In episode two, we engage in an awe-inspiring dialogue with the wildly popular punk rock legend and lifelong nature lover, Mark Coleman. This episode dives deep into ephemerality, loss of identity, and how to reclaim the sense of our highest self, beauty, connection, being in the presence of 'wild things,' nervous system regulation, protecting the natural world, the great turning, remembering what it means to be human, opening to what is, and so much more.

May you find spaciousness, calm, and mystery in our wondrous conversation with Mark

About Mark Coleman:

Mark is a life-long nature lover and is passionate about guiding people into the beauty of meditation and nature. He has led wilderness nature retreats for over twenty years worldwide. Through his organization Awake in the Wild Mark leads year long nature meditation teacher trainings in the US and Europe.

Mark has trained extensively in the Buddhist tradition, both in the Insight meditation and in the Dzogchen tradition. He is a senior teacher at Spirit Rock Meditation Center and has taught insight meditation retreats since 1997.

Co-founder of the Mindfulness Training Institute Mark also leads year long professional mindfulness teacher in Europe and the US. 

Mark also founded the non-profit Mindful of Nature, that takes nature meditation work to communities and populations that will most benefit from these resilience building practices. 

He is author of Awake in the Wild - Mindfulness in Nature as a Path to Self-Discovery, Make Peace With Your Mind, From Suffering to Peace and his recent book A Field Guide to Nature Meditation.

He lives in Sausalito, CA and likes nothing more than hiking, biking, kayaking, and being outdoors.

Connect with Mark

To learn more about The Heart of Now and the hosts, visit us on Instagram, LinkedIn or online.

ER - PART SIX:  Meeting Adversity

“Steadying like a mountain.”

In a world full of noise and distraction, what’s your recommendation for maintaining equanimity?

Mark Coleman: Finding True Refuge in Nature

Elizabeth: Hi everyone. Monika and I would like to welcome you back to another episode of the heart of now a truth podcast focused on candid conversations with prominent global thought leaders on how humanity can be free of suffering. Our goal as we go through this process is to journey into the unknown via a unique guest led format.

So, what that means is we have a series of poignant thought provoking questions, each episode building upon the next with the previous guest designating the best person to. To continue the conversation with and go deeper in living in truth and joy in the present moment. So, for those of you who tuned into our last episode, we had the esteemed Lama Palden, and today we are thrilled to be with her recommendation, the very inspiring Mark Coleman. Mark. Welcome.

Mark: Thank you. Good to be here.

Elizabeth: Lovely. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Mark's work, he is a lifelong nature lover and is passionate about guiding people into the beauty of meditation and nature. He has led wilderness nature retreats for over 20 years across the globe through his organization, Awaken the Wild.

Co-founder of the Mindfulness Training Institute, Mark also leads yearlong professional mindfulness teacher trainings in Europe and the U S. And he also recently, I think recently founded the nonprofit mindful of nature that takes nature meditation work to communities and populations that will most benefit from these resilience building practices.

He has many books to his name, Awake in the Wild: Mindfulness in Nature as a Path to Self-Discovery, Make Peace with your Mind, From Suffering to Peace and his recent book, A Field Guide to Nature Meditation. He lives in Sausalito right down the street from me, which is lovely. And likes nothing more than hiking, biking, kayaking, and being outdoors.

Mark, thank you so much for joining us today.

Mark: Thank you for having me.

Monika: Mark, your credentials are amazing. We have so much to talk about with you today, but first I want to thank all our viewers for tuning back in with us, we're super excited to learn more about Mark and his work. So, Mark, we, have a series of questions.

Really the first one is understanding your background and really what has been the most catalytic moment of your self-discovery. We'd love to hear about that.

Mark: Yeah, well, I've been doing my own spiritual practice, Buddhist practice for a long time now, many decades, so it's hard to crystallize it into one.

And they all inform each other. Those understandings and build on each other. I would say that I'm going to point to something that's been a growing realization in recent years, which does feel very significant to me, which is the understanding of knowing ourselves as earth, knowing ourselves as not separate from the environment, the ecology, the ecosystem, the earth in which we live.

