Secular Buddhism Podcast

Episode 61: Mindfulness, Relationships, and Social Activism

Interview with Yael Shy

Introduction

Noah Rasheta: It looks like we are streaming live now here on the Crowdcast platform and on social media channels. Welcome, everyone who's listening in live. I am Noah Rasheta, host of the Secular Buddhism Podcast. I'm excited to have Yael Shy with me here today.

Yael is an author. Her recent book titled, What Now? is going to be one of the topics of our discussion today, but really quickly—Yael is the founder and director of MindfulNYU, which happens to be the largest campus-wide meditation initiative in the country. She's also the senior director for the Center for Global Spiritual Life at New York University. She leads meditation workshops around the country and around the world. She's been published in the Harvard Business Review, the Huffington Post, the Journal of Interreligious Studies, among other publications, and she lives in Brooklyn with her husband and son.

I'm really excited to have her on the show today because she offers expert guidance not just on meditation practice, but more specifically on how to bring mindfulness and this practice into things like relationships, love, social media, how we interact on social media, social justice, activism, and just the general ups and downs of everyday life.

With that, welcome, Yael. Thank you for being on the show.

Yael Shy: So happy to be here. Thank you so much. I'm a big fan of the show and the podcast—the whole thing.

Noah Rasheta: Thank you. Just to clarify for those of you who are following us live—this is streaming on the various social channels, but the platform we're using to do this interview is Crowdcast. Now, those of you who are watching through the Crowdcast platform have the ability to submit questions. Towards the end of the discussion, we will open up questions specific to what we're talking about today.

If you're on Facebook, Periscope, or YouTube watching this live and you post questions in the comments, we may not see those live. I'll go back and look for those after the interview. Yael, if she has time, may do that too, but the ones that we will certainly entertain are the ones that are posted on the Crowdcast platform. If you are watching this stream somewhere else and you want to join this one on the actual platform, it's crowdcast.io/e/yael—which is Y-A-E-L dash Shy. It's kind of a complicated URL to give out on the spot like that.

I'm excited to talk about a couple of topics specifically. I think the two I'm most excited about are the expertise that Yael brings to the topic of mindfulness and relationships—because we are all in relationships. It's not just romantic relationships, which I think is key here, but any relationship—relationships with siblings, with parents, with children. And then the other overall topic is social activism. We're going to talk a little bit about how we change the world without burning out.

Yael's Journey into Mindfulness

Noah Rasheta: Let's start with the first one: mindfulness and relationships. Before we jump into that, tell us a little bit, Yael, about how you got into mindfulness meditation and Buddhism. Tell us a little bit about your journey.

Yael Shy: Sure. I started meditating when I was a college junior, and really, I came to it from a lot of suffering, a lot of stress—and not just the stress that people often talk about with college students like so much homework and fights with parents. There was deep existential stress about what is the point of being alive, what is my role in this world, how am I supposed to survive when all of these feelings were just rushing through me in a lot of anxiety and fear constantly. I was having panic attacks regularly, and the circumstances of my life were falling apart around me. My parents were getting divorced. I had ended a relationship. I felt very lonely and alone. I was struggling hard.

So then I was having a really hard time. I sought out a bunch of different kinds of advice—what am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to get better? My mother actually passed along to me a flyer about a meditation retreat—a seven-day silent meditation retreat. I had no concept of what that was. I'd never meditated before.

Noah Rasheta: [laughs]

Yael Shy: Yeah, it was crazy because I was imagining like a nice spa vacation with maybe hot tubs or massages. And I get to that retreat center, and it was really just seven days of meditation from morning until night without much of a break at all. We weren't allowed to talk to anyone. We weren't supposed to be making eye contact. It was extremely intense. I had multiple panic attacks within a couple of days. I was having fantasies about hot-wiring cars and getting out of that place.

Then about midway through the retreat, I finally got to talk to a teacher about all the stress I was experiencing. I said, "I'm just so full of fear all the time." He said to me, "Fear doesn't like the light. If you shine a light on it, then sometimes you can help to understand it, and fear will eventually disperse." That began the process of trying to look at what was underneath all that anxiety, what the root of so much of that panic and stress was.

That really just started the journey for the rest of my life in this world and this meditation world, because it almost immediately cracked through so much of that pain and anxiety that I was experiencing on a daily basis. Of course, it didn't solve it right away, but over the years, it almost transformed the chemical makeup of my body so that I really haven't had a panic attack in, I don't know, like ten years almost. That's how I came to this practice.

Noah Rasheta: Wow. It seems like intense suffering is a common path for people to find their way to this path, right?

Yael Shy: Right.

Noah Rasheta: I know that's certainly the case for me. It's the case for a lot of people I've encountered. It seems like these meditation retreats almost all consistently—somewhere around that halfway mark—is when people realize, "Okay, I can do this," and then it becomes a really neat experience after that. Why do you think that is? Is it because we're just not used to doing anything remotely close to sitting in silence for that long?

