Ep. 15 - Sharon Salzberg

[Music] Welcome to episode 15 of Synchronicity. Welcome back or welcome for the first time. I don't know. I really can't know if you're listening for the first time or you've listened before. But I'm glad you're here. Thank you. I gave a very special guest today, Sharon Salzberg. She is part of MindPod Network, our podcast network here, and one of my favorite teachers, just whenever I get a chance to talk to her, or with her, it's just always, I always come away from the conversations, even if it's just short, like before class or something. I always just feel good and happy, and I think that speaks volumes about what Sharon has been dedicating most of her life to, at least the last 45 years, which is teaching various forms of meditation in the Taravada and Buddhist tradition.

So that includes stuff like Vipassana, Meda, Loving Kindness, and yeah, I mean, let's talk about meditation a little bit. So right now, Sharon is running on her website, Sharon Salzberg.com. If you go there, you'll see the very top something called the 28 Day Meditation Challenge, and what that is is during the month of February, it's been going on. There is a meditation challenge where there's a meditation every single day that is a guided meditation from Sharon that was specifically put together for this challenge, and it's been awesome. I'm pretty sure that I've mentioned in the past that I, as much as I'm inundated and surrounded by meditation and meditative practices, I actually don't meditate consistently very often.

One of the few times during the year where I do meditate, like four weeks in a row, is the meditation challenge. I'm going to talk a little bit with Sharon about that, having to do with accountability, community, and that's definitely all of it, but it is so helpful. It is so helpful to have, you know, just this being dished out to you every day. So 10 days, I'm going 10 days strong, and what I really like about this year's challenge is there's all these different types of meditation. Like today was a body scan meditation, yesterday was a sensation meditation, the first week was dedicated to concentration.

So, you're interested in meditation, 28 day challenge, go to Sharon's website, you can still sign up, there's time, I'll have a link in this podcast page. Again, you get there by going to minepodnetwork.com/noah, and the first episode will be Sharon. Sharon also mentions a book, I ask her, you know, what's she reading, what's she digging right now? And she mentioned a book called "Always Smiling" about the Dalai Lama by Lama Somo, Somo T-S-O-M-O, so that is also in the podcast page. So, yeah, let's see, do I have anything else to talk about before we go into the episode? Yes, yes, one other thing.

Okay, so, I over vacationed, which I had two weeks ago in Jamaica, and I point out in Jamaica all the time because, you know, wink, wink, not not. But I was, in Jamaica, I was reading an excellent book, I bought three books with me. I bought Carl Jung, the undiscovered self, good, oh, and my next guest, I'm actually interviewing her today. You'll hear it next week is Kelly Carlin, George Carlin's daughter, but such an interesting and cool person, I'm super stoked to speak to her, so stay tuned for that one. Carl Jung, make me think, she has her degree in Jungian depth psychology, so right up my alley.

So, I brought the undiscovered self by Carl Jung, not a long book, but man, if you haven't read his stuff, dense, but good. I brought Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces, excellent, excellent seminal work, and I also brought a book I had been reading, but hadn't got around to finishing, had about 100 pages, was Phil Jackson's book, 11 Rings, The Soul to Success, The Soul of Success. Holy crap, I cannot overstate how great that Phil Jackson book is, don't have to be a basketball fan, don't even need to know who Phil Jackson is. In fact, I mentioned Phil Jackson to a couple people, I said, oh, I read his book and they're like, the guy who did The Lord of the Rings, no, that's Peter Jackson.

Also, cool guy, don't know if he wrote a book, don't know if he could write a book as good as this one, but why is this Phil Jackson book so good? Well, besides going into how he managed to win multiple series of championships with teams, it's really about leadership organizations and really had to create harmony, you know, within organization teams, groups, and there's just a ton of amazing, he's like a super spiritual guy, and he weaves together all of these different traditions and perspectives into this thing that just works, and he's doing this with people with the biggest egos on the planet.

We're getting paid tens of millions of dollars to play a sport, so you can imagine if it's working there, how it could work in a place with maybe even a little less ego. It was just great, you'll hear me talk about it a little bit in this episode, we go over tribal leadership stages, and admittedly, I've heard, you know, tribe, God, buddy, tribe, gotta find your tribe, yeah, yeah, yeah. I stayed away from all this stuff, it seemed a little marketing and a little too simplistic for me, but the way Phil Jackson describes it in the book, it's great, like I get it, totally makes sense. I started looking through a lot of my relationships and even clients, and just through the lens of, you know, a tribal mindset, and it's pretty illuminating, so I'll have a link to that in this episode of page two.

I can't, you know what, here's the deal, first person to either leave a comment, rate a review mentioning this specific little spiel here, or send me an email at nlampart@mindpodnetwork.com, I'll send you a copy of the book, that's how confident I am that you'll like it. It's so good, it really, really is, so yeah, let's talk about just the teen little stuff I go into here with Sharon, so whenever I get around someone like Sharon, I like to pick her brain, I don't like to phrase pick her brain, that sounds weird, I don't want to do that, but I like to ask her questions, related to concepts that I've come across, have some understanding of, but really could, you know, I could stand to hear someone elucidate who knows what they're actually talking about.

So we go over the five hindrances, the six parameters, Buddhist personality types, which I find incredibly interesting. There, we also go over a brief perspective on mental health issues from a Buddhist perspective, and again, Sharon is great at practicing and making sure not to paint with a very broad brush here. There are many different types and factions of Buddhism, and each have their own little wrinkles, she's giving her perspective, so, you know, it's not all Buddhism, there's many different types, but she gives some very clear insights into what those concepts mean. She also gives, right at the beginning, a phenomenal definition of happiness, which is a tricky word for, I think, a lot of people.

