Speaker 1: The first nobilities that there is suffering, and I remember
Speaker 1: as a young kid feeling so grateful for someone acknowledging
Speaker 1: that things are hard, that they're suffering in life, that
Speaker 1: it's real because I grew up in a space where
Speaker 1: most people were telling me what I was thinking was
Speaker 1: happening wasn't happening, and everything was just fine, and it
Speaker 1: wasn't fine.
Speaker 2: This is it's okay that you're not okay, and I'm
Speaker 2: Megan Divine. This week, one of my favorite people on
Speaker 2: the planet returns to the show, Zen teacher Koshin Paley
Speaker 2: Ellison is here to talk about his book Untangled and
Speaker 2: how the real work of spiritual practice is turning to
Speaker 2: face what hurts, not trying to rise above it. There
Speaker 2: is no spiritual bypassing allowed here, friends, ever, but certainly
Speaker 2: not in this episode. Stay tuned and I will be
Speaker 2: right back after this first break. Before we get started,
Speaker 2: two quick notes. One, this episode is an encore performance.
Speaker 2: I am on break working on a giant new project,
Speaker 2: so we're releasing a mix of our favorite episodes from
Speaker 2: the first three seasons of the show. Some of these
Speaker 2: conversations you might have missed in their original seasons, and
Speaker 2: some shows just truly deserve multiple listens so that you
Speaker 2: capture all of the goodness. Second note, while we cover
Speaker 2: a lot of emotional relational territory in our time here together,
Speaker 2: this show is not a substitute for skilled support, but
Speaker 2: a licensemental health provider or for professional supervision related to
Speaker 2: your work. Take what you learn here, take your thoughts
Speaker 2: and your reflections out into your world and.
Speaker 3: Talk about it.
Speaker 2: Hey, today's guest is an old friend of mine, an
Speaker 2: old friend from way back in season one of the podcast.
Speaker 2: He's back because he's got a new book out called
Speaker 2: Untangled Walking the Eightfold Path to Clarity, Courage, and Compassion.
Speaker 2: But I'll tell you the truth, a little secret. I
Speaker 2: have him back on the show because his presence is
Speaker 2: like medicine for me personally, his words, his way of
Speaker 2: looking at the world, and his silliness, especially his silliness.
Speaker 2: I always feel somehow both calm and joyful after spending
Speaker 2: time with him, even when we talk about difficult or
Speaker 2: painful things. Kohin Paley Ellison is an author, a zen teacher,
Speaker 2: and a Jungian psychotherapist who has devoted his life to
Speaker 2: the study and application of psychotherapy and Buddhism. Koshin co
Speaker 2: founded the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care with
Speaker 2: his husband Shodo. Robert Campbell, and Koshin's newest book is Untangled,
Speaker 2: Walking the Eightfold Path to Clarity, Courage, and Compassion. As
Speaker 2: I mentioned earlier, now, it is not important that you
Speaker 2: know what the Eightfold Path is or what the foreign
Speaker 2: Noble Truths are in order to get something beautiful and
Speaker 2: useful out of today's episode. But in a very brief nutshell,
Speaker 2: in case you want to know, think of the four
Speaker 2: Noble truths like a concise description of the human condition.
Speaker 2: Suffering exists, it has a cause, it has an end,
Speaker 2: and there is a path or a practice that will
Speaker 2: help you find the end to suffering. That path is
Speaker 2: called the Middle Way. Now side note here, if you
Speaker 2: have read my book It's okay that you're not okay,
Speaker 2: you might remember that there is a short little section
Speaker 2: on the Teachings of the Buddha in my book where
Speaker 2: I talk about the middle Way. So if you're like,
Speaker 2: I've heard this before, that might be it. The middle
Speaker 2: Way introduces us to the noble Eightfold Path, which is
Speaker 2: what helps us find the cessation of suffering. It is
Speaker 2: not an eight step plan to pretending that things don't suck.
Speaker 2: The point of practice, and the point of Koshin's new
Speaker 2: book is that if you can find your own roots,
Speaker 2: your own center inside difficult times, you can tend to
Speaker 2: your pain in ways that make it a lot less
Speaker 2: likely your pain will fester and cause more harm aka suffering.
Speaker 2: That's going to all make a lot more sense when
Speaker 2: you listen to this week's show, So for now, just
Speaker 2: let that part wash over you. Now, a couple of
Speaker 2: content notes for today's episode. The real power of Koshin's
Speaker 2: work is that it's rooted in intense pain and suffering.
Speaker 2: He really knows intimately and personally the power of the
Speaker 2: tools he teaches. You'll hear him tell a very intense
Speaker 2: story of anti semitism in his childhood and how that
Speaker 2: experience affects him to this day. He does that so
Speaker 2: that he can talk about the ways that Buddhism has
Speaker 2: helped him engage with what happened to him in ways
Speaker 2: that make that memory easier to endure. So one content note,
Speaker 2: there is a graphic description of antisemitism in this episode,
Speaker 2: and two a reminder that anti Semitism is not a
Speaker 2: thing of the distant past. It is here, now, present
Speaker 2: and growing. I shall hear Koshins say in this episode,
Speaker 2: all violence has suffering at its root. All right, that's
Speaker 2: enough prep out of me. I hope you find so
Speaker 2: much to carry with you in this episode. Friends, Koshin's
Speaker 2: joy shines through everything he does, and I'm so happy
Speaker 2: to share his wisdom and his presence with you here again. Hello,
Speaker 2: my friend. I am so glad to be back. And
Speaker 2: of course we have been chatting before this, and I
Speaker 2: feel like we could get together for this show once
Speaker 2: a season for years and years and years and years
Speaker 2: and just sort of vaguely chat about everything forever. But
Speaker 2: this time, this time, we are here to talk about
Speaker 2: your new book and why it matters in this moment,
Speaker 2: individually and collectively. So I want to hear about two
Speaker 2: things before we really get rolling. And I'm doing this
Speaker 2: because I know how conversations with you go. You say
Speaker 2: something and it reminds me of something else, and then
Speaker 2: we're before we know it, those horses have not only
Speaker 2: left the barn, but they are in Arkansas and we
Speaker 2: started in California. So two things that I want to
Speaker 2: know from you before we get rolling. First, can you
Speaker 2: tell us about your new book? And second can you
Speaker 2: give a little primer on the Buddhist eightfold path so
Speaker 2: that people know what we're referring to as we talk
Speaker 2: about it.
Speaker 3: So, first of all, it's really sweet to see you
Speaker 3: and thank you. Yeah. So the new book, Untangled.
Speaker 1: Is really a book that I've been in some ways
Speaker 1: living for the last couple of decades and really looking
Speaker 1: at how we can actually address the gap.
Speaker 3: Between what we all kind of know.
Speaker 1: If we pause for a second and you say, what
Speaker 1: do I really value? What do I really care about?
