Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 292: The Opposite of Schadenfreude | Election Sanity Series | Tuere Sala

Episode Date: October 19, 2020

There’s an old expression: “Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little bit.” I love that saying, because it speaks to how hard it can be to take pleasure in other people’s happiness. That said, while it may be difficult, it is not impossible -- and moreover, as our guest today will argue, it’s a massively useful skill, especially as we endure this bonkers election. Welcome to week three of our special Election Sanity podcast series. Every Monday in October, we’re tackling a mental skill drawn from an ancient Buddhist list known as the Four Brahma Viharas, or the Four Heavenly Abodes. Don’t be fooled by the high falutin’ name; these skills are eminently achievable, and massively helpful. I can say this based on both personal experience, and also a significant amount of scientific research. In the previous two episodes, we explored loving-kindness (also known by the less gooey moniker of “friendliness”), and also compassion. This week it’s “sympathetic joy,” or “mudita.” You can think of this skill as the opposite of Schadenfreude; instead of reveling in the suffering of other people, you’re celebrating their happiness. Our guest today calls it “borrowing joy.” Her name is Tuere Sala. She’s a guiding teacher at Insight Seattle. She’s no pollyanna; she doesn’t sugarcoat how challenging mudita can be, but she does have a strategy that I think you will find appealingly doable. Where to find Tuere Sala online: Seattle Insight Meditation Society: https://seattleinsight.org/Teachers/Teacher/TeacherID/102 Just a reminder, our Free Election Sanity meditation challenge starts next week. We're super excited about this one—we've worked with our very wise meditation teachers from this Election Sanity podcast series to create a really unique set of daily lessons and meditations, all geared toward helping you keep your cool during the 2020 Election. If you'd like to join the Challenge, Download the Ten Percent Happier app today to start meditating your way through this Election season, and see you in the Challenge with thousands of other meditators. It starts on Tuesday, October 27th! Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/tuere-sala-292 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. From ABC, this is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hey, hey, there's an old expression. Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little bit. I love that saying because it speaks to how hard it is to take pleasure in other people's happiness. That said, while it may be hard, it is not impossible. And moreover, as our guests today will argue, it is a massively useful skill, especially as we endure this bonkers election.

Welcome to week three of our special election sanity podcast series. Every Monday in October, we're tackling a mental skill drawn from an ancient Buddhist list known as the Four Brahma Viharas, or the Heavenly Abodes. Do not be fooled by the highfalutiname. These skills are eminently achievable and massively helpful, and I can say this based, both on personal experience and also a significant amount of scientific research. In the previous two episodes, we explored loving kindness, also known by the less gooey moniker of friendliness,

and then in episode two, compassion. This week, it's sympathetic joy or mudita. That's the ancient poly term. You can think of this skill as the opposite of Shadon Freud instead of reveling in the suffering of other people, you're celebrating your happiness. Our guest today calls it Barrowing Joy. Her name is Tawere Salah, she's a guiding teacher

at Insight Seattle. She is no polyanna, she does not sugar code how challenging Moudita can be, but she does have a strategy that I think you will find appealingly doable. Before we dive in, just as a reminder, our free election sanity meditation challenge starts next week.

We're super excited about this. We've worked with our very wise meditation teachers from this election sanity podcast series to create a really unique set of daily lessons and meditations all geared toward helping you keep your cool during the 2020 election. And we'll be doing this challenge for the seven days we're running up to the election day.

If you'd like to join the challenge, download the 10% happier app today to start meditating your way through this election season. And we'll see you in the challenge with thousands of other meditators. Again, it starts Tuesday, October 27th. Having said all that, let's dive in on Mudita with Tuéri Salah. Hello, Tuéri. Great to meet you first thing in the morning. Yeah, hello, Dad. It's good to meet you too. It's a little bit after six in the morning where you are at Seattle and shortly after nine here where I am on the East

Coast. So thanks for getting up early to do this. I just be curious to hear. I know you've had a chance to hear the two episodes that have preceded you in this election sanity series on Mehta or friendliness and also on compassion or which I sometimes refer to as, you know, given a crap. Any thoughts on what you've heard? I, you know, I really thought you guys did a really nice job of picking two people that really seemed to, I don't know, exemplify the two qualities. So I think the way they talked about it, each one in their own way really is the way I would hold meta and compassion.

