Introduction and Welcome

Part 1 of 2 · Ep. 691

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Mormon Stories is a production of the Open Stories foundation and relies solely upon the support of people like you, its listeners to help keep the podcast alive or to become a member of the community. Please become a monthly subscriber by visiting MormonStories.org and clicking on the Donate button on the right side of the page under support. All contributions to Mormon Stories are completely tax deductible and go towards producing the podcast and building communities and programs of support for Mormons like you. Thanks for your support.

Noah Rasheta [00:00:36] The kindly light amid encircling gloom

John Dehlin [00:00:43] Lead

Noah Rasheta [00:00:43] thou me on the night is dark and I am far.

John Dehlin [00:00:50] Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. And in reality, this isn't just a Mormon Stories podcast. This is also Mormon Transitions Podcast. But first of all, let me just give you the date. It's January 19, 2017. I say this every time, but I absolutely mean it every time. And today I am so excited for my current guest. This is someone I've wanted to interview for literally years, but I truly believe that this will be one of the most important interviews that I ever do. And I'm not intentionally adding any hyperbole. I really mean it. Today we're going to be interviewing a dear friend of mine. His name is Noah Rachetta. Noah Rachetta has been a listener of Mormon Stories for quite some time. So he's a dear friend. He's got so much wisdom to share with everybody. And Noah is the founder of a website and a book and a podcast called secularbuddhism.com and we're going to talk about that in our interview. But secular Buddhism.com has become one of the top 100 religious themed podcasts in the world. From my perspective, based on what I understand, Noah has not only published this podcast, but also written a book called Secular Buddhism, and he's appeared with me at many of my Mormon Transitions retreats and workshops talking about secular spirituality, secular Buddhism, mindfulness, and that sort of thing. So before we actually launch into the interview, there's just a couple I want to set the stage. We're going to start by talking about Noah's story. So in that sense, it's going to be a very classic Mormon stories interview. I imagine that's going to take at least a couple hours to do. From there, what we're going to do is we're going to dig into at least a good hour on Secular Buddhism and the main principles of Secular Buddhism. And I'm super excited about that because I believe that Secular Buddhism, which is not religious in any way, it's not supernatural in any way, it's an absolutely powerful, and I would even argue essential paradigm both for positive mental health and, and for navigating Mormonism in or out of the church, and just basic fundamental principles of good mental health. So we're going to talk about that, then we're going to turn to doing an actual Mormon Transitions interview. So those of you who were able to tune into Margi's interview, I asked her a series of like 30 or 50 questions all about her transition from start to finish. And that was a really powerful interview that I know tens of thousands of people have really valued and appreciated. But what we also did is not just release that as an interview, we released that in chunks. So up on YouTube we've got 30 to 50 little chunks of my interview with Margi dealing with various topics, whether it's belief in God, how you came out as a non traditional believer, et cetera. And that project, Mormon transitions on YouTube is going to allow people to dig into various issues or aspects of their transition in a way that really specifically addresses practical concerns. On top of all that, Noah's faith transition story is one of a mixed faith marriage, and it's one of remaining actively engaged in the church as a non believer. So this, this interview has something for everyone. It has something for people who have lost their faith, something for people who are in a mixed faith marriage, something for people who are trying to remain in the church, but as a non believer and absolutely fundamental for people who have totally left. So it's powerful on tons of levels. So with all of that, and we're live streaming like a six hour interview on Facebook to anyone who wants to go the marathon, we've already got 41 people who have joined us. Noah, Rasheta, welcome to Mormon Stories and Mormon Transitions.

Noah Rasheta [00:05:17] Thank you, John. I'm excited. I've been looking forward to this for quite some time, so thank you for having me.

John Dehlin [00:05:23] My pleasure. Okay, so I do want to invite those who are joining us live to feel free to tune in, to ask comments, to ask questions, to give feedback, and I will integrate as much of those into our discussion as I can. But to begin, Noah, we're going to do the first hour or two just on your story. So why don't we begin by just talking a little bit about your background and anything that you think will be important background for helping people understand the context of your Mormon experience and your transitioning and post Mormon experience.

Noah's Background and Early Life

Noah Rasheta [00:06:01] Okay, great. I guess I'll just start at the very beginning. I was born in Texas. Oftentimes when I'm talking about myself, I go into we. I talk about myself as we because I have an identical twin brother. And it's been really hard to ever break away from that we when I'm talking about myself. So if I say we, that's why. So born in Texas, grew up in Dallas, northern part of Dallas, in Plano. Went to elementary school, middle school, and then halfway through middle school, my family moved to Mexico. So I finished middle school and all of high school in Guadalajara, Mexico, which is where my mom is from. And then after graduating high school in Mexico, my twin brother and I went on our missions. We left the same day, came home the same day. I served in Ecuador, and he served in Bolivia. And then after our missions, came home and went to school in Utah. That's what brought me here. And he met someone and got married and moved to Arizona. About three years later, I got married and stayed here in Utah, where my wife is from. And kind of in a nutshell, that's like, I guess, the part of the story.

John Dehlin [00:07:33] So you said your mom is from Mexico. Talk a bit about your parents, their cultural, ethnic backgrounds, and how they came into the church. I'm just curious.

Noah Rasheta [00:07:45] Yeah. So they literally just. Their worlds collided one day at the airport. My mom was flying up from Guadalajara to Dallas to go shopping for the weekend with her sister, and my dad was dropping off a friend at the airport, and he saw my mom and got brave and got out and started talking to her, and that's how they met.

John Dehlin [00:08:07] Is your dad of Mexican descent or no?

Noah Rasheta [00:08:10] No, he didn't speak Spanish. She didn't speak English. My sister or her sister did most of the translating, and he started calling her and then visiting her down in Mexico, and eventually they decided to get married.

John Dehlin [00:08:26] So your dad's puro gringo?

Noah Rasheta [00:08:28] Yeah. Yep, very much.

Parents' Cultural Roots and Joining the Church

John Dehlin [00:08:31] All right. Okay, cool. And how did each of them join the church?

Noah Rasheta [00:08:36] So my mom comes from a Catholic background, and my dad was Episcopalian, I believe. So when they wanted to get married, they were not able to get married in the Catholic Church because he had been married before. So they had to settle on a random third party, and they. I think they picked the Episcopalian church. And that's where they got married. And when my twin brother and I were about three, one of my dad's closest friends, he had been in an accident. That kind of got him thinking more seriously about life. And he found the church. I'm not entirely sure how that happened, but he's the one who ended up sharing with my dad, sending the missionaries over and sending him a Book of Mormon. And that's kind of where the conversion story started for my parents. And my dad was very interested in it. I think my mom was a little bit more reluctant because of her ties to her traditional beliefs. And that whole process in itself was. Was kind of interesting because my dad decided that he wanted to go ahead and join, and my mom wasn't sure. And she consulted with her, with the priest at the Catholic Church. And the advice she got was, interestingly enough, he was like, you know, all paths lead to the same place. Do what's best for your family, and if you feel that this is what will bring the most amount of harmony to your home, then go for it and don't stress about it. Which I think was really good advice for her. And then she double checked with her mom, who is also very orthodox and devout in her Catholicism, and interestingly enough, got the same advice there where she said, you know, put your family first. Do what's right for your family. Don't stress about. At the end, in a nutshell, I guess kind of told her, if there's a God and he's a loving God, then there's nothing to fear. He knows your heart, and choosing to leave the church to join another church for the benefit of your family is a noble thing, and go for it. So that gave my mom permission to kind of go with it, But I don't think she was ever 100% certain if that's what made sense to her, I guess, theologically or she never really got into that. It was more of a do what feels right and just go with it. So that was their relationship, and that's how that worked. And so my brother and I essentially grew up from three on in the church. And I feel like we were always part of two cultures, because when we lived in Mexico, we attended Catholic school, we attended Catholic, the equivalent of seminary, while attending LDS seminary. Every Friday we would go to mass at school, every Sunday we would go to church. And I felt like I was always immersed in two cultures, two ideologies. And I felt a fondness for Catholicism, even though I knew I didn't align with it in terms of beliefs. The people that I really cared about, you know, it was very meaningful to them. My grandma, my aunts and uncles, my cousins, you know, going to their first communions. It always felt. I never really felt like an outsider. I felt like I was there participating without having to share the specific beliefs. And I never Felt like excluded. It always felt like from our perspective, from the Catholic Church down where we were in Mexico, it just felt very welcome. It's like in our school, Nick and I were the only. Well, actually there were four of us in the entire high school who were not Catholic. There was a Protestant boy, a Jewish girl, and then Nick and I were the kind of the random American Mormons. And we always felt like we were included in everything. You know, they never, I don't recall ever feeling like we weren't part of them. It was just kind of like treated like, yeah, just come be with us. That's kind of weird that you're not one of us, but sure, you're one of us. So that's. I always had that kind of the two cultures, not just between the countries that, you know, being half Mexican, half American, but in some ways feeling half Catholic, half Mormon. And I know for me personally, I didn't feel the solidification into Mormonism as an orthodox thing until my mission.

John Dehlin [00:13:31] Right.

Noah Rasheta [00:13:32] So give me one second.

John Dehlin [00:13:33] Missions tend to do that. No. While you're helping the UPS guy, I'm just going to say that we just got a text from your brother. So, Nick, Thor Rasheta commented. So glad this is happening. Love watching this live. So Nick's. Nick's tuned in. Your brother and that's super happy. Nick. Nick, welcome. Glad you're joining us on the show, on the stream. So that's fascinating, Noah, that you had sort of a mixed faith upbringing. And it sounds like a really powerfully compelling upbringing. I'll just say that that advice your mom got sounds a lot like the advice the Dalai Lama would give somebody. And it's kind of how you, you start out every episode of Secular Buddhism by telling people. What. What do you tell people?

Growing Up in a Mixed-Faith Household

Noah Rasheta [00:14:25] Yeah, I share my favorite quote of his. It says, do not use what you learned from Buddhism to try to be a Buddhist. Just use it to be a better whatever you already are. And I kind of got that advice from my grandma, now that I think about it. When my brother and I were going on our missions, we went to say goodbye to everyone in the family and my grandma wanted to give us blessings. So they kind of do the cross on your forehead and give you a blessing. And. And I remember getting the specific advice that when you're out there, there are people who are searching for something. Look for those people and see if you can give them something. But then she also said there are people who are not searching for something. They're happy with what they have. Don't Bug those people. Let them be happy with what they have. And she was referring to Catholicism, kind of saying, don't mess with the Catholics who are happy to be Catholics. Leave us alone, but go find the people who are looking for something different in their lives. And I took that to heart. That was kind of my philosophy on my mission. I always felt like, I know there are people out here who are searching. Those are the people I want to find because I think this message could be relevant and useful to them. But I never wanted to be in a position where I was trying to tear someone's base down. Saying what you have, ignore that. There's something else you should look at.

John Dehlin [00:15:47] I love that. I love that. Very powerful. Okay, so you say that your mission was your introduction into sort of pure orthodoxy. Is that right?

Mission Experience and Orthodox Immersion

Noah Rasheta [00:15:56] Yeah, it was. I think the experience for me growing up in the church in Mexico, we didn't really deal with the pioneer traditions or church history. All of that was kind of irrelevant for us. I feel in some ways, when you're outside of the U.S. the church felt more about the what are the positive things that just make you a better person or trying to understand concepts from that view. So I remember going into the MTC and learning things, going through the flip charts and we're doing mock teachings, and I would read something kind of like, huh, I didn't know we thought that, or I didn't know we believed that. So I think it wasn't until my mission where things started to really solidify. And I feel like I had my first transition into a much more orthodox view of belief.

John Dehlin [00:16:53] And do you feel like you just kind of went full force into that? Was there cognitive dissonance? Were you excited? What was that like to move from more broad, diverse, heterogeneous minded to sort of orthodox minded.

Noah Rasheta [00:17:11] I remember that transition felt good. I remember feeling like, oh, this is what it feels to really believe, to really have a certainty. Now in my testimony, where prior to that, it always kind of felt like. I remember on my farewell speech mentioning something to the effect of, I'm excited to find people and if they're not interested in, you know, at least plant the seed that maybe one day they will be. And I remember after my. After that talk, someone in the audience came up to me and said, just so you know, you're not out there to plant seeds, you're out there to convert and bring people to Christ. And I remember feeling chastised in my approach of just wanting to plant seeds. So when I was transitioning into more a More orthodox view of all that. It made sense. And I remember thinking, oh, yeah, yeah, this is what it's all about. You know, I do need to share what is relevant to everyone. And I always kind of battled that because I would picture people when I was talking to them like, this is like my grandma, you know, who is so devout in her tradition, her religious tradition. And I always hesitated because I felt like, I know that that's not right. Good for you for having that, but that's not good enough for you. But I was reluctant to strip people away from something that was meaningful to them. And I think in the back of my mind, I didn't worry too much because I always thought, you know, if you didn't get it here, you'll get it at some point, or there's always the. The fail safe, you know, we'll get you once you die, and then it's all good, right? So. But yeah, those. Those were kind of some of the experiences I recall from my mission.

John Dehlin [00:19:02] So anything sort of like really formative on your mission or, you know, epic or important that you want to share or should we. Or was. Was it just kind of a traditional mission or anything important?

Noah Rasheta [00:19:16] It was a traditional mission. I think the most impactful part of it for me, that I still think about a lot, was the discovery that being a part of something bigger than myself was an incredible experience. I remember early on in my mission, walking down the street and there were some people sitting on the sidewalk who were drinking, and one of them mumbled something and threw a bottle of beer at us. I remember being so offended, thinking, you don't even know me. Why would you treat me like that? And in the, you know, in the coming days, really thinking about that, feeling personally offended, and then like a switch, it just hit me where I realized, oh, he didn't throw that at me. He threw that at whatever I represent. And I remember letting go of the personal attachment at that point in my mission to this is me and, you know, what I'm sharing with you is all on me. I remember at that point letting go of that and feeling like what I'm really doing is sharing something greater than me, a teaching that's greater than me, talking about a character that's greater than me, an organization that's greater than me. And I felt from that moment on, I thoroughly enjoyed that experience of removing myself for a bit. Because up until then, life had always felt like it's me, and it was cool to experience that. And that's something I still value a lot about the mission experience.

John Dehlin [00:20:45] That's very Buddhist. Actually. I'm dying to think about whether Nick was feeling and thinking similar things on his mission and to what extent you and he process things similarly versus differently in your respective missions. Do you have any sense for that since he was your twin?

Noah Rasheta [00:21:07] We wrote to each other very often. I remember it was surprising. The insights we would share with each other and the experiences we were sharing with each other seemed very, very simultaneous. He would experience something, and I did, too, and then we'd write about it. And back then, everything took weeks. And by the time I'd read his letter and I would calculate what he went through and some experience, I would think, oh, that's when I was going through this. The timing was almost always spot on. I mean, even with our assignments in the mission, we were, you know, served as, I think, district leaders within weeks of each other, zone leaders within weeks of each other. And then I remember sending him the news that I had been called to be an assistant to the president. And he replied and said he was, too. And it was like we shared almost identical experiences. And on one occasion, while we were both in the office, before we knew that we were both in the office, I went to pick up some missionaries at the airport. And when they got off the plane, they were all whispering to each other and pointing. And as they got closer, they said, elder Rochetta, how did you get here? And I was like, wait, where did you guys come from? And they said, bolivia. And that's when I was like, did an Elder Rochetta take you to the airport? And they're like, yep. And I was like, that's my twin brother. So he literally took missionaries to the airport that I picked up at the airport. And we didn't know any of that until weeks later when our letters would arrive. That happened a lot to us.

John Dehlin [00:22:37] That must have been bizarre for them, time travel.

Noah Rasheta [00:22:41] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:22:44] I love that story. That's a great story. Nick writes, no, and I have always been able to speak for the other. We think the same. That's what Nick says.

Noah Rasheta [00:22:54] Yeah, that's true.

Seeds of Doubt and Faith Questions

John Dehlin [00:22:56] Okay, so tell us about the things that happened after your mission that were either important or that you think led up to your faith transition.

Noah Rasheta [00:23:10] Okay. I remember coming home. It was really exciting to reunite with Nick and to reunite with my family. I do remember growing up, my family in general, we always had a slightly more. Maybe nuanced is the right word view of things in general. Like, I would never say we were orthodox in our approach to Mormonism or anything else. Growing up in Mexico. I think a lot of people kind of adopt the mindset of you play with the system and you mold it rather than adhering strictly to rules. For example, getting pulled over, you try to negotiate a way to get out of it instead of paying the fine. That kind of mindset is a little bit more natural in a culture like in Mexico. Coming home with a much more rigid mindset. I remember one of my first experiences coming home. Nick and I were driving, I think, the first time in Mexico from being home. And at one of the intersections, I turned left on green without the green arrow. And I had forgotten that in Mexico you can't turn left on green. It has to be the arrow only. And sure enough, get pulled over. And right away, the officer starts playing that game of, you know, if I can find a way to help you, maybe you can find a way to help me. And kind of makes it obvious that he's going for the bribe. And I remember at that point thinking, no, I mean, I just came home from a mission. The last thing I would ever do is bribe anyone now, like, I'm so beyond that. And so we started negotiating with him and trying to get out of it without getting out of it. And he was frustrated because he wasn't used to that. He was used to people just immediately going into the, okay, yeah, I'll play this game, and we wouldn't. And after about 15 minutes of him trying to get us to do something, finally says, well, what would you know? How do you want to get out of this? And I said, well, I'll tell you how I want to get out of this. I said, I think it would be really noble of you to give me a warning, and then I'll leave here knowing that I shouldn't do that again. And he was just like. He didn't know what to say, and he let us go. It's the first time I ever got out of a ticket in Mexico without having to bribe. I remember thinking, yeah, that's the right approach, you know, And I was going to try to tackle life that way. Much more rigid in my, no more gray zones. Try to be more black and white.

