#277: Sharon Salzberg, World-Renowned Meditation Teacher

Sharon Salzberg (@SharonSalzberg https://twitter.com/SharonSalzberg) is a central figure in the field of meditation, a world-renowned teacher, and New York Times bestselling author of Real Happiness: The Power of Meditation: A 28-Day Program http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0761159258/offsitoftimfe-20. Sharon has played a crucial role in bringing meditation and mindfulness practices to the West and into mainstream culture since 1974, when she first began teaching. She is the co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society https://www.dharma.org/ in Barre, MA, and she has written ten books -- from her seminal Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/157062903X/offsitoftimfe-20 to her latest, Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1250076501/offsitoftimfe-20. Sharon offers a secular and modern approach to Buddhist teachings, making them more accessible. She is a regular columnist for On Being https://onbeing.org/author/sharon-salzberg/, a contributor to Huffington Post https://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/sharon-salzberg, and the host of her own podcast: The Metta Hour https://www.sharonsalzberg.com/metta-hour-podcast/. Please enjoy! This podcast is brought to you by ConvertKit https://convertkit.com/Tim/. This my go-to email service provider and the only email tool that has made email marketing intuitive for my team without sacrificing any of the features and benefits I need to run a profitable business. It's got easy-to-use systems, split testing, resending technology, automation, targeted content, high rates of deliverability, integration with more than 35 services -- like WordPress, Shopify, and Sumo -- and excellent customer service. 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• 0:01Speaker 00

  At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Can I ask you a personal question?

• 0:08Speaker 01

  No, we're seeing an appropriate time.

• 0:12Speaker 00

  I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

• 0:23Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:04Tim Ferriss?

  subscription purchase. So learn more, check it out, go to drinkag1.com/tim. That's drink A G one, the number one, drinkag1.com/tim. Last time, drinkag1.com/tim. Check it out.

• 1:24Tim Ferriss?

  Hello, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job to interview people from many diverse fields, different arenas of competition, or lack thereof, to dissect what makes them the best at what they do. The habits, routines, philosophies, beliefs, et cetera, that you can apply in your own life. This episode, we have Sharon Salzberg, S A L Z B E R G. You can find her on Twitter. I believe it's just at Sharon Salzberg. And Sharon is a central figure in the field of meditation, a world-renowned teacher and New York Times bestselling author. She has played a crucial role from the very beginning

• 2:06Tim Ferriss?

  in some respects in bringing meditation and mindfulness practices to the West and very much into mainstream culture since 1974, when she first began teaching. She is the co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society in Bar, Massachusetts, and the author of several books, including the New York Times bestseller, Real Happiness, her seminal work, Loving Kindness, which we'll get into, and Real Happiness at Work. Very well-known for her down-to-earth style, and you'll get a firsthand view of that when you listen to this. She offers a secular and modern approach to Buddhist teachings, making them more accessible than I think some of the esoteric varieties would be to type a personalities like you,

• 2:48Tim Ferriss?

  friend, listening to this podcast, probably. She's a columnist for On Being, contributor to Huffington Post, and the host of her own podcast, The Metta Hour, M-E-T-T-A, and we will get into what that means. Her newest book is Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection. And I've wanted to speak with Sharon for a long time. I've read her work, I've heard her audio, and it's very meaningfully impacted how I operate in the world, how I perceive myself and others. And ultimately, that has made me both more effective and given me a greater sense of well-being. So I hope that you pull some of that from this conversation. We bounce all over the place. I ask some very personal, self-interested questions,

• 3:33Tim Ferriss?

  which I think make the answers practical also. And there you have it. So I hope you enjoy, as much as I did, this wide-ranging conversation with Sharon Salzberg.

• 3:48Tim Ferriss?

  Sharon, welcome to the show.

• 3:50Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 3:51Tim Ferriss?

  I have been looking forward to this conversation for some time, and I'm glad we could finally make it happen, the construction around your apartment in New York notwithstanding. And I know that you have to be out at a set time, so I'd like to just jump right into it and begin at the beginning, in a sense, with a question related to your youth. And if you're comfortable sharing the story, could you tell us about your experience that you had, I think it was at nine years old, when you were dressed in your Halloween costume and watching Nat King Cole?

• 4:32Speaker 03

  Yes, my mother died when I was nine. And it was that night when I was nine that my mother started hemorrhaging. I was alone in the house with her. And I ended up getting an ambulance, and she went to the hospital. And she died about two weeks later. And it was much later when I was writing a book called Faith, which was kind of like my faith journey, that I looked back over my life from the time I was born until the time I went to college at 16. And I realized that I had lived in five different family configurations along that time. And each one of them had been altered by trauma or death or some kind of really terrible circumstance.

• 5:13Tim Ferriss?

  And what was your relationship like with your father when you were younger?

• 5:19Speaker 03

  Well, my parents had divorced when I was four. And my father, as far as I can recall, was really like my hero. He was the love in my life, and then he was just gone. He completely disappeared, and there was no contact whatsoever from the time I lived with my mother after they split up, and her siblings, from the time I was four till the time I was nine. At that point, after she died, I ended up living with my father's parents, whom I hardly knew. And that was the first time that contact was reestablished between us. And he didn't reappear in my life, my actual, you know, physical presence, until I was 11. And by that time, it was clear he'd suffered, you know, really severe mental illness.

• 6:02Speaker 03

  He was drinking, he was gambling, and he was really lost. And he came back when my grandfather died, when I was 11, and was in the house for, it was about six weeks, when he took an overdose of sleeping pills and then entered the mental health system, where he stayed for the next, you know, significant number of years before he died. So, and it was part of that, that was kind of my recollection, because I was, I was sort of part of a family system where this was never, ever really talked about. And so I had, as one can imagine, all these feelings inside, and I didn't know what to do with them. And people had always told me, "Oh, your father accidentally took an extra pill."

• 6:45Speaker 03

  You know, "He just didn't remember that he'd taken sleeping pills already." And it was only when I was in college, like, years later, that I thought, "Wait a minute. That's a lot to have happen, so that you then end up in a mental health facility for the rest of your life." And I, it took a lot to figure out, oh, you know, people, of course, were trying to protect me, they were trying to keep me happy, keep me going, but it was on the basis of denying what I actually was feeling, and so it was very destructive.

• 7:16Tim Ferriss?

  When did you have your first encounter with Buddhism or mindfulness? How did that enter your life?

• 7:25Speaker 03

  I was, well, I went to college when I was 16. When I was a sophomore, I took an Asian philosophy course. And honestly, looking back, as far as I can tell, it was kind of like happenstance, you know, like, it was on Tuesday, it fit in with my schedule, I had a philosophy requirement, "Let me do that one."

• 7:41Tim Ferriss?

