Seth Zuiho Segall: Mindfulness In Context

We talk about putting mindfulness and Buddhism in context - the contexts in which they evolved, and in which they are currently practiced in the Western world. Seth Zuiho Segall is a Zen priest in the White Plum Asanga and Zen Peacemaker Order lineages. He is a retired clinical psychologist who served as an Assistant Clinical Professor at the Yale School of Medicine.
Interviewer: Serge Prengel has been exploring creative ways to live with an embodied sense of meaning and purpose.

Transcript

So Seth you've been paying a lot of attention to the context in which we practice mindfulness I Have and and one of the things I've been trying to think through is the whole issue of what exactly is the context for mindfulness practice and what happens when we extract it from that mindfulness and export it to some other context and Does that change the meaning of the practice and also the possible range of outcomes for it?

So so in other words?

The context in which mindfulness evolved came about in Asia Many centuries ago versus the context in which we practice it in America That's that's one context if you go back to The Asian traditions,

For example,

There's there's a Theravada tradition Theravada tradition in which the word Sati means mindfulness and has a specific meaning in that context and Then if you look at some of the later in North Asian Buddhist Traditions and lineages say Zen or as a Chan you see that mindfulness has a slightly different meaning in that tradition and Then if you look at the way that it's used in America today say starting with Jon Kabat-Zinn's definition of mindfulness is paying attention to the present on purpose and non-judgmentally That's yet a different meaning and and what you see is that Kabat-Zinn studied The pasta practice in Theravada Buddhism he studied Zen in Korean Zen Buddhism but he also studied yoga and he was also influenced by the teachings of Krishna Murthy and and other people who were interested in In present moment awareness and then he was also influenced by humanistic psychology and transpersonal psychology and ideas concerning interdependence and a Transcendence and present moment sent to this that came out of those schools And what he's done is he's kind of blended them all together into something something essentially new So then when the people sometimes criticize Kabat-Zinn for saying well his idea of mindfulness doesn't exactly track What what appears and say the Buddhist Pali Canon in terms of definitions of mindfulness in some ways?

That's a it's a criticism that's off the mark because he's really invented something very new and modern and American in the process Yeah,

Yeah and and then Let me say in what in what way is what Jon Kabat-Zinn does different from say the Pali Canon and And from say the Zen traditions Okay,

Well,

Let's the biggest difference.

I think is with the the Pali Canon tradition where mindfulness is one of eight eight aspects of the noble eightfold path and it's only one aspect of it is not the entire path in itself and As such there can there could be right mindfulness and wrong mindfulness mindfulness isn't always right month You can be attentive to something but it may not be wholesome for example in which case you should disattend to it in There's a lot more discursive thought involved in what you do with mindfulness in Theravada Buddhism You're you're really looking at the contents of your desires for example in your attachments and You're asking yourself is it wise or not?

Does it lead ultimately to happiness or not and there are judgments involved?

So it's not a non-judgmental Attention and it's tightly it's more tightly tied to an ethical focus We're whereas Kabat-Zinn's approach is much more to just allow whatever to arise to rise and just notice it with bare attention Not making any judgment about it at all.

So that that's one that's one major difference between the two and his conception is much closer to the Zen conception and that is on chance Which is much more of an kind of open open monitoring kind of awareness of things.

Yeah,

So so just from this we're also touching on the idea that It doesn't really make sense to just speak about Buddhism as a monolith because of all the different traditions in Buddhism and That there you know that there would be also differences in practice and difference in purpose Absolutely.

So it makes a lot more sense to talk about Buddhism's both historically and then also to talk about the fact that there isn't any one voice for Buddhism today that it's multi vocal that there are many traditions and even within Each tradition there are many different voices speaking And that the tradition has changed quite a bit historically over 2,

500 years It's no different than say if we looked at Judaism,

For example,

And we noticed that Way back in the past there were many Judaism's there were the scenes and there you know Pharisees and Sadducees and so forth And that it originally started not as a monotheistic religion But as fealty to one particular God among many gods that existed in the world eventually it evolves to monotheism It starts out as a religion of ritual sacrifice and later on becomes a rabbinical religion of Following a group of commandments and giving charity and prayer,

But that's not how it begins And then if you look at today,

There are many different forms of it whether Hasidic or Orthodox or Reform or conservative reconstructions There's not just one voice speaking for what it means to be Jewish and you have to look at Buddhism in the same way.

