Welcome to the Buddhist Boot Camp Podcast. Our intention is to awaken, enlighten, enrich,
and inspire a simple and uncomplicated life.
Discover the benefits of mindful living with your host, Timber Hawkeye.
I was recently interviewed by Steve Prussack on his Juice Guru Radio show. If someone
you know might benefit from the message and invitation in Buddhist Boot Camp,
go ahead and send them this audio clip as a good place to start, or enjoy the gentle
reminder. Here's the recorded portion of that live conversation we had on the air.
[Steve] Timber, thanks for being here, there's been a lot of talk in the community,
a lot of excitement about the work you're doing. So, thank you for taking the time
out of your schedule to be here.
[Timber] It's my pleasure.
[Steve] Why don't you take us back, because, I mean, I know you've got lots of adventures
and you've been traveling a lot. Can you tell us how you got into the work
you're doing in spreading the message?
[Timber] All I did was take kind of inventory of my own life to figure out How am I
contributing to my own suffering? What am I doing that is not in line with the kind
of life I wanna lead? How am I driving myself in the wrong direction?
And I realized that I was working way too much, my focus was way too much
on appearances, and money, and image, yet, what brought me the most joy is when
I dropped all of that, when I was just in my board shorts and tank top,
on the beach playing volleyball, and living a simple life, completely unconcerned with
the judgment of others, which immediately made me less judgmental of others as well.
It was a very interesting thing: by working on this, I was able to let go of so much.
So, I left the corporate world, sold everything I ever owned, and initially moved to Hawaii
with just one intention, which was to live a simple and uncomplicated life.
And it became this ongoing journey as opposed to a decision you make one time, like
cleaning out your junk drawer in the kitchen, you clean it out once, but that doesn't mean
it's forever good. That means that a week later you go through it and you go,
"Why did I decide to keep this?" And you get rid of it again and again and I'm talking
about tangible things, but when you're doing the work internally, you can take inventory
of old belief systems that you have, judgments, opinions, anything that's holding
you back from being the version of yourself you believe yourself to be.
So, it just snowballed, and before I knew it, that simple and uncomplicated life
transitioned from playing beach volleyball to living in a Buddhist monastery. So, that's
kind of what the journey has been about: into the monastery and then back out to share
what I have learned with people who are perhaps too busy or less inclined to go
into the monastery, but are still interested in what there is to learn from there.
And I do think what we learn in there is not only applicable if you're tucked away in the
mountains somewhere, the real key, the real issue, the real challenge, is: can I remain
peaceful, calm, and patient in the middle of downtown Los Angeles, Times Square,
you know... with four kids? Can I do that? Not just when no one's pushing my buttons,
but can I get to a place where I don't have any buttons that can be pushed?
[Steve] I know part of your journey has been noticing the suffering in others, and you talk
about suffering and why we suffer and what lesson is in that? What can we learn
about suffering and why is there so much going on now?
[Timber] Well, all of the Buddha's teachings can be encapsulated into a very simple,
"Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional." Where are WE contributing? Where do we go
from the pain, which is inevitable: we're all gonna get old, we're all gonna get sick,
we're all gonna die, and that's fine. What's not fine is that we try to avoid the very things
that are inevitable, and thereby creating our own suffering. When we resist getting old,
when we resist aging, when we resist death, we are trying to cling to something that
we can't cling to. It's like trying to take a cloud and put it in a jar. We can't do that. And by the
attempt itself creates suffering. So, at the core of Buddhist teachings is the invitation
to let go, which doesn't mean to give up: It's to loosen our grip, to allow,
to observe, instead of to get so attached, if that makes any sense.
[Steve] It's almost like living in fear, isn't it?
[Timber] Well, we have two options. Everything we think, and feel, and act upon,
either stems from a place of love or it stems from a place of fear. And it's up to us to
in the moment, kind of take inventory again and observe our behavior, our thoughts,
our beliefs, our opinions, our actions, and go: Where is this coming from? Is this
a fear-based thought or is this love-based? And once we are aware of that, we're kind of
equipped with a rudder of sort, and we can go through life, and we can go, Oh I have
an option: I can choose love or I can choose fear. And if we make a commitment to only
make love-based decisions in our lives, then we are guiding ourselves to the life we want
and away from the life we don't want. But if we let fear rule us, we are in a sense
relinquishing control. We're like: I'm gonna be affected by everything that happens
around me, as opposed to: I'm gonna stay calm regardless of what happens around me.
I don't know if that makes sense...
[Steve] Yeah, and you talked about the letting go, and when you let go of the need to
compare yourself, the need to present in this certain way, and that goes on.
And we're here on Facebook right now, and people might look at other feeds and, well,
they're live, they're doing this, and subconsciously, there's a lot of that going on.
How do we escape that and let go of the need to compare and all the jealousy
and all that goes on, too?
[Timber] I think changing our language around it is a really good place to start.
It's not a "need," it's an addiction. If nothing else, it's a habitual tendency. And that's all
we essentially are is a pattern of behavior. We've developed a pattern of comparing
ourselves, we've developed a pattern of judging other people, and it's just a pattern
of behavior that we've created. And that's actually very empowering because that
means if we created THAT pattern, we can create a new pattern. And in the book
I compare it to taking a piece of paper and folding it in half, and by doing that you create
a crease. So the next time you wanna fold the paper in half, it's going to want to fold in the
exact same spot. And the more often you have folded it in that place, the deeper
the crease, the more likely you are to follow that path. So creating a new crease
is possible, but it takes more deliberate intention. Just like with a piece of paper,
if you just mindlessly fold it, it's gonna fold in the crease that's already there. But if you
slow down, if you bring awareness, and you go: I wanna fold it exactly in half, or I wanna
fold it here, you have to be more deliberate about it, more intentional, and then you can
create a new crease. The old one will always be there. Think of it like a scar. I think of it
as a reminder of where I've been, but it has absolutely nothing to do with where I'm going.