Transcription of podcast with Susan Bauer Wu
Russell:
Hi and welcome back to Resilience Unravelled. It’s a beautiful spring day. It’s absolutely gorgeous. That time of the year where the rabbits are out, the leaves are on the tree, the blossoms showing and yesterday we had snow. Can you believe that? Its one of those times. Welcome to my guest Susan Bauer W and welcome to our podcast from someone based in the UK. Hi nice to meet you.
Susan:
Nice to meet you, Russell. It’s a delight for me to be here with you.
Russell:
Great Well I can tell by the accent you’re not from the place I’m in so where in the world are you?
Susan:
I’m in Charlestown, Virginia, about 2 hours from Washington, DC. Although I do have a daughter who lives in Edinburgh.
Russell:
Okay.
Susan:
And I go back there quite often and two grandsons that are there.
Russell:
Very good. That's another country, you know, that we don't talk a lot about Scotland. I'm in the north of England. It's still not far from Scotland at all. Well, it's a delight to meet you. Well, maybe tell us a little bit about yourself.
Susan:
So, I am president of a non-profit organisation called the Mind and Life Institute, and our mission for Mind and Life is basically bridging science and contemplative wisdom to foster insight and inspire action to create positive change in the world. Organization was founded 35 years ago, co-founded by the Dalai Lama, and we have been giving research grants and running educational programs that basically foster inquiry and helping people to ask deeper questions about what really matters and how we understand the mind and understand one another. So that's what I'm doing now. I've been leading Mind in Life for eight years, and I started my career as a registered nurse, though that was about 40 years ago. Worked in oncology and hospice and then got my PhD and became a researcher and then ultimately found my way here.
Russell:
Very interesting. So, what was the attraction of coming to work for this organisation?
Susan:
Well, my most recent work was in academia, and I was a professor and a researcher. And much of my research was around the science of meditation. And I was particularly focused on teaching meditation practices to people who are experiencing cancer and going through cancer, as well as other life limiting illnesses. That was my program of research. And Mind and Life has created this incubator for meditation researchers. So, I got involved with it way before I started leading the organisation. And when the opportunity came for me to be in this leadership role, I recognized that it had the power to perhaps have a larger impact. We're an international organisation. Most of our educational programs include people from every continent except to Antarctica. And it's been really meaningful for me over the time I've been doing this.
Russell:
And so, you say it was founded by the Dalai Lama. Tell me about that story. That's fascinating. How did that all come to come about?
Susan:
Yeah, well, he's a very smart and compassionate person. And he also says if he wasn't a modest monk, that he basically would have been an engineer or a scientist. He loved science, and Buddhist inquiry actually is based on investigation. It's about investigation of your mind, investigation of the present moment. And he says, you know the truth, you figure it out for yourself. And that's sort of at the heart of His Holiness's teachings, is that and as well as bring in a compassionate, wise heart to it. And so, 35 years ago was the first what was called the mind and life dialogue. And it was his holiness with western scientists, researchers, philosophers, humanists, and they basically just got together in his living room just to talk about science, talk about the nature of mind, talk about the nature of what it means to be human. And in those early days, there was not a plan to have an organization by any means.
Susan:
It was completely grassroots and completely from a spirit of shared learning. And essentially, the Dalai Lama enjoyed hanging out with scientists and philosophers and humanists and they did, and they did as well. Everybody. It was like, you know, it was so rich, and they were learning from each other. And we recorded all that mind and life institute. We have 35 years of archival footage, and we're actually putting it out in the next month in a digital dialogue that people can search and search the transcripts, search the videos, and to just learn over the last 35 years how these conversations have unfolded.
Russell:
It's interesting, isn't it? Because okay, well, you give me to think about there. So, let's start with the basics. You're looking at the role of science with spirituality, as opposed to science and religion. Is that an important place to start?
Susan:
I do think it's an important place to start, but it doesn't exclude religion, so I think it includes religion. And many of the conversations and dialogues that we've had over the decades have included variety of religious and spiritual leaders, so it doesn't exclude it. But I do think that if you say religious, it doesn't necessarily include non-religious traditions such as indigenous wisdom and others who are drawn to spirituality and deeper inquiry about nature of our lives and the meaning of our lives. That is not within a religious context per se.
