The Benefits of Emptiness, No-Self, & Non-Attachment

Billy Wynne (00:06)
I’m doing great. Thank you. It’s great to be with you.

Berkeley Well-Being Institute (00:09)
Wonderful. I’d like to start with a simple question to help people begin growing their well-being right away. And that is, if you had to recommend one tip or strategy or exercise for people, what would it be and why?

Billy Wynne (00:23)
boy, well, I’d say the thing that I use the most is focusing on the breath, both as a dedicated meditation practice, but also just throughout the day as a way to recenter ourselves. It’s always available and can become a nice habit, you know, habitual way to recenter and connect with our, our truest intentions.

Berkeley Well-Being Institute (00:49)
I love that because that’s something everybody can do and everybody can do everywhere. So that’s a great tip. And now I’d love to just learn a little bit about you and how you got interested in well-being and happiness and mindfulness and Buddhism. So feel free to tell us a little bit of your story.

Billy Wynne (01:08)
Sure, thank you. Well, I’ll try to be brief, I started in high school, really, I read the Tao of Pu, and I got into Taoism, and I got a little bit into yoga and meditation, just at an introductory level. And then I studied religion in college, I minored in religion, and I focused primarily on Eastern, really Chinese religions, Taoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism. And then I kind of got into life.

and work and marriage and children. and all along I continued some interest in those areas and was increasingly interested in meditation. My first really formal connection to, to meditation was, through my cardiologist in Washington, DC, the kind of Zenith of my stress as a, you know, worker bee in the, our, our economy.

And he gave me a book or he recommended that I get a book called the relaxation response, which is a really early, you know, mainstream, know, clinically oriented book about meditation. And that made it more accessible to me. I started to learn about some other folks like Dean Ornish, who is actually provides an endorsement of my book on the cover who had begun to do some more clinical work about around meditation, John Capiton, of course.

and started to read some of those things. And so I started doing mindfulness meditation about 10 to 12 years ago. Mindfulness in Plain English was another handbook that I used to get into that practice. And also at that time I was working with anger issues and alcohol abuse and sought some therapy and counseling for that. I ended up meeting a life coach who has stayed with me, Kate Gerstberger, who I also

quote and reference in the book. And just rekindled my interest in Buddhism kind of in all that mix. And so after experimenting with a few other Buddhist sanghas, I found the Zen Center of Denver, and this was about eight years ago. And I, I say stumbled into a sitting with them with no idea. I heard, you know, as we maybe all have heard a lot about Zen and popular culture, but I really had no idea what it was actually like.

And even within Zen, there’s lots of variability and diversity of practices. But I found what I was looking for. And I’ve been getting deeper and deeper in that path ever since. that has, you know, there’s, my gosh, I could go on, but I mean, that’s really the core of my practice today and has brought me here and has contributed to the book.

Berkeley Well-Being Institute (03:52)
Wonderful. So you mentioned your book a couple of times. Let’s talk about that a little bit. Do you want to give us a broad overview so we understand kind of like why you think writing this particular book is so important in this moment?

Billy Wynne (04:07)
Sure. So it’s called the empty path, finding fulfillment through the radical art of lessening. And the core inspiration for the book was my observation. And I tell the story of kind of in my life, how this became very apparent about myself, but that we are trained to believe that in order to be fulfilled and happy and satisfied, that we need to do more, find more, learn more wisdom.

material comfort, relationships, retreats, all of it. The message that we are given is that we need to go get more in order to be at peace in our lives. And the other side of the coin of that message is that we are flawed, that we are lacking, that we are in need, we’re deficient in some way. And so we have to go out and fill this kind of void that we think that we have. And what I discovered, after really exhausting every…

effort to more my life was that it’s a lie and that we’re actually whole and complete from the very beginning. And there is a, you know, a source of peace and fulfillment that the world can’t give or take away. It’s always here. It was there in a way before we were born and it will be there after we die. And so reconnecting with that and engaging with what I call the path of of lessening or the art of lessening.

is to get more intimate with that source of sufficiency that is always inside of us. And as a part of that, start to distill our lives. It doesn’t mean we quit our job or leave our family or any of those things. can still kind of, know, outwardly our life could be very similar, but our relationship with our life experience can start to change. And where we have more gratitude, more appreciation,

more pause, more patience with all of these various endeavors. And there in that way, find more fulfillment and satisfaction with.

Berkeley Well-Being Institute (06:14)
That sounds amazing and I’m sure easier said than done, probably for most of us. It’s a lifelong practice. So you mentioned this inner sense of sufficiency. I can imagine that a lot of my audience is kind of like, what? Like, that’s not really a thing. Can you describe first what that even feels like and two, how people can maybe move a little, like one step closer towards that?

Billy Wynne (06:18)
Of course, it’s a lifelong practice.

