Good Life Project - Meditation | Science, Soul & Practice

Episode Date: June 3, 2021

Today’s episode is special, it’s a unique meditation deep dive that brings together the deep, research-driven insights from Daniel Goleman, best known for his work on Emotional Intelligence, as well as his book, Altered Traits. Daniel takes us into the science behind meditation and also asks a surprising question - what if popular wisdom and science about meditation were wrong? Goleman reveals powerful new truths about meditation, what it really is and isn't, and how only about 1% of the 6,000+ studies done on the topic are what might be considered "good science."We then turn it over to Sharon Salzberg, renowned meditation and loving-kindness teacher and founder of Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts. She travels the world teaching people how to become aware and cultivate loving-kindness in their lives and has been doing so for decades. Sharon also recently partnered with Dan Harris to bring her latest venture to life, 10% Happier, an exciting new app that builds on Dan’s book, 10% Happier.And finally, I’ll take the meditation reigns for our Act 3, guiding you through a special blended mindful body scan and loving-kindness meditation.I hope you enjoy this meditation deep-dive. And if you loved this episode, be sure to share it around, and listen to the full-length conversations with Daniel and Sharon, linked belowYou can find Daniel Goleman at: Website : https://www.danielgoleman.info/First Person Plural: EI & Beyond podcast : https://pod.link/1538498597You can find Sharon Salzberg at: Website : https://www.sharonsalzberg.com/Instagram : https://instagram.com/sharonsalzberg/Metta Hour podcast : https://pod.link/923019021If you LOVED this episode:You’ll also love the full-length conversations we had with Daniel Goleman (https://tinyurl.com/GLPgoleman) and Sharon Salzberg (https://tinyurl.com/GLPsaltzberg).-------------Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://sparketype.com/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend. Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hey, so today's episode is different and kind of special. It is a unique meditation deep dive that brings together the research-driven insights from Daniel Goleman, who's best known for his work on emotional intelligence, as well as his book Altered Traits. Daniel takes us into the science behind meditation and also really asks a surprising question. What if popular wisdom and science about meditation was all wrong? He actually reveals powerful new truths about meditation, what it really is and isn't, and how only about 1% of the more than 6,000 studies done on the topic are what might be considered good science.

We then turn it over to Sharon Salzberg, renowned meditation teacher and loving kindness teacher and the founder of the Insight Meditation Society in Bari, Massachusetts. She has traveled the world teaching people how to become aware and cultivate loving kindness in their lives and has been doing so for decades. Sharon also partnered with Dan Harris to bring to life 10% Happier. And finally, I will take the meditation reins for our Meditation Act 3, guiding you through a special blended, mindful body scan and a loving kindness meditation. So let's kick off with insights from my conversation with Daniel Goldman. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg.

You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him! We need him! Y'all need a pilot? Flight Risk. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever,

making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS with Richard Davidson, just coming out, we looked at the strongest studies on meditation. We found even from the beginning, you get benefit for concentration, which is that focus, and your amygdala, which is the part of the brain which flips out when you get upset, calms down under stress.

And I actually want to go layers deeper into that with you. It seems to be a deep fascination around meditation on so many different levels. Where does that touch down? Well, it started with my bar mitzvah. Okay. My sister gave me a book called Zen Flesh, Zen Bones, which was a collection of Zen stories. And it just blew me away. I had never even imagined that there were methods like Zen or that people had experiences that took them out of their ordinary awareness and were transcendent.

And when I got to college, I was very interested. And I looked into different kinds of meditations. I started meditating in college, frankly, because I was anxious and it helped me calm down. And when I got to graduate school, I managed to do my dissertation on meditation and stress reactivity. You know, I actually got a traveling fellowship, pre-doctoral traveling fellowship to India. And I made it my business to look up yogis and lamas and swamis because I wanted to know what happens. So you end up in India. What happens there?

Well, in India, I was lucky enough to be with someone who you may have heard of. Do you know who Ram Dass is? So Ram Dass wrote a book called Be Here Now. And he mentioned the old man in the blanket, Maharaji. Right. Neem Kroli Baba. Neem Kroli Baba. So I was with Neem Kroli Baba. And Neem Kroli Baba was kind of ideal type of what was possible through consciousness change for the better. Many people would call him enlightened. He was loving. He was super present. He had an aura around him which was contagious. A friend of mine, Larry Brilliant, who was with him, put it this way. He said, the miracle wasn't that when I was with him, I loved Maharaji. The

miracle was that I loved everybody else too. So his quality of being really infiltrated you. But for me, it was an inspiration in terms of what is possible for human potential. What could we possibly be like? Then I went to Bodh Gaya, India, which is where the Buddha was enlightened, the big Buddha center. And there I studied meditations like mindfulness and it's more advanced level insight meditation. And I saw texts that date from the fifth century that describe very matter of factly what you can do in meditation that will help you become like Nyingkoli Baba, presumably, or, presumably, or they have other language for it. And it was that that I tried to bring back to psychology. I was just about a couple of decades too soon. When you first discovered these texts, did you believe that there was sort of a linear path that would take me from point A to where Maharaji was. It seems like a big, a big path.

I don't know if it's linear. You know, those bases they have that are taken from a medieval cathedrals. I think it's more like that where you start out one way and it looks like you're getting somewhere that all of a sudden you circle back. And, you know, I don't know that it's a linear progression, but in the research we looked at in the book Altered Traits, and now there's 6,000 peer-reviewed studies of meditation. But my co-author, Richard Davidson, has very strict standards. He looked at the methodology and he said, maybe 1% are really strong.

