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# Look inward to make external change: Advice from a meditation teacher

By Elise Hu, Andee Tagle

Tuesday, October 20, 2020 • 12:03 AM EDT

When you think about meditation, what comes to mind?

Perhaps it evokes gentle music, the soft light of candles or a cool, tranquil
space. Maybe you're thinking about the last five minutes of your yoga practice
or the first five minutes of your morning. Or, maybe, meditation doesn't do
much for you at all.

But have you ever considered meditation as a means for social change? Or
mindfulness as a path toward real action?

When the outside world feels upside-down — like it so often does these days —
it might seem counterintuitive to look inside yourself for change. But that's
exactly what Sharon Salzberg, a bestselling author and world-renowned
meditation teacher, says is the answer.

Salzberg's new book, _Real Change: Mindfulness to Heal Ourselves and the
World_, __ argues that doing work within ourselves can create ripples of real
change in the outer world.

"One of the strangest things I discovered about meditation practice is that
while it looks like maybe the most solitary activity imaginable ... what it
actually produces is a profound sense of connection, not only to yourself but
to others," says Salzberg.

Salzberg wrote her new book for the many meditators she knows who are looking
to bring their compassion alive into the world and for the many activists she
knows on the front lines in need of relief. Wherever you are in your journey,
she says, taking the time to be present with yourself and your emotions can be
healing and gratifying. And that awareness can lead to connections —
connections that lead to real change.

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Related Story: NPR

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So, you might be asking, where do you start?

Mindfulness is a time to be with ourselves and our emotions "without the
intense overlay of projection or comparison or judgment ... so that we get a
cleaner, clearer view of what our experience actually is," Salzberg says.
Mindfulness can be practiced in a lot of ways, and meditation, she says, is a
direct shot at it.

She suggests taking 10 or 15 minutes out of your day to practice mindful
meditation.

From this space of clarity, says Salzberg, we can get a better sense of
ourselves, our place in the world and our relationships to other people. We
can "reorient our priorities, and our worldview changes."

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Related Story: NPR

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Sitting with your emotions in this way allows you to look at your experience
with more objectivity. Take anger, for example.

"If you just watch — not judging and not being lost in it — you see anger is a
very complex emotion. It almost always has sadness in it, fear in it, maybe
grief in it, maybe guilt in it, and ... you see a kind of kernel of
helplessness in it," says Salzberg. "And if we can get there to where we
really observe the helplessness, then that's the moment we will resolve on an
action, and that's the beginning of channeling the energy."

That energy won't go far without recognizing your agency, Salzberg says.

"I've seen over so many years of teaching that even as we develop a lot more
kindness and compassion, there's often a feeling like, 'I could never do
enough, whatever I have to contribute is so meager, it's little and nothing,
and so I won't do anything.' " Agency requires that we continue to take action
despite that uncertainty or insecurity.

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Related Story: NPR

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"It means finding the one thing that you can make real to begin with, just
making a call or getting someone's phone number," says Salzberg. "It's like
we're rebuilding at the same time everything is falling apart."

It's these small individual acts, says Salzburg, that can together bring about
big societal change.

"We share this life. We share this planet. We need to be responsive to one
another as though what we do affects others and what others do will affect us,
because that's the truth of things."

* * *

_The podcast portion of this story was produced by Andee Tagle._

 _We'd love to hear from you. Leave us a voicemail at 202-216-9823 with a
greeting, your name, your phone number and a random life tip. Or send us an
email at_ _LifeKit@npr.org_ _. It might appear in an upcoming episode._

 _For more Life Kit,_ _subscribe to our newsletter_ _._

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### Transcript

ELISE HU, HOST:

This is NPR's LIFE KIT. I'm Elise Hu. Today, we're talking mindfulness and
meditation but maybe not in a way you're used to.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

SHARON SALZBERG: Imagine you're on the subway and these Martians come, and
they zap the subway cars so that those of you who are in there are going to be
together forever.

