Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 137: Roshi Joan Halifax, 'Turning Towards the Suffering'

Episode Date: May 30, 2018

Roshi Joan Halifax came to New York City by way of New Orleans in the '60s with a thirst to engage in social justice, protesting "everything related to discrimination," she said, and the Vietnam War. Halifax, whose latest book is called "Standing at the Edge: Finding Freedom Where Fear and Courage Meet," went on to become a Buddhist teacher, Zen priest, anthropologist and a pioneer in the field of end-of-life care who has brought her work into psychiatric programs, penitentiaries and refugee camps. 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..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. Hey y'all, it's your girl, Kiki Palmer. I'm an actress, singer, and entrepreneur. I'm a new podcast, baby, this is Kiki Palmer. I'm asking friends, family, and experts,

the questions that are in my head. Like, it's only fans only bad. Where did memes come from. And where's Tom from MySpace? Listen to Baby, this is Kiki Palmer on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. I got a tweet the other day from somebody named Frank Crawford. And Frank, thank you for tweeting me. He said, uh, we need some more deep end podcasts soon. So Frank, we got you covered this week. Rochy Joan Halifax is on the show. She's a Zen priest and also an anthropologist

and she's done a lot of work around death and dying, which as we've covered before on this show is not and does not need to be as morbid as sometimes we assume. Okay, much more from from Joan coming up, but first a little piece of business and then your phone calls. So the business is there's a little event coming up in New York City that I'm doing at the Museum of Modern Art, MoMA. It's on June 6th. They have this thing there called Quiet Mornings, where they open up the museum at 730 in the morning. It goes until about 9 in the morning and you can look at the art and then they do a guided

meditation and I'm going to do one of those guided meditations. And so that's it's June 6th. So Wednesday morning you can get tickets at momma.org. All right, let's do some phone calls. As usual, you can get tickets at momma.org. All right, let's do some phone calls. As usual, my caveat, I'm not a meditation teacher, not a mental health expert. I've not heard these voice mails in advance,

so I just answer them to the best of my ability, which is, as I think you all know, somewhat limited. Having said that, let's do it. Here's call number one. Hi, Dan. This is Donna in Raleigh North Carolina. I'm curious as to how somebody can build a stronger stillness meditation, so where they're actually sitting very, very still not moving.

And getting past the point where all you're thinking about is how I can't move right now. I'm trying to teach this to my students at the university and they've asked me these questions about filmist meditation, so I'm curious about it. Thanks. So I don't, I said my abilities were limited and this may be a great example of how they're limited because I don't know much about anything called stillness meditation, specifically, but I do know about the issue of stillness in meditation because that comes up a lot and especially for fidgety people such as myself. So here's what I'll say about that. So people often ask, can I move? And so the headline answer, the simple easy answer is yes, you can move, especially if you think

you're going to get hurt, you will not get struck by lightning if you move while meditating, especially again, if you think you're about to hurt yourself in which case you absolutely shouldn't move. There is, however, a real benefit to staying still. The body will get uncomfortable. There's a reason why we're shifting in our chair all day long why we roll around in our beds because the body staying in any one position gets uncomfortable.

And what we're doing in meditation is learning how to be Equanimous, okay with the discomfort to not get so carried away by all the stories of oh my god This is gonna get worse. This is never gonna end. I'm gonna die, etc. etc. So the move in meditation, as I've been taught, is to get curious about the discomfort. Get curious about the kind of thinking that the discomfort is provoking and to view it mindfully, to not get so caught up in it. And that ultimately is what we're training. And yes, it may be painful,

but we're developing the ability over time to be able to handle stuff that we often just run from. And when you examine it, when you get curious about what is this sensation of pain in my knee right now, for example, you'll see that it's shifting and changing all the time. And that may not be as bad as you thought if you were just fully invested in all of the things that your ego is telling you about how this is so horrible, you better move this old meditation thing is junk, blah, blah, blah.

So there's a lot to be learned through sitting through pain and discomfort. But again, the thing to know is that if you really are about to get hurt, you should move. It's not a big deal. I think that answers your question. I hope it answers your question. If not, you get your money back. Here's call number two. Hey, Dan. This is David in Denver, Colorado. Love your work around meditation and 10% happier. I've been a participant with you on this journey for the last almost two years.

And my question has to do with, and really would like your perspective, as somebody who started meditation, ostensibly to deal with anxiety and panic attacks and stress. But, you know, nine years into it, you're really starting to, and probably for a long time, starting to get into the deep end of the pool. And my path is somewhat similar. I started this, you know, merely to deal with stress management, anxiety, and what I have found is that I am really taken to this practice and starting to get very deep into it,

both in terms of time, almost two hours a day, sometimes longer, and starting to explore deeper practices. But my challenge is is how to deal with that and lead a normal, but they call householder life like you and other people. So I'm wondering how you handle that and how you balance getting into the deep end of the pool and also kind of remaining in society and interacting on a more less transcendent level with other people.