Speaker 1: What are the things that I care about? What activities
Speaker 1: that are nourishing to me, the people, and actually what
Speaker 1: we're doing with our time? And so for me, the
Speaker 1: forl Noble Truths and they both have are exactly the
Speaker 1: medicine to address that gap that we kind of all know.
Speaker 1: And I think it's a gap of anxiety. It's a
Speaker 1: gap of aversion from our discomfort for what feels hard.
Speaker 1: We don't want to do something that's hard, and to
Speaker 1: be with our grief, to be with our sadness, to
Speaker 1: be with our anger, to be with our greed. You know,
Speaker 1: we just fill in, you know, and cover over what
Speaker 1: is most important, and then we end up living our lives,
Speaker 1: or we can end up living our lives actually just
Speaker 1: always far away from what we most care about. And so,
Speaker 1: you know, the historical Liddho was so smart and often
Speaker 1: he has thought of as the great position and as
Speaker 1: the great position. One of the reasons why he's known
Speaker 1: is that is because he diagnosed the problem, which is
Speaker 1: that there's suffering, that there is tangled that there's you know,
Speaker 1: as my grandmother would say, it was souris you know,
Speaker 1: like basically it hurts, and we feel confused and overwhelmed
Speaker 1: and all of this stuff. And the first nobility is
Speaker 1: that there is suffering. And I remember as a young
Speaker 1: kid feeling so grateful for someone acknowledging that things are hard,
Speaker 1: that they're suffering in life, that it's real. Because I
Speaker 1: grew up in a space where most people were telling
Speaker 1: me what I was thinking was happening wasn't happening, and
Speaker 1: everything was just fine, and it wasn't fine.
Speaker 3: So hearing that first.
Speaker 1: Nobility and the nobility of suffering, that that it's noble,
Speaker 1: you know, that we can actually sit in nobility and
Speaker 1: realize that yes, I feel tangled up and that there
Speaker 1: is something about honoring that that I feel like a
Speaker 1: mess where I feel terrible. And the second nobility are
Speaker 1: these giants of what I think of as giants because
Speaker 1: they giants exist in pretty much any culture where they're
Speaker 1: kind of like the giant size of what we is
Speaker 1: normally you know, smaller, which is greed and resentment and
Speaker 1: delusion and oh boy, and to really jump into that,
Speaker 1: these are what caused the suffering, caused the tangle, and
Speaker 1: to me, there to really honor, you know, to really
Speaker 1: see clearly with acuity, with a loving acuity of attention.
Speaker 1: And I feel like that's probably the most important, is
Speaker 1: to really look at really carefully in a loving tender way, like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm so greedy, I you know, I know for much
Speaker 1: of my life, you know, I was holding onto this
Speaker 1: feeling of victimization. I was really sure because of you know,
Speaker 1: the different kinds of abuse that I experienced that it
Speaker 1: made me a victim, which on one hand I was,
Speaker 1: you know, those things happened, and what was extra is
Speaker 1: my greed of holding onto like that's who I was.
Speaker 1: When I realized, like I had, terrible things happened to
Speaker 1: me and many wonderful things, but I was kind of
Speaker 1: holding on to one side of that as an identity.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of a different way of understanding greed.
Speaker 1: You know, sometimes we understand greed which is also a
Speaker 1: cause of suffering, which is trying to get stuff in
Speaker 1: the world. You know, if my teacher thought I was
Speaker 1: a good person, or if I got a car or
Speaker 1: an iPhone or whatever that is, you know, or people
Speaker 1: like me that can be agreed to, like the desire
Speaker 1: to be liked and all those different ways, and so
Speaker 1: so greed is one of them the causes of our
Speaker 1: suffering and then resentment holding on holding on to like.
Speaker 3: That kind of anger that where we just.
Speaker 1: Like hold it and hold it and hold it. It
Speaker 1: just corrodes, corrodes away. And I know for me, you
Speaker 1: know too, I'm in my own experience. And this is
Speaker 1: one of the things that was really important for me
Speaker 1: in writing this, is to really get into that spaces
Speaker 1: myself so that I could walk with you the reader,
Speaker 1: to really say, like, I have my experience and what
Speaker 1: is yours? And you know, that feeling of resentment towards
Speaker 1: the people who had perpetrated against me, Like I really
Speaker 1: held onto this like and it became like a black bile,
Speaker 1: you know, like you just like look and really seeing that,
Speaker 1: just seeing like how we hold on to resentment and
Speaker 1: what it does to us.
Speaker 3: What does the greed do to us? You know?
Speaker 1: In the last one's delusion where we kind of separate,
Speaker 1: we are delusive because we think that we're alone. To me,
Speaker 1: that's the fundamental delusion, is that we're alone. And you know,
Speaker 1: for one of my favorite antidotes to that is just
Speaker 1: to look up and look around and realize that we're
Speaker 1: just part of the world and it's our delusion that
Speaker 1: we're not. To me, the fun delusion of separateness is
Speaker 1: really like when we have the feeling of being alone
Speaker 1: and then turning it into a truth, you know, and
Speaker 1: how often instead of feeling our feelings and letting the
Speaker 1: feelings just flow like a river and we can sit
Speaker 1: on the bank and just watch all those thoughts and
Speaker 1: feelings flow around and learning how to see that instead
Speaker 1: of identifying of that's who I am, I am that
Speaker 1: feeling of alone.
Speaker 2: I love that you started all of this with the
Speaker 2: acknowledgment of suffering. I also like we're probably going to
Speaker 2: pull out what you said about that first truth of
Speaker 2: the nobility of suffering, being able to look at the
Speaker 2: world and say ouch.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: One of the things that irritates me about spiritual bypassing
Speaker 2: is that we take these intensely deep and beautiful and useful, single, simple,
Speaker 2: simple in air quotes here, simple teachings and twist them
Speaker 2: to our own nefarious devices. Right, like to be able
Speaker 2: to say, like yea, yeah, yeah, life is pain. You
Speaker 2: have to get over it. You have to move on.
Speaker 2: That happened to you, but you can't let it define you.
