Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 12: Thupten Jinpa

Episode Date: May 4, 2016

Thupten Jinpa may be best known for being the Dalai Lama's longtime English-language translator. But now Jinpa is working to get his own message across. In his new book, "A Fearless Heart," Jinpa touches on the course in compassion training he helped create at Stanford University -- one that has been shown to make people happier, healthier and better able to regulate their emotions. 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. I'm Dan Harris. If you had told me a few years ago that someday someday I'd have my very own podcast and I'd be able to invite anybody on that I wanted and that one of my very first guests would be a guy who wrote a book called A Fearless Heart.

I would have been a little bit surprised, but in this case I'm going to set aside my militant anti-sentimentality because this guy is worth it. His name is Thuptin Jinpa, am I pronouncing that correctly? He's got a PhD from Cambridge. He's now working with Stanford University where he's created a secular protocol called Compassion Cultivation Training, which is basically a course that teaches people a series of meditative techniques designed to build your compassion muscles. Another name for this course could be how not to be a jerk to yourself and others. That's my branding, not his. And this program, CCT, is now being studied

in the labs, and it's shown that it makes people happier and healthier and better able to regulate their emotions. Basically what Thupdin's trying to do here is to do for compassion what's already been done for mindfulness, which is to create a lot of excitement around it. Everybody knows that there's an enormous amount of science that at least strongly suggests that mindfulness is good for you. So what Thuptan is hoping to achieve, and I really support this, is to get the message out there that there is a powerful, scientifically scientifically validated self-interested case for not being a jerk.

Great to have you here. Thank you. Thank you for having me on the show. Thank you. The book has just come out in paperback. Congratulations on that. Thank you very much. I want to get to the book and to the CCT and to your advice about how people can practice this at home in a minute, but I want to start with your personal story, which is really epic. As a child, you were refugee from Tibet, you became a monk at age 11, and you somehow made it to Cambridge University twice. And then, and I haven't even mentioned this yet, you also have served as the Dalai Lama's personal English translator for 30 years during which context I've actually met you a few times when I've interviewed his holiness. So let's just start with that. How old were you when your family had to leave to bet?

Thank you. Let me first of all say how deeply honored I am. I didn't realize actually, I was one of the early Gastonio podcast show. It's such an honor and pleasure. I was barely a year when my parents left in 1959 in the wake of the Chinese occupation of Tibet and the Dalai Lama's exotus kind of fly to India. So I don't remember at all, but I do tell my many of my young Tibetan colleagues that at least I Had drank Tibetan water. I was born in Tibet So in the early part of my child was really spent in India in a northern part of India and your parents were

basically I mean based on what I read in your book kind of conscripted into working on doing road work in northern India. Yes, after the initial kind of resettlement assistance that the international aid agencies as well as the government of India offered to the large number of Tibetans, around 80,000 followed the Dalai Lama to India. So that's a very large number to absorb. So after the first few months of initial resettlement and assistance, then of course people have to support themselves. Now what do you do? I mean my parents' generation, they don't speak any English at all, they don't speak local Hindi, and they have never really been outside Tibet. So you know what can they do? And the only thing they could

do, and actually they were well suited to do, was the road construction at high altitude, because all of a sudden India now had to man a very large international border. To protect themselves from the Chinese. Now, for the Chinese, and for centuries, because the border was between Tibetan India, there was no conflict, so there was no need to defend the border at all. And all of a sudden, now India now has to defend its border against potential Chinese aggression, so which meant building roads that are militarily viable, and many of the Tibetans of my parents' generation ended up working on those.

And they were very grateful because at least they got employment. Right, but it wasn't easy. And the kids were were separated from their parents for ex you got to stay with your parents at the work site for a couple of weeks. Yes, yes, yes, we're living separately. Exactly. I mean, that's the kind of typical story of children of my depends of my generation. I mean, if if the children are very small, of course, they would be with their parents up to age four. If the children were very small, of course they would be with the parents up to age four. And then I was sent to a boarding school at the age of four because the parents have to

move from one side to another side. These are tent camps. And as the road progressed, they have to move camps, which meant that they cannot really look after the older kids. And they were all sent to boarding schools that were run setup for the Tibetan refugee children. But the smaller ones, I do remember vividly once I was visiting my parents from my school and they were very small children who were tied to pegs like dogs with a leash around their waist so that the mothers can work and the mothers will be breaking stones to make pebbles to put on the road for the asphalt and the children will be

Has to be far enough because otherwise chips will affect their eyes But they have to be close enough so that they can keep an eye so I remember vividly seeing children's tied up You know to pegs so so these conditions really were not optimal for human flourishing and in fact your mother got sick. Yes, my mother, after the birth of my sister, who was the third child, she became ill. And at that time also my father was already ill and in a hospital. So I think she really went through a very difficult time. And soon after the birth of my sister, she left the child at the daycare or a child care in one of the Tibetan communities and visited my father.

And it turns out that there was internal bleeding, which could have been prevented, but because there was no. And we have to understand that the level of education among the depends was also quite low in terms of modern education. So they don't know much about health needs. So unfortunately in Dram Sala after a few days she passed away. And you were nine. Yes.

