Krista Tippett: Sylvia, I want to ask you, to this question of raising children, human beings who are kind, who have a heart for the world, in a world that’s troubled — when you and I met on a panel in Southern California two years ago, you told a story about leading mindfulness teaching sessions. And you told a story about, I think, it was a man who at the end of it said, “I’m frightened to go back out into the world. I feel so vulnerable, and in here I’m safe. But I don’t know how I can be out in the world and be vulnerable.”

That story came back to me as I was thinking about interviewing you on this subject because I think, as a parent, there’s a version of that that goes through my mind. How much do I expose my children to? How do I teach them to be kind and open to the world’s pain — and vulnerable? And yet I want them to be safe, and I actually want them to be tough out in that scary world at the same time. Talk to me about that.

Slyvia Boorstein: As a child who’s growing up, inevitably they live in the world, and they’ll hear about things. If they live in a house that’s relatively peaceful, and we have a certain amount of control as parents about how much the TV is on and what’s on the TV and how much they are confronted by the pain of the world. You know what I think?

Since for myself, really, I can’t — sometimes the pain of the world seems incomprehensible and unbearable to me, but I think if there’s anything that balances it, it’s the wonder at the world, the amazingness of people, how kind they are, how resilient they are, how people will take care of people that they don’t know. If somebody falls or someone’s in trouble in a public place, people take care of them. People take care of people that they don’t know. Human beings have that ability. I don’t think they have to learn it. They don’t have to have lessons. I think we’re a companionable species, for the most part.

Every once in a while, we meet hermit-type people. But for the most part, we’re companionable and congenial, and we care about other people, and we take care of them. So to be able to look at human beings and say human beings are amazing. Life is amazing. The sun came up in the exact right place this morning and celebrates seasons. I think that’s a wonderful part of being part of a group of people who celebrate seasons and birthdays and holy days. So that here we are again at another time in another season, and there’s that great cosmos out there to look at and imagine people going up into space and looking at the stars. Our ancestors looked at the same stars.

I think that there’s a way of — if I keep in myself a sense of amazement, I tell my grandchildren, “Look at this moon. It’s a three-day moon. It’s the best moon. It’s better than a two-day moon. A two-day moon is kind of skimpy. You really can’t see it yet. And a four-day moon? Oh, it’s already on its way to a moon, but a three-day moon is just beautiful. It’s my favorite moon.” And if I show that to them, then they begin to think, “Oh, it’s my favorite moon, a three-day moon.” That just happens to be me. I like moons. Everybody will do it in their own way. I think that all these balances — when the Buddha taught about needing to see the suffering in the world so that we could respond with compassion, he also talked about the preciousness of life and the need to take care of it, and I think they’re both.

Tippett: Cultivating those two at the same time. I mean, that’s also something I think — our children give us new eyes, especially when they’re very little, to see the world. Actually Trent, my colleague, was talking about taking a walk with his son the other day. I remember those moments when your children are little, and it’s like everything has been invented for them. And they name it. And everything is fascinating.

Boorstein: Yeah, yeah. Right. You can look at one flower for a long time because it’s amazing when they start to do that. I have a friend who ends all of her emails — you know where you have an automatic signature, and you put your automatic signature? Her automatic signature says, “Stay amazed.” I love that.

Tippett: This is also making me think about how we need to be attentive to what our children can teach us, as well as what we want to impart to them, because some of this they know, and they actually know more immediately than we do, because we lose it. I remember watching something terrible on the news the other day. And my daughter said, “So many beautiful lives in the world, and this is what they focus on.”

Boorstein: Well, I think the beautiful and wonderful lives in the world — I certainly am not a sociologist of journalism — aren’t as compelling images as the others.

Tippett: They don’t make good headlines.

Boorstein: They don’t make good headlines. It would be wonderful — I don’t know if it would be commercially viable if there were a channel that had all wonderful things in the news.

Tippett: I don’t know. It’s hard to make good news sexy. It is. I think about this a lot as a journalist.

Boorstein: But somebody could do that. Some entrepreneur could figure it out.

