On Mindfulness - A Conversation (Paulo Coelho & Arianna Huffington) | DLD14

uh good morning let me talk about this book because I had the possibility of receiving a a proof galy and I start reading first I start reading just can you hear me no I start reading because I was going to have a discussion here with fana and all of a sudden I start devouring it so I strongly recommend you this book Thrive that it is adana's story and her struggle and at the same time a lot of philosophy so I think I I I strongly recommend and it will be out in March all right thank

you thank you Paulo and of course Paulo coo is quoted in it we are going to we are going to take our seats in a minute but I just want to say what an honor it is to be sharing the stage with Paulo I have been a huge fan and a huge admirer for so long he was born in Rio I was born in Athens very different lives he even ended up in jail I never did I'm still aspiring to that and but we've come to some similar conclusions from very different perspectives that we'd like

to discuss here with you so Paulo please Elana so it's great to be with all of you here this is the sort of Mecca of technology so I'm going to ask you to do something counterintuitive and this is to put your devices aside because there is something amazing about unitasking and uh being really present for 15 minutes with which is what we have and um we want to start by something that Joe said last night when he drank a toast to Hubert when he said that maybe one day robots will take over but they will

never be able to replace the human heart and in a sense this is like an interlude this is a a group full of incredibly successful accomplished people surrounded by big and small data but our world is kind of swimming in data and drowning for wisdom people are connected 24/7 and burning out and stressed out affecting their health their wisdom and these are themes that Paulo has explored for years at the Forefront of these discussions that are now becoming mainstream so Paulo for you a constant theme has has been the theme of transformation that there is

always more in us that we can tap into and bring out that leads to our own transformation that leads to our own destiny talk to us about that I would like to summarize is is very complicated uh but once I saw an interview with Paul McCartney and the the journalist asked him can you summarize the message of the B people they love to ask you can you summarize the message of your books and it is a question that it is very complicated because you can't if you can summarize something you tweet but you don't write

a book about it but PO mcartney he was brilliant he said yes I can and he said Diana there is one sentence in one of our songs that say all you need is love I think and then he summarized the message he sumarize that everything we need you see Ariana here she created a platform for us to share and sharing is one of the most important things that we have love is sharing work is sharing everything is sharing that's why we have just tendency to share uh with devices and things like this but at the

end of the day if you talk about politics if you talk about romance you only have four stories four to tell so the first story is a love story between two people the second story is a love story between three people the third one is the a struggle for power and the fourth is a journey so if you read any news about politics any book whatever you're are going somehow to read one of these four Stories the thing is that there are many variations to this four stories and and we have a goal and our

goal is to answer this question that I I tell you I don't ask myself this question but the question is what am I doing here we have to answer this question a tricky question very tricky question because there is no answer I was talking to to Gino as scientist and he had an explanation a framework are you here J no oh yeah he's there a frame workk and a methodology to answer this question but I said I don't believe in this answer and because at the end of the day we don't know we have to

respect the fact that we live in a mystery and recognize this mystery in the Greeks that the Kings and the Queens of mystery of respecting mystery so Ariana I don't know if I can answer your question I know that I want to be here 100% when I'm here I'm here I'm looking to H who had this fantastic idea of this this shift that we're seeing now and uh in at the end of the day we just do and we respect what we are doing let me ask you a question uh what drove you to create

the Huffington Post of course we have so for me what you said about sharing is what led me to the hington Post you know I felt the conversation was moving online and I wanted a platform that combined great journalism with the opportunity for anybody with something interesting to say to say it but in in the course of developing The Huffington Post and being kind of connected 24/7 I went through my own personal struggle that you know about from the book which led to my collapsing from exhaustion in 2007 breaking my cheekbone and getting five stitches

on my right eye and that started me on my own Journey Story number four of discovering is that really what success is is it success to really be burning up and um undermining your health and that led me to this question that you are asking also in your new book manuscript found at Acra which is what is a good life the Greek philosophers used to ask that all the time and our world has defined a good life in very simplistic terms as being successful in terms of two metrics money and power and I feel there

is that third metric that you've been writing about which is the third metric that brings together our well-being our wisdom our capacity to wonder at The Mystery of Life and giving and when we introduce these elements back into our life our life is transformed I call it being transformed from struggle to Grace so I see now this as the next journey of my life how do we make that part of the Huffington Post but also part of what we are all doing and you know what is interesting there is no tradeoff between being productive and

