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House Calls Podcast
Clarity and the Domain of Stillness (Part 2)
With guest Jon Kabat-Zinn,
Author, Professor, Mindfulness Pioneer

Description

What is the difference between loneliness and being alone? The Surgeon General and mindfulness pioneer Jon Kabat-Zinn delve into the complexities of the modern human experience, including the ways technologies that have the power to both bring us together and drive us apart. Embodied wakefulness, says Kabat-Zinn, is the key to showing up whole for a planet-wide renaissance in which everyone leads a life of dignity and authenticity together.

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Transcript

Vivek Murthy

Hello and welcome to House Calls. I'm Vivek Murthy and I have the honor of serving as U.S. Surgeon General. I'd like to introduce you to Jon Kabat-Zinn, pioneer of mindfulness-based stress reduction. Jon is also a meditation teacher, author, professor and a dear friend. We believe conversations can be healing, and today we'll be talking about finding peace. This conversation serves as a guide to how we can find ways to cope with the daily stressors of life.

Vivek Murthy

Hi everyone. Thanks for tuning in to House Calls. I'm excited to share this conversation with mindfulness pioneer Jon Kabat-Zinn. Jon is a doctor, a Buddhist, a bestselling author and a leader in the field and practice of mindfulness. He is professor of medicine emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, where he founded its world renowned Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Clinic and the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care and Society. Jon and I have known each other for many years, connecting through our practice of meditation and our shared interest in mental health and emotional well-being. I wanted to speak with Jon because our country is facing a major mental health crisis. As Surgeon General, I've seen this up close. I've met with kids and adults across America who, like so many of us, are living through anxiety, loneliness, and stress. The pandemic has only added to our emotional and psychological burden. Jon and I recorded this conversation in November 2021, so there are some references to that stage of the pandemic in this conversation. But what I want to share is how Jon's work offers simple ways to reduce stress and find ways to cope with uncertainty. One of the things I love about Jon is he can be both theoretical and practical, and in this conversation he is both. He walks us through ways we can breathe, through stress responses while explaining why this works. Along the way, we talk about the impact of technology befriending ourselves, and how to be alone without being lonely. As I mentioned, Jon and I are friends, so this conversation did get pretty long. That's why it's split into two parts. But stick with us. It's worth it. By the time Jon closes with a guided meditation, I hope you'll find the same sense of peace and solace that I experienced in this episode of House Calls.

Vivek Murthy

This is Part Two of a two-part conversation. We'll pick up where we left off talking about technology and our mental health.

Jon Kabat-Zinn

When I first met you, you were doing a lot of stuff online because you were Surgeon General. And, you know, that's a very powerful way to connect with people. But I'm wondering how how that's played out over the years in terms of in your own life, in terms of how to maximize the good and actually minimize the potential toxicity of the technology?

Vivek Murthy

Yeah, I think you're right that it is a it is one of the most profound public health questions we can ask now. What is the impact of technology on our health and our well-being? And what's, I find really interesting about it is obviously technology is a tool at the end of the day. It can bring so much benefit to our lives. It can also cause inadvertent consequences that are not so positive. But the real question I find is how do we enable ourselves to use technology without letting technology use us? How do we control the benefit that we derive from technology? And there actually, I think it comes back to something you began our conversation with, which is the importance of awareness, of understanding what the impact of technology is on you. We've all had those moments where, like, yeah, this isn't like bringing me to a good place. This is not improving how I feel. It's taking me in the opposite direction. But sometimes we don't have those moments of awareness until we are so far in that we've actually sustained a fair amount of anger or resentment or whatever the negative feeling may be because of our use of technology, or it's just taken time away from us that we could have spent potentially doing other things that may have brought joy or fulfillment, whether that's time with others or just time on our own or frankly time sleeping, which technology's also robbed many people of their sleep. And so these there's a, I think, question of awareness of how do we understand the impact tech is having on us with enough moment-to-moment awareness that we can actually course correct. And I think for all of us, also, regardless of what generation we grew up in or whether we grew up in an analog age or whether we're digital natives, my suspicion is that for all of us, it's important to have some space in our lives that isn't dominated by technology, when we can be comfortable being with ourselves and being with others without technology. I worry that there is a, that there's a fear that many people have of being alone, of being unengaged with people, whether it's virtually or or otherwise. And that discomfort with being by ourselves is something that popped up a lot in conversations I had with people over the years, as I've done research on loneliness and social connection. And I think that's one of the illusions or the myths, rather that our phones sell to us, right? They tell us that you'll never have to be alone again. And that's a very complicated promise, if you will, that our devices make. Sometimes there are moments where we have to be comfortable being with ourselves, and we don't need to be necessarily connected by tech all the time. And I worry that we have in some ways sacrificed quality of connection for quantity of connection through through technology. I don't think it has to be that way. I think we can use tech for very positive ways to reconnect with old friends, to stay in touch with new friends, to meet new people, to be a part of communities, of shared experience and shared purpose. But I worry that for many people, the way they narrate and have shared with me over the years, their experience of technology hasn't always been that. It's often engaged them in conversations or in ways of thinking that they have not found necessarily to be positive. I'll lastly say, Jon, that on this one of my great concerns is around a sort of culture of comparison that I think is amplified and accelerated. The experience of many people with social media is that comparing your average days with other people's best days and you often come up short in that experience, which I think especially for our young people whose sense of self is self is developing, that can be a very precarious and dangerous experience to be, to really drop in to that deep ocean of comparison which which can be really harmful, I think, a lot of times to people's mental health and wellbeing. So we have a lot of work I think to do as a society to fully understand, like you said, the impact of technology on our health and our wellbeing. But I think it's important for us to bring an awareness to how tech is impacting our way of thinking, our way of feeling and to cultivate, I think, a comfort with being with ourselves.

