Speaker 1: Welcome to the Psychology Podcast, where we give you insights
Speaker 1: into the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity. I'm doctor Scott
Speaker 1: Barry Kaufman, and in each episode I have a conversation
Speaker 1: with a guest who will stimulate your mind and give
Speaker 1: you a greater understanding of yourself, others, and the world
Speaker 1: to live in. Hopefully we'll also provide a glimpse into
Speaker 1: human possibility. Thanks for listening and enjoy the podcast. Today,
Speaker 1: it's great to have Sharon Salzburg on the podcast. Sharon
Speaker 1: is a meditation pioneer and industry leader, a world renowned teacher,
Speaker 1: and New York Times bestselling author. As one of the
Speaker 1: first to bring meditation and mindfulness into mainstream America culture
Speaker 1: over forty five years ago, her relatable, demystifying approach has
Speaker 1: inspired generations of meditation teachers and wellness influencers. Sharon is
Speaker 1: co founder of the Insight Meditation Society in Barry, Massachusetts,
Speaker 1: and the author of eleven books, including the New York
Speaker 1: Times bestseller Real Happiness Now It's in its second edition,
Speaker 1: her seminal work Loving Kindness, and her newest book, Real Change,
Speaker 1: Mindfulness to Heal Ourselves in the World, released in September
Speaker 1: of twenty twenty from Flat Aroon Books. Sharon's secular modern
Speaker 1: approach to Buddhist teachings is sought after its schools, conferences,
Speaker 1: and retreat centers worldwide. Her podcast, The Meta Hour has
Speaker 1: amassed over three million downloads and features interviews with the
Speaker 1: top leaders and thinkers of the Mindfulnest movement and beyond.
Speaker 1: Sharon's writing could be found on Medium, on Being, the
Speaker 1: Maria Schreier Blog, and Huffington Post. Sharon's so great to
Speaker 1: chat with you again today on the Psychology Podcast. It's
Speaker 1: great to talk to you. You were on a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago, you were on the early days of
Speaker 1: the Psychology Podcast. I think. So I want to talk
Speaker 1: about your most recent book, Real Change, and I want
Speaker 1: to know why you wrote that book, in particular because
Speaker 1: it was written before the world the apocalypse happened, right
Speaker 1: and social justice reckoning and to the extent to which
Speaker 1: it has. So, yeah, are you just are you just
Speaker 1: quite avoyant? Well that's I'm so glad you said that,
Speaker 1: you know, because I did. I wrote virtually the entire
Speaker 1: book before even the pandemic and then post pandemic of
Speaker 1: friends was reading it to excerpt it and he said
Speaker 1: to me, you know those examples, you just kept driving
Speaker 1: me crazy. I think that's what made you anxious. Where
Speaker 1: do you see what's coming? And the pike. The publisher
Speaker 1: delayed publication from June to September. So I went back
Speaker 1: to them and I said, would be okay if I
Speaker 1: wrote a new preface and they said yes. But that
Speaker 1: was before any of the protests, so I thought, I
Speaker 1: can't keep going back to them. And you know, some
Speaker 1: of my great fear was that I'd written a completely
Speaker 1: irrelevant book. I mean, you know, as a writer, you
Speaker 1: want to hit in a way a place that's timeless,
Speaker 1: because you don't want people to say, well, that was
Speaker 1: last month's news, you know. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: you also don't want to seem like you're totally just
Speaker 1: connected from people's reality, especially this kind of extreme reality.
Speaker 1: So I was really concerned that it just wouldn't have
Speaker 1: any relevance. So when people say, like somebody said to
Speaker 1: maybe psychic, I was so happy. So this book, in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways, is about how we can move
Speaker 1: from spirituality to activism. You know, spirituality is sometimes thought
Speaker 1: is the being realm of human existence. Is Abraham Masel,
Speaker 1: but is sometimes thought is antithetical to the doing realm.
Speaker 1: I thought if we could start off by talking about
Speaker 1: that interesting dialectical between being and doing. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think I really wrote it. It was a bidirectional flow.
Speaker 1: I certainly know a lot of meditators. I've been teaching
Speaker 1: meditation since nineteen seventy four. You know, I have seen
Speaker 1: I feel, very genuinely how not for everyone, of course,
Speaker 1: but many, many, many people who get involved in just
Speaker 1: greater self awareness actually become more compassionate, And not everyone
Speaker 1: knows what to do with that. You know. I've heard
Speaker 1: the story countless times where someone has said to me
Speaker 1: I started meditating and then I was taking a walk
Speaker 1: and the person approached me on the street and asked
Speaker 1: me for a dollar, and I gave them a dollar,
Speaker 1: and because that's just what I do, that's my practice.
Speaker 1: And they say, that's the first time I ever looked
Speaker 1: that person in the eye and realized that was another
Speaker 1: human being. I've heard that so many times, But not
Speaker 1: everyone knows what to then, do you know? It's like
Speaker 1: a person to person exchange of kindness, but it's like
Speaker 1: taking a step, you know, towards more maybe more systemic
Speaker 1: change or looking more at causes and condition. So that
Speaker 1: was one flow. The other flow is that I've spent
Speaker 1: not my earliest years of teaching, which were just largely
Speaker 1: open to anybody, and even now, of course many things
Speaker 1: I teach are just open to anybody, but especially in
Speaker 1: the last several years, I spent time working with what
Speaker 1: we call caregivers, and I always think there has to
Speaker 1: be a better word, you know, but basically people who
Speaker 1: are on the front lines of suffering, either in their
Speaker 1: families taking care of somebody, or domestic island shelter workers,
Speaker 1: were international humanitarian aid workers or these days frontline medical personnel.
