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This episode is sponsored by Tianren Culture, whose vision is “One Health, One Wellness.” Tianren Culture is a next-generation social platform that acts as a catalyst to foster positive global values and lifestyles.
Episode summary:
Many of us see yard work as a chore. But what if we shift our perspective and instead see it as an opportunity to practice mindfulness? This week on The Science of Happiness, our guest shares his experience of sweeping the steps of a Buddhist temple in Kyoto, Japan, and the mindfulness and mental processes involved in the practice. Then, we hear from Shoukei Matsumoto, a Buddhist monk and author, about the practice of cleaning as a form of mindfulness.
Practice:
The next time you’re tending to your garden, picking up trash on your sidewalk, watering the plants, or doing other chores, spend a few minutes practicing mindfulness by slowing down and really being present with the activity and your own bodies movements while you do it.
Today’s guests:
Matt Heron is a Canadian who has been living and working in Japan for five years.
Shoukei Matsumoto is a Buddhist monk and cleaning enthusiast in Kyoto, Japan. He is the author of “A Monk’s Guide to a Clean House and Mind,” which has been translated into 18 languages, including English
More episodes like this one:
How to Make Work More Satisfying: https://tinyurl.com/3fa925yf
Why We Should Seek Beauty in the Everyday Life: https://tinyurl.com/26dskv38
Related Happiness Breaks (a short, guided practice by The Science of Happiness)
Contemplating Our Interdependence With Nature, With Dekila Chungyalpa: https://tinyurl.com/erz2f5de
Happiness Break: How to Be in Harmony in Nature—Wherever You Are, With Yuria Celidwen: https://tinyurl.com/ynxeeb7a
Tell us about your mindful gardening experiences! Email us at happinesspod@berkeley.edu or use the hashtag #happinesspod.
Help us share The Science of Happiness!
Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or share this link with someone who might like the show: https://tinyurl.com/2p9h5aap
Shuka Kalantari: This episode is sponsored by Tianren Culture, whose vision is “One Health, One Wellness.”
Dacher Keltner Hi, I’m Dacher Keltner, and this is The Science of Happiness podcast. As a lot of you know, we’re based out of UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center and we’ve been sharing our episodes on Greater Good’s social media platforms. But now, we have our own Science of Happiness Instagram, and we’d love for you to follow us. You can find us at @ScienceofHappinessPod, all one word. We’re going to go behind the scenes of our episodes, and share how to do the practices we talk about on the show. The first 100 followers will be included in a raffle to win a signed copy of my newest book, Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life. That’s, “Science of Happiness p-o-d” on Instagram. We also have a link in our show notes. Enjoy this week’s episode.
Matt Heron When I was living in Canada, I felt like I didn’t necessarily have that much stress in my life. And now that I’m here in Japan, that’s not the case for various reasons. I’m teaching English and that’s every evening, usually starting at five, maybe finishing at nine or 10, so that’s a little stressful ’cause it takes away from a lot of the time I would generally spend at home with my wife. And, I now own six properties, all of which are these abandoned old houses that require a lot of renovation work. And, I’m trying to do– myself. I feel very stressed out a lot of the time. It feels like it’s, you know, 24 hours a day. And occasionally I find myself not necessarily lashing out at other people, but not being as happy as I want to be, or as open in the moment as I want to be.
Dacher Keltner Welcome to The Science of Happiness. I’m Dacher Keltner. Feeling overworked and unable to show up for our loved ones in the ways we want to – or to show up for ourselves, for that matter – is something so many of us struggle with. But getting outside and plugging into the natural world can really help to settle our minds, ease our nerves, and allow us to feel that we’re a part of something bigger than ourselves. In fact, studies show that just getting outdoors a bit reduces our tendency to ruminate, reduces our feelings of anxiety and depression, and we also know that just getting outdoors and enjoying nature increases our emotional well being and our sense of purpose and meaning in life. In celebration of summer, our next few episodes of the Science of Happiness will be about things we can do outside to make us feel good on the inside. We’ll travel to the boroughs of New York City, the deep ocean waters of South Africa, and for our show this week, we’re visiting Japan, exploring a way to feel good to tap into nature through a Buddhist tradition, the practice of caring for the temple grounds. In this case, sweeping leaves from some temple steps in Kyoto. It’s a practice that any of us can do wherever we are, just find some place outdoors to pick up a little bit, whether that means weeding the garden or picking up the sidewalk near our homes. For today’s show, we’re going to hear from my friend Shoukei Matsumoto, a Buddhist punk.
