Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 249: Don't Let This Crisis Go To Waste | Roshi Joan Halifax

Episode Date: May 20, 2020

Roshi Joan Halifax is definitely not arguing the pandemic is a good thing, but she also believes we shouldn't let this crisis go to waste. It's a wake-up call, she says - a chance for us to really take a beat and ask ourselves what actually matters, both individually and as a culture. Roshi Joan Halifax is a buddhist teacher, zen priest, anthropologist, and pioneer in the field of end-of-life care. She is founder, abbot, and head teacher of Upaya Institute and Zen Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico. And her motto for this crisis, as you will hear, is: strong back, soft front. Where to find Roshi Joan Halifax online: Website: https://www.upaya.org/about/roshi/ Twitter: Joan Halifax (@jhalifax) / https://twitter.com/jhalifax Facebook: Joan Halifax / https://www.facebook.com/joan.halifax For a limited time, we're offering a 40% discount on a year-long subscription to the app. Visit tenpercent.com/podcast40 to get your discount and get support for your meditation practice today. This promotion is only available to users without a current Ten Percent Happier app subscription. Other Resources Mentioned: Glassman Roshi / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernie_Glassman Arnold van Gennep / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_van_Gennep What is Jukai? / https://www.lionsroar.com/what-is-jukai/ Biography of Nelson Mandela – Nelson Mandela Foundation https://www.nelsonmandela.org/content/page/biography Malala - Girls' Education / https://malala.org/advocacy?sc=header Heather McTeer Toney / https://www.momscleanairforce.org/team/heather-mcteer-toney/ The Sun My Heart by Thich Nhat Hanh / https://www.amazon.com/Sun-Heart-Thich-Nhat-Hanh/dp/0712654224 Aldo Leopold / https://www.aldoleopold.org/about/aldo-leopold/ Robert Bly / http://www.robertbly.com/ Stanislav Grof / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Grof Venerable Tara Tulku Rinpoche Additional Resources: Ten Percent Happier Live: https://tenpercent.com/live Coronavirus Sanity Guide: https://www.tenpercent.com/coronavirussanityguide Free App Access for Journalists, Teachers, Healthcare, Grocery and Food Delivery, and Warehouse Workers: https://tenpercent.com/care Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/joan-halifax-249 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. to baby, this is Kiki Palmer on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcast. For ABC, this is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hey, guys, I mentioned this the other day, but just to quickly repeat, we are offering right now a big discount on the 10% happier app, 40% off your subscription. My colleagues and I spent a ton of time finding the best teachers, scientists and experts in the world to create really compelling video and audio content to

help you reduce your stress, create good habits, get more sleep, boost your mindfulness and prove your relationships, and more. We rarely offer discounts, but this is clearly a tough time when people could use some meditation practice. So if you're interested, go to 10%.com slash podcast 40 for the discount. That's 10% one word, all spelled out.com slash podcast for zero. And remember, if you're a healthcare worker, a teacher, a food delivery person, a grocery store employee, or a warehouse worker, the app is free for you, just go to 10%.com slash care. All right, let's get to the show.

This week, our guest this week is definitely not arguing that the pandemic is a good thing, but she also believes that we shouldn't let a good crisis go to waste, as they sometimes say in politics. This is a wake up call. She says, a chance for us to really take a beat and ask ourselves what actually matters. How do we want to do this life? Both individually and as a culture. Her name is Rochie Joan Halifax, PhD. She is, this is her second appearance on the show. She is a major figure in the American Buddhist scene. She's a Buddhist

teacher as an priest and anthropologist, a pioneer in the field of end of life care. She's the founder, Abbott, and head teacher at Upaya Institute and Zen Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She was speaking to us from her bedroom there for this podcast, and her motto for this crisis as you will hear is strong back soft front. And she'll explain what that means and much more. Here we go. Joan Halifax. Super. Hi. Hi. Dan, where are you? I'm in my wife's closet. I'm not going to make a comment about that. I mean, you're in a safe place. You can make any comment you want. I will. I am in a safe place, but I have to watch out about my comments. They get broadcast out there. I feel a little embarrassed sometimes. Fair enough. Fair enough. Let me start with a question that may historically pre-crisis was a perfunctory question, but actually now is a very interesting

question, which is how are you? Well, I'm actually fine. I was fine pre-crisis and in maybe a race in the middle of this thing. You know, I'm feeling very fortunate to be sheltering with 24 people at the Zen Center and having a strong practice and also having the opportunity to cook food for homeless people, which is delivered safely. And also the kind of Zoom world, which I was not particularly involved with,

prior to the crisis, talking to the great vacuum on Zoom. It is really a kind of bizarre situation, but I'm getting more comfortable sharing the Dharma to, you know, the Zoom space. So it sounds like you're doing fine, but what are your observations about the state of the world? doing fine, but what are your observations about the state of the world? Well, that's a small question. Well, this is a podcast you can answer for as long as you'd like. Yeah, I'm very interested in what is happening. I will say that I feel like I was born to be in the middle of this mess. You know, it's a kind of channel ground, a global channel ground. I'm an anthropologist in a former lifetime. It's just for me an incredible process that we're in, we're reflecting

the aspects that have been written about in terms of what is the right of passage. We're seeing it at a global level. I don't know what the outcome will be. One of the things that Glassman Rochie taught me was to really sit with not knowing. And we're in this experience of radical uncertainty right now. There's just no way that we can predict what the outcome of all this will be. Although there were intimations from epidemiologists and others about the possibility of a pandemic,

but I think, you know, there's a kind of global oblivion that has been operational for a little bit too long. Suddenly, we've gotten this invisible wake-up call. And it is fascinating and it is frightening and it is compounded by the fact that literally millions of people are in social isolation. And it is, as I said, an opportunity for us to look deeply at our lives, our lives in relationship to people who are less economically, what could I say, stable, affluent, and also to look at the effects of our lives on the environment.

