#156 Jack Kornfield: Finding Inner Calm
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You're invited to quiet your mind and to set your own best intention. If you were to set an intention of what really matters to you most, it becomes a touchstone for you. I mean, it can be as simple as, I vow to be kind, or I vow to live with more wakefulness and attentiveness to myself and others, or with more respect. It can be that simple.

And then when you get to a place of struggle, you take a pause and you say, what's my best intention? And it shines a light and it gives you a new direction.

Welcome to the Knowledge Project Podcast. I'm your host, Shane Parrish. The goal of this show is to master the best of what other people have already figured out. To do that, I sit down with people at the top of their game to uncover the useful lessons that you can learn and apply in life and business. If you're listening to this, you're missing out. If you'd like special member-only episodes, access before anyone else, hand-edited transcripts,

and other member-only content you can join at fs.blog.com. Check out the show notes for a link. Today, I'm speaking with Jack Kornfield. Jack trained as a Buddhist monk in the monasteries of Thailand, India, and Burma. He's taught meditation since the 70s and is recognized as one of the best in the world.

I've wanted to talk to Jack because of the inner voice that's always in my head. Perhaps you have this inner voice too, the one that's constantly judging you and seemingly at war with yourself, the one that's worried about what other people think, the one that feeds your emotions, your destructive patterns, and gets you caught up in the problems of others and the world. This conversation is about finding inner calm. So many of our problems, even our physical ones, come from our inner state.

When we're calm on the inside, we don't pick fights, we're not passive-aggressive, we're not creating or getting caught up in drama, and we're healthier. Calm in this sense isn't the absence of conflict or stress, but rather the ability to deal with it in healthy ways rather than destructive patterns. It's time to listen and learn.

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Let's jump right in. You trained as a Buddhist monk in the monasteries of Thailand, India, Burma. What was the experience like and what memories stand out as transformational when you look back? I went there right after university. I'd graduated from Dartmouth College and it was during the Vietnam War.

And I didn't want to go in the military. It was still the draft. I didn't either want to kill people or get killed. So I asked to go in the Peace Corps to a Buddhist country because I've been studying all of that. They sent me to Thailand. I learned to speak Thai and Lao. And I found this great teacher. And I said, can I come and learn from you? And he said, sure, you want to come as a monk? And I said, all right.

It was a wild forest on the border of Thailand and Laos, pretty far out in the middle of what was still then quite unmodernized world. And I'd been there a few times as a lay person and got some teachings. And he said, okay, now you're coming as a monk. I hope you're not afraid to suffer. And I thought, that's a pretty weird greeting, right?

And he just laughed. And he said, there's two kinds of suffering, the kind you run away from that follows you everywhere, and the kind that you face. And that's the gateway to freedom. If you're interested, come in. It was an ascetic forest monastery. We lived a quite scheduled, in a certain way, and very rigorous training of the kind you might read about as end monasteries as well.

The bell in the forest would ring at 3 or 3.30 a.m., and we'd walk these narrow paths. In one of the forest monasteries, we would use these little sticks to tap the paths so the cobras and snakes would hear you coming and move off the trail. Then we'd sit in meditation places.

for a time and then get prepared just before dawn to go out with our alms bowls and walk five or ten miles barefoot back and forth to one of the villages nearby. And the villagers would wait and put food in the bowls. And we'd come back and eat that and clean up and then do a day of meditation or of

community work of sewing robes or things like that. So it was quite disciplined. And then at least once a week, we'd sit up all night in meditation. So the experience was very different than anything I'd ever had before. What I'd learned was

in an Ivy League education, was half of what I needed in my education. I learned philosophy and history. I did some mathematics and I was doing pre-med for a while, so science things. I said, but nobody taught me what to do with my anger and rage at my violent father. It was all stored inside. Nobody taught me how to have a

kind relationship or to listen with some compassion. No one taught me what to do with the kind of fears and anxieties that come up for all of us as human beings or even how to be with myself in a deep way in my own body and heart and mind. I said, so it's as if I had half of the curriculum of a wise education and I needed the second half. There's so much I want to dive into there.

I think let's start with, I mean, were there moments you wanted to quit? We all have moments when we want to quit where it seems like it's just impossible to keep going. And I'm sure you had many of those moments. How did you keep going? Oh, I did. I remember I got malaria, which was reasonably common in those forests. And I was lying on the floor of my hut, which is, you know, it was about,

six feet by seven feet or something tiny little hut in the forest with a tin roof and quite wretched and one of the monks nearby had gone to tell the the teacher and he came to visit me and he he he spoke in mostly in the Lao language which is very kind of laconic and straightforward and he looked at me and he said um Kaiba which means you're sick I said yes he said

"Tuba, is it hard? Are you suffering?" I said, "Yes." And he smiled and he said, "Yeah." He said, "This is suffering, all right. We've all had it. It looks like it's probably malaria." I said, "Yeah." Then he looked at me and said, "Makes you want to go home and see your mother, doesn't it?" I said, "Yes."

And then he looked at me, he said, you know, you know how to do this. We all have gone through this. I'll send the medicine monk, but this is a part of your training and you can do it. And he smiled and I just felt this transmission of somebody who'd lived in the jungle for years with malaria and tigers and things like that saying, hey,

Go for it. I want to dive into some of the emotions that you were talking about earlier in terms of anger and rage that you felt with your father. I mean, we all have a lot of very strong emotions. What skills sort of help us deal with our emotions? My father was a somewhat brilliant scientist. He was a biophysicist who helped design some of the first artificial hearts and lungs and

He taught medical school for a bit. He worked on space medicine. But he was also paranoid and periodically rageful and violent, very abusive to my mother. He would throw her down the stairs.

She hid bottles behind curtains so that when he came at her, she could reach for a bottle to defend herself. She had four boys. We didn't know when he came home which father we would get, the terrifying one or the sort of normal one. My strategy, each of us brothers had our survival strategy. Mine was to be the peacemaker in the family.

try and calm things down. I still do that for a living. That's a whole other story. And so when I got to the monastery, I considered myself a very peaceful person. And there I was sitting in meditation for quite a few hours a day in this remote place and being in a community. And I started to get irritated by folks around. And then I started to get angry. And it was an anger out of proportion to what was happening.

And I started to get quite angry. And I realized, wait, I thought I was a peaceful person. So I went to the teacher and I said to Ajahn Chah, my teacher, I said, you know, I'm starting to feel really angry at stuff that's happening around. What should I do? And he smiled. He said, good. What do you mean? He said, listen, go back to your hut. It was a hot season, tin roof. He said, close the door and the two windows.

Wrap yourself in all your robes. And if you're going to be angry, do it right. And just sit there until you know anger, until you can hear the story it tells, the many stories, until you can feel the energy of it, you know, pulsing through your body, until you can find a way to actually be with it and not run away from it. So that was the beginning of the training of dealing, in this case, with that particular emotion.

To answer more generally, because that was your question, what helps is to begin to trust our capacity to be present for the emotions that we have. Because a lot of us grew up either suppressing them or being afraid of them, that's on one extreme, or getting volatile because they sweep in and take us over. And one of the great gifts of mindful awareness, or even mindful loving awareness, because it's got kindness in it,

is that as you train and sit, and it doesn't take a lot in meditation for your emotions to show themselves, you learn to, the neuroscientist called, you learn to expand the window of tolerance. So the first step is to recognize what emotion is there, and we were actually taught to begin to name them.

anger, rage, fear, longing, love, delight, joy, tenderness, anxiety, amusement. I mean, I've got a list of 500 emotions to begin to recognize them, to feel as I did in that hut where I feel them in my body, what stories they tell, to make space for them so that they become like visitors rather than catching us up.

