Duncan Trussell Family Hour - 377: Sharon Salzberg

Episode Date: March 21, 2020

Sharon Salzberg, author, meditation teacher, and EXACTLY the kind of voice we need to hear in this tumultuous time, joins the DTFH! Pre-Order Sharon's new book, Real Change - Mindfulness To Heal Ourselves and the World. This episode is brought to you by: Squarespace - Use offer code: DUNCAN to save 10% on your first site. Black Tux - Use offer code: DUNCAN for 10% off your first order.

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Someday I will see that this makes sense. One day when I'm old and wise, I'll think back and realize that these were all completely normal events. I'll have all the answers when I'm older. Like why we're in this dark enchanted wood. Someday when I'm old and wise, I'll grow up and realize that all of this ain't bad. It's good.

Growing up means adapting. Puzzling out your world and your place. When I'm more mature, I'll feel totally secure. Freaking out and motherfucking quarantine. I'm going to run out of where to wait. See, that will all make sense when I am older. So there's no need to be terrified or tense. I'll just dream about a time when I'm in my age of crime.

Because when you're older, absolutely everything makes sense. This is fine. Greetings to you, my quarantine kids and pandemic pals. It is your noble, faithful, muscular, powerful, masculine, beautiful, bearded host, D. Trussell, reporting in from a very secure compound in LA where we have been told to shelter in place. Suddenly we find ourselves in some kind of apocalyptic thriller.

The news is non-different from every single disease slash zombie movie that I've ever seen. And the weird BDI politicians are getting real squirmy up there in a way that I've never really seen before. And if I wasn't someone who was actually in the movie, I think I would probably enjoy watching it. But the reality is I don't get to lean into my previous self-destructive mode of being

because now I'm married with a one-year-old. So I don't get to get off on the possibility of dying or society falling apart or to lean into the stupid fantasy of being a survivor, wandering down the highway, gathering old bits of metal and trading them for ketamine that I bring back to my bunker. And I don't know why that's a fantasy, to live in a bunker with a big pile of ketamine.

But if I didn't have a wife and a child, that's probably what I'd be doing right now. I'd be up to my neck in the k-hole, spinning around, pouring booze on the rising anxiety and, I don't know, playing God of War over again. But that's not, I don't get to do that now because we got to get milk for the baby. How weird is this?

The buttons aren't working anymore. You press the button and they bring you the food. You want milk, you go to the store and there's milk and eggs. It's all gone. Every single person that I rolled my eyes at who had chickens, I don't know if y'all ever did that, but you know when your friends got chickens, you're like, what's going on, Grizzly Adams?

What else you got around here? You're collecting rainwater, you're gonna do that too. Are you okay? You know, you leave the prepper's house and you're like, oh boy, what's wrong with them? They're eating too much weed. Now I'm trying to remember who the fuck had chickens that I know so I could contact them

and see if they'd be willing to trade some eggs for some of the, I don't know, musical gear or something like that. No eggs, you can't bake, you know? We're okay. After one of the first creepy press conferences where Trump said he was putting Mike Pence in front of the pandemic and in charge of the pandemic,

I ordered hundreds of dollars worth of food and then I told my wife and then she ordered a bunch of food and so we find ourselves fairly well supplied, but still some of this stuff, man, holy shit, we just don't have it right now. They're saying they might bring the National Garden to help stock grocery shelves here. You know, I don't know, it's a very bizarre situation

we find ourselves in and I feel really lucky that I had this podcast on hand with Sharon Salzburg who is an author, a meditation teacher and exactly the sort of voice that I would wanna broadcast out into the world at the moment. Remember, we recorded this prior to this becoming a pandemic so if it seems as though we are ignoring the current reality, it's just this happened before this current reality

was a reality, but nonetheless, I think you'll find there's many things that Sharon teaches that are very applicable to the present moment, specifically the idea of being kind and compassionate to yourself and to others and that compassion and kindness is like a muscle that we can develop that maybe you just don't start off as some kind of perfectly kind and compassionate being,

but just like any other beautiful thing, it's something that you develop over time. We're gonna jump right into this episode, but first this, much thanks to Squarespace for sponsoring this episode of the DTFH. Squarespace is the most powerful web creation service in the entire universe. This space used to be held by the Lordarians

from the Wasneck Sector of Ex-Tevalon, but as you know, they were supernovaed into oblivion. So now it's Squarespace and let's face it, the Lordarians are dicks and they're not afraid to slap you for no reason. So look, I'm not glad anybody got supernovaed, but if I had to choose, it would be the Lordarians. Regardless, Squarespace has all the tools you need

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off your first order of a website or a domain. Again, that's squarespace.com forward slash Duncan, offer code Duncan to get 10% off your first order of a website or a domain. Thank you, Squarespace. My beautiful friends, here's some amazing news. I finally got my shit together and started updating my Patreon.

So right now, if you head over to patreon.com forward slash DTFH, you'll find that there's some new tiers. And if you stick around long enough, you can get exclusive DTFH sacred mugs. They're beautiful. You can get exclusive t-shirts that you can only get from subscribing to the Patreon. Also, you'll get hour long extra rambling things,

reports in from my bunker here during the pandemic and lots of other stuff. Who knows what you're gonna see on there. Maybe a human sacrifice eventually. I don't know how far left this thing is gonna slide. Regardless, head over to patreon.com forward slash DTFH and subscribe. Also, I can finally announce that my show on Netflix

that I created with the brilliant Pendleton Ward is going to be out on April 20th. If you haven't seen the teaser for the show, you can find it on YouTube. I'll put a link at dunkintrustle.com. Today's guest is a meditation teacher and an author. She's one of the most powerful spiritual leaders that I've ever crossed paths with

and has written a great many incredibly powerful life changing books. She's got a new book coming out, which is fantastic and certainly timely. It's called Real Change, Mindfulness to Heal the World and Ourselves. Right now you can pre-order the book and y'all, if you love Sharon,

won't you please pre-order her book. These guests are so generous with their time and it's so cool that they come on the show and you can really, really help them out by pre-ordering books. I don't know much about publishing, but I do know that it has some kind of impact on the business side of things.

