Hello and welcome to another episode of the Secular Buddhism Podcast. This is episode number 88.

I am your host Noah Rasheda. And today I'm talking about the concept of radical okness, or in other words the idea of getting to know yourself.

Keep in mind the Dalai Lama's advice to not use what you learn from Buddhism to be a Buddhist. Use it to be a better whatever you already are.

Now I first encountered the expression radical okness when I was attending the Salt Lake Buddhist Fellowship. A weekly gathering in Salt Lake City run by my friend Christopher.

And he was given a Dharma talk and he used this concept of radical okness. And I remember it really stood out to me. I thought it was a really cool expression that really gets at the heart of what Buddhism is trying to accomplish in so many of its teachings.

You know we always talk about the middle way in Buddhism. And I like to think that in the middle of on the spectrum of wow life is great and that's what I'm chasing after.

Oh man life is really crappy right now I don't like this. Right in the middle there's just ok life is ok. And what a radical shift it is to go from chasing after the extremes right chasing to get to one extreme or fighting hard to avoid letting that other extreme get close to us.

Our habitual mode is to desire more of what we think we want and to feel a version or to push away that which we think we don't want.

But to be ok with things just as they are when when they're good and when they're bad that to me is the essence of radical okness radical in the sense that that's not normal. Most people are caught in the game chasing after one and fighting off the other.

But what a radical shift in perspective to be ok and to stop playing that game and just thinking when it's good it's good and I'll enjoy it when it's bad it's fine doesn't mean I like it.

But I can also enjoy it is a very that's a radical thing for me so I want to dig into this a little bit more there's a very clear message that seems to permeate through many of the Buddha's teachings.

That is the importance of getting to know yourself knowing your own mind and I want to correlate this with this concept of radical okness.

So the Buddha's teachings are primarily concerned with understanding suffering and the elimination of what we would call self inflicted or unnecessary suffering.

And I've mentioned this before in podcast episodes the parable of the two arrows you know common Buddhist teaching meant to help us to understand the nature of what we could say is natural suffering the first arrow versus self inflicted suffering the suffering that we bring on ourselves which is the second arrow.

And the Buddha understood that the source of this unnecessary suffering was to be discovered within.

So think about this for a moment what are the things that generally cause us mental anguish or discomfort for you specifically the things that cause you mental anguish or discomfort perhaps it's the fear of death that's a big one likely rooted in the fear of uncertainty not knowing what what comes next the fear of just not knowing or not having control over how life is unfolding.

You know when we feel anguish or stress or worry or anxiety these are all mental states and they arise in the mind and they reside in the mind while we're experiencing them.

But this is also how the pleasant mental states work when we're in love or we look up at the night sky and we contemplate the vastness of the cosmos and our smallness in this place or you smell a flower or you watch a sunset or you look at the sky.

You know these are incredibly powerful experiences that all take place in our minds. So in this sense pleasure and pain are both experiences of the mind.

And I don't know about you but for me I cannot think of a greater goal than that of getting to know myself and don't get me wrong I'm certainly intrigued by the great mysteries of the youth.

I'm very mysterious of the universe and the cosmos. I'm fascinated by what we know and by what we don't know about space and time and the big bang and the expansion of the universe and the origins of life and all that.

But somehow as I sit here and I really think and I feel I'm also overwhelmed by a sense of awe and wonder at the fact that my mind can produce thoughts and it can produce feelings.

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