Speaker 1: Hi, everybody. Since self improvement is kind of in the
Speaker 1: air this time of year, I thought I would choose
Speaker 1: our twenty twenty two episode on mindfulness. We cover its origins,
Speaker 1: how it became a thing in the West, and the
Speaker 1: upsides and yes, drawbacks. I hope it changes your life
Speaker 1: for the better. Enjoy.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Speaker 1: Chuck and Jerry's here ish and this is stuff you
Speaker 1: should know Ish. This is full on stuff you should know.
Speaker 3: Charles, remember that point. I feel like it was about.
Speaker 2: Ten eight to ten years ago where everyone was just
Speaker 2: saying ish on the end of things instead of saying, like,
Speaker 2: you know, finding the real word that they were looking.
Speaker 1: For, so so like an approximation of the word or
Speaker 1: of the thing they were describing. So like I'm say forty.
Speaker 2: Ish, No, not even that, like when there's like a
Speaker 2: real word that could be used and they would just
Speaker 2: throw ish on another word.
Speaker 1: I don't know what you're talking about.
Speaker 3: No, yeah, it was it was the thing it swept
Speaker 3: the nation.
Speaker 1: When was it?
Speaker 3: Or maybe I'm thinking of the macarena.
Speaker 1: That's what you're thinking, okay, all right, man really did
Speaker 1: sweep the nation? Remember that who let the dogs out?
Speaker 1: It was like a.
Speaker 3: One dogs out? Did they ever find that out?
Speaker 1: No? I think it was a rhetorical question.
Speaker 3: Ish.
Speaker 1: It's the kind of rhetorical question you could ask yourself,
Speaker 1: Chuck while you're meditating. Yeah, my first, thanks, thanks, But
Speaker 1: I'm going to step all over the segway because before
Speaker 1: we get started, Chuck, I want to do, if you'll
Speaker 1: allow me, another shout out for my little niece, Mila's movie,
Speaker 1: big time movie called No Exit that's coming out as
Speaker 1: far as when this episode drops tomorrow, so February twenty four,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two. No matter when you hear this, just
Speaker 1: immediately go on to Hulu subscribe it you haven't yet,
Speaker 1: and check out my niece Mela in No Exit because
Speaker 1: she is me the trailer amazing. What'd you think?
Speaker 2: It looks like a taut thriller. She looks fantastic from
Speaker 2: what you can tell from a trailer. I you just
Speaker 2: saved all the bad parts for the movie.
Speaker 1: I don't think they did. I was reading an interview
Speaker 1: with the director and he was saying like she was
Speaker 1: doing such an amazing job of being terrified and freaked
Speaker 1: out and everything that, like after in between takes, like
Speaker 1: the other cast, Memers would be like are you okay?
Speaker 1: And she'd be like, yeah, are you okay? And I'm
Speaker 1: acting right yeah exactly. She's like, it's acting like John Lovegrad. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So on Hulu, No Exit, February twenty fifth, my niece
Speaker 1: Mela just kills it.
Speaker 3: There you go, can't wait.
Speaker 1: Thanks again for that, So let's get started. Thank you
Speaker 1: for not passing judgment on that. Either way.
Speaker 2: You're resegueing, because we're trys passing judgment, it means I'm
Speaker 2: not being mindful because a big part of mindfulness you
Speaker 2: just did not judge.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So that's like, this is one of those ones,
Speaker 1: you know, those episodes where we just start talking about
Speaker 1: the thing without defining it. This is not gonna be
Speaker 1: one of those episodes because I think it would be
Speaker 1: kind of rough otherwise, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I guess if you're gonna define mindfulness, you
Speaker 2: need to kind of go back in time. I mean,
Speaker 2: I guess we could hop in the way back machine.
Speaker 1: We haven't done that way it's been a while.
Speaker 2: Let's pull the old cover off. It's quite dusty in
Speaker 2: here and a little bit of mildew, A little mildew.
Speaker 2: There's some old crystals boxes. Those are yours?
Speaker 1: Remember you had them accidentally delivered to your house?
Speaker 3: Right, and then we went back to the Old West
Speaker 3: to celebrate.
Speaker 1: You're thinking of back to the future. Three?
Speaker 3: Oh right, right? Right?
Speaker 1: I called Mary steam Virgin if I get to play her,
Speaker 1: not date her or anything.
Speaker 3: Oh date may steam Virgin. A big crush on.
Speaker 1: Her, isn't that really? That's a ted Danson's old squeeze, right.
Speaker 3: It's his current squeeze. I'm not going to fight any before.
Speaker 1: Are they still together? Yeah?
Speaker 3: I think so.
Speaker 1: Gosh, they've been together for a while.
Speaker 3: Yeah, good couple.
Speaker 1: Okay, great, good stuff.
Speaker 2: So who knew we were gonna be talking about ted
Speaker 2: Danson at the beginning of mindfulness?
Speaker 1: Richard Gear, But ted Danson's a big surprise.
Speaker 2: If we get in the way back machine and go
Speaker 2: back uh in time to sort of the beginning of Buddhism,
Speaker 2: you'd have to look at the the the language polly
Speaker 2: and the word sati. Polly is p a l i,
Speaker 2: Sati is s a t i. There are a lot
Speaker 2: of different words for mindfulness, but the one that we
Speaker 2: can kind of identify with It's kind of been used
Speaker 2: most from Polly, which is a Middle Indo Aryan liturgical
Speaker 2: language from the early branches of Buddhism.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I want to take in the reason that Polly
Speaker 1: is so important is because they say that it was
Speaker 1: the language of the Buddha, and at the very least
Speaker 1: it was the first language that the Buddha's words which
Speaker 1: have been passed down orally were written down in. So
Speaker 1: it's like legit old school Buddhist thinking and teachings. And
Speaker 1: one of the basic parts of that is, like you said, sati,
Speaker 1: which has been translated to mindfulness, but it was translated
Speaker 1: by a British colonial administrator, wasn't it.
Speaker 2: That's right, And it kind of more accurately is translated
Speaker 2: as memory of the present, which I think is a
Speaker 2: really kind of a cool way to look at mindfulness.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, it really kind of reveals what's going on. Especially
Speaker 1: once you kind of learned a little more about it,
Speaker 1: you're like, that actually works about as perfectly as can be.