HU: That's Sharon Salzberg. She's a bestselling author and world-renowned
meditation expert. She really likes this alien subway example her friend
shared with her because it reminds us, we're not alone. We're all connected.

SALZBERG: What do you do? You know, if somebody is hungry, you feed them.
Somebody is freaking out, you try to calm them down, not 'cause you
necessarily like them or approve of them, but because you're going to be
together forever. Well, guess what? There's a kind of reality to that. We
share this life. We share this planet. We need to be responsive to one another
as though what we do affects others and what others do will affect us because
that's the truth of things.

HU: When the outside world feels so upside down, like it often does these
days, it might feel counterintuitive to look inside yourself for change. But
that's exactly what Sharon Salzberg says is the answer. Meditation and
mindfulness can get you on the path to being that helpful person on the subway
car.

SALZBERG: You know, sometimes the change we seek is vast and deep, and that
doesn't mean it's going to happen right away. But we understand that
everything is, like, a step-by-step process, and we're going to put everything
we've got into this next step.

HU: Her new book, "Real Change: Mindfulness To Heal Ourselves And Our World,"
is all about practicing our own mindfulness and about how meditation can
create ripples of real change.

SALZBERG: I've wanted to write this book for years, both because I know so
many people who are meditators who are really looking for a way to bring their
compassion alive into the world, and I know so many activists who are really
on the front lines of suffering and trying to make a difference and who are
really burning out and maybe could use some of these practices.

HU: In this episode of LIFE KIT, my interview with meditation teacher Sharon
Salzberg about her new book and how using meditation more in our everyday
lives can make this subway car we call a planet a little bit better.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

HU: All right. Sharon, let's start at the beginning. You say in your book that
mindfulness and meditation practices are often thought of as personal and too
maybe inward focused, but you also say they can be very social as well. Can
you introduce us to that idea?

SALZBERG: I think one of the strangest things I discovered about meditation
practice is that while it looks like maybe the most solitary activity
imaginable - you might be all alone...

HU: Sure.

SALZBERG: ...You might be sitting with your eyes closed - what it actually
produces is a profound sense of connection, not only to yourself but to
others. There's some awareness of how interconnected this world actually is
and how entwined our lives are that just seems to come as a kind of insight.
And that's the beginning of really wanting to live those values and not just,
like, sit there and enjoy them.

HU: For folks who are approaching meditation as a concept for the first time
or mindfulness, and they hear about mindfulness but don't quite understand it
or think of it as something that's a little woo woo, how are mindfulness and
meditation foundations for what you argue is the possibility of social change?

SALZBERG: Well, mindfulness can be practiced in lots of different ways.
Meditation is like a direct shot at it, you know. It's like saying, OK, for
these next five or 10 or 15 minutes, whatever, I'm going to just try
cultivating this ability. So mindfulness is really an ability to be with our
experience without the intense overlay of so much projection or comparison or
judgment, and that way we get actually a cleaner, clearer view of what our
experience actually is. So we may have physical pain or heartache or
disappointment, and right away, just out of habit, we start projecting it into
the future, like what's it going to feel like tomorrow? What's it going to
feel like next week? So not only...

HU: Or we try to push it away, right?

SALZBERG: Or we try to push it away. So we not only have what's actually
happening, we have the burden of our reaction to what's happening. And so...

HU: Or our fears of how people might think of what happening.

SALZBERG: Yeah. No, exactly. We try to just let go of those add-ons and be
more directly with our experience. And that, I think, is partly where we find
one another. When you actually get to look at the state 'cause you're
experiencing it directly, you think, look at that, you know? That's not that
weak after all. And so we reorient our priorities, and our world view changes.

HU: We are in a real reckoning, a real racial reckoning in the United States
and in the middle of a global pandemic with coronavirus. And you write of how
we respond to wake-up calls and respond to crisis situations. So it's fight,
flight or freeze reactions. And I know a lot of us can really relate to this
sense of freezing. And you talk about refining that into a response that's
more active and engaged. Can you walk us through that?

