Our Latest Radio Show + Podcast: Opening to Our Lives: Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Science of Mindfulness (» download mp3)
“It doesn’t actually take any more time to say good-bye or hug you know, your children or whatever it is in the morning when you’re on your way to work. But the mind says, ‘I don’t have any time for this.’ But actually that’s all you have time for, is this because there’s nothing else than this…So when your four year-old can’t decide which dress she wants to wear, that’s not a problem for you, unless you make it a problem for you. That’s just the way four year-olds are. And the more we can sort of learn these lessons the more we will not be in some sense running towards our death, but in a sense opening to our lives.”
Scientist and author Jon Kabat-Zinn has changed Western medicine through his work on meditation and stress. He’s clinically demonstrated the benefits of ancient traditions of mindfulness and meditation. And he’s adapted these for people who are healthy or living with chronic illness, for Olympic athletes and corporate cultures.
In this week’s On Being podcast, Jon Kabat-Zinn offers wise perspective on inhabiting the ordinary and extreme stresses of our lives. Technology may function 24/7, he points out, but our minds and bodies do not. He has practical and spiritual tools accessible to everyone — for slowing down time and “opening to our lives.”
And, for this week’s show, our host Krista Tippett recommends reading: 
Coming to Our Senses: Healing Ourselves and the World Through Mindfulness
by Jon Kabat-Zinn
There are a couple of minutes in this podcast in which we hear Jon Kabat-Zinn conduct an introductory meditative experience for employees at Google. This spiritual technology is immediately effective and at the same time an engagement for a lifetime. It is about “coming to our senses” in the fullest sense of that phrase. This book explores these ways of living in more depth.
“The place to improve the world is first in one’s own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there.”
~Robert M. Pirsig from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
Meredith Monk: A Twitterscript
by Susan Leem, associate producer
Last Wednesday, the artist Meredith Monk joined our host Krista Tippett for a 90-minute conversation via ISDN. We live-tweeted highlights of this interview and have aggregated them below for those who weren’t able to follow along. Look for our show with her in the coming weeks, and follow us next time at @BeingTweets.
For those not familiar with Ms. Monk, she is an American composer, performer, director, vocalist, filmmaker, and choreographer who has been creating multi-disciplinary works since the 1960s. She is best known for her vocal innovations, including a wide range of extended techniques.
Also a practicing Buddhist, she is a member of the Shambala sangha. Her most recent album, Songs of Ascension, is inspired by a Zen abbot who described Songs of Ascents — songs which Jews were believed to have sung in biblical times on pilgrimages to Jerusalem and to the top of Mount Zion.
- For the next 90 minutes we’ll be live-tweeting Krista’s interview with composer/vocalist/performer/ Meredith Monk —@meredith_monk 1:02 PM 11 Jan
- “Singing was a natural kind of language for me. I read music before I read words.” —@meredith_monk 1:10 PM 11 Jan
- “I think of the voice as a very kinetic instrument. I think of the body and the voice as one.” —@meredith_monk 1:12 PM 11 Jan
- “Auditions are hard on the human level…I was looking for people who could sing well, and had a radiant generosity to them.” —@meredith_monk 1:14 PM 11 Jan
- “Auditions are hard at the human level. I like to give back to people.” —@meredith_monk 1:15 PM 11 Jan
- “I’m really trying to do something that makes the voice universal and transcendent.” —@meredith_monk 1:16 PM 11 Jan
- “I had the revelation that the voice could be like the body. Like the spine, it could turn, it could fall…” —@meredith_monk 1:20 PM 11 Jan
- “I had the sensation of something ancient, primal, visceral, preverbal expression.” —@meredith_monk 1:21 PM 11 Jan
- “As an artist so interested in uncovering the invisible, mysterious, inexplicable, things we can’t label.” —@meredith_monk 1:24 PM 11 Jan
- “I was thinking of the voice as the messenger of my soul.” —@meredith_monk 1:24 PM 11 Jan
- “Performing is such an amazing template of human behavior: of generosity, sensitive to the environment and to other people.” —@meredith_monk 1:28 PM 11 Jan
- “We’re taught to be distracted and diverted from feeling the good pain as in open-heartedness of the moment.” —@meredith_monk 1:30 PM 11 Jan
- “I wanted to spend the rest of my life making pieces about things you can’t make pieces about.” —@meredith_monk 1:34 PM 11 Jan
- “The act of making artwork was the act of contemplating something.” —@meredith_monk 1:35 PM 11 Jan
- “How do we spend time on this planet? How do you do work that’s of benefit?” —@meredith_monk 1:35 PM 11 Jan
- “Why does worship always go up? There’s this idea of heaven going up.” —@meredith_monk 1:38 PM 11 Jan
- “In the Buddhist tradition there’s circumambulation, that’s a different form, going around.” —@meredith_monk 1:39 PM 11 Jan
- “I love the idea of working with strings, the bowing arm is so much like the breath.” —@meredith_monk 1:40 PM 11 Jan
- “Maybe I should’ve called it ‘Songs of Going Up and Down’” —@meredith_monk on her new work “Songs of Ascension” 1:43 PM 11 Jan
- “Play is something to really think about. That sense of playfulness is another aspect of being alive, awake.” —@meredith_monk 1:45 PM 11 Jan
- “When it comes down to it, you leave love behind…the Beatles had it right.” —@meredith_monk 1: 48 PM 11 Jan
- “If I do use words, they’re used more abstractly…The word dissolves into pure sound.” —@meredith_monk on song writing 1:55 PM 11 Jan
- “The older I get, the simpler the work gets…the most essential is what reaches people the most.” —@meredith_monk 2:00 PM 11 Jan
- “Curiosity is a great antidote to fear.” —@meredith_monk 2:00 PM 11 Jan
- “All of us as human beings are part of the world vocal family.” —@meredith_monk 2:04 PM 11 Jan
- “The human voice is the original instrument. You’re going back to the beginnings of utterance…The memory of being a human being.” —@meredith_monk 2:04 PM 11 Jan
- “Most of my songs deal with emotion…between the cracks of emotion.” —@meredith_monk 2:10 PM 11 Jan
- “It was like two young children just loving each other so much” —@meredith_monk on singing for the Dalai Lama 2:16 PM 11 Jan
- @rosannecash - Meredith Monk (@meredith_monk) loved your interview with Krista and would love to meet you! 2:19 PM 11 Jan
Photo of Meredith Monk by Jesse Frohman.