Speaker 1: And I've seen just like for all this world can
Speaker 1: be depicted, I think accurately, it's kind of cold and
Speaker 1: cruel without enough empathy. These people have a lot of empathy,
Speaker 1: but they're burning out for some other reason, you know,
Speaker 1: It's not from lack of caring at all. And the
Speaker 1: closest equivalent I realized one day to the caregivers were activists,
Speaker 1: you know, who were also on the front lines of
Speaker 1: suffering and sometimes burning out mightily. And so I just
Speaker 1: sort of wanted to serve both with groups. Now, are
Speaker 1: you have you been personally involved in activism yourself. I
Speaker 1: don't know how much street credit I have, but yes,
Speaker 1: I've been very involved. Like do you go out there
Speaker 1: like is Sharon Salzburg out there like with Sie? You know,
Speaker 1: not not in a long time. I mean I went
Speaker 1: I'm a child of the sixties, you know, I went
Speaker 1: to scholding, you know, Vietnam War protests. In fact, I
Speaker 1: went to college at the State University of New York
Speaker 1: at Buffalo. And this last year I went back to
Speaker 1: Buffalo for the first time, and his friend gave me
Speaker 1: a tour, driving tour the campus and I'd said I
Speaker 1: was tear guest over there. She said, oh, yeah, my
Speaker 1: protest was broken up over there. But I had an
Speaker 1: interesting conversation actually, in working on the book, I was
Speaker 1: talking to Belle Hooks, who yeah, and she's a friend,
Speaker 1: and and she told me she didn't like the phrase
Speaker 1: social action because in her mind it might imply only
Speaker 1: marching and protesting. And she said to me, what about art?
Speaker 1: What about creativity? Is and that a form of social
Speaker 1: action and you know, dissolving the boundaries of conventional understanding
Speaker 1: and pushing us to a new vision and all that.
Speaker 1: And I said, yeah, so I tried really hard, you know,
Speaker 1: to have a broader view. Yeah, that's that's I like that.
Speaker 1: It's really important that we don't lose our artists, that
Speaker 1: we don't lose our our intellectual capital. It's interesting. There's
Speaker 1: an interesting culture war going on with some intellectuals thinking
Speaker 1: that the woke, the quote woke people are trying to
Speaker 1: censor them. They're trying to censor the artists. They think
Speaker 1: the woke people are trying to sensor the artists, and
Speaker 1: so there's there's an interesting tension arising between you. It's
Speaker 1: not all it's not always like oh yeah, of course
Speaker 1: art is social action. Of course, intellectual changes social action
Speaker 1: that stands right alongside the Black Lives Matter movement. It's
Speaker 1: not so uh. There seems to actually just be a
Speaker 1: tension growing. Have you seen that? Oh well, nothing is
Speaker 1: easy is my new motto. I love that. You said
Speaker 1: you want that on your shirt. Well, I have several things.
Speaker 1: Something's just hurt, nothing is easy would be good, and
Speaker 1: we feel what we feel is another one. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: these are good ones. Yeah, I have several preferences that way. Well,
Speaker 1: it is an interesting time, you know, because because people
Speaker 1: that maybe would more well, I think maybe were just
Speaker 1: worn out. You know, people who would more readily be
Speaker 1: allalyized and recognize that are pretty afraid, you know, and
Speaker 1: it could be a lot of ill will, which is
Speaker 1: really unfortunate. Okay, so you're kind of like the loving
Speaker 1: kindness queen. I cat in w that. I w that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you've forty five years of meditation loving kindness. I
Speaker 1: got to ask, do you forget bored of loving kindness? Meditation? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I have ninety five fifteen. No, loving kindness is more
Speaker 1: like thirty five years. Because I think I got that
Speaker 1: titl Aert. You know, people say that because I learned
Speaker 1: meditation in January nineteen seventy one, and it was a
Speaker 1: mindfulness practice and the teacher was Sen Gooinka is a
Speaker 1: ten day tensive retreat in India, and right at the
Speaker 1: end of that he taught a little loving kindness meditation,
Speaker 1: almost as a kind of ceremonial goodbye, and I was
Speaker 1: really transfixed. I thought, what is that I want to
Speaker 1: learn that. It was only in nineteen eighty five that
Speaker 1: I got a chance to go to Burma for three
Speaker 1: months and do this intensive period of loving kindness practice.
Speaker 1: And so then I came back and started teaching it.
Speaker 1: So I've been teaching it in this country since nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty five when there were not many Westerners of any
Speaker 1: who were, you know, And so that's part of it.
Speaker 1: And it also wasn't so totally well received in those days.
Speaker 1: You know, it's a hard practice to understand, actually, and
Speaker 1: people would say, well, that's just a feel good practice,
Speaker 1: or it's sentimental, or you'll never I'm from the Buddhist
Speaker 1: point of view. Some people said, you'll never understand emptiness
Speaker 1: that way, it's not really a wisdom practice. Later, I
Speaker 1: mean much later, looking back, I thought, oh, they're saying
Speaker 1: it's like a girly practice. That's what they're saying. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a very gendered comment, series of comments, but
Speaker 1: it meant so much to me. It helped me so
Speaker 1: much that I just kept teaching it. And then I
Speaker 1: wrote Loving Kindness, which was my first book twenty five
Speaker 1: years ago. And that was the first book. So you
Speaker 1: just don't get bored with it, you know, do you
Speaker 1: like you practice Loving Kindness? Meant to you practice almost
Speaker 1: every day? Do you ever miss a day? You were
Speaker 1: like miss a day to Sharon's old miss a day?