SALZBERG: I think the whole point of that description is that the stress
dynamic is really a dynamic. There's the stressor, the pressure, the incident,
the situation coming at us, and then there's the resource with which it's met.
And we don't usually give much power to that sense of resource. And that is
not meant to imply that we never try to change the stressor. We do. You know,
we try to change the circumstance and alter things and so on. But we often
neglect that incredible power that we have through meeting things differently.

You know, how many times do we have people trying to help us and we don't let
in those helping hands? You know, turning away a resource. Or we give up
before we even began. You know, so there are lots of ways in which we realize
that we can well cultivate a greater sense of resource with which to meet the
adversity that's happening.

HU: So is the resource and the power that we meet these challenges, is that
agency? You know, you write an entire chapter on agency. So talk a little bit
about that and what it means to you.

SALZBERG: Well, I've seen, you know, in so many people over so many years of
teaching is that even as we develop a lot more kindness and compassion,
there's often a feeling like I could never do enough. Whatever I have to...

HU: Yes.

SALZBERG: ...Contribute is so, like, meager. It's so, like, little and
nothing.

HU: Yes.

SALZBERG: You know, so I won't do anything. And so I think agency is that
moment when we do something, you know.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

SALZBERG: It's that one step. And so many times, we're befuddled. We don't
know what to do, and nothing seems enough. But we have to take that one step,
and that's agency. It means finding the one thing that you can make real to
begin with, just making a call or getting someone's phone number and making
sure they have yours in case you need it. It's like we're rebuilding at the
same time everything is falling apart. And so we have to look at what we are
building and what we really care about.

HU: It sounds to me like you're saying these individual acts can together
bring about the societal change that is necessary, kind of going back to the
original idea we were talking about.

SALZBERG: Yeah, because it's real, you know? Like, I don't think we need to
lose that vision at all of kind of vast systemic change and that understanding
that there are causes and conditions for a lot of what we see, and we don't
need to stay just on the surface. We can look deeper at those causes and
conditions. But at the same time, what's real, you know, it's that person
right in front of you who's scared to go to the grocery store. Or, you know, I
know so many stories of people who reach out to someone who seem lonely.

You know, people in New York would say to me, I've lived in this building, in
this apartment for 12 years and I never even knew my neighbor's name. And now,
we all have one another's phone numbers, and we check in on one another. You
know, that's...

HU: That has been a nice - yeah. That has been a nice outcome of this, the
increased sense of community - right? - and neighborliness. I've heard some
stories like that as well. OK, let's move on to anger. A lot of us are angry
right now for a lot of reasons. But you write about mining the energy of anger
and harvesting it. Can you explain?

SALZBERG: Yes. It's considered, you know, like, in the - from the meditative
perspective, anger is like a mixed emotion. It's got enormous energy, and
that's really positive, and has often a kind of cutting through capacity.
Like, sometimes it's the angriest person in the room at the meeting who's
pointing out the problem that no one else wants to look at. And we're all
studiously looking the other way, and they're saying, look at this, you know?
So we rely on that also.

But if one gets consumed by it and overwhelmed by it, not just feeling it but
really being defined by it, then it tends to be devastating to one's self. And
it really can destroy or damage a lot, you know - our health, our
relationships. That's why we want to mine the energy of it. We don't want to
deny it or put ourselves down for what we're feeling ever. But we want to take
the energy of it without being so lost and the burning and the kind of tunnel
vision. It's like when you think about, for example, the last time you were
really angry at yourself, it's not usually a time where you think I did five
great things the same morning, you know?

HU: (Laughter).

SALZBERG: It's like they're gone. So we get lost in a kind of tunnel vision,
and we don't see options that may actually be there for us.

HU: So talk me through the practicality of that. How would we actually
practice a mindfulness of anger?

