Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 11: Lama Tsomo

Episode Date: April 27, 2016

Lama Tsomo is one of the first American women to be ordained as a Tibetan Buddhist lama, or spiritual teacher. Born Linda Pritzker, she is part of the family that built the Hyatt hotel chain. But Lama Tsomo embarked on a very different path, diving deeply into Buddhism, spending months on retreat, learning Tibetan and teaching around the world. She sat down with Dan Harris to talk about her story and to detail some of these Tibetan practices. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It kind of blows my mind to consider the fact that we're up to nearly 600 episodes of this podcast, the 10% happier podcast. That's a lot of conversations. I like to think of it as a great compendium of, and I know this is a bit of a grandiose term, but wisdom. The only downside of having this vast library of audio is that it can be hard to know where to start. So we're launching a new feature here, playlists, just like you put together a playlist of your favorite songs.

Back in the day, we used to call those mix tapes. Just like you do that with music, you can do it with podcasts. So if you're looking for episodes about anxiety, we've got a playlist of all of our anxiety episodes. Or if you're looking for how to sleep better, we've got a playlist of all of our anxiety episodes, or if you're looking for how to sleep better, we've got a playlist for that. We've even put together a playlist of some of my personal favorite episodes. That was a hard list to make. Check out our playlists at 10%.com slash playlist. That's 10% all one word spelled out. Dot com slash playlist singular.

Let us know what you think. We're always open to tweaking how we do things. And maybe there's a playlist we haven't thought of. Hit me up on Twitter or submit a comment through the website. From ABC, this is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. La Mutt Somo has a truly fascinating story. She's one of the first American women to be ordained as a Tibetan Buddhist Lama or spiritual

teacher. Her birth name is Linda Pritzker. She's part of the famous Pritzker family, which built a high hotel chain, but she has taken a very, very different path in her life, diving very deeply into Buddhism, spending months on retreat, actually learning to speak to Beten and now teaching all over the world. She's just written a book, it's called Why is the Dalai Lama always smiling in which she tells her story and also details some of these Tibetan practices which to those of us in the West who are practicing either secular mindfulness or insight

meditation will be new and different and extremely interesting. So Lamat Somal, thanks for being here. Glad to be here. Thanks for having me. Congratulations on your new book. Thanks. We were just discussing before the podcast started. I'm sort of embarrassed who had met. I've only read about two-thirds of it because I ran out of time, but it's really, really, really interesting. And again, as somebody who's been trained in both secular mindfulness and insight meditation, or teravodin meditation, all of this stuff is new to me and just deeply, deeply fascinating. You do a really good job of explaining it in simple terms. But before I get to that, let's start at the beginning.

So how did you go from being a Pritzker to Lama Tsama? How did that happen? How did that pretty big shift happen? Okay, so I don't think you mean about the names themselves. No So I was just really to me just sort of a regular American person wanting to be happy all the time and never suffer. And despite pursuing happiness all day every day and trying to avoid suffering all day every day, and then in dreams at night probably pursuing the same thing, I wasn't succeeding

in avoiding suffering or always being happy. And actually, my life had angst in it as all of our lives do. You know, now I'm thinking of the word duka, which is translated as suffering, but actually is more like baked-in insufficiency of life. So let me just stop here right there. So duka is an ancient word in the poly language, the language of the Buddha,

which is translated now as suffering, but the Buddha's principal pronouncement was life is suffering, which is, I think, widely agreed now among the experts to be kind of a mis-translation, because he wasn't saying that life is like having your innards pecked out by crows, he was saying that life is inherently unsatisfying if you're always latching onto things that will not last. is inherently unsatisfying if you're always latching out the things they will not last. That's yeah one problem and also trying to avoid the things that we don't like. So there's a famous Zen saying, enlightenment is easy for those who have no preferences. The problem is of course we have serious preferences. And we keep putting what we prefer, sort of as an overlay on top of what actually is. So that turns out to be

a source of suffering. You are very open and honest and I think a courageous way about your childhood you say and this is a quote from the book, throughout my childhood I felt lonely sad and not very safe. I used to cry for no apparent reason and I was just waiting to graduate high school and leave home. The underlying tone of that time was a melancholic longing though I didn't even know for what. Yeah. What was going on? Oh gosh. I think what we were just describing was really at the root of it and I don't think I'm alone and having felt that way. And so there are lots of, I mean, each person's childhood is unique. And yet we can all relate to some of those statements, I think. So I think at the root of it, I wasn't being shown how to navigate life in a skillful way. And my parents weren't shown that either. Nobody was teaching it in school. And so I wasn't learning it. And so it turns out I was being pretty bad at it.

What I came later to learn now fast forward to when I spent a lot of time on the cushion and had a chance to watch what my mind does, I could see I was my own movie producer and writer was starring in my own movie and I wasn't even aware of that and I hadn't learned how to do it well. So why is it a surprise that the movie is turning out badly? Mm-hmm. What point did you start meditating? Well, it seemed like a good idea to me when I was living in the country and in gosh, I think I was like 20 years old. So fresh out of college. Yeah, I didn't even graduate college.

I left college because it was, I felt like I didn't like the way they were teaching things. I ended up getting my degree after having my kids and then my masters as well. But any of your pre-lama days, even though you were doing some meditating, you had a pretty conventional life. Got married, had kids in some ways. Yeah, although home studying in the country is not something everyone does. No, no, no. I don't know how many goat owners there are in this country that I think is a small demographic.