And breathe and abide and are nourished and fed by. So that realization has come because I've been doing my own personal meditation practice in, in the outdoors in nature for the last 25, 30 years and teaching the last 20 years outside in nature, integrating mindfulness and awareness practices.

And the more I spend time outside, the more I'm especially in a more contemplative. Awareness when I'm outdoors, then the understanding that I think has been true for the almost the whole of human history, save the last, few hundred years or maybe last couple of millennia where we've began to separate ourselves from the natural world through, whether it's agriculture or urban living or now technology for the most of our history, there's been a sense of being one with, embedded into, and completely attuned and immersed in the natural world. And so that discovery for me changes everything, both how I live, how I respond to life, how I hold what's happening ecologically what I think is necessary for us as human beings to rekindle that sense of kinship and connectivity. And yeah, so that's that is continually unfolding realization to know myself more deeply as Earth, as not separate.

So this individual separate being that we most identify with in our humanness, when we realize we're actually not just this physical form but actually not separate from the world that we that birthed us and in, and that we inhabit is a very different way of relating to experience.

Monika: For sure. And I am curious, that connection with nature. What would you say to people who don't have access to nature? How do they experience that oneness? And so many people live in metropolitan areas now?

How do you guide people who live on concrete day in, day out?

Mark: Yeah. It's just harder. I don't have a magic pill to be honest. The urbanization, more of us live in cities than in, in the country. It was first time ever in human history. And now we spend, half of our day looking at screens. That is fundamentally challenging to what I'm just speaking about, that if we don't have access to nature whatever form that is, garden, park or, more wild places, forests and beaches and oceans, and then to, sense on nature as earth is challenging because it becomes conceptual and the realization of knowing ourselves as not separate from the earth happens through connection and through intimacy with nature.

So, which is why I say, everywhere I teach every time I teach, my main message to people is wherever you are, go outside. And having said what I just said, everything is nature. Even our cities, I'm living in a in a timber house. I'm living in a forest, a reconfigured forest, floors, ceilings, walls and you can go outside of any building in any place, urban or otherwise, and connect with the elements, sky, clouds, sun, earth below us, wind, seasons, migrations, moon, rise, sun setting. So, there's still a way to connect with cycles, seasons.

Mark: But it's, it takes more work to attune to the natural world, because we've built over it.

And also, to feel a sense of kinship that it's easier to access when we're outside in a park or in a forest or in the, in the, in a meadow somewhere.

Elizabeth: Can you take it back, per Monika’s inquiry. I grow micro greens in my windowsill from seed, right? And then just watching them sprout through the soil, the topsoil every couple of days that to me touches into that invitation.

Mark: Yeah, every time we eat, I've been thinking a lot about this and teaching a lot about every time we eat food which we can be so divorced from because we go to the store, we buy, it's in a package and it takes just a little cognitive remembering of this, like the lettuce that you might eat or the apple that you ate for breakfast, right?

That may have been on a tree or in the earth yesterday. And that food, that nourishment becomes body, like we are continually renewing our body, our earth body through food, through hydration. And we are like, we're walking soil, we're walking humans, we're walking earth. We're part of the earth's moving surface and all the nutrients and the elements just recycle through us that come from the ground, come from, composting, whatever it is. And we're just part of that cycle. And, when we look at a deer or a bird or a lizard or whatever it is, we, we can sense more easily how those animals, those beings are part of the earth or trees or plants.

And yet we have this separation, partly from I would say Judeo Christian conditioning, partly from our sort of scientific worldview that separates mind and body and humans and earth. And so, we have to work at unpacking that and re remembering as in remembering ourselves as earth.

Monika: Beautiful. That is so beautiful. And I do wonder about the connection to impermanence too, that as soil, as a body being connected to nature, do you teach about impermanence and that connection and oneness?

Mark: Yes, of course. Mostly my work, 90 percent of my work now is teaching outside in nature and nature's really doing the teaching.

