How to Become Less Reactive with Sharon Salzberg | Being Well

0:00 Hello and welcome to Being Well.

0:01 I'm Forest Tansen.

0:02 If you're new to the podcast, thanks for listening today.

0:05 And if you've listened before, welcome back.

0:07 I'm joined today by two very special guests.

0:10 First, clinical psychologist Rick Hansen.

0:13 So, Dad, how are you doing today?

0:14 I'm great and I'm psyched.

0:16 And before we go further, I want to say that I consider Sharon, our guest,

0:20 uh, to be a personal teacher of mine, someone I hold in tremendous esteem.

0:25 And resting in that feeling is actually I

0:29 think a really important thing for people in general.

0:32 Period.

0:32 Even if it's somewhat goes against my aging hippie egalitarian nature.

0:39 Well, as you just said, Dad,

0:40 we are here with the co-founder of the Inside Meditation Society,

0:43 a truly worldrenowned teacher uh and the author of 14 books, Sharon Salsberg.

0:48 Sharon was one of the first people to bring mindfulness

0:50 and meditation to the mainstream American culture over 50 years ago.

0:54 And her books include her seinal work, Love and Kindness.

0:57 But she was very young then.

0:58 You can see pictures of her.

1:00 She was a little little cherub.

1:02 So young.

1:03 So young.

1:04 So so young.

1:05 So young.

1:06 And also her first children's book, which just came out,

1:08 Kind Carl, a little crocodile with big feelings.

1:11 And this was co-authored with, I hope I say this correctly, Jason Grrew.

1:15 So Sharon, thanks for joining us today.

1:16 How are you doing?

1:17 I'm doing really well.

1:18 I'm actually in Barry, Massachusetts,

1:20 next door to the Insight Meditation Society,

1:23 which is going to turn 50 since we started it.

1:29 All of us were really children, you know, at the time.

1:32 So, you guys have known each other, as you just alluded to there,

1:35 for a quite a while at this point.

1:37 And I I'm wondering, not to put you on the spot or anything,

1:39 but do you happen to remember when and where you met?

1:42 Where did we meet?

1:43 Well, first off, if you can do this for us in the Patreon account, I don't know.

1:47 at Spirit Rock Meditation Center,

1:49 the sister center to IMS there in Barry, Massachusetts.

1:53 At Spirit Rock in a hut, it's called the Gratitude Hut.

1:57 There are these various photographs and one of them is of Sharon.

2:02 I think you were maybe 19 or 22 or some really young age at the time

2:08 with I believe Joseph Goldstein and Jack Kornfield

2:11 and another young woman whose name escapes me.

2:14 If we could find that photograph or if you could share it, it would just

2:18 I'll hunt it down online.

2:21 Super cool.

2:21 For

2:22 if I can find it, I'll even put it in the video of this podcast.

2:24 We'll just have it as a little popup up here.

2:26 Yeah, sure.

2:26 It was Jacqueline Mandel Schwarz or Schwarz Mandel, I guess, is the right order.

2:32 And I was 23.

2:35 Yeah.

2:35 I think I might have interviewed you.

2:36 I reached out to you if I could interview for some program I was doing maybe.

2:40 And I was very nervous cuz you're of course up there.

2:44 you know, the pantheon.

2:46 And you can really feel when someone's treating

2:48 you like a thou to their eye rather than,

2:51 you know, one person to smile at and quickly move on.

2:54 And I always felt like an a thou to your eye.

2:57 Oh, thank you.

2:58 It's really beautiful because that's you.

3:00 You, thou, all beings, you you treat them as a thou.

3:03 And your children's book's marvelous, too.

3:06 We're going to get into that.

3:06 And I thought one of the sweetest parts of Carl's journey,

3:10 it's not just Carl working with his own reactions.

3:13 is Carl learning to thou all the other beings

3:18 in his world to treat them as a thou to his eye.

3:22 For me, one of the things that I was sort of taking in as I was reading through

3:26 this, it's a picture book for kids and it's

3:29 very easy to kind of frame it in that way,

3:31 but I actually think that kids books are a great way

3:34 in to thinking about ideas in kind of a fresh way.

3:38 And also when you're writing for kids,

3:41 you have to make choices about how deep into a topic do I want to go?

3:44 What do I want to emphasize?

3:45 You know, I'm dealing with only so much text on the page.

3:48 And so you have to make choices about what am I going

3:51 to emphasize in this very limited uh amount of space that I have.

3:56 And I'm wondering of of all the places that you

3:59 could have started or all the ideas you could have emphasized,

4:02 why did you choose the ones that you put in this book?

4:06 Well, I was actually approached by Shambala Publications

4:09 to to write the book or co-author the book.

4:12 It was really fascinating for me because what

4:14 I saw was that everything I was used

4:17 to talking about like loving kindness meditation

4:20 or the development of compassion had to become really concrete,

4:24 you know, and and appropriate.

4:26 And so for example in loving kindness meditation kind of classically one

4:31 way of doing it and the way I was taught it was

4:34 to silently repeat certain phrases as a kind of gift or offering

4:39 to oneself and to others like may you be safe may you

4:42 be happy and so we started out with well what does it

4:48 feel like to be safe you know when I was writing this thing

4:50 for kids like if you're about to cross a really crazy busy

4:54 street and someone takes your hand cuz they want to help you.

4:58 That's safe.

4:58 That's what safe feels like.

5:01 And it's that feeling that we are offering to others.

5:05 We're we're wishing, oh, may you have this.

5:07 And it was really fun, you know, starting with somebody you really like and then

5:12 maybe a kid you're mad at right now, but you usually like them.

5:16 And then, you know, just sort of trying to enter that world of of a child.

5:20 I've worked with a lot of children.

5:22 I'm a child therapist.

5:23 I have a lot of background there.

5:24 One of the very first things you start

5:26 with is um Carl noticing what he's experiencing.

5:33 Carl Carl is initially hijacked by his reactivity.

5:37 He's just swept away.

5:39 And step one is for him to be able to notice it, to be able to recognize it.

5:45 And again, that's such an important foundational step, as you well know,

5:48 of course, in our in our own adult journey.

5:50 So, I just kind of wonder if you could

5:52 just say more about the importance of that first

5:56 step of being able to recognize or step

5:59 back a little bit from your own experiences.

6:01 Well, actually, one of my favorite

6:03 definitions of mindfulness came from an article

6:07 I read like a really long time ago in the New York Times.

6:10 It was about one of the first

6:13 pilot programs bringing mindfulness into the classroom.

6:16 So this was a fourth grade classroom in Oakland, California.

6:20 And so the kids are like eight or nine years old.

6:23 And the journalist asked one of the kids, "What is mindfulness?

6:28 What is mindfulness?" And the kid replied,

6:31 "Mindfulness means not hitting someone in the mouth.

6:35 That's what mindfulness means." And I thought,

6:37 "That's a great definition of mindfulness." Cuz what does it imply?

6:42 the first thing which you're describing.

6:44 We know what we're feeling as we're beginning to feel it.

6:47 Not after it's accelerated, not after we've sent off that email,

6:52 not after we've lashed out at somebody,

6:54 but we're feeling we're aware of what's cooking, you know, as it as it happens.

7:00 It also implies a certain balanced relationship,

7:04 say, to that anger or irritation.

7:06 Because if we just get completely swept up

7:09 in the emotion of the moment and consumed by it,

7:13 we're likely to hit a lot of people

7:14 in the mouth cuz life can be really frustrating.

7:17 But on the other hand, if we hate what we're feeling and we're ashamed

7:20 of it and we try to stuff it down,

7:23 repress it, we get tighter and tighter and tighter and we'll explode.

7:28 So mindfulness has, we say, both those components.

7:31 We're aware of what we're feeling and we're not freaked out about it.

7:35 you know, there there's a kind of balanced relationship there

7:39 and that creates and we see this in Carl the crocodile too.

