What it means to truly pay attention (w/ Kevin Townley)

Kevin Townley is a meditation teacher. But he’s also a comedian who leads museum tours and an actor whose career spans Men in Black 3 and Law & Order. In today’s episode, Kevin talks about how to practice the art of looking and the deep Buddhist wisdom that can be found in every museum. Inspired by his book Look, Look, Look, Look, Look Again: Buddhist Wisdom Reflected in 26 Artists, Kevin shows Chris how letting go of judgment—and engaging Buddhist principles—can change the way we view the world and find belonging. Featured guest Follow Kevin Townley on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/kevintownleyjr/?hl=en and at kevintownley.nyc/home https://www.kevintownley.nyc/homeBuy Look, Look, Look, Look, Look Again by Kevin Townley https://www.amazon.com/Look-Again-Buddhist-Reflected-Artists/dp/1736943901 Connect with the team Follow Chris on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/chrisiduffy/?hl=en and at chrisduffycomedy.com https://chrisduffycomedy.com/Buy Chris’ book, Humor Me https://t.ted.com/ZGuYfcL Watch How to Be a Better Human videos on YouTube at TEDAudioCollective https://www.youtube.com/TEDAudioCollectiveFollow TED on X https://x.com/TEDTalks, Instagram https://www.instagram.com/ted, Facebook https://www.facebook.com/TED, LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/ted-conferences/, and TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@tedtoks For the full text transcript, visit go.ted.com/BHTranscripts https://go.ted.com/BHTranscripts Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Hey, everyone. This is Elise Hu, host of the TED Talks Daily Podcast. If there's one thing I've learned, it's that the people who make the biggest difference aren't waiting for the right moment, they're building toward it. Creighton University's online graduate programs in business, healthcare, and leadership are designed for exactly that kind of person. You'll sharpen the skills that matter and connect with others who share that drive. If you're ready to grow in your career and do work that actually counts, start at graduateprograms.creighton.edu.

• 0:36Chris Duffy?

  This episode is sponsored by the Natural Resources Defense Council. Here's a question this show asks a lot. What can one person actually do? Take protecting the environment. When the task feels so big, it's hard to know where to even begin. Turns out, the answer isn't doing it alone. It's teaming up with people who care as much as you do. With the help of 3 million supporters, the Natural Resources Defense Council is in court to defend ancient forests, pristine coasts, and the wildlife that depend on them. None of these places or species can be replaced. They're still here because people fought for them, in and out of court. And that fight needs your support today. Donate at nrdc.org/human, and your gift will be matched five times.

• 1:24Chris Duffy?

  You are listening to How to Be a Better Human. I'm your host, Chris Duffy. One thing that people have been asking me a lot these days, when they find out that I wrote a book about humor, is how do you find things to laugh at when the world is so dark and so ominous? Where is the funny when we live in such unfunny times? And I think that is actually a very good question. It's one that I have been asking myself a lot. What's the role of art, or beauty, or joy right now? Today's guest, Kevin Townley, is a person who I think gives a very compelling answer. Kevin is one of the funniest and cleverest people I know, but he is also a longtime meditation teacher, and he is the author of the book, Look, Look, Look, Look, Look Again: Buddhist

• 2:07Chris Duffy?

  Wisdom Reflected in Twenty-Six Artists. Today Kevin is gonna talk to us about some of the deep lessons about life and suffering and survival that we can find in art. He's gonna share how looking closely and carefully at works of art and the world around us can allow us to get into some of the deepest existential questions that humans wrestle with in religion. But as you'll see, he's also gonna make us laugh along the way. To get us started, here's a clip of Kevin reading an excerpt from his book about why he believes creativity and spiritual discovery are parallel paths.

• 2:42Speaker 02

  After falling in love with art, I obviously developed an abiding soft spot for tortured artists. You know, the poor individuals for whom the protective membrane that buffers the nervous system from the beauty and abrasions of life is frustratingly gloriously absent. They appear saturated by the vibrancy of the world, causing them to overflow into poetry, painting, needlepoint, pursuits which are largely met with derision by a callous, unsophisticated public. This then leads to any number of tragic ends, from suicide, Sylvia Plath, to customs inspector, Herman Melville. We've all heard stories like that before.

• 3:23Speaker 02

  Aside from devoting my own free time to feeling misunderstood and a strong predilection for emotional aggrandizement, what is most beguiling to me about this trope is the notion that the very energy which in one iteration can lead to creation, in another form can lead to self-destruction. How can the same energy lead to such drastically different results, even in the same person? For many artists, what's most tortuous is to begin. Meeting space without any idea of what will happen next. We yearn to honor the creative impulse by expressing ourselves. And yet, many of us, when we, when met with the imagined edge of our own inner abyss,

• 4:06Speaker 02

  slink backward and adding insult to injury, feel ashamed by our cringing. We cannot bear the intimacy of our own brilliant minds, and so we look away. Looking away can show up in behaviors as myriad as diverting our creative energy into gossip, housecleaning, manicures, masturbation, and volunteer work. Mythologists might grandly refer to this as "the refusal of the call." But it is also a completely understandable response to meeting the charnal ground of one's own psyche. There are instances when approaching a blank page or canvas feels more like visiting a crime scene, where a doab of vapor rub under the nose would be more appropriate than a doab of paint on the canvas.

