Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 250: Holding it Together When Things Fall Apart | Pema Chodron

Starting point is 00:00:00 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

Starting point is 00:00:32 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. From ABC, this is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hello, before we start, I want to remind everybody that we're running a big discount at the 10% happier app. This app, by the way, is my baby, not just my baby, there's a whole team of amazing people, dozens of us who work really hard on this app, we're constantly dreaming up ways to create content that will help you boot up and sustain a meditation practice and then apply it in all aspects of your life, from sleep to relationships to work. We are now offering a rare 40% discount on

Starting point is 00:01:47 new subscriptions. You can visit 10%.com slash podcast 40. That's 10% one word all spelled out. .com slash podcast for zero. Check it out. Okay, our guest this week has seemingly been trying to prepare us for this pandemic for years through a series of very popular books with titles such as When things fall apart welcoming the unwelcome and the wisdom of no escape But as you're about to hear Pema Trodron is Anything but gloomy even though the titles sound a littleomy. Like all the great meditation teachers, I've had the good fortune to encounter. She has a real lightness and a sense of humor about her, as you will hear. That said, notwithstanding her chipper demeanor, she has worked really hard to point out to her readers and her many students that groundlessness and uncertainty are fundamental facts of life, which are, as we all know, becoming increasingly

Starting point is 00:02:46 salient in our current crisis. Pema Chodron is her name, as I said, she was born, Deer Drow Blumfield in Connecticut. She lived a rather conventional life going to UC Berkeley, becoming a schoolteacher, having a pair of kids. But after a rough divorce, she found herself adrift. And during that time, she discovered Tibetan Buddhism, and ultimately shaved her head and became a nun. She's now in her mid 80s. She lives in rural Nova Scotia, where she's the director of Gampo Abbey.

Starting point is 00:03:16 And we connected with her via old school landline. So you'll hear that in the audio. We talked to her about a bunch of things, including how to actually, as she recommends in one of the aforementioned book titles, how to actually welcome the unwelcome. We also discussed how to befriend your demons, how to sympathize without being stupid, how to lighten up in the face of fear, and how to embrace chaos as, and this is a quote here, extremely good news. So here we go, Pemma Children. Hello. Hi, this is Dan Harris calling. Hello, this is Pemma Children.

Starting point is 00:03:55 Nice to connect with you. Nice to talk to you again. Are you in New York? I am in New York, right in the heart of the town. Oh yeah. Wow. That's a hard place to be right now. That is a statement of fact. It is a hard place to be. Yeah. No question. How are you? Situated us. Where are you exactly? And how are you? I'm good. I'm very well. I'm healthy and good. I'm in Nova Scotia and I'm at Gampo Abbey, which is very remote in a kind of a very natural setting on the ocean, far north in Nova Scotia on Cape Breton Island. And we've had to close to anyone coming in, but the community, it's like we're, as they say, sheltering in place, we're

Starting point is 00:04:45 all sheltering in place together, and just doing what we were doing before, you know. So, but we're very aware, of course, heightened awareness of what's happening with virus and the amount of suffering and death. So that's very strong, but in terms of being healthy, we are, and in terms of being able to, our life is not claustrophobic. I guess you could say that, you know. So we feel fortunate that way. Well, I'm glad to hear that you're relatively unaffected, but I also hear that you're saying

Starting point is 00:05:20 that you can't help but be aware of the global situation. Oh, yeah, yeah, very much. Very much. I was I was looking at some of your book titles. Just read them back to you. But when things fall apart, welcome, welcoming the unwelcome, comfortable with uncertainty, the wisdom of no escape.

Starting point is 00:05:44 I was thinking it's like you've been trying to prepare us for this for decades. That's true. It's true, actually. I, uh, when my primary teacher, Joe, Jim Trumpo was alive, he taught a lot about difficult times who will be coming. And you should be preparing yourself to be strong and resilient and compassionate so that when things are difficult, it's like rather than catch the flu, you'll be there

Starting point is 00:06:12 to help people, you know. So that made a big impression on me to train and working with difficulty when it wasn't so intense, you know? And everybody had plenty of difficulty to work with, but I was always thinking of things getting worse globally. Yeah, so the book titles somewhat reflect that and encouragement to work with your heart and mind so that you could be sort of steady and able to be of benefit in these times.