Speaker 1: Do you ever have a day where you're like, I'm
Speaker 1: not feeling in love today, and I'm okay with that. Well,
Speaker 1: one of my things is that you don't have to
Speaker 1: feel anything in doing it. You know, it's just the
Speaker 1: willingness to pay attention differently, like maybe those people like
Speaker 1: I had an interesting experience with the book where somebody else,
Speaker 1: another journalist, was wanting to record a meditation of me
Speaker 1: guiding it, and the meditation they chose was a loving
Speaker 1: kindness to a neutral person. And that particular section of
Speaker 1: loving kindness practice we offer loving kindness, which is silently
Speaker 1: repeating certain phrases like maybe be happy, maybe peaceful, towards
Speaker 1: someone we hardly know that we're kind of indifferent to.
Speaker 1: Because the idea is that if this is someone that
Speaker 1: we'll see now and then, you may not feel any
Speaker 1: great shakes happening in your formal practice, but when you
Speaker 1: run into them, you'll notice, oh there's a different feeling here.
Speaker 1: I feel some connection, or I'm interested in them, or
Speaker 1: they're well being. So for like forty five years, my
Speaker 1: colleagues and I have been saying, like the checkout person
Speaker 1: in the supermarket, they're the totally perfect neutral person. We
Speaker 1: couldn't care less about them. You know, they're like a
Speaker 1: machine or something. They're piece of furniture as far as
Speaker 1: most of us are concerned, Although I tend to I'm
Speaker 1: known for kibbitzing with them. Well you are an excellent
Speaker 1: or mention then, you know, but not everyone's like that.
Speaker 1: So I heard myself repeating those words, and I went, whoops,
Speaker 1: look at that. You know, how do we think we
Speaker 1: get fited if we're not growing at ourselves? And now
Speaker 1: we call them essential workers. Now it seems like an
Speaker 1: endangered occupation. And so even just paying attention to someone
Speaker 1: we normally ignore is an act of loving kindness. And
Speaker 1: so even I'm feeling any great burst of warmth or
Speaker 1: something doesn't matter. Yeah, I definitely hear your perspective. You
Speaker 1: say something. I thought it was really interesting. There are
Speaker 1: times I get up in the morning I think, Okay,
Speaker 1: who am I going to love today? Or who am
Speaker 1: I to love today? That is not a choice space
Speaker 1: on who I think is cute or who I want
Speaker 1: to spend time with, But it's the recognition of the
Speaker 1: hunger we all have for love. Sometimes that backfires for me, though,
Speaker 1: like because I you know, sometimes I'll give love. But
Speaker 1: then then the person like will expect it all the time,
Speaker 1: and then and then it gets awkwhere you're like, no,
Speaker 1: I really was just doing my love agliness mata days
Speaker 1: and like, I mean that never happens to you where
Speaker 1: you're ner have a boundary issues. It's like it's like, no,
Speaker 1: I don't want to actually give you love, like twenty
Speaker 1: four to seven. You know, yeah, well so another confusing
Speaker 1: thing about loving kindness is a practice is that it
Speaker 1: actually doesn't imply action. And you know, it doesn't mean
Speaker 1: you can't have boundaries or do you have to give
Speaker 1: someone money or you have to let them move in
Speaker 1: or lets it hurt you. But it's more like this
Speaker 1: inner space that allows us to relay more from the
Speaker 1: sense of connection rather than self consciousness or fear or whatever.
Speaker 1: We're usually kind of lost in and you wink a
Speaker 1: lot of this day, you know, agency you say, we
Speaker 1: have control over so little, a truth that is sometimes
Speaker 1: exceptionally better. But we can choose to care and we
Speaker 1: can choose to act. That is the truth that frees us.
Speaker 1: There were some interesting undertones of one of my favorite
Speaker 1: humanistic psychologists, Role May there and if you're read in
Speaker 1: his work and love and will and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: He talks a lot about how we can choose to
Speaker 1: care or through will. Yeah, I thought that was that
Speaker 1: was beautiful. Could you could you talk a little about
Speaker 1: that and how you personally experience that when you're recently
Speaker 1: hospitalized with a severe infection. By the way, we're all
Speaker 1: really worried about you. Yeah, there are a lot of
Speaker 1: a lot of people that really love will genuinely love you,
Speaker 1: not just through their practice, their woman kindest practice, but
Speaker 1: they I mean, they really love you. And can you
Speaker 1: talk a little about what you learned about agency through
Speaker 1: that process? Well, actually through this process, through the pandemic.
Speaker 1: You know, when I realized, which I never think of,
Speaker 1: I thought, I'm a senior citizen. I was just in
Speaker 1: the hospital. I have asthma. I'm the vulnerable person they're
Speaker 1: talking about, you know, which is partly where I went
Speaker 1: left New York at that time. I was in the
Speaker 1: hospital now moving on toward two years ago with sepsis,
Speaker 1: which was really you know, you don't want to have
Speaker 1: part of what happened was I'm not sure this is
Speaker 1: totally about agency. I learned a lot. I learned a
Speaker 1: lot about love. I learned a lot about receiving love
Speaker 1: because I didn't really feel a tremendous amount of love.
