The Art of Vibrant Living Show with Daniel Aaron 4: Video automatically transcribed by Sonix

The Art of Vibrant Living Show with Daniel Aaron 4: this mp4 video file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Daniel Aaron:
You. Hello, everybody. I am Daniel Aaron, and I am delighted to welcome you all to the art of vibrant living. Super excited that today our guest, my guest is David Leaf. And I'll tell you more about him in a moment. And first off, importantly, thank you to our sponsor, Longevity Drops. And well, David, you probably know him already. If you know anything about the modern yoga world, he's one of the innovators, one of the most important teachers of our time. And he's done an incredible amount for the advancement and evolution of yoga. My own gratitude goes a bit further because when I was a a young yogi back when I was just getting into it and obsessed with it, when I discovered David and his partner Sharon in their method Jivamukti Yoga, it really blew me away as to what was possible with yoga. I was personally a bit hooked on yoga already and had learned it largely as a as a physical practice, and I knew there was a bit more to it though when I met David and Sharon and saw the the artistry with which they taught and the depth and the integration of the philosophical, which is part of what hopefully we'll get into today. Also, it really opened my eyes and I'm super grateful to you, David, for what you brought to to yoga and for me personally for being such a great model of how to bring more to yoga and for me as a teacher, how to bring more to the students. So thanks for joining us today.

David Life:
Now. Thank you for having me, Daniel. I appreciate that introduction. I'm slightly blushing.

Daniel Aaron:
Well, the fire in the background offsets any blushing, so that works out well.

David Life:
It's warming me up. I was just we got just got about eight inches of snow. So I'm out there moving it out of my way.

Daniel Aaron:
Excellent. Well, I love that. I love that you you know, you're far from a retired yogi, but from the years of living in New York City and being so deeply immersed in the yoga scene, I like the image of you up there in upstate New York in the wilderness and and even I suppose wilderness is some of what we're talking about today in ways. And for for y'all watching this show, the title is The Practice of Peace. And as David and I were talking before we came on live, we were saying how important it is that we make this really practical, the practice of peace and. You know, it's we're in a time, an era where there is so much conflict and division and pain and name blaming and, you know, like always, violence. It seems to be accelerating. And and for a lot of people, there's there's a lot of fear about that. So I think part of what part of what's amazing about yoga and part of what we can get in this is, is how can we learn from these teachings and actually apply them and put the practice into our own life. So before we go that into that, though, David, would you be up for telling our friends here a little bit about how you got into yoga yourself? I know it was a couple of years ago that you started. Mm.

David Life:
Yeah. It was a few years ago, actually. About, uh, 40. 40 some years ago. Well, you know, it's hard to say. When do you get into yoga? I think that those of us who are interested in yoga now probably have been interested in the past, meaning other lives or maybe in earlier times in this life, what we were doing, it wasn't maybe it wasn't called yoga, but there were some yogic aspects to it. Now, looking back. So. But. In in the form that yoga is appearing in the world today. My main interest started to happen when I was about 30 years old in New York City, of all places. Right. Who would have thought? And I felt something was missing from my life. And even though my life was quite full at that time, I did feel that there were things that were missing. And and my first yoga teacher was a waitress at a cafe that I own. Her name was Tara Rose, and she was a very generous and offering for me to come to her classes and she shared her knowledge very generously. And and I benefited greatly from that. And I dove in. Um, quite deeply that another benefit of being in New York City is that there was a lot of yoga available. Many of the most famous teachers at the time, Master Iyengar, Vishnudevananda, Swami Satchidananda, they all came to New York City regularly and taught public classes. And so my early studies was benefited greatly from the the grace of those. Those wonderful teachers. And and it was partly because I was living in New York City and not out here in the woods where I am now that I was able to partake of those teachings. I guess. Primarily the old story is that I was interested in Sharon. Sharon had at the time, a broken back, a broken vertebra in her back, and Tara offered that her yoga classes might help. Sharon. Learn to integrate with that injury. And and Sharon started going to classes. And so then I followed along like the proverbial little puppy dog. And although it was very easy and natural for her, it was a difficult, difficult road for me.