Starting point is 00:06:50 I suspect people listening to this are thinking to themselves in all caps. How do I welcome the unwelcome? How do I become comfortable with uncertainty? How do I, your teacher has a quote, chaos should be regarded as extremely good news. How do I do all that sounds great, but what do I, how do I do that? Yeah. Well, it's like, well, now I make a pitch for the books, which are filled with instruction, you know. So the basic thing is to have a meditation practice in which you become increasingly self-aware. You're able to self-reflect

Starting point is 00:07:34 and you're conscious of your own habitual patterns and your own tendencies towards fear or aggression or whatever it might be, a know, self-aggression, aggression towards others. And then the teachings are about, when you can acknowledge what's happening with you, then the teachings are, don't make yourself bad, you know. Don't turn this into some kind of enemy, but cultivate a kind attitude towards your own habitual patterns. And don't act them out, but don't repress them, but be there,

Starting point is 00:08:12 get to know their energy very well with a kind and open heart and mind. So even that sounds, might sound good, but then the question is, well, how do you do that? But you do it by starting to meditate. People have many different styles of meditation, but most Buddhist meditation has a lot of similarity to it. And it's all about open acceptance of whatever arises without getting caught in good and bad thinking. So that's where you start.

Starting point is 00:08:46 You start with acknowledging what's happening with you and then the expression is always something like making friends with that or being friendly towards that or welcoming that. I try not to use language that's too corny, but nevertheless, I can't have music quite a bit of it in any case, you know, like embrace and things like that. So that's the basis. And from that, you begin to get in touch as time goes on, you begin to have confidence really that fundamentally

Starting point is 00:09:19 you are a good person and you have habitual patterns to work on, but you have the strength in you to do that and then it takes a lot of patience and sense of humor, but you work with yourself that way. And that doesn't maybe sound so in a linear way how that adds up to being able to be comfortable with uncertainty, but in fact that's where it leads you because you get comfortable with the unpleasantness or the fear-producing quality of seeing yourself so clearly, you know. But then the idea is to make friends with that. So then the other thing that's always taught is that to the degree that you can be friendly to yourself, you will be friendly towards others.

Starting point is 00:10:12 To the degree that you can make friends with yourself unconditionally, you'll be able to have an unconditional regard and openness to other people. So it's kind of twofold, you know, you become more and more, it's not comfortable, at least very familiar, and not running away from uncomfortable feelings of all kinds. And it builds a kind of resilience and confidence that allows you, for instance, now, all the various things that are being triggered for people just being in isolation, you know, everything from

Starting point is 00:10:52 rage to just being irritable to being very afraid and loneliness is a big one. And there's a lot of uncomfortableness associated for many people with being quarantined so to speak or having to stay put. So it starts there that you're already prepared for that kind of experience. So does that help at all? It does. I'll just amplify your point by maybe just adding that in my own practice, which is very young, especially compared to yours, but just over a decade long. I've

Starting point is 00:11:33 really seen a shift, I've talked about this before on the show, so I apologize if I'm being repetitive to listeners, but I've really seen a shift in the last couple of years where initially I was trying to be mind-fully self-aware of whatever is coming up. I had a clinical kind of a coldness to it and maybe even some aversion that, okay, I'm seeing the selfishness or I'm seeing the fear or I'm seeing the anger, but kind of with gritted teeth. And then over the last couple of years as I've done more, and this is from

Starting point is 00:12:05 the Teravada tradition, and I know you're more from the Tibetan tradition, but I've done a more loving kindness practice, I think, in the Tibetan tradition you call the Tong Leng practice. And I've noticed that that warming up my own inner weather has allowed me to do, I believe you use the phrase in one of your books, making friends with our own demons and to have a certain sense of humor about it or the great teacher Ram Das once said that you, it's not that your neuroses go away, but you become a connoisseur of them. And I can see that showing up in this time where my historical depression and anxiety is peaking, but it's not gaining as much of a foothold as it otherwise would because I have the self-awareness and some sense of humor and warmth toward these patterns as they arise.