Mm-hmm. This podcast is actually entirely targeted to goat owners. Okay, so you didn't want a lot of listeners, do you? No, no, no. Okay, so you didn't want a lot of listeners. No, no, no, no. Okay, you succeeded. I'm actually thinking about getting a couple of goats again. Well, you live in the country still. I live in the country again. And very happy too. It's my natural habitat. So you dropped out of school, you went, you were homesteading for a while, and that was the unconventional part of it, and you were also meditating, but you also got married and had some kids.

So this is all in the pre. Yes, and I'm not speaking of go kids at that point. These are human children, and you- Human. Three of them. This is pre, even though you were meditating, this is pre-lama days. It was pre-instruction. So I really had the feeling,

I must be doing a terrible job at this. And I probably was, but nevertheless, when I gave up, because I thought, I'm not doing myself any good here, that's when five years passed, and I realized, oh my gosh, I'm not doing with my life what I need to be doing. And I'm really off course. I was with the wrong people doing the wrong stuff and that kind of thing and living in the wrong place. And I just

suddenly sort of kind of came to and said, no, no, this is not my path in life. This is not the life that I need to live. Everybody's got their own, you know, and I could just feel I'm off track. And so I decided I have to resume meditating because I realized, hmm, so every day I was not reacting to things on the outside for at least those 15 minutes, it was 15 minute meditations at the time. And that allowed me to just kind of like that eight ball with the message bubbling up.

I was there. I was there to see it. I was there to see it. I was there to hear it. And so all the thousands of decisions I was making then throughout my day was, were that much more on track because of having tuned into myself, pushed the reset button, whatever you want to say. And so I thought, okay, well, so it turns out meditation is important to do, even if it's bad meditation. But imagine if I did good meditation.

So I'd taken piano as a kid, and I knew that if you go to a teacher for lessons, who knows how to do what you're trying to do, your chances of doing it better are pretty good. So I applied that same logic to meditation. So then I thought, okay, I'm just gonna, you just sort of sound the note out there in the world. I want to find my teacher. And so I just sort of silently created that aspiration.

And I was very clear about, you know, I want somebody who's really accomplished, I want somebody who also knows the scholarly tradition behind it, who's good at the teaching process, so on and so forth. And I had a pretty good clear list, but I forgot one thing. I forgot to require must speak English. So I met Tuku Sangok Rinpoche, my teacher. Say that name again. You didn't catch that the first time? No, I didn't. Huh, neither did I. I couldn't say it for a long time. Tuku, Sangok, Rumpuche. And Tuku, or? Tuku means a reincarnated Lama.

Okay, and so that's like the title, or one of the titles. One of the titles, and then Sangok is his actual name, and then Rumpuche is also a title, meaning sort of like high Lama's, I think how people tend to refer to it here. Master teacher. Yeah, yeah. And so you met him? I met him and didn't realize he was the one I was looking for at first. So it wasn't until I met him again when he came to my house to teach somebody else.

And I was just sort of hosting them. That's when I got to sit in on some of the teachings and then some more and you know, it was kind of working out. And somewhere along the line I realized, oh my gosh, I can feel that, you know, just kind of this knowing this is my teacher. I have a million more questions about the teacher, but just situate me chronologically here. How long ago was this? You had married and divorced and had three children and were they grown? What was going on in your own?

Yeah, so I married, had the three children and then got divorced in that order. Did I get that wrong there? I probably did. Conventional in that way. Okay. And let's see, I must have been somewhere around, gosh, late 30s when I met him. I'm trying to remember exactly the year. It was 1994 when I met him.

Yeah, that was it. So, that, yeah, 1994. And so that was preceded, though, by my already having, sort of, as I said, sort of put out the call in a sense, and I was now setting my sights on finding a teacher. And I sort of said, I don't care what flavor is as far as what lineage or tradition they came from. I didn't even specify Buddhist, but I just found myself

gravitating to Buddhism. And I started with the very my very first Buddhist retreat I ever went to, or meditation retreat, where I finally got some instruction, was taught by Sharon Salzburg and Joseph Goldstein. If familiar names, I hope to our listeners, Sharon Salzburg, a recent guest on the podcast and Joseph Goldstein, a future guest and also my meditation teacher. So Teravata really appealed to me. That's the school in which they teach, which is the kind of the old school Buddhism. Yes. And the first one that the Buddha laid out for students.

So that did appeal to me and I was doing daily meditations already, but then I did it according to their instructions. And I did that for a while, but it didn't quite feel, you know, at this point I was needing to sort of try things on for size. How does this feel for me?

Because this is a very personal thing. And no one lineage or path is going to be right for everybody. And even the Buddha laid out these different lineages and so on. And there were sub-lineages and so on and so forth. Because we're all different. So I tried that and it was like good, but that wasn't sure it was just absolutely hitting the spot for me.

I then studied Zen with a roxi, that's like an abbot for monastery, and he was American, he spoke English, thank goodness. However, he was not gonna be my teacher and Zen wasn't hitting this thought for me. I actually preferred Teravada to Zen. But then a friend who lived nearby invited an American Lama from the Tibetan tradition, which is Vajrayana, to her house, and he began talking about that tradition and I thought, oh, this

is really interesting. I think this feels more right to me, but I'd better road test these methods and see for myself how that feels. So I was doing what's known as the preliminary practices, which is a set of five practices and it's fairly foundational within Tibetan Buddhism. I was doing that on retreat at this American Lama's retreat when I was just about to get to practice number three, you sort of go in a progression. you sort of go in a progression. When Tukusongak Rinpoche dropped into this center in the middle of the desert in New Mexico to teach teachings on Vajrasatha, which was the third in the progression, that was the next thing I was coming to, just so happened.