Speaker 2: That is not what the Buddha taughte and that is
Speaker 2: not what the apl path is about. It is not
Speaker 2: about saying yeah, yeah, yeah, this terrible stuff happened to you,
Speaker 2: but you have to not hold on to it. You
Speaker 2: have to let go of your feelings about what happened
Speaker 2: to you. I feel like we could spend an entire
Speaker 2: lifetime just studying thing one which is ouch and giving
Speaker 2: space to letting things hurt and seeing our hurt in
Speaker 2: ourselves and seeing the hurt in the people around us,
Speaker 2: and seeing the things that hurt in the world and
Speaker 2: giving that breathing space. And if we can't do that,
Speaker 2: it makes it really difficult to go into all of
Speaker 2: the things that you just described about noticing your feelings
Speaker 2: and getting untangled and working with resentment and looking at
Speaker 2: the ways that in a way, painful things get weaponized,
Speaker 2: whether by the world outside not seeing you and not
Speaker 2: recognizing the truth of what you're living, and therefore we
Speaker 2: get sort of resentful of like if you're not gonna
Speaker 2: see me, then I'm going to make sure you see me. Right,
Speaker 2: pain passed to the outside world or that sort of
Speaker 2: spiritual bypassing of it's not quote unquote enlightened to be
Speaker 2: in pain. You're supposed to use these tools to free
Speaker 2: yourself of it. And I am very Buddhist light in
Speaker 2: my understanding of the teachings. This is something that I
Speaker 2: hear a lot from people that they move away from
Speaker 2: anything spiritual or religious, or meditation can cure cancer, all
Speaker 2: of these things because we don't do that step number one,
Speaker 2: you're in pain, and I see it totally.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, it's to me the most important. It
Speaker 1: was also so interesting because when I was preparing to
Speaker 1: write this book, I started reading on their texts about
Speaker 1: the vulnerable truths, and usually the first three you know,
Speaker 1: as you're saying the out or the tangle and the
Speaker 1: causes of suffering. You know, people tend to write like
Speaker 1: one chapter about that and then then move into the
Speaker 1: rest of it as they full path, which is kind
Speaker 1: of the prescription to heal and for me like, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I just slow it down. Yeah, if we're to be real,
Speaker 1: you know, I thought, actually, what you were going to
Speaker 1: say about the challenge of spiritual bypassing, I would that
Speaker 1: you're going to say this challenges spiritual bypassing.
Speaker 3: Is spiritual bypassing?
Speaker 4: Why?
Speaker 2: Yes, that is accurate. Bypassing is bad because it's bypassing. Yes.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I think that it's so important to honor what's hard.
Speaker 1: It's just critical because the reality is that life is
Speaker 1: sour and sweet and savory and everything. So how do
Speaker 1: we appreciate what's hard because we all know that life's
Speaker 1: hard and it's also so interesting, and so that another.
Speaker 3: Reason we need each other is to remind each.
Speaker 1: Other, Oh, it's hard, all right, Yeah, yeah, you're in
Speaker 1: that hard spot.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I feel like you can watch somebody, if somebody is
Speaker 2: in pain, and instead of cheering them up, telling them
Speaker 2: to look on the bright side, telling them that maybe
Speaker 2: they should get on their mat and meditate, Like all
Speaker 2: of these things if you do what you just described,
Speaker 2: which is mirror that back. Yeah, this sucks, this is hard.
Speaker 2: What happened to you was not okay? Right, you can
Speaker 2: watch their physical being relax in a way. Right, Like
Speaker 2: there is such powerful medicine and acknowledgment. What I hear
Speaker 2: you saying is like, we only get to use the
Speaker 2: tools to come to our own aid and our own
Speaker 2: assistance when we tell the truth, and it super helps
Speaker 2: to have that truth reflected and validated by the world
Speaker 2: around you. And then we can jump into all of
Speaker 2: these beautiful tools that you're talking about in Untangling. Then
Speaker 2: we can talk about how do you work with the
Speaker 2: pain and the suffering in your own life so that
Speaker 2: it doesn't fester and cause more harm. We're talking with
Speaker 2: Koshin Paley Ellison, author of the new book Untangled. Let's
Speaker 2: get back to it.
Speaker 1: You know, I was thinking about we have this Contemplative
Speaker 1: Medicine fellowship for our physicians and there's practitioners, and it's
Speaker 1: a year long training because we were really just worried
Speaker 1: about doctors and nur's practitioners because they have the highest
Speaker 1: rates of suicide, the highest rates of divorce, drugging, alcohol
Speaker 1: abuse and leaving the profession. It's actually often thought of
Speaker 1: as the most unhealthy profession.
Speaker 3: And we realized that in.
Speaker 1: Order to engage them in a loving way, we had
Speaker 1: to start with the truth of suffering, right, And so
Speaker 1: we start right there, and it's like, okay, so let's
Speaker 1: talk about what's hard and what you're caring inside of
Speaker 1: yourself in your interpersonal relationships and your life out in
Speaker 1: the world. I think that it's such a beautiful model
Speaker 1: for all of us to think about, Okay, what hurts,
Speaker 1: what's tangled up inside of me, what's tangled up in
Speaker 1: my inner personal relationships, and what's tangled up in my
Speaker 1: relationship with the world, and what's topsy turvy, you know
Speaker 1: what is kind of a little cup cooop here. And
Speaker 1: to me, when we start to do that, you know,
Speaker 1: I was thinking about my teacher again, you and he
Speaker 1: was talking about the most important thing is to suffer
Speaker 1: together first.
Speaker 3: So let's suffer together.
Speaker 1: And so to me, that's why those very powerful giants
Speaker 1: of greed and resentment and delusion are so important. Is like,
Speaker 1: oh you too, you too. Tell me about how those
Speaker 1: things affect you, and I'll tell you how they affect me.
Speaker 1: And so we can get really.
Speaker 2: Real, yeah, real, and curious about each other, right, curious
Speaker 2: about pain in our own lives and the pain in others,
Speaker 2: so that we can suffer together.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: You only get that kind of companionship and connection when
Speaker 2: you can tell the truth about what it's like to
Speaker 2: be you, and the you that.
Speaker 1: We don't often share with most people because we want
Speaker 1: appear like we're okay.
Speaker 3: Reminds me of a book that you wrote, Yes.
Speaker 2: It's okay that you're not okay exactly. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 2: this is this is such a challenge, right, It's sort
Speaker 2: of chicken in the egg type thing. We pretend to
Speaker 2: be okay when we're not because we've internalized all of
Speaker 2: that messaging that says that happiness is the only true
Speaker 2: marker of health and if you're suffering, you're doing it wrong.
Speaker 2: And also behavioral conditioning. Right, if I come to the
Speaker 2: people in my life and I say, hey, this is
Speaker 2: really hard right now, and what I get back is
Speaker 2: not validation or acknowledgment, it's spiritual bypassing. It's you think
Speaker 2: you have it bad, My life is worse. One of
Speaker 2: the things that I say often is like, if you
Speaker 2: keep going to the grocery store looking for milk and
Speaker 2: they insist on selling you furniture. You're going to stop
Speaker 2: going to that store because you're not going to get
Speaker 2: what you need.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So it's tricky because I think, I think, because we
Speaker 2: have such a backlog of being able to name the
Speaker 2: truth of suffering, it almost fuels the resentment that we're
Speaker 2: trying to untangle by using the tools of untangling resentment
Speaker 2: because it's like, oh, great, now I'm just supposed to
Speaker 2: like start being open and honest and start dealing with
Speaker 2: my resentment. I mean, I can feel myself getting tangled
Speaker 2: up even just trying to express it right.
