#183 - The End of Suffering - with Sharon Salzberg & Jerry Colonna

[Music] Welcome to the reboot podcast. We are so glad you're here. [Music] Hey friends. Before this episode begins, I want to tell you a little bit about how this conversation came to be. For close to 20 years now, Sharon Salisberg has been both a teacher and a friend to me. I first came to her as a student, brokenhearted, looking for answers, searching. And over the years, something much more human grew alongside that. Trust, laughter, long conversations, and the kind of guidance that doesn't just change how you think. But how you live. Sharon is one of the pioneering voices who help bring mindfulness and loving kindness meditation into Western culture. She's a co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society and the author of many books, including loving kindness, real happiness, and my personal favorite, faith. For decades, she has taught a simple but demanding idea. The compassion is not sentiment and not a scape, but a practical way of meeting life as it actually is. Recently, the two of us decided to sit down together and talk about a phrase from the Buddhist tradition that sounds almost impossible. The end of suffering. Not the end of pain. Not a life without loss, but a different relationship to that which happens to us. This conversation is an lecture or a teaching session. It's just two people who have walked alongside each other for a very long time, trying to understand something that matters right now. How we live in a world that can feel frightening and broken and yet still remain open, connected, and human. I'm very glad you're here to listen in. Here now is my teacher, my friend, my mentor, Sharon Salzburg. From seed stage founders to Fortune 100 executives, we understand that modern leadership demands practical wisdom, emotional intelligence, and an understanding of the psychodynamic forces at play in an organization. Our coaches combine operational excellence with self-discovery to help you and your teams navigate complexity, build resilience, and lead with greater authenticity and purpose. Learn more about reboots approach to coaching and connect with us at reboot.io/coaching. Lately, it feels as though suffering has become both unavoidable and strangely invisible at the same time. We're surrounded by pain, personal, collective, historical, and yet we're often urged to move on, past it quickly, to optimize it away, or to pretend it isn't shaping us. For me, this can lead to a deep and profound cognitive dissonance, where it feels like the world is a dumpster fire. But if I do the things I know are important, I can feel okay. Indeed, I might be able to touch a kind of joy, whether it's by witnessing the client have an experience of profound insight, or my granddaughter's smile, or hope inducing sunrise. My conversation partner today is my teacher and dearest friend Sharon Salisberg. And ever the teacher, encoding her friend Sarah Bareilles, she speaks about the phenomena of both. We can feel the suffering of the world, and we can also feel its joy. In the Buddhist tradition, the Buddha said he taught one thing and one thing only, suffering and the end of suffering. That teaching feels especially necessary right now, not as a promise that pain will disappear, but as an invitation to relate to it differently. Today Sharon and I will explore all this, and a bit more, in a conversation series we're calling the end of suffering. Over a few conversations, we'll explore what it means to live with suffering, without being defined by it. How hope can be wise rather than attached. How belonging can loosen isolation. How compassion can soften shame. And how joy, joy and agency all add can still exist even when circumstances don't change. I can't imagine a better person to explore these questions with. My friend and teacher Sharon Salisberg, welcome Sharon. Thank you so much. I just had a profound sense of interconnection and the chains of connection because Sarah Bareilles is actually also quoting a friend of hers. So it's lineage. Exactly. Gavin Creel, who died a little over a year ago, and he had a tattoo that said both. Right. Because here we are. And it's such a challenge and such an opportunity to hold many things at the same time. It is. I mean, you first told me that quoting Sarah, quoting her friend, Gavin, when we were talking, I think, about just the sort of state of the world. And as I put it, the cognitive dissonance of the world sucks. And yet I can still, at some point, see joy. And I think today in the conversation, and this is sort of part of something what I think is maybe the most important goodness teaching, which is the notion that that as consistent and persistent as suffering is, there is the truth of the cessation of suffering. That suffering can end. So for people listening, and for people who are suffering of which we both know there are many. What does the end of suffering actually mean? Well, that is the question, isn't it? And going back to the quotation of the booties that you used, I teach one thing. And one thing only that is suffering in the end of suffering, a witty friend of mine once said, why is that one thing? And that's two things. And that is an interesting question as well. And I would come back to, well, there are so many layers to this. Sometimes, of course, there's pain, there's distress, there's