Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - USC Dean of Religious Life Dr. Varun Soni on Mindfulness, Leadership, Spirituality

Episode Date: November 8, 2017

Varun Soni is the Dean of Religious Life at the University of Southern California (USC) and the first Hindu to serve as the chief religious or spiritual leader of an American university.In a time where it feels like we have never been more divided, this conversation is about unity. It’s about empathy. It’s about diversity. It’s about curiosity and regard.There is so much to learn in this conversation.Varun has been personally impacted by some of the most influential thought leaders in history… Gandhi, the Dalai Lama, to name a few.As a leader (and I’m not throwing that term out there loosely) at the University of Southern California, Varun is deeply committed to helping students become, through embracing the tension between differences and commonalities.His goal is to run the office of religious life at USC as the office of the future – to envision what religion and spirituality is going to look like 10 years from now rather than what it looked like 10 years ago.In this conversation we talk about how to master the art of living – this includes the importance of asking yourself the right questions, redefining your metrics for success, and the importance of emotional intelligence.Varun also sheds light on some of the difficulties today’s college students face that previous generations may have thought inconceivable._________________Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more powerful conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and meaning: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine! https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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And the idea behind these conversations is to learn, to learn from people who are on the path of mastery. And we want to understand what they're searching for, what they're hungry for, what's driving them. We want to get to the psychological framework of how they explain their world, their craft, others, how they make sense of it. And then we also want to dig to understand the mental skills that they use to build and refine their craft. Finding Mastery is brought to you by LinkedIn Sales Solutions. In any high-performing environment that I've been part of, from elite teams to executive boardrooms, one thing holds true. Meaningful relationships are at the center of sustained success. And building those relationships,

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Religious Life at the University of Southern California, also known as USC. And he's the first Hindu to serve as the chief religious or spiritual leader of an American university. Cool. Very cool. In a time where it feels like we have never been more divided, this conversation is about unity. It's about empathy. It's about diversity. And it's about curiosity and regard. And there is so much to learn from this man and this conversation. So Varun has been personally impacted by some of the most influential thought leaders in the world. Gandhi, the Dalai Lama, just to name a few.

And as a leader at the University of Southern California, and I'm not throwing that term out leader loosely, Varun is deeply, deeply committed to helping students become, and he's helping them do just that through embracing the tension between differences and commonalities. And his goal is to run the Office of Religious Life at USC as the office of the future, to envision what religion and spirituality is going to look like 10 years from now, rather than what it used to look like 10 years ago. How refreshing is that? I mean, as a simple little model, it's so refreshing to think about, let's build for what we think the future could be. And in this conversation, we talk about how to master the art of living. And this includes the importance of asking yourself the right

questions, redefining your metrics of success, and the importance of emotional intelligence. And Varun has a beautiful model that he shares with us here. Now, Varun also sheds light on some of the difficulties that college students are facing that their predecessors, the earlier generations, would have thought to be inconceivable. It's fascinating. And we have the power to make this world better. I mean, it's so evident in this conversation and we can all become better as humans. That's pretty much what this podcast series is about. Finding mastery is to become better, but that takes work to condition our minds, to pay more attention to the signal versus the noise, the internal noise, that all the distractions that we entertain in our conversations about nothing, really.

And then the external noise about what potentially other people are thinking about us. All of that noise gets in the way. And for sure, to embrace others for their differences is part of that signal. Now, owing the fact that we're all individuals uniquely, entirely into ourselves, that sense of individuality is an important part of just being human. And seriously, if someone's not causing harm to you or others, why do we give such a rat's ass about like what they should be doing? I mean, that's a puzzling thought at a deep level, a psychologically challenging idea.

Like, why do we care so much about what other people are doing? And it's almost as if like all of them over there or those types of people, if they would do it more my way or the way that I think that they should do it, then the world would be a better place. I mean, is that really the case? Is that really the case? I don't know. I think that the world would be pretty freaking boring if that were the case? Is that really the case? I don't know. I think that the world would be pretty freaking boring if that were the case. And so, you know, that model that sounds trite, but is so right. Live and let live as long as harm isn't part of the equation. Like literally live and let live as long as people aren't doing mean and bad things and harmful things to each other. Now, officially off my

small little soapbox here. Man, I love this conversation. I love these conversations. And Varun, thank you. Thank you again. So with that, let's jump right into this conversation about carving your own path. Varun, how you doing? Hey, good to be here with you. Here's what I want to be able to learn from you. I want to be able to learn how you've been able to be the first Hindu to run a university religious center, if you will. More than a center, but an entire institution here. And I also want to learn about religion as well. I want to learn about those two things from you.

Can you talk about what you've done here quickly on USC campus, University of Southern California? Sure. So we're sitting right here at the University Religious Center at USC. My job here is to be the Dean of Religious Life, which is essentially to be the university chaplain, which means I oversee all of religious and spiritual life. I oversee community service and interfaith activities. I do pastoral care and spiritual counseling for students. I am involved in ceremonial events. So there's a lot going on here, especially given the fact that we have more student religious groups than any American university, more than 90 religious groups representing every faith tradition on the planet. We have more campus chaplains than any American

university, almost 60 campus chaplains this year, also representing every perspective in the world in terms of religious belief, including a humanist chaplain for our secular and atheist students. And we reside right here in Los Angeles, the most religiously diverse city ever in the history of the world. So the opportunities for religious exploration and spiritual engagement and interfaith service are tremendous, really unparalleled. And I'm really fortunate that I get to run this enterprise. I get to oversee it and sort of set the course for where we're going. My goal is to run the Office of Religious Life at USC as the office of the future. What is religion and spirituality going to look like 10 years from now? Not what did it look like 10 years ago?

That's a really cool thought. And so that's how we're modeling what we do. And that makes us very different than a lot of offices of religious life. I think one of the major differences is that most offices of religious life or university chaplains' offices are oriented around God, and we're not. We're oriented around meaning and purpose and significance and authenticity and identity and the things that make us human. That way, we can be a resource for our entire university community, not just those who self-identify as religious or theistic. For many people, they can find meaning and purpose and significance through traditional religion, through God, and we have as many resources for those students as anyone. But I'm

also aware that 40% of our students are not formally affiliated with religion, and two-thirds of our students say they're more with religion. And two-thirds of our students say they're more spiritual than religious. And the future of religion in the United States is going to look a lot different than the past. And if I'm not catering to those students and challenging them to think about the big questions, the ultimate questions, the questions that make us human, then I feel like I'm missing an incredible opportunity because I believe the ages of 18 to 26, the ages of most of our students, are really the right time in one's life to be struggling, interrogating, and engaging these

questions. And so I think we are really different in that our orientation is more around what does it mean to be human than what does it mean to be God. And that way, I think we can be a resource for everyone, not just those who are formally affiliated with religion. When did that insight happen for you? From the very beginning. And it's partly because when I was hired here, I was really young. I had just been out of school. I'd been teaching college students at UC Santa Barbara who weren't that much younger than I was.

I was hired at 33, which is young for a university chaplain. And so I felt closer to the age of my students than I did to the age of traditional university chaplains. And I thought there was a big generational gap there. So I tried to speak in a way that I thought would inspire students and think in a way that they were thinking. And quite frankly, that mirrored my own way of thinking because I was of a similar generational perspective. So right from the beginning, that was one of the choices we made. And I think that was, that choice has made us really a much bigger, that choice has allowed us to have a much bigger presence on campus than we otherwise would have had. Because it doesn't alienate people. It doesn't alienate anyone. It's an inclusive thought.

We're here to meet students where they're at, wherever they're at. It's a central idea for everybody. Wherever they're at, right? We want to go out and meet them wherever they're at on their journey, wherever they're at in their course of study, wherever they're at in their professional aspirations. We want to be there for them. And that's why we have one of the only humanist chaplains. But we also have the only Sikh chaplain in the country, the only Baha'i chaplain in the country. We are really trying to be there for all students, no matter where they're at. How large is the Baha'i faith here? There are probably 20 or 30 students who are actively involved in the Baha'i club, but LA being a big Persian city, one of the biggest, I think LA is

the biggest city, biggest Iranian city outside of Tehran. That's why they call it Taranjalus. LA has a large Baha'i population, a multi-ethnic Baha'i population. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So there's two things I said I was really keen to learn from you is like, how did you become the first Hindu to be able to run a university religious institution? And I don't say that lightly because I guess I'm playing that back the way it might've sounded in my head is like, that sounds crass, but it's really meant like, how did you break down the walls and the worldviews that you're supposed to be a Christian to run a university? Like, how did that happen? There's political views, worldviews, there's historical views that you've had to work through.

