Why Meditate?

Carrie Grossman (Dayashila) is a devotional singer, composer, and lifelong student of the mystical traditions. For over 20 years, she has studied the art of sacred sound, guiding people into the sublime realms of the heart through her concerts, workshops, and retreats. With a warm, approachable style, Carrie weaves together music and mantra, meditation, healing arts, and wisdom teachings to nourish and inspire seekers from all walks of life. Her acclaimed albums include Soma-Bandhu: Friend of the Moon, The Ram Sessions, Pranam, and Homeward. You can find her creations on Apple Music, Spotify, and the popular meditation app, Insight Timer. CarrieGMusic.com

At the age of 21, Carrie first traveled to India where she was introduced to kirtan (call and response mantra chanting). The beauty of the practice inspired her to sing, but due to shyness and self-doubt, 10 years went by before the music within her emerged. It wasn’t until a difficult life period that she began to write songs and play the harmonium. She has since produced several albums, including Soma-Bandhu: Friend of the Moon (2010), The Ram Sessions (2016), Pranam (2017), and Homeward (2019).  

Carrie began her journey as a scholar, earning degrees in Religious Studies from Brown University (BA) and Naropa University (MA), but ultimately she longed to experience the teachings directly. This desire led her to study with some of the world’s great masters and to receive further training and certification in yoga, mind-body medicine, and the healing arts.

Also a prolific writer, Carrie is the former editor of Common Ground magazine. She is deeply influenced by her longtime spiritual teacher Amma, and the many guides and mentors she’s had along the way.

To listen to more of Carrie’s music

Mitra Manesh, (the founder of Innermap and Innermap App.)  is a mindfulness educator with over 3 decades of experience and practice. She blends Western methods and Eastern traditions in a synthesis that cultivates intelligence and wisdom. A student of Rumi’s philosophy, a former Human Rights Commissioner, Mitra has a private practice in Beverly Hills, CA and teaches at UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center in the School of Neuroscience/Semel Institute. 

A very rough transcription of my interview.

I’m here with Mitra Manesh and it’s meditation teacher mindfulness-based coach. The first question I have is. Why meditate?

Why meditate, because meditation is the study of South and eventually we can no longer skip over ourselves and we need to meet date except and hopefully greet ourselves and also meditation is a great sampler of how. A mindful life can look like so hopefully and eventually we would like to copy and paste what we do in our meditation in our daily life. I haven’t that nobody’s approached it from that place yet.

The next question is what is your definition of mindfulness? And what does it look like to live a mindful life?

Okay, so as you know, I teach mindfulness and have taught many many decades. So I’ve created my own definition nothing unusual. Just something that goes home for me and the way I Define mindfulness. As being awake and present with curiosity and compassion so I used for keywords. And the first one is a week. You may say what do you mean me to try I’m sitting here obviously up a week I drove for hours, right? But I’m not talking about physical weakness. I’m talking about with our sense of being aware and awake and knowing the here it’s opposite of being on autopilot. The second word I use was present and that is basically the opposite of being either in the past or in the future and you’ve heard me say that past is wonderful and we do want to go there but with a visitor’s visa. Because we want to learn or even maybe remember our grades experiences and learn from them even and also the future we would like to go there too. Lightly. The key word here is like the plan and come. After the present moment, so whenever we stay there too long either in the past or present or future and then that’s where all our troubles reside the extreme of being in the past brings a sense of sadness and even depression and extreme of being in the future brings a sense of anxiousness. So every sadness and depression needs a past and every anxiousness and anxiety needs a future. So it’s looking at but if we are looking into the past we’re looking at it in a light way. We’re observing it as opposed to living it exactly and grew up. There is a need for a purpose. That’s why I called the visitor Visa. I’m going to The Limited period of stay and I’m going to see some things of interest learn something. Hopefully, expand my Horizon of understanding life. So it’s very purposeful. I don’t go there to lament I go there to learn it’s a different and same thing with planning I go there to plan because of course if you and I didn’t plan we wouldn’t be able to meet today. Sure. However when anything. Even good and I have another relationship with good and bad. But let’s call it good whenever we do something over a certain line. It turns into something not useful. I’m in a very difficult sewn and why can’t we really plan and determine the future because at best I plan the day our the week with the knowledge of that present moment and as you know the knowledge or the facts are always changing, so I planned you plan to be here half an hour earlier, right? Did you know the traffic would be as know why because that was not predictable you gave it probably half an hour here and there but yet something different happens and that is a great example for how life works? We plan it with the information that we have at the time when you left or when you plan to leave but. Things changed completely out of your control perhaps even so that’s why we need to just plan it and leave it to come back to the present moment. And so that we can actually be open and able to death. With the present moment information and Circumstance, right? You know answered it. I had a question but you answered in your answer to lose its great. Great. I love the I’ve always liked your reference to the past and the present and the future, you know, and how you live in those because we all live in that every day, but. Yeah, we have to be able to understand it and put it in perspective exactly and it can serve you they can completely serve you. I mean learning from the past is amazing, you know experience being able to likely plan the future. It’s fantastic. It gives you some sense of knowing where you’re going but then. You have to understand the nature of the impermanent nature of everything that things will change. So that’s the weakness and presence that I used to other words and I said curiosity with a sense of curiosity and compassion. So curiosity basically says. I don’t know but I’m very interested to know that’s the message of curiosity which is very opposite of for instance. The judgment says either I know I don’t know but I’m pretending that I know and by the way, I don’t like it this way. I hate you better be that way. Sure so curiosity is almost beautifully child like that. You know how children like to know, they don’t have any. Sort of severe disposition or Judgment of writing, you know, they just like to know it’s just yeah. Yeah. Yeah new we did with his sense of honest, like, you know do tell whatever it is, you know, tell me about this food. You eat tell me about this place you’ve. From telling me about this idea you have so curiosity. It’s sort of something that allows us to let judgment settle down and not be so activated in us and. And of course compassion hmm. Well, I should hold on to that one because that’s one of the questions that I want out. I want to approach these in my little order here.

What is the difference between meditation contemplation and prayer?

Okay, so meditation means basically becoming familiar with. in meaning but really it means becoming familiar with self. Getting to know oneself. Of course, there are many different kinds of meditations. I’m not going to go into it. But in essence, meditation means that Getting to Know Yourself contemplation means really looking. For the truth or truth of something particular because contemplation can be focused. Like there are practices are when I take mindfulness to workplaces sometimes when they need to make a collective decision when they have like, you know group Gatherings, we put out to clarify a question and allow everybody to. So it’s a very focused contemplation. We’re looking for an answer for a very specific question. Right? So that’s contemplation for looking for a particular truth to this question or this subject and then we have contemplation which is open contemplation that you just contemplate to for the truth. In general which is a very philosophical and old way of finding out a lot. So if you look at the history of philosophy many many. People that at least I see as my teachers such as roomy they did a lot of contemplation, but the contemplation wasn’t for anything particular it was just contemplation of finding the truth of Life of like what exactly so that’s contemplation. So contemplation is looking for the truth or truth of something meditation is getting familiar with. South wouldn’t practices and then prayer is wishing for or asking for something in particular and of course, it depends on our your definition or the person’s definition of what prayer means Ram, right? It has a whole Spectrum, but in general, is either I’m praying just generally for someone or I’m asking for something so they’re completely different in there. Outcomes but their processes are the same because they all require a sense of going in right? So it’s a journey to within and brings a sense of self-connection before we even take it to the next step and say why we’re going in the first we go in and then we may go in for understanding and getting to know ourselves. We may be going into. Ask for a wish or pray for someone or we may be going in to actually find the truth. What did you resolve something?

Is how do we promote compassion in ourselves and the world around us? Because I just look around and that’s what made the biggest impression on me is that the world itself needs more?

It’s a lot more compassion that it. For fellow humans for oneself and I just looking for that answer. so. first of all, we cannot give compassion when we do not hold compassion. We cannot in fact give anything that we do not hold I can only give you what I hold. So the first is a step to compassion is self-compassion. However, the way I see. I like to see it as a common passion, you know looking at compassion and really looking at it from the point of view of not thinking compassionately but feeling compassionately because compassion has become fashionable, right and anything that becomes fashionable and it’s beautiful by the way. It’s I have nothing against that however anything that becomes fashionable. It’s in the danger of becoming a little bit and not true to its Essence. So we all know the vocabulary. We all know the practices and it’s interesting sometimes when I work with one-on-one clients and I talk about how much they say. I say I’m very compassionate I say living room and they say the words and I say okay and tell me how you feel because somehow I don’t. Come see the energy of compassion right now, but I could be wrong, you know, and when I asked that question, it goes deeper say oh feeling I say, yeah that’s feeling of course very different than thinking compassion. So. Because it’s fashionable a lot of us are thinking compassionately meaning I use the words. I do all the practices. And by the way, there’s nothing wrong. That’s a start. Absolutely. Yes, and you do it until you feel it, but it’s important to really pay attention to feeling compassion. And and and experiencing it in a deeper sense and really seeing it as a verb because it’s not something that you just wish it’s something that you do and that’s a very huge responsibility. Basically, you know to have that common passion in the context that we use it in. The mindfulness is really compassion is kindness at times of difficulties. That’s the difference between compassion and kindness in the sense that at least I use it in sure dude. These are just words and they’re not you know of Corbin come from the sky, but basically to understand the difference between kindness and compassion is more called for when we’re going through difficult and challenging experiences and times or others are going through. The same so it is really understanding that that common passion is all of our passion for wanting to be happy and pain-free. So with that when we are going through about trying time, that’s the time. We really need to give ourselves more of the feeling of compassion and really understand that as opposed to being in our head exactly. But of course, that’s the most difficult time to of course, of course, that’s why you start small and you start when it’s not that urgent. That’s why you incorporate the compassion practice in everyday life when you’re not in desperate need is almost like an insurance, you know, we have all these insurances and I don’t know about you. I’ve hardly used them. But what it is is for the day that you know, I really cannot afford. To do whatever it is that I normally do and compassion. Is that internal? It is really working. Very small. I always suggest that you start very very very small meaning start compassion. When you forget your keys, you know, just-just give yourself some kind of compassionate experience instead of saying oh, so whatever you just say, ah, I forgot I’m human that’s interesting another day of Being Human. Especially overwhelmed human probably overwhelmed with all the things that they have to do and we have to pay attention to so bringing compassion over, you know, not finding your keys. Then you can take it one notch higher and then higher and then you can do it when you make big mistakes, and we do and we do and eventually, we need to be able to be there for ourselves and others when larger bigger more. Show mistakes take place in life and sooner or later they do right? So that is really how we. that’s the second part of my question is that this is how we manifest that in the world. This is how we promote it around us by having it in the US. Click it’s basically the voice with which we see so-called mistakes in Life or things that have gone wrong in Life or the pain of life. So pain, as you know, happens all the time and differing sizes, but there will arrive the question is how do I choose to face this pain which determines the level of suffering by the way, of course when compassion is. Then suffering is it you know, I’d its minimal level, right? But when compassion is not present. Then there is the pain there is my judgment about the pain. There’s my judgment about myself experiencing the pain and of course, if you don’t there are other people involved, there’s my judgment about them and they don’t I always say we have a judgment about ourselves the world and the people in the world. So there are three layers on top of the pain whereas when compassion is there then. It’s a completely different experience, right? All right, that’s the whole thing. Wow. I really appreciate the time. Thank you very much.

Thank you for listening to our podcast and making it work.

Over the last 6 months, I have been busy with all things meditation. We have a great season ahead, and I am looking forward to new types of interviews and digging deeper into why we meditate. I am also interested in how we bring mindfulness into our daily life. And, no, I am not talking about going around like a zombie all day. As Shinzen Young put it. “If you are mindful you don’t need to do anything, just live” But how do we know if we are mindful? The practice of being present can take many forms. How do I tell? When you are mindful you see the world differently, you can really taste the food, see colors, smell the flowers. While your benefits may vary, you too can come of this journey. Start with an app by your self you don’t need to tell anyone. Let your friends notice the difference in you. Then, when you need help and have questions, find a teacher. If you are lucky enough to be in LA check out UCLA Mindfulness Research Center. UCLA has a new app if you are looking for something totally secular. Check out Diana Winston’s new book Little Book of Being Practices. Another free app you can use is Insight Timer app. This app along with being a timer it also has both free and paid guided meditations and courses. Free groups are places you can go to get answers from your community.

But, you should get a teacher, a living breathing in the flesh teacher person . Community is important to the growth of your practice.

Enjoy and Thank you again for listening.

Diana Winston is the Director of Mindfulness Education at UCLA Semel Institute’s Mindful Awareness Research Center (MARC) and the co-author, with Susan Smalley PhD, of Fully Present, the Science, Art and Practice of Mindfulness (DaCapo, 2010). She teaches mindful awareness practices to the general public to promote health and well-being. Called by the LA Times “one of the nation’s best-known teachers of mindfulness,” she has developed curriculum and taught mindfulness since 1993 in a variety of settings including hospitals, universities, corporations, non profits, and schools. She has taught mindful awareness to health professionals, leaders, teachers, activists, seniors, and adolescents in the US and Asia.

Diana is the founder of the Certificate in Mindfulness Facilitation, a pioneering year-long UCLA program that provides training, support, and supervision to those wishing to incorporate mindfulness into their occupation or to share mindfulness with individuals, groups, communities, or institutions. She is considered one of the early founders of meditation programs for youth, and taught on the seminal mindfulness and ADHD research study at UCLA in 2005. Her work has been mentioned in the New York Times, O Magazine, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and in a variety of magazines, books, and journals. She is also the author of Wide Awake: A Buddhist Guide for Teens (Perigee Books, 2003), the CD “Mindful Meditations,” and has published numerous articles on mindfulness.

Diana is a member of the Teacher’s Council at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Northern California. She is a graduate of Brown University and has been practicing mindfulness meditation since 1989, including a year as a Buddhist nun in Burma. Currently Diana’s most challenging practice is mindfully parenting a kindergartner.

A Ruff Transcription of our Conversation:

Hi, I’m with Diana Winston, Director of Mindfulness Education at UCLA and we’re just going to jump right into it.

The first question is why meditate?

