TANIA KETENJIAN:

Welcome to AWAKEN, a podcast from the Rubin Museum of Art that uses art to explore the dynamic path to enlightenment and what it means to “wake up.” I’m Tania Ketenjian, executive producer of AWAKEN, and because of the amazing response we have received for AWAKEN Season 2, we wanted to extend the conversations and broaden the experience and understanding of the five mind states we discuss in the series: Pride, Attachment, Envy, Anger, and Ignorance.

AWAKEN is inspired by the Mandala Lab at the Rubin, an installation based on the Vairochana mandala, an artwork that represents the path to enlightenment. Along with the installation, the Rubin also has an ongoing live series, BRAINWAVE, where two people—one of whom is a scientist— are in conversation on a given topic. In this case, the topics are the mind states we just mentioned.

In this episode, we have excerpted parts of those conversations and interwoven them with neuroscientist Tracy Dennis-Tiwary’s understanding of what each of these emotions are. You may remember Tracy—her insights led us through each of the seven episodes of AWAKEN and here she is again, doing the same.

Let’s begin with Pride.

In the teachings of the Vairochana mandala ‘pride’ means placing yourself on a higher or lower plane than others—exhibiting arrogance or low self worth. That’s what is damaging. For the conversation around pride, the Rubin invited cognitive neuroscientist Dr. Phillip Corlett and performer and artist Jean Grae to discuss their experiences with pride. Here Tracy Dennis-Tiwary starts us off with her understanding of pride.

TRACY DENNIS-TIWARY:

With pride, I’d say, you have to have as a starting point, the appraisal that, I am a self, I’m an individual self and a self that has agency in the world is a valued self.

TANIA KETENJIAN:

Dr. Philip Corlett:

DR. PHILIP CORLETT:

One of the things I study is how we build our sense of self and situations where that might break down. I’ve tried to study from various different points of view. People who unfortunately get brain damage and, and lose aspects of their sense of self. And it really speaks to that kind of constructive process that our brains do. That really, the self is a story that you tell yourself and others in order to make all of these things that are incident upon us, all of these attachments that we have make sense.

TRACY DENNIS-TIWARY:

So you are appraising in the moment, is this sense of myself as a positive, powerful self? Is it being threatened or supported? That’s the appraisal part. Like just how is the world connecting with my sense of self?

TANIA KETENJIAN:

Performer and artist Jean Grae.

JEAN GRAE:

That’s the interesting thing. I now identify as non-binary. During my rap career, I identified as a woman. Or as they would call me: a “female.” It is a competitive world. It is based on braggadocio, based on I’m the best. And I thoroughly enjoyed that about it. And I never looked at it like I’m enjoying myself here on this stage or on this song. My mission was to destroy, it was to destroy the imaginary people. It was to destroy the other people who were on the song. If someone was like, you’re opening for them, I was like, they are closing for me…

TRACY DENNIS-TIWARY:

The action readiness tendency, depending on how you appraise that situation is how can reestablish my sense of integrity and a self that again that is valued and powerful. So when we are in a prideful state, depending on how we view our sense of self and our value, we do things to sustain, sometimes at any cost that sense of being a valued self.

JEAN GRAE:

As a woman, that was not acceptable. And I’m like, well, that’s very interesting. It was always, that I should be grateful to be there. And I think just as an other in general, as a black woman, a mixed woman, an immigrant, I was raised Muslim, I’m like, listen, I got all the others down. How, at what point do I have to stop being like “Oh, thank you, thank you so much.” And because I never presented that and my only presentation was, I’m sorry, I’m sorry I’m better than you. It was never accepted. It did not go well.

TANIA KETENJIAN:

Sometimes society forces individuals to exhibit pride in specific ways because of discrimination and judgment, which impacts one’s worldview and way of navigating the world. Sometimes one’s pride has to be overinflated in order to receive the acceptance and acknowledgement that should be applied to everyone equally.

Making your mark and claiming your territory, whether it be in a place or a career, sometimes takes some posturing, a sense that you know what you’re doing and you’re the strongest. Fake it til you make it. Be proud and then have reason to be so. Dr. Phillip Corlett.

