Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 200: Sharon Salzberg, A Meditation Master Stares Down Death

Episode Date: August 14, 2019

World-renowned meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg recently faced a very serious health scare and a true test of her decades of practice. In this very candid conversation Sharon tells us what happened to her, how her mindfulness training took over to help her get through the crisis and the lessons she learned coming perilously close to death. Plug Zone Website: https://www.sharonsalzberg.com/ Social Media: @sharonsalzberg Ten Percent Happier Resources Loving-kindness + Walking meditation: https://10percenthappier.app.link/cnjzzwHvhX ***VOICEMAILS*** Have a question for Dan? Leave us a voicemail: 646-883-8326 See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Before we jump into today's show, many of us want to live healthier lives, but keep bumping our heads up against the same obstacles over and over again. But what if there was a different way to relate to this gap between what you want to do and what you actually do? What if you could find intrinsic motivation for habit change that will make you happier instead of sending you into a shame spiral? Learn how to form healthy habits without kicking your own ass unnecessarily by taking our healthy habits course over on the 10% happier app. It's taught by the Stanford psychologist Kelly McGonical and the Great Meditation Teacher Alexis

Santos to access the course. Just download the 10% happier app wherever you get your apps or by visiting 10% calm. All one word spelled out. Okay on with the show. For ABC, to baby. This is Kiki Palmer on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcast. From ABC, this is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. We're at a milestone this week people. 200 episodes. I can't believe we're at 200 episodes. This whole thing started on a lark. I was in an elevator right here at ABC News headquarters in New York City a couple years ago. And one of my friends longtime colleague Lauren Efron, she got

onto the elevator. And I said to her, do we do podcasts here at ABC News? She works in the in digital, which I thought maybe had something to do with the podcast division, which of course it doesn't. The radio folks do the podcast. Anyway, the answer was, at that point, we really didn't have a podcast.

But Lauren is such a high-energy person that a couple days later, she organized a meeting with some folks from the digital department and the radio world, and they were in my office, and everybody was like, yeah, let's try doing a podcast. And so a couple weeks later, we had a podcast. I interviewed the dollar. I had a pre-scheduled interview with the dollar llama.

We dumped that into the podcast feed. And then I set something up with Rivers Cuomo from Weezer, who's a friend of a friend and boom, I launched the podcast with those two. And every week since then, we've been somehow wrangling guests into the studio to sit and talk to me about meditation and it has been amazing. I've learned an extraordinary amount and I continue to learn from all of you. As some of you may know, we have this amazing group of podcast insiders, hundreds of people

who give us feedback every week. And so I'm, you know, continually trying to up my game. And yeah, this has been an incredible run. And to mark the occasion, we have brought back the legendary meditation teacher Sharon Salisberg, who has been on this show more than any other person for good reason, because she's an extraordinary human being who's got an extraordinary life story and has been a teacher who's touched the lives of tens of thousands of people. She's written a series of bestselling books and is one of the founding teachers on the 10% happier app.

And she happens to be on the other side, thankfully, of a really serious health crisis. I mentioned this on the show a few months ago that went when she was in the throes of this and she was in the hospital in California and there was a big outpouring of support and love for her. But I wanted to bring her on. I sent her an email when she arrived back in New York after she got out of the hospital and said, would you be willing to come on the show

and talk about it? Because I thought it would be useful for people, we're all gonna get sick, we're all gonna die. And I thought it would be useful for people to hear what it's like to be in a situation where death is a very real possibility. And you've spent decades of your life training your mind in meditation.

So Sharon really in this episode walks us low by blow through this ordeal and we get a fascinating window into what what it was like in her head as she was enduring this. One quick little plug here before we get into the episode and that is that she has she's one of the most popular teachers on the 10% happier app. And there is a great meditation I want to highlight here. It's when she guides on doing loving kindness meditation while walking. And she describes it as a kind of silent secret superpower that can be applied as you walk through the world. So if you go to the on the go category on the app and click on her meditations, you can

find it there. We've also put a direct link in the show notes. All right. Back to Sharon Salisberg. I want to thank her for all she's done for me as a teacher and for the bravery that this interview really entailed as you're about to hear. Oh, and one more thing before we go here, we're going to do voicemails this week, but Sharon's

going to do them. We recorded these separately, so the audio will sound a little different, but Sharon's going to take your voicemails at the end of the show. So stay tuned for that. Here we go. Sharon Salisbury. Nice to see you. It's very nice to see you.

A lot of people were really worried about you when the news broke, but I can tell them because they can't see you. They look great. Thank you. And I've seen you a couple times over the last few weeks and months, and you're up and about and doing your thing. But I wanted to have you in. You are, you already were the most frequent guest on the show, but I wanted to have you in you are you already were the most frequent guest on the show but i wanted to have you in and again

because i really i'm interested in how does a meditation somebody's been meditating for this long with so much intensity handle health crisis of the lex the of which you just endured so can we start at the beginning? What happened here? What happened to me? Well, there was some amazing strokes of luck

come along the way. You know, I had great good fortune as well. I was staying with some friends and I was staying in their guest house which was down the hill from their house which would have meant I would have been alone if all that followed had happened down there but I happened to be in their actual house in California.

And I was flying back the next day I thought to New York and you were out there teaching meditation. Yeah, I had taught in LA, taught in San Francisco and then I was just visiting my friends. And in their house, I sort of, I went to some altered state of consciousness. I was shivering, I was shaking, and it wasn't unpleasant. You know, I had, it was fascinating. I just thought, wow, it's so interesting. And I'm like, tripping. This is so weird.

And then I must have passed out. Were you standing up at the time? No, I was on their couch and lying on their couch. Then I got up to go to the bathroom and that's when I collapsed. And I kind of came to on their couch again, and there was a stranger looking down at me who was an ambulance driver and he said,

I'm here to take you to the hospital. And I was so confused like, why do I have to go to the hospital? I'm having a fine time, you know, just exploring these other realms of consciousness. And had you been actively exploring other realms? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I was just out there, you know, and subjectively, I was just shivering and shaking.

That's all anybody could see. And I was just like, wow, this is kind of cool subjectively to the other people in the room. Yeah. I mean, oh, I should say physically, you know, the symptom was that I was shivering and shaking, but I was, um, I was not suffering. I didn't feel ill. Uh, did you know you were shivering and shaking? Yeah, yeah, I know I was shivering and shaking, but then I thought I was having some experience.

So just to put that in perspective, some people who've meditated a lot, and some people who haven't meditated that much, have quite interesting experiences, in particular, that there's this practice known as John Up Practice, where you get very focused, and you, this is going to sound pretty far out, although we've talked about it on the show before, you actually are able to walk into these kind of interconnected rooms in the mind. Yeah, yeah, I've stealing that phraseology from somebody else. Where it's pretty far out. And there's a lot of people have done this practice. It's not something super natural.

And did you think that's what was going on something along those lines? Uh, yeah, I mean, the the term John didn't come to my mind, but I would have these thoughts like, wow, this is kind of like reading my DNA or something. This is like, this is really far out. You weren't freaked out by the fact that all the city you were sitting on a couch one minute in the next minute you know you're shivering and shaking and also like looking at your own DNA. No. That part didn't, I mean, I, there were, you know, I was, my friend was rubbing my leg, you know, it felt like a massage. I, you know, I thought, oh, this is just some release of something, you know, something was just happening. I didn't. A release of some sort of something, something is just happening.

I didn't. A release of some sort of energy or something. Yeah. Okay, again, I just put that in perspective because the untrained ear that's gonna sound out there, but in meditation, people sweat or move involuntarily all the time and actually having an energy release like that is not uncommon.