We'll talk about those. But it makes it very clear that the more you do, the greater the benefits become. There's a dose-response relationship. So right from the beginning of, say, mindfulness, people have benefits. They focus better, they're calmer. But he's been able to bring Olympic-level meditators over from Nepal and India, mainly Tibetan yogis, flies them over, brings them to the brain lab, has them do different exercises and scans their brains. And the results are pretty astounding. And it suggests that something is going on here that we don't know of in our psychology, but should. For example, if you take one of the yogis and you look at their brain waves, you see something

really interesting. Ordinarily, for me and maybe for you and listeners, when you get an insight, like, oh, I just solved that problem I've been grappling with. I realized what I should do with this thing. A creative insight, your brain shows a particular wave called a gamma for about a half second. It doesn't show up much otherwise, but it's very fleeting. These yogis are in gamma all the time. I don't know how to interpret that, but it sounds really great. And we've never seen it before. Perpetual insight.

Yeah. They describe it as a spaciousness, a presence, a readiness for whatever comes. They say there's really no words for it. Yeah. They describe it as a spaciousness, a presence, a readiness for whatever comes. They say there's really no words for it. Yeah. I don't know if you know this information, but is the gamma detectable at the moment that somebody would identify as the moment of insight or shortly before? Oh, I don't know. It's a good question. Yeah. Although it might be the moment before. Yeah. Because I've seen some research where there is sort of like there is a less unconscious

awareness that something just happened before we even know that we've discovered it. This has to do with how the mind is constructed and the fact that the cognitive unconscious, where this work goes on, knows things before it presents it to us in awareness. So for that reason, I suspect it might show up just before we get the idea. Yeah. Before this research, would either of you have even guessed that it was possible to sustain a gamma brainwave state? No. No. And in fact, other scientists are just amazed. There's some other amazing findings that

occurred. You don't have to be Olympic level, long-term meditators, people who've been practicing every morning for years and sometimes go to a retreat, there are many people like that. If they do one day of meditation, like six hours or so, there's what's called the down-regulation of the genes for inflammation. That means the genes that create inflammation throughout the body, which are at cause in a wide range of disorders, you know, arthritis, diabetes, cancer, heart disease, they go quiet. This is what's called epigenetics. Epigenetics is understanding that it's not the genes you have, but whether you turn them on or off. So what they found is that a day of meditation turns them off.

Well, that was a shock to people in genomic science. They didn't think that a day of any kind of mental activity would affect your gene activity in the least. So along the way, there have been many discoveries that are eye-opening for science as we know it today. I think in the future it'll be taken for granted. Yeah. Is there an understanding of why? Like in that example that you just gave, you know, like you sit for six hours or whatever,

like meditation for six hours, it starts to affect you on an epigenetic level. Why? Is there an explanation or is that still an open question? Well, I think the specific mechanism is quite unknown. Yeah. But we do know there's a general correlation between mood states and health. And this may be one of the linkages that matters.

Right, explains it. Yeah. And like sitting six hours but spread out over 20 minutes a day for X number of days doesn't have the same effect. Doesn't seem to. So interesting. So it's not just dose dependent in terms of this much every day for a long window of time. It seems like intense periods mixed in with that. It's almost like interval training. Exactly. So the data so far seems to suggest that the benefits of meditation are enhanced by retreats,

full days, a week, a month of continual meditation, which is like going to, you know, professional baseball players go to camp in Florida for this, to up their game. So why not the mental game? It's the same principle. It has to do with mastering expertise in any domain. The 10,000-hour rule is kind of a meme that surrounds a myth. It's generally that the more hours you put in, the better you get. But the key difference is this. In any domain, meditation, chess, math, doesn't matter. Golf. Most amateurs improve their game to about 50 hours and then plateau. The pros, all the pros have coaches and they keep working on whatever it is they need to improve all their lives. And that's why they're at the top of the game.

So the yogis, for example, that Davidson studied at Wisconsin, all had teachers. They have teachers continuously all their lives who are somewhere more advanced in what they're doing. Just like professional singers, opera singers have voice coaches, same thing. That's so interesting to hear you say that. And it makes perfect sense. I had the chance to sit down with Kate Anders Ericsson, who was the source of the quote 10,000 hour, which we now know is- He's a little miffed at the 10,000 hour. Yeah. He's like, look, that's not quite legit. That's not really what my research said.

But he said the same thing. He's like the best of the best in any domain. He was really speaking to the role of the teacher- That's right. in the process. The expert coach. Yeah. Somebody who can look and sort of be a part of it and say, okay, we need to keep continually shifting how you're going about this so that it's not just showing up and doing it by road, but actually saying, okay, how was that?

And sort of like iterating on this. But in the context of meditation, I've almost heard that, yes, I've heard that a teacher is important. And at the same time, I've always heard some variation of the instruction of most important thing to do is just show up and sit every day and don't judge the quality of any one given time on the mat. Yes. But you're saying that's... I'm saying both are true. Okay. I think it's very important to have a non-judgmental attitude

toward a given meditation session. All kinds of things can happen. It's like when you go to the gym and you're going, say you're doing nautilus machines and do these repetitions. Every time you do the repetition, you're strengthening the muscle just a little bit. You may not enjoy it as much as you did yesterday. It doesn't matter. Same with meditation. Every time you focus on your breath and your breath wanders,

you notice it wandered, you bring it back, you're strengthening a little bit the circuitry for concentration. It doesn't matter if you enjoy it or not, just that you do it. So that's true. On the other hand, a teacher in meditation might say, well, you've really got your concentration down. Let's see if you can gain more insight. Watch your thoughts come and go. Don't treat them as distractions.