Russell:
Right? So basically, you've been running conventions and teachings and learnings and such like, you've digitised those, and you now have those to offer as products. That makes sense. You've got all this collaborative learning, which is fantastic, and obviously that's the point of the organisation, which, again, makes a lot of sense. But why the link between science and spirituality? Is there some sort of frenetic need to prove something, or why do you pull those two communities together?
Susan:
Well, again, the way it happened was organically, like, through the Dalai Lama and through scientists and philosophers getting together, and then through my leadership. Something that's been really important to me is that we don't just have intellectual conversations, but we connect this kind of inquiry with matters that matter in the world.
Right?
Susan:
And so, like my latest book, which is a mind and life book, is called A Future We Can Love, how we can reverse the climate Crisis through the power of our hearts and minds. And it's being released in June of this year, 2023. And it was inspired, actually, by a conversation that happened in January 2021 with His Holiness of Dalai Lama, with Greta Thurnberg and climate scientists. And so, it's not just at this point in time. I feel like we have to go beyond just curiosity, which is so important. That's how the greatest innovations happen. That's how we come together, take down our divisions of us versus them, self-versus other, because that's just creating more division. But how we can really bridge different ways of understanding, different ways of learning and connect that with the most important issues in the world. To me, I can't think of there are a lot of important things, but to me it's like really critical because everybody's invited into that conversation.
Russell:
And so, is the aim to make a change through the efforts of the community of people or are you lobbying and working politically as well?
Susan:
Yeah, we don't directly do that, but I know indirectly that our work impacts that. And so there are people who are on the front lines of policy making or on the front lines of teaching in classrooms or working in hospitals or community workers or climate activists that are absolutely inspired by the work that we do that then bring those teachings and those learnings out into their work in the world.
Russell:
Interesting. So, it's really interesting that you've attempted to link the pragmatism of the real world with the practice of the scientific endeavours and spirituality that you pull together. That makes a lot of sense. That's a nice way of pulling it together, isn't it? So why climate change? To me, why climate change? But for those people that might not be convinced, why would you tackle climate change as a subject?
Susan:
Well, just me speaking as a regular person who is a citizen on this planet, just like you, Russell, and I care about a lot of things. I'm the kind of person who, from the time I was a little girl, I care about things, and I try to make my community better, try to make the world better. At this moment in time, though, I cannot think of anything more important. It is all hands-on deck. Time is of the essence. We haven't crossed the tipping point, but we're getting close, and every single person is affected. And I find it hard to believe that there are climate deniers that still are out there. But I think if people, again are just mindful and wake up to the world around them, the weather that they're experiencing, or people that they know that live in other parts of the world, they will see that this is not a joke and it's very real and it's not too late.
Russell:
No, but it's awfully close. But it's interesting, isn't the way the debate seems to be going and this might be completely wrong, but only my own perception that we seem to have an ever more extreme set of factions, the people on the climate are dying side and such. Like the big powers, the oil companies, all that sort of stuff, the fossil fuel lobby and such like the smoking lobbies used to be years ago. They're increasingly working against this. And then you have an increasingly marginalised but vocal community of people who are working on the other side. What seems to be missing is that middle ground. I just wonder what you think about that.
Susan:
Well, yeah, actually the book my hope is that the people who read the book are people that are more like you and I, in a way, because I'm not I'll be honest, at this point in time, I'm not a climate activist, although I'm starting to get pretty motivated to do more than I've been doing. And it's going to take just the regular people who want to just live a decent life and really care about their children and their grandchildren and their great grandchildren. That's right. It's called a future we can love. It's like we have to go beyond just our everyday comforts and just wanting to live our lives, just being blind to the realities of what is before us.
Russell:
But it's fascinating, isn't it, when you go around the world, as I do, and you look at the Scandinavian countries, who like everything in this all far ahead to a certain extent. China, very green, lots of solar power, parts of Africa, then even to America that talks about this all the time, and it's nowhere near I mean, I was really surprised to be in the southern states and drinking out. Of plastic straws, plastic bags and often find it very old that the demands are coming from America, but they're not actually doing anything about it themselves. So how do you mobilize this group of people? Because it seems to me that the mobilization is the point that's wrong. Forget the fact that you haven't won the argument. It's the mobilisation of the centre that's missing. Really?
