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So I'll begin with the definition of mindfulness. This is from the book I wrote
with Linda Carlson... Mindfulness is the awareness that arises out of intentionally
paying attention in an open, kind, and discerning way. Next slide.
So out of this definition, we have these three simple elements... Intention,
which we just heard about, intention and motivation... Attention, which we've all
heard quite a lot about when we think of mindfulness... And then attitude... And
I'd like to speak about each of these. So, intention is simply knowing
why we're doing what we're doing. Why am I practicing? Jon put it beautifully.
He said, Your intentions set the stage for what is possible. They remind you,
moment to moment, of why you are practicing. I used to think meditation was
so powerful that as long as you did it at all, you would see growth and change.
But time has taught me that some kind of personal vision is necessary. Okay.
So why are we here? Why are we practicing? Why are we paying attention?
Suzuki Roshi puts it even more simply. He says, The most important thing
is to remember the most important thing. [AUDIENCE LAUGHTER] Right.
What's most important? When I work with my patients, we always begin here.
What is most important? Why do you want to learn this practice or
these practices? What is the most important thing? Okay.
The second element of mindfulness is attention. And this has really,
in some way, been the focal point in Western science and psychology. And
it's a very important element, of course. This is our Present Moment Awareness. And
mindfulness is a lot about seeing clearly, seeing clearly what's true, not our story,
or the narrative, as John said, but seeing clearly what's actually here.
And what we notice, as we start to pay attention,
is that the mind is like a monkey. Right? It's referred to as monkey mind...
That it swings from thought to thought, like a monkey swings from limb to limb...
And so, with mindfulness practice we begin to train and stabilize our
attention in the present moment. I love this quote from Christopher Germer.
He says, An unstable mind is like an unstable camera--we get a fuzzy picture.
Right. So, attention, helping us see clearly... Next slide.
The third element is attitude, which is how we pay attention. So,
when I was first learning meditation, I decided to go to Thailand and
study at a monastery there. And I didn't know very much about meditation, and
I didn't speak any Thai. And this beautiful monk at the monastery, who
didn't really speak any English, taught me to focus on the breath coming in and
out of my nose. Sounded relatively simple... So
I sat down to practice, 16 to 18 hours a day, every day in silence.
And what I noticed is that it was hard. [AUDIENCE LAUGHTER] It was really hard.
And I started getting more and more frustrated,
like, why can't I do this? And I starting trying harder, striving...
I became really judgmental towards myself, like, What's wrong with you?
And, You, meditation just isn't for you, you're a terrible meditator, and
maybe you're just not spiritual enough, or you're not trying hard enough.
And by about day four, I was just a huge ball of knots and
anxiety and frustration. And a monk from London flew in...
And I said, Can I please talk to someone who speaks English? So
I went to my interview with him, and said, How's it going? And I, you know,
hadn't spoken in four days, so it kind of all vomited on him.
[AUDIENCE LAUGHTER] [LAUGH] I said, I'm terrible at this.
Something's wrong with me... I look out at all these other people, and
they're sitting there so perfectly... And something's wrong with me. And
he looked at me with a lot of compassion, and also a little bit of humor,
and he said, Sweetheart, you're not practicing mindfulness...
You're practicing frustration, and striving, and anger... Next slide.
He said, What we practice becomes stronger. Right? And
we know this now with neuroplasticity. What we practice becomes stronger.
Our repeated experiences shape our brain. So, what he said is, Practice
paying attention with kindness...with openness...with curiosity...
Be interested in your experience, compassionate with whatever's arising.
Not that I always had to feel happy, or compassionate, or joyful, but
that this pot of mindfulness was holding with care whatever my experience was...
Next slide. So as I said, these words: What we practice becomes stronger...
These five words really became important in my life,
and it's incredible to see it play out in the science, but
this is something that these traditions have known for thousands of years. And
so when I came back to the States to get my PhD, I became really interested in:
Does training in mindfulness increase compassion? And so
the very first randomized control trial I did was in 1998, and Dhakar is correct,
I was told you're going to ruin your career, you will never go into academia,
if you're going to study this meditation stuff. And if you do,
at least don't study compassion and empathy along with it. So, of course,
that's what I decided to do. [AUDIENCE LAUGHTER] [LAUGH] And
I did a randomized control trial with medical students. And
what we found is that training in mindfulness-based stress reduction
significantly increased their empathy and compassion. Since that time, for the past
15 years, I've conducted six or seven other randomized control trials that have
been published, showing that mindfulness significantly increases compassion for
others, as well as compassion for ourselves. Next slide.
So, this is very interesting, which is the first order question, which is,
Does mindfulness increase compassion? And right now, we can say,
yes, there's a strong foundation. And so the second order question,
which I've become really interested in, is how? What are the mechanisms of action?
So I'm going to offer these to you just as a way of opening a conversation...
These are ideas that I have been exploring and playing with.
So, I'll introduce four ideas... The first is...perfect... No, you're perfect...
One more... Back to the super-highway, yes... What we practice becomes stronger.
I think the reason mindfulness increases compassion is because when you're
practicing this way with yourself, moment by moment, right? We're with ourselves all
the time... We strengthen the capacity to be compassionate with ourselves and
with others. And I like to think of it as kind of we have these super-highways
of our condition patterning. And so what I noticed from myself at the monastery was
my super-highway, my habit pattern, was judgment, and self-criticism, and
striving, and thinking something was wrong... And so, I had this image of
this kind of like little country road that I was digging out of compassion...
