EP 123: Relationships That Work | Jack Kornfield and Trudy Goodman Kornfield

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Hi.

Welcome to the Radical Responsibility podcast. I'm your host, Fleet Maul. And today I'm sharing with you a conversation with Jack Kornfield and Trudy Go Goodman, who happen to be a couple. And they're both renowned mindfulness teachers, renowned mindfulness meditation teachers. They're both PhDs, they're both deep spiritual teachers with long careers at both Buddhist and secular mindfulness teachers. And we talked about relationship and human thriving in the context of mindfulness practices and. And wisdom practices. And they really shared a lot of their own personal experience and their own personal relational experience. So really interesting to listen to these two renowned meditation teachers share personally about the same relationship challenges that we all face and how they work through that together in the context of being deep meditators, mindfulness practitioners, and bringing the principles and values of that self, compassion, compassion into the relationship. And it's an incredibly empowering teaching for all of us. And so I really encourage you to give it a listen. Jack Kornfield and Trudy Goodman, welcome to both of you.

This summit day is focused on relationship, which includes intimate family, social and professional relationships. You are both psychotherapists, so I imagine you have a lot of experience in supporting people in the area of relationship.

You're also both, in your own right, very prominent meditation teachers, leaders in your fields of mindfulness and psychotherapy, and leaders of meditation communities. A lot of relationships. The really cool thing, though, for our conversation today is that you are both married and relatively recently married in 2016, I believe. So let's start there. Given the depth of your experience as mindfulness teachers, psychotherapists, psychologists, and leaders, you must have the relationship pretty much figured out by now. He says, tongue in cheek, but probably, you know, a lot. And so what's it been like coming together to get married in this later stage of your lives? And how's it going?

We've actually been together 10 years. The wedding that you talked about was a beautiful one. When we kind of eloped to Hawaii and had Ram Dass marry us in his yard. Oh, wow. Little private ceremony. That was absolutely beautiful.

That is very special.

And my grandchildren freaked out that we eloped and they weren't part. They couldn't believe.

So we had a wedding in LA where they officiated. They were the ministers, and my grandson announced to everybody he calls me nini. He was 12 at the time. He's 16 now. He said, nini, third time's the charm. In case anybody didn't know that this was my third marriage, and actually I consider it my fourth because I had a secret one, too. And so I would have to say yes this time.

This time you may have to wait a while. But it is possible to find the right person and get it right.

And beck, for me, I had been Married for about 30 years. Had a beautiful daughter, now grandchild. Grandchild. And after getting divorced.

I actually thought about dating. And I was like, oh, God, do I have to date? I mean, I wanted another relationship, but that one did not work out, let us say. But I also knew Trudy. And I've known Trudy for 45 years. We've been in and out of different.

Circumstances. We studied with the same Zen master. We're friends with many of the same people. We practiced together and then taught together. And we had such a great time. So I started to get inclined more and more to be with Trudy. I knew that I really cared about her. And she encouraged me to go on dates. She said, you know, you're still kind of radioactive. You just got out of a marriage. I've been out of mine for 10 years. So I did. I went on a few dates. But the strange thing is, she's laughing, is that I would call her on the way home.

I'd say, well.

Debrief the date.

Anyway, we've been having a wonderful time. And I want to second what Trudy said. I don't know about finding the right person. That's a part of it, but I think that's also partly a myth. I also feel like when I've matured a lot and there are ways in which I know myself better and I see her in a clearer way. And it allows me to love without the kind of needs and expectations and imaginations, just to love her as she is and to be loved. And that makes a wonderful relationship. So we've traveled and we teach together and live together. We need a little space on occasion and take that which is also helpful.

And the things that have, you know, we share a lot because we're both interested in the. You know, in the field of what opens the heart and what brings a kind of inner freedom, whether it's in literature and arts or whether it's in the meditation that we teach or in psychotherapy. And so that kind of shared interest has also been a treat.

Yeah, yeah. And when I say found the Right person. I think there can be many right people. It's not that there's just one for you in this lifetime, whoever you are. But I do feel that.

All the things that I went through in the previous relationships, yes, I learned a lot. I learned a lot. And I think some of what I learned is that it's okay to have time apart as a couple. I know that now the retreat centers are closed and we're in the pandemic. And it makes it really hard for people who may have worked out a relationship just fine. I know one person in my family, their marriage was going just fine until suddenly one of them was home. They were both home all the time together. And the strain of that, really, it pushed hard on a marriage that was fine before. And so there's tremendous pressures now that people have. But in general, I think, for me at least, being kind of independent minded, the idea that you could go on retreat or that you could take some time apart from each other without it meaning that there's something wrong with the relationship.

