Positive Psychology, Zen, and the Unity of Wisdom — with Nick Egan
In this episode of Attunement and The Living Conversation, hosts Anthony Wright and Adam Dietz welcome guest Nick Egan, PhD; a leadership coach and scholar with a background in positive psychology and Asian philosophy. Together, they explore the crossroads of philosophy and psychology, diving into themes of authority and authenticity in coaching, flourishing and positive psychology, Buddhist and Daoist perspectives on consciousness, and the unity of wisdom across traditions.
The conversation ranges from Martin Seligman’s call for a psychology of flourishing, to James Hillman’s critique of psychotherapy, to Tibetan Buddhism, Zen practice, and Daoist teachings; all pointing toward the timeless question: how do we live and flourish in a “crazy world”?
Nick reflects on coaching as mirror-work, the dangers of “Deadwood Zen,” and why wisdom traditions across East and West ultimately converge on the same mystical truth. Adam and Anthony bring in insights from Dr. Yi Wu, William James, Deepak Chopra, Alan Watts, and B. Alan Wallace, weaving a dialogue between science, psychology, and spirituality.
Connect with our guest: nickeganphd.com | shiftleadership.group
Connect with us: Adam — The Way Between on Substack | Anthony — theonaut.com
Apologies for the technical difficulties. It has been fixed but the episode, we felt, was well worth posting for the content.
Transcript
Foreign.
Speaker B:I'm Anthony Wright and I'm your host today on Attunement and the Living Conversation with my co host, Adam Meats.
Speaker A:Welcome.
Speaker B:And our guest today is Nick Egan.
Speaker B:And before the break, Nick, we were talking about reflecting your.
Speaker B:We are all sort of mirrors that are reflecting.
Speaker B:But I also was curious about.
Speaker B:I had asked you about your affiliation with Harvard, but you got into another point of discussion, so would you unfold that, please?
Speaker A:We were talking about authority and authenticity.
Speaker A:Where does one get authority?
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:And I'm of the strong opinion that as a coach, part of my job is to not cling to or perhaps actively dissuade people from seeing me as an authority in any way.
Speaker A:Like, it's not.
Speaker A:I'm not a consultant.
Speaker A:I mean, I am a consultant.
Speaker A:I do consult.
Speaker A:But when you're doing coaching, the idea is that when I'm acting as a mirror, you come to the realization yourself of what the pattern is, and you actively choose whether or not you do that or you disrupt it or not.
Speaker A:And so the idea is I'm sort of allergic to concepts of myself as an authority in any way, shape or form.
Speaker A:Like, I don't know any more than anybody else.
Speaker B:I have a master's degree in science.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker A:And so what I tell people is like, look, choose the coach that you're most connected to, because that's where you're going to get the most value.
Speaker A:It doesn't matter if they have PhD in Tibet and basket weaving or not.
Speaker B:Well, you're coaching them about coaching.
Speaker B:So in your LinkedIn, you say your background is in positive psychology.
Speaker B:Certainly we've been talking about Asian philosophy, but can you go in a little bit more to positive psychology?
Speaker A:Yeah, positive psychology.
Speaker A:So there's been lots of waves of psychology.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:There was behaviorism and then which was like, you know, I can, through positive and negative reward systems, I can make people do whatever I want.
Speaker A:Or pigeons, at least.
Speaker B:Or dogs.
Speaker A:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker A:Dogs.
Speaker A:Like Pavlovian.
Speaker A:Exactly.
Speaker A:Then there's like transpersonal psychology, humanistic psychology.
Speaker A:There's all these different ways.
Speaker A: But it wasn't until, I think,: Speaker A:He was the head of the apa, the American Psychological association, gave a speech at that conference about, and said we need a psychology that's a psychology of positivity that points towards flourishing.
Speaker A:And that sort of created.
Speaker A:Kicked off this modern terminology of, like, positive psychology, which, broadly defined, is the psychology of moving people who are doing sort of okay to really flourishing, whereas Some modalities in psychology look at people that are really struggling and trying to either heal those wounds or make them, you know, better adjusted.
Speaker B:I remember Hillman talking about.
Speaker B:James Hillman talking about, we've had 100 years of psychotherapy and people are just getting worse, Right?
Speaker A:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker A:Well, I mean, it's.
Speaker A:There's the argument, like, it's no measure of health to be well adjusted in a.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker B:Well.
