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.