Sure. So it does stem from my Buddhist practice, although the book doesn’t try to persuade anybody to be Buddhist or anything like that. And it starts with the title, The Empty Path. this was another inspiration I have for writing the book. Having read dozens and dozens and dozens of books about Buddhism, more strictly Buddhist and also the more popular culture orientation of Buddhism and mindfulness, I noticed that

A very core principle of Buddhism, is emptiness, often translated as emptiness, which is a challenging translation issue, but nonetheless, that’s the word we use, is overlooked or ignored or brushed aside. And I think the reason for that is that on its face, it sounds like meaninglessness, nihilism, know, the word emptiness is not something that sounds very inspiring or exciting or happy for people at first glance. But for me, it’s really at the very core.

of our life experience and it is a way to access that source of natural inherent fulfillment and satisfaction. And so a lot of the book folks, so there’s really three major threads to the book that kind of construct it. One is Buddhist teachings around emptiness. So each of the 10 chapters has a certain aspect of emptiness to help readers, whatever their spiritual path may be or their non-spiritual path may be.

Just try to connect with that concept that’s at the core of Buddhist thought. Another is mindfulness practices. So each chapter ends with a guided meditation and there are recordings of it on my website at BillyWen.com. So the reader can, you know, it’s one thing to read a meditation, but sometimes it’s nice to put the book down and be able to focus a bit more with the auditory guide. And then the third piece is

essentially autobiographical components. So each chapter starts with an anecdote from my life to show how these ideas and practices can actually translate into the real nitty gritty of life and relationships and ups and downs and, you know, hardship and beauty and all the different things that make up our lives. the Buddhist teaching part about emptiness, you know, really breaks down into, I’d say, two major components. And I’ll try to go.

long, but to give your readers a brief sense, one aspect of emptiness that I think folks can relate to is impermanence. And this is another Buddhist commonly used Buddhist term, but we can all relate to it. So everything has a beginning and an end, right? Whether it’s a living thing, it’s bored and it dies, or if it’s this water bottle, like there was a time when it didn’t exist and then someday it will no longer exist, right? So that’s true of everything. Impermanence also occurs moment to moment.

because everything has always changed. The atoms are always swirling. The cells are always living and dying and merging. And, you know, our mindset is changing. Our history is changing. Our relationships are changing. So that’s also impermanence. Everything is not just, you know, kind of lives and dies, but also in every moment it’s born again, in a sense. So that’s one lens for approaching the core Buddhist teaching of emptiness. The other one is what the Buddhists call no self, but is

maybe better to think of in terms of, and I walk us through this exercise a couple of different times in the book, starting with more mundane things like a chair, or I use the example of an olive that I’m futzing with at a restaurant I used to own, know, different, different aspects of our experience, but really ultimately we can turn that lens to ourselves and think about, okay, I have a history, I have a body, right? I have a history, I have a mind, I have thoughts, I have, you know,

a name, I parents, I have all these different things. And if I take a very, very close and careful look at them, it’s like, which one makes me me? Right. And so, and I suggest in the book that that is actually very difficult to identify, you know, and there might be some things that we’ve sort of assumed are us. But again, if we really step back and take a, take a careful look at it, this, this, you know,

single thing or idea that we can point to to say, okay, well, that’s us, is probably not us, right? Not our names, not our history, it’s not our thoughts, it’s not these things. So then what? Okay, so everything’s impermanent, everything is lacking in kind of this coherent, kind of egoic self-identity. Well, then, yeah, so then what happens? And the answer is that our relationship

to our world and our life and our life experience has totally changed. We’ve been living in this idea that we have a self and others have a self and these things have a self. And so I’m over here, you’re over there, we’re separate. And therefore there’s scarcity because there’s all these different things and kind of competing for finite resources and so forth. When we recognize that we’re lacking and that all things are empty, then nothing is separate. There’s nothing to divide them.

That’s how we can start to tap in. once that’s where this idea of everything is already as it is, right? Everything is already fulfilled. Everything is, to go around kind of grasping at things as if they’re separate and somehow gonna fulfill us is actually the cause of our suffering, not the solution to it.

Berkeley Well-Being Institute (12:19)
Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. I have been getting really interested in this no self concept. It’s not something that as a personality and social psychologist, it’s like, we are the personality. And when I discovered no self, which was maybe a year or two ago, it kind of blew my mind. And I’d love if you could go into that a little bit more. I think it’s difficult to even.

Billy Wynne (12:31)
Yes, yes.

Berkeley Well-Being Institute (12:45)
understand what that means because we’re so attached to our identity, our appearance, our behaviors, our thoughts and emotions. And so how might one begin to look at this so that they can experience that non-suffering of the non-self?