David Life:
I remember leaving many of those early classes crying and and just. Didn't see very much hope for myself in that process. Very tight and and tight in the body, but also tight in the mind. And over time that tightness was as yoga practices are want to do that tightness was broken through and. And here I am some 40 years later. Happy that those days are past. But I still I look back with fondness. Those early times yoga was not popular then either. I have to say. Yoga is sort of the. The an area for losers of various types. At that time it was not the hip. Modern practice. That's a cat. It was not the hip practice that it is today. And so but in in many ways that made it easier for me to sort of blend with it because I. One thing I liked about New York City is that I was sort of an outlier and I was in a community of outliers in the Lower East Side and. It was easy for me to sort of blend in with the yoga community and find a place where I could. Make have it be extreme as I wanted it to be, and as perform my personal experiments in a in an atmosphere that was not stifled in any way. And so I was glad to come to yoga at that point in time when it was not popular. Um. Even in New York City.

Daniel Aaron:
Mm. Well, I can certainly relate on the level that when I started yoga, when I look back on it now, I think, you know, actually I'll revise that when I started the physical practice of yoga because I agree, it's tricky sometimes to say when yoga really starts and perhaps I'll say more about that in a moment because I think it'll relate to our topic. But for me, when I got into the physical practice of it, it was it was horrific. It was traumatizing for me. I was fat and stiff and I felt humiliated every class I went to. And, you know, it's to me a miracle that I continued with it. You know, there's I guess there was just some little voice in me that knew that there was something worthwhile or important about persisting. Um, well, and maybe, you know, actually, I'll jump back now and perhaps segue into my next question for you. Um, how when I, when I look back at my life and I think about when I got into yoga, it was for me, it was really out of a philosophy class my first year of college when I was studying about animal rights and I had to write a paper and I thought, well, you know, scientific testing on animals. That's an interesting topic. And and I love animals. And it doesn't seem right to me that scientists get to do all this experimentation on them. And nobody's asking them if that's okay. And, you know, that was the the the conclusion I'd drawn before I started doing the research. And what I came across in my research was article after article about vegetarianism, which I was completely not interested in. I, you know, I ate the standard American diet. I ate meat at least twice a day. And and yet I was in this ethics class and I'd studied logic and, you know, and I read these papers and I thought, well, you know, it makes sense. I can't really argue with that. It is a more ethical way of living is to not eat animals, not participate in their killing. And nothing changed for me for a couple of months after I drew those conclusions. And then then there was an epiphany at one point and and it completely fell away for me, the eating of meat.

Daniel Aaron:
And when I look back at my life now and that was. When was that? 30 something years ago. I think that was the moment when I when I had that epiphany, when I stopped eating meat, that it was like a crack in the windshield. And from there, as soon as there was that first crack, then there's a spider web rippling out. And it took me a few years after that to discover yoga, asana, the physical practice and and even a couple of years after that, to actually get the link between the practice of peace and what we think of as the yoga practice now. And and it was really one of the gifts you gave me. You may not even know this back when I first started studying with you and Sharon was the way you all taught about the practice of peace, what in yoga we call ahimsa and how it relates to yoga and how it's part of the yogic teachings. And when I got into when I became vegetarian in college, I became a zealot. I became a missionary for it to the point that I ostracized nearly everyone I knew, to the point where I would walk into the dining hall and sit down at a table and people would leave the table because they're like, Oh, no, he's going to go on one of his rants again. And, you know, I stopped just short of, you know, throwing red dye on people in the demonstrations. But I did make papier maché cows. Um, in any case, you know, I know this is important topic for you. And in the Jivamukti method. What? And I guess the last thing I'll say is this long intro to my question, something that I really appreciated in the way you all taught about this practice of ahimsa and the way it comes from Patanjali, the Yoga Sutra author, that it's, it's not necessarily something that you should do. It's not moral. It's actually something that if we practice this, if we practice peace, then there are benefits that come directly to us. Um, does that make sense? And could you say more about that?