Yes. And my thought underneath of it is that if we can really understand that we're going to find some good stuff about how people in general, you as a model of one can move through barriers, either external or internal. This seems to me right now as external barriers, right? Perceived or real. I'm not sure yet, but that's right. Well, um, you know, maybe I'll just start with a little bit with my childhood in terms of my interest and then move to how this position actually manifests. So I was raised in the United States at a time when there weren't that many Indians, certainly not that many in the public sphere. I was raised by Indian physicians who were immigrants to this country.

So I was the first – I was of the first generation of Indians to be born and raised essentially in the United States. Is that from your family or for like Indian migration period? Well, for the most part, you know, Indian immigration from the United States was precluded from the mid-20s to the 1965 Immigration and Naturalization Act. And after 1965, Indians could come into this country if they were physicians or engineers. So that's how my parents came. So in many ways, my generation was the first generation of ethnic Indian Hindus to be born and raised in the United States. We were the first. So mom and dad were successful? They were successful. Well, they went to medical school in India and they came over at a very young

age, as many of their peers and colleagues did. And that's why people look at Hindu Americans or Indian Americans as a model minority. It's not that there's something inherently model. It's not that there's an inherent, I think, cultural sort of intelligence that comes from India that made Indian immigrants successful. It's that they had to be doctors or engineers when they came here. So they came into high paying jobs. They came into nice communities and they came in with a value of education. Like my parents lived an American dream because they were doctors. So the most important thing for us was education, just like it was for all of my Indian peers growing up.

It almost didn't even matter what you did with your degree. I'm an attorney. I don't practice. My brother is a physician. He doesn't practice. My sister is an attorney. She doesn't practice. We all do things with our degrees but not what we're supposed to do with our degrees, but it doesn't matter. My parents were like, I don't

care if you want to be an actor, you become a doctor first. I don't care if you want to make movies, you become a doctor first. So you can see the value of education in many Indians who grew up in my age because of who our parents were and how they had to make it. Was that a hard line at home? Was it just like that? Listen, I don't care what you do. It was a hard line. Education is the first. That's it. Okay. That was the most important thing.

And so when it's the most important, where did it lay in context of religion or spiritual life? So I think what allowed me to have a different path is that because my parents were working so much, I was kind of raised by my grandparents. They lived in my house with us. Oh, they came too. They came later. And how many kids? Three of us. So in some ways, my parents were supporting three generations. They were supporting themselves. They were supporting their parents and they were supporting their kids.

And there were new immigrants to this country. So they had a lot on their plate. English was a second language? In India, English is like a co-first language. So that's one of the great... The British gave us English and the railroads. We always say that. Both English and the railroads help connect India in a way that I think has been beneficial for India. With my folks, they kind of ceded some of that responsibility to my grandparents just because they had to. So the predominant role model in my life was my grandfather. And my grandfather was a different kind of person. His mother, my great-grandmother was very close with Kasturba Gandhi, who was Mahatma Gandhi's wife. So my grandfather grew up around Gandhi. He grew up as a little kid sitting

on Gandhi's lap. He grew up around the leaders of the Indian nationalist movement. And so at a very young age, he would regale me with stories about Gandhi. And we didn't have any public sphere role models. Now they're Indians who are governors and filmmakers and the attorney general at Miss America, right? Indians have kind of occupied an interesting space in the popular sphere. When I was growing up, there was Deepak Chopra and there was Apu from The Simpsons and that was it. So we didn't have those kinds of role models. But my grandfather would regale me with these stories about Gandhi. And then when I was 10, the movie Gandhi came out. And we, for the first time, saw our story on a screen in a way that other people really admired.

Right. And so what was this? What do you remember about Gandhi? What did you learn about from your grandfather about Gandhi. So what really inspired me and what I think subconsciously created a trajectory for my career was the idea that we can bring together the spiritual and the scholarly in our lives in a cohesive way. They're not two sides of the same coin. They're the same side. That in fact, if we bring together our spiritual selves, how we find meaning and purpose and community, and our academic or scholarly selves, what we want to do in the world and how we prepare ourselves

to do it, then we can be much more effective on both fronts. Okay. So you just said what I think, I wouldn't use spiritual and you didn't say science, scholarly. I don't use a scholarly word, but the same process that I'm looking for, for performance. Yeah. It might be internal, external. Well, yeah, I think that if you're thinking that the scholarly is external, I, I, it's a good question. Maybe, maybe, maybe. I mean, there's an internal and an external, both on the performance side, there's an internal relationship we have with ourselves. Yeah.

But the deeper part of us is primarily internal. That's right. Right? And it extends through relationships. That's right. And I think there is that with scholarly too. We study not just to prepare ourselves professionally. We study to transform ourselves personally or spiritually.

But Gandhi did that because Gandhi was a lawyer. But he was also a spiritual religious leader. And what he did is he talked about how do you transform yourself to transform the world? So you became Gandhi for USC. Well, I went to law school. I'm joking. But I studied religion. I went to law school.

I lived in India. I became interested in social justice. I didn't model myself after Gandhi, but when I look at my life, I can see his influence. There's no doubt about it. Yeah. So that was your grandfather's influence. That was my grandfather's influence. And what was the stories that, not the exact stories, but was Gandhi bigger than life or was Gandhi a frail man? I'm just creating a dichotomy.

I think it was the human side. When you saw him on the screen, it was this epic figure. But when my grandfather talked quiet moments, the human moments. And I think that humanness is what makes Gandhi more attractive for me. A lot of people critique Gandhi because he did some stuff that people are critical of. In my mind, people like Gandhi or Martin Luther King, because they're imperfect, we can emulate them. If they were perfect, heroic figures on a pedestal, they would be irrelevant to us in some ways because there's no way we can do what they did. But as we see the challenges, the tribulations, in some ways it makes them more extraordinary but also more relatable and that there is a way to take something from their lives and have that come out in our lives even if we're imperfect and we know our own flaws better than anyone else does. There's a question that's just jumping out at my mind, which is, so Gandhi was

imperfect, extraordinary. And then the other model that many people are influenced by is Jesus, who was perfect. Do I have that right? Well, it depends on who you ask, right? I think for Christians, he was perfect. He was God and man. Yeah. For Hindus, he was a great yogi. For Muslims, he was a great prophet. For Jews, he was a great rabbi. I think in those other models, they might find a humanness to him. But even in the Christian model, he was human. And God. And God. And when I asked the question, I was thinking through a Christian lens, because the model that they teach, the model that Christians follow is that he's perfect and human, which is an interesting model to try to replicate. That's right.

Yeah. That's right. Okay. So, all right. So early influence from grandfather, parents were successful and ambitious and working hard. The three kids were taught stories about one of the most world-changing people in the world. And in very personal, intimate ways. Like when the movie came out, I took a great deal of pride in the fact that my family had a relationship with Gandhi's family in a way that up until that point, I didn't know what to make of my ethnic identity because I was the only Indian in most of my classes. I was the only Hindu at my Catholic school.

I was always the other. And my parents wanted to raise us American. Why did your folks send you to a Catholic school? Because in India, the best schools were Catholic schools or Jesuit schools. My mother went to one. So they didn't send us for the mass. They sent us for the education. Okay. So you got early on, you got the fish out of water. It's a little bit different experience. Very early. I mean, I was right up in Newport beach, which isn't the most diverse place.

And, you know, my grandmother would pick me up in her sari from work or from school and other kids were being picked up by, you know, their parents or their brothers and sisters. And our family really stood out. We, we didn't, we stood out in school. If we didn't take communion, we stood out in the classroom because we're often the only Brown kids. So I had an experience of the other where I didn't feel American in the U S and then when I went to India to visit family, I didn't feel Indian in India. In the US, everyone saw me as Indian. And in India, everyone saw me as the American. And yet I didn't really feel like I belonged in either place.

Picked on? Did you get picked on? Yeah, I think so. Was it that type of thing? It wasn't terrible. It wasn't like – Not included. No, it wasn't terrible.

I mean it wasn't traumatic. It was more ignorant. I mostly got picked on for what I wasn't. Like people would make anti-Mexican or anti-Iran Persian jokes to me. I mean, it wasn't traumatic. It was more ignorant. I mostly got picked on for what I wasn't. Like people would make anti-Mexican or anti-Iranian Persian jokes to me. I'm like, well, if you're going to be xenophobic, at least get the region right. So I got the experience of what other people get in some ways. I got to see what anti-Mexican racism looks like or anti-Persian racism looks like or anti-Muslim or whatever. But if they're going to say the slur that at least it should hurt you.

That's right. It didn't hurt because of you. It wasn't. Yeah, it wasn't. I didn't have that kind of experience. But I did have an experience of uncertainty, which meant that when I went to college, I started taking classes about Hinduism and Buddhism in India just to learn about who I was.