John Dehlin [00:25:54] That's awesome. Love that story.

Noah Rasheta [00:25:57] And then going to school, you know, I think my experience of going to school and college was quite different from high school. In high school, I still had the mindset of find ways to make this process easier. Cheating on a test didn't seem like an ethical problem. It was more of a, you're just playing the system. This is probably why corruption is so Bad in Mexico, I think we all kind of had that mindset down there. But then in college, it was really fun to do it all the right way, actually study hard instead of spending time on deciding how I was going to write the answers on a little piece of paper. It was fun to actually spend that time studying and realize I could get the good grade doing it that way. So college was a whole different experience than high school. And I think that was directly because of the mission experience. And then went on and got married and really enjoyed that experience. And it wasn't until later in my marriage that, you know, the first time I had kind of struggled at times with that idea of when is it okay to be gray in your view of things versus just pure black and white? And I remember at times feeling guilty telling people stories about growing up in Mexico. Like I was ashamed to tell someone that I've bribed a police officer or that I cheated on a high school test. And then I went through an experience that was like a breach of confidence with someone really close to me. I remember that was the first. That was the initial catalyst to thinking something was wrong with the black and white approach to life. Because sometimes there are gray areas and sometimes it's not as simple as right or wrong, black or white, good or bad. And it was during that experience in my life, that phase, I guess you could say, where I felt really let down. I felt really down on myself. I think my self esteem was pretty low. And just thinking it's hard to be hurt by somebody that you're close to. And in that mindset, I wanted to try to become much more rigorous in my view of all things, including and especially my beliefs. And so I started studying really hard and studying church history just really quick,

John Dehlin [00:28:25] without going into any details, just so I can repeat. So you experienced something with a loved one or someone you cared about that you just felt. You felt hurt by that, right?

Noah Rasheta [00:28:37] Yeah. Yeah. So it was a pivotal moment for me to feel. I've always just been very open and giving people the benefit of the doubt and very trusting and very optimistic. Like those are all kind of natural traits for me. And going through this experience left me, in a way closed off, thinking if somebody close to you can lie to you to your face or can do something that's hurtful to you, it made me start questioning everything and especially my. My own ability to discern if I could interpret people or situations with certainty. So at that time, I really dive into trying to be much more orthodox, I guess, or more knowledgeable. About the church in general. And I started reading Rough Stone Rolling. I think that was one of the first books that I read. And I don't remember it, for me, being a big impact in the sense of, like, earth shattering. But I do remember thinking, it's troubling to me that if there are things that happened in a way that I didn't know, that they happened that way. The thing itself isn't what troubles me. It's the fact that I didn't know that that's how it happened. I remember specifically thinking, as I was studying church history, there's nothing here more crazy than a burning bush talking to Moses. The difference is, I have known about the burning bush from day one. And had the story been that Moses was talking to someone there at the table and they're drinking tea together, and then later you read it and you're like, wait a second. No, it was a burning bush, then it would be problematic. But there was nothing inherent in any of the church history that I was encountering that seemed like, this can't be what I thought it was. I just remember thinking, why was it, you know, why is the picture painted a different way? Why didn't I know about this? But that led me to want to read more. And the more I read into it, the more difficult the overall view became for me. And it wasn't even specifically the church. I think for me, it went on because I wanted to understand, well, if this is this, then what is this? And I kept going back, and I started studying New Testament historicity through Bart Ehrman, who's a New Testament scholar. And I was realizing a lot of the troubles, even with just the way the New Testament was compiled and how it was written. And that whole process also became problematic for me. So at some point, rather than experiencing, I guess, a traditional faith transition or faith crisis with the church specifically, it was more of, what if we're wrong about everything we've ever thought about religion or about the entire narrative that we use for, you know, understanding who we are, where we came from, why we're here, where we're going, all of that kind of went up in the air for me. At the same time, it was never specific to, oh, you know, it's specifically the church's narrative that I have a problem with. It's kind of just the overall religious narrative became troublesome for me.

John Dehlin [00:32:05] Yeah, so you went right to the root of it. What. What made you think to read Rough Stone Rolling as a reaction to being betrayed by a loved one? Like, why. Why How Rough Stone Rolling. How did you get the idea to do that?

Noah Rasheta [00:32:21] Yeah, that's a good question. I think if I remember correctly, the process for me was part of my inability to discern a person, their intent. I remember specifically feeling like I'm living my life in a way that is righteous. Everything that's supposed to be checked off is checked off. Anything that you're not supposed to be doing, I'm not doing it. Why was I not able to discern that this specific thing was going on in my life? Why was I not able to sense a red flag or something to help prevent this breach of confidence the way that it happened? And that was troubling for me because I genuinely felt like I was supposed to know, like, that's the whole point of the spirit, is to help. Help, you know, things. So that was troubling for me. And I think I wanted to understand rather than immediately thinking, oh, well, then there is no spirit. I remember thinking, I've misunderstood what the purpose of the spirit is. I want to understand that more. So that led to. I want to say there's a series of books by Joseph Fielding Smith called Doctrines of Salvation. Doctrines of Salvation. I started there, and then that led to, like, Joseph Smith's book. He had a little red pamphlet book that I read.

John Dehlin [00:33:49] Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith or Truth Restored or something like that.

Noah Rasheta [00:33:52] Yeah, I don't remember lectures on faith. Okay, yeah, Lectures on Faith.

John Dehlin [00:33:56] Okay.

Noah Rasheta [00:33:57] And then that led to something else. And then at some point throughout all of that reading, I was thinking, this is fascinating because it's all new. I was experiencing what I did on my mission where it was like, this is a Mormonism I'm not familiar with. And somewhere in that search, I was told a really good book that'll give you a synopsis of all of it for church history that's not biased. I wasn't interested in anything that would even hint of being the church. And I was told Rough Stone Rolling was a good source because it was written by someone who's not antagonistic. And so that's why I think that's what led me. It only left me with more questions because then I was like, well, I didn't know this either or that either, you know?

John Dehlin [00:34:44] Okay. So this had to have been around 2005, 2006. When you're reading Rough Stone Rolling, do you even remember?

Noah Rasheta [00:34:51] It was 2010.

John Dehlin [00:34:54] Okay. Okay. Wow. Oh, wow. I met you that late? Yeah. I think my first time I talked to you was when I was in my PhD. Okay. So that makes sense. So we're talking 2010. You read rough Stone Rolling, and you go right to the root of religion. So where do you go from there? You're questioning now all religion, which means you're probably questioning God. Where'd you go from there?

Noah Rasheta [00:35:17] Yeah, I was questioning all of it. I remember early on, the first time I hinted anything was to my brother, to Nick. And at this time, I felt he was the person closest to me who understands me the best, the safest person to go to. And at this point, it had probably been three or four months of me really doubting, what if we got it all wrong? And remember, this stems from the experience of thinking, if I misunderstood somebody that I thought I knew really well, what if I've misunderstood everything that I felt confident with? So I approached Nick. We were on a trip and.

John Dehlin [00:35:54] Are you both living in Arizona at the time?

Noah Rasheta [00:35:58] No, I was living in Utah.

John Dehlin [00:35:59] Okay, okay. Just curious.

Noah Rasheta [00:36:00] I was still in Arizona. We were in California visiting a good friend who's Catholic, my good high school buddy. And in the car, we're just kind of talking, and he was telling us something about, like, you know, I love my religion, but it's more of a cultural thing. It doesn't. It's not such a big deal if it's true or not, something to that effect. And I remember hinting at that time, thinking, I think what I said was something along the lines of, what if we're all wrong about everything? What if every single person who's ever told a story is wrong about that story? And I remember Nick pushing back, kind of like, no, no, no, don't even go down that route there. You know, like, we have answers and you have the answers. You just have to adhere to those answers. And I don't remember if we talked about it in the moments after that conversation, but I felt strong pushback, and I felt bad for bringing it up. And I just didn't bring anything up the rest of that trip. And meanwhile, I had been listening to. By then, I had discovered Mormon stories, and I was just devouring a new podcast every day and learning more and more. And finally, I reached out to Nick one day and I said, look, I know this whole topic is uncomfortable for you. You've been supportive with me in this trial that I'm going through. And the reality is this, I'm going through something that's very difficult that I can't talk to anyone about, because I feel like it's taboo to even say this, but I have serious doubts about my understanding of life. And the world in general. And I said, I know it's uncomfortable for you, but I don't know who else to talk to. And, I mean, right away he was like, you're right. Yeah. I mean, that's. Of course, I should be the person that, no matter what you're going to say, I'm here for you. So let's hear it. What's troubling you? And I think he kind of wanted to help me through this, you know, help me find certainty again. So I start just telling them things. And, well, I heard this, and, you know, this doesn't make sense. And I learned that, and that doesn't make sense. And he was surprised, too. He was kind of like, I've never heard about that. I've never heard about that. And his approach was, let me look into this a little bit. I'll research it more and let's keep talking. But, like, don't worry about this. We can find a way for everything to make sense. And then he just goes on the same route and starts reading church history. And really. And not just church history, but all history, religious history and the history of Christianity. And it seemed to me in hindsight, like this process was quick. Within a couple months, you know, we'd still be calling each other every day. Well, did you know this? Well, yeah. Did you know that? And we're sharing, sharing, sharing. And out of the blue, he's like, well, my wife and I have been talking, and we decided, the church is not for us. We're going to leave it.

John Dehlin [00:38:53] So he jumped ahead of you.

Noah Rasheta [00:38:55] Oh, yeah. And I was like, no, wait, don't. Are you sure? Like, take it slowly. It was very abrupt. And my parents called and they were like, what's going on with Nick? And I was like, at that point, I felt bad because I felt like I was the catalyst to his decision. So I didn't want my parents to know anything. I just said, you know, there's just stuff that I've been talking with him about, and I don't want to share any of it. If you want to know his perspective, just talk to him. Well, then they start talking and seems like again, another couple months go by, and then my parents are like, hmm, we're just not very interested. It wasn't a big, abrupt, like, we don't believe. It was just a. This isn't for us. We're done.

John Dehlin [00:39:40] The church.

Noah Rasheta [00:39:41] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:39:42] Your whole family starts falling away.

Discovering Buddhism After Leaving Mormonism

Noah Rasheta [00:39:44] Yeah. And again, I just felt so much guilt. I felt horrible because I felt like I was the source of Introducing doubt. But at the same time, I could see, especially with my mom, and I was really surprised at this. I saw liberation for her. She had been secretly harboring for years a resentment against leaving what felt like her cultural roots and her mom and her sisters and her siblings that are all very devout Catholic. And she immediately reverted to what felt comfortable to her and to her roots. And that's the first time I remember thinking, oh, I'm so sorry that you felt like you couldn't have that in your life up until now. And I felt very happy for her. And meanwhile, all this time I'm trying to. I kind of have this mindset of I need to figure it out. I need to figure all of this out and fix all of it. And I start studying philosophy and religion. And I was always fascinated by philosophy and psychology in high school. That's one of the first things I wanted to study in college. I never did. But that led me down this route of studying world religions. And I attended a lecture series on the five major world religions. And I'm kind of just listening with this perspective of which one am I going to hear that actually makes sense that I'll say, ah, maybe they have it right. And I didn't get that. You know, it goes through Christianity, then Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, and the last series was on Buddhism. And when it gets to the series on Buddhism, I didn't know much about it. And I was really fascinated with their take on things. And it was something to the effect, I remember, of interacting with either the lecturer or someone there. I was like, how does this information help me to arrive at an understanding of the truth? And I remember they were kind of like, well, what do you mean, the truth? I was like, yeah, I want to discover what's the truth in life? And he just kind of laughed. He's like, oh, you're not going to find that here. I was like, what? He's like, yeah, no, the only truth you're going to get here is the truth of no truth. The truth that there is no truth. And I was kind of like, what are you talking about? And that was where I was like, I want to learn more about this. I started to feel like there was just no pressure there to know anything with certainty. And that was very refreshing for me because I had been going through this internal struggle with my worldview. Is it true or is it not true? Is it right or is it wrong? Are they right or are they wrong? Everything was black and white. And this introduced an entirely new way of thinking which was it's not about white or black or right or wrong. Like, something can be true and not true. It can be true to you and not true to me. It can be good for you and not good for me. And it was, like, mind blowing. It was like, oh, okay, I want to learn more about this and remind

John Dehlin [00:42:45] me, who is this person again that told you that truth?

Noah Rasheta [00:42:48] This is a lecture on world religions.

John Dehlin [00:42:52] Okay, so general lecture.

Noah Rasheta [00:42:54] Okay, yeah, yeah, okay. So at that point, I decided, well, I want to learn a lot more about this. And I just start diving into Buddhism as a philosophy.

John Dehlin [00:43:05] What was it about Buddhism that you deter. What turned you to Buddhism specifically?

Noah Rasheta [00:43:10] That I. It was the only one that, when I would ask certain questions, never hinted at, you know, what you need is this. This is what you need. And let me tell you why this is right. It was the only one that said, oh, no, there's no right, and we're definitely not right. If you think we're right, then this is not for you. And that was the irony is that where it's like, okay, well, then tell me more about that. How does that make sense?

John Dehlin [00:43:34] I love that. Love that.

Noah Rasheta [00:43:37] So, yeah, then I started down that path and trying to understand why do they view the world that way? And I would listen to, like, the Dalai Lama or Thich Nhat Hanh, and there was just this sense of contentment and peace. Like, there was just no worry, no stress. And they weren't. It felt like they're not trying to sell anything. So I wanted that. I was like, how do you arrive at that place of such genuine contentment with things, with life as it is? It felt like there was no hidden agenda when I was listening to them talk about their own ideology. And that, for me, was fascinating. I wanted to know why. How do they think? Why do they think the way they think? So that I started reading about it and studying book after book after book. And that went on for a couple of years. And at some point, I felt like it all clicked. I finally got what I think Buddhism was trying to allude to all along, is that your aha moment comes the moment you realize there's nothing to get. It's like the greatest thing you'll get is that there's nothing to get. And I had been convinced up until that point. You know, I'm always taking notes, like, I'm going to figure this out. And I remember just letting it all go at that point, thinking, oh, that's the point, is that there is no point. Like, you just get to experience life Authentically. And there's no competition. It's not. I'm not trying to make sure that I got it right, and I'm not trying to correct you if I think you got it wrong, because it was beyond that. There was no, it wasn't about that. And that was really refreshing for me.

John Dehlin [00:45:16] And, you know, when we're in the Orthodox mindset or when we've been raised in the Orthodox mindset, that can be perceived as very troubling and actually a flaw, because I think for many, the appeal of an orthodox high demand religion is that it has all the answers and is that it tells you exactly what to do. And so, you know, we'll dig more into that both in our secular Buddhism episode, but also in our Mormon transitions episode. But I can see from your perspective how that would have been incredibly enlightening and refreshing. And for many others, that's allergic and disconcerting and distressing.

Noah Rasheta [00:45:59] Yeah, for sure.

John Dehlin [00:46:00] Yeah. So how, I'm curious how the Landmark Forum got integrated into your study of Buddhism. And then I really want to just talk about what that was like for your, your, your wife and your young family to, you know, how you, how you manage that.

Marriage, Identity, and Religious Tension

Noah Rasheta [00:46:22] Yeah, I think it was a scary experience, for sure. Anytime you have somebody who views the world differently than you, it's scary. Uncertainty is scary. And especially in the Orthodox mindset, because from that mindset, we know there's a right way and we know that every other way is wrong. No matter how good it is, it's still wrong. So to start expressing with more honesty to my wife, for example, my, my way of viewing the world and what made sense to me, I think it was very scary and in a lot of ways probably still is. But I think what started to happen right away is she started to notice that in spite of my disbeliefs or in spite of my doubts to certain truth claims, I wasn't changing. I was still who I've always been. I was still just me. I don't know exactly how long that process took, but that's when she started feeling safe again. And I remember a couple times having to explain things like when you feel your security based on a belief, it's not really substantial, for example, you know, if you feel that. Well, let's just give the example. Like, if you felt like your spouse was being unfaithful to you, believing that that's what's happening is what causes the anxiety and the stress, it may be that that's not happening at all, but because you believe that it is, you experience unnecessary anxiety and stress in the relationship. Now, the flip side of that could be, maybe it is happening, but you don't know and you don't think that it is. So you're living with peace or contentment, thinking everything's good, when really it's not. In both of those scenarios, the problem isn't necessarily what's happening. It's the way we perceive or the belief we have of what's happening. So I remember telling her, now imagine if you feel that our safety net in our relationship hinges on my beliefs. You know, I believe that I should be a good husband or a loyal husband or, you know, all those things. That's where your safety comes from. Now imagine knowing that, you know, regardless of what I believe, the safety comes from knowing I'm just. I wouldn't do that.

John Dehlin [00:49:04] Or.

Noah Rasheta [00:49:06] So I don't know if that makes sense. But I remember that was kind of a pivotal moment in our relationship to feel like, huh, it's not the belief that keeps me in a loving marriage. It's the actions of staying in a loving marriage that keep me in a loving marriage, regardless of what I believe, regardless of what she believes. And I think we both kind of felt at that point, okay, the beliefs can take a second, you know, a backseat to this whole thing. Like, if we're committed to our relationship, it's okay if we both have different worldviews and different beliefs. And from that moment on, it started to feel like it was going to be okay.

John Dehlin [00:49:44] I think a way that occurs to me to kind of restate that is you can believe and feel all sorts of things, but your beliefs and your feelings can be wrong. And they can be wrong in terms of, you know, they can. They're not necessarily reliable. They can fail. They can be based on things that are false in every direction. And so really, the only thing you can really, really kind of put a stake in is people's behavior. Because behavior is the ultimate testament. Because I could tell you I'm faithful to you as a spouse, but I could be cheating, and you could feel great about the marriage and it sucks, or you could hate the marriage and their marriage is actually pretty good.