  Right, right, right. Didn't start too early.

• 7:44Speaker 03

  No, and, exactly, you know, I couldn't do that. And so I took this class, and it was really in that class that I encountered Buddhism for the first time, really. I mean, I knew, you know, it was the 60s, so it was all kind of around in a way, but... It was the first time I really heard what the Buddha taught. And the first part that was incredibly important, given everything I'd been through, was just the teaching about suffering, that suffering is a part of life. That it's not just me, it's not something to be ashamed of and feel I'm aberrant, I'm different, you know? Which of course is what I primarily felt my entire life, is like I'm different. You know, people have two parents, people have, you know, sane parents, all the things are going on for other people, but not me.

• 8:28Speaker 03

  But all of a sudden, it was like I was part of the human family, that not, life is not always pleasant, it doesn't always go our way. It's not that it's grim or horrible, but you know, it's, it contains suffering for everybody. And that was like a huge liberation. And then I heard in that class that there was actually something you could do about the suffering in your life, not the suffering of circumstance, but all the ways we hold it, the ways we, you know, we can have pain and we can hold it in isolation, or we can hold it as feeling part of the human family, or we can have rage, or we can have compassion. And there's so many options. And I heard there was this stuff you could do, there were actual methods or techniques called meditation. And if you did them, you could be happier.

• 9:12Speaker 03

  So I was going to school in Buffalo, New York. I looked around Buffalo, didn't see it anywhere, probably everywhere now, but didn't see it, you know? So there was an independent study program at the school, and I created a project. I said, I want to go to India and study meditation. And they said, okay. So off I went.

• 9:29Tim Ferriss?

  Hotnet, have you, had you traveled outside of the country prior to going to India?

• 9:36Speaker 03

  No, I had not. I, I was just teaching a class there earlier today, I said, you know, I'd never even been to California before I went to India. I grew up in New York City, I went to school in Buffalo, there'd been one family trip to Florida in my youth, that was it. And then I was on a plane.

• 9:53Tim Ferriss?

  So I had read that a few days before leaving to India, you went to talk by a famed Tibetan master. And I'd love for you to tell us a bit about that. A, because I have no idea how to pronounce this name properly. And B, and B, what you took away from it.

• 10:18Speaker 03

  His name is Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. It was his first trip to the United States. And I don't know who did his tour. He ended up in Buffalo, New York. He later became the founder of Nerupa Institute and Shambala Publications, all kinds of things. But this was his first trip. And he was giving a lecture, not at my university, but at a nearby college. This was maybe three or four days before my friends and I were going to leave for India. And we didn't know where we were going to go. I just know I wanted to study meditation. So we went to his talk and they asked for written questions. And I wrote out the question like, where should I go? I'm leaving in a few days for India. I want to study Buddhist meditation. Where should I go?

• 11:01Speaker 03

  And he had this big pile of questions in front of him. And he pulled it out and he read it out loud. And then he was silent for a moment. And then he said, I think you had perhaps best follow the pretense of accident. I think you had perhaps best follow the pretense of accident. And that was it. It was like no addresses, no handing monastery guidebook, you know, nothing. Just follow the pretense of accident. It's exactly how it happened.

• 11:29Tim Ferriss?

  So pretense of accident, meaning no set plan, allow things to unfold as they unfold? Is that what that means?

• 11:38Speaker 03

  It means that. And I think it also, what it meant for me was stay close to your intention. You know, like my intention was so strong and my yearning was so strong that it really saved me in a way, staying close to that, because there were naturally some disappointments along the way and, you know, ways I couldn't, I couldn't imagine how things were going to turn out. Like I started out in Dharamsala in India because I knew the Dalai Lama lived there. I'd heard he was a Buddhist. And there were, you know, amazing teachers and opportunities there. But it was one of those situations where it didn't quite work. Like I'd go to a meditation class.

• 12:22Speaker 03

  And because remember, I was really into the practical how to, what's the stuff, you know, that's gonna help make me happy. And I'd go to this meditation class and they'd say, well, the teacher had to go to the dentist at the other end of India, come back in two weeks, you know, or the translator's out of town, try again later, you know, or, and it just wasn't happening. And I went to a Tibetan restaurant one day and I overheard a conversation where these two women were saying that there was gonna be an international yoga conference in New Delhi. And I thought, oh, great, I'll go there, that's where I'll find my teacher. And I went there and it was a really dispiriting time where the low point was probably when

• 13:03Speaker 03

  these yogis and swamis were up on the stage pushing and shoving against each other to be the first to grab the mic and speak. And I thought, oh, man, you know, I should've stayed in Buffalo, this is terrible. And actually, Dan Goldman, who, you know, is now very well known for his book Emotional Intelligence and, and his work, but in those days, he was a graduate student in psychology at Harvard and he was studying meditation. For some reason, he was delivering a paper at this conference. So I went to his lecture and he said at the end of the lecture that he was on his way to this town called Bodhgaya in northern India, he was gonna do an intensive 10-day meditation retreat, which was like

• 13:44Speaker 03

  an immersion course, free of cultural baggage and really the direct stuff. And I thought, that's it. And it was it. So I followed him to Bodhgaya.

• 13:53Tim Ferriss?

  The pretense of accident. What happened in Bodhgaya, if I'm saying that correctly? I probably am not.

• 14:02Speaker 03

  Yes, you are.

• 14:03Tim Ferriss?

  All right, great, I'll take it.

• 14:04Speaker 03

  No, you are.

• 14:05Tim Ferriss?

  What happened there?

• 14:07Speaker 03

  Um, well, there was a teacher named S. N. Gohanka who had just left Burma. Um, he was teaching intensive 10-day meditation retreats where you were basically, um...

• 14:23Speaker 03

  Meditating under his guidance all day. He'd give one lecture at night. We were, we had certain silent days and silent times and he would just keep modulating the instruction until we'd come to the end. So we did meditation first on feeling the breath and just basic concentration and then kind of scanning your attention through your body, feeling these different sensations. And then the very last thing that he taught was a loving kindness meditation, which many years later became sort of my main meditation, my personal meditation and also in terms of my teaching and writing. So that was like the 10 days. It was really like an immersion and it was a tremendous time of discovery.

• 15:05Speaker 03

  Not only did we forge lifelong friendships, because here it is all these years later, that was January of 1971 that I did my first retreat. And I just saw Dan Goldman last night, for example. And, you know, we are tremendous friends, this whole group of people. And it really was about learning. It was about discovering and the lab, the vehicle was ourselves.

• 15:32Tim Ferriss?

  So the timing of our conversation is very opportune because I'm actually in about six days' time doing my very first 10-day silent retreat.

• 15:47Speaker 03

  You are.

• 15:48Tim Ferriss?

  I am.

