#464 The hidden wisdom of Tibetan yoga and how it leads to self-mastery, compassion, and purpose, with Bob Cirino.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

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Agi Keramidas 0:00
In this episode, 464 you will discover how the often overlooked aspects of Tibetan yoga can unlock the secrets to self mastery and transform your personal growth journey. Welcome to personal development mastery, the podcast that helps intelligent, busy professionals develop self mastery and discover their calling so you can thrive in a fulfilling, purposeful life. I'm your host, Agi Keramidas. By listening to this episode, you are going to discover the connection between physical yoga postures and deeper mental and emotional well being. You're also going to learn about the often overlooked aspects of yoga that can unlock the secrets to self mastery before we get started. I have a quick favor to ask if you like this podcast, can you think of someone else you know who might find it useful and share it with them? Not only will this help the podcast grow, but you will be adding value to people you care about. Thank you. Now let's dive into the conversation.

Agi Keramidas 1:24
today, it is my real pleasure to speak with Bob Cirino. Bob, you are the executive director of the non profit yoga Studies Institute and the founder of spiritual warriors. You have over eight years of studying Tibetan yoga lineages, and you have reached 1000s of students in over 35 countries. Beyond Yoga, you are a serial entrepreneur with ventures in regenerative agriculture, real estate and educational technology you are passionate about integrating the essential, often overlooked aspects of yoga into everyday life. Bob, welcome to the show. It's such a real pleasure to speak with you

Bob Cirino 2:15
today. I'm so glad to be here. Thank you very much. Agi, it

Agi Keramidas 2:19
is a real pleasure. I will repeat what I told you when we started this call, before we started recording, that you have a very serene presence, and I hope the listener or the watcher of this conversation can see that and sense it. Bob, I would like to explore today with you where there are many things, but let's say the main thing I would like to explore is those essential aspects of yoga that are often missing in the western practices, like the listener most likely knows about yoga. So before we go there, what I would like to ask you is what initially drew you to do this extensive study of the Tibetan yoga lineages. So yeah,

Bob Cirino 3:21
well, thank you for that question. It's a kind question. I love the title of your podcast of personal development, because that's something I've been passionate about for my whole life, and mastery. So those two different things. They are different things in one way, but of course, they're connected, and I've just always been attracted to both of those things. Mastery, you know, you see a master and you know, it's better than any movie. You know, it's better than you know. You just see a master in action, and it's just, it's, it's marvelous. And so I've always been very interested in mastery, and of all the things to master, the one that I thought was most interesting, because we can master skills, we can master art, we can master technical things, but mastery of The self I felt was kind of the epitome of this personal development and mastery, because the constant, independent of anything that I experience anywhere is I'm bringing me there. And so let me bring the best me wherever I go to whatever I'm doing. And also I find that it's easier in many ways, to master an instrument or to master a sport than it is to master the self. And so when I think about the most interesting field upon which you know, to gain mastery, mastery at the. Self is, is infinite in its in its endeavor. So that's really not that the others aren't, but there's a certain kind of interesting complexity to mastery of the self. So I started by by just journeying into what was really available in Western society growing up in the United States. And so I got into people who were talking about, you know, I grew up very Christian in a Christian household. And, you know, the prayer was just an interesting method of Christianity, because it was, it was quieting. It was this kind of communing. And it was a place where you close your eyes and drop away everything, and you're entering into a unique place. And so I really, really liked that, and that was one of the first times that I really started to engage with the mind very directly, and then I took and then I took a long time alone in the woods once. And what I found was that all of my presumptions about who I am, what I'm doing, what my journey is, it drops away when the social pressures are released. You know, I love this thing. You put your fist out and you and you have someone put their fist against your fist, and then you press against their fist, and they will naturally, unthinkingly press against you. And so often, the way that we engage with the world is a reaction to the social pressures that are pressing against us, but they're not necessarily our intention. And so I said, whoa. Who is this guy, you know, who is this self beneath all of these things and and so I started learning like Napoleon Hill and Jim Rohn and a lot of these really beautiful people, honestly, and a lot of their teachings still live in in me. And so I got really into that. And then finally, that led me to living on an organic farm in Costa Rica, where I picked up a book called Introduction to Buddhism. And in that it said, hey, check out meditation. And so I checked out meditation, and I had a I had a really profound experience that was indescribable. And so then I spent the next five years trying to put together science to describe what I was experiencing, which led me to quantum physics. And so I was reading and studying quantum physics, and what I found was that there was this one text that said, in summary, the way that we are beginning to understand consciousness and our experience of reality is very accurately described by texts that are 1000s of years old in the yogic and Buddhist traditions. And so I said, well, so then I started. I said, Well, if these are masters of the mind, if these are masters itself, and that, for me, is very interesting, because as I was getting into this mastery of self in mind, I realized that this light began to shine inside me of compassion. And I began as I got out of the selfishness of my high school version of me into, you know, I was always passionate about the environment. I wanted to help others. But you know this idea of what is the depth of compassion? How deep, how infinite can that be? And what I found was these traditions that mastered the mind had a logical conclusion that our purpose is to serve others, which really resonated with me, because, you know, I've done a lot of things, and you get to the end of it, you say, was that worth it? But every time I got to the quote, unquote, end of being compassionate or serving others, it was undoubtedly worth it. And so it felt like a really good way to to hone in and have the fruit of my meditation focus on serving others. And that's exactly what the Tibetan lineage is, that is the that is the apex of practice in the Tibetan lineages. And what the Buddha taught, and what a lot of the yogic traditions teach, is, you know, our ultimate purpose is to become the best version of ourselves, so that we can help all beings. And that's a really cool mission. So that's my long answer. Agi,

