Toby Sola: How Can Meditation Make Us More Effective?

00:00 — Introduction: meditation, responsibility, and effectiveness

Pranab · 00:00

I'm here with Toby Sola, founder of the Brightmind app, longtime student of Shinzen Young, and someone who's recently been thinking and talking a lot about the role of meditation and responsibility, the practicality of meditation practice, and lots of other things that we're going to dive into. So Toby, welcome.

Toby Sola · 00:22

Hi, Pranab. Really excited to be here. I'm excited for a conversation.

Pranab · 00:28

When I reached out to you, the initial idea was to talk about how Shinzen Young, the famous meditation teacher who's influenced many of us, especially you, has said—I think in a YouTube video—that even after decades of meditation practice, procrastination was still something he struggled with. He needed therapy to sufficiently work through it. So we'll get into that.

But I'm curious how you view meditation. The title of a lecture you did recently is “Meditation Is Unnecessary and Insufficient.” I'd love for you to riff on that idea.

Toby Sola · 01:08

Heresy.

Pranab · 01:11

It's crazy for meditators and for people interested in the benefits. I would love if you could talk about that, and eventually we can get into Shinzen's stuff.

01:21 — “Meditation is unnecessary and insufficient”

Toby Sola · 01:21

Sounds good. I recently offered a weeklong retreat and gave a series of lectures, which was a really fun creative exercise in fleshing out some of these ideas. I'll try to summarize what I went over as succinctly as I can. That first lecture, “Meditation Is Unnecessary and Insufficient,” starts with framing the discussion.

There are a lot of ways of talking about meditation. For example, the modern secular mindfulness movement frames it as stress reduction, right? MBSR, etc. Another way of framing it that's common these days is the jhana movement and framing meditation as ecstatic states. So there are various movements that we see in the world, different emphases, different ways of framing meditation.

One of my main goals right now is to set up a framework where the North Star, the real frame of the practice, is to develop a feedback loop between your practice and your ability to be effective in the world. So the deeper your meditation practice becomes, the more effective you are in the world. And the more effective you are in the world, the deeper your meditation practice becomes. It's a mutually supportive, mutually beneficial feedback loop. That's the North Star that we aim towards.

All of the practical and theoretical decisions and ways of doing things are really just in service of that North Star. It's an orientation. Importantly, I don't think I disagree with anything fundamental that other meditation camps are saying. I think if I were to listen to a teacher talking about the jhanas, I would agree with everything they say. If I were to listen to a lecture from Jon Kabat-Zinn, the founder of MBSR, I would agree with everything they say. And I think they would probably agree with everything I say.

Really, all I'm pointing to, at least the way I see it, is that we're emphasizing stuff differently. I think that's important to understand. There are a bunch of truths, and I'm choosing to emphasize one truth over some other truths for various reasons. That's the context. Where I get to the fiery title for this talk is basically starting out by making clear what I'm not saying.

What I am saying is you can create a feedback loop between meditation and responsibility. What I'm not saying is that it always happens, or that you need meditation in order to be effective, or that you need to be effective in order to be good at meditation.

There are a few different logical corollaries that I want to make clear I'm not saying. Think about it for a moment. There are lots of yogis who are incredibly ineffective in the world. What that means is meditation by itself doesn't necessarily lead to effectiveness. There are also a lot of incredibly powerful people who are not awakened.

So you don't necessarily need meditation to be effective, which I think a lot of meditators need to hear. There are other ways up this mountain of being effective in the world. It's not all about calming your mind or whatever. It's important to understand that what I'm really excited about is not a given. It's not necessary, it's not sufficient, but it's possible.

This really great thing is possible. The only thing I'm asserting is that it's possible, not that it's necessary or that it's even sufficient. Does that make sense as a starting point?

05:31 — What practice can change in a conversation

Pranab · 05:31

That's awesome. I really love those distinctions. Hearing that, what makes it important or even useful at all to think about meditation as increasing or altering our ability to be capable of doing things?

Toby Sola · 05:48

Great question. I think, if set up skillfully, it is an incredibly effective and optimal way to work. Talk to a lot of meditators and ask them, “How helpful has your practice been in your relationships?” Some of them will say it's been extremely helpful.

I'll start giving some examples. Maybe that's a good way to bring it down to earth. For example, you can use concentration that you develop in meditation to focus on sounds in your environment, right? It's a basic focus strategy. You can then use that when you're having a conversation with someone to focus on the sound of their voice as an object of meditation. While the other person's talking, you're highly focused, which is inherently pleasant and relaxing and calming, and you could say joyous.

