EPISODE 4 - Sharon Salzberg
Sharon Salzberg:
It's this more divisiveness than I had thought might come out of this experience. But if you are in a mood to learn and you have that interest in growing and learning, I think there's lots to be seen.
Tyler Greene:
Hi, there. Welcome to This is My Family, a podcast about building a life with the people you love. I'm your host, Tyler Greene and I am so glad that you're here.
On today's show, we are talking with Sharon Salzberg, a beloved Buddhist meditation teacher and New York Times best-selling author who has been practicing and teaching meditation for decades. She opens up with me about losing both of her parents as a child, reparenting herself with her meditation teachers and perhaps most importantly, she has some calming words of wisdom for how to navigate these trying times.
For those of you who are new, welcome. This is a podcast that I have created to spotlight conversations with people about what their families look like. My family doesn't look like the one I've thought I'd have growing up. I'm married to a man and he's from China. We have a baby that we created through surrogacy with the help of a lot of people and we moved from Chicago to California in February.
So like all of you, we are making our way through a pandemic in a totally different universe. So go back and listen to episode one. If you have a chance, that's the story of my family. Episode two, we talk about drag families and families of origin and a lot, lot more with RuPaul's Drag Race Queen, Latrice Royale. On episode three, we talked about mixed race families and also infertility with Shereen Marisol Meraji.
In the end, I really hope that this is a place where people feel comfortable to talk to me about what makes up their family, what gets them up in the morning, what keeps them going when they're feeling down. So again, especially if you're new, thanks for joining me. And for those who have returned, welcome back.
I've been practicing meditation on and off for about the last seven years. When I sit still and actually do it, it truly makes me a better husband and a father. It can prevent conflicts. It can loosen friction in all of our relationships. So early on in the pandemic, as I was settling down with my husband and our baby, Sam, I took a lot of meditation classes online. Things were really scary and I needed something to hold on to. Today's guest, Sharon led two of those online retreats. She's been a digital teacher of mine since I started doing this.
But can I be honest with you? I haven't really meditated much since those early days of the pandemic. And honestly, I noticed a difference. Things are more anxious. The world buzzes more. It's really easy to get wrapped up in Twitter and looking for those notifications to appear on your phone. And honestly, I have a lot more headaches. I talked to Sharon in August of this year, but now winter is here and the pandemic is getting worse, again.
It feels like a good moment to listen to somebody who is an expert at staying calm. Sharon is really chill. You'll notice that when you hear her speak. Becoming steady in the face of struggles is part of her journey. So I hope that you like me can sit back, relax, and maybe get some tips from Sharon that might help you in your family relationships. At the end of the episode, we're even treated to Sharon leading us in a meditation. So make sure you stay tuned until after the credits, especially if you're new to all this meditation stuff.
Sharon, co-founded the Insight Meditation Society in the 1970s. She continues to be an important voice in a world that these days especially seems hungrier than ever for a little more mindfulness. Her latest book is called Real Change. At the core of this book, and all of Sharon's work is the Buddhist principle that suffering is a natural part of life. Sharon is no stranger to suffering. She draws a direct line from the family trauma that marked her childhood to her work now. So I asked her to begin by telling me about the chaos and loss she experienced growing up.
Sharon Salzberg:
I grew up in New York City and my parents got divorced when I was four. So then my father just went away and I didn't see him for many years. And then when I was nine, my mother died and I went to live with my father's parents whom I hardly knew. They were Eastern European immigrants. And my grandparents, so older, they just had this belief apparently that it would upset me too much to bring up my mother. And so we just never talked about her, ever.
So it was that sort of strange silence that was probably more impactful on me than anything. I lived with my grandparents for a couple of years and my father came back. This is when I was 11. When his father died, my grandfather died, my father came back and he was very different from the man I remembered in a way idealized. He had problems with alcohol.
He clearly had problems with mental illness and he was back for about six weeks and took an overdose of sleeping pills. They told me it was an accident. He lived in some variant of a psychiatric hospital, nursing home for the next many years until he died, which was quite a bit later.
It was only when I was in college that I looked back and I thought, wait a minute, "An accidental overdose of sleeping pills doesn't really lead you to a psychiatric hospital, does it?"