Yeah, no, it's not uncommon. And so I didn't think, you know, this is toxicity or I'm ill or get me to the hospital. And I think so. In fact, when this guy looked down at me and said, I'm here to take you to the hospital. I'm an ambulance driver. He said, is that okay? And I looked at my friends like so confused. Why do I have to go to the hospital? And then I realized I couldn't remember their names. And I thought, oh, I have to

go to the hospital. And I have zero, zero recollection of the ambulance ride. What had happened was that I I was getting set to see me just then. It was like overcoming me, the bacteria that had been in my body, actually, in my leg, which nobody knew about, including me, first, since my bloodstream. And so it was just like taking over. Septicemia. So that's septic shock? Yeah. It's like, it's being septic, it's having septic.

And I don't know what point the line is, warrants is, oh, now you're in septic shock. I was pretty shocking because I was, you know, I was unconscious. But as you had said in the conversation we had earlier, you know, I was never intubated. I mean, I hear a lot of stories about people with sepsis that are far worse. But still, I was, I was gone so, you know. And so I kind of came to somewhat later in the evening in the emergency room still.

And the same ambulance driver was there, and he'd already gone out and picked up someone else, the birth of a minute he poked his head in and he said, boy, you look a lot better. You look awful when we brought you in. And then there was a lot of effort, you know, they put me on IV antibiotics, but there was a lot of effort to find the original source of the infection so they could target the antibiotics, which took a while.

So they gave me a bunch of chest x-rays because I thought I'm a 7-0-1, which I did not have. And they admitted me to ICU. And it was the next day when an infectious disease doctor came in and she saw like this really small, I'll play some of my leg. And she said, oh, that's it. She was right.

How did it happen? Nobody knows. They asked me a lot of questions. A lot of people said, did you have a pedicure? Pedicures are famous, which I thought, never again. They said, you might bang your leg on an airplane, you know, scratch. Something happened. It was just unaware of.

And it just, what was odd was that once they got the right antibiotics and then the bacteria started leaving my bloodstream and kind of went home to my leg, which swelled up like a had an alphanthiasis and it was really disgusting. My poor leg. But it was interesting watching it come home in that way. One thing I'm hearing in your voices, I'm hearing you tell the story, and I don't know if it's just because there's enough distance now, but I'm not hearing a lot of fear, panic.

I don't, you seem pretty calm about it. Were you calm in the moment? Was I calm in the moment? Oh, that was calm. I'm not. Okay. You know, I wouldn't say I was panic, but I was in answer in parts to your implied question. I feel like I was supported by my practice throughout. Not in a conscious or strained way. Like, I better calm down, I'd

been a stir breathing or something. But it was there. My first nurse in ICU was actually also an acupuncturist. I was in Santa Cruz, you know, so right away we know they were in kind of hip, you know, so the nurse was an acupuncturist in Santa Cruz and he said, so he couldn't know who I was. in Santa Cruz and he said, so he couldn't know who I was. And he said at 1.0, your lips are really chapped. I'm gonna go get your chapstick and I said to my friend, isn't that sweet? He's gonna give me a chapstick and then I said, well, it's probably not giving it to me.

It's probably gonna cost me $65, you know? And I look back at that and I think, how could my mind have done that? Like been detached enough to be funny. I mean, there I am and I see you, you know? Like, and yet there was something in the next day when the infectious disease doctor came in. She said to me, boy, I didn't know what I was going to find in here because your numbers

are really bad. Your white blood cell counts is through the roof, but you seem much better than your numbers. And I really honestly feel that that was my practice, that that was sustaining me. And giving me a way of looking at my experience, that was strong. That's what the say was never scared. And giving me a way of looking at my experience, that was strong. That's what to say, was never scared. I mean, I was scared. I was scared to read different things at different times, you know, because there were scary things

at different times, different ones. You know, there were moments when people would say, well, you know, this kind of bacteria really likes to go into the heart. So we have to give you an echocardiogram and start hadn't gone into my heart. I had another echocardiogram later hadn't gone into my heart or people would say, well, this kind of bacteria really likes to go into the bones. So we've got to give you cats again, you know, give me cats again hadn't gone into my bones. My white blood cell count just came steadily down. The really kind of initial scary thing I remember is that it was so foggy.

And my head was just cloudy. And I thought maybe this is it. You know, like maybe I'm not going to write another book or speak or just going to be in a room kind of mellow, you know, but hopefully, but, you know, I certainly didn't have mental acuity. I was forgetting people's names or I was like just kind of, you know, still reading my DNA a little bit, I guess, you know, somewhere else. So that was scary. Well, I just reading your DNA to me seems like you're

at a high state of meditation, which would, which would, it seems to me, entail mental locuity, whereas the fogginess seems to be kind of the opposite of meditation. Well, I think that the fogginess was because I had to function, not highly function, but I had to respond to people's questions or I had to know how to ask for something and function in a system, you know, got out of ICOs in a room.

And you know, so it was a little bit like I have to learn this culture. I have to know how to make things work here. And it was just like, you know, and I was a non-functional, but I was not as bright as I might have wished by any means. Must be that I would imagine would be scary given that you'd spent decades cultivating awareness, a weak, wakefulness. Yeah, though that was scary. That was really a low point in the whole situation. It was just kind of like,

oh, because my mind did, my thoughts did what we do, which one really has to be careful of, which was I projected it into the future. This is going to be the way it is maybe. You know, this is how I'm going to function for the rest of my life. That life is gone. You know, and so I didn't quite have the energy. I mean, I did to some extent, you know, thank goodness, but it was only a little later. I couldn't sleep in the hospital bed. It was too uncomfortable little later. I couldn't sleep in the hospital bed. There's two uncomfortable, the other thing, and the other thing that happened is that I

got diagnosed with sleep apneuminose in there because I would stop breathing and it's team at heart monitor. And people would come running in, you know, like, and they'd wake me up and go, what? And so between the machine and the whole thing, I couldn't sleep in the hospital bed. So I was sleeping in this old rickety armchair in the room. And I had to keep my leg elevated, which meant both legs elevated with that particular recliner. So, and that bottom part kept falling down because it was so old and rickety.

So at one point, I thought, Oh, you know what? There's that stool off in the corner of the room. And if we take the stool and we prop it up, you know, that bottom part is not going to fall down anymore. And then I thought, my brain is back now. It's back. And that was that was actually a turning point. How long were you in the hospital?

I was there for 10 days. And did it progressively get better from the moment you entered or did where there times when you know new Problems emerged and you thought oh no no no we're in a worse place now It was a lot of up and down because at some point You know, you're obviously trying to survive the hospital. You're trying to survive the system, you know like I Guess when I got to the emergency room, they pumped me full of fluids because that's what they do to try to keep your blood pressure

from crashing in your organs from failing. And then they had to give me diuretics to get rid of the fluid. And then at one point the diuretics gave me gout. So there I am. G'm very painful, very painful condition where I guess the York acid builds up in your toe joint or other joints. And it was so excruciating, and that was my other foot. The supposedly healthy foot. The healthy foot, right? So I had one leg that was like swollen and, you know, infected and I had, and pain, terrible pain in the other foot. And I kept saying, my other

foot really hurts. This is like so weird. And the doctor came in again, so I think you have got out and they did the test and I did have got, you know, your gas, it was too high. So, think you have got out and they did the test and I did have got your guess. It was too high. So then I couldn't walk. I couldn't bear weight, you know, that is like really miserable because I had previously gotten up with a walker using a walker. And, you know, I'm another thing I really feel my use of practice given me is it's just strong sense of a path

So I said okay, I've got a path. I've got to get up twice a day. I've got a I've got to try to walk. I've got to Do this and it was really hard one of my great lessons actually, which I'll tell you in a minute came from that first time I got up but oh said I couldn't walk so I couldn't get to the bathroom. And then it was just like, you know, it was such a regression. And this is just a sense of maybe this is endless. This is just a loop, you know. So again, there's like future thinking, you know, like now I'm. Now I'm spiraling. Now I'm spiraling.