Yael Shy: Yes. I think we're not used to it on multiple levels. We're not used to it on just our everyday consciousness level, but our bodies are not used to it either. In the beginning, everything is screaming either in pain, or I know many people who just slept through their first three days. I have no idea what it's doing. You sit down and you say don't move—it's bedtime. There's all kinds of things that come up. The Buddha called these things hindrances that come up when we sit down for meditation.

Especially for beginners who do what I—I mean I did a crazy thing. Most people have had some experience or exposure to meditation before you do a retreat, but retreats are just incredible incubators of ourselves. And most of us do not fit with ourselves and our minds for that intensity for that amount of time.

Noah Rasheta: When I think of meditation in general as the art of becoming comfortable with discomfort, I think retreat is like what you're describing. That's bootcamp, right? That's the—

Yael Shy: It is bootcamp.

Noah Rasheta: You're going to sit there and it's going to hurt until suddenly, at some point, you become more comfortable with that discomfort. I imagine that's why it's so transformative too.

Yael Shy: That's right. Yes, that's right. It's just that if anybody is thinking about doing one—if you haven't done one yet—the real key is just to have as much faith as you can muster that something will happen. That's what we promise whenever I lead a retreat: that something will happen. You don't know exactly what it will be, but it's just to hang in there through those moments of difficulty. For some people beginning time, maybe not for everyone, but certainly for me in the early days.

Noah Rasheta: Cool. Thanks for sharing that.

Mindful Relationships

Noah Rasheta: Let's jump in to the topic of mindfulness and relationships. You have a chapter in your book. I'm trying to remember exactly what it's called. Is it "Mindfulness and Relationships"?

Yael Shy: "Mindful Relationships."

Noah Rasheta: That's exactly what it's called. In the chapter, you bring together the concepts of how does mindfulness benefit a relationship. Let's talk about that a little bit. Summarize the marriage of these two things.

Yael Shy: Sure. Like you said, everybody's in relationships. I think what we all crave out of relationships is to be fully seen and heard, to feel and be seen for who we really are and to have our voices heard—or our needs heard. Even if the other person can't always meet our needs or fulfill our fantasies, to really be seen is so healing, and it's what so many of us are seeking.

In order to really see another person and to see them in their totality, I think the practice of meditation and mindfulness enables us to see ourselves, to open up our own hearts to ourselves—to see the ugly and difficult parts, to see the parts that we believe are beautiful and strong, and to have space for all of those different elements.

The more we do that, the more we cultivate a loving, appreciative, accepting relationship with ourselves. The more we have space to let in the totality of another person and to really see them—rather than what often happens, which is we use the frame of another person to try and discover whether or not we are lovable. And the person feels used and feels unseen, and we feel frustrated because we're not getting the right answers to the right question. And everybody suffers.

The best metaphor I've heard about this is from a Zen teacher named Thich Nhat Hahn, who I'm sure many of your listeners know. He talks about how if you put a handful of salt in a glass of water and you try to drink it, you can't drink it—it's disgusting. But if you put even more than a handful of salt in a very large, clear lake, you can still drink it. There's enough space for it to dissolve, and the lake water can still taste delicious.

The metaphor being that when we have a lot of room and space for the difficult things that arise and for the different parts of ourselves, then we have that room and space for other people.

Noah Rasheta: I like that analogy of the salt. I think about it from the psychological standpoint—we have the negativity bias, where for every one bad thing, it takes a certain amount of good things to offset that. Do you know that ratio? Is it four to one, ten to one?

Yael Shy: Something like that, yes.

Noah Rasheta: It's roughly in that range, yeah. It's a significant ratio. I think in relationships, that becomes really evident, right? Especially in romantic relationships. Your spouse can do ten nice things, but then they do that one thing, and boom—that's where the focus goes.

I imagine this concept of the salt is like that. It's like if you're just focusing on this small glass, it's really salty. But increase your awareness, and you increase your container. It's not the circumstance that has changed, but the perspective changed. That's something I like that you highlighted in your book—bringing it back inward. Because what we're trying to do through mindfulness practice in general is that same thing.

There's reality, and then there's me. I feel separate from it, and everything I'm looking for is out there. But then mindfulness tweaks this, and you start to turn that shift. You start to look inward and realize it's here, it's me. I think that's hard to do in a relationship because we're programmed to think everything I'm looking for in the success of this relationship is contingent on that other person. It's outward, right?

Yael Shy: Yes.

Noah Rasheta: When you start to acquire these mindfulness principles into something like a relationship—you brought up this concept of the mirror, that relationships are like a mirror. I really like that. So tell me a little bit about how that really works in a practical sense. I'm in a relationship with my wife, for example, and there's this mirror. What are some of the common things that we hope to see? Or, if we don't realize it's a mirror, but when I realize it's a mirror, what do we start to see? What changes?