This is good stuff. I have a lot to say on this. I hope I'll remember to say it all and hopefully I'll say it correctly. But yeah, I mean, look, for some people you start meditating and over time it goes in directions you weren't expecting. I think a lot of people start trying to do

one, two, three, four, five minutes a I think a lot of people start trying to do one, two, three, four, five minutes a day, a couple of times a week. And by the way, to be clear, if that is what you do for the rest of your meditation career, for the rest of your life, that's great. I think you're getting a lot of benefits out of that. But some people, and I will put myself in this category, start to get really interested in getting out of the shallow

and to the pool and toward the deep end of the pool. And by the way, when I say shallow, I don't mean that in the pejorative. I just mean that for some folks just want to do a little bit of meditation to boost their ability to focus and boost their mindfulness, so they're not so yanked around by their emotions, that is beautiful. And again, there is no disrespect or disdain in anything I'm saying about the movement

toward the deep end of the pool. It's just some people are interested in it, and if you're not, that's no big deal. But so it sounds like you and I both are. And yeah, it does come with a bunch of challenges. You know, how do you not let the practice, you know, eat up your rather, your conventional life? So for me, you know, I think we now get into some individual decisions. So for me, I definitely want to stay in, you used a sort of Buddhist term of art here in my householder life, in that I have a wife who's not a big

meditator. She does a little bit of it. I have a three-year-old who does zero meditation and a lot of pooping in his pants and cats and I have a busy life at ABC News. I have a startup company, a podcast and blah, blah, blah. And I like being engaged in the world. a podcast and blah, blah, blah, and I like being engaged in the world. And I find, I don't actually find the deeper engagement with the practice to be a problem in my deep engagement with the world. In fact, quite the opposite is true. Since in the last three years, since I started doing two hours a day of meditation, which again, regular listeners will know,

I don't do all in one dose, I just do it and whatever dose I can, whatever length I can, as many times as I want, wherever I want throughout the course of the day. I found that just upping the amount of meditation has helped me be more effective in all of my various endeavors. So that I'm less of a jerk to myself and others. I'm able to focus and be more productive on all the various projects that I'm working on. And I find that interweaving quite beautiful. But I can see where it would be challenging for somebody

a to find the time to do all the meditation you want to do, and b, and then maybe I think I'm kind of hearing this in what you're saying to feel a little torn between your conventional householder life and your burgeoning interest in the practice. And so I don't know much about the details of your life, but I would say, you know, there are some people who decide, look, I'm going to, you know, stop leading so much of the conventional

life and maybe really take time off and do months, if not years of retreat. And that's an incredible thing to do, not only for you, but for the world, because many if not most of the people who do that, then come back and teach others how to meditate. And that is an incredibly valuable service to provide. You know, as somebody who's now part of the meditation industry, one of the biggest problems we have in the industry, is we don't have, there's a dearth of qualified teachers. The qualifications needed to be a real, serious meditation teacher.

Are extensive, and I've talked about this on the show before, so I won't go often too much of a jag about this. But I think you could be doing a great service to yourself and others. If you decided, hey, look, if you can responsibly, consciously, uncple from to quote, Gwyneth Paltrow, from your conventional life. If that's what you want to do and it's not hurting anybody, then, you know, why not poke around? But if you do want to stay in your regular life, then I think you're dealing with what I'm dealing with,

which is a balance between this incredible interest and value from the practice and how to stay in the, the quote unquote, real world successfully. And that's just a really interesting thing to play with. And interestingly, the practice will help you with that balance. Final thing you said to the extent that I can remember everything you said is, because all of us so interesting,

is that you're wondering about how, now that you're practicing so much, how to interact with using this term, civilians, people who aren't really that into meditation and not being weird. Well, I think that's another thing that your practice can help you with. And, you know, you can hopefully be attuned to the folks you're talking to and see when you're bumping them out or wearing them out or losing their interest

if you're going on and on about your meditation practice, if you're getting to woo-woo or syrupy or something like that. And I think that's just a thing to watch and to be okay making mistakes because you will make mistakes and this is just a learning process. So great question. Good on you for getting so interested in the practice. It's nice to know that there are Confederates out there. Okay, just one last note on the voicemails. If we love these voicemails, they started this as an experiment that Josh and Lauren, who are the producers of the show, dreamed up, and I kind of resisted it for a long time, but now we do it every week. So if you want to call in and leave voicemail, the number is 646-883-832-646-883-8366 will probably use it if it isn't too weird. And if it is really

weird, we may use it anyway. Okay, our guest, Roshi Joan Halifax, PhD. She is an incredibly interesting person. She's a Zen priest. She's a Buddhist teacher. She's an anthropologist. She's also a pioneer in the field of end-of of life care, which is of real interest to me as somebody who spends time volunteering in a hospice every week and who I think we'll get to this, I worry about the way we die in this culture. So she is just an incredibly interesting person who's had a fascinating life. So rather than me, I'm around about it. Let's hear it from Joan herself.

Here she is, Rochie Joan Halifax PhD. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ From ABC, this is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ So I'll ask you the question I always ask everybody, which is how did you start menacing? I began out of desperation. I think you did too. Yes. And it was in

the 1960s during the civil rights and the anti-war movement. And a couple of things came up for me. One was my mind was seriously upregulated. It's always my body. We were in a very resistant revolutionary mood in the 1960s. Where were you? I actually was here in New York. And at Columbia? I was at Columbia.