And we also talk about kind of one of her main teachers, the woman who actually encouraged Sharon to go teach in the West, Deepa Ma. Deepa Ma is an incredibly interesting story and person, went through a tremendous amount of suffering in her life, and came out the other side, kind of like a spiritual juggernaut, and just someone who Sharon describes it as her not really giving any specific or pithy quotes, which I'm a big fan of pithy quotes, but she was just, you know, like when you got around her, you just felt the love. And I am always interested in discussing and learning about those types of people, so I am not going to ramble on anymore.

As always, please, and they're coming in, but they slowed down a little bit. Maybe I haven't been getting on it enough, but if you could please rate and review this on iTunes, that you have no idea how much it helps me. Do I need to go back to my bribe of actually bribing people? I will send you money if you do it. Seriously, if you leave a review, write a review on iTunes, log in, find the place, go to iTunes Store, go to Podcasts, type in Synchronicity, find the podcast. I know it's a lot of work. I know it's a lot of work. Maybe I'll just put a link right on the page so you can do it, huh? But if you do that, send me a screenshot of that and lampert@mindpodnetwork.com, I'll send you some money, some shekels. That's not a joke. That's true. Ask people. They've done it. They've gotten their little shekels.

So, yeah, without further ado, please do that. That is the last to do you have to do, and enjoy this episode with Sharon. I certainly did, and I'll see you next week. This is before the episode start. I'll say that at the end of the episode. Enjoy Sharon Salisbury. Thank you again for coming on. Super happy. So, speaking of happy, I would love if you could give a definition of what happiness or real happiness means to you, that would be a fantastic way to start. I think I was, maybe I anticipated it somewhat, but I was also so much surprised at how controversial the word "happiness" is actually. And, you know, since I have two books now, we've happiness prominently in the title of real happiness and real happiness at work.

I think a lot of people think of happiness as something kind of superficial and a little bit silly, like endlessly seeking pleasure like we do anyway. And something also selfish, very self-centered, and I really use the word "happiness" in a very different way, more almost as a kind of inner resource. It's like whether our circumstance feels great, or there's a lot of adversity, or whatever it might be. We can have a sense of wherewithal inside, like you have something to meet the moment with. So it couldn't really be dependent on external circumstance, because that's always changing, right? And the word "real" is maybe it. But, you know, I think we met something kind of more sustainable or accessible, because if your whole sense of happiness is tied up in getting an object and getting a new car and having it not ever break down, no one ever ding it in the parking lot. It's like you're in big trouble, right?

So I'll cross off getting a yacht as the meaning of real happiness. Okay, done. Well, it's funny because I remember my first girlfriend ever, I was like 15, 16. We were having these big question conversations. It was like one of the first people of the opposite sex. I was really trying to figure out where they were coming from. And one of the questions, we were asking like, what's the meaning of life? And she would say happiness. And I didn't like buy into it right away. I wasn't like, yeah, of course. Like everyone wants to be happy. That's what it is. And, you know, as we were discussing, it came out that it seemed like what her definition of happiness was like, well, then I'll get this.

Then I'll be a doctor. Then I'll be happy. Then I'll have money to get the things I want. And I was like, I don't think that's what it is. Like, I think we're touching close to some area that's like, but I love your definition of it because you do. You describe it as an inner resource, which then buffers it against the constantly changing circumstances of the world, which does. I noticed it too. Like if tell someone like, you know, to be happy in the conventional sense who's depressed, that's not going to do anything for them. That's going to make them feel worse in a lot of different cases. So I love that definition of it.

And I like for you to explain it so people know we're not just talking about like, you'll be happy when you get this or when you do this or when you do that. It's good. Okay. Next concept I would love for you to talk about too, because it's been pivotal in my life since I was essentially introduced to it by you, which is the concept of beginning again. And how did you come across this? I mean, I have an inclination of how you did. And then what have been the effects and kind of like wisdom you've kind of culled from that concept? Well, in the microcosm, it's something we experience in meditation practice all the time. So I went to India in 1970 as part of this university program, like an independent study project.

And I began meditating January 7th, 1971. So I just had a big anniversary. And the first instruction I ever received in meditation was sit comfortably and feel your breath. And, you know, as you've heard me say, in the past, the first I was very disappointed. I felt like feel my breath came up with India, you know, where's the magical esoteric, fantastic technique that's going to change my whole life. And then I thought, "Hey, how hard can this be?" And I was like, "Whoa, this is not so easy." I had thought before I did it, I thought, "Oh, what would it be like 800 breaths or 900 wonders into my absolute astonishment?"

It was like one breath, two breaths. And then I'd be gone. And I'd be way gone. And I kept hearing, but did not trust the instruction that the most important moment in the process is the moment after you've been distracted, after you've lost it, after you've gone to sleep. Because that's the moment we have the chance to be really different. And that is we have the opportunity to let go gently without a lot of judgment, without putting ourselves down, without calling ourselves a failure. And we have the opportunity to begin again, just come back and start over. So when we don't do that, what happens is, first of all, we extend the period of the distraction considerably. I'm so bad. I'm so terrible. I'm so awful, right? That takes time.

And it's also, it's so disheartening. It's so demoralizing that we leave exhausted. We don't leave with a feeling like, "Yeah, I'm going to get back on it." And so I think if we really look at accomplishment in any realm of life, getting it done, getting better at something, making progress, we're going to see that there's a role for always being able to begin again and begin again with some compassion for ourselves. Because whether it's at work or at school or trying to learn something or craft or whatever it might be, I think if we really look at how progress is best made, it's through that ability. It's not through haranging ourselves for a year and a half, you know, for mistakes made.

