015. Andy Schulman

Buddha at the Gas Pump

Rick Archer

Religion & Spirituality, Philosophy, Spirituality, Society & Culture

4.7 • 695 Ratings

🗓️ 18 March 2010

⏱️ 74 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

I remember having the thought at age 26, “what am I going to do, I will never make it through the second year of graduate school”? Having just completed my first year in training as a psychiatric social worker it was obvious that I felt more like a patient, who needed intense help, than the person charged with helping others. At that moment, I became a seeker. The subsequent initiation into Transcendental Meditation forever set the direction of my life in ways I could not have imagined and it was a blessing that I did not. The road was bumpy quite a bit of the time yet there were always people there to help. Nature was always there giving both challenges and help necessary to see my way through them. Then one day not knowing how it happened or why, silence was now present all the time. Everything had changed yet nothing was different. The change was both ordinary and profound. It was not the end of the journey but a new beginning and way of experiencing it. Life is now spent in the deepening of that silence and removal of the remaining junk. One can indeed know “One’s Self” and yet have much more work to do. Interview recorded 3/17/2010. YouTube Video Chapters: 00:00:00 - Motivations for creating the show and the different paths to enlightenment 00:03:48 - Awakening and the Impact of Spiritual Practice 00:07:41 - The Impact of TM Meditation on Personal Growth 00:12:23 - The Shift in Consciousness 00:17:19 - The Solvent of Silence 00:21:15 - The Separation of Thinking from Awareness 00:25:33 - Exploring Heart-Oriented Practices 00:29:06 - Gratitude and Appreciation 00:32:49 - The Importance of Development and Meditation in Life 00:36:20 - Meditation as a Vehicle for Growth 00:39:11 - The Value of Seeking Help 00:42:18 - Working through Thoughts and Achieving Peace 00:45:25 - Overcoming Fear and Wrong Thinking 00:47:48 - Recognizing and Accepting Personal Strength 00:50:07 - Dealing with Habits and Tendencies 00:52:32 - The Byron Katie Work and the Journey of Self-Discovery 00:55:20 - The Fulfillment of Silence 00:57:53 - Getting Along Better with People in Silence 01:00:19 - The Value of Peaceful Relationships and Cordiality 01:02:35 - Varieties of Awakened People 01:04:47 - The Similarity of Silence 01:07:33 - The Illusion of Enlightenment 01:10:25 - Overcoming Fear through Faith in God 01:13:44 - Nature's Help in Moving Forward 01:16:28 - Shifting Perspective: From Individual to Ocean 01:19:13 - Life's Supportive Events 01:21:23 - Support and Spontaneity in Doing the Work 01:24:09 - Relaxing into Vastness 01:26:29 - Letting Go of Control and Accepting Life 01:29:09 - The Gift of Fairfield 01:31:44 - Living in Fairfield: A Fascinating Place

Transcript

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0:00.0	The
0:07.0	The Welcome to Buddha at the gas pump. My name is Rick Archer and my guest this week is Andy Schulman.
0:32.6	And as I was thinking about how I would conduct this interview with Andy, I had the impulse to just review a little bit what my motivations were for creating this show.
0:44.3	And perhaps this will give Andy an angle on how he'd like to tell his story.
0:49.3	When I started meditating back in 1968 and later began teaching in 71, I was told and I began
0:57.0	telling people that one could expect to gain the first stage of enlightenment, which
1:04.0	was called, which they called cosmic consciousness, in maybe five to eight years.
1:09.0	I actually know a couple of people who say that that happened for them,
1:12.1	but for the vast majority of people who were practicing what I was practicing, it apparently
1:16.9	didn't. Now, 30 or 40 years later, if I think of all the people I know who've been on a spiritual
1:22.8	path all that time, I can kind of categorize them. One category might be people who just gave up on the whole thing.
1:30.3	They got discouraged. They decided it was a pipe dream and they just decided to live life
1:35.3	and not worry about spiritual things. I don't know what the percentages of these categories might be, but that's one.
1:41.3	Another is people who have been practicing their meditation or whatever.
1:46.8	I'll generalize this to include any sort of spiritual practice. They've been doing this for
1:51.5	years and decades. And it's become a routine. And they've kind of given up on the idea of
1:58.1	actually becoming enlightened, whatever that is, and so on.
2:02.6	They just figure it's restful, I enjoy it, and I'll just kind of live out my life doing this thing.
2:07.6	A subcategory of those people, perhaps, is those who have an understanding of enlightenment
2:13.6	as being something quite extraordinary in the sense that, you know, if you've
2:18.8	actually attained it, you should be able to levitate or do other miraculous things as proof
2:26.4	of that attainment. And if you can't do such things, then you're probably kidding yourself
	...

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