Agi Keramidas 9:43
not at all. Actually, it is. It was not long at all. And you know the what you just ended with, becoming our best self. That is what I think you began your answer by, talking about self mastery and the name of my. Podcast, because through our self mastery, the let's say the contribution, that's how I see it anyway, the contribution we can make in the world is great, the greater we become. And I use the word great, I know it's possibly not the most appropriate word, but it just came to me. So thank you. Your answer had so many you gave me very well. The reason why you went into this quest because you had these answers that you wanted to and to find for your question. So having, having gotten this kind of introduction, shall we say, let's actually move on to what I said earlier about yoga. And you know, the, as you say, the essential aspects of yoga that are missing, often missing from Western practices. So let's talk about this. So also the listener can understand a bit more practically. What is it that you know they you mentioned compassion, but maybe someone is wondering how what is the relationship between compassion and stretching?

Bob Cirino 11:22
Oh, yeah, great question. And, you know, also, before we, before we started this podcast, I was asking you about your your experience in your silent retreat, and, and, and one of the things that we landed on was, you know, we can have an intellectualization of a lot of these, but if we don't have an experience of it, then it's just something on the shelf gathering dust, honestly. And you know, I was doing, I was pursuing a double major in university, in biology and soil science, with a minor in biochemistry, and I published peer reviewed scientific journal articles as an undergraduate, and I dropped out because I realized that there's all this incredible information that we have that's just on shelves gathering dust, and that was not my purpose. My purpose was to invoke. I love that word invoke, you know, let's bring it. You know, we're there's a lot of work to be done, and I think that we have the answers honestly, and so let's put it into action. And so what the reason I brought that up to respond to you, Agi, was with compassion being related to stretching, I can't tell you. You have to do it Okay. Coming from a scientific background, when I started learning about what I'm going to share with you, I was extremely skeptical. And all of the teachings say that if you're not skeptical, you're not doing it right. So, you know, I think that, and so we should bring the rigor of scientific of the Western scientific approach to Eastern philosophy. And what you'll find, if you really have a genuine, if you have a genuine endeavor and application of yourself to the practices, don't do it for two days and tell me it didn't work. You know, that's not science. These things. It's like saying, Oh, you can master piano. And you're like, Okay, I played piano twice, and I still can't play Mozart. And it's like, Well, let's think about that. You have to give yourself a true application of it. So the essential connection between stretching and compassion comes to a really, really ancient teaching from the Upanishads, where it describes the nature of the being. And that's the first time that this was presented that we have records of. I'm sure people have been teaching this since the beginning of consciousness, literally, but, but the first, the oldest recording we have, is from the Upanishads, and then it's taught in any kind of variation from there forward. So it's called the pancha Kosha system. So pancha means five, and Kosha means like an envelope or a covering or a sheath, like the sword has a sheath. So Kosha is, this is the sheath of the sword. And so the teaching is that we have these coverings that make us up. So in western world, we very much end at the very outermost, gross, obvious covering. This, this flesh, body. And you say, is there anything deeper than that? And a lot of people in the West will say, Nope. You're like, Hmm, let's test that. Okay, do you have a mind? And someone says, Yeah, I do have a mind. And you're okay, cool. Point to your mind. And someone says, Well, you know it's right here. And. Say, Well, is it right there? I for listeners, I'm pointing to my brain, yes. And, and people say, Well, yeah, that you know that that's where it is. I said, Well, ism is your mind a mental thing or a physical thing? They say, well, the mind is a physical thing. And they say, Oh, is that true? So you can take your mind, you can put it in a jar. And they're like, Well, no. And I said, well, all physical things you can locate, you