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How Mindfulness Works · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
0:04
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
0:13
Speaker 1: and there's Chuck and Jerry's here, Ish and this is
0:17
Speaker 1: stuff you should know. Ish. This is full on stuff
0:22
Speaker 1: you should know, Charles. Remember that point. I feel like
0:26
Speaker 1: it was about ten eight to ten years ago where
0:31
Speaker 1: everyone was just saying ish on the end of things
0:35
Speaker 1: instead of saying, like, you know, finding the real word
0:39
Speaker 1: that they were looking for, so so like an approximation
0:42
Speaker 1: of the word or or of the thing they were describing.
0:45
Speaker 1: So like I'm saying, no, not even that, like when
0:51
Speaker 1: there's like a real word that could be used and
0:53
Speaker 1: they would just the ish on another word. I don't
0:55
Speaker 1: know what you're talking about. No, yeah, it was. It
0:58
Speaker 1: was the thing it swept the nation? When was it?
1:01
Speaker 1: Or maybe I'm thinking of the Marcarina. That's that's what
1:04
Speaker 1: you're thinking. Okay, alright, man, that really did sweep the nature.
1:08
Speaker 1: Remember that who let the dogs out? It was like
1:11
Speaker 1: a one. Did they ever find that out? No? I
1:15
Speaker 1: think it was a rhetorical question. It's the kind of
1:19
Speaker 1: rhetorical question you could ask yourself, Chuck while you're meditating. Yeah,
1:24
Speaker 1: but first thanks thanks, but I'm gonna step all over
1:26
Speaker 1: the segway because because before we get started, Chuck, I
1:29
Speaker 1: want to do if you'll allow me, another shout out
1:33
Speaker 1: for my little niece Mela's movie, big time movie called
1:37
Speaker 1: No Exit that's coming out as far as when this
1:40
Speaker 1: episode drops tomorrow, so February, No matter when you hear this,
1:46
Speaker 1: just immediately go onto Hulu subscribe if you haven't yet,
1:50
Speaker 1: and check out my niece Mila in No Exit because
1:54
Speaker 1: she is the trailer amazing. What do you think it
1:57
Speaker 1: looks like a taut thriller? She looks fantastic from what
2:01
Speaker 1: you can tell from a trailer. You just saved all
2:04
Speaker 1: the bad parts for the movie. I don't think they did.
2:06
Speaker 1: I was reading an interview with the director and he
2:08
Speaker 1: was saying like she was. She was doing such an
2:11
Speaker 1: amazing job of being terrified and freaked out and everything
2:14
Speaker 1: that like after in between takes, like the other customers
2:17
Speaker 1: would be like are you okay? And she'd be like, yeah,
2:19
Speaker 1: why are you okay? And you know I'm acting right exactly.
2:23
Speaker 1: She's like, it's acting you like John Love. Yeah, So
2:28
Speaker 1: on Hulu No Exit February. My niece Mila just kills
2:33
Speaker 1: it there you go, can't wait. Thanks again for that, chuck,
2:37
Speaker 1: So let's get started. Thank you for not passing judgment
2:41
Speaker 1: on that either way, Uh, your re siguing because we're
2:47
Speaker 1: times passing judgment. It means I'm not being mindful because
2:50
Speaker 1: a big part of mindfulness you just did not judge. Yeah,
2:54
Speaker 1: So that's like, this is one of those ones, you know,
2:57
Speaker 1: those episodes where we just start talking about the thing
3:00
Speaker 1: without defining it. Um. This is not going to be
3:03
Speaker 1: one of those episodes because I think it would be
3:05
Speaker 1: kind of rough otherwise, you know. Yeah, And I guess
3:09
Speaker 1: if you're gonna define mindfulness, you need to kind of
3:12
Speaker 1: go back in time. I mean, I guess we could
3:15
Speaker 1: hop in the way back machine. We haven't done that,
3:17
Speaker 1: it's been a while. Let's pull the old cover off.
3:20
Speaker 1: It's quite dusty in here, and a little bit of
3:22
Speaker 1: mill do, Little mill do. There's some old crystals boxes.
3:26
Speaker 1: Those are yours? Remember you had them accidentally delivered to
3:30
Speaker 1: your house? Right, and then we went back to the
3:32
Speaker 1: old West to celebrate you're thinking of back to the future.
3:41
Speaker 1: Three ah, right, right right? I called Mary steam Virgin,
3:46
Speaker 1: meaning if I did to play her, not date her
3:48
Speaker 1: or anything, Oh, Dave Mary steam Burgin on her? Isn't that? Um?
3:54
Speaker 1: I really that's a Ted Danson's old squeeze, right, it's
3:58
Speaker 1: his current squeeze. I'm not gonna fight. Are they still together? Yeah?
4:02
Speaker 1: I think so. Gosh they've been together for a while. Yeah.
4:05
Speaker 1: Good couple. Okay, great, good stuff. So who knew we
4:09
Speaker 1: were gonna be talking about ted dancing at the beginning
4:11
Speaker 1: of Mine could richer gear, but ted dancing is a
4:15
Speaker 1: big surprise. If we get in the way back machine
4:19
Speaker 1: and go back uh in time to sort of the
4:23
Speaker 1: beginning of Buddhism, you'd have to look at the language
4:27
Speaker 1: Polly and the words sati Polly is p a l
4:32
Speaker 1: i satis s a t i. There are a lot
4:34
Speaker 1: of different words for mindfulness, but the one that we
4:37
Speaker 1: kind of identify with it's kind of been used most
4:40
Speaker 1: from Polly, which is a Middle Indo Aryan liturgical language
4:47
Speaker 1: from the early branches of Buddhism. iBOT to take in
4:50
Speaker 1: the reason that that Poully is so important is because
4:54
Speaker 1: they say that it was the language of the Buddha
4:57
Speaker 1: and at the very least it was the first language
4:59
Speaker 1: that the Buddhas were which have been passed down orally, um,
5:02
Speaker 1: we're written down in so it's like legit old school
5:05
Speaker 1: Buddhist thinking and teachings. And one of the basic parts
5:09
Speaker 1: of that is, like you said, sati, which is has
5:11
Speaker 1: been translated to mindfulness, but it was translated by a
5:15
Speaker 1: British colonial administrator, wasn't it. That's right, And it kind
5:19
Speaker 1: of more accurately as translated as memory of the present,
5:23
Speaker 1: which I think is a really kind of a cool
5:25
Speaker 1: way to look at mindfulness. Yeah. Absolutely, it really kind
5:29
Speaker 1: of reveals what what's what's going on, especially once you
5:31
Speaker 1: kind of learned a little more about it, you're like,
5:33
Speaker 1: that actually works about as perfectly as as can be.
5:37
Speaker 1: But it got it got translated, um into the word mindfulness,
5:41
Speaker 1: sati into mindfulness by a British colonial administrator in Ceylon
5:46
Speaker 1: which is now Sri Lanka, back in the eighteen eighties.
5:50
Speaker 1: So it was some British guy who said sati means
5:52
Speaker 1: mindfulness and actually kind of gave it to us today,
5:54
Speaker 1: although there was a long period where it had been forgotten.
5:58
Speaker 1: But I think you don't really talk about mindfulness even
6:01
Speaker 1: though it's changed so dramatically, especially in the last decade
6:04
Speaker 1: or so, without kind of describing what it was originally
6:09
Speaker 1: meant to describe, what it still describes if you're a
6:12
Speaker 1: practicing Buddhist um and that is that like you are
6:16
Speaker 1: not only like paying attention to the moment and um
6:21
Speaker 1: like like experiencing this moment without letting your thoughts wander
6:26
Speaker 1: to the past or the future or anything like that,
6:28
Speaker 1: but that whatever you're experiencing in the moment, no matter
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Speaker 1: what it is, you're experiencing with equanimity, which means that
6:35
Speaker 1: you're not passing judgment on it as good or bad
6:38
Speaker 1: or anything else. It just is And it sounds easy
6:42
Speaker 1: to describe, but if you've ever tried it, it's one
6:45
Speaker 1: of the hardest things a human being can never set
6:47
Speaker 1: out to do. Yeah, I mean, I think it's very
6:51
Speaker 1: very natural for human too, ah, seek out and contemplate
6:57
Speaker 1: and think about the things that feel good and please them,
7:01
Speaker 1: and to try and stuff down and get rid of
7:04
Speaker 1: and avoid things that either hurt literally hurt or emotionally hurt,
7:10
Speaker 1: or things that are painful or unpleasant. And Boyle's a
7:15
Speaker 1: that is a tough thing to overcome, my friend. Uh,
7:18
Speaker 1: just the condition of being human makes that very difficult.