You also don't miss anything they say because you're highly focused on every single word, even when every word begins and ends. There's a lot of clarity there. With this simple practice, when they're done talking and it's your turn to respond, practically speaking, you haven't missed anything they've said. You're hyperaware of the meaning, the content of what they're talking about.

And because you've been highly focused, you're really relaxed and present. Energetically, you're coming from a really nice place. This simple strategy can greatly increase the skillfulness with which we respond during conversations.

That's just one example. There are a million examples we could get into, and there are some frameworks I could present too that attempt to be comprehensive. But the reason to be excited about it is the potential is great. The sky is the limit in terms of how meditation can help you be more effective. The sky is really the limit. This is a very awesome way to work.

It can sometimes be hard to set up this feedback, and you need to do it skillfully, you need to do it healthily, and there are dead ends that you can run into.

Pranab · 08:19

Yeah, I'd love to get into those loops. Before we do that, just to reflect back, how that lands for me is that meditation is one of the few categories of things where you actually can tractably increase skills in a certain way. I think a lot of other ways to be effective boil down to “just do it,” and there's not much of a progression or much certainty. There are, but the thing I like a lot about meditation is that there are paths to actually notice your skills getting built over time. I think back to the mid-2010s when I was getting into meditation, to Tim Ferriss and the popularization of mindfulness in the productivity space and all that. It was pretty obvious that a little bit of meditation really does help.

But once I realized there was a deep end of practice—we're talking about things like awakening, jhanas, all this cool stuff—weirdly, this “practical benefit” kind of falters. In some ways, people de-emphasize practicality there because of getting into the deep end stuff. It's actually important in some ways to de-emphasize practicality. I'd be curious if you could talk about that. We'll do that, and then we'll get into some of those loops that are really important for increasing practice.

09:38 — Deep practice, creativity, and self-trust

Toby Sola · 09:38

Yeah, that's a really great question. I think ultimately what I'm proposing is you don't ever really de-emphasize the practicality or the way in which even a deep practice influences how you show up in the world.

Part of the way I think about the path is that there can be seasons in the path. It may be appropriate for someone to spend several years even in a monastery, not really interacting with the world very much. That still fits within my paradigm, right? There can be seasons of practice where you're focused on transcendence or the deep end of the path. But ultimately, if you back up and zoom out and look at your whole life, there is an integration happening.

Ultimately, that depth is in service of meeting the world, interacting with the world, and positively impacting the world, so that you trust yourself. Because being a positive force in the world isn't just an end in itself. This is part of where I'm going. Being a positive force in the world is going to then fuel your awakening, right? That goes back into it because there's a deep sense of trust in your mind, in your integrity. Then when you go to meditate, you can actually let go of the mind.

I think if you're not engaged in the world, at least periodically, it becomes very hard to let go of the mind because you don't trust yourself at a deep level. So there's that.

The other thing I would say is, what I described with that example of focusing on what the other person is saying and the sound of their voice, that's a relatively simple, surface-level description of how meditation can help you be more effective. But there are much more subtle and profound ways that the deep end of practice starts allowing you to be more effective.

For example, spontaneity is a flavor that's very common in the deep end of practice, where thoughts, actions, and speech begin to arise spontaneously. Plug that into a leader who needs to give public talks or someone who's doing creative work to solve creative problems in the real world of housing or education or whatever, and you start to get really helpful improvements.

The deep end of the practice expresses itself in subtle ways, but you could even argue more powerful ways, in the productivity space. But not a lot of people are talking about that.

Pranab · 12:58

Yeah, and in some ways that's really the thing I'm deeply interested in intellectually, personally, and from a service-oriented lens. I think over the last several years we've had a deepening of awareness of the deep end of practice. You have Dr. Matthew Sacchet's lab at Harvard, Sara Lazar's lab at Harvard, a bunch of people in the consciousness studies space talking about cessation and jhana and awakening. That's just becoming stuff you can talk about now. There are papers and institutions that show credibility there.

In some ways this is a bit more boring than all that fun stuff, but in some ways much more practical and applicable. I really liked your emphasis on self-trust and integrity with all that.

Toby Sola · 13:47

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think you could make the argument that it's more interesting because cessation, no-self, transcendence—at least to someone who's inexperienced with the space, it just sounds kind of weird and dead and dry. Whereas being able to integrate that into the joy of human connection and the impact of creativity in your work, in a way it's more interesting because it's the manifestation of the insight.