Speaker B:And so what have you and Adam, what have you guys been talking about?
Speaker C:Well, I just thought it was interesting what you quoted there.
Speaker C:I definitely feel like, well, there's two sides that we need together, psychology and philosophy.
Speaker C:Dr. Wu used to say, our mentor at CIS, we all took classroom.
Speaker C:Dr. Wu, he used to say that.
Speaker C:He used to say that psychology sometimes is criticized being too shallow and philosophy sometimes criticized by being too lofty.
Speaker C:Ivory tower.
Speaker C:So we need them both together.
Speaker C:And so I think when you're talking about the psychology of positivity and flourishing, it kind of brings back the sense of Carl Jung where we're all on the hero's journey.
Speaker C:We all need to find our soul in this type of language, and once we find it, we need to integrate it.
Speaker C:So there's the roots there in psychology.
Speaker C:But so often, like you were describing, it's just if you hang out with a lot of psychologists, you're gonna see them diagnosing everyone with the worst thing they could find in a person, you know?
Speaker A:Yeah, I know.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:Well.
Speaker B:And I really like the idea about being well adjusted in a crazy world.
Speaker B:I mean, wow.
Speaker B:Wait a minute, hold on here.
Speaker B:What do we want?
Speaker A:You know?
Speaker A:Yeah, you know, philosophy.
Speaker A:And I'm thinking back to, like, in Indusibetan philosophy, there is like, Abhidharma, so the study of human psychology.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:And then there is, like, philosophy and cosmology and all of that.
Speaker A:So philosophy, meaning, like, how do things.
Speaker A:What's the ontology of objects in the world?
Speaker A:And how might I relate to that?
Speaker A:And then there's cosmology.
Speaker A:Like, where are all the different beings that those things are just different sides of the same sort of entity traditionally?
Speaker A:And it wasn't.
Speaker A:It was kind of an invention of the modern West.
Speaker A:I would say, like, past.
Speaker A:Past kind of the Neoplatonists, right after that.
Speaker A:And then it was like, well, we're gonna focus on this, like, as this philosophy, and we're gonna focus on this as, like, the study of nature, etc, and then like, science and chemistry coming out of that and all that.
Speaker B:So it was all artificial divisions.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:So it's like my In Buddhist philosophy, you know, the psychology is like, okay, how can I understand how the mind works?
Speaker A:And then how might I better use that to further myself down the spiritual path in a really tactical result.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:And then.
Speaker A:And also on philosophy, it's like, well, how do things exist in the world?
Speaker A:And then how might I use that to be furthering my spiritual path?
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:So all of this to say like, yeah, I strongly agree.
Speaker A:I think that the division's artificial and one.
Speaker B:Yeah, well, and I was listening to a conference on psychedelics and Deepak Chopra was talking about, in the west, our ontological primitive is matter.
Speaker B:It's stuff, it's subject, object.
Speaker B:And in the east, the ontological primitive is consciousness.
Speaker B:And that's actually, as a physicist, what I think, what.
Speaker B:I really admire the work of B. Allen Wallace because he really articulates what his understanding is and how to.
Speaker B:How do I say it?
Speaker B:Be unencumbered by any sort of idea in experience.
Speaker A:He has a great book called the Magic of Reality, talking about the intersection of modern physics and the magic of reality.
Speaker A:Theoretical perspective.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker A:It's a.
Speaker A:It's a great, great work.
Speaker A:And yet he does talk about that.
Speaker A:And he, Deepak Chopra is right.
Speaker A:Like the fundamental.
Speaker A:At least in the Indic traditions, possibly you can make the claim in the Chinese traditions too.
Speaker A:Yep.
Speaker A:What's the fundamental building block of matter would be consciousness itself.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:And so that's vibration.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:But if you look at like German solipsism, what they talk about is like, it's all my mind, you know, so it's all projection of my mind, which is actually not the way.
Speaker A:And then people say, well, isn't Buddhism solipsistic?
Speaker A:And it's not.
Speaker A:No, it's not a projection of my mind.
Speaker A:It's all the substrate of phenomena, the mind.
Speaker A:So that's a different thing than one leads to ego clinging, the other leads to freedom.
Speaker A:So it's quite different.
Speaker B:I remember Alan Watts talking about how interesting it would be to go to a conference of solipsists who are all arguing about who is actually the real person in the room.