Tyler Greene:
Yeah.
Sharon Salzberg:
So I would say that just juncture between my inner sense of what must be true and the outer messages I was getting. That disjuncture was probably the biggest characteristic of my childhood. So it was when I went to college, which I did at the age of 16. In my sophomore year, I took an Asian philosophy course, which as far as I could tell, I really did out of happenstance. I looked at the schedule, I thought, "Oh, it's Tuesday. That's convenient. Let me do that one." And it completely changed my life.
To begin with, because when they talked about the Buddha's teaching about life and suffering, that suffering is an inevitable and natural part of life. For me, it was like this huge relief. It was suddenly this message like, "Oh, you're not weird. You belong. This is a part of life." And then it was in the context of that class I heard that there were things you could do. There were actual methods you could employ that if you use them, you'd be a lot happier. And they were called meditation.
This is like 1970. I looked around Buffalo. I didn't see it anywhere. So I created an independent study project for the school and said, "I want to go to India and study meditation." So they said, "Okay". And off I went.
Tyler Greene:
Then you had this incredible experience in India, which you talk about in many of your books. And I encourage people to consume all of the things Sharon has written about to find out about that trip and all the contours of it and what it taught her. But one thing about that journey that I want to zoom in on for this show is the people who taught and mentored you. I was particularly moved by your relationship to one teacher of named Dipa Ma. You talked about rediscovering a sense of maternal safety that had been absent since your mother's passing. Can you tell me about her?
Sharon Salzberg:
Dipa Ma is like a nickname. It means Dipa's mother. Somebody wrote a book about her, which I actually felt some compassion for them because some teachers, some philosophers, some influential people like that, they just have a way of using language and they have a turn of phrase that one sentence can really change you in some way. And she was not like that. It was all her presence and her being. And I thought, "How do you say it in a book where you only have words to try to describe it? It's very hard. It's like it's always the same story." I felt completely miserable. Then I was with her, I felt a whole lot better. That's the story. Yeah.
Tyler Greene:
And Dipa Ma means Dipa's mother. So who was Dipa?
Sharon Salzberg:
Dipa was Dipa Ma's one surviving child. She had three children. Two of them died and there was Dipa. Dipa and I were about the same age. When Dipa was still a young child and her father died when they were living in Burma. I think part of Dipa Ma's inspiration to get out of bed despite her grief, despite her frailty, despite her heart condition was that she still had a daughter to raise.
So when a doctor came and said, "You should really do something about your mind. You should learn how to meditate." She got up, went to the master. She was a person who exemplified maybe more than almost anybody I've met or what it's like to come through, great personal suffering and emerge into a power of compassion that I really didn't leave anyone out. So she was very important for me because there I was with all of that behind me, from my childhood and then within me. She's actually the person who told me to teach. She made me a teacher which really formed so much of my life.
Tyler Greene:
You went there, you met Dipa Ma. You were a child who had lost her mother, biological mother. And you were connecting on the spiritual level with somebody who had a parent who had lost a child, right? And I guess I wondered, were you ever consciously aware of that as you were living it?
Sharon Salzberg:
I feel like I reparented myself with every one of my teachers practically. Not maybe every single one, but mostly men, women. So it wasn't just her.
Tyler Greene:
Right.
Sharon Salzberg:
I don't think it was specifically that she had lost a child, but more that she had suffered a lot that I could relate to. I have seen more in my life since then in terms of students or friends that I often form a very strong bond with a mother who's lost a child. So I've had that thought, but not particularly about Dipa Ma necessarily.
Tyler Greene:
So you did mention this idea of reparenting. What is it first of all as you understand it and then how has it worked in your life?
Sharon Salzberg:
Well, I don't know the specific psychological exact definition, but I think many of my teachers serve the function that we long for a parent to serve, seeing potential within us and affirming like, yeah, you fell on your face, but that's okay. It's not the end of the world. You can get up. I'm still here. It was psychologically very important and very healing for as many people do that with a therapist or do that with someone else, when it didn't quite work with the original people. So a very classic teacher-student relationship in the Asian culture like that. It's a very deep bond.
Tyler Greene:
So this is really a show, as we said, at the beginning, we were chatting about family being a fluid idea, right? An active thing, this thing that we build. And I'm curious how Buddhism specifically helps us do that?