Yeah. And again, I'm just getting this from having read your book, but it was actually a part of a number of what must have been devastating and confusing events because your mother passed away, and then your father went off and joined a monastery, so you were kind of on your own. Yes, I was at Tibetan boarding school, and in fact, the first time he came to see me, it was a bit of a shock because he turned up in monks robes with clean-shaving head. because he turned up in monks robes with clean shaven head. And for a second, I had no actually recognized him. And no one had warned me that he had become a monk.

So why would he do that? I think, I mean, it depends on very devout religious people, particularly of my parents' generation. And because he was sick for a long time, and there was a lot of tragedy with my mother's death, I think he did some consultations with Lamas and many of them kind of converged on saying that, you know, your long-term health and the well-being of your children is better off if you choose to become a monk. And interestingly, not long thereafter, you became a monk. Yes, I did, yeah. At age 11?

It was 11, yeah. And after I finished my grade four. So how did you, here you are, a refugee. You lost your mother, your father went off to join a monastery. You go and become a monk. During all of this, you somehow become fluent in English. How did that happen? Well, the reason why I chose to become a monk was,

I remember very clearly that a group of monks came and stayed for a couple of weeks in our school, boarding school in Shimla. In our town in India. Yeah, in northern India, that's the British summer capital, a former British summer capital, and it's a beautiful area, It's a nice area of North India. And I remember at school, you know, my constant memory of school, two enduring memories,

are actually hunger and boredom. So it was not very challenging academically for me. Then all of a sudden we had these groups of monks staying there for a couple of weeks and each class was assigned a monk. And the monk who was assigned to our class taught us elementary and monastic debate. And I was completely fascinating. It's a debating tradition which uses kind of logical rules. And that's the main kind of form of a medium of scholarship in the academic monasteries later I found that. And also the monks had, you know, the stories they were telling about, you know, classical India and Buddhism and the life of the Buddha was fascinating.

And of course, as an eight, nine-year-old kid, I just wanted to be like them, you know, so that was the main reason why I really wanted to become a monk. Well, I mean, that would not have inspired me as an 80-year-old. I was interested in video games, so you were definitely a special kid if that was inspiring to you. Well, because I associated, you know, someone wearing monastic robes with intelligence and something interesting and kind of, you know, sharp logical thinking, you know, all of that. But the English, when I left school, I had a rudimentary English to be able to read. Of course, I wasn't able to speak

and did not understand much. But the timing was perfect. The monastery that I joined where my father was among was in Darmsala. This was in 1970, 1971, at the height of the hippie movement. And there were a lot of Western hippies in the Darmsala area. And that meant that I had an opportunity to hang out with them, you know, make friends,

started having conversations. And in fact, I made friends with one particular person who stayed in Darmsala for a while, and I would visit him twice or once a week and spend some time with him. And that's how I was able to pick up English. And how did you end up becoming the Dalai Lama's English translator? That was pure coincidence. It was in 85. By that time, I was based in South India at one of the large monastic academic monasteries.

And I was visiting Darmsala to see my younger brother and sister who were at the Tibetan Children's Village. And it so happened that his holiness was scheduled to give a series of teachings. And at the request of a Los Angeles-based Buddhist center, but the official interpreter, they had arranged, could not make it on the first day, because of the plane delay.

And they were looking for someone to stand in for him. So you were like the understudy? Exactly. And then the word spread around there is this young monk who has a reasonably good command of English. Maybe he can do it, you know, one thing led to another. I was plugged out of my seat by the secretary and put in there to translate for his soleness. But fortunately, the format of the interpreting was simultaneous, which meant it's less nerve-wracking because there is no stopping. So his solanus continues to talk, and the interpreter speaks through FM radio. So it's much less nerve-wracking, and the text that he was teaching was something that

I was very familiar with. So that's how, and then, you know, two or three days later, his son-in-law called me up, and I had a private meeting with him, and he said, I know you're a good scholar, you're from one of the monasteries, and he said, how come I don't, I did not know that you spoke English? When we come back, give us the real deal. Do you ever see him get no bad mood? Of course, yes, I mean, you know, he's a real deal. Yes, he is a human being. Stick around. Hey there listeners, while we take a little break here,

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in a really permanent way. Well, when he then he said, you know, some people told me that you have an easy English to listen to and would you be willing to, you know, travel with me if I need your service. Of course, you know, I wasn't even dreaming about this and I just broke down in tears and, you know, for a Tibetan and especially someone of that age, who, you know, for us, his Holiness is always this very elevated figure and who's like the source of our meaning, source of our purpose, our existence, in the exiled community. In hours, of course, tremendously touched, and says, of course, I've never,

even in my dream I have thought that I will have an opportunity like that. But give us the real deal. Do you ever seem to get into a bad mood? Of course, yes, I'm really, you know. Is he every ill do you? Yes, he is a human mood? Of course, yes, I'm really, you know, he's every elder you. He is a human being. You can yell that by the Dalai Lama, that's pretty good.