7:21
Speaker 1: But yeah, and you just nailed it on the head,
7:23
Speaker 1: not once but twice, Chuck, when you said that it's
7:26
Speaker 1: a very human condition and part of sati. The point
7:30
Speaker 1: of sati as far as like Buddhists are concerned, is
7:33
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 like
7:38
Speaker 1: life and death and rebirth and to become like a
7:41
Speaker 1: truly enlightened being that's freed from all of that. And
7:45
Speaker 1: so you have to free yourself from that human condition,
7:47
Speaker 1: and a big part of that is to free yourself
7:49
Speaker 1: from yearning from wanting. Because yearning and wanting or being
7:53
Speaker 1: repelled by something and wanting to get away from it,
7:56
Speaker 1: there are two sides of the same coin as far
7:58
Speaker 1: as sati is concerned, which is um you are wishing
8:03
Speaker 1: that something is different or was different than it actually is,
8:07
Speaker 1: and then that's the basis of suffering, and suffering is
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Speaker 1: the thing that keeps you in that cycle of life
8:13
Speaker 1: and death and rebirth. So meditating to become mindful and
8:17
Speaker 1: non judgmental about your present experience is one step toward
8:22
Speaker 1: relieving yourself with suffering and then freeing yourself from that
8:25
Speaker 1: shackle being born and reborn and reborn again. Well, you
8:29
Speaker 1: and my friend have just spoken about the noble truths,
8:32
Speaker 1: in part because craving is the cause of suffering is
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Speaker 1: the second noble truth. And to cease that craving will
8:40
Speaker 1: bring about the ceasing of that suffering, which is the
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Speaker 1: third noble truth. And basically, experiencing the moment without and
8:49
Speaker 1: everything about the moment without judgment is sort of the
8:53
Speaker 1: the goal. And you know, for modern you know, we're
8:57
Speaker 1: gonna talk a lot about sort of the beginnings of
9:00
Speaker 1: mindfulness and kind of how it's become um, kind of
9:03
Speaker 1: a hip thing to do here in the United States, uh,
9:06
Speaker 1: starting in about the nineteen seventies and on and especially today.
9:10
Speaker 1: But we're we're kind of talking in American modern terms
9:13
Speaker 1: about stress and distressing and the Buddhists have a term
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Speaker 1: for that, which is duca d u k k h
9:21
Speaker 1: a uh. And that is, you know, again, to avoid
9:26
Speaker 1: or destroy something that we don't like, and what we
9:29
Speaker 1: usually don't like is something that's going to put a
9:31
Speaker 1: stress on us, right exactly. And they're saying, like, dude,
9:35
Speaker 1: this is part of the point of life. I'm reading
9:37
Speaker 1: this really amazing book by Tick not Han right now. Um,
9:41
Speaker 1: rereading it. Actually it's when I was when you just
9:43
Speaker 1: kind of go back and reread very like easy slim volume.
9:47
Speaker 1: It's called No Mud, No Lotus, and it basically says
9:50
Speaker 1: like without suffering, you can't have happiness and vice versa.
9:54
Speaker 1: Pretty pretty basic stuff. But like he really gets into
9:56
Speaker 1: explaining how to confront suffering and understand that it's just
10:01
Speaker 1: part of life. And that's a huge part of the
10:06
Speaker 1: Buddhist approach to mindfulness. It's not to get away from suffering,
10:09
Speaker 1: is to recognize it as it is and also simultaneously
10:13
Speaker 1: not make a bigger deal out of it than it is,
10:16
Speaker 1: because suffering is enough. It's bad enough as it is,
10:18
Speaker 1: but another part of the human condition is to make
10:21
Speaker 1: it way worse by anticipating it, worrying about it, um like,
10:26
Speaker 1: focusing on it after it happens. There's a lot of
10:29
Speaker 1: stuff we do to our own suffering that explodes it,
10:31
Speaker 1: and part of mindfulness training is to is to stop
10:34
Speaker 1: doing that as well too. You ain't kidding, uh, And
10:38
Speaker 1: the lack of judgment is a big, big part of
10:39
Speaker 1: all of this. And we're gonna talk quite a bit
10:42
Speaker 1: here and there about John cabot Zin, who is uh,
10:46
Speaker 1: it's like easy, far and away the sort of leader
10:49
Speaker 1: of the modern American mindfulness movement in a lot of
10:53
Speaker 1: different ways. And we'll get to him in more detail later.
10:55
Speaker 1: But he says that awareness that arises through paying attention
10:59
Speaker 1: on purpose, and that's another big part of it. It's
11:01
Speaker 1: it's a very purposeful practice. Yeah, but not meditation, which
11:05
Speaker 1: we'll get to that as well, because meditation is a
11:08
Speaker 1: true physical practice that you in mental practice, whereas mindfulness
11:11
Speaker 1: is more of a state of being that you're trying
11:13
Speaker 1: to get to. But he says on purpose in the
11:16
Speaker 1: present moment and non non judgmentally, they always have to
11:20
Speaker 1: kind of hammer home the lack of judgment being a
11:22
Speaker 1: key part right exactly. Um, And he's he's a proponent
11:27
Speaker 1: in kind of one of the founders of what you
11:30
Speaker 1: can refer to as secular mindfulness, which is this current
11:34
Speaker 1: incarnation of mindfulness that's sweeping the West. It's like you said,
11:37
Speaker 1: hip that's been kind of like removed deliberately, as we'll see,
11:41
Speaker 1: removed from its Buddhist roots and Buddhist context to make
11:44
Speaker 1: it more palatable and scientific seeming. Yeah, secular, secular stripped
11:50
Speaker 1: of all the religion and maybe we can sell it
11:53
Speaker 1: to Americans exactly, and then a but the yeah, Um,
11:57
Speaker 1: The upshot of all this, though, Chuck, is that no
12:00
Speaker 1: matter who you are, where you're coming from, if you're
12:02
Speaker 1: talking about mindfulness, you're talking about paying attention to the
12:05
Speaker 1: present moment and doing the best you can at not
12:08
Speaker 1: judging anything that's going on in that present experience and
12:12
Speaker 1: just taking it on its faith value and engaging in
12:15
Speaker 1: it fully. That's mindfulness in a nutshell. Yeah. And it's
12:18
Speaker 1: not anything that the Buddhists um had a corner on.
12:22
Speaker 1: They just probably did it better because all different kinds
12:26
Speaker 1: of religions throughout antiquity had you know, chanting or some
12:30
Speaker 1: kind of mindfulness practice, maybe prayers or through songs or dance. Uh.
12:35
Speaker 1: You know that that kind of thing has been around
12:38
Speaker 1: as long as people have been practicing religion. So the
12:41
Speaker 1: Buddhists did not invent it, but I think they got
12:43
Speaker 1: it fairly right. So, um, let's talk a little more
12:46
Speaker 1: about how we got here today, Um, historically speaking, after break,
12:51
Speaker 1: what do you think about that? It sounds great. I'm
12:53
Speaker 1: gonna breathe in the meantime, Hey, let me teach you
13:21
Speaker 1: something I've been using that tickna Han taught me, not personally,
13:25
Speaker 1: but through his writing in a book that was published
13:28
Speaker 1: that I purchased with money. Smash your hand with a hammer, Yeah,
13:32
Speaker 1: he said, try to focus on anything else chump. Uh.