Susan:
Yeah. I think it's actually happening. So, I do think that I think it's starting to happen more. I do think that there are people that I even know in my personal life who haven't really quite got it. For example, my brothers are big golfers and I kind of have a little bit of judgment about the care of all the costs to the environment in creating golf courses, basically for a small number of privileged people who want to take advantage of it. I've been in conversation with one of my brothers about this. My surprise, pleasant surprise, is that I learned that actually there's a whole green golf movement that they're looking at, and not just green grass, but really looking at having much more sustainable and environmentally conscious decisions that are made. And that's happening here in America. I know it's happening in other parts of the world as well.
Susan:
So, I think it's moving beyond the fringes. I hope it is. I sense it is from the people that I'm talking to. And I think that there's a scientist, a climate scientist who's also really big into communication and how to talk about climate change. Her name is Catherine Hajo and she's based in Texas oil country. Right? And one thing she talks about is that the moment we start talking about climate change it can turn people off, it can scare people. And why does it scare people? I mean there's a lot of different reasons why, but we feel like we don't know enough, we're not intelligent enough or we're afraid that we have to change how we're living, or we think it doesn't affect us, it's really not about us, it's about somebody else. And what she encourages us to do is to actually begin to talk about climate in ways that you don't actually use that word.
Russell:
So, it doesn't turn people off. And you begin at a point where everybody you connect with them in what they care about. So, if for some people actually who money might be the most important thing. So, I don't want to be judgmental and to write them off because there's a lot of people in this world that are like that money is really important. But those people who have money also have children and they have grandchildren, and they can also realize that right now there are different ways of investing innovations to address climate change that can still have a positive impact on their pocketbook, if you will.
Susan:
Yeah, you see that's a really fascinating view, isn't it? And I'm minded to think of the work of George Bernard Shaw who said that something along the lines of all progress depends on the unreasonable man. It's idea that actually we're spending so much time being reasonable we're losing the speed. I mean we changed the word on the behest of the climate tonight is from global warming to climate change but actually we are having global heating. That's actually what's happening here. And people should be frightened because that's how you take action. People should be having change because that's how we know you're making a difference. And I just wonder sometimes whether we treat people so much like children that we lose the resilience that come from treating them like adults, building the capacity and such like. There are hard messages. The thing is that you can be making millions from solar power.
Susan:
If you go to the Far East and the Middle East, you'll see huge ranges of solar power. There's loads of money to be made. But what we do is we sort of skirt around the issue instead of legislating. The fact is, without political will, it's a very difficult exercise. And until you get someone liberated at the tops of organizations it's like the classic change problem. So, they're not going to change. So, we have to, so we've got to start standing up in this country. We have all these people gluing themselves to the floor and extinction rebellion and just stop oil and all these different things. And there is change happening because people notice a bit like Black Lives Matter and the Me-Too movement. That was the behest of the unreasonable man. I'm doing parentheses at the moment because it wasn't all men, but you see what I mean.
Russell:
I just wonder whether we've lost that campaign, that spirit of getting out there because we're too frightened to offend people at the moment, to say what needs to really be said.
Susan:
Yeah, I think what you just said is really spot on and very well said, Russell. We need to not be afraid, and we have to make people at the top accountable. And in the places where we're fortunate to have democracies is that we actually have to vote and to get people, leaders in power who actually care about this. And it's not just window addressing, it's not just saying the right things, but we have to hold them accountable.
Russell:
And the problem is, we have political systems that mitigate against it. You're going to have potentially two ancient old white blokes who are going to potentially bore each other to sleep at the next election, neither of which you believe in this subject, really, and certainly your Senate and other places just don't. We got the same problem over here. Increasingly, as a government's lurching to the right, across the whole of what used to call the Democratic world, we're all focused on a march to right wingism rather than climate change. I mean, look at the vitriol that is turned against Greta Thunberg in this country. It's horrendous how depersonalised and attacked is for saying the most obvious things. Somehow, somehow the message isn't cutting through, somehow the message has to change, isn't it?