I was working in a big project in the Bureau of Applied Social Research for a remarkable person named Alan Lomax. And we were looking at patterns of culture, cross-culturally. And he was left of left, himself. My parents used to refer to them as left of Trotsky. More or less in that direction. And of course, one of the really powerful things was to be in New York at that time, although I was raised in the South and schooled in the South. I came here in a way to get away from the...

Where in the South? Well, I went to school in New Orleans. Love New Orleans. New Orleans is great. It was great. But it was a very complicated atmosphere. Especially at that time. And at that time, and I was very close with a man called Hotting Carter who was at that point, he had lost his eyesight, but he needed feet and hands, so to speak, out there doing civil

rights work on his behalf. And so he and I, and I was very close with his wife, Betty Werliner. And it was just an incredible time where I was able to learn a lot about the perspective of justice that I carried today. Hot and Carter was a major influence in my life. Then right after that, when I came to New York, I connected with a physicist named David Fingleston and I was in the student on Violent Coordinating Committee. Then I had the chance to meet Fannie Lou Hamer. And she just completely lit my fire because I could see how faith and justice worked

together. I've never heard of Fannie Lou Hamer. Well, she ran for president, by the way. Well, I was a little live. She was a sharecropper from Mississippi who became one of the major voices for SNCC. And she was here in New York? No, she actually worked all over the South and she was really pushing for voter registration. But I can't believe you haven't heard of her. Well, now you have to look her up. It's just the beginning of my ignorance. Well, it's going to get worse from here, I promise.

I'm not sure about that. But anyway, she was a major voice during the Civil Rights Movement, and she was kind of two voices. I want really three. She was the voice of justice. She was the voice of feminism. And she also, she could sing from the souls of her feet. So like all of my best guests, you say a few things and now I have a million questions, so I don't even know where to start. For you, when's this thirst to be engaged in social justice? Why was that driving you so forcefully?

driving you so forcefully. You know, Tan, I think all of us in that era who were of my ilk and there were I think millions of my ilk had been raised in a kind of dead time. That time was the 50s. Eisenhower. I mean, well Eisenhower was not entirely a bad person. He had quite a bit of wisdom. No, but that era was known as yeah. Yeah, it was, it was sort of a dead time. It was a bubble of privilege if you were a white person. And I was raised in the south, but also when I was a child, I lost my eyesight and I was in bed really sick at the age of four until the age of six. And my parents brought a woman in to our household whose mother had been a slave or grandmother had been a slave.

And this woman was really extraordinary. She was the epitome of loving kindness. Plus, she had a disposition to die for. And so, you could say, loved into a view of justice. And that justice was combined with love. And when Martin Luther King brought those two parameters together a decade later, it truly made sense to me. And I couldn't understand because I was born into or raised in a community that was restricted. So what was a restricted community? you and I can't even imagine that at this point in our life.

But that community did not allow Afro-Americans nor Jews to live in that neighborhood. And so... Which state was this in? This was in Florida, Southern Florida. So the... That was legal. That was legal. That was what I mean, that was the law, indeed. I know. So, the, the bubble that, in the moral apathy that pervaded white communities in that time,

of course, was something that also was part of my history, but also this extraordinary person entered into that bubble by virtue of my sickness and my father picking her up every day and bringing her into Carl Gables, Florida, where my mother and father lived. And as a result of that, I got ignited by some sort of fire of, in a way, it was curiosity or inquiry or how could this be these communities of discrimination that seem to protect people from the heart? So, you wind up after New Orleans in New York City, use the word up-regulated to describe your mental state. What do you mean by that?

And what were you doing that up-regulated you? Well, you know, we were protesting everything. I mean, I say everything related to discrimination. And the war, I would say. And the war. But first it was the civil rights movement, and then it was the war, but first it was the civil rights movement and then it was the war and then in the mid-60s Dan I joined a huge demonstration where we were moving down Fifth Avenue and there was one Buddhist

walking at a snail's pace and His name was Tick-Not-Hon Okay, can I explain to people who Ticknothan is? Please do. At this point in history, actually, a wrecky figure, because he's a Vietnamese... Young person. At this point, yes, again, at the point in the chronology in which you're... you have taken us a young Vietnamese monk who went on to take a play a very important role in the in the piece process and also now is still

alive and has a large following and has written some really incredible books and if you're looking listener for his books the spelling is is not obvious. THICH and HAT, H-A-N, three different words. I get that. H-A-N-H. Okay, I missed an H. There are a lot of H's in there. There are. And he's incredible. Yeah. So, did you meet him?

Well, I met him, but in a very casual way, but actually, I met him, which is to say, I was a social activist, but also I was suffering. I was suffering because I was in enormous reaction against our government and against violence. But in a way, having a war with violence causes one suffering. And so, the thing that really stirred me down was here with somebody who brought a contemplative practice in relation to social action and social responsibility and dealing with issues which he did related to structural violence. So it just completely again, you know, another face shift in my life where I saw you could be a

revolutionary that walked the path of peace. So did you put on the robes the next day or how did it go? You know, I had been practicing as a book Buddhist, if you will, inspired by Alan Watts and also a little bit by Christian Murty and then somebody, D. T. Suzuki, but that kind of Buddhism was and actually, Christa Murty has a book called, The Only Revolution. That's the title of the book, but the following line is the revolution within. And so, you know, I thought, that is a very interesting perspective for someone who's basically a revolutionary myself, but

because it implied a transformation process had to happen internally so that I could actually do the work around social justice. But it wasn't as though Christian Murdy was a social revolutionary, and I felt some sense of deep responsibility in terms of engaging at the social level and the political level in terms of how do we transform the fabric of our society. And so Tick-Nat Han exemplified exactly the processes and qualities which I felt were essential in terms of social and environmental responsibility.

