A beautifully weird conversation with the creator of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction.
Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D. is Professor of Medicine emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, where he founded its world-renown Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) Clinic in 1979, and the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society (CFM), in 1995. He is the author of many books including Full Catastrophe Living and Wherever You Go, There You Are.
His latest book, Mindfulness Meditation for Pain Relief, illustrates a range of evidence-based mindfulness meditation practices for those suffering with the challenges of chronic pain.
In this episode we talk about:
- The origins of MBSR and its relation to pain relief
- Pain vs. Suffering
- The accessibility of awareness
- The limitation of mindfulness meditation as a self-improvement practice
- The quote, “open your mouth and you’re wrong”
- Jon Kabat-Zinn’s definition of of healing
Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/jon-kabat-zinn-580
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
This is the ten percent happier podcast cast andean harris, okay, well, kids, this
was one of those very humbling interviews where I went
The whole plan and then had to throw the whole plan out the window said defend astray
and was required, because my interviewee john Cabot then is a magically unpredictable dude
deliberately or not. He delivered. For me, a great buddhist
reaching on
bandinage my expectations, which is a lesson they need to learn over and over again
I went in wanting to talk to John about his new book about managing pain with meditation,
mindfulness, and we did talk about that a little bit, but then he ended
tripping out in some fascinating, a beautiful weighs about everything from rethinking anxiety to the future of the species to the buddhas teachings
in one sentence and more? We talked about meditation
as a love affair. How do we achieve equity
he and the invitation to die now,
those of you who don't know Jon kabat Zinn Phd, is professor of
medicine emeritus at the university of massachusetts, medical school back in the nineteen seventies, he came up with something called mindfulness based stress,
reduction or embryos are, which is
a secular way of teaching buddhist meditation. John may have some quibbles without description, but a space
true, envious. Our is massively
useful and impacts in many many ways it
for millions of skeptical non buddhists to meditating gained the benefits of the practice. It also gave scientists a secular,
look of all protocol and eight weak programme for teaching meditation that secular replica bowl protocol allowed scientists
to research meditation in a systematic way, and they came up with all this fascinating information about what the practice does. Tour
physiology and psychology, and without all that research, many of us myself included, might never
started meditating so much of the credit for my own,
this may be yours can be traced back to John habits. In John has written many book.
Including full catastrophe living wherever you go there you are and coming to our senses and he's got a new book called mindfulness meditation for pain relief
In this conversation, we talked about
the origins of envy ass, our in its relation to pain relief. We talk about pain versus suffering,
the accessibility of awareness, the limitation of my phone
meditation as a self improvement practice. The quotation,
open your mouth and you're wrong,
and his definition of healing, which he thinks of as coming to terms with things as they are buckle up. Kids. This is a good one.
It kind of my mind to consider the fact that, where
to nearly six hundred episodes of this podcast, the ten percent happier podcast
That's a lot of conversations I like to think of it as a great compendium of- and I know this is a bit of a grandiose term but wisdom.
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John cabbage and welcome back to the show, thank you, don't really knows to be here always great to have you on, and I know your new
he's on pain, mindfulness, meditation for pain relief, and so it
The starting question very simple: one would be. Why pain why this subject? Well, that was.
in some way, my
entry into MBA s are with one eye
back in nineteen
seventy nine. When I was working
yet the EU mass medical center in
science lab doing molecular biology you talking
physicians, because
really interested in bringing meditation into the mainstream of medicine which-
in seventy nine would have been considered in other.
the height of lunacy you're, the visigoths her at the gates of the citadel of western civilization about to territories. So I went on talking to doctors and asking
since like what percentage? If you pay,
you feel you actually help and also
stand by what they said and neither will make
Ten percent may be fifteen percent, my god, what happened
to the rest of them, and they say
like well, they either get better on their own. They never get better answer
I said to him. Well, do you feel like it would be valuable if you had a place to send all the people that you didn't know what to do with anymore and sometimes didn't even want to see again, because it was
frustrating on both sides and a place,
where they could learn some kind of life skills to self regulate
the level of the body in the mind and heart in their income,
actions with the world because things are
oh stressful and a lot of the desert with suffering people are suffering
pain. Connection comes in part, because pain is kind of the way suffering presents itself,
as emotional pain or physical pain if there
an injury or chronic issue,
and I was speaking with people in the paint clinic you know, and as these the elegant seward drawing people with chronic pain conditions and those people were,
to a large degree falling through the cracks in the health care system, they wouldn't not getting full satisfaction with the range of treatments that were being offered at that time. So they would send them to the stress reduction clinic was what we called it.