disappointment, there's illness, there's some really scary diagnosis, there's loss, I mean, so many things happen in life. And then there is this kind of the surround. How do we hold it? That has fascinated me my entire life. And then learning something of the booties teaching. And if suffering is universal, one degree or another, why is it that some, or how is it that some people seem to emerge bitter and isolated and resentful and other people actually do emerge, if it emerges the right word, with incredible compassion and love and resilience being part of a whole. So that is the question right there. You know, as the end of suffering can possibly mean only pleasure and delight and satisfaction, because that's not life. And yet, there's something that happens with some people, buy some people to give us a little sense of agency there for some people so that even the relationship to suffering being genuine and direct and authentic, that they really do have a sense of closeness to others and care. I mean, sometimes I would think that when I was living in India, you know, and I'd meet say to Bet and people or Indian people who've gone through so much. And yet, you know, you take a train journey maybe and meet them and they would really be interested in your comfort and, you know, your well-being. And I used to think, boy, if I've been through what you've been through, I don't know if I care about your, you know, train journey, you know, this could be such a lack of self-preoccupation. and so much connection to others. And so that is what could be available to us. That's our challenge. - You know, your story brings to mind something that actually happened to me. If you remember way back when, I think it was 2010, 15 years ago, 16 years ago, soon there was an earthquake in Jai-Goo in a remote part of Tibet where one of my lineage teachers, Trimper Impashe, was born. And I woke up one day that April, after the earthquake and I had this, I had had this dream in which his most recent incarnation, the 12th Trimper came to see me. And he was a baby and he was hungry. And I was kind of startled by this dream and I wrote to some friends in Tibet and they told me about this earthquake. And so I immediately started raising money, our mutual friend Jeff Walker gave a lot of money. And as you recall, I put together a kind of convoy of supplies and we drove for three days through rural China into Tibet to provide some relief. And we didn't arrive until September. And months after the earthquake, the town was still devastated and people were still living in tents. And I remember meeting one man in particular. He was living in a tent. He was caring for a woman that he called his daughter but she actually wasn't his daughter. She was a blind nun. And she had a compound fracture that was still not treated. And he told us that on the morning of the earthquake, his wife was circumambulating the nearest stupa that architectural entity that is a very holy and sacred place. And when the earthquake happened, the stupa fell and killed her. And he started weeping and he put his hands together and he started crying and he was speaking into bed. And I asked one of my guides, what was he saying? And imagining that he was just recalling his wife and his suffering. And what he said was that if such an earthquake was ever to happen again, he hoped it would happen to him so that no one else could ever feel what he was feeling. - Too Bayzing, isn't it? - No. Well, look, I don't want to romanticize to betons. I don't want to romanticize suffering in this way. But that story just brings to mind this notion that how we relate to the most unimaginable suffering how we relate to that. And I'm gonna ask you to dive deep on a concept I know you're working with, which is this notion of wise hope. What is wise hope and how does it show up in the circumstances that we're talking about? - Well, it's a little tricky using the word hope in the Buddhist context because - Right, because we're taught not to hope. - That's right. - Which doesn't mean be hopeless, you know, or fallen to nihilism at all. And that's what's tricky. Usually when they use the word hope, it's more like an attachment. Like I know it's gonna work out exactly the way I needed to. And everything's gonna fall into place just like I desire. And there's a kind of clinging to that. And they talk about, in Buddhism, they talk about the hope fear dynamic. It's like hope in fear, hope in fear. So that's why, you know, just trying to get some clarification, we use a term like wise hope, you know, to differentiate it from that. And I think it comes back to what you were talking about earlier with both, you know, it's like, I think it was Kierkegaard who talked about the necessary and the possible. It's like seeing things as they are, not pretending, it doesn't hurt, or you know, that other person is we know is gonna be just fine. Like things can be really bad and harrowing in life. And, you know, to be able to recognize that, and not deny it and not pretend, that's part of it. But we also have to have a sense of the possible because everything is changing all of the time. Life is change, it's movement, right? And so rather than being defined by the terrible situation or the painful feeling, we feel it, we're authentic with it. And we have this sense of renewal or beginnings or, you know, the light that might be also present. Like