MF 43 – Guided Meditations to Help Develop a Regular Meditation Habit with OMG I can Meditate! co-founder Lynne Goldberg
Lynne was stressed-out, sleep-deprived, type-A businesswoman, and ended up a renowned meditation coach. As she talks about in the interview, when she started meditating, no one would have labeled Lynne Goldberg “a natural”.
Lynne had a series of devastating life blows, including the loss of twin baby girls, her mother, her marriage, and her job, coupled with years of infertility treatment and multiple failed adoptions, she counted on overworking and wine to help her survive.
But in the quiet moments she was forced to face the fact that, ultimately, she was still alone, unhappy, unfulfilled, and disconnected. Something—in fact, everything—was missing. Dragged kicking and screaming by a friend to a yoga retreat, Lynne reluctantly abided by the meat-free, alcohol-free diet and sat through the meditations simply because there was nowhere else to go.
But as she found her stress and anxiety slowly dissipating, the reluctance transformed into acceptance, and acceptance into appreciation and outright enjoyment. There was no denying the transformative effects this balanced, healthy approach was having on her life. She felt calm, capable, and in control.
Lynne course-corrected her life onto a path to understanding and embraced a new healthy and balanced lifestyle, studying along the way with Deepak Chopra, Sri Dharma Mittra and Tony Robbins.
Today she is a certified meditation coach, yoga instructor, strategic interventionist, and author of the book “Get Balanced. Get Blissed.”
Her passion and life mission lie in helping others transform their lives and discover true happiness, peace of mind and fulfillment through meditation and personal growth. Her ability to compassionately connect with others, and her accessible, everyday approach to teaching meditation, have led her to copach people from all walks of life, from celebrities, athletes, and business executives to 80-year-old cancer patients and five-year-old children.
Lynne’s meditation programs and curriculum have been implemented in elementary and high schools, special needs schools, and hospitals.
Lynne Goldberg is also co-founder of OMG. I Can Meditate!, a mobile and web meditation app that can teach anybody how to meditate in just 10 minutes a day. Lynne’s simple and clear teaching style has brought the joy of meditation to stressed-out business executives, soccer moms, eighty year olds, kindergarten kids, and everyone in between. She is the author of the book Get Balanced. Get Blissed.
When Lynne is not helping people find their bliss, she is living her own doing the things she loves most: being in nature, hiking or biking, traveling the world, cooking, or enjoying time with her husband and kids.
(What follows is a summary transcript of the interview. Listen to the episode for the full conversation)
(Above: Guided Meditation video by OMG I can Meditate! Lynn Goldberg)
What was your life like before you started a meditation practice?
Lynne was not a natural meditator at all (stresses this point). So many folks are intimidated by meditation, and look at other meditators and think, “oh, I could never do that”. She came to meditation by accident. Her mother was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer. At the time when Lynn’s mother went through all her cancer treatments, her doctor recommended she try meditation.
And simultaneously, Lynne was going through infertility treatments. She thought, while her mother was having difficulties with her treatments, if it can help her mother, maybe it can help her as well. And when you’re pregnant, people like to tell you, just relax, and you’ll get pregnant. So she looked at meditation as a way to help her relax, as well as deal with this stuff that was going on as well.
And over time, meditation with practice became easier.
And you mentioned that you had a lot of other dramas in your life as well, with your business as well. Were you attracted to meditation because you could see another way of dealing with these issues?
She didn’t have any plan. What she noticed was that she wasn’t coping as well as she’d like to cope. Lynne noticed that she was waking up at 3 am having panic attacks. Sleep was difficult for her. Her self-worth was very low. Lost her job, her marriage started to fall apart. She did not feel very good about herself.
And one of the things that really made a difference was meditation. It started to give her another sense of self-worth. As she started meditating more, those feelings of self-doubt, those inner voices that you tend to hear all the time, started to diminish. So it really helped.
Thich Nhat Hahn talks about the radio stations in our minds, how with time and more meditation, you can turn the channels to a less anxious channel/frequency.
Yes…I call it my automatic thought machine, my ATM, which unfortunately doesn’t dispense a lot of cash. (laughing) Rather it dispenses self-criticism. Over time, the self-talk can become a bit more realistic, little less self-critical.
So the story about yourself is less one-way, less rigid, less negative. It begins to open up…
Exactly. .
What kind of meditations did you start with and how did it evolve?
Lynne’s first experience with meditation, she was going through infertility treatments. And she used a cassette tape guided meditation recording. That was more like body scan, that type of meditations. She wasn’t physically capable of doing silent meditations, of doing anything but guided meditations. Over time it didn’t really change, she’d have moments of peace and tranquility. But it wasn’t immediate.
Further down the road, as she started to develop that attention muscle, she could get more silence in those gaps. So she could develop that practice more. But, she admits, her mantra for a long time was, “When will this be over, when will this be over!”
So during your meditation practice, it was still future oriented..it was still about getting to another place..
Absolutely, yes, and there was an emphasis on the future, and also there was an emphasis on, I was not doing it right. A strong feeling that other people probably had more tranquility, silence, space in their thoughts than I. A lot of comparison, not feeling good enough in the meditation. And a sense that this was something that only I was failing at.
Which was really important to us, as we developed our app. We really tried to address those concerns, that most people have when they meditate. And then give up, because they think that they’re not doing it properly. We wanted to reassure people, that this is it.
There’s thought, thought, thought, thought, thought…And then you go back to the object of your attention, and you have some more thoughts. And as you continue to do that, eventually it becomes a bit more accessible. A little bit less though, and a little bit more space.
And it sounds like you’re putting components of self-acceptance in your app’s guided meditations. So that people aren’t as hard on themselves, as you were on your former self.
Did you also have teachers along the way?
My first experience, was a meditation retreat. It was a funny situation, my girlfriend dragged me kicking and screaming. Reluctant to go with her. I found out there was no alcohol there. And it was basically Vegan. (laughing) I was hoping to stay in a nearby hotel. So I was stuck there for a whole week.
But I submerged myself, and thankfully so. Because that was the beginning of a love affair.
Did you see it differently at the end of the retreat than at the beginning of the retreat?
I’d love to say that I did..What I did notice, was that I had been craving, hoping to achieve a certain state. Peace and quiet type of state. I noticed that that peace that was so elusive, was accessible for periods of time. And I could access this state of mind, more when I was allowing myself to be still and quiet than when I was not.
And so I counter-intuitively I always thought I had to work really really hard to achieve a certain state. If I do this, then maybe I can get there, or have that. But what I recognized, is the less I did, the more peaceful I actually felt. So that was that shift in me. I wouldn’t say that it, boom all changed all at once, but that realization was really helpful and important.
Yeah I think that is the case with many people, it doesn’t just go from one day to the next. But they may read a story that says it should happen a certain way, so pretty quick it turns to self-doubt, and then it turns into thinking there’s something wrong with oneself.
Did you end up going to more retreats in the future?
Yeah. I’m a retreat junkie. They’re fun, I like them. But it’s also very important to develop my own practice. But it was over time that it became a love affair that became consistent. That consistency was difficult for me.
That’s another thing we try to help people with. Even though I knew that some of my behaviors were not necessarily beneficial for myself, I still did that. Example, I know clearly, if I had a drink when I came home from work. It might be better if I meditate for 20 minutes after work.
Strong habit patterns…
Yes, old habit patterns. But hard to shift. So those habits, and getting to the place where I wanted to change the habits was also a long process, didn’t just happen. Still I’d come home, and still reach for a drink after a hard day.
I find it helpful to make a daily meditation practice habit. From habits that are not self nourishing, to habits that are self-nourishing. Getting myself in that regular habitual practice, that over time, did become a habit. Now I can’t imagine a time where I don’t meditate.
It’s a healthy habit, rather than a destructive habit. Did you also find that your attitude towards certain events would also change as a result of meditation? Like your response or how you deal with a very negative event for example?
Absolutely. That story that I tell my kids all the time. My favorite kid story. This farmer comes into his backyard, and his whole backyard is completely destroyed, how horrible! And his response is, “maybe good, maybe bad.” That is sort of how my own practice has helped me as well. Lynne’s dad had been diagnosed with lung cancer, a tumor in his lung. And there was that moment of understanding that this is something that is potentially life-threatening. But then after surgery, they find out that, Oh, it’s actually not cancer. And then he found out after that while he had internal bleeding, that developed into Pneumonia. And now he’s recuperating. And it’s those waves, and recognizing that it’s temporary, it’s what it it is.
Rather than getting caught up in the moment to moment events. Just being present with whatever is happening. And just enjoying the time, being able to be with my father. And have truly alone time with this man, where he’s truly lucid, and able to communicate and able to share feelings. And probably very poignant, and wouldn’t be said under any other circumstances.
Truly a gift. And being able to see the gift in whatever is happening at the moment, was a huge shift for me.
I see how if your mind thought it was too real, and you get caught up in these situations, then you wouldn’t have as much time to be fully present for the person who is actually undergoing through this pain. There’s a huge advantage for the people around you, when you’re able to be more present for them, and not caught up or swallowed up by the stories. And at the same time you’re still able to grieve, but it doesn’t have the added mental stuff to it.
How does this meditation practice affect you as a parent?
My oldest son is 20 something, and my daughter is about 11 at this time. Different parenting rules and regulations at this point. I’m certainly grateful to my older son, for letting me practice on him (laughing). One of the things that was very important to me, was making sure that my kids had a contemplative practice of their own. The ability to step back.
Because my kids were not interested in learning from me, (laughing) as a parent, we really did our best to get the schools to put in meditation as part of the curriculum.
A very creative way as a parent to get your kids to do something you want them to do! (laughing) And at the same time, you’re helping the schools too.
Yes, it was a win-win for everyone. And I did this at different schools, because Lynn’s kids were at different schools. Her oldest son as ADHD, with learning disabilities. That’s all about your executive functioning, and the inability to concentrate. Making rash decisions, and not necessarily thinking things through.
Having meditation not only helped the teachers, as well as him, and myself. I’ve certainly relied on it as a parent. One of the stories was when her son was at school a few years back, and they called Lynne, telling her that he was on the way to the emergency. When they call like that, usually it means something bad has happened. It ended up that he had blown up the science lab, and part of his arm was injured as part of that experiment gone wrong.