7:42 It creates a kind of space and in that space

7:46 we might see options we hadn't seen before.

7:49 We might see creative responses to the situation, you know.

7:54 So, I like to think of that kid thinking hit someone in the mouth last week.

8:00 Didn't work out that well, you know.

8:02 maybe I'll try my words or or whatever,

8:05 you know, I'll try to shift things around.

8:08 So, it's not like a passive quality, you know,

8:10 where we just sort of grin and bear it,

8:13 but we're not sort of driven by by the habits of old.

8:17 What helps people in general get more space around that experience?

8:22 And I talk to people sometimes who feel really hijacked by the feelings

8:26 that they're having or um they have an interaction with a friend,

8:30 a partner who just says something really hits

8:33 them the wrong way and their their mouth

8:35 is moving before they feel like their brain's had time to catch up.

8:38 Uh I'm wondering what do you think helps somebody?

8:41 Well, there's so many kind of methods.

8:43 You know, for me, a lot of them are encapsulated in in meditation.

8:48 So even something simple as uh naming the feeling

8:54 you know which we do as a sort of meditative

8:56 technique of mental noting and I was once I

8:59 was actually I was online listening to someone's memorial service

9:03 and and part of the memorial service he they played

9:07 some recordings of him you know in his voice and one

9:11 of the things he said was I'm a meditator

9:14 and the technique that I use is called mental mental noting.

9:19 And with mental noting, you want to name your emotion before it names you.

9:24 In other words, before it overtakes you and and consumes you,

9:29 you think, "Oh, there's anger." Not like,

9:31 "I'm such an angry person and I always will be." So,

9:35 we learn, that's another thing.

9:37 We learn to make a distinction between what

9:39 we're feeling and everything we add to it.

9:41 Like, next year, you know,

9:42 it's going to be even worse or I'm the only one who ever feels this.

9:47 And you know for me my path was so much about meditation.

9:51 It doesn't have to be meditation clearly you know to develop those skills

9:56 but uh for me meditation was a very direct avenue to doing just that.

10:01 So the essence of it is there's a kind of observing of the experience.

10:06 There's a there's an awareness of the experience um even as one feels it.

10:11 So when it's not um becoming in becoming divided away from experiences,

10:16 we're we're fully feeling them.

10:18 I think sometimes people misunderstand that about mindfulness.

10:21 You're still really feeling it.

10:22 It's there for you, but there's a spaciousness around it,

10:26 some a certain disidentification from it.

10:30 Um okay, a lot of that I think for many people certainly is not very verbal.

10:39 It's somatic.

10:40 They're in touch with themselves.

10:42 There's an intouchness.

10:43 There's an awareness.

10:45 But noting, trying to label the complex subtlety of what

10:50 you're feeling in your belly when you're around an authority figure,

10:54 it goes way beyond the word fear, right?

10:58 You know, just the word alone, I think sometimes people get caught up

11:00 in noting like it it becomes almost robotic.

11:03 And I just wondered if you could say

11:04 more about mindful self-awareness that's not necessarily verbalized.

11:10 Even if it is verbalized, it points us back to our direct experience, you know.

11:16 So if I'm feeling that kind of anger and I leap into I'm such a terrible person,

11:23 I shouldn't have this, but after all, I do have it and I just, you know,

11:26 I deserve to be treated better and next year I'm going to, you know,

11:30 um that's very different than simply applying the word anger,

11:33 which can be the pointer of like what are you feeling right now?

11:38 Yeah.

11:37 What does it feel like in your body?

11:40 What's the kind of anger moving?

11:42 Because as you know, we look at any of these feelings, they're very complex.

11:47 Within that anger, we may see sadness, we may see fear,

11:51 we may see guilt, we may see grief, and we see change.

11:57 You know, this thing that arises that seems so permanent forever,

12:02 who we really are, when we really look at it, it's moving.

12:06 It's changing because it's it's alive, you know.

12:08 And you're right, of course, that so many people find a tremendous

12:12 awkwardness in that particular technique of mental noting,

12:16 but it's just an example, and you could say a symbolic example if you

12:22 choose not to do it precisely, of a relationship.

12:28 How am I relating to this thing that I'm feeling?

12:31 You know, am I grabbing on to it?

12:33 Am I taking it to heart?

12:35 Am I feeling burdened by it?

12:36 Do I hate it?

12:39 Yeah.

12:41 Or am I just aware of it?

12:43 As somebody's general reactivity um goes down,

12:47 maybe because they've adopted some of these practices,

12:50 they've, you know, they're doing a noting practice,

12:52 they've got a little practice with mindfulness in general,

12:54 getting some space around reactivity, whatever it is for them.

12:57 I think that from the outside, it's easy to think that what's happened is they

13:02 just don't feel things as strongly as they used to.

13:04 they've developed this like perfect teflon Buddha equinimity things

13:08 just you know slide right off and all of that.

13:10 Uh my experience with even very advanced meditators and people who do a lot

13:15 of practice like you guys do is that this isn't really the case.

13:18 You know maybe there's some more equinimity.

13:20 Sure that comes along.

13:21 That's one of the benefits of practice.

13:23 But really it's that reactivity has gone down.

13:26 Not that the initial like sensory experience that you're having has gotten

13:31 so much more more calmed out or you're just not feeling it anymore.

13:34 And I I would actually love to hear both

13:35 of you guys talk about that a little bit.

13:36 Like what's your experience with that Ben?

13:38 I I think that's right.

13:39 Even if you go back to the classical teachings where the Buddha said

13:44 uh we experience the world in every moment in one of six ways seeing,

13:49 hearing, tasting, touching or through the mind door,

13:53 through mind objects um thoughts, cognition, emotion so on.

14:00 And he said that we feel every one of those moments to be pleasant,

14:06 unpleasant, or neutral.

14:09 And that's not kind of a fixed characteristic.

14:12 If you like didn't get any sleep last night,

14:16 that same comment may seem really unpleasant, you know, whereas

14:21 the other day it was just neutral or or even amusing or something.

14:24 But even even if it's not fixed and rigid,

14:30 there will be that component of the feeling tone of pleasantness,

14:34 unpleasantness or neutrality.

14:36 Now a lot of people think and maybe this is part of your question

14:40 that if they practice really a lot and they get to be great meditators,

14:44 everything becomes neutral.

14:46 Yeah.

14:46 It all just totally, you know, it's just sort of like this blob, you know,

14:53 this grayness and some people long for that and some people dread it,

14:57 but it's not what happens anyway.

14:59 So, it's kind of, you know, it's not it's not real.

15:03 We feel the pleasantness, we feel the pain of things,

15:05 we feel uh or we recognize neutrality, but we are different with it.

15:11 You know, if you look at pleasant sight, pleasant sound,

15:15 the kind of classical comment is that we get lost in craving.

15:20 I've got to keep this.

15:21 I've got to keep it from changing.

15:23 I've got to keep that person from changing.

15:26 You know, so I always have this pleasant feeling.

15:28 I've got to and you know,

15:30 if we really look and I I think contemporary understanding will expand that.

15:35 There are plenty of people,

15:36 and I'm sure Rick could speak to this uh much better than I can professionally.

15:41 There are plenty of people who can allow pleasure, right, who reject it.

15:47 I think I think it was from you, Rick.

15:49 I heard uh first about savoring, you know, things like that, you know.

15:54 So, uh one way or another, we can have a very distorted kind

15:58 of relationship to pleasure and certainly with pain.

16:02 You know, if you look at American society,

16:05 it's like so extremely phobic about painful experience.

16:10 I was talking to somebody the other day and I said,

16:13 "I am old enough uh and also, you know,

16:16 grew up in part with my grandparents who were

16:20 Eastern European immigrants and had certain cultural biases." You know,

16:25 I said, "I'm old enough so that I don't remember

16:28 as a child ever hearing the word cancer spoken out loud.

