Barry Gillespie: Is There a Place for Joy and Compassion?

Podcast 82 Barry Gillespie

There are many of us across the world today who are in despair, who are angry, who are in mourning, whose lives are touched and torn by the tragedies wrought by human depravity and cruelty. Some might say this is not a time to contemplate the place of compassion and yes, even joy in this world, which are among the subjects of this episode. I have to say, given the weight of these terrible times it will be hard to find a place for these graces. But, I think, if we are to ever change the tyranny of this story, that place must be made.

[: 00:00:00

One is a serious devotion to Buddhist practice and teaching, and the other is as a painter of a wide range of subjects, from abstract geometrics to Buddhas to women weightlifters. If you're a regular listener, you're probably aware that in my view of the history and prehistory of Homo sapiens sapiens, art making and spiritual practice emerged from the same evolutionary seeds --- seeds that were eventually spread on the wings of human story making.

The Word, a word,

I don’t know…,

-

but that Word

doing its best to stay afloat at the confluence of time and space

spinning at the hot center

of the minds-eye vortex

had no choice

but to go forth

and multiply

and…beget a Story

Now, this making thing

That it appears

We’ve always done

that we call art

These are the tools we

use to nudge our stories

out into the world

But it’s important to remember

The artists hands

made that animal thing

that bison on the wall

that became the words

that begat the first story!

That gave birth to the

First tale tale

The first myth

=

The first joke

The first rumor

The first vexing, no-easy-answer question

That audio excerpt came from our short film, StoryStory, and could be applied to many of our guests, whose contemporary practice continues the work of making and spreading change provoking stories across the world. Stories that we take enormous pride in sharing on this show. Given this, I thought it would be interesting to talk to someone like Barry, whose life of service encompasses an intensely deep commitment to both spiritual and creative paths.

time we spent together in the: 1970

Part One: Six Buddhas

[: 00:02:48

And I, I can't carry a tune in a bucket, let's be real honest. And I didn't have any musical talent, but I'm like, “Oh, wait, I'm with all these cool people. I have to have some sort of artistic output, right?” So, I started painting things on the walls. If you remember,

BC: Yes, I do.

BG: I had, I was going to be an artist and that's how it started. Just that was the impulse. The original impulse was I, I gotta be cool like these other people. Only they're musicians. I can't be a musician. So, I have to be an artist and that's how it all started. 50 odd years

[: 00:03:49

[00:03:52] BG: I'll be an artist and I had no training, no formal, nothing, nothing. I just like, Oh, I like geometry. So, I started doing geometric things on the walls of the farm.

BC: I remember that, absolutely.

BG: But that was like just that was the impetus was like, “Oh, I gotta do something.” Yeah.

[: 00:04:10

[00:04:16] BG: I've always been, since I was a teenager, interested in, I suppose you'd say spiritual pursuits, trying to understand the world in ways other than the concrete. And in high school, I tried to start a group where I would invite different people like a Buddhist monk and a Jewish rabbi and have them come in and explain their faith to us and the school wouldn't let me.

Can't do that in high school. That'd be way too shocking. And then through university, I explored a few things in my 20s. I explored various yoga traditions and then became very involved in a yoga school for a long time with someone named Swami Vishnu Devananda. He passed away in 93. I was like, Oh, now what do I do? And then someone told me about this book called The Experience of Insight by Joseph Goldstein.

Joseph is like the grandfather of the Buddhist mindfulness movement in the West. And I read this book and went, “Ah, this is what I've been looking for.” I went off right away. I found out where he was teaching and went and sat a 10 day retreat with him. And so that's 20 years ago. And since then, I've practiced, spent a lot of time, it's been about a year in silent retreat.

[: 00:05:32

[00:05:41] BG: Well, right? And so, I started teaching dhamma about 10 years or so ago. And for me, the reason I teach it is it just has changed how I see the world and how I interact with the world, I think somewhat dramatically, though maybe not, maybe just resonates with me so much that I get it in a certain way.

But it's such a powerful set of teachings, and the Buddha taught for 40 years. So, it's like a huge collection of teaching that I also spend time. So, I study and I teach and I still go on retreat myself. I just go for a week or three weeks or a month or whatever I can get together with other things.