Billy Wynne (13:01)
Yes, yes. So one important thing that you’re pointing to that is good for everybody to know at the outset is that the principle of no self, what I would suggest is the reality of no self, doesn’t mean that the validity, that your life experience isn’t valid, right? So you do have a name and you do have certain characteristics, some of which are kind of immutable, right? That we’re born with.

we, know, so, and we have life circumstances and some of us have been, you know, privileged and fortunate and others have extreme hardship and don’t have material comfort. And so on, you know, face war and turmoil. So all of those things are real and valid and nothing about, you know, no self or Buddhist, in my opinion, Buddhist teaching, or certainly I hope my book is intended to deny, you know, the reality or the validity of any of that. But at the exact same time, right.

the reality of no self and emptiness and impermanence is also true. And so that’s why the question then becomes, okay, we’re not denying any of these aspects of our experience. We’re just, learning and practicing how to be with them in a different way. And it’s one thing and I can, we can go through some more, I call them unselfing exercises, you know, to kind of, demonstrate this point. We can do it like with a chair and so forth. And so, okay, so I will do that. But I also want to say that,

Berkeley Well-Being Institute (14:21)
would love that.

Billy Wynne (14:26)
The intellectual understanding, know, the kind of discursive mind’s understanding of the idea of no self is different than the felt sense and the kind of internalized intimate sense of what, you know, really means for us. And that’s why mindfulness practices and particularly meditation can be so important. And in Zen, which is my personal path, Zen is, some people don’t know this, means

Meditation it’s the Japanese word for meditation. So that is at the very very core of what we do and part of the reason we do it is because it helps us just you know feel and personally realize What this means that we don’t have a self right in a kind of personal practice, you know in a manifested way So that’s one thing so we can use the chair I’m sitting on a chair it so and one way to kind of get

better acquainted with this idea of no self is to think of an object like that, a relatively simple object, something that’s close by to us. And so, so this chair, it has legs, right? It has a seat, it has a backrest, it has wood, it’s made of wood, it’s got some bolts, right? So all of those things are here. And so the beginning of the process to say, well, if I took one of them away, would it stop being a chair? And typically the answer is,

No, it wouldn’t stop being. So if I took the bolts away, I’d say, well, that’s a chair. It’s missing the bolts or that’s a chair. It’s missing the seat. That’s a chair. It’s missing its legs. It’s weird. It’s sitting on the floor, but it’s, you know, it still has kind of its chair-ness, right? And that’s really just the… So the point being not one of those physical things that we can see as part of the chair right here is the chair, is what makes it a chair. Okay, but that’s just kind of the beginning because really this chair is the trees that…

comprised it, right, the manufacturing plant that it came from, the people that designed it, the people that shipped it from there to here. I all of those things contribute to the reality of this chair that’s sitting under my body right now and holding me up. Okay, and so then we can look at those things and say, well, is any one of those things a chair? Because that would makes a chair a chair. And I think typically the answer that comes back to us is no, not one of those things.

is a chair. So we just kind of keep playing with the chair because someday the chair is going to like decompose and fade away and you know it’s going to be a trash dump or whatever. It’s like, was that a chair? Like that’s part of the chair. That’s part of the the know reality of this chair, but that’s not the chair itself, right? So then we can go into our own mind and say, well I have this like idea of a chair, right? I mean I know there’s a word and there’s there’s you know I can’t maybe can’t express it.

always so clearly, but I know it when I see it, right? I know what a chair is and it’s not actually that, not that complicated. But you know, what is that? I mean, that’s neurons firing in my brain is like, that’s not a chair, you know? So, so again, we can go through kind of every, and really if we go down the path and this is another Buddhist teaching and Thich Nhat Hanh calls it interdependent co-arising, is wonky, but also beautiful phrasing, I think it’s like actually everything.

is what contributes to the reality of this chair. There’s no end to that process of connecting dots to say, the tree and the soil and the sun and the rain. all of that is the wood that came into this chair. And that’s just one kind of path to go down in terms of imagining all the different things that contribute to this chair. So that’s another aspect really of emptiness is this idea of interdependence of things.

So anyway, so we go through all these different angles for trying to figure out what the chair is, and then we kind of exhaust them all. And so then we come back and it’s like, there is no chair, really. There’s just this idea. And yet coming back, right, full circle, I am sitting on something. I’m not going to fall through it. It’s here, it’s real, and it’s not a chair.

And you could do that exercise with anything. I suggest it will pass the test of not having an identifiable cell.

Berkeley Well-Being Institute (18:43)
So I think that’s a really good beginner way to start thinking about this no self thing. And it can kind of help loosen the structures in your mind about like, what is what. When it comes to actually reflecting on the chicky myself, it can get a little bit more intense, I’ve noticed in doing these experiences. Because when you start to look at, okay, well, I think of myself as a nice person.

Billy Wynne (18:54)
Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes. Yes.

Yes.

Berkeley Well-Being Institute (19:13)
But

I’m not nice in every situation. Or I think of myself as, you know, how old am I? 41. Yes. But I was, you know, a child also. Is that the same person? My personality changes. So like when people come to looking at themselves and exploring what self is actually there, what are some of the experiences or questions or challenges they might?