Jon Kabat-Zinn

That's a very beautiful way of framing it. And I really feel like that's our future. So we've got our work cut out for us. There is a big difference, as you know, we talk about between loneliness and aloneness and one of the potential powers of befriending your own awareness is that awareness is always at home and at home in a way that means that you're not lonely, even though you're alone. In other words, you can be completely at home with things exactly as they are in this moment. That does not mean that the world doesn't need to change, that we don't have to work for social change or or right wrongs or anything like that. But for the present moment, again, it's possible to inhabit it in such a way that that it's timeless and that you have no place to go. And you can be at home in this moment as it is without having to accept injustice, but to actually experience being at home. That sense of embodied wakefulness actually is healing and transformative. And when I like to sometimes call it the domain of being, when you can just be and you don't have to fill your mind up with this, that and the other, and then you engage out of that domain of stillness being clarity alone, but not lonely. Then when you let your doing come out of that being, whether it's going back online or whether it's going to work or whether it's engaging with your children or grandchildren or anybody, then you're showing up in an entirely new way and everybody benefits from that. And that's one of the ways in which I use the word healing, that it's coming to terms with things as they are. But from a wisdom perspective and from a perspective of non dual, not this-ing and that-ing and other-ing all the time. And that means the potential for us actually seeing a greater unity even in a huge diversity. And I feel like whether we're talking about the body politic or we're talking about this body or mind, that awareness is the only actual power that I know that's a human attribute of our genetics that's capable of actually engaging, embracing the whole in such a way that we show up whole, which is the meaning of the word health and healthy and holy for that matter, so that if we learn to recognize our own wholeness, and what if we create an epidemic of that, a love affair with being who you already are and not having to be incomplete, where something else has to fill you up. And then you can have relationships that are profoundly satisfying because they are no longer dependent in a certain kind of dysfunctional way. And at every age, you know, talking about the pandemic, I've been speaking with a whole bunch of different people. And I realize the 19 year olds have been suffering in a way that I don't, you know, it's not my experience, but imagine being 19 and being sort of kept apart in this kind of way. The 17 year olds and the 15 year olds, the 13 year olds every age is being affected by this differently. And I feel like we really have to wrap our minds around what that is and honoring their sovereignty, honoring what's right with them, what's what's whole in them, so that they recognize that their intrinsic nature is wholeness and that they can bring this into every aspect of the challenges of life in ways that actually the world is calling out for, and I would say even starving, for on every level.