Starting point is 00:12:55 Does it sound like that's an appropriate build on the points you were trying to make? Absolutely, that says it beautifully. Yeah, that's exactly the point I was trying to make. And yeah, also in Tibetan Buddhist, there's also a version of meta-practice of the loving kindness practice that you're referring to. And that warmth is very important, you know. That warmth is very important. So clear seeing, but I use the word kindness, but warmth is another word. Yeah, it is amazing how it prepares you, prepares you for a difficult time. And that's another book title right when

Starting point is 00:13:32 things fall apart, so kind of prepares you for that. But as much as I feel that just again speaking for myself here that I'm maybe handling this current situation a little bit better than I might have. I don't know that I'm actively welcoming the unwelcome and I don't know that I'm actively viewing this chaos as excellent news. Yeah well I know there's too much suffering I think to view it as excellent news and so I think it's just that you keep your heart open to the situation so that to the degree that you're able. And that ed is in flows, you know, some days yes, some days no, some hours yes, some hours no. But there's more resiliency.

Starting point is 00:14:21 And so the word welcome, I think you have, I've never sense of humor around about the word welcome, you know, but it is the idea of warmth, warmth toward whatever is arising, rather than you're a bad person or you're not doing it right or there's something wrong with you, that's very deeply held feeling. And then when the outer circumstances are very difficult, it tends to bring out these strong, you might say, more negative qualities in all of us. And so if you've already spent some time already spent some time befriending what previously you called negative qualities, then you feel more prepared. So maybe just drop the language.

Starting point is 00:15:13 I think with the book title, she's just trying to convey something, a kind of view of what one will find in the book. But I think it's more how does the language of warmth or kindness rather than welcoming? Does that sit better? Yeah, it does. And I, by the way, I do not mean to be legalistic with you about book titles. Believe me, I've written a few books and I don't want to be held entirely accountable for every nuance in my book titles. So that was not my intention. But more to get at the spirit of what you're going to. I'm not offended by that. It's so common though. I have

Starting point is 00:15:51 so many people saying, you know, basically, I don't want to welcome beyond welcome. So in conversation, I've come to use different language, but it means the same thing really. But stick dig deeper into this spirit of what you have been saying and again your teacher Koyum Trumpa, the idea that there's some sort of, and this is my word not yours, but maybe some sort of opportunity in the chaos, you know, the notion that we should regard it as good news. And I know, again, your teacher was not saying, and you're not saying that a pandemic is good news, that it's not great and you're not saying that a pandemic is good news

Starting point is 00:16:28 That it's not great that these people are suffering, but there is Perhaps an opportunity to get in touch with what has been true all along, which is that they're That the world isn't as so the ground beneath our feet isn't as solid as we might have imagined Yeah, absolutely that's right. So that is the value of chaos, which or of crisis, which so many people have experienced throughout the centuries, really, you know that when things got really, really bad, it was if they had the realization that up to then they had been living on the facade, they had been living on the surface of life, not really realizing the Princeton's not taking impermanence as a fact of life. Let's just talk about that.

Starting point is 00:17:13 Just not valuing the fleeting quality of our life as something very precious, that makes it more precious. And instead, a lot of denial of death or resistance to change and that kind of thing. And then some crisis happens where you're kind of cornered. You know, you can't get away from the truth of it. And for many people over the centuries, that's been a big turning point of realizing something that's been true all along, as you say,

Starting point is 00:17:46 that the situation is fundamentally groundless. And our plans are like, there's a bumper sticker. If you want to make God laugh, make plans. So the idea of the, you have to make plans. You know, you have to make your plane reservations and things. But how many people, I mean, many people, like my experience, is I look on my calendar, and I look at the months of May on my calendar, and I see all the things that were carefully planned, the different airline reservations and hotel reservations and teaching engagements and family reunions and things like this and

Starting point is 00:18:29 just gone, you know none of it's happening canceled or sometimes they say postponed but till when you don't know So it's for many people. It's like some kind of light bulb goes off around things like this. And they have the feeling that they're not afterwards going to live on the surface anymore, that they have some more profound connection with the true facts of life, has not been bad news like impermanence, for instance, and change.