Well, that's a different instruction. And it needs to come at the right time. Or it's helpful if it comes at the right time. And it turns out there are instructions like that all the way up the ladder. And I don't even know what the top of the ladder is, frankly. Yeah, and it makes complete sense. When I think about the quality of my practice, so I sit daily, just a, very fundamental breath oriented mindfulness practice. I've been doing it for since 2010. And I'm not in love with my practice. Like, I don't sit and see and feel amazing. No, that's not the point.

This is not my experience. Nobody ever promised you'd feel amazing. They shouldn't promise you. Yeah. And it took me a while to understand that that's okay. Yes. Yes. Exactly. And in fact, I was just talking to someone who said, you know, I tried to meditate, but I think my mind just goes crazy. I can't be a meditator. And I said, you know, actually, that's the first major insight. Congratulations, because you're looking at your mind. We don't realize how busy our mind is all the time until we stop and look at it in meditation.

And then, I don't know if this happened with you, Jonathan. It certainly happened to me. You realize your mind is wandering all the time. That's the state. And meditation is the attempt to bring discipline to that mind. So how did you learn to meditate? You know, I came to meditation in a bit of an odd way. I was teaching yoga for a number of years. So I took a number of workshops and had different

teachers. But I became pretty fascinated with yoga initially through meditation because in a very past life, I was a lawyer and I was not handling it well. And it was causing a massive amount of stress in my life. Ended up hospitalized actually. And I was not handling it well. And it was causing a massive amount of stress in my life. Ended up hospitalized, actually. And I was looking for ways to be okay in the career that I had chosen at that window in time. And yoga was interesting to me. Meditation was something that I had always been kind of interested in, but never really got. And breathing, pranayama.

So I started, it's almost like my gateway drug was actually more pranayama. And I realized that I could very quickly come into a much more calm state through that. And that brought me to yoga, which brought me to meditation, but I dabbled in it. I never really embraced it until I was kind of forced to. 2010, I ended up with tinnitus. So literally in the blink of an eye, just this loud high pitch ringing in my ears. And I didn't handle it well. I was one of the people that did not habituate well or easily. And it was crushing me. So I started looking into my past. And it turns out that kind of as a fluke too, I was working on a book on how people handle uncertainty. And one of the ways was mindfulness and meditation. And that turned me on to how mindfulness can help people process pain, sustain pain.

Without the stimulus going away, the pain is still there, but you can train yourself to handle it better. And I wondered, could this also help me with the sound in my head? And that took me down a rabbit hole where I ended up kind of going back to certain teachers, going to a mindfulness-based cognitive therapist who also had tinnitus and said, well, it could work. And then I kind of over time experimented because I realized I had to develop my own practice that would work with what I was moving through. So I tried a lot of things and ended up blending a blend of pranayama to get me to a place where I could actually be still and allow this thing to just surround me and be a part of me

and not freak out with anxiety. Until finally I got to a point where I realized sitting one day that my mind had drifted from the sound. And that was the moment where I realized I one day that my mind had drifted from the sound. And that was the moment where I realized I was figuring it out. And from that day on, it's a sustained practice. And for me, it's funny, I think because, and I'm sure you've had this conversation too. So this is a daily practice. This is like brushing my teeth for me. And people ask me, how do you keep doing it? And for me, I have a daily reminder in my head of where things can go when I don't.

And maybe I've habituated by now and I'd be fine without it. But it also became a gateway to so much other goodness that I don't want to give it up because so many of the benefits that you've talked about, I've experienced in relationships and life and business. So I started meditating for very similar reasons. I was in college and I was anxious. And I found meditation, hey, it helps me be less anxious, which in turn helps you be more focused. And over time, I was pleased with the benefits, general benefits of the practice. And what we found looking at the literature, one is just exactly what you mentioned. People

who have chronic pain or chronic condition like tinnitus is irritating and drives you crazy, who do mindfulness are able to do two things. Change your relationship to the irritant, to the pain, whatever it is, which is wonderful. You're not caught up by it and you're not reacting because of it. You're just seeing, oh, it's there. And the other thing is that the amygdala, which is what goes nuts, it's the trigger for the fight or flight response, quiets down, calms down. So it's less reactive. So those two are very powerful. Mindfulness-based stress reduction, which was developed by John Kabat-Zinn, another old friend from Cambridge, interestingly,

is used very commonly now in medical settings to help people who have chronic pain because it doesn't take the physiological sensation away at all. It takes the emotional reaction away. And that's what makes all the difference. Yeah. It makes so much sense. It takes the emotional reaction away. And that's what makes all the difference. Yeah. It makes so much sense. It's interesting that you came to it from sort of like a similar angle originally. It's funny. It seems like you were, so you, Jon Kabat-Zinn, Richie Davis, not too outside of the window, Ram Dass, those guys. It's almost like you guys are like the mindfulness mafia from that time. It's like- We all saw the value very, very early. It's almost like you guys are like the mindfulness mafia from that time. It's like-

Well, we all saw the value very, very early. That's true. Yeah. But what's interesting is it seems like you've developed this research and the research has been, or the interest, and then that developed for you into writing and in-depth study and for various people,

it's been expressed in different ways. And in the last, it feels like the last five years, there's been this major tipping point. And you write about this and all their traits about the difference between deep and wide in sort of the way that meditation and mindfulness is, you know, like moving out into the world. And there's a plus and a minus to that, I guess. Well, first of all, what you mentioned as the kind of tipping point for mindfulness in society, you see it very clearly. So we reviewed all of the academic studies, peer review, literature studies, and we draw a curve of how many there were per year. Five years ago, it just went ballistic. There are now more than a thousand studies a year, scientific studies of meditation or mindfulness.