I took classes as a heritage student just to learn more about where my family came from. I didn't go to college with the idea that I would study religion, but I took religion classes to learn more about myself. And I had a few experiences in college that really changed the trajectory of my life and put me on a course that sort of- Where'd you go to college? So I went to Tufts University, which is in Boston. Yeah, good school. And- So was that a big deal to get to school? It was expected. Yeah. It probably, you know, at the time I went to Tufts, it was kind of like the backup to Ivy's. And so, and you know, it wasn't that, I think from my parents,

all my friends were going to Ivy's. So going to Tufts wasn't, it wasn't like it was something that we celebrated. How'd you deal with that? Yeah. So going to Tufts wasn't – it wasn't like it was something that we celebrated. How did you deal with that? Yeah. So there was a little bit of shame. There was a little bit of shame. I guess you could say. Oh, my God.

So how did you – Even when I was at Harvard Divinity School, my father used to tell all of his friends that I was at Harvard Medical School. And so like I felt like even at Harvard, I was kind of the failure and the black sheep in the family. And so I have 11 physicians in my family. So my PhD means nothing and no one calls me doctor. And that's why I had to get so many degrees just to kind of prove to my family that I could hang with them. And eventually I married a physician, which redeemed me in my parents' eyes. Oh, my God.

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Again, that's L-I-V-E Momentus, M-O-M-E-N-T-O-U-S, LiveMomentuscom, and use the code FindingMastery for 35% off your first subscription order. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Felix Gray. I spend a lot of time thinking about how we can create the conditions for high performance. How do we protect our ability to focus, to recover, to be present? And one of the biggest challenges we face today is our sheer amount of screen time. It messes with our sleep, our clarity, even our mood. And that's why I've been using Felix Gray glasses. What I appreciate most about Felix Gray is that they're just not another wellness product.

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Mastery listeners 20% off. Just head to FelixGray.com and use the code FINDINGMASTERY20 at checkout. Again, that's Felix Gray. You spell it F-E-L-I-X-G-R-A-Y.com and use the code FindingMastery20 at FelixGray.com for 20% off. How did you deal with those high standards? Because sometimes high standards can be a blessing and a curse, right? I think it made me reject everything that I was expected to do. I was expected to be a physician. So I studied music and poetry and English and philosophy. I was expected to be a scientist. So I studied spirituality. I was expected to go to, you know, a great school. I think I went to

a pretty good school. Um, but I didn't make my, I didn't make my identity based on where I went to school or what my grades were or anything like that. Okay. So it sounds really cool to be contrarian. Yeah, that's right. You know, it sounds cool to do that now as two adults talking, but when you're a kid and you were making that decision to go contrary or to do different, was that because, and I'll tell you a story about me is that I wasn't sure if I could do it. Right. So, Hey Mike, you could, you can do, if you would apply yourself, you could fill in the blank. Like you could do all those things, but I wasn't sure. So I would do something that felt a little easier or better for me.

Yeah. Call it contrarian. Yeah. But also like the seed of it was insecurity. Yeah. And so where was it for you? Was it anger? Was it insecurity?

I think part of it was just trying to find a place, a home, a community. I didn't always feel accepted in the Indian American community because the choices I made put me at odds with many of the choices that I was expected to make. So I was trying to find a community. I was trying to find a group of people, a tribe essentially. I was trying to find my tribe. And so I did in college. I found a bunch of free-thinking, free-spirited people who I grew to love as brothers and sisters and we're still very close. And that became a sense – that gave me a sense of home in a way that I didn't always feel like I had when I was growing up. Okay. All right.

So then you're at Tufts. Yep. So my junior year, I'd go to India to do a study abroad program, also to continue my understanding of my own tradition. The first time I'd ever lived in India was when I was 20 on this study abroad program. And it was a program where you studied Buddhism and you lived in a Buddhist monastery in the town that the Buddha was enlightened in. And so this was a fully immersive kind of experience. It wasn't like semester in Madrid where we're drinking all night. You know, it was very different than my other friends' study abroad programs. I was living in an Indian village. I took up the vows of a traditional Buddhist monk and I meditated all day and I studied Buddhism. And there was one day I remember very clearly, October 2nd, 1994. October 2nd is Mahatma Gandhi's birthday. So it means a lot in my family. So it's a day that we sort of observe. It was Sunday morning. I was in the monastery. The sun was rising. I'm like, oh, it's October 2nd. It's Gandhi's birthday. I'm going to go meditate under in the center of this

town is a sapling from the tree where the Buddha was enlightened on the site where he was enlightened. Yeah, the Bodhi tree. It's the center of the Buddhist world. So I said, I'm going to go- It's a sapling. It's not the actual tree. In theory, it's a sapling. The tree was sent to lanka and then this tree was apparently poisoned by uprooted the tree well they sent a sapling to sri lanka and then the the story goes that emperor shok who is a buddhist emperor his wife was jealous that he'd spent so much time with buddhism and not with her that she poisoned the original tree and then they went back to the original synagogue and they got a sapling from the sapling and they replanted, who knows. But it's related to the tree he was enlightened under and it's in the same spot,

right? So I'm sitting there at the site where the Buddha was enlightened under the tree of his enlightenment. The sun is rising. It's Mahatma Gandhi's birthday. I'm sitting there by myself. And suddenly I hear this laughter and I opened my eyes and walking towards me is the Dalai Lama. And I thought to myself, am I hallucinating? Like what's actually happening? But it was really him. He was in near town and whenever he goes by the site, he stops to give his respects. So wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. So you're, you're in the, you're in it. I'm in it. Okay. And then you hear some laughter. Yeah. Okay. And so at that moment, like, do you go, Oh my God. Oh, you say, and you're totally disrupted from what you're doing or do you, or do you, are

you supposed to play it cool? Well, I played it. I played it cool. Of course. Yeah. Yeah. I got to play it cool. But, uh, but, um, but it was incredible.

Uh, he came right up to me. He started laughing, took my hand. We had a moment where I was looking in his eyes and I realized that the things that I was trying to cultivate in my life by living in a monastery. Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait, wait, wait, wait. Okay. Before you go to this insight. So he grabs your hand. You're looking at each other. Yeah. And we started laughing. Start laughing. I stand up. I bow. He grabs my hand. He bows. And we just start laughing. And that laughter came from where? It came, I think from him. It came from, it's what I would consider like a deep sense of joy.

I wouldn't say happiness. I would say joy. It felt more enduring than just the fleeting glimpses that we get when we're happy. OK. But I had spent the last several months thinking about the Buddha, reading about Buddhism in a very theoretical way. And at that moment, if I could put into words, I would say I recognized in him what I had been reading about, that this, you could have a different consciousness. You could see the world in a different way. You could mitigate your own suffering by cleaning your perception of the world or changing your perception of the world.

And I saw it in him. Okay. I know you want to keep going to get to this, but so you're holding hands, you're looking at him, he laughs. Are you laughing out of nervousness or excitement or did you have joy as well? It was otherworldly. It was almost like ethereal. It was almost like I was outside of my body at that point. Okay. And then phenomenal. Then you look in his eyes and what, okay, now I want to get to some source stuff. Okay. So this is a great story. What gave you the instinct or the right or the impulse? I'm not sure the right word because I don't know yet to look him in his eyes. And then

I want to know about what that was like because oftentimes I'm fascinated by the razor's edge and joy. There's a razor's edge to joy. We'll eject out of joy because it's so intense and we'll eject in lots of ways that we do it. And if we can go on and on and on about that, but also eye contact, we'll eject out of eye contact because of the intensity is overwhelming. Yeah. So can you first pass go, where did it come from to want to look him in the eyes? I know that surfacely that's like, of course that's what you do.

That's right. But this is an enlightened man. So once you look, then I want to know the second experience, not the joy, but the second experience when you wanted to pull away, if and when. So I'm not sure I was that methodical about it. It almost was like I was on autopilot. Yeah, I had a feeling that I think is hard to put into words. But that's the point of the Buddhist experience is that there are some things that you can't put in the world. Once you get past conceptual mind, every time you try and describe something in language, you're breaking the world up into concepts.

But the point is to get beyond those concepts. So I think to some extent poetry might be a way to get the experience more than prose, because poetry uses words to get beyond those words. But the feeling I had was a sense of equanimity. And that's what Buddhists are after. And I really got what that meant, that not too high, not too low, but that equanimity in and of itself is a kind of a high, right? Well, neurochemically, we know that to be the case. But then experientially, it's a buzz beyond. It's a buzz. And what I felt at that moment was more grounded and present in that moment and in the time I spent with him that morning than I'd ever felt before. I felt fully grounded,

fully aware. I remember the wind, what it sounded like, the leave as it dropped. I remember the sensation on my skin of the wind. So what primed you to have that? Did his presence infuse into you? And you were an open vessel because you were doing some sort of clarity work? I think it was the fact that I'd spent several months meditating many hours a day before I met him that I was primed for this kind of insight, I would say. Even in that morning, I was having a really deep meditation when he came into my world. And I think the fact that I was in a deep meditation, I opened my eyes and I immediately am engaging with him. It's different than now when I go visit him and I get in a car and I sit in traffic and I go through security and I'm in a very different consciousness when

I'm with him now, as opposed to then there was almost a purity of the experience, unexpected. Literally the childlike mind. That's right. Yeah. So you were right in it. I was right in it. Then when you're looking at his eyes and you felt that experience, and now we're talking about joy. So the concept I'm working from is joy. There's a razor's edge to joy. And do you have any sense of how quickly you wanted to leave that?