Noah Rasheta [00:50:33] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:50:34] But it's all perspective, and perspective isn't necessarily reliable.

Noah Rasheta [00:50:39] Exactly.

John Dehlin [00:50:40] So am I showing up to the marriage every day? Am I treating you with respect? Because that's really all, you know.

Noah Rasheta [00:50:46] Yeah. Yeah. And I remember at that point kind of thinking what we both decided and agreed on was, well, that's how we'll approach this. Yeah, we're going to have Differences in views, which we already had. We already had differences in political views or differences in, you know, general ideologies, and now we were just going to have some differences in our worldviews. But how do we show up for each other every day? Are we committed, you know, to our relationship? And it felt like we would both know that from this point on going forward, like, we feel that we can tell each other, you know, something's not right, rather than hiding that we can just say, hey, this doesn't feel right, or this, this is something we need to talk about. And it really enhanced our ability to communicate with each other going through all of this.

John Dehlin [00:51:37] Loved it. Yeah. I love that idea that we're always terrified of a religious or faith transition. And I love the idea that it can actually strengthen marriages, even mixed faith marriages. It can actually strengthen relationships and deepen them. So that's. I love hearing that.

Noah Rasheta [00:51:55] And I have to add, I was terrified the day that I thought, you know, I'm going to finally tell her and come out about being skeptical or being, you know, an unbeliever was terrifying. I. In the months or maybe even year, year or two leading up to that point, I was convinced that the day that that happens is the day our marriage ends. Because I'd always thought that, you know, marriage is contingent on having shared beliefs. And she took it so well. It was difficult and, you know, it was very scary and uncertain. But she was like, we've been through harder things. We've been through, you know, we can. This is something we can do and we'll do it together. Like, don't feel like you're alone in this. Let's figure this out. And that's part of the. The experience of being partners, is that we're partners through whatever we go through. I remember feeling just really good. It was like, okay, I can hold space for my doubts and at the same time feel safe and certain in our marriage that it's okay. It doesn't have to spell disaster there.

What Kept Noah in the Church

John Dehlin [00:53:02] What kept you from your brother and sister in law had left, then your parents leave. What kept you from just saying, I'm out of here? Yeah. Do you want to mention your wife's name on this episode? Is that okay? Or do you not? Or do you? Sure.

Noah Rasheta [00:53:19] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:53:19] Okay. Giselle, right?

Noah Rasheta [00:53:21] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:53:21] What kept you from just saying, gisele, I'm out of here. You can go to church all you want, but my parents have left, my brother's left, I'm leaving and I'm out?

Noah Rasheta [00:53:32] Yeah, that's a good question. It certainly has crossed my mind on occasions. But what I found is I realized there are things I like about the church. I like the social aspect, especially where I live. It's a very small community and I feel like we're all really close. The people you see at church are the same people you see at school, at the store, at the rodeo for the fourth of July. It's just a very tight knit community. And rather than feeling like that was a constraint for me or feeling like that smothering, I felt the opposite. I feel like I support my community and the things that my neighbors believe. It's meaningful to me because it's meaningful to them, even if I don't believe those same things. And I remember on one specific occasion, again studying Buddhism, there is an instance where the Buddha's cousin is talking to him about the spiritual path. The path of spirituality is a path where you find connection and meaning. It's not about beliefs, it's about feeling connected and about finding meaning in life. And he asks him specifically, with what you're building up here with the congregation, what does that speak about this whole thing? And the Buddha kind of tells him, a lot of people think, he tells them, how much of the spiritual friendships do you think makes up the totality of the spiritual life? And he says, probably about 50% or so. And he says, no, Ananda, the spiritual friendships is the whole of the way. I remember that. That was a very meaningful moment for me. And that day specifically, I was thinking about, you know, from work, I went to pick up my kids who were babysat by a lady in our ward who, her family is just the kindest, nicest people. And I remember thinking that day, that's been my experience with most people in the church. They are incredible people who are trying their best based on the way that they view the world and believe the world to live up to those beliefs. And it seemed like this precious thing that I would never want to just outright dismiss or give up based solely on my belief being different. And I remember that day kind of feeling like, this is okay. I can be involved with something that I don't fully believe. And ironically, it took me back to my earlier experience in life of that's how I lived my Catholicism, never being a Catholic and always feeling deeply tied to Catholicism. And now I kind of feel the same way with my view of Mormonism. I may not share the same beliefs, but I feel a connection to those beliefs and to the people who share those beliefs. And then one Sunday, I remember thinking, you know, I'M not going to go today. And my wife and kids got in the car and they drove off and it was just heart wrenching because I have such little kids still. And it was like, oh, you know, I don't want them to have to. I don't want my wife to have to go and wrestle with the three kids all alone. Like, what does it cost me to just go and participate and just sit there? Like, you know, I spent many weeks of my life going to Mass just because that's where my friends and my family were. So I just sat there with them. And then it kind of dawned on me. I think that's ultimately the message that Christianity is trying to impart anyway. It's that you support the people. By supporting them, you mourn with those who mourn. That concept was like, why not just go and sit and participate with something that's meaningful to them? It doesn't mean just because I don't believe this, I shouldn't be a part of this. All those things kind of cross my mind and that's kind of where I am with it now. It's something that I enjoy. It's meaningful to the people that I care about and I have no problem with participating as much as it feels comfortable or as much as I'm allowed.

John Dehlin [00:57:51] We're going to go more into depth on how you've navigated your relationship with the church in your marriage. As a semi believer, non believer, do you even care? Do you give yourself a label? I know Buddhism doesn't like labels, so do you describe yourself in a certain way?

Noah Rasheta [00:58:13] It depends. As much as I don't like labels, it's impossible to not have labels because others give you the labels. So I've tried to navigate with the what's the label that best fits me that others could give me? Because especially in the church, the two biggest labels are are you one of us or are you not one of us? Are you in or are you out? And that one's been difficult to navigate for me because I feel like, well, I could say yes to either of those labels. But then there's a big but I've got to explain a lot behind it, which you don't have time to do and nobody really cares. So I think if I had to go with any label, I've been comfortable with the label of not necessarily that I'm Buddhist, but that I teach Buddhism or that I practice Buddhism, because then that leaves space for like, well, what does that mean? Well, there's a lot to talk about there, but as far as belief or non belief, I think non belief is a label that's accurate because I simply don't share the belief of many of the things that are taught both in the church and with the Christian worldview in general. I don't view it as in opposition to like, well, it's either true or it's false. I just more. It's just kind of irrelevant to me. I think in the same way that it would be irrelevant to you about what a Zoroastrian believes. It's kind of like, you know, are you a Zoroastrian or are you a non Zoroastrian? It's like, well, it's kind of irrelevant. I'm just, it's just nothing. To me, that's kind of how I view belief in general. I mean, even the basic existential question to me is just kind of like, it's just, I don't know, it's irrelevant.

John Dehlin [01:00:00] Not important. Yeah, how do you. And again, we'll just touch on this briefly. How have you avoided sitting in church and not feeling like, you know, you were contributing to. With your name, with your time, with your involvement, contributing to whatever harm the church does, Kind of complicit. Did you ever, or did that never occur to you, or do you just think that's wrong?

Noah Rasheta [01:00:31] No, it's occurred to me. I don't think it had occurred to me until the more recent stance with the church and children of same sex couples. That was probably one of the first times where I felt like by not being vocal and accepting, I'm complicit in and what seems like a form of discrimination. I remember that was the first time that it occurred to me that my silence on the issue could be interpreted as a statement. But I haven't really allowed it. It doesn't trouble me because I don't share that belief. And by simply going there, it doesn't to me, I don't feel complicit in. I feel like by simply going to church and being there in a lot of ways is like being an American. I travel the world as an American and yet I don't line up with all the ideologies that the government espouses. So I don't know if that's a valid comparison. But in a way that's kind of how I view it. It's like, well, I don't identify with this specific view and I'm vocal to share with somebody if they were to ask me that, I don't view it this way, or, you know, I want To I feel like I'm accepting of anyone how they are. There's no way, there's no wrong way to be. If that's how you are, that's how you are. It's not that it's wrong or right or even, you know, any more right than any other way. It's just how you are. So I think that's how I've kind of treated that.

John Dehlin [01:02:14] What about when you hear people talking about Native Americans as dark skinned, curse from God or gay people is a bad sign of the times. Or even talking about Joseph Smith as having one wife or anytime the discourse at church is either inaccurate or discriminatory. I remember reaching this boiling point where it became incredibly difficult for me to sit and listen. Especially because I knew that I had to be silent in church to be welcome. And if I actually spoke my truth or tried to clarify that I would, you know, that it just caused problems and that I would probably not be welcome. That having the kind of stuff, my own feelings and expressions while I heard other people not only be able to express, but to express things that were actually many times either wrong or harmful. That discrepancy caused an incredible amount of distress and cognitive dissonance in me for a decent period of time. Did you ever experience that and how did you handle it?

Noah Rasheta [01:03:37] Yeah, early on I did. I guess I should preface this with saying my involvement with being at church isn't. I don't go to Sunday school, I don't participate in the classes. I'm just kind of there. And my job, we have a one year old, so my job is I walk the halls with her while my wife teaches. I think it would be, maybe it could be difficult to have to sit through a lesson and think, well, you know, I don't agree with how this is being presented or not, but I do have to say in my ward, specifically here in Woodland where I live, it's a very diverse audience where any topic, no matter what the topic is, I feel like people will jump in on both sides. And it's never been taboo to hash stuff out like that. So in a lesson where something is presented like, well, this is this, you would have one or two or three people already coming in from the other side saying, no, that's not how that happened. It's our job to know how things church history really played out and you get kind of the discourse going that makes people stirred and a little upset. But that's never really been taboo. We have enough people in our ward who are very open about everything that I feel like it would be easy to just. If I wanted to jump in on one side or jump in on the other side, but my personality has always just been. I just listen and don't let it get to me or bother me.

Navigating Authenticity as a Non-Believer

John Dehlin [01:05:07] What about the impulse to want to be authentic? To want to be able to express who you are, to not create an appearance of something that isn't authentic to you and just to be understood by community members, loved ones? Because usually you have to just keep everything to yourself to be accepted. Have you ever struggled with feeling inauthentic?

Noah Rasheta [01:05:34] Yeah, for sure. I think I struggled with that a lot up until I started my podcast. And once I had a place where I could be authentic and feel like this is me portraying myself to the world in an authentic way, this is how I view the world, this is how I understand things. That platform allowed me to be authentic, and it's just out there. So I feel like the misunderstanding is inevitable. Somebody who doesn't, you know, if they don't listen to my explanation of how I understand or see things, of course they're going to misinterpret or misunderstand how I am. And I felt like that, that would, that was unavoidable because by sitting there and giving off the impression that I align with these same views and beliefs, I'm giving off a false impression. By sitting there and saying, I do not agree with this and putting my stance that I don't view this, that's also giving off the wrong impression. I realized early on, why is that wrong?

John Dehlin [01:06:37] Why is that the wrong impression?

Noah Rasheta [01:06:43] What I mean is, if I were to give off this impression that, oh, I'm here with you and I believe like you, that's wrong.

John Dehlin [01:06:49] Right.

Noah Rasheta [01:06:49] And if, if I'm sitting there and saying, I don't believe this, they will also be having the wrong impression thinking,

John Dehlin [01:06:55] why is that second part wrong?

Noah Rasheta [01:06:57] Oh, because maybe they're thinking, oh, he wants to sin, or oh, he must have done something.

John Dehlin [01:07:01] Got it.

Noah Rasheta [01:07:02] You know, so either way I will be misunderstood.

John Dehlin [01:07:04] Got it, got it. Sorry I missed that second part. Okay. And. And you probably don't want them to think that you object to their right to have beliefs or disrespect their beliefs.

Noah Rasheta [01:07:17] Right, right.

John Dehlin [01:07:18] Because sometimes people think that if you disagree, you must disrespect.

Noah Rasheta [01:07:22] Right, right. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:07:24] Okay, real quickly. You know the hardest part, and we'll get to this in the Mormon transitions interview as well. One of the hardest parts is being a second class citizen. In other words, do you go to the temple to Go to the temple, you have to pay a full tithing. Do you want to pay a full tithing to go to the temple? You have to answer the temple recommend interview questions. Are you lying? Do you lie? Or do you just try and talk around them? Or talk in coded language? And then do you feel ethical if you've deceived your bishop or stake president? And then even separate from the temple, there's baptizing or confirming kids or participating in priesthood ordinances. But if you don't really believe in the power of the priesthood, and you don't really believe that baptism is necessary or that there even is a priesthood power by which you're conferring the Holy Ghost, are you, again, doing something deceitful? But if you're not doing it, then you're publicly shamed because people are saying, well, he's not baptizing his child. Why is that? He's not in the temple. Why is that? He can't attend the marriage. How have you dealt with that?

Noah Rasheta [01:08:42] Yeah, good questions. Because I think that was a difficult process for me to decide early on. Can I nuance the way I give my answers to these questions? What felt ethical for me? I had to decide early on that I just had to go with what felt right for me. And as uncomfortable as that was, that meant not participating with going to the temple or wearing garments or a lot of things that. And the premise for me was I know how meaningful this is to someone, especially my wife. I have this at home where this is something that's very meaningful to her. And I would never want her to feel like I treat this in any way of disrespect. And I felt like for me to continue to engage in those activities or to live that way while not truly believing that that was something meaningful for me was a way of mocking it. So I had to decide early on, like, as uncomfortable as it's going to be, I'm going to just be up front and say, this is something I don't want to participate in. I don't want to have a temple recommender. I don't want to. So that kind of happened early on with. With me personally. But where it started to get tricky was when a nephew is getting baptized and we're all sitting there and the moment comes up for. It's just kind of like this general. All men in the family come up here. And I found myself on a couple of those occasions feeling really torn and really uncomfortable because I didn't want to feel like an outsider. I didn't Want to feel like I'm not part of this. So the first time that happened and I was kind of caught off guard, I did just stand up and I went out and I participated in the ordination of one of my nephews. And I felt bad, I felt like there's something wrong with it because at that point people in the family know that I don't participate in other things or that I don't share the same beliefs. And I didn't want them to think that I was treating this like, oh, whatever. So then when the next event like that happened with my nephew, another nephew whose dad is the bishop, is my bishop and happens to be my brother in law, I was able to communicate with him and say beforehand, and I asked him, I said, I don't want to make any assumptions here, I would love to participate, but I don't want to be disrespectful in any way, do you think it's appropriate for me to participate? If for me this is simply a rite of passage, it's a cultural rite of passage. And he didn't reply to me. It took a few days, but the day of the baptism, he whispered to his son, his son came over to me and said, uncle Noah, would you be willing to stand in the circle? And it made me feel very emotional because he reached out to me and kind of extended that, you know, it's okay. So I participated then. And then when it was over, he came up and he, my bishop, my brother in law, he gave me a big hug and I said, thank you for allowing me to be a part of that. He said, of course. And I said, and thank you for not making me feel that pressure that it has to mean something more than a simple rite of passage. And he was just like, of course. He made me feel so good. And then months later, as we've been preparing for my own son's baptism, I've been confronted with that again because it's like, I know how meaningful this is for my wife and for the people in the ward and my in laws, my family. And so with this one, I approached it differently. I think standing in the circle is one thing, but actually performing an ordinance, I don't want to come across as disrespectful in any way to what is meaningful to somebody else with their beliefs. So with this round, I kind of decided collectively and discussing with my wife and her discussions with our brother in law, kind of the consensus of what if, let's just maybe I shouldn't participate because if it doesn't mean the same thing to me that it means to them. I would hate for somebody to feel uncomfortable, like, why is he doing this? Then if he doesn't believe, why is he doing this? So the easiest way around that is to just not participate. And the only negative side of that for me was just the ego side thinking, oh, I don't want people thinking, why isn't he up there doing this? What did he do wrong? But then again, that kind of goes back to, there's just no way around being misinterpreted or misunderstood by people, no matter what I do. Because if I did do it, I could still have people upset thinking, why is he doing this? He's just lying, or he's not being ethical, or, you know, there's no way around it. And I thought what's best for me and my circumstances was to just say, okay, well, I won't be involved with this process.

John Dehlin [01:13:48] But that's got to be a little bit tragic, right? To watch someone else baptize and confirm your own son. Right. And to have everyone in the ward and extended family wonder, is he worthy? Is there a worthiness problem? What's the problem? I know I struggled with that with my own baptism of my son. And I think, looking back, I kind of justified it and just said, oh, I'm going to baptize him. And of course, Winston had to wait a year. But at the time, I felt like I just couldn't bear someone else doing that. It was either going to be me or no one. Have you had to deal with those feelings at all?

Noah Rasheta [01:14:33] Yeah, I felt those feelings, and I was able to just kind of be with it for a minute and realize, why does this really feel? Where does the negative aspect of this feeling really come from? And I had to just be really honest with myself and understand. It comes from my ego not wanting to. You know, I want to be looked at and think, oh, he's good. And I want to avoid being looked at and think, oh, something's wrong. And that was kind of the driving force behind this entire thing, feeling uncomfortable for me. But I had to kind of think, well, this isn't about me at all. This is about. In a lot of ways, it's not even about my son. This is about the family feeling comfortable and happy with the ritual that they're all used to. And expecting is something that's supposed to happen in life. And I thought, you know, doesn't my son, when he's old enough and he can be who he is, he's the one Who'll get to decide if this is all good for him and if it is good and if it's not, it's not. But meanwhile, I was making this about me. Like, this isn't about me. It's about everyone else feeling comfortable that one more in the family has joined the ranks and done what was expected of him, you know? And yeah, it doesn't mean it was easy. It's taken me years of thinking every scenario and how I'm going to handle this. And now here I am. It's happening next month and it's still not easy. A part of me wishes it could just be me so that because I still feel connected to it, it's my son. This is a cultural practice that up until now I felt connected to. And now I'm kind of feeling for the first time that idea of if you're not really completely one of us, then you're not one of us, you can't participate with us. And that part is a little tragic and difficult, especially coming from, ironically, on the other side of my cultural background, like on the Catholic side, I've never felt that. So I always felt like, oh, that's okay if you don't believe it completely. The way to still come, still do it. And from this side it feels a little bit more like, well, if you don't exactly view it like us, maybe you're not quite welcome here. I mean, you're welcome here, but you're welcome here with the underlying intent of eventually becoming, viewing it like we do. As long as that's a possibility, it's all great. But if there's the possibility that you don't view it like us, maybe that's a little scary. Maybe you're a little poisonous and that always feels bad to kind of be shunned a little bit, you know?