So he comes in from nowhere and is teaching the next thing I'm about to do. And I didn't get yet that that was my teacher. I didn't catch on. So it wasn't until he came to my house to teach that American llama that I was like, oh wait, this is my teacher. What was it about me? You couldn't even speak the same language. Why did you feel like this is my teacher?

Yeah, well recognition is a funny thing, isn't it? I mean, you know, although the Lama student relationship is very different from, you know, meeting your spouse, there's still this sort of just recognition moment when you go, oh, this is the person for me. So it's interesting is it is a very intimate relationship but not at all romantic. It's a relationship that actually Westerners, I didn't have any precedent for as a matter of time. You say in the book more profound and intimate than a romantic relationship, more enduring than familial ones?

Well, yeah, if you believe in reincarnation, that can be the case. Yeah. Actually, you pull up another quote from you just to play off that. As Rinpoche knew, this is your teacher. As he knew from the beginning, and I came to know much later, our relationship had begun lifetimes ago, and will no doubt go into future ones. Why do you, why do you believe that? Again, sometimes there are things you come to just know.

And as I've spent more time in meditation, sort of, you know, quieting my distraction to the point where I can just know more things. That's one of the things I've just known. The odd thing is, though, I remember as a kid on the playground talking with my best friend, and we were like, so what animals were you in past lives? And we never heard of reincarnation. So I don't know why. I may just be inclined to think that way. reincarnation. So I don't know why I may just be inclined to think that way. I can't really say. But for me, it's not something that I need to wait until science can prove it because that's going to be a tough one. But it's something that I feel I just know. But would you call that faith then? But not you would, I would not, I'll put words in your mouth and then you tell me how wrong

Faith but not blind faith in your view. I am glad you made that distinction because for me, it's not blind faith Faith is a funny word especially for Westerners because when people say in English have faith, they generally mean give up having proof. You know, so and go with blind faith is kind of the parenthetical implication. So I'm not comfortable with blind faith and that wasn't what I was raised with even in a Jewish household to have blind faith. We had these rousing dinner table debates that you read about in the book. There were lots of fun, but certainly nobody was expected to take anything on blind faith. But so then how, because I would imagine there wasn't like some sort of empirical proof

offered up to you in your meditation practice, how did you arrive at this bone level knowing that you describe? So something that I'd come to earlier when I was studying Jung's work, Carl Jung, when I was in my master's program. We completely left that part of your biography out that you were a therapist. Yeah. So as I was studying Jung, proving that I'm a terrible podcast host, but carry on. You're doing great. Thank you. Thank you for that reference. I have faith in you. Thank you. Oh, I'm safe. Anyway, anyway, so Jung was an interesting balance of objective rigorous scientific study.

He did some wonderful studies on how the brain works on association. But then he also gave credence to inner experience. And he did his own three-year retreat, for example, and spent a lot of time by himself and looked deeply into his subjective experience. And the scientists involved with the studies with the Dalai Lama in mind and life were asked to... The mind and life foundation, which is... You were involved with it, if I understand, which is basically a

consortium of scientists who work with the Dalai Lama to research the impact of contemplative practices on the mind and the brain. That's right. And at one point, the scientists were sort of The scientists were sort of cajoled into, well, there was a whole debate first about objective exploration of truth and subjective exploration of truth. And the scientists were, you know, trained to be very leery of subjective experience. And they were saying, how can you trust it? And then the Dalai Lama and some from his end of things were saying, well, if your mind is trained to be more stable, then what you learn from subjective investigation can be more trustworthy. So that's what happened with you, VZV. And I found that to be the case in my experience.

So does it, I'm just trying to get a sense of the said that you, in your meditation, can you see and recall interactions between you and your teacher in past lives or see for into the future to get a sense of subsequent lives? Or is it a little bit? I'm not that good. Okay. So what is my teacher's better? I would imagine.

Yeah. So what is the, I'm just trying to get a sense of what would take somebody from your background and bring you to the point where I would imagine if I had tapped you on the shoulder when you were 25 and said to you, hey, you're going to meet this guy who you're going to arrive at the conclusion you've been friends with for several lifetimes and will continue to be in future lifetimes. You might have rolled your eyes. Maybe.

Maybe that wasn't the type of thing you would do. I would, yeah, kind of shrug my shoulders out. Who knows? I have no idea, you know, that sounds a little out there. So what then? What, I'm just trying to, given my mindset, trying to understand what, what in your meditation experience would give you the confidence that this is true. I've had enough experience of just knowing something and then having that be

proven out in objective reality that I've begun to be able to trust that more. And so I would say that's one way that I felt I could trust that. Another is just reading accounts and hearing accounts of people who have remembered very specific things about a previous life, particularly when they had a sudden death at a young age, and for some reason it remained more clear in their minds. And then for these trained Tibetan masters, such as my teacher and many others, there are written historical accounts of their remembering very specific things about future lives that they predicted and then came to pass, past lives that then played out in the one that they were then incarnate in writing.