That has. I think it's been important to me. And I wish there weren't some sort of stigma attached to that in terms of marriages especially. I saw this New Yorker cartoon once years ago where, you know, the officiant, the minister, the rabbi, whoever it was, was saying to the couple, you know, and now Trudy and now Jack. Do you agree that you take this person, this person alone will be the person with whom you will have sex for the rest of your living days, forever and ever? And, you know, when you put it like that, it's terrifying, actually.

You know, and I think that there's just so many ways to do relationship. That's one of the things that I learned, and. And it's not to say let's not be naive. In the 70s, there were open marriages, and they didn't really work because lots of times they were just a cover for people's dissatisfaction with their partner and wish to be with somebody else. But it's like today we have polyamory. We have lots more different choices. And I think that when those choices are made from up to place of maturity, like really wanting to open the heart and expand what's possible in an atmosphere of, you know, emotional honesty and transparency, this is a good thing. We, you know, we're monogamous in our relationship, but we're also past the age where that's so much of an issue.

So I think, you know, our relationship is incredibly happy. And during the pandemic, we've been together all the time, which we weren't before. My center is in Los Angeles. Jack is located up here in Northern California, where we are right now. And so we were kind of going back and forth, but also each having times apart in our own lives. And that's something you can't do when you're raising children or, you know, it's something that really belongs to this phase of life. But we've been constantly together in the pandemic, including Fleet, two weeks in a tiny space in an rv, traveling together.

And I am really loving it. It's a wonderful. It's wonderful that you can share your life with and get along with.

It is wonderful. And I'm really happy for the both of you that you found each other in that way. Having known each other for a long time. It seems like a really ideal situation. And there's something really, I think, sweet about being able to enjoy each other later in our lives when we are a little more mature and experienced and have worked through some of the shadow stuff. And, yeah, it can really be delightful. I can identify with a lot. I lost my last partner, my beloved, to cancer back in 2008. I didn't know whether I'd have another relationship, but somehow I found Sophie about five years ago, and we got married this past June. And it's absolutely delightful. And we're both in a place where. Where we're mature enough to do it and. And we also, like the two of you, share so much. We practice in the same traditions. We. We're interested in similar things. We have our own lives as well. We're both independent, but we also share so much. It just. It just really makes it a delight.

Well, congratulations. I'm happy for you.

Well, thank you. Thank you very much.

And there's something I want to add because as I listen to your questions and what we're saying, I'm also aware that there may be a number of people listening who are not in a partnership or a close or committed or intimate relationship in that way. Some by choice. Hallelujah. Because that's a beautiful choice when it's part of really what serve you. And some out of longing that they haven't found that opportunity. And, of course, it's a lot harder under Covid. And I remember, you know, talking with you, Trudy, where after you. Well, when you moved to Los Angeles from.

Cambridge after you got divorced, to start your center there and be with your new granddaughter and your mom, who was much older, and you talked to somebody, you said about. Ask them whether they were married or not someone would come to practice with you. And the woman said, no, I'm between marriages.

But for you, Trudy, it was a 10 year between or for you lead, it was something like that. It was eight years between. It's not to say what's right or wrong, but to recognize that we have these rhythms and that our primary relationship is actually with our own heart and one kind of well being. And then when we come together and join heart, body, mind and so forth, lovely. But if it can come from a place where you actually love yourself and care for yourself, well, so that it's not out of the sense of loneliness and need and we all have loneliness. I've had my own lots of bouts, loneliness and so forth. But somehow that sense of actually being able to care for ourselves well allows for a different kind of relationship to happen that's not as much based on need and more based on regard and love and the joy of being together.

That's really important point. Thank you. I think for our audience, you know, if people are longing for relationship, want to create more relationship in their life, it's about doing our own work so that it's who we're being that's going to attract the right relationship.

Right?

Yes. And.

I think for me just sort of following on what Jack said, I actually needed to acknowledge my loneliness and my need for somebody else. That wasn't easy for me. The vulnerability of actually letting myself feel that, how much I wanted a relationship, especially after the last divorce that I had, I didn't know if I ever would want that again. So I don't think it's, it's okay to feel that need. But, but as Jack was saying, to know too that one is okay if it doesn't happen. And that's. And then also when you've had a breakup, especially traumatic breakup, which I've had, I really know about those. And.

And one of the things I remember, it was such a game changing insight for me. I was walking in New England on a rocky beach and I remember I was looking down at the rocks and just feeling so heartbroken and devastated. And it dawned on me, wait a minute. That was my love that I felt for him. And that love was in my heart. And sure, he's gone, but that love is still mine and wanting to experience and mine to give. And that the idea that one person could sort of drain all the love out of my life and leave me bereft and abandoned, well, one still has those feelings, but at the same time realizing, yes, there is love in our own hearts and remembering that and cultivating that. It makes us, I think, more irresistible to other people because we become so friendly and more open hearted and it's easier for people to connect with us. We're more relatable when we aren't so afraid of our own vulnerability that way.