Tippett: Maybe. But I think it’s like kindness. It’s the stuff of moments. But it can be absolutely transformative in moments, and these beautiful lives are transformative in moments. But we have to train ourselves to look for them.

Boorstein: There were two things that you just said. One of them is that when we are really paying attention, which is what mindfulness is, we really connect with other people. Lots of times, I think, for reasons of rush or whatever, even with our own children, we’re not completely there. I have a friend whose grandchild said to him — a grandchild with whom he spends a lot of time; he was visiting and staying at the house and doing whatever — said to him, “Grandpa, do you love me?” He said, “Of course I love you. You do know that, don’t you?” He said, “Yes, but I don’t feel it when you aren’t paying attention to me.” So there is something about really paying attention.

What seems most clear to me is that children pick up what their parents live. My friend Jim Finley, who’s a Christian contemplative psychotherapist, said, “I learned to pray sitting next to my mother in church.” And what I understood from him is that he didn’t learn the words of the prayer; he learned the feelings out of her body as she sat there. I think that children learn that from us.

When we bless them in a natural way, if it’s part of our way, then they feel all right about it. We used to have certain kinds of blessing rituals in our family that we still do. But at some point I elaborated on them. So we’d finish a blessing, like the blessing at the end of the Sabbath, and then I’d say, “And now everybody kisses everybody.” And they all did it, for a certain amount of years until my eldest grandchild, at some point — we’d finished the ritual, and I said, “Now everybody kisses everybody.” He said, “I don’t think everybody does this in their family.” So all of a sudden he didn’t want to kiss his girl cousins, I think. But the kissing is extra. Blessing is blessing.

Spirituality doesn’t look like sitting down and meditating. Spirituality looks like folding the towels in a sweet way and talking kindly to the people in the family even though you’ve had a long day. Or even saying to them, “Listen, I’ve had such a long day, but it would be really wonderful if I could just fold these — I’d really love folding these towels quietly if you all are ready to go bed without me,” or whatever it is.

But I actually think that spiritual parenting — people often say to me, “I have so many things that take up my day. I don’t have time to take up a spiritual practice.” And the thing about being a parent who might think of themselves as a wise parent or a spiritual parent doesn’t take extra time. It’s enfolded into the act of parenting. You fold the towels in a sweet way. It doesn’t take extra time.

Tippett: So Sylvia, one thing following on that. Lovingkindness meditation is also towards one’s self. You share a story in your writing about precisely that. But you share what you often say to yourself when you’re in a moment of anxiety. OK. So I think this is just great advice. I’m going to hang onto this: “Sweetheart, you are in pain. Relax. Take a breath. Let’s pay attention to what is happening. Then we’ll figure out what to do.” I think that’s a fabulous sentence for one’s self and for one’s children.

Boorstein: I’m so pleased that you found that. It’s tremendously pleasing to me because I meet people in some significant numbers who tell me that they say to themselves in moments of distress. They say, “I say to myself, ‘Sweetheart, you’re in pain. Relax, take a breath.’” I love that. A whole bunch of people out there saying to themselves, “Sweetheart.”

Tippett: As I promised, I want to end with a poem. We’re going to let Pablo Neruda have the last word because you mentioned this in your writing as a poem that you always have with you.

I printed it out, and I think it’s beautiful, and I wonder if you’d leave that as a gift for all the rest of us.

Boorstein: This is called, “Keeping Quiet.”

“Now we will count to twelve / and we will all keep still. / For once on the face of the earth, / let’s not speak in any language; / let’s stop for a second, / and not move our arms so much. / It would be an exotic moment, / without rush, without engines; / we would all be together / in a sudden strangeness. / Fishermen in the cold sea / would not harm whales / and the man gathering salt / would not look at his hurt hands. / Those who prepare green wars, / wars with gas, wars with fire, / victories with no survivors, / would put on clean clothes / and walk about with their brothers / in the shade, doing nothing. / What I want should not be confused / with total inactivity. / Life is what it is about; / If we were not so single-minded / about keeping our lives moving, / and for once could do nothing, / perhaps the huge silence / might interrupt this sadness / of never understanding ourselves / and of frightening ourselves with death. / Now I’ll count up to twelve / and you keep quiet and I will go.”