John Dehlin [01:17:16] Yeah. For me, I always thought of it as a second class citizen and that you have to be quiet and silent, a silent participant. So there's a couple of good comments here. We're about to wrap up this segment of the interview, but I just want to get a few of the listener comments and questions in. So I'll start with Susan. She asks, is Giselle still active? Nick responded, but go ahead and respond.

Noah Rasheta [01:17:50] Yeah, yeah, she is. And yeah, she really enjoys the whole experience of being Mormon, of being a believer. You know, she, I think she's, she has a very open way and healthy way of interpreting her faith and her testimony or her beliefs. I don't think she comes across, and I guess I should say this for most people and that I know in my Mormon circles, and including my family, my wife's family, I think for them, it's not about being wrong or right. It's about this feels right. It feels like what I want in my life. And I think a lot of them, including my wife, if they were ever confronted with the idea of what if it's not true? I think that would be almost irrelevant. It'd be like, but it's good. It's what I like, it's what I want. And almost Pascal's Wager type approach where it's like, I have nothing to lose if it's wrong. But at the same time, I'm not hinging everything on. But if I am right, then it pays off. It's more like, if I'm right, well, I'm right. And if I'm wrong, that's okay, too. But it's what I enjoy. It's what makes sense to me. It's the cultural ties, the. And a lot of the same things that make my mom feel so comfortable with Catholicism. My mom doesn't treat Catholicism like. Well, it's because this is the right one. It's more like it's right for me.

John Dehlin [01:19:27] A lot of people have this sort of reaction if I raise my kids in the church. If I allow my kids to go to church, they're going to be poisoned. They'll become sexist and bigoted and racist and homophobic, and they'll get all these unhealthy messages about sexuality and it'll screw up their brain. And especially if they're gay, then they're being raised in a toxic environment. How do you get around the petrifying fear that your children are going to be poisoned or brainwashed or damaged by remaining exposed to teachings of the church?

Noah Rasheta [01:20:04] Yeah, I think that's a good question and a valid point. I think in our case, I don't have any of those fears with my kids because I think they're not going to be getting that from home. They may be getting that from church or from beliefs in general, but I think in our home, what they'll always experience is more of an unconditional love, like who you are is who you are. That's never going to. There's not a right way or a wrong way to be you. And I think you can get some of this in the church and in our case, in our family. I don't think that's an issue for us now. Where I think that could be problematic is if my wife was very Narrow minded with a lot of the way things are understood in the church. That could certainly be problematic in our case. I don't think she is and I don't think that those are issues that would be problematic for us in the future. I think there's a lot of love and acceptance in our home and I think in a lot of LDS families that happens. You know, they might think that they're really far one way and then a son comes out or a daughter comes out as being gay and right away they're like, okay, boom. And then everyone's like, we need to make sure you know that you're loved and accepted. And maybe you didn't know that until you're confronted with it. So I feel like the way we're tackling life as it unfolds is that we're tackling it as it unfolds rather than setting from here. You know, this is how the future is going to have to turn out. And when this happens, they have to do this and when that, you know, we're just kind of playing it by ear as it goes.

John Dehlin [01:21:45] Right. One of the most toxic things that I experience is when, you know, non believing spouse is trying to convince the kids to become atheists and to not go to church and believing spouse is trying to maintain a pristine view of Joseph Smith and of a historical Book of Mormon and the children become footballs in a religious battle between the parents. And it sounds like one of the things that makes this possible for you is that Giselle is allowing you to share your candid, thoughtful views with the children. Maybe there isn't a sense of her being threatened or competitive about or worried about you poisoning the kids. And on the flip side, you've obviously shown that you have confidence and comfort with her sharing her beliefs with the kids and you're sort of putting the power in the child and saying, we both have respect for each other, we both view things differently, we're both going to share with you different beliefs and we're going to put the trust in you as a kid to figure out what feels right to you. And that way there isn't this fear or competition between believing and unbelieving spouse. Is that fair restatement?

Noah Rasheta [01:23:06] I think so. And I mean, I hate to. That's certainly how I view feels like that's a lot of how she views it too. And I think, I think she understands that at some point there are certain things that to her feel like, no, this does have to be this way or this does have to be that way. And those are things that we'll kind of tackle as we get there. For the most part, I think that's pretty accurate with. We kind of view it, like, when you get to decide. We've had topics like this that have come up. One day our son was asking us about died. He's way into dinosaurs, so we're talking about dinosaurs. And then he's kind of like, well, oh, no, this was with Adam and Eve. And he's like, did Adam have a belly button? Because we had been telling him the purpose of the belly button, you know, and the umbilical cord. So he was like, did Adam have a belly button? And so my wife started kind of explaining, well, I think. And she kind of gave her explanation, and it was awesome, because then she turned and she's like, daddy, what do you think? And then I kind of gave, you know, from my view, from an evolutionary standpoint, you know, and I explained how I view things. And then when I was done, then we kind of turned, like, well, what do you think? And he just kind of gave his answer. And then we took that as an opportunity to tell him, you know, as you get older, you will have, you know, Mommy will say, this is how I view this. Daddy will say, well, this is how I view this. But it's important for you to know that you get to decide how do you view things. And it's okay if it's different than how mom views it, different than how dad views it, because you get to have your own. And I think that's kind of a scary thought sometimes from the believing side, but it's a healthy one, because at the end of the day, I think we both recognize that that's exactly what it is. We're not going to impose our views in an authoritarian way. This is how it has to be.

Noah's Decision to Step Away from the Church

John Dehlin [01:25:02] And I think that's to your credit. But I think it's even more to Giselle's credit because it's really rare for someone who's an orthodox believer to allow for that level of trust in a child when they view, like, there's so much at stake in terms of orthodox belief.

Noah Rasheta [01:25:23] So, yeah, for sure.

John Dehlin [01:25:24] Yeah. I'll just say. I'll just say. Josh writes, I respect Noah for forging a way that feels truthful to him. Mark talks about going to his son's baptism but not participating. He said he felt incredibly alone because, you know, the Mormons in the room jump to the conclusion that you're not worthy. He says he wishes there was a more open mindset that People could choose to participate or not outside of worthiness. He says, that's sad.

Noah Rasheta [01:25:57] Yeah, for sure.

John Dehlin [01:26:00] Steve Holbrook writes, it's not that tragic to watch others do the ordinance for your kids. At least it wasn't for me. I felt cleaner and plenty brave to just face it as a reality. But I only did this a few times before we stopped all such ordinances just to keep with tradition. So Steve says, it wasn't that bad. Melissa writes, the disrespect is sad. The parents should be able to participate no matter what. I think that that is a legitimate point of view as well. Josh writes, everything has its costs. Were Noah to have gone the route of the faithful Mormon elder in the public eye, then he would have had to be inauthentic to himself. It would have ate away at him. So this is, oh, and I have to say Nick's comment. Nick says we all live in unique social scenarios with costs, benefits, equations that are different. If I lived in Noah's circumstance, my relationship with the church may be more like his right now. My social circumstances are different. Therefore, I left the church without the cost it would probably give to him. I am happy with the coherence living gives to my story, and I respect the coherence staying has been to him. What do you think about that?

Noah Rasheta [01:27:21] Yeah, I agree completely.

John Dehlin [01:27:24] Yeah. All right. So with that, I think we're coming to a close of this first episode of the interview. Before people tune out, I just want to let them know, both to the recording and to the live audience, what we're going to do next is we're going to dig into a good hour of what Secular Buddhism is. So we're going to give an introduction to Secular Buddhism. And I just want to make a plug for Secular Buddhism. It's not just like, for me, it's not just an interesting point of view. It's for me, number one, a valid and empirically supported framework for mental health in the 21st century. If you have anxiety, if you have depression, if you're not happy in your life, if you're struggling, secular Buddhism can be a, and I'm saying this is Someone with a PhD in clinical and counseling psychology. These principles will help you live a happier and a healthier and a better life. Not only if you're no longer religious, if you're an active, believing, orthodox, devout Mormon, these principles of secular Buddhism will help you live your religion and be happier and healthier in your religion. And I would argue that the principles of Secular Buddhism are consistent with Christianity and with Mormonism and a very, very deep, in a profound way. So finally, for transitioning and post Mormons who feel like they've lost a sense of spirituality, maybe even don't like the term spirituality, and feel like they can't be spiritual anymore, my view is secular Buddhism provides a form of secular spirituality that in every way is either as nourishing or more nourishing than what I experienced in the church. So for me, it has something for everyone. Do you want to dispute that, Noah?

Noah Rasheta [01:29:29] No, I agree.

John Dehlin [01:29:31] Okay, cool. And then so we'll dive into secular Buddhism as the next episode, and then what we're going to do is we're going to come back to sort of the Mormon transitions interview, where we're just going to go question by question. More practically, what do you believe about God now? What do you believe about Jesus now? What do you believe about raising kids? What's your approach to spirituality? What's your approach to, you know, life, to meaning, to purpose? And it's going to be very much sort of for people either trying to make progressive Mormon work or post Mormon work Mormonism work. It'll be tips and tricks and approaches that you found to specifically navigating a Mormon transition. How does that sound?

Noah Rasheta [01:30:18] Great.

John Dehlin [01:30:19] Okay, so I'm going to sign off to this Mormon Stories episode one. Thank all the Mormon Stories listeners for checking us out. Please email us@mormonstoriesmail.com Please come up to the blog at mormonstories.org and make comments. Thank you for everyone who financially supports us. Your financial support is what makes this possible. So please continue if you can become a monthly subscriber. And so with that, don't hang up, Noah. Don't hang up. Facebook Live, listeners and watchers, I'll sign off and then we'll continue. Just right back on with the next segment of the interview. Does that sound all right?

Noah Rasheta [01:30:59] Yep.

John Dehlin [01:30:59] All right, thanks, everybody. Take care. Thanks for joining us today on Mormon Stories. If you enjoyed this episode, please help us make more like it by becoming a monthly subscriber@mormonstories.org music for this episode was provided by the Lower Lights. When with the wounded heart, anger or

Noah Rasheta [01:31:39] malice I draw myself apart, searching my soul.

Part 2 of 2 · Ep. 692

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Mormon Stories is a production of the Open Stories foundation and relies solely upon the support of people like you, its listeners to help keep the podcast alive or to become a member of the community. Please become a monthly subscriber by visiting MormonStories.org and clicking on the Donate button on the right side of the page under support. All contributions to Mormon Stories are completely tax deductible and go towards producing the podcast and building communities and programs of support for Mormons like you. Thanks for your support. The kindly light amid encircling gloom Lead

Noah Rasheta [00:00:43] thou me on the night is dark and I am far from home.

Part Two Introduction and Overview

John Dehlin [00:00:52] Hello everyone and welcome back to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It's January 19th and we are in part two of of our interview with Noah Rachetta, a dear friend, but also the founder of secularbuddhism.com which is a super successful podcast and book that you should all check out. But Noah's also the CEO of iStabilizer. Is that the name of the company?

Noah Rasheta [00:01:22] Yeah, Istabilizer.

John Dehlin [00:01:23] And that's a really cool company that not only makes attachments and accessories for cameras, but they make tripods, all sorts of really cool camera equipment. Do you want to talk about Istabilizer real quick or not?

Noah Rasheta [00:01:38] Sure, yeah, it's just a product line of photography and videography accessories specifically for smartphones, tablets, and then all kinds of cameras, actual point and shoot, and professional cameras as well.

John Dehlin [00:01:54] Yeah, it's great quality stuff. Mormon Stories uses Noah's tripod for many of my interviews and it's seriously, I've been through like five, six tripods. It's amazing. Completely worth the money. So I'm not getting paid to endorse Istabilizer in any way, but check out Istabilizer if you want a really awesome tripod, attachments, accessories. Noah does super high quality work in addition to secular Buddhism. So the purpose of this episode is part two. We're gonna just do an introduction to secular Buddhism and I'm gonna say that at the outset. I've already said this at the close of last episode. You don't have to believe in God or religion to get value from secular Buddhism. Or you can be an orthodox believing Mormon or any other religion and you'll probably find secular Buddhism to be 100% complementary and enhancing to your viewpoint. But if you separate all that, I have a PhD in clinical and counseling psychology. I've spent eight years now counseling people on mental health, on anxiety, on depression, on obsessive compulsive disorder, and I'VE been trained in a form of psychotherapy called acceptance and commitment therapy, which is really nothing more than secular Buddhism integrated into cognitive behavioral therapy. And by far it's the best treatment that I know out there for so much around people's just mental health and well being. And so this is profound stuff and I don't know how we're going to do it because we didn't even put an outline together and we haven't even sort of structured what this interview is going to be like. Having said that, Noah and I have co led several workshops and retreats together and I think we have a good sense for each other's stuff. So what you're going to get over the next hour is an introduction to secular Buddhism. And what I hope you'll do is afterwards buy Noah's book, check out his podcast again. I'm receiving no money or anything that I'm aware of for my endorsement. And you'll be able to go way more in depth. Is that all right? How does that sound, Noah?

Noah Rasheta [00:04:09] Yeah, that sounds great.

John Dehlin [00:04:11] And Steve says he's buying istabilizer right now, so. All right, so let's begin. Let's begin with just the main principles and concepts of secular Buddhism, what it is, and then I'll start kind of drilling you with questions to make it really meaningful and useful.

Noah Rasheta [00:04:32] Okay? Yeah. In a nutshell, contemplative practices like Buddhism is essentially a study of the mind. And the ultimate understanding that you come away with is that the things that we typically seek and associate as being external. For example, I'll finally be happy when X, Y or Z happens. Or I'll minimize experiencing suffering in life if I can just avoid X, Y and Z. What this is teaching is those things that we seek that outside of us are actually to be found inside. And it's by understanding ourselves and understanding the way that we see the world, then the way we see the world changes. So that's kind of in a nutshell. And another way I like to describe what the aim of contemplative practices like meditation or living mindfully is to have with Buddhism. We call it the path to liberation. It's not called the path to happiness. It's not about happiness. If anything, it's about learning to escape that trap. Right? The trap of thinking that the whole point of it is to always be happy. It's more about understanding that the things that we are seeking for can be found internally. And we do that by understanding how the mind works.

John Dehlin [00:06:02] Talk about the happiness trap for a second. I think that's a great introduction. If you're not familiar with that term, I can explain it, but I'm sure you are, so.

Noah Rasheta [00:06:11] Yeah. Excuse me. So I think as far as I understand it, the happiness trap is that happiness is the trap. It's thinking that it's the hamster wheel and thinking that the harder I run, the longer I go, I'll finally get there. But you don't, because the nature of the hamster wheel is that you just go, go, go. And I think Buddhism kind of takes that approach with seeking after something like happiness and life. It's saying you're on the hamster wheel, and at some point, it's not that there's anything wrong with it, but if you're tired and you're thinking, what's the point? Well, just step off. And you may understand at that point. Oh, it's okay. I can. I can get out of that trap. So applying that to happiness, it would be the shift of thinking that happiness is a goal. At some point you get it and you do it by complying with this formula. And that will get you to happiness as if it's this place. The approach that Buddhism takes is understanding that the goal, or the path itself is the goal. It's the journey. So. So rather than focusing on the pursuit of happiness, it's understanding that happiness is in the pursuit. And then the path becomes the goal. You enjoy the journey. It becomes all about the journey with the ups and with the downs.

John Dehlin [00:07:38] Yeah. And I'll just say so many of us think that happiness is the purpose of life. And what we mean by that is this feeling of happiness. And. And so we do all these things to try and be happy. But the truth is, and this is good, I think, be the launching point into the first main principle of Buddhism about suffering is that life is not always about joy and happiness. We're not wired that way. We're wired. Life has suffering. There's no way to avoid it. There's bad things that are going to happen. And it probably wouldn't be good for you to be happy all the time, because so much of your learning and your development comes from the pain and suffering. And pain and suffering can become the teacher. And so when you start pursuing happiness, why it's a trap is you pursue the happiness. Happiness doesn't come. You think that there's something wrong, you try harder, and it's this continual loop of frustration and discouragement and then dejection, and then you try harder, and then it doesn't come.

Noah Rasheta [00:08:42] And then.

John Dehlin [00:08:43] And it becomes this trap where actually pursuing happiness makes you more and more miserable. And so the, so the question then becomes, well, if life isn't about happiness, if that's not the pursuit, and I just want to say that doesn't mean that secular Buddhism won't lead to an increased level of fulfillment and even happiness. That's for me, the paradox is because for me, I'm actually happier and more fulfilled following this philosophy, but it's not because I'm seeking the happiness. And that's the irony. So if the, if the goal isn't to seek happiness, and if the goal isn't happiness, and if life isn't about happiness, there's the segue, what is the first principle of Buddhism and what is, what is life?