And this takes a bit of training, like anything, if you want to learn to play guitar or code computer. And it really changes your relationship inside so that sadness comes. And first you can recognize it. Oh, here's sadness. You name it. Sad, sad. You give it space. You see its story. It tells it'll always be this way. And you know why this happened and so forth. And you become the...

mindful witness of it, the kind witness that says, oh, this is sadness. And then something really wonderful also begins to happen. You don't take it so personally. At first, it's all about you and who did you wrong or right or who left you or what loss there is, which is genuine. We have our grief. But then as you learn with mindfulness to be present,

for emotions, you realize that they're not just yours, they're ours, that this is part of the grief of the world or the joy of the world or the longing of the world, and that you share in that with humanity. And it gives a kind of spacious perspective

and a greater ease or even graciousness with emotion. Is the moment when you sort of witness them, is that almost like perspective taking where you're sort of like stepping outside of yourself and you can see it through a different frame? Well put. Yes, it is. The only thing I would add is sometimes perspective taking is more mental. You sort of tell yourself a story. Okay, this is, you know,

loss or grief, lots of people have it. But the perspective taking can also include, this is what the body feels like when grief sweeps over. You know, this is what the heart feels like, so that it's in the body attention as well as the mental perspective.

That's fascinating. I have a theory that the way that we talk to ourselves matters, right? That inner voice we all have. And I know it's just trying to protect us. But that narrative, it often goes into the drama triangle or these patterns that are not helping us.

How do you think about that? It's true and deep what you say, how we talk to ourself, because most of us have a whole running commentary going on. And one of the beautiful things is that in learning mindfulness, you start to actually become conscious of that rather than just repeating the patterns of it. And as you become conscious of

then another interesting possibility opens, which is you can see which of these thoughts are healthy and helpful and which of them are unhealthy or destructive. And you get a chance to then, with that spaciousness, you go, oh, there's that pattern. Since a teenager, I've felt

shitty about myself because I didn't think I that my hair wasn't thick enough I'm looking at you on the screen and we're we're both guys without much hair on our head you know and you have that whole story and then you hear I hear that story and go oh yeah I know that story is that a helpful story um that there's something wrong with me you know is it is it is it even true

And I see it and I say, okay, thank you for the story. I'm not going to go there. Not exactly like that. You said something also really important in your comment, because our thoughts try to keep us safe.

In all kinds of ways, try to keep us safe from pain, from difficulty, from humiliation, from loss and so forth. And try to help us get everything around us that will protect us and keep us safe, whether it's money or a place or something. So even when I see, or especially maybe, when I see what seem to be unhealthy thoughts, instead of adding judgment on top of it,

I can say, "Thank you for trying to protect me," or, "Thank you for trying to keep me safe. I'm okay. You can relax." And then I go about planting better seeds than that in my heart and mind. Is there a way to go about planting those seeds where we can acknowledge or recognize our story? We can see the impact it's having on us. We can even witness it. But then how do we go about substituting one story for another?

Maybe a destructive story for a more productive story. So the first step, of course, is just to recognize them and then to tune in a little bit to the fear or the pain that's behind them. So you drop from the story down into the emotion that keeps it going. And to acknowledge that, oh, there's worry or fear or grasping or confusion or those kinds of states.

And you bring a kind attention to that. And you say, okay, almost as if to pay respects, thank you for trying to take care of me. I'm okay for now. You can relax. Then the next step is, so that's sort of the mindfulness process.

response, where you step out of it or you become bigger than that, you become a field of awareness, of loving awareness, then the next step comes from a complementary practice, which is loving compassion. And that's a training in which you practice regularly, envisioning one at a time, starting wherever it's the easiest, people that you care about and wishing them well.

And you picture, you know, when your children or your partner or wherever it's not so conflicted to start with where their love is natural. And there's a series of kind of training phrases one would get in the monastery of may you be safe and well, may you be healthy and healed, may you be happy and peaceful at ease, may you be held in love.

And you do that for a while for one person, you pick another, another. And as you practice it, it becomes a kind of response that you can draw on. So there you see the unhealthy thoughts, you recognize them, you say thank you. And then you can do that toward yourself. There's a whole training in mindful self-compassion in which you realize that you share a common humanity of struggle with everybody. We all have it.

You know, we all get frightened. We all get caught up in things. So first you say, let me hold this with compassion, feel the suffering of it, and then wish yourself well. And this well-wishing, it's not, at first it feels mechanical, which is totally fine when you practice piano, it feels mechanical for a while or, you know, but after a while it becomes easier and you have it as a

not just as a resource, but almost as a default, as a place that you can call on and rest in. Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, who is this great Vietnamese Zen master that died recently, talked about it this way. He said, in the heart and mind, there are all kinds of seeds. There are seeds of

joy and love of connection, of creativity, peace or well-being, of caring, of strength. But there's also a whole set of seeds of fear and anxiety, of anger or rage, greed or grasping, and so forth. He said, how you live depends on which seeds you water. If you water and tend those healthy seeds,

Those are what will grow in you, and those become who you are in your response to the world. So it's not by accident, if you will, as much as, because we all have our history and our sufferings and our struggles and our good parts, but now, who will you be?

It seems like it's a lot easier to feed those negative seeds than to feed the positive ones. And as you were talking, one of the things that I was thinking about is often, and maybe it's just me and other people don't feel this way, but sometimes I feel undeserving of positive emotions for some reason. Undeserving is one, you know, if you're saying it's your perspective on it,

but actually it sort of snuck up behind and tells you, yeah, this is really the truth. When in fact, it's one of those unhealthy thoughts is actually all that it is. I'm unworthy. And I remember being in a teacher meeting that we helped to organize with the Dalai Lama decades ago. There was a group of us who were Western meditation teachers. And at one point we said, so

What do you suggest we do about all the self-hatred that comes up for many students? So this is taking your question, you know, even one step further. And he got confused. He said, self-hatred. And he went back and forth with his translator. He said, how many of you have experienced this? And almost every hand went up. And then he said, you know, we don't even have a word for that in Tibetan.

We don't get taught that. So we had this whole conversation about compassion and self-compassion. He said people might think self-compassion is a weakness.

He said, but in fact, when you hold your humanity with a tender heart, with genuine compassion, then you can also hold others that way and you become a force for what's beneficial in the world. But you need to be able to do it in yourself as well. Is self-compassion acceptance? Self-compassion has several parts to it. It is acceptance. And there's beautiful trainings. Chris Gerber at Harvard and Kristen Neff have a whole course

whole beautiful training you can find online on mindful self-compassion. And it has steps, first of all, to really listen to those voices that you talked about that play so often and notice how often and how many or what stories they tell that are judgmental. And then, of course, you could say, stop that. I hate all that judgment. Go away. How do I get rid of it? But what's that? It's more judgment, right?

So instead, you turn almost as if to acknowledge it and say, all right, I see you. And I see the fear or the struggle or the pain behind it. And already that acknowledgement and the kindness starts to allow it to change. Then there's a reflection on common humanity that you realize not only are you and I the only guys around,

who are bald and it's not something you did wrong. It's just part of, this is the human species. We have fur in some places, not in others. And that's how it works. And you start to see, oh, this isn't about me. This is just about the fact that we all go through stuff and it becomes way less personal. And then you bring in the cultivation of compassion for everybody who's lost in self-judgment. And in this process,

it starts to shift the interior. It starts to shift the way you hold yourself. And a kind of confidence grows that's different than sort of brash confidence. I mean, I have a lot of confidence. That was one of the

Things I inherited from my father that was good. I don't want to paint them as all bad because nobody's all bad in that way. But you get a growing confidence that's not so much about, look how great I am.