But that practice for me, being able to step back, not getting caught up in the whole drama of the situation. Have a bit of calm and clarity with the situation. This has really helped me get out of that habit of the shame and blame that a lot of parents get into. Like, “why did he do that, how could he do that to me!” And then it becomes all about me, my ego, I’m so worried and I’m so upset. As opposed to just recognizing this is a kid who’s just being a kid, experimenting.
Have you noticed any changes in him as a result of his meditation?
It’s a work in progress (laughing). So he’s 20, and it’ll be interesting, because no one necessarily wants to do what their parents want them to do. He now has some meditation skills that he’s learned, and whether he chooses to use them, and when he will use them is up to him. When he’s ready, he’ll know how..he can make a choice.
Yeah, it has to come from within..
How did the guided meditations from going to schools, to fine-tuning them, making them better, and then taking them out into the world (through the OMG I can Meditate meditation app)?
We had things people would say repeatedly, like a common theme a lot of people complained about was, “I don’t have enough time”. So when we were developing the app, we wanted to give people an alarm, so they could just wake up with the app, and start meditating right away. So there were certain comments, which allowed us to put together a wishlist. If I could have everything in the world, what would it be to help people to have no more excuses to meditate. That would make it simple, and completely accessible and available. We were lucky that we have lots of people gave us lots of information.
Another thing besides the alarm, was the fact that it was daily and progressive. Also, we noticed that if we gave too much information up front, there wasn’t necessarily the sense of continuity. They wanted bite-size pieces, that they could have on a daily basis. This was more important. Consistency and continuity were very important. As opposed to how I did it, going to a full week meditation retreat, one week on, and then not consistent. It was a work in progress.
Was it like a year later that you decided to create the app?
Yes, it took a year of writing, and also making sure on the technology side getting it all put together.
Was it then at the kitchen table, where you decided to, your husband had already done all kinds of things like apps or ringtones right?
His claim to fame was (as he put it), developer of the Fart Ringtone (laughing). He wanted to do something in this chapter of his life that had a little more meaning than that! Yes, he had several technology companies and he had developed web content and content for mobile phones and mobile apps, prior to Apple. So he had been at this for a long time.
So he just thought, I can just take these meditations, and add the technologies with the bell and timer etc..
Yes, he knew how to make something that was consumer friendly..
And also now in airplanes, Air Canada, and Delta…how did that come about?
That’s his doing as well. We’d fly together, and the first 20 minutes you can’t really do anything anyway. And it was just like this, “we should be meditating right now, wouldn’t it be cool if….”. So he was the one to make that happen as well.
Seeing your app in the plane was amazing to me. When I took an international flight recently, I saw so many video screens on all night. Because now you can watch shows and movies all you want. So unlike the past, where folks slept during these international flights, now many people just watch one show after another, and get even less rest. There’s so much more distraction and things then in the past. So your app in a way helps counter-act that, and gives folks permission to rest and meditate.
Do you find the guided meditations from the store app, have different popular guided meditations, vs the meditation app in the planes?
We also wanted to make sure that we could address, each of the meditations on the app are situation specific. Anywhere from the, “my boss is a jerk” guided meditation, which teaches self, and other compassion. To standing in line at the grocery store. Like a 2 minute meditation. Very specific to whatever you need at the moment.
On a plane, if you have fears, or you’re worried about flying, concerns. Or if it’s just for rest and relaxation that would be another one. We have different ones that are specific to what you’d be going through when you’re flying.
That’s great, because in the past you might have to read through a whole book, or take a whole class before you get to the point that is relevant to a particular situation. And everyone has a different situation, and a different thing you might need at that moment. That’s a really wonderful thing about these apps, just-in-time learning, just in time needed, something that’s needed at that moment.
Love that…
Any other surprises, or things you’ll be doing in the future, as a result of seeing the usage of your app?
It’s just been truly the most gratifying process I could ever imagine. We’ve met some wonderful people, like you..It’s just incredible to have met a community who share our interests and passions. But we’ve also seen the changes and differences that meditation can make in people’s lives. We’ve received some very gratifying letters from people, who’s lives have been improved and have been touched, by their own words. That’s the most special thing I can imagine.
Yes, very gratifying, makes your life meaningful too…
That’s why I get up in the morning, very meaningful. Makes it feel like there’s a sense of purpose. Very special.
Do you have any other plans, or keep building on what you have?
Right now the intention is to develop this further, we’re constantly releasing new content. We’re working with people who help us develop things that are important to them and giving us insight into what issues they have. So we’re very interested in continuing to grow that. We’re interested in developing our distribution network. That’s really the goal right now, making it useful.
You’re definitely succeeding at that. Any final tips for folks just beginning with practice, or struggling with practice?
The most important thing I can think of is consistency. Permitting, even if it’s just 10 minutes a day, as opposed setting a lofty goal of an hour. Better off, biting of 10 minutes at a time, and committing to that, and doing it consistently over time. That’s what the research shows, helps develop the attention muscle. You get your practice underway. Baby steps, be gentle with yourself. This is a practice that takes time. Not having expectations, that might be unrealistic. Just committing to it.
Also recognizing what your intention for starting the practice is in the first place.
Yes very good tip..
Recognizing this is why I’m doing that. And honoring that. Coming back to that, whenever there’s a moment when you feel, “Ugh…do I really want to do this!”
Yeah…rain or shine..
Yes.
Do you see a community component coming up in the future?
Yes, so that’s our ultimate goal. But that’s secret (laughing). That’s an exiting possibility.
Thanks so much for sharing!
The popular guided meditation, “Blanket of Love Meditation” is played at the end of the interview to finish the episode.
MF 39 – Bringing Stillness and Peace between Police and Community
Cheri Maples is a dharma teacher, keynote speaker, and organizational consultant and trainer. In 2008 she was ordained a dharma teacher by Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, her long-time spiritual teacher.
For 25 years Cheri worked in the criminal justice system, as an Assistant Attorney General in the Wisconsin Department of Justice, head of Probation and Parole for the Wisconsin Department of Corrections, and as a police officer with the City of Madison Police Department, earning the rank of Captain of Personnel and Training.
Cheri has been an active community organizer, working in neighborhood centers, deferred prosecution programs, and as the first Director of the Wisconsin Coalition Against Domestic Violence. As Past President of the Dane County Timebank, Cheri was instrumental in creating its justice projects – the Youth Court, which is based on a prevention and restorative justice model; and the Prison Project, a prison education and reintegration initiative supported by multiple community groups.
She has incorporated all of these experiences into her mindfulness practice. Cheri’s interest in criminal justice professionals comes from learning that peace in one’s own heart is a prerequisite to providing true justice and compassion to others. Her initial focus was on translating the language and practice of mindfulness into an understandable framework for criminal justice professionals. Cheri’s work has evolved to include other helping professionals – health-care workers, teachers, and employees of social service agencies – who must also manage the emotional effects of their work, while maintaining an open heart and healthy boundaries.
(video above is a sharing or dharma talk by Lay Dharma teacher Cheri Maples during a 21-Day Retreat)
Cheri holds a J.D. and a M.S.S.W. from University of Wisconsin-Madison and is currently a licensed attorney and licensed clinical social worker in the state of Wisconsin.
(This is a summary transcript, listen to the episode for the full conversation)
What brought you to a meditation practice?
Either series of coincidences or perhaps miracles. I was certainly open to it. About 7 years into police career, was a street sergeant at the time. Had a back injury, from lifting a moped out of a squad car. Went to chiropractor, and in her waiting room she had the book, Being Peace. This got Cheri interested, started reading her own copy. Then she found a flyer for a retreat in Illinois, in 1991, and decided to go to this week-long retreat.
In those days Thay or (Thich Nhat Hanh), translated as teacher. In those days Thay did everything. Dharma talks by Thay, questions and answers. And they were taught sitting, eating, and walking meditation. It was lovely to stop and she got very interested in the practice. So she started practicing. She didn’t understand Buddhism very much. She had an intuitive understanding of it from practice.
Where there moments during this retreat for you that sort of woke you up?
There were several. For example, during eating meditation the first time she did it. She was such a fast eater, especially as a cop. You try to get food in as fast as you can between the next siren call. Wolf it down as fast as you could before the next call. To actually slow down and taste my food, be with it, and think of where it came from. Was a wonderful experience.
It was sitting and walking meditation. Of course just watching Thay walking to a room is a dharma talk in and of itself.
Bells, there were beautiful bells, not just the bells that were invited (rang) in our sessions. But this was in a Catholic college campus, so we’d also stop whenever those bells went off. We’d stop and take three breaths when we heard any kind of bell.
That was also the retreat where I had some tough questions. I still had a chip on my shoulder. I didn’t want anyone to know I was a cop. Was sure I’d be pigeon holed and people assume what my politics are, and that I only eat donuts. So I didn’t say much.
The Five Mindfulness Trainings represent the Buddhist vision for a global spirituality and ethic. They are a concrete expression of the Buddha’s teachings on the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path, the path of right understanding and true love, leading to healing, transformation, and happiness for ourselves and for the world. To practice the Five Mindfulness Trainings is to cultivate the insight of interbeing, or Right View, which can remove all discrimination, intolerance, anger, fear, and despair. If we live according to the Five Mindfulness Trainings, we are already on the path of a bodhisattva (someone who joyfully and wholeheartedly hears and participates in the “sorrows of the world”). Knowing we are on that path, we are not lost in confusion about our life in the present or in fears about the future.
1. Reverence For Life
Aware of the suffering caused by the destruction of life, I am committed to cultivating the insight of interbeing and compassion and learning ways to protect the lives of people, animals, plants, and minerals. I am determined not to kill, not to let others kill, and not to support any act of killing in the world, in my thinking, or in my way of life. Seeing that harmful actions arise from anger, fear, greed, and intolerance, which in turn come from dualistic and discriminative thinking, I will cultivate openness, non-discrimination, and non-attachment to views in order to transform violence, fanaticism, and dogmatism in myself and in the world.
2. True Happiness
Aware of the suffering caused by exploitation, social injustice, stealing, and oppression, I am committed to practicing generosity in my thinking, speaking, and acting. I am determined not to steal and not to possess anything that should belong to others; and I will share my time, energy, and material resources with those who are in need. I will practice looking deeply to see that the happiness and suffering of others are not separate from my own happiness and suffering; that true happiness is not possible without understanding and compassion; and that running after wealth, fame, power and sensual pleasures can bring much suffering and despair. I am aware that happiness depends on my mental attitude and not on external conditions, and that I can live happily in the present moment simply by remembering that I already have more than enough conditions to be happy. I am committed to practicing Right Livelihood so that I can help reduce the suffering of living beings on Earth and reverse the process of global warming.