Well, not yell, but scold it. Really? Yes, because I've this year would be 30 years working with him. So 30 years, if I don't get scolded several times, then something is wrong. I mean, he's Dalai Lama, he's never not supposed to get into a bad mood. Well, I mean, he's not like Lambo, he's not supposed to get no bad mood. Well, I mean, he's a human being. I mean, he is an amazing individual definitely. But at the end, he's an infant for me, honestly, when I see him occasionally, you know,

lose it and scold me, I actually feel more respect for him, because he's not trying to hide it. He's very genuine, he's very authentic. And, you know, what you see is what you get. And of course, he has a level of mastery of his mind, which is amazing and impressive. But at the end of the day, he's also a human being. You know, he is susceptible to all the irritation, especially when he's tired. And the amount of work that he does, and if you look at his international travels and his itinerary, it's almost every minute it is. I count it for.

And you really go to have a tremendous degree of stability to be able to maintain your cool throughout all of that time. And then I actually told some of my colleagues that, you know, when he's all in a school to you, you know, you have to appreciate this because if he's not allowed to school He's staff who else can he school true true so so I mean let me just ask you a few more questions about his holiness because I and I talk about I've been open about this in my book I'm pretty sure he hasn't read the book, but I

Approach him with some level of just reflexive skepticism because I'm, you know, an agnostic western skeptic raised by scientists, married to a scientist, and the kind of Buddhism that I practice, you know, is that we don't have smells and bells. There's not no robes or anything like that. And obviously he's considered to be a reincarnation. And he has the term his holiness and title, which I've never understood because I read a lot about Buddhism and there's not anything about holiness really mentioned.

So where does that come from? I think it's, you know, I mean, this is the thing because when he... I think that this determined, he's all in his, the epithet that we end up using is really a kind of a projection from the West. And Western European, particularly the British relationship with the Dalai Lama's began in the beginning of the 20th century. So already a pattern was established

referring to his predecessor as his oneness, the 13 Dalai Lama. So, and in the West, you know, you always want to figure out who's the highest, who's the lower, the ranks matter. And especially when you're in the kind of journalistic description of another foreign leader, you would want to make

sure that you get the title right. So he's like competing with the Pope personally. Well, I think this is how the titles came to be because he inherited, because he's produced the previous Dalai Lama was referred to as the Solanist, the Thirding Dalai Lama, by the British press. Then automatically, when the young Dalai Lama was recognized, the title got transferred. that's how it. But he, I mean, if you ask him, he would say, I'm just a simple Buddhist monk, you know, and that is truly who he is.

And to his credit, I've now sat with him a couple of times, and he does say that, and he was the first, he is the first to admit that he is not perpetually in some state of blister and such like that. And so he does deserve credit for that. But let me just ask you after all the education you've had, all the traveling you've done, do you believe that he is the reincarnation? Do you believe in reincarnation?

I do. I do. Honestly, there's nothing in science and philosophy that I've done at Stanford and Cambridge and also through the many years of my life work. And we just interrupt you mind and let because my life is a consortium of scientists who are doing neuroscience around contemplative techniques such as medical. And also trying to understand the mind from the perspective of the first person experience, which is what is needed to add to the scientific third person outside

kind of a bridge. So there is nothing in what I've learned from all of these that really undermines my belief in the reincarnation, because reincarnation in the end is grounded upon your conception of what consciousness is. If you have a materialistic conception of what consciousness is, that consciousness is nothing but an emerging property from the physiological processes, then you have a body and a brain and consciousness just emerges from that. Then of course it's very difficult to ground your understanding of reincarnation, but if you have an understanding that consciousness

is more in the form of an information type, but it can have any kind of material basis, and there is a continuity of its own, which is more of a kind of a structure of energy, then reincarnation isn't that much of a stretch. So, I don't... And also the basic truth of Buddhism. You know, I'm a practicing Buddhist still. Many of the basic truths of Buddhism

really has to do with fundamental reality of human aspiration and needs and reality and perfect ability of our mind, the ways in which we can self-regulate our emotions and you know, there are certain qualities of our nature that can be developed and perfected. So many of these insights and teachings, I think remain valid. It doesn't really matter what scientific framework you have.

So I mean, look, on the latter half of that, well, first of all, let me just say on reincarnation, I just, I remain respectfully, I'm not saying, I don't know. So I don't make any claims either way. It's hard for me to espouse it unreservedly because I just don't know. But on the latter half of what you just said,

that one of, if not the fundamental insights of Buddhism and Buddhism's a tricky word because the Buddha didn't think he was founding a religion and now there are many, many schools. But one may common denominator among all the different schools is that, and this is hugely important, you don't have to be a Buddhist, you don't have to be anything in order to find this radical and empowering, which is that the mind can be trained, the mind through which we experience everything. We spend so much time on our bank accounts, our home decor, our cars, our

bodies, but almost no time most of us on the one filter through which we experience everything. That's true. And it is susceptible to training. And that, I mean, it's been taught in an Eastern quote-unquote religious context for millennia, but that is a, that's our birthright. That's true. And also in principle, there is nothing religious about that idea. Yes, yes. And that's, and that's one of the reasons why his Holiness, in particular, is very keen to engage with scientist and kind of humanistic philosophy to bring that insight into an idiom and a conceptual framework that is independent of religion. Because, you know,

and the same thing with compassion, I mean, historically, something like compassion is embedded within the religious ideology and idiom and metaphor, but in itself, we are talking about fundamental human quality. And same goes for many of the techniques that has to do with training our mind. I mean, one of the things that I find beautifully kind of encouraging is that in one of this

very important statements of the Buddha, he says that with our mind, we create our world. I mean, literally, you know, we may be all living in the same physical environment, but each of us live in a slightly different world that we ourselves create. And what he means by that is the way we see the world around us, the way we see ourselves literally shapes the way we experience it. And the way in which the quality and the tone of our experience then influences our behavior. So in other words, our mind has a powerful role in determining the quality of our life. You talked about all the science that's happening around this.