Yeah, I noticed this, you know, I make music and I find that what will often happen and I'm reading a lot about the creative process now and how to get past roadblocks and one of my biggest issues is finishing songs. I can start, I probably, no joke, have 2,000, 3,000 songs on my hard drive. But I've noticed what actually stops me a lot of the time from finishing them isn't, it really doesn't have anything to do with the song. It's that I get stuck somewhere and get this like, and then I just leave it and then it's gone and then the times I actually can finish songs is when I say, okay, you know what, let me approach this with completely fresh eyes, I'm not going to be bogged down, maybe some time has passed and I'm going to start again.

Then I'm like, oh my God, this is actually kind of good, this is fresh, this is, I really like the way this is sounding and I always do this little thing, I've been blogging for your 28 day meditation challenge and one of my first posts was, you know, kind of taking the concept of meditation and mindfulness and awareness and applying it to music and kind of making people bells, the Hazra Inayat Khan quote, of everyone's a bell when one resonates by that sound, the other bells are wrong. That was, that always applies to me, so I always, I love how all of these concepts, of course, they apply to everything in life, they're not like, oh well this is just for meditation, it's only good if you begin again in meditation, it just, it slowly seeps in.

And I have the benefit, I wrote this again too in the, in my blog post, I admittedly do not meditate every single day, the only time I've really found myself meditating consistently over four weeks has been the meditation challenge. So, I mean, I, this is not one of my questions but it popped into my head, I'm trying to hone in on what gets people to meditate consistently, sometimes it's like a big event, like a traumatic event, they're like, okay this is a wake up call, I have to do this is the only way to get some clarity. But I'm also centering in on the idea of accountability as being very important, so could you talk about what you've noticed, I'm sure you've seen so many people and so many different levels of meditation and where they're starting, where they are, they fall off, they're on, so can you talk what you notice as the important thing to get people to attain a consistent practice? I think there are a couple of things, one is certainly accountability. I have a little cyber community. It's five people total, it started when a friend of mine said that if he wakes up in the morning and he turns right is that his desk.

And if he turns left is that his meditation cushion. So we started this support group, and called the turn left song song or community. And so every day when you've practiced, whatever time that is, you send an email to the other four and the subject line is always turned left. And then if you want, you know, like turn left in Miami, or, you know, turn left and I floated in the air or whatever. But the important thing is just the subject line and it's really true. It's like, I know that there are four other people that notice, you know. And of course, some of these people sit and they forget to write or, you know, whatever happened, they didn't sit. But so it's not supposed to be an exercise in more self judgment. But it's really a lot of fun, actually.

So I was like, Oh, right. Well, like self-propelling, right? Yeah, it's a community in which has elements of accountability because we kind of trade roles, you know, sometimes someone is really needing help. Sometimes we need help. And, you know, it's not just one way. And so it's very enriching. And the other thing that really helps me a lot is simply structure. You know, I don't have the kind of mind where it does that much good to try to peel away the layers of why do I feel resistant to you know. But if I have a commitment, and it has to be a reasonable commitment, you know, not like I'm going to sit 16 hours a day, 22 hours on the weekend, but 10 minutes a day, you know, whatever it is.

Then I'll do it. Right. Even if it's like the last thing at night. And it also helps because one of the great difficulties I had in having a regular sitting practice when I first started was just the habit of self judgment. So when I was living in India. And when things felt good when I sat when I was peaceful and nice, I'd think, Oh, great, I'm going to spend the rest of my life in India feeling exactly like this. And then when, you know, my knee hurt or was bored or was restless, I get out. I say, it doesn't work. Right. Only works on retreat or something like that. So I actually went to one of my teachers, this man named Ninja and described that pattern in India. And he said to me, if you have one piece of advice, and that is just put your body there.

Every day, just put your body there. Some days it's going to feel one way. Other days it's going to feel another way. You just got to do it. And like I said, it has to be reasonable, you know, and it's not going to like ruin your day to take 10 minutes. Right. Well, so I want to shift also now to kind of maybe the pitfalls of how maybe I noticed, I'm sure you've noticed this too. How could you not? You know, the mindfulness movement in this country and in the West, it is, you know, really blown up to a point where it's commercialized for lack of a better word in a lot of ways and not everything.

And there's certainly plenty of amazing things coming out of it. But what I've been noticing a little bit of is sometimes meditation is framed as like a panacea. You know, something that is going to eliminate all the negative aspects of your, that happen in your life. You're going to be enlightened. You're going to be able to tackle any issue. And while I've noticed when I do consistently meditate a lot of positive things happen, I wouldn't say to me it's a panacea. It doesn't solve all of my problems. What it does is it gives me an ability to actually notice what those things might be and then choose a wiser path of dealing with them.

But, and I don't need you to do a whole critical assessment of the mindfulness movement, but what, what have you noticed with kind of how it's taken off or kind of, you know, materialized in this country and how it's kind of being framed now? I mean, because, you know, you look online, there's meditation courses and teachers everywhere. I mean, it is, I mean, I know this has got to be surreal for you. Having done this for 45 years, coming back from India and people were probably looking at you like crazy. But yeah, what's your kind of take on that? And, you know, yeah, what's your take on that?

Well, first of all, the idea of getting enlightened for meditation is the most old fashioned result of the mindfulness movement of anything, because I've talked about it. That's true. You know, so in some ways, it's almost, I mean, I think everything is happening, you know, and it's fabulous. Just the accessibility and the openness. There are lots of things that we don't understand and maybe, you know, it'll, it'll, maybe it'll be clear in the course of history, maybe not. So, for example, I went to India when I was 18 years old, because I had had, you know, tremendous amount of suffering in my childhood.