13:36
Speaker 1: There's a bunch of different mantras you can say, and
13:39
Speaker 1: I'm not even sure that's the right word, but um,
13:41
Speaker 1: one that I keep using is And it's just striking
13:44
Speaker 1: what taking a breath and deliberately focusing on that breath,
13:48
Speaker 1: just breathing in once and breathing out once can do
13:51
Speaker 1: to like just suck you right out of wherever your
13:54
Speaker 1: mind is, um, in the past or the future. It's
13:57
Speaker 1: it's really striking what how it can do that? But um,
14:01
Speaker 1: his was, Um, it's a take breathing in. I noticed
14:06
Speaker 1: that I'm alive and breathing out. I'm happy to be alive,
14:11
Speaker 1: and just doing it once like immediately brings me back
14:14
Speaker 1: into the present moment. And it's really cool. I like it.
14:17
Speaker 1: It's all very new for me, but I think it's Uh,
14:19
Speaker 1: it's pretty cool. Yeah, there's a lot of value there. Um.
14:23
Speaker 1: And you know, you can like practice something like this
14:26
Speaker 1: and those breathing techniques. It's not exclusive to mindfulness or meditation.
14:31
Speaker 1: Or Buddhism. Uh. You know, that's a great technique if
14:35
Speaker 1: you have kids. I found that, you know, with if
14:38
Speaker 1: my daughter is having a bad time, just kind of
14:40
Speaker 1: get her to slow down and take a couple of
14:42
Speaker 1: good deep breaths. Always a good thing to do. Uh.
14:46
Speaker 1: And Emily, who you know, someone who has a lot
14:48
Speaker 1: of anxieties in her life as a struggling small business owner.
14:52
Speaker 1: We will do this thing where we have hug breathing,
14:56
Speaker 1: where I will go up to her and we will
14:59
Speaker 1: have a good tight bear hug embrace and we'll breathe
15:02
Speaker 1: in together and it's sort of like doubles the power
15:06
Speaker 1: of it. Wow, that's neat, Chuck, Is that your own?
15:09
Speaker 1: Did you come up with that? Yeah? I mean I'm sure.
15:11
Speaker 1: I mean I didn't get it from anywhere, but I'm
15:13
Speaker 1: sure I didn't invent that. It sounds like a biking
15:17
Speaker 1: mindfulness like Hell's Angels. Sure, yeah, that's the Hell's Angels technique.
15:24
Speaker 1: You came up. You can call it whatever you want.
15:26
Speaker 1: It's your invention. It's a good one. Well. Yeah, there's
15:28
Speaker 1: something about breathing together that close physically. It's it's pretty powerful.
15:33
Speaker 1: So if you if you went back, Um, a few
15:36
Speaker 1: hundred years, a couple hundred years even, and you spoke
15:39
Speaker 1: to any Buddhists around the world and said, hey, how
15:41
Speaker 1: often do you do mindfulness meditation? They would look at
15:45
Speaker 1: you like they had no idea where you're talking about.
15:48
Speaker 1: And if you said, you know, sati, they'd say, oh,
15:50
Speaker 1: that's not for us. That's for like the monks and
15:52
Speaker 1: the nuns up in the caves in the mountains, Like,
15:56
Speaker 1: we don't do that kind of stuff where sup For Buddhists.
15:58
Speaker 1: We care about morality and we worship local deities and
16:01
Speaker 1: all that stuff. But that's that's kind of advance that's
16:04
Speaker 1: more than than the average Buddhist does. And it wasn't
16:08
Speaker 1: until I think the late nineteenth century in Burma that
16:11
Speaker 1: that was finally kind of broken up and and meditation
16:15
Speaker 1: and mindfulness together, we're kind of introduced for the first
16:18
Speaker 1: time to like lay Buddhists, like just the normal, everyday,
16:22
Speaker 1: average Buddhists living their life. Yeah, this is pretty cool. Like,
16:25
Speaker 1: I know, we love it when we can kind of
16:27
Speaker 1: pinpoint when things happen or when things change. Uh, And
16:31
Speaker 1: this is one of them. On November five, this is
16:35
Speaker 1: when the British Imperial army uh conquered Burma and said, King, uh,
16:41
Speaker 1: we're gonna mispronounce some of these thebol maybe. I think
16:44
Speaker 1: that's right, you're out of here. And that king was
16:48
Speaker 1: promoting mindfulness and promoting Buddhist institutions throughout the nation. The
16:53
Speaker 1: Brits of course, said, now we're not gonna really do that.
16:56
Speaker 1: So it fell to the lay people to get organized,
16:59
Speaker 1: to find new places to meet, uh, to find their
17:02
Speaker 1: own you know, gathering grounds, and a lot of times
17:06
Speaker 1: these were monasteries and it would go through monks, but
17:09
Speaker 1: they would it basically went to them to kind of
17:12
Speaker 1: figure it out because it wasn't I don't want to
17:14
Speaker 1: say state sponsored, but it kind of state sponsored, yeah,
17:17
Speaker 1: or state supported or something like that. Yeah, yeah, but
17:20
Speaker 1: so and so rather than being like, oh, I don't
17:23
Speaker 1: know who, I guess we're not Buddhists anymore, they took
17:26
Speaker 1: it by the horns and like they did something with it.
17:28
Speaker 1: But one of the outcroppings of that was that like
17:31
Speaker 1: these monks who used to just go meditate out in
17:34
Speaker 1: the like in the mountains or the hills or in
17:36
Speaker 1: the woods, were now now had audiences of like everyday
17:40
Speaker 1: people who were practicing Buddhists that they were teaching this
17:42
Speaker 1: stuff too, and it was it was one of these guys,
17:46
Speaker 1: Letty Sayado, who was a Buddhist monk, who said, you
17:50
Speaker 1: know what, this isn't just for us, this is for everybody.
17:53
Speaker 1: And closely in Letty Sayadow's footsteps came Minga and sayo
17:59
Speaker 1: say y aw, say yea. I think that's right, and
18:03
Speaker 1: that he that monk was the first one to actually
18:06
Speaker 1: teach um mindfulness and meditation to regular people, I think
18:12
Speaker 1: around nineteen eleven. Yeah, I mean it's cool stuff. Like
18:15
Speaker 1: I love the idea that Letty uh say Adel kind
18:18
Speaker 1: of put forth, which was you don't have to go
18:21
Speaker 1: to a monastery even like we've set these up for
18:23
Speaker 1: you and you can. You don't have to retreat to
18:25
Speaker 1: a cave. You don't have to you don't even have
18:28
Speaker 1: to go into a deep meditative state or anything like.
18:31
Speaker 1: Just momentary bits of mindfulness are very helpful. Uh. And
18:36
Speaker 1: that's a good way to reach regular lay people. And
18:39
Speaker 1: I think through practice is when Sail came along and said, hey,
18:43
Speaker 1: that all sounds great, and buddy, I'm gonna teach it right,
18:47
Speaker 1: so the the people in what is now my me
18:51
Speaker 1: and Mar are the ones who um kind of broke out,
18:54
Speaker 1: broke mindfulness and meditation out of it's it's little slumber
18:59
Speaker 1: sure cage or something like that, and democratized it a
19:03
Speaker 1: little bit. But it was as far as the people
19:05
Speaker 1: in the West are concerned, it was the Japanese and
19:08
Speaker 1: their development of Zen Buddhism that we have to thank
19:12
Speaker 1: because this is you can pretty much trace a direct
19:14
Speaker 1: line between um, the mindfulness and the meditation and the
19:19
Speaker 1: approach to Buddhism in the West today back to the
19:23
Speaker 1: twentieth century Japan and specifically a guy named Dai Setsu
19:29
Speaker 1: Ta Taro d T. Suzuki. So d T. Suzuki was
19:34
Speaker 1: kind of a what's called a Buddhist modernist thinker who said, Um,
19:39
Speaker 1: there's different things we can do with this, but this
19:41
Speaker 1: approach is a little more rationally, a little less dogmatically,
19:44
Speaker 1: and open it up to people like our friends and
19:46
Speaker 1: what's soon to be me and Mar and um. Not
19:50
Speaker 1: only that, let's let's start relating to the West a
19:53
Speaker 1: little more. And DTI Suzuki actually kind of carried this message,
19:57
Speaker 1: this idea of Zen Buddhism with him over to America
20:01
Speaker 1: in Europe, and it just started to catch on like wildfire. Yeah.
