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On Being with Krista Tippett

[Unedited] Sharon Salzberg and Robert Thurman with Krista Tippett

On Being with Krista Tippett

On Being Studios

Society, Spirituality, Society & Culture, Sociology, Culture, Science, Religion & Spirituality, Krista Tippett, Social Sciences, On Being, Arts

4.710.2K Ratings

🗓️ 17 February 2022

⏱️ 96 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

It’s a piece of deep psychological acuity, carried in many religious traditions: that each of us is defined as much by who our enemies are and how we treat them as by whom and what we love. In this episode, two legendary Buddhist teachers shine a light on the lofty ideal of loving your enemies and bring it down to earth. Across a half-century conversation and friendship, Sharon Salzberg and Robert Thurman have investigated the mind science behind this virtue and practice. They illuminate how to transmute the very real, very consequential and consuming energy of anger and hatred — and why love in fact can be a rational and pragmatic stance towards those who vex us. This is a conversation filled with laughter and friendship and with practical wisdom on how we relate to that which makes us feel embattled from without, and from within.

Transcript

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0:00.0

On Being With Christa Tippett is supported in part by the Fetzer Institute, helping build the

0:04.8

Spiritual Foundation for a loving world. Fetzer's sharing spiritual heritage report asks,

0:10.8

how will we hold on to ancient wisdom traditions while applying them creatively in today's time?

0:16.4

Learn more at Fetzer.org.

0:19.5

I'm Christa Tippett. Up next, my unedited conversation with American Buddhist icons

0:25.2

Sharon Salzburg and Robert Thurman on loving our enemies as the most rational and pragmatic of moves.

0:33.3

There is, as always, a shorter, produced version of this wherever you found this podcast.

0:40.9

Well, you know, I'd like to start where I start all my conversations and I probably asked you

0:48.3

this question all those years ago, Sharon, but just want to hear a little bit about, you know,

0:53.3

what we want to focus on with you as we speak is this teaching and thinking you're doing about

1:01.4

enemies in the broadest sense of how we approach that. But I'd like to start with just a little bit

1:08.5

about whether there was a spiritual background to your childhood and also whether, you know,

1:16.4

in your earliest life, you know, how language and a sense of enemies was present for you.

1:22.4

I'm spiritually or otherwise.

1:25.0

No, that's very interesting. I don't know that there was a spiritual presence in my earliest

1:30.0

life. There was certainly the presence of a lot of suffering and confusion. And out of that,

1:34.6

I, out of that, I really reached for something that, and I actually did sense always, not that it was

1:42.4

given unto me, but I always had a sense there was something other. There was something bigger than

1:47.8

the situations I found myself in. And, you know, my childhood was marked by a lot of disruption,

1:54.0

a lot of loss. My mother died when I was very young. And all of this was surrounded by a very

1:59.6

strange kind of silence. No one would ever actually talk about anything. And so it was when I

2:04.6

went to college and I first encountered the Buddhist teaching in an Asian philosophy course,

...

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