Episode 1: Be, Do, Have

Transcript

[0:01] Hi, welcome to Loving Kindness Wins, the podcast where wisdom teachings meet real life. I'm Coyote Jackson, your host, here to explore how modern Buddhist and other wisdom teachings can help us navigate difficult times, get unstuck, and find happiness.

Welcome. I'm Coyote Jackson and this is the very first episode of my new podcast, a new venture for me to learn about, get excited about, and bring to the world as my little offering. So I'm very happy you're here. If you're listening to this, maybe you signed up with me several years ago when I was more actively writing and teaching — thank you, welcome back. I'm happy to be here, I'm happy you're here. If you're listening to me for the first time, welcome, I'm very happy you're here also.

[1:03] So I have a big renewed spirit in my life in terms of connecting with these wisdom teachings. There's been a lot going on with me spiritually, so I'm excited to be reconnected with all of this and starting this new venture of the podcast, where I hope to really be able to explore these teachings in depth. I've been writing for some time and I love writing, but I've been drawn a lot more to the spoken word and to video recently. So this is a new venture for me to try this out. I hope you will stick with me — I'm sure I'll make lots of mistakes. I've been learning on the fly here, running little experiments, getting set up. Excited to be here, excited to connect with the teachings of loving kindness and talk about them and explore them and break them apart so we can really dive in and explore how they can really make a difference in our lives.

This is not intended to be an abstract intellectual discussion — that's wonderful and I love that part of teachings, of course — but for me it's so important that

[2:07] it translates to the practical. Understanding things in the context of practice is what I'm all about. It's what I really try and help people get to — practice is primary. So we have to put these into practice, and then in the context of that, understanding arises, insight arises. Wisdom is applied wisdom. Just on its own it's just knowledge, information. The dharma, the teachings, have to be applied for it to be wisdom.

Understanding is not the point. The point is to shift your life experience, to move through difficult times — whether that's depression, anxiety, shame, the political situation going on, the wars, etc. — all these things that are difficult, as well as the very direct frustrations and disappointments and conversations with our loved ones that are difficult. All these things that are

[3:07] in our life — the point of all of this is that we have a meaningful transformation there. We shift along the axis towards happiness, equanimity, peace, compassion, joy — these fundamental qualities of being in alignment. Being in alignment with what I call loving kindness. So that's where the title of this podcast comes from — Loving Kindness Wins.

So all that to say, welcome to the podcast, welcome to the world of Coyote Jackson, where I hope to help you make a real change in your life towards whatever it is that you want.

So this is where wisdom teachings meet real life. I think the intersection of wisdom teachings and real life is a very important place to stand. So that's my intention — to stand in that

[4:09] intersection of wisdom teachings with real life. The life that we live out here, with loved ones, with jobs, with money and so on.

Sometimes we can get very caught up perhaps in the wisdom teachings themselves, the understanding, the insight that we get. But how to use those, how to apply them, how to really put them in service of expanding our awareness, building, cultivating, growing joy, equanimity, compassion, kindness, love in our actual lives — the lives that we can touch with our hands, the people that we interact with. So how to really apply the teachings in service of growing these qualities within us and being able to bring those out into the

[5:10] world that we see with our eyes and our hands and our noses.

So that's the intersection that I love to stand in, to explore, to help bridge the world of these beautiful, deep teachings — especially in the Buddhist tradition, the law of attraction teachings — these very deep, powerful teachings that have so many layers to them. How to bridge that world of wisdom teachings with real life. So that's what this podcast is intended to help with.

So what's in this first season of this podcast? It's going to be a set of teachings. These are layered teachings — there's a lot of layers to wisdom teachings. So at one level, they're about how to get what you want in life,

[6:11] whether that's a better body, better relationship, better feelings within your relationship, better communication, better boundary setting, things like this. Or working with depression and anxiety, navigating difficult times in your life, how to get unstuck and move forward towards whatever it is that you want — a new job, a better body, a better partner. These things, the things that we want in life. So at one level, that's what these teachings are all about — how to apply these wisdom teachings from the Buddhist tradition and others to get what you want.