DR. PHILIP CORLETT:

See, so it’s interesting. So I’ve approached science kind of similarly, believe it or not. There was this feeling, this sort of apocryphal story that perhaps people tell you when you first go into prison, that you’re supposed to find the biggest guy on the yard and hit him as hard as you can to prove that you are something, and that you have something to say. And I’ve often tried to chase the big ideas or the new territories, or the things that people thought were outside of the realm of science or something that we ought not to have something to say about. And I’ve tried that and, and it does become exhausting. It’s interesting to try and sort of stake out new territory and pursue new things, and it’s really exciting, but at some point, you know, you’ve kind of gotta stop innovating. You know? And hand over the torch to other people. And I think that’s the point where I’m at now, where my job isn’t to push me as the brand forward anymore. It’s to train the next generation of people who are coming through and, and sort of point them to the areas where I perhaps went wrong or slipped up or made the wrong choices. Um, I’m still very proud of what I’ve done, but in a sense I’m also kind of over it and don’t want to be known as the guy who does that so much anymore.

JEAN GRAE:

How many, like rough times did you have in those thoughts that I know it, really, in my heart I was like, I know it’s not me. I know I’m amazing, but at a certain point you’re like, oh. But what if I’m not? And then that leaks over into so many other things.

DR. PHILIP CORLETT:

Yeah. No, I definitely, you know, submitted grant after grant application every time, you know, three times a year, every time they’re coming back, not even discussed. Like, we’re not even gonna dignify this with comments, you know? And, uh, and it wears you down. It really does. Uh, and it really eats into your sense of self. And so, so my response was, let’s try and do the craziest thing that no one expects and pull it off and show that I am a sort of forced to be reckoned with or someone to be taken seriously…So, so since then, all my grants get funding. Well, not all of them, but more than none.

TANIA KETENJIAN:

Trailblazing of the sort that Philip and Jean have done has the aim of leveling the playing field. And it needs to be accompanied by a level of responsibility, a willingness to not only make your mark but also allow others, ultimately, to make theirs. This sort of achievement and pride should not be at the expense of others. The antidote to pride is suspending judgment, to approach things with the absence of ego.

JEAN GRAE:

Also being like, Hey, if you’re not gonna let me in the club, okay, I’ll stop trying to get in the club. Like, I’ll go down the street and then I’ll build a whole new club. I think that happened to me very early on, probably before I got my first tattoo. We’re just living in the world and being like, the rules don’t apply. So if the rules don’t apply to me and I’m invisible and you don’t want me here, so then I can do whatever I want. And yeah, even even in that sense, my first, my first tattoo was very small. My second tattoo was this giant dragon on my neck, and I was about 19 years old, and everyone was like, what are you doing? And I was like, don’t worry, I understand the world is gonna catch up. I live in a non-linear, I’m in, I’m in the future. Just don’t worry about it.

DR. PHILIP CORLETT:

And you were right.

JEAN GRAE:

Yeah, but I’m always telling people like, it’s not about me being a superhero or me being up here. The idea is for all of us to be superheroes, all of us, to have that confidence. And it doesn’t mean anyone has to be lower. How do we stop people from thinking that this has to happen instead of this happen?

DR. PHILIP CORLETT:

Some amazing advice that my PhD advisor gave me. Which is that you’re running your own race, right? You never have to outrun anybody else. And comparisons are always gonna sort of trip you up and you don’t know the race that anyone else is running. Right. You think you do, but you really don’t. And we see this in economics in neuroeconomics, right? Like, money doesn’t create happiness. Well it does to a certain point, right? But then when you reach that point, there’s always someone above you who has a little bit more and then it just keeps going. And so whilst it is our way of being in the world to draw comparisons with people around us, that’s the thing that, that trips us up and gets us in trouble often. It can be motivating, right?

Yeah. I think, again, to get back to that point I was making earlier, it’s really important not to pull the ladder up after you, but actually to make sure that whoever’s coming up next learns from your mistakes, takes the path that maybe you didn’t and really benefits from it. And I think that’s a really hard lesson to learn cuz it doesn’t feel right. Like if you had to struggle to get where you are, it feels weird to help others. But I think it actually helps more in the long run.

TRACY DENNIS-TIWARY:

If pride has this assessment, this appraisal of who you are, what is valuable about you, what power you have in the world to do things, and then this sort of action readiness to sustain that sense of self. And are the things that I am prideful about, are they going to survive, are the sustainable, are they meaningful, will it have mattered that I was in this world? Do I have to knock down others to feel pride in myself? Or maybe success means helping others succeed?

And so, you start to have those sorts of opportunities and either internal discussions or even external discussions. So I think of pride as this fraught emotion, but one that has, if we can bear to look at ourselves and really face what we’re prideful about, to be an emotion that has incredible potential for transformation.

