Mindfulness Meditation: Benefits and Dilemmas

00:00:01 uh in couple of weeks. Uh today's program was uh proposed by and organized by uh John Williams who's a professor of English and film and media studies at Yale University, author of the Buddha in the machine, art technology and the meeting of East and West and has published as well on a number of topics including religion, futurology, systems theory, psychoanalysis and film and television. His forthcoming manuscript is called out

00:00:32 of mind a media theoretical critic of meditation. Uh and it examines the role of communication technologies in the evolution of contemplative practices during the 20th century. So John will u introduce the other participants and then we'll get going. Thank you. Okay. Um, I want to begin by thanking Ed and the New York Psychoanalytic Institute for allowing us to host this

00:01:03 Helix Center event today. Um, can you not quite hear me well enough? I got it. Okay. As Ed said, my name is John Williams. I will uh introduce the members of our round table today and then ask a few questions to get the conversation going. Uh we'll probably talk as a panel until about 3:45 and then try to open it up for some questions and answers afterwards. So if you have something you'd like to say,

00:01:33 keep that in mind. Um so to begin, our first panelist is Mark Epstein, a psychiatrist in private practice in New York City. He's the author of a number of books about the interface of Buddhism and psychotherapy, including Thoughts Without a Thinker, Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart, Going on Being, Open to Desire, Psychotherapy Without the Self, The Trauma of Everyday Life, and Advice Not Given: A Guide to Getting Over Yourself. His latest work, The Zen

00:02:04 of Therapy: Uncovering a Hidden Kindness in Life, was published in 2022 by Penguin Press. He received his undergraduate and medical degrees from Harvard and he's been a student of episana meditation since 1974. David Forbes is an emeritus in the urban education doctoral program at the City University of New York graduate center. He teaches and writes on critical and integral approaches to mindfulness and education and has consulted with New York City schools on developing social

00:02:34 mindfulness programs. He recently helped form the CUNI mindfulness and contemplative studies network and develop an upcoming online advance certificate program on mindfulness through Lehman College CUNI. David is the author of Mindfulness and its discontents, education, self, and social transformation and co-editor of the Handbook of Mindfulness: Culture, Context, and Social Engagement with Ron Perser, with whom he co-produces the podcast, The Mindful

00:03:05 Cranks. As a counselor and educator, David has taught school counseling at the School of Education at Brooklyn College for 19 years. While there, he wrote about his experience and practicing mindfulness with a Brooklyn high school football team in his book, Boys to Buddhas, Counseling Urban High School Male Athletes in the Zone, and was a co-reient of a contemplative program development fellowship from the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society. Andrea Jane is a professor of religious

00:03:37 studies at Indiana University, editor of the journal of the American Academy of Religion and author of Selling Yoga: From Counterculture to Pop Culture, published by Oxford University Press in 2014, and Peace, Love, Yoga: The Politics of Global Spirituality, also published by Oxford in 2020. She received her doctorate degree in religious studies from Rice University in 2010. She writes and speaks about capitalism, religion, sex, and society in our contemporary world from a leftist

00:04:09 feminist perspective. She also advocates for neurodeiversity everywhere she goes. Her politics inform her work. The work is always already political. Tim Mckenry has been presenting uh Reuben Museum of Art audiences over the past 20 years with what the Huffington Post has called some of the most original and inspired programs on the arts and consciousnesses in New York City. Mckenry created 26 onstage conversations around Young's Red Book in

00:04:41 2009 with Youngian analysts paired with the likes of composer John Adams, artist Maria Abramovich, musician David Burn, filmmaker Jonathan Dem, and novelist Alice Walker. He initiates some of the early He initiated some of the early public conversations on neuroscience and meditation practice and mindfulness in the context of his long-running series Brainwave, a weekly art and practice session, mindfulness meditation continues to be a Reuben offering at the Insight Meditation Center in New York

00:05:11 City. And last but not least, Dr. Katherine Wilholm is a clinical psychologist based in Kent University. She is registered with the health and uh core professional council and chartered by the British psychological society. Having previously worked at the National Health Service, Katherine currently works in private practice and specializes in child, adolescent, and young adult mental health. She is the co-author of the Buddha pill, can meditation change you? uh and just to introduce our topic today. Uh I chose everyone on this panel both because I

00:05:42 respect the depth of their insights and thinking about meditation and also because they all tend to push back on some of the sacred assumptions that people have about meditation and different practices. So I'm going to begin by just referring to the program and some of the questions that we begin by asking such as is there such a thing as an authentic mindfulness meditation? has the practice itself of meditating become too corporatized to be effective and what does the future of meditation look like uh for us today? So, I'm going to turn

00:06:14 the time over now to our panel to begin talking. The conversation will be free flowing and as I said, please be prepared for questions and answers afterwards. You don't have it. Katherine, why don't you start? Um, so my interest in this came about actually through a study where it was based at Oxford University where we looked at the effects of yoga and meditation with prisoners and off the

00:06:47 back of that um my co-author Miguel Fri and I got really interested in what's the actual kind of scientific evidence for the effects of meditation. So we looked at TM and mindfulness and something interesting that we came to as part of the process of writing the book was about exploring the adverse effects that people can experience during meditation including mindfulness meditation as well as the benefits and as well as that thinking around the hype

00:07:20 around mindfulness especially at that time and I think to some degree some of that hype has lessened over the last 10 years since we wrote the book and there is much more awareness of the range of experiences people can have when they meditate. But I think still there is something around the kind of universalist approach to mindfulness as a mental health um intervention that it's meant to be kind of or seen often in the media as

00:07:51 good for all and is working the same way for all. When increasingly we're finding that the role of individual differences is so important and that while it can work really well for some, it works less well for others and for some others it can be harmful or bring about experiences that they may not be expecting. So um I think Willoughby Britain put it um

00:08:23 in her her sort of studies on adverse implications of mindfulness practice uh was that um the adverse reactions were about 1 in 10 of the practitioners which he said comparatively to other sort of uh psychotherapy um approaches was about the same ratio. So again, there might be an awful lot of hype about the benefits of meditation, but I'm wondering whether there's an becoming an awful lot of hype about the adverse effects of meditation given the proportionately they are comparable. So it just goes to say that

00:08:55 perhaps um you're right, not everybody benefits from the same type of treatment. But I think context is is is the most important thing. Who's your teacher? Um who's your guide? who's your therapist? Um, and you know, if you're alone on a mountaintop with an app, is that really doing you service? I don't know. This is up for us to talk about. In the in the 1980s, what I I got interested in in

00:09:26 vapasa, Buddhist meditation, and so on in the 70s, but by the 1980s, uh, friends of mine were setting up conferences in places like this. I think we had one at the Harvard club uh of uh psychoanalysts and Buddhists and we we brought together you know RD Lang and some some pretty well-known New York psychoanalytic people and and various Buddhist teachers I think Ramdas was at one uh u anyway the conclusion that that

00:09:57 came out of uh those first conferences um which was at the beginning of my time being interested in uh uh could psychoanalysis and Buddhism talk to each other and so on was that the main similarity between psychoanalysis and and meditation or psychoanalysis and Buddhism was that there were two things that didn't work because people want so much from both of them you you know they want they want something like the way Prozac the

00:10:27 way everybody wanted something from Prozac also and uh maybe everything helps a little both helped me a lot But um but the expectations are are so um you know so much a part of of uh how uh uh all this is is digested. Hence Dan Harris is 10% happier not 59%. Right. 10% was a good a good take on it. Yeah. Well I think in terms of the effectiveness too we have to ask you