20:05
Speaker 1: I think it's really interesting too that it was another
20:07
Speaker 1: active war that led to you know, that helped give
20:10
Speaker 1: rise to someone like Suzuki, just like when the Brits
20:14
Speaker 1: over threw Burma, when the U. S. Navy attacked Tokyo
20:17
Speaker 1: Harbor in eighteen fifty three. Uh, there was you know,
20:22
Speaker 1: basically Japan was like, you know, we gotta we gotta
20:25
Speaker 1: start relating to the West a little bit more and
20:27
Speaker 1: sort of modernize. And this was known as the Meiji Restoration.
20:31
Speaker 1: And part of that was saying, hey, Shinto is going
20:35
Speaker 1: to be our religion, our main religion, and not Buddhism,
20:38
Speaker 1: which led the Buddhist to say, hey, maybe we should
20:41
Speaker 1: modernize our religion as well, to you know, so we
20:44
Speaker 1: don't get left by the wayside. And that gave rise
20:46
Speaker 1: to someone like Deti Suzuki. Right. So it was from
20:50
Speaker 1: that modernization that um, Buddhist modernism came about. And it's
20:54
Speaker 1: basically what you would recognize as Buddhism today, like very thoughtful,
20:58
Speaker 1: very um uh, interior dwelling, um, the idea that the
21:03
Speaker 1: universe has all connected. All these were like Buddhist thoughts before,
21:06
Speaker 1: but it was it was Buddhism allowing itself to be
21:09
Speaker 1: influenced by Modernism and by other groups like the Romantics
21:13
Speaker 1: and the Transcendentalists, right, so they jumped on it big time.
21:17
Speaker 1: It was pretty It was like a confluence of perfect
21:20
Speaker 1: timing as far as coming to the United States and
21:23
Speaker 1: like the counterculture ready for this, but in a weird way.
21:26
Speaker 1: It was like the United States, unbeknownst to the counterculture
21:29
Speaker 1: Beats and then later the Hippies um that their predecessors,
21:34
Speaker 1: like the Transidentalists, had had pre influenced what was coming
21:38
Speaker 1: back to them. So it was already in a very
21:41
Speaker 1: palatable form for Americans who were open to the idea
21:44
Speaker 1: of like mind expansion and taking acid and um, you know,
21:48
Speaker 1: and meditating and were just open to the ideas of
21:51
Speaker 1: other cultures of becoming like more in tune with the universe.
21:55
Speaker 1: It was they were just waiting for it, and it
21:57
Speaker 1: came to them in the and in the briefcase I
22:01
Speaker 1: guess of D. T. Suzuki um, and it just kind
22:04
Speaker 1: of took off from there. So the idea everything we
22:07
Speaker 1: understand about mindfulness and meditation you can trace back to
22:10
Speaker 1: like D. T. Suzuki in those beats absolutely. And there
22:14
Speaker 1: were three people in particular, uh, in the seventies and
22:18
Speaker 1: sixties and seventies practicing this, Joseph Goldstein, Jack Cornfield and
22:23
Speaker 1: Sharon Salzburg who were not together but they studied separately
22:28
Speaker 1: meditation in Burma, and then the mid seventies founded the
22:31
Speaker 1: Insight Meditation Society in Massachusetts, which became sort of the
22:35
Speaker 1: center of the v Pasana meditation movement here in the
22:40
Speaker 1: United States. And they're they're still around, they're still doing
22:43
Speaker 1: their thing. So um, it was from that same group.
22:48
Speaker 1: There was actually a time where John cabot z In,
22:51
Speaker 1: the guy you we mentioned earlier ze I, by the way,
22:55
Speaker 1: not z In. That would be too far on the nose.
22:58
Speaker 1: Oh wait, what if his name was spelled z E
23:03
Speaker 1: n Oh, I got boy. I was not paying to
23:08
Speaker 1: the current experience very well, I'm sorry. That'd be like
23:13
Speaker 1: a boxer being named boxer. Uh, yeah, it would be right.
23:18
Speaker 1: I was for some reason, I was going more towards
23:21
Speaker 1: the um cabernets in. Yeah. So he's known as the
23:28
Speaker 1: godfather of modern mindfulness according to The Guardian at least,
23:33
Speaker 1: which is a pretty legit newspaper. Um, and by the way,
23:37
Speaker 1: thank you also to Olivia for helping us out with
23:39
Speaker 1: this one. Chuck. She did, she did, um. But John
23:44
Speaker 1: cabot Zin was among those people Jack Cornfield, great name,
23:48
Speaker 1: Sharon Salzburg, and J. Joseph Goldstein. He actually taught at
23:52
Speaker 1: their UM Insight Meditation Society, and he was a big
23:56
Speaker 1: time practitioner of Zen Buddhism and he had he was
24:00
Speaker 1: on like, uh, I guess, a meditation retreat and he
24:03
Speaker 1: had a bit of insight well, I guess an epiphany
24:06
Speaker 1: is probably what you call it. That he was meant
24:09
Speaker 1: to help apply Buddhist techniques to help people who are
24:14
Speaker 1: in pain. He had either a microbiology or molecular biology
24:17
Speaker 1: degree and he ended up applying it to medicine and
24:21
Speaker 1: figuring out how to join Buddhist practices and medicine to
24:25
Speaker 1: help people in the seventies and it really started to
24:29
Speaker 1: take off from there. Yeah. I mean he sort of
24:32
Speaker 1: had the same idea as previous UH cultures, which was, hey,
24:36
Speaker 1: if we want to UH and not sell for money,
24:39
Speaker 1: but if we want to popularize this, we should get
24:42
Speaker 1: a little bit away from the religion part, the sort
24:45
Speaker 1: of hippie dippy new Agi part. And he really wanted
24:49
Speaker 1: to start talking in concrete terms about things that everyone
24:52
Speaker 1: worried about, which was stress, and like, if you want
24:55
Speaker 1: to make your life less stressful, here's here's a way
24:59
Speaker 1: to do it, and more on mindfulness and less on meditation,
25:02
Speaker 1: which was still a tough sell to mainstream America and
25:06
Speaker 1: still is today. I think, yeah, but it's gotten less
25:09
Speaker 1: and less. I feel like if he finally overcame the
25:14
Speaker 1: threshold that was you know, keeping it back in the
25:18
Speaker 1: last like five ten years, and achieved what he was
25:21
Speaker 1: looking for. I mean, think about mindfulness is everywhere today
25:25
Speaker 1: and it is almost totally divorced from any kind of
25:30
Speaker 1: religious connotations. It seems like a neuroscience tool more than
25:33
Speaker 1: anything the way that it stated in the West, and
25:36
Speaker 1: that was his goal. He he was trying to to
25:40
Speaker 1: get it to the most people possible, Uh, study it scientifically,
25:44
Speaker 1: and then apply it to help people. And specifically again,
25:48
Speaker 1: he was initially looking at how it can help people
25:51
Speaker 1: with pain. Um, and he came up with mindfulness based
25:55
Speaker 1: stress reduction m B s R, which is still very
25:59
Speaker 1: much in use today. And then there was an offshoot
26:02
Speaker 1: to chuck mindfulness based cognitive therapy and UM, that's that
26:07
Speaker 1: takes CBT which is a proven type of talk therapy
26:12
Speaker 1: UM used extensively in psychology and and applies John cabot
26:17
Speaker 1: Zin's approach to mindfulness to it, right. Yeah, And I
26:21
Speaker 1: think one of the big tenants here is to interrupt
26:25
Speaker 1: automatic thoughts and the automatic thoughts that can lead to
26:28
Speaker 1: an automatic behavior. So the automatic thought might just be
26:33
Speaker 1: your propensity to feel that stress and reach for a
26:37
Speaker 1: drink immediately and not even think like, oh boy, I
26:40
Speaker 1: need a drink because I'm stressed out and that will
26:42
Speaker 1: help out. It becomes this automatic thing. And he was
26:45
Speaker 1: all about and the practice of mindfulness is all about
26:48
Speaker 1: disruption and disrupting that flow without judgment. Yeah, Because one
26:53
Speaker 1: of the big things in cognitive behavioral therapy is that
26:57
Speaker 1: you have a thought, your thought leads to a feeling,
26:59
Speaker 1: and your feeling leads to a behavior. And oftentimes it's,
27:02
Speaker 1: like you said, it's very destructive and you don't even
27:04
Speaker 1: realize it's going on UM until your life is kind
27:08
Speaker 1: of falling apart or it's certainly not as good as
27:10
Speaker 1: it could be. And it doesn't even have to be
27:12
Speaker 1: a drink. It could be a donut, It could be
27:15
Speaker 1: yelling at at a cashier, at a um, you know,
27:18
Speaker 1: a grocery store like all sorts of different things, and
27:21
Speaker 1: you are totally out of control of it. The idea
27:24
Speaker 1: behind this mindfulness, adding mindfulness to cognitive behavioral therapy is
27:29
Speaker 1: that you are training yourself to detach yourself from all
27:34
Speaker 1: thoughts and emotions so that you can evaluate them clearly,
27:37
Speaker 1: so that none of them can jump out of nowhere
27:39
Speaker 1: pounce on you. And the next thing you know, you've
27:42
Speaker 1: eaten a dozen donuts and had six scotches and you
27:45
Speaker 1: have no idea why. You do have the idea why,
27:47
Speaker 1: and you probably haven't gotten to that point because you've
27:50
Speaker 1: stopped the whole process by recognizing it the moment it
27:53
Speaker 1: began ideally theoretically on paper. That's the purpose of you
28:00
Speaker 1: mindfulness to help, especially with with mental health. Yeah, there's
28:04
Speaker 1: um a journalist named Robert Wright, and he kind of
28:07
Speaker 1: put it in a way that I kind of like,
28:09
Speaker 1: which was to think of your thoughts and emotions as transient.