TANIA KETENJIAN:

And that is the idea with the Vairochana mandala, it’s a visual representation of the path of transformation, using the energy of difficult emotions, like pride, as a pathway to compassion for and a connection to others, and yourself. To lead a life where judgment of oneself and others is suspended and not clouded by one’s egoic view of the world.

While pride may seem quite different from attachment, when pride is misplaced, it can be an attachment to a sense of self. An attachment to how you want to be viewed by others, or even by yourself. Of course attachment isn’t all bad. Like all the mental states, it’s about balance. We need attachment in our lives, particularly in our infancy. Attachment trips us up when we expect things to stay the way they are because, as this whole series illustrates, if there is one thing we can surely rely on it’s change.

Here, Tracy shares her understanding of attachment from a neuroscientific perspective.

TRACY DENNIS-TIWARY:

When I think attachment, I start with early child caregiver attachment, about this bond that very naturally and automatically will form between a primary caregiver and any caregiver and a child. And in psychology, we often actually characterize that attachment as secure or insecure.

TANIA KETENJIAN:

In the BRAINWAVE series, the two people discussing attachment are Pulitzer Prize-winning theater writer Michael R. Jackson, and Dr. Hedy Kober, an associate professor of psychology at Yale University whose studies specialize in cravings. Very apt since another way attachment shows up in our lives is through our attachment to things: objects, food, technology. Here is Dr. Kober speaking about attachment, from the perspective of craving.

DR. HEDY KOBER:

One of the things that I think are superbly interesting about humans is that we were all essentially born to crave, right? The systems in our brain that give rise to craving are the systems in our brain that allow us to pursue the kinds of food that we need to survive and pursue sex and when everything works well, and we live in the same kind of environment that we did maybe some tens of thousands of years ago, it’s really functional actually to run after the, um, kinds of things that are high fat and high sugar and give us nutrients and sex because we don’t get a lot of them. And having a strong desire to keep us motivated is actually really, really helpful.

TANIA KETENJIAN:

Michael R. Jackson is familiar with craving. As he will admit, he is an all or nothing kind of person. And this certainly made itself apparent during the pandemic.

MICHAEL R. JACKSON:

Something I learned about the pandemic was that, uh, when a sort of global stressor like that happens, my instinct actually was to sort of take care of myself like more than I thought that I would not, and I’m not saying necessarily sitting in a healthy way, I’m just saying like, my instinct was not to like help everyone else. My instinct was like, stay alive, like, or by any means necessary. And for me what that meant was like eating and drinking every single thing in sight.

TANIA KETENJIAN:

One very common attachment that many of us have, maybe all of us, is to food. Not to sustenance but to certain foods, that little piece of chocolate at night, that fried chicken or burger you know isn’t great for you but you just want. And sometimes that can get a little out of hand. Because really it’s our attachment to what feels good. And it can get tricky because being attached to feeling good can lead to behaviors that aren’t very healthy.

DR. HEDY KOBER:

Most people crave some set of things pretty consistently. People for whom alcohol can be a part of their life often crave alcohol, at least sometimes under some circumstances. Um, in epidemiological studies between 98 and a hundred percent of people say that they crave some forms of food sometimes. This should surprise none of you. And people often have a relationship that is craving like with things that they either have experienced previously and experienced some pleasure for, some pleasure with that they have enjoyed, that they found rewarding, or things that they imagine will be rewarding.

And I’m now thinking specifically about the kind of positive craving that we’re talking about. But also a cognitive component. If I have this, I’ll feel better. If I don’t have it, I’ll feel worse.

Food companies know this, this is why they made food commercials and food ads, but also other kinds of parts in our body. Our heart starts beating a little bit more quickly. Sometimes we get our palms get a little sweaty. And of course a motivational component which is associated with the impetus to act on these thoughts and feelings. And that’s pretty universal.

TANIA KETENJIAN:

There’s no question that another big attachment we all struggle with is our attachment to our devices. It’s a lot like the attachment to food, that need to feel good, sometimes at any cost. And it can be a real struggle. Because our devices are often an escape from what is right here, a sense that what is right here just isn’t good enough. When we step away from those attachments, to food, to phones, we can start to see things differently, and maybe, if we’re lucky, become less attached.

MICHAEL R. JACKSON:

I had this interesting experience of, I was in St. Lucia two, like three days ago, two days ago. And while I was there I dropped my phone and like dirt got in the charger and so then I couldn’t charge it, so then my phone died. And so I literally couldn’t be on it and it was great.