But also modern accounts. So those sort of gave me a little boost in confidence that this is a possibility. It's interesting because for people like me, you know, skeptics, that reincarnation is such a barrier in terms of embracing Tibetan teachings. Because it just, even though I mean, I find it reassuring to be sitting across from a clearly sane individual who's talking about it in lucid ways. Clearly you don't know me. There you go.

I believe they adjust to conclusions. But notwithstanding that, I have seen no evidence for it and have a hard time with it. Yeah, and so that there are only little bits of other pieces of evidence as far as objective experience that we can point to. And so I've sort of looked at all of those and they all sort of indicated in that direction, but no, we can't say that we've proven in objective form, you know, scientifically that there is reincarnation. There begin to be very few explanations for how a child can know exactly what household they used to be in in their last lifetime and the names of their parents and what their name was and how they died and so on. And there are enough accounts of that that, you know, I'm not sure how else to explain it.

Maybe there's some far-fetched explanation, but that begins to sound more far-fetched than simply saying, okay, well, maybe awareness doesn't die when the body dies. And if that's the case, then maybe it can have it in another body. And maybe that's no more far-fetched than what we'd have to dream up to explain what I just mentioned about the child.

Yeah, I think for somebody like me, the only reasonable stance is, you know, respectful agnosticism, curiosity and interest. Anyway, setting that aside, your relationship with this teacher was clearly transformative. Absolutely. And you dove in headlong. Yeah, I did. As I say a few times in the book, do I have something better to pursue than enlightenment? I don't know what that would be. And the other thing is even from the beginning, I was just trying these things on for size, testing them out for myself, being my own scientist, if you will. And I felt better and better. I was happier and happier. I was able to handle challenges in life,

better and better, and was finding myself to be a lot more steady, less of a chicken running around with his head cut off, more and more and more and more on track. And really, I have challenges in life just like anybody else. And I was finding I was doing much better. And I have to say, again, just sort of my steady state level of happiness, way more than 10% happier. Got to say. So what does that mean?

I'm doing it wrong. I'm doing the wrong school. I'm not doing enough meditation. Live longer for one thing. Yeah. And anytime you can have a chance to do the total immersion of your treat, even for a weekend, it's kind of like learning a foreign language, such as Tibetan. Having total immersion once in a while.

Not all the time, I never lived into that. So you don't have to do that. It can be daily practice with some total immersion here and there, because if you're changing the habits of your mind and trying to get your mind off of these pathways and onto those pathways, then total immersion is an important way to go because then, as with learning Spanish, let's say, if you stop speaking English and you don't allow yourself

to speak any English and you're only surrounded by Spanish, you just leap ahead. I fully agree. I mean, I try to do a 10-day retreat every year and while I'm obviously going to be stuck with the whole 10% happier thing the rest of my life, I believe it compounds annually and as like any good investment does. If you keep investing, yes. I also believe that I've made 10% happier up completely so I'm not married to it in any way

I pulled it out of my you know what? so Back to you though you You started doing long retreats and and also learning Tibetan which allowed you to communicate directly with your teacher What how long did it take for you to? Earn the title of Lama and how big a deal was that? I mean, it seems to me like a very big deal. Yeah, actually, I debated with him about that.

For me, wild horses weren't going to stop me from pursuing this. I was going to do these long retreats because I was feeling better and I was loving studying and practicing this stuff and seeing results. So that's why I was doing it. He said, when you finish the traditional course of practice for three-year retreat, I am going to give you the Lama title. And I said, well, I don't need the Lama title. I just want to do these practices. And he's like, no, no, no, no. They will call you Lama Tommel. And after a certain point, I couldn't keep arguing with him. He was my teacher, and that's what he wanted to do.

Now Tommel was my refuge name from that first time with teachings with him when I was sitting in on his teachings of the American Lama. I don't know what a refuge name means. So there was a refuge ceremony where I took refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha, the three jewels, as they're called. The Buddha, his teachings, and the community of people pursuing those teachings. Exactly. So Rinpoche did that ceremony and in that ceremony he gave me the name Sang-Ak-Tomu. So he was giving me part of his name, Sang-Ak, and then adding Tomu. Actually the whole thing was Sang-Ak-Esh-ia Somo, which you don't have to say back to me or spell. But anyway, so he took Somo and then added Lama to it, and that's what he wanted people

to call me. So over the course of years, I couldn't do three years, three months and three days, which is the traditional three-year retreat all at once, because I did have kids who were mostly grown. And I had responsibilities and so on. I just couldn't take it all at once, but I did three months at a time, quite often, and two-month retreats and one-month retreats. And so I put it all together, and he taught me all the levels, and I did the required amount of practice for all of those. I want to give people a sense of what these practices are. I think most of the people,

and I could be wrong about this, but most of the people who meditate these days are doing one of two things. Either they're doing sort of a Vedic meditation, TM or similar to those lines where they're using a mantra, a sigh word, silently repeated in the mind to settle the mind, or they're doing mindfulness, which is either derived from Buddhism or firmly in Buddhism, but basic mindfulness meditation where you're just aware of the breath as it comes in and goes out and when you get lost, you start again. To that in Buddhism, the practices include both mantras and the sort of breath awareness, but getting some pretty far out stuff. So let me ask you, and this is a Vajrayana, is the name of this school of Buddhism.