Shoukei Matsumoto We tend to think that to cultivate our mindfulness, we need to practice some specific special set of meditation, but in reality, we can turn every single moment. In our daily life into mindful practice.
Dacher Keltner we’ll also hear from Matt Heron, a Canadian living in Kyoto, who’s struggling like many of us with a hefty workload. He shares how this sweeping practice went for him. And we’ll also learn about the scientific findings that explain how practices like this, can have such a deep impact on our minds and bodies. All that, after this short break.
Dacher Keltner Welcome to the Science of Happiness, I’m Dacher Keltner. Today we’re exploring an ancient but enduring contemplative technique, caring for a garden. In this case, by clearing leaves from the steps of a Buddhist temple in Kyoto, Japan. This might sound like a lot of yard work to you, and it absolutely is, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t wisdom in finding meaning in mindfully working. Besides cultivating mindfulness, which supports us in so many ways, there’s a robust literature on both the benefits of gardening, which has been shown to help us feel happier or relaxed, less anxious and depressed, and more generally in spending time in nature. Our guest today is Matt Herron, a Canadian who’s lived in Japan for the last five years. Matt joined my friend Shoukei Matsumoto, a Buddhist monk, to learn about the Buddhist principles behind sweeping the temple steps. And, we’ll hear some moments of their time together. Here’s part of our conversation.
Dacher Keltner So I want to get a sense of what it was like the day, or really the morning you went to the with temple with Shoukei, as you sort of pulled away from the stressful days and what it was like for you.
Matt Heron Yeah, it was very nice actually. But as I was walking, it’s funny, we talked about it a little bit once I got there. I had emails coming in and customers sending me messages that were Causing some frustration, I suppose. I’m texting a customer, or like messaging a customer who keeps asking the same question over and over. So I’m like, okay, I think I will, whatever we’re doing today will probably be a good time to do it.
Dacher Keltner What was it like as you started your conversation and practice with him?
Matt Heron He had a very calm demeanor about him, which was very nice.
Shoukei Matsumoto Good morning. Welcome to Hōnen-in Temple in Kyoto.
Matt Heron So, initially we went to the back of the temple and pulled out some bamboo brooms. And some other tools we would have needed for the cleaning. With probably dozens, if not a hundred, very small branches. Also from bamboo, I think. So it’s a very stiff broom. Somewhat like an old witch’s broom, but a Japanese version.
Shoukei Matsumoto I don’t know how. How it is called in English, but it’s Chiritori in Japanese.
Matt Heron Ah, a very large dustpan.
Shoukei Matsumoto Dustpan, ok. You bring, thank you.
Matt Heron So when we were starting off, heading towards the steps, we were walking down a stone path that was lined with trees and moss on the sides. So, it’s a really beautiful old temple grounds actually, so it’s really well kept. There’s lots of relatively large, white, traditional buildings, and then a small pebble path that leads through. What seems to be like a small forest on the mountainside. It was very green and lush with these gray steps in the middle. It was really beautiful.
Dacher Keltner Walk me through exactly what you did with Shoukei with this sweeping practice.
Matt Heron Sure. Once we got to the stairs he kind of explained that these are the stairs we’re going to be cleaning and while we’re sweeping them it doesn’t need to be perfect and that the cleaning process is not about doing it perfectly.
Shoukei Matsumoto You do half the left side. I do right but uh yeah it’s not competition, so okay.
Matt Heron Sounds good.
Shoukei Matsumoto All right You’re sweeping the leaves, you’re also sweeping your inner noise in your mind.
Matt Heron It’s interesting. So for me, there’s, it comes in waves as I’m doing this sweeping. So we’re sweeping from the sides into the middle. And when I do the sides, I feel much more calm because I can do large sweeping motions. It’s flowing a little easier. As we get into the middle, all the leaves start falling into the cracks of the stones, and then I have to start sweeping a little more aggressively to get them out. So it’s an interesting ebb and flow. The start is very smooth and, oh, this is very nice and relaxing. And then I get to the middle and it’s like, okay, I need to be a little more aggressive here and then I can go back to the nice, relaxing part. It was interesting. We had actually talked about how, for me, it reminded me of living in Canada. So, in Canada, I would do a lot of shoveling of snow, and it was similar in the sense that if you do it early enough and the snow is light and fluffy, you can do large shoveling motions, and as much as it’s a more aggressive sound, I find it somewhat calming, but when it’s icy and the snow is heavy, you’re doing these short, aggressive chipping motions. And that is not so relaxing and it can be frustrating. So this was somewhat reminiscent of that.