I’m trying to like figure out how to get back into what I did as a teenager, which is that I used to read before bed and I’m, and I’m trying to do it now and I’m finding that it’s very difficult now because my attention span has been so stolen by this, like this horrible device.

TANIA KETENJIAN:

The desire to become distracted by the present moment, scroll through Instagram, check your email, eat a donut, whatever your escape may be is normal. How do we allow for these attachments without letting them take over our lives.

DR. HEDY KOBER:

Craving in itself, I don’t think of it as anything bad at all. I think craving moves us again towards all of the useful behaviors we have to do, like feed ourselves and take care of loved ones and, um, move us towards things that we think are important in life. Craving, especially if we kind of take a step back and think about craving in the broader sense, right? Craving is really any kind of internal movement towards or away, right? And in that kind of context, of course we need craving, we need motivation to do lots of things…

I think that the place where as humans, we really run into, what we might call a little bit of trouble is when we start wanting things that might be good for us in the moment, good for us in the short term, and really damaging, in the long term where the math, the global math might not really make sense for our wellbeing, but in the immediate moment it still creates that yearning that goes, mmm, I want more of that.

I think of freedom as being perfectly, perfectly okay with everything exactly as it is in this moment. Um, and in that sense, that piece can be brought, for example, to a moment of craving. I might really wanna be doing something or consuming something, and I can notice that not necessarily react to that, find joy and peace in exactly this moment exactly as it is.

What we expose ourselves to, how we spend our time, that typically is what grows, where we put our attention that grows. And so if I put my attention for as many minutes of the day on this moment being glorious as it’s presenting itself completely outside of my control in its beautiful glory, it is highly likely that I will increase my skill of being here.

TRACY DENNIS-TIWARY:

I think about attachment as… It’s that cliché, if you love something, set it free. I think there’s something really profound about just simply thinking about how do we stay connected to people without owning them? When we approach people that way in these connections and our attachments like a child, like with our children that, oh my goodness, talk about a challenge and a opportunity for growth like, how do we stay attached to these children that we love so much but give them freedom that allows them to not simply be serving to meet our needs and our scarcity and our… So, I think there’s…that’s what I think about when I think about attachment in the best sense of the word, that we can dig into that love and use it in ways that grow ourselves and others and don’t shrink them down to just fit the needs and the emptiness that we have.

TANIA KETENJIAN:

Emotions are energy. And whether attachment presents itself as an attachment to a person or as an attachment to a thing, that attachment is an energy, one that can be harnessed and transformed. As Tracy says, we can take that attachment, that love, and use it to grow.

The wisdom one can get from attachment is what the mandala teaching calls the wisdom of discernment. It is the ability to see things from a new vantage point, to see how our attachment, desire, and sense of craving is powering our behavior. If we can suspend our attachments, we can begin to build connection, compassion, and empathy for ourselves and others.

Another one of the emotions we discuss in AWAKEN and is illustrated in the mandala is envy. And in the context of connection, envy may be one of the most challenging emotions because as Tracy Dennis-Tiwary says:

TRACY DENNIS-TIWARY:

Envy is a breaker of social connection.

TANIA KETENJIAN:

And it takes many forms. For one:

TRACY DENNIS-TIWARY:

I think of it as sort of a cloying, this kind of consumeristic, this wanting, it’s this sort of emotion…

TANIA KETENJIAN:

In the BRAINWAVE series, the two people discussing envy are comedian Janeane Garofalo and professor and psychologist, Dr. Kevin Ochsner. Janeane started with discussing where her envy lies, and while she doesn’t have much of it in her life, it simply isn’t her character to be envious, she pointed to something so many of us feel, and what Tracy referred to as a consumerist wanting. Seems like regardless of how well known you are or how much you have, it’s natural to want more. Everything around us, from commercials to social media, implies that we don’t have enough, more is better. So it makes sense for Janeane to want more than what she has.

JANEANE GAROFALO:

I envy great apartments. Honestly, when I walk the dogs at night, I’ll look in windows. And I always wish I lived, I think it’s 43 Fifth Avenue. There’s a building. Oh, I envy and covet, but I don’t begrudge them. I’m not mad at them for living in there. I’m happy for them for living there. So I, I see it in that way. Like, I wish I had, I wish, a lot of times I wish I was a different kind of person. I wish I had worked harder and could have that apartment or something like that.