Billy Wynne (19:20)
I’ve said a birthday, 48.

Yes.

Berkeley Well-Being Institute (19:43)
come across.

Billy Wynne (19:44)
Yeah, so I think, you know, on the one hand, I think that people can relate to the suggestion that they are impermanent, right? Even in a moment to moment basis. one thing I like to recall is that so often I think about something I did, you know, two years ago, three years ago, five years ago, and not just like a bad mistake that I regret, although that’s certainly part of it, but, you know, the kind of the show that I like to watch or like the movie that I had a certain reaction to.

it’s so context dependent. I go back and look at that same thing now and I’m like, that is not something I would choose and that person really doesn’t feel like me. That is not the choice that I would make. So I think we can relate to that without getting too kind of esoteric. At the same time, for many, really to some degree another thing for all of us, the idea that we

this thing that we’ve assumed all along, This, this, this, this, this, and coherent internalized, you know, self that it doesn’t actually exist is very, can be very challenging. And, and, Buddhism, sometimes we call it the dying, great death. You know, it is, it is a way, it is in a way a debt, shedding this concept of ourselves as a separate, you know, independent, coherent, identity.

is deeply, deeply challenging. And it’s important, I think, to keep in mind that what we’re talking about at the other end of this journey is the resolution of suffering, right? I mean, you can call it nirvana and lighten it. You can use fancy words for it. really, think it’s, yeah, right, exactly. It’s like, it’s not gonna come easy. And I quote St. John of the Cross in my book where it’s like, and I’m gonna mess it up verbatim, but it’s like, to become that which we are not, we have to go by the way that we know not, right?

Berkeley Well-Being Institute (21:26)
Seems worth it to me.

Billy Wynne (21:40)
the things we’ve been doing before have not worked to give us lasting happiness and peace. that’s, we call it, sometimes we call it great doubt. It’s like this realization that like, you know, okay, the last 10 tools like seemed good, maybe helped for a while, but now I’m yelling again, I’m unhappy again. Like it’s just this endless cycle. Right. And so it’s like, maybe I don’t need the 11th tool. Maybe I need to fundamentally reorient how I think about myself in my life. And so that’s

That’s really what’s being offered here. it doesn’t, yes, it is a radical reorientation and it can be destabilizing. It could be confusing. could be, it could have its dark and, you know, scary kind of uncertain moments. But, you know, I think there’s hope that you come out of the other end. And again, it is a life. It’s not, don’t, it’s not like I once was lost and I now I’m found. You know, you go through it and then you’re, everything’s magical and you know, gold rains down from heaven and all that kind of stuff.

It does continue. just, you’re really just trying to deepen, you know, if you, if you connect with it and you start to reorient yourself, then it’s just a question of deepening and, know, trying to maintain that awareness as consistently as you can as all these life events, you know, keep popping up.

Berkeley Well-Being Institute (22:55)
Yeah, I think my community and myself included have done that whole, maybe like self-compassion will help, maybe setting boundaries will help, maybe like getting a better relationship will help, maybe making more money will help. And for me personally, I’ve spent much of my career frustrated, as you might expect, because these are all helpful in the short term, I believe, which is why it’s still important to me that, you know, as we move towards your work and…

experiencing this non-self and non-suffering, there’s a lot of suffering along the way. So it’s completely important to build these other skills in the journey. But ultimately, you eventually come to the conclusion that, like I’ve tried X, Y, and Z, why would I think another letter would help in the way that these other ones haven’t? And that is kind of like a difficult, grief-ridden realization.

Billy Wynne (23:32)
Yes.

Yes.

Berkeley Well-Being Institute (23:49)
But

it’s ultimately the reason why I started this podcast because I know a lot of people are pursuing happiness in all these ways. again, I think that’s good, but it’s an unending journey. how do people, I guess, get the mindset shift where they’re like, all right, this hasn’t worked. There’s this other path, this empty path, as your book says, that can provide a more lasting.

happiness, well-being, contentment, whatever you want to call it.

Billy Wynne (24:21)
Yeah, yeah. So it is interesting to note that, and I’ve seen this in even in a recent meditation course that I taught at the Zen Center, a secular mindfulness meditation course, where it came up in our kind of discussion and sharing that once one starts to get into this practice, two things often happen, many, many things happen, but two that I want to comment on now. One is that we realize just how scattered

you know, in wild, our mind is almost all the time. Right. I mean, if we, if we really turn the, turn the camera around and look inside, it’s like, wow, I can’t even stay focused on my breath for two breaths. Right. I mean, that’s how wild our minds are. And that’s, that’s the world that we typically live in. And the other thing is, gosh, it is sad. It is sad. It’s like, if you, if you connect with this sort of other way of being to know that you’ve spent 99 % of the rest of your life.