• 15:48Speaker 03

  You are.

• 15:49Tim Ferriss?

  I am at Spirit Rock and I've never

• 15:52Speaker 03

  Oh, fabulous.

• 15:52Tim Ferriss?

  I've never had this experience. I am apprehensive, excited but apprehensive about it. Jack Cornfield will be there, so I'm very interested to engage with him before I have to stop talking. What advice would you give to someone going into that type of experience for the first time?

• 16:15Speaker 03

  I think that's great, and congratulations. Thank you. I would love to hear from you when you come out. We'll have a follow-up. I would really love that, sincerely. I mean, there are a few things. One is, the thing most people feel trepidation about, seems to be, is the silence. And it, you know, people show up and they say, "I don't think I can be silent," or "my partner doesn't think I can be silent," or "one woman came and said they're doing a bedding pool in my office, they don't think I can be silent." But of all the elements of the retreat, it's almost always one of the things people point to is the most beautiful. Because it's like, for once in our lives, we can really, fully be ourselves, and we don't have to present ourselves to others and think about their experience versus our experience.

• 17:00Speaker 03

  And, you know, "am I witty enough? Am I, am I strong enough?" Or anything, we can just be. And it's, it's a beautiful, beautiful gift to, give to oneself. I'd also say, the first few days of a retreat, like, the first day and a half, let's say, are usually pretty rough. Even if you have tremendous experience in meditation and in retreats, it's just an adjustment period. It's like, I, you know, forty-some years later, forty-five years later, if I go into an intensive retreat, the beginning is, is usually, you know, I say there are two voices that arise inside my head. One voice says, "There's nothing happening here, it must be time to go to sleep." So even if I slept for ten hours, it's just like, I conk out. And the other voice says, "There's nothing happening here, let's make something happen."

• 17:44Speaker 03

  You know, "The next book, the next center, whatever," you know? All these fantasies start pouring in. So it's like a careening, almost, from sleepiness to restlessness, and sleepiness to restlessness. And that will definitely change, and it will even out, and you'll have an experience of both energy and calm at the same time. But the most tricky thing is believing the thought that tends to arise that says, "Oh, no, nine more days, exactly like this."

• 18:13Speaker 03

  You know, which we tend to believe. And if you can remember, don't believe that thought. It's gonna keep changing, you know, just, just keep going. It will really, it will change and you'll feel really much more completely there.

• 18:28Tim Ferriss?

  Thank you. I'm really excited about it and

• 18:31Speaker 03

  I'm excited too now.

• 18:32Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I'm really excited about it and I'd love to hear how you, let's just say you had a room of open-minded, intelligent people who are all type A. That's basically most of the people listening to this. So imagine you have these people and they are in the boat that I was in for a very long time. And I'm not gonna lie, occasionally I end up back on that boat, which is meditation just doesn't seem to work for me. I've tried A, B, and C, and it's just not the tool to fix my particular set of problems. I can't sit still, I can't do

• 19:13Tim Ferriss?

  fill in the blank. But I would like to make an attempt because I recognize at least the benefits I've seen in other people and read about and so on. How do you get those people started? What do you say to them?

• 19:30Speaker 03

  Well, my first question is about what is that blank that we're trying to fill in? Because a lot of people have really intense expectations of what meditation is supposed to do, and they're often wrong. You know, so a lot of people have said to me, for example, I tried that once, I failed at it. And they said, well, I couldn't stop thinking, I couldn't make my mind blank, I couldn't have only beautiful thoughts, I couldn't keep the anxiety from coming up, I couldn't keep sleepiness at bay. And we say, of course, you cannot fail at it. It's impossible to fail at it because you cannot be having the wrong experience. The question is not what is happening, but how are you relating to what's happening? That's the whole terrain of the transformation is how much presence, how much balance, how

• 20:11Speaker 03

  much kindness, how much compassion are you bringing forth in relationship to what's coming up? And of course, there's a kind of social pressure these days, like If you ran into a friend, you know, what you'd like to be able to say is, well, you know, I had a little bit of restlessness in the beginning, but then this peace, like this unfathomable peace, just descended upon me. And then it started like shimmering at the edges and turned into bliss. And there was bliss and peace. And, you know, that's what we want to say. We don't want to say, well, my knee hurt, my back hurt, and I got restless, and I got angry, and I judged myself, and then I fell asleep. You know, but in truth, really in truth, not just consolation, you know, but in truth, from the point of view of mindfulness, it doesn't matter.

• 20:51Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 20:52Speaker 03

  Because the question is, okay, how were you with the sleepiness? How kind were you when you got angry? You know, how kind toward yourself? You know, how much could you include in that field of awareness? And those things are much more subtle, and they're not as satisfying, you know, and they're certainly not as satisfying to talk about. But that's the whole point. So I would really want to know what someone's expectations are. And then, I mean, you can be reassured, like, you're going to sit with Jack, who's been teaching for a very long time. And, you know, there's not like a cookie cutter description of what it's supposed to look like. Maybe for you, he'll suggest more walking meditation than sitting meditation. Maybe he'll, you know, suggest a more structured

• 21:35Speaker 03

  approach, because that is, is proving useful for you, or maybe a less structured approach. Or, you know, there's so many possibilities.

• 21:42Tim Ferriss?

  Now, when you are, say, advising someone who is really making an effort to create meditation as a practice, much like they would brush their teeth or do something else, what are, and I think what you already said is very helpful in the sense that it's not the content of the experience, it's how you relate to... The various things that come up during your experience. And I, I remember one thing that helped me as a typically very, well, suppose I'd self-describe

• 22:24Tim Ferriss?

  as sort of driven type A personality was the idea that it's, this is something that someone said to me, I don't recall who it was, but it's not, it's, it's not important. Or you shouldn't judge the, the session based on how many times you lose focus of X, whether that's a mantra or your breath or whatever, but because the practice itself is coming back to the focus.

• 22:48Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 22:48Tim Ferriss?

  And thinking of it in terms of repetitions in that context really helped me to relate better to what I viewed as these horrible distractions, but not realizing like, no, that's the lowering of the weight and then your job is to lift it back up and.

• 23:04Speaker 03

  That's right. That's exactly right.

• 23:06Tim Ferriss?

  Are there other

• 23:11Tim Ferriss?

  mental frameworks or analogies that you've found very helpful, much like that for, for people to keep in mind when they're sitting down and their knee hurts and they're having these various, they're thinking of the last episode of Rick and Morty that they watched or whatever. Are there other, great show, but other, are there any other analogies or recommendations that allow people to be easier on themselves and make progress through relating to themselves in an easier way as opposed to straining?