Dacher Keltner All right, Matt, I’m going to push on this. You know, it sounds like parts of the exercise were frustrating those stacks of leaves in the middle of the steps and i’m just curious at that moment, you know what your attitude was towards the activity and your frustration.
Matt Heron I think what I was taking away from it is that the whole idea of this mindfulness and, I guess, and Shoukei said interbeing, is, it’s likely a skill more than it is simply something you can turn on and turn off. I assume if I was better with the broom. Assuming anyone who does this more often is a little less, uh, aggravated by the cracks than I am.
Shoukei Matsumoto I think cleaning is a good way to leave our goal oriented mindset or mindset for efficiency. So just enjoy without thinking of how I can do this better. Just become broom.
Matt Heron Okay.
Shoukei Matsumoto Yeah, anyway, we can enjoy.
Matt Heron Shoukei mentioned that you just need to be the broom and don’t worry about it so much, and I certainly did get a little better at it by the time we got to the bottom of the steps, but I think, going forward, it’s something that I need to be mindful of, that the whole idea of mindfulness is a skill I’ll need to work on, and I don’t think doing any particular activity is going to change anything necessarily. It’s a matter of consistently keeping this idea in mind and practicing this mindset, regardless of the activity. And I think that’s a big thing that I took away is that if I have a goal in mind as far as mindset goes, or dealing with stresses, it’s something that I need to work on little by little, and it’s a skill that I’ll develop and hopefully, eventually, have a lot more control over.
Shoukei Matsumoto So, you may think cleaning is about perfectionism, so you need to clean 100%, but it’s not. I’d say it’s a practice to leave from perfectionism. So we cannot complete cleaning. There is no 100 percent cleanliness, right? Right after cleaning, the leaves start falling. So that’s the nature.
Matt Heron I mean, even as we’re talking now, I’ve seen maybe three leaves fall on the steps that we just spent however long cleaning. But, I think Shoukei is right that it’ll never be clean and done. There will always be more to do.
Dacher Keltner That’s good to hear. In a study in South Korea, they had these adults who had mild depression and anxiety and they did a 15 week gardening program and Twice weekly they did gardening activities and over that time their symptoms of depression and anxiety Improved or lessened and I’m just curious how you feel this practice was showcase sweeping the steps affected all the stresses that you’ve reported on of you know, worrying about things sort of mind focused on the phone if you notice any changes.
Matt Heron Being able to go into the temple and hear the birds chirping, be in the trees, have the light rays coming through them was really nice and created a bit of a disconnect from all the stresses of normal life. Being away from all of my normal stuff, certainly I did feel some relaxation and some relief from all those stresses. Um, but I, I wonder part of it though is Sweeping is not typically a relaxing activity for me if I’m doing it, but I wonder if a lot of that sort of enjoyment and Calmness that came out of it was because I was doing it with Shoukei. I wonder if I had personally done it myself If it would have been more of a goal oriented exercise where I thought, oh, okay I need to clean these steps and I need to get this done and I would have been, you know, counting down the sweeps until I was finished. Whereas with Shoukei, it was, it wasn’t about sweeping the steps. It was about doing the activity and enjoying the atmosphere versus the actual activity of sweeping. And part of it, I even wonder is if it needed to be Shoukei. I think if I was doing it with anyone, maybe this is just me personally, but I think doing the activity with someone else, whether it was gardening or sweeping or hiking, can change the activity from something that is goal driven and is about kind of the purpose of the activity to time spent enjoying what you’re doing. Personally, when I’m in nature and I can see the light, I can feel the wind, I can hear the birds. There’s nothing there putting pressure on me. I’m just existing in that space surrounded by trees, birds, water, whatever have you. And I feel more open. I think the biggest thing I’m going to take away from this whole experience is that I will try to make more of a conscious effort to get into nature more. You can feel more connected with nature, you can feel more open and more fresh, and it’s a nice refresher from normal life and normal stresses, and then you can go back into normal life again and perhaps feel a little bit cleaner, if you will.
Dacher Keltner Well, Matt, thank you so much for doing this unusual practice with Shoukei and it’s been a wonderful conversation.
Matt Heron Thank you so much. I enjoyed the whole experience.
Shoukei Matsumoto Cleaning outdoor is a great opportunity to come to understand that we are part of the nature.
Dacher Keltner Up next, my conversation with Shoukei.