disconnected from that way of being, that’s very sad. And it has had harmful consequences for ourselves and for people that we love and the world around us. So there is definitely a grieving process. again, none of this, I mean, maybe theoretically it can, but for me at least, it doesn’t go away permanently. And so for example, I’ll go on a long retreat, let’s say, once people go down the path, that’s definitely something I recommend if they’re interested where you can,

settle further, right? In a multi-day retreat, for example, into stillness and to, you know, realization of maybe your truest self, shall we say. And inevitably for me, part of that is what a bummer that, you know, just before this retreat, I was like yelling at somebody, you know, I mean, it’s so, it is definitely, it could be sad, but the teaching is,

If something is sad, be sad. I mean, that is the appropriate response. Like we lose a loved one or we have a regret about a deep relationship. It’s like, is not about ignoring that or letting it go. It’s actually about turning toward our authentic feelings of it. And in that sense, think there’s, I’m talking about a radical reorientation of our life, but I’m also offering some practices that.

that certainly you and other people are going to be very familiar with. Some of them are kind of just psychological practices. Some of them are, you know, compassion practices, know, so it’s gratitude practices. So it’s not like I’m poo-pooing, you know, tools, right? But the idea is, for me at least, is to think about these tools in this context of a reorientation of how we want to be in

Berkeley Well-Being Institute (27:10)
I agree. I think that’s how I’m thinking of tools now too, because the journey is difficult. And I do think a lot of people in this sort of like spiritual wellbeing space are like, it’s gonna be all sunshine and roses. And that is not true, but it’s worth it. And if you have the tools, it’s really, it’s really, really worth it because then, you you can handle the emotions that come up or handle the fact that

Billy Wynne (27:31)
Yes.

Berkeley Well-Being Institute (27:40)
you realize you’re not a self and it’s not quite so difficult.

Billy Wynne (27:44)
Yeah, I love that. I love that. Yes, there is a sense. John Kabat-Zinn says, you you can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf. And I think there is a way in which even now, when I’m sad or harder to say this is true when I’m frustrated or which still does arise, of course, but like, let’s just take sadness. It’s like there is a simultaneous recognition of the beauty of it. You know, there is a tenderness. There’s a love often,

beauty in that sadness that even if we are authentically sad and it’s not, you know, overarchingly pleasant experience, I think we can, if we’re open to it, right, it can also be a beautiful manifestation of love and, you know, and truth. So, yes, I think turning toward those things and, you know, being with them in a different way is right at the heart of this.

Berkeley Well-Being Institute (28:39)
Yeah, and then it seems like it goes in multiple stages. Maybe you could share a little bit about this. So like when you’re first turning towards your emotions, maybe you’re not interested in spirituality at all. I know I wasn’t. I just like wanted my emotions to be a little bit easier to handle. And then the more I did it, the more I was like, all right, like what’s this emotion? Why am I feeling it? The more it became easy to be with that emotion. And then over time, like you said,

Billy Wynne (28:56)
Yeah.

Berkeley Well-Being Institute (29:08)
you start to have this sort of respect for the emotion or you value it and what it’s trying to tell you. And then beyond that even, it doesn’t even feel like what you thought it was anymore. For example, I had this one experience where I’ve had bad anxiety in my life. And at one point I’m like, all right, just like sit with it, just like be with the fear and like wave after wave of fear rolled over me. But it didn’t feel that different from bliss. I was like, wow.

Billy Wynne (29:10)
Yep.

Berkeley Well-Being Institute (29:38)
It’s just the label I’m putting on the fear that’s making me think this is fear. So it’s really a very exciting journey. I don’t know if you can share more about how that process occurs. For me, I just sort of am like haphazardly pursuing this and any insights you have would be really helpful.

Billy Wynne (29:55)
Sure. So a couple of different things. So one is that kind of the basic technique of mindfulness, whether it be with our emotions and I do offer a mindfulness of kind of thoughts and emotions. Some people have two separate practices for those. For the sake of gravity, I’ve lumped them together in the book. But also with mindfulness of body or thought, or pardon me, of breath, et cetera. You can break it down to two key components. And the first is

Awareness. So the first is acknowledging what is present You know here now so Fear is present anxiety is present sadness is present happiness is present, you know pleasant bodily feeling it’s warm It’s cold whatever it is, you know, the kind of authentic direct experience what we’re seeing what we’re hearing Acknowledging that for you know, what it is is step one step two is non-judgment or you could call it

kindness even. It’s so resisting. we have this because of our sense of separateness and our, you know, we have this instinct to immediately label something as positive or negative, right? Beneficial or threatening. And some of that is our evolutionary training, right? But a lot of it is just our mindset about the nature of us and the nature of the things around us. So what mindfulness practice is, it says, okay, here’s this thing. Now I’m just going to

practice pausing, letting that thing be and letting me be with that thing, in this case an emotion, before I rush in to say, well, this is bad, right? And I should try to get rid of it, or this is something great and I want to hang on to it for as long as I can. That’s the judging mind that we were trying to quiet in mindfulness practice. And that way we expand our capacity then to be with things and, you know, such as emotions. So the more that I practice saying, identifying

you know, anxiousness when it arises and the more I practice pausing with anxiousness before I rush into say, I don’t like how this feels. I, know, give me a TV show or give me a conversation or give me something to get rid of this, you know, then, then if I can pause that that’s strengthened this muscle, you know, expanding this spatial spaciousness that I have to be with that emotion and other emotions, you know, in the future. So for me, that’s kind of a.