Yael Shy: It's a great question. I'll use myself as an example because that's the easiest for me to use. I was single for a long time—much longer than I wanted to be. I think I put a lot of hope and pressure on it. I thought if I met someone and they saw me as the one, the most beautiful, the best person in their life, that I would finally, on the inside, really feel that way about myself. That I was worthy, that I was lovable. It meant so much to me that many potential partners came along, and if I sensed even a little bit that any of them couldn't do that for me—couldn't present to me with that picture of "you are everything"—then either my fear or something else just kept getting in the way. I kept thinking, "That person is not for me. That person is not for me."

When I finally met my husband and we were getting serious, nearly all of our fights in those early years were sparked by this feeling of jealousy—that he secretly wanted to be with someone else, that he really liked someone else better, that he thought someone else was more attractive. The feeling in me would be just so much shame and fear and anxiety and pain, because I was still looking outward to get that inner feeling of "I'm lovable, I'm worthy."

Even though he was giving me a lot of love and was giving me a lot of support, as long as it's outward, it will never be enough. That's what I realized. We all want outward love and attention, and that's fine. But when it's to answer that core question about ourselves, then we're never going to be happy. It's never going to be satisfying. And that's where a lot of my mindfulness practice had to come in.

I had to say, in those most difficult moments, "You know what, this relationship, right now, is just about me looking in the mirror of myself and my own worth and whether or not I believed myself." And it would be different if he was giving me a lot of evidence that he really wasn't that into me. But that wasn't happening.

That's where the mirror comes in. Once you see, "You know what, this is happening over and over again. This is triggering something over and over again," and once you see it, then you have to go back in. Every time I was about to start a fight along these lines—and this has been until recent years really—I had to take a break. I had to take some space, and I needed to bring a lot of love and compassion to my own painful experience. I had to sit with what it felt like to not really fully have that strong sense of "I'm lovable, I'm fine, I'm beautiful, I'm okay."

It took a lot to do that. And then part of it is to grieve—almost—that the partner is not going to be able to do that for you. They can give you a lot of wonderful things, but they can't answer that essential question.

Noah Rasheta: I love that. Let me clarify something for anyone listening. I want to make sure we're not saying that as long as I love myself I can stay in an unhealthy relationship with someone who's abusive or something like that. That's not at all what this is insinuating.

I think what I'm hearing, and I want to be clear about it, is what you're saying is the sense of completeness that comes in the relationship only comes when it's complete here on your side—when you are okay with you. Then you can be okay with them. That's when the relationship can be completely whole.

I want to correlate this to this societal view of "my other half"—the idea that I'm half, and someone else is going to complete me. But with that other half, I'm not whole. This is saying, "No, that's nonsense." This is saying, "Mindfulness helps you realize you are it. You are essentially it. And when you are whole, you take a whole—and whatever the other is, that other maybe half or maybe"—it doesn't matter. Wherever that other thing is, you work well with the other part because you are whole. Does that sound more along the lines of what you are insinuating?

Yael Shy: Yes. The only thing I want to also clarify in there is absolutely—yes. This is not about settling, like if you can't find someone that you're matching with and you should just settle for them because it's really all about you. Don't believe in that. Not a good idea. And accepting people being unkind or not good to you—absolutely not. That's just really a lot of more suffering. I'm not saying that at all.

I'm saying with the person you really love—and once you've had the chance to really see that person—then we come to that question of in each of these difficult interactions: where are you, and who is that, and where is this appropriate boundary?

My stepfather, who is a very wise man, always says this line: "Love is boundaries." And we don't think of it that way. Especially in the Buddhist world, we say we are all one, and we are interconnected, which is very true. But I think when it comes to relationships, seeing and understanding the boundary where someone else begins and you end—even in a relative sense—is really, really important. All kinds of relationships, romantic and otherwise.

Before I forget, the one thing I just wanted to adjust is that it's not a static process. It's not like, "I am at one with all of myself. I am fully enlightened and love myself. Now I'm ready to be in a relationship." It's a constant process of back and forth—figuring out what's yours and what's the other person's—and just trying to be awake to the whole thing, even if you're still stuck in a really hard place where you have a lot of self-loathing. Just trying to be aware goes a long way.

Noah Rasheta: Thank you for clarifying that. From the Buddhist perspective, we've talked about and acknowledged that things are impermanent—in other words, everything is constantly changing. When a relationship—I mean this is extremely evident because the me that was me when I got married is not the me that I am today. Same with my partner. She's not the person I married. And I hear this from people all the time. They say things like, "Oh, that's not who I married."

And it's like, "Well, of course. That's absolutely not who you married, and you're not who they married." This idea of looking in the mirror relative to time is that you're always looking in the mirror because you're not the you that you were five minutes ago, much less the you that you were when you got married or when you started the relationship.

Emphasizing that this process is dynamic—if you ever think "we got it, we figured it out, we're there," that's when you should probably worry, because you don't get to the point. You're always getting there. And I think I like thinking about that in terms of relationships, especially romantic ones with my wife.

I'm thinking we'll never get there. That's the point. We're always building and working on the dynamic of our relationship. Who is the me that is in love today? Who is the person that I'm loving today? Because that's not the same person from yesterday. The ability to keep it fluid like that—I think in our case has been really helpful.