16:32 if somebody was going to be described as having cancer,

16:36 you know, everyone whispered it like it was this terrible secret,

16:40 you know, and and there's so many threads of that in in this society anyway,

16:45 you know, whatever one's personal conditioning is.

16:48 And um but we can be different with painful feeling.

16:51 And that's a little bit what uh Carl the Crocodile learns,

16:55 you know, it's like things can be really painful,

16:59 you know, or even uh just difficult and we

17:04 can be kinder to ourselves and to others.

17:07 We can have more balance.

17:09 We don't have to um throw an eraser is what he did, you know, at the blackboard.

17:16 And then I'm also really interested in neutral experience because

17:20 there's so much in our day that's just kind of neutral.

17:23 You know, it's not really pleasant.

17:25 It's not really unpleasant and we just numb out and and we sort of go to sleep.

17:30 We wait for something better to happen in order to feel alive.

17:34 And that is the definition of mindfulness is

17:37 is having a different relationship to what's pleasant,

17:41 what's painful, and what's neutral.

17:43 And that also means that from the vantage point of mindfulness,

17:48 it doesn't matter what our experience is.

17:51 You know, we'd like to think that maybe meditation's

17:55 a little a little difficult and be in the beginning,

17:58 but then we're going to enter this realm where

18:01 it's like so lovely and placid and blissful and peaceful.

18:06 And maybe it's not, but that's okay.

18:11 truly, you know, not just a solace or comfort from the point

18:15 of view of wisdom and insight and compassion and so on.

18:19 It's actually okay.

18:20 It's a really deep question for us that you're asking.

18:23 I think Sharon will be familiar with this metaphor of the notion

18:27 that the the the path has two tracks and it's like uh as we

18:32 engage our own path uh it's like being in a wagon with two

18:36 wheels following two tracks and one is the track of true nature already.

18:41 The idea that deep down in every person underneath it

18:47 all is a kind of wellspring that's uh uh wakeful,

18:54 benevolent, uh deeper than personality, deeper than gender socialization,

19:00 you know, kind of a well of being.

19:02 And even arguably deeper than that perhaps

19:05 is an ultimately unconditioned ground of all.

19:09 So and the process there is recognizing true nature and becoming more and more

19:14 permeable to it and rested in it and removing the obscurations to it.

19:19 Okay.

19:20 Then the other track is one of gradual

19:22 development which includes both gradually releasing habit patterns

19:27 and tendencies and moods and afflictions and hindrances

19:32 that um occupy us and also gradually cultivating positive qualities.

19:38 uh skillfulness, emotional intelligence, secure attachment,

19:41 healthy self-worth, factors of awakening, um tranquility,

19:46 investigation and mindfulness itself as a kind

19:49 of inner muscle that we acquire over time.

19:51 So I would say definitely uh what's available to people in general and I

19:55 think certainly you know in the path laid out by the Buddha early Buddhism um

20:01 this process of gradual development which also

20:04 includes not just um changing the interior landscape

20:11 in general and also very much what Sharon's

20:15 been talking about shifting our relationship to it.

20:18 So for me it would be both hand that there is

20:21 a process in which people become often you know less reactive less prickly.

20:26 We see this for Carl.

20:27 Carl becomes happier while also really shifting

20:31 his relationship to his own mind stream.

20:34 I wonder about because the book is so much about reactivity.

20:38 It's really the focus of it.

20:40 like how do we how do we deal

20:41 with these unpleasant experiences that we have and and get

20:44 to to something else where some kind of better

20:46 behavior can come out of this unpleasant feeling.

20:50 You know, I feel something bad.

20:51 I don't like that I feel it.

20:52 Now what?

20:53 And um one of the you guys are so much more uh familiar with this than I am,

21:00 but my general understanding is that one of the big

21:03 uh things that gets explored in aspects of Buddhist

21:05 practice is the relationship between anger and fear and how

21:09 anger and fear are somewhat similar in their qualities.

21:13 Anger often emerges out of different kinds of fear.

21:15 I think about Carl's behavior.

21:17 You know, he's afraid that the other kids don't like him.

21:19 He's afraid that uh he is a certain kind of way

21:23 that his self-concept is like I am this snappy crocodile.

21:26 What if I am just this thing is kind of like

21:28 implicit uh underneath some of the things that he's communicating.

21:32 And I think about uh life in the world in America

21:36 or in other places in the world more broadly these days.

21:38 So much of our frustration with other people

21:41 is driven by a kind of fear of them.

21:43 And so I think this just takes me to thinking about like the functions of anger

21:47 and how appreciating those functions can help us

21:51 form a different kind of relationship to it.

21:54 In certain schools of Buddhism,

21:56 it's not even so much that anger comes out of fear.

22:00 It's the same mind state.

22:02 It's just two different forms.

22:04 Anger being the expressive, energized,

22:07 outflowing form and fear being the held in kind of frozen,

22:12 imploding form of striking out against what's happening,

22:15 wanting to declare it to be untrue,

22:17 wanting to separate from it one way or the other.

22:20 So they're the same thing, you know, in in those certain schools.

22:24 And that was really where I was trained.

22:26 So it's a little bit funny sometimes because

22:30 of course all these things are translations into English.

22:34 which in some ways is sort of an awkward vehicle for nuance of the mind.

22:39 Um it's like you know a very classic one is

22:43 uh in Asian languages heart and mind are the same

22:47 word you know and not so in English with very

22:52 different implications in English and I've heard many u western

22:57 student ask a you know Burmese or Tibetan teacher um

23:02 how do I not be so much in my mind

23:05 and get into my heart and the teacher always looks

23:08 very puzzled because you've just asked ask them how do I

23:11 get out of my heart mind to get into my heart

23:13 mind you know and it doesn't make any sense

23:15 so it's a little bit like like that um so

23:19 you could say from that point of view anger has many

23:22 forms one of which is that kind of uh repulsion

23:28 you know like pulling in and and being so afraid

23:32 um and it's a they're you know they're both in both

23:36 manifestations it's a very powerful force and worth looking at.

23:40 So, another way you could think of mindfulness

23:43 is is a willingness to explore, you know,

23:48 instead of denouncing what you're feeling or freaking out about

23:51 it or diving into it and letting it rule the day,

23:54 like what is this, you know, what's this made of?

23:58 How's it how's it behaving?

24:00 How's it making me feel?

24:02 Um, and and that's really a fascinating journey.

24:06 So anger in the Buddhist psychology is and this doesn't mean feeling anger.

24:12 That's another important distinction.

24:14 It means sort of being overwhelmed by anger

24:17 and especially when it becomes our motivation to act.

24:21 They would say anger you know in that kind of involvement is likened to a forest

24:26 fire which burns up its own support which

24:29 means it damages the host which is us right.

24:33 It's our nervous system.

24:34 It's our relationships, our families.

24:36 Sometimes, um, our bodies, you know, our health.

24:41 And like a forest fire,

24:44 it might burn to leave us very far from where we want to be.

24:48 And so developing uh like the positive part of anger is the energy.

24:54 So developing a relationship where we can actually take the energy

24:59 of it you know and not be complacent and have

25:02 boundaries and you know a sense of integrity and uh being

25:07 able to say no and things like that without getting lost

25:11 in it and overwhelmed by it and the burning is the task

25:14 you know and you can say it's not easy but um

25:18 and it's not easy but being lost in it is so

25:21 painful when we are paying attention And it's also so distorting.

25:26 I mean, this is something that Carl

25:29 the crocodile discovers when he's really angry at himself.

25:33 You know, he makes a mistake in spelling and uh freaks out.

25:38 He throws the eraser at the board, goes running,

25:41 and then he's sitting at home and he's

25:44 having all these thoughts like, "I have no friends.

25:46 I'm stupid." You know, crocodiles can't learn or something like that.

25:52 And then because he's practicing awareness of what he's feeling,

25:57 he sees, oh, those those thoughts are actually not reflecting the truth.

