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Selects: How Mindfulness Works · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hi, everybody. Since self improvement is kind of in the
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  Speaker 1: air this time of year, I thought I would choose
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  Speaker 1: our twenty twenty two episode on mindfulness. We cover its origins,
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  Speaker 1: how it became a thing in the West, and the
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  Speaker 1: upsides and yes, drawbacks. I hope it changes your life
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  Speaker 1: for the better. Enjoy.
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: Chuck and Jerry's here ish and this is stuff you
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: should know Ish. This is full on stuff you should know.
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  Speaker 3: Charles, remember that point. I feel like it was about.
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  Speaker 2: Ten eight to ten years ago where everyone was just
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: saying ish on the end of things instead of saying, like,
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: you know, finding the real word that they were looking.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: For, so so like an approximation of the word or
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: of the thing they were describing. So like I'm say forty.
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  Speaker 2: Ish, No, not even that, like when there's like a
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  Speaker 2: real word that could be used and they would just
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  Speaker 2: throw ish on another word.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: I don't know what you're talking about.
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  Speaker 3: No, yeah, it was it was the thing it swept
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  Speaker 3: the nation.
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  Speaker 1: When was it?
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  Speaker 3: Or maybe I'm thinking of the macarena.
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  Speaker 1: That's what you're thinking, okay, all right, man really did
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  Speaker 1: sweep the nation? Remember that who let the dogs out?
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  Speaker 1: It was like a.
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  Speaker 3: One dogs out? Did they ever find that out?
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  Speaker 1: No? I think it was a rhetorical question.
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  Speaker 3: Ish.
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  Speaker 1: It's the kind of rhetorical question you could ask yourself,
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  Speaker 1: Chuck while you're meditating. Yeah, my first, thanks, thanks, But
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: I'm going to step all over the segway because before
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: we get started, Chuck, I want to do, if you'll
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: allow me, another shout out for my little niece, Mila's movie,
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  Speaker 1: big time movie called No Exit that's coming out as
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  Speaker 1: far as when this episode drops tomorrow, so February twenty four,
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  Speaker 1: twenty twenty two. No matter when you hear this, just
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  Speaker 1: immediately go on to Hulu subscribe it you haven't yet,
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: and check out my niece Mela in No Exit because
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  Speaker 1: she is me the trailer amazing. What'd you think?
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: It looks like a taut thriller. She looks fantastic from
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: what you can tell from a trailer. I you just
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  Speaker 2: saved all the bad parts for the movie.
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  Speaker 1: I don't think they did. I was reading an interview
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  Speaker 1: with the director and he was saying like she was
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  Speaker 1: doing such an amazing job of being terrified and freaked
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: out and everything that, like after in between takes, like
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: the other cast, Memers would be like are you okay?
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: And she'd be like, yeah, are you okay? And I'm
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  Speaker 1: acting right yeah exactly. She's like, it's acting like John Lovegrad. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: So on Hulu, No Exit, February twenty fifth, my niece
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  Speaker 1: Mela just kills it.
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  Speaker 3: There you go, can't wait.
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  Speaker 1: Thanks again for that, So let's get started. Thank you
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  Speaker 1: for not passing judgment on that. Either way.
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  Speaker 2: You're resegueing, because we're trys passing judgment, it means I'm
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  Speaker 2: not being mindful because a big part of mindfulness you
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: just did not judge.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, So that's like, this is one of those ones,
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  Speaker 1: you know, those episodes where we just start talking about
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  Speaker 1: the thing without defining it. This is not gonna be
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  Speaker 1: one of those episodes because I think it would be
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  Speaker 1: kind of rough otherwise, you know.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, And I guess if you're gonna define mindfulness, you
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: need to kind of go back in time. I mean,
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: I guess we could hop in the way back machine.
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  Speaker 1: We haven't done that way it's been a while.
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: Let's pull the old cover off. It's quite dusty in
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: here and a little bit of mildew, A little mildew.
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: There's some old crystals boxes. Those are yours?
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  Speaker 1: Remember you had them accidentally delivered to your house?
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  Speaker 3: Right, and then we went back to the Old West
• 3:55
  Speaker 3: to celebrate.
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: You're thinking of back to the future. Three?
• 4:05
  Speaker 3: Oh right, right? Right?
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: I called Mary steam Virgin if I get to play her,
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: not date her or anything.
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: Oh date may steam Virgin. A big crush on.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: Her, isn't that really? That's a ted Danson's old squeeze, right.
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  Speaker 3: It's his current squeeze. I'm not going to fight any before.
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  Speaker 1: Are they still together? Yeah?
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  Speaker 3: I think so.
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  Speaker 1: Gosh, they've been together for a while.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, good couple.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, great, good stuff.
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  Speaker 2: So who knew we were gonna be talking about ted
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  Speaker 2: Danson at the beginning of mindfulness?
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  Speaker 1: Richard Gear, But ted Danson's a big surprise.
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  Speaker 2: If we get in the way back machine and go
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  Speaker 2: back uh in time to sort of the beginning of Buddhism,
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  Speaker 2: you'd have to look at the the the language polly
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  Speaker 2: and the word sati. Polly is p a l i,
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  Speaker 2: Sati is s a t i. There are a lot
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  Speaker 2: of different words for mindfulness, but the one that we
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  Speaker 2: can kind of identify with It's kind of been used
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  Speaker 2: most from Polly, which is a Middle Indo Aryan liturgical
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  Speaker 2: language from the early branches of Buddhism.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, I want to take in the reason that Polly
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  Speaker 1: is so important is because they say that it was
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  Speaker 1: the language of the Buddha, and at the very least
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  Speaker 1: it was the first language that the Buddha's words which
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  Speaker 1: have been passed down orally were written down in. So
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  Speaker 1: it's like legit old school Buddhist thinking and teachings. And
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  Speaker 1: one of the basic parts of that is, like you said, sati,
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  Speaker 1: which has been translated to mindfulness, but it was translated
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  Speaker 1: by a British colonial administrator, wasn't it.
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  Speaker 2: That's right, And it kind of more accurately is translated
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  Speaker 2: as memory of the present, which I think is a
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  Speaker 2: really kind of a cool way to look at mindfulness.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Absolutely, it really kind of reveals what's going on. Especially
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: once you kind of learned a little more about it,
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: you're like, that actually works about as perfectly as can be.