• 23:46Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, that, you know, that's also a great question. And there's several levels to that. And the kind of immediate level, what you said is the most important thing. Sometimes we say, the healing is in the return, not in never having wandered to begin with. The most important thing is that coming back. And in some ways, it's the opportunity to come back that the distraction gives us. You know, and so you can come back, you could need to let go and come back a billion times and it would be fine. Cause that's the actual training. One of my teachers, the Tibetan teacher, Sonny Rinpoche, he called it exercising the letting go muscle. So the secret ingredient in that is actually self-compassion, which means that.

• 24:31Speaker 03

  You realize you blew it, your mind wandered, or in life, maybe you realize you made a mistake, or, you know, things didn't really go the way that you wanted them to. And rather than spending the next year and a half castigating yourself about that, you know, it's realizing, okay, lessons learned, or maybe I need to make amends, or maybe there's something I need to do to come back into balance, but I need to do that with kindness toward myself. And, you know, that makes the process go a whole lot quicker, and it's restorative. Rather than, you know, if you just blame yourself, and you call yourself a failure, and you get down on yourself, and you judge yourself, it lasts forever, and you're exhausted.

• 25:13Speaker 03

  And it's not really resilience, it's not really the space with which we can start again. So if you start finding yourself doing that in the process of meditating, that's the signal, you know, to remember, like, this happens, you know, this is the process, this is actually the path. It's not that I need remedial work, you know, I'm the worst meditator that ever lived, this is what it looks like for everybody, let me just start over, and start over, it's really very important.

• 25:40Tim Ferriss?

  When you're thinking back on the many people you've taught and interacted with, readers who've given you feedback and so on, have you identified any type of what I might call minimum effective dose? And what I mean by that is, if you look at, say, certain types of resistance training, or physical training, you can research and experiment with the frequency, the duration, the intensity, and figure out which parameters you respond best to. And same is true for different aspects of diet or drugs, certainly, right?

• 26:23Tim Ferriss?

  You do too much, there are unintended side effects, you do too little, you don't get the effect you're looking for. I've noticed for myself at least, that...

• 26:34Tim Ferriss?

  This is just for me, but that maybe 20 minutes a day, first thing in the morning, for five to 10 days straight is about the minimum dose that I need to click into feeling generally much more relaxed with meditation. But have you, and then after that point, I can actually dial back the frequency if need be, but I need that first loading period. Have you observed any sort of generalizable minimum effective dose from people where it's like, well, like X, Y, and Z is too little, too infrequently, this is too much,

• 27:17Tim Ferriss?

  you're more likely to quit, but like this kind of, this is the Goldilocks in-between that I've seen to really deliver the most benefits for the least inconvenience, for lack of a better term. But how would you think about that?

• 27:32Speaker 03

  Well, it just so happens that last night I was with some friends that were giving a lecture. Dan Goldman, Richie Davidson, who's a neuroscientist at University of Wisconsin-Mass and studying meditation, and John Capetzen, who founded mindfulness-based stress reduction. And Richie, from the point of view of neuroscience, said that nine minutes a day will actually change your brain, but you have to do it every day. And I often think of retreats, like the intensive retreat, as a period of really deepening confidence and clarity about the practice, so that you have better tools to actually practice every day. Somebody also made a comment about how, you know, it may not be the healthiest thing

• 28:17Speaker 03

  in the world to think about the least possible amount I need to put into this thing to get some result, you know? So I would pad it some, I wouldn't just try to do nine minutes a day. Usually I say 20 minutes a day. More if you can, just because the first five minutes or so in a daily sitting tend to be the most distracted, like, "What's that sound?" And I think it's about refrigerator. Do they still have refrigerator repair people? I don't know. Maybe I need a new refrigerator. Do they still have Sears anymore? I don't know, you know? And it's almost like this discharge of tension for the little bit. And then if you can hang in there, you get a chance to go deeper, having discharged all of that. And so it's just, it's just more fruitful in a way if you can do 20 minutes. But if you only have three, I'd say do three.

• 29:02Speaker 03

  Everybody says it's the everydiness of it, which seems to be the most potent thing.

• 29:07Tim Ferriss?

  And for a beginner, what would you recommend those 20 minutes look like? What would the protocol or the format of those 20 minutes look like?

• 29:16Speaker 03

  Well, there are kind of three main thrusts of the tradition, and which were reflected in my first retreat. The first is concentration, where we try to settle our attention and have it be more stable and get more centered. So that usually means choosing an object, whether it's the breath or a mantra or whatever it is. Anarkis is usually the breath. And settling your attention on that object and then simply returning every time you realize you've wandered. Over time, you get a sense of, first of all, a tremendous amount of energy returning to you, because there's an awful lot of energy that could be available to us but isn't, because it's scattered all over the place. And we keep gathering it and returning it

• 29:59Speaker 03

  and do feel the kind of empowerment of that. And also a kind of integration of our being. It's like all that scatteredness is also a kind of fragmentation. And we kind of bring it all together. And then there's mindfulness, which actually is, is an extension of that, where we not only pay attention to the single object, like the breath, but we take, we pay attention to our emotional world and what's coming up predominantly, and our bodies and what we're feeling and all kinds of things with that same kind of balanced awareness, which is why we say mindfulness is the, is the basis for insight. You know, we understand so much more about everything.

• 30:38Speaker 03

  So, and one example is I often talk about sitting and looking at my own fear, trying to be as mindful as I can, which means not condemning it and also not diving into it and having it take over. And I feel I've seen a lot. So as one example, I felt that You know, unlike the kind of world's maxim that we're afraid of the unknown, I find that I'm really afraid when I think I do know and it's gonna be really bad. And it's all the stories I tell myself that really get me going. And even in the midst of that, if I remind myself, you know what? You don't know. Then I feel relief. I feel a sense of space. You know, we look at our desire and we say, look how much loneliness there is in there.

• 31:21Speaker 03

  We look at our anger, we say, look how much sadness there is in there. And wherever we look, we see into change that, look at that. I thought it was so forever. I thought that was all that I ever felt, but look at that. It's always changing. And so all of that just kind of naturally arises from paying attention. And then the third kind of thrust of the skills training in meditation is loving kindness or compassion. And that was the last meditation that Goenke introduced in my 10-day course. It was just an hour or so, but it so ignited me that it became, you know, something I got very devoted to. And that's threaded throughout, both the self-compassion we have to feel for ourselves to be able to do the first two, concentration and mindfulness as well.

• 32:04Speaker 03

  And then there are distinct practices which are just devoted to the deepening of loving kindness and compassion.

• 32:09Tim Ferriss?