26:03 Three people came to my birthday party and I'm not stupid.

26:07 You know, I just made a mistake.

26:08 And and then he learns, which is one of my favorite parts of the book,

26:12 he learns to put those particularly harsh thoughts

26:16 in these clouds and has them float away.

26:20 and then he resolves to be kinder to himself and notices how

26:25 that feels and that becomes the basis for wanting to be kind to others.

26:30 So um it's not that we look at anger

26:33 and say it's wrong and I'm a terrible person

26:36 and uh but we do want to explore that different

26:40 relationship to it so that we have some options.

26:44 You know we're not so driven into action and fear is another one

26:47 I think I've spent quite a bit of time looking at my own fear.

26:53 Um, and one of the things I've seen is

26:56 that despite the world's pronouncement that we're afraid of the unknown,

27:01 which of course is also true,

27:03 I get really afraid when I think I do know and it's going to be really bad.

27:08 And it's all the stories that I tell myself.

27:12 That's when I really get going.

27:13 And and that was a really useful insight because even when

27:17 I'm not sitting on a cushion just in life when I

27:21 see that arc beginning I remind myself you know what you

27:26 don't know then I relax then things open up then there's space.

27:31 You might not know this about me but the YouTube videos

27:34 that I watch most frequently aren't about psychology or mental health.

27:39 They're about cooking.

27:40 I love cooking and I do a lot of it.

27:43 So, I'm pretty picky about cookware.

27:45 When you're touching an object everyday,

27:46 you want it to feel nice and perform well.

27:49 Carowway sent us their 12piece ceramic nonstick set in the marold color,

27:54 and Elizabeth and I have loved them.

27:56 The color is great.

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29:03 Is there a place for healthy anger?

29:07 Is there a place for moral anger?

29:08 A lot of people are grappling with that in the world these days.

29:11 Moral anger, outrage.

29:13 How can we use anger rather than letting it use us?

29:17 Well, that's that's the skill, right?

29:19 You know.

29:21 Yeah.

29:21 And I think well, I think the hardest

29:23 thing in some ways is wanting that to happen.

29:28 I kind of learned that most from talking to activists.

29:33 Um I was once in a panel with this uh friend now that I

29:38 didn't know her then uh that I now quote a lot, Malikica Dot,

29:42 who is um we were just on this panel together

29:45 and she was saying she had uh she's Indian and American

29:50 and uh she was in India and a friend

29:54 of hers was in I think a really bad car accident.

29:58 So she was in the hospital and the system at least in those days

30:02 in Indian hospitals was that your family

30:04 and friends really had to come in and help

30:06 take care of you and the only place in the hospital the only empty

30:11 bed for her friend was on the burn unit even though that wasn't her situation.

30:16 So Malikica was there visiting her friend,

30:18 taking care of her friend on the burn unit and she saw many,

30:23 many women who and you know had

30:28 been burnt by their mother-in-law, by their husband, you know, some horrible,

30:32 horrible suffering and Malikica who was

30:34 an attorney resolved to really try to make

30:39 a change and so she formed this organization

30:41 called Breakthrough Working Against Violence Against Women.

30:45 So then we're on the panel and so Malikica is

30:47 talking about the outrage that she felt at everything she

30:51 was seeing and then she said but you know I

30:53 don't know how to dial it down and she said you

30:56 see it throughout my organization the backbiting and and the ways

31:01 people treat each other so that is being overcome

31:05 by anger even if you generated it initially in a kind

31:10 of almost like wise response to something as a state.

31:14 It It can be so sticky and and so overwhelming.

31:19 That's the task, you know,

31:21 and it never works to say I shouldn't feel what I'm feeling.

31:25 We feel what we feel, which apparently is one of my great or often used sayings.

31:31 I don't know if it's great,

31:32 but when I was teaching incessantly during the pandemic online,

31:37 apparently I was saying the same thing over and over again.

31:39 So people started sending me mugs with those sayings on it

31:44 and one of them was we feel what we feel.

31:48 You know we have to allow the kind

31:50 of dignity of every feeling but that doesn't mean we

31:54 want to take every feeling to heart and let

31:56 it overcome us and let it make decisions for us.

32:00 So we're talking here about kind of forms of appropriate anger and clearly there

32:04 are times in life where it makes sense to express yourself to other people.

32:07 you know, you don't want a bottle.

32:08 Uh you don't want to be a doormat.

32:10 All of those different things that people talk about when you start

32:13 mentioning uh loving kindness practice or meta

32:15 practice or whatever else to somebody,

32:17 you know, all the kind of classic classic oppositions to it.

32:21 Also, we want to be uh thoughtful about how we express anger

32:26 to other people and we don't want to be consumed by it.

32:29 And also, I feel like there is this uh

32:32 way where anger can become a habit for people.

32:34 Anger was kind of a habit for Carl.

32:39 And you know, I I can think of people uh I've myself when I was a teenager,

32:42 I was this way at least a little bit where you just kind

32:45 of snap as a response because you're used to snapping as Carl said,

32:49 something along those lines.

32:50 You know, crocodile snap.

32:52 That's just the way they are.

32:53 And I'm wondering what you think helps

32:55 people separate out these these different things.

32:58 appropriate anger maybe on the one hand

33:00 from more the habit of anger or this kind

33:03 of habitual response to to just stimuli in general on the other like what

33:08 helps people think okay this is a moment where this is a tool that makes

33:13 sense versus this is a moment where I need to take a little bit more space

33:16 I think sometimes it's extracting from the anger the qualities

33:21 that are really positive clarity strength courage Um, you know,

33:29 cuz sometimes I say, and I think it's true,

33:32 we sometimes rely socially on the angry person in the room,

33:36 you know, cuz they're pointing to some like

33:38 flaw in the carpet that everyone else is

33:41 very carefully looking away from, not wanting to admit

33:44 is there and they're saying, "Look at that.

33:46 Look at that burn mark.

33:48 Look at it." You know, so sometimes we really depend on them as well.

33:52 But it's not their anger.

33:54 It's their anger that may be leading them

33:56 but it the qualities within that arc are things like

33:59 courage uh truthtelling you know and that is what

34:04 I think we really want to try to absorb from from that state and we can you know

34:12 people do and back to my teachers you know one

34:16 of the things that just fascinated me about them all

34:21 along was that they usually didn't have really easy lives.

34:28 You know, we look at some of the models we tend to hold.

34:32 You know, the Daly Lama, Tiknad Han, uh both lost their countries,

34:37 you know, lived in exile, had tremendous suffering.

34:41 And then I had teachers who had tremendous suffering personally,

34:45 you know, losing children and things like that.

34:49 Um, and so not only do they not seem kind of bland, you know, uh,

34:55 but they they haven't like come to this out of some incredibly cushy,

35:01 indulged, you know, luxurious life.

35:04 It's been a lot a lot of hardship.

35:06 And somehow that equinimity um,

35:10 serves because what they're not is incredibly self-p preoccupied.

35:16 You know I would I would my teacher deep for example did lose

35:20 two children and her husband and um and that was when she began meditating.

35:26 She was living in Burma.

35:27 Her husband uh and she were uh from Bangladesh but he was in the civil

35:33 service in Burma and when he died she

35:36 was completely griefstricken and she went to bed.

35:39 She couldn't get out of bed and the doctor came and said,

35:42 "You're actually going to die of a broken

35:44 heart unless you do something about your mind.

35:47 You should learn how to meditate." So,

35:49 she got up and she went to the monastery and learned how to meditate.

35:54 And she was like so incredibly compassionate.

35:57 It was like she knew anyone's life could change on a dime.

36:03 And I never saw anybody I was kind of rejected by her, you know.

36:08 Um, but it was that lack of self-p preoccupation that just fascinated me.

36:13 Like she lived in Kolkata and we'd like take

36:16 a train and go see her and she would say, "How was your journey?

36:20 Tell me, do you need some tea?