Well, I'll tell you, I missed it when it dissipated. I felt myself getting attached to the way I felt in a way that I think is antithetical to what this world wants you to do. I'm in love! I know. I remember coming back to college and telling everyone about my experiences. And I kept going around saying, look at me. I don't exist. Look at me.

I've gone past my ego. Look at me, Mr. No Ego. Look, look, acknowledge my lack of ego. And at some point I'm like, I missed the point there because I've basically reified my lack of ego as an ego. I had a moment. That's right. And that became the biggest ego of them all. But it was a type of spiritual materialism, right? It's using a spiritual idea or experience as something that sort of reifies or, you know. It's a trading. Yeah, it expands your own ego in one way or the other. But when I got to spend a little time with him that day, it changed my life forever. Because what I was talking about earlier in terms of the spiritual and the scholarly, I saw in him. Because here's someone who had studied his whole life. He has a Gachet degree, which is the equivalent of a PhD,

but had also figured out the art of living. And I know this is a Finding Mastery podcast. When I met him for the first time, I thought of mastery as something very different than what the world salutes as mastery, the sort of external markers of being a master of a craft where everyone says, oh, you're the best at X, Y, and Z. I saw someone who was a master of himself, of his own senses, of his own desires, of the art of living, of the things that matter, the kinds of relationships he has, the joy that he emanates, the compassion he feels. And the fact that he was able to feel that despite having gone through one of the most horrific things that anyone could ever go through,

which is leading a people and then getting exiled and then seeing your people get slaughtered. And I would consider what happened in Tibet to be a genocide, 1.2 million Tibetans killed in a 15-year period, and still to be able to find within you that kind of joy and still be able to say, my enemy is my greatest teacher. I can say that, but I haven't gone through anything. For me, it was an attractive idea because Gandhi said that and King said that, but meeting someone who actually was living it was a very different thing. And so what I saw in him was a type of mastery in the art of living, in the way that we perceive the world, so that mastery wasn't something that

manifests as a craft, but as a way of being, or as a way of thinking, or as a way of moving through the world. And I recognize that in people who I consider to be great leaders too, a type of internal mastery that I'm more attracted to than whatever accolades the world may give them for their external sort of mastery or success or craft. Because there are a lot of people who are really good at things that they do, but that doesn't make them really good at the most important things. There are a lot of great athletes, but they're terrible fathers, terrible husbands. They're not very nice when you get to meet with them. And so, yes, they're a

master of their craft, but are they, have they mastered their life, you know, in a way that's going to allow them to flourish? Do you, is that, is, okay. So you met one man that is probably a complete master. In my opinion, that's what I felt. And then, and then what I was able, and then over the next, like that was 20 years ago. Over the last 20 years, I've gotten to spend some time with him, a type of self-mastery over one's own feelings, emotions, fears, et cetera. For Gandhi, the great battle was happening in his own heart. That was the battlefield. It wasn't external. It was internal, right? And by being around those people, I have thought really deeply about what that means for me. I'm really lucky to have had those kinds of experiences firsthand. So there's a phrase that I think about a lot,

which is at any given moment in time, I'm a standing civil war within myself. And okay. So just taking that phrase, it's like what you're just describing. Gandhi was working. Yeah. Like, so that's, that's that inner dialogue and experience. And it sounds like when I say that, like I'm, I'm shredding and cutting myself. It doesn't feel like that. Maybe at one point out of born out of a neurotic anxiousness if i was good enough yeah if i mattered enough that that was the case it was really loud and now it feels like that voice and that conversation has become familiar and even friendly you know like there's a um uh appreciation of that duality so all that being said how do you help people with that inner the thing gandhi was working through the thing i just talked about like how do you people? And I guess the easiest way to offer that is like, how do you

do it yourself? What is the civil war like within yourself? Yeah. Well, I think what I talk to my students about and what I have to remind myself of, cause I'm really good at telling my students and giving them advice and not always great at following my own advice. But what I challenge my students to think about and what I challenge myself to think about is how do we redefine the metrics of success? So many of our students who come to USC, they're the smartest kids in their class. They're the best athletes on their team, the best musician in their band. And they come to USC and for the first time, they're not the smartest kid in their class and they're not the best athlete. They're not the best musician and they're not going to maybe get in the sorority or fraternity they want to. And they maybe won't get the A in the class

they want. And they maybe won't get the girl or guy that they want. And they might not get the internship or job that they want. And that can be devastating because in their own mind, they've succeeded at everything they've done and their first B and suddenly they're like living in a van down by the river in their own mind. It just spirals out of control. And so what I challenge students to think about is how do you define success in a way that makes sense for you? Why are you so reactive to the everyone else's definition of your success? And why are you so dismissive of your own definition of success? How do we empower ourselves to define success in a way that focuses on the things that both spirituality and science tell us matter, which are human relationships, a sense of meaning

and purpose, a type of service to others, the understanding of ourselves as being part of a larger whole. Those are the things that science shows us now matters. And of course, you're probably familiar with the Harvard Grant study, which was the longest study of the longest logical study of human behavior in history. And after 75 years, they found that the things that made people feel like they were going to flourish in life, weren't their status or, or celebrity or salary or grade or institution that they graduated from. It wasn't anything that American capitalism tells us it is. It was actually the relationships they have, the depth of their loving relationships. And in fact, for men,

it was the warmth of their relationships with their mothers before the age of five. So here we are our whole life trying to find a sense of flourishing and happiness by going to the right schools and getting the right grades and getting the right jobs and making the right money. And something that we've had no control over, where we were born, who we were born to, and how we were raised, is actually the most responsible for how we feel at the end of our life, which is incredible. And it's a phenomenal finding that I feel like it zipped under the radar. Yeah, that's right. It did. It did. It did. But it's like my gospel is the grand study. I talk about it every chance I get because I'm at a research university. But I also have to do that.

So what I challenge my students to think about is create an internal resume that only you see, not that the world sees, of the accomplishments that are meaningful to you. How do you measure bravery? How do you measure courage? How do you measure overcoming fear? How do you measure your relationships? How do you measure the things that will ultimately be responsible for the types of personal success that you're looking for in a way that you can embrace and judge and sort of not judge, but gauge your progress along the way. Okay. So we will have them literally, you'll pull up some characteristics or traits or whatever value systems that are important. And will you have them define each one of those? Or are you looking for one definition with a big S success? I want them to define it for themselves. I want them to feel

empowered. Okay. So I love, I love this because I think about this all the time. Is there, okay. It's too trite to say there's one definition of success for sure. But can there be 20,000 definitions of success or are there four? Are we going to, I don't know if you've been keeping track of the thousands of kids and student athletes that were students that have given you a definition. Yes. But are any themes emerging? Like, what are you finding when you ask that question? Well, I think that there are themes that that kind of success inevitably draws upon, like

doing something outside of one's comfort zone. Students feel really proud if they're able to do that, or doing more than they think they can do, or being in a relationship that matters to them. I think those are themes. But the way those themes are articulated by different people are different. I think that everyone is going to have a subjective experience of the way that kind of success translates into their life. So I'm less concerned about the nuts and bolts. I'm more concerned that they just start the process of thinking about this. And also, if we're talking about spirituality, for me, spirituality is really more about the questions than the answers.

I think religion tends to be about answers. Spirituality tends to be about questions. Our students will describe themselves as more spiritual than religious. That means they have to be comfortable with the questions. At a university, they're told that they need to have the right answers. They're not told they need to have the right questions. What I'm trying to tell them is have the right questions of how do I measure this? What matters to me and why?

How do I find meaning and purpose? How do I translate my faith into action or my values into action? Even if you don't know the answers to those questions, it's important you ask and live those questions. Okay, cool. What? All right. So let me, there's so many good things that you're dropping in here. So I want to go back to one, the success question, because I want to know how you think about it today. Right. And it might've been different than yesterday or last week, but how are you thinking about success? And then I want to ask about one is just like a great project, a digital based project to ask your thousands of people, like what a success and curate that

into a theme based order. I bet it's been done. I don't know. I haven't seen it. I'd love to do it with the college age population. Exactly. Right. And especially a college age population that is pretty switched on your that is pretty switched on. Your community is pretty switched on about meaning. And diverse too, right? Yeah. We have students from 140 countries, from every faith, from every background, every perspective and identity. It is a microcosm of the world right here on campus.

