 and welcome to Out and About, a show where we explore a variety of people, groups, and events taking place in our city, state, nation, and world. Today we are delighted to have a topic Awakening in a Time of Crisis, Enlightenment in a Time of Coronavirus. In our current moment right now where we're facing a great deal of suffering, distress, and uncertainty, staying calm has become a major concern for everyone. What can we learn from the world's wisdom traditions that will help us navigate one of the most critical moments in human history, certainly in our lifetimes and to date. Well, today we're going to be talking with Dr. Karma Lexisomo, Professor of Buddhism and World Religions at the University of San Diego, and a founder of Asakyadita International Association of Buddhist Women, and also the founder and director of Jamyang Foundation, a charitable organization that provides education to girls and women in India, Bangladesh, and other developing countries. So welcome back to the show, and it's a delight to have you here again, Lexi. Thank you. Good to see you. So, yes, it's, I guess you, we weren't planning on you being here at this time of the year, but like everybody else, your schedule has been altered. So what's been going up with you, going on with you in the last month or so? Well, I went to India for about six weeks and came back, did a meditation course, and when I finished the course on the North Shore, everything had changed. The whole world had changed. So here we are in Hawaii, which is not a bad place to be on lockdown, I must say. At the same time, it's clear that all plans have changed, everything's on hold. So it's a really very interesting moment. It is a very interesting moment. And when we were talking earlier, you said that you were at a Vipassana retreat, and I guess this was under Goenkaji's type of Vipassana meditation, is that right? Right. Yes, it's an intensive meditation course for 10 days. You meditate about 14 hours a day, and it was amazing. There are 100 people there, mostly young, all keeping silence, and it was remarkable. We talked about them 10 years ago, but they were amazing. Had the coronavirus already started at that time, and was that a topic where people were trying to meditate, or did it really come into play? Because you're really in your trying to get out of your mind, I guess, and be back in your body. Well, you're trying to get in touch with your mind and all of your emotions, your sensations, everything. But the virus was around. It had just started, and people weren't certain where it was going. In the 10 days that we were there, then it became critical. So everything had changed. In fact, they even ended early so that people could get back to wherever they came from, because they came from over the world. So it was a real game changer. And right now, are you on sabbatical, then, from University of San Diego? Yes, it's kind of sabbatical for this year. So I'm free. Most of my colleagues now are having to switch over within a week, switch over to teaching online, which has been really a challenge for students and faculty alike. Yeah, that's what I'm hearing. Now, when we left last time, we didn't have enough time to go into the Lai Peace Center. I'm mainly not pronouncing it correctly up in Waialua. Tell us what's been going on with that. And was that a different location than where the Boston Meditation took place? Actually, it's not far away. The Meditation Course was in Pupukaya up at the Boy Scout Camp. And our land is just about 20 minutes from there. So now it's become a place really for Meditation practice. We want to hold all kinds of programs for the community, but especially Meditation practice. So it was perfect because doing 10 days of intensive meditation, you're prepared for anything. You know, your mind is in a really good state. And that challenge is just to keep that awareness, that continual deep awareness. So when you do come out of a meditation like that, and you are in a noble silence, so you're not supposed to be talking with other people or even asking them to pass this all to the pepper. You're just, you're with yourself. And when you come out of that, your mind is sort of undergone a bit of a purification. It's sort of like fasting from society and the noise that's all around us. Is it jarring to come back into something like this? Or do you feel like that really helps ground you for something like this that's coming back into an epidemic situation? It definitely helps ground you in that your awareness is really heightened. You begin to see a lot of the ordinary activities of everyday life as fairly trivial. You know, a lot of the things that we spend our time with. And that's exactly what the coronavirus crisis has also brought into focus. It's helped people to reevaluate their priorities. Sometimes it makes us more aware of the kinds of activities that we've been getting into and questioning, you know, how valuable are those activities, those desires, those aversions, all of those, you know, things that we get involved in all of our scheduling and events and expectations. I mean, really, how important is all of it in stark focus of the great matter of life and death? So for people that are facing real challenges now, the losses, the fears, the anxieties about all of this, they're huge disruptions of their normal lives. And a lot of it probably is noise that's just sort of created. But nevertheless, when you take that away, and you change things around, it does produce a lot of anxiety. From the traditions that you've been studying, what can you advise people or what might you tell them to help ease some of these anxieties or some tricks