TRANSCRIPT 🔗
WEBVTT
1
00:00:02.879 --> 00:00:07.669
From ABC, this is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris.
2
00:00:09.810 --> 00:00:10.310
Hello.
3
00:00:10.609 --> 00:00:12.630
Before we start, I want to remind everybody that we're
4
00:00:12.650 --> 00:00:17.510
running a big discount at the 10% Happier app. This app,
5
00:00:17.550 --> 00:00:19.910
by the way, is my baby. Not just my baby.
6
00:00:19.929 --> 00:00:23.109
There's a whole team of amazing people, dozens of us
7
00:00:23.149 --> 00:00:27.250
who work really hard on this app. We're constantly dreaming
8
00:00:27.309 --> 00:00:31.390
up ways to create content that will Help you boot
9
00:00:31.449 --> 00:00:33.990
up and sustain a meditation practice and then apply it
10
00:00:34.049 --> 00:00:38.009
in all aspects of your life from sleep to relationships
11
00:00:38.049 --> 00:00:42.469
to work. We are now offering a rare 40% discount
12
00:00:42.590 --> 00:00:45.909
on new subscriptions. You can visit 10% dot com slash
13
00:00:46.049 --> 00:00:50.710
podcast 40. That's 10% one word all spelled out dot
14
00:00:50.750 --> 00:00:53.619
com slash podcast for zero.
15
00:00:54.130 --> 00:00:54.530
Check it out.
16
00:00:55.799 --> 00:00:59.969
Okay, our guest this week is has seemingly been trying
17
00:01:00.009 --> 00:01:02.990
to prepare us for this pandemic for years through a
18
00:01:03.070 --> 00:01:07.430
series of very popular books with titles such as When
19
00:01:07.489 --> 00:01:11.500
Things Fall Apart, Welcoming the Unwelcome, and The Wisdom of
20
00:01:11.620 --> 00:01:15.519
No Escape. But as you're about to hear, Pema Chodron
21
00:01:16.280 --> 00:01:18.920
is anything but gloomy, even though the titles sound a
22
00:01:18.959 --> 00:01:21.939
little gloomy. Like all the great meditation teachers, I've had
23
00:01:22.609 --> 00:01:25.269
the good fortune to encounter. She has a real lightness
24
00:01:25.310 --> 00:01:27.510
and a sense of humor about her, as you will hear.
25
00:01:28.280 --> 00:01:31.439
That said, notwithstanding her chipper demeanor, she has worked really
26
00:01:31.480 --> 00:01:33.799
hard to point out to her readers and her many
27
00:01:33.840 --> 00:01:38.980
students that groundlessness and uncertainty are fundamental facts of life,
28
00:01:39.200 --> 00:01:43.260
which are, as we all know, becoming increasingly salient in
29
00:01:43.340 --> 00:01:47.200
our current crisis. Pema Chodron is her name. As I said,
30
00:01:47.280 --> 00:01:50.819
she was born Deirdre Blumfield in Connecticut. She lived a
31
00:01:50.840 --> 00:01:54.090
rather conventional life, going to UC Berkeley, becoming a schoolteacher,
32
00:01:54.489 --> 00:01:57.299
having a pair of kids. But after a rough divorce,
33
00:01:57.459 --> 00:02:01.260
she found herself adrift. And during that time, she discovered
34
00:02:01.299 --> 00:02:04.420
Tibetan Buddhism and ultimately shaved her head and became a nun.
35
00:02:04.909 --> 00:02:08.650
She's now in her mid-80s. She lives in rural Nova Scotia,
36
00:02:08.710 --> 00:02:12.550
where she's the director of Gampo Abbey. And we connected
37
00:02:12.590 --> 00:02:15.189
with her via old school landline. So you'll hear that
38
00:02:15.330 --> 00:02:17.370
in the audio. We talked to her about a bunch
39
00:02:17.409 --> 00:02:20.490
of things, including how to actually, as she recommends in
40
00:02:20.550 --> 00:02:24.129
one of the aforementioned book titles, how to actually welcome
41
00:02:24.169 --> 00:02:28.210
the unwelcome. We also discussed how to befriend your demons,
42
00:02:28.370 --> 00:02:31.710
how to sympathize without being stupid, how to lighten up
43
00:02:31.750 --> 00:02:35.930
in the face of fear, and how to embrace chaos as,
44
00:02:36.150 --> 00:02:39.789
and this is a quote here, extremely good news. So
45
00:02:39.939 --> 00:02:41.659
here we go. Pema Chodron.
46
00:02:43.340 --> 00:02:43.800
Hello.
47
00:02:43.819 --> 00:02:46.719
Hi, this is Dan Harris calling.
48
00:02:47.719 --> 00:02:49.860
Hello, this is Pema Chodron.
49
00:02:51.219 --> 00:02:52.280
Nice to connect with you.
50
00:02:52.300 --> 00:02:55.539
Nice to talk to you again. Are you in New York?
51
00:02:56.259 --> 00:02:58.069
I am in New York, right in the heart of things.
52
00:02:58.090 --> 00:03:02.770
Oh, yeah. Wow. That's a hard place to be right now.
53
00:03:03.870 --> 00:03:08.030
That is a statement of fact. It is a hard
54
00:03:08.069 --> 00:03:08.729
place to be.
55
00:03:09.169 --> 00:03:09.770
No question.
56
00:03:10.310 --> 00:03:14.889
How are you? Situate us. Where are you exactly, and
57
00:03:14.930 --> 00:03:16.349
how are you?
58
00:03:16.689 --> 00:03:20.520
I'm good. I'm very well. I'm healthy and good. I'm
59
00:03:20.840 --> 00:03:23.960
in Nova Scotia, and I'm at Gumpo Abbey, which is...
60
00:03:24.729 --> 00:03:28.340
is very remote in a kind of a very natural
61
00:03:28.469 --> 00:03:32.360
setting on the ocean, far north in Nova Scotia on
62
00:03:32.400 --> 00:03:35.460
Cape Breton Island. And we've had to close to anyone
63
00:03:35.539 --> 00:03:39.780
coming in, but the community, it's like we're, as they say,
64
00:03:39.879 --> 00:03:43.740
sheltering in place. We're all sheltering in place together and
65
00:03:43.800 --> 00:03:48.810
just doing what we were doing before. But we're very aware,
66
00:03:48.849 --> 00:03:53.500
of course, heightened awareness of what's happening. With the virus
67
00:03:53.580 --> 00:03:57.930
and the amount of suffering and death. So that's very strong.
68
00:03:58.030 --> 00:04:01.330
But in terms of being healthy, we are. And in
69
00:04:01.409 --> 00:04:05.330
terms of, you know, being able to our life is
70
00:04:05.409 --> 00:04:08.090
not claustrophobic. I guess you could say that, you know.
71
00:04:08.949 --> 00:04:10.409
So we feel fortunate that way.
72
00:04:11.389 --> 00:04:14.569
I'm glad to hear that you're relatively unaffected. But I
73
00:04:14.650 --> 00:04:17.449
also hear that
Load full transcript
you're saying that you can't help but
74
00:04:17.509 --> 00:04:19.290
be aware of the global situation.
75
00:04:20.329 --> 00:04:23.110
Oh, yeah, yeah. Very much so. very much so.
76
00:04:24.110 --> 00:04:26.230
I was, uh, I was looking at some of your
77
00:04:26.310 --> 00:04:31.759
book titles, just read them back to you, but when
78
00:04:31.839 --> 00:04:38.810
things fall apart, welcoming the unwelcome, comfortable with uncertainty, the
79
00:04:38.899 --> 00:04:41.430
wisdom of no escape. I was thinking it's like you've
80
00:04:41.449 --> 00:04:43.670
been trying to prepare us for this for decades.
81
00:04:44.670 --> 00:04:50.240
That's true. It's true. Actually. I, uh, When my primary teacher,
82
00:04:50.259 --> 00:04:55.389
Joe Gentrompo, was alive, he taught a lot about difficult
83
00:04:55.449 --> 00:04:59.089
times will be coming and you should be preparing yourself
84
00:04:59.569 --> 00:05:03.829
to be strong and resilient and compassionate so that when
85
00:05:03.910 --> 00:05:07.420
things are difficult, it's like rather than catch the flu,
86
00:05:07.459 --> 00:05:10.879
you'll be there to help people, you know. So that
87
00:05:10.939 --> 00:05:14.600
made a big impression on me to train and working
88
00:05:14.639 --> 00:05:18.480
with difficulty when it wasn't so intense, you know. And
89
00:05:18.519 --> 00:05:21.500
everybody had plenty of difficulty to work with. But I
90
00:05:21.540 --> 00:05:28.279
was always thinking of things getting worse globally. So the
91
00:05:28.319 --> 00:05:35.459
book titles somewhat reflect that and encouragement to work with
92
00:05:35.500 --> 00:05:39.899
your heart and mind so that you could be sort
93
00:05:39.930 --> 00:05:44.949
of steady and able to be of benefit in these times.