Speaker 1: I learned something I learned that was encapsulated in this
Speaker 1: the first time I got up to walk, which was
Speaker 1: a little walker going up intown my hospital carters, as
Speaker 1: one does with a physical therapy. At one point she
Speaker 1: said to me, it's not a race. You know, you're
Speaker 1: going to get further if you'll only stop now and
Speaker 1: then and give yourself a break and then start again.
Speaker 1: You're like good. Point. Oh so that actually became kind
Speaker 1: of my mantra for life because I realized, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm like, you can only do one step at a time.
Speaker 1: You can only do one thing at a time. Look
Speaker 1: you now, I mean you're not you mean it? You
Speaker 1: mean through it? Yeah, I mean. I learned about agency more,
Speaker 1: I think from just a regular mindfulness practice, because basically
Speaker 1: it's just a question of choice. Well in two ways
Speaker 1: I learned about it. And as a question of choice,
Speaker 1: because when we don't know what we're feeling, we have
Speaker 1: no choice, we have no power, you know, we like
Speaker 1: press send on an email two hours later, go whops?
Speaker 1: Look at that that was kind of hostile. I wasn't
Speaker 1: it or or whatever. But the more I could come
Speaker 1: to the place where I could see what I was
Speaker 1: feeling as I was feeling it and have a better
Speaker 1: relationship to those few feelings. And they'd say, oh right,
Speaker 1: tell a story in the book about this little girl
Speaker 1: maybe seven or eight years old, didn't. My friends who
Speaker 1: run the Holistic Life Foundation of Baltimore, which brings yoga
Speaker 1: and meditation to the inner city schools, they taught her.
Speaker 1: She was like a fighter. She was always in a
Speaker 1: battle with somebody that were kids were teasing her and
Speaker 1: they I mean to her, but she'd like punch them
Speaker 1: out and then she'd have to go to detention. And
Speaker 1: she was in a bad trouble. And so they taught
Speaker 1: her how to meditate. One day, they walked into the
Speaker 1: gym or the auditorium or something some public space, and
Speaker 1: she had this other little girl up against the wall,
Speaker 1: holding her by the throat, and then she said to her,
Speaker 1: you're just lucky, and I had to meditate. She dropped
Speaker 1: her and she went and sat. You know, it's just
Speaker 1: like it's the perfect story because it is a perfect moment, Like,
Speaker 1: you know, she had a choice about what she was
Speaker 1: going to do, but she doesn't have a choice about
Speaker 1: what she's feeling. She had a choice about what she
Speaker 1: was going to do about it. I really honor that.
Speaker 1: And then I think a lot about agency because I
Speaker 1: think about those people who care more than they used to, perhaps,
Speaker 1: and they've opened up to a sense of connection with others,
Speaker 1: but anything they might do to try to make a
Speaker 1: difference seems so small and so insufficient, and so people
Speaker 1: just stay stuck a lot. And so part of really
Speaker 1: why I wrote the book was to try to urge
Speaker 1: people to like, it doesn't matter if it seems like
Speaker 1: it's a really small action, you know, and nothing much contribution.
Speaker 1: It's a contribution. You've got to do it. Yeah. There
Speaker 1: was an that was in your book about the example
Speaker 1: where the there's a starfish that he's throwing back in
Speaker 1: the water and the guy says, why are you doing that?
Speaker 1: There's a million here and he's threw one, and he said, well,
Speaker 1: I saved that life. Yeah, yeah, I really like that.
Speaker 1: I also like that you bring up cynicism and hopelessness.
Speaker 1: These they're very prevalent these days right now, you know,
Speaker 1: and especially during this time, people are quite senecle of
Speaker 1: each other. You say that it actually gives one a
Speaker 1: false sense of agency. M H thought that was really interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we feel really strong, don't we when we can be
Speaker 1: contemptuous or you know, I mean I think about righteousness
Speaker 1: as well, Yeah, and self righteous and dismissive. And and
Speaker 1: I think even before these terrible times, you know, there
Speaker 1: was sort of a cultural delight at putting other people down.
Speaker 1: And you could see it in like reality TV shows,
Speaker 1: which I don't generally watch from well back when we
Speaker 1: used to visit people. If I was at a friend's house,
Speaker 1: you know, I think somebody maybe watch this cooking show once.
Speaker 1: And I thought it was devastating because they weren't saying
Speaker 1: that people like, you know, you're not love. Could have
Speaker 1: used a little more spice, but the best of luck
Speaker 1: to you. They say, take your knives and go like
Speaker 1: you don't deserve to be alive, you know, And that
Speaker 1: was entertainment. And I thought, this is terrible, and it
Speaker 1: was like a culture of contempt. And now you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's just compounded because I don't know what you've observed.
Speaker 1: It's probably the same thing. But I feel like the cycles,
Speaker 1: you know, were so strong, from anxiety to grief to
Speaker 1: anger to exhaustion. I think people are just exhausted. I
Speaker 1: do think people are absolutely exhausted, and I think they
Speaker 1: have an outrage fatigue. Do you feel do you feel
Speaker 1: inner peace? What is your what is your own like
Speaker 1: inner state of consciousness? Like I feel I feel pretty peaceful.
Speaker 1: I mean I feel the consequence of losing it, you know,
Speaker 1: of like not being there, and it's painful. So fortunately
Speaker 1: I feel it usually fairly quickly. I mean, it's been
Speaker 1: ten thousand years since I started practice. It's like you
Speaker 1: still look young, thank you, but I you know, I really,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's funny. It's like the first lesson
Speaker 1: in meditation is to choose an object of awareness that
Speaker 1: commonly something like the feeling of the breath, rest your
Speaker 1: attention there, and then when your attention wanders, sort of
Speaker 1: blaming yourself for freaking out or calling yourself a failure,
Speaker 1: seeing if you can let go and just come back.
