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Foreign And I was thinking of this very much in Las Vegas this past week where you know I've been I I've seen a lot of death and And a lot of people die uh either in Front of me or after I you know right Before I get there Um and after a while it's very it's to Me it's important to see everything with Fresh eyes every time because if you're Not outraged or horrified as a reporter You can't do a very good job to tell the Horror of the situation but how do you Keep that beginner's mind that Beginner's eye of of of being whether It's horrified or whatever it is every Single time Well I wouldn't because you talk about Beginner's mom yes so well I it's a Phrase that Suzuki roshi coined uh when The the founding uh teacher of the San Francisco Zen Center in tasahara and Green Gulch in California but it's a Beautiful concept from you know Japanese Sotozen beginner's mind and the quote is In the mind of the uh experts there are A few possibilities in the mind of the Beginner there are many So to keep the Mind open new emergences Are possible that when our minds are Close we can't see so this has to be a Practice it can't be a philosophy or a Catechism or you know some kind of thing It has to be a practice and you're like
Right in its face in a way that none of Us are except in our own ways but you Are like very publicly out there and and So Uh I think the cultivating a certain Kind of empathic transparency so that It's not like you shut down which often Happens even in medicine you know it can Only take so much suffering and then you Shut it off and the mindfulness is the Opposite of that it's opening up the Space and letting it move through you so That it's not like you don't have Profound compassion empathy and so forth But your humanity and I see this in you On television your Humanity your very Presence is healing for people because You're listening and that listening is a Form of mindfulness And you're you're also giving people an Opportunity to have millions of people Listen to their grief listen to their Loss listen to the insanity of what's Happening in the body of the United States of America it is we need to hear That it isn't assuming how grief and Loss is something that we don't talk About that people are surprised if they See on TV if people see anger on TV That's normal they think you know on Cable news it's normal to have a person Be angry and shouting and whatever Arguing with each other if you turn on And you see a genuine expression of
Sorrow or sadness or loss people seem Surprised by that I think this is part Of our Collective education and that in That sense the media you know the media Has been challenged I don't know enough About a history to know whether this is The first time it's ever been this bad Or it's always been this bad but in Different ways and then Trump's added a Completely orthogonal Dimension beyond Belief Orthogonal that's a for another okay But The thing is I write about it coming to our son yeah But but the but the thing is it is I Think an incredible opportunity for all Of us to not fall into despair Depression reactivity or anger but to Actually fall into wakefulness with Compassion and find new imaginative Creative ways to interface with those Who we project otherness onto not the Sort of people who love us and who think We're the greatest but just those very Other people and to give voice to them As you do on CNN and to sort of have us Actually realize that Genetically Speaking and medically speaking and in Every other way including I think Politically speaking Although it seems like The differences are Insurmountable as human beings we are
Virtually 99.9 The Same Around the world no matter what our Beliefs and those beliefs are really Fungible and they have a lot to do with The pain and suffering and fear that We've experienced over life and also Personality and how our brains are wired And I do recommend you read Robert Sapolsky it's only six or seven hundred Pages but absolutely brilliant on the Best and the worst of human beings and Of course being a neuroscientist and a Primatologist he can tell us how you Know a lot of stuff didn't just come From like uh the Middle Ages it came From like when we were on the Savannah In in Africa you know uh way before we Became human so a lot of this is we call Ourselves Homo sapiens sapiens you know I have I talk about that sometimes it Means from Latin Superior to taste Excuse me it means the species that Knows and knows that it knows so there's A certain kind of arrogance to that yeah We're the species that knows and we know That we know and so that's awareness and Metal awareness not cognition and Metacognition so I think that it's time We lived our way into that because the Stakes are only whether we our Grandchildren Will have you know the possibility of Living a life of Integrity or where
They're going to create a hell on Earth Where a very small minority will have Everything and the large venerable Majority will be suffering like nobody's Business and so if we can imagine it What's going to happen actually is the Unimaginable you know whether it's North Korea or whatever what's going to happen Is the unimaginable we're not that smart As you know Mark Twain observed to sort Of really get it right in terms of the Future but we can change the future by Changing our relationship to the present That's the only leverage the only Fulcrum we have