Diana: Why not meditate, it’s such a broad question. Yeah, but there’s so many dimensions to it. You know, I think about all the scientific research showing why mindfulness is helpful and how it improves. All sorts of things like physical health conditions and reduces blood pressure reduces stress, I think about how it’s helpful for anxiety and depression and all sorts of mental health concerns and. There’s you know, there’s so many different studies these days that have been showing the benefits of mindfulness. So there’s as I had the physical health impacts insomnia, it can impact cardiovascular disease. It can impact, you know, just a whole Ray of stress-related health conditions and. Just around that. Yeah, do they do you are using the same mindful meditation that that you’re teaching here or are you using different types of meditations for different types of ailments or you know chronic pain or those kind of things are working with different? It depends. So we’re talking we’re talking there’s been like about three or four thousand studies and they all do different things the most popular thing that’s been done probably as mindfulness-based stress reduction in the mindfulness world. So a lot of the symptoms that I mentioned they’ve. They’ve gone through an eight-week protocol with mindfulness-based stress reduction and but they’re different protocols. So some we’ve done research on maps are six week program. We’ve done it related to insomnia related to surviving breast cancer related to working on one right now with Alzheimer’s caregiver seeing if it improves their their ability to you know, just quality of life pain and less stress and so forth so map. The research but then there’s a lot of other studies that just, you know teach people a meditation and then look at the results of that and put them on a certain task and to see what even like one hour of meditation can do. I mean there’s a whole range of ways really just just sitting okay meditate for one hour you’ve never made it to you before and now you’re better then maybe that’s not exactly what’s happening. But it’s I’ve seen things like where they put over a period of time. Yeah, they might give someone attack. Like Lou might measure social anxiety and then teach them like 10 minutes of loving-kindness meditation and then see the results of that and whether it actually decreases social anxiety, so they’re so sometimes it’s just taught and little bite-sized pieces. There’s a lot of I mean, there’s a whole range of the way my figuring out how to study. Yeah, yeah. Yeah along with going along with teaching and so there’s there’s so there’s a lots of different areas which are mental and physical health can be improved through mindfulness practice. And and also just to say that mindfulness is not the same as meditation mindfulness is a type of meditation. Maybe this is a later question. But but meditation is a big category like sports is a big category and there’s hundreds of sports and there’s. Many many types of meditation and so mindfulness is the one that I’m that’s my expertise. And so I’m very familiar with the research. But if you go over to the Transcendental Meditation World, they’ll tell you all about their research. So of course so it just depends but also, you know, a lot of research has been done around attention impacting attention. So UCLA we when I was first hired here. 12 to 15 years ago, we were doing a study on adolescents and adults with ADHD and we saw that doing going through an eight-week program that we designed specifically for them improve their ability to pay attention and I mean so much so that the scientists were saying well what kind of medication did you put them on and with the note is meditation occasion, but. So attention is improved and then there’s even a lot of research looking at the people’s brains and how it impacts brain structure. So there was someone at UCLA researching long-term meditators and found that they had more cortical folds Than People of the same age range and that’s pretty interesting. So if you meditate your brain has more exercise for the brain, yeah. Yeah it right you can think of it as an exercise for the brain and and some of the early studies that were first on. At long-term meditators like monks who’ve been in the caves for 30 years or something found that they had thicker brain thicker certain areas of the brain Than People of the same age range. So like the two areas in the original study that was done out of Harvard and like I think 2005. Found that long-term meditators a sort of you know, you know, I’m talking about who they were looking at. They like the Olympic athletes and meditation their prefrontal cortex and insular cortex were Thicker Than People the same age range and prefrontal cortex is you know, what we think of as the CEO of our brain executive functioning delayed gratification, right working memory and +. So we develops last when you’re growing up exactly. So it’s the it’s was thicker than people who have the same age range that they compared it to so I’m answering on a kind of. I’m answering sort of like from a clinical perspective like why meditate and I wanted to start with that but then I kind of wanted to dig a little deeper into my own personal experience and why to like why I meditate and also having worked with you know thousands of students. Now what I see has been beneficial so that was where I wanted to start when I think about like why meditate it’s it’s probably for me been the most important thing I’ve ever done in my life, you know, just finding that attention I was. We lucky because I got into it when I was in my early twenties and I think you know at that age were still developing right the brains not fully developed and I was it really spoke to me in such a profound way. And I remember. Like having this insight into like wow, I can understand my mind by simply paying attention to it, you know and out of that sent me on a long journey of mindfulness practice and you know living in monasteries and doing long Retreats and so forth, but. Mostly I was meditating at a time because it was so incredibly interesting like getting to know this mind and what it does and seeing the habits and the patterns and all of the things like wow, and then that there could be a relief from those habits and patterns like that was the really exciting part that I could not in the beginning but ultimately begin to quiet my mind and have these places of he’s and Equanimity and then the resulting joy and compassion and connection, you know, so. For me mindfulness, well mindfulness and meditation are synonymous for me. Although I do have done other meditations in my life. But but for me, it’s like a deep dive into myself and it’s profound and sometimes surprising and beautiful and sometimes scary and weird and you know, our minds are of these amazing things. So. I think that the biggest gift over the years of having done now about 30 years of meditating is that I under I never fully understand my mind, but I have all sorts of tools and excuse me tools and skills to deal with whatever is arising so weather. Anxiety arises over my daughter or you know loss or grief or if I’m like, I have so many skill. I always have this place of kind of a refuge inside me that’s never goes away, you know, and even when I get flustered and you know crazy about this and that because of my meditation practice, there’s always a place to return to and that’s that’s you know, the greatest gift.

I could what is your definition of mindfulness? And what is your what is your vision of a mindful life?

Have a definition that I’ve been using for some time. Of course, really? No. Yeah, I just paying attention to our present moment experiences with openness and curiosity and a willingness to be with what is so it’s so for me mindfulness is what. The word mindfulness is actually brought that sort of write technical definition and that the definition that involves the placement of attention like the training of attention all into the present moment bringing it back again, and again for the present moment with certain qualities capacity to be with so there are some definitions of mindfulness that are popular that use the non-judgmental awareness and I’m not crazy about that because I found that when students. Start meditating. They often find their mind is filled with judgments. And then if they hear they’re supposed to be non-judgmental to be mindful then they think they’re doing something wrong. So I’ve kind of replaced it in my definition with a willingness to be with what is step back and one more time on that because I didn’t quite catch the beginning of what is mindfulness as it relates to. To judgment, right? So so there’s a quality inherent in mindfulness that’s about that’s what we can use lots of words. We can use acceptance non-judgmental nests Equanimity. I use willingness to be with what is so it’s so it’s not merely paying attention, but it’s also the attitude with which we pay attention. So we pay attention with a quality of willingness of openness to the experience of not being in resistance of life with life, you know, so you can be paying attention to something but be thinking wishing you were doing something else, you know of many many many we’ve all done and have it so but with mindfulness it’s much more open and so the word non-judgmentally can work for some people, but I’m not anyway. I’m not so crazy about it. But well in also just another definition the word judgment. And is like the negative part of judgment not and then the positive part you refer to that as discernment. Right? Right. I just because that was confusing to me in the beginning here. Yeah, that’s a good way you talked about those things part of mindfulness is helping us to make decisions that lead to more and more happiness and less than the sufferers right? So when we say without judgment, it could imply the non-discernment. Peace, and we don’t want that. We want people to make you know, ethical. The exhibition so our choices in life. That’s kind of how I Define mindfulness. There are different ways of being mindful. We can be mindful in a very focused way. Like I telephoto lens on a camera. We’re really just paying attention to our breathing breath after breath. You can be mindful in a very wide open way. We’re we’re noticing everything around us and that both of them are mindfulness. So there’s more spacious awareness. There’s more focused mindfulness. There are all sorts of ways. In which we can be mindful and we can bring mindfulness to whatever we’re doing as of course, you know, but for me mindfulness is I mean, there’s that specific definition and then there’s kind of living a quality of mindfulness in life, which I think was sort of a second part of right. I’ve your question a mindful life is interesting because there’s a way. And we teach those quite a bit here at Michael awareness Research Center. We can bring mindfulness into daily activities that we can that mindfulness is not just meant for your 15 minutes or 30 minutes when you’re sitting on your meditation cushion, right or chair. We sit in chairs a lot here you feel like you do and I took a little bit of getting used to but right. Well, you’re welcome. This is. So we can think that mindfulness is just stirring this protected time period but what we teach of course is that we can bring it into all of life so we can bring it into you know, when you’re walking down the street we, of course, we teach walking meditation so that teaches you how to integrate that it’s not necessarily when you’re doing walking down the street. You’re not walking like a zombie very slowly. You’re just being normal, right you’re being normal being aware. Noticing your body noticing Your Body Sensations your feet on the ground the touch the movement we can do it even more informally than that when you’re washing dishes or when you’re taking a shower or when your we teach a lot of relational mindfulness practices. So as you also know that we do a lot where we learn how to speak and listen mindfully. And that’s an incredible place to practice my music and also a really interesting place because you’re right there with another person and can we teach ourselves cells to show up in that way? So mindfulness. So one way of thinking about the mindful life is how we just bring mindfulness off the cushion or chair into life, you know, like a new thing that’s been happening for me because I got a dog recently. I used to get up and meditate but now get up and take care of the dog got up and take the dog for a walk the second he recognizes I’m away. So I just turned the walk into a kind of casual. Dog walking meditation, you know and initially the first part is a lot of me kind of thinking and following him because he’s trying to do his business but there’s a point where my mind let’s go and just kind of rests in a place of more awareness and there’s more like a flow where he’s with me and we’re just kind of walking gently and there’s a there’s like, oh, I’m getting my morning meditation and even though it’s a little bit more informal. So there’s so there are ways of incorporating into life and then but the like the question of mindful life as an interesting question to me because I think it also implies. It doesn’t mean that I guess I wasn’t want to say is it doesn’t mean that we have to be mindful every second every day to live a mindful life. That would be number one unrealistic and number two not a lot of fun. You know, I have to be mindful every single second. But a mindful life to me is a life that’s about the values of mindfulness. So. A Life That’s about integrity. That’s that’s an ethical life A Life That’s about Compassion Care Connection a lot A Life That’s about awareness and self-reflection and growth in her personal growth. Those are all things that make up a mindful life and I would say like for myself. I hope I leave them on to life. I try and some of its that very deliberately. Okay. I’m walking the dog and practicing mindfulness. But a lot of it is like the approach than taking that even when I knew you. My kid, whatever yesterday. She like she had turned the thermostat up to 78 and I went I went boom. You know, why did you do those, you know, and I just and then my lucky grandma was there and she was like, I don’t think she knew that she wasn’t supposed to do that. And then, of course, I took a breath and I calmed down and I realized that I had made you know, I had done so many unnecessary and. I could just be there and kindness with her once I could let go of my story about. Oh, that I can’t believe that kid turn the heater up to 90 degrees. So so it’s really about leaving living a life of a tune men and awareness and connection. And those are the things that to me makeup on mindful life. And you know, I would be unrealistic but to be like I thought that to have. Always being mindful every second and also that carries with it a kind of like self-judgment quality that I write that it sounds it sounds like yeah, you know like you have to be my pain there something wrong. If you’re not Mindful and sometimes life is just like we’re hanging out with our friends or having a good time. We’re petting the dog and we’re not being deliberately mindful, but it’s like it’s like the larger intention the guides. Our vision for who we want to be in the world when I’m like when there’s like awareness is present. Wow. I’m so connected to awareness or I’m so mindful as I as I you know, I’m washing the dishes today and sometimes I’m not you know, but it’s it’s the kind of the larger container the spirit of you know, goodness really that permeates a life that is dedicated to mindfulness. That’s what I’m interested in when I think about my pull life, right?

The next question is.  What is the difference between and the definition I suppose between meditation, contemplation, and prayer?

So I was saying earlier that meditations a big category and there are lots of different types underneath it and then. I would probably say that contemplation and prayer were types of meditation, but you could also maybe argue that contemplation is the bigger category and meditation is under it and they also come from different Traditions right contemplatively. Well, there’s contemplative prayer right? And then there’s. That is often associated with Christianity. And I know that in some secular circles, we’ve been using the word contemplation to get out of using the word meditation but I think contemplation is more. I don’t know. I don’t see I’m a little biased because. I think of I think of meditation I mean I’m so kind of mindfulness Focus then I think about meditation my mind goes there, but I know there’s some like when we do the loving-kindness meditations, which are meditations that cultivate different states of heart and mind that’s different than mindfulness when we do a visualization meditation and then you could say there’s a contemplation meditation where you. You know reflect on a particular topic and her mind contemplates that topic but that not may not be how other people talk about it. They may, of course, use it as an umbrella term. That’s more how I see it and to me a prayer again. I associate more in religious traditions and I think of prayer as either, you know an asking for or a listening, you know, I mean, I love the most beautiful definitions of prayer. I hear the ones that are about. About listening, you know, that’s not about like I want to get I’m going to pray for. My you know a new car or something like that, but the ones that are connected to gratitude and listening to a deeper wisdom, whether it’s someone’s conception of God or an inner knowing to me that’s different than a mindfulness practice, which is really about as we know, you know, this cultivation of awareness of a moment to moment awareness, but I will say that. In my meditation practice of many years of mindfulness. I’ve used all different types all the ones that I mentioned that you’re not even mentioning and sometimes there might have a prayer offering in my meditation in the morning or I might sometimes a lot of times people will say. That like they hear loving-kindness meditation and they say, oh I’ve been doing that with praying, you know, so I’ve had a lot of people over the years say, it feels very close to prayer. So I think that there’s when I’ve tried to Define meditation office the best definition I’ll often say it’s it’s it’s methods of inward investigation and I feel like. Contemplation is also a method of investigation and prayer can be to prayer to me connects a little bit to it more and external. Right? Right, right. Where’s contemplation? We can contemplate Our Lives we can contemplate. We can take a topic like when I studied Tibetan Buddhism, you would take a topic and you would just contemplate it. So you would think about death and you would think about death is uncertain and the time of death is and so I mean Death is certain. Sorry. No, that’s definitely gonna die. The time of death is uncertain. You know and you would contemplate that and you would sit there for hours thinking about death and that was an incredibly powerful meditation very different than what we do with the mindfulness practice. So depressing if we did that if we spent our whole time but the whole time thinking about that, how do we how do you see? Us being able to promote compassion in ourselves, and the first I want to link it directly to meditation than to say that end to answer the first part of the question it. I think that these practices mindfulness practice that she says is directly linked to compassion in a number of ways partially it’s going back to what we were talking about that willingness to be with. What is that willingness to be with what it is no small matter? That means that you are sitting there with whatever is happening and it could be something like a fly landing on you and you’re willing to be with it, but it could also be the depth of your Despair and you. Loss and grief and anger and rage and anxiety. So as you sit with that your own some people Define mindfulness is kind attention. I think that’s a lovely but sort of incomplete but you are bringing kind attention to your experience. So if you’re sitting there meditating. Get back to the breath. No, that’s not a kind of tension. Right if you’re having a feeling arise and you’re saying I shouldn’t be having this or something wrong. That’s also not a kind attention and that’s not how you cultivate it in mindfulness. So. What instead you’re doing is this loving allowing letting be being with being with ourselves and that in itself is a cultivation of kindness and compassion for ourselves. And the more we can cultivate it for ourselves and more there’s energy to have to have compassion outwards. So that’s the first way that compassion is cultivated and the second way is. One of the things that happen in mindfulness practice is that quality that we often talk about at UCLA’s of disidentification right that there’s a sense of me me me. Oh, no, I really want my kids to be like this and they have to be like this and I’m going to dive they’re not like the okay. I’m going to let it go. I’m going to just see this. I thought wow, I want them wanting that so much and then we decide to edify from the thought or the. And and what that does is it begins to over time as we’re constantly letting go over and over in our meditation practice and that skill transfers into daily life as we’re constantly doing that that we start to break down this like kind of reified sense of me me me, right the self-centeredness that many of us kind of live by. And in that space of it lasting about me, there’s more opportunity for love and compassion and kindness to arrive. So it’s like it’s like what’s in the way of being loving? It’s me me me. It’s I’m so important. I needed to be my way. I mean, I know when I’m that way with my daughter you have to be you have to be a certain way. I’m not seeing her for who she is and the love is kind of blocked, you know what I mean? And then when I can let go and I’m like, oh, she’s just she’s that why she’s different. I am there’s much more of a connection and empathy and compassion. So so that’s that’s the second way these practices cultivate compassion. And then the third is that we as you know, we deliberately cultivate them doing cultivation practices like she can practice compassion we can practice loving kindness. So so those so that’s how we kind of work on our internal. And I will say this I don’t know. There’s a kind of mysterious quality to it. Like I would say that most people at most of the students I’ve had in the colleagues and friends that I’ve had most people just kind of. Mysteriously an automatically become more compassionate when they practice mindfulness over time. It’s kind of beautiful. It just happens and I really trust that process without exactly knowing why there are people I will say I’ve met people who that’s not the case, but they usually were stuck in some other way when anyway but so then the question you asked was about. How do we then bring it out into the world to say more about that question? What was right, it’s just how it is. How do we promote it in the world around us? I think there’s something very profound about how inner change impacts outer change and that the more we transform the more that begins to transform our relationships and our communities and our jobs and our institutions that were part of so there’s a very. Very slow but real. Transformation that happens as people practice and as there’s more compassion we become more available to others. We begin to become want to work for institutions that that and help create that within our institutions, you know, so I think so. I kind of jokingly like call the work that I do at UCLA cognitive Justice work because it’s like we’re really transforming Minds, you know. Maybe we should call it like cardio cognitive justice but change I’m transforming hearts and Minds right and it’s and like I said, it’s not the kind of fast change of activism. Although we teach mindfulness to activists and that can be really supportive to their work. But it’s more the slow change of actually like transforming human beings and. Developing more compassion which then goes out into the world now that’s that so that to me is like the bottom line and then there are other things that are more explicit that we can do as practitioners that promote compassion and that means maybe people do compassion attacks or you can involve that organizations or are you I mean the there are so many Amazing Stories. I mean, I know people who. Have gone to a colleague of mine went to Burma and saw the plight of what was happening with the Rohingyas and he just started an organization to raise money for that. And that was like a very compassionate response that came out of his practice and his exposure are so so I think there are many ways we can promote it but I did and I guess lastly I will say kind of going back to what you said before about. We need kindness so much right now. Like I’ve never ever seen ever what’s going on in this country this country in this world. I’ve never seen such such a kind of. what is the word I’m looking for but it’s like a day of vacation of meanness, you know, and it’s like a song exactly what I want to say, but you know what I’m getting at. It’s a glorification. Yes the right right a glow like like it’s not even a lack of Civility. It’s Way Beyond The Way Beyond that it’s it’s an encouragement to do the opposite of kindness, right? And so I think when you ask that question of how do we promote promote kindness? I think more than ever right now we need to be. Somehow I don’t know exactly maybe your listeners are you can figure this out but from doing what you’re doing promoting kindness out into the world and the regaining Civility and regaining ethics and regaining a basis of love and that is really hard right now in these times of deep breaths. Yeah, it’s true. Thank you very much for the time. Hey, I really appreciate this.