can put in a jar, you can hold in your hand, because it has a physical nature to it has a three dimensional presence, or at least a two dimensional location, which isn't necessarily a three dimensional object. And they say, Well, yeah, okay, it's in my mind. You say, Okay, think about your fridge. Okay, I'm thinking about my fridge. And I said, well, where's your mind? You Well, where's your mind? You know, is that my fridge? Well, it's just a memory. And I said, Okay, fair enough. It's just a memory. Think about your toe. And they're like, Okay, yeah, I'm thinking about my toe. And they said, well, where's your mind? And they said, well, it's in my brain. I said, Well, if the mind is the is the organ of perception, if the mind is the organ of consciousness, and you're conscious of your toe, then is there a conscious perception of your toe before there's an organization of the thought I just felt my toe, because that is what the machinery of the brain does, is it takes all of these these sensations, it takes all of this conscious awareness, and it makes it into an organized thing, but that is secondary. The primary is just the conscious awareness. So okay, our body is a physical thing and our mind is a mental thing. Physical things are not mental, and mental things aren't physical. So if you say that our being, Bob or Agi or the listener, is only their physical body. That's the only depth of reality. Then you've you simply can't agree with that, if you would agree with the previous conversation. So how does stretching connect us through compassion? On the outside is our physical body, but on our inside is our internal world, is our mind, is our thoughts. And then, in Buddhism, Bucha taught that at the core of all of this is our most essential nature. And then the second verse, sorry, in the third verse of the yoga sutra, which is the defining text of what yoga actually is, which was written sometime between 200 BC and 200 ad. So very old text, it says that the whole goal of yoga is to realize our true self and to see our true self. What is the most essential version of us? Take away our name, take away our body, take away our thoughts, take away our emotions. Is it? Is there still someone there and in your experience, and what you wrote in your LinkedIn post is that's the goal of the Vipassana or Vipassana tradition, is to have the direct insight of who is that, or what is that nature, before cognition. What is that? You know, we say, I am upset. Okay, are you upset. You would never talk about your car in the way that you would talk about your emotions. You would say, I have a car, or I have a feeling of upset. But are you your car? Are you your upset? You would not say, I am my car. I am car. You would not say, so therefore, it'd be erroneous to say I am upset. So I have upset. Well, who is the one who has upset feelings? Okay, that's an interesting question. So when we stretch our body, what we're doing is we're putting we're getting closer to this intersection of mind and body. We have this outer world, physical body, and we have this inner world, emotions and thoughts and feelings. But how do these things what are impossibly not connected? Because mental things are not physical things, and physical things are not mental things. Where do they connect? And so this physical practice of yoga, the original yoga posture, if you look at what the original first writings of it were, was meditation posture. That's the first posture. Okay? And so this physical aspect of yoga is just this tiny tip of the iceberg of what the practice of yoga is, because the practice of yoga is the science of self mastery. It's the science of self discovery. It's the science of the self it's this journey, it's this method. It's this commitment to realizing the true nature of reality, so that we can escape from illusion, which is the cause of all suffering. And so once we are able to wake up to illusion, it's like thinking movies are real, like you're gonna have a bad time, and then when you go to hit the TV screen because you don't like what you see on the film, you know, then you're a fool, because that could never change what you're experiencing. You have to change the film. You have to change the impressions in order to change what you're seeing as the projection. And so when we do this practice of. Moving our body. What's happening is we're getting to a more subtle level of our physical being, which is closer to our mind, and a heart of compassion that is a mental thing. So what we're doing if we can move our body in a specific way, and again, you just got to try it, don't knock it till you give it a real effort.