3. True Love
Aware of the suffering caused by sexual misconduct, I am committed to cultivating responsibility and learning ways to protect the safety and integrity of individuals, couples, families, and society. Knowing that sexual desire is not love, and that sexual activity motivated by craving always harms myself as well as others, I am determined not to engage in sexual relations without true love and a deep, long-term commitment made known to my family and friends. I will do everything in my power to protect children from sexual abuse and to prevent couples and families from being broken by sexual misconduct. Seeing that body and mind are one, I am committed to learning appropriate ways to take care of my sexual energy and cultivating loving kindness, compassion, joy and inclusiveness – which are the four basic elements of true love – for my greater happiness and the greater happiness of others. Practicing true love, we know that we will continue beautifully into the future.
4. Loving Speech and Deep Listening
Aware of the suffering caused by unmindful speech and the inability to listen to others, I am committed to cultivating loving speech and compassionate listening in order to relieve suffering and to promote reconciliation and peace in myself and among other people, ethnic and religious groups, and nations. Knowing that words can create happiness or suffering, I am committed to speaking truthfully using words that inspire confidence, joy, and hope. When anger is manifesting in me, I am determined not to speak. I will practice mindful breathing and walking in order to recognize and to look deeply into my anger. I know that the roots of anger can be found in my wrong perceptions and lack of understanding of the suffering in myself and in the other person. I will speak and listen in a way that can help myself and the other person to transform suffering and see the way out of difficult situations. I am determined not to spread news that I do not know to be certain and not to utter words that can cause division or discord. I will practice Right Diligence to nourish my capacity for understanding, love, joy, and inclusiveness, and gradually transform anger, violence, and fear that lie deep in my consciousness.
5. Nourishment and Healing
Aware of the suffering caused by unmindful consumption, I am committed to cultivating good health, both physical and mental, for myself, my family, and my society by practicing mindful eating, drinking, and consuming. I will practice looking deeply into how I consume the Four Kinds of Nutriments, namely edible foods, sense impressions, volition, and consciousness. I am determined not to gamble, or to use alcohol, drugs, or any other products which contain toxins, such as certain websites, electronic games, TV programs, films, magazines, books, and conversations. I will practice coming back to the present moment to be in touch with the refreshing, healing and nourishing elements in me and around me, not letting regrets and sorrow drag me back into the past nor letting anxieties, fear, or craving pull me out of the present moment. I am determined not to try to cover up loneliness, anxiety, or other suffering by losing myself in consumption. I will contemplate interbeing and consume in a way that preserves peace, joy, and well-being in my body and consciousness, and in the collective body and consciousness of my family, my society and the Earth.
Interview continued..
And someone asked me if I was going to take these 5 mindfulness trainings. And I said, I can’t take these, I’m a cop. During a question/answer session, I asked Thay about it, and that’s where he said. Who else would we want to carry a gun, but someone who will do it mindfully? So I took the 5 mindfulness trainings and joined a Sangha that was formed after that retreat. And slowly started developing a practice.
When you came back out into the world, it changed the quality and intentionality on how you confronted the day-to-day consumption of violence that police officers have to go through.
I don’t think anybody faces the consequences and results of poverty, racism, and violence on a daily basis more than cops. I had a very powerful experience right after the retreat that taught me a lot.
I came back to work, and I literally couldn’t understand why everyone had changed. Even the people I was arresting, it just seemed like they had gotten kinder in my absence. It was the energy I was putting out.
It was such a powerful experience for me. To realize that. It’s not like it lasted, but I did something that knew was very important for me, and that I could come back to.
I started realizing over time, we’re talking incremental changes here. That it was possible to start every call with the intention not to do further harm. Even if force was required.
Not to do further harm.
I have an example too that I wanted to talk about with you. Some time back I remember going to the airport to pick up my wife. I did not notice the speed sign, and went a little too fast coming into the airport. And a police officer stopped me and as he was walking to my vehicle. I recall being very still and peaceful place at that time. Perhaps I had come from a retreat as well recently. At any rate, my heart was calm in that moment. I could see the stress on the officers place. It was eye opening to me. I realized my own state of mind was then shifting his state of mind. I could see the tension drop off his face. It made me realize how important the quality of our being that we bring to every interaction and every encounter.
So true, love that example. It’s a powerful example how energy follows thought. What we tend to put out comes back at us.
So many of these awful things that are happening right now. The unnecessary use of deadly force. I often wonder in these interactions that happen. The main responsibility should be with the professional, but I often wonder if either person in the interaction was just able to calm down.
Just start turning that volume down, what would happen?
Whether it’s the police officer or someone like yourself, who’s trying to bring some stillness to that interaction. It makes a huge difference.
What you saw, is what happens a lot of the time. Police officers are taught to expect the worst from people. And they’re taught that their safety depends on it. That whole things needs to be reexamined.
And there’s already this kind of expectation of tension and plausible conflict just by the way the police officer has to not just figuratively put on body armor, but literally put on body armor.
Just imagine going to work, having to change, and with that change comes. I have small children, so kept things in a locker. You’re putting on a uniform. Before you even put on the outer clothing of a uniform with a badge. You’re putting on a bullet proof vest, gun-belt, weapons, you’re literally putting armor on. You’re preparing for work by putting armor on. Most places now require bullet proof vests, it’s not optional.
One of the things I wanted to explore. You know rational thinking often will say, you’ve got to be pro-active, and react (when someone provokes you, or in the case of a terrorist attack for example). But there’s something that happens (Thay calls that the miracle of mindfulness) when you inner disarm, when you bring that stillness in your heart, that then de-escalates the encounter, whichever encounter you then have. I think it can be extrapolated for example with wars as well, to all kinds of situations, like with the military and politics, where there’s a military reaction, rather than a calmer response to a provocation.
Well you see what happens. Thay would be the first to say, you can’t fight violence with violence. It’s so interesting, because I think..
Until we start learning from history, this will probably continue. We’ve just seen in the history books. Humiliating the Germans gave a springboard to Hitler. Then we bombarded Cambodia in ’73, which became fodder for the recruitment campaign of Khmer Rouge. and then the war in Iraq really led to Islamist fanaticism and the current crisis. As long as we continue doing what we’ve done, we’re going to get what we’ve always gotten.
What would this look like from the point of view of deep listening? To someone who might be looking at these crisis and provocations from the point of view of someone who is of the viewpoint that you have got to fight fire with fire, or else you’d be seen as weak. What ideas or advice would you have for someone who struggles with that.
That’s a really hard one. One is to recognize the responsibility that someone like the president of France has right now (This was recorded after the Paris attacks). As the US president had during 9/11. They need deep listening, people have to know that they’re not alone. There are times when you absolutely can’t let people, terrorists take over. But the answer is not bombing civilians, or tearing countries apart.
Someone who had interviewed all these ISIS people who had been prisoners, and what had motivated them there. And a lot of them were saying they’d lost their adolescence, because of the war. Lost all means of supporting their families, and a lot of it was plain financial, and some of it was hatred towards America for forcing them to live in a worn-torn country. And now we’re doing that to Syria. So what are the alternatives?
I’m not sure, but I am sure that we can’t continue to do the things we did. I do think that we need better intelligence, we need to understand the whole idea of interdependence. It’s not just an idea, we are all inter-related. What we do matters, what we do to ourselves and others.
There has to be some very careful thought about how to respond, and what is going to be the most effective response. We’ve learned over and over that that is not violence.
We can verify that in our own lives and with our practice, waking up, doesn’t matter what job we have. It’s the intention we bring when starting our day. If we come from a place from stillness and peace, and wanting there to be more love in the world. Then it changes our interactions everywhere.
So true. I was reading something by the Dalai Lama. He said, we’re all equal members of one and the same family. And the affairs of the entire world are our internal affairs. There’s a complete recognition of the internal and external, and how totally interdependent they are.
Can you imagine what it would look like if we had people running the world, who were mindful human beings?
Getting back to not letting ourselves get run over. It’s a different way for a police officer to come at a situation from a mindful perspective. Than carrying and using a gun is a compassionate action if you do have to use it. A different way to use a gun when coming from that place right?
Exactly the focus is always intention. What is my intention in this interaction. Is it to stop the violence to protect more people, or is it coming from a place of anger and vengeance and punishment? Those are two very different places to start an interaction with. Whether it is with an individual or with another country.
That’s one of the reason I appreciate what you’re saying. A lot of people would look at Buddhist practitioners and peace activists and they would ask. How does this apply in real situations where there is a threat and you do need to save someone, and it may require force to do handle that situation.
And folks need to understand that there are some encounters that demand the use of force. But again, not as many as people think. And this includes from the police officer’s perspective, and the militairy. And it can be done in a manner again from where the intention is. It can be done for the good of the most people possible. What would that be, what would that look like?
There’s a Buddhist parable. There was a captain of a ship, he had some 200 people on board. And he realized that this one guy who came on the boat, was going to do great harm to this people. Very mindfully he actually killed this man. And in his act he said out of love and compassion and to keep him from having to live with the karma of what he was doing. Very different intention, or very different place to start that interaction from, than most people would start from.
How would you work with the current situation where the police and the African American community are at odds in some places. How would you change that on a systemic level?
People have to understand that this is not a police issue. Questions have to be asked, why is racial profiling happening? Why is it happening. How is this happening in my own organization? Where are the individual and organizational decision making points were race is and can be a factor? And that is certainly. Race is and can’t be a factor in deciding who to stop. That is where it starts.
But this is not just a question for police officers. This is a question for all of us. How do we become more aware of the conscious and unconscious bias operating in our individual and organizational decisions making.
How do we begin to monitor and shift the unconscious agreements that lead to racial profiling. So for example, there are many officers, I’m only talking about my own department. There were not many officers in my department who walked around with a conscious belief that one race is superior to another. But if you’re walking around with unconscious biases of any kind…
Let’s take it out of the race context. Let’s say I belief Ford drivers are more likely to commit traffic offenses than Chevy drivers. So I’ll put myself outside Ford dealerships and stop more Ford drivers. Put myself in a position where more Ford drivers are. And I’ll stop a lot more of these drivers. And because I stop more of these Ford drivers than Chevy drivers. And because I’m going to stop more of them, I’m going to arrest more of them as well. Which reinforces my own bias.