And you've been right there, not only translating, but also working with the Mind and Life Institute. And also your work at Stanford with CCT, which I want to get to in just a minute, but just to close the loop on your personal story, you were no longer a monk. Yes. You, you, you left and you now are married and you have teenage daughters and you live in Montreal Yes, how did that come about? Well, one of the things that you know I struggled with as a monk was always a kind of a yearning for a family and

Probably you know, maybe I'm now being kind of slightly Freud here. If I try to psychoanalyze myself, why is that this kind of yearning? It's probably because I missed family life from a very, very early age. At age four, I was in the boarding school. Age nine, my mother died, then my father became a monk. So I never really had a real family kind of warm kind of memory.

So I think there was a yearning for a family and that really never went away. So when I was in my early 30s, as I was becoming more and more kind of senior in the within the monastic establishment, then it became morally important, morally important question for me to really ask myself, do I see my entire future within the monastic establishment? Or do I really need to follow my heart and seek a family? Because one of the things is the more senior you are if you leave the more damage it could do to the community. So that was the decision I made and I just happened to be very fortunate.

I landed well, I found a beautiful wife who was, you know, she had my values. She is French Canadian, her Quebec was. And, you know, and parenting experience, I've been really a joy for me. It's, there were challenges, both in the area of relationships and parenting as well. But also, I've, you know, learned that many of the skills that I've acquired as a monk were perfectly applicable and tremendously useful. Yeah, well, I mean, that's why it's so valuable for the rest of us to be adopting these practices that for so long, which are cloistered in monastic communities.

So let's talk about compassion and your program, CCT, which is designed to teach people how to be compassionate. I think the best question to ask early though is what exactly is compassion? How is it different from empathy or sympathy or pity? Yes, that's a very important question because in everyday English we tend to conflate all of them and mix them up and sometimes we use them interchangeably. But compassion I would define as a kind of a the natural response that you experience in the face of someone's suffering, where you are able to connect with that person's experience and you know wish to do something about it.

So there is, when compassion arises in us, there is the perception of that person's suffering, you know, followed by understanding it. There is also an emotional component where you actually connect with that suffering. You're moved by that suffering. And then there is also a kind of a motivational component where you want to do something. And, you know, now in neuroscience, they also see that when compassion arises, the mortal regions of the brain also becomes active. So, you know, a lot of things happen at the same time. And empathy is more of a route to compassion. So empathy is closer to emotion. So when you experience empathy,

you're making that emotional connection with other person's experience. But the compassion at the action or desire. You're a desire. So there is a desire that is the added component. So when you're in compassion, in some sense, you're no longer just in the emotional state. And that's why one of the things that people like myself

who are involved in development of compassion training, we try to bring across the key point is that empathy in itself, if you are just trapped in that state, is not very constructive because it's very draining. It's also because, and even from an evolutionary point of view, emotions are not meant to be enduring. Emotions are meant to be fleeting. Emotions are indicator of a message, something important is happening in you, in your life or around you, pay attention. And then you are supposed to do something

after it. So if you are able to train your mind so that you are responsive enough to feel empathy, but then move on to compassion, then your focus will be more on the solution rather than getting stuck in the suffering. And that, I think, is an important point. So you talked very well on the book, and I'll give you a chance to do it here about why there's

resistance among so many people to compassion. There's generally been a view in science that we are inherently selfish. Yes. Also, some people are worried about compassion because they think it's going to make them weak or stupid, insufficiently tough. My, my, you don't talk about this in the book, but for me, and this is not speak well of me, but I'll admit it anyway. My problem with compassion was that, first of all, it just seemed irretrievably sappy and gooey, and I like, like a Valentine's Day sentiment. And then also, I didn't get into meditation to be mother Teresa. I got into meditation to make myself less miserable.

So I wasn't really in it to help anybody else, because I was just trying to be less of a jerk to myself and be less crazy. So tell me why they're old me was wrong. I mean, this is part of the problem of our culture in the West. And in fact, I make this point in the book that we in the West don't really have a good cultural framework to understand compassion. Part of that has to do with history because we somehow have found a way to relegate compassion

either within the domain of religion, where we expect it as part of a saintly quality of someone that we admire, like Jesus or some other figure, or we relegate it in the private domain of a family life, where we expect love, kindness and compassion to your children, from your parents and so on. And by doing that, we then leave no room for compassion. And we don't expect to have to see compassion within the public domain of a shared space. And that is one problem, because we, part of that has to do with associated compassion too much with sentimentality. We, compassion has both the emotional component, yes, which is making the connection, opening up the heart and so on.

But compassion also has this... There you go with that heart and stuff again. Yes, yes, yes. I mean, that's, in fact, you know, we shouldn't underestimate the power of heart. I mean, often, a lot of the things that we do are motivated by some kind of emotion. But, you know, you said something in the book, and I'm digressing a little bit here, and I don't want to derail you too much, but I just want to point out that you say in the book that in the ancient language of Polly, the language of the Buddha, heart and mind are the same words.

