Using Buddhist Principles to Explore Meaning: In Conversation with Lauren Bush
It was such a joy to sit down, chat, and catch up with Lauren! Lauren is such an inspiration to me personally. Her passion for life is palpable, but further, she executes on her dreams. I was lucky to record with Lauren before she left to become a Teaching Assistant in Germany as a Fullbright Scholar. Our conversation became a blend of nostalgia from high school, a reminder of ideas I haven’t thought about in a while, and a fascinating development of new ideas. Talking with Lauren also reminded me of where I was (mentally and physically) when Cohere was born. During high school, I developed the idea for a community around self growth and it was that idea that eventually became The Cohere Collective. It was people like Lauren who encouraged me to pursue my passion that made me truly believe in its creation, and myself. This podcast was a wonderful full circle experience for me.
During our conversation I was reminded of the importance of having these discussions joyfully. So often we get caught up in the gravity of topics like these that we forget to balance the importance with levity and humor. The reason we discuss purpose, ethics, and the meaning of life is to apply the principles and actually live in alignment with our higher purpose. Life is not all lighthearted or all gravely important, but a nuanced combination of experiences, and I firmly believe that when we discuss ways to approach life, the conversations we have should reflect life. It’s rare to find a friend who can balance the joy and gravity of life within these conversations and that makes me extremely grateful for my friendship, and conversations like these, with Lauren.
Me and Lauren’s conversation centered around living with meaning everyday. We talked about the difficulty of living life in the present moment consistently, especially during the day-to-day mundane moments. Lauren called the difficulty of choosing meaning every day, every moment, the “impossible obligation.” This obligation changes the way Lauren approaches her own life. She expressed, “[Everyone] has the power to imbue every experience [they] have with meaning, and learn from it.” Here, Lauren talks about how everyone has their own unique internal magic that allows us the capacity to find or create our own, personalized, meaning. Moreover, Lauren explains how, now that we have the ability to own our power, we must own that power. Through owning our power, Lauren argues that we can begin to mediate between two disparate aspects of lived experience. These two aspects, the physical and the metaphysical, can reach an equilibrium when we are living with presence. Living with this type of presence, and being able to mediate between the physical and the metaphysical, we step into the balancing act of awareness and can traverse daily life in a deeper and more meaningful way.
Lauren discussed the importance of embracing our power, and mediating in awareness everyday. It is through doing that that has allowed Lauren to truly create meaning for herself. But once we embrace our power, how do we go about creating meaning? Further, we can talk about creating meaning in the abstract, but how does making meaning actually impact our daily lives? Our conversation, and the logical next steps, made me think of one of my favorite Buddhist proverbs:
Before enlightenment: chop wood, carry water.
After enlightenment: chop wood, carry water.
While this proverb talks about enlightenment, and embracing this power could mean enlightenment for you, it also extends to owning our power and embracing daily awareness. How do we change our lives in the aftermath? The proverb would suggest that we don’t need to change our actions to change our lives, but that by changing the intention behind our behavior we can achieve this newfound perspective and meaning. We all have the capacity to create meaning, in fact we all consistently create meaning whether we want to or not, but how we do it is entirely in our control.
Lauren and I turned our conversation toward nature as we wrapped up our discussion of purpose. We discussed how everyone has a duty to find our own “impossible obligation,” and then, like in the Buddhist proverb, continue to live but with newfound, or renewed, purpose. Lauren expressed how powerful nature has been for her in making meaning daily. Whether it serves as a reminder, or a space to explore your awareness, nature can offer a wealth of knowledge when we are traversing our own journey towards purpose. Lauren’s relationship with nature reminded me of one of my favorite meditation exercises: the Nature Walk. In this meditation, you take a walk through nature while moving your awareness between each of your five senses. Starting with sight, you bring your awareness to that sense and then notice any sensations that arise. The purpose of this exercise is to narrow down your experience to a specific sense to hone your awareness and notice the nature surrounding you. Not only does this help you practice daily awareness, but it also allows you to reconnect to nature in a simple way.
I hope you all had a laugh and enjoyed this episode! Lauren is such a wonderful person and such a wonderful example of real friendship, and I’m so excited to share our conversation with you! If you want more content, subscribe to Making Meaning on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, and subscribe to the blog so you never miss a post! If you want to join the conversation, follow us on Instagram @thecoherecollective.
Until next time, so much love!
XX