Russell:
Well, I'd love to hear more about why you think that's the case. I'd love to, but I think what's happening in the I mean, we can get derailed here, so I don't want to do that. But I do think that there it's all about resilience, isn't it? For me, it's all about the resilience of the planet and how you learn and move things forward, just as you're saying, really.
Susan:
Yeah, it is. Yet we, us and our contemporaries don't want to change because we're comfortable. We're comfortable with the way we're living our lives and having what we want when we want it. Right? And we don't want to be shaken in a way that we maybe have to change or we're too scared to change. But I also wonder, it's the message, like, what do you think it is about Greta that turns people off? Because is she saying something that's so uncomfortable that they don't want to hear it? Or is it because she's like, finger pointing in a way that turns people off and older people like us don't want to be told from a young person. But I will tell you, the young people, like, there is a strong movement of young people that give me hope.
Russell:
But it's always been the case for every generation of 16- to 25-year-olds, or the people who change the planet for the next grid go back to the hungry and uprisings of the 50s through to the 60s. It's always young people and it's always, usually older people are holding back because they have everything to lose and very little to gain from the change. But this is bigger than all of us and it's a fascinating subject. Sorry, I know you tell me about the book because obviously reading the book is obviously going to throw more light on this. So, tell me about the book and what's in it and who's it for.
Susan:
Yeah, well, the book is for, to me, really, everybody, and mostly for people who I think who care. So, I think for people who don't care, who are total deniers and are going to find be critical of anything related to this topic, I don't think we push it, we encourage them. But I think everybody else, I think anybody who cares, who feels scared, who has children and grandchildren and wants to learn what they could do, how they can lead their lives in a way that's in alignment. And the way the book is written, it's in four parts and it goes from knowledge to capacity to will to action and those four parts. And so, the knowledge is one thing to recognize. Is there's something in the climate science called climate feedback loops that I didn't know about until I started, until I learned about this topic from a colleague that created these free videos if you want to learn about climate science.
Susan:
They're called Climate Emergency feedback loops, and they're available in 27 languages, freely available online. And when I got turned on to climate feedback loops, I was like, wow. Feedback loops are basically that the Earth is getting hotter and the hotter it gets, the worse it gets. It's these positive feedback loops.
Russell:
We see it in the weather. We see it in the weather every single day, don't we?
Susan:
Yeah. Oh, I wanted to say something that you said earlier about the word like global warming and to climate change. That woman that I mentioned earlier, that scientist, she uses a term that I think is more like accurate. It's called global weirding.
Russell:
Yeah, it's a good one like that.
Susan:
Global weirding meaning that the weather is unpredictable. It's very unpredictable. And so, for people who say, what do you mean global warming? It's so cold where I live and well, okay, that's not the point. It's that basically the weather patterns are changing because the Earth is warming, the atmosphere is warming, and it's creating these crazy changes. So, it's global weirding. So anyway, the book talks about the science of climate feedback loops. And that also is where the promise is, because once we can begin to start cooling the planet, the feedback loops can go in the opposite direction and there could be this rapid feedback of cooling that can take place.
Russell:
Well, we saw some of that in the Pandemic, didn't we? We saw the readjustment of some of the levels. We saw the difference in sea movement, sea creature movement, because cruise ships weren't operating. We saw all sorts of things when humans weren't there. And in a funny sort of nihilistic way, what you might argue that actually we should actually get on with the global warming and much quicker eradicate the human race and then basically the planet will settle itself down.
Susan:
There's a lot of people who say that.
Russell:
It's the guy in movement, isn't it? And that's the thought, isn't it? Because there's a view in one view is that humans are the virus that's come onto the Earth to consume it and destroy the host, as it were. Anyway, that's far too philosophical for where we're going today. Tell me about the book. Sorry, keep interrupting.
Susan:
No, you didn't interrupt.
Russell:
You got me too interested. That's the truth.