There's a kind of dignity again, that nobility from that Buddhist phrase or text that says, yeah, I am who I am, and you feel a certain kind of self-respect or worthiness in it. And it's a beautiful thing to shift from self-judgment to a sense of

I want to come back to something you said earlier, which was emotion keeps your story going. Does the strength of our emotions reveal anything about what we're feeling? So like sometimes you can feel...

uh slighted and it doesn't affect you but sometimes you'll feel slighted in a particular way and it almost like hits at a part of your identity or a part of how you see yourself and then you have a stronger reaction to it yeah and that has to do with the conditioning from your past somebody might say hey you know and say something that's a bit of a slight and you know it's not even true and it just rolls through you and someone else

says something as you say and it's something that reminds you even unconsciously of pain you experienced before years before something like that and you know you react

So it's a signal that that pattern is there in you, that trauma or the past and that strength of the reaction, just as you point out, kind of shows that. It doesn't mean it's bad or good. It just says, okay, that's something that's there. And if you're not conscious about it, then you realize it continues to play out.

There's part of us that already is witnessing our life from a, you call it perspective or mindful place that says, oh yeah, I'm really caught in that, this one again, aren't I? You know, whether it's around food, whether it's around addiction or whether it's around fear or whether it's around, you know, certain kinds of patterns or needs or things. But there's another part of us that can see it.

And gradually, as we learn, can even be a little bit bemused, like, oh yeah, caught in that one again, or there we are. And what the invitation of inner training is, is to shift our identity, you talked about it, from being the one who's always just reactive by habit and able to step back and see, oh yeah, there's that habit, and that's not who I really am.

And we already know this in some deep way, but it's beautiful that we can train the heart and mind, we can practice this so that it begins to liberate us in ways. And less frequently do we get caught in the patterns that are unhealthy. It's interesting, as you said that, I was thinking...

Often our days spiral because of one of these events, right? Somebody slights us in a meeting or somebody cuts us off driving to work and, you know, that inner sort of road rage comes on. And then what happens is the rest of the day, we don't react the way that we want to. We're not present in the way that we want to. And so it seems like almost all of our problems come from our inner state. And if we get out of balance, we're

Putting that back in balance really quickly is key because if our inner state is calm and fulfilled, we don't sort of pick fights or create drama or keep score. So in a practical way, for a few decades, I also worked as a therapist. And one of the things that I did was

was have people sit quietly with me for five minutes before we launched into our therapeutic conversation. And it wasn't like, okay, I'll be the meditation teacher now, and you close your eyes and you have this state or something. I just wanted them to get quiet. Because if they came in and somebody had cut them off and they were filled with the road rage, um,

They could hardly listen at that point to themselves or to me. They were just caught up in it. And it didn't mean we couldn't deal with the road rage or how it reminded them of whatever, their father, I might say, since I have that. But it allowed them to quiet down a little bit. Wherever they came from, usually it was just a busy day or getting the kids off or meeting with the boss or the employees.

It allowed them to quiet down a little bit and we could have a conversation that was much deeper, that would not start with just the superficial what happened, you know, this morning. There's a great gift in this for those who are listening. The language we use is a mindful pause. It's just what you described, that when you find yourself being reactive or set off or triggered from kinds of languages, you can learn things.

to take a pause, to step back or even step away. Excuse me just a moment. I've got to, you know, got to do something, go to the bathroom, whatever, or just take a few breaths. And we know this capacity. And as you point out, it serves us really well because without it, unprocessed in some way, it'll flavor our whole morning and we'll snap at people or we'll judge ourselves or things will look more dire than they need to because that's coloring our experience.

And the great thing is that it doesn't take very long. A mindful pause can be a few breaths or a few minutes, but it transforms us in a way. One thing that came to mind when you said that is often what gets us in trouble is we react without reasoning, right? We are animals. We are instinctive. We have these biological tendencies and impulses.

And learning to pause creates a space for reason to come in. And it also puts things in the proper perspective, or it seems to put things in the, you know, it's not the end of the world that I got a parking ticket or, but we carry these things with us if we don't consciously do that pause. Is in your experience, are there ways that we can create the habit of that reflective pause so that we don't bring the weight of whatever,

that we've experienced during the day with us forward? You know, I'll amplify the question just a tiny bit. What if it's an unjust parking ticket? Hey. Those are the worst. Exactly. It's not fair. But then you don't want to go to court because it takes like three days out of your life and you might not, whatever. But anyway, so there you are. And this is not a huge deal. Yes, there are. And in a way, again, you're pointing back to...

the capacity to train the heart and mind. I was invited to the first White House Buddhist leadership gathering toward the end of Barack Obama's presidency. There was about a hundred of us, and part of it was, you know, talking about serving communities so

Any of these teachers and communities were working with the homeless or, you know, feeding people or working with kids who didn't have the support they needed or doing all kinds of beautiful stuff. But they were also teaching meditation in most cases. And I was invited to be one of the last speakers to kind of sum up what had happened. And I talked about the wisdom behind

What in Buddhist tradition is called a wise society. It goes back thousands of years. A wise society, people treat one another respectfully and they listen to each other with respect. They care for the vulnerable. They take care of the environment. These are things that are part of this ancient text.

I said, but it's not just Buddhist. You can find it from Lao Tzu and the Confucians, and you can find it from the Iroquois Nation and the indigenous people, the elders of Africa or Latin America. I said, but here's what I would like to say, that the specialty of the Buddhist teachings, or I call it Buddhist psychology, is

is that there are ways to develop this. This is what we want. It's a vision of what a wise or beautiful society might be. And then your question is, all right, how do we do it? And it has to start in ourselves. It's also collective. There are a lot of things we need to do collectively. But anybody who looks can see that

that no amount of computers and artificial intelligence and space technology and nanotechnology and biotechnology and all that is going to stop continuing warfare, stop racism, stop climate destruction, you know, or economic injustice, because those are bored in the human heart. And so if we want to change the world for the better, which we can, and I believe people

struggle that we do that many, many of us want to, it starts with these inner capacities that you're talking about. That we as human beings also have to change our relationship to our emotions and our fears and to shift from living a life of fear and more living a life of connection and compassion.

And that inner and the outer then, as you work to change the world, it comes from a really different place. And it's that that changes, you know, the movement toward war or the incredible suffering of racism or things like that.

So then your question is, well, how do you do it? Because you've been asking that all along. And I've sort of been talking about it. All right. You take time to quiet. You have a mindful pause. You practice loving kindness or compassion meditation until it becomes a little more easy. Then it becomes very easy. And I notice when I

go out to the market or I'm driving or something. And somebody, whether they cut me off or they slow me down because I'm a little bit of a speed freak, even though I'm supposed to be Mr. Mindfulness, but I actually move pretty quickly, you know, and then when somebody gets in my way, there's that little moment like, hey, you know, I'm trying to get somewhere, whatever. This is my temperament. And I notice it and instantly I wish them well.

Not because I'm like some great, noble, saintly whatever, but because I've practiced it and it feels great, you know, or there's that person shuffling along and I might feel a little pity for them or I might, you know, think about the society that doesn't feed homeless people or something. But instead, just because I've been practicing a lot, I look and the compassion just comes up. Oh,

They've really got a tough life, haven't they? And I feel that. And it's a moment that somehow softens my heart and my life. And it comes relatively often. So this is the fruit of practicing. The other practice or training, which we're talking about, is the kind attention or mindful awareness. And there are all kinds of wonderful programs to learn it. And it's not that hard.

Where we started when I said, well, you know, I got an Ivy League education, but nobody taught me all this. Nobody taught me about how to practice forgiveness and how it could free me from the past.