Bob Cirino 20:24
And for me, I had the courage to go through the endeavor of investigating the subtle body because I met people who were incredibly compassionate, vastly calm and incredibly aware, and they said, just try it and give it an honest effort. And so I said, Okay, I want to be like these people. So as a scientist, I have to have hypothesis. I need a hypothesis, and I need to experiment. And so when we move our physical body, we move our breath, and when we move our breath, we move our subtle energies, which some people call chi or prana or vital. And you know, there's lots of different words from all over the globe, of people who've endeavored to find the depths of their being you pass through the subtle body to get to the mind. You ever feel just jumbled up on the inside like energetically. It's not necessarily that your you know your body is doing a certain thing, but you have this internal turmoil. Or Oppositely, you have this really good, profound, deep feeling, okay? And then how does that reflected in the quality of your mind? If you pay attention, you will find that it's a one to one correlation. So then, as we pass through our subtle body, our subtle physical body, we then get to the place where our physical world connects to our mental world, and then what we realize is that we have a mind that has thoughts, and we realize that those thoughts are not causeless. They're not random. They're not for no reason at all. There's no such thing as an effect without a cause, let's be honest. So then what is the call? If we have a mental experience, that's a result. So then we have to say, well, if every result has a cause, then what is the cause? And through a still mind, you can see how kindness causes stable mind, how kindness to others, how realizing that hurting others could never make a better world. If you just observe the movement of your mind connected to the movement of your subtle body, which is connected to the movement of your breath, which is connected to the movement of your body of a thumbs up, or, you know, some worse sign that you can give with your finger, you'll see that there is a connection. And then finally, you realize that there is a deeper level before even the cause and effect. And the way the Buddha taught that is that that is emptiness, which means that things have infinite potential. Things have no qualities of their own. It's the our experience of reality is the experience of the Self before cause and effect. It is that canvas. It's that blank movie screen that makes it possible for something to be perceived at all, and that is the true nature. So we stretch our bodies, not to get more flexible, but it's to influence the movement of our breath, to influence the movement of our subtle energy, to influence the movement of our mind, so that we can realize, without a doubt, the true nature of reality. And anybody who's plumbed those depths will tell you that our purpose is to be kind.

Agi Keramidas 23:47
If you enjoy this episode, can you think of one person that would find it useful and share it with them? I'd really appreciate it, and you will also be adding value to people you care about. Thank you. And now let's get back to the episode when you were describing the mental and the physical, and because you mentioned the the meditation, the Vipassana, then they practice in there, it is what you were describing, describing as the physical structure and the mental structure. And I liked what you were describing about with yoga and the movement, that area, that place, if I can call it that, where the those two structures intersect, it is becomes more accessible, shall we say, so that's my own, you know, interpretation of what you just said. This is wonderful. What I would really like as a continuation of this. So let's say Bob someone listening to this right now, they do practice yoga in the. Western Way, which I will, you know, assume that means for someone that they do a series of postures. What practically can one do to incorporate what you were just talking about and you used the phrase earlier? Just try it. So what? Exactly as a, you know, an action, something to do, to go into that and try that and to work into it. Yeah,