28:13
Speaker 1: So it's not like that kind of goes back to
28:15
Speaker 1: the no judgment thing. You can have these bad feelings
28:19
Speaker 1: and bad emotions and bad tendencies, but if you allow,
28:23
Speaker 1: if you allow them to just flow through you, they
28:24
Speaker 1: become transient, they don't stick around. Uh, the same sort
28:29
Speaker 1: of ideas that you you can't, um, why worry about
28:33
Speaker 1: things that you can't control? But not in a uh
28:38
Speaker 1: an office poster kind of way, you know what I mean.
28:42
Speaker 1: It runs a bit deeper than that. It's not like
28:46
Speaker 1: a Pollyanna thing. No. And as a matter of fact,
28:48
Speaker 1: like if you want to trace it all the way
28:50
Speaker 1: back to its original Buddhist roots, it's that like, we
28:53
Speaker 1: have very little, if any control over life, and that
28:57
Speaker 1: recognizing that will free us for um, all of our
29:01
Speaker 1: desires and the idea that like we have to have
29:03
Speaker 1: things and we want to hang onto it. Like it
29:05
Speaker 1: just lets you let things flow by and you can
29:09
Speaker 1: enjoy them and experience them as they come, rather than
29:12
Speaker 1: hoping for the next one, needing the next donut um
29:16
Speaker 1: or fearing the next loss. Uh, you just experience life
29:20
Speaker 1: as it comes. That's kind of the point of that
29:23
Speaker 1: of of understanding that everything is transient and impermanent, including
29:27
Speaker 1: your own your own life, Like you're going to die
29:29
Speaker 1: one day. There's ultimately the big like you know, like
29:34
Speaker 1: bingo number. Yeah, Like that's ultimately what it's leading is
29:38
Speaker 1: you're going to die you're you, yourself are impermanent, and
29:41
Speaker 1: so understanding that through getting there through meditation, daily meditative
29:46
Speaker 1: practice UM is is kind of the goal. Yeah, and
29:50
Speaker 1: it's interesting they found that it's um even though something
29:54
Speaker 1: like MBSR is more rooted in that sort of neuroscience
29:58
Speaker 1: e thing and not uh, spirituality or religion. They found
30:02
Speaker 1: it's sort of a chicken in the egg deal where
30:05
Speaker 1: once you do participate m m BSR, you may become
30:09
Speaker 1: more spiritual as a result, even though you weren't going in.
30:12
Speaker 1: But I think the reason why is because even if
30:14
Speaker 1: these people don't know it, even if they're at a
30:16
Speaker 1: corporate mindfulness retreat, they're engaging in a deeply spiritual practice
30:24
Speaker 1: that that it's they're kind of doing it wrong is
30:26
Speaker 1: we'll see, but there's still it's still you know, part
30:29
Speaker 1: of this very long established tradition that's that actually has
30:33
Speaker 1: like legs. It's not it's not mumbo jumbo like. It
30:36
Speaker 1: actually has a pronounced effect on on the human brain,
30:40
Speaker 1: the human psyche, the outlook that we have on life.
30:44
Speaker 1: And so depending on the context you're doing it, and
30:46
Speaker 1: it can be very useful, it can be harmful, or
30:49
Speaker 1: it can be totally useless in some cases too, But
30:52
Speaker 1: it is a spiritual act, so it makes sense that
30:54
Speaker 1: it would make you more interested in spirituality. Well, I
30:58
Speaker 1: say we take our second break, if that's good, And
31:02
Speaker 1: because we're stuff, you should know, we have to talk
31:04
Speaker 1: about whether or not this works and if there have
31:07
Speaker 1: been studies that tell us one way or the other.
31:10
Speaker 1: So we'll get into that right after this. All right,
31:35
Speaker 1: it's fun to sit around and talk about mindfulness and
31:39
Speaker 1: to just sort of zen out and lose ourselves, become
31:44
Speaker 1: one with each other through these headphones. Yeah, man, you
31:48
Speaker 1: sound like Rory Cochrane and days are confused. The new
31:52
Speaker 1: man what was his name? Oh Slater? Was he Slater?
31:58
Speaker 1: Maybe Peter? You happy? Give me drugs, man, Yeah, it's later,
32:01
Speaker 1: you're right, get some from your mother. Man. It's funny.
32:06
Speaker 1: I've seen him and he's been in a bunch of
32:08
Speaker 1: stuff since then, and it's it's always impossible to see
32:11
Speaker 1: him as anyone other than Slater. I mean, have you
32:13
Speaker 1: he was on CSI Miami. I think for years and
32:16
Speaker 1: years and years you're just waiting from her whip out
32:18
Speaker 1: of Dubio. Yes, and he's all clean cut and everything,
32:21
Speaker 1: and I still can't not see it. I totally agree
32:24
Speaker 1: with He's not fooling anybody, all right, So does this
32:28
Speaker 1: stuff work? Could? There have been plenty of studies, of course,
32:31
Speaker 1: and there is a lot of evidence that mindfulness programs
32:35
Speaker 1: can help people through emotional problems, through mental problems. Uh.
32:39
Speaker 1: They've done controlled trials of MBSR programs and clinical settings
32:43
Speaker 1: and non clinical settings, and they generally found that they do.
32:48
Speaker 1: And this is self reported stuff obviously, but they reduce
32:51
Speaker 1: self reported anxiety depression uh and stress and increase well
32:56
Speaker 1: being as opposed to people who got no treatment at all. Yeah,
33:00
Speaker 1: so yes, it's I mean, it does seem to be effective. Um.
33:03
Speaker 1: There's also especially with self reporting chok that seems to
33:07
Speaker 1: be like the big one that if you if you
33:09
Speaker 1: look at studies where they're using self reporting, like it
33:12
Speaker 1: has the most pronounced effect um. Objective tests there does
33:17
Speaker 1: seem to register some sort of effect like on the
33:19
Speaker 1: objective experience of say like pain or something like that.
