Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 22: Dr. Mark Epstein

Episode Date: June 22, 2016

Buddhist psychiatrist and author Dr. Mark Epstein has for years written about the overlap between Western psychotherapy and Eastern Buddhist philosophies. Epstein sat down with Dan Harris to talk about the impact meditation can have on the mind, both positive and negative, for those looking for an escape from suffering. He also went deep into the Buddhist concept of the "no-self," whether Enlightenment can be reached ... and what it might look or feel like. He has written numerous books on these topics, his most recent being, "The Trauma of Everyday Life." Epstein first discovered meditation in college and one of the "breakthroughs" he said that made the practice click for him happened while he was learning to juggle. "Once I got the three oranges in the air, my mind had to relax in order to keep it going and I understood, 'Oh yeah, this is what they're trying to teach me in mediation.'" Before he found meditation, Epstein said he was a very anxious person who worried all the time. Now after practicing meditation for more than 40 years, Epstein said he wouldn't know what he would be without it. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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

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

Let us know what you think. We're always open to tweaking how we do things and maybe there's a playlist we haven't thought of. Hit me up on Twitter or submit a comment through the website. I'm Dan Harris. I'm Dan Harris. I'm Dan Harris. I'm Dan Harris.

I'm Dan Harris. I'm Dan Harris. I'm Dan Harris. I'm Dan Harris. I'm Dan Harris. I'm Dan Harris. I'm Dan Harris. I'm Dan Harris. I'm Dan Harris. I'm Dan Harris. I'm Dan Harris. Disclaimer right off the top. Do not expect journalistic objectivity on this one. My guest today, and this is a horribly overused phrase,

but I'm going to use it unapologetically anyway. I think it's fair to say that my guest today changed my life. His name is Dr. Mark Epstein. Just a little quick backstory before I let him talk. In 2009, my wife gave me a book by a guy named Dr. Mark Epstein just a little quick backstory before I let him talk. In 2009, my wife gave me a book by a guy named Dr. Mark Epstein. I never heard of the guy and he's a psychiatrist based here in New York sitting. He writes about the overlap between psychology and Buddhism. I, and I like to tell the story, I actually knew nothing about Buddhism at this point other

than the fact that when I was a 15 year old punk kid, I stole a Buddha statue from a local gardening store and put it in my bedroom because I thought maybe it would help me with the ladies. It didn't. That's another story. And I started to read his book the night my wife gave it to me and it blew my mind. I had no idea that the Buddha who I thought of as kind of a religious figure was actually not a god, not a prophet, mere mortal,

albeit probably a genius. And he had sort of a diagnosis of the human condition that I was, that I found deeply resonant and I hadn't really heard before. His argument is, well, he compares the mind to a monkey. He says we're like furry little primates, just hurling ourselves through a forest of urges and impulses and desires, constantly latching onto things

that won't last in a universe that's characterized by impermanence and hurling ourselves from one hit of pleasant experience to the next, one movie, one latte, one birthday to the next and never fully satisfied. As Mark and I have the same meditation teacher, he's a guy named Joseph Goldstein, and if you've listened to this podcast before, you may have heard some of his guided meditations

that we've posted as Joseph likes to ask people, you know, how many promotions, how many ice cream cones, how many vacations have you experienced, and are you done yet? Of course not. We're insatiable. And in this way, the pursuit of happiness that's enshrined in our founding documents becomes the source of our unhappiness. So this was, I'm just kind of paraphrasing a lot of what Mark writes about, but I found this to be really compelling. So I did something I had never really done before, which is I actually called the guy up and said well you have a drink with me and I wasn't gonna interview him or I at

that point I didn't know I was gonna write a book I ended up writing a lot about him in in my book 10% happier available to find bookstores everywhere but so I just wanted to have a drink with a guy so there was nothing in it for him and to my surprise he said yes and we went and had a drink with a guy. So there was nothing in it for him. And to my surprise, he said, yes. And we went and had a drink at a hotel and downtown Manhattan. And then I kind of basically just forced myself into his life and made him become my friend and give me free meditation advice, free counseling, free psychotherapy, a lot of free stuff. And this was in 2009.

So it's like, I've never been good at math. But seven years, we've been friends. And so I can say a lot more about Mark and I will. But let me just shut up for a second and nine, so it's like, I'm never gonna math, but seven years we've been friends. And so I can say a lot more about Mark and I will, but let me just shut up for a second and say thank you for coming on the show. Nice to be here. So why did you agree to be friends with me? What were you thinking?

When you first called? Yeah, I was not thinking. I was like, oh, you're so interesting. No one ever calls, and wants to go out for a drink like that. Really? Even after all the books you've written Yeah, by the way the name of the book that I read in case you're wondering he's

Written six books his seventh is gonna come out sometime next year I believe the name of the book that I read was going to pieces without falling apart We're gonna talk about a lot of his books during the course of this podcast But that book I highly highly read I recommend all of his books But that was the first one I read and we'll talk about a lot of the other ones But anyway when you met this kind of strange over caffeinated hyper self-obsessed TV reporter And he demanded that you you know like CM semi regularly on an unpaid basis. Why did you continue with that?

Well, I liked you from the beginning. So that's probably the main reason. But also you asked good questions, and I enjoyed that because your questions made me think. And I think in the same way that writing my books has helped me understand Buddhism and psychotherapy to the extent that I do, because it forces me to say what I think, that in answering your questions, it actually helped my thinking. So I enjoyed that and you always picked up the check which you know like why not come. There is that even Buddhists can be bought. How when where why how did you just start meditating and find Buddhism? I started meditating probably in my first or second year of college. I took an introduction to world religion class, my freshman year in college,

and the first semester was Eastern Religion, and I read the Dhamma Pada, which is a collection of Buddhist Diverse for lay people, and something in it spoke to me, and I keep going back to it. And then my father, who's a physician, he was at Harvard then, where I was. And he worked with my mother. He worked with your mother, which I did not know. But he was like, what are you studying? And I said, well, I took this religion class and I'm taking a psychophysiology class and

I'm interested in this Eastern stuff maybe. And he said, oh, there's a guy working for me who's doing research on this, whose name was Herbert Benson, who had written a book called The Relaxation Response. He was the best seller. Best seller in the 70s. He did research on what was then TM, transcendental meditation. And I went to work for him in the summer and I actually started meditating then using his method that he had stolen from TM.