You know, Joanna was talking from this big framework and broader, unconditional, kind of just being able to engage and connect with the world wherever you're at in a friendlier, loving way, not out of this intimacy kind of love, but kind of an unconditioned embrace of life, which is how I hold meta also in this very big framework. And Reverend Angel seemed fierce, the way I hold Meta, I mean, compassion. I don't hold compassion in that kind of mushy, empathetic kind of way,

but much more of a fierce connection. And I thought your exchange was her around. and the difference between empathy and compassion was really really good. I'm hoping I can do for Moudita what they did for both compassion and meta because I really think they gave a good solid representation of these hard qualities that go beyond just our basic, do I like someone, is someone deserving of my compassion, that kind of energy. These energies are much beyond that. It's much beyond our ordinary way of looking at things. Yeah, our default can be mistrust and self-protection. Yes, you can be.

And that's what we are in our ordinary sense. And in that ordinary kind of way, you can mistakenly think that the ordinary is all there is. And that there is no access to this, it's called super mundane or this other worldly kind of energy, unless there's some kind of special thing going on. But it's not really true like that. We have access to this extraordinary level of the heart all the time. We just sort of take it. We kind of assume it in life.

And we don't assume these heart energies like that, but you can cultivate them at the same degree of ordinaryness, these beyond ordinary mind states and heart qualities. States and heart qualities. You know, you use the term super mundane and I am about to mangle Buddhist history. So just please everybody forgive me. But my understanding of that term super mundane is that back in the day when the Buddha's was around, he would refer to the cities or itdies, the sort of powers that one can get through meditation allegedly, like being able to replicate your body or read people's minds. He would call them mundane powers.

Super mundane powers were the ability to cultivate in your own mind, friendliness for all beings everywhere, or to drop the ability to cling in the face of relentless impermanence, et cetera, et cetera. So, in many ways, these super mundane powers are, you know, as ordinary as getting a cup of tea and not as magical as, you know, replicating your body or walking through walls, but they happen to be much more doable. Yes, that's it. I think that's why I like that word super mundane,

that phrasing, just the, I just so connected to it. And the more we see these as super mundane, the less we think of it as I got to make something special. It's like it's got to be my birthday or something for the day to be special, but it's not based in conditions. These heart qualities you guys are talking about aren't based in conditions. Which is why I think this series is, it's a phenomenal idea. This is the perfect time to talk about the Brahma Vihara's and to talk about them with the people that you actually have selected for talking about them, because we all represent each one of these heart qualities from a super mundane kind of way. That's what I think that's what I've been trying to go around and say. We have just this

extraordinary connection to them. A friend of mine has this read on the history of powers or superpowers or magical powers within Buddhist history that the Buddhists talked about these quote unquote mundane powers as a kind of like spiritual advertising because he was competing in a pretty crowded spiritual field 2600 years ago. And so yeah, yeah, yeah, we got the powers too, but those are mundane powers. We've also got super mundane powers, which are, that's the real deal. That's the real deal. That's the real deal. I mean, that's what we're going to talk about today. This is the real deal.

This is how we get through whatever happens in our lives, these powers. You know, if you don't have a sense of meta, sense of friendliness and a kindness around life, it can burn you up because there's just so much stuff that happens. It has nothing to do with you. And it impacts you if you can't find access to that kindness or the pain that you feel all around us. I mean, right now, there's so much pain around us and that pain isn't gonna be letting up anytime soon, that level of suffering around. If you're not intimate with suffering, a custom to suffering, acquainted with it.

I thought I think the word is, you have to be acquainted with suffering. If you're not acquainted with it. I thought I think the word is you have to be acquainted with suffering. If you're not acquainted with suffering, then being in a world in the times that we happen to live in where suffering is all around us, then we can fall quickly into that level of cruelty, whether we want to or not, we can quickly fall over and get further and further and further away from human time. So this is about cultivating these qualities that actually help us live in a world like we're living in

and still do great things, still do inspirational and remarkable things in these times. inspirational and remarkable things in these times. So let's talk about Moudita. Let's start with some definition, I'll let you define it. The way I often talk about it is the opposite of Shadon Freud, like it's, you know, we all walk around sort of delighting,

especially in a political context, and whatever woe befalls our quote unquote enemies but actually is there a way to do the opposite and is that even safer advisable in the current context? I don't know what you mean by is there a way to do the opposite but I gotta tell you Dan I always had a problem trying to access mudita, just using this phrasing, finding joy in another's good fortune. And I always used my own English interpretation of that in a, I don't know, I'd say a worldly sense, I always thought of it as meaning, I got to be happy because somebody else has some good stuff going on for them. And I could just never access that. I could never, I was always inevitably turned towards my own

disgruntledness with the lack of joy in my own life. But I think that is too ordinary for a mudita. That's not, um, maybe if I say worldly and unworldly, because worldly seems like it's too connected to our random way of thinking. And mudita is pointing to something that is unworldly outside of our random way of thinking. So I changed it. So my definition is for Mudita is that you borrow another person's joy in their good fortune. You're borrowing their joy rather than getting caught up and trying to be joyful for their good fortune. So maybe we can tease it out a little bit, but it's really in this borrowing that I opened some Pandora's box of Modita and stepped into it and the gate's just open forming.