Vivek Murthy

Gosh, I mean, it's so beautifully put. And I do, I do you think the words you use, the world is hungry for this, but it's starved of that kind of awareness and centeredness and connection that you're talking about, I think I really sense that too. And you remind me of something that a teacher I really like said often, which is that "Being precedes doing," that often when we can be in the right place by bringing our awareness and to the moment, by creating and cultivating a sense of peace, when we then go out and act in the world, we're often so much more powerful and so much more effective, whether, as you said, were with family or at work. You know, this is a moment where also so many people in the country are confronting injustice, whether that's the injustice of racial inequities or whether that's, you know, other forms of injustices that we've been struggling with for a long time as a country, including economic injustice, including including inequities in health that we've seen, and in health care. And there is, I think, a tremendous amount of energy to respond and to close the gaps that have existed for far too long here to create a more equitable, fair society where we all work and thrive together. But we also know that moments like this, where we are moved by injustice to take action, those are important moments. But one of the things I'd love for you to reflect on with us is how do we bring ourselves to those moments when things are happening in the world that may make us angry, that may make us upset and resentful? How do we manage those moments, manage the emotions that they elicit within us, and be effective in the actions we put forward without necessarily being negatively impacted by the anger and other feelings that they may generate? I'll tell you honestly, this is something I struggle with. I see the injustices in the world, and sometimes they make me very angry, you know, sometimes they make me upset. And I feel like these are some things we've got to address, we've got to do something about. But I'm also aware that in those moments, one of the dangers is that we can turn our anger toward an issue, into an anger toward one another, and we can start to see go down this slippery slope where we see other people as evil as the agents of injustice, and it can suddenly become a very polarizing circumstance. So how do we respond to injustice in a way that lifts up society, that strengthens us and ultimately addresses the injustice that we're seeking to deal with? I wish I could answer that.

Jon Kabat-Zinn

You know, it's such a huge question, and I'm not sure that any one of us can come up with a kind of definitive prescription, so to speak, for what ails us. But I would say that the threads that we've been following in this conversation are an intimate part of it. And it's it's in part to understand that deep interconnectivity and also how easily we can fall into our own self righteousness around our opinions and then have a fortified position, that's all or nothing. So that we're kind of dehumanizing those who are not in the group that agrees with us, so to speak. And and then that becomes its own barrier or really a disease that requires its own healing. Meanwhile, the injustice doesn't get dealt with. The injustice doesn't get dealt with because we're too polarized around what the solution is. The fact is that human history has been full of this kind of thing since, you know, long before recorded history. And so it's almost as if this may sound too global for you, but it's such a powerful question. I don't want to get lost in sort of details around it. I feel the largest challenge for us, karmically speaking, if you don't mind my using that word in this framework is as a species, the Homo sapiens sapiens, a species from the Latin superior, which means to taste or to know. So Linnaeus gave us this name. We’re the species that not only is aware because that's the direct perceiving, it's not thinking, it's awareness and is aware that we are aware. When we can live our way into that as a species and as individuals, then I think we can actually right the ship, balance the centuries-old injustices that are not going to go away and are more and more in our faces and actually do need to be dealt with at the institutional level, at every, at the legal level, at every conceivable level, so that the body politic itself is whole or made whole. Because as I like to say, if the heart and the liver decide to go to war with each other because the cells of the heart, obviously are so much more superior to the cells of the liver, because we can contract, we have all this power and they're the wrong, they look wrong, they look sickly. I don't like their color. Whatever it is, that's a prescription for the death of the body, the death of the organism. So in a sense, our human species, we're waking up to the fact that we're kind of like the auto immune disease of the planet and maybe even worse than COVID that, you know, in the sense that we are the active vector of the dis-ease, but at the same time we're the immediate victim of it. So again, awareness, mindfulness, wakefulness, heartfullness is is really the antidote and not impractical by any stretch of the imagination, because we can actually instantiate it moment by moment by moment. And we don't have to find the most difficult person to relate to who's most unlike ourselves or fortified in their own trench, lobbing grenades our way. But just with every interaction that we have to actually practice honoring the humanity of the other in some way that's not associated with ideas and opinions. Because even every single one of us in five years, the ideas and opinions that we hold so strongly we might hold totally opposite or different ideas and opinions that we will hold equally strongly. And at certain point we have to sort of bring a certain degree of humor to all of this and see that the more we reify a sense of self and I and a me and a mine, my interest, my self-interest, my health, but not yours, my wealth, but not yours, my pain, but not yours. The more we reify that sense of self, the more we are losing touch with the deep, multi-dimensional beauty of our core humanity, which was has been the teachings of Vivekananda and, you know, the, the Upanishads and, you know, all meditative traditions globally forever. And I think it's that time. It's time to wake up while we still have the chance and thread these needles in the next decade or generations, if we even have a decade and generations, so that we actually do find ways to live that honor, what's deepest and best in us, in human beings. And I would say that that's how would be my working definition of a healthy society or a healthy planet, and we know how to do it. That's the irony. And we need leadership in a certain way and people who can not only articulate this but actually instrumentalize it in in policy and then in the kind of approaches that the country can take that are not limited by the vast cost that it would make, because the cost is not really the biggest impediment. It's our imagination or lack thereof, I think, that's the biggest impediment when all is said and done. And that's where I think true liberation, true freedom, true wakefulness, true health and wellbeing lie. And I think that, you know, this was pointed to in that 1979 surgeon general's report in ways like I was reading, of course, between the lines. But I feel like now the opportunity we have an opportunity like never before to instantiate a renaissance on the planet, a true renaissance where everybody's needs get taken care of, but nobody’s needs get ignored to the point where it's not possible to actually live a life of dignity and authenticity, anywhere on this planet.