Nobody taught me how to deal with my anger and not just believe it and get completely caught up in it. It seems like we're constantly, maybe this is the wrong metaphor, but constantly at war with ourselves, right? You're walking down the sidewalk, somebody's walking slower. You instinctively, without consciously, have this thought about like, move out of my way.

And maybe that's just because both you and I are like honorary New Yorkers and we just want people to move out of our way. But we have this thought or we have this emotion, right? Or we have these triggers or we have these feelings and our job is to

sort of recognize those feelings, pause and sort of give them the space they need so that they don't grow. But we don't want to suppress them because if we suppress them, they're going to come out in a different way. And if we overly feel them, then they're going to come out too extreme. And so we have this constant tension. How do we get out of this tension? I'll use an image from my friend Ram Dass, who I learned a lot from over the years.

He learned to view his personality like his pet, right? You don't want to beat the puppy. The puppy doesn't like it and you don't feel that good about it either. So, you know, we have temperaments, speedy or slow or introverted or extroverted or whatever. And you see it. You get a body for this human incarnation and you're born with a certain kind of personality and

And then it gets shaped further. So you see it and there's a certain bemusement like, oh, yeah, here's Jack speeding along good New Yorker style and, you know, maybe judging people who get in his way. And so it's not suppressing it. It's also not getting lost in it. It's a sense of, oh, yeah, kind bemusement. There's the pet and it's fine.

And this is really still in that, in some way, in that same terrain of mindful self-compassion. Because otherwise you either try to get rid of it, as you said, or run away from it or suppress it or something like that. And we can treat ourselves more graciously in the same way we treat others. And forgiveness is another part of this. There's a whole training

that is so healthy and helpful for us as human beings to learn the art of forgiveness. And there's some critical things about it. First of all, forgiveness doesn't mean forgive and forget, and it doesn't condone what happened. You really need to see what happened clearly, feel the suffering of it in whatever way this happened to you or somebody else. And then you

resolve to do whatever you can to stop that suffering. You know, that you will stand up or you will do whatever it takes so that the suffering doesn't continue. So it's not like rolling over in any way. But then forgiveness is about what you carry in yourself. And without it, we're lost.

Without it, you have the Hutus and the Tutsis or the Bosnians and the Serbs or the Northern Irish Catholic Protestants saying, "Your people marched through our neighborhood, you know, 89 or 200 years ago, and we're not going to let this stop and we'll do that." And you just keep the cycle going. At some point, it has to stop with someone. Someone has to say it stops here.

I remember a woman who I was working with who was in the middle of a terrible divorce. And the guy that she'd married was a successful type A lawyer. And he was trying to keep all the money and also get custody of the children and spinning stories about her as a bad mother when it was actually he who had had the series of affairs.

At some point she came into me, she said, "My ex is doing these things, telling our children these stories and trying to turn them against me. He's been doing that." She said, "I've been sitting with this." She had learned to meditate some. She said, "I've come to a revelation. I will not bequeath a legacy of bitterness to my children.

about their father. I will not say a bad word about him no matter what he does. And when she said that, I was so moved. Not because she wouldn't protect her children and get a good lawyer and do what she could, but she was saying,

I'm not going to play this game. It stops with me. I will be big enough, if you will, to say that the long-term benefit for us as humanity is not to carry the suffering from the past. How do you want to live as a human being? Do you want to carry that suffering and the bitterness? Or can you forgive yourself? Because we also have a lot to forgive in our own lives.

or others, even though it wasn't right, and even though it wasn't fair, it simply did not carry the hatred in your heart to see clearly and realize that who I am is bigger than that. We're all prisoners in our own mind in some way or another. When you're telling me that story about the woman and the divorce,

There's one aspect of that that was stopping saying it to your kids. That doesn't mean she's stopping thinking it, but I'm wondering if that is the first step to forgiving those thoughts and acknowledging them as like, okay, I'm not going to pass this on to my kids. It doesn't change that I'm thinking it, but by not passing it on, I'm not feeding it as much. Yes, very well put. Exactly. And they kind of work together, hand in hand, the thoughts and then the actions. Yeah.

The actions can reinforce the thoughts. You know, if you talk about it, fuel it, and the thoughts can fuel the action. Or you can dial it down, or you can step out of it and say, yeah, I see this, and this will cause...

A legacy of pain. Which again goes to a perspective thing, right? So it's, you're taking your, I find this fascinating and maybe I'm off on a wild goose chase here, but you sort of take yourself out of this moment and what you have in this moment is all I can see. And what you're doing is you're shifting the perspective to a broader perspective.

perspective. And now you're seeing, well, this moment in the context of that perspective doesn't matter. And I'm thinking about this in the context of, you know, a lot of bad behavior gets eliminated. If you assume that you're going to be in a relationship with this person for the next 30 years, you're going to handle this moment a lot differently than if you don't assume that, but that's just a framing thing. It's a perspective thing. That's a beautiful. And it's one of the ways that work.

to have that perspective because as you talked about, you're kind of shifting then from the more primitive parts of the brain, if you will, that are just our reactive parts to a part that can hold and see over space and time and have a whole different philosophical or perspective view. Sometimes it also works not so much with that perspective but just simply

How do I want to live right now in this moment with my heart closed or open, with feeling, you know, in the grip of bitterness? Or do I want to soften and hold this moment and everything I have with compassion or respect for it, but not feed it? So all of those, all of those can help.

And here's another thing, I guess, just to tell a different kind of story. I worked for a number of years with some colleagues, Michael Mead, who is one of the great mythologists of the world in the tradition of Joseph Campbell, and Luis Rodriguez, a

a great Latino poet and activist. He was the poet laureate of Los Angeles a couple of years ago. And Maledoma Sameh, a West African shaman and medicine man who had a couple of PhDs from the Sorbonne in Michigan or something like that. But anyway, and we did a series of retreats for kids coming out of street gangs in Los Angeles and Oakland and Chicago. And

And I remember one particular class or group that we had. And here we are in this room and there's, you know, 40, 50 young men there. We also work with young women, some of this is mostly young men in here.

And we're there and we're sort of set up to work with them. They were brought by mentors or something. And they're sitting there with their hoods up and their hats, you know, on backward and kind of like, you know, what you got? You're going to read us some damn poems. You know, you got some stupid meditation. I mean, we're out on the street with nine millimeters. People are shooting at us. You've got to give us something better than that. We can't even start to have

to talk about what we came here for, because there's too many people in this room who haven't been honored, who've gone through so much. We took a candle, put it in the center of a table, just a simple table in front, lit it, and said, would you go out in the parking lot and pick up a stone for every young person that you know who's been killed? And

place it by the candle and say their name out loud so we know what we're dealing with. And some of these kids came back with their hands full of stones, Shane. And no young person should know that many dead people. And they say, this is for RJ and this is for Tito and this is for homegirl, you know, and this is for Devin. And all of a sudden there's this pile of stones there and the hats come off and the hoods come off. And it's like, okay, we can get real here.

And I remember going into Google to work with the top, you know, vice presidents who helped run the company. And there we're in this white, I mean, in this glass cubicle because it's sort of open floor plan, but you can kind of sit and close some doors so it's not as noisy. And we sit down and...