So how do you do this, Barrow? Okay, so think of it like this. If I were to tell you some difficulty I had, you know, if I described my mother's death and let's say she died recently, she died several years ago, but let's say she died recently and I'm telling you about my mother's death.

And you could feel my sadness of missing her. You can feel that sadness also. It's what Reverend Angel was pointing to. You can feel as human to human my suffering along with me. human to human, my suffering along with me. And that capacity that we have, it's just a normal thing. It's why I think when George Floyd's death happened, the whole world seemed to feel the same thing. And in that ability, we have to share in the suffering of each other.

And I realize we have that same ability when it comes to another person's joy. So when a person is feeling joyous for whatever their circumstances are, they feel happy, they're joyful. We can borrow that joy from them and feel that joy as a part of our own present moment experience. A way to see it is if your sister just had a baby and you just lost your job. But if you go around her and the baby, you are going to be full of joy, regardless

of what's happening in your current circumstances. And so I begin to borrow the joy of all these different people I know, all these different situations, things that bring me joy. I start to borrow and joy from all the time. So it's like a systematic harnessing of a contact high. Yes, that would be a perfect way to describe it. That's really good, Dan. Yeah, this is like a systematic way of getting a contact time. It's probably the best way to do it. And I guess we need to borrow joy, because part of our problem

with joy is that it's connected to circumstances. It's connected to conditions. So I just assume I get two opportunities of joy in my life a year. And everybody gets only two. So you get two good things happen to you over the course of a year, where you could say, oh, I feel good. But if I look at two, and if

my luck is like it usually is, I'm going to use those two opportunities up by the 15th of January. So that makes for a pretty sucky year. But if that is the way I look at life, But if that is the way I look at life, you can see the resentment, the jealousy, the bitterness that's going to happen while all the joys of other people start popping up over the course of the year. But there's another way you could think about this. And this is what I begin to tap into. Now, there's like billions of people on this earth. And all these billions of people, they get their two joys also. So if I share in their joy, and they share in my joy, then I can feel joyous at any moment,

in any second, at any time. It's not limited to my two circumstances. It's limited to my willingness to turn towards the joy of another and borrow theirs. And that becomes a way of bringing joy into your life in an everyday ordinary, get a cup of tea kind of way. Can you say even more about, you know, where the rubber hits the road here, you know, how do you, to where a do this? What's your system for the borrowing?

So here's how I borrow it. I love romantic everything. I love romantic comedy. I like to see people who are in love. I just love love love romance. And I love the whole idea of asking someone to marry them and the person saying, yes, and I love it when couples are cut old. And it's just the whole thing about romantic love. I love it. But my current life, I have a valacy for this lifetime. So I don't really have romantic love in that way in my life. And that's the choice I made years ago that this isn't about that choice. The point that I want to make is I could be bitter because I hear I love romance. And yet it's not in my life in that way. But I think about all the people who are

wanting to ask someone to marry them, all the couples that are together, and I kind of I can't just seriously share that joy that they have with them. Because I know there are millions and millions and millions of people enjoying that experience. So it's more of sharing in the joy of it, not in the condition of it. But, you know, put it in perspective, if you want a partner and you don't have a partner, I would not say that you would necessarily experience joy by thinking about all the people who have partners and you don't have one. I think you're gonna end up feeling more miserable.

So that is not your doorway into this joy. I realized that I had to find the places and the people and the circumstances that I actually feel joy for. If I'm looking for a job, I can't just say, okay, I'm happy that everybody else has a job. It doesn't work like that. You're not happy that everybody else has a job. It doesn't work like that. You're not happy that everybody else has a job. You want a job. So if you're looking for joy, then you have to think, what is it that gives you joy, regardless of your circumstances? It could be animals you're with, it could be when you get artistic or the reading of poems,

it's all there's this a myriad of things that give people joy. So instead of thinking of, I'm glad you got that job when I really want one, it's more of what is it that gives you joy? And imagine the millions of people that are sharing in that same joy with you. A way to think about it is, if you sit down in any conversation with like-minded people

and you are all sitting there talking about a subject that you all agree on. So much joy comes out of that subject. Even if you're just complaining, there's so much energetic joy that someone else understands me and what I'm saying. It's the same way with sympathetic joy. You're looking for It's the same way with sympathetic joy. You're looking for like-minded people who are experiencing the joy that you already like. And you're just connecting to the reality that there are millions of people out there feeling that same joy.