Bob Cirino 25:31
thanks for asking. What I would say is, when we do things for ourself, that is, that's a grasping that is like me, me, me, me, me, and living a life of me, me, me, me, me, is not satisfying. Just, you know, if you've spent a lot of time just living for self gratification, you know, trying to by thinking, by getting more, by taking care of me only at the expense of others, then you'll realize that you don't have a you don't have a a calm heart. The mind is hard to the mind is hard to reel in. Okay? So when we do our yoga for ourselves, that that's okay. You know that's okay. We should love ourselves. But what I would say is do one simple upgrade in your intention, do your yoga for the sake of all beings, and see how that changes your experience and and be present with the intention the entire time. So what do I mean by that? Okay, all beings, that's a lot of beings. Okay, so maybe start with one being. So who do you love? Who do you care about? Which can which, obviously should include you, right? The Buddha said, we become enlightened to meet the two needs. And the two needs are my needs and the needs of all other beings. So there's misinterpretation by saying, take care of others, but to heck with me. No, no. All beings, includes you. Okay, so and with equanimity, there's no preference between my happiness and your happiness. I care about your happiness equally as I care about my own happiness. And so if we go into yoga, if there's a loved one that we see suffering, and we say, What's the best thing that I can do for that person? You know, to some extent, give them food if they're hungry, that will help them for sure. Give them time if they're stressed out, that will help them, for sure, but what if you gave them the best version of you? How much would that help them? That? Because once you eat the food you need more food, you know, once you give them the time, they need more time. But if you are in relationship with somebody then and you give them the best you then that's something that will continue to be available as long as you are in relationships. So imagine that you are doing your yoga for their sake, okay? And see how that changes the good feelings that you have in your yoga. And see, interestingly, so how that affects the residual heart benefit, and not cardiovascular but compassion and the residual mental benefit of your yoga. People come out of yoga and they they're like, Man, I feel good, and I have no idea why. Well, here's why your body's connected to your breath. Your breath is connected to your subtle energy. Your subtle energy is connected to your mind. Your mind is connected to realization of the true nature of things. And when we can abide in that, then the only way we can experience reality is with love and peace. That's why yoga feels good when it does feel good. So bring in the intention of doing your yoga for the sake of others, and you'll see how that changes your life at the yoga Studies Institute, we say it's yoga that it doesn't just change your body, it changes your whole world, because that's what yoga is designed to do.

Agi Keramidas 29:15
You used the first upgrade your intention to do yoga for to benefit all beings or for someone else's sake. So my follow up question with this is that when you say intention, for many, intention is something you said beforehand, and then it's you might perhaps rethink about it from time to time, but that's about it. Do you? Does that involve or does do we maintain that intention throughout the focus? I think it is something that, depending on what intention, someone could interpret intention as something, okay, I've set my intention. Let me. Let me do it. Now. That's why I'm asking, yeah,

Bob Cirino 30:15
yeah. I mean the what is meditation? To answer your question, I have to say, what is meditation? There's many different kinds of meditation, but in essence, meditation is the ability to concentrate. That's it.

Agi Keramidas 30:31
I will interrupt for a moment because I was I got the answer very well, because I was asking about yoga. You answered about meditation? I realized that it is not two different things. We're talking about the same thing. So that is how I got the the answer. So if you want to add to that, please do Sure.