The analogies are obvious. What makes it worse is that the racial disparities actually gets worse at each point in the system. So they start with who’s stopped. The racial disparity is so clear there, its been researched extensively. Who gets arrested is another decision making point. Who gets actually charged, is another decision making point, in terms of who gets prosecuted. Who gets sentenced, and how they get sentenced, whether it’s going to be jail or prison is another decision making point. And then there’s all kinds of decision making points, once someone is actually incarcerated. In terms of conduct violations, parole, who gets treatments. List goes on and on.
So it’s Cheri’s (as a member working in the criminal justice system), it is my responsibility to define where those decision making points are. And to do what I can about them. It’s important for all of us, no matter where we work to do the same thing.
And what would you recommend an organization do to reveal to expose or reveal these subconscious beliefs, these implicit biases?
One of the things I would NOT recommend is a talking head up on the stage, and have a “diversity training”. People just get resentful about that. There are experiential trainings that can be really helpful.
For example with racial profiling. We know police officers have this mechanism for training, it’s called fast training. It’s with simulators where they have to make decisions whether to shoot or not shoot with these infra-red weapons. The simulators will mark if they make the right decision or not. It’s a training exercise.
So why not use this same sort of technology and have officers making stops, and talk through exactly what is going through their minds. And why they are stopping and for what reason.
The other thing that is very important, and can be done anywhere.
It’s not so much what the mission statement of an organization is, but what are the unconscious agreements, that peers, employees, socialize each other to. They’re usually unconscious, unspoken, usually not talked about publicly, you won’t find them on paper. It’s important to get people together and just ask questions.
For example, as a young officer the first thing I got taught is where to go to get a free cup of coffee. By the time I was a sergeant I was interested in examining that norm. It wouldn’t have done me any good to say, hey I’m ordering you to not go to that coffee store, because I know they give out free coffee, and I see 4 squad cars out there all the time. That would have been a joke.
But if I can get people together and say, Hey, I know from the time I came on the department, I was told that you could go to get free coffee there. So let’s talk about it. Is that OK? So I’ve had those conversations about that, and when they talk about that, they raise their own consciousness.
They might have disagreements, about it. But it is out there, and the norm is challenged. I think that’s how you work to change ethical climates in organizations. You bring unconscious agreements into the conscious arena of dialogue. You don’t tell people to do things, but you make inquiries.
But you are talking to some extent about challenging the status quo in some organizations. Not everyone would be open to that, especially a top-down type organization. In some organization, if you question anything, your career promotion is up for grabs. What would you say for those situations, where people are afraid to speak up, or bring up issues they see?
Until I rose through the ranks, and was a captain….Everyone works in a team, at least in policing. I was just talking to my 7-8 people team about this. But what they do matters, and that can have a ripple effect. They then talk to 7 or 8 more people. There are ethics scenarios that can be acted out with 20 people at a time. The order is already there, it’s in the policy manual, don’t accept free things. There are good reasons for that.
Think of the gossip that goes on in organizations. How many organizations have a culture where you try to recruit somebody to your viewpoint behind closed doors? A lot of time is spend doing that. What if people made an agreement not to gossip? I did that, it was the most satisfying wonderful work experience I’ve ever had.
I told them that they are the ones to take responsibility for refraining from gossip. So let’s all agree on that, if we all want that. And I used the fourth mindfulness training (see above). Basically I said to them. How would it be, since we all talking about not liking the gossip, and politics that goes on in this organization. If we made a decision to take a complaint directly to the person we had it with, or somebody who could do something about it.
You had some buy-in at this point?
I didn’t say, let’s do it. I asked everybody, what is the biggest source of stress, the major stressor in this organization? That’s what they came up with, gossip, politics in the organization. What if we did something just on our team. Not an order, that wouldn’t be effective. We don’t make an agreement, unless everybody agreed on it. Everybody agrees to police each other. And they did, and then they brought it to the recruits, and they bought in to it.
So you changed the organizational culture at that point.
It all started in 2002 for Cheri at Plum Village, where she was chopping vegetables with someone. She had this image of seeing police officers walking hand in hand, trying to make peaceful steps on the earth. And the person she was relating that image to, said, “Sure, you can make that happen.” You can make that happen!
Thursday, the day after she said that to me, with an FAQ session with Thay. Cheri asked Thay to come to a retreat for police officers. He said to me that we don’t need to wait 2 years to do a retreat for police officers. We can do this next year, so in 2003 there was a retreat for police officers. That woman does not know the ripple effects of what she said to me, she will never know what she started.
Her practice was so much part of her, it came out without hesitation.
It did. I can’t even remember her name, or what she looked like, but I can remember the impact that she had on me.
So here you have a complete stranger that started all of these ripple effects that have reverberated on and on.
Is this something that you’d recommend for all police departments. To have a yearly or so retreat?
I’m working with someone in the DC area to hold a retreat for police officers on the east coast next year. So I’m hoping that we’ll get a lot of people there.
One of the things in terms of deep listening and understanding that has to happen..I really believe that trust isn’t going to be restored between police departments and their communities without dialogue.
Police officers have to meet in small groups with community members, and we have to tell each other. Police officers have to tell community members, and community members have to tell police officers what it’s like for them.
And listen to each other. That has more of an impact than anything else I can think of.
At the end of the retreat for police officers, Thay asked to hear from police officers. I’d never heard police officers share like that in my life. And I’ve never seen a community respond to them like they did. That had a big impact on me. I think that has to be replicated.
And communities also have to put pressure on their police departments. They have to understand what it’s like.
But the communities also have to ask questions.
What is your standard for using deadly force? Police officers have the ability to use an employer state sanctioned violence. And communities have the right to know under what circumstances they’re using it. And why? And how it’s being trained for. And those are important questions that every community needs to ask.
Is there anything else you’d recommend to folks who don’t currently have a retreat to go to, where they can cultivate that peace in their heart-mind? When they step in their patrol car or wherever they are in situations of conflict?
To understand the cycle. So many people are either very hyper vigilant to keep themselves safe. Which produces adrenaline. Or multi-tasking like crazy. Especially people responding to trauma, there’s a lot of adrenaline that gets produced in those situations. The research shows that, that adrenaline pushes you out of the normal, and it takes 24 hours to return to normal. But people go back to work before that. So a lot of the time what people experience is this spike. They’re at the top of their game. They have humor, they can make quick decisions, they’re not procrastinating. Then they go home. They’re listless, don’t have any energy. They start to project that unto the people that are at home. I’m feeling better at work. At home is where I can’t make decisions, procrastinating, a lot of the things that look like depression at the bottom of that cycle. I see that over and over. There are people that have researched and talked about this.
Watering the Seeds of Joy
So one has to do some very pro-active things. And one of the most important things is watering the seeds of joy. What are the things that you really like to do? Here’s the trick though. If you wait until you feel like doing them, you’re not going to do them. But if you schedule them pro-actively, you will do them.
When you’re at work there are a number of things you can do..
Take 3 breaths….Each time you get a call, before you respond, before you do anything. Find reasons to take 3 breaths during your shift during your work. If you get a lunch break, you can get off the street, and chose to eat mindfully. If you’re in an office close your door and spend 15 minutes eating mindfully. Rather than eating on the computer or while driving.
The most important thing anyone can do is to develop a daily practice.To learn how to still and disengage from your mind, and to learn how to understand that your thoughts are not the truth. They are a result of your conditioning. When you really get that, things become very different. And you get that from being still, through practice, through learning how to be mindful. And there are so many tools available to us. Everyone can access to a podcast. There are so many people out there offering tools, so many tools in how to meditate, and learn mindfulness.
Read Thich Nhat Hanh’s book, Keeping the Peace. The book which came out of the retreat for police officers.
I was thinking about my first retreat with Thay’s. Part of this is also self-acceptance. Especially in the west, we have the problem of self-loathing. That we don’t even think we deserve to get 3 breaths. Than that could be another obstacle.
That’s so important I think too. Pema Chodron says that she gets the same letter from everyone of her students in some form. And that letter says, “I’m the worst person in the world, help me”. And in some way it’s like that. And right away there’s one thing we can do about that.
We can undo what the Buddha called “the second arrow”.
In other words, for example, and event happens with me and my son that is extremely stressful and leads to suffering. That suffering is an event that has occurred. But if I start to say, “bad mother” to myself. That is suffering added to suffering. That is the second arrow, and the kind of suffering that we can control.
That is another thing that meditation and mindfulness help us do.
They help us recognize our self-talk. And it is so helpful to recognize our judgments. And they help us become friendly with ourselves.
For example, one of the questions that I started asking myself through meditation was, when will I be enough, and what would make me enough?
Another one I started asking myself, is what would I do in this situation if I didn’t have an ego? To protect, defend and build up. What would my actions look like?
This practice is not about a goal of enlightenment, it’s about transformation.
It’s about transformation and freedom.
Getting those arrows out of the way, is very freeing.
Learning not to shoot them in the first place, wouldn’t that be freeing? (laughing)
I just want people to take advantage of all the resources and teachers out there right now, so take advantage of them. Thay has so many podcasts out there as well. And I think retreats are so important. If you’ve never been to a retreat, it’s like an acceleration what you might get from 60 times of trying to meditate on your own. Not only do you get instruction, but you have other people, and you all contribute energy. You’re contributing to it, and you’re drawing from it. And you’re letting the details, the to-do lists, go for a few days, so you can totally devote yourselves to this. So find a retreat and go to it.
MF 38 – Nourishing Meditation Practice Remotely with Wild Mind Teacher and Founder Bodhipaksa
Biography: Bodhipaksa is an accomplished teacher, published author, and founder of the popular Wildmind web site. He recently (Oct 2012) gave a TEDx talk on compassion (“The Surprising Secret of Unlocking Compassion”).
He has been meditating and practicing Buddhism since 1982. He was ordained into the Triratna Buddhist Order (former known as the Western Buddhist Order) in 1993. In addition to his work with Wildmind, he leads activities at Aryaloka Buddhist Center in Newmarket, New Hampshire, and for nine years he has taught a summer course to low income teens at the University of New Hampshire.
He was formerly the director of a retreat center in Scotland, and was center director at the Rocky Mountain Buddhist Center in Missoula, Montana. He completed a Master’s degree in Buddhist approaches to business at the university of Montana, and founded Wildmind in 2001.
He has published several books and audiobooks on aspects of meditation and Buddhist practice, and is well-known for his guided meditation recordings. As the director of Wildmind and the father of two young children, Bodhipaksa understands the challenges of balancing a meditation practice with a busy life. His online courses have been running since 2002, and he has received consistent praise for his practical, down-to-earth approach as well as his care for and commitment to each student.