New Camaldoli Hermitage is a community of Roman Catholic monks whose life is dedicated to contemplation and prayer. They are a worshiping community, celebrating with their friends and guests the Liturgy of the Hours and the Holy Eucharist. Their monastic fellowship extends beyond the walls of this hermitage and embraces a large and inclusive community of oblates, persons of different walks of life who live the grace of their baptism in spiritual communion with the monks. This page offers a brief history of the monastic men and women whose life and teachings have inspired the Camaldolese Benedictines to this day.

“…a threefold advantage: the community life, which is what novices want; golden solitude, for those who are mature and thirst for the living God; and witnessing to the good news of Christ, for those who long to be freed from this life in order to be with him.”

A ruff transcript of our conversation:

I am here with Father Thomas. Let me just introduce myself. Okay, Thomas Matus monk of Newcombe. I’ll delete Hermitage in Big Sur, California. Thank you, sir. Okay, thank you so much for meeting with me today after all of that. I think it’s been a long drive up from Los Angeles. Okay, so I’m just going to jump right into it.

And the first question is why meditate?

the question really is why not you see, right? It’s something that is being talked about being proposed. There’s an enormous amount of literature about it. It’s part of people’s lives. If you ask them why they meditate they might give an answer, but that’s really not pertinent to the experience itself. Right which is a discovery of a dimension of our existence. Which goes beyond the purely physical or the immediate and so forth and certainly isn’t something that is gratuitous. In other words. It is a pure gift. It is not something that produces something that they can be sold or put on the market and so forth. So all of these exterior criteria that are. Very important for people everyday life there their work there the income. What are we going to pay the bills at the end of the month it all of that? These are these are concerns that real concern for people but on the other hand, this does not feed into these concerns. It is a way also of finding a space where we need not be so concerned about. These contingent realities of our life. What are we going to do? What are we going to eat? You know, Jesus reminded his followers to look at the flowers of the field and the other words. This is a meditation that you’re looking beyond your immediate needs and requirements and so forth look at the flowers of the field. They don’t do work. They don’t spend they don’t so they don’t do other activities, but there they are and all their beauty right? There are more beautiful than Solomon in all his glory as the metaphor is in the gospel. So there you are. It is something that you could say. Does not have any justification because it needs no justification. There was no reason to say well I meditate because it does this or that people will say this and I don’t say they’re wrong. I just say that that’s a very marginal part of it. Uh-huh because meditation is discovering who you truly are and it also in a perspective that I think is there in much greater tradition. Of the greatest traditions of humankind who or what is the ultimate in this reality in which we’re immersed and obviously many of our tradition speak of God, right and in very different terms, they can be and all have different metaphors and so forth. I might mention Buddhists are sometimes referred to as atheistic. Well, they’re not because you just ask them they say well we don’t profess atheism. No, but you will find that when they are conversing with Christians. We obviously believe in God they will use the term God and then they will question. What do we mean by? Right and that is the basis of before conversation. Let me just fill in little Gap here. I’ve been I joined this community in June of 1962. Wow, and I was a year out of college and had but I had no background in really about the institutional Christianity. I was baptized the age of 12 by my own request. I was attending a Baptist Sunday school to learn about the Bible and they passed out a car. Do you want to be baptized at Easter and I signed it? Yes. Yeah, because I wanted some connection with Jesus Through reading about Jesus reading about the Bible reading the New Testament so fourth gospel and I wanted to know more about him and have a personal contact with. This was something that I understood is really of the essence then not long after that. I read the “Autobiography of a Yogi”. This was the cry out of my early autobiography of Paramahansa. Yogananda was Ryan to Yogi teacher. Who came to California and 1920 course he first came to Boston and then he moved to California and so after he had been. Lecturing to large groups of people who are wanted to learn about yoga wanted to learn about spiritual practice that is based on concrete reality life itself and so forth and he was very good at that because he understood, you know that Americans are very pragmatic and they want something that something tangible something real in their lives. Yoga is. Very tangible part of the Hindu tradition correct, but he would always lead them to an understanding of yoga as a way of realizing God realizing that God is in me and in others and in all things and so this realization of God was something that I. This real up didn’t I? I knew that this was what I was really looking for what had been seeking and oh and reading the Bible and learning a bit about Christianity and as I developed a was reading. The Hindu Buddhist writings and also the Christian Mystics and it came to me that the guru that I needed to follow was the Catholic Church. There is this great tradition. Wow, not just the Roman Catholics the Eastern Orthodox and many others that this Catholic tradition that where the mystics are. Recognized are honored even though they’re not that many of them are often a very exceptional people often went against the grain of things that were considered suitable and so forth and yet at the same time, they were persons of experience and could testify to that experience. So this attracted me and but it was a very immediate thing and I very quickly requested to speak with a priest. And as I was beginning my last year at in college, I was speaking regularly with her Dominican young Dominican priest who men of answered my questions very satisfactorily and became a Roman Catholic. And went on from there while looking for a monastery. Well, I’d read my read about Catholic but monastic orders and there was in a book written by a very famous mock called Thomas Merton. He also wrote an autobiography two years after you go Yogananda. Let’s go back to when these two autobiographies were written. Okay, the autobiography of a yogi in 1946. Two years later in 1948 the seven-story mountain by Thomas Merton two months the two best-selling American autobiographies, right? You know, yep, so you’re going to understand where these two monks now, what was so fascinating and attractive and you know make that made them both be the best sellers, right? What about. Because this is something that you know, it doesn’t confuse new right or something new the law also something quite strange. I think that people. Coming out of whether they were directly on the front lines of the second world war but coming out the from a half a century of one tragedy up to after the next two great Wars and the depression and lots of other, you know, some smart stuff scattered suffering and violence and so forth. They wanted something that would lead them Beyond this and into a way of existence. That would be. Peaceful that would be creative. They would open possibilities for richer and more authentic human life. So something like that was was behind this interest. But for me, it was in that very existential thing. It was something that I very quickly realized that for me about the call of God was to enter a monastery. And so I read about the Kemal delays Benedictus in one of Thomas Merton’s books. And well, I thought all these monsters were in Europe and Italy or France or wherever but in the United States and him so a lo and behold somebody sent me a newspaper article about this new commodity Hermitage, which was being founded here in Big Sur, California. Wow, very far from where I was living so. I decided to come here. I decided to try this life first by visited another Catholic Monastery in Southern California closer to where I was living and it was very, you know impressed by it, but I wanted to try this and I said well if it doesn’t work for me, I made a deal with God, you know, I’m not going to move until the superior of this Monastery tells me to leave right? Otherwise, I’ll stay here and. See what see what happens what kind of and what happened was I just went ahead and made my vows and it was difficult. I think I was not naturally disposed to the kind of discipline that was required of me and our way of life here. And this was a time where we followed certain rules very strictly. We were getting up at 1:30 in the morning to celebrate a vigil service. Which sometimes lasted. More than an hour while in Latin the Latin was actually something that I’m I liked because it would be a childhood ambition to learn, you know, another language learn how an ancient language and the modern language. I studied Spanish and so forth and a little bit of Latin I study on my own but here, you know, I could learn it and then she was praying but this Latin language and so forth and I enjoyed that but it was very difficult for me on an emotional level on. Psychological level physical even because you know, this is not what we’re people in the US, you know, they don’t burn up at 1:30. And that’s what is that going to a party or something like that or right? Yeah, but I mean it’s schedule was trying with difficult. There were other things that were very strictly observed. We didn’t take our meals together. They were all delivered to these cells. You know, these guys that we reached Mach has a separate space. That’s the Hermitage. I’m ideal that the element of solitude there was also this strong affirmation of community and the insistence that we must be there on time for every one of these prayers and said it was five times a day. We were meeting for prayer Charles and then also has younger. Candidates for monastic vows we had to attend classes. And also do manual labor. I mean the church was being built starting my first years here. Okay, so I had to push a wheelbarrow foiled and full of full of Samantha, right and sometimes a little too heavy for me and I knocked over this apparently was not very pleased by that. But then I had one of the Elder monks who said oh don’t worry about him. He’s an artist. He doesn’t you know, that’s not made too much too much for this heavy manual labor. Sure. Okay, but I was. Want to do my part and of course building this Hermitage and there were some others and so forth. So there were lots of coming and going at the beginning. You know, we just lost two of the eldest Monks at the present moment. I am the eldest and the oldest the oldest in here’s and the eldest and Asthma as a member of our monastic order sure and in the community here, so you were here at the very beginning early beginning of the close to the beginning here. There were one of our monks is about three years older than I and had been here. Already two and a half years when I joined as Father Robert Hale. He just passed away in September. I was out and I wasn’t able to be here at before his funeral but you know, he was 81 and made a great contribution serve the community and various ways and wrote some very excellent books short. So he was a learned man. It was kind of an example for me because since he  know went to Fordham to get a Ph.D. I also went to Fordham to get a Ph.D. but on something different right as a matter of fact on yoga, but compared with Christian mysticism. Well, so anyway, we you know, we had some some excellent examples. I have you know in these brothers who were here before me and then. I’ve tried to fulfill my duties, but you see the. It was a choice that was made at the beginning of this Foundation that the first two groups of novices who joined the community here after their first formation and making vows would go to Italy to live at our mother house, which is in Tuscany. It’s midway between Florence and and Rome and it is it’s called Commander Li and oh and has a Hermitage very much like this, but also, A larger Monastery sure that which forms one Community but with this visible balance and integration of what are considered to be. Incompatible on the one hand community on the other hand Solitude. Well, if you go for solid you don’t have any Community when you’re not with anyone, but if you go to give me a let’s see what they’re always there and so forth. You don’t have a 10-minute to yourself. Well, maybe if night then okay, you can meditate a bit by yourself. But this is this is not what we do here. You see we bring together these aspects and join it also with a way of reaching out to people. In on a way that could be called a mission but it is not like the missionaries who go and and to foreign countries and and live there and work and you know do great works, you know for for education and health care and all of that. Whereas we do it by receiving people here as guests retreatants. And so this was the the way there at our mother house. Well the in my case, it was a very interesting experience because I was asked to continue my studies and then I realized that I’ve also felt that part of my own personal mission could be teaching. Teaching spirituality in English or and so I remained in Italy for more than 30 years while men no man. I’d finished my teaching and also some other duties that I had for service to our congregation, then I came back here. Wow, that’s quite a bit. It’s quite a story. And yeah, it is I suppose but you see all this I see it as simply a Grace a gift. And that is the way I see life itself. I mean, this is a language. That’s illogical it is traditionally Christian and also other religions use these terms helps you in Hinduism the doctrine of grace. Well, a longer along that same line then the next question is about mindfulness. Yes.

What is your definition of mindfulness and what is your vision of a mindful life?

Do what you’re doing be present to yourself and also breath present to your relationships with others because I think we Americans tend to be. There’s a certain tendency to well certain subsets. And as you know, there were rugged individualism that right ideal, you know comes out of the pioneering Spirit as I could of our country at the beginning and so forth and and all of that but you are not mindfulness. If you’re not thinking about another you’re not in mindfulness and others mindfulness, you’re not mindful if you’re only mindful of. That’s right. We’re putting on your only mindful. You’re not mindful. If you’re only mindful of yourself what’s going on inside of your brain or what you want to do or need to do or whatever you’re mindful when you realize the greater context of your existence and that includes the people to whom you relate or people. That you can help you can serve this is also something. It’s like I’m speaking of course in and very much in Christian terms, but the old thing can be very easily translated. I do believe into Buddhist terms because mindfulness is inseparable from compassion, right? so if I’m mindful of. Like the state of my Consciousness, this must bring another word if it is true mindfulness, it will bring me to the compassion for those who suffer and a commitment to alleviating the suffering. So this is a two very different Traditions. That’s our Christianity and Buddhism really come together on a very essential point. And I think this is also very important for us to be aware that our way of life, even though we’re if you’re in mountain and you know, very far from any, you know, great centers of population right? We’re open and we enable people to come here so that they can discover something in their lives that connects them with a greater reality. Since it is a quiet place and we are here in one of the great natural. Wonderland is above the planet, you know, people say to him for a lifetime to drive this highway up and down this Coast just for the beauty of it. Then I’m driven up the down this Coast a hundred times and didn’t realize this was even here. Yeah. Yeah. It was really exciting for me to find something new. So we are here and we welcome people and we offered them the what is necessary to have a beautiful experience. What this the natural beauty of nature can, in other words, nature here will draw people out of themselves into a wider reality. And this is always for me very important that the sensual the meditation. Yes. It is turning inward in a certain sense. But the purpose is not simply to analyze my thoughts. Self-analysis said he it is it is the way of connecting with them. Greater scheme of things. So that’s what that’s what if I’m understanding you correctly mindfulness allows us to connect with them with a larger world. Yes and to find compassion in us exactly. Okay. The next question is what is your different?