There was a period in time in my life when I felt like things were stagnant. Like, "I'm the me that I've always been." That's when there was conflict, where I was thinking, "Is this not my soul mate? Did I pick the wrong half? Is there another half that would have been more suitable?" Because I was thinking in terms of that sense of permanence of the relationship. But when I started to look in the mirror—that was a drastic change. And when I understood the aspect of impermanence in the relationship, that changed the dynamic.

Yael Shy: So well said. It's this process of continually waking up and being like, "Who's in front of me? Who is this person?" When you're together a long time—I think my understanding—I haven't been together with my husband for longer than I think we're going into forty years. But I think it's even more important to just really see the person instead of being like the kind of hazy, "I know who you are."

Certainly, if you have kids, if you have any of these relationships in our lives, I think it's so important to just really keep committing yourself over and over. The same way we come back in meditation practice over and over again—what's happening now, what's real now, what's a story in my mind? We come back to this person: who is this person now, how are we interacting now, who am I now in this thing? It's a beautiful practice. It's a really intense, beautiful practice.

Noah Rasheta: I think it requires a lot of vulnerability too—because to show up and just be seen, like "this is me." It seems like in relationships, especially the romantic ones, we're always adding layers. I did this for a long time in my marriage. I'm trying to be who I think she thinks I should be. I'm measuring myself—who I am versus who I think you think I think you should want me to be. The layers are insane here because it's "who I think you think I think you should"—you know? It gets really crazy. You're doing the same thing back. You're comparing your partner.

It's like, are you allowing them to be who they are, or who you think they should be, or who they think you think they should be? It gets extremely complicated with the layers and masks that we put on. And I think the mindfulness approach is just saying what you just said. You show up and you just ask, "Well, who am I, and who is this, and what is now? What is happening now? Why are we saying this? Why am I feeling this?" I think that is a really powerful exercise.

Yael Shy: Yes. The times when I felt like that deepest love for my partner is often those times when I'm like, "Look at this person that's sitting on the couch with me." Not like, "Did you pick up the milk yesterday?"—not that practical moment. I usually just kind of, not ignoring, not taking for granted, but just treating them like they were a piece of furniture. But when I look, and I'm like, "Wow, this is a miracle. We're trying this thing together. We're doing this thing together," that's where this swelling of love comes from. Because I think it's impossible to feel that all the time. Those moments are really special.

Noah Rasheta: Yeah, that's been great. I want to take this concept and expand it a little to other forms of relationships. Something that you mention in the book that stood out to me was your understanding of love in terms of your son. How old is your son?

Yael Shy: He's thirteen months, and I have another on the way, actually.

Noah Rasheta: Congratulations.

Yael Shy: Thank you.

Noah Rasheta: You mentioned something that really resonated with me because I have three kids—ages five, eight, and two. You mentioned this realization that with your son, you would give your life up for him in a heartbeat, no questions asked. There's this idea of conditional love that I think we get stuck in—like, "I love you because you love me." But if you didn't love me back, then I probably wouldn't love you back, right?

Then suddenly kids come along, and you discover this new level where it's truly unconditional. You don't need anything out of it. The joy of it is that you get to love them, and that's what I was gathering as I was reading that part in your book where you're talking about your son.

Let's talk about that a little bit. This reminds me of meta-practice, where you're trying to have that sense of unconditional love for someone. You start with someone where that's natural. When I do this exercise, I start with my kids, then expand it from there. How can I love my wife in that same unconditional way as I love my kids? Parents, siblings—you move out from there.

Let's talk about that a little bit. How do you experience that?

Yael Shy: I wrote in the book, and I still feel this way, that this is the edge. It's a very interesting thing. Writing about that was in reference to the Heart Sutra, which talks about how, like a mother at the risk of her own life protects and cradles her only child, we have a boundless love for the entire world.

When I first read that, before I had kids, I was like, "That sounds wonderful. I could have that." Now, where we come back down to the kind of brass tacks of it—definitely not. I definitely feel a different way about my family than I do about the world. Even if I may not wish anyone harm in the world, that entire sense of love that goes that deeply, that I feel so deeply connected to, is not present in the same way.

But I had a little moment—actually maybe a year ago on a retreat. We had broken one of those light bulbs, and I wasn't sure if the light bulb was fluorescent or not. You know how when you break one of those eco-friendly light bulbs?

Noah Rasheta: The ones that just explode when they break.

Yael Shy: It's so annoying. They have mercury, and you're supposed to abandon the area and air it out and all this kind of stuff. I was pregnant at the time. I remember when the light bulb broke, it was on the floor in a large room. We were about to do a meditation, and they were cleaning up the light bulb. At that moment, we still didn't know if it was that kind with the mercury.