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  Speaker 1: But it got translated into the word mindfulness, sati into
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  Speaker 1: mindfulness by a British colonial administrator in Ceylon which is
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  Speaker 1: now Sri Lanka. Back in the eighteen eighties, so as
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  Speaker 1: some British guy who said sati means mindfulness and actually
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  Speaker 1: kind of gave it to us today, although there was
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  Speaker 1: a long period where it had been forgotten. But I
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  Speaker 1: think you can't really talk about mindfulness, even though it's
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  Speaker 1: changed so dramatically, especially in the last decade or so,
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  Speaker 1: without kind of describing what it was originally meant to describe,
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  Speaker 1: or what it still describes if you're a practicing Buddhist,
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  Speaker 1: and that is that you are not only like paying
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  Speaker 1: attention to the moment and like experiencing this moment without
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  Speaker 1: letting your thoughts wander to the past or the future
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  Speaker 1: or anything like that, but that whatever you're experiencing in
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  Speaker 1: the moment, no matter what it is, you're experiencing with equanimity,
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  Speaker 1: which means that you're not passing judgment on it, good
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  Speaker 1: or bad or anything else. It just is And it
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  Speaker 1: sounds easy to describe, but if you've ever tried it,
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  Speaker 1: it's one of the hardest things a human being can
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  Speaker 1: ever set out to do.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think it's very very natural for
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  Speaker 2: a human to seek out and contemplate and think about
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  Speaker 2: the things that feel good and please them and to
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  Speaker 2: try and stuff down and get rid of and avoid
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  Speaker 2: things that either hurt literally hurt or emotionally hurt, or
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  Speaker 2: things that are painful or unpleasant. And boy, see, that
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  Speaker 2: is a tough thing to overcome, my friend. Just the
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  Speaker 2: condition of being human makes that very difficult.
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  Speaker 1: But yeah, and you just nailed it on the head,
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  Speaker 1: not once, but twice, Chuck when you said that it's
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  Speaker 1: a very human condition. And part of sati. The point
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  Speaker 1: of sati as far as like Buddhists are concerned, is
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  Speaker 1: that it's a step that you take on the path
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  Speaker 1: to enlightenment to free yourself from the cycle of life
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  Speaker 1: and death and rebirth and to become like a truly
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  Speaker 1: enlightened being that's freed from all of that. And so
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  Speaker 1: you have to free yourself from that human condition, and
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  Speaker 1: a big part of that is to free yourself from
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  Speaker 1: yearning from wanting. Because yearning and wanting or being repelled
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  Speaker 1: by something and wanting to get away from it, there
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  Speaker 1: are two sides of the same coin as far as
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  Speaker 1: sati is concerned, which is you are wishing that something
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  Speaker 1: is different or was different than it actually is. And
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  Speaker 1: then that's the basis of suffering. And suffering is the
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  Speaker 1: thing that keeps you in that cycle of life and
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  Speaker 1: death and rebirth. So meditating to become mindful and non
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  Speaker 1: judgmental about your present experience is one step toward relieving
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  Speaker 1: yourself with suffering and then freeing yourself from that shackle
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  Speaker 1: of being born and reborn and reborn again.
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  Speaker 2: Well, you and my friend have just spoken about the
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  Speaker 2: noble truths in part because craving is the cause of
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  Speaker 2: suffering is the second noble truth, and to cease that
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  Speaker 2: craving will bring about the ceasing of that suffering, which
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  Speaker 2: is the third noble truth. And basically, experiencing the moment
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  Speaker 2: without and everything about the moment without judgment is sort
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  Speaker 2: of the goal. And you know, for modern you know,
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  Speaker 2: we're going to talk a lot about sort of the
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  Speaker 2: beginnings of mindfulness and kind of how it's become kind
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  Speaker 2: of a hip thing to do here in the United
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  Speaker 2: States starting in about the nineteen seventies and on especially today.
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  Speaker 2: But we're kind of talking in American modern terms about
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  Speaker 2: stress and de stressing. And the Buddhists have a term
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  Speaker 2: for that, which is duka d u kk h a,
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  Speaker 2: and that is, you know, again, to avoid or destroy
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  Speaker 2: something that we don't like, and what we usually don't
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  Speaker 2: like is something that's going to put a stress on.
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  Speaker 1: Us, right exactly, And they're saying, like, dude, this is
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  Speaker 1: part of the point of life. This really amazing book
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: by Tick not Han right now rereading it. Actually, it's
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: one of those ones you just kind of go back
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  Speaker 1: and reread, very like easy slim volume. It's called No Mud,
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  Speaker 1: No Lotus, and it basically says like, without suffering, you
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  Speaker 1: can't have happiness and vice versa. Pretty basic stuff, but
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  Speaker 1: like he really gets into explaining how to confront suffering
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  Speaker 1: and understand that it's just part of life. And that's
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  Speaker 1: a huge part of the Buddhist approach to mindfulness. It's
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  Speaker 1: not to get away from suffering. It's to recognize it
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  Speaker 1: as it is and also simultaneously not make a bigger
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  Speaker 1: deal out of it than it is, because suffering is enough.
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  Speaker 1: It's bad enough as it is. But another part of
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  Speaker 1: the human condition is to make it way worse by
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  Speaker 1: anticipating it, worrying about it, like focusing on it after
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  Speaker 1: it happens. There's a lot of stuff we do to
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  Speaker 1: our own suffering that explodes it, and part of mindfulness
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  Speaker 1: training is to is to stop doing that as well too.
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  Speaker 2: You ain't kidding. And the lack of judgment is a big,
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: big part of all of this. And we're going to
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  Speaker 2: talk quite a bit here and there about John cabot Zen,
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  Speaker 2: who is as easy, far and away the sort of
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  Speaker 2: leader of the modern American mindfulness movement in a lot
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  Speaker 2: of different ways, and we'll get to him in more
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  Speaker 2: detail later, but he says that awareness that arises through
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: paying attention on purpose, and that's another big part of it.