Core Buddhist Teaching on Suffering

Noah Rasheta [00:09:38] So the first principle or the first key teaching is that in life there is suffering. And I think sometimes this is misinterpreted as life is suffering. And that's not at all the case. It's the understanding that in life we will experience suffering, difficulties will arise, and we can experience this, whether it be through the loss of a job, the loss of a loved one, being stuck at a red light, when you're in a rush to get somewhere. Any moment that we're experiencing that life is other than how we want it to be, we experience suffering and it's universal. I think it's important to understand that it's universal because one of the illusions sometimes with suffering is that it's not fair. Why is this happening to me? And the reality is that everyone experiences this. The type of suffering may be different. It's not about comparing, it's about recognizing I know what it is to experience suffering, I know what it is to be experiencing life in a way other than how I want it to be. And I can flip that and say, and so do you, in what way? I don't know. But you've absolutely experienced that and so has he, and so has she. And then we start to see ourselves in this together. We all know what it is to experience suffering and none of us want to experience it. And that can be the catalyst for experiencing empathy and compassion when we understand that the universality of suffering. Now one of the things that I think needs to be clarified with this concept of suffering from the Buddhist side of things is an important distinction that's made between suffering and self inflicted suffering. You know, it's the understanding that to experience the loss of a loved one is completely normal and natural. And there's nothing wrong with that. To be angry at something that happened at work is completely normal and natural. But coming home and punching the wall, and now I have a hole in the wall and a broken finger, that was unnecessary and unwise. Now that's the self inflicted suffering. And we experience that outside of the. As a physical example, we do that emotionally as well. We can suffer for something and then we can add suffering to the suffering because of the unwise self inflicted suffering that we add. That we always add through rumination or

John Dehlin [00:12:11] guilt or shame or any of that sort of thing.

Noah Rasheta [00:12:14] Yeah,

John Dehlin [00:12:17] two quick things. The first is I just want to say that. Well, first of all, I like to use the term pain versus suffering. Pain is something that's inevitable. You know, we have sensors on our fingers, hurricanes come, we're all going to die. Pain is unavoidable. I call suffering that added poking yourself in the eye or cutting off your hand or whipping yourself on the back with self castigation. It's the stuff that we add to it. Like punching the wall now.

Noah Rasheta [00:12:52] Exactly.

John Dehlin [00:12:52] There's probably drawbacks to using the word pain versus suffering, but that's, that's the way I simplify that conversation. Pain is unavoidable. Suffering is what you do to add pain to the pain that's already there. Yeah, the only other thing I like that. Yeah, the only other thing I was going to say is that there is something magical about starting with the premise that life is going to be suffering. And maybe you're going to talk about this, but if you're expecting there to be suffering, then when the suffering happens, you're not disappointed, you were expecting it. But if you're expecting life to not be painful, then when it happens, you're feeling disenchanted and disillusioned, you're feeling let down, it feels personal. And then all of a sudden that's when you start adding the additional pain. If you start personalizing it like, well, God must hate me or I must have bad luck or the world must be out to get me. And that's adding the additional pain. And that's something magical about starting with the acceptance that life is. I know I'm getting ahead of myself here and stealing your thunder, but I just wanted to say. No, no, no. That's what's useful to me.

Noah Rasheta [00:13:58] Yeah. In fact, I usually relate this with a story, you know, to imagine that you're getting ready to go on a hike in the forest through the woods and right before you take off, a friend comes up and warns you and says, hey, just so you know, along that path, at some point there's Somebody who's jumping out in a bear costume scaring people. And there, now you've been warned. And there you go on your journey, and at some point it does happen. Someone jumps out to scare you. You still feel startled, you still jump. You know, you still may feel like you almost had a heart attack. But how much more quickly do you recover from that? Thinking, I knew this might happen, I was warned. And that's kind of the understanding of that in life, there are going to be difficulties. Now, the flip side of that is we typically go through life the other way as if we've never been told. And every time that does happen and someone does jump out, the way we react is in a way, as if this was not supposed to happen, and we're startled. It takes us much longer to recover. It takes us longer to process what's happening, because as it's happening and we're still thinking, this wasn't supposed to happen. This was never supposed to happen. To me, I'm on this trail that's not supposed to jump out and scare me. And I think what Buddhism is saying is it's telling you, hey, in life, this is going to happen. At some point, life jumps out at you. It's scary, but you don't have to take it personally because that's the nature of the experience of living, is that you will experience difficulties, difficulties will arise. I think that's the essential lesson that's taught in the understanding of suffering.

John Dehlin [00:15:38] Beautiful. All right, I'm going to do one quick pause and I'm going to ask my listen audience to try something. We have about 44 people that are listening. For those who are comfortable, I would love people to each share this if they're enjoying this conversation, if they think there's other people who might enjoy it. I want to invite everyone to share on their wall that they're enjoying this conversation. Just push the little share button. Share to their wall. Say, I'm listening to this really great conversation with Noah Rasheta about secular Buddhism. I think you'll love it. And I'm just curious if we can increase our listenership through that kind of outreach. So that's all I'm going to say. Okay, now, we talked about suffering. Noah, what's the next major pillar of your approach to secular Buddhism?

The Causes of Suffering and the Conceptual Mind

Noah Rasheta [00:16:25] So with the understanding of suffering as being something universal, something that. And maybe let's say, yeah, suffering. Because we're distinguishing pain and suffering. I like the way you did that. Then what we want to understand, if it's universal, then we can't get rid of it, right? And that might sound at first a bit pessimistic or kind of like nihilistic, but the understanding here is that we can attack or examine the roots of the causes of suffering. And this is kind of where Buddhism always goes to. It's. It's not about ending suffering, it's about understanding the causes of suffering and then eliminating the causes of suffering, not suffering itself. So this is where the whole concept of non attachment comes in from the Buddhist perspective. But kind of the idea here is that when we understand that the cause of suffering is wanting life to be other than it is, then the solution to it is acceptance. And I think sometimes there's pushback thinking, oh, so you're saying life's crappy and I'm saying just accept it, but I'm not, because acceptance is different than resignation. We're not saying that there's a resignation to this is how life is. And oh, well, I'm just going to deal with it. What we're saying is when I can accept that this is the way life is, with that acceptance now I can do something because it's always anchored in the present moment. Acceptance is acceptance of how things are here and now. This is it. This is all I've got. This is how it is now. With that comes the freedom, well, how am I going to change it? What am I going to do differently? And I'll discuss, I think, the idea of acceptance a little bit later. I think for now I just kind of want to clarify that the understanding of suffering and the causes of suffering, and then that leads to, well, then how do we deal with those things? And this is where I want to clarify something really quickly from the Buddhist perspective. And I'd like to hear what you think from the psychology side of this, from the Buddhist side, we would kind of say there are three layers of the mind that we work with. And starting from the beginning, there's the perceptual mind, the way I perceive life as it's unfolding, which leads to the conceptual mind, which is the meaning I'm making of how these things are, what it means about what I perceive. And then that leads to the third one, which is the reactive mind. This is where I choose to react. So in an example, this would be. We typically live in that third state, the reactive mind, which is, I'm driving, somebody cuts me off, and there I'm giving the finger. That was the reaction. It all happened that fast. Now we do that with everything, right? I think that driving is a good Example, because we've probably all experienced that. So if we take that by layer, the reactive mind that reacts so quickly that we don't even know we've already reacted, we call that habitual reactivity. And the whole purpose of mindfulness, or being introspective is to create a space with the concept my conceptual mind and my habitual reactivity. The greater the space there, the more freedom I have to decide how I react to life as it unfolds. So to understand how I'm reacting, I have to understand the second layer, which is the conceptual mind. What are the meanings or the stories that I'm creating around this as it unfolds. Using the example of the car, that cuts me off. That's only a problem because in the conceptual mind, I'm saying, this is a jerk. This is a jerk that cut me off. That's the concept, and that's what led to the reaction. Now, the conceptual mind also happens so quickly that we don't really. We don't catch it. It just happens. We're always making meaning of the events that unfold in life. So in Buddhism, we're going back to the first layer, the perceptual mind. How do I perceive the world and the events that unfold as they're happening? And from the Buddhist perspective, we say there are two. There are two perceptions that are accurate, and anything else outside of that is a form of ignorance or delusion. And that is, number one, that things are impermanent. Things are constantly changing, and we have the tendency to make things permanent. If I interact with you and I get an impression of you, boom, there's the permanent. This is John. As if I could know that from, you know, 10 minutes of talking to you. But we do that, you know, with everything, right? And the second is the understanding of interdependence, that all things are interdependent, and our tendency is to view all things as separate. There's me, there's you. There's this, there's that, there's here, there's there. So trying to kind of explain those two perspectives in a way that makes more sense, we would say on the plane of time and space, we exist in the time and space continuum or whatever. In terms of time, all things are impermanent, meaning all things are changing. In terms of space, all things depend on each other. For example, when Thich Nhat Hanh talks about this idea of inter being, and I love the way he presents it because he asks you to look at something as simple as a flower. If you See a flower and only look at it for what it is. The flower. He says, you haven't actually seen the flower. It's when you can see the flower made up of all the elements that are not the flower. The sun, the rain, the clouds that form the rain, the soil. All these processes allow that flower to be what it is. Then you start to see the flower the way a flower really is. It's interdependent with all these other things. Well, it's no different to view ourselves in that light or to view events in life. Everything has causes, has conditions, has interdependencies. And when we start to see the world that way and its interdependencies, then it changes the way we react to things as they unfold. Because now you're driving, somebody cuts you off, and there's already natural space to allow. Well, it could be that there's somebody pregnant in the backseat. It could be that this person's on their way to the hospital. It could be whatever that story could be. Now, I realize from the conceptual mind it's almost pointless to conceptualize this because I just don't know. So there's uncertainty.

John Dehlin [00:23:17] This is when I think about Christ's admonition. And I don't even know that Jesus existed, just for the record. But for those who care about Christianity, when Christ says, judge not, this is what I like to think he meant, which is, anytime you say, well, you're dumb or they're stupid or life sucks or I'm gonna die next week because things are terrible, you're making a snap conceptual judgment that very well could be and almost certainly is completely false. Right?

Noah Rasheta [00:23:54] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:23:55] And so if you can, sort of like, I'm going to stop judging so much. I'm going to stop making these snap assessments. I'm going to start cultivating an awareness that my brain just generates thoughts and feelings almost instinctively. And I'm going to start practicing noticing that my brain does that and. And holding them at a distance instead of seeing those judgments as being true. If I can do that, then I create a little bit more freedom to react. Not in a reactive way where I'm harming myself and others, but instead react in a more wise way for myself and for other people. So forgive me now. Keep going. I just wanted to add that to bring it home a little bit.

Noah Rasheta [00:24:44] Yeah, No, I love that. That's exactly the idea here, because like I mentioned before, it's called the path of liberation. Mindfulness is. Is a path of being free. And this is what we're Talking about being free from our habitual reactivity. I think even with the chase for happiness, sometimes we think, well, what I need is I need more money. Because if I have more money, then I'll have the things that I want. Why do I want the things that I want? Because then I'll be happy. But why do I really want to be happy? Because then I have the freedom to just be. We think that that's the space where we finally have freedom, is the space of happiness. And. And the reality is that becomes the trap that is, you know, it's the moment you have happiness, and now there's the thought of not having it. Well, now you're experiencing suffering because of the happiness. And what Buddhism is trying to say is in life there are uncertainties, and that's not a problem. The problem is that I'm not okay with that. I'm not okay with the uncertainty. So these contemplative practices, like what we do in mindfulness and meditation, the goal isn't to learn to be happy. You can't fake that. You can't just, well, I'm going to sit here until I'm peaceful and enforce that. That's not the point. The point is there's discomfort in life. How do I become comfortable with discomfort? Because the moment I can do that, well, now I'm okay. I'm at peace and I'm content again, not because the circumstances change, but because I'm okay with the circumstances.

John Dehlin [00:26:17] Yeah. Do you have, like. I like the arrow analogy you use. Do you have an analogy or two? Your stories are always the favorite part of what you do. Do you have a story or two to kind of illustrate kind of what we've talked about so far with the.

Noah Rasheta [00:26:35] With the concept of.

John Dehlin [00:26:39] Well, think of that as an invitation to just always invoke whatever stories you think help. Help drive the point home. Because your story's about the river, about the bridge, about the arrow. And there's several. There's several about, you know, the river or the bridge or whatever. Just. They're great. So feel free to sprinkle those in.

Noah Rasheta [00:27:01] Okay. Well, one, I think that's relevant to kind of to this, what we're talking about here. You know, when people ask about Buddhism, I always like to. To explain how pragmatic Buddhism is in its approach to life. So there's a story that's a parable about a man who was shot with an arrow, a poisoned arrow. And as he's sitting there, realizing he's been shot and that it's a poisoned arrow, he immediately becomes concerned with all the details. You know, what kind of wood is the shaft of this arrow? What kind of feathers are on the end? What kind of bow, what kind of string was used on the bow? Who shot it? Why did he shoot it? Where did he come from? All the details around the circumstances of what just happened. So all of his entourage goes out to discover all this and then come back and he's dead because it was a poisoned arrow. And the Buddha talks about this story as an analogy, saying, when we get caught up with trying to understand the existential questions of life, essentially what we're doing is we're dismissing the situation at hand, which is that we've all been shot with a poisoned arrow. Our time is short, and it's filled with uncertainty. So what's more important to discover the details of these things that are irrelevant or to tend to the situation at hand, which is how do I minimize the suffering that I'm experiencing for the amount of time that I have left? And I love that story because I think we all have that tendency to want to get caught up in the existential details of this experience, that here we are alive, and now I want to know why? Why am I here? Where do I go when I die? And what Buddhism is saying is, well, sure, you can entertain that, but is that going to distract you from the real situation at hand, which is that we're all here, we're alive, there is suffering in the world. How do we minimize that and make the best of the time that we have? Because all we have is the present moment. That's it. And you may bank everything on a possible scenario of afterlife or on anything in the future. But why would we want to when we for certain already have this, the present moment? And this is where we can start to learn to experience life in its entire spectrum with the good and the bad, the happy, the sad. All is one big thing. And what we get out of that is this strong sense of contentment. And I think contentment or joy is different than happiness because happiness as an emotion and reality is no different than sadness as an emotion. When the causes or the conditions are right, you experience happiness. When the causes and conditions are not there, happiness is gone. So same with sadness, same with anger, all of those emotions, and they're all natural. But contentment or joy is more of an attitude. It's a disposition that we can foster, that we can learn to develop. And then with an attitude of joy or contentment, we accept all of it, the full range of it. So when we're experiencing the happy, when we're experiencing the sad, when we're experiencing the angry, they're all equals. And there's no aversion. There's no, I want to avoid this one and get more of this one. It's more of, I'm taking it all in. It's all part of the experience of being alive. And that's contentment, that's joy. That's the peace or the equanimity that I see so often in people who practice contemplative traditions. Because for them, it's about all of it. They're not pushing anything away.

John Dehlin [00:30:45] Right. If I could just go back to the arrow analogy for a second and then actually illustrate it with a real live person. If you're sitting there with an arrow shot in you, yeah, you could be angry that someone is out to get you. You could try and build up a story around why they did it. You can feel all this shame and guilt that someone would hate you so bad that they would want to shoot you. You could marshal all your resources to go run after and find who did it and chase them down. But the truth is, every minute that you waste doing those things, you're number one. You're wasting time that you could actually spend treating yourself like maybe getting the arrow out of you, right? And then whatever. And maybe that could prolong your life, so to speak, by actually dealing with whatever the situation is at hand. But also, whatever time you do have remaining, you can either spend it in ways that are consistent with your values, or you can spend your time fearing and beating yourself and chasing after people and making enemies and creating more wars and even making more people want to shoot more arrows into you. So what you can do is just say, I have an arrow in me. I accept it. Let me figure out how to deal with that. And then with whatever days I have left, I'm going to live as meaningful and as good of a life as I can after being shot with an arrow. And an example of that was very real. I talked to a friend once who was really reeling from a divorce, and he felt like there were good reasons for the divorce, but he also felt like his spouse, his ex spouse, had demonized him and blamed him. Maybe it was his fault. Maybe he was the reason. Maybe he was in denial and he was literally paralyzed with the shame and the rumination and the guilt over the fact that he was divorced. And he was spending all his time in his brain beating himself up and trying to figure out, was I really to blame Was I not to blame? Was it more her? Was it more me? How much do I blame myself? How much do I blame her? And, you know, the way to apply this was to say, you know what? You're divorced. That's just what is. And as long as you're divorced, it kind of doesn't matter. Number one, it probably doesn't matter what the cause is. But number two, it's probably never fully knowable what the percentages are of whose fault it is and what the exact causes are. It's just impossible. So kind of all you have is, what are your values now? And what. How much time do you have left? And how do you want to spend that time? That's really all that matters. And like. Like Steve. Steve Holbrooke just wrote the Power of Now. That's Eckhart Tolle's book. Where's all your power? It's not in ruminating about the past. It's not in fearing the future or having anxiety about the future. The power is in at exactly 12, 1:25pm you know, on January 19th. What can I do right now? What decisions can I make now that are going to lead to something better? And that's your only power. Because tomorrow may never come and yesterday is gone. Sorry, I had to just jump in and say that.

Noah Rasheta [00:34:13] No, that's great.

John Dehlin [00:34:15] Yeah. Okay. So where do we go from here?