I remember talking to a woman who was very involved in Parkland, Parkland, Florida with the people who'd been at Marjorie Stumman Douglas high school as a school shooting and her mother was a teacher there. And she was a little bit older. Samantha, I love quoting Samantha. So I went down to Parkland to teach a day, very within a few months of the shooting. And everyone in the room had somehow been impacted and by that event, that horrible event. And so at one point Samantha raised her hand. She said, "I feel really weird because I'm having this incredible day and it's really wonderful." And I know the only reason it's happening is because that horrible thing happened. And I had to get over that to really appreciate this. And I said, "I don't know that we ever get over it, "but we learn to hold them both at once." You know, the suffering and the fear and the loss and look at this. You know, there's coming together, people helping one another. There's skills that are available, all that. And we talked about the Yin Yang symbol in Chinese tradition. You know, this is a kind of light squiggly part with a dark circle right in the middle of it and the dark squiggly part with a circle of light, right? In the middle of it, that's why his hope is being able to hold them both at once. You know, to really see what's happening. That's what, let's say in that philosophical term, the necessary, you know, look at this. This really hurts. And look at that, you know, there's movement, there's possibility, there can be love, you know, there can be connection, there can be so many things, even in the midst of something really terrible. And I think that's the hope that we can feel both. And if we only feel, you know, the possibility in the renewal, then we're missing a lot of life. We're kind of pretty ungrounded. But if we only even open to the pain, which itself is hard enough to do, and just a sense of like, this is it, I'm trapped. You know, that's not true either. - Yeah, you know, in some ways, what you've just described is what I've, the way I've always related to the three noble truth, the three of the four noble truths. - Yeah, I would add the truth of just, whatever, we'll get to the fourth. But for me, if you just stop those teachings at the first two noble truths, that life is filled with suffering, and that which we do to end suffering often increases suffering, right? Attachment, hope, unwise hope, might be one of those things that we do. You kind of want to just give up at that point, you know. But that's why this notion of being able to hold on the end of suffering is so powerful for me. But I think to be able to hold on to that in wise hope, what I want to explore the sense of connection to others. But before I go there, I think it requires an understanding, and you tell me if I've got this, right? That suffering is not punishment. - Mm-hmm. - Right, and this is important because a lot of people, I think, misunderstand karma. They will say, oh shit, karma happens, you know. Oh, I was bad. And in fact, it's all reflections on guilt. I suffer because I did something wrong. Which of course, becomes hard to reconcile when you see the innocent suffer. And the innocent suffer all the time. - Yeah. - So tell me about suffering not as punishment. - Yeah, I mean, within the Eastern framework, I think misunderstanding of karma is, is like I deserved it or they deserve it. - Right. - Right. And I think the Buddha actually said at one point, You can't understand karma rationally. You know, it's just not gonna make any sense 'cause they're also working in a framework of many, many lifetimes and. - Right. - In the course of which we've all done everything. So, you know, it's not like. - We've done bad things and we've done good things. - Exactly, and we've done everything. And, you know, so. (laughing) It's not exactly the way we usually interpret it. Like, oh, you know, 15 lifetimes ago, I killed a mosquito. Therefore, I broke my toe. You know, it's not really like that. The idea of karma is really that actions are consequential. You know, so how we are responding to what's happening right now is planting a seed for the future. And that's the action that we can take. But, you know, what you're referring to is really a heavy burden that many of us have of shame and guilt and almost this kind of magical thinking. Like, I should have been able to control it. You know, if I were. - It's the irrational aspect that bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people. And that there is no correlation between those two. Yet, there are consequences to all of our actions. And sometimes that which we perceive as bad is in fact good and that which we perceive as good is in fact bad. And it can get very, very confusing, you know, as we sort of work through this. And I have found, and I'm going to transition to what I think you're sort of laying out, which is a one way of relating to this, I have found that in that irrational confused state, the notion that it's not just happening to me is really, really powerful. You know, I know you're working with these topics a lot and you know, we've been together long enough that I know the importance of overcoming a sense of isolation, overcoming a sense of this happened to me. You know, you were talking about Parkland and the shooting. And one of the things you said was everyone in the room was impacted. Everyone