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  Speaker 3: It's a very purposeful practice.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, but not meditation, which we'll get to that as well,
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  Speaker 2: because meditation is a true physical practice that you in
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  Speaker 2: mental practice, whereas mindfulness is more of a state of
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  Speaker 2: being that you're trying to get to, right. But he
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  Speaker 2: says on purpose in the present moment and non judgment only,
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  Speaker 2: they always have to kind of hammer home the lack
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  Speaker 2: of judgment being a key part.
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  Speaker 1: Right exactly. And he's a proponent in kind of one
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  Speaker 1: of the founders of what you can refer to as
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  Speaker 1: secular mindfulness, which is this current incarnation of mindfulness that's
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  Speaker 1: sweeping the West. It's like you said, hip that's been
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  Speaker 1: kind of like removed deliberately, as we'll see, removed from
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  Speaker 1: its Buddhist roots and Buddhist contexts to make it more
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  Speaker 1: palatable and scientific seeming. Yeah, secular, secular.
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  Speaker 2: Strip it of all the religion and maybe we can
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  Speaker 2: sell it to Americans exactly and then that.
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  Speaker 1: But the yeah, the upshot of all this, though, Chuck,
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  Speaker 1: is that no matter who you are, where you're coming from,
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  Speaker 1: if you're talking about mindfulness, you're talking about paying attention
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  Speaker 1: to the present moment and doing the best you can
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  Speaker 1: at not judging anything that's going on in that present
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  Speaker 1: experience and just taking it on its face value and
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  Speaker 1: engaging in it fully. That's mindfulness in a nutshell.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's not anything that the Buddhists had a
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  Speaker 2: corner on. They just probably did it better because all
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: different kinds of religions throughout antiquity had you know, chanting
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: or some kind of mindfulness practice, maybe prayers or through
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  Speaker 2: songs or dance. You know, that kind of thing has
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  Speaker 2: been around as long as people have been practicing religion.
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  Speaker 2: So the Buddhists did not invent it, but I think
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  Speaker 2: they got it fairly right.
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  Speaker 1: So let's talk a little more about how we got
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: here today. Historically speaking after a break. What do you
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: think about that?
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  Speaker 3: It sounds great. I'm gonna breathe in the meantime.
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: Hey, let me teach you something I've been using that
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: tik not Han taught me, not personally but through his
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: writing in a book that was published that I purchased
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: with MONI.
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  Speaker 3: Smash your hand with a hammer.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, he said, try to focus on anything else. Chump.
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  Speaker 3: Right.
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  Speaker 1: There's a bunch of different mantras you can say, and
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  Speaker 1: I don't not even sure that's the right word, but
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  Speaker 1: one that I keep using is And it's just striking
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  Speaker 1: what taking a breath and deliberately focusing on that breath,
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  Speaker 1: just breathing in once and breathing out once can do
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  Speaker 1: to like just suck you right out of wherever your
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: mind is in the past or the future. It's it's
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  Speaker 1: really striking how it can do that. But his was
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  Speaker 1: it's a breathing in I noticed that I'm alive and
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  Speaker 1: then breathing out. I'm happy to be alive, and just
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  Speaker 1: doing it at once like immediately brings me back into
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  Speaker 1: the present moment. It's really cool. I like it. It's
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: all very new for me, but I think it's it's
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: pretty cool.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a lot of value there. And you know
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  Speaker 2: you can like practice something like this and those breathing techniques.
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  Speaker 2: It's not exclusive to mindfulness or meditation or Buddhism. I
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: you know, that's a great technique if you have kids.
• 14:59
  Speaker 3: I found that.
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: You know, if my daughter is having a bad time,
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: just kind of get her to slow down and take
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: a couple of good deep breaths.
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  Speaker 3: Always a good thing to do. Yeah.
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: And Emily, who you know, someone who has a lot
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: of anxieties in her life as a struggling small business owner.
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: We will do this thing where we have hug breathing,
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: where I will go up to her and we will
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: have a good tight bear hug embrace and will breathe
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  Speaker 2: in together, and it sort of like doubles the power
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: of it.
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  Speaker 1: Wow, that's neat, Chuck, Is that your own? Did you
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: come up with that?
• 15:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah?
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: I mean I'm sure, I mean I didn't get it
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: from anywhere, but I'm sure I didn't invent that.
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: It sounds like a Viking mindfulness.
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: Like Hell's Angels.
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: Sure, Yeah, that's the Hell's Angels technique you came up with.
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: You can call it whatever you want. It's your invention.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: It's a good one.
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's something about breathing together that close physically. It's
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: pretty powerful.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: So if you went back a few hundred years, a
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: couple hundred years even, and you spoke to any Buddhists
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: around the world and said, hey, how often do you
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: do mindfulness meditation? They would look at you like they
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: had no idea what you were talking about. And if
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: you said, you know, sati, they'd say, oh, that's not
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: for us, that's for like the monks and the nuns
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: up in the caves in the mountains, Like, we don't
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: do that kind of stuff where we're super Buddhists. We
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: care about morality and we worship local deities and all
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: that stuff. But that's that's kind of advanced. That's more
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: than the average Buddhist does. And it wasn't until I
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: think the late nineteenth century in Burma that that was
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: finally kind of broken up and meditation and mindfulness together
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: were kind of introduced for the first time to like
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: lay Buddhists, like just the normal, everyday, average Buddhists living
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: their life.
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this is pretty cool, Like, I know, we love
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: it when we can kind of pinpoint when things happen
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: or when things change, and this is one of them.
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  Speaker 2: On November twenty eighth and eighteen eighty five, this is
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: when the British Imperial Army conquered Burma and said, King,
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: we're gonna mispronounce some of these Thibal Maybe I think
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: that's right, you're out of here. And that king was
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: promoting mindfulness and promoting Buddhist institutions throughout the nation. The Brits,
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: of course, said now we're not going to.
• 17:18
  Speaker 3: Really do that.
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: So it fell to the lay people to get organized,
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: to find new places to meet, to find their own
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: you know, gathering grounds, and a lot of times these
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: were monasteries and it would go through monks, but they
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: would it basically went to them to kind of figure
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: it out because it wasn't I don't want to say
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: state sponsored, but it kind of state sponsored.
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, or state supported or something like that.
