Meet Oren Jay Sofer, Author of Your Heart Was Made for This

Your Heart Was Made For This

A new book by Oren Jay Sofer

Interviewed by Diane Cyr

To many Western eyes, monasticism looks about as “real world” as a Jane Austen novel. But to teacher/author Oren Jay Sofer, who spent two and a half years in a Thai Buddhist monastery as part of his spiritual training, the skills of contemplative practice are ideal preparation for living in a flawed, fast-moving world. Even the title of his new book—Your Heart Was Made for This—affirms his view of embracing the world, not escaping it. In many ways, it’s a natural follow-up to his first book, Say What You Mean, which applies mindfulness and meditation skills to effective communication. By deepening that skill set, Sofer now shows how we can live with hope and gratitude in our complicated world of AI, war, climate change and click-bait—all of which became a lot more immediate and personal to Sofer himself when he recently became a first-time father. 

DID HAVING A BABY CHANGE THE WAY YOU WROTE THIS LATEST BOOK?

Absolutely. I started writing the book in 2020, when our world changed so dramatically and quickly and I was asking myself, how does our contemplative practice relate to what we’re living through? How is meditation relevant? How can it be something that’s applicable to more than just our personal lives? The first draft of the book was a very traditional dharma book—‘This is how you cultivate the qualities of meditation and here’s how and why.’ The second draft, which took place after our son was born—with the sleepless nights, my newborn on my lap while I was writing—was looking through this lens of the collective challenges we’re facing, and also with a much more honest lens about the privilege that I have in my life. What does it mean to cultivate renunciation to someone who has certain class privileges and someone who doesn’t? What does it mean to cultivate rest if you’re working two jobs and trying to raise kids as a single parent? There was a lot of deep soul-searching and feedback in the second draft, and I’m really grateful for that because I think that it made it a much more applicable book.

DO YOU SEE THIS AS AN EXTENSION OF YOUR BOOK, SAY WHAT YOU MEAN?

One of the central questions that drives my own life and practice is the question, “How do we walk the walk?” How do we live our values, making real the vision we have for our own lives personally and collectively? My first book was one response to that question—let’s try to communicate a little better. Mindfulness allows you to do that, but, having spent years teaching communication to thousands of people, you need a lot more than mindfulness. You need patience, you need courage, you need empathy, compassion, joy, rest, determination—there are a lot of other qualities that go into having difficult conversations and really robust relationships. 

My new book takes a broader and deeper look at that question. Contemplative practice gives us a method to strengthen all the different medicines to bring to bear on the many challenges we face in our world, personally, relationally and collectively. The book says, here’s a set of qualities that are indispensable for all of us, and here are pragmatic tools for how to cultivate each of them in the midst of an ordinary, busy life.

HOW DID YOU CHOOSE THE TITLE, YOUR HEART WAS MADE FOR THIS?

Well, there’s a play on words there. The surface meaning is the hopeful message of ‘we can do this.’ And, the reality is that none of us know where we’re headed. Frankly, our nervous systems and hearts were not designed for the world we live in today—algorithms, social media, AI, war halfway around the earth flooding our hearts and minds daily. So there’s a tension in the title that’s intentional. The inner meaning of the title is that our hearts were made to learn, to grow, and to love. We are endowed with this remarkable capacity to be awake, to embody a transcendent beauty as human beings in a real and tangible way. That’s what our hearts were made for. The more we’re able to fulfill that and move in that direction, the more we have to offer in the middle of all the crises of our times.

GIVEN THIS EVOLUTIONARY MISMATCH, HOW DO YOU RECOMMEND WE CONSUME THE NEWS TODAY?

I think this is such an important question for all of us today. Media consumption can get out of control, so things like trying to have balance, setting limits on when and for how long, focusing more on reading than on images—these are all very wise pieces of advice. I would add two things. First, consciously disengaging from the news cycle for a pre-determined period of time can serve a more balanced and skillful engagement. There’s a dialectic between stepping back and nourishing ourselves, and then engaging again. Second, having a sense of purpose when reading the news can be incredibly helpful. What’s my aim? Why am I looking at this? Without purpose, we don’t have anything to guide us in what news to look at, for how long, and when to take a break. When we decide which issues we are going to follow, how much information we need about them, and why, we can start make wiser decisions about our media consumption. Then, we apply that information with compassion. In terms of Buddhist principles, we choose to stay in touch with suffering and bring our wisdom to bear so we can contribute in a skillful and effective way. 

HOW DO YOU ACHIEVE THIS UNDERSTANDING, GIVEN THE PULL OF TWITTER AND CLICK-BAIT?

Here I think that both wisdom and resolve are relevant. Knowing one’s purpose, what you’re hoping to learn or accomplish, takes wisdom. This takes time to develop, to actually look inside, really consider and listen, and is supported by bringing other factors, like mindfulness, concentration, curiosity, into our life. 

The second piece is gaining some traction in the battle for our attention, experiencing some agency in relation to things like persuasive design and social media algorithms. For this we need resolve, a quality of firmness and strength in the mind and heart. We need to be able to feel the pull into something and then be able to observe that and allow it to pass through us rather than to act on it. All of these different qualities and capacities and potentials—which the book centers around and teaches—work together. So we can focus on one or the other when we’re developing them, but in our day-to-day life, they create a supportive environment for us to navigate the really complex challenges.