And the question is deep or wide, as we put it in the book. And the deepest is the way these practices are done in their native setting, say in a monastery in Asia or an ashram in Asia. Then those methods have been brought to America and their meditation centers. Some things have been left behind, but they're still pretty deep. And because some things have been left behind, some of which are culture specific, more people have access to the methods. Then they've been taken outside the spiritual context totally. In fact, the person who urged this was the Dalai Lama. He said to Richard Davidson, a meeting of the Mind and Life Dialogues, which he and I have helped organize for a long time. There's scientists meeting with

Dalai Lama around a particular topic. There was one on destructive emotions. And Darlan says to Davidson, you know, our tradition has many methods that seem to work very well for managing destructive emotions. I urge you to take them outside the religious context, test them rigorously in the lab, and if they're a benefit to people, spread them very widely. And that's exactly what's been happening with the science. So Davidson was one of those who established that these methods work. MBSR, Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, MBCT that you did. Those are variations of traditional methods that have been tweaked so that they're accessible to even more wide range of people. And that's kind of level three.

And level four, which is the widest, are like the apps, you know, the New York Times, the mindfulness tip for the day. Well, those go to far more people, but they aren't as deep as the other methods. So it's kind of trade-off. And I see value in both. I think if these are a benefit, why not share them as widely as possible? And on the other hand, people who are doing them in the less deep way may not realize that they could go deeper. And some people who are doing the deep methods complain about that and say, well, they don't realize really what they're doing. But I can see the value of every level.

Yeah. I mean, it's almost like there's mindfulness shaming to a certain extent, you know, like between the people who've chosen to go deeper and those who stay surface, but also those who promote the wider exposure. I mean, I see it very similarly to you. I see the wide as the point of entry for most people. And then a certain percentage of those people will be like, huh, there's something going on here with that. Maybe I didn't even expect it. I wonder what else is happening underneath the hood here. And there's an imitation. And then the cool thing is that, yes, there's, I mean, what's interesting is, you know, through the research that you're talking about, there's benefit, you know, on the shallow and wide level. But it seems like there's a big bridge between that and the deeper practice.

I think that there's a continuum, actually. Yeah. And you marched out that continuum by how many sheer hours with instruction that you put in. So anyone who starts at a very, you know, the widest level, gone to scale, the app, can progress if they want to. They could go to, say you're doing mindfulness, go to an Insight New York weekend, go to Insight Meditation Center, do a week-long or 10-day retreat, and it gets richer and richer the more you do. And that's so clear from the scientific data. Yeah. Among the research that you've done and with the book that you guys have come out with now, you shared some of the really interesting, kind of surprising research. Is there anything else

that really jumped out at you? It's like's like wow we did not see this coming oh you know i just did a a list of 57 findings from the book yes a lot each of them a good reason to meditate yeah so i think i've told you the two that really pop out the one the genomic finding wow who that? And then the gamma and the pain in the yogis. No pain, no. And then gamma all the time. That's astounding. Another thing that surprised us and pleased us was that loving kindness practice, where you systematically wish well to people that have been kind to you, to yourself, to the

people you love, people you know, wider people in the city, people beyond, finally everyone, actually seems to strengthen the circuitry for, it's the same circuitry as a parent's love for a child. It's a circuitry for concern, caring, and compassion in the brain. And it makes you more likely to actually help people. And this happens very quickly. You start seeing it right at the beginning of practice. And we think that the brain is prepared to learn to love. And for us, that was both a surprise and very pleasing. That's certainly a nice thing to think about in this day and age.

Where I think we need as much of that as possible. One of the things I've been curious about also is the origins of the practice across many different traditions, whether it's mindfulness or so many different ways to approach meditative practices, very often has been attached to an aspiration, whether you call it samadhi, bliss, enlightenment, whatever it may be. And that's been, I know you're not supposed to say there's an attachment to an outcome when you're along any of these paths, but it's kind of like everybody's working towards that thing. And this is one of the ways that you get there is developing this practice. And the there has been described as having so many profound benefits. Have you found in the research that any of the states that would be described in classic literature and associated with Samadhi enlightenment, this thing, are validated scientifically in any way?

So our book is called Altered Traits. And we're actually not that interested in the states. We're interested in the lasting effects on your very being. Every spiritual tradition that has meditation, and by the way, that includes every major religion. You know, there were Christian monks in the Egyptian desert in the second century who were basically looked like yogis in the Himalayas today.

They had a mala, they had beads, and they're doing a Montaquire liaison. They had to go to Mount Athos when the Muslim invasion came. But it's the same unbroken tradition in Christianity. There are Jewish meditations. There's Islamic meditations. There's Hindu. There's Buddhist.

Every major religion has it. But what's kind of paradoxical, actually, when we looked at the research. Every tradition says the key to this deep change is stepping out of your everyday self into a transcendent being. That may or may not mean samadhi, but it does mean you're less self-focused and you're more open to the needs of others. That's one of the trait changes that we find. And the paradox for us was that was the least interesting to researchers. Researchers are happy to look at how your concentration improves, how you get calmer, how you get more loving.

Less selfish, not so interested. There are only like three or four studies we could find that bore on that. And yet if you look in the traditions themselves, they talk about in yoga tradition from the small self to the big S self. In Buddhism from the small self to the non-self. There may not be a difference, who knows, but the directionality is very clear. And so we're looking at traits because what we realized is that all of the spiritual traditions are talking about a being which is less concerned with selfish things, my this, my that, more open to other beings, more calm, more equanimous, more generous, more focused, more present. And it seemed to us that those are overlooked largely in our culture, but there's intrinsic

value in that mode of being. So it was the trait changes we were looking for, not in the States. And a lot of those traditions will say, for example, if you look at Patanjali, the Yoga Sutra, or you look at the Vasudhimagga, the 5th century meditation text, they both treat samadhi or concentrative highs as nice, but not the point. It's interesting. The point is who you are after you leave the cave.