And that was like a big feeling of a setback. And then my carbon dioxide was too high. And so they put me on another medicine. There was, they gave me a pick line, so they weren't always poking my veins. And so then there's always the fear fear of infection or just like, you know, there's just a certain point where I thought, wow, I really have to get on here. And so it sounds like you had many of the reactions that us mortals would have, which is, you know, you know, feeling demoralized or fear or the word proponsha the mental proliferationiferation, projection into the future, mostly in a sort of phantasmagoric way. You had all of that.

We can't run a test to see the version of Sharon that hadn't been meditating for 40, 50 years to see what that person, how that person would have reacted. But do you think is your gut that you had all those normal reactions that we would all have fear, anger, whatever, but that they didn't stay around as long as they otherwise might have? Oh, yeah. I mean, I, you know, in all those ways that, you know, I was kind of describing it would be sort of like, if I didn't get tripped up in future projection, you know, which I did from time to time,

but I wouldn't say all the time, then it was a lot of stuff passing through me, you know, it was just like washing through me and certainly fear came and anger and there were things to be scared of. And yet, it wasn't a detour or a path that I really wanted to. If I saw myself beginning to project, well, what's going to be like when I'm back home? well, you know, what's going to be like when I'm back home, you know, like, I would say to myself things like, why are you rehearsing that? You know, why are you rehearsing catastrophe? Why are you

rehearsing such a huge deviation from your life? And so that clearly is a gift of my practice, you know, is being able to catch the hapunch of the proliferation and say, maybe not. And also not have some horrific reaction against myself. Like, why are you thinking that you were practicing for God knows how many years, you know, it wasn't like that at all. And it was also so interesting being in Santa Cruz. Like, one point of nurse came in and she was doing whatever and she took a look at me and she said, I teach loving kindness to kindergarten kids.

You know, I thought, woo, this is really interesting. This is really, I also, really honestly, I got a glimpse of what's happened in these last 40, 50 years in this country. Respiratory therapist came in. I think they put meditation expert on my chart. So respiratory therapist came in and he said, I've been meditating for about a year. Have you been to Insights and Accuracy?

I said, well, no, I haven't actually been there and you were great, Chris, in case you're listening to this. And then he said, well, do you know Vinny? Vinny for our own. I said, I know Vinny really well. Well, well-known meditation teacher, yeah. Yeah. And he said, he's my teacher, you know. And so it was just fantastic to feel that, you know, that, that kind of movement into society and these people work so hard and I had so much respect for

them to feel that they were supported and what they were doing because that is not easy to work. In terms of your interior situation, I'm just curious how to, what about the pain? I'm not particularly good at pain, but one of the things in meditation is to try to have a, to try to hack our kind of habitual response to pain, which is just blind aversion. When you had this screaming pain in your foot as a result of gout, what did you do in your mind? Um, there are two, you know, there was a lot of experience I had sitting and looking at pain. I, um, if I wasn't distracted, you know, if there weren't a lot of people trying

to talk to me or things going on, if I could just focus, then it was just, it was all right. You know, like they kept saying, you know, do you want something for the paint? What number is the pain, you know, one to ten and do you want something for the pain? And the most favorite took was like time and all something, you know. I go straight for the morphine. Oh god. I never actually had more theme, but I feel like it would. But I, again, you know, it's just what it was. It was a thought of disability more than the physical pain that was scary. You know, I mean, I couldn't walk.

And you thought maybe I'll never walk? I thought, could it be that I will never walk? There thought maybe I'll never walk. I thought could it be that I will never, I'm there's no reason with gout that you would never walk again and my leg was being dealt with, but I couldn't walk and then there's that thought, like what if, what if this is the way it's gonna be? I was like, oh. So that would be what would trip me up probably more than anything. What if this is the way it's going to be? Oh.

So that would be what would trip me up probably more than anything. You know, because I'd had a life and a lifestyle, which was too much travel and too much other things, you know, and that had to change clearly. But how much had to change? And it was just like facing this big unknown. That was pretty scary. What about death? Because you mentioned before, there were times when they said, well, this could go to your heart, it could go to your bones, and the obvious proponsha loop there is, I'm going to die. Did that happen? And how scary was that for you,

especially given that contemplating death, at least theoretically, in Buddhism is a huge part of what's on the menu. You know, I thought about having a different life, or having a limited life, more than I thought about dying, and maybe that was a way to avoid thinking about dying, you know, like comes to think of it. I mean, I've done a lot of contemplation on death. And I would say that I had been maybe very particularly afraid of dying earlier in my life.

My mother died when I was nine and I was brought up by my father's parents. And they were Eastern European and so both culturally and for whatever reason. They never really talked about it again. They thought it would be too painful for me or something like that. And so the whole prospect of death was also cloaked and is this shameful, you know, this is a big secret.

This is a terrible thing, no one's going to help you. Life's abandoned you, you shouldn't be able to stop this, what is this? And it was years of practice that helped ease, I think some of that particular burden, kind of, you know, psychological or conditioned burden. And then it's just plain old fear, you know, like, you know, psychological or condition burden. And then it's just plain old fear, you know, like, I, uh, I visited his friend in hospice, not too long before I went out to California. And, uh, she said to me, when I get afraid of dying, I just say to myself, it's what's happening.

And I said to her, I know it's just a belief system, but I do believe in rebirth. And I realized that when I get afraid of dying, I'm afraid of doing it wrong. So I say to myself, you've done this before. You know how to do this. And so I realized that they're in the hospital that I didn't think I was going to die. I mean, nobody was, you know, but that I didn't have to have like the right experience, you know, or make it be a certain way. I just had to be with what is. And I would laugh with that memory like I've done this before, you know, like I've

done this so many times. She had left my saying it. I, you know, I, that was part of what, you know, when I would go there, I go and say, don't rehearse that, you know, you're kind of, you're putting all your energy into creating a scenario that doesn't seem that likely. You know, you're here, you're being taken care of, you're an antibiotics, nothing's fit. No organs failed so far. I did, somebody sent me a website saying that someone they knew who had sepsis found it very helpful. So of course I also got a lot of you know emails and stuff. I had sepsis, you know, I almost died. You know, got to be really careful. The hardest parts of recovery.

You could still die. But somebody sent me this link and it was some site that I'm sure other people did find very helpful. So the first thing I had to decide was uh because I didn't know which which to click am I an elderly person who's had sepsis and I thought and I thought I kind of am actually that was a shock too um I'll do I'm 66 I guess that qualifies yeah what's the cutoff for elderly I I don't know, but like every time the nurses in the hospital would change shift and they would do report in front of you, which was interesting. It says, she's a 66 year old woman, I think, who's that?

Oh my God, it's me. But I am elderly. So I clicked yes. And then the first thing the site said was something like, many people who've had sepsis report that they've lost one or two significant capacities as a result. And I closed it up and I never looked at it again. And I would just keep telling myself, don't go there. You know, this is not a question of being unrealistic. It's just like, don't go there. You know, that's creating a world

that you don't have to believe in utterly and kind of hold and let define you. And certainly, I don't know that all these people have had sepsis. A lot of them are not limited, you know, or have a lot of capacities at all. So I know, or having lost capacities at all. So I thought, don't do that. You know, it was easy to do that, you know, because you're in a hospital, you know, we're in clothes, you're eating their food, you know, you're being defined by a lot of other people, but I just kept saying, don't do that. Just don't do that.

