Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 294: Vitamin E: How To Cultivate Equanimity Amidst Political Chaos | Election Sanity Series | Roshi Joan Halifax

Episode Date: October 26, 2020

#294: Vitamin E: How To Cultivate Equanimity Amidst Political Chaos | Election Sanity Series | Roshi Joan Halifax It’s part four in our Election Sanity series. Throughout October, we have been trying to help you stay engaged in current events without losing your mind. As you know, we’ve been drawing on an ancient Buddhist list called The Four Brahma Viharas, which are four mental skills that can be enormously useful. Over the last three episodes, we’ve taken deep dives into loving-kindness (or friendliness), compassion (or giving a crap), and sympathetic joy (the opposite of schadenfreude). This week, it’s equanimity, the secret sauce that allows you to apply to aforementioned skills in difficult times. Our guest this week is perfect for this subject, precisely because she freely admits that equanimity -- which she calls “vitamin E” -- doesn’t come easily for her. Roshi Joan Halifax is a Buddhist teacher, Zen priest, anthropologist, and pioneer in the field of end-of-life care. She’s been passionately politically engaged for much of her life-- and, as you will hear, she doesn’t hold back on her own personal views, even as she calls for extending respect to people with whom we disagree. Wherever you stand politically, this interview is filled with practical advice for cultivating equanimity without going dull. Quick reminder before we dive in: our Free Election Sanity meditation challenge starts in the Ten Percent Happier app TOMORROW, you can join the challenge right now by downloading the Ten Percent Happier app and be ready for day 1 of the challenge tomorrow. We're really excited about this Challenge. We designed it specifically to meet you in this moment and help you lean into the commotion of the election, without getting burnt out or overwhelmed. To join the Challenge, just download the Ten Percent Happier app today. See you in there. This interview was recorded on October 7, 2020. Where to find Roshi Joan Halifax online: Website: https://www.upaya.org/about/roshi/ Social Media: •   Twitter: https://twitter.com/jhalifax •   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/joan.halifax Other Resources Mentioned: •   Shantideva: https://www.shambhala.com/authors/o-t/shantideva.html •   Thich Nhat Hanh: https://plumvillage.org/about/thich-nhat-hanh/biography/ •   Angela Davis: https://www.biography.com/activist/angela-davis •   Eli Pariser: https://www.elipariser.org/ •   Kazuaki Tanahashi: https://www.brushmind.net/ •   Eight Worldly Winds: https://www.lionsroar.com/buddhism-by-the-numbers-the-eight-worldly-concerns/ •   Uchiyama Roshi: https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/506986.Kosho_Uchiyama Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/joan-halifax-294 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 gang, it's part four in our election sanity series throughout October. We've been trying to help you stay engaged in current events without losing your mind. As you know, we've been drawing on an ancient Buddhist list called the Four Brahma Viharas, which are four mental skills that can be enormously helpful. Over the last three episodes, we've taken deep dives into loving kindness or friendliness, compassion or giving a crap and sympathetic joy, which I call the opposite of Shaddon Freud.

This week, it's equanimity. The secret sauce that allows you to apply all of the aforementioned skills in difficult times. Our guest this week is perfect for this subject, precisely because she freely admits that equanimity, which she calls vitamin E, does not come easily for her. Roshi Joan Halifax is a Buddhist teacher, is an priest, anthropologist, and pioneer in the field

of end of life care. She's been passionately politically engaged for pretty much all her life. And as you will hear, she does not hold back on her own personal views, even as she calls for extending respect to people with whom we disagree. Wherever you stand politically, this interview is filled with practical advice for cultivating equanimity as she calls for extending respect to people with whom we disagree. Wherever you stand politically, this interview is filled with practical advice for cultivating

equanimity without going dull. Quick reminder before we dive in, our free election sanity meditation challenge starts in the 10% happier app tomorrow. You can join the challenge right now by downloading the 10% happier app and be ready for day one of the challenge, which again starts tomorrow. You can join the challenge right now by downloading the 10% happier app and be ready for day one of the challenge, which again starts tomorrow. We're really excited about this thing. We designed it specifically to help you meet this moment and lean in to the commotion of the election without getting burnt out or overwhelmed or anything else that you don't want to join the challenge. Just download the 10% happier app today.

I'll see you in there. It's gonna be great. That said, here we go with today's episode with Rochie Joan Halifax. Okay, well Rochie Joan, great to see you. Thanks for doing this. It's wonderful to see you again, Dan. Thank you so much for inviting me and also giving me this interesting assignment, which, as I said to the people who are in the background organizing, if there is one boundless abode that I need to work

on, it is equanimity. Why is equanimity so challenging for you? I think because I'm a passionate person, I also may be more in touch with contemporary events than some practitioners. And I think really since the mid 60s, I've been socially engaged and have a sense of what it is to actualize justice in a world that is increasingly fraught and increasingly unfair. So, you know, I feel the suffering. I have a lot of loving kindness toward people. Sympathetic joy is very accessible to me.

