(upbeat music)
- Yeah, I mean, I think it all just comes down
to languaging.
One of my sick thrills is trying to,
it's not really a sick thrill,
but it's just trying to figure out how to talk
about deep dharma in like the most basic language
and accessible language possible.
I live for that, and it's not because I'm trying
to be a covert Buddhist,
It's just that Buddhism, isn't Buddhism.
It's just a guy that...
wanted to understand the mind and suffering and happiness.
And it was like European religious scholars
that turned it into Buddhism
and made a whole thing around it.
And there's more cultural stuff too within that,
So, I don't want to dilute the depth
of what is there, but like if we look
at the seed of intention, it's just like, why do we suffer?
What leads to happiness?
And the Buddha was also a brilliant marketer,
like he was known to be able to speak
to the different kinds of people that he would meet
and find the language that was appropriate for them.
And what was the door.
And then like sometimes entice them,
like if they weren't into doing the work of understanding
and permanence and suffering, he might like dangle a carrot
of like, xx the Dave arounds.
Like you could be reborn as this, as it is,
as a way to open their minds to like,
maybe I want to meditate.
So I am a big proponent of not diluting the practice,
and not pretending it's something other than it is,
but just finding the language for the person
that or the group that you're presenting to.
So if it's an organizational context,
and it is in the South, then I might reframe
my whole presentation, as like attention training,
or emotional intelligence, or mental fitness.
Mental fitness is the main category or the main
like title of my keynote.
You could say these days, just because it's good
for education, it's good for business,
and it's good for healthcare.
There does not need to be any mention
of Buddhism in my opinion.
And...
if there really is pushback on mindfulness,
or meditation, and if they feel like
if you have a sense that I'm mentioning
of that word, is going to be activating
and they're going to immediately associate
with it with religion, then I would have some fun thinking
about how can I present all of this stuff,
without even mentioning mindfulness or meditation once.
Cause it's just language that we're placing
on top of a process.
So...
the amount of stuff I see in SEL, Social Emotional Learning,
that's like simple as the mind wander
and then come back to the breath or Herbert Benson
the relaxation technique, just saying one.
In principles, So much of it is fundamentally the same.
And having 30 years in the space that you have,
you probably know the language of your people
and what would resonate and what wouldn't resonate.
And having gone deeper into mindfulness space now,
you have a sense of like, okay, what is the synonym
for mindfulness or what is a way to describe this?
It doesn't use traditional language.
It might take it a day,
or a couple of days of like planning and being creative.
But as simple as calling it mental training,
focused training, attention training,
and then you just give them, the same thing you give them,
if it was under the umbrella of Buddhism, meditation,
mindfulness.
And again, I really want to make clear
that I don't believe like this is a Trojan horse.
I really don't have any agenda of making people Buddhists.
I don't even identify as a Buddhist.
I'm interested in so many things related
to what makes life worth living.
And I'd never go to a Buddhist monk for relationship advice,
like someone that's lived in a cave for 30 years,
and really don't know much about relationships.
So, like if I'm maybe a Buddhist then like it,
whatever, all the say like there's a lot I'm interested in.
And so I don't see this as the Trojan horse for Buddhism.
I just see it as like these the practice
has been powerful for me, someone that wants to go deeper
into Buddhism, I'll give them that.
They'd also talking about sila,
and ethics, and impermanence, and non-self,
but and if that happens to come out of attention training,
great, but it doesn't have to have to be spoken
about explicitly.