And one of nature's most obvious teachings is change, transience, ephemerality. And so, we just have to go outside. And I'm looking at the changing cloudscape, the changing lightscape, the changing, the movement of leaves, the emergence of, emerald green and yes, every moment, wind, breeze, sounds, light, color, form, animals, birds, moving, right?

So, we just, we can think of ourselves as a bit more static, but we're just like nature, changing, ephemeral, transient. And that's the reasons why I teach outside is because of the wisdom that nature's teaching, all the time. That's just the original teacher, wisdom keeper.

Elizabeth: And that ephemerality brings us back into our bodies, which creates presence, which creates peace, right? It's just this cycle that continues. And it's very simple, the framework, if we could just tap into it initially.

Mark: Yeah. Yeah. It's again, one of the reasons I teach outside is because there's a certain accessibility to, what you're calling presence or awareness or to embodiment or to sensory connection to aliveness.

So much of that happens quite naturally. We go outside and we sit in a, on a bench in our garden or in a park or somewhere and it doesn't take a lot of effort to be present, to be aware of songbirds, of wind, of beauty, of light, of animals.

Nature naturally allures us into presence, into connection. And then also because we're so intimately connected, because we are Earth, then our body and we've co evolved with the Earth. So, when we go out into say a woodland or somewhere, a park, our nervous system relaxes, the brain relaxes.

Mark: There's a field of Restoration Theory where I, where the brain relaxes in nature because it knows the natural world because that's what we co evolve with. In the city that takes more work. It's more stimulating, more stressful.

Mark: And so, when we go outside, we come into the presence of wild things.

Then we feel the impact of that, which is usually that nature is mostly not always, calmer, stiller, more ‘presenceful’, spacious. And then also, we're touched by what we see and hear and feel, beauty, joy, delight, wonder.

Mark: And so, it's so medicinal for us and so important that we go out and it's such an available resource.

Even in the city, you can look out the window and see the clouds forming or the light or the glimmer of stars or the sound of birds on a local tree in your street. And there's something important about that whole remembering and connected process.

Elizabeth: Beautiful. And your book, A Field Guide to Nature Meditation and the dedication. I loved the dedication so much.

“To the earth and all her miraculous expressions of life and to all those who dedicate their lives to understanding and protecting the natural world.”

I hope more of us step into that. That's my wish, right? Because we all need to be. Not need to be…could consider doing that.

Mark: Yes. Yes. It's a, it's a remembering again, I keep coming back to that word. We take so much for granted.

Whether that's the food we eat, the water that we drink, and, when we take time to understand our connectivity. It's oh, this water that I'm drinking, was probably Pacific Ocean, a few months ago.

And then we had heavy rains in the winter, and then it rains on Mount Tam, the local mountain here, which is the main watershed catchment for our reservoirs. And here I am drinking evaporated ocean clouds.

Aquifer, streams and it's true, it's not just Oh, that's a nice idea. It's real. Oh, I'm, my body now because I drink, live here, my body is what, 70, 80 percent water. So, I'm 70, 80%. Evaporated ocean, rain, clouds, lakes and that's true. So, when I go to that body of water on the mountain, I'm like looking at myself “oh, hello.”

You may soon be in me, it's a reflection.

Monika: Your reflection of that water.

Elizabeth: I love that. I love that too. And to me, when you speak of it that way, I get that sense of awe. That just stops everything. All the things that really don't matter just come into a tunnel vision of awe.

Mark: Yeah. No, it's wondrous. It's a mystery. It's magical. How does that happen? How does the emotion end up being the tears in my eyes, but it does somehow that, and everything is everything's miraculous, how does that seed that we planted in the fall now that's germinating as I'm seeing in my garden as a young tomato plant and I'll be eating, those tomatoes probably in a couple of months and how does that happen?

All I did was put a seed in this fertile soil and nature does everything else.

And then some, in some moments I'll be that, that tomato, which is the soil, which is also the rains that I'm drinking from, it's wild.

Elizabeth: It is wild. So much opportunity here in terms of perceiving the world differently.

I think that we're on the precipice of that, right? So, the next question I wanted to ask you is how can humanity solve the challenges we're currently facing? And you can define the challenges, however you'd like. What are our most profound opportunities, both individually and collectively within those challenges you identify?