So, as I said, Dan, this is like a right of passage where we're in the first phase of that right of passage. And rights of passage were described by Arnold Van Hennep, who was a Dutch ethnologist, who wrote a very important book in the 1920s on rights of passage. And it became the model that anthropologists and mythologists use to actually look at the contours of transformation and transformational processes that individuals as well as cultures go through.

And Van Hennep fascinatingly enough identified the first phase of a right of passage as separation. And we're in it. I mean, our experience of social isolation is an absolute perfect condition for us to withdraw from our ordinary lives, our normal lives, to be put into solitude, so to speak, and to not have access to others or to our habitual ways of living and consuming that have been part of our lives forever. So we're in the phase of separation. And then VanHenop describes the second phase, Dan. And that phase is called the threshold experience. And the word threshold shares the same feeling, and meaning as the word thrash. And I feel like we are globally being thrashed.

You know, our economies are being thrashed, the corporate world. Not so bad, maybe, that it's being thrashed, but also people who live in communities of poverty, material poverty, they are being thrashed. And our racism is becoming much more visible. And as well, I think we're at a time where we are in a certain way seeing the dissolution of a, I don't know how you could call it exactly, but the dissolution of a world that has been built out of an unjust economy that has had profound environmental implications. You know, I will say Dan, both in terms of this separation phase that Dan Hennep talked

about and the threshold phase where, you know, you're in the charnel ground. And I think particularly in relation to the experience of professional caregivers, these are people who are in the charnel ground. They're in the experience of, you know, seeing the worst suffering in the world. I think that one of the experiences that I have as a Buddhist practitioner is to recognize how important my practice is right now. As I'm facing the social isolation, although I'm with 24 other practitioners, and we've actually, Dan, we've been in lockdown since March 9th. You know, I saw this was coming down and I talked with friends of mine who are epidemiologists and clinicians and it really set my compass to close the center, which we did on the 9th of March, no one in, no one out, because the risk was just I saw too

to great. So you know, our place like many other places, you know, whether it's a small business or a big Buddha center or a church or a government, we've been working since the 9th of March when we saw what was probably going to happen with a very powerful process of reimagining our institution to meet a world that is coming apart at the seams. So this is what Van Hennep was talking about in the threshold. It's experience. It's an experience of being betwixt in between, between two worlds.

And in a certain way, we can't draw on the lessons from the past, but we don't want to repeat the past. And also, we can't really see into the future clearly. So we have to be very open, you know, with this spirit of what Suzuki Roshi called beginner's mind. Glassman Roshi, my teacher, Bernie, not knowing, not knowing, you know,, can we live with radical insecurity? Can we live, uphold ourselves, be open in the midst of radical uncertainty? And that's the practice, because, you know,

what's interesting to me, Dan, is, in a way, it's always like this. You know, we're prediction machines, but guess what? Our machines are not operating right now. And as a result of that, we're being opened to a whole other dimension of our potential to drop into wisdom, into being surprised. And not to Einstein said it, into being surprised.

And not to Einstein said it, and so many people have said it, we sure do not want to recreate the past. We don't want to be in the state of mind that created the mess that we're in. We know that the pandemic is not separate from the climate catastrophe. And we have to look at what drove the climate catastrophe. And I feel what practice does, it strips you down. It takes you down to a place where data doesn't operate. But what operates, actually, what unfolds, and this is going to sound probably crazy to the people who are listening, but this is what I feel deeply.

What really counts right now is love. I feel like what really makes a difference is love. So much there to unpack. You raised a bunch of things that I want to follow up on, but it feels, I guess most natural, just go with that last point. Love, it's easy to, for that to fall into cliche, you know, the Beatles, as I've joked before on this podcast, the Beatles said,

all you need is love, but you also need toilet paper and Purell. So that's not quite right. And yet, obviously, love is extraordinarily powerful. So, and I think a complex thing to define. So what do you mean when you say it comes down to love? I think it means this quality of care, where I think Purell is really important. So anybody, student who enters the little place where I live, they use hand sanitizer. We wash our hands. For me, that's love. I mean, toilet paper is love.

Maybe less so than purell. Well, but you're caring for yourself. So you're caring for yourself, but you know, it's like those of us who are sheltering here, and by the way, Dan, most of the people who are sheltering here are way young. They're people in their 20s and 30s, which is wonderful. One is from Venezuela, another is from Colombia, the Philippines, Spain, this group of really extraordinary young people. And it is, you know, an experience where we realize that taking care of ourselves at a very practical level is taking care of the world. So holding a hard perimeter, not breaking out. One person who breaks out of here and comes back and they're sick, all people become

sick. So taking care of ourselves is taking care of the world. Taking care of the world is taking care of ourselves because we are not separate from the world. Right. So, so Purell is fine. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Purell. I had a very similar conversation recently with your Zen, I don't know, colleague, might not be the right word, but the Reverend Angel Cotto Williams and I were talking about love and talking about the idea that it's she was saying we kind of need to seize it back from the Hollywoodification of you know the string music and the and only defining it in terms of the narrow band of romantic love that it is as you said before the capacity to care. I mean Elvis killed love.

