Getting mystical with Michael Harding

33:09You talk about performance. You talk about the romance of, you know, engaging with women. It's always the same. And everybody knows this. I think everybody listening to this would be sort of saying, yeah, I know that. So I like to listen because it's affirming what everybody knows. And that is that naming the bird, you cease to experience the song. The song of life is unnameable. And there's an Islam line that's very beautiful. It's Rumi again. He says, language can bring you to the door, but it cannot bring you into the house. You have to go. It's beyond language to experience the sense of union, if you like, relationality with the universe.

34:06The thing that gives you peace because it's the deepest reality in the cosmos. And that's always getting away from the way we have named ourselves. And the only danger then is that the actual going away, the thing that I've now done, is another naming. You know what I mean? Yes. And you get people like me who then get trapped linguistically, like eejits, telling people that they're enlightened or I do a lot of meditation. Because it's very good. Because you're naming things. Because you're naming it again. You're labelling yourself and naming it. Yeah. And then what you talked about, about the thing with women where they can sense something that's false when a man is trying to construct himself in a way that pleases women and they say, something about him I don't like.

34:58And yet, if he lets go of that, they'll intuitively or instinctively say, he's authentic at this moment. He's a nice guy. Even though he's a, I can't use dirty words, you know, but you know the word that started to be. Bollocks. Yeah. Oh, that's fine. Do you know what they say? He's a bollocks. But he's nice. You know, I like him. Like, why? Because he's actually, they're getting a sense that he's not constructing something. And then if you add to that, and I'm only going back over some of the things we've said, if you then think about humility, not as some sort of or kind of, as I say, self-effacing Victorian medieval sort of, you know, you know, whipping yourself psychologically.

35:41but humility is actually just letting go it's the guy in the room who's or at the audition who's just not bothered because he knows he won't get it and he's relaxed and he's so I've been there and he's so relaxed that you get the job because because you were completely in the zone because you're an actor Michael as well yeah I'm sitting in a room with four or five people I know and they're all so good but Brian forget the job I won't get the job but Brian Cranston the famous actor that played in Breaking Bad. Yeah. He's very interesting on, because he's experienced and having gone, he spent a lot of his life as a working actor before he made it.

36:22Yeah. So he has a lot of good opinions on what's it like to work in that area. Yeah. And he said something similar to you and he said, whenever you do an audition, make sure you know in your heart you have no chance of getting that. Yeah. You're gone. That's it. By doing so, you will then not only, as you said, relaxed and free, but you will actually free yourself to focus on the job in hand. Absolutely. Which is the thing. Yeah. Not you getting the job. You getting the job isn't the job. Yeah. You getting the job isn't the job. Remember. Yeah. You getting the job isn't the job. Yeah. The job is the job.

37:00Yeah. So by you. Absolutely. You're interrupting yourself. Yeah. Yeah. In that moment. Yeah. Yeah. You're getting in your own way. Yeah. You're actually putting a huge block in front of you doing the job. By doing this construct saying, I must get the job. Which is, you mustn't get the job, you must do the job. And then they will decide, the universe will decide if you will have the job. And in theatre, directors use the phrase all the time, you know, stay in the room. Stay in the room. I worked one time with Judy Hegarty Lovett as a director, you know. And you'd be doing the monologue or whatever.

37:34and all the time she'd be saying, Michael, stay in the room, please. She could hear you thinking. Yeah. She could hear you thinking, you know. She directs Conor Lover. And that's why he's so good. Yeah. Because he does Beckett, but he's like in the room. Yeah. He never acts. Yeah. Another thing about acting, which is very similar to what you're talking about. People talk about acting being, acting being two different things, which are both similar. Reacting. Yeah. And two, listening. Yeah. So reacting and listening both basically involve you not speaking. Yeah. Pretty much not speaking. It's the idea of being present in the moment.

38:15Being there. And so people who are good actors, you notice a lot how good they are as an actor by the way they are when the other person who is an imaginary creation is talking to them. Yeah. Because they are either there or they're not. They're not waiting to say their next line. Yeah. They are there. and that's the kind of magic of it because when we're speaking it's always well I have my job to speak now and I must be in the moment and I must be good and hopefully I can get across the sense of what I'm talking about but it's the person who you're talking to that's the interesting person there because they're the one who's not doing anything but they must be there and that's interesting Yeah and it's huge in theatre and it makes I remember one time I was doing The Bowl and McCabe in the Gaty and I had a lovely scene.