Noah Rasheta [00:34:20] I think so, with that understanding of suffering. It's something I wanted to add to the arrow analogy you mentioned, because there's this natural arising of empathy and compassion that we strive for in the contemplative practices. But it's not compelled. It's not like you're commanded to be kind or it doesn't happen because it's supposed to happen. It happens because it arises naturally. So the idea here is using the parable of the arrow, when I understand the situation at hand with me, I've been shot with an arrow, and then I turn and look at you, and I understand, holy cow. So has John. He's been shot with this arrow, and his time is limited. Whether or not you notice that in yourself is irrelevant, because now I notice it in you changes the way I see you. And it allows me to have this natural compassion. Thinking his time is limited. And he may not know that, and that's beyond the point, but I know his time is limited. I start to see you in the same way that I see everything else, which is that in terms of being impermanent, always changing and interdependent with all the things that allow you to be you. So the Buddhist approach is that when we start to see the world that way, things like compassion arise naturally, not because it's forced, but because there's just a natural arising that causes you to change the way you see yourself and the way you see others. And I think it's important to bring that up because that's kind of the analogy that we talked about. It's the consequence. It's not the goal, it's not the purpose. But it's one of the things that happens in Buddhism. We talk about this like. It's like you're out there chasing happiness, for example, or compassion or whatever it is. You're chasing it like a butterfly in a field, like a crazy man trying to catch it, and you just. You're not going to catch it. But the moment you quit trying and you sit down, it comes and it lands on your nose. And that's kind of how this concept of kindness or compassion, it's not forced. You can't. You know, I'm going to be kind because I was told to be kind. Well, that's not kindness. That's pretend kindness. Same.

Labels, Beliefs, and How They Shape Us

John Dehlin [00:36:34] It's obedience. Right?

Noah Rasheta [00:36:35] Yeah, yeah. So what we're saying is through this approach of seeing, changing the way that I see the world getting really introspective and looking at my perceptual mind, the way I perceive things as they are, is this really how they are? Is this just how I perceive that they are? The natural consequence of all of this, at the end of it, is a natural arising of kindness and compassion and understanding. And I think that's important to bring up because while that's not the goal, it is the result.

John Dehlin [00:37:06] Yeah. It allows for. Instead of having these labels that we put on people and ourselves, they're good, they're bad, they're with us, they're against us, they're on our team. They're not. Or these stories that he tried to hurt me. He was trying to. You know, she was trying to. You know, she's bad. She's. She's part of this whole thing. Instead of getting caught up in labels and in stories, you're just saying none of that's necessarily true or false. We're all interdependent. We're all part of our context, part of our DNA. We're part of a group. We're all on a journey. And I'm not going to let labels and stories sort of characterize people and mischaracterize people in a way to where we have animosity and separation. Instead, I'm going to view the world as, we're all on this journey together, we're all trying, and let's just give everyone compassion, the benefit of the doubt. That's kind of how I think of talk about labels and stories and their role, good and bad in our lives.

Noah Rasheta [00:38:16] Yeah. So from the Buddhist perspective, the problem with labeling something. And let's use good and bad as an example here, because in our Western mindset, and especially in the Christian and LDS mindset, there's this dichotomy between good and bad, right and wrong, true or false. And I think that comes naturally for us, not just as from the Mormon background, but from our Western thinking. And the problem with that is. So there's a parable that's told about an old farmer who has a horse. And a lot of people have heard this story, but the premise of the story. The premise of the story is that there's an old farmer who's out in a field, and out of the blue, a horse shows up. And he takes the horse, and his neighbor comes running over and says, you know, how fortunate for you. And there are different versions of the story. In some, it's how lucky or how blessed or how I like to say, how fortunate.

John Dehlin [00:39:14] Wait, start with this horse going away, him losing his horse. I think that's powerful. Yeah, unless you don't want to.

Noah Rasheta [00:39:24] Well, the way I heard the story, it starts with a horse shows up, okay. And then the second thing that happens is the horse leaves. And the moment the horse leaves, the neighbor comes running over and he's like, oh, no, you had a horse, but now it left you. How unfortunate. And again he just replies, well, who knows what is good and what is bad? And he goes about doing his thing. And later the horse comes back with another horse. And then the neighbor comes running over and he's like, oh, now you've got two horses. How fortunate for you. And he says, who knows what is good and what is bad? And he goes about doing his thing, has the horses in the corral. His son takes one of the horses out to try to start working with it in the field, and it knocks him off and it breaks his leg. And the neighbor comes running over. He's like, your son, your only helper in the field has a broken leg. How unfortunate for you. And again the old man just says, who knows what is good and what is bad? And he goes about doing his thing. And the next day the army comes into town and they're conscripting all the youth to join the army, but they can't take his son. And they do take the neighbor's son. So of course he comes running over and he's like, they didn't take your son because you broke his leg. You're so fortunate. And then at that point, he just pauses and says, who knows what is good and what is bad? And then goes home. And that's the end of the story. But I love that story because what it's teaching us is that in the context of the event as it's unfolding, we have the tendency to decide this is good, this is bad, this is a fortunate thing or a misfortunate thing. But because we don't understand the bigger picture, we never do, it's wise to not get caught up in that. And the labeling and the making the meaning. Now, that's not to say when the old man's son breaks his leg, sure, there's going to be discontent or unhappiness or sorrow, sadness. It's not saying that you're numb to things as they unfold. But it's important to distinguish the difference between experiencing life with all of its emotions versus categorizing life into inherent goodness, inherent badness. This is, you know, because it's. What it's saying is what was bad in one context became good the moment the context changed, the circumstances change. And because we don't know all the circumstances in the context, let's be very careful to not label things as inherently this or that. Or if we do, to at least recognize it is. Right now, I don't know what it is 10 minutes from now, but right now this seems like an unfortunate thing. Losing a job may seem as an unfortunate thing that six months later you're at a new place, thinking, man, I'm so glad I lost my job because I would have never landed this job. That's the difference of making meaning. Now, if that applies to life and the events of life, how much more relevant is that to the way we treat people? Who you are in the moment, I label you, you're this, you're that, you're a believer, you're a non believer. It's like I'm making something that's impermanent, permanent by attaching a label to it. When the truth is, I don't know what this is. I don't know what Alan Watts used to say. You're under no obligation to be the same person that you were five minutes ago. And that's because understanding the nature of impermanence, that all things are changing, you're giving yourself that freedom to always be who you are in the here and now. Not who I was. I'm certainly not who I was five years ago, ten years ago. Same with you. Which could only imply that we may not be at all who we are now, five years from now or ten years from now. So we allow there to be that space of I'm interacting with you only in the context of the present moment, and it's in this present moment that you have all the freedom to be who you are right here and right now. But I'm not going to make anything permanent out of that.

John Dehlin [00:43:26] Yeah. And in a transitioning or post Mormon context, this is such a powerful and undiscussed concept because what happened was we were told this narrative and we were given these rules and instructions as believers and we believed it. And then at some point, either it didn't work for us or we learned a different narrative. And all of a sudden it's like, okay, we had this one believing narrative and everything was good, but then it wasn't good. So then we get this counter narrative, and all of a sudden that counter narrative is good. And then everyone who believes or the church that we're a part of, or everyone who's in it, well, they're all bad. And the church is a cult and the church is a fraud, and everyone who's a believer is dumb. But anyone who's been around the block a little bit longer realizes that there's smart and dumb people who believe and there's kind and evil people in the church. And religion does good things and religion does bad things. And being post Mormon can be good, but you can also completely wreck your life and it can all of a sudden become really bad. And so if. And by the way, this notion of having to have there be one truth and you're on one side or the other just sets you up for all sorts of divisions and sadness, separation, broken relationships, disappointment and disillusionment again. And so we have to just really be careful and say, what about instead of saying Joseph's a pedophile or the church is a fraud, or the church is true and non believers are awful, what if you just let go of the labels and what if you let go of the stories? You say, we'll never know exactly what happened. We'll never know exactly what is good or bad. We'll never know who exactly is good or bad. We're just going to say, where am I now? Who am I with? How do I have the best? How do I make the most of today. Right now, 1:36pm I'm with Noah. How do I make the best of that? Because that's all I really have. And what is it you say about stories and the rope? Talk about that.

Noah Rasheta [00:45:44] Yeah. So thank you for sharing that. I totally agree with you. I like to have the philosophy of what am I doing in the present moment to minimize the suffering of others or of myself? Because that's really all that matters. In the context of the rope, there's this idea how our beliefs are what bind and blind us. And I'm not referring to beliefs in general, like a belief in a God or not God, or I'm talking about any belief. I believe, you know, that I'm fat or I believe that I'm ugly. You know, those are beliefs and these are concepts.

John Dehlin [00:46:26] I'm depressed or I'm. I'm a better than you. Yeah, I'm amazing. I'm fabulous. Right.

Noah Rasheta [00:46:32] I'm smart. I'm. I'm right. You're wrong. So the moment we hold a belief, we're bound by it. And there's a quote that says, good beliefs are like a gold chain and bad beliefs are like a rusty iron chain, but they both equally bind you in the end. One may be pretty, the other one may be ugly, but you're still bound by it. And I experienced this firsthand just a couple of years ago through my work and traveling to China. I was meeting with a new supplier who manufactures one of the components to one of the products I sell. We had been communicating for about six months or so by email. When you're dealing with people in China, they usually pick a Western name to make it easy to do business, and they just kind of pick whatever name they like. So I had been working with Chris, and at another factory I worked with Wyatt, and at another factory I worked with Jason. So I had been working with Chris, and we decided to meet while I was in China. And the day, the time and the place come for meeting Chris in person and I show up and I just couldn't see him anywhere. He wasn't there. And I'm looking down at my clock and minutes go by and eventually 15 to 20 minutes go by, and I was starting to get frustrated that he wasn't there. So I finally just sat down at the table. This was in a long hallway at an Expo center. And one of the young girls sitting at the table who had been there on her phone the whole time, looked up and she said, oh, hi, are you Noah? I'm Chris. And it Was just this. It was a shattering moment for me because I just laughed and thought, of course you're Chris. Because that's not at all what I was expecting. And in the days after this experience with Chris, I realized that's this concept of how our beliefs or our concepts blind us. It's the moment I had a picture of who Chris was, I was, in a very literal way, blinded to who Chris actually was. And there I was looking at Chris, not seeing Chris because of a belief. Now think of all the other areas in life that we do that, you know, John's a bad guy. Well, now I'm bound by that. That concept literally binds me to only seeing you. The way that I've bound myself through my own belief or extend this to almost anything you can think of, or my lover.

John Dehlin [00:49:08] My lover is everything. She's my salvation. What type of expectation does that put on a person to be your everything? You think, oh, I found my soulmate. But what happens when they're not your soulmate all of a sudden? Right.

Noah Rasheta [00:49:22] Exactly.

John Dehlin [00:49:23] What does it do to how you feel about them and your relationship? Because you built them up with too big of a label.

Noah Rasheta [00:49:28] Right?

John Dehlin [00:49:29] Right.

Noah Rasheta [00:49:30] Yeah. So the goal with contemplative practice, with living mindfully, that's what we're being mindful about. What concepts or ideas or beliefs do I hold that may be blinding me from seeing whatever is actually there? We call this the dichotomy of reality and the concept of reality. So there's what is, and then there's the story I've created around what is. And the moment I do that, I'm bound, I'm blind. And this isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it is a limiting thing, because the moment we do that, we can't see reality the way that it is. So we're striving at any given moment to break through the conceptualizations that we've created around reality, to just be exposed to reality as it is, as a neutral observer, not making good or bad meaning out of it. It just is what it is. And in that context, if I'm upset, I'm free to be upset. I'm free to be angry. If I'm going through something, I'm free to just be with whatever is. Because of the nature of things being impermanent, eventually I won't be feeling that. I think at one of our workshops, we kind of encountered this where someone was listening to all this and then saying, well, I like all this, but it makes it seem like it's not okay for me to be angry, and I just want to be angry. And I don't know if you remember, but we were kind of like, no, what we're saying is you're free to be angry. If being angry is what you are, then be angry, because it's thinking you're not supposed to be angry that's aggravating the anger. And ironically, a few minutes or hours later that day, it was kind of like, I don't. He was like, I actually don't feel as angry anymore. Do you remember that?

John Dehlin [00:51:15] Yeah, absolutely.

Noah Rasheta [00:51:16] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:51:17] That's part of the power of acceptance, too, that instead of trying to not be angry, just accepting your anger ironically makes you less angry. I want to pause for just a second. There's three things I want to cover. First, Nick, your brother, is. I think he has a joke for us. He wrote, I can conceptually grasp a belief in Chris, but I almost certainly don't believe in your Chris. And then he has a smiley face. So I just had to share Nick's little joke. Two more things. You say that there's power and not having belief, and this is intellectual. People are going to have this reaction, which is, well, secular Buddhism is a whole set of beliefs. This whole podcast is a set of principles that are assertions for a way to look at the world and a way to behave that is more healthy and constructive. And so which is it? Don't have beliefs or follow secular Buddhism, which is a belief. Like, how do you get out of that sort of logical, recursive criticism?

Noah Rasheta [00:52:25] So I would say, first of all, don't follow secular Buddhism. Don't think that this is something that needs to be followed. This is relevant only to the people who this is relevant for. And what I mean by that is it may be that none of this is applicable or relevant right now in your life, and that's fine. The Buddha was asked this question on multiple occasions because he would talk about the danger of becoming dogmatic. And then people would say, well, isn't Buddhism itself what you're teaching? Isn't this a dogma? And he would say, it's not, because a dogma requires something to be a certain way, and any other way is wrong. He's saying, what I'm saying is, look into your own mind and look at the nature of reality. This is something that doesn't need to be believed in. It's observable. The longer time that you sit observing your own mind and the nature of your own mind, then you can logically arrive at the conclusion of, oh, all things are interdependent of one another and all things are constantly changing. That's it. That's the nature of reality. There's nothing to believe in that because you don't have to believe. Are things really impermanent or are they permanent? I'm going to choose to believe one over the other. It's not about believing it, it's just about observing it. And the irony in that is you can observe it. And if that's not observable to you, then your reality is still your reality. This isn't dogmatic, you know, it's not like this is the set that has to apply to everyone and you have to see the world this way. That's non existent. I think in Buddhism in general, and certainly in this approach, a more secularized form of Buddhism, this isn't a message that's being proselyted. This isn't a worldview that's being sold as, hey, come try this out. It's not that at all. It's saying, whatever your worldview is, stick with it. But look at it, analyze it, get to the root of why do I see the world the way that I see it? Doesn't mean you have to let go of any beliefs and you certainly don't want to add any new beliefs. In fact, when it comes to belief in general, kind of what we're saying is, you know, I've got my glasses on and there's my way of seeing the world like this without glasses. The moment I put my glasses on, this would be like the filter of my beliefs. It alters the way I view the world in some ways. It can enhance it in other ways. If they were tinted, it could be diminishing my ability to see reality as it is. So it's not that there's anything inherently wrong with the belief that. But what we're saying is, what we're trying to get at is what are the layers that are currently limiting beliefs that are unhealthy, that are altering the way that I see the world. Look at those, explore those and be willing to let go of those. But we're certainly not trying to adopt any new ones because we see the belief itself as the problem. That's the tinted layer that we. I don't take yellow glasses and fix it by putting on blue glasses on top of the yellow. You know, I don't know if that makes sense.

John Dehlin [00:55:42] It's almost like you're kind of saying Buddhism is just someone's best attempt at describing reality and participating in reality. Steve writes, it's more of a context than it is a set of beliefs. It's just sort of being aware of what is and then deciding to engage with things as they more authentically are.

Noah Rasheta [00:56:11] Yeah, yeah. I think, you know, looking at it as this example, the concept would be like a label, you know, if I explore. Who am I? Well, I'm Noah. Okay. But that's just my name. I'm an American. Okay. Well, that's just, you know, that's just where I live. Whatever I keep adding to that. Those are the beliefs. What Buddhism is saying is at the root of all of this. Who am I? I'm just me. That's it. Anything I add to that becomes the label or the story or the belief we're trying to become comfortable with. Well, if I'm just me and that's it, I don't have to be caught up in, well, is that me a believer, or is that me a non believer? Or is that me a good guy or is that me a bad guy? That's what we're trying to break away from.

John Dehlin [00:57:00] Got it. Okay. Another question from a listener, and I'm just trying to scroll to it. Okay. And I may not find it immediately, so I'm just going to say someone wrote in and basically asked, but what about. Okay, this is Joshua. He wrote, what do I do when I see injustice in the world? For example, if I see a religion treating LGBTQ people badly, the suicides that result from that, how do I not assign that bad label and yet still protect vulnerable people and himself from the harm that's being caused? So how do you address that issue of bad? You know, rape is bad and murder is bad, and, you know, poisoning people is bad. And there are things that I think we could just objectively, categorically say they're bad. Right?

Noah Rasheta [00:58:00] Yeah. Yeah. For me, the difference here is when I understand bad things happen. But that's different than saying there is an inherent badness, like evil, for example. To assign these things to something inherent like evil leaves us powerless. Some atrocity happens. Hitler, for example. Am I really mad at Hitler for being unwise and committing the atrocity, or should I really be mad at the devil for being the source of evil that caused Hitler to happen? What Buddhism is saying is, when we separate that inherent goodness and badness, what we're left with is ourselves, the you and me of the present moment, and all the responsibility is on us. So in an event where you see an injustice rather than just thinking of it as an inherently bad thing, I can say this is a harmful thing that I'm going to say something about, I'm going to act against or, you know, it goes. Do you see the difference, though, how there's more responsibility when I get away from the split good and bad? It's not saying there's no such thing as good things or bad things. It's just saying we're the creators of it. We are the ones responsible for all these things that we say. This one's good and this one's bad. So it's not inherently bad because it's still us doing it. So all it takes for it to not be bad is for us to not do that, to make it something good. And now it's something that's positive, that promotes positive emotions rather than negative emotions.

John Dehlin [00:59:42] And I would just add that there's a practical, There's a utilitarian benefit to this approach. Let's just say you think the Mormon Church makes harmful policies and has harmful beliefs about LGBT people. Well, what happens when you go to them and say, you guys are bad, you're doing bad things and your policies are bad, and furthermore, your leaders are frauds and they're. They're homophobic. Right. So we're adding all these stories and labels onto it. Do we think that that leads to them being more open to listening to us or less. More open to changing or less versus you go to them and you say, hey, I'm noticing that there's some people killing themselves. And I'm noticing that there's ton of people leaving the church. And I'm noticing that there's a lot of kind of people who are just really sad and depressed out there. I'm wondering how what we might do to reduce the pain and suffering that's out there and the suicide, which approach, the one with labels and stories and words like evil and good and bad, is that the one that's going to lead to the best result or the one that says, huh, what can we do right now in the present moment based on our behaviors to alleviate the suffering that we see?