Bob Cirino 30:56
Because I think this is really, I think that there's a lot of misunderstanding of what meditation is. You know, people say, I want to be rich, I want to be rich. I want to be rich. And you're like, Okay, you know, yes, you are meditating on that. But so the first thing of meditation is to be able to develop concentration into single point of focus. So what that means is that we're like, we call it a meditation object. What is the object of our meditation. Okay, we meditate really well when we smell pizza and we're like, oh, PIZZA PIZZA PIZZA PIZZA PIZZA PIZZA PIZZA PIZZA PIZZA PIZZA Okay, what if we upgrade that object like? What happens if you spent all day, every single day, thinking about pizza, your mind would become saturated with desire for pizza. What would happen if you were to dedicate your entire mind's conscious power onto the object of compassion, or to answer the question, Who am I? Or what am I? Or what is it? What is consciousness at all? What is reality at all? What if you spent all day concentrating on that one object? What would be the quality of your mind? What would be the quality of your life if you were to do that? So first is develop concentration on an object, and then the second is, once we have that stable single point of concentration, which in Sanskrit is called shamatha, then we have Vipassana, which is insight, because once we drill down with such incredible focus into a single point like a laser, almost then we're able to break through the illusion and then get behind the membrane this that has illusory reality separated from Ultimate Reality, and we're able to drill through and have a direct perception of the ultimate nature of reality. So what we need to do is we need to meditate without stopping all day long. And so an easy way to do that in your asana, which is the yoga for that's like the word for physical practice postures, is when you do your down dog. You know, there's all these times in your practice when you're taking kind of a rest or a transition, whether it's a down dog or a Vinyasa or something that's regular, that's a nice way to be like, Wait, what am I doing? Why am I doing this? And you come back to your intention. But then what ends up happening is that you ride your breath, your mind rides your breath, and every single breath that you take is an embodiment of your intention. So you start with the grossest thing you can, you know, get a hook onto right the word Buddha, you know, is to wake up the Awoken one. And so we're sleeping. Society gives us a story to live. Marketing gives us stories to live. Our culture tells us who we are, but have we woken up to who we actually are or what we really want to do? We're sold a dream, but it's the dream a nightmare. Is the dream a silly stupor from which we need to wake up into vibrant realization, into vibrant intentionality. And so the essence of meditation, or to live meditative, is to embody your intention unceasingly. And that's we get a lot of practice for that in our yoga, in our Asana, and then you ride that throughout the day as best you can

Agi Keramidas 34:22
thank you. The answer is what I was even more than what I was hoping to get, and it makes it very clear on me regarding my question. So both this is a truly fascinating conversation. Of course, I have to say that I am, personally, I do have a keen interest on, let's say, spiritual topics. I will put it very broadly like this, so listening to what you were saying, I found it very fascinating. I will start wrapping. Back up this conversation. I do have some final questions that I will ask you before there. Where do you want to direct the listener who has also found this conversation fascinating and want to learn more?

Bob Cirino 35:18
So thank you. Agi, the first place I'd like to direct listeners is to their heart.

Bob Cirino 35:31
The truth is there, you know, I promise so, so go looking, you know, and the truth will set you free. It's true. And the truth is heavy, because when you realize truth, then you realize illusion, and then you have a sadness that you've been living in something that was never true, and that's heavy. But then once you can process through that, you know, then it's really this. It's so liberating, like it feels like it feels like floating. You know, it's really sweet. So go looking, and then have the courage and the strength to process and and I know that not everybody, necessarily is super into spiritual things, but, but I encourage you to take a moment to reflect on those who have had worldly success and ask yourself, how fulfilled Do they feel? How much do they feel like a source of light? You know, I love, we think about plants as being heliotrophic, which means they, they grow toward light. And I, and I, I love design. I love real estate because it's this idea of how to create physical patterns in a way that help people to be free. And I read this study that argued that humans are also heliotrophic, which means if they're given a window, humans will go to Windows. They won't be in the dark. And it's like obvious, and I think that that's a reflection of of our heart, of our spirit. And so when you find people who feel like a source of light, you feel yourself growing. You know you feel vitality. You feel health. And so the spiritual warrior framework, so you can go to spiritual warrior dot life, that's my website. And what we do there is we. The whole mission is to live fearlessly on purpose, because once we first of all, what's a good purpose? It's a great question. Let's endeavor. Let's figure that out for ourselves. Here's some tools. You know, I can we teach people how to do that because my teachers taught me. I'm just sharing what my teachers taught me. It's their kindness. And so first of all, you know what is a worthwhile purpose you live once you know, at least in this form. And so how do we use this opportunity while we have it? And then the second is, once we realize what it what it really means to us to live on purpose. Those are our core values, and we've realized that it's really difficult to live our core values. So we have to be a warrior. We need to be warrior like in destroying our anger. Because I love Shanti Deva, great philosopher from 700 ad said warriors feel like they've won by killing a human. But the nature of being alive is that we die, and so you're doing something that's inevitable. So it's actually no great thing to kill a living thing, because the moment you're born, you're guaranteed to die everything that starts messing so warriors feel like they've accomplished some great thing by doing something inevitable. But the nature of anger is that anger begets anger. And so it's it's unending. So what a warrior it would be to end an unending thing. And the way that we end our anger is through compassion and wisdom. So we can go and be a warrior of the worldly things and win. And I would argue that if we don't have a spiritual underlying current or spiritual purpose that's deeper than a worldly thing, then we'll realize that by winning, we've just lost. But with lipstick, you know, we've lost, but there's frills and shininess around it, and so spiritual warrior framework is by winning the war of spiritual realization, by defeating the foes of selfishness and defeating the foes of transgressing our core values and defeating the foe of misunderstanding how things work, we, by nature, win the war of worldly things also. So spiritual worry dot life is where you can find a lot of those cool ideas, techniques and teachings. And then I would encourage you to go to yoga Studies institute.org which is a nonprofit whose mission is to teach the classic texts and methods of yoga, which are a means of liberating. Ourselves and others from suffering forever. So those are two places, and you can find me on Instagram. I post pictures of my baby. We just had our first child five weeks ago. And you know, life's pretty awesome, you know? So if you want to, if you want to, engage there, that's great.