I said, like, "You know what, I'm pregnant, so I'm going to take my cushion and sit on the other end of the room. Then I'll feel better." As I did that, and as I started seeing all of the other retreatants come into the room, some sitting right next to where that broken light bulb was, I just started to have this horrible feeling. Like, "What is the difference between this life that I'm trying to protect inside of me and this beautiful life that's over there sitting potentially near this source of poison?"

Just all of a sudden, I got up, and I was like, "You know what, wait. We have to actually figure this out. I can't just protect myself. This is ridiculous."

I think it's because I was in that heightened heart space of a retreat where I could actually tap into that understanding. There is literally no difference. A life is a life, and everybody deserves that kind of love and care. So there are little pockets, little edges of where the heart can be really expanded to include more and more people.

I love the way you connect it to meta-practice because that's exactly it. We're like going to the gym and weightlifting to expand our hearts that wide.

Noah Rasheta: Similar to what you're describing, for me it's been in those moments of practicing that I get those glimpses—either seeing somebody, connecting for a moment, maybe it's just mentally doing meta-practice—but it's like for a minute, I can grasp the concept of truly loving everyone the same way I love my own children. That feels incredible. Then you get back into the daily routine, like the habitual reactivity of life, and it's not as easy.

But I love that you compared it to the gym because it's the same way with the gym. It's like what makes it work is that you call the time, and it's consistent, and you do a routine. That's when, after X amount of months or something, you notice you're a lot stronger now. I think this is similar. It's practice, practice, practice, and then one day you realize "Oh, it comes naturally now. I feel the compassion and the unconditional love much easier than I did before."

Yael Shy: Yeah. A teacher said that it's sort of like the heart is one muscle—so it's either open or closed. It's not like a dimmer switch that you can keep in one area. As you work that muscle, it's going to keep opening and opening, and more and more people can fit. But when we're tightened around just a little nuclear family, it's actually not as liberating. Like you said, it doesn't feel good. It actually doesn't feel very good. It feels tight and constricted.

Noah Rasheta: Great. If you were to offer just one snippet of advice to someone listening who is saying, "I want to have a more mindful relationship with whoever they're thinking of, whatever"—what tips would you give? Are there specific meditation techniques or just advice to someone who wants to introduce mindfulness into their relationships?

Yael Shy: I have a meditation—a mindful loving-kindness meditation—in the back of my book, and on that one, it's about realizing and coming home to how much you have been loved over the course of your life and how much you have loved. Because I think where a lot of us run into trouble and difficulty with relationships is this feeling like we're coming in as beggars, and we're empty. The other person must fill us or must meet our needs, because we don't have anything here.

This practice focuses on, from the beginning, even if people hurt you when you were a child, even if things were not wonderful—which is the case for a lot of us—somewhere along the line, so many people did acts of love to keep you alive. Then you, maybe without even knowing it, have had enough in you to do acts of love for other people.

Starting to tap into that fullness within oneself in meditation, I think, is really helpful for relationships. That's number one. Then I think number two is really helpful to do that practice that we were talking about—really trying to see who is this other person and who am I, really going back and forth on those pieces.

Then there's the communication piece. When you're really communicating with someone, when you're in a fight, know when you need to take time away. One of my favorite lines on this is "strike when the iron is cool, never hot." Get really cool, if you possibly can, before you engage with somebody that's triggering you. Then, when you are engaged, as much as you can, through communication, see if you can fully let the other person feel heard and seen before you then say, "Can I now share my piece of this?"

That might be just repeating to them back, exactly word for word what they say, until they feel like you got their whole story right—you've got their entire side of the story right. Then say, "Now can I explain to you, and would you mind repeating it back to me?" That's a tip from the nonviolent communication folks, who have an entire curriculum around that. But I think it's also deeply a mindfulness practice of being willing and able to be present with oneself, to be with the boundary, and to be with the other person.

Noah Rasheta: Great, thank you for sharing that. One more aspect of it that I just thought of—we talked about the mirror and starting the process with learning to love yourself. You specifically mentioned in your book you had this moment where you're looking at yourself in the mirror and you said, "Are you going to love yourself or not?" How do we start that process of introspection in a relationship? "I want to improve my relationship. How do I start with me?" Is there a first step or something like that?

Yael Shy: It's accepting. It's looking and accepting what is already there. And it's not going to happen overnight. We all carry a lot of judgment and pain. But it's almost like we have to marry ourselves. We have to be like, "I'm committed to this with you."

That was my moment when I asked myself, "Listen, are you in or are you out?" We have a life together—me and myself. And if I'm really committed to opening my heart to myself, to loving myself over time, then I need to really accept what is there. And I need to form a friendly relationship, even to the parts of myself I thought were so horrible and so ugly that I never wanted anybody else to see. Just continually coming back to that, and holding it with love, and realizing that it was probably parts of myself that developed when I was very young in response to situations that were out of my control.

For me, all of meditation, all of this process of even just coming back to our breath and coming back to our feelings, coming back to the things that arise—it's a practice of learning to love oneself. It's not a fast process, but if you're committed, if you put that ring on, then that's where the work happens. And that's where you will slowly and slowly just start to love this being that you are.