Well, it basically he gave you a mantra, which is like the word one. Yeah, he said repeat the word one instead of a secret mantra. Silently in your head. Silently in your head. Yeah, so I tried that myself sitting in front of the typewriter or whatever preceded computers then that myself sitting in front of the typewriter or whatever preceded computers, then. You have a kiss. Something like that, yeah. And then it was after that, that the graduate student teacher in the psychophysiology class

was a guy named Daniel Goldman, who was then a graduate school, went on to become the psychology writer at the times, and then wrote emotional intelligence. But he already had been in India. And there was something about him that I wanted, something I saw that I liked and wanted for myself. And he's the one who told me, oh, go, if you want to know more, go out to Naropa, which

was like a Buddhist summer camp in Colorado, where I met Joseph Goldstein and Jack Cornfield and Ramdas and Sharon Salisberg and that's really when I started doing Buddhist meditation. And those people just for those of you who don't know, all those names you just listed are the sort of, they often get referred to by me included as the Jewish. Especially by you. Yeah, especially by me as the Jew booze, the sort of young Jewish people who had gone over Jewish people.

Young Jewish people who had gone over to India, and learned how to meditate and come back. They were just back. So Joseph and Sharon knew each other. Jack they didn't know. They were all converged in Boulder, and they were each teaching individual classes. And I was still a student in college,

so I took their classes and then befriended them and then sat the first meditation courses that they taught and then traveled to Asia with them. And I'm still close with all of them. It's interesting you say that Danny Goldman, who's now a friend of both of ours, he introduced me to him, had something you wanted because that's what I felt about you the first time I met you because I had been kind of On a little mission that after having had a panic attack and looking around at different ways to be less of an idiot and Had met a lot of self-help gurus who I who you know that really

Sent my BS meter into over driving you you seemed Kind of slightly happier than average but totally not claiming to be perfected or anything like that. You seem kind of comfortable with your imperfections maybe I'm just making this up a little bit but that that's the way you seem to me is that way? It's a good way to seem. Yeah yeah is that I'm was I misreading it? Well let's hope not but I think that personal attraction, that's in the Buddhist world, people tend to downplay desire, you know, or attachment even,

or attraction as something that we're trying to get rid of. But I've always found that there's a healthy element to it. I've tried to incorporate that into a lot of my writing. But the thing about Danny Goldman was that he was wearing purple bell-bottom pants. And I was like, a corduroy, purple bell-bottom corduroy pants. And I was like, oh, who is this guy? Those are really nice pants. And he later, his wife made them for him in India or something. I question your fashion case, but I will give you a pass. 1972.

Fair enough. When we come back, she was kind of asking me, you know, what was going on that you were able to kind of lean in and one of the things I say was spousal loyalty. And she was like, oh, so do you mean love? After this. Hey there listeners. While we take a little break here,

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that pulls energy from the ground to heat in cool homes, or even figuring out how to make drinking water from air and sunlight. Together they discussed their entire journey from day one, and all the skills they had to learn along the way, like confronting big challenges, and how to lead through uncertainty. So if you want to get inspired and learn how to think like an entrepreneur, check out how I built this, wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen early and add free on the Amazon or Wondery app. So the ease that sort of wafes off you now and that I got from you in 2009, and I know, again, I'm not trying to say that you never have your bad or uncomfortable or unhappy moments.

In fact, the fact that you're open about that actually makes all of it so much more credible and aspirational for me. But that was actually not the case back in 1972 when you were first getting into this. You describe yourself in a lot of your books as being a pretty uncomfortable, unhappy, uptight kind of guy. Yeah, well, in order to make the books make sense, I have to accentuate those aspects of who I was, but I was definitely anxious, and I was, I think, probably a big warrior,

and something of a striver also within my academic world. So my approach to meditation, for instance, was to go to the classes and try really hard and try to get it with my mind, which was very frustrating. And one of the breakthroughs that I had in those early days was to tap into some other way of relating to meditation and other people and myself that I got off the Buddhist thing. Once I entered it in a different way. The breakthrough, if memory serves, actually came through juggling? The breakthrough that summer came from juggling because I was at this Buddhist summer camp slash university where everyone was very serious about their spiritual aspirations.

But I had these two roommates who had been assigned to me randomly who were sons, there were twins, sons of Holocaust survivors, parents owned a fruit and vegetable store and Long Beach, Long Island, and they were into like back to Eden and naturopathy and herbs and they were into like back to Eden and natureopathy and herbs and they got disgusted right away with all the egos of the supposedly eagulous Buddhist teachers and they stopped going to classes and started driving to Denver in the early morning and bringing back big crates of fruits and vegetables into our little apartment and they taught me to juggle. One of them was already a good juggler. So I would practice with the oranges on the couch,

you know, in between classes. And it was, and I was, you know, diligently practicing. And once I got the three oranges in the air, like my mind had to relax in order to keep it going. And I understood, oh yeah, I can use this as what they're trying to tell me to do in meditation. So that helped. You say in some ways, and this isn't actually, I was recently rereading your most recent book, which is also excellent, it's called The Trauma of Everyday Life, and you talk about this juggling moment.

And you say, I can't, I don't know if I'm going to say this correctly, but it was like as if you were juggling Your mind was juggling the balls and but your mind was also being juggled. Yeah, I think The the thing I learned from meditation that or that maybe I saw first in the juggling was that I was usually so centered in my thinking mind. It never occurred to me to go elsewhere. But in order to do the juggling, I had to be more, you know, in a, in my body maybe or in a, uh, in a less, um, uh, cerebral place. Uh, and I've come to see that as a therapist when people are bringing emotional experience to me that they're uncomfortable with, that there's a way that we can be with the emotional experience as well as the stories we're telling ourselves, as well as the physical sensation of just being in a body,

that there's a way to be with all of that that's sort of like the juggling where it's all a part of us, it's not like there are different parts, we're only one person, but it's all happening, and in meditation we can sort of fall back and experience things that way, but it's possible in therapy and in life also. So 44 years of meditation, again, I'm not. Probably 42. 42. Depends when you say I started. OK.

Yeah. What kind of impact is it at and you? And what do you think you'd be like now if you'd never found it? That's like one of those impossible questions, because I've been intrigued by it for so long that it's been, you know, in and out. It's been a big threat in my life. So who would I be without? And I might have found something else.