Thich Nhat Hanh Followers Harrassed
Kate Moos, managing producer
For a few weeks I’ve been tracking scanty headlines out of Viet Nam about the harassment of followers of Thich Nhat Hanh, a Zen Buddhist monk whom we interviewed in 2003. He was forced out of his native country decades ago because of his opposition to the Vietnamese War and lived in exile, primarily in France. A few years ago, he was allowed to return on a visit and told authorities at that time they should end state control of religion. Apparently his point of view angered some officials.
Now, his followers are being chased around, and the government, which only permits state-approved religious practice, appears to be cracking down.
The European Union is investigating but the most consistent news on this is coming from Thich Nhat Hahn’s Twitter feed. Perhaps the Western press will pick it up.
Dharma Talking with Cheri Maples
» download (mp3, 12:53)
Nancy Rosenbaum, associate producer
I recently caught up with dharma teacher Cheri Maples, who appeared in our 2003 program “Brother Thay: A Radio Pilgrimage with Thich Nhat Hahn.” Back then, Maples was a police captain (later an assistant attorney general) in Madison, Wisconsin. She spoke with Krista about what it means to be a compassionate cop who practices mindfulness awareness on the job.
We’ve re-aired “Brother Thay” seven times (!) since its inaugural broadcast, and noticed that people consistently resonate with Maples and her personal story. Maples was in town recently to deliver a dharma talk (PDF) so I decided to go and see what’s changed in her life since she and Krista last spoke.
Maples reflected on the surprising ways in which her life changed course after she accepted an invitation from Thich Nhat Hahn to travel together to Vietnam in 2007. The following year, the Zen master formally ordained her as a dharma teacher through a ceremony called “The Transmission of the Lamp.” She is no longer employed by the state, but she’s still involved with the criminal justice system through a new organization she co-founded called The Center for Mindfulness and Justice.
Maples drew a standing-room only crowd for her dharma talk that evening. She spoke about gratitude, joy, wonder, tenderness, and mystery. Here’s something I jotted down that stuck with me: “The hell in your life is the compost of your enlightenment.”
Books that Changed Your Life
Kate Moos, Managing Producer
Trent and I have been talking about how to discuss books on the blog. We get tons of books every week and while we look at all of them, and read some of them, I don’t think we have either the capacity or the interest for a regular book feature. But we are aware that books are a big part of the DNA of our program and website, even though we hardly ever do what is commonly considered a “book interview.”
It’s in the nature of the program to care deeply about books that matter, and to have deep respect for the textual basis of tradition. So, for us, the focus on books has less to do with what is being published recently and more to do with how they have had a deep impact, or capture a topic or a story in a way we just can’t resist.
I think of our show with Mary Doria Russell, “The Novelist As God,” as an example of a program that arose out of a singular attraction to an author’s work. An exception to the “we don’t do book interviews” rule happened early in the show’s history. When Jennifer Michael Hecht’s book, Doubt: A History, had just been published, we pursued her because we thought it was just so brilliant.
There are books that become so important to us they become like old friends. Or, books that we find so transformative our lives are never the same. In about 1979, I picked up a copy of D.T. Shunryu Suzuki’s slim volume, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, in a book store and was so struck by the lines I read I bought it and took it home to read. And I’ve never stopped reading it.
At one time, I transcribed the entire book by hand into a notebook as a meditative practice. I’m not a Buddhist, but this man’s words settled in to my being to stay. Now, that paperback is missing its cover. Its pages are dog-eared, and I’ve written grocery lists and phone numbers on the flyleaves.
Suzuki, seen briefly above in the trailer from a documentary about him, was one of the major importers of Zen Buddhism to the West. What were his words that so captivated me? “In the beginner’s mind,” he wrote, “there are many possibilities. In the expert’s mind, there are few.”
What are the books that have changed your life? What are the books that became your best friend?
UPDATE: We inadvertently conflated the two Suzukis, and so struck some language, replaced the video (but kept the link to the D.T. documentary), and swapped out the photo as well. Thanks to chucklief for leaving the comment below and correcting our mistake.
Buddhist Slime Mold
Rob McGinley Myers, Associate Producer
It’s been a pretty cold, wet, desolate spring so far in Minnesota. I went for a walk the other night and it seemed more like autumn than spring, with the wind on my face and the scent of dead leaves in the air. But as I passed under a tree I suddenly noticed buds breaking out all over the branches. It felt like a tiny miracle.
I had just recently listened to our upcoming show with Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh, and seeing those buds made me think of what he says about being mindful.
“When you breathe in, your mind comes back to your body, and then you become fully aware that you’re alive, that you are a miracle and everything you touch could be a miracle — the orange in your hand, the blue sky, the face of a child.”
I was looking for a video to illustrate my own sense of wonder about the world coming back to life, and discovered this, which I find equally creepy and beautiful. It’s not exactly an image of spring, but it reminds me that all living things are breathing. We just have to pay attention to realize it.
(video by sesotek/Vimeo)