Yes, yes. And so that is a key thing here. That's true. It's not like a hallmark, that idea of heart, or an emoji of a heart. That's true. This is really the consciousness. Exactly. I would argue that we need to tone down

the sentimental dimension of what we understand by the word compassion, but emphasize also the more cognitive, the perception side of compassion, which has to do with action and understanding and perspective. Because compassion as a filter response, of course, compassion, which has to do with action and understanding and perspective, because compassion as a felt response of course has strong emotional component, but compassion as a standpoint has less emotional dimension. And I think this is an important point, because for example, if we are talking about the

place of compassion in a public space, we need to emphasize not so much the feeling component, but the perspective component, which is grounded upon the case that we need to recognize the shared commonality of all humans and respect the basic humanity of each of one of us. So the idea behind, say, for example, respect for fundamental human rights of all, that is a compassionate principle. And if you look at the universal declaration of human rights, as well as the American charter of declaration of independence, you know, there is compassion, it's not explicitly stated,

but the underlying foundation that grounds these principles is really compassion, which is a recognition of a fundamentally shared common humanity, which is defined by our social nature, and where we have both needs as well as vulnerabilities that needs to be respected and taken into account. And that part of compassion needs is less evident in Western formulations because the way in which we have somehow historically dealt with the compassion. And you haven't said this yet, but you're kind of building to it. Another reason why the old anti-compassion me was wrong is that actually compassion is in your personal best interest. Exactly. Yeah, exactly.

I mean, here, he's all in holiness makes a very, very powerful point. He said that when you experience compassion and act out of kindness towards someone, he says, whether or not that particular action and your feeling benefits the other person, which is the object, the recipient of your act, depends on many other factors, whether the person is ready or whether it was the right thing to do, but one thing that cannot be denied is at that moment when you act it, you feel good. So the first beneficiary of compassion is actually yourself. And we, in the West, tend to think when we think about compassion, we immediately think

in terms of self-sacrifice, you know, only about the other and all of this. And in fact, he's making the argument that actually compassion is also in your own self-interest. Yeah, I mean, look, for anybody who doubts this, I mean, just watch what happens when you hold the door open for somebody or you let somebody go in front of you online. What is that moment like for you? It feels good. Exactly. Squirt of dopamine happening in your mind. Exactly.

You know, and you talk about this beautifully in your book, Fearless Heart, where you say, and I love this, compassion gives us a sense of purpose beyond our habitual petty obsessions. You go on to describe it as escaping the prison of obsessive self- involvement. When you are caught up in your habitual neuroses, as most of us are most of the time, it doesn't feel good. Exactly. And also, when our focus is too narrow and

focused too much on self, even the small problems tend to assume a very great proportion. So they seem almost unbearable. But we are able to open up that focus a little bit and to leave enough space to think about others as well. Then the problems that we face in our life, you know, they don't go away. But we have a different perspective on them. They assume a different proportion within that framework.

And that in itself, I mean, this is also one of the reasons why increasingly now, there is some indication that the more compassionate you are, the more you're able to bring into account other people's kind of well-being as part of your equation, you feel less stressed. I mean, that's almost paradoxical because one, the rational mind would say, hey, wanna minute, you know, if you're thinking about someone else's problem,

you are taking on an additional problem. In addition to what you already have, you know, why wouldn't that make you more miserable? Additionally, more miserable. But it turns out it's exactly the opposite because by opening up our focus, including someone else giving space for someone, it somehow seems to kind of tone down the intensity of our own anxiety and our own suffering. Yes, because the highest form of suffering is obsessive self-focus.

Exactly. And again, you don't trust me or or or Thornton just examine your own life. So I I think a lot of people are are the one of the reflexive avenues of rejection for what we're discussing here among some of my listeners may be, well, I work in a competitive environment or I'm trying to make my way in a cold world. I don't have room for compassion, it will mess me up. That's true. But on the other hand, I don't think taking compassion seriously and wanting to make

compassion an important part of your life and a guiding principle should not preclude our ability to compete in a competitive world. I mean we have to you know we have to face the reality the world is competitive and in fact any society so long as it has some idea of progress cannot rule out competition. I mean the competition is part and parcel of human development and progress. And I recently I was asked to write a special forward to the Korean edition of my book. And South Korea is one of the most competitive places, scaringly, actually, especially when it comes to children's education. And the publisher was saying that, you know, I want you to write a special

for preface because the Korean audience are even more skeptical. And so they are highly competitive. What can you say about the relationship between compassion and competition, whether or not it will undermine it? And one thing I did write in that is that, you know, taking compassion seriously has an undermine in preventing me from being able to go to Cambridge, which is a very competitive admissions. So I think that there, you know, Insulin has talked about a positive kind of competition and a negative kind of competition. The positive kind of competition involves you want to bring the best of you.

You want to bring your ability in the optimal level. And it's not done in the way in which you want to deliberately push others down. You want to compete in a sense with yourself. So that you bring the best out of yourself. So there's a way of doing competition, which is actually compatible with the compassionate principle.