It's a very complex tradition with many tributaries and many side streams and offshoots Yeah,

So Maybe there's no such thing as one Buddhism anymore that there is such a thing as one Christianity or one Jewish religion Absolutely,

And I think it's much more helpful to view Buddhism historically as a very complex Conversation that's gone on over 2,

500 years in which there are a lot of tributaries and side streams and You can look at early Indian Buddhism as being much different than say Chinese Buddhism which mixed what is understood about Buddhism with Taoism and with Confucianism And then it continues to change as it goes to Japan for example and then changes again as it comes to America And within each stream of Buddhism there are many different forms of Buddhism And within each stream of Buddhism there are many many different voices through many many different schools So even within Zen there are there are different schools such as Ren's eyes and versus Soto Zen and they have different opinions Then different Japanese schools of Buddhism like Tendai or Shingon or Ichiren It's it's it's like looking at Christianity and seeing trying to guess what Roman Catholics have in common with Unitarians Jehovah Witnesses Seventh-day Adventists and Mormons for example Normal expressions of Christianity,

But they all have very different sets of beliefs Yeah,

Yeah And so we're talking about this within the context of context so that things you know practices evolve because they fit a certain context and and so You know,

Maybe we can talk about the context in America these days Compared to say the context in which Buddhism evolved Well,

Once again if you're looking at American Buddhism You're looking at a very complex phenomena with different streams and currents Anne Gleave just wrote this wonderful book called American Dharma That looks at what it calls the postmodern condition of modern American Buddhism and all the different Voices in it saying sometimes quite different things So you have tendencies Within American Buddhism to modernize And to incorporate aspects of Western psychology and Western Western philosophy and then other other reactions against that to try to come back to some kind of orthodoxy But even these attempts to move back to orthodoxy are really reinventions Of an old orthodoxy that really didn't exist.

So It's a very fluid kind of situation.

But but I think there have been a number of factors that have really been dominant factors in how American Buddhism is emerging and they have to do with aspects of Western culture that That feel absolutely natural to us.

They feel intuitive to us They they're part of the culture that we've absorbed and and they're as natural as the air we breathe to us We can't even question them so one of these Examples is our own beliefs about life after death And in the West there are certain dominant beliefs that we have if you're a member of an Abrahamic faith Maybe you believe in an afterlife of some kind and having an L Or if you're a scientific naturalist,

Maybe you believe when you're dead you're dead and that's it But what we don't tend to believe in is the idea of rebirth being reborn over and over and over again and even if you look at some of the the fringe Sex and religion that we have in the West is that there are a lot of the fringe sex and religions in the United States that do believe in reincarnation like Rosicrucians or theosophists or anthroposophists and so forth Their belief about reincarnation is still quite different than the Buddhist ideas about it and the conception of it So we already have a set of beliefs That make us think that the idea of reincarnation is probably very unlikely It's very hard to believe in it.

And even if we can entertain the idea that it might be true We still can't base our entire life and how we're going to orient our lives on it It's just an interesting idea,

But it's not our most important existential concern So that's one idea that doesn't fly but that was the glue that held all of traditional Buddhism together the idea that Karma affected your realm of rebirth and that the reason you behaved ethically was to to end the endless chains of rebirth or at least to be reborn into a better environment and so forth Another thing that is very strong for us is the science and its commitments to naturalism Maybe just stop there because that's a very big point that the you know the big motivating factor for early Buddhists was the idea of interrupting stopping the the cycle Reverse.

Yeah,

The whole idea was the cycle was interminable And you just one year one birth you went up next birth you went down you you would go to hell You'd go you'd become a god in the next life and live in heaven Next time around you'd be on earth and you'd be an animal next time you'd be a human being But there was no direction to what happened.

You just endlessly recycled to no point and there was an existential meaningless to it.

So For the ancient Buddhists the idea of rebirth was suffering you were chained to this wheel of constantly becoming for no purpose Right.

So that's a very different sense from say suffering in this life because the suffering was not just about the suffering in this life But it was the the suffering you you used a word you say the meaninglessness of this going on You know eternally.

That's right.

There's an existential dimension to it that's related to something that uh,

You know,

What is the purpose of life if all that happens is you keep being thrust?

Into this meaningless cycle of reincarnation Exactly.

And so the goal of the initial Buddhist was to step off that wheel entirely and go to this other state nirvana In which there was no further rebirth Although they were very unclear in specifying what your ontological status was once you stepped off the wheel.