Which sort of got messed up by the pandemic for a while there. We couldn't do that sort of stuff. And I teach simply because I think this is, you know, on an individual basis, because I think that's the only way I can be effective in changing the world, is to reach people. And so sometimes there'll be 40 people in the room, and sometimes I'm teaching someone one on one.

But I'm just trying to give them an understanding of what the Buddha taught. Because I think it changes how they are in the world and in a positive way, in a wholesome way. So that's the other stream.

There are other little bits, like I'm married, I've got two kids, all those sorts of things. I have a big garden. I work one morning a week as a chaplain at the local hospital. As a volunteer chaplain, so there's other little bits. But those two, the art and the Buddhist teachings are the two streams that are where my main focus in life is and how I reach out into the world and try and affect change in the world.

Interestingly, you were talking about, you know, how you started doing this project. During the pandemic I painted six Buddhas, one after another. Because that's what I needed to do. That's how I could deal with it. Like, okay, how can I deal with what's going on? Oh, I have all these images of Buddhas. I'm just going to sit here and paint Buddhas.

And that's what I did. And it was great. What I needed to do at the time and actually, I finished that series and started painting women weightlifters, which is, “Oh, I think I need to do something different.” It was like, “Oh, let's switch, let's switch streams completely here.”

[: 00:07:59

[00:08:13] BG: Oh, very much. Other than just painting Buddhas. I paint in very high detail with very small brushes. And so, the actual process of applying paint is very slow and very concentrated and very meticulous.

So, it's essentially meditative. And not in the traditional sense of that, but certainly for me, the actual process of painting, especially when I get to the painting part, the drawing part somewhat, but more of the painting part, it's very Still and quiet. Just me and the scritch, scritch, scritch of the brush on the canvas and that's about it.

So, I see the two fitting together quite nicely.

[: 00:08:58

And there you go. And particularly these days, to be able to avail yourself of that consciously with intention is a great gift.

[: 00:09:30

But in that time, I was, relatively speaking, successful as a businessman. And I don't have to work at a regular job anymore. I can, I, I sell my paintings in the Buddhist community in which I'm part of. We work on what's called dana. So, I teach with no price, no, I never charge anything, and people give whatever they can afford or if they can't afford anything, they don't give anything and that's all okay.

And that's my income in a sense. And that plus what I put away, what a life! How lucky can you get?

Part Two: Cycles

[: 00:10:29

It's very welcoming, invitational, and friendly, and more than anything, humble. Consistently saying, “I didn't know, I was trying to figure this out.” I think that's exactly the way that people who have something valuable to share, here's something I found, maybe you might find it too, that kind of thing. Yeah,

[: 00:11:14

[00:11:17] BC: And one of the articles I'm going to reference here is Cultivating Joy. And the reason it resonated with me is that, if I have a religion, it's the religion of story. Little stories that... Moms tell their kids, and big stories that we tell ourselves that we don't even realize are stories. And powerful stories that can, in many ways, determine the path of our lives.

And your article about cultivating joy, for me when I read it, said... “If you're going to cultivate joy, it's not just going to drop on your head.” That cultivation is an intention. And that the work, in essence, is understanding the stories that are in there, and finding the connection between you and the joy that's around you.

That joy doesn't come out of you, it comes from the world around you. It's, it's not about you. And I just really appreciated it.

[: 00:12:20

So, it's a story. Most of the Pali Canon is just stories. So, I spent a lot of time in story land in that sense, but in a very intentional way. The thing you're talking about in the Buddhist tradition is called mudita. Mudita roughly translates as sympathetic joy you experience when you see joy around you.

And that, and the beauty of that. And I teach about this a lot, actually, in what I'm actually formally teaching, is that it's free. You don't have to buy anything, you don't have to be any certain way, you just need to be open. Open your heart, mind, and take in what's all around you, and see it.

And then not be reactive to it, like not see someone walking their dog, right? And your mind can go, “Oh, look, that dog looks really happy and that person looks really happy.” Or your mind can go, “That guy better pick up the poop.” And that's just your choice in your mind, which way you go, right? And, but I take it in as joy as I'm experiencing just walking down the street and this guy walked by with a dog.

