Bart: Rats, Zen, and Social Change

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Being Underwater

Joana Breidenbach

45 episodes

4 days ago

Being Underwater is a project about inner life in the digital age. Hosted by social entrepreneur and anthropologist Joana Breidenbach, this series of interviews tries to uncover the language we use to describe our inner worlds, as well as the tools or practices that help us decipher them. These conversations are important to engage in at any time, however with the onset of the digital age, they present a new urgency. As machines and algorithms threaten to know and understand us better than we do ourselves, we are faced with an evolutionary pressure to expand our consciousness and comprehend greater amounts of complexity. We must understand who we are, and what it is that we want, in order to define our relationship with technology, rather than allowing technology to define us. The project was conceived by Joana Breidenbach and edited by Siena Powers. Angus Sewell McCann composed the main theme music, and Vincent Augustus mixed the second theme. All visuals were created by Florentin Aisslinger.

Self-Improvement

Education

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All content for Being Underwater is the property of Joana Breidenbach and is served directly from their servers with no modification, redirects, or rehosting. The podcast is not affiliated with or endorsed by Podjoint in any way.

Self-Improvement

Education

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Bart: Rats, Zen, and Social Change

Being Underwater

57 minutes 39 seconds

3 years ago

Bart: Rats, Zen, and Social Change

My guest today is Bart Weetjens. In the world of social entrepreneurship and change Bart is a well-known figure as he founded Apopo, an organisation that trains rats to detect landmines in countries around the world, from Mosambique to Cambodia. Bart is also an ordained Zen monk and has been practicing Zen for over 30 years. Today he lives again in his native Antwerp, facilitating Zen sessions and working as an executive coach.

I first met Bart many years ago, when I was co-hosting a TEDx event in Hamburg and invited Bart to speak there. Since, we have met a number of times, recently in connection to the Wellbeing Project. This is a global project aimed to cultivate a culture of inner wellbeing for all social change makers. For this conversation we met online and spoke about Barts early path into Zen and meditation. How the practice has helped him overcome deep challenges as a young adult and accompanied him on his path as a social changemaker and now coach.

For me as an interviewer our exchange was a beautiful experience. It felt to me as if Bart’s inner composition was holding the space in which the conversation could unfold in a very easy and natural way.