Speaker 1: And I used to think that was so stupid and elementary,
Speaker 1: but it's actually still the biggest lesson I've ever learned,
Speaker 1: because we all lose it. I lose it, you know,
Speaker 1: I get anxious, or I get upset, or I get reactive.
Speaker 1: In some way, but I remember, oh, you can start over,
Speaker 1: just come back. Yeah. I like that idea of starting
Speaker 1: or I like that a lot. Anger is an interesting
Speaker 1: emotion that you cover in your book because it can
Speaker 1: be a double edged sword. You right, If we can
Speaker 1: be mindful of our anger, we can learn to use
Speaker 1: the energy and intelligence of it without getting lost in
Speaker 1: the tunnel vision it tends to foster. It certainly does
Speaker 1: create a tunnel vision being mindful of the anger. What
Speaker 1: did they give you the flexibility to if you decide?
Speaker 1: What if you decide you just don't want to be
Speaker 1: angry anymore? Can you stop being angry? I think you
Speaker 1: can get I don't think you can cut off the
Speaker 1: feeling necessarily, but you can get some space from it.
Speaker 1: And you could certainly choose not to act on it,
Speaker 1: you know, which is the really consequential thing. And the
Speaker 1: Buddhist psychology anger is like into a forest fire, which
Speaker 1: is always interesting to say someone in California these days.
Speaker 1: It's like into a forest fire which burns up its
Speaker 1: own support, which means it can destroy the host, and
Speaker 1: like a forest fire can burn really wild, so you
Speaker 1: might end up far from where you want to be.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a strength and anger, and there's an
Speaker 1: energy for sure, which we actually rely on. You know,
Speaker 1: I've been at more than one meeting because perhaps you
Speaker 1: have as well. Whereas the angriest person in the room
Speaker 1: that was the truth teller, and everyone else was studiously
Speaker 1: looking the other way and not wanting to confront whatever,
Speaker 1: and they're saying, no, look at that. So we needed
Speaker 1: that too. And yet if you're enveloped in it, if
Speaker 1: you're really wrap up in it, if you're consumed by it,
Speaker 1: first of all, it's so painful, and you do get
Speaker 1: tunnel vision. Like my example is usually like if you
Speaker 1: think of the last time you were really angry at yourself,
Speaker 1: it's not a time we also thought, you know what,
Speaker 1: those five great things. Also same day those are gone,
Speaker 1: and so we lose information, we lose some options, and
Speaker 1: that's not a good thing. Yeah, it's not a good thing.
Speaker 1: And balance is what it is all about. And you say,
Speaker 1: how do we fully acknowledge the suffering but at the
Speaker 1: same time not let it define and overtake us. I
Speaker 1: mean this question can also be asked in lots of
Speaker 1: different ways. You know, you talk, you have a delightful
Speaker 1: you have a delightful Baldwin quote. You really read my
Speaker 1: book a good Baldwin quote. You know, we have this
Speaker 1: simultaneous acceptance that does exist, but we also can still
Speaker 1: fight for what we can fight for. How can we
Speaker 1: have full acceptance of the suffering acknowledge at the same
Speaker 1: time not let it overtake it, like the fight, not
Speaker 1: overtake us, so that we no longer have any sort
Speaker 1: of self care. It's possible to do right, It is
Speaker 1: possible to do. My favorite definition of mindfulness came actually
Speaker 1: from the New York Times many years ago. There was
Speaker 1: a pilot program in Oakland, california're bringing mindfulness into the
Speaker 1: classroom when it was very rare, you know, long before
Speaker 1: and now and fourth grade classroom. The kids are like
Speaker 1: nine or ten years old. So the journalist asked one
Speaker 1: of the kids, like, what is mindfulness? What is mindfulness?
Speaker 1: And the kids said, mindfulness means not hitting someone in
Speaker 1: the mouth. That's what mindfulness means. And I thought that
Speaker 1: is a great definition of mindfulness because what does it imply.
Speaker 1: It implies you know, you're feeling angry when you're starting
Speaker 1: to feel angry, not after you've sent the email, not
Speaker 1: after you've lashed out at somebody. It also implies, as
Speaker 1: you say, a certain balanced relationship to the anger, because
Speaker 1: if you just fall into it and you get overcome
Speaker 1: by it and defined by it, you're like, I hit
Speaker 1: a lot of people in the mouth because life can
Speaker 1: be really frustrating. But at the same time, if you're
Speaker 1: ashamed of what you feel and you hate it and
Speaker 1: you try to repress it and try to deny it,
Speaker 1: you're just going to explode. It just doesn't work as
Speaker 1: an approach. So we call mindfulness that place in the
Speaker 1: middle where you're fully aware and connected to what you're feeling,
Speaker 1: but there's some space I don't know, like sometimes like
Speaker 1: with out of self defense for instance. Yeah, for sure,
Speaker 1: you're like, you know what, I'm angry, I'm mindful of it,
Speaker 1: and I'm okay with that. I'm okay with this anger. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think it's just remembering actions are consequential, and so
Speaker 1: you want to choose your action like that little girl. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: just you want that maximum flexibility so active as burnout
Speaker 1: is a real thing, and that lenks to what we
Speaker 1: were just talking about earlier, and I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people who are activists are really feeling that burnout
Speaker 1: right now. And you know my friend Bob Thurman, who
Speaker 1: was a professor of British studies at Columbia, he's retired lately.
