Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 215: What's Your Motivation? Thubten Chodron

Episode Date: November 27, 2019

Thubten Chodron was born in Chicago and grew up near Los Angeles. She felt her life's calling was to help others, so she became a teacher, landing her first job in the inner-city schools of Los Angeles. Looking for something to do during summer break, she saw a flyer for a meditation course being taught by two Tibetan Lamas. Little did she know, taking this course would change the trajectory of her life. The teaching that resonated with her most was about setting motivations. She realized that though she was doing good things in her life, the motivations she had for doing them were self-centered. Chodron wanted to dedicate her life to living selflessly and with altruistic intentions. She felt the only way she could do that was to let go of her worldly attachments, including her marriage, and become a Buddhist nun. She believes we all have the potential to be happy and live altruistically, but we get in our own way. In this episode, Chodron offers her thoughts on how to set selfless motivations as we live our everyday lives. Plugzone: Personal Website: https://thubtenchodron.org/ Sravasti Abbey: https://sravastiabbey.org/ YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/sravastiabbey Books: The Compassionate Kitchen: Buddhist Practices for Eating with Mindfulness and Gratitude https://www.amazon.com/Compassionate-Kitchen-Practices-Mindfulness-Gratitude/dp/1611806348 Other book titles by Thubton Chodron: https://www.amazon.com/Thubten-Chodron/e/B000APM652 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. Happy Thanksgiving to our American listeners. And if you're not here in the US, sending you just my usual love, we have a great episode this week. Thubton Chodron. She is, don't, don't, don't be fooled by the serious sounding Tibetan non-name. She is very serious. She's written a bunch of books on Buddhist philosophy and practice, including co-authoring some books with the Dalai Lama, but she's also really self-deprecating and

really down to earth. She was born in Chicago, raised in LA, was a teacher, and was happily married 43 years ago when she decided to become a nun, and has gone off and now teaches all over the world, and has written some of the books that I've already mentioned. She's also written a book about eating and sharing meals in a Buddhist and mindful spirit. It's called the compassionate kitchen. We spend a lot of time here talking about her life as a nun, but we also talk about big issues including what is your motivation? We are all operating... These are questions we don't like to ask ourselves many of us. We are all operating often on these sort of unacknowledged scripts and habit patterns, but what's actually driving us and can you work with that? She got me thinking a lot about that issue. Another question she poses is, what is enough?

Another thing that I think a lot of people don't wrestle with, but it's a fascinating thing to do. And then toward the end here in this chat, we talk about her book, The Compassionate Kitchen. So much here, so here we go, here's Thibton children. How often do you set motivations and why? Well, the why is because our motivation is the most important aspect of whatever we do. It's not what we do that makes something worthwhile or wholesome. it's our motivation for doing it. And since our motivations, as ordinary beings, are usually self-centered and thinking about how can I benefit from this, than, you know, as a Buddhist practitioner, I try, you know, before I start things to

generate a positive motivation and think, you know, long term, not just, oh, my pleasure, this life. Oh, I'm coming to be interviewed by Dan Harris, and now I'll be famous. It's like, forget that. And I don't want to have that kind of motivation. OK. So to really stop and get in touch with what's important in my life.

So I do it when I first wake up in the morning. At the monastery where I live, we have after breakfast, we have a short meeting, we do it there, before all of our teachings, before all of our meditation sessions, before we launch, all throughout the day we pause and just come back to our motivation. I love this. I'm actually very interested in the issue of motivation. Do you nonetheless notwithstanding all of the motivation setting you just described that's

woven into the fabric of your day, do you nonetheless notice occasionally self-interest creeping in? Occasionally. Come on, it's like all the time. Yeah. I mean, this is the way we are. I mean, who do we think about all day long? Me, me, me.

Who do we dream about all day long? Me, me, me. You know, when we wake up in the morning, do we think about, oh, how are other living beings? What's their experience? Are they suffering? Are they happy? How can I benefit?

We don't think about anything. You know, like that. We wake up in the morning and it's like, okay, where's my coffee? And that's what gets us out of bed. And that's like, you know, who wants to go through your life with that as a motivation, just seeking, you know, sense pleasure and reputation and all of that. So, you know, my natural way is to go after all that stuff. I'm an ordinary being, but it's like, you know, if you're going to have a spiritual life, you have to start counteracting that kind of motivation.

But is that kind of self-interested? Let me just say the self- interest that you're describing as normal. I experience that in mind. That sounds like a mild description of what's happening for me. But is that really true for everybody? I was thinking about my wife for a second. I'm not in my wife's mind, but just judging by her behavior. I think she may wake up in the morning worrying about our four year old son or her dad who's

had some health issues. I mean, is that true for, is that really true for most people? That kind of non-stop me, me, me? I think it is, you know? And then we do think about other people, but it's usually the people we care about. If we think about the people we don't like, well, we think about them, but what's our motivation towards them?

May they get hit by a truck? Yes, complete destruction. Yeah, so again, it's like, I remember at the first course, I went to my teacher said, if you help your friends and harm your enemies, that's not any better than a dog. Because it does have a dogduck, you know, helps their friends, bites the enemies. And he was saying, you know, you want to be really human and really take advantage of our human potential, then we have to counteract that and really open our heart to

want to benefit all living beings, whether we like them or not, whether we know them or not. So if we wake up in the morning thinking about the well-being of the people we love, that's just an expansion of the ego. Basically, it's good, at least we're not thinking about ourselves, you know? And it's good to think about others that we're fond of. But it's good to even go beyond that, yeah?