• 4:51Speaker 02

  In his brilliant book, From Where You Dream, Robert Olin Butler describes the creative process as entering one's white-hot center. This radioactive unconscious realm feels like hell, because for most of us, it is hell. Like scaffolding erected around treacherous architecture, our entire personalities are deliberately crafted to avoid descending into the underworld of missed opportunities, traumas, and gears from obsolete machinery. And yet, this is precisely what we must do. Whether we are on the creative or spiritual path, and I would hazard that they are the same thing, by keeping that portal open through constant visitation, we may not only find

• 5:31Speaker 02

  our endurance for entering that zone strengthened, but also come to be quite adept at navigating its sinkholes and topiary. But you don't get to choose what you discover.

• 5:45Chris Duffy?

  We are going to discover so much over the course of this episode with Kevin Townley, and we are going to get right into discovering things after this quick break.

• 6:04Chris Duffy?

  This episode is brought to you by Planet Visionaries, a podcast in partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative. What connects a hidden laboratory in the Amazon, giant pandas in China's mountain forests, research relating to the ocean, and communities living alongside wildlife in India? That's what you'll hear on season six of Planet Visionaries. Stories from the explorers, scientists, and conservation leaders whose work addresses research, biodiversity, and conservation issues in specific locations. Planet Visionaries, hosted by environmental advocate and professional climber Alex Honnold, brings you real stories of discovery, determination, and research and initiatives relating to

• 6:46Chris Duffy?

  environmental change. In partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative, this is Planet Visionaries. Listen or watch wherever you get your podcasts.

• 6:57Speaker 03

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• 7:55Chris Duffy?

  This episode is brought to you by Whatnot. You know what makes shopping great? When it feels like an experience, like a conversation with someone who's just as excited about what you're buying as you are. That's what I like about Whatnot. Whatnot is the largest dedicated live shopping app where you can hop into a live show, hang out and ask questions. And on the other side of the screen, sellers are building real thriving businesses. I recently joined a couple of live shows on their app and I found all sorts of great deals. I bought giant boxes of candy bars at a huge discount for Halloween and then I got a tool I needed for my home repairs. It's just such an interactive way to shop. It's really unlike any other way that I've bought things and it's a lot of fun. And not only can you shop, you can sell too. It doesn't matter if your business is big, small, or still just an idea.

• 8:37Chris Duffy?

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• 8:57Chris Duffy?

  And we are back. We are talking about looking closely, about the power of noticing and about the connection between spirituality and art with Kevin Townley.

• 9:07Speaker 02

  Hi, everybody. My name's Kevin Townley. I'm a writer, an actor, a comedy dabbler. I'm a meditation teacher and a filmmaker and I wrote a book called Look, Look, Look, Look, Look Again: Buddhist Wisdom Reflected in 26 Artists.

• 9:26Chris Duffy?

  So Kevin, you and I have known each other for years and I've always really admired the way that you blend all the different things that you do, right? You have, you're such a funny onstage presence. You're a really brilliant writer. You make really amazing films, but you also are a very serious practitioner of meditation. You teach Buddhist meditation and you have brought it into some unexpected places, which is kind of the core of what the book that you wrote is about. So can you, for people who aren't familiar with Look, Look, Look, Look, Look Again, what is the like premise of the book?

• 10:01Speaker 02

  So this book is based on a collection of ninth century Tibetan Buddhist teachings that are called the Five Buddha Families, or the Five Wisdom Energies. And they're kind of like a ninth century personality test that show how human beings are swayed and formed by, you could say, like, five main difficult emotions. And those are called ignorance, anger, pride, craving, and jealousy. So to some degree, every person experiences these things, sometimes several times in a minute.

• 10:46Speaker 02

  But in the, in kind of like Western culture, those five things are like to be avoided and gotten rid of with all possible alacrity, and are considered like bad personality traits and embarrassing, particularly jealousy. And so the Buddhist view, being a philosophical tradition that is based on what's called nonduality, is saying, actually, those, those things that we experience as negative emotions are, have real intelligence in them. There's actually wisdom in them, if you take the time to investigate them. They have something to tell you about where you are and what might be next.

• 11:29Speaker 02

  And so that's the kind of like philosophy behind the book. But what I've done is I've, I was thinking about how that's basically like what all artists do all the time, anyway, even, you know, comedians. You are looking at the difficulty in your life as a, not just as a, something to overcome, but actually as your creative inheritance. Quite, quite some of the greatest stuff that we ever experience as consumers of art, whatever the form, comes from real pain and confusion and difficulty.

• 12:05Speaker 02

  Even my cat, who's screaming in the background, has some notes. Like, there are some things that could be better in the cat world and in the human world. So, so artists are always transforming this energy of negativity into something else. That doesn't mean necessarily they become wonderful people in the process. The list of not wonderful, great artists is a long one. But what they've made kind of transcends both their personality and their emotion into some other new thing that the viewer, or the listener, or the taster experiences in an intimate and direct way on their own.

• 12:43Speaker 02

  And then, in a way, it transforms, again, becomes about that relationship between the art and the person who's perceiving it. So that's kind of what the book's about.

• 12:53Chris Duffy?

  You know, even before I knew that you were writing this book and trying to figure out a way to connect these deep philosophical ideas with art, you were leading tours in museums. And you've led tours, you've led hundreds of tours in museums all across the United States.