Phenomenal. So how are you thinking about or defining success right now? So I think in my own life, I'm human and I'm an immigrant. And so in some ways, when I became the Dean of Religious Life, that was success because suddenly in my parents' eyes and in their friends' eyes, everything I did made sense. Like when I was appointed Dean, all the people in my community were like, we always believed in you. And, you know, we always knew you would. And I was like, auntie, you were talking smack about me last week. I know that nothing's changed. It's just that someone gave me a job that you think is impressive, right? But it still made me feel validated in my path because other people saw it as a type of success. But now that I've gotten older, that kind of success doesn't drive me to come to work every day. It doesn't drive me to think

creatively about what we can do or should be doing with our students or for our students. It's the work itself that drives me, not the title, not the accolades. And as I've gotten older, I realized that my priorities now are a little different. Like I would rather be successful as if I'm a new father. I'd rather be successful as a father or as a husband than even as a dean. Now, I think that one creates the other. If I'm successful, like if I'm a good father, I can be a better chaplain. I think that one creates the other. If I'm successful, like if I'm a good father, I can be a better chaplain. I think that's true, but I'm not chasing the same kind of

external validation that I used to when I was younger and earlier in my career. I'm now trying to sort of get my own approval. How did that pivot? Cause I think that that's the, that's the story of becoming, right. Is chasing the external rewards and it's the hero's journey, if you will, where the strong man stumbles, he gets the calling, he stumbles and then figures out some internal stuff and then goes on to whatever. But how did that pivot for you? Because that's a real deal. I wonder if it's a pivot or if I just finally have the courage to embrace what I always knew was true. Because that idea was something that I had thought about at a very young age. I always had thought that when you live in a Buddhist monastery at 20, you see the world in

a very different way, in a way that really is focused on internal processes and perception as opposed to external processes. What I learned in the Buddhist monastery was that I couldn't control the world out here. I couldn't control what everyone did. I couldn't make everyone to do what I want them to do. I couldn't control the events of the world, but I could control the world in here in my own head. I can't control what's happening in outer space, but I can control what's happening in inner space. And I can control my perception of the events of the world, and that's where I have power. So I always felt like it was really about my own perception rather than the external world. When I got in this sort of job and I was getting external validation, I kind of – I enjoyed it I guess. And as an immigrant, I was told that that's success and that's the way my parents would define success, the American dream, right? And Maslow to some extent, community and recognition, all those things that allow you to work on self-actualization or even self-transcendence.

But at some point, I came back to this idea of actually it really is more about the way I see the world as opposed to what everyone else is telling me. And the more I began to read about the people I admire, the more I realized that's how they saw the world too. So for example, a guy like Sir Edmund Hillary, he climbs Mount Everest. He's the first, one of the first two people to climb Mount Everest. And that's a huge, that's a Herculean accomplishment. He did this in the 50s. I think for people our age, we don't even realize what a big deal that was. But that was like something no one could ever do and he did it. And what did he say when he came down even realize what a big deal that was, but that was like something no one could ever do, and he did it. And what did he say when he came down? It's not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.

He had most external validation of anyone ever to do this Herculean task, one of the pivotal moments of the 20th century. It's not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves. If you go down to the Mud Hall of Philosophy here at USC, you'll see a mural of Plato, the most important thinker in Western civilization, the person who founded the academy, which is in some ways the blueprint for the modern research university, in some ways the godfather of everything we do at the university. And what does this quote say? The first and best victory is to conquer self. Not to write books, not to leave a mark, not to change the world, but to conquer self. That's what Gandhi said. That's what King said. That's what the Dalai Lama said. So all the people who I admire, all the people I look up to, all the people I want to emulate, that's what they have been talking about for

most of their lives. So I think intuitively, I always knew it was true. It's fun to get caught up in all the, you know, a nice article about you, or someone says something nice about you. And sometimes that can be really, when you're having a tough time at work, that can be nourishing and affirming and it can be important. But I wake up with me, you know, and that's the person I need to, when I look in the mirror, that's the person I need to say, okay, you're doing what you need to be doing. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Cozy Earth. Over the years, I've learned that recovery doesn't just happen when we sleep. It starts with how we transition and wind down. And that's why I've

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the way you prepare for it matters. If you're looking for high quality personal care products that elevate your routine without complicating it, I'd love for you to check them out. Head to calderalab.com slash finding mastery and use the code finding mastery at checkout for 20% off your first order. That's calderalab, C-A-L-D-E-R-L-A-B.com slash finding mastery. Do you have a philosophy? I want to get back to questions in a minute, but do you have a philosophy that guides your life? I think at different points, I've had different philosophies. I guess the philosophy that really defines the way I want to live is to really pay attention

to what's happening inside. That's why I have a meditation practice or I'm a proponent of mindfulness and contemplative practice, because I feel like that's the real power. And I think what has helped me too is the power of storytelling. And I don't say that in a trite way. You know, on a university campus for at least 100 years, there's been the debate, are we the product of our genes? Or are we the product of our environment? You know, the biologists will say, well, you're the product of your genes, the sociologists will say you're the product of your environment. And people go back and forth. The problem with nature and nurture is that you don't control nature, and you don't control nurture, you don't control where you were

born, and you don't control who you were born to, you don't control how you were raised. So both nature and nurture, to me me are not empowering in terms of personal identity formation because I don't really have control over either. What I do have control over is narrative. So when we think about nature and nurture, I think we also have to think about narrative because at the end of the day, I find we become the stories that we tell ourselves. We may not be aware of the stories we're telling ourselves. Well, that's the work of mindfulness, to become more aware.

That's right, to become more aware. So are you more interested in the projection or the response? And so let's both agree and nod our heads that we can't control a genetic coding nor have full control of our environment. We can have some impact and some control, but not full control. And then, but our internal experience, we're able to project meaning and we're also able to respond to the activity. Yes. And so are you more interested in front loading for helping others on the projection, the storyline of why somebody cut me off in traffic or the response to it? And it's a loaded question because we need to say both. Yes. But if it was a hard line and you had to choose which one to front load earlier on people.

Yeah. And I'm talking about psychological framework and skills. Yep. Right. Those are the two. I would say projection. So you're talking about psychological framework. I'm much more interested in the proactive work than the reactive work.

Yeah. As a chaplain, I end up doing a lot more of the reactive work. That's right. I get students in crisis who are so far down the river that I can't even see what's happening up river. But I would like to be working up river. That's a cool thought. Yeah. And so in the sport world or performance world, there's mental skills and psychological framework is my reductionist view of all the different things we can think about.

And I don't like being a reductionist, but it makes it simple to get my arms around. And that the framework is the heavy lifting. Now let's take Jesus. Let's take the Dalai Lama. Let's take whomever inspired people. They probably didn't need a whole lot of mental skills training because the framework was so solid. Right.

And so, so how do you help people on the framework, on the projection piece, on the storyline? What are some real applied ways? And I want to go back to the questions in a second. What are some real applied ways that you can help others become? Well, it's tough because you're combating a lot of conditioning. We all emerge in a particular cultural context. And it's one thing if you emerge in a context like the Dalai Lama before he had to go into exile. He emerged in a context where the government was run by Buddhists, by Rinpoches who were chosen by reincarnation.

That creates a cultural value system where everything is oriented around a type of compassion and liberation and spiritual enlightenment. So he was raised in those kinds of conditions, which made it easier for him to orient himself around those issues in a way that's more difficult, I think, for a lot of Americans who are raised in a different society with different cultural value markers, which push us in an almost antithetical direction around accumulation of possession and celebrity and wealth and things that are essentially a function of ego. I think at its core, every religion is about getting past ego. Every religion is about challenging you to think that you're not who you think you are. The Buddhists would say, you're actually an enlightened Buddha already. You just don't know it. The Hindus would say, you actually have God inside of you.

You don't know it. The Christians would say, you're actually a child of God. You just don't know it. So in every religion, there's a challenge to reinvent yourself, to get past self, to get past ego, to think about yourself in a bigger way. I think our American cultural system and certainly our university system actually values and rewards those external things that tie to ego. And when those things aren't achieved, then ego goes into a tailspin, right? So a lot of the challenge of working with students is a deculturalization of certain things. And it's very different with students from different countries who have had different kind of pressure points moving forward. I think the thing that I want to challenge my students to think about deeply is how they themselves create the conditions of their own suffering. And that to me is Buddhism 101.