I will have the link, the presale link at dunkintrustle.com and I'd love for you to do what you can to order the book and to support Sharon. So now without further ado, everybody, please welcome to the DTFH Sharon Salzburg. ["Welcome to the DTFH Sharon Salzburg"] ["Welcome to the DTFH Sharon Salzburg"] ["It's the Dunkin' Tristle, DTFH Sharon Salzburg"]

Sharon, welcome back. It's so great to see you. It's great to see you. This is Loh Star. We're here on the Tibetan New Year and I already got to be at a Tibetan temple and now I get to be with you, who I consider one of the greatest Buddhist teachers

around right now. Is it fair to say it's Buddhism that you teach? It's fair to say it. I mean, I don't often express it that way because I think it's sort of universal wisdom and I don't want like to be labeled. Right, I get it. Does that, sometimes I feel like kind of like

people want you to compartmentalize yourself into something, don't they? Like they want you to say that or, yeah, I love that you're just saying, yeah, I'm not that. But then sometimes I feel like is, if I say I'm not that, does that mean I'm not committing enough to Buddhism or to some path? Because some people say, listen,

you've got to like pick it and go for it and say that's what it is. Buddhism, Christianity, Islam. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, well, I mean, for me, I feel like I live kind of in a hyphenated reality. That's why people say jubus or hindus. Okay, I got you, yeah, I see.

My first teacher was S. N. Goenka. I'd gone to India in 1970 and I began my first intensive 10 day retreat, January 7th, 1971. That's where I met Ramdas and Krishnadas and Joseph Goldstein, all kinds of people. And the first night of that retreat, Goenka said, the Buddha did not teach Buddhism. The Buddha taught a way of life.

Wow. So that was like day one. Wow. And it just became like the foundation of my understanding. That's so cool. That's so true. He didn't know it would be,

probably that's not even what they called it then. No, they don't call it Buddhism. We call it Buddhism. It was a Western notion, some hundreds of years after the Buddha. So they call it the Buddha's teaching or the Buddha's way or something like that. Wow, what a relief to hear that.

I guess it's true with Christianity too. It wasn't Christianity at the time. There was a name for it. It was just some kind of way of being. That's right. That maybe it wasn't even that new necessarily. I mean, it's not like Buddhism didn't, this is also where I get a little confused about Buddhism

is the concept that it predates the existence of Siddhartha Gautama. Like that, the thing that was coming out of him, it's not like it wasn't already there. Right, right. Yeah, I mean, that's true. It's like the word Dharma, which is usually translated as the Buddha's teaching

or the way really means the laws of nature. So it's not like the Buddha made them up. Right. A new depth of understanding maybe or revelation and he expressed them. Well, to me, the implication of the pre-existence or the transcendental perennial philosophy sort of channel through people

means that we live in a world where at some point a new Buddhism or a new thing without a name, maybe it exists in the world right now, could begin to be propagated. And that creates a situation of, I guess what would you call it, hopefulness? That at any given moment, the same epiphany that happens

to the mythological or historic prophets could happen to a person. But it's something new, right? It's something that people haven't quite heard before in a certain way. But the difference is when these people in the past were talking about their epiphany, there was no internet,

meaning that the transference of the data set will happen overnight. Do you ever think about that? Not really. But I mean, I think certainly it's true that we don't think of tradition as like a monument. It's like a river. It's always renewing and changing and being born again.

Otherwise it's dead, right? And what was so important for people like me, 2600 years later, from the Buddhist realization is that he wasn't just describing a reality he glimpsed or even abided in, he had methods, he had a path where he said, I make human being because he's always talked about as having been a human being.

I had some big questions about life, like why is it so hard and why do we suffer so much and why is there change and how do I cope with that? And it said that whatever answers he came to, he came to through the power of his own awareness and so can we, whatever our deepest questions are. And so the whole point is pointing back to you always. And that's not considered selfish or conceited.

That's really the whole point. It's like we marginalize ourselves. We say, oh, it's great for the Buddha sitting under a tree 2600 years ago, but I live in LA. I'm busy, you know, I can't have any real understanding. And that's not true. The whole point is our own understanding. This to me is that's exactly, I think for a lot of people

drives them to take these very expensive trips to different parts of the world in the hopes that they're going to run into this person or that person or see you, I don't know if it was expensive actually, I think it those days. It wasn't that expensive. But you took the classic trip to India

and sure enough, you met a great teacher and you became a tremendous part of a community of seekers because of that. And so yeah, I hear what you're saying and I love the idea because, you know, I don't want to fly to India. I would like to teleport to India. I don't want to go live in a cave.

I like the idea that my home is a temple, being a father is a teaching and that just where I'm at right now is the Bodhi tree. But then the other side of it goes, you had spiritual bypass. You're just afraid to take the big leap, the big jump. But you think so, the LA can be the very same as the forest that Siddhartha Gautama left the palace

to go into with your work, your job. How could that be? I do really believe that I think it's a harder path actually to stay in LA than to go off to India. It wasn't expensive of course in those days, especially not the way we traveled. You were on, you took a charter ride. Overland, yeah, yeah.

Sounds dangerous. Yeah, it was a little scary. But I do think it's the harder path because it takes a huge intentionality to make that real. It's one thing to say being a father is my path and it can be. And it's another thing when you've got a deadline and your kid doesn't scream.

Oh, never. Actually, yeah, it's weird. I thought that was gonna happen, doesn't cry. He just laughs. Yeah, it's because he's not asleep to price. It's great. And I don't know if it was. And he screams.

But you know, it's like, and you have a feel of this pressure and someone else is really anxious around you and you're picking that up. And it's like remembering in that moment, like, oh yeah, I have a commitment to kindness or I have a commitment to the present moment or look at this, everything changes.

It's not easy, but it's possible. And what is easy is to just talk about it. Like I once had, I was teaching a class in New York and someone rather charmingly said to me, or not so charmingly said to me, a lot of younger meditation teachers than you say we don't have to do regular practice, like a formal dedicated period of practice.

We can just be mindful, whatever we do, mindful stirring the rice, mindful washing dishes or whatever. So what do you say in like your donage? And I said, well, I think hypothetically that's true. For me, that would just be a story I tell. If I didn't have like a regular practice, it's like strength training or something.

Let's make it real, you know, because when the rice is boiling over and the phone is ringing and this is happening and that's happening, it's not that easy. But if you've kind of steadily devoted some time to deepening awareness and compassion and things like that, it will be there for you. Right, so yeah, I mean, it would be a dream come true.

If just by being around weight lifters, you could get in shape. That would be the best. All you would need is to be friends with someone who was in shape. You would need to run, you would need to exercise. That is something I really love about Buddhism is that, or whatever you wanna call it,

is that there is an action involved, a kind of action, which some people say is meditation, some people say is meta, I guess, like working out your compassion muscle or something like that. I heard Chogyam Trump or Rinpoche say something that I'd love to ask you about in this regard. He was talking about the feeling of coming home from work.

And he goes, people sit on the couch and they go, and it felt like when he was implying that you don't need to come home from work and sit on the couch to go, that actually that feeling is the feeling of being human, but it's being covered up by all the stress. Almost like he was saying enlightenment, is that am I misunderstanding him?

