408. “Emptiness is the only real fulfillment.” | The Radical Art of Lessening with Billy Wynne

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Billy Wayne:
The empty path is not something that is on a hillside in Tibet. It's not in the clouds. It's not in your mind. It is right here under your feet. You are already on it. You are walking it every day with every breath.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Hello and welcome to The Daily Helping with Dr. Richard Shuster. Food for the brain, knowledge from the experts, tools to win at life. I'm your host, Dr. Richard. Whoever you are, wherever you're from, and whatever you do, this is the show that is going to help you become the best version of yourself. Each episode, you will hear from some of the most amazing, talented, and successful people on the planet who followed their passions and strive to help others. Join our movement to get a million people each day to commit acts of kindness for others. Together, we're going to make the world a better place. Are you ready? Because it's time for your Daily Helping.

Thanks for tuning into this episode of the Daily Helping Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Richard. And our guest today is simply amazing. His name is Billy Wynne, and he is a student of Buddhism and mindfulness for 30 years. He's received meditation teaching certifications under Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach, and he is frequently quoted by media outlets, including New York Times and the Washington Post. 

But he's here today to talk to us about his new book, The Empathy Path: Finding Fulfillment Through the Radical Art of Lessening, which is available everywhere. Billy, welcome to The Daily Helping. It is great to have you here with us today.

Billy Wayne:
Thank you, Dr. Richard. Great to be with you. I appreciate it.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Thank you. Yeah, no, this is going to be a great conversation. What I love to do, and I'm a little privileged because I know a bit about your past, and so I'm excited to dive into that because it's, so often, the experiences we go through that shape the actions that we take moving forward, and yours is a powerful story. So, I want to jump in the Billy Wynne time machine, if you're willing, and go back and talk to us about your journey. Talk to us about these experiences that led to you doing what you're doing in the world today.

Billy Wayne:
Sure. So, well, really the pivotal experience was when I opened an alcohol-free bar in Denver in 2020, which stemmed from my decision to stop drinking alcohol about six years ago. And the short story is that the overwhelming stress and the realization that I had just added so much more and more to my life with the thinking that that was what was going to satisfy, fulfill me, had really pushed me to the very edge, to the point that I was driving home one night from the bar, one knee up on the wheel, one thumb up on the phone and realizing that I could die and having this thought flash through my head that I would be okay with that. 

That was a very scary experience, and I realized pretty quickly that I needed to start winding down my involvement with the bar and really take a new course in my life. And a couple months after that, I started writing the book, The Empty Path. So, that was really the core piece, but the book goes way back to my childhood, my parents' divorce, my dad's, the dissolution of his business. He spent my junior year of high school in prison. And reckoning with my abuse of alcohol for over 25 years. 

All those experiences are really presented in the book mainly as a way to help readers relate to, hopefully, some aspect of that, and then see the Buddhist teachings, the mindfulness practices that I'm sharing to see that they can actually apply to real life here and now. They're not philosophical, they're not theoretical. These are real practices to help us with the real nitty-gritty of our daily lives.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
And it's interesting. You know, most people, if not practically all people who are involved in substance use or alcohol, it's all trauma-related, right? And you described, these are dots on a map for you but traumatic experiences that you went through  since childhood. And what people don't understand about trauma is trauma is relative. People think about trauma, oftentimes, they talk about it in terms of, say, PTSD. But PTSD, as many people understand it, is being shot at, having a car that explodes and you barely survive. Getting yelled at by your parents at the age of four can be traumatic. Your father going to prison, certainly traumatic, right? 

And so, what's fascinating is that you had your wake-up call but you didn't crash the car into another person but yet, you said you would have been okay had you died. So, is suicide or even passive suicidal thoughts, was that in your sphere at the time? Was that something you were playing with?