But the main point argument I would make is this, if you are able to bring some compassion into your life, in the end, you benefit because you become happier. There's not much point in being conventionally, being very successful, but at the same time deeply miserable. I mean, in the end, what's the point of becoming successful? Right, right, right, right, doing your life. Exactly, you know.

And the interesting thing about life is, regardless of whether you're happy or miserable, the life goes on. And the key argument I try to make when talking about compassion is that it's in your self-interest to make sure that while life goes on, that life is more enjoyable, happier. Sure. And we just get back to your point about the more crass end of this spectrum here on the competition part of it. Not only is it true that as you say when you're competing, being bogged down by useless hatred and jealousy is a waste of energy, but it is also true that notwithstanding

the American ideal of a maverick out there, bootstrapping his's her way to a successful business or career. Actually, we live in an interconnected human beings with other homo sapiens. And we need them in order to get anything done. And if you're a jerk all the time, it's good luck getting people to work with you. And I think that's where compassion really makes sense. It is definitely. And also, as social animals, whether we like it or not, a large part of our experience of happiness and suffering is defined by the quality of our relationship with others, with our colleagues at workplace, with our spouses, with our children, and compassion is key to this.

In a, basically, what compassion asks is the ability to take into account the impact of our behavior and thoughts on others that are important in our life, so that we make space as part of the equation. And the more you are able to do it, of course, the more compassionate you are. But at the bottom, what compassion asks us is to take into account the well-being and the need and the wish of the other person in your life. And if you are able to do that, you become someone whose company is more enjoyable, to be more fun to be with. I mean, so, and again, you don't have to take our words for this, the science seems to back

you up, us up. And I'll just say from my own first person experience, while I'm actually still pretty obnoxious, I was much more obnoxious before I started meditating. And I do this sort of loving, kindness-slash compassion practice every day. I can't believe I do it because it is so sort of syrupy but it seems to work and and the science is really what convinced me to do it. So let's talk about how you do it. You have this course, CCT, Compassion Cultivation Training, which you developed in conjunction with some folks at Stanford, which I believe is a seven or eight week course.

It's eight week course. So you can't obviously tell us everything in it, but give us a taste of some of the practices that one would do in your course. The one thing that we emphasize right at the beginning is what we call the intention setting practice. And this is inspired from a particular Tibetan Buddhist approach where every morning you find a quite moment, maybe it doesn't take very long two to three minutes or five minutes and you consciously set your intention for the day. You know, if I want to be today I would like

to be more mindful, more caring, more understanding, less judgmental, whatever, you set your intention. And then in the evening, before you go to bed, at some point, you, in a sense, reconnect with that initial intention that you set. So that's the framing. An intention setting is an important part of the compassion training because unlike mindfulness, mindfulness is practice of mindfulness has more to do with the cultivation of self-awareness. And in some sense, it's when it comes to value, it's neutral, it's a value-free kind of practice. Whereas when you're talking about compassion, it's not value-free. You're choosing compassion to be an important value in your life.

So intention becomes a very important part of it. And the idea of intention setting is that, by setting your intention, you change your motivation. Because it's very difficult to handle with motivation directly, because motivations generally tend to be emotional. And emotions are very difficult immediately, switch and change, but by changing your intention, by choosing a specific goal in your life, you kind of try to predispose yourself to experience and feel in that particular way. So it's like a cognitive rewiring of your emotional. Exactly, exactly.

So I have to say, I was, this is, you know, I've really been enjoying your book and, and this was one of the areas that landed most successfully with me, this idea of intentions. I had always thought of intense in setting in the same categories like making vision boards or doing, you know, aura readings or soul retrieval, whatever, just kind of new age govety book. But the way you describe it, I actually now think I'm probably gonna do this.

But all it is is taking a few seconds before you hurl yourself into the momentum of the day and start checking your emails to say, all right, what are my highest goals for this day? Which again, just sort of lifts you above the fray. You're gonna have to throw yourself into the fray pretty quickly, but I would imagine that would set a much nicer tone for the day.

And even for meetings, I think when you have an important meeting, especially a difficult one, like a challenging meeting, like with a staff member or colleague, again taking that one minute, checking with the intention, it really makes a huge difference. So that's the framing. Well, I intend not to rip this person's head off because they're in the same place. Or if you have a very strong opinion of this particular person, to tell yourself, let me be more mindful, not to react it and rush.

So that's the framing. And then the first step based on that framing is a basic mindfulness type practice, because all the subsequent practices are premised upon having some ability to apply your mind. So this is like to state you, you get people to focus on their breath so that their mind is stable enough to do what they're doing. Yeah, more kind of settled, yes, settled there.

So that is the next step. And then after that, we then begin with the loving-kindness meditation and what we do here and here the sequence is different from the traditional approach. The traditional approach tends to be from self to a loved one, then to a neutral person, a difficult person, then all person. Let me just jump in for a second because some of our listeners might not know what loving-kindness is.