Dacher Keltner Welcome back to The Science of Happiness. I’m Dacher Keltner. We’ve been talking about practicing mindfulness in nature by cleaning up a little outdoors. It’s something that most of us can do wherever we are. Maybe it’s raking leaves in the yard or picking up trash at a park. Our guests for today’s show had the privilege of visiting a beautiful Buddhist temple on a hillside in Kyoto to sweep the temple steps. We’re now joined by the Buddhist monk who guided him through that sweeping practice. My friend, Shoukei Matsumoto. Shoukei has been a monk for more than 20 years and is the author of the book,$ “A Monk’s Guide to a Clean House and Mind.” Shoukei, thanks for being in conversation.
Shoukei Matsumoto Hi, Dacher. Very wonderful to see you here. Thank you.
Dacher Keltner I think you’ve been one of the best illustrations of something I’ve always gleaned from Buddhism, which is just this lovely space. the possibility of mindfulness or enlightenment or awareness just in every aspect of our behavior.You teach people that cleaning and sweeping becomes a form of contemplation. How is this possible?
Shoukei Matsumoto We tend to think that to cultivate our mindfulness, we need to practice some specific special set of meditation or some sort of practice in our time but in reality, we can turn every single moment in our daily life into mindful practice. So to cultivate mindfulness what is important is keeping practice, practicing, right. Sometimes your mind might be occupied with issues you’re facing at or emotions of anger or whatever. Compared to the meditation in silence, in stillness, cleaning practice is meditation in motion. So, at least you need to be aware of your physical motion, otherwise, you cannot, you know, continue cleaning, right? So, if you’re occupied with some emotion or thought, try to concentrate on your emotion in cleaning, so that it reduces your attachment to the issue or problem you are facing.
Dacher Keltner We know from a lot of research that, you know, when you practice meditation outdoors, there’s just greater reductions in stress. A recent study from the UK, other research finds people feel more connected to nature, which is so important today. How would you teach us about the deepening of a meditative practice by doing it outdoors? What does it give to us?
Shoukei Matsumoto So basically, I think that the role of Buddhism, the role of Mahayana Buddhism is cultivating your sense of feeling interbeingness in this world. So, the great Mahayana Buddhist, the Thich Nhat Hanh, said, human being is interbeing. Everyone is interconnected, interdependent. Everything is related, each other. So, cleaning outdoor is very, very powerful experience for us to remember that we are interbeing, interconnected. So we can feel the wind, we can see the change of the season and touch the soil and the microbes in the soil. And so we are beyond ourselves, right?
Dacher Keltner Shoukei, I wanted to ask you about something you wrote in your book about communing with nature. And first you write that it gives us richness to our minds. And that’s a old idea, a very deep idea, you know. In indigenous traditions and Ralph Waldo Emerson writing, we learned some of our most important ethical ideas in being with nature. But then you go on to say that, you know, examine nature and then examine yourself through the lens of nature. And that really struck me. You know, there’s recent research coming out of the UK showing when students do mindfulness practices outdoors in nature, they do indeed become more reflective. So I’m curious what your thinking is about examining yourself through the lens of nature.
Shoukei Matsumoto Yeah.So the cleaning garden is my favorite cleaning. When you clean outdoor, you examine the nature, but not only that, you become nature. Right? So, nature is not something outside of yourself, but you are part of the nature. And in this consumerism, we tend to be obsessed with being very valuable, value adding existence as a producer or as a consumer, but we could be neither consumer nor producer. We could be decomposer. So that’s the great learning in cleaning practice.
Dacher Keltner It’s a whole shift in identity. It’s not a subject object relationship in some way. It’s right, right. A process view of what we do out in the world.
Shoukei Matsumoto Right. Right. Right.
Dacher Keltner This has been such a rich conversation, Shoukei. Thank you so much for joining us on the science of happiness and Showing our guests Matt Herr on how to properly sweep the temple steps.
Shoukei Matsumoto Yeah, thank you so much.
Dacher Keltner Next time on The Science of Happiness, we’re staying outdoors, except instead of Japanese temples, our guest explores new places he’s never seen before in New York City, where he lives.
Aaron Heller On days when you explore more, you go to new places, you tend to report feeling happier, and that’s partially driven by this novelty bonus that’s intrinsic in people’s brains.
Dacher Keltner We travel through the boroughs of New York and learn why visiting new places without traveling far can make us happier. Thanks for joining us on the Science of Happiness. I’m Dacher Keltner. A special thanks to our research assistants and my former Science of Happiness students, Dasha Zerboni and Selina Bilal. Our associate producer is Aisha Wallace-Palomares. Our sound designer is Jenny Cataldo of Accompany Studios. Our producer is Haley Gray. Our podcast’s executive producer is Shuka Kalantari.