Billy Wayne:
It was really the first time I'd had a thought like that, which is why it was so scary. I wouldn't call it an active suicidal thought, but I would call it a permissive suicidal thought. And that really, really scared me and was a clear message that I needed to take a different course. I had been depressed, I talked about that in the book, during college. So, I was familiar with that type of thinking. It was not suicidal at that time, but to have this ambivalence about carrying my life forward was really a shock that set me on a much more stable path, and that led me to want to share some of these ideas with other people.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
And I want to just kind of frame the timeline because you said this happened six years ago, was that when that happened. And yet, you've been a student of Buddhism and mindfulness for three decades, right? 

Billy Wayne:
Yeah.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
So, those things kind of feel at odds with each other, right? The alcohol abuse but yet practicing mindfulness and Buddhist practices and ways of thinking. So, talk to us first how you started getting involved with Buddhism and mindfulness. And then, I wanna shift and talk about how you were able to kind of reconcile that while you were abusing alcohol.

Billy Wayne:
Yeah, thanks for those questions. And so, my journey really began in high school, reading the Tao Te Ching, getting interested in Eastern religions, starting to drift a bit away from my Christian upbringing. I minored in religion in college and focused on Chinese religions there, Taoism and Buddhism. And, really, it wasn't, though, until about 10 years ago that I got very serious about mindfulness meditation. And about eight years ago that I joined the Zen Center of Denver, where I'm now a very active participant and member of the board. 

And it does take a while. And this is something I try to communicate to my readers is for the practice to mature. So it really wasn't until I was taking what they call the Jukai process where one really deepens their commitment to the Buddhist path where we evaluate what we call the Buddhist precepts, one of which is a vow not to misuse alcohol or drugs. And it's not a commandment not to use alcohol, and there are plenty of American Buddhists who drink. But for me, the decision to stop drinking was unavoidable. If I was going to be in integrity with that precept, if I was going to be honest with myself about what was right for me in this path of mindfulness and Buddhism, it was abundantly apparent that my use of alcohol was totally inconsistent and contradictory to that path that I was on. 

And that was six years ago. The incident that I write about in the book was about two years ago. So, the timeline is a little weird.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
And so, you had this wake-up call. You were shocked and horrified that for the first time in your life, you had this thought that if you were to die, that would be okay. And you decided to make some pretty radical changes and you started writing this book. And I want to jump to that because I find the title of the book so interesting, The Empty Path. And then the subtitle, Finding Fulfillment Through the Radical Art of Lessening. So, let's start with the main title, The Empty Path. What are we talking about here?

Billy Wayne:
So, it's a reference to the Buddhist principle of emptiness. And I've read, I don't know, probably a hundred books on Buddhism and also kind of the related mindfulness meditation and related kind of self-help spiritual books. And one thing that I noticed is that this very core Buddhist principle, for me, it is arguably the core principle of Buddhism, particularly Zen Buddhism, is emptiness. And so, I wanted to confront it directly. 

I think one reason that authors and teachers avoid it is because on its face, it sounds depressing, it sounds like meaninglessness or nihilism or something like that. So, I wanted to take it out of this kind of mysterious theoretical arena and explain it to people in, kind of, day-to-day terminology, that they could understand and apply it to their lives. So, that's the essence of the empty path is trying to understand and relate to this principle of emptiness and see how it can apply to the steps you're taking in your real life.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Okay, so let's dig in then to the subtitle, Finding Fulfillment Through the Radical Art of Lessening. So, we're talking about cutting things out of our lives.

Billy Wayne:
Yes, yes. And that, it relates to my alcohol abuse, it relates to my decision to open and then close that alcohol-free bar. And really, to me, it's right at the core of our suffering in our lives, is this idea that we have to be more, do more, get more, learn more, earn more in order to be happy and fulfilled and be the best person that we can be. 

And what I have discovered in my own life is actually by doing the opposite, by distilling our lives, by releasing our attachment to these things that we're told that we need in order to be good people that we find true fulfillment, the kind of fulfillment that the world can't give or take away, that's always present right within us at all times. And so, realizing that, and tuning into that, and seeing what that means for manifesting in the day-to-day reality of our lives is the core proposition of this book. 