When I would do that, it was miserable. You know, those are the places of all that future projection. Oh, what if I, you know, can never do this again? Or if I can't teach or what if I can't do whatever. But I had, I mean, it's really, it's just those years of practice that came through for me as they do, which is wonderful. You know, it was just like, you don't have to do that. I don't know if what I'm about to say is gonna resonate in any way, but I've often had the thought or realization on retreat

that if I'm suffering, I'm not being mindful of something. Is that roughly what happened with you? In other words, you were suffering when you got lost in these projections. But actually, when you had time to just focus on the pain and feel it non-judgmentally, there wasn't a lot of suffering. It sounds like. Well, I think, you know, here, you kind of have to make some people make a distinction between pain and suffering, because I'm also very much of a school on and believe that I believe pain

happens. You know, something's just hurt. That's one of my favorite, favorite slogans. Something's just hurt, and it's very unfair to say to ourselves, well, if I had a better attitude, this wouldn't hurt. Or if I didn't resist it You know, it's all my fault in a way my bad thinking is making this hurt I think something's just hurt, you know, and But it's like that extra suffering we don't need and and that I think Over and over again, I saw oh, it's easy to fall into that, you know, you don't want to do that. And I was also, you know, so lucky, like it did not go into my heart or it did not,

went to my bones or, you know, when I had a problem it could be addressed and it was just a matter of time. You know, so I can't swear that if things had gone in a, you know, worst direction, I would have been so capable. But I really just think it's like all those hours, you know, even those hours, you think, why am I sitting here? You know, nothing's happening where I'm just dealing with this knee pain or it's like it counts. It really counts. Count how? Because I found strengths. I found... Oh, okay. We were talking about all those hours of meditation. Yeah, those hours of meditation. They really count. Because there were times, of course, I had

to consciously bring in perspectives or strengths that I could draw on, you know, like this will change too, or... But there were a lot of times when it just arose within me because I had practiced it again, and again, and again, and again. In other words, you're feeling the pain and the... There's the raw data of the pain and then there's the extra layer we add of, this is gonna happen, this is gonna be with me forever. I will never get out of this.

But after all those years of meditation practice, you were able to spontaneously realize everything changes all the time, this is gonna change too. What a, that's an amazing gift, gave yourself. Well, we do. I mean, of course, it's not just me. And it reminds me of, you know,

I was interviewed for, I think it was a good housekeeping, which is really ludicrous, if you see my house, any of them. And whatever I had to say, didn't ultimately make it into the article anyway. But the question was something like, how do you think, how do you use mindfulness in a time of complete crisis?

And what I said was, I wouldn't wait. Don't wait. And of course, people sometimes wait and they reach for something and the midst of, you know, the bottoms falling out and you're in the hospital and it's all scary. And even then, it might prove to be a resource or something helpful. But the, you know, the truth was like, you don't have to wait. And just like that time we put in, which does often seem inconsequential or boring or useless. It's like, it does matter. I really saw that so clearly because there it was.

You know, something was holding me up in a way so that this doctor could walk in and say, boy, you seem a lot better than your numbers? I mean, you're, well, first of all, I guess I have two things to say that. One is, I was going to ask you, what are the lessons in your story for the rest of us? And I'm sure there are many, but that seems like a big one. That, because I know a lot of, I hear from people all the time

who feel compelled them to, you're in this position too, to come up and confess to me their meditation secrets. I gotta be honest with you, I only do it when things are going poorly and when things are bad, when things are good, I just drop it or whatever. And I often say, well, you know, doing it when things are good is,

will give you the strength to have those bad times to be less bad. So that seems to be a really powerful takeaway. The other thing that just came to my mind as you were saying that, was that a thing that your longtime colleague, Joseph Goldstein, often says about meditation, which is that you can view it as practicing for death for the dying process. So, can you be awake with a knee pain right now? And if you're a little thing that might come to mind

as you're dealing with a knee pain is, if I can be with this, can I be with whatever's coming at the end of my life? Any response to either of those things? Yeah, I mean, when the friend I had visited in hospice, either of those things. Yeah, I mean, when the friend I had visited in hospice, when she died, Joseph said to me, we're in the queue, you know,

like to die, and that's something we don't often think about, and we're so busy for one thing. I am so busy, that to take a moment and realize, oh yeah, and yet, you know, I do feel, I also told you I would tell you about when I first started walking, which I will in a minute, but I do feel, uh, something shifted, you know, from, from that experience as well, even though I contemplate death, and I, you know, I do that as an exercise, it was really like, I find things don't stick in quite the same way. You know, I want it like I'm writing a book right now.

I believe you may be too. And you know, I just picked my head away from that computer now and then. And I hope it serves people. I hope it does well, but it's like really. I mean, the thought of, you know, doing what people do and like checking the numbers on Amazon. I care. I care. Well, I do that a lot. Yeah. Well, you didn't just get out of the hospital. You know, so that was, it has that lasted because I often find that I get to the end of a meditation retreat. I had one almost a about 10 months ago and at the end of it was a loving kindness meditation

retreat with our mutual friend spring washam and at the end I feel like you know I understand everything about how I need to live my life from now on and I'm going to have everything is in perspective and then you know I'm checking my Amazon rank you know a week later probably less than that but this sounds more powerful. Well I've, of course my book hasn't come out yet so I will see how bad I am but it feels I feel different you know I feel that there has been something where it's just like it's just a good a good time. Well, part of what happened was that, the first time I got up to walk in the hospital was with a walker,

and which is very hard, and a physical therapist, and she said to me at one point, it's not a race, you know. She said, you'll go further if you just stop now and then enrast, and that's become my new mantra, it's not a race, you know. Said you'll go further if you just stop now and then enrast. And that's become my new mantra. It's not a race, you know, because that, you know, was was a big thing, you know, like let's do it. Let's get it done. Let's, you know, there's so much to

do. Let's do more. And let's do it quickly. And then I said to myself, it's not a race. You know, like who are you competing against yourself? You know, like just relax, do it, stop and rest. So, you know, I moved, my friends who were saintly, you know, offered me their house when I was getting ready to leave the hospital. Or before the doctor said to me, it's illegal to prescribe anything IV over state lines. You've got to stay in California.

And nobody knew how long I'd be on IV antibiotics for. And it could have been months, it turned out just to be two weeks because I made a meteoric recovery. And she said you can go into a skilled nursing home, which would be a really difficult experience, or work something else out. And my friends offered me, I'm the guest house, another friend offered home health care aids. And so I created this world in their guest house. And it was amazing, because she Bob Thurman wrote to me. I'm an Buddhist scholar at Columbia.

Yeah, and he said, you know, whenever the Dalai Lama has a challenge like this, he goes into retreat. Why don't you go on to retreat? And so I basically, I didn't go into like full retreat as we know it, but I had two months. I think the only place I ever went was the doctors or the medical supplies store. And I practiced and I wrote and I hung out

with my home health care aids who became my good friends. And I asked people not to come see me right away. I didn't talk to anyone on the phone. And it was really a restorative period. It was really important. And my theme is it's not a race. Just do what you can do. Do it at a different pace.

Relax. Have fun. Keep breathing while you can. And so I'd be interesting to see how often I check Amazon when the book comes out. Right now it feels like it's all right, whatever. Stay tuned more of our conversation is on the way after this. 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-expert-expert. Each week we'll share a parenting story that'll have you laughing, nodding, and thinking. Oh yeah, I have absolutely been there. We'll talk about what went right and wrong. What would we do differently?