39:06I won't name people in case I get them wrong but one of the other actors I had a dialogue with. It was the start of the second act and it was funny. So you're in the gaiety and the play is opening up. The audience have been for a drink and relaxed and they come back in in a good form and you have about five good minutes of dialogue just with you and this fella playing the sun Paul McCabe's son and it's funny right and it's lovely every night it goes well and you throw out that first line whatever it is and you hear the ripple of love back from the audience and it's like just like a downhill motorbike it's lovely and then you go out one night and you know you do it wrong you say the line too quick or you weren't listening to him and then you for some mysterious reason the audience goes not just neutral but the kind of you can feel them going hostile because they don't see the funny bit and that that noised them then because they instinctively know we should be laughing but we're fucking it's fine we should be laughing but we're not yeah but anyway I remember that happening once or twice in this particular scene and like the direction was always like savagely you need to let it go that it it's like football if you ever have that moment where you drop the ball don't start thinking about it because there's knock on effect is you'll ruin the whole scene you'll ruin the whole play for the evening and that's amazing that if you are able not to do that if you're able to immediately let it go say I made a mess of that I've just made a total mess of that so it doesn't matter he's there I'm here I'm going to say my line lovingly to him and suddenly gradually you find the audience rising back up to you and there's There's one other example in the theatre of this kind of being present, and that is, I always notice this, or I used to.

41:09So the play is going on, and people are saying things like, yeah, yeah, Joe, yeah, he's a great actor. Yeah, yeah, she's, oh, she's very good. She's always good, yeah. Now, they're actually blocking the engagement, the theatricality, the beautiful theatre moment has been blocked by the audience's perceptions these are good actors look at the way they're acting so in some sense the audience is also being blocked and not in the moment because they're actually kind of saying hmm and so you can hear this from an audience and it's a kind of it's not a grumble or a noise that you can actually hear with your ears but you can hear it emotionally that audience is not paying attention now how do you know the difference the difference is on one moment when an actor forgets his line right so he's supposed to say I'll see you tomorrow and he says and immediately you can hear a pin dropping at the back of the theatre because everybody knows he's lost his line and everybody's now totally paying attention.

42:18You've actually entered the first theatrical moment of the play. The magic is when the audience are looking and thinking I think he's lost his line I don't know what he's going to say next. So paying attention is the trick And it's not easy No, paying attention I suppose paying attention To now Paying attention to now And also, well obviously the obvious thing strikes me Paying attention now These days is harder than ever Yeah, it is, yeah Because of the increase in distraction Yeah And also The increase in distraction But also I think the sense that people are getting very locked into convictions.

43:05You know, we're living in a world where more and more we very tightly grip this is my belief. That's right. And, you know, I don't want you to annoy me about it. Which is the antithesis of letting go. Exactly. Exactly. So we're moving further and further away from, this is my Buddhist for dummies now, we're moving further and further away in a way from a Buddhist. yeah except for one thing one thing changes everything and honestly God I have this I was passing the time at lunchtime because I wouldn't get any food but I was reading this thing can I read you just a sentence or do it she's a beautiful writer A Helwa is her name H-E-L-W-A she'd be very well known but she's an Islamic kind of mystic person writer She says,

44:24were not in trouble. You see, we were going to a place where we said, well, there's not enough Buddhist wisdom around. But of course there is, because if everybody's belief from the major religions to the quantum physicists and many of the secular scientists and philosophers of our age, if everybody agrees that there is some sort of form or ground of reality that we are enveloped in, then we're okay, even if we make mistakes. And that's why I always feel that I can wipe the slate clean every day and start again, you know, because I'm not going downhill, because there is something holding me up.

45:14Yeah. You know, just Buddhism again, right? Just talk me through this. Is religion, like let's say, let's take Judeo-Christian or Hindu-Islam. Islam. Is that antithetical in a way to Buddhism? And what I mean by that is this, that they are weighed down with labels, tenets and identity politics. and it's weighed down with must, can't, forbidden, never, shouldn't, won't, if it does, you will be. It's full of threat. It's full of prediction. It's full of certainty. It's full of absolute certainty. If I've ever heard anything more certain than you. You will go to hell or you will go to heaven. Really?