Noah Rasheta: Thank you. Going back to the gym analogy, we wouldn't think, "If I go to the gym today for ten hours, then I'll finally be strong." It doesn't work that way. In fact, that's going to be really bad—you're probably going to tear all your muscles. Consistency and time—that's how it works, much the same way as going to the gym.

Yael Shy: The only other thing I would add, which I didn't before, is that part of the meditation process is hearing our inner critic—because otherwise, they're just running our life. Like, "Why are you such an idiot? Why do you do things this way? You're such a failure?" These things that we just say to ourselves constantly without second-guessing it.

I think another piece of the meditation practice—where we start to hear this voice, and then we don't believe it—is to slowly start to interrogate that voice. Not kick it out, but just not believe that it's true.

Noah Rasheta: I love that. I do think early on, we focus a lot of energy on trying to silence the voice or thinking that it won't be okay until that voice is gone—we need to get rid of it. Then you're just set up for disappointment because the surprise is, "Hey, that voice doesn't go away." It's the moment when you realize, like you just said, "I don't have to believe my own thoughts. Oh, well, now they can just be there. They can stay, whatever."

And you're like, "Oh, there's that thought again, but it doesn't have power over me anymore."

Yael Shy: If anything, you just have a lot of room for all of these voices that again—like we said—were probably created when you were very young. They're not these big evil demons that they feel like so much of the time.

Social Activism and Mindfulness

Noah Rasheta: Sure. Okay, let's shift topics and talk a little bit about social activism now. One of the common misconceptions I hear—and I'm sure you've encountered this too—about mindfulness or living mindfully is that if you're mindful, you're just content with what is. There are bad things happening in the world, and it's like, "Whatever. Let things be." I think that's a fundamental misconception.

So I want to address that a little bit. There's social activism, social justice work, activism that we do in that arena—how does mindfulness come in and fit in? How does it improve social activism?

Yael Shy: This goes right back to that analogy I was saying in that meditation room that day, where I thought to myself, "I'll protect my baby in the womb. I'll protect myself, and other people can work it out for themselves." The more that we really tap in, the more we open our hearts—but also, just experientially understand—that we are deeply interconnected. And that we sink or we swim as a species, as a world together.

That kind of "I'm here, I'm in this just for myself and maybe a couple other people, and everybody else can fend for themselves"—that starts to break down. It starts to actually make you see that it's not because it's the right thing to do. It's because actually, that leads to more suffering for myself and for others. It leads to more of a feeling of a wall, of division, which then makes me feel imprisoned behind this wall—this imaginary wall where I am separate from everyone else.

The more that we practice, and the more we really truly see how our fates are completely tied together, then the more that we can't sit by when other people are deeply suffering. And we unfortunately live in a world where there are people suffering. I mean hopefully this will not be the case sometime. I assume from my lifetime there will always be people suffering.

It's no longer an option to just be like, "I'll just meditate so that I can feel calm on my day-to-day walk to work." Because you're not going to feel calm. It's not going to ease some of that inside suffering that you have while other people are still in pain. That's the connection in my mind.

Noah Rasheta: I really like what you shared in your book—a quote. This was, I think, from the Aboriginal peoples? The quote says, "If you come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let's work together."

That's introducing the idea of interdependence again—that we're all connected. I think of that not just in the context of going and doing something big, like building schools somewhere in the world. I'm thinking, wow, this is extremely relevant in my relationships just here with a friend who's like, "Hey, I want to help you." How different is that perception if it goes from "I'm helping you because I know what's good for you" versus "We're tangled up in this together. Let's work together"?

Yael Shy: Right. The helping mentality is like an asymmetrical power structure. Adults don't really like to be helped on a large scale, but everybody needs real solidarity—people working in alignment with them.

Noah Rasheta: Isn't that fascinating? We're hardwired as social creatures to want to fit in. Almost everything we do revolves around making sure I fit in and then I'm not excluded. And yet I think we have such a hard time receiving help. It's like, "I want to be a part of a team, but I don't want you to do anything for me. If we're doing it together as a team, that's great—that's what I actually want."

It seems like that's another way to shift that mindset: like, "I'm on your team. We're working together here."

Yael Shy: I think that's right. To some degree, it's actually legitimate to not want to be helped by someone who has no idea what your circumstances are. When it's a patronizing relationship, it can often feel like the person is trying to help you just so that they feel better. And the same way that I want to help someone else sometimes is just so that I feel better—but then it's all about me. It's not really about them. It's a realignment of that.

Noah Rasheta: I think sometimes in my past experience, I think sometimes that's exacerbated by certain beliefs. If I want to save you, it's like, "I'm not saved the way that I am, but no, I'm going to save you." I try to make sure that doesn't happen. I think it's easy to have that extent in a Buddhist practice where it's like, "You need more mindfulness like me. Look, how mindful I am." It just doesn't work to have that mindset—that's so far off the mark.