I might have just been doing drugs. You know, I'd probably be just another version of who I already am. Maybe a little more anxious, maybe worrying a little more, or maybe I would have found another way to deal with that aspect of myself, I don't know. But I'm happy to, you know, I'm not tired of it yet, that much I could say. It's given me inspiration in my life that hasn't gone away. That's only kind of opened and become more. What do you think you get out of it? I think that idea of refuge, like a place of refuge inside of myself. It's more, it's less what I get out of it

than that it gives me a place to go. So it's nice to have a place to go. Where are you going? Inside somewhere, inside to a kind of timeless place. I was trying to explain this to my father before my father died. He died of a brain tumor, I think like eight years ago, and he had a brain tumor on the silent in the silent part of his brain, so he was totally conscious and aware, unimpacted, except for his sense of balance and direction. But I had never talked to him. He was a physician, as I mentioned before, a scientist, and I had never talked to him about the spiritual stuff since the time when he sent me to Dr. Benson.

But I realized, oh, he's going to die. And maybe I should try to talk to him about what I've maybe learned from this whole thing. So I said to him on the phone, something like, you know, that place inside of you where you feel the same, you know, who you were when you were 19 and who you were when you were 30 and who you were when you were 50, it doesn't really feel any different. And that place, if you, if you try to look at it, it's hard to find, it's sort of invisible or transparent, but you kind of know you're you in there. I said that's the place they say that if you relax into that, you can kind of ride that

out when you're dying. And I think that was trying to talk about what that, what is the place I go to in meditation when I'm not just thinking. And he was like, okay, darling, I'll try. But he was really listening. That's the closest I've come to being able to describe what that place might be. And how do you, what's your process when you meditate now? How do you get to this place that you're describing? What do you do? And how long do you do it? And where do you do it?

I long ago stopped being religious about the meditating. So I'm not trying to do it for X amount of time, or trying to do it at certain times of the day, or whatever, but if the time opens up, then I'm happy to meditate. And I have a few places around the house that are good for that. So I'll go to one of them. And I don't do it with a clock or a watch or

anything. I just sit until I'm ready to get up. And I watch my breath to the, you know, I use the breath as the central object. So when I breathe in, I try to know that I'm breathing and when I breathe out, I try to know that I'm breathing out. But I've stopped trying to zero in on the sensation of the breath as precisely as I did for a long time, realizing I could back off from that a little bit and that opens it up a little more or it has recently. So I do it when I can for as long as feels right. And I've been trying every year to go on a silent retreat for a week or 10 days, or however much time I can give myself. Talk a little bit more about not fixating so much

on the sensations of the breath. What are you feeling instead? That came out of the last retreat that I did, where one of the instructors mentioned that as a possibility and it spoke to me. So I've been practicing. I've, instead of trying too hard to find the precise sensation, I've just been like, when you breathe in, know that you're breathing in. That's how the actual instructions read. Right from the minute. When you breathe out, know that you're breathing out.

So, okay, I do know when I'm breathing in. I'm often slightly criticizing myself for not being able to find the breath the way I think I'm supposed to. Like that never really, I think I was like that 40 years ago and that element is still with me, so I'm trying to work with that. So, I realized, okay, I know when I'm breathing in, I know, I know that I'm breathing in when I breathe in, so that's good enough. And I know that I'm breathing out when I breathe out. And that, I think, helps me settle into a more concentrated place, which I think is like the stepping stone for, you know, that

balance between effort and no effort that is seems productive in meditation But how does what you're describing sort of knowing you're breathing in knowing you're breathing out? How does that get you to this place you were describing to your father? How does it get you there? Yeah, how the whole thing what you know the whole thing is mysterious and God knows how One thing leads to another. But what I've seen very clearly over the years is that the meditation is a real thing. It's not a fake thing. It's like, if you really do it, stuff happens.

So it end it teaches you. But it doesn't teach you if you don't do it. But if you just do the basic thing of like, breathe in, know your breathing in, breathe out, know your breathing out. If you're thinking, know that you're thinking, if you're feeling stuff, know that you're feeling it, the meditation has a momentum that brings you places, shows you things. So one of the things that shown me is that what I was trying to describe before that transparent, subjective place that we could call self or no self,

but that we all kind of know that it's there but don't spend that much time in it. The inner mark. Well, does it really mark? I had a whole thing about mark on one of my retreats, too. You were telling me. Like, I don't really like that name. And I felt this sort of like burden of the name, you know,

like people calling me Mark when I was a little boy and stuff and having to answer to it. I was like, oh, it's just a name. Like, what a relief. I don't have to, you know, I don't really have to be Mark. It doesn't have to be an inner mark either. One of the most confusing things about Buddhism, at least to me, I think for a lot of people, is this idea of no self, selflessness, not in the sense of generosity, but the fact that the inner, well, let's take the inner dance as you don't like the inner marks so much. The inner Dan, which is this feeling we have of being ourselves, if you look for it,

you won't really find it. But if we didn't exist, we wouldn't have to put our pants on in the morning, right? So how do we understand this thing of, we don't really exist. There's no self. Well, well, you don't really exist, but you do have to put your pants on in the morning. So that, you know, you could just work with that idea. But selflessness, I think probably selflessness might really mean selflessness like kindness to the other.

It could be as simple as that. I think it's also that the self that we take so seriously, you know, it's not as real as we feel it to be when we're in our neurotic self-obsessed, you know, worry. Robert Thurman, you know, my friend, the professor of Buddhist studies at Columbia, he had a Mongolian Tibetan teacher when he was young in the early 60s who used to say to him, it's not that you're not real. Of course you're real. You know, your problem is you think you're really real. So it's that sense. I always like that. It's that sense of really real. So it's that sense. So I always like that. It's that sense of really real that I think

the Buddhist no self is after. When you peel away the endless kinds of stories that we're repeating subconsciously about who we think we are, when you see those things as just stories, just thoughts, no more real than any other kind of thought. It's not that thoughts don't have their own reality, but they have a very evanescent reality. So all the thoughts about yourself are just that also.