creative and tapping into the deeper part of ourselves on the contrary when we give ourselves that time we are more creative we are more productive I mean you wrote The Alchemist in two weeks yeah that's true clearly it was coming from such a deep Part of Yourself Steve Jobs wrote um and told his biographer Walter isacson that some of the deepest and most important insights that he had that led to the iconic Apple products came after Zen meditation so we are now at a turning point where a lot of these things which were seeing as

on the margin even though clearly people were longing for it I mean your book sold 65 million copies no more more more shall I see see I'm sorry I'm underestimating 170 million wow one okay 170 million copies of a book that is ultimately about this journey of transformation that is phenomenal it shows what a longing there is out there and now a lot of the things that you wrote about in The Alchemist and you've been writing in all your books are now mainstream you now have CEOs coming out of the closet saying that they are

meditating or they are bringing mindfulness PRS into their lives you have mark benov from Salesforce and mark bertolini from Etna and all around the world so this is a very exciting time to be on this journey and for you having started it so many years ago how different does it feel I think that people are much more open to it but they try to hide I can give you again use a Gino as an example stand up Gino please Gino Gino lives in Hong Kong and uh uh he's a professor and he's trying to map

the connection between uh the human body and the things that are invisible so we sat down and start talking about his work my work and at the end of the day I said J know but it is about spirituality he said yes but if I tell people am I lying if I tell people that it is about spirituality I cannot I cannot go to to some universities and start talking johnman is here okay which I also respect you know because he has another Vision I think we should not think that spirituality is is Spirit can

be summarized in something do what you have to do it's it's not about believing in God it's not about uh abstractions It Is by living honoring your life every single minute every every moment of your life but then you will have to hide because he's here and not because only because that because people feel that they stepping into a very Sor in a very complicated area and then we start creating a lot of Mythology around spirituality and when at the end of the day is just to live the present moment period and also because the

confusion between organized religion and spirituality but now again if you look at the place of death in our life I think that's a great entry point I find it amazing that this is the one Universal thing that connects all of humanity you know the onion the satirical magazine in the United States had a story recently and the headline was death rate holds firm at 100% so given that this is a reality isn't it amazing how uncurious we are how little time we are spending integrating it into our lives not in a morbid way you know

um the the Romans used to carve Meo Mori mm on statues and trees not out of morbidity but because it puts everything in perspective the theme of the conference this year is content and context well death provides context and I was recently at a friend's Memorial and listening to the eulogy I thought to myself a eulogy is completely different from a resume you know when you hear people eulogized you never hear you know George was amazing he increased market share by oneir or Mary you know she made SVP at the age of 35 you know

the eulogies are always about the other things the things that you write about the things that um bring joy in life the things that touch our hearts poetry music smiles and yet we don't live our lives in terms of what ultimately our life is going to be about but you know why because people don't realize that there is a Finishing Line something called Death you know so we spend most of our time either thinking about life how should we live our life or trying to do something to avoid this nightmare that sooner or later it

will knock our door I can give you a very quick example example two years ago I almost died uh so I went to to see my heart for different reasons and I had to have a heart operation very quickly and then I had one night to think about my life and I said oh my God I'm here by my side with the woman that I love and I've been married for 34 years with her B I did did every crazy thing in my life every single one you think I did you know from all drugs

uh to whatever a very intense sexual life as I may guess the third I decided that I was going to fulfill my dream that it is to be a writer and it was non sense nobody can make a living out of writing but I I said I'm going to I'm going to write I'm not think about make a living and fourth I succeeded in what I was doing so meaning I'm not alone I can share I can uh well really share and I I had a tablet by my side and I was reading I said

oh the only thing that I will not to know if I die tomorrow because the doctor said you can die tomorrow is the end of the Syrian conflict that was two years ago I was in New York Times I I don't know how this is going to end if I die today I still don't know how how the Syrian conflict will end but in any case this is my real experience so accepting death as a companion Ariana as someone who is sitting here look at you look at me and asking us to live in the

present moment and give to this present moment a sense a reason you don't need to believe in God you just need to believe in life and ah thank you thank thank you but uh you need to believe in life if you believe in life then it is enough and this is what you do also I guess no when you have your all all the things you did in your life because I had uh 90% of your book uh it was someone who believes in life well it's also um what you write in one of your

books about what the Yaki Indians consider death as an advisor and they ask that and they ask death you know how should I live my life it affects the choices we make and it also affects the way you react to things I love this conversation that you have between the Zen master and the Samurai and I I want to read you just one little part of it because I love it um the Zen Master says now that is Hell letting yourself be angered by silly things and then this the samurai ask him so what is