Speaker 1: His favorite word is realistic. And I used to think
Speaker 1: I used a scholar and a translator and we teach together.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I used to think it's sort of an odd
Speaker 1: word to be so into, you know, like it sounds
Speaker 1: a little plain and unadorned. But I got to appreciate it,
Speaker 1: you know, like if we're talking about getting happier, we're
Speaker 1: talking about getting free, we have to be realistic, like
Speaker 1: what helps and what hinders, and you know, what's real actually,
Speaker 1: and because we want to align ourselves with what's true,
Speaker 1: which is another way of saying real because otherwise we're
Speaker 1: living in some odd angle to what's true and we're
Speaker 1: totally screwed up. You know, everything is distorted, and so
Speaker 1: what's realistic? People think it just as you say described
Speaker 1: I think totally accurately. I can't allow myself to be happy.
Speaker 1: I can't allow myself to relax. I can't take in
Speaker 1: the joy. It would be wrong, it's shameful. There's too
Speaker 1: much suffering. But in the end we end up depleted,
Speaker 1: We end up exhausted, we end up feeling that we
Speaker 1: have no wherewithal within to offer anything to anybody else.
Speaker 1: We have no sense of inner resource left. So we
Speaker 1: have to look at realistically what allows us to build
Speaker 1: a sense of inner resource, because trying to make a
Speaker 1: difference in any way professionally, in your family, in the
Speaker 1: world is not easy, and so we need and we
Speaker 1: need energy, and we need some sense of balance, and
Speaker 1: we need long term perspective often and taking in the
Speaker 1: joy is part of that. It's part of actually resilience.
Speaker 1: One of the first activists also years ago that I
Speaker 1: was getting to know who is brilliant and amazing and
Speaker 1: phenomenally depressed. And I wouldn't say that was cause and effect,
Speaker 1: but he kept telling me, you know how, he couldn't
Speaker 1: allow himself to eat a banana because he knew the
Speaker 1: chain of suffering that had gone into being right there
Speaker 1: in front of him. And that's not to deny that,
Speaker 1: but I kept thinking, he's so unhappy. You know what
Speaker 1: is this idea of benevolent contagion that Sarah Jones talks about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's an idea of ways in which we
Speaker 1: affect one another and that there actually can be a
Speaker 1: sort of spread of greater delight, you know, and and
Speaker 1: sense of harmony, and which she strives for in her creativity.
Speaker 1: She's a playwright. There's a lot of cynical continion, yes,
Speaker 1: going around, and it's especially on Twitter. Yes, you know,
Speaker 1: it's great fun following you on Twitter, I must say,
Speaker 1: because you're very you're creative, and you're prolific. I see
Speaker 1: you and I think I should write more. You bring
Speaker 1: up a great point about how we easily, how easily
Speaker 1: we judge others. It's just tribalism is in our bones,
Speaker 1: and as well as categorization, you know, we evolve this tendency.
Speaker 1: It's a good thing. I mean, if we didn't have
Speaker 1: any categorization capacities. So it's good, but it also leads
Speaker 1: us astray obviously. You know, what does living with a
Speaker 1: vision of interconnection look like to you? I think we're
Speaker 1: just kinder like for years, whenever I go into a
Speaker 1: company or an organization to teach, I would ask how
Speaker 1: many other people need to be doing their job well
Speaker 1: for you to do your job well? Because we can
Speaker 1: live I mean, I grew up in New York City,
Speaker 1: it's especially easily to feel disconnected you know, from nature,
Speaker 1: from all kinds of things. And yet I think if
Speaker 1: we realize that we're not in like a silo, however,
Speaker 1: alone or cut off, we might feel there are other
Speaker 1: people we're counting on. Like pretty recently, I was talking
Speaker 1: to a physician who is running this medical practice at
Speaker 1: the hospital, and he said, you know, I have like
Speaker 1: all this new appreciation for it is the cleaning staff.
Speaker 1: And I thought, well, yeah, you know, but we just
Speaker 1: go about our day, you know, and not really giving
Speaker 1: a thought to all these people that we are counting on,
Speaker 1: that we're relying on and others are counting on us.
Speaker 1: We really do live in an interdependent universe, and so
Speaker 1: I think there's just a kind of softening, and there's
Speaker 1: a certain there's a certain kindness as you sort of
Speaker 1: have a sense like, oh, we're all in this together.
Speaker 1: But one of my favorite stories of all time is
Speaker 1: in the book, which was about how I was driving
Speaker 1: with his friend. We were caught in this terrible, horrible,
Speaker 1: awful traffic, complaining about it the whole time, and and
Speaker 1: then my friend said to me, well, we're the traffic too,
Speaker 1: you know, And I thought, oh right, it never occurred
Speaker 1: to me. It's like, that's really the presumption of privilege,
Speaker 1: Like it's my road and you're in my way. You
Speaker 1: interlobers are going so damn slow, you know, but it's
Speaker 1: my road, and so what if that sense of centrality
Speaker 1: and marginalization drops away and then we're just all the traffic.
Speaker 1: So we have a problem, but we can deal with
Speaker 1: it as we you know, rather than feeling like you're
Speaker 1: in my way. You know, it's easier said than done
Speaker 1: when you're a wait for an appointment and people are
Speaker 1: in your way, But it's much easier said. But you
Speaker 1: say mindfulness meditation can help dissolve the grip of habits
Speaker 1: like stereotyping and attribution bias. Sure, it's also are dropping
Speaker 1: some psychological terms there. I was going to say that
Speaker 1: just before when you said something, I thought, oh, that's
Speaker 1: like attribution bias. Yeah, yeah, you go go leading to
Speaker 1: a cleaner leading to a cleaner, clearer view of what
Speaker 1: we are encountering and of various possible resolutions. It might
Speaker 1: be humanity's only tool, sort cognitive tool that we evolved
Speaker 1: in order to do that, to override this attribution bias.