Or I can take it in as, or I gotta, or those people with those dogs they never pick up and get caught spinning in one of those stories about how bad people with dogs are. It's just a choice, you know, and that's, and the choice is what, what in Buddhist teachings are called cultivation. Cultivation implies you have to do something.

You have to consciously choose to, more and more often, the situation. See, the joy in the situation, you know. And I mentioned I'm a chaplain at the hospital and I spend a lot of time really in the cancer ward where, and you think there's not going to be any joy there, right? Man, it's like you meet people and they tell you their stories.

Talk about stories. You get to hear great stories hanging out as a chaplain because they just, people want to talk. And there's this, you just burst with joy sometimes. In the midst of the fact that they may not be around for very long, but they still have stories to tell, and they want to share them, and there's joy there just in the telling.

And in having someone just sit and listen. That's my role as a chaplain, really. People say, well, what's your job? I go in there, chat a bit, and then I listen, because a lot of times, people want to tell those stories, but their family won't listen to them anymore, because they've told those stories to the family 50 times.

And they say, “Oh, oh, Grandpa, don't tell, not that stupid story again.” But this guy just comes and sits down and really pays attention and tunes in to what they're saying. And the joy just comes out and I thought, well, what a great place to hang out in and find joy.

[: 00:15:24

[00:15:39] BG: Absolutely. And it's just, it's a synergy right there. Yeah, they feel it. They feel, oh, this person really cares. This person really wants to just sit and listen to my story. Yeah. And yeah, and that's very true, too. It's a, it is a complimentary thing. So, I just tell you one other story about teaching joy, because it seems applicable.

A couple of students of mine asked me a couple of years ago now to marry them. In Colorado, basicall, you don't need to have any license. You can just marry people. It's… Colorado's got this, all these weird frontier laws. So basically, they just went and got this piece of paper from the clerk, and they signed it, and they were married.

So, they didn't need any officiant, officially, but they wanted me to do this because… What did I talk about? I talked about, there we are in this. The family setting is a small group and what I talk about, because they said they wanted a Buddhist wedding I had to make something up, right? So, I said, and I talked about Mudita.

I thought, look, just look what's going on here right now. Here's these two people who clearly are totally gaga for each other. It was palpable. And all the family was around and they were taking it in, and they all looked really happy and I felt really happy just being there and see what's going on here.

This is the gift these two people are giving us. They're giving us access to their joy and we can all feel it. And we… it comes back to them and it just, it's such a powerful thing. And this is just, this is what weddings are about. As far as I was concerned, this is an important part of being a wedding.

There's like time for joy and it's. The people who are getting married are giving opportunity for joy to everyone else. Maybe a different way of looking at weddings, but you know, it seems to be applicable to my mind.

[: 00:17:25

And be blessed by the people who love them and somebody like yourself who's tied up in a way. And as you well know, your wedding day is probably the easiest day to be cultivating joy. But that message, a year later, two years later, five years later, is right at the center of being able to maintain those relationships.

[: 00:18:21

[00:18:23] BC: Yeah. So, uh, the thing you're reminding me of... Is another part of, I guess you could say my practice is this idea of cultivating what some people describe as the creative process. And not some technique, but in fact, an intrinsic aspect of what it is to be human. And maybe, one of the most powerful aspects of what it is to be human is the imagination and the creative process.

And what you do in one half of your life, which is to manifest the products of your, your imagination, your observation, your sense of a beauty in the world. And when you describe joy here, and then there's another practice, metta, which you've written about, the practice of loving kindness. Which it seems to me is joined at the hip with the joy practice, both are synergistic, powerful ways of being in the world that take work, but actually manifest an extraordinary return, and, which is a creative process.

And I'll just, one other thing to say is that scientists have been struggling for a long time to try and create the perpetual motion machine in terms of energy ---cold fusion, or whatever you want to call it, that basically creates more energy than you put in. And I've always felt that the creative process is, as you say, free and available, and it does that on a regular basis.