is impacted kind of all the time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If we were awake, you know, like, what do you mean? Well, I mean, I think we are genuinely all impacted, but we like to look away, you know, and pretend that we're immune in some way, you know, because it's comforting. And I think it does come back to this sense. It's a very cultural sense that we should be in control of everything. You know, that getting older is a personal humiliation, getting sick, dying even. We failed somehow. We failed to seize the moment or I've seen people, you know, who have tremendously good and recommended health habits who have come down with a disease, you know, and it's like, it's all my fault. Right. You know, right. And it's a little bit, you know, like, when people get very involved in, you know, it's only my bad thinking that gave me cancer, you know, or my emotional repression. It's not to say the mind isn't very powerful. The mind is very powerful, but there's a kind of self blame there that I think is missing the boat. And what I've said to some people is, I do believe the mind is very powerful. And if you also live near toxic waste dump, you might take that into account, you know, like conditionality is so complex. And, you know, we do what we can in terms of changing habits or altering our mental habit of repressing emotion or whatever it might be, but at the same time, we're not going to be in perfect control of the unfolding of life. And we look at many, many causes and conditions when we can discern them. I think you're doing something very, very subtle and sophisticated here because let me draw it out and see if I've got this. It's almost as if there's a connection between a couple concepts, hope that is unwise, which in some ways gets plate can be like a kissing cousin to blame. Yeah. Right. And so because I didn't hope well enough, somehow I'm at fault for the suffering, which then puts us in a position of seeing suffering as a punishment for our unworthiness or bad behavior. And enhances our sense of isolation. Yeah, that's beautiful. Thank you. I think that there's a negative through line. There's a positive through line that I think is equally toxic, which is something that I grew up with, which is there but for the grace of God, go I. Right. That's like almost a false interconnection, a false interdependence, right there, but for the grace of God or to put it in another way there, but for the grace of my connection to God. Yeah. Go I means I'm not like them. Those who are suffering. Those who commit bad deeds. I'm different from them. I'm better than them. I'm apart from them. And then when suffering happens to me, I become the root cause of that. Am I seeing this correctly? Yeah. I think that's right. Sometimes people see compassion. For example, there's a very hierarchical state. You know, like I, who have this perfect life, I'm so immune from any trouble. I'm kind of throwing this crumb of kindness down on you way down there. You know, cause your life has fallen apart and mine never could. And it's not really like that, you know, because we don't all suffer to the same degree. You know, we don't. But the vulnerability, the fragility of life is really pretty equally distributed, you know, like any one of us can pick up a phone message and have a different life. Then the one we had before, that's how things are. In all directions, you know, wondrous and beautiful as well as really terrible and shocking. And, you know, it's that unreliability of life and the constant change and the insecurity we share that. Yeah. The irrationality of life unfolding in a particular way. And you just said something really important. We share that. And, you know, I know we're both fans of the Kisakotami story and the mustard seed. Yeah. Can you share that story and how it relates back to this? Yeah. That also is a story that some people really object to, you know, and I understand why. You know, you have to really think deeply. Kisakotami was a woman in the time of the Buddha who had an infant son and he died. And she couldn't accept the fact that he had died. And so she was going around from holy person to holy person saying, please bring my son back to life. And she's holding the corpse of a little baby. And she finally went to the Buddha and made the same request and he said, okay. And then she was really happy that he was going to bring her son back to life. And he said, there's just one thing. You have to bring me a mustard seed from a house where there's been no death. So she went from house to house to house and holding her baby. And she would say, can you give me a mustard seed and they'd say, of course, and then she'd say, but wait a minute, has anyone here ever died? Like in your family and you're saying, they'd say, of course, people die. And she went from house to house to house. And then at one point it was like the light dawned and she realized, this is life. We share this. And she buried her son and as these stories all end so happily she went and became a nun and got fully enlightened. And the reason some people object of course is it's almost like you're saying, you're Well, misery loves company, but that's not it. You know, it's like on top of the horrible pain that exists anyway with that kind of loss, that sense of being so apart and uniquely cursed and all of that, it just adds so much to the pain