What do you see the difference between meditation, contemplation and prayer?

Sometimes these can be described in terms of States Progressive States and there’s something of this of course in the yoga tradition your sutras also the Buddhist Traditions, but I don’t think that I think there’s a there’s a great overlap in the Christian tradition in specifically in Christian monastic tradition and the. The church there is a practice a spiritual practice that begins with a certain way of reading the scriptures reading. The scripture is not to gain information or gay learning, you know points to argue with people about how they should live and what they should do and shouldn’t do but rather as a way into a vision of God. And so we find we open a page in the scriptures and find a brief passage a verse a phrase a single word that speaks to us and we remain with that. So this is what is called Next you Naveen had said Divine reading it. So it’s a reading that takes us immediately into the presence of God and then. When we go through that we go to into meditation is dwelling with that word and allowing it to speak to us from within we taking it in by reading then we allow it to abide within our own Consciousness and from that comes contemplation. Brian and so is so it’s a progressive unfolding that begins with something that is out there that is a word or a parable of Jesus or something like that and then it becomes contemplation. But from the contemplation comes something else and that is the return to humanity. There were other Traditions also have this metaphor them and all their hermit in the cave at a certain point leaves his cave and comes down into the village sure comes down to the end and to the other where people live and gives them some words of inspiration of some spiritual healing and so forth. So we find this of course unless the stories of the prophets in the Old Testament of Jesus himself, you know spend time in the desert and then sure came forward with his with his teaching and preaching and healing. So anyway, this is this is something so what is the difference there is a certain difference if we look at it as ways of progressive interiorization. Going within and finding within the deeper meaning of the word that we have read and so forth, but it’s not really something that can be separated because the culmination of the practice of meditation or contemplation is when there is no difference. It is not an altered state of consciousness. But I am simply conscious. I am simply here and the hero now is being with someone doing something listening to somebody else and so forth. So all of this is a moment where I can experience the great mystery of my existence of the existence of the other and I am which I understand is God God present within us sure. Yeah, fabulous. The next question is my business.

Are actually my last question is what can we do to promote compassion in ourselves and in the world around us?

There’s a practice or as well as a daily life in our daily life. Well, I think one way is to examine that which is contrary to compassion with the examination. Yes of our own wealth of conscience. That is a very traditional term which is used in the course as a part of. Christian spiritual practice examining one’s conscience. No, but not simply to find where we have done wrong. But we are we have fallen short of the greatness of the great potentiality of our human existence which gives fulfilled only in the outpouring of love in the outpouring of service to others. Right but also an examination of conscience as an examination of consciousness. What where is my Consciousness limited only to that which is immediately happening and what is necessary or what I need or I want and so forth or do I am I am I able to enter into the situation of others to know in myself what they themselves may be suffering, but they themselves need. And that brings us to compassion and that brings us to compassion. Okay. Yeah, just to recap in my own little brain. Yeah, when we’re involved in the world and being mindful in our day. Yeah, and we’re seeing the suffering of others and doing what we can to alleviate that of our own and in the world around us. That is what brings us to compassion. That’s exactly right now along the compassion, of course, I mean. They had to be proven in our deeds and that’s very important that we do something that is real and concrete and effective in the lives of. People to help them so it’s not it’s not something that needs to be organized and developed and well-known, right but just finding those occasions where I can alleviate some of these self-suffering rights and also to have this intention and this is very important. That the credit not is given to me. I’m not doing it in order to have the person thank me or have the person praised me if they think to give me. Thanks, then I accept their thanks, but that’s that’s it and not looking to Source from a selfless place. It is Promised selfless place and that is a test of the sincerity and of the truthfulness of the practice of. So that’s the question we want to ask ourselves the question we want to ask ourselves and also it reflects the depth of our meditation in other words. If we meditate deeply if we try to have this sense of an immense and infinite reality, which yet can be found within us if we realized that this is not only. I realize that it’s not only in myself, but this is in every person every human being every human being says the Bible is created in the image and likeness of God or in the image of God and develops into a greater and greater likeness if their life goes well, so written God dwells in each of us in eastern in each of us, right. and therefore selflessness and. Self-effacement in other words not putting myself forward not wanting to be praised or honored because I’m doing good deeds and so forth, but really to have a positive effect on others. It’s put in this these terms in the gospel so that they will give glory and thanks to God. You see of course not worry and thanks to me right now and thanks to God in other words to the source of all of this the source of the good that I can do is not is can be in myself. I can Discover it within myself sure as the imprint of the Divine reality upon my own being my own soul, but ultimately. It is always from there. It is always from that Infinite Source and it leads back to that. So the effectiveness of my service to someone helping us of suffering person is then that they will discover God within themselves and they will relate to God.

Lastly, if there’s anything else that you that you think we’ve missed or around the subject. There are only two things that I know we could go on for hours about it. But I even my father’s have been of course will fill in a lot of a lot of gaps from his own experience. And I finally helping and helping us live together as a community because he’s in he’s he’s the prior other words. He himself had the first servant the servant of the servants and so he. Is Among Us and helps us to work together and to build the community and so forth. So he has a great experience there to share with you. Well, I was Finding with each of these interviews that I’ve been doing. It’s just interesting to hear. Because it’s all about personal experience and it’s all about how one relates to these subjects and to this in their own lives and it’s just been it’s just been really intriguing and interesting for me. No learning about this, but I just want to thank you so very much for spending the time with me and the noise you heard is the rain coming down. Oh my gosh, the rain. Yes, and I guess that’s a little nerve-wracking up here with all the. That wider leave it is, of course, a concern and that is why we have this huge expenditure ever before us and we don’t know how well but we have to do it, you know to build this new entrance Road you did. I read write that this is 800 that you have 800 acres here 800 acres but but on a steep slope right other words, you can’t, you know can’t really do anything. Yeah, plant wheat here. Yeah. Sure. Sure. Yeah, it’s it’s yes part of it is to create a safe environment where all of the aspects of nature of the plant life the animal life and so forth is sure is respected and venerating live in harmony and live in harmony with that. We live in harmony as a community and welcome people into this where they can contemplate this beauty as we as we do sure and so it serves that purpose of creating a space A Generous space right only for ourselves, but also for the people who come here and join with us, and I also have to say I love your domain name. Contemplation.com contemplation.com that was just brilliant. I just when I saw that he suggested to me and then I saw the domain name and I go oh my gosh, I gotta go talk to these guys. I have to it was just it was that’s what really drew me. Anyway. Thank you very much

Well, it has been a few months.  I have done interviews with Meditation Teachers, Rabbis, and Priests.  If you have been listening along you had heard that while they are all talking about meditation they look at it a little different.   Yet when we review these interviews we find that they are seeing differently but with the same goal or result.  As we all know everyone suffers and wants it to end and that suffering a lot of the time is caused by us, by our choices.  Meditation is a way (not the only way) to find control over our choices.  The great thing is the calmness, the better health, and all of the other benefits that bring people to meditation are just that benefits.

We get up every day and start our day if we start from a place of compassion and love we will go into our day sending that out to everyone we meet.  That, in turn, will make their day a little better.

My hope is to bring a little compassion and understanding to us about what goes on in each of us.  Thanks to everyone for listening and see you on the cushion.

New Camaldoli Hermitage is a community of Roman Catholic monks whose life is dedicated to contemplation and prayer. We are a worshiping community, celebrating with our friends and guests the Liturgy of the Hours and the Holy Eucharist. Our monastic fellowship extends beyond the walls of this hermitage and embraces a large and inclusive community of oblates, persons of different walks of life who live the grace of their baptism in spiritual communion with the monks. This page offers a brief history of the monastic men and women whose life and teachings have inspired the Camaldolese Benedictines to this day.

Cyprian Consiglio, OSB Cam.:

is a Camaldolese monk, musician, composer, author, and teacher. A native of Illinois, he spent his young adult years mostly in Arizona working as a professional musician. He joined the New Camaldoli Hermitage in Big Sur, California in 1992. After his initial years of formation there, and solemn vows and ordination, he lived in a hermitage near Santa Cruz, California for ten years, spending about half his time at home, and half his time traveling, performing and teaching, working extensively in interreligious dialogue, music, and meditation. Much of both his music and his teaching revolve around the Universal Call to Contemplation through spirituality and the arts. He has six collections of original music recorded and published through OCP Publications, and several independent releases, including those with his longtime collaborator, percussionist John Pennington. A student of the writings of Bede Griffiths and Abhishiktananda, Cyprian has a great love for comparative religion and has published two books based on wisdom culled from what he has gained from his studies, and numerous articles on spirituality as well as on music and liturgy. He has been to India numerous times as well as other countries in Europe, Asia, and the Mideast, performing as well as studying and teaching. Returning to New Camaldoli in 2012, he was elected prior of the community in 2013.

A Ruff Transcript of my Conversation:

Hello, I am here with Father Cyprien. Thank you. Listen on thank you very much for meeting with me. I really appreciate it. And we’re at great New Camaldoli Hermitage Big Sur. Okay, and so I’m just going to jump into the question because the storms Outside are calling me to get on the road. Okay pretty quick here.

The first question is why meditate?

Which is a great question as I mentioned you before.  These four principles that great teacher looked Anandi taught the four principles for meditation. He thought the most basic thing was every time you sit down to meditate. You should ask yourself why we’re meditating and I suppose every one of the Traditions will tell you in a different way. But I would say from the Christian perspective. There’s a great Lane line from st. Paul’s letter to the Romans. Where he says the love of God is poured into our hearts by the spirit living in us. So the most mystical understanding of the Christian dispensation is that. God dwells within us as the Holy Spirit God is Not Just in celeb Heaven light years away. The very ground of our being the ground of our Consciousness and the source of our life is the Divine who we call God who we call the Holy Spirit by the power of the spirit. So I would say from a Christian perspective. I meditate about the facial 12 steps to have conscious contact with that with the ground of my being with the ground of my Consciousness. Who is the Divine the love of God poured into my heart the spirit living in the great I can add Alleluia on the back? Yeah. The next question is what is your definition of mindfulness? And what does it look like to live a mindful life? Okay, have a negative answer to that first. I think. From a secular perspective. We usually so distracted by so many things even in my own life as a monk, you know, I’m the Prior here. So I’m. Doing administrative work and Pastor work and teaching work and my intercom is blinking with four messages and the IT guy just couldn’t buy and I’ve got to preach tonight and I have to do the announcements for Saturday, and I could be so caught up in that. Did I forget that you’re seeing right here in front of me and the sound of the rain outside sure and the fact that I cook is in there cooking up a storm for the feast tomorrow and I think most people in life even outside of the monastery maybe even? The radios going in the phone’s ringing in the maybe there is one Buddhist monk. I know says if your kids are awake their online, we’re constantly drawn outside of ourselves. Sure. So the first mindfulness is that we’re not actually mindful of what’s Happening Here and Now, I still think that there’s no better book ever written then Ram Dass is an old book from the 60s that sums it up to be. Here nowhere. Now. I could just say that over and over again here now nowhere but also I think from the spiritual perspective. What’s interesting about that is a whole nother kind of. Enlightened non-mindfulness, I think sometimes we can get so caught up in our spiritual practice escaping to heaven or escaping to Nirvana or skipping to Enlightenment that we also forget about here and now right so mindfulness. To me means being totally awake, you know, and there’s a wonderful Christian. Teacher of meditation named Martin Laird and he had this great phrase. I use all the time with people and people really like it relates to it usually were caught behind the wallpaper of our own narrative. No, we’re trapped behind the wallpaper of our own narrative. We don’t actually see what’s going on without our own interpretation of what’s going on and some of those we want to see what’s going on at all, right because we’re trapped behind the wallpaper of our own narrative our own story. So mindfulness is also that like somehow trying to take those filters down take the funny glasses off. Thank you. Mindful living. Yeah, I guess is that as well? That’s something somehow nothing is unimportant. There’s a song that it’s wonderful songwriter Pete and mayor called Everything Is Holy now? that I adopted as. Might one of my theme song and the musician as well as I sing it sometimes as if it was my own song and that’s kind of the definition of monastic life is see Benedict says in the rule that all the tools of the monastery should be treated as if they were sacred vessels for the altar that’s mindful living like nothing isn’t. Holy one time when I first took on this job as prior here. Some friends of mine took me out for dinner up in Santa Cruz and the one guy said to me. So what’s going on down there in the mountain I said, well they have been dealing with sewer lines in the leach field out in the front of the property and he said I thought you were up there doing holy things. And if I had thought about it for a second, I might have had a really subtle answer and I kind of blurted out. What’s not wholly about a leach field in a cease? If this is what I’m supposed to do in the service of my brothers and to protect our life. Everything’s holy now even working with sewage. Yeah, it’s all holy. That’s great. That’s awesome mindful living. I think right if it if meditation doesn’t lead us back to that. It’s a waste of time. Right. That’s great.

The next question is what is your or what is the difference between meditation contemplation and prayer?