And I was hugely highly motivated to actually learn how to meditate. If I was going to college in Buffalo, New York, if I could look around Buffalo and find it, I probably wouldn't have gone to India, but I didn't see it anywhere. Right. And so I went to India and never even went to California before. Right. And it wasn't just me. Obviously, you know, many of the people of generation, you know, who were maybe a little bit older than I was. Or maybe not, maybe the same age. And, and we had such huge motivation. And nobody really knows what it means that now you just, like you say, you open up, or you go to the health food store to buy some vitamin C.

Right. You see all these meditation CDs, you know, and it's so casual. You know, maybe I'll try that. Yeah. You know, you don't have to have that kind of motivation. You know, so it's a different kind of experience for some people. Yeah. You know, but I think it's, I think it's fantastic that it's getting to be as accessible as it is and, and open. And we'll just see. I think it's not so much that. I do think it's portrayed as a panacea because, you know, there's, there's sort of an entrepreneurial thing happening. Right. Like your meditation coach or your mindfulness coach. Right. You know, a trainer or whatever. And, you know, like, it used to be like, even 10 years ago, if somebody told me I'm a mindfulness teacher, I'm a meditation teacher.

My first question would have been, who's your teacher? Right. Right. That would have showed me something. Like, if you said, I'm a student of Ticna Hunt, it probably, you had a strong affinity for social action. Right. Right. If you told me you were a student of a certain particular school of Tibetan Buddhism, that would have implied a lot of scholarship. Right. You know, study or, you know, just these different flavors. And, and now it's not even a relevant question. You know, people don't necessarily have a teacher or certainly don't think in that way or. Yeah. I, I noticed that myself because that's typically something that I do when I find like a new teacher or someone who comes across, but I'll look at their root teacher or their lineage. And I don't look at it like to be like, well, they studied which I'm trunkless so they're, they're validated.

I do it because I kind of know what the core of, you know, if they're doing Shambalai, no kind of what they're looking for an enlightened society eventually they're trying to get these values. So I, I always tend to do that because sometimes I'll read, I personally love reading quotes. I love reading spiritual quotes. And I'm sure if anyone has spent any time on the web, there is no shortage of quotes all over the Internet. And sometimes I'll get the feeling like this is just an empty platitude. This is nothing. And then sometimes I'll get a feeling like, wow, there's something deep there. So I'll go and research the person before I just go copy the quote and put it up because I want to make sure that I'm looking at something that actually has some substance to it.

So I noticed that too with the teachers, you know, and it is, it's not just a validation thing like it was saying, but it does give you insight into where they're coming from or their potential approach. And that's something that I've always, again, came into that. Like anyone can pick up meditation at any point at this point, you know, from a magazine, like you said, it doesn't have anything to do with the teacher. It's just a skill and it's kind of plucked out of, you know, the other stuff around it, which to me always is funny because we're, you know, one of the things that happens with meditation, at least for me, is you become acutely aware of the interconnectedness of not only your mind states, but just us as people.

So to pluck something away from that interconnectedness or the lineage always just struck me as a little bit weird, not that it's bad. And I also believe this. I think that anyone who starts meditating consistently will eventually come to these realizations, maybe not even in this life, maybe some other time, but eventually the seed is planted. And it, you know, we, we would talk about like the Wall Street people who are meditating, like, you know, they're doing it to make money and to rip people off. Like, how is that? How does that dive? And I was like, you know what? I think it's maybe a self-correcting thing at a certain point. And, you know, I just, that's my take on it.

I mean, I think you're right. I think it is a self-correcting thing. I also think from my experience that, you know, if I go into a company and teach, whatever the motivation of like the HR department and bringing in a minute, I mean, I don't do that much by doing some. You know, whatever the motivation of the HR department or the CEO and bringing in a meditation teacher, like people are really people. Nobody has ever said to me, I want to be, you know, I want to use help me meditate because I want to be that much more efficient so I can make a ton more money, like exploit people further. You know, they talk about their alcoholic brother or, you know, child that they're a little worried about or how to have a meaningful contribution to their community or something, you know, people are actually people.

Yeah, they're not monsters who are just doing things singularly. I've learned this over the years. As much as when I'm angry at someone, I would like to make them a monster. I haven't found one yet. I haven't found a complete monster human being yet. I'm still looking. But, okay, so I want to move into some Buddhist concepts because you're one of my favorite people to hear speak about these things. One of the first concepts I was ever kind of drawn to, you know, even weirdly, almost I delved into it. Of course, the four noble truths in the April path, those, those I kind of just your elementary get into it, right?

But I was always drawn to the six perfections or the parameters, those I memorize those quickly and because I just felt like if you could keep those in mind, you had at least a little bit of a blueprint for how to deal with most situations. So, can you talk about a little bit about the parameters and what they are? Okay, so, in the chair writing system, there are actually 10. I know, I know that too. I always look at them like I'm doing six. I can't do 10. And then I, you know, I looked them up the other day because I'm officiating a friend's wedding and he wants to be in the context of armies.

And he's a Shambhala student. And so, he said six. And I said, well, if you, if you do, if you go as far as 10 to add loving kindness, which is a good thing for a wedding. Basically, the idea of the parmes are six or 10. How do you say it? How do you say it? So, I don't say it. Parmes are meat and Sanskrit, par me. Okay, P-A-R-A-M-I-S in Pali, which is the language of the original boost. Got it. Okay, cool. Perfections is a good translation, I think. Is that there's certain things, certain qualities we develop both within and without. So, whether it's sitting in formal meditation or at work or with your kid or with your partner, you're strengthening these qualities, which are the qualities of awakening.

