Buddhism

And also, it's not, she's not wrong in that empathy is a vehicle.

But if you looked at it from a Buddhist perspective, it would be to compassion.

It, y- you know, the, the goal is never empathy because just feeling what someone else is feeling doesn't resolve.

There needs to be some action that happens after that, so it's always been a vehicle.

She was trained as a psychologist, but kind of as she's going on her psychology journey, she's also becoming a really hardcore meditator.

She does other things to kind of show her commitment to this cause, so she's constantly reading these Dharma books, which are, like, books about the Buddhist teachings.

She's teaching meditation kind of through the same meditation class that I took called MBSR, and she also meditates herself for hours and hours a day.

... meditation studies.

She, like, loved reading the book.

She really took it to heart, and that kind of launched her meditation journey.

From then on, Willoughby began to devote her life to ancient Buddhist principles.

But she also had her degree in neuroscience, so she wanted to use her scientific background to advance the cause of meditation.

It just doesn't fit with observation.

Now, in the, in the-- in traditional Indian Buddhism, the solution is rebirth.

You've just had many lives before this life, so a lot of the leanings that you are born with are the leanings that you've ac-- that you've acquired in past lives.

I don't, I don't know about rebirth.

Here's where everything is chaos morally, and this is how we ach- we get to a new way of being human.

Um, the Eightfold Path in Buddhism works this way.

Surrender in Islam works this way.

All the religious traditions seem to have a starting point as a critique of red that invites us to move into blue.

You're all probably familiar with the word mindfulness, and you may also know that millions of people across the globe today incorporate some form of mindfulness meditation into their daily lives.

But what's even more amazing is did you know that this movement traces its roots in large part to Burmese Buddhist traditions? From historical giants like Lady Sayadaw, to more recent meditation masters like Mahasi Sayadaw and SN Goenka, to contemporary figures like Sayadaw Utejaniya and Paok Sayadaw, these teachers have played pivotal roles in evolving meditation practices into accessible tools for modern lay audiences.

These powerful and effective teachings of liberation and spiritual transformation, once confined to secluded monasteries and only instructed the lifelong monastics across Burma.

Today, they span continents and they reach millions of people from all backgrounds and religions.

married.

know what i think is really interesting about where your story is going is obviously on on our podcast and you know because you're an avid listener you know we we speak to um well we we have conversations going into burma and conversations going into meditation leaving the the the stuff on burmese history and conflict and things aside just looking at the meditation aspect you know we've spoken to monks and buddhist scholars and uh you know spiritual seekers on the hippie trail that ended up meeting these great figures in India and Burma and came back and sharing that and academics and just all across the board.

And I think where there's been kind of a gap in the stories that we've told and the conversations we've had is is looking at where the Dhamma has spread, and especially where Burmese mindfulness meditation practices have spread, that these are not just things for those in counterculture, those in academics, those that are deep into Buddhist studies or coming from Asian backgrounds, or spending time in Asia even.

There is a way that the impact of these practices can make themselves known and felt.

Yeah,

well, like, again, this is a really long time ago, but the Pali Canon was the most ancient of, like, the Buddhist scriptures.

And it's, like, it's of, not to get too granular here, it's of a more traditional version of Buddhism, Theravada Buddhism, which basically is, like, you want to become an Arhat, so you want to become a Buddha so you can have everyone else become a Buddha.

Mm-hmm.

So, The principles of religious literacy were come up by Professor Diane Moore of Harvard Divinity School, and now it's kind of accepted by the American Academy of Religion.

And it's just a way of approaching any religious tradition, whether it's Islam, Christianity, or Buddhism.

I think if you keep these principles in mind, you're on the right track.

And, you know, you often get people who'll say, uh, there's no such thing as being Islamophobic.

And in the case of Islam, that doesn't just mean people know about Sunni and they know about Shia.

But even within those sects or groups, there's a lot of internal diversity, just like there is in Islam.

Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, any religion, there's a great deal of internal diversity.

And that includes, uh, today you'll have people who are, I mean, you have Osama bin Laden on one side, who's like a religious extremist and you got Islamic feminists on the other side.

The point is, the word religion has long reflected a particularly Western and Christian way of thinking about the world, and also about the self.

So if we were to ask, are Maori beliefs part of a religion? Some would argue it's what the Buddhists call a question wrongly put.

It's like asking your grandma if she was a crunchy mom, a silky mom, or a scrunchy mom.

Like, sure, you could ask her to retrofit her identity into those invented internet categories, but that would be Weird, although for the record, my grandmother was the very paragon of a five-martini-and-send-the-kids-out-to-play mom.

It was Tibetan chanting.

He was a Buddhist.

And he was selling these CDs for $25 a piece.

He says, I want you to listen to this when you meditate.