Cultivating Virtue in Educational Practice with Ethan Hsieh

36:00You are in a state of super abundance.

36:06And I want to name an anecdote. Well, it's an experience of one of the aspirants. you know, the interview. And we do these interviews after containers to just have participants talk to each other. I'm not there so they can speak freely. Neither am I throwing questions or whatever. And I get to watch it afterwards. And this is from Naz. Naz is a beautiful, beautiful human being. We are going to love him a lot. And I think you've met him as well. where, so he's a lecturer in computational science. And he does a lot of work on predictive processing. And one of the things he said in this interview, which we've made public so I can share, is for a long time, there's a way in which he's heard that the logical part of him, the part that likes to figure things out and find causal relations between the parts that's the sciencey part of, right, is not human.

37:12And what he had found in doing the practices is a kind of acceptance that, no, this part of me that is logical, that wants to pursue ideas and concepts, they are also a part of me and therefore they are human. What does it mean that it's not human? I'm almost quoting him verbatim here because I think he's so powerful, especially for a computational scientist to say that. you know um and i say this because i don't want us to demonize the logical process i don't want to to demonize that and say that oh you know what i've heard in um a variety of other kinds of like workshops i suppose is um or leave your uh leave your brain at the door or don't think about it too much no no that that's that's yeah that's that that that's decadent zen that's decadent zen that's the part that's why zen needs to be in opponent processing with neoplatonism that that that yeah the yeah when there there is a there's an importance to getting to the primordial pre-logical uh and that's what zen is doing because it's so deeply influenced by taoism but there's an importance to going to the super logical, right?

38:32Which takes us into ultimacy. And that's what Neoplatonism does. And those two balance each other off so you can properly proportion, ratio, your attitude and your attention to the logical, right? Yeah. Well, you know, I think I've been pretty consistent. I refuse any framework. This is one of my heuristics, but it's a maxim. Any framework that demonizes or deifies any particular faculty, I reject it right off the bat. Go with your heart. Your intellect is your problem. No, go with your intellect. Your heart. No, sorry. No, that's, first of all, that's dehumanizing. It's idolatrous. And it presupposes a model of cognition that is plausibly and probably false.

39:29And yet, I see it as a cross-cultural parasitic process. I've got to, wow, you know, I may not be into it. And people, no, no, you've got to. It's like, nope, nope. um i'm a little bit worried at times about ian mcgillcrist that he's starting to deify the right hemisphere um and the research that he talks about really and this is what i keep saying okay i've said it to you in space so this is not me talking behind his back insight isn't in the right hemisphere it's between it's metaxu between the left and the right hemisphere um and it's also Not just left and right. It's front and back. It's top and bottom.

40:19I'm worried about the deification. I'm worried when people start to deify. I'm also worried when people... And they're almost always together. Like the deification, for example, of the right hemisphere, there's a demonization of the left hemisphere that can happen. I don't know if Ian's doing that. I'm worried that he could be taken to be doing that. And I know a lot of people who follow him do that. And I find that very worrying. I understand why we have to overcompensate because we have neglected the right and deified the left. And so there's a needed corrective overcompensation, but I'm worried that it's shifting into deification, a counterbalanced, you know, off balance, I should say.

41:14deification and demonization. So, like, there's something, I mean, we want to do this. And I'm just wondering, this is Charles, based on some work from both Frankfurt and Charles Taylor. They have the idea that one of the functions of the ego is to identify and disidentify. so that what the ego does is it endorses this and says i'm that and it it and it rejects this and says i'm not that yeah and i'm identity and difference yeah yeah and i think i'm wondering if that's the initial engine um of deification and demonization sorry i said a lot there but that there was a lot there to unpack yeah well there's a lot there's a lot to pick up here i think what we're circling around this well when we say recovering the virtue of being in the world I think is fundamentally this idea of how do we recover the virtue of the good yes and so there there are a couple of things to point out here first of all the ego piece I mean I named this in my tier one opening lecture right that the ego has a filtration function of identification and difference yeah and that necessarily forms the ground of our autobiographical narrative the story of your life, right?

42:37And that has a gravitational center, which is why egocentrism is actually necessary because otherwise we fall apart, right? Now, if you want to hear more about the lecture, there's resources and come for a workshop and I'm happy to give it because it's a very fun lecture to give. But there is also something here which I think is really, really fascinating. So the question is not one of, I think it is, so sorry, let me slow down. I think you're right. I think the ego is the primordial kind of mechanic for the deification, demonization piece if taken out of proportion. And I think this is what you're pointing at with Ian is not so much, I don't think it's a question of what he is doing or isn't doing, because we have to be in relationship with him to discover the intent, right?