or some tips or some practices that you find particularly useful that others might? Right. Okay. Well, the first thing, of course, is to stay calm, to try to cultivate a calm, aware mind. So awareness of each moment is really important for handling any kind of whatever could come around, especially a crisis like this, where, you know, people are faced with losing loss, losing people, losing connections, losing income, losing a lot of familiar props. So the first thing is to stay calm. Don't panic, because a panic doesn't help anything. If we can lessen our stress, we'll be in a better position to handle whatever comes, comes along. So the stress really weakens our mind and our body. So learning to meditate on our breathing, be aware of our breathing, is one practice that everybody finds really helpful. It means being aware of the breath as it flows out, and as it flows in. Simply that it's a really simple practice. It's something that anyone can do. Children can do, all folks can do, people who are ill. Anyone of any religion or no religion, awareness of breathing. It's a very ancient practice. And it's also found in the Christian tradition, a long time ago, maybe fourth century, there's a book called The Philokalia that describes exactly this practice. So that's the first one that I find really, really helpful. Second is the practice of loving kindness. So loving kindness for everyone in the world. So loving kindness for the people around us, loving kindness for the people who are suffering. Loving kindness for people who are afraid, anxious, and simply everyone, both pets and humans and all living creatures. So this kind of loving kindness, what it does is to help us get our self out of the way and direct our attention to all living beings. It opens our awareness beyond just our self-interest. That's always a good thing. It opens our mind, which relaxes a lot of the tension that comes from clinging to oneself and one's desires, one's own attachments. So these two practices, awareness of breathing and loving kindness, highly recommended. And when you say loving kindness, what do you mean by that? Does that mean that maybe you're looking at a situation where you see some suffering or you see some need or lack and then you're sort of enveloping a person with a sort of a psychic blanket of love? What does that mean? How would you go about doing something like that? Well, loving kindness in the Buddhist tradition is defined as wishing all beings to be happy. So everyone is suffering in different ways. Everyone has a story. Everyone has some personal suffering. We can't get away from it. As long as we're born into this human body, we all experience different kinds of distress, unpleasantness, and so on. So when we generate loving kindness, we visualize sending out loving kindness from our heart to reach all living beings, especially the people around us. So we can practice first with the people who are most difficult to get along with. They say start with the people who are most difficult first. So if we can send loving kindness to the people who are bugging us, the people who are annoying, then we can send loving kindness to anyone. But ultimately, the idea is to send loving kindness to everyone without exception. The nice people, the nasty people, all of them. So we just imagined that, especially right now, I think a lot of people there, yeah, I'm reading articles like how do you, how do you be around your spouse 24-7 or your kids? And you know, these are people that that we're supposed to be loving anyway, but that people are finding too much or just irritating. And so we should, I guess, try and find a quiet place and say, you know, Mommy is meditating right now or and then just sending a psychic vibration out there. Or how would you go about this? Should it be integrated into this, the breathing activity? Or should these be two separate things? What would you recommend for someone who really doesn't, who's ready to pull their hair out and just can't deal with, you know, having to homeschool and cook and look after Mom who suddenly lived with them or Dad? You know, how do they find five minutes or half an hour to meditate? How do you start with this? And should you do it in little chunks throughout the day or in the morning or in the night? Or what's the way that we can figure this out? Well, it's going to be different for everyone. In a sense, we have more time now than ever before. This is a great time to do a retreat, but we may also have to face a lot of other interruptions, especially if we're living with other people. So it's a matter of finding time throughout the day, even five minutes here, five minutes there, where we can sit quietly and we don't have to sit on and we don't have to sit on a cushion and, you know, make a big show of it, not at all. Just be able to find a quiet place in the house, a time when we can take time for ourselves, and just sit down and calm the mind. Now, generally, these are two different meditations. You can do a session of mindfulness of breathing and another session of loving kindness. Or you can combine them, too. You can do mindfulness of breathing and then wind up with loving kindness meditation. But until you get really proficient at both of them, maybe it's good to do separate sessions. Okay, so if we start with mindfulness of breathing, we decide how long we're going to try to meditate, five minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes. It doesn't have to be a full hour, not at all. Start small. Start with five minutes, work up to 10 minutes, then to 15 minutes so that you really like it, you know, and you also get a sense of accomplishment that you can