IN YOUR FIRST BOOK, YOU TALK ABOUT “CHOICE POINTS”—KNOWING WHEN TO BE ACTIVE, WHEN TO BE RECEPTIVE. HOW DOES THIS WORK?

If we are aware, everything becomes a choice point. The most fundamental choice point—which comprises the first chapter of the book—is what we are doing with our attention? If we’re not tracking how we’re using our attention, then we’re on automatic, being pulled around by our habits and by the forces of society and media around us. From that foundation of where we place our attention we begin to be able to make wiser choices and have more agency over how we respond. 

MY OWN TENDENCY IS TOWARD AVOIDANCE. 

Yes, that’s not uncommon and in many regards it’s a useful strategy. When we feel overwhelmed, helpless, or just depressed, it makes sense to shut off or turn away. The impulse to avoid is not a fear-based response of self-protection; I think there’s an element of wisdom in it. There’s a kind of organic intelligence that’s about finding balance. If we contemplate this, we can start to recognize the difference between avoidance rooted in reactivity and fear, and consciously redirecting attention to cultivate rest, joy, and nourishment, which is rooted in wisdom and compassion. So watching TV, taking a long walk, not looking at any devices for a day or two—these things can look the same externally but have very different effects based on where they’re coming from and what the intention is behind them.

HOW DOES ONE DEAL WITH THE SENSE OF HELPLESSNESS IN LOOKING AT WORLD NEWS?

That helplessness is so common, so real. I think the question of our aim or purpose is really important here. I struggle with it regularly, because there are so many urgent problems that feel so big. I also understand that most of these problems are beyond my immediate sphere of influence, and even if they weren’t, I can’t do everything. For me, it’s important to focus on what we can do. We know that social transformation is not linear. There are tipping points, network effects, and other unpredictable feedback loops at play. Instead of feeling helpless, what happens if we each give our wholehearted energy to something we care about that we can actually effect? Throughout the book, I invite people to explore the ways in which they want to contribute. What is your calling? Is it the community garden down the street, creating that as a place of sanctuary and connection and reverence for the earth? Is it the local PTA? Having clarity of how to express care and love for the world is really important. 

The other question then becomes, what is the role of these larger forces unfolding in our lives? Whether we’re talking about the climate crisis, the economy, inflation, war or the refugee crisis, we need to practice compassion and bear these larger forces in mind as part of the historical context of our times. We can cultivate compassion internally and also embody compassion externally as a response, whether it’s through donating, looking at how we use resources, or making a radical investigation of our way of life. 

WHAT HAS BEEN YOUR OWN RESPONSE TO THE CONFLICT IN ISRAEL?

It’s been so, so heartbreaking. Talk about helplessness… I think the conflict is a prime example of how the teachings in my book are relevant today, and one that’s challenging me to put them into practice myself! The geopolitical forces at play are so vast that there’s very little influence any of us have as individuals over what’s happening. But even in these situations, we can find a response that honors the depth of suffering with integrity. 

As a Jew whose grandparents immigrated to British Palestine in the early 1900s, and whose father was born there, I’ve been grappling with a lot of pain and discomfort. One of my main responses has been to educate myself. Developing understanding is part of a wise response. For years—in fact for most of my life—I’ve had the privilege of not needing to understand the situation. All of that changed in a significant way on October 7th, and since then. So, I’ve been going through a very deep process of investigation and self-reflection, examining the history, the different information that’s available, and the different narratives that are present. I have been reading articles and books, listening to podcasts, trying to make sense of the history and pushing myself to examine things through the lens of my values alongside my identity. 

I’ve also been practicing compassion and humility and staying in touch with the suffering and allowing it to inform how I live every day. I’ve also been writing and speaking in small ways about this whole process, ensuring that I’m not being silent. My response has also included other practical things like creating a Jewish affinity group of colleagues to discuss our relationship to what’s happening and learn together, donating to organizations working to create the conditions for peace, supporting humanitarian aid, and calling elected representatives to express my views. 

HOW HAS BECOMING A FATHER AFFECTED YOUR OWN PRACTICE AND WORLDVIEW?

It’s reaffirmed so many of my values, strengthened my deep gratitude for Dharma practice, and challenged me immensely. Having a child has proven to me in unequivocal biological terms what I’ve known to be true spiritually: that the human heart-mind are innately pure, that we have to be taught to hate. It’s also affirmed the argument I make in the book: that these qualities are innate capacities. We come into this world with presence, wonder, joy, play, generosity—all the qualities that infants exhibit so clearly. And, the other qualities that infants do not have—like patience, equanimity, perspective—I see how they develop and grow with mirroring and encouragement. For a newborn, changing a diaper is so intense on the level of sensation that it’s overwhelming. Within a month or two, you see that the range of what triggers them gets narrower and narrower. Equanimity is developing on the sensory level! Having a child has strengthened the confidence I have in these practices and this way of being.

It’s also definitely pushed me to edges repeatedly—both in parenting and in my marriage. I feel grateful for my practice not because I’m such an amazing practitioner or parent, but because I’ve learned how to work with the challenges that inevitably arise in consciousness when we are low-resourced or faced with our limits. So when I lose patience, feel activated, or when my wife and I lose connection, I fall back on what I’ve learned through contemplative practice: how to be gentle and forgiving with myself, how to be comfortable with not knowing, how to be patient, let go, and give things time. These are each such priceless, essential life skills. I’m just grateful that I’ve had the opportunity to develop them before having a child.