36:22 Do you want some biscuits?" And I think,

36:23 "Boy, if I went through what she went through,

36:25 I don't know if I'd care about anybody else's train journey,

36:29 you know, but they were not like that.

36:30 they were not um sucking in all the energy in the room, you know,

36:36 they were incredibly generous and giving

36:38 and uh so that equinimity didn't produce coldness,

36:43 you know, it was it was very aligned with compassion.

36:46 On the path of gradual development,

36:49 uh it takes time to change your brain and your hormones

36:54 and your body and your immune system and all the rest of it.

36:58 the physicalness of our on the one

37:00 hand sort of burdensome patterns and and moods

37:05 and and gradually acquire new ways of being that usually takes some time.

37:10 But what does not take a lot of time and can happen just at the very start uh

37:16 is that capacity to be mindful of whatever you're

37:18 experiencing at the time to shift your relationship to it.

37:22 It may take a while and I think it's important

37:24 to um value the gradual transformation of the heart mind.

37:29 Okay, good.

37:30 But meanwhile, our relationship to it can be very rapidly transformed.

37:34 And then going back to what you're getting at here,

37:37 Sharon, about the selfobsession, the self-p preoccupation and all that.

37:41 Um, I just wonder I'm just reflecting

37:44 on the ways in which that that movement into observation,

37:50 including the observation of the self-reerential

37:53 thoughts and possessiveness and righteousness

37:55 and case against others and the sense of being agrieved individually,

38:00 whatever the when you shift into observation of it,

38:03 you you shift the frame of self in a broad sense.

38:07 You move from self to person.

38:08 It's the way I would kind of describe it.

38:10 And I wondered if you could say more about

38:12 that kind of the magic of mindfulness to desenter the selfobsession.

38:19 It seems to do that you know uh which is pretty amazing.

38:23 I mean I think there are a few

38:24 things you know it it does exactly that apparently

38:27 even in terms of neuroscience you know um

38:31 but it also uh we shift our frame of reference.

38:37 So I think you know something we say is like if you see your own greed,

38:41 you see your own jealousy and you see your own hatred or fear,

38:45 you don't call it bad or wrong or terrible.

38:47 You recognize it as a state of suffering because you

38:51 feel that you know you're you're in touch with that.

38:54 And once we make that shift then that's

38:56 the moment that compassion can arise for ourselves.

39:00 you know that we uh our whole frame

39:04 of reference changes and once you are developing compassion

39:07 for yourself it's I think a pretty natural extension

39:12 to have compassion for others which doesn't mean stupidity you

39:17 know it doesn't mean you don't notice the difference

39:20 between joy and sorrow or between greed and generosity

39:25 you know of course we can see that but we

39:27 don't have the same relationship to to those polarities,

39:32 you know, it's very very different.

39:34 And I had a question for you.

39:35 Do you, as I sometimes hear uh these days,

39:39 do you think children are kind of naturally altruistic and compassionate?

39:44 What an interesting question.

39:45 Um, well, I'll tell a story on Forest.

39:48 Oh, okay.

39:49 Oh, no.

39:52 Good.

39:50 It's a very sweet one.

39:52 Uh, so I think this was while Jan might have been pregnant with Laurel.

39:58 Laurel had not yet come along.

39:59 So Forest was maybe two and a half or so.

40:02 And we went out to a local Sizzler restaurant

40:05 and money was kind of tight for Jan and me then.

40:08 I maybe had just gotten out of graduate school.

40:10 No, I was still in graduate school.

40:12 Goodness, still then.

40:13 And so we sit down at a table like as one does at Sizzler and it's Jan and I

40:18 and and for us she's a super cute two-year-old just

40:22 well behaved sitting in his chair and having a great time.

40:24 And next to us was this older couple.

40:27 They seemed kind of like grandparenty.

40:29 Okay.

40:29 And we could see them watching us, you know, interacting.

40:32 Finally, the uh the check came and on top of it was this peppermint candy.

40:37 there was a candy that would come with the check to sweeten,

40:40 you know, the bitter pill of having to pay them some money.

40:44 Anyway, you know how that is.

40:46 And Boris liked sweets and liked sweets a lot then.

40:50 And he reached for it and uh as he was reaching for it,

40:56 the grandfatherly type man at the adjacent table reached for it as well.

41:02 And so Forest had it in his hand and the grandfatherly man in a joking way said,

41:07 "Could I have that or can I have it?" And was messing with me, messing with me.

41:14 Yeah.

41:14 And we all expected Forest to do

41:17 the normal possessive my precious kind of thing.

41:22 And Forest looked at him and his face kind

41:25 of softened and opened and he handed the man the candy.

41:28 I feel almost teary talking about the room.

41:31 very sweet like the whole room like whoa and how touching.

41:38 So I think yes there is a lot

41:40 of that and it's also normal developmentally you know for three-year-olds

41:46 three to five typically to be kind of self-referential

41:49 you know for them to shift out of their own

41:51 frame to recognize how it is for other people

41:54 um it's not so natural to them in general but I do believe there is a a deep

41:59 inherent goodness and movement toward altruism in children in general.

42:07 And then of course child rearing occurs, right?

42:11 School in their peers and nursery school.

42:14 And then this sibling comes along and pushes

42:17 them out of the throne they occupied.

42:19 And you know, you know,

42:20 was I that way because children have this deep wellspring of givingness

42:26 or was I that way because I grew up in a situation where yeah,

42:29 even though at at that moment in time there were

42:31 certainly some restrictions on us financially or things like that.

42:34 But I'm I'm sure as a three-year-old or whatever,

42:36 I always kind of had a sense that there was sort of enough stuff.

42:38 You know, what am I sacrificing to give?

42:40 I I imagine somebody who's coming up from a very different

42:42 background could have a very different reaction to that kind of thing.

42:45 Anyways, it's I I just think the nature

42:47 and nurture of this is really tough to peel apart.

42:50 Yeah.

42:51 Yeah.

42:51 What do you think about that, Sharon?

42:53 Well, you know, I I do hear it more and more and and read

42:57 it and it's a little bit aligned with what you were talking about before,

43:01 that sense of um kind of a fundamental goodness or

43:06 um awareness that just needs to be uncovered.

43:09 I personally, you know, I I've of course been exposed to both those perspectives

43:16 and in a way they don't seem that different to me.

43:19 They may be different emotionally for somebody at certain phases or stages,

43:24 but in my mind, there's always work to do.

43:26 You're either uncovering what's already there

43:29 or you're cultivating what is not yet strong.

43:32 But it it's not like one's a free ride, you know.

43:37 Yeah.

43:37 Yeah.

43:38 Yeah.

43:38 Well to well to go with that I mean there are a lot of non-dual types Mhm.

43:44 who would say that well since the ground of all is always the ground

43:51 of all even though it transcends our capacity to language it and if

43:57 there is an innate Buddha nature innate

44:00 goodness you know the spark of the divine

44:02 within however again it's kind of framed if that's always the case well

44:07 it's always available and u you know is not a lot

44:13 of work to kind of settle in or uh now I I would

44:18 say that many of the people who say that have been doing

44:20 a lot of work for 30 years and now they're settled into it.

44:25 I don't know what what's your take on all that.

44:28 Well, I mean from the non-dual Buddhist schools they would say you know

44:32 yes that that could all be true but one needs to stabilize that access.

44:40 you know the access may always be there but look at look

44:42 at our day you know look at our lives it's not

44:46 necessarily expressive of of that you know so the the work so to speak

44:51 and it's got a different flavor to it you know so when I say

44:54 work I sort of hesitated but the the path is really stabilizing it so

45:01 how do you do that you return again and again and you you know clean

45:05 up your life a little bit you know so the obscurations are not so

45:08 strong and then you clean up your life a little more and then you

45:12 know so it it it does have a different flavor and sometimes that could

45:16 be a healthier flavor if you fall

45:19 into cultivating means straining which it really shouldn't.