actually keep your concentration for, you know, one or two up to five, 10 minutes. You get a feeling of satisfaction from that. Now, the meditation on loving kindness, what we can do is, again, sit still, close our eyes, or just slightly open, and first imagine generating loving kindness for ourselves. Fill our entire body with loving kindness from head to foot, displacing all negative emotions. So letting go of all grudges that we feel toward other people, all unhappiness that we might be carrying around, disappointments, regrets, and so forth. Just let all of that go, and just settle into a really cozy feeling of love, starting with yourself. Then gradually extend that loving kindness to the people immediately around you, your family, your roommates, folks in the neighborhood, and imagine each one of them completely filled with loving kindness. Then extend it out even further to everyone in town, like everyone in Honolulu or whatever town you're in. And then from there out to everyone in the state, and then to everyone in the country, and then everyone into the whole world. And the Buddhists would even say to everyone in all world systems, assuming that maybe we're not the only ones around, and they include the animals as well as the humans. So it's very inclusive, right? Now, especially you want to remember the people who you don't like so much. Don't exclude them. Sometimes we even focus especially on those people. People are giving us a hard time. People we have some kind of history with. So we want to especially be able to send living kindness to those people. But ultimately to everyone of all nationalities, all genders, all religious backgrounds, all philosophies, all political persuasions. So in this way, we really can eliminate all unwholesome thoughts and feelings, all unsettling emotions. You know, hatred and distrust and aversion are uncomfortable emotions. So why not get rid of them? Why not replace them with feelings of loving kindness and compassion? Now compassion is the wish that all beings be free from suffering. So compassion may all beings be free from suffering. And here we can think about the sufferings that people in different parts of the world are feeling right now. Especially people who are in essential jobs, who have no choice but to go to work every day now, despite the risk to themselves and their families. So we can send loving kindness to these people and compassion for them, hoping that they'll be free, imagining them free from all anxiety, stress, fear. That's also a wonderful practice. Loving kindness and compassion go hand in hand. But one is wishing them to be free from suffering. One is wishing them to enjoy happiness and that. So ultimately, the practice of loving kindness is learning to be kind to everyone without exception, right? To your boss, to your employees, to the homeless, to everyone equally. Ultimately, we want to send loving kindness equally to all. We also want to avoid anger. And this is going to come up in situations today where people are confined to a small space. Now, if we have a large space and we have plenty of peace and quiet, then we're the fortunate ones. But not everyone is so fortunate. A lot of people are cooped up with a lot of people together of all different backgrounds and some who are not used to silence or not used to solitude. And so this can be very disruptive. But in a way, it's a perfect situation for practice, practicing patience. And patience is a virtue. Patience is a great virtue. So when someone gets upset at us, that's a perfect opportunity to practice patience. We can feel grateful to them. We should feel grateful to them because otherwise, how would we learn to develop the great quality of patience? So avoiding anger by practicing patience. If someone's upset, we try to calm them down. But of course, that means we have to calm ourselves down too. So we actually use annoying people as the objects of our practice of patience. That seems... Right. Yeah. That's advanced. And I can see that people are saying, oh, actually, there's no way. It's too much. I can't even be patient with myself. But I do love that you started out with the loving kindness of saying, give it to yourself first. Oh, and here is a loving kindness animal who wants to come on the show. I'm sorry, sweetie. Oh, what an angel. She's a little angel and she does practice loving kindness that I think gets irritated with me. And so she wants what she wants when she wants it. But having animals around, they're so natural that they can't help. But that's the benefit of being able to broadcast from home as we can have our pets on the show too. But she gets irritated with me and she doesn't have, I suppose, the facilities that I do to be able to practice loving kindness. But other people, I know, they're getting irritated with their spouses. And so what you talk about is pretty advanced. But you probably have some really good tools to help us after this show. Are there some websites or particular videos that you would recommend for people that want to? Yes, there are. And I can send you some links. Okay. So it's very practical. It's very practical to think of generating love for everyone around us. Because right now, if we're impatient with the people around us, it's only going to make life miserable for ourselves. So it's also just a practical matter. If we get upset with the people around us, then we're going to make things really uncomfortable, both for ourselves and others. And it could escalate. In fact, domestic violence is escalating nationally. And that's a big problem. So this is one solution that we can definitely try. And love is common to all the world's religions. You