TRACY DENNIS-TIWARY:

Of course, envy is that there’s something of value that I need, that someone has and that I don’t have. So it’s again, it’s a value proposition. It’s that there’s something that I need, but why do we need it when it comes to envy? I think, again comes back to this self appraisal like we saw before where there’s a notion that if I have this thing, it will contribute to my self worth and my agency and autonomy and ability to have, and my empowerment to do things in the world.

TANIA KETENJIAN:

Janeane’s wistful coveting of New York apartments, of wanting something that someone else has is one form of envy, but some envy can have more of an edge, a sense of contempt, even resentment or jealousy. This type of envy can breed a sense of competition that divides rather than unites.

TRACY DENNIS-TIWARY:

There’s a block such that someone has that thing, or they have it and I want it, or they have a way of getting it that I haven’t figured out how to achieve. And so, what envy drives is much more competitive types of behavior rather than collaborative.

TANIA KETENJIAN:

Neuroscientist and psychologist Dr. Kevin Ochsner is chair of the psychology department at Columbia University.

DR. KEVIN OCHSNER:

When you think about jealousy or envy from the perspective of a theorist, like what are these emotions and why do we have them? They’re really about the difference between you and what you have and what someone else has. So jealousy is about interpersonal relationships, at least when you’re trying to parse them apart.

Envy is about objects attainment, but it’s really, it’s the same kind of emotion. It’s like a triangle…it’s an emotion triangle.

JANEANE GAROFALO:

I think when adults retain jealousy and envy it perhaps is about they think deep down they’re not good enough. Somehow they’re being victimized or not good enough. Or not enough.

TRACY DENNIS-TIWARY:

It is from a sense of lack, so sometimes we’re envious. When we really do have something in our life that we’re struggling with and we see other people have it and we’re like, “Ugh.” Even when it’s sort of tinged with like, “That’s my friend. I’m happy for them.” But God, I wish I had that success or that thing, or that whatever. There’s that. But even people who have everything in the world ostensibly, right? It’s not just about things or achievement, it’s about this kind of fundamental sense of lack that you really can’t fill up with anything.

DR. KEVIN OCHSNER:

I think that’s absolutely right. I think almost all human suffering is rooted in a fundamental sense of personal inadequacy and insecurity. And so much of life, especially early on, is about trying to securely attach yourself to other people. Not to be attached to things inappropriately, but to be attached to relationships where there’s a caring and compassionate relationship.

There’s a whole class of emotions that are about the way in which you evaluate yourself with respect to others. So embarrassment, shame, guilt are kind of in this same family, envy pride, and jealousy are in the same family. And when you experience them, they’re about the comparison of yourself to something else.

TRACY DENNIS-TIWARY:

In many ways, it’s again, it’s a natural emotion. It’s one that at least when we listen to, it lets us understand what we value and then evaluate whether it’s a good thing to value. But what it does in a way though, is it short circuits some of our most powerful tools which are tools of social connectedness and social bonding.

DR. KEVIN OCHSNER:

I have this very vivid memory that when our second child was about three or four months old and our daughter was two and a half, she was excited. She’s like, can I have him on my lap? And we put Rafa on our daughter Red’s lap on a pillow, and we’re like taking pictures. This is so cute. And she’s like smiling and all of a sudden she goes and hits him on the head. And then she had this confused look on her face like, what just happened? Why did I do that? And she got upset. And like there was something like I, we felt like there’s something just like really primitive about like I was number one and what is going on.

And I think some, in some cases, empathy is the antidote to envy, right? It seemed like you have a tremendous amount of empathy for a lot of the people you’ve worked with, and others where that might have been, maybe that’s partly what comes from having a tremendous amount of parental love, but being able to accept and, feel what other people are feeling. Let them have their joy without it reflecting negatively on yourself. Right? So if we could do that in situations where envy might otherwise lead to some malicious or hostile behavior, you might be able to defang it.

TRACY DENNIS-TIWARY:

It takes courage to look at envy, to listen to it as information, to see where we feel the lack, and then there could be other ways that we could start to build ourself up without being grasping towards what someone else has. I think it is no coincidence that across religious traditions, whether it’s in the 10 commandments or in religious teachings and Buddhism or Hinduism, there’s our cultural practices around envy. We know it’s a really hot button important emotion. So from a double-edged-sword perspective, all the more reason to pay attention and to try to work with it.