Noah Rasheta [01:01:14] Yeah, yeah. It's a lot like the Martin Luther King quote, which is alluding to really what Buddhism teaches is that concept that only love can dispel hate, hate cannot dispel hate and combating. So when we're stuck in that mindset of bad, that's kind of the idea. Or Thich Nhat Hanh says, the more we understand, the more we love, and the more we love, the more we understand. And I think in my own life I've seen this as the classic example, like, you may have an organization that teaches this and says that, and the result of that is that you could have a narrow mindset that's prevented from accepting somebody the way they are now. The way to combat that isn't to say your way is wrong. The way to combat that, I think, is to approach it, saying, I'm sorry that you see it that way. Let me tell you how I see it, because here's what I see. And then we describe, from a place of understanding and love, this person. And that's what starts to influence the other party to say, I wish I saw it that way. Not because it's force. It'll never work to say your way is wrong. It never, ever works that way. All we can do is try to have not only understanding for the person we're describing, like the LGBT scenario, but also understanding for the person who doesn't view it that way. How can I understand the believing orthodox member? And out of that understanding, say, I can see why you view them this way because you're caught by your own beliefs in a mental prison as well. And then there's space for compassion towards that view rather than just animosity or hatred.

John Dehlin [01:03:00] Beautiful. Okay, let's segue. Now. One of the most misunderstood things about Buddhism is the notion of mindfulness or meditation. The basic way that I see it happening is somebody says, mindfulness or meditation is good. So people sit down and try and meditate. They expect that they'll have the Zen moment where their mind becomes a clean slate, and they're able to totally become one with the universe and feel all sorts of positive adrenaline and positive reinforcement and exhilaration. And then they'll just run around being happy and joyful all the time, because by meditating, they're able to clear their brain, experience Zen. And what people actually do is they start meditating. They get distracted in their thoughts, they get frustrated, they're not feeling better. They're actually feeling worse because they're trying not to have thoughts and they're trying to clean their mind. But the more they try and empty their mind, the more frustrated and jumbled their mind becomes. And they say, this sucks, and I'm bored, and I'd rather go watch something on Netflix and eat a cheeseburger, and they give up mindfulness altogether. So before we talk about the ways to do mindfulness properly, talk about what the value is of contact with the present moment and mindfulness, how it fits into secular Buddhism, and then what the best way to practice it is, is that, okay, yeah, perfect. All right.

Mindfulness, Meditation, and Practical Tools

Noah Rasheta [01:04:38] And so I have a whole. I've developed a form of meditation called threefold mindfulness meditation, where I go in depth and talk about all of it in detail. And for anyone interested in that, you just go to getmindful.org and then just follow along there. That'll explain it all. But in a nutshell, I think one of the biggest misconceptions with meditation is the idea that it's a form of escapism. There's, like, reality. I don't like it, so I escape it for a moment as a hermit in a cave or out in the forest. What I'm doing is I'm escaping the reality that I'm not content or happy with. I'm trying to find, in that moment of escape, a little bit of freedom from reality. And the reason that's problematic is because there is no escaping reality. Reality is what's always there. You never, ever escape it. The. The true purpose of meditation is the understanding of becoming comfortable with reality the way that it is. So the last thing that you want to do is to practice it as a form of escapism. So with that in mind, what meditation really is, it's sitting there with what is. With the chaos and all of the discomfort of life. However life is, I'm going to confront it. I'm going to. Not in a way of opposition, but in a way of a neutral observer who just sits here. In the same way that I would sit out and watch the clouds passing over in the sky, I'm just going to watch. Because when you're an observer, there's no good or bad. You know, you don't look at the clouds and say, oh, that one's misshapen. This one's too white. You don't do that as an observer. You just see what's there. You don't make meaning of it. And what we're trying to do is observe this sense of self and my thoughts, my emotions, the actual sensation of being here, alive and existing. What does that look like from a neutral, observing standpoint? Because it's the process of allowing ourselves to just be observers that we accept life the way that it is. And that's where that contentment and that peace come from. Not because anything changed, but because I actually became comfortable with what is. So that's the first thing I would mention about meditation. It's not a form of escapism. You actually can't do it wrong, because when you're observing, you're just observing. And even the act of observing that it's hard to observe is the observation. There's just no way that you can do it wrong. So you sit there and you observe and then what happens, the way this translates into actual day to day life, the positive benefits of meditation translated to real life living is. And you talk about this with the idea that in real life we're always self medicating. If we're not happy with the way life is, then we're looking for distraction. And that's also what we're saying is the idea of living mindfully is my ability to live with life just the way that it is. It doesn't mean I have to like, it doesn't mean I have to. It's not about that. It's just about being with what is. And my ability to be with what is is where I'm going to find the power to accept the way that it is and change the way that it is. All because I'm not fighting it, resisting it. Whether that be distraction or a form of self medication, anything that's trying to get me out of that reality is counterintuitive to solving that problem. Because the problem itself is that you just need to be with what is. Does that make sense?

John Dehlin [01:08:24] Yeah. But a lot of people are like, well, that's too painful. That would feel awful. The last thing I want to do is really get into the sadness, really get in and hug the, you know, the misery or the despair because it feels too awful.

Noah Rasheta [01:08:40] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:08:41] What would you respond? I know what I'd say. But what would you say to that?

Noah Rasheta [01:08:44] Yeah, no, I think it's certainly a scary thing. It's like. And it's not required to overcome that. I mean, you can, maybe there's a mountain and you've been wanting to get to the other side your whole life, but you just never have because you're not willing to go through the painful part of getting, you know, climbing the mountain. Well then sure, you can stay on that side, but you'll continue to experience that suffering and that longing for wanting to be there wherever there is. And yeah, it does take that moment of introspection that can be painful for a little bit. But remember, all things are impermanent. So this too shall pass. You know, you sit there with it, this is painful. I've looked at it. I've befriended my pain, I've become comfortable with my discomfort and suddenly everything changes and nothing changed. That's the beautiful irony of all of this stuff, is that nothing will change and everything will change and suddenly everything's better. Because we can mindfully be with. What is. What would you say to that?

John Dehlin [01:09:50] Oh, in some ways it goes back to our discussion of the happiness trap or our discussions about anger when we talked about that, because you can say, well, life is miserable. So here's the way I conceptualize it. People experience anxiety, mood, depression. They have regrets about the past, all sorts of problems, right? And they don't feel good, that by definition they feel bad. And people don't like feeling bad. And so what they do is they say, well, I'll just binge watch Netflix. I will. I will drink some alcohol to self medicate. I'll take Prozac. I will. I'll, you know, masturbate and look at pornography.

Noah Rasheta [01:10:37] Stay on Facebook all day.

John Dehlin [01:10:39] Yeah, yeah. None of this is necessarily bad. I'm not saying drinking is bad or, you know, even Prozac is bad or, you know, some people believe pornography could be. Okay, my point again, isn't the label stuff. We're obviously not big into that. The functional problem with avoidant behavior is at least two things. The first thing is, what if your pain or your sadness are actually there for a reason? What if they're there to teach you something? What if they're there to get you to slow down, pay attention to what you're doing in your life and what's going on around you, and it's only through sitting with them and having them become your teacher that you actually learn the lessons that you need to learn to be able to then improve and better your life. That's problem one with avoidant behavior. Problem number two with avoidant behavior is, is that avoidant behavior backfires because what you do is, let's say you're a jerk and you're depressed because all these people are treating you crappily and. And they're treating you crappily because you're a jerk. Well, you're going to feel the anxiety and you're going to feel the depression. But maybe you don't really realize how much of a jerk you're being and what you're doing that is jerky. And so what you do is, is all you know is you're depressed. All you know is you have anxiety. And then if, if. But if you say in response to that, well, then what I'll do is I'll drink a lot of alcohol or I'll. I'll just smoke some weed or I'll develop a sexual addiction or avoid. What happens is, well, all of a sudden you're drinking to medicate, and are you going to be less of a jerk when you're drunk? Are you going to be less of a jerk when you're high? Are you going to be less of a jerk when you're neglecting your life by binge watching Netflix? Chances are you're actually going to become more of a jerk. And guess what happens when you become more of a jerk? Well, you have more anxiety and more depression because people treat you more like you're a jerk. They treat you worse off. And all of a sudden, your attempts at avoiding led to an increase in anxiety and an increase in sadness. And so avoidance actually makes the sadness and the anxiety and the depression worse than when it started. And it also, you never learned the lessons that life's trying to teach you. And so that's why sitting in the sadness, being mindful about it, being curious about it, hugging the sadness, hugging the anger, hugging the despair, it makes it less of a big thing. It allows you to learn from it, and it allows you to move on and actually get past it in a way that trying to avoid it and numb it just never will.

Noah Rasheta [01:13:53] Yeah. Yep. That's great.

John Dehlin [01:14:00] How so really quickly, how does it work? So you just. What are some practical ways that people can start meditating or start being mindful? And how. How in the world will. Like sitting in and listening to Headspace or, you know, calm.com or joining. Joining one of your meditation retreats or whatever it is. How in the world does that lead to a happier, healthier life? So what do you have to do? And how can give people a roadmap for how 10 minutes a day is going to translate into a better life?

Noah Rasheta [01:14:39] Okay. Yeah. So I think a good way to visualize this entire process is the same way we understand yoga or exercise in the gym does for the body what mindfulness or meditation does for the mind. You don't go to the gym and work out for two hours and then think, that's it, I'm strong. In fact, usually the opposite happens. Now you're very weak. You can barely move the next day. So think of consistency over duration. Now, if you went to the gym for half an hour every day and you follow a plan and you're building up certain muscles at some point in the future, whether that be weeks or months, you notice there's a big change, and now you're more healthy, you're stronger. It used to be hard to lift this thing, but now you can, so you start to see the actual benefits. Well, meditation is really no different. You start to learn to sit there and there are various techniques. There are three main ones. One is the technique to calm yourself. That's a big benefit for some people, just want to be more calm. Others, you practice observing. And that's kind of learning to switch the mind from that outward way of thinking to turning inward. And if I just look inward and become introspective, what do I do as a natural observer? And then there's like the analytical mind. And I talk about this usually through Visualize a pond. And it's got murky water, and you're always throwing rocks into it because that's what keeps it murky and unsettled. Now, the first thing you'd have to do is calm it. You stop throwing the rocks, you calm the mind and give that time. And then all that sediment starts to settle. And now you've got water that's clear. That's learning to observe. And the moment I can learn to observe and look into that clear water. Now, what's actually there? What do I see at the bottom? Oh, there's an old rusty can there. There's this tire. Let's move that. That's the analytical part. But you can't really jump to the end if it's still murky. And the water's all difficult to look at because we haven't learned to calm the mind. So one technique of learning to calm the mind is practicing. You just sit there with your thoughts, observing your thoughts. And you do that for five to 15 minutes every day. And give it roughly two to three weeks, you will notice a difference. You'll start to notice that you're not as reactive. The reactivity is like those pebbles. The moment you react, there's a new pebble. And now it causes all these new waves. And you're always dealing with the waves of the reactivity that you're as you interact with life. Now, when you can learn to be calm and by practicing that consistently day after day, after a while you notice you're not as reactive. It's easier to have something happen and just think, I can be with this. Because that's what you're practicing is just being with something, sitting, doing. I mean, you're not doing anything. You're just sitting there observing. And then with time, through that observation comes the ability to gain insight. You start to see, oh, when this happens, and I react this way, I've been able to sit with that long enough to where now I know. Oh, that's why I'm upset. You start to look into things deeper. One layer and then two layers. You get Good at being introspective. And there are a lot of benefits to that because, I mean, just think of how easy it is being married. Your spouse says something and then you react. And here you are in this fight with your spouse and you realize, oh, it had nothing to do with whatever I thought the catalyst was. You didn't take the trash. Oh, I thought that's what I mad at. But no, there's more. There's always something else. That's what you become good at. That's where mindfulness really starts to kick in. So the techniques, there's simple sitting and observing your breath, noticing the breath goes in and the breath goes out. It can become more complex where you practice observing your thoughts and you just watch the thoughts come. Boom, it's replaced by another one. You watch that one, boom, replaced by another one. And you just observe yourself and the busyness of the mind not trying to change it. You're not trying to not have thoughts, you're just observing. And those are kind of the steps. And eventually you get to this place where it becomes natural to observe the thoughts. And when you observe something, you gain insight by looking at it. And that's where you start to gain insight into the nature of your own. The way you are, the way my brain works, the why I think, the things that I think, that kind of stuff.

John Dehlin [01:19:25] Beautiful. Do you have any apps or simple ways for people to get started? I'll just say that my wife and I started with this app called Headspace, which was really, really powerful of an introduction to just 10 minutes a day of meditation. After that we discovered calm.com which is another app. And literally Margi and I, every morning, for her and for me, almost every morning, depending on my schedule, we sit down at the foot of our bed, we turn on calm.com, we do a 10 minute mindfulness meditation. And it has been incredibly powerful for our family to introduce mindfulness to it. So I recommend calm.com or headspace. Do you have anything else to add in terms of specific tools or technologies that people can use to start practicing mindfulness?

Noah Rasheta [01:20:23] Yeah, I like calm. Calm.com. i like headspace. There's another really good one called Insight Timer. And the nice thing with Insight Timers, you can do guided meditations or just listening to music. You can have meditation bells that go off every five minutes or something to keep you on track. And there are communities you can join. The secular Buddhism community is on Insight Timer. I have a guided meditation on Insight Timer. That's a 15 minute one. If you go to getmindful.org, you can download the guided meditation I do. That's a 15 minute one. That's a good, I think, a good introductory way to get into meditation. There's so many resources out there.

John Dehlin [01:21:13] Beautiful. I'm going to take a minute to just do a shout out. My buddy Andrew joined us, my buddy Tad joined us, and my buddy Tyler just rejoined us. And I'm just going to say hi to my friends who are joining us. Okay, so we're towards the end of this episode. There's a whole piece that I do with acceptance, commitment, therapy, around values and committed action. And I'm not really sure how you deal with that. And it's weird because we've done several workshops together. But the way that I would ask you the question is, okay, we learn to accept life. We disentangle from labels and stories. We learn that we're not our emotions. We develop the focus on living in the present moment, and we cultivate a better sense of consciousness. And we do that through meditation and mindfulness. And that helps us disentangle from story and label and judgment and pain and suffering. What do we do? What does Buddhism say about what we do do? So now we're no longer bound. So how do we spend our life? What do we do?

Learning to Live Artfully and Closing Thoughts

Noah Rasheta [01:22:31] Yeah. Yeah, good question. So we kind of call this learning to live artfully. And the idea is, one of the overarching questions that's always at the forefront of, of anyone practicing Buddhism or practicing mindfulness is this question, who am I? And by analyzing that, breaking that down, if I'm not my thoughts, I'm not my emotions, I'm not my memories, I'm not my arms, I'm not my brain. You go through this process and what you're left with is, well, then, who am I? And what we are, we're just this ongoing process of becoming momentary events that the shift from one moment to the next, we're just this process. So then what are we left with? That what's the purpose? What are we supposed to do? And I think this is kind of what ties in with what you described with the values. We say at this point, you have the freedom to live artfully. And if you look at anybody, any artist, they do what they do because it's what they do. There's not a. There's not a hidden premise behind it. A painter paints because they enjoy painting. A singer sings because they sing. Now, sure, they could end up reaping the benefits for it. They make money doing it, or they sell a Painting, but they don't do it. They don't set out to say, I'm going to paint this so that when you look at it, you'll say, wow, that's a beautiful painting, Noah. Because that's not the careful approach.

John Dehlin [01:24:06] And then you'll pay me, right?

Noah Rasheta [01:24:09] The artful approach is, I'm doing this because this is what screams to me to do in life. So we call that living artfully. So there's this sense of freedom that comes from the moment we liberate ourselves from the meanings and the labels that we've given ourselves. It's at that moment that. The moment I become free of the attachments to labels that you've imposed on me, and I believed your labels of me. That's when I become free. And with that freedom, it's like having a blank slate, a blank canvas, where now I'm left with the freedom to build what I am, who I am, how I am, while recognizing that at no time am I bound by any of that. I can say, well, this is what I am. Oh, no, never mind. This is what I am. Nope. No, this is. You know, there's always that freedom to be living artfully. And then in that space of living, that way we can truly learn the art form of giving and receiving. Life isn't a transaction anymore. I'm doing this so that this happens. I'll be kind so that I can go to heaven. I'll avoid being mean because I don't want to be punished. Everything that has been a transaction with something to gain in the artful life, it's not about the transaction. It's just about the process itself. And we go back to that analogy of the flower. The flower receives the sun, the light from the sun, but it doesn't take it. It's not a transaction. It doesn't say, well, I'll take this. And then the sun gets nothing out of the flower's use of its rays. And when we can learn to live that way, there's this. This mindful way of living, of giving and receiving with all that is the way that the world's unfolding around me. I give and I receive. But that's different than taking or giving something that's a transaction. And we call that living artfully. And it's like one of the most enjoyable aspects of being alive is that there's no reason to. You just are. You just get to be. And you find all kinds of wonderful things with that mindset. Does that make sense, what you're asking?