David Life:
Sure. Yeah, I can say a lot about that. How long do you have? You know, I will. I'll add, though, in terms of my yoga journey. Um, not 40 years ago, but 50 years ago when I when I went into college, I was that was during the Vietnam War. And so I was an objector to the Vietnam War. And I read a lot of things about nonviolence and participated in a lot of nonviolence and also violent protest of the war. And that was sort of a big an important learning phase for me. I became quite resolute about the importance of not fighting against war with the tools of war and and became well established. I think in in the techniques and the techniques of of Martin Luther King had adopted in the in the fight against segregation. The techniques of of Mahatma Gandhi and the Indian movement for for independence. Um, and I studied those things a lot together with philosophy also in, in college. But I didn't practice yoga. I tried a couple of yoga classes and they were really boring and uninteresting to me. I found them to not have anything to do with my life and the reality of my life. Just a little bit. Didn't really didn't start practicing yoga. Then I just tried a couple times. So. But long story short, I. Managed to escape the Vietnam War. And through various means and. Later on, years later on, when I moved to New York City and started to experience yoga and started to learn something about the philosophy of yoga. These early seeds started to ripen the seeds of nonviolent, nonviolent demonstrations and the seeds of the words of Martin Luther King and so many other people started to ripen inside the support of the yoga philosophy. And so really, I think that was part of what drew me to yoga, even though I didn't know it at the time, I had some inkling that there was something in yoga about that. There was something of these principles of ahimsa and principles of nonviolence that that drew me to yoga. I was a vegetarian before I found yoga. I was a vegetarian because I was a hippie.

David Life:
And that's why I tried yoga, because that's what hippies did. And so then when I found that yoga had a structured philosophical school of philosophy, of perennial school of philosophy that supported these ideals in my life. And not only that, but a practical approach for realizing the truth of these ideas in the methods of yoga, which is an unusual part of yoga philosophy. It's a practical philosophy and that it gives you the tools and the methods for incorporating the ideas and the philosophy into your your cellular structure, into your nervous system, which so many philosophies, you know, it starts in the head and it stays in the head. And that can be a very frustrating experience for someone who knows that the intelligence of a being is not just in the head, it's in every cell of that being. And so yoga methods have a way of putting the philosophical ideas in a practical way right into your nervous system. And so when I experienced that and the clarity it gave me, that is mainly why both Sharon and I began to teach Yoga is not because. In no way did it represent a career, a good a smart career choice at that time. As I said, is the pre popularity. This is before there were such things as yoga mats and yoga clothes. And so we saw this as providing a wonderful platform for what we thought was really something that could make a change in our world and in the world in that we experienced together here in America, but also the world at large, was to change human beings relationship to the earth and to the other beings that we share the earth with. If we were to say, what is the underlying problem for all the abuse that we see in the world, for all the disagreements, it starts with a disagreement with the idea that we are earthlings and that that we are we have grown out of the earth itself. Some idea that human beings are a special lot that landed here from somewhere else and that and because of that, it's our job to use up the earth while we're here and to to make waste of it and get out of here before it before it all blows up.

David Life:
That seems to be the common denominator for how human beings interact with the earth these days. They interact from a basis of control. And for from abuse. So if we look into the animal kingdom in general and definitely into the the animal kingdom of the animals that we choose to. Harvest for food and for all the things that we do, entertainment and so forth. It's based on. It's predicated upon an abusive relationship control relationship. That's why people want dogs to obey them. It's an idea of control and mastery. That's why people put saddles and bridles on horses. That's because a horse running free without human interference is seen as not useful to humans. That's why humans dam rivers. Because a river running free and wild is not useful unless you dam it and get electricity out of it. That's why human beings cut down forests because of forests is really not useful to human being unless you can turn it into paper or lumber or other wood products. And so our whole relationship with the Earth is based on this. And yoga means becoming one. Joining together means we become one with the forest, one with the rushing river, one with the rushing, the running Mustang that is free and happy, one with the dog who's who's real family has its pack and we begin to feel that as worthy in and of itself. And so we try to teach this through the yoga practices and make it real through the methods of yoga. All those yoga asanas aren't named after animals just because it makes a better kids yoga class. It's about how to mend our relationship with dogs and mountains and trees and fish and alligators and everybody else. All the other earthlings.

