Sharon Salzberg has become America’s meditation teacher. In this episode Sharon talks about places of resistance as “tight spots” and methods of transforming resistance to more openness and freedom. Marc and Sharon discuss the practice of loving kindness as well as shame, an emotion that has positive and negative qualities. They discuss the power of presence and the role of meditation.

 

 

ABOUT MARC’S GUEST

Sharon Salzberg is a New York Times bestselling author and teacher of Buddhist meditation practices in the West. In 1974, she co-founded the Insight Meditation Society at Barre, Massachusetts. Her emphasis is on Vipassanā (insight) and mettā (loving-kindness) methods, and has been leading meditation retreats around the world for over three decades. Her books include Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness, A Heart as Wide as the World, and Real Happiness – The Power of Meditation: A 28-Day Program among others.

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:02] Marc Lesser: Welcome to Zen Bones: Ancient Wisdom For Modern Times. This is Marc Lesser. Why Zen Bones? Our world is in crisis and ever-shifting, and now more than ever, more wisdom, clarity, and courage are essential, especially in the world of work, business, and leadership. I’m really pleased to welcome Sharon Salzberg. Sharon is one of the most well-known and reviewed mindfulness and meditation teachers in the world today. She’s written many books, including a very popular and wonderful book about loving-kindness.

In our discussion, we talk about tight spots and resistance and methods and ways of transforming tight spots to openness and freedom. We talk about loving-kindness, the practice of loving-kindness. We get into the topic of shame and how shame can be negative or positive depending on the approach. We talk about presence and meditation. Then Sharon leads a powerful, loving-kindness meditation. I hope you enjoy this episode. Welcome to Zen Bones: Ancient Wisdom For Modern Times.

This is Marc Lesser, and I am really happy this morning to be here with my dharma sister friend, Sharon Salzberg. Good morning, Sharon.

[00:01:47] Sharon Salzberg: Good morning or afternoon? Well, morning. Late morning.

[00:01:52] Marc: Well, time has taken a whole different sense because people can listen to this in the middle of the night or early in the morning, or driving or walking or, who knows?

[00:02:03] Sharon: That’s true. Two years from now.

[00:02:06] Marc: Two years from now, 10 years from now. Who knows? Well, Sharon, I was thinking about the last time we were in person, was at a book reading here in Mill Valley when your book about real love had come out. I was just looking at your book that’s about to come out called Real Life. One of the things that really got my attention was you’re talking about the power of our imaginations and having the courage to imagine. As you and I were preparing, I was saying, let’s imagine this conversation being life-changing, earth-shattering.

Let’s. Tell me a little bit about this new book and what you mean by having the courage to imagine. Where does that come from and how might people practice with this in their lives?

[00:03:07] Sharon: It’s so interesting. I actually have a book in between. It was a book I wrote called Real Change on the real train. I wrote real change before the Pandemic. It came out during the pandemic. I wrote Real Life during the Pandemic and it will come out wherever we are, which is very interesting. It started in a way because on April something of 2020, so it was newly into lockdown. I watched a thing on YouTube called Saturday Night Seder. It was one of the first productions I think that was created entirely on Zoom and so the writers were never in the room together.

It was beautiful and it was rabbis, opera singers, performers, and comedians. It was a reminder to me that in that story, the story of the exodus from Egypt to Jerusalem was the story of the movement from oppression to freedom. That the word Egypt, I was really pushing people in reading it not to get lost in geopolitics. That’s not what it’s about. It’s all symbolic and the word Egypt actually means narrow place like confined, constrained, held in place. It’s that movement from contraction to expansion, to openness.

First of all, what it takes really struck me to have that kind of audacity to imagine life can really look different, don’t have to feel stuck here. Then to take the journey. Of course, the Seder ends and this is the end of the book with aspiration where everyone says next year in Jerusalem, So what if Jerusalem is not a place, but it is that world that doesn’t have people hungry and doesn’t have war and doesn’t have the things that very real in but possible. These are not impossible dreams. What’s it like to have that kind of aspiration, beginning, middle, and end take the journey?

[00:05:37] Marc: I love the word often come back to the word aspiration, which includes breath. When we think about these ancient practices for modern times, and here you are talking about the ancient Passover Seder and Egypt and these traditions of this focus on tight places. Interesting. The relationship between right tight places, aspiration, and imagining and moving toward real freedom or of your forthcoming books Real life, Real Freedom.

