The Tim Ferriss Show - #277: Sharon Salzberg, World-Renowned Meditation Teacher

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Starting point is 00:03:16 competition or lack thereof to dissect what makes them the best at what they do. The habits, routines, philosophies, beliefs, et cetera, that you can apply in your own life. This episode, we have Sharon Salzberg, S-A-L-Z-B-E-R-G. You can find her on Twitter. I believe it's just at Sharon Salzberg. And Sharon is a central figure in the field of meditation, a world-renowned teacher, and New York Times bestselling author. She has played a crucial role from the very beginning, in some respects, in bringing meditation and mindfulness practices to the West, and very much into mainstream culture since 1974, when she first began teaching. She is the co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society

Starting point is 00:04:02 in Bar, Massachusetts, and the author of several books, including the New York Times bestseller, Real Happiness, her seminal work, Loving Kindness, which we'll get into, and Real Happiness at Work. Very well known for her down-to-earth style, and you'll get a firsthand view of that when you listen to this. She offers a secular and modern approach to Buddhist teachings, making them more accessible than I think some of the esoteric varieties would be to type a personalities like you, friend, listening to this podcast, probably. She's a columnist for On Being, contributor to Huffington Post, and the host of her own podcast, The Metta Hour, M-E-T-T-A, and we will get into what that means. Her newest book is Real Love, The Art of Mindful

Starting point is 00:04:47 Connection. And I've wanted to speak with Sharon for a long time. I've read her work. I've heard her audio. And it's very meaningfully impacted how I operate in the world, how I perceive myself and others. And ultimately, that has made me both more effective and given me a greater sense of well-being. So I hope that you pull some of that from this conversation. We bounce all over the place. I ask some very personal, self-interested questions, which I think make the answers practical also. And there you have it. So I hope you enjoy, as much as I did, this wide-ranging conversation with Sharon Salzberg. Sharon, welcome to the show.

Starting point is 00:05:32 Thank you. I have been looking forward to this conversation for some time, and I'm glad we could finally make it happen, the construction around your apartment in New York notwithstanding. And I know that you have to be out at a set time. So I'd like to just jump right into it and begin at the beginning, in a sense, with a question related to your youth. And if you're comfortable sharing the story, could you tell us about your experience that you had i think it was at nine years old when you were dressed in your halloween costume and watching nat king call yes i uh my mother died when i was nine and it was that night when i was nine that my mother started hemorrhaging i was alone in the house with her and she uh i got

Starting point is 00:06:24 ended up getting an ambulance and she went to the hospital and she died about two weeks later. And it was much later when I was writing a book called Faith, which was kind of like my faith journey, that I looked back over my life from the time I was born until the time I went to college at 16. And I realized that I had lived in five different family configurations along that time, and each one of them had been altered by trauma or death or some kind of really terrible circumstance. And what was your relationship like with your father when you were younger?

Starting point is 00:07:01 Well, my parents had divorced when I was four, And my father, as far as I can recall, was really like my hero. You know, he was the love in my life. And then he was just gone. He completely disappeared. And there was no contact whatsoever from the time I lived with my mother after they split up and her siblings from the time I was four to the time I was nine. And at that point after she died, I ended up living with my father's parents, whom I hardly knew. And that was the first time that contact was reestablished between us. And he didn't reappear in my life, my actual physical presence, until I was 11. And by that time, it was clear he'd suffered really severe mental illness. He was drinking, he was gambling he'd suffered a really severe mental illness. He was drinking,

Starting point is 00:07:46 he was gambling, and he was really lost. And he came back when my grandfather died when I was 11 and was in the house for just about six weeks when he took an overdose of sleeping pills and then entered the mental health system where he stayed for the next, you know, significant number of years before he died. So, and it was part of that, that was kind of my recollection, because I was, I was sort of part of a family system where this was never ever really talked about. And so I had, as one can imagine, all these feelings inside, and I didn't know what to do with them. And people had always told me, oh, your father accidentally took an extra pill. You know, he just didn't remember that he'd taken

Starting point is 00:08:29 sleeping pills already. And it was only when I was in college, like years later, that I thought, wait a minute, that's a lot to have happen so that you then end up in a mental health facility for the rest of your life. And it took a lot to figure out, oh, you know, people, of course, were trying to protect me, they were trying to keep me happy, keep me going, but it was on the basis of denying what I actually was feeling. And so it was very destructive. When did you have your first encounter with Buddhismdhism or mindfulness how did that enter your life i was uh when i went to college when i was 16 when i was a sophomore i took an asian philosophy course and honestly looking back as far as i can tell it was kind of like happenstance you know

Starting point is 00:09:18 like it was on tuesday it fit in with my schedule i had a philosophy requirement let me do that one right right didn't start too early no and uh exactly you know i couldn't do that and uh so i took this class and it was really in that class that i encountered buddhism for the first time really i mean i knew you know i was the 60s so it was all kind of around in a way but it was the first time i really heard what the buddha taught and the first part that was incredibly important, given everything I'd been through, was just the teaching about suffering, that suffering is a part of life, that it's not just me, it's not something to be ashamed of and feel I'm aberrant, I'm different, which of course is what I primarily felt my entire life, is that I'm different.

Starting point is 00:10:03 People have two parents, people have, you know, sane parents, so other things are going on for other people, but not me. But all of a sudden, it was like I was part of the human family, that life is not always pleasant. It doesn't always go our way. It's not that it's grim or horrible, but, you know, it contains suffering for everybody. And that was like a huge liberation. And then I heard in that class that there was actually something you could do about the suffering in your life, not the suffering of circumstance, but all the ways we hold it, the ways we can have pain and we can hold it in isolation or we can hold it as feeling part of the human family or we can can have rage, or we can have compassion. There's so many options, and I heard there was this stuff you could do. There were actual methods or techniques called meditation, and if you did them, you could be happier.