33:24
Speaker 1: But social psychology has jumped all over this. It's like
33:27
Speaker 1: we're going to study this, um. And there's this one
33:30
Speaker 1: study from which I have to give a hat tip
33:34
Speaker 1: to you mean because she turned this one up. Um.
33:36
Speaker 1: But it was a study of white people who some
33:40
Speaker 1: of whom received mindfulness training and a control group who
33:45
Speaker 1: received sham mindfulness training, which is hilarious, and the effect
33:51
Speaker 1: that it had on their willingness to help black people
33:54
Speaker 1: that they saw who they saw in need, um and
33:57
Speaker 1: not like you need like you know, homeless or something
33:59
Speaker 1: like that. Like um, they would be they would be
34:01
Speaker 1: subjected to a test unwittingly where they be in a
34:04
Speaker 1: room and like a black person would come in and
34:06
Speaker 1: like drop their papers, and their their willingness to help
34:09
Speaker 1: that person pick up the papers, or if a black
34:12
Speaker 1: person entered the room and they were on crutches, their
34:14
Speaker 1: willingness to give up their seat. And apparently black people
34:17
Speaker 1: tend to help black people more. White people tend to
34:19
Speaker 1: help white people more. Spanning people tend to help hispanning
34:22
Speaker 1: people more. They people help their in group more. But
34:25
Speaker 1: this mindfulness group, um actually kind of cross lines way
34:29
Speaker 1: more than than was expected. Right, Yeah, I mean I
34:33
Speaker 1: think that kind of says it all. You you do
34:36
Speaker 1: help your in group more. But the people that received
34:39
Speaker 1: the real mindfulness training, we're definitely far and away more
34:43
Speaker 1: willing to step outside there in group and help someone
34:46
Speaker 1: of another race. Yeah, let's you know, there's going to
34:48
Speaker 1: be said for that. Yeah, and I mean it was
34:50
Speaker 1: significant three times more. It's really significant statistically speaking for
34:54
Speaker 1: a study, and it seems like it was a pretty
34:56
Speaker 1: good study. Like the fact that they had sham my
35:00
Speaker 1: canfulness training ruled out the possibility that the group that
35:04
Speaker 1: got mindfulness training was behaving a certain way because they
35:07
Speaker 1: thought like that's what was going to be the result
35:10
Speaker 1: of it, almost like a placebo effect. So the group
35:14
Speaker 1: that received sham training thought they were getting mindfulness training.
35:18
Speaker 1: They still that's what I want to know. I would
35:20
Speaker 1: love to know what sham mindfulness right. It's like breathing,
35:24
Speaker 1: really concentrate on all the anger, really feel it. They
35:30
Speaker 1: or they'd let him in like uh, Lama's breathing where
35:32
Speaker 1: they're like, I don't think that's right. That doesn't feel right.
35:37
Speaker 1: They started to float away. It's really funny and shout
35:40
Speaker 1: out to cal State San Marcos and Professor Daniel Berry
35:44
Speaker 1: and I guess you me, yeah, sure, the trifecta. Yeah sure,
35:49
Speaker 1: what what's cal State Sam Marcos is the mascot? Geez,
35:54
Speaker 1: I'm gonna bet five dollars on the lobos. That sounds good. Okay,
35:59
Speaker 1: let's go with that, alright, Los Lobos even, Yeah, that's
36:03
Speaker 1: the bandless Lobo sys their magic and not coincidentally their
36:08
Speaker 1: halftime entertainment as well. Um, but we do need to
36:14
Speaker 1: say that, Uh, there's another school of thought, and it's
36:17
Speaker 1: not a a competing school of thought. It's just to hey,
36:20
Speaker 1: be aware that it's not always great for everyone. Uh.
36:25
Speaker 1: They there's this one article you said about people that
36:27
Speaker 1: experience trauma in their lives that have buried it and
36:31
Speaker 1: it sits in their body, is unconscious trauma that mindfulness
36:35
Speaker 1: practices and meditation practices can dredge that stuff up. And
36:39
Speaker 1: so they found that when these people they're studying them
36:41
Speaker 1: and they're doing these mindfulness practice they're experiencing like rage
36:45
Speaker 1: and anxiety, and it's like whoa, whoa, whoa. This is
36:48
Speaker 1: the opposite of where we're supposed to be headed here.
36:51
Speaker 1: And I think they have figured out in a lot
36:52
Speaker 1: of these cases it's people that are uncovering these buried traumas. Yeah,
36:57
Speaker 1: and here's where we reach like the first initial part
37:00
Speaker 1: where the West has kind of screwed this up because
37:04
Speaker 1: it is unexpected when somebody in America goes to a
37:08
Speaker 1: meditation retreat and tries to become more mindful, and they're
37:11
Speaker 1: confronted with trauma where they're confronted with rage or self
37:15
Speaker 1: hatred or something like that, and they're not expecting it.
37:18
Speaker 1: If you went and talked to like an actual like
37:20
Speaker 1: Buddhist monk, they'd be like, well, somebody probably should have
37:23
Speaker 1: told you that that's a real possibility that you're not
37:26
Speaker 1: This isn't all, This isn't like you know, it's like
37:28
Speaker 1: an acid trip. It's not always like flowers and sunshine.
37:31
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's like the darkest thing you'll ever be confronted with.
37:34
Speaker 1: Kind of thing, same thing. The good thing about mindfulness
37:38
Speaker 1: meditation is that you can stop immediately, but it's supposedly
37:42
Speaker 1: in some some retreats, in some situations they're like, no,
37:45
Speaker 1: you've gotta press through. You gotta press through. And people
37:48
Speaker 1: are kind of um enticed or forced into staying in
37:52
Speaker 1: really uncomfortable trauma experiences um way beyond their comfort zone,
37:57
Speaker 1: and it can actually be damaging, and it's very rare
38:00
Speaker 1: from what I can tell, for their be like like
38:04
Speaker 1: lasting harm. But there are reports of people having to
38:08
Speaker 1: go to therapy for years after having gone on basically
38:11
Speaker 1: a bad trip at a meditation retreat for years years
38:15
Speaker 1: of therapy. Um, so it can happen. And I guess,
38:20
Speaker 1: like I think, Chuck, there's a two thousand nineteen study
38:22
Speaker 1: that found like twenty of people who meditate reported experiencing
38:28
Speaker 1: unwanted effects, right, like negative effects that they were not
38:32
Speaker 1: planning for. And that's the thing that's the big problem.
38:35
Speaker 1: There's no there's nowhere, very little warnings about this stuff.
38:39
Speaker 1: It's all treated in a very pollyannish naive manner, as
38:43
Speaker 1: if like you know, America and Europe got its hands
38:46
Speaker 1: on l the the Secret the Cube from hell Raisers,
38:50
Speaker 1: just like this is awesome. Let's figure out how to
38:52
Speaker 1: be more productive using this thing. That's kind of what's
38:55
Speaker 1: going on. Yeah, And I think another thing that can
38:58
Speaker 1: happen is uh uh. It can lead to a spiral
39:01
Speaker 1: of anxiety if you're not able to get to that
39:05
Speaker 1: place that you think you should be getting to by
39:06
Speaker 1: practicing it. So it becomes like this cycle where you
39:10
Speaker 1: know you're thinking, like, when practicing this meditation doesn't seem
39:13
Speaker 1: to be doing anything for me, why can I not
39:15
Speaker 1: even do this right? And all of a sudden that
39:18
Speaker 1: is building upon itself and creating anxieties because you feel
39:22
Speaker 1: like you're supposed to reach this sort of moment of
39:24
Speaker 1: like float floaty bliss that is I mean that's really
39:28
Speaker 1: hard to maintain, yes, but I mean not maintained, but
39:31
Speaker 1: like even touch even reach sure, And it's been packaged
39:34
Speaker 1: like that, it's been marketed, is something that you will
39:36
Speaker 1: just read some floaty bliss with and yeah, I can
39:38
Speaker 1: totally see being stressed out because you don't reach it
39:41
Speaker 1: because it hasn't been explained to you even what you're doing. Right. So, um,
39:45
Speaker 1: there's a it's a it's a good little short read.