And of course, as you know, Dan, I spent many years studying compassion and then working in the end of life care field, really working on developing the strength of compassion in my own life. But equanimity has been the, if you will, the biggest assignment, but the one I'm least compelled to explore. So I, you know, I thank your team for asking me to do this because it gave me a chance to look at my own behavior, but also how important this

quality is in the world today. Do you have a suspicion perhaps even subconsciously that equanimity would be the enemy of effective social engagement? Well, as you know, the near enemy of equanimity is indifference. And sometimes equanimity in the literature has been described as neutrality. So I think that the near-enemy expression of what we know as equanimity is a challenge. But I looked in as equanimity is having big arms, not arms that are overweight per se,

but big arms so big that it can hold everything. It rejects nothing. And this kind of reminds me of what it is to be a grandmother. You know, it's an expression of grandmother's heart. That's an expression we used in Zen, Robeye Shin. This is a heart that is without fear. So, you know, anytime we hold something apart from us, we're afraid of it. And grandmother's heart means we're including everything. I want to go deep on this concept of grandmother's heart, which you wrote about in a recently published essay,

which we'll link to in the show notes. But let me just step back for a second. How do we define equanimity? What is it? Well, the polyword is interesting. The polyword is Upeca, and it literally means to look over another way of describing it is to look with patience. And I've described it as a kind of metacognition where you are bearing witness internally to whatever is arising and holding whatever is arising, not pushing it away, not grasping it,

and holding whatever is arising, not pushing it away, not grasping it, not being ruled by like and dislike, but actually, equanimity has this quality that is quite fascinating. In other words, you know, I use the image of Robyson of Grandmother's Heart. And Grandmother's heart has this feeling of, you know, I've lived a life I've given birth to children. My children have given birth to children. I've seen birth and death, birth and death. And grandmother's heart has wisdom, has insight. So it is why I believe equanimity is laced throughout the different exalted lists of realization in Buddhism.

But it is not to be clear a sort of bovine neutrality. Not at all. In fact, I think it's really the opposite. It is to have that internal capacity to be deeply grounded, to have a strong back, which I'll be sharing in the meditation, but also an open front, a front that is wide open and that allows for one's subjectivity, one's sense of self to expand into an experience of radical inclusivity. So, let's just go over that again because the last time you were on the show, you talked about strong backs off front and I think it's worth saying more about it because it is something we can bring into our daily lives just by thinking about our posture.

So can you just give us a few more paragraphs on how to operationalize this idea of strong backs off front? So Dan, this is a beautiful physical metaphor for an internal state, which actually gives us the capacity to uphold ourselves in the midst of any conditions and not to turn away from whatever's arising.

And so, you know, in the meditation that I teach Dan using this physical metaphor, but it's also an embodied experience. It's not simply a metaphor. I begin with inviting people first to allow their attention to be in the breath, to just begin that embodiment process, and then inviting people to get grounded, and then to move their attention to their motivation.

You know, why are you doing this practice? It's so important that we have an altruistic intention. And you know, that sets the field, that sets the feeling, if you will. And then we begin this exploration through the body which allows us to cultivate or nourish qualities of heart and mind that give us strength to be in the world and to connect deeply. So I often begin that part of the process with an invitation to people or for

people to get grounded, to maybe bring your attention to your feet on the floor or your sits bones on a cushion, and to understand that mental stability and embodied stability affects our capacity to see clearly. It's very important if we're up-regulated if our attention is all over the place, if we're moving out of anxiety, then we don't see reality very clearly. We lack insight, we lack wisdom. So being grounded is very essential. And then to shift our attention to our back, there's a physical metaphor, but also as an embodied experience. And the images of strong back, even if your back isn't so healthy, then relating it a little bit more to the notion of a metaphor, but still this capacity to uphold ourselves in the midst of extraordinary complexity.

And Dan, part of this has to do with not being a stiff, if you will, you know, corpse-like, but having like a stalk of bamboo, being nimble, being flexible, being pliable, because this is very important. If we're rigid, if the back is rigid, it can break. If we're mentally rigid, we can crack. And crack can not necessarily a good way. So this sense of dignity, of presence, of upholding ourselves in the midst of all this complexity, and also presence that is so important I have found in working with dying people of the kind of work that I have done in the prison system with people on death row, men on death row, and also just with students who are up-regulated or people suffering from deep grief, Being present and having the strength there and complemented by this open front, our capacity to really stay open and to bear witness, be present for whatever is happening. You know, I learned so much from my teacher, Rochie Bernie Glassman about this when we were doing bearing witness retreats in Auschwitz.

What is it to sit in a concentration camp and try to concentrate? What is it to walk into the Auschwitz see a case filled with human hair or another case of children's shoes or another glass case of eye glasses or stacks of suitcases. What is it to bear witness to the truth of suffering? And that is really, I believe, Dan, what is required today as we move through this process that we call election. You know, this run up to the election is extraordinary. We never, as far as my lifetime is concerned, we've never approached anything like this. We thought that the Gore Bush, Mr. Goss, was crazy enough. But this really between the pandemic, the behavior of our fearless leader, so to speak,

and also the polarization and extraordinary racism in our country right now, combined with the climate catastrophe, we need to be grounded, have a strong back and an open front. We need to see things clearly, and we need to act out of that wisdom. And that is what this meditation is about.

