Krista Tippett: The first time I came to IMS, which was a long time ago, before I had met you, and very much as a visitor and very new to understanding this tradition and these practices, I think there were a bunch of rabbis and Christian ministers on three-month silent retreats at the Insight Meditation Society. So that, also, is a reality of how this has penetrated the culture.

Sharon Salzberg:
Well, I think it’s really true. When I was at this Buddhist-Christian conference at Gethsemane Monastery —

Tippett: Thomas Merton’s monastery.

Salzberg: Thomas Merton’s monastery. And the Dalai Lama was there; he was one of the participants. It was a very small conference. And in the beginning it was, honestly, it was kind of dreary. Everyone was extremely polite and gracious, but very polite. And it actually all turned around when Norman Fisher, who’s a Zen teacher, got up. And he’s a really guileless kind of person, so he spoke with tremendous sincerity. And he said, “I just want to ask you a question. I don’t understand what’s inspiring about a crucifix.” He said, “I look at the cross, and that’s one thing. But when the figure of Christ is hanging off the cross,” he said, “I don’t find that inspiring. And I don’t mean to offend anybody, but I just really want to know, what do you see? What are you thinking?”

And then the whole thing shifted, and then everybody, from every side, was talking about suffering, and suffering that has nowhere to go, suffering that can only look at a figure like that and have the thought, he would understand, and suffering of losing your fellow priests in a massacre in some place, or suffering of losing your country, as a Tibetan. And all of a sudden, we were actually connecting. And it took that. It took coming back to, OK, what’s real? It’s like, suffering. Let’s talk about it.

Tippett: I do want to touch a bit on — your new book is Real Change, and the connection you’re making that I also feel is really organically revealing itself in a new way, in this young century, between inner life and outer presence in the world — and you said, somewhere — I was reading an interview you gave this year — “one of the weirdest results of meditation is a powerful sense of connection to others.”

Salzberg: Isn’t that weird?

Tippett: But it’s everything, isn’t it? It’s really where you’re going with this now, and I think where a lot of people are going with this.

Salzberg: It’s weird, just because on the face of it, it’s such a solitary activity. You might be all alone, you might be sitting with your eyes closed. But there’s such a profound truth to interconnection that gets revealed. And it’s not because we’re superimposing the idea, like, I have to see it that way. But that’s what we see. Because we feel like, oh, it’s just me, but really, what’s the truth?

It’s like, I was talking to the head of a medical practice not too long ago, and he said, “You know who I’m really appreciating in a whole new way is the cleaning staff.” And you think, well, yeah. Look at how many people we rely on. Or when I teach lovingkindness practice, one of the categories, classically, is a neutral person, somebody we don’t like or dislike very much.

Tippett: So you’d send out wishes for happiness and health and [indistinct].

Salzberg: So we might be repeating phrases like “May you be happy, may you be healthy,” just to acknowledge them and wish them well. And probably for 45 years, when we talk about that neutral person, my colleagues and I would say, “like the checkout person in the supermarket, the kind of person you usually look right through, you couldn’t care less about.” And I heard myself say that, and I go, whoops. Look at that. How do we think we get to eat?

Tippett: And I think you’re saying, that’s inner life and it’s outer life, all at the same time.

Salzberg: It’s totally united. It’s the way we get the sense of freedom to keep doing what we’re doing. And we need — many of us need a kind of reflective or contemplative or introspective, meditative component to that so that we can keep connecting to that truth, as well.

Tippett: I also experience, in new generations, a wisdom about this, and a wisdom that I think — a perspective that I think 2020 has only deepened, which is that the work ahead of us, to create the world we want to live in, that we want to offer to future generations — that that’s the work of the rest of our lifetimes. It’s long. It’s transformation that’s needed. And then I experience new generations of caregivers and social change agents to understand that they’re going to need renewal to keep going.

One other thing, one final thing that I’ve taken from this retreat I’ve been on with you, virtually, is — I’ve spoken with you previously, including on the show, about enemies. And you just said it really clearly. And as you know, we live in this moment where — “divided” doesn’t do it. We have chasms between us. And there’s a lot of enemy feeling and language and posturing. And you said, loving your enemies is science. Yes, it’s a teaching of lovingkindness, it’s a spiritual teaching, but that it’s actually the most pragmatic teaching.