39:47
Speaker 1: It's called Mindfulness, Meditation and Trauma Proceed with Caution. I
39:50
Speaker 1: found it on good therapy dot org. And it it
39:54
Speaker 1: doesn't say like, don't do this even if you know
39:56
Speaker 1: your trauma, don't meditate, don't try to become mindful. It
39:59
Speaker 1: says some you know, make sure you find like a
40:02
Speaker 1: good coach, a good guide, a good teacher who understands
40:05
Speaker 1: how to deal with trauma and can prepare you for
40:07
Speaker 1: it and can pull you back and be like, don't forget.
40:10
Speaker 1: Life's actually good. You're good, and now let's try a
40:12
Speaker 1: little more and just kind of little by little expose
40:15
Speaker 1: yourself to it rather than like you know, ripping your
40:18
Speaker 1: shirt off and standing in front of like the baseball
40:20
Speaker 1: pitching machine. Uh. There's when it comes to physical pain,
40:24
Speaker 1: that's a pretty interesting area as far as the studies
40:28
Speaker 1: have been concerned, like the idea that can it out
40:32
Speaker 1: actually help reduce physical pain or at least the subjective
40:36
Speaker 1: experience of pain. And you know, in some studies, in
40:39
Speaker 1: some cases the men people who practice meditation do report
40:44
Speaker 1: lower subjective experience of pain or what they call pain unpleasantness.
40:49
Speaker 1: So this might be a little bit of a mind
40:52
Speaker 1: over matter, Like the actual pain is still there, but
40:56
Speaker 1: I've gotten my mind too in such a place that
40:59
Speaker 1: the unpleasantness or the anticipation of that unpleasantness isn't as
41:03
Speaker 1: great as it would be if I weren't able to
41:04
Speaker 1: practice that mindfulness. Yeah, as which ties very closely into
41:09
Speaker 1: a Buddhist tenant of the first arrow of sufferings, which
41:13
Speaker 1: is where everyone has to experience that. Let's say you're
41:16
Speaker 1: bitten by an aunt. It's not a very pleasant sensation,
41:20
Speaker 1: and everybody's going to experience it roughly the same. But
41:23
Speaker 1: there's also a second arrow where you can be worried
41:26
Speaker 1: about being bitten by an aunt and it makes the
41:28
Speaker 1: actually makes the first arrow ten times worse, not just
41:31
Speaker 1: twice as bad, but ten times worse. And the idea
41:34
Speaker 1: is that if you're mindful, if you practice um sati,
41:38
Speaker 1: you won't really experience a second arrow, just the first arrow.
41:42
Speaker 1: And that's the best you can hope for in this life.
41:45
Speaker 1: That's right, Mr Roisa, what it's from. Oh, it's just
41:52
Speaker 1: correct up when every time I think of an arrow
41:54
Speaker 1: hitting a human body, I only think of Monty Python
41:58
Speaker 1: when that guy takes a arrow message to you, so
42:01
Speaker 1: as he's dying. Uh. There was one study though, in
42:04
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, a review of studies actually that found the
42:07
Speaker 1: NBSR can reduce severity of chronic pain or improved daily
42:11
Speaker 1: functioning and depression about like associated with that pain, which
42:15
Speaker 1: is you know, that's there's something to be said for that,
42:18
Speaker 1: Like I don't think it should only be looked at
42:20
Speaker 1: as some sort of hippie dippie thing like if you
42:24
Speaker 1: have real physical pain, it could possibly help, yes, And yeah,
42:30
Speaker 1: for sure, I mean think that that's kind of like
42:32
Speaker 1: one of the outcomes of it being exposed to westernization
42:36
Speaker 1: is that it's being studied and it's actually holding up
42:38
Speaker 1: in studies and boys. It being exposed because if you
42:43
Speaker 1: work for a big corporation, if you especially work in
42:46
Speaker 1: Silicon Valley, chances are there are mindfulness retreats, maybe mindfulness
42:52
Speaker 1: rooms in the offices where they say, hey, we know
42:56
Speaker 1: we work you to death, and it's not fair. Why
42:58
Speaker 1: don't we set up this little room that used to
43:01
Speaker 1: be uh, a room for um, you know, for your
43:06
Speaker 1: kids to come to work. But we don't let that
43:08
Speaker 1: happen anymore. It used to be the nursery. But we'll
43:11
Speaker 1: put you in here and you can zen out and
43:13
Speaker 1: be cool. Uh. And here's one of the criticisms. As
43:16
Speaker 1: long as you come back and you get all that
43:17
Speaker 1: work done, we think it's a great tool for you,
43:20
Speaker 1: right exactly. And not just corporations, but the military is
43:24
Speaker 1: using mindfulness um. Schools, little kids are being taught mindfulness
43:29
Speaker 1: um and to meditate uh prisons um. And there's there's
43:34
Speaker 1: an enormous amount of like out just out there in
43:37
Speaker 1: the culture. It's it's gotten really popular. I guess in
43:40
Speaker 1: two thousand and twelve, just over four percent of Americans meditated. Uh.
43:45
Speaker 1: Five years later it was up to four That's a
43:48
Speaker 1: pretty big increase in just five years, and I would
43:51
Speaker 1: propose it's probably more than that now in um so
43:57
Speaker 1: it's everywhere, But it's also really kind of um lost
44:02
Speaker 1: its way. I guess once it hit America and corporate
44:07
Speaker 1: America in particular, mindfulness kind of got perverted, I think,
44:11
Speaker 1: is a way you could put it. Yeah, I mean
44:13
Speaker 1: that critique is is really valid. Like it's great that
44:16
Speaker 1: a company might take mindfulness in the consideration is something
44:20
Speaker 1: beneficial for their employees, But to ignore the root cause,
44:24
Speaker 1: which is you're working too many hours a week and
44:27
Speaker 1: you're overworked and you can't possibly get done what you
44:30
Speaker 1: should get done, and that's where this anxiety is rooted. Um,
44:34
Speaker 1: here's a mindfulness room so you can help correct all that.
44:37
Speaker 1: Like it totally puts the onus on the employee to
44:39
Speaker 1: sort of self adjust to what's probably way too much work,
44:44
Speaker 1: instead of saying, hey, maybe people wouldn't be in this
44:47
Speaker 1: position to begin with if they, you know, didn't have
44:50
Speaker 1: to work sixty hours in a week. And and the
44:53
Speaker 1: same thing goes for social movements as well, Like some
44:56
Speaker 1: people say, hey, you know how like a lot of
44:59
Speaker 1: us are mentally ill these days. That's because society is
45:02
Speaker 1: screwed up. So rather than putting the onus again on
45:05
Speaker 1: the individual person, just kind of suck it up and
45:07
Speaker 1: deal with it in a mindful manner. Why don't we
45:10
Speaker 1: focus instead on these social problems that are causing all
45:14
Speaker 1: of these other social problems too, So what we don't
45:17
Speaker 1: have to do that? Um? And those are really valid
45:23
Speaker 1: criticisms of westernized your mindfulness in twenties, And there's actually
45:28
Speaker 1: a term for it that a guy named Miles Neil
45:30
Speaker 1: coined and another guy named Ronald Purser wrote a book
45:33
Speaker 1: using that name, It's perfect Mick mindfulness. Yeah, I love
45:38
Speaker 1: that word. And they're basically saying like, hey, you guys
45:42
Speaker 1: have so completely detached this from ethics and morals and
45:45
Speaker 1: religion and and kind of co opted something that had
45:50
Speaker 1: its roots there that Yeah, you've you've there needs to
45:53
Speaker 1: be a term for that. You've mixed mixed it. Yeah,
45:56
Speaker 1: you've been lit up, you've mixed screwed it, you make
45:59
Speaker 1: lift it? You like that? Uh? And that you know
46:05
Speaker 1: you can't ignore the theological roots, uh and have it
46:10
Speaker 1: be the same thing. And hr reps across the country say,
46:14
Speaker 1: oh yes we can, And look what happens. We're really
46:18
Speaker 1: screwing people up. So, um, there's a there's a like
46:23
Speaker 1: a couple of quotes I found that I really feel
46:24
Speaker 1: like kind of get to the heart of what happened
46:27
Speaker 1: when mindfulness came over here and got got picked up
46:30
Speaker 1: by corporate America and the military and just other surprising
46:34
Speaker 1: groups and maybe put to not the best uses. Um.
