Conversations on Compassion with Werner Erhard (Video)

Hey that’s very kind of you thank you very much okay Werner told me he likes tortilla so so that’s right I did say so we’re gonna eat some tortilla chips so you know if you guys will bear with us and we’ll share maybe so how is everyone [Applause] so my lovely wife is right here and she usually does this so I’m sort of how many men you know the wonderful thing about at least my wife is that she keeps me humble but it’s a very difficult task sometimes so how many people came to see me thank you for lying how many how many people came to see Werner Wow how many people have been to our events before alright you know we really have a wonderful vibrant community and it really is quite extraordinary to be with you and to do these events and my name is Jim Doty and I’m the founder of the Center for compassion and altruism research and education here at Stanford which is part of the School of Medicine and some of you have may have read the book that I published a little bit ago and if you have thank you if you haven’t go by it please it’s now in 31 languages and it’s coming out in Mongolian soon so for any of my Mongolian friends you can just be a little patient Jim name the name the O into the magic shop a neurosurgeons quest to discover the mysteries of the brain and the secrets of the heart actually I want to tell you a story real quick because it also reminds me about being humble so my wife and I had lunch the other day and it was an outdoor cafe and there were only two seats left with another couple so we sat down with them and after a while the woman looks over and she goes I know who you are I know who you are you’re famous you’re the guy who wrote that book so I smile and yes I and so I accepted that and we actually we became friends and it was wonderful how many of you who have been to our events have seen me cry at our events how many have cried themselves and you know what happens is that as I was saying earlier the really the funnest thing that I do for me and in fact it’s very selfish is to do these types of events where I engage and interact and hopefully allow to you to share that experience of being with some of the most profound thought leaders in the world people who have impacted hundreds of thousands of lives if not millions of lives and seeing the world through the lens of these individuals and the work that they have done to change so many lives in a positive way not only allows us to sit with them and share their experience I but also allows us to look into our own the windows of our own lives and see what might be possible when I told a few people I was inviting Werner to be at this event today they said what does he have to do with compassion and I was actually shocked because as many of you know he was at and really started this movement of self transformation and in some ways the power if you will of positive thinking but in a very confrontational way that allowed you or forced you to perhaps look at your using a term that I think he may have said once or twice and and you know there are many ways to deal with your and some find a path through the Dalai Lama some find it through other spiritual leaders I have to say though Werner has been a hero of mine because what he does is he practices ruthless compassion you see because a lot of people think that compassion is sort of mamby-pamby and it doesn’t really isn’t powerful but in fact compassion is really one of the most powerful things and when you are forced to look at in a very direct way how you have created the prison that limits you from reaching your own potential and forces you to look at that what it does is it’s an incredible gift because it gives you the key to open the door and that’s what’s really extraordinary and if you’ve followed asked if you’ve seen the power of Landmark Forum even today where hundreds of thousands of lives are changed you will understand this innumerable studies have been done that have demonstrated very scientifically the extraordinary positive effect that esthe in these types of trainings have really had on people and changed really millions of lives the other interesting thing there are studies that have demonstrated that people who have taken esthe are more empathic and are more motivated to be of service to others because once you can recognize your own suffering and be relieved of that suffering then you see that so many others are suffering and that in fact you were empowered to alleviate their suffering we were having dinner last night and Warner said and I absolutely believe it’s true that his mission in life is to relieve suffering and fundamentally of course that’s what compassion is so without further ado we will start talking about ruthless compassion so thank you so much did you see that that has the power yes yes thank you I get the guacamole listen thank you very very much for coming you know I know you have other things to do with your life and it was really really really great for me to see people who have been a big part of my life for a very very very long time people I feel really close to and have had an extraordinary experience with but the first thing I need to do is if you don’t really know who James Doty is you are privileged to be in the presence of a truly extraordinary human being Jim let’s sit down yes I if you yeah take the time to look up James Doty on the internet so that you know who you had the chance to be with really really really makes my hair stand on end when I think about what the guy is accomplished and who more maybe even more powerfully who he actually is so oh I have to tell you how Jim and I met a friend of ours common friend of ours invited us to do at their home and I didn’t know who Jim was but you know every once in a while you have the experience making having a connection with somebody I’m not talking about his experience in Mike’s dress I had this experience of connecting with the guy and I said gee I’d like to come talk to you would you mind if I did and he was very gracious he said no come on whenever you run and and I never went and I was sitting yeah like a fool I never went any rate I was sitting at my in my studio with the other people colleagues with whom I work and I talked about the experience that I had had at Francie’s house for Francie and Charlie’s house with this guy and about an hour later hanukkah my wife walks in and says Werner I just heard from James Doty and and that’s how this all happened so it makes me very very happy really happy and and I have a lot of respect both for James as a extraordinary surgeon neurosurgeon and for James as an extraordinary human being for his for his extraordinary generosity and contributions to life and finally for this really remarkable let’s see what compassion really is about and I hope he’ll take some time to tell us about some of the research because it’s quite extraordinary a matter of fact Jim’s gonna leave right after because he has to get to the airport to take an airplane to San Diego where he’s going to give a talk to a whole group of doctors tomorrow about the impact he’ll say more but about the impact on healing the impact the impact it has on healing and so now I have to do two things from me most of my brain works okay more or less but the part that remembers names does not work at all and it’s sometimes embarrassing for people when I can’t remember the name of you know somebody I’ve known for 20 years or certainly I can’t remember the name of the author of this great book that I read and so forth and I want you to know it does not embarrass me so you don’t need to be embarrassed for me when I can’t remember a name the the other thing is that I went you know I have an ear that doesn’t work well that’s why it Jim was kind enough to sit on my left this is the good ear and I went to so I go to an ear nose and throat doctor and he pokes around in there every six months or so to see if he can keep it working a little bit and any