Daniel Aaron:
Yeah. I'm with you and. Okay, that's great. I love what you said. And I want to ask you, I am asking you how. How do. You know, I think there's no one certainly on on this viewing or probably in the world who would say, I don't want peace. You know, I want to have a world that has conflict and hate and war. And yet that's what we have in our world. We have had forever. And there are some of us that continue to believe that there is something else possible. And so the question and actually I'm going to ask it, but then I'm going to pause so you can have a moment to sit with it if you want, is, you know, what's going on and how can we change that? What how do we take those ideals and actually apply them in our lives? And I'll and I'll pause for a second to say thank you to Longevity Drops, which in some ways relates to what we were talking about earlier. David was saying that he's been learning about the the fungal world and the medicinal mushrooms, of which there are many in the wilderness. And that's one of the great powers of this kind of herbal medicine. Is it? Well, one is it obviously it benefits our health and we get a lot of upliftment and vitality from it. And I love about the formula here that it's a bunch of tonic herbs, which means that when they come in, they will balance us out. If we need more energy, they'll bring in if we need more relaxation, it'll bring that part of what I love about it. Similar to what you were saying, David, about the the asana being named after animals is that when we get essentialized nutrients from nature, it brings us in closer contact with nature and it brings us back to our own nature. And some of the ingredients in longevity drops are Hoshu wei and substantia, but also cordyceps mushrooms and chaga mushrooms which must grow on the trees up there near where you are. And I love about the longevity drops that you know. My friend David Wolf is a purist and also similar similarly devoted to ahimsa. And he creates it in such a way that it's very high quality with coconut glycerin rather than alcohol. Very easy to use a drop dropper full in the morning drop or full in the afternoon. I love it. It actually tastes good. My daughter loves it. Ten years old, which is even better getting her to have medicine that she loves. So thank you to Longevity Drops for sponsoring the show. And all that said, I'll go back to my question, David. How can people apply the what we all know this this idea of their lives.

David Life:
Well, I think I think, you know, we all have our issues. You spoke about something speaking about You can't imagine anyone that doesn't wouldn't be in favor of peace. And yet they they must exist because we've had a certainly our whole lifetime has been continuous war. And for most all of human history, there have been wars. And I think when you whenever I mean, if we could say that our practice or our our road toward peace is away from war and we want people to turn that direction, we need to ask ourselves who is benefiting from this war? And it sort of goes without saying that war is good business. It makes good business sense. And during war time, war time, businesses thrive and and another thing, you know, I've just been rereading 1984, this book by George Orwell. And at that in that book, the many countries that we know are consolidated into four very large countries and they're in a continuous state of war. And one of the reasons they prefer that state of war is that it keeps the populace in a state of fear. Yeah, which is also good for business because the cure for fear is shopping. Our own president told us the day after 9/11, please go shopping. And I'm sure many people did. And they maybe it put the tragedy of the situation out of sight and out of mind for them when they bought some new technical gadget or or some item of clothing. So we have to we have to be from a very practical point of view, we have to know that war is is good for business from a lot of point of view, from very many points of view. It's good for government who wants to keep their citizenry shopping and in a state of fear and in control. Again, just to use our own government as an example, I'm not sure that they still do, but they used to have they would color their day with different degrees of terrorist threat. I can't remember. Yellow, orange, red. I don't even remember them now. Maybe they still do that. Or maybe it fell by the wayside. But I know that that served a many purposes on many different levels.

David Life:
And certainly one thing it did is keep the citizenry in a state of of fear. Um, so I think that for people to begin to bring a reality of shanti, a reality of peacefulness into their life, they have to start with their own. Organism with their own nervous system. In other words, you have to make peace a reality of of your own being. And then you radiate that peace outward. You can't be an angry, vengeful person. Angry about there not being enough peace in the world. Vengeful about trying to create peace and think that you're you're making the world a better place. You must incorporate fully and completely this peacefulness inside yourself and then allow that to begin to affect the world around you in a in a very real way, affect your family first and foremost, effect your your friends next and then your, you know, your, your larger local community. And gradually, gradually, you aren't going to never going to defeat war from the top down except by making another war to end the previous war, which is is again, that's like a that's ignorant action. So yogis like to take take very specific action toward creating a peaceful environment inside their own being. And then allowing that to then have a profound effect on the world. First close at hand and then as it. As it has, it manifests into the larger world. It comes from a place of peace. So in order to do that again, you have to use the age old techniques meditation, breathing. Um, contemplation. All the techniques of yoga, asana, practice. These things will begin to create. They'll take away the war that's inside. And when you can bring that peace inside yourself, when you operate into the world from a place of peace is completely different than if you operate into the world from a place of anger or resentment or dissatisfaction with things the way. That's another very important point in yoga is that. The yogi tries to have detachment from the fruits of their action. So I could say, for example, that that I'm going to talk to everyone about the benefits of a vegan lifestyle. Uh, but I'm going to talk to them from the point of view that I want them to become vegan so that if they don't become vegan after what I say, then I'm going to become very angry.