Which song do you blame heartbreak hotel i probably that is the nemesis of true love yeah and then he was followed by bon joe v and uh... also get you know maybe sorry for the bad joke gave love a little bit of a bad name but you know yes i mean it's not it's pop music generally it's pop culture generally and i think there's something very powerful in just defining it down, but I don't mean that in a negative sense,

defining it down to something very practical. You know, it's practical, but there's also, as you say, it's purel. And it's also social responsibility and environmental responsibility. But also those phrases sound like duty. Do you know what I'm saying? It's like this is my duty. D-U-T-U-T-Y, not D-O-O-D-Y.

D-U-T-Y, thank you. So, you know, it's a kind of, so there's duty on one side of the equation in responsibility, but actually there's a kind of tenderness that love engenders. And the image that I use, Dan, often as a way to teach meditation practice, practice is an image that refers to the body, but is about the interrelationship between equanimity and compassion. And it's a somatic image. It is strong back, soft front. So that image is, I think, very interesting right now because strong back refers to that capacity that we have to uphold ourselves in the midst of any conditions, that fundamental equanimity, but an equanimity that is not separate from. And I remember once Dan, Taratuku said equanimity,

is to care for all beings equally. And I thought, wow, gosh, that's a really amazing perspective. And it's a hard assignment because our preferential mind is so strong. Can we care about politicians who we see are many of whom are pretty corrupt and mean-spirited, can we care for the guy on death row who murdered the little girl after he raped her? Can we rehumanize those whom we have objectified and polarized and see the man on death row who is the murderer and the rapist as also a human being, or the politician with whom we have lots of argument. Can we see, wow, the state of mind of that person who is signing into law, more and more means-bearded and destructive

laws in relation to the environment or in relation to issues related to race and poverty. But can we say, oh, that state of mind, that is also suffering. Dan, I learned that, and I think in our last encounter, I mentioned this, I worked in the penitentiary of New Mexico as a volunteer for six years. And with people, well, the men, I worked with, is all men, and all of them were in maximum security or on death row. People who really had done horrible crimes, but I came to both see the truth of what they had done to others, all of them were people who had committed murder

and the horror of their crimes on one hand and the suffering in relation to others. And what the victim had gone through must have been just absolutely terrifying. But I also came to realize, oh, these two are human beings. And can I see, as Tiktok Han so wonderfully said it, he said, you know, this is a wounded Buddha. This is a human. The state of mind, and often the economic and social circumstances and psychological circumstances that led to a horrible act, that too is suffering. The state of mind that was entered in order to rape or kill, that too is suffering. So that really broke apart my Judeo-Christian perspective of good and evil. And I began to look at things as suffering

and not suffering. Well, don't you often hear from Christians, you know, love the sinner, hate the sin? Yeah, that's the perfect way of putting it. Yeah. If, as you said before, if it all comes down down to love, how do we get better at this and what is blocking that capacity? Well, in a way, I think we've been given a gift by this virus, by this pandemic. We've been forced to withdraw our habitual ways of being in the world, and to actually, and this is, you know, what we say in Zen, you know, turning the light around. We've been forced to actually look inwardly. It's a half of our life that we have ignored, that we have felt to be unimportant, that we've imputed if we have any sense of it at all, that it's woo-woo, but in fact many of us are

hearing from our students and our colleagues and I who work with healthcare providers all over the world, I'm hearing the same thing. The importance now of looking at how the mind works, how the heart works, what our values are, what is integrity, what is important in our world now. And I think this morning we did Jukai, which is a ceremony of conferring the precepts to those who wish to receive them. And I said to my students who received Jukai, you know, we've taken so much for granted.

We felt so entitled, the world owes us something. Now we have a chance to look deeply into what it is to actually give back and to discover who we really are, which is not separate from any being or thing, from the man on death row, from the Politico in DC. It's an incredible time for us to look deeply and to also be in touch with the truth of our suffering, the drivenness of our habits, and to open up to the possibility, as I said at the beginning, that this pandemic, which is turning the world upside down, and it looks like it's not going to stop tomorrow,

will perhaps give us the opportunity to reshape society in a way that is more just, more loving, more compassionate, and more respectful of all species. Dan, one of the things that I think is so interesting in complex adaptive systems is this view that when there is a breakdown of a system and we're in it, right now, if we learn from that breakdown, we can be part of a reorganization process that is at a much higher order than what gave rise to the breakdown in the first place.

So there's an incredible opportunity here. And we might be in the threshold experience longer than any of us ever anticipated. And that is going to be, I think, a very bumpy ride for not thousands, millions of people. And yet, we will learn. Some of us will learn. I hope many of us will learn. So, as I keep saying, we could be part of the emergence of a more just, sane, and compassionate world. How confident are you that that's because the opposite is also possible too. We could, it could, so the thing could devolve into unbridled fear and greed and violence and all manner of venality.