Now called mindfulness bay stress reduction, and they would
learn how to live with the conditions that were not
magically going to disappear and often their pain?
ago level of pain,
would attenuate because they were learning to differentiate between pain and suffering.
and how much
the emotional with cognitive dimensions of pain can actually
flame and exacerbate a pain that you know
really come
from the body so this
as a kind of beautiful learning curve for people that is in some sense elementary and obvious. If your
dictator, but if you're not a meditative, it's like you need help from the outside, and we were saying well to the degree that you can get help from the outset.
That's what medicine is all about, but what about
helping yourself. What about drawing on your own deep interior resources for learning, for growing, for healing and transformation through these ancient practices that all have to do with
the cultivation of awareness of attention of deep inquiry into the night
who you actually are, and
go hard for the depths of that who regard for the depths of that who? What does that mean? I've never heard myself quite put it that way, but
We tell ourselves stories all the time about who we are and how my life is ruined. Then this is killing me, but we don't really
enquire that often about who the me is the story of me or where I'm going and how this ruin did or all of that kind of stuff. So the
Meditative awareness is really about a deep inquiry into the nature of our being, and
very often the narratives tat we tell ourselves are just
you know, surface glimpse and
often in inaccurate, read about the depth of are wholeness the depth of our beauty, the depth of our
being when we can learn how to inhabit the domain of four.
viega not just get caught in our thoughts and narratives stories, most of which
start to pay attention to it is like
it is a movie going on in your head constantly or you know, and it has to do with a lot of it's past. A lot of it's the future present moment tend to get
squeezed out a lot of the time, especially you know, so you don't
necessarily even recognize the beauty in the present moment, the rich
The relationships in the
creation and so this practice kind of just invite people to step up
the story of me and actually be the awareness that, when you boy little down soon,
you might actually be much
more than any story
Does it make any sense to you the way? I think it may
since the me better.
I've been around for a minute in this space, doing some meditation
yet I am always try to represent the listener and they may understated too. But let me just
you a little bit. How exactly can we use matter
patient to inhabit this space of awareness and then further will. How does that help us differentiate between, as you said, before, pain and suffering? Well, the great questions and
I think I would start off by saying that this is not an abstraction so that, when you are suffering when you're in pain,
is very, very real and so to offer something that you can't.
Have your mind around or sounds crazy. That's not very helpful!
Hence our embryos are from the beginning was meant to take these meditative practices, which really
As you are suggesting that we take a while to learn how to drop into and can be seen in many different
I says are key, nor special law
his door requires me to become a buddhist store, learn a whole differ
vocabulary and so forth,
That may be one person out of a hundred could do and what I,
Yes, our is about as saying no, let's like throughout the vocabulary red language all of this and make the practice is available with the intense
for, like nine,
five or one hundred percent of the people who are coming through the door to actually get it as opposed to five or ten percent
which is very often what happens in meditation centres is like the people. Stay are very small percentage of the people who come
but in the hospital you have a kind of moral and ethical responsibility to meet everybody's suffering
as if it was possible to actually
is form into wisdom not to take away the packing butter understand that space bit
in pain and suffering, and that's where awareness comes in
and we never get any instruction in how to be in contact with or appreciate our own awareness and
in summary, everybody's, his ball with it. We have it all
day long, maybe not deep sleep for most people, but all day long.
So it's not awareness itself that were cultivating it's actually optimizing access to.
Our awareness
attention is the doorway to away
Let me see if I can put it in vain
simple terms, and then you can tell me if I'm close, I think what
I you say
is he admitted
asian. We learn how to be
the raw data of the pain, the right
data of.