Is there an implication that through this practice, every moment in traffic, in chaos, I could be getting that experience that I get right when I relax on the couch at the end of the day? No, and I think you're misunderstanding that. I think that's in a way the whole point. If not continuously there, then we know how to return to it

when we're in traffic or whatever. Because now I'm thinking about what's in that moment of like, huh, it is authenticity, right? You're not putting on a show for anybody anymore. You're just being yourself, you're relaxing of course, and also it's a sense of almost like collecting yourself. We get so role identified, okay, now I've got to educate people

or now I've got to do this or I've got to do that. And then it's just like, okay, I'm just being, I'm just me. So there's a lot in that moment. And I think certainly that sense of home can be something we have wherever we are. Role identified. Wow, what a mess that is, huh? That's an insidious trap, isn't it?

You don't even realize you've become role identified until it's way too late. And then there you are trying to be the teacher or a dad or a husband or somebody doesn't want to be a dad or whatever it is. Role identified. That's almost blasphemy for some people to even imagine that the thing they are

isn't just an identification. That's right, well, that's what, you know, when we meet people, that's what we say, right? What do you do? Yeah, what do you do? Oh, well, I'm a fireman or I do comedy. Well, I'm not sure if I do comedy, but I do podcasts, well, I don't know.

And yeah, then imposter syndrome sets in. And then do you ever get that? Do you ever think to yourself, am I really a teacher? Yeah, I don't know that I get it so much anymore. Although, you know, there's a certain level it depends on who I'm thinking about as my own teachers where it does seem ludicrous.

But, you know, when I started, I started teaching because one of my teachers told me to teach. So it was really the old fashioned way. Right. And I was completely disbelieving. I thought, that's ridiculous. I can't do that. This is a woman teacher, this woman named Deepa Ma

who I was leaving India, this was 1974. And I was leaving for what I was convinced was a very short trip back to the States before I'd go back and spend the entire rest of my life in India. And I went to see her, she was living in Calcutta. I went to see her just to say goodbye and get her blessing for my very short trip home.

And she said, when you go back, you'll be teaching. And I said, no, I won't. And she said, yes, you will. And I said, no, I won't. She said, yes, you will. I said, no, I won't. And then she said two things that were very mind blowing. She said, you really understand suffering.

That's what you should teach. Cause I like many people that had a very tumultuous traumatic childhood and I never, certainly that's what drove me to India at such a young age but I never thought of it as a useful thing, you know, in terms of helping others. And then she said, you can do anything you want to do which you're thinking you can't do it.

That's gonna hold you back. Wow. And I left her place. She lived in what we would call like a tenement room up on the fourth floor and I walked down that staircase thinking, no, I won't, that's ridiculous. I'm not gonna go teach. And I came back and life unfolded.

And I went to visit Joseph Goldstein who I had met at my first retreat. He was, it was the first summer in Boulder that Naropa Institute was opening up, speaking of Trumpi Rinpoche. And Joseph was actually Romdus's TA. Joseph had run into Romdus in Berkeley and Romdus was on his way to Boulder

and he was gonna teach this mega class of like a thousand people. And then he had these divisions like the chanting division and the meditation division. He asked Joseph if he wanted to teach the meditation one and Joseph said yes. So. Wow.

Jack Winfield was living down the hall. That's where we met. Teaching a class of his own. And Joseph was so popular, he was invited to stay on for the second session and I stayed on with him. And then we got invited to teach a month on retreat. That whole time I thought I can't.

First of all, I was terrified of public speaking. I mean, I couldn't give a talk at all. So that was a 30 day retreat, our first retreat. And the format of our retreats is that there's like one formal lecture like at night and Joseph had to do them all like for 30 nights. I couldn't do it. Was there a time where you were just backstage

like I'm not going out there or you just told him I'm not gonna get in front of people. It's not happening. I was sitting in the back of the room. I mean, there was no backstage, you know, it's just us, you know, like. Sorry, I don't know why I thought you were at the Apollo or something like that.

No, here's some. What was the green room like? Yeah, the green room, the snacks were extraordinary. That's a, because I've seen you speak and you're incredible. So that's so beautiful. Yeah, I couldn't do it. And like all these people would go up and yell at Joseph

like, why don't you let her speak? Why don't you let her have a voice? And he would say, it's not my fault to talk to her, but I was terrified when I was scared of was that I'd be speaking and my mind would go blank. And I would just sit there and it looked like a fool. Yeah. And then I remember this was long before I did

intensive loving kindness practice. There was that one practice that has a really nice guided meditation called loving kindness. And maybe I could talk about that topic because if my mind goes blank, maybe I can launch into the guided meditation and no one will know. Yeah.

And so at home in Massachusetts, I have like piles and piles and piles of cassette tapes of me giving one talk because it's the only thing I can do. Let's talk about loving kindness. So wait, when you say one talk, you mean like the same beats. So like a standup routine, except for, wow. Oh, wow, that's so smart. That's one of my favorite Bill Hicks quotes.

He's a great comic, you know, Bill Hicks, the comic. Sorry, I don't know, of course, I'm sorry. No, no, of course, I don't know. One of his quotes is, your jokes are safety parachutes for when your improv isn't working. And knowing that you have like a, now that is a very controversial thing to say because many comments would be like, yeah, right.

Go look at like late Bill Hicks when he's all hammered on stage quote, improvising. It's terrible. There's nothing funny about it. You can like trick yourself, you know, but still for you, wow, that's so smart because you always have that to drop into you. That's your, there's certain comics

where you know they're having a bad set because the joke, they have a joke that's designed to like life support their way out of like whatever terrible trap they got themselves into up there. That's so, so you started doing that and then you became repetitive with it a little bit. Yeah, quite a lot.

And did you start feeling in that repetition that it's something like robotic or that this was not that you needed to evolve past? Just, no, it was all I could do really. But then one day I sort of had a realization. I thought, you know what? Cause loving kindness is about connection. That's its essence.

And one day I realized they're all like about connection, all those talks, you know, it's like people aren't here gathered to hear me import my expertise. They want a sense of connection. So the kind of all loving kindness talks in a way. And that was when I could begin to speak. What's going on with us as humans that we don't see that?

Why is that invisible? It seems just from some, like a, not that I'm clearly not an evolutionary biologist, but it seems to me a little bizarre that beings that are so deeply, deeply interconnected seem completely oblivious to that reality. Do you have any theories on that? Why are we blind to that?