Starting point is 00:19:02 Not being bad news, but just being part of what it means to be a human being is that each moment and each day and your body and all your friends and relations, it's all impermanent. And when you talk about that to many people, they think you're being bismill or negative or something, you know. And so it's very hard how to convey that so that it's like a fact of life rather than a downer that you're just trying to paint a dark picture, a stormy picture of life. So the suffering, let me just say this also, then in a situation like this pandemic, it also makes you much more really able to be touched deeply by the suffering of other

Starting point is 00:19:58 people and the loss that people are experiencing, so that the feeling of interconnectedness can be so strong and so vivid. And that's another of the right of the main truth that's inescapable right now and how interconnected we are. I agree. Yes, I mean, I think it's indisputable. There are some non-negotiable facts of existence and impermanence

Starting point is 00:20:27 and interconnection are two of them. I wonder though, I think it was you, you as once I read used your books or some of the first Buddhist books that I ever read. I think you used the phrase that has really stuck with me, which is the fact that we're programmed for denial. And we're in an impossible situation in which to make forecasts, but I'm curious, and we're very early in this crisis, but you talked, and I agree with you, that crises and moments of getting in touch with the aforementioned non-negotiable truths of human existence can be times where we wake up, but we also can pretty easily go back to sleep. And so I wonder, do you imagine that this crisis could be a time where it could affect some fundamental changes on us as a species, or do you think we're just going

Starting point is 00:21:18 to go back to shopping as a way to deal with our problems? Yeah, well that's a big question. I don't really have a prophetic sense of it, but in the sense I do see it as a big opportunity and many people will take advantage of what they've learned through this, but I think when things are extreme, it often gets very clear that people either grow from it or they're denial and even the sense of fundamentalism gets stronger. You know, the fear gets stronger.

Starting point is 00:21:53 And so digging in your heels more and more even more than before gets stronger. So, you know, for someone like myself, I find that frightening and I'm committed to not having that happen, staying awake and to the teachings or the messages of these indisputable facts of these times. But so I don't know if I had to make a prediction, you know, I would just say maybe things, this is kind of a sad prediction, but perhaps things will get more polarized that people will either become more fundamentalist or more open-hearted and open-minded, you know. More closed or more open might be the two directions

Starting point is 00:22:38 that it goes, you know. I don't know. But even so, if you have to have, I personally have a lot of sympathy for someone who just wants to close down and dig in their heels and hold on to something desperately, because it's just an attempt to be happy. It's just an attempt to be kind to oneself. It's just that it causes so much more suffering. That's the problem, right? It causes so much more suffering for oneself

Starting point is 00:23:11 and one other because one fears grows rather than diminishes and one sense of danger grows rather than diminishing. Whereas if you're opening more and more, you feel more and more comfortable with uncertainty, more comfortable with what life is presenting to you, or at least more flexible or ready to work with whatever might come, you know, something like that. Is that what you were asking? Yeah. Yes. I, uh, I asked questions without expecting any particular answer. Right. Right. But sometimes, you know, I can go off on a pension. It doesn't have much relationship to the question. So that's why I check in, you know, well, let me assure you, you're in a safe place for tangents.

Starting point is 00:24:05 This is a podcast. We like to, we like that, Greshans, rabbit holes. It's all good here. You're touched on something there that I think is incredibly important. Well, a million things that are incredibly important. But this is one thing I'm going to pick up on here, which is the idea of having sympathy, apathy, compassion for people who are behaving in this situation in ways which we might deeply disagree.