rate I told him look my nose runs all the time and he says okay you know and he mm-hmm looked and so and so forth and he said use this for a week and everything would be fine so I used it for a week and nothing happened my nose still ran so then he said this stuff you get it at the drugstore and you put water in the bottle and you put the stuff in the bottle and then you put the stuff up in your sinuses and that should take care of everything that didn’t work either so then I finally went back and said no it didn’t work and he said have you ever heard old man’s nose drip so now he doesn’t bother with my nose anymore but you’ll see me every once in a while take care of my old man’s nose drip on that note how many people in here have old man nose drip I guess it’s also old woman and middle-aged and woman drip – so you had a transformational experience yourself crossing the Golden Gate Bridge by accident yes maybe that’s how coincidence can you just tell us what happened yeah so by the way I studied every discipline I could follow participated in it and I can’t think of a disciplines that you wouldn’t even know the name of they’re so weird and far-out but at any rate I got value out of every discipline I ever participated in but none of them got me sorry for the whatever this is got me over the bridge to a really fundamentally transformational experience and that’s what happened and it turned completely altered my life and what what the experience was one of first realizing that I wasted my life running after things that had no value and and hiding it with all of the knowledge I could gain and all of the things I could comp and you know making money and and things I won’t mention here in polite company and all of the things that somehow looked like they were what it was about but on the in that moment on the bridge I realized it was all hollow that there was no Humanity in it and that I had really wasted my life and then in addition to that I also realized that I actually didn’t know anything I was truly ignorant because although I had learned a lot during my life because I loved learning I everything I knew I knew in order to in order to look good in order to be smarter than somebody else in order to make money in order to but it was all in order to I didn’t know anything for itself and and at the same time you know these experiences are difficult to comprehend because at the same time I realize I could know anything that that so to speak the truth the what matters that what makes a difference was actually available and and then finally and this is one that takes a lot more explanation when we’re good then we’re going to get into tonight but I realized that on the next on the next Galaxy looking back at what was but in this galaxy on this earth nothing was inherently significant that all of the Cygnus chickens that I had placed on the junk that I had placed the significance on was not inherently significant and then I looked for what was inherently significant and I couldn’t find anything nothing inherently significant and that left me free to be and free to act I had taken the walls of the prison that I lived in and and just disappeared them I mean I couldn’t reach all the way that way or all the way this way or this way or that what a trick done pretty good down there by the way by then but but I could tell that there was no longer any limitation and that that it was up to me up to me – and by the way what a me was I’ll get to in a second but it was up to me to own what I made significant it belonged to me I was accountable for it I was responsible for it it was up to me to own whatever it was that I would make significant and and I started to live a life of my own making now though if we go back to your early background growing up you married early seventeen and maybe I was 18 I guess it was a much more mature by then yes no but it was a really good thing Jim because being a young husband and father you know I just had to perform my family didn’t eat if I didn’t perform you know when I look back I forgotten somebody asked me about it I looked back and and I never ever ever worked for a salary I always worked on performance and so it it helped to keep me straight to borrow one of your terms sorry Jim – very hard to yourself when your family depends on your performance sorry no but the so but you ended up having four children the other first wife and but then you urgently I was married to a saint yeah really but then you left yes I know no i deserted my wife and children that’s a form of leaving yeah well no no but it’s important for me to own the reality of it and and to take it on squarely and since you brought it up I’ll just tell you when I when I [Music] reconnected with my family I had to do it without being sorry for what I did because that would have alleviated some of the burden of what I did for me at least I was sorry no I couldn’t get away with anything as far as I was concerned except you deserted your wife and children and you’re gonna have to deal with that and do whatever you need to do to balance the books if you can what was though the seminal event though that made you do that was it you were saying I you know nothing had meaning or I don’t know not I know but back then it all had me me it was all very very very very meaningful and very important and very significant no I had gotten myself into a place where I no longer could function effectively and that was the genesis of leaving of deserting how many of us in this room have done things that were not necessarily proud of how many have done despicable things that they’re not proud of how many are human beings so if you will you came West and you mentioned some of the known and unknown forms of education that you ventured through were you then was this you were looking to find meaning or just the very nature of how your mind work drove you to try to understand the human condition or to explain what was in your own head and motivating well to explain myself to myself to see what might be underneath it all and that’s what got me to read the books I read and to participate in the disciplines that I participated in actually there’s a wonderful quote that says Werner Erhard is an authentic American genius who has taught himself which is really an extraordinary statement to make but this is the nature of your learning and so once you had this if you will transformational experience how ultimately did that translate into the creation of esthe yeah fairly quick Klee actually you know it’s so long ago now I can’t remember the real time span and and I’m terrible at that time always have to ask Annika how many years was that or when did that happen because I’m bad about time loose about time but at any rate it was not long after I participated one of the disciplines I participated in I saw an opportunity to [Music] interact with people in a way that perhaps left them empowered and that I chose to start doing that and I did it in that discipline but then I found that it was so totally inconsistent with the process there that I started that’s when I started asked yeah okay okay okay so so tell me about s then I mean or maybe obviously most people in here know but I know it has evolved mm-hmm but at the time you started it at least for many it was very forceful reflection that had people oftentimes crying does everybody agree with that was I being too kind but all of you remember it don’t you dramatically right well for one thing Jim it was what was called yes training so and it was not I mean people knew what they were going into and they they were courageous well they knew it was not going to be Sunday school yeah obviously they didn’t know what was going to happen and what did happen was surprising for people but remember there was an environment in those days in which it was kind of loosey-goosey and dropout and bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla and so it required a certain wake-up call you know when you’re most of