Dr. Richard Shuster:
So, if somebody's listening to this right now, and they're nodding along, and they're like, "Billy, I hear you. I've got a wife. I've got two kids. I've got a job where I work 60 hours a week. I coach baseball. I have to take another kid to play practice," on and on and on and on. I wouldn't even get into the dogs, right? So, lessening, less is more, removing things from our lives. How do we do it? 

Billy Wayne:
Yeah, yeah. So, I have a wife and two kids and two dogs and a job, and all those things too. So, the spirit of lessening is about how we relate to these things that are in our lives. It doesn't mean, leave your spouse. It doesn't mean, abandon your children. It doesn't mean stop caring for your dogs. That's not what it means. It's about how we relate to these things. 

So, throughout our lives, we're going to have happiness and sadness. We're going to have ups and downs. We're going to have successes and failures. We're going to have streaks maybe where we're making a good bit of money, and then we're going to have a downturn, and things are not going as we hoped. The question is, are we relating to our truest self through all of the ups and downs of life and realizing that whatever might be happening, we are essentially and fundamentally fulfilled?

And if we can do that, then actually our relationship with our spouse, our parenting of our kids, our performance in our job is actually gonna improve. So. this is not about nihilism and saying nothing matters, and I'm gonna walk away from everything. And as I take great pains to show in the book consistent with mindfulness practices, it's actually turning directly toward each of these things carefully, mindfully, attentively, patiently. Listening to our spouse, being careful with our words in communication with our relationships, that's the spirit of lessening. It's not ignoring life. It's the exact opposite of that. It's tuning in and giving ourselves a little bit of extra space, so that the things that we care about the most get our best attention.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
So, I'm gonna take that response, which I love, Billy, and I'm gonna ask you to go 5000 feet higher. One of the things you said was connecting with our truest selves. In the midst of all the noise, and the cell phones, and bombardment from media and everything else, how do we find our truest selves and then connect with that?

Billy Wayne:
Well, the book offers some advice. And it gets to this core-

Dr. Richard Shuster:
I figured it would. I figured it would. 

Billy Wayne:
It gets to this core idea of emptiness. And so, in the Buddhist tradition, they use the term no-self, right? So, really, what I'm proposing and what I'm trying to communicate, and I'm not asking people to convert to Buddhism or anything like that, and I think of the thing, and I talk about this in the book, that what I'm offering, I believe, is consistent with any spiritual path or the absence of a spiritual path that somebody might be on. 

What I encourage people to do is to take a very, very good look at themselves. And I start with things that are not ourselves, like a chair or I use an example of an olive that I'm trying to put on a plate when I'm working at a wake at a bar or restaurant. So, those things that are a little easier and less personal to address this idea of no-self. 

And it has two, kind of, characteristics, this aspect of emptiness. One is impermanence. Everything comes into being and if it's a living thing, it is born and then it dies. If it's an object, it comes into existence and some day it withers and decays and so forth. That's one aspect of emptiness. 

Another aspect is no self, where we take a look at, for example, this pencil and we say, okay, there's plastic, there's lead, there's an eraser, there's the manufacturing plant where it came from, there's the person who designed it, there's the branding, the coloring, all that kind of stuff. Which one of those things makes this a mechanical pencil? And if we look closely, we probably can't say. We could take away the lead, it's still a pencil. We could take away the plastic, it's still a pencil. So, it's very hard to identify what gives it its pencil-ness. 

The same is true for us. We can go, is it our body? Is it our name? Is it our history? Is it our memories? Is it our plans, ideas, all these things we can, sort of, bit by bit, peel back the onion and deconstruct this idea that we have cultivated of ourself and see that, in fact, it is empty. And that is what our truest self is. And when we can see that, then the separation we believe we have between ourselves and other people, the separation we have between ourselves and our experiences goes away because if we're empty, there's nothing that separates us.