I pull out a candle and put it in the middle of the table and lit it. And I said, we have things to talk about, but let me light this candle. I didn't say what it was for. And let's just be quiet, sit quietly for a minute or two. And then we can talk about what's happening, what you're struggling with as a company with one another with it and so forth. And these were just very simple ritual gestures. Ritual is this ancient language.

of lighting a candle or pouring water or earth or water or things like that, or a handshake or a bow. But it's a human expression, a language to say, let's meet in a different way, or let's hold what we're dealing with in a different way. And in a couple of minutes, things can change. You used the word ritual there, which I think is incredibly important

I'm wondering if that's a conscious choice of wording on your part and what that means in terms of counterbalancing, acting as a force of nature almost to counterbalance these things that we're naturally experiencing in our own mind. Ritual is probably our oldest human language. Some ritual of meeting another being and signaling in some ritual way.

that you're not going to harm them. Or maybe that you are going to harm them, and they better take note of that. Or signaling in some way our connection to one another. And rituals are elemental. So I used the image of a candle, which is fire, right? And just lighting a candle, and all of a sudden it changes the environment and how we're relating. Air is really language and words. I can...

invoke, I can say a poem or I can make a three sentence prayer. You know, may we come together for the benefit of those that we, you know, that we serve, even though we're in conflict or something. And that, that prayer, I make a prayer now, may all who hold us with goodness help us to come together in a better way. And those three lines of a prayer change everything.

Again, that ritual I described with the kids was using a stone. Go find a stone and place it there to represent something that you care about and that the element from the earth, you know, fire, water, or whatever it happens to be. Water, you can say, let's raise a toast. Even before we start, pick up your glass and, you know, let's toast the fact that

we succeeded at this or this person is whatever has led us in a good way even before we start. I'm inviting this sense of ritual, first of all, again, to make it conscious, but also so that those who are listening can hear just as we can make a mindful pause or shift to compassion in a moment.

We can shift our collective energy by taking a pause with the smallest gestures if the inner intention is also there with it. It's a powerful way to get out of what's happened. Like if you can insert a ritual to pause before responding, to take a breath before responding, you often respond differently. And if you watch elite athletes...

They have the same ritual. Lewis Hamilton gets in the same side of the car. Roger Federer bounces the ball the same number of times before he serves it. NBA players bounce the ball the same number of times. They take the same shot. LeBron James, before a game, puts the powder on his hands and throws it in the air as an honor to Michael Jordan, I think. And so we all have these rituals that help us

leave something behind, whether it's being slighted or the last play, whether it was positive or negative. It's not always a negative play. You might have just had the best play in your life, but you need to focus now on the present moment. And so rituals bring us into that moment. And I have a colleague and good friend named George Mumford who wrote a book called The Mindful Athlete. You may know him.

Because he was the mindfulness coach for the Chicago Bulls and the LA Lakers when they won all their championships. So he worked with all these guys, and this is part of what he was also teaching them.

So you're exactly on point. So interesting. Okay, let's switch gears to intentions. Talk to me about intentions. Intention is incredibly powerful for us. And it's said in the Buddhist teachings that intention is also the basis of karma or cause and effect, that the state behind your action matters greatly

as well as the action itself. So I'll give an example. Suppose you pull out of your driveway and you drive through the fence of the house next door, crash through it and, you know, into their living room.

Now, suppose it happened that that was the neighbor who cut down all the trees you loved on the property line, you know, and shot at your dog and did a whole bunch of horrible things. And you just were so enraged that one morning they did one more thing and you couldn't take it and you just crashed your car through. That will make a certain karma and the blue lights will come and you'll have to deal with all of the consequences of what you did.

Suppose instead your accelerator pedal stuck. So the exact same thing happens. You get in your car and you pull out and then it crashes through the fence into the house. So the outside, no one could see anything different, right? But your intention was entirely different. It was an accident. You know, when the person comes out furious and you say, my accelerator pedal stuck and they might still be furious and you have to deal with insurance and things.

But there will be entirely different consequences because the intention was different. So it becomes really powerful to start to pay attention to our intentions and setting our intentions deliberately. And also, of course, it's important then to notice the impact or the consequences because you could have good intentions and still out of them there could be a bad impact. So you need to notice that.

But one of the beautiful things that mindfulness training invites is the setting of deliberate intention. And it can be inwardly or it can be outwardly, whether it's before an athletic game, as you were talking about, or whether it's a business meeting or it's, you know, an education or whatever it happens to be. What's our intention? And setting intention starts to steer everything.

There's something that's quite traditional in the kind of training that I did in which you set these long-term vows. Sometimes they're called bodhisattva vows. A bodhisattva is simply somebody who's committed to the well-being of everyone. The Dalai Lama wakes up in the morning and says this prayer, may I be food for the hungry and medicine for the sick.

May I be a resting place for the weary and a lamp for those in darkness. May I be a boat, a bridge, a raft for those to cross the flood. And may I do so to benefit all beings for as long as time and space exists. Some little pesky little intention like that, right? Actually kind of magnificent. You're invited to quiet your mind and to set your own best intention. It's like setting the compass of the heart.

If you were to set an intention of what really matters to you most, this is called long-term intention, almost like a vow. This is what matters and this is how I want to live. It becomes a touchstone for you. I mean, it can be as simple as I vow to be kind or I vow to live with more wakefulness and attentiveness to myself and others or with more respect. It can be that simple. And then when you get to a place of struggle, things are confusing again.

You take a pause and you say, what's my best intention? What was that? And it shines a light and it gives you a new direction. Or if you're in conflict in a conversation, there you are talking with your spouse. I'm here with my beloved Trudy, who is my wife and partner and amazing, wonderful woman. But it could happen on occasion that we have a little conflict and

And if I take a pause, a breath like that mindful pause, I can also ask myself, what's my best intention or my highest intention? And then consciousness changes. And instead of proving how right I was, which I certainly enjoy doing in certain moments, you know,

I remember what's my best intention. Well, my intention fundamentally is an intention to connect, to be kind, that we live with love, respect. And I feel that. What's my best intention? And my whole tone of voice changes because I could say, what did you mean? And it fuels an argument.

Or I could say, what did you mean? I want to understand in that same phrase, but it shifts from blame to interest and care. Is that what it means to set an intention? This is what matters and this is the way that I want to live. And then how often should we consciously evoke those intentions and

when we're not in a moment? Like, should we just wake up and think these? Should we...

How do you think about that? I don't want to make people even think that there's some kind of cookie cutter spiritual, okay, you should do your yoga and eat tofu and set good intention every hour and stuff. It's not like that. You point to it quite beautifully. In moments of difficulty or conflict, taking a pause and asking what's my best or highest intention shifts your state of consciousness.

Periodically, whether it's the start of the day or a week or some new venture or some new adventure, it can be helpful to reflect on what's your best intention. But it's really organic. In a way, what I want to say is, what works for you? We're sort of part of this always on go, go, go culture. We're busy. Our minds are busy.

There's always something we're thinking about that is sort of not the present moment, right? The grocery list, the kids seem to be picked up. There's a million projects at work. I have to text this person back. I need to email this person. And we're striving, right? We're striving for...

Either if we're conscious, we're striving for things that we want to pursue. And if we're unconscious, I feel like we're striving for things that other people want us to pursue. So we're playing life by somebody else's scorecards. But this striving individually might...

be detrimental to us, but it also pushes us forward as a society. So I see sort of like pros and cons to it. What ways does this striving sort of help us and in what ways does it hurt us? So let me ask you again, now we're back on the basketball court, you know, where you want to win the game or now we're in the terrain of running a business or teaching a class or something like that.

Have you had the experience of being quite engaged so that you're devoted to something and putting your best energy in it without the energy of tension, of grasping and striving as much as being engaged in the present for its own sake? And if you have, what did that feel like? I mean, it feels great, right? Because it feels like this feels like this conversation, right? One of the reasons that we book three hours is

is because then there's no time pressure. There's no, you're not thinking about, oh, I only have an hour. I got to fit all this in. And so it's just, I am here in this moment for this length of time. And it all, it never goes three hours or very rarely, but I find that that frees me to be more focused in the moment where if it's an hour, it actually is detrimental to me being in that moment and being present. All right. So here you are in the supermarket. You got your list.