So that's a very real and normal and usual desire of humans — how do I get what I want? We have to understand really what we want, because sometimes what we think we want is not really what we want. And we're going to talk a lot about that in the beginning of the next episode.

[7:13] So that's what it is all about at one level. But at another level, it's about coming into alignment with loving kindness. Loving kindness is the background energy of everything, and we'll speak more about this in many of the episodes. So coming into alignment with loving kindness, more and more and more — there's a lot of layers to that. So that's what these wisdom teachings are all about, and we see this across all the different wisdom traditions — spiritual, religious teachings, new age, channeled wisdom. All of these wisdom teachings point to love, loving kindness, coming into alignment with that.

So that's another level of what these are all about — the process of that, how to do that. And by placing our attention on that, by listening to this podcast and other ways, we are actually doing that. We are coming into alignment by placing our attention on coming into alignment. So that's another level.

And then another layer to it is the nature,

[8:14] the fabric of reality. What is it that we're looking at when we look at the world? What is our mind? What is consciousness? And I'm definitely a nature-of-mind geek. I have been diving into this for many years now — understanding the nature of mind, the nature of reality, consciousness. And another layer of these teachings is about that — they point to this nature of mind, the nature of consciousness, and the nature of the reality that we perceive. So that's another level to these teachings.

So these are multi-level, and I'll try and present them and talk about them at different levels. And I'm going to be excited to have people come on, especially starting with my good friend Dr. Gano Vaccaro, who's a psychotherapist and a very well-read and beautifully intelligent man that I've had a lot of conversations with. And so we're going to together dive in and explore these. I'll

[9:15] be excited to introduce him in the next episode. So that's some of what to expect from this season of the podcast.

I grew up in Ireland, traveled quite a bit as a family growing up. When I was about 25, I moved to the US, to San Francisco, to move to Silicon Valley basically — two reasons: Silicon Valley and being gay. So I moved to San Francisco right towards the end of the dot-com boom, the original dot-com boom, and was part of the explosion of technology there. I worked at a place where we were really one of the primary software architects of the mobile internet, which was just beginning. And so I traveled the world a lot and worked in technology and continued a career in technology for 20 years. I worked in

[10:16] supercomputing and a lot of high-powered, fast-paced, intensely interesting and challenging jobs in high tech.

But while that was happening, I was also diving into deep depression, anxiety, and ended up with PTSD and agoraphobia and some very challenging situations. A lot came out in my body too — I was morbidly obese, 320 pounds, hard to walk up a hill. And also was out on disability with my back, a lot of back problems and intense pain. So a lot of suffering.

I've been through almost every difficult situation, which is one of the reasons I resonate with clients — because I've been there, done that in terms of alcoholism, addiction, recovery, PTSD, agoraphobia, many afflictive mental states, deep body shame, suicidal ideation, going through the suicide of my partner. A lot

[11:19] of very challenging situations, at the same time as being successful in my career.

And so I followed a path that was extremely difficult to find a spiritual awakening, you could say. For me, it took several years of thinking about it, talking about it, wanting it, before I really moved into the practice that was pointed to by the wisdom teachings. So I found Buddhist teachings and meditation, but it took me quite some time to begin to practice. But when I did, that's when things started to shift.

And so that's what has become what I really love to help people with — that shift from trying to understand, like why, and gain information and so on, to making the shift to practice. That is what really makes a difference.

I followed a spiritual path and really dove in, as I like to do. I ended up giving away almost everything I

[12:19] own and becoming a nomad and living, traveling around the continent for a year. I lived from my car, I went camping, I lived in the forests, meditating, diving in lakes. And all the while building an online business on my laptop, where I would go into towns around the country and work at a cafe or a co-working space, and then go back out into the wilderness.