Starting point is 00:10:56 So I was going to school in Buffalo, New York. I looked around Buffalo, didn't see it anywhere. Probably everywhere now, but I didn't see it. So there was an independent study program at the school, and I created a project. I said, I want to go to India and study meditation. And they said, okay. So off I went. Had you traveled outside of the country prior to going to India?

Starting point is 00:11:21 No, I had not. I was just teaching a class there earlier today. I said, you know, I'd never even been to California before I went to India. I grew up in New York City. I went to school in Buffalo. There'd been one family trip to a talk by a famed Tibetan master. And I'd love for you to tell us a bit about that. A, because I have no idea how to pronounce this name properly. And B, what you took away from it. His name is Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. It was his first trip to the United States. And I don't know who did his tour. He ended up in Buffalo, New York. His name is Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. It was his first trip to the United States.

Starting point is 00:12:06 I don't know who did his tour. He ended up in Buffalo, New York. He later became the founder of Naropa Institute and Shambhala Publications, all kinds of things. But this was his first trip, and he was giving a lecture, not at my university, but at a nearby college. This was maybe three or four days before my friends and I were going to leave for India and we didn't know where we were going to go. I just know I wanted to study meditation. So we went to his talk and they asked for written questions and I wrote out the question like where should I go?

Starting point is 00:12:39 I'm leaving in a few days for India. I want to study Buddhist meditation. Where should I go? And he had this big pile of questions in front of him. And he pulled it out. And he read it out loud. And then he was silent for a moment. And then he said, I think you had perhaps best follow the pretense of accident.

Starting point is 00:12:58 I think you had perhaps best follow the pretense of accident. And that was it. It was like no addresses, no handy monastery guidebook, you know, nothing. Just follow the pretense of accident. It's exactly how it happened. So pretense of accident, meaning no set plan, allow things to unfold as they unfold. Is that what that means?

Starting point is 00:13:21 It means that. And I think what it meant for me was stay close to your intention. My intention was so strong and my yearning was so strong that it really saved me in a way, staying close to that. Because there were naturally some disappointments along the way and ways I couldn't imagine how things were going to turn out. Like I started out in Dharamsala in India because I knew the Dalai Lama lived there. I'd heard he was a Buddhist. And there were, you know, amazing teachers and opportunities there. But it was one of those situations where it didn't quite work.

Starting point is 00:14:01 Like I'd go to a meditation class. Because remember, I was really into the practical how-to. What's the stuff that's going to help make me happy? And I'd go to this meditation class and they'd say, well, the teacher had to go to the dentist at the other end of India. Come back in two weeks. The translator's out of town. Try again later.

Starting point is 00:14:23 And it just wasn't happening. And I went to a Tibetan restaurant one day The translator is out of town. Try again later. And it just wasn't happening. And I went to a Tibetan restaurant one day and I overheard a conversation where these two women were saying that there was going to be an international yoga conference in New Delhi. And I thought, oh, great. I'll go there. That's where I'll find my teacher. I went there and it was a really dispiriting time where the low point was probably when these yogis and swamis were up on the stage pushing and shoving against each other to be the first to grab the mic and speak. I thought, oh man, I should have stayed in Buffalo. This is terrible. He's now very well known for his book Emotional Intelligence and his work. But in those days, he was a graduate student in psychology at Harvard and he was studying meditation. For some reason, he was delivering a paper at this conference.

Starting point is 00:15:26 So I went to his lecture and he said at the end of the lecture that he was on his way to this town called Bodh Gaya in northern India. He was going to do an intensive 10-day meditation retreat, which was like an immersion course, free of cultural baggage and really the direct stuff. And I thought, that's it. And it was it. So I followed him to Bodh Gaya. The pretense of accident. What happened in Bodh Gaya, if I'm saying that correctly? I probably am not. Yes, you are. All right, great. I'll take it. No, you are. What happened in Bodh Gaya, if I'm saying that correctly? I probably am not. Yes, you are. All right, great. I'll take it. No, you are. What happened there?

Starting point is 00:15:50 Well, there was a teacher named SN Goenka who had just left Burma. He was teaching intensive 10-day meditation retreats where you were basically meditating under his guidance all day. He'd give one lecture at night. We had certain silent days and silent times, and he would just keep modulating the instruction until we'd come to the end. So we did meditation first on feeling the breath and just basic concentration and then kind of scanning your attention through your body, feeling these different sensations. And then the very last thing that he taught was a loving kindness meditation, which many years later became sort of my main meditation, my personal meditation and also in terms of my teaching and writing.

Starting point is 00:16:41 So that was like the 10 days. It was really like an immersion. And it was a tremendous time of discovery. Not only did we forge lifelong friendships, because here it is all these years later. That was January of 1971 that I did my first retreat. And I just saw Dan Goldman last night, for example. And, you know, we are tremendous friends, this whole group of people. And it really was about learning.

Starting point is 00:17:08 It was about discovering. And the lab, the vehicle was ourselves. So the timing of our conversation is very opportune because I'm actually in about six days' doing my very first 10 day silent retreat. You are. I am. You are. I am at Spirit Rock and I've never had this experience. I am apprehensive, excited, but apprehensive about it.

Starting point is 00:17:42 Jack Kornfield will be there. So I'm very interested to engage with him Before I have to stop talking What advice would you give to someone Going into that type of experience for the first time? I think that's great And congratulations Thank you

Starting point is 00:18:01 I would love to hear from you when you come out We'll have a follow-up. I would really love that, sincerely. I mean, there are a few things. One is the thing most people feel trepidation about, it seems to be, is the silence. And people show up and they say, I don't think I can be silent, or my partner doesn't think I can be silent, or one woman came and said they're doing a bedding pool in my office, they don't think I can be silent or one woman came and said they're doing a bedding pool in my office they don't think I can be silent but of all the the elements of the retreat it's almost always one of the things people point to is the most beautiful because it's like for once in our lives

Starting point is 00:18:35 we can really fully be ourselves and we don't have to present ourselves to others and think about their experience versus our experience and um you know am i witty enough am i am i strong enough or anything we can just be and it's it's a beautiful beautiful gift to give to oneself i'd also say the first few days of a retreat like the first day and a half let's say are usually pretty rough even if you have tremendous experience in meditation and in retreats it's just an adjustment period it It's like I, you know, 40 some years later, 45 years later, if I go into an intensive retreat, the beginning is usually, you know, I say there are two voices that arise inside my head. One voice says, there's nothing

Starting point is 00:19:17 happening here. It must be time to go to sleep. So even if I slept for 10 hours, it's just like I conk out. And the other voice says, there's nothing happening here. Let's make something happen. You know, the next book, the next center, whatever, you know. All these fantasies start pouring in. And so it's like a careening almost from sleepiness to restlessness and sleepiness to restlessness. And that will definitely change and it will even out. And you'll have an experience of both energy and calm at the same time.