Yeah. Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. You just feel differently about it. Yeah. Which also describes coming full circle. When you show up in India and you see Maharaji sitting there and there's just something. Exactly. Yeah. I think we all want to feel that way when it comes down to it. If we could close our eyes and say, I want to move through whatever I move through on a daily basis, and I want some of that. I hope we all get some of that. Yeah. Which makes me curious why that part of it is the least researched part of it.

I wonder if it's because it's the least tangible, sellable, valuable in a business context, you know, like publishable. I think that the research reflects the underlying value system of the culture. Yeah, that makes sense, I guess. Unfortunate, though. It's important that we know it. Yeah. Thank you.

Pleasure, Jonathan. Whether you're in your running era, Pilates era, or yoga era, dive into Peloton workouts that work with you. From meditating at your kid's game to mastering a strength program, they've got everything you need to keep knocking down your goals. No pressure to be who you're not. Just workouts and classes to strengthen who you are. So no matter your era, make it your best with Peloton. Find

your push. Find your power. Peloton. Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised.

The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun on january 24th tell me how to fly this thing mark walberg you know what the difference between me and you you're gonna die don't shoot if we need them y'all need a pilot flight risk such powerful wisdom and myth busting from someone who has been front row and center in the research behind meditation. And now we shift gears a bit to move more into an exploration of the soul of meditation, its relationship to Eastern philosophy, and what exactly loving kindness or meta meditation is. I think that's one of the biggest sort of interesting pop culture assumptions about Buddhism these days also, because it is so much a part of at least American culture these days is that Buddhism is just Buddhism rather than there are actually some very – there are different paths and different lineages that really have different lenses. got really confused. And so I would sit to meditate, for example, and instead of doing

either methodology, I would just think, should I do this? Should I do that? Should I do this? Should I do that? Which one's better? Which one's faster? How do I get enlightened faster? Well, these people seem more enlightened than those people, but I know these people better than I know those people. If I knew those people and these people. Should I do this? Should I do that? And finally, I said to myself, just do something. It doesn't have to be a lifetime commitment, but you've got to get out of your head. You've got to actually put this into

practice and do something. And the Burmese tradition just seems simpler and quite direct and that's what I did. Man, there's a lesson in there also. It's like we spend so much time in our head trying to like not wanting to make the mistake of taking the wrong path. That's right.

That's right. And it's just I think there's something really powerful to be said about just creating momentum, you know, and then adjusting course if it's not, if for some reason it's not right down the road. Yeah. I'm so stuck and just a standstill and I had to do something. Yeah. How much of it was, I'm curious for you, the culture of the community surrounding that tradition along with the teachings? Because I know you've got the teachings, but you've also got the teacher and you've got the community, and they all play their roles. I think it was – I mean, I have since had much closer relationships with Tibetan teachers and Tibetan communities. But I think the strongest thing that drew me to the people doing Tibetan practice at the time was this tremendous sense of commitment.

Really, how generous have you been today? How have you brought this into your life? What have you given up today that you might have grabbed? How much renunciation did you practice today you know in the burmese we were a tradition we were more i think focused on those immersion experiences in the retreats at least for that time and it was that was attractive too because it was like you, it was like a completely modeled life. You know, there was a schedule. There were bells.

They locked the gates. You know, it was like, if you want to go out and buy a cookie, you got to climb over that gate. You know, it was like a big thing. And, you know, there was somebody like Goenka chanting. I had other teachers, too, in that tradition who were incredible and very important for me. So it's not meant to be like, oh, this is how you can live the rest of your life. But this is a way of letting it all go. And for me, because you can tell from that example I gave about the Tibetan and the Burmese, I have a certain kind of mind. So I'd wake up and I'd think, should I sit?

Should I walk? Should I sit? Should I walk? And to have it decided for me was actually a great blessing in those days. The structure really supported me. You also mentioned the intensive retreat nature of what you're doing. I think I know what you're talking about there, but for my benefit and for the benefit of those, can you take me into what you mean by that more?

Yeah. I mean, it's just a certain structure. It's like an immersion experience where those retreats were not completely silent, but we had silent days and silent periods. And these days, I think even in that style, they are silent, but you wake up theoretically at some early hour of the morning and there's a schedule of sitting meditation. I didn't have walking meditation, but IMS, the Insight Meditation Society, the center I co-founded, you'd have sitting meditation, walking meditation, some meals. Everything's in silence except for teacher contact.

There are times when you can ask questions, or there are times of instruction, there are times where you meet with a teacher in a smaller group or individually, and you sit and you walk and you sit and you walk and you sit and you walk and you eat now and then. And then there's a lecture, a discourse at night, and then there's another walking in another city, you go to bed. So you're kind of held in this container of a structure, this tremendous group support, this tremendous peer pressure.

We happen to be extremely nice. We're not militant. No one's going to say, where are you? You slept late. You're taking a walk in the woods. A bad person. It's not like that at all. But the structure exists to support you.

Yeah. And it seems like it's also meant to push you. Yeah. So, I mean, what's the why there? What's behind that? Well, there are a couple of things. One is, in terms of a retreat, the thread that gives us the most result is continuity of practice, where everything becomes a practice, whether you're drinking a cup of tea or you're getting dressed or you're sitting or you're walking. And so there's a huge amount of responsibility taken away from you.

You're not cooking. You're not shopping. You're not doing your laundry. You're not, you know, you're being taken care of. And the food is great, by the way. It's just there. And, you know, so you're held in this. The only thing, your job is cultivating awareness and love and compassion.

