Meditation Works Best When It Becomes A Lifestyle

Speaker 1 · 0:00Welcome everyone to the Mindfulness Exercises Podcast. I'm Sean Fargo. Today I have the pleasure and honor of speaking with my friend Liam McClintock, who is the founder of FitMind, which you can find at fitmind.org. And he just released a new book called Fitmind: Four Steps to Lasting Bliss, Neuroscience and Meditation for Daily Life. We met after I had been a Buddhist monk and looking at how we share these teachings with the world. Liam was on that journey as well. He came from a neuroscience background, and we're gonna dive into a really impressive background at Yale, looking at how you have been fascinated with the mind for so long. Liam then went on to ordain as a Buddhist monk. He's recently disrobed for about six months now in Mexico. Liam, you started your app called FitMind after we met, I believe. And I consistently hear from people who have used the app and have gone through your teachings how helpful it's been. And it's such a comprehensive collection of meditations and teachings that you don't quite find anywhere else. I think it speaks not only the breadth of your training, but also the depth of your training, which has only been deepened through your recent monastic training. And I'm so glad that you have just published your new book, FitMind. We'll have a link to it in the show notes in the description field. But I highly encourage everyone listening to check out Liam's book and to contact Liam for trainings and coaching. You've been a contributor to our mindfulness meditation teacher certification program, providing a lot of great insights for our community about craving. So it's just a delight to see how your journey has unfolded. And it's a honor to be your friend on the path. So welcome to the podcast.

Speaker 2 · 2:11Thanks so much, Sean. It's an honor to be on the podcast with

Speaker 2 · 2:14you.

Speaker 1 · 2:14First, just to catch up personally, like I'm curious why you had decided to ordain as a monk and how that journey unfolded for you.

Speaker 2 · 2:23For me, there were many factors as to why I wanted to ordain. A big part of it was finding a teacher, Bhante Vimlaramsi, whom you mentioned in the introduction, but passed away a couple of years ago. But he was such an incredible meditation teacher, and I had the opportunity to ordain under him. He actually gave temporary ordination, so it was a kind of uh rare opportunity to experience the life of a Buddhist monk, and I thought it was only going to be for a couple of months, maybe a year or two maximum when I first ordained. But I thought this was a golden opportunity to take my practice deeper, to start living a more simple lifestyle and start devoting more time to training my mind.

Speaker 1 · 3:04How long did you end up being a monk for?

Speaker 2 · 3:07I was a monk for a total of three years in terms of time training in monasteries and about another year where I was in robes, but I was actually writing the book and had planned to return to Malaysia and actually be a monk for life, although my plans obviously changed during that period. But it was just an incredible journey that was unexpected from the start. I really saw it as a temporary opportunity to go deeper in my practice, and it became for me, as I went deeper in my practice, eventually a lifestyle that I felt more and more gravitated towards. Maybe later we can talk about what changed and such, but just to give the overview of the journey, I started in the U.S. with Bhante Vimlaramsi. He ended up falling ill towards, I think I was with him for about six months when his health started to decline. And then I went over to help with some retreats in India. I was in India for about six months, and then from there went on to Sri Lanka for a few months and then to Malaysia. My last time in monasteries was this past summer in the Thai forest tradition, and I was back in the US. So I got to see a range of different monasteries and got to see different ways of living the monastic life and met a bunch of awesome people, really incredible meditators, incredible people, teachers, mentors. Yeah, just gained a really deep appreciation for meditation, the teachings of the historical Buddha, the Eightfold Path, and how meditation really is a lifestyle. It's not just about a sitting practice, but it's about how we're cultivating our mind all the time.

Speaker 1 · 4:41Were you at a bayagiri for a little bit?

Speaker 2 · 4:44I never visited a bayagiri, no. It was a different monastery, which I guess I'd like to respect their privacy because it's a relatively small monastery, but it was another one in the Thai forest tradition in the US.

Speaker 1 · 4:55So you're talking about your gain to deepen your practice.

Speaker 1 · 5:00Can you say a little bit more about what you mean by that? Are you meaning to have more consistency with peace of mind, opening the heart, learning new tools, like mental training tools? Can you say a little bit more about what you mean by wanting to deepen your practice and then how monastic life actually ended up deepening your practice?

