Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 295: This Thanksgiving, How to Make Gratitude More Than a Platitude | DaRa Williams

Episode Date: November 23, 2022

Can gratitude be more than just a platitude? Our guest today argues: yes. DaRa Williams is a longtime practitioner and teacher of meditation. She is one of the guiding teachers at Insight Meditation Society, a graduate of the Spirit Rock Insight Meditation Society Teacher Training Program, and also has a clinical mental health private practice in Manhattan. DaRa also says, only semi-facetiously, that she believes gratitude can be considered the fifth Brahma Vihara. In this conversation we talk about:How to start knitting gratitude into your everyday lifeWhether gratitude is possible when everything sucksHow to avoid spiritual bypassThe opportunity that suffering brings for happinessHow to take our suffering less personallyThe power of reminding yourself that you are natureAnd our unconscious fascination with creating difficultyFull Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/dara-williams-295-rerunSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hey gang, happy Thanksgiving. It is that time of year when at least nominally we're supposed to be giving thanks, being grateful. But as is the case with so many positive human qualities, we don't often get a lot of specific instruction about how to actually be grateful to be a little cute about it.

How do we elevate gratitude beyond mere platitude? That is what we're gonna talk about today. Dora Williams, my guest is a meditation teacher and psychotherapist. She's a graduate of the Spirit Rock Insight Meditation Society Teacher Training Program and is also a guiding teacher at IMS Not only has she been meditating for more than 25 years She's also been a clinician and administrator in the field of mental health for roughly that same period of time

She currently maintains a private practice in Manhattan In this conversation we talk about how to start knitting gratitude into your everyday life, or as she says, how to think about gratitude, like personal hygiene on the level of taking a shower. We talk about whether gratitude is possible when everything sucks, how to avoid spiritual bypass, which she will define the opportunity that suffering brings for happiness, and how to take our suffering less personally. The power of reminding yourself that you are nature, our unconscious fascination with creating difficulty in our own lives. And her semi-facetious belief that gratitude should be

the fifth Brahma-Vihara for the uninitiated, the Brahma Vihara's are four qualities of mind, four mental skills, trainable via meditation. That include friendliness, compassion, sympathetic joy, which is being happy for other people's happiness and equanimity. Just to say before we dive in here, we first posted this interview back in October of 2020, right after we ran a whole series of episodes about the broma of Viharas, that was also in the heart of the pandemic. So you're gonna hear a few references to that. Okay, we'll get started with Dora Williams, right after this.

Before we jump into today's show, many of us wanna 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 10percent.com. All one word spelled out. Okay, on with the show.

Hey y'all, it's your girl, Kiki Palmer. I'm an actress, singer, and entrepreneur. On my new podcast, Baby This is Kiki Palmer. I'm asking friends, family, and experts the questions that are in my head. Like, it's only fans only bad. Where did memes come from? And where's Tom from, MySpace?

Listen to Baby This is Kiki Palmer on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcast. Hello, Dora. First time on the podcast. Thanks for coming on. Appreciate it. Thank you, Dan. Yes, it is. I'm really excited. You made time for this. So thank you. You're welcome. You're welcome. You said something super interesting. Well, you said a bunch of super interesting things before we started rolling. The first one I want to latch onto and bring back into your mind right now is you said you appreciate that we've been doing this focus on the so-called four Brahma Vihara's and you said I think there should be a fifth Brahma Vihara which is gratitude and I love that and I want to know is gratitude possible when everything sucks?

Is gratitude possible when everything sucks? Oh, that's a good question. Is gratitude possible? Not only do I think it's possible, but I think it's essential in order to navigate the suckiness. And when we think about gratitude, it doesn't have to be this big grand gratitude can be something as simple as waking up in the morning and really centering oneself for a really good before, this I do this, even before my feet hit the ground.

It's like, oh, thank you. Not to anybody, but just the expression of gratitude through my heart and mind that I'm here for another day. And then I do the listen and I hear my mom, I live with my 96 year old mom, I hear her start moving around downstairs and I'm like, oh, mom's good, you know, and then I hear my husband and then the cat jumps

on the bed and we get a little morning greeting like those kinds of just day to day kind of small but incrementally acknowledged opportunities for gratitude really help to serve as a cloak or as a holding to navigate all the other stuff that mostly all of us do from the time we start engaging with the world until the time we go to bed at night. So yeah, yeah. And I also think maybe the aspects of gratitude are a natural kind of organic unfolding if one is engaged with meta or loving kindness

or caruino or compassion as it's English word or a mudi to sympathetic joy or peca, equanimity. Anyone or all of those together if we're in the practice of those that also kind of fuels or strengthens this turning towards remembering that we all have something to have gratitude about. So that's kind of like what just kind of showed up there in relationship to that. And the other thing about gratitude. Yes, certainly these times are really off the charts and I'm a good one for saying, you know, throughout history, this has been off the chart times for groups of people at various different times.