00:10:59 know what are we trying to do? What's the end goal with mindfulness? Is it to cure anxiety? I mean, if we're talking about a prison population, then we're talking about a lot of people who are also suffering from all sorts of systemic structural forms of oppression. And so, we might help a person who's imprisoned relax or feel somewhat less anxiety through mindfulness, but are we going to solve those systemic issues that put them in prison in the first place? Um, and you know, perpetuate the lifetime of um distress. um amst

00:11:34 uh lack of access to resources probably not. In some ways that is the question about the claims that are often made about meditation and mindfulness that it isn't just like cognitive behavioral therapy where nine out of 10 times it works or something but that it can somehow change structurally societal dilemmas that it has an effect on making us more empathetic, more sensitive, more ethical and so on. So, I I'm sensitive to that as well. And I think if it worked, then

00:12:04 that would be um fantastic. My own experience with teaching in a a prison population is um that for a few years now I've been part of the Yale Prison Education Initiative. And I teach things like the introduction to American literature and poetry and novels. And often I've asked them what the rest of their experience is like in the prison, whether they get religious people proitizing that come or people that come and teach meditation. And when I mentioned meditation, several of them rolled their eyes and says, "Yeah, like

00:12:35 and I said, "What do you what's what what do you mean?" And they said, "Well, like I need to sit alone with my thoughts. You know, I much prefer, you know, picking up a novel and learning about it." And so there was at least in my small sample of the experience with that some frustration that it didn't feel like a kind of even a relaxation in a way. It felt like a a joke almost. Yeah. Yeah. And I think in in my work, I've addressed a lot of the ways in which these the prescriptions of these practices serve

00:13:07 as a way to burden individuals with the uh responsibility of healing from the inside out, as they put it, instead of engaging in in practices that demand strugg. And you're exhausted all the time. Well, spend your lunch hours studying mindfulness. that's how you achieve, you know, a better balanced life. Uh, you know, so yet giving her another thing to do rather than demand child care at the workplace or, uh, you

00:13:38 know, paid family leave. Uh, so those are, you know, some of the concerns I've thought about in terms of and I I hear some echo maybe in like the the prisoners rolling their eyes at you, you know. Okay. So, you want me to sit and reflect on all the I've been through in my life, but, you know, I mean, maybe I'd like, you know, an opportunity to engage in in some opportunity to get access to something I haven't otherwise had access to. Uh, that might be somewhat better intervention for me. David. Yeah. I I

00:14:09 think it might be helpful to to rewind the tape a bit and and ask where mindfulness comes from. And most of us would agree that it comes out of the Buddhist tradition. Um so so I'm I'm always interested in the purpose of mindfulness, which is what which is what you're raising. um you know and well first of all with Buddhism it it has it a lot of people there there are purists that say no it's

00:14:41 you ought to go back to Buddhism and most of us would say no that's not the case and that much of Buddhism as as it's as as Buddhism has has moved from from India to to China and elsewhere has has changed the nature of mindfulness so that shouldn't be an issue of is there a pure mindfulness But but the question of what the purpose of it is is something that that that I I think is important to look at. Why why why are people doing it? One of my points is I always ask the

00:15:13 people that I'm presenting to or my students is is it for adjustment to to the current issues of society like you're raising or is it for some kind of transformation? And and I think that's that's a key question that that we we need to ask. um you know what what is the purpose? A lot of it I think again we know John Cavsson kind of is credited with secularizing it and bringing it sort of taking it away from the Buddhist ethical foundation. Uh which I which I

00:15:44 would adhere it doesn't have to be a Buddhist ethical or moral foundation but I think we need one. I think we need one to say well what what is the purpose here and and there I think there is a higher purpose if you want to use the word terms of development a later stage purpose um and that a lot of it though becomes stress reduction which I'm not against I think people are stress stressed out by many things but from my point of view I think we have to look at what are the social conditions of why people are stressed out and that a lot

00:16:16 and that one of my concerns and my colleague and friend Ron Perer and others talk about is well well what what are the social conditions that contribute to the stress and and often a lot of mindfulness is just about helping individuals be responsible for their feelings and and and not look at the social context and um that everything everything is inside you and that coincides with with with a critique of neoliberalism with a critique of capitalism in a way that that that's very good at having us ignore

00:16:49 the the largest social inequities and political inequities and focusing just on the individual. One of do you all know sorry uh historically how mindfulness emerged where it came from? I think it might be interesting just to just to talk about that for a second that um it mindfulness uh first started to be talked about disc as a discrete thing uh in the 1800s in

00:17:21 Burma um as a a revolutionary act or an antic-colonial act. The British had taken over Burma and uh a monk named Lady Sioda Lei uh um took the mindfulness instructions which had traditionally been only for monks in the monastery who after many years of study and so on and he secularized it um for the general

00:17:53 population for lay people not for monks in in order to uh give a a um a a feeling of self-esteem uh to the Burmese people to resist the Christian missionaries and the British uh uh uh colonialists to to like spread a sense of pride really [Music] to spread a sense of pride among the among the local people. And um so the

00:18:25 practice of uh um intensive meditation retreats uh uh that have taken hold here where where many people interested in mindfulness or or vaposa go uh to you know deepen their practice. that that started in Burma during that time and uh a few of the British uh uh military people who were were stationed there uh

00:18:55 uh started to get interested and the one of the first books that I found in my freshman year at at Harvard taking an introduction to world religion class was written by one of those British uh officers who did a 10day day a vapa retreat with a teacher named Mahasi Seda who uh uh was also the teacher of Joseph Goldstein's teacher you know so the the tradition that has come down to us through I don't know if people know all

00:19:27 these names but through John Cavitzin and Joseph Goldstein and so on had its direct origin you just have to go back two steps to this anti-colonialist uh Burmese uh you you know, we're not going to let you stamp out our tradition kind of thing. And uh uh from there, it's entered this new form where now we're talking about it in a in a place like this. It's resilience after all. It's got something. Well, resistance. Is

00:19:58 it resilient if it's I mean, is it the same thing, right? because how quickly something can go from being anti-colonial to serving colonialism or capitalism for example you know uh mindfulness you know where's the line between mindfulness as a tool for making better workers right and mindfulness as a tool for resisting capitalism uh you know it definitely doesn't make better workers well it but it c it can be absolutely instrumentalized toward that end you know for example in Silicon

00:20:29 Valley it's assumed that it does it I mean it's a mistake it's very explicit in the way it's prescribed in certain context that you will be able to work be better worker be better at what you do so but just uh resetting again because Mark that's a great historical context but David also um talked about uh mindfulness as a having a Buddhist origin or at least a a foundation and it'll be really interesting just to hear from you know one sentence dictionary entry qualific ification or

00:21:01 quantification of what mindfulness meditation actually does or serves. That's a very good Katherine. I I was sensitive that you might have wanted to say something earlier. So, oh without going back too far, I think I was thinking what about David was saying around um sort of the systems and you as well Andrea and thinking about sort of the use of mindfulness within schools. Um, so I'm a clinical psychologist who specializes in child and adolescent

00:21:31 mental health. So I care a lot about anything that will help the mental health of children. But I think in this particular environment and thinking about factors which contribute to mental health problems in children, a lot of which are around inequalities, deprivation, so many factors other than their attention or their ability to pay attention in the present moment and so on. And I think there's a particular consideration with this where there's a risk of locating the the

00:22:03 problem within the child that if they can just learn to do this better then they're taking ownership of of their mental health. Now I I'm not against kind of mindfulness with children. What I am in favor of is about children having choice in the matter. And certainly I think maybe it's less so now but when Miguel and I was writing the book at the time I was working in an NHS CAM service which