You describe a practice, which you call the Tibetan nose blow? What is that? Yes. Well, it is not just for people with bad sinuses like myself. It is a practice that helps you jumpstart your meditation. So many people, let's say they do 20 minutes of meditation, they get to the last five or 10 minutes and that's when it really gets good. They've really settled in. And they're sort of like, how can I get to that part from the beginning? And the answer is the Tibetan nose blow.

It's known as lungrocell and Tibetan, which means basically clearing the stale winds is the way it's generally translated. So you work with the energy in your body and your breath and visualization, and the Tibetan's work with visualization a lot, and it turns out I was really excited to read the case for mental imagery by Stephen Costeland. I don't know if you've read that. But at Harvard, he conducted a lot of studies, looking at exactly what the brain does

when you're visualizing something as opposed to seeing the actual thing in front of you. And it turns out it behaves pretty much the same. It lights up in the same patterns. So the Tibetans took full advantage of that despite not having FMRI technology. And they were able to use visualization for us to set up just the perfect experiences for ourselves to create a lot of deep transformation in the brain and the mind. So this is a very simple practice. Once you see it done, it's tough to describe, you know, in audio form. And writing about it in the book doesn't really help either.

So you have pictures of the book that doesn't make it easier to understand. It's a little easier, but actually we have a video of it on our website, which is nomchock.org. N-A-M-C-H-A-K-D-O-R. Yes. Okay. And so then you can just, you know, much easier. And, you know, it takes like 30 seconds or so to do it. And I have found that I've immediately gotten into a drop to in place.

Well, can you put a little more meat on the bone? What is it actually? Okay. So you're forcefully expelling air out of one nostril and then the other alternately a few times and then both together. And while you're doing that, you're visualizing the sort of distractedness in the form of the three categories of negative emotions, or neurotic emotions, afflicted emotions, whatever you want to call them.

So ignorance, laziness, stupor, none of us have that first thing in the morning, but you know, should it happen, that's one. And then the whole category of sort of clinging, desire, addiction, all of that is another category. And then a third one is a version or aggression or competitiveness. Yes, usually Westerners don't identify with that one, so I tend not to use that as much. But yeah, that too would be in that category. Worry is also in the fear, is in that category as well. So if you just think about the fact that we're either trying to pull stuff to us that we

want or push away stuff we don't want and we're occupying ourselves with that all the time, imagine if we could just part the clouds of that effort for a little bit when that be nice. And that's what this practice helps us to do. And so then we can sit in clear calm, uh, where meditation right away. Hey there listeners, while we take a little break here, I want to tell you about another podcast that I think you'll like. It's called How I Built This, where host Guy Razz talks to founders behind some of the world's biggest and most innovative companies, to learn how they built them from the ground up.

Guy has sat down with hundreds of founders behind well-known companies like Headspace, Manduka Yoga Mats, Soul Cycle, and Koto Paxi, as well as entrepreneurs working to solve some of the biggest problems of our time, like developing technology that pulls energy from the ground to heat in cool homes, or even figuring out how to make drinking water from air and sunlight. Together, they discuss their entire journey from day one, and all the skills they had to learn along the way, like confronting big challenges, and how to lead through uncertainty. So, if you want to get inspired and learn how to think like an entrepreneur, check out how I built this wherever you get your podcasts.

You can listen early and add free on the Amazon or Wondery app. We would need hours and hours and hours to get into all of the practices you've done, but let's just pick something else, just so people get a sense of actually what you're doing on the cushion. Give us a sense of some other practices that you did and do. Well, this is the thing I love about Vajrayana is there's lots of them and so there's a practice for any occasion. And they're pretty psychedelic. Some of them are pretty psychedelic. Some of them, well, they use visualization and they use archetypes in the form of archetypal image, archetypal sound as in mantra, and archetypes are very, you know, deep, powerful, transformative catalysts, and so they are

extremely skilled at using them, and that was something that I was sort of marveling at as I was sitting there in one of my three-month retreats. I was like, my God, this is so finely honed and highly developed and efficient. How could it be that they dreamed this up? I thought, well, wait a second. Freud and Jung lived how long ago? And the Buddha and the Tibetan masters lived how long ago. They've had a lot more time to develop all this. So what does it mean, you're visualizing a deity

or something like that? Sometimes, yeah. Sometimes not. So here's one that isn't visualizing a deity. What I like about Vajrayana is it meets us where we're at. So we normally visualize somebody and imagine an internal conversation with them. We do that all the time every day. So Vajrayana is attempting to take what we're already doing and just turn it toward a much more positive direction.

And they're quite a way. They get a different movie. Yeah. And make a movie that's closer to how it really is. And the closer we are to real reality, the happier we're gonna be. The farther we are from how, the farther our movie is from what actually is going on,

the more we're gonna suffer. So, you know, basically the Buddha, right from the start, was trying to help us to get closer to reality as it actually is. And you were gonna describe one of these practices? Yeah, so one that's still early on and I teach in the book is Don Lin. And Don Lin is also uses visualization and it kind of riffs off this same idea of imagining somebody and having an interaction with them.