You were quite.

There's also some tiny little story I want to tell somehow related. We had a good friend, actually a really close friend of Trudy, a Dharma teacher and poet named Gavin Harrison, who lived for a long time around IMS and Barry and then moved to Hawaii to be with this wonderful teacher there.

And Vipassana teacher himself and was right.

Was a meditative teacher. Anyway, he went to visit Ram Dass and he was again, you know, in his 60s and kind of longing for a relationship. He hadn't been in the partnership for a while, but he was a very devoted poet and practitioner of the inner life and, you know, made his life connected with the.

Landscape and the flora and fauna and people of Hawaii in this beautiful way. And he asked Ram Dass when he was sitting with him, he said, you know, I really want a relationship. And Ram Dass looked back at him and said, you're already taken.

And, you know, he could see that Gavin had written these beautiful devotional books and poems, was so connected to his sense of the divine. And that which was holding it was like Ram Dass was reminding him, you've got the real relationship and don't worry about the other one. And there's something so beautiful in Ram Dasses deep seeing that of our friend that reminds us in some way that that kind of love and connection to what's sacred or holy is available to us.

Well, that reminds me of hearing from Ani Pema Chodron and other contemplatives that make that choice to live that monastic life, that solitary life that then open up their heart to the whole world and have a relationship with humanity as well. But however that works, having that foundation of that relationship with ourselves and having made peace with ourselves, that really needs to be the ground. And I love what you said, Trudy, that was so empowering that even when we lose a love, a breakup, that that love that we had is still, it's ours, it's in our heart, it really is part of us. Right. And it can be really painful. Obviously breakups are painful, there's no question about that. But that's a very empowering piece of wisdom there. Yeah. So thank you. So I'm actually very grateful for the. I spent a lot of time alone in my life. And I'm very grateful for those long periods because I really was able to make peace with being alone, make really make friends with myself. And so I'm able to be in a relationship now in a way that has much greater ease and not the desperation that maybe would have been there when I was young. Yeah. So I want to branch out, you know, into.

Sharing your experience about relationship altogether from your. Both your personal experience, but also as teachers and psychologists and psychotherapists. But I still want to focus on your relationship for a moment. So the two of you are kind of the proverbial power couple, at least in the world of mindfulness and meditation. And as very prominent people and leaders with a lot of responsibility, even though I'm sure you're both shifting at this stage in your life and maybe letting go of some responsibilities and some of the work. But you are very prominent people and leaders in the field. And I'm just wondering what kind of. If that puts any particular pressures on your relationship coming together in that way where you both. I mean, I guess it does give you that sense of independence, of having your own lives, but I wonder if it brings any kind of things you have to negotiate or any particular tensions or pressures.

Yeah, I'll speak to that. Because I have felt that.

I think for me, I have felt sometimes, not so much now, fleet, but especially more toward the beginning of our relationship. I would be teaching side by side with Jack, and in my life, just, I think, circumstances. Having been a single mom, having not had. Having always had to work, really, since I could get a work permit as a teenager. I really didn't write the books and I didn't care about. I didn't really see the larger picture of how many people I could help if I was better known. And I didn't care about that at all. And so I would be sitting up next to Jack, who was very well known, and we would be at a conference or something, and I would just say, sure, take my extra time. I don't care. And then I began to realize, actually, as a woman sitting up there, I really needed to sort of claim my own confidence and presence. And it was challenging for me. It was sort of like.

I would be comparing, in my mind, comparing us. And that was painful. And even today, I would say there are times when.

I feel. How would I put it? Like.

It'S my issue of my confidence. This has nothing to do with Jack, who's completely generous and would support me in any way that he can. This is my issue I just was never that confident of a person, and Jack is very confident. And so it's just over.

Overconfident.

Well, and I don't even think that. I just say that. For me, it's been. That's been something to negotiate times when I just don't want to be sort of lost in his orbit or that's why I didn't change my name. And people feel like sometimes conferences, they'll use the cornfield, Trudy Goodman cornfield, so that they can get maybe more people. Because I'm not.

Important to me, to just be who I am as I am. And it's. Of course, anytime we compare ourselves to other people, we lose that connection to our own hearts. That's just why comparing ourselves to other people is painful. But that's just been something that I've had to work with. And I think it's inspired me, actually to sort of dig down and develop more strength and confidence, but also.

Just to appreciate, as Jack was saying, each of us being who we are, and we're different in that way.

Thank you, Judy. How about you, Jack? How's that issue? Benji?