• 13:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:09Chris Duffy?

  And I think the idea, just even the idea that there would be like a comedic tour in a museum, is such a different and exciting idea, right? Like, no one else is doing comedy in the Metropolitan Museum of Art while also engaging with the artwork.

• 13:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, Dave Hill did, but he also just made stuff up.

• 13:27Chris Duffy?

  This is actually facts about the art.

• 13:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was actually facts about the artist. And like, I think it's a, it's always a good way in, of course, because, you know, people are scared, I think, to go to museums. I still work in museums and people are entering in feeling like they don't belong there and that they should know something that they don't and that they're gonna be made fools of somehow if they don't have the right kind of experience. And so my tours were kind of predicated on the notion that like, the people who made this stuff didn't know anything either. I mean, they may have been skilled craftspeople, but they had their heads up their cans and didn't, couldn't make their relationships work and were just a wreck, you know? And so by kind of infusing factual, biographical details into...

• 14:13Speaker 02

  And the strange stories of how these things got made. It kind of breaks open the stuffiness and creates an inroad for people to like see art as a human inheritance. And that the people who made it were really just like them, more or less. So it gives a sense of permission and accessibility, which is what good comedy does in the best of times.

• 14:38Chris Duffy?

  As I was doing research and thinking about humor and laughter, I came across in Boston, the Museum of Bad Art. And they are a museum that deliberately exhibits only the worst works of art, things that are either donated or found on the street. And they have something so like glaringly awful about them that they are really genuinely hilarious often when you go. And they, they have these quite serious, like exactly in the style of a regular art museum. They say like the dates, the materials, the artist, if it's known. And then like they, in their description, they'll say something like, you know, when you look at this at first, it looks just like a regular hand. And then you notice there are an extra set of knuckles on every finger. And also like, why is it that color? And the artworks are hilarious.

• 15:23Chris Duffy?

  But the thing that I thought was really fascinating is I talked to the woman who runs the museum, Louise Sacco is her name. And she told me that one of the things they really recommend is they try and get school groups to come. And they, they really recommend that school groups pair the Museum of Bad Art with a traditional art museum. Because what happens is when you go to the Museum of Bad Art, you're of course allowed to have an opinion. You're allowed to say that's terrible, or here's how they could have done it better. And she feels like it lets people engage with the excellent art in a different way that isn't so like, well, they obviously know and I don't know. And what could I possibly, I couldn't have an opinion about their art. So I, this is exactly in line with what you're saying.

• 16:01Speaker 02

  Totally. And like statistically, they did a study, I think in 2001, and the average person spends 17 seconds looking at an artwork. And in that moment, there might be like a flash judgment, you like, you don't like it, which is totally legitimate. It's totally fine to have opinions. And there are some clunky, you know, Van Goghs out there. There's a ridiculous, if I may say. Degas painting at the Frick Collection, which looks like a Cabbage Patch doll doing a pirouette. And I like to look at it because it's so silly. But quite often, I think like what's interesting about looking at art in particular is that if you're only looking

• 16:43Speaker 02

  at something for 17 seconds, then all you're really going to see is your opinion anyway. And if you spend more time looking at something, kind of to the point maybe of even like boredom, you start to actually see what is there. And even though like at the Museum of Bad Art, I mean, the composition might be a little sluggish, or the the skill level is somewhat, you know, pedestrian, or whatever someone might say about it. But if you actually start to really, really, really look at it, you might find something that's actually quite delightful or pleasing about it, or you might not. But just the notion that one of the fascinating

• 17:27Speaker 02

  things for me in this whole process of looking at art and writing about it is seeing the degree to which we actually don't ever see anything. We can look at something, but we're not really seeing it. What we're seeing is our idea about what we're looking at. And then we are moving on. And so if you can give it a little bit of extra time, you start to see what the thing actually is. And an indication that that is occurring is you cease to know what you're looking at, interestingly. Tell me more about that. When we go to a museum, we might like spend time looking at something that we find aesthetically pleasing, or we've heard of Matisse, or we've heard of, you know,

• 18:10Speaker 02

  Joan Mitchell or something. And so we'll go and look at the hits. And we'll feel like we're somehow checking off a box in our mind, like that we have to see X. Or you have a personal association with like a Monet painting, because it was on a journal that you had when you were in middle school. And so you kind of like, like that. And you know that it's telling you something about you. But if you actually start to look at something for a long time, the story about your journal, or having seen like the art that you're supposed to have seen at the museum. Starts to fall away and you even stop thinking about maybe like who the artist was

• 18:53Speaker 02

  or what the narrative of the image is, if indeed it's even like figurative. And then you start to just sort of see like color and form and structure. And you realize that you're not actually looking at a woman in a park at all. You're actually looking at gestures that were created by somebody long dead. In some cases, sometimes they're alive and they're assembled colorful shapes that are also kind of abstract in a way, even if they're depicting something. And sometimes when there's an abstract, you start to see images in it that aren't maybe there and like a, what were they called? The magic eye?

• 19:35Chris Duffy?

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, those magic eye images when you're a little kid.