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah. But so rather than being like, oh, well, I
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: don't know who, I guess we're not Buddhists anymore, they
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: took it by the horns and like they did something
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: with it. But one of the outcroppings of that was
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: that like these monks who used to just go meditate
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: out in the like in the mountains or the hills
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: or in the woods. Now had audiences of like everyday
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: people who were practicing Buddhists that they were teaching this
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: stuff too, And it was it was one of these guys,
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: Letty Sayadao, who was a Buddhist monk, who said, you
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: know what, this isn't just for us, this is for everybody.
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: And closely in Letty Sayadow's footsteps came Minga and Sayao
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: s a yaw say yao. I think that's right, and
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: that monk was the first one to actually teach mindfulness
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: and meditation to regular people, I think around nineteen eleven.
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's cool stuff.
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: Like I love the idea that Letty Sayadal kind of
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: put forth, which was you don't have to go to
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: a monastery, even like we've set these up for you
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: and you can.
• 18:47
  Speaker 3: You don't have to retreat to a cave.
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: You don't have to you don't even have to go
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: into a deep meditative state or anything like. Just momentary
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: bits of mindfulness are very helpful, right, and that's a
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: good way to reach each regular lay people. And I
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: think through practice is when Sayel came along and said, hey,
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: that all sounds great, and buddy, I'm going to teach
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: it right.
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: So the people in what is now Miamar are the
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: ones who kind of broke out, broke mindfulness of meditation
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: out of its little slumber sure cage or something like that,
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: and democratized it a little bit. But it was as
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: far as the people in the West are concerned, it
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: was the Japanese in their development of Zen Buddhism that
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: we have to thank because this is you can pretty
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: much trace a direct line between the mindfulness and the
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: meditation and the approach to Buddhism in the West today
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: back to the twentieth century Japan and specifically a guy
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: named die Setsu Tei Taro dt Suzuki. So dt Suzuki
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: was kind of a what's called a Buddhist modernist thinker
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: who said, there's different things we can do with this,
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: but let's approach us a little more rationally, a little
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: less dogmatically, and open it up to people like our
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: friends and what's soon to be me and mar and
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: not only that, let's start relating to the West a
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: little more. And dt Suzuki actually kind of carried this message,
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: this idea of Zen Buddhism with him over to America
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: in Europe and it just started to catch on like wildfire.
• 20:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: I think it's really interesting too that it was another
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: act of war that led to you know, that helped
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: give rise to someone like Suzuki, just like when the
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: Brits overthrow Burma. When the US Navy attacked Tokyo Harbor
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: in eighteen fifty three, though was you know, basically Japan
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: was like, you know, we got we got to start
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: relating to the West a little bit more and sort
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: of modernize, and this was known as the Meiji Restoration.
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: And part of that was saying, hey, Shinto is going
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: to be our religion, our main religion, and not Buddhism,
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: which led the Buddhists to say, hey, maybe we should
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: modernize our religion as well, to you know, so we
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: don't get left by the wayside, and that gave rise
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: to someone like DT.
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: Suzuki, Right. So it was from that modernization that Buddhist
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: modernism came about, and it's basically what you would recognize
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: as Buddhism today, like very thoughtful, very interior dwelling, the
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: idea that the universe is all connected. All these were
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: like Buddhist thoughts before, but it was it was Buddhism
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: allowing itself to be influenced by Modernism and by other
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: groups like the Romantics and the Transcendentalists, right.
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: So they jumped on a big time. It was pretty
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: It was like a confluence of perfect timing as far
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: as coming to the United States and like the counterculture
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: ready for this.
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: But in a weird way, it was like the United States,
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: unbeknownst to the counterculture Beats and then later the Hippies,
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: that their predecessors, like the Transcendentalists, had pre influenced what
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: was coming back to them. So it was already in
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: a very palatable form for Americans who were open to
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: the idea of like mind expansion and taking acid and
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: you know, and meditating and were just open to the
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: ideas of other cultures of becoming like more in tune
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: with the universe. It was they were just waiting for it,
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: and it came to them in the in the briefcase
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: I guess of DT Suzuki and it just kind of
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: took off from there. So the idea everything we understand
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: about mindfulness and meditation you can trace back to like
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: DT Suzuki in those beats.
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, And there were three people in particular in the
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: seventies and sixties and seventies practicing this, Joseph Goldstein, Jack
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: Cornfield and Sharon Salzberg who were not together but they
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: studied separately meditation in Burma, and then the mid seventies
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: founded the Insight Meditation Society in Massachusetts, which became sort
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: of the center of the uh VI Pasana meditation movement
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: here in the United States. And they're they're still around,
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: they're still doing their thing.
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: Right, So it was from that same group. There was
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: actually a time where John cabot Z in the guy
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: we mentioned earlier.
• 23:16
  Speaker 3: Z I by the way, not that would be too
• 23:19
  Speaker 3: far on the nose.
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: Oh wait, what if his name was spelled z E
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: n Oh, I got.
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: You, boy. I was not the current experience very well,
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry, Oh that's okay.
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: That'd be like a boxer being named boxer. Yeah, it
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: would be differently, right.
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: I was for some reason, I was going more toward
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: the cabernet Zen play on.
• 23:46
  Speaker 3: Well because you're eyes in there.
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So he's known as the godfather of modern mindfulness
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: according to The Guardian at least, which is a pretty
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: legit newspaper. And by the way, they thank you also
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: to Olivia for helping us out with this one. Chuck
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: one to wrangle very great, Josh, she did, she did.
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: But John cabot Zen was among those people Jack Cornfield,
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: great name, Sharon Salzburg, and Jason Joseph Goldstein. He actually
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: taught at their Insight Meditation Society, and he was a
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: big time practitioner of Zen Buddhism and he had he
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: was on like a I guess a meditation retreat and
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: he had a bit of insight well, I guess an
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: epiphany is probably what you'd call it. That he was
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: meant to help apply Buddhist techniques to help people who
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: are in pain. He had either a microbiology or molecular
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: biology degree and he ended up applying it to medicine
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: and figuring out how to join Buddhist practices and medicine
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: to help people in the seventies and it really started
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: to take off from there.
• 24:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: I mean, he sort of had the same idea as
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: previous cultures, which was, hey, if we want to and
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: not sell for money, but if we want to popularize this,
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: we should get a little bit away from the religion part,
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: the sort of hippie dippy New Age part, and he
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: really wanted to start talking in concrete terms about things
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: that everyone worried about, which was stress, and like, if
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: you want to make your life less stressful, here's a
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: way to do it, and more on mindfulness and less
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: on meditation, which was still a tough sell to mainstream
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: America and still is today.