Did you exist?

Did you not exist?

It's they would they would have said well neither of those terms apply once you step real of existence.

Yeah.

Yeah,

And so um certainly um in for contemporary Americans who are adepts of Buddhism That is not a very motivating factor per se.

So that's kind of usually handled as a metaphor for you know the The karma the chain of actions have consequences as opposed to necessarily literally being born again That's right.

So so how do We're going to exclude from this conversation heritage Buddhists who were raised as Buddhists And their families,

You know and come from Buddhist families and we're looking at convert Buddhists Maybe come as atheists or Christians or Jews and discover Buddhism and then discover they like it better than maybe what they were practicing before in some way and What are they looking for when they come and their answer is they're in some kind of distress or suffering?

Or uncomfortableness now and they're hoping that their meditative practice or their beliefs of is when someone relieved their suffering in this life and That's what people are really looking for some kind of amelioration of distress within their current lifetime.

They're not looking for ending rebirth Yeah,

So that changes the whole frame immediately In terms of why people are practicing what they hope to get from that.

Yeah,

And so,

You know I want to make sure to clarify that you're not seeing that as a problem far from that You're just simply pointing out the difference That's right.

I'm just saying that that that the compelling reasons for practice that People practice for it within India twenty five hundred years ago no longer work And no longer answer the questions that people want addressed in our contemporary world Yeah,

And so in fact you see this as a continuation of the very western form of preoccupation With what is the purpose of life and which could be said as described as say happiness or maybe even going as far back as Aristotle's concepts absolutely Absolutely That when we try to think about What do we mean when we talk about being good or having a good life Or what's the kind of life that we aspire to and hope our children will aspire to and accomplish The kinds of models that we have for understanding what?

What is good in life?

What is human flourishing?

There are no competing models for that.

There's a Christian model.

There's a Marxist model um,

There's there's the just the Bourgeois hedonistic model of making as much money as you can and passing it on to your children and so forth marrying will Achieving social status,

But but the most compelling model that we have that is really the some version of the Aristotelian model which is that um We're all hoping to kind of develop or unfold in some kind of way that maximizes who we are in a morally good way We want to believe that we can develop our strengths develop our virtues develop all our uh,

All our Possible potentials as fully as we can have the freedom to do so and to use them in a way that leads to our happiness And not just exclusively to our happiness,

But leads to well-being of other people around us,

Too We don't we don't most of us don't want to be remembered as just the happiest person in the world But we made everyone around us miserable We want to believe that somehow other people are glad that we're around that we make them A little bit better because we're around as well Yeah,

So that's really that model of virtue Um and developing one's capacities is really kind of an Aristotelian Aristotelian model And then Aristotel had a little bit more to that model too in that he also said that we ought to be able to also Be contemplative we want to recognize deep truths about the nature of our existence And he also says that we ought to be part of a community.

We ought to be Um contributing somehow so that everyone will be able to maximize their potential So that's I think I think the most enduring Model of what it means to live well and have a good life and be a good person And I think that even people who haven't read Aristotle understand that just from the culture in general Yeah,

I want to I think at some point you you you use the analogy of that Old slogan for the army of be all that you can be So that it's not it's certainly not something that only applies to people who study philosophy Right,

And when I went to undergraduate school in the state university of New York Binghamton The state university of New York has the model let each become all he is capable of being it's the same Sort of model that's that's really Uh,

We all believe in I think in some way or another that's you know What we're trying to accomplish in life and be and that's what we want our kids to do And so so then we really go with the concept.

It puts a different angle on buddhism that as For many people who practice buddhism in contemporary america It's actually not so much trying to do something that is foreign or something that's exotic But it's actually finding tools that better allow people To do something that's been a longing in the civilization for millennia Absolutely,

Absolutely.

It's it's a way people find The way they construe and use buddha's practice as a way to increasing their own well-being and maximizing their ability to become the kind of person they wish they could be And this changes some of the buddha studies even even more dramatically I think When the ancient buddhas talked about Reaching nirvana part of what they meant by that was ending all desire and ending all attachment And just you know disconnecting from all of that so that every situation that occurs is just fine as it is And I find that while there's some there's a there's some degree of psychological truth in that That accepting the reality the way it is and not demanding it be different from the way it is is actually very sane and good thing to do there's a way in which it seems rather extreme and and counterintuitive because we When I look at what I really want from life,

I don't want to be desireless I like my desires,

You know I I like the fact that I want to see something beautiful when I look at my body and I want to see something beautiful When I look out my window and so I cultivate my garden You know,

I like the idea that I want my food to be tasty and not repulsive I I do want to wear nice clothes and live in a house as comfortable and have good health care Um,

I I want air conditioning in the summer.