And when I say, like just thinking about ourselves and being self-centered, it's a certain – I'm not saying we shouldn't take care of ourselves. I'm not saying that, okay? There's a healthy way to take care of ourselves and a way to take care of ourselves with a good motivation. And then there's our usual – MO – of, you know, how can I get something out of this? Yeah, be it, you know, immediate pleasure or praise and approval, reputation, possessions, money, status, yeah, so to, you know, that's the self-centeredness that we want to let go of,

but we do need to take care of ourselves in a healthy and realistic way. But doesn't what you just described lead to, if I were to porch that attitude into my life, wouldn't that lead to me being in robes? In other words, I would think about the basic necessities, but I wouldn't be trying to build a big company as I'm trying to do or grow the audience of this podcast, et cetera, et cetera. There's, you can do those things that you're describing,

but with a different motivation. Another word, self-centeredness doesn't have to be the motivation. If you're doing a podcast and you're having guests come in, and you think, may through these conversations and the wisdom that these people talk about, may that influence all the people who hear the podcast in a beneficial way so that they can become

kind of people. So, as I seek to grow the audience of the podcast, I shouldn't be doing it because it will, you know, be bragging rights or whatever it is that it's a good enhancement that's at stake. There's more like, can I help other people? Exactly. Exactly. Because, you know, you can make a ton of money from doing this and your name can be all over,

you know, wherever. Yes. And when you... Yeah, you like that. Great. But when you die, what happens? It's nothing. No, it's all gone. It's all gone.

You know, and when you go into your next life, none of that stuff comes with you. How do you know there's a next life? It makes sense. You know, when you think about logically, that everything that functions has a cause, things don't come out of nowhere. So if you look at our consciousness, each moment of mind had the principle cause was the preceding moment of mind. So you trace that back to

conception, where did that first moment of mind come from? Yeah, it didn't come from the body because the body's nature is atoms and molecules. The mind's nature is not physical in any way. So the only thing, you know, if each preceding, if each moment of mind had a preceding moment of mind that it was its cause, then also the first moment of mind in this life had a preceding moment. Is your evangelizing on behalf of, and that's my term, not yours, on behalf of compassion in any way wedded to or dependent upon this belief in rebirth. Oh, yes. It is. Yes. So, but what if I, I have seen no evidence for rebirth, although your case, carries some gravity for me. gravity. That's that's probably

For me, but I don't really I can't I'm not gonna pound the table and say karma and rebirth or I can prove it Be on a shadow of a doubt does that mean that I? Incorrigible when it becomes No, no, you can still cultivate compassion Yeah, but when you have a respective of multiple lifetimes, it really changes the the way you have compassion and the reach of your compassion and what you have compassion for why yeah, okay usually in our society, when we say compassion for living being suffering, people think of the out kind of suffering. You know, I have kidney disease,

I have cancer, you know, I stub my toe, physical suffering, or mental suffering, which in the West we have, I think, much more of, than physical suffering. You know, my relationships aren't going well, I lost my job, I'm depressed, I, you know, all this, you know, mental stuff too. We usually think of what regular people identify a suffering that everybody knows, okay? But in Buddhism, and I'm speaking as a Buddhist here, you know, but it's not, it's on my own beliefs, you know. In Buddhism, we're saying that's not, that's one level of unsatisfactory experience, but there's other levels too. Like, another level of unsatisfactory experience is that whatever gives us pleasure, if we keep doing it again and again, it stops giving us pleasure.

Yeah? When you're hungry, you eat, it gives you pleasure. If you keep eating, you get a stomach ache. So it's like the things that give us pleasure are not pleasurable in their own nature. You have to do it in a certain manner, in a certain way, in a certain limit, because if you keep doing it, you know, like you fall in love and like that person is marvelous,

I always wanna be with them. But if you're with them, day after day, chain to them 24,7, what happens? I've never had that experience, but I imagine it would be unpleasant. Yeah, so that's another level of unsatisfactory experience. And then an even deeper level is the fact that we have a body and mind the way we do that basically are not in our control. Yeah? From a Buddhist viewpoint, we say they're under the influence of afflictions and karma.

And so this is why we want to be free from this situation and why there's the importance of having a path to that freedom, to attain awakening, because, you know, as long as we're born in a body that has this nature, it's kind of, you know, the moment you're born, you start aging and start going towards death. Yeah? And so when we think that, you know, what's behind this, it's our ignorance and our afflictions in our karma because we do so much negativity, you know, trying to be happy. And yet, you know, the nature of our mind is something pure and clear. And we have the potential to cultivate love and compassion for everybody equally, okay, without bias, without, well, I'll have compassion for you as long as you're nice to me, but

just have a totally open heart that wants to give, because that's the way to do things. And we have the potential to realize the ultimate nature of reality and to free our mind from the ignorance and afflictions and karma. So we have this amazing human potential. And we don't use it. And that's the tragedy. You know, that's the tragedy. We're running around like chickens without our head. You know, for what? You know, I'm wasting that potential. And so you, to get back to the question, asked me of just believing in rebirth, change how I have compassion. It, yeah, it does, because I look now and it's not just the out kind of compassion that I, the out kind of suffering, sorry, that I have compassion for.

I try and think of the compassion that, you know, what sending beings are doing doesn't bring the ultimate happiness and that they have potential and they're not using it, you know, and to cultivate compassion for that. So that really changes the nature of the compassion. But were you describing right there doesn't seem contingent upon rebirth? It is because we keep getting reborn under the influence of our ignorance and afflictions. I see, I see, because it's conditioned the next life. Yes. Because another thing I argument that I'd heard, I believe I've heard made by folks in the Tibetan

tradition that I thought you were going to say is, if we're in this endless cycle of rebirth, at some point, even the guy I hate over there might have been my mother. Right. Yeah. There's that too. Yeah. There's that that they've all been kind to us in this life for previous lives and will be kind

to us in future lives. You have compassion on that basis. But you also have compassion just realizing that everybody is exactly like me wanting happiness and not suffering. And there's no difference between us. And so on that basis, how can I really look out only for my own happiness and work to cure my only my own suffering? Let me say a bunch of words so that I can give you enough time to take a sip of that water that you're eyeing.