What brought you to a meditation practice?
It was a confluence of things in his life. Bodhipaksa was young and in high school, 17 or 18 years old, when he got interested in finding some kind of religious path, to find meaning and purpose in his life.
He did some exploration of left-wing politics, in an era where the communist party was very strong at the time. It was idealistic, socialism that attracted him. He’d been an atheist since he was eleven years old, the concept of God didn’t make sense at all. He did go back to the New Testament, interested in the ethical teachings of the New Testament.
He did come across references of Buddhism. It was not well known in Scotland at that time. But Buddhism made sense to him. It was rational to him, and didn’t require any belief in a supernatural being, etc.
At that same time, he went through a personal crisis as well. His friends went off to do other things, and left the area. His friends were very important to him, and he experienced a lot suffering. He felt quite lonely, anxiety, and a feeling of not fitting in. He had a hard time getting on with the people remaining.
Bodhipaksa was looking for something that gave his life meaning and purpose.
The idea of meditation as being a way of finding happiness within oneself was attractive to him. Because the outside world didn’t seem at all reliable.
Unfortunately there was no way for him to get to a meditation class. The nearest town was about 30 miles away, and might as well be on the other side of the world, as he didn’t drive. So it wasn’t until Bodhipaksa went to Glasgow, to the university, and he saw posters around campus, until he started going to these classes.
Did your sense of what you were looking for change as you started going to these classes? Anything you wanted to delve more deeply into?
Bodhipaksa had some particular experiences fairly early on. On particular day, he was with some classmates, and they were sitting together in the car to go home. And he was in a terrible mood, he tended to be very irritable in those days. In some ways he was quiet sensitive, and irritation was his defense mechanism in those days. He was listening to this conversation these two girls were having, and getting annoyed at how trivial and trite it seemed. But he caught himself getting really annoyed.
“And I remembered this loving-kindness practice that he had learned. And just started saying to myself, “May I be well…. may I be happy… may I be free from suffering”. And it completely stunned me, but after 3 or 4 minutes of this, I actually felt really happy! Nothing mystical, or anything like that, meditation just works.”
Yeah, it’s pretty radical..
It does actually work. Today, I’m getting into teaching very short meditations to people, just 3 or 4 minutes long. They very often, almost everyone reports they’ve experienced a change in their level of well-being.
The reason for teaching these short meditations is because he’s very interested in helping people to make meditation part of their life. The trouble is that we teach meditation, make them sit through 25, 35, or 45 minutes of meditation.
People can get the idea that meditation isn’t real meditation, no point in doing it, unless you sit for 45 minutes. And then they go home at the end of the meditation class, and the next day its like, OK, I suppose I should meditate. Do I have 30 or 40 spare minutes?
No of course they don’t, because their lives are already full, they’ve already got a bunch of habits and responsibilities. And because they have this idea that it has to be a full fledged long meditation, or it is not a real meditation. And they end up not doing it at all.
So Bodhipaksa tries to encourage people to just try tiny 3 or 4 minutes of meditation, this is what you can do. He gets them to do the meditation standing up, or sitting in a chair. Get the idea across that you don’t need special equipment, get all setup, or lighting all the candles.
Yes, in our daily life is where the real fruits of meditation are..
Yes, especially with regularity, consistency in practice.
Do you find that the folks who do the mini meditations repeat the meditations until it becomes part of their lives..that something kicks in that activates within the person that then practices automatically, where it might be really helpful to de-escalate the inner turmoil?
Yes, I think it’s quite hard for people to start meditating on their own. This is maybe another reason to encourage people to do shorter meditations. Because what we’re asking people to do is to apply a certain mindset, things like being patient, and kind with yourself. Recognizing that it’s OK to be distracted. You’re not the worst meditator in the world because your mind is distracted and all over the place.
People bring a lot of unhelpful attitudes into the practice, so it can be quite difficult to get a meditation practice established.
Did you find that as you as you bring these meditations online, that this influences the way you’re doing these meditations? Because some of the folks are like you were when you were young in a remote place far away from a meditation center. So maybe that is part of the reason why you decided you wanted to bring it online to make it accessible to people who are like you at an earlier time in your life?
That’s really interesting. I haven’t made that connection before but i think that’s quite possibly the case. Yeah I have a very strong sympathetic, empathetic response to people who are in isolated situations, and who find it difficult to get a meditation practice started, and there are a lot of them.
How many are there, what is that like since you’ve been doing this since 2001?
Yeah, I’ve doing it for a long time. I mean when I said there’s a lot of them I was thinking there’s a lot of people in a similar situation and perhaps the entire state where there’s hardly any meditations centers. And you have to travel like a 120 miles to get to a meditation center.
But in terms of how many I managed to reach through online activities is quite difficult to count. We have a lot of traffic to our website. I have this website with structured guides to meditation, all free. There’s recorded guided meditations that you can listen to. The Wild Mind web site get something like a 150.ooo thousand visits per month.
Wow, that’s a lot.
Yeah, and they’re all over the world as well so when the last time I looked, there were visitors from every country in the world except for think Western Sahara. It’s a disputed area, government or maybe there’s not even the internet there. Quite possibly there’s no internet connection.
You wrote a couple of books about diets. Did that change as a result of meditation in any way?
Yes, it did interestingly. To put this in context. I first got in touch with a practicing Buddhist since I’ve been meditating. I was going to the University of Glasgow and I was training to be a veterinarian which is something that I had wanted to be for a long long time. Since it was a long time, probably since I was about 14 years old.
I was in contact with Buddhists and most of the Buddhists I knew where vegetarian. And I actually hung around with Buddhists a lot. I really enjoyed being with them. I was actually working with a Buddhist company during my summer vacation. We’d eat with each other, going to each other’s houses after working all day. So I was eating a lot of vegetarian food but I was almost militantly anti-vegetarian.
People would say you’re eating a dead animal. I didn’t affect me at all at that time. It was completely normal and natural to me to eat meat. And then my entire veterinary class went to a slaughter house.
One of the things that you’re trained to do as a veterinarian is meat inspection. Two aspects to it There’s the welfare of animals before they die, and there’s also inspecting carcasses to make sure they’re not diseased so that cancer and infections and things don’t get to the food supply. So we had to go and learn how to do these things.
And the very first day I went into the slaughterhouse was quite horrifying. First of all those the smell of the place felt absolutely disgusting. Nobody else having this reaction I think it was possibly because I had just for several months not been eating much meat and been living a vegetarian diet. As I was hanging around with other vegetarians.
I had to have a scarf wrapped around my face to try to filter out some of the smell. And then we went through into the killing floor to have a look at the end of the day and they’d finished slaughtering animals for the day. There was a pig which had been spotted which had been quite badly injured. And the animal welfare rules say, that the animals to be killed as quickly as possible. So I saw my first pig being slaughtered, by being shot in the head and having its throat cut and bleeding on the floor.
And at that point the question or statement, “you do realize that that meat is a dead animal” is something that made sense. I didn’t actually make a conscious decision to become a vegetarian. I just went home and I couldn’t eat it anymore. We already had some meat that we bought for our meal. And I just looked at it and I realized I can’t eat this. And I think it was a combination of, as I mentioned not having it very much meat for a while, while hanging out with vegetarians. Their philosophical approach to vegetarianism had not really affected me on a conscious level.
I think the meditation practice that I’ve been doing had perhaps woken me up. Because I was the only person out of like 40, 45 people. The only one who had this kind of response.
I don’t want to have anything to do with this.
Yeah so that it opened you up in in a sense to the the suffering of someone else. Kind of like an empathetic response.
I think so yeah. I’ve been doing a combination of mindfulness of breathing and loving-kindness practice for several months. And at that point I think it opened me up in an empathetic way.
I also noticed on your website you mentioned you see your children as your spiritual teachers. Maybe you can explain that a little bit what you mean.
Well , so you’re a meditation teacher and you go and teach your meditation class. You’re friendly and understanding to everybody, even when people can be quite difficult. And you’re patient with them. It is much more difficult to maintain that sense of, I’m in public, and I’m in charge of myself and I am emotionally non-reactive, kind and patient.
It’s much more difficult to maintain that kind of equanimity when you’ve got a child who’s screaming at you. Or having a temper tantrum or really upset about something. Doesn’t want to do what you want to do. Or even when they’re sick you know. When my kids were really young and I’d have to stay up half the night, holding them up right because they couldn’t sleep lying down, because of an earache, etc.
It really tests you. Children push your buttons and they learn how to push your buttons . So it teaches you to practice patience and kindness in a much deeper level. Because when you’re doing it at the meditation class, it’s relatively easy to do.
When you’re in public and people are watching you, you’re on your best behavior. But you can also remember to be on your best behavior all the time when with your kids. And you don’t feel like anyone is watching you when you’re on your own with them.
Yeah just like at the workplace, you know it’s easier to be nice there too because you’re you’re also getting getting paid to be there and so forth.
I think sometimes the amount of time that people spend at work leads to that familiarity that breeds contempt. That’s also a very good practice place for sure. Especially at meetings, where people disagree with you, it’s very easy to get heated and to get stubborn.
And in terms of your website, what inspired you to decide to do the Wild Mind web site about meditation full time? What what makes you realize this is something that you wanted to do full time right?
It is now. It was not full time at first, it was a very part time thing for a long time. The idea for the website came to me but I was doing a master’s degree at the University of Montana. And I had this decision that I wanted to go and study Buddhism at University. I wanted to do a master’s in Buddhism.
And the reason for that was because being smart can be a bit of a problem sometimes, because it can seem quite easy to get your head around Buddhist teachings. And because you think you understand it, you don’t ask yourself the deeper questions, like do I really understand this?
On an experiential level. Does this even make sense. Are there contradictions. Because you can sometimes find yourself holding contradictory ideas in your head. And you can flip from one to the other without even realizing that you’re doing. It is very common to do that. So I wanted to be challenged to think more deeply about about the Dharma, about Buddhism.
And I was lucky enough to bump into professor of Buddhist Studies who is looking for a teaching assistant. And a teaching assistantship would pay for a masters degree.