45:25 Um but it's it's certainly possible and even easy to fall

45:28 into that sometimes and uh so it could be a good antidote but um

45:35 I mean I of course have met many of those people and heard

45:39 that and I was thinking you're the one who slept all the way

45:42 to India you know to you know be in a community where you

45:46 could assure one another of your innate goodness and that's a schle you

45:51 know and that's some effort and uh Being in a community is not

45:56 always easy and is I I just believe that that there's always work.

46:03 Does that trap you in seeking?

46:05 No.

46:05 I mean, you could be very grateful, you know,

46:08 I think if you if you have a sense of confidence in a path.

46:11 Well, we are, you know, I understand what you're saying,

46:15 but it's also um you look at those stories, you know,

46:20 of the great non-dual teacher who lived in a cave for 20 years or something,

46:26 you know, and you think that was a lot of work.

46:29 Yeah.

46:30 Yeah.

46:31 Hey there, thanks for watching and sorry for the brief interruption,

46:34 but it turns out that over 60% of the people

46:36 watching this right now are not subscribed to the channel.

46:39 So, if you could just take a moment to hit the subscribe button,

46:42 it would really help me out.

46:43 I'd appreciate it a lot.

46:44 All right, back to the show.

46:46 You were saying something a moment ago, Sharon,

46:48 that I would love to come back to and ask you a question about,

46:51 which is this kind of movement um from something

46:55 as an identity like you were talking about

46:58 uh I want to I think I I made a note from it because it was really good.

47:02 Yeah.

47:03 that.

47:03 So the um I think the line was you recognize your your fear,

47:07 anger, greed not as something you are but as a state of suffering.

47:11 So in that you're decoupling identity from what's happening.

47:16 This is actually a really big move for people

47:19 and in the relatively small amount of coaching work that I've done,

47:23 I've seen it over and over again as a kind of transformative moment.

47:27 Yeah.

47:27 where people go from thinking of themselves

47:30 as a fill-in-theblank kind of person, if we apply this idea really broadly,

47:35 I'm the kind of person who can't have

47:38 that sort of a conversation with uh with my friend.

47:41 I'm the kind of person who just gets really

47:42 activated when people do whatever it is that they do,

47:45 you know, um to really viewing themselves

47:48 with a much more like open perspective.

47:51 And of course some some of the answer

47:54 to this is just like meditation helps a lot.

47:57 But I I'm wondering in general what you found tends

47:59 to help people with that that that movement from uh

48:02 this as a view of self to this as a state

48:05 and particularly this as a state of suffering.

48:08 You know you just pointed out coaching you know or therapy or

48:13 a really good community.

48:15 It's like I I once was at some conference and I heard a therapist,

48:18 I don't think he was a coach per se,

48:20 I think he was a therapist say instead of saying um I'm an angry person,

48:27 say I'm feeling anger right now, right?

48:31 And and so uh that makes a shift, you know,

48:36 like one of those moments where we're suddenly like, "Oh,

48:40 I've been holding on really tight." And then the relief of letting go

48:44 is is really enormous and and it could happen a thousand different ways.

48:50 Um I think about art a lot, you know,

48:54 and creativity and uh what happens in those moments

48:59 when when we make something that didn't exist before,

49:03 even if it's, you know, not an exhibit in the Guggenheim or something,

49:09 you know, but it's it's something that is coming from within.

49:13 You know, there's so many ways in which we we want that perspective shift and I

49:19 think that's exactly what we want because there's

49:22 so much possibility once we open in that way.

49:26 It's like even Carl and we go back to my crocodile.

49:30 I first of all had to learn the German student alligator and a crocodile

49:33 for this book which was not natural to me being from New York City.

49:38 Um, but you know there there's a time

49:42 after he goes through his big change where he's,

49:46 you know, it says he still gets sad sometimes.

49:50 And so what does he do?

49:52 Sometimes he jumps up and down his trampoline.

49:55 Sometimes he uses every single crayon in the box.

49:58 And sometimes he just cries.

50:00 And that's okay, too.

50:01 He's not limited into uh a kind of not caring or bland perspective,

50:10 but he's so different with himself because not only

50:13 is there that shift in identity that you're describing,

50:17 there's just so much more kindness toward ourselves.

50:20 If you're looking at being jealous and you think that's disgusting, you know,

50:25 and like I've been in therapy for a thousand years, why am I still jealous?

50:29 So, I've been meditating forever or am I still jealous?

50:32 That's really different than, oh, that really hurts

50:36 and having that that kindness toward ourselves.

50:39 This is a bit of a personal question, Sharon.

50:41 So, if you want to pass on it, feel free to pass on it.

50:44 But I'm wondering if you have any examples of this from your own life.

50:47 Any any things that you've really moved self-concept around

50:50 or different ways you've come to think about yourself?

50:53 I've had a I mean, I've been meditating for over 50.

50:57 I have like a million examples versions of these.

51:00 Yeah, totally.

51:00 Totally.

51:01 Yeah.

51:02 Um, but I think it was such a huge issue

51:04 for me because I can look back and, you know,

51:08 I started meditating in January of 1971 and I've had a number

51:13 of teachers since then and I can think of, you know,

51:17 oh, in 1971 that my first teacher said this to me, 1973,

51:22 this other teacher said this other thing to me, but it's kind of the same thing.

51:27 in 1975 and it was all around um self- judgment.

51:32 I have this one teacher Manindra who said something to me also

51:36 in the early 70s like why are you so upset about that thought

51:39 that came up in your mind did you invite it did you say

51:43 at like 3:15 I'd like to be filled with self-hatred please and he

51:48 said no but when conditions come together for something to arise it

51:51 will arise and you can affect those conditions you know for sure it's

51:55 like if you realize I'm very vulnerable to flying off the handle

52:00 when I haven't slept or when I get drunk or whatever it is,

52:04 you know, you can affect those conditions,

52:07 but you can't ultimately absolutely control them.

52:10 Like, I'm never going to be angry again, never going to be frightened again.

52:14 And when I look back at how many times in different

52:17 ways a teacher was saying the same thing to me,

52:21 it gives me a glimpse of how big a problem it was,

52:26 you know, that I was so self-judgmental and and so harsh.

52:30 Um, which is probably another reason that loving kindness meditation

52:35 as a style of practice became so important for me.

52:38 Well, thank you for sharing that, Sharon.

52:39 I appreciate that.

52:40 I I I would say over time I think identity does shift and it goes back

52:44 to what you've been emphasizing Sharon which is

52:49 what's our our relationship to what we're experiencing.

52:54 And increasingly I think for many people identity kind of starts moving

52:59 increasingly toward being in kind of the space in which things are happening.

53:05 You know the I think of it as the difference between the person and the self.

53:09 Clearly there are persons.

53:11 Is there actually a self as this sort

53:14 of presumed congealed unified entity inside?

53:18 Well if you look really closely you you can't find such a one.

53:21 You can find fragments of such a one and references to such a one.

53:25 You sure can't find such a one in the underlying neurology of the sense of self.

53:30 So in any case, there's a kind of a shift away from, you know,

53:35 identification with that perspective, that righteousness, that possessiveness,

53:39 that grievance, that hurt, all the rest of it.

53:41 Carl is very caught up in Carl in the beginning of your book, right?

53:46 But then over time uh the sense of being a person becomes much more fluid.

53:52 The boundaries start softening at the edges.

53:54 You start feeling more and more like you're a person process.

53:57 You know it's part of a much larger process.

54:00 And it it sort of opens out there.

54:02 And yeah, maybe I'll ask you this question which is

54:05 I think a lot of people are afraid that uh

54:08 as that softening of the self-world boundary starts occurring

54:14 that uh people will become psies or pushed around by others.

54:20 They won't stick up for themselves.

54:22 And it's actually been my experience that as people

54:26 increasingly disidentify from and disengage from kind

54:30 of a self who are you looking at, what are you going to do to me,

54:35 you know, I want this or that.

