Speaker 1 · 0:03So today we're speaking with Jeremy Lipkowitz. He's a meditation teacher, mindfulness coach. He's a teacher who I've been following pretty closely and really admire his practice but also his style of teaching. For the past 10 years, Jeremy has been teaching mindfulness and emotional intelligence practices at universities, recovery centers, and companies throughout Asia and the US. He holds a bachelor's and master's degree in genetics and genomics. But Jeremy, like me, also spent time living as a fully ordained Buddhist monk. I was in Thailand. Jeremy was in Myanmar or Burma and has that depth of practice with a little bit of this Buddhist roots or Buddhist approach. He now combines a science-based expertise with a hunger for personal development to help others be disciplined in their minds and achieve genuine inner peace and fulfillment. Jeremy, welcome to the podcast. It's a pleasure to have you here.
Speaker 2 · 1:23Yeah, I'm happy to be here as well. You know, when I left my PhD program, in between that and working full-time as a mindfulness specialist, I did spend a few months working as a manager at a donut shop. I went from a PhD at Duke University to selling donuts. And that was a very interesting transition. You know, all the ego issues of, okay, I'm an intelligent, smart, scientific person to asking people what kind of donut they would like.
Speaker 1 · 1:53Can you share a little bit about that journey of struggling with that identity and how you dealt with that? Because I could see a lot of people going through changes in their profession with these things that we might superficially deem as downgrades in our life or our identity. Maybe we lose a home, maybe we lose a partner, and now we're divorced. You know, there's all sorts of these transitions that on the outside might seem quote unquote bad, but there's these self-judgments at play. And so can you talk about how you handled that transition from PhD student to donut seller?
Speaker 2 · 2:43Yeah, you know, for me, most of my life I had been in the academic world, most of my young adult life and mid-adult life, I was a scientist and had built up such a strong identity around my intelligence. You know, I thought that my intelligence was the most important thing, and it thought that it made me better than other people. And it's one of the reasons why I started to realize that I needed to get out of the academic system, is that it was so wrapped up in you're just as good as how many papers you've published, or you know, you need to be seen as the most intelligent person in the room. And what I saw is so many of my peers and the people that I was supposed to be looking up to had all of these insecurities around how successful they were, how smart they were. And it wasn't something that I was looking up to. You know, it wasn't something that I looked at them and said, that's the life I want. Because I realized that even though they might seem successful from the outside, you know, from society standards, they were tenured professors or successful by society standards, they weren't living a happy life. They weren't filled with well-being and happiness and inner peace. And that's something that I recognized in myself that as successful as I was with all of my external endeavors, whether it was academics or sports or anything external, I wasn't actually feeling happy inside. And so that was one of the big drivers of me deciding to leave was realizing, hey, you know, this is not actually leading me in a direction I want. It's not leading me to greater happiness or greater inner peace. So it was a hard, it, you know, it actually wasn't a hard decision to leave. Uh it was quite easy because I just realized I didn't want to be a scientist. I didn't want to be in the academic world, and I wanted to teach people about mindfulness and meditation and well-being. And at that point, I had already been teaching other graduate students and undergrads for a few years. So leaving the sciences wasn't hard, but the identity, the ego did crop up a number of times where I had to kind of reinvent and say, okay, if I'm not identifying with being a smart, intelligent person at a prestigious university, how am I going to identify? You know, what is it that I'm putting my value as a human being on? And what I realized is it was more around my values and how I was showing up and the things that I cared about, you know, compassion, patience, being a good listener, smiling at people, you know, giving that kind of warmth of spirit to others, being of service. So there were so many things that I could focus on that were more important. And that really helped me. But it was a struggle because I was so identified with this. Yes, I'm an intelligent, smart person.
Speaker 1 · 5:45Yeah, it reminds me a lot of my journey right before I became a monk, is realizing that the externals were kind of what I was hoping for, but the internals were missing, and I wasn't happy. And the people kind of even ahead of me on the sort of business game weren't happy. And it's like started questioning what I wanted and why and what was my purpose. So when you went through this transformation of sort of dropping that identity as this smart PhD person and reorienting to the inner life, how then did you make the transition into the monastery where you became a monk? And how did you decide to do that?