TANIA KETENJIAN:

In Season 2 of AWAKEN, Buddhist teacher Sharon Salzberg spoke beautifully about the antidote to envy which is sympathetic joy. And Dr. Kevin Ochsner echoes this. It’s such a beautiful thing—to really feel joy for what someone else and in so doing, feel joy within yourself. To rise above competition, above envy, and realize that it isn’t wanting what someone else has, but it is the actions you take to create a better world that make the lasting impact, and that we’re all in this together. Ever connected, and if we can find it, joyful. This is what the Vairocana mandala refers to as the all-accomplishing wisdom—that achievement and accomplishment is ultimately a collaborative effort. Take a moment now to do that and experience how it feels in your heart, mind and body to feel truly joyful for someone else.

Now, for this next emotion, anger. Tracy was actually a guest so we will hear her both in studio and on stage. Anger is an emotion we all experience, it starts very early. One can argue that the baby’s first cry is based in anger: How dare you take me out of the warm comfort of my mother’s womb! So it’s very natural to feel anger. And, in many ways, it doesn’t take much to get there. Because, as Tracy says:

TRACY DENNIS-TIWARY:

Anger is the appraisal that there is an obstacle to something I want to a desired outcome or goal. And so it’s that perception, conscious or unconscious that there’s something blocking what I want. That’s the appraisal part. That leads and is linked to the second part of what makes up an emotion, which is an action readiness tendency.

TANIA KETENJIAN:

For this installment of BRAINWAVE, filmmaker Josh Seftel, Afghani community organizer Bibi Bahrami, ex-Marine Richard “Mac” McKinney, and neuroscientist Tracy Dennis-Tiwary are in conversation about anger. The conversation is inspired by Josh Seftel’s film A Stranger at the Gate, which explores how Mac McKinney’s PTSD and rage at Muslims is transformed through the care and attention of community organizer Bibi Bahrami.

TRACY DENNIS-TIWARY:

Emotions from either a Buddhist or a scientific perspective, are energy. And like any energy they have to go someplace. And like any energy, they can be transformed. And the notion of a klesha, which is a state that clouds the mind, and these difficult emotions that we have, are sort of prime, prime examples of kleshas is that they’re, they’re always double edged swords. So there’s always a flip side and anger is one of the big ones.

TANIA KETENJIAN:

Josh has made many films and has directed some of our most beloved TV shows. It’s his real life experiences that have fueled a lot of his filmmaking.

JOSHUA SEFTEL:

After 9/11 I saw my Muslim friends facing hatred. And I related to it because when I was growing up in upstate New York, I faced antisemitism and name calling and kids calling me “Jew kike” and throwing pennies at me to remind me that Jews are cheap. And someone threw a rock the size of a brick through the front window of our home. And those memories stayed with me, and I connected with my Muslim friends after 9/11. And so I decided to try to make films that would tell stories of American Muslims and give a platform to them to share their stories in a way that I thought was a more accurate portrayal.

I was thinking about it the other day, and in relation to anger, and, you know, there’s, there’s a calm in the storytelling, but I was thinking about it and I was like, you know, this is my anger. This is, the anger fuels me. And being able to tell a story that I don’t wanna swear, but like, that’s sort of a little bit of FU to the haters that says, try to argue this one. That is really satisfying for me. And, it’s fueled by anger, for sure it’s fueled by anger.

TANIA KETENJIAN:

Richard “Mac” McKinney fought in Afghanistan and experienced PTSD which led to some deep anger and sadness. While anger can sometimes feel empowering, it’s one of the most destructive emotions, not only to those outside but also within.

RICHARD “MAC” MCKINNEY:

I’ve never admitted to this, but in, in a lot of ways, my hatred left me vulnerable. I do believe that my hatred left me vulnerable to take something else in, maybe, or to replace something.

TRACY DENNIS-TIWARY:

And the thing about this energy of emotions, these powerful, painful, destructive emotions, is that it has to go someplace. And when our impulse is to squash it, avoid it, make it stop, that’s when it becomes–that’s when it explodes.

JOSHUA SEFTEL:

When I’m in a tough situation, like when I’m on an airplane, you know, I travel a lot and it’s really annoying to be on an airplane. You know, you’re squished and you’re smushed against people. And it’s impossible not to sometimes for me to be like, when the person sits next to me and they’re pressing on me to be like, I hate you. And what I’ve been doing lately, and when I think of Bibi is I’m just like, I just turn to them and I say like, “Hey, how’s it going? How you doing?” And then, you know, usually they, we have a nice conversation and, those feelings of like, anger, like just melt away within seconds, you know? Cause you start to connect.

TRACY DENNIS-TIWARY:

And then, well, Bibi is like a ninja of emotion. But what if we thought about all negative emotions like that? What if we actually thought that when we feel them, we’re not broken, we’re not bad. It’s an opportunity. Opportunity. What if we thought, what if we did that all the time? Opportunity. What would happen?