can't have enough love. Whatever the question, love is the answer. You know, it sounds idealistic. But we all have love in our hearts. And all we need to do is practice it. So it's like any other skill, learning to play the piano or learning to play the ukulele or whatever else, we don't know how to do it automatically. It comes with practice. And so some people have an easier time developing loving kindness than others. But we all have that potential. We all have that capability. So we shouldn't create barriers thinking, oh, I can't do this. Think, yes, I can. I can generate love for everyone. And not only love, but need to. I'm sorry. Yeah, but we need to. It's so important at this period in time. Now, you know, as I wonder if in this time, there's a lot of people that and myself included that want to assign a certain measure of, I don't want to say blame, we don't want to blame exactly, but we want to point fingers a little bit. And it's easy to do when you see something like this and you say, well, this is the cause. But how do you deal with that? How do we stay active and engaged in our society so that we can affect positive change rather than just be overly accepting of a situation and say, well, that's the way that it is when, in fact, we really do need to make some changes. We need to have everybody wearing masks, for example, or we need to have public health policies that are beneficial for everybody. How do we stay active and engaged and yet detached at the same times from the outcome? Or is it possible? Well, I think we have to keep informed and read as many sources as we can to try to get the straight story, because obviously huge missteps have occurred that have endangered the lives of all Americans. And we definitely need to put policies in place that will prevent this in the future. It's a disaster. And I think this will wake a lot of people up to the fact that we need a consistent, wholesome, inclusive healthcare policy for this country. And at the same time, if we do too much media, we could get upset at what we see. So we can sign petitions. We can advocate for change. We can do what is possible while we're in confinement. And then we can prepare to make changes later that will hopefully prevent pandemics like this from happening again. So you see this as a time when we're going to get maybe a lot of awareness that's coming out just for ourselves and our society in general. You're hopeful and optimistic coming out of this event. I hope so. I hope people will inform themselves and get the straight story and understand better what happened so that we can avoid it in the future. It's also our responsibility as citizens to inform ourselves. And so without getting angry, I think we want to be prepared to make some important changes as much as possible. Really. Another thing I was thinking is that during this time we have to also face the fact that we've actually been quite privileged in being able to go where we want, eat what we want, do what we want, have dreams as we wish. But this is also a time when we can realize that not everyone enjoys those kinds of freedoms. So it's a time to reevaluate and be content with what we have. So I think people are eating a lot of canned foods right now. But we can also feel grateful that at least we're eating. I just came from India and it's a disaster waiting to happen there. I've got 500 students there and it's a source of great concern because so many people living together and it's almost unavoidable. Trying to get food under those circumstances. We take for granted that we have water, even hot water. And we take for granted things like electricity, freedom of movement and so forth. So I think that this experience will make all of us aware and appreciative of all of the things that we do enjoy. And to understand that millions of people in the world do not enjoy those advantages, including in our own country. Seeing 30 million people without health insurance for example. This should wake us up to the fact that many people do not have the basic requirements of human life that they need. So I think it also helps, right? I think it's so true what you're saying is that while we're mindful, maybe mindful of our own suffering, we shouldn't be mindless of the suffering of others. And so I would like to put a link to your foundation in the notes as well when you send over a place to, as well as you have a beautiful quotation of Prayer for the World that we won't have time to get to today, but that I would like to put in there also that people maybe can focus on that. A place to donate to your foundation and also perhaps some links for us to have some more inner peace so that we can, you know, face this time and make this crisis an opportunity. And as usual, our time goes by so fast, actually. Can you come back again and continue this conversation so we can go more deeply into these topics? We'd love to. Thank you. It would be my great pleasure to have you there back here. And unfortunately, we are out of time today. So we do have to wrap it up, but it has been my great pleasure to have on, obviously, a brilliant mind and compassionate example for us all. Dr. Karma Lakshisomal, who is a professor of Buddhism and World Relations at the University of San Diego and founder of Sakyati International Association of Buddhist Women, as well as the founder and director of Jamyang Foundation, which is a charitable organization providing education to girls and women in India, Bangladesh, and other developing countries. So thank you again for joining us. Practice some mindfulness, be kind to yourself, be kind to others, and we'll see you here in a couple weeks. Thanks so much.