Our emotions about the pain ends lit that off separate that off see the difference between the
Raw data of the sensations in the emotions,
and these stories about the pain
our emotions, which is
what part of the raw data. Actually, it's the seeing function that
I forget most of the time, so you could say a lot of the time and you can pay attention to this in your life and see if it's true or not for you, you know a lot of the time. We are zoning along on autopilot, so the thoughts
the emotions and the stories they
wind up being the falling
bent of one's life
for reality, but only
as we not paying attention to the fact that
All of this is, in some sense thinking narrative.
And its generated by certain intelligence factors that we have, but sometimes, if we don't recruit other intelligence factors like.
It's great, ok, nobody, I'm not knocking thought or class.
education or anything like that, but there's this others
superpower, that's that at least is biggest thought in fact bigger and prove it in a second
and that's called human awareness and how much attention does that get in our education.
system more, the university or cooperation
cancer anyplace else. Well, you know in the past twenty years the answer
as more and more
more and more mind from this is moving into the mainstream society, whether you like it or not. What do you think it's like fully
sure enough. There is no question that we are waking up to win orthogonal dimension of experience that we ve been, for the most part, just ignorant of
we have the capacity for awareness and we can examine the
out of universe,
the inner universe in ways that absolutely markup one
we're evolving to be able to do that, and if we are not successful at it, we want involve the cockroaches, won't care
In a couple more billion years on planet earth, however hard it gets again, the cockroach
care and some other life form will emerge. But if we care about what's steep december,
the most beautiful inhumanity. Then maybe
We need to address this moment in its uniqueness and say look I know this is like we're all cells of the one body of the planet.
The body politic. However, you want a frame it and if we don't get a blood supply to all of ourselves cells, the tissue
new crosses every cell needs, inadequate blood supply. So if you take that in terms of light the planet,
every human being needs adequate blood,
supply of whatever
it is resources to be able to live a life of dignity, peace, health, well being and control.
to a larger sense of meaning and collaborative engagement, and I,
that's! What's going on on the planet, on the evolution of scale and the jury's
about how successful it will be, but
Certainly the universe could not have imagined twenty,
let's go
dan Harris now,
doing this
do what then Harris started out thinking his life is going to be a power and that's evidence, that's
I would say, data of its own like well. How did that happened under you, some kind of weird newton? No, you know this is happening
to new of millions of people, people are beginning to wake up to this.
didn't dimensions and also the level of
supervision about what I want for the sheep brief moment,
that we are alive on this planet, how to live
integrity in a way that has meaning
virtue and contributes to
the larger hole.
There is a certain way which were council
leaving a legacy for our children for grandchildren, for students for the people we a fact, because, our being
facts, other people's being in ways that
love is all about so earnest
certain way. When I take me
sit in the morning to meditate. Formerly I came to see
if, after maybe thirty or forty years sitting, is like a love affair
it's not like. Oh no now I gotta meditate for an hour to keep up the story of how
one I shouldn't meditating or have devoted diameter practice. Love affair,
get your ass on the cushion. If you don't mind my putting it that way,
then just give yourself over to the domain of being outside of time.
It doesn't matter how long it happens by the clock, but it actually
recognize and remember this hidden dimension of experience. That is inhabitable
and not only that can become your what the nurse
and his recall your default mode so that that you live, you live in awareness, embodied awareness.
Noticing the firstly recognise your part,
this larger wholesome found interconnectedness with people with the air with water.
freeze with sunlight and so
That's where compassion rises. Like wonder, income
fashion and compassion compassion for the people who can only be who they are and when they are suffering. The heart goes out to heart.
We takes a journey it reaches out. We ve all felt there because you want to be.
Somehow, and sometimes very
Strikingly, you can't the earth tat much help
His conditions have to be right to be of some use said the lad,
fear that real meditation practice life itself
and if it's not a love affair forget about it, then it becomes one with self improvement strategy.
No improving on the self, because the fact that matter is there isn't
self, in the way that we usually talk about it,
when we say I mean in mine.