Insights are kind of by definition archetypal and transcendent. Whereas if you can maintain contact with an insight while doing stuff in the world, it's like the flower is blossoming. The insight is actually connected and expressing itself.

14:48 — The Happiness Grid and building feedback loops

Pranab · 14:48

Yeah, I love that. I would love for you to get into some of those loops. That's something you bring up in that lecture series: loops to set up to actually make meditation something that can make you more effective and responsible, assuming that one has a practice and it's a thing that's already there.

Toby Sola · 15:06

Shinzen Young, who's my main influence, my main teacher, is wonderful. One of the things he's well known for is being very comprehensive in the way that he teaches. He tries to show students the options and lets them choose their path, as opposed to giving us a specific technique. It's like, “Here are the different ways to meditate and to think about this path, and it's up to you to decide how you really want to manifest that.”

Instead of just saying that meditation is about achieving enlightenment, Shinzen has this awesome—I guess it's five by four, yeah—20-box grid of what he calls the happiness elements.

Pranab · 15:59

On the top it's five categories, and there are four levels for each category. The five categories are relief, fulfillment, insight, mastery, service. Going into those, relief is minimizing suffering, fulfillment is maximizing satisfaction, insight is understanding yourself, mastery is acting skillfully, and service is serving from love.

Toby Sola · 16:24

The basic idea is this table is attempting to be more comprehensive in terms of what people really mean when they say “the goal of this path” or “enlightenment.”

It includes everything from “You understand yourself as primordial perfection”—that sounds a lot like what a lot of people associate with the word “enlightened”—but it also includes things like, “You are able to eliminate undesirable objective situations in your life,” and “You are able to have desirable objective situations in your life.” So it's a very holistic conception of what this path can lead to.

To be clear, neither Shinzen nor I are subscribing to magical thinking in this regard. It's not like we're saying that if you believe it, it will come true. This is way more loose and broad, basically the law of karma that we've all seen in our lives. In general, most people, most of the time, if you have really good intentions and you do good work, it tends to come back to you.

Of course there are structural issues in society. We're not trying to say that doesn't exist, but we're pointing at a truth, something that does seem to happen, right?

It also includes stuff like performance skills, sports skills, useful skills that you can use for your job. Deriving deep fulfillment from subtle service, which is positively influencing others by vibe and example. That's interesting. That's related to what we were talking about before. This isn't just about being calm and being more creative. You can positively influence people by your vibe.

I don't want to get too nitty-gritty, but I think the important part is there's this cool table of 20 different elements, which does a really comprehensive, good job of breaking out all the different ways that meditation can impact your life.

Taking that and bringing in my idea of awakening and responsibility, and creating loops between these two things, you can basically make loops between any of the boxes. You can take, “I understand myself as primordial perfection,” and tie that to, “You are able to eliminate undesirable objective situations.” That can be a theme of your practice. How does my insight into the fact that I'm primordial perfection allow me to achieve the elimination of undesirable objective situations? And vice versa.

Maybe that's not the best example, but you get the idea. You can tie boxes together with loops.

Pranab · 19:17

I'm curious about getting more into the loop exactly. So on that example, or maybe a different example, it sounds like a loop is basically taking two aspects that may seem dissimilar but are actually happening somewhat in parallel, and tying them together. Creating a way in which they're emphasized and more related than they may be otherwise. Does that seem right? What does that actually look like? And what makes it so that doesn't often happen on its own spontaneously?

19:49 — Procrastination as sensory experience

Toby Sola · 19:49

Good question. Maybe let's pick another example to flesh it out a little bit. One box in the table is, “You understand yourself as a sensory system,” which is an insight that a lot of meditators achieve, especially if you're doing noting-style practice.

There's an insight where you realize that the entirety of experience is made up of some combination of mental image, mental talk, emotional body sensation, and the exterior senses of sight, sound, and physical body sensation. This is a version of no-self where there isn't really some kind of permanent self, although I could lecture about that for half an hour. Let's put a pin in that for a second.

One way to conceive of experience is as just a combination of those six elements, these six sensory experiences that are happening. You can track it all in real time, right? That's an insight.

Then let's say you have a character skill that you're working on, like procrastination. Let's bring in procrastination. Working on procrastination would fit into the following box: “You attain character skills.” That's how Shinzen would classify procrastination. It's a character skill that you can work on.