43:33At least how he intends it. But there is, what the context of our culture does is to necessitate a particular emphasis. And with the necessary emphasis comes the over-indexing on that. Probably because, and I take Ian in good faith, I think he looks at it and goes, well, this is what we need. It doesn't mean that there's all that there is, right? So even when I'm facilitating, I find myself in a precarious position because if someone is explicitly too logical and propositional and following too much of the abstract, I find it my job, my pedagogical responsibility to go, hey, are you considering your gut?

44:21Right. How are you feeling about this? And I'm not trying to pigeonhole the person or corner them or shift goalposts on them. But there is a necessary evil, quote unquote, of being a pedagogue to say, hey, look at this area that you're not considering in order to bring them into alignment. And this scales out because for me, one of my big concerns with TMF, and I constantly tackle this question is, is it a cult? and I think that's a necessary question because I don't want to be a cult leader. There's too much of that around and there is a particular historical precedent in like say performance training which lends itself to those kinds of dynamics.

45:11So I often tell people three things. One, I try and do good problem formulation as transparently as I can. Two, open to self-correction, which is why exercises constantly shift and change and become better and reiterated with people like yourself. Yeah. Just to pin on that. Don't lose your flow. I was always telling people to look for a living tradition rather than a veneration of the leader. Is the lead, is the tradition. Yeah. So go ahead. Go ahead. yeah well you're keen to the third point which is uh the an absence of dependency yes so people can come they attend a workshop go go away go go live your life go be a dad go raise your raise your family go run your school go you know be a nurse right like go out into the world go be back in the world to do that because one of the things which i think key into the day's occasion is people coming to a workshop or a practice out of desperation.

46:16I need this otherwise I can't function in my life right and then that very quickly flips over into I hate this it was terrible etc etc etc and then the dialogue is lost. So when we talk about recovering the virtue of being in the world how do you see that play out in dynamics within a particular practice context? And how do you see that showing up in the world? Like coming back to the phenomenology, what would you say to people who are looking for a tradition and how to perhaps identify whether or not the orientation is healthy before you even go in? Or is that possible at all? It's very hard to know it from the outside because this is L.A.

47:13Paul's problem of transformative experience. You don't know who you're going to be and what it's going to be like until you're inside and doing the practice.

47:27So, I mean, the heuristics you pointed to, I think are excellent heuristics. Again, what is the focus? I used to say, what's the focus? Is the focus the teaching or the teacher? Is there evidence that there has been correction, a living tradition? I used to do that, but I realized it wasn't helping people. Or is there instead the suppression of correction? No, no, do it this way because I am the master and you must do what I say. And then again, is there the affordance of independence or is there the creation of dependency? You must, you know, more and more, be near me more and more and more. Or, you know, you shouldn't need me anymore.

48:21You should be going out and doing stuff in the world kind of thing. um so i think i mean it doesn't surprise me we we were saying very very similar this is when i was teaching the meditation classes and i was very similar so i think those heuristics are good heuristics um i tend to add a few more now um one of the things that can help um is to see the degree to which the person who is the generative teacher of the group is being responsible to history and to science.

49:00If they're just armchairing it autodidactically, that's a flag. Be careful. That's a flag. If they're saying, right, and if they say, I'm citing this and I'm citing and then you have to be careful because people will often cite things that you can't catch them on well quantum mechanics backs my it's like what no no so right it has to be that they have to try and make a case for how this is responsible they don't have to be scientists obviously but they have to care um about being consistent with the best science being consistent with history. If they start creating fictional histories, which cults always do, one of the clear senses you are in a cult is a fictional history of your culture or your city or whatever starts to be generated and you have to take on that fictional history.

49:58That's another thing to look for. Also, the degree to which the community is embedded in a network of other communities or is it self-isolating is it or does it try to interact with other communities doing different things and welcome that so those are a few of the extra ones i add and you know that we and you know in the lectern uh we're trying we're trying to live all of those out um and then the The last one, which is last because you should only consider it after you've done all these other ones that have a more objective aspect to them. Would you consider this person a role model for other people?

51:00like you know like and you may say well it doesn't every cult no what i mean is with like some people that you really love do you have clear ideas that could be put into practice on how what this person is teaching could be helpful to them not what the leader says is helpful, but do you, because the leader will actually try to get you, if they're called, they'll try to get you to draw people in, right? And I'm saying, so what I'm trying to say is, can you go the other way? Instead of drawing everything into the cult and to the leader, because what's going here, transfer out into the world, into where they are and help them where they are or do they have to come to the leader that's what i'm trying to trying to say and so the people like when i meet people that i think are great teachers that's one of the features that shines for me i want to teach it to other people right where they are right so those are those are some uh i mean i think there are deeper uh uh sort of ontological issues about being in the world and the good, but right at the level of giving people a set of criteria by which they can distinguish where they're liable to be in the world in a way that plugs them in, right, to what's primordial and orients them to what is ultimate.