That's it. You know, for two days, three days, seven days, however long you're there. So that's it, you know, for two days, three days, seven days, however long you're there. So that's an amazing thing. And then being pushed, it's like as long as it's in the right way. You know, so many people have ideas about what should happen when they meditate. And people say often to me if they meet me and they hear I teach meditation, they say, oh, I tried that once. I failed at it. And then, you know, maybe they describe, oh, I couldn't stop thinking. I couldn't

make my mind blank. I couldn't have only beautiful thoughts. I couldn't keep the anxiety away or whatever. And we say you cannot fail at it, that that's actually impossible. Because the goal is not to have a certain thing happen or not happen. The goal is to relate differently to anything that is happening. Thoughts, feelings, sensations, whatever it is, pleasant, painful, neutral. We develop a relationship to all of that that's like open and present and non-judging and compassionate and so on. So you can't have the wrong experience. So as long as there's that understanding, then putting your heart into it and not, you know, kind of giving up two and a half minutes into a sitting because you got a little bored or you got a little sleepy. You know, it's a tremendous experience.

You talked about two phrases around the practice, mindfulness and also meta or loving kindness. Describe a bit what in your experience, sort of like what do you mean by mindfulness and what do you mean by loving kindness. Describe a bit what in your experience, what do you mean by mindfulness and what do you mean by loving kindness? I'm curious how those play together. Well, as qualities, they're very supportive of one another. They're very intertwined as methodologies that can be distinguished. So with mindfulness practice, the goal is to really see one's experience more clearly without so many distorting lenses. So, for example, maybe you have the habit when something uncomfortable arises in your body to right away start projecting into the future. Like, what's it going to feel like in 10 minutes?

What's it going to feel like tomorrow? What's it going to feel like next week? So not only do we have the actual experience in the moment, we have all that additional anticipation, which is miserable. And so we see that beginning to arise, let go of it and come back to what's actually happening. actually looking at our experience, you know, instead of being driven by these old habits. Loving-kindness practice is a different method where I sometimes call it a stretch, you know, where we realize that we tend to pay attention in a certain way, and we consciously pay attention in a different way. So for example, if you're in the habit at the end of the day of looking back at yourself almost as though to evaluate yourself, like, how did I do today? And if you're in the habit of pretty well only remembering the mistakes you made and what you didn't do quite right and what you could have done better, you stretch. And it's almost like asking yourself, anything good happen today?

Any good within me? So we do that through the silent repetition of certain phrases so that we're paying attention differently. Instead of castigating ourselves and blaming ourselves, we're wishing ourselves well. Another example is there are tons of people we encounter, we look right through. They're objects to us, person who works behind the counter in the supermarket or maybe the homeless person, you know. And so the question becomes what happens when we look at them instead of through them. So this isn't like a need to like take them home with you or have them be your best friend. But what is that moment where you like kind of recognize the humanity of that person?

And so we use the phrases to pay attention differently so it actually it takes intentionality and it kind of makes our world bigger more inclusive yeah i mean it's beautiful it's also and also speaks to how much we don't see You know, and how much more of the world there really is available to us. Yeah. Yeah, no, totally. Totally. Yeah. Can you take me more into loving kindness practice? You talked about sort of a progression, and I know it starts with a reflection on you,

which is sort of an interesting – I always look at that with this corollary with it. You know, like in yoga, there's a himsa, you know, which a lot of people translate as nonviolence. But I think a lot of times we don't look at it first as nonviolence to ourselves. We just kind of like immediately say, well, that's for other people or towards other people. And it seems like, you know, that reflection and the first, what do you call it, a phase of loving kindness meditation. It's like, let's turn this on ourselves first. Well, one way of seeing the practice of loving kindness is as a practice of generosity. It's like generosity of the spirit. And sometimes we look at material generosity just as a kind of teaching vehicle because it's so much more concrete, right? So it's said that the

best kind of generosity comes from a sense of inner abundance. And it makes sense, right? Because even if you have a huge amount by external measures, if you martyrdom. We feel we don't deserve to have anything, but the best kind of generosity comes from that sense of inner abundance. And so then, you know, generosity of the spirit, thanking somebody, being present with somebody, paying attention, having loving kindness for them, having compassion for them. If we feel depleted and overcome and we've got nothing going on inside, it's very hard to be giving or offering from a good place. It's very, very hard. So there is a big emphasis on loving kindness for oneself.

It's like renewal. It's resilience. It's creating the wherewithal, that sense of inner resource so that we can, in a much better way, be paying attention to others. And so it always struck me as odd, you know, that even in the traditional Buddhist teaching, you start with loving kindness for yourself. And I thought, wow, that is, you know, surely it's all about self-denial and self-abnegation, but it's not.

You know, it's about building the sense of resource. Yeah. And that makes a lot of sense. You know, if you're on empty, you got nothing to give. And if you genuinely want to be of service, you got to have a well or else you end up completely gutted and you can't serve anybody. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. No, that makes a lot of sense. But I wonder sometimes if we look at that part of the practice and say, well, let me do something to love myself up or like, yeah, as being a little too self-aggrandizing or self-serving. And that's what stops us from wanting to go there on a certain level.

Oh, yeah. Even practice itself. I often say, I think I ended one of my books with saying, isn't it ironic if somebody said to us, here's this thing you can do 20 minutes a day, really help your friend? We do it. But really help me? Oh, no, I don't have time. You know, I can't do it. I couldn't possibly do it. You should see my to-do list. That's so selfish. You know, I need to take care of everybody else. I can't spend 20 minutes, but you cannot run on empty forever. You just can't. And, you know, so it's not selfish. It's not the same as being self-preoccupied or yeah or whatever it's really important uh it's like i love the airplane analogy

where it's like what are the instructions like if you're a parent put the mask on you first yeah right because you're of no service to anyone else if you go out yeah i think there's there's like layers of shame and all that stuff that just gets sort of put upon us. I love what you shared earlier in a conversation, though, about the fact that you just mentioned that before this you were walking down the street in New York City. And you're looking at different people offering loving kindness. Is that just a regular – is that just the way – I mean, is that a deliberate practice for you at this point or is it just the way you are? It's a deliberate practice. Okay.