By, you know, we've got to compassionately buy you some time. Oh, thank you. But this is such an interesting question because it does cut against the grain of our habitual way of being, which is out for ourselves. I'll just speak for myself. For myself. So how do we operationalize your advice? You know, would you would you recommend that we're setting motivations with some regularity and repetition throughout the day? We'll wake up in the morning right before we go into a meeting. What would that look like? What kind of meditation will we practice to

help us escape from what the author David Foster Wallace has described as a skull-sized kingdom which I really like to escape from this or what the Dalai Lama has called self-charishing Yeah, so talk talk about how we can put into practice what you're describing. Okay. Now that you it's not difficult It's not difficult First of all when you first wake up in the morning before you even get out of bed, yeah, what I do is I set my motivation for the day. So I say to myself, first of all,

what's the most important thing that I'm going to do today? Yeah? Most important thing is not to harm anybody. Everything else on my calendar and all my appointments and this and that and the other thing, that secondary, most important thing to date is not to harm anybody. Another most important thing, there's more than one most important, is to benefit others as much as I can in whatever big or small way I'm capable of. And third is to cultivate that motivation, that long-term motivation, we call it bodhicitta,

the awakening mind. The mind that aspires for full awakening so that we can really be of the greatest and most effective benefit to others. So I set that motivation right when I wake up in the morning. And then at the monastery where I live, we have little things on our bathroom window. Yeah, so instead of, you know, well, how do I look? But, you know, just certain sayings from some of our teachers to remind us of how we want to be that day. Is that your bathroom mirror? Yeah. What, just having a shaved head help? Because you're

not faking your hair. No, yeah, you just look in the mirror maybe when you're brushing your teeth, but you don't have to worry about your hair. Yeah, I've heard you old Brenner described that head evanities went away when he shaved his head. Yeah, yeah, I believe, I mean, I've had a shaved head now for 42 years. It's just kind of how it is, but yeah, it's very nice. And people recognize me when they put me up at the airport.

Well, the robes help. Yes. I imagine several robes in the hair. The petty vanities are still there. I mean, I have to be truthful. Yeah yeah there's a lot of conditioning in that direction. So when I notice them arising, then I think of an aspect of the Buddha's teachings that helps me counteract that. Okay, so if I, all of a sudden, you know, I just turned 69 and it's like it's beginning to dawn on me that other people see me as an old person. Not to inflame your petty vanities, but you don't look like you're 69.

Oh, okay. I don't feel like I'm 69, you know? I feel like, yeah, there's some eggses and pains coming and you know that stuff is happening. But you know, I think, oh, other people may see me that way, but I don't feel that way. And I don't have to put myself into a pigeonhole of thinking, oh, I have to act like I'm 69. Because I actually feel, you know, and this is a delusion, like, I have a long time to live. And it's beginning on Don, don't, don't me.

You know, no, you don't. Yeah. You don't. This machine is going to, you know, it's going to break and, uh, I see you have to be prepared for that. Yeah. And so if I see some kind of petty vanity like that coming, and then I think, okay, as I age, how do I want to be?

I want to be a nice old person. I want to be a gracious, easy to get along with person. You know, I don't want to complain. I absolutely do not want to be bitter. And I do not want to carry any grudges against anybody. Yeah? And I certainly don't want to care about how I look because, you know, what does it matter?

I mean, when you are a day, and you stop caring about how you look. You are a day, isn't it? Yeah. You know, there's still the thought, oh, how do I look? But you know that, hey, you know, nobody's going to be attracted to you because of how you look.

And also, you know, yeah, you shave your head. Why? Because if I'm going to have friends, I want them to see inner beauty. I don't want them to see external beauty. Because if people like you for external beauty, it's not going to last long, is it? Yeah, if you cultivate internal beauty, then that keeps building and building and building, and then the people that you're close to, you know it's genuine friendship. Yeah? Yeah, I can see. I can see how that would be to use

a loaded word attractive. Yeah. How would you, how would, why did you, did you decide to take what seems to be a pretty big step, which is to become a nun? Yes. Well, if you would ask me that when I was younger, I would have told them that a nun was the last thing I would ever be. It was just not in my framework. I had a lot of spiritual questions, but being a nun, I grew up Jewish, so Catholic non and stuff like that. That wasn't anything familiar to me at all. I was always wondering what's the purpose of my life?

And as a kid going around, asking different spiritual leaders and religious people, and none of them could give me an answer that made sense to me. They make sense to other people, and that's good. It benefits them, but they didn't make any sense to me. So then I did what most people did in the 60s and early 70s. And I went into education as a career because I figured that I had a feeling that part of my life, the purpose of my life had to do with benefiting others. So I thought education's a good way to do that. Which is I should just to ground people geographically, this is all playing out in Los Angeles if I could go correctly.

You grew up there, went to UCLA, and then went into teaching in the public schools in LA? Yeah, my first job was in the inner city schools. And so I taught for about a year and a half, and then there was a summer vacation, nothing to do, and I saw a flyer about a meditation course. This was 1975, and it was taught by two Tibetan llamas, and I said, okay, let's go. So I went and that was it. What about it made it it? Well, first of all, one of the first things they said was you don't have to believe anything we say. You're intelligent, you think for yourself, you make up your own mind. I said, that's good now I'll listen. Because I was tired of

people telling me the truth with the tech capital T. And these people were like, no, we'll just say it, you can believe it or not, you check it out. So I did. And one of the things that really, there are several things that really touched me. One of them was this whole thing about motivation, you know, because I thought I was a really good person, yeah. But when I started looking at why I did the things I did and I started being honest with myself. I realized, you know, I was pretty selfish, you know, and just looking out for myself. And yet, start interrupting. And yet, you had the sense that your life was to be of benefit and you were teaching in

inner-city schools. That doesn't sound like a case of overweaning selfishness to me. You know, you can be a mixture of many different things. You can take multitudes. I mean, look, we have part one day we're angry the next day we're loving. Yeah, one day we're greedy the next day we are. We are a mass of contradictory mental states. So that's what I started to see. And I had my ethical standards, but I mostly applied them to other people. And they shouldn't lie and they shouldn't cheat and they shouldn't and they should. But if I lie, there was a purpose to it. It was to prevent hurting somebody. You see,

actually, of course, it's to cover up something I did that I don't want somebody to know about because they'll be angry. But I couched in it. Well, I'm doing it for their benefit. Yeah. Which is garbage. Yeah. So I started really looking at my mind and seeing how my mind operated and seeing the contradictions in my own ethical standards.