And the next time you step on yet another stray Lego in the middle of the night, you'll feel less alone. So if you like to laugh with us as we talk about the hardest job in the world, listen to, I love my kid, but wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on the Amazon music or Wondery app. If the 35-year-old version of you was listening to this, had some way to listen to this interview back when she was starting to write books and you had already founded this eminent meditation retreat center and go, go, go, which you carried on for a long time, would you have been able

to hear it's not a race? And can the rest of us somehow operationalize this wisdom or do we need to have gone through the particular hell that you went through? Uh, what do they say? Smart people learn from their own mistakes, wise people learn from other people's mistakes. Oh, that's a good thing. Yes, I don't, I think I saw that in a movie the other day. Anyway, is that possible that we that we we could incorporate? Because I find the idea of it's not a race very Attractive because I am doing what you described before if let's do more. Let's do it quickly blah blah blah Can I do what you're describing without somehow losing my edge or whatever? Oh, I think so. I mean that's you know

my edge or whatever. Oh, I think so. I mean, that's, you know, the things I learned by the time I was 35, you know, through my teachers and through people like that was also enormous. You know, I've had a very counter cultural life. And, and, definitely, I think that's why we reflect on death. That's why we listen to others having this experience when we pay attention. I also say that I was overwhelmed by the degree of love and care that came toward me. It had never been my intention to kind of do a widespread announcement of what I was going through and somehow it happened. And well, we did, I did a big thing on the show here. I did. And there was something on your website and I heard from everybody.

I know. I know. So yeah, there was a lot of love. It was enormous and so touching. And that really supported me too. I mean, it really, I felt so gratified and I felt like, oh, you know, here's this kid who's a respiratory therapist and he's just learning how to meditate. You know, all the people who had a teach me breathing exercises were always so embarrassed. I can't believe I've teach you how to breathe. You know, where the neuroses teaching loving kindness to children or I thought, you know, I didn't

set out to have a legacy. It wasn't that kind of person and none of us were. You know, I was 23 when we started IMS and insight meditation. Yes, I get insight meditation study and it was none of us could have imagined what would happen in this country around the world in terms of mindfulness or the practice. And it wasn't like a vision we held like, oh, we're going to have a worldwide, you know, impact. There was nothing. It was like, if we can make it to have a worldwide impact. There was nothing. If we can make it to the year, we'd be so happy. And yet, it's what transpired.

So I felt a degree of fulfillment and certainly gratitude, you know, is all that love came pouring in. And a lot of people sent me flowers. And there were so many that I just gave them, you know, I would like look at them for a little bit and I'd send everything away, I'd got given away and somebody came in, I think she was an occupational therapist at one point, his mother was in the hospital and she said to me, you the flower lady and I said, my mom got four roses, it's so great. Made her so happy. I was so moved

by that. And I thought, well, that's the life that I lived. You know, I mean, there's nothing else I can rest too. Wait, say more about this. So given the love that you received was a symbol of the fact that you had done great, you had made great contributions. And yeah, okay, so drop the mic. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I mean, it was just like sheer joy and gratitude. It was overwhelming, really. So even though I had not been my intention that it would be on my website or that it would be kind of, I've the only people I really was sent on and forming with, I had a cancel a whole bunch of things. That's why I was on the website. Yeah. You know, so, but I just wanted to those organizers, those particular, I was also very, you know, like naive, like, they tell me that I think the first night that I was in ICU my friends were hanging around and

I Was saying things like well, I can't I won't get to Jordan and in two and a half weeks, but maybe I can get to Paris by the end of the month and you had it You had an engagement in the country of Jordan. Yeah, yeah, yeah with you You had it you had an engagement in the country of Jordan. Yeah, yeah, yeah Emanitarian healthcare workers people working the Syrian refugee camps and I couldn't make it and But you know the fact that I thought I was gonna be in Paris in three weeks and my friends were thinking yeah, right You're really delusional So what was your was your schedule?

I mean, I have known you for a while But and I know you have a busy schedule and you're somehow on Twitter and email all the time, or at least seemingly all the time. So you pump out a book every five minutes. So I know that your schedule has been crazy, but it's really crazy. It was really crazy.

It was really crazy. And Joseph Kipsand made, I don't know how you do it. I don't know how you're doing it. And of course, I couldn't do it, but I was doing it and I couldn't sustain it. You're also 10 years younger than him But still I'm I'm nine years younger than him. Yeah, nine years younger than he is Yeah, but he's very protective of his energy. Yes. Yes. Yes, which is very smart and He's always been a model like that for me, but even now, I get, I can't travel the way once that I'm teaching, I'm writing,

I certainly feel like I'm active. And plus life is complicated, everything in some sort seems to be Medicare is complicated. Like how do I get this to pay for that? And it's just like there's a lot to do just just getting by. But you know, when I get an invitation, my new mantra about that is don't answer right away. You know, because you're going to want to say yes, and you just can't say yes to everything. Just like breathe a bit, you know, answer it a little later.

And that's really important. What was driving your high productivity, your para-potetic nature? What was, what made Sammy run there? What was going on? I think there's so many different levels. There was a level which was just grateful someone wanted me, you know, like, wow,

you know, they want me to continue. It's amazing. But that seems like I hear low self esteem in there. It could hear that. I mean, that's not an unreasonable assessment. I would probably have said not being in touch with kind of that feeling of how much I had done. You know, it wasn't that I wouldn't have been grateful, but I just didn't sit and receive. Like, you know, you've done a lot.

Like, this is, you know, ticket. It's not a race. See that. Like, take it slowly. Some of it is that I get pulled in a lot of different directions. There's a whole initiative, which I am now a part of. It seems to bring tools of meditation and things like that to people whose lives have been affected by gun violence. So it started out in my gun, the Parkland community. You went to Parkland. I went to Parkland. And now there's going to be a retreat at the study center in Barry for not only people from Parkland, but people from Pittsburgh

and people from, you know, a small, obviously retreat with enormous number of people on faculty, or when I was going to go to Jordan for the International Humanitarian Aid Workers, there are things that that move me to do, and then there are other things that are livelihood, you know, really frankly, and then there's responsibility to the Insight Meditation Society, and then there's this, and then there's that, and I just was not good at really curtailing all of that, I think. Oh, is that exciting? I could be involved in this research project.

Oh, is that amazing? I can do that as well. Or like, wow, it's only three flights to get there. And if I stay away, then I can go from there to there. And it was just all wrong. I really resonate with that in particular, and this would probably projection on my part, the low self-esteem of it.

Like I wrote a book and all of a sudden, I nobody ever asked me to go speak anywhere. And then like now everybody's asking me to go give talks and they want me to come talk to a good vibe. I'll go do it. And oh yeah, somebody else wants me to write a book with them or maybe start an app or maybe do a collaborative process with X and Y and Z.

And so you say yes, because it's exciting and you can't believe. And also there's the remuneration. People at meditation teachers don't make a lot of money. That's great. And much of what you do relies on what's called Donna, which is generosity or in other words, people pay what they can. And sometimes that means they pay nothing. Yeah. And you do relies on what's called Donna, which is generosity or in other words, people pay what they can.

And sometimes that means they pay nothing. Yeah. And you do it anyway. In your case, I think I'm speaking, I know I am speaking for you here, but I think I'm speaking for you correctly. There's a deep belief in what you're doing and the need that other human beings have for this.