It is about the embodiment of equanimity, which is, as I said in the beginning, the actualization of these big arms that can hold anything and uphold oneself as we're holding the suffering of the world. So the duality of strong back, soft front allows us to both be grounded and dignified in the face of the vexations and vicissitudes of life, but also open and soft and receptive to the suffering and the net effect of this combination is the kind of balance that equanimity entails. Dan, you're the perfect student. Thank you. Thank you so much.

But you know, Dan, it's actually not a duality because equanimity entails compassion and compassion entails or includes equanimity. They are not separate. They inter are. And I think this is one of the really important aspects of this boundless abode to understand, for example, that the preceding three boundless abodes of loving kindness, compassion, and sympathetic joy all reside within the geography of equanimity. I want to mention something else.

First, as I said, strong back, soft front, these are not separate qualities, just like the back of your body is not separate from the front of your body. You can't have one without the other. So that's a very important thing to consider, that they are, if you will, two sides of the same coin. But another thing is to play with the metaphor a little bit more. And that is what is it to have a strong front and a soft back, right? So you know, it's very interesting because if you look at some of our

politicians, they are embodying exactly these characteristics, this defended front, this kind of puffed up chest, this sort of armor of identity in the front of themselves. And actually what's happening on the backside, so to speak, is fear, is a weak back. They're unable to uphold themselves in the midst of conditions. And this is just so important for us to notice. You know, when you see somebody who has that strong front, you know, really stuck on their identity,

then you begin to realize what's behind them, actually what's in them right now, is fear because so much energy is being put forth in defining and defending the self and not recognizing with strong backs off front that our subjectivity, our self, is interrelated with all beings and things, even the most malicious politician, upregulated politician. we enter our with this person. It's so interesting you talk about hard front softback. As I listen back to many of the episodes of this podcast, sometimes I'll go back and

listen back. A big theme that seems to emerge is that, and I've mentioned this a few times recently, so I apologize to listeners if I'm being repetitive. But a big theme that seems to emerge is that we armor up quite naturally, often early on in our lives in response to the harshness of the world, the threats of the world, and that in many ways, the job of the rest of our life is to see the radical power of disarmament,

because that armor is preventing us from being real, from being all those annoyingly, cloying cliche words like authentic, or et cetera, et cetera, that the armor is preventing us from connecting to other people, et cetera, et cetera. So it seems like this is the job. And I'm really grateful that you mentioned this because exactly Dan, this is the issue at hand, that whether it's global armament, if you will, it's bringing munitions that are embodied,

that is physical munitions, appointing nuclear weapons at each other. This is really coming out of strong front, soft back, or whether it's indirect in terms of the bullying that is happening, for example, between our country, from our country to other nations, to other world leaders. So you see this behavior and you realize, ah-huh, okay. How do we actually not separate ourselves

from the experience of this aggressive, hostile, disparaging, bullying, disrespectful behavior? And recently I picked up a nice little bit from a wonderful meditation teacher. She was quoting Mahatma Gandhi and she said, once Gandhi was asked, what would you do if a plane was flying over your ashram with the intention from with the intention to bomb you. And Gandhi answered, I would pray for the pilot. And this is actually something I think many of us are doing right now.

We're praying that so and so wins. I personally am praying that Biden and Harris prevail is looking hopeful, but also I'm praying for Trump. Yeah, I'm sending him meta. I'm recognizing the quality of mind that he's in right now, which is really fear-based. That is suffering. And I wish him to move out of that suffering.

Maybe it won't happen in this lifetime. Maybe next, who knows? But still, he has earned that consideration by virtue of the fact of that anger, anguish, fear, rage, need to control, need to display his masculinity. That is suffering. That's very tough road of hope. And so like Gandhi, but he would do it much better. I think many of us are praying for the pilot, so to speak. You mentioned this before, but I think it's worth expanding that equanimity is the final of the four Brahmavaharas, the four immeasurable, the four heavenly abodes, whatever grandiose title you want to give this list. Can you say more about why it's the final quality or mental skill in this

list and how it interacts with the three preceding. So yeah, I think what is so interesting is that equanimity is actually the last in several lists, which are about spiritual development or about spiritual formation and the experience of awakening. For example, it is the last in the four boundless abodes, the Brahma-Viharas. It's the last in the ten paramedas, the ten perfections. It's the ultimate jhana, the ultimate form of absorption, experience of absorption. And it's the last of the seven factors of awakening. So it is perceived from the point of view of Buddha's experience,