And said, I better do something about this. I really need to do something because I don't wanna continue to be this kind of person. And then of course, when the teacher started speaking about generating love and compassion Buddhist style for all living beings and being of benefit to all living beings, I thought, wow, that sounds really good. That's what I'd like to do.

Of course, it takes eons and eons and eons, but, and I'm not going to accomplish it, you know, by Tuesday, but it gives a meaning and purpose to my life that, you know, because I know the direction I'm going in in the long term is something that's going to benefit myself and others, and it's going to benefit myself and others and it's going to extend over many lifetimes. And so having that kind of motivation, a byproduct of it is when you hit bumps in the road in your own life, they're not so big because you're focused on your long-term goal.

Yeah? It's like the-term goal. Yeah? It's like the most renewable fuel. Yeah. It burns clean. Definitely. Yeah, it's weird because I've been thinking a lot about how to frame compassion or concern for friendliness toward other people in a fresh way in the writing of this book that I'm doing.

And it's simultaneously like the ultimate life hack. And it's also anointingly obvious and anointingly just annoying to be told just get out of your own head in some ways and care about other people because we're told that often the message is having to do with compassion are delivered in a preachy way. So we don't like it. And yeah, I completely, I'm sitting here with you, I'm thinking, okay, if I could reframe all of my motivations in terms of benefiting others, then every time I stumble that wouldn't take it so personally or care

exactly Exactly because you know where you're going in the long term Is someplace worthwhile and you expect to stumble You know and you expect to have roadblocks. And then when they come, and this is one of the things that really appeal especially in the Tibetan tradition about thought training, is there's ways to transform what we usually consider

as bad situations into something that helps you on the path to awakening. For example. For example, okay. This is one that I practice. Quite a bit. None of us like getting criticized. Yeah. We hate getting criticized.

We get angry, we get hurt, we get defensive, we get aggressive, we get resentful. You know, it's like how dare you criticize me. I don't have any faults. And even if I do, you're not supposed to notice. Okay. But hey, we get criticized, don't we? Yeah. I look at my Twitter feed every day.

Yeah. I don't have Twitter, it's the best way not to have to listen to that. So, you know, we get criticized all the time. So one way to flip the situation, what I do is I say, oh, it's very good, I got criticized. Because sometimes I get kind of arrogant and full of myself. And I think I'm better than other people. And here's somebody else tearing me down.

And that is actually good for me. Because as a spiritual practitioner, being arrogant does not fit. You know, arrogance is one of those afflictions that's keeping me in this cycle and that makes me harm others. So here's somebody shaking down my arrogance and pulling me out of it. So that's good. Okay, it hurts my feelings, but that's okay. I can survive some hurt feelings. And, you know, it's good that I bring myself or somebody else helps bring me down a few notches.

Stay tuned. More of our conversation is on the way after this. Life is short and it's full of a lot of interesting questions. What does happiness really mean? How do I get the most out of my time here on Earth? And what really is the best cereal? These are the questions I seek to resolve on my weekly podcast Life is short with Justin Long. If you're looking for the answer to deep philosophical questions, like, what is the meaning

of life? I can't really help you. But I do believe that we really enrich our experience here by learning from others. And that's why in each episode, I like to talk with actors, musicians, artists, scientists, and many more types of people about how they get the most out of life. We explore how they felt during the highs. And sometimes more importantly, the lows of their careers. We discuss how they've been able to stay happy during some of the harder times. But if I'm being honest, it's mostly just fun chats between friends about the important stuff. Like, if you had a sandwich named

after you, what would be on it? Follow Life is short wherever you get your podcasts. You can also listen to Add Free on the Amazon Music or Wondering app. So clearly these teachings spoke to you and as you relate them, they speak to me too, so much so that even before I walked into this room, I've been spending a lot of time thinking about the cultivation of compassion, writing a book about it, trying to operationalize it in my own life, et cetera, et cetera. And I'm a bit of a tough case. I'll also admit that from the beginning.

And yet I am not tempted to shave my head, give up my possessions, and never have sex again. And yet you did. And so how did you decide to make that leap? Oh, okay. I wanted to dedicate my life to this. I thought if I'm going to do it, I'm going to do it. So that's one factor. Another was I realized, because I was married when I met the Dharma.

No kids. I was married to very nice man. Happily married? Yeah, was married to very nice man. Happily married? Yeah. Happily married. Very nice man. I had good work. You know, it was everything was going well. And in a worldly sense, everything was fine. And why did I do this? Yes. That was the question I wanted to give back to your question.

Why did I do this? Because I knew that I couldn't continue in that life situation and practice well. My attachment was too strong. You couldn't keep doing this and meditate and practice Buddhism up to par because your attachments to the things in the world, including your husband and your career or whatever paintings you put up on the wall, etc. were too strong to do it the way you wanted to do it. Right. The situation was to, yeah, there are too many things for me to grasp out with attachment, too many things I got angry at.

Yeah. What does this say about the rest of us? Can we, can we, that mean we can't practice up to? No, no, I'm talking about myself as an individual. I'm not saying that everybody should, you everybody should go down to the barber shop. Yeah, I'm not saying that. I'm talking about my own inner experience. And so when I was honest with myself, I knew,

I want to do this wholeheartedly. And I just don't have the capability to do it in this situation. Yeah? So I thought, okay, I'm going to ordain. Had this go over with your nice husband? Well, he became a Buddhist. He had become a Buddhist too. And he understood.

Of course he didn't like it at all. But he was incredibly kind and I am grateful to him to this day because he did not guilt rip me, he did not try and hold me back, he understood the reasons why I was doing this, even though it was something that was painful for him. And I'm very grateful. You still in touch with him? Yeah, we're still in touch. My mom introduced him to another woman.

They're happily married with three kids. Huh. I didn't expect that twist. No. It's a crazy story. It's like she was being a Jewish mom and somebody else's behalf. Yeah. I love it.