  Now, is loving kindness, I'm not terribly familiar with loving kindness, but I recall, and please correct me if I'm misapplying the label, but I read some writing by a gentleman named Ched Meng Tan, who, out of Google, you may know, and a friend of mine. So Meng introduced me to a very simple practice of thinking of two people, initially people you know well and care for, and just wishing them to be happy in the most, in a sense, in the most abstract of ways, but it didn't seem to matter that it was abstract, even

• 32:54Tim Ferriss?

  though I loved the concrete. And I did this for a period of time about a year ago at night, just before winding down and going to bed. And it had a tremendous impact on my...

• 33:08Tim Ferriss?

  Happiness, if we want to call it that, or self-reported well-being over the subsequent 10 days, I mean, I was in such a good mood and the only variable that I could identify that I changed was wishing two people happiness for, say, two or three minutes apiece every night. Is that, does that fall in the category of loving-kindness practice?

• 33:27Speaker 03

  It does. It does.

• 33:29Tim Ferriss?

  Okay. All right. I was really, really just impressed by how profound the impact was because, I'm not going to lie, I expected it to do very, very little. And I, why does it appear to have such an impact? I mean, I don't feel like I'm a jerk. I mean, I do like to wish other people to be happy and I try very hard in my books and so on to facilitate that, but why does it seem to have such an impact?

• 33:56Speaker 03

  Well, I think it's because it trains our attention to be different. It's like we're paying attention differently. You know, so for example, if you were doing it in a formal sequence, and you may, in the retreat, I'm not really sure, you know, you start with offering loving-kindness to yourself, and then you move on to those people that you like, you know, and you keep on moving through, like those you feel neutral toward, maybe somebody who plays a role in your life that you see now and then. You move on to offering loving-kindness to more difficult people for you. And then finally, all beings everywhere, all of life. I think the reason it works, and it does work, and I also know, you know, it's easy

• 34:40Speaker 03

  to be cynical about it, it sounds so schmaltzy and like, it does sound ridiculous, I know that. But it's actually very powerful. So, the question is, do you want to make the experiment or not? Or is it just so off-putting that you'd rather not, which some people feel? But it is, I think, all about paying attention differently. So, for example, in looking at yourself, if you're the kind of person who, at the end of the day, you sort of evaluate yourself, like, how did I do today? And if you're the kind of person who pretty well only remembers the things you did wrong, and the mistakes you made, and what you didn't say so well. That's right.

• 35:19Speaker 03

  You know, so the loving kindness is almost like asking yourself, anything else happened today? Like, any good within me? And it's not to be conflict avoidant and pretend we're perfect or anything, but it's that kind of singular obsessive look at what's wrong that we want to broaden. And so we want a little airtime for the rest, you know? So what do we pay attention to? And who do we pay attention to is a fascinating question. Who do we look right through? Who doesn't count? Who doesn't matter? You know, who's like an object for us? And this is one of the places where that neutral person is really interesting because they're just the shopkeeper, just the dry cleaner, or whatever they are. Very easy to objectify, very easy to look through.

• 36:01Speaker 03

  So what happens when we look at them instead of through them, which is in effect what we're doing in the practice? And how do we pay attention? Are we really there ever? Are we, you know, talking to a stranger and thinking about our email and whatever else we need to do? And we actually arrive? And that is exactly the same movement we do in the concentration meditation. It's like, we realize we're a million miles away, we come back. You know, so what's it like then, when you're really listening? You know, that's how the practice actually works.

• 36:31Tim Ferriss?

  And the filter question, or the lens through which you look at your daily experience, the reframing of that by doing this exercise is a really important point. So I want to underscore that for people listening. And just to draw an analogy, or at least a parallel, if you buy a new car, let's just say you buy a white Volkswagen Golf, it will seem that the next day or the subsequent week, that there are white Volkswagen Golfs everywhere on the street. But it's simply because you've attuned your attention to that particular object. And I owe one of my ex-girlfriends a debt of gratitude because at one point she noticed

• 37:14Tim Ferriss?

  that I did have this habit of running my life along a certain philosophical line, which was, "The good things will take care of itself, just tell me what's going wrong." And I didn't want the positive feedback, I wanted to know how I could improve and what I needed to improve. And to remedy that, at one point, she created this jar, it was a big mason jar, and she just wrote on the side, "The jar of awesome." And- What she asked me to do was every night, just to write down one really good thing that happened, that made me happy, or made me grateful that day, and put it in the jar. And it's not that I was a total ingrate, it's not like I was Ebenezer Scrooge or anything,

• 37:58Tim Ferriss?

  but I would put down the things that were good, and I realized one of the critical mistakes that I made, and I'm getting a little off track here, but I assumed that I would always remember the good things, long-term, because I found it second nature to remember the bad things, long-term. And it turned out that it was a completely false assumption, and I would very quickly forget the good things that happened. And so, my girlfriend encouraged me to write down these events, or encounters, whatever it might be, on a piece of paper, and fill up the jar, and then when I was having a down moment, or being over-judgmental towards myself, to just reach into the jar and rifle, to go

• 38:40Tim Ferriss?

  through it, and to pick out one or two examples. And it was really therapeutic for me, but I still have it to this day. And the question of self-compassion, or the topic of self-compassion, is one I want to come back to. And we were chatting before we started recording, a little bit about the word "love," and how perhaps it's been co-opted, or used, in ways that have made it challenging. Could you please elaborate on what you mean by that? We didn't get into it before we started. So, just for myself, also, this is a word that is so often used, it seems to have almost lost a lot of meaning. And so, I'd be curious to

• 39:24Tim Ferriss?

  know how you wield it, and how you would suggest people think about it.

• 39:28Speaker 03

  Well, I think it has lost a lot of meaning, because we use the word "love."

• 39:33Speaker 03

  From everything from, you know, I love that cabinet and I love frozen yogurt to I love you. And there are so many associations with love. It's like, I mean, in one of the questions you posed before, you know, if you are a person who's kind of a type A person and you're brought into a room and say, we're going to do a meditation on love, you know, it tends to be a little moseying for a lot of people. And because we often associate love with weakness, with giving in, kind of smiling with, you know, it's just this frivolous smile, it's not connected, maybe to very deep feelings of pain or anger or edge or ferocity or intensity or the things that are really a part of us.

• 40:16Speaker 03

  And the word in Pali, the language of the original Buddhist texts is metta, M E T T A. And it's commonly translated as loving kindness, which I think has a flavor of the actual meaning, but it's a kind of problematic term because nobody really uses it. Like you wouldn't really necessarily expect to go to a coffee shop somewhere and hear the conversation at the next table, including the word loving kindness. It's maybe it's a little saccharine or removed from day to day life. And I've had scholars and translators come to me and say, just say love, stop being so cutesy. You know, you mean love, but love is so complicated and can also be frankly a medium of exchange.