but I feel very aligned with having equanimity, being the, if you will, a fulfillment of all the other characteristics in these various lists. I'm pointing to back again to this sense of the capacity, not to turn away in fear or a version from anything that is rising in reality, not to grasp or cling, but to be certainly not to be indifferent, and not to fomentent cruelty, but it's that capacity to actually grandmother's heart, roe by shin, to open our arms and to take everything into what is our subjectivity, our experience in this moment. So in a way, we could look on it as the quintessential factor of realization. Equanimity is. And specifically, as it pertains to this list, the forebrum of the horrors, why is equanimity

so important? In some ways, it doesn't seem, at first blush, it doesn't seem related to these warm, often called heart qualities of loving kindness and compassion and sympathetic joy, then there's equanimity. And it's like, wait, wait, is that a non-sequitor? So why is it the fourth and final here? And why is it so important in terms of operationalizing the preceding three? I think that there is a structure here that requires a foundation.

And that foundation includes the other three promovary horrors that is to say, equanimity without loving kindness is cold. Equanimity without compassion doesn't care. Equanimity without altruistic or sympathetic joy is non-affected in the sense of positivity, is not lifted up by the joy of others. So, you know, these characteristics, the preceding qualities, are it really important and they inter-are with equanimity because we also know

that loving kindness without equanimity produces, conduces to the near enemy, if you will, of loving kindness, which is attachment. And the far enemy of loving kindness, we know is of hatred. So, you know, if equanimity isn't there, making, if you will, providing the balance for a love and kindness to be grounded, it can even flip into hatred. And the same is true of compassion. You know, compassion is this capacity to attend deeply to another and to have the feeling of concern arising within one about the other suffering and then having the capacity to actually discern what might serve and the deep aspiration to end that person or being suffering. Without the grounding, without the ballast of equanimity, compassion becomes pity or it lapses into empathy, which is, you know, empathy is important, but empathy that is not regulated can lead to over-identification. Or compassion can

flip into cruelty. And the same with sympathetic joy. Having the vitamin, if you will, of equanimity, in the experience of feeling the great heart, joy, well-being, good luck, good fortune, blessing that another has experienced, that sense of deep resonance when you see another benefit. But without equanimity being there, it can move into a kind of mind of comparison. well, what about me? Or even into too much exuberance and Equanimity gives sympathetic joy is the sense of love and gravity and brings wisdom to bear and Of course the the far enemy of sympathetic joy is of envy. So Equanimity is if you will it's kind of like vitamin D, but in this case, it's vitamin E.

You know, we need it. We need the sunshine of equanimity in our lives. Yeah, it's the linchpin here. And the way you describe the sort of, how the qualities, the three preceding qualities flow into it. And then equanimity flows back into the preceding qualities flow into it, and then equanimity flows back into the preceding qualities is quite beautiful and useful. And now that we really have a full understanding

of how important equanimity is, let's go back to how hard it has been for you, because in discussing that, I think you give us all permission to view this as a practice, not as some sort of immediately attainable perfection. So right before we started rolling, you were saying that you woke up in the middle of the night, last night worrying about something having to do with current events, just to point out that equanimity is not something that just comes naturally to you.

Thank you for raising the curtains, so to speak, opening the window. It's true. I woke up at 3 a.m. even though I'm in the mountains and up at 9,400 feet surrounded by 3 million acres of national forest. I came down to you, Pia, today, Dan, because we're on satellite. I'm on satellite there. So the transmission isn't always so good. So your team wanted me to come down, which I didn't want to, by the way. Thanks a lot. It's not that I'm indifferent to the world, but I would rather be at a higher altitude, so to speak, literally and figuratively. But in any case, through satellite, I'm able to keep up with what's happening in the world

through the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, and Twitter. I curate my Twitter stream carefully, as you can imagine. So in any case, I woke up at 3, and I know quite a bit about steroids. When we're at high altitude, you know, working in the Himalayas, if people move into altitude sickness, often our team will give them, you know, exactly what Trump has been given. And, woo, that is a ride. You know, it enhances one's sense of omnipotence in a way that is really a little eerie to observe. And I kept thinking, you know, already this person is grandiose. He's sick. We do

not know. Have a clear picture of what's going on clinically, though we did see him like a goldfish out of his bowl gasping on the balcony. And, you know, I'm sending him lots of loving kindness, compassion, but I woke up at three. And I was worried for our nation and the world because it's very difficult to manage one self in this upregulated state, and it's also very difficult to manage anyone in that kind of state. And I, you know, I saw I sat up at three in the morning and I took some really deep breaths and And like Gandhi said, I sent the pilot, loving kindness, compassion. There wasn't any sympathetic joy, you know, there's this. But I sent him,

may you find balance as you move through the journey of this illness. But I noticed my own heart was beating harder than usual. I have very good cardiovascular system. I also noticed that my mind, internal experience, I was up-regulated. And that the irony was I was coming down from the mountain to talk to you this morning about equanimity and it took an hour for me to sort through the threads of my

concern but I did not want to reject the concern. I wanted to actually keep it alive because I think it's an important part of my nature to stay in touch with the truth of suffering. But finally, to apply a method, if you will, to allow myself to down-regulate and go back to sleep. So I wouldn't be a complete wreck during our interview from Sleep Loss. Ha-ha. Much more by conversation with Rosci Joan Halifax right after this.