00:22:33 is child and adolescent mental health service and lots of kids I was seeing were having what was essentially mandatory mindfulness classes at school like delivered by their class teacher you know sandwiched between lunch and French. They're in the school hall with all their peers and we're asking well they they're being told to practice mindfulness meditation which for some is helpful but for others really wasn't and I think um over the last few years I

00:23:05 suppose it has been recognized that at least with the use of mindfulness with children that the enthusiasm was certainly ahead of of the evidence in terms of rolling it out so much within schools. or having just children's class teachers that have had maybe a brief bit of mindfulness training be their mindfulness teacher and not telling children that actually yes this might help to relax you and it it might help reduce stuff which maybe they don't want to be thinking about when they're at school. So we know that for people

00:23:37 children who've been through trauma there is the possibility of reexperiencing some of that within mindfulness meditation. And I think you know linking it again back to kind of bitter roots and so on that although mindfulness is meant to be this secularized technique and we're using it for stress reduction or reducing depression or so on. That's the aim. that actually potentially there's there's more power within that. There's the potential for a lot more to happen to

00:24:08 someone internally than a child who's being told to do it as part of their school curriculum is expecting. The science around that is so interesting, isn't it? Because I mean um the area in the brain the insula uh where attention is manifested and practice is the it can also be the same area in which terror is experienced. Right? So so fear anxiety and attention actually happen to be stimulated in the same area of the brain. So therefore a great deal of

00:24:39 caution is needed and context is needed in order to um anchor a practice and not for a whole hour for a busy um working mom. You know 10 minutes max then move on. You know it's it's that small dipping in on a regular basis that might be beneficial that incremental rather than trying to um you know force somebody to focus for an hour which is impossible. that thing you're saying about what could come up with for the kids, the same thing is true with what

00:25:10 could come up for for anybody. Yes. And and that's why I've always thought the the combination with psychonamic thinking doesn't have to be psychoanalysis, but with any kind of depth psychology where we understand that that a person's mind isn't just the superficial thoughts, but that there's all kinds of whether there's trauma or no trauma that it will come up under the spell of meditation. And uh pe people have to understand that the the first u retreats that I went on in this country

00:25:42 with uh American Buddhist teachers who had no psychological training at at at every retreat there would be people who flipped out basically who who had you know intense anxiety couldn't stop it intense obsessional thinking psychotic symptoms and the and the teachers didn't know what to do about it. uh um they would you know uh send the people out to the local hospital basically. Uh it took about I don't know 10 years 20 years um

00:26:14 to uh get enough safeguards in place and and enough psychological training for the otherwise unschooled meditation teachers to know how to even handle that that kind of stuff. So, I'm not surprised like once you start bringing into schools and and so on, it's it's way um it's it's an you know what I was saying before it's an exaggerated enthusiasm for ahead of the science. I think you guys are right about that. Yeah, there's a interesting question

00:26:45 about what it is as well and the particular historical origin that you detailed seems to be it's one that I've heard many times in discussions of mindfulness and yet when I think about the term and how it operates in you know most western cultures it seems to be a much vaster matrix of assumptions and associations that people have than something that was briefly secularized among you know uh a particular tradition and came down through have at Zen and others. Um, what passes as it as

00:27:17 mindfulness meditation is often deeply ingrained with other histories, the development of new age thought and theosophy, the history of yoga in the United States. Um, even notions of like Aryan mythology back through the 19th century and the notion of the sort of inwardness, the notion that that we all have this soul inside that can be edified and cultivated through different forms of meditation. And so I I think when I when we talk about mindfulness, we need to um be careful that there isn't just an it.

00:27:49 There are so many different forms and modes of it that seem to be operating among different people and different institutions. Um which makes it hard to talk about. But I think that's part of why it also has so much power is that everyone seems to assume that they know what it is when they see it. some kind of um deep breathing, some kind of being in the present moment seems to be associated with it often. Um a certain posture that one often takes when uh

00:28:21 engaging in the practice. But all of those are consistent with many different forms of meditation that all have complex histories and are all kind of woven together in our current uh late capitalist society. I'd love to um just sort of dive into a very particular example of that because um I mean I'm here because in a museum world I've created situations, contexts, um arenas, installations in which contemplative practice may flourish and

00:28:51 be experimented with in a safe environment. Um that includes dark retreats but also mindfulness. I mean the whole range. Uh what one of uh the installations I worked on called the Mund Lab features um uh an illuminated orb that pulses at a rate of 5 and a half seconds um up and 5 and a half seconds down. It's quite magical. It's by Paul Winereb and it's based on um the scientific foundation of it is uh basically to encourage you to match your

00:29:22 breathing to this particular rhythm and the rhythm is one that was defined by uh Luchana Bernardi in a university of Pavia study of 2001 where uh Buddhist mantra reciters and a maria um bead reciters were were um measured up for heart rate and um various other conditions. And it turned out that independently both sections ended up

00:29:52 adopting or defaulting to this particular breathing pattern which has corolleries in all sorts of other traditions to this this whole 11 second cycle of breathing in and breathing out. And there has to be a reason surely for why we naturally default to a breathing pattern in which uh everything all your bodily systems come into a form of coherence or balance and uh GB and and Brown also have have done those um

00:30:23 experiments with 911 survivors. So as a very so on a very secular level right so no association with any sort of recitation of of mantras. So, so breathing, yeah, there is something universal, something common that we have. We all survive by breathing. And breathing at that particular rhythm that provides so many potential health benefits would seem to have a reason for being. Everything we do is rooted in our survival. So, what's that about? I'd

00:30:53 like to throw that out a little bit. Okay, I'll take it back. No, no, it's a good question. Breath everyone. No, I wonder the degree to which um calm breathing um and just relaxation in general isn't sort of what what you're describing there. I think it's interesting that uh on the one hand calm rhythmic breathing has almost become exclusively associated with meditation. I don't think of very many other instances where

00:31:23 people practice this even though it's obviously good to breathe. Um but many times uh people can a engage in um modes of relaxation that are more activity based and could begin to sort of also engage in contemplative breathing that isn't um technically something we would place under the rubric of of meditation per se. So I guess I think it goes back to this fascination with meditation as a cultural uh signifier. It's a thing that

00:31:53 people put a lot of hopes and dreams and assumptions about secularity and um non-western religiosity into this space where uh something magical will happen if it's meditation in that case. And I guess that's what um fascinates me most about meditation is the cultural assumptions that often get attached to it as a particular kind of um kind of magic. Something kind of happens when you sit quietly with yourself in a

00:32:24 particular posture and breathe at a certain rate. But it doesn't always happen. I mean, different things happen to Of course not. Yeah. The whole equation of meditation and relaxation uh I think is a false equation. Say more. I mean I started out I when I was before I went to medical school, I worked as a laboratory assistant to Herbert Benson. Oh yeah. The relaxation response. He wrote a book called the relaxation response. I have was had worked with him already. He did the first work uh with t with transcendental

00:32:57 meditation meditators measuring their oxygen consumption and their carbon dioxide output and and said, "Oh, we've discovered a new state of consciousness that's different from the fight orflight response and I'm going to call it the relaxation response." and and I learned a lot from him about um PR um because he was um he was persona non grata at Harvard Medical School because he was interested in meditation at all um and so he had to get his own funding uh and

00:33:29 make a place for himself so so that they wouldn't just fire him. So uh so he courted the public media uh which he was good at and uh and began this equation of you know Harvard science uh uh the his um uh his measurements were never really reproduced. um what what what findings he found were maybe statistically significant but it's not like meditation you you know uh doing TM