Exactly. So loving-kindness, again, sounds helplessly, hopelessly saccharin, but it is actually just an insight from ancient contemplatives that compassion is not something like factory settings that you can never change. Compassion is a skill and that you can cultivate it. And the ancient way of doing that is this kind of meditation called loving kindness meditation where you wish others well, the systematic way you call them to mind maybe even visualize them starting traditionally with yourself and then to maybe a benefactor to dear friend a neutral person a difficult person and

then everybody exactly so in the order we change the order because it turns out in the West you know starting from self is very difficult because for some strange reason contemporary Western culture. We hate ourselves. Yeah, the self-relation is very complicated and it has probably something to do with the highly competitive nature of the society and the way in which we kind of, you know, we have internalized a way of judging ourselves from a very early age where we have been compared with someone else and we have been evaluated externally, evaluated and so on. So what we did was to begin with loving kindness for a loved one, someone that you have no uncomplicated relationship. It could even be a pet. Yeah, it could be a cat, or a granny that you really have a wonderful relationship, or

a mental who has been so kind to you. So you allow your natural emotional response to arise so that in whose presence you feel completely accepted as who you are unconditionally. You evoke that. So that's one step. And once you are able to do it on a regular basis, then we move on to the self where basically the kind of the subtext is, you have this natural ability to do to someone else that you truly care.

So now you just need to switch it on yourself, turn it on yourself. So we then have a two weeks of self-compassion practice because it's quite challenging in the West. And then once the self-compassion practice is gone. Drill down that on that first egg on self-compassion because my initial beef with self-compassion and I suspect a lot of the people listening to this will share it is having an internal cattle prod and internal jockey that's just you know, being a horse all the time is the only route to success. If I don't have this, I'm going to be on the cow-chall-day. Well, it turns out actually it may work for a while,

but it's not very sustainable. And also, the cost you pay is quite harsh. And that's the downside of being that kind of, very strong harsh, self-critic to yourself. Whereas you can achieve what you want by switching it and being kinder to yourself and understanding your situation within the context of other people's experience as well. So self-compassion, and now there are a lot of research showing that among students who

have problems with self-compassion, when they faced kind of a disappointment, it's very difficult to recover. And many of them either deal with that situation through a denial and anger saying, oh, it sucks, system sucks, nobody's fair to me. Or turning up on themselves saying, oh, I'm a loser, you know, why should anybody care about me? Why? You know, I don't deserve this. So we, you know, switch into these modes. And none of these turns out to be a very effective tool. Can I just comment on the deliciousness of sitting across from a former monk talking about

anything sucking at the boss? Sorry sir. That was great. Please keep doing it. So on the other hand, those who have greater self-compassion are able to deal with the situation and not completely universalize it. When we are harsh towards ourselves, when we are confronted with the situation, we immediately universalize it, saying that everybody is unfair or turn it upon oneself. I say, nothing works for me. Whereas if you are most self compassionate, you are able to look at the situation in concrete terms and not immediately rush to universalize it and relate to that particular difficulty and disappointment with the greatest sense of proportion and understanding.

And then you learn and it turns out to learn from a past mistakes and failure, self-compassion, if those who have a greater self-compassion are much more effective. So what is the practice to generate, how do you actually do it? How do you generate self-compassion? A lot of that would involve almost like kind of a journaling. For example, you confront with a difficult situation, say for example you have an argument, difficult argument with a colleague. You know, you then, after things come down, then you reflect upon that, you've tried to reimagine the scenario.

How would I have reacted to this? And because you're feeling very bad now, and how did you relate to your own experience? Can I reframe it in a way that is more compassionate, both to myself and the other person. So a lot of that has to do with the cognitive reframing of a situation so that you learned, initially it's very difficult to catch yourself because if you have a particular pattern,

it's very difficult to catch in the moment, but you can catch yourself immediately after and reframe it. But also part of that involves, you know, now here it may sound a little cheesy. Part of the practice also that is very helpful is to, I could call it almost like reparenting yourself. So you imagine, for example, what we call compassion image,

or compassion figure in your life, someone in whose presence you really feel yourself. You don't need to pretend anything. There is a total feeling of self-acceptance and unconditional acceptance. You evoke that through your imagination so that you know, I mean, basically there is a British psychrists who developed a compassion-focused therapy, which is especially targeting people who suffer with pathological self-criticism. And he actually, his point was that a lot of people who suffered through this have forgotten how to switch on the self-suding mechanism. So in our brain, we have different motivation systems and a lot of people have learned to switch that off

when it comes to their own experience. And self-compassion practice is in a way a kind of rebooting that system. So that you learn to extend that soothing mechanism, which we are all capable when we have to, as parents, most parents will know when you have your young child in an infancy Automatically we don't have to learn this it's in us, but many of us have Somehow learn to switch it off when it comes to our own needs

So a part of the self-compassion practice involved kind of turning that upon yourself and switching that soothing kind of system Self-suting system. I should say that if you want to know more about what exactly these practices are and how to do them, it's all over the book. Yes, it's, yeah, the practices that present you in the book here. But so let me, let me ask you, let me just get personal for a second on my end. Let me just ask you, let me just give you some reports from the front lines of my own mind. And because I've been doing this kind of practice, not exactly what you teach, but it's kind

of practice for many years now. And I'm still a complete moron sometimes. You know, last couple days I was in airports a lot, which is a great place to see how loathsome you can be. You know, I basically didn't want to talk to the woman next to me on the plane and I used to wrap because I was reading your book, which is ironic, you know, I'm here reading this book, compassion, but I had to finish the book or get further into it in order to be prepared for this interview. And I didn't want to talk to the woman next to me. And you know, people cutting me off, I was tired. I could just see the sort of internal

toxicity ramp up as this was happening. The other part of it is that, you know, even after you're having done this for years, I'm still really hard on myself and ways that I recognize that aren't super constructive. I'm really critical of the way I look and perform on television. You know, I'm like, oh, you look swollen there

because you can't stop eating cookies or what, you know, just constantly, or you need a haircut haircut or whatever just constantly on myself about this kind of thing So does that suggest to you that these practices don't work or that I'm a terrible meditator or what no actually the fact that you now catching this in yourself Is the indication that there is a higher level of self-awareness is an indication that there is a higher level of self-awareness. But before the practices, you may not even be aware that you are being overly self-critical. I just ought to go from the criticism to the right down the level.

