Anu Gupta is an educator, lawyer, research scientist, and meditation teacher, and his work focuses on harnessing mindfulness and compassion practices for social change. In his new book, Breaking Bias: Where Stereotypes and Prejudices Come From—and the Science-Backed Method to Unravel Them, he weaves together Buddhist teachings and insights from modern neuroscience to lay out practical tools for dismantling bias within ourselves and in the world around us.
In this episode of Life As It Is, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, and meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg sit down with Gupta to discuss what it looks like to imagine a world without bias, how our fundamental ignorance of our interconnectedness distorts our perceptions, the dangers of getting stuck in outdated stories about ourselves and others, and how we can access and strengthen our innate capacity for compassion.