Mark: Yeah as we all know, we're facing multiple challenges individually, collectively, globally, ecologically I don't think we need to go into those because we, there are many and I was thinking about this question and the, both the challenges and the possible responses And I think one, I was trying to get to the root of what's at the root of all these?

And I think one of the roots is we're in a crisis of identity as a species. AI is challenging. What it means to be uniquely human right? Since AI, in a very short period, will be able to, and already does in some ways, think and calculate and deduce and analyze quicker than we are.

Often, Descartes, reduced that human exceptionalism to our thinking process. And now we have technology that out thinks us, outsmarts us in some ways. And we'll look more, and we'll do some more and more. So, I think that we are facing a crisis of who we are.

And facing a crisis of the way we live, if we continue, will be the force of our own extinction.

What does it mean to be facing mortality as a species? What does it mean to realize that we're living in one ecosystem and that whatever we do, or I do impacts others and whatever they do impacts me.

And so, I think the gift of this time, many authors, writers, thinkers have pointed to like Joanna Macy, she talks about this as the time of the great turning what's being called on us is to wake up to a radical and re understanding or again, remembering of what it means to be human and, indigenous cultures have been living this way and trying to wake us up in this, in some way to understanding that we are embedded.

And intimately part of the ecosystem, but just one part of many equally important parts of the ecosystem. And we've been living for in the last few thousand years with the sense of dominance over, power over other people, land, species. And so, to radically shift to realizing everything, we're part of everything and everything has an equal right to be here.

That's a very challenging message for a species that's known and thrived through dominance. So, you know, I just was at the Goldman Environmental Prize Awards, which is an annual ceremony that a San Francisco foundation gives these awards to some of the most pioneering Environmental warriors, you could say.

And one of them was to a lawyer in Spain who was in shock that this huge, one of the fresh, biggest freshwater lagoons in the world was dying because of human runoff and pollution. And she, over a long, hard fight, managed to get the lake human rights. To be recognized as a legal entity, which was the first time in Europe that a natural system was given entity status like corporations are and like people are.

And so that there was a beautiful solution to, so suddenly the lake, the lagoon had entity and therefore agency, and therefore we could, through legal means have ways to protect itself. Reorienting hard as it is I think what's being asked of us, we're being asked to understand ourselves as a global species, not as a nation, not as a tribe, but as a species that my friend Wes Niska calls earthlings.

We're all earthlings. First and foremost, we're of this earth. Then, and also to realize that again, as I was pointing to earlier, my own realization, like we could say how amazing that this lawyer was able to rally enough support to protect the lagoon. And you could also say the lagoon was acting through her and informing her, and it was a vehicle for her to help the lagoon protect itself.

Just as John Seed, when he was protecting rainforests in India said, in New South Wales, in Australia, he said, “Oh, it's I'm not protecting the rainforests, it's the rainforests protecting themselves through me.”

Mark: So, when we see, “Oh, I think I have agency, but actually maybe the agency is also coming from the earth itself, because we're connected.”

So why wouldn't the redwood forest around here enlist me to protect and care for it? And so that, I think this is where our contemplative practice comes in. And it's if we're listening deeply. And this is a question I ask of people on retreats, and they study with me as I ask the question:

How does the earth wish to move through you?

How is the earth moving through you? Because the earth is always moving through us because we are the earth, but how does it wish to move through you? And how does it wish to move through you in defense of itself? And so that's a, it's a question of rather than thinking, Oh, I'm a separate individual self.

How can I, help protect my local watershed or ecosystem, which is a worthy thought and cause, but it's also overwhelming because I'm a tiny little speck in the immensity of the global crisis, poly crisis, eco crisis. But if I think of myself as earth what would this plant want to do in response?

And so, it requires getting out of our head, out of our concepts, and listening. And maybe going to the woods, going to the places you love, the rivers, the streams, the mountains, the desert, the ocean, the marshes, the wetlands, and go, if I could listen, if I could hear the wetlands speaking, what would they be asking of me?