Speaker 1: But it got translated into the word mindfulness, sati into
Speaker 1: mindfulness by a British colonial administrator in Ceylon which is
Speaker 1: now Sri Lanka. Back in the eighteen eighties, so as
Speaker 1: some British guy who said sati means mindfulness and actually
Speaker 1: kind of gave it to us today, although there was
Speaker 1: a long period where it had been forgotten. But I
Speaker 1: think you can't really talk about mindfulness, even though it's
Speaker 1: changed so dramatically, especially in the last decade or so,
Speaker 1: without kind of describing what it was originally meant to describe,
Speaker 1: or what it still describes if you're a practicing Buddhist,
Speaker 1: and that is that you are not only like paying
Speaker 1: attention to the moment and like experiencing this moment without
Speaker 1: letting your thoughts wander to the past or the future
Speaker 1: or anything like that, but that whatever you're experiencing in
Speaker 1: the moment, no matter what it is, you're experiencing with equanimity,
Speaker 1: which means that you're not passing judgment on it, good
Speaker 1: or bad or anything else. It just is And it
Speaker 1: sounds easy to describe, but if you've ever tried it,
Speaker 1: it's one of the hardest things a human being can
Speaker 1: ever set out to do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think it's very very natural for
Speaker 2: a human to seek out and contemplate and think about
Speaker 2: the things that feel good and please them and to
Speaker 2: try and stuff down and get rid of and avoid
Speaker 2: things that either hurt literally hurt or emotionally hurt, or
Speaker 2: things that are painful or unpleasant. And boy, see, that
Speaker 2: is a tough thing to overcome, my friend. Just the
Speaker 2: condition of being human makes that very difficult.
Speaker 1: But yeah, and you just nailed it on the head,
Speaker 1: not once, but twice, Chuck when you said that it's
Speaker 1: a very human condition. And part of sati. The point
Speaker 1: of sati as far as like Buddhists are concerned, is
Speaker 1: that it's a step that you take on the path
Speaker 1: to enlightenment to free yourself from the cycle of life
Speaker 1: and death and rebirth and to become like a truly
Speaker 1: enlightened being that's freed from all of that. And so
Speaker 1: you have to free yourself from that human condition, and
Speaker 1: a big part of that is to free yourself from
Speaker 1: yearning from wanting. Because yearning and wanting or being repelled
Speaker 1: by something and wanting to get away from it, there
Speaker 1: are two sides of the same coin as far as
Speaker 1: sati is concerned, which is you are wishing that something
Speaker 1: is different or was different than it actually is. And
Speaker 1: then that's the basis of suffering. And suffering is the
Speaker 1: thing that keeps you in that cycle of life and
Speaker 1: death and rebirth. So meditating to become mindful and non
Speaker 1: judgmental about your present experience is one step toward relieving
Speaker 1: yourself with suffering and then freeing yourself from that shackle
Speaker 1: of being born and reborn and reborn again.
Speaker 2: Well, you and my friend have just spoken about the
Speaker 2: noble truths in part because craving is the cause of
Speaker 2: suffering is the second noble truth, and to cease that
Speaker 2: craving will bring about the ceasing of that suffering, which
Speaker 2: is the third noble truth. And basically, experiencing the moment
Speaker 2: without and everything about the moment without judgment is sort
Speaker 2: of the goal. And you know, for modern you know,
Speaker 2: we're going to talk a lot about sort of the
Speaker 2: beginnings of mindfulness and kind of how it's become kind
Speaker 2: of a hip thing to do here in the United
Speaker 2: States starting in about the nineteen seventies and on especially today.
Speaker 2: But we're kind of talking in American modern terms about
Speaker 2: stress and de stressing. And the Buddhists have a term
Speaker 2: for that, which is duka d u kk h a,
Speaker 2: and that is, you know, again, to avoid or destroy
Speaker 2: something that we don't like, and what we usually don't
Speaker 2: like is something that's going to put a stress on.
Speaker 1: Us, right exactly, And they're saying, like, dude, this is
Speaker 1: part of the point of life. This really amazing book
Speaker 1: by Tick not Han right now rereading it. Actually, it's
Speaker 1: one of those ones you just kind of go back
Speaker 1: and reread, very like easy slim volume. It's called No Mud,
Speaker 1: No Lotus, and it basically says like, without suffering, you
Speaker 1: can't have happiness and vice versa. Pretty basic stuff, but
Speaker 1: like he really gets into explaining how to confront suffering
Speaker 1: and understand that it's just part of life. And that's
Speaker 1: a huge part of the Buddhist approach to mindfulness. It's
Speaker 1: not to get away from suffering. It's to recognize it
Speaker 1: as it is and also simultaneously not make a bigger
Speaker 1: deal out of it than it is, because suffering is enough.
Speaker 1: It's bad enough as it is. But another part of
Speaker 1: the human condition is to make it way worse by
Speaker 1: anticipating it, worrying about it, like focusing on it after
Speaker 1: it happens. There's a lot of stuff we do to
Speaker 1: our own suffering that explodes it, and part of mindfulness
Speaker 1: training is to is to stop doing that as well too.
Speaker 2: You ain't kidding. And the lack of judgment is a big,
Speaker 2: big part of all of this. And we're going to
Speaker 2: talk quite a bit here and there about John cabot Zen,
Speaker 2: who is as easy, far and away the sort of
Speaker 2: leader of the modern American mindfulness movement in a lot
Speaker 2: of different ways, and we'll get to him in more
Speaker 2: detail later, but he says that awareness that arises through
Speaker 2: paying attention on purpose, and that's another big part of it.
Speaker 3: It's a very purposeful practice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but not meditation, which we'll get to that as well,
Speaker 2: because meditation is a true physical practice that you in
Speaker 2: mental practice, whereas mindfulness is more of a state of
Speaker 2: being that you're trying to get to, right. But he
Speaker 2: says on purpose in the present moment and non judgment only,
Speaker 2: they always have to kind of hammer home the lack
Speaker 2: of judgment being a key part.
Speaker 1: Right exactly. And he's a proponent in kind of one
Speaker 1: of the founders of what you can refer to as
Speaker 1: secular mindfulness, which is this current incarnation of mindfulness that's
Speaker 1: sweeping the West. It's like you said, hip that's been
Speaker 1: kind of like removed deliberately, as we'll see, removed from
Speaker 1: its Buddhist roots and Buddhist contexts to make it more
Speaker 1: palatable and scientific seeming. Yeah, secular, secular.
Speaker 2: Strip it of all the religion and maybe we can
Speaker 2: sell it to Americans exactly and then that.
Speaker 1: But the yeah, the upshot of all this, though, Chuck,
Speaker 1: is that no matter who you are, where you're coming from,
Speaker 1: if you're talking about mindfulness, you're talking about paying attention
Speaker 1: to the present moment and doing the best you can
Speaker 1: at not judging anything that's going on in that present
Speaker 1: experience and just taking it on its face value and
Speaker 1: engaging in it fully. That's mindfulness in a nutshell.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's not anything that the Buddhists had a
Speaker 2: corner on. They just probably did it better because all
Speaker 2: different kinds of religions throughout antiquity had you know, chanting
Speaker 2: or some kind of mindfulness practice, maybe prayers or through
Speaker 2: songs or dance. You know, that kind of thing has
Speaker 2: been around as long as people have been practicing religion.
Speaker 2: So the Buddhists did not invent it, but I think
Speaker 2: they got it fairly right.