Because I'm thinking, I don't do that, but I'd like to. Well, I do sit every day. I have like a formal meditation practice. For four years, I went to Burma in 1985. So I started practice in January 71, January 7th, 1971. I happened to be teaching at Lodro Rinsler's studio, Mindful, with Novels, that night. And I remembered, and I said, hey, guess what? This is my 45th anniversary of becoming a meditator. And I saw Lodro start to run out the door, and I said, are you going to

get me a cake? Which he was. Sounds like Lodro. Yeah. So it took a while before I went to Burma and did intensive loving kindness practice, like 14 years. But from 85 till 89, that was my entire practice, whether I was sitting at home or I was on retreat, I just did loving kindness practice. And most people I know have some kind of awareness practice and some kind of loving kindness or compassion practice. And you just divide up the time in different ways. So these days, the way I divide

up the time is my daily sitting is largely like a mindfulness practice. But I have this resolve to do loving kindness whenever I'm waiting, and I count every mode of transportation as waiting. So airplanes, walking down the streets of New York and literally waiting, you know, in line in the grocery store or something like that. Yeah. Instead of fretting or getting peeved, I do loving kindness. And it's very interesting. Interesting in what way?

Like what is it? Well, for one thing, I find that all the same judgments might arise in my mind, but I cap it with a little loving kindness. Like, why are you wearing a jacket? It's so hot out. Be happy. Something like that. Yeah. So it's like you can end it with a different energy.

Yeah. Yeah. But that's so interesting too. And I love the fact that that's – you're not denying the fact that you're still a human being. You're still a good people. There's still judgment. There's still this and that. And it's like – and not so much but, but and you can then come back to this place, which just leaves you reoriented.

You know, it's not like you have to leave behind that essence of who you are. It's like you keep coming back to a place and a practice. And over the time, I mean, just I think you live in the world differently when you do that. No, definitely. And that's why when, you know, if somebody's smiling, coming in the other direction down the street and they smile at me, I think maybe they're doing it too.

I don't know. Right. Wouldn't that be a nice assumption? Just like, I'm going to assume that they're doing it too. And thank you. I think it's really exciting what you're doing.

It's to sort of look at your journey from, hey, I'm getting on a plane, you know, and then building this incredible center and community and teaching around the world and now becoming one of the people who's really leading, how do we actually take this with integrity and leverage technology and flatten the world to a certain extent where people don't have direct access to wonderful teachers like you

can experience it. Thank you. Thank you. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch,

getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday, we've been compromised.

The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're gonna die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. So I love Sharon's deep well of wisdom and experience. And now I thought I might step in and share something I don't believe I've ever done here on the podcast, even though I've been meditating myself for over a decade and taught and practiced yoga and meditation to thousands of people over many years.

We're going to ease into a bit of a special blended practice that takes us into a grounding in our bodies and breath, and then introduces a simple version of a loving kindness practice together. So find a nice comfortable seat a loving-kindness practice together. So find a nice comfortable seat. It can be on a couch, it can be a cushion, a bolster, whatever. Allows you to kind of settle in in a nice upright but not overly erect position. So you want to feel like you're active but not straining. So you're comfortable, you can sit for a little bit of time here. So just wiggle around a little bit and settle in

so that you feel good with whatever you're doing. Just close your eyes for a moment and just notice your body. Do a quick scan from the top of your head and let your attention just slowly pour down through your body, just noticing how everything feels. You can kind of move your shoulders around a little bit. Squeeze them for a second, and as you exhale, just kind of drop them and let them hang loosely. Bring your awareness down around your hips and your legs, and just notice the sensation

as they settle into the cushion or whatever it is that you're sitting on. Feeling the sit bones in contact and the legs in contact with the floor or wherever they may be touching. Take a nice inhale with your eyes closed, full body inhale through your nose and through your mouth. Just let it all out. And again through your mouth, just let it all out. And again, through your nose, inhale. And through your mouth. Just feel your body settle just really comfortably.

The eyes still closed again, just scan from the top of the head slowly. It's almost as if your attention were drifting down through you. Like an ephemeral line of awareness, it just slowly lowers from the tippy top of your head down through your body. And as it goes, just noticing that everything seems to release so comfortably, so gently, without intention, without having to force anything. Just noticing your breath, noticing your body, finding a nice comfortable place. And as you do, very slowly, very deliberately, ease your left hand up and place your left

palm right against your heart. So you feel the warmth of your hand slowly penetrating in. And you feel the soft energy of your heart slowly pouring out into your palm. Just notice that sensation for a moment. And then equally slowly, really gently, just slowly ease your right hand up so that your palm is sitting gently against the stomach. Again, noticing the warmth pouring in from the palm. And similarly, the softest energy, barely perceptible, pouring back out into the palm. You may notice that your shoulders may have raised or tightened a bit as you did that so keeping your hands where they are relaxing your palms but keeping them where they are just

slowly let your shoulders relax down soften them a little bit again with your eyes still closed with the next next inhale. Breathe slowly into the top palm and let your inhale pour down into the bottom as it pushes gently out. And then slowly exhale, allowing the bottom hand to recede in and the top hand to settle back into the chest. And again, breathing in through the top palm and then pouring it down into the bottom.

