Ms. Halifax: I think cetaceans grieve, and I think that we need to create, as I said, the conditions where the value of grief is acknowledged and supported within our own culture.
Ms. Tippett: You write about it. You say, “Grief can be seen as a natural human process giving rise to one’s basic humanity” — which you’ve just described — “yet it can also be a potential trap, a no-exit, a source of chronic suffering.” Do we need to be able to hold it properly in order to let it go or to live with it gracefully? Is that what you’re saying?
Ms. Halifax: Again, this is coming back to the value of a contemplative practice. Within any tradition or non-tradition is that when you are in a state of deep internal stillness, you see the truth of change, the truth of impermanence that’s constantly in flow, moment by moment. And so that becomes a kind of insight that liberates you from the futility of the kind of grief that disallows our own humanity to emerge.
[music: “Recurring” by Bonobo]
Ms. Tippett: I’m Krista Tippett, and this is On Being. Today, my conversation with Zen teacher and medical anthropologist Joan Halifax at the Chautauqua Institution in New York. The theme of our week was “Inspiration, Action, and Commitment.” Over 1,000 people surrounded us in the open-air Hall of Philosophy, and a few came forward with questions.
[music: “Recurring” by Bonobo]
Audience Member 1: I was really struck by what you were saying about compassion fatigue. In my younger days, I was a social worker in domestic violence shelters. I did a lot of leftist political work and, at a certain point, realized that I was surrounded by people who were dedicating their life to “no,” to fighting against something. And my husband and I had decided to get married, and we sat down and said, “What’s our ‘yes’? How are we going to commit to living ‘yes’ on a daily basis? Because if we stay here and do this, we will spend our whole life just fighting and saying no.”
And I wonder, sometimes, if part of what people refer to as compassion fatigue is the unwillingness or perhaps fear of doing the hard, daily, personal work to pay attention in one’s intimate relationships and in one’s neighborhood and in one’s community — because that’s constant. That never ends. But if all you’re thinking about is: I need to do something about that thing out there, that thing that I see on that television, the thing that I read in the newspaper, instead of: What’s happening in this house? What’s happening right here, and why don’t I start there? And once that sort of intention and mindfulness becomes almost instinctual, then the tendency to sort of fall into that empathic pit where you feel like you can’t get out in response to what’s going on in the world lessens, because you’re building up a capacity to hold complexity.
Ms. Halifax: So that was a question that had the whole answer in it. [laughs] That was wonderful.
Ms. Tippett: Well, she’s a redhead, you see.
Ms. Halifax: Yeah. [laughs] That was beautiful. What’s your name?
Audience Member 1: Asha.
Ms. Halifax: Asha, thank you. We agree. [laughs] Yeah. I mean there is — first of all, there’s the recognition. Then there was the intention, the commitment. And then there was the action. Then you made it real in your everyday life. And that’s where the rubber meets the road, exactly — in our everyday lives. So thank you.
Audience Member 2: It seems, at least in the great literature as we move from the age of Romanticism to the Age of Reason and rationality, that the concept of death changed greatly. And I’m wondering how much of that, if you’ve done any research, there really was a concept — before, let’s say, the 1800s — that death did bring a better place to folks and how that changed the way people actually approached life without that fear of death?
Ms. Halifax: I think with the secularization of our world that the notion of death — for example, in the Eastern world that I’ve been trained in, as the greatest opportunity for liberation, or, in the Christian world, as the path to go home to heaven, to God, to return, which was certainly part of the experience of the woman who took care of me as a child, for example. But with this massive secularization that we’re experiencing now, and skepticism, it has separated us from our own spirituality. And I’m not a very sectarian anything, if you know what I’m saying. Okay, I do Buddhist practices and so on and so forth, but I’m not a sectarian Buddhist.
What I am, though, is someone who wants to help people see inside. And there are many paths to that. Our churches provide a path, our synagogues provide a path, our great literature and art provides a path. But mostly, I believe that we’ve turned our vision to being so superficial and outward. And there’s a potential for a new kind of enlightenment in our time, and that is, I think, a yearning that many of us experience, as we see the world distancing itself from its own heart. So I don’t feel hopeless or futile. I’m very interested. I’m so glad I lived this long, because my superficial study of enlightenment, for example, in the Western world leads me to believe that we have tremendous potential to realize in these coming decades.
I just don’t want to say it’s a downhill slope, in other words, [laughs] if you know what I mean.
No, I just think, if you look at complex dynamical systems, we’re in a fascinating breakdown. And what we know about complex dynamical systems is that living systems — and we’re in this robust living system. And we’ve seen eras. We can look back through history. We’re in an era of great breakdown, environmentally and socially and psychologically, and when systems break down, the ones who have the resilience to actually repair themselves, they move to a higher order of organization. And I think that this is characterized by something the complexity theorists call robustness, that we can anticipate both a time of great robustness, which we’re in, with tremendous potential to wake up and take responsibility, and, at the same time, we’re in a lot of difficulties, and we need resilience to make our way through this change.