• 40:59Speaker 03

  Like I will love you as long as following 15 conditions are met. Or I will love myself as long as I never make a mistake. And it's so fragile, it's so breakable. It's not really what metta means. The literal translation, I also have a problem with, the literal translation is friendship. And for me, friendship implies conviviality, like let's have dinner together. Or let's go to the movies together. I want to spend time with you. And love in that sense of metta does not mean that at all. It actually doesn't even imply a certain action. It's an inner space of connection. We acknowledge our lives are connected, that everybody counts, everybody matters. Doesn't mean I like you. It doesn't mean I want to spend any time with you.

• 41:42Speaker 03

  It doesn't mean I'm going to cease fighting you and your agenda, but not from a place of hatred, you know? And it's connection. That's really what it's about. And so those practices of, say, loving kindness meditation are about connecting more deeply to ourselves and connecting more deeply to others.

• 42:00Tim Ferriss?

  What if someone feels themselves steering towards anger in an exchange with someone? Aside from the mindfulness training or practice that they would do outside of that encounter, is there anything you recommend they do or self-talk they could use to diffuse that and steer it in a less antagonistic direction?

• 42:24Speaker 03

  I mean, I think there are lots of levels to that. One is getting really acquainted with what's happening in your body. It's like you feel the beginning of the anger, not like after you've sent the email or, you know, lashed out, but you can feel it really emerging. And then you have choice. And we also practice in mindfulness, being able to hang in there with the anger, you know, without having it take us over and also without being ashamed of it or afraid of it, without fighting it. But we have a more balanced relationship to it and we can hang in there. It's almost like the storm moving through your body and then you decide how you want to act. Because often we do have to act and we should act, but, you know, maybe that very email's

• 43:08Speaker 03

  not going to get you what you want, you know? Maybe it's better to wait a moment and see what else emerges, something like that. And there's also, there's kind of intentionality. It's like we can remember our deepest intention, like, what do I want to have come out of this conversation? What would make me happiest? Do I want to be seen as right? Do I want to grind them into dust? Do I want to be helpful? Do I want a resolution? And that'll give us a lot of information, you know, about where we're really coming from. And if it's to have a resolution, to find a way to work together, whatever it might be, or even to finish dinner together, you know, then that might counsel being quieter

• 43:49Speaker 03

  and not being so forceful, or finding another way of saying, this is what I feel, instead of this is the way the truth is, things like that. And if you, in fact, want to grind them into dust, that would be a different path.

• 44:04Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, the "this is how I feel" frame is one that I want to personally get better at using. Because I think it's so easy, at least for me, to unfortunately convey messages in a way that seems very Spock-like. And if you were to take the same content and have someone transmit it with a smile and preface it with, "This may be just how I feel," but I think that I could have avoided a lot of wasted time and energy and hurt feelings in other people, even though it's exactly the same content, in effect.

• 44:45Tim Ferriss?

  So, two quick notes. The first is, just since you mentioned email and creating unnecessary messes, I would suggest to anyone out there, one thing I've learned, if you're experimenting with any type of fasting, obviously with proper medical supervision and so on, probably a good idea, if you've never done it before, to not let yourself send email on the second or third day.

• 45:10Tim Ferriss?

  That's funny. I've created a lot of ugly disasters by manning the inbox during times like that. The second is something that I wanted to back into that's related to what we've been talking about, and I thought was really profound and worth highlighting for people. And that is that oftentimes, this has certainly been true for me, that others, if you are working on, say, your meditation practice, it also applies to all sorts of things like medication, in some instances. This happened to a friend of mine when he started taking very low-dose lithium, for

• 45:55Tim Ferriss?

  instance. Others see the changes in us before we see the changes in ourselves. And I'd love for you, if you could, to talk about that a little bit, and I can certainly give an example or two as well. But it strikes me that a lot of people give up because they feel like nothing has happened, when in fact, a lot has happened, and they just can't yet perceive it themselves. So if you could talk to that at all, I'd love to hear your additional thoughts, because I think it's really... Really important, since so many analytical, sort of left-brain people think they're really, really good at self-assessment and self-awareness, but it's hugely, hugely overestimated, at least in this capacity.

• 46:40Speaker 03

  I think that's really true, and I tell a story sometimes about a friend who came to me in New York City and took me out to lunch, and he said, "This is like a confessional lunch." I said, "Really?" You know? He said, "He had been doing loving-kindness meditation." That was just his particular methodology. He said, "I've been doing loving-kindness meditation for about three years now, and I want to say that my experience, when I sit each day, or when I'm on retreat, doing that practice, it's not that different now than it was three years ago when I started out, but I'm like a totally different person. I'm different with myself, I'm different with my family, I'm different ethically, I'm different with my community." And then he looked at me and he said, "Is that enough?"

• 47:22Speaker 03

  And I said, "Yeah, I think it's kind of enough, you know, really." So that's the first thing I say is, if you're trying to assess your practice, and you should, you don't want to do something forever, not knowing if it's making a difference, but don't look at that, say, 20-minute period a day when you're formally practicing. Look at your life.

• 47:39Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 47:40Speaker 03

  That's where we're going to see it, ultimately. I mean, you don't see it right away, you're totally right. Like, usually, other people see it more in us first, before we see it in ourselves. And I've had many people come to me and say, "You know, I was going to stop, I didn't think anything was happening," but my kids came to me and said, "Please don't stop, you're much better." You know, so...

• 47:59Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 48:00Speaker 03

  You know, the ultimate point is to look at our lives, maybe not right away, others will tell us if we're changing, but then when we are really seriously assessing, do look at your life, that's where it matters. And, you know, I think it's in our lives that we really, we do see the benefits, if they're there to be seen, and that's where they matter, so that's where it should be.

• 48:24Tim Ferriss?

  The friend I mentioned had a very similar experience. He runs pretty hot, as I do, as a lot of people do. And his story was very similar, and I think applies equally to meditation, which he's also since started. But he began taking this very low dose, like 5mg of lithium orotate. So caveat, people, talk to your medical professionals. But generally, you would expect, say, for, as a monotherapy for bipolar depression, you'd be looking at something like 1,200 or 1,500mg of lithium carbonate. This is 5mg.

• 49:06Tim Ferriss?

  And he started taking it, didn't really notice anything, took it for a few weeks, and then at one point, he was out with his wife, and she was trying on some shoes, and she came out, they kept walking, and he was telling her, you know, I've actually been taking lithium for the last week or two, I haven't really noticed anything. And she said, wait, what? And rewound, and she said, do you realize that you just sat while I tried on shoes for 45 minutes and did not complain? She goes, go buy all the lithium you can buy. She goes, you've been totally, you've been totally different with her and with the kids.

• 49:48Tim Ferriss?