However, and this was a real stroke of good luck. It wasn’t possible to do a pure masters in Buddhism at this particular University. There weren’t enough for credit courses available. So was gonna have to do some kind of interdisciplinary masters. And choose two different areas of Buddhism. And something else and focus on both of those areas but especially on the overlap between them and I considered various options. I was quite interested at one point in studying Zen Buddhism and so on studying Japanese. But my adviser pointed out that would take many many years to develop enough proficiency in Japanese and Chinese, which I’d also have to learn, classical Chinese, in order to be able to make any use of that.
And it occurred to me that one of the things I’d always really love doing was running businesses. Hadn’t really thought of myself as doing that. But when I was in Glasgow and involved in Dharma center there, I volunteered to run the book shop. I love the craft of taking something and making it work well. And making it appealing to people. Increasing the range of books there, expanding things, building things up
So I love that, and then moved into a Buddhist center for a number of years. A retreat center in the Highlands of Scotland when I arrived it was a very small scale operation then. Again I just love building it up and be able to reach more people and being the benefit more people.
And so I thought well maybe I could study Buddhism and business. A really intreaging thing to do. Most people do what you’re doing right now and give a little nervous laugh. Buddhism, business? Aren’t they the complete opposite? (laughing)
But of course in the Buddhist teaching there’s the 8 fold path, which is the core teaching of Buddhism, and one of the aspects of the eight fold path, is right livelihood . So that’s Buddhism and business. It’s how to make your work into a practice.
So I was studying classes in the business school and I was studying Buddhism in the philosophy department. And I was trying to think what am I gonna do with this degree. Where is this going to go. I had friends who were Buddhists who were running businesses, and I got involved. And looked at whether I might be able to apply the principles I was learning to their particular businesses.
Hello dogs! (NOTE: Sorry, the dogs were barking for a few seconds at this point..As you can see, our dogs can be troublemakers. They want to apparently insert themselves not just in pots, pans, and trashcans, but also in the podcast!)
And then it just it just came to me one day, but it just came to me that the internet at that time (around 2000) was not a good place to go if you want to learn meditation. There were people who were advertising meditation classes there, but you can’t go onto the internet at a particular time and learn how to meditate.
And I thought well you know you can. People don’t think it’s unusual to learn meditation from a book to go out and buy tons of books about meditation. People don’t think it’s unusual to go out and buy a CD on meditation. And then you can do all of those things on the internet.
So I worked on putting together a structured program, and actually wrote a grant proposal to the Council of learned societies and managed to get some grant money. Which funded me for a summer to work on writing and recording some material and I tried to make in the University first of all of it was an online course. Just within the university and then I you know that started the website and that was 2001 November 2001.
And and then it started attracting people to come to it, and and how did you do change over time, to meet whatever needs they had. Did you just do it based on whatever feedback you got?
Well things just kind of evolved. My original idea was just have a website where people can come and we can learn something about meditation. And that was it. Trouble, I was a graduate student and I could barely scrape through a week and feed myself. Never mind set a website. I had a friend who was a Buddhist was fairly successful businessman and I told them about my idea for this website and I said I’d probably need a couple hundred dollars to get started. He said, no problem at all more like this one particular time. He asked if I thought about doing meditation classes online, because he knew I was a meditation teacher. And I thought, yeah I know how I could do that. I Immediately thought about how you could you could do that with discussion forum and readings and guided meditations.
And so after starting their website I moved into having online courses . And people liked the recordings I done. So tried to put some of those CD and CD did very well. And things just gonna took off from there.
And then did the CD’s then turn into downloadable audio?
Yeah we’ve the website now has a an online store, where you can buy CDs. The online courses have changed quite dramatically. I used to work with a small number of people quite intensively. And have a daily correspondence with them about their practice. That limits you to a small number though.
Now there’s a suggested donation, no fixed charges. If you got some more money use another level of donation. And so you know we’re getting in our most recent course there is like 227 people.
You also mentioned prison, do you the same way with them?
Yeah for several years I went along to the state prison for men in Concord, New Hampshire, where there was already a meditation group. They don’t have a lot of internet access in prison, for obvious reasons. So that was actually an incredibly fulfilling thing to do. This was quite frustrating in some ways not because of the inmates that the staff was often making it quite difficult. I would drive an hour there and discover that was something else planned at the chapel that day, and no one had bothered to call any of the volunteers. So you drive an hour home again. So sometimes it it was quite frustrating.
But the amazing thing was that these guys had an incredible depth of practice, as they were living in very difficult circumstances and the Dharma practice, their meditation practice was a lifesaver. But it was actually inspirational to be with a group of people who are so committed to the practice.
It was much more satisfying in many ways then teaching meditation class in my my local Dharma center just down the road. Where you know in some cases people would come along and meditate in the evening. But that was the only meditation that they did all week.
It’s almost like that image of your hair being on fire. I have a sense that if you’re in prison you’re more willing to make a full commitment. Then in the case that you’re not in prison where you got lots of distractions and other things.
Yeah absolutely the problem became one of time and resources. My then wife and I adopted two children , and she wasn’t working anymore, because she was staying with them. Staying at home to look after the children. And a lot less money came in, and I just have to be more careful about how I spent my time. So unfortunately there was one of the things I had to withdraw.
Their group is still meeting by the other people who stepped. I also went down to a couple of prisons in Massachusetts as well to manage to get somebody else to take over.
And you also mentioned you worked with low-income teens have at one point.
That was the University of New Hampshire. There was a program there is actually a federally funded program called Upward Bound. And everyone thinks I’m saying outward bound, and think it’s about camping. It’s a federally funded program that started in the nineteen sixties. Back in the days when people had a consensus around helping people from low-income families to get into higher education, and when they saw it as a good thing. Because it would strengthen the nation, because you’re tapping into talent, that might otherwise go unrealized.
And so the program means to help teens from low-income families prepare for college. Very well actually none of their parents have ever been to college. Often their parents are quite impoverished. Sometimes now your mental health problems substance abuse problems etc. So they were great bunch of kids and I did that for ten years. I have very tentatively started doing some meditation with them. I was basically asked to come in and help teach them study skills and personal development skills. And I was a little hesitant about it at first, because it’s something that really precious to me. And the thought of taking something very precious and offering up to a bunch of people who might not appreciate it, or think it was boring or dull or something like that that was that was scary.
But I took the risk and I started introducing to meditation to the low-income kids, and found out very quickly it was their favorite thing of everything that was being taught. And they wanted more of it. It became a regular thing, and we did it in every single class. And they found that very beneficial.
Did you notice it changed them as well?
It’s kinda hard to tell, whether meditation changes people. I mean I’m getting a bunch of people I don’t really know very well I’m teaching to meditate. By the time I’m getting to know them they had only been meditating for a few weeks. But a lot of them said that they find it helpful. I have to go on their reports, rather than mine.
How do you explain Wild Mind in terms of working with habit patterns?
It was just a name. Well it’s become in a way just the name. I would explain it in terms of ecosystem for example. An ecosystem doesn’t have anyone in control of it. There was no one saying, okay we’ve got too many insects you know, let’s send in the birds. There’s no one saying, oh, there’s a clearing. Let’s plant seeds so that some trees drop. It just all you know works perfectly and beautifully.
So meditation can bring about something like that as well. First we feel compelled to meddle with our minds. Feeling like we always need to be doing something. And actually we do need to do something at first. You know we need to make some kind of an effort. But with practice you can get more of a sense that your meditation practice is just happening. It’s just something that’s just arising within you. And it can happen quite beautifully.
There can be no conscious intent to do anything. You’re just sitting there. It’s like sitting observing a forest and seeing all the life going about its business, doing whatever it does, staying, keeping in balance. And it can be like that with the mind well. You’re not doing anything but sitting there.
And sometimes even when you’re not watching you get the sense there’s things going on. I’ve had many times in my meditation practice, where I’ve become mildly distracted. And I’m thinking about something, and then I realized. Oh, I’m distracted, let’s go back to my experiences and notice what my experience is. And I find that my experience is very different from what it was before I got distracted.
Suddenly now I’m really happy. And it’s really easy to be calm. My mind feels bright and I feel energized And it’s like, while my attention was out of the way, some parts of me were collaborating to produce this beautiful experience for me to come back to.
And so, yeah there is there is a sense in which I’m using this word Wild Mind, to suggest something quite expansive. Also tend to use a lot of nature images.
I think all meditation teachers end up using a lot of nature imagery, as it is very evocative. So we talk about sitting like a mountain.
We talk about letting your mind be like water so the water. You stop stirring the water, and you just let it settle down and let it become clear and and calm. And able to reflect. You find but as water calms down, you can see into it. With your mind calming down, you can also see into that more easily.
So there’s a lot of nature imagery that tends to come into meditation practice. Again this idea, of the wild as being something spiritual.
But I don’t tend to think about why I called it, “Wild Mind” very much these days.
But it’s really nice to let meditation help you become aware of the background (nature), instead what is often the foreground (our minds). The Background comes to the foreground.
You’re also an individual coach. Is that part of the website as well?
It’s something that’s available through the website. It is something that’s fairly new for me as well. As I mentioned I did quite a bit of coaching in my early days when I first saw online courses. I mean a lot. I was doing a lot of coaching. But primarily through text. Corresponding with them pretty much on a daily basis. And that’s where I got the idea from being on the generation X dharma teachers conference this past summer. And there were a few people there who are coaching.
Folks listening to this might be thinking, maybe that’s a helpful way to have somebody like a coach, “see your back”. You’ve already mentioned your kids, and that’s wonderful. That folks folks like us who have families. They look at the back of our necks as well. They can see the parts of ourselves that we don’t necessarily notice or wanna notice as much. And as a coach you kind of do that as well, seeing patterns that someone else might not recognize as easily?
Yeah, I think that’s one of the big advantages of Kalyana Mitta (spiritual friends) or special friendship. It is interesting you look at the scriptures and you see that, “spiritual friendship is the whole of the spiritual life“. That is a very strong statement.
There’s actually very little in terms of teachings apart from that, spiritual friendship. I can think of a couple of suttas where either the Buddha either discusses spiritual friendship or praises spiritual friendship in a detailed way. But it’s not really developed very strongly. One of the advantages of spiritual friendship is it helps you to become conscious of things that you’re not so conscious of.
Is there anything else that you would like to tell people that would be listening now, who want to be free from suffering?
There are many things I could say. The first thing that springs to mind is to find some kind of balance in your meditation practice. A lot of people when we they go to learn meditation take up some kind of mindfulness practice. That’s the most common thing. So you’re sitting watching everything or paying attention to the body are you sitting watching thoughts passing through. And letting go of them.