Yeah, because I mean, she loved him. She thought he was great. And I was the one who was messing everything up. How'd she feel about what you were doing? Oh, she didn't like it at all. My family didn't speak to me for a long time. Yeah, this was in the 70s. So nobody knew the Dalai Lama then.

So they thought I joined a call. You're going off to India to live in a place where they don't even have flush toilets. You know, what did we do to deserve this? So it was very difficult for them. And you were hanging around with the Dalai Lama at this time? I had a lot of trouble with my job. I was a little bit uncomfortable with my job. I was a little bit uncomfortable with my job. I was a little bit uncomfortable with my job. I was a little bit uncomfortable with my job. I was a little bit uncomfortable with my job.

I was a little bit uncomfortable with my job. I was a little bit uncomfortable with my job. I was a little bit uncomfortable with my job. I was a little bit uncomfortable with my job. I was a little bit uncomfortable with my job. I was a little bit uncomfortable with my job. I was a little bit uncomfortable with my job. I was a little bit uncomfortable with my job. That happened later, sometime in the 80s, because you go to his holiness teachings,

there's thousands of people. Yeah, so he became one of my teachings, but teachers, but the principal teachers I relied on didn't have at that time thousands of disciples. So for other things, I relied on other teachers. So I met his holiness at that time, but then I didn't get to know him personally until, for a few years.

Are women treated well in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition? She's making a face. She's pulling a face. Am I supposed to be polite? Which, not in this podcast, this is the safe place to be employed. As an individual with my teachers, by and large, I was treated very well and I was respected for my intelligence not because I'm very intelligent but respected in the way that you

respect any living being you know for their intelligence and as Westerners we had the same education for the women and the men. Okay, so that part was equal. I lived in the Tibetan community for a long time and nuns are not many ways, the laywomen have more status than the nuns do. Because the laywomen do business. They run their home, they do business, they operate the stores, and so on in Darmsala. The nuns, when I went there in the 70s, were now the situation for the nuns is much better due to the solveness of kindness. Really, it's this holiness that really has started

to change things. But still, it's not a good solution. Is it kindness or just lack of hypocrisy? Because these guys hold themselves up as the beacons of compassion on planet Earth, and they weren't Applying it omnidirectionally in this life. That's what is very interesting to me is how sometimes you see

Because we grew up in America where at least we were told everybody's equal. Of course, you live in American society. There's no equality here. Well, just look at the pay gap. Yeah, the pay gap, racism. I was just talking about men and women, but yeah, racism. Oh yeah. You know, to racism, of course. Right, you know, and the pay gap was men and women, of course.

But, you know, in the Tibetan situation the Tibetan situation, you kind of grow up. Just it's unspoken that women are not as intelligent as the men. I had a friend who studied at the dialectic school, a male friend. You studied the dialectic school in Darm Sala. And the teacher one day, he was telling me, asked, do you think women are equal to men? And he told me, all the Tibetan monks in the class who were young ones said, no, that he was the only one who said, yes. Yeah. the only one who said yes. So it's part of the culture, it's quite patriarchal. And it's

in certain aspects of Buddhism as well. I don't think the Buddha himself was patriarchal, but in the system, because religion is influenced by culture, then you have things coming in sometimes to the scriptures. Yeah, but didn't the Buddha's stepmother have to convince him to to ordain women? Yeah, that's the way the story goes. Yeah. But I wonder if the story goes that way in order to convince men that women are

capable of maintaining awakening. Because at the time of the Buddha, the women weren't even allowed out of the house. You were under the control first of your father, then your husband, then your son. Okay. You have to give birth to this little guy, changes diapers, and then do what he says. Yep. And in many ways, that culture is still there. And you look at other countries in the world.

I mean, it's like that. And not Buddhist countries, but countries of other religions too. I mean, look at America in the 1950s. Yeah, my mom was a brilliant woman. She could have been a lawyer like, whoa, she was a housewife. Yeah, because women just didn't have careers at that time. So, you know, this gets into the culture and then people don't even notice it.

His holiness is aware of it. But most of them aren't, and you know what's really shocking is the Western monks. Of all people, I would expect the Western monks to do not be discriminatory against the women, but there's that with them too. It's very surprising. And so it's not, you know, it's not, it comes out in many subtle kind of ways and many not so subtle ways too, yeah.

So. Let me ask another question as it pertains to compassion and gender. Okay. You'll use the term before nice. You were talking about your aspiration to be a nice older person. Yeah. I did not take that the wrong way, but I, well, I'm not. I don't want to be a grumpy old person. Fair enough. I took it, I think, want to be a grumpy old person.

Fair enough. I took it, I think, in the spirit in which you intended it. However, I've spoken to enough women, a mayor to one, have a lot of female colleagues and friends, I've spoken to a lot of women now, but the issue of compassion and nice can be a provocative term because of the way the culture sends messages that women should be nice, meaning shut up. Yeah.

What's your view on all everything I just said? I think it's true. And then how should women view niceness in given this context? I think nice, for me, nice means polite, cooperative, For me, nice means polite, cooperative, not being obnoxious. Yeah, it doesn't mean being Susie Creamtees. Susie Creamtees. Susie Creamtees.

And running and getting all the men coffee. And to me, that's not the meaning of nice. To me, nice means, I mean, look at our civil discourse in this country right now. It is not nice, it is horrible, and it's detrimental, and it's harmful. And to me, speaking politely, speaking kindly, you know, being cooperative when you can, that's what I mean by nice. There's like a fierce niceness

You can be fierce. There's a fierce compassion that I really believe in Yeah, and there's a truthful kind of niceness Right, you can communicate clearly without being impolite you can compete without being cruel there are ways to do all this without falling into the trap of doing what the culture is implicitly telling you. Right, and becoming like the people that you object against. You know, like if a woman objects against all these men, they're so aggressive and they're so this and they're so that. And then you try and imitate them, because you think that's the only way you can do it in order to get heard.