Sharon Salzberg:
I think understanding causes and conditions, which is sort of inherent in the Buddhist approach to things. Don't stay on the surface of things, look deeper because as we make a family, we bring, of course with us the impressions and the conditionings or our family of origin and the ways we believe love looks and the nature of closeness and a tough story in one of my books about this couple that I knew who would only fight at dinner time.
The man in that particular couple, growing up, his father was a very violent man and he was only home at dinner time. So dinner time was like the worst imaginable time. So all he wanted to do, now an adult, was get through it. And his wife had a very chaotic family, very kind of crazy family. And the only nice time of the day was dinner, where people would actually sit down and talk to one another.
So she craved a nice dinner with that formal coloring and table set and the whole thing. So they weren't really fighting about dinner. They were fighting their own childhoods and being locked into a particular view of what was good and what was better. Once they realized that they could actually communicate, I don't know what they decided about dinner. Sometimes he's standing up in the kitchen and sometimes sit down. But the intensity of the argument was not about how should we eat tonight, it was really about carrying all that stuff from the past into the present.
Tyler Greene:
Yeah. So as I was doing some research here on family in the context of Buddhism, this word Sangha kept coming up. Can you define that for us?
Sharon Salzberg:
So Sangha is S-A-N-G-H-A and it has many meanings. That's part of the complexity. In a traditional sense, it refers to those men and women who have sought to see a deeper truth than just conventional reality. The kind of myths were offered and that's really like the traditional meaning. The contemporary meaning, it does mean community. It's often in the meditative context. It's people who practice together because you share a lot, even if you're silent in a silent retreat. It's that sense of community where together we can really probably accomplish something that is much more difficult to do alone.
Tyler Greene:
Sharon's first meditation retreat in India was in January of 1971. Many of her closest friendships, including the one she still has with Joseph Goldstein, the co-founder of her meditation business started there almost 50 years ago.
Sharon Salzberg:
When we met he was quite a bit more experienced in meditation than I was. It was my very first retreat. And really I'm quite close to many of the people who were at that retreat. So he came back in 1974 from India to the States about six months before I came back. And actually when I went to see Dipa Ma to say goodbye, the way she phrased it was, "When you go back, you'll be teaching with Joseph." And I said, "No, I won't." She said, "Yes." I said, "No, I won't."
So I came back, Joseph at that point was at Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado. It was the first summer that it was opened. And from the beginning of my teaching life, I've been teaching with Joseph. We co-founded the Insight Meditation Society together.
And currently we live in a duplex. We share an entryway where you take off your shoes and coats and stuff like that. And you go in one direction, it's just us going another direction. It's my house. So the room I'm speaking to you from is an office and it used to be a screened-in porch. And Joseph kept his as a screened-in porch. So that is the epicenter of my social life in the midst of the pandemic. So I was just out there yesterday with some friends. We're going to get Joseph a heater, so they can actually serve for a little bit longer.
Tyler Greene:
I think it's just so wonderful that you all are that close physically right now.
Sharon Salzberg:
Yeah. I mean, clearly I recreated a family.
Tyler Greene:
Still ahead, I talked with Sharon more about how meditation can help us wade through the profoundly weird times we're living in. If you're enjoying what you're hearing now, be sure to subscribe to This is My Family wherever you're listening. More with Sharon in just a moment.
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A central part of Sharon's meditation practice and teaching is something called loving kindness. It's a style of meditation that focuses on saying phrases like, "May you be safe. May you be happy. May you be healthy. May you live with ease." You say these phrases to yourself, to those do love, to strangers, and even those you find difficult as a way of offering them peace and love.
Sharon Salzberg:
So it's really just using the faculty of our attention to make some shifts and some experiments to look at people that we normally look through to wish ourselves well rather than just go through that list one more time of everything that's wrong with us.
Tyler Greene:
Very powerful. And I'm also thinking right now too like when we think of family and family systems is that the self is a part of that, right? Is in many ways the most important part of that. And I also remember you defining meditation as relationship somewhere and I'm wondering if those two are the same ideas and how you think that fits into this discussion of family.