How did he operate? What was he doing that was so intriguing in terms of having a contemplative practice Buddhism in this case and also engaging in the world in a meaningful way? Well, I don't really know what he was doing at that point. It wasn't until 20 years later I became a student. It was more the archetype or more bringing together social action and contemplation. And I thought, if this guy does it, it can be done.

And in a way Martin Luther King also did it. He was a person of profound faith in prayer. Just a different tradition. And just a different tradition. In fact, King nominated Tick-N-Hon for the Nobel Peace Prize. But, you know, particularly Tick-N-Hon, I wanted to understand what Buddhism was. I was born and raised into a Protestant family, went to an episcopal school, had this kind of flavor of faith in my psyche, fanning Lou Hamer also was a person of great faith, whom I met in the 1960s, and I wanted to understand the role of religion spirituality in terms of social responsibility, but also Dan. I saw something in encountering Tick-Not-Han about his mind that really moved me, and I wanted to grow a mind and heart like

that. What did you see? I saw peace. I saw pain. I saw wisdom. I saw compassion, but I saw peace. And it was that peace that I felt was essential to actualize if I were going to be engaged as a social activist. How? A lot of people are going to wonder, how do you have pain in your mind and compassion? How do those co-exist compassion, of course, being the desire to alleviate others' pain and suffering? How do you hold that at the same time with peace? I don't think if you're human, you can avoid pain and suffering. I think the Buddha saw that clearly by articulating the first noble truth in the first teaching that he gave. Not that life is suffering,

but there is suffering. And in fact, in my new book, Standing at the Edge, one of the areas that I explore in the book is how important it is to stand in a landscape that allows you to see both the truth of suffering and also freedom from suffering at the same time. And if you look at the great revolutionaries and people we admire today, like Malala or Mandela or Jane Gurdall or Tiktokhan or his holiness, the Dalai Lama. These are people who have encountered deep suffering in their lives. They were exiled from their countries, they were shot at, they were imprisoned. And as a result, in a certain way of having been wounded by the world,

they came to embrace the whole world. And out of that, they actualized wisdom and compassion. And so I think that one of the really important things, it's like turning into the skit. It's not turning away from suffering through avoidance or denial or numbing or addiction. It's actually to understand what suffering is about. And I feel ticked out Han went into that completely with his whole life. Let me press you on that a little bit because I mean, I agree with what you're saying, but I'm not sure I fully understand it even though I'm directionally trying to, you know, live that way. Turning into this kid, sort of fully experiencing

your pain and suffering. What is the mechanism by which that can lead to peace of mind? So I feel that when we push our suffering away, it's not that we have to seek it. Don't worry, you'll be given it in one form or another, even if it's the suffering of anger or the suffering of ignorance. But on what turning toward the suffering that one goes through instead of pushing it away or denying it, what it does for us is that it opens up our capacity for compassion. It becomes a kind of ground where we are able to attend to the truth of suffering in all of the world.

So if you can fully experience your own suffering and without pushing it away and without indulging it, without feeding it through you know whatever neurotic obsessions happen to be flitting through your mind in any given moment but just really experiencing it mindfully, then you have a more of a sense that everybody else experiences this too and you might be of a mind to be useful. Well, what happened to you? In what? When?

A lot of things have happened. Well, I know, a lot of things have happened, but you made a radical shift, you know, out of a disintegrated state toward what and why? I would say up regulation is a nice word. I actually, I liked is a nice word. I actually like the word you use that for me I was super self-centered and ambitious and moving very fast

with a lot of distraction and when I When it was pointed out to me that we have a voice in our heads as yammering all the time and that we're, and then it's mostly negative and self, and repetitive and self-referential, I'm really the third really, that it's all you're all just stuck in this own movie of your own making that is all about you. And I realized, oh yeah, that describes my life. And meditation seemed like a useful tech inner technology for chipping away at that for transcending it occasionally. But

more importantly, just seeing it, seeing that it's happening so that it doesn't own you. And just doing that mental exercise over and over and over and over again, where you just see the chaos, the inner zoo allows you to disin bed from it. And so for me, that has been the process. Well, I know different for me. Maybe my project has been a little bit longer than yours, because I've been more stubborn and resistant, or I have to, you know, keep returning to it again and again. Although I get pangs of guilt when I'm confronted with somebody like you,

because even though I'm a full-time meditator now and a meditational evangelist, et cetera, et cetera, I wouldn't say if I examine my own motivations carefully and I try to do that when I have the guts to do it, I don't know that I wouldn't call myself as somebody who is, I wouldn't describe myself as somebody who is principally motivated by social justice. You know, I think there's a lot of stuff in my range of motivation that is selfish, you know, feathering the nest for me and my wife and our child, promoting my work, et cetera, et cetera.