Speaker 1: So let's talk a little more about how we got
Speaker 1: here today. Historically speaking after a break. What do you
Speaker 1: think about that?
Speaker 3: It sounds great. I'm gonna breathe in the meantime.
Speaker 1: Hey, let me teach you something I've been using that
Speaker 1: tik not Han taught me, not personally but through his
Speaker 1: writing in a book that was published that I purchased
Speaker 1: with MONI.
Speaker 3: Smash your hand with a hammer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he said, try to focus on anything else. Chump.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: There's a bunch of different mantras you can say, and
Speaker 1: I don't not even sure that's the right word, but
Speaker 1: one that I keep using is And it's just striking
Speaker 1: what taking a breath and deliberately focusing on that breath,
Speaker 1: just breathing in once and breathing out once can do
Speaker 1: to like just suck you right out of wherever your
Speaker 1: mind is in the past or the future. It's it's
Speaker 1: really striking how it can do that. But his was
Speaker 1: it's a breathing in I noticed that I'm alive and
Speaker 1: then breathing out. I'm happy to be alive, and just
Speaker 1: doing it at once like immediately brings me back into
Speaker 1: the present moment. It's really cool. I like it. It's
Speaker 1: all very new for me, but I think it's it's
Speaker 1: pretty cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a lot of value there. And you know
Speaker 2: you can like practice something like this and those breathing techniques.
Speaker 2: It's not exclusive to mindfulness or meditation or Buddhism. I
Speaker 2: you know, that's a great technique if you have kids.
Speaker 3: I found that.
Speaker 2: You know, if my daughter is having a bad time,
Speaker 2: just kind of get her to slow down and take
Speaker 2: a couple of good deep breaths.
Speaker 3: Always a good thing to do. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And Emily, who you know, someone who has a lot
Speaker 2: of anxieties in her life as a struggling small business owner.
Speaker 2: We will do this thing where we have hug breathing,
Speaker 2: where I will go up to her and we will
Speaker 2: have a good tight bear hug embrace and will breathe
Speaker 2: in together, and it sort of like doubles the power
Speaker 2: of it.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's neat, Chuck, Is that your own? Did you
Speaker 1: come up with that?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I mean I'm sure, I mean I didn't get it
Speaker 2: from anywhere, but I'm sure I didn't invent that.
Speaker 1: It sounds like a Viking mindfulness.
Speaker 3: Like Hell's Angels.
Speaker 1: Sure, Yeah, that's the Hell's Angels technique you came up with.
Speaker 1: You can call it whatever you want. It's your invention.
Speaker 1: It's a good one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's something about breathing together that close physically. It's
Speaker 2: pretty powerful.
Speaker 1: So if you went back a few hundred years, a
Speaker 1: couple hundred years even, and you spoke to any Buddhists
Speaker 1: around the world and said, hey, how often do you
Speaker 1: do mindfulness meditation? They would look at you like they
Speaker 1: had no idea what you were talking about. And if
Speaker 1: you said, you know, sati, they'd say, oh, that's not
Speaker 1: for us, that's for like the monks and the nuns
Speaker 1: up in the caves in the mountains, Like, we don't
Speaker 1: do that kind of stuff where we're super Buddhists. We
Speaker 1: care about morality and we worship local deities and all
Speaker 1: that stuff. But that's that's kind of advanced. That's more
Speaker 1: than the average Buddhist does. And it wasn't until I
Speaker 1: think the late nineteenth century in Burma that that was
Speaker 1: finally kind of broken up and meditation and mindfulness together
Speaker 1: were kind of introduced for the first time to like
Speaker 1: lay Buddhists, like just the normal, everyday, average Buddhists living
Speaker 1: their life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is pretty cool, Like, I know, we love
Speaker 2: it when we can kind of pinpoint when things happen
Speaker 2: or when things change, and this is one of them.
Speaker 2: On November twenty eighth and eighteen eighty five, this is
Speaker 2: when the British Imperial Army conquered Burma and said, King,
Speaker 2: we're gonna mispronounce some of these Thibal Maybe I think
Speaker 2: that's right, you're out of here. And that king was
Speaker 2: promoting mindfulness and promoting Buddhist institutions throughout the nation. The Brits,
Speaker 2: of course, said now we're not going to.
Speaker 3: Really do that.
Speaker 2: So it fell to the lay people to get organized,
Speaker 2: to find new places to meet, to find their own
Speaker 2: you know, gathering grounds, and a lot of times these
Speaker 2: were monasteries and it would go through monks, but they
Speaker 2: would it basically went to them to kind of figure
Speaker 2: it out because it wasn't I don't want to say
Speaker 2: state sponsored, but it kind of state sponsored.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or state supported or something like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah. But so rather than being like, oh, well, I
Speaker 1: don't know who, I guess we're not Buddhists anymore, they
Speaker 1: took it by the horns and like they did something
Speaker 1: with it. But one of the outcroppings of that was
Speaker 1: that like these monks who used to just go meditate
Speaker 1: out in the like in the mountains or the hills
Speaker 1: or in the woods. Now had audiences of like everyday
Speaker 1: people who were practicing Buddhists that they were teaching this
Speaker 1: stuff too, And it was it was one of these guys,
Speaker 1: Letty Sayadao, who was a Buddhist monk, who said, you
Speaker 1: know what, this isn't just for us, this is for everybody.
Speaker 1: And closely in Letty Sayadow's footsteps came Minga and Sayao
Speaker 1: s a yaw say yao. I think that's right, and
Speaker 1: that monk was the first one to actually teach mindfulness
Speaker 1: and meditation to regular people, I think around nineteen eleven.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's cool stuff.
Speaker 2: Like I love the idea that Letty Sayadal kind of
Speaker 2: put forth, which was you don't have to go to
Speaker 2: a monastery, even like we've set these up for you
Speaker 2: and you can.
Speaker 3: You don't have to retreat to a cave.
Speaker 2: You don't have to you don't even have to go
Speaker 2: into a deep meditative state or anything like. Just momentary
Speaker 2: bits of mindfulness are very helpful, right, and that's a
Speaker 2: good way to reach each regular lay people. And I
Speaker 2: think through practice is when Sayel came along and said, hey,
Speaker 2: that all sounds great, and buddy, I'm going to teach
Speaker 2: it right.