TANIA KETENJIAN:

Bibi Bahrami is a community organizer and her mission is to bring seemingly disparate communities together. Through knowledge, through shared common experiences, she believes barriers can come down and what feels like anger can turn into care. She and Mac became very close and if there is one antidote to anger, it is acceptance and respect.

BIBI BAHRAMI:

The better we know each other, the hate goes away.

I respect all people. Respect is one way that I, I always advise my brothers and sisters and humanity, please. When you respect others, that respect comes back to you. And when you understand others’ needs, that need, you can understand.

RICHARD “MAC” MCKINNEY:

It’s about humanity. It’s about each other and how we treat each other and how we look at each other. And whether it be the color of someone’s skin, whether it be their faith, their gender, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. We’re all in this together because when they fail, we fail. Period.

TRACY DENNIS-TIWARY:

I think anger is hard for many, many people. When that anger is channeled in ways that are aggressive, harmful, hostile, it doesn’t bear fruit, but when we can channel anger in a way where the goals that we’re working towards… When you can channel that anger into perhaps more righteous indignation, or working for justice or some outcome that requires a lot of fight and a lot of energy, we couldn’t do it without anger and frustration and some of those unpleasant and sort of distasteful, what we find often distasteful emotions.

TANIA KETENJIAN:

As we said earlier, anger is a really powerful energy and when combined with patience and the ability to see the emotion for what it is and not how it makes you feel, it can propel change rather than destruction. The clarity that can arise from practicing patience in these situations is what the mandala refers to as “mirror-like wisdom”.

And this brings us to the last emotion: Ignorance. In life, it’s where we start and, ironically, it’s where we want to get to. At least from the spiritual perspective. From the psychological perspective, however, ignorance is, according to Tracy Dennis-Tiwary:

TRACY DENNIS-TIWARY:

A state of sort of disrupted state of learning where there are malfunctions or dysfunctions, and how we learn about the world and our place in it.

TANIA KETENJIAN:

But from the Buddhist perspective, ignorance has an entirely different implication.

In the final BRAINWAVE episode on emotions represented in the Mandala Lab, Tibetan Buddhist teacher Khenpo Pema Wangdak is in conversation with philosopher of mind, Dr. Adriana Renero. Here, he offers a beautiful insight into ignorance.

KHENPO PEMA:

Ignorance. I’d like to start with the word, in Tibetan, we call maripa. “Ma” is negative; “rip” means aware to be aware, that “ripa” is called conscious. Be conscious, be aware. It is a direct translation of a Sanskrit, term called with to be aware with. Our talk is, this whole program is, is done in conjunction with the Vairochana.

For those who are unaware of all things as empty and no self existence, may I purify sins and obscurations, and thus place all sentient beings on the stage of Buddhahood. For that purpose I will practice the yoga of “all aware eliminator.”

The idea is that there’s, there’s something to know. Is that right? Which means we don’t know. Basically that’s, and the teaching is Buddha, after he became enlightened, he taught the first, his teaching called for novel truth. In it, you’ll find the word. He says, this is truth or the truth of suffering, truth of cessation of suffering to the how we can free from the suffering.

This is how we one should do this and that. And then he ask the word one should know this. So the idea is the, the, the awareness, the knowledge is the key. So the question, is what is ignorance? Is that right? Ignorance is nothing. Is just simply lack. What is silence? It’s just absence of sound. Is that right? Ignorance is the lack of awareness, the lack of knowledge, the lack of wisdom, how to cook, is that right? The basic things, how to talk to each other, how to think thoughts, something that we go and we go about our daily business and live a life and have a good life, hopefully, and live long and die. Versus what is the underlining of all of these things? The two factors.

So we have here the word ignorance should be treated, true, kind, the innate inborn things we think the way things are, and we pursue that level. And then the cultural, religion, philosophy which says that’s what we think is right and we should follow.

TANIA KETENJIAN:

Ignorance is a suspension of judgment, it’s pure awareness, it’s seeing things as they are. And with that comes a liberation, a freedom. When we think of babies, and the way they seem to see the world, the vision is unclouded, presence with exactly what is, when it is. And that’s why it’s where we start and it’s, hopefully, where we get to. Again, Khenpo Pema Wangdak.

