With over a million copies sold, Mark Nepo has moved and inspired readers and seekers all over the world with his #1 New York Times bestseller The Book of Awakening. e has published twenty-five books and recorded sixteen audio projects. He was named by Watkins: Mind Body Spirit as one of the 100 Most Spiritually Influential Living People, was chosen as one of OWN’s SuperSoul 100, and has received a Life Achievement Award from OMTimes. His latest work is The Power of Friendship.
Mark Nepo Explores The Power of Friendship
Interview By Victor Fuhrman
Carol King’s 1971 Grammy Award-winning album of the Year, tapestry, featured the heartwarming song. You’ve Got a Friend. What are the Secrets to True Friendship?
With more than a million copies sold, Mark Nepo has moved and inspired readers and seekers all over the world with his number one New York Times bestseller, the Book of Awakening, beloved as a poet, teacher, and storyteller. Mark has been called one of the finest spiritual guides of our time, a consummate storyteller, and an eloquent spiritual teacher. His website is https://marknepo.com/, and he joins me to share his amazing path and new book, You Don’t Have to Do It Alone, The Power of Friendship.
Victor Fuhrman: You know, it turns out, Mark, that we’re a couple of young men born in Brooklyn, New York, about two years apart, . So, I feel almost like we’re family and kin here. We’re Brooklyn Boys. Please share your early path and how it planted the seeds for your work and wisdom.
Mark Nepo: Well, you know, I think, even as a boy, before I had any language for it, the world always spoke to me in metaphor. And even when I didn’t know what that was, even as a boy, um, and interestingly, in Brooklyn, my first alone time was in the alley between brownstones, right outside my grandmother’s kitchen window. But, if the wind went through a tree, it was like speaking to me, saying: “Okay, what is this like? And later, I understood the word metaphor. So that’s been like a native language, but I think relationally, when I was in high school and the first fall in love, and she was a year older, and when she went to college, first our paths parted, and of course, my heart was broken.
In dealing with those feelings, I started to write. And I realized after a while that I wasn’t just writing, talking to myself. I had begun a conversation with life and the universe. At that early age, the authenticity of our feelings was the threshold for that conversation. Fast forward, I am 72 now And I will be 73 next week. And when I met people our age when I was younger, I thought they were ancient. It doesn’t seem so old now.
In my Thirties, I almost died of a rare form of Lymphoma. And that nearly changed everything, of course, and threw me into my heart without any wisdom on my part. From that, I became a student of all paths. I was raised Jewish, and I was blessed that people from all traditions and walks of life offered formal or informal help along the way. So, spit back out of the mouth of the whale of Cancer back into life; I am still not wise enough to realize what did work and what didn’t. I am a student committed to the gifts of the common center of all paths and the unique gift of each.
Victor Fuhrman: Growing up in the sixties and seventies, I remember songs like Buzzy Lin Hart’s Friends, a hit for Bette Midler and Carol King. You’ve got a friend that was also a hit for James Taylor, your new book, You Don’t Have to Do It Alone. The Power of Friendship is described as exploring and celebrating friendship and community. What inspired this book, and what are you exploring it?
Mark Nepo: Oh, well, I’ve always wanted to write a book about spirit and friendship. Famously, the Dalai Lama has said that “kindness is his religion”. And reflecting on that, I think friendship is mine. I think one of the central paradoxes of life, and maybe the most central, is that no one can live your life for you. No one has ever been here. Who is you? And no one can do it alone. In fact, I think a modern disease, a psychological disease, is that we think we can do it alone. And so, I wouldn’t be here without the love and care of so many friends and people, and my friends have become my family. And so, one of the things I wanted to explore is to bear witness to that journey of what it really means to be a friend.
How do we initiate it? The challenges of friendship, the limitations, and how it all brings us together to life’s larger resources. So all of that, and paying tribute to the friendships that I’ve had and encouraging people, We discover friends. I think so much of it is not like going out looking for a friend, but we’re open to true connection by being who we are. There’s a direct link between opening ourselves and connecting with others.
Victor Fuhrman: When did you first become aware of the power of friendship?
Mark Nepo: Oh, I think it was in college, in high school, I would say, I mean, I wasn’t a loner. I had what you’d guess you’d call acquaintances. And it wasn’t until college that I really had my first deep friendships where we could be broken with each other. We could be in pain, in fear. And it wasn’t just all about having a good time or showing up with our best face. And so discovering that people would actually be there for me, and me for them, opened up a whole other way of being that I never knew before.
Victor Fuhrman: What are the different manifestations of friendship?
Mark Nepo: Let’s start with the word friendship, which goes back to a German Indo, a German root word, Indo-European, um, that means place of high safety. Cicero said two quotes, and then we’ll look at that. I mean, Cicero said:” A friend is a second self.” I didn’t talk to Cicero, so I don’t know what he meant, but it says that we can be completely who we are. You understand that a friend is someone you can bring all of who you are; you don’t have to pose, hold back, or hide. Then, I used it as the epigraph for the book by Ralph Walter Emerson, who said a friend may be, or friendship may be, the masterpiece of nature.