us wind up pretty arrogant about who we are I mean I Know Who I am I’ve been like this for you know whatever the heck it’s been and I go through life like I’m like this and for somebody to tell you that maybe that’s not who you are that’s tough stuff it takes a certain wake-up call to recognize that I don’t listen because I’ve got an already always listening so I can’t hear what you said and I can’t get over where you are and etc I’m gonna read you a note I just got from a housekeeper that we hired about three or four months ago maybe it was five months ago as I said Hanukkah will tell you but I can somewhere in that range and this is a really competent able young woman who’s has a son who just graduated from high school and is now in college and I was really impressed with the way she came in and started to work and told her that I thought that there you know she would go beyond the level at which we hired her and at any rate let me what’s up Jim here thank you at any rate here’s what she wrote and um and I have her permission to read it of course she’s you know she she asked no no no I see you have the same communication I have she had this pants formation she chose to do something let left her with a transformational experience and here’s what she said I discovered things in my life things I didn’t have names for but we’re like heavy loads hanging on me and holding me back in many ways she goes on I identified with having a sea of opinions on those around me and that I’m always quick to judge so that I’ve ended up trusting nobody I’ve been making up stories about how people hate or dislike me my issue with trust has been isolating me you know it’s pretty brilliant I mean makes my hair stand and then that somebody could be big enough to be that straight at any rate she says I’m looking at things differently now and I’m on a journey to opening up more and also to allow people to speak in my life many many wars inside me have ceased a new language is forming and a person of integrity is emerging now just Regent you speaking about the experience this experience new experience of her self this new experience of herself she says it’s unique and inspiring so sorry this is going to take a few minutes now that’s that part here’s the second part the second part is had I’ve had the privilege of working with people in prisons as a matter of fact right here in California San Quentin lots of people lots of guys in there with the sentences of life without hope of parole and and before you go in there you sign a statement that you understand that the state will not trade something for you shouldn’t you be taken hostage it keeps you wide awake to see any rate what I learned from working with those men in prison is that they were succeeding in life the wall was there and the wall was there but they had a television and they had a kid and they had two guys that watched their back and they had food from the commissary now I realized that many people actually live in that kind of prison maybe not quite that bad but we somehow find a way and I certainly found a way to get by with all of the limitations that I had in my life and and so yeah that’s what for me called for ruthless compassion and I think what people we know we go about and live our lives and and we think that’s a life and the result though many times is that we stop really scene and then we expect a lot of others after we’ve created this narrative one of the things that we were talking about excuse me I got some salsa was that you know we have these experiences in our lives and we think how we register that experience is the picture of the experience right but what we forget is that that experience is actually a canvas that we paint and we paint it with our emotions and then that gets cataloged and every time we look at it it’s not the event it’s how we painted the event and you know is interesting and this was really brought forward to me one time as someone really was explaining this to me and they said so you’re sitting with somebody who’s very aggressive towards you but if you really had insight and put yourself in their position you would they were you would agree that you’re an and suddenly this light bulb went on that in fact we think our narrative is the correct narrative and when we talk about ruthless compassion it’s not to diminish I think our experience per se but to understand that an event in and of itself in and of itself has no power whatsoever it is the emotion that we paint it with that gives us power over our lives and what was freeing for me was at the age of 12 a woman gave me that insight because in my own situation I felt and I tell people I felt like I was a leaf blowing in the wind because I had no control I was 12 my father was an alcoholic my mother was an envelope she was chronically depressed had attempted suicide we’re in public assistance we had been evicted we didn’t always have food and I only tell you that because I kept said well either there’s something wrong with me or this event occurred and it was their fault mm-hmm and this is a tendency we all have to do our have to act this way and after spending time with this woman at the age of 12 which is mentioned in my book if you want to I suddenly realized that again I had painted all of these experiences that made me a victim that allowed me to sit and say well if only this happened oh I can’t do this because that didn’t happen or I had this immense anger towards all of these people about my situation and then suddenly after this when I got this insight I wasn’t angry at anybody and there was this most incredible gift it wasn’t to say these weren’t bad experiences on some level but I wasn’t angry at the events and I was allowed to just see them and to sit with them and really that fundamental experience which I think in so many ways is what’s the work that you have done was what released me from my prison what I found was that when I changed how I this narrative I had created which had anger hostility actually fear and took that away I did not understand the what I was doing in my environment because how I stood how I reacted how I responded had an effect on every other individual who interacted me with me and so when I no longer reacted that way to the world the world no longer reacted in a negative way to me and that was freedom yeah and you know I mean it’s it yeah and that’s you know that for me is a perfect illustration of what you can do to leave yourself free to be and free to act and that’s what I heard and what you said that that through the interaction you had with the woman told me more about it last night it left you free to being free to act yeah and you know for the last I don’t know how how long maybe thirty years now maybe it’s 40 I can’t remember the way I’ve talked about what I’m what drives me is to discover a new meaning for what it means to be human rather than the whatever it has meant up till now certainly includes all of the in my life and and and I’d like to see us make available to each other a new meaning for what it is to be human and that leads me to a more practical entry into it and that is Who am I really and it’s not Who am I really but who who is this I that’s all over the place all over the room really who with what is it to be I really or what is it to be itself and you know one of the things that got loosened in that experience coming across the Golden Gate was the importance of I and the centrality of me and and so it’s been a guy 50 years I don’t know it’s so long now I can’t remember exercise of discovering and and that is a large part of what has generated the kind of work that I do I avoid figuring it out and I’ve learned to say it a couple different ways of learn to sit with it or just look at it so most people say well this is good thinking no this is good looking as far as I’m concerned good seeing and and it takes some time to be with it to sit with it to just perceive it just look at it see what arises in being with it and