94
00:05:46.370 --> 00:05:47.009
I suspect.
95
00:05:47.509 --> 00:05:53.310
people listening to this are thinking to themselves in all caps, how,
96
00:05:54.060 --> 00:05:56.480
how do I welcome the unwelcome? You know, how do
97
00:05:56.519 --> 00:05:59.060
I become comfortable with uncertainty? How do I, you know,
98
00:05:59.100 --> 00:06:02.540
your teacher has a quote, chaos should be regarded as
99
00:06:02.620 --> 00:06:07.329
extremely good news. How do I do all that? Sounds great.
100
00:06:07.410 --> 00:06:08.829
But what do I, how do I do that?
101
00:06:10.009 --> 00:06:15.360
Yeah. Well, I, it's like a, Well, now I make
102
00:06:15.399 --> 00:06:18.839
a pitch for the books, which are filled with instruction,
103
00:06:18.879 --> 00:06:22.620
you know. So the basic thing is to have a
104
00:06:22.660 --> 00:06:28.560
meditation practice in which you become increasingly self-aware. You're able
105
00:06:28.600 --> 00:06:33.759
to self-reflect and you're conscious of your own habitual patterns
106
00:06:33.959 --> 00:06:39.110
and your own tendencies towards fear or aggression or whatever
107
00:06:39.629 --> 00:06:43.680
it might be, you know, self-aggression, aggression towards others. And
108
00:06:43.720 --> 00:06:48.899
then the teachings are about when you can acknowledge what's
109
00:06:48.939 --> 00:06:54.370
happening with you, then the teachings are don't make yourself bad,
110
00:06:54.430 --> 00:06:57.790
you know. Don't turn this into some kind of enemy,
111
00:06:58.269 --> 00:07:02.980
but cultivate a kind attitude towards your own habitual patterns.
112
00:07:03.620 --> 00:07:07.540
And don't act them out, but don't repress them, but
113
00:07:07.660 --> 00:07:11.259
be there. Get to know their energy very well with us.
114
00:07:11.810 --> 00:07:15.889
kind and open heart and mind. So even that sounds
115
00:07:15.910 --> 00:07:18.629
and might sound good, but then the question is, well,
116
00:07:18.670 --> 00:07:21.629
how do you do that? But you do it by
117
00:07:21.750 --> 00:07:26.910
starting to meditate. People have many different styles of meditation,
118
00:07:27.829 --> 00:07:31.339
but most Buddhist meditation has a lot of similarity to it.
119
00:07:32.100 --> 00:07:37.240
And it's all about open acceptance of whatever arises without
120
00:07:37.439 --> 00:07:41.100
getting caught in good and bad thinking. So that's where
121
00:07:41.120 --> 00:07:44.829
you start. You start with acknowledging what's happening with you.
122
00:07:44.970 --> 00:07:48.870
And then the expression is always something like making friends
123
00:07:48.949 --> 00:07:52.490
with that or being friendly towards that or, you know,
124
00:07:52.709 --> 00:07:57.110
welcoming that. I try not to use language that's too corny,
125
00:07:57.170 --> 00:08:00.519
you know, but nevertheless, I end up using quite a
126
00:08:00.540 --> 00:08:03.160
bit of it in any case, you know, like embrace
127
00:08:03.220 --> 00:08:08.100
and things like that. So that's the basis. And from that,
128
00:08:08.199 --> 00:08:11.269
you begin to get in touch with as time goes on,
129
00:08:11.310 --> 00:08:16.009
you begin to have confidence really that fundamentally you are
130
00:08:16.029 --> 00:08:19.490
a good person and you have habitual patterns to work on,
131
00:08:20.149 --> 00:08:22.850
but you have the strength in you to do that.
132
00:08:22.930 --> 00:08:25.829
And then, and it takes a lot of patience and
133
00:08:26.360 --> 00:08:30.579
sense of humor, but you work with yourself that way. And, um,
134
00:08:31.550 --> 00:08:34.789
that doesn't maybe sound so in a linear way, how
135
00:08:34.850 --> 00:08:38.090
that adds up to being able to be comfortable with uncertainty.
136
00:08:38.629 --> 00:08:42.419
But in fact, that's where it leads you because you
137
00:08:42.440 --> 00:08:50.990
get comfortable with the unpleasantness or the fear producing quality
138
00:08:51.129 --> 00:08:54.490
of seeing yourself so clearly, you know, but then the
139
00:08:54.590 --> 00:08:59.009
idea is to make friends with that. So Then the
140
00:08:59.129 --> 00:09:02.870
other thing that's always taught is that to the degree
141
00:09:02.950 --> 00:09:06.570
that you can be friendly to yourself, you will be
142
00:09:06.629 --> 00:09:09.860
friendly towards others. To the degree that you can make
143
00:09:09.909 --> 00:09:13.639
friends with yourself unconditionally, you'll be able to have an
144
00:09:13.759 --> 00:09:21.000
unconditional regard and openness to other people. So it's kind
145
00:09:21.039 --> 00:09:25.870
of twofold. You become more and more, if not comfortable,
146
00:09:25.889 --> 00:09:30.090
at least very familiar with and not running away from
147
00:09:31.169 --> 00:09:35.750
uncomfortable feelings of all kinds. And it builds a kind
148
00:09:35.830 --> 00:09:40.610
of resilience and confidence that allows you, for instance, now,
149
00:09:41.590 --> 00:09:45.399
all the various things that are being triggered for people
150
00:09:45.539 --> 00:09:49.519
just being in isolation, you know, everything from rage to
151
00:09:50.679 --> 00:09:55.200
just being irritable to being very afraid. And loneliness is
152
00:09:55.269 --> 00:09:59.950
a big one. And there's a lot of uncomfortableness associated
153
00:10:00.120 --> 00:10:04.100
for many people with being quarantined, so to speak, or
154
00:10:04.759 --> 00:10:09.860
having to stay put. So it starts there that you're
155
00:10:10.039 --> 00:10:15.000
already prepared for that kind of experience. So does that
156
00:10:15.039 --> 00:10:16.580
help at all? It does.
157
00:10:16.639 --> 00:10:21.399
I mean, I'll just amplify your point by Maybe just
158
00:10:21.480 --> 00:10:24.370
adding that in my own practice, which is very young,
159
00:10:24.509 --> 00:10:28.549
especially compared to yours, but just over a decade long,
160
00:10:29.029 --> 00:10:31.950
I've really seen a shift. I've talked about this before
161
00:10:32.029 --> 00:10:34.250
on this show, so I apologize if I'm being repetitive
162
00:10:34.289 --> 00:10:36.470
to listeners, but I've really seen a shift in the
163
00:10:36.529 --> 00:10:40.230
last couple of years where initially I was trying to
164
00:10:40.309 --> 00:10:43.529
be mindfully self-aware of whatever is coming up. It had
165
00:10:43.580 --> 00:10:47.519
a clinical kind of a coldness to it and maybe
166
00:10:47.620 --> 00:10:52.500
even some aversion that, okay, I'm seeing the selfishness or
167
00:10:52.539 --> 00:10:54.769
I'm seeing the fear or I'm seeing the anger, but
168
00:10:55.289 --> 00:10:57.870
kind of with gritted teeth. And over the last couple
169
00:10:57.889 --> 00:11:00.610
of years, as I've done more, and this is from
170
00:11:00.649 --> 00:11:02.529
the Theravada tradition, and I know you're more from the
171
00:11:02.570 --> 00:11:05.490
Tibetan tradition, but I've done a more loving kindness practice.
172
00:11:05.549 --> 00:11:08.009
I think in the Tibetan tradition, you call it the
173
00:11:08.049 --> 00:11:13.899
Tonglen practice. And I've noticed that that warming up my
174
00:11:14.000 --> 00:11:17.590
own inner weather has allowed
me to do, I believe
175
00:11:17.610 --> 00:11:19.850
you use the phrase in one of your books, you know,
176
00:11:20.049 --> 00:11:22.769
making friends with our own demons and to have a
177
00:11:22.789 --> 00:11:25.850
certain sense of humor about it. Or the great teacher
178
00:11:25.909 --> 00:11:28.470
Ram Dass once said that you, it's not that your
179
00:11:28.490 --> 00:11:31.230
neuroses go away, but you become a connoisseur of them.
