An Interview with Tara Brach, Conquering FOMO, and What Successful Meditation Looks Like

I have said before that I often think of my life in terms of before and after a 10 day silent meditation retreat I spent in western Massachusetts. Hyperbole aside, I still find ways to maintain a focused practice and I recently found this interview between Tara Brach and Tim Ferriss to be a great refresher on why I meditate. 

There's a strong quote in the interview that resonated with me: "Often times, the people that need meditation the most are the people who might also be most likely to quit because they like doing everything successfully." I am not shy to name my addiction to overachievement and this quote from Tara acknowledges the truth that meditation is not something to conquer, but instead a way of understanding how to categorize and employ a framework of living. 

I discovered four categories of insight from the interview:

(1) The Trance of Unworthiness:
When Tara first started getting involved in meditation (she actually lived in an ashram for ten years after college), she went through a lot of the same things I myself go through and the things I hear my friends go through in our present day Western culture which is the question: 'What else can I do to relieve myself of anxiety and stress?' The short answer? Relax more. Tara describes this relentless desire for self-improvement as the trance of unworthiness. And it comes from a mindset that lives in a world of scarcity and not one of abundance and self-love. 

(2) Balance
In my conversations with peers, another problem that is posed is this: What is the balance between acceptance and pushing the boundaries to increase progress? This refers to either self-progress and self-optimization in the personal life, or progress within a specific job function or company. I've thought long and hard about Steve Jobs' accomplishments and what he had to sacrifice to fulfill those, for example. Here, I enjoy Tara's pull from Carl Rogers: "It wasn't until I accepted myself just as I was that I was free to change." 

(3) What does successful meditation look like?
Okay, a bit of a paradoxical question, but my point is that for those of us who want to live a life not removed from civilization (i.e. I don't see myself moving to the mountains of Nepal anytime soon), what is the end goal? To this, I enjoyed Tara's point: The goal isn't to live life without any pleasures or desires (materialism, satisfactions, etc), but the goal is to be aware of when there is tight gripping and control of those objects, rather than the other way around. There is a difference between thinking of Buddhism and mindfulness as an ideal state of being without any desire, and thinking of Buddhism and mindfulness as a state of awareness of what those desires are. 

As an aside: I found some really great pointers in the interview geared towards giving a better way to meditate for the first time. Around the 1:30 mark. 

(4) Having tea with Mara
In Buddhist mythology, there is a popular story that describes the Buddha going out to have tea with Mara. In the Buddhist mythology of Buddha's awakening, one night Buddha sits under a bodhi tree (later known as the tree of awakening). Through the night, the god mara (Mara represents all the forces that create misery. Think jealousy, greed, desire, etc) attacked him. Instead of reacting with emotion, Buddha employed a practice of presence mind thinking so that every arrow, so to speak, was turned into a flower petal. Over the course of Buddha's life, Mara kept showing up. And the Buddha’s reaction to Mara was always to employ an attitude of calm and chill, despite more explosive cries from the guards and the caretakers who would sound the alarms with Mara's presence. In those moments, Buddha would go up to Mara and say, “Hi Mara. Good to see you. Why don’t we go have some tea?"

Okay, so...my two takeaways from the story: 1) Awareness: Buddha sees what is happening in this moment. He has a capacity to acknowledge what is here. Instead of fighting what is here in the moment, there’s an ability to create space for it and find a way to live with it. It’s a way of being with ourselves that is intimate and full, not part in part. 

Both of these together are radical acceptance. And with this, when we respond to the world, we get to respond to the world with our full selves and with our full potential. We aren’t in a reactive mode. 

“Between stimulus and response, there is space. And in that space is your power and freedom.” - Viktor Frankl

(5) Dealing with FOMO (fear of missing out)
I will keep this one short. There's a way to feel fear without being driven by it. There's a way to say that you're going to take a step back and take a sabbatical. This is the exact kind of relationship we can have with FOMO if we want to feel more liberated.

"The hero and the coward feel the same t hing. It's what the hero does that makes him different." - Mike Tyson

Tara ends the interview: "Ask yourself: What am I unwilling to feel?" To become fearless, you first have to feel the fear.

Surviving and Thriving and Happiness

Some habits are better to ​pick back up by easing into them instead of diving back in (realize I haven't kept a regular cadence of writings and thoughts here lately). Below is a quick roundup of what's been on my bookshelf. 

1) Surviving and Thriving in a Relationship with an Entrepreneur by Brad Feld
Alright, so I wouldn't say I'm an entrepreneur. Or that I'm dating an entrepreneur. But I started reading Brad Feld's Surviving and Thriving, just one of his books in a larger series on the start-up lifestyle (see Startup Revolution), and I'm incredibly drawn to the topics and arguments him and his wife Amy Batchelor make. They both run their own organizations and run tight schedules. But the essence of the book is finding a work/life balance, and as part of that balance (or really, integral to that balance) is finding a way to continue developing the relationships we have outside of our computer work screens. You don't need to be running your own start-up and dating a likewise entrepreneur to want any of those in your life, so I found the book to be adaptable and enlightening. The examples they give in the book are specific to spousal relationships, but a lot of the tips could be taken to other relationships/friendships. 

A couple of highlights from the book I enjoyed (I'm about halfway through): 

Never Schedule High Priorities Activities or Deadlines on Fridays: Doing so will likely create a scenario that drifts into Friday night, Saturday, and then Sunday. Always be realistic about the ebb and flow of the work cycle.

Have a Life Dinner Once a Month: Make a reservation right now at one of your favorite restaurants. Go out--just the two of you. Buy your significant other a gift. Turn off your cell phones and hand them to the other person. Spend a long slow dinner enjoying each other's company.

Four Minutes in the Morning: One simple thing that we do that connects and grounds us each morning when we are physically in the same place is to spend four minutes together, making eye contact, and chatting casually about what the day's schedule is and when we might see each other again.

If you want more, I'd suggest his blog as well as his thoughtful reflection on resetting priorities. 

2) Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill by Mathieu Ricard
I've been on a bit of a meditation kick for the better half of a quarter of a year (and before that had done a great job at failing at regular meditation). Without going any deeper into that point of conversation than needed, and instead focusing on Mathieu Ricard's book, I've recently come to believe there is merit to developing an ability to define what derives happiness and how to work towards that. 

Even more interesting is Ricard's explicit calling of "happiness" as a skill. As a recent new grad I would say that what I've learned in the past year could easily be divided into items that fit a "hard resume" and a "soft resume". Slot Ricard's concepts and thoughts on mindfulness and meditation under the soft resume. These are skills I find to be incredibly useful in my day-to-day at work (and would imagine them to be useful just about in any job) but might look a little bit awkward under the conventional "Skills and Interests" section of a traditional job resume. 

What worked for me was Ricard's ability to comunicate these concepts from a Western perspective (he grew up in France and prior to moving to Nepal to practice Buddhism full time he was on a promising career track in cellular genetics. The book blends in fascinating psychological studies alongside the traditional wise sayings and practices of true Buddhism. 

​Next Up: Wherever You Go, There You Are by Jon Kabat-Zinn