Yeah, we. First of all, after 45 or 48 years of teaching, whatever pressures come or invitations or possibilities, I'm just more at ease with it at all. As noted, we both pulled back some from being as active in our centers and doing other kinds of projects, writing or creating things online or things like that.

I haven't really felt pressure from it. There is expectations, of course. We actually had a conversation recently about how we disappoint people. That one of the things that happens as you become more successful, not only you become successful. At its best, if you're able to serve people and offer teaching. Rudy has or I have that people say, well, this helped me. This changed my life. It's not us, it's the dorm, actually. We just channels for that. But then there's a whole group of people that we disappoint that want a closer relationship, that wish we would do it in a different way, that would, you know, and it's very genuine occasionally, because we make mistakes and we say things that are unconsciously racist because the culture is so crazy racist, and it's in all of us. And we say things that are not as appropriate, but most often it's not that kind of discipline. It's other ways. And then we just have to say, all right, we can do what we can. And it's not our job to fix everybody or meet their needs, but to try to stay centered and True in ourselves and offer as best as we can, what we have. And then the only other thing to say, kind of going back to what Trudy was talking about, is that in couple relationships, part of what we're also talking about is power dynamic. It might be confidence or how well known somebody is, but it also can be who has the money or brings it in, or who has certain skills or abilities and so forth. And we're just different. And how do we navigate that? Can we accept each other in that way and not get into struggles about that? To me, when I. When I have married people, which I don't do pretty much anymore, but I married a lot of couples, and the great majority are still together, not all of them. But one of the things that I'll say in this kind of marriage ceremony, when I do a little talk, I say, when you go to the used car lot.

There is in the window of the cars that you might buy a sign that says as is.

And I say, I want you to look at this person because you have all your hopes and your expectations and visible and so forth. And can you see with the eyes of love of the heart and say, I take these vows and I take you as it is. That is. Is really part of what makes love real. Wow. Yeah.

I think that's a wonderful thing to include in marriage vows. I'd like to revisit what you brought up a moment ago about the issue of power, because I think in intimate relationships, primary relationships, as well as professional relationships, if we don't find a way to transparently talk about power and negotiate power and bring it out of the shadows, it will rear its ugly head and create a lot of conflict. I just wonder if you all might address that a little bit, both in your own relationship and your experience as teachers and therapists and psychologists and so forth.

Well, for me, as a woman, I experience it. I feel just as, you know, we feel the results of our white supremacist society and the privilege we carry. I also feel the patriarchy that is still existing and the privileging of male voices and male authority over female voices and female authority. I've noticed, for example, that when a male, And I've known this for years, that certain things. When a male self discloses his vulnerability from the teacher's seat, the audience, which is usually more female than male, just loves him for it. When a female does it like a woman, like me, it's seen as a sign of weakness and not being as perhaps enlightened as the man. So there Are lots of things like that that I think play into the power dynamics.

And I see them, yeah, I see them pretty rampant throughout the world. And, you know, being white and being heterosexual and being, you know, there's lots of privilege that goes along with that. And I think for reasons maybe having to do with my parents both being very oriented toward helping others and being what we would call bodhisattvas in their lives. I've always been sensitive to the people who are marginalized in our society and those difficulty of having power and being seen as powerful and.

Maybe just being a woman. And in the 70s, you know, being part of that second wave of feminism, I don't know exactly why, but that's something that I notice and feel often.

Yeah, certainly the phenomena of power brings up all the cultural issues that you're describing. And. And that's really part of our journey right now. It's really kind of been our faces and what we're working with and trying to transform. I'm curious though, that even if we would imagine for a moment even, let's say, a same sex couple or something.

Same race, same sex, still there's inevitably power issues. And people might want to think, well, we're in love, we don't have power issues. But power is part of the human landscape. I mean, it's just something that always needs to be negotiated. I don't know if you agree with that, but it's. There's nothing wrong with powers. It's something we either handle transparently and authentically or it's something that goes into the shadows.

Right. Well put. Yeah, it's really important. And in some way, you know, people who are in an intimate relationship now we're talking to that subset of those who are listening or those who will be listening. There's a kind of inner inquiry. What is it that we don't talk about? What is it that's not on the table exactly?

Oh, we don't talk about money or we don't talk about where we already don't talk about your parents or whatever it happens to be or this or that. That not only, as you say, in the shadow, can be destructive, but when it's brought to the surface, even though the conflict comes, if it can be done in a loving way, it can actually lead to a deeper and more fruitful trust in that relationship and that union, which is really the point.

Yeah, that's the work of relationship, right?

Yeah. I think you nailed it when you talked about honesty and transparency.

Because that's how we grow, is taking Those risks to be emotionally honest and, and talk about, do I have to slice the tomatoes thin just because that's how you think it's right to have tomato slices? How are it manifests in all these little details of our lives?