How confident are you that the outcome that you are clearly rooting for will come to pass? Well, I'm a hopeful person, but I'm not optimistic. What's the difference? The difference is an optimist doesn't really have, because they think everything's going to turn out okay, so you don't have to do anything. And it's the same with the pessimist. It's all going to go to hell, so you don't have to do anything. But a hopeful person is a person that sees the truth of uncertainty and the possibility that anything could happen

including the best. Why I closed UPAI's end center to the general public on the 9th, it was I was hopeful, not pessimistic. We will find a way through this, and it really has to do, I think, with again going back to what we said earlier, having a strong back on one side, groundedness, equanimity, care, the capacity to uphold ourselves in the midst of these really completely odd and for many of us terrifying conditions, where you see a person coming towards you without a mask and is that person going to infect you? Or a staff member whose daughter was hospitalized had to take an airplane from Albuquerque to Chicago, and

they're afraid to get on an airplane. They did, but they're completely terrified of getting on a plane. Or someone, because a good friend of mine had to go to the hospital last week. And you're afraid to touch the door of the emergency room. You know, we're living in a world I believe that is driven with fear and with grief. And it's a time for us to actually turn toward the truth of these responses to the world as it's coming apart at the seams and to see what can I learn. How do I begin to develop the moral character to meet the call of this era that we're in? And it takes a lot of grit and also a lot of grace. But I feel optimistic

in one way, but more than optimistic, I feel hopeful. I want to work for, in which is why we're interacting now for a world that is more loving. This turning toward attitude that you described earlier, you described the current situation as a gift. And I'm just wondering, is it an equally bestowed gift? In other words, can I have the attitude of turning toward and learning in the current atmosphere if I have to go work in a hospital or on a subway system or on a subway system or on a bus or I've just lost my job and I've kids and I don't know how to feed them.

Can I have that attitude in those circumstances? For me, there's a yes and a no. Circumstances have been created in certain lives where we're in a position of privilege. And that privilege is not just privilege in the sense of being wealthy or white or powerful. We've found ourselves in conditions of safety. This also includes some of the high-altitude people who are very close with me in Nepal, who live in material poverty, but have great spiritual richness, and who have so far their situation has not devolved. So it's not just communities of poverty as we know in the West and also in the East,

but there are whole communities that are quite isolated who are not facing what communities of poverty in this country are communities of race in this country are facing. What can we do for others when we experience the good fortune of being able to shelter safely and to have access to food and I feel like This is one way we can send our voice in the world But it's also small acts. It's the purel. It's also intimate acts cooking food for the homeless creating cards for old people who are in isolation. On the kinds of things that our community is doing, we need to use, I believe, our resources to, for example, really push on voter registration, to push on education right now. And this is part of it. Your interviews with people.

I mean, I look at these as they're bright, they're deep, they're fun, but they're also deeply instructive. They're education. They're giving people ballast to meet the world and in a way where strong-backed, soft front, in other words, our capacity to be open to the truth of suffering, not to bubbleize ourselves, which includes addictions, engaging in addictive behaviors, but to stay in touch with what is going on to the greatest extent that we are able with people who are unsheltered, with clinicians on the front lines in New York, with people who are working with sex trafficking, humanitarian organizations, environmentalists, staying in touch with the deep good pulses in the world and doing what you can on this micro level,

but also if you have the capacity on the macro level, as you do, Dan, through your broadcasts to reach as many people as possible. So but if I'm here, you're correctly, the injunction here is if you're lucky, like I am, and you are, don't let this crisis go to waste. Make the most of this pandemic to explore inwardly and be generous outwardly. If you, however, you are somebody who doesn't have that luxury because you're acute existential risk, then maybe the advice would be different. I think that's very true. But you know, I just want to say something else, Dan. Even people who are at high risk at the functional level that is people of color, people who live in communities of poverty, people who live in condensed urban areas,

clinicians who are working on the front lines, medical examiners, morticians. You know, these are all people who experience high vulnerability at this time. So I often think down of Nelson Mandela. And I remember I was moderating a panel where Archbishop Tutu and the Dalai Lama were interacting. And And before Nelson went to prison, he lacked empathy. And then when he was released from prison, who was at his table during his inauguration in the big dinner, his prison guard, the main prison guard. So, you know, how do we instead of engendering despair through all the strata of our society,

how do we actually engender hope and possibility? Let's take another person in this regard, and that's Malala. She stood in her principles, which her principles, she was completely dedicated to the education of girls. She took a bullet in the head for it. And that could dampen one's enthusiasm for being out there. But instead, what did she do? She rose out of brain damage and near death and is a voice for love and justice for girls and women in the world today. So you know, we have the potential for a lot of lemonade right now.

Heather McTier-Toney, who was the youngest and the first Afro-American mayor of Greenville, Mississippi, really putting her world into focus around communities of poverty and race, how to actually bootstrap into greater health. actually bootstrap into greater health. So, you know, I think what we want to see are not just the rotten roll models, it's free, we're overdozed with. But I'm also to reflect on those men and women who have overcome incredible odds and who have turned toward the world in great service. More 10% happier after this. Hey, I'm Aresha and I'm Brooke.

And we're the hosts of Wunderys Podcast podcast, Even the Rich, where we bring you absolutely true and absolutely shocking stories about the most famous families and biggest celebrities the world has ever seen. Our newest series is all about drag icon RuPaul Charles. After a childhood of being ignored by his absentee father, Ru goes out searching for love and acceptance. But the road to success is a rocky one. Substance abuse and mental health struggles threaten to veer Rue off course.