And I had a lot of spiritual experiences — countless experiences at this point. It has been a path that has accelerated and continues to be intensely beautiful and challenging and continues to unfold more and more information and experiences.

I moved to a meditation community, a semi-monastery in Vermont, and I lived there for about a year. And I learned a lot there — studying and meditation and practice. I moved to

[13:19] Boulder to again do postgraduate studies in Buddhism. Lots and lots of experiences as this path became more and more central in my life. Life transitioned away from technology into the spiritual path as that became really primary in my life — at first to escape all the suffering that I was in, and then as that worked and I transitioned into a space of joy and movement and flow, then began to work with other people and help them do the same. And here we are with this podcast as my next offering in that space.

All right, so let's dive in with the first teaching. This in a way forms the basis for this whole season of podcast episodes. So the teaching can be written as seven words:

[14:26] Be, do, have — not have, do, be.

So we'll walk through what this means and the application to real life, and how it really actually is the basis of all of this — of how to get unstuck in life, how to get out of depression, how to get the body that you want, how to be better in relationship. All of these things, any of these things that you want — this teaching, this fundamental teaching, has the capacity to change everything. I really can't overstate the power of this teaching.

So then it comes down to the application of it — actually using it, implementing it, putting it into practice within our lives. That's how wisdom works — it's the action, the practice, the application of the knowledge. So I'm going to try and give the knowledge here about what this teaching is and give some

[15:27] examples about how to use it. And then in the upcoming episodes, I'll talk about in great detail how to actually apply this — how to break it down, how to use it in all these circumstances, about areas of life that you want to apply it to, and what are the obstacles, the things that come up.

All right, let's break it down. Be, do, have — not have, do, be. So what this means is: the second part — the part that it's not, have, do, be — is the normal way we tend to think. This is the way culture has programmed us and the way that we have grown up thinking — that we have to have something first, and then we can do the things that having that thing allows us to do, and then we will be something.

So for example: I have to have money, and then when I have money I'll be able to do things that money allows me to do, and then I will be happy.

[16:29] It's a very common way of thinking. What this teaching says is: that's not how it works. Instead of have something in order to do something in order to be something like happy — not that. Instead, it's be, do, have.

So the order of things is that we first have to be happy, and then we will do things that happy people do, and then we will have money, for example, in that situation. But it's the outcome of being happy that we will have. So the having — the having of objects and experiences and things in life — the having comes as a result of the doing, which comes as a result of, or a flowing from, the being.

This type of thinking is very endemic. We see it as we grow up through life, right? In school — well, I have to have something. And in that example, it's like I have to have

[17:29] the college degree. Okay, so we go to college and then we have that, we got through college, and then I'll be able to do things — like wonderful things, like a job, this great job. So then we think, okay, now I have to have the job. And so we get the job — now I'll be able to do things that people with a job do, and then I'll be happy.

And maybe we last, maybe we were happy. But then after a while, we're thinking, hmm, well now I'm not happy. So what's wrong? Oh, well, I must have the wrong job, or I don't have the right level of job — I need to have a promotion. So we work and we say, okay, I'm going to get a promotion. And so we get the promotion, and now, oh, now I can do much better work, and then I'll be happy. And maybe we are for a while, or maybe we're not — we actually end up being stressed and unhappy.

So then we think, oh, this is not the right level of job, I need to be at the next level. Or we've done that a few times, maybe we think, oh, now I have

[18:30] to have a different job. This is not the right job for me, I have to have a different job. And so we go through the loop again — I have to have this other job, and so we go get it. We do the things that we need to do to get it, constantly thinking: when I get that, then I'll be happy.

And then that doesn't work out. So we see that playing out all the time. And people go through our whole lives — we go through our whole life in this way of thinking. I have to have retirement, I have to have no job, and then I'll be able to do things that I want to do, like travel, and then I will be happy.