that's already there and what she was able to do in going around and realizing this death everywhere was somehow be relieved of that what I call extra suffering, you know, in those ways and then she could sort of see it path clearly. To bring it back to my experience in Tibet, in his compassion, the Buddha did not shame her, did not make her wrong, but gave her the opportunity, this is the way I've always interpreted this story, to see the interconnectedness of everyone and and and you know what I'm hearing in that is that if we can see that everyone is impacted by suffering all the time, then what arises for me is what arose for that man in the tent into bed compassion. Yeah. It's like a two-step process that the end of suffering in some way begins with well, it's a multi-step process begins in some ways with wise hope, not unwise hope and then breaking through the isolation and then we start glimpsing compassion and it's not the the air but for the grace of God go I that superior mindset looking down but it's actually a genuine empathy, empathetic connection. It's you know one teach I used to have used to say just like me and whatever it is that I was going through just like me I'm terrified at the state of the world. You know just like me they are terrified at the state of the world. Just like me they worry about whether or not their grandchildren are going to grow up in environment that in a climate that is safe for human beings. Just like me they worry about the end of democracy. Just like me we've been working together a long time Sharon. It's approaching 20 years. Wow. I think I'm beginning to understand the connection between how I feel better and this movement that you've implicitly and sometimes explicitly taught me. Yeah that's beautiful. Yeah. Well you know so funny the way we think of compassion is so weak and frivolous and sentimental and it really is just the most extraordinary force. You know we're recording the day after the Dalai Lama was awarded a Grammy. You know which. I just think it's the funniest thing you know like he and Kendrick Lamar. Right. New house. I don't know. Bad bunny. And this sort of like there's something in us that knows it's not as stupid as we sometimes compassion as we sometimes make it out to be that that it is the healing force and it does bring us together and it's you know going much earlier in our conversation if you think about the second noble truth the causes of suffering and certainly the causes of what I'm calling extra suffering the burden you know the way we're defined by circumstance even really intense circumstance. The feeling there's there's nothing I can do to respond differently to this situation I just have to suffer and suffer and suffer whatever it might be. That's the key you know is that we do have a kind of agency not control but we have an ability to respond differently and that is an extraordinary ability and I know you know lighter note I remember and I tell the story sometimes I was teaching with our friend Sylvia Bourstein and she told a story about her granddaughter who then was nine years old and it was Passover and she asked honor that's the grand order to propel prepare the plates you know for the satyr dinner at Passover right right one of the very traditional foods is give Phil to fish for if anybody doesn't know what that is it's a very odd sort of mixture of different just gelatinous it's like weird and and horse radish which you used to you know as a condiment for the for the fields fish so she said to honor could you put a piece of gefilt to fish on each plate and put like a big tablespoon of horse radish next to it and honor said I never knew you could take something really terrible and make it even worse and telling the story Sylvia Hayson's to add I make really good gefilt to fish and I Hayson to add you know we're teaching together I said I really like horse radish um but that's sort of the idea is that let's not pretend you're not I'm gefilt to fish is fine but there are some really terrible things that happen and we don't have to make them worse look at that right power right look at that ability and a big part of that is compassion you know not feeling so into ourselves it's only me and no one else you know so it's like compassion becomes the means to to mitigating the suffering yeah yeah which is which is we can grok it intuitively I think but to experience it you know if I break my foot the the first thing that occurs to me is not to think about all the people in the world who've broken their feet which is what that fellow in Tibet was moving towards um I think part of what blocks me from thinking about others empathetically is this this this this sense of pain as punishment this sense of like or even my sense of isolation but part of it I think too is shame it's like we shame ourselves for feeling badly about the world don't we we we we we we you know if we live in a world where they're but for the grace of God go I right which is this almost shame inducing statement then when I am just like you in suffering I must have lost the grace of God yeah yeah which is really torturous it is and I want to come back to that in a minute but it just popped up in my head that another reason it is very hard for us to look at the suffering of others is that we feel we have to fix it you know it's very hard to kind of bear witness and not feel like well you