Mindful Interdependence: A Conversation With Jeremy David Engels

Jeremy David Engels is a liberal arts endowed professor of communication arts and sciences at Penn State University, co-founder of Yoga Lab and a mindfulness and yoga teacher. He has authored six books, including his latest two published this year: On Mindful Democracy: A Declaration of Interdependence to Mend a Fractured World and Living Namaste: A Practical Guide to Mindfulness, Yoga, and Building Community.

In both the classroom and his writings, Engels teaches how mindfulness, ethics and community influence our lives and help us heal. His work examines the impact of contemplative practices such as mindfulness and yoga in building relationships, enhancing our sense of belonging and inspiring civic engagement, enabling us to coexist with greater compassion, clarity and courage.

Engels holds a master’s degree (2003) and doctorate (2006) in rhetoric from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has also studied Sanskrit, yoga philosophy, pranayama (breathing techniques) and chanting at the prestigious Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram. After a pilgrimage to India and Nepal in 2018, following the Buddha’s footsteps, he became a devoted student of mindfulness meditation as taught by Zen master and peace activist Thích Nhất Hạnh. He was certified to teach mindfulness after completing an intensive, two-year training program under Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield.

 

Why did you aspire to be a teacher and peace advocate as a child, and how did you uphold those ideals into adulthood?

I grew up surrounded by shouting and naturally became the peacemaker. This trait is inherent and influenced by my environment, deeply ingrained in my personality. I identify as a peacemaker and relationship builder.

Most of us are fortunate to have a teacher who profoundly impacts our lives. In high school, my humanities teacher, Andrew Davis, who also taught English literature, ignited my love of rhetoric. He has become a dear friend and mentor. In his class, I first encountered the works of Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Tolstoy and Thoreau’s writings on civil disobedience and nonviolence. These books spoke to my soul, influencing my choices in business and writing. They became a part of who I am.

 

What subjects do you teach at Penn State?

My Ph.D. is in rhetoric, which focuses on the power of language to build and break worlds, bring people together and push them apart, incite wars and foster peace. My classes reflect this focus. Rhetoric has always been integral to democracy, dating back to the ancient Greeks, because a functioning democracy and capable, compassionate citizens require the ability to make and refute arguments, as well as to listen carefully and critically.

I teach communication ethics, looking at how people can communicate better to build stronger communities and healthier relationships. I teach a big lecture class on propaganda, exploring how we are manipulated and how to resist it. And, I teach classes on how to deliberate, debate or argue without devolving into a fight.

 

How do you incorporate mindfulness and yoga in your college classes?

Chris Uhl, a colleague who taught an amazing biology class, often joked that academics act as if we’re just brains on sticks, neglecting our bodies. Many academics and college students fall into this trap, developing bad habits that disregard their physical and mental well-being. By integrating mindfulness and yoga into the classroom, I try to provide my students with resources to care for their bodies and minds.

Historical writings by the founders of the United States assumed citizens were capable of paying attention without distraction. We can’t make that assumption anymore, given our current world of distractions. Before we can do anything else, I have to teach my students to be present in the classroom and in life. Mindfulness is a wonderful practice for this. Everything I teach is better absorbed when students have mindfulness skills

Yoga is a way of putting mindfulness into motion. I bring my smaller classes to our yoga studio once or twice a semester to practice together. In On Mindful Democracy, I say that democracy requires mindfulness. Beyond politics, being present for your children, partner, friends or community members is crucial. If we’re not able to show up and be fully present, maintaining good relationships is challenging.

I find etymology—the roots of words—fascinating. Communication and community share a Latin root, cum, meaning “with”. Community also comes from munus, meaning “gift”. When we are having a conversation with someone, we give the gift of ourselves—our time and our presence. This gift is rare today because people are distracted; we’re torn in different directions.

 

What do you propose in your book, Living Namaste?

We often say “namaste” to each other at the end of yoga practice, but for me, it doesn’t mark an end but rather a moment of continuation, when we take the practice from the mat into the world. Namaste means, “I bow to you. I honor you. I recognize you. I honor the dignity of you.” Over time, it has become associated with bowing or honoring the divine in someone else.

Many think of “divine” as distant and otherworldly, but to me, the divine is close and very human. It’s the innate dignity and worth every human possesses. It comes from the fact that all of us are capable of practicing mindfulness, responding rather than reacting, and recognizing the miracle of every life.