That’s all great so wonderful very good thing to do. That’s an excellent practice. But there’s a whole other side of practice which involves working with heart. And developing more kindness and developing more compassion and developing more appreciation. And that is really important.
One of the things that I’m quite wary of in the modern Buddhist world is, there is this emphasis on the goal, as being having a particular kind of insight. And so people want to have this kind of insight. They want to see you through the illusion of self. Which is a completely valid, and wonderful thing to do. And everyone should have that experience.
But the Buddha’s ideal of somebody who’s awakened was not just somebody who has that insight and seen through the illusion of a separate self. But the Buddha’s ideal was of somebody who is like an ideal human being. Somebody who is warm and compassionate and kind. Somebody who is patient and who is able to live in a very simple way. So some of those elements tend to get lost in people’s practice because they’re focusing on developing mindfulness and insight.
But if you’re doing that, you not really aiming at becoming the kind of person that the Buddha was encouraging us to be. So you’re not really aiming for the Buddha’s goal was. So I really encourage people to take up not just mindfulness practice, but also some kind of loving-kindness or compassion practices as well.
Great advice. I know my my teachers teacher put that, is he said, “I’m not interested in your enlightenment experience. I’m interested in the day after.” (laughing)
I really appreciate your time and and your kind words, and I hope that folks can check out your website.
MF 35 – Why Authenticity and Getting Real Matters – with Mark Shapiro of the One & Only Podcast
A former marketing director at Showtime Networks Inc., Mark left his six-figure corporate job and is on a mission to bring more authenticity to the world, with a goal to inspire and empower 100,000+ people to be true to themselves and “live an epic life they’re proud of.” He is the Host of The One & Only Podcast on iTunes, creator of the Be You authenticity workshop, a heralded transformational trainer, coach speaker, and a vocal Alzheimer’s advocate.
(This is a summary transcript, please listen to the episode to enjoy the full conversation)
How did you get on a a path of meditation?
Mark Shapiro
Mark was like many feeling he couldn’t’ meditate. But keep hearing it over and over how great it was to meditate. But he went to transformational workshops where meditation was used, and fell in love with it this meditation practice, and then learned to meditate and start practicing meditation.
He considers himself emotional and flexible and wants to be present for the people around him. Needs to check with himself, so he doesn’t give his power away. Meditation allows him to ground himself and his breath, who he is, and check in with himself. To be himself vs to be one with the changing winds.
Was there a particular moment where meditation clicked for you?
Yes, there was. He was doing a sound bath, and went deeply into a meditation state. He felt so light and clear and in touch with himself, his life, and at peace. He was able to see that from a different trajectory. He could watch these thoughts as they were moving down the street.
What is a sound bath for those who don’t know this?
It is different crystals, gongs, and even a little bit of guitar. That brought him into a deeper meditative state, easier then doing sitting himself. He could then tap into that space easier after this sound bath. The sounds help to quell his thoughts.
So the sounds help to mitigate the thoughts. Yes, I’ve also experienced these sound baths here in So Cal, and it is a beautiful experience.
Yes, it’s easy to surrender to it. I find it healing and soothing. Easy to focus on, light, and to get lost in.
I like the chanting in our Zen retreats. It’s another way to let go of the trance of thoughts, and become part of a bigger body, the body of the group, community. Music is a wonderful way to get introduced to meditation.
What is your meditation practice like now?
Unregimented currently. At least 3-4 days of the week. It’s a priority for Mark though. He sits outside his house on the front deck. Close eyes, for 15-20 minutes. Listening to breath and birds, lawnmower, walking dogs. That’s just part of it. Continue to listen to it. Present to whatever sounds that come his way, he’s practicing being OK with all of that.
For example, in a public space, I also close my eyes and meditate and also drop into a meditative space. I couldn’t have done that a couple of years ago when he started meditating.
Do you also practice mindfulness or sense more presence in the rest of your day to day life?
Yes, usually when feeling anxiety it ‘s a reminder to take a few breaths. To be appreciate and re-ground himself. Whenever he feels anxiety, he’s either in the future or in the past. It’s just a reminder to see what’s around him. What’s around me that I can appreciate?
You also talk about the burning man, how this also helps you to be more and more present.
Mark loves Burning Man. It’s so incredibly unique and magical. Learned so many lessons, a years’ worth of emotions in one week. So much stimuli, synchronicity. Open to all the possibilities that present themselves. He’s more likely to communicate with people at Burning Man than at a grocery store for example. He’s more open to the possibilities in the situations at Burning Man. He does do his best to apply what he learned at Burning man into his daily life.
What are some of the other interesting things you’ve learned as a result of Burning Man?
The following is from http://burningman.org/culture/philosophical-center/10-principles/
The 10 Principles of Burning Man
Burning Man co-founder Larry Harvey wrote the Ten Principles in 2004 as guidelines for the newly-formed Regional Network. They were crafted not as a dictate of how people should be and act, but as a reflection of the community’s ethos and culture as it had organically developed since the event’s inception.
Radical Inclusion
Anyone may be a part of Burning Man. We welcome and respect the stranger. No prerequisites exist for participation in our community.
Gifting
Burning Man is devoted to acts of gift giving. The value of a gift is unconditional. Gifting does not contemplate a return or an exchange for something of equal value.
Decommodification
In order to preserve the spirit of gifting, our community seeks to create social environments that are unmediated by commercial sponsorships, transactions, or advertising. We stand ready to protect our culture from such exploitation. We resist the substitution of consumption for participatory experience.
Radical Self-reliance
Burning Man encourages the individual to discover, exercise and rely on his or her inner resources.
Join the conversation in the 10 Principles blog series.
Radical Self-expression
Radical self-expression arises from the unique gifts of the individual. No one other than the individual or a collaborating group can determine its content. It is offered as a gift to others. In this spirit, the giver should respect the rights and liberties of the recipient.
Communal Effort
Our community values creative cooperation and collaboration. We strive to produce, promote and protect social networks, public spaces, works of art, and methods of communication that support such interaction.
Civic Responsibility
We value civil society. Community members who organize events should assume responsibility for public welfare and endeavor to communicate civic responsibilities to participants. They must also assume responsibility for conducting events in accordance with local, state and federal laws.
Leaving No Trace
Our community respects the environment. We are committed to leaving no physical trace of our activities wherever we gather. We clean up after ourselves and endeavor, whenever possible, to leave such places in a better state than when we found them.
Participation
Our community is committed to a radically participatory ethic. We believe that transformative change, whether in the individual or in society, can occur only through the medium of deeply personal participation. We achieve being through doing. Everyone is invited to work. Everyone is invited to play. We make the world real through actions that open the heart.
Immediacy
Immediate experience is, in many ways, the most important touchstone of value in our culture. We seek to overcome barriers that stand between us and a recognition of our inner selves, the reality of those around us, participation in society, and contact with a natural world exceeding human powers. No idea can substitute for this experience.
Interview continues…
Mark: Giving for the sake of giving. It’s a gifting economy. People are giving things, expecting nothing in return. Example getting water when you just need it. So with 70K people attending, it’s a powerful experience. It took a couple of years, to bring the principles of burning man back into his daily life.
He loves entertaining, giving out books in daily life, and giving parties.
The other one is creativity and contribution. Burning Man unlike other music festivals is that everyone is a participant, and contributor. VS a traditional festival, where you have the performers on the stage, and the people experiencing the performance. But in Burning man everyone is a contributor, bringing gifts, artistic expressions, climbing walls, possibilities are endless.
There is also an element of creativity and self-expression. Encouragement of trying new things. Like talking in song is what Mark likes to do. Just being free to be himself.
Sounds like there’s a real sense of freedom that allows people to uncover their own innate creativity..
It’s way more than just a party. Lots of misconceptions about Burning Man. It’s a transformational experience. To grow in addition to having the best week of his year.
Yes, I wouldn’t want to disregard Burning Man. Some say it trashes the desert, others that it’s a freak show. We need to experiment as human beings, and occasionally let go of the personas, the rules we don’t even know where they came from etc. Authenticity is very important. To stop and pause and try something completely different.
Yes, that was my take-away this year at Burning Man. Applies to my life in general. To be real with myself and be real with others. I’ve found with all the masks that I wear that support me. In his 33 years on earth so far, he’s learned through experience what works and doesn’t work. The various masks, podcast host mask, friendly guy mask, professional mask etc.
He talks about his emotional experience with his best friend and ex. He tried to be detached, but it really did hurt. So it caused him to question himself. It had to do with older hurts, his divorce, his dad with Alzheimers. So when he went to that place and was truly real with himself, that is when he got to let go of a lot of pain and hurt that he didn’t even realize he was carrying around.
Being real with others, is about creating a safe space to dig below the surface with those that we love. Not to settle for one-word answers. Asking open-ended questions. Letting friends know that you are here for them, that you love them.
Yes, an authentic way of relating..
Yes, the stuff that isn’t going well in the world. In order to see what’s working and isn’t we need information. We need to see the entire picture. There’s so much happening under the surface, under our feelings. And if we’re not sharing our feelings, what we’re going through with each other, then how are we supposed to know. We’re then only seeing part of it. I’m a big advocate for creating that space, so we can best support one another.
And you’re also sitting outside reflecting on it, looking back into your life. That’s part of what retreats are like. To take a temporary refuge in another safe place, to step outside of the river of life, and looking back in to see what’s going on.
And also in relation to the school shootings, a lot of these shootings are a reflection of deep alienation. Not connecting on a deeper level.
Yes, by connecting with others, we give each other permission to be authentic and real. To share what’s really going on. I find that incredibly liberating. It feels so good to let it out.
Whether it’s the fear of this new career path. I left a 6 figure corporate job at Showtime networks to be in service of others full-time. It’s going really well, and very fulfilling. But also very challenging!
Continue to go through all the emotions. This morning, I felt some anxiety, going to be on your podcast. But I meditated, brought myself in the present, and was good to go.
Yeah, and you get yourself out of your own way.
Yeah, I use that doubt and fear as motivation to challenge myself how committed I am to my goals. When I get to that place where i’m hard on myself. I ask myself, what have you not tried yet? It unleashes creativity in me. I come up with 5-10 things I haven’t done yet, whether like reaching out to guests, or reaching to companies, or reaching out to increase my consulting business. It’s a motivation to get back in the game.
What made you decide to make a podcast about authenticity?