180
00:11:31.669 --> 00:11:34.169
And I can see that showing up in this time
181
00:11:34.230 --> 00:11:40.570
where my historical depression and anxiety is peaking, but it's
182
00:11:40.710 --> 00:11:43.950
not gaining as much of a foothold as it otherwise
183
00:11:44.009 --> 00:11:47.769
would because I have the self-awareness and some sense of
184
00:11:47.830 --> 00:11:51.230
humor and warmth toward these patterns as they arise. Does
185
00:11:51.269 --> 00:11:53.409
it sound like that's an appropriate build on the points
186
00:11:53.429 --> 00:11:54.070
you were trying to make?
187
00:11:54.850 --> 00:11:58.480
Absolutely. That says it beautifully. Yeah, that's exactly the point
188
00:11:58.539 --> 00:12:01.960
I was trying to make. And yeah, also in Tibetan Buddhism,
189
00:12:02.039 --> 00:12:05.649
there's also a version of metta practice called of the
190
00:12:05.730 --> 00:12:09.750
loving kindness practice that you're referring to. And that warmth
191
00:12:09.850 --> 00:12:13.169
is very important. You know, that warmth is very important.
192
00:12:13.549 --> 00:12:16.580
So clear seeing, but I use the word kindness, but
193
00:12:16.980 --> 00:12:21.539
warmth is another word. Yeah. It is amazing how it
194
00:12:21.639 --> 00:12:27.080
prepares you, prepares you for difficult times. And that's another
195
00:12:27.120 --> 00:12:30.250
book title, right? When things fall apart. So kind of
196
00:12:30.299 --> 00:12:31.330
prepares you for that.
197
00:12:32.610 --> 00:12:35.600
But, As much as I feel that, just again speaking
198
00:12:35.639 --> 00:12:38.039
for myself here, that I may be handling this current
199
00:12:38.059 --> 00:12:41.019
situation a little bit better than I might have, I
200
00:12:41.059 --> 00:12:44.529
don't know that I'm actively welcoming the unwelcome, and I
201
00:12:44.570 --> 00:12:49.090
don't know that I'm actively viewing this chaos as excellent news.
202
00:12:49.649 --> 00:12:54.269
Yeah, well, no. There's too much suffering, I think, to
203
00:12:54.450 --> 00:12:58.100
view it as excellent news. And so I think it's
204
00:12:58.240 --> 00:13:02.860
just that you keep your heart open. to the situation
205
00:13:02.960 --> 00:13:07.899
so that to the degree that you're able and that
206
00:13:08.000 --> 00:13:11.309
ebbs and flows, you know, some days, yes, some days, no,
207
00:13:11.789 --> 00:13:16.450
some hours, yes, some hours, no, but there's more resiliency.
208
00:13:17.330 --> 00:13:22.190
And so the word welcome, I think you have to
209
00:13:22.549 --> 00:13:25.529
have a sense of humor around about the word welcome,
210
00:13:25.590 --> 00:13:29.389
you know, but it is the idea of warmth, warmth
211
00:13:29.570 --> 00:13:34.809
toward whatever is arising. rather than you're a bad person
212
00:13:35.009 --> 00:13:38.029
or you're not doing it right or there's something wrong
213
00:13:38.070 --> 00:13:41.669
with you. That's a very deeply held feeling. And then
214
00:13:41.769 --> 00:13:47.250
when the outer circumstances are very difficult, it tends to
215
00:13:47.470 --> 00:13:52.139
bring out these strong, you might say more negative qualities
216
00:13:52.840 --> 00:13:56.440
in all of us. And so if you've already spent
217
00:13:57.059 --> 00:14:03.460
some time befriending what previously you called negative qualities, then
218
00:14:03.960 --> 00:14:08.360
you feel more prepared. So maybe just drop the language.
219
00:14:08.580 --> 00:14:10.980
I think with the book titles, you're just trying to
220
00:14:11.679 --> 00:14:15.659
convey something, a kind of view of what one will
221
00:14:15.720 --> 00:14:19.440
find in the book. But I think it's more, how
222
00:14:19.480 --> 00:14:24.590
does the language of warmth or kindness rather than welcoming,
223
00:14:24.950 --> 00:14:25.929
does that fit better?
224
00:14:25.950 --> 00:14:30.250
Yeah, it does. And I, by the way, I do
225
00:14:30.309 --> 00:14:32.830
not mean to be legalistic with you about book titles.
226
00:14:32.909 --> 00:14:34.570
Believe me, I've written a few books and I don't
227
00:14:34.590 --> 00:14:37.929
want to be held entirely accountable for every nuance in
228
00:14:37.970 --> 00:14:40.850
my book titles. So that was not my intention, but
229
00:14:40.909 --> 00:14:42.690
more to get at the spirit.
230
00:14:42.350 --> 00:14:44.590
Of what you're going for. I'm not offended by that.
231
00:14:44.889 --> 00:14:47.649
It's so common, though. I have so many people saying,
232
00:14:47.789 --> 00:14:51.330
you know, basically, I don't want to welcome the unwelcome.
233
00:14:51.750 --> 00:14:55.250
So in conversation, I've come to use different language, but
234
00:14:55.309 --> 00:14:56.649
it means the same thing, really.
235
00:14:57.500 --> 00:15:00.240
But just to dig deeper into the spirit of what
236
00:15:00.279 --> 00:15:03.490
you have been saying, and again, your teacher, Chogyam Trungpa,
237
00:15:04.190 --> 00:15:06.509
the idea that there's some sort of, and this is
238
00:15:06.549 --> 00:15:11.129
my word, not yours, but maybe some sort of opportunity
239
00:15:11.210 --> 00:15:13.389
in the chaos, you know, the notion that we should
240
00:15:13.970 --> 00:15:16.960
regard it as good news. And I know, again, I'm not,
241
00:15:17.179 --> 00:15:19.200
your teacher was not saying, and you're not saying that
242
00:15:19.240 --> 00:15:22.360
a pandemic is good news, that it's not great that
243
00:15:22.399 --> 00:15:25.860
these people are suffering, but there is perhaps an
opportunity
244
00:15:25.889 --> 00:15:28.700
to get in touch with what has been true all along,
245
00:15:28.759 --> 00:15:32.320
which is that the world isn't as solid, the ground
246
00:15:32.360 --> 00:15:34.919
beneath our feet isn't as solid as we might have imagined.
247
00:15:36.360 --> 00:15:40.100
Yeah, absolutely. That's right. So that is the value of
248
00:15:40.159 --> 00:15:44.899
chaos or of crisis, which so many people have experienced
249
00:15:45.179 --> 00:15:48.919
throughout the centuries, really, you know, that when things got really,
250
00:15:48.980 --> 00:15:52.480
really bad, it was as if they failed. had the
251
00:15:52.500 --> 00:15:55.600
realization that up to then they had been living on
252
00:15:55.639 --> 00:15:58.460
the facade. They had been living on the surface of life,
253
00:15:59.279 --> 00:16:04.889
not really realizing, for instance, not taking impermanence as a
254
00:16:05.029 --> 00:16:08.909
fact of life. Let's just talk about that. Just not
255
00:16:09.090 --> 00:16:13.710
valuing the fleeting quality of our life as something very
256
00:16:13.809 --> 00:16:17.350
precious that makes it more precious. And instead, a lot
257
00:16:17.429 --> 00:16:22.909
of denial of death or resistance to change and that
258
00:16:22.980 --> 00:16:26.860
kind of thing and then some crisis happens where you're
259
00:16:26.879 --> 00:16:29.539
kind of cornered you know you can't get away from
260
00:16:29.580 --> 00:16:32.620
the truth of it and for many people over the
261
00:16:32.700 --> 00:16:38.509
centuries that's been a big turning point of uh realizing
262
00:16:38.669 --> 00:16:41.669
something that's been true all along as you say that
263
00:16:41.889 --> 00:16:48.879
the situation is fundamentally groundless and our plans are like
264
00:16:48.889 --> 00:16:52.169
a there's a bumper sticker. If you want to make
265
00:16:52.230 --> 00:16:56.990
God laugh, make plans. So the idea of the, you
266
00:16:57.049 --> 00:16:58.950
have to make plans, you know, you have to make
267
00:16:58.990 --> 00:17:02.950
your plane reservations and things, but how many people, I mean,
268
00:17:03.330 --> 00:17:07.349
many people like my experience is I look on my
269
00:17:07.430 --> 00:17:10.119
calendar and I look at the month of May on
270
00:17:10.150 --> 00:17:13.299
my calendar and I see all the things that were
271
00:17:13.359 --> 00:17:19.170
carefully planned, the different airline reservations and hotel reservations and,
272
00:17:19.579 --> 00:17:24.920
teaching engagements and family reunions and things like this. And
273
00:17:25.220 --> 00:17:30.700
just gone, you know, none of it's happening, canceled, or
274
00:17:31.039 --> 00:17:34.119
sometimes they say postponed, but till when you don't know.