And not only is it your list, but there's other people that you're close to that put their shit on the list too, right? And if you get the right kind of laundry soap and the right kind of ice cream or whatever for the kids or whatever, I don't know who makes your list. But there you are. You have a time constraint because you have to get back. There's something, you know. How are you going to do it? You could do it like...

careening through the aisles like a good New Yorker, grabbing things pretty quickly, trying to get through, you know, and at the same time, think about all the other stuff that you have to get done when you get home and all of that. That's one way you could do it. The other, you could actually enjoy. I personally like shopping. So it's a great thing in my marriage because my wife does it. So I'm glad to do it. Grocery shopping or other kind. Um,

But you could do it and have fun. You could do it, and I bet you have at certain points, and say, you know, now I'm shopping, let me enjoy this. And it doesn't mean you're going to be much slower. You're not going to be the speed freak, you know. But, you know, let me feel my steps and enjoy and be present and...

not try to work everything else out in my life. I'll just, there's one Zen saying that says, you know, when you sit, just sit. And when you eat, just eat, you know, to just be where you are. And you can practice this and you start to pay attention to what it's like when you do it in a gracious way. And it doesn't mean you can't set a goal.

And it doesn't mean you can't give it your very best and that there are certain moments you need to really throw yourself into something. But even that, you can do it with a good spirit and with fun rather than being afraid of how it's going to turn out. So this Zen teacher, Seung San San, a Korean Roshi or a Zen master that I studied with. And so he was sitting in his Zen center in Providence one morning, eating his breakfast and reading the morning paper.

And one of the students, as we are, Appadie students, said, hey, wait a second. Didn't you say when you sit, just sit? And when you eat, just eat? What is this thing about eating and reading the paper? And he looked up and he said, when you eat and read, just eat and read.

But the idea of it is still an invitation to bring this quality of mindful presence to actually be where you are more fully. Because 90% of your thoughts are repeats. Maybe more than that when you sit in meditation and you kind of notice what's going on in your mind. It's a little bit like

being stuck in Motel 6 at night with the shopping channel on or whatever, or some other channel. It could be whatever your favorite channel is. But they're not new. And it's the brain and the mind reciting certain things. You can say, thank you, I appreciate it. That's what minds do. And then you can tune into a deeper quality of being present. There you are in the supermarket.

Say, all right, let me be here. I'm not going to try and solve the problems of my life right now. I'll take my time to do it. And then, of course, once in a while, as you don't pay attention to your thinking, some good new intuition comes. I don't want to put it down. Thought is a great servant. It's just not a good master. You don't want to let it run your life. You want the quality of presence and compassion to run your life and thoughts to serve that.

Something you said there just struck me as really interesting, which is 90% of our thoughts are repeat thoughts. It's like we have the same playlist going over and over again in our head. And if we think about people say that you're the sum of the five people that you hang around the most, but.

In fact, there's also this unconscious playlist going on in the back of your mind, these stories, not only the thoughts that we're telling ourselves, but the stories. I'm thinking that they impact our habits, our behaviors, our actions. Very much so, just what you say. And they impact us much more

When they're not conscious, when we don't really recognize them. So one of the first things that happens when you sit in meditation, the idea isn't that you'd stop your mind thinking. There are ways to do that for periods of time, but it's not really the goal at all. And it doesn't last that long, but to step outside of it or to make space. And then you begin to recognize, all right, what's the playlist?

you know, what's happening, what are these stories? And you start to see the repeats of them. And you can see again, okay, these ones, all right, these are healthy. I want to water these ones. These ones, I just let them pass, let them go. You're quite right, more than the five people. It's the five patterns. One of the

meditation techniques or tricks that I teach people is to actually number the top 10 tunes. If they come on a meditation retreat and they're going to sit for a week or 10 days,

And they'll start to watch, here's the top 10 tunes. Or I had a friend who was a disc jockey, and he had literally had the playlist. He said, I didn't ask it, and then all the tunes would start playing. But anyway, so you number them. Number one is what's happening with my daughter, or number two is...

what's happening with my stock portfolio or number three you know often their worries or number three is i've got this whole creative project how can i figure it out and make this film or theater or build this thing and so forth and then you're sitting there and they come on you say oh number three uh thank you thank you for you know coming along i'm okay

And it just helps you step out of them a little bit and recognize, oh, that's just what the mind does. And then there's a space around it where you can

walk out the door and see the pine trees, you know, or smell the air in a way that you wouldn't because you're, or, you know, or see the people walking by in ways that you would have totally missed because you were just lost in thought. Why does nature seem to have such a profound effect on our thoughts? I generally speaking don't know how to answer why questions very well because everything is so multi-determined. But

you're acknowledging a truth for many, many people that walking into the forest or going by the seashore or up in the mountains and so forth, it changes us. It steps us out of that modern, constant thinking, moving to a different dimension of our being. And it can change us even more deeply. There's a reality...

that we know but that we forget, like that poem from Juan Ramon Jimenez, who you are is not your body. You rent it from Hertz or something. You get it for a certain number of years and you have to give it up. And I've had the remarkable experiences many of us have of sitting with people as they're dying. And there's that moment, especially if it's a kind of conscious, where the person is more or less conscious as they die. When they're there,

and then they are not. And it's silent like a falling star, this amazing moment where spirit leaves the body. But in that moment, the body just becomes meat, basically, the corpse, because it's not who you are. Consciousness uses this body. You're also not your emotions. If you were, you'd be really in trouble. They come,

But if that's who you are, then each one would throw you around into a different universe for that emotional time. And it can if you're not subconscious, but that's not who you are. And Lord knows you're not your thoughts. If we could put a little speaker on the heads of everyone sitting in a room together at a meeting, not to speak of a quiet meditation, there would be a din. So then who are you is the question.

And I don't mean it philosophically to think about it. But when you get quiet, you can realize that even now as you're listening, that there are these words, Shane's words, my words, and so forth. And there's an awareness of them. There are two different things. You are that awareness. That is consciousness itself. And that awareness is timeless. It's not limited by your body.

It was born into your body. And we know this. This goes back to your question about time and nature. I'm going to circle back. Because walking in the high mountains or making love or going to an amazing cathedral or hearing an extraordinary piece of music or taking some kind of sacred medicine or being there at the birth of a child or the mysterious moment of death,

The gates between the worlds open in some way. And we remember, oh, this mystery. What I am actually is part of the consciousness experiencing this mystery in life. That's part of what nature can do for us, is it opens that gateway again.

I like that. I think I mentioned nature because you mentioned pine trees instinctively as the first thing when you were talking. And then I was like, oh, there's something soothing about nature. I know when I pull into nature or go for a walk in nature, I instantly feel like a weight off my shoulders. I'm listening to you and we haven't ever talked before. I didn't really know you

My experience in talking to you is that you have a lovely, measured and gracious way of talking. A great deal of space in your listening. You're not saying so much you could. I mean, I'm on to blab, so I guess that's my job for today plus.

As a teacher, that just happens, sorry to say. I find your presence to carry some of this, and maybe you know it, I hope so, that has got graciousness and spaciousness both, and a kind of warmth in it. There's a sweetness to it, a sweetness and at the same time a real...

interest or clarity. The sweetness doesn't take away your, your ability to listen and, and discover. Um, so how, how does that land for you? Thank you. That's incredibly kind and generous of you. Um, a little bit nervous, actually. I'm not very good at sort of, um,

taking compliments or acknowledging them, I always want to deflect. Yeah, that's true for lots of us. For me, it's been a practice I've had to learn to do it, especially in a teacher kind of, you know, I'm in the role with all the lamas and mamas and swamis and gurus and things. And so people throw a lot of that. And I tried to deflect it a long time. And then I realized, no, it's fine.