I think I have a less of that idealism. I'm embarrassed to admit, but I have some, but not as much. I'm guessing here. But I can see from my own personal experience how you would get into this situation, because I've done it, and it's gotten me into a lot of trouble. Yeah. Yeah. No, definitely. Well, you will say, you know, family and everything. Things, but yes, you know, I don't receive any money for the work I do with say, Parkland, and I have an apartment in New York City, you know, those things also

need to be balanced out. And I had a book contract. I'm oddly enough, I have three books coming out next year because it's the 25th anniversary of loving kindness. Which was your seminal work, one of the- This was my first book. Yeah, the work that really helped put compassion meditation practices on the map. You know, so that, I just wrote a new afterward for that. The publisher of real happiness

is reassuring it next year. So I wrote a new afterward for that. The publisher of real happiness is reassuring it next year, so I wrote a new forward for that. And I have the book book, which I've been working on. Which is about... It's mindfulness, loving kindness, and social change. So it's eight chapters. I'm working on seven and eight simultaneously, and then intro and then I've got a first draft so we're close. But just getting at the just getting back to the it's not a race. I'm just wondering I asked this before and I don't think we really chased it down. Can I I'll just put it and I'll keep it in the eye as some people say in meditation circles.

Can I, I mean, I haven't gone through a healthcare the way you have. But could I, or could the 35 version, your old version of you, or are listeners today who are out there thinking, well, I gotta make a living. It's not a race sounds good, but I haven't done everything that Sharon Salisberg's done. I can't take in the magnitude of my contributions and kind of exhale. Is this operational for other people? It's not a race. I think it is, because I think we've all incorporated it to some extent or another, because otherwise

we'd be completely crazy or it would collapse long ago. You know, I think it's bringing it more and more because I think it has a lot to do with quality of effort, more maybe even than quantity of effort because it's like I am writing and I don't feel, I know in writing when I've been really in a bad state. I felt like just funded in, you know, like, this is your eighth or ninth or tenth book. It's like, nobody cares what you have to say anymore. And I worked out of that state by getting reinspired, but I don't feel that. You know, I don't feel like, oh, you know,

I was in the hospital and I was so sick and who knows what could have happened. Let me just, you know, turn in whatever, or, you know, it's not like that at all. I feel as, because you use the word, edge earlier, you know, so when I think of edge, I think of excellence. And I feel as committed as I've ever felt to turning in something excellent, you know, to the best of my ability. Why? Because you wanted to reflect well on your, because you think excellence will help

more people. I honestly don't think about how it's going to reflect on me at this point. I just think that's the way to do things. You know, like if you've got limited time and, you know, this will be my 11th book. And I don't know that there will be any more or certainly many more. And this is a little bit similar to the book I wrote Faith in that it's something that I very much have wanted to write for some time. And I got the opportunity to do it. And so we'll see, we'll see what happens but I don't feel like oh well you know this person's book is coming up before mine and they're going to probably save 50% of the same thing so how

unfortunate you know of only I was like who cares um honestly genuinely like who cares? I don't think you have to lose your edge. I don't think it depends on what your edge is, but I don't think you have to lose your commitment to excellence and to really shining in a way. And even ambition, having that that but when it gets crazy then It's really your life you're trading in your life for some story So you can strive for excellence as one of my friends dads used to tell us more little kids who would say strive for excellence you can strive for excellence

In the spirit of it's not a race. Yeah, so that you're not while striving for excellence, making yourself and everybody around you miserable. Yeah, I think that's true. Because I think it's incremental. It's like we've all done it to some extent. You know, that's the lesson learned. I mean, that's the thing I saw myself. I thought, you knew that already, why, you know? But how deeply do we know it and we keep

maybe learning the same thing again and again and again. We all have changed in some way, could be worse, this other mantra could have been a lot worse, but it's a continual process of growth and change. And so I think lessons learned, you know, we just continue to get better. How's your health now? I think good. I hope good. I get very tired. So less so though, when I went up to teach at the Insight Meditation Society in May, rather

than a full teaching load, I just, I peered for an hour day in the hall. I spoke, we sat, I did questions. And in some ways, it was the way to maximize my connection to the whole group rather than, you know, maybe seeing a part of the group and small groups are individually, as one would often do, there are other people doing that. And I just taught this last weekend at Cropowai Co-Tot, and I saw him a lot less tired than I was in May. But that's sort of the biggest marker, is that I just, I just get really tired. What would you say has been,

what would you say is the hardest part about this experience that has been contributory to your overall wellbeing? In other words, what's been the most valuable challenge? Was it stopping? Was it letting other people take care of you? Was it facing death? Was it all of those? I think it was all of those in a lot of ways.

Again, with the reflection on death, which is something I do, it can also be quite abstract until it's not. I have a friend in Barry, really insight meditation side is where I always said, the closets are a mess. And if I die and you have to clean them up, please don't judge me. So that was our pact, you know.

And then the reason I thought, you know, those closets really are a mess. Like maybe I should clean it up or I had to do a health thought, you know, those classes really are a mess. Like, maybe I should, I mean, that upper I had to do a health directive, you know, which I had not done, which does what keeps me in. You need to do this and live directions for caregivers. Yeah, you know, and now I have one. And, you know, it's much more real than it had been before. It was not easy to let other people, it's still not easy to let other people take care of me.

And it's just some conditioning. I'm used to taking care of other people and it's like I find embarrassing, you know, like, oh, you better. But, you know. You think it's rooted in some way in your personal history where you lost your mother early, your dad, you lost him as well.

Yeah, I probably, you know, yeah, I'm probably undoubtedly, you know, that, and the way I got by was by making sure I got by. You know, like, I went to college when I was 16, I was, you know, You handled your business. Yeah, yeah, and that's how I survived. So that's how I'm used to surviving.

So what's it like when you can't handle your business? Can't walk? Yeah, no, it was, I was so grateful for that nursing staff because they, you know, I kept apologizing. I'm so sorry, you know, I've done, and they'd say, no, no, no. Whatever they were thinking, you know, they were incredibly no, no. Whatever they were thinking, you know, they were incredibly gracious and

and generous and my friends, you know, it's like, um, you know, people have then and and continue to really offer me a lot, you know, and it's it's been very beautiful. And this is always this moment of like, eh, eh. Isn't there a phrase in Buddhism something about letting go? Oh, yeah, that one. So this seems like a pretty big exercise in letting go of control. Well, I remember when Ramdas had his stroke

and we were teaching once in Hawaii and he said, he was giving a talk and he said something like He was teaching once in Hawaii and he was giving a talk and he said something like, of all the things that happened to me after the stroke. Now, this is significant. He's been in a wheelchair ever since. It's been like 20 years. His speech, which had been like his superpower, has been pretty affected.

So when he gives a talk, he'll have long silences or whatever. He said, the hardest thing of all was letting people take care of me. And he said, one of my most famous books was called, How Can I Help? He said, maybe I should write a book now called How Can You Help Me? Because and he's been an incredible model for me as I've gone through this because it was very hard for him and he's so kind of porous now. It's just like love. He's so loving and you can see he's receiving it and he's offering it and it's not

weird in any way. It's it's so flowing weird in any way. It's so flowing now. And so I think of that, but that's hard. You know, it's quite hard to be that different. And it is really hard to stop because... Stop the forward momentum. Yeah. Stop the forward momentum because people have very different views and Understood levels of understanding of Anyone's state, you know, and so You know, I think invitations would keep coming in well now. You've had a week off, you know, like maybe like to come here or I'm so glad you got back to New York. Would you come to my you know?

And those are all things that if I say, yes, I would do, because I was moved by them, not because they were helping my livelihood or sustain me, you know, and so there's a balancing act that's very different that that has to happen now. And it's hard. It's hard to say, you know, I can't do everything I used to do or sorry, I can't show up at your thing or, you know, I will have just left Barry where I'm teaching for the first time in an extended retreat.