Vivek Murthy

Gosh, such powerful words and so beautifully put. You know, as big as this challenges is I'm leaving this conversation with this sense of hope and possibility, as you said, that we actually have many of the tools that we need to do this important work and to embark and sustain this important healing. It's a question of can we come together and build these tools into our day-to-day lives? I've learned so much from you over the years. You've taught so many people over the years about how to live a better life. And I just I'm incredibly grateful to had the chance to have this conversation. I was wondering, Jon, if we could ask you just to close this out with with a brief meditation as well, something I've been looking forward to for a while.

Jon Kabat-Zinn

Sure, Vivek. But let me just say before I do, what an honor and a pleasure it is to have this conversation with you and to to know you and to feel that there is somebody in this office who cares on the multiplicity of levels and who has insight on the multiplicity of levels that it's going to take to actually tend to the health of the nation in the you know, sort of the aftermath, if we are in the aftermath, or in the midst of this pandemic and also everything else that's facing us right now and you, you know, the role of physician is often the role of teacher. And I feel like in your in your position, you have the capacity and are already doing it, I can see it and feel it, to teach us what we need to know and to take modest steps in the direction of understanding at the deepest levels what it means to be healthy as a human being, as a society, as a community of families, and also as a nation and also as a planet. And I just I just love that. I mean, I feel like the potential here is infinite and I want you to know that I sense that we are all on board with you and are willing to support you and collaborate and and help to, in some sense, enter into this new era, post-COVID or whatever, but a new era of possibilities where we actually make it happen. And to tell you the truth, it's an internal mental rotation and consciousness that actually doesn't cost any money at all. You don't need to budget for it. You don't even need time because the only time you need is the present moment and that's already yours. So there's a certain way in which we can, if it's possible to educate ourselves and each other to these possibilities, then we can handle the shadow side of our own minds and greed and hatred and delusion and so forth in ways that I think will translate into work, into meaningful work at every level and into a kind of hopeful Renaissance planet-wide that will allow us to have the time and the energy to enjoy the beauty that we intrinsically are as one part, but not the supremely dominant element of the natural world.

Vivek Murthy

As part of my House Calls conversation with Jon Kabat-Zinn, Jon guided a five-minute meditation. I'd like to share that with you.

Jon Kabat-Zinn

Let me invite you to close your eyes if you care to, or keep them open. So if you have a certain idea that meditation requires closing your eyes or sitting on the floor in a cross-legged posture or anything like that, you can abandon those thoughts as being maybe accurate to a degree, but not accurate enough. The real meditation practice is how we live our lives moment by moment by moment, as I was saying, in the only moment we ever have. So let's drop in to this moment and let's actually feel the body sitting here breathing and feel the carriage of the body in the gravitational field. And let me invite you to sit with a sense of intrinsic dignity and let the beauty that is you just radiate through your face and your chest and your belly and the entirety of your body actually in all directions, including the back and experiencing the air as we drink it in with each in-breath and as we let it exit with each out-breath. experiencing the miracle of being able to drink in this air moment by moment, and to let it exit. And that on each in-breath life our life is being renewed. Each out breath, a complete letting go, letting be and discharging of whatever toxins or negativity one might say has been accumulating. And the more we befriend, not the breath, but our awareness of the breath or the body with the breath and the body and our family and the space in our homes and our communities and our world. You find that your awareness is boundless, and you yourself, by virtue of that awareness, are also boundless. There's no center to awareness, there's no periphery to it. And so it's capable of enveloping the entirety of the world and holding the world in our own hearts. So just dropping into silence for a few breaths and experiencing the entire sensory field of the body, sitting here breathing in how it is right in this moment in your heart, in your mind, in your body, in your family, in your community, and in the world. And invite yourself to be at home right here in this timeless present moment we call now infinitely portable, always available, and the most profound human resource right at your disposal to bring to every circumstance in your life, however challenging, however stressful, however painful and let the beauty that we are express itself in how we inhabit this only moment we will ever experience.

Vivek Murthy

That concludes this conversation with Jon Kabat-Zinn. Join me for the next episode of House Calls with Dr. Vivek Murthy. Wishing you all health and happiness.