In our series, Rue Paul born naked. We'll show you how Rue Paul overcame his demons and carved out a place for himself as one of the world's top entertainers, opening the doors for aspiring queens everywhere. Follow even the rich wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or the Wondery app. Let me go back to something that I was trying to bring up earlier and I think there's potentially a lot here. So if you're saying to all of us in whatever situation we find ourselves, now is the time to call on our better angels in many ways, and

to call on our capacity to care, i.e. love. What stands in the way of that? Why do we so often not go in that direction? Why do we have Nelson Mandela to celebrate in many ways because he is showing us a different way than we normally do things. I think that's a great question and of course that's a question that's right at the heart of Buddhism. It's the recognition of the truth of suffering but also the source of suffering. And one person talked about it in terms of defending and defining the self.

in terms of defending and defining the Self. We put so much energy into our separate self-identity, and that is driven in part by greed, by desire, by grasping, which of course is fear-based, and by, as well, hatred, by anger, which is also fear-based and by ignorance. And unless we're able to see the patterns that are driving our subjectivity into a tighter and tighter grip, I don't think that we will be able to actually foster or nourish a world that I keep using the words just saying and compassionate. It really means facing the truth of this illusion of a separate self.

And I remember Tiktok Han wrote a beautiful book called The Sun, my heart. And in it, he talked about our practice in the best of circumstances, allows us to realize the truth of interconnectedness, the truth of interdependence, and the truth of interpenetration. How can we say we're separate from the very atmosphere that we breathe? And yet we're throwing junk into it, you know, moment after moment. Suddenly you realize the atmosphere I breathe and I am not separate, we are not separate from each other. I think that's the thing also Aldo Leopold, who was the person who really brought ecology and deep ecology into the awareness of people in the 1960s and 70s, you know, when he shot the wolf, wolves like bad wolf. He shot the wolf and then he went out to the wolf that he had shot and saw as the wolf was dying. He looked into the wolf's eyes and he realized, oh, this is a sacred being. And he just turned on a dime. He just shifted out of looking at the natural world

as something dangerous into understanding that we are part of that natural world. How do we do this? It sounds great. It sounds incredibly important. And I'm, as a Buddhist, I am on your side, but might be worth talking a little bit about how to use this time for many of us in lockdown and for those less fortunate who are more engaged to use our more limited time to tap into

this potential to get over this harmful illusion that we're somehow separate from everything else. You know, Dan, I think we've been given the opportunity right now. Certainly the virus and this pandemic have pointed out how powerful interconnectedness operates in the world today. I mean, it's just wild. I looked at the mail, I went down, I saw there were some packages, and I actually had this moment. I wonder how many hands touch these packages,

unseen hands, unknown hands, and were those hands thick, hands that carried the virus. I just looked at that moment of hesitation. I thought, you know, I was sort of threading my own analysis back to, you know, the sender, so to speak. And what happens in deep practice is that one has this kind of breakdown of the sense of self and other. And one can, but it's not always available, but one can have the realization of radical non-separateness.

And that is one of the really important realizations in Buddhism. It's the realization that I am not separate from any being or thing. And every time there's a contraction inside of me, that contraction is a signal that, like the contraction I had when I was looking at the mail, where fears is actually priming that contraction. And can I actually respect the possibility that that package might be harmful? And can I relate to that package in a way that is skillful and caring and not let fear turn me away from opening up, quotes the package, the whole package. So you know, that's why practice, Dan, meditation, practice, whether you're a Christian or a Jew

or a Buddhist or a Hindu or a non, but it is about breaking down the sense of self and other and this realization of radical interconnectedness. So that's one of the things. I think another thing that is really up for us, Dan, is the another core piece that the Buddha taught and that is also part of many other spiritual and religious traditions is the understanding that everything is characterized by impermanence. Everything, the very thought I'm having now, the conditions in the world. and you realize, you know, when you're practicing, any attempt at creating security, so to speak, is actually engendering, suffering. And so you're in this kind of flow of uncertainty, radical uncertainty, of change, of impermanence. And one of the things that does, I think, and this really comes from my work with dying people,

which has been part of my life since 1970, it is this experience of actually caring for, respecting, treasuring, appreciating what this present moment is. Even if the present moment is really tough, really terrible. As one clinician said to me who's working on the front lines, I am learning so much. So instead of being bitter and casting aside the lesson, it's actually turning toward the difficulty with humility and saying, wow, I am learning so much from this mess. So I think that that is really one of the gifts of coming into

relationship with the truth of impermanence. And I was supposed to go to Japan in April or late March in April, Dan. And I love teaching in Japan in the spring because all the trees are just glorious in their blossoming and families are gathered under the trees and lots of sake, not for me, but for others. It's like big, big time and everything. One of the things, why this is such an important season in Japan is that it's the realization that everything is transient. Those blossoms are going to fall.

They're beautiful, but they're also going to go away. And the Japanese have a beautiful term, mono non awade. Mononon Oare. And that term was translated, I think, in a very good way by the poet Robert Bly. He translated that as the slender sadness. So you know, it's the function of grief also that operates in a positive way in our lives, not in just a negative way, that what grief teaches us, and a student said to me last month, she said, grief is love that has nowhere to go. And I believe that one of the deep lessons that grief teaches us is how much we love. How much we love.