In this case, what you're doing though is expanding your capacity for compassion. So I don't know where you are with your practice, but the teachers I've worked with, including Sharon and Joseph, point out that we really need to pursue wisdom and compassion together. And all of the great bodhisattvas, and I include people like Martin Luther King among them, for example, had both a great measure of wisdom and a great measure of compassion, and that was what caused them to be a powerful force for the good. I don't want you to derail you too much before you describe Tonglin, but define Bodhisattva. So it literally means a one who has a mind of awakening, I guess I would say, an awakened

mind, a bodhi being awakened. So we're all kind of dreaming our way through life, and these people are a lot more awake than we are. And therefore they're able to be a lot more effective in helping others, and that's what they're motivated to do. It's just kind of what they're about. So, Dong Lin is for those of us baby bodhisattvas who would like to do some good in the world and get a little distracted by our own stuff and maybe don't have such a strong capacity for compassion. And for us Westerners, in particular, we have to start with ourselves because I don't think we're so compassionate toward our side. I don't think we really like ourselves very much or feel like we're worthy of compassion. And so we need to start there.

But the basic essence of the practice is that you imagine somebody who's suffering and you can just read about somebody on the news who's suffering terribly. And you just move by that and so you want to do that for them. And again, you use breath and visualization. So you imagine that suffering person in front of you and you see their suffering face. You don't have to get perfect with a visualization. That's not important. It's what you're feeling that's most important. And so now you use the breath to really make it real and you breathe in their suffering

into your heart, which is a bit of an act of courage. But if you're feeling moved by compassion, you just want to take away their suffering and replace it with happiness. So you breathe in their suffering and you imagine these sort of dense, thick, dark clouds of the suffering and you breathe not their actual facts of their experience but the suffering itself into your heart. And then you breathe out these bright white clouds into them and you see their face changing to a smile. So that's the essence of the practice but you don't just do that for the ones who are your favorite people. You step it out until it's eventually people you don't know,

the person at the checkout counter, anybody and everybody, until finally it's really quite big. And it's known as one of the four boundless qualities, the four measurables. And it's not very boundless if we stick with our favorite people. And we're not going to exercise that muscle of compassion and strengthen it if we don't step it out to everybody. But don't start with your ex, for example, right away, you know, just exercise the muscle a little bit more.

I did. There is some very similar practice in that's taught in and Teravaden or insightight meditation traditions. So Sharon Salzberg, who was on the show recently, as a major proponent of what's called loving kindness meditation, is actually quite similar to what you described. And despite my initial repulsion at the description of it, because it seems so sappy. I do it every day and I find it very useful. I'm not a great at it, but I don't think that's the point. Well, if you do it every day, you'll get better.

That is the point. Every day is the point. Yeah. And getting better is the point as opposed to being perfect. I mean, I don't know if that's possible, which leads me to my question about enlightenment. You talked about it before. In fact, you describe in the book some, and this is a quote from the book, some practitioners

have even transformed their bodies out of the material realm altogether with rainbow-colored light streaming out of their empty clothes as they attain complete enlightenment. And later, you mentioned that some of these people leave behind nothing but hair and nails. Any evidence for this? Yes. Really? Witnesses. Yeah.

And you consume this without any skepticism, there's not. Because to me, you know, it's a little weird. I know. It took me a while. Yeah, it did take me a while. Yeah, I don't want you to feel like I'm just sort of a gullible person. Quite the contrary. My dad was into science.

I was raised with science. I like to see evidence. Well, let me just say in your defense, let me just say in your defense, I have met you one time before and anybody, if our listeners and viewers were in the room with you, they would know you were, you give off nothing of being a gullible person in person. So that's why you're interesting to me because you clearly are a skeptical person. And yet, you talk about this stuff without really any, without any caveats, without you presented as facts. and so I'm very interested in how

somebody like you gets to the point where you can just talk about this as if you're talking about yeah I used to own goats and maybe will again and maybe will again so my teacher is a sane person and he's seen it I met met one llama in Tibet and his son and that llama, when he died, he sat in Tukdom, which I'm sure you've heard about. The clear white after death, the clear light after death, or something. Yeah, which is not actually the direct translation of that term, but anyway, the point is that he was sitting up and his skin was as though he wasn't dead and it went on and on for, I think it was 25 days, and his body shrank. He didn't do the full rainbow body that you read from my book,

but he came down to the size of about eight inches high. So how would you advise somebody like me? Many people saw it and I know these people. I was into that. I met them. They're saying they can't measure it. And so on, I saw a picture. So that's one. My teacher met a woman who that sort of thing happened to. And he just asked, my teacher, well, how do you explain this? How does it work? These were the questions I kept asking him, how does it work? And he said they were so enlightened to the point

where they just cleared away all karma and the body is made from karma So there wasn't anything to sustain the substance except for the hair and the nails apparently well because those aren't actually alive anymore They're just evidence left behind and the clothes, you know So how would you advise something like me to deal with this just just just to keep a attitude of openness? I would say openness with asking lots of questions, which you seem to be doing very well. And, you know, investigating, because that's what I had to do. I had to, you know, read about all these different accounts. And, you know, I had to know some people who actually witnessed it.

I happened to see the remains of one master myself. And so all of these things, and it was months later, no smell. It was very hard to explain away with conventional science. I've had these very similar discussions with my teacher, the aforementioned Joseph Goldstein, who talks about psychic powers and things like that, where we've had long arguments about this. Arguments? Well, arguments.

I use that term. Debates? Maybe debates, and a lot of me making fun of him, and him being good nature about it. So, I mean, you're not unique in, I'm not picking on you in some unique way, as I guess my point. But I just find it interesting because it appears, his argument is that you should employ what he calls, don't know mind. Like maybe it's true. Yeah.