Speaker 1: So the people in what is now Miamar are the
Speaker 1: ones who kind of broke out, broke mindfulness of meditation
Speaker 1: out of its little slumber sure cage or something like that,
Speaker 1: and democratized it a little bit. But it was as
Speaker 1: far as the people in the West are concerned, it
Speaker 1: was the Japanese in their development of Zen Buddhism that
Speaker 1: we have to thank because this is you can pretty
Speaker 1: much trace a direct line between the mindfulness and the
Speaker 1: meditation and the approach to Buddhism in the West today
Speaker 1: back to the twentieth century Japan and specifically a guy
Speaker 1: named die Setsu Tei Taro dt Suzuki. So dt Suzuki
Speaker 1: was kind of a what's called a Buddhist modernist thinker
Speaker 1: who said, there's different things we can do with this,
Speaker 1: but let's approach us a little more rationally, a little
Speaker 1: less dogmatically, and open it up to people like our
Speaker 1: friends and what's soon to be me and mar and
Speaker 1: not only that, let's start relating to the West a
Speaker 1: little more. And dt Suzuki actually kind of carried this message,
Speaker 1: this idea of Zen Buddhism with him over to America
Speaker 1: in Europe and it just started to catch on like wildfire.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think it's really interesting too that it was another
Speaker 2: act of war that led to you know, that helped
Speaker 2: give rise to someone like Suzuki, just like when the
Speaker 2: Brits overthrow Burma. When the US Navy attacked Tokyo Harbor
Speaker 2: in eighteen fifty three, though was you know, basically Japan
Speaker 2: was like, you know, we got we got to start
Speaker 2: relating to the West a little bit more and sort
Speaker 2: of modernize, and this was known as the Meiji Restoration.
Speaker 2: And part of that was saying, hey, Shinto is going
Speaker 2: to be our religion, our main religion, and not Buddhism,
Speaker 2: which led the Buddhists to say, hey, maybe we should
Speaker 2: modernize our religion as well, to you know, so we
Speaker 2: don't get left by the wayside, and that gave rise
Speaker 2: to someone like DT.
Speaker 1: Suzuki, Right. So it was from that modernization that Buddhist
Speaker 1: modernism came about, and it's basically what you would recognize
Speaker 1: as Buddhism today, like very thoughtful, very interior dwelling, the
Speaker 1: idea that the universe is all connected. All these were
Speaker 1: like Buddhist thoughts before, but it was it was Buddhism
Speaker 1: allowing itself to be influenced by Modernism and by other
Speaker 1: groups like the Romantics and the Transcendentalists, right.
Speaker 2: So they jumped on a big time. It was pretty
Speaker 2: It was like a confluence of perfect timing as far
Speaker 2: as coming to the United States and like the counterculture
Speaker 2: ready for this.
Speaker 1: But in a weird way, it was like the United States,
Speaker 1: unbeknownst to the counterculture Beats and then later the Hippies,
Speaker 1: that their predecessors, like the Transcendentalists, had pre influenced what
Speaker 1: was coming back to them. So it was already in
Speaker 1: a very palatable form for Americans who were open to
Speaker 1: the idea of like mind expansion and taking acid and
Speaker 1: you know, and meditating and were just open to the
Speaker 1: ideas of other cultures of becoming like more in tune
Speaker 1: with the universe. It was they were just waiting for it,
Speaker 1: and it came to them in the in the briefcase
Speaker 1: I guess of DT Suzuki and it just kind of
Speaker 1: took off from there. So the idea everything we understand
Speaker 1: about mindfulness and meditation you can trace back to like
Speaker 1: DT Suzuki in those beats.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, And there were three people in particular in the
Speaker 2: seventies and sixties and seventies practicing this, Joseph Goldstein, Jack
Speaker 2: Cornfield and Sharon Salzberg who were not together but they
Speaker 2: studied separately meditation in Burma, and then the mid seventies
Speaker 2: founded the Insight Meditation Society in Massachusetts, which became sort
Speaker 2: of the center of the uh VI Pasana meditation movement
Speaker 2: here in the United States. And they're they're still around,
Speaker 2: they're still doing their thing.
Speaker 1: Right, So it was from that same group. There was
Speaker 1: actually a time where John cabot Z in the guy
Speaker 1: we mentioned earlier.
Speaker 3: Z I by the way, not that would be too
Speaker 3: far on the nose.
Speaker 2: Oh wait, what if his name was spelled z E
Speaker 2: n Oh, I got.
Speaker 1: You, boy. I was not the current experience very well,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, Oh that's okay.
Speaker 2: That'd be like a boxer being named boxer. Yeah, it
Speaker 2: would be differently, right.
Speaker 1: I was for some reason, I was going more toward
Speaker 1: the cabernet Zen play on.
Speaker 3: Well because you're eyes in there.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So he's known as the godfather of modern mindfulness
Speaker 1: according to The Guardian at least, which is a pretty
Speaker 1: legit newspaper. And by the way, they thank you also
Speaker 1: to Olivia for helping us out with this one. Chuck
Speaker 1: one to wrangle very great, Josh, she did, she did.
Speaker 1: But John cabot Zen was among those people Jack Cornfield,
Speaker 1: great name, Sharon Salzburg, and Jason Joseph Goldstein. He actually
Speaker 1: taught at their Insight Meditation Society, and he was a
Speaker 1: big time practitioner of Zen Buddhism and he had he
Speaker 1: was on like a I guess a meditation retreat and
Speaker 1: he had a bit of insight well, I guess an
Speaker 1: epiphany is probably what you'd call it. That he was
Speaker 1: meant to help apply Buddhist techniques to help people who
Speaker 1: are in pain. He had either a microbiology or molecular
Speaker 1: biology degree and he ended up applying it to medicine
Speaker 1: and figuring out how to join Buddhist practices and medicine
Speaker 1: to help people in the seventies and it really started
Speaker 1: to take off from there.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, he sort of had the same idea as
Speaker 2: previous cultures, which was, hey, if we want to and
Speaker 2: not sell for money, but if we want to popularize this,
Speaker 2: we should get a little bit away from the religion part,
Speaker 2: the sort of hippie dippy New Age part, and he
Speaker 2: really wanted to start talking in concrete terms about things
Speaker 2: that everyone worried about, which was stress, and like, if
Speaker 2: you want to make your life less stressful, here's a
Speaker 2: way to do it, and more on mindfulness and less
Speaker 2: on meditation, which was still a tough sell to mainstream
Speaker 2: America and still is today.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, but it's gotten less and less. I
Speaker 1: feel like he finally overcame the threshold that was, you know,
Speaker 1: keeping it back in the last like five ten years,
Speaker 1: and achieved what he was looking for. I mean, think
Speaker 1: about mindfulness is everywhere today and it is almost totally
Speaker 1: divorced from any kind of religious connotations. It seems like
Speaker 1: a neuroscience tool more than anything, the way that it's
Speaker 1: totally did in the West, and that was his goal.
Speaker 1: He was trying to get it to the most people possible,
Speaker 1: study it scientifically, and then apply it to help people.