[: 00:20:00

[00:20:03] BC: Absolutely. Yeah.

[: 00:20:05

Here's what the Buddha said. Let's just see if we can live it out. Really simple, really plain. The focus and practice is always on silence and stillness. Much… if you've ever been to a Quaker meeting, you go to a Quaker meeting and people are sitting there, and someone stands up and he says something, and then that person sits down, and they might be silent for the next ten minutes, and so on.

So, let's just cultivate this energy of silence and stillness. And metta, which is typically translated as loving kindness, to differentiate it from loving, so it's just like kindness having an open heart. Another translation of metta is goodwill. And the beauty of metta and mudita is they are two of what are called the four Brahmavihārā’s, the noble abodes, the wholesome mind state that the Buddha continually encouraged us to cultivate.

And it's always starting with metta, because if you can have a heart full of loving kindness, then naturally, if you encounter joy in the world, you feel joy. But interestingly also if you encounter suffering in the world, Naturally, you feel compassion. Metta is the thing that creates the space for those other two to arise.

And then on the other fourth one of those is equanimity, which means we've got to keep our balance. If you think with all of these cultivations, it's like everything else, like every other practice, you can go off the rails, so to speak. And you, for instance, with Metta, with loving kindness, you can get caught in the space of, well... “I'll be loving kind towards you, but I expect you to be loving kindness towards me,” which is not meta anymore.

[: 00:22:06

They're all related to each other, and they interact with each other in various ways, but they're all practices. And that's what that, uh, I'm going back to my Buddhist thought here, but that's what I like about the Buddhist teachings. The Buddha doesn't say, just do this and everything will be okay. He says, “Practice this and see what happens.”

Yes. And this is what I, this is what I teach. This is all I'm ever trying to do, is get people to say, “This is what I've experienced, but who knows what you're going to experience. Go practice and see what happens. Just try it out.” And there's this famous teaching in the Buddha called the Kalama Sutta.

Kalamas is a village in India, and he showed up, and the Kalamans were all going, “Oh, all these different teachers come and say one thing, and then another teacher says another thing. We don't know who to believe.”

And he lists all these things you shouldn't believe. Here's good reasons not to believe something. Just because it's said so in the scriptures, don't believe that. Just because someone looking really wise thinks they know what they're doing, don't. And then the last thing he said was, “And don't believe anything I say.Don't believe me. Go practice and find out for yourself.”

That, if I can teach that, if I can get that across. I've been successful. That's what I'm trying to do all the time. Just get that across. And it's so,… thing is,… it's so counter to our whole culture, which is basically, you know, just buy this and get this and do, go to this and everything will be okay.

No, sorry. It doesn't work that way. Yeah,

[: 00:23:51

BG: I was a Boy Scout. Yeah.

BC: But you know, the merit badge as somehow emblematic of the fact that you know something or you are something. When, in fact, it's bestowed upon you as a result of having done certain things. And it… what you just described really also reminds me, not of all artistic practice, but particularly the artistic practice of people that I interact with,--- which is… many of them are in, are in the business of sharing a practice with other people who are drawn to it and who are interested in it. And at the core of that teaching is not “Here's the exact way to do this and I'm going to look over your shoulder and make sure that you get this line right or these colors right. I'm going to share some, some ideas and some principles and things, but you have to get in there with it yourself and you're going to go someplace I have never been.”

And that's the gift, which is, it's not somebody else's dime. It's not somebody else's idea. It is something that lives in you, and that you now have the ability to manifest, you know, if you put in the time.

[: 00:25:14

And I can teach people like, here's how you make a stretcher, and here's how you stretch a canvas, and here's how I make my frames. I can… so the technical crafty stuff, I'd be happy to teach people that. But when it comes down to, okay, now you've got this blank canvas, what are you going to do? “You're on your own, bud.Don't ask me, because I don't know.”

[: 00:25:56

[00:26:13] BG: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. And when you get your paintings out there in the world in a show or in someone's house or whatever.

And I know some people who have my paintings and I've gone to visit them and I haven't seen this painting in two or three years and there it is on their walls. Oh, it's sweet to see that it's become part of their life and has nothing to do with my life other than I did it back then. And it's yeah, that energy I put into that painting.