Speaker 1: Like right, because before we think that there is it's
Speaker 1: linear right now, reality is not linear. Our brains sometimes
Speaker 1: just wants to create a linear story. First do this,
Speaker 1: then do that, and then do that. Like many of us,
Speaker 1: you know, look for self help books or different things
Speaker 1: where tell me what to do to not feel often.
Speaker 3: What I'm feeling. And to me, the courage comes from
Speaker 3: that clarity of oh, right.
Speaker 1: Like, I'm in a hard moment right now, and to
Speaker 1: realize we're just in that moment that's challenging, not in
Speaker 1: a reality that we can turn it into like that's
Speaker 1: my reality. Everything's hard, life sucks, and sometimes life does suck.
Speaker 1: But I think that the key part is sometimes.
Speaker 2: Sometimes yeah, it's it's interesting, and this is this is
Speaker 2: the effect that you have in the world. I will
Speaker 2: just say this, Like I just mentioned that, like even
Speaker 2: talking about and resentment and all of these things, I
Speaker 2: could feel myself getting tangled and in my head I
Speaker 2: went go back to step one, go back to step one,
Speaker 2: which is, oh right, this is hard, and that did something.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's amazing. Just telling the truth seems like
Speaker 2: it's too simple to be of any kind of use
Speaker 2: at all. But I feel like we're in such a
Speaker 2: habit of managing the feelings instead of naming the experience,
Speaker 2: and that that really is what this book is about.
Speaker 2: Right when you're noticing that tangle, that anxiety, that resentment,
Speaker 2: that frustration, and going back to step one, yeah.
Speaker 1: Acknowledgement, Oh I'm in that nobility of things get tangled up.
Speaker 1: I'm just I'm back here, okay, yeah, okay, okay, okay, yeah.
Speaker 2: I want to talk a little bit about you as
Speaker 2: a younger person, because I think that these conversations can
Speaker 2: get philosophical and esoteric really quickly. So there's a story
Speaker 2: in the book where you talk about being chased through
Speaker 2: the woods as a child. Are you okay if we
Speaker 2: talk about that story, do you want to share that story?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: So I think what's important about the story too, is
Speaker 1: that what happened before the story and okay, what happened
Speaker 1: is that there were these pictures that maybe some of
Speaker 1: us all remember of those refugees being kind of lassoed
Speaker 1: at the border and kind of hunted at the border,
Speaker 1: like on horseback. And the images were so haunting and
Speaker 1: so disturbing to me. I just felt such tenderness and
Speaker 1: such sorrow and fear these images, and there was something
Speaker 1: about it. I was like, what is it about that
Speaker 1: image that is so scary to me?
Speaker 3: And I was biking.
Speaker 1: Home and you know, I live in a little island
Speaker 1: called Manhattan and has these beautiful rivers all around it,
Speaker 1: and I liked to bike home at night. And I
Speaker 1: was biking home and you kind of have to go
Speaker 1: off into the wooded area and it was getting dark,
Speaker 1: and I suddenly this memory just like shot through me
Speaker 1: and I literally fell off my bike, like it just
Speaker 1: like literally.
Speaker 3: Hit me, and I just fell off the bike.
Speaker 1: And what happened was that my mother and my stepfather
Speaker 1: had this kind of idea of romantic idea kind of
Speaker 1: a beautiful utopian idea of homesteading and living off the
Speaker 1: land and moving into a rural place and won't that
Speaker 1: be great? And a razor on food and whatever that is.
Speaker 1: So we moved to this tiny little town in the
Speaker 1: upstate New York and clearly they had never had Jews there,
Speaker 1: and you know, the first night that kind of circled
Speaker 1: our house and the four wheelers and were shooting at
Speaker 1: the house and painted jew in the mailbox. And I actually,
Speaker 1: I was, I think ten years old, and I had
Speaker 1: never been so terrified in my life. And actually I
Speaker 1: didn't even know that I was. I didn't really even
Speaker 1: understand that I was Jewish, like even what that meant,
Speaker 1: because I felt like I looked like everybody else, but
Speaker 1: it was clear I was not like everybody else. So
Speaker 1: we lived in this kind of town where actually, even
Speaker 1: in the public school, it's so horrific, you know, and
Speaker 1: I think it's important you know that this is in
Speaker 1: New York state, upstate New York. And the teacher lifting
Speaker 1: me up by my hair and saying, show us your
Speaker 1: horns jew and somehow, and I still can feel the
Speaker 1: pain of that, like the physical pain and.
Speaker 3: The kind of humiliation of that.
Speaker 1: And I remember still feeling a sense of agency somehow
Speaker 1: going to the principal's office and saying, you know, this
Speaker 1: is what happens, and he's like, well, where are your horns?
Speaker 1: So it was that kind of town, deeply racist place,
Speaker 1: and one of the places where I found a lot
Speaker 1: of solace as a young person. We had a lot
Speaker 1: of woods, and so i'd go off into the woods
Speaker 1: and find these big boulders and lay on the boulders
Speaker 1: and just try to you know, often the boulders were
Speaker 1: covered in moss, and just to be able to feel
Speaker 1: the ground and feel supported and comforted by the world,
Speaker 1: and just looking up at the canopy of trees and
Speaker 1: the light coming through the trees has always been so
Speaker 1: magical to me and continues to be just the kind
Speaker 1: of effmorable, ephemeral beauty of the world.
Speaker 3: One afternoon, late afternoon.
Speaker 1: I'd gotten really far away from the house and pretty
Speaker 1: deep in the woods where there were these trails that
Speaker 1: I heard the four wheelers coming and they saw me
Speaker 1: and they're like, you know, died you died, and they
Speaker 1: had guns and they were shooting at me. So it's
Speaker 1: like being I was actually being hunted, and even now,
Speaker 1: like it's hard to even touch the feeling of it,
Speaker 1: you know, And so I'm even noticing while I'm saying
Speaker 1: it now, it's so hard to touch the depth of
Speaker 1: that terror.
Speaker 3: So it was getting.
Speaker 1: Dark into the lights on their four wheelers and the gunshots,
Speaker 1: and I just remember like jumping into like the side
Speaker 1: off the trail.
Speaker 3: I went around a corner and I thought I'd kind of.
Speaker 1: Be able to hide and landed in this BlackBerry bramble
Speaker 1: which you got completely cut up, and just laid there,
Speaker 1: you know, a breath and heart beating, and that's all
Speaker 1: I really remember. And they passed and couldn't find me.
Speaker 3: But it was so so.
Speaker 1: Powerful, And that's what I remember, the hunting, like i'd remember.
Speaker 3: The hair pulling. I remembered, you know, being.
Speaker 1: Our house being circled, but the hunting, being a human
Speaker 1: being hunted by other humans, like I was a young boy,
Speaker 1: and what is that, you know? So what I fell
Speaker 1: off my bike is like that's what I remembered. The
Speaker 1: light kind of getting dark in the forest and being
Speaker 1: terrified and they were my neighbors. I knew these people,
Speaker 1: So it really, you know, brought me back to you know,
Speaker 1: I've come from a family who were affected by the Holocaust,
Speaker 1: and we're actually most of my family who were killed
Speaker 1: were killed by their neighbors.
