their companionship and also their intelligence. And I also just think the human culture is really fascinating, the the tremendous architecture and art and music and literature that human beings have created. Life is such an adventure of learning potentially in nature, in society, through education, through spirituality. You know, I think that probably the greatest adventure is the adventure in the mind of uncovering new vistas of understanding and perspectives. And so that's probably been, I guess, my most passionate adventure probably has been through meditation, just to really dedicate myself to trying to understand what a human being actually is. And I've been very influenced by Indian culture from the really from the beginning, since I first started this in my early 20s. And even before that, and when I was just a kid and a teenager, I was always interested in the culture of India, the culture of Tibet. I remember reading books about Tibet when I was oh, just a kid. And I always thought there's something more than just what I was learning in church and in Sunday school, where I was raised in a Christian background. And so when I discovered the teachings of Ramana Maharshi and some of the other teachings of the Bhagavad Gita and so forth, when I was just still in college, back in maybe I was maybe 19 or 20 years old, it was very interesting to me to go deeper. And it felt like a beckoning adventure, really, to learn more about what it is to be a human being, other than merely competing and trying to get more things and make more money, but to actually awaken out of the delusion of the self who's always suffering and struggling. And I I always had this feeling that came from the sages of India and and other countries too. I think there's been great sages from all over the world, China and Europe also, who uh who woke up and realized

When Music Becomes Meditation

SPEAKER_00 6:05

the joy of being, the joy of creativity. And I and then when I was uh going through this and in in college, I remember I was a classically trained pianist, and I was also a church organist, and I decided to stop playing other people's music and just sit at the piano and just let the music come through me as a meditation. And when I started doing that, it seemed like there were beings from beyond the earth that were doing their best to bring, to kind of bring music through me. And so I would just let that happen. And it was very beautiful. I felt like this, these beautiful melodies, harmonies, rhythms would come through. And when I would play like this for other people, they would very often start crying and have tears in their eyes. And so that led to more meditation because I wanted to quiet my mind because I realized if I was thinking, then that stopped the flow of creativity. But if I could just learn to stop thinking and get out of the way, then the music would just come through more clearly. And it was very inspiring and uplifting. And sometimes I would be crying myself as I was playing. So it was all very new. And it led me to, you know, I think I mentioned it the other time we were, we talked, and I left, you know, I left home with my brother, and we decided to walk across the country with no money. And, you know, so we walk we I ended up eventually getting to California and just playing music and and meditating and living in meditation centers and meditation, like Zen Buddhist and uh Tibetan Buddhist, various things, and studying yoga and so forth. And it's all, you know, it's it's been that was like 50 years ago. And so, you know, now I kind of look back and I just I have to say I'm very grateful to uh the the uh the Dharma teachers uh from hundreds and thousands of years, the the the great sages and saints, you know, who have always said that we have to cultivate discriminating awareness wisdom, you know, the wisdom Viveka, uh, the wisdom of of realizing what's true and what's not true, what's false and what's an illusion. And in our society, it seems like we're constantly being fooled. You know, we're being told a lot of lies, that our happiness will come from consuming or buying something, or from some relationship we can have. And I think we it all comes back to cultivating, like your, like your show says, uh a healthy mind, a quiet mind, a mind that is, I think in a way it's a mind that is under the direction of our consciousness. You know, our consciousness is what we are as an infinite, eternal being that was never born and will never die. And our mind is very often jumping around trying to get this and get that. And so if we can let our consciousness embrace our mind in a way that we relax and we begin to realize our true nature, then I think we begin to see the true nature of others, you know, animals, especially, human beings

Vegan Ethics And Inner Peace

SPEAKER_00 9:40

and animals. And then, like, like you mentioned, I've been a vegan since 1980. So I'm so glad I realize that the body and the mind are very connected, and they're both should be under our consciousness, our our our will, our responsible power. And we so then we don't pay people to stab animals and abuse animals and eat them. We try not to harm other human beings or animals in anything we're doing. And that creates a foundation of inner peace that lets our mind get quieter, and so we can create a positive spiral in our in our life where we're we're doing as best as we can good and helping others, and then that lets us get more peaceful inside, and that leads to more understanding that we're all interconnected, that there's really just one life that lives through all of us. And the more we understand that, the more joy and gratitude we feel. And I think that's the really the great adventure of a human life. It's it's the adventure of escaping the prison. You know, we're it's we're in a prison. We're born we're born into a prison in many ways. We're born into a system that would like to exploit us and and teach us how to exploit others. And we exploit cows and pigs and chickens and other animals for food and milk and meat and all these things. And then we we find we're getting exploited ourselves very often by very powerful corporations and governments and other people. And so to me, it's uh an adventure of escaping out of this prison of delusion and realizing that our mind creates everything in many ways. And if we can have discipline, I think have a practice, have a discipline of medit of regular meditation every day, then we begin to see how much our mind really controls our experience. And that's the key, I think. That's the main key of getting out of the prison, is it's our own mind and freeing our mind and freeing our actions so that our actions are are helping, helping other living beings and helping ourselves. It all it all comes back really to the ego, really, this this sense of being a separate self. That's really the prison. It's really, it's really an internal prison, but we but everybody's in it. You know, we're all sort of co-creating it together, so it's in the outer world too. And I think a lot of it is in education. You know, I my PhD from Berkeley is in philosophy of education. So I've really studied