Speaker 1: And specifically again, he was initially looking at how it
Speaker 1: can help people with pain, and he came up with
Speaker 1: mindfulness based stress Reduction MBSR, which is still very much
Speaker 1: in use today. And then there was an offshoot too,
Speaker 1: Chuck Mindfulness based cognitive therapy, and that takes CBT, which
Speaker 1: is a proven type of talk therapy used extensively in
Speaker 1: psychology and applies John cabot Zin's approach to mindfulness to it, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think one of the big tenets here
Speaker 2: is to interrupt automatic thoughts, right, And the automatic thoughts
Speaker 2: that can lead to an automatic behavior. So the automatic
Speaker 2: thought might just be your propensity to feel that stress
Speaker 2: and reach for drink immediately and not even think like,
Speaker 2: oh boy, I need a drink because I'm stressed out
Speaker 2: and that'll help out. It becomes this automatic thing. And
Speaker 2: he was all about and the practice of mindfulness is
Speaker 2: all about disruption and disrupting that flow without judgment.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Because one of the big things in cognitive behavioral
Speaker 1: therapy is that you have a thought, your thought leads
Speaker 1: to a feeling, and your feeling leads to a behavior.
Speaker 1: And oftentimes it's, like you said, it's very destructive and
Speaker 1: you don't even realize it's going on until your life
Speaker 1: is kind of falling apart or it's certainly not as
Speaker 1: good as it could be. And it doesn't even have
Speaker 1: to be a drink. It could be a donut, it
Speaker 1: could be yelling at a cashier at a grocery store,
Speaker 1: like all sorts of different things, and you are totally
Speaker 1: out of control of it. The idea behind this mindfulness,
Speaker 1: adding mindfulness to cognitive behavioral therapy is that you are
Speaker 1: training yourself to detach yourself from all thoughts and emotions
Speaker 1: so that you can evaluate them clearly, so that none
Speaker 1: of them can jump out of nowhere pounce on you,
Speaker 1: and the next thing you know, you've eaten a dozen
Speaker 1: donuts and had six s gotches and you have no
Speaker 1: idea why. You do have the idea why, and you
Speaker 1: probably haven't gotten to that point because you've stopped the
Speaker 1: whole process by recognizing it the moment it began ideally,
Speaker 1: theoretically on paper. That's the purpose of using mindfulness to help,
Speaker 1: especially with mental health.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a journalist named Robert Wright, and he kind
Speaker 2: of put it in a way that I kind of like,
Speaker 2: which was to think of your thoughts and emotions as transient.
Speaker 2: So it's not like that kind of goes back to
Speaker 2: the no judgment thing. You can have these bad feelings
Speaker 2: and bad emotions and bad tendencies, but if you allow,
Speaker 2: if you allow them to just flow through you, they
Speaker 2: become transient. They don't stick around the same sort of
Speaker 2: ideas that you can't why worry about things that you
Speaker 2: can't control?
Speaker 3: But not in.
Speaker 2: A an office poster kind of way, you know what
Speaker 2: I mean. Sure it runs a bit deeper than that.
Speaker 2: It's not like a Pollyanna thing.
Speaker 1: No, And as a matter of fact, like if you
Speaker 1: want to trace it all the way back to its
Speaker 1: original Buddhist roots, it's that like, we have very little,
Speaker 1: if any control over life, and that recognizing that will
Speaker 1: free us from all of our desires and the idea
Speaker 1: that like we have to have things that we want
Speaker 1: to hang on to. It like it just lets you
Speaker 1: let things flow by and you can enjoy them and
Speaker 1: experience them as they come. Rather than hoping for the
Speaker 1: next one, needing the next doughnut, or fearing the next loss.
Speaker 1: You just experience life as it comes. It's kind of
Speaker 1: the point of that of understanding that everything is transient
Speaker 1: and impermanent, including your own your own life, Like you're
Speaker 1: going to die one day. There's ultimately the big like
Speaker 1: you know, like bingo number, Yeah, Like that's ultimate is
Speaker 1: you're going to die. You you yourself are impermanent and
Speaker 1: so understanding that through getting there through meditation. Daily meditative
Speaker 1: practice is kind of the goal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's interesting they found that it's even though
Speaker 2: something like MBSR is more rooted in that sort of
Speaker 2: neuroscience y thing and not spirituality or religion, they found
Speaker 2: it's sort of a chicken in the egg deal where
Speaker 2: once you do participate in MBSR, you may become more
Speaker 2: spiritual as a result, even though you weren't going in.
Speaker 1: But I think the reason why is because even if
Speaker 1: these people don't know it, even if they're at a
Speaker 1: corporate mindfulness retreat, they're engaging in a deeply spiritual practice.
Speaker 1: That that it's they're kind of doing it wrong is
Speaker 1: we'll see, But there's still it's still, you know, part
Speaker 1: of this very long established tradition that's that actually has
Speaker 1: like legs. It's not it's not mumbo jumbo like. It
Speaker 1: actually has pronounced effect on the human brain, the human psyche,
Speaker 1: the outlook that we have on life. And so depending
Speaker 1: on the context, you're doing it, and it can be
Speaker 1: very useful, it can be harmful, or it can be
Speaker 1: totally useless in some cases too. But it is a
Speaker 1: spiritual act. So it makes sense that it would make
Speaker 1: you more interested in spirituality.
Speaker 2: Well, I say we take our second break, if that's good.
Speaker 2: And because we're stuff, you should know, we have to
Speaker 2: talk about whether or not this works and if there
Speaker 2: have been studies that tell us one way or the other.
Speaker 3: So we'll get into that right after this. All right.
Speaker 2: It's fun to sit around and talk about mindfulness, So fun,
Speaker 2: and to just sort of zen out and lose ourselves,
Speaker 2: become one with each other through these headphones.
Speaker 1: Yeah, man, you sound like Rory cochrane and days.
Speaker 3: And confused, Marthan new Man.
Speaker 1: What was his name?
Speaker 3: Oh Slater?
Speaker 1: Was he Slater? Maybe you give me drugs man, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's later. You're right, get some from your mother. Man.
Speaker 3: It's funny.
Speaker 2: I've seen him and he's been in a bunch of
Speaker 2: stuff since then. It's always impossible to see him as
Speaker 2: anyone other than Slater.
Speaker 1: I mean, have you he was on CSI Miami. I
Speaker 1: think for years and years and years.
Speaker 3: You're just waiting for her whip out of Dubie.
Speaker 1: Yes, and he's all clean cut and everything and just
Speaker 1: still can't not see it. I totally agree with.
Speaker 3: He's not fooling anybody, all right? So does this stuff work.
Speaker 2: There have been plenty of studies, of course, and there
Speaker 2: is a lot of evidence that mindfulness programs can help
Speaker 2: people through emotional problems, through mental problems. They've done control
Speaker 2: trials of MBSR programs and clinical settings and non clinical settings,
Speaker 2: and they generally found that they do. And this is
Speaker 2: self reported stuff obviously, but they reduce self reported anxiety, depression,
Speaker 2: and stress and increase well being as opposed to people
Speaker 2: who've got no treatment at all.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so yes, I mean it does seem to be effective.