Starting point is 00:24:29 I'm a newsman, so I'm not supposed to disagree with anybody, but I would say it's probably not a good idea to take an assault weapon to a state capital building. But can we look at that and say, you know, I get, I feel in myself, if I look carefully the desire to clamp down and to resist the change and to close down. And can I see that nugget of fear and close in the instinct to close down and project it outward and understand that somebody else is just acting out of pain, even if I completely disagree with how they're handling that.

Starting point is 00:25:03 That seems like a very useful function of the mind to use a loaded term here to make that go viral right now. Yeah, I think that's right. I think that people have trouble with this kind of thinking often because they think it means if you have some kind of empathetic reaction, then they feel that's the same thing as condoning or thinking that the action was okay.

Starting point is 00:25:28 So I suppose that's a subtle point. You don't condone the action, but on the other hand, you don't condemn the person. You know, I was reading this book by Paul X-Men and the Dalai Lama. Emotional awareness, I think it's cold, or something like that. In which the point is made again and again and again by the Dalai Lama and then by Paul Ekman that you condemn the acts but not the person, and that there's always a sense that the person is capable of changing. And the person has goodness in their heart,

Starting point is 00:26:06 as well as getting extremely carried away by aggression and hatred, etc. But condemning the action but not the person, I think that's something that I definitely adhere to and try to follow in my life. And it comes fairly naturally for me, but it doesn't make you stupid about when there's danger where danger lies, and it doesn't make you think that somebody shouldn't, that you realize, even from the point of view of Buddhist teachings on karma,

Starting point is 00:26:42 the realization that those actions will have results. There will always be consequences to any actions, actions that are beneficial to others or actions that are harmful to others, and the consequences will be to other people, but they will also be to oneself. So I think that's something that you keep in mind. I was always very struck by the fact that the Tibetans, when the Chinese Communist overtook Tibet, in was it the 50s, right, that that happened? I believe so, yes.

Starting point is 00:27:16 Yeah, so many people were put in prison and tortured, and I've heard so many accounts, they say someone, I read once, this study that I've heard so many accounts, they say, someone I read once this study that I've never been able to find. But I read this study about someone was very intrigued by how could people who had been tortured on a regular basis very brutally? How is it that they could come out of that without post-traumatic stress? Which was an observation that people could come out of that without post-traumatic stress, which was an observation that people did come out of it without the post-traumatic stress, I guess many of them.

Starting point is 00:27:52 And the conclusion of the article was that it was because they held a view that, which is, by the way, this is not a view that's easy for Western people to handle. But nevertheless, they held the view from their Buddhist teachings that what was happening to them was their opportunity for them to pay some kind of karmic debts. But their real worry was for the people that were torturing them because they were creating such a hellish future circumstances for themselves. And so someone asked this one monk, were you ever afraid? And he said yes, and then they said, what were you afraid of? And he said, I was afraid that I would lose my compassion

Starting point is 00:28:46 for the people that were torturing me. So that's a very extreme example of this ability to see, to look at things very differently, in terms of who's creating the suffering here in this situation, for know, for themselves? So I don't know. You know, that reminds me of, you don't have to even believe in rebirth or karma. I've done a few stories as a reporter over the years with people who were wrongly convicted

Starting point is 00:29:19 and spent decades of their lives behind bars. And afterwards, I would ask them, are you angry? How do you? I would be angry. And to one, the man I interviewed who were in that situation said to me, if I give into that anger, it will consume me. You know, they just spoke very eloquently about the dis-utility of that kind of rage and bitterness in terms of their ability to move forward. I remember reading an interview with Nelson Mandela, where the interview asked him that same question, weren't you angry?

Starting point is 00:29:54 And he said, yes, I was angry. But I realized that if exactly what you said, in this case, what my memory of what he said was, if I left that anger that anger consume me then I'm still there prisoner, you know. And so I'm not going to let myself be consumed in that way because then nothing has shifted. I'm out of prison but only in my body but in my mind I'm still completely caught. So always remember that. It's the same idea, right? I think it's exactly the same idea just articulated in a different way that so how do we want to endure the hardships?