52:33So things are properly proportioned in their being. So they flow with nature, as the Stoics would say, or the Daoists would say. um but in terms of practical criteria those are those are so we were convergent i was doing something very analogous because i was always ending because i would end the course and say like if you want to practice but here's some things to look for and so there that's that that's sort of where i'm at when i try to give people and i talk to a lot of people now a lot of students on the lecture and ask me oh i'm looking around for group what should I look for? I've been trying and so I've been slowly sort of gathering more and more criteria.

53:18I hope that's helpful. I mean it is because I think there is a context in which what you've named sits well and you know my hope is that this also exemplifies it which is you know at the time that we're recording this this hasn't happened yet. By the time you watch this you have been privy to the announcement of TiamatX. And TiamatX is a partnership between the lectern and Five to Midnight, the organization that I run, to do an extended training program, completely practical, that takes you from tier one to tier two, and then potentially tier three if one is healthy and capable. And for you to co-teach on that is a big piece of that invitation and why I value your presence because I think for me it's necessary that you are somebody who holds the dialogical sort of threads into these different fields with the necessary criteria.

54:24In a way, not because I want to drop that responsibility, I don't, but to have someone in the room who I can really meet this with and go, hey, how much more rigorous with this can we be? Ellie was asking me this question of like, you know, how do you see John's contribution to TiamatX? What role does he play? And I said, you know, and this is my opportunity to check it with you, right? The anticipation is you wear multiple hats in the course of the program. Maybe one hat is a teacher, a researcher, participant, a friend, right? but also what else might I be missing in that formulation because one of those things that I definitely hold and it's not an imposition but I trust you to keep the work that I'm doing and the way I do that oriented to virtue as well not because you're a paragon of virtue but because I don't want to be monological the rest of the aspirants hold that same pole as well.

55:35But I would throw that question to you. Yeah, I mean, I welcome wearing many hats. I would probably also wear the hat of a philosopher and a scientist, a cognitive scientist while I'm there.

55:53I am, by Leah Logos, I'm a lover of the Logos. And I'm not a paragon of virtue.

56:04but I am a lover of the practices that with and through other people and the world presents the logos and that is what I'll be looking for I'll be looking for is is is the logo showing up is it taking place is it taking shape does it have a life of its own And D.C. Schindler, and we didn't get a chance to get into this, but onto normativity, that the good, the platonic good, which is not moral goodness in a very real sense, and Nietzsche missed this, the platonic good is beyond standard good and evil. And before you, some people freak out about that, even God in the Bible says, I'm the source of good and evil.

56:54And he means both of those, darkness and light. But he says that what the platonic good is, what is it that makes real real? I mean, this is really interesting. And there's a lot going on there. But I don't think this is enough, but I think it's a good starting point. The really real is the for itselfness of things. That their inexhaustibility gives them. Remember when we talked about we did absolute zero? and there's a pressure that remains from things, right? There's a for itselfness because without that for itselfness, you can't get out of yourself, right? It is the only thing that draws you into and this idea that love is to recognize something other than yourself is real.

57:52But in order to recognize that something other than yourself is real, You need something other than yourself to be othering than yourself. But nevertheless, although this is one half, this is how realness is surprising to us, but yet, although it is for itself, it is also for us. We can enter into relation with it. And so it is somehow the good is the holding together of the for itself and the for us. and right this is the this is again the phenomenological why is this real because it's for me i can confirm why is that real oh this falsified my beliefs it's oh wow it shook me it's surprising it's both of those it's it's that that's that the the the the for itselfness And when the Logos is really present and relevance realization becomes resonance realization, those two senses of realness are going like this.

59:00You're getting a sense of other than me and yet for me. For me and yet other than me. you're getting that communal that desmond talks about and that that's being in the world the communal nature of beings is being in the world which is not the same thing as saying that um everything is formula the for itselfness is some kind of narcissistic self-confirmation no no no know it's what i mean it's actually yeah uh stereoscopic exactly the point the point is neither one of those sense if you isolate either one of those senses of real you lose touch with reality if i give you just unmitigated surprise you're in horror and you're losing your grip on reality if i give you just confirmation you're in a kafka-esque nightmare both of those are to lose touch with reality.