Speaker 2 · 6:38Yeah. You know, it's interesting. My monastic experience is quite different from I mean, I'm sure everyone's monastic experience is unique in its own way. For me, my monastic experience came many years later. You know, so I had started, even before I left the academic world, left the sciences, left my PhD, I had been starting to do these silent meditation retreats. So vipassana retreats or insight meditation retreats. And those had such a profound impact on my life. You know, I started my first one in India when I was around 25. And once I did one of them, I realized how impactful it was and how important it was. I went on them regularly. So it was maybe once every six or seven months I would go on a 10-day retreat. And I did that for many, many years. And then a few years into that, you know, maybe eight years later or so, I decided to go on a month-long meditation retreat in Burma. And at this month-long silent retreat, you had the possibility to do a temporary ordination. And so for me, it wasn't like I was deciding, oh, okay, I really want to be a monk for the rest of my life. It was more knowing how important this practice of insight meditation and Buddhist philosophy and all of it was, it was more of something that I wanted to experience for a while, but it I knew it wasn't going to be for the rest of my life. And it wasn't, I knew I didn't want to be a monk forever. So for me, it was actually more of an experience to have for a while. And in some ways, to intensify the experience of the month-long retreat as well, because you take on a few extra rules that apply to you. So that decision wasn't a momentous decision. This was much later in my path as a practitioner.
Speaker 1 · 8:29Yeah, these 10-day, one-month, three-month retreats can be so powerful. And I recommend everyone listening to try one if you haven't tried one, especially a like a silent pipassana or insight mindfulness meditation retreat where you're sitting, walking, sitting, walking, mindful eating, you know, limiting the amount of distractions in our lives and really just being mindful of each moment, seeing the thoughts come and go, feeling tones come and go, and to get a glimpse into the workings of our minds. And it can be so helpful for resetting our nervous system and opening the heart and letting the mind settle. And you know, retreats are such a powerful way to deepen our own practice and to strengthen our mindfulness teachings because we're speaking from experience and those layers of depth that we go to, layers of presence. And so I'm glad that a lot of your practice is based on these retreats. And I'm uh curious about maybe any momentous times in your life on retreat that maybe had a powerful impact on you. Maybe you had a challenge in a retreat where it felt particularly painful, or a point where you found bliss, or you noticed some of your habits of mind changing. Any particular moments of retreat that you can share that might be of use for us?
Speaker 2 · 10:15Yeah. You know, in some ways it's hard to kind of pick a few moments because as you know, you've been on these retreats. It's like every moment is a roller coaster ride. You know, a lot of people they hear a silent meditation retreat, and there's some people might think, oh, this sounds so relaxing, you get to take a break and just, you know, hang out and do nothing. And in some ways, these retreats are the most challenging things I've ever experienced. You know, you have no distraction from the craziness that's going on in your mind, you know, all the emotions, all the drama. There's no escape from it. And you really have to be there and just sit with it and experience it. And so over the years, you know, at this point, I've done 17 or 18 Vipassana retreats, and each one of them has had hundreds of different insightful moments and challenges. You know, a few things that come to me. One is just the realization, you know, when you simplify in this way and you don't have any phones or books or music or internet, and you're just sitting and walking and having lunch, sitting, walking, having tea, sitting, walking. And you can experience such a profound contentment in the simplest of things. And there's one moment that stands out to me. I was at Spirit Rock for a retreat, and I was sitting outside, I think it was after lunch, and I just had a cup of tea, and I remember just kind of stirring the tea and just hearing the clink of the spoon against the teacup. And it was just this simplicity, this peacefulness. You know, just not going anywhere, not needing anything extra, just that peacefulness in the present moment. And to realize that most of my life I had been chasing so much, chasing pleasure, chasing excitement, chasing all the extremes, money, status, fame. And none of it was actually making me happy. But this contentment you could find and just sitting and enjoying a cup of tea and feeling the wind on your face. And it can be so beautiful to have those reminders that happiness and contentment and fulfillment isn't some far-off thing. You know, it's just right here within you, if you know how to stop chasing things. And for me on retreat, you know, often, particularly in my early days, there was a lot of lust coming up. And on Vipassana retreats, there's this thing that we call a vipassana romance, where you're in silence, you're there for 10 days, you're not talking to anyone, you're not even making eye contact with people. But the mind has these ways of playing tricks on you where you start to, you know, start to see someone, and maybe you're attracted to them, and maybe they put their shoes next to your shoes in the meditation hall, and you start getting these ideas, and you can, oh, okay, maybe I'll go talk to them after the retreat, and maybe