One experience of procrastination is you know you need to do something, but you don't want to do it. You can, in the moment, implement a meditation technique that emphasizes this insight of understanding yourself as a sensory system. Instead of experiencing, “I really don't want to do that,” you break it up into: What am I experiencing as mental images, my imagination? What talk am I hearing in my mind, mental dialogue? And what am I feeling in the body?

It's not always affecting the body, but a lot of people aren't aware that something like procrastination often exists in the body. Shinzen describes it as—I'm going to take some agency here in terms of how he describes it—but it's something like your body's covered in molasses and it's hard to move. It seems as though there's something physically blocking your body. That's something that some people report.

Importantly, procrastination exists in the body as some kind of felt sensation. You could imagine, if you implement a mindfulness technique that allows you to see those parts as parts and distinguish them, it becomes a lot more manageable. The experience of procrastination becomes simply, “I'm experiencing a mental image of this. I experience some mental talk that is jabbering away about this, and it begins and ends, and it seems to be up in my head. Then I have this kind of icky feeling in the body.” That's it. There isn't some kind of divine abstract thing that's preventing me from doing something. I'm experiencing sensory experiences, but I have a lot more agency, and all this is a lot more manageable.

You're able to decrease the impact that has on your decision, and you're able to just do what you need to do. You're able to overcome the procrastination more easily.

Then we'll just complete the loop here. Let's say you're able to get done what you're able to get done, which means you actually have some free time in the evening, and therefore you can meditate more. You have 20 minutes free in the evening because you got done what you needed to get done. So your ability to be effective in the world in this case is then supporting your awakening practice. There's the loop. We just did a full loop. We did a walk around the full block.

Pranab · 24:27

I see. So that's the loop. It's like, great, you—

Toby Sola · 24:29

That's the loop.

Pranab · 24:30

—you're applying it. Then the loop aspect is that with that extra benefit, whether it's more time or maybe less stress, there's less negative self-talk that then reverberates into more challenging mind states in the future. Instead, you have more positive mind states. You can cultivate more mind states that then lead to more virtuous cycles. It's this idea of how to build virtuous cycles and how they all fit in together.

Toby Sola · 24:54

Yeah, and making sure to tie them together because it takes some intention. I think, to answer your question directly, what I just described is kind of subtle and you might need to be coached through it.

Pranab · 25:11

Yes.

Toby Sola · 25:12

And that's why this doesn't always happen, right? A lot of people meditate, but they don't know how to apply it to their procrastination, and they certainly don't know how to let the pride and joy that comes from these character changes fuel a meditation practice. These are subtle things that need to be pointed out, working with a coach or something.

It doesn't always happen because it's subtle and you need to be coached on specific strategies. Even just having the intention of creating these loops, noticing these loops, and appreciating these loops is motivating and helpful.

Pranab · 25:59

Yeah, I like that a lot. I think there's an interesting thing where, for some people, this may happen spontaneously. They may just, for whatever reason, actually do it, and they say, “It spontaneously happened.” Then for many others, for reasons of conditioning, for reasons of whatever it is, it may not happen as readily. It's helpful to point out these aspects and show that this is actually trainable, coachable, teachable. There are ways to really get in. In some ways, I just see it as better pedagogy, getting really into the details.

Toby Sola · 26:31

Yeah, exactly. It definitely happens spontaneously sometimes. And for most people it's helpful to have some framework for what we're doing here.

Pranab · 26:48

Yep. Awesome. To me, this feels like it's all deeply part of integration. Some traditions call it liberation practice, other people call it showing up or cleaning up practice, in a way.

It's really this aspect of bringing practice and the skills of meditation to more things in life, to more situations. I really like the use of that term “character skill.” Based on the roll of the dice or life circumstances, we all have various skills—thinking of it as a video game, maybe—in these different areas. But it's cool to see that certain areas can be improved upon or altered based on the way practice goes.

Toby Sola · 27:30

Yeah, a hundred percent.

27:31 — Shinzen Young, procrastination, and support beyond meditation

Pranab · 27:31

I'm curious if you're open to doing a little bit of a branch into Shinzen Young's experience of procrastination. And I'll preface by saying I really enjoyed that description of procrastination as feeling into the body sensations. Maybe it feels like molasses. Once it's broken down into these various subcomponents, one can realize, “I thought it was this whole thing, that I'm a bad person. What's going on?” That separation can reduce the weight of it and make it less challenging. Eventually you can work and actually get the thing done.

