Mindfulness Is A Quality Of awareness In The Present Moment: Sharon Salzberg
Sharon Salzberg, long-time meditation teacher, leading expert in mindfulness and author of a multitude of books has recently launched an online course name 'Real Love'.
Sharon believes that genuine love is an ability and capacity within us - an inner resource, which we can grow by drawing from timeless Buddhist wisdom and loving-kindness practice.
She encountered mindfulness in her sophomore year, the quest of which brought her to India at the tender age of 17 years.
In a conversation with BW Businessworld, she talks about mindfulness, the importance of meditation, loving kindness, her new course and the need to moderate the use of devices.
How would you explain mindfulness to a layperson and how relevant is it for interpersonal relationships at both the personal and professional level???
Mindfulness is a quality of awareness in the present moment so that our perception isn’t distorted by bias or old habits.
One example would be the tendency towards distraction, which would mean that when dominated by distraction we aren’t listening fully to others as they speak– instead we are thinking about the email we need to write or who we’re seeing tomorrow.
Clearly, that kind of disconnection has a lot of personal and professional ramifications. Our lives go by like a dream, we’re not very fulfilled and we’re not very effective.
How can meditation be used as a capacity building tool in the workplace scenario? Any exercises that you would recommend in particular to nurture well-being??
Going into a corporation or an organization, I like to ask people to do this reflection, “How many people need to be doing their job well for you to be able to do your job well?”
Reframing our work to be understood as a sign of interdependence allows us to pursue individual excellence but also understand that we are all, in one way or another, part of a team.
In addition, foundational mindfulness exercises, like awareness of our breath, gives us a tool for returning to ourselves, to this moment, even in a stressful, anxious environment. And when we return to this moment we also return to our values, to what we really care about, which helps us make wiser decisions.
You talk of Loving-Kindness meditation. Can you elaborate on the benefits of practising this extending from a personal level to a vehicle of Global Peace?
On a personal level, one of the great benefits of practising loving kindness is the deepening of self-compassion. It isn’t the same thing as laziness, or not having standards of excellence. Rather, it is an ability to be resilient, to learn from mistakes rather than be stuck in them, to go one when we need to make a course correction or pick ourselves up from disappointment. Harsh self-criticism, a punishing attitude, actually keeps us identified with the mistake, so that’s not an efficient, effective way to make progress.
On a larger level, the practice of loving-kindness reminds us that everybody wants to be happy, we all want a sense of belonging, of being at home somewhere in this life – in our bodies and minds, with one another, on this planet. It is the force of ignorance that keeps us confused and running around after useless things. Because we all share this wish for happiness, we can recognize ourselves in one another. We also see that we do live in an interdependent universe and that we are fundamentally relying on one another.
Social media was intended to bring people closer, today it has become a tool for anti-socialisation and mindless engagement. What are your thoughts on device disease and disconnection today, in this light?
I am personally very fond of my device, and I admire the way it has erased psychological distance for many. What do I mean by that? I use the example of my first trip to India when I was 18 years old. I grew up in New York City, and I had never even been to California when I went to India, in order to learn meditation.
Like many, I travelled overland, finally arriving in New Delhi. From the time I got there, I felt like I was home. I realized that I had erased a sense of alienation, or psychological distance. I knew I could go back for a short trip, like a week or 10 days, and I’d feel at home as soon as I arrived, rather than culture shock and anxiety. I realize that many younger people are doing that through their devices, to people and places all around the world.
Those devices are also being used, as we know, for endless distraction, to present a highly curated life to the world (“ my perfect lunch” “my perfect trip.”) so that others feel incomplete, or we feel less if we spot someone’s more perfect lunch.
We need to moderate our use, and also commit to using them for genuine connection.
You have just started a course on Real Love. What does it entail?
The course follows the trajectory of my book Real Love. The whole first part is about cultivating genuine for ourselves, which is not narcissism or arrogance.
It is this love for ourselves that gives us the inner strength to face adversity. The second part is about love for another, whether that be a partner or a sibling, or a parent or a colleague.
The third part is about cultivating a love for all, which is different than liking everybody or approving of them. It is that sense of oneness that generates compassion as a great strength as we try to make a difference in this world.