I mean there are all kinds of things I want that I don't want to necessarily let go of And in addition,

I like my attachments.

In fact It's my attachments to my family and my friends uh And and the communities that I belong to that make my life as rich as it is I wouldn't want to I wouldn't want to live a life where what happened to other people what?

What happened to some stranger?

Wouldn't matter any more to me or less to me than what happened to my own child,

You know I mean think about the conundrum if you uh If you're at the beach and there are two children who are drowning one of them is your own and one is the strangers To say that you really shouldn't have any preference at all about which one you save I said something it says something very um,

Um says something that's that's Doesn't really reflect the genuineness of human nature at all It's natural for us to care more about the people that we know and are in our lives and strangers Yeah It's not mean that we shouldn't extend goodwill to other people and try to be kind to everyone and recognize that everybody Is human and deserves respect and care But to say that we ought to have no preference at all.

I mean doesn't make any sense to me Yeah,

So when I think about those ancient Buddhist ideas,

I say I want to I want to reform that I don't want to not have desires instead what I want to have is a Is a wise relationship to desire to recognize when desires lead to good outcomes and when they lead to bad outcomes To recognize when they're not actually attainable And so I ought to drop them to recognize when if I if I get this desire will interfere with other higher orders That are more important to me and therefore I should let go of them I should be able to think about desire in that kind of way and not be a slave to desire but be able to um To feel it care about it and then decide whether it's wise or not and whether to pursue it And the same thing with attachments.

I want to understand whether attachments are healthy or not and those that are healthy and enrich my life I want to be able to maintain and enhance them.

I don't want to let go of them.

Yeah.

Yeah,

So we're It's a major shift Where on the one hand originally we're talking about something a way of behaving that is Certainly beyond human No human that we've ever encountered would be able to actually Be that way Absolutely,

And if we had the possibility to be that way you or I would not want to be that way so so that's kind of a Definition of a of a buddha as a very very enlightened person in general is something that is out of the ordinary And we're talking about something that is bringing You know our satisfaction our focus of uh of practice our our goals into something that's more of ordinary life and finding Contentment and gratification And gratification in in in regular life Absolutely,

And that's the key question.

Do you want to become trans human?

Do you want to become something and put all your efforts towards becoming something like somebody you have never known or actually met in life?

Or do you want to become more human and more yourself in some kind of deep way and find some?

With it.

Those are two very different goals.

And so I think one of the the values of articulating that so clearly Is uh,

It has a practical implication say for somebody who is practicing and uh going to You know a group practice and in a way trying to say what is it that you're trying to achieve?

You know in some way maybe you're trying to achieve,

You know,

Uh some kind of fantasy Of having a connection to some Wisdom that gives you a unique grip on the meaning of the universe or something Maybe some kind of mystical enlightenment and nothing wrong with being mystical but it's a it's a it's a very specific direction and another would be kind of the mysticism of every day of finding the You know the the contentment and happiness and beauty in ordinary things Yes and I would just amend that in one way that I think that what The mainstream of American Buddhist modernism does today is it includes that it's aimed at happiness in this life and well-being in this life Living harmoniously within a community and helping the community grow as well.

So it's not self-focused in that way But it also does have that transcendent element to it which is An interest in discovering one's deep interconnection to the rest of the world Understanding that um that our own idea of what it is to be a self is maybe too narrowly delimited And that it can be expanded in all kinds of ways so that includes it includes a deeper interconnectedness Understanding the constructed nature of of self and how it can be construed differently.

I mean,

These are all possibilities That are also part of modern Buddhist modernism and very important The idea also of paying of being immediately present in a full way in a wholehearted way to life Being in touch with what's happening experientially As opposed to staying cognitively in your thoughts about things trying to kind of always say Well,

This is my cognitive map about things.

But how does it really feel right now?

I mean,

I think these are all part of the western idea of of enlightenment now as well And I'm pretty sure that the question is how does it really feel right now?