275
00:17:34.920 --> 00:17:37.480
So it's for many people, it's like some kind of
276
00:17:37.539 --> 00:17:42.349
light bulb goes off around things like this. And they
277
00:17:42.390 --> 00:17:44.890
have
the feeling that they're not afterwards going to live
278
00:17:44.950 --> 00:17:48.109
on the surface anymore, that they'll have some more profound
279
00:17:48.170 --> 00:17:53.390
connection with the true facts of life as not being
280
00:17:53.849 --> 00:17:58.089
bad news, like impermanence, for instance, and change, not being
281
00:17:58.150 --> 00:18:01.470
bad news, but just being part of what it means
282
00:18:01.529 --> 00:18:04.710
to be a human being is that each moment and
283
00:18:04.769 --> 00:18:10.589
each day and your body and all your friends and relations,
284
00:18:10.910 --> 00:18:14.630
it's all impermanent. And when you talk about that to
285
00:18:15.049 --> 00:18:20.420
many people, they think you're being dismal or negative or something,
286
00:18:20.440 --> 00:18:23.509
you know? And so it's very hard how to convey
287
00:18:23.569 --> 00:18:26.049
that so that it's like a fact of life rather
288
00:18:26.109 --> 00:18:30.349
than a downer that you're just trying to paint a
289
00:18:30.410 --> 00:18:37.650
dark picture, a stormy picture of life. So the suffering,
290
00:18:38.789 --> 00:18:42.150
let me just say this also, then in a situation
291
00:18:42.190 --> 00:18:49.160
like this pandemic, it also makes you much more really
292
00:18:49.900 --> 00:18:53.960
able to be touched deeply by the suffering of other
293
00:18:54.019 --> 00:18:59.980
people and the losses that people are experiencing. So that
294
00:19:00.140 --> 00:19:04.470
the feeling of interconnectedness can be so strong and so vivid.
295
00:19:04.490 --> 00:19:10.890
And that's another, right, of the main truth that's inescapable
296
00:19:10.970 --> 00:19:13.539
right now is how interconnected we are.
297
00:19:14.819 --> 00:19:18.160
I agree. Yes, I mean, I think it's indisputable. There
298
00:19:18.220 --> 00:19:23.420
are some non-negotiable facts of existence and impermanence and interconnection
299
00:19:23.460 --> 00:19:26.140
are two of them. I wonder, though, I think it
300
00:19:26.180 --> 00:19:31.390
was you once I read, your books are some of
301
00:19:31.410 --> 00:19:33.170
the first Buddhist books that I ever read. And I
302
00:19:33.690 --> 00:19:35.789
think you used a phrase that has really stuck with me,
303
00:19:35.829 --> 00:19:39.079
which is the fact that we're programmed for denial. And
304
00:19:39.799 --> 00:19:42.539
You know, we're in an impossible situation in which to
305
00:19:42.579 --> 00:19:46.029
make forecasts. But I'm curious, just and we're very early
306
00:19:46.069 --> 00:19:48.829
in this crisis, but you talked and I agree with
307
00:19:48.849 --> 00:19:52.119
you that crises happen. and moments of getting in touch
308
00:19:52.200 --> 00:19:57.279
with the aforementioned non-negotiable truths of human existence can be
309
00:19:57.400 --> 00:20:01.190
times where we wake up, but we also can pretty
310
00:20:01.230 --> 00:20:04.690
easily go back to sleep. And so I wonder, do
311
00:20:04.750 --> 00:20:07.349
you imagine that this crisis could be a time where
312
00:20:08.809 --> 00:20:13.009
it could affect some fundamental changes on us as a species,
313
00:20:13.150 --> 00:20:14.930
or do you think we're just going to go back
314
00:20:15.000 --> 00:20:17.220
to shopping as a way to deal with our problems?
315
00:20:18.559 --> 00:20:21.980
Yeah, well, that's the big question. I don't really have
316
00:20:22.079 --> 00:20:25.759
a prophetic sense of it, but in this sense, I
317
00:20:25.819 --> 00:20:29.059
do see it as a big opportunity. And many people
318
00:20:29.119 --> 00:20:33.130
will take advantage of what they've learned through this. But
319
00:20:33.589 --> 00:20:38.829
I think when things are extreme... it often gets very
320
00:20:39.509 --> 00:20:43.589
clear that people either grow from it or their denial
321
00:20:43.769 --> 00:20:47.390
and even the sense of fundamentalism gets stronger. You know,
322
00:20:47.430 --> 00:20:50.569
the fear gets stronger. And so digging in your heels
323
00:20:50.670 --> 00:20:53.930
more and more, even more than before, gets stronger. So,
324
00:20:54.410 --> 00:20:58.170
you know, for someone like myself, I find that frightening
325
00:20:58.329 --> 00:21:02.490
and I'm committed to not having that happen, staying awake
326
00:21:02.789 --> 00:21:07.759
and to the teachings or the messages of these indisputable
327
00:21:07.839 --> 00:21:11.859
facts of these times. But so I don't know if
328
00:21:11.920 --> 00:21:14.119
I had to make a prediction, you know, I would
329
00:21:14.160 --> 00:21:18.900
just say maybe things, this is kind of a sad prediction,
330
00:21:19.480 --> 00:21:23.019
but perhaps things will get more polarized, that people will
331
00:21:23.200 --> 00:21:28.140
either become more fundamentalist or more open-hearted and open-minded, you know,
332
00:21:28.500 --> 00:21:33.569
more closed or more open might be the two directions
333
00:21:33.609 --> 00:21:38.480
that it goes, you know. I don't know. But even so,
334
00:21:38.500 --> 00:21:43.359
if you have to have, I personally have a lot
335
00:21:43.380 --> 00:21:46.190
of sympathy for someone who just wants to close down
336
00:21:46.269 --> 00:21:50.369
and dig in their heels and hold on to something
337
00:21:50.430 --> 00:21:56.509
desperately because it's just an attempt to be happy. It's
338
00:21:56.569 --> 00:22:00.180
just an attempt to be kind to oneself. It's just
339
00:22:00.240 --> 00:22:03.720
that it causes so much more suffering. That's the problem, right?
340
00:22:04.440 --> 00:22:07.769
causes so much more suffering for oneself and one other
341
00:22:07.849 --> 00:22:12.230
because one's fear grows rather than diminishes, and one's sense
342
00:22:12.410 --> 00:22:18.289
of danger grows rather than diminishing. Whereas if you're opening
343
00:22:18.329 --> 00:22:24.059
more and more, you feel more and more comfortable with uncertainty,
344
00:22:24.119 --> 00:22:29.420
more comfortable
with what life is presenting to you, or
345
00:22:29.460 --> 00:22:35.099
at least more flexible or ready to work with whatever
346
00:22:35.180 --> 00:22:38.859
might come, you know, something like that. Is that what
347
00:22:38.880 --> 00:22:40.680
you were asking? Yeah, yes.
348
00:22:44.599 --> 00:22:47.410
I ask questions without expecting any particular answer.
349
00:22:48.549 --> 00:22:51.549
Right, right. But sometimes, you know, I can go off
350
00:22:51.589 --> 00:22:55.109
on a tangent. It doesn't have much relationship to the question.
351
00:22:56.069 --> 00:22:57.819
So that's why I check in, you know.