we'll get married and we'll fall in love and we'll have kids, and then we'll get divorced. And the mind goes all over the place. And, you know, this would come up for me on a fairly regular basis, as would lust, you know, just the pure kind of carnal physical desire to be with someone. And a big part of my story was realizing how painful lust is. And lust being different from desire, you know, being different from just attraction. Lust is that feeling of I need to be with this person, I need to have this person in order to be happy. And that lust that would come up, you know, you can feel the fire and you can feel the burning sensation of unhappiness and how strong that is. And I remember learning how to befriend my lust rather than to try to repress it and say, oh, lust is bad, and like, go away. I'm supposed to be a peaceful monk and not feel these, you know, but instead just learning how to accept it and say, oh, lust is here again, or you know, my old friend lust, you know, sit with me for a while. And so rather than indulging in it, you know, and going and watching porn or trying to find someone to sleep with, rather than that, and then also rather than suppressing it, denying it, trying to push it away, to actually just make space for the experience and make space for the emotion. And that tool of accepting and making space for what's happening is so valuable for any emotion that you're experiencing, whether it's sadness, grief, anxiety, anger, you know, all of these things. If you can learn how to be with it and say, Oh, my old friend anger or my old friend insecurity. And it just makes the experience so much more beyond manageable. You know, it makes it a fulfilling moment to actually be with a strong emotion and not push it away. So those are two that come to mind. But you know, honestly, there's a million different experiences that I've had on retreat that are valuable.
Speaker 1 · 15:25Yeah. Well, you touched on and eloquently described two of the huge ones that are so transformative. You know, a lot of people ask me, what did I learn as a monk? or like how did being a monk change you? And and I usually talk about what you just spoke about with the contentment piece. Like, you don't really need much to be happy. You learn how to be content with basically no personal possessions, you know, outside of an alms bowl and a pair of robes. And because there's no distractions or very few distractions, you are sort of confronted with all these emotions. And the whole purpose of the mindfulness retreat is to learn how to be with these different emotions, which can be incredibly difficult when these are the emotions that we've been running away from or deeming as horrible or wrong for 20, 30, 45 years. So it's an incredibly difficult thing to do. It can be so simple and yet so hard sometimes to just be with our old friend lust or anger or shame or fear that are kind of lurking underneath, oftentimes. And so some people will say, Well, why would I want to sign up for that? Sounds awful, but the freedom that we experience when we practice it can be paradigm shifting in the sense that we don't have to fight it, we don't have to run away from it. There's this sense of fulfillment that comes from learning how to be friends with it, and it diffuses the emotion with this light of awareness.
Speaker 2 · 17:26Yeah. The word you said freedom. And for me, I think that's one of the most important things that retreats do for me. There's this concept in Buddhism and mindfulness that they often say on retreat of unconditional freedom. And I think what's so beautiful about that is that so much of my life and so many people's lives is trying to arrange the conditions in our life to be pleasant and to be good. And all of our happiness is so conditional. You know, as long as I have this much money and this kind of partner, and people are treating me this way, like the happiness is conditional and conditioned on things being the way we want them to be. And it's a very fragile kind of happiness. We need everything to be just in the way we want it, and it can't be anything other than that, and otherwise we're unhappy. And kind of the promise of vipassana, the promise of mindfulness and meditation, is this unconditional freedom that it doesn't matter what's going on in your external life, you can experience that freedom and that fulfillment from within. One of the beautiful parables or stories that I love from Buddhism is like this king who had some thorns laying around his kingdom. And he told all of his workers and people, he's like, Okay, cover the whole world with leather so that when I walk, you know, I'll never step on a thorn. And someone was like, hey, dude, like, why don't you just wrap leather around your feet? And that way you can walk wherever you want and you don't have to worry about it. And to me, that's what mindfulness and meditation does. It's like wrapping leather around your feet. It's it doesn't matter if you're in a stressful environment, if you're experiencing lust, if you lose things. You know, it's like you have that freedom from within. You have the strength and the resources that you can go into any situation, you can experience anything and still maintain your inner peace, your inner calm, your balance. In Buddhism, we talk about the eight worldly winds, which are like these eight things that come and go, so pleasure and pain, gain and loss, fame and disrepute. And it's like we can't help. Those things will come. We have pleasure and we have pain. We have gain and we have loss. And so we can't have only the four good ones and none of the four bad ones, right? So, in order to deal with that, we cultivate this inner strength. So that unconditional freedom is a big part of what retreats can do for you.