It's okay to let it come in and wash through and go away. So even now as you say that, I appreciate that you were honest in saying it and also that you can bring a kind of humor to it and say, yeah, for us, it's hard to take it in. And so you can just acknowledge that too. Yeah, thank you. And then you become mindful with kindness to it. Yeah, sure. Yeah.

It's also, I definitely think that when somebody gives me a gift, I would always rather be the person giving a gift to somebody else than receiving. Because then I become self-conscious in that moment about what am I supposed to say? What's the right thing to say? How do I? And it's not even about the gift. It's just all me in my own mind. Well, it's also because in that position, you're more vulnerable, right?

quite honestly. Again, going back to my dear friend Ram Dass, as a teacher, he also started something called Seva Foundation, which still is, doing surgeries to restore sight for blind people around the world. And he got a whole group of really great people to do it. His musician friends like the Grateful Dead to support.

give them tons of money and various other people and so forth. And they've now restored sight to five and a half million blind people. And he did all these other really beautiful things. And then he had a major stroke in which he lost his ability to move almost half his body and he couldn't speak well. He had aphasia and he has to mostly be in a wheelchair. And he said, you know,

going around the world as a teacher and going around with these projects, trying to do conscious business and trying to cure blindness or help with polio or all these other things that I've devoted myself to. He said, that was nowhere near as hard as being in a wheelchair and having people have to pick me up and wipe my butt. He said, that's way harder than trying to cure blindness in some country.

because we get vulnerable. And yet, I think part of what makes your work

trustworthy to people. I mean, there's all kinds of ways, but it is that I actually feel that you are present and that you're willing to be vulnerable somewhat, including talk about how hard it is to receive things. It's hard for all of us. You make it really easy to feel safe and sort of reveal things because I don't feel like there'll be any judgment.

which is super powerful. Like we're always judging, we're judging ourselves, we're judging other people. - Well, there's two words for it. One is judgment and the other is discernment. And the judgment has a kind of negativity. You shouldn't think that and you shouldn't have said that and that's bad and this is good and so forth. And we all learn those kind of things growing up as kids and the society reinforces it in spades.

Instead of the judgment, which has that negative valence, if we use the beautiful quality of discernment to see this is valuable, this is not, this wants more inquiry, that doesn't, this doesn't look like it serves. It allows that same capacity that we have to see clearly to be marshaled in this service of real connection.

to others or even to ourself rather than judging them or rather than judging ourselves. Because a lot of us are so judgmental when you really sit in meditation, see how many judgments there are. They wouldn't hire you on the bench in a civilized country.

you know, before we come to consciousness, there's, which, which is, um, super recent for me. I want to, when I struggle and I assume other people are like this too, I have a tendency not to ask people for help. And I think it's because I don't want to inconvenience them. And the result is that I tend to isolate myself or withdraw, uh,

withdraw is is struggling something we should do alone or with others and of course the answer to these kind of koans is always yes you know because part of it is an inner job that you have to do right but it's not healthy to do all that in yourself and that's why we have one another to talk to and learn and in every spiritual tradition you know there's the

Sangha, the community, the satsang, the Jewish minion in Christianity, whenever two or more are gathered in his name, there's an understanding that we help each other to be more fully the best we can, more human. I mean, we can also misguide each other, and that happens in all kinds of war and political and so forth. But for the work that we're talking about, to become...

a mensch, a gracious, wise, you know, human being. We need each other and we learn from one another. It's so interesting to hear you say that. And I agree with that. I feel like we're also missing that today. Our channels are very thin and we don't have the kind of communion that, you know, COVID made it way, way worse, but we don't have that kind of communion. It's one of the things that makes something like AA so powerful.

Because when you're there, people get real with one another, get honest, and you feel like, oh, okay, I'm not alone in this, in my struggle. And that's a huge healing part of it. I want to read a story, and it'll take a minute or two. And because I'm a storyteller, and I'm just going to throw it into the conversation and see where it takes you and us together.

During my first year of teaching, a girl named Shay was assigned to a seventh grade, my seventh grade class. She was a desperately unhappy child and rebelled against the most basic rules such as stay in your seat, raise your hand to speak. Shay and I battled for control of the classroom. I tried every technique I knew, behavior contracts, praise, reprimands,

None of them worked. I tried calling Shay's home every week, but almost always no one answered. She lived with an older sister, and I just don't know what had happened to her and her family. I went to the school counselor who said I'd done my duty and offered to transfer Shay to another classroom. I declined. Shay was my student, and I wasn't going to pass her on to someone else.

in the faculty lounge the older teachers patted me on the back thankful they didn't have shea in their classroom june finally came on the last day of school shea was quick to head out the door as i sat contemplating my failure with her she walked back in oh great i thought one last act of terrorism in shea's hand was a small bowl the kind that students made in ceramics class

She thrust it into my grasp. Here, she said, it's the only thing I could think of to give you. I turned the bowl over and saw Shay's initials etched on the bottom. Thanks for trying to like me, she said. And before I could speak, she turned and left. After several more years of teaching, I went on to become a school principal, and now I'm the district superintendent.

Shay's bowl has never left my desk. I think it's a powerful story. And there's a lot of things interwoven there, right? There's stubbornness and the persistence of the teacher. There's the...

My initial, I have a grade seven. My initial sort of thinking is like what's going on in that person's lives for them to act like that. Yes, which I'm sure the teacher also thought about exactly what kind of suffering at home that she had to armor herself that way. Yeah.

And then also what was interesting about the story and just a story, obviously, but like when Shay came in the last day of school, it was her thinking, even at that point, was one last act of terrorism. Yes. Right. So we become predisposed to see the narrative that we've formed in our head about other people. And once we've seen it, it's almost impossible to change it.

And what was really powerful about that story for me is that the narrative changed in that moment, even though she had seen this, this story one way for a whole school year. So September through June in that one moment, she was able to see that whole story and that person in a different way. Yeah. Thank you for that. That's, that's a beautiful perspective on it. You know, in India,

people who go to see these famous gurus and so forth, sometimes something special happens, sometimes nothing special happens or something, you know, whatever. There's something that's interesting that's described called the glance of mercy. And what it describes is once in a while you can go see somebody and

who looks at you and really gets you, sees who you are deeply. And we know there are people who can really see into someone somehow or other. And I know, yes, sometimes it might seem mystical. Some of it's just intuitive, but you know those kind of folks. And in this case, somebody who can see you so deeply and looks at you with the eyes of love, says, I see you, I see all of you.

and I love you. I accept you, and you're worthy of love. And it's said that that kind of glance of mercy can change a person's life, because all the things that they were ashamed of, or struggle with, or didn't, all the things that were part of their humanity that they didn't accept, and then all of a sudden, that shock of

turning everything around like you described so well at the end of the story can change everything. Yeah, and it probably, I mean, changed how, it probably made that narrative a lot slower to form with other kids in the future as well, right? So it had a profound effect. Yeah, and it redoubled that teacher's commitment to actually be there for kids now, you know, for obviously many years later with the bowl still empty

sitting on her desk. But that's also important, right? The visual, there's a word for it. I just don't remember what it is, but the token, the sort of like visual reminder of something that you want to keep

coming back to is super powerful as well. It just centers you and unconsciously it centers you because you've associated that with a certain thing. And so it doesn't even have to be a conscious thing. It's like the presence of it alone is speaking to your unconscious. That is the ultimate question, right? How do we live a meaningful life? And how do we

live consciously. Is there a difference or what is the difference, I guess, between compassion and empathy? Beautiful question. And I just want to say one thing going back to what you were saying. At the end of life, there aren't that many questions. If you have lived even a bit conscious life, did I love well? Did I bring my gifts to the world? Maladoma said that in his, the Dagara people in West Africa, they

where there are all these rivers that have always had boats, whether they were dug out boats or simple boats or more so. He said, "We believe that every child who comes into the world has gifts to deliver and that their task is to deliver their cargo." So did I love well? Did I use my gifts? Did I offer them to the world? And then of course, in the end, did I learn to let go?