You know, I can't then or, you know, somebody wanted me to do some extremely noble thing, which would have meant, this is this coming September. They're opening the noble thing is that they're opening a kind of resilience center in Pittsburgh, you know, after they've been at synagogue shooting and they're naming the resilience center at some of like house of living kindness. And people want me to go and teach living kindness. And it was like extremely noble. But when we've met, I'm teaching here in the city all day on that Saturday, we've met teaching all day,

going to the airport, flying to Pittsburgh. Because Pittsburgh is not close, as it turns out. Teaching, and I just wrote to the person I said those days are over, you know, I'm teaching all day and running to an airport. I just have to be over. You okay with that? I am okay with that. I feel mixed, you know, because I would just place in me that wishes they were not over, that I could respond to that, because it's so beautiful. And yet, that would be crazy. I could just see like,

legions of disapproving friends, and like, what? Is all you're doing, what? I'm just scared to do that. As we're heading toward the close here, I just wanna make sure I didn't leave any boxes unchecked. Is there something I should have asked that? I don't know.

Let me just say this. Do you want to talk about your hospice training at all? Is that sure? Yeah, I'm very curious about that. I'll say the thing I was going to say later. Well, I've been doing the hospice training for a couple of years with our mutual friends, Cotion, Paley, Ellison, and Robert Chodo Campbell. And yeah, I still

go up thick, I'll be going later today. We're recording the Cynic Saturday morning. Originally, I was, it's a small hospice in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, and I would, originally, when I was doing the training a couple of years ago, three years ago, maybe, I would go and really be a regular volunteer where I would go to all the rooms. Now, I'm my volunteer training ended, and I would have kind of let it lapse just because I'm so busy and Mr. Doom, one more thing, guy. I think you might be able to relate to that. And, but there was a patient in there

who I don't think is gonna die anytime soon. He's been there for five years. Oh my God. Yes. I think it's like a world record hospice stay. And we're quite close now. And so now I go and just spend time with Ronnie. And mostly what we do is play violent video games,

which is a little incongruous in the hospice where killing zombies together. But that's the way it is he likes video games. And we have, you know, like on paper, nothing in common. He's a 61-year-old former construction worker from Harlem. And, uh, but we just totally hit it off. So yeah, I go in there pretty much once a week and spend time with him and then I usually order dinner in for him and the staff. That's really nice. And I will say, we talked a lot about death. I will say this, I'm still terrified of death, of course.

I don't wanna present some image that's incorrect, but I'm less terrified there, it used to be, because I see that the end At the end most of the people I've seen are comfortable physically and many of them are comfortable psychologically. I've seen some people fight it and that looks really tough Or I've seen some anxiety set in which it looks really tough But it doesn't feel wrong.

You know what I mean? It feels like over time I've started to see like, oh yeah, of course, we're nature. And this is part of nature. And we don't feel it viscerally, but you can get there by seeing it over and over and over again. It just starts to feel less wrong, like of course. Yeah, that's amazing. That you do that, you know, and because all the society seems geared toward, let's look somewhere else, you know, let's look the other way.

And it's the wrongness of it, that's what I was trying to say about my childhood, you know, that the way things all went down made it seem wrong. Like alienated from nature, this shouldn't have happened. You know, this only happened to you. You know, this doesn't happen to others. You're isolated, you're alone, you're weird. And but of course, that's also what led me to Buddhism because the first time I heard what the Buddha taught, it had to do with suffering as a part of life.

And it was like, oh, right. You know, I do belong that I'm not that alienated that. And one of the interesting things about being in the hospital is that partly because my father was in so many psychiatric hospitals throughout my childhood. And I would leave a facility and be on the street and think nobody knows what's happening behind closed doors, you know People are just walking around with that some sense of like a whole level of society What people go through and

I mean have that feeling that much anymore And then when I was out of the hospital and I have that feeling that much anymore. And then when I was out of the hospital and I would think, oh, you know, people, you know, we drive by these places and we don't necessarily stop and think, oh, that's the story. When they moved me to an actual room out of ICU, the one-home wall was actually a wall. It was more like a room divider or something. So I couldn't see anything going on in there, but I could hear everything, like every conversation. And there was a pretty rapid turnover of people in the next room. And so there was a lot of stories that I heard in a lot of different languages. And I think nobody, you know, driving by would necessarily think, oh, look at the intricacy of people's stories and how many kinds of people are in there and

and struggling and all right, you know when I would get up in the walker and walk by these other people also with IV polls, you know, and using walkers, you think, who are you? Um, look at here, this is where we meet, humanity, we meet in scary places and suffering and disability and facing death. And the cat cut off we are, usually from one another. It's because we've structured society like Santa's workshop where there's an island of misfit toys, right?

So all the misfit toys are sent to an island and we don't see them, but we'll always see are the working toys and the elves making them and all that stuff. And as soon as something's messed up, it's very quickly sent away to inside the hospital or inside a nursing home or a hospice. And so most of us aren't confronted with this in any way until disaster strikes. But then the other thing that I've really noticed is even is how quickly habits reassert themselves. So you can have a friend of mine, her dad died recently and she said it was like the tectonic plates shifted for her.

Now I don't know what's happened in the subsequent weeks, but I can imagine just reverting back to the old habits of momentum around taking care of her family and her professional life. I don't know that that's what happened for her, but I could imagine that happening for me. And I can also see what happens for me when I, even though I have sustained not episodic vantage point on, you

know, on the island of misfits toys on the other side of the curtain by going to the hospice regularly. And so once in a while I'm walking down the street lost in my own, like fog of to-do list or self-pity or anger or what, you know, practicing some long invective, I'm going to hurl at my boss. And then I'll wake up and be like, oh my god, but I'm walking. You know, like, well, how much would Ronnie give to be just walking down the street right now? But those moments are pretty few and far between. Most of the time I'm caught up. And yeah, so it's easy to have the realization hard to make it last. Yeah, I mean, I tend to want to give you more credit for those moments than I suspect you're giving yourself, because they matter too.

And I think progress or change is always like that. You know, we take three steps forward. We take two steps back. We don't like those two steps back and we grieve over that, but it's just, you know, it's not as far back as we once were. And those moments are really important and they grow. They really do grow because I think we can get more mindful in an ordinary day and then there are also the big challenges and then it's there.

It really is there, that kind of sustaining strength of a different perspective. And they say that one of the booties pieces of advice if you're sitting with someone who's dying or you're with someone who's dying is to remind them of the good that they've done. And I'd always just to puzzle me because I thought, well, wouldn't that get them more attached like because if you say you were a great cousin and you, you know, it took me to the park, you're supposed to be specific if you can be. And I thought that would be the last thing you want to do is get them even more attached to those struggle, little stuff or more, but

people asked me of course a lot and I've always said that you know this is what I've heard the Buddha said it and every single time people have come back and said it was perfect because instead of focusing on regret or the things undone or unlearned missing unregrat or the things undone or unlearned. There was just the sense of both the power of goodness we've been able to access and the joy of having not blocked it or hindered it in some way and expressed it and been a good cousin or you took the kids

of the playground or something like that. And so I see a lot in that light too, you know, that if we let ourselves rejoice more in the good that we have been able to do or the fact that we're committed or that we care about others or that you go to the hospice once a week, there are lots of places to go once a week when you work hard, you know, and the hospice isn't necessarily the easiest. It's not like conceiter arrogance. It's like taking delight. It's really rejoicing. And the more we do of that, I think the less