So, it seems like patience, whether you're sitting in meditation and needing to begin again, and again, and again, or you and your partner are trying to work out something, you know, or your child, you know, who seems to not get some lesson in the first go around. And it's like, it's a process, right? Things take time, or healing takes time, times, you know, may have its own rhythm. You or someone else may not be getting better on the timetable that you have a status, you know, you need some patience. So, it's things like that. Generosity is another one. There's a kind of generosity within as we're kinder to ourselves and also in letting go, something very seductive comes up in your mind and you let it go because you're practicing.

That said, to be the same, it's like the same internal gesture as external giving. So, rather than like maybe a thought comes up and you're freaked out about it and you try to throw it away, you know, rather than that, it's like relinquishing the hold, it's letting go. And we also, of course, practice generosity externally. It's the same, it's like the same mental muscle, you know. Right, right, right. And so it's a practice, like if you undertake external generosity. And one of the things we talk about sometimes is the center co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society, you know, because there's like a resident community, because there's a staff.

So, you know, is undertaking these kind of disciplines, which are interesting and fun. So, for example, we did one where if you have a strong impulse to give something, not a little, you know, minor impulse, but like a really strong impulse to give it. And it's reasonable, it's not like giving away your house, you know, give it, even if following that strong impulse, the next 50 thoughts are fearful. Oh no, you know, like I've carried that book around through three different to New York and it's close to the top of the pile of the books I haven't read, maybe in the next four years, you know, just give it.

And watch your mind that whole time. What does it feel like with that impulse? What does it feel like when you're afraid? What does it feel like when you give anyway? And then you really get a sense of what that moment of giving feels like, what it is. And that's, it's such a huge relief, you know, people don't like stew, you know, like, oh God, I gave it a book away. That's the kind of thing that parmes is it's internal and external work coming together. Yeah, and I mean, it's, you've put it, I find it, so were you saying you put the, you use them organizationally because they're up in the Insight Meditation Center? That's how you would kind of pat them.

Yeah, I hadn't meant that. I meant just as a community undertaking discipline, you know, for five disciplines, a harsh word, but you know what I mean. No, and I get it. I ask because I recently read an incredible book by Phil Jackson. He wrote this book 11 ranks. Have you read it? It's, oh my God, it's, I put it up there with some of the best spiritual books I've read because, you know, he was a basketball coach. He worked with some of the biggest egos and George Mumford. Obviously, he brings in for the meditation stuff, but he has this very, he kind of synthesizes the concept of tribal leadership with spiritual stuff.

And he calls from, you know, people like the Lakota, Zen Buddhism, you know, roomy mystics. But one of the things that I really liked, he spoke about was this concept of effective organizations, team building and leadership. And that's why I asked the question, if you were using that for the organization internally, he talks about five stages of tribes, but he starts at three because that's the first tribal leadership foundation that can have any type of success. And that's essentially where everyone in the organization has the mindset, "I'm the best, you're not." And you can have an incredibly talented people and still achieve success, but it's kind of, "I'm the best, you're not." So a bunch of egos kind of warring with each other, which still can lead to success.

Stage four is where the best, you're not. And that is, again, you can have actually a tremendous amount of success because you're internalizing kind of what's going on, you're, we collectively are fighting for something. And this applies not just to a basketball team, obviously, but any tribe. And stage five, my favorite. And he described his teams that went on championship runs like this, is when everyone is doing it for the common good, or just doing it for the thing, the love of the game, the same spirit we're trying to achieve something. And he basically says, you know, you can oscillate organizations, like everything in life, oscillate between different tribal stages, but when you get to stage five, something shifts in the entire collective organization.

And the things he was talking about that foster, those types of organizations are things like transparency, honesty, generosity, kindness, diligence, focus. Like all the parents, basically. And I, you know, I work with the organizations and individuals. So I'm always now looking through a lens of how do we foster those qualities to create that type of situation, which is why I asked if you use those because to me, a lot of these concepts, you know, and we'll go into some other ones. We'll go into some other ones are so directly applicable to like life as we know it, like it's not like some foreign exotic concept like, Oh, we're importing this Buddhist concept and it's going to be cool. It's like this stuff really, really, really has meaning.

So you reminded me of that. And you reminded me of George Mopford, of course, a friend of mine. And he has a book that came out called the mindful athlete. Yeah, I ordered it. Yeah, he's worked for Phil Jackson, the Chicago Bulls in the LA like there's another New York nation. And when his book came out, we did some things together in New York and other places and people would often ask like, how do you get like massive superstars, you know, unbelievable people so devoted to their own excellence to think like a team because so much of Phil Jackson's philosophy is a team. And George would say, because that's how you win. That's how you actually, it's true. Yeah, it's very true. All right, let's, let's talk about five hindrances.

So these are things. Can you, can you give a brief overview? I'm putting the heavy lifting on you for these. So the five hindrances are five states that very commonly arise in meditation practice because they very commonly arise in life. And they're called hindrances not because they're bad or because they're a bad person if you have them come up, but because when we are lost to them, they tend to be very confusing qualities. They really, some tend to give us really strong tunnel vision so we don't see options some. They all work to have us be less focused and less present when we're lost in them and they're very seductive. So, yeah, can you give an example of like what one of the hindrances.

I'm sure like grasping is one, or I mean the first two are grasping and the second is aversion or fear. So those are two examples of things that very strongly give us tunnel vision. It's like if you're fixated on meeting a certain thing in order to be happy, you might have like fabulous things coming your way, but you don't even notice them, you know, because you've got this one thing you think you need. If you think about the last time you were really angry at yourself, it's not likely also a time when you're thinking, you know, I said that stupid thing, but I did five great things. The same thing is like those five things, they're gone. That's the tunnel vision problem.