I don't know. I mean, I don't know the why, but it's certainly true and it's maybe getting worse. You know, like one of the things I keep reading about, which I find startling and amazing is, is this kind of epidemic of loneliness that more and more and more people are describing themselves as lonely

and not just here in the state. So you think, wow, look at that because we are so intimately interconnected in truth. I'm going to be real honest with you. When you mentioned connection just then, I don't know that I had actually connected with you. And in that moment, I looked at you and thought, oh, Sharon, hi.

Hi. And then this other thing happened. It was like dropping into something. It's, and so the epidemic of loneliness is, I didn't know about that, but it makes sense. Maybe, you know, maybe just because I remember the first time I saw you talk and you were talking about compassion,

training to be compassionate. And I remember thinking to myself, what? You just, you can get better at that. You train at that. That's a thing you work out at. Similarly with connection, and maybe there isn't much of a difference between the two. Maybe people just don't even understand

that you don't just instantly, it's not something that you can do just in the way that you can like fall asleep or something like that. That's right, that's right. Yeah, I mean, I think that's pretty controversial in the West. Maybe training is not even the right word,

although it's the word I use, but people seem to think that something like compassion is something you either have or you don't have. And if you don't have it, you're out of luck. Maybe you didn't get enough as a kid or whatever, but it's too late. In the East, they would never think that

because qualities like love and compassion and connection are considered emergent properties of how we pay attention. Like in that moment, when we're just here together and we're actually just together, that's a moment of real connection because we're paying attention to one another. I'm not thinking about what time it's gonna end

because I've gotta do my laundry or something like that. And we're also not thinking, does he like me? I hope he likes me better than his last guest. I don't know who that was. I do. It was Brendan Walsh. I hope you're listening, Brendan. He's a friend of mine.

He's a friend of mine. I'm joking. I mean, I'm not joking, but. Yeah, so that's why the word training comes in because we know you can train attention. That's what meditation practice is. And the belief is that if you train your attention, always other things will just blossom.

You don't have to sit and think I'm a miserable, hating person and I have to get more loving. It doesn't matter what you think because you're putting the pieces in place. I love what you said about the idea that if you get to a certain age and you haven't achieved some ability to be a compassionate person, a good listener,

someone who isn't selfish, all the qualities that are, we all applaud and look at it as like, oh, that's the idea of a good person. I love that like there is this idea that if someone's gotten to that point, they're like, well, we have names for them. Well, they're sociopaths. It's a narcissist.

It's a soulless thing. You know, I got on, I don't know how it happened. Maybe I was just Googling narcissism, but I ended up on this terrible mailing, Ask Quora Narcissist mailing list where people, I would get updates anytime anyone wrote a horror story about an encounter with a narcissist.

And at some point I began to feel really sorry for these narcissists because they're universally hated. And like just from the DSMR4 definition, they're like, it's like hating someone who has autism or something like that. But like they're irredeemable. There is this concept that like, oh, there's no way for them to ever not

be concerned with themselves. They're like a black hole. They're a gravity well of ego identification. And therefore they should be, I don't know what, banished, pushed out of society. And there's all kinds of just forget the narcissist or sociopath. Just how many times have you been sitting,

listening to people talk at a cafe? Just eavesdropping and they're talking about that person. Can you believe them? They're awful. Well, I cut them out of my life because the idea is, yeah, you're never gonna, they're never gonna come back. Wow, I love that.

The idea that at any point in time, no matter how rancid you may be, there is an ability, if you wanted to, to connect. I really do believe that. Any one of us might have come from some really disconnected places, you know, and renewed or came back and returned in a way. Returned, yeah.

Cause this is a, I mean, we're dealing with a country that's been at war for 93% of its history. We got so many people who are raising kids who have profound PTSD. PTSD manifests as, you know, some people's parents are walking defense mechanisms. And then the kids learn that.

Many of us have learned that. And I'm afraid to say I learned it. And both my parents have passed away. And I'm still terrified to say, oh, you know, I learned to be. I became a master of numb. Like I can go so numb, so fast, ice cold, just glaciated human in moments.

I used to be proud of that. I used to think that was a good quality that's in the world, like a superpower. Now I have a son. You can't go numb. You can't ice down in front of a toddler or a wife or anyone for that matter. But I think a lot of us are kind of like,

well, that's all that's left. Well, you can't ice down or freeze in front of a toddler. Certainly, I think plenty of people have, which is why. A toddler, you know, grows up thinking that's the way to be. I mean, you're also remind me of something I wrote about in this book about the stress reaction and how people always used to say, fight or flight.

And now they've added freeze. What? Yeah, so there's three common responses to incredible stress. And by incredible stress or responses, I mean, there's always stress of some kind, but when the resources we have within don't seem adequate to meet the stress that's coming our way,

it's fight, flight, or freeze. And we're used to fight or flight. And freeze is now considered one of them. And I was really happy because I too am a type, you know, where I'm more likely to freeze than fight my way out or flee. And so I thought, oh, good, you know, I'm being included. But it's a huge pattern. Freeze.

It doesn't, obviously it's not a literal freeze. That means numb down. It means just like drop out of wherever you're at. It's like disassociate, and it's better that way. There's an watershed down. They had a great name for when the rabbits see the headlights of a car. Thrall, I think is what they called it.

Or they had a cool name for it, where they froze up with the headlights of the car coming. And yeah, but wow, so it almost is like this, this is not only if many of us just frozen, but we've sort of come up with an idea of like, well, this is just how it is to live. You sort of, you're here, you're not really here. And you just stay not here until you die.

And then you're really not here anymore. And then that's a human life. Because for a lot of us, you know, growing up, what are you gonna do? Where are you gonna go? You're six. What are you gonna get in the car? You're gonna drive away?

You're gonna find a job somewhere? There's no escape. So what are you gonna do? You definitely aren't gonna fight 190 pound human. So yeah, I get it. You just go to the ground, freeze up. And that's where we're at. Well, not you, but I think some of these frozen people,

are they the ones saying that that's loneliness? Maybe they're not even lonely. Well, that's interesting. Is the definition of loneliness changing? Or does people just feel generally numb? That's very interesting. I'll really have to think about that. Maybe that's so.

I mean, I've only thought about it in kind of sociological terms. Like the things that used to bring us together, like you went to a temple this morning. People don't often do that anymore, necessarily. Right. The classic book about it was called Bowling Alone, about the dissolution of bowling leagues.

Ways we just used to come together and have a sense of community, they're not so prevalent anymore. For some people they are, of course, and other people are just dying, or they've died. So how are we gonna find each other? And we have to find each other. How are we gonna find each other?

I mean, I think both of us have a, like I know sometimes, because I travel and do stand-up and I have to go out at night to do stand-up. And a lot of times I don't want, I am a recluse. If I can stay in, I stay in. I like it. And I recognize like, oh no, this is bad.