[00:06:17] Sharon: It’s the first time I say this to you as a fellow writer, it’s the first time I’ve written a book without also traveling all the time myself because I was in lockdown. It was such an interesting experience to be stable in a way, and not moving around, and to be writing about movement and change and so on. It was really good experience.

[00:06:45] Marc: One of the descriptions of this book is to take some risks with what we dare to imagine an interest in states we might normally try to avoid. I think we normally avoid those tight places and yet there’s something so profound and useful about those tight places. It’s interesting that meditation practice is like sitting still, and I’m aware of how it’s hard for me, it’s hard for most people to sit still and actually access those tight places. At the same time, this really feeling these tight places and then imagining what’s possible or feeling how we can transform those tight places into greater freedom.

[00:07:45] Sharon: Well, I began to see just in that process it’s almost like daydreaming or it’s just like being in the neighborhood of your topic. You’re not actively writing maybe, but you’re just there. You’re seeing what moves through you and what appears but you end up channeling it away and how many of my own teachers or teachers from other traditions had the same advice, more or less poetic, which was exactly what you just said. Instead of trying to dismantle the particular habit structure that has you feeling a certain way or thinking a certain pattern, be open to it.

In a way, maybe it’s all about balance, like many things, because sometimes we have a tendency to get immersed and overcome and really defined by what is really a passing emotional state, like agreed or jealousy or something. Instead of realizing what we need is a little bit more space. Other times we’re so distant, we’re so unwilling to feel or recognize or acknowledge, “This is what’s going on right now.” That what we need to do is come a little closer but if you just use the word like openness or open to, then covers both imbalances, which is really what we need.

We need a presence in the face of whatever that’s very different from probably our normal conditioning.

[00:09:26] Marc: It sounds a lot like a pain and possibility or tightness. The balance but it’s interesting. I think it’s not about finding the middle ground, but like really feeling the tightness. Again, this being really open to imagining what’s possible. Like this journey that you were describing, the journey out of Egypt into freedom. Again, these are symbols of being constriction and openness. It’s a little bit. One of the exercises that I’ve seen done is making a fist, feeling in your body what it’s like to constrict and then literally to feeling what it’s to open your hand. That bodily sensation of constriction and freedom and openness.

[00:10:28] Sharon: Part of our problem, I guess, is that we don’t feel that that’s a big part of our problem. [laughs] We’re disconnected and we don’t recognize that we’re not being asked to get angry at what we’re feeling or have a hostility toward it or hate it or be ashamed of it, but to relinquish the hold because it’s actually painful. What we don’t feel is the pain of it. If we can feel that it’s a very natural movement. It’s not coerced or even overly fierce.

It’s just like, Oh, yes, we just open and we’re able to let go in a different way and able to come back to a state of balance and more presence than maybe we had before. It’s all to the good.

[00:11:25] Marc: The other statement from the description of the book Real Life is taking interest in people we might normally try to avoid. Where does that come from and what do you mean by that?

[00:11:41] Sharon: I think it’s the same movement of this is the same gesture. It’s almost a gesture of generosity, although we don’t think of it that way of loving-kindness when we are working with internal states and we say, oh, yes, this is what’s happening right now. That’s not an easy thing. I think about the various points of view about the popularity of the word mindfulness, for example. Being as old as I am, having watched this popularization of this movement happen, it’s been very interesting because there are a lot of qualities implied in the word mindfulness.

Which I would define it could be defined a lot of different ways. I would define it as a quality of awareness where our perception of what’s happening in the present moment is not so distorted by bias, old fears, projection into the future, whatever it might be. It’s not easy because that’s where we tend to go, just out of habit. One of the things implied there is the kind of love or loving-kindness or tolerance of, “Yes, this is what I’m feeling right now.” These days a lot of people are trying to bring that out and not have it be implicit but explicit.

You hear these conversations where people say, mindfulness is such a cold word, it sounds so clinical and cold. Let’s call it kindfulness instead of mindfulness or call it loving awareness or something like that. I don’t know that you need to change the word, but understand how much is there. Just as we work internally with those states, it’s the same gesture externally, like all those many beings. I think that was one of the striking things for a lot of people in the pandemic, depending on how you were living.

That ocean of beings that we are generally indifferent to, that we look through that we don’t look at that. We can call them essential workers all we want, but they’ve not felt very essential to our lives, and how many we miss in having that kind of dreamlike existence where we go to the supermarket, where we go somewhere. You can just feel these flickers of wakefulness as people were recognizing, “Oh, I live in an interdependent universe. I don’t grow my own food. There’s lots of beings involved in my being able to eat.” Look at that.