Starting point is 00:30:37 We're a friend of mine wrote to me something about this on text that he said, you know, I've been through crises in my life where I had the crisis and then I had all the rage I was adding on top of it. I'm not doing that this time. Yeah, yeah, good for him. Good for him. Yeah, that's the idea. That's the idea right there. But you know there's that thing about your poison in yourself. You eat rat poison thinking that the rat will die. So, but it's you that suffering from the whole thing. Yeah, that's right. So that's a wise person who texted you that. More 10% happier after this. Hey, I'm Arisha and I'm Brooke. And we're the hosts of Wondery's podcast, Even the Rich, where we bring you absolutely

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Starting point is 00:32:02 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's look back to the issue of fear because you've written about the notion of intimacy with fear and I think I'll confront you again with one of your quotes here the next time you you wrote the next time you encounter fear consider yourself lucky and I know I'll confront you again with one of your quotes here the next time you wrote the next time you encounter fear consider yourself lucky and I know you're being provocative there. But I wonder if we could get granular about ways in which we could actually practice with

Starting point is 00:32:36 the fear given that most of our listeners, our meditators or meditation curious. Could you talk a little bit about how we could work with fear in our own minds? Well, I kind of was alluding to it earlier, where I was talking about meditation and that you get very close to yourself. It becomes a process of becoming familiar with yourself and familiar with your habits, but with an attitude of another quote from Trump or Rimsche, my main teacher that I really like was, you place that fearful mind in the cradle of loving kindness. So that's a rather poetic way of expressing

Starting point is 00:33:20 something, but sometimes that's the closest you can get rather than like a step-step process or something. But I do think that's the key to working with fear is placing it in the cradle of Muffin kindness, which is to say, acknowledge, then some sense you might have to really notice what you're saying to yourself, like what the storylines are, and how they are escalating the fear, exaggerating the fear, heightening the fear. And then through meditation, you learn all styles of Buddhist meditation. You learn to let the thoughts go and just come right back in this case,

Starting point is 00:34:06 come back to the maybe physically embodied, how do you feel in your body? So let's say, okay, so in terms of step-by-step, it's something about through meditation becoming aware, being able to acknowledge with kindness and then being embodied, like come into your body to the degrees that you're able through your meditation practice, letting thoughts go, they come and then you let them go, and rather than feeding them and escalating them, with the realization with the kind of understanding that the thoughts are going to close you a lot of suffering because the fact that they like pouring kerosene on the fire to put it out, you know, you think if I could just think my

Starting point is 00:34:55 way out of this, I wouldn't have to feel this fear, but in fact all those thoughts are causing you more pain. So letting the storylines come and go, not making them bad, but being aware of their power to cause you to suffer. So letting storylines go and go to your body, feel the fear in your body, wherever it's contracted. So for instance, fear, people feel it in different ways. Sometimes it's in the throat, sometimes in the shoulders, often in the solar plexus, sometimes in the stomach, often in the heart area. And I'm sure there's other places that fear is felt. And then one actual method is then to breathe deeply.

Starting point is 00:35:45 This comes more from the teravon approach, but you breathe deeply into those places. So like with the in-breath, you open and in some sense of expansion and letting yourself feel the fear physically. Not think about the fear, but actually embody it, feel it. And then when you breathe out, there's also that sense of relaxation. So you breathe in with a sense of opening and warmth, you breathe out with a sense of opening and warmth in and out of that contracted place so that what's contracted can relax and expand.

Starting point is 00:36:24 And that's a very practical way of working with fear. In other words, not mentally trying to figure it out, but just go to your body, get in touch with what it feels like physically, and then breathe in and out of the places that are contracted and tight, and work with it that way. What do you think? I love it. Something you said earlier about not trying to use,

Starting point is 00:36:50 this is something a problem I pop up against personally, not wanting to use corny language, but then as soon as you get into this stuff, you can't help it. And the thing about the wisdom of the body is, yeah, it sounds corny to say it, and yet what are you supposed to do because it happens to be true? And so yeah, it sounds corny to say it, and yet, what are you supposed to do because it happens to be true?