And I think there's different ways to get heard. And there's different kinds of dignity to have, you know, that we don't have to be in somebody's face all the time to get heard. Let me just go back to this issue of motivation, which I'm so interested in. I'm just going to ask a question from a truly selfish standpoint, which may spoil the whole question. So I just think about, you didn't use this word. The purity of motivation. And I think about it in my own life.

So I am, I have a career in television news. I have this podcast, I have a meditation app, I write and tell books. So I want all of these things to be successful. If I were to, if it was possible, if it were possible for me to really work on my motivation so that I was, you know, much, much, much, much more oriented toward benefiting other people than myself, would I, do you think it would hinder my ability to reach people in the end?

In other words, some of that selfishness is possible. Absolutely not. It would not enter your ability. Absolutely not. In fact, I think when you have a sincere good motivation, people take what you say seriously. When they know that you're there to make a buck, and you're just like everybody else who wants to make a buck. So the irony is I might end up making more bucks but I wouldn't care so much about the bucks. Well, if I follow your advice. Yeah, you may or may not make a lot of bucks. That's not your aim.

I write books, all the royalties I get, which are not a lot, you know, you can't live off of that. But all the royalties go into a special account that I only use for Dharma purposes and being generous. Right, but you're a nun. Yeah. And I'm a guy who has a kid in private school and, you know, I live in Manhattan and have to pay my rent. Should I not care about money?

I don't want to tell you what you shouldn't do. That's not my rent. Should I not care about money? I don't want to tell you what you shouldn't do. That's not my business. Okay, should one not care about money? I'm going to get you over here the other. You need money. I mean, if you're a layperson, you need money. You need to eat. You need to do all that stuff.

Okay? But there's different motivations for making money, and there's different ways of handling your money. You could buy your kid everything your kid wants, or you could teach your child how to deal with frustration of not getting what they want. And you can teach your child how to be generous and how to give things. So there's different ways to use your money. And also, your self-esteem doesn't depend on the amount of money you make.

I met one man who came to the Abbey to study with us, and he was a former Army Ranger. And he told me that he saw in his marriage that he was loved more when he made more money. And of course that hurt him a lot. So if money isn't your currency for being a successful person, Then you get money, you don't get money. You know, you make do with what you have. It's okay. You don't need the best of everything. You don't need the most modern of everything. And sometimes it's really freeing. Like, I don't have a smartphone. Maybe the only person in the country. Yeah? And you seem fine.

Yeah, I'm fine. Can you believe it? Yes, actually, I can. You know, and I manage in my life. And I don't have a smartphone. And I don't want to be available 24-7. Yeah, I don't want to be attached to that thing. So it's quite freeing.

You figure out what you really need and what you don't. Well, you just went right to what I was going to ask you about. Because a question, you know, I talk to a lot of, both in my personal life and in my public life, I talk to a lot of Buddhist teachers. And a question that's been posed to me often as one that I might mall for myself is what is enough? How much is enough? And I wonder if you have any thoughts on how we can go about considering that? There is never enough. Yeah, whatever you have, it's never enough.

We don't have enough love, we don't have enough money, we don't have enough appreciation, we don't have enough fame. There is never enough. Yeah, when you live your life from that point of view, from just being concerned with only things of this life, there is never enough. So my philosophy is, you make what you have enough. Then you have enough. It's enough.

Yeah. And so if our family revenue goes down and we have to make a bunch of sacrifices, maybe put our child in a different school or maybe don't have so much takeout or whatever. It's just like that's enough. Yeah. Still with my family. That's okay. Do you need to take out every night? No, I don't. I'm just pulling random. Yeah, but do you know? Yes. Yeah, but just all those things I had one student and she had two or three kids and was unemployed at that time and

One night really didn't have enough money for dinner for the kids. So they had a picnic at home Sitting around the fireplace, making BB and Jade sandwiches. And she said they had a great time because they made it like the special thing of, you know, having a family picnic with BB and Jade. And it was a wonderful opportunity, you know, much better than going out to some fancy restaurant

with their kids. Yeah? I mean, you'd be surprised sometimes what the creativity that can come out and the connection among people that can come out when you don't have all this stuff because look at it right now. What do people do? You spend your time on the phone making appointments to meet your friends. You go out for coffee or tea or whatever with your friends. What's the first thing everybody does? They take out their phone and put it in front of them. So everybody's sitting there with their phone, which they keep checking every few minutes.

They don't really communicate with the people they're with because they're too busy looking at their phone. And even if they don't have any messages, they kind of make like they had messages because if you don't have it then you don't have a life in your nobody. Right, you're not getting enough attention. Yeah, and so here it is. You made effort to be together with this group of people that you like and then you're not really with them because you're all looking at your phones.

You don't look people in the eye. You don't really connect with them. You're all about creating a face and an image Not all about it, but you know a good amount of time And a creating a face and image instead of really listening to people a face and image instead of really listening to people. So you know, when you die, what I never heard of anybody at the time of death saying I should have worked more over time. Or I should have done a better job on Instagram.

Yeah. Or I should have made more money. You know, what is the thing that people regret when they die? Yeah? Having spent a reasonable amount of time around people who were dying, I think they were grits. Things have to do with their relationships. Yeah, that's exactly it, isn't it?

Yeah, because of getting angry, because of having an uncontrolled mind and saying and doing things that harmed others. That's what people regret. So if we spend our time working on ourselves so we don't do those things, then our life is so much peaceful when we're alive. And when we die, no regret. And again, you are of the belief that this whole approach to life is doable for lay people as well. They say. Have you seen it?

I think it's harder for lay people, but as they say, it's doable. Anyway, it's not a doable or undoable thing. Everything is is you know, we have light switches on or off. Spiritual practice is not on and off spectrum. It's a spectrum. Yeah, so we all do what we're capable of doing and That is good enough. Yeah, that's one of the, and that is good enough. Yeah, that's one of the things we have on our mirror at the abbey. One of my teachers called everybody dear and one of the things he said to us so often was good enough dear.

