Exclusive interview with Jon Kabat-Zinn
Buddhism News No. 132, February 2011 When three
e Forum "Buddhism and Medicine" (1) organized by Rigpa Lerab to Ling in October 2010, the American scientist Jon Kabat-Zinn has done us the honor of an exclusive interview. He who refuses to be present as a pioneer in introducing meditation in a secular context, we prefer to speak of him as someone who loves what he does. Before this insistence on recognizing him the role of bridge between the traditions, he focuses on the forces at work in the world so spread the meditation. "It does not depend on one person, so I can either destroy or save the dharma", says he, that's a lot of fun. Meeting with a cheeky man and his vision.
Nicolas Inca : Do you distinguish between Dharma and Buddhism?
Jon Kabat-Zinn : Imagine that I asked the same question to His Holiness the Dalai Lama on stage at the 13 th meeting " Mind & Life Institute in Washington in November 2005. I asked him if he was operating a difference between Buddhadharma and universal dharma. And he said no. I knew his answer, but I wanted to hear three thousand people present there is no fundamental difference: the dharma is the dharma. SSDL also said that whenever we learn something good for humanity, we must find clever ways to share at best. It's not as if we were trying to sell people a kind of Buddhism in disguise. Just the pure dharma.
ND: That was the substance of my question: maybe people will he begin the Stress Reduction through Mindfulness (MBSR), then they will want to meditate, and then where will they go? In Buddhist centers.
JKZ : Yes, it's true that we send many of our patients meditate in Buddhist retreat centers. But then they will know that the statue of Buddha on the altar is not a statue. One can speak of the Buddha not only as the "doctor of the world", but as a true scientist, a genius interested in mental functioning. It had in his time any of our sophisticated machines for brain imaging or molecular genetics, it was just his body and mind. He has calibrated his mind, as an experiment, it has stabilized before beginning his investigation into the nature of experience. Who feels pain? Who collects? Everyone gets curious about his own being through meditation.
ND: The question of who experiences it is science itself?
JKZ : No, it's all about experiential but today we can put someone in a scanner and see what he did during his practice, even in his brain. Those studies that were conducted on Matthieu Ricard, which began as a molecular biologist before becoming a monk who becomes a scientist through this work. So we have people who are excellent reporters' First Person, "they can finely describe their experience, and at the same time we can observe" third person "with the machines, an outside perspective.
ND: What you say reminds me of Francisco Varela.
JKZ : Yes, it was his idea. We owe him everything. Francisco was a remarkable individual, a polymath, a genius in several fields: immunology, phenomenology, neuroscience and meditation. He was a student of Tulku Urgyen, learning meditation with Chogyam Trungpa.
ND: In your presentation at the forum you speak of "magnets duhkha " such as schools or hospitals. But how to work with pain in the world, has itself become magnet duhkha in together?
JKZ : It depends on what you like. Because nobody will not be responsible for all the work ... At least until the next Buddha! You must therefore begin by asking yourself the question: what do you like most? I have not told my story, but you know, it took me ten years of meditation before finding what was my role on this planet. Ten years have been realized in ten seconds of vision about the MBSR , during a retreat. My strategy in this lecture to eight hundred people was to make them wonder about what they like. This is especially true with the dharma, which affects your own practice. The Buddha or any Zen master will tell you that you must do by yourself. The Buddha was not Buddhist.
ND: We must above all be yourself, it's an interesting point. There is no danger of altering the tradition?
JKZ : I think the Dharma takes care of itself. I asked this question many people who live and work with the dharma, in terms of scholarship and in practice: should we Regardless of the corruption Dharma? If you follow his story, the Dharma has been corrupted many times, there have been periods of decline when it was no longer true Dharma. But he survived anyway. It would be an incredible hubris (pride in Greek, nec) to believe that one has the power to protect or destroy the dharma. The most important thing is not to fall into the illusion, not to deceive oneself about the fact that we teach the Dharma so that it is anti-Dharma. It must be seated, firmly anchored in your own practice and interact with practitioners of long standing, the Authentic teachers, so it is your responsibility to embody your understanding of the teachings. The best way to share with people is your way of life. You do not even teach. View Matthieu Ricard, this is not a meditation master, it does not teach it ... he embodies.
However, a real danger of which I speak is little current interest in people for meditation. This is sexy! Particularly in psychology, people say I must become teacher mindfulness (Mindfulness). In eight weeks or eight minutes, they think they understand everything! Being in the moment, do not judge her thoughts, no problem, I'm already more or less like this, so I do not need to practice but I can teach it to others! Whatever they do, it's not fully conscious, and there is a great danger. You really have to remind people: you must practice. It is not possible simply to be a therapist and teach meditation, you must do yourself, like a beginner. Practicing every day, but retire to experience long periods of sitting, so that when you talk not by repeating what you learned yesterday, but it comes from your bone marrow.
ND: Is not a current problem in France, where people are newcomers to meditation?
JKZ : Yes, they should be patient. They were not turning France into a nation of Mindfulness in a month, you know! Not even a year or ten years ... Patience is crucial, unless you want to betray Dharma, which is not a good idea for his karma. It is better that people go quietly, they build strong foundations in themselves, in their heart, their practice. So faced with someone who suffers, they will know that first of all, there is nothing to do. Another problematic issue is to raise what might be called the "repair mode", which is at stake in medicine and psychology, where we want to heal people.
ND: When someone suffers, we want it immediately so, without letting it be the trial of his own suffering.
JKZ (in French): You understand .
ND: It's my job every day as a psychologist.
JKZ : Yes, but still, it's good for me to hear that. Thank you.
Interview by Nicolas Inca
French Sites mindfulness:
http://association-mindfulness.org/
http://delphanne.wordpress.com/
(1) See also Buddhism News No. 129, November 2010, "Bo uddhisme and Medicine with Sogyal Rinpoche "
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