Yael Shy: In that same way of trying to manipulate others, we're just using these different tools. But people manipulate it because there is that manipulation happening, even if you think you have the best intentions.

Noah Rasheta: Something I want to highlight with social activism and kind of going back to that misconception of Buddhism—that Buddhism isn't really engaged socially. I think of someone like Martin Luther King as a good example of this.

Imagine for a moment how ineffective all of his work would have been if he was hyperactive and highly emotional in his approach—very reactive. It would be completely ineffective. I think what made him such an effective force for enacting change was he was very calm, levelheaded, and he had wise things to say. He could present things in a way that made people think, "Oh, yeah. Why are we doing this? Why are we not doing that?"

I think that, to me, is the key connection between mindfulness and social activism—what we're trying to accomplish through mindfulness is essentially skillful means. If I'm going to be engaged in a social cause, I want to be as effective as possible. So mindfulness can help me to be more skillful in my engagement with whatever cause I'm involved with.

When I see it that way, then I realize mindfulness is a really powerful tool to increase the effectiveness of whatever social engagement I'm involved with.

Yael Shy: Absolutely, without a doubt. At the same time, I want to be careful also, because it doesn't mean that you don't—I imagine, and I think from what I've read of his writings, Martin Luther King felt things.

Noah Rasheta: Absolutely.

Yael Shy: He felt frustration and suffering and had those strong responses. So I know that's not what you're saying—that you don't feel furious or angry or deeply wounded or afraid. Like you so beautifully said, we develop the right strategy and skillful means to address it. Then the only thing I can add to that is that you could say that about anything—that mindfulness could bring you skillful means to do a bank takeover or something like that, or to whatever country—which is true. It does give you those tools of calming and focusing and being responsive and not reactive.

But then if you couple that with also understanding the interconnection that we're talking about and that kind of commitment to relieving suffering, then it becomes that you not only have the skillful means bit, you also cannot do things that harm people. You can't even have—I write about this in my book, this line that I love: "How you do anything is how you do everything."

I think people who do engage in social justice often find ourselves sometimes in situations where the language is vitriolic against the other, or it's dehumanizing of the other side in a way that I think does not do us any favors. I think it just perpetuates this again—that sense of a division, of those people are bad and we're good. We just have to win, and then we'll be okay. That's the real hard work.

When you're fighting for justice, nobody can be left out. It doesn't mean that you don't hold people accountable or that you don't restrain them when they're doing harm or anything like that. But it's all done with the spirit of "we are connected." Then it's an entirely different kind of spirit.

Noah Rasheta: I mean, for me I think that's what makes it so powerful—knowing that the sense of wanting to do something arises naturally out of understanding, understanding that we're interdependent, rather than "this is what you should do because it's the right thing to do." It's not compelled. It's not a commandment. It's not "I'm supposed to love everyone, so here I go." It arises very naturally out of understanding.

And that understanding arises through sitting and meditating or practicing mindfulness. Then it's like, "Why are we doing this? Why aren't we doing that?" All of that is natural. I think that's an important part to highlight because when it arises naturally, I think we can be more skillful and more determined with the cause. We're doing this because this is natural. It's not "I'm doing this just because."

Yael Shy: Right. Absolutely. There's a Zen proverb that says, "In Zen, we do two things. We sit and we sweep the garden. It doesn't matter how big the garden is." And that's the proverb. That's the spirit.

When we feel just so overwhelmed by the state of the world, then I think when you're like, "Time to pick up my broom and sweep my little tiny corner of the garden, and I'm just going to do that until I die"—it doesn't matter if the garden is as big as the whole world. That's my challenge, and that's what gives you the sustainability to do that long-term.

Noah Rasheta: To do what I can, where I can, and what I can, which is now. Not having that feeling of being overwhelmed like, "If I can't do all of it, I guess I'll just sit here not doing any of it."

I do this with work when I have enough projects on my table or on my plate. I can feel overwhelmed, and I think, "Well, I'm never going to get any of it done, so I guess I'll just sit here not doing any of it." I think that can translate to social activism. It's like, this is so overwhelming, so I just won't do anything. I think mindfulness helps us to take that step back and say, "You can do something. I can do this. This little thing that I'm doing here—and that's where I start."

Yael Shy: Absolutely. That's right. Not only can you, but it's for the sake of all of us. It's for the sake of yourself and for all of us.

One of my teachers, Rabbi Alami, once said, "Walking around the world," we sometimes have this psychic squint. We're trying to screen out all the unpleasant, all the suffering, all the things that people are going through. We're just trying to be happy just by ourselves. That psychic squint gives us headaches—like, it gives us entire life headaches.

To really commit ourselves even to our little corners of the garden means to really open our eyes and to say like, "I'm not going to wall myself away from this anymore." It's tremendously freeing to do that. To me, it feels like I accept there is suffering, and I'm going to do what I can. And I'm not going to hide myself away anymore.

Noah Rasheta: I like that analogy of the squinting. The irony of a strategy like that is that the thing you're doing is the thing that's causing it to be worse. It's like, "I'm doing this because I want to be shielded, but that's also what's preventing me from taking in all the things that are great."