Agi Keramidas 40:18
That's fantastic. Thank you. And Bob, I have two final quick questions I always ask. The first one is, what does personal development mean to you?

Bob Cirino 40:31
Compassion? You know, what does it mean? My major metric, whatever we measure we achieve, and what? So then we have to ask what's meaningful to measure, and what I found in all the things that I've done, you know, I've started businesses, I've sold businesses, I've traveled the world, you know, I've done all these things, and I what i've what my teachers taught me, which I find to be true, is that the greatest thing to develop is compassion. And what is incredible about that is that you're going to hit a ceiling in your capacity for compassion if you haven't mastered the self and so it there's a prerequisite to reaching the greatest steps of compassion. The prerequisite is to gain incredible control of the self and the mind and to develop a deep wisdom around things. Because we can be compassionate and foolish. I will celebrate your heart, but we need to adjust our method. You know, there's times when we wanted to be kind, but we didn't. We were not skillful, because we don't understand how things work, necessarily. And so if we measure our capacity for compassion as our as the most important thing to develop, then it requires that we've developed all the other attractive and desirable traits of ourself.

Agi Keramidas 42:05
And one quick hypothetical question, if you could go back in time and meet, say, your 17 year old self, what's one piece of advice you would give him?

Bob Cirino 42:18
Well, 17 is an interesting age, because that was when I really started to do all this. And you know, my journey is my journey, and I don't know if I would change it, because everything that I've gone through has given me the tools and the experiences that allowed me to serve others. I think I would just amplify everything that my 17 year old self was realizing, which is when I was 17, one phrase that woke me up, Agi was in all things pursue peace, I realized I did a death meditation, and I said, you know, on my deathbed, what is the last emotion that I want to experience? Because I realized when I'm 17 that our experience of life is not material, our experience of life is emotional. And so I said, Wow. Well, what's the last emotion that I want to feel as a conscious being in the form of Bob, and it was peace. And so I said, Well, if that's the last thing, start with the end in mind. And so I think what I'd say is I'd say, correct, yes, do that. And then I think I would say, Go study Buddhism, because they were masters of mind. They were and they are the the in my in my analysis, in my experience, the greatest logicians, the highest faculty of logic applied to the highest extent I find in the in the schools of Buddhism. And so I think I'd say, check that out sooner.

Agi Keramidas 44:06
That's great, Bob. I want to thank you very much for this conversation. I want to wish you all the very best with continuing your mission, with what you're doing. I will leave it to you for your final part in wisdom for the listeners, yeah,

Bob Cirino 44:30
thank you for having me. This was a fun conversation. I just wish that you fearlessly live on purpose. That's it. That's it. Don't, don't be afraid to pursue that.

Agi Keramidas 44:48
I hope you found this episode enlightening. If you want to continue the journey further, join us in our free community, mastery, seeker, strive. It is a space to move from. Inspiration to implementation, from knowledge to action. If you're not already a member, you are invited go to mastery seekers tribe.com, and until next time, stand out. Don't fit in .