I was going to say that is Buddhism. It's Buddhism 101. We're all suffering. That we're all suffering, that we have in some ways caused our suffering by the way we think about the world, and that we can somehow mitigate our suffering by the way we think about the world. I want students to feel like they can be proactive in mitigating their suffering and in being a participant in

their own mental health. Because many students don't feel that. They're almost like afflicted by the suffering or by mental health challenges and don't feel empowered to address it in any particular way. They haven't been taught the tools that they might have been taught to do well in school to actually do well in life. I wish that students took care of their mental health in the same way that they take care of their physical health. I wish that they had exercises in the same way that they have exercises with physical health. And that's why we've launched a mindfulness initiative, to give people some basic tools, some exercises, to think about mental health as something that everyone needs to be involved in in their life,

in the same way that everyone needs to be involved in physical health. There's no stigma around it. It's just part and parcel of being a human, right? And so that is my challenge really for students. Now, different students come with different issues, but I will say this. I have been really dismayed over the last nine years to see the trajectory of my conversations with students. When I started nine years ago, most of my conversations with students. When I started nine years ago, most of my conversations with students were, how do I live an extraordinary life? How do I live a meaningful life? There were these inspiring conversations. Now, most of my conversations with students are more like, why should I live at all? It's a conversation from meaning to meaninglessness. And I thought, maybe it's just that people are finding me nine years later into

this job in a way they weren't in year one. But when I talk to other chaplains, when I talk to counselors on our campus and counselors across American higher education, it's the same story. We have a mental health crisis in American higher education. And I think elite research universities have some blame in exacerbating that crisis by only focusing on how to make a living and not how to make a life. And as schools become more expensive, they become more pre-professional and people come to college to get better jobs and to make more money because colleges cost so much. But the mission of a liberal arts education should be to challenge students how to think, how to act, how to be, not just how to work a particular job. And I think we're missing part of that now. And so I think students come to college with

all sorts of mental health challenges and issues for a variety of reasons. If we're able to fully engage a liberal arts experience with our students and teach them how to think critically, not just about their profession, but about their worldview in a way that's meaningful and positive, I think we can help create the kind of citizen who is concerned with their own mental health, their own emotional intelligence, their own form of personal leadership that are empowered to sort of understand how interpersonal relationships work in their life. And what I found is the people who are most successful professionally are also really good in terms of emotional intelligence. They're not successful because they went to the right schools or got the right grades.

They're successful because they understand what it means to be human and how other humans operate and what other humans need and how to be that person for others. Yeah. There's some good research around that as well. There is, you know, EQ is a great predictor. Yep. It also feels really good because you get to be in relationships that go a little bit

deeper, but for those that don't have the EQ because they're more challenged, either they're lacking that insight or ability or skill, or they're just more interested, flat out interested in what others think of them and the achievement. What are the key questions? If there was four to six questions, I don't want to put you on the spot, but I'm sure you've got them.

Like, what are the four to six questions you would hope that an incoming group of students would be able to have sorted out before they got to you? Before they got to me? Yeah. Well, like I said, it's the questions more than the answers. I think we're all still trying to figure out the answers, but that doesn't mean we don't ask the questions. And I would just say they're the big ultimate questions, the existential questions. And

those questions really haven't changed that much over 2000 years. Like how do I find meaning and purpose? And what is my role in this world? One of the things I really want to challenge students to think about is not what is my job in this world, but what is my role in this world? I want to move kids from job to vocation. I want students to think about calling, not just work, right? And so part of thinking about what you're calling is figuring out the answers to what matters to me. Why does it matter to me? What are my values? How do I translate those values into action? Like how do I find meaning? What does love mean to me? What, what does it mean to be a good friend? That's a big one. I got to say, what does it mean to be a friend? That's the, that's the question. I, I got, okay. For, I've been here for nine years, for six years, I never got this question. And now for the last three years, every week I get this question. How do I make friends? I never got that question before. You're on a campus of 42,000 students. Why are you asking the old man how to make friends, right? have entirely been raised in an online social environment where all of their most meaningful

social interactions have happened online. They may have a thousand friends online, but they don't know what it means to be a friend to the person in their dorm. And here we are at a research university. This is going to sound crazy. Here we are at a research university with Nobel Prize winners, with MacArthur Genius Grant winners, with federal funding to do the most sophisticated scientific research in the world right here. And if I had to teach one class on this campus, it would be friendship 101. Isn't that crazy? And I wouldn't have said that nine years ago. Yeah. I mean, you're so animated about it. It's striking. And at the same time, it's like,

I feel like I already knew that this was coming, but I've never, I've never, no one's ever said this to me the way you're saying it. So it's alarming. And I've got a nine, eight year old son that, um, you know, like they are, they love he and his friends, they love social media. They not social media, but gaming, they love being on, on this, the platform. So it's a concern. It's a concern. And on the platform. So it's a concern. It's a concern. And I think there's obviously it's a tool and there are benefits to the tool, but it can't replace, you know, talking with thumbs can't replace talking with tongues, right? We have to be able to talk and grow.

You know, that was nice too. Yeah. That's pretty good. I've been working on that one for a while. Yeah. Okay. I wish I could say it just came to me. Yeah, that was nice.

All right. Let's for a while. Yeah. Okay. I wish I could say it just came to me. Yeah, that was nice. All right. Let's do a quick little pivot. And what do you love about Hinduism? What are the things – and then what are some of the challenges that you're working on? And I also want to ask you what you're meditating on or what does your meditation practice look like? So what do I love about Hinduism? I love the way I was raised Hindu and there are many ways to be Hindu because it's a very decentralized, I would say disorganized religion. The way I was raised is there are many paths up the mountain, but they're all going the

same place. Different strokes for different folks. The oldest religious text in the world is a Hindu text. Oh, it's not Zoroastrianism? Well, the oldest extant text. So the oldest continually existing text is a Hindu text called the Rig Veda. It may be older than the Zoroastrian tradition. We just don't know because it's an oral tradition. Okay. But in Zoroastrianism is oral. No, Hindu, the Hindu texts were oral. So we can't even date this text. But in the text, it says, truth is one, but the wise call truth by many names. And I love that. I love that idea that we don't have to claim exclusive truth to be true for who we are. We can all come to our own truth in a way that recognizes we're moving towards a similar place, like many rivers all go to the ocean, right?

Lao Tzu has some similar idea. Have you studied some of the Tao Te Ching? Yeah, I have. That's right. And so that to me actually provides me a powerful template for doing the work of the university chaplain. I have 90 religious groups and I don't see any of them as better or worse. I don't judge any of them in any way or another. I'm not exclusive or evangelical about how I approach them. I want to support all of them in all of the work that they're doing, even if their work is antithetical to each other. We have very progressive groups. We have very conservative groups. They have every position on every issue, but I want to support them all equally. And I always go back to my core root Hindu belief of many paths, one truth. And that

to me is really the most important Hindu teaching in doing the work of interfaith. And what is the truth? Capital T, is that what we're talking about? I think there may be a capital T, but there's also a lowercase t. I think we all have subjective truths. My truth may be different than yours. What works for me may not work for you. Ultimate truth is, I think, a little harder to define. And I wonder- What does the Hindu faith? Well, for Hinduism, ultimate truth is understanding your own nature as being divine. Okay. You know, that's what namaste is, like namaste, the Hindu greeting.

Yeah, my divinity acknowledges and salutes the divinity within you. The divinity with me salutes the divinity within you. That we're all reflections of God, that we're all reincarnated over many lifetimes. And the goal is for the soul to no longer be reincarnated, to escape the cycle of suffering and rebirth and to become one with God. That is ultimate truth, that you are God and you're not only God, but there is God in you, right? That is truth. You know what would be cool? I don't know if this is, if you can riff on this or in some ways this question doesn't do justice to the wisdom that is underneath what I'm

about to ask you is, but could you do a two line, three line capsulation of each religion? Oh, I don't know about that. The more you study, the harder it is to get into the nuance. Yeah. But I could certainly say for Hindus, you could say something like your nature is inherently divine and you just have to realize that. Yeah. For Buddhists, you could say very much the same thing.

You are already an enlightened Buddha and you just have to realize that. That in some ways for both of those traditions, which are the traditions that have shaped me the most, we already have the power. We already have the knowledge. We already have the wisdom. We already have – we're already enlightened. We just have to cleanse the screen that we're looking through in some ways. You know what I found? I think that this thought, I don't know where it was inspired by, but it's done a lot of good. And so I'll share

it with you. I've seen it like played out in so many deep, meaningful ways, as well as it's worked in performance settings where there's a lot of intensity is that this thought, everything you need is already inside you. Yeah. Everything you need is already inside. And then it's a lot of intensity is that this thought, everything you need is already inside you. Yeah. Everything you need is already inside. And then it's a matter of accessing that. That's right. Trusting it.

That's right. So on that thought. And it feels empowering if it's inside of you. It's not something you have to get. It's not something you have to learn. It's not something you have to accumulate. You have to work to reveal it. It's hard work.