heaven and he says and that is heaven not reacting to silly provocations but if you look at our daily lives so often we are upset by silly things we are reacting to silly provocations that's why in a sense you are a stoic philosopher I mean a lot of stoicism is about teing what Marcus aelius called you know that inner Citadel that place in us which we all have you know it's a place of wisdom strength peace but most of the time we don't live there so how can we create paths to return there faster and

faster and spend more time in that place you know Aran I don't think it is a journey itself it is a moment a moment that you take a decision I will do this and it to be difficult H the first day but then you try to grab the present moment as strongly as you can and you have to be there with all your heart and with no way out from the moment that you're there from the moment that you're connected to yourself there will be a lot of distractions but little by little distractions will go

away this is at least how I managed but I don't have a formula there are no formulas in this subject true there are no algorithms you understand there is no software so you have to tell to yourself again what I'm doing here I don't have the answer to this question but I want to be here and little by little you adapt yourself to be at the present moment well what is exciting now is that the scientific findings have been extraord orary in the last few years around these realities you know whether it's Richard Davidson's work

around compassion and uh well-being H whether it's the neuroscientist's work around the impact of mindfulness on creativity Innovation well-being it shows that these things are real they can transform our lives and it doesn't matter what the entry point is I love that in your writing H what the wakeup call is what that magical moment is it can be a wakeup call like mine when you collapse from exhaustion it can be a worse wakeup call when you get a health scare it can be a piece of poetry it can be um absolutely it can be a

child that you bring to the world and fall in love with it doesn't matter what the entry point is what matters is to be awake in our lives yes m to a meline no so he saw meline and his me so uh our Awakening moment it is there for us to recognize we have several a day we don't recognize because we are too us it to our lives and uh and then life changed let me because we only have 1 minute and 24 [Music] seconds life is running fast so for example now we have ebooks

new platforms and uh it's very difficult to to separate the physical book from the ebooks this is something that I I want to to to say here and they are pricing the ebooks with the same price with uh physical books why because they think that if you price a new book for $3 and the the hard cover uh the hard copy is seven people are going to stop going to book stores which is totally nonsense people who read physical books will read physical books forever people who read uh electronic books they're a totally different way

same thing happens to us so I'm fighting just when the thing I'm fighting for for for having my books I'm fighting no I'm going to because there's a moment that you have to use your socalled power to do something that it is good uh and that you believe in so from today on from the end of jary my book my books will be priced not 0 but uh but uh 399 and then the same shift you know you still continue to do to believe that life is a physical book when there is new platforms and

at the end of the day the book is something that brings you to a place and leaves you there alone it's up to you to take your decision actually I completely agree with you there are people like me who will always love physical books and in fact if you try to create a space in your life which is free of Technology after try to create that because it helps my sleep it helps my meditation I've made my bedroom for example a device free zone so I only read real books in bed so it doesn't matter

how what the price differential is if you love the feeling of real books if you like underlining books and all those things you'll keep buying them and recognizing the new realities while loving you know the old um realities whether it's books or anything is part of the hybrid future we are going into so since we are out of time I would just like to end by saying that um the the very profound uh lesson that I took from The Alchemist when I read it many years ago and I carry with me in fact I have

it laminated in my wallet it's too long to read but I want to give you the essence of it which is this shopkeeper sent his son to learn about the secret of Happiness from the wisest men in the world and he wandered through the desert for 40 days and finally came upon a beautiful Castle High at top of mountain it was there that the wise men lived but rather than finding a saintly man he found an amazing Hive of activity Tradesmen came and went people were conversing in the corners a small Orchestra was playing soft

music and there was a table covered with amazing food so the master told the boy to look around the palace and return in 2 hours but I asked you he said as you wander around carry this spoon with you without allowing the oil the drops of oil that are in the spoon to Spill the boy began climbing and descending the many stairways of the palace keeping his eyes fixed on the spoon after 2 hours he returned to the room where the wise man was so the wise man said did you see the Persian tapestries that

are hanging in my dining hall did you see the garden that it took the Master Gardener 10 years to create did you notice the beautiful parchments in a in my library the boy was embarrassed and confessed that he had see nothing because his only concern had been not to spill the oil that the wise men had entrusted to him then go back the master said and observe the marvels of the world so the boy went and when he returned the wisest of wise men said to him well there is only one piece of advice I

can give you the secret of happiness is to see all the marvels of the world and never to forget the drops of oil on the spoon so in a sense everyone's here is right in the middle of the world seeing and living the marvels of the world and what we need is to remember the two oil drops of oil on in the spoon which is basically our soul our heart whatever you want to call it what Archimedes my compatriot called the place from which we can stand and move the world so we can do both

but if we do one without the the other we pay a very very heavy and increasingly unsustainable price thank you so much that's it thank you