Here are a few highlights……
Jeff Weiner, the CEO of LinkedIn, spoke quite personally about how he uses the guiding principle of compassion for the network of 200 million users that he has helped create. And Padmasree Warrior, CTO of Cisco who oversees tens of thousands of engineers, described her mediation practice supporting her values and an integrated way of life. These Tech leaders are questioning and searching for healthy values to animate the growing global connectivity.

Then Sherry Turkle, a brilliant MIT professor, raised difficult questions about the deleterious effects of increasingly rearing our children by electronics, and how critical it is for them and for us as adults to balance the digital world with deep nourishing interpersonal connections of body, spirit and soul. But the potential gifts from the wired world are also growing, empowering women, giving micro loans, tweeting the Arab spring and making international connections between young people everywhere. From Facebook, Arturo Bejar explained how he is teaching the principles of emotional intelligence and conflict resolution skills to the one billion users when they get in conflict with one another.

When Congressmen Tim Ryan and Jon Kabat Zinn talked about the compelling research that shows how the power of mindfulness and inner training can transform education, medicine, business and veterans care they went on to talk about using mindfulness to transform society as a whole, and how this can be part of the digital revolution. Then Marianne Williamson passionately exhorted the conference to take the connectivity of Facebook and Twitter and other social platforms and the wealth of Silicon Valley and dedicate ourselves to end hunger. 17,000 children die each day from malnutrition around the world, and as she said, “We can no longer tolerate this. It is time to put an end to it.” I truly hope this gets followed up on by the many participants.

My greatest pleasure was interviewing the Executive Chairman of Ford Motors, Bill Ford. He is a friend and longtime meditation practitioner. The first part of the interview is a bit embarrassing for me because he is so laudatory. But then the interview becomes really alive and Bill speaks in a very open and heartfelt way about his own journey and how practice has supported bringing long term benefit and well-being to all he tends. In his work you can see what visionary leadership devoted to compassion looks like. He is an inspiring model for the next generation of tech leaders who were there. Here’s the link to a really fine conversation.

All I can say is if technology is wedded to wisdom and compassion it will be awesome. May it be so!

Jack interviewing Bill Ford at Wisdom 2.0

Before her release 2 years ago, you wouldn’t dare mention her name in Burma without fear that secret place might overhear and arrest the Burmese you talked to. I remember asking a taxi driver about why no one spoke about her and wondering whether she was still remembered, and his eyes grew wide with fear. When I reassured him how much I admired her, at the next stoplight he turned around and put his fingers to seal his lips and said “never here”. Then he moved his hand to his heart and said, “always here”.

Having been elected as Prime minister in 1990, she was put under arrest by the military dictatorship, and over the years she remained both resolute and, in the spirit of Gandhi, directed metta to her captors. Winning the 1991 the Nobel Peace prize she has carried the lamp of hope for the Burmese people for all these years.

In Honolulu we listened raptly to Daw Suu, who is wise, wildly smart, gracious and beautiful. Fiercely committed to justice, she spoke of the need for courage and the necessary sacrifices for anyone who chooses a dedicated life. Describing herself as a namby pamby sort of girl, Daw Suu said her mother set about instilling in her a powerful sense of discipline that later served her well in her meditation, in her years of house arrest, and in dealing with the military dictatorship. With the same dedication, now she is free to work for positive change in Burma.

Addressing high school students warmly and personally, and then business leaders, Daw Suu said “Honesty requires courage, and peace requires courage – because honesty and peace are very close together. To be at peace with yourself, you have to be honest with yourself. You have to know what you are like, you have to know what your strengths and weaknesses are, and then you learn to live with yourself, to be at peace with yourself.

In the same way we want peace among ourselves, we have to learn about one another – including ourselves – and that requires courage. You have to have the courage to face what you have to do as well as what you are, with compassion. And you have to have the courage to recognize the truth in others even if you don’t agree with them. Peace is not easy to achieve. Peace requires change, and change requires a lot of hard work, and hard work requires patience, commitment and courage.”