• 19:38Speaker 02

  Out of them all. So I think that we'd start to like, not really know what we're looking at in the sense that like, the structure of our narrative can start to like, break down or recede somewhat from what's primary in the mind, which is just visual. The visual, the sense faculties don't know what anything is, you know? The eyeball doesn't know what a lady in a dress in the park is. It's just perceiving color and light and texture and, and so on. And then a friend of mine once said, as an experiment, it's good to go to the museum and spend time looking at stuff that you think is horrible because it's actually showing you something about your mind.

• 20:22Speaker 02

  It's actually showing something about you, your preferences, your discomfort, your aversion, that feeling inside of you like, I mean, we could do that's just a light bulb on a rope. What the hell? That's not art. But that voice isn't contained in the artwork. It's actually in your mind and somehow some person put a light bulb on a rope and put it in a corner at a museum and it called forward this voice in you. It's something about you that you're giving, being given the opportunity to see by the artist who you may never meet.

• 20:56Chris Duffy?

  I'm so happy I'm getting to talk to you. I'm like stumbling on my words because I'm so excited about all of this stuff. That that is part of just observing art is so exciting to me because I think it's, it's also something that like. Is accessible to almost everyone, right? Like, we can engage with art. Whether you have an incredible museum in your city or town, you still can find art and engage with art wherever you are.

• 21:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, interesting, one of the tenants of Buddhism, there's said to be three marks of existence. And that is suffering. So like, if you're born, you have nerve endings. And at some point, you're gonna get bursitis or close your hand in the door. And worse, then eventually you're going to die. And there, you're gonna lose the things that you love. And you're gonna get crap you don't want. Another one is impermanence. So things just don't last. And then the third one is said to be no self, which doesn't mean that you don't have a body and don't pay the rent and that you don't have a personality. But that what that self is, is constantly in flux and in negotiation

• 22:03Speaker 02

  and open to refinement and complete detonation and reassembly. And I think another aspect of the Buddha families is it's showing you like, okay, there are these five emotions that we have, these five main ones. And they are intense, they're no joke. Stultifying ignorance, the heat of being completely enraged, feeling completely full of yourself and arrogant. Or the flip side of that is feeling like a complete doormat and pathetic and nobody likes me. Both of them are said to be reflections of self-centeredness, interestingly. Feeling that whatever you have isn't the right thing and you need to innovate just for the sake of innovating.

• 22:47Speaker 02

  Or, you know, you're in a relationship and it's, you start thinking you're in the wrong one or you're going to the wrong school. It's always something else, something else that you could be grasping at craving for. And then competitiveness and jealousy and all of that. So all of those are like intense and people like kill each other over them. And so if you start to like slightly shift your perspective a little bit, which is the same kind of art appreciation experience. If you take a kind of curatorial or aesthetic approach to what you're feeling, then suddenly they're like not necessarily like.

• 23:27Speaker 02

  Hallmarks of your eternal live or die self, but they are aspects of a shifting ground of selfhood that we experience. And if we can take a kind of more curious, interested point of view, or experience them and with a little more distance, then like the intensity with which we felt like shut down, or our feelings were hurt, or we got dumped, or whatever, it does kind of become hilarious. There's a kind of like funniness to it. In fact, like the Dalai Lama, I think, said, um, "A real sign of spiritual growth is a sense of humor." Not that you're like slapping your knee at the atrocities

• 24:12Speaker 02

  of the world, going, "Ho, ho, ho, he, he, he." But there's a sense of like spaciousness and possibility. I mean, humor, you know, in the Middle Ages, there were said to be four humors that were, you know, blood and black bile and yellow bile and something odd, I don't remember, something else, uh, that phlegm, oh yeah, phlegm. And these were like the four elements that made up the human being. But basically what they're talking about, I think, is like that there's a fluidity, like humor literally means like a fluidity. So in contemporary parlance, when we see a great comedian, what they're doing is showing

• 24:53Speaker 02

  us something that we take for granted, pulling the rug out from under us and showing us that what we thought was one thing, or that we'd been trained to look at something in a particular solid way can be seen from another point of view. And what's opening up is a sudden like big wow of space. And it's that kind of spaciousness which makes us laugh.

• 25:15Chris Duffy?

  I think that what I see in it is, and this goes back to what you were talking about, about some like profound Buddhist wisdom and truths, is um, the desire to be at the center, to make it so that it is, you are the self at the center. And I, I think that like art in humor and that knowledge, right? All of these things have, have a real power and they have a real social power. And you can get people to pay attention to you and to respect you. And in some cases to pay you money or, or whatever. But I think that when you use them, in my view, correctly. It builds connections. It makes you closer to other people. It makes you less sure of yourself in a good way, like a good way of not being like, I'm this perfect person, not like I'm insecure.

• 26:00Chris Duffy?

  And I think that when you use them the other way, it's about like, you shut up and you pay attention to me. Because I think there's such a misguided idea that like, to have a good sense of humor means you're the person in the center and everyone is laughing at you, as opposed to you're the person laughing really hard and making people feel good. And that, to me, is the good sense of humor, not the attention person.

• 26:19Speaker 02

  Totally. And you bring up an interesting image, which in Buddhism is called a mandala. But this is an ancient image that shows up in every culture since time immemorial, and it's a circle. But that there's a center to this circle, and everyone is the center of their own mandala, so to speak. But given the reminders, these three reminders, okay, like, okay, so there's suffering in the world. Am I going to make more of it? Am I going to try to alleviate it in some way? Am I going to like shill in some way to trick people out of remembering that things are fleeting and impermanent?