What would they be saying? What would they be inviting me to enter into? And, and the first thing that might be they might be like you people are so quick on coming up with big ideas, but how come, why don't you just come hang out with us for a year and just get to know us, and just walk in us and be with us and feel and smell and see us in all the different seasons.

And then maybe something of use might come through that. So, it's a different way of being and listening and acting. Especially in industrialized cultures where we live in this sort of the sort of hero's myth of like the individual savior is going to somehow do it.

Mark: And we’re seeing the consequence of that has often has a lot of negative repercussions.

In the same way that, people are fine listening to indigenous elders and wisdom keepers about how do we protect the land where we protect the people who have a deep intimate relationship with it, who were listening to the forest, who are already knowing what's needed to care for that ecosystem.

So, it's shifting out of our left brain, there's a place for all of that left brain technological solutions and, all the different ways where there's incredible innovation. I'm mostly speaking about the ecological crisis. There are many different aspects of the poly crisis, but because my work is nature based, that's what feels first and foremost to me.

And I do feel like if we don't solve the ecological crisis, every other crisis, Is going to be upended anyway because we're going to be living in an unsustainable planet.

Monika: Yes, it is a primary crisis. I agree.

Mark: Maybe I'll pause there.

Monika: And I think what the tuning in is so imperative. And what I was thinking, as you were talking about being with nature and inquiring about what it needs, I came to the word reciprocity.

With nature, that there's a relationship of reciprocity that happens every day. We receive so much from the earth every day as you're speaking through water, through food, through the experience. What is it that we can offer back and tune into doing that? That's very powerful. And I guess, as we move along Mark, I'm going to the next question because I'd love to hear about just how do we free ourselves from the suffering that we experience, and you've been talking about that and being in nature, but are there any specifics that our listeners could glean from you of how they can work with that?

Mark: there's a lot of suffering, personally and, so there's, depending on what level we're speaking at here, I think it makes sense to speak about the personal since that's what we have some agency over theoretically. I think, in my decades of mindfulness practice the radical dimension of mindfulness practice is it's a radical turning towards and meeting what is, being with what is, turning towards what is, opening to what is, receiving what is, beautiful, painful, difficult, peaceful, joyful, heartbreaking. And it means living and holding with paradox, right? So, we live in a world and an earth and a time where there's tremendous beauty and tremendous suffering. There's tremendous joy and there's tremendous heartbreak. There's amazing people doing beautiful things every day, helping, caring, protecting each other, rainforests, tending to the sick and the dying.

And there's people doing atrocious things of, hatred and violence and racism, and destruction. And both are true. We live in a world where we have this paradox of a range of experience, of delight of hearing the songbirds. I'm here listening to the Buick's Wren singing.

Comes back here every April to nest and has a beautiful song. And I'm also aware that there's less birds here than there used to be. And that causes some heartbreak, and I'm looking at the beautiful woods down here, the trees in my neighborhood, and I'm also aware that the forests are burning up in, in Canada right now and in Nepal and in, in Brazil being burned for cattle farms.

And that's horrific.

And so we're being asked to bear witness in mindfulness as a practice of bearing witness to the truth, to what's here, to reality in ourselves, both the joy that we might be experiencing and the sorrow and the rage and the anxiety about life, about the world. So, to be with, to turn towards, to open to, and then to also explore, what is my relationship to the suffering? Do I hate it? Do I reject it? Do I numb out? Do I tranquilize it? Do I blame someone for it? Or do I feel open, grieve, tend to with kindness, with compassion, tend to the suffering of others with care and with so there's the opening to, there's an understanding of the relationship. And then the third thing is examining the causes. What are the causes of either my suffering or your suffering or the collective suffering? You know, different wisdom traditions have different understandings of that.

Mark: When The forces of the egoic mind are unchecked, the negative forces of greed, of hatred, of ignorance are running free, then we live in a world with tremendous suffering, and the destruction of the earth and the genocide of populations.

And so, it's important that we understand the seeds in our own mind, of our own hatred, our own greed, our own delusion, and work with those to free those up. Because we are the earth, and we are connected to everything. So, the more we do our inner work, the more, the less likely we are to be continuing to act that out.