Starting point is 00:19:46 But the most tricky thing is believing the thought that tends to arise that says, oh, no, nine more days exactly like this, you know, which we tend to believe. And if you can remember, don't believe that thought. It's going to keep changing. You know, just keep going. It will really, it will, and you'll feel really much more completely there. Thank you. I'm really excited about it. I'm excited too now. Yeah, I'm really excited about it. And I'd love to hear how you, let's just say you had a room of open-minded, intelligent people who are all type

Starting point is 00:20:29 A. That's basically most of the people listening to this. So imagine you have these people and they are in the boat that I was in for a very long time. And I'm not going to lie. Occasionally, I end up back on that boat, which is meditation. This doesn't seem to work for me. I've tried A, B, and C, and it's just not the tool to fix my particular set of problems. I can't sit still. I can't do fill in the blank, but I would like to make an attempt because I recognize at least the benefits I've seen in other people and read about and so on. How do you get those people started? What do you say to them? Well, my first question is about what is that blank that we're trying to fill in? Because a lot of people have really intense

Starting point is 00:21:20 expectations of what meditation is supposed to do. And they're often wrong. You know, so a lot of people have said to me, for example, I tried that once I felt that I think they said, Well, 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 from coming up. I couldn't keep sleepiness at bay. And we say, of course, you cannot fail at it. It's impossible to fail at it. Because you cannot be having the wrong experience. The question is not what is happening, but how are you relating to what's happening? That's the whole terrain of the transformation is how much presence, how much balance, how much kindness, how much compassion

Starting point is 00:21:55 are you bringing forth in relationship to what's coming up? And of course, there's a kind of social pressure these days. Like if you ran into a friend, you know, what you'd like to be able to say is, well, you know, I had a little bit of restlessness in the beginning, but then this peace, like this unfathomable peace just descended upon me. And then it started like shimmering at the edges and turned into bliss. And there was bliss and peace. And, you know, that's what we want to say. We don't want to say, well, my knee hurt, my back hurt, and I got restless and I got angry and they judged myself and then I fell

Starting point is 00:22:24 asleep, you know, but in truth, really in truth, not just consolation, My knee hurt. My back hurt. I got restless and I got angry and I judged myself and then I fell asleep. But in truth, really in truth, not just consolation, but in truth, from the point of view of mindfulness, it doesn't matter. Because the question is, okay, how were you with the sleepiness? How kind were you when you got angry? Kind toward yourself. How much could you include in that field of awareness? And those things are much more subtle, and they're not as satisfying, you know, and they're certainly not as satisfying to talk about. But that's the whole point. So I would really want to know what someone's expectations are. And then, I mean, you can be reassured, like you're going to sit with

Starting point is 00:22:59 Jack, who's been teaching for a very long time. And, you know, there's not like a cookie-cutter description of what it's supposed to look like. Maybe for you, he'll suggest more walking meditation than sitting meditation. Maybe he'll, you know, suggest a more structured approach because that is proving useful for you. Or maybe a less structured approach. You know, there's so many possibilities now when you are uh say advising someone who is really making an effort to uh create meditation as a practice much like they would brush their teeth or do something else what are and i think what you already said is very helpful in the sense that it's not the content of the experience.

Starting point is 00:23:50 It's how you relate to the various things that come up during your experience. And I remember one thing that helped me as a typically very, well, I suppose I self-describe as sort of driven type A personality was the idea that it's, this is something that someone said to me. I don't recall who it was, but it's not, it's, it's not important. Or you shouldn't judge the session based on how many times you lose focus of X, whether that's a mantra or your breath or whatever, but because the practice itself is coming back to the focus and thinking of it in terms of repetitions in that context really helped me to relate better to what I viewed as these horrible distractions, but not realizing like, no, that's the lowering of the weight. And then your job is to lift it back up.

Starting point is 00:24:46 And that's right. That's exactly right. Are there other mental frameworks or analogies that you found very helpful? Much like that for people to keep in mind when they're sitting down and their knee hurts and they're having these various thinking of the last episode of rick and morty that they watched or whatever are there other uh great show uh but other are there any other analogies or recommendations that allow people to be easier on themselves and make progress through relating to themselves in an easier way as opposed to straining?

Starting point is 00:25:28 Yeah, I mean, that's also a great question. I mean, there's several levels to that. In the kind of immediate level, what you said is the most important thing. Sometimes we say the healing is in the return, not in never having wandered to begin with the most important thing is that coming back and in some ways it's the opportunity to come back if the distraction gives us um you know and so you can come back you could need to let go and come back a billion times and it would be fine because that's the actual training one of my teachers uh this tibetan teacher sony, he called it exercising the letting go muscle.

Starting point is 00:26:07 So the secret ingredient in that is actually self-compassion, which means that you realize you blew it, your mind wandered, or in life maybe you realize you made a mistake or things didn't really go the way that you wanted them to. And rather than spending the next year and a half castigating yourself about that, you know, it's realizing, okay, lessons learned, or maybe I need to make amends, or maybe there's something I need to do to come back into balance. But I need to do that with kindness toward myself. And, and, you know, that makes the process go a whole lot quicker. And it's restorative rather than, you know, if you just blame yourself and you call yourself a failure and you get down on yourself and you judge yourself, it lasts forever and you're exhausted. And it's not really resilience. It's not really the space with which we can start again. So if you start finding yourself doing that in the process of meditating, that's the signal, you know, to remember, like, this happens. You know, this is the process.