know I know here's your list of things you need to change or you know I can make it better I can make it okay and and we feel ashamed of that as well because it's not true you know because we feel helpless yeah we feel helpless to fix their suffering and so therefore we don't actually want to come close to their suffering that's right because if we come close to their suffering so we come close to the shame that they might feel but we also then feel our own shame of our helplessness and so okay so what do we do with the helplessness well with everything you know it's it's kind of a one note response and you know I think be able to feel it recognize it understand that um we don't want to build on something and make it a seeming solidity when it actually it's also a fluid changing state you know and there are many feelings like that helplessness sometimes we reframe it's like I've been situations where I didn't I didn't think someone could give me the answer and I sort of didn't want to hear their answer either but I was some move by their presence with me right you know just being together in in the truth truth of what I was going through. That's part of, you know, something we can do. It's like, check that habit, you know, to feel we are responsible for making everything better for everyone. We do what we can. That's the right thing to do. That's the right way to live. And I think there needs to be a kind of letting go at the same time, to be with. The other thing with something, and other thing with something like helplessness, also reminds me of another story about my Tibetan teacher, Sakami Rinpoche, who tells the story about him being afraid of heights. And I'm also afraid of heights. So I resonated a lot with this. So he was in Malaysian. There was some like two immense buildings that were connected by a sky bridge that was like a million feet into the sky. And you just walked from one building to another across the sky bridge. And he had like a friend with him who just happily walked, you know, across. And Sunni Rinpoche said he'd take a few steps and he couldn't do it. He was so scared. And he kept trying to talk himself out of what he was feeling. Like he'd look at a whole group of tourists walking across together and he'd think, well, thing didn't collapse under them. You know, like five of them, there's only one of me. And he'd take a few steps and he couldn't do it. And he just tried to talk himself out of the feeling. I shouldn't have this one. And then finally, he used a phrase with himself that was the right one. He said, this feeling is real. It's what I'm really feeling. And it's not true. It's not reflecting an actual truth of life. But it's real. I have to honor the fact that I feel feels crummy. You know, this is what's happening right now. And it's not reflecting the truth. And with that kind of dynamic, it's real, but not true. He could walk across. The two things I would connect with, I think the story you tell is also an expression and an example of something you said earlier, which is this notion of being with the feeling. And not getting caught up in the story that is associated with the feeling. Because I think this is part of what part of this, like larger experience. And I'm going to connect it back to a couple of things. The first is, you know, I studied Latin in high school. And mostly because my being of the speaks banish was so bad. The cool thing about studying Latin and was nobody knows how it actually sounds. So, you know, you're you're you're you're you didn't have to get it wrong. But understanding the Latin roots of the word compassion, it breaks down to being with calm feelings, passion. And our mutual friend, Parker Palmer likes to talk about the fact that violence is what we do when we don't know what to do with suffering. It's interesting. Yeah. Right. So, so so there's I don't know what to do with my suffering. But even more, I don't know what to do with your suffering. So I label it, I fix it, I try to make it go away. I try to believe the stories that are going on. And I think what we're hitting upon is that what compassion does is it transforms the experience of suffering into something that actually unites us all, that pulls us all together. And that doesn't, you know, there's the suffering of, you know, what we see when a when government overreach destroys families. And compassion is like the proverbial thoughts and prayers, you know, we need sensible gun control. We need rules and regulations that that that even our most powerful must abide to abide by. We do need those things. But when those things are not rooted in compassion, I think we compound the problem. Yeah. We compound the suffering. So even in when we when we move into fix, without compassion, we end up exacerbating the problem. We end up back in, in say, the second noble truth, if you will. Does this make sense? It makes total sense. It brings me back to the Grammys, which I did not watch. But so bad bunnies, acceptance speech for, I don't know, best album or something like that. And he basically said, you know, you can see the kind of the roiling hatred and to respond with hatred just makes everything worse. The only stronger forces love. And I know it sounds so stupid. I mean, he didn't say this. I'm saying this now. You know, that and I've certainly been accused of that. You know, like it's just like sending thoughts and