They don't even have a remote idea,
but we really are so we just limited to the narrative and then you know sometimes
late at night in the middle of the night near or some kind of deep depression. You know you narratives, not true,
doesn't hold water is just like, but you cling to it like us
Lot saw me your piece of wreckage not because prevent you from drowning
But the fact of the matter is that
what point able to swim? And so that's what the meditation practice is about a sort of gifting that back to
People in ways that are so commonsensical and so much like
resident without my having to say, had or talk about it as a love affair that its in certain ways, infectious in ones like yeah,
yeah the domain of being isn't getting anywhere near the amount of
tension, that it really is required on a daily basis, and if we do that, then actually everything's.
meditation, not just sitting on a cushion or something like that, but
I know how you say good morning to whoever you live with in the morning.
Are you hold your children or your grandchildren are
What comes out of your mouth? Everything can just be
truly embrace
where awareness without any
contrivance. It's not like forcing were thinking will now have to be mindful of what's coming out of my mouth. It's not like that. It's like when you're mindful is just
There's no separation between what's commando my mouth and what's in my heart and the buddhist spain,
As for having said one of the suitors, that,
his entire teaching repertoire of well over forty years.
the encapsulated in one sentence- and I like this
on the off chance that he was kidding an unambiguous getting that maybe we should memorized. That's it.
then the senses, nothing is to be clung to, as I mean you're mine, so it's like self identification clinging does the source of pollution and the source of wanting greed ground.
Thing and the source of heating in pushing away and aversion, and that's like the disease that we're basically healing by taking a book
with kindness and with a certain degree of rigour and long term commitment. So
it's not about fixing yourself for improving on yourself, but it's about understanding who you are in ways,
go way beyond thought. The up great superpower thought, but unless you have heart and awareness, also superpowers and they're not themselves near thinking about, but direct experiencing,
then, the prognosis for the homo sapiens sapiens, not that great
I am very optimistic. I think the prognosis is grey, which is why I do what I do and when I,
Guessing why you do what you do?
so many people in the mindfulness space. If you want to call it that do what they do coming up john talks,
the limitations of my fulness meditation as a self improvement practice, the quote open your mouth and you're wrong: an invitation to die now.
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really enjoy listening to talk. You don't get it carbon out.
you for a number of reasons,
Do we often enough said the taught you know in the list?
to talk your very skilful at
looking in the listener, a sense of awe and a few minutes-
you said something that you said many things at later, when we but there's one particular thing. You said: that's provoking this question which ultimately I'll get to
about how you can meditate a kind of road self improvement. Omelette focused on this breath, then
Try to focus on the next one and grit my teeth and then try to focus and do this right and blue
blah blah can be devoid of a lot of inspiration or the bigger picture, and so
I totally agree that I can see that in my own practice.
and you won't do it won't last very long either. If you it's coming under that it won't last very long and you'll say things like one
detention doesn't work. I tried it, it's bullshit, yes, so how do we in future?
who's the wonder into our practice
Merely listening to you talk, which I think does the trick quite nicely as very sweet of you
they might be short answer would be anyway. You can, I mentioned
In Britain the outbreak bookkeepers
in breathe, breath breathe? What are you talking about,
well somebody held your head under water at the beach for even a fraction of a minute.
in very short order. The only
thing in the entire universe that you would care about, would be the next in breadth, and you will do everything
To make sure that in breath becomes a possibility anything,
and yet we forget that you
one breath away from being out of here, so the mirror
I was in the wonders: it's just endless, we're talking about
like the beauty of science and also the beauty of art, because meditations is quite form and is often expressed more in poetry than anything else, so maybe it's appropriate to point out that law.
so poets per week to what we speaking about which, at a certain point, words one.
Thank you any further. That's why poetry even exists, because the poets there com
assignment is to put things into words that are impossible to put into words and when the great ones do it
whether shakespeare at Dante or anybody else. It's like this
do it. I mean it's like you know: it's boggles the mind because it transcend.
the mind the thinking minded ways. So this is
molly dickinson? If it's all right to offer it
and have a title which is known by his first line me from myself
to banish, had I art,
pregnant ball, my fortress onto all heart, but since
myself, assault me: how have I peace, except by subjugating consciousness,
since we are mutual monarch above that way,
mutual me and myself how this be, except by abdication me of me.
I saw you can ask yourself how much of the time in your heart of hearts may be only at three o clock in the morning. Do think that this way or feel it that you not actually being true to yourself.
because you're too busy to distracted too much in your phone too much on you too, too much in toxic relationship whatever it is you create on.
welfare or barriers between me and myself. You banishing that part of me from myself to ban
had I art and of course you know, as I understand it, with Emily Dickinson, she had a very you
challenging and heartbreaking love affair,
We all know something about that from our youth. At least and.