46:38
Speaker 1: There's a really good New York Times article from back
46:40
Speaker 1: in two thousand fifteen that's kind of a meditation on
46:43
Speaker 1: the idea of mindfulness or the word mindfulness and what
46:46
Speaker 1: it what it means, by Virginia Heffernan, UM, and she
46:50
Speaker 1: says that, Um, what commercial mindfulness may have lost from
46:55
Speaker 1: the most rigorous Buddhist tenants that it replaced is the
46:59
Speaker 1: implication that suffering cannot be escaped but must be faced.
47:03
Speaker 1: And that's that's that mispackaging, that miss marketing that we
47:07
Speaker 1: talked about. That the idea that if you meditate your mindful,
47:09
Speaker 1: it's going to free you from all your problems and
47:11
Speaker 1: make you less stressed and more productive and just happier.
47:15
Speaker 1: And that's not necessarily the case, because we in the
47:17
Speaker 1: West tend to really like to, like you said, um,
47:21
Speaker 1: avoid all of the stuff that that really stinks and
47:25
Speaker 1: just get as much of the stuff that we like,
47:27
Speaker 1: and that's not what that's meant for. Yeah this, Uh,
47:32
Speaker 1: I think it's from the same article about mindful fracking. Uh.
47:35
Speaker 1: Could that be next putting a neuroscience halo around a
47:39
Speaker 1: byeword for both uppers productivity and downers relaxation to ensure
47:43
Speaker 1: a more compliant workforce in a more prosperous c suite.
47:47
Speaker 1: There it is, and there's another one to um. The
47:50
Speaker 1: Dali Lama apparently pointed out that um, even a suicide
47:53
Speaker 1: bomber would likely have to cultivate some sort of mindfulness.
47:57
Speaker 1: It's not it's not inherently ethical. And if it's not
48:00
Speaker 1: inherently ethical, then that means that you could conceivably use
48:04
Speaker 1: it to nefarious ends. And the way that Buddhists for
48:09
Speaker 1: thousands of years kept it from being used to the
48:12
Speaker 1: farest ends is by encasing it in wholesomeness like mindfulness. Specifically,
48:17
Speaker 1: what's called right mindfulness by the Buddhists is it's a
48:20
Speaker 1: wholesome approach and separating wholesome thoughts from unwholesome thoughts. And
48:24
Speaker 1: if you just take the mindfulness practice out of that context,
48:30
Speaker 1: you have a problem. Um, you want to read that
48:33
Speaker 1: quote from Andrew Olensky. True mindfulness is deeply and inextricably
48:38
Speaker 1: embedded in the notion of wholesomeness. Just as a tree
48:41
Speaker 1: removed from the forest is no longer a tree but
48:43
Speaker 1: a piece of lumber. So also the carrying attentiveness of mindfulness,
48:48
Speaker 1: extracted from its matrix of wholesome co arising factors, denigrates
48:52
Speaker 1: into mere attention. Yeah, that's attention. That's the best you
48:56
Speaker 1: can hope for. Is it just denegrates into mere attention
48:59
Speaker 1: and not something hard for you? Know? So I think
49:02
Speaker 1: it's great. I think it's a I think it's wonderful
49:04
Speaker 1: that people want this and they're seeking it out and
49:06
Speaker 1: they're trying it. I think the people who are selling
49:08
Speaker 1: it to everybody need to just package it more transparently
49:13
Speaker 1: and explain the true purpose of it and stopped using
49:15
Speaker 1: it for productivity. Agreed. Uh, if you want to know
49:21
Speaker 1: more about mindfulness, go, um, go research it and see
49:25
Speaker 1: if it's for you, and give it a shot and
49:26
Speaker 1: go into it with right eyes, right vision. I can't remember. Uh.
49:31
Speaker 1: And since I said I can't remember, of course, that
49:33
Speaker 1: means it's time for a listener mail. I'm gonna call
49:38
Speaker 1: this tribute to Ziggy Bombach from his son Michael. We
49:43
Speaker 1: got a great email that and I've been conversing with
49:46
Speaker 1: Michael for the past couple of weeks on this good
49:49
Speaker 1: dude and his dad was a good dude. Hey, guys,
49:51
Speaker 1: longtime listener. Recently lost my father and I've been going
49:55
Speaker 1: through a great deal of grief. My dad was at
49:57
Speaker 1: high risk for UH catching COVID, so I made sure
50:01
Speaker 1: it was my priority to keep them safe, and since
50:03
Speaker 1: being social wasn't an option over the past couple of years,
50:06
Speaker 1: we turned to nature during the pandemic and rekindled our
50:09
Speaker 1: love for the great outdoors UH though he never had
50:12
Speaker 1: to rekindle his. He was born in Poland and immigrated
50:15
Speaker 1: to the States in the sixties and was only ever
50:17
Speaker 1: comfortable in his gardener in the woods. He was a
50:19
Speaker 1: simple but passionate man. So we started driving out to
50:23
Speaker 1: western North New Jersey two Stokes Forest to get spring
50:26
Speaker 1: water and go fishing. It's a gorgeous part of the state.
50:30
Speaker 1: It was about fifty minutes each way. Perfect to introduce
50:33
Speaker 1: him to my favorite podcast, stuff you should know. Even
50:35
Speaker 1: though I had to describe to him what a podcast was.
50:38
Speaker 1: He was instantly enthralled, and I can still hear him
50:41
Speaker 1: quietly asking in the car if Chuck and Josh were
50:44
Speaker 1: going to be broadcasting today. It's just adorable. Like me.
50:49
Speaker 1: He adored your ability to convey something complex and tough
50:53
Speaker 1: information in such a sweetened conversational way. He would always
50:56
Speaker 1: come home and tell my mom what he had learned.
50:59
Speaker 1: Was so much isolate in the past few years. It
51:01
Speaker 1: was warming to hear him happy about all these new
51:03
Speaker 1: subjects that he was learning about. You gave him that
51:06
Speaker 1: happiness and made his life that much better of the
51:08
Speaker 1: last couple of years of his life. I can't thank
51:10
Speaker 1: you enough for everything that you continue to do. There's
51:13
Speaker 1: so much bad in this world right now, and people
51:15
Speaker 1: are hardly operating at their best, but you continue to
51:18
Speaker 1: do something worthwhile and worth making, something worth learning. So
51:23
Speaker 1: thank you for making the life of Ziggy bomboch a
51:25
Speaker 1: little brighter towards his end. And that is from Mike.
51:29
Speaker 1: And he sent me a picture of Ziggy and I
51:30
Speaker 1: read the obituary. I looked it up and Ziggy seemed
51:34
Speaker 1: like a great, great guy and uh I had his
51:36
Speaker 1: zin out to reading this. So I wouldn't cry. I
51:40
Speaker 1: cried every time. That's a really amazing email. Thank you
51:43
Speaker 1: so much that it's impossible to not past judgment on
51:47
Speaker 1: that one. I'm going to say, I feel very proud Chuck,
51:50
Speaker 1: that's right in this case. Great judgment and uh r
51:53
Speaker 1: I p ziggy sound like a great guy. R I
51:56
Speaker 1: p Ziggy And thank you Mike. I'm glad we could
51:59
Speaker 1: help bring you in dead together. That's pretty amazing stuff. Uh.
52:03
Speaker 1: If you want to be like Mike, can get in
52:05
Speaker 1: touch with us and write us the email of the century.
52:08
Speaker 1: We are willing to read it. Uh. You can send
52:11
Speaker 1: it to us at stuff Podcasts at iHeart radio dot com.
52:18
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of I heart Radio.
52:21
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