Speaker 3: And how easily that can happen, and how that almost
Speaker 3: happened to me. Well, it did happen, but I didn't
Speaker 3: get killed, you know, And so I think that there
Speaker 3: was also this like, well what is that?
Speaker 1: And someone that could do that, they were probably, like
Speaker 1: I don't know, teenagers of some kind, you know.
Speaker 3: And if we think about compassion, how.
Speaker 1: Does compassion include those people and yet hold people responsible.
Speaker 1: So it makes me really feel really deeply for the
Speaker 1: challenge that.
Speaker 3: We're met with.
Speaker 1: And for me, what has been so important for my
Speaker 1: own healing process is to really recognize and turn the
Speaker 1: light to where it isn't and saying, oh, right, this happened,
Speaker 1: It was real, It was terrifying, and in some ways.
Speaker 3: Those wounds, my wounds.
Speaker 1: Those wounds are exactly what has propelled me into a
Speaker 1: life of healing and intimacy and the almost demand for that.
Speaker 1: And I learned from early early age that my body
Speaker 1: wouldn't necessarily continue that my body could get killed like that.
Speaker 1: I knew that from a very young age, and so
Speaker 1: I think this it has brought this like exquisite focus.
Speaker 3: Into the beauty of the world.
Speaker 1: And so I think sometimes I think the was the
Speaker 1: mythologist Michael Mead where he's talks about like these wounds
Speaker 1: and he's like kind of almost like knife loves to
Speaker 1: your heart at an early age can propel us into
Speaker 1: our life purpose. And so I'm also so glad that
Speaker 1: I was able to, you know, with lots of therapy,
Speaker 1: a lot, but really a lot of therapy, and with
Speaker 1: really good people, having really meaningful friends, and you know,
Speaker 1: a steady meditation practice has been completely that kind of
Speaker 1: that combination of three things has been what has shifted
Speaker 1: things dramatically for me. And really learning how to stay
Speaker 1: with what's hard and not turn away. And you know,
Speaker 1: it was two years later that I actually met my
Speaker 1: first teacher, who was this guy send Say White and
Speaker 1: sense White was you know, I'd seen these movies came out,
Speaker 1: which now there's remakes and enfranchises about them, Star Wars
Speaker 1: and Karate Kid, the original ones, and I would just
Speaker 1: love these two, like the Karate Kid and Luke Skywalker
Speaker 1: were so whiny and like nag, you know, they were
Speaker 1: so whiny, and it was so helpful to me because
Speaker 1: I realized, like I felt so whiny, and there was
Speaker 1: something about the hero being able to whine, which kind
Speaker 1: of gets back to what you were saying before, or
Speaker 1: that like incredible scene of.
Speaker 3: When I don't know if.
Speaker 1: You saw this film called Spirited Away where it's a
Speaker 1: genius and there's a scene of this giant baby.
Speaker 3: I love the giant.
Speaker 1: Baby so much, and it's just like this crazy giant
Speaker 1: baby and she's like, like, you have to attend to that.
Speaker 1: You have to attend to our giant baby.
Speaker 3: You know, and that bag, you know.
Speaker 1: And so I found this teacher since White because I realized, oh,
Speaker 1: you could have a teacher who actually helps you to
Speaker 1: not whine and never had registered to me, and I
Speaker 1: felt like I was kind of stuck, and I realized, oh,
Speaker 1: I have to find a teacher and ow karate, so
Speaker 1: you can learn karate and find a teacher, and so
Speaker 1: I went to the local strip mall. This is when
Speaker 1: after we moved back from that mountain town.
Speaker 3: You could say.
Speaker 1: And in the bottom of the drug store was this
Speaker 1: karate school was like really gross, you know, like really
Speaker 1: like definitely had a lot of fun gus going on there.
Speaker 1: But there was this teacher, sense White, and he used
Speaker 1: to have a sit and says that, which is like
Speaker 1: when you have your legs underneath yourself, you're sitting almost
Speaker 1: like on your knees. And it was not like the
Speaker 1: kind of karate school where like there was like kids classes.
Speaker 1: So I was like, I was kind of the real
Speaker 1: super high ball at eleven years old, which is another theme.
Speaker 1: But he used to walk around us and say that
Speaker 1: we would sit there like that, and it hurts so
Speaker 1: much because now these days, you know, if you sit meditation,
Speaker 1: you have a nice chushion, you have a nice share or.
Speaker 3: Whatever that is.
Speaker 1: We laid down and this is like on a hardwood
Speaker 1: floor and he would be sweating and sitting there sweating, sweating, sweating,
Speaker 1: and he said, you know, you'll never be free until
Speaker 1: you can be still with your pain. And coming from
Speaker 1: that town, that also I began to see how, you know,
Speaker 1: people in my family, how those kids on the four wheelers,
Speaker 1: that none of them knew how to be still with
Speaker 1: their pain. Otherwise, why would anyone cause so much harm
Speaker 1: like I couldn't articulate at that time, but I remember
Speaker 1: feeling like I understood them somehow, in not a very
Speaker 1: sophisticated way, that I understood that they did not know
Speaker 1: how that their values and their actions were together, because
Speaker 1: as we were talking about earlier, they didn't know how
Speaker 1: to be with their tangle. They didn't know how to
Speaker 1: be with their pain or never mind the causes of
Speaker 1: their pain. They just like you know, bounce, bounce off
Speaker 1: their pain and just.
Speaker 3: React, react, react, react.
Speaker 1: For these days, people's I get trigger, trigger, you know,
Speaker 1: and as opposed to yes, I feel pain and I
Speaker 1: can stay here with you, Yes, it's true and I'm
Speaker 1: here with you. To me, learning how to be still
Speaker 1: with your pain is the beginning of intimacy, and that
Speaker 1: Mads not crazy, but for me, it is totally true.
Speaker 2: Okay, I've been just sitting here listening and thank you
Speaker 2: for sharing all of that. I think what you just
Speaker 2: said about learning to be silent with your pain is
Speaker 2: I don't even remember what you said because it was
Speaker 2: so perfect, but about intimacy starting there, right, And this
Speaker 2: is something that we've been talking about from various entry
Speaker 2: points this whole time, is that it is not that
Speaker 2: horrendous things don't happen. It's also not that horrendous things happen. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but let's move on and not live there anymore. This
Speaker 2: is being here and being human is impossible and it
Speaker 2: is and delicious. Yes, I'm getting there, don't you worry.
Speaker 2: I'm coming. I'm coming for the joy and the beauty.