Speaker 1: And you said stereotypical categories, categorization, there's a lot build
Speaker 1: into our DNA that can cause it's kind of like
Speaker 1: ready for strife, you know, just asking for a strife
Speaker 1: and instead of like it's going to override that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so look at the whole, not just the parts. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: how do we sustain ourselves, our sanity and open hearts
Speaker 1: and have a clear vision in the face of COVID.
Speaker 1: This is the million doilec question everybody. Now, this is
Speaker 1: your chance, by the way, to directly link your book
Speaker 1: to thank you. Yeah, I'm giving you a chance to
Speaker 1: You're relevant right now, just a little too early, you know. Well,
Speaker 1: I use language the way you use language, but I
Speaker 1: hesitated at a word like sustain because I don't think
Speaker 1: that's the way it's going to happen. I don't think
Speaker 1: that's realistic. I think we'll lose it, but we'll be
Speaker 1: able to come back, you know, to balance, and we'll
Speaker 1: lose it again, but maybe if not as long, and
Speaker 1: we'll come back more gracefully, and then we'll lose it again.
Speaker 1: I think that's actually the rhythm of change. That's how
Speaker 1: we grow, that's how we make progress. And I've just
Speaker 1: seen so many people discourage through the years, thinking oh,
Speaker 1: you know, I blew up with my family and it
Speaker 1: was the same stupid little provocation, no better than I
Speaker 1: was before. And they may not realize that they used
Speaker 1: to be lost in the anger for twenty four hours
Speaker 1: and now it's two minutes, which is a big change
Speaker 1: in the quality of one's life. And I think we're
Speaker 1: just so unfair to ourselves in general, and unjust. And
Speaker 1: people ask me that variation of that question all the time,
Speaker 1: like how do I maintain mindfulness all day long at work?
Speaker 1: Or how do I stay at this level of concentration
Speaker 1: after this retreat? And I always say, well, you're not
Speaker 1: going to, but something great can happen. Something great will
Speaker 1: happen in that you can start over again, you know,
Speaker 1: so much sooner and so much more gracefully. So I'll
Speaker 1: tell you what I do because I thought about that
Speaker 1: a lot. In fact, when in writing that new preface,
Speaker 1: my fundamental question was what's still true? You know, expectations
Speaker 1: were shattered. Where I thought I was living was changed,
Speaker 1: There's a lot of anxiety, everything was uncertain. What's still true?
Speaker 1: And that translated into what upholds me? Like in the
Speaker 1: Sanskrit word dorma, which is usually translated is the truth
Speaker 1: or the way things are, or sometimes even the Buddhist
Speaker 1: teaching literally means that which sustains us, that which supports us.
Speaker 1: So I thought, okay, what's supporting me? And I realized
Speaker 1: that there were different elements of my meditation practice that
Speaker 1: were like just that act of centering around something like
Speaker 1: the feeling of the breath and getting some rest because
Speaker 1: I don't have to fabricate anything and create anything. That
Speaker 1: was really important. And the part of mindfulness that about
Speaker 1: looking at very difficult feelings like anger or grief or
Speaker 1: whatever without totally being lost in them, and also without
Speaker 1: fighting them. It's just like a skill. The part of
Speaker 1: mindfulness that was remembering to take in the joy. And
Speaker 1: the oddest thing I found through all these years about
Speaker 1: meditation practice is that it really creates a profound sense
Speaker 1: of connection with others. And it's odd because you might
Speaker 1: be all alone when you practice, your eyes might be closed,
Speaker 1: but somehow you drop into that understanding of interconnection that's
Speaker 1: not just intellectual, and you really do feel like you
Speaker 1: were part of a whole, which I find fascinating. Even
Speaker 1: before the pandemic, people were saying there was an epidemic
Speaker 1: of loneliness, and I'd read about social connection in health
Speaker 1: situations where it seemed to be such a strong killing agent.
Speaker 1: I thought, it can't just be numbers. It can't just
Speaker 1: be like, oh, you've only got two friends, you need five.
Speaker 1: It's got to be something else, right, some inner sense,
Speaker 1: and that we can cultivate in any circumstance. Yes, this
Speaker 1: idea of equanimity and balances is something you say, a
Speaker 1: lot of people misunderstand that, but you really link perspective
Speaker 1: to it. Perspectives and really interesting thing because it seems
Speaker 1: like mindfulness can allow us to zoom out on ourselves
Speaker 1: in a big way, right, and then we can zoom
Speaker 1: out on what we're seeing right in front of us
Speaker 1: about someone else as well. We can try to put
Speaker 1: it in context. Yeah, I do think we're so quick
Speaker 1: to put up the defenses and react when someone is
Speaker 1: being hostile to us, as opposed to having dare I say,
Speaker 1: compassion for the fact they're being hostile they're obviously suffering, right.
Speaker 1: It's not like like no one got the memo that
Speaker 1: you're allowed to have compassion for someone who's acting out.