Speaker 1 · 20:01Absolutely. Yeah, well said, it offers us freedom from always doing and getting, and offers us this contentment to be. And we get to appreciate these moments of our life and appreciate ourselves. The more we meditate, the more we go through these difficult times of being on retreat, the more inner confidence we often build and these new habits of mind and turning towards reality rather than anesthizing ourselves or distracting ourselves with Netflix or bourbon or you know, 16 Twinkies.
Speaker 2 · 20:48Yeah, you know, I was actually just preparing um a podcast episode that I want to make around this one thing. And it's just to remind people that whatever you're going through, you're not alone. That's one of the things that exacerbates addiction, but it exacerbates just any difficulty that you're experiencing, is whether you're going through addiction or stress or body image issues, you know, eating disorders, it's easy to feel like everyone else has got it figured out, and I'm the only one kind of broken or struggling with this. You know, loneliness is a big epidemic right now of people feeling like everyone else has friends and everyone else is connected, and I'm lonely and you know, don't have people. And just to know that you're not alone and know that you're not broken, that alone can really make a big difference. Really connecting with the fact that, hey, this is something that many people experience. And in particular with porn addiction, I stress it because it's one of those things nobody talks about. And so when a guy does struggle with it, or when a girl does struggle with it, they think, gosh, I must be a freak, you know, must be a pervert and just broken. And so to really understand, you know, it doesn't mean you're broken or flawed or unlovable.
Speaker 1 · 22:14Beautiful. Yeah, if you're listening to this, we love you, and you are worthy of love and happiness, and there is a way through it with the light of you know, caring, gentle awareness and mindfulness. How can people get a hold of you? And what do you offer around supporting people with porn addiction?
Speaker 2 · 22:43Yeah, so people you know can find me. I have a podcast that I host myself talking about this issue. I also have an online course specifically geared towards helping people understand how to break free from digital addictions. So it goes through some of the habit science, understanding addiction, building a stronger mental foundation. And, you know, a big part of recovery, just a little side note, is building a more fulfilling life. That we know that a lot of addiction comes when we're not getting our needs met in terms of our relationships, our physical health, mental well-being. And there's some very interesting studies, you know, that point to that. And so, in order to actually recover, you can't just stop the behavior and just try to white knuckle it. You actually have to build the inner tools and the inner fulfillment so that you don't need addiction. You know, you don't need to escape. It's like building a life that you don't need to escape from. So, anyways, I talk about this in my online course. So people can find that, just go to my website, which you know we'll link, I imagine. And then also I work with people one-on-one. So, you know, probably the best way to get support is that direct accountability, you know, having somebody in your corner to hold you accountable, but also to champion you and remind you of what's possible and give you that support when you need it. So I do one-on-one coaching work as well around this issue.
Speaker 1 · 24:07Great. And what's the name of your podcast?
Speaker 2 · 24:10It's called Unhooked. So if you look unhooked and then my name, or even if you just search unhooked on any of the podcast platforms, you'll find it.
Speaker 1 · 24:20Beautiful. Jeremy, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with us today around so many topics. We have his links to his offerings down below. Please check them out and subscribe to Unhooked wherever you get your podcasts. Jeremy, thank you so much for joining us today.
Speaker 2 · 24:46Thank you. It's been a pleasure.