Mark was running away from his own authenticity for the first 30 years of his life, and didn’t even know it. I played it safe, got the corporate job, the marriage, and when that came to an end. I had to get back to the drawing board. Who am I? What’s next? What am I capable of doing. I’ve always had the desire to live an epic dream life. He knew he wanted to be his own boss, my own kind of company. Didn’t have an idea, didn’t know what value I could provide. Meanwhile doing very well in my corporate job.
Meanwhile when standing in front of a room, I was coming across as scripted and inauthentic. Lewis Howes (lewishowes.com), his mentor said, he was all professional, and monotone. This feedback hit him with a ton of bricks. That didn’t seem like part of him. He was so obsessed with getting it right, and looking good, that he didn’t let himself shine.
That example could be stretched across his entire life. He was playing it safe, focused on fitting in. Looking good, saying what he perceived to be the right thing to say, vs what he really felt. And other people could sense that he was inauthentic. That is what got him pursuing authenticity. That became a big part of his core values. Started practicing this a couple of years ago.
Learned so many valuable lessons.
When he has the courage to say what he really feels, that it feels amazing. Feels so good when he says what he really feels. When I have the courage to be myself, it builds my confidence, and this helps me feel empowered. And then I can do anything. That’s the first big lesson.
2. Second, when I’m myself, I don’t need to try to fit in. I’m naturally going to belong. Brene Brown has been saying this for years.
3. If in every moment I’m choosing to be authentic, saying how I feel. Really checking in with myself. Then over time, my life is going to resemble the life I’ve always wanted. Now after a few years, that’s what’s the results show. I’m my own boss now. I’m heading in this direction because of the courage to be authentic, and in this moment.
You’re living into your question…
4. That when I’m being authentic, I create immense value for others. Whether creating a space for other people to be real with themselves and real with me. But also, if I express how I really feel to someone., that that could be exceptionally valuable., because maybe everyone else is just blowing smoke up their ass.
You’re giving permission to people to be more authentic..
Absolutely. Those are my big 4 takeaways from practicing authenticity.
With your podcast you ask other people what their sense of authenticity is, what have you learned that you didn’t know before you started your podcast?
I’ve learned so much.
Pretty much every one has said. If there’s something you want go out there and get it. Don’t ask for permission.
Just to have the courage, and take a risk.
Failure is part of the game, part of the process. The fear of failure should not deter you. You learn from both what works, and what doesn’t.
Yes, we’ve stigmatized failure. Fear of failure, of looking bad.
I have that all the time.
What are some of the practices to go into places that are uncomfortable. Its something you have to really lean into, if just once in a while, it’s much harder. You have to nurture it and tend it.
Yes, I found myself changing my relationship with fear. But I realized from overcoming so many fears, what is available on the other side of fear. And that is tremendous celebration. New ground and opportunities.
Social anxieties and fears I used to have as well. After practicing authenticity, I realize we’re all in the same boat, we all have the same fears, insecurities. Now I find myself having deep conversations, and relationships in just a few minutes for example during social situations, and parties.
You also do workshops to help other folks draw out their authenticity, describe that?
It’s an experiential training, of about 2,5 hours of exercises. Where I primarily ask thought provoking questions. Such as, if people really knew me, they’d know this about me. Or these are my biggest fears about sharing how I really feel. How does my life look today, in relation to my biggest goals. In a scale of 1-10 how happy are you with the way you spend your time. If totally happy, they’d rate it a 10, but if 6, then what do you think a 10 is like?
Then the next question is what steps do you need to take in order to get this 10. Great way for people to check in with themselves. Also valuable for them to see how they measure themselves. They can see how hard they are on themselves, compared to other people.
Is the inner critic a big part of it?
Yes, inner critic is huge. In conjunction with going through this experiential workshop with many other people. Makes them realize we’re all in this together. We all have such similar private conversations with ourselves that may or may not serve us. When we get real with each other, and share those things. It makes me feel so much more comfortable and less alone.
It connects everyone under the surface. We’re very external focused society, not realizing what’s going underneath the persona’s. If we do realize underneath, the same fears and emotions. And connect, then it takes away a lot of the separation.
Yes, that is the way I’ve found to create the deepest relationships, is to get Real with one another!
Easier said then done!
Yes, requires two to tango. I want to lead by example, lead with vulnerability, lead with authenticity. Aim to create a space where it’s reciprocated. Sometimes I get met with resistance.
There’s a difference between transparency vs authenticity as Brene Brown talks about. To me sharing absolutely everything is more transparency than so much authenticity.
Yes, everyone’s definition of authenticity is different. Some refer to it as being present, open, like a tiger in the jungle. Then others look at it as nothing is authentic, because we’re born into the world with so much conditioning. I think it’s important to have balance. I look at it more of a barometer. And as a practice.
In terms of transparency vs authenticity. Authenticity doesn’t mean I have to share every thought I have. When someone asks me a question, it’s my natural instinct to answer it exactly how I’m feeling. But I do sometimes say out of respect, I prefer to keep that quiet.
What about you?
For me as a teen, one of the first books that drew me into finding out who I was by Ramana Maharishi. I wanted to know who I was at bottom. Not just in relation to, but at bottom. The Self the true self. Not just us as individual expressions of that Self. But also the larger Self, where we’re all parts of. I consider myself a student of this great mystery that we’re all part of.
To me that’s a lifetime practice. Both a spiritual journey, as well as individual. The individual part is also important. My teacher’s teacher says we’re all at the headwaters of our own unique streams. So it’s important to me to uncover my own self, and move from my own center. Instead of from a script or societal expectation.
So two parts, the boundless mystery, and the individual sense, contribution, expression of it. There’s only one Mark, and only one Sicco. But we’re all connected in the deep, that’s our Big and boundless and formless Self (or whatever you want to call it).
100%, yes, it’s our job to be ourselves. We’re irreplaceable.
MF 34 – The Benefits (and Challenges!) of Self-Discipline in Cultivating a Meditation Practice
(This is a summary transcript, listen to the episode for the full conversation)
Kristina and I reflect on what it takes to cultivate self-discipline in our meditation practice. What are some of the challenges we have come across, and what are some of the benefits of doing a regular consistent practice. We start off with some quotes.
Self-Discipline is needed to get up out of bed early enough to enjoy the sunset, to enjoy the world waking up!
“Like a beautiful flower full of color but without fragrance, even so, fruitless are the fair words of one who does not practice them.” Dhammapada
“With sustained effort and sincerity discipline and self-control the wise become like islands which no flood can overwhelm” Dhammapada
This type of effort of course requires commitment, consistency, patience, courage, determination, and enthusiasm.
In, When Things Fall Apart, Pema Chodron understands sila/discipline to be a “process that supports us in going against the grain of our painful habitual patterns.”
She notes that:
“Discipline provides the support to slow down enough and be present enough so that we can live our lives without making a big mess. It provides the encouragement to step further into groundlessness.
….What we discipline is not our “badness” or our “wrongness.”
What we discipline is any form of potential escape from reality. In other words, discipline allows us to be right here and connect with the richness of the moment. What makes this discipline free from severity is prajna (wisdom).”
Self Discipline, or self-control has somewhat negative connotation in the west I think. But I wanted to talk about self-chosen discipline instead of externally imposed discipline.
Discipline is often associated with punishment. However, the latin root of the word means learning disciplina teaching, learning, from discipulus pupil.
Sure, there is a dark side of discipline that is too serious, too restrictive and narrowing. I think too much of that can lead to a separation, where it could move away from intimacy, and turn into too much coldness and detachment from the world, and therefor another type of separation.
That is not what we want to talk about today. Perhaps, calling it cultivation, instead of discipline. For example, the cultivation of moment-to-moment mindfulness sounds nicer than calling it, the discipline of mindfulness. But really what it means to me is simply to practice something regularly and consistently in a structure that I chose on my own volition (or my community), and make it a priority, make time for it.
For example, without discipline, we wouldn’t brush our teeth. But because we don’t like getting drilled, we decide to give some of our time to the discipline of brushing our teeth. (Kristina shares her thoughts)
For me, when I was a teenager, I wanted the benefits of meditation, such as peace, and equanimity, but I did not have the discipline, or some might say, serious enough intent and humility to practice regularly.
I didn’t realize how serious I would need to take the practice in order to really start transforming my afflictions etc. Now I’m not saying meditation is a serious practice, simply saying that we do need to take our practice seriously, but then enjoy and take joy in the practice. You can have both serious and joy at the same time, recognizing these opposites can co-exist at the same time is part of maturity.
Back then, I’d sit whenever I felt like it, do it with eyes closed, try multiple meditations traditions and practices at once, didn’t seek out a mentor, read a lot, etc. (Kristina shares her thoughts)
As I got into meditation formally, and got feedback from a teacher and a community of practitioners. This formal at-home, as well as community practice helped me see the various gaps in mindfulness, the times where I lacked of composure. Some might call those gaps leaks. And the practice is about doing our best to create a gap-less practice.
As I practiced more, I uncovered and became aware of more and deeper levels and areas where I was stuck, or clinging, or afflicted, or forgetful, etc. So that further provided the fuel and motivation to continue to practice. I’d become aware of the tendency to hold onto illusions of separateness, fear of change, desire to grasp onto illusions, “nostalgia for samsara”, clinging to solidity of image, etc. etc.
Can I see and treat each and every “thing” as a manifestation of the “mystery” and realize non-separation? Can I see or exclaim, “not-two!” whenever I see a flower, or perhaps a rapist, or terrorist? If not, I’d have to look even deeper, and see behind the mask, behind the veil, behind outward appearances.
Anger issues when things don’t go the way I expect or prefer. Sloppiness, forgetfulness, like forgetting keys, or forgetting to close the gate, can all lead to a lot of suffering. Not cleaning up after myself, not maintaining relationships or the possessions, etc,.
Each of those instances, are reminders to get back to practicing (or polishing that jewel that we all have). It also takes discipline to remain fully engaged in each moment, even when tired, sick, physically injured, or fatigued. It is so easy to start sliding into complacency, or some type of lazyness.
Jim Rohn says discipline is the bridge between Goal and Accomplishment. Dreams get you started, discipline keeps you going.
A mentor or teacher, community helps push us deeper into understanding. I talk some more on what I think of as non-rigid discipline. Kristina laughs and we talk some more.
What’s your sense of it, what do you make of self-discipline?
Hello dogs! (NOTE: Sorry, the dogs were barking for a few seconds at this point..As you can see, our dogs can be troublemakers. They want to apparently insert themselves not just in pots, pans, and trashcans, but also in the podcast!)