  And what I've found is that it's also really easy to perceive a lack of progress, because you don't see yourself doing new things in the rest of your life, where what you don't notice are the things that you're doing less of, if that makes sense. And what I have found for myself, at least, it's very subtle until someone points it out in you. But if I think of, let's just say, my...

• 50:21Tim Ferriss?

  Prone-ness to anger or impatience. Let's just say there's a buffer. So there's a buffer between sort of control and then externally throwing out anger or impatience. And there are certain things that decrease that buffer, that kind of, that safety zone, like for me caffeine, for instance, sleep deprivation. But when I meditate and do other practices, it increases the buffer. So it takes more and more and more to get me to that threshold after which I lash out or send the stupid brusque email or whatever it might be.

• 51:03Tim Ferriss?

  You know, I'd love to, you mentioned the conditional love a while back, the if you satisfy these 15 requirements, then I will love you. If not, I will revoke my, my, my right to, or my ability to love you, whatever it might be. I've, I've read a little bit, maybe you can elaborate on or tell the story about the, the man and his dog, the 100/100 story.

• 51:31Speaker 03

  Oh, yes.

• 51:33Tim Ferriss?

  Could you, could you share that with the people listening, please? Because I, I do, I do like it. I, and I only, I only, I only read a very abbreviated version.

• 51:45Speaker 03

  That's great. Well, I, I recently read a book called Real Love, and the process of writing the book, we really tried to crowdsource in a way. I wanted to hear a lot of people's stories and insights about love and some of that I tried to do online, a lot of it I did meeting with groups. And the very first group I met with was in New York City and people just were talking about their experiences of love. So the, um, The trajectory of the book, the structure of the book is that the first section is about love for oneself. The second section is about love for another, whether that's a parent, or child, or a lover, or whatever. And then the third section is about love for all beings. So I just said, let it rip.

• 52:28Speaker 03

  I don't care which section you're talking about, but, you know, help me. Tell me what love means to you. Tell me some stories. So we got through, you know, a good part of the evening, and this guy raised his hand, and he said, you know, most people think of a good relationship as fifty-fifty. He said, my dog and I, we're a hundred, a hundred. And it was perfect. I loved that story. And then I was unfortunately quite late with the book, and it kept getting delayed, you know, because of me. And finally, it was, you know, a little over a year ago, and it was, I was in England about to sit a retreat. I was just about to press send. It was a day early from the final, final deadline. I felt really proud. Oh, I'm a day early.

• 53:10Speaker 03

  And I was just about to press send when I remembered that story. And I thought, did that make it in there? You know, did it stay in there through all these changes and editings and stuff like that? So I looked, and I had not. So I quickly typed it in, and then I pressed send. So it was the last thing that got written.

• 53:25Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, no kidding. That's awesome. How do you, so, meeting deadlines, always a good feeling. Doesn't always happen with books. How do you think about success, if you use that word? Or how would you like people to redefine it?

• 53:45Speaker 03

  I've kind of redefined it a lot in my own life, in that I know now, you know, like meditation, mindfulness is extremely popular, and a lot of people talk about scaling, you know, like, let's have a big impact on a lot of people, even a small impact on a lot of people. But the lot of people part is what's critical for a lot of folks. And when I think about it, you know, it's not really so much that way for me, because... You know, I feel really privileged. I feel incredibly lucky in my life. The things I get to talk about, the things I get to explore with people and their willingness

• 54:29Speaker 03

  to be vulnerable and honest and the methods that were given to me and I'm able to pass on and that I find really viable and useful and life-saving in many cases. And, you know, I ask myself, is it enough if one person or three people or I have 100 people in front of me and only three people, you know, want to take it to some depth or whatever it is, you know, is that enough? And I actually really kind of feel it's enough because it's so amazing when somebody says to you with that kind of sincerity, "Oh, your work has really made a difference." Or, you know, "People recognize my voice now because of recordings." Or, you know, it's really a beautiful thing.

• 55:13Speaker 03

  And so, I, like anybody, you know, have great conditioning toward like numbers, you know, it's got to be this many people or it's got to be this many people per recording or something like that. And as I get older, which I have somehow, you know, I think, who cares, you know, really? You know, just think of that one person.

• 55:38Tim Ferriss?

  What are your biggest challenges right now? Are there any particular behaviors you're trying to change, problems you're trying to solve, if you're comfortable discussing it? Because I think it's very easy for people to assume that you've got everything figured out, that you wake up and it's just one blissful zen moment to the next of self-compassion and loving-kindness towards everyone in the world. But I would imagine there's more to the picture. What are, are there any particular challenges or things you're trying to change in your life right now?

• 56:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, I guess that's what I mean. But first, does the story catch me that I was sitting in, it was actually the San Francisco airport and my flight was delayed for six hours, six and a half, actually. It was delayed for six and a half hours.

• 56:29Tim Ferriss?

  Welcome to San Francisco.

• 56:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, thank you. For the first five and a half hours, I was fine. And then I just got like so irritated and I was so impatient and I felt so miserable. And just then this woman came up to me and said, are you Sharon Salzberg? I thought, great, you know? It almost caught me having a temper tantrum on the floor. If only you'd come three hours ago, I was fine. But, you know, so there's just a lot of that. Yeah, I mean, I say yes to too many things. I'm tired. And I'm a night owl anyway, you know? So if I'm asleep by one, that's a good thing. If I'm asleep by three, that's a bad thing. I just had this book came out and I was traveling like crazy and I'm like so happy.

• 57:14Speaker 03

  I'm getting on another airplane for a few weeks. And there is this great temptation in this moment in time because, you know, I remember coming back from India in 1974 as a meditation teacher because one of my own teachers had told me to teach. So, you know, and in those days, if I was at a party or some social situation, introduced as a meditation teacher, people would kind of sidle away like, that's weird. Or, you know, or they'd say, you know, did you meet the Beatles when you were over there? And I'd say, sadly, you know, they went when I was in high school. But, you know, now it's like so tempting.

• 57:54Speaker 03

  There's so many opportunities and you could go so many, I could go so many places and reach so many different kinds of people. It's like, wait a minute, like, take a break.

• 58:04Tim Ferriss?

  How do you, how do you work through improving any of those things? How do you think about making progress with behavior change?

• 58:18Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, by the time that my thousandth friend has said to me, you're traveling too much.

• 58:24Tim Ferriss?

  Right, it sinks in.

• 58:25Speaker 03

  I guess it's obvious. Or you look really tired. I think, yeah, you know, maybe I should go to sleep a little earlier.

• 58:34Tim Ferriss?

  What has worked well for you historically? When you feel overwhelmed or are in a dark place? Are there any particular times that come to mind for you in the past that you could, where you could tell a story? And then what helped you get out of it? Whether the funk is overwhelmed, depression, or some combination?