How much we define ourselves by the love of another that that's not actually such an effect
The way to develop a stable relationship is gonna. Last over decades
as leaning it's like trying to make two crutches stand up in spain,
by leaning against each other, not stable. You gotta learn how to stand on your own. In europe,
humanity and not banish me for myself. What do you think she met?
mutual monarch, I love that phrase. To always enough, beautiful were mutual monarch.
Who is me and myself? What's the by forecasts?
well, I think it means buddha nature, its original nature. So
when neutral manner means there never was a separation
We are in charge here with a ruler, whereas the throne, but when we separate ourselves from myself, then we're abdicating large parts of our self robber, bligh used to talk about their said speak about another
It would like totally amazing robber, bly used to say everybody's born with little black bag over his shoulder and open
the course of their life, all of the things that they told their bad or they shouldn't do this or their no good or all of those sort of things. That kind of other people. Wool tried tat, be helpful about, but then
the toxic you take them, and you stuff them, because you don't look at me. That's that's you stuff it into your bag,
at the time you're in your thirties or forties, you've got a bag. That's like so long that when you walk into the elevator and the doors close on the bag, it's so long and it's so heavy and you're dragging it around everywhere and this
is the kind of story
of me when
believe what other people projected onto us, whether its positive or negative. I mean the positive is just as toxic as the negative and we see
So many people become
worship by their followers. And then you know just
all into total on ethics
behavior disharmony and so forth and surprise. Well, projections are toxic to half the actual embody. What is that
offering, and that means understanding
we're mutual monarch so to speak, yeah on a relative level. There's me and myself right, but on an absolute level, it's beyond words. So again, son's name used to say open your mouth and you're wrong can be talked about open your mouth and you're wrong. I mean that that is such a nice corrective
against the epidemic, the pandemic of certainty that I see it our culture, it's like I'm right, you're, wrong. Everybody else is wrong for the people in my tribe, while theirs
I mean my mise also like at the heart of dualism, their self,
there's other suggested dualism, and that
expresses on a lot of different levels, but on the social level, it's us versus them. Ok, it's us versus them and tribalism, just as your saying and
in the evolution of human beings, people
kill each other over that kind of stuff or figure out ways to sort of make peace
but there's been an evolutionary art. That's why keep coming back to the serve evolutionary nature of this that?
yeah we're learning how to grow out of that too
I bought thing when there were maybe like a million human beings on the planet altogether, because now it so
and billion
they don't have spears
have nuclear weapons and so
we need a report. We need the kind of reassess like what is our karmic assignment here as the species and the hippocratic oath is.
Not to come back to medicine and envious are in the hospital. The hippocratic oath is a very good place
start, even though it's not always honoured in
you know the actual embodiment of it, but its first to know her
and how would you even know if you're doing harm unless you are aware, unless your mindful and unless you are heartful, because
if you're, harming another person saved by your words were by even a look. They do to notice
and you don't notice that you form that person that just perpetuates suffering. But if you catch it, then you can do all sorts of things you ve apologize
if it's after the fact in a sincere apology and learn from it and not do it down the road when you get triggered,
speak, feel defensive, and then you wind up lashing,
older, just stupidly, saying something. That's really hurtful to another person.
Disregarding other ring. All that comes from tribalism and were you
karmic assignment is to our group
wet and the only way to do it is exercised the muscle of mindfulness of heart from this amendment
take responsibility and live this practice in it
ethical way, you know first, do no harm and again
how would you know it unless you are aware,
then that in certain sense reaffirms living
might be. What do you know the nature of possibility, embodied possibility says nasa come dream, think that a future, but it's
right here right now in no time, so you not
you sit down to meditate just for anybody used like listening to this dimension of it in notice. How much you might be
bringing to that sitting down that now. What am I supposed to do? You know what I mean
was the feel. How can I feel good and stuff like that, and although that is irrelevant, and just like this now feeling what's he had to be felt?