00:34:01 for 20 minutes uh uh induced such a profound change in anybody um but but his his whole mission after that was to secure a safe place for his brand you know and yet he was also persona nongrada among the transcendental meditationer well he took He he uh suggested that the special mantra that uh the Maharishi was offering that there was nothing special about the mantra. Yeah. That any sound

00:34:31 would work and he picked what he called a what he wanted to be a nondescript scientific sound which he used for the people that he taught which was one but he didn't realize the uh spiritual significance of choosing the the word one as the mantra that he taught people. Um but yes so then he broke it was Benson and Wallace um who did the original research and Wallace went on to become president of Maharishi Mahesh University in Nebraska and uh and Benson

00:35:03 continued his career and and and I you know he was a big mentor of mine. I'm very fascinated by the insistence in transcendental meditation that there's something specific about the mantra that one is assigned that actually does the focusing. Well, there's a whole history of mantra and in Indian thought I mean it's not it's not coming from nowhere but but but you know everything became about a brand uh as as it entered uh uh our world. So there's something

00:35:34 effective about branding something Indian or Buddhist that does a lot of work in selling it in our culture because of the exotic appeal. And so if we're talking about simply breathing a certain way, you know, there's only so much work that I'll do in attracting consumers, but if we call it mindfulness, well then now we have great authority and more people are likely to spend their money. the the I mean that's that's the commodification that's the brand that that sells. The other the

00:36:07 other shift has been towards medicalization and science and seeing as a science again away from what I'd said earlier about a kind of a moral foundation or or or a moral purpose. So that's that's been part of the concern. It just becomes a a commodity and um and and and you're and you're psychizing it. You're sc you're you're medicalicalizing it. I mean that's that's a pretty and you're making it less accessible too. So you know commodities can help people comm

00:36:37 you know you can you know you can buy something at the store that helps with your headache and it's really truly effective right. Yeah. So it it's not necessarily the the problem of um you know it's not that commodification takes away the effectiveness of something. It's that it makes it less accessible uh to as many people. uh and that could be a problem. Yeah. Well, there's there's Andre when when you uh use the word authority that's so interesting because um what I suspect uh the use of the sort

00:37:08 of specification of the mantra that this is for you and only for you and it so on um that has a reason I mean mantra what does mantra mean? It means mind vehicle. Yes, anything could work in theory. But what I think we've not really addressed yet is the whole um not just Buddhist tradition of passing on a teaching which can change your perspective on existence has that potential from teacher to student and that in itself is a sacred bond as you would probably know David as

00:37:41 a teacher yourself as an educator there is a particular relationship and there's a trust and that trust is invested in that particular mantra that's designed for you. Whether it is or not doesn't matter. That is the promise. And so therefore, that becomes the relationship that's incredibly important for the successful presumably context in which um meditation practice can happen. So that's the authority and that's the trust. Now when

00:38:12 there is no seeming authority for when some sort of practice is just put out there and you sort of double click and then you sit with your phone um in isolation from others then you know then there's also no responsibility for anything that might happen and that's not part of the contract in a sort of spiritual practice although in spiritual practice authority can be abused. Yes, of course it can. So it's not always Yes. No, I mean again nothing is a panacea. So the context is

00:38:44 really really important and and there's nuance in all of this. The relationship is is so important and thinking about you know when we look at um you know what makes therapy of any kind effective. What we see what we find is that it's the number one factor is the quality of the therapeutic relationship. And so I think there is something really important to be thinking about when it comes with with to learning mindfulness and so on. It's about who is who is your teacher or is it that you know with these children in school it's just your

00:39:15 class teacher. Um, or is it that it's just via an app and then if you do have experiences that you weren't expecting, you might be woefully underprepared and there's no one to support you. Or is it that you are learning with someone who you have this this strong relationship with and actually then if powerful or transformative or unexpected experiences do occur actually that could be something that is really of value that you can work through and and be supported with. So I think the idea of relationship is is really

00:39:46 important. Right. And and and Tanya Singh in her research at the Max Plunk also um indicated that adverse uh reactions to u mindfulness or other meditation practice are substantially mitigated or negated by the fact of doing it with someone else. Right? That sort of pairing or that communal aspect that idea of support. Again I keep on saying context is everything. Um and and so we kind of need to look at that and see how that's positioned in our current society. Is a large part of that context

00:40:19 the question of secularity. I mean I was I noted earlier you referred to that teacher and student as a kind of sacred bond and the sacrality the sacredness of it is interesting in an age when you know secularity seems to be the dominant ethos which is why I think we get uncomfortable when we talk about meditative practices as having a kind of branding because branding already speaks to something that is commodifiable that is part of a marketplace. Um Charles Taylor has a great book called uh the

00:40:49 secular age and in it he defines secularism as not the absence of religion but to exist in a time when you recognize your religiosity as a choice among many others as existing within a marketplace of ideas. And so I wonder if part of what we're lacking in contemporary society are these relationships that would have perhaps in an older time been mediated by religious ritual or ceremony or

00:41:20 relationships in communities. And today we live in a time where it's very different. And so we're seeking forms of exteriorization of ourselves in relationships. But what is perhaps most troubling about mindfulness is that it tends to emphasize the cultivation of a kind of inwardness of a kind of soulful edification that can come by practicing with oneself a certain kind of context just as a therapist. Yeah. Say more. Um I think

00:41:53 the therapists have to step in in this secular age without the you know without the traditions. A lot of my patients uh um either come to me because they're already meditating and they want a therapist who won't think that there's something wrong with them because they're interested in that or or they come because they might trust me because I've written books or whatever to help guide them towards uh a practice. But a lot of what we talk about is is what's happening in their what comes up for

00:42:24 them in their meditation practice, you know, because that because what is there a line between psychotherapy and meditation? Really, it's just all it's all about self-discovery. Um so and people need to a trusted place where they can process uh whatever they're experiencing and and and often the meditation teachers aren't aren't you know they've got five minutes with each person and uh so there's no real space for that. Is it your experience

00:42:55 that you've um that there are therapists out there who are uncomfortable with people coming to them who have meditated? Oh, I just think there are a lot of therapists who have no idea what what uh or what to make of it. What to make of it or how to talk about it. I mean, I have a lot of patients in the art world, too, because I'm because my wife's an artist and I'm familiar with the art world and and so I can talk about the art world and people are grateful. It's the same in I can talk about the meditation world. Um because I know the language and I know the characters and I know the history. Uh

00:43:27 um anyway, well, knowing knowing as much as you do about that, I'm curious if you could say a little bit about where you think it's been going and where you think it might go. This sort of meditation world and the way people talk about it. I think you're much more in tune with that with those conversations. Uh where is it going? uh uh the well the commodification that we're all talking about is lapse and the uh uh uh sort of you you know uh

00:43:58 diffusing out into the uh virtual world. So I'm sure there'll be AI you know horrible uh uh uses of it. Um but but that's but I think that's only one aspect. I I mean I think people are hungry. They're hungry still like they were 30 years ago, 40 years ago, they're they're hungry for a meaningful [Music] experience. Uh uh so the whole all

00:44:31 everyone being interested in psychedelics, you know, the psychedelic resurgence, ketamine, all that all that business uh people are looking are are looking for like like they're looking for something like they've always been looking for something only it's a new generation looking for it. So, I would just also add I'd kind of I'd push back against this definition of secularism as a sort of as going handinhand with sort of democratization or increased choice or self-awareness

00:45:03 about having choice because I think especially in my field in religious studies, we've really problematized this equation of secularism with not the non-religious because secularism is its own kind of authority and it's a very religious authority. It's usually Protestant authority and so it's not in fact choice even though it's framed that way. Uh and in fact it's oftentimes capitalist and so in that way it holds a great deal of authority too if it's about you know the neoliberal self. Yeah. The hard worker, the great, you