And that has its own impact. It's small, but it's an important impact. and then we also look to see how those root causes of greed, hatred, and ignorance are running through our, structures, our systems, and how to best change those.

Elizabeth: You actually answered it in the 3-point solution that you provided to free us from suffering in my opinion, but I would love to hear if you have more to add to it: How are you committed to truth?

Mark: Yeah, interesting question. So, and of course we could get into conversation about what is truth, but…

Monika: Exactly. It's a loaded question, Mark. Sorry. Yeah.

Mark: And again, I think, I have to draw my practice, my practice of mindfulness, awareness, and my Dharma Buddhist practice, which I think of that practice as how do we turn to and be with the truth of this moment the reality of this moment as we know it, as well as we can know reality. and to be with it in an uncompromising way. And I think much of human endeavor is trying to avoid the truth or the reality of this moment.

So, we're trying to gloss over the reality of our pain or the experience of deficiency or loneliness or separation or anxiety or fear or, if we haven't had that mental training to learn how to be present, to learn how to be with experience, both beautiful and difficult, then we end up in avoidance and running Reacting and acting out.

My experience of the question of how am I committed to truth is my commitment to being with what is with whatever's here, whatever's true in my experience in me, in another. And as much as I can understand the reality of what's true in the world, which is getting harder and harder to discern, given all the noise, the distorted, polarized opinions and whatnot.

Mark: I think, but fundamentally, it's being willing to show up with what's here in, in ourselves, in our experience, in our heart, in our body, in our minds, in our relationships, which is often not easy. We have. bodies that feel pain and aging and we have hearts that feel sad and grief and anxious and fear.

And we have minds that can be, distorted and self-hating and critical. And so it's a practice to meet that and to understand, what is this moment? What is happening? Who am I? And how do I be present for that?

That's my commitment is to just be present to what is, as well as I know it.

And that also means, as I said earlier, holding paradox, that, this truth, this reality is. It's always multi-dimensional, it's relative my experience of it is subjective, and that's my commitment, is just to show up, like, how do I show up in this moment to what is, with as much care and kindness and compassion, wisdom, and that's the intention, and do the best we can.

Monika: We do the best we can. I see that theme of seeing what is in yourself and in nature is a very big theme for your work. It seems to me, which I imagine might be connected to the next question, but maybe it's not. It's like, how do you live in joy in that truth? What brings you that joy?

Mark: Yeah. Yes, it is very related to what I've been saying. So for me, I would say, the greatest joy comes from my connection with the earth and all that brings, the beauty I'm looking at the light on the leaves right now and the wind blowing the trees and the light lighting up the clouds. The seagulls doing their aerial acrobatics and you know, I could comment on a thousand things just in my vicinity and I'm, sitting in a town.

It's not like I'm, in the woods, I'm in a town, in a beautiful town, nonetheless, in a beautiful town.

Mark: It's a great town and it's a lot of, it's true. But I think, taking a step back from that, what supports joy is first being present, you know. Being here and not stuck in my mind, not stuck in the past or the imagined future, not caught up in whatever emotional drama might be happening, fear, anxiety, whatever. Then also a practice that I do and have done since I heard it in the mid 80s from the Buddha, which is, there's a line he says: “Whatever the mind frequently dwells and ponders upon that becomes the inclination of the mind and the heart.”

So where are we inclining our attention? If we sadly incline our attention to the TV, not a great place to incline our attention, especially for the news, we will be inclining towards negativity and fear inducing. Presentation of reality. If I'm inclining my attention to my mind, that's often based in fear or scarcity, I'm also going to be, the outcome of that is not feeling so good.

If I incline my attention to what is wholesome, what is uplifting, what is expansive, what is good in people or in nature or in myself, then my sense of wellbeing will grow. I spend a lot of time inclining my attention to that which uplifts me. And as I reported I'll look out the window and I'll look at beauty, I'll look at trees, I'll look at this little, I've got this little orchid on my desk, it's been flowering for the last 15 months, just unendingly generative of flowers.