Of like a new way of being with myself and being with my experience... And
that that country road, that neural pathway, gets stronger as we practice it.
Next slide. Another reason I think mindfulness increases compassion
is actually very similar to what Paul was just talking about with safety and
slowing down. That there is the classic study,
the good Samaritan study done at Princeton University in the '70s... And
what they found is they took seminary students... And they said,
Prepare a lecture on what it means to be a good person. What does it mean to be
a good Samaritan? And then half of the group, they said, You better hurry,
because you're late to give this lecture. And these students went running across
campus, afraid, scared... And they had a confederate fall down in front of them.
And the students for the most part ran by...
They didn't stop to help. The other half of the students were told,
You have all the time you need. Go ahead to give your lecture...
And the same person fell in front of them, and for the most part they stopped.
What I love about this study is it doesn't say, Oh, we're such bad people.
What it says is that when we're scared, when we're hurried,
when we're not seeing clearly, our natural compassion doesn't come out. And so
I think what mindfulness does is it helps us slow down, see more clearly, feel safe,
so that we can express this natural compassion. The third way that
I think mindfulness increases compassion is by helping us see our inner dependence,
our inner connectedness. John spoke about Indra's Net,
this understanding that we're not separate... And so,
I love this kind of metaphor of imagining that the left hand had a splinter in it.
The right hand would naturally take the splinter out. And the left hand wouldn't
say, Oh, my god, you're so generous... You're so compassionate... Thank you so
much. It's just what the right hand does, right? We're part of the same body.
We're part of the same body. Okay. Spinoza,
who was my grandfather's favorite philosopher, he says,
We're all cells in God's body. When we begin to see
clearly that we're not separate... When we begin to see clearly our interdependence,
compassion naturally arises. It's just what makes sense. Okay.
Are you still breathing? [AUDIENCE LAUGHTER] I just remembered mine.
[LAUGH] Next slide. A final pathway, I think, for
mindfulness to increase compassion is that it helps us remember our essential nature.
When I was first working as a clinical psychologist in a veterans hospital,
I was leading a group of mindfulness training for
veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder. And these were mostly men who
had come back from Vietnam and who had been suffering for
a very long time with post-traumatic stress disorder. And the group focused on
training and mindfulness--really with an emphasis on holding ourselves, and
our experiences, and our past experiences, even the seemingly unforgivable ones,
with compassion. So, I was leading a group of about a dozen men...
And there was one man who never spoke, never looked up. And then we were about
three months into this group, and I remember saying to my clinical supervisor,
I don't know what to do--I'm not reaching him. And
a few weeks later, he went to speak... And he said, I don't want to get better...
I don't deserve to get better. What I did was so
horrible that I deserve these nightmares... I deserve this pain. And
he proceeded to tell us, looking down, he really didn't looked up the entire time,
looking down, he said, You know, I wasn't even a soldier, I wasn't even in combat.
I was just on the medic truck, and I would bring food and supplies to the villages.
And when our truck would come in, the children kind of got to
know that we are the ones with food and they'd come running out. And one day
we're coming into the village, and who came running out was our own troops, and
they were bloody and beaten... And they came running to us saying how most of them
had died because the village had betrayed us. They had told the enemy where we were,
and we had been bombed. And just as we're receiving this, the children come
running out, because they hear a truck. And out of the corner my
eye I see my friend pick up a can of food and throw it at a small boy,
and have it hit the boy, and he falls down. And he said, And all of a sudden,
before I knew it, I was picking up a can of food and
I was throwing it at these children. And we'd cheer every time we'd hit one,
like it was target practice. And as he's speaking,
these tears are running down his face and he's looking down at the floor, and
the shame in the room was palpable. And I looked at the other men's faces,
a little bit nervous about what I was going to see...
And all I saw was compassion... There was no judgment. They got it. They knew.
They understood. They saw the horror of what had happened,
and they also saw who he truly was. And I invited him to look up,
and to look around the room, and to experience that compassion...
That compassion that was possible... Next slide.
Some years later a patient of mine gave me this poem... And
I wish I had had it at that time to read. It's from Galway Kinnell.
He says, The bud stands for all things, even those things that do not flower.
For everything flowers from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on the brow of the flower and reteach it in words and
in touch that it is lovely until it flowers again from within of
self-blessing. To reteach a thing it's loveliness...
And I believe that's what we're doing with mindfulness,
is that we're holding ourselves, our experience, and each other with this
compassionate presence. John brought up before that the symbol for mindfulness...
Where this top character means presence, right, the hat... And
the bottom character can be translated as heart.
So, mindfulness really can be understood as presence of heart.
I'm going to end with a teaching from Jack Kornfield. If you can sit quietly
after difficult news... If in financial downturns, you remain perfectly calm...
If you see your neighbors travel to favorite places without a tinge of
jealousy... If you can happily eat whatever is put on your plate...
And love everyone around you unconditionally... If you can always find
contentment just where you are... You are probably... A dog! [AUDIENCE LAUGHTER]
[APPLAUSE].
Next slide. So, I want to thank you for your kind attention. Thank you.
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