Starting point is 00:27:10 This is actually the path. It's not that I need remedial work, you know. I'm the worst meditator that ever lived. This is what it looks like for everybody. Let me just start over and start over. It's really very important. If you look at, say, certain types of resistance training or physical training, you can research and experiment with the frequency, the duration, the intensity, and figure out which parameters you respond best to. And same is true for different aspects of diet or drugs, certainly, right? You do too much, there are unintended side effects. You do too little, you don't get the effect you're

Starting point is 00:28:10 looking for. I've noticed for myself, at least, that this is just for me, but that maybe 20 minutes a day, first thing in the morning for five to 10 days straight is about the minimum dose that I need to click into feeling generally much more relaxed with with meditation. But have you and then after that point, I can actually dial back the frequency if need be, but I need that first loading period. Have you observed any sort of generalizable minimum effective dose from people where it's like, well, like X, Y, and Z is the Goldilocks in between that I've seen to really deliver the most benefits for the least inconvenience, for lack of a better term. But how would you think about that? Well, it just so happens that last night I was with some friends that were giving a lecture.

Starting point is 00:29:21 Dan Goleman, Richie Davidson, who's a neuroscientist at University of Wisconsin-Madison studying meditation, and Jon Kabat-Zinn, who founded Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction. And Richie, from the point of view of neuroscience, said that nine minutes a day will actually change your brain, but you have to do it every day. And I often think of retreats, like the intensive retreat, as a period of really deepening confidence and clarity about the practice so that you have better tools to actually practice every day. Somebody also made a comment about how it may not be the healthiest thing in the world to think about the least possible amount I need to put into this thing to get some result. So I would pad it some. I wouldn't just try to do nine minutes a day. Usually I say 20 minutes a day, more if you can, just because the first five minutes or so in a daily sitting tend to be the most distracted. Like, what's that sound? And I think it's my refrigerator. Do they still

Starting point is 00:30:22 have refrigerator repair people? I don't know. Maybe I need a new refrigerator. Do they still have Sears anymore? I don't know. And it's almost like this discharge of tension for the little bit. And then if you can hang in there, you get a chance to go deeper, having discharged all of that. And so it's just more fruitful in a way if you can do 20 minutes. But if you only have three, I'd say do three. Everybody says it's the everydayness of it, which seems to be the most potent thing.

Starting point is 00:30:50 And for a beginner, what would you recommend those 20 minutes look like? What would the protocol or the format of those 20 minutes look like? Well, there are kind of three main thrusts of the tradition and uh which were reflected in my first retreat the first is concentration where we try to settle our attention and have it be more stable um and get more centered so that usually means choosing an object whether it's the breath or a mantra or whatever it is anarchist is usually the breath. And settling your attention on that object and then simply returning every time you realize you've wandered. Over time, you get a sense of, first of all, a tremendous amount of energy returning to you because there's an awful lot

Starting point is 00:31:35 of energy that could be available to us but isn't because it's scattered all over the place. And we keep gathering it and returning it and do feel the kind of empowerment of that. And also a kind of integration of our being. It's like all that scatteredness is also a kind of fragmentation and we kind of bring it all together. And then there's mindfulness, which actually is an extension of that where we not only pay attention to the single object like the breath, but we pay attention to our emotional world and what's coming up predominantly and our bodies and what we're feeling and all kinds of things with that same kind of balanced awareness, which is why we say mindfulness is the basis for insight. We understand so much more about everything. So, and one example is I often talk about sitting and looking at my own fear,

Starting point is 00:32:27 trying to be as mindful as I can, which means not condemning it and also not diving into it and having it take over. And I feel I've seen a lot. So as one example, I felt that, you know, unlike the kind of world's maxim that we're afraid of the unknown, I find that I'm really afraid when I think I do know and it's going to be really bad. And it's all the stories I tell myself that really get me going. And even in the midst of that, if I remind myself, you know what, you don't know, then I feel relief. I feel a sense of space. And, you know, we look at our desire and we say, look how much loneliness there is in there. We look at our anger. we say, look how much loneliness there is in there. We look at our anger.

Starting point is 00:33:07 We say, look how much sadness there is in there. And wherever we look, we see into change. Look at that. I thought it was so forever. I thought that was all that I ever felt. But look at that. It's always changing. And so all of that just kind of naturally arises from paying attention. And then the third kind of thrust of the skills training in meditation is loving

Starting point is 00:33:26 kindness or compassion. And that was the last meditation that going introduced to my 10 day course, it was just an hour or so, but it so ignited me that it became something I got very devoted to. And that's threaded throughout both the self compassion, we have to feel for ourselves to be able to do the first two, concentration and mindfulness as well. And then there are distinct practices which are just devoted to the deepening of loving kindness and compassion. Now, is loving kindness – I'm not terribly familiar with loving kindness, but I recall – and please correct me if I'm misapplying the label, but I read some writing by a gentleman named Chade Meng Tan, who out of Google, you initially people, you know, well and care for and just wishing them to be happy in the most, um, in, in a sense, in the most abstract of ways, but it didn't seem to matter that it was abstract, even though I love the concrete.

Starting point is 00:34:37 And I did this for a period of time about a year ago at night just before winding down and going to bed. And it, it had a tremendous impact on my happiness, if we want to call it that, or self-reported wellbeing over the subsequent 10 days. I mean, I was in such a good mood and the only variable that I could identify that I'd changed was wishing two people happiness for say two or three minutes a piece every night. Is that, does that fall in the category of loving kindness practice? It does. It does. All right. I was really, really just impressed by how profound the impact was because I'm not going to lie. I expected it to do very, very little. And why does it appear to have such an

Starting point is 00:35:27 impact? I mean, I don't feel like I'm a jerk. I mean, I do like to wish other people to be happy, and I try very hard in my books and so on to facilitate that. But why does it seem to have such an impact? Well, I think it's because it trains our attention to be different. It's like we're paying attention differently. So, for example, if you were doing it in a formal sequence, and you may in the retreat, I'm not really sure. You start with offering loving kindness to yourself. And then you move on to those people that you like. And you keep on moving through those you feel neutral toward, maybe somebody who plays a role in your life that you see now and then. You move on to offering loving kindness to more difficult people for you.