They enjoy this too. They enjoy a good book of poetry just like you do. That's what you're connecting to. I want to talk about the political context in a minute, but just staying with right where you are right there. The, you know, I think about the utility of Mudita or sympathetic joy in my own life. We all know what it's like to share good news with somebody and to feel that they are siked when you tell them something that's good that's happened to you. And to be

able to do that for other people, it feels really good too. And it just deepens your relationships with other people, makes you more trusted. For my perspective, not that I'm perfect at doing this, it just seems like there's a lot of self interest or sort of enlightened self interest to be, to increasing one's capacity from Modita. That's not the only way in which it's their self interest. There's the fact that the more you learn to borrow joy, the more joy you have,

and there's the decrease, hopefully over time, of the kind of suffering that we all feel if we happen to embrace that old expression every time a friend of mine succeeds, I die a little bit. In other words, in order to reduce the jealousy that can be such a burden as we move through the world. So I just listed at least three reasons why this can be just a useful skill to cultivate individually. If we're sharing good news and it's all about the thing that happened to me, right? I got this promotion and it's all about yeah, I got this promotion and I have to compete for it and blah, blah, blah. If it's all about the promotion,

then that's not really sharing any joy. That's just sharing good news. I had some good news happen to me, and this is what it is. You're not really sharing the joy. But when you actually let yourself be joyous, then you actually let other people have access to Mudita because we are human beings. We are social beings with each other. It is

impossible to be around somebody full of joy without feeling joy also. It's contagious. But somebody that's just self-grandizing about look at this good thing that happened to me, that is not sharing joy. That's sharing your good news. And yeah, people may not be interested in your good news, because they haven't had any good news, but they definitely need some joy. And that means instead of it being about

the good news or the good thing that's happened to you, it's more about how you feel about this good thing that's happened to you. You're sharing your good fortune with someone else. And that everybody appreciates. Everybody can connect to. Not just your good news. Yes, yes. I think you're making a even more sophisticated point than the points I was making. But I think on the receiving end,

there's also that if you can cultivate the super mundane power so that when people share good news or share their joy, that you're able to actually resonate with it rather than contract into some sort of what about me thing. Then you are a more attractive friend. Yeah, you know, it is like that. I do want to be cautious here, though, because contracting into, you know, what about me? That's a normal experience. Contracting into, you know, what about me? That's a normal experience. It's very real. This is the example I love to use because it's perfect for how normal it is. So I had some friends in my son got and they won this $10,000 gift because they submitted a write-up little story with this organization and they won.

And they were sharing it with the sangha. And I could hear myself saying, man, I never win anything. That need $10,000. How come I don't get $10,000? And I heard myself saying this. And it hit me, you know, I mean, it was so easy and simple to say that

because at that moment, all I was thinking about was the money. So I just told everybody what I was thinking, you know, just so we could get a good laugh out of the whole thing. But I said what struck me is, my mind doesn't care that I didn't apply, I didn't even submit anything. I didn't know anything about the contest.

It doesn't matter that this wasn't even something I was gonna be a part of. When my mind hears about somebody else's good news, I immediately have this automatic response of, why not me, what about me, I don't get that. It's so automatic. And if you believe that, you will get stuck in that automatic kind of grasping mind. What about me? But after I told everybody, there was this great laughter in the room. And instead of this being about the money they got, it became about just the joy we were all

sharing in, in all our responses, in our own heads, of what happened when they said this. And this joy began to just kind of the laughter of it and the fun of it completely changed this impulse reaction of what about me. So the what about me, I think, I think that's just something that our grasping minds are always going to think. It's just part of the worldly way in which we live as human to human. But below that, what about me? Is this ability that we have to feel the joy that person is feeling in this good news that they have? And that's what Mudita is. Mud to is below that impulse level of good for you. You know, it is a very important aspect of practice. And before we get to the social issues here, the current situation,