00:45:35 know, the the person who is successful, resilient, um, ambitious, right? Right. These are assumed values that, uh, under secularism that are, you know, yeah, we we might say are religious values. You know, who who is the ideal self? What are we all ascribing for? What does it mean to achieve salvation or liberation? Uh those are very religious questions that very much are explored in secular

00:46:05 environments and conversations. Uh and so uh and there are also authoritarian answers that are deemed the right ones. Um and so there's also authority. And so I I would just say there's like this false democratization or like thought that there's that secularism is about democratization. But but would you say those are often unexamined? All those values, neoliberal values that are implicitly Well, because they're dominant in our culture today, they go unexamined because they're

00:46:36 assume assumed to be right. Right. Yeah. Right. Like we're all here today because we hold authority. Why do we have authority? Because we have certain letters after our names. Where do we get those letters at certain neoliberal institutions and so on and so forth? Yeah. I I often start with the story from David Foster Wallace's uh commencement speech where he some of you may know that they two two young fish are swimming along and and they meet an older fish and older fish says good morning boys how's the water and they look at each other and

00:47:06 the older fish swims by and and they say what the hell is water and so my argument is the neoliberalism is the kind of water you don't you don't even we we live in it we assume it we don't even reflect on it or or I say this a lot too. It's the water we're swimming in. Say it again. I I use that expression too that it's the water we're swimming in like the patriarchy. Yeah. John, when you um uh sort of try to put uh mindfulness meditation in the sort of secular camp uh and you you stop short,

00:47:38 I think of of talking about it promoting individualism, which I actually think it is. Um I mean, you came close to that. Yeah. Yeah. But I mean it's it's and it's and and this is the great irony isn't or perversity of of the secularization or commodification of of mindfulness practices that it is supposed to make you better but in be in ways that better serve the uh efficiency uh sort of spectrum of corporate desire or or societal desire as it might be

00:48:09 posited at the time. And yet the whole point it seems to me of um most meditation practices from certainly the Buddhist uh value system is that uh it actually fosters or has the potential to foster a really really strong sense of community. And why? Because it actually is there to cultivate selflessness. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Not a sense of the individual but rather a sense that uh you're no longer buffeted by external

00:48:42 factors because you see or you perceive rather you understand the communality of everything there is. That's a tall order but it's it it's it's I mean it's very possible and I'd actually love to hear from all of us about your own personal experiences of meditation. we're talking about it as an it and not as a thing we've actually experienced it. And and so it might be kind of fun to hear about an experience or some experiences that

00:49:13 you guys have had that can put all of this in a sort of context with a face. Um I mean one thought I just had linked to what you were saying um a minute ago was that in um well studies looking at the effects of mindfulness meditation as a secular technique is about the increase in spirituality that people often experience and that's not their intention in doing it but that still happens right um and kind of and not not

00:49:44 as a bad thing at all but you know just raising that thing of how much can you can it be a secularized technique if it leads to an increase in spirituality. In terms of of my own experiences, um I think I mean I care a lot about choice and being able to to have a say in in whatever you do for personal growth or to support your mental health. And my initial introduction to

00:50:17 experiencing mindfulness was in my first year of training as a clinical psychologist when we were all told to lie on the floor um all 28 of us and and do some mindfulness meditation. And I suppose it kind of links in a little bit with what I talked about around about children doing it um at school, although of course we were all adults about the fact that actually right then wasn't a good time for me to do that in what was effectively my work day surrounded by colleagues. Um I've had certainly many

00:50:50 other more positive or meaningful experiences of meditation but in that environment that was not a helpful experience and I think bringing it back to context timing that it's something which not only does it work differently for different people but I think as well like when we're doing it and where we're doing it are really important to consider as well. how you Oh, go ahead. No, I was just going to say um in answer to Tim's

00:51:20 question, I in the course of writing the manuscript I just finished, I tried a lot of different forms of meditation, including a lot of apps and some of the sort of commoditized versions, but also attending the transmittal meditation course and receiving my own personal mantra, which I cannot reveal. Um I also afterwards, John, afterwards. Yeah, after maybe. But I've also a couple of times tried um a new form of it that people are doing in the um sensory deprivation tank um floating on the you know Epsom salt saturated water.

00:51:53 And um what I've found most intriguing about so many of these different forms is how often they encourage a focus on the present moment on a kind of nowness as the um sort of critical operation that's most important to the experience. That thoughts may come, you watch them, they go, but essentially it's a an attempt to be present. And often the notion of presence is invoked in this. Um, and

00:52:25 I've I found that quite curious about um what it is that we assume is happening in our mind when we focus on the present moment, whether we actually are focusing what it even means to focus on the present moment. And I've walked away quite puzzled at times by uh the assumption that this um this particular form of uh engaging present- moment temporality will have these therapeutic effects. Um

00:52:55 so yeah, and I I it's not to say that I didn't enjoy them or wasn't relaxed by any of them, but I did walk away somewhat puzzled by the the experience. Can you hear me? Try holding it to your Well, if you put the mic to your mouth, it might be better. Is the mic on? Yes. Yeah, there you go. Yeah. There is this uh comparison that has come up

00:53:27 couple of times between uh psychoanalysis, psychotherapy. Yeah, you have to keep it right right at your lips. I can't put it in my mouth. There you go. Yes, you can. That's better. That's better. So, there has been this compar or this analogy comparison connection that has been raised between psychotherapy, psychoanalysis and meditation. But in psychotherapy or in psychoanalysis, we have we focus and we hope to achieve

00:54:00 certain specific changes in the person that persists over a long term and that in one way or another improves the quality of their life, improves their relationships, improves their capacity for uh doing better work. In other words, number of changes that come from looking carefully at someone's past experiences, understanding them and trying to change the directions that it

00:54:33 has taken for a better direction. Now in what way does that compare or connect or seem similar because there have been this comparison made to meditation particularly in the context of what I think I just talked about which is this emphasis on the present moment because it would seem that in psychoanalysis in particular there's a lot of emphasis played uh placed on the historicity of one's experiences of one's childhood of one's you know place in society and so on there's a real history that's implied

00:55:04 in that a memory. I think that um if I may be so bold to say that um analysis is uh based on an articulation of emotion and meditation is rooted in experience and the experience of the present moment is there because the only experience that you can have and be witnessed to is the present. The future is a fiction. the past is um also a

00:55:34 fiction because you've accumulated all sorts of rather insubstantial memories of what just happened. And the cultivation of an ability to not confuse your feelings about something for the thing itself is actually at the heart of Buddhist teaching. So that's why the focus on the present allows you to let everything else go because that is all you have. So in that case a kind of metacognition would be the connection

00:56:05 between therapy and meditation. Yeah. Yeah. I think I can get I I have the sort of converse of your of what you of what you said Katherine about your um one one of my uh positive experiences of meditation was early in my training uh I was in I was in medical school but doing a uh my first psychiatry rotation but in in medical school they don't teach you anything about how to be a therapist. It's it the model is, you know, see one,

00:56:37 do one as if you're like learning stitches in the uh ER or something. So, um uh uh my first patient that I was, okay, you go in the room now and and you be the therapist with the with this hospitalized patient. Um and but no one had given me any training about what to do. Uh um so all I had to draw on was my own experience watching my own mind in meditation and and my own experience in

00:57:07 psychotherapy. Uh but I thought to myself, if I can give this person the same kind of non-judgmental, impartial, open uh attention that I've learned to give to myself, maybe that would be therapeutic. And so that's what I tried to do. And and uh uh they found that it was Uh and then much later when I started reading Freud and so on, I I saw that in his recommendations to physicians practicing psychoanalysis and so on, he was recommending he called it