• 26:58Speaker 02

  That we only have some, maybe only moments left in this particular arrangement of selves? And are you really going to spend like crapping on people? And thirdly, that there isn't a solid identity here, and that the attempt to codify and maintain a branded identity is an act of violence. It requires a kind of aggressiveness that is detrimental to you, and I would venture to say others as well. And it makes me always wonder, like, the artist Laurie Anderson says, like, why does art have to be self-expression?

• 27:40Speaker 02

  Like, if I want to understand what a bird is doing when it makes a particular sound, and I start to make a sound or write a poem based on the birds, what the birds song in my mind. That's not expressing me. It's expressing some third thing that arises between the perception of the bird song and my curiosity about it and wanting to engage with that. So there's nothing wrong, obviously, with like, stand-ups who create funny points of view and a personality and whatever. It's great, but it's not necessary. So certainly, there's like, a resource of like,

• 28:20Speaker 02

  personal experience and emotion and whatever that comes into any act of expression in the arts, but there's an imagination. It's a liberation from the self. Art is a liberation from being a self. You can do anything.

• 28:38Chris Duffy?

  Speaking of doing things, we are going to take a quick ad break and then we will be right back. Don't go anywhere.

• 28:51Chris Duffy?

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• 29:36Speaker 00

  Hey, everyone. This is Elise Hu, host of the TED Talks Daily Podcast. If there's one thing I've learned, it's that the people who make the biggest difference aren't waiting for the right moment. They're building toward it. Creighton University's online graduate programs in business, healthcare, and leadership are designed for exactly that kind of person. You'll sharpen the skills that matter and connect with others who share that drive. If you're ready to grow in your career and do work that actually counts, start at graduateprograms.creighton.edu.

• 30:09Speaker 00

  You have a tiny computer in your pocket, putting a world of information at your fingertips, but it's hard to decipher what information is worth consuming when getting lost in the scroll. I'm Elise Hu, and on my podcast, TED Talks Daily, you can count on hearing ideas from experts that feed your brain, not slop that rots it. Neuroscientists, technologists, world-renowned artists, and more unveil complex ideas to help you make sense of the world. From breakthrough mental health research, to advice on navigating tricky relationships, to the latest AI innovation. It's a trusted place to get your daily curiosity fix. Listen to TED Talks Daily with new episodes every day, wherever you get your podcasts.

• 30:55Chris Duffy?

  And we are back. You're saying such profound things, and you are saying really like important things that I'm going to think about for years. And also, you are a person who played a role in Men in Black 3. And also, you have been part of-

• 31:09Speaker 02

  And I'm wearing a flashy brooch that my grandma won on The Price is Right.

• 31:13Chris Duffy?

  Wow, a Price is Right brooch, and wisdom. But I guess what I'm saying to say is, part of why I love the idea of laughing at yourself is that it is a way of acknowledging the impermanence of who you are, but also it's a way of getting out of the like, I'm so great and perfect. And instead, like, I have contained all sorts of contradictions and imperfections. And that isn't something that I have to feel ashamed of. It's instead, like, that's part of being human, and that's why we can laugh about it.

• 31:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's not about being meek and just wearing, you know, earth tones and hiding behind a paper bag.

• 31:49Chris Duffy?

  Every once in a while, you gotta put the brooch on.

• 31:51Speaker 02

  Of course. Well, that's one of another interesting Buddhist teaching is it's called emptiness and luminosity. So one of the core tenets of Buddhism is that everything that you think about something is empty of that. Like, you might not like eggplant parmigiana, but the eggplant doesn't contain your loathing. You just don't like it, which is fine. Or-

• 32:17Speaker 02

  You might have been culturally brainwashed into disliking a particular type of person, but that person doesn't contain your ignorance. The ignorance is in your mind and the juxtaposition of you and that person is calling forward your own ignorance. So, everything is empty of what you think of it. Everything is empty of some solid inherent thing, like it's constantly in flux. So that's one side of it. But the other side of it is called luminosity. So, everything is empty, but it is luminous as it is. So, the eggplant doesn't contain your loathing or your approbation, but it has its own, you know, funny shape that's got some

• 33:02Speaker 02

  traction in texting circles. But it's, the eggplant itself doesn't, you know, contain your prurient jokes. It's just a plant, you know, that's purple and whatever. So, it is what it is. It has its qualities, but it's also empty of what you think about it, which is, to me, fascinating. Cause like, you can still be a person with no essential solid self and still like, wear a ridiculous outfit or, you know, hop around on a pogo stick and, you know, juggle devil sticks on the high school lawn. If you're in high school. Don't do that.

• 33:41Chris Duffy?

  I have a couple of like, just practical questions for you, I guess, which is, if someone's listening and they're really moved to, to try and do this, how, how should you start? Like, observing art and, and thinking about things in these, these deeper ways? How can, what, what's an exercise that you can do that will actually get you to step forward in this?