Audience Member 3: Okay, this question might ring as a little redundant, speaking of meditation. To many, I feel like it comes to mind a Buddhist meditating under a tree for 30 years or something. And speaking of the neurological benefits that it can have, I was wondering if you can recommend to somebody that’s not that religious or spiritual — and I feel like spirituality is something that has to come on your own time — and to maybe just start off to get the benefits of meditation. Like, does it have to be sitting cross-legged? Does it have to be — what’s the simplest way that you can do it and still get the benefits? Can it be ten minutes? Can it be 15? Does it have to be 20?
[laughter]
I just wanted to just have it broken down. As a younger member of this world, I would like to get my foot in the door, but I’m not ready for the whole shebang yet. [laughs]
[applause]
Ms. Tippett: An honest question.
Ms. Halifax: So our mutual friend Richie Davidson at the Keck Lab, has even developed an intervention, an internet intervention on compassion that is teeny-weeny, where they’ve seen effects. The truth is that — I mean the word “meditation” — in our training program in the end-of-life care field, we actually don’t even use the word meditation, because it’s so freighted. We call it reflective practices or contemplative interventions or whatever. So I feel that what’s happened is, it’s kind of — these practices in mental training have also gotten mixed up in the dark side of religion or the more difficult side of religion. But also, these practices have been secularized so that they no longer are hooked into the ethics which gave rise to them. And so what I feel is, we sort of have to meet somewhere in between. We have to have a view or a strong ethical base; at the same time, engage in the techniques that allow us to deepen concentration, to have insight, and to also develop more pro-social capacity.
And there are many programs out there that — the whole range of mindfulness-based stress reduction in Jon Kabat-Zinn’s work. The work that Dorrie Fontaine, who’s in our audience here and an old-time Chautauqua family member, participant, is doing at UVA, the training that we do of clinicians, where hundreds of clinicians, including, I think, some 40 of Dorrie’s nurses and doctors, have been through our training program, which is completely secular. So what’s happening in the West is fascinating in terms of these approaches to training the mind being secularized, by the same token, so you can have a five-minute intervention, and it can really produce a nice effect. But we also know that dose makes a difference. And so try the five, then go to ten and then 20. Then you might find an hour, and then you might want to actually sort of take the plunge. But also, be very mindful of what is appropriate for you. Respect your boundaries. Be sure you’re with a qualified person, because, I tell you, to stop in this world is to create the conditions where a lot of unusual experiences can rise up. So be very respectful of your situation and proceed with love and with care, as well as courage.
[music: “Pine View” by Goldmund]
Ms. Tippett: Joan Halifax is founding abbot of Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and she’s the director of the project on Being with Dying. Her books include Being with Dying: Cultivating Compassion and Fearlessness in the Presence of Death.
I asked Joan Halifax to end our conversation at Chautauqua with a guided meditation on encountering grief — grief as something ordinary, part of life and humanity. We’ve posted the whole ten minutes of that on our website, onbeing.org. Here’s a taste of how it begins:
Ms. Halifax: So I would like to invite you to put down whatever might be in your hand and to find a position that’s comfortable and also that supports you. And listen to my words, and if they are resonant for you, if they are helpful, really let them enter into your experience. And bring your attention to the breath for just a moment. And let the breath sweep your mind, and notice whether it’s a deep breath or shallow. And recall for a moment now a loss or losses that have really touched you, or the anticipation of loss. And now I’ll offer some simple phrases. May I be open to the pain of grief. Notice whatever comes up, not rejecting it, not clinging to it. May I find the inner resources to really be present for my sorrow. May I accept my sadness, knowing that I am not my sadness. May I and all beings learn from and transform sorrow.
[music: “Pine View” by Goldmund]
Ms. Tippett: To listen again or share this show with Joan Halifax, go to onbeing.org. And follow everything we do through our weekly email newsletter. Just click the newsletter link on any page at onbeing.org
Staff: On Being is: Trent Gilliss, Chris Heagle, Lily Percy, Mariah Helgeson, Maia Tarrell, Marie Sambilay, Bethanie Mann, Selena Carlson, Malka Fenyvesi, Erinn Farrell, and Gisell Calderón.
Ms. Tippett: Special thanks this week to Maureen Rovegno, Joan Brown Campbell, and the Chautauqua Institution.
[music: “Her String” by Clown N Sunset Collective]
Our lovely theme music is composed by Zoë Keating. And the last voice you hear, singing our final credits in each show, is hip-hop artist Lizzo.
On Being was created at American Public Media.
Our funding partners include:
The Fetzer Institute, helping to build the spiritual foundation for a loving world. Find them at fetzer.org.
Kalliopeia Foundation, working to create a future where universal spiritual values form the foundation of how we care for our common home.
The Henry Luce Foundation, in support of Public Theology Reimagined.
The Osprey Foundation, a catalyst for empowered, healthy, and fulfilled lives.
And the Lilly Endowment, an Indianapolis-based, private family foundation dedicated to its founders’ interests in religion, community development, and education.
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