The inspiration of spiritual elders like Daw Suu is a mirror for our own possibility. Listening to her dedication makes me reflect on what small piece I can best add to the world at this point in my life. And how to so this while staying centered amidst the busyness of our times. It’s a blessing to have the practices of mindfulness, equanimity and metta but it also requires enough discipline and contemplative time to keep them strong. Then we can each dedicate ourselves to plant seeds of mindfulness and love, to bring our unique gifts to our gardens, our businesses, our clinics, our schools, to serve our community and the world. Who better to bring the Dharma alive where you are than you?

If you want to listen to Daw Suu, her talk and her Q and A with the Hawaiian students are below:

Peace Takes Courage & Compassion

Aung San Suu Kyi takes questions from Hawaiian students

Dante did not speak to her and saw her very little. And then Beatrice died, carried off by plague. Dante was stricken with the loss of his vision. She was the connection between his soul and Heaven itself, and from it the Divine Comedy was born.

Six hundred fifty years later, during World War II, the Americans were chasing the German army up the Italian peninsula. The Germans were blowing up everything of aid to the progression of the American army, including the bridges across the Arno River. But no one wanted to blow up the Ponte Vecchio, because Beatrice had stood on it and Dante had written about her. So the German commandant made radio contact with the Americans and, in plain language, said they would leave the Ponte Vecchio intact if the Americans would promise not to use it. The promise was held. The bridge was not blown up, and not one American soldier or piece of equipment went across it. We’re such hard bitten people that we need hard bitten proof of things, and this is the most hard bitten fact I know to present to you. The bridge was spared, in a modern, ruthless war, because Beatrice had stood upon it. (story from R. Johnson)

May the light of compassion and wakefulness shine brightly in this world with the return of the sun.

Love, Jack

“The greatest miracle is the miracle of learning”  
– Buddha

Asked to reflect on how I have changed my mind and perspective over years of Dharma  practice and teaching, I recognize that I have changed my mind about a hundred things. Effort in meditation is one example. I used to think that to become free you had to practice like a samurai warrior, but now I understand that you have to practice like a devoted mother of a newborn child. It takes the same energy but has a completely different quality. It’s unwavering compassion and presence that liberates rather than having to defeat the enemy in battle.

Here’s another thing: I used to think that sitting in meditation was enough, that it would really change everything in your life in a whole and complete way. For a few people, it might work out that way, but in general, it ain’t so. For most of us, meditation is one part of a whole mandala of awakening, which includes attention to your body, attention to your relationships, attention to right speech and right livelihood.

I used to think that deeper, better meditation and practice was happening in the centers in Asia than what we could teach here in America, and that for the real thing you had to go to Thailand or Burma or India or Tibet. Many of us who studied in Asia used to think that, and maybe some still do. But now, when I go back to Asia, I realize that beautiful deep practice is happening in Burma and Thailand and India and Tibet, and the same beautiful deep practice is happening here, at our centers and in our lives, and I think, “Oh, that was just a delusion I had.”

Wherever you are is the perfect place to awaken. This moment is the exact place to practice compassion and loving awareness. You have all the ingredients to breathe and find freedom just where you are.

On a misty Sunday afternoon, Central Park became a Temple of Peace for the many hundreds who joined or observed the NY Silent Peace Walk in support of peace in the Middle East. NYPeaceWalk.org.

There were intermittent soft showers, the smell of autumn leaves, lovers holding hands, homeless people on park benches, and beside them a stream of nearby traffic and taxis. In the midst of it all we walked as peace walkers carrying a palpable, reverent, dignified and joyful silence. At the front of the line was Sufi Sheikh, Pir Zia Khan holding hands with a prominent west side Rabbi, David Ingber, joined by other well known leaders. The column of silent walkers stretched behind them for nearly half a mile. It was a beautiful moving stream of people from every tradition committed to embodying peace and respect for all, walking with friendliness and dignity.

Inspired by ten years of silent walks of mutual respect in Palestine and Israel, the NY Peace Walk was an affirmation of peace longed for by so many. With over 2 million Muslims and Jews and millions of others who all ride the subways in harmony, New York is the perfect place to show this human possibility. Home to the United nations and to huge politically active communities, what is seeded in New York can carry across the world.