Speaker 1: There's also, especially with self reporting, Chuck, that seems to
Speaker 1: be like the big one that if you look at
Speaker 1: studies where they're using self reporting, like it has the
Speaker 1: most pronounced effect. Objective tests there does seem to register
Speaker 1: some sort of effect like on the objective experience of
Speaker 1: say like pain or something like that. But social psychology
Speaker 1: has jumped all over this. It's like we're going to
Speaker 1: study this. And there's this one study from twenty twenty
Speaker 1: one which I have to give a hat tip to
Speaker 1: Umi because she turned this one up. But it was
Speaker 1: a study of white people who some of whom received
Speaker 1: mindfulness training and a control group who received sham mindfulness training,
Speaker 1: which is hilarious, and the effect that it had on
Speaker 1: their willingness to help black people that they saw who
Speaker 1: they saw in need and not like you need, like
Speaker 1: you know, homeless or something like that. Like they would
Speaker 1: be they would be subjected to a test unwittingly where
Speaker 1: they'd be in a room and like a black person
Speaker 1: would come in and like drop their papers, and their
Speaker 1: willingness to help that person pick up the papers, or
Speaker 1: if a black person entered the room and they were
Speaker 1: on crutches, their willingness to give up their seat. And
Speaker 1: apparently black people tend to help black people more, White
Speaker 1: people tend to help white people more, or spanning people
Speaker 1: tend to help Hispanic people more. They people help their
Speaker 1: in group more. But this mindfulness group actually kind of
Speaker 1: crossed lines way more than was expected.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, I mean I think that kind of says
Speaker 2: it all. You do help your in group more, But
Speaker 2: the people that received the real mindfulness training were definitely
Speaker 2: far and away more willing to step outside their end
Speaker 2: group and help someone of another race.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know they're.
Speaker 1: Going to be said for that, Yeah, And I mean
Speaker 1: it was significant. Three times more is really significant statistically
Speaker 1: speaking for a study and it seems like it was
Speaker 1: a pretty good study. Like the fact that they had
Speaker 1: sham mindfulness training ruled out the possibility that the group
Speaker 1: that got mindfulness training was behaving a certain way because
Speaker 1: they they thought like that's what was going to be
Speaker 1: the result of it, almost like a placebo effect. So
Speaker 1: the group that received sham training thought they were getting
Speaker 1: mindfulness training.
Speaker 3: What they like?
Speaker 1: They still that's what I want to know.
Speaker 3: I would love to know what sham mindfulness is. Right.
Speaker 1: It's like breathing, really concentrate on all the anger, really
Speaker 1: feel it.
Speaker 2: They or they'd let them in like a lama's breathing
Speaker 2: where they're like, I don't think that's right.
Speaker 1: That doesn't feel right, started to float away.
Speaker 2: It's really funny, And shout out to cal State San
Speaker 2: Marcos and Professor Daniel Berry and I guess you.
Speaker 3: Me for all that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sure, the trifecta, Yeah sure, what's a cal State
Speaker 1: San Marcos's mascot? Geez, I'm gonna bet five dollars on
Speaker 1: the Lobos.
Speaker 3: That sounds good.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go with that, all right, Los Lobos even.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the the banless Lobos is their.
Speaker 1: Mak and not coincidentally, they're halftime entertainment as well.
Speaker 2: But we do need to say that there's another school
Speaker 2: of thought, and it's not a competing school of thought,
Speaker 2: it's just a hey, be aware that it's not always
Speaker 2: great for everyone. They there's this one article you sent
Speaker 2: about people that experience trauma in their lives, that have
Speaker 2: buried it and it sits in their body as unconscious
Speaker 2: trauma that mindfulness practices and meditation practices can dredge that
Speaker 2: stuff up. Yeah, And so they found that when these
Speaker 2: people they're studying them and they're doing these mindfulness practice
Speaker 2: they're experiencing like rage and anxiety, and it's like whoa, whoa, whoa.
Speaker 2: This is the opposite of where we're supposed to be
Speaker 2: edded here. And I think they had figured out in
Speaker 2: a lot of these cases it's people that are uncovering
Speaker 2: these bary traumas.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and here's where we reach like the first initial
Speaker 1: part where the West has kind of screwed this up,
Speaker 1: because it is unexpected when somebody in America goes to
Speaker 1: a meditation retreat and tries to become more mindful and
Speaker 1: they're confronted with trauma or they're confronted with rage or
Speaker 1: self hatred or something like that, and they're not expecting it.
Speaker 1: If you went and talked to like an actual like
Speaker 1: Buddhist monk, they'd be like, well, somebody probably should have
Speaker 1: told you that that's a real possibility, right that you're
Speaker 1: not This isn't all. This isn't like you know, it's
Speaker 1: like an acid trip. It's not always like flowers and sunshine.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's like the darkest thing you'll ever be confronted with.
Speaker 1: Kind of thing, same thing. The good thing about mindfulness
Speaker 1: meditation is that you can stop immediately, but it supposedly
Speaker 1: in some retreats, in some situations they're like, no, you
Speaker 1: got to press through. You got to press through. And
Speaker 1: people are kind of enticed or forced into staying in
Speaker 1: really uncomfortable trauma experiences way beyond their comfort zone. And
Speaker 1: it can actually be damaging. And it's very rare from
Speaker 1: what I can tell, for there be to like lasting harm,
Speaker 1: but there are reports of people having to go to
Speaker 1: therapy for years after having gone on basically a bad
Speaker 1: trip at a meditation retreat for years years of therapy,
Speaker 1: so it can happen. And I guess, like I think, Chuck,
Speaker 1: there's a twenty nineteen study that found like twenty to
Speaker 1: twenty five percent of people who meditate reported experiencing unwanted effects, right,
Speaker 1: like negative effects that they were not planning for. And
Speaker 1: that's that's the big problem. There's no there's nowhere, very
Speaker 1: little warnings about this stuff. It's all treated in a
Speaker 1: very pollyannish naive manner, as if like you know, America
Speaker 1: in Europe got its hands on unlike the the Secret
Speaker 1: the Cube from Hell Raiser is just like, this is awesome,
Speaker 1: Let's figure out how to be more productive using this thing.
Speaker 1: That's kind of what's going on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think another thing that can happen is
Speaker 2: it can lead to a spiral of anxiety if you're
Speaker 2: not able to get to that place that you think
Speaker 2: you should be getting to by practicing it. Yeah, So
Speaker 2: it becomes like this cycle where you know you're thinking, like, well,
Speaker 2: I'm practicing this meditation doesn't seem to be doing anything
Speaker 2: for me. Why can I not even do this right?
Speaker 2: And all of a sudden, that is building upon itself
Speaker 2: and creating anxieties because you feel like you're supposed to
Speaker 2: reach this sort of moment of like floating bliss that
Speaker 2: is I mean that's really hard to maintain. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean not maintained, but like even touch.