1:00:01This is Marloponte. When I'm touching, it's other than me. I'm always being touched. That is the quintessential of being. And it's communal. It's neither yours. It's not yours. And it's not just other than you. This is what we have so much, again, because of that evil machine it's either me or not me and being is both and neither you and not you that's that's a hard thing to get because it's it is that which is more primordial than those and you have to get to really taste and see that the the lord is good is to really realize that to have a sensed presence of that And there is a deep presupposition to that, which is one has to recognize oneself as real.

1:00:56Well, what you have to do is you have to realize that. So like in one practice I do, I try to withdraw all projections, all representations become realization. And you try to remove everything except what is intrinsic to the act of awareness. And what you get down to is a realizing while being realized, a realizing while being realized. Yeah. Yeah, you're pointing exactly at what I'm talking about because I'm trying to address this issue where I dare say I can make this assumption. The degree of depersonalization and derealization in our contemporary culture is astonishingly hard. Yes, yes, we're traumatized.

1:01:43Yes, this sense of if you're listening to this and you've ever felt this sensation of like, oh my God, I'm not real to myself. other people are not real. I'm living in a kind of solipsis or I'm living in a kind of illusion. That's the fundamental presupposition that I'm trying to address. Both have to be real. So what can have contact with reality? And that's right. And the degree to which you think everything is that reality is a blank canvas that you project on is the degree to which you actually lose touch with reality. I mean, the metaphor, yeah, I guess it's a metaphor, the image actually betrays itself.

1:02:25Because if the canvas doesn't resist your projection, your projection just dissipates into nothingness. The canvas has to resist and have a shape and have a structure of its own in order for your projection to land. So even if you pay attention to the imagery of projection, it undermines itself. This is my fundamental problem with Kant and the nominalists. This is why I go on and on about it. And people, I don't care about all that abstract stuff. I get that you don't care about the abstract stuff. What you don't understand is the abstract stuff has insinuated it in to the very fiber of your experience.

1:03:02You don't emerge or live in a cognitive cultural vacuum. You are completely insinuated by and into things. And part of ascesis of spiritual practice is to, as you said, it's to cut. You do a kind of dissociation so you can reweave things in a way that is true to reality. And a deep part of that truth is the inherent uncontrollability of reality, which is its unknownness. Yes. I think there is... That's resonant. Sorry, just to finish up that point also, it's the unknownness of oneself. Oh my God, I had no idea I've been doing this the entire time. This is the Psalms, deep calls to deep. That's resonance realization.

1:03:54That's when relevance realization becomes resonance realization. It's like, oh, and Hartman Rosen says the uncontrollability of the world is essential to resonance. And resonance are the moments you live for. And I literally mean that, by the way. Not you live from, but you live for. And so you get that. But as you said, if it was just that, you would go, and there would be horror. But what you find is the uncontrollability of the world is met by something that you egoically don't control that emerges in response and resonates. It's the deep calling to deep and the deep calling to deep. Those are the moments of realness.

1:04:42Pay attention to when things seemed the most real and what's really going on in your experience. That's to do phenomenology. And pay attention to how different it is, radically different from the picture we have been all enculturated to carry around. I'm sorry, I keep saying the same thing. In some ways, everything I teach is to try and, like, sorry, I'm marking an allegiance. I'm not putting myself in the same class. But this is, you know, this is Edmund Husserl, return to the things, or Wittgenstein, stop talking and look, right? Right? These philosophers constantly trying to wake us up from the way in which we are, as Wittgenstein says, a picture has us in its grip.

1:05:34We think we have a grip on the world, but a picture has us in its grip. And the practices you do, like loosening that grip is painful for people. It's challenging. You need something that's well thought out, well-structured, well, like there's a pedagogical program that's well-scaffolded, that's well-supervised, this is what you're offering. And there is a big part of that that is deeply involved. So, just look at a few seconds ago, right? Like how animated, it's very difficult to do that sort of sitting down. I mean, you and name this experiment often, right? You get people to hold on to a pole.

1:06:19Yeah, they can't solve an inside problem. That when so much, because all of TMS is undergirded by play. If you're not playing in the world, then, and you're stuck like this, it's like you're holding on to your knees rather than holding on to a pose. But physically, it's the same thing. We have to be in the world fully embodied. And, you know, one can argue that like, yeah, but even if I'm here, I'm also fully embodied. I'm like, yes, but I'm talking more about this term which I'm throwing around, I'm shipping it around, called psychophysical coherence, right? Where your inner experience matches your outer expression, that there is a clear channel, right?