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: I think, yeah, but it's gotten less and less. I
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: feel like he finally overcame the threshold that was, you know,
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: keeping it back in the last like five ten years,
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: and achieved what he was looking for. I mean, think
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: about mindfulness is everywhere today and it is almost totally
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: divorced from any kind of religious connotations. It seems like
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: a neuroscience tool more than anything, the way that it's
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: totally did in the West, and that was his goal.
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: He was trying to get it to the most people possible,
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: study it scientifically, and then apply it to help people.
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: And specifically again, he was initially looking at how it
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: can help people with pain, and he came up with
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: mindfulness based stress Reduction MBSR, which is still very much
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: in use today. And then there was an offshoot too,
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: Chuck Mindfulness based cognitive therapy, and that takes CBT, which
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: is a proven type of talk therapy used extensively in
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: psychology and applies John cabot Zin's approach to mindfulness to it, right.
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think one of the big tenets here
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: is to interrupt automatic thoughts, right, And the automatic thoughts
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: that can lead to an automatic behavior. So the automatic
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: thought might just be your propensity to feel that stress
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: and reach for drink immediately and not even think like,
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: oh boy, I need a drink because I'm stressed out
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: and that'll help out. It becomes this automatic thing. And
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: he was all about and the practice of mindfulness is
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: all about disruption and disrupting that flow without judgment.
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Because one of the big things in cognitive behavioral
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: therapy is that you have a thought, your thought leads
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: to a feeling, and your feeling leads to a behavior.
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: And oftentimes it's, like you said, it's very destructive and
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: you don't even realize it's going on until your life
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: is kind of falling apart or it's certainly not as
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: good as it could be. And it doesn't even have
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: to be a drink. It could be a donut, it
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: could be yelling at a cashier at a grocery store,
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: like all sorts of different things, and you are totally
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: out of control of it. The idea behind this mindfulness,
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: adding mindfulness to cognitive behavioral therapy is that you are
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: training yourself to detach yourself from all thoughts and emotions
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: so that you can evaluate them clearly, so that none
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: of them can jump out of nowhere pounce on you,
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: and the next thing you know, you've eaten a dozen
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: donuts and had six s gotches and you have no
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: idea why. You do have the idea why, and you
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: probably haven't gotten to that point because you've stopped the
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: whole process by recognizing it the moment it began ideally,
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: theoretically on paper. That's the purpose of using mindfulness to help,
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: especially with mental health.
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a journalist named Robert Wright, and he kind
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: of put it in a way that I kind of like,
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: which was to think of your thoughts and emotions as transient.
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: So it's not like that kind of goes back to
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: the no judgment thing. You can have these bad feelings
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: and bad emotions and bad tendencies, but if you allow,
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: if you allow them to just flow through you, they
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: become transient. They don't stick around the same sort of
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: ideas that you can't why worry about things that you
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: can't control?
• 28:57
  Speaker 3: But not in.
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: A an office poster kind of way, you know what
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: I mean. Sure it runs a bit deeper than that.
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: It's not like a Pollyanna thing.
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: No, And as a matter of fact, like if you
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: want to trace it all the way back to its
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: original Buddhist roots, it's that like, we have very little,
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: if any control over life, and that recognizing that will
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: free us from all of our desires and the idea
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: that like we have to have things that we want
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: to hang on to. It like it just lets you
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: let things flow by and you can enjoy them and
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: experience them as they come. Rather than hoping for the
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: next one, needing the next doughnut, or fearing the next loss.
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: You just experience life as it comes. It's kind of
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: the point of that of understanding that everything is transient
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: and impermanent, including your own your own life, Like you're
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: going to die one day. There's ultimately the big like
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: you know, like bingo number, Yeah, Like that's ultimate is
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: you're going to die. You you yourself are impermanent and
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: so understanding that through getting there through meditation. Daily meditative
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: practice is kind of the goal.
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's interesting they found that it's even though
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: something like MBSR is more rooted in that sort of
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: neuroscience y thing and not spirituality or religion, they found
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: it's sort of a chicken in the egg deal where
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: once you do participate in MBSR, you may become more
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: spiritual as a result, even though you weren't going in.
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: But I think the reason why is because even if
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: these people don't know it, even if they're at a
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: corporate mindfulness retreat, they're engaging in a deeply spiritual practice.
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: That that it's they're kind of doing it wrong is
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: we'll see, But there's still it's still, you know, part
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: of this very long established tradition that's that actually has
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: like legs. It's not it's not mumbo jumbo like. It
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: actually has pronounced effect on the human brain, the human psyche,
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: the outlook that we have on life. And so depending
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: on the context, you're doing it, and it can be
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: very useful, it can be harmful, or it can be
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: totally useless in some cases too. But it is a
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: spiritual act. So it makes sense that it would make
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: you more interested in spirituality.
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: Well, I say we take our second break, if that's good.
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: And because we're stuff, you should know, we have to
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: talk about whether or not this works and if there
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: have been studies that tell us one way or the other.
• 31:32
  Speaker 3: So we'll get into that right after this. All right.
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: It's fun to sit around and talk about mindfulness, So fun,
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: and to just sort of zen out and lose ourselves,
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: become one with each other through these headphones.
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, man, you sound like Rory cochrane and days.
• 32:13
  Speaker 3: And confused, Marthan new Man.
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: What was his name?
• 32:17
  Speaker 3: Oh Slater?
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: Was he Slater? Maybe you give me drugs man, Yeah,
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: it's later. You're right, get some from your mother. Man.
• 32:28
  Speaker 3: It's funny.
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: I've seen him and he's been in a bunch of
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: stuff since then. It's always impossible to see him as
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: anyone other than Slater.
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: I mean, have you he was on CSI Miami. I
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: think for years and years and years.
• 32:40
  Speaker 3: You're just waiting for her whip out of Dubie.
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: Yes, and he's all clean cut and everything and just
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: still can't not see it. I totally agree with.
• 32:46
  Speaker 3: He's not fooling anybody, all right? So does this stuff work.