the heart of the practice. Another very helpful emotion practice, and I’m riffing this from Brene Brown and others who many have read, which is to name the emotion. And it can be very helpful, as you, I think we’re pointing to, to get more familiar with the different types of emotions. A lot of us immediately rush to like, I’m angry or I’m happy, right? The very big, broad, easily kind of rick. But often it’s more like, actually I’m melancholy or I’m nostalgic or I’m

I’m actually lamenting or regretting a memory or there’s more specific emotion, more we can increase our fluency with the different streams of emotion, then that can help us get more acquainted with them and then more comfortable with them, right? Where we actually can sort of welcome this experience of this emotion because for one thing, we’re probably very familiar with it. It’s almost like a friend, right? Even if we don’t like it that much.

It’s something that we have, it’s a life, a friend of me, it’s a friend of me, I think I use that, it’s a friend of me, it’s a lifelong companion. So we buy it as well, practice getting comfortable with it, right? It’s not going to go away, likely, completely. So what we can work on is how we are with it when it comes up.

Berkeley Well-Being Institute (33:23)
The frenemy.

Yeah, and I think a key message that you’re highlighting is that you can get comfortable with it. Like much of my graduate degree work looked at cognitive reappraisal, which is a technique where you change your emotion, which I do still think is useful in certain contexts, but…

The amount of mental effort it takes to change certain emotions can be exhausting. And if you can be with the emotion and sort of like treat it like a friend, a frenemy, or understand what it’s trying to tell you, then it becomes something you don’t have to change anymore. And that just is such a relief to not have to worry about that.

Billy Wynne (34:22)
Yes, yes, yes, something you can welcome and you don’t have to be afraid of necessarily. That’s another kind of refrain is like this too, there’s space for this, I can allow this to come. know it’s not gonna, it’s gonna probably keep coming back, but it’s also, it’s not gonna last forever. These things arise, we have basically, for lack of a better word, kind of pleasant parts of our day and unpleasant parts of our day and they come and they go.

And we, we, part of what I think we’re, I’m suggesting we’re training toward, and I do offer some meditations around this is, is greeting the next moment with an open heart. You know, that, that’s how part of how I look at my practice is like, okay, this happened. This is now what, know, how open am I, am I kind of attached to, to, you know, what has just moved by and is that sort of restraining my capacity to respond to what’s next? The new person I meet or the new place I go or the new thing I see, you know, or can I.

greet it with an openness is a lot of times how I think about my practice.

Berkeley Well-Being Institute (35:31)
You just mentioned attachment just then so can you tell viewers a little bit about what one can do or first? What is attachment in your definition because in the psychology world? It’s defined in a different way than I think how you’ll define it and then what can people do to just start? Non-attached being non-attached to certain things in their lives

Billy Wynne (35:45)
Mm-hmm.

Yes. So, let’s see kind of where to begin. I’d say it’s, it, it, it starts with and ends with it kind of, cause it kind of also reinforces this perception of ourselves as, as separate from things and therefore immediately diagnosing things as beneficial or threatening. And either side of that coin in, in kind of the, teachings that I’m relaying is a version of attachment. So the idea that, you know, I don’t like

this person, let’s just say. And so I want to avoid them and I exhaust mental energy around, my dislike for them and my effort to avoid them. That’s attachment, right? I am attached to that person. are, you know, my perception of them, my judgments about them are sticking with me. So too with things that we like, right? I have this idea about this next vacation I’m going to take.

And I have a preconception that it’s going to be beautiful weather and it’s going to, you know, my family and I are all going to get along swimmingly and everybody’s going to be happy and smiling all the time. And it’s going to be fun and you know, all that kind of stuff. And that’s, that’s also attachment, right? And that also is likely to inhibit my authentic and direct experience of what the vacation itself is actually going to be.

And if something arises that is inconsistent with that preconception, I might react in kind of an adverse way. And that’s how attachments also can play out. really, they’re the opposite of greeting the next moment with an open heart. They are restricting and kind of pre-defining what our experience is going to be like. And so really what this, you know, another way to think about this practice is softening our attachments. Our attachments are unlikely to completely go away.