Yeah, and I think what you said, Jack, in terms of what we don't talk about, you know, or what we. Life will bring it to us sooner or later. Right. If there's things we're avoiding, sooner or later life is going to conspire to present it to us, I think. Yeah. Especially in relationship.

So let's start to generalize then for our summit participants who would like to improve the quality of their relationships or perhaps create amazing relationships, whether it's their primary personal relationships or other relationships in their life. And I know you both just have a lot of wisdom from your experience as psychologists, psychotherapists and meditation teachers. Well, let's start with mindfulness or meditation altogether. So how can having some kind of mindfulness and or awareness practice support the quality of our relationships? I know for the three of us that may seem like a no brainer question, but really, I mean, not everyone in the world has a mindfulness or an awareness practice of some kind. And how do you see that as really being supportive of quality and relationship?

Where to begin? There's so many ways that it's helpful. But I guess the two things that pop into my mind just right now are.

When we're mindful, we can be aware of what we're feeling and we can be aware of our intention. For example, before we say something to.

What is my intention in saying that thing? Am I trying to sort of subtly point out an area that needs improvement? Am I trying to subtly prove that I was right? You know, is my intention to be loving or is my intention to be right? Do I want to be more connected in that moment or do I have something to prove or a point to make? Just those kinds of things to be aware takes from my. It takes mindfulness, it takes awareness and mindfulness cultivates that awareness for us. I also feel like being mindful and present in relationship, it allows us to be more present when we're actually together, to listen better.

To not take things so personally. That was a huge thing for me. I would my feelings so easily hurt and ruffled. And today I can honestly say don't hold grudges. But that took a lot of work. So I think the practice also helps us, it helps us normalize. This is what it's like to be a human being who's Angry or this is what it's like to be a human being who's disappointed in this moment or sad or joyful, whatever it might be. But I feel it helps normalize.

What'S happening, that it's just not. I don't have to take it personally that it's especially that I'm inadequate in relationship or don't know how to do it right. But it also. It also helps us see that.

What, as my friend Yvonne Rand, a Zen priest who passed away very recently, used to say, keep in mind that 98% of what someone is saying to you is actually about them and not you. That was very helpful to me.

Helps us not take things personally.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

I love how you express that. It's sort of like having some kind of reflective practice, awareness. Practice is a pathway to sort of revealing our own humanity to ourselves and then making friends with that, because befriending that, and then it's from that place that we can actually be in relationship.

Yeah.

You have a beautiful way of saying things.

Thank you. That's lovely. Another way to express the benefit of mindfulness. If we talk about mindfulness as loving awareness or mindful presence, that to take some time in a day in which you sit quietly, really talking about that dimension of meditation and the sitting, to let your mind quiet down and to tend your heart, feel all the emotions and all those things you begin to notice as you. As you practice, just as if you were to practice piano or guitar or some musical instrument. After a little while, you learn the instrument of loving awareness and attention to your own emotions and heart, what's going on in your body and mind. And that quieting the mind a little bit doesn't mean the thoughts stop, but you drop outside of them. You can see in a fresher way, allows you not only to know what you're feeling intended, but then also, as Khuti said, to listen more deeply, to be more present for the other. And I think of it as being able to see the other person with the eyes of love rather than with the. The thoughts and ideas we have, or at least to move that way. One of the things that I love doing with Trudy at times, especially if there's any moments which there can be of frustration or irritation or things and we get along really well, but they happen, is I look at her and I see her not just as she is, but I also see her as a girl and as a beautiful girl, and I just see the innocence that was born in her and the good heart and the spirit and that's really who she is, that child of the spirit that was born in her. And I love this. It's still very much alive in her. But by quieting myself.

And tending my own heart and mind, then that's the first half of mindfulness, mindful presence. And the second half of that same word sat in some Virginia is mindful response, mindful connection. Then from that place, I can see with the eyes of love. There's a loving awareness here. And that loving awareness then becomes the way that I hold the world.

Wonderful. So beautiful. So I can imagine that for any of us in a relationship, even if we had some kind of mindfulness awareness practice and our partner didn't, it would still help us really show up beautifully in that relationship. But then if both people have a shared. I wonder if you could speak to that, because I know for my wife Sophie and I, we practice together every.

Morning for an hour to an hour.

And a half before breakfast. And a lot of time we're doing the same practice because we share a lot of the same practices on our lineage. But sometimes she does it. If you want, we do it. But we still. We have that space together, practicing together every day. And it just creates such an amazing foundation. So I wonder if you could speak to that of the, you know, the ground of a relationship, of having some shared context, of an ability to work with our minds and our hearts in some kind of contemplative way.