I want to talk a little bit about what Moody to is to practice, to be a strong practitioner, to this idea or aspiration we can have for an awakened mind and put it in some context. Because when you start practicing and you start looking for peace and calm, I mean, that's the thing that everybody's trying to, I just need to get to this peace and the calm. But before that peace and calm is joy. It's almost like joy is the bridge that turns our efforts of practice, of returning to the breath,

and returning to the breath, or returning to the breath. It's like the joy is what enables us to let go of striving and relax into this more tranquil, calm, peaceful place. We need the joy to do that because without that joy, the basic effort or energy that we use to return again, to be non-judgmental, to be accepting, allowing, returning again to this neutral object, returning, returning, it in of itself can get mundane. It can get boring. You could be sitting there saying, okay, I'm coming back to the breath, coming back to the breath. And without that joy that uplift, learning to cultivate that joy,

then it's very difficult to get to the more peaceful, calmer, blissful states in meditation. And so the joy is what I would consider the bridge between the basic difficulty of settling the mind with the benefits and the reward that comes when your mind is settled. The joy is that bridge. And so it's necessary that we cultivate this, not just so I can be happy all the time. Even though I am happy all the time, that's not why we're cultivating it. We're cultivating it so that we can get to a level of calm and peace and a gathered mind.

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You can listen ad-free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app. So if I've heard you correctly, you're talking about joy writ large here, not just borrow joy, all joy as a necessary prerequisite to the states that many of us hope for when we approach meditation such as calm focus insight. And so what does that joy look like? This joy you're talking about that is the bridge in my meditation practice, how and where and why would I be feeling this? So think of it like this. You get up every morning, you sit down at your cushion and you start meditating and one morning, you are very peaceful, very quiet. I like it.

I like it. I like it. I like it. But that kind of morning isn't all the time. Some mornings you're going to get up and and you're gonna be in a grumpy mood or frustrated or irritated, afraid, anxious, all kinds of emotional energy show up every time we sit down.

But we wanna practice even with an anxious mind. We don't want the anxious mind to control our practice. We wanna be able to be with this anxious mind. So learning to access joy is how we are able to still connect with our breath and be with our practice even when we're feeling anxious or irritable or averse. Barrowing of joy that comes from Mudita is what I think we do to cultivate that access to joy. Just cultivate the access to joy and joy arises on its own. I guess what I'm trying to say is the joy that arises in practice even when you're irritable or averse

is a byproduct of cultivating mudita. As you cultivate, borrow, enjoy, it's like you get acquainted with joy. You begin to get intimate with this joy. So when you're sitting there in practice, this mind-heart system can generate that joy that you need to stay and practice when you're in a diverse mind. It leads to this calm. But if I hear you correctly, it's not like we need to be sneezing, pixie dust every time we sit down to practice.

No, not, you can't. I mean, I wish I could as long as I've been practicing. I should be like a pro at it, but I still sit down with a diverse mind and an anxious mind and, you know, all these different worried minds, you know, sleepy mind. I still sit down with the same thing, but the difference is I have access to a level of joy that I knew it's going to sound a little weird, but I'm going to enjoy being with a worried mind and

not have to do anything about it. I don't have to have the worried mind go away because I have enough interest and joy in just beginning to get to know what it's like to be with a worried mind. And it's easier for me to do it when I'm just sitting there doing nothing than it is when I'm trying to move about teaching and doing all the other things I have to do. Then the worried mind gets distracting. And so practicing what a worried mind is a good way to get to know what are the conditions that lead to worry and what are the conditions that lead to the absence of worry. and what are the conditions that lead to the absence of worry. So there is joy inherent in the capacity to sit or stand or lie down with whatever is going on in our mind and in our body at any given moment. The settling back, viewing it with interests, some warmth, lack of judgment, just that mere capacity, which by the way,

is our birthright, there's joy in that and knowing that bolstering it through the borrowing that we've discussed, is a necessary prerequisite to a successful abiding meditation practice. That's what I think. So just to put it in the framework of what you guys are doing here, being able to be with, let's say, worry, that's meta. That's what meta is. Meta is the friendliness

even in worry. What joy has to do with it is, is that if we are willing to bring that meta to the worry, then our basic cultivation of meta, but compassion, if it feels suffering, joy that we're able to stay with it, that's where I think my joy would be, is that, oh, this isn't, I got this, you know, this is like, oh, okay, I can be with this. If it's difficult, it's going to show up like compassion, you know, this sense of, oh, the suffering here. And let's look at this. I know this is hard, but there's a way in which there are times when I'm feeling worried

and I'm connected to it through the meta. And I can feel the sense of, oh, yeah, I got this. It's not really getting the best of me. Or there's this Aquanimous way in which we can begin with that you're going to talk about next week. And that too has its way of helping us turn towards this calm and stillness. But it comes in the cultivation of the Brahma-viharas that help and support us as we're sitting there with whatever arises. I keep going back to the...