And the Japanese in their one-on-one-the-wadi moment in the kind of climax of spring, it is both the beauty and the sadness. As we stand in the middle of this mess where people of color are not safe, where there's increasing radicalization from more fundamentalist groups, where the respect for human life and our environment seems to be decreasing every day. Monononawari, it is impermanent, and at the same time, we have so much to learn now because just as you're sitting in your wife's closet,

so to speak, Our racism, our classism, our ageism, our sexism is out of the closet. And this being so visible at this time, I believe is a call, a revolutionary call in the best sense of the word, to address the truth of suffering at the individual level and also in terms of society and our economic system as well. Let me say something that I probably going to be unpopular and make people not like me, but I'm going to say it anyway because it happens to be true. I do notice as somebody who I've copped at this many times, very lucky, raised in upper middle class,

Amelia, suburban Boston, parents or doctors, had everything handed to me, didn't have to worry about paying for college, et cetera, et cetera. And then all the advantages that are conferred upon somebody who's, you know, straight white male. When I hear we can remake the world, part of me is very excited about that because I see a lot of injustice and I don't like it at all.

A part of me feels a little bit of threat. I hear you. You should. Yeah, it's not going to be like it was. I mean, I think the manifestations of patriarchy, you know, right now it's as though the shadow, the worst aspects of patriarchy, right in our face. And you know, what you're also seeing is that some of the countries that are doing the best are countries that are led by women. And I think I wouldn't want to be a white guy today to be perfectly frank.

You know, I feel like white men, particularly privileged white men, are now stigmatized as well in a way they should be. And so, you know, if you're in that particular role in this incarnation, you get to work twice as hard to rectify what patriarchy has wrought. You know, there are a couple levels to this. So the one level is, as we've been discussing that, you know, if the world's going to be remade, it's possible that people who've had a lot disproportionate amount handed to them, I put myself in that category,

that that situation will not be perpetuated anymore. The other is even on a sort of more crass level that I just want this to be over. And, you know, I just, I just want to stop wearing the mask every time I leave. And so, yes, we're in this bit twist in between that you referenced before that really landed for me because yes, I want the world to be more just. And I'm actually on some levels pretty comfortable with some of the aforementioned threat to me. It's more just that I don't like living in the uncertainty so much. And I just want to stop my prediction, you call this prediction machines. I'm fritzing out over here because I keep trying to cast forward into the future and I can't do it. What a blessing. What a blessing. You know, It's like you've been forced to the mat.

I think all of us have been forced to the mat to grade or lesser degrees. Your mat and my mat just happens to be a nicer mat than many people are actually forced to at this time. You know, I got an email today from my wonderful Sirdhar friend in Nepal. China's border with China is closed on the north, the border with India is closed on the south. They're in a food desert right now. They're feeding people out of their back doors. There's starvation now in Nepal. So that's being forced to the mat. And it is tough. But the other side of it is this communication that I received this morning was so moving because the neighborhood in which Prem lives has mobilized, has bonded together,

which Prem lives has mobilized, has bonded together, has shared its rights, shared its lentils, so it can be equally divided among all families. So, you know, you just see these small acts of goodness and you realize, oh, we have much that we can share from our privilege and we must share at an individual level. And part of it has to do with rebuilding our neighborhoods. You know, I have to say, so like a number of my friends who are Buddhist teachers,

you know, we travel a lot and so on and so forth. So, you know, I'm not at my center, 365 days a year. Suddenly, I'm in lockdown at my center, but I'm fortunate enough to be able, unlike New Yorkers, I don't have to stay in my apartment. I can walk out and walk the road and walk up into the forest. And for the first time that I've lived here 30 years, I'm meeting neighbors that

whose houses are, you know, one or two houses away from Yuppaya, where we're going, hi, you, yeah, the Zen Center, you and, you know, we're making that kind of special connection. I love it, because we're beginning to appreciate our connections in a way that is really fresh. You know, I live in an apartment building in Manhattan and I've seen a lot of that here too. And I've talked about this on the show before, but we have an 85 year old neighbor who we guys see every day now. I mean, we sometimes eat dinner together in the hallway or every night we just go out there and hang out. And so that I really like. There are aspects of this pandemic that are really nice. Let me just go back to white men for a second.

Oh, sorry, did you want to say that? Well, no, wait, I just want to actually go back to the thing is you just want to get this over. Okay, good. Yes, let's go there. Why? As much as I intellectually can acknowledge the unbelievable flaws of the world that existed pre-March.

At least I knew it. At least I had it with the Terra firma for me. And again, I say this is a guy who, you know, much of our world was created by people who look like me. And so therefore I'm reaping the rewards, even though I didn't choose the womb I came out of. So of course, you have to take my comments with that large grain of salt, but I think it's

just I don't feel comfortable in the uncertainty. So what is that telling you? I'm curious. Well, I mean, I now have the benefit of a little bit over a decade of meditation. And so when I feel that discomfort, I, some muscle memory kicks in and I investigated. And there are very interesting things to be learned when you investigate the discomfort and about the human situation, about how you're living your life moment to moment, about the larger culture.

And so I feel very lucky that I can see that discomfort arise and then get curious about it rather than just acting on it blindly. So what's your big takeaway? I'm curious. Oh, I don't have any idea what the hell I'm talking about. So you're asking the wrong guy. But what was my big takeaway?

I mean, there are so many, but on the uncertainty thing, I'll just state a bunch of very obvious things. We're not wired for uncertainty, which is a design flaw because we're living in a world that is infused with it. My teacher, Joseph Goldstein, has a little expression that he uses, which is, anything can happen at any time. I think that's very true, but we don't like that. And so now we're really just being forced to see what has always been true, but we've papered over it with the world that we all knew pre-march.