Starting point is 00:36:14 And then finally, all beings everywhere, all of life. I think the reason it works, and it does work, and I also know it's easy to be cynical about it. It sounds so schmaltzy. It does sound ridiculous i also know you know it's easy to be cynical about it it sounds so schmaltzy and it does sound ridiculous i know that but uh it's actually very powerful so the question is do you want to make the experiment or not or is it just so off-putting that you'd rather not which some people feel but um it is i think all about paying attention differently. So, for example, in looking at yourself, if you're the kind of person who at the end of the day you sort of evaluate yourself, like how did I do today?

Starting point is 00:36:52 And if you're the kind of person who pretty well only remembers the things you did wrong and the mistakes you made and what you didn't say so well. That's right. So the loving kindness is almost like asking yourself, anything else happen today? Like any good within me? And it's not to be conflict avoidant and pretend we're perfect or anything,

Starting point is 00:37:12 but it's that kind of singular, obsessive look at what's wrong that we want to broaden. And so we want a little airtime for the rest, you know? So what do we pay attention to? And who do we pay attention to is a fascinating question. Who do we look right through? Who doesn't count? Who doesn't matter? Who's like an object for us? And this is one of the places where that neutral person is really interesting because they're just the shopkeeper or just the dry cleaner or whatever they are. Very easy to objectify, very easy to look through. So what happens when we look at them instead of through them,

Starting point is 00:37:47 which is in effect what we're doing in the practice? And how do we pay attention? Are we really there ever? Are we talking to a stranger and thinking about our email and whatever else we need to do? And can we actually arrive? And that is exactly the same movement we do in the concentration meditation. It's like we realize we're a million

Starting point is 00:38:05 miles away, we come back. You know, so what's it like then when you're really listening? You know, that's how the practice actually works. And the filter question, or the lens through which you look at your daily experience, the reframing of that by doing this exercise is a really important point. So I want to underscore that for people listening. And just to draw an analogy, or at least a parallel, if you buy a new car, let's just say you buy a white Volkswagen Golf, it will seem that the next day or subsequent week that there are white Volkswagen Golfs everywhere on the street. But it's simply because you've attuned your attention to that particular object. And I owe one of my ex-girlfriends a debt of gratitude because at one point she noticed

Starting point is 00:38:56 that I did have this habit of running my life along a certain philosophical line, which was the good things will take care of itself. Just tell me what's going wrong. And I didn't want the positive feedback. I wanted to know how I could improve and what I needed to improve. And to remedy that at one point, she created this jar. It was a big Mason jar. And she just wrote on the side, the jar of awesome. And what she, what she asked me to do was every night just to write down one really good thing that happened that made me happy or made me grateful that day and put it in the jar. And it's not that I was a total ingrate. It's not like I was Ebenezer Scrooge or anything, but I would put down the things that were good. And I realized one of the

Starting point is 00:39:46 critical mistakes that I made, and I'm getting a little off track here, but I assumed that I would always remember the good things long term, because I found it second nature to remember the bad things long term. And it turned out that it was a completely false assumption. And I would very quickly forget the good things that happened. And so my girlfriend encouraged me to write down these events or encounters, whatever it might be, on a piece of paper

Starting point is 00:40:13 and fill up the jar. And then when I was having a down moment or being overjudgmental towards myself to just reach into the jar and to go through it and to pick out one or two examples. And it was really therapeutic for me, uh, but I still have it to this day. And, uh, the, the question of self compassion or the topic of self compassion is one I want to come back to. Uh, and we were chatting

Starting point is 00:40:42 before we started recording a little bit about the word love and how perhaps it's been co-opted or used in ways that have made it challenging. Could you please elaborate on what you mean by that? We didn't get into it before we started. So just for myself also, this is a word that is so often used, it seems to have almost lost a lot of meaning. And so I'd be curious to know how you wield it and how you would suggest people think about it. Well, I think it has lost a lot of meaning because we use the word love from everything. From, you know, I love the color of that cabinet and I love frozen yogurt to I love you. And there's so many associations with love.

Starting point is 00:41:26 It's like, I mean, in one of the questions you posed before, you know, if you are a person who's kind of a type A person and you're brought into a room and say, we're going to do a meditation on love, you know, it tends to be a little emaciating for a lot of people because we often associate love with weakness, with giving in, kind of smiling with, you know, it's just this frivolous smile. It's not connected. Maybe to very deep feelings of pain or anger or edge or ferocity or intensity

Starting point is 00:41:57 or the things that are really a part of us. And the word in Pali, the language of the original Buddhist text, is metta, M-E-T-T-A, and it's commonly translated as loving kindness, uh, which I think has a flavor of the actual meaning, but it's a kind of problematic term because nobody really uses it. Like you wouldn't really necessarily expect to go to a coffee shop somewhere and hear the conversation at the next table, including the word loving kindness. It's, kindness. It maybe is a little saccharine or removed from day-to-day life. I've had scholars and translators come to me and say, just say love.

Starting point is 00:42:35 Stop being so cutesy. You mean love. But love is so complicated and can also be, frankly, a medium of exchange. Like I would love you as long as following 15 conditions are met, or I would love myself as long as I never make a mistake. And it's so fragile. It's so breakable. It's not really what metta means.

Starting point is 00:42:54 The literal translation I also have a problem with. The literal translation is friendship. And for me, friendship implies conviviality, like let's have dinner together or let's go to the movies together. I want to spend time with you. And love in that sense of metta does not mean that at all. It actually doesn't even imply a certain action. It's an inner space of connection. We acknowledge our lives are connected, that everybody counts, everybody matters.