Speaker A:Yeah, totally.
Speaker A:Exactly.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:That's the total number of minds in the universe.
Speaker B:Well, and so, you know, it's.
Speaker B:And that was one of the breakthroughs for me.
Speaker B:I always thought Suzuki's book, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind was about the thinking, the brain.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Dr. Wu would always say, the problem with you people in the west is you think with your brain and not your mind.
Speaker B:He says, pointing to his heart.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:You know, and this idea then about mind, or in Chinese, it's xing.
Speaker B:It's warm and it's kind.
Speaker B:It's not cold, but it's.
Speaker B:And I've told this story before, but I'll be very quick about it.
Speaker B:There was an evangelical acquaintance who came to me and said, anthony, you're so spiritual.
Speaker B:How can you be so spiritual and not be Christian?
Speaker B:And I said, well, I study Buddhism.
Speaker B:And I thought about.
Speaker B:He wanted to know more.
Speaker B:And so I thought about in the Diamond Sutra where Sabudi comes to the Buddha and oh, Lord Buddha, your merit is greater than all the numerous grains of sand in the Ganges.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:And the Buddha said, just so suphuddhi, but that's only a way of talking about it.
Speaker B:So I came back to my friend or my acquaintance and gave him a mind worm.
Speaker B:And I said, if you can think of it, it's already too small.
Speaker B:And he wrestled with that.
Speaker B:The more that he thought about it, the more that he was.
Speaker B:It was centrifugal.
Speaker B:It threw him out.
Speaker B:And he came back to me and he said he got to know God better because he quit trying to put.
Speaker B:Got into a thought box, you know.
Speaker B:And I guess that's, you know, part of this idea about getting rid of attachment.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:And isn't that your experience with your clients in having this mind shift that.
Speaker A:They maybe a tiny, tiny bit.
Speaker A:Nothing is lofty, I think, as that.
Speaker A:But I think to your point, the anything, any state or concept of the divine that can be conceptualized in and of itself is by definition limited.
Speaker B:Yep.
Speaker A:And so that's where you get things like in Zen or, or even in Daoism.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:The way that can be told is not the true way.
Speaker A:The Tao that can be talked about is not the true Dao.
Speaker B:Absolutely.
Speaker A:The reason for that.
Speaker A:And, and so what happens is we have it a lot in the Tibetan tradition about, like Zogchen, so, like the great, great perfection in Mahmoud Mudra.
Speaker A:So those are kind of analogous practices.
Speaker A:And the.
Speaker A:And so what happens though, from a misinterpretation perspective is people think like, oh, there, I can't talk about it.
Speaker A:Therefore, if I just sit and not think, then that's the state that it is.
Speaker A:And that's not.
Speaker A:That's not the case.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:And so they go more toward like, what I would consider a state of ignorance as opposed to, like a state of liveliness.
Speaker A:And so the rhetoric of non attachment is really about allowing the unfoldment of the present moment while you're still being aware of it in a non Conceptual way.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker C:On that note, it reminds me of another saying from Dr. Woods.
Speaker C:He named maybe six or seven different types of challenges in Zen.
Speaker C:The one you were describing, trying not to think at all was called.
Speaker C:He called it Deadwood Zen.
Speaker A:Like a log.
Speaker C:Another thought that comes to me as we're speaking here, and we veered into physics a little bit.
Speaker C:I did mention before on the show, and I didn't ever dive too deep into this book, but it's called the transcendent unity of religion.
Speaker C:Frith Josh Schuen.
Speaker C:And it just.
Speaker C:What you're describing here, I also feel that transcendent unity of all fields.
Speaker C:So we have physics now, or the transcendent unity of all cultures, that when you understand and work and practice and develop this insight at the highest level, it's all a unified experience.
Speaker C:You can name it different things, God Dao, but it's a unified, inexplicable experience.
Speaker C:And we see now that Western science is finding it through physics.
Speaker C:Can you speak to again the Western journey of knowledge and understanding and where.
Speaker C:Where you see us and where we've been and where we're going?
Speaker A:Maybe, yeah, no, happy to talk about it.
Speaker A:First, just a word about, like, the dead woods.
Speaker A:And that's a real.
Speaker A:Any serious meditator or serious practitioner will experience versions of that for.
Speaker A:At some point.
Speaker A:And it can last for years and years.