Take all that away, and then you don't really know who you are. You know, and it's in the not really knowing who you are that maybe you're getting close to what the Buddhists are describing in no self or emptiness or whatever. But so what? So that's liberating because then the inner Dan doesn't have to be the inner Dan that the inner Dan thinks he is, you know. Yeah, but then you could be such a much nicer person with turning out to be true I you had don't don't bet don't you always quote your wife as say it's true

Yeah, no, she's she says I'm less of a jerk. What that's she's she knows how to talk to you Do that's probably we just had a long and interesting conversation that I will actually discuss you Okay, yeah, because I'm gonna use this as yet another occasion for free therapy and there's no food that I'm buying you So this is really gonna cost you that's true Anyway, but getting back to this whole no self thing. Yeah, the I've never really known what to do with it It is true and very interesting that if you close your eyes and look for you or look for like one of the exercises that Joseph teaches, which I think he's taken from Zogchen teachers, which is kind of a flavor of Tibetan Buddhism, but which is, you know, to listen to sounds, you talk about this too. Listen to sounds and look for what is hearing. Yeah. And you won't find the hearing for what

is what is knowing because you're hearing the sound, but what is he says what, but it could be who is knowing. The knowing is just there. You know, it's just there. You don't, there doesn't have to be this intermediary of like the the solid self, but everyone who hears those who wants to understand it, you know, too, too much, you know, it starts to feel that they have to throw out the obvious, as if they don't exist period. And even in Buddhist thought, they've had to deal with this. Once they put forth the idea of no self, but then they also had the idea of reincarnation, then they had to explain if there's no self,

but you get reincarnated, who's getting reincarnated, you know? So there's definitely, so then it's, you know, you can think about the soul, but they also had a thing about no soul. But there is a, and obviously there's a stream of consciousness that makes up the individual person, you know, who you were at five and who you are at 40. You're not the same, that's obvious, but you are connected. So there is an inner something that is proceeding through time.

That inner something, if you stop and look for it, oh, it's by no means clear what that inner something is. So being willing to keep looking and wondering and holding the not knowing, that's I think as close as you can come to understanding the no self thing without distorting it. But again, what do you, and I know you just said, what do you get out of it?

A sense of freedom. A sense of freedom. A sense of freedom. And maybe it plays into the selflessness as kindness to others because you can see, you start to be able to see other people locked into their various conceptions of who they are, what they're capable of, what's holding them back, what they're angry about, what they're ashamed of,

and you can see everyone way burdened in a way that maybe they don't need to be. You had, if memory serves a bit of a breakthrough on this idea of self Which you describe in your last book which again, I'm gonna name the trauma of everyday life Which sounds like a pessimistic title, but is actually not which we can talk about. Yeah, sort of a scary title for people It was meant to have a little humor, but It's a phenomenal book You talk about taking a walk while on a retreat a few years ago, outside of the Insight

Meditation Society where we both practice in Barry Massachusetts, BA, R-E Massachusetts, a great place to take a retreat if you're going to take one. We have a little bit of a sort of a moment. Do you remember when I'm talking about? I think I had been reading, you're not supposed to read on these retreats, but they have a little library at the retreat center there, and I would usually go for maybe half an hour at sunset and just pick things at random and see if they spoke to me in the midst of the retreat environment. So I think I had been reading something, the punch line of which was, there's no self apart from the world.

And because, like you were just asking, this thing of self, no, like, what am I looking for when I'm meditating? That's always in the mind when doing this practice. So I like that phrase, there's no self apart from the world. And then when I was taking this walk, which I like to do when I'm on retreat there, I would go out early in the morning, like after breakfast,

but, you know, seven o'clock kind of thing. So the birds are all alive, even in the middle of winter and the sun is trying to peek through and so on. And there's a nice walk on an old stage coach road kind of thing. And I was walking and listening to the birds and looking at everything. And in that meditative place, I've probably been

there for a few days. And that phrase, there's no self apart from the world started to resonate, like I was just in my sensory experience and realizing that me and the world weren't two separate things. It's kind of, you know, it gets trite if you try to talk about it, but my usual experience is I'm here and the world's out there, and I'm walking through it kind of thing, but I was like, okay, no self apart from the world, my eyes are just reflecting what's out there,

my ears are just responding to what's out there, and that sense of there being one indivisible union, you know, that included me in the world. All of a sudden I thought, oh, maybe I'm really understanding something. And I remember I went to Joseph Goldstein who was in residence as the teacher there. And I was, I described this and he was like oh, yeah That that might work for a while Something like that, you know, but that seems like the freedom You know like just the intellectual or even the visceral knowing that okay this self the inner Dan is is

Real but not really real the Really getting us a gut level sense of the indivisibility that you aren't separate from the world. How can you be your created out of the same attitude? I think that's the inspiration in a way, or that gives you some kind of confidence that you don't have to be like you always like to say. You don't have to be the ass.

I think the freedom is more like when your boss is giving you a hard time or your daughter is making you feel bad or you're having a fight with someone close to you that you don't have to respond and the way you normally do. You know, that you have a, that you actually feel like you don't have to. And somehow that experience of that you're asking me to talk about of taking that walk, somehow that is helpful, that memory is helpful in those other more stressful moments. I don't quite know if I could explain why, but I'm pretty sure it is. The thing that sort of comes through and just in this conversation, I'm sure people hear it and

it's come through and all of our conversations is you're, I mean, maybe this is what led to be calling the book 10% happier in a way, which is that you really do not oversell or even try to sell at all the notion of meditation. When I asked you, you know, what's it done for you? You were like, well, maybe it's them, maybe I'm a little bit less anxious after 40, whatever years are doing this. Where does that kind of modesty vis-a-vis the impact of meditation come from?

I'm still waiting for the 10%. You're talking about it. You haven't even gotten that. I don't know. Where does the modesty come from? Yeah, why do you play it down? Or maybe you're not playing it down? I don't think I'm playing it down.

I think I'm not playing it up because I'm not selling it. I don't think it's right for everybody, the meditation. I mean, I'm a therapist. I've been a psychiatrist like seeing people in therapy for almost as long, you know, 30-some years. And people want a quick fix, you know. They want something that's going to change them. And maybe that's our culture or maybe that's just people, but psychotherapy is not a quick fix, meditations not a quick fix.

Even if there's no self, people are really hard to change. Meditation requires that you actually do it, which most people don't, and it might not even be the right thing for a lot of people to be, you know, sit there struggling with their minds. So I'm definitely not trying to sell it. I feel like it's been a big help for me in my life. And I've written a lot of books about it. I'm not hiding that.