one of the things that’s really become clear to me Jim is the centrality and you’ve just Illustrated it the centrality of reducing the significance of what’s going on with me internally and I’m you know it’s one of my favorite conversations today with people is to recognize well okay that don’t figure it out and don’t tell me what you’ve learned and don’t tell me what you’ve read tell me as you sit there and as you be with yourself what is going on with you internally and one of the things as you pointed out that I think all of us will discover because as far as I can tell the same stuff is going on with everyone of us internally one of the things going on with people internally what Damacio calls emotion and what he likes to say is feeling a subjective level okay great yeah and I think that’s quite true now the problem is most people go through life I didn’t say anybody believes this I said most people go through life that they are what’s going on with them internally I don’t like it I am angry I am annoyed I am happy I am satisfied you know this is who I am huh not I’m being angry not I’m being happy no I am happy I’m not being happy yeah now the so just to mention some of the others most of us have an outlook on life or an attitude or a whatever you’d like to call it a frame for four women or a frame for old man or a frame for this or a frame for that so let’s call that a mental state and the other one in an emotional state and then there’s seems to me always to be a bodily state and then there’s this incessant thoughts mixed in every once in a while with a memory and as far as I can tell and you have more to say about this than I but as far as I can tell I have no dominion over what’s going on with me internally that somehow someway there it is and and I I don’t think that’s who I am I mean I don’t believe that you I am but I tend to go through life that that is Who I am and and it’s ridiculously simple if that’s true now by the way somebody will always say yes Werner but another thing going on with me internally is my perceptions know your perceptions are about what’s going on externally so let’s just leave those out for a moment and leave it as the simple-minded floor I got four things going on with me internally mental state emotional state bodily state and thoughts and mixed in with some feelings now I have made the most horrible mess out of four simple distinctions I just can’t believe it if you talk to people the stories that they have about how they’re angry and put upon and not appreciated and bla bla bla bla bla but that’s all what’s going on with me internally and the people I work with my colleagues and I the one of whom’s in the room sitting over there he and I work on this thing well let’s discover not figure out let’s discover what’s going on with me internally and you know not let’s not take it for granted let’s not obvious it you know I like heidegger’s notion about tranquilised obvious Ness so as I look at a person oh yeah I know yeah oh I have dinner with ya know I know that is you know you there’s no wonder in it it’s not oh great Masha yeah really great it’s like no no Marsha you know now if you watch couples they tend in that direction oh yeah sure yeah yes that’s true now in March and no any rate the here’s my point my point is that one of the things that enabled the work and one of the things that I share with other people and one of the things I’m ruthless about is discover for yourself what is going on with you internally and I use the word discover because if you look it up in the dictionary it’s to be struck with wonder at this whatever this is yeah holy mackerel what’s going on with me internally is simple uncomplicated jumbled up if I like it that way I have no no call on it nothing zero I can’t be angry I can’t be sad I can’t be I can’t stop thinking yeah you know if it’s you thinking stop it yeah no people don’t do that they don’t stop thinking they think about not thinking maybe but that’s still more thinking huh yeah so I find that for me is the first step into the freedom to be and the freedom to act and the other half of it I’m gonna shut up in a minute Jim no I the other enjoyed myself is I’m thinking wow you’re okay good the other half of it is what Descartes left us with you know Descartes is the guy who was looking for what was truly real and he debt everything he came up with he doubted he could find a way to doubt that it was valid and he finally as we all know couldn’t stop that he couldn’t get rid of the doubting because if he’s tried to doubt the doubting he was still doubting okay so now he then concluded ah man human beings are sorry this is translating the Latin thinking things things object things substances he got it from Aristotle but never mind thinking things I am a thinking thing the one thing sorry I gotta stand up so I get this across the one thing he didn’t doubt was the I that he came up with he forgot to doubt this I stuff he said I am a thinking thing uh therefore I am I think therefore I am yeah I had just said that I think I’m there for you yeah no all he had a right to say is what I’m left with is doubted not a subject that doubts yeah so it’s I think the second half of this journey into the freedom to be in the freedom to act is to start to question what is it I’m referring to when I say I and and last story then I’m going to shut up about this I want to train from the heat from the the airport in Tokyo into Tokyo on the train with the woman who translates for me in Japan and you me and you me is the most skeptical human being not she’s amongst the most skeptical she she’s not gonna believe anything so I asked her I want you to find this thing you call I I want you to find it for me and and you me was of course skeptical there was that obviously she was going to find the I it was who she was so there it had to be somewhere and but when we got to the event she sheepishly told me I looked all over I couldn’t find the damn thing now that one’s pretty tough to give up this significance about I yeah and to give it its proper place which is okay life is a game to some degree like monopoly and you got to have a piece to play you know like a Scottie dog or a top hat or a race car and this eye is useful and a piece with which to play the game that’s I probably said way too much no not enough but hey you know the speaking of this eye and speaking of you were commenting about you have this narrative if you will going on I think and this was my experience and and I think often the experience of many as you have this dialogue but you think that dialogue sorry just saying goodbye to a friend this is my dear friend Charlie Wilson who’s one of the most iconic neuro surgeons in the world [Applause] Charlie thanks for coming Thank You charlie it’s so nice to have so many friends who come to these and who you get to see and interact with and who actually had profound effects on your own life but this issue of these this talk in your head what so many of us do is hi this is Tamara there’s is a good friend of mine hello Kate thank you [Applause] what happened so for so many of us is that this dialogue that goes in our head we think that dialogue is us we listen to it and we believe it and what happens is though like how many people that that dialogue that constantly is going on your head says how great you are a queue of you it obviously you guys are narcissistic of kidding of course but but for so many of us that dialogue is this very negative hyper critical condemnation and what it is though is as a species we have a tendency to respond to stuff that’s negative because it’s threatening but the problem is we process that into our head and it says I’m not good enough I’m not smart enough etc etc etc and then the I we talked about is that and when you say I can’t do this I you know I and the other thing is how many of you have had friends or people close to you say you know I want to do this and they look at so you’re never going to do this have any of you