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, 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.
It was really hard. And I started getting more and
more frustrated, like, why can't I do this?
And I started 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. 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 Dacher 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.
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 had 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.
Jon 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?
I just remembered mine. 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. Jon 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! Next slide. So, I want to thank you for
your kind attention. Thank you.