The One You Feed

Episode 189 of the Secular Buddhism Podcast

Hello and welcome to the Secular Buddhism podcast, a podcast that presents Buddhist teachings, concepts, and ideas from a secular perspective. You don't need to use what you learn from Buddhism to be a Buddhist. You can use what you learn to simply be a better whatever you already are. I'm your host, Noah Rasheta, and let's jump into today's topic.

Today's podcast episode is a little unique in that it's not the ordinary format of me just sharing a concept or idea. In today's episode, I'm going to share an audio recording of a discussion I had a few days ago with Eric Zimmer, who hosts the One You Feed podcast. The One You Feed podcast uses the parable of the two wolves—battling within us—as a jumping-off point for meaningful discussions on how to live skillfully amidst life's inherent challenges.

This is a really popular podcast. Eric's show has had over 35 million downloads and over 600 episodes. It was named one of the 22 podcasts that will motivate you to live your best life on Oprah Daily and several other places. I've always enjoyed this parable, and you've probably come across it too—the one about the two wolves. I won't share it because Eric will share it in our discussion.

His normal format is interviewing people, but he did something kind of unique in our episode because it was just a conversation. We've talked off and on throughout the past year or so, and thought it would be cool to just get on the computer and record a conversation and then share that conversation with our audiences. So he released his episode about a week ago, and this is the version of the recording that I'm sharing. It's the exact same recording—he has his intro in his, and I'm doing my normal podcast intro in mine.

Before I jump into that real quick, though, I do want to just say it's been three months to the day since I last updated you—or released an episode where I updated you on big life changes. I've had a new career change, a new job, we moved to a new house, and it's been a busy time. I was looking at everything today and realizing, man, it's been three months since I've done a podcast episode. Now I'm ready to try to get more episodes uploaded.

It hasn't been for lack of content. I have three or even four podcast ideas all queued up and ready to go. I just haven't had the time because of the busyness with the new job. The first big project was developing a new website for the company I work for, and it's been long days. I've spent a lot of time on that. But I finished that. That website's been out for about two weeks now, and I feel like I now have the bandwidth—the mental bandwidth—to get caught up on a lot of other things I've been wanting to do. So that's just a quick update on that front. Things are going really well with the new job and the new house and just getting settled into all these new things. And I'm excited to get going with the podcast again.

So real quick again, with this particular podcast: Eric Zimmer usually talks with people—experts such as scientists, authors, researchers, psychologists, thought leaders, and public figures. The whole premise is how can listeners act their way into a better, more fulfilling life through action. The conversations center around offerings that give listeners practical and powerful tools they can use in their daily lives to suffer less, to live with more joy, love, peace, and fulfillment.

This is very aligned with the mission I mentioned at the beginning—that you don't need to use what you learn from Buddhism to be a Buddhist. You can use it to be a better whatever you already are. I've always thought of these concepts and ideas as tools you can put in your toolkit and have them whenever you need. The intention isn't to drive people to Buddhism. The intention is to instill concepts and ideas that help anyone be a better whatever they already are. And that's kind of the shared mission we have amongst each other—both of our podcasts, Eric's and mine.

So we thought it would be really fun to just get together, start talking with no real intention of what the episode was going to be, and just let it flow and let it go where it goes. So that's what I'm ready to share with you now.

Without further ado, here's the conversation I had with Eric Zimmer. I hope you enjoy it.

The Discussion

Eric Zimmer: I'm excited to do this. But we talked before and said that we would still start with the parable of the two wolves to allow you to sort of give your thoughts on that.

So in the parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild. They say, "In life, there's two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear."

And the grandchild stops and they think for a second. They look up at their grandparent and they say, "Well, which one wins?" And the grandparent says, "The one you feed."

I'd like to start off by asking you: what does that parable mean to you in your life and in the work that you do?

Noah Rasheta: Well, it's a great parable. I think anyone who encounters that story, it resonates because that really is how things are, right? We've got these opposing forces that seem to be at odds with each other at all times and in all things. Should I go to the gym? Should I not go to the gym? Should I be nice? Should I say something mean?

And I love the point of that story where the grandparent says, "The one that you feed." When I think about that parable in relation to me and the work that I do, I understand that we have propensities. Let's take just the idea of having habitual thought patterns versus more deliberate, thought-out thought patterns. In a very similar way, the one that you feed—the one that you continually do—becomes reinforced and more natural and more easy over time. So if you want things to be different, you have to do them differently. That's what comes to mind when I hear that parable with those two wolves.

Eric Zimmer: I love the phrase you just used there: propensities. Because I often think about how we talk about these things that are recurrent in us, and yet we don't want to go so far as to say, "That's who I am" or "What I am" or "How I am all the time"—because that's not the way it is. We're not like that. And yet there is a way in which these things show up again and again.

A word I often use is tendencies. We have tendencies towards something. But I also like propensities. We're speaking to this idea that, yeah, there are ways in which we are more habitual, and something that has become habitual can become unhabitual. You can unwind the habit.

Noah Rasheta: Yes, absolutely. You know, when I first encountered that word propensities, it really spoke to me as well, because I recognize that part of our habitual tendencies may be learned—societal norms, upbringing—but there's also the genetic component. My wife and I were actually just talking about this the other day about how she and I both have very different propensities for certain things based on genetics.

Procrastination is actually what we were talking about. For her, it just comes so natural to delay, delay, delay until she's forced to do it. And I tend to want to get things done a little bit earlier and avoid the rush at the end. But I think there's something to that—the idea that we do have propensities, some of which are learned or inherited or genetic. And then there are others that we have to put in the effort, time, and energy into if we want to change those propensities in ourselves.