Starting point is 00:43:22 It doesn't mean I like you. It doesn't mean I want to spend any time with you. It doesn't mean I'm going to cease fighting you and your agenda, but not from a place of hatred. And it's connection. That's really what it's about. And so those practices of, say, loving-kindness meditation are about connecting more deeply to ourselves

Starting point is 00:43:39 and connecting more deeply to others. If someone feels themselves steering towards anger in an exchange with someone, aside from the mindfulness training or practice that they would do outside of that encounter, is there anything you recommend they do or self-talk they could use to diffuse that and steer it in a less antagonistic direction?

Starting point is 00:44:08 I mean, I think there are lots of levels to that. One is getting really acquainted with what's happening in your body. It's like you feel the beginning of the anger, not like after you've sent the email or lashed out, but you can feel it really emerging. And then you have choice. And we also practice in mindfulness being able to hang in there with the anger, you know, without having it take us over and also without being ashamed of it or afraid of it, without fighting it. But we have a more balanced relationship to it and we can hang in there. It's almost like the storm moving through your body. And then you decide how you want to act. Because often we do have to act and we should act but uh you know maybe that very email is not gonna get you what

Starting point is 00:44:52 you want you know and maybe it's better to wait a moment and see what else emerges something like that um and there's also there's kind of intentionalities it's like we can remember our deepest intention like what do i want to have come out of this conversation? What would make me happiest? Do I want to be seen as right? Do I want to grind them into dust? Do I want to be helpful? Do I want a resolution?

Starting point is 00:45:16 And that will give us a lot of information about where we're really coming from. And if it's to have a resolution, to find a way to work together, whatever it might be, or even to finish dinner together, then that might counsel being quieter and not being so forceful or finding another way of saying this is what I feel instead of this is the way the truth is, things like that. And if you, in fact, want to grind them them into dust that will be a different path yeah the the this is how i feel frame is one that i want to personally get better at using because i think it's so easy at least for me to unfortunately convey messages in a way that seems very Spock like. And if you were to take the same content and have someone transmit it with a smile and preface it with this may be just how I feel, but I, I think that I could have avoided a lot of wasted time and energy and hurt feelings and other people, uh, even though it's exactly the same content, in effect. So two quick notes.

Starting point is 00:46:29 The first is, just since you mentioned email and creating unnecessary messes, I would suggest to anyone out there, one thing I've learned, if you're experimenting with any type of fasting, obviously with proper medical supervision and so on, probably a good idea, if you've never done it before, to not let yourself send email on the second or third day.

Starting point is 00:46:52 That's funny. I've created a lot of ugly disasters by manning the inbox during times like that. The second is something that I wanted to back into that's related to what we've been talking about and I thought was really profound and worth highlighting for people. And that is that oftentimes, this has certainly been true for me, that others, if you are working on, say, your meditation practice, it also applies to all sorts of things like medication in some instances. This happened to a friend of mine when he started taking very low-dose lithium, for instance. Others see the changes in us before we see the changes in ourselves.

Starting point is 00:47:44 And I'd love for you, if you could talk about that a little bit, and I can certainly give an example or two as well. But it's it strikes me that a lot of people give up because they feel like nothing has happened when in fact, a lot has happened, they just can't yet perceive it themselves. So if you could talk to that at all, I'd love to hear your additional thoughts, because I think it's really, really important, since so many analytical sort of left brain people think they're really, really good at self assessment and self awareness, but it's hugely, hugely overestimated, at least in this capacity.

Starting point is 00:48:23 I think that's really true. And I tell a story sometimes about a friend who came to me in New York City and took me out to lunch, and he said, this is like a confessional lunch. I said, really? He said he had been doing loving-kindness meditation. That was just his particular methodology. He said, I've been doing loving kindness meditation for about three years now. And I want to say that my experience when I sit each day or when I'm on retreat doing that

Starting point is 00:48:50 practice, it's not that different now than it was three years ago when I started out. But I'm like a totally different person. I'm different with myself. I'm different with my family. I'm different ethically. I'm different with my community. And then he looked at me and he said, is that enough? I said, yeah, I think it's kind of I'm different with my community. And then he looked at me and he said, is that enough? And I said, yeah, I think it's kind of enough, you know, really. So that's the first thing I say is if you're trying to assess your practice, and you should. You don't want to do something forever not knowing if it's making a difference. But don't look at that, say, 20-minute period a day when you're formally practicing.

Starting point is 00:49:20 Look at your life. That's where we're going to see it. So important. I mean, you don't see it right away. You're totally right. Like usually other people see it more in us first before we see it in ourselves. And I've had many people come to me and say, you know, I was going to stop. I didn't think anything was happening.

Starting point is 00:49:36 But my kids came to me and said, please don't stop. You're much better. You know, so, you know, the ultimate point is to look at our lives maybe not right away others will tell us if we're changing uh but then when we are really seriously assessing do look at your life that's where it matters and you know i think it's in our lives that we really uh we do see the benefits if they're there to be seen and that's where they matter so that's where it should be the the friend i mentioned had a very similar experience uh he runs pretty hot uh as as i do as a lot of people do and uh his story was very similar and i think applies equally to meditation, which he's also since started. But he began taking this very low dose, like five milligrams of lithium orotate.

Starting point is 00:50:33 So caveat, people, talk to your medical professionals. But generally, you would expect, say, as a monotherapy for bipolar depression, you'd be looking at something like 1200 or 1500 milligrams of lithium carbonates. This is five milligrams. And he started taking it, didn't really notice anything, took it for a few weeks. And then at one point, he was out with his wife, and she was trying on some shoes. And she came out, They kept walking, and he was telling her, I've actually been taking lithium for the last week or two. I haven't really noticed anything.