It seems like the locus of the joy here is... is in the... it's not getting the best of me. Like, there's joy that comes from no matter what's going on, no matter how much tumult is playing out in your mind or pain in your body. If you can be with it without getting owned by it entirely, there's joy in that. Yes, that's what I'm saying.

That's where that joy is coming from. And it's the same joy that we cultivate in Mudita. Barrowing joy is necessary so that we can get acquainted with joy because we don't have enough joyful things happening to us as an individual for it to happen at a level that we need to be able to sit through whatever. So we borrow it from other people so we can begin to get acquainted with, to get used to it. Oh, I know what this joy is.

And then when we're sitting there with worry and we're realizing, I'm steady with this. It's not getting the best of me, as you say. Then you can begin to experience that joy. It turns into equanimity. Now you're just gonna be with it as it is. But I think we need that joy to be able to turn in some of these difficult practice states.

Yeah, I really appreciate that point. If you don't mind, I'd like to go back to the Modita, you know, feeling joy in the face of other people's joy. I really liked what you said. What I heard it as is kind of a giving permission to yourself to not feel that, to be sitting there with somebody who just won the lottery and have the mind go, you know, I could use some of that cash, having metta with your own, for like, maybe this is too harsh of a word, but maybe your own selfishness or your own self interest, having some warmth toward that, it seems like feeling that self-interest

does not preclude you from then moving or transcending it to get to the joy in other people's joy. Yes, that's true, because all practice is nuanced. All of these things that we talk about, it's nuanced. And remember when Reverend Angel was talking about, you guys had that little back and forth about people who think they're being really, really compassionate. It's more like pity. They're not really connecting with the suffering itself

because they don't even want to feel their own suffering. So this is the same kind of a nuance here. Sometimes someone is sharing something with you, but you can't seem to access the joy from whatever they're sharing. They're sharing some good fortune, but you can't seem to access the joy of it. And so it's not a situation where I should be happy every time somebody else has some good thing happen. What you're looking for is can you feel their joy? If you can't feel their joy, that's not your mudita moment. You know, you're like good for you. Okay, and move on. But someone somewhere has joy that you can access. You can share in their joy. You can feel it.

And that's what you're looking for. Are those moments, those situations where you feel the joy of someone else? And it could be in any kind of situation. It could just be in a shared conversation that someone else is having, you know, you guys are talking about something they did stood up for themselves. They finally stood up for themselves and they really said their truth, you know, and they just feel great about it. And you can feel that. You're happy too. I'm so glad you stood up for yourself. And that is where Modita is because it's in the feeling of the joy for another being. And if you don't feel it, there's no Modita there. It doesn't say anything about you and it doesn't say anything about the other person.

It's just not a moment of Modita. Modita is when you can... I know that I probably got a throw a little caveat here because in the brome of e-haras, when we teach it, we don't want to create this energy that says, oh, you got to feel it, you got to be oozing it all over the place. I realize that. But I think Modita is a little different. I think Modita, you actually have to feel another person's joy. And it's learning to feel another person's joy so that as humans,

we can learn that joy is abundant. It's always abundant. Someone's always in some joyous state. Yeah, I mean, I think I'm picking up what you're putting down here. I'm going to use this term, which I can be very careful of armor. So armor, I think, is actually generally very harmful for us. We, we arm up, armor up in response to the world when we're younger and then the work of the rest of our lives is often kind of skillfully disarming. But it sounds to me like your approach to the borrowing joy here is a kind of very healthy psychospiritual armor that allows you to navigate the suckiness of the world

with a little bit more resilience. Oh, yes. That is a good way to describe it. That's a good way to connect with it. Maybe that naturally brings us to politics because this is a bonkers election and I suspect people are thinking, okay well, we've been talking about Moodita in many ways here,

but one of them is taking joy in other people's joy. I do not want to feel happy if the people with whom I disagree in a political context are prevailing in some way. So how do I put this idea to use right now? So it's like we were just saying, if someone else prevails in whatever their strategies are and you don't want them to, that's not where you're going to find Mudita. So don't even think about that. There's no Mudita in there. That's not what Mudita is about.