Peace walks date from the time of the Buddha, and in modern times, inspired by Gandhi and Dr. King and Cambodian elder Maha Ghosananda, peace walks have come to hold a special power. I remember how one morning in the 1970′s when the student protests against the Thai military dictatorship had reached a dangerous peak, a long line of Buddhist monks and nuns came and stood peacefully between the barricades of students and the military police. Bangkok’s biggest road had been blocked for weeks, government shooting had taken the lives of students, and the conflict was on the verge of spiraling further out of control. Barefoot and silent the line of forest monks and nuns had walked with their abbot for miles, and came to stand meditatively, in the center of the battlefield bringing their peaceful hearts to cool the danger. After standing for hours, they withdrew silently. But it was enough. Their powerful compassionate presence turned the tide, and negotiations between the leaders resumed and the resolution of student demands began.

Peace walks are a practice of steady loving presence, slow, beautiful and dignified, without flags, placards or slogans. Instead of shouting in the name of peace, peace is demonstrated by the walk.  The silent walkers embody the reality of respect and co-existence. They offer calmness, confidence, and a spirit of mindful empathy. They create community among disparate people, uplift spirits, and empower participants to act for peace. They end with listening circles, groups where participants can tell their life stories, learn from one another and voice the longing for peace in their hearts.

These are perilous times for people across the world especially in many countries of the Middle East. It is time for us too to walk between the lines, to show another way. Before we even consider another war, we can walk for peace. We envision silent walks in all parts of the country. We can join together as we did at Central Park, a collaboration of Rabbis and Imams and world famous peace negotiators, Quakers and Buddhists and mothers and activists and students and those who don’t want to just watch the events unfold on TV, but want their care and dignity to be seen by all the world. We can walk for those hiding in basements in war zones and those worried about what war will bring to their children and for all the women who are endangered when they speak up, and for all the men who long to go home after the battle.

Go to the Peacewalk site to learn more, to support this work, to join in or to inquire about holding a walk in your community. May you find a way to bring your seeds of peace to the troubles of this world.

Photo by Roy Rochlin

It is a crisp autumn day in the Big Apple of New York, and I am wandering the streets doing metta practice and grinning at the miracle of it all. Lots of people are smiling, and it’s a dazzling mix of dog walkers, street vendors, shoppers, tourists, business people, hard boiled cabbies, and fashionistas all intersecting in this moving dance. New York is a 100 story beehive added to over centuries, and weaves together walls of gleaming plate glass, fiber optic internet cables, trash trucks, underground aquifers, side street urban forests, preschool children holding hands, construction cranes, pastrami deliveries to 10,000 deli’s, banks, birthing centers and morgues into a mysterious collaboration of interbeing, powered by human imagination and for the most part, surprising goodwill. A space alien would be amazed at the complexity and generosity that holds it all.

Photo by Roy Rochlin

In the midst of it all on 63rd Street I just taught a weekend at the Ethical Culture Society with Mark Epstein on the complementary blessings of Eastern and Western psychology. Almost 600 participants, many healers and therapists listened as Mark told the story of Patachara, a woman overwhelmed with grief after the loss of her whole family. Weeping inconsolably she went to see the Buddha who had his attendant place the Buddha’s own cloak around her shoulders, as he began to teach and comfort her. Then Mark described how as therapists and healers we too can offer the cloak of compassion, and the kind attention of mindfulness to those who come to us. And how as dharma practitioners we can learn to place the compassionate cloak of the Buddha around our own shoulders as we sit.

With compassion as a theme, the next evening on Central Park’s Great Lawn 25,000 fans gathered for the Global Citizen Festival. Neil Young, the Foo Fighters and The Black Keys played music so wonderful and loud, with amplifiers so big, that the base lines and drums echoed off the tall buildings ringing the Park, beating like a huge heart in the center of the city. A warm night held the concert and thousands contributed to end polio in Pakistan, feed children in Latin America, build schools for everyone in Africa. It was a celebration of goodwill, and the New York spirit and the reality that in spite of the global problems we face, most everyone wants a better, more humane, compassionate world.

“Compassion is natural” taught the Buddha. Wherever you are on this dazzling earth today, regard yourself and all that is around with eyes of wonder and a heart of compassion. This is called the Dharma blessing here and now.