Starting point is 00:51:12 She said, wait, what? Rewound, and she said, do you realize that you just sat while I tried on shoes for 45 minutes and did not complain? She goes, go buy all the lithium you can buy. She goes, you've been totally, you've been totally different with her and with the kids. And what I've found is that it's also really easy to perceive a lack of progress because you don't see yourself doing new things in the rest of your life where what you don't notice are the things that you're doing less of, if that makes sense. And, uh, what I have found for myself, at least it's, it's very subtle until someone points it out in you. But, uh, if I think of, let's just say, my proneness to anger or impatience, let's just say there's a buffer.

Starting point is 00:52:09 So there's a buffer between sort of control and then externally throwing out anger or impatience. And there are certain things that decrease that buffer, that kind of that safety zone. Like for me, caffeine,, uh, that safety zone. Uh, like for me, caffeine, for instance, uh, sleep deprivation. But when I meditate and do other practices, it increases the buffer. So it takes more and more and more to get me to that threshold after which I lash out or send the stupid brusque email or whatever it might be. You know, I'd love to, you mentioned the conditional love a while back,

Starting point is 00:52:56 the if you satisfy these 15 requirements, then I will love you. If not, I will revoke my, my, my right to my or my ability to love you, whatever it might be. I've read a little bit, maybe you can elaborate on or tell the story about the man and his dog, the 100-100 story. Oh, yeah. Could you share that

Starting point is 00:53:19 with the people listening, please? Because I do like it. And I only read a very abbreviated version. That's great. Well, I recently read a book called Real Love. And the process of writing the book, we really tried to crowdsource in a way. I wanted to hear a lot of people's stories and insights about love. And some of that I tried to do online, a lot of that I did meeting with groups. And the very first group I met with was in New York City and people just were talking about their experiences of love. So the trajectory of the book, the structure of the book is that the first

Starting point is 00:53:57 section is about love for oneself. The second section is about love for another, whether that's a parent or a child or a lover or whatever. And then the third section is about love for another, whether that's a parent or a child or a lover or whatever. And then the third section is about love for all beings. So I just said, let it rip. I don't care which section you're talking about, but help me. Tell me what love means to you. Tell me some stories. So we got through a good part of the evening, and this guy raised his hand.

Starting point is 00:54:21 He said, most people think of a good relationship as 50-50. He said, my dog and I, we're 100-100. And it was perfect. I love that story. And then I was unfortunately quite late with the book and it kept getting delayed, you know, because of me. And finally, it was, you know, a little over a year ago and I was in England about to sit a retreat. I was just about to press send. It was a day early from the final, final deadline. I felt really proud. Oh, I'm a day early. And I was just about to press send when I remembered that story, and I thought, did that make it in there?

Starting point is 00:54:59 Did it stay in there through all these changes and editings and stuff like that? So I looked, and I had not. So I quickly typed it in, and I pressed pressed send so it was the last thing that got written how do you so meeting deadlines always a good feeling uh it doesn't always happen with books if how do you think about success if you use that? Or how would you like people to redefine it? I've kind of redefined it a lot in my own life in that I know now, you know, like meditation, mindfulness is extremely popular. And a lot of people talk about scaling, you know, like let's have a big impact on a lot of people, even a small impact on a lot of people.

Starting point is 00:55:50 But the lot of people part is what's critical for a lot of folks. And when I think about it, you know, it's not really so much that way for me because, you know, I feel really privileged. I feel incredibly lucky in my life. The things I get to talk about, the things I get to explore with people and their willingness to be vulnerable and honest and the methods that, you know, were given to me and I'm able to pass on and that I find really viable and useful and life-saving in many cases.

Starting point is 00:56:24 And, you know, I ask myself, is it enough if one person or three people or I have 100 people in front of me and only three people, you know, want to take it to some depth or whatever it is, you know, is that enough? And I actually really kind of feel it's enough because it's so amazing when somebody says to you with that kind of sincerity, oh, your work has really made a difference. Or people recognize my voice now because of recordings. It's really a beautiful thing. And so I, like anybody, have great conditioning toward like numbers you know it's got to be this many people or it's got to be

Starting point is 00:57:06 this many people per recording or something like that and as i get older which i have somehow um you know i think who cares you know really you know just think of that one person what are what are your biggest challenges right now? Are there any particular behaviors you're trying to change, problems you're trying to solve, if you're comfortable discussing it? and it's just one blissful Zen moment to the next of self-compassion and loving kindness towards everyone in the world. But I would imagine there's more to the picture. Are there any particular challenges or things you're trying to change in your life right now? Yeah, I guess that in a minute. But first, just this story occurred to me that I was sitting in, it was actually the San Francisco airport, and my flight was delayed for six hours.

Starting point is 00:58:09 Six and a half, actually. It was delayed for six and a half hours. Welcome to San Francisco. Yeah, thank you. For the first five and a half hours, I was fine. And then I just got so irritated, and I was so impatient, and I felt so miserable. And just then, this woman came up to me and said, are you Sharon Salzberg? I thought, great, you know, it was having a temper tantrum on the floor. If only you'd come three hours ago, I was fine. But, uh, you know, so there's just a

Starting point is 00:58:35 lot of that. Yeah. I mean, I say yes to too many things. I'm tired. Um, and, uh, I'm a night owl anyway, you know? So, uh, if I, if I'm asleep by one, that's a good thing. If I'm asleep by three, that's a bad thing. I just had this book came out and I was traveling like crazy and I 1974 as a meditation teacher because one of kind of sidle away like, that's weird. Or, you know, they'd say, you know, did you meet the Beatles when you were over there? And I'd say, no, sadly, you know, they went when I was in high school. But, you know, now it's like so tempting. There's so many opportunities. And you could go so many, I could go so many places and reach so many different kinds of people. It's like, wait a minute, take a break.

Starting point is 00:59:47 How do you work through improving any of those things? How do you think about making progress with behavior change? Well, I mean, by the time that my thousandth friend has said to me, you're traveling too much. Right, it sinks in. I guess it's obvious. Or you look really tired. I think, yeah, you know, maybe I should go to sleep a little earlier.