It’s a whole of the universe.

We had imagined maybe, and it’s fascinating also watching the interplay and the external and realize, oh, we’re developing the same qualities no matter where it’s directed. Internally, it’s the various forces that arise in our minds and come and go. Externally is the various beings in our lives that we make assumptions about or we cut off before they really present themselves or we’re not really paying attention to. The question becomes, what happens when I do pay attention after all?

[00:15:25] Marc: It’s interesting. Paying attention both to the restrictions and the possibilities. Expanding, how can we? A bit paradoxical. Expanding our worlds through what’s possible. It also makes me think, Sharon, of the book that was I think a powerful part of your becoming more known was the book about loving-kindness. Which in some way it maybe catches people’s imaginations. The possibility that we can practice loving-kindness and the need to practice loving-kindness, maybe as a way of touching and melting or transforming our tightness.

We’re tight and where we’re narrow. Loving-kindness maybe as the path from restriction to freedom.

[00:16:27] Sharon: That was my first book and covered within the Buddhist context of four Brahmaviharas or four about the states of loving-kindness, compassion, and sympathetic joy or joy in the happiness of others. Then equanimity or the articulation of wisdom as balance and mostly about loving-kindness. As though you are doing that practice where you make that offering of paying attention differently and care and so on to yourself and then a variety of beings. Those you feel close to, those you’re more distant from, and so on until we come to all beings everywhere to all of life.

It’s all based on a recognition of intraconnection that our lives have something to do with one another. I found that a tremendously profound practice and not that easy to understand even because we tend to confuse, say, loving-kindness with liking somebody or approving of them or giving into them or something like that. It doesn’t mean any of that. It isn’t even necessarily emotional. For those who use the word love, that’s really confusing which always seems emotional to us, but it isn’t necessarily.

It could be that moment of inclusion, that moment of listening and realizing, “Oh, I haven’t been listening to this being,” something like that. That was such a hugely important practice for me when I did it intensively in 1985 when I went to Burma for three months to do that practice. From that point on when I was teaching it because then I was with others as they went through their own process in doing it. I was really happy to write about it. It was my first book and it was a long time ago.

In those days I didn’t know how to use a personal computer, and I hardly knew anybody who had one. I did notice that the few people I knew who did have one never talked about anything else. It was such a magical thing and I was so scared or so intimidated, I thought I could never learn how to use it. It’s like was so beyond me. I was at IMS at the Insight Meditation Society and we had a visit one day from a 94-year-old Sri Lankan monk. We were just hanging out together and he mentioned that he was learning how to use a computer.

I thought, “Okay, he’s 94 years old, he’s learning how to use a computer, maybe I can’t too.” Then he said he’d like to go into the meditation hall, we had a retreat that was happening. He’d like to go into the home hall and you talk. I thought, he’s 94 years old, it’s not going to be a very long talk. How long could it be? It turned out to be an endless talk. It was so long because he had more energy than all of us put together. During the course of the talk, he said, “I want to teach you my favorite meditation,” which was a combo.

We would say a body scan as Jon Kabat-Zinn later popularized the term, moving your attention through your body, picking up these different sensations that might be appearing. His favorite meditation was a combo of the body scan and loving-kindness meditation so that he might start with like, “May my head be happy, may it be peaceful.” Would run through his eyes and his ears and every organ. I sat there and I thought, “Oh, maybe that’s the reason he has so much energy because this is his favorite meditation and he must do it sometimes.”

It was very beautiful to think of relating with the body in just that way. Through the years I’ve seen the healing potential and the transformation as people deal with. The body’s extremely inconvenienced as you get older, it is a tough road. The scarring and the hurting and the everything, it can be very hard to deal with. Seeing there’s no choice. It’s not like we’re given a menu.

[00:21:20] Marc: I’m staying with your statement, the body is very inconvenient and hearing about this 94-year-old do this meditation that I haven’t heard that before. The combination of integrating a body scan, as you said that Jon Kabat-Zinn popularized, and which now everyone does, or at least I see a lot of people doing it. Combining it with loving-kindness seems really profound, right?

[00:21:52] Sharon: I think it’s very beautiful. First listening, of course, it seemed very elementally, may my eyes be happy, may my nose be happy. Was this kindergarten? Actually, it’s mostly through the years, seeing people practice it and seeing the really profound effect. It’s also a deeper understanding of loving-kindness because it can’t possibly mean, “May my terrible diagnosis flourish,” that’s not what we want. That marshal attacking part of my body as it goes into revolt, that’s not what we want necessarily either.