If I look at it, it's like taking a shower. It's like socially going out is like taking a shower. If you don't do it long enough, you get a little stinky. But, I think for me, it's just like the anxiety, man. It's like being around people when you're out of practice is just deeply anxiety-provoking.

Opening your heart to other people. This is why I don't do LSD. I used to, when I was younger, I would just like take acid, go to the mall, watch people. I can't do it anymore because it opens your heart. And you're around a person and all the, you just see the pain. And it comes wrecking balling into you.

You're looking at a person you've never met in your life and seeing like, oh man, you're not doing good. I'm never gonna meet you. I certainly can't come up to you with my eyes completely dilated while you're at dinner with your family and be like, are you okay? But you see it, you know? So how do you cross that barrier?

There's no way. I mean, we're so sequestered. I don't wanna bug anybody. I don't wanna bother anybody. I mean, literally people are laying on the street and we walk right by them. Much less passing someone with a frown on their face or who seems sad or upset.

How do you even cross that boundary, Sharon? Well, I mean, for me, the most important state is the interstate. What you do externally will depend on the circumstance, you know? It's like you probably are not gonna walk up to every person lying on the street and say hello, you know? But it's the internal feeling of like

that person's life has something to do with mine. That seems really critical and we don't have that either. No one wants to even hear that. What are you? A socialist? Are you a socialist, Sharon? Is that what you've come to? Socialism?

No, because I'm not saying you have to give them money even, for example, but in our hearts, we have got to recognize this person as a person. It's easier to give them money. But it's easier to give them money. Well, I'm not saying it's an easy thing to do, but I think in terms of a genuine sense of connection, that's what's gotta happen.

And by the way, when I was doing the R.U.S., whatever, Tucker Carlson interviewing Cheryl Sharon Salzburg or something, I was joking. You know, to me, I think it's like a wild thing that we even live in a world where the term socialism, which is the act of being social, is considered one of the great mistakes you can make. It's like getting a disease.

It's like athletes' foot, politically, you're broken out with socialism. Wow, man, God, I'm itching today, man. I've got socialism all over my body. And this seems to really mirror what you're saying about loneliness. If we live in a country where socialism is considered abhorrent, then wouldn't loneliness

be a natural result of that? I mean, social, we want to be around, it's social. It's like we're social animals. But the term socialism, which would be the practice of being a social animal, is forget it. You're not getting elected if you're a social animal. You know? Well, I'm also not running for office, thankfully enough.

Well, maybe thankfully for you, but for the rest of us, we would love it if you would. But you know what I'm saying? It's like this is the country we're in is, and I'm not beating up on America or anything like that. I just know that a lot of people are watching Bernie Sanders, who is a socialist, and they're like, no, oh my God, no.

So it feels like what you're saying is all the political isms and stuff is great, but first, you've got to dethaw a little bit, start making these connections. No, it's true. I mean, sometimes if I go into a company or an organization to teach, one of the questions I ask people to ponder is,

how many other people need to be doing their job well for you to be able to do your job well? Because we feel like we're all alone, right? And it's a dog eat dog world, and no one's helping me, so I'm not gonna help anybody else. But what's the reality? You're counting on someone cleaning that room, right?

Yeah. And you left it like a pigsty the night before, but you're counting on it, or that operating theater. You're counting on it being sterilized, and you're counting on, we all are, or the roads and the bridges and getting somewhere, getting to work. It's like we live in an interdependent universe,

and we don't acknowledge that very often. So if we don't wake up to that, then we don't wanna contribute. Like why should I contribute to the roads, you know? Yeah. Things like that, and it's crazy, because there's not a way to survive that if it just goes on and on and on and on.

It's completely unsustainable. I mean, you can't, forget the roads in my own house sometimes. If I'm in a particularly dark, selfish, compressed state, you know, I'll like leave like food on the counter. I won't even think about, you know, it's like, and then someone's cleaning it up, that's not me. And that does not work at all. Let me tell you, in a marriage, that does not work at all.

Oh, if only it did. It doesn't work, but much less in a society. But it almost feels like we've all been trained. Since, you know, we could watch TV at the very least to like not think about who's fixing the roads, to not think about who's cleaning our room, to not think about the person that you are just a jerk to at wherever you are buying the thing

is going home that night to take care of their, sister and parents. That's right. You're, no one's saying this stuff. I mean, I love conspiracy theories. I could talk about hollow earth all day long. But if you want to, it's for a different podcast, but if you want to talk about the grand conspiracy,

it's that to me. Why is this not taught in school? Just a basic thing. Oh, you know, the janitor, guess what? He feels. Yeah. He has to buy money to eat. No one wants to even, what is that?

Well, it's like, is that suppressed data? Is that, or is that some kind of like dark, Jungian, like, or like a, a Gestalt that's springing up out of like the way we're running society right now that there's an implicit censorship. The moment you start saying, you know, you're, there's someone who's going to wash your dishes after you eat today.

People are like, shut up, social justice warrior. I'm trying to enjoy my pie by people. I mean, me, I don't want to hear it. It's annoying. Is it, what is, is it conspiratorial? You're, you have a new book coming out about this very thing. And when you told me about this book, I thought, oh boy, I don't know, man, that's, that's want to dive into that.

Is really courageous and tricky. Yeah. Maybe. I mean, the book is about mindfulness, loving kindness and social change. And I include, by the way, art as a means of social change. So I have a lot of interviews basically with playwrights and artists of different kinds,

as well as striking fast food workers, you know, trying to get minimum wage extended to $15 an hour. And people doing all kinds of work, immigration attorneys. And I have made a strong connection with the Parkland community in the last couple of years. So I have a few students and teachers. I've taught there and I've led retreats for that community. And so there are all kinds of people in the book,

which makes me very happy, you know. And they are really heroes, all of them. And they're not the super famous people that we might know about. And I just think they're terrific. And it's about things like interconnection. Like what's, it's a few things. One is like a vision of agency.

I'm not going to just sit around and bemoan how the world is so terrible when I'm on Twitter. You know, I'm going to like do something, even if it seems like a small thing. Wait, you mean rather than just like throwing out tweets. Yeah. Or something a little bit more. Yeah.

Than typing into your computer. That's right. Going that extra stack. Yeah, a little bit extra. So Instagram. Could be. And then it's about, because I think we also live in a time

where people are very impacted and feel often helpless. And so that idea of agency is really important. And I talk about, I have a chapter on moving from anger to courage and a chapter on moving from grief to resilience and chapter on interconnection, the chapter on. Can we talk about the anger to courage chapter? Cause this is, you know, like I, yeah.