And then exhaling from the bottom, slowly rising up and out, letting everything settle. Just one more time. Into the top. Through the bottom. And then exhale, letting the hands slowly slide back into the center of the body, keeping that stillness, that energetic circuit between the heart and the center. With your eyes closed, just slowly release your palms gently back down into your lap or wherever feels comfortable to you, returning to the sensation of your breath. And then bring a visual representation in your mind's eye.

Picture yourself just sitting here with a sense of ease, a sense of comfort, a sense of acceptance. Just create that picture of yourself. And then begin to offer yourself certain wishes. So with that vision sitting in front of you, as you breathe, just very slowly and quietly, recite with your mind the following phrases. May you be free.

May you be happy. May you be happy. May you be healthy. May you be loved. May you live with ease. Sending it out to you, to yourself. And you can even change it to I, so let's try that. May I be free. May I be free. May I be happy. May I be healthy. May I be loved. May I live happy May I be healthy May I be loved

May I live with ease May I be free Be happy Be healthy Be loved Live with ease. Repeating the phrase while you hold that image of yourself, wishing these things to yourself and opening, surrend happy, be healthy, be loved, live with ease. Take a nice big inhale, and then exhale, and just let go of that image of yourself.

And now take a moment and just bring into your mind's eye the image of somebody who you love unconditionally, somebody who's so dear to you, and they may be with us today, or they may be somebody who's passed. It's okay, either one. Bring that vision, and make it as clear as you can. What do they look like?

What are they wearing? What do they feel like? Create that visual in your mind's eye. And then we offer that same set of blessings or wishes to them. May you be free. May you be free. May you be happy. May you be healthy. May you be loved.

May you live with ease. May you be free. May you be happy. May you be free. May you be happy. May you be healthy. May you be loved. May you live with ease. May you be free. Be happy.

Be happy. Be healthy. Be loved. Live with ease. be healthy be loved live with ease continuing to repeat those while you hold that image of this person who you care so deeply about

in your mind's eye may you be free be happy be healthy, be loved, live with ease. And just continue slowly with that, very slowly. And then as you're ready, take a deep inhale and then slowly just exhale and let it all out. Yeah.

And then let go of the image of that person. Just let it sort of float off into the ether. And then very gently bring your mind's eye to the image of somebody who maybe appears in your daily life, but you really have no feelings for, no specific connection to somebody. Maybe you see in passing, maybe it's somebody who's at the deli

who makes your coffee or a barista, or maybe it's just somebody who you know in passing, but really don't have any connection, no strong feeling for, about or against. Just bring a picture of that into your mind's eye. See them in your mind's eye. And we share that same series of wishes to them, holding that in your eye. May you be free. May you be free.

May you be happy. May you be healthy. May you be loved. May you live with ease. May you be free. May you be happy. May you be free May you be happy May you be healthy May you be loved

May you live with ease May you be free Be happy Be healthy Be loved. Live with ease. May you be free. Be happy.

Be healthy. Be loved. Live with ease. Take a nice inhale. And as you exhale, just let that person go into the ether, vanishing away. And then bring your mind's eye very gently, very gently, to the image of somebody with whom you feel a sense of

unease, a sense of struggle. It may be somebody you feel has done you wrong. It may just be somebody who you're not comfortable with. And this can sometimes be challenging. And if doing so starts to bring up so much discomfort or unease or suffering within you, then just allow that person to drift off and replace them with yourself because you're the one in need of wishes of love. So hold that person in your mind's eye and create that same image. And to them we offer the same. May you be free. May you be free.

May you be happy. May you be healthy. May you be loved. May you live with ease. May you be free. May you be happy. May you be happy. May you be healthy. May you be loved.

May you live with ease. May you be free. Be happy. Be healthy. Be loved. Be healthy. Be loved. Live with ease. May you be free. Be happy.

Be healthy. Be loved. Live with ease. Taking a very gentle breath. And as you exhale, just let that person evaporate out into the ether, just letting your mind go still, nice and quiet. Good. And then finally, and very gently, bringing into your mind's eye the experience of all those people and all those beyond, a sense of oneness, as if no matter who it is that we perceive to exist outside of this solitary boundary we call our body,

we're all just a part of one shared existence, one shared energy, one shared experience of love, surrender, and generosity. Feeling that connectedness and bringing to your mind's eye a sense of oneness, a community, a vision, however you choose to manifest it in your mind's eye, of those beings all around you, everyone with

whom we've just talked, and the greater community around us. And we offer those same blessings to us all. May we be free. May we be happy. May we be free. May we be happy. May we be healthy. May we be loved. May we live with ease. May we be free.

May we be happy. May we be healthy. May we be healthy. May we be loved. May we live with ease. May we be free. Be happy. Be healthy. Be loved.

Live with ease. May we be free. Be happy. Be healthy. Be loved. Live with ease. Taking a deep breath in, feel all the room, all those in our mind's eye. And as you exhale, just let them all evaporate into the ether.

With the eyes still closed again, very gently, return a soft left palm to your heart, and a soft right palm to your stomach. Just breathe into your hands, feeling the connection. Letting the shoulders relax. And with this final exhale, allowing your palms to just gently return to your lap, surrendering open, shoulders relaxed. And as you're ready, very slowly, letting your eyes lift open, looking gently around and bringing the same energy to the rest of your day. of blended mashup montage episodes in the future that are focused on specific topics, bringing

together the wisdom, stories, and expertise of different guests we've been so fortunate to have on the show over the years. And if you loved this episode, be sure to share it around. If you want to make that loving kindness meditation at the end a part of a sort of a weekly practice, then by all means, feel free to. And listen to the full length conversations with Daniel and Sharon, both so rich and so wise and so deep and generous. Both episodes are linked in the show notes below. Thanks so much. See you next time. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever,

making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required,

charge time and actual results will vary.