46:14Will you go to heaven? How do you know? how do you how can you be so certain how can you be so fixed in labelling things that person over there who did that is bad that person over there who did something similar but it's not too bad yeah you're just extremely good at labelling yeah do you see what I'm talking about I do I mean does that not ever kind of would you never ever wonder about that that the biggest religions in the world are doing all the things that are the opposite of letting go yeah I I do think like that. I've often thought like that. And we didn't even put in there the misogyny as a kind of a capsule of, you know, singularly narrow judgment on the world that perceives it in a certain way.

47:03So I feel that in my lifetime, I came through those kind of struggles and I thought my curiosity kept driving me to think about sort of religious traditions. And now I would say that the more you look into them, the more you realize that what you're saying is only surface. You know, it's really not, it's not what religions are saying at all. I honestly feel that if you get into the extraordinary beauty of, you know, Teilhard de Chardin as a 20th century Christian philosopher or, you know, Maximus the Great in the 3rd century or Evagrius, a kind of like a psychotherapist in the deserts of Egypt.

47:52You go to these guys and you say, what did they mean by the mystical Christ? Or what did they mean by these things? And you find all the same ideas that you get in quantum physics. And you find at the heart of it every time is the word love. Every time it's about love, compassion, and being your authentic self in the nameless sphere of just being. And that's what the Gospels are saying. The kingdom of heaven is now. You know, that was the wellness phrase of the time, right? It wasn't to do with a linear afterlife that medieval Europe invented after the Black Death, and then we blamed the Jesuits that they all terrified us with hell.

48:37But in actual fact, the idea of the kingdom of God was like the wellness, you know, I will make you well, or you will be well if you listen. and constantly, like you could count the amount of phrases in the four Gospels that are simply saying the kingdom of God is not in the future. It's not in the afterlife. It's now. It's here and now. This guy was saying be here now. Okay. Thich Nhat Khan was saying be here now. Follow. Why do you follow a religious path? But the Dalai Lama would say, because people are culturally different and we are such a rich diversity in culture, that isn't it glorious that we have so many different pathways towards wisdom.

49:28Wisdom being to be here now, to awaken to, if you call it the kingdom of heaven, it's the kingdom of heaven. If you call it living with Christ, it's living with Christ. if you call it in any sense by a newer name it's still the same thing the language is only a pathway and there's a lovely zen story about that, it's the story of the young monk, the old monk and they're in the boat and the old monk points up at the moon and he says look at the moon, it's beautiful and the young monk looks up at the moon and he says yes, it's beautiful and the story says religion is the finger it only points it only points at the reality it only directs you to the reality it's not the moon it's all the same thing it's not the moon the finger is not the moon the religion is not the moon the religion is not God God is not a Catholic so that's where I would defend religion I think that when you've what an interesting way of looking at it if you read the mystics if you read Meister Eckhart if you read Theresa Wavilla if you read whatever of them.

50:37Julian of Norwich is a lovely place to start. 13th century English woman. If you read these people, you get what they're saying, which is like a message of joy, peace, hope, love, whatever you want yourself. What everybody's looking for. Like really and truly, what people are looking for is in the religious texts. They've abandoned them for the moment on the basis that they were giving us too much judgment and they were telling me I'd go to hell. Well, get over yourself. You know, you're a big lad. And go back. There's a lot of bad messengers out there. Go back and read it. There's a lot of bad messengers out there then.

51:14There's a lot of good ones as well. Yeah. There's an extraordinary amount. And I'm going to get those names. Of good guys. Just one last thing. Oh, no, no, it's not a last thing. Keep going. But about that subject, because I didn't get around to the difference between Buddhism and all the rest. Like I've been just kind of, you know, putting an argument for all the rest. But the difference is this, that Buddhism is not a revealed religion. So in every other of the major five religions, there is a revelation. There is a kind of an intuitive sense that in some way, the ground of being has a kind of an ability to articulate meaning and has revealed meaning through this scripture or that scripture or this person or that person.