54:37 They actually become better at taking care

54:39 of the needs of themselves broadly as a person.

54:44 You know, they they they have more of a sense

54:46 of uh their own rights, their own dignity.

54:49 They they're less reactive.

54:50 they're more effective and actually working with others to get their needs met.

54:54 So anyway, I just wondered what you would say

54:57 to someone who's a maybe concerned that they're going

55:00 to become a just like a I don't know what

55:03 a big puddle that other people will be walking on.

55:06 Yeah.

55:06 Really?

55:07 Uh well I certainly do hear that a lot and um

55:11 in a time of you know the rising ties of hatred which seem really

55:16 to be happening you know uh right now and always and to some

55:22 extent for sure but in a very um intense sort of way right now.

55:27 Um, you know, it's a little bit funny also to be such a um,

55:34 you talked about my brand earlier, you know,

55:37 to to be so affiliated with loving kindness.

55:40 Um, because it's almost like really, you know, Yeah.

55:45 And you know, are you telling me that I, you know,

55:48 and people for a long time have said, you know,

55:52 are you saying I should try loving kindness or compassion

55:55 to that person who doesn't feel people like like me should exist even?

56:00 Or the way it's been phrased these days, which is also kind of funny,

56:03 is isn't loving kindness or compassion the same as appeasement?

56:08 you haven't often, you know, I haven't often heard the word appeasement since

56:11 I was studying World War II, you know, like

56:16 um but that's the fear and it's a very reasonable fear.

56:19 I think it's the right fear to have,

56:22 but it takes exploration to see if it's even true.

56:26 And and like you, I would I would posit

56:29 it's not true that there's an ability to sustain

56:34 effort and not burn out and be clear

56:38 and not absorb sort of the toxic energy of another.

56:44 You can't stop it from coming at you, you know,

56:47 but you don't have to absorb it and kind of suck it up, you know, in those ways.

56:54 And it's tricky because it's only I think honestly in the experience of it.

56:59 It's like the experiment.

57:01 Are you willing to make the experiment to see what happens?

57:06 It's only in making the experiment that you see.

57:08 Oh, this is a strength.

57:11 You know, this is not a weakness.

57:12 This is not becoming a psy or just giving in.

57:16 It's really quite something to ponder.

57:19 Like what do you think when you hear about or maybe study a loneliness epidemic?

57:25 Because in my mind that's sort of related.

57:27 You know, if we feel disconnected and and apart doesn't, you know,

57:34 that that sense of loneliness is not

57:36 going to be resolved by getting more friends,

57:39 you know, or going to a social club.

57:40 It's some inner knowing that in a way we kind of belong to one another.

57:47 I see it as something really real.

57:49 I was very struck by Vivic Merti uh his comment as you know the previous

57:54 surgeon general uh who said that the health

57:57 burden of chronic loneliness distinct from enjoying solitude.

58:01 I'd say two of my favorite things in the world are having dinner by myself

58:06 with a good book and a nice restaurant

58:08 or being off trail in wilderness by myself.

58:11 Two of my favorite things.

58:13 I'm not lonely in those settings.

58:15 Right.

58:16 Okay.

58:16 So loneliness has as much health burden as smoking

58:19 half a pack of cigarettes a day lifetime.

58:22 Holy moly.

58:23 So I reflect a lot on okay what to do.

58:25 And I think it's helpful to start by realizing that the source

58:29 of a lot of what might seem so personal like a failure.

58:33 Oh, they're all so happy.

58:34 As Forest says, we see the highlight reels of other people's

58:38 lives on social media and then we contrast that to our own,

58:42 you know, day-to-day soap opera.

58:44 Messy reality.

58:45 Yeah.

58:45 Yeah.

58:45 messy reality.

58:47 And I think a lot of the loneliness people experience

58:50 is due to these massive forces that are not personal.

58:53 Just the way in which people now travel long distances often to work.

58:57 They aren't working with other people alongside.

59:00 The nature of work has changed.

59:02 Um all kinds of other fragmentation of different kinds, divisiveness and so on.

59:07 So that's helpful to realize it's not so much your fault.

59:10 Second, I'm really struck by the ways in which

59:13 many times people who are lonely are alienated from themselves.

59:21 They're they're they feel a kind of inner homelessness.

59:24 And you know the great proverb

59:26 that the root of all sickness is homesickness, right?

59:29 Tara Brock will quote that.

59:31 That's where I first heard it.

59:32 and that so that's one thing people can do

59:35 is to become friends with yourself you know like Carl

59:39 does Carl befriends his own reactions I think that's really

59:42 helpful then the another thing that really strikes me is

59:46 that people who feel lonely often do have a a dir

59:52 a lack it's a thin soup of social supplies

59:56 coming their way they're they don't have a mate they

1:00:00 don't have a circle of friends it's hard to make friends,

1:00:03 you know, after you kind of pass through your early 20s

1:00:06 and whether it's college or a bar scene, what do you do?

1:00:09 And yes, that's true.

1:00:11 There may not be a lot coming toward you, but interestingly,

1:00:16 if you tap into your own lovingness,

1:00:18 your own loving kindness, you know, your own compassion,

1:00:21 your own basic friendliness, as you know, and I'll just say it for others,

1:00:24 the root of the word meta for loving kindness is friend.

1:00:27 Just friendliness.

1:00:29 It's like doesn't have to be all cosmic.

1:00:31 Just smile at someone or listen to them for a minute.

1:00:35 Um anyway, what flows out of you is under your control.

1:00:40 Uh you may not you don't have control a lot of what comes into you,

1:00:43 but what flows out of you that does connect

1:00:46 you with others feeds you and protects you as it

1:00:49 flows through you uh and is a soothing balm

1:00:53 to the wound and the unmet longing of loneliness.

1:00:56 For me it's a deep matter of wisdom to recognize the ways in which

1:01:00 we're at the effect of the world and we have things arise dependently.

1:01:06 You know we're dependent upon so many causes and conditions and a lot

1:01:09 of them suck you know and on the other hand there's uh wise effort.

1:01:16 there's making the efforts inside the mind

1:01:18 and out in the world thought word and deed

1:01:21 um that can make a difference in our life in the range that we have influence.

1:01:26 So I wonder how you see that how you help people and how you do

1:01:29 that in your own life that that balance

1:01:32 of right being at the effect or at cause.

1:01:35 Well, it's always a balance, you know.

1:01:36 I I think um you I was interviewed once uh by this journalist

1:01:45 about doom scrolling and I don't know what the word meant.

1:01:48 So, he started out, you know, he said,

1:01:50 "One of your colleagues recommended you and so what do you

1:01:55 think about doom scrolling and what should we do about it?" So,

1:01:58 I said, "What is it?" And he explained it to me and I said, "Oh, yeah,

1:02:02 I do that." You know, and and so some of it is,

1:02:06 you know, back to things we were talking about earlier is seeing the effect,

1:02:11 feeling the effect of certain activities on oneself

1:02:14 instead of just living in this dream, you know, of of being disconnected.

1:02:19 It's like, oh, look at how I feel after my eighth hour of, you know,

1:02:26 being online or or uh something like that.

1:02:29 and using that as an imp impetus not to be like

1:02:32 a better person or perfect person but just out of kindness to myself.

1:02:38 It's like, oh, this this really needs to be I need a little less

1:02:41 of the world coming in and and working with my own sense of resource inside.

1:02:48 And then, you know, I'm not implying like

1:02:51 being cut off and oblivious cuz here it is, you know, uh impinging like crazy,

1:02:58 but um it it sort of goes back in my mind

1:03:02 to something I realized which kind of surprised me.

1:03:07 It's that when the Buddha was talking about say meditation practice,

1:03:13 the purpose of it was not to suffer.

1:03:16 That there's nothing redemptive about

1:03:18 suffering inherently because there are plenty

1:03:21 of people who suffer and they're bitter and hostile and isolated.