But I think it's there for people who are drawn to it for whatever reason to explore themselves. And when that happens, like for you, who would have thought you would have gotten so into it? And you really have, and you're doing all that, like look what's come out of you as a result. So, and that does happen occasionally. But it really touches somebody. and that does happen occasionally.

But it really touches somebody. In your view, what's more effective, and maybe this is a false binary, but what do you think is more effective therapy or meditation? Oh, it totally, totally depends. I think one of the things I object to, the way mindfulness has taken over popular consciousness in the therapy world, is that it's kind of edged out traditional psychotherapy, so that a lot of people in training feel, like they just want to learn how to be a mindfulness teacher, instead of learning how to be a

psychodynamic psychotherapist, or a lot of people feel that if they just learn mindfulness they can get help with their childhood Feelings that are still haunting them that it should be enough and I don't think it is for a lot of people So I'm all about you know use whatever helps, including medicine and so on. I just gave the other day someone who had a lot of trouble going to public events, you know, public speaking, or even going to a dinner party, because he would feel really anxious.

I gave a little bit of the stage fright drug, you know, beta blocker, yeah, proprano lull or indrol, and they were like, oh my god, why didn't anybody give me this, you know, like 20 years ago, like, walked into the party, had a good time, didn't berate themselves, you know, that's much more effective than either psychotherapy or meditation, but it because it's very specific for that person, you know, for that particular thing. So sometimes there are very specific treatments that help sometimes not, and then, you know, so everyone has to find what works for them. I strongly agree with that, and I may feel this way just because I've known you for a while but there are a lot of arrows in the quiver when it comes to well-being therapy medicine medication sleep diet exercise good relationships having a meaningful work life and you don't have to choose

one and none of them is a silver bullet. Right. I think meditation has been really useful for me, but I, again, I agree. I'm glad I called the book 10% happier, even though I'm stuck with math jokes the rest of my life, but because I, I think the overselling is a, is a problem in the culture for sure. What do you think about with, I wasn't going to go there, but you brought up the sort of mindfulness excitement that's in the culture right now. What do you do feel like it's edging out? You used to you talked about it edging out traditional psychotherapy. Do you feel like it's edging out Buddhism in a way and is that worrisome to you? No, it might be edging out

itself. You know, the pendulum might have swung already. People may start questioning, you know, all the, it's sort of like Prozac, you know, 20 years ago, 30 years ago. Everyone wanted to take Prozac, because it helped some people so much. So everyone who needed help with anything wanted Prozac, you know, and if Prozac doesn't help you, then it's like just drinking water, you know, you just get the side effects or or nothing happens. So I'm all for the mindfulness movement. I think it's been wonderful, you know, that people have picked up on one aspect of Buddhism that is, you know, a wonderful thing. And I think it helped the psychotherapy field to

realize that there's a practical technique that can be taught that people can take home, that you can learn in a group, that people can practice together, all of that. But you can't, people really want that quick, fixed thing. And so inevitably they're going to be disappointed. So then it'll find its place. Yeah, I think it should just be, to use the analogy again, I think it should be another arrow in the quiver.

Yeah. One of the kind of things that we think about, we're trying to figure out how to improve our own well-being. This should just be something we can turn to. But it isn't going to be, it's not going to beat the BL and end all, and it's not going to be to the exclusion of the other things. Yeah.

And the thing about psychotherapy is that the time and the culture that Buddhism came from, you know, there is no psychotherapy. And there was hardly a psychological self, perhaps we don't know what the self was like 2,500 years ago. But certainly in Asian cultures now, there's a huge need for psychotherapy that is only beginning to be talked about. It's not, they're not cultures where people feel free to, you know, even investigate, they are more difficult emotions.

You just have to put them away to, you know, do what you have to do in your family and for your job and so on. But that doesn't sound super healthy to me. No, do what you have to do in your family and for your job and so on. But that doesn't sound super healthy to me. No, I don't think it is super healthy. Yeah. So just on the issue of the sort of efficacy of meditation, Matt had experienced last week that we were discussing with you.

Bianca, my wife who you know, she had a double mastectomy last week, so it's pretty intense. And you know, it was interesting to watch my own reactions around it, because I'm so squeamish and not naturally super like nurturing. There was a passage in your, one of your books going on being where you talked about during the birth of I think your second child you were a little detached in the deliver room and your wife was a little annoyed at you because you thought you were kind of applying some of the lessons of meditation but

you're admiss applying them. But I kind of tried to lean in even though I'm so squeamish like a feel in my body and I was getting cold and I was also getting angry that she was in pain and you know but I was I tried to you know be right there for her and you look at the wounds in a way that I wasn't normally wouldn't normally do even though my parents are doctors and she's the oncosiddoctor but I really tried to not fight my own instincts but be aware of my instincts and let them pass and do what I thought was the right thing, which was to lean in.

Yeah. So I'll just stop talking and see what you have to say about any of that, including your own experience that I mentioned. Well, I think it's just the way that you were describing it as sort of the answer to the question that you were asking me before, like how does all this help,

that you were able to not repress or suppress your own instincts, but kind of allow them to float around wherever they floated around in your head, and then deliberately try to do what you thought to be the right thing. That just seems like a very fruitful use of the meditation. So I hope she felt what you were doing, not what you were thinking. Well, I told her both. I mean, I think she felt it and we had no one talking about it. Hardly kidding. Well, no, no, getting is fine. We just had a funny conversation which she was asking me, you know She was saying that she thought I was very supportive and she would wanted to say thank you

And I say it's ridiculous to be thank you. This should be basic cable if you have made major surgery your spouse should be like right there And that's like it's not non-negotiable. So I don't know her thanking me was You know speaks to the low bar that she said or what, but she was kind of asking me, you know, I know how squeezy she was. So what was going on that you were able to kind of lean in and ice. I don't know. I was listening a bunch of the things and I one of the things I said was spousal loyalty. And she was like, oh, so do you mean love. And I said, yes, that's actually what I meant. But I think this is exactly what meditation, where the benefit of, where the rubber hits the robe in meditation. So I've been doing it for seven years, not a long time. But if you work on your biceps for seven years, like you'll be able to lift stuff up. And if you work on seeing clearly

what your your how your mind and body are in any given moment without getting carried away by it then I think in when you need it sometimes you'll be more effective or less. Yeah. Well it's just a good example of how you end up feeling better by doing the thing that's a little more difficult, you know, because you didn't have to pull so far away from her. Or it's just because, yes, and also just less of a, you see that the buffers between you and doing the thing that you know is really the right thing to do, aren't as solid as you thought. It's just your mind.