Or do you see a difference may be a bit of semantics I would make a distinction between meditation and contemplation only in this sense that from my understanding anyway? With the Asian Traditions call meditation Western Christian tradition calls contemplation and what the Western Christian tradition calls meditation. I think the Asian Traditions call contemplation okay there for us. Meditating is expansive thought is discursive thought mainly know it through st. Ignatius of Loyola their meditation style. As you would be a passage of scripture and you would imagine what Jesus was wearing and what the roads look like with the air smelled like with people around were like, so it’s expansive and when we do our practice is called Lectio Divina. The first stages or Lexile reading and then minute Asia, which means actually kind of chewing on that reading meditating on until it expands the more imminent images. The third stage is around to your prayer. Which so that meditation is supposed to lead you to prayer inform your prayer. So the reading will teach you how to pray to Focus your prayer in the final stage of this contemplation. So for us right hundred patient comes after meditation and in my understanding, it’s the simplification of that meditations bring it down. When I teach that their groups I say now take whatever meditation you had on the reading and make the small as prayer the shortest prayer possible out of that. There’s your Orazio and I’ll use that as your mantra. Let’s go beyond the word just go back to the silence and let that lead you to the ineffable let that lead you to the mystery. That’s great. That’s like an active site of the content of could of contemplation. So we would call that contemplative prayer. If you want to be strict about it threat that people play with those words back and forth. Yeah, that was one reason to that question came out because I was hearing kind of searing meditation contemplation being used almost. Yes, and I think that’s why people go back and forth with it, but I think more or less we would call that contempt of prayer going to those single-pointed, you know going to Simplicity as you learn from The Cloud of Unknowing that uses, you know, just like a mono logistic practice or the Jesus prayer. That leads you to contemplate appear but one little Nuance there and I think it’s really important in the Christian tradition and you’ll see this mostly articulated to the Carmelites the 16th-century Carmelites ultimately contemplation is a gift, not something we attain hmm. So the Carmelites talk about infused contemplation the so they could be given to us we can set ourselves up, right? By sieve it but we can’t get it. Yeah, this is the fun little thing, but you know, I think. Any of us? might study Zen or yoga and. think that we got the formula down and we just got to climb up that ladder and you know the top of the ladder we’re going to run smack-dab into Divinity and going, in turn, ourselves into these little. Gurus and kind gods and that’s Insidious. So there’s a trap there and I don’t believe that even Hinduism and Buddhism with the switch on the most familiar. And even though is it with some extent. I don’t believe that they are without their own notion of Grace as well that there is something to that Ro bindo, you know, the Great Indian philosopher says within there is a soul above there is Grace. That’s all you need to know it. There’s that great song to The Guru. That starts out them the image of the guru ma’am. The root of meditation is the image of the Guru Mantra is the word of the guru. The word of worship is the feet of the guru and ends with the root of Salvation is the grace of the guru group click bah, so that notion that there’s Grace in there as really important for us. We’re not just it’s not a self-powered hmm claim to God to Divinity somehow and that actually ties in with what we understand about Jesus. St. Paul’s letter to the Philippians as his beautiful Canticle that opens up with that. We sing every Saturday night. it’s called the Canosa’s him and the word Canosa sin Greek means emptying self-emptying and it says. We can have the mind of Christ. We can partake in Divinity. Right? And this is what the mind of Christ was like, he did not deem equality with God something to be grasped at he emptied himself. Even Jesus emptied himself and took the slave form of a slave and therefore God raised him on high. Is so beautiful and it is our own tradition. The Commodities benedictions were a very small branch of Benedictines with this unique feature of the hermit aspect and our Founders here on your left us only a paragraph of like supposedly his own words. And in the middle of that little paragraph, which is called the brief rule is empty yourself completely. Sit waiting for content with the grace of God hmm to me. That’s the summer a summary of Christian meditation. That’s what I’m Christian does not in that excursive discursive sense. But in the contempt of sense empty yourself completely and sit waiting for content with the grace of God like a chick who eats nothing and taste nothing but what the mother hen brings it. Right, right, right. That’s that’s to me. That’s what I do when I sit on my soft food. Try any way that I can do is I can empty myself. Myself. Well that is that is from my experience that he was with the Buddhist teaching is telling you the same thing is to empty your mind. I agree with income and allow it to come to a lot to fill you. I agree about the same thing. I think that the short-term goal of all the practices. We really do agree across Traditions. That’s why we have such wonderful conversations between traditions. We may not agree. On the ultimate end of the Y, right? No, but the nature of this self and Nirvana and God in heaven. That’s that’s doesn’t matter because most of us were at base camp anyway, right? That’s very true. Yeah, that’s very good that you empty yourself of the small self and being yourself with a phenomenal self. This is. This is the wisdom that we share right now that I mean, that’s the whole purpose for the podcast. You know, it’s to find these things. Yeah.

I’m just the last question is how do we promote compassion in ourselves and the world around us?

How do we promote it? Well, first I think we have to find it in ourselves. I know for the Buddha was one of the most attractive things about the life of the Buddha to me. Are that wisdom and compassion always go together, you know when he understands. The four noble truths, you know of suck freighted permanence. It’s because of this clinging to sell for cleaning, too. Selfish clinging then that immediately becomes compassion because he sees why others are suffering. Do you want to relieve them of their suffering too I just love that and I assume that’s the whole basis of the bodhisattva principle is based in that in that own sentiment in the Buddha’s life? Right? And I see that as one of the links to the life of Jesus who? As mentioned in the gospel of saying he had compassion on the crowds because they were like sheep without a shepherd. And I don’t think we can conjure up compassion. We can’t force compassion. but the root of even that word in English is to feel with. the pot they comb paseo to feel with somebody. It is since I want to say compassion is also a gift. Right, we have to actually find the passion in our self. We have to find the feeling in our self. We have to understand that nature of. maybe that nature of suffering which is. Pretty avid in the Christian tradition to this is why Jesus has compassion on the crowds. He sees their suffering like sheep without a Shepherd, right? And once the feed them and wants to heal them and wants to give them a sense of the benevolence of the universe and the one who is in charge of the universe. That’s why I think we can’t we almost can’t promote it but we can’t promote is actually finding that within ourselves says it’s something we’re realizing. I mean, that’s a great word realize. Because it means two things at once it means becoming aware of something and making it real and I think those two things are connected things don’t become real until we could become aware they and we become aware of something they suddenly become real to us. So we open ourselves up to compassion and then realize we are being compassionate or do is it something that you’re not really realizing you just doing it? I think the Buddha would talk about the interconnectedness of all things, you know independent co-arising but. Even from the Christian tradition didn’t take me a whole lot of research to figure out that we are organically intimately connected at a material Level and at a psychic level and certainly our scriptures teach also at a spiritual level, right? So I mean compassion. Yes for other human beings because they’re suffering. But even compassion for the Earth because whatever we’re feeding Mama, we’re taking into our own selves we can how can we not feel with Mom? We have we’re putting into the air. We’re putting into our lungs whatever we’re doing to our own selves. We’re doing everything we could be if we could feel that link. First of all intimate link with all material reality. We’d find some compassion right there right with the Earth with plants with animals because we are actually affecting our own body. Of course because our this is somehow an extension of our body it’s harder to get to on a psychic level, but I think especially in the post-911 Years here in the states. This idea out there being a kind of a collective Consciousness in a Collective Soul and a collective mood is very obvious to Americans, you know, also in Donald Trump’s America, there’s really you can get a sense of a Collective Consciousness a collective anger one side of the other. So this us being attached to each other as psychic level and how a wave can go through a crowd or where you can go through a whole state or a whole city certainly in a community like this. You can feel a wave a psychic emotional wave Pastor the home Community. Yeah, and hence. That’s that’s kind of where the whole question came from. Yeah is just being seeing a world around me and realizing that all sides. Yeah, all sides need to do. Realize the compassionate they have if there’s a promotion to compassion that that has to happen. I guess I would lean on the side of overcoming the ignorance of people not realizing that we are interconnected sure like a web. You know, there’s a little bumper sticker version of is it blackout this says. Earth does not belong to us. We belong to the Earth. The whole version of his beautifully talks about this web of interrelated realities of how we’re tied together what we do to one strand we’re doing to the whole strand including to our own selves right you that I would say overcoming the ignorance of not realizing that intricate web of relatedness interconnectedness. That would be the thing right then. You just run smack dab in your compassion flashes through you, okay? That’s great. That’s I lastly if there’s anything else along these lines that I’ve missed or something that we were talking about. I’d be open to hearing that if you’ve got something final to say just following in and what you’ve been doing with these podcasts and why meditate I think that though it doesn’t look to be material materially profitable or even like the Corporal Works of Mercy as we would say in our tradition feeding the poor clothing the. Naked teaching mindfulness teaching meditation overcoming the ignorance, you know about our interconnectedness. This is a great thing to be doing for the world right now because I think that the only way we’re going to survive and thrive as soon evolution of Consciousness, right and the Consciousness is not going to involve into we dig deep and find this deepest core of our being. The transpersonal transformation is going to happen only if we reconnect with the ground of our being in the ground of our Consciousness and as I tell everybody in on any of my students is just it’s one person at a time. Yeah, absolutely not trying to change the masses. I’m not trying to change anybody’s beliefs. I want to reinforce their beliefs through meditation. Yeah, whatever they believe that doesn’t it really because I found so many similarities in all of these that they’re there. They can come together. Yeah, we can be one person. They are one, you know out of anyone. Yeah. Anyway, I appreciate that. I appreciate your time. Thank you so very much good. Yeah, I’m glad I could and I’m glad I was able to get the two of you and actually get up here a good talk with Father Thomas. Oh, yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. He had he had a lot to say and it was it was really interesting

This reenactment was inspired by a Native American story.
Enjoy, at the end of the story take a few minutes to reflect on the battle going on in your own life.  Seek to find in yourself the power to overcome greed, hatred, and animus.  End your own suffering, you have to power to do it.

 I will look for stories like this to help us with our daily lives.  Have a beautiful holiday. 

Gloria Kamler, MA, is a holistic educator and stress relief expert, who has taught mindfulness meditation for the past 20 years. She facilitates all levels of the Mindful Awareness Practices or MAP classes at UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center (MARC). In addition to teaching at UCLA, Gloria leads mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) classes and retreats in Los Angeles as well as other U.S. cities and internationally. Throughout her career, Gloria has trained with mindfulness leaders such as Jon Kabat-Zinn Ph.D., founder of the Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction program (MBSR), teachers at Spirit Rock Meditation Center as well as Shinzen Young, Ph.D., founder of  Vipassana Support International. Gloria earned her B.S. in education from the University of Michigan and an M.A. in guidance and counseling from Eastern Michigan University.  She has maintained a personal meditation practice for more than three decades, and her dedication to living mindfully is an integral part of her life.

A ruff transcript of our conversation:

Well, hello, I’m here with Gloria Kamler meditation teacher and again in all disclosure. I met Gloria as one of my teachers over at UCLA. So we’re just going to jump in and how are you today before we get started?

That’s a really good question. One of my teachers who has been shins and young. That’s one of the things he has asked when you first sit down every time you can ask that question and quite often. I do ask that question and I encourage others to ask themselves the same question as to why we do this practice. So I asked myself the question and I get different answers at different times. Definitely when I got interested in meditation. Thirty-some years ago. My reasons for meditating, I don’t know that I had a well-formed reason I just heard it was kind of an interesting thing to do and it was 1969 and I wanted to find some way to bring in some peace. And so I heard meditation maybe could be helpful in that regard. And so that’s what first got me into interested. You know, it’s the time of the Vietnam War and there was a lot of conflict and recognizing that maybe there’s more. Maybe there’s just more about life that I couldn’t see, you know, I sure so that with that’s what got me interested then and then I suspect over time. I got interested more specifically in mindfulness of that approach to meditation. Just recognizing that. I had a very serious meditation practice that was two and a half hours a day. Wow, and I did that for 10 years and that was a very long time to do practice Yeah, and. Over that time I always felt that something was missing for me in terms of the kind of meditation. It was it was it was a mantra focused practice, but for some reason it didn’t seem to be impacting my life in terms of me noticing. How important it was in my life. So I was looking after 10 years I was looking for. Wanting to meditate because I knew it was a good way to help me focus and to calm down a bit, but I wanted something more relevant for how I lived my life. Maybe the ethical way of living my life, right? Not sure what it was, but I knew I needed. Something different plus two and a half hours a day of meditation practice was unsustainable for me. I wasn’t the best meditator. So two and a half hour two hours of day. That’s that’s quite a bit two and a half hours is one-tenth of your day. Yeah, I’ll people tithe a tenth of their. This is a tenth of your time. Wow, and and I did it for a long time. But I never felt like I was very good at it. So I was looking around the last couple of years of in that ten year time of was there something else I could do? And I came across Buddhist practice mindfulness practice and I started to learn how to do it and I could see how it was relevant to my life. Right and then I got involved with Jon Kabat-Zinn and mindfulness-based stress reduction his whole program and that really made it very clear to me how this practice could overlay and actually inform my life and inform I was a therapist I work with people in chronic pain and. For years for 40 over 40 years and so for me it was a great tool to for myself, but also to teach other people besides working with them to help them with their health. This could help them more with in addition to their physical health their emotional health as well, which I thought would be even more beneficial. So I got interested through that and that pulled me in to get more interested as why I meditate and then. I found that once I got into mindfulness meditation, even though my mind is you know, like a wild horse. It thinks a lot and constantly is going other places. I found that it felt relevant to me to see things more clearly to and over time. I started to see that I felt more kind to myself and to others in a way. I mean, I’ve always been nice to people and I’ve always been in the helping profession. So that’s more of my nature, but I found a deepening of kindness for myself and my own fragile. Nastas and. And I wasn’t expecting that but that’s one of the benefits. I’ve seen come out of the practice. So I think my work kept me going with this practice of meditation, but I think as I’ve experienced it on a more personal level. It’s that’s been the infusing to keep me going and more and more interested. Right?

Well, that’s that’s great. And that also kind of leads into the next question. The next question is what is your definition of mindfulness? And what does it look like to live a mindful life?

Hmm – that’s a great question. I have all these definitions memorized and yeah, that’s right due to the classes that I teach. Yeah, so you might hear one that you’ve heard from others, but basically to me mindfulness is being present with whatever our experiences right now. So to really be there without resisting. The experience of now in other words if there’s any fighting going on it’s putting down the fight experiencing something more fully. With interest curiosity and kind of a don’t know mind and you know the definition that we give at UCLA, which you have probably had recorded on here few times of you know, basically this open curiosity this interest and openness to the moment and a willingness to be with things as they are and what I mean by that is. Kind of letting go of the fight with whatever’s coming up and and just getting interested so it can be a learning experience of how to proceed. So maybe not so much going around life that really slowly and doing everything very deliberately. I mean that is yeah. I know I don’t mean that no, I mean being able to kind of flow at the flux and flow of life without fighting about everything without having to control everything. So just kind of going with the flow going more with the flow of life and being aware and awake to it. So in other words when life is difficult because if I’m aware of that it’s difficult, then I can work with it in a more constructive way rather than when life gets difficult and I’m on automatic pilot usually. Do things that aren’t so skillful and that are hurtful to me or to somebody else. So it’s just kind of lighting up the moment as much as we’re able we go unconscious a lot all of us. I do, you know in our daily life. Yeah. And so what I used to see as a flaw that I couldn’t focus or concentrate, I just see it as oh, this is what it is to be human. And so it’s. For me, it’s been a much more. It’s created a much bigger field of acceptance of my own experience and also a lot more possibility with how can I deal with life when it is hard because I know that when I go unconscious I just stuff that I can see how I contribute to some of the suffering that I might have or someone else might have and when I’m more awake, yeah sometimes life is is hard. You know, this week’s been a great example of hard. You know things we can’t control but what’s the most skillful way to navigate and it’s hard. So that’s to me mindfulness can really comes in handy then to recognize for me that there’s a choice. Right because I didn’t used to look at life. That way life was just like dodging cars or something. You know, I’m just I don’t know I think examples I used to use their to that’s good work hard too. Little life is days, but just like it sometimes life feels like traffic is just coming at you and it’s like how do we navigate in a way, you know to just make it as. As as best as it can be for whatever the circumstances are and also benefit and which really surprised me is that I get to see some of the goodness in my life that I might have just missed because of just worrying about all this other stuff. Sometimes it’s hard to just go cash at the sky is blue today and it’s just beautiful and then my whole system comes down. So it’s helpful to also recognize the goodies that are also going on where the Habit is to just to go around worrying or that could be my habit. Yeah. I don’t know if it’s everybody’s happy. There’s a good bet that there’s a lot of people there. Yeah the same way, so I don’t know if I got to your question. Did I get your question you want to frame living the life living a mindful life is is being able to go with the flow. Yeah, so to move with it a skillfully as possible and hopefully with some Joy, right, you know rather than just looking you’re not just looking like an investigator what’s wrong with strong because that’s normally how we’re walking around. Right. There’s a lot of that right, you know, once the next you going to drop that I never used to really think that consciously but I really ask people that question that what makes it so you didn’t notice how good you felt in that moment and people quite often would share their afraid to really enjoy themselves because they’re just waiting for what’s going to happen next. And so so I feel like this is helped me really. This practice of mindfulness has helped enjoy when life is good to notice it and to enjoy it more. That’s great. That’s great. Hopefully to go more skillfully when it’s hard now and we all have that Journey. Yeah.