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: There have been plenty of studies, of course, and there
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: is a lot of evidence that mindfulness programs can help
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: people through emotional problems, through mental problems. They've done control
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: trials of MBSR programs and clinical settings and non clinical settings,
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: and they generally found that they do. And this is
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: self reported stuff obviously, but they reduce self reported anxiety, depression,
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: and stress and increase well being as opposed to people
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: who've got no treatment at all.
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so yes, I mean it does seem to be effective.
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: There's also, especially with self reporting, Chuck, that seems to
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: be like the big one that if you look at
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: studies where they're using self reporting, like it has the
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: most pronounced effect. Objective tests there does seem to register
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: some sort of effect like on the objective experience of
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: say like pain or something like that. But social psychology
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: has jumped all over this. It's like we're going to
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: study this. And there's this one study from twenty twenty
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: one which I have to give a hat tip to
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: Umi because she turned this one up. But it was
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: a study of white people who some of whom received
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: mindfulness training and a control group who received sham mindfulness training,
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: which is hilarious, and the effect that it had on
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: their willingness to help black people that they saw who
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: they saw in need and not like you need, like
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: you know, homeless or something like that. Like they would
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: be they would be subjected to a test unwittingly where
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: they'd be in a room and like a black person
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: would come in and like drop their papers, and their
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: willingness to help that person pick up the papers, or
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: if a black person entered the room and they were
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: on crutches, their willingness to give up their seat. And
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: apparently black people tend to help black people more, White
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: people tend to help white people more, or spanning people
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: tend to help Hispanic people more. They people help their
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: in group more. But this mindfulness group actually kind of
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: crossed lines way more than was expected.
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, I mean I think that kind of says
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: it all. You do help your in group more, But
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: the people that received the real mindfulness training were definitely
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: far and away more willing to step outside their end
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: group and help someone of another race.
• 35:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you know they're.
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: Going to be said for that, Yeah, And I mean
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: it was significant. Three times more is really significant statistically
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: speaking for a study and it seems like it was
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: a pretty good study. Like the fact that they had
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: sham mindfulness training ruled out the possibility that the group
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: that got mindfulness training was behaving a certain way because
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: they they thought like that's what was going to be
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: the result of it, almost like a placebo effect. So
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: the group that received sham training thought they were getting
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: mindfulness training.
• 35:40
  Speaker 3: What they like?
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: They still that's what I want to know.
• 35:42
  Speaker 3: I would love to know what sham mindfulness is. Right.
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: It's like breathing, really concentrate on all the anger, really
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: feel it.
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: They or they'd let them in like a lama's breathing
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: where they're like, I don't think that's right.
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: That doesn't feel right, started to float away.
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: It's really funny, And shout out to cal State San
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: Marcos and Professor Daniel Berry and I guess you.
• 36:07
  Speaker 3: Me for all that.
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, sure, the trifecta, Yeah sure, what's a cal State
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: San Marcos's mascot? Geez, I'm gonna bet five dollars on
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: the Lobos.
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: That sounds good.
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's go with that, all right, Los Lobos even.
• 36:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the the banless Lobos is their.
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: Mak and not coincidentally, they're halftime entertainment as well.
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: But we do need to say that there's another school
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: of thought, and it's not a competing school of thought,
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: it's just a hey, be aware that it's not always
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: great for everyone. They there's this one article you sent
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: about people that experience trauma in their lives, that have
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: buried it and it sits in their body as unconscious
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: trauma that mindfulness practices and meditation practices can dredge that
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: stuff up. Yeah, And so they found that when these
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: people they're studying them and they're doing these mindfulness practice
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: they're experiencing like rage and anxiety, and it's like whoa, whoa, whoa.
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: This is the opposite of where we're supposed to be
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: edded here. And I think they had figured out in
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: a lot of these cases it's people that are uncovering
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: these bary traumas.
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and here's where we reach like the first initial
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: part where the West has kind of screwed this up,
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: because it is unexpected when somebody in America goes to
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: a meditation retreat and tries to become more mindful and
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: they're confronted with trauma or they're confronted with rage or
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: self hatred or something like that, and they're not expecting it.
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: If you went and talked to like an actual like
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: Buddhist monk, they'd be like, well, somebody probably should have
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: told you that that's a real possibility, right that you're
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: not This isn't all. This isn't like you know, it's
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: like an acid trip. It's not always like flowers and sunshine.
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: Sometimes it's like the darkest thing you'll ever be confronted with.
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: Kind of thing, same thing. The good thing about mindfulness
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: meditation is that you can stop immediately, but it supposedly
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: in some retreats, in some situations they're like, no, you
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: got to press through. You got to press through. And
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: people are kind of enticed or forced into staying in
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: really uncomfortable trauma experiences way beyond their comfort zone. And
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: it can actually be damaging. And it's very rare from
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: what I can tell, for there be to like lasting harm,
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: but there are reports of people having to go to
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: therapy for years after having gone on basically a bad
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: trip at a meditation retreat for years years of therapy,
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: so it can happen. And I guess, like I think, Chuck,
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: there's a twenty nineteen study that found like twenty to
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: twenty five percent of people who meditate reported experiencing unwanted effects, right,
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: like negative effects that they were not planning for. And
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: that's that's the big problem. There's no there's nowhere, very
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: little warnings about this stuff. It's all treated in a
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: very pollyannish naive manner, as if like you know, America
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: in Europe got its hands on unlike the the Secret
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: the Cube from Hell Raiser is just like, this is awesome,
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: Let's figure out how to be more productive using this thing.
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: That's kind of what's going on.
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think another thing that can happen is
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: it can lead to a spiral of anxiety if you're
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: not able to get to that place that you think
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: you should be getting to by practicing it. Yeah, So
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: it becomes like this cycle where you know you're thinking, like, well,
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: I'm practicing this meditation doesn't seem to be doing anything
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: for me. Why can I not even do this right?
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: And all of a sudden, that is building upon itself
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: and creating anxieties because you feel like you're supposed to
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: reach this sort of moment of like floating bliss that
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: is I mean that's really hard to maintain. Yes, yeah,
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: I mean not maintained, but like even touch.