One thing I've noticed as well is procrastination can actually be a lot of different things. There's wanting to do a thing and then not doing it. There's the external aspect of commitment: “I committed to doing this thing, even though I didn't really want to.” And then there's maybe, “Do I actually even want to do a thing? I should, but actually I don't want to do it. I'm just choosing not to do this.” There may be more that all could be discussed as procrastination. That's my understanding.

I'd be curious, with your experience of Shinzen Young, about his experience of procrastination, how he related to it, and how it changed over the years.

Toby Sola · 28:46

Yeah, so I've heard him talk publicly about his experience. Everything I say here is basically what I've heard him talk about publicly. I don't have any inside scoop, as they say.

As you say, he's a very well-respected meditation teacher who spent decades practicing, and still he was struggling a lot with procrastination. He worked with a psychiatrist that I believe was trained in cognitive behavioral therapy, so he used that approach specifically. I would imagine something about the rapport, going and meeting with a psychiatrist in person regularly, something about the social accountability was also probably helpful for him.

But even as a very deep practitioner, he still needed the support of a therapist working with cognitive behavioral therapy. Cognitive behavioral therapy certainly has a meditative component in that you're recognizing thoughts and feelings as distinct entities, almost. But it's this established approach in modern therapy. Only through that was he able to at least somewhat get a handle on this character trait.

But it didn't solve all the problems. I know that even since then—he met with a therapist probably like 20 years ago—he's still struggled. So it wasn't even a clear and total solution. It's an ongoing struggle for him.

I think maybe what this gets to is, it's one thing to understand that you can develop loops between your awakening practice and your ability to be effective in the world, which we've been talking about. As I was saying just now, there are a lot of dead ends, and it can be tricky to set up these loops. So the question becomes: what kind of support do we need in order to set up healthy loops that work? In this example of Shinzen, he needed the support of a CBT therapist.

I think this opens up an interesting question, which is, realistically, for most people, you need other forms of support and other systems to be in place in order for these loops to grow healthily. Another way to put it is that I don't think, in most cases, you can rely on meditation instruction alone in order to set up these loops. It's too subtle, it's too complicated, it's too easy to make mistakes. So we need other modalities.

Therapy is probably one of the best modalities that can complement a meditation practice and increase the chances that you'll be able to establish these loops. But there are a lot of other modalities or ways of working. This is part of what I go into in this lecture series: a long list of other practices and modalities that help us establish these loops healthily.

I'll just talk about a few examples. One example is giving and receiving feedback among peers and colleagues. This is a practice that is probably the most helpful, or one of the most helpful, things you can do to help you set up all these loops. It's so hard to see clearly within your own mind. Giving and receiving feedback with other people is a way to tap the collective intelligence of your community.

Another example is the Serenity Prayer. It's not necessarily a modality, it's just a framework that you can keep in mind. It's a question you can ask yourself. As you may or may not know, the Serenity Prayer is very popular in AA communities, Alcoholics Anonymous communities. It's like, “May I have the courage to change the things that I can, and the openness to let things be that I can't change, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

That leads to, if you're in a situation, ask yourself: What elements of the situation can I change, and what elements can I not change? Okay, that's very helpful. For the stuff I can't change, the only tool I have is meditation. The only tool I have is transcendence. That's good to know. I'm not going to waste energy trying to change something I can't change. For the stuff that you can change, you best not only be using meditation. You really should be thinking about this rationally, imaginatively, getting advice from mentors, and doing stuff to objectively make the situation better, right? Those are just some examples of additional angles that are necessary in order to get these loops to thrive.

Pranab · 34:41

Yeah. There's a whole thread there I want to dive into. I think the word for that would be discernment, or that's the word that comes up—

Toby Sola · 34:50

Yes. Yeah.

Pranab · 34:51

—as a big theme in your talk. Putting a bookmark in that just for a moment, to reflect back on the Shinzen stuff, it seems like a thing I'm taking away is the value of external structures. Let's stop trying to do this by ourselves only.

The value of meeting with someone, and also what I'm hearing is norms, community, structure, expectations, rules. All that stuff actually can be quite helpful and useful. Being in a community of people who give each other feedback from a certain lens of frameworks and from a certain view seems really valuable and useful, compared to spending the equivalent time by yourself meditating in a room, trying to figure it out yourself, just reading books. While of course that's all valuable, and that can be bootstrapped to a lot, it shows to me the value of finding other people who can support. Which then gets into how few of those exist. There aren't actually that many healthy organizations and structures that can support this, which is quite sad, but also helpful in the sense that maybe a hundred years from now we can have many, many more of those that make it easier for people to do this training and skill development.