And living in that space, I think there's no longer scarcity, there's no longer craving, there's no longer fear. Everything is already immediately present and unseparate from us. That, to me, is the heart of living as our truest self. And then, it's like, "Well, then what is life like? How do I relate to these people around me if I recognize this core principle of emptiness? And how do I think about my job? How do I think about my financial security?" 

And the answer is we can be more at ease with these things. We can be more at peace. We might still work hard. We might still, of course, be sad when we lose a loved one, for example. I'm not proposing that that's going to change. But even in our sadness, we can be at peace if we are connected to this truest self that I'm trying to call us to.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
This is making sense to me. And I'm wondering, does the book present a framework — I suspect it's yes — that people can follow to start finding fulfillment by listening?

Billy Wayne:
Yes. So, there's really three major planks of the book that run consistently throughout. One is my own autobiography. And so, to tell my own story, just to help, again, communicate to people, this is not philosophy or theory. This is about real nitty gritty life. And I have been busy, and I have had loss, and I have had traumatic childhood experiences. And so, it's all laid out there in fine detail. 

The other one is, basically, teachings around emptiness. So, different. I talked about impermanence, I talked about no-self. There's different sort of recommended ideas that people can explore to help deepen their understanding of this core Buddhist principle. And this different facet of that is transmitted in each of the 10 chapters. 

And then, the third thing is mindfulness practices. So, each chapter concludes with a guided meditation. And there's also recordings of these meditations on my website at BillyWynne.com, so people can listen rather than read when they're trying to do some of these meditations. And the mindfulness practices are ways to really cultivate our personal connection and intimacy with these ideas, again. So, it's not theoretical. We begin to develop a felt sense of what these things mean for us personally. 

So, those are kind of the three different teaching mechanisms I'm trying to use. The examples of my own life, Buddhist philosophy, for lack of a better word, and mindfulness meditation practices.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Mindfulness is something over the years that's come up on the show a lot from a lot of different guests. But I'm curious, is mindfulness as a, kind of, core construct, is that something that comes out of Buddhism or something that just is very much, it's peanut butter to Buddhism's chocolate, and they just work well together?

Billy Wayne:
Yeah. So, I think it's fair to say… well, a couple of different ways to answer that. One is, I don't think it's fair to say Buddhism invented mindfulness, right? And also, there was the Vedic practices we now call Hinduism that predates Buddhism. There's also other indigenous practices around the world that independently develop things that we could consider meditation or mindfulness practices. 

I think it is also fair to say that mindfulness meditation, as presented in the United States of America, mainly comes from vipassana or insight Buddhist practices, which is a stream of Theravada Buddhism, which is prominent in Southeast Asia. People like Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach are some of the more famous teachers of this version of mindfulness meditation. Also, Jon Kabat-Zinn founded something called Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, which is also derived from these Buddhist practices. 

Many of these people went to Thailand, went to Burma, stayed in monasteries, really deepened their understanding of these practices, and then have really transmitted them for a broader and secular audience. So, it's like mindfulness meditation is not just for Buddhists. It's not really presented that way in the US these days. And there's been lots of efforts by Zen in particular, and as a doctor, I'd appreciate you to really clinically study and validate the cognitive benefits, the stress reduction benefits, the other mental health benefits and so forth that mindfulness meditation practiced by Buddhists, and non-Buddhist, and Christians and secular people of all stripes, you can still have these benefits.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Well, there is no question that there are physiological and psychological benefits to having a meditation practice of any kind. The data very clearly has repeatedly borne that out. Mindfulness, in particular, because everybody… you just described there's these different flavors of it. So, I'm curious about how you practice mindfulness. 

So, talk about, I don't want to call it the Billy Wynne flavor of mindful meditation but, obviously, every chapter in your book ends with a little mindfulness exercise. So, talk to us about how you apply mindfulness. And if somebody's never had a mindfulness meditation practice, what they can expect.