terrible those moments of backsliding theme, you know, they're real and maybe say something about their, they're not the whole story, really. And I can also see how it would lead to letting go, because it happened with you. When you received all of the love when you were having a health crisis, that allowed you to let go of, that allowed you to embrace, it's not a race. Yeah. And I could see how at the end telling somebody, hey, job well done, then they can drop their mic and say,

okay, I can let go without struggling. So maybe we have to do that before the end. Well, I mean, dying before you die is a theme we've discussed on I've discussed on the show before. It's just, can you take the wisdom that we often only get in those last final moments and incorporate it into your life? I'm very interested in that. I'll just say in closing that unless you certainly are welcome to say anything else you want, that, you know, I think what you were talking about before that we can get better

at these things. Now, you're referring to that I occasionally will wake up walking down the street. We can't get better over time. It just goes right to my the animating inside of my meditation career, which is the mind is trainable. And you've been training people's minds for a long time and made an enormous contribution, even in my own life, right? And I think coming here today and talking about this very painful physically and psychologically, this painful episode in your own life

is a very powerful teacher for other people. So I thank you for sharing it. Thank you for inviting me. Really? Thank you, Sharon. Love you. All right, love you too. Okay.

As we said at the show, at the beginning of the show, Sharon is doing the voicemails this week. We recorded this separately, but I think it'll be a treat. So here is vo mail number one starting with Tori from South Carolina. Hi, Dan. First, my obligatory, but sincere. Thank you for your podcast and your books that I have not only read, but reread several times.

They are immeasurably helpful to me. So my question is a two-fold question about meta-meditation. I meditate regularly pretty much every morning for 10 to 20 minutes. My question is how often should I incorporate meta into my daily practice? Is there like a prescribed amount? How often do you do it? Is it you know daily, weekly, or more circumstantial when perhaps you are having issues with a person? And my second part of the meta question is, I am having trouble holding visualization

when I do meta. I've been listening to the Sharon Salzburg podcast. And I know that she prescribed while you were thinking the meditation thought you were told a kind of visualization of a person in your mind. I have a real trouble doing that for whatever reason, including my family, which I find kind of disturbing. But I wondered how important it is to hold a real visualization like that. I end up kind of getting leaving thoughts of them smiling with light around them.

That's honestly about the best I can do while I'm sending kind of thoughts towards them. Anyway, I didn't know if that's something that I will get better with with time or if you have any words of wisdom of how I can get better with visualizing people as I am sending them thoughts. And also how often you know met a meditation is part of your daily meditation. Anyway, thanks for everything you do Dan. Bye. Hi, this is Sharon. Thank you, Tori, for both your questions actually. In terms of how often to do metzerloving kind kindness practice, it's really up to you.

When I went to Burma in 1985 to do a three month intensive retreat in loving kindness, that began a four year period where loving kindness was really my only practice. Each day when I was sitting, that's what I would do. Mostly that's not the case for people and not the case for myself either anymore. I would suggest that doing it often enough that you have a sense of confidence and clarity about the practice. And certainly, as you said, in different circumstances, it may be really the practice that you reach for. Often I actually find myself reaching for it when I don't know what else to do in some situation or connection with somebody. So it's really up to you and I really honor the fact that you're putting some energy

into it. And in terms of not being able to visualize, well, actually, honestly, not there can I. It's really an option. It's one way of having the practice come more alive for people because we want concentration and we want a sense of focus, but we also don't want it to be road or mechanical or to feel dead in some way. And so how do we get that sense of offering to kind of pop that sense of there being a

being that we are connecting to to come more alive. And for some people that is really through the process of visualization, sometimes it's not. I usually try to offer the option and just say that name to yourself, the name of that person, or being if there's a single object, you know, with all being, sometimes it becomes more of a global sense. Some people do have an image, say, of a planet, other people. It's almost like this visceral sense, you can just feel this energy or some sense of connection that is happening. Some people actually do a kind of travelogue through the world and just get a sense of like, oh, here's a miscountry,

here's that, here's beings underwater, there's beings in the air, whatever it might be, but really, I don't think it's a question of somehow getting better at visualization. You might actually find that you are, but it's not really intrinsic to the development of the practice. So I hope that was helpful. All right, it's Tory. Thank you for that. And I appreciate you calling in. And now another one, voice mail number two, this is from Max in Nebraska.

My question is with regard to meta, loving kindness and meditation. So I have the very, I think, common issue with it that it feels very artificial, contrived to have this object with a repeated set of phrases that I'm repeating to him or her, may you be happy, may you be safe, et cetera. And that's not to say it doesn't work, and that it doesn't get me to feeling that living kindness. It just has that extra layer of sort of separation due to the artifice there. I find it easy to bring up that feeling, that loving kindness, even without that sort

of artifice, without having to picture an an object without having to repeat these phrases. The feeling just sort of comes up naturally if I'm looking for it. And yet I imagine many people have been able to do that before me and that the meta practice is still nonetheless to think of someone in particular and to send them to sort of directed intentional thoughts. It's not simply calling up a feeling and resting in that. So I'm wondering what is the particular benefit of having that sort of structure to it, having the intentional directed thoughts as opposed to simply resting in the feeling. So any advice you have there would be much appreciated.

Thank you. Thank you, Max, for the question. I think it's actually fine to simply rest in the feeling of loving kindness. One of the reasons that I've appreciated having a structure, and I appreciate also your use of that word, is that first of all, I find that the sense of loving kindness may not even be a feeling always. Sometimes it's a worldview. It's it's a sense of recognition like, oh, that person has more similarity to me than I ever might have imagined or sense of inclusion where we used to exclude more readily or maybe it's a full sense of connection because we're paying attention to someone

we usually ignore, kind of look through. And so we utilize the structure, the phrases, or the sense of offering of gift giving toward a particular being, very much in the sense of trying to enhance that. But absolutely, you can rest in the feeling if there is one. And I would just say maybe now in an experiment with using phrases or some sense of offering,

just to see what happens. And especially for those times when the growth of the development in a sense of connection may not be captured by that particular feeling because it's bigger than that. It's bigger than we can imagine usually. And there's more to it than that. And also don't be discouraged if that feeling doesn't come sometimes because that's a perfect place to actually utilize the structure of the practice and see what happens.

Max, I hope that was helpful. All righty. Thanks. Big thanks to Sharon for doing that. Both the interview and the voicemails, which again were recorded separately, also thanks to Max for calling in. And on this episode 200, I just wanna thank,

again, I know I do this every week, but here's an extra heartfelt thanks to everybody. I really did not think this show was gonna last this long. I really didn't have much foresight about what this endeavor was gonna tell at all when we launched it, but I'm really happy that it exists. I talked about Lauren Efron, who was the founding producer of the show.

She's since gone off to do other things within ABC News, but we now have a new end. And so, as so has Josh Cohan, who was the co-founding producer, both of them have left the nest, but we now have Ryan Kessler who took over the show many months ago and has done an incredible job. So Ryan, thanks to you and we also now have a few folks from 10% happier the company who spend a lot of time and and dedicate an enormous amount of energy and thought to this

project and those are Samuel Johns and Grace Livingston. And Grace, in particular, has organized a group of folks that I mentioned at the top of the show, the podcast Insiders, who's comments really inform how we do our work. So I wanna thank all of you. And if you're not an insider and you're just a listener, I wanna thank you as well because without without you none of this would be possible.

So thank you again. We'll be back with episode 201 next week. Hey, hey, prime members. You can listen to 10% happier early and addfree on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and ad-free with 1-3-plus in Apple podcasts. Before you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondery.com slash survey. you