So, so what's the gift there? What's the takeaway? What's the piece that's really important for you? Everything you just said, you said, lean into it, investigate with openness, and when you can, when you see, when you see how uncomfortable that is, you can see that everybody else is feeling that same discomfort and that you have an opportunity to be useful.

And by the way, in that being useful, which we might call love, there is a kind of relief from the way, in that being useful, which we might call love, there is a kind of relief from the suffering, a different stance in the face of all of the groundlessness. Then if you come out of that piece of wisdom, which is, you know, it's like a continent, it's not a little island, I mean, it's a really important landscape landscape and go back to the question

that you were pointing to which has to do with patriarchy. Your identity is an affluent, privileged white male, and you're in that body and you don't want to carry the stigma to the grave, so to speak. What do you feel the imperative is for you? What's important right now to shift that? To shift that as a white man? Yeah, I'm really curious about that. I think we've got to be looking for opportunities. Everybody has to be looking for opportunities, as you've said, to exercise the love muscle. And as I believe, it was JFK who's also a white man who says something like to people who've been given so much, much is expected.

So the more you have to give, the more you should be giving. Yeah. I mean, how could that wisdom be transmitted to a culture that is so materialistic and attached to identity? Well, you've just asked the question that is like, define my career for the last little while. I don't know that you, my instinct, but I'm very open to discussing this, my instinct has been to not go for the full Monty right away because it's a lot to swallow, but to really go the 10% happier route. Hey, look, there's this practice that can make you

calmer, more focused, less yank around by your emotions, and there's science that says it's good for you, and let that be the easy way in. And then of course, as we, as you and I both know as people, and this is way more true for you, then for me, as people who have been practicing for a while, the motivation for practice changes, the deeper you go. And that can be for people who are just doing five, ten minutes a day. Over over time, you can see some really important things. You can see that it feels good

when you do something nice for people, and you might want to double down on that, as opposed to spending all of your time worrying about whatever your Instagram follower count. So in a way, your nervous breakdown mirrors globally a kind of nervous breakdown that's happening across the world. You're talking about my panic attack on TV.

Yeah. And I think we're in a certain way in a kind of global panic attack. But if you look at this, Dan, in terms of your life, not saying that your life is the sort of, the contour that you've followed can be applied universally. But thinking about, you know, what were the lessons that you learned in the experience which was sort of strange, terrifying, humiliating,

and set you back in a serious way? What did you learn? I mean, would you have learned those lessons? Had you not had that experience? I doubt it. So yeah, I doubt it. So hence the initiation that you talked about at the beginning. The testing right? The test. The right of passage.

There you are. Mm-hmm. Now, I think one of the things is to understand that rights of passage, Dan, happen in a context that are deemed sacred. So you know, this is sort of out of the box. This is not the view is not necessarily that this is a holy time, a sacred time globally. And maybe your own situation at the time it was happening, the context was hypersecular, just at least.

But it turned you, I think, toward the sacred or toward the spiritual, not the sappy spiritual. But I'd like to just hear a little bit more from you about your view of how that experience moved your dial toward a kind of secular spirituality. Yeah, well, although I'm not sure how secular it is given that I consider myself a Buddhist, but I guess a Buddhist who doesn't, a Buddhist in the spirit in which the historical Buddha described, you know, what it said, don't believe anything without proof. I think it was a stepwise progression to answer your question.

I think what happened was the first insight for me was that we have an inner voice, this non-stop, nattering dialogue that when we don't see it owns us. And that was a huge piece of news to me because that was what allowed me, that inner voice was what allowed me to go off, cover wars without thinking about the consequences and then to come home and get depressed and not know it and then to very unwisely start using a bunch of cocaine and that led to the panic attack. So seeing that we had that we have this inner voice, having that pointed out to me and that meditation is a kind of antidote where you can wake up systematically to the powerful emotions, random thoughts,

unhelpful urges that are coursing through your consciousness and once you see them you don't have to be owned by them. That was the first big thing for me. And then I think more recently getting interested in love. Again, as you described before, as our evolutionarily wired capacity to care, core part of being a human, and seeing that that is another skill that can be developed just the way mindfulness, you know, self-awareness can be developed, and then twinning those two in a nice upward spiral. Yeah, I remember in the early 1970s, Jack Cornfield and Sharon Salisburg and Joseph Goldstein had just started the

Insight Meditation Society, and my husband then, I had, I've had one husband, the Stanislaw of Groph and I went to IMS to meet them and hang out with them. And Sharon and I really connected, I just loved her and still do. And after more than 50 years of friendship, or 50 years of friendship, and I was a kind of hard-ass Zen person.

And I said to Sharon, well, what practice do you do? And she proceeded to describe the Brahmaviara, the boundless abodes of saying these phrases related to the cultivation of loving kindness, the cultivation of compassion, of sympathetic joy and equanimity. Honestly, Dan, I thought I would have a dipet fall into a diabetic coma. She was like, oh my God, you've got to be kidding.

That is so sappy. And she was so, you know, Sharon is in her way, totally impotervable. She just lives in this kind of field of humor and kindness and goodness and wisdom. And she looked at me with those big round eyes and she said, you want to do it, it will make a difference in your life. And I thought, oh my God. And it's a zillion years. I wouldn't do this.

