{"id":16,"date":"2009-08-31T10:41:35","date_gmt":"2009-08-31T10:41:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/freshliving\/2009\/08\/happy-birthday-richard-gere.html"},"modified":"2009-08-31T10:41:35","modified_gmt":"2009-08-31T10:41:35","slug":"happy-birthday-richard-gere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving\/2009\/08\/happy-birthday-richard-gere.html","title":{"rendered":"Happy Birthday, Richard Gere!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"gerethumb.jpg\"With today being the actor\/activist\/Buddhist’s birthday, thought I’d trot out an interview<\/a> I did with him for Beliefnet last year. <\/p>\n

I’m not usually starstruck (ok, maybe I just wish I wasn’t), but when his voice came over the phone my first thought was “Oh my God! I’m talking to Richard Gere! Squee!” But luckily I stuck to talking about the situation in Tibet, the Dalai Lama, and his meditation practice. And he was truly lovely–well-informed, articulate, and present–the absolute opposite of the people who make you think, “Wow, what was she like before <\/em>she meditated every day?” <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

When I asked him how often he meditates, he said:<\/p>\n

“Well, mindfulness is a quality that’s always there. It’s an illusion that there’s a meditation and post-meditation period, which I always find amusing, because you’re either mindful or you’re not. The meditation is just taking different forms. But it’s always watching the mind. It’s always watching the mind.” <\/p>\n

The whole Richard Gere interview<\/a> is here.<\/p>\n

 Like what you see?  <\/strong>Click here to subscribe<\/strong><\/font><\/a> and get Fresh Living in your in-box every day!<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With today being the actor\/activist\/Buddhist’s birthday, thought I’d trot out an interview I did with him for Beliefnet last year. I’m not usually starstruck (ok, maybe I just wish I wasn’t), but when his voice came over the phone my first thought was “Oh my God! I’m talking to Richard Gere! Squee!” But luckily I stuck to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-by-valerie-reiss","category-holistic-living"],"yoast_head":"\nHappy Birthday, Richard Gere! - Fresh Living<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving\/2009\/08\/happy-birthday-richard-gere.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Happy Birthday, Richard Gere! - Fresh Living\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"With today being the actor\/activist\/Buddhist’s birthday, thought I’d trot out an interview I did with him for Beliefnet last year. I’m not usually starstruck (ok, maybe I just wish I wasn’t), but when his voice came over the phone my first thought was “Oh my God! I’m talking to Richard Gere! 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She was a founding editor at Breathe magazine, and her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Newsweek, Women's Health, Natural Health, Yoga Journal, Lime.com, Vegetarian Times, and ABCNEWS.com. A native New Yorker, Valerie holds an M.S. from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism and a B.A. from Beloit College in Creative Writing with a minor in Women's Studies. She also lived in Maui for a while where she drank green papaya juice and taught some creative writing. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving\/author\/vreiss"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}