seeing with you to be seen knowing what
to be known, knowing, what's not known and just being
came with that in no time. So it's not like you
the story out of that. But it's just like this moment this moment and something deeper
transformative unfolds when we give ourselves over to that kind of the rest
taking up residency in awareness all we need
is to begin this moment, and the next moment will take care of itself and we do need to fill it or pursuing it,
push anything away. Now what yeah and then stay open, keep your hard open, keep your eyes open, keep
all your senses and see what might be possible not just become sick, the adventure of a lifetime but you're here for it rather than
just before you die as the roof said,
Lastly, in walden you don't wanna just before you
wake up and realise that you haven't lived that you were living in the story of me
and it was wrong- it wasn't that complete story wasn't true, but it was a prison and now you die. So that's why
in the the tradition and romano harsh. You actually did this when he was sixteen years old. He lay down the coffin
and decided,
ok, I'm gonna just die now and he woke up. Apparently that's the story and
seems to be confirmed by. However men
decades. He lived afterwards and taught, but that
I your yoga of all the eighty four thousand main yoga pauses and ten variations on each one of those yoga possessed. They say the hardest
of all the other policies, is the corpse pose
just lying on your back: okay, because the middle
the tension. Why do they call it? The corpse pose? Isn't that a little on the model inside well know who hits
it's actually incredible gift. The invitation is die now die now to say the future die now to the past and then wake up into the present. That's what the court,
this really is a guy to all of that stuff. The me from myself to banish and border that warfare
that concern within ourselves wanting to have the perfect life when you already in some states, have it and it's a miracle
the body itself is a miracle, never mind the mind. The family have children,
old age in everything and ass. Well,
realisation is all about wake. You realize it.
Then don't bill the big story about enlightened,
to him even greater because that'll
in prison, you as well as anything else and give you
seriously wrong ideas about what this is all about? Coming up john talks about equanimity
ray labeling, your anxiety and his definition of healing hello. There pike s listeners, my name is just a long, I'm an actor, but I also have a pike s. Good life is short of undutiful. Couple years, my brother christian, we ve been having so much fun. In fact that we decided to do another one, a spin off show. We should say what the name is right. Now, it's god. Life is short. Her two very important part of this proof tat. That's my brother, it that's him! That's christian, and he you know he keeps me honest
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You know ending the war between
draw monarchs realising that you
What you need right now and that's very appealing to me as somebody who is quite anxious- and you know I can think back to see,
one of the more operatic moments for me on my various meditation retreats and
the common denominator, among all of the moments that I might call, a quota quote: break breakthrough, which a probably term the is a feeling of everything's. Ok,.
and yet I go back to my life and I'm still dealing with- are quite dogged sense of fear and so
when I hear you talk on both inspired and feeling a little bit like a failure. Ok,
go to the everything's. Ok part of it. What do you mean
by everything's. Ok,
Well, I'm not in that mind state right now, so it's hard for me to summon it but yeah. I guess it's just said
real equanimity, a sense of like I can handle whatever comes up, I'm not in control of it, but I can be cool with whatever happens
so things are as they are. Basically, yes, yes,
and you mentioned equanimity, which is a very powerful space that is
habitable with end is coming
with wisdom, where you see that
nature of greed data.
Delusion and its key,
success in terms of suffering has been ongoing, but when it comes to just
The thing is as it is, that doesn't mean that you don't act. It means that you act from a place of boundless spaciousness where it's fine to
recognize that there is anxiety to you know that, like here in- and I still have to do this this in this- and
challenging in, and people ray
act in one way or another. So it's not like that stuff doesn't still protein
What changes is how you are in relationship to it?
including how your relationship with I'll say
this way your own anxiety, although it's not yours, it's more like a weather patterns in the mind, but when we
personally, then it becomes my anxiety and just to notice
france, between my anxiety and this
cloud of contracted feeling that overcoming
joy on my back in my face and comes with a lot of sorrow or fear, and then all of a sudden,
like a snowstorm or a blizzard or you know rain, and it's just
the weather patterns. You don't have to take it personally. In my own experience, I found that over time
that's really helpful. I may anxiety arises the times and if nothing
self. Foe, one's loved ones for people
cares about, you know the. What? If the oh, my god, no in all this stuff stuff, is the the reality and as you're saying this, is it
this is the way it is. It's always been this
only now- it's this way with more beauty and more destructive power, so
challenge is always the same home. Am I or how are we going to be an wisely?