Exactly. And I think, in fact, for example, in some of the meditation texts, they tell you that when you first start meditating, you might feel maybe a second or third week or maybe a second or third month, you feel that somehow your mind is getting worse. Because you never thought your mind was that restless, and now once you start meditating, you begin to catch and become aware how restless it is. So I think I would say actually it is a good sign that you are making progress.

But also, I mean, we humans are very complicated creatures. There are so many forces that pull us in different directions. And, you know, scientists now tell us that there are different motivation systems in the brain. And when confronted with a particular situation, what kind of motivation system we tap into, you know, changes the way in which we behave. So over time, I think it will change. And the samalag is all in this. His default position is non-judgment and compression. But if the situation calls for something tougher, then he's able to do it. But so that's the ideal.

But it's, you know, and the fact is, I mean, from your own personal experience, you know that as you meditate, you benefit more from this. You know, and it's very difficult to completely prevent emotional reactivity because we are emotional creatures. But we are able to do it now with greater awareness.

We catch ourselves before it is too late. You know, for example, I often tell people that, you know, say, you have an argument with your spouse. If you are a meditator, then you will be able to catch before you go further down that path and start saying horrible things which you will regret. You know, anger is anger. You know, we are emotional creatures. When we feel defensive, anger is the expression that comes out.

That's natural. I mean, I've seen anger in his alloness as well, but that's very human. But the difference is, if you don't have the self-self awareness coming from kind of mental training, then you really go down that path and then start using the harshest things to just to make a point. My friend Sam Harris talks, we're not related but he also wrote a book about meditation talks about the half life of anger and the difference between the amount of damage you can do in an hour of anger as opposed to two minutes of anger isn't anger is incalculable. But so I assume and you actually talk about this in the book, you still mess up, even though you're a professional compassion guy.

Oh definitely, definitely. And my wife is, you know, that's one of the things I tell my monastic colleagues that one advantage of being a married man is that you have your best critic next to you all the time in whose presence you cannot pretend. And that I think is, and I have found that to be tremendously helpful. And of course, as a ordinary human being, they will be ups and downs in my day as well, yeah. So what is your, I always like to ask people this question,

we're almost out of time, but I just want to get a sense of, what is your daily practice? What, and what, giving the nuts and what, and what's in both of it? How much meditation do you do, and what are you doing? I spend about half an hour in the morning here, and part of that involves, I mean, as a Tibetan Buddhist, my own personal practice is framed within the Buddhist practice. So I begin my meditation session seated, and then I do a little bit of breathing at the beginning,

and then intention setting. And then I have certain types of practices, a large part of which is compassion, meditation. Are you also doing like tantric stuff that you know a lot of talk about? Yes, that's part of my practice as well. And then I end with, there's a beautiful eight verses on training the mind, which is an altruistic practice in the Tibetan tradition, which is really like the setting

for the day, kind of setting the tone for the day. And I end my practice with that. And part of the practice also involves a little bit of mindfulness and breathing. But I mean, I'm just curious about Tantra, which is basically the secret practices. Why are they secret? Well because unlike mainstream Buddhism that you see in the Teravada tradition, Teravada tradition is based on the progenitor of modern mindfulness. And then one that the version of Buddhism that you see in Thailand, Sri Lanka, Burma, and so on, Tantric Buddhism is more prevalent in Tibet and to some extent in Japan and to a little extent in some aspect of Chinese tradition as well.

Part of the reason for their secrecy has to do with certain kind of understanding of the role of human emotions, including sexuality, as part of the liberative spiritual process. And if you don't have a grounding in the general Buddhist teachings, these practices can be misunderstood. You just go crazy with desire. Yeah. So that's one of the main reasons for its secrecy. I could we could do a whole hour on that at some point in the future. But let me close with this,

what do you mean by a fearless heart? What I mean by fearless heart is that a large part of fear that we have in our life is kind of an inarticulate sense of anxiety. And a lot of that inhibits our natural interaction with our love, particularly loved ones. And so, my point is that through training our mind, through cultivating compassion, we can get to a point where we can live our life with transparency, without that kind of inhibition that obstructs us, always hesitating, always doubting. And that's the idea that I deal with when I say, feel is hard. I'm still trying to get there, but I like the way it sounds.

That's a good thing, Jim, a pleasure. Thank you very much. And thank you, and thank you for the honour. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you and thank you for the honor. Thank you for listening to today's show. You can find video of the episode and an article about it at ABCNews.com. Thanks as always to the producers of the show, Lauren, Efron, Josh Cohen, Sarah Amos, and Dan Silver.

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