I think a lot of people are just pissed off in the most, in terror and terrifying ways and in extreme ways. And, you know, it's not, even talking about activism now is considered, maybe you don't even talk about it. You know, like it's annoying. We just stop.

There's nothing that can be done. And then this like deep anger is building. This is why we have democracy. They're supposed to, it's supposed to steam pressure valve that anger. So we don't have like violent revolutions. So how do you convert anger into courage? Cause the real problem is anytime anyone really angry

starts lecturing us, even if they're right. A lot of us are like, I don't want to hear it. I don't want to get lectured. You're so mad. I have jokes that I do that I've learned that if I do them with even the slightest hint of anger behind it, they don't work because people feel like I'm like preaching up there

and it sucks. But if there's like real love behind it, the joke was funny and it's, my friend calls it the spirit of play. So how do you do this conversion? This, I would love to learn this alchemy. Okay. Well, there's also a chapter on joy, remembering joy because there are lots of reasons

we get lost in anger. And that's one of them. And you mean lack of joy? Yeah, or lack of appreciation of joy. It's like the small things that seem great. We disregard because we have it too guilty or we're too consumed with outrage or something like that. And then we get depleted, you know, we can't go on.

And I also think, you know, activism doesn't just mean like protesting. That's why I include art. And I also include a person-to-person change in relationship. Oh, okay. You know, it's not just vast social systems. It's like, it's basically an expression

of our deepest values. Oh, okay. Wow. Okay, right. Well, it's sure easier to think about the, you know, grand social scheme than to just think about the fact that you haven't opened up to your wife about the way you feel for a little bit. We just did that.

We were not, we were like, it was rough. We went through a rough patch. And then one, a few days ago, we were just laying in bed and we both just started telling each other how we felt, the truth. And now it's the best. It was amazing. Like it was just, we, and all the things

that we were afraid to, we were both like, I feel that too. I feel that too. It was amazing. But I've never, never would I have thought that was social change. Yeah, well, I'll call it social change. Yeah. Wow.

It makes it so much more manageable. Cause I always just think of like, man, that Gandhi movie. When I think of social change, I think of that Gandhi movie where they didn't even use an Indian to play Gandhi. Right. But aside from that, just, you know, the marches. Is he half Indian? Oh, is he?

I think Ben Kingsley is. Good God. Hold on, that's getting, hold on. You have to Google it. No, I can cut that out. So I don't look like the biggest idiot on earth. I'm not cutting it out. I'm leaving it.

What do I care? Anyway, sorry, Ben Kingsley. I know you listen to this podcast quite regularly. We're all good friends. Taught him how to act, actually. The, yeah, in my mind, it's a big thing. Big, big, big. So big that I just don't have the even slightest ability

to, you know, to, I just can't imagine doing anything like that, like really making the big waves like Gandhi or Martin Luther King or Greta Thornberg, all those people, you know, you're just like, oh, that's, that's out there. But this thing that you're talking about, that's one of the most empowering things I've ever heard maybe, which is like, oh, right, of course.

It could just be like, is this, could even be walking the dogs more? Whoa. I think that's part of it. And for some people, of course, that's their arena, you know, like, could Martin Luther King Jr. have done something else? I doubt it, you know, that was just his, his space.

Right, that's his karma where he landed. And also, I'm not sure things at home were that great for him sometimes. It seems like there was some trouble. Well, apparently there weren't, yeah. So that to me is, that I can get behind. Because it's, for one, it's not even, there's no politics to finding harmony where you live.

That's not a political situation. That's just common sense. And the idea that also by doing that, you're simultaneously in some, I guess, infinitesimally small way, a little droplet of peace in the world. Now that, wow, that's so beautiful. And like, I've heard versions of it,

but that, that one really sunk in. Wow, that's cool, Sharon. I really liked that. It's so good. And you're clearly a great parent, you know, and it's coming from somewhere, right? Well, I mean, I don't know if I'm a great parent. I'll be honest with you.

I want to be a great parent. Like, I have that intention in me. But I don't, you know, from hanging out with you and Ramdas and by hanging out, I mean, being able to listen to you teach and read your books, I feel like my wife and I, well, the advantage we've got

is that we can have that moment where we really open up to each other. And we, you know, well, but my wife and I did not come from a place where we should be, where we know how to do marriage or know how to do, you know, do that, do that. Cause no, I mean, my mom was divorced and remarried three times.

And, you know, I know, knowing most people I know are divorced, you know, it's not like how it's like compassion. Yeah. Like how do you just know how to be married? Yeah. Yeah. It's almost impossible, you know?

And it's very, it's difficult to live with anybody. Then at a child, you know, here's an example. We went yesterday to walk the baby around the park and his wagon. And it was a beautiful day. And it's great. Cause we're all, we're getting along now. It's really sweet.

Everything's real poignant and sweet. It's the spring, the baby loves the wagon, but he's hungry. So we go to get something to eat. And I made the wretched mistake of being like, why don't we just stop at this Thai food place? You don't give a baby Thai food. Yes. But Aaron, we looked on the menu

like there's something there for me. Anyway, the point is the beautiful day suddenly turns into the child having an allergic reaction to peanuts, we think. Face turned red, he's coughing, we're seconds away from calling 911. So how do you learn to deal with that level of instantaneous shift into, oh, what a beautiful day to,

oh my God, am I going to lose the greatest love I've ever experienced in my life over peanut sauce? You know, this creates a lot of stress on top of just living with another human being. And so to me, like imagining that the ability to harmonize those situations in a way that is, at least has the intention of love is actually social work.

Yeah. Is actually helping society in some way. I can't tell you how I'm invigorating an idea that. Oh, I'm so happy. Yeah, no, I really do believe it, you know, that it's funny whenever it says something to me like I'm allergic to shellfish or I'm allergic to strawberries.

They say, how did you find out? Cause it's got to be a bad story, right? Like I hit a shrimp and I passed out. It's got to be a bad story. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, there's that level to it. You know, like maybe it's good, you're discovering that. This is something that.

Oh, right, you're right. Well, yeah, you know, we, that's right. We, you know, that's one thing for sure. It's like, now we kind of know something. Also, you know, after the baby was fine, everything was fine, but I was thinking like, how many babies right now aren't fine? Like how many kids are like having to go to the ER right now?

Cause of, you know, cause of this situation, but this to me, there's like a, you know, I would never in a million years wanna be a messiah, a Buddha, a Jesus. I would for a day, maybe it'd be fun to wander around for a day being like that level of a being. But I think over time I would just be like, I wanna go play video games, have a beer and like, you know,

I don't know, hate watch Sean Hannity or something. You know, I wouldn't want that life. But the idea of being a pixel, a little tiny part of an enlightened being in like a movement in society that didn't hinge on saving the ice caps or lowering fossil fuel emissions but was more based on,

can you figure out a way to be with the people you're with right now that have caused you so much trouble or that you've caused them so much trouble in a whole new way? I think it's impossible for sometimes though. Don't you think it's impossible? Like some situations seem untenable, you know, horrific, you know, no way out.