Eric Zimmer: Out of curiosity, how did you guys arrive at your style of getting things done and her style of getting things done being genetic? In what ways did you unwind that from all the other things that it could be, right—all the conditioning and learning that we've had in life?

Noah Rasheta: Well, I should say for this specifically, I don't know if it's genetic, but it came to mind as we were talking about her family members and her siblings. And then she was saying, "Yeah, my dad always..." And I'm thinking, "I wonder if this is a genetic one."

There are others we've talked about that are genetic. She has a very fast metabolism and I have a very slow metabolism. And we know that doesn't have to do with our lifestyle or eating because we have the same lifestyle and we eat the same things. So we know that one's genetic.

Eric Zimmer: With all of these things, one of them at a time, you would go, "So what? It doesn't matter." But collectively, they turn into something really significant. And I love that you're sort of bringing all that together.

I call them "still points"—a term I borrowed from someone. You could think of a still point as like a little container. If you can stitch those into your day, like you do with a timer or every time you go to the bathroom or whatever it is, you can put whatever you want into that little still point. Yours was a reflection on interdependence, which you did again and again. Or it could simply be like you said: "What is something that I can notice that I've never noticed before?" or "What are five things that I can see right now?" or a reflection on why you want to be patient with your children.

It doesn't matter what you put in there, but that consistent, regular reflection over time—it's actually the way our thinking and our default reactions to life change.

Noah Rasheta: Yeah, yeah. And you know, a good time to do it is when you're having to do something that you don't necessarily want to do, because then it's combating the habitual tendency to feel negative. For example, washing the dishes is something I've never particularly enjoyed. But it's one of the tasks that I've taken on in the dynamic of our home. I thought, "I'm going to just do this until I finally like doing it." But I never just started to like doing it.

But when I made it part of my meditative practice—where the whole time I'm washing the dishes, I'm also thinking, "What is something that I hadn't noticed or hadn't thought about?"—it changed the relationship with the experience. So now it's not a negative one. I look forward to it. It's like, "Oh, I'm going to meditate a little later when I'm washing the dishes."

Eric Zimmer: Or stopped at a red light is another great one.

Noah Rasheta: Most people don't enjoy being stopped at a red light. It's like, "Oh, dang, I got the red light." But what I noticed for me is it's like, "Oh, I got the red light. Okay, good. I'll take a few seconds here."

One of the practices I do at a red light—because it's usually the same route, not like I'm somewhere new—is I'll say, "What's something I have never noticed about this area?" And it's shocking how much we don't notice. I can't tell you how many times I'll look over at a specific detail in a building and think, "Huh, I had never noticed that they had that red thing there on the corner of the building." And that's it. That was the only goal. Then the light turns green and I keep going.

But I think it's those little simple things that, like you said, in the moment you might say, "So what? What does this matter?" But it's at some other moment in time where that propensity, that habit kicks in. And now you gain an insight or something that's actually a big deal. And you say, "Well, I wouldn't have noticed this had I not been practicing it on all those little insignificant, who-cares moments."

Eric Zimmer: We're nearly at the end of our time, but one of the things we said we would do is talk about a couple of our favorite books relating to Buddhism. We've already talked about Stephen Batchelor's work—Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist and Buddhism Without Beliefs. What are a couple other books that have been really important to you?

Noah Rasheta: There have been a few. I think one that I've revisited over and over again is Rebel Buddha by Dzogchen Ponlop. And for whatever reason, that one just really resonates with me. What he presents in that book, he goes through the core Buddhist teachings and ideas, but it's all presented through this lens of being rebellious against the habitual. You know, like the idea of going against the stream—it's kind of that same notion that everything configured in me is hardwired to want to just take the easy route, even if it's not the ideal route. But the rebel Buddha in me could say, "Hey, maybe there's another way. Maybe it doesn't need to be as difficult as it is."

So that's one that I enjoy. And then I always recommend any of Pema Chödrön's books, but the one that I've really been enjoying from her is When Things Fall Apart. I think that's a good one. The reason why is because in life—like we talked about earlier—Buddhism isn't saying life is difficult and that's the end. But what it is saying is there will be difficulties.

In this book, she expresses it with this idea that things are always coming together and falling apart. And then they come together and then they fall apart. And that's always happening. That image has really stayed with me—that in my day-to-day lived experience, I see it. Things are coming together and things are falling apart, and that's not going to end.

Those are two books that I highly recommend to anyone interested in these ideas.

Eric Zimmer: When Things Fall Apart is one of my favorites. I was going through a divorce when my son was two—it was just a brutal time for me. And that book was incredibly helpful. I've not read Rebel Buddha, but it makes me think of a teacher, Noah Levine. He wrote Against the Stream and Dharma Punks.

Now, apparently there were some sexual misconduct allegations around him in his sangha, and I don't know what is real and what is not real and what has been found. All that aside, he's a brilliant teacher. I can't speak to who he is as a person, but as a teacher, he's a brilliant teacher. And with my background in punk rock, I love those books.

There's also a book I like called Buddhism Plain and Simple by a teacher, Steve Hagen. It's a book that's just about noticing and seeing, and that's the heart of the whole thing. It's a really simple but really profound and powerful book. And A Path with Heart by Jack Kornfield is always a classic.

Noah Rasheta: Yeah, I'll have to check those out. I'm not familiar with the one you mentioned.

Eric Zimmer: Well, it's been a pleasure sort of doing this collaborative episode together. So thank you so much.

Noah Rasheta: Yeah, thank you too for making this happen. It's been great.

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May you carry the wisdom from today's episode into your daily life. Thank you for listening. Until next time.