Yes, I do have some high-minded goals, especially sort of making this practice, this simple secular practice available to a wider swath of people, which I believe will alleviate suffering, mitigate suffering, but it co-exist with a lot of selfish stuff too, if I'm being honest. So I do, you know, I think that's a difference I see between the two of us, although of course I can't read your mind. I think we're all a little selfish. And I think what's really extraordinary is that your message, which is a secular message, is reaching deep into our society and is turning many people toward the so-called Dharma

toward the value of mental training, the value of cultivating loving kindness. You've interviewed Sharon Salzburg and she loves you. So what I met her in the early 1970s, IMS was just starting. And so Joseph Goldstein and Jack and Sharon were at IMS, which was much smaller than Needless. The Insight Meditation Society and Barry Massachusetts, which they started, yes. And so I went to meet them and visit with them.

And I was a Zen person by this time. And Sharon asked me about my practice. I said, oh, just sitting in this kind of warrior-like practice, which actually suits me rather well in terms of my disposition. And I said to her, well, what's your practice? And she said, oh, I practice loving kindness. And I'm like, oh, I wonder if I would slip into a diabetic coma during that kind of practice. Tell me more about that practice, I said.

And she began to describe the promovie horrors, the boundless abodes of loving kindness, practicing that in compassion and sympathetic joy, and equanimity, and I'm listening going, Oi, I'm not sure this is anything I would ever do. It just sounds too sweet to me. She said, hey, just do it. It'll change your life. I just loved her. She's such an amazing person. She's so totally who she is. And I decided to try it on. And it's been over 40 years since I started this practice bringing it into

my Zen practice. And I think I'm a better person for it. So, but it's not strictly orthodox, right? So if you're a Zen practitioner, this loving kindness meditation, which is really comes from a different tradition. If I understand correctly, so you'll correct me when I step outside of accuracy here. A bit more of something that's done in sort of teravada tradition, which is the older school Buddhism. So was that considered in any way a transgression for you to bring this into a zen context? First I did it just for myself, mostly because I was conditioned by the era in which I was found myself as a young adult

into a lot of sort of revolutionary, a versus states of mind. But I also had this other thread moving through my life, which came from the woman who was so kind to me as a child, she exemplified the Brahma viharas. Can you define the Brahma viharas for folks? Yeah, so there are four. This is known as the Boundless of Boads.

These are states of mind that are actually natural to us, but get covered up by virtue of our history, our genetics, our conditioning, our childhood, our culture, and so forth. And I begin with, are they begin with loving kindness? And are they begin with loving kindness? And, you know, how we can ask ourselves, how can we be supported by this heart and mind that is characterized by deep kindness, by concern about others, by gentleness. And it's not just interpersonally,

but it's also how can we develop a mind and heart that is loving and kind? And just for the listeners who may want to know what the others are, I'll just fill it in quickly and you'll correct me again because I'm sitting here talking with an eminent teacher and I'm pretending I know what I'm talking about. Anyway, they are loving kindness, as you said, which is basically you could translate it as friendliness. Compassion, which is the desire to, or the movement to alleviate others' suffering. Moudito, which is one of my favorite words, is very hard to do in a professional context.

It's the opposite of Shaddon Freud. It's the desire. It is the taking pleasure in other people's success or good fortune. And finally, equanimity, which is needed if you're going to apply these compassionate states in a world in which is characterized by entropy, impermanence and sometimes cruelty.

You know, another take on equanimity that I've always appreciated is loving all beings equally. Beautiful. Hard to do when you have a kid. In other words, like I have a child, I don't know that I can love everybody who walks by me on the street. Right.

Well, it's kind of, it's a standard that's kind of interesting because when you find your, your in touch with your biases and like I worked in the Penitentiary of New Mexico, which is one of the worst penitentiaries in this country, maybe not in the world, but in this country. And I would notice when I cared a little bit more for prisoner A, as distinct from prisoner B, and it would be like a kind of poll. I would feel like, oh, I'm favoring one over another. Or if I'm with a student, and I realize, oh, I'm favoring this student over another student.

Or I'm sitting with a group of teachers and favoring one over another. Or if I'm sitting in Rohingya refugee camp in Katmandu and I favor a woman, a Rohingya woman who's in a burka, over her husband who is looking a little bit intimidating to me. And you feel this kind of tug when you go off and you realize, ah, it's interesting to hold all beings in equal regard to value each life. You know, I'm going to expand on that. And then again, hopefully you'll just tell me if you disagree. It seems to what I like about the Buddhist system for training the mind is it's not saying

you need to engage in self-legulation if you notice yourself favoring one person over the other. The remedy seems to be mindfulness, just seeing it clearly. There's a sort of a healing value and just seeing it. It's like when I was talking about my range of motivation before, well, I do feel some sheepishness about the fact that I have selfish motivations. To me, it's just important to see it. And the same is true, I think, with our biases. And particularly important right now in the American political scene, I'm often telling people that it's

actually a important mindfulness practice in my view to have a varied media diet, because it is useful to see where your biases are. If you can listen to smart people on both sides of the ideological spectrum, although I actually think the ideological spectrum has shifted these days because it's not just so much liberal versus conservatives actually, whether you're pro-Trump or anti-Trump, but whatever. You should listen to smart people on all sides of issues. Because then you'll start to see there's a value. There's even in some ways a kind of pleasure in seeing your biases so that you aren't drowned by them and you can make better, come to wise or conclusions.