Starting point is 00:37:06 And so, yeah, we can get stuck in thinking about things or planning or worrying or regretting in past or future mode, but the body is always right here and in the only time it ever is, and to kind of move your attention out of your head and into your body in an animalistic sense, in a creaturely sense, as my friend Jeff often says, can be a nice short circuit on the habits and the patterns of rumination and anxiety. That's right. I was talking to a student mind recently,

Starting point is 00:37:42 who was telling me, he said that he decided that he was going to a student man recently who was telling me he said that he decided that he was going to spend a week, it was just recently, so he was working with fear around what's going to happen after this, or it had a lot to do with his financial situation or lack thereof, you know. So he said, I'm going to spend a week, five days to a week, just trying to think this through and see how I feel at the end of the week. And then I'll try a week of what you're proposing here of letting the storylines dissolve as much as best I can and just keep coming back to what it feels like in my body and breathing in and out of that in the relaxed, open ways.

Starting point is 00:38:31 So I thought that was great, you know? Like, okay, I'm just going to find out for myself. Well, I think you can guess, really, what's... which week ended with him feeling more settled and getting more inside and some sense of moving through something rather than getting stuck. So the week where he just said it, he said he actually, he couldn't last a week. He said when he started doing that consciously, when he was very aware that that's what he was doing almost like a practice. He just could not keep it up because it was so excruciating. So then he tried the other and he said it was just something to do about the fact that the way he put it was there was nothing between me and the feeling. It was just right

Starting point is 00:39:23 there. That's all that was happening. There weren't thoughts in between. There was no, not I wasn't distracting myself. It was just very direct and dealing with the immediacy of my experience, he said. And that he felt was just that, that he was dealing with the immediacy of his experience, even without the breathingacy of his experience, even without the

Starting point is 00:39:45 breathing in and breathing out, was so much more settling for him. He felt so much more on the mark, felt so much more accurate and genuine and helpful. And then he did the breathing thing too. In his case, it was very helpful to him. It's not that helpful to everybody, but there's nothing I don't think that's that helpful to everybody that has to be very as message for this kind of thing. Well, actually, you led me exactly to the question that popped up in my mind, which is how broadly applicable these techniques are.

Starting point is 00:40:20 So you're in an Abby and Nova Scotia. I'm on the upper west side in a comparatively very comfortable situation. What about for people who have to go into a hospital every day to clean the room or somebody who's lost their job and needs to go to a food pantry? For people in really truly acute situations, are these techniques workable, do you think? I do think so, yes. I do think so. You're talking about truly desperate situations, especially the, well, both of those instances that you said, warm you have your job, but your job is so dangerous.

Starting point is 00:40:56 And the other, you were just scraping by with your minimum wage job before being and barely able to pay the rent or buy the food or feed the kids or whatever it was. And now all of that's gone and the schools are closed. It's just like a nightmare. Yeah, I've talked to people who work in the hospitals, had a number of talks with some of them.

Starting point is 00:41:20 And this kind of technique has been very helpful to them, to just go in and be there for people. Otherwise, they say, you know, before they were, it was like, they just didn't know if they could go in. They were so afraid of contacting the disease, even though they had lots and lots of protection and all of that. They were so afraid and so they were worked this way. And then I've talked to inmates in prison who find this technique extremely helpful. So I haven't had the opportunity, which I would very much value, but to talk to, start to have conversations with people that have lost their

Starting point is 00:42:01 employment. Actually, I had one. It was a man who, he and his wife, have been building a business, kind of a nature resort for almost 30 years. And it's never been a big money maker, but they've always been able to make a living, and they always felt it was so worthwhile and gave them a lot of joy, this particular work. So now he was almost in tears talking to me because he said, you know, we have bills to pay and everybody has canceling. All the people that were signed up to come for the summer season, every single one of them has canceled and we have our bills to pay and like, what are we going to do?