Hey, I'm Aresha and I'm Brooke. And where the hosts of Wonder E's 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 threatened to veer Ru off course. In our series RuPaul born naked. We'll

show you how RuPaul 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. A comment and a question to comment is I am actually increasingly familiar with the effects of steroids because I was on a meditation retreat for the last couple of weeks in Maine and I got a horrible case of poison IV and so they put me on steroids and primarily I noticed two things.

One, horrible acid reflux and two, seeing real rage arise in my mind. I didn't feel I'm nipin' it, but I definitely felt at key moments, especially if I was driving just real anger coming up in ways that I had never seen or I hadn't recently seen. And so yeah, it's a, those steroids are no joke. The question, though, for you is, as somebody who's engaged in the work of boosting equanimity, have you considered not looking at Twitter anymore or reducing your news consumption? You know, I do reduce my news consumption every day or so, partly because I go out and hike into mountains in order to transform my sense of helplessness

into some sense of agency. I think this is a really important point, though, Dan. In Zen, we talk about the Supreme Meal, we say, roll everything into your practice, but I also feel like doom scrolling, news obsession, the reality theater, the president's health, looking at the incredible polarization in our country. You know, we're really, really, interesting process right now. And it is like a sort of serial tragedy or a serial mystery. We are not content with just letting go, enresting and not knowing, and letting the nervous system rest.

You know, I'm in a place where, if I'm at UPAI, there's meditation various times every day. There's teaching that one must do. When you're my age, you keep yourself as physically fit as possible. So when I'm up in the mountains, I'll be, you know,

whole days, nights without any input from the outside world. But I remember one of my Tibetan teachers, Chagdu Tukur Rinpoche, he said, it's really, this was in the television era. And he said, it's really important to watch television. And I'm like, oh, you've got to be kidding. And he used TV as a way to strengthen his equanimity. And I also have followed that practice. Do not turn away from the truth of suffering, walking into the charnel ground of a prison, walking into the pod of death row inmates, going to Auschwitz, standing in the midst of hospital charnel ground. These are places where there's extreme suffering.

Do you over-identify or do you objectify? Do you find that sweet spot in the middle between the two poles in the Char- in Charnal Ground practice where you're not dissociating, you're not bypassing, but you're also not overwhelmed by the truth of suffering. So, you know, sometimes I go on tilt, you know, I wrote the books, standing at the edge. I talk about it. You go over the edge. And what Bill's character damn is that you're able to actually, you know, crawl out of the mud and back up the mountain to stand at the top and you develop strength and character by falling over the edge. But it's not that we have to seek the edge. The edge finds us and it's not that we have to throw ourselves

over the edge. We don't. We will get pitched. No, listening to you, I find myself toggling back and forth because I work and obviously leading in the news business. And so I'm exposed to a lot of news. And I cover a lot of really disturbing stories. But I think that I've probably developed some conscious or subconscious coping mechanisms

where either I'm protecting myself from really taking it all in because I'm in the role of journalists or I'm able to tune it out in some way because I listen to you and I think wow, Roshi Jones just sounds like such a raw nerve. Like she's taking it in in such a powerful way. And yeah, I get upset by things in the news, but I'm pretty easy. It's pretty easy for me to switch my subject to, yeah, Bianca, what are we going to watch on Netflix tonight?

Or I got to take my son to Cubscouts tonight or, you know, worrying about some ridiculously narrow selfish concern, whereas when I hear from you this really unaffected concern for the well-being of the nation and the world and I don't know where I'm going with this, but I toggle back and forth between thinking that's great and wow, that seems like a burden. And wow, maybe I'm doing it wrong. You know, I love what is holiness. The Dalai Lama says, there are 84,000 Darmadors.

And each one of us has a diet appropriate for ourselves. My particular ingredients, you know, you're getting some sense of, I think this is our third interaction. You're getting some sense of, you know, the ingredients that are appropriate to keep me alive and aligned with my values. You know, other people have other ingredients.

I think what's important though, Dan, is that we don't engage in kind of monodiet, that we need to have a very diet. It's not that I'm just sitting there feeding on suffering. Hardly, I have so much beauty and joy in my life. Such deep friendships, so many good laughs, where I have the, you know, the blessing, instead of flying around the world,

which I have for decades, sharing teachings with others. I have the blessing. I'm in super quarantine. OK, there's no plumbing. OK, there's no central heat. I get to put little wood in my wood stove every night to keep myself warm up there at 9,400 feet.