I mean, kids learn a lot because they don't snap to judgment, they don't go with what they already know. They keep their blinders way open. And I think as we get older, we tend to learn less because we tend to decide what's what. And that makes less room for learning. So I try to sort of work against time and try to keep the blinders open, but I still want to know, well, how does it work? And you know, what evidence is there?

Because I still like evidence too. And that's why I happen to know some of those things I mentioned because I was busy investigating. You said before that you said, do I have anything better to do than pursue enlightenment? That was the kind of question you asked yourself at the beginning of your experience with Vajrayana and your relationship with your teacher. How do you define enlightenment and do you think you're getting close? Let's see. So I would define enlightenment the way I've understood it, which seems just so clean. From my teacher, determined Tibetan is Sanjay, which means clearing away and maturing or bringing forth.

So, if we all basically come from this source of everything and that's pure, then our essence is pure. And so what's all the excitement about we're already there in a way. But we happen to be really covered over with a lot of distraction and mental habits that, megasodil we can't even see that much less live from that. So if we can clear all of that away, 100%, so that's a clearing way.

And we can bring forward our true nature to its fullest extent, which is the second part of that word. That is the definition of enlightenment for me. That works for me. And so you feel like you're progressing along that? I'm progressing. I am nowhere near there. And are there markers? You know, we don't look at that really. I can say I've had, how can I put it? Experiences where the clouds part and I'm able to see more clearly the true nature of my mind and the true nature of how things are.

And then I go back to whatever habitual level of distraction I'm out of the moment. So it's kind of like that, but the more the clouds open and the more I give them a chance to through, you know, doing these practices, whichever, you know, practice it is, meditation practice. Then it's sort of like,

that habit gets created more and more. And I begin to believe in that experience more and more, although that experience is really my subjective reality and experience. But nevertheless, it's something that I've been able to replicate it again and again. When I first had sort of moments of epiphany, the first one I had was when I was in college, and it actually lasted for quite some time. Yeah, you described it in the book, you say it lasted like a half hour. Well, yeah, but then I could still tune into it any time, and I did so many times a day

for years afterwards. But I didn't do formal meditation and I didn't have instruction. I didn't know what it was and the first person to really explain what was going on was my teacher. And that was one of the moments when I was like, oh, this is my teacher. So when the clouds part, what do you see? Well, I don't know. Maybe I should take my cue from the Buddha when they you know after he reached full enlightenment in his case His first student his early students said well Describe it for us. He fell silent because it's words are a carry concepts. That's what words are really and

are a carry concepts. That's what words are really. And any words I use to describe it aren't it because it's beyond conceptualizing. So I'm going to be at a bit of a loss here. I figure if the Buddha wasn't a loss for words, you know. You're a good chef. Yeah, I have an excuse. How would I describe it? I would say that things seem less solid and rigid, and I feel less solid and rigid, and there's a deep feeling of, just sort of abiding state of love and satisfaction. Just joy, I guess I would say. That's there when the clearing away happens.

There's joy and there's a quality of brightness and clarity. Those are some words that I'm throwing at it. You know, if I'm doing a word collage, it's sort of the best I can do to describe it. Pretty good. You also talk about in the book about the ocean, that we tend to identify ourselves as one wave in the ocean, but and that's the source of our unhappiness, but we'd be much happier if we just identified with the ocean. Which makes sense to me intellectually, I just don't understand how you do how you make that switch because I'm still identifying as as damn.

Well, so when I identify with the whole ocean and that is very much a part of these experiences I have when the clouds part and I can do that more on a regular basis because I have the tools to do it now and I've trained my mind more and so on. It doesn't disinclude the waves, right? The ocean includes all the waves, including the Dan wave and the Tommel wave. It's just way bigger than that. And there is the whole ocean that we're all a part of.

And I think that's a natural way that I come to, because I don't like to be sappy either, that's a natural way I can come to love and compassion, is, you know, for all connected in that way, it's kind of like if I stub my toe, my whole body suffers. Right? So here, I'm in this funny position, because I am deeply intrigued by descriptions of enlightenment that I hear from people like you and from my teachers and from what I read.

I'm not sure, however, that it even exists. I mean, because I haven't had it for myself and there's no scientific evidence. So what I can I can't just, it would be blind faith on some level for me to just say that, of course, this is true. And yet, I want to spend a lot of my own time trying to experience this. You said you wanted to talk about this a little bit before the podcast began.

You said that the Jewish therapist and you wanted to talk to me about this. So what did you want to talk about? Well, so you're a busy guy, and you wanted to talk to me about this. So what did you want to talk about? Well, so you're a busy guy, and you're spending two hours a day now meditating. Yes. And when we talked before, you had just started that program. Yeah, so you came to my office several months ago.

I think it was, I started doing two hours a day, maybe nine or 10 months ago. Yeah, so I think it was last May. I came to your office. Yeah. And I could see that, you know, there was this burning desire or longing, I would say, for something. So what is it that you're really wanting?

What's your bottom line? You know, that's part of the conundrum is I don't know that I can describe it. I don't know that I can describe it. I don't know that I can articulate it. When I started to work on 10% happier, people would ask me like, why are you doing this? And what's over taking you? And I had a lot of trouble articulating it until I was finished writing the book.