We want a different kind of holding environment for every experience that can be present because guess what? Our awareness is stronger than this disease process or whatever the body is undergoing. It’s hard to trust that, there’s no reason to just trust it on, my saying so, but we experiment. We keep paying attention and we do these things and see what the effect is.

[00:23:02] Marc: This simple practice of bringing attention and love to our bodies. Loving, it seems so obvious, and yet as you said like kindergarten, so elementary, I love loving my eyes, loving my nose. I wonder, Sharon, if you would– First maybe is there anything else you would like to bring up or say here in this conversation? I’m also thinking it would be great or we’re ready to close if you would lead maybe just a short loving-kindness meditation of some kind.

[00:23:45] Sharon: I would be happy to. I’m thinking about real life, what’s in that book anyway?

[laughter]

[00:23:52] Marc: Yes, what’s in that book? How would you describe what’s the essence of this book real-life?

[00:23:59] Sharon: I tried to make a point that when I say moving from constriction or narrowness, when I say narrowness, I don’t mean intentionality or conviction. Or a lot of the times we think about being focused as being narrow, but that’s not what I mean. I mean really those times we feel trapped, we feel like we are imprisoned in something and hell, so many of the things that we get that feeling from being entrapped, being closed in, you could say again, from the Buddhist point of view, the three basic issues of grasping aversion and delusion.

Aversion being anger and fear. Just two different forms of the same mindset basically, and how these manifest in everyday life. In talking about grasping, I talked about addiction and talking about aversion I talked about shame. That was a really interesting journey because all of these things of our elements, their habits, their forces in our minds that we picked up because we had a lot of hope about them. This is going to make me happy or this is going to be the way out, and sometimes they work for a period of time, they do work.

Of course, we know that from psychology, they don’t work always, and then they get old. Then it’s the go-to place and it’s like, I’m here again. Again, which means it’s another reason we can forgive ourselves for whatever we’re feeling because it was a survival mechanism often. Then there’s delusion, which is just delusion and confusion and numbness. I also wrote about how in the teachings, there’s some aspect of delusion that leads us to a kind of fundamentalism, because being out in the wilderness, so to speak, we usually hold on tight to something, if we can find it.

That becomes a fundamentalist stance.

[00:26:13] Marc: Shame, which you mentioned is really interesting. In Buddhist psychology, of all the different emotions, I believe that shame is the only one that is listed as both unwholesome and wholesome. There’s an unwholesome kind of shaming, but there’s also a wholesome kind of shame as there’s a depth to it. It makes me also think of, I remember in a conversation I had some time ago with Bill George, who wrote True North about leadership.

One of the things he talks about is how CEOs and leaders, his experience is they need to touch their shame and transform a sense of shame in order to be more effective and skillful leaders. I think of it as maybe a deep sense of humility, it’s very humbling. The shame that we can’t change everything or that maybe that we’ve done things inadvertently that have been hurtful. I think is the wholesome side of shame is this recognition that we’ve caused some harm despite our best intentions.

[00:27:35] Sharon: One of the things I feel looking back at my writing, especially, of course, has been that part of what I’ve gotten really excited about and inspired by is the ability to redeem words. These words are complex and these states are complex, loving-kindness or love of faith. I wrote a book on faith, which no one understood why I was writing a book on faith. People would say to me, “Why are you doing that?” I’d say, “I want to redeem the word. I don’t think it has to mean a state where you’re not allowed to ask questions, for example.

Or where you’re silenced in some way. Partly that passage or that section happened, because just before– I spent February of 2020 traveling and teaching in California, not knowing what was coming is we didn’t. I was with this small group of people in someone’s house teaching one night, and it was a psychologist present who made some comment, the brain that’s filled with shame cannot learn. That was a particular meaning of shame in a certain context and it was a very interesting context. I thought about knowing what we want out of a situation.

Maybe what we really want is behavior change and if you can’t learn when you’re filled with shame, that’s probably not the best place to be, and trying to affect some change, there was that. Then thinking how do we learn? How do we let go of these habits? How do we, without hating ourselves and without carrying on? So then I got entangled because in some schools of Buddha psychology, the distinction would be between regret or remorse, which is painful. It’s like what you’re talking about, it’s psychconscience.

Where we do recollect the harm we caused or the way we behaved that wasn’t that great, but we can let go of it with some imagination about the possibility of change. Or we stay stuck there and that would be guilt. The distinction is between guilt and remorse, and with guilt, we just go over it and over it and over it, and over and over and over. We can’t move on. It’s exhausting, it’s demoralizing and it’s not considered that wholesome because we’re stuck.