Susan:
And then I also talk about human feedback loops. The first chapter in the first section is about climate feedback loops. And then we have human feedback loops. And the human feedback loops are basically our greed, hatred and desire and delusion. And the delusion part is that we don't see ourselves as interconnected. We see ourselves as just sort of safe and solitary all by ourselves and with our family. But the truth is, everything we eat, the air we breathe, what we buy, where we buy, we are all interconnected, not only within our communities, but within this whole entire planet Earth, which is our home. And greed is an important part. It's liking things and wanting things because we think things will make us happy. And one of my greatest wishes for my grandsons, who are now four and one, five and one, that stuff isn't going to make them happy.
Russell:
But this is the challenge, isn't it? It's our generation that created this problem because our generation brought them up to be desiring of things. They were poorly parented by our generation. You can't blame the current generation for wanting things when we brought them up to expect that. And I think we don't take the accountability in our generation saying, we messed up here, so how do we put this right?
Susan:
Yeah.
Russell:
And I think we're always blaming the youngsters for being words that are thrown at the current generation are pretty horrendous. And then you talk and look at parents who have no skill in parenting. Yeah, I think the point of human feedback loops is absolutely critical for me because unless we fix that, nothing will change, will it?
Susan:
Yeah, absolutely. And then the next part is about capacity. And the capacity is Earth's capacity, just as you said earlier, the Earth's capacity to heal. And then we have human capacity. And the research shows, psychological research, human behaviour research shows time and time again we can change. We can change. And so, we talk about how we can begin to think about changing. Third part of the book is about will, and it's broken up into two parts, which I see is like two sides of the same coin. One side is about climate grief. Grief is changing our old ways, maybe. And also, grief that everyday thousands and thousands of species are dying. It's real. There's climate refugees that are losing their homes. There's a lot of grief associated with it, and we need to be real about that. And the flip side is what we call I'm calling and Machi Ricard, the Buddhist teacher from France, calls wonderment or awe, where basically if we actually just pause in any given day and just look outside, look around, the way you started this show was perfect.
Susan:
Noticing the bunny rabbits and the leaves on the trees, and we close our eyes, and we smell, and we hear the birds. We can be nurtured in any moment by what's right here before us and by tapping into that actually helps us with our grief and our anxiety. And then finally, the book ends on action, and there's not just one checklist that's perfect for everybody. And so, we actually offer a variety from a lot of experts in the field and a lot of just really wise spiritual people and activists and scientists and others, of just some suggestions that you can pick and choose. And the most important things for climate actions are the ones that you actually are inspired to do and can do. And I believe every little bit matters. And I also think it's really important. What I have found personally helpful is to realize I'm not alone.
Susan:
There's a lot of people who care about this. There's 8 billion people on this planet, and if we can get even a quarter of us going on this, it can just continue to spread. And I believe we can turn this around.
Russell:
So, are you optimistic for the future?
Susan:
I actually am. I wasn't when I started working on the book, but when I have learned about the amazing things that are happening in every corner of this, every corner of every continent. And I believe not only in Earth's capacity to heal, but I do believe in our human capacity to care for one another, to care for our future and our kids and our ability to change. And when we decide to do something look at what we've done in the past. If we decide to do it, we can do it. And I'm not ready to give up. But time is of the essence.
Russell:
So, on that optimistic note, you better remind people the name of the book, where to find it, and how they can find out more about the mind life.
Susan:
Okay. So, thank you, Russell. The book is called A Future We Can Love. How we can reverse the climate crisis through the power of our hearts. And Minds. So, it's available starting on June 13. You could pre-order it before June 13, but after June 13 it's available anywhere. Don't want to pick and choose. You can find your local bookseller or online and Mindandlifeinstitute is mindandlife.org. And you can learn more about our programs. There many of them. Most of them are actually free. And any of them that you have to pay for, we have very generous scholarships.
Russell:
Brilliant. That's been absolute joy to talk to you. You've got me all intrigued and apologies for slightly taking more of your time than I should. So, thank you for spending time with us today.
Susan:
Thank you, Russell. I really enjoyed my conversation with you.
Russell:
Super. You take care.
Susan:
You too.