It's hard work. Like the hardest. Yes. So that being said, how do you help people trust themselves? Is there a way that you can talk about that? I think it takes a little bit of – it takes some – you have to peel some of the layers off. There's a lot there when you're talking to... The reality is I now more often than not will talk to students in crisis. So they're different than the kinds of conversations I used to have,

where it was just, I want to change the world. And how do I do it? Like the hopes and dreams conversations. I miss those conversations. But when you're in crisis, there's a lot already happening and the whole person is in crisis. It's not just that the academic or part is in crisis. It's physical, it's spiritual, it's emotional, it can be mental. And I think it in some ways comes back to an idea of self-compassion or self-love versus self-loathing. Our most popular Mindful USC class is self-compassion. When we put up self-compassion, it sells out in 30 minutes and we have 200 people on the waiting list. And it's not even for a credit or a grade. And it's an eight-week course. And yet the second I put it up there, it's already sold out because of the waiting list and everyone's.

And if I tell a student it's okay to love yourself or be compassionate towards yourself, sometimes they'll start crying. No one has ever told them that. I think people don't trust themselves or students don't trust themselves because they haven't learned to love themselves or accept themselves. And so there's this fragmentation within them where they can't trust the person that they don't love or respect or admire. And if you can figure out how to re-embrace that self, to not have a fragmented, but rather an integrated self, then I think they're going to be much more willing to be intuitive about what that self is pointing them towards. Do you have a working definition for

mindfulness, which is one of the tools that you're helping for self-compassion? It's good. It means different things to different people. For us, we oriented around the idea of being present, being kind, and being opened. Oh, so you added some action to it. Yes. That's interesting. So present, kind, and open, you said. And that's what mindfulness is. So you're not getting involved with the thought stream or you're not getting involved with the non-judgmental judgment?

Well, as part of open, I think we would say non-judgmental. There is a non-judgmental aspect that we have to – and that's the big thing for students is to not be judgmental, not evaluate everything. Am I guessing wrong that you don't want to use the word non-judgmental because it's like, it's got the toxic tone to it? It's tough because we're trying to teach students how to be critical thinkers, but then we're telling them not to be judgmental, right? So we do use the language of self-compassion as a way of getting it non-judgment because it's an intervention towards the way they're already judging themselves. But I think ultimately mindfulness is about choices, right? Mindfulness gives you the choices.

I don't have to react in a particular way. I don't have to feel a particular way. So the application of mindfulness. I can choose to do something in a different way. I don't have to fall into old patterns. Mindfulness gives you choices that you might not otherwise have. And then, so I like to think about mindfulness in this way. And so I'd love to bounce off this with you is that the whole game, the whole purpose of mindfulness is awareness first so that you can reveal insight and wisdom. And then there's lots of ways to do the practice of mindfulness, eating mindfully, walking mindfully, talking mindfully, breathing mindfully. And what is the actual structure? So you're nodding your head like, okay, we're on the same page there. And then single point mindfulness as well as contemplative mindfulness are the two

buckets that I drop mindfulness into. Like I can do single point over and over and over and over again, focus on one thing. And that is going to train some awareness. Eventually, like I might slip into an altered state, if you will, right? High consciousness. And then the contemplative is if I just observe without judgment and I just watch the stream of consciousness or whatever it is that I'm attending to and just see where that thread goes or whatever it is that I'm attending to and just see where that thread goes or where it takes me. Is there a third bucket?

Is there another besides single point and contemplative? Some people are saying to suggesting to me, Mike, are you considering imagery as a form of meditation, as a form of mindfulness? And I don't. And so I'd love to. I think there's a third bucket in that regard on a university campus. Because the other thing we're doing besides just teaching classes is we have a group called the Contemplative Pedagogy Group. So we've had over 200 faculty

members participate. And these are faculty members... So let's break this down real quick. Contemplative... Pedagogy. And pedagogy... Contemplative meaning reflective. Pedagogy is the way we teach. So how do we teach in a reflective way? And what surprised me is that there is – That seems like a skill to me. Yeah. So that's a skill that you're working on. Okay.

What we've done with this group is we realized that there are already professors doing this and we're convening them to talk about how they do it. What I thought it would be was the comparative religion guy teaching people how to meditate. But we have physicians, we have filmmakers, we have engineers, we have mathematicians who are using contemplative, reflective, and visualization practices as a way of teaching course material inside of the classroom as an effective form of pedagogy. So it's already baked in. That's really good. And now contemplative pedagogy is a national movement in higher education. Is it? Yeah. And so I think there is that imagery, visualization, whatever, whatever. Like the mathematician talks about how they visualize a three-dimensional object before they actually work on the mathematical aspects. He takes people

into a meditative exercise that has learning outcomes that are positive in the classroom. So you don't have to even believe in mindfulness to think that there is a contemplative way of learning that is actually good for students in a rigorous academic setting. That's really cool. And that is essentially what the Dalai Lama did for you when he grabbed your hand. He was aware and he was at the same time teaching by being. Yes. Right. And so that's his gift that he gave you, which created this buzz for you. That's right. My first teacher in mindfulness said to me, Mike, are you interested in having a full

body orgasm? Well, at 20, that would have turned my head too. What do you mean? That's right. Okay. Is there a word? Maybe that's what we should be using for our students. And you know what? Maybe that's how we should be using for our students. Right. And you know what?

Maybe that's how we get to Greek life. Yeah, Greek life. One of our mutual friends, Meng, he points to research that says, I can show you in the brain that that's accurate. Yeah. So it's evidence-based. It's not just some whack kind of thought from 20 years ago. But anyways, that being said, is there a word or a phrase that cuts to the center of what you understand most?

Oh, wow. I'm not sure if there is. I would say that in the work that I do in religious life and spiritual life, not in the academic study of religion, but in the chaplaincy and in the practice of religion, spirituality. The one thing that one of my mentors told me that has never left me is that you can doubt a creed, but you can't doubt a dance. And I keep coming back to that. You can doubt a creed, but you can't doubt a dance. And in some ways, that's my spiritual and scholarly dilemma, that as a scholar of religion, I've studied the creeds, and we can debate endlessly about those creeds. But if you and I go to a dance, how do we doubt that?

And for me, the dance is the lived experience. It is the manifestation of spirit, whereas the study can just be theoretical. And over the course of my career, I have moved as someone who thought of himself as predominantly a scholar of religion to now someone who thinks of himself as a chaplain or a practitioner of religion. It's not easy to wear both hats of scholar practitioner because both communities have distrust. Scholars think practitioners are naive and. Practitioners think scholars are missing the point. To be a scholar practitioner is oftentimes to be at war with yourself.

But I have moved towards this idea that when we're talking about the ultimate expression of what it means to be human or of the spirit or of spiritual truth, it's going to be hard to put that into words. And the most effective way of communicating that is through the arts, through mysticism, through poetry, through dance, through song, through popular culture, through films, through stories. And I think that's always been the case. You know, religions have been effective and have been embraced because of popular culture. The Sistine Chapel was popular culture. You know, passion plays are popular culture. The Sistine Chapel was popular culture. Passion plays are popular culture. Sufi poetry is popular culture of its time. And that's how religious transmission

often happens. I don't think those forms of transmission get enough credit. People talk about, oh, everyone converted to Islam for X, Y, or Z reasons. If you look at India, the most effective missionaries of the faith were Sufis who brought music, devotional music to India. And that moved the spirit, right? So I keep coming back to that. You can doubt a creed, but you can't doubt a dance. Really cool. And then do you have a vision for what life looks like for you in the next five years, 25 years?

I wish I did have a better vision of that. For the most part, my life has unfolded in a way that totally surprises me and yet makes perfect sense. The fact that I became the first Hindu to be a university chaplain would totally surprise me. But when I got the job, I was like, this makes perfect sense, actually. This is the job I've always wanted, even though I never thought I could get it. And it's actually the job, I was like, this makes perfect sense. Actually, this is the job I've always wanted, even though I never thought I could get it. And it's actually the job that I've trained for. And they saw something in me maybe that I didn't even see in myself, but it made perfect sense. My challenge now that I'm a father is most of my life, I've really tried to just be in the present moment. I haven't really got caught up in thoughts of the future or the past. What Buddhism teaches us is that the past is a mental projection or a mental recreation. The future is a wish. When the future comes,

it'll be the present. When the past was here, it'll be the present. The only thing I can say about my life that's true, two things. One is that I'll die. And two is that in every moment of my life, I will be living in the present moment. So that's the only truth is that we're always in the present moment, yet we do so much to distract ourselves from that truth. So my challenge now as a father is I find myself thinking a lot about the future in a way that I never really have before. And so when I get caught up in thoughts of the future, I get caught up in thoughts of my future.