Yes, I think that can come through. Yes. Psychotherapy as well as through meditation. But I also want to say to people who might be in a relationship with somebody who doesn't share their interest in meditation practice, it's no guarantee. The marriage that I was in for a long time before Jack, I was married to somebody who was a Zen master. We did so much intensive practice together. It was wonderful that we practiced together, but it didn't save our marriage. It wasn't a guarantee of happiness. And I really, you know, my. One of my teachers that I just. My heart teacher that I love so much, Maureen Stewart Roshi, she used to say, one in a family is enough. So don't be discouraged and think, oh, you know, they have the Dharma relationship and the Dharma partner, and it's just going to be all smooth and easy. It's not the guarantee. There's no perfect remedy. This was what was called, you know, the first noble truth in the Buddhist psychology tradition. And, yeah, so I think it's definitely helpful to spend time in quiet reflection together. But it could be time just reading a book to Together or my parents used to have coffee in bed together before they started their day. They also used to take baths together as part of their daily practice. They would. They had a deep tub and they would just take a bath together. That was more when they were older. But, you know, it doesn't have to look a certain way. That's the main thing for everybody to understand.

Just simply. Yeah, that. That tea or coffee in the morning before you get busy, whatever, it might be.

Wonderful. Yeah, wonderful.

Yeah. Another thing Sophie and I do that we didn't have breakfast. Then we do sit there with our tea and coffee and just talk. Sometimes we listen to a podcast together or something. But we have that reflective time because we're both very busy. And once our workday starts, it's kind of off to the races. Right. So it's wonderful to have that time. Okay, let's explore a bit what you've learned from your many years of experience with mindfulness based psychotherapy. So, Trudy, you studied and trained in developmental psychology and practiced mindfulness based psychotherapy with children, adults, couples. So how did you approach working with couples, and what did you see as prerequisites for healthy and fulfilling relationships? I mean, what were some of the challenges and how did you help people work through that and what was necessary if a relationship was going to continue and thrive? Because I'm sure sometimes doing couples therapy, you may end up facilitating a divorce, because that's what needs to happen.

But, yeah, yeah.

I would say I began working with couples out of my work with children because so many times people would bring in a child therapy, but actually the difficulty was with the parents and not that child. So I kind of got into working with couples that way through working with families. And I think the most important thing that I would see diagnostically when a couple would come in in distress. Have you ever really been happy together? Have you ever actually really enjoyed each other in this marriage? Have you ever liked making love with each other? Because if you have, maybe you haven't done it for years, but if you have, you can find that again. You can come back to that. If you haven't, if it was a marriage that started out for whatever reason in a way that was not satisfactory, it's harder. It's just harder once you're in trouble to. You can, but it's just harder. So that's. That's one thing that I've always felt, and then the other thing is really finding out what matters most to each person. And for example, I said before, you know, do you Want to be close or do you want to be right? This is a big question for couples when they get into conflict, especially when there's a ritual impasse, you know, they just come back to over and over, that stuck place.

There are lots of ways to work with couples, and I have to say I always enjoy, because I love finding these little spots, little spots of light and love and helping people recognize them and see that there's hope and they can find their way back to each other. I remember being. Actually, I think it was the 20th anniversary at IMS and one of the teachers came up to me and said, how can you stand working with couples? They were in a painful place in their own marriage at that time. It must be so awful listening to people like that. But I just feel that's, you know, what is it? No mud, no lotus out of that muck that people find themselves in.

In.

There's so much rich learning that can happen. And then they do find their way back to themselves or to each other more often than not, in my experience. And then, you know, the lotus, the love blooms again. And it's not perfect, but who is and what is in this life?

That's the second time you brought up this question of being right and what an obstacle that can be. And, and that really caught my attention because I lead a very intensive group process training. I usually do it a couple times a year prior to COVID 19. And sometimes we'll. We'll have a couple in there or sometimes a parent and their adult child and they're just kind of locked, you know, with like a couple of battering rams with their, you know, and they're just locked in there. And at some point myself or my co trainer will say to them, basically, what do you want? Do you want to be right or do you want to have a relationship? You have to choose. You don't get to have both, right? And that, that needing to be right is, is one of the most, you know, boy, that has so much leverage to pull relationships apart, whether it's parental, child, relationship. I mean, anybody who's adolescent, adolescent knows if you need to be right all the time, you're not going to be in relationship with your adolescents. Right? But even in marriages that need to be right can really be a corrosive energy.

And that's where what Jack said earlier really helps too, is understanding human development, understanding what, what children go through, really understanding how for children, they get so steamroller by their caregivers that they can lose themselves. And then that struggle to be Right. Becomes a life or death. You know, am I going to be annihilated or do I get to actually be somebody? And understanding the roots of those conflicts can help people too. So much much have compassion and be able to be a little more generous and flexible.