Starting point is 00:42:45 And he said that the only thing that was helping him and his wife was this kind of meditation and that was actually a big help. So there is one person that I talked to whose whole livelihood was gone, you know, gone. The other thing I haven't heard anything about, but I feel great concern, for people who have been a history of violence in the family and they're now all cooped up together, that's very frightening to think about. And I haven't even read one thing about that, but it must be going on quite a bit, I would think, you know, terrifying kind of domestic situations because of all of this.

Starting point is 00:43:29 So there's a lot that can open your heart, you know, and bring out your love and compassion for humanity and the wish for things to work out for people. But I think what we're talking about here a little bit is what if certain things are not work outable, what about if this is just how it's going to be, like how do you live with that? So I think the meditation can be very helpful in that way. And one of the things that's helpful about it also is that if you calm down enough and can settle enough with yourself in this way where there is a lot of warmth and compassion available toward yourself and

Starting point is 00:44:12 then it begins to expand out to other people. When you can do that, sometimes when you can calm down like that, I use that expression calm down but settle maybe. Insights come to you about a new fresh perspective on what you might do, how you might handle it differently. So for instance, the man I was talking to you about, whose business is falling apart, I mean has just dried up on him and he has to pay his bill. He said that his children who are in their 20s, they never showed any interest in the business, but now they're coming up with all these fresh ideas about how they might work with things later.

Starting point is 00:44:59 And so it's those kind of insights that have the opportunity to come up if you settle, if you settle. And then the benefit of other people is undeniable. I mean, the story I've told many times recently is Tick-Nan Han's writing about the both people, leaving Vietnam, going out into the sea and the pirates coming and knowing that the pirates could kill everybody on your boat, could rape all the women just knowing how what horror might be coming. He said if one person on the boat remained calm it had the ability to calm everybody and I think that's something that I have in mind a lot is wanting to be that

Starting point is 00:45:48 person on the boat that could have that impact on other people. And then if you just honest with yourself and say, I'm not there yet, you know, I'm not that person who can stay calm. At least you have the, you can contemplate the effect of that calmness on you. And give you motivation for why you might practice in this way. What do you think? I think that I agree with everything you said and that I am really grateful to you for spending so much time talking to me and the folks who listen to the show. I'm very grateful. Thank you.

Starting point is 00:46:28 You're very welcome and may we meet again and we'll see where this all goes, right? Yeah, and now it's the time to get in touch with the fact that we don't know. We don't know. We definitely don't know. That's right. Okay, lots of love and may you be well and stay healthy there in New York. Thank you, right back at you, wishing you safety and to the best of your ability, ease all the way up there in Nova Scotia. Okay. Take care. Thank you. Bye-bye. Big thanks to Pema. A little bit of an announcement here.

Starting point is 00:47:06 I'm kind of bearing the lead. Maybe I should have said this earlier. On our next episode, which drops on Wednesday, we've got a really big guest, an obscure meditation teacher by the name of his holiness, the Dalai Lama. We'll be coming on the podcast. Very excited for that. So keep it here for much more. Big thanks to the team who work

Starting point is 00:47:26 incredibly hard to make this podcast happen on such a busy cadence during this pandemic. Samuel Johns is the point man as our producer, our sound engineer is Matt Boynton and Anja Sheshik of ultraviolet audio. Maria Wartell is our indefatigable production coordinator. We also get an enormous amount of insight and guidance from colleagues at 10% happier, including Nate Toby, Jen Poient, and Ben Rubin. And of course, my guys at ABC Ryan Kessler and Josh Cohen

Starting point is 00:47:58 will see you on Wednesday for the Dalai Lama. Hey, hey, prime members. You can listen to 10% happier early and ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Or you can listen early and ad-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.

Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 250: Holding it Together When Things Fall Apart | Pema Chodron

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