Starting point is 01:00:16 What has worked well for you historically when you feel overwhelmed or are in a dark place, are there any particular times that come to mind for you in the past where you could tell a story and then what helped you get out of it, whether the funk is overwhelmed, depression, or some combination? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I did write a book called Faith, and faith in the Buddhist tradition is not, you know, it's not like a commodity you have or you don't have. And if you don't have enough or the right kind, you're condemned. It's more a process. It's a journey, and it's a journey. is almost defined as offering your heart, being able to be fully present with something,

Starting point is 01:01:10 moving off of the sidelines into the center of possibilities, that movement. And it's only aided and strengthened by questioning and doubt and wondering, doubt, the right kind of doubt, you know, like wanting to see the truth for yourself. So I was working with this freelance editor friend on the book and saying, well, you know, from the Buddhist point of view, doubt is not the right kind of doubt. That insistence on questioning is not the opposite of faith. So she said, what's the opposite of faith? And I said, despair. And then she said, well, you're going to have to tell a despair story in your book. And I said, I'd really rather not.

Starting point is 01:01:47 I did. And it's a story – we started this conversation 30 years later, more, I was meditating. I was in Australia on an intensive retreat, a month-long intensive retreat with my Burmese years old and not knowing what to do, not knowing how to get help. And the terror and the anguish and the whole thing, it was just there. And it was one of those moments where I thought, I thought I worked through this. I thought this was done. And through the whole process, a lot relying on him and his trust in me and the practice and just being in nature and things like that, I really saw that despair was like the severing of connection, that faith was like connection, like love, which I'm also defining as connection. So I'm realizing I'm kind of back there again.

Starting point is 01:03:08 So I realized that everything I could do that would renew my sense of connection and kind of bring me to that sense of not being so alone, not being severed from life itself. And there was at the time this passage from Rilke came up in my mind, something like, do not be frightened if a sadness greater than you've ever known before comes up before you. Life has not forgotten you. I love that. And that really became my mantra. Life has not forgotten me. I'm still a part of life. Life has not forgotten you. I love that. And that really became my mantra. Life has not forgotten me. I'm still a part of life. Life has not forgotten me. And maybe, you know, that first

Starting point is 01:03:50 class I did in Asian philosophy was the beginning of that. You know, like everybody suffers. This is a part of life. Life has not forgotten you. You haven't been abandoned. And so when, you know, I feel that, I mean, I don't really feel it often, but if I feel the intimations of that re-emerging, it's all about connection. Well, I know we have some time constraints today, but I think that is, I think that's, that's actually a very good place to just hit pause for a second. And I want to, I didn't do this up front, but I was planning on it. So here it is. I wanted to thank you personally for the work that you put out in the world, because it's had an impact on me. I've listened to your audio. I've read a lot of your writing and I want to, I suppose, reaffirm what you said earlier about success and not necessarily reaching for scale from the outset, but focusing on one person at a time because your work has impacted me, which has helped me to also try to do better things in the world.

Starting point is 01:05:07 So from a very personal standpoint, I just wanted to thank you for doing what you do. Oh, thank you. Really. And I continue to read your work and I am, I would highly recommend people check out Real Love. And certainly for people listening, I'm going to link to that as well as anything that we've spoken about in this episode in the show notes at tim.blog.com forward slash podcast as per usual. If there's any ask that you have or recommendation of the audience that you have before we draw to a close, are there any parting comments or words that you would like to share? Could be anything, really, with the people who are listening. Yeah, I mean, I do find this.

Starting point is 01:06:03 Thank you. And I do find this such a time of grief on the part of people and rage. And so many people say to me, I can't bear who I've become. I'm continually the book came out when it came out. Because it's so easy to think of love as being weak and saccharine and all of that. And it's so easy to think the only strength we have is vengefulness and hatred. And I hope we just keep looking at that all together and understand that we can fight and struggle and we kind of have to because what a time. But it can come from a different place and it's kind of got to come from a different place. because you can never really source it, where he apparently said somewhere, the problems that we face cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.

Starting point is 01:07:12 It sounds very Einstein-like. I bet he did say it. And it's an amazing statement. And I think about that really a lot. I hope people, I mean, my deepest hope is that people will do the good that's in front of them, even if it feels very small, because the problems right now can seem insurmountable and massive. And we just have to step by step do what we can. Do the good that's in front of you. That is, that's advice that everybody needs to hear. I think it's so important. So thank you, A. And B, what's in front of you is concrete. I think this is also why a lot of people feel overwhelmed is that the big, the macro, the global economic, political, fill in the blank, tend to be very, very abstract. And, and, and it's difficult to sort of grapple with a shadow in that sense. And rather than focusing on the things you cannot control or the things that

Starting point is 01:08:13 you will not attempt to control, work with what's right in front of you. And it's those small acts done by one or several or many people that ultimately create the large scale change. So do the good that's in front of you. I appreciate that. And people can certainly find you on social. If they want to say hello, do you have a preferred location on the internet for people to say hello?

Starting point is 01:08:44 Well, I'm on Twitter a lot, at Sharon Salzberg, and my website is SharonSalzberg.com, and you can actually reach me through there as well. Perfect. Well, Sharon, thank you so much. I hope we have a chance to meet in person or do a round two,

Starting point is 01:09:03 and I'll definitely keep you posted on the goings-on or not goings-on during my first 10-day. Yeah. Oh, I'd love to hear it, really, and I'd love to meet you sometime. So to be continued, thank you very much for the time. Oh, thank you. And just to repeat for everybody listening,

Starting point is 01:09:22 you can find links to everything we've discussed, including the books and so on at Tim.blog forward slash podcast. And until next time, thank you for listening. Hey, guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun for the weekend?

Starting point is 01:09:52 And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the world of the esoteric as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very

Starting point is 01:10:18 short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to fourhourworkweek.com. That's fourhourworkweek.com all spelled out and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it.

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The Tim Ferriss Show - #277: Sharon Salzberg, World-Renowned Meditation Teacher

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The Tim Ferriss Show - #277: Sharon Salzberg, World-Renowned Meditation Teacher

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.