Anything I just say make any sense to you? Actually, it makes great sense. For one thing. You just say that because you're for one thing. For one thing. For one thing. For one thing. For one thing. For one thing. For one thing.

For one thing. Because you're on my podcast. No. No. No. You know, if you were talking, I was thinking, how important curiosity is. Yes. I mean, you know, if we don't have this sort of mind of not knowing, you know, we're not open

to perspective taking, being able to kind of slip, you know, in and out of worlds and to see from other points of view. And this really came up for me when I was a young person as an anthropologist doing cross-cultural anthropology. You know, being able to look out of the eyes of other people are include, who actually it's not so much looking out of other people's eyes, is if you could say it this way, it's expanding your subjectivity to include others' perspectives into how you see the world. Then you can have true depth of field.

Much more of our conversation right after this quick break. Raising kids can be one of the greatest rewards of a parent's life. But come on, someday, parenting is unbearable. I love my kid, but is a new parenting podcast from Wondry that shares a refreshingly honest and insightful take on parenting. Hosted by myself, Megan Galey, Chris Garcia, and Kurt Brown-Oller, we will be your resident not-so- so expert experts.

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You can listen ad-free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app. We've just very conveniently brought us back where I wanted to go, which is you in the 1960s at Columbia and doing this work, this anthropology work, but also engaged in civil rights work and anti-war work and feeling, as you said before, up-regulated. And as we know, you encountered Buddhism and meditation, but you haven't quite told us exactly when you went from being a book Buddhist to a practicing Buddhist,

and then what impact it had on you and your mind, given how much, as you described it, a version you were experiencing. So, Dan, I was a book Buddhist for 10 years. And you know, a book Buddhist reads about Buddhism, goes to Buddhist talks, but doesn't have a teacher. Or, doesn't, do you have a practice? Oh, yeah. Oh, so you did have a practice.

So you were just reading books. Yeah. I mean, I think one of the things book Buddhists do is they kind of try on practice. You know, it's kind of like putting on a new outfit. You know, that's an interesting practice. Then you read a book about Tibetan Buddhism. And you try on that. And you try on a lot of different things.

But you're not held accountable and not being held accountable in a certain way. You can really kind of fool yourself sort of dream that you're a good spiritual person, which I don't think I was caught in that dream so much. But in any case, Jack Cornfield said to me, he and my ex-husband, Stanislav Graf, produced a big program at Eselin in 1975, called Buddhism in Mind. And it was about science, philosophy, and Buddhism, and psychology.

And Jack said to me, you know, there's this Korean teacher and he's really interesting and he's really wild. And I don't know, I just feel like it's sort of a good fit. And I met this Korean teacher who came sort of up the walk in his little sort of gray outfit. And he had a ton of energy. And I ended up becoming a student. And it was a fantastically interesting shift for me.

His name was Sonsanim, Song Song, Sonsanim. And he had Korean practice, Korean style practice, this sort of mountain style practice. And it had a lot of vigor. Mountain style. Yeah, you know, Korea is 75% mountains. sort of mountain style practice and it had a lot of vigor. Mountain style. Yeah, you know, Korean is 75% mountains. And those monks, those Korean monks in the Chokyo order are people who do like 3,000

prostrations a day. They're very vigorous kind of people. They're like extreme athletes of Buddhism. I would say Not the only the Tibetans are pretty good too, but the Koreans are really amazing this way and this guy had sort of a lot of energy and I became a student and did a lot of what are called Yongman John Jin which is these intensive practices and Yongman John Jin as, to leap like a tiger while sitting. That's great.

Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah. And so it was really, you know, I practiced with him for 10 years. It was a very positive experience mostly. No relationship with the teacher is completely clear, clean, and radiant. But the deficit for me was no social action. So, you know, I was living in a divided world. Part of that world was in this intensive Korean Zen practice. Part of the world was

apart from practice, which was related to my activities in the area of social justice. It ended up in the mid-80s that I had the opportunity to meet Tick.Hon once again. And this was in 85 and I said, you know, I have to shift. I need to actually change dreams. I understood the value and I had really benefited from mind training, but I also needed to go back in a way to the original impulse, which was how do we bring the experience of mind training in relation to social action, to dealing with issues of structural violence in the world. How do you do that?

Well, I'm not sure, actually, Dan. I didn't expect that answer. I could say, for all of us, and there are people like Sulak, Shiva-Rakshan, and a long list of Buddhists who are involved in social action. And I think all of us would come to the same conclusion in terms of how it's always a work in progress. And it's holding the Dalai Lama, is also a social activist. He's also calling for justice. I mean, he called out Ansan Suu Chi on the Rohingya, for example. And he's a very fiery character, a lot of energy.

He's not just a breathing smile. He's got tons of Chi, and he's kind of has dragon energy about him. I think that we're, we who are involved in both meditation and social action, are constantly exploring that edge. The edge of moral outrage, and I write about it in this new book, standing at the edge, the edge of moral outrage that is unprincipled and chronic, and moral outrage that's principled, where our sense of the transgression, of what it is to be a good human being on the earth today and the assault on our conscience

that we feel that it doesn't become a chronic state where we are able to actually use the energy related to injustice, to engage in activities that transform our social fabric. Well, I know you say a lot about this in the book, but give us some sense of how do you walk that edge between being appropriately infuriated by the injustices in the world, and then, on the other side, just being adrounding it and allowing it to have a corrosive effect.