Of enlightenment now as well and i'm I want to call this eudaimonic enlightenment rather than just classical enlightenment just to distinguish it Yeah It's within this larger context of happiness in this life deeper sense of interconnection to nature and the universe And the more open,

Uh attention to ongoing experiencing rather than conceptual thinking about things Um,

It's in this environment uh That khabitz then develops his idea of mindfulness And when you look at how people are actually practicing mindfulness within say john khabitz's mindfulness based stress reduction or similar kinds of interventions They're really working within this kind of envelope Of what I would call secularized western buddhist modernism And and you're right this this gives us a map of what we hope to achieve through the practice It gives us some sense of what the outcomes might be And it guides us in knowing whether our practice is helping or not Whether we're doing it the right way or not.

It provides a roadmap for all kinds of things And I think one of the interesting questions is what happens if you try to divorce it From that context and try to export it elsewhere But so let's stay there for a moment I'd like to come back to what you're saying But just when you talk about a roadmap for the practice,

I want to to see a little bit more with it You know,

What does it mean in practice in a way?

And so part of it is going to be um,

You know,

Does is is this helping me?

Have more of a sense of my own experience of what I am as a self,

You know Not as something,

You know a predetermined idea of a self something rigid but the the moment by moment unfolding Of experience that we call the self And and you know,

Does my notion of myself in a way is it is it transformed?

Do I have curiosity to notice aspects of it so that it starts reforming and flowing in a different way?

Absolutely I think that's a wonderful way of of expressing it Do do I feel more connected to others?

Does this help me feel a sense of connection?

What's the nature of that connection,

You know,

Does that connection feed me?

You know,

Do I contribute to others in a way that actually feeds them and me?

All that is subsumed in there.

Yes.

Yes Then kind of a sense of you know,

What am I doing here?

What am I doing when I'm sitting or doing any other,

You know,

Pause mindfulness practice?

Is it something that actually is helping me be more of who I want to be?

Is it helping me,

You know,

Be more present in life?

Is it helping me having more options?

Is it helping me in some way having a better more happier experience of life?

That's right.

All of the above.

Yeah,

And then you could look at specific sub skills in there as well Am I able to when I have urges come up or whims come up or just as am I able to kind of notice them?

And and decide are they helpful or not?

Am I able not to believe all my thoughts to realize that all the thoughts most of the thoughts I have aren't necessarily true They're just thoughts and and they're very ephemeral in that kind of way and maybe not too important Am I experiencing my body fully?

Am I present in my body as opposed to just being in my head?

And we can go down a whole list of such things So as you're talking what what's coming up for me is that you know,

So as you're talking what what's coming up for me is a sense that maybe instead of enlightenment,

You know in the image of enlightenment Or say even awakening by itself Evokes something that oh,

You know,

You cross a gate and something amazing happens And um and and i'm as i'm listening to you I think of more awakening being a verb that's followed by something and so specifically awakening curiosity uh to curiosity about a different way of being awakening curiosity about a different way of being in life of exploring life and experiencing life Absolutely,

No question about it.

Um,

I just I had a wonderful thought and I just lost it I want to apologize for that but Uh,

Let me see if I can get back to it for a moment.

Yes I think one of the other major differences between this eudaimonic enlightenment and classical enlightenment Is that classical enlightenment or traditional enlightenment saw itself as an end point?

You got there And there was a place to be and then you stayed there once you're there You're once you're enlightened you stayed enlightened and there was nothing further to do You you've done all the work that needed to be done And I think if instead if you look at the idea of enlightened being as a horizon that you're kind of seeing as a kind of a Maybe a long-term dimension that you're heading towards But that you realize that it's just an ongoing process of awakening after awakening after awakening with no end and no predetermined endpoint I think that's a much I think that's more accurate about how most people look at In quotes enlightenment now not as an endpoint but as an ongoing awakened process of awakening that we never we never complete well And and and that's exciting to think about that.

We always have more to grow So you're talking about saying with the ing not being a noun that marks a moment but the ing Uh the same way as we say walking or eating that marks this process Absolutely Yeah,

Absolutely So,

You know,

I interrupted you earlier when you you were going to talk more about the eudaimonic,

Um,

Um awakening and Enlightenment,

Um,

So,

You know did Or have we just covered that I'm sorry.

I i'm not sure I heard everything I think I interrupted you earlier.

I think I think I I don't think I need to say more about it right now Okay,

So let's just take a moment to see Um,

Whether it feels right to end here or whether there's something else you might want to add Yeah,

I wanted to talk about what happens when you remove Mindfulness practice from that context that i've been talking about of eudaimonic enlightenment because we're talking now about Since john kappetzin introduced the idea of mindfulness.