36:12 — Accountability, community, and patterns in feedback

Toby Sola · 36:12

Yeah. Two things. One is, Shinzen has a term for what you're describing, or at least one version of the thing you're describing. He calls them “behaviorally oriented accountability and support structures.” Shinzen's such a nerd. I'll say that again: behaviorally oriented accountability and support structures.

He sees this as very, very helpful in the path, right? You need structures that are behaviorally oriented. This isn't about what your intentions were. This is where the rubber meets the road. How are you behaving? So there's no way to fake it, right? It's accountability in that there are expectations, but the structures also have to support you. Realistically, we can't do this alone, as you say. Absolutely, we need behaviorally oriented accountability and support structures.

The other thing I would say is, it is optimal or important if these communities have meditation as a central theme, but it's not necessary. You can rely on your good old circle of friends who may or may not meditate to do at least some of this work. It's also just a return to the simplicity of being engaged with your immediate community, regardless of how interested they are in meditation. You can still do a lot of work, even with just your family and your friends, because there really is a wisdom in crowds.

Maybe to flesh that out a little bit more, if one person gives you feedback about something, you don't necessarily know if it's helpful feedback or not. As we all know, people project a lot, and it might be their own problem more than your problem. But when you get feedback from a variety of people, you can start to notice patterns. That's really what we're interested in: a variety of people are giving me the same feedback. Therefore, there probably is something there. That's a real data point.

You don't need to be in contact with a sage, or even a spiritual community. You can be in contact with the everyday person. Because you're taking your relationships seriously, many of them, you'll still get truth because you'll be looking for patterns. You get sage-like wisdom just by listening to a variety of people, I guess is what I'm saying.

39:12 — Discernment as a skill

Pranab · 39:12

Yeah, that makes sense. This naturally segues into that bookmark of discernment and view. I'm curious how you think about discernment in the way that loops are, and if you could talk more about the role of discernment and how to build that.

Toby Sola · 39:33

Yeah, so we've been circling this question of, “Okay, Toby, you can set up a loop, but how do you make sure to do that? How do you make sure to set up a loop correctly and healthily?” Briefly, my answer to that is discernment. This is a somewhat distinct skill that you can develop systematically.

The dictionary definition of discernment is something like the ability to understand and perceive things that aren't obvious. The two important things there: one is there's an element of perception. It's an ability to perceive what is often very subtle phenomena. If things are obviously wrong, most people can see that. Where discernment helps is if it's a little unclear how you should act, right?

The second piece of that definition, which I think is important, is things that are not obvious. If you can develop the ability to notice subtle information that helps you make calls when things aren't obvious, that's one way to define what you need in order to set up these loops.

That's where a lot of personal development goes awry. “It seems like I really just need to do more meditation practice, and I really need to figure this out in my own mind. That seems like a good direction. Let's go do that.” Whereas, in fact, if you were aware of subtle phenomena, you might notice, “You know what I really need is to practice being in relationship with people. That's going to be a much more beneficial practice for me right now.” That's just an example of noticing something subtle.

If you can't notice that, if you don't have discernment, your loop isn't going to develop properly. Discernment, I propose, is a crucial skill.

One way to talk about this is: what are the practices, what are the frameworks we can work on to systematically develop discernment, so it's not just random, so we can really see our discernment building and growing and getting better? That's that whole list of practices we started exploring. That's how I think about the term discernment.

Pranab · 42:37

I love that. It feels inclusive of both practical or more mundane views of discernment, like someone who's more senior than you at your job. Let's say you're a software engineer. A senior software engineer tends to find things that can go wrong more than a junior software engineer. And you don't have to meditate to do that. That just comes from experience. At the same time, what does it mean to build that experience? It's likely harder if you're not open to new information, or if you're really rigid about the concepts in your head, or if you're not actually listening to people in conversations. Meditation training and all the stuff we've talked about so far could be really helpful for those things that then lead you to becoming better at acquiring skill and better at acquiring discernment in that more mundane way.

Toby Sola · 43:29

Yeah, exactly. You can already start to see how meditation increases the resolution of your experience, helps you see more clearly. That is a really important part of discernment. There are a lot of interrelated skills here.

Discernment is something that's really simple. It shows up, as you say, in software development. But it can also be a profound intuition, almost.

Pranab · 44:07

Yes.