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: Even reach sure, and it's been packaged like that, it's
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: been marketed is something that you will just reach some flow,
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: he blissed with, And yeah, I can totally see being
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: stressed out because you don't reach it because it hasn't
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: been explained to you even what you're doing. Right. So
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: there's it's a good little short read. It's called Mindfulness,
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: Meditation and Trauma, Proceed with caution. I found it on
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: good therapy dot org. And it doesn't say like, don't
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: do this even if you know your trauma, don't meditate,
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: don't try to become mindful. It says some you know,
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: make sure you find like a good coach, a good guide,
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: a good teacher who understands how to deal with trauma
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: and can prepare you for it and can pull you
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: back and be like, don't forget life's actually good. You're good,
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: and now let's try a little more and just kind of,
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: little by little expose yourself to it rather than like
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: you know, ripping your shirt off and standing in front
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: of like the baseball pitching machine.
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: Uh, there's when it comes to physical pain. That's a
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: pretty interesting area as far as the studies have been concerned,
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: Like the idea that can it out actually help reduce
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: physical pain or at least the subjective experience of pain.
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: And you know, in some studies, in some cases, the
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: people who practice meditation do report lower subjective experience of
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: pain or what they call pain unpleasantness. So this might
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: be a little bit of a mind over matter, Like
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: the actual pain is still there, but I've gotten my
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: mind to in such a place that the unpleasantness or
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: the anticipation of that unpleasantness isn't as great as it
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: would be if I weren't able to practice that mindfulness.
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, which ties very closely into a Buddhist tenet of
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: the first arrow of sufferings, which is where everyone has
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: to experience that. Let's say you're bitten by an ant.
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: It's not a very pleasant sensation, and everybody's going to
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: experience it roughly the same. But there's also a second
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: arrow where you can be worried about being bitten by
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: an ant, and it makes the actually makes the first
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: arrow ten times worse, not just twice as bad, but
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: ten times worse. And the idea is that if you're mindful,
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: if you practice sati, you won't really experience the second arrow,
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: just the first arrow. And that's the best you can
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: hope for in this life.
• 42:07
  Speaker 3: That's right, missage Troyusa.
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: What that's from?
• 42:13
  Speaker 3: Uh?
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: I always just crack up when every time I think of
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: an arrow hitting a human body, I only think of
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: Monty Python.
• 42:21
  Speaker 3: When that guy takes the aero message Troyusa as he's dying.
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: There was one study, though, in twenty nineteen, a review
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: of studies actually that found that NBSR can reduce severity
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: of chronic pain or improve daily functioning and depression about
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: like associated with that pain, which is you know, that's
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: there's something to be said for that, Like I don't
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: think it should only be looked at as some sort
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: of hippie dippy thing like if you have real physical pain,
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: it could possibly help.
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: Yes, And yeah, for sure, I mean think that that's
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: kind of like one of the outcomes of it being
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: exposed to westernization is that it's being studied. It's actually
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: holding up in studies.
• 43:03
  Speaker 2: And boy is it being exposed Because if you work
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: for a big corporation, if you especially work in Silicon Valley,
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: chances are there are mindfulness retreats, maybe mindfulness rooms in
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: the offices where they say, hey, we know we work
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: you to death, and it's not fair. Why don't we
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: set up this little room that used to be a
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: room for you know, for your kids to come to work,
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: but we don't let that happen anymore. Used to be
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: the nursery. But we'll put you in here and you
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: can zen out and be cool. And here's one of
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: the criticisms. As long as you come back and you
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: get all that work done, we think it's a great
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: tool for you.
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: Right exactly. And not just corporations, but the military is
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: using mindfulness schools. Little kids are being taught mindfulness and
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: to meditate prisons, and there's an enormous amount of like
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: out just out there in the culture. It's gotten really popular.
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: I guess in twenty twelve, just over four percent of
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: Americans meditated. Five years later it was up to fourteen percent.
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: That's a pretty big increase in just five years, and
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: I would propose it's probably more than that now in
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: twenty twenty two. So it's everywhere. But it's also really
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: kind of lost its way, I guess once it hit
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: America and corporate America in particular, mindfulness kind of got perverted,
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: I think, is a way you could put it.
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that critique is really valid. It's great
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: that a company might take mindfulness and the consideration as
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: something beneficial for their employees, but to ignore the root cause,
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: which is you're working too many hours a week and
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: you're overworked and you can't possibly get done what you
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: should get done, and that's where this anxiety is rooted.
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: Here's a mindfulness room so you can help correct all that. Like,
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: it totally puts the onus on the employee to sort
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: of self adjust to what's probably way too much work,
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: instead of saying, hey, maybe people wouldn't be in this
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: position to begin with if they didn't have to work
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: sixty hours in a.
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: Week, right, And the same thing goes for social movements
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: as well. Like some people say, hey, you know how
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: like a lot of us are mentally ill these days.
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: That's because society is screwed up. So rather than putting
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: the onus again on the individual person just kind of
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: suck it up and deal with it in a mindful manner,
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: why don't we focus instead on these social problems that
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: are causing all of these other social problems, so what
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: we don't have to do that? And those are really
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: valid criticisms of westernized mindfulness in twenty twenties. And there's
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: actually a term for it that a guy named Miles
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: Kniel coined and another guy named Ronald Purser wrote a
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: book using that name, It's perfect mic mindfulness.
• 46:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I love that word.
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: And they're basically saying like, hey, you guys have so
• 46:05
  Speaker 2: completely detached this from ethics and morals and religion and
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: and kind of co opted something that had its roots
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: there that Yeah, you've you've there.
• 46:15
  Speaker 3: Needs to be a term for that. You've mixed micked it.
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you've.
• 46:20
  Speaker 3: You've mixed screwed it, you miffed it, You've make miffed it.
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: I like that, Uh, and that you know, you can't
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: ignore the theological roots, uh and have it be the
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: same thing.