• 58:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. I did write a book called Faith and Faith in the Buddhist tradition is not,

• 59:06Speaker 03

  you know, it's not like a commodity you have or you don't have. And if you don't have enough for the right kind, you're condemned. It's more a process, it's a journey, and it's a journey.

• 59:17Speaker 03

  Faith is almost defined as offering your heart, being able to be fully present with something, moving off of the sidelines into the center of possibilities, that movement. And it's only aided and strengthened by questioning and doubt and wondering doubt, the right kind of doubt, you know, like wanting to see the truth for yourself. So I was working with this freelance editor friend on the book

• 59:43Speaker 03

  and saying, well, you know, from the Buddhist point of view, doubt is not the right kind of doubt, that insistence on questioning, is not the opposite of faith. So she said, what's the opposite of faith? And I said, despair. And then she said, well, you're gonna have to tell a despair story in your book. And I said, I'd really rather not, you know.

• 1:00:06Speaker 03

  I did. And it's a story, you know, we started this conversation talking about my mother dying when I was nine. And in the book, Faith, I talk about this time in the 90s. So that's, you know, 30 years later, more. I was meditating, I was in Australia on an intensive retreat, a month-long intensive retreat with my Burmese teacher, Saida Upanthi, who had gone to Australia to teach. And out of nowhere, I was kind of back there, I was nine years old and not knowing what to do, not knowing how to get help and the, you know, the terror and the anguish and the whole thing,

• 1:00:51Speaker 03

  it was just there. And it was one of those moments where I thought, I thought I worked through this. You know, I thought this was done. And through the whole process, a lot relying on him and his trust in me and the practice and just being in nature and things like that. I really saw that despair was like the severing of connection, that faith was like connection, like love, which I'm also defining as connection. So I'm realizing I'm kind of back there again.

• 1:01:26Speaker 03

  So I realized that everything I could do that would renew my sense of connection and kind of bring me to that sense of, you know, not being so alone, not being severed from life itself. And there was, at the time, this passage from Rilke came up in my mind, something like, "Do not be frightened if a sadness greater than you've ever known before comes up before you. Life has not forgotten you."

• 1:01:59Tim Ferriss?

  I love that.

• 1:02:00Speaker 03

  And that really became my mantra. "Life has not forgotten me. I'm still a part of life. Life has not forgotten me." And maybe, you know, that first class I did in Asian philosophy was the beginning of that, you know, like, everybody suffers. This is a part of life. Life has not forgotten you. You haven't been abandoned. And so when, you know, I feel that, I mean, I don't really feel it often, but if I feel the intimations of that remerging, it's all about connection.

• 1:02:29Tim Ferriss?

  Hmm. Well, I know we have some time constraints today, but I think that is, I think that's actually a very good place to just hit pause for a second. And I want to, I didn't do this up front, but I was planning on it, so here it is. I wanted to thank you personally for the work that you put out in the world, because it's had an impact on me. I've listened to your audio. I've read a lot of your writing. And I want to, I suppose,

• 1:03:09Tim Ferriss?

  reaffirm what you said earlier about success and not necessarily reaching for scale from the outset, but focusing on one person at a time, because your work has impacted me, which has helped me to also try to do better things in the world. So from a very personal standpoint, I just wanted to thank you for doing what you do.

• 1:03:29Speaker 03

  Oh, thank you, really.

• 1:03:31Tim Ferriss?

  And I

• 1:03:35Tim Ferriss?

  Continue to read your work. And I would highly recommend people check out Real Love. And certainly, for people listening, I'm going to link to that, as well as anything that we've spoken about in this episode, in the show notes at tim.blog/podcast, as per usual. But I'm wondering if there's any ask that you have or recommendation of the audience that you have before we draw to a close. Are there any parting comments or words that you would like to share? Could be anything, really, with the people who are listening.

• 1:04:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, I do find this, thank you. And I do find this such a time of grief on the part of people, and rage, and so many people say to me, "I can't bear who I've become. I'm continually enraged." You know, my hope is always that love be a part of the conversation and that we, in a way, I guess that's why I'm glad the book came out when it came out, because it's so easy to think of love as being weak and saccharine and all of that. And it's so easy to think the only strength we have is vengefulness and hatred. And I hope we just keep looking at that altogether and understand that we can fight and struggle,

• 1:05:04Speaker 03

  and we kind of have to, because what a time. But, you know, it can come from a different place, and it's kind of got to come from a different place. I know that quotation from Einstein is a little suspect, you know, because you can never really source it, where he apparently said somewhere, "You know, the problems that we face cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them." But it sounds very Einstein-like. I bet he did say it. And it's an amazing statement. And, you know, I think about that really a lot. And I hope people, I mean, my deepest hope is that people will do the good that's in front of them, even if it feels very small, because the problems right now can seem insurmountable and massive.

• 1:05:49Speaker 03

  And we just have to, step by step, do what we can.

• 1:05:53Tim Ferriss?

  Do the good that's in front of you. That is, that's advice that everybody needs to hear. I, I think it's so important. So, thank you, A. And B, what's in front of you is concrete. I think this is also why a lot of people feel overwhelmed, is that the, the big, the macro, the global economic, political, fill in the blank, tend to be very, very abstract. And, and, and it's difficult to sort of grapple with a shadow in that sense. And rather than focusing on the things you cannot control, or the things that you will not attempt to control, work with what's right in front of you.

• 1:06:34Tim Ferriss?

  And it's those small acts done by one, or several, or many people that ultimately create the large scale, the large scale change. So, do the good that's in front of you. I appreciate that. And people can certainly find you on social if they want to say hello. Do you have a preferred location on the internet for people to say hello?

• 1:07:01Speaker 03

  Well, I'm on Twitter a lot, @sharonsalzberg. And my website is sharonsalzberg.com, and you can actually reach me through there as well.

• 1:07:13Tim Ferriss?

  Perfect. Well, Sharon, thank you so much. I hope we have a chance to, to meet in person, or do a round two. And I'll definitely keep you posted on the goings on, or not goings on, during my first 10-day.

• 1:07:27Speaker 03

  Yeah. Oh, I'd love to hear it, really, and I'd love to meet you sometime.

• 1:07:32Tim Ferriss?

  So, to be continued. Thank you very much for the time.

• 1:07:35Speaker 03

  Oh, well, thank you.

• 1:07:37Tim Ferriss?

  And just to repeat for everybody listening, you can find links to everything we've discussed, including the books and so on, at tim.blog/podcast. And until next time, thank you for listening.

• 1:07:53Tim Ferriss?

  Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun for the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered, it could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the world of the esoteric as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short.

• 1:08:36Tim Ferriss?

  It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to fourhourworkweek.com. That's fourhourworkweek.com all spelled out and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it.