Toby Sola · 44:09

Subtly sensing into what needs to happen in a major decision where you don't have full information.

Pranab · 44:16

Yes. This is where, in my own experience and from seeing wise coaches or therapists or people we typically see as wise or sage-like in our society, they tend to have a deep understanding of human psychology, emotions, the nature of things. This seems to be where meditation is extra helpful at being able to really understand and discern.

Toby Sola · 44:43

Yeah, exactly. Yep.

44:45 — How do healthy loops develop?

Pranab · 44:45

Yeah. Nice. Cool. I'm curious about rounding out the loops and discernment idea. How do you typically close the lecture series on creating a North Star between awakening practices and responsibility? I'm curious how they can be fragile and how they can be more healthy.

Toby Sola · 45:09

My answer to “How do you do that?”—the best answer I have right now—is a long list of practices. Maybe that is the best answer. I could list some of them out, but I think some of these ideas are somewhat nascent. I'm interested in developing some kind of framework or conceptual diagram so I can give a simple answer to that question. Right now, all I have is, “Here's 20 things you can do.”

One way to answer your question is, it's an open question, and I'm still figuring that out. Another way to answer your question is, Buddhism has the Eightfold Path. I think that's one answer. Study and practice the Eightfold Path, which includes things like right view and right thought and right speech.

Another example of techniques is, I teach a lot of what I call “blurry meditation techniques.” The reason I call them blurry is they blur the line between your life and meditation. For example, a decision-making meditation, where you are developing concentration and you're definitely meditating, but you're really unpacking and spending time with a decision and the content of that decision in your life. There's a whole variety of what I would call blurry meditation techniques that really weave these two worlds together. Mentorship is another thing you can do.

Those are my two answers: I'm working on it, and right now I have a list of 20 things. I'm curious, how might you structure an answer to that question? How would you answer it? How do you do this? Do you have any type of conceptual framework or internal trick of the trade that you're using in your own life?

Pranab · 47:24

I think it's something around reminding myself that this is important, just how strong the inertia of ignorance is. In some ways, that's what a lot of meditation fights against. It's definitely not comprehensive, but I'm struck by how important keeping momentum on these emphases is.

A theme that's come up throughout the conversation is that there are so many different truths. There are lots of ways to do it, and you would be doing it “right.” To actually have it morph in this way where you get these loops, showing up to life and improving in responsibility, does require a certain emphasis that requires a certain form of mindfulness or remembering. It's easy to move away from that in a very valid way. And in some ways it's choosing between various good options, which I think is harder than choosing between being mindful of something versus restless. You could emphasize a different way, but then realize later that, “I actually want to be more into life,” it seems like.

Toby Sola · 48:38

Right. Yeah, that's a good point. I like that. That matches my experience. I'll kind of coast for a bit, and then some of my relationships will have tension, and I just have to take a breath, remind myself, “Okay, I need to think of this as a training. How is my meditation practice going to help me grow through this, as opposed to just suffer through this?”

Pranab · 49:15

Yeah.

Toby Sola · 49:15

Yeah, it's a constant reminding.

49:22 — Happiness independent of conditions

Pranab · 49:22

It's interesting because part of what makes me so interested about this is seeing how, while very much worth it, in some ways the deep end of practice and getting a lot of these benefits can make life a little bit more complicated. A little bit of, “I could go in this direction…”

I could go in the direction of my own deepening and awakening and understanding these things. I could go in the direction of showing up in these relationships or doing this thing. This is more exploratory, but there's that saying, “Happiness independent of conditions.” There's clearly a truth there that Shinzen talks about and really gets into.

Toby Sola · 50:16

Yeah, Shinzen uses this phrase all the time.

Pranab · 50:21

I'm hearing how, in some ways, it's like, well, aren't all these relationships and mentoring and therapy, aren't those all conditions? I think there's maybe a trap in that view.

Toby Sola · 50:35

Yeah, that's a great point. Personally, I think Shinzen and many meditation teachers—and in a way, this is the main point I'm making—overemphasize happiness independent of conditions in a way that's not practically helpful for most students.

It's inspiring to hear about it. It is true. It can be achieved. It works. But practically speaking, for most people, when it's overemphasized it can lead to confusion and suffering.

Especially with Shinzen, it's interesting because he's the one that maps out the periodic table of happiness, which is really impressive. I think it's by far the most comprehensive mapping of the goal of the meditative path that I've ever encountered. So he gets it. At least on one level, Shinzen absolutely gets that happiness independent of conditions is not the whole shebang.