00:57:40 evenly suspended attention, but that the state of mind, the kind of attention that he was recommending for psychoanalysts in training, what was what if you read his description, you would think it was a Buddhist mindfulness teacher. you know, the the therapist should give should suspend judgment, he said, and give impartial attention to everything there is to observe. And and so that goes back to the present moment. Because when you suspend judgment and give impartial attention to everything there is to observe, you're in the present. And and

00:58:13 the idea like Tim was saying is that when you're giving that kind of attention in the present, the the Buddhist promise is that that kind of awareness is itself healing or or or they they would say liberating that uh you don't have to do any when the angry difficult thoughts, feelings, memories, traumatic uh remnants come up if you can just witness them with that sort of what you're calling metacognition that in the field of awareness in the in that moment

00:58:44 there's a an opportunity to metabolize or digest the difficult feelings and that and and or or integrate we might say uh uh the difficult feelings uh into the personhood. So I think for me that's how it all comes together. I just I just want to maybe push back a little bit though on the the um the kind of assumption that there's something to benefit from retreating into the present because I wonder if there's also something elitist in retreating into the

00:59:15 present like who has the privilege to focus on the present to be here now. Yeah. Yeah. Uh and and also is there something counter to uh activism and the pursuit of social change that happens when we retreat into the present and forget the historical past or our own historical contingencies. Sure. uh and you know I worry a little bit about you know what and of course when we talk about mindfulness and meditation one of the things that oftentimes comes

00:59:46 to mind is retreat right retreating into the present retreating into the meditation room or retreating away from society or you know and um of course many of us can't retreat right because we got to be at work or we got to raise the kids or we got to put food on the table and so uh Does retreat also can it I mean I'm not suggesting it always does but can it go handinhand with a unwillingness to reflect on the

01:00:20 importance of history and historical contingencies and how our historical contingencies placed us very differently in the world. Um and that can be a dangerous thing if we're not reflecting on those questions both from you frame it as retreat. I mean, you're saying retreat into the present. That's what, you know, having a child, having the experience of raising a child is like having a 20-year retreat, you know, but you're but you're in the world in the family, you know, so

01:00:52 it's I think it's a linguistic thing a little Could you see I'm not sure I saw I I heard the connection between having the child as a retreat and the type of retreats the kind of attention that you that you learn to give to your own mind on a quote unquote meditation retreat is the kind of attention that Freud was recommending that therapists give to the their patients. It's the kind of attention that that Winnott recommends you know that a good enough parent gives to a child. Yeah, it's the kind of attention if that one has to give as an

01:01:24 activist to the work that one is doing in the world. It it's all about how you position your mind. It's it's Rogerian too, right? Excuse me. It's Rogerian too as well. It's what Rogerian Carl Rogers. Oh, perhaps. Yeah. Yeah. Andrea, I would say that um yeah, I would push back against the retreat idea too because I think it's actually a really really bold and adventurous step to be in the present without being hampered for just the 10 minutes that you can muster uh in

01:01:56 your working day by uh the the confusion of the past and the fear of of the future and it becomes a little bit of a gift. I describe it when I ever lucky enough to sort of find myself there as the room without corners. Say it again. I'm here. a room without corners because everything has equal veilance. There are no sort of little hidden away pieces where sort of emotional dust bunnies can accumulate. You know, it's it's actually very very clear. And with that clarity,

01:02:27 I can better step back into the hurly burly and deal. Um when I was doing the Mandalab installation at the Reuben, I asked Minja Rimpete, one of the leading um Tibetan Buddhist teachers of our time, uh who was advising us on this. There's a section about anger and the section has eight gongs over a 20ft basin of water. You're there to um strike the gong in anger, you think, and then you dip it in the water and you

01:02:58 know, the sound transforms itself and it's really funky and weird and wonderful. Um uh and but you experience patience as a result of that and I won't go into that because that's not part of this conversation. What I wanted to bring into the conversation was I said to to to Rimpier, I said, "Is there any uh justification ever for being angry?" And he said, "Oh, absolutely." And I thought, "Oh gosh, this is going to be news." And he said, "Yes, when exercised with compassion." And that's kind of it. It's

01:03:30 cultivating a world view or a societal view in which you have a greater 360 in order to then artfully and skillfully cut through the confusion that anger very often produces, but that our society also lobbs at us. And that cultivation requires tenacity, boldness, um, yes, attention, but also

01:04:00 consistency. And we haven't really talked about that yet. The persistent nature, the incremental growth that you can cultivate or should cultivate in practicing meditation. I mean, I've fallen off the wagon so many times, it doesn't count. But in it's not oh no and you can't fix a classroom you know in 40 minutes. Um but I think it's that gradual introduction to something of what it's like until you can find your way. And that cultivation needs a very

01:04:31 skilled teacher in a classroom. I would say Katherine. Yeah absolutely. But I mean this makes me think of the the findings of you know the large scale myriad study which you know ran for a few years thousands of children involved and found that it it didn't help mindfulness within schools didn't help and a factor within that potentially is the fact that most of the kids didn't practice it. So they were doing the once weekly class with their teacher without really choosing to. They were just doing it but then most of them

01:05:03 weren't practicing. So what do we expect? Now I suppose you know what kind of came up to me within this as well is yes maybe maybe it would have benefited them more if they were consistent and incrementally you know they got more from it but actually they didn't want to they just didn't want to do it. And I think there's something within the idea of that because and I obviously I I see that you are one of the people who benefit from meditation or find value in

01:05:34 it. It it's clearly something so important and has so much value that sometimes there can be this sense of therefore we should all do it and we would all benefit from it if we were consistent and we tried hard enough with it. And I suppose my perspective is maybe, but for some people maybe it might never be a good fit. Maybe they might always find it in the case of these teenagers boring or it it brings

01:06:05 up stuff that relating back to what you said, maybe as a busy mother with jobs and kids and stuff, there just isn't the time. More work, right? more work in a world where we're already told to do more and get less. It's yet more work too. Yeah. Um I I I'm shifting a little bit. I I just want to push back a little on the term now because again what what one of the things I'm interested in is looking

01:06:35 critically at mindfulness. A lot of people that that I've been working with do not and and so I've been trying to encourage that. the notion of the now. One one of the one of the useful things of a of a therapist named John Wellwood, he talked about spiritual bypass and spiritual bypass is you're not dealing with the concrete with the social context of things. So what I sometimes see is that or be in the now or be here and now or to be with what is th those have to be socially constructed. The the now

01:07:07 there's not there's not a pure now. I mean there is in in Buddhism and and possibly a notion of awareness. We can we can get to that but but in most cases there's an implicit um interpretation of what the now is is is going on. And so when people it's kind of confl it it it it throws dust in you in your face. I mean you're not really able to see well what is the now? I mean I I mean I heard when you were frustrated about that. And I think that's there there's there's something to that because it's it's it's

01:07:37 a broomemide. It's a bit, you know, just being the now. The now is interpreted and and the other it has to be socially constructed. And and every now is linked is linked for you could say there's no such thing as a past and a future, but in in your mind, it often is linked to a past. I mean, there's a con there's a there's a as you said, a context. There's always a con context of the now. And that's what we're you and I are especially interested in in trying to push back a little bit on mindfulness in terms of looking at well what who does it who does it serve what is the purpose

01:08:08 and how is it being used and you know for for for who's who's benefiting from it. So there is an interesting tension um in the idea that the type of awareness that living in the present moment or being in the present moment isn't designed to invoke which we're kind of describing as a form of metacognition that is a kind of attention that a therapist might give to a a client or that a social worker might give to someone in the in the world. Um, and this idea of what I take to be a very individuating mode as it's

01:08:40 expressed in mindfulness meditation where it's you're here and you're now that is important in this particular moment. There's a great uh page in Rahm Das's be here now which not a lot of people remember that the full title is remember be here now which is itself a a sort of contradictory phrase I think but there's a page you know he has these lovely illustrations and it's all about being here now and it's be here now while jogging and there's a jogger be here now while walking up the stairs while going to the bathroom while um but

01:09:12 he doesn't ever have be here now while writing history books right he doesn't have there is this I think this kind of interesting structural tension between that or being in an alienating job. Yeah. Right. Right. Um I think if it were, you know, metacognition now that's an interesting distinction. Um and that but then again I think that to me begins to erase the distinctiveness of what at least what I've experienced as the general thrust of mindfulness meditation.