Because otherwise you get a crash course, you know. But anyway, so then you switch the theme, repeat the question again. What is the difference between compassion and empathy? Yeah, so let me give an image. Suppose you're on the edge of a schoolyard and there's a kid who's being bullied, right?

um by a bully and some other kids around him being taunted or you know hit or whatever it is empathy arises when you feel for that kid and maybe maybe even when you feel for whatever the other kids the bully had to go through to become that bully so there's this kind of recognition um and you get it in yourself uh it's like you know neuroscientists talk all about mirror neurons

And if you put a violin on a table and then take another violin in your hand and bow it strongly, the strings on the violin and the table will resonate with the strings of the violin in your hand. And that's how we're tuned to one another. So that part is empathy. Compassion is a verb. When you empathize and you feel compassion, it also moves you

to either walk over, if that's the right thing, or go talk to the teacher or the principal or something and say, hey, you know, there's this suffering. Let's do something to make this better. And so compassion combines empathy with the heart's response to alleviate suffering. So compassion, is it fair to say that compassion leads to action? Yes. Whereas empathy is more understanding. Yes.

and being non-judgmental. Yes. Yeah, being with, being with in some deep way. Yeah. I want to come back to consciousness and how it leaves the body. I'll tell it in the form of a story, a personal story. I was sitting with my father in the hospital at University of Pennsylvania Medical School as he was dying. He was 75 and it was congestive heart failure.

And he was terrified of dying. And I'd made my peace with him in some way, you know, over the years. So, you know, I sat with him and he just kept being so frightened. And I said, so what do you think happens when you die? And he said, nothing, dirt. No, I'm a scientist. You know, the body dies and you turn to dirt.

And I said, well, if you're a scientist, you want to be open-minded and take it as an experiment, right? He said, yeah, I guess so. I said, all right, let me tell you my experience. In meditation, I've had these out-of-body experiences where I was sitting there. I was completely shocked because I could feel myself where I was sleeping, lying down. And all of a sudden, I felt myself get up.

and walk over and look out the window and saw things happening. And then I turned back around and looked and, oh, you were lying down meditating and then you left your body and you had this out-of-body experience. And then I walked back over to my body that was lying there and kind of fell into it.

That was the first time it happened. And I got up and I walked over to the window. And yes, the very things I'd seen that I couldn't possibly see lying down there were still happening. And so I started to have a series of out-of-the-body experiences. Then I also had memories. It was sort of strange of being past lives and being in monasteries in China, you know, working in the kitchen or something, nothing particularly noble or great.

And I learned to do past life regressions with people. And people believe it or they don't, but they have these wild experiences in doing it. Not everyone, but it doesn't matter if you believe it or not. I've done it in different countries. So I was telling my father about this. And then I said, and I sit with people as they die. And sometimes they almost die, the near-death experience. And then they come back. And I say, how are you? So they said, oh, I floated out of my body.

There was this incredible light. I just felt myself drawn to light or I was surrounded by light. Sometimes they'll say it's as if there are other beings there that were waiting for me, but then I felt myself drawn back into my body so I see I haven't died yet. And I've had that experience sitting with people or felt it with them. So I told all this to my father and I said, you know, you're a scientist.

Why don't you wait and see what happens? Because likely, as you die, in fact, you will float out of your body and there might be a bit of a review, like looking back and saying, wow, that was an amazing life, an amazing incarnation, what you lived through. And there'll be light and, you know, a whole other thing will happen to your consciousness that's not your body. So you wait and see if this happens.

And if it does, remember, I told you so. Got my last little lick in there. Anyway, so I kind of wanted to tell this as a story, partly because it's true, all the parts of it, I think. But also, it starts to illustrate something that we know about the mystery. And the mystery is that who we are is this consciousness itself.

And that some part of us knows that. You're involved in a lot of things. I'm wondering if there's any you think people might be interested in. I am and I'm happily involved. I taught for probably 40, 45 years, all kinds of classes and retreats. And especially with COVID, I've done now gone. Most of my teaching is online. You know, people can find what I'm doing at jackhornfield.com.

I've been teaching online for Spirit Rock, one of the meditation centers I've started. But also you and I were talking about the importance of being part of a community and how helpful it is to have other people to talk to about what you're learning. And so we've started a company called Cloud Sangha, S-A-N-G-H-A, Cloud Sangha, in the cloud, community in the cloud. And there you can sign up for classes

a few months or a year to be part of a weekly group, a small group like six or eight people with a really experienced meditation teacher and have support and talk about what's going on in your life, what's going on in your meditation, all the kinds of things that we talked about, about how do you approach these things in your life from a mindful or compassionate perspective. And people who are doing it love it. So it's kind of an exciting and beautiful thing to see.

And then another way I'm getting myself into new kinds of trouble is I'm part of a new venture capital fund, which is sort of weird for a meditation teacher and former monk, called Wisdom Ventures. And Wisdom Ventures, with a group of

very experienced meditators and several very experienced venture capitalists. And I thought, well, why would I want to do that? But our intention turns out to be to fund companies that are building compassion, empathy,

and mindfulness in the world. And we've started to find a whole series of startup companies that are doing things like spreading really good mental health and therapy in Asia.

by changing the whole name of it and how it's seen so that where it's just stigmatized a lot in certain societies, it's now seen as something positive as a kind of inner coaching and development that people love or working with a really great company that's getting jobs for people coming out of prisons and changing their life around using some of these principles of mindfulness and compassion and so forth. So wisdom ventures is another great thing that I've

learning from. And it's, again, sort of shows that these practices and principles can be used in all kinds of areas, whether it's in education or business or building community or in your own life. One of the most

beautiful things to learn is that all of these are places that are amenable to, that are benefited by your own inner training of mindfulness and compassion. And that there are ways that turn them around to be really successful and a kind of delicious way to live, quite honestly. So I hope that what we've talked about

Something in here will touch those of you who are listening and give you an inspiration. It doesn't matter that you, certainly not that you become a Buddhist, spare your friends and family that. You want to become a Buddha. You want to become that noble being or that gracious human being that you were born to be and that there are beautiful ways to learn to do this. And then you can bring it into every kind of venture.

And I work a lot with CEOs and some of them very publicly, the CEOs of Ford or Nike who talk about it in Wall Street Journal. And I work with people doing stuff in prisons and all kinds of things. And in each of these places, the trainings and principles change.

of empathy and compassion and self-compassion, of mindfulness and perspective, they bring a tremendous benefit and value. So I hope something in this podcast has brought some seeds of that for you who listened as well. And I really want to thank you, Shane. It's been a pleasure. You've said in the past that the mind creates the abyss and the heart crosses it. I want to thank you so much today for teaching us about the heart.

And mutual thanks, Shane. Take care. Bye. Thanks for listening and learning with us. For a complete list of episodes, show notes, transcripts, and more, go to fs.blog slash podcast, or just Google The Knowledge Project. Until next time.