1:03:27 There's a possibility there,

1:03:29 but it's not inevitable that suffering will open us to love,

1:03:36 you know, or compassion.

1:03:38 But because there is that possibility there,

1:03:40 we want to work to relate differently to the suffering,

1:03:45 you know, so it's not so engulfing or whatever.

1:03:49 And that always fascinated me, you know,

1:03:51 that the purpose of practice was not to suffer.

1:03:54 The purpose of life is not to suffer.

1:03:57 It's inevitable.

1:03:58 It will happen.

1:03:59 But how are we going to be with it?

1:04:01 That's the whole point.

1:04:02 So there's always some sense of agency

1:04:04 and uh possibility in in how we're relating.

1:04:10 And um you know there there all these parts

1:04:13 of the text about suffering leading to compassion, leading to faith,

1:04:19 leading to a sense of something bigger.

1:04:22 But you just have to look around.

1:04:23 And it doesn't always happen that way, you know,

1:04:27 and I think we need to understand that um we we need to have a sense of a path

1:04:38 um and confidence in it and we fall down

1:04:40 and we pick ourselves up and we start over.

1:04:44 But there is a way that we can relate differently to circumstances.

1:04:49 And some of that may involve more seclusion, more, you know,

1:04:56 solitude at times or uh an ethical revolution

1:05:00 in your life depending on how you behave or you live.

1:05:04 Uh it might mean don't doom scroll like all day long.

1:05:08 Perhaps you might feel better and have more

1:05:12 energy to try to do something about this world,

1:05:14 you know, rather than just feel desolated, you know, by it.

1:05:19 And um all born of paying attention.

1:05:23 I don't think I can find a better period to put on the end of the sentence.

1:05:26 I've really enjoyed this, Sharon.

1:05:28 It's always great to talk with you.

1:05:29 Uh you have such a human approach to your teaching that I really appreciate.

1:05:33 It's so grounded in people's real lives and their real experiences,

1:05:37 including the unpleasant ones.

1:05:38 Uh, is there anything that you would like

1:05:40 people to know about where to find you, what you're doing these days,

1:05:45 if they want to consume more Sharon Solsber related content, where would we go?

1:05:50 Anything like that.

1:05:51 Um, you can just look on my website, which is sharber.com.

1:05:56 And I'm working on a uh a workbook on loving kindness for sounds true.

1:06:01 So between kind Carl the children's book and the workbook I'm saying

1:06:05 well my books are having fewer and fewer words these days you know

1:06:10 so I don't know that that's a trend I might reverse that and see

1:06:13 see about another book book someday but that's that's it for now

1:06:18 it's a very natural process I think I

1:06:20 remember talking to uh somebody an expert on trauma

1:06:23 actually years and years ago who said that he

1:06:25 had hadn't written a book about it uh Dr.

1:06:28 Jacob Hal to name drop him and but he mentioned that if

1:06:31 he were to write a book about trauma it would just be

1:06:33 300 blank pages and there would be one instruction at the beginning

1:06:37 which is fill these in and that would be the process for people.

1:06:40 So maybe that's the maybe that's the kind

1:06:42 of takeaway from some of what you're doing here.

1:06:45 Yeah.

1:06:47 I really love this conversation today with Rick and Sharon Salsberg.

1:06:51 We talked about anger and reactivity through

1:06:54 the lens of Sharon's new children's book,

1:06:56 Kind Carl, which is just an absolutely adorable book.

1:07:01 And one of the moments early on in the conversation that stuck with me,

1:07:04 was when Sharon said that one

1:07:05 of her favorite definitions of mindfulness comes from children.

1:07:09 It came from a kid.

1:07:10 Mindfulness means not hitting someone in the mouth.

1:07:13 And when you put it that simply, a lot of stuff gets clarified.

1:07:18 Some of the big topics that we explored were cognitive diffusion.

1:07:21 In other words, how do you start seeing a thought

1:07:23 or a feeling as just a thought or just

1:07:26 a feeling as opposed to this statement of reality or uh

1:07:30 what it suggests about who you are as a person?

1:07:33 I'm the kind of person who feels angry all the time.

1:07:35 I'm the kind of person who struggles to control my reactivity.

1:07:39 And how do we move towards seeing that thought as just

1:07:42 a thought or that feeling of anger as just a feeling?

1:07:45 We also talked about managing anger and frustration

1:07:48 and creating a more flexible sense of self.

1:07:50 And then Rick and Sharon talked a lot about practice,

1:07:52 about the path of practice in general

1:07:53 and how your reactivity can change over time.

1:07:56 Another part of the conversation that I'm going

1:07:58 to remember is when Sharon talked about my uh

1:08:01 my kind of joke of the Teflon Buddha

1:08:02 image that people often have of advanced meditators.

1:08:06 And sure, reactivity in general does go down.

1:08:10 those uh negative stimuli maybe won't feel quite as bad

1:08:14 as they used to after you're practicing for a while.

1:08:17 But what you really emphasized is it's more that everything else changes.

1:08:21 The space that you hold those feelings in changes.

1:08:23 Your relationship to them changes.

1:08:26 Uh your desire to get more of the good out of that anger

1:08:31 or frustration and less of the suffering maybe changes as well.

1:08:35 you develop some tools that help you extract

1:08:37 from the anger the qualities that are more positive.

1:08:40 And she mentioned clarity, movement into action,

1:08:43 seeing what's true, a kind of energy, courage, truthtelling,

1:08:47 all of this good stuff that we can get from anger and frustration and that are

1:08:51 often particularly useful for people who have

1:08:54 gone through some really painful experiences in life.

1:08:56 People who have experienced trauma,

1:08:58 people who come from marginalized groups of people.

1:09:01 Those are groups of people that have often had their anger taken away from them.

1:09:05 And so reclaiming the useful aspects of it can be really valuable.

1:09:09 Sharon also talked about the value of accepting our feelings in general.

1:09:13 If we hate the feeling or push down the feeling,

1:09:15 we tend to just get tighter with other people, we feel worse ourselves.

1:09:20 And as we've talked about a lot on the podcast,

1:09:22 that material most of the time boils out of us one way or the other.

1:09:26 We also talked about the relationship between anger and fear

1:09:29 and how Sharon mentioned that in some Buddhist traditions,

1:09:32 anger and fear are actually viewed as the same mind state.

1:09:36 So these are just different expressions of the same state.

1:09:39 They are inextricably linked to each other.

1:09:42 Sharon had this comment when she was talking about

1:09:43 that about how suffering is not something we're aiming for.

1:09:46 And yes, that might sound kind of obvious to people,

1:09:49 but it exists inside of actually a really important context here.

1:09:52 The Buddhist started out as an aesthetic.

1:09:55 This is somebody who was trying to move away from pleasure in all

1:09:58 of its forms and was seeking

1:10:00 out these various practices of essentially self-deprivation,

1:10:04 twisting his body into uncomfortable positions,

1:10:07 uh not eating food for long periods of time

1:10:10 because there was a thought at the time

1:10:12 that this could help somebody reach a you

1:10:14 know a more advanced state of practice.

1:10:17 And there are some people and and in some

1:10:19 traditions that is a line that people follow.

1:10:22 But in the Buddhist process, what he found was eventually that no,

1:10:25 this is seeking out suffering is not the point here.

1:10:28 The point is to relieve ourselves of suffering.

1:10:30 And so that's very much aligned with the comment that Sharon made.

1:10:33 And so recognizing for him how suffering

1:10:35 wasn't the path of growth was revelatory.

1:10:39 I also enjoyed just how relational

1:10:40 Sharon and Rick were during this conversation.

1:10:42 It was fun to be here with both of them.

1:10:45 They've known each other for a while.

1:10:47 They've got a lot of professional experience with each other

1:10:49 and they're just so thoughtful about all of these issues.

1:10:52 So, I really enjoyed this conversation personally.

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