• 34:00Speaker 02

  So fundamentally, whether you're doing like a simple meditation practice, like mindfulness of breath, or just kind of like, an open awareness practice where you hold the body still and notice what shows up during the interval of your practice time. What's being strengthened is your awareness. And in-

• 34:20Speaker 02

  A museum setting or in an art appreciation setting, what's being strengthened is awareness. So awareness is really the the queen of the whole project, not to bring the monarchy into it, but you know, it's like the the apex of of of why we do this. Because when we're not aware, when we're not aware that our opinions are just our opinions, or that our particular upbringing gave us some maybe not nice thoughts about different kinds of people, then we start to believe what we think about crap and then start to be led by the nose through the impulses associated with our thoughts.

• 35:03Speaker 02

  But if in meditation practice, we can just follow the breath for a little while, doesn't have to be long, or just keep kind of an open panoramic awareness, then we become aware of all of that stuff and we aren't compelled into activity by those thoughts anymore. Like if you do have a museum nearby or an art gallery, or you could even like, go to the TJ Maxx and look at the pre-framed photos that they have on sale or say weird art piece, it could be anything. You could even do it with a bit of tree bark if you wanted to. But the most helpful tools are a little bit of time and somewhere to sit, which is what my favorite art nun

• 35:44Speaker 02

  sister Wendy used to say on PBS. Just you just need some time and a place to sit. So if you can find an artwork that has a bench in front of it, that's a good way to choose one. And what you can do is sit in front of it, you can stand too, and you could kind of imagine like a big X going through the canvas and try to find a central point, more or less. It could be like a little shape or something that you can rest the eyeball on. And you just kind of look at that central point in the canvas, but see if you can't actually move your visual awareness, which is separate from the moving eyeball.

• 36:27Speaker 02

  And, and see if you can't, for example, just decide, okay, I'm going to pull all the triangle shapes in this vast canvas forward in my visual awareness without moving my eye. And just see what happens. It might not, might be all circles, you know, I might be looking at a Kandinsky and laugh sign you, but then just do the circles. Or just say, pull forward all of the, the black shapes or all of the red shapes. And you alternate through, you know, just don't make a big deal out of it, but you just like alternate triangle shapes, blues, greens. Place your attention on the back of your neck as you're looking at this image and see what happens. And then you can take a break and then just like, sort of move your eye around the image, looking at stuff as you normally would.

• 37:11Speaker 02

  And then, and then like plant the eye and, and not move it. And then try to move a visual awareness in some way around the canvas. Because what starts to happen is we start to actually see what's there. You're stepping into the mind stream of the person who made this thing. You're mixing minds with another person. In the same way as when you read a novel, you're mixing minds. This person has put strangely colored black shapes on a page that you've assembled into a mental image. You're co-creating this. And so the same stands for when you're looking at a painting, like a great painter like Philip Guston, who I love, you would just stand and look at this. And at first it looks like some idiot painted it.

• 37:55Speaker 02

  It's like clunky shapes and cartoony and dumb. But if you leave the eye still, but allow the image to come toward you, suddenly you start to see like the brushstrokes, the composition, the color choices. And these things can start to have emotional resonances, which are liberated from like narrative. And then you can step back and be like, what, what story is this? Read the placard next to it, which is sometimes helpful and sometimes trying to protect us from having our own personal experience of the art. So I think that's a way of doing it. Find an object, plant your eye in the middle of it and then just call different shapes and colors forward in visual awareness and see how that starts to.

• 38:39Speaker 02

  Transform your relationship to what you're looking at, how it makes you become what you're looking at.

• 38:45Chris Duffy?

  I have a question about this exercise that's also a question about meditation in general, which is, is this an exercise that builds the muscle so that we can then use this skill in other places? Are we at the gym training for the performance, the athletic competition? Or is this the athletic competition?

• 39:07Speaker 02

  It's training you to be able to apply this in your life. And what's interesting in the gym metaphor, like, obviously, you want to have, like, good form. And if you keep throwing your back out and you strengthen your core, you know, like, when you're picking up the, you know, cat food box to lift from your knees, there might be a little, like, positioning going on. But like, the reminder of good positioning isn't giving you the stronger muscles. The stronger muscles have been gained from having done the exercise. So, parallel to this, in like, the art experience, an art image is like a simulacrum of the world, but it's frozen.

• 39:51Speaker 02

  It's like, still, unless it's like, a film, but that's another matter. But anyway, like, if it's a painting, or a sculpture or something, it's like, a simulacrum of some aspect of the world, but it's still. And yet, as you look at it, the awareness finds a kind of, like, dynamism and movement in the work, and you just begin to be able to perceive that more clearly. So that when you go into your life, if it's in the office, if it's at home with your partner, we're partners, Chris, I'm not here to judge anybody. It's a new age. Then what starts to lead naturally is awareness. It is not going to expunge jealousy.

• 40:36Speaker 02

  It's not going to make you not mad. It's not going to make you not, you know, a lustful person, or self-important, or whatever. It's not going to make you not have, like, knee-jerk, ignorant, prejudiced thoughts. But if we're playing whack-a-mole with all of that, we're just completely into the weeds here. We're believing these echoes of past actions that show up as thoughts as somehow problems to solve, rather than moving through our experience led by the awareness itself. And we don't have to think about it. It happens naturally. It's natural to human beings. But it does take practice, because our entire world seems to be structured

• 41:18Speaker 02

  in such a way to like congratulate us and monetize hot takes and mean spiritedness and other unpleasant qualities.

• 41:30Chris Duffy?