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

SALZBERG: Well, one of the things we say to begin with is we do a pivot 'cause
when we have a strong emotion of any kind, then we tend to be entranced with
the object. It's like if you really, really, really want a new car, you are
thinking about which feature and should I do this and should I buy that? And
you're not necessarily turning your attention around and saying, what does it
feel like to want something so much? So it's just what we do with the anger.
We're turning our attention around to anger itself. Like, what does it feel
like in my body?

HU: OK.

SALZBERG: And then what's the sort of anger movie? 'Cause if you just watch
not judging, you know, and not being lost in it, you'll see anger is a very
complex emotion. It almost always has sadness in it, fear in it, maybe grief
in it, maybe guilt in it. And always, pretty well, you see a kind of kernel of
helplessness in it. And if we can get there to where we really observe the
helplessness, then that's the moment we will resolve on an action, and that's
the beginning of channeling the energy.

HU: Grief - another really complicated emotion. And one way that we lose
energy is when we get overwhelmed by feelings of loss and pain and grief. What
is the first step that someone could take to kind of get out of his or her own
way when feeling kind of that sort of profound loss?

SALZBERG: Well, again, you know, I think it's a multitiered process. We have
to honor what we're feeling and not think like, you know, it's been an hour
and a half. I should...

HU: It's time to - yeah.

SALZBERG: ...Get over it....

HU: Like, it's time to - right.

SALZBERG: ...You know?

HU: It's time to get over it. Right. Moving on.

SALZBERG: It's like that's just not fair. And there may be plenty of other
people saying that to us, but we don't need to say to ourselves either, you
know, and so to really honor the - I mean, whatever the loss is - of a person,
of a situation, of an ideal. It hurts. It's really painful. And then we look
at what we might be adding to that - you know? - and especially maybe a sense
of isolation, like I'm the only one. Because really, this is one of the things
- our vulnerability to loss should be one of the things that brings us
together because we all share it.

HU: Yeah.

SALZBERG: And if we feel like completely cast aside by life in our grief then,
you know, I would look at ways of forging some kind of connection to others.
And what - I read something once, which is somewhere in the book, about how
grief is love that doesn't have the normal place to land. And something I do
in that reflection is I go back to, OK, let me also honor the love and
recognize the love that is in here 'cause that's still intact. That's not
lost.

HU: That's really beautiful. Yeah. I've heard some things about how grief -
the amount of grief you feel is kind of the flipside of the amount of love
that you felt. Well, I'm glad you brought this up because with so much pain
happening in the world right now, it seems like a lot of us who are also going
through moments of joy and pleasure stand to feel a little guilty about that
pleasure or joy, or not wanting to post good things that happen to them on
social media or over-celebrate. As we are trying to do the best we can, how do
we cultivate a little joy? Are we allowed to feel, you know, a certain amount
of joy or celebration right now despite all of the global pain?

SALZBERG: I think we have to, you know? We need to not be so depleted. We need
to not be so exhausted and overcome by pain because then we can't help anybody
anyway. One of the people that I talk about in the book is this woman
Samantha, who's this amazing young woman from Parkland, Fla., whose mother is
a teacher at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and was there on the day the
school shooting. And I went down there sometime in 2018 and was teaching. And
there were a whole bunch of people there.

And at one point, Samantha raised her hand. She said, I feel really weird
because I'm having an incredible time here, you know, meeting you and learning
about mindfulness and doing these practices. And I know the only reason it's
happening is because that horrible thing happened, and I don't know how to get
over it in order to enjoy this. And I said to her, you know, I don't know if
we ever get over it so much as we learn to hold them both at once. And in
Buddhist terminology, we'd call that equanimity, you know? It's like having a
big enough heart and mind to be able to hold all of that experience at once.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

HU: Another practical takeaway that I'm looking for, Sharon, that would be
really helpful is, is there a quick mindfulness practice? When you go around
and teach, is there a mindfulness practice when we're feeling really worked up
during the course of the day that you can share with us that, you know, I
could use in the course of my life, like the next time more people from the
White House get sick with COVID or there's some sort of news breaking or, you
know, I'm in a fight with my kids.