Isn’t sleep mysterious? We close our eyes and enter a world of dreams for almost a third of our life. Of course meditation and mindfulness can develop calm, clarity, emotional regulation, mental resilience and healthier bodies. Modern neuroscience has demonstrated this and more. But more than this, is it a gateway to mystery.

As we quiet the mind and open the heart, as we attend with loving awareness, we sense our body inter-breathing with the pine trees and the ocean winds. Our endless stream of dreams and thoughts and language carry tens of thousands of years of previous conversations that created human communication. And our sense of self breathes like all other things. Sometimes we open to the enormous turning of the galaxy, we look out on a starry night, or surrender to amazing music or make love or witness the birth of a child and we dissolve into oneness or become empty space as the universe turns. But then we get hungry, or our partner comes home, the baby cries, our boss needs the project, others need help and we have to inhabit this paradoxical incarnation, bringing the love and honesty and mystery alive here, through being our unique self.

The spiritual process is one of transcendence and of embodiment, emptiness and fullness, combining the universal and the oh-so-human dimensions of our mysterious incarnation. This theme was voiced in beautiful ways by Adyashanti and Sandra Ingerman and Coleman Barks and Shiva Rea and two dozen other fine teachers, whose words and care reverberated at Sound’s True’s Estes Park Wake Up Festival.

It was a message of spiritual maturity, different from the idealistic “let’s get enlightened and live happily ever after” early days. This integrated wisdom invites vast opening, loving, visionary understanding and then full embodiment in our homes and community.

With spiritual maturity we tend and dedicate and love, but with a free heart. We can still be foolish, but we don’t judge ourselves and others so much. We become delighted by the mystery of life. And not all at once, but organically and genuinely, joy and freedom grow, we become gracious and liberated and wise.

To reach his studio we drive past woods of chestnut and linden trees and wind through cow filled pastures to arrive at the 17th century farmhouse. Bedecked with brilliant pink geraniums and white vinca spilling from window boxes, we enter the kitchen and living room as if stepping into a Vermeer painting. Rustic elegance with broad old beams, a lovingly worn farm table and perfectly placed pottery and paintings and wooden country kitchen implements that would be equally home in a classic farm in Japan. After warm greetings and catching up on family news we express our joy in the glow created by their home. The Hermanns explain that they have chosen to live simply and to devote their lives to beauty, the beauty of harmony with surroundings and surrounding themselves with friends who carry inner beauty. It is their way of caring for life and for the world.

Jean-Christophe’s country pottery is earthy and delicate with perfect proportions. When asked about whether people come to train as apprentices, he said few have the prodigious discipline and humility for it. The training is so considerable that it is twelve years before one is really ready to attach handles to a cup. Yet this is not just hard work, but mastery and concentration and dedication, all of the elements of great Buddhist training. He speaks with a delight and depth in every sentence, a friendly gracious smile, large deliberate hands and a kind of a twinkle mirrored by Joelle.

Over the years Jean-Christophe and Joelle have visited and admired the arts of China and India and Egypt, but their life focus is their own community, and living a life of simplicity and care. Just to be with them is refreshing and inspiring, like entering a temple of attention, or sitting in a cool forest on a hot day.

We each need to find a way to practice right livelihood and support ourselves and our families. But we also have to choose where we will place our devotion. And the Hermann’s show how beautiful those choices can be.

The Association is a dedicated and good hearted group of professionals and practitioners, a community supporting the worldwide work born from Jon Kabat Zinn in applied mindfulness and MBSR. It is apparent that there is a uniquely French approach to mindfulness and Buddhist dharma here expressed through the cultural values of philosophy, science, arts, revolution and education. Many also consider themselves refugees from religion and favor a secular or scientific approach to the teaching. In this spirit we are gathered, 400 or so, in a broad room, off a gracious courtyard used for theater productions, and not far from Notre Dame, to explore the meditative life and work of mindfulness. And of course to have the freshest croissants, baguettes and a leisurely lunch conversation with great wine and equally good conversation.