I know. It's just your mind, I know, it's just your mind. Yep. So I don't know if I'm now overselling meditation, but I do think that it can be useful, and that was a great example for me personally. I talk a lot about just getting back to your last book. I talk a lot about mindfulness. We talk about the other thing that people talk about in Boozin,

which is selflessness, but mindfulness is the other big thing. And I talk about it in a pretty work-a-day manner. I think about it as the ability to see what's going on in your head at any given moment without getting carried away by it, which is really what was going on with me in the hospital with you. But you actually put it in a really, and really, I think, beautiful and elevated terms, and I'm just going to pick a quote from your last book, and just get

you to talk about it a little. One of the central paradoxes of Buddhism is that the bear attention of the meditative mind changes the psyche by not trying to change anything at all. The steady application of the meditative posture, like the steadiness of an attuned parent, allows something inherent in the mind's potential to emerge, and it emerges naturally if left alone properly in a good enough way. Sounds like the way I write a little too complicated. I'm trying to get simpler. I like the phrase bear attention. I like to mix that up with mindfulness.

One of the first books that I ever read about mindfulness, about Buddhism, was called the Heart of Buddhist Meditation by a who I thought was a Sri Lankan monk from Salan named Neonapanaka Terra, Terra's THERA, which just means elder, it turns out. And Neonapanaka means flowing towards wisdom, I think. But he was a German refugee. Neonapanaka was a German refugee named, I think, Sigmund Feninger or something, who left Berlin in the 30s and went to Sri Lanka and studied Buddhism, and then got put in a prisoner of war camp by the British

during the war, did a lot of translations of Buddhist texts, and then moved back to Sri Lanka and started the Buddhist publication society. And he wrote a lot of the first, the first like Westerners interpreting Buddhism for us. He must have written in German and then got translated in English. I'm not sure. But anyway, he used this phrase bear attention, which he had a good definition for that I almost know. The clear and single-minded awareness of what happens to us and in us at the successive moments of perception, just the bare knowledge, like an exact registering, knowing your reactions as separate from the thing itself.

It's like the raw data of experience. Like the raw data of experience. Yeah. So I really like that. I keep coming back to that. I think the first Dharma talk, the first kind of attempt I ever made to teach Buddhism in a public way. I framed it around that idea of bare attention. And then And then years after I read that book, I actually met Neonoponica when I went to Sri Lanka the first time, I became very influenced by this British child psychoanalyst, Donald Winnecott, DW Winnecott, who talks about what the ordinary devoted mother, he wrote in the 40s and 50s, so you could say mother or parent, but the attitude of the ordinary devoted good enough mother who doesn't intrude but doesn't abandon in the face of her child's anger, rage, ruthless attacks, etc.

And I always thought that what he was describing in the quote-unquote good enough parent was similar, if not identical, to what Neonoponica was describing in when he's talking about bear attention or mindfulness. That what we're doing when we're trying to be mindful is we're basically applying that kind of maternal attention that's part of our biological inheritance. We have it in us already. And like you were saying before, if you practice it, over time, it gets stronger. What was great about Winnecott was he was saying,

look, this is intuitive. It's there naturally in a mother. You don't need, he was like working in the 50s. It's a breastfeed. It's OK to breastfeed. Trust yourself. Don't listen to the experts. He was all about like bringing out what's already there

and the mother. And I think there's something in Buddhism that's like bringing out what's already there in the mind. We know how to do this, even if we don't know how to do it, you know, once we sort of find the thread of it, like with the juggling, you know, then it can take over. So like when you're on the cushion, when you're meditating, whatever, you can view the contents of your own consciousness with, I guess, and there are Tibetan, maybe it's Tibetan, I don't know what the, you can kind of view it like a grandparent watching kids playing in a playground with some remove, but a, but a beneficent remove tick not Hans says hold anger like a baby

Which I always like Does it work for you? A little bit sometimes if I'm not too angry if I'm just sitting on the cushion. It's easy Yeah, do you still after all this time? You know get pretty deeply pissed off sometimes? Oh, yeah, of course. What do you think? It's not like it goes, I don't think, I don't believe in that thing that it goes away. But do you believe that you can handle it better? Do I believe that I can handle it better?

Better than I could have once? Yeah, sure. So we're talking about parenting and DW Winnecope. What kind of, you have two grown children, I have a 17-month-old, holy terror name Alexander. What kind of impact can meditation and mindfulness have on parenting? What advice would you impart to me?

What advice would I impart to you? After the baby goes to sleep, that's the good time to meditate in the room. In the room. No, just in the house, because when you have little kids, it's like all about the little kids all the time, there's no real escape. Even if you have a good babysitter or whatever, you're still totally conscious of what's going on. But there's that nice moment, it's like when when dust falls, when the when the child takes his or her nap,

or when they go to sleep at seven or eight or nine, or whenever you manage to get them asleep, then it's like, you know, peace falls in the household. So your impulse is to go have a drink or have dinner, or read the paper, or turn the TV on, or whatever, but there's a nice moment there to meditate. And I used to meditate with meditate when my kids had trouble falling asleep or wanted me to stay in the room with them longer than I really wanted to stay in the room with them,

but I thought that, you know, how that is when you're a parent, you don't know, should you be strict or should you give them what they're claiming to need. So I set for a few years, I set my meditation cushion up in the room with them. And then if they were having trouble going to sleep or whatever, I would just sit and meditate. And then eventually they would fall asleep, but they knew I was there, kind of thing.