Speaker 2: But I think there's so much in what you just shared,
Speaker 2: and so much of it is loss of intimacy, loss
Speaker 2: of connection, feeling like you're the only one in the world,
Speaker 2: pain getting passed down and passed down and passed down,
Speaker 2: and reactivity time being so fast that you don't even
Speaker 2: recognize that you are in pain, and that is driving
Speaker 2: your actions and your reactions, and so much of our
Speaker 2: real spiritual traditions are about slow the fuck down and
Speaker 2: say ouch, and sit with that and tell the truth
Speaker 2: about that, and learn to be silent with that pain
Speaker 2: so that you can wonder, how do I want to
Speaker 2: move in this world? Living what I just lived? And
Speaker 2: so much of your work and the Zencenter's work and
Speaker 2: all of the things that you do in all of
Speaker 2: your books, this one especially really dives right into it
Speaker 2: of ouch and how will we live? With that so
Speaker 2: that the pain does not eclipse every other experience moving forward. Yes,
Speaker 2: the joy, the beauty and the intimacy. It's not about
Speaker 2: deal with your pain so you can put it behind you.
Speaker 2: It is listen to your pain so that you get
Speaker 2: to have some agency and some choice in how that
Speaker 2: lives in you.
Speaker 1: Yes, you know, I think that you know, I still
Speaker 1: have scars from that moment of being hunted, and and
Speaker 1: I think I'm glad.
Speaker 3: That I do, you know.
Speaker 1: And that to me it's also part of like I
Speaker 1: can see it on my body, you know, like there
Speaker 1: it is, but it's real. And I think that so
Speaker 1: much of our negation of what's happened is what causes
Speaker 1: more suffering. And so to me it's like, yes, that happened,
Speaker 1: and it is what's propelled me towards healing, and so
Speaker 1: like that, I'm just loving this conversation, first of all
Speaker 1: being with you. And that's why those first tree noble
Speaker 1: truths are they deserve that nobility of attention and really
Speaker 1: feeling them so that we can go to the actually
Speaker 1: you're asked about the that for me, it's actually the
Speaker 1: third one nobility is that there's another way to do
Speaker 1: it you can pivot.
Speaker 3: But it's not to deny.
Speaker 1: The pivot is not a denial or a turning away
Speaker 1: from it's because you have suffered and know what it
Speaker 1: is to feel almost impossible things.
Speaker 3: It's because of.
Speaker 1: That you can actually turn in a whole bodied way
Speaker 1: towards well, what else is true? Because I know what's hard,
Speaker 1: I can actually see you more clearly, and I can
Speaker 1: really appreciate the preciousness of this moment, like I can
Speaker 1: see your eyes right now, and how rarely we actually
Speaker 1: are paying attention, and so like, from there then we
Speaker 1: can go into the nobility of yes, there are these practices,
Speaker 1: Yes there are, and the full path is really built
Speaker 1: on wisdom, compassion and ethics. Like yes, And because we're
Speaker 1: not again turning away from anything, we're saying what we
Speaker 1: go through and live in this life is what makes
Speaker 1: us wives, is what teaches us, compassion is what teaches
Speaker 1: us our own ethics, what our ethics actually are, how
Speaker 1: to live an ethical life? You know, recently we're with
Speaker 1: with our friend Tronia and she has this incredible ranch
Speaker 1: in New Mexico and they just have these crazy fires
Speaker 1: and eating up everything but not everything, and part of
Speaker 1: the land that she's Stewards there has this great, great
Speaker 1: cedar tree, and the cedar tree is totally singed by
Speaker 1: the fire and yet so alive in the top, you know,
Speaker 1: and so alive throughout. And she was saying that, you know,
Speaker 1: they the tree is so deep, its roots are so
Speaker 1: deep that it stays moist and the fire can't really
Speaker 1: burn it and singe it.
Speaker 3: And so to me, the.
Speaker 1: Eightful path are actually just living, you know, you could say,
Speaker 1: just living with wisdom, compassion, ethics is allowing that depth
Speaker 1: and that verticality where we can feel the depth of
Speaker 1: the darkness and the height of spirit and air and possibility.
Speaker 1: And so I think that that kind of verticality is
Speaker 1: always available to all of us. And so it's this
Speaker 1: such a gorgeous image of allowing ourself to go deep
Speaker 1: into what's heard, into what's confusing, into what is inconceivable,
Speaker 1: so that we can actually grow strong. And to me,
Speaker 1: that's what courage is, you know, to feel like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is scary and let's go ooh this is hard,
Speaker 1: and let's go idiot.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah.
Speaker 3: Hey.
Speaker 2: Before we get back to this week's guest, I want
Speaker 2: to talk with you about exploring your losses. Through writing.
Speaker 2: There are lots of grief writing workshops out there with
Speaker 2: prompts like tell us about the funeral, that sort of thing.
Speaker 2: My thirty day Writing your Grief course is not like that.
Speaker 2: Them prompts are deeper, they're more nuanced. They're designed to
Speaker 2: get you into your heart and into your own actual story. Now,
Speaker 2: writing isn't going to cure anything, but it can help
Speaker 2: you hear your own voice, and that is incredibly powerful.
Speaker 2: You can read all about the Writing your Grief Course
Speaker 2: at Refuge in Grief dot com backslash wyg. That is
Speaker 2: WYG for Writing your Grief. You can see a sample
Speaker 2: prompt from the course and get writing your own words
Speaker 2: in minutes. My thirty day Writing your Grief Course is
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Speaker 2: Come join more than ten thousand people who have taken
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Speaker 2: or you can find the link in the show notes. Okay,
Speaker 2: so this phrase just popped into my head and you know,
Speaker 2: like pop psychology meme sort of thing, but like the
Speaker 2: life you long for is on the other side of fear. Now.
Speaker 2: I am not a fan of lifestyle edicts by Meme.
Speaker 2: But that's what came up in my mind as you
Speaker 2: were talking about that. And again, it's not it's not
Speaker 2: a binary and it's not linear. It's not you dive
Speaker 2: into really witnessing and paying attention to your pain or
Speaker 2: somebody else's pain or the pain of the world so
Speaker 2: that you can live a great life like this. That
Speaker 2: binary is trash and that is not what we're talking about.
Speaker 2: But what we're talking about is we all intrinsically as
Speaker 2: social creatures, as mammals, we need each other to survive
Speaker 2: and in order to feel companioned inside the impossible things
Speaker 2: that we live and feel companioned, enjoy this practice that
Speaker 2: you talk about in the book, that you live in
Speaker 2: your life, that you've created in the in the world
Speaker 2: for the people who are fortunate to be near you.
Speaker 2: This is one of the tools by which you can
Speaker 2: build that kind of life where all is welcome and
Speaker 2: if not welcome, all is seen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's this image to and when you're talking, I
Speaker 1: just really reminds me of this other image I've always
Speaker 1: enjoyed so much. There's this text called the load Is Sutra,
Speaker 1: which sounds promising and.
Speaker 3: At the beginning of it.