So, I think a friend is the manifestation of friendship. In the early part of the book, I think it’s a unity of souls. I think it is a way for us to seek truth together. I think it’s a way for us to travel. I actually use this in another book of mine called Inside the Miracle, but there’s a print by Hokusai, the great Japanese woodblock. Hiroshige and Hokusai, I’ve often said that together they are the Shakespeare of woodblock in Japan. He or she had this beautiful print of a suspension bridge, and it’s not a bridge that’s made out of planks and rope, very narrow. And so, as you’re stepping on it, it dips. I mean, you see the way, so there are these two people in the middle of this suspension bridge crossing between two cliffs.
And where they’re standing is, you know, it holds, but it dips. To me, that is a great image of real-life friendship.
And that very foundational, both sturdy and precarious walk through life along the corridor of aliveness. And how do we help each other? How do we hold each other when the view makes us dizzy? How do we hold each other up when we feel like we can’t go on? And, again, in that paradox, everybody needs someone.
Victor Fuhrman: Can you say more about the nature of spiritual friendship?
Mark Nepo: I think spiritual friendship. So, let’s back up and talk for a second about the spiritual journey. So I have come to feel and believe that everyone, whoever lives will be given the opportunity to be dropped into the depth of life. Now, often, like me, it was cancer. It can be something that’s very difficult or life-threatening, but it also can be beauty and wonder and surprise and grace. So it’s not just suffering. But when we’re dropped into that depth, then our journey turns completely relational. And our quest is about what kind of part am I in what kind of universe? How do I relate to everything larger than me? How do I be as fully alive as possible while I’m here?
How do I, you know, as you were talking Victor, how do I, uh, offer service and compassion and kindness and help things repair and heal and join? And so often, and this is very interesting, in the Buddhist tradition, you know, there is what’s called Hinayana Buddhism and Mahayana Buddhists.
And it’s interesting, if you look at, I mean, the emphasis in Maha in Hiana, it’s not that we don’t still try to help people, but the emphasis is on the solo journey. Like Hinayana means small raft, and it emphasizes the part that, okay, I’m rooting for you, but it’s your work. But Mahayana means big raft. While that acknowledges that no one can do it for you, it also says, I’m here for you. And actually, in some kind of paradoxical way, when you do your journey, and I do mine, we’re more together than alone, which is the name of another book about community.
How do I offer service, compassion, and kindness and help things repair, heal, and join? And so often, and this is very interesting, in the Buddhist tradition, there are what’s called Hinayana Buddhism and Mahayana Buddhists. And it’s interesting, the emphasis in Maha and Hinayana, it’s not that we don’t still try to help people, but the emphasis is on the solo journey. Like Hinayana means small raft, and it emphasizes the part that, okay, I’m rooting for you, but it’s your work. But Mahayana means big raft. While that acknowledges that no one can do it for you, it also says, you know, I’m here for you. And actually, in some kind of paradoxical way, when you do your journey, and I do mine, we’re more together than alone, which is the name of another book of mine about community.
Victor Fuhrman: There are so many ways that we may share in friendship from my personal experience. One of these ways is truly listening to a friend who needs to be heard without interjection or opining. What would you share with us about listening?
Mark Nepo: Oh my God. And that’s a whole book I wrote on listening called 7,000 Ways to Listen. This is a key part of how I teach. In the circles I teach when we break up into pairs to explore how whatever we’re looking at, what it is, and where it lives in your life, I invite people when another person is speaking; there is no crosstalk. We’re not here to fix or give advice. We’re here to be present and listen. Thomas Merton had said that if we truly beheld each other, we would fall and worship each other. And so, if I’m truly listening to you, I don’t know what I’m going to say next. You know, so often out of even goodwill, even meaning, well, we’re preparing what to respond with. And as soon as we do that, we’re not present. So, listening with the heart, and this is a big distinction too, is that, in our modern world, if I say to you, learn this by heart, well, we think that means memorizing it. That’s not what learning by heart means. Learning, by heart, means I am so present with you that I will be changed after being with you.
And I also find that when people truly listen to one another, we give them the space to think and feel out loud so that they can discover what they didn’t know they knew. So, I think when we think and feel out loud in the company of a friend, that is for a soul; that kind of talking is what sketching is for an artist. We don’t know where it’s going. We don’t know what’s going on. Yeah. So, I think listening is really how the heart breathes. I think it’s a crucial threshold for everything.
Victor Fuhrman: There’s a wonderful expression in parts of Africa, different iterations, but the basic word is Ubuntu. And it translates as I am because we are; it truly is the essence of what we’re talking about.
Mark Nepo: I’m sure you know the Jewish ethic of Tikkun Olam, which means healing to repair the world. But I believe that we can’t fix the world if we don’t repair ourselves.
Victor Fuhrman: Mark, please share with our listeners again whether they can get all of your wonderful books and works and find out more about you.
Mark Nepo: Yeah, thank you. So, my website, mark nepo.com, has everything about where I’m teaching all my books. You can find my books really anywhere on Amazon or Barnes and Noble or different places, and at live.mark nepo.com is where you can register for my webinars.
Victor Fuhrman: Mark, thank you again for joining us and sharing this wonderful wisdom in a world that longs for wonderful wisdom. So thank you.
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