352
00:22:58.299 --> 00:23:00.099
Well, let me assure you, you're in a safe place
353
00:23:00.140 --> 00:23:03.190
for tangents. This is a podcast. We like to we
354
00:23:03.230 --> 00:23:07.890
like digressions, rabbit holes. It's all good here. But you
355
00:23:07.930 --> 00:23:11.269
touched on something there that I think is incredibly important. Well,
356
00:23:11.329 --> 00:23:13.150
a million things that are incredibly important. But there's just
357
00:23:13.210 --> 00:23:14.710
one thing I'm going to pick up on here, which
358
00:23:14.799 --> 00:23:18.859
is the idea of having sympathy, empathy, compassion for people
359
00:23:19.000 --> 00:23:22.240
who are behaving in this situation in ways which we
360
00:23:22.299 --> 00:23:25.420
might deeply disagree with. I'm a newsman, so I'm not
361
00:23:25.440 --> 00:23:27.500
supposed to disagree with anybody. But I would say it's
362
00:23:27.539 --> 00:23:30.579
probably not a good idea to take an assault weapon
363
00:23:30.720 --> 00:23:33.950
to a state capitol building. But can we look at
364
00:23:34.069 --> 00:23:37.890
that and say, you know, I get I feel in myself,
365
00:23:37.970 --> 00:23:40.829
if I look carefully, the desire to clamp down and
366
00:23:40.890 --> 00:23:44.009
to resist the change and close down. And can I
367
00:23:44.779 --> 00:23:48.799
see that nugget of fear and close in the instinct
368
00:23:48.839 --> 00:23:53.390
to close down and project it outward and I understand
369
00:23:53.430 --> 00:23:55.640
that somebody else is just acting out of pain, even
370
00:23:55.680 --> 00:23:59.079
if I completely disagree with how they're handling that. That
371
00:23:59.140 --> 00:24:02.359
seems like a very useful function of the mind, to
372
00:24:02.440 --> 00:24:04.720
use a loaded term here, to make that go viral
373
00:24:04.779 --> 00:24:05.180
right now.
374
00:24:06.000 --> 00:24:09.779
Yeah, I think that's right. I think that people have
375
00:24:09.839 --> 00:24:13.180
trouble with this kind of thinking often because they think
376
00:24:13.240 --> 00:24:17.259
it means if you have some kind of empathetic reaction,
377
00:24:17.980 --> 00:24:21.670
then they feel that's the same thing as condoning. or
378
00:24:21.759 --> 00:24:25.319
thinking that the action was okay. So I suppose that's
379
00:24:25.380 --> 00:24:28.519
a subtle point. You don't condone the action, but on
380
00:24:28.539 --> 00:24:32.119
the other hand, you don't condemn the person. You know,
381
00:24:32.240 --> 00:24:36.160
I was reading this book by Paul Ekman and the
382
00:24:36.220 --> 00:24:41.299
Dalai Lama, Emotional Awareness, I think it's called, or something
383
00:24:41.339 --> 00:24:44.180
like that, in which the point is made again and
384
00:24:44.240 --> 00:24:46.950
again and again by the Dalai Lama and then by
385
00:24:47.029 --> 00:24:51.480
Paul Ekman that you condemn the act, but not the person.
386
00:24:52.200 --> 00:24:55.289
And that there's always a sense that the person is
387
00:24:55.349 --> 00:25:01.029
capable of changing. And the person has goodness in their heart,
388
00:25:01.769 --> 00:25:08.029
as well as getting extremely carried away by aggression and hatred, etc.
389
00:25:08.789 --> 00:25:11.720
But condemning the action, but not the person, I think
390
00:25:11.779 --> 00:25:16.960
that's something that I definitely adhere to and try to follow,
391
00:25:17.039 --> 00:25:21.450
you know. in my life. And it comes fairly naturally
392
00:25:21.589 --> 00:25:25.029
for me, but it doesn't make you stupid, you know,
393
00:25:25.150 --> 00:25:30.380
about when there's danger, where danger lies, and it doesn't
394
00:25:30.430 --> 00:25:34.640
make you think that somebody shouldn't. But you realize, even
395
00:25:34.680 --> 00:25:37.079
from the point of view of Buddha's teachings on karma,
396
00:25:37.460 --> 00:25:41.920
the realization that those actions will have results. There will
397
00:25:42.000 --> 00:25:46.269
always be consequences to any actions, actions that are beneficial
398
00:25:46.349 --> 00:25:49.630
to others or actions that are harmful to others. And
399
00:25:49.650 --> 00:25:52.920
the consequences will be to other people, but they'll also
400
00:25:52.980 --> 00:25:57.259
be to oneself. So I think that's something that you
401
00:25:57.480 --> 00:26:00.480
keep in mind. I was always very struck by the
402
00:26:00.519 --> 00:26:06.450
fact that the Tibetans, when the Chinese communists overtook Tibet in,
403
00:26:07.470 --> 00:26:10.269
was it the 50s, right, that that happened?
404
00:26:10.710 --> 00:26:11.670
I believe so, yes.
405
00:26:11.730 --> 00:26:16.880
Yeah. Yeah. So many people were put in prison and tortured.
406
00:26:17.779 --> 00:26:21.980
And I've heard so many accounts. I read once this
407
00:26:22.079 --> 00:26:25.589
study that I've never been able to find, but I
408
00:26:25.640 --> 00:26:29.109
read this study about someone was very intrigued by how
409
00:26:29.269 --> 00:26:33.329
could people who had been tortured on a regular basis
410
00:26:33.470 --> 00:26:37.109
very brutally, how is it that they could come out
411
00:26:37.130 --> 00:26:41.740
of that without post-traumatic stress? which was an observation that
412
00:26:41.799 --> 00:26:44.839
people did come out of it without the post-traumatic stress,
413
00:26:45.380 --> 00:26:49.460
I guess many of them. And the conclusion of the
414
00:26:49.589 --> 00:26:55.029
article was that it was because they held a view that,
415
00:26:55.430 --> 00:26:57.509
which is, by the way, this is not a view
416
00:26:57.569 --> 00:27:01.970
that's easy for Western people to handle, but nevertheless, they
417
00:27:02.029 --> 00:27:07.990
held the view from their Buddhist teachings that what was
418
00:27:08.069 --> 00:27:12.410
happening to them was their opportunity for them to pay
419
00:27:12.470 --> 00:27:16.039
some kind of karmic debt but their real worry was
420
00:27:16.380 --> 00:27:20.500
for the people that were torturing them because they were
421
00:27:20.559 --> 00:27:29.039
creating such hellish future circumstances for themselves and so someone
422
00:27:29.279 --> 00:27:33.859
asked this one monk were you ever afraid and he
423
00:27:33.940 --> 00:27:36.220
said yes and then they said what were you afraid
424
00:27:36.440 --> 00:27:41.049
of he said I was afraid that I would lose
425
00:27:41.130 --> 00:27:45.509
my compassion for the people that were torturing me. So
426
00:27:45.650 --> 00:27:52.170
that's a very extreme example of this ability to see,
427
00:27:52.690 --> 00:27:55.150
to look at things very differently, you know, in terms
428
00:27:55.259 --> 00:27:59.440
of who's creating the suffering here in this situation, you know,
429
00:27:59.680 --> 00:28:02.119
for themselves. So I don't know.
430
00:28:03.160 --> 00:28:06.460
You know, that reminds me of, you don't have to
431
00:28:07.240 --> 00:28:10.680
even believe in rebirth or karma. I've done a few
432
00:28:10.740 --> 00:28:13.240
stories as a reporter over the years with people who
433
00:28:13.309 --> 00:28:16.809
were wrongly convicted and spent decades of their lives behind bars.
434
00:28:17.410 --> 00:28:19.849
And afterwards, I would ask them, are you angry? How
435
00:28:19.890 --> 00:28:24.230
do you I would be angry. And to one of
436
00:28:24.710 --> 00:28:26.930
the men I interviewed who were in that situation said
437
00:28:26.950 --> 00:28:31.190
to me, if I give in to that anger, it
438
00:28:31.230 --> 00:28:34.140
will consume me. You know, they just spoke very eloquently
439
00:28:34.160 --> 00:28:37.279
about the disutility of that kind of rage and bitterness.
440
00:28:37.839 --> 00:28:40.079
in terms of their ability to move forward?
441
00:28:40.859 --> 00:28:45.880
I remember reading an interview with Nelson Mandela, where the
442
00:28:45.940 --> 00:28:49.609
interviewer asked him that same question, weren't you angry? And
443
00:28:49.720 --> 00:28:53.049
he said, yes, I was angry. But I realized that
444
00:28:53.210 --> 00:28:56.970
if exactly what you said, and this case, my memory
445
00:28:57.049 --> 00:28:59.950
is what he said was, if I let that anger
446
00:29:00.049 --> 00:29:04.930
consume me, then I'm still their prisoner, you know? And so...