And so now I'm in the process of writing another book about the sort of deep end of the pool and meditation, what's beyond 10 percent. And I can't articulate it. And yet I've sort of arranged my life around going for it. Okay, but I'm not asking you to articulate enlightenment. What I'm asking you to articulate, and this may be equally difficult, is what is the longing that's impelling you? Oh, I see. Oh, I think it's become any amount of meditation shows you how habitual habitual

Me centered thinking is and and and being driven by Desire in a version is a recipe for unhappiness, and so you can't unsee that That's that's the answer that I can articulate and so you just want to be rid of as much of that as possible Is that the idea? Well, I certainly have faith that one can sand those edges down. And I think there's pretty good evidence, not only experiential, but scientific that meditation has a salutary effect physiologically and psychologically. So I'm pretty confident that I'm not wasting my time and that the more I do, the better I'll get at it. So the math there is pretty obvious to me.

And the desire is there to get rid of it because the more you see it, the more it's like, let me get rid of this. Absolutely. When you, my friend, Judbrough, who is a neuroscientist, talks about the Skinner box, which is a, you know what it is going to train, it's a therapist, but our listeners may not, but basically we put rats inside of a Skinner box and they, if they go to the wrong part of the box, they'll get an electric shock. When you notice what it's like to have a mindless moment as opposed to a mindful moment,

it just feels better to be mindful. And so why, again, the math is pretty obvious. Why wouldn't you wanna rack up as many mindful moments as possible in a finite lifetime? So that I think is what's compelling me. I just don't know exactly what I'm shooting for. Cause I mean, I can take other people's definitions, but one thing I find compelling is,

we're gonna die and everybody we know is going to die. And I would like to be less scared of that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a really good one to motivate yourself with because it's the truth and people like to forget it. But, you know, dying isn't something that happens to everybody else just. It also happens to us and are we ready?

And Tibetans are very much aware of that in the whole dying process. They've delineated it out in finitim. But getting back to the sort of the idea of sappy loving kindness or sappy compassion, it gets sappy when it's ego-tinged. It can get sappy loving kindness or sappy compassion, it gets sappy when it's ego-tinged. It can get sappy. Because it's about you and how. Oh, there there you poor thing. Oh, I see. I thought it was more like a... Well, that's the caution. ...thing. You know, where you're showing off how loving you are. Well, that could be also with compassion. It could be, you know be sort of turning to pity, which is known

as the near enemy of compassion. Yeah, Sharon talks about that. Right. And so that's the problem is it's tainted by ego. So if there isn't ego involved in it, then there's just this automatic wanting to take away the suffering and replace it with happiness. So, you know, that's why we practice. And then for love, loving kindness, it can be, you know, sort of this sappy kind of sentimental, sentimentality is a near enemy of loving kindness. And again, it's tainted by ego, tinge, you know, rather than just simply this expansive heart,

and just feeling how we're all connected, and that's a wonderful feeling. And those four boundless qualities are ways of feeling connected. So it's one thing to see how there's this one big ocean that's all connected and we're all connected, and that's what the mindful meditation can do. But Donglin or Metta meditation, the loving-kindest meditation, helps us to feel how we're connected.

So it's another way in. Yeah, no, I buy it. You know, when I talked about the sackingness of it, that was my initial problem. But over it, I just like to bring, I, because I know that, or that many people who listen to a podcast hosted by me will probably also share my, you know, sort of, pet elections, that I, I always want to introduce it with some level of skepticism because otherwise people won't get past it to the good stuff. Well, that's right. And I just wanted to sort of trace a pathway from here to there, kind of thing. It's, you know, kind of taking a rest with the ego involvement and just, you know, the simple feeling of connectedness in those two ways. So, did I give you a full chance to explore the issue that you wanted to explore?

Pretty much. Okay. But, you know, if we talked again, I could probably pursue it more. Well, then you should consider that an invitation to come back on the show next time you are in New York. Let me ask you this. I would be remiss if I did not ask this. Why is the Dalai Lama always smiling?

The short answer. Read the book. Give me the longer answer. I will recommend everybody read the book. It's a very, very interesting book. So a slightly longer answer. He is somebody who has really mastered these methods. And even before I had really done much meditating, I was so moved being in a large room full of people where he was present. And a lot of other people really moved to just by his presence.

And we were all sort of marveling and this one guy said, you know, what is it you're all saying? What is it? And he said, you know, I think he's just how a human being can be without all this stuff in the way. So I clearing forward and bringing forth. Exactly. Clearing away and bringing forth. He's just done a lot of that using these methods and it shows. So he's kind of a poster child for the methods. You're not a bad poster child yourself. Thanks. Really appreciate having you on Lamat Somo. By the way, did it take a while to get used to being called Somo instead of the name you spent decades identifying with? A little bit, but not too long. It is funny. Now, you know, speaking of letting go of ego

identification, I have two different names I truly do identify or respond to, and it's loose in my ego identification in a way, because I'll answer the phone and I won't know, am I long on someone with this conversation or Linda Prisker? I don't know. Let's see who it is. So that has been kind of a lightning

up of the grasp of ego in that way. Such a fascinating interview. Thank you very much. Really appreciate it. Thanks for having me on. Thanks as always to the producers of the show, Lauren, Efron Josh, co-hand Sarah Amos and Dan Silver. You can hit me on Twitter at Dan B. Harris and me time you like. If you liked the episode today and you want to hear more like it, you can subscribe to the podcast, rate it, and leave a review. Thank you for that and we'll talk to you next week.

Hey, hey prime members. You can listen to 10% happier early and ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and ad-free with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts. Before you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondery.com slash survey. Bye.