We still have these ideas, we still have things we like and dislike, and those things do guide how we behave toward them. But if we can cultivate this understanding of things as empty, to put it one way, and therefore actually not separate in a very important way, if we can think of ourselves as fundamentally fulfilled and satisfied and sufficient, and cultivate these other practices, then that very deeply ingrained instinct we have to attach to things, whether they be deemed positive or negative,

starts to soften and we start to have a little more space and patience to be with things as they arise before our attached judgments and reactions to them start to play out.

Berkeley Well-Being Institute (38:30)
It’s very clear. think one of the things that’s also worked for me is just from like almost like using an empathy perspective. Like if Bob views something one way and Sally views something another way and I view something a third way, it’s like, is there actually a truth there? Is something bad or is something good? And for me, using that sort of like perspective taking has been a useful tool for me to.

realize that maybe my label’s wrong. It doesn’t make my label go away, unfortunately. I still have a lot of resistance and aversion to lots of things, but part of me knows that’s in my mind and not the reality of it. So hopefully that’s a helpful tool.

Billy Wynne (39:03)
Yeah.

Yeah,

very helpful. That reminds me, there’s a practice, there’s this group called the Zen Peacemaker Order that a Zen teacher, Bernie Glassman, who’s recently passed on but started. And one of the practices is, there’s sort of a threefold practice to the Zen Peacemaker Order. One is bearing witness. So observing as best we can, kind like in your example, listening to what other people are saying about

the particular experience of a thing. Second is not knowing. it’s softening our attachment to our belief about the thing, right? To think we know what the right outcome is, to think we know what the best thing to do is, to think, you know, and we can all relate to that. you know, sometimes our knowing about what is right, you know, in like a value played in context is

is us. We’re like, well, if I’m wrong about that, then I’m not me. And so by golly, like I’m going to fight to the end for that principle. So one of these practices is to open up, maybe I don’t know, right? I might believe very passionately something, but I think letting in an openness to doubting our certainty about things is an excellent teaching. And then the third thing is taking action. So we have this, we,

there’s still a step to take, but if we can take it a little less attached to what we so fervently believe is the right outcome, then when, and I do talk about this in the book, it’s like, to me, how we are in doing the thing is as important as the outcome that we seek, right? So I might believe, for example, in like this certain just outcome, this justice cause in our society, you know, that I want to work toward. Well, I could go about it in a way that is, you know,

Blames the other side, hates the other side, thinks the other side needs to be defeated, that they’re dumb and that they’re evil and that I’m going to show them and I’m going to yell at that. That’s one way to go about it. I submit that is not going to be an effective way creating lasting peace. Then there’s another way to go about it. says, I have a belief. They have a belief. Those beliefs are different.

you know, how can I better understand, first of all, where they’re coming from and why they have that belief? What’s the most skillful and compassionate way for me to go about trying to accomplish this thing that I believe is just, but doing it in a way that manifests the peace and the love and, you know, whatever kind of is at the heart of what I’m trying to accomplish. And I think that’s a more sustainable, you know, there’s never, of course, any guarantees we’re going to succeed in these various endeavors we pursue, but I think it’s going to be more successful in bringing about

the world, let’s say, that I believe in than that other path of battle.

Berkeley Well-Being Institute (42:16)
Yeah, I totally agree. So you mentioned that there’s no guarantees of success. That’s a given, I think. But what can people do to increase their chances of success on this path? And by success, I probably just mean like a little bit more happiness, a little more well-being, a little bit more contentment or whatever it is that people are seeking on their well-being journey.

Billy Wynne (42:31)
world.

Yes, yes. I’d say, I typically say this in the context of meditation. And so I do, you know, encourage folks to at least explore doing some kind of meditation practice. And this, think that was true for other things that I’m trying to communicate in the book. And so what I say is that for me, the most important, or the most important kind of principle to keep in mind to,

increase your probability of success with a meditation practice is to get rid of all of your ideas about what a meditation practice should be. So people go to the grocery store and they see the magazine and they see somebody sitting on a hillside with the perfect sunset and they got the perfect little yoga costume on and they got you know and they’re beautiful and you know it’s like that’s what meditation is right or they think that authentic meditation can only happen in a Tibetan monastery on the hillside in the middle of nowhere.

separate from their daily life of family and job and frustration and driving in the car and all those things. And that is all a hundred percent totally, in my opinion, false and harmful to people to communicate that message. It is not what meditation is like. Meditation is about the mind wandering off, right? And acknowledging that and just patiently as we can, trying to re bring that attention back to our breath or whatever the kind of meditation focuses for that moment.

and it, it, it, it, it is something that, know, like we’ve said before, it never ends. It’s, no, you you know, get to a spot where you’re like, okay. I’m done. I got it. Right. I’m now perfectly lucid, you know, in all aspects of my life. It is a daily moment to moment practice. so to like those who, whether you’ve been meditating for, you know, a day or 30 years, the crux of the practice is the same. It’s being open to what may arise.

acknowledging it and then, you know, returning to our, our core, our core focus. So, so many people I talked to say, I’m not cut out for meditation, right? I’m too busy. My mind is too scattered. I’ve tried it and it, you know, it wasn’t pleasant. I would just, I was distracted the whole time. And, and, of course, of course, look, I mean, I’m not going to say it’s for everybody or everybody has to do it. Of course, of course not. Right. But

Berkeley Well-Being Institute (44:46)
one of those.