447
00:29:05.779 --> 00:29:07.859
I'm not going
to let myself be consumed in that
448
00:29:07.940 --> 00:29:12.119
way because then nothing has shifted. I'm out of prison,
449
00:29:12.160 --> 00:29:14.640
but only in my body. But in my mind, I'm
450
00:29:14.700 --> 00:29:20.990
still completely caught. So I always remember that. It's the
451
00:29:21.009 --> 00:29:21.950
same idea, right?
452
00:29:22.869 --> 00:29:26.190
I think it's exactly the same idea, just articulated in
453
00:29:26.230 --> 00:29:30.289
a different way. So how do we want to endure
454
00:29:30.309 --> 00:29:34.710
the hardships? A friend of mine wrote to me something
455
00:29:34.750 --> 00:29:36.880
about this on text. that he said, you know, I've
456
00:29:36.900 --> 00:29:39.490
been through crises in my life where I had the
457
00:29:39.509 --> 00:29:41.839
crisis and then I had all the rage I was
458
00:29:41.900 --> 00:29:44.500
adding on top of it. I'm not doing that this time.
459
00:29:45.680 --> 00:29:48.869
Yeah. Yeah. Good for him. Good for him. Yeah, that's
460
00:29:48.930 --> 00:29:51.730
the idea. That's the idea right there. But, you know,
461
00:29:51.769 --> 00:29:55.490
there's that thing about. You're poisoning yourself. You eat rat
462
00:29:55.569 --> 00:30:01.220
poison thinking that the rat will die. But it's you
463
00:30:01.279 --> 00:30:05.099
that's suffering from the whole thing. Yeah, that's right. So
464
00:30:05.140 --> 00:30:08.220
that's a wise person who texted you that.
465
00:30:09.619 --> 00:30:11.460
More 10% Happier after this. Let's look back to the
466
00:30:11.500 --> 00:30:25.400
issue of fear. Because you've written about the notion of
467
00:30:25.529 --> 00:30:29.529
intimacy with fear. And I think I'll confront you again
468
00:30:29.569 --> 00:30:31.369
with one of your quotes here. The next time you
469
00:30:31.849 --> 00:30:34.670
you wrote the next time you encounter fear, consider yourself lucky.
470
00:30:34.950 --> 00:30:38.079
And I know you're being provocative there. But I wonder
471
00:30:38.119 --> 00:30:40.960
if we could get granular about ways in which we
472
00:30:40.980 --> 00:30:44.200
could actually practice with the fear, given that most of
473
00:30:44.279 --> 00:30:48.220
our listeners are meditators or meditation curious. Could you talk
474
00:30:48.259 --> 00:30:50.730
a little bit about how we could work with fear
475
00:30:50.769 --> 00:30:51.390
in our own minds?
476
00:30:52.319 --> 00:30:55.839
Well, I kind of was alluding to it earlier, where
477
00:30:55.859 --> 00:30:59.519
I was talking about meditation and that you get very
478
00:30:59.599 --> 00:31:04.180
close to yourself. It becomes a process of becoming familiar
479
00:31:04.220 --> 00:31:07.720
with yourself and familiar with your habits, but with an
480
00:31:07.829 --> 00:31:12.650
attitude of another quote from Trungpa Rinpoche, my main teacher,
481
00:31:13.029 --> 00:31:17.289
that I really like was, you place that fearful mind
482
00:31:17.970 --> 00:31:22.789
in the cradle of loving kindness. So That's a rather
483
00:31:23.029 --> 00:31:28.450
poetic way of trying, of expressing something, but sometimes that's
484
00:31:29.069 --> 00:31:32.509
the closest you can get rather than like a step-by-step
485
00:31:32.670 --> 00:31:36.490
process or something. But I do think that's the key
486
00:31:37.059 --> 00:31:40.940
to working with fear is placing it in the cradle
487
00:31:40.960 --> 00:31:46.160
of loving kindness, which is to say, acknowledge, then some
488
00:31:46.240 --> 00:31:50.609
sense you might have to really notice what you're saying
489
00:31:50.670 --> 00:31:53.849
to yourself, like what the storylines are and how they
490
00:31:54.009 --> 00:32:00.930
are escalating the fear, exaggerating the fear, heightening the fear.
491
00:32:01.809 --> 00:32:07.730
And then through meditation, you learn all styles of Buddhist meditation.
492
00:32:07.859 --> 00:32:11.220
You learn to let the thoughts go and just come
493
00:32:11.279 --> 00:32:14.039
right back. And in this case, come back to the
494
00:32:14.940 --> 00:32:19.480
maybe physically embodied, how do you feel in your body.
495
00:32:19.779 --> 00:32:22.660
So let's say, okay, so in terms of step-by-step, it's
496
00:32:22.720 --> 00:32:27.940
something about through meditation, becoming aware, being able to acknowledge
497
00:32:28.569 --> 00:32:33.170
with kindness and then being embodied, like come into your
498
00:32:33.210 --> 00:32:38.009
body to the degree that you're able through your meditation practice,
499
00:32:38.390 --> 00:32:41.730
letting thoughts go, they come and then you let them go.
500
00:32:42.529 --> 00:32:46.799
And rather than feeding them and escalating them with the
501
00:32:46.839 --> 00:32:51.599
realization with the kind of understanding that the thoughts are
502
00:32:51.619 --> 00:32:54.079
going to cause you a lot of suffering because of
503
00:32:54.140 --> 00:32:58.339
the fact that they like pouring kerosene on the fire
504
00:32:58.359 --> 00:33:00.559
to put it out. You know, you think if I
505
00:33:00.599 --> 00:33:03.750
could just think my way out of this, I wouldn't
506
00:33:03.809 --> 00:33:07.329
have to feel this fear. But in fact, all those
507
00:33:07.410 --> 00:33:11.710
thoughts are causing you more pain. So letting the storylines
508
00:33:11.950 --> 00:33:15.609
come and go, not making them bad, but being aware
509
00:33:15.809 --> 00:33:18.970
of their power to cause you to suffer. So letting
510
00:33:19.029 --> 00:33:22.769
storylines go and go to your body, feel the fear
511
00:33:22.910 --> 00:33:27.869
in your body, wherever it's contracted. So for instance, fear,
512
00:33:28.269 --> 00:33:32.420
people feel it in different ways. Sometimes it's in the throat,
513
00:33:32.980 --> 00:33:38.460
sometimes in the shoulders, often in the solar plexus, sometimes
514
00:33:38.539 --> 00:33:42.019
in the stomach, often in the heart area. And I'm
515
00:33:42.079 --> 00:33:46.619
sure
there's other places that fear is felt. And then
516
00:33:47.380 --> 00:33:52.920
One actual method is then to breathe deeply. This comes
517
00:33:53.000 --> 00:33:57.839
more from the Theravadan approach, but it's you breathe deeply
518
00:33:57.900 --> 00:34:02.019
into those places. So like with the in-breath, you open
519
00:34:02.279 --> 00:34:06.430
and there's some sense of expansion and letting yourself feel
520
00:34:07.049 --> 00:34:10.849
the fear physically, not think about the fear, but actually
521
00:34:11.050 --> 00:34:14.230
embody it, feel it. And then when you breathe out,
522
00:34:14.250 --> 00:34:19.210
there's also that sense of relaxation, So you breathe in
523
00:34:19.269 --> 00:34:22.789
with a sense of opening and warmth. You breathe out
524
00:34:22.849 --> 00:34:25.210
with a sense of opening and warmth in and out
525
00:34:25.250 --> 00:34:30.110
of that contracted place so that what's contracted can relax
526
00:34:30.190 --> 00:34:34.289
and expand. And that's a very practical way of working
527
00:34:34.349 --> 00:34:38.829
with fear. In other words, not mentally trying to figure
528
00:34:38.889 --> 00:34:41.929
it out, but just go to your body, get in
529
00:34:41.969 --> 00:34:45.460
touch with what it feels like physically, And then breathe
530
00:34:45.679 --> 00:34:48.860
in and out of the places that are contracted and
531
00:34:48.940 --> 00:34:52.619
tight and work with it that way. What do you think?