I heard you describe it also with anger. I wrote this down because I thought it was really cool. You said it. It's like you fall into a place where you have no center, like you can't actually hold on. And that's anger is one of my, you know, advice, advice is I don't know how to put it. It's something that I fall into. I have a temper. Unfortunately, or unfortunately, it's usually reserved for the people closest to me. So most people outside of my little bubble will never really see me have a temper. They're like, no, it's such a nice guy. I can't believe, but I actually have a really big temper.

And I noticed when I started meditating a few years ago, not consistently, but at least doing it, what would happen is there'd be this point where I'd be in a rage and I'd be angry and I'd, but I'd notice it. I couldn't stop it. I couldn't stop getting angry. I couldn't really change the situation at all. But there'd be a little voice in my head said, hey, like you're acting kind of like a douche, like stop doing this. And as I continued to kind of be more aware of that, I actually did start to get to the point where I could at least quit the anger a little bit. And that to me may be one of the most transformational things in my life.

I'm certainly not at the point where I'm not getting angry, but I at least have this awareness and recognition. And I was happy at a certain point I was able to actually take that and use it. So, yeah, anger, I'm always looking at ways to kind of deal with that because it's never productive. Like, no one feels good after they get angry after you yelled at a significant another, like my dog. A dog's a perfect example. Why are you yelling at a dog? Like, the dog has no intention to do anything to make you angry or get upset. When you find yourself yelling at a small animal, it can be a wake up call.

But yeah, I'm always looking for techniques to kind of shift that or give me some perspective on how to deal with it because it's been a big part of my life. Yeah. Well, even like in the Buddhist psychology, there's, you know, the positive part to anger is the energy. Yeah, right. As the same though, it has a strong line or whatever. The negative part is in Buddhist psychology, anger is likened to a forest fire which burns up its own support. So, as devastated, and it can leave us very far from where we really want to be. Like, we are filled with regret when we yell at the dog. Right. That doesn't mean you don't want to ever talk forcefully to your dog. Right. Right.

But, you know, shrieking and yelling is really not the best. Yeah, it's not productive. It's good, you know, so, but it's realizing it's not a bad state. It's a painful state. It's like capture the energy of that without getting just spun around by it. That's mindfulness. You know, it's pretty quickly what you're feeling. Not after you, and I'll remember it as it's like, as it's, and especially in your body, sometimes, you know, you can feel it starting to come up in your body even before it's formed words in your mind. And that's the clue. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, today, the, for the challenge, it was a sensation, meditation.

And that reminded me very quickly to start paying attention to, because like you can physically feel these things in your body at times. And that's a huge kind of relief in a way, because you can actually identify where it is and then start exploring it and see if that's connected to something. So we actually spoke about something that fascinated me. It's the first time I'd ever really heard it. I think Raghu was on a podcast. We were in your apartment and we were talking about the Buddhist personality types. And can you go into those in case the listeners didn't hear that? What are the Buddhist personality types and, and what is their kind of function in terms of giving us perspective on what, what may be happening with ourselves?

Well, every school of Buddhism, I think has their own list of personalities. Yeah. So this is very terrifying or Burmese. Sure. So there are three main types, each of which has a purified form. So you get like six. The three main types don't have very nice names, but it's the greedy type, the ant type and the diluted type. So the greeting type doesn't mean you're a greedy person. It means, I usually, it's described sometimes as the kind of person who walk into a room and notice right away what they like. They will overlook problems and faults, which is the hindrance of it. And the angry type doesn't actually mean you're screaming at all your friends, but it's the kind of person who walks into a room and notices what they don't like.

Right. Right. You know, like, oh, you know, this, I see a little boo boo on that wall. Where did that come from? And like, my beautiful new apartment, but I don't know how I can notice that. And it's a diluted type is just kind of a space cadet. You know, somebody who walks into the room doesn't notice much until someone else points it out. And so I'm a classic diluted type, you know, but there's a jewel or very positive quality embedded in each of those. So in the greedy type, it's like a love for life. It's an ability to draw close to experience and not hold back. And in the immersive type or the angry type, it's just kind of cutting through energy. Like sometimes, you know, how the angry person in a meeting will be the one who points out what really needs to be looked at.

Right. Right. Right. What everyone's willing to look at this thing. So it's a cutting through energy that is very incisive and strong. That's the positive part of anger. And then the diluted type has a sort of balance or equanimity. But in the unpurified form, it's like the equanimity of not noticing anything. So, and since I have a million stories since I am such a. I went, I traveled through China and to bat with a friend of mine in 1985 and which, you know, I would go into a hotel room somewhere in China and she'd say, do you mind if I take that bed over there? And I'd say, no, of course. And then like 10 minutes later, I said, why did you want that bed? She'd say, Oh, the light switches right there and I can travel light.

You know, that looks much better. And then it's like, I know it's nothing, you know. So, but the purified form, you do notice that they still have that kind of balance. That's, that's, that's important. I, and I, I look at all of those types and I, I say, like, I feel like I'm all three of those at various times because I can be any one of those depending on the circumstances. So, well, let me ask you this, because this is, I'm very interested in mental health and mental illness issues. And from the Buddhist lens, like, how, what, how does Buddhism frame or deal with something like depression or even being bipolar or some type of clearly not stable mind state that is not productive for the individual and those around them? Are there, are there antidotes? I'm sure.