Because there's certainly a synergistic process to create the painting that I think comes out of the painting into the world that I feel.

[: 00:26:47

But, I mean, anybody's house that you go to and you see what they have, adorned their space with, and inevitably you can say, So what about that? What's up with that? And there is a, there's a, there's a, often a series of stories, um, that, That are part history and part everyday relationship with this thing that they live with. It's a pretty amazing thing.

Part 3: Trust

So, Barry, as you know, every society at one time or another gets focused on the navel of their own moment in history, but today it seems like we are in a particular moment in need of some common sense wisdom. I think the two virtues we just talked about, cultivating joy and loving kindness, like you said, these are not easy things to manifest, but not to be flip, if we could get those down, it would be transformative.

What are your thoughts about what we humans will need to do to survive and thrive?

[: 00:28:12

And number two, there's a lot of joy out there in the world, but you need to put in the work to connect with it. And there's also a very, and there's a lot of suffering in the world, if you just look around you. I read the New York Times every day. I shouldn't do it, but it's like, Oh my God, now this happened.

I just see off and on… wehat I'll see is I see the suffering and I think, what can I do fix that in some small way? Perhaps now I'm going to shock you. But I spent a long time, basically ranting about a former president of ours, shall we say. But at the same time, all during that time and right now to today, I look at him and it just tears my heart because this man is so deeply lost in suffering.

How could he possibly be acting and speaking in this way if he wasn't really just totally insecure and full of suffering all the time. And so, I have to somehow look at the world and see both of those things at the same time. God forbid, I would never want him to be president again, but I have to balance those two.

Yeah,

[: 00:29:40

Yeah. Steal my capacity to have compassion, my capacity to have joy in the world, my capacity to feed the people around me. I've felt the same way with the political situation, which is the real danger .There is, is the terminal toxic heart, which basically transcends the headline. It just stays with you, and you can just turn that on the guy that doesn't pick up his poop and you've put… you've poisoned the world around you.

And that previous president is nowhere to be found. He's not in the park next door to my house. But that's one of the great lessons, I think, of this moment is where do you want to be? Where do you want to go with your heart? Be active with that, with where your heart is. Don't just let it get stolen.

[: 00:30:54

[00:31:03] BC: A question about you and your painting. Obviously, there's this moment of intense concentration. You collect images and then you decide what you want to paint.

But as you have said, there is an exchange of energy between you and your subject, and you and the canvas, which is... It just, at least in my mind, it's a powerful manifestation of what it is to be human, is to make something that didn't exist before, that, that celebrates, that also blesses a thing that somebody else may take for granted, or not even see. Does that ring true?

[: 00:31:44

And how did I go from one to the next? I don't know. How can I go from painting Buddhists to painting women weightlifters? But it was like I was just sitting around going, what am I going to do now? Literally, I just literally, what am I going to paint now? And interestingly, I visited a huge oil refinery in Denver. And I had this whole idea. Getting into the oil refinery and taking photos, but they wouldn't let me in. They had all these rules. So now what do I do? And then this whole, this idea of painting women weightlifters just sort of popped out of my brain. Who knows? I really have no idea what the impetus of that was at all.

But as soon as it was there, I went off and refined it and started looking, talking to people. And here I am, nine months later.

[: 00:32:54

[00:32:59] BG: And the creative process, which is, oh, what a surprise that I'm here. I'm here, and it seems to be working, so let's keep doing that.

[: 00:33:05

[00:33:21] BG: It's been fascinating, and to be honest with you, at times quite difficult. Basically, when I find someone who says, “Yeah, I really like what you're doing .” and I'll go in and what I always tell them is, “Just you just do your workout like you normally would and ignore the fact that I'm here with this camera going click, click.

But that's a pretty intense thing because they're right there. Doing their thing. And I'm just standing there with my camera, taking pictures. I always tell them, “Please don't pose. I just want you to be doing what you would normally do.” And hopefully I'll capture something that resonates that turns into a painting.