Like just what we were saying earlier about, the whole of society depends on a collapse of the circumference of our awareness of the suffering of other sentient beings. What you're proposing is a really sweet way of saying we have to have some kind of revolution. I think it's rather sweet, isn't it? Because it is like a revolution of consciousness.

And, you know, I mean, I think it's also, it's not impossible. I mean, there's some situations that may be impossible, but I think the freedom of heart to really care about somebody and include them doesn't mean you're gonna stay living with them or you're gonna hang out with them or you're gonna not fight their agenda, you know?

We have that notion that love is a kind of passivity or something and it's really not so. So I'm not saying like every relationship needs to be, you know, endured or something like that. But inside, within ourselves, we can be free. We don't have to have other people define us. We don't have to believe utterly their story about us. We don't have to be lost in projection.

We don't have to have a feeling that because things were a certain way yesterday, inevitably definitely there will be that way today. If we are awake, you know, certainly we can be different. And if a situation is actually, doesn't seem amenable to change and it's terribly painful and it's limiting us and making our lives smaller or frightened,

it's fine to go. That doesn't mean that you have no love in your heart. Right. It can be done lovingly. Yeah. It doesn't have to be done in some dramatic, dark, you know, vengeful way. There's a loving way to revolt.

Yeah. Loving revolution. I just, only because I love you and I feel comfortable with you, I like that idea, but I have to say, and I want that to be the way. But it's like, isn't that a pipe dream? Look at France, the firefighters setting themselves on fire

while the police attack them because of pension. Look at all the revolutions that happen all over the world. And now in mass, as people begin to really wake up to the reality of the distribution of wealth, how do we do this peacefully? How do we do it lovingly? And also, are you saying that there's a possibility

for loving violence? You're acting violently out of a place of love. Yes. I mean, I think it's talking about pipe dreams. It's like, certainly, there's the idea of forceful action. We know that such a thing is tough love, right? Yes.

We know that such a thing is fierce compassion. You may, first of all, you're working toward having compassion for yourself as well as for somebody else. It's not just all one direction. And in that balance, which is hard to find, you may decide you need strong boundaries, you need to be intense, you need to be fierce.

You need to take strong action. I think when you say, is there such a thing as loving violence, there's every possibility of deluding ourselves. There's a story that actually happened to me when I was living in India way back when, that I've heard like 50 other versions of, as though they happened to other people.

And I was with a friend and we'd left Bud Guy, which is a very peaceful, holy place. To go to Calcutta and coming back from Calcutta to get to the train station in Calcutta, there's something happening on the street, like a riot or something like that. We couldn't get a car, we couldn't get a cab. So we got into a rickshaw and in Calcutta,

in those days, I don't know about now, rickshaws were not like men on bicycles, they were men running and pulling the spark. Oh yeah. So we got into one of those, because it was the only way we could get to the train station. So he's going down these back roads

and these alleyways and things like that. And at one point, this very large, very drunken man comes out of the shadows and grabs him, stops him and pulls at me, like to pull me off the rickshaw. And I thought, oh my God, I'm gonna be raped, I'm gonna be killed, this is the end. And then the friend that I was with managed to push him away

and get the rickshaw guy to start running again. So we got to the train station, got on the train, got to Budgaya and I was very shaken still. And I said to one of my teachers, this man named Menindra, I told him what had happened. And he said, oh Sharon, with all the loving kindness in your heart, you should have taken your umbrella and hit that man over the head.

Yeah. Which is basically saying, you know, be strong. Like, and yet we can think we have all the loving kindness in our hearts and not. And so it's very tricky terrain. I just, I don't think about it in those terms because it's too tricky, but I do think about strength, strong action and that a loving space

doesn't have to lead to meekness and, you know. Wow, this is, you know, this is one of the, I'm so glad we're talking about this because I think it's one, it is the trickiest of terrains. It's how easy to trick yourself into imagining that your aggression and violence had some spiritual intent behind it and therefore it was justified.

How simple to imagine that. But, and I guess this is just a discernment, a subjective discernment. You have to figure that out on your own. Yeah. I mean, because you know when you're in love. You know when you're loving. Yeah.

Right? Don't you just know, can you trick yourself? But then that being said, think of how many people, I'm asking you, how many people trick themselves into thinking they're feeling love when they, they aren't. But is it a feeling? You know, is love a feeling? I'm sorry, you're blowing my mind here.

So I'm just trying to like decode what you're saying, imagining lovingly hitting someone with an umbrella. I think it could be done. Yeah. I've been to dominatrixes now that I think of it. I'm sorry. Well, there's that too. I mean, this is the modern world.

We're not talking about like some quaint little Indian village. Yeah. But the reason I'm asking you this is because in my own, you know, in my mind sometimes, when I look at the world and I see what's happening, I get real nervous thinking, I don't know if protests are gonna be enough ultimately. Right now, things are great for some people,

but they sure ain't great for most people. And they, people are getting mad. And then that gets me really creeped out because the last thing I want my child to experience is a violent revolution, the collapse of society, the fragmentation of society because of, you know, whatever inequality on such an overt massive level and then the, you know, so that it's just,

I think one of the things all of us should be kicking around in our mind is what does that look like? What would it look like for us to somehow simultaneously harmonize a loving intention with a forceful, That's right. No. Cause I get anxious too. I mean, I can imagine things degenerating

to the point where violence is inevitable. And I think that would be dreadful clearly. And so I would like to see people engage, engage as much as we can right now because we can be awfully complacent and wait for the worst in a way. And why do that? Like I am very passionate about people voting,

not everybody is. And I've gotten slammed for that too, you know, but I think it's, in a way, it's like the closest thing in a social political system to the Buddha saying everybody has innate dignity. Everybody has a worth. Everybody has a voice in other words. And we need to exercise that and we need to protect that

and see if we can protect it for as many people as we can. And people need to do it. You know, you can't like just complain. You know, everything has to move in the direction of it's not right, you know, things aren't right when people are hurting so badly. And we've got to each do something about it. And it will look differently for everybody,

which is why I include art, for example, and creativity and things like that. But however it looks, I think we need that ignited. Can we just, it's an hour and I know you got a dinner, but just very quickly, I would, when is your dinner, by the way? At 5.30. What time is it now?

In a quarter after four. Okay. That's okay. No, we can definitely do whatever we want to. Thank you. Okay, thank you. So, creativity, you're one of, honestly, you've got to be one of the most prolific people I know.