And then I remember at various times, they would call to me, you know, like, Daddy, will you come meditate with me? And so I felt like that was that was going to be helpful for them. But I think now that they're older, they're both in their 20s, some of my faith that if I just, you know, meditated around them or introduced them, made this part of what they were growing up in that it would take care of all their problems. I've been disabused of that. You know, they're, they're their own individuals,

they have their own stuff to work out. My wife and I tried really hard to, you know, like many of our generation to be there for everything we could do, you know, and they still, they still have to find their own way. So that's sobering. Do they meditated you encourage them to do so? I didn't encourage them, but I let them know that it was out there for them. They knew all the characters who had, all the, all the characters who had, um, influenced me and become my friends. And they each, uh, especially in their time

in college where now you can like, I guess when I was in college, you could take courses in it too. But, um, they each kind of investigated it while they were in college and tried to see whether there was anything for them in it. And I think they're still figuring that out. Yeah, I've talked to your older daughter, so yeah, I've talked to her about it a little bit. Yeah, she's gone on retreats. She went on a couple of retreats. Yeah, they have these retreats in Barry for young people,

who, which they define as, I think, up to 30 now. I used to always be the youngest one on the retreats, when I was in my 20s, and when I was in my 50s, I still felt like I was the youngest one on the retreats. 20s and when I was in my 50s I still felt like I was going to spend on the retreat. When do you have a goal for your meditation, are you trying to get enlightened? I'm definitely trying to get enlightened. Yeah.

What do you mean by that? What do you? I don't know what I mean by the new world. I'm like pursuing the goal that I don't know that I don't understand. And how do you pursue it? Do you pursue it real, are you really gunning for it or are you kind of pursuing it in a softer way? I'm really gunning for it in a softer way because I've figured out that the softer way

is more the, is actually the, the more intense way. What do you mean by that? Well, if you gun for it in two aggressive away, it's obviously not going to work. So, so you have to back off. So then the backing off is really you're still trying. I'm still trying as hard as ever by backing off. Fair enough. I kind of understand that. Does that make sense? A little bit. The the traditional definition, at least for my reading of Buddhism of enlightenment is, or full enlightenment, is the uprooting of greed, greed, hatred, and delusion.

Well, that's the easy definition. That's the definition they give you when, if you start asking too many questions, and they don't want to tell you if they believe it's an actual experience. We'll give us the real thing. I don't know what the real thing is. What are you, what are you going for in your study? I told you, I lost, I lost touch with the goal with what it actually is. But I just read this. I was reading this little book about one of Sharon and Joseph's

teachers, you know, this woman, Deepama, if you heard stories about Deepama. I have this little book about her. I think it's called Need Deep in Grace or something. I never really looked at it because it's a collection of testimonials and it looked kind of what's that word like hageographic or whatever. But anyway, I met her a couple of times and she was wonderful, but I never had a deep connection with her. But I was reading for something I'm writing now,

I wanted to look at it. And deep in that book, you might not have seen this yet. I know you're interested in this question of enlightenment. She, they talk, someone talks about her, talking about her enlightenment, her first enlightenment experience. And she says something like she was sitting, and then there was just this, most, like it's almost like nothing happened.

It was like the rustling of a bird's wing or something. And just an instant that had a different quality, like a sort of almost like really nothing quality. And that was her first enlightenment experience. That would have been stream entry. Whatever they call it, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think they, I think early Buddhism created a bunch of narratives around these experiences that then they coded into, you know, made a story out of.

So yes, stream entry. But that was her first, her for according to either her or whoever's telling the story that, you know, the nature of the experience was that, that if they're all. Why? But also, but, but not something she missed, you know. But why are you gunning for this thing that you've, why, why set this goal that you can't even define? I didn't set the goal. The goal is the goal is comes with the territory. Yeah, but you can ignore it. I basically have ignored it, except that I believe in it. We're talking like one of these like, you're asking like Yoda, like who's

you're looking to elliptical. You're asking me to tell you what's real. I'm trying to tell you this is how I think about it. But you see how it would be confusing, right? Or you deliberately trying to confuse. I'm deliberately confused. You are deliberately confused. Or I'm indeliberately confused. Do you think it's a, do you think for you having this goal, however you hold it, is serves you?

Yeah, I think so. There's a famous story about Sunkapa. He's the great saint of the Galugpa School of Tibetan Buddhism lived in the 14th century. When he got enlightened, the first thing he did when he got enlightened, he wrote a big enlightenment statement. But the first thing he said was, oh, it's exactly the opposite of what I thought it was going to be,

you know, which I always like that, because I know I'm not enlightened. So what do I think it's going to be? How do I imagine it, you know, oh, like a great cessation, you know, no more greed hatred and delusion, like going to a heavenly place, like, you know, like finally understanding everything, you know,

what are the very... so, what's the opposite of all that, you know, what would that be? So, I don't know, but, but, you know, for sure it's not going to be what I'm imagining it's going to be. Right? But, the Buddha was pretty explicit about what it is. The opposite. Well,. Well, I thought, I mean, I've read a little bit of the scriptures and he says the operating of greed hatred and delusion. I'm not saying I believe in this, I'm just saying that's what he says it is. Okay.

That would be super nice. But you don't, you don't hold to that. I'll believe it when I see it, you know? But you don't even hold to that as a deaf, don't you think if you're gonna have a goal and make sense to have understanding of what the goal is? That wouldn make sense. Yes. I'm all for that. You're not all for that. And for most goals, yeah. But why not on this one?

Well, like God, what's God? I have no idea. Does anyone understand what God is? Well, some people claim they do. Yeah. Well, do you believe them? I am respectfully agnostic. So the uprooting of greed, hatred and delusion, that would be nice. So I should hold the same respectful agnosticism toward that maybe as well. Maybe. I mean, whatever you want. But it's just for me, okay, forget it, set you aside for a second. For me, it is, it's a very, I'm interested in whatever lies beyond 10% happier. Yeah. But I don't know how to define it.

I don't even know if I believe in it. Well, well, you know that the self is a problem. Right? Like we're all sort of, like, locked in a little bit to this body-mind phenomenon that we experience as like Mark or Dan, you know, and we know it's sort of troubling. Like we're gonna, we're in this body, how did we get in this body, and we're in, we have this life, and we're gonna die, we see our parents, and you know, things go go wrong and we're you know like we know what it's like to be

us. And then there's some this notion of enlightenment like oh like we're that what enlightenment says the way where the idea of enlightenment says the way we're experiencing the world is ignorant or diluted, right? So what does that mean? Like you sort of know, you sort of know you're diluted. But so there's greed, hatred, and delusion. Like greed, we know, hatred, we know. Delusion, like what is that? You kind of know what it is.

So I kind of think about it as being confused about, it's all, I don't know if I'm gonna be able to articulate this well, but the delusion is something around the sense that you are separate from everything else when you, of course, you can't be. Right, maybe that's it. Maybe it's just like no self apart from the world. Right.