The next question is what is the difference between meditation contemplation and prayer?

It’s an interesting question. Because I do find sometimes that in some of those classes people were using meditation and contemplation almost synonymously and I see them as different things and they were kind of using that you know, one time in the other at the other time. So at that’s where the question came from and then I through prayer in because that’s another type of meditation in a lot of ways totally throws the leaves. Yeah. It’s what your definition of contemplation I’m just curious. What is mine. Yeah contemplating a thing. I mean thinking about some thinking about something. Yeah, that’s okay. So my mind and your mind are in the same place as we’re asking this question, so I think about meditation like mindfulness training trim mindfulness we talk about is the training of the brain right so we can train our attention to be present. Then we can also train ourselves to be more open and you know to be present with what’s happening. So contemplation to me is more just like what you were just sharing when I think about contemplation. I’m thinking about a word that I sometimes use is thinking tation and sometimes it’s sometimes I meditating and then I get into. Thinking something through so someone might call that contemplation. I don’t know that I would call that meditation because I don’t think it’s really helping my training of of being in the moment. I think I go off on a train of thought in the contemplation, but there is value to contemplation as well. So it might be I’m thinking of. I’m going blank right now. I’m thinking about. The diamond heart training to about that and they do different reflections of sorts. They have a name for it. But I know that’s where I’m going blank at the moment. But anyway, these are they do contemplations of a topic, right, you know, and then you think about it. So to me meditation at least mindfulness meditation. There’s a couple ways one can do it. You know, there’s there’s schemata and there’s be Pasadena right in the kind of meditation that mindfulness is engine, you know, and this is in the theravada tradition of Buddhism, but. Where if you just if we’re going to call it secular mindfulness, right? Okay, give it that umbrella. I would say it’s still a training of attention back to what I was saying in the meditation is where we train the attention but as I just mentioned these two words Summit on be pasta. Neshama te is that focused attention. On so maybe we’re focusing on the breath and and we can have a really Blissful state that comes out of it. But then you also have a pasta now which can be when the mind is really focused. Then you can do some insight observation and gaining more insights into our habitual nature as human beings. And so how I see that is that. Some people might call that contemplation when you go into the pasta. I don’t see it that way myself. I see contemplation is more thinking something through and it’s single subject and focused on that. Yeah or whatever you’re contemplating, right, you know, if it’s a single subject or whatever the topic is and I wouldn’t compare that to the pasta to the Insight part of this practice that we’re talking about. I see it is slightly different. Although you might gain some of the same insight. That you might in your meditation, but meditation to me isn’t sitting and thinking about something but you could choose to have a session where you get very focused and you’re meditating and then you could choose to work something out. Just as I might choose to go on a mindful walk and I’m not necessarily going to be with walking. I might choose to be very focused on something as I’m walking. Let’s say my steps or feeling the air or feeling my arms move, but then at some point I might decide that I’m going to contemplate something. I’m going to think about something while I and and I consciously choose to do that. Prayer yeah is I’m not the best person to talk to about prayer because I don’t think I have it together right sure a clergyperson might be better or someone who prays more often. But to me prayer, you know as a young child, I grew up Jewish. I went to Temple. I loved Services. I loved praying at Temple. I loved coming home and singing the songs and I also before I went to bed. I love saying prayers to God and the whole thing. I don’t do that now and in truth, I haven’t totally worked that out in my mind as to how prayer fits and right. I’m not anti it.

I just I’m in a very curious place around it sure well, and that’s what was the reason for the question because it is also in my history when I was growing up. I grew up Southern Baptist. So it was very in the Forefront but it is very different than my meditation practice and it is very different than contemplative practice contemplation practice, you know and I see those as definitely different things. That was why?

I kind. Separated I’m in and I can also see a prayer being kind of a contemplation at times. Yeah, because you’re focused on the thing and you’re praying about that thing and it kind of works through that. So I’m kind of I’m kind of curious to see what kind of reaction I’m going to get from a from a Baptist Minister, you know as somebody who does some type of meditation and in the sea that I mean, it’s just. You know take this to that point. Yeah, you know, it is in my plans here and the obvious here is the idea of God and less to me and you know in Buddhist practice. We don’t really talk so much about God and and in secular mindfulness, we’re definitely not talking about God either right and and so for me because it is a part of what I grew up with and they’re you know, I’m. I guess I would be considered a jubu. I think is the proper title that I might have and it’s still still out for review. I’m curious It’s a place of curiosity to me, but I really cuz sometimes in classes I’ll see people talk about prayer synonymous to meditation and it really isn’t that way for me. I don’t know and I don’t want to you know. Everyone needs to do whatever they need to do what they feel right about particularly around prayer and you know our beliefs and those kind of things but I’m curious to understand it more. So that’s why it’s a place that I feel my eyes are very big right now and open and. Interested as to how this is for people, right? You know, and I think it’s a curious time in history because there is so much division amongst people and ideas about other people strong ideas that we each have about other people and I recognize this is just a place for me that I haven’t explored in my. Later years of life, you know where I am. Now as I was very interested as a young child, but curious again before little different kind of reasoning. Yeah, cool.

The last question is. How do we promote compassion in ourselves and in the world around us? How do we make it part of our life? And what does that look like when we’re doing that?

I think a great question. Your questions are really good. Thank you. That’s why I kept it for because I thought it was good. So to me, the biggest surprise about the practice is this. Ability to be more compassionate and kind to me and to others that is definitely if any, you know people go around the classrooms every you know time we meet it in class. The first question is what brought you here and you know, all these similar questions that you might be asking, you know, why are people here? To me when I talk about the benefits, you know, I have a list of benefits of why people might want to do this and but to me, the one benefit that is totally surprising to me is to realize how we really are wired to be kind and compassionate. To ourselves in each other, but we also have a very strong wiring system of reactivity and automatic pilot and where that amygdala is in charge and there’s just a lot of fight or flight about everything and so I was more familiar with that posture in my life and so over the years and for me now, it’s. As I mentioned, I think I started meditating then you know when I was in my early 20s and or late nineteen or whatever. I started a long time ago and over time. I’ve just seen that there’s just a much more compassionate person and I didn’t realize how much Kinder person and it’s not that I don’t still have a broadcast person in my head that is critical and can have you know can. Can get not so kind about myself or somebody else or something else, but I don’t hear it. Now as the commander-in-chief that is running the show as much as a lot of interesting and so and that’s a very different stance than I once. Heard my own mind and watched it dictate what I was to think and do and now I can there’s some space where I can just see it be interested in then make a choice as to how to proceed. So to me, that is the biggest surprise and it’s not a surprise when you read these teachings, but it was a surprise to me because I hadn’t read these teachings. I was just doing these teachings and over time. This is what I saw really changed is that. I really believe that our true nature is to be kind and caring to ourselves and to each other and I think due to a lot of fear and a lot of our own PR in our own heads and what comes out us it makes us question that you know are real goodness and you know just so much habits stuff of fear. And you know, making sure we’re okay and this is okay. But that we lose sight of how we are connected and how are connected to ourselves how were connected to each other how I have a relationship to my neighbor or to somebody in the Amazon or wherever that is. And so to me that’s been the biggest surprise. I don’t think it’s anything that I have consciously done just to become more compassionate. I’ve just witnessed that over the years. Its kind of like the waves of the ocean is pounding at the Rocks they get smooth over time or if it’s the Purl the Purl that you know has the grit the sand in the end and suddenly you have a pearl who would have expected any of that but. Ultimately over time life happens and we start to feel more comfortable kind of navigating in it. And and we don’t take us I’m not taking it quite as personally as where I used to think everything was so personal and wood. And is that starts to change? And we start to witness our own fragility and then see it. I mean right now it’s you know, you can just see how the world there’s so many vulnerable people and that don’t have a voice. So social justice to me is part of what you’re talking about. The compassion that is done to take action in the world, not through hating other people but actually through and having more understanding and also really talking about. Is true and what is important? So I just find it’s a natural movement that has happened more and more and I don’t think it’s because I’m thinking about it. I think it’s it’s every breath that I’m here for, you know everyone is pounding away at that rock. That’s great. That’s a great analogy. So that’s kind of how I see that. And so it helps me feel my own heart more and the hearts of others. And so I think there’s some basic things Christiane F and Chris Germer, you know, they have this self-compassion course and program that I think is very good actually and but one of the things they talk about is to be more mindful. To be more kind and to have a sense of belonging and I think that those three pieces are so important and particularly the last one. The sense of belonging to remember that and those who come to my classes. I’m always talking about feeling your feet on the ground and I’m always talking about feeling that connection in the earth to all beings on the earth and maybe some people don’t even notice how important that is, but to me just coming into the present moment may be feeling your breath, but then really connecting. The sense of belonging how important that is that we too are supported. And we forget that and so I really appreciate with Kristin Neff and and Chris Grammar had talked about with those three components because I think that’s a big part of being able to sustain and even get in touch with our own sense of compassion and caring sure well that kind of goes along with the end of the phones and everything. There’s a lot of technology that separates us. Yeah and that grounding ourselves. I really appreciate that and if there was a time in my life, I thought when I heard people say that it sounded kind of, you know, kind of woke up exactly the word. I was used to the movements. He’s good with his hands right now, but coming to realize coming to realize that that compassion and I felt similar things for my practice and feel that I am more kind Than I Used to Be You know on that kind of thing and can see those are the real benefits that I can see.

I appreciate I appreciate your time. Thank you so very much for doing this.

Shinzen Young is an American mindfulness teacher and neuroscience research consultant.

His systematic approach to categorizing, adapting and teaching meditation, known as Unified Mindfulness, has resulted in collaborations with Harvard Medical School, Carnegie-Mellon University and the University of Vermont in the bourgeoning field of contemplative neuroscience.

Shinzen’s interest in Asia began at the age of 14 when he decided to attend Japanese ethnic school in his native city of Los Angeles.

After majoring in Asian languages at UCLA, he entered a PhD program in Buddhist Studies at the University of Wisconsin. As a part of his thesis research, he lived as a Shingon (Japanese Vajrayana) monk for three years at Mount Koya, Japan. It was then that he received the name Shinzen (真善).

Also during that time, he became friends with Father William Johnston (author of Christian Zen). Fr. Johnston helped broaden Shinzen’s interests to include comparative world mysticism and the scientific study of meditative states.

Upon returning to the United States, his academic interests shifted to the dialogue between Eastern meditation and Western science.

Shinzen is known for his interactive, algorithmic approach to mindfulness, and often uses mathematical metaphors to illustrate meditative phenomena.

He is the author of The Science of Enlightenment, Natural Pain Relief and numerous audio offerings.

Shinzen leads residential retreats throughout North America. In 2006, he created the Home Practice Program. These phone-based mini-retreats are designed to make deep meditation practice accessible to anyone in the world regardless of their location, health situation, and time or financial constraints.

Shinzen gives us a reading of TS Eliot’s poem “The Little Gidding”. A great ending to a great interview. 

This is the Shinzen’s Periodic table of happiness.  Click Here.

Shinzen’s in depth look at Mindfulness. Click Here

A ruff transcript of our conversation:  

Hello, I’m here with Shinsen Young an American mindfulness teacher and Neuroscience research consultant. Welcome.

Thank you. This is my favorite thing to do talk about meditation mindfulness and so forth. So I’ll yes, feel free to ask whatever you would like to ask.

I appreciate it. The first question is very basic.

Why meditate? I have a set answer to that question personally my favorite answer but then I think I would preface it by saying that the answer is Technical and therefore requires some explication. So in a word. Why should someone meditate?  Or in afraid it’s the phrase would be in order to optimize happiness, but we’re going.

Be precise about what we mean by happiness. I have developed something that I call the Periodic Table of Happiness elements. It looks yeah, it looks a little bit like a periodic table of chemical elements except. It’s only got 20 boxes instead of hundred and eighteen. I think anyway, it’s got 20 boxes and it cross classifies happiness along two Dimensions.

The first is a qualitative dimension. Current basic kinds of happiness and then the second is a depth depth measures the degree to which that particular happiness element is obvious to the average person. So the five basic kinds of Happiness are relief which means relief from physical suffering mental suffering.

Emotional suffering.  Relief, next time you have any bigger small physical mental and or emotional suffering. Would it be nice? To not have to suffer. Most people would say. Yeah, that would make me happy now sort of and one of the reasons to meditate is that meditative attentional skills.  Will allow not one but several different strategies for reducing suffering now.

Second reason to meditate is to increase fulfillment. So in addition to physical mental and emotional discomforts, we have physical mental and emotional pleasures and to increase the degree the degree of fulfillment that we derive from what is pleasurable evident that’s a second basic. Type of Happiness then there’s understanding yourself at all levels from the personal psychological level to the collective unconsciousness unconscious, which is a deeper level of self to understanding yourself as a sensory system and finally understanding yourself as pure Spirit those last two.

Are in a sense not that extraordinary because they’re just examples of understanding yourself. We all want to understand ourselves, but the deeper levels of self-understanding involve an experience of insight or Liberation that is sometimes called Enlightenment. So to understand yourself at all the levels.

From the personal biographical level to the sort of collective unconscious that young or shamans would talk about the some Pogo Kaya as it’s called in Buddhism and then to understand yourself as sensory system the self arises through Mind Body Experience and when Mind Body Experience is. Complete then we have a insight into the spiritual nature of mind and body.

So that’s another aspect of happiness self-understanding at all levels including the deepest level. Then another aspect of happiness is too. Make positive behavior changes to be an admirable person to have good character. So it turns out that meditative skills concentration power sensory Clarity Equanimity the attentional skills that get developed when you do a meditation practice those skills.

Can help you understand yourself psychologically, so they’re an adjunct to therapy but those skills can also help you understand yourself spiritually at the deepest level. And that’s where we get some of the classic goals that the Traditions talk about Liberation Satori can show Enlightenment true self.

No self and so forth. Well, It turns out that these attentional skills that we develop systematically through meditation help us understand ourselves a personal level, but they can also take us down to the deepest level and then for Behavior change well minute meditation skills allow you to deconstruct negative urges and they allow actually for a variety of once again of strategies for sort of.