prayers. It's so nothing. You know, right. But I think of a few things. One is the survival of those trying to make this a better world because hatred in the end can destroy us. You know, and it is like in the Buddha's psychology, compared to, and I don't mean just feeling it. I mean, being embroiled in it over come by it. You know, defined by it. Anger hatred is is like into a forest fire, which can burn up its own support, which is our bodies, our nervous system, our families, you know, are happiness, our own happiness. Our happiness is not a selfish thing. It's the fuel out of which we can continue to confront pain and try to make a difference. And, you know, why try to change a system from a place of maximum exhaustion and depletion and overwhelm? It's not it's not survivable. So that's part of it. And part of it is the energy that we put out into the world. It needs to be different from what is dragging us down. And that doesn't mean, you know, for quality. I mean, I grew up in the era of the civil rights movement. Right. You know, and I used to watch on TV like those people going into the south to register people to vote and kneeling down and praying and then going forward and getting beaten up. Right. And I used to see them interviewed sometimes in the hospital and they were like not full of hatred, you know, they were connecting to something so much bigger. Right. And joy is not the right word. They didn't enjoy what was happening, but they were uplifted by their belief in the commonality of all beings. And and I watched, you know, like Martin Luther King, Jr. And I watched, you know, when you, I wouldn't watch the actual assassination, but I was, you know, I kind of a kid. And I was very aware of it. And I know that so many people like, I also tell this story years later, of course, I spent the day with this man, Miles Horton, who was the founder of the Highlander Folk School, which was the place where, you know, the people who became civil rights leaders would go to kind of train. And just through some, he was visiting a friend, but the friend had to go to work. So I ended up spending the day with him. And we talked about meditation and he wasn't at all interested. And and I said, what do you do to sustain yourself? And he said, I look at the mountains, you know, they were in Tennessee or Kentucky, so they said, I just sit and look at the mountains. And then we talked about loving kindness meditation, which was, you know, so much my thing. And he said, oh, Marty, meaning Martin Luther King, Jr. He said, Marty used to tell me you got to love everybody. And I'd say, no, I don't, you know, I only have to love the people who deserve to be loved. And he said, Marty would laugh and just say, no, you got to love everybody. And in the few times I've told that story, there's often been somebody said, well, look what happened to Martin Luther King. He got killed as though if he were hateful and bitter, he would be alive. He would be alive. That would have kept him safe. You know, so what are we thinking? Right. Right. Right. And all of this brings to mind for me, Victor Frankl and man searched for meaning, right? Who of course, you know, he sought to understand the most unimaginable suffering possible life in a Nazi concentration. Yeah. And I don't know that I don't remember him using the words about compassion, but I do remember his understanding that a sense of purpose, a sense of something larger than oneself, which to me does link back to the notion of compassion that we're all kind of in this together, including those that we have trouble loving. Mm-hmm. Because right now I have a hard time with them as well. I'm like your friend from Highland, you know? But the notion of being able to not descend into bitterness and nihilism and anger and hatred, which is something that I really worry about right now. I mean, we live in times where suffering is almost the coin of the realm. Mm-hmm. It's like not only is there a war in empathy, but violence is being rewarded and a tax, not just on empathy, but a tax on other individuals, or somehow in an authoritarian structure, or somehow elevating that to the status of power. And I worry that when the worm turns and I firmly believe that the worm will turn, that we will give over to those same impulses and thereby maintain suffering. Oh, yeah, I mean, there's every possibility of that, which is why we need to really hold a light of understanding as best we can. I'm going to read you a poem that I just-- Please remember it by Mr. Rogers, you know, my hero. What do you do with the mad that you feel? When you feel so mad you could bite. When the whole wide world seems oh, so wrong and nothing you do seems very right. What do you do? Do you punch a bag? Do you pound some clay or some dough? Do you round up friends for a game of tag or see how fast you go? It's great to be able to stop when you've planned a thing that's wrong and be able to do something else instead and think this song. I can stop when I want to, I can stop when I wish, I can stop, stop, stop any time and what a good feeling to feel like this. And know that the feeling is really mine. Know that there's something deep inside that helps us become what we can. For a girl can be someday a woman and a boy can someday a man. And I have a feeling that when we forget that, we increase our suffering because we forget the power that we do