But still, just in terms of emphasis, like I've been saying, in a lot of his Dharma talks and a lot of his interviews, he's often hammering away at the importance of happiness independent of conditions. I'm painting with a pretty broad brush, and my point isn't to—well, whatever, you get what I'm saying.

Yeah, I ultimately think happiness independent of conditions, that goal, is only helpful within the context of a larger framework that recognizes the importance of conditions. It has to be part of that larger holistic framework. And that's not to diminish happiness independent of conditions. Again, I'm trying to accelerate that. I think that's part of what is tricky about what I'm suggesting. If you pay attention to conditions, you will transcend conditions more. This isn't a zero-sum game, right? If you invest in your relationships, you will be supported in such a way that you will awaken more. That's somewhat seen in traditional monasteries, where the sangha and the community is a very important part of practice, and the way in which people support each other emotionally, physically, relationally. That really does play an important role in some traditional settings. So there's even traditional precedent for what I'm pointing to.

Pranab · 53:26

Yeah. An interesting thing—this is my interpretation as well, and in response to a lot of what you said—is you can experience happiness independent of conditions as a way of being in a way that's actually quite deep, as I imagine it was for Shinzen, and still choose to do other things or emphasize other things or want other things. Or not just go after happiness, but choose to have conditions for other reasons. Conditions that cause ups and downs and things like that, to spread things into the world. It reminds me of the bodhisattva vow. Exactly.

Toby Sola · 54:05

Yeah, I was just thinking that. There's an intention. You recognize that, okay, happiness independent of conditions is real, but I'm going to choose to keep my hands dirty and keep interacting with this world of conditions because it's important, right?

Pranab · 54:21

Yeah. In some ways, I think that's where it's quite fascinating how it feels even deeper, more mysterious and curious, how one chooses these things.

Which might be a good way to end this conversation.

54:40 — Seasons of retreat and engagement

Toby Sola · 54:40

Mm-hmm. Yeah. One of the things I was talking about earlier is there are seasons. It's not like anyone ever really makes a choice one way or the other. There can be themes, but I would encourage people to experiment and have seasons and emphasize one or the other and go back and forth. In a way, that is walking the path.

Maybe this might be a nice inspirational way to end it. When I told my teacher I was leaving the monastery, he said, “Don't think of it as you're leaving a practice or you're switching directions. Think about it as another step on the same path.”

What this path looks like is you spend time training in a monastery. That's walking, that's taking a step forward with your left foot. Then you re-enter the world. That's taking a step forward with your right foot. Then you train in the monastery, that's taking a step forward with your left foot. And then you re-enter the world, that's taking a step forward with your right foot.

This path really is fundamentally alternating between seasons of transcendence and immanence, and weaving the insights that you make in the practice into your life and how you show up.

56:03 — Where to find Toby

Pranab · 56:03

Awesome. Thank you, Toby. What are a few links or ways people can find you if they're excited about this conversation?

Toby Sola · 56:14

I run a meditation app called Brightmind Meditation. Pretty much all of my teaching, guided meditations, Q&As, lectures, stuff is all on the app. It's like a one-stop shop. You can download it in the Apple App Store, the Google Play Store, Brightmind.

I regularly host fully online retreats, some in-person retreats too, actually. The best way to find out about all that is to create a Brightmind account, and then you'll be on my email list.

Recently—we'll see how long this lasts—two weeks ago, I started to post weekly on Instagram Reels. You can follow me on Instagram, “Toby or not Toby 3000.” It's all my name, Toby, T-O-B-Y. Pretty funny handle.

Pranab · 57:13

That's pretty funny.

Toby Sola · 57:15

Yeah, without the number it was taken, so I had to add 3000, which I think is kind of funny because it makes me sound like a vacuum cleaner. Like “Toby or not Toby 3000. Get it today while supplies last.” So yeah, I'm excited about that. We'll see. I just want to share in real time the perspectives, the skills, the techniques that are actually helpful for me in my real life. I just want to share it immediately on social media. That's another good way to get bite-size chunks.

Like I mentioned earlier in the discussion, some of these ideas are nascent, and I'm trying to wrestle with them and figure them out. Hopefully this practice of sharing weekly videos is going to help me do some of that. It'll be a very creative process, and I'm excited to produce those videos.

Pranab · 58:06

Awesome. Thank you, Toby.

Toby Sola · 58:07

Thank you, Pranab. This has been really epically mega super fun. Thank you.