Speaker 1: You're allowed to make that choice. So yeah, I think
Speaker 1: about that and just how important that would be to
Speaker 1: heal the divides. As they say, it's like the phrase
Speaker 1: heal the divides. You know, it's like everyone's putting up
Speaker 1: their defenses, not listening to each other, and you think,
Speaker 1: you think equanimity can help with that. First of all,
Speaker 1: I think the first step is probably examining what we
Speaker 1: think compassion is. You know, so often we think it's
Speaker 1: something stupid and it means allowing yourself to be hurt
Speaker 1: or someone else to be hurt. And it doesn't have
Speaker 1: to mean that at all, you know, it's just this
Speaker 1: kind of almost a state of understanding, like, oh, that
Speaker 1: likely hurts, you know, to live a life that disconnected
Speaker 1: like they hurt, sort of act in that way. It's
Speaker 1: like for a while, maybe she still lives around. Huffington
Speaker 1: would often be talking about the difference between resume virtues
Speaker 1: and obituary virtues, you know, or eulogy virtues. Is that
Speaker 1: a Brooks David Brooks thing. I think he started doing
Speaker 1: that too. Yeah. The resume virtues are like they worked
Speaker 1: over time, like you know, fifty weeks of the year,
Speaker 1: and the eulogy virtues are they were incredibly kind or
Speaker 1: they remember their grandchildren, or something like that. To see
Speaker 1: that people you know, can think their happiness their greatest strength,
Speaker 1: their greatest accomplishment is going to be in cruelty or
Speaker 1: you know, disdain for others, and you think, wow, that's
Speaker 1: like that's worthy of some compassion and also curiosity. When
Speaker 1: you're on my podcast years ago, you said so many
Speaker 1: things that have stuck with me today. You know, it's amazing,
Speaker 1: like how many insights that were in that episode. One
Speaker 1: thing I keep quoting over and over again, and I
Speaker 1: asked you about however it can still maintain passion in
Speaker 1: a relationship. And I in my book Trin said, I
Speaker 1: like quote you, and I'm just fascinated with that. You said,
Speaker 1: I brought up people who were jerks or whatever, and
Speaker 1: you said, you know, I look at some of those
Speaker 1: people when I say, well, that's an interesting way someone's
Speaker 1: decided to live their life that free. You said that.
Speaker 1: You said that, I don't know if you remember that,
Speaker 1: but yeah, it sounds like something you would say, though, right,
Speaker 1: you'd believe it if if you said it, and if
Speaker 1: if you heard it back. Well, yeah, it's just that
Speaker 1: really stuck with me. I thought that was interesting, and
Speaker 1: I've actually had that thought from time to time where
Speaker 1: I've treated something that I would normally judge with curiosity,
Speaker 1: you know, and be like, oh, you know, that's interesting
Speaker 1: that someone's decided to just fight that your whole life,
Speaker 1: you know, Like that's what they've decided. They're they're the
Speaker 1: bound and they're standing on. Yeah. And I think it
Speaker 1: has a lot to do with like when you write
Speaker 1: about Maslow, you know, it's like it's what's your vision
Speaker 1: of what's possible, you know, and if it's really like
Speaker 1: meager and cramped, you know, it's like you're gonna settle
Speaker 1: for a lot mistakenly. So I think, you know, because
Speaker 1: we are capable of so much more. You say, to
Speaker 1: be present, alive, and effective, we try to live a
Speaker 1: life with a sense of both necessity and possibility. There
Speaker 1: has to be a balance. This is I think related
Speaker 1: to the baldenicle. What I was talking about is that, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you have to strike a good balance between that. And
Speaker 1: all of our actions can be motivated by love. They
Speaker 1: also be motivated by hatred and revenge too, but it
Speaker 1: can also be motivated by love. And you say love
Speaker 1: or compassion, I kind of put love and compassion synonymous
Speaker 1: with each other. But when you have compassion and you
Speaker 1: pair that with equanimity, you know, that seems to be
Speaker 1: the goody goody pairing. Yeah. Yeah, I mean that's what
Speaker 1: we need, because otherwise there's too much heartache, and there's
Speaker 1: too much impatience, and there's too much frustration. And this
Speaker 1: is quite quite a profound quote of yours, and it's personal.
Speaker 1: You say, I want the trajectory of my own life, though,
Speaker 1: to be one where I don't avoid the suffering of others,
Speaker 1: but I work to be present and open hearted and
Speaker 1: caring while caring for myself as well. Is that how
Speaker 1: you want to be remembered? Yeah? Like in writing the book,
Speaker 1: you know, I went through There are all kinds of
Speaker 1: loops in the book, and that particular one was I
Speaker 1: moved from you know, working with anger and working with
Speaker 1: grief and remembering to taking the joy and seeing interconnection
Speaker 1: to this kind of system's view. And then I realized
Speaker 1: I was looping right back to like one on one,
Speaker 1: this moment with one person and with the story of
Speaker 1: my friends who was with his father as he was dying.
Speaker 1: And I thought, oh, that's a strange loop, you know,
Speaker 1: I just did. I hope that was okay, and then
Speaker 1: I realized, well, this is what was the essence of it,
Speaker 1: So well, how do I want to live? Well? Thanks
Speaker 1: for again for coming on my podcast, and I love you.
Speaker 1: I love you. I'm so to see you. Likewise, thanks
Speaker 1: for listening to this episode of the Psychology Podcast. If
Speaker 1: you'd like to react in some way to something you heard,
Speaker 1: I encourage you to join in the discussion at the
Speaker 1: Psychology podcast dot com. That's the Psychology podcast dot com. Also,
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Speaker 1: tune in next time for more on the mind, brain, behavior,
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