Sharon Salzberg:
Well, that's interesting. I mean, mindfulness is a quality of relationship because it doesn't mean something is not happening. It doesn't mean you're not having that same repetitive thought. It doesn't mean you're not having the same fear or anxiety or whatever. It means you're learning to relate to it differently. And that's everything because you can't actually insist like, "I'm never going to be afraid again or I'm never going to have that nasty thought again." But you can relate differently and it will change everything. That's an interesting expansion when you think about a family system where you can't make your uncle any more politically in tune with other-
Tyler Greene:
Brother in my case, yeah.
Sharon Salzberg:
Okay. Or you can try, but it doesn't seem to work really. But how do you relate to it? The degree that we absorb the toxicity of another or the way it can impact us and be so devastating, that can shift.
Tyler Greene:
Yeah. It strikes me that we're all absorbing each other a lot more these days as we sit in various forms of quarantine. What have you learned as you observe the way that this COVID-19 pandemic is unfolding?
Sharon Salzberg:
I don't know if there's a uniform learning. It's too bad this is not... In the beginning, it felt like there was maybe a tremendous growing understanding of interconnection and how we are all really connected and that we can live in a delusion or illusion that what happens over there is going to nicely stay over there, but it really comes over here. And what we do, it matters because the truth is that it's an interconnected universe.
Somebody sent me a quotation of me, which is always a very interesting event from 10 years ago, something like that where I said, as I do say that interconnection isn't just a spiritual understanding that science teaches us this and economics teaches us this. Environmental consciousness certainly teaches us this and even epidemiology teaches us this. So I've always used the term epidemiology.
Because I have friends who are epidemiologists. But people used to say to me, "Why are you using that word? What does that mean? I don't know what that means." It was very funny. So here we are, we're singing that very beautiful aspect of interconnection, but nonetheless. And it also felt like... I was having a conversation with this doctor who's ahead head of like a medical practice, and he said to me, I'm appreciating so much more now, it's the hospital cleaning staff.
You think about all the people that we are actually counting on that we're dependent on, in fact and that we usually ignore, look right through. It just indifferent to them. We couldn't care less. And it felt in the beginning like that was the awakening like, "Oh, we do need each other and we're all in this together now." It's a little hard to say because if they've been alone, they're envious of the people who have their families with them or friends with them and then the people with friends in worst cases they could be alone.
I've read so many things that people have said, "We're all at home." And we're not all at home. A lot of people are going out and working every single day. I know a lot of people who talk about spending time with their children in a different way and how incredible it is. But that's not true for everybody.
Tyler Greene:
Yeah. This is not a revolutionary thought, but I think everything feels very zoomed in still, and that can be quite good and it can also be difficult to wrangle if you have a fisher in your relationship with the person you're living with. Or I laughed earlier when you were comparing like people who have people to live with versus people who don't. I see my friends on Facebook who are single and are saying like, "Don't give me any complaints about your partner because you have one."
So I'm curious, I know you're teaching a lot and you just launched this book, but what have you been turning to when you're craving that, that Sangha or that family?
Sharon Salzberg:
Well, I have been teaching an enormous amount. And of course the characteristic of teaching online is that everything is potentially international. In the last time I taught, I was reading in the chat where people were from, where they were tuning in from, and someone was in Panama, someone was in Dubai, all over the states. So it's this incredible feeling of closeness and caring. And I have friends, friends that I sit with. We Zoom together and meditate together and speak. And we could also talk, but somebody will kick off online, "I'm having Zoom fatigue. So let's just talk on the phone for God's sake."
Tyler Greene:
The other area that's, I think very relevant for advice these days is difficult people. On so many levels, I think obviously politically, there's conversations that need to be had. I think particularly among white people in family systems, that can get really quite difficult. And truth is like my brother is a staunch Trump Republican. And just as an example, like how do we have a conversation that's effective? And then what is an effective conversation? How do you advise people to enter into those conversations? What's important to consider?
Sharon Salzberg:
Well, I don't know that I would advise them to enter into those conversations. It depends on your own discernment. It depends on your intention. What do you hope to get from that conversation? Even in the Buddhist analysis of action, and I'm sure you've heard this many times, there's the intention behind the action, the motivation, and we get to know our motives more than more mindful we are. Sometimes, before a major conversation, before a major meeting or phone call, why don't you just ask yourself, what do I want to see more than anything to come out of this conversation?