Thank you very much, Judy. So, Jack, you've been at the forefront of this conversation between Buddhist and Western psychology for a long time. And I think it would be safe to say that our human condition, biologically, it sets us up to lead a fear and survival based life. And all the childhood conditioning we get that we have nothing to say about. And both Buddhist and Western psychology offer ways for us to really come to understand ourselves and understand each other. And it seems like having that deep understanding is what gives us any possibility of having a more conscious relationship. And I just wonder if you could explore how that river of insight has emerged here in the west and what that's meant for you, how that can contribute to developing the kind of relationships we'd really like to have.

There are a few different things to respond. Please. First of all, the, the kind of meditation that I trained in.

In part when I was a Buddhist monk. What I chose actually was very much an individual path where I would go. I spent, you know, almost a year and a half in silence in a Burmese monastery doing this very intensive training and other places. And so bringing those practices back to a culture where we don't know how to, where we actually don't have the tools and the familiarity to know about our own heart and mind was revolutionary. And for me, I went from an Ivy League education where everything was, you know, organic chemistry and philosophy and mathematics and history or anthropology. Nobody told me what to do with the grief because my family pain. My father was a really violent and, you know, out of control human being. Nobody taught me how to deal with my own anger like his, or what to do about forgiveness or how to have work with my emotions or how to have a relationship. So I got the second half of my education in the monastery, but a lot of it was the interior part. Then it turned out.

That I needed to know how to apply it in relation to others. And that's a second task somehow, first knowing yourself a bit. And in that way, I found the training in Western psychotherapy to be immensely valuable. And in the beginning, when I would talk to people in the Buddhist world, oh, it's so helpful to have good therapy as well, which is really paired mindfulness. It's having somebody be with you who tunes into you and listens deeply, knows developmental Psychology and can ask you to pay attention to things in whole new ways. And I got a lot of pushback. Oh, sitting the Dharma. It'll take care of everything.

Now, I could tell you the names of the therapists, of all the prominence and masters and blocks, because they all realize that there are pieces that we need to have outside of ourselves. And part of that is that we all carry trauma. In some cases, really significant trauma. And so to be aware, as you said, you intrude. You said so helpfully, that there's a basis for that, whether it's that need to be right or the kind of fears or the insecurity and so forth. That. That goes way back. And Western psychology has been great at exploring and articulating not only what are those traumas, but also how, step by step, to go back and unlayer them and discover that you're not that. As Purdy was saying that there's something else. I remember working with a couple because I also did 25 years of therapy, not as intensively as Prudy. This couple was really at war with one another. And they came in together, and after a little bit of introduction, I said, well, we have to really start to look at what's happening. Would you move yourself in a way that you feel that there's a safe or proper distance to begin to talk about some of these difficult matters? The woman got up, walked outside, walked out the door and slammed the door shut. And then a minute later, she opened the door, There was this little crack, and her eye was peeking through. And I said, okay, that's the distance. Because her husband had been actually very judgmental. I said, that's the distance you need to feel safe. And I asked him, what was that? And it took a while to kind of get. Regulate them, help them to regulate and resource to where they could even begin to say, all right, here's a safe enough space that we can actually hear each other. And the main thing I wanted to hear was how much pain they had and how much they. So they would open that place of compassion. So therapy has been incredibly important in healing for me and for Trudy and now for many, many of our students. And we embody it in some way in the way we teach now. It's almost like you can't divide them, but that these are actually the process of awakening. And even if you look at the Buddha's teaching, the Eightfold path, half of those elements are relational, wise, wise action, wise livelihood, wise intention with others. So this is our practice, actually.

Wow. And what you pointed to that we're all holding so much trauma, and some of us obviously much more than others. And some of that is structured around all kinds of cultural and historical injustice and so forth. But we all have it. And you're probably familiar Virginia Satir's work around sculpting. And I've seen that process play out where you have a couple that have a chronic argument and you work with it. You see they're actually playing out the ghosts of their parents or having the argument. Right. You know, and so if we don't have awareness and work through these shadow things, it's just all these historical, genetic, and even our own primary parent relationships, it just continues to play itself out again and again and again. So in some ways, it seems like.

Getting married, and I think probably some vows are structured that way. But in the same way, when we enter into a spiritual path, we usually go through some rite of passage that we're committing to a path of practice for awakening. And marriage should really be the same thing. I mean, it's kind of the same deal, right?

It's a practice. Although I have to say, when we.

Were getting married, I was going to tell the story.

Well, you tell.

Might be a different story. Go ahead.

No, it's probably. There are two parts to the story, but one of them. So Ram Dass said something as you do.