51:58That's what Buddhism is fundamentally different. Buddhism is a set of propositions, ideas, that the Buddha says, test these and see, do they make sense to you? That's all it is. It's a completely kind of psychotherapy. Not showing you meaning. It's asking you to find the meaning within yourself. Absolutely, yeah. And then what happens is, for me, and I'm saying this like this would be personal to me, I realized that my enthusiasm as a Buddhist is like a scaffolding around my faith. So I'm a better Christian now than I was 30 years ago because of Buddhism. Because when I went to my teacher and I said, you know, I declared myself as a Christian, he was fully happy to say, well, you know, let's work at Buddhist practice and we make you a better Christian.

52:54Okay, exactly. The moon. yeah it's the the direction towards the moon but yeah but the moon is what counts yeah yeah the moon is the love exactly the moon is the joy yeah and there's a lovely there's a lovely thing comes up I'm not a scientist I wouldn't have a clue but I know enough just from the outside reading our bits of things or looking at YouTube and you'd see that that there's a huge thing in quantum physics that says that there's one famous fella I think he was a scientist he said his last words were the electron is not neutral. You know, that what they talk about particles, that everything is particles, and then the quantum physicist will tell you, well, the particle is actually just a relational position of the wave.

53:42Like, it's not actually anything. So we think there's something there and there's not. So we're labelling it again. Yeah, so what's holding it together? What's holding the cosmos together at a very little frequency, a very precise, narrow corridor of frequency, and all that energy would be just nothing if the frequency changed. And it's very close to the idea of love. Do you know what I mean? That everything is attached to everything else in order to create the bigger, more complex, beautiful thing. And that's the way the universe evolves. So that sense of the moon, of there being something, if you like beautiful at the heart of matter at the heart of human life that's something that is in every religion and it's mysterious to me how all of them in separate traditions reach the same detailed conclusions that there's not a shade of difference between Islam and Christianity or Judaism in relation to the nature of the human soul a love and compassion forgiveness yeah that seems like well at least they were good psychologists that is a mystery a beautiful mystery yeah they don't conflict no even they're all fighting with each other yeah that's the surface and that's an irony isn't it that's because they're not reading the books that's a huge irony and they're not saying their prayers because again all this we're doing reading books talking talking like this it's all Thomas Aquinas said this he wrote about 30 volumes or something of the Summa Theologica, right?

55:22He got the whole thing into one, like a cosmic kind of book of the meaning of everything, right? And then when he was finished it, he was going along on his horse one day. He was only about 45 years of age and he had a nervous breakdown. He fell off the horse totally in bits and they took him to a convent to die. And he just, the only thing he kept saying was, it's all straw. You know, the books, it's all straw. Put it in with the horses. Oh God. It means nothing. Yeah. Because what had happened, Carl Jung, I think, says this, is that Aquinas had really come to a full, sudden individuation. You get it sometimes in lives of saints or lives of very big guys in history.

56:05It's not a gradual awakening to being in the present moment. It's kind of dramatic. You know, you're hiding it from yourself for years and then you have this sudden intense experience of, let's say, beauty or peace or God or Christ or, you know, whatever. A couple of things. God is very real. A couple of things have come out there in my brain. One of them is a little flippant and that is that Fianna Fáilers should get into Buddhism. It would just help them to answer questions in such a sneakier way than they already do. They get caught all the time. Yeah. Right? Yeah. But all they have to do is just spend some time with Dalai Lama or that and then will you or do you just start answering questions?

56:48It's all about the look infinite letting go look we're all about the moon okay? Now you asked me right about social protection 15 % just look up at that moon there Yeah. It's the finger not the moon and Michal Martin is the finger Yeah. We're all the moon and Fianna Fáil is about love that's what Fianna Fáil is about Michal Yeah. So that's one thing that occurred to me You're dead right. Exactly. But I'm just thinking, if we think that Fianna Fáil and politicians are slippery enough already, wait until they get into Buddhism. Yeah. Miriam will have no chance. No. Sorry, William D, you're saying you're not born?

57:21I'm not even here, Miriam. One of the things of your book is darkness. Winter. Absolutely. The idea that we dread winter, that it's almost embedded in your conversations. Oh, I can't. Winter's coming. Jesus, the night's closing. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you embrace this idea of winter. Yeah. I can see it for what it's worth. I mean, I'm sure you're far more to say about it than me, but even for what it's worth, I mean, the decay that you talk about, that we all know about things falling off the trees and all this sort of stuff. Yeah. For me, that obviously is the potential for all of that stuff to become part of the whole again and to become anew again.