532
00:34:53.429 --> 00:34:55.889
I love it. Something you said earlier about not trying
533
00:34:55.929 --> 00:34:58.449
to use, this is something, a problem I bump up
534
00:34:58.510 --> 00:35:02.090
against personally, not wanting to use corny language, but then,
535
00:35:02.329 --> 00:35:03.949
you know, as soon as you get into this stuff,
536
00:35:03.989 --> 00:35:06.690
you can't help it. And the thing about the wisdom
537
00:35:06.769 --> 00:35:09.880
of the body is, yeah, it sounds corny to say it.
538
00:35:10.050 --> 00:35:12.360
And yet what are you supposed to do? Because it
539
00:35:12.400 --> 00:35:15.210
happens to be true. And so, Yeah, we can get
540
00:35:15.309 --> 00:35:18.800
stuck in thinking about things or planning or worrying or
541
00:35:18.880 --> 00:35:22.880
regretting in past or future mode. But the body is
542
00:35:22.920 --> 00:35:26.829
always right here and in the only time it ever is.
543
00:35:27.570 --> 00:35:31.110
And to kind of move your attention out of your
544
00:35:31.170 --> 00:35:35.429
head and into your body. in an animalistic sense, in
545
00:35:35.449 --> 00:35:38.929
a creaturely sense, as my friend Jeff often says, can
546
00:35:39.610 --> 00:35:42.969
be a nice short circuit on the habits and the
547
00:35:43.010 --> 00:35:45.110
patterns of rumination and anxiety.
548
00:35:45.750 --> 00:35:48.449
That's right. I was talking to a student of mine
549
00:35:48.489 --> 00:35:52.090
recently who was telling me, he said that he decided
550
00:35:52.170 --> 00:35:55.789
that he was going to spend a week, it was
551
00:35:55.829 --> 00:35:59.449
just recently, so he was working with fear around what's
552
00:35:59.489 --> 00:36:02.440
going to happen after this, or It had a lot
553
00:36:02.480 --> 00:36:07.239
to do with his financial situation or lack thereof, you know.
554
00:36:08.030 --> 00:36:10.489
So he said, I'm going to spend a week, five
555
00:36:10.530 --> 00:36:13.949
days to a week, just trying to think this through
556
00:36:14.690 --> 00:36:17.469
and see how I feel at the end of the week.
557
00:36:17.809 --> 00:36:20.880
And then I'll try a week of what you're proposing
558
00:36:20.940 --> 00:36:26.260
here of letting the storylines dissolve as much as best
559
00:36:26.340 --> 00:36:31.090
I can and just keep coming back. to what it
560
00:36:31.170 --> 00:36:34.329
feels like in my body and breathing in and out
561
00:36:34.429 --> 00:36:39.190
of that in a relaxed, open way. So I thought
562
00:36:39.230 --> 00:36:41.849
that was great, you know, like, okay, I'm just going
563
00:36:41.869 --> 00:36:44.690
to find out for myself. Well, I think you can
564
00:36:44.869 --> 00:36:51.719
guess really which week ended with him feeling more settled
565
00:36:52.059 --> 00:36:56.679
and getting more insight and some sense of moving through
566
00:36:56.780 --> 00:37:01.780
something rather than getting stuck. So the week where he
567
00:37:01.840 --> 00:37:04.519
just fed it, he said he actually, he couldn't last
568
00:37:04.559 --> 00:37:07.579
a week. He said when he started doing that consciously,
569
00:37:08.019 --> 00:37:11.360
when he was very aware that that's what he was doing,
570
00:37:11.420 --> 00:37:14.739
almost like a practice, he just could not keep it
571
00:37:14.840 --> 00:37:19.389
up because it was so excruciating. So then he tried
572
00:37:19.429 --> 00:37:21.429
the other and he said it was just something to
573
00:37:21.489 --> 00:37:25.659
do about the fact that the way he put it was,
574
00:37:25.960 --> 00:37:29.179
there was nothing between me and the feeling. It was
575
00:37:29.280 --> 00:37:33.730
just right there. That's all that was happening. There weren't
576
00:37:33.789 --> 00:37:38.030
thoughts in between. There was no nothing. I wasn't distracting myself.
577
00:37:38.570 --> 00:37:42.809
It was just very direct and dealing with the immediacy
578
00:37:42.869 --> 00:37:46.889
of my experience, he said. And that he felt was
579
00:37:47.369 --> 00:37:49.889
just that, that he was dealing with the immediacy of
580
00:37:49.929 --> 00:37:54.070
his experience, even without the breathing in and breathing out.
581
00:37:54.610 --> 00:37:59.150
was so much more settling for him. He felt so
582
00:37:59.210 --> 00:38:03.789
much more on the mark, felt so much more accurate
583
00:38:03.829 --> 00:38:07.670
and genuine and helpful. And then he did the breathing
584
00:38:07.750 --> 00:38:10.449
thing too. And in his case, it was very
helpful
585
00:38:10.510 --> 00:38:13.880
to him. It's not that helpful to everybody, but there's nothing,
586
00:38:13.889 --> 00:38:16.880
I don't think, that's that helpful to everybody. There have
587
00:38:16.900 --> 00:38:19.320
to be various methods for this kind of thing.
588
00:38:20.079 --> 00:38:22.780
Well, actually, you led me exactly to the question that
589
00:38:22.800 --> 00:38:26.179
popped up in my mind, which is, How broadly applicable
590
00:38:26.219 --> 00:38:29.800
these techniques are. So you're in an abbey in Nova Scotia.
591
00:38:29.880 --> 00:38:32.380
I'm on the Upper West Side in a comparatively very
592
00:38:32.420 --> 00:38:36.000
comfortable situation. What about for people who have to go
593
00:38:36.039 --> 00:38:38.400
into a hospital every day to clean the room or
594
00:38:39.159 --> 00:38:42.369
somebody who's lost their job and needs to go to
595
00:38:42.409 --> 00:38:46.090
a food pantry? For people in really, truly acute situations,
596
00:38:46.190 --> 00:38:47.969
are these techniques workable, do you think?
597
00:38:48.789 --> 00:38:51.670
I do think so, yes. I do think so. You're
598
00:38:51.730 --> 00:38:59.030
talking about truly desperate situations, especially both of those instances
599
00:38:59.090 --> 00:39:01.820
that you said. One, you have your job, but your
600
00:39:01.860 --> 00:39:04.920
job is so dangerous. And the other, you were just
601
00:39:05.079 --> 00:39:10.579
scraping by with your minimum wage job before being barely
602
00:39:10.659 --> 00:39:13.199
able to pay the rent or buy the food or
603
00:39:13.340 --> 00:39:16.579
feed the kids or whatever it was. And now all
604
00:39:16.599 --> 00:39:19.079
of that's gone and the schools are closed. It's just
605
00:39:19.139 --> 00:39:22.900
like a nightmare. Yeah, I've talked to people who work
606
00:39:22.920 --> 00:39:26.429
in the hospitals, had a number of talks with some
607
00:39:26.469 --> 00:39:29.949
of them, and this kind of technique has been very helpful.
608
00:39:30.079 --> 00:39:34.239
to them to just go in and be there for people. Otherwise,
609
00:39:34.280 --> 00:39:37.179
they say, you know, before they were, it was like
610
00:39:37.400 --> 00:39:39.280
they just didn't know if they could go in. They
611
00:39:39.320 --> 00:39:43.400
were so afraid of contacting the disease, even though they
612
00:39:43.440 --> 00:39:45.840
had lots and lots of protection and all of that.
613
00:39:46.320 --> 00:39:49.550
They were so afraid. And so they worked this way.
614
00:39:50.369 --> 00:39:54.030
And then I've talked to inmates in prison who find
615
00:39:54.050 --> 00:40:00.369
this technique extremely helpful. So I haven't had the opportunity,
616
00:40:00.530 --> 00:40:03.409
which I would very much value, but to talk to,
617
00:40:04.050 --> 00:40:09.340
start to have conversations with people that have lost their employment. Actually,
618
00:40:09.360 --> 00:40:12.739
I had one. It was a man who he and
619
00:40:12.760 --> 00:40:17.000
his wife have been building a business, kind of a
620
00:40:17.119 --> 00:40:22.550
nature resort for children. almost 30 years. And it's never
621
00:40:22.590 --> 00:40:25.309
been a big moneymaker, but they've always been able to
622
00:40:25.909 --> 00:40:27.739
make a living and they always felt it was so
623
00:40:27.800 --> 00:40:32.400
worthwhile and gave them a lot of joy, this particular work.