Speaker 1: It's this, you know, that this assembly, this greatest where
Speaker 1: the buddhas you know, hanging out there about to give
Speaker 1: a talk, and that the whole chapter, the whole first chapter,
Speaker 1: is describing all the people who are there. And there's
Speaker 1: demons and snakes and and you know, monks in the
Speaker 1: usual suspects, you know, a mons.
Speaker 3: Nuns and gods and all kinds of magical creatures.
Speaker 1: But there's also demons and snakes and fighting people and
Speaker 1: all kinds of people. So it's like that welcoming of
Speaker 1: this kind of canopy of reality. And to me, like
Speaker 1: that's an easy thing to say, and to me, that's
Speaker 1: why we need good spiritual friends. Why we're living actually
Speaker 1: in a sort of extraordinary time where we can actually
Speaker 1: be in community virtually and online and so like we
Speaker 1: can actually there's less barriers now than ever before to
Speaker 1: actually connect.
Speaker 3: And I know many people who have.
Speaker 1: Been part of the Zen Center in the last couple
Speaker 1: of years or just become.
Speaker 3: Very connected, and they live in the.
Speaker 1: Mountains of the Dominican Republic, in South Africa and all
Speaker 1: these different places, and they really feel a sense of belonging.
Speaker 1: So I think we need community in order to remind us. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's about inviting it all in, which is an easy
Speaker 1: thing to say, but it's like when it gets hard
Speaker 1: sometimes having someone to call like, ooh.
Speaker 3: I'm having a really hard moment, I'm all tangled.
Speaker 2: Ouch.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we can say come on, we can do
Speaker 1: this together. We can suffer together and open.
Speaker 3: It up again.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And this, this sort of radical acknowledgment of reality is
Speaker 2: how we build connection, and it is also how we
Speaker 2: build the world that we want right where young people
Speaker 2: don't have to suffer the things that you suffer. Anyone does.
Speaker 2: And also we start you know, there's a there's another
Speaker 2: episode during this season, and I don't remember which one,
Speaker 2: but there's something where I say that heard people, hear people,
Speaker 2: which is sort of a play on that hurt people,
Speaker 2: hurt people, right, Like in that practice of hearing and
Speaker 2: listening and seeing it gives it seeing our own our
Speaker 2: own pain and saying ouch, and what do I need
Speaker 2: in this moment?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: That opens up the capacity and the ability to do
Speaker 2: that for others, which is not the same as excusing
Speaker 2: people for their crap behavior. But that's a conversation for
Speaker 2: a different day. But really, you know, one of the
Speaker 2: things that you talk about in the book that I
Speaker 2: just want to touch on really briefly. Here is that
Speaker 2: epidemic of loneliness, and so much of what you and
Speaker 2: I have been talking about today, and so much of
Speaker 2: what is in your new book is about the antidote
Speaker 2: to that loneliness, and the antidote to loneliness this is
Speaker 2: this is not the bumper sticker we want it to be.
Speaker 2: But the antidote to loneliness is acknowledging the reality of pain,
Speaker 2: right like, oh, Megan is such a downer, but discarding
Speaker 2: all of those things that we've internalized and learned and
Speaker 2: promoted to the world that the only way you're going
Speaker 2: to be liked, the only way you're going to be connected,
Speaker 2: is if you're happy and you rise above anything bad
Speaker 2: that's ever happened to you. Like all of that resilience
Speaker 2: porn and all of that stuff, but like, no, actually,
Speaker 2: real connection is in the mess of life, the beauty,
Speaker 2: the joy, the moments, the hardships, the suffering. That is
Speaker 2: where love comes from.
Speaker 3: Totally.
Speaker 1: My greatest teacher about love is my grandmother, and you
Speaker 1: know she I can't remember if we shared this story
Speaker 1: the last time we were together, but right before she
Speaker 1: was dying, she said, you know, she woke me up
Speaker 1: in the night. I was sleeping with her in the hospice,
Speaker 1: and she woke me up and she was crying and crying,
Speaker 1: and she said, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry. I
Speaker 1: was like, what are you sorry about it? Because I
Speaker 1: never felt so loved by someone. She said, I just
Speaker 1: realized that there's a part of me that withdrew from
Speaker 1: you because I didn't understand that whole zending. And I
Speaker 1: feel so sorry about it because now I'm just realizing
Speaker 1: to love someone is to love all the parts of them,
Speaker 1: not just the parts that I understand, but it's their
Speaker 1: complexity that makes them who they are.
Speaker 2: I love that. I had to bite my tongue because
Speaker 2: you said that. She's like, I didn't get the whole
Speaker 2: zend thing. I'm like, wait a minute, you totally get
Speaker 2: the whole end thing.
Speaker 1: I know, of course, because the next morning is when
Speaker 1: she said, you know, I often tell because it's just
Speaker 1: so amazing. It's just like, you know, there is something
Speaker 1: to the zen thing. I never thought i'd say that.
Speaker 1: And she said, you and Jodah, who is my husband.
Speaker 1: You know, you guys should.
Speaker 3: Start some.
Speaker 1: Kind of nonprofit organization teach people about the Zen and
Speaker 1: teach people how to care for people, and that's what
Speaker 1: we're doing.
Speaker 2: I did not know that origin story.
Speaker 1: It was Mammy Schwartz, Hungarian immigrant. She's the true founder.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's really cool. I absolutely love that. Thank you,
Speaker 2: Mimi Schwartz. Okay, I'm going to ask you the question
Speaker 2: that I'm asking everybody during this season, knowing that we're
Speaker 2: coming up on time. But you and I do this
Speaker 2: and I'm here for it. Okay. So, knowing what you know,
Speaker 2: knowing what you've lived through, what you've seen not just
Speaker 2: in your own personal history, but in the work that
Speaker 2: you do with contemplative care and end of life and
Speaker 2: working with medical providers and being a partner and you know,
Speaker 2: all of the things. Knowing what you know and being
Speaker 2: who you are, what does hope look like for you
Speaker 2: in this moment, at this time.
Speaker 3: For me, hope is actually not so great.
Speaker 1: And so actually I write about this in the book
Speaker 1: and where I You know, Pandora's baskets, you know, we
Speaker 1: thought of it. I mean think of them now as
Speaker 1: Pandora's box. But back in the day, there were baskets,
Speaker 1: and there was one about all the blessings and almost
Speaker 1: all the curses on humankind, and like most people get curious,
Speaker 1: and she opened up the basket and all greed, anger
Speaker 1: and ignorance came out, jealousy and envy and justice was
Speaker 1: put in the lid.
Speaker 3: Back got hope jumped down.
Speaker 1: And so I've always thought a lot about that because
Speaker 1: I remember as a young person, I was so into
Speaker 1: Greek de belot and for me, I hope is kind
Speaker 1: of wishing that things were different, and so I think
Speaker 1: it's so tricky and for me as a human, I
Speaker 1: don't find it very helpful. Like I wished how it
Speaker 1: was different, you know, I hope it will change. I
Speaker 1: hope fill in the blank. And I'm much more interested
Speaker 1: in how are things and.