We should do it,
and so then the anxiety you put the welcome matter for its. If it's here, it becomes an object of our meditation practice
welcome anxiety? Let's let it just do with thing we're done
how to get rid of it will pursue it, but we just let it
itself out as a storm and then have you have at the thought afterwards, like almost
so anxious about what the peculiar you don't say until then
finally get anxious and those like name. I got the same goddamn thing. So that's kind of life
it's funny were laughing about it, but
we're not laughing about it. We were in the midst of something like that
That's where remembering what the practice offers is in no time
it's like really liberating its limits.
Reading of the suffering associated with the entire or what sort of this
sensation. If we're talking about physical pain, acute physical pain turned towards it
open to it and put the welcome about it. Just
this new degrees of freedom. It does it make everything better, but it gives us new degrees of freedom with working with that and that's my
The definition of the word healing is not
fixing not curing making
The way it used to be when I was twenty years younger, but coming to terms with things as they are, and so how did we come to terms with the fact that I am
anxious or depressed or whatever and part of it is like. You could ask well just the way
who's dying. You could ask in the corpse post your desk, whose anxious whose depressed
and then you see the story of me and then you see,
The emptiness of the story of me: it's like empty of any kind of essential nature, and then it's kinda, like it like falls apart, is like a constructed.
Making out of thin air
You see the
impersonal, empty nature of it, but it's a real experience is not coming out of some kind of philosophy or some kinda thing you read about
You know the role of emptiness in meditation practice, but it's the nature of reality and
the space of awareness is not just as we
said boundless and centre.
So just like the universe.
But it's also mostly empty. I mean it's really empty,
And it's also another word:
and they would befall because it's absolutely full of possibility- and I just love that
because it's kind of like
It is healing it's a way for us to come to terms with enormous levels of pain and suffering and then do what we can and not beat ourselves up for what we can't
and then the ark would be coming back to
yes, are you come Tenby Assad because yourself,
are you in pain of one kind or another in the hospital for a week,
once a week to inhabit
our class and you learn the stuff,
her here about it may be for the first time you never read any books, and it's like you start to learn something about other people, because you listening to other people talk about their suffering. We almost never get to hear from strangers about that
said their suffering is like jaw dropping, and then you realize you're part of a much larger circle here. So that learning
what does learning due to us. Why is education some point because we grow as an outcome of learning, something
Two into together
rose into four.
And a realisation that two into his four? Ok, that's like new, so we learning growing
Another growing is that coming to terms with things as they are, we can't just fix everything, but we can contribute in whatever way, can
And out of healing comes transformation that it is safe
listen, you always were only you not because they wordsworth put at youth.
Recognize discordant elements that now moving one society in also it's like things, become unified and
you are who you always were a but its embodied for now, and the next moment takes care of itself. If you take care of this
and it's a lifetime adventure.
Lifetime love affair. Far as I can see-
and made it to the end? Yet I I can't reveal the entity, but many,
people have and feel incredibly privilege
to be living at this point,
kill the time where
is really a potential renaissance of wakefulness and compassion around
missing on the planet in the face of all this darkness and destruction and the
challenges to the earth itself.
think we're equipped were really well equipped to thread this needle
and I think that's why, having a pocket
It's a good idea, because somebody's gonna be listening,
It is, I don't know it's a nest.
Jerry. I, like people, just listen and then act and not so much
dan Harris or me. He they connect with themselves through a conversation like this, and that is part of the helios transformation
and we're all doing what we can and its
insanely, beautiful and
love that weaken been in relationship in some weird way here, for so many decades and in her that
because, in the end, the adventurer unfold. I'm grateful for grateful for that, for sure am grateful to you for taking the time to do this by cast. Thank you. Thank you. The absolute pleasure for me.
Thanks again to John covered them. Thanks to you for listening to us a solid and go into your podcast,
layer and rate or review us or both five stars would be nice. It's kind of like loop,
Thanks about everybody who worked so hard on. This show ten percent happier
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Transcript generated on 2023-04-07.