But, you know, I am, I'm, as I was once at one point in my, I had a bipolar episode that actually led me, it led to a clinical diagnosis of bipolar II. I took lithium for about three years. It actually made the decision about three years after it to be like, I don't think I'm bipolar. Let me investigate this. I spoke to my mom about it. I saw a psychotherapist, psychiatrist to make sure that I was doing this in the right way. And I successfully went off and I haven't had any issues whatsoever. And I come away from that experience and I've had classic hypomania, hypermata, I had it. I mean, you could look at it. It was a clinical diagnosis. But I came away from that situation afterwards, years retrospectively, thinking that maybe what we view as these general labels, you know, in the west of this person's bipolar, they're going through this, they're depressed, they're this, or maybe just one way of looking at these things and there may be some other things going on.

Because my personal experience was I didn't imbalance somewhere. I think I had a spiritual experience and I think my ego got super tied into it. And I started identifying myself, no enlampred with these transcendental things and that led to a schism that manifested in any number of ways, some positive, some negative. So I'm interested, you know, in all the different approaches people have towards mental health or perspectives. And I was wondering if you had any insight on how Buddhism approaches kind of mental illness or mental health and how they look at it, how it is looked at. Well, I mean, it depends. I mean, there are also different schools of Buddhism, you know, like in Tibetan Buddhism, as far as I understand, you know, there's a lot of stuff about what they call the subtle body.

You know, so it's not like the physical body, but maybe we'd call it the nervous system or you go to an acupuncturist and they write your knee hurts and they stick a needle in your shoulder. Because those channels, those meridians, she is moving. And so in Tibetan practice, they think about and talk about the subtle body a lot. And they talk about disturbances in the subtle body, which no amount of kind of cognitive understanding. I mean, even tremendous wisdom won't necessarily rebalance the subtle body. Sometimes it's something else you need to do. So they have, you know, get exercises for that or in our world. Maybe that would be medication, you know, whatever.

And so I think I'm really glad you went on medication, you know, because sometimes I think that's actually what one needs. Yeah, just for a little while to come back to kind of an even playing field and then you can do the work, you know. Yeah. Well, when you're in a little better state, I mean, I, what happened to me is I was, I was manic, right? And I was all I could talk about, I was plugged into something. All I could talk about was unconditional love. Literally to the point where I was alienating people because I was only stuck on one channel. And the way I describe it is everything in my life at that point was one giant synchronicity.

There was no not synchronicity. It was like, if anyone's done psychedelics, when you're tripping and everything is epiphany after epiphany after epiphany, that's what it was. And some of them I look back and I go, you know what, those really were epiphany. Some of them I go, I don't know about that. But, and I always look at, like, you know, I went on lithium. I don't know if it actually bounced something back out. I don't know if mentally it gave me the placebo effect, but it was useful at that time. And I have an interesting perspective on allotropic drugs, but I do recognize the sometimes very clear benefits for getting people to a place where they can at least approach it from a different place.

So yeah, yeah, yeah, I get that. Well, that's, yeah, the subtle body stuff makes sense to me too, because energetically, I just feel like, you know, in the West, we have a very kind of clinical physiological approach to, you know, like, just look at it when people are trying to figure out what consciousness is. It's in the brain. These narrow transmitters are creating these signals. Sure, they are, but maybe there's something else. I don't know. Okay, so I want to shift gears to a little bit to some of your teachers. And I want to start with Deepa Ma, because I love her story as someone who doesn't know, and I'll let you explain it more than me, is she had a lot of suffering in her life, like a tremendous, like, obscene amounts, I'd say.

And she was one of your primary teachers, and she also became just in her own right, like, one of an amazing teacher to a lot of people. So could you explain kind of who Deepa Ma is and, you know, in your life and kind of what she was about? Sure. Deepa Ma was a Bengali woman, actually, who, her life story is really kind of amazing. She was placed into an arranged marriage when she was about 12 years old. This was the custom of the time, but she and her husband fell deeply in love, which, of course, didn't always happen. And then they couldn't have children. They didn't have children for, like, 18 years or something, and his family was very irate and wanted him to, like, get another wife, but he would do that.

So then they finally had three children and two of her children died. And Deepa Ma was, like, a nickname, he was Deepa's mother, so Deepa was still alive. And her husband, at that point, was in the civil service in Burma, and so they were living in Burma, and he came home from work one afternoon, he didn't feel well, and he died by that night. She was totally overcome by grief, and she actually developed this heart condition. She couldn't get out of bed, and the doctor came in Burma and said to her, "You're actually going to die of a broken heart. If you don't do something about your mind, you should learn how to meditate."

So she got out of bed, and they say when she went to the meditation center, where the temple, the meditation hall, was on, like, what we would call the second floor, she was so weak she couldn't actually walk up the stairs. She had a crawl to get up there. When she came out of that retreat, I think a huge amount of that suffering had been metabolized into compassion. It got moved somehow into this really strong compassion, and she was incredibly loving and compassionate. Somebody wrote a book about her, which I think in the current edition, it's called Deepa Ma, and I thought that was a pretty hard task, because unlike some teachers who have these very pithy sayings, they say this one line and you feel like your whole life shifts.

I like that with her. I think person after person, if you ask what was it like with her, how was it with her? She was so loving. But you can't say it, and then she said to me, "Baba, my whole life changed." She didn't do one of those with me, because she's the person who told me to teach. So really, the whole rest of my life was based on that comment. But you know what I mean? You know, curly baba, it's like those pithy one-liners. Yeah, or any quotes that I put up, they're like, "Oh, that got it, resonates, got it quickly." I mean, what I love about Deepa Ma, or what I've heard about her, is what you described as metabolizing suffering into compassion.

I think that's where some of the biggest spiritual juggernauts for lack of a better word are kind of made, like an intense, first of all, an awareness and a clarity and a presentness with suffering. To just be like, "Okay, first noble truth, got it." Then being able to actually go through, which is hard work, to change that or transmute it into something like compassion, which is like a life sustaining and giving force in my estimation. So I love that, you know, I didn't know that she was the person who actually encouraged you to become a teacher. That makes sense to me. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I told me. I didn't know that.