Who you are is good enough. What you have is good enough. What you do is good enough. And that's an antidote to that mind that is that high achiever pushing I've got. Be somebody more than I am. And that kind of life is good enough. Now let's connect with people. Before I let you go, because I didn't this conversation, I had a kind of plan going in and I threw it out. But you did write a book called The Compassionate Kitchen. Yes.

So one of the things that I struggle a lot with, if I'm being honest, is, and I've talked about it on the show before, overeating or getting in my head about allegedly overeating. So what do you, and I think I'm not alone, and also maybe, and I'll add another thing on here is maybe not being so mindful while eating. So that's a lot to throw at you. And I know you wrote a whole book about it,

so you have a lot to say, so I feel guilty just throwing it out there in an open and it ended way, but can you just free associate on what I just said? Okay, one thing that I, that is emphasized in the book is to put our eating in proper context. And so I talk about five contemplations before we eat. The first one is just thinking about all the causes and conditions that came into our receiving our food.

As a monastic, I eat because of the generosity of other people. We don't buy any food where I live. We eat only the food that people give us. Yeah? Even if you're lay people, you work person, you work for a living. You know, don't think, this is my money, I'm spending it.

Because your money came from other people, they gave it to you. Yeah? Your food, where did it come from? Boy, there's a lot of people who worked to get our food. Yeah. And if we think nowadays, yeah, my friend, one of our nuns is from Germany. She said that one one store in Germany, they took out all the food that was not made in Germany. And the store had very little left in it.

Can you imagine in this country, if we took out everything that wasn't grown in another country, or in our stores, if we took out everything that wasn't made in another country? So we think, I mean, how many people in what kind of conditions worked and were eating off of their labor? And how kind they are. Somebody could say, well, they didn't grow the food just for me. They did it to make money. That's okay. The bottom line is if they didn't do it, I wouldn't eat. Yeah? So when you eat, you feel connected to so many other living beings. Can that slow you down while you're eating?

In other words, slow you down in a positive way. Yeah. Yeah. Because you think about that. And then you think about, well, what is the state of mind? I'm eating. And what kind of state of mind do I have during the day? If I'm accepting other people's generosity, I want to improve the state of my mind. And why am I eating? I'm eating to nourish my body. That's the purpose.

And why do I want to nourish my body? It's not for strength and good looks. It's so that I can practice the path and so that I can do activities that are beneficial for other people. So I'm keeping my body alive, but not just because, you know, I'm so important and I want to look good, but because I have some potential to use my life in a beneficial way for others. So this goes back to motivation?

Yeah, definitely. I feel like there's a lot more to say on this. I've almost regret bringing it up because we should probably make it to subject them another podcast. Maybe we will. Unfortunately, I have to ironically go to lunch. So I don't want to take too. And also we're coming to the end of our allotted time anyway.

But as we close, can you do something that may run against your training, which is be a little self-promotional and find out and tell us the names of some of your books and where can we learn more about you and your Abby, etc., etc. Okay. The Abby's name is Shravasti. Abby, S-R-A-V-A-S-T-I. It's the name of a place in India where the Buddha spent 25 summer retreats. So it's in Newport, Washington. People can look at Shravasti.org and find us. I have my own website, tuptantrydron.org. I better spell that. THUBTENCHODRON.org. And we also have a YouTube channel that's Shrovasty, Abby, Shrovasty, Abby YouTube channel.

So we have lots of material online, audio, video, written stuff. In terms of books, you want me to name all of them? Maybe name three. Three? Okay, so three that I did myself, because I've edited the co-authored things with other people. But three, I did myself open-heart clear mind, Buddhism for beginners, taming the mind, working with anger. That's one people may like. That's four. Yeah, that's four. That's fine. Well, you told me, you told me just to promote myself. I did more than you gave me. So then there's

the compassionate kitchen is the one on food. And then there's another one called Awaken Every Day that is has short passages for every day of the year that you can kind of read and give you something to contemplate during the day. And then you, can I promote myself some more? Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. No, this time I'm promoting his holiness

because we're doing a series of books together. And so it's published by Wisdom Publication. So there's four books out in this series so far. Approaching the Buddhist Path, foundation of Buddhist practice, samsara, nirvana, and Buddha nature, following in the Buddhist footsteps. And the next volume is in praise of great compassion. So you'll want to read that one if you're writing about compassion. I've gotten a lot out of this conversation. Thank you very much.

I think a lot of everybody will. So thank you so much. I hope so. Yeah. And then also for compassion of people are interested, I did a book with a psychology professor at Eastern Washington University, WrestleColth. And we wrote a book called Living with an Open Heart. called, what did we call it, living, because it was published in UK in one title, living with an open heart, and in the states it was published as an open-hearted life.

And it's a book about compassion, from a psychological viewpoint, anabotus viewpoint, but it's written secular in a secular way. In other words, there's no talk about rebirth or anything in it. Thank you again for sharing my pleasure. All right, I got a lot out of that chat. The children really appreciate her coming in. Let's do some voicemails. Here's number one. Hi, Dan. This is Adam. I've been meditating for about three years. And I understand the concept of trying to be present and in the moment.

And when my mind wanders, I bring my attention back to the object of focus and begin again. I'll typically meditate for about 10 to 15 minutes a day. But while I'm in the act, I'm doing fine. However, once the chime sounds and I hop up to resume my day, I often forget to be mindful or present during the course of the day. I know my practice has helped me realize that pause between a reaction and a response, so I know it's working. But do you

have any suggestions for how to remember to be mindful during the course of the day? I often find myself looking back on the day and wondering if I was present at all. Thanks for your guidance thumb this one. This is a great question. I've struggled with this a lot. So, I'll answer just from a personal perspective. A couple of thoughts. One is, you know, the conversation we just heard was with the Thuptan children.

I mean, the idea that we could set an intention in the beginning of the day and, you know, maybe the intention is that, can I be as mindful as possible today? I think that could be useful. And again, I know it sounds a little, the idea of, I just hear in my own, in her echo chamber this a little bit of resistance to the idea of setting an attention, it sounds a little, I don't know.