So we go all the way to retirement, then we get there and we're not happy. Oh, now what do I need? So this is very endemic — it's the way of thinking that is the water that we swim in, for many of us, for most of us. And we see it playing out in relationships — have to have the right partner, and so on. And we keep thinking, oh, and we try it again — I have to have this other partner. And we go through this way of thinking: have, do, be.

I have to have

[19:31] something, then I'll be able to do the things that come from that thing — the having of that thing. So we give the power to the thing — the object, or the job, or the money, or the situation — the having of which will enable me. And so what it does is it takes away our power. We're saying, in that way of thinking, I'm powerless — I can't be happy unless I have this thing.

It actually forms the underpinning of most of our economy. This is what advertising is based upon — lack. You don't have what you need. The underpinning of most advertising is: there's something wrong with you, basically, because you don't have this thing. But it's okay — I have this thing and I can sell it to you. So if you have this thing — this course, this information, this cruise, whatever it might be — if you have it,

[20:32] then you're going to be able to do these wonderful things, and then you're going to be happy. And for happy, it might be fulfilled, purposeful, a great husband and father or mother — you're going to be these things, right? Peaceful — lots of ways of being that are promised, but you have to have the thing.

So those are not within you is what this way of thinking says. You're not happy, you're not fulfilled, you're not a good mother or father, you're not a good partner — that is the sometimes subtle, sometimes very obvious message that is in advertising. So it's everywhere we look — this thinking, this way of thinking: you have to have it, then you can do some things, and then you're going to be happy, fulfilled, at peace.

So that's all wrong. It's totally wrong. This teaching says what the order actually is: be, do,

[21:34] have. So we choose to be happy, peaceful, loving, connected — whatever it is that we want. Be that. And then allow the doing to flow from that.

So it's be, then do — a doing flows from the being of happiness, or peacefulness, or connectedness, or lovingness. The doing flows from that. And then the having of whatever comes will happen automatically. We don't have to really put any attention so much on the having. And it doesn't matter, because if we're already happy, then that's what we actually wanted in the first place.

The other way of thinking — have, do, be — is actually a massive detour. What is it that we actually want? To be happy, connected, loving — these things. That's what we want. But we think that we have to have something first in order to get there. So

[22:36] it's sort of a detour. But if we come back to: what do we really want? Be happy, fulfilled, peaceful — these things. Then the choice is to step into that right now, in little ways at first. Little ways.

Of course, when we hear that, we're like, oh, of course I can't just be happy all the time. Yeah, sure — that's why it's a practice. It's a practice, it's something you implement, you work at it, you bring some effort into this practice. But you do it — you be it. So we choose to be happy, or fulfilled, or peaceful, or connected, or loving — whatever it is that we want — we be it. Be it.

Then the doing comes from that, and having will arrive without any sort of effort on our part. The effort comes from placing our attention on being what we want, and then allowing the doing to

[23:37] flow from that.

All right, so I'm going to leave the teaching at that for this episode. The upcoming episodes, we're going to break this down and really show how to put this into practice, and how it can shift your life and really help you get what you want — whatever that might be.

So if you're struggling with depression and anxiety, if you're struggling with feeling stuck, you know you want to change your job but you can't, or if you're struggling in your relationship or with your body — I've used this teaching myself to transform so many aspects of my life. Going from being morbidly obese to being in shape, fit, running triathlons, bodybuilding — really massive transformation in the body, from a place of deep body shame. I've used it to

[24:39] really shift into a fundamental experience of happiness and of joy and equanimity, and many others — financial and career — really shifting life experience in a deep, lasting, meaningful way. So this teaching is very powerful. I know it might sound a little abstract at this point, but hang with me and we'll lay it out and break it down.

So you might be asking: what does be, do, have got to do with Loving Kindness Wins, the name of the podcast? Remember, I talked about the different levels and layers of how this unfolds. So talking a little bit now about the level of reality, the nature of reality.

So loving kindness is the background energy of everything. It is the architecture of reality. It is the architecture of our mind. It is the technology with which, by which, in which

[25:41] everything operates.