had that experience and isn’t it horrible people who you look to people who you love people who you care about people who you think are important will tell you things like that and it’s very sad because what they’re telling you is they can’t do it but they don’t want you to do it and the thing is we process this and we say that’s us we couldn’t possibly do it and when we’re talking about prisons when you start listening to this this creates this prison brick by brick by brick that encloses you in this very narrow thing that you can’t get past yet each of us has this incredible potential and when you when you change that dialogue or you don’t believe that dialogue or you stop reacting to that dialogue everything changes in your life and every interaction you have changes and the thing that is absolutely critical of that when you understand that though is you remember how powerful words can be words that you say and you try to remind yourself of the person who said that to you and hurt you because how many of you can recall it experience even 20 years ago 30 years ago where somebody said something to you and you remember it to this day because it hurt you so badly and the thing is you don’t have to carry it with you you’re free to release it but it’s so hard to do and what they said to you wasn’t truth and the thing is though you can give the same gift not of hypercritical words but words of acceptance words of love because what happened so often because of this narrative we become judgemental right because we have this stuff going on so we have to categorize everybody and we hurt them and we don’t even know it you know I was talking to a woman the other day and I was giving a talk and she came up to me and she said this is 30 years later because my father told me I wasn’t smart enough in her case to be adverse and actually this was an event where I was speaking to nurses ok but imagine this poor woman carried this now in some ways it empowered her but the empowerment came at a great cost to her every every day you should be empowered the words of love you know Washington Irving said tears are precious things he said that in tears speak more than 10,000 tongues and that the message of Tears is one of love you know people say jisub time shoe tariffs wear when you’re in front of people but that’s okay you see because so often we think that we can’t show our motion like you can’t show your pain you can’t show your hurt and it’s all okay but again it comes about judgment know how we think other people judge like I had a person say to be I was giving a talk and I became fearful and this woman says you know I could be with you for two hours and get rid of that she was a psychologist and I can be with you and take everything that is human about you how you connect with another person away from you and the saying that makes you human the thing that makes you connect the thing that makes you feel another person’s pain I can take from you in two hours if you want but tears are powerful tears connect tears are love and each of you can be can give so much to another person by just not judging them and more importantly not judging yourself great [Applause] well that was a little detour Jim take take take a minute and talk about the research if you would on compassion Wow well so sorry that was it good that was a granola it’s a great segue can I can stop crying uh actually for some of you who may be interested there was just a book published called from Oxford University presses which is probably one of the most prestigious academic presses and it’s a an academic book that I’m the senior editor Don and actually two of my colleagues who work with me are also Co editors and it’s called the handbook of compassion science and this is almost a 600 page text that talks about the latest cutting-edge research and you know I have to tell you something when I came up with this idea of studying compassion and it’s ten years ago actually next year I had people say why would you ever do that that is an academic dead end no I and and in fact when I I had left Stanford for a period of time and I had come back and I went to a variety of scientists in psychology and neuroscience and I said you know I’d like to work with you to explore this area and without exception every one of them said why would I do that and now the great thing about scientists is that they are motivated by a few things and if you pay for research they’re highly motivated so actually we began these different research experiments that I funded and we found some extraordinary results and two of those people who I initially engaged change the focus of their research to focus actually on compassion and the thing is that we don’t have what we don’t appreciate as as a species to theory of mind to have abstract thinking to have complex language which result in this huge development of our cortex it required our species unlike other species which swim away after they’re born are running to the forest we have an absolute requirement that our species is cared for for 10 12 15 years in my case 37 years but our children learn from us but the extraordinary thing about that is that we have several attributes that has a lot have allowed us to survive it is the ability to read emotional states in a microsecond how many of you have loved ones or partners they walk into a room they don’t need to see anything you know exactly what’s going on in with them right that is connection and it’s something we all have but we are hardwired because why would a mother care for a child for 10 12 15 years because the resource cost the energy cost huge huge huge and it’s because we are hardwired to care that is our default state that is how we function that is how our physiology works at its best when a mother or an individual cares for another person they have the release of hormones or neurotransmitters that result in a feeling of pleasure a feeling of reward a feeling of happiness and so we know that when an individual sees another individual do an act of kindness or caring it spreads ripples and it motivates other people to care we know that when you are in a situation and how many people have been in a room somebody walks in the room they have a scowl on their face their body language is aggressive and all of you sit like this right because you go into threat mode when you were in threat mode you cannot have access to your executive control function which is discernment thoughtful decision-making because you’re surviving it shuts everything down so you will survive and you stopped listening yep this is how people interact with people another person walks into a room and they sit there and they say hello how are you you know it’s it’s a beautiful day today I ran into so-and-so and it was just so nice to see them and it’s so wonderful to be with you today and you know I really feel I that I care for you and how does that change everything you’re suddenly relaxed you’re suddenly going wow this is pretty cool because we are made to care so when you act with intention with compassion your blood pressure decreases your peripheral vascular function is improved your blood pressure decreases your heart rate becomes more variable which is a good thing it is associated with a decrease in heart attacks or sudden cardiac death your stress hormones are decreased your inflammatory proteins that are released are decreased and inflammatory proteins are associated with a lot of disease states and in fact your telomeres lengthen so there is every benefit every day where you were rewarded when you care for the other and this is the other problem though is as part of our evolution and they’re good things and they’re bad things right we have an excessive stress mode now because we’re thus it have the same DNA as we had 200,000 years ago nothing’s changed but we have a very modern society that makes a lot of demands on our time and it creates a lot of stress for you for individuals the other thing that happens