Billy Wayne:
Sure. So, I'd say that the Billy Wynne version is really an effort to distill the crux of most of these practices. And there's some pretty consistent themes that anybody who is interested in mindfulness meditation will encounter if they read any kind of book about it.

And so, first of all, in terms of the posture, there's two principles, which is to be stable and at ease. And so, one analogy I like to use, whether you're sitting in a chair or getting on a cushion on the floor, even if you're standing, you want to try to have a relatively straight spine. So, the analogy I use is a coat rack, where your spine is like the coat rack, and then the rest of your body is a raincoat that's just draped off of the rack and really relaxed. Your shoulders are relaxed, your stomach's relaxed, the rest of your body can be at ease, but you still have this sort of uprightness, and you're kind of lifting your head, you're having a little bit of dignity and nobility, we also say, to help encourage this kind of upright posture, but also a sense of relaxation.

And then, so too with the mind, it is alert and at ease. And so, usually, we will focus on the breath as something that's always with us. It's accessible, it's understandable, and it can become a real tool of ease and patience in our lives. And so, focusing on particularly the sensation of the breath. So, there's this embodiment, kind of, somatic component to the practice where we're finding the place in our body, our stomach, our nose, our back, our throat, where we feel the breath most obviously, and that's where we let our attention gather. And so, that's the kind of focused component of it. 

And then, the other component is to be at ease. So, pretty quickly, we're gonna get more, our mind's gonna wander off, we're gonna get distracted, we're gonna think about lunch, we're gonna think about our job. And so, it's to recognize that that's what the mind does, and that's okay. I think one major pitfall with folks getting into mindfulness meditation is they think they're not doing it right if their mind starts to wander. And the response is that that's what minds do. Minds create thoughts. Your mind is going to wander off and that is what the experience of meditation is like for everyone. 

The key is to acknowledge that as something that is okay and just very gently, kind of like you're corralling a puppy back who's wandered away from the path, just gently corral your focus back on that sensation of the breath. That's the crux of the practice and you can have more of a focus on the breath, more of a focus on thoughts, more of a focus on the body, what have you. We do a loving kindness meditation in the book and all these different flavors. But at the core of it, it's going to have those common principles of alert awareness and also ease and non-judgment.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
My follow-up question to that is loaded because I suspect your answer is going to say it's different for everybody. But if somebody is starting a mindfulness practice. 

Billy Wynne:
Yeah. 

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Two questions. One, what would you recommend is kind of the baseline amount of time somebody should spend doing this every day? And two, as you've been doing this for a long time and have interacted with a lot of people that have done this for a long time, when might somebody start to notice positive effects from it?

Billy Wayne:
Sure, sure. So I'll start with the second. And one very cool thing about the research that Jon Kabat-Zinn has done is that beginners with no prior experience and have no kind of demonstrated success, let's say, and we'll come back to what that means, but with meditation, still get the benefits. It's like my high school football coach said, "You just have to show up," right? You just have to try and follow the recommended practices. And the evidence shows you will gain these benefits. It doesn't matter if you think you're not good at it. It doesn't matter if your mind is wandering. If you, kind of, sincerely engage with the practice, then you will cultivate these benefits of cognitive improvement and mental health, etc. 

In terms of getting started, I think five minutes is not too much to ask. It's very interesting. Like one first step of mindfulness is to confront the idea that we don't have five minutes to give ourselves or something as clearly, I think, beneficial as we've shared in terms of the science as mindfulness meditation is like, "Oh, I don't have." We've got five minutes, I promise. And over time for me, in the morning I meditate for 25 minutes or so. When I go to the Zen Center, we'll do a couple of rounds of 25 minutes. And sometimes, we do longer form retreats. The practice can deepen. 