SALZBERG: Yeah, I mean, if you're really trying to reregulate your nervous
system, which comes in handy in, you know, these times, the basic scientific
teaching - I mean, this is a simplification - but is if you're outbreath is
longer than your inbreath, then your parasympathetic nervous system will take
over for your sympathetic nervous system. Your blood pressure will go down,
and you'll start to calm down. But - and there are fancier ways of doing it,
like you breathe in to the count of four and you breathe out to the count of
eight. And there are lots of forms of it, but the basic need is to have your
outbreath be longer than your inbreath, and it'll happen that way.

HU: That's such a great takeaway just on breathing. Try and make your
outbreath longer than your inbreath.

SALZBERG: Yeah.

HU: Well, one idea and one theme that comes up again and again in your book
and also just in this conversation is the idea of belonging and
interconnectedness. And we're talking about this at a time - we're all pretty
isolated...

SALZBERG: Yeah.

HU: ...Still from one another and really craving connection in some way. But
in the book, you're talking about a deeper, more universal kind of
interconnectedness - right? - that transcends this time that we're in.

SALZBERG: Yeah. I mean, I think it's just the truth of how things are. You
know, like, even before the pandemic, you know, when - I kept reading that
there was a loneliness epidemic in the...

HU: Yes.

SALZBERG: ...States and England and Japan, I think it was. And when I would
read about social connection in terms of health care and how a very strong
healing agent seemed to be to have, you know, a sense of social connection, I
kept thinking, well, it can't be numbers. You know, it can't be like, well, I
only have two friends; I need four. You know, it must be some inner sense of
belonging, of a feeling connected to life, feeling connected to others, you
know, whether we knew them or not. And I believe that's it, you know, which is
why even in these really bizarre circumstances, we can be cultivating that.

HU: What do we stand to gain by recognizing interconnectedness?

SALZBERG: I think one of the powerful things about it is that it's actually
true (laughter), you know? And I think of the story I tell sometimes where I
was riding in the car with a friend of mine, and we were caught in this
incredible, terrible, awful traffic and complaining bitterly about it the
whole time. And then my friend turned to me and said, well, we're the traffic,
too, you know? And I thought, oh, right.

HU: (Laughter).

SALZBERG: You know, like, they're complaining about us.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

SALZBERG: And I look back at that sense of like, I am the center of the
universe. It's my road. You are an interloper, and you're in my way by slowing
down. And I thought, well, there's privilege right there, right?

HU: Yeah.

SALZBERG: And what if that could drop away and I could recognize, well, we're
the traffic, too. We're all the traffic. Now let's deal with this mess.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

HU: Meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg. Her new book is called "Real Change:
Mindfulness To Heal Ourselves And The World."

Sharon, thank you so much.

SALZBERG: Thank you.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

HU: For more LIFE KIT, check out our other episodes. We have an episode on
embracing solitude, another on how to give advice, which I really loved, and
lots more. You can find those at /lifekit. And if you love LIFE KIT and want
more, which we hope you do, subscribe to our newsletter at /lifekitnewsletter.
And like we do at the end of each episode, here's a completely random tip,
this time from listener Kelly Gavel.

KELLY GAVEL: Hi. My tip is if you have really unripe avocados, you can use
wool socks to ripen them in about 24 to 48 hours. So you take, like, knee-high
socks, you put two avocados in, and then you wrap the rest of the sock kind of
just around it and make it nice and snug. And that way all of your avocados
will be ripe in time. Have a great day. Bye-bye.

HU: Do you have a random tip? Leave us a voicemail at 202-216-9823. That's
202-216-9823 or email us at lifekit@npr.org. This episode was produced by
Andee Tagle. Meghan Keane is the managing producer, and Beth Donovan is our
senior editor. Our digital editor is Clare Lombardo, and our editorial
assistant is Clare Marie Schneider.

I'm Elise Hu. Thanks for listening.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

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