But Mudita is about, this is probably the best way I can explain it as a black woman When I think about the civil rights and I hear about the things that people had to go through You know at lunch counters and with hoses of water being poured on them and all of this and the level of blatant in your face racism that was happening to black people before the civil rights movement, I can get pretty angry. And there was, I am certain, a degree of rage

that was in the black community like it is now. So in order for them to actually move in against a system that was that volatile towards them, you would have to sing gospel music to the rafters in order to get the inspiration and the energy and the joy that you can do this. This is what it takes in order to do that. So before they would do these big, huge protests, they would go to church and sing to the rafters. It's to me they were borrowing each other's joy. They were cultivating modita, a enough modita that would inspire them to stay through whatever difficulty they had to have.

And that's really what modita is for. It is protection in the level of suffering that humans exist in. And we need to combat that, if you know, using all these warrior kind of words, but in a way, it's like a warrior sense when you're thinking about social unrest and social injustice and inequality and all of it. You need to have enough inspiration and willingness that will allow you to show up. And even though friendliness of meta allows us to love at this unworldly

level and compassion allows us to be with suffering up close. You need the joy to stay in there. You need joy in order to not get burned up and bitter and cynical and just angry all the time. You need the joy to be able to get up and do this day after day, after day, after after day after day. And that's probably one of the great gifts of being an African-American person is that we are a people full of laughter.

And no matter how difficult things are, we can always get together and laugh, you know, I'm talking big, loud, belly laughs, just huge laughter because it's inherent in suffering that laughter has to be there. And that's part of why I think it's important that we cultivate joy right now and stay with it. You know, it's like, it's the bridge that's gonna get us through this difficulty and this ability to stay connected. You use this beautiful, really inspirational example

of singing to the rafters in a civil rights context before going out to protests, which at that time, and now, but definitely at that time, could involve risk to life and limb. I had a much more ridiculous example come to mind as I contemplate your the strategy you're describing here, which is I never actually played this game, but I remember as a journalist covering the Pokemon Go craze where people would walk around collecting these, using their phones to find these digital characters and hidden all over the place and just swallowing them up and collect these points. And it seems to me like you're doing some sort of very healthy, non-tech version of that just walking around through the world like,

oh, there's some joy over there, got it. Oh, but there's a cat video, got that, et cetera, et cetera. Oh, I just heard about somebody graduate from high school and they're psyched, got it, but mine, and you're collecting all of that and using it in your meditation practice. And as you, like every other citizen of this country, watch all the craziness that's transpiring during the selection. Yeah, that's what you're doing. That's what we joke. It can kill us. It can dissolve us into such a level of bitterness and cynicism that we, you know, depression is a killer, basically. And so, we don't want to be stuck in so much suffering that we can't get up every day and go out and fight yet again, struggle yet again.

We want to be able to get up every day and face these things. You know, I remember in my own scenario when I always send the younger president Bush, I always send him meta all the time and it's quite strange because when he got elected I was Just boiling I was over the top in rage and I I believe the whole world was falling apart If he were elected and then when he got reelected, it was even worse. But his presidency was a turning point for me, an anger, and modita. A friend of mine and I used to go to protest marches all over the country. They were all over the country.

But most people don't even know the amount of protests that were going on against the Iraq war all over the country and the hundreds of thousands of people that were showing up at these protest marches because they would never barely put on the news. So I would go to some protest march in Chicago, my mother when I get home, she'd say, oh, I'm sorry you didn't have your protest. But I'm like, there were like half a million people there. But what I felt between the marching, the being with people, the yelling, the getting, the energy out, the laughter at these marches, I was so steeped in joy and so grounded in this sense that I'm not crazy. I know what it is that I'm thinking here. And I remember

getting a sense when I would go around my friends who did not go on these marches, they were so bitter, so angry, so disgruntled. And I could never get them to see. I'd say, we need to go to some protest marches. You should come with me. We're gonna have a great time. And there'd be like, nothing happens. It's not working. Nothing's happening. And they're so angry. But what I begin to realize is that my ability to stay upbeat and positive is what was changing. That is what was keeping me sending letters, doing all this efforting that I had to do, keeping people together, helping people who were struggling, all of that came because I had this upbeat energy.