Salzberg: Sometimes people feel, or they say, if I hear something like, generosity or kindness will help you feel more free, and free up that energy which you will need, then I think that’s selfish. That’s bad, because then my motive is impure. And I usually say, well, that’s not greed. That’s science. If you devote your energy in a certain direction, you’re going to be depleted, very likely, and you’re going to feel more alone, and you’re going to suffer. And that’s not the basis for trying to make a difference. And so what can we do that actually is going to have us feel some sense of renewal and some sense of possibility, because things are so bad, in so many ways, but to remember, oh, people can find one another, and we can understand one another in a different way. How do we get back to that, just, conviction that it’s possible? We do need energy for that. And so what is going to have that energy come forward and be something that can serve us in some way?

And I remember my father saying something in one of his brief visits back, when he was already — he was so trashed mentally, and he said something like, “You can’t let people affect you.” And I was like, really? Is that the lesson that I’m supposed to absorb? But I did absorb it. And then you get to look at those things in your own mind, and all these things that you’ve believed, like vengefulness is really going to make you strong, and you look at it and you think, well, that was a myth. Look how painful that state is, to be enclosed in that way and shut off to anything else. And things like, compassion is stupid and make you too weak. And really? Look at that. Look at the state itself. It’s not like that.

And so we get to discover all the things that are possible for us, and we see, you know what? I don’t want to live a life that is based on, it’s a dog eat dog world. And I don’t want to feel that alone. I don’t want to feel that frightened. And I have possibilities. There are choices, because if I can see those assumptions arise in my mind as they’re arising, not seven years later but as it’s happening, then I can say — it’s the same thing. It’s probably all the same lesson. Everything’s like a fractal, in the dharma. You open the door, and there’s the visitor, and you say, “Oh, there you are. Have a cup of tea. Sit. I’m not going there again.” And it’s the gentlest thing. It’s not angry at yourself, and it’s not full of shame and trying to avoid what’s going on. It’s just saying, “I don’t need to go down there again.”

Tippett: It’s another form of strength that is good for us.

There was a section where you were teaching “Shelter for the Heart and Mind,” which I wrote down, and it came out looking like a poem — like an 11-line poem. I’m going to read it to you. And it’s simple, and yet, it’s — I think it’s in this category of what is really true.

“I do the best I can,
I try to learn from my mistakes,
and the world is the world
of constant change
and pleasure and pain
and being thanked and not being thanked —
all of those things.
And so that’s where equanimity comes in
as a kind of comprehension
of, this is the way things are.”

Salzberg: Wow. That’s great. That’s beautiful.

Tippett: It’s you.

Salzberg: No, but it’s you.

Tippett: No, it was literally your words.

Salzberg: Wow. That’s amazing.

Tippett: But when I wrote them out, I realized that it’s like this complete meditation. You want to say any more about that? That feels like, in some ways, it sums up so much of what we’ve been talking about. I’ll send you this, so you can see it as a poem.

Salzberg: That’s so beautiful. I’m so glad. I, as you know, from yourself and like many people, it’s like, I never know what I’m going to say, so it just kind of emerges, which is how I learned to teach, because when we started, Joseph and I, I was too petrified to do any of the talks.

But it was only through my later development of lovingkindness meditation or even the recognition of it that I realized, oh, we’re just here, connecting. That’s the nature of it. People aren’t here to listen to me impart my incredible expertise about something. We’re just connecting. That’s the important thing. And it’s just us. Here we are. And that’s when I could begin to give talks. And so I don’t usually use notes or something, it’s just whatever emerges. And so that’s really beautiful, that I said that.

It comes down, so much of the time, to equanimity, which is really peace. And certainly, if I heard the word “equanimity,” long ago, I’d have thought, “That’s really bizarre. What does that mean?” And so many times, we think it means indifference, but it really doesn’t. It’s such a huge capacity of our hearts to see what we’re going through, to see what others are going through, and to just have this perspective of, there is change in life. And there is light in the darkness and darkness in the light. And we’re not avoiding pain, because some things just hurt. That’s fundamental. But we’re holding it in a way that it’s almost like when I said earlier, the awareness is stronger than the visitor. It’s like the love is stronger than the pain, even. And the room we create, the environment we create, where all of this can come and go — it is, it’s built of awareness, it’s built of love, and it’s built of the sense of community — that we’re not so alone. And then we can really be with things in a very, very different way.