Speaker A:I myself was in a state when I was meditating, particularly in Zen a lot.
Speaker A:You get into a state that's very, very restful and very.
Speaker A:Time passes very fast.
Speaker A:And so you start to think like you're gaining experience and skills.
Speaker A:But really what it is is it's a.
Speaker A:In Tibetan, we call it like resting in the nature of ignorance.
Speaker A:It's like, oh, yeah, you're resting in a state of consciousness that's not as alive and aware.
Speaker A:And so it feels almost like a deep sleep and a rest, which is fine, but it's not.
Speaker A:It's actually counterproductive to real spiritual practice.
Speaker A:And you have to get through that.
Speaker A:And that's one of the reasons why it's so important to have a clear teacher that can be like, oh, you're in that state.
Speaker A:Here's how you get out.
Speaker A:Here's the antidote to that.
Speaker A:And then to your point about, like, the unified theory of everything.
Speaker A:And then you're sort of saying like the.
Speaker A:It goes by different names in different religions.
Speaker A:I used to not like this perspective, but I've come to really adopt it as I get older.
Speaker C:Oh, I do think that Unitarian.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Totally given you stuff.
Speaker A:Exactly.
Speaker A:That's exactly right.
Speaker A:Like, I do think that in many ways, each religion is actually just a delivery system for a mystical truth, which is the same thing.
Speaker A:Like Zogen, Mahamudra, Zen, you know, high level Daoism, certainly like elements of other Dharma practices in India.
Speaker A:I would even go so far as to say, like some of the orthodox priests that I've talked to, they have a really good sense of like the divine as beyond the realm of thought.
Speaker A:And so they're really solid philosophers on top of, like, practitioners.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:So it's in Christianity as well, Sufism.
Speaker A:So I do think there's that.
Speaker A:And I think that along with that, it's the delivery system of ethics and also community and all that.
Speaker A:But at its heart, it's this other mystical thing.
Speaker A:And unfortunately, it doesn't get.
Speaker A:It's, to greater or lesser degrees, front and center within traditions.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Like in Zen, it's like the only thing.
Speaker A:In Zogen, it's like, that's the main thing.
Speaker A:But if you go to, like, different, even Buddhist traditions, it's like, yeah, that's.
Speaker A:We know that and we can talk about that, but that's not the main thing.
Speaker A:And so it's like, how direct do you want it?
Speaker A:You know?
Speaker A:And the reason I think the west is starting to get through it, through science is because.
Speaker A:Because the west focuses on external versus internal.
Speaker A:Like in the east before William James was actually big on it.
Speaker A:Like one of the early, early forefathers of psychology, he was talking about, like, felt, lived experience is as valuable as an experimental place as it is externals.
Speaker A:And so what happened was that that shifted to only externals after him.
Speaker A:And so we became very focused, almost fixated on like, the nature of reality from the external perspective.
Speaker A:Perfect sense that we're now coming back around to what has been there the entire time from an internal perspective that we've known about in the contemplative traditions.
Speaker A:Not just in east, but in all the contemplative traditions.
Speaker A:So to get to your question, Adam, like, what do I see?
Speaker A:I see eventually the West, I think science will come to it.
Speaker A:Like, actually what the world is, is the union of consciousness and energy.
Speaker A:Like, that's just what it is.
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker A:And then that'll allow us to do all kinds of cool scientific, amazing stuff, technology stuff.
Speaker A:It probably will continue to.
Speaker A:And it doesn't matter how well you intellectually understand that.
Speaker A:You still don't get it unless you experience it from a felt sense.
Speaker A:And the only way to do that is through some of these practices we've been talking about.
Speaker B:Yep.
Speaker B:And there was a guy I was a recording engineer for John Wellwood, and he worked with Trungpa, and a guy named Eugene Gendlin who talked about the felt sense.
Speaker B:Well, I feel like we have to take a short break.
Speaker B:I'm Anthony Wright and I am your co host with Adam, Adam Dietz.
Speaker B:And you can contact me at theonaut.com T-H E O N A U T.
Speaker C:And Adam dietzadammail.com D I E T Z Adam and the way between Substack and Nick.
Speaker B:How can people contact you?
Speaker A:Nickeganphd.com or you can go to my leadership website, which is shiftleadership.group.
Speaker A:great.
Speaker B:All right, we'll be right back, so stay tuned.
