"ROBERT WALDINGER: I am a Zen practitioner and I'm an ordained Zen priest, and I'm a Zen teacher. I'm actually a Roshi, a Zen master. And so I meditate every day. I teach meditation here in the United States and actually internationally, it's a big part of my life. And what I find is that it is an enormous benefit in terms of how I think about my own life, other people's lives, how I think about my research, how I think about working with patients."
"Most of us feel we have miles to go with self improvement. That we want to become calmer, wiser, more finished. What if this pursuit actually keeps us trapped from that becoming? Zen teacher and psychiatrist Robert Waldinger argues that enlightenment isn't a destination or a rare mystical state. Rather, its the ever-shifting recognition of the present moment. This quiet state of noticing, Waldinger says, can be extremely liberating, freeing us from the pressure of becoming."
"Zen emphasizes community. It's called sangha in the Buddhist language. And it's really the idea that we practice learning about ourselves and each other by being in relationships with each other, both during meditation sessions and out there in the world. So we practice with whatever comes up for us. So if I get annoyed at my friend, I practice with that. I notice the annoyance, I feel what it feels like in my body and in my brain, and I notice what I do with an"
Daily meditation and Zen practice cultivate present-moment noticing that reshapes relationship to self-improvement and other people. Meditation supports clearer thinking about personal life, relationships, research, and clinical work. Enlightenment is presented as a continuously shifting awareness rather than a fixed destination or mystical state. Noticing internal states reduces the compulsion to always be more finished and diminishes the urge to have others conform to preferences. Sangha, or practicing within community, provides opportunities to observe emotions, feel their bodily manifestations, and attend to habitual reactions with greater compassion and presence.
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