Carrying oneself in a more admirable way in terms of positive behavior. And then finally if you’ve been counting that’s for sort of Happiness columns relief fulfillment insight into who you really are at the deepest level Mastery, which is mastering your actions and behaviors and then finally, although people don’t really.

Realize it in many cases. Everyone is drawn to be of service to others in some way or another and that dimension of you improve yourself. That’s mastery. And then you make the world around you either locally or globally as wide as you you know, choose you make the world a better place that’s service.

So relief fulfillment understanding yourself at all levels mastering your how you carry yourself in the world and. Call towards a life of service in some way or another. Those are the five basic types of happiness. And then the different there are different strategies for achieving these that represent more subtle levels of that particular kind of Happiness.

So. If someone says why meditate well, first of all, what do we mean by meditation? I would say it’s the systematic cultivation of a well defined set of attentional skills. So why develop these attentional skills? Well, because they’re Central to all aspects of human happiness. They’re either are directly related or their indirectly related.

And to every single thing that any individual or culture has ever said this is an aspect of flourishing or human well-being. Now when I say that meditative skills or attentional skills are. Our Central it doesn’t mean that they represent the whole picture of human happiness. There are limitations as to what they can deliver but I would say that meditative skills are relevant either directly or indirectly to every issue of Happiness relief fulfillment Insight Mastery service.

At any level we can show that the attentional skills that we Elevate through systematic meditation. Those attentional skills are either directly or indirectly relevant to optimizing that particular element of Happiness. So quick answer why meditate optimize happiness. And notice that but notice that our definition of happiness is quite broad.

It’s not just a subjective experience of being in a good mood. It’s the ability to deconstruct physical pain. It’s the ability to understand your spiritual Essence. It’s the ability to be a nicer person and ultimately it’s a natural pull tour happiness is very associated with a life of helping to make the world a better place.

So our definition of happiness is much broader and much deeper than. What is normally connoted by the English word happy which just sort of means you’re in a good mood or your right have good luck recently. It just meant good luck happen happenstance. So yeah happened good one for that. Yeah. Yeah, the words change, you know semantically they develop so originally it just meant lucky and then it meant fortunate and then it meant other things but I use happy in as in a very Broad and very deep way and I would claim that meditative.

Attention skills are directly or indirectly related to every aspect of that happiness issue. Do you find a do you find that a teacher is important to this process? I think having at least one competent coach you are in personal contact with. Say once or twice a year at least to give seems check in on the big picture of your practice.

That’s highly desirable. So the answer is yes if you. Want a high probability of achieving the classical results, then you’d do best to have at least one competent coach that you’re working with notice. I didn’t say that it has to be an exclusive right? Neither. Did I say that it has to be someone that makes claims about being some I don’t know.

World Guru or something like that a competent mindfulness coach. Yes, something a modern mindful as coach is actually a new profession in this world and it’s an interesting perfect. We train them out. Well many teachers do I have a training program run by one of my senior facilitators Julie an array at unified mindfulness.com.

Where. We teach you how to do the techniques and how to teach the techniques at the same time. It’s things are really evolving in in the west here so far away great questions fire away with your next question. The next one is what is your definition of mindfulness? And what does it look like to live a mindful life?

So I would say that different people are going to give different. Definitions of mindfulness. Yes, I wrote a long essay like an 80 page essay called what is mindfulness that sits on the internet? There is sort of ha ha well link to that. So that’s 80 pages and it’s loaded with technical Asian. Arms and in Sanskrit and Pali and Tibetan and so forth.

So clearly there is a lot that we can say about how to define mindfulness. So the most important thing is. There is no definition of mindfulness. There’s just mindfulness as this particular person or organization has chosen to Define it. So I use the word personally. This is just my choice and there are reasons why I made this choice, but I would use the word mindfulness.

As a synonym for contemplative practice. So for me, it’s very very broad. It’s basically synonymous with meditation. Now you would say well why Define it that way the reason is practical mindfulness is an acceptable word.  All around the world now and it means car. In the sense of contemplative practice coevolving with science.

So we have a cooperation going on between contemplative practice and science that’s lend that lends credibility to the contemplative practice anywhere in the world. You can give a mindfulness course without the government. Or individuals being upset by the word mindfulness on the other hand if you were to use the word meditation.

That has more loading. It imply, although it could be used synonymously. When you see meditation. Most people first of all don’t think of something linked to science or that has a lot of you know, empirical evidence. Whereas when you see. We’re talking about something where we’re going to show you the brain scans.

We’re going to show you how it works for clinical applications, like pain management addiction recovery. You’re coming at it in a more secular scientific back to base way. I would say I’m. Justifying why I choose to Define mindfulness very broadly because it’s an acceptable word for meditation or contemplative practice in all cultures.

You can have mindfulness in a school system in the US where as a board of education might have some resistance to having meditation in a school system also. Meditation has a strong visual connotation of someone sitting on the floor mellowing out with their eyes closed whereas mindfulness should not have that connotation.

Now, of course in theory meditation can be done in while you’re working and so forth. That’s well known but when you use the English word meditation people. First think of okay someone sitting on the floor. Maybe they’re oming. They’re in a certain posture. Their eyes are closed. They’re withdrawing they’re trying to cool out mellow out common connotation and a common visual image of that m word where and I think that that’s not going to fly in.

Human call him and cultures, but the but if we had a different metaphor that we’re doing exercises that elevate certain attentional skills, and those exercises could be done seated, but they could be done while you’re driving the car. You can mindfully drive your car certainly, so to get away from the notion that were withdrawing and sitting in a certain posture.

And to strengthen the connection with logic and evidence.  Or I would I would use the word mindfulness to broadly mean contemplatively practice and I would claim that there are three core skills.  That are either. Explicitly or implicitly involved in all meditation practices around the world and their those three skills are concentration power sensory Clarity and Equanimity.

Each of these is a technical term. Concentration is the ability to focus on what you deem relevant. You can think of it as that you can think of sensory clarity as the ability to untangle the sensory strands. What part of self is mental image what part of self is mental talk? What part of self is emotional body sensation what part of self is physical body sensation when those get tangled together, they produce the impression that the mind and body are a thing and a prison that limits your identity when you untangle those strands.

Then the prison bars go away and you’re set free sensory Clarity the ability to divide and conquer break a complex phenomenon into its sensory atoms is. Very Central to the Buddha’s discovery of I like that description. I have never heard that that particular definition of or that phrase and it makes a lot of sense.

Yeah, and then Equanimity you can think of it as non grasping or a relationship to sensory experience, which is the ability to allow sensory experience to come and go without push and pull so. Either explicitly or implicitly these three attentional skills are part make up the contemplative practice of.

Human history East-West ancient and modern now what characterizes the modern mindfulness movement is, two things one. It explicitly talks about all three of these skills, explicitly if someone. Does a program with me and I’m guiding them in meditation. I’m going to give them an technique and as I’m guiding them in the technique, I’m going to say something like.

By bringing your attention back to mental talk space you’re developing concentration by noticing the presence or absence of mental talk. You’re developing sensory Clarity by having no preference with regards to the content of mental talk or even its presence or absence you’re developing. Equanimity so I’ll actually point out how this particular mindfulness techniques that I’m teaching you is developing The Three core skills and I would claim that I can show you how concentration Clarity and Equanimity are an explanatory mechanism for Relief fulfillment in sight.

Mastery and service these basic aspects of Happiness. So I choose to Define mindfulness.  as the development and application of those three skills and they are attentional skills or another way to put it is they are. They represent a relationship to sensory experience. Most people do not have the ability to focus on one thing.

If even if they want to most people do not have the ability to parse the somethingness of self. Into mind-body elements most people do not have the ability to experience physical emotional or mental discomfort as a flow of spacious energy. There’s almost inevitably a coagulation around discomfort that causes it to become suffering if you have equanimity.

Your discomfort is Flowing which causes less suffering and your pleasure is also flowing which causes more fulfillment and your sense of self is Flowing which causes you to have a liberated sense of self and so forth. So I would say I would Define mindfulness. As mindful awareness as concentration Clarity and Equanimity working together mindfulness practice is the development and application of those skills the development of those skills and the application of those skills.

To all dimensions of happiness that I mentioned now when you say going just going to the second part of my question about what does it look like to live a mindful life? You’re not talking about going through life very slowly and paying, you know, paying a hundred percent attention to every single thing you do or are you ha ha that is a great question.

And that might be a an interesting. I would almost be tempted to make that question be a litmus test for mindfulness teacher how they answer that question might indicate the depth of their understanding and the subtlety of the understanding because it’s a very interesting. Way to formulate a question.

So here’s how I would put it we do. So you said you know, how important is a teacher? Well, I’m not a believer in like gurus, but I do believe in coach and I believe in competency so you can be a competent modern mindfulness coach. So what you need to be successful. With mindfulness is.  you need to do some Retreat practice.

You need to practice in life between Retreats you need to get support from at least one coach and ultimately it’s good to learn to give support to teach it because you discovered that by teaching it. You were the best and yeah. Yeah, that’s that. I’ve always found that the those are the pillars Retreat practice life practice get support give support once those pillars are in place.

What happens well as time?  moves on. Your base level of concentration Clarity and Equanimity becomes elevated so I can make an analogy here if we do physical exercise if you work out on a regular basis and you keep it up week after week month after month year after year. Your let’s say that you do a very rounded cross-training kind of exercise.

So we could say that your base level of strength physical strength is going to increase we can also say that your endurance.  your cardiovascular is going to increase we can also say that your flexibility will increase because you’re stretching so. Three features of the fabric of your body the physical fabric of your body three features will be.

Sort of permanently changed maybe not permanent permanent because we get old we die. We get sick, but effectively we’re elevating your base level of strength flexibility and cardiovascular endurance. Now what that means is.  that that strength is with you all day. You don’t have to be pumping iron.

In order for that strength to be there the strength is always there the exercise elevated.  the base level of the strength whether you’re exercising or not at a given moment the strength is there likewise the flexibility is there whether you’re stretching or not and the cardio is there whether you’re on a treadmill or not sure so in the same way.

By doing systematic practice you elevate your base level of concentration Clarity and Equanimity and we’re going to Define your base level of CC and e2b how concentrated clear and equanimous you are as you go about ordinary life activities without particularly trying to be. Concentrated clear or equanimous.

So that’s the measure that’s the way you can in you can kind of look at yourself and see how you’re moving through your other through your world on Let it go unless you’re not so the answer to your question is a mindful life does not necessarily mean all day. You’re going around trying to be mindful.

Not necessarily now when you’re on a retreat you’ll be doing that. So what ordinary life not necessarily however your base level of mindful awareness elevates. So even though you’re not making an effort to necessarily to be mindful you are very very very mindful because it’s on autopilot, right?

It’s second nature, so. I’m sitting I’m standing here talking to you. Okay, I’m just standing by a space heater in my house Northern New England and we’re having a conversation. My bandwidth is going into organizing this conversation. Sure, and I’m also sort of warming my buns here and looking at the you know that we have Leaf peeping in New England.

I’m I’m I’m looking at a postcard of Vermont right now. I’m looking at at the oak trees in the maples, etc. Etc. So this is very ordinary. I would say that my quote State as I’m standing here flailing my arms looking out the window.  Using my mind to organize words right my state of consciousness.

Is incomparably deeper right now than it was in the middle of my deepest Retreat 20 years ago. So without particularly trying you actually are going around.  24/7 because it also affects your dreaming life you start to meditate in your dreams even meditate and dreamless sleep. So we’re talking about we’re talking about elevating your base level.

And because we’re elevating the base level.  You are in fact stunningly dramatically mindful every single second, but without necessarily having to make an effort to do that. In La especially everybody wants everything immediately right now. When I talk to them about meditation is that it’s not a quick fix.

What does it take to get to that point? Is that a consistent practice over a period of time? Yes. Yeah. It’s it’s a consistent practice over a period of time. So what do you need? You need at least one technique? Some people have a set of techniques. It could be like open presence or it could be a breath counting could be whatever you want.

But you need at least one technique. Maybe you have a whole set of techniques that you organized into a little workout routine, but you need at least one technique and any Focus technique as two sides on one hand it. There’s sort of what you focus on we’ll call that the focus range could be broad or narrow and then there’s sort of how you focus on it.

We’ll call that the instruction set or the focus method. So you need at least one technique. Maybe you have three or four techniques and then you need to. Do Retreat practice life practice get support give support and all of this. I described in the literature on my websites and sure which I’ll be linking to also.

Yeah, so most people can’t get away to residential Retreats. That’s why we created the home practice program where the pipe micro retreats. Into your into your home so you don’t even have to travel and therefore our very tight modules. So that’s the minimal case of retreat practice. Most people around the world are not in a situation where they can get away to a residential retreat, but they could do the home practice program.

Then there’s systematically organizing. Your mindfulness practice each day between Retreats I call that life practice and I’ve got a life practice program where we talk about a systematic way to do that. Then there’s getting support you have at least one competent coach you work with and then there’s giving support which is at some point.

You learn how to teach yourself. So if you have these. Pillars in place and the months and years pass then what happens is your base level of concentration Clarity and Equanimity become elevated as a consequence of that your base level of Happiness becomes elevated. That’s the.  final Criterion for is the practice working.

Am I improve is my happiness improving in enough ways fast enough as a result of this practice. Anyone that can answer. Yes to that question. Then I say their practice is well structured. Yeah, and they’re making progress so it’s true. What you say? It’s not necessarily a quick fix, but it compensates for that by being a deep fix about half of the different elements of happiness that I document are impossible without mindfulness skills.

And those are the. The elements of happiness that are independent of conditions so we can’t always know our control conditions. So it’s very important if we want to live our life fully that we have a resource that we know if we encounter physical mental emotional discomfort even in severe. That we know that we have a way of.

Still being in contact with primordial Perfection for real now. So yes, it may not be a quick fix, but it is a deep fix and it may be the only fix many human beings. Will find themselves at some point in their life in a situation where they will either discover the power of mindfulness or they will have to suffer horribly.

The next question is what is the what is your difference between meditation contemplation and prayer? Because I am talking to a lot of different religious religious leaders of with different backgrounds. So there yeah it even seems well. That’s right. You’re going to get a lot of different answers on this.

And once again, it’s just sort of how do you want to think of it? So I use the word meditation.

Pretty much synonymously with mindfulness and as you know, I use mindful awareness to be those attentional skills concentration Clarity and Equanimity. So I would say that meditation practice and mindfulness practice. To me are pretty synonymous as far as now just to get a little bit of background though.

Sure meditation. Well, it’s English. But what what language does it come from? It comes from Latin mitad. Talk to you meta tatio.  Contemplation. Well, it’s English, but it comes from Latin contemplative. In traditional Christianity sometimes meditation and contemplation are distinguished. In fact, sometimes there’s a four-fold distinction lectio.

Meda tatio.  Ruma natio. Contemplative. This is a traditional Christian terminology. I believe associated with Saint Benedict. At least a Benedictine nun told me this lectio is you read the scriptures that the Psalms or whatever a passage you just read it, maybe out loud lectio, right? It’s Latin for.