So when we look at be, do, have instead of have, do, be — what we are doing is we are following the direct path. In Buddhist teachings, this is called vajrayana, where instead of taking a slower path — which is: well, I have to understand it all, I have to have something, and then I'll do some things, and maybe eventually I'll be happy, and maybe we get there, maybe we get there eventually — the vajrayana path is the direct path.

So if we want to be happy, if we want to be Buddha, enlightened, nirvana — it's about recognizing that we already are, and that what we need to do is step into it right now. There's nowhere to go, there's nothing to find, we don't have to have something — we can step into it right now. Be. Be Buddha. Be

[26:44] enlightened. Be happy. Be peaceful. Be joyful. Be in equanimity.

So this is the direct path — direct into being happy and all those other qualities. So loving kindness being the background of everything — that is the ultimate destination, you could say — is to be in full alignment with loving kindness. Other aspects: wisdom, compassion, and joy, peaceful. And into the things that we want less — frustration, disappointment, anger — these are levels, you could say, on the path to full alignment with loving kindness.

So whatever we choose to be — being happy, fulfilled — great, that's a path to full alignment with loving kindness. So practicing this, step by step, be closer to loving

[27:46] kindness — that is the path by which we will ultimately get there. There's nowhere to go, but "get there" means we come into full alignment, or we recognize our alignment, and we drop what is not in alignment — which are the contractions, the frustration, and the anger, and so on.

At the level that we're talking about, which is called the relative level, we drop anger as we come into more alignment with peace. Ultimately, anger is actually a form of peace, and we'll talk about that later. But this path that we're talking about — the direct path — is the path of coming into full alignment with loving kindness. And so be, do, have is the way to do that. Step directly into being, now. We don't have to wait.

So in the next episode, we're going to talk about the first piece of breaking this down. Okay, be, do, have —

[28:48] that's what I'm supposed to do. What do I want to be? So that's the first question that arises when we look at this and how to use it: okay, if I buy into this be, do, have thing — what do I want? What do I want? How do I be something? So what do I want?

So that's the topic of the next episode — hope you tune in to that.

In the meantime, of course, I'd love if you can share this podcast with your friends, give me a review, and go to my website coyotejackson.com. And there you can sign up to get emails from me, where I'll send notifications of the podcast, but also you get to sign up for what I call my starter kit, which will give you a written form of these teachings. So there'll be a series of emails that lay these teachings out so you have them in written form, and also a download of a mini ebook that I wrote.

The other thing I'd love to ask you to do is to practice

[29:50] loving kindness in your life. In order for loving kindness to win, we all have to practice loving kindness, and it will win. And so I will ask you to practice loving kindness wherever you are.

These are difficult times. There's a lot going on, there's a lot of aggression in the world. And in the face of that, what do we do? Do we react with fight? We match aggression with aggression — we see that so much. It is bringing out the aggression in the world — and politics and wars and everything that's occurring. That aggression is bringing out the aggression in people. And so we're seeing responses of wanting to harm people, these aggressive reactions to aggression.

What Loving Kindness Wins means is to respond with loving kindness. This is not a passive submission in any way — it's actually a forceful bringing forth of

[30:51] loving kindness within us. Please practice loving kindness everywhere you can.

And personally, what's in this for me? Of course, I love these teachings, I love sharing about them. My mission is to bring loving kindness to the world, bring people into recognition of loving kindness, and help us all practice it. So all of that is there.

But at a very simple personal level — what do I want? Connection. I am craving connection with you, with others, in this space of wanting to understand wisdom teachings, to help people be better humans, be happier, be healthier, thrive. I want connection — that's really the biggest personal thing that I would like from this.

Please reach out, give me a shout, drop me an email. If you like this, if you don't like this — comments,

[31:54] appreciation, anything. I love to hear from you all. I love connection. I want to build my community. So reach out and say hi. All right, thank you.