And many of my friends were spiraling into this constant complaining, but they did not have the energy to do anything other than that, just complain. And so if you think about it as big as the social problems and difficulties that we have to face, it is going to take a lot of energy to move against the system like that. I mean, if we're talking about systematic racism, if you think about it, to move against the entire system of being and not completely send a spiraling into a massive depression in a country, a massive economic mess, then we're gonna have to uproot a system

that's gonna take a lot of energy and a lot of effort and a lot of work. A lot of being with people and a lot of connecting and all kinds of things. Without the inspiration and the joy, then you're just going to be angrier and angrier and angrier. I don't have a problem with anger because believe me, I love anger. It's what motivates us and moves us. But anger can burn us if we don't have it balanced

with joy to keep us steady upright. So you have the energy of the anger that's going to move you and you need the joy to keep you steady and balanced. You have done a phenomenal job of talking about joy in sub-optimal times. I have one final question which is you said something early on that I suspect is buzzing around in the Back of the minds of listeners that I feel responsible to just chase down to so that people can understand it Which is you said you took a vow of celibacy and yet you also mentioned you had a son which I Came after So what what is that story?

I know it's not fully related, but just in closing here, just so that I served the listener. I have two sons. It was after my son's birth. So definitely after that. And it was several years after they were teenagers. And I just, it was just this personal choice I made that I was very young.

I was only 34 and I, it just felt like that was the choice that I needed to make at the time. I just, I don't know. I just, I don't know how to describe it, but relationships and I were not necessarily, it was just wasn't working out. Probably, you know, I had a lot to do with my growing up. And so this choice came, at first, I thought I was gonna be just a miserable old woman, you know, just mad all the time. But it didn't turn out like that at all. It just turned

out to be the perfect choice for me to make in my life. But it didn't do anything for my loving romantic comedy. And it doesn't do anything for my need to know there are people who are coupled and they love each other and they're all hugging and kissing and all of that. I love it. And what I realized is that I didn't have to give up my love for that just because I gave up the actual relationship. I still enjoy watching love and couples and just the connection that comes from that love and so yeah that's just part and parcel of what Medita does. It helps us be with the things that we really love and enjoy and at the same time you know it just gives us access to the freedom that comes with it. For you, the foreswaring of romantic relationships, did it clear out time and energy to devote to meditation, Buddhism, teaching?

Yes, most definitely. I was definitely going into a much deeper meditative practice. And so that was part of the choice that it was part of this connection to wanting to practice a little bit more deeper. Well, we're all benefiting from it. Yeah, good. So one last question here actually, you're handing off the baton now to Rochie Joan Halifax, who's going to talk about equanimity. Any words of wisdom, advice, anything as you hand the aforementioned baton off? Yeah, I think what I would really hope that Jones can speak to Rochie Jones is that how do we keep equanimity as a strength and not have it kind of move into indifference. How do we keep it alive and upbeat and not dull?

I think that's the difficulty with equanimity is you can get a little dull and so how do we keep it vibrant and upbeat? Perfect. That's very good for me to keep in mind as I go into that interview with Grocery Jones. So thank you again. This has been Delight. I have derived joy from sitting and talking to you. So I am grateful. Welcome. Thank you, Dad. I'm so glad that you invited me, you know, so, you know, because these are difficult times and we need your way to get us through it. So I'm glad you guys are doing this.

Very nice. Big thanks to Tawari. Really enjoyed that. And I have fun not only recording this podcast, but also doing the video segments, which will be used in the free the video segments, which will be used in the free election sanity challenge, which we're going to be running in the days leading up to election day. If you want to join that challenge, as I mentioned at the top of the show, just download the

10% happier app today. Before the challenge starts, you can just start using those meditations in there to help you keep calm. And then we'll see you in the challenge itself with thousands of other meditators and that starts again on Tuesday, October 27th. Big thanks to the team who helped put this together. Samuel Johns is our senior producer and Marissa Schneiderman is our producer. Our sound designer is Matt Boynton of ultraviolet audio, Maria Whartell is our production coordinator. We've got a ton of incredibly useful wisdom and insight and guidance from our TPH colleagues,

such as Ben Rubin, Jen Poient, and Natoby and Liz Levin. And extended thank you to all the folks who helped put this series together and the coming election sanity challenge. Jade Weston, Jessica Goldberg, Crystal Isaac Matthew, Hepburn, Julia Wu, Nico Johnson, Allison Bryant, Josh Berkowitz, Clea Stagnity, Lizzie Hope, Zoolika Hassan, Connor Donahue, Derek Haswell, Eva Brightonbach, and many more. Lastly, I would be remiss if I didn't send some gratitude out to my ABC News colleagues, Ryan Kessler and Josh Cohan.

We'll see you all on Wednesday for a fascinating episode with country music star Brett Eldridge, who really goes there and takes us inside his mind. The mind of somebody who's doing a ton of work on his own mental well-being. We don't do a lot of celebrity interviews these days, but this one absolutely worth it, utterly fascinating. We're gonna see you on Wednesday for that. 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.

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