Oh my God. And then I thought, you know, I'm going to try it out. And it has been, I have to say, the most important practice that I have done, of the different wonderful approaches to meditation that exist in Buddhism, but the cultivation of an unselfish motivation, every time the little self wants to grasp, I can feel it in my body. I feel the contraction. And then I think of Sharon, you know, 50 years ago, saying, this will change your life and I just begin to shift my feeling toward myself and open up toward the world with more kindness. May loving kindness support you. May I offer my care and presence, even though it may be met by gratitude, indifference, anger or anguish. May I offer love, knowing I cannot control the course of life, suffering, and death, and so forth.

So, yeah, this beautiful process of beginning to turn away from again Defending and defining the self to understand that we're in this intersejective reality and an experience of radical inclusivity that we can't separate ourselves from any being or thing at a fundamental level and That compassion these practices actually open up. They reorganize our nervous system, our neural networks toward the good. And I just thank Sharon always. She opened that door for me. Yes, she has popularized these practices in many ways.

And then wait, if she hadn't done that, I wouldn't be doing it for sure. Let me just ask one last question, going back to white men for a second. So we've been talking about generating compassion and warmth. Can you feel that for white men, notwithstanding the amount of damage

people who look like me have done? Listen, I told you I've worked in a maximum security prison as a volunteer with men on death row. And I felt it toward murderers. I feel it toward our president. Yeah, that's not, one of the things, again, going back to what Tara Tuku said one time in a talk, caring for all beings equally, separating the human from what the human

has foisted on another in terms of suffering. But to realize, you know, as I looked at Terry Clark, who was the first man to be put to death in New Mexico after 40 years for raping and killing a little girl. You know, I saw the truth of his delusion, his suffering, his self-hatred, and also there's a human being in there. And this practice really opens up what John Paul Letterac has called this experience of rehumanization. But you talked about the stigma that is now attaching to white men. And if I remember, serves, there was some approval on your end for that stigma. But is that really fair, given that, again, as I said before, white men didn't choose to be white men?

Well, just as we as racists, because our unconscious biases are really strong and they do fall on racial lines, gender is the same way. And I think to stigmatize all white males is no better than to stigmatize all people of color or all politicians. I think we really have to look at the human being each individual in their totality and not throw them into just the bin of patriarchy. Final question for me, I used this phrase before early on in the discussion about sort of don't let this crisis go to waste.

I think a lot of us feel the urge to be productive, to get things done, to make soda bread, whatever during the course of this pandemic. But what I heard from you is maybe do more nothing. We've in a way been commanded to stop. And this is, from the Buddhist perspective, what is called cessation. There is physical stopping, but there's also mental stopping. And can we, for example, serve others do, you know, engage in acts of compassion, which have a functional aspect, which is to serve others, but also

do it from a perspective of cessation, from a perspective of stopping. And I think that's what's really important. Now we're forced to physically stop and to turn the light around and to begin not to live so externally, but to look at what our life is really about, which is not to create more suffering, but in fact to engender greater good. And in the model that I was speaking about, when we began the interview, Dan Dan of the right of passage. Remember I talked about the first disseparation, the being separated from the conditions that are familiar to us, and that actually are habitual.

The second phase, the threshold, or the liminal state. The third phase is of the return. You know, what are we going to take from what we have learned during this time in relation to our how our economy operates, what our responsibility is in relation to the environment, to enhancing gender parity, to end the abuse of children, to address deeply issues that are related to race and poverty. So what are we going to bring forward to end the structural violence that has actually been part of the equation that's given rise to this pandemic? And you know, the corporate world is on its knees.

I know they're getting a lot of benefits from our government, but those will not last. The airlines are on their knees. The banks are on their knees. The food production, the farms, you know, the people who are going to be harvesting, the strawberries, the lettuce, you know, are we going to let them into this country? We're in a huge phase shift, and what we bring forward into this next phase, it's the return. How do we actually bring the gift that is boon bestowing? How do we bring grace back, kindness back, justice back into our world? And I think that this is in a way, into our world. And I think that this is in a way whether we're at the raw end of suffering during this pandemic, which some of the people that I'm deeply in touch with are, you know, they're the doctors and nurses working in New York City in New Jersey. Just, you know,

their stories are horrifying. Some of them are taking their lives. Many of them are hitting the rust kind of futility. Can we wake up in the midst of these conditions and commit to values that won't be a repeat of our past? Rochie John, thank you very much. Well, thank you so much. Well, thank you so much. I've been raving.

But I just feel so interested and also so dedicated to what is ahead of us. And being a part of along with you and Sharon Joseph and others, a group of individuals who, and my friend Jane Fonda in Cristiana Figueras and the Geographer and Environmental Scientist, Diana Leverman and Heather McDier Tony, these incredible people who are working at the front lines in deep, deep ways to bring the gift forward. And you're part of that.

Don't worry about being a guy. We love you. I love you back. Big thanks, Joan. Really appreciate her taking time to talk to us. Also want to thank the team that puts this show together every week. Samuel Johns is our producer. Our sound designers are Matt Boynton. And Anja Sheshik of Ultravalid Audio, Maria Wertel is our production coordinator.

Also want to thank the folks at 10% who do a ton of work on this show. Ben Rubin, Nate Toby, Jan Point, Liz Levin, also big thank you to ABC folks including Ryan Kessler and Josh Cohan. We'll see all on Friday for a bonus drop. Hey, hey prime members, you can listen to 10% happier early and add free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Or you can listen early and add free with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts. Before you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondery.com slash Survey.

at Wondery.com-survey.