Richard Taite

I had written the book with Mary Hartzell.

parenting from the inside out about the importance of inner awareness.

I'd written a textbook for graduate school called the developing mind.

Anyway, for some reason I got invited to do a talk at a conference on like mindfulness, spirituality and religion.

which I didn't know anything about any of those three things.

So the guy who invited me, I didn't really understand why we decided to have lunch together.

And it was gonna be him and a fellow named Houston Smith, who is like the world's leading scholar of religion and some other folks who were writing about mindfulness.

So the conference organizers, a fellow named Jack Kornfield.

So Jack, who I didn't know, you know, takes me to lunch and we go to lunch and he says, well, how do you know about mindfulness?

I said, I don't.

And I don't even know why you're asking me to be at this conference.

He goes, oh, because I read some of your stuff.

I think I think, you know, I said, no, I don't know.

He goes, you know, I said, I don't know.

And he goes, you know, I can tell, you know, how do you know?

And I say.

Well, I don't know why I'm going to tell you this, but let me tell you a story about what happened to me just before I turned 20.

So this would have been, you know, 30 years later.

So I was in my 50s.

I said, just before I turned 20, I was, you know, I was studying anthropology in college and my professor invited me to go work for the World Health Organization in Mexico.