Wow. And there's beauty everywhere. And in this, in the eyes of a child, in my cat sleeping in the sun to, listening to the sound of songbirds to what, you name it again comes back to being mindful of what generates well-being in myself and in ourselves.

For some people, it's gardening or playing music or reading or being outside or being athletic or in connection. So, for me, how do I live in joy? I make sure I prioritize what brings joy, being outside, connection with friends, space for just being. Being quiet, meditation, the simple things in life, enjoying a nice cup of tea, being English, we like our tea.

Monika: Don’t forget the biscuit. Don't forget the biscuit.

Mark: Right. Nice biscuit to dunk in. And so, it's an invitation for all of us to ask that question, and when do we see our mind unnecessarily going to things that cause stress? A fearful thought about the future that hasn't actually happened, dwelling in the past, self-judgment, or all the ways that we are comparing ourselves to others or, the coulda, woulda, shoulda mind and then going, Oh, I do have some relative agency in the moment.

And then lastly, I'd say what really, deeper than all that, having explored awareness practice for some decades, it's really the awareness, the knowing, this capacity. To be aware that really is the seed of all that joy and being it's the having a spacious mind, a spacious presence, awareness that can hold anything, both the beauty and the sorrow, suffering and the joy, and be at peace in the midst of it.

So, whether my back is spasming as it does or I'm feeling cold or I'm feeling lonely or whatever, is arising, taking refuge in the awareness that has the ability to be at ease in the midst of all of it. That’s the sort of the true refuge of joy that comes through practice.

Elizabeth: Steadying like the mountain, as you say, right? I know in my work, a lot of people say, I don't have the luxury of looking at my orchid for five minutes and or watching my cat sleep in the sun or listening to the birds. I don't have the luxury of that. That to me is heartbreaking, because like you said, it is a choice.

How would you respond to that comment about it being a luxury?

Mark: Yeah, I would say, I think for some people that is, there's many people in this world who, have incredibly stressful lives. They are taking care of sick family, they’re working multiple jobs, they're dealing with some chronic autoimmune thing.

You name it, there's a long list of things, but I think, what you're pointing to is for many people, there's an absence of time or there's time scarcity, where people are just, running to survive, working, taking care of the kids, et cetera. And that's reality for many people.

Mark: I would say that even though that is true and the reality for many people, that even within that, some of these things don't take any time.

We spend a lot of time doing things. My life is extremely compact. And I'm working from six in the morning till 10 at night.

I know there's still many windows, like I have to eat. I have to walk to my mailbox, I have to shower, I have to make my breakfast, talk to people and I'm sitting waiting for a Zoom meeting to start, and I look out the window, like there are innumerable moments where, you know, to listen to the sound of birds while you're chopping your carrots for your dinner, to glance at a flower on your desk while you're in between emails, meetings, or whatever, doesn't take time. And so when you're walking to the bus or to your office, And you could be on your phone, or you could be stressing about all the things you haven't done, or you could be noticing, “Oh, there's a tree that's coming into flower just outside my office that I've never noticed before.”

It's actually quite pretty. It's a chestnut, and they're coming into bloom right now, and its beautiful pink flowers.

I learned this from Nyoshua Kemrin Peshe, wonderful Sogchen Master in Nepal. And one of his teachings was to create short moments, many short moments, when you maybe don't have time to do a 30-minute sit.

That's true for some people, but you have time to have a few moments, many times in the day, few moments where you just, you know, pause, you take a breath, you pause, you look out the window and you find something beautiful. You pause and you listen to see if there's anything you can hear in nature, you pause and you remember the goodness of nature.

With one of your kids, you pause and you you're stroking your dog's head, and you just take that five seconds to go, “Oh, this is a very beautiful dog. And he's always very loving.” And you know that there are innumerable moments in the day, right? Where we can touch into connection. Appreciation, gratitude, joy, love, right?

These are all very wholesome qualities. But it requires that we let go of the trance of being stuck in our mind. Or stuck in the trance of scarcity, I'm rushing, I don't have time for anything. Or stuck dwelling in the past. It's a practice to be present while you're doing something and find there can be a joy in rinsing lettuce, in washing dishes, like it doesn't have to be a chore to get to the next thing.