We've seen it We've seen mindfulness interventions expand into almost every possible imaginal space Whether you're talking about mindfulness for depression or specific disorders mindfulness for cancer Mindfulness for attention deficit disorder,

But we're also seeing it move into the boardroom in terms of life coaching for executives or into sports teams and we're seeing it being brought into the military in terms of trying to make soldiers more mindful so that They're more discerning in moments of crisis and can make wise choices in those moments and so forth And there are a number of critics who uh have been quite vocal in the last few years about this Saying um is mindfulness being used in some way to um as a kind of a soporific to there's a there are a lot of negative things in that culture whether it's militarism or or greedy forms of capitalism and so forth In which um say corporations for example might exploit the workers prefer the workers to be happy and pleasant but on less wages and with fewer benefits and working longer hours and so forth so let's just introduce a mindfulness program and uh,

You know,

Maybe we can make our workers less disturbed so that they They take fewer sick days and we spend less on Healthcare and so forth But there's no real interest in making the workers better.

So is it becoming a soporific or sop in some ways to prop up?

Like the new opium rotten system and Excuse me,

The new opium of the people the new opiate of the people exactly so I I think that's um I just I think it's something we need to think about so so one thing we want to be aware of is that as Say mindfulness teachers move into corporate environments or into the military They need to be very aware of the possible conflicts of interest that occur if i'm a mindfulness teacher and I want to go to large corporation like Monsanto and I want to teach for example The workers who suffer from the same kinds of existential anxieties and problems that all of us do and it might benefit them in some Way am I going to downplay some of the elements elements of mindfulness as I bring it into the corporation?

So that I might emphasize it as a stress reduction technique And not look at its possibility that people might become more aware of the conflicts between their values And their employer's values and to find the courage to speak up about it,

Which is also part of my Will I will I tailor in such a way that I change its outcome?

So I think that people who move into different contexts need to be very aware of possible conflicts In onages that might compromise their integrity as they move into these areas and need to stay focused on that as they do I also think it's possible To export mindfulness in ways that are entirely malignant So I want us to imagine for a moment a different philosophy other than eudaimonic enlightenment.

I want to imagine a philosophy of selfishness pure selfishness in which we say that life is nasty and brutish and short and the best we can do is aggrandize ourselves and get and gain whatever we can at the expense of other people and that life is a zero-sum game and every time we Defeat someone else and get what we want.

We we've succeeded in as best we can And how would mindfulness function in there?

It would be like a a tool to always be vigilant to where you might get your advantage Or to be always vigilant at uncovering the various plots by your competitors and so forth And it could be something that doesn't support eudaimonia and a well-obliged at all.

That's something rather selfish and narrow And I Dt suzuki who was One of the people who introduced zen to the west back in 1938.

He wrote a book on on zen buddhism and japanese culture In which he made the claim which is probably not historically true That that zen was an important part of the samurai culture of bushido,

For example And that somebody who learned to meditate as a samurai where I could learn that life and death are are insignificant You know that That one can remain calm under all circumstances and be able to see where your opponents,

You know Vital organs lie very quickly without being distracted by other thoughts And it could be part of the way of a warrior to just remain calm and focused as a killer Well,

That may or may not be true samurai may not have may or may not have on the whole practice meditation But there are modern examples of people who've done just that sociopathic individuals who've used meditation to focus to um To further their own designs.

I I read a case of a Of a would-be serial killer who killed one person and almost killed some others back in new york city in 1996 Who practiced meditation before going out on a killing spree?

He was for example on one occasion.

He was meditating by a stream in central park And then saw somebody went by and went off and attacked them And we see the case of uh,

Andres brevek the norwegian mass murderer who also used meditation in the same way He said it would make him would make him numb And indifferent,

You know to the suffering of others when you practiced it So clearly there are ways to use meditation that are malignant When they're practiced within a larger frame that doesn't support human flourishing.

So I think we just Need to be very careful and not always say well learning to meditate is always a good thing and it's always useful And always promotes human growth It does when you're practicing it within large and meaningful framework that supports that Yeah,

Yeah,

Yeah,

So the so that's a the large and meaningful framework comes back To the ethical orientation So that's a very important part of the meditation that we're talking about So the notion of mindfulness in context is very much in the context of the spiritual And so we very much stay within that uh notion of mindfulness in context That's right You