Mindfulness, Meditation & Performance: Manoj Dias Live At The Rivian Performance House

**Manoj Dias** (0:00)
Mindfulness doesn't mean just being calm. It means being really available to the present moment.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:06)
Manoj Dias, Sri Lankan meditation teacher, founder of the Open App.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:10)
He is an animated speaker, humble teacher, and thought leader in the mindfulness space.

**Manoj Dias** (0:15)
You are not your thoughts. When I heard that, I think that was the first moment I'd experienced conscious mindfulness, like I heard my thoughts for the first time.

**Rich Roll** (0:24)
All we have is our attention, and where we decide to place it ends up dictating the trajectory of our lives.

**Manoj Dias** (0:32)
Loneliness is continuing to rise. Mental health rates are continuing to get worse. You don't meditate to get good at meditation. You meditate to get good at life.
We're really good at being anywhere but here. The moment we have to just be with ourself, it's very hard.

**Rich Roll** (0:49)
If we're not our thoughts, then who are we?

**Manoj Dias** (0:53)
And she's how long do we have? Yeah.

**Rich Roll** (1:06)
Get this. Thanks for coming out, everybody.
Nice to see so many happy faces. Very excited for this conversation. Manoj, I think the best place to start is with you making the case for mindfulness. Why should we care about this instead of just yada yadaing it?

**Manoj Dias** (1:27)
We've all heard for the longest time this word mindfulness. It had like a real moment, I think around the 90s when everyone was practicing mindfulness as a way to work with stress. John Capitizen really introduced mindfulness-based stress reduction, and that became the prevailing connection to that word.
Over time, it's becoming so many different things. Like I've worked in different industries where mindfulness can be how you perform at work, for example. It can be mindful cooking. I once saw a workshop for mindful sex, and I'm like, this is cool, but what does this word mean these days?
So I'm a little flexible on what it means, but for me, I come from the Buddhist system, so that was how I was born and raised. So for me, mindfulness is a way to really free myself from suffering. For me to overcome the patterns that keep on happening in my life, my own neuroses. And so if that is interesting to people, I think you should care about mindfulness. But I also think it's interesting in a place like New York, which is kind of wild. I've been living here for a year and a half, and it's kind of insane. And I'm like, if I didn't have a mindfulness practice, would I be okay? And I'm like, I don't know.

**Rich Roll** (2:42)
Share a little bit about your entry point to this, because you're Sri Lankan, you were sort of raised in this tradition, but it took you a while to realize you had to develop your own relationship with it.

**Manoj Dias** (2:56)
Yeah, I think people assume, because when they look at me, I've got a shaved head, I'm brown. I'm like, he probably meditates. I didn't, I think this was never, it was never a part of my life. Like in Sri Lanka, mindfulness and Buddhism is more of a religion, whereas in the West, it's becoming more of a philosophical practice. And so for me, I came to it through suffering. Like that was my entry point. I was in marketing and advertising. And if anyone's worked in marketing and advertising, you probably know this story, had like an anxiety attack one day, was trying to figure out what that was because I'd never experienced anxiety or even a panic attack.
Went through all these different ways to try and fix myself. You know, went and saw psychologists, psychotherapists, took medication, took time off.
And nothing really helps me unless, until a friend told me one day, come to a yoga class. And no shit, this is actually what I said. I said, I don't know any lululemon, I can't. Yeah.
I was like, no, no, come, there's lots of hot girls there. It's also what he said. And that got me. So I was like, okay, I'll come. And there was no hot girls there. And no lululemon, there was like five guys over the age of 70 It was an ex-Buddhist meditation teacher, and he was really talking about mindfulness. He was talking about meditation and developing awareness. And I think that moment was the first time in that class when he was saying, you are not your thoughts. He kept on repeating that you are not your thoughts. When I heard that, I think that was the first moment I'd experienced conscious mindfulness. Like I heard my thoughts for the first time. You know, you are never going to be anything or you are always going to be sick or what are you going to have for lunch? And I was actually just able to see it without having to embody every single thought that popped into my mind.