If you will, you know, I'll go on and finish that story, just because of that. Yeah, yeah, please do. So in '74, I went to India in '70. I stayed a little more than a year. I came back and finished school, and I went back to India. So in '74, I was getting ready to leave again to come back to the States. And I had the thought very strongly that I was coming back just briefly to the States. Then I was going to go back and spend the rest of my life in India. So I went to see her in Kalkada just to say goodbye and get her blessing from my very brief journey. My friend, Joseph Goldstein, whom I'd met at my first retreat, had already come back. He'd been back maybe six months or something like that.

So Deepa Ma said to me, "When you go back to the States, you'll be teaching with Joseph." And I said, "I won't." She said, "Yes, you will." And I said, "No, I won't." And she said, "No, I won't." And she said, "Yes, you will." And she said, "Two things that were really kind of incredible." She said, "You really understand suffering. That's what you should teach." So it was like the suffering of my own life. My own childhood suddenly seemed to mean something else. And then she said, "You can do anything you want to do. What you're thinking you can't do it that's going to stop you." And I actually left her little room, walked down these four flights of stairs thinking, "No, I won't."

But of course, as life evolved, that's exactly what happened. I became a teacher the old fashioned way, like my teacher told me. Yeah, well, I don't know what it is. I've spoken about it in a previous podcast. But before I even started working with Love Serve, I was always gravitating towards teachers or specific lineages. And I never had an intellectual understanding of why. But now kind of looking like I get it, there is some level of transference. And it exists. It's real. I don't want to go too much in it and over analyze it. But I noticed that it's a real thing. And it's been important in my life.

So I definitely, I get it. I'm not surprised at all that she told you to do that. All right, two last questions here. Are you reading any books or anything that you're consuming media wise now that you're super digging or in the past, maybe the past few months or so, anything that is really doing it for you? There are a few things. One is a book. It's not out yet. It's called something like "Why is the Dalai Lama smiling?" That the Western woman who's Tibetan Lama solo wrote. I'm going to put links to these in this page. Okay, I have to look at the actual title. Yeah, yeah, there's no. We can figure that afterwards.

Okay, and then my last question. This is my most important maybe. Practical tips for people who may be listening, who maybe have heard something you've said about meditation or any of these Buddhist concepts. What can they do practically to kind of start moving in a direction? And I don't want to frame it as a panacea, but something that they can start investigating a little bit further. What are some practical tips? Well, I think it is like a program. It's like figuring out what's reasonable for you and what length commitment is reasonable. So it might be ten minutes a day for a month. It might be five minutes a day for a month or two weeks or whatever it is.

There's a way of actually putting it into practice and then getting some clarity, whether it's through book or whatever. But I think people have a lot of ideas about what should be happening in meditation practice. So we struggle. You know, people say to me all the time, "Oh, I tried that once. I failed at it. I couldn't stop thinking. I couldn't make my mind blank. I couldn't have bliss." Whatever, I don't believe meditation is about any of that, but it's about changing your relationship to what is. That's perfectly said, though. Changing your relationship to what is, because I have friends who are not meditators now, but my friends before I was even really doing any of this stuff professionally or personally.

And they'll ask me questions, like, "How do I start?" And A, feels abundantly qualified in terms of giving them a sustaining practice, so I typically refer them to someone like you. But I like that phrase, you know, changing your relationship to what is. That's... I'll leave it there. Thank you, Sharon, for doing this. This was great. Very, very awesome. Thank you so much. Oh, thank you. [Music] Oh, thank you for listening past the music. That's an untitled one. I don't have titles for any of these, because most of them are unfinished tracks on my hard drives from over the years. But thank you for listening to the episode and past music. So I realized I wanted to mention something that I didn't get around to in the intro, and I liked the intro, so I didn't want to redo the intro, and I didn't want to edit it.

But I recently rediscovered these ice cream bars. I don't get compensated for this. I wish I did. Oh, man, I wish I did. There's these ice cream bars called magnums. Yes, like the condom, but it's not a condom. It's an ice cream bar, so get your head out of the gutter. But these ice cream bars are fucking incredible. I don't know why I did that, sorry. But, man, these things are arguably the best deliciousness things I've ever had in my life. I am fundamental. So what I want to do here, I want to start a movement because I think this is possible where we replace all currency, all currency, global currency, all fiat currency, with these ice cream bars, because I think it'll work.

I'm very confident. This is half a joke, and half I actually think these things are so, if you haven't had, here's a deal. If you haven't had one, go to the grocery store or go to wherever they have these magnum bars. Get the chocolate ones. The chocolate ones only. I did research. The other ones, they're okay. They're not great, but the chocolate ones, because I think it's Belgian and Belgian chocolate. But they are maybe the best thing I can remember having in a long time that's like this. So that's not the only reason I have an outro here. Please, rate and review the podcast. At this point, if you've endured me talking about ice cream bars as currency, I would hope that you would maybe be inclined to give me a review.

Maybe it turned a lot of you off. That's cool. That's cool. That's cool. I'll get you next time or something you like, but I'm telling you, these ice cream bars, man, or ladies, they are incredible. Please, please, hear me on this if nothing else. All right, thank you, and I'll see you next week. Bye-bye. When business depends on trucks, the Hudson Valley depends on Healy Brothers. With six dedicated commercial service centers and sales locations across the Hudson Valley, Healy Brothers offers the strength, scale, and capability commercial buyers demand, because work doesn't wait. With mobile service available when and where it counts, Hudson Valley turns to Healy Brothers.

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