I offer an evening and a day of Buddhist psychology, presented as a science of mind, blended with a series of practices and trainings in breath, body and emotional mindfulness, and meditations of metta and compassion. A lively panel discussion follows my teaching, with a group of renowned doctors and researchers physicist/philosophers exploring the relationship of mindfulness and meditation to modern philosophical constructs of epistemology, knowing and self-knowledge,( Nagarjuna would appreciate this), and to neuroscience research and examples drawn from the healing arts and illuminated with personal stories and literary references from French poets to Goethe. It was moving and inspiring to listen to the physicians in the group discuss how important it is for doctors to tend the hearts of patients as well as their bodies. Their mindful approach to care includes fostering a spiritual well-being needed for healing chronic illness, anxiety, depression and pain. It is medicine for the soul.

Trudy Goodman and I spoke as dharma teachers and psychotherapists, sparking a genuine dialogue of how the teachings of awareness can best be made available in stressed and troubled modern times. From parenting to education, from the environment and politics all our worldly work benefits when the outer grows together with the cultivation of peace and inner well being. In this Paris gathering there is a sense of being part of a historical moment. The liberating spirit of mindfulness and Dharma is finding its way in a new French form, bringing teachings and practices of wisdom and compassion that are good in the beginning, good in the middle and good in the end to all who come to listen.

Processing to the Retreat Hall

I am seated at Spirit Rock with two of the new generation of American nuns, delightfully wise and courageous and funny and incredibly dedicated and inspiring. Ayya Anandabodhi and Ayya Santacitta trained for 20 years in the lineage of Ajahn Chah and now run a small and wonderful nunnery, Aloka Vihara in San Francisco. They talk about the joy of having nothing, the commitment to mindful and loving simplicity, the mystery of living on faith in the Dharma without money or even cooking food for themselves. And how satisfying this life is for them, even though it is also wildly challenging to live this way in the midst of modern consumer society. They are part of a magnificent 2,500 year old tradition of Nuns, women who have taken robes to live a life fully devoted to the Buddha’s way.

Taking Vows

The Songs of the Sisters are old texts and poems that describe the enlightenments of the first generation of these Sisters. But nuns are accorded second and third class status in most of Buddhist Asia. (See story below..) And so it was a particular and profound happiness last fall for Spirit Rock to host one of the first full ordinations of Bikkhunis in the west. The preceptor, Ven. Ayya Tathaaloka set up the sacred ordination ground in a circle of

flowers in the center of the main hall at Spirit Rock. Inside were senior nuns and monks from many traditions, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Tibet, China. And surrounding them were hundreds of celebratory lay supporters. And now Ayya Anandabodhi and Ajyya Santacitta, both ordained in that ceremony, returned to Spirit Rock to lead a retreat and inspire everyone by their joy and dedication. We are fortunate to have the spirit of awakening and the power of the feminine flowering together with them and in many of Spirit Rock’s programs and offerings.

The world needs to be reminded of stillness, virtue, lovingkindness and inner freedom. Lay teachers and nuns, men and women, it is essential that the wise feminine and the wise masculine join together in this uncertain hour.

Teaching from the Feminine
Since the early 1990’s, I have been involved in convening a succession of gatherings for Buddhist teachers, several hosted by the Dalai Lama at his Dharamsala palace. Here Western and Asian teachers gathered to discuss the ways Buddhist practice might be of help in the modern world, and also to address the difficulties we encountered.

One of my favorite moments was when Sylvia Wetzel, a Buddhist teacher from Germany, talked to the gathered teachers about how hard it was for women and feminine wisdom to be fully included in the Buddhist community. They are excluded from opportunities to receive many teachings, poorly supported financially, badly respected and often used more to support the monks than practice their own. Most significantly, men are seen as higher than women. To get the monks to understand, Sylvia pointed to the many golden Buddhas and exquisite Tibetan paintings surrounding our room, noting they were all depicting males.

Then she instructed the Dalai Lama and the other lamas and masters to close their eyes and meditate with her, to imagine that they were entering the room and that it had been transformed so that they bowed to the fourteenth female incarnation of the Dalai Lama. With her were many advisors who had always been female, and surrounding them were images of Buddhas and saints, all naturally in women’s bodies because it is the best form for becoming liberated. Of course, it is never taught that there is anything lesser about being a man. Despite that, these men were asked to sit in the back, be silent, and after meeting to help with the cooking.

At the end of her meditation, the eyes of every man in the room reopened, slightly astonished, maybe even slightly more enlightened.