Escaping The Ego Prison

SPEAKER_00 12:35

education a lot. And and we live most of the educational systems that we're in in the world today are really indoctrination systems that are used in order to facilitate workers who will do what they're told to do and won't ask questions and we'll just go along. And so that's not the best thing if we want to have a really happy spiritual life. It's important to really, I think, open up our mind and our heart and question the the assumptions in our society that we've been taught. I I realize that so much of what we've been taught really isn't true. And like with food, that we need to eat meat to have enough protein or enough calcium. It's just not true. I've been a vegan for all these years now. It's been 46 years, and I'm I'm really healthy, healthier than I think most people my age. And so if we can really thrive and be healthy, especially by eating organic, whole plant-based foods and having a regular uh meditation practice and being kind and loving in our relationships, connecting with nature, exercising and and uh being active and and I think especially as important as being creative and finding it, finding outlets for creativity. Like for me, it's writing, it's music, it's gardening, it's we're you know, making things. I I think it's really great. And the thing is, our life is pretty short. You know, it does it's maybe, I mean, maybe we get a hundred years or ninety years, we're not sure. But even that, it's it goes by pretty fast. So every day is precious, I think. Every day is an opportunity to learn and to grow and to take the adventure, you know, just to uh live our life, our unique life, that we're all like having unique opportunity. I mean, I really see that with uh what you're doing on creating this whole platform for people to question the kinds of uh stories that we hear in the media and in the educational system that uh create more suffering and more disease, and really focus on the positive and show people how they can transform their lives in a positive way by using their own inner wisdom, you know, accessing their own inner wisdom, their own inner guidance system, and and then getting more and more people to to uh join the party in a sense, you know, to understand this and share these ideas. And it's really great. You know, we have the the internet, you know. I mean, the internet has has some positive things, and we can use it to share these ideas all over the world, you know. I mean, it's really fantastic. I'm in I'm in California, you're in India, there's probably some people listening that are in s you know, Europe or who knows where. And we can all connect through our consciousness and inspire each other. So I'm really grateful for that. And I'm grateful to you for what you're doing because with without communication, uh, without sharing these ideas, we would all be trapped

Food Myths And Daily Practices

SPEAKER_00 15:55

in the prison. You know, this is how we get out. We we we show each other the way. And I think that's really important.

(Cont.) Food Myths And Daily Practices

SPEAKER_01 16:03

Exactly. And uh also like uh you have been doing the war for over forty years, presenting in every country, writing books, composing music, living the age. So this is an extraordinary sustained commitment to a vision. So there must have been periods of discouragement, of feeling like the message wasn't landing, or wondering whether the world was actually moving in the direction you were wanting. So how do you sustain that kind of long-game dedication to something you believe in when the results are slow and the obstacles are significant?

SPEAKER_00 16:47

Right, yeah, well, I think it's been what can I say? I guess the the main thing I think for me has that's kept me going and has kept my spirits strong in this whole thing, is an underlying faith or certainty that it's possible to attain a higher way of living and and thinking and understanding that's in harmony with the great wisdom that people have touched on over the millennia. I I think of people like the Buddha and Jesus and Lao Tzu and great sages. I mean, they're the light of their consciousness is always shining. And very often they were revered and loved by the people around them for their loving kindness and their wisdom. But very often they were hated also, or they were misunderstood and they were attacked for questioning the whole structure of society. So I should not expect that something similar might happen to me sometimes. I mean, sometimes people really love what I'm saying and everything, and sometimes it seems like they don't like it, you know. But but all in all, I think the whole idea is to, you know, to just realize that this life is temporary and the true life is eternal. And I think that, you know, I early on I I just started marinating and you know, reading books on Eastern religion. I mean, the idea of reincarnation, rebirth is very important. And this is