It's like lifting weights. At first, it's hard and you're tearing your muscle. And eventually, you get better at it, and your muscle starts to grow, and it becomes something that you actually enjoy, and look forward to, and it becomes a habit. Mindfulness meditation is just like that. At first, I was like, "Okay, I'm going to set my alarm for 12 noon and I'm going to go for five minutes." Then, maybe 30% of the time, I actually ended up doing it. Well, now I meditate every day and I love it. And it's been about 10 years of really dedicated practice. So, it's not gonna happen in an instant. 

I do think though, and I'll wind up with this, that one reason I was able to stick with it, and this is something that I believe that others can and will experience, is that pretty early on, even in five minutes, and sometimes maybe after exercising is good because our blood's flowing and our mind is relatively clear, you will notice a little bit of relaxation and ease that you feel like you would not have had if you hadn't done that five minutes meditation. Pretty soon, you'll have just five seconds of like, "Oh, this is kind of the thing that everybody's talking about."

And that brought me back. I wanted to deepen and expand that experience of relaxation and ease in my life. And it has flourished, and it does carry over into other aspects of our lives. Even if we don't sort of mentally connect one dot to the next, it just happens of its own course if we can dig into this practice. 

Dr. Richard Shuster:
I love this. I love this. So, another thing that's kind of top of mind for me, Billy, we've done hundreds of these episodes with lots of authors and if you're listening to this, you're probably somebody who will grab up all the self-help books you can find and want to improve yourself, what would you say is kind of the secret sauce about what makes this book so different than a lot of the self-help books that are out there in the marketplace?

Billy Wayne:
Sure, well, there's a bit of a paradox at the heart of my book, and that is that you don't actually need to do a single other thing in order to be the best person that you are, your truest self. That's really the core thesis. There is absolutely nothing wrong with us. Society sends us the message that we need to do more and be more and get more and buy more books and go on more retreats in order to be a better person. When in fact, the sort of beautiful truth of who we are, whole and complete from the very beginning is always present. So you don't actually need to read my book, but it might help you remember that true person that you already are, and that can help you discover some ease and joy in your life.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Well said, I love that. Billy, our time together has been wonderful, but flew by as I suspected that it would. As you know, I like to wrap up every episode by asking my guests a single question, and that is, what is your biggest helping, that one most important piece of information you'd like somebody to walk away with after hearing our conversation today?

Billy Wayne:
Sure. Well, as I just pointed to, the empty path is not something that is on a hillside in Tibet. It's not in the clouds. It's not in your mind. It is right here under your feet. You are already on it. You are walking it every day with every breath. And so, coming back to that center of who you are, trying to set aside all these ideas we have cultivated about what we need to do and should do is really the essence of finding peace and fulfillment in our lives. So, just look down wherever you are, that's the spot. And I wish everybody to discover that and they flourish in their lives.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Beautifully said. The book is called The Empty Path, Finding Fulfillment Through the Radical Art of Lessening. And that is available everywhere today. Billy, tell us where people can find you online and learn more about all you're up to.

Billy Wayne:
Sure, I'm at BillyWynne.com. And you can find guided meditations. I do meditation classes periodically, learn about the book, some book events in Colorado and my home state of Virginia coming up, and other things going on with me, newsletter, et cetera. You can find it all there, BillyWynne.com. Also links to my social can be found there as well.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Perfect. And for those of you in the car, we got you covered. Everything Billy will be linked in the show notes at drrichardshuster.com. Well, Billy, thank you for joining us today. Can't wait to read the book in its entirety and really grateful for all you're doing in the world.

Billy Wayne:
Thank you. Dr. Richard for having me. It was a pleasure.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Absolutely. And for each and every one of you who took time out of your busy day to listen to this, thank you as well. If you liked it, if you're inspired, if you're to go tap into the art of lessening, go give us a follow on a five star review on your podcast app of choice, because this is what helps other people find the show. But most importantly, go out there today and do something nice for somebody else, even if you don't know who they are and post it in your social media feeds using the hashtag #MyDailyHelping because the happiest people are those that help others.