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: And hr reps across the country say, oh, yes we can, yes,
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: and look what happens. We're really screwing people up. So
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: there's a there's like a couple of quotes I found
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: that I really feel like kind of get to the
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: heart of what happened when mindfulness came over here and
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: got got picked up by corporate America and the military
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: and just other surprising groups and maybe put to not
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: the best uses. There's a really good New York Times
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: article from back in twenty fifteen that was kind of
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: a meditation on the idea of mindfulness or the word
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: mindfulness and what it means by Virginia Heffernan, and she
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: says that what commercial mindfulness may have lost from the
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: most rigorous Buddhist tenants that it replaced is the implication
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: that suffering cannot be escaped but must be faced. And
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: that's that mispackaging, that miss marketing that we talked about,
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: That the idea that if you meditate your mindful it's
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: going to free you from all your problems, make you
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: less stressed and more productive and just happier. And that's
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: not necessarily the case, because we in the West tend
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: to really like to, like you said, avoid all of
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: the stuff that really stinks and just get as much
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: of the stuff that we like, and that's not what
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: that's meant for.
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this I think is from the same article about
• 47:56
  Speaker 2: mindful fracking. Could that be next? Putting in neuros science
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: halo around a byword for both uppers productivity and downers
• 48:04
  Speaker 2: relaxation to ensure a more compliant workforce in a more
• 48:07
  Speaker 2: prosperous c suite.
• 48:09
  Speaker 3: Right there it is.
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: And there's another one too. The Dalai Lama apparently pointed
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: out that even a suicide bomber would likely have to
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: cultivate some sort of mindfulness. It's not inherently ethical. And
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: if it's not inherently ethical, then that means that you
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: could conceivably use it to nefarious ends. And the way
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: that Buddhists for thousands of years kept it from being
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: used to nefares ends is by encasing it in wholesomeness
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: like mindfulness. Specifically, what's called right mindfulness by the Buddhists
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: is it's a wholesome approach and separating wholesome thoughts from
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: unwholesome thoughts. And if you just take the mindfulness practice
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: out of that context, you have a problem. You want
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: to read that quote from Andrew Olenski.
• 48:58
  Speaker 2: True mindfulness is deeply an inextricably embedded in the notion
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: of wholesomeness. Just as a tree removed from the forest
• 49:05
  Speaker 2: is no longer a tree but a piece of lumber,
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: so also the carrying attentiveness of mindfulness extracted from its
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: matrix of wholesome coorizing factors, denigrates into mere attention.
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, best attention. That's the best you can hope for.
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: Is it just detegrates into mere attention and not something harmful,
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: you know? So Yeah, I think it's great. I think
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: it's wonderful that people want this and they're seeking it
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: out and they're trying it. I think the people who
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: are selling it to everybody need to just package it
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: more transparently and explain the true purpose of it and
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: stop using it for productivity.
• 49:40
  Speaker 3: Agreed.
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: If you want to know more about mindfulness, go research
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: it and see if it's for you, and give it
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: a shot, and go into it with right eyes, right vision.
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: I can't remember. And since I said I can't remember,
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: of course, that means it's time for the listener mail.
• 50:00
  Speaker 2: I'm going to call this tribute to Ziggi Bombach from
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: his son Michael. We got a great email that I've
• 50:07
  Speaker 2: been conversing with Michael for the past couple of weeks
• 50:10
  Speaker 2: on this good dude and his dad was a good dude. Hey, guys,
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: longtime listener recently lost. My father had had been going
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: through a great deal of grief. My dad was at
• 50:20
  Speaker 2: high risk for catching COVID, so I made sure it
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: was my priority to keep him safe and since being
• 50:26
  Speaker 2: social wasn't an option over the past couple of years,
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: we turned to nature during the pandemic and rekindled our
• 50:31
  Speaker 2: love for the great outdoors, though he never had to
• 50:34
  Speaker 2: rekindle his. He was born in Poland and immigrated to
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: the States in the sixties and was only ever comfortable
• 50:40
  Speaker 2: in his gardener in the woods. He was a simple
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: but passionate man. So we started driving out to western
• 50:46
  Speaker 2: north New Jersey to Stokes for Est to get spring
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: water and go fishing. It's a gorgeous part of the state.
• 50:52
  Speaker 2: It was about fifty minutes each way. Perfect to introduce
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: him to my favorite podcast, Stuff you should Know. Even
• 50:58
  Speaker 2: though I had to describe to him what a pot
• 51:00
  Speaker 2: cast was, he was instantly enthralled, and I can still
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: hear him quietly asking in the car, if Chuck and
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: Josh we're going to be broadcasting today, it's just adorable.
• 51:11
  Speaker 3: Like me, He adored your.
• 51:13
  Speaker 2: Ability to convey something complex and tough information, such as
• 51:16
  Speaker 2: sweetened conversational way.
• 51:18
  Speaker 3: He would always come home and.
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: Tell my mom what he had learned was so much
• 51:22
  Speaker 2: isolation the past few years. It was warming to hear
• 51:24
  Speaker 2: him happy about all these new subjects that he was
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: learning about. You gave him that happiness and made his
• 51:29
  Speaker 2: life that much better of the last couple of years
• 51:31
  Speaker 2: of his life. I can't thank you enough for everything
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: that you continue to do. There's so much bad in
• 51:36
  Speaker 2: this world right now, and people are hardly operating at
• 51:39
  Speaker 2: their best, but you continue to do something worthwhile and
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: worth making, something worth learning. So thank you for making
• 51:46
  Speaker 2: the life of Ziggy bomb Bach a little brighter towards
• 51:48
  Speaker 2: his end.
• 51:49
  Speaker 3: And that is from.
• 51:50
  Speaker 2: Mike, and he sent me a picture of Ziggy and
• 51:53
  Speaker 2: I read the obituary. I looked it up and Ziggy
• 51:56
  Speaker 2: seemed like a great, great guy. And I had to
• 51:59
  Speaker 2: zen out to reading this so I wouldn't cry.
• 52:02
  Speaker 3: Ye have cried every time.
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: That's a really amazing email. Thank you so much. It's
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: impossible to not past judgment on that one. I'm going
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: to say, I feel very proud, Chuck.
• 52:13
  Speaker 2: That's right in this case, great judgment and ri Ip
• 52:16
  Speaker 2: Ziggy sound like a great guy.
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, ri Ip Ziggy, And thank you Mike. I'm glad
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: we could help bring you and your dad together. That's
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: pretty amazing stuff. If you want to be like Mike
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: and get in touch with us and write us the
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: email of the century, we are willing to read it.
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: You can send it to us at stuff Podcasts at
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: iHeartRadio dot com.
• 52:41
  Speaker 2: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
• 52:44
  Speaker 2: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 52:48
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