58:05Right? Yeah. That's one of the points of darkness. but I know you But do you dread winter? Is this from a personal thing? Yeah, just asking you I do not I never dread winter I mean I'll come at it very very basically first of all I love the changing seasons so the act of changing the act of going from one constant into the next I love that that locus point where it changes I love it when you can see the leaves turn a different colour right now that's just on a very normal level. But I even, and I like then winter as well because it's, I always wonder what's it like to live in Saudi Arabia, being a weatherman in Saudi Arabia.

58:48Well, we go to the weather now with Ahmed. That's all. It's the same every day. But in Ireland, the weather forecaster, you're basically like James Joyce. It's basically like, well, let me tell you about the weather today. You haven't seen anything like this, folks. it's changing but it hasn't changed yet sort of on the curb of changing and like we have mad you know four seasons in one day but four seasons five seasons in one year and that's changing as well because of mother nature but so I think it's part of our I think it's part of our collective consciousness up here to know change to know the way evolution happens and I would think I would think most a lot of people embrace it I suppose you have your things I mean you suffered with depression and winter became the symbol of it.

59:40Exactly. And also ain't good for it physically because of the lack of light. That's right. And it closes down your light. You have to take your vitamin D. Yeah. And suicide, sorry for being a bit Alan Partridge about this, but suicide is more prevalent in Scandinavian countries, Michael. And why is that? Because the sun's never fucking down. They're all topping themselves. Yeah. But there is a certain element of truth in that. Yeah, absolutely. and hence those ABBA songs which are so sad yeah the ABBA songs the winner takes it all the loser has to fall the ABBA songs the Scandinavian songs are so even the happy songs they have are so sad there's a great song called Super Trooper do you ever remember it?

1:00:22no it's ABBA yeah okay because like a super trooper beams are gonna blind me like I always trooper I remember it yeah but the words of the song are the words of the song are desperately sad. She talks about being in a band who's chained to success. So much success that they can never go home and be with the family. She's sitting and she's singing songs tonight to 20 ,000 of their friends, the audience, but all of her one of them are strangers. She doesn't even know any of them. But you're surrounded by all these people who love you. But nobody knows you. So very, very sentimental and nostalgic songs.

1:01:01Scandinavian. Yeah. And, you know, it's part of the sort of the lack the kind of lacrimal sort of sad sad feelings that can so you had that you see I did and you made your way out of it because you say all things pass yeah or most things pass it was a mixture of of that kind of Buddhist practice to disengage from things and trying to disengage when I would get sweeps of emotion sweeps of kind of terrible negative emotion that life is off and I can't cope and I can't get out of the house or something. And using Buddhist practice to overcome that. But also, I think I also did use the Christian thing that I started using, like, you know, lighting candles in front of icons.

1:01:48And that helped. And the reason I only, the only thing I say to people about religion is, like, if it gets you through the day, use it. Because the only place we want to get to is being happy and at peace in the now. now I think that the weather affects it definitely but I also think that probably I've only thought about this like now when I'm talking to you and I'd say you live in an urban area am I right? Enniskerry that's like rural little village it's kind of beautiful village but it's still in the cluster of like lights and urban you know you got to see it's lovely but you're still there what I'm saying is that the winter metaphor is probably coming from our memory of rural life that that even with electricity where I live in rural life you know those nights can be ferocious oh Jesus have you seen the weir yeah well yeah not the recent one but yeah but the weir talks this is exactly what the weir is about what is it like to live in a house in the middle of theck and letrum yeah it's dark yeah dark the darkness you've never seen before they go on about it in the play yeah Like you just can't imagine the blackness.

1:03:00Yeah. There's nothing you can see. Try Donegal. Yeah. Yeah, black. I spend sometimes like the winter in Donegal now. Yeah, in West Donegal. Yeah. And it's like there's days where, like in the summer in Donegal, I'm around West Donegal, around Anagrae, that area, around the Farsta, to make Fulham and Gellig, learning the Irish. But people would be saying things like, you'd see in the summer, no cat. I used to always wonder, why did it have no cats in Donegal? Because I'd think of bringing a cat. And then you'd notice the men are always out mowing the grass. Like, it's like to have an issue. You know, the therapist could be brought in to figure out why men are so committed to fucking totally shaven, totally shaven, like five acres around the house.