  Is there something different about engaging with a masterpiece? Or, you know, a quote unquote timeless work of art versus, you know, the thing that your aunt painted in her spare time and she's, even she doesn't think it's her best work?

• 41:44Speaker 02

  Sure. I think there is. And obviously masterpiece is relative and whatever. But I do think there is some other aspect at play here when an art maker, and this is something that a lot of artists now are talking about in contrast to AI. The writer Robert Olin Butler talks about how creativity is hard. It's really hard to do. And quite often, we avoid doing it because to delve down into the unconscious realm where the creative impulse seems to simmer is literally hell for a lot of people. For most people,

• 42:26Speaker 02

  it's hellish. Even if you're trying to write a joke, it's torture. So the idea is like, if you're looking at a masterpiece, then you are engaging with a work made by somebody who is doing this all the time. And it's not necessarily a self-improvement technique. I mean, while reports seem to indicate that Picasso was an asshat, but like, there's some interesting shapes and good work he did, you know, he made some good things. So like, if you are looking at something that went through this kind of rigorous

• 43:09Speaker 02

  Practice, it's a practice of not knowing, of transforming negativity into something colorful, something with shape, something with tone. Somebody who is able to handle the heat, the white hot heat of the creative process and bend it or tap dance it into some other medium. And there's a certain skill that's involved that seems to like be honed when you keep at it. There's a book I was reading by this writer called Brenda Ulland, who wrote this book in the 30s called If You Want to Write, I think it's called.

• 43:50Speaker 02

  She said, I would tell my students, just write 10 really bad stories. Just write the 10 worst stories you can possibly write. Eventually, they start to kind of improve just because you keep doing it. So when we engage with a masterpiece, we're looking at a form or experiencing sound or some kind of thing that went through this human process. This human process of investigating the inner world, the collective unconscious, whatever you want to call it, and then transmuted it into something else, a painting, a song, a sculpture, a dance, a novel.

• 44:33Speaker 02

  And, and somebody who is like doing that as a path, David Lynch called it the art life. He made like, what, 11 films, but he was working every single day of his life. He was, he was like, if no one wants to give me the money for a film, I'm gonna make a painting. And if that doesn't work, I'm gonna make a, an album. And maybe no one wants to listen to Crazy Clown Time, but I'm gonna do it. So, anyway, I, so I think there is something to that. And it's nourishing. It's nourishing to look at something that was given such consideration. That person who brought the full force of their emotional life, their training, their experience, their neurosis, their wisdom to this particular thing.

• 45:18Speaker 02

  And now you're getting to like, share in that. And if nothing else, maybe be inspired to do that yourself as well.

• 45:27Chris Duffy?

  You know, you select 26 artists in here who mean something to you. And you're talking about Buddha's wisdom as reflected through their work. Is there one of these 26 artists who feels like they're particularly speaking to you right now? And who and why?

• 45:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, I've been thinking a lot about Agnes Martin recently. The five wisdom energies all have names. So like the ignorance one is called Buddha. The anger one is called Vajra, which is like a diamond thunderbolt. The prideful one is called Ratna, which means like jewel. So it's kind of has like a bling quality. The lusty, grabby, greedy one is called Padma, which is like a lotus that looks like it's on fire. But the fifth one is called Karma, which is the competitive activity one. So as somebody who's like trying to make work, I've just made like two films. I've like shot two films. Let's

• 46:27Speaker 02

  not get carried away. Because apparently you also have to edit them.

• 46:32Chris Duffy?

  Well, some would disagree.

• 46:34Speaker 02

  That's true. That is true. So I'm in a stage now where I'm like, I don't know how to move forward with this. And my nervousness at not knowing is like, well, I'm gonna force it. I'm gonna bully somebody. I'm gonna sweet talk somebody. I'm just gonna give up. I hate myself. No, I'm the best. You know, like you just ping pong through all of these like crazy things. But what Agnes Martin did, she said, you just sit down and wait for the inspiration. If you don't know what to do, don't fill the space with a lot of flailing and splashing around. If it's if the mind is like a surface of a pond, that is maybe going to give you some sense of depth, splashing on the surface is not going

• 47:17Speaker 02

  to help you get clarity. So she said she would just sit in a chair and say, okay, well, what are we going to do next? And she would sit there. And until the inspiration came in her mind. And then she would say, okay, that's the inspiration. I'm going to do that. And so she would try as best she could to extrapolate the image that came to her, what she said was like the size of a postage stamp, out into a six by six foot canvas. And if she started like riffing or futzing around too much, she would just destroy the canvas and start again. This is the central problem of the human being, it seems, that whatever we want to say about it,

• 48:01Speaker 02

  whatever our faith or our philosophy or our schemes or our morning routine happens to be, we don't know what the F is going to happen next. We just don't know. And when we panic and try to like, double down on what we think we know, based on what has happened before and blah, blah, blah, that space becomes concrete. It becomes completely immovable. Like what Agnes Martin reminds me of is we don't have to fill the space just because we don't know. Because ignorance is the self-centered, fearful, encumbered interpretation of space.