Speaker 2 · 5:26It's a good question because my understanding of the practice evolved through my monastic training. How I came to meditation was viewing it, I think, the way a lot of maybe Westerners or at least Americans view it, where there's a sense that you can have your daily practice and there's incredible benefits that come from sitting for even a few minutes. And even in a busy life, a lot of people make time for even 30-minute or one-hour daily sittings. But there's so many other activities throughout our day, it's harder to get into deep states of altered states of consciousness that can lead to more profound changes, lasting changes, and shifts in consciousness. And so a lot of what I'd read about was people going on these 10-day silent retreats where it's easier to put aside all distractions, essentially meditate all day, alternating between sitting and walking and maintain a continuous flow of mindfulness, which builds a momentum and can lead eventually to deep insights and shifts in consciousness. So I saw being a monk as an extension of that initially, as a chance not just do a 10-day retreat, but essentially be on retreat all the time, or at least at the time I still had some other responsibilities, but I could set aside large chunks of time where I was just practicing. The way my understanding evolved was I still think there's incredible value in retreat, and I highly recommend meditation retreats to anyone who is interested in deepening their practice. However, I realized that through studying the teachings of the historical Buddha, for example, the suttas and the Pali Canon, it became clear to me that he was talking about a lifestyle, whether someone was a monk or not. And he was talking about essentially creating wholesome or what I call fit states of mind, which include states like loving-kindness, equanimity, peace, compassion, gratitude. These are all fit states of mind. And they grow as a result of how we lead our entire day. What I began to realize, especially when I went to Sri Lanka, where the monastic life is such a part of their culture, I started to see how all the little things I was doing, for example, helping the other monks at the monastery with their chores or going for alms round, which is where you take your bowl and essentially go from house to house. I'm hesitant to use the word begging, but without asking, you're showing up and they're giving an opportunity for generosity. But those all really filled my heart with what became the fuel for my meditation practice. So I started to see how the way I was going about my day, having a simple life, starting to do more kind things for the people around me. This was all contributing to the sitting meditation practice, which is exactly what the Buddha was talking about in these traditional texts. The Eightfold Path is a complete recipe. It includes what's called right speech, right livelihood, right action. And these are all essentially living in a loving way, doing things that are gonna create positive, fit states of mind, and they all contribute to the practice. So I think to summarize, my understanding of meditation started as this kind of thinking it was almost like a sprint to the finish line with like a 10K race being the 10-day deep meditation retreat. As my understanding evolved, it became clear that it was more of a lifestyle, and the lifestyle could be lived as a monk or as a lay person, but it really involved using one's mind and one's actions, one's speech, everything throughout the day to be consciously cultivating these fit states.

Speaker 1 · 8:54I don't know if you and I had this conversation or not, but I remember thinking that at least five, ten years ago, maybe twenty years ago now, crossfit was sort of a big buzzword and big practice in the physical exercise community, in the sense that there's all these different exercises that you cycle through to have more of a comprehensive level of fitness for the body. I remember thinking, you know, what if there was something like that for the mind where there's all these different practices one could do? And I do think, like as men, at least, especially younger men, we tend to want to get things done, do the 10K sprint, or get to the finish line of the 10-day retreat and do everything really well and efficiently and get to that outcome. And there's all sorts of different meditations one could do. For me, pre-monk life, I was wanting to learn and fill my head with all these steps and get them done in order to be happy. And I had kind of a similar journey in the sense that the monk life actually broke my heart open in a good way, and then it became less about what we do and more about how we are while we do it. And you spoke of loving kindness, compassion, equanimity, forgiveness, generosity. These are practices or ways of being of the heart, and that was something that was kind of unexpected for me.

Speaker 1 · 10:37And so I'm struck by your background, your degree in applied neuroscience dissertation on the neural correlates of advanced non-dual meditation, where there's this emphasis on the brain, per se, with your scholastic training. Your monk name was Meta Nanda, the one who enjoys loving kindness. The picture on your website at fitmind.org, you're just beaming with joy, and there's a very heartfelt quality about you. So would it be fair to say that a lot of your monk experience, which is pretty vast for three plus years in robes, that a lot of that was incorporating heart practice into your daily lifestyle?

Speaker 2 · 11:29Yes, absolutely. As you said, I started out with a real focus on trying to meditate with my head at first, to use an analogy. And I know one teacher who told a friend of mine who's kind of similar that you don't meditate with the head, you meditate with the heart. Subjectively, there is a sense of this kind of warmth. Subjectively, your awareness starts to feel less centered behind the eyes, where the thinking subjectively seems to be taking place, and you start to be able to feel more things happening in the chest area. That certainly happened to me throughout my journey, and I also gained a deeper appreciation for metta practice, which means metta being the poly word for loving kindness. And this was the main practice that my teacher Bhante Vimlaramsi taught was metta. What he realized was that, especially for Westerners, there was a sense that this practice of generating loving kindness could create a natural kind of joy in the practice that's necessary for accessing uh deeper states. Not only does it feel good, not only does it benefit those around you, not only does it start to change your perspective about the world, but it also is a vehicle for accessing uh deeper states. And Bonte would often say on retreat that he found it to be seven times faster in terms of his students' progress than being with the breath. So that's why he started to teach almost exclusively metapractions, although he would occasionally give breath-focused meditation to some students. But over time it became clear to me that this was the core of the practice. If I could say maybe 95% of what the practice was all about was trying to be loving all the time. There's many words for love, of course. I think like joy and compassion, these are all different kinds of varieties of love, but they have this common quality of an open heart and open awareness and like warmth and connectedness to them.

Speaker 1 · 13:27Beautiful. Wow, it's quite a statement that meta practice could help certain people to go seven times faster with their practice. And I certainly see that in the West, where a lot of us live in the head, and yeah, even meditate from the head, as you said. I just invite our listeners to kind of play with that or to sense into how can we meditate from the heart and relate to our unfolding experience from the heart as well. Well,

Speaker 1 · 14:03Liam McClintock, aka Metananda. Thank you so much for chatting about this with me today. It's great to catch up with you. When you reached out, I just felt a lot of gladness to hear from you. I'm so happy for you that you published your book, FitMind. I highly recommend to everyone listening or watching to check out the book, which includes practical teachings and exercises to create this fit mind, this loving awareness.

Speaker 2 · 14:39Thanks again, Sean. This has been really awesome.

Speaker 1 · 14:41Beautiful, thank you.