But I have a varied diet. And this includes taking direct draft, if you will, of the truth of what's happening in our world. And then balancing all of that, which allows me to open my heart to our fearless leaders, so to speak, with some humor, grandmother's heart, some tenderness, concern, but also I look out and at the blazing fall, the incredible aspentries like personal cathedral, that your natural cathedral, you're out there, you know, and it's all gold with spikes of red. And that is important. You just cannot stay in the suffering. That's what's so beautiful about the Brahma-Vihars

is that you have four different kinds of vitamins, if you will, loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity. And when you have them in combo, the possibility for health is present. I love that. I think you've answered in many ways the question I'm about to ask you, but I feel compelled to ask you again because I suspect that even in the repetition there will be new gems. So as you know, at the end of the last episode on sympathetic joy, the meditation teacher

who we interviewed on that subject to aerie salat, had a question for you, which was, how do we keep equanimity alive, vibrant, and upbeat as opposed to dull, which is often the case for equanimity? What response do you have to that question? I don't think that I've experienced equanimity as dull. Actually, I've experienced it. The opposite is brilliant. And so, you know, how do I keep it brilliant?

Well, you know, one of my personal secrets is a sense of humor. I find both humor that is, you know, I find many things very funny. And I have friends who love to laugh. I actually have friends who tease me mercilessly and cause me no end to my own personal upwelling of joy. I love to be effectively teased, if you will. Not meanly teased. The know, the only people who can really tease me well are my really close friends that you just, they know how to get me laughing.

But, you know, part of it is to understand that when equanimity becomes dull, it is a withdrawal. It's a kind of bypassing. And so if you're bypassing, then you know, it probably means you need a little bit more of the vitamin of loving kindness. And you can be the recipient of it through friendship, you can give it to countless beings, but it's good to actually warm the heart, moisten the heart intentionally. As I understand, meta or loving kindness, having practiced it a little bit, you can, and this may not be the appropriate phrase,

but there's a little bit of faking it until you make it. In other words, at least what I've liked about the instructions when I've heard them is that you are repeating, you're envisioning a being and you're repeating phrases like maybe happy, maybe safe. And you don't actually have to feel anything. It's just about going through the motions of working the muscle of sending the good wishes.

And maybe the emotional company is it, maybe it doesn't. So there's a certain amount of like, let's just do the reps. With, as my understanding, you're arguing with equanimity, you really can't fake equanimity. You know, Dan, first of all, if you think about the reps that most of us are engaged in, for example, the rep of disparagement, the rep of despair, the rep of anger, that's what's going on inside of our mind. And we're reinforcing that content in a way that is really unhealthy. And again, my work in relation to healthcare professionals and being in environments where there is horizontal hostility, you know,

greege's disrespect, really coming out of a negative or toxic reps, so to speak. So what I believe is happening in this experience is, you know, pretty much as you describe it, you're changing the under-mutter, you're shifting the narrative, which is habitual to a habit that is prosocial, less toxic. I think this is a very clever strategy, because it's changing, if you will, what's called the store consciousness, the content within the store consciousness,

within the pre-conscious level of our experience. So I think it's a very handy, dandy strategy, actually, brilliant on the part of the Buddha. And it also, Dan, we well know it can produce cynicism, skepticism, it can produce cynicism, skepticism, alienation, and everything that we're aware of in the shadow. And that is for us to see as well. How sneaky the ego is. The ego will simply, you know, it's like an assassin of the good. It's just, you know, waiting behind the biggest rock It's just, you know, waiting behind the biggest rock for any morsel of goodness to come and it attacks. So, you know, you have to look, oh, this is a rising. And you turn loving kindness towards your ego, not buying it, buying into it, being consumed by some kind of sentimental relationship to it, but to recognize, ah, this is exactly the landscape where I suffer.

Is there more to say about how we can cultivate equanimity in meditation? You talked about the practice of strong backs off front. Are, you know, I know in some schools of Buddhism there are also phrases that can be used. So do you have any further thoughts on the meditative cultivation of Upeca? Well, I think the phrases are wonderful. The first foundation of mindfulness is mindfulness of the body.

The body is the repository of a huge amount of information. And so as a result of that, most of us are dissociated from the body because we don't want to listen. But in this case, listening to the body and noticing when the gut grips, when the heart rate increases, when the tension in the shoulder or the jaw is present, the body is saying, whoa, I am struggling in a certain way to keep balance in the midst of conditions, and then working with the breath to help regulate, and then

very importantly, this has to do with recalling our motivation. I want to transform my suffering in order to benefit others, but in the meantime, I want to bring as many to the other shore as possible. So, I heard two things in there, the second of which I want to explore a little bit further because it's an area of personal curiosity and fascination for me. So, the first thing was a one way to cultivate upekko or equanimity is just to watch how your body is reacting, especially as you're watching the news during this election season.

