The Psychology of Obsession, Rumination & Letting Go - Dr Rick Hanson - #968

**Rick Hanson** (0:00)
In Buddhism, there's this view, in early Buddhism especially, that life is very unsatisfactory because everything keeps ending. Well, wait a second. First of all, if you're not attached to what's happening, the fact that it's endlessly changing is not itself a problem. And meanwhile, there's the endless arising. And so there's some physics about that. Why is there time at all? And one of the leading theories comes from this Professor Muller, M-U-L-L-E-R, at UC Berkeley, that the Big Bang Universe is a four-dimensional space-time universe. Space is expanding. There's evidence for that. And we don't notice it because it's so big. We're continually being stretched, just a tiny, tiny wee bit. But time is the other dimension of the expanding bubble of the Big Bang Universe. So maybe the next moment is simply what's occurring as the temporal expansion of the universe precedes. So we are always in creation at the leading edge of now in the temporal expansion of the Big Bang Universe. Whoa! And so things are ending because there's the endless expanding into the next moment. And isn't that the coolest way to kind of relate to what up?

**Chris Williamson** (1:19)
It's so funny that you decided to start your soliloquy with that because I wanted to talk about change. I wanted to talk about letting go today. And there's a...
I think a lot of people like the idea of being someone who can deal with change well. And I think a lot of people probably are. You know, if they were to look at their past, they actually probably did deal with change well when the change happened. But maybe not so well in advance of it occurring. Fear of change is a real source of pain for a lot of people. And it's interesting that, you know, you're right. The perfect cocktail is going to be drained at some point. You know, the dinner is going to finish. The friends are going to move to a different country. The parents are going to pass away. The career is going to end. The passions are going to become less enthusing than they were in the past. And with that, needs two things. You need to be prepared to let go. And I think the techniques of letting go, what that means, whether it's letting go of something that you still aren't 100% certain about, a relationship, a friendship, a career, or something that's completely ended. This is, you know, a person who's passed. This is a situation which no longer exists. That's one side. And then the other side is, okay, how do we step into the future more hopefully? So I think lots of fertile ground for us to get into here. It's nice that we came in and our astral minds had yet, had been linked before we even started talking.

**Rick Hanson** (2:57)
That's fantastic. I had no idea that would be our topic. And so much to say about it. I've read off the top, I'm just reflecting on this kind of statement from Ajahn Chah, Ajahn is an honorific, like minister or rabbi. Anyway, in Thailand, no longer alive, major teacher in the lineage of Western Buddhism, Jack Cornfield, Sharon Salzberg, Joseph Goldstein, so forth, really a wonderful teacher, lived in rural settings and was really down to earth. He said, if you let go a little, you'll have a lot of happiness. I'm sorry, if you let go a little, you'll have a little happiness. If you let go a lot, you'll have a lot of happiness. And if you let go completely, you will be completely happy.
That's kind of a good frame here, right?

**Chris Williamson** (3:48)
That was pretty cool.

**Rick Hanson** (3:49)
Yeah, very, very cool.
Well, I'll say another little thing about it, which is, you know, I'm a long time therapist and understandably people are dealing with fear, fear of change, let's say, and feeling unsupported. And in Buddhist meditative practice that gets mature, sometimes people are so aware of the endless ending of the moment that it is terrifying. And it's very important, whether it's an everyday life or in deep meditative practice to feel buttressed and supported and buoyed and lived by the ongoingness of all rightness that is actually true. To the extent it's true, amidst the crud and crap, there's so much that's already okay continuously. And bringing that foregrounding that into awareness with a brain that tends to tune out what it habituates to is really important, right? We notice the things that are bad or that are ending. We don't notice what is continually booing us and living us. You know, our own bodies, our friends, the goodness in our own heart, the things in the world that are supportive. Anyway, just bringing attention to those parts of the truth, amidst other parts that are concerning, then we need to do something about bringing attention to those parts of the truth as a regular practice and developing the habit of that is really useful.