I think that is really the work of meditation, because you don't want to just stand in the kind of cloud of happiness per se, that obscures the whole landscape of our lives, the landscape of justice and also the landscape of injustice. You want to be able to see the whole landscape. And so walking that edge is really important because it allows you to see the wider landscape, if you will, the wider view of our human nature. And how do you do it? You learn balance. Balance at the edge is really critical. And you also, because we're always sliding off, you know,

the high edge of the human heart and encountering our own difficulties and stupidity. One of the things is that you gain out of these unfortunate, and difficult slides down the slope into empathic distress or pathological altruism or disrespect or moral suffering or burnout. And as you make your way back up to the high edge, you gain a little bit of humility. So you're saying that it's hard to maybe even impossible to have the balance that you're describing without having gone through periods of imbalance?

I think that you don't have to seek imbalance. Don't worry. No, I get it. You'll find yourself in rough times. But you're not calling for perfection, a perfect balance at all times here. I guess that's what I'm getting at. No. for perfection, a perfect balance at all times here. I guess that's what I'm getting at. No, in fact, I think just the opposite. What perfection does is keep you away from your full potential.

I really love the image that Tiktok Han uses in this regard. And I talk about it in the book, Standing at the Edge. He says, no mud, no lotus. That is, the root of the lotus goes deep into the mud of suffering, but, and also feeds what causes the lotus to bloom. Give me the basic thesis of this new book. So this book is an exploration of qualities of the human heart and mind

related to our character and what it is to live a life that's characterized by moral character, by virtue, by civility. And it explores five domains. One of those domains is altruism. Altruism is essential for our human life. If our parents hadn't been altruistic, we wouldn't be alive today.

Not you nor me. You know this as a father. Altruism is one of those qualities of human character that make for a healthy society, but when we harm ourselves in the course of serving others, when we harm the body or our mind, or when we actually harm disempower or overwhelm those who were endeavoring to serve, or the institutions in which we're serving, or the institutions like governments that we're serving, like Nepal in a way has been harmed by pathological altruism. Then altruism becomes toxic. And it's what Oakley calls, Barbara Oakley calls,

pathological altruism. Empathy, I go deep in the book into the whole world of empathy, what it is to be physically resonant with another, what it is to be emotionally resonant with another, to feel empathy for another. And what it is to experience cognitive or mental empathy, where you include the other and how you see the world and how they see the world. But if we get too aroused, there's too much fusion with the other person. Then we experience what the social psychologists are now calling empathic distress. And empathic distress can lead to secondary trauma to us actually being wounded

by experiencing the feelings of another. I also take a deep dive into integrity and the value of what it is to be a person of integrity in our world today. And we can look at our contemporary politics or what's happening in the media as a kind of violation of integrity. What is it to cultivate a civil society and to be a civil and respectful individual? And when that is absent there, you could say when integrity begins to fragment, then we experience moral suffering. And in the book, I explore four areas of moral suffering.

They include moral distress, moral injury, moral outrage, and moral apathy. And I go deeply into these areas in the course of the book. Let me ask you a couple of questions that may not be maybe sort of only obliquely related to the book, but they just, you know, they really popped out to me. And I wonder if listeners will have a tune to them as well. One of them I already ask you about, but I want to go back to it, which is, I think a lot of people listening to this will have conventional lives by which I mean,

in this case, in this context, not social activists. You know, we have, I work for a major corporation, I'm sure lots of people listen to this, have their accountants, maybe they, I don't know, whatever they do, but it's not, you know, they're not full-time engaged in trying to heal the wounds of the world. I find, again, as I said before, that could be a little sitting or with you or hearing for somebody like you can be a little bit of a guilt inducing. What would you say to those who might have those feelings upon listening to you as somebody who's built her life around addressing these issues in the world and also addressing your own internal issues so that you

can better address the issues in the world? That's a good luck. Good luck because I think that in a way all of us contribute. And all of us, I believe, are called on to contribute, not necessarily being Nelson Mandela, not necessarily being Malala, not necessarily even following a little bit, say, the tiny little bit that I've done, but I'm addressing our own consumerism. Looking at what we can do in terms of the environment. Do we really need all of the things that are in our storage locker?

Can we bring up our kids in a way where there's great appreciation for inclusivity, diversity? We are all in an interconnected world, whether you're a banker or a accountant or a forest ranger, or whether you're an academician or you're plastering walls. We are sharing all in a moment of time, of hyper interconnectedness, where cause and effect is really operating and we're all responsible and we all can take responsibility to ways that are appropriate for us and we have to find each of us our scale of effectiveness. Right, so we don't need to be Mahatma Gandhi.

We can just do our best in our own jurisdiction. Exactly. So the other thing you said, when you talked about book Buddhists, a little flag went up for me because I suspect a lot of listeners to this podcast would be what you would describe as book Buddhists, people who read a lot of books, they practice a little bit, maybe they use an app, whatever, but they don't have a teacher per se. They're not going for it in that way. Is it, does that mean they're not doing it right? I needed a teacher, Dan.