1:03:54And it's amazing. And it looks like billiard tables, and it's beautiful. and they don't go in here's an interesting thing too about Donegal West Wing they don't go in for fences they don't define the parameter of their property so that it all blends into one and it's lovely and it has a psychological effect on you now the reason they don't like the cats the reason why they're doing the everything like that is because if something is not battened down by October it'll fly away the cat will fly away everything will be gone so So when winter comes in Donegal and you have a stormy night. Oh, I can see where you're going.

1:04:30It can be really dark. You've done a Buddhism on this as well. Yeah, and then you wake up in the morning. Donegal is letting go. And then you wake up and it's dark and you go to bed and it's dark and it's like after about three days you think this is a dark kind of place. Yes, but Donegal isn't building fences because it's letting go. Well, I wasn't thinking like that but I was more just thinking that how beautiful it is in the summer when all the holidaymakers are there and how desolate like Leitrim or anywhere else in a rural place can be in winter. And I think that even when we're living in urban areas, we carry with us the metaphor of winter.

1:05:05That it's like, it's almost like our own life as well. You know, our life, every 10 years, you're a bit older and you're a bit more paying attention to the pain in your knee or your leg or something. And as you get older, it's like you're going in this inevitable direction of winter. so it calls out a sense of is this it and winter tells you the opposite winter actually tells you no it's not it's a cycle there will be another life so you will live forever and if you're ever on the Marian show Marian O 'Callaghan Miriam Miriam O 'Callaghan just tell them no no I was never born I'm here forever baby we leave it there do you listen to music?

1:05:48I do yeah I just always Just on the theme that you were talking about, there's a lovely Bob Dylan song that I always tell people to listen to that I love. And it's from an album he did called Time Out of Mind in 1997. And it's called It's Not Dark Yet. Oh, yeah. Do you know it? I don't know. So one of the lyrics is very big Bob Dylan. And I'm always ramming this down people's. He says, he says, this is so simple now. And so, but he says, I was born here and I'll die here. Yeah. Against my will. And it's that whole idea of being powerless over what and who and when you are. Yeah. That you are just thrown into this world and you are thrown out of it and nothing has anything to do with you.

1:06:34Yeah. So why do you think you'll have any power in the middle of it if you have no power at the beginning and no power at the end? It's funny, but it's called It's Not Dark Yet. And obviously not dark yet is the idea that he's getting a little older towards winter. Yeah. But it's not. I love, I seriously love these guys, Dylan and Cohen. And Dylan, again, like you got to serve someone. Such wisdom in it. But then Cohen, you come to Leonard Cohen and he says like in his almost last breath, he does a final album and he calls it. You want it darker? Yeah. and he goes away and he dies like he walks away into the cosmos and the week after Donald Trump arrives true just like that and that was Cohen's last line as a great prophet true you want it darker yeah here it comes baby David Bowie died at the same time he did yeah that's interesting Michael so lovely to talk to you it's a privilege talking to you it's just such great because you actually you do enjoy the process of talking I've noticed and I don't mean and I think you find that you like to be in that moment yeah I know I mean people live with me like me thinking and talking they have a hard time listening to me yeah I go on the whole effing night well thank you I had a great hour no I really enjoyed you thank you thank you sir

1:08:10that's it from me and this week's Mario Rosenstock podcast and that's it from Michael Harding. I always end up feeling much better when I talk to Michael. It's like therapy for me anyway. I go home with a kind of, oh, I don't know, wistful smile on my face. Thanks to Michael. Thanks to you, of course, for listening. If you like the podcast, please tell just one other person about it in a very Buddhist way if you can. Acceptance. Just let it happen. And I would like you to also pay heed to our sponsor, OnEis.ie, who will rejoin us after last year. on ice, Ireland's premium ice skating experience.

1:08:45Open, not nationwide, but like Shaw's, almost nationwide in Dundrum and Swords, Dublin, Marina Market and Cork, as well as locations in Waterford and Limerick. Take care, folks. I'm on tour at the moment. If you want to catch me, I'm just finishing a run in the gaiety. I'm going to Wexford soon. I'm going to Derry. And I'm going to Galway, Leisureland. So catch me at any one of those dates. Bye-bye.

1:09:12you