So the photos are like the very beginning of a multi step process. At the same time, I've had a hard time finding people. I can't tell you the number of times I've had someone who has said to me, said, “Oh, what a great idea. I really liked the idea behind this. I think representing women in this way is really, I think, important.”

And then I go, that's great, and they just disappear.

[: 00:34:18

\We have pseudo-trust all over the place, but the whole idea of being vulnerable in the face of all of the questions about, “Nobody is who you think they are and when things you think are X turn out Y.” And I think about that, that there are those people who did agree. And you have done your work and there are those people, when you're a chaplain ,who are at their most vulnerable and they are trusting you again, not just with their story, but with their existential soul in a sense. And in many ways, all the relational work that I know that involves creativity and empathy and compassion is really, at its core, it's about how do you generate trust in a world that has removed a whole landscape that was naturally set up for people to learn how to trust each other through hanging out and practicing.

“You showed up and helped me with my barn. Great.” I think you're doing one of the most basic and important things that we really need now, big time. You're probably not going to be best friends with all of your subjects, but just having someone valueyour image and making yourself vulnerable ,and allowing that to occur in the hospital, in the weight room, whatever.

That's a, that's an important thing, and, I think, hard work, too.

[: 00:36:22

It's like, you're really in the front lines of their lives for those that time. Yeah, and it's powerful and I love doing it and it's really powerful, but it's hard. What I often I think is like people think somehow (that) these things are going to be magic. “Oh, I'll just start to meditate a bit and everything will be okay.”

Actually, you start meditating a bit, your mind goes a little bit still, and all the junk you've been avoiding comes up into your mind and you have to deal with all your shit, right? Sorry about that. This is what you've got. And that's all in this part of the practice.

[: 00:37:25

So people are going to be listening to this.People get excited or interested or curious to put their toe in the water, as you say. Are there other things that people can read or study that can help?

[: 00:37:42

If you don't have the inner language, you'll read the Sutta and go, “What the hell is this all about?” Because it's written in a certain style and a certain way of speaking. But there are lots of online teaching and group teaching and retreats going on all the time. The two main places I spent time practicing was called the Insight Meditation Society in Berry, Massachusetts.

And Spirit Rock in California, which are like major Buddhist retreat centers in North America right now that have programs anywhere from a day to three months. So, it depends on that. And you wouldn't go to three months first to start with a day. And they now, because of what's gone on with the pandemic, there's a huge amount of online resources.

[: 00:38:46

[00:39:02] BG: Certainly, teachings on joy, I'd say, do that. Not directly, but creative process is all about joy, as far as I'm concerned. Why create things and be miserable at the same time? It seems antithetical, right? There's certainly teachings on spontaneity, and what it really means to be spontaneous. And there's teachings on that within the Buddhist canon. So yeah, but particularly in the Theravada world, that I'm most deeply connected with, there's not a lot going on about art, because it's, most of the practice, it's very personal, and silent, and interior.

Now, but I'm speaking of this particular form of Buddhist practice. If you go into, say, Tibetan, Buddhist teachings. There's a huge Tibetan organization here in Boulder, and you go into their temple, and it's like an explosion of color, and kanka’s, and bodhisattvas, and it's just absolutely gorgeous, but for me, way too distracting, but for other people, it's that, that, that energy of that color, and that images as them to how they want to practice and in different traditions of Buddhism there'd be a lot more art going on than in the particular tradition I practiced.

[: 00:40:18

[00:40:24] BG: I'm fascinated by poetry because I think poetry can sometimes express things much more clearly than I can go and blah, blah, blah. And almost every time I teach, I'll read a poem. Mary Oliver, Dana Falls, the people of that sort of ilk. And these are Western poets, and I'm using them to teach Dhamma.

[: 00:40:47

[00:40:54] Mary:

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

[: 00:41:56

The fact that she was a Christian is beside the point, but it's like how she expresses things and the way she explains things in her poetry just resonates so deeply with the Buddhist teachings. And so, I can use that Western imagery and Western words and Western form as part of teaching Buddhadharma.

[: 00:42:27

[00:42:46] BG: Sure. Two books in particular.