Speaker 1: Even reach sure, and it's been packaged like that, it's
Speaker 1: been marketed is something that you will just reach some flow,
Speaker 1: he blissed with, And yeah, I can totally see being
Speaker 1: stressed out because you don't reach it because it hasn't
Speaker 1: been explained to you even what you're doing. Right. So
Speaker 1: there's it's a good little short read. It's called Mindfulness,
Speaker 1: Meditation and Trauma, Proceed with caution. I found it on
Speaker 1: good therapy dot org. And it doesn't say like, don't
Speaker 1: do this even if you know your trauma, don't meditate,
Speaker 1: don't try to become mindful. It says some you know,
Speaker 1: make sure you find like a good coach, a good guide,
Speaker 1: a good teacher who understands how to deal with trauma
Speaker 1: and can prepare you for it and can pull you
Speaker 1: back and be like, don't forget life's actually good. You're good,
Speaker 1: and now let's try a little more and just kind of,
Speaker 1: little by little expose yourself to it rather than like
Speaker 1: you know, ripping your shirt off and standing in front
Speaker 1: of like the baseball pitching machine.
Speaker 2: Uh, there's when it comes to physical pain. That's a
Speaker 2: pretty interesting area as far as the studies have been concerned,
Speaker 2: Like the idea that can it out actually help reduce
Speaker 2: physical pain or at least the subjective experience of pain.
Speaker 2: And you know, in some studies, in some cases, the
Speaker 2: people who practice meditation do report lower subjective experience of
Speaker 2: pain or what they call pain unpleasantness. So this might
Speaker 2: be a little bit of a mind over matter, Like
Speaker 2: the actual pain is still there, but I've gotten my
Speaker 2: mind to in such a place that the unpleasantness or
Speaker 2: the anticipation of that unpleasantness isn't as great as it
Speaker 2: would be if I weren't able to practice that mindfulness.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which ties very closely into a Buddhist tenet of
Speaker 1: the first arrow of sufferings, which is where everyone has
Speaker 1: to experience that. Let's say you're bitten by an ant.
Speaker 1: It's not a very pleasant sensation, and everybody's going to
Speaker 1: experience it roughly the same. But there's also a second
Speaker 1: arrow where you can be worried about being bitten by
Speaker 1: an ant, and it makes the actually makes the first
Speaker 1: arrow ten times worse, not just twice as bad, but
Speaker 1: ten times worse. And the idea is that if you're mindful,
Speaker 1: if you practice sati, you won't really experience the second arrow,
Speaker 1: just the first arrow. And that's the best you can
Speaker 1: hope for in this life.
Speaker 3: That's right, missage Troyusa.
Speaker 1: What that's from?
Speaker 3: Uh?
Speaker 2: I always just crack up when every time I think of
Speaker 2: an arrow hitting a human body, I only think of
Speaker 2: Monty Python.
Speaker 3: When that guy takes the aero message Troyusa as he's dying.
Speaker 2: There was one study, though, in twenty nineteen, a review
Speaker 2: of studies actually that found that NBSR can reduce severity
Speaker 2: of chronic pain or improve daily functioning and depression about
Speaker 2: like associated with that pain, which is you know, that's
Speaker 2: there's something to be said for that, Like I don't
Speaker 2: think it should only be looked at as some sort
Speaker 2: of hippie dippy thing like if you have real physical pain,
Speaker 2: it could possibly help.
Speaker 1: Yes, And yeah, for sure, I mean think that that's
Speaker 1: kind of like one of the outcomes of it being
Speaker 1: exposed to westernization is that it's being studied. It's actually
Speaker 1: holding up in studies.
Speaker 2: And boy is it being exposed Because if you work
Speaker 2: for a big corporation, if you especially work in Silicon Valley,
Speaker 2: chances are there are mindfulness retreats, maybe mindfulness rooms in
Speaker 2: the offices where they say, hey, we know we work
Speaker 2: you to death, and it's not fair. Why don't we
Speaker 2: set up this little room that used to be a
Speaker 2: room for you know, for your kids to come to work,
Speaker 2: but we don't let that happen anymore. Used to be
Speaker 2: the nursery. But we'll put you in here and you
Speaker 2: can zen out and be cool. And here's one of
Speaker 2: the criticisms. As long as you come back and you
Speaker 2: get all that work done, we think it's a great
Speaker 2: tool for you.
Speaker 1: Right exactly. And not just corporations, but the military is
Speaker 1: using mindfulness schools. Little kids are being taught mindfulness and
Speaker 1: to meditate prisons, and there's an enormous amount of like
Speaker 1: out just out there in the culture. It's gotten really popular.
Speaker 1: I guess in twenty twelve, just over four percent of
Speaker 1: Americans meditated. Five years later it was up to fourteen percent.
Speaker 1: That's a pretty big increase in just five years, and
Speaker 1: I would propose it's probably more than that now in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two. So it's everywhere. But it's also really
Speaker 1: kind of lost its way, I guess once it hit
Speaker 1: America and corporate America in particular, mindfulness kind of got perverted,
Speaker 1: I think, is a way you could put it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that critique is really valid. It's great
Speaker 2: that a company might take mindfulness and the consideration as
Speaker 2: something beneficial for their employees, but to ignore the root cause,
Speaker 2: which is you're working too many hours a week and
Speaker 2: you're overworked and you can't possibly get done what you
Speaker 2: should get done, and that's where this anxiety is rooted.
Speaker 2: Here's a mindfulness room so you can help correct all that. Like,
Speaker 2: it totally puts the onus on the employee to sort
Speaker 2: of self adjust to what's probably way too much work,
Speaker 2: instead of saying, hey, maybe people wouldn't be in this
Speaker 2: position to begin with if they didn't have to work
Speaker 2: sixty hours in a.
Speaker 1: Week, right, And the same thing goes for social movements
Speaker 1: as well. Like some people say, hey, you know how
Speaker 1: like a lot of us are mentally ill these days.
Speaker 1: That's because society is screwed up. So rather than putting
Speaker 1: the onus again on the individual person just kind of
Speaker 1: suck it up and deal with it in a mindful manner,
Speaker 1: why don't we focus instead on these social problems that
Speaker 1: are causing all of these other social problems, so what
Speaker 1: we don't have to do that? And those are really
Speaker 1: valid criticisms of westernized mindfulness in twenty twenties. And there's
Speaker 1: actually a term for it that a guy named Miles
Speaker 1: Kniel coined and another guy named Ronald Purser wrote a
Speaker 1: book using that name, It's perfect mic mindfulness.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I love that word.
Speaker 2: And they're basically saying like, hey, you guys have so
Speaker 2: completely detached this from ethics and morals and religion and
Speaker 2: and kind of co opted something that had its roots
Speaker 2: there that Yeah, you've you've there.
Speaker 3: Needs to be a term for that. You've mixed micked it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you've.
Speaker 3: You've mixed screwed it, you miffed it, You've make miffed it.
Speaker 2: I like that, Uh, and that you know, you can't
Speaker 2: ignore the theological roots, uh and have it be the
Speaker 2: same thing.