David Life:
And very disenchanted with the possibilities of talking to people about it at all. My actions in the world was said to be colored by that dissatisfaction with the outcome. So an important aspect of a yoga practice and again, the yogic methods in a very practical way make this real in your life. You start to dissociate with the results of your actions and just concentrate on doing perfect action. Now perfect action is. We could define it in many ways, but one way to define it is an action that doesn't. Uh, take away the freedom of any other being or doesn't impose on any other being in any way that is negative. That includes the beings who you don't agree with, the way they live their life. So that your again, your actions, the words you choose to say, the actions you choose to take in the world come from a place of no expectations. I'm going to talk about veganism and the importance of it in the world, the importance of becoming again a healed earthling who has good relationships with the whole world of wildness. And and if you choose to, to change the way that you consume the world, if you should choose to change your the way you view the world, good. But if you choose not to hear those words, that's all right. Also, that's not going to stop me from talking about veganism, because I talk about veganism from a place of peace. And with I have renounced the fruits. Any fruits of talking about that, just like I've renounced the fruits of my yogic actions and every other way, then then I'm a free one. And this practice, all these things we're talking about, the end goal should be freedom. It shouldn't be bondage. That's what everyone wants to be free. Everyone wants to be happy. That's for sure. Even the ones selling the machine guns and the bombs, though, they're making a good profit selling those machine guns and those bombs. They still in their heart, they want to be free and they want to be happy. And it's our job to educate them about ways to do that, where they can turn their not turn those machine guns and those bombs into plowshares, because that also is wreaking violence in the in the earth today.

David Life:
What we've done with the plowshares is wreaking a whole different level of violence on the ecosystems and the and the peaceful prairies of the earth that have existed in the past. So it's a it's a continuous sort of review of. Of our feelings and our assessments of the world around us. Whenever you see a situation that you think needs to be changed, you have to ask yourself who's profiting from this? And then you have to turn your attention toward them and start to care for them. Start to grow them up. We talked about this before, that it's important not to approach. These changes that you would like to see happen, whether the political changes or changes in people's daily lives, the way they consume and eat food and the way the relationships inside their family or inside their community. You have to grow them perhaps from an ego centered, childish kind of experience into a more relational experience to family and friends and even into a broader, like, you could say, global experience. And then in the end, to integrate all those together so that you don't lose a sense of of individual self. You don't lose a sense of family. You don't lose a sense of of larger community. You don't lose a sense of your your religious group, but you grow it into a world centric view that integrates all those together. I could go on and on. Got to, like, jump in there.

Daniel Aaron:
That's great what you said. And I think I'll reiterate and summarize a couple of pieces. I think you bring up a really good component that we sometimes forget, which is that there is a machinery or an agenda that that benefits from conflict and war. And while our best resource toward that may be creating peace within ourselves and our, you know, our smallest communities and expanding out. It's also useful to realize that and know that there is there are there is somebody that's benefiting from it. And and what you said about, you know, the practice for us is to see how we can create peace in in ourselves and in our families and in our friendships and our business relationships. And that is, I think it's worth mentioning that that's that's a tall order. It's an important order. And and I'm confident that it's a doable order and. Part of the I think what could be helpful for a lot of us is to realize, well, you know what, We are so indoctrinated and conditioned into this idea of going against or fighting or having anger and anger being okay to to sort of throw out on to other people, that it really takes a conscious effort to a real dedication to live in a different way. And, you know, I know for my experience, I've been very consciously devoted to this ideal for 30 something years. And on a daily basis, I still slip up with that, whether it's, you know, with my daughter or a friend. And I find myself reacting or going against something. And I think for all of us, it's important to to realize that that's part of the process and also not create against this on ourself with that. Because anytime we're getting into the you know, I'm dedicated to peace and those people over there that are warmongers, then then that's equally, you know, because we all have that those components of ourselves. And and you call.

David Life:
It the blaming and complaining syndrome.

Daniel Aaron:
Yeah So more.

David Life:
Can't fall into the blaming and complaining. It doesn't doesn't lead to a productive place. Never does. Never has Yeah.

