(upbeat music)
- I figured,
we could maybe start with a guided meditation shortly
and in the context of what you're writing about
with real change,
and how we can heal ourselves and the world.
I just wanna offer a quick story
that I found very relevant
to what I wanted to do a couple of weeks ago.
I wanted to lead an online meditation
for like black lives matter
and to dedicate a loving kindness meditation
for racial equity.
And I announced it online.
I said, you know, we're gonna be doing
a loving kindness practice for this issue
and for black lives.
And I got a lot of pushback
and it was surprising to me.
It was shocking to me how much pushback I received
that people were saying that either well,
all lives matter or what good can you do with a meditation?
What does it mean?
Why don't you like, you know,
put this into action or this is self-serving in some way
I've got many different kinds of pushback
and I was very surprised.
And in your book, you actually shared a story
that you had a similar experience
where you got a lot of pushback
from people saying similar things.
And I found, you know, you share a couple of tweets
that you shared stating
some of the context of what you mean
or what your intentions are with the guided meditation
and how it can impact our fight for real change.
And so just quoting you in the book,
you say that and I modified it very slightly,
but you say basically that,
"I offer this meditation to remind myself not
to disconnect from what is happening.
It's so much less painful to look the other way
but this is vital.
I would never suggest that meditation
prayer or positive thoughts are replacement for action
but I know I need to connect to something bigger repeatedly
to have energy, to keep acting."
And so I feel like
that clarification is useful
for a lot of us who may not understand
the link between our own mindfulness practice.
And doing this together as a collective community
and linking that to real change.
And so, I know I've been talking a lot right now,
but I have to be very helpful for my own sake.
And I feel like that context may be helpful
for others as well.
And so I invite you to see
if you would be comfortable sharing a guided meditation
perhaps anchoring in a sense of belonging
for us welcoming home to ourselves as we get started.
- Sure, and maybe I'll just respond to the content,
you know, of what you said a little bit.
The meditation I was proposing on Twitter
actually was the suggestion of somebody else.
And I thought,
oh, this could be really powerful and helpful.
So it was metta, M-E-T-T-A, meaning loving kindness,
a metta minute for the kids who were in cages
in detention centers of the border.
And I was actually at an airport
when I got somebody put on Twitter
the suggestion directed to me,
and then I wrote back
and said, well, yeah, that's interesting.
I'm on my way home.
I'll see if I can get a script together
and record something, and I did.
And it went up a few days later,
I was back in an airport.
That's where I did my minute.
And there was a fair amount of pushback.
So it was just, as you said,
people saying you're as bad as the people
who just do thoughts and prayers and never do anything.
And why aren't you donating money?
You know, why aren't you sitting in somewhere?
And I said, exactly what you read
because it is hard to really bear witness to suffering
and have enough energy to wanna do something about it.
And we see the most caring people
who are on the front lines of suffering
whether as caregivers, you know, medical personnel,
first responders who,
you know, these days doing a fair amount of work
with ambulance drivers people like that
or activists who are really trying to create
some kind of systemic change,
is not easy.
And we see people burning out left and right
because it is not easy.
And we need these people.
We really (mumbles) their activity so tremendously.
And so I fought deeply about what helps us keep going.
What allows us to sustain a kind of energy or effort
when, you know, you don't get immediate results right away
or it's a long haul, you know, of effort.
And for me to try to make a difference
in that might mean in your family,
it might mean in your neighborhood,
it might mean your community,
it might mean in the country,
it might mean on planet.
And the manifestation of the effort could be very different.
This is something I really tried to emphasize in the book.
You know, that actually that part
was based on a conversation I had with Bell Hooks.
Who's a kind of iconic feminist writer.
And I told her, cause we're friends
that I'm used to Buddhist scholars
who as you know very well will parse the exact word
and be all fussy and like pick it apart
and change the vocabulary.
And I told her she was even worse,
which is probably why she's such a great writer.
And she said to me
I was in the process of writing the book,
so I don't like the phrase social action
because I think it sounds like it's only limited to marches
and protests and things like that.
So what about art?
You know, what about creativity
that takes us beyond the conventional or the convenient
has us a dare to imagine something different
and dissolves boundaries.
You know, so anyway that's a bigger term
than we normally give credence to.
And if you are engaged in that way,
then I think we really do need practices
that will sustain us
and will help us keep going.
And when you say belonging,
a way I am often talking about that precise thing
these days is, rest.
It's some place of awareness
where we're not trying to manipulate our experience
and we're not trying to fabricate anything.
We can just rest.
And there we find a sense of home right there.
And so this is really embedded
in very classical practice as well.
And it's a very powerful thing to do.
It's also the kind of thing amongst many things
that we can talk about that feels wrong.
You know, it just feels selfish,
and weirdly I can't do that.
You know, there's so much happening,
it's so urgent and there is so much happening.
And nonetheless, we have to be able to hang in there
in a more sustained way.
And so the word rest,
is really very prominent to my own thinking
and teaching these days.
And it's funny 'cause it is a really classical instruction.
Like rest your attention.
Let's say you're using the breath,
rest your attention lightly
like a butterfly resting on a flower.
And I remember 10 years ago
actually I wrote a book called Real Happiness
which has a lot of guided meditations in it.
And when I turned it into the editor of the first time
and I got it back, she said,
"You're using the word rest a lot,
you're very tired?
And I said, well, probably, but that's also the word.
So I'd like to have us do a meditation
where we are practicing that elements of rest
and just kind of finding a home in our actual experience.
And so very commonly when that's done,
as I'm sure many of you know,
we choose an object of awareness.
We rest our attention on it.
When our attention wanders,
we see if we can let go and come back,
like no judgment or blame,
just see if you can let go and come back.
And that home-base that central object
very commonly as something like the feeling of the breath
the actual sensation of the breath
it's always present for us.
It's available when we're then out,
you know, commuting or whatever as a place of return
but it doesn't have to be the breath,
you know, maybe for physical reasons or emotional reasons
the breath is not serving as that kind of restful place.
And so we would then say, well, that's fine.
You know, it's not a secondary practice
to do something else.
Just choose something else,
another sensation in your body something like that,
where you don't have to make it happen
you know, it's happening anyway.