And just by seeing it and letting it go over and over and over again, you are cultivating a sense of steadiness and ease in the face of all of the tumult that may be available to you on your television or on on the screen of your phone. The second thing I heard was that another way to cultivate equanimity is to get in touch with your motivation. I don't think most people do this systematically. So might be worth you saying more about how we can do that to identify and then to have a system where we're identifying our motivation

and then reminding ourselves of it on the regular. You know, I think this is such an important piece to explore right now because without touching into a motivation that is unselfish, that is fundamentally altruistic, we will just be on a big self-improvement program. And that is, I don't think what this practice is about. This practice is about, and I'm thinking a lot about Tick-N-Tot Han, by the way, Shanti Deva as well, and many great yogis in the history of Buddhism. And it is this realization that we are not separate from each other. And that in the deepest kind of awakening,

it is awakening to interconnectedness, interdependence, and interpenetration. And that is, I think, critical. So, for example, in one of these early Indian texts, Shanti David talks about, you know, you're walking along, you step on a thorn, and your right hand immediately goes to your foot to pull the thorn out of your foot. And it's an automatic reaction. And so what equanimity and compassion and loving kindness and sympathetic joy provide us is if you will the landscape where we are not separate from all beings and things. And as such, then, this motivation, which is not just about, I'm going to be enlightened. I'm pushing for

enlightenment, this credible commodification of liberation, wild. This is actually something totally different. May I serve others bringing them to the other shore, even before my own awakening, my own liberation. So having that motivation, which is deeply altruistic, is, I believe, key in our practice right now, because it allows us not to have the ego reified, whereas if we're going just for our personal enlightenment. Of course, the ego is completely reified. It's substantiated, it gets substantial. But this is a brilliant early Buddhist strategy from basically around the time of Jesus, where the things, you know, Buddhism began to transform into a Mahayana perspective. And what opened up was this vision of deep interconnectedness. Therefore, this unsalphished motivation is liberating. And it perfumes our practice.

It perfumes our life. You know, if you're a clinician and you're working just for money, that is what's going to stink your life up. But if you're a clinician and you've gone into medicine and nursing because you want to free others from sickness and suffering, then that is what will perfume your life and your service to others.

So how do we identify whether we want to be enlightened or not? I'm not sure. I'm not sure where listeners stand on that question, but how do we identify and articulate a unselfish motivation and then how do we remind ourselves of it regularly so that we're in touch with it and not lost in selfishness. It's such a great question, Dan. What I do and many other practitioners do is that I bring to mind someone who is really struggling. It could be a student, it could be a dying person. I have a close friend who's dying of breast cancer right now. She's entered into that

inter-world state. We talked just last week. So, you know, I bring her into my awareness and I just send her so much loving kindness. And the hour that I spent on the Zoom call with her last week was an hour where we recollected moments of joy in her life. And she went from a fairly few tile space into a space that was characterized by a lot of laughter and a lot of appreciation and joy. So it's like bringing this into my lived experience, feeling it somatically, feeling it in my heart. I'm not being dissociated from it. I'm not doing it as an exercise, if you will, but doing it as something that's coming from a very sincere place, a place that I really feel for you.

It might be your child, your little boy, who sounds like a really incredible kid. But he struggles. You want a world for him that is not filled with ranker. You want a world for him when he's your age, where he has joy. So you send that aspiration to him, really contemplating, your son's life, 20 years from now, 30 years from now, 40 years from now. And Angela Davis, as you know, said, you have to have imagination in order to survive this kind of situation. We have to be able to imagine the best for your son and then to work for that. We have to imagine the best for the planet and then to work for that. And I think another person who really admirers, Ali Perizer, move on, you know, you also have to have some kind of confidence, faith, hope. You have to operate,

you know, really from a base of possibility that is not sinking mind, but where whatever outcome you'll meet it, but in the meantime, you'll give the very best that you can. Speaking of that, if the election doesn't go your way, how do you think your equanimity is going to be? I think it will be deeply challenged. How about you? Well, as we've already established, I'm a professional at numbing myself out, so actually I'm being semi-facitious there. I think how will my equanimity be, no matter how the election goes, if the country is, if we're at each other's throats, it's going to be a real challenge for me to be equanimous.

And what will help is identifying ways in which I can be useful and then working on that. I think that's exactly where we're at, you and I, and many of us. You know, whatever is given to us, up to that point, we have done our best, and then we're going to do less. No. No, we'll meet it. And that is what I think also, Ellie Perizer's pointing to, you know, just have the confidence, the strong back, the open front, the soft front, to meet the world fully, no matter what happens.

And do you know something, Dan? There is one thing that I really have learned from dying people and from Buddhism. Trust in the truth of impermanence. You know, that Berlin wall came down. Things will inevitably change. We don't know in what direction. Probabilities are always put out there. They're kind of traps in a certain way.

And part of our work, it's the work of the Bodhisattva, is how do we ride, learn to ride the waves of birth and death? That is our work, riding the waves, like the Bodhisattva, avalukiteshvara, the Bodhisattva of great compassion, riding her surfboard perfectly balanced with equanimity on the waves of birth and death. Well, good luck.