Staying Committed When Progress Is Slow

SPEAKER_00 18:45

just one lifetime. So, you know, the more the the a lot of the the wisdom traditions of the world, they say if you have a lifetime where you have many, many difficulties and many, many challenges, that's very good because that means you're making more progress in your in your spiritual awakening. If you have a lifetime where everything's kind of easy and you don't have to really do anything, that it's too comfortable. That's not so good. So the whole idea that I learned from these teachings is that in in the big picture, it's actually good to have challenges and difficulties in one's life because that's really how we grow. And we have them, I think, as individuals. You know, illnesses can happen, or we can lose people that are close to us, or we can have financial catastrophes can happen. And I've I've experienced some of these things myself. And and then there can also be group things that we all go through, like like that whole thing with COVID we had for a few years, or various economic or political challenges, wars, different things. And all these things can make us stressed out, but they can also help us. We can learn. We can learn, like I learned, which I think is good, not to trust the media. I learned, you know, with COVID not to trust the the pharmaceutical industry. I mean, more. I already knew it, but I knew I learned even more. So I think a lot of times these these sort of so-called bad things that we go through difficulty can really be good. You know, we can wake up and we can realize, aha, I have to become more self-reliant. I have to be willing to be different from other people. And if they don't like me, then you know there'll be other people who do. But, you know, if I'm only concerned about my reputation, then pretty soon I'm a slave to what other people think of me. And so then I only try to say what other what I think other people want to hear, and that's not a life, really. So I think these difficulties that we have, whatever they are, I think they they make us stronger. I mean, you know, I mean, at one point in my life, I remember we we we had an in my wife and I had an an investment, a financial investment, and that we thought was really good, and suddenly we just lost everything. You know, like all these years of work, we saved all this money and it was just gone. You know, it was like, oh no. But but it it really it's there's a certain pain. There's a pain in losing all that, you know. But on the other hand, we just we just smiled. We, I mean, we we said, all right, so we just keep doing. We just keep going. And within a few years, we made it all back. And, you know, I mean, it was just you just have to keep going. You know, you just we we learn and we just keep going, do our best. And I think underlying everything is the realization that our life isn't about much more than. Than the outer things, how much money we have, or how what our reputation is, or how many friends we have. It's really about the quality of our consciousness moment by moment by moment. How is that? How is the quality? What is the underlying feeling? Is there a feeling of gratitude and joy? Oh, you know, is that there? Is that just present? And that's something I think we can actually cultivate. We can develop it. We can nurture that. And that's the beautiful thing. It just takes work. But it's work, it's an investment. I think that's an important thing that I've discovered is that all the time I spend in meditation or doing inner work, from the outer side, from the outside, it looks like it's a waste of time, but it's really a wonderful investment of time because it's an investment in what's permanent. When my body dies, the mind is really and the consciousness is what goes on. So that's where I should be putting my attention. You know, there what's going to happen be born in the next incarnation. What what what kind of an incarnation am I creating? And I think that uh that understanding is very helpful. And so we to really look at the big picture, a much bigger picture than just this one lifetime, to see things in multiple lifetimes. And then we realize that uh everything we do now, all the seeds we're planting now, they will bear fruit in the future. And it's all about planting seeds, planting seeds as much as possible of loving kindness and joy and freedom and compassion and creativity and mercy and tenderness and gentleness and refraining from planting seeds of anger and hostility and shame and so forth. That really, I think, is how we uh create a positive future. And that's how I

Planting Seeds Of Gratitude

SPEAKER_00 23:55

that's kind of how I see it. That's a great question. Thanks.

SPEAKER_01 23:59

So, like if listeners want to connect with you, what will be the great medium to connect?

SPEAKER_00 24:05

Actually, the probably the best thing is our our website and our YouTube channel. My name is Will Tuttle, W-I-L-L-T-U-T-T-L-E.com, or the the main book that you mentioned, uh The World Peace Diet. That book, that that website is just worldpeacediet.com, that has links to essays that I've written, our lecture schedule, where we're going to be, and videos that we've made of music, of gardening, of our of Melon's art and her cooking videos and my lectures and interviews, all these things. Or you can go to our you

Where To Find Will Tuttle

SPEAKER_00 24:45

just put Will Tuttle in at YouTube. We have a channel there, lots of uh videos are there. And that's that's the main thing, probably for me. It's that's the easiest.

SPEAKER_01 24:56

Okay, okay. That's really great to know. And uh dear listeners, what I'll do is I'll put all the links and the details into the show notes for easy reference so that I can easily reach out to Dr. Will. And um, I have to say that is the wrap for today's episode of Can The Man Hendelight. And if something Dr. Truckle said today moved something in you, a question, a bold verte stillness, a curiosity about what you are eating and why all that it matters more than it might say and yeah, and Dr. Turtle's book, music, and all his work are all window notes. And if this conversation belongs in someone else's life today, appreciate it gently. And you can just take care of yourselves and everything around you.

SPEAKER_00 25:53

Thank you so much.