1:07:04And that doesn't mean that it's a complete impulsive reactivity into hedonism. I'm not a romantic, but that capacity to be able to live in the world completely, gesturally, fully, is what allows us, I think, to get access to the imaginal dimension. So that when you are putting on a different lens, it's not just abstract, it's in the body. Why I do live containers is exactly for this reason. When you're standing next to somebody and you can feel their breath on you, and you can reach out and you can touch them, there is something in that that is deeply real in that you're really touching them, but you're also really being touched.

1:07:54Exactly. That contact. That's why contact is our primary metaphor of relationship to reality. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's, I think, what gives a kind of dimensionality. I was thinking about this this morning, where something that really, for lack of a better term, triggers me, like opens up all of my particular defensiveness or protectiveness is when I get the sense that I'm not being taken as a whole person. I'm being seen as an aspect. And I don't know what to do with that aside from, and this is partially from growing up in a fairly traumatic household, but it opens a kind of desperation to be like, yeah, but look at all these other aspects of myself.

1:08:51I'm trying to give people a fuller picture. I do that with all of my relationships as well. You know, that when someone says, oh, you know, you read a lot. I go, yeah, but also play a ton of video games. You know, I spend a lot of time on guitar and then I read a book and then I write something. And then I go grocery shopping. And I think it's very often nowadays where, you know, part of it is, I'm sure it's mediated by technology. but you know and i named this to you like you're not just a teacher to me right talk about projections before um uh the silk road before i joined you on the silk road i was aware there was a part of me that saw you as my father right there's a there's a transference psychodynamic piece that's happening and i felt so blessed um to meet jason right and i've named this to you as well because to watch you interact with your son helped me to understand ah John is not my father and then what opens up for me in and and so the evolution of our relationship is I see all the ways in which you're not that aspect which I'm naturally sort of like drawn towards right you know there is there's so much more color to your being in my life and I try and offer that to people where if you are not interested in understanding Charles Taylor or William Desmond or voluntary necessity goes over your head, I urge you to consider if you're a parent or you have a partner and you spend a lot of time with them, more and more dimensions of their being being revealed to you.

1:10:40Excellent. I feel that as like, oh, my child can say four syllable words at the age of 10 months, right, if you happen to have a child like that. And to really allow that illumination to strike you deeply, never mind the statistics of what the average syllables will be by that age. I'm talking about the experience. of what is ultimately the unfolding of reality embodied in an entity, in a living organism. That's what I'm talking about. That's the thing that if somebody comes out of a workshop and like goes, well, my child is just magical to me every single day, I go, my work is done. Yeah, I mean, this is Wynne's masterpiece, renewing the senses.

1:11:42The point of all of this is a recovery of our sensibility that renews our senses, the way you just described. That's it. That's to experience the face of God, using his way of talking about it. It's adverbial. It's not to see a face in the sky. it's to do the senses are renewed so everything everything sings its name everything is right everything is fuzis everything is springing forth from itself um yeah um i mean i have because of practices i have these experiences some of them are generative some of are generated, I should say. Some of them are spontaneous. It gives me, I'll never, I'm very confident, I'll never be enlightened or anything such.

1:12:39But I was talking to a friend of our, we both know Varun the other day about, but you get enough in these practices that you can taste what, what it might've been like to be Socrates or Siddhartha or Jesus or Plotinus or Maximus. And when I was on the philosophical Silk Road, I could get deep tastes of people that are beyond me. Every one of them, all my interlocutors, including Jason, are beyond me in certain ways. And I don't know what else makes a good life other than that, to tell you the truth. I mean, I get it. Obviously, are there things that we need in order to be alive i need food and i need shelter i need medicine but that that that that beyonding that's betweening to use the title of our forthcoming book um yes that that i don't know what else makes a life worth living other than that um that's the good again um the good is ultimately what makes life worth living.

1:13:50And it's to really realize reality in this comprehensive way we've been talking about. I think that's a good place to end, actually. And this has been a wonderful journey we've had together. This has been a wonderful journey. This has been excellent. I want to thank you for it. I'm going to consult this video multiple times as I do the continuing this work on the world tree of the true, the good, and the beautiful. It's been very helpful. As always, I'll give you the final word.

1:14:44I'm still with that question of is there… I don't even know how to phrase this question. but what makes a better life than that and somewhat playfully my answer is no thing

1:15:08so thank you all everybody likewise you know it's been an amazing um set of three conversations and And of course, we talk all the time, but I've missed this. I've missed philosophizing with you. Aristotle has very often said, just talk about virtue. And I love doing this with you. I look forward to doing this with you more on TMX. If you are interested and we are primarily focusing on practice, please consider. Please consider. I would like to meet more persons.

1:15:55Thank you all, everybody. Thank you.

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