Suffering Stops with Us; Jon Kabat-Zinn and Wisdom 2.0 Founder Soren Gordhamer
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Foreign [Music] [Laughter] [Applause] There's a way in which the uh I think The like the directness that Katie had Spoke to requires a certain self uh Responsibility towards where does Suffering actually start and where does It end And it's easy to think that it has Started somewhere else and it ends Somewhere else and I feel like the Invitation that you're making and that She's making is to say no it starts and Ends with us and no matter how wonderful And beautiful and perfect whatever Leader we imagine could be the suffering Stop Finance with us it also doesn't Mean that you don't act it's not it's Not the dualism Act of passive it's Non-dual wisdom non-dual but it does not Mean that you don't act when it's time To act and the same way as it doesn't Mean that you don't sleep just because You're a fan of wakefulness [Laughter] At times when it's really not wise to Stay awake You need we need our sleep yeah okay but When we're awake you can ask yourself Actually how awake Are we Or are we in the narrative or of how
Awake we are and what great meditators We are and how great Iron Katie is And just light years away from What's being pointed to So this is in some sense where the Rubber meets the road for us and I'm in Complete alignment with you Soren that Like you know If it was you that said it but that you Know what's unfolding is perfect why Because it's unfolding And uh and that it's in some sense had It unfolded differently we could have Stayed asleep to a certain kind of Disease That now it's almost impossible to stay Asleep too and that brings up perhaps a Lot of fear and in some communities a Lot more fear than others because it's More proximal but if you're feeling Sensing breathing person with compassion And empathy then we're feeling that fear That pain and You know in the work that we teach you Know called mbsr We teach people to turn towards all of The Unwanted stuff that's in your life Why because it's already here And to approach it with Kind of welcome that and curiosity and And then inquiry too deep inquiry is Like Am I my pain
Am I my fear am I my suffering and I Don't mean like uh You know ask yourself and then think About it I mean direct penetrating into Awareness and apprehending whether In This Moment No matter how much pain or fear or Anxiety or whether that is the full Story of Who who you are or who's meditating And one of the beauties of this work Over the past almost 40 years Um Just to talk about mbsr is that uh We don't ask people that political Persuasion when they come in with back Pain or cancer or heart disease or Any chronic anything We just assume oh another full-blown Miraculous being has come into the room And we don't look at the diagnosis Either everybody comes with a diagnosis As a rule we don't look at the diagnosis Because we want to meet the human being How many of you use hospitals ever Dangerous but sometimes necessary raise Your hands up high I want to feel that How many of you go to the hospital Sometimes okay so now it's all Electronic medical records but that Every time you walk in the door they Need to know you've walked in the door Because they need to charge you and That's called an encounter form
But we've noticed over the years that The business of Medicine Is into the encounter forms more than It's into the encounter If you're not careful you could go Through a whole visit to the hospital or Stay in the hospital and never be met Never be encountered In an open-hearted spaciousness of not Knowing and Beyond the diagnosis or the treatment is Like a human being in the bed or in the Chair And when you turn that around when you Exercise or you know Catalyze a an orthogonal rotation in Consciousness same Hospital same patient Same doctor same everything only Everything's different because we've got Mindfulness And so we can see feel here the The actual Uh lattice structure of being and we Have an infinite number of degrees of Freedom of how we are going to be in Relationship to what we don't like Feeling say disregarded right you know I Think that's that level of Attunement Allows us to feel into what the response That needs to come through in that Moment versus the repetitive and then You don't need to be wounded about it Because when you're honest you're just Like
Take care of it In the in that moment it evaporates and Then you just reel with You know but you don't take it Personally so this is one of the most Powerful elements of any kind of Mindfulness practice is to recognize How easy it is to take personally that Which is not personal whether it's Trump Or whether it's you know Fears of what's going to happen or Anything these are narratives that may Be true to a degree but to a lot you Know and it's like this whole thing About false news is very interesting Because yeah there's a lot of Dissimulation propaganda and that's Always happened in in this topic times And in you know pre-fascist times and Everything else I mean Goebbels has a Great quote about like and I just just Keep telling the lies long enough and Big enough and find a scapegoat and Everybody will you know be happy Uh but at the same time If we can apprehend that then we can Also see that a lot of the stories we Tell ourselves are false news and you Asked Katie what's new you did ask what Is Real News Real News and there's a Line from a Wallace Stevens poem which Is in coming to our senses I don't Remember the whole home but the last Line is and it's all about bombs falling
On cities and everything else and it's Like a real poem of pain and desolation And destruction and blackout and the Last line is the real news is there's no News at all Hmm No news at all so when we you know sort Of face the challenges of this era If we're not taking this sort of Orthogonal wisdom perspective then we're Going to get caught constantly and blame It on the other without recognizing that It's the kind of We're participating in a certain kind of Game or unfolding that where a lot of The news is questionable a lot of the Facts are actually questionable I mean if you ask me a lot of facts About American history you know I have my own View of American history but I don't Know that much about it I'm sorry to say But a lot of the time when we think About American history we fashion it so That It's our story of the American history Isn't like based on our facts you know Or our forgetfulness or whatever it is Or one segment of the population story Yeah exactly like not interested in you Know slavery That's so Can't we get over slavery no Because we've never done the healing
Jack kornfield I think said you know Reckons Truth and Reconciliation around The legacy of slavery is non-trivial What about the Native American genocide Thing so we can point our fingers at the Palestinians and the you know everywhere In the rule where you know if only they Had what we had they would be so Enlightened to look at us So there's a certain disease of the body Politic And and I think Katie's absolutely right If we're not willing to align ourselves With what's the deepest and best the Most beautiful in us on a virtually Moment by moment and everyday basis Then uh the prognosis is that we're Going to just get more the same And there'll be an enormous amount of Harm potentially we need to you said Third Way or an alternative way of Dealing with this and I think you know People in this room have enormous amount Of optimism and faith and and not just This room but the sort of online world And and all the other worlds that Intersect with this that you know this Is our curriculum For the moment this is our curriculum What does it mean to be human In this kind of a time and to lead with Our Humanity as opposed to Leading with Our fear without denying the fear