So I want to be seen as right. Do I want a resolution? Do I want to just convey my interest? Do I want to grind them into dust? Because that will give us a clue about what we're motivated by. And then there's the issue of discernment in terms of the skillful or unskillful execution of that intention. Is this the kind of comment you suspect might be best done privately or in a group? And that assessment of skillfulness and unskillfulness also could involve, I'm not spending time with that parent who's actually dangerous, physically or mentally to my health.
And I'm not saying you have to do that, but that's discernment. That's wisdom. So depending on your motivation, you want to keep a bond. You want to let someone know you care. You want to have an ongoing discussion. Then that's the conversation. I care about you. If you want to try to disentangle someone's views, then you can say that. Let's just put it out on the table. I'm going to tell you what I think of your views, and you can tell me what you think of mine. But plenty of people who, for the sake of their own mental health imbalance are saying, "I'm not going there. I'm just not going there."
Tyler Greene:
I think it's just tricky, right? Very, very tricky, because there's so much noise. There's so much noise. And I'm struck that maybe one way in for my brother specifically, without going into too many details is just trying to know him more and know what events have led to this support of this person that I don't support. Then that might be an interesting opening.
So in an even more serious topic forgiving and forgiveness of people who have either harmed us or have caused damage in our lives. I'm thinking in my life of a couple people who I don't know that I have actually fully forgiven. Right. And you hear this phrase that forgiveness would be for me in that instance and maybe not for the other person.
Sharon Salzberg:
And it's a very complex topic because people use the word differently. One of my colleague friends, Sylvia Boorstein says forgiveness does not mean amnesia, but we often think it does that we're wiping the slate clean, that what happened didn't matter. And maybe it really does matter. As you said, it's more like not wanting to carry something, so that it's really a burden for us. When I was writing Real Change, it had the foot, "Oh, I want to use the Gandhi quote where he said something like the difference between feeling anger and being immersed and overcome and lost in anger."
Because we feel what we feel right and you can't really blame yourself for what you feel. I mean, you can, but it's not that helpful. The question is, "Do you want to let it take you over?" So I had the thought, "Oh God, Gandhi said something like to be lost in anger is like drinking poison, thinking it's going to kill the other guy."
So I really want to quite a bit because I wanted to use it in the book. I had to find the attribution and the exact wording. I never once saw it attributed to Gandhi. I attribute it to the Buddha, and Oprah Winfrey, and Nelson Mandela, and the big book of AA, and Carrie Fisher. So I have no idea who said it, but that's like fundamental wisdom. We obsess about what someone else did or sad. It takes us over, and it's just too much. It's so toxic and energy.
So what we want to do is just be free of that. Forgiveness maybe too lofty a goal in terms of the wording, but we want to be free of that kind of obsessive linkage to someone else's action, which we actually cannot change. And so that's really the point. So I think we can have a compassion truly, but compassion also doesn't mean giving in and making nice and all those things we tend to think it means.
Tyler Greene:
In your book, Real Change, you talk about this idea of residing in the bigger vision. For me, I see my son's face which is very cliched and whatever, but you see his face and you see that's the future. So then that informs decisions that I make now on a daily basis. So I'm curious what your wish is or your bigger vision for, I guess, the great American family at this time in our culture?
Sharon Salzberg:
My wish comes in different phases within my Buddhist background of training of the Buddha talking about the innate dignity of everybody, that everybody has worth, everybody matters. And I think that correlates that everybody should have a voice. And I think that is based on my larger wish that we come to that place of a deeper and deeper sense of interconnection, of interdependence that we realized that our lives really have something to do with one another.
Tyler Greene:
Sharon Salzberg, thank you so much for joining me.
Sharon Salzberg:
Thank you.
Tyler Greene:
Here's the thing. The election results make it clearer than ever. We live in an extremely divided nation today. Nearly split down the middle. And our family units, even if they are the most serene families in the world, they're affected by the energy of that division. So I wanted to summarize a few things that Sharon taught us this weekend. Say a few words about each.