• 48:42Speaker 02

  But the open space is called all-accommodating awareness. And then the other thing she said, which I love, she was babysitting her gallerist's granddaughter. And she had a rose on her table. And the granddaughter loved this flower. And Agnes Martin said, do you think the rose is beautiful? And the girl said, yes, it is beautiful. And she took the rose and hid it behind her back. And she said, do you still think the rose is beautiful? And the girl said, yes, the rose is still beautiful. And she said, that's because the beauty is not in the rose. It's in your own mind. Hmm.

• 49:26Speaker 02

  If I can like just hang with being uncomfortable with not knowing how this film is gonna get finished, with not knowing what my next creative endeavor is gonna be, not knowing if anyone's ever gonna watch it or care, then what does arise, I will be able to see clearly and I can take that inspiration and and work with that rather than having to like rely on all of my fustile defense mechanisms to seem like I'm not scared of dying or something.

• 49:58Chris Duffy?

  You know, we've talked about being willing to laugh at yourself and to see some of the absurdity of your own existence and what you cling to. What is something in yourself that you're laughing about right now or able to find some absurdity in?

• 50:11Speaker 02

  Well, the first thing that comes to mind is I work at a museum right now and I work in the visitor services department. And so some of my coworkers are 17 years old and some of them are 82 years old. And so like whenever I'm like, why am I doing this sort of work? It just makes me laugh so hard. I was like, well, you always wanted to be a retiree and now you're doing it. So like just catching my self-importance and then like being like, what other, what other job could I have where I would actually get to like,

• 50:48Speaker 02

  talk to such a wide age range of people. It's kind of like amazing. So that's a big LOL.

• 50:57Chris Duffy?

  Kevin, I cannot thank you enough for making time to be on the show. You are such a delight. It was such an interesting conversation. This was truly, it has given me so much to think about and it was a perfect fit for this month of thinking about the self and humor and paying attention and laughing.

• 51:14Speaker 02

  Oh, it's so beautiful to see you and I'm so happy that we got to connect again and congratulations on your book, which I cannot wait to read. And kiss your baby and high five your wife and you can kiss her too. No pressure.

• 51:29Chris Duffy?

  High fives and kisses all around.

• 51:33Chris Duffy?

  That is it for today's episode of How to Be a Better Human. Thank you so much to our guest, Kevin Townley. You can find more about his films, his writing, and his book, Look, Look, Look, Look, Look Again: Buddhist Wisdom Reflected in 26 Artists, on his website, keventownley.nyc. I'm your host, Chris Duffy, and this episode is part of a month-long series on How to Laugh More that is inspired by my new nonfiction book, Humor Me, which just came out. You can find the book wherever you get books, or at chrisduffycomedy.com. Thank you to Apple for featuring How to Be a Better Human in their Living Well collection for 2026. Go check it out on Apple Podcasts. How to Be a Better Human is put together by a team of monks working with a team of expert artisans.

• 52:15Chris Duffy?

  On the TED side, we've got the fully enlightened Daniela Balarezzo, Banban Cheng, Michelle Quint, Chloe Shasha-Brooks, Valentina Bohanini, Laney Lott, Tansukasung Manibong, Antonia Lei, and Joseph DeBryne. This episode was fact-checked by Matthias Salas, who transcends falsehoods to arrive at pure and noble truth. On the PRX side, we've got the Picasso's of podcasts, and I mean that in the excellent art way and not the terrible person way. I am talking about Morgan Flannery, Nora Gill, Patrick Grant, and Jocelyn Gonzalez. Thanks again to you for listening. We may never know what is gonna happen next, but I'm pretty sure that you can count on another episode of How to Be a Better Human coming out next Monday. In the meantime, share this episode with someone who you want to go to a museum with, or just someone who you like. Thanks again for listening, and take care.

• 53:05Chris Duffy?

  This episode is sponsored by the Natural Resources Defense Council. Here's a question this show asks a lot. What can one person actually do? Take protecting the environment. When the task feels so big, it's hard to know where to even begin. Turns out, the answer isn't doing it alone. It's teaming up with people who care as much as you do. With the help of 3 million supporters, the Natural Resources Defense Council is in court to defend ancient forests, pristine coasts, and the wildlife that depend on them. None of these places or species can be replaced. They're still here because people fought for them, in and out of court, and that fight needs your support today. Donate at nrdc.org/human, and your gift will be matched five times.

• 53:52Chris Duffy?

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• 54:40Speaker 04

  Welcome to 215 Maple Drive. We just put this property on the market. Love the crown molding. Oh, wait until you see the walk-in closets and the bathroom tile. Does it have Verizon FiOS? You know, 100% fiber internet. No FiOS, but it looks like it's got cable. Let's check out the kitchen. No FiOS? Yeah, no thank you. Don't you want to see the rest? Okay, bye-bye.

• 55:04Speaker 05

  Get Verizon FiOS, because when you're moving, it's 100% or nothing.

• 55:10Speaker 00

  You have a tiny computer in your pocket, putting a world of information at your fingertips, but it's hard to decipher what information is worth consuming when getting lost in the scroll. I'm Elise Hu, and on my podcast, TED Talks Daily, you can count on hearing ideas from experts that feed your brain, not slop that rots it. Neuroscientists, technologists, world-renowned artists, and more unveil complex ideas to help you make sense of the world. From breakthrough mental health research, to advice on navigating tricky relationships, to the latest AI innovation. It's a trusted place to get your daily curiosity fix. Listen to TED Talks Daily with new episodes every day, wherever you get your podcasts.