You've written so many books. You're always speaking. You're always doing retreats. And how are you finding the inspiration and the discipline? Like, where's it coming from? When are you writing? Do you write every day?

Well, I just turned in the final final edit. Oh, no, I just got some back today. I thought I turned in the final final edits of my next book last Wednesday. I did just get a few queries back today that I had to answer. And so now it's done. I think it's in.

I have learned that, you know, I usually sign a book contract, but I get booked in teaching so far ahead of time that I'm then scrambling to find time to write. And I've learned that doesn't really work as well as just doing what sensible people do, which is not traveling so much when you have a book and being more present.

I do kind of write every day. Do you have a practice around writing? Most of my practices is based on sitting, meditation, and then writing, for example, because what I found like, I wrote this book called Faith, which was really like my faith journey. So it was very personal.

And I found that the best writing I did was two times a day. One was when I first woke up in the morning. It's like the sensor had not woken up yet. And the other was just after I meditated because I don't sit down and think how, my biggest weakness in writing is structure, which is really relationship. How does this relate to that?

Because it all relates in my mind. And so the editorial criticism I received right from the beginning was, how'd you get from here to there? I just went, I don't know. But when I sit, and I'm not trying to figure out how does this relate to that, but I'm just creating some space and it's open.

And it's a space where a lot of possibilities can emerge. And that's when structure comes to me though. This relates to this in this way. Okay. So when you're sitting, you don't feel like, you know, because sometimes when I'm sitting, I'll have moments of inspiration. I'm like, oh, that's a funny joke or that.

And then I think, what are you doing? You're meditating right now. This isn't a place to be contemplating what your next podcast is gonna be about or what you're gonna say. You should both, you should be quiet and let that float on. So it's okay.

It's okay, of course it's okay. But you know, I try not to deliberate on it and like elaborate it and figure it because then I'm thinking about India or something, you know, before I know it. But it's like, I almost have a compartment I feel in my brain where I just say, remember that. And I remember it.

Some people actually keep a pad of paper near them and they'll just write down that idea. But I don't like to do that because I figured I'll just spend all the time writing, you know, knowing me. So. This is, oh my God. This is such a cool thing to hear.

It's so funny how, David Nickton and I worked together with meditation. He has taught me a lot. And before I started sitting with him, I thought you had to be in pain. Like you load his position back, but you know, like there was an agony that needed to be there.

And also don't move. Like stay completely stone cold still, like you're being stalked or something. So my meditation, which I didn't do that much was essentially like the most ridiculous, contorted, frozen, paralyzed thing. And I remember when he told me, you can, you can, if you have an itch, you can itch it.

If you need to adjust, you could adjust, but the pad, whoa. Now that's revolutionary. But if it's too much, then try what I do, which is just like mentally put it in a place where you're going to file it in effect and then go on. I get the feeling I've smoked more weed than you have to show you.

Very possible. I'm a child of the 60s though. I didn't want to say that. I went to college in 1968. That compartment you're talking about in my brain is like a collapsed mine. I think the pad would be maybe the pad. P.S., no offense marijuana friends out there.

You know what I'm saying though. I know it's not fashionable to say maybe it affects our memory. I've done other drugs too. I also fell off my bike when I was a kid. Anyway, the point is the pad sounds amazing, but I feel like we should close on, not just talking about your process, but in your book, the idea that your art,

your writing, your comedy, whatever particular mode of creative expression, it might be a little bit more important than you think it is as far as our planet goes. Well, I think it's crucially important. And one of the things that I went into, because I do have this whole section on accepting joy, and it's hard when you're aware, you're concerned.

I mean, you keep bringing up other people's children. When you're aware of how hard things can be, it's very hard to accept the joy, but we need a sense of renewal. We need some peace. We need a break so we can then marshal some energy and try to make a difference. And so I've really long been fascinated

by the question of that in art, because I've always been asked, like I've had painters say to me, I don't know if I want to meditate because I'll lose my ability to make art, which has to come from this anguish inside of me. And that's a very Western notion of where great art comes from.

So I talk in the book about this panel I saw once at Emory University with the Dalai Lama, and it was actually Alice Walker and Richard Gere on the panel, and that was the first question. Like, does an art have to come from great suffering? And Alice Walker said she once believed that. That's sort of what she was taught, but she felt that she got happier.

Her art was getting better. And Richard Gere talked about being like an angry young man. And then the Dalai Lama was so interesting. He said, basically, people are always taking me to look at things and say, isn't that beautiful? And he said, in the Tibetan view, a work of art has worth depending on what happened to the artist in the act of creating it.

So if an artist got more enlightened or kinder or more balanced as they created, more aware as they created the work of art, that made it great art. Wow. That's the most beautiful thing I've ever heard. Wow. You have got me tearing up over that. That's beautiful.

I'm so happy. That's the metric. Yeah. Worth torturing ourselves over here because the metric is how much money did you make? Or was it, did it get out? Or how many, how many? That's right.

Wow. The metric isn't even, did it like bring world peace or did it create social change out in the world? It's, how are you? That's right. When you finish? That's right. Wow.

Well, if the Dalai Lama is correct, then this was a very good podcast. Cause that's like, thank you for that. Yeah, well thank you. I can't wait to read your book. Yeah, thank you. When's it coming up? June 2nd.

June 2nd. It's right around the corner. Yeah. Yeah, it's already available for pre-sale, which is remarkable. And friends, please. I don't mean to go all telethon here. I'm just, my eyes are now watering from what I just heard,

which is my mind is blown. So I'm going to, I got some, I'm going to do a telethon. It actually helps a lot if you do pre-sale. I've heard. Yeah, it does. Do the pre-sale. Obviously, this is a book you should read. I'm going to be reading it.

Go, just go do it right now for Sharon, because I'm sure you get a litany of podcast requests every day and thank you so much for giving me your time today. I'm so delighted to see you. I'm so delighted to see you too. And thanks for what you do. Thank you. It's been really, really wonderful chatting with you.

Wow. Friends, that's real change, mindfulness to heal ourselves in the world. By Sharon Salzberg, all the links you need to find that are going to be at dunkitrussell.com. Sharon, thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks for listening, everybody.

That was Sharon Salzberg. A big thank you to Squarespace for sponsoring this episode of the DTFH. I've got to head out and put razor wire and machine gun turrets around the side of my compound, but we will be back next week. If you love the DTFH, don't forget to subscribe to us

over at patreon.com forward slash DTFH and give us a nice rating on iTunes, won't you? I love you all. Stay safe. This will blow over soon and we'll be back to normal before you know it. I'll see you soon. Hare Krishna.

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