Many people don't need teachers. You know, I'm such a wild person that I actually needed somebody that who would talk straight to me. And as a result of that, you know, I'm still a wild person. But I'm wild. You're the teacher. But also, my teacher is still alive. And so I practiced Thai for a decade, take that Han.

And then I decided, look, I want a Western teacher. And I became Rochi Bernie Glassman student. And so I talked to my teacher all the time and I say, hey, Bernie, tell me, how can I do this better? And he's very wonderful. He'll say, well, I don't know. And then we enter into inquiry, but not everybody needs a teacher because you know Dan, everything is teaching us. Everything is. And part of it is how do we ignite this sense of inquiry within our human heart so everything can teach us?

What is your, just curious? What's your daily practice? What does meditation for you mean? I like what Clark Strand said in something he wrote. He said, you know, it's the best thing to do is to meditate inside the life you have. So if you're a policeman, you meditate inside of that life. If you're an accountant, you meditate inside that life. For me, if I'm on an airplane, that's the life I have in that moment, and I meditate inside of that life.

I think that having a daily practice for some people, like myself, is really good. So first thing I do when I wake up in the morning is I actually check my state of mind. And I begin to shift into first resettling the body and then to remember why I'm really here, which is to end suffering. And since I work with a lot of beings, a lot of people who suffer, I have the chance to bring one person or another into my heart in that moment, to just kind of let me be, if you will, infused with a sense of compassion and this gives direction and meaning in my life. And then in that state, then, you know, I'll spend anywhere from five minutes to sometimes an hour in the morning, just allowing my body and mind to settle down and to become much more integrated before I head out into the world.

Will you get out of bed before you do this or you sometimes just stay right there and bed and? You know, Dan, a lot of times I'll just sit up in bed. Sometimes I'll stay supine. And if I haven't had a lot of sleep, that night, because I'm jet lag from traveling, from time zone to time zone, you know, I might stay supine and just allow myself to be infused

with that quality of presence, compassion, and wakefulness. And it's like a vitamin that you take it. quality of presence, compassion, and wakefulness. And it's like a vitamin that you take. I think that long-term retreat or intensive, a weekend of really strong practice is good, but also this kind of daily dose is important. And I do the same thing at night, then. But also, going back to Clark Strand's wonderful view of meditating inside the life you have,

I'm walking down the concourse to catch a plane. And instead of hurrying mindlessly, often often I'll do it as walking meditation. Then I'll see, oh, it says gate 43. But actually the Sanskrit word, gate, which means gone, gone or arrive, arrive. I'll go gate, gate, as I pass by each gate. You know, as a way to kind of amuse myself and to drop in and to help to regulate my nervous system. This is really good. I mean, especially for me, the part about waking up in the morning, because I realize even after all of my public lecturing about the value of meditation, I tend to wake up, grab my phone, which is the opposite of mindfulness. You know, to spend some time supine or sitting, checking in makes a ton of sense.

I'm going to start doing that. Finally, sorry, just in a minute. Well, I was going to say, Dan, I think that sometimes we have the idea as people who do meditation practice that you have to do these long periods, you know, like an hour or even 20 minutes for some people is just not viable one breath Can help you shift states absolutely it can wake you up to whatever has been owning you the moment before mindlessly So one final question as we wrap up here about the book. Why now? Why this book now? I think we have a serious deficit of virtue right now. And it's not as though there has been a more virtuous time in the history of human endeavor. But it's more that non-virtue or

incivility or unkindness, violence is more visible to us. And that we have to actually put our hand on the tiller and shift the direction of our boat now. The tipping point in a certain way is in this moment, it's in this moment intimately, but it's also in this moment globally. And we have an opportunity as a global society, not just as a Western society, but really as a global society, to shift toward a future which can be possible if we develop a good heart and a clear mind. And bringing together wisdom and compassion as an imperative at this time, I think is essential. But do you think enough people are going to do this that it can make a difference?

I do. My friend Rebecca Solnett, who wrote the introduction to the book, has written a, of my book, has written many powerful books. She wrote one called Hope in the Dark. And I feel that kind of hope. I feel that as complicated and difficult and vulnerable and threatened as our world is today. And I'm talking about the whole world. I'm also the possibility not of just escaping off the planet to parallel universes, but of transforming our world into a viable, generative society. That includes all beings and things. I feel that possibility is with us now. This has been great.

If people want to learn more about you, how can they do that? I'm the Abbott of UPAI Zen Center. It's very easy to find www.yupia.org. Also, I'm getting my book standing at the edge. It's filled with stories about many lives, including mine. And it also is filled, I believe, with a view that has great possibility for bringing peace into this world. Excellent. Thank you very much. Thank you, Dan.

My pleasure. My pleasure. Okay, that does it for another edition of the 10% Happier Podcast. If you liked it, please take a minute to subscribe, rate us. Also, if you want to suggest topics, you think we should cover or guests that we should bring in, hit me up on Twitter, at Dan B. Harris. Importantly, I want to thank the people who produced this podcast, Lauren Efron, Josh Cohen, and the rest of the folks here at ABC, who helped make this thing possible.

We have tons of other podcasts. You can check them out at ABCnewspodcasts.com. I'll talk to you next Wednesday. Hey, hey, prime members. I'll talk to you next Wednesday. Before you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondery.com slash Survey.