Daniel Aaron:
Yeah. And you know what you said about awakening people or growing them up reminds me of, you know, the famous last lines of Jesus. Forgive them, for they know not what they do is equally applicable for ourselves to say, you know, forgive myself. I don't know what I was thinking. I don't know what came over me in that moment. Um.

David Life:
And Dalai Lama says that the way to peace is through universal responsibility. So rather than blaming others, what you say when you see something you don't like, you say, this is my fault. And if you take blame for it yourself, it means you are also empowered to do something about it. But if you're just blaming others, it just doesn't help. Create a positive impact in the situation. It's just confrontational. You know, we talked about early roots of getting into yoga. One of my early roots was through martial arts, and in many of the martial arts, there's an idea that you don't you will never win through confrontation. You will never overwhelm opposing forces with by opposing them with equal fierceness. But instead what you learn to do is you learn to use them against themselves. You learn to turn energy and it really is energy work. You learn to turn the energy of their of their disagreeable nature back onto themselves. Without. And if they stop. Being disagreeable, then the fight is over. There's no reason to exact vengeance or revenge. Um, it doesn't make sense in this context because you're just becoming your own worst enemy. That's why so much of what's going on today in the world, you know, there's so much that's based not only on blaming and complaining, but on that's not enough that people want revenge. For whatever wrong they feel has been done to them. And they're not satisfied until they somehow exact that revenge in whatever way they feel they can. They can get it. And. And that's never. A way to. Achieve the kind of goals that we say we're working for. For example, I use Martin Luther King again as a as a good example of someone who overcame an obstacle that was filled with violence. Violence against black people and the institution, the institutionalized segregation and separation and making black people into second class citizens in America. He never chose every time he was given the option of violence. He never chose to use that because he saw that violence as something that he was opposing, not as a tool that he could use against his opposition. And so many years later, I know so much work that remains to do.

David Life:
But a basic level of recognition of that old system being wrong and the institution of a new system of equality. Uh, has only come through the insistence, even in the face of of the personal possibility of your life being ended. By others, even in the face of that, to still insist on the integrity of the approach. If you want peace, you have to be peace. If you want peace in the world, you have to be that peace yourself. And is my. My constant inspiration. This man who from from birth to grave in this lifetime, he he maintained the integrity of those views. And and it's because of that that equality as it stands has been achieved. If he'd used tactics of violence, I don't know where we would be today. Maybe in a more repressed condition even.

Daniel Aaron:
Um, I'm with you. Um, he. I just learned recently, actually, I didn't know this. Martin Luther King Junior. One of the things he did was he actually trained, um. He trained the people that were part of the movement to work on their own anger and anger responses, you know, and that kind of what we often think of as venting, you know, like, oh, you know, I'm really angry and I'm just going to go over here and yell. He actually trained the people that were part of the movement to not vent and to be able to stay peaceful with the anger that would naturally come up. And, you know, imagine for us to imagine somebody calling us horrible names or spitting in our face or slapping us in the head and to stay peaceful and not reactive to that is phenomenal. And. Well, you know, I think maybe this will be my last question for you, David. You know, when I think about the advances we've made in in race and there certainly have been some and we certainly have a ways to go and in gender equality or feminism or women's rights. And, you know, we're on another precipice of that right now. And in the gay and lesbian movement, we certainly made advances. You know, and I have some optimism from all of that. And and I still look at the way we treat animals, what we might call speciesism. And it seems like that's a long ways to go. And and I you know, I set for myself the goal, I'm sure, inspired by you and Sharon in many ways years ago, that what I want to achieve in this lifetime is where animals being treated as other or inferior or killed is something of the past, just in the way that segregation became something of the past? What would you say about the am I deluded? Do you think that's not going to happen? Is it possible? Do we have hope?