The philosophy of namaste is that every time you say hello to someone, you acknowledge their dignity, worth, beauty and miraculousness, even when you disagree on fundamental things. Our relationships transform when we are willing to meet people on that common ground of shared divinity.

 

How do you envision this practice extending beyond the yoga classroom?

I’m under no illusion that people are going to walk around saying namaste to each other, but many people practice yoga, meditation, mindfulness and other kinds of spiritual practices. In these contexts, they use namaste, and I invite them to reflect on its power as a greeting. By bowing to the divine in others and carrying that reverence into their daily interactions, regardless of the words they choose, they can become the seed from which some flower of cultural change could sprout.

 

Do you see all greetings, including hello, as an opportunity to extend the namaste concept?

Words have immense power, but using them over and over again can diminish their impact, making them so commonplace we no longer think about what they mean. Hello is a prime example. By pausing to appreciate the significance of greetings and infusing them with the spirit of namaste, we can transform our interactions.

Whether we pass people in the grocery store or encounter them online, it’s as if we don’t see them anymore. They’re avatars rather than real people. Many of my college students have grown up online, forming most of their relationships there. They interact with people in real life as if they were online and fail to truly see them. A practice like namaste is a call to slow down, be present and really see other people as collaborators, rather than competitors. I don’t blame my students; it’s the culture they’ve grown up in. But these are skills they can learn if they choose to.

 

As a rhetorician, in the spirit of namaste, which words should we use more frequently and which should we reduce?

My next book will include a chapter on the mindfulness of words and noticing how often we bring violent words into everyday conversations. We talk about fighting this or fighting that, going to war, having a battle. We need to become more conscious of this because describing our relationships with others as a war increases the likelihood of those relationships becoming combative. The words we choose influence us. One word I like is “friends”. I address everyone I meet as friends—I get it from Walt Whitman. It’s an invitation to a certain kind of relationship. Instead of preparing for battle, perhaps we should be getting ready for a conversation.

 

How can we become more interconnected when our society seems to keep us distracted and divided?

We have never been more connected to news and information in the history of the world. Social media gives us access to more people than ever before, but we feel lonelier because those are not genuine relationships. Real relationships with embodied human beings make life worth living and nourish the spirit. A key motivation behind my books is to encourage people to open up to others and recognize our deep interdependence.

 
What do you mean by interdependence?

Interdependence is an insight, not just a concept to understand intellectually. It’s something you have to feel in your body. Meditation is one path to this understanding, but not the only one. Many religions, science, theoretical physics and ecology all teach interdependence. A forest exemplifies it. It’s not just that we have to collaborate with people we may have written off, dislike or rarely consider. It’s that we are already working together in unseen ways.

Think about prescription medication: from research and development to your medicine cabinet, it’s staggering to think about the countless individuals that have touched that pill or shot—scientists, medicine developers, trial participants, ingredient harvesters and assemblers, plant operators, label designers, bottle makers, shipping workers, truck drivers and pharmacists. That’s interdependence.

We are already deeply interconnected and interdependent. We’re just not awake to it because we’ve been conditioned to see the world as individualistic. Our technology and the way our society is structured reinforces feelings of loneliness, isolation and alienation. While individuality is important, so is our interdependence.

I hope my work helps to awaken people to our inherent connection. Imagine how much stronger we would be if we acknowledged this interdependence and actively devoted our attention and energy to building things together? There is such profound untapped power in the human species. Even little bits of awakening to this power will go a long way.

 

Do you still have hope?

I do, because hope is a practice. Like lovingkindness, hope is something we can cultivate. What truly inspires me is watching people come together to support each other after tragedies or disasters. That’s when we see the true caliber of the human spirit. When there’s a fire or flood, people instinctively ask, “How can I help? What can I do?” Over the past six months during book talks nationwide, I’ve connected with many wonderful communities—religious, spiritual and practice-based—and their efforts to care for each other and the world give me immense hope. I’m not convinced that the political vision of division, hatred, violence, evil and “enemy-ship” reflects who we really are. I believe that we’re more compassionate than politicians tend to give us credit for.

 

Sandra Yeyati is the national editor of Natural Awakenings.

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