Speaker 3: What do I care about, and how do.
Speaker 1: I nourish those things so that they can move into
Speaker 1: a new life, you know. And I'm so much more
Speaker 1: interested in how, you know, the great Tony Morrison loved
Speaker 1: Tony Moore, since you know why it's too hard to
Speaker 1: take refuge and how it's like I'm much more interested
Speaker 1: in how we actually get really connected to our value
Speaker 1: and what we care about and how we nourish them
Speaker 1: so that we can be more ourselves and other people
Speaker 1: can be more in themselves, and that we can do
Speaker 1: the healing work that we can do.
Speaker 2: In this line, that might be my favorite definition of
Speaker 2: hope so far. I have grammatical and etymological issues with
Speaker 2: the actual word hope, but you know, you just brought
Speaker 2: up something that I hadn't thought about before, is that
Speaker 2: hope is not now, Hope is future. Hope is for something.
Speaker 2: As you said, that things are different, but that aspect
Speaker 2: of you're living in the future when you're hoping and
Speaker 2: what is important is right now.
Speaker 1: I really dig that.
Speaker 2: I am definitely taking that one with me forward from
Speaker 2: this conversation. I know we rock.
Speaker 3: It's all yours, Megan, Thank you. Take it away.
Speaker 2: I'm taking it. I'm taking it. And you know, after
Speaker 2: we come back from the last break, obviously, I'm going
Speaker 2: to have some words to say about it, because that's
Speaker 2: what we do here. I close up with my beloved
Speaker 2: guests and then we go to break, and then I
Speaker 2: come back and I talk about WHOA. That was amazing,
Speaker 2: wasn't it. So that's what's going to happen next. And
Speaker 2: we're going to link to you and the Zen Center
Speaker 2: and your books and all of the things in the
Speaker 2: show notes and as we close up here, what do
Speaker 2: you want people to know? A sort of a partying
Speaker 2: message for this episode, but also like where can we
Speaker 2: find you? Where should they interact with you? All of
Speaker 2: those things.
Speaker 1: So our center call is called the New York Sun
Speaker 1: Center for Contemplative Care, and the website is zencare dot org.
Speaker 1: So keeping with Mammy Schwartz's memory, bringing those two things together,
Speaker 1: and my own instagram is kachin Pale Allison, and we
Speaker 1: have lots of opportunities for people to practice with us.
Speaker 1: We have a ninety day practice period that begins actually
Speaker 1: in January, and that's an opportunity to really dig into
Speaker 1: and build a practice of meditation. And we have sixteen
Speaker 1: beautiful teachers and it's just really gorgeous. And two things
Speaker 1: that I always like to share. One is called Foundations
Speaker 1: and Contemplative Care. So it's a nine month training for
Speaker 1: anyone who's interested in that gap and how do I
Speaker 1: bring my practice my spiritual practice of some kind or
Speaker 1: build a spiritual practice and learn how to serve and
Speaker 1: be intimate. And so that's available for anybody and for
Speaker 1: nurse practitioners and physician assistants and physicians. We have this gorgeous,
Speaker 1: a year long contemplative medicine fellowship that with some of
Speaker 1: the some gorgeous faculty and really meaningful work to do.
Speaker 3: And so those are some things that could be helped.
Speaker 2: And the book again, and the.
Speaker 1: New book is called Untangled Walking the Eightfold Path to Clarity, Courage,
Speaker 1: and Compassion.
Speaker 2: Yes, and get that book, everybody, find it wherever you
Speaker 2: get your books. And I'm also going to link in
Speaker 2: the show notes. During season one, quoshin end Choto came
Speaker 2: on and talked about their oh my gosh, oh my god,
Speaker 2: I just totally got a complete Yeah. They came on
Speaker 2: and talked about love No No No, the the contemporative
Speaker 2: care training program for healthcare providers. We talked about that
Speaker 2: at length during our season one episode, so we will
Speaker 2: link to that. All right, everybody, I'm going to close
Speaker 2: up our conversation here and we'll be right back after
Speaker 2: this break. Obviously, you're going to hear about the things
Speaker 2: I'm carrying with me and the things I would love
Speaker 2: to hear that you took from this episode. Each week,
Speaker 2: I leave you with some questions to carry with you
Speaker 2: until we meet again. Now this season has a running theme,
Speaker 2: and it's more obvious in some episodes than others. This
Speaker 2: season is all about hope, finding it, losing it, redefining it,
Speaker 2: and fighting for it in these weird personal and collective times.
Speaker 2: So you know, what really struck me in my talk
Speaker 2: with Koshin is one like how often we look to
Speaker 2: spiritual tools to somehow lift us out of the pain
Speaker 2: we're in, and how spiritual practices are often weaponized, right like,
Speaker 2: if you just motitate more, everything will be fine. What
Speaker 2: I love about Koshin is that he does give you
Speaker 2: a way forward. He does help you reduce your suffering,
Speaker 2: but he never asks you to pretend that things don't hurt.
Speaker 2: I also really really liked what he said about hope
Speaker 2: at the end there that he has an issue with hope.
Speaker 2: I mean, first of all, there's a reason we're friends.
Speaker 2: We both have issues with the word hope. But I
Speaker 2: love that he said hope is always a future issue
Speaker 2: and he's more interested in right now. I love that
Speaker 2: what parts of the conversation today made you see things
Speaker 2: in a different way or just feel a tiny bit
Speaker 2: better in the moment that you're in. Everybody's going to
Speaker 2: take something different from today's show, but I do hope
Speaker 2: you found something to hold on to. There are lots
Speaker 2: of ways to open these conversations on everyday grief and
Speaker 2: how we survive the things that happen to us, and
Speaker 2: we definitely want to hear from you on all of
Speaker 2: these things. What are you holding onto you right now?
Speaker 2: If you like the show, please leave a review on
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. Share the show with
Speaker 2: your friends and your colleagues. These are the conversations that
Speaker 2: so many of us long for in our daily lives
Speaker 2: and just don't always have the opportunity to have them.
Speaker 2: Sharing the show makes it just that much easier to
Speaker 2: have that kind of connection. Thanks, friends. Grief education doesn't
Speaker 2: just belong to end of life issues. As my dad says,
Speaker 2: daily life is full of everyday grief that we don't
Speaker 2: call grief. Learning how to talk about all of that
Speaker 2: without cliches or platitudes or simplistic dismissive statements is an
Speaker 2: important skill for everyone, especially if you're in any of
Speaker 2: the helping professions. Hereafter with Megan Divine is written and
Speaker 2: produced by me Megan Divine. Executive producer is Amy Brown,
Speaker 2: co produced by Elizabeth Fozzio. Logistical and social media support
Speaker 2: by Micah, edited by Houston Tilly, and music provided by
Speaker 2: Wave Crush. Background Noise Today provided by the leaf Blowers.