01:09:45 um that that's that that's particularly what's being offered. Um but I'm intrigued by these modes of of meditation that seem to be so consistent with other forms of psycho dynamic therapies and you know historicity. Um do you need the microphone though yet? Yeah. I still don't see the relationship connection between what psychotherapy and psychoanalysis is about and what meditation is about. I really don't

01:10:19 uh maybe you can clarify it for me but I don't and and then I just wanted to add one other comment when you said about uh jogging. M when I'm jogging, I'd rather not be in the moment because if my mind goes somewhere else, makes it a lot easier. If it's in the moment, I feel Yes, you're exhausted. Climbing a mountain here. So, but um so I I both both putting your mind elsewhere or

01:10:51 putting your mind uh on the jogging those are both meditations. So, it's just a question of what isn't meditation then? um mindlessness, thought thoughtlessness, uh um that's not meditation. You know, when when you're um uh acting impulsively, that's not meditation. Uh um when you're acting consciously, that is meditation. So if I'm thinking of a paper I want to write while I'm jogging, that's meditation.

01:11:21 That's thinking meditation. Yeah, that's meditation. Yeah. Yeah. We a lot of people think that meditation means not thinking. That's a very very broad definition of meditation though. It sounds like it's just a definition of of what I would call contemplation more generally. That's fine. Contemplation. Meditation. Yeah. But I think meditation has connotations of like Eastern religiosity and modes of sitting practice. There's a lot of meditation in Oh, that's true. western I mean but I mean today in

01:11:52 today's society if you say I'm a meditator Islam actually Sufi come on don't but in what you said there is nothing that's not meditation the way it's marketed the way it's marketed for sure yeah any any intentional direction of your mind is meditation anything you're intentionally doing with your mind is meditation and so that's how it's connected to analysis is because analysis too is about watching the mind intentional reflection on one's thoughts, memories,

01:12:23 recollections, feelings. Yeah, I would say you know like free floating attention that's a kind of meditation as as as one used to practice in psychoanalysis. All of philosophy is meditation. Then all of philosophy is meditation. All meditation is philosophy. Yeah. I love this definition. I've never heard it. Yeah. Um my friend Steven Bachelor is writing a book about um uh Socrates and Buddha, you know. Sure. Yeah. One of if we if we return a little bit

01:12:53 to the one of the foundations of mind of mindfulness as I understand it from Buddhism is is to is to let go of attachment to yourself. Let go of attachment to your ego. It doesn't mean I mean we we need an ego in the re in the relative world but but but the attachment is is the pain. I mean that's the argument. It's in in the Buddhist tradition it's it's insight. Yeah. Uh that that encourages you to let go of attachment to the self to the ego. So just insight. Yeah. Mindfulness is is

01:13:24 there is no word for mindfulness in in Buddhism. The the word is remembering. Sati remember the word just translates as remembering but it's become mindfulness. But so so mindfulness is like a beginning meditation technique, you know, of which there are two in the traditional Buddhist tradition. One is concentration. Yeah. Where you put your mind somewhere. So like you could when you're jogging, you put it over there. Concentration. The other is mindfulness where you're open like John Cage to, you know, all the sounds in the universe or

01:13:55 music. You listen to everything equally. That's mindfulness. The the point of practicing mindfulness from the Buddhist tra uh position is to develop insight. And what are you developing insight into? You're developing insight into your own tendency to to to cling, you know, to cling or crave or, you know, try to control what you can't control or to realize that there's no self, right? That's that's Well, that's sort of like peripheral. Okay. Uh um but because what

01:14:27 does that mean that there's no self? No one no one understands that. Well that the the argument is that selfression if you're clinging to self you're you're you have greed, delusion and and and you know ill will. I mean the Buddhist definition of conceit is is that your your mind is comparing you're comparing yourself to another to somebody else. Yeah. Yeah. So and we're all doing that all the time comparing you know. So when you're meditating and you're what you're doing is you're seeing yourself

01:14:57 comparing, you know, and that becomes exhausting and then and then you get a little tired of that and little space like Tim is talking about with no corners starts to open up if you're lucky. Speaking of corners and others, I'm uh sensitive of the time and want to make uh the microphone available to anyone who might have questions for us as a way of continuing this conversation. Please don't hesitate if you want to to still chime in. But yeah, um if anyone would like to come to the microphone. Yeah, you can just come on

01:15:28 over here. You can just Yeah, come maybe come in line. Yeah. What when I was speaking to the microphone, please. Yeah, there you go. when I was deciding to uh whether I should come or not uh yeah I was thinking about what is meditation. Now, one of the things that have jumped out at me uh in uh kind kind of seeing it as a a

01:15:59 cousin to psychiatry or even other forms of medicine or other ways of doing psychotherapy is is something very critical. difference in them. When it concerns with medicine and psychiatry and other disciplines, medical disciplines, the problem comes before the solution.

01:16:30 But it seems to me there's been a lot of talk about the solution about this giving coming up with the solution that solves a problem that hasn't been defined yet. I I think that's that's a very frustrating thing for a person who goes to a physician or a psych or a psychotherapist because are

01:17:01 suffering and there are particular ways of doing it. Not all of them are successful but it at least it's a rational approach and it's not doing something and then coming up oh yeah I feel much better. Well what was what well what did you need to feel better about? Okay thank you for that. Yeah. So the solution before the problem is I don't know if anyone wants to comment on this or maybe if we want to ask a couple

01:17:32 questions and then I could comment on it if you want if I'm not talking too much. Uh um you were talking about Ramdas and be here now. He was an important figure for me and who who I knew at various times in my life. Harvard um I knew him when I was young and then he had a bad stroke where he couldn't really talk very well. I went to visit him after that and I had become a psychiatrist. He knew me when I was you know a student. Uh and and um in a long drawn out conversation because he couldn't make

01:18:03 words very well anymore. He was joked with me like oh so you're a Buddhist psychiatrist now Mark. Uh and you know started making fun of me and then and then he got serious and then he said in a more drawn out way do you see them meaning my patients do you see them as already free? Do you see them as already free? Which is this the solution before the problem in a in a way. But I but it that really hit me because I thought first I didn't understand what he was saying but that but when it you know

01:18:33 that like maybe I do you know uh and um so and and that's a helpful thing in therapy to have that memory. Thank you. It was very informative. What I want to ask about is that I'm sitting at the psychoanalytic society. So I should be mindful of what I'm going to say. Uh there is a book by George Leov. It's called uh the political mind. Why we cannot understand the 21st century with an 18th century brain. And what he has talked about is

01:19:03 the linguistic cognitive unconscious that how homo sapiens and children of humans they get indoctrinated with particular ideologies. They could be religious ideologies, nationalistic, ethnosentric ideologies of any variety. But those neurons once once they they wire together, they fire together. The Habs law, the Pavlovian conditioning, what gets paired in the environment over and over again repeatedly. So So Leov talks about what children get repeated. And when we look across the board, the