One is called Insight Meditation. I just looked at my bookcase to make sure I had the title correct. Insight Meditation by Joseph Goldstein. Which is? Your basic teachings on the practice and why you practice and how it works. Gorgeous book, but written from a Western point of view.

And then the other one is Sharon Salzberg's book, Loving Kindness.

Basically, in this Buddhist world I live in, there's these two forms of practice. One is called insight meditation, which is very mental and focused and just observing what's arising. And then there's loving kindness practice, which is much more this idea of cultivating by repeating phrases and using images, using the mind and that sort of thing.

So, there are two very different forms, there's two different doors into the same space, like all spiritual practice, I think, to a certain extent. And so those, in Buddhist teaching, there's something called chitta. Chitta means heart mind. In the West, we think there's heart and mind, but in Buddhism, it's like heart mind, it's this one place.

And mental practice and teachings come at more the heart side, and mindfulness practices come more at the mind side. But they blend together at the end, but they're like two different ways of approaching practice. And those two particular books, Joseph Goldstein's Inside Meditation and Sharon Salzberg's Loving Kindness, which are two of the original books that I really resonated with me when I started.

The interesting thing, and I'm having a talk with this actually, and I think it's actually quite important, is there is actually a very Western Buddhist form has risen and is continually changing and arising now.

Buddhism, the teachings of the Buddha, 2, 500 years old, have been transmitted into different cultures. It went into Tibet and connected with the Bon tradition of Tibet and all this elaborate ritual and, but it's still Buddhism until basic teaching. It went to Japan and there was the whole Samurai tradition, so it became this sort of fierce warrior like practice, right? Now it's come to the West. And it's like this whole other form of Buddhism is arising that I'm part of.

I heard someone ask Joseph Goldstein this, and he said, Here's what's happening in the West that's different. Two things have happened. One is the Buddhist teachings have been blended, in some sense, with Western psychological understanding. And actually, if you go and look around in the West, at people who teach this practice, about half of them are therapists, interestingly enough.

And the other thing is it's become much more feminine. The patriarchal energy that comes from Thailand and Burma, which are very patriarchal, rigid societies in some ways, particularly within the Buddhist tradition, has been softened intentionally by people like Joseph. Where whenever I went on retreat, there'll be a group of teachers.

Half the teachers are always women. That's the way it is. You know, it's understood that it has to be that way. Mm-hmm. , so you see this sort of more western, softer, in some senses, form of Buddhist practice and teaching going on in the West.

[: 00:46:07

[00:46:33] BG: Having said all that, I have to add one more thing. I don't think Buddhist practice is for everybody. Yeah. At all. Part of it is, it's a pretty introverted practice. Go and sit still with a group of 90 people and not talk to them for a month. Doesn't attract a lot of extroverts.

[: 00:46:52

[00:47:02] BG: And here's another thing. And this is probably quite important that I say this. The thing about these practices is the whole teachings of the Buddha is how we have to gradually give up the sense of a separate self and stay connected more with the universal Energy, right? That is not self. That is everything. To be able to do that Successfully, you have to have a pretty solid sense of self to begin with.

So I've had people come on retreat who shouldn't have been there who who left. Because they were not ready. Mm-hmm. , they couldn't take the fact that when they were still and quiet, and they weren't interacting ,and all the distractions that they had the contents of your mind, that's all you got.

For some people, that's not a good place to be. Yeah,

[: 00:47:47

[00:47:48] BG: At all. I, it's, but I think in that, in the, the formal practice world there's a subset of people who would find it useful and want to do it. But it's just one form of practice and there's lots of other places you can go. But I think in the broader sense of, “Oh, do we need more joy and more loving kindness and more compassion in the world? Without, without exception!

[: 00:48:12

And to you listeners, I'm. Truly thankful to those of you who've taken a few moments out of your busy lives to share these stories and conversations. And of course, if you really dig it and want more, please follow or subscribe for free in your preferred podcast listening app.

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Change the Story/ Change the world is a production of the Center for the Study of Art and Community. Our theme and soundscape spring forth from the head, heart, and hands of the maestro Judy Munsen. Our text editing is by Andre Nnebe. Our effects come from freesound. org, and our inspiration rises up from the ever present spirit of UKE 235.