is until six to eight thousand years ago we live in groups of ten to fifty we lived in tribes so we have a tendency to identify with people who look like us act like us think like us and while on the you know in a harsh environment that worked really well and you could identify when another of your tribe was suffering and intervene in modern society it’s horrible and we have a tendency to look at the other as the other yet we only transcend when we look at the other as us so we are running out of time but that’s okay order talk to me about integrity well it’s really again I always had to tell people I don’t say nice things which means by which I mean you can trust what I say I’m going to be straight with you and and in the beginning of the work that my colleagues and I were developing integrity became a really fundamental expression having gotten past the way you wound up being that’s to say you could be counted on for your word and so that was around for a very long time then I met a extraordinary economist academic economists by the name of Michael Jensen and Mike is I think at least he was at one time the most referenced economist in the whole community that makes a really really bright guy but he had this he had a transformational experience and he became interested in making that more available but then he got really fascinated with this integrity stuff and what fascinated him was sorry I’m going to use economic language here for a second I’ll try to explain it he said that the way in which we treated integrity made it a positive phenomenon now positive for most of us sounds like something good except for an economist it’s not something good it’s simply the way the wave is so so integrity for most people is a good idea something you ought to have something it’s good to have something that nice people had but and not nice people don’t have but as Mike so Mike and I have been working on this aisle I think 10 years the last paper we wrote on integrity was putting integrity into finance wow that would be nice and I have to tell you it was accepted by a pretty prestigious journal called capitalism in society the editor which is a Nobel laureate in economics so we’re starting to make a few little in roads in hey let me tell you what pot pot integrity is a positive phenomenon is a description of the way things work so I’ll do this really fast integrity is defined as the state of being whole complete unbroken sound and perfect never mind the rest of it and so something is either in that state or it isn’t an object is either whole complete unbroken sound and perfect condition or it isn’t a system likewise and a person as a for a person as a person now I’m a person as a body and you know my body’s either whole complete unbroken sound a perfect condition or it isn’t and if it isn’t there are consequences what the consequence of being less than now used short phrase whole and complete is a diminution a lowering of workability things don’t work well when they lack integrity that is to say when they’re less than whole and complete pretty obvious and workability is all you need sorry let me get this straight workability no whole and complete is all you need for workability and workability is a either an opening or a limit for performance it’s not the whole story about performance you need something in addition to workability but as workability goes down the opportunity for performance goes down and and that’s integrity as a positive phenomenon as just the way things work so people who allow their integrity to diminish wind up with a lesson opportunity for performance doesn’t mean they don’t perform because you can get a bicycle with a missing stroke spoke to perform really well if you’ve got a champion bicycle rider on it but as you reduce whole and complete you reduce workability as a reduced workability you reduce the opportunity for performance and so that’s in two seconds the Mike and I are and in the process Mike and I are in the process of writing the final thing we’re ever gonna write on integrity for Cambridge University Press about the story about integrity as a positive phenomenon okay that’s my old story let me ask you a question when you look over this extraordinary life and career and the things that you’ve done and I want to reference this back actually to the Hunger Project actually what is the centrality of what you have been trying the gift you have been giving people well here’s what happened was very early after doing the training for I don’t know a year – or whatever the heck it was I was now observing people who had been through that transformational experience and there were they were different they wanted to make a difference I watched people make big sacrifices when they were confronted by an opportunity to make a difference they would take it on even at a fairly significant sacrifice and I watched kids from who in those days we called them youth at risk yeah I watch youth that risk go through this transformational experience and all of a sudden they were the leaders in the community watch guys in prison do the same thing at any rate I would I be came convinced by observation that people who have achieved a certain freedom to be and freedom to act people who were at least significantly free of the limitations that they may be had built up in what was going on with them internally wanted to make a difference and that’s how the hunger project got born I look for where could the people that I knew the people that I had worked with the people that I watched do extraordinary things for themselves I wanted to find a place where we they and I could participate in making a difference and and those days hunger was inevitable I mean it just couldn’t you know it was inevitable and we committed ourselves to getting hunger to the end of hunger to be an idea whose time had come and I don’t know something like five million people participated in making that happen and the reason I bring that up is that each of us has the ability again to connect and make something happen and and never underestimate this power within you to do this and Werner is just an extraordinary example of that but each of us has that what I’d like to do now is to open the mics for Question and Answer so you just come to the mic here there’s you can form a line and we’ll go and do some question and answers and we’ll see what we might learn from all of that yes there are no questions on this side these are the knowers yeah hi Werner I used to work for you many years ago in New York Laura Owen there used to be Maxwell yes great to see you and dr. Doty I read your book it’s great okay now that I’ve kissed bass here no done a hell of a job I’m good I’m good to go now you talking about how caring is in our DNA and I look at the what’s going on in the world and I’ll just take one thing okay there’s so many things we could talk about but let’s just say refugees millions of refugees what’s going on with our DNA that that’s being okay that that what is the dysfunction that’s going on there it’s not okay of course the problem is that when you create fear it results in people doing things that are not fundamentally natural to them because they put in they go into their stress mode and they don’t become more open they become less open if you look in our own political you see a fear narrative and a group of people who are terrified and and who then create the other and in in a artificial a narrative that there’s not enough or something’s being taken from me or somebody’s taking advantage then you objectify the other and you justify doing horrible things and we see it over and over again you know the one thing that I know for sure is that if I act how I wish others to act I can control that and that is the only thing I know for sure and the other I mean no I I like what Jim said about fear makes people less human yeah and you know it’s probably a lot more to be said about the whole issue that you brought up but that’s a pretty good beginning