624
00:40:33.380 --> 00:40:36.679
So now he was almost in tears talking to me
625
00:40:36.739 --> 00:40:39.699
because he said, you know, we have bills to pay
626
00:40:39.780 --> 00:40:43.599
and everybody is canceling. All the people that were signed
627
00:40:43.739 --> 00:40:46.869
up to come for the summer season, every single one
628
00:40:46.909 --> 00:40:49.570
of them has canceled and we have our bills to pay.
629
00:40:49.630 --> 00:40:53.059
And like, What are we going to do? And he
630
00:40:53.139 --> 00:40:56.420
said that the only thing that was helping him and
631
00:40:56.460 --> 00:41:00.380
his wife was this kind of meditation. And that was
632
00:41:00.480 --> 00:41:04.309
actually a big help. So there is one person that
633
00:41:04.349 --> 00:41:08.829
I talked to whose whole livelihood was gone, you know, gone.
634
00:41:10.070 --> 00:41:12.750
The other thing I haven't heard anything about, but I
635
00:41:12.849 --> 00:41:16.500
feel great concern about, for people who were, there has
636
00:41:16.599 --> 00:41:19.300
been a history of violence in the family and they're
637
00:41:19.360 --> 00:41:23.260
now all cooped up together. That's very frightening to think about.
638
00:41:23.340 --> 00:41:26.320
And I haven't even read one thing about that, but
639
00:41:26.599 --> 00:41:29.179
it must be going on quite a bit. I would think,
640
00:41:30.000 --> 00:41:34.659
you know, terrifying kind of domestic situations because of all this.
641
00:41:35.920 --> 00:41:38.519
So there's a lot that can open your heart, you know,
642
00:41:38.659 --> 00:41:42.650
and bring out your love and compassion for humanity and,
643
00:41:43.829 --> 00:41:47.889
the wish for things to work out for people. But
644
00:41:47.929 --> 00:41:49.929
I think what we're talking about here a little bit
645
00:41:49.969 --> 00:41:53.500
is what if certain things are not work outable? What
646
00:41:53.539 --> 00:41:56.980
about if this is just how it's going to be? Like,
647
00:41:57.400 --> 00:42:00.900
how do you live with that? So I think the
648
00:42:01.659 --> 00:42:05.090
meditation can be very helpful in that way. And one
649
00:42:05.110 --> 00:42:07.769
of the things that's helpful about it also is that
650
00:42:08.469 --> 00:42:12.869
if you calm down enough and can settle enough with yourself,
651
00:42:14.269 --> 00:42:16.809
in this way where there is a lot of warmth
652
00:42:16.929 --> 00:42:20.610
and compassion available toward yourself, and then it begins to
653
00:42:20.679 --> 00:42:24.659
expand out
to other people. When you can do that,
654
00:42:25.159 --> 00:42:28.659
sometimes when you can calm down like that, I use
655
00:42:28.699 --> 00:42:32.880
that expression, calm down, but settle maybe, insights come to
656
00:42:32.940 --> 00:42:38.210
you about a new, fresh perspective on what you might do,
657
00:42:38.809 --> 00:42:43.510
how you might handle it differently. So, for instance, the
658
00:42:43.550 --> 00:42:46.409
man I was talking to you about whose business is
659
00:42:47.170 --> 00:42:50.460
falling apart, I mean, has just dried up on him
660
00:42:50.980 --> 00:42:53.480
and he has to pay his bills. He said that
661
00:42:53.579 --> 00:42:57.159
his children who are in their 20s, they never showed
662
00:42:57.300 --> 00:43:00.280
any interest in the business. But now they're coming up
663
00:43:00.340 --> 00:43:04.329
with all these fresh ideas about how they might work
664
00:43:04.349 --> 00:43:07.630
with things later. And so it's those kind of insights
665
00:43:07.690 --> 00:43:10.670
that have the opportunity to come up if you settle,
666
00:43:11.530 --> 00:43:14.610
if you settle. And then the benefit to other people
667
00:43:14.710 --> 00:43:18.619
is undeniable. I mean, the story I've told many times
668
00:43:19.000 --> 00:43:24.239
recently is Thich Nhat Hanh's writing about the boat people
669
00:43:25.119 --> 00:43:29.699
leaving Vietnam, going out into the sea, and the pirates coming,
670
00:43:30.480 --> 00:43:34.309
and knowing that the pirates could kill everybody on your boat,
671
00:43:34.429 --> 00:43:39.530
could rape all the women, just knowing what horror might
672
00:43:39.610 --> 00:43:43.420
be coming. He said, if one person on the boat
673
00:43:43.719 --> 00:43:48.699
remained calm, it had the ability to calm everybody. And
674
00:43:48.980 --> 00:43:52.199
I think that's something that I have in mind a
675
00:43:52.239 --> 00:43:56.119
lot is wanting to be that person on the boat
676
00:43:56.179 --> 00:44:00.289
that could have that impact on other people. And then
677
00:44:00.489 --> 00:44:02.750
if you're just honest with yourself and say, I'm not
678
00:44:02.849 --> 00:44:06.610
there yet, I'm not that person who can stay calm,
679
00:44:07.289 --> 00:44:12.500
at least you can contemplate the effect of that calmness
680
00:44:12.679 --> 00:44:16.440
on you. And it gives you motivation for why you
681
00:44:16.480 --> 00:44:21.000
might practice in this way. So what do you think?
682
00:44:22.480 --> 00:44:25.400
I think that I agree with everything you said and
683
00:44:25.460 --> 00:44:29.090
that I am really grateful to you for spending so
684
00:44:29.119 --> 00:44:32.250
much time talking to me and the folks who listen
685
00:44:32.269 --> 00:44:34.489
to the show. I'm very grateful.
686
00:44:34.730 --> 00:44:38.130
Thank you. You're very welcome, and may we meet again,
687
00:44:38.530 --> 00:44:40.849
and we'll see where this all goes, right?
688
00:44:41.730 --> 00:44:43.389
Yeah, now's the time to get in touch with the
689
00:44:43.429 --> 00:44:44.389
fact that we don't know.
690
00:44:45.530 --> 00:44:51.420
We don't know. We definitely don't know. That's right. Okay.
691
00:44:51.780 --> 00:44:54.659
Lots of love, and may you be well and stay
692
00:44:54.699 --> 00:44:55.860
healthy there in New York.
693
00:44:56.699 --> 00:44:59.920
Thank you. Right back at you. Wishing you safety and,
694
00:45:00.119 --> 00:45:02.230
to the best of your ability, ease all the way
695
00:45:02.289 --> 00:45:03.190
up there in Nova Scotia.
696
00:45:03.210 --> 00:45:04.789
Okay. Okay.
697
00:45:05.880 --> 00:45:06.860
Take care. Thank you.
698
00:45:07.099 --> 00:45:07.599
Bye bye.
699
00:45:10.380 --> 00:45:12.739
Big thanks to Pema. A little bit of an announcement here.
700
00:45:12.760 --> 00:45:14.239
I'm kind of bearing the lead. Maybe I should have
701
00:45:14.260 --> 00:45:17.610
said this earlier. On our next episode, which drops on Wednesday,
702
00:45:17.630 --> 00:45:21.750
we've got a really big guest, an obscure meditation teacher
703
00:45:22.250 --> 00:45:25.170
by the name of His Holiness the Dalai Lama will
704
00:45:25.190 --> 00:45:28.469
be coming on the podcast. Very excited for that. So
705
00:45:29.039 --> 00:45:31.760
keep it here for much more. Big thanks to the
706
00:45:31.780 --> 00:45:35.300
team who work incredibly hard to make this podcast happen
707
00:45:35.940 --> 00:45:40.219
on such a busy cadence during this pandemic. Samuel Johns
708
00:45:40.300 --> 00:45:43.809
is the point man as our producer. Our sound engineers,
709
00:45:43.849 --> 00:45:48.650
Matt Boynton and Anya Shashik of Ultraviolet Audio. Maria Wirtel
710
00:45:48.730 --> 00:45:53.800
is our indefatigable production coordinator. We also get an enormous
711
00:45:53.840 --> 00:45:57.340
amount of insight and guidance from colleagues at 10% Happier,
712
00:45:57.420 --> 00:46:01.789
including Nate Tobey, Jen Poyant, and Ben Rubin. And, of course,
713
00:46:02.329 --> 00:46:05.420
my guys at ABC, Ryan Kessler and Josh Kohan. We'll
714
00:46:05.440 --> 00:46:07.590
see you on Wednesday for the Dalai Lama.