What's my job going to be in five years? Am I going to be a good father? What am I going to, how am I going to teach my values to my kid? What am I going to leave for my kid? Am I financially secure? Things I'd never really thought that much about before. And it's gotten me away from the present. And I think it's created a type of anxiety that isn't always helpful. So on one hand, I would love to have a really prosperous and fruitful and meaningful career five years in the future. But on the other hand, I would rather think about what that means for me right now in the present and make it happen right now in the present. So when you have those thoughts of,

oh my goodness, what's the future going to be? How do you get back? Yeah, it's tough. I think a meditation practice, I get on my bike. That's very meditative for me. What about when you're walking to campus or you're in the middle of a meeting or a conversation? It's just a type of – it's cultivating a self-awareness that brings you back to the moment. It's a hello and goodbye. And 20 years of meditating and it's still hard for me. It's still hard for me not to fall into the traps. I'm still my own worst enemy.

When I think of an idea, I'll think of 10 reasons why I can't do it. Is that how you get in your way? That's how I get in my way. So you overanalyze what could go wrong. I can't do this. I can't do that. So I won't even do it. And if I can get past my own lack of creativity or my own mental obstacles, I find that I can generally do the things I want. The world or the universe is much more accepting of the idea than I am of myself. And if I can get past that first hurdle, that to me is always the biggest hurdle. So why is that thought not enough?

What thought? The thought that, listen, I'm pretty clear that when I get out of my own way, I'm able to do some pretty cool stuff. Like how is the thought not enough? Because people ask all the time, like, Mike, how, how, how do I become whatever? And how do I do whatever? Well, first you've got to make up your mind that there's something that you really want to experience in life. And like a Navy SEAL, the director of SEAL Team 5 shares this insight with me.

He says, when something really matters, you'll do whatever it takes. And that thought I think is really powerful. When I think of my son, my wife, whatever, like the noble truth, you'll do whatever it takes. And so how is the thought not enough? I think it's because there are other thoughts there too. And so it's not a thought. I have a lot of voices in my head. I have my mother's voice in my head. I have the naysayer voices in my head. When I got this job, I got some angry mail from alums saying, how can a Judeo-Christian institute hire a heathen, an idolater, someone who believes in a false religion? I try and prove those people wrong, but their voices are still in my head. Maybe they were right.

So it's not just that the thought isn't enough. It's just that there are other competing thoughts that drown out the thought that could be enough. Brilliant. Okay. One to ten on some scales, if you will. Okay. So one, one being low, 10 being high and they can be quick answers or longer answers, whatever you want, your ability to switch on and be fully engaged. Oh, um, probably like a six, your ability to switch off. Oh, probably like a six. Your ability to switch off. Oh, probably like a 10.

I'm pretty good at that. You can, you can turn it down. I can leave work at work if I need to. Your ability to manage internal distractions. I would say a six. It depends on the day. Your ability to lock in and focus. Probably like an eight.

I've gotten better over the years. When it's dangerous. Yeah. Especially when it's dangerous. Okay. gotten better over the years. When it's dangerous? Yeah. Especially when it's dangerous. Okay. And then when it's boring? It's harder. When you feel pressure? I fear pressure anxiety. I can focus better actually. I can channel that in a way that allows me to be more effective. So on the pressure piece, it goes up. You score yourself higher? I do. And then when it's boring, it goes lower. It does. And so is that a nine and a two? Yeah. I feel maybe, maybe it's the challenge that gets me going and the boredom doesn't feel like a challenge. Scale, um, risk-taking versus rule following. So what, one to 10 risk-taking?

I would say in my twenties, uh, I was a 10 at risk-taking. I took every risk and I'm so glad I did. Now I'm more risk-averse, quite frankly, because I have a kid and I have a wife and I have a mortgage and I have to think about how I can be there for them. And I can't take every risk that I would like to. So this to me is the big difference between being in my 20s and being in my early 40s, which I am now, is the risk-taking element. And that's why I tell my students, take every risk now. You're only living for yourself. You don't have to live for your folks now. You don't have to live for your employer, your spouse, your kid.

The more informed risk you take, the better the opportunity for you to live a meaningful life will be. I took a lot of big risks that have paid huge dividends that I could never take right now. Financial, emotional, physical, spiritual. Everything. From what I study to how I live to what I did with my life. When I graduated from college, I spent two years traveling around the Himalayas when everyone else was going off to medical school. I studied religion when there was no real off to medical school, right? I studied religion when there was no real reason to do that. I wanted to become a professor in religion when it's really hard and not very financially lucrative. So everything that I was raised with, all the

values that I was supposed to sort of inherit, I kind of pushed back against. And those risks are directly responsible for the fact that I can do the work that I do now. I love it. Your fear of success one to 10. I think when I was younger, I feared it more. And now I'm now that I I've tried to redefine it in some ways, I'm less fearful of it. One to 10. My fear, uh, probably like now. Five. Fear of failure? Fear of failure, probably like a five. Five. Okay. Yeah, I'm not. I actually enjoy failing. I wear it as a badge of pride. I think when we fail, it means we put ourselves in an uncomfortable position. And if we're putting ourselves in an uncomfortable position, it means we're growing. And I think

the goal of life isn't to succeed, but to evolve. That is success. And so if I'm failing but growing, if I'm failing forward, then I'm succeeding. I think we have to redefine failure as a type of success. I tell my students that all the time. And people who succeed spectacularly fail spectacularly. That's why they succeed spectacularly. Like Gretzky says, you miss every shot you don't take. Or Michael Doran says, I've failed so many times. That's why they succeed spectacularly. Like Gretzky says, you miss every shot you don't take. Or Michael Doran says, I've failed so many times. That's why I succeed, right? I think that's so true. And then we'll also run into trouble in interviews.

This is a funny way to think about it. This is how I think about it with younger kids. Like one of the easiest questions for interviewers to ask is tell us about a time that you failed. So if you don't have anything, you played it way too safe. Yeah, that's right. This is easy. One to ten, spirituality. Yeah, I'd say, I hope it way too safe. Yeah, that's right. This is easy. One to 10 spirituality. Yeah, I'd say, I hope it's a 10.

Better be a 10, right? Better be a 10. Practicing spirituality, one to 10. I would hope it's a 10. Yeah. And then science, one to 10. 10. I don't see any, you know, for me, science and spirituality are two sides of the same coin.

I think that's part of my Hindu and Buddhist upbringing. Yeah. Where we don't have the same kind of tension. Brilliant. Relationships. One to 10. 10. Having great habits. 10. What is a one habit you wish that you'll be able to install in your son? You said son, right? Daughter. Daughter. Compassion. As a verb. Cool. Yeah. As a doing. Yeah. Yeah. Was there a thought that you'd like to install? I'd like for her to think that, and I think every parent wants this for their kid,

that they can do whatever they think they can do, that they can do more than they think they can do. Yeah. That's really cool. And then what does your sleep program look like? What does your recovery program look like? You've got big jobs. Yeah. What I've realized is I can't, I don't have balance in my day-to-day life, but I can build balance over the course of a year. So when the school year is going, it's really tough. We have, you know, 42,000 students. So there's a lot of trauma. There's a lot of, there's death. There's, there's a lot to do that is really emotionally exhausting for me. I can do it because at some point I'll have a summer break or a winter break.

I can do it in spurts. I cannot see my kid this week because I know in the summer I'll see her a lot. So I've stopped thinking about how do I find day-to-day or week-to-week balance. I start thinking about how I find year-to-year balance. And that might be two extremes. It might be an extreme work environment. And then the summer I might just pack up and go to the Eastern Sierras for two weeks and turn off my phone, right? It's one extreme or the other, but somewhere I find the balance. Varun, thank you. Thank you.

I've enjoyed this quite a bit. Yeah. And what you've been able to do speaks for itself, but then how you conduct your inner experience to share complicated ideas and thoughts. It didn't, none of this sounded rehearsed, which is refreshing. Right. And it all sounded like you've thought deeply about how you think and the worldviews that are shaping you. Thank you.

And that you are also in return shaping many others' worldviews. So if there's one thing that you would hope people can walk away with, I know I asked you the question about for your daughter, to create compassion as a verb. Yeah. What would be a parting thought? I would say the same thing I said about my daughter, that we can do more than we think we can do. I think we, in some ways, limit ourselves by the kinds of rules or constraints we mentally put on ourselves. And if we unshackle ourselves, we can achieve optimum peak performance in not just a physical way, but emotional, spiritual,

intellectual, in a holistic way. Brilliant. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And then how can people find you, follow you? I'm not on social media, but you can learn more about me at my website, varunsoni.com and just shoot me an email. V-A-R-U-N-S-O-N-I.com. Yep. Yeah. Brilliant. And there's going to be lots of questions coming your way. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Brilliant. Thank you, everyone. All right. Right on. All right. Thank you so much for diving into another episode of Finding Mastery with us. Our team loves creating this podcast and sharing these conversations with you. We really appreciate you being part of this community. And if you're enjoying the show,

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