Billy Wynne (45:00)
But I would say that I think a lot of people who could benefit from it get turned off from it early in the path because they have these, know, fantasies that society has handed them about what meditation is supposed to be like that actually has nothing to do with what meditation is actually.

Berkeley Well-Being Institute (45:17)
I’m so glad you said that because, yes, I am one of those people that I have… I had a period of time where I sat on a pillow and meditated, but I’m really into practicing these mindful moments, like you say, just like, oh, man, the smell of the pine trees, that’s just bliss, and then the thoughts stop for a second. I remember this one time I saw a flower growing between the cracks of the sidewalk, and it…

just like all of my thoughts stopped for a minute and I was just so present. And building that as a habit, I feel like is a lot more sustainable than being like, I gotta like sit down for the next hour and like shut my mind off, like impossible for me anyway. So I’m really glad you said that. I think that’s gonna be super useful for everybody watching this.

Billy Wynne (46:00)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I hear it.

Great, great. Yeah. So, know, William Blake said, let’s see, eternity in the blade of grass. your reference to the blade of grass, I don’t know how to quote directly on hand, but there’s something universal, I think about, I mean, it is often a blade of grass. mean, it’s like, there’s something about the blade of grass. It’s so simple, and yet so beautiful. And in some ways, and this is a bit of a paradox about my book and also about Zen teaching and so forth, it’s like,

We pile words on top of that experience, that type of experience that you just described. But really, it’s just the direct authentic experience itself that is the thing. And any effort to really describe it or try to bring it back is ultimately kind of unsatisfactory. And nonetheless, we use words and we communicate and we write books and we do these things. But at the end of the day, it’s about that direct personal intimate experience with things that can change our lives.

Berkeley Well-Being Institute (47:08)
I think that’s a really good overview of everything you’ve been talking about. We pile words and concepts and thoughts and beliefs on top of our experience. And the more we can let go of all those little pieces, the closer we are to our experience, which is actually quite comfortable. So, excellent.

Billy Wynne (47:24)
Yes. Yes.

Berkeley Well-Being Institute (47:28)
What are some of the benefits people can expect? If people follow the strategies in your book, what would that be like for them?

Billy Wynne (47:37)
Yeah, so, you know, for one thing, it is helpful to put down expectations. I’m going to answer your question, but I’m going to start with a caveat that I think that the book will be most beneficial if folks enter into it with an open heart and without an expectation that, you know, they are going to gain things. My teacher, one of my teachers in Zen likes to say, this is not about self help. Right. And so what, you know, of course, what she means is that the, the

most effective way to realize the benefits is to put down this idea of we have this self that needs help and is going to somehow get help by doing this thing. Right? So that’s the caveat. Having said that, what I believe I have observed in my own life and with others who have engaged with these practices and my, to some degree, faith that it can bring to others is more calm and ease and happiness in the

the day-to-day experience of their current life. I’m not asking folks to drop out and tune in or tune out or whatever Timothy Leary said. I’m saying re-immersed yourself in your life as it is. It doesn’t mean things can’t change or that something might be calling you to make a job change or whatever. But the point is not to go around changing those things. The point is to change how we experience those things. And I do believe that there will be

moments of ease, right? Moments of curiosity, moments of insight, moments of connection with other people that if we can engage, even one of the really many practices that I’m offering in the book can help us cultivate and realize on a more consistent basis. So we’re still going to have frustration. Again, I’ve probably said it five times in the past time we’ve been talking, but it’s important to keep in mind, right? Because

doesn’t mean it’s not working if life continues to happen. And these adverse experiences are a part of life. And so the thing that can transform is our ability to be with those experiences in a more lighthearted and fulfilled way.

Berkeley Well-Being Institute (49:50)
Very well said. And if people want to learn more about your work, where can they go?

Billy Wynne (49:55)
They can go to BillyWin.com and all about my book, my meditation teaching, I have a newsletter, any folks who want to connect with me. There’s also links to my social that I am not an expert in that stuff, but I do post from time to time about things going on. And my book does come out next Tuesday, March 18th. So thank you very much. So it will be, it’s available for pre-order now wherever you like to buy books, but it’ll be available for purchase on Tuesday.

Berkeley Well-Being Institute (50:14)
Congratulations!

Wonderful. Well, I can honestly say this has been a delight talking to you. I feel like I learned a ton and I hope our viewers will learn a ton too. And I hope you have a great afternoon.

Billy Wynne (50:30)
Good. Thank you.

Thanks for having me. It’s really a pleasure. Great chatting with you.