We're not, we're part of the world. But what, you know, like you were asking me, like what's the, so what? Does it come down to that trite idea of one is with everything? Probably not, because we can imagine that. But if it's exactly the opposite of what we can imagine, you know, it's probably much more, it's probably much more about like we're loving entities and we're not

always connected to the love that we're capable of in my mind. Same more about that. I don't know. That's all you have to say about that. Yeah, I mean, basically. We're capable of more love than we express. But that goes back to a connectivity and one that's yeah yeah yeah perhaps. Did you read the book on having no head? I did Joseph loves that book. Yeah he recommended it to me too. So

it's a book called on having no head and I can't remember the name of the game. British British guy and I too read this on a retreat, which I know is it was like an illicit little book that I kept in my room, but. It's really struck me. His idea is his little conceit is that you can see other people's heads, but you can't see your own head. In fact, your experience of the world is of headlessness. And I found that to be actually kind of powerful. I mean, it's silly at first, but it actually is real that if you look, the way we're experiencing the world is through this kind of yawning chasm of pure knowing, right? And, but there seems to be something there to that. I don't know if it connects to what you're talking about You're on the chasm of pure knowing that I'm just pulling that out of my butt. Yeah, that was good. All right, thanks

But but but do you think I'm is you see a connection between that and yeah Well like Joseph said when I when I came to him after that walk like that'll work for a while You know working with that Then then it kind of loses its dynamism. Right, so it's kick. But what is that? So these things work for at these little, like, on having no head might work for me for a little while. Some little meditative technique might work for me a little while. But that does seem to indicate that there's something that will do it for you. And

we just haven't found it yet. Yeah. This is what kind of mess with my mind about in life. Well, also, if I'm right at all about the, you know, that we're capable of more love than we're expressing and that's sort of the point, then just to say that it's about connection or pure, or oneness or whatever that diminishes the individual responsibility of being, you know,

embodied or minded, whatever... Having agency. Having agency. And I'm pretty sure the point is not to just surrender your agency. Right, so in some ways it may come back to just sort of normally selfish self-centered Dan in the hospital last week with his deeply suffering wife And I will I had more to give than I thought I had to give even though frankly what I was giving is so as I said before Basic cable. I mean like that yeah, shouldn't be I'm not overly proud of myself for not being an absentee husband in that moment, but I did have more to give than I thought I did.

And maybe that is kind of like a continuum of enlightenment. You may be. You know that the book of mine that you liked, going to pieces without falling apart. Yeah, I like all your books just for that. But the first, the one that you that brought you to me, the way I structured that book, because I had just read all this Buddhist tantric stuff, was around the four stages of Tibetan tantra, which are compared to the process of falling in love. So it was, I think, looking, smiling, embracing, and orgasm, because the closest thing that we, the closest experience that we can

have, so it said in a regular life, that approximates the closest experience that we can have, so it's said in a regular life that approximates the experience of enlightenment, is the process of sexual union. So, and the thing about sexual union is that you're simultaneously yourself, but also in union with the other. So I think there's something about the simultaneity of being an individual but also connected, that we, because we think in a binary way, we think we either were one or the other, you know? But that they're, actually, it's all existing

simultaneously at its core. Something about that is interesting. Yeah, you've taught you in some of your books that you talk about sort of porousness of borders. Yeah, personal. Yeah. Yeah. And they use orgasm, you know, in the secret teachings they use orgasm as, you know, what they're saying is that the underlying nature of reality is orgasmic, underlying nature of reality is orgasmic, that we think about it as just an instant, but that actually that's the subterranean nature of things. So what if that's the enlightenment? Then that's a goal I would definitely share. So to speak.

Sorry that took me a second to get. Normally, we cut these things off earlier, but you're so fascinating. A and B, just as an aside, this is not the last time you're going to be on here because you have another book coming out in the not too distant future, and I want to bring you back to talk about that. But before I let you go, if you have time, I want to ask you one last question. You're cool with that. You had recommended to be over brunch not long ago,

we get together and often it's over brunch. And that I investigate more Tibetan Buddhism, because most of what I've looked at is known as Teravodin Buddhism, which is kind of the old school, early Buddhists. Why did you make that record? Do you remember making that recommendation apply? Why did you make that record? Do you remember making that recommendation? Yes, sure. Well, because over 1500 years or whatever in the Buddhist culture of South Asia,

Buddhism itself evolved. And it went from the predominant view being, we're here in Samsara, we're here in this life, which is painful and suffering, and we want to escape from it by meditating and reaching enlightenment, and that's going to remove us from this world. You know, that's the end and will achieve Nirvana and that and there's a, they parsed it in various ways, but the underlying dominant philosophical position was that Nirvana was over there, suffering and samsara is here and Nirvana is over there and we're trying to escape. That's very simplified, but as Buddhism evolved, and I think as people wrestled with these

questions of what is enlightenment and what is the point? And do we just go and meditate ourselves away or are supposed to come back and be in the world? You know, that dualistic thing, subtly dualistic thing, people really began to question that. And the later developments in Buddhism that became the Mahayana and some of which is preserved in the Buddhism that went to Tibet. Questions all of that, and it's much more about Nirvana and samsara being two faces of

the same coin, two sides of the same coin. And Janus. Yeah. And this idea that I've talking about before of the underlying nature of reality that we think is suffering. It's the diluted or ignorant mind that sees it as suffering, but if we could see everything the way the Buddha saw it, we would be immersed in the orgasmic reality of that is this world, not in another place, not in another world, you know.

And so that, I think once you've been meditating for a while and asking these kinds of questions and wondering about it, it's illuminating to see that, oh yeah, people were a thousand years ago, people were questioning this and writing poetry about this and coming up with other possibilities for how to understand it, and you know, to refresh. All right, there's another edition of the 10% Happier Podcast. And, you know, it's a refreshing one. All right, there's another edition of the 10% Happier Podcast. If you like it, I'm gonna hit you up for a favor.

Please subscribe to it, review it, and rate it. Preferably five stars, but, you know, four will do. Five is better. I wanna also thank the people who produced this podcast. Josh Cohan, Lauren Efron, Sarah Amos, and the head of ABC News Digital, Dan Silver. And hit me up at Twitter, Dan B. Harris.

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