have to respond to my God to even respond to evil, to respond to the violence that produces the suffering in a way that actually reduces suffering when we forget that we have that capacity. And it feels like such a conflagration, it's like so many forces of greed, hatred and delusion. And such a consolidated form, people always quote the Dalai Lama when he was asked about evil and he said from the Buddhist point of view, evil is ignorance. It's thinking, oh, that's going to make me happy to be disconnected from everybody and kick them. And in this case, to kick immigrants out of the United States. Yeah. Legal and otherwise. Yeah, that's going to make me happy. And I really come to feel, of course, I do believe that. And also, there's a way in which that energy can get so consolidated. You know, it feels so thick and oppressive that we feel it energetically as well as having an understanding of the kind of thought process behind it. And that's our challenge as well is somehow not to absorb it, you know, and to face it, but not really be consumed by it. To be wise, not just in hope, not to be wise generally. And you know, it feels like compassion and overcoming our own guilt, our own shame, our own helplessness, our isolation, our sense that this is only happening to us. All of these things are about wisdom. It's about responding to suffering with wisdom. And as I sit here, Sharon, there's a sadness that I feel. You know, I entered it into this conversation excited and you can tell I did my homework. Yeah. Part of that question. But and there is a part of me that can try to think my way through suffering because I'm very clever. But I think over the course of our conversation, the sadness and heaviness that has come into me is really the sadness that I feel around the world. You know, you and I both encounter lots and lots of people who turn to us for alleviation of pain. And right now in this moment, I'm feeling all of their pain. Yeah. You know, we've joked about this before compassion can hurt. Yeah. But bodhi chita open our heart, hurt us. Yeah. But you know, sometimes I think it's the beginning of the pandemic. You said to me, you were born for this time. Yeah. And I think suffering does hurt opening to the situation of so many people and knowing it doesn't have to be this way, but it is this way. It hurts. And yet we also compounded my compounded by that feeling of helplessness and I don't know what to do and it's too much. It's too massive. I can't do anything. And I remind myself, because certain opportunities have come up to do what I do, you know, and to do what I do with people who are really on the front lines of trying to make a difference and do what I do, you know, which is teach meditation or meditate with people. And I realize that I feel terrible when I feel that what I can do is it's not big enough. You know, it can't, they can't like penetrate and break up the system. And then I think, you know what, it's what I do. Right. And, you know, let me not hold back from doing what I do. And what I can do. And I think we each need to find that. We're not just well in helplessness and nealism. You know, nothing is going to make a difference. Nothing's good enough because then we're just sunk. Right. Right. And it's like I've taken to using this phrase that, you know, for some reason, God or the divine, when it breathed life into me, gave me the capacity to speak in a way that people listen. Yeah. Sometimes it baffles me, but okay. And that's what I can do. Yeah. That's what I can do to help in suffering. Yeah. And I think that what I just said there was important for me to help in suffering. Not to end suffering for all time for all people. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, well Sharon, this has been an extraordinary conversation. It was bit of an experiment. And, and I really appreciate taking the time and working this through. And I know we're going to do this again. But as we start to wrap the question I, I, I leave you with is because I know we're not done in this conversation. But for now, if there's one thing you'd want people to remember right now, what would you hope that they remember? Um, I think that love or, or kindness or compassion is a power and that it, it is the capacity we have. It's a big part of the capacity we have to be different in facing suffering. That we, in a way we're, we're all in this together. It's a little cliched. But I think it's actually true. Well, um, you know, Sharon, you've been teaching us that for, I won't name the number of years because that will imply you for a lot of years. For a lot of years. That's right. For a lot of years. And I, I really appreciate your, your, well, I love you and I appreciate all that you bring to the world. And, um, yeah, you were born for these times. So, guys, thank you for, for being in conversation together. Well, thank you so much. If you enjoyed this episode and want to hear more, go to reboot.io/podcasts to listen to all past and present seasons of our show. And leave us a review at Apple Podcasts, we're Spotify. That's the best way for other people to find and enjoy the show just as you have done. And don't forget to join our mailing list at reboot.io/signup so you never miss an episode. Thank you again for listening. [Music] Becoming yourself is the ultimate act of leadership. 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