Yael Shy: Exactly. You screen out the suffering; you screen out the joy. They're all part of the same thing.

Living with Insecurity and Uncertainty

Noah Rasheta: For anyone who's watching live who has questions—now would be a great time if you want to post your question. If you're on the Crowdcast website, you can submit your question. I'm just going to check really quick on the Facebook one and see what's going on there.

[pause]

I see comments, but I don't see any questions there. I don't see any questions on the Crowdcast platform either. We are approaching the one-hour mark, so I don't want to keep you too long and take your precious time.

Let's shift quickly to the idea of insecurity and intense emotions. I think this ties in to what we talked about. There's insecurity in relationships, there's insecurity in the things that we do. Is what I'm doing helping? Am I just wasting my time? What should I be doing in life? There's a lot of insecurity in life, and I think it's especially evident in younger ages where you're trying to decide, "Hey, is this the path that goes this way or that way? Uh-oh, what if I picked the wrong one?"

It's evident later in life too because you go down the path and you're like, "This is the path I should have gone down." Most adults have thoughts like, "Is this the person I should have married? Is this the career I should have gone into? What would it be like if I was over there?"

This insecurity that we seem to live with at any given moment—we talked earlier about how mindfulness is a skill set as a tool. It's trying to help us to get more comfortable with the discomfort. The fact is life is uncomfortable. Thoughts like that are natural. So, rather than thinking, "Uh-oh, I need to never think those thoughts," it's just saying, "Where did that thought come from? Explore it."

Let's talk about that just for a second. How do we become more comfortable with discomfort, with the insecurity?

Yael Shy: I'm really happy you framed it that way because I think that's exactly what it is. It's not finding a solid ground that you can stand on necessarily. It's learning how to surf on waves that sometimes will take us under and sometimes will just be enough that we can kind of move our bodies and be flexible and surf gently on those waves.

And then when we're completely knocked over, we try and get back up on that surfboard again. And we truly believe that the Buddhist message—certainly my experience has been—that the world is constantly, constantly, constantly changing. We are constantly, constantly changing. And any solidity is just from releasing into the waves. It's from releasing into our world that we can't control and stopping fighting.

It's over and over again this knowledge, this understanding that when we try, we can change as much as we can change obviously, and we do as much as we can do when we try and get ourselves closer to feeling whole and feeling happy. But when the world knocks us out again, trying to just say, "I'm knocked out, or I'm on very unsteady ground, and this is what's true"—and really sinking in to that. That's the challenge.

Noah Rasheta: I love the analogy with surfing because you can't catch the wave if you're not going with the flow. Anything static in surfing spells disaster. It doesn't work. You can't stay in one spot. If the wave is too big, you better go under it. If the wave is just right, you're going to ride it. There's a lot of dynamic stuff happening there, but definitely nothing static.

Yael Shy: Things are really bad. The thing that makes it absolutely worse is fighting it. Fighting that break time—so you have to just swim into the current. That's what they always teach you. And that's the journey of our life: to figure out, like the Serenity Prayer says, "change the things you can change and to really accept and grieve or to mourn and to be with the things you can't change and the wisdom to know the difference."

Noah Rasheta: I love that. Great. This has been a really fun topic, and I really appreciate you taking the time to join me for this call.

Closing

Noah Rasheta: For those of you who are listening or watching later, Yael's book is called What Now? Meditation for Your Twenties and Beyond. I read this, and I was telling Yael earlier that one of the things that was really evident to me is this stuff is for anyone. It's written from the perspective of a lot of the experiences during those twenties and thirties, but all of the concepts in here, every single one of them, are applicable at any stage in life.

So if you're interested in learning more about Yael's approach with her book What Now?, pick this up. I know it's available in all of the major places where you can buy books. And I will put the link on the Secular Buddhism website when I post this interview. I'll have the video, the audio for the podcast, and then I'll have links to Yael's website and to her book, at least on Amazon.

One of our viewers said, "Great surfing analogy. I haven't realized you can choose to go under the wave as a positive option." That's cool.

If you have any final closing thoughts you want to share with us, Yael?

Yael Shy: Well, I just want to thank you so much for such a fun conversation. I had a really nice time exploring these things with you. And I just want to let everybody know that in addition to my website, which you'll post—yaelshy.com—you can also find me on all the social medias: @yaelshy1.

Noah Rasheta: Okay, @yaelshy1. That's your Twitter. Is it the same for Instagram and Facebook and stuff?

Yael Shy: Yes.

Noah Rasheta: Okay, awesome. Well, thank you, Yael. I'm going to end the live portion of this. Thank you to everyone who listened to and participated live. This will be posted on the podcast hopefully later today.

Thank you, guys.

Yael Shy: Thank you.

For more about the Secular Buddhism podcast and Noah Rasheta's work, visit SecularBuddhism.com

For more about Yael Shy and her work, visit yaelshy.com or find her on social media @yaelshy1