It can be its own beautiful activity. But again, it comes back to the quality of attention, the quality of awareness, the quality of presence, and again, that's what practice supports over time is that quality of presence,

Elizabeth: Yeah, I love that answer. It's like an integration of, they’re not separate. They can be one. They can be unified. But it has to be a continuous choice to do that.

Monika: Yeah. And presence is required for it. That's really the key. Yes. Yes.

Elizabeth: Okay. So, the last question that we have for you, this has been wonderful so far. Thank you for everything you're sharing

If you had a global microphone, what would you say?

Mark: That's funny. I was I was reading an email from a friend of mine. A dear friend of mine who was asked to speak up to this is maybe not quite what you're asking, but he was asked to speak up to add his voice to the call for a ceasefire in Israel, Gaza.

And he said, I could and here's my response: “Does it really matter what I say? Does anybody care about my opinion?”

And, who am I to say, given a point of view about something that's so complex and so deeply historical, that anything I would say would be really quite glib in response to the complexity and the nuance of that.

So that is a caveat, the complexity of anything that's happening globally I would say, I would come back to what I started with, you know so that the question you asked about, what's humanity facing right now. I would say, you know, if I had a global microphone that actually people listen to.

Monika: Let's assume that everyone's listening, everyone is glued to the microphone.

Elizabeth: Now they are listening intently to this message.

Mark: Yeah, I would come back to what I started with, which is that we have to wake up to understanding that who we are is earth, that we are the earth, that we're not just on the earth, we're of the earth, from the earth, connected to the earth and connected to all living beings, species, systems, and that the more we understand that, the more we become intimate with place, with our own ecology and ecosystem, the more we understand our place in that, then the more that we will, and the more that we are okay, I'm going to say two things, if I had the mic.

That's one. Knowing oneself as the earth, and that happens, this is Part B, that happens through going outside, being mindful, having, having a,‘presenceful’ contemplative connection with your senses, with your body, To the earth around you, to your garden, to trees, to parks, to water, to whatever it is, whatever ecology that you're living in, whatever the most natural place that you can find, to begin to develop a more intimate relationship.

Be curious, be open, be let the natural world fill your senses. And in that, As Mary Oliver points to, where she says: “There's nothing in this world, if I pay attention to long and too long enough, doesn't fail to, doesn't cease to, doesn't fail to foster wonder and love.”

And so my intention for that invitation is to go outside, to become intimate with whatever nature is around you, to get curious, And to fall in love with it, because when your heart opens to seeing the beauty of an oak tree, of a hummingbird, of an earthworm, of an iridescent beetle to a buzzard, when the heart is touched, we feel beauty, we feel awe, we feel love, and when we feel love, we of course want to take care and protect the very earth that we're living in and interdependent with.

So that's my microphone two cents.

Elizabeth: Beautiful message from a former punk rock master from London, right? I love it.

Mark: Come a long way.

I was living in East End London, which was very run down at the time, very depressed, very urban my practice was to notice any natural beauty, which where I was the London, plain trees that survived the war. A few parks, a few grasses and wildflowers, dandelions growing up through the sidewalk. And that was my practice to see, oh how resilient, how thriving nature can be, even in the city, and how much beauty it gives. That has been a through line these last four years.

Elizabeth: Love it. Mark, thank you again for being here for giving us this space and time to share in your wisdom.

I absolutely adore this conversation and I'm so grateful to you for taking the time. You are welcome back anytime. Please join us again. Anything else from you, Monika?

Monika: No, I'm speechless in some ways, because every answer was layer upon layer of enriched thinking.

And so, I just can't wait to go back and listen to it again. So, I can really take it in. So, thank you.

Mark: Pleasure to be talking with you both.

Monika: Next time we'll meet, we're going to meet in nature. And not on these screens.

Elizabeth: Let's do that. I'm in.

Thanks so much for being here with us today in the now to learn more, visit us on Instagram at the heart of now podcast or online at the heart of now. info.