As our, you know, officiant, minister, whatever room, whatever role he was in, of, you know, do you take this person, you know, in sickness and health and so forth, as long as you live? And then Trudy piped up and said.

I said, lifetime after lifetime, I'd be with you forever, was my feeling of just this.

I glance and I step back and I said, one lifetime at a time. Maybe one lifetime at a time. That's great. Another thing, though, that's really related to what we were talking about earlier about power dynamics is that Ram Dass asked us.

How we would like to be referred to once we're married. Would it be husband and wife or whatever, as he concludes the ceremony?

And Trudy said, no, no, no. She said, I don't want to be called a wife. She said, in fact, I'd like to have a wife. Most of us would like that, you know, using that sense that like somebody to be there to take care of whatever it is. She says, I don't want to be anybody's wife. I want a husband, but I don't want to be a wife. So we puzzled about it a little bit while we were standing there was quite charming, actually. And Then in the end, Ram Dass pronounced us husband and Trudy. And that's kind of solved it for the.

That comes back to the patriarchy and the role traditionally woman as help meet and.

Yeah, well, there's been countless stories of women towards the end of their marriages that finally say, enough, I'm done being a wife. Go take care of yourself. Right.

Yeah. But better to start on that note and say, let us respect each other. Not without those patriarchal assumptions of the culture.

But I want to tell a story about my parents about this, because they were, of course, of a generation where my mom was a homemaker, my dad worked, and it was very 1950s that way. And she.

You know, she really oriented her life around him and his career. And when he retired, he had to retire. He didn't even want to, but it was forced on him. When he was 65, he had been working at who and Johns Hopkins. And anyway, he had to retire. And he said to my mom, you know, you've been supporting my life all these years up until now, and now it's your turn. What would you like to do? I will do the things that you would like to do. And I thought that was very unusual for a man of his generation, really, to say that.

Some of us finally.

Grow up after 60, 70, 80 years. You know, it's a miracle. But some of us do.

Some of us meaning particularly men.

Particularly men is what I meant. Yes, men.

High school coming to me, she was like, 17 after maybe one of her first relationships with these sort of sad eyes. And she said, dad, when do guys mature?

Yeah, it's a painful, tough question to answer.

Well, this has really been delightful. So the name of this summit is the best year of your life. And I realize that's a little bit of a linear idea. And we might more properly, with two Buddhist teachers, talk about the best moment of our life. Why isn't right now. Right. But nonetheless, I feel humorous a bit with the title of our, you know, what's. What's next for you all. And if you imagine 2021, I mean, we've been through quite a year with this pandemic. And, you know, it's had. It's had. I don't know if silver linings is the right word, but it's had its blessings in terms of, you know, bringing us together and, you know, slowing down, stopping, more reflective. And there's been also a tremendous amount of pain. And it's not over going into the next year, but hopefully we will start to see light at the end of the tunnel. But for you all personally, what would make 2021 continue to be life flourishing for the two of you as both as individuals and in terms of your relationship?

Well, we've talked about.

The ability to travel again because we both have loved traveling and teaching. It's not that we want to fly around and do you know, that whole one retreat after another thing, but there are communities of people and places that we love. So we're hoping maybe later in the year when things open up again that we'll be able to do that and visit people that we really care about. It will open our lives in that way that seems to be coming.

And I'm also aware, just as you say, that it's going to be a very scary and difficult winter. So many people, and especially in the communities of those who are vulnerable, whether they've got pre existing sickness or they're in the communities of people of color where there's a lot more poverty or all the kinds of things that are, that make them all the more vulnerable. So there's some way also that being Safe and we're 75, so we're really pretty careful and don't go out being safe both feels good, but it's also heartbreaking because we know so many people who aren't safe. And so maybe when things come back together, we can do things that serve us all, that bring us back up, you know, into some flowering that's not just this hunkered down. In many cases that needs to happen.

I think for me, the best year of my life would be a year when I can really see the people I love and smuggle our youngest grandchild and be able to not be so frightened of contact with others. And also to see the political landscape change would ease my grief and my heart. I have felt over watching whether it's immigration, whether it's, I'm not going to go into all of the issues, racial injustice, but just feeling heartbroken over and over feeling just to see things really improve. And if the pandemic could call on us to create some different systems, different ways of living our life as a country, as.

Individuals, as a global community, that if I saw things going in a direction like that, that would make it really the best of my life.

Wow. Thank you so much. Well, this has been delightful and it's been illuminating and I know this is going to be of tremendous value to our audience. So thank you so much, both of you for taking the time and I'm so glad to see you together. When I was thinking about this, I thought, oh, maybe Trudy's stuck in LA and Jackson in San Francisco and they're both in lockdown. But you're together, which is wonderful. I'm glad.

Thank you, Khalid. Thank you so much. Nice to meet you. At last.

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