Then in being home and talking to psychologists, therapists, and people, they would say to me well in western psychology the distinction would be between shame and guilt. Guilt would be considered positive because it’s in contrast to globalizing. Instead of saying I did something reckless or I said something inappropriate or unskillful at that meeting, it would be, “I’m a bad person.” That was a whole other angle for me.

[00:30:47] Marc: Yes. I would think the unwholesome the distinction I think is for any of these whether it’s shame or even remorse or guilt that there’s a fixed quality to it versus a recognition that these are tentative states or temporary states that we can learn from and grow from. Again, this full circle here in this conversation starting with Egypt, the tight spots. Seeing the tight spots as opportunities for learning and growth because they’re not fixed. We’re not stuck in Egypt.

[00:31:26] Sharon: That’s right. The imagination.

[00:31:27] Marc: The imagination. Yes. Not avoiding or grasping onto the tight spots. Well, it’s so great to get to hang out with you, Sharon, I must say.

[00:31:41] Sharon: It’s fun to hang out with you.

[00:31:43] Marc: [chuckles] Is there something, maybe a short again in a few minutes? Does that work for you?

[00:31:49] Sharon: Oh, yes. You wanted a loving-kindness meditation.

[00:31:52] Marc: Yes, just–

[00:31:53] Sharon: Great, let’s go for it.

[00:31:54] Marc: Let’s do it.

[music]

[00:32:02] Sharon: You can sit comfortably and if it’s appropriate, close your eyes or leave them open and depends on how you’re comfortable. There are many ways of doing loving-kindness meditation. I was taught and therefore teach the silent repetition of certain phrases. The phrases are a different way of paying attention. You don’t have to force or manufacture any kind of feeling or emotion. The power of the practice is in the complete wholehearted gathering of all of our attention one phrase at a time. Phrases need to be big enough.

There are gestures of generosity. It’s offering it’s gift-giving. We start with offering the phrases to ourselves and go through a variety of different relationships. Those we feel close to those we don’t feel that close to until we come to all beings everywhere all of life. Now that’s an awful lot to do in one session. We don’t try to do every single thing in one session but that’s okay too. The phrases need to be general to reflect that. Common phrases starting with ourselves are things like, “May I be safe be happy be healthy, live with ease,” which means in the things of day-to-day life.

Like livelihood and family may not be such a struggle. May I live with ease. May I be safe be happy be healthy live with ease. People often say to me,”Who am I asking?” My response is, “We’re not asking anybody anything. We’re gift-giving we’re offering.” You can repeat these phrases over and over again with enough space and enough silence so that it is a rhythm that’s pleasing to you. Crucial is when your attention wanders, you fall asleep. You’re totally lost in thought spun out in a fantasy. Don’t worry about it truly.

Do You realize you’re gone. You’ve been distracted. See if you can let go gently and simply start again. Come back to the phrases. Okay beginning with oneself may I be safe be happy be healthy live with ease. See if you can think of someone who’s been a benefactor for you. They’ve helped you. They’ve helped you directly they’ve helped pick you up when you’ve fallen down. They’ve inspired you from afar you’ve never even met them. The tech says this is the one who when you think of them you smile. Could be an adult could be a child could be a pet.

It’s like an embodiment of the force of love in this world. Is there someone you think of them and they just lift you lift your spirits? If so bring them here. You can get an image of them or say their name to yourself. Get a feeling for their presence and offer the phrases of love and kindness to them. Even if the words don’t seem perfect, you’re carrying the energy of the heart so they’re serving us. May you be safe be happy, be healthy, live with ease. A friend who not doing so well right now, maybe let’s bring them here.

See what happens as we offer the phrases of loving-kindness to them. May you be safe, be happy, be healthy live with ease and in all beings everywhere, all people, all creatures, all those in existence, near and far known and unknown, may all beings be safe. Be happy be healthy live with ease. When you feel ready you can open your eyes or lift your gaze we’ll end the meditation.

[music]

[00:37:25] Marc: Thank you. May you be happy and healthy. May you live with ease and what a joy to have this time together. Really appreciate it.

[00:37:38] Sharon: Well, thank you so much.

[music]

[00:37:44] Marc: Listen in each week for interviews, teachings, and guided meditations. You’ll receive supportive tools for creating more meaningful work and mindfulness practices to develop yourself, influence your organization, and help change the world. Thank you for listening.

[00:38:08] [END OF AUDIO]