First of all, taking care of your mental health is part of being able to care for others. RuPaul says, "If you can't love yourself, how in the hell are you going to love somebody else?" Meditating, sleeping, going for a run, avoiding sugar, all the things that you can do to take care of your body, your mind, and your spirit will help the rest of your family.
Number two, before you enter into a difficult conversation, ask yourself why you're doing it. What do you want out of it? I'm thinking here too of Oprah and intention, how she starts every meeting by stating the intention from the beginning, which is a practice that I wish I could remember more often.
Number three, suffering is a part of life. It doesn't make you weird, it makes you human. I think we spend so much time trying to fix ourselves and to prevent ourselves from hurting. And the truth is sometimes it just sucks, and it's part of being a person in the world.
Your homework for today is to listen to the meditation at the end of this episode after the credits. And if you're so inclined, also listen to the meditation I link to in the show notes. If you go that far and you're still interested, I recommend downloading the 10% Happier app and trying to do 10 minutes a day. Carve out a space for yourself. Make time for you.
One meditation teacher told me if we can't make 10 minutes for ourselves, we really need to pause and think about that. Let me know if you have a meditation practice or if you're struggling to get one started, I'd love to help, tyler@timfshow.com. And that's it for today's show. On next week's episode, we talked to Tony award-winning educator, Corey Mitchell, about creative families, drama kids, and the night he stood on stage at the iconic radio city music hall to accept the aforementioned Tony award.
Corey Mitchell:
When you look out, even if you're able to see the back wall, you're still looking at audiences. So it just like gets this feeling that you're looking out into infinity of people giving love back to you. And that was truly incredible.
Tyler Greene:
Thanks for listening to This is My Family. You can find Sharon's work at sharonsalzberg.com or on all the social media platforms. Make sure you add her podcast to your rotation. She hosts a show called the Metta Hour, and again, stay tuned until after the credits for a short guided meditation from the master herself. You can find this show on social media @TIMFshow. Our website is timfshow.com. This is a production of the Story Producer and it's produced by me, Tricia Bobeda and Jackie Ball. It's edited and mixed by Adam Yoffe. Our music is by Andrew Edwards. Our community manager is Anika Exum and last, but certainly not least our art director is my handsome husband, Ziwu Zhou.
If you like what you're hearing, we'd love five stars and a review on Apple Podcasts. Be sure that you're subscribed on whatever podcast app you use. And if you're on Spotify, don't forget to hit follow and switch on notifications to get informed of new episodes as they come out. Thanks for listening. I'm Tyler Greene, and until next time stay beautiful and messy.
Okay. So Sharon, this time has been really invaluable to me and I hope our listeners. I really appreciate your time. And I'm hoping since I have you, that you would be willing to end us on a short meditation.
Sure. Let's do a kind of foundational exercise and concentration together. You can sit comfortably and close your eyes or not, however you feel most of these. Bring your attention to the place where you feel the breath most clearly, most strongly.
Sharon Salzberg:
Maybe that's the nostrils or the chest or the abdomen. And this is just the normal natural breath. You don't have to try to make it deeper or different.
You can find that place where the breath is clearest for you. Bring your attention there and just rest. Let's see if you can feel one breath.
And if you like, you can use a quiet mental notation like in, out or rise and falling to help support the awareness of the breath, but very quiet. So your attention is really going to feeling the breath one breath at a time.
Of images or sounds, or sensations, or emotions should arise, but they're not very strong, if you can stay connected to the feeling of the breath, just let them flow on by your breathing. It's just one breath.
If something does come up and it pulls you away, you get lost in thought, spun out in a fantasy or you fall asleep, truly, don't worry about it. We say the next moment is the really important moment after you've been gone, after you've been lost, where we have the chance to be really different.
So instead of judging yourself and being down on yourself and calling yourself a failure, see if you can just recognize that you've been distracted, gently let go and come back. Just bring your attention back to the feeling of the breath. (silence)
When you feel ready, you can open your eyes, lift your gaze and we'll end the meditation.
Tyler Greene:
Thank you.
Sharon Salzberg:
Thank you. That was nice, little soothing.
Tyler Greene:
That was nice. Thank you very much. I am, again ,just very moved that you said yes to this. I appreciate it. I know how incredibly busy you are. I really, really appreciate it.
Is the podcast all done, Sam?
Sam:
All done.