Then in this case Meda tatio.  Which literally would be meditation it just means you think about the passage that you just read you intellectually. Think about it. They use sometimes meditation means just think about right and room and RTO which gives us the English word rumination. Like chewing your cud you bring it back up.

So room and not Tio is you’re not you’re not thinking about it anymore, but it’s got your embodying the impact of the scripture reading. In the substance of the fell substance of your soul and that’s called room room and natio and then in a very technical sense contemplate EO or contemplation in this framework means you completely go beyond form.

Time-space self and World disappear. This is technically called infused contemplation. So sometimes in Christianity meditation is just a certain level of practice a depth and contemplation refers to an incomparably deeper. Also known as infused contemplation like Saint John of the Cross and Juan De La Cruz.

Says so Todo it hmmm.  the Honda me cuidado. And three last asanas all votado. That’s a poem in Spanish called The Dark Night of the Soul where he describes infused contemplation Cecil total everything stopped Edith Emma, and I was set free they handle me cuidado relieved of all concerned. And 3 Los asesinos all vedado my worries forgotten among the lilies.

That’s a poetic description of formlessness Ryan fuse contemplation or what we would call well anyway. Emptiness in Buddhism sure. So sometimes contemplation means that but sometimes contemplation just means a lifestyle you were either in an active lifestyle meaning you were in service. Or you were in a contemplatively lifestyle meaning your cloistered and mostly pray and meditate or you’re in a mixed lifestyle and these are for the different Christian orders, like the carmelites the benedictines Dominicans franciscans and so forth.

So anyway, these are some of the ways that those terms are used. Within Christianity, so it’s quite complex really there really is. No. Hey, this is what meditation means this is what contemplation thanks. There’s there’s no it’s not like this is what energy means this is what power means the charge what actually physics.

Yeah. It’s not physics in physics. We know what these words mean sure, but but so far in. World meditation, we’re not out of common vocabulary yet. Although I suspect we’ll be there within a century or two the way the dialoguing is taking place now. So as far as prayer goes, well, once again whose definition the Catholic Church says, there’s two kinds of prayer discursive prayer that involves words and images.

And non-discursive prayer that involves.  something beyond words and images. Both of those are considered forms of prayer. So from that point of view infused contemplation is the highest form of prayer according to traditional Christianity, right so I don’t myself. I have my own definitions. You can read TS Eliot read his poem little getting where he talks about the essence of prayer.

You have someone says what’s prayer I would have a tendency to give a poetic answer. Let me just this is a incredible poem. Little getting Elliot talks about.  Prayer in its deepest sense is how do we promote compassion in ourselves? And in the world around us? I would say.  a couple things come to mind one is.

Let’s just set up put it in a little more explicit terms. So some people are unhappy about the political situation in the US for example, and so when that situation arose of course or when these situations arise people, Constantly come to me, you know, do you have a suggestion? You know what to do Etc.

I have a phrase that I like to use. Okay, that’s sort of summarizes the whole thing sort of idiosyncratic way of talking and thinking so my phrase is. Love deeply and act effectively. That’s good. So you heard me before say, you know, hey, I’m giving technical terms to love deeply is.

a.  noble aspiration it.

Is something that might take a while to develop but it’s worth it. It’s worth devoting one’s entire life because in the end it’s what everyone really wants. So let’s say that there’s something in the world that is troublesome to you. Some one or group of people that are doing things that untenable unacceptable in your way of thinking so.

acting effectively means taking measures that really work in the real world to improve that situation. That’s what acting effectively means now part of acting effectively means to understand how the world works.  You can’t act effectively unless you understand deeply how the world works. But another part of acting effectively is to not be distorted by suffering.

And you’ll recall that I mentioned first off relief from suffering is a one of the major answers to the question why meditate or and suffering has two sides subjectively. It’s it blocks the Perfection of the moment, but object if we it can drive and distort our our behaviors sure so that even though you may understand how the world works.

You’re you’re unable to act effectively because of the distorting forces. Due to the suffering that you’re going through compassion composite EO mean in Latin means share the pain so you share the pain but I would encourage people not to share the suffering and that is a subtle but very important distinction Compassion or sympathy means you resonate with the pain.

You experience it fully as you would experience your own pain you experience the other person’s pain. Does it hurt? Yes. Does that Brock block the primordial Perfection? No, right and therefore if you understand deeply how the world works. And you’re willing to let go of certain perhaps preconceptions about how you’d like it to work or how it should work.

Now. That’s not a thing. That’s an understand how the world Works

thing sure and you so that’s you have to go to you have to learn that but a meditation component is. In addition to understanding how the world works you are not distorted in your perceptions or your actions due to suffering you just feel the pain it motivates and directs. Your actions but it doesn’t drive in distort your actions as it tends to so acting effectively.

There’s two parts one is understand how the world works and that may that may require a letting go of a certain preconception or wishful thinking about how the world works. You have to understand how it works. I don’t that’s not my specialty. I can’t tell you but I know I could make it my specialty.

I could study political science and I would study if I studied it. I would study it with a very open mind. I have my own. I have my own beliefs and prejudices for sure. And I have candidates that I like and dislike intensely for sure. But that’s not based on a good knowledge of how the world works.

I don’t claim to that’s just based on my prejudices, right if I really wanted to know how the world works. I would study political science economics and I would study it from a. A very neutral point of view not from my own prejudices. But anyway, and I would try to find out how does it really work.

So two things the meditation can allow you not to suffer because of the way the world works and then if you understand how the world works now you’re in a position to act effectively you need those two things, but then what about love deeply. Let’s say that there’s a certain person that does things in the world and I I disagree with what they’re doing and I think that it hurts a lot of people.

How do I know this person exists? And it’s doing what they’re doing. I don’t ask this as a rhetorical question or even a philosophical kind of question. I mean literally, how do I know the way I know is through my senses I turn on the internet. I see this person.  I hear them. If I was in their presence, maybe I shake their hand or something.

I’d have physical contact with them. So that’s outer see here field. But if I’m not listening to them and looking at them are shaking their hand, I could be thinking about them. I have an inner see hear feel. All right. I have a mental image. I hear what they say. I hear what I would say in response in my talk space and I have emotions maybe rage tear grief shame and so forth in my emotional body.

So some combination of inner and or outer see hear feel in the moment arises. That lets me know this person the situation exists in the world. Now the question is.  what is your base level of concentration Clarity and Equanimity recall that your base level of mindful awareness is how mindful you are in ordinary life doing ordinary things when you’re not particularly trying to be mindful.

Right. So let’s say that I turn on the internet and I look at the political news and I start to think about politics. I’m not particularly trying to be mindful, but I’m seeing I’m hearing I’m feeling if my base level of mindful awareness is high enough. In fact, and now I have to pause for a moment and apologize.

Okay, there’s a big sharp turn a head in the road. Okay, a big sharp turn warning. Okay hairpin turn in this conversation. Okay. Okay. I’ve warned everyone the next thing I say maybe a little bit on the weird side. Okay, if there’s enough constant concentration Clarity and Equanimity in the inner and outer see hear feel and sound touch sight sound touch mental image mental talk and body motion.

That’s what I mean by inner and outer see hear feel if your base level of mindfulness is high enough.  Okay. So here’s the weird Zen poetry. Okay, in fact you do not see. Hear and feel.  the world.  You manifest the world you cold participate with Consciousness in loving?  Each person and each thing literally loving them.

Into existence from nothing and loving them back into nothing.  Moment by moment that is the activity of Consciousness at the deepest level. Remember when you understand yourself at the deepest level you understand that each of the ten trillion something’s. That constitutes an experience in a person’s life each of those arise from one nothing.

So all of our experiences are actually manifestations of a kind of cosmic love that you participate in and so the first thing that you experience. When you think about a person that maybe is unacceptable in their actions the first thing that you experience before you act effectively before at the instant of arising you experience consciousness.

Loving that person into existence in your inner and outer see hear feel in real time. Right? I’m more primero this perception that the universe is our Consciousness or I same thing, uh-huh are loving each thing that I see hear feel. Into existence moment-by-moment.  that.  participation with Consciousness in the creation.

So instead of perceiving a world you manifest the world.  So a primordial love comes first and then. Effective actions.  Can be based on that so that’s when that when the first thing you experience is the universe loving each of its parts into existence as you perceive that part when that’s the first thing.

And you don’t have to work on it. You can’t avoid it Christians used to call it the practice of the presence of God, you don’t you don’t go don’t go to church anymore because you can’t leave church every place is church. So that’s what I mean by loving deeply it’s a lifelong Endeavor. But what else are we going to do?

So love deeply. And act effectively.  is what I would recommend for more compassion in the world. Do you see do you see the act of the actin practice of meditation and and what we’ve been talking about as do you see this as a result of that? It isn’t something that you actually have to go after because it just comes to you when you when you start to Envision the world and bring the bring the world into it.

Well, it’s I would say that I just described a facet of the column of Happiness called understanding yourself at the deepest level. Okay? So are we good? Have we covered most of your questions? I think we’ve covered them all and I I just I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this and I’m honored by the time that you’ve spent with me.

So do we have a do we have another five minutes? We certainly have another five minutes. So I’m just going to read a poem uh-huh part of the four quartets by TS Eliot. Okay, this is little getting and there’s a lot that you can say about this a lot in the cliff notes.

Eliot once said that.  you don’t necessarily have to understand a poem in order to feel it. So those listening may not understand all the specifics. Of this little getting poem because there’s a lot of history and literary allusions and footnotes connections and so forth. We’re not going to go into that.

So you may not understand the details, but you will be able to feel something. It’s a poem about the nature of prayer, but it’s also. So one thing that you and I didn’t get into is there’s another way to define mindfulness, which is present centered non-judgmental awareness. Right. You’ve probably heard that now that’s John Cabot sins phraseology, right?

I would I would say though that you could say that present centered is enough if you’re in the absolute present. You can’t be judgmental. There’s no time or space to be judgmental. So a case could be made that another definition of mindful. Awareness is absolute present centered. Now what Elliot did is he wrote a poem you asked about prayer, right?

So for him prayer so Elliot was a Conservative Christian. Who lived in the 20th century most of his life in England? Although he was born in the US and he considered his profession to be a religious poet. And he said the job of a religious poet is not to try to convince someone else of your religion, but to give someone else the experience of what it is.

To be in your religion. So Elliot was high Church of England High Church Anglican. And so it’s very similar to Catholicism really just the King instead of the Pope running the church sure, but the sacraments and the theology is pretty similar. So he. He wrote this poem about Christian meditative practice.

But of course it’s a poem about all meditative practice called the four quartets. He was what’s interesting is although he was primarily Christian. He was very strongly influenced by him. Hinduism and Buddhism really so that the yeah, that’s a very interesting combination. Yeah. He actually learned Sanskrit and Pali when he was at Harvard.

This is in this is still in the 1800’s right late 1800s. You had to really have an interest in index civilization to study those kinds of languages at that time. You know, that was. Even now Sanskrit in college is relatively esoteric what to say of you know, the 1890s of but anyway, he wrote this poem about the Christian experience of meditation entirely based on the notion of being in the presence moment.

Absolutely.  and also because it’s a poem about. The power and desirability of the absolute present. It’s also a poem about how miserable it is to not be in the present moment. Right? So like I say, I’d like to give all the cliff notes on this, but we don’t have time but but people should be able.

To feel it one last thing. I’ll say this poem was written in the at the height of World War Two when England was being blitzed fire bombed by Germany and Eliot wrote this.  As an inspiration to his fellows British subjects. You know anyone can write. Nationalistic.  patriotic poetry anyone can write that but only only the Great’s can write a patriotic poem.

That transcends nationality at the same time. Okay, right, right. It tastes the like of an Eliot to do that sure and you’ll see that he’s pulled it off. So it’s a poem about surviving the war. He was he was a fire. Marshall our fire warden so, you know he had to like deal with these buildings burning and whatever it was very real to him.

So it’s about surviving the war but it’s also about transcending time and space at the same time and and it describes nature and.  the cycles of time. And the Transcendence of time in the cycles of nature. So here we go. Okay Mid Winter Spring is its own season simp eternals or sodden towards son Sundown suspended in time between pole and Tropic when the short day.

Is brightest with frost and fire the brief Sun Flames the ice on pond and ditches.  In windlass cold. That is the hearts heat reflecting in a watery mirror a glare that is Blindness. In the early afternoon.  That glare that is brought blindness.  In the early afternoon, that’s the clear light of the void and a glow more intense than blaze of Branch or Brazier stirs.

stirs the dumb spirit. No wind, but Pentecostal fire in the dark time of the year.  Between melting and freezing the souls sap Quivers. There is no Earth smell or smell of living thing. This is the springtime but not in times Covenant. Now the Hedge grow is now the Hedge grow is Blanche for an hour with transitory Blossom of snow.

a bloom more sudden than that of Summer neither budding.  nor fading. Not in the scheme of generation. He’s talking about what the Christians called The Unborn the uncreated light of Mount Tabor and so forth. So not in the scheme of generation the on generated light of the Void. Where is the summer the unabashed?

Sorry, I get a little for Klimt, you know emotional when I read this. Where is the summer the unimaginable zero summer?  Completed complete Enlightenment. Okay. This is intermediate Enlightenment. He’s describing here right midwinter spray. So he’s not describing is going to describe a place called little getting which had been a small angle of cutting contemplative community that got caught up in the politics of the.

English Civil War with Cromwell and the you know, the Puritans and what have you and the.  government destroyed the community but the remnants are there and it’s called Little getting so he’s describing this this community that had been a contemporary of community just described destroyed because they were loyal to.

Loyalty to the king yeah as opposed to Cromwell. So if you came this way taking the root you would like be likely to take.  From the place you wish be likely to come from if you came. This way in May time. You would find the edges white again in May with voluptuary sweetness.

It would be the same.  at the end of the journey.

Sorry, if you came at night like a broken King if you came by day. Not knowing what you came for it would be the same.  When you leave the rough road.  And turn behind the pigsty to the doll facade and the tombstones.  And what you thought? You came for his own is only a shell a husk of meaning from which the purpose breaks forth only when it is fulfilled if at all either you had no purpose or the purpose is beyond where the purpose is beyond the end you figured and altered in.

Fulfillment.  There are other sorry there are other places which are also the worlds.  The World’s End some in the see jaws or over a dark late or in a desert or a city but this is the nearest In Time. In place and time now and in England if you came this way taking any route starting from.  Anywhere at anytime or any season it would always be the same you would have to put off since and notion you are not here to verify.

It’s struct yourself or informed curiosity or carry report. You are here to Neil where prayer has been valid.  and prayer is more than an order of words the conscious occupation of the prey mind or the sound of the voice brain and. And what the dad had no speech for when living?  They can tell you being dead.

The communication of the communication of the Dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.  Here the intersection of the Timeless moment he is. England.  And nowhere, never and always.  That’s what Elliot has to say about prayer. Sorry. I lose my composure when I reach the greatest works of art.

So there you go. Thank you. So very very much.

Are you got it?