01:19:34 populist prime minister was in town and she said that she wants to make West great again. uh and you know I mean the 20th century two world wars and you know the rise of militarism rise of populism across the planet we have had all these great religions for centuries but look at the conflicts which started thousands of years ago they are being restarted by the new generations so so there is a big aspect of the human mind which is never even discussed and which is has to do with the cognitive unconscious what the propagandists and advertisers and all

01:20:06 these populist uh leaders of the world know. So I I I would appreciate if there is some exchange of views about that. Thank you. Reflections on ideology. Um, oh, I I think there's actually a connection there to the first question, and that is, you know, that, you know, really, is there something that um we that that the populist movement is doing that also is like the dark side of

01:20:39 mindfulness and that is avoiding addressing the the real causes of our problems. Um, and so rather than then like discuss climate change and capitalism and systemic racism and the effects these things have on our well-being and the ways it's been generating anxiety in us for a lifetime. You know, we might escape into a moment of, you know, blaming the other or or

01:21:11 blaming oneself that I'm just not meditating right. I'm just not thinking right or I don't have the right state of mind or I'm not buying the right app on my phone that will help me have the right state of mind. And you know, it worries me that in both cases we might be avoiding really addressing the real causes of our demise. Not that it must be that way, but it certainly can be.

01:21:41 Uh there were there in my lifetime for example there was Freud and McLuhan postmodernism uh question of uh things coming into fashion and going out of fashion. Uh for myself um the contribution of postmodernism was profound uh because uh as I understood meditation it was uh very simple. You took two

01:22:13 minutes or five minutes or 10 minutes or whatever to set aside your yourself uh either in a walking meditation or in a sitting meditation to do nothing else um and watch your mind. And in doing so it simpl it was a method simplified uh that uh could be done how do I say it is offered uh in in

01:22:46 that manner and uh postmodernism's point was um um I'm very forgetful in my 88 years right now um to to do that. And the point of it was uh for postmodernism that we were narrative making beings. And by doing that we were observing by

01:23:17 inaction uh during that period our narratives. And in doing so, we may learn uh obviously there's incredible dynamic going on in terms of what's happening from person to person uh during that time. Yeah. But the point would be that you are observing your narratives and you post

01:23:48 Martin says you are learning possibly right possibly that you're a narrative making creature and the limitations of those narratives and their importance in your life. Yeah. And as a consequence, maybe you will come to a point of having the alternative of letting go or finding a position perspective to view those

01:24:20 narratives. Thank you. Yeah, I am not my narrative now. Okay, that thank you. Thank you for that question. Um, actually it's an interesting question. Is there something correlative between postmodernism as a form of extreme metaccognition and mindfulness meditation? I see some for sure nodding. Okay. And if then is it then subject to the same epistemological dilemmas as

01:24:51 postmodernism to the same critiques of it as a probably a mode of late capitalist ideology whatever they are. It's definitely something. Fair enough. Okay. Next, please. Thank you. Yeah. So, uh I would like to address the question that you raised, sir, about the connection between psychoanalysis and what the discussion today about mindfulness, meditation, etc. I'm going to use a quote that I was told Young said it, but if he didn't, it

01:25:25 doesn't really matter. It's the quote that really matters. And the quote was um one ought to spend the first half of one's life uh developing a healthy ego and one ought to spend the rest of one's life transcending that ego. And there is a connection between all of this talk of psychoanalysis and transcending the

01:25:55 notion that I stop at the tip of my fingers and that this healthy ego who can function in the world, have a job, spouse, contentment in life is all that there is to life and that where that leaves off is where meditation picks you up and takes you to a transpersonal

01:26:27 uh expansion beyond the ego. And um and I just want to say one other thing is that it's not like half your life you do one thing then you totally stop it and you do something totally different for the rest of your life. There needs to be a conversation all through life between these two directions. More emphasis on building a healthy ego when you're younger, but guidance from elders who have uh gone

01:26:58 beyond and vice versa. Even elders who have gone beyond need to help uh people to just function within the world. One doesn't just stop functioning in the world. So there needs to be a conversation, a living conversation. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Um why don't we ask the last question as well and then we can maybe have a few final thoughts and we'll second to you. We'll ask two more questions. Go ahead. Yes. Um I thank you very much for the

01:27:28 conversation. I find it very fascinating. Can you hear me? Yeah. Um as a psychoanalyst uh I thought a lot about how I use meditation in with my patients and I think uh what it has brought out for me is that both my understanding of meditation as well as my understanding of psychoanalysis is that both are actually uh based on uh an

01:27:59 ethical concept of acceptance of acceptance and compassion. And we haven't really talked about that here in today in the discussion because in order to be what we call a self have a self-observing ego and suspend judgment in psychoanalysis, it's based on the assumption that we accept in the first place what comes up. So to me our discussion today was about a deeply

01:28:30 relational concept. You cannot be in the moment because our thoughts are not just thoughts they come with a effect and you cannot be in the moment if you do not accept the affect that comes up which is what you were actually bringing out. If you are overwhelmed by your hurt, by your anger and you do not have a person in your life like an analyst or a guru that helps you with it, then your task is for you to develop the compassion to

01:29:03 contain and hold your feelings in that moment because otherwise you cannot meditate. You cannot be with yourself without that ethical compassion of accepting yourself in order to let go of yourself. So thank you. I wanted just to bring that out into the discussion. Thank you. That's a good comment. Thank you. Okay. Last question. self um wi with with so many melody I'm going to of course to wade into a lacuna that was left by a questioner about um about

01:29:38 about his perception that that that a solution is being offered before a problem and um I I heard the first American Zen master Philip Kaplau respond to the question of how much practice a day was really necessary by answering in his opinion He said, "An hour a day will keep a practice going, but in order to move ahead, you really need two hours a day, which is a far cry from the claim of current claim of uh of commodificated

01:30:09 commodificationist um mindfulness industry. But at any rate, I filed that response from Roshi from Kaplar Roshi for a long time and then started practicing it. And damn, if very quickly at at at at at 45 minutes, like clockwork, relaxation response would kick in. And at an hour and a half, heart the heart would open. And at two hours like

01:30:41 clockwork when I reach a level in which in which the hurly burly of normal waking life we were riding on the waves everything was the same in the world. So it is actually pulling out the arrow as the Buddha put it. that is you are offering through meditation because in in in the Zen tradition of course Zah Zen is already

01:31:11 enlightenment that's the claim in in sodto Zen that the experience of meditation is the experience of enlightenment so I mean in the cabalistic tradition which I practice now which is I mean my in my experience far more efficient actually and through the core of the ancient service practiced in in the way of our mystics 15 20 minutes produces what a 2-hour zen sit used to produce for me. But the point is

01:31:44 you don't need to be suffering from the from this and that and work it out because there is the possibility of rising to a level of soul within yourself. the way the cabalists talk about it. You can language it differently. It doesn't matter. Okay. In which you're not suffering. Yeah. Thank you for that. Well, um I think that's actually a pretty apt description of what most would understand by the word meditation. But I really appreciate the more capacious definitions and

01:32:15 conversations we've had today. I think in the interest of time, uh we'll end it there. And I want to ask everyone to uh offer a round of applause for yourselves and for our panelists as well. [Applause] and we'll see you next month at the next one. Great. That was really fun to hear from all of you. That was a great time.

01:32:46 Not only did you do great, you started it all. And then we sat next to each other. Oh, wow. probably the best way. Hey, did you invade my wood? I wish we got I've got neuroscience back in there somewhere and I

01:33:20 didn't Excellent play.