Speaker 1: And hr reps across the country say, oh, yes we can, yes,
Speaker 1: and look what happens. We're really screwing people up. So
Speaker 1: there's a there's like a couple of quotes I found
Speaker 1: that I really feel like kind of get to the
Speaker 1: heart of what happened when mindfulness came over here and
Speaker 1: got got picked up by corporate America and the military
Speaker 1: and just other surprising groups and maybe put to not
Speaker 1: the best uses. There's a really good New York Times
Speaker 1: article from back in twenty fifteen that was kind of
Speaker 1: a meditation on the idea of mindfulness or the word
Speaker 1: mindfulness and what it means by Virginia Heffernan, and she
Speaker 1: says that what commercial mindfulness may have lost from the
Speaker 1: most rigorous Buddhist tenants that it replaced is the implication
Speaker 1: that suffering cannot be escaped but must be faced. And
Speaker 1: that's that mispackaging, that miss marketing that we talked about,
Speaker 1: That the idea that if you meditate your mindful it's
Speaker 1: going to free you from all your problems, make you
Speaker 1: less stressed and more productive and just happier. And that's
Speaker 1: not necessarily the case, because we in the West tend
Speaker 1: to really like to, like you said, avoid all of
Speaker 1: the stuff that really stinks and just get as much
Speaker 1: of the stuff that we like, and that's not what
Speaker 1: that's meant for.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this I think is from the same article about
Speaker 2: mindful fracking. Could that be next? Putting in neuros science
Speaker 2: halo around a byword for both uppers productivity and downers
Speaker 2: relaxation to ensure a more compliant workforce in a more
Speaker 2: prosperous c suite.
Speaker 3: Right there it is.
Speaker 1: And there's another one too. The Dalai Lama apparently pointed
Speaker 1: out that even a suicide bomber would likely have to
Speaker 1: cultivate some sort of mindfulness. It's not inherently ethical. And
Speaker 1: if it's not inherently ethical, then that means that you
Speaker 1: could conceivably use it to nefarious ends. And the way
Speaker 1: that Buddhists for thousands of years kept it from being
Speaker 1: used to nefares ends is by encasing it in wholesomeness
Speaker 1: like mindfulness. Specifically, what's called right mindfulness by the Buddhists
Speaker 1: is it's a wholesome approach and separating wholesome thoughts from
Speaker 1: unwholesome thoughts. And if you just take the mindfulness practice
Speaker 1: out of that context, you have a problem. You want
Speaker 1: to read that quote from Andrew Olenski.
Speaker 2: True mindfulness is deeply an inextricably embedded in the notion
Speaker 2: of wholesomeness. Just as a tree removed from the forest
Speaker 2: is no longer a tree but a piece of lumber,
Speaker 2: so also the carrying attentiveness of mindfulness extracted from its
Speaker 2: matrix of wholesome coorizing factors, denigrates into mere attention.
Speaker 1: Yeah, best attention. That's the best you can hope for.
Speaker 1: Is it just detegrates into mere attention and not something harmful,
Speaker 1: you know? So Yeah, I think it's great. I think
Speaker 1: it's wonderful that people want this and they're seeking it
Speaker 1: out and they're trying it. I think the people who
Speaker 1: are selling it to everybody need to just package it
Speaker 1: more transparently and explain the true purpose of it and
Speaker 1: stop using it for productivity.
Speaker 3: Agreed.
Speaker 1: If you want to know more about mindfulness, go research
Speaker 1: it and see if it's for you, and give it
Speaker 1: a shot, and go into it with right eyes, right vision.
Speaker 1: I can't remember. And since I said I can't remember,
Speaker 1: of course, that means it's time for the listener mail.
Speaker 2: I'm going to call this tribute to Ziggi Bombach from
Speaker 2: his son Michael. We got a great email that I've
Speaker 2: been conversing with Michael for the past couple of weeks
Speaker 2: on this good dude and his dad was a good dude. Hey, guys,
Speaker 2: longtime listener recently lost. My father had had been going
Speaker 2: through a great deal of grief. My dad was at
Speaker 2: high risk for catching COVID, so I made sure it
Speaker 2: was my priority to keep him safe and since being
Speaker 2: social wasn't an option over the past couple of years,
Speaker 2: we turned to nature during the pandemic and rekindled our
Speaker 2: love for the great outdoors, though he never had to
Speaker 2: rekindle his. He was born in Poland and immigrated to
Speaker 2: the States in the sixties and was only ever comfortable
Speaker 2: in his gardener in the woods. He was a simple
Speaker 2: but passionate man. So we started driving out to western
Speaker 2: north New Jersey to Stokes for Est to get spring
Speaker 2: water and go fishing. It's a gorgeous part of the state.
Speaker 2: It was about fifty minutes each way. Perfect to introduce
Speaker 2: him to my favorite podcast, Stuff you should Know. Even
Speaker 2: though I had to describe to him what a pot
Speaker 2: cast was, he was instantly enthralled, and I can still
Speaker 2: hear him quietly asking in the car, if Chuck and
Speaker 2: Josh we're going to be broadcasting today, it's just adorable.
Speaker 3: Like me, He adored your.
Speaker 2: Ability to convey something complex and tough information, such as
Speaker 2: sweetened conversational way.
Speaker 3: He would always come home and.
Speaker 2: Tell my mom what he had learned was so much
Speaker 2: isolation the past few years. It was warming to hear
Speaker 2: him happy about all these new subjects that he was
Speaker 2: learning about. You gave him that happiness and made his
Speaker 2: life that much better of the last couple of years
Speaker 2: of his life. I can't thank you enough for everything
Speaker 2: that you continue to do. There's so much bad in
Speaker 2: this world right now, and people are hardly operating at
Speaker 2: their best, but you continue to do something worthwhile and
Speaker 2: worth making, something worth learning. So thank you for making
Speaker 2: the life of Ziggy bomb Bach a little brighter towards
Speaker 2: his end.
Speaker 3: And that is from.
Speaker 2: Mike, and he sent me a picture of Ziggy and
Speaker 2: I read the obituary. I looked it up and Ziggy
Speaker 2: seemed like a great, great guy. And I had to
Speaker 2: zen out to reading this so I wouldn't cry.
Speaker 3: Ye have cried every time.
Speaker 1: That's a really amazing email. Thank you so much. It's
Speaker 1: impossible to not past judgment on that one. I'm going
Speaker 1: to say, I feel very proud, Chuck.
Speaker 2: That's right in this case, great judgment and ri Ip
Speaker 2: Ziggy sound like a great guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, ri Ip Ziggy, And thank you Mike. I'm glad
Speaker 1: we could help bring you and your dad together. That's
Speaker 1: pretty amazing stuff. If you want to be like Mike
Speaker 1: and get in touch with us and write us the
Speaker 1: email of the century, we are willing to read it.
Speaker 1: You can send it to us at stuff Podcasts at
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 2: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.