Jay Harper is a songwriter/producer and the Creative Director of SunZoo Studios in South Florida. Jay’s song Lu Shan Cha is featured our album Dhamma Gita: Music of Young Practitioners Inspired by the Dhamma. In this podcast he explains his inspiration, his Dharma practice, and his music.

Jay says, “Lu Shan Cha is my interpretation of an incense prayer song that we sing at the St Dak Tong Buddhist temple where my wife Abi and I are students of Grand Master Sheng-Yen Lu. The monk who teaches at St Dak Tong – Fasi Lien Hum – taught us to sing it. I was so inspired by the song that I wrote this piece. We have learned so much from the Dharma teachings and one thing we know to be true is there is a gold mine inside of all of us, but we must tunnel deep into ourselves to claim our riches. Wealth is not of the pocket, it is of the heart and mind.”

Lucky recently spoke with More Than Sound about how his practice inspires and influences his creative projects.

In 2005 I was a part of a recording project in Burma. The goal of the trip was to document older monks, nuns, and lay people describing their meditation experiences. We called this The Wisdom Preservation Project. The vast majority of those recordings were in Burmese and have yet to be translated. Happily, we were able to record many jewels of wisdom for posterity before the these elder practitioners passed on (some of them have already).

Throughout this trip we stayed in monasteries and retreat centers and so I had the good fortune to record some young nuns as they were studying their lessons. Chanting is used as a memorization technique. Part of the training of Theravadan monks and nuns includes not dancing, singing, or making/listening to music or any kind of entertainment show.  So, while they don’t think of this chanting as music, there is voice and rhythm.  Though this is a more traditional Buddhist context than Dhamma Gita, they are both young people are using sound and Dhamma together. Here are the nuns and their chanting:

Section 5 – Social Connectivity in Preparedness Training

Leonard Marcus asks in the beginning of this podcast: “How do we get different groups of people to work together?” Once a group of people has learned to work as a unit by going through the processes outlined earlier, how does this group make sure that it will be able to reliably function when asked to work together with other groups of people with with distinct personalities, perspectives and methodologies?

Section 4 – Risk, Uncertainty and Experience

In the last decade, the public health profession has often been called on to prepare for unprecedented emergency events. As public health officials face off against global pandemics and the threat of chemical/biological weapons, the unpredictable nature of the emergency becomes a grave concern. And to compound this problem, the brain responds to uncertainty in the same way as it responds to a known danger.

In these new and ever-changing times, what’s the best way for an emergency worker to prepare for the unprecedented event?

Section 3: Getting and Staying “In The Zone”

In this section, Goleman discusses new neurological evidence that suggests that humans are more receptive to emotional signals than was previously believed. Therefore, it is very important for leaders to set an emotional tone that will serve each phase of the crisis management. Whatever the emotional tone is at the top, that tends to ripple down through the levels of command. What you as a leader have done (or not done) to establish chemistry within the group, will determine the functionality of the group when there are high stakes.

Section 2 – Four Key Skill Domains For Leadership
In this section Dan Goleman discusses four important areas of expertise that are essential to effective leadership:

1) Emotional Self-Awareness - Recognizing your own inner state is the first step to being able to draw on past successes and failures. Maintaining access to this decision matrix allows for informed, clear-headed decisions in the heat of the crisis.

2) Emotional Self-Management - Because this decision-matrix is non-verbal, staying cool in the moment (and avoiding the “amygdala-hijack” that we heard about in the last section) allows a leader to trust his gut sense of how to handle the challenging situation.

3) Empathy – How adept you are at seeing things from various perspectives can determine your own effectiveness as a leader during emergency situations as well as during the team-building (prework) phase.

4) Leadership style – Of the five styles that Goleman mentions here (Visionary, Coaching, Affiliative, Consensus, and Command & Control), there is no one single style that will serve you well in all situations. Knowing how to utilize them in different situations is the key to tapping into the potential of every person and improving your team’s Group IQ.

Section 1: Applied Emotion

In this first section, Goleman describes why effective emergency response requires “the intelligent application of emotion.” He offers a neurological explanation for why cognitive intelligence is often rendered irrelevant in our response to highly stressful situations. During these events, the brain’s decision-making center shifts from the left prefrontal cortex (which usually governs logically and analytically) to the amygdala, the brain’s emergency response center. Since they are rooted in deep-seeded biological survival tactics, reactions typically generated by the amygdala are strong, sudden and emotional, and they often lead to poor decisions. In order to be effective in emergency situations, responders must learn to resist the “amygdala hijack” and remain calm and focused enough to draw on necessary expertise to devise an innovative solution.

In the final segment of their discussion, Goleman introduces “empathic concern” and what social neuroloscience has taught us about different individuals’ capacity for compassion. Brilliant expands on these cutting-edge studies with examples from his life that have lead him to observe a distinction between “smart” and “wise” individuals. Finally, Brilliant closes by sharing inspirations from his past that have instilled in him a working model of “Compassionate Capitalism,” and how the tools of the business world can be used to serve the sick and poor.

More Than Sound presents a discussion between Daniel Goleman and Dr. Larry Brilliant. In this, the second segment of their discussion, Goleman discusses the well-known “Good Samaritan” parable and Brilliant expands on the story with ways in which society as a whole can avoid such trappings. Brilliant points out that the need for compassion and charity extends beyond what lies in our immediate surroundings, and the importance of acting in such a way on a global scale.

More Than Sound presents a discussion between Daniel Goleman and Dr. Larry Brilliant. In the first segment of this interview, Larry discusses his vision for Google.org, the search engine’s philanthropic division, and how ideas of “Compassionate Capitalism” can be applied to business practices. Larry discusses both the modern and esoteric influences that have brought him to his present world view, and explains the ways in which big business can enact a positive, lasting influence on the needs of the world.