I don't know. But anyway, I still think, when you wake up in the morning, or as your maybe you don't know. I don't know. But anyway, I still think, you know, the first thing you wake up in the morning or as you're maybe, I sometimes don't remember one of my, either one of my alarm goes off or my eyes open in the morning. Sometimes I don't remember to do this, but maybe, you know, I catch myself

in the first 10, 15 minutes of the day. I'm like, oh yeah, all right. Well, it's my little goal today. And maybe it's to be as mindful as possible, to wake up as much as possible. Another might be just to be, you know, not a jerk, which is something I continue to struggle with. So I'm intrigued by that. The other thing is, you know, first of all, I think that that in your answer, in your question, I hear already that you're making a lot of progress.

First of all, you're doing the daily daily practice and the fact that you're noticing yourself on autopilot or being mindless throughout the rest of the day is a form of mindfulness. That noticing is the waking up. I think what's I suspect what may be happening is something that often happens for me, which is I notice and then I self-flagulate. And so I go back right into mindlessness. But you can notice and maybe reflexively you'll have a little self-flag Lagellation that's you can't really do much about, but then you can kind of train yourself over time to like oh yeah, yeah, wait I'm actually awake. This is an opportunity and I just find that that This is a skill that develops on its own

Just as you have the desire to do it like to me as as far as I can tell, the waking up is kind of a mysterious process. I don't quite understand how it happens, but you can increase the odds that you will wake up by having your daily practice and then having the intention to do it, and then kind of celebrating when you notice it, because you kind of disincentivize yourself to wake up if every time you do it, you're punishing yourself by launching into a story of what a horrible meditator you are or whatever, then the mind what what what what one incentive does the mind have to wake up. So I guess that's just a long, long way of saying keep doing what you're doing and I suspect you'll find yourself waking up with more and more frequency.

And you know, there may be little hacks you can put throughout your day. I remember when I was training to be a hospice volunteer, one of my teachers, Chodo, who is if you scroll back in this podcast feed, he was on, he and his husband were on a, before they got married, actually, they were on this podcast. Way, way, way back in the beginning, his husband's name is Cotion. And Chodo was saying that one little thing he has is every time he walked into a new room where a patient was, he would just touch the outline of the door. What's the name of that?

Anyway, he was crossing the threshold. He would touch the door, what's the name of that? Anyway, he was crossing the threshold, he would touch the door. And that would just be, it was a habit he created that allowed him, that was a trigger to him to wake up. And so little, this is gonna sound a little superficial, but little hacks like that can also be nice to play with. Anyway, I think you're on the right road, so I appreciate the question and keep it up. Let's do voicemail number two.

Hi Dan, my name is Goand. I've been doing the meditation app for about six months. Very enjoyable. I find myself using the meditation when I'm driving, walking, and just getting ready. I don't find myself doing the actual sitting in a meditation, as you would say, on the cushion. Is that something I should strive for? I feel I'm getting quite a bit out of the, you know, activity part of meditation and focusing and following the app that I'm wondering if

I'm not getting the full complete by getting to the cushion. Thanks for your response. I thought it would be cool to include these two questions together because there are in many ways obviously related. First of all, thank you for being a subscriber to the app. There are a lot of us who work really hard to make that app excellent. And so it's just gratifying to hear that you're getting something out of it. I'm low to be too, you know, dogmatic, you know, to lecture you about the right way to do this. The fact that you're tuning in and using the meditations to bring mindfulness in your daily life I think is excellent. So what I say I say kind of with

medium to low conviction or I would just Hold whatever I'm saying lightly which is I really do think that the formal seated or walking practice actually there as you may know for formal quote unquote, formal ways to practice. The word formal is a little heavy, but anyway, that's the best I can do right now. But there are four formal ways to practice. One is seated, the other is walking, there's also lying down or standing. And that doing one thing, in other words, doing just meditation or mindfulness practice as opposed to using it while you're walking, walking to work, rather commuting, walking

or driving, or many of the other ways that we've got all these meditations on the app to integrate it into parts of your day, which I consider sort of on the go or free range meditation. I think the formal meditation boosts your ability to do the informal meditation. And it can create a really self reinforcing cycle. So this links back, of course, to the first question, how can you bring mindfulness to as much of the day as possible?

That's what both of you guys are asking for, essentially. To me, in my experience, and of one here, having the formal practice really fuels my ability to be mindful the rest of the time, to wake up, and then really practicing not only creating the conditions where I'm more likely to wake up, but also getting myself out of the nose dive when I notice that I have been mindless for a while and I'm tempted to beat myself up, which as discussed can create a kind of sort of inner lack of incentives to wake up at all. Just to notice, oh yeah, okay, so I just woke up, I've been mindless for a while, maybe a couple hours, but here I am online at the grocery store with a bunch of bananas in my hand and I've noticed that I've been on a long

cascade of mindlessness and then I notice quickly, even out of my control, I start to beat myself up. And then it kind of kicks in, oh, no, no, I can drop all that and just be with where I am right now. And so just over time, I've just find that these two practices, the quote unquote formal practice, interwoven with the desire and intention to, and I know desire is a loaded word, but the intention to be as mindful as possible throughout the

rest of my day, it's just, it's a skill that you develop over time and you're never, I don't know anybody who's perfect at it, but you can, you can keep getting better. And I think the results are incredibly meaningful. It's Shin Zen, Young, the great meditation teacher who's been on the show has talked about the fact that when you're more mindful, it expands your life. Not your life expectancy. You may live for the same amount of time chronology,

but you will be awake for more of it. More of it. And in that way, you get more life. Okay, I've probably said enough. Thank you for those excellent questions. Anybody else who wants to leave us a voicemail? Our number is 646-883-836-646-883-836. We'll put that number in the show notes.

Big thanks to everybody who makes this podcast possible. There are a lot of folks who work really hard on it just to name a few names, Ryan Kessler, Samuel Johns, Grace Livingston, Lauren Hartzog, Tiffany O'Mahundro, and Brittany, who's working the boards. As I record this right now, big thanks to all of you. We'll be back next Wednesday with a new show. See you then. of them. Before you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondery.com slash Survey.