John Dehlin [01:26:35] It does. And it really resonates with me. When I went through my faith crisis at Microsoft, podcasts didn't exist yet. The Internet was just kind of relatively new. And all I knew is I wasn't feeling fulfilled in my job. And I knew that I discovered that tens of thousands of people were suffering through their faith crisis. And for some reason, I just really paid attention to what I was feeling. And I got this incredible feeling that I needed to leave Microsoft. And it was incredibly controversial in my family because I was making a couple hundred thousand dollars a year, and I was actually enjoying my job, but it didn't feel right. But it was a very artistic decision because we literally gave up a $200,000 a year job, moved to Logan, and I didn't know even how I was going to be a part of the solution to this faith crisis stuff. And podcasts didn't exist yet until about a year later. So I moved to Logan and start just trying to find my way. And eventually I learned about podcasts. And then when I started the podcast, I had no idea that it was going to, you know, gain tens of thousands of listeners, let alone get to the point where people would donate to be able to, you know, support a nonprofit and its mission, several other podcasts, and that I could support my family on the income from that. None of that was ever, like, part of the plan. I just got in touch with what I cared about. I started with this desire to alleviate suffering, and then I just started moving in the direction, taking each day as it came and trying to make a little bit of a difference each day. And all I can say is, looking back now, 16 years from my disaffection and 11 years from starting Mormon Stories, I think together with the Open Stories foundation and a lot of great listener support, we've changed tens of thousands of people's lives. We've made a huge difference. I found an incredible amount of fulfillment and joy and were able to squeak by as a family and make a decent living. And I could have never constructed that. I could have never managed that in any way that I could have predicted. It came from a desire to alleviate suffering, a willingness to accept what is a commitment to living in the present moment when I had pain and suffering and fear and anxiety. To not let that bind me, to not let that hold me back, to just focus on each day what I could do, to make a difference, to learn from everything around me and live artfully into some sort of existence and offering that could help people. And it's. And it's literally the Most powerful thing that's ever happened to me. And I think it's changed the lives of tens of thousands, if not at this point, well over a hundred thousand people. And it came from these principles. And I hope that makes sense. And I don't mean to brag, but I'm not. I think bragging's a label in a story. I don't even buy into that crap anymore. I think it's just a fact that these are good things. Well, these are things. These things have been useful to a lot of people, and I'm not going to shrink from that anymore. And my guess is your work with secular Buddhism maybe followed a similar path.

Noah Rasheta [01:30:11] Yeah, I think so. I think if I were to sum up this entire concept of mindfulness, mindful living, it would be in this quote from Pablo Picasso. And he says, when I was younger, my mother said, if you join the army, you'll become a general. If you become a priest, you'll become the pope. Instead, I became a painter and I became Picasso. And I love that quote because to me, what that means is, he did exactly. The whole point of all of it is to discover who he is, and he became himself. And I think we go through life with these conceptualizations. There's who I am and there's who I think I should be, then there's who I think you think I should be. And that spirals out of control. But rarely, we have the freedom to just discover and become who we are. Who you are. That's it. Whether that be a member of the church, a believing member of the church, a non believer, whatever you are, it's embodied in that quote by the Dalai Lama to use these things to become a better whatever you already are, because there's nothing that you're supposed to be. All there is is who you are. And why not become. Discover the you that you are that you've been all along and become the best version of you that you can be. That's really what it's all about. And that's why I say it's not about beliefs. It's about learning to discover the reality of who you are and embrace that and be you.

John Dehlin [01:31:42] I love it. And when I talk to formerly orthodox Mormons about this, this is a mindset that is not intuitive because it's comfortable to have someone tell us what to do and who we are and what to believe. And, you know, sometimes it's really complicated to try and figure that out. And sometimes we can really make a mess of our lives thinking that we have the Knowledge and the ability and the insight to know what's good for us. And then you, you know that religion fills us with these cautionary tales of people who left the church. And this isn't about whether you stay or go, but I'll just say that, oh, if you start drinking, you're going to become a drunk, and if you start doing drugs, you'll become addicted. And if you. And if you leave the church, you'll cheat on your spouse and you'll get divorced and your kids will become awful because, you know, you set a bad example. And, and then the church fills us with this idea that the learned think that they are wise. And you trust in the arm of flesh, and if you trust in the arm of flesh, which you could interpret as yourself, then you're going to get lost and fall into sin and depravity and have a miserable, awful, decrepit, decaying life. And my question to you is, what would you say to a questioning, transitioning Mormon who says, I'm scared? How do I know what's right for me? How do I know who I am? How do I know what I should do? And what if I get it wrong?

Noah Rasheta [01:33:24] Yeah, I think that's a good question. And the truth is, we do get it wrong. It takes a lifetime of living to figure out how to live. That process doesn't end. We never figure it out. And this is kind of what I mentioned at the beginning, that the whole point is that there isn't a point. What that means is that you never get it because the moment you got it, it's changed. Life is always changing. It's like I mentioned this in my workshops. It's like life is like a game of Tetris and pieces show up, but you never master the game. You never figure out the game. The whole point of the game is that you figure out each piece as it comes and you have limited control over it. You can move the piece left or right and twist it around to get it to fit the way that you see best. But you don't ever master the game. You don't ever win the game. There is no winning the game. You play the game until it's game over. That's the game. And I think life is a lot like that. It's like playing Tetris and figuring it out as you go and never making the mistake of thinking, aha, I finally figured it out. Because the moment you do, the new piece shows up and now you're at it all over again, trying to figure it out all over again. And that was the point, is that you're always figuring it out. So when we talk about faith and the Buddhist understanding of things, that sense of faith is faith in ourselves, that we'll figure it out, even if that means not figuring it out. I might not figure it out for two or three pieces, but then eventually things are good, and then things are good for three or four pieces, and then things are bad again. And that's the whole point we say wisdom is our ability to be flexible. It's flexible with life as it unfolds. That's wisdom. And the moment we try to make something fixed or permanent, well, now you're not wise, because life isn't fixed and life isn't permanent. So in that scenario, to someone who's afraid, it already takes faith in yourself to put faith in someone else. The only reason I have faith in someone else is because I have faith in myself to have faith in that someone else. So there's no escaping the faith that you have to have in yourself in the first place. So, sure we'll get it wrong, sure we'll mess up. Sure we'll experience difficulties in life. The ups and downs, the, you know, in life we experience suffering, all these things. But to have the freedom to be ourselves, to trust ourselves, and to figure it out as we go, that's where there's freedom. That's where we're not seeking after happiness, remember, we're seeking after that freedom. And part of that freedom is the freedom to be free. To be free. It's kind of the paradox there. So that's what I would say.

John Dehlin [01:36:10] No, that's great. And I'm just going to. I'm just gonna ask, you know, kind of follow up some. Sometimes freedom is catastrophic. So, you know, the example I got as a Mormon was the kite. The kite is flying in the air, but it's only able to fly in the air because it has the string that grounds it. But as soon as you cut the string, you think, oh, freedom, freedom. But guess what happens? The kite comes crashing down to the ground. And. And the only other thing I'll say is, yes, it sounds healthy to say to somebody, yeah, you're gonna make mistakes. But sometimes mistakes are catastrophic. Sometimes mistakes are life ending, sometimes they're marriage ending. And, you know, some would say, just don't. Don't leave the church. And again, this is not about whether you leave the church or don't. But they would say, stay with your. Whatever your former belief was, because it's sure it's safe and it will prevent you from a catastrophic error that ends your marriage or ends relationships or ends your life. And if you cut yourself from that grounding string of an orthodox religious faith, then you risk a catastrophic error. What would you say to that?

Noah Rasheta [01:37:31] I agree with that. I agree with that completely. I think, and that's why I've mentioned on a couple of occasions that there's not a right path. That's the right path for everyone. I think for some people, based on where they are in their life and the way their personality is, it may be best to have the string. I think the problematic part of the scenario is the assumption that we're all kites, because a kite needs a string, but a bird doesn't need a string. So the bird shouldn't have the string and the kite should have the string. And then there's everything in between. There's the boulder on the ground. There's whatever you are. That's the key, is discovering what are you and being free to be what you are. Even if that means my sense of freedom to be myself means I'm going to be an orthodox believing member with structure and rules and explanations for, you know, my existence, then good, go for it and be that. Does that make sense?

John Dehlin [01:38:35] Yeah, yeah. And I'm just arguing with myself. A string tied to a bird kills the bird, right?

Noah Rasheta [01:38:43] Yeah, absolutely. Yeah,

John Dehlin [01:38:47] yeah. So that's. But then what if somebody says, what if I have a catastrophic error while trying to figure out who I am? What would you say to that?

Noah Rasheta [01:38:57] Yeah, that's a valid. That's a very valid argument and view. And I think that's why it takes. I think this is where mindfulness comes in. Because with catastrophic errors, they're typically associated with that reactivity, right? The habitual reactivity. And we want to have wisdom in the way that we approach things. If we're already volatile and unhinged, take it slow, sit with it for a minute, sit with the discontent. I think I see this all the time with doubting in general. The moment that you start to doubt your beliefs, there's this pressure. I either need to believe that it is, or I need to go ahead and believe that it isn't. And we're still playing that same game of certainty. I'm certain that it is, or now I'm certain that it isn't. And that's the problem, is that what we're not okay with is the uncertainty. What if I could sit with the uncertainty for weeks and months or even years and say, I don't know and I'M comfortable being here in the structure, the safe environment, while not knowing, or I'm going to get out of this environment but still sit with it for a minute. I'm not going to just be like, okay, well now that means I'm going to go unhinged and be reactive in this new lifestyle. Like, the whole point of being mindful is that there's no rush for anything because there's nowhere that you're supposed to be and there's nowhere that you're supposed to not be. Anywhere that you are is just where you are and be comfortable with being where you are as a believer, as a doubter, as a non believer. Just if you can be comfortable with where you are, then you don't have those big problems that are going to lead to the catastrophic events. I think you can take your time and be with what is and then using wisdom, navigate your way in this uncertain world. But now there's no problem with the uncertainty.

John Dehlin [01:40:45] Yeah, beautiful. And I'll just add, answering my own question again, one thing that first of all, the point of this isn't to make people unorthodox. It's more about if somebody, if orthodoxy isn't working for somebody and they're contemplating a different path, but fear and uncertainty is keeping them from following that path, then I want to allow them to not hold themselves back, to go towards something that's more healthy. But the response I was going to have is it's not like orthodox people don't experience catastrophic problems. Orthodox people experience divorce at the same rates as unorthodox people or non believers. Suicide and depression sometimes is even greater within an orthodox mindset. There's all sorts of, you know, there's prescription drug abuse and sexual addiction all rampant within the orthodox mindset. Absolutely. And so you. It's not, it's an illusion to think that by sticking to orthodoxy and holding to the rod, you're gonna prevent catastrophic error. I know children of apostles and prophets who are gay or suicidal or depressed or ex Mormon, divorced. Just name the condition. You'll find it in the children of the most enlightened people, Gandhi, Winston Churchill, all had disastrous experiences. Their personal lives. And that's the one thing I'd say. The only other thing I'd say is I agree with you that mindfulness is a really safe iron rod to hold onto. And avoiding numbing and self numbing and self medication is a really safe iron rod to hold onto. Because generally you're not. If you're, if you're listening to the quiet whisperings of your soul. Your soul is not going to tell you to murder somebody. Your soul is not going to tell you to become a liar. Your soul is not going to tell you take these substances that are going to wreck your life or mistreat people. Your soul is going to usually, almost always guide you in a healthy way. It's if you're listening to other voices or numbing your own voice or avoiding your own voice, where you're going to then fall prey to becoming reactive to your story, reactive to your labels or the labels and stories people give you, or reactive to your anger or reactive to your sexual impulse that's going to lead you to that disastrous decision. So we're not actually giving people an untethered, unsafe sort of alternative. What we're saying is you tuning in to who you really are and what your inner voice really says, and call it the Holy Ghost if you want to, but getting in tune with that might actually be the safest and healthiest thing you can follow.

Noah Rasheta [01:44:10] Yeah. Yep. Totally agree.

John Dehlin [01:44:13] All right, well, we're at the end of this episode. We went an hour and 43 minutes. We've still got the Mormon transition stuff. I don't know if we're going to do that now or take a break or come back. I want to thank everyone who's joined us live to listen and everyone who's listening on the podcast. So before we end this podcast, part of the episode, any.

Noah Rasheta [01:44:39] Yeah, one thing, I'd like to share this. At the end of the Buddha's life, he gathered around his monks, people who were trying to follow his way of life, which we call the middle way. The idea is it's not one extreme or it's another. It's finding that complete austerity isn't the path. Having everything isn't the path. Anyway, there's this really wonderful teaching that I think is relevant in the context of understanding faith transitions. So he asked the monks at the edge of the river, he said, suppose that a man was going to try to cross this river. And he looks left and right, there's no way to cross. So he decides to start spending time and energy and resources into building a raft. How important is the raft to this person? They're like, well, it's a matter of life and death. The raft is everything. He says, okay, now he's on the river and he crosses. Once he's reached the other side, how wise would it be to continue to carry that raft? And they deliberate for a moment, and they say, well, it wouldn't be wise at that point, it's more wise to let the raft go. And I think there's a valuable teaching there because what at one point was literally a matter of life and death, it's everything in the world to you at another point may just be dead weight that no longer needs to be carried. And I think as we go through life, we have rafts. We build rafts for different periods of life, different experiences that we go through in life. And it's difficult to let go of the rafts. And I see this quite often with faith transitions in general. We look back at our specific beliefs as the raft with resentment. Think, I should have never had that. And at the same time, if we didn't at that point when it meant everything in the world to us,

John Dehlin [01:46:35] it

Noah Rasheta [01:46:36] would have been a matter of life and death, at least in our minds. So I kind of wanted to end it with this notion. This concept of non attachment in Buddhism can kind of be summed up with this idea of the raft. It's okay to, to let go of something that at some point was the most important thing in the world to us and to analyze and look in our own lives. What are the rafts that I continue to carry that at one point may have been useful and now is hindering my progress on my path because it's unnecessary weight that I'm carrying. And I think that's a matter of introspection. I can't look and say, john, here's your raft. But I can look at myself with a little bit of mindfulness and introspection and say, wow, I'm carrying this raft that I no longer need to carry and it's okay to let go. That's the essential teaching of non attachment and acceptance. Accepting that in this moment, what was once a crucial thing for me is no longer crucial and I can let it go.

John Dehlin [01:47:35] Right, right. That's so powerful. Shandy writes that she loves the rafters story. Thank you. So you're already getting positive feedback on that. Jared says, what a great discussion. Thank you both. Emmanuel writes, I highly recommend including Loving kindness meditation as a companion to mindfulness. Andrew writes, I first heard this raft parable years ago and I love it. It's caused me to consider myself to have graduated from Mormonism. That's what Andrew says, and I love that idea. And I want to make sure our listeners know that. The point here is not to tell you whether to stay or leave religion. That's expressly not the point. Noah, what final resources do you want to point people to for more? Whether that's books, your book, your website, your podcast, workshops you're doing. What do you want to tell people if they want to learn more, if they want to cultivate this? What do you want to leave people with?

Noah Rasheta [01:48:39] Okay. There are so many good resources out there. What I've tried to do, if you go to secularbuddhism.com there is a very simple way of starting out. You just enter a little pop up window shows up that says if you're interested in learning more about meditation or about secular Buddhism, enter your email when you subscribe to that. It'll do like a one email per day for seven days with a lot of good introduction content, an introductory understanding of these concepts. And I think on the last one it says now if you're interested in learning more, it has recommendations for maybe 5 to 10 books that I've really enjoyed that all talk about these concepts much more in depth. I have a book that's also meant to be very introductory. It kind of gives a brief overview of these concepts and that's called Secular Buddhism. And then there's the podcast, which I think is a valuable resource. The first five episodes of the podcast are an introduction to all these concepts. And then every week I go into one specific topic and I'll talk about it a bit more in depth. And that's an ongoing thing. I try to update that with a new episode that's roughly 20 to 30 minutes every week. So those are all valuable resources and tools that are out there to learn a bit more about all this stuff.

John Dehlin [01:50:06] Beautiful. All right. And I'll also add that at the Open Stories foundation, we have these workshops and retreats that we sponsor through Mormon Transitions that the Mormon Transitions Workshop, we're having one in California, January 26th and 27th in Anaheim. It's going to be all about this stuff. And it doesn't matter that you just heard us talk about it, because it's one thing to hear these concepts, it's another thing to internalize them and apply them to your life. So feel free to join us there. Go up to mormontransitions.org events and you can sign up for that event. Or we also have a retreat in Salt Lake City, a three day retreat in March, and it costs the equivalent of two hours of therapy, but you're getting three full days of engagement, friendships, community. It's really one of the most powerful experiences I've ever been a part of. They're always very highly rated. NOAA's almost always a part of those. And I can't recommend them highly enough if you if you feel like you're in use for some improvement in your mental health, in your relationships, in your transition, in your life, etc. So please consider that. So we're going to sign off now to part two of this episode on Mormon Stories. Noah thank you for joining us, listeners. Thank you for joining us. Anyone who donates to Mormon Stories, you keep this possible, please consider donating today@mormonstories.org a monthly donation as low as 10 or $20 a month can transform our ability to help more people. So thanks to everyone for making all this possible. Thanks to the Open Stories foundation and Noah will come back soon to follow up with our Mormon Transitions interview. So anyone who's listening either on the podcast or live or wherever, we are still going to be interviewing Noah specifically about how to apply his life experiences and secular Buddhism to the navigation of a Mormon Transition. So please check that out if you're interested in more. All right, Noah, thanks so much.

Noah Rasheta [01:52:17] Thank you.

John Dehlin [01:52:18] Thanks listeners. We're going to not turn out of Facebook yet, but we're going to go ahead and log off this episode. So take care, everybody. Thanks for joining us today on Mormon Stories. If you enjoyed this episode, please help us make more like it by becoming a monthly subscriber@mormonstories.org music for this episode was provided by the Lower Lights. When with the wounded heart, anger or

Noah Rasheta [01:53:02] mouth I draw myself apart, searching my soul.

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