thank you yes ma’am thank you I was very excited wonder to hear you talking about this idea about dis identifying with the eye and and being able to step back and just in a place of looking or discovering and I was excited about it because the last year or two that’s the way my spiritual journey has been going great and yeah yeah and so I I just loved hearing you talk about that yourself to us and I wondered to me it’s been coming to me through the study of non-duality and some of the teachers like Rupert Spira and advisor and things like that and I just wondered if you’ve if you’ve studied any of those ideas some more just through your own awarenesses the answer is no but lots and lots and lots of others and probably people like that yes and like like I said I got value out of everything I’ve ever studied and then everything I’ve ever participated in and and I have a lot of respect Jim has interviewed lots of really great people and I watched some of the interviews that he did maybe not the whole thing but a good good a good portion of them there were nevertheless and you know he’s had some the real thing here that he’s interviewed and spoken to yeah thank you great yes sir hello burner first of all I just want to say thank you so much for your technology because when I went to landmark I just after that I was like wow like I can see the reality now and and the matrix and I felt elevated but at the same time for some reason in my day-to-day jobs I have a like the context of Silicon Valley and what occurs to me is that I want to make the next Apple you know or the next great the problem is after listening to you is that the I my ego and I see myself and I’m like you know that’s your ego so why you’re doing that but I’m like just can’t get rid of it because I want to do it but one side of me is the creative artistic side which says you know doesn’t matter go and do your art and do other things and there’s a conflict and could you have resolved it for me well yeah I don’t know whether I can resolve it for you but let me tell you how I resolved it yeah I in Zen Buddhism there’s what they call the high road and the low road and the high road is very wonderful and the low on the low road you have to do everything wrong first and then you get to enlightenment so maybe maybe give yourself some room to participate in this I expression okay great yep yeah and don’t get stuck there keep going out yeah yes sir yes very hard two questions during your research you’re reading your discovery when you were putting together asked did you ever read or investigate the big books of the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous oh yes yeah yes you know and and the other one was a kid sorry I’m gonna forget the man’s name but the guy who wrote the book about raising the floor you know an Alcoholics Anonymous they don’t bother with you until you eat the you know the floor but this guy wrote a book about how to raise the floor and I learned a lot from him and was able to practice some of the things that he had discovered actually worked for people yeah and I have a lot of respect for alcoholic alcoholics Anonymous and the other three anonymous entities yeah they’re great people they work for a lot of people I was just curious about that second question as a a Discoverer of truth a presentation of truth to people have you ever noticed or considered in your personal experience the outside actions okay on your or the attempts or the attempts to question your integrity and your character oh ho yeah as as a truth discover and and sharing the truth of people have you ever noticed or discovered or thought about how the similarity that is with the the life of Christ how yeah so looked out like like like a you know like you know if Christ was crucified like did you ever notice that that wow this is this is what I’m experiencing when you experience so I you know obviously I have no right to have any relationship with Christ and what Christ represented and yeah I think that there’s a certain similarity from people who achieved a certain breakthrough beyond what it used to be to be human to what it’s now to be human and I think it’s happened a lot a few times in history at one point we all would be except that we were not going to call the shots the chief was going to call the shots the head the king the Queen the whatever it was was going to call the shots and that’s just the way it was and somehow someway we broke through that and while it’s not all gone it’s pretty much undermined and and the broader scope of society at least the part of society where I’ve spent most of my time although I’ve made damn sure I spent time in those other societies so I had a sense of them yeah I have no problem with that that’s great yeah thank you hey it’s been a dream come true for me to be with you thank you I did the Landmark Forum right after the LA riots with Crips and bloods yeah and Latino cholos that I used to try to be like and Jerome downs was my lamb yeah I I’d listen to I never did asked I listened to all your tapes so I used to memorize sorry about that I created myself as an empowerment comedian in a landmark seminar yeah I spoke at a high school in Vegas this morning I flew here to be here with you I’m flying back to Vegas tonight to speak at another high school tomorrow yeah I take what you’ve created and I make it funny and I give it to thousands and thousands of students all over the country and I just I just want to say until you make it your own and therefore it’s no longer what I created it’s now what you created makes you powerful yeah great great thank my question for you and I had really kind of turned coached me because I got to see you at Berkeley and I went up to her and I go oh I have noticed that now transformations out there yeah everyone’s getting a master’s in transformational leadership and have you taken this course and if you taking this seminar and people take a seminar and then they think they can teach it they package it and then they’re making money and they’ve done two seminars people look here’s my view excuse me for interrupting here’s my view there’s nothing I want people to learn from me it’s what you discovered for yourself that makes it powerful okay sir III think we have to go we have a lot of people out question I just want to ask can I just say to people because I’ve been saying this to everybody that the S training and what you created was the granddaddy of it all it came from you okay out in the world thank you very much yeah I guess who you are I got it yes ma’am thank you yes family hi Werner I just had a question you said you said something to the effect that you’re not nice you’ll tell it to us straight yeah and then dr. Doty is talking about we’re hardwired for caring so I’m wondering if you could talk a little bit about you know you’ve got this ruthless compassion yeah but look two things what people misunderstand ruthless compassion I think look Jim puts knives into people’s brains [Laughter] yeah and and in fact I was operating until 4:45 p.m. actually all from 7:30 to yeah and I happened to because he had some photographs of what he had accomplished it was really ridiculous remarkable and you know the guy stood up for I’m sure hours on end to do it and you can’t do what he did without caring yeah you can do you can get some ways into it but I don’t think you can do it like he does it without caring so this ruthless compassion is an expression of caring and I I couldn’t agree more with Jim that it’s fundamental to being human I didn’t say was fundamental to all people I just said when you find your humanity you will find caring there and that’s what happened for example with the Hunger Project people found their humanity and the caring was natural they wanted to make a difference but they didn’t want I didn’t want to make a difference to look good he wanted to make a difference that would make a difference good help hi Werner my name is Rihanna you and I’ve had a few of these