You know, we'll do our best, but we also know in a way it's like sailing. You can't sail straight into port. You're always tacking. So you know, we're going to be always correcting our course. And that is again, one of the, I think, perspectives that is so helpful to realize that my friend, Kastana Hashi, he talks about, and it's really inspired by Zen Master Dogan, continuous failure, continuous failure. Well, may you course correct and continuously fail while laughing.

That's the assignment currently. This has been, as always, you've been on the show three times, every time it's been at the light. Have I failed to ask you something that I should have asked? Well, you've failed to ask me about the worldly wins, but we don't have to talk about them. No, let's do it. I kind of like them because one of the powerful things about equanimity is that it is a kind of protection

from what are called the worldly wins. They include the experience of praise, just being completely admired and great blurbs on your book and your hairdo is gorgeous and you're the most wonderful person in the world and it's opposite blame. Boy, and we are in a praise and blame world and equanimity protects us from the stickiness of both praise and blame. Also, the worldly winds associated with cost. Big problem. And a failure, the other side of success, of the sense of not humility, but of humiliation that arises from the experience of failure. And so equanimity brings us to this experience of not

being attached to outcome. We do the best that we can. But success and failure are natural experiences in the psychosocial realm to navigate through, but not to be stuck by. And then pleasure and pain and how we work that equation in our life seeking pleasure, chasing, you know, with addictions in place, avoidance of pain, or falling into the grip of pain and wallowing it. And again, equanimity is this, this powerful antidote to the stickiness of both pleasure and pain. And then the last of the eight-worldly winds,

the last two are fame and distribute, the loss of our reputation. And what's important in these, you know, sort of eight worldly wins is our capacity to actually recognize when we're in the grip of one or another and to do what Uchiha Maroshi says opening the hand of thought, opening the hand of feeling to loosen the grip and to allow equanimity to be present. It's funny, you talk about how equanimity is key in terms of living between the toggling back and forth of praise and blame and gain and loss and peltrant pain, fame and disrepute.

But to me, it's actually, there's an enormous amount of equanimity to be derived simply from the name of that list to the eight worldly wins. If you see these changes that we all go through in our life, not as the result of personal failure, but the result of nature just like the wind, well, that is a big gust of equanimity right there.

Exactly. And this is one of the reasons why our practice is so important. Going back to what the word equanimity means in poly, it means to look over. You know, I talk about it in terms of medic cognition. It's that capacity to see the place of the knot is tightening and to loosen it. And to see things also in the spirit of deep patients and not to be ruled by the tightness, by the grip, by the fear. You know, there's one other thing I want to mention,

and it comes a little bit out of observing my own experience, but also what's happening all over this country in terms of wild disrespect, and knowing one of the third Brahma-Bihara is sympathetic joy, and it's shadow or it's far enemy is a shodden Freude, you know, it's just this engagement with deep disparagement, of loathing, of criticism, of humiliation, of bullying, and so forth. But what's been very powerful to observe

and my own experience in just interacting with others with the diagnosis that Trump has, you know, has been subject to, having contracted the virus and seeing, you know, many of his cohort falling victim to the virus and realizing it's a time to both understand the value of accountability, cause and effect karma, in this case, action, response, causes and conditions.

But on the other hand, not to be caught in the kind of cruelty that, you know, I have flashes of, of Shalden Freud, like he got what he deserved. Well, he did. He got what he deserved. And this is really hard to go through for everybody, including him. So it's working that edge right now. And it takes wisdom. And it also takes keen self observation, not to be caught in the updraft of this worldly win of disrespect, disparagement, and bullying. Well said. Always a pleasure talking with you. Thank you so much for doing this. Thank you, Dan.

Big thanks to Rochie Jones, really appreciate her coming on. And you can see more of her in the challenge, speaking of which quick reminder, as I mentioned at the top of the show, you can join the challenge right now by downloading the 10% happier app and be ready for day one tomorrow. We're very excited about this. Ton of work went into this

and really appreciate all the teachers who participated. So to join the challenge, as I said, just download the app and I'll see you in there tomorrow. And before we go, big thanks to the team who put this thing together. Samuel Johns is our senior producer, Marissa Schneidermann is our producer. Our sound designer is Matt Boynton from Ultraviolet Audio, Maria Wartel is our production coordinator. We get a ton of massively useful input from our TPH colleagues, such as Jen Point, Nate Toby, Liz Levin, Ben Rubin, and extended thank you to all the

people who worked so hard to put this election sanity series together. Jade Weston, Jessica Goldberg, Crystal Isaac, Matthew Heppern, Julia Wu, Nico Johnson, Alison Bryant, Josh Birkowitz, Clia Stagnitti, Lizzie Hoekz, who like a Hassan, Connor Donahue, Derek Haswell, Eva Brightonbock, Maggie Moran, and many, many more. Lastly, as always, big thank you to Ryan Kessler and Josh Cohan from ABC News. We'll see you all on Wednesday for an episode with Dora Williams, who has invented the fifth Brahma VR, as she says, semi-facitiously, and that is gratitude. And the question we'll be addressing is, can you be grateful when everything kind of sucks?

See you then. 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 1-3-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.