KHENPO PEMA:

The freedom lies in connecting to the nature that nature says is pure and perfect, organic interdependent. And then there’s nothing absolute to hold on to, which we call it emptiness. And whoever understands that, they frees themselves there. They find the joys and the happiness of the things they have, and the joys and the happiness, and they’re content with the things they don’t have. Either way you gain the wisdom.

In fact, so many of our sufferings are actually, it’s created by not knowing what is happiness. That’s funny. While we are obsessed with the overcoming happiness, they’re suffering, and they’re running so-called, so, running after so-called happiness. And yet we are running after the very misery in suffering, never knowing that what we are doing is just exactly the opposite.

TANIA KETENJIAN:

Dr. Adriana Renero is a philosopher of mind as well as of cognitive science so she looks at what some of our most revered philosophers have reflected on. In this case, Aristotle and Socrates.

DR. ADRIANA RENERO:

Aristotle in, book, first of the metaphysics says, all human beings desire by nature to know. And also he says, there is like a capacity of wonder. So in some way, this wanting to know starts when we wonder about things and when we start to philosophize or think about those things.

So as Plato says, in the Apology of Socrates, that he’s the wise person, the wisest person, but he admits his own ignorance. So in order to know, it seems that we have to be, or to start first by a state of wonder.

KHENPO PEMA:

Your spiritual temple starts precisely where you are, no matter who you are, just, it absolutely doesn’t matter. And that too good health and peace of mind, the basic functional, because unhappiness is not a privilege. It’s not a right either. It’s a dangerous, it’s is very harmful. And all the harms we do each other, beside the ignorance. Yeah. Uh, that’s a given. Unhappiness right behind it, underlining violence, all the bad things we do, anything–bad words, bad thoughts, bad emotions, whatever anger there is, there is underlining unhappiness, meaning our mind is not peaceful.

So there’s an actual change reaction, and you can observe yourself. You will never say bad things when you are happy. You never think bad thoughts when you are happy, when you are, when you are, when I say bad things, think bad thoughts, you will see right there, right there. If you look at yourself and be aware of it, you bring the awareness. You see there is some kind of unhappiness there to generate these kinds of emotions.

TANIA KETENJIAN:

The awareness. That’s what it’s all about. It’s nearly impossible to eradicate these feelings: Pride, Attachment, Envy, Anger, Ignorance. And nor do we want to. They give us very useful information and energy. And when we bring awareness to them, we start to appreciate the interdependence, the interconnectedness of all things. That lends our awareness a quality we could even begin to call love. We can come to know these challenging emotions better, be in deeper conversation with them, and make choices that support ourselves and our communities.

This is a bonus episode of AWAKEN, where we have taken excerpts from the live BRAINWAVE series and interwoven them with insights from psychologist and neuroscientist, Tracy Dennis-Tiwary.

The voices you heard here are Tracy Dennis-Tiwary, psychologist and neuroscientist Dr. Philip Corlett, performer Jean Grae, comedian Janeane Garofalo, psychologist and neuroscientist Dr. Kevin Ochsner, psychologist and neuroscientist Dr. Hedy Kober, filmmaker Joshua Seftel, community organizer Bibi Bahrami, former Marine Richard “Mac” McKinney, Tibetan Buddhist teacher Khenpo Pema Wangdak, and philosopher of cognitive science Dr. Adriana Renero.

To learn more about BRAINWAVE, please visit rubinmuseum.org/brainwave. You’ll be able to hear all the talks there.

AWAKEN is produced by the Rubin Museum of Art with Dawn Eshelman, Tenzin Gelek, Jamie Lawyer, Christina Watson, and Tim McHenry in collaboration with SOUND MADE PUBLIC, including Tania Ketenjian, Emma Vecchione, Philip Wood, Claire Mullen, and Jeremiah Moore.

AWAKEN Season 2 is part of the Rubin Museum’s Mandala Lab. A multiyear initiative generously supported by 28 donors and sponsors. Lead support for BRAINWAVE is provided by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. Additional support is provided by Gerry Ohrstrom and Cheryl Henson. To hear all 7 episodes of Season 2, go to rubinmuseum.org/podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.

You can continue the conversation by following us on Instagram at @rubinmuseum. And if you’re enjoying this podcast, leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts, and tell your friends about the conversation you just heard.

AWAKEN is inspired by the Mandala Lab at the Rubin Museum—an immersive space for social, emotional, and ethical learning. Come explore the Lab in New York City, or in one of the installations that is traveling the world. Visit rubinmuseum.org to learn more about the Museum and about the art, cultures, and ideas of Himalayan regions. We look forward to seeing you.