conversations over the last 40 years okay so I came tonight first of all I would come anywhere to see you but the topic was of particular interest to me because the day after Thanksgiving I’m going to see you my dad who I haven’t talked to in 26 years so and the last time I had a long dry spell I did the S training and then we talked and then things didn’t work out and so 26 years back and the thing the thing I find myself in right now is the best way to describe it is unrecognizable huh my good I got two things going on one in relationship and one with regard to my dad where I find myself like this isn’t to me that that I was up until recently so I’m I’m I’m struggling with that and then the thing with my dad that I believe was the catalyst and I didn’t put it together until tonight so my brother died suddenly four months ago like just drop dead of a heart attack mm-hmm and I had this regret that I was going to go see him and I hadn’t seen him and all that stuff well I called my other brother to call my dad because we weren’t talking and my so my brother calls him and when I talked to my brother I said hey did you talk to dad and he said yeah I said what’d he say he said he started crying now he hadn’t talked to my brother in 45 years right yeah and he started crying yeah and in that moment I thought if he hadn’t talked to him for 45 years that he cried then five died or he died and that’s right that’s probably still there so I sent an email and said hey you want to talk and and they said yes him and my stepmother and they’re like welcoming me with open arms and so I guess around the whole compassion connection is ice I think that what had me reach out was my compassion for him mm-hmm but what I came for tonight was more about of compassion great and how to grant the same kind of generosity to myself that I seem to give away yeah here’s one of the things that helps me a lot it’s all made up anyhow its interpretation all the way down yeah so I got a own what’s there as belonging to me and then I don’t have to be at the effect of it because it belongs to me I’m the guy who made it up yeah I created that conversation for me to live for me to live and if I own it and I make it my own I can let it be and wet and and here’s the big secret anything you can let be lets you be so if I can let my own stupidity and ignorance and smallness if I can let it be lets me be and it leaves me free to be and free to act and you know your compassion for your dad speaks about your being a big human being yeah yes ma’am it was about 40 years ago that you and I first worked together and the experience of satisfaction and professors and you consistently told us professors as you’re saying today that it is going inside and pulling out the learning from the students not putting in information which is a real misunderstanding of what education is available so I’m sitting here today 40 years later with a room full of people wanting to know more about compassion and one of the ways I think we’re interested is what’s the how of it that we can walk out of here what is the how that we can do today one of the ways I like to do it is to just think about what it took every one of us to get here yep be here logistics of it all the things we didn’t do and so on you know by reaching in again to seeing me as a person and looking to see the other person is kind of the same person without as you taught us all those years ago regret or resentment the only two emotions you said that are about the past and not changeable so it seems like having that kind of compassion for ourselves yeah to not judge to live anything the two of you well as I said earlier and as she reiterated in part I think that be kind to yourself I mean that’s really the the key and look when I Werner had talked about some of his negative experiences are being an and I asked how many of us have done despicable things or and it shows you every one of us is living this and when you recognize that we’re all frail fragile human beings and the power of just being gentle with yourself because that gives you the gift of allowing you to see your own vulnerability your own fragility and then seeing that it is the same that all of us have and we’re all connected in that way and that when you give that love to another person unconditionally without expectation that’s really the greatest gift you can give to anybody and it is what enriches your life and it’s what gives your life meaning and as Werner would say everything else is yes yes sir thank you for for setting all of this up Jim and the research that you do and Thank You Werner for being here tonight one of I did the forum a couple years ago and I was very skeptical going in and one of the things that so I got it at the end or I got what I got and and one of the things that really fascinated me was that even though you had left the work or the corporation maybe 30 years ago 25 years ago it was still delivering the results consistently and if you run a company so I’d be better better I don’t know I don’t know but so I was sitting there and I was thinking how is this possible because you know in my company if I’m not pushing the right buttons things just fall apart and I was wondering what is the key to creating this kind of consistency of something that delivers these resolves every time yeah I think that a lot of it has to do with constituting the enterprise as an opportunity for people to contribute and as I told you just unfailingly when people start to get who they are and I always tell you tell people if you turn around real fast and see yourself promise it’ll move you to tears but never mind the point is to answer your question the point is that the organization has given lots of people rooms full of them lots of people an opportunity to contribute and that is what’s continued to make the organization viable and it’s also not so bad that my brother Harry who by the way was my brother Harry with whom I worked very very closely before he became the CEO and he’s been the CEO now for almost 25 years almost unheard of nobody lasts that long and as I said the organization has just gotten better run and more successful and more useful and more contributing and making a greater difference all the time so it helps to have a really really great brother I would love to sit with here all of you here hold on one second now everybody should know Jim has the lead because he’s going to give a talk tomorrow in another place and he has to get an airplane tonight so we have to let him close things up and I would love to sit with you all night but I think just also the nature of this room we have to be out of here so unless you want to just sit here for oh I’m good yeah but really and this happens actually a lot we’re just gonna have to call it now and I’m so sorry I know I know and I have this guilt feeling whenever I leave these because I have all these eyes looking at me and but so I would like to thank everyone who has shared tonight and thank you all so much for being with us I want to also thank Werner for coming tonight his friendship and the incredible work that he’s done I’d like to give him just an incredible thank you thank you thank you okay okay thank you very much Daniel okay okay okay and I would also like to say in a selfish way and a little bit many of you think that because seek care is at Stanford that Stanford shares their 21 billion dollar endowment with me they do not at all although I am very thankful and joyous to be affiliated with Stanford if you like the work that we do the things that we do come into these events if you would consider at some point if make a contribution I don’t like to ask for things necessarily but at the same time that’s how we survive so thank you again so much let me get I just really really really want to thank you for coming it’s an act of generosity and kindness and I appreciate it and I don’t see it any other way other than your generous and kind participation thank you very much [Applause]