David Life:
Well, from the point of view of the detachment I was talking about, it doesn't matter. What are you going to choose to do in your life? That's what matters. You can choose to be a good person and to uphold these ideas of equality and and and kindness and compassion. Or you can choose to be a bad guy. If you knew that it wasn't going to work, would you just choose to be a bad guy because you knew it wasn't going to work? I don't think so, Daniel. I think you're a good guy, and I think that you would stay a good guy even if you if you knew for some crystal ball reason that this wasn't going to work the way you just hoped it would, you would still act with the same amount of integrity. And so that's the important that's the critical juncture, the critical decision. Can you have enough detachment about about the actions that you take so that you don't just, like shove the cat rudely away from in front of the computer, but just she wants to participate? She likes what I'm saying. She's putting in her vote. You know, recently I was gave a real short program to a group of people who are the least likely. To respond well to the message of veganism. It seems that way. And it was a program where we presented first the movie Cowspiracy, which I'll recommend to everybody, and the new movie by Jivamukti yoga student Kip what the health equally a great movie, but Cowspiracy emphasizes the connection to the environment and animal agriculture, something Cape Town has to take to heart these days where they're running out of water. In any case, we presented that movie, which is filled with a lot of facts and figures. And after the movie I gave a few comments together with some other people, and I looked at everybody in the audience, which is pretty conservative. Um, probably mostly in their 60s. Your age category who've been eating meat their whole life and been on a different path than me. I said, You know this changing your diet is going to be very difficult for you. I said, first of all, you're addicted to these foods, the dairy and the meat.

David Life:
It has an addictive quality to it. It changes your brain chemistry in a way not dissimilar from hard drugs. And you will have to go through a withdrawal period. I said also, you have many emotional associations with the way you eat. It was the way you ate with your parents and your family and your growing up times. And so you need to create a path for yourself that involves having compassion for yourself and to work on this project a step at a time. And they reacted like really favorably to my my communicating in that way, rather than coming at them with more facts and figures, more judgment, more accusations of them being the problem. First of all, I assumed that they were going to change their diet. I didn't argue the fact and I told proceeded to tell them why it was going to be really hard, but that they should do it in any case, that it was worthwhile and the movie made. All the facts and figures and all the good reasons to change diet. A parent didn't have to go over that again. What I needed to do was to try to create a relationship with these people. Relationship based on trust and on coming from a non-judgmental place, but at the same time relationship coming from knowledge that a parent might show a child that we're going to I'm going to grow you up in this new idea of the world. And the reason I think it's important is for your children. So that they could have a different kind of a world to grow up in. And all that made sense to them. And I think if all of our efforts fail. If. Which they aren't failing. More and more people are turning to a vegetable based diet in the world. But let's say that something happens and it and it goes wrong. It's not going to change what I talk about. Instead, I'm going to say that's my fault for not having skill. Skillful means in the past, for not being able to express these ideas in a way that opens up other people to the idea rather than closing them down. And so I think what we have to do, what all your listeners have to do is work on, first of all, embodying that piece through the tools of meditation and and good diet and all the things that we are doing, reading and studying to.

David Life:
To bring ourselves into a higher state of vibration and then to begin to. In a peaceful way, to radiate that that confidence and that feeling into the world around us and to do the things that we do because they're the right thing to do. And to encourage others to do the same.

Daniel Aaron:
Absolutely. Well put. And. It's a good reminder, too. I'm glad you said it, that that there really has been a lot of progress. And I forget that sometimes it's easy to to look at how much how long there is to go in a way, if if there is a place to go to. And it is really phenomenal, you know, since in the last 30, 40 years, just the awareness around caring for animals and plant based diets for whatever the motivation, it's pretty tremendous the the advances we've made. So, David, I really appreciate your well, you're being here, but also you're, you know, 40 something years of dedication to this. And, you know, I've known you for a long time and I've really seen how your own practices have resulted in greater and greater peace and equanimity and kindness in you and to be a model for all of us, for, well, the benefits that come. I love again what Jesus said, the it's the peace that passeth all understanding and from the mind perspective to look at all that's going on in the world. You know, some would look at look at you, look at us and say, how can you be peaceful in the midst of all this? And it does go beyond the understanding that the mind's dualism. And yet for you to have done all that you've done and be radiating that and sharing with us is a real gift. So thanks for all the work and thanks for being here with us.

David Life:
Okay. Thank you, Daniel, for having this show.

Daniel Aaron:
Hey, I feel blessed to have the opportunity. Thanks again to Longevity Drops for sponsoring us. Thanks to Tom for putting it all together for us, y'all. I am Daniel Aaron. It's the art of vibrant living. Hey, next week, by the way, I will be live with Parashakti Sigalit, who is an incredible teacher, a bright eagle spirit and founder of Dance of Liberation. And we got some great stuff to share on Valentine's Day. And with that, thanks, everybody. Thanks, David. See you soon.

Daniel Aaron:
This. It is.

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