But there's something about the coalescing or the coming together, numerous, so many challenging and difficult things, along with the kind of really challenge with moving away from all of that, creating the space from all of that. Sometimes you may not be feeling love in your heart. Sometimes you may not be feeling equanimous, like this, sometimes you may definitely may not be feeling joyful,

but we could always find something Always find something that we can have gratitude for and Every person every person that I don't know if this podcast is I'm sure it is probably heard outside of the United States as well But if I'm speaking to the United States every person here including first nations people, including the indigenous people of these lands, come from people where they were hard times. You know, if you're a descendant or your ancestors are immigrants from some place else, you can

bet they were hard times. You know, certainly if you're African-American or out of the African diaspora, you know that they were hard times and sometimes continue to be hard times. And certainly if you are indigenous to this land, if you come from people who are indigenous to this land, from this land, you also know that there were hard times. So hard times are not new. It's not a new place to be. It's not a new happening in human kind. But fortunately for us, beyond our ancestors needing to also just survive in those times, you know, like have food, have shelter, have water, all those kinds of things, that's pretty much for many of us, not all of us,

but that's pretty much available to all of us. So even that is something to be, I stand under the shower and like, oh, I'm so glad to have this shower and that hot water hits my back and the muscle starts to relax and gratitude. If I'm hearing you correctly though, you are not saying we should use gratitude to force ourselves into the land of eternal sunshine and pretend that the problems that are here don't exist. Absolutely not. Absolutely not. I mean, you know, it's the duality of goodness and difficulty or, you know, and Buddhist terminology, the joys and the sorrows. That's like given.

And it's actually this is one of the other things you were speaking to that we spoke about in terms of managing expectations. I think that's the way either I said it or you gave it back to me. It's like, who said it was always supposed to be rainbows and flowers and like, who said that? Nobody said that. We're probably more prone even in this country to attach to that particular perception or understanding or perspective or lens that in the background always is that there's some promise that things should be really great all the time.

But that's not true. So yeah, absolutely not. And also not to be engaged with like spiritual bypass, you know, which is kind of where you're that comes from me in terms of what you just put out there. Spiritual bypass meaning that you pretend you've got pixie dust coming out of your butt, but actually you're just not dealing with your problems. Dealing with your individual challenges,

dealing with the collective challenges of our time, dealing with the historical challenges that are manifesting now in these times. So there's a understanding actually that there's now a lot of talk about trauma and bicarious trauma and those kinds of things. And all of that is useful, helpful, and necessary to understand and when there are practices or resolutions for those experiences to engage with them. One of the things that's the byproduct of can be, can be the byproduct of trauma is traumatic growth, you know, and it's almost like when I think about nature, right? I'm just imagining this of course, but thinking about when it goes from winter to spring and the plants that are reborn in the spring have to

struggle to get up out of that dirt like just crack it open a little bit and get that one Third, like just crack it open a little bit and get that one tendril out to seek the sun. You know, I really don't know a lot of opportunity for joy and happiness without having had the opportunity for challenge and suffering. You know, I think that they coexist together and that you actually can't have joy and happiness without having engaged with difficulty and challenge. I'm thinking about a conversation I had recently with a meditation teacher. Her name is Tuwary Salash. She's in Seattle.

Dude, you laughing. Oh, she's my girl. I love Tuwary. Uh-huh. So she and I were doing an interview about joy. And I asked her a similar question like, okay, well, you just put on rose colored glasses here and you, you know, you're not seeing things for what the way they are. And she was saying, no, no, no,

the joy is what sustains you so that you can do what you need to do in the world. Absolutely. Absolutely. I would concur with that and say that that's very healthy way to understand and hold joy and gratitude and gratitude. Absolutely gratitude. Also the gratitude that comes from being able to maintain sustain or even just cultivate equanimity. Like, you know, there's certain circumstances and situations that are in our lives, in our country, that are operating right now here. And one of the things that I will often say to people is, well, why are you expecting anything else? There's been consistent ongoing evidence that this is how this is. And the suffering happens because you keep wanting that to not be true. You keep wanting it to be different.

You keep wanting it to be something else. But when you can open to, ah, this is how it is. And you can then bring your body, mind, and heart to that realization, to that recognition, to that awareness, and engage with those circumstances from that position, there is a whole lot of freedom that opens up, not only a whole lot of freedom that opens up, but then you can actually begin to ascertain for yourself, do I need to do anything about this here? Or do I need to just leave it alone? You know, so the gratitude for that kind of discernment that's possible is also another, for me, big piece of moving through these

times, operating in these times. When you talk about the sort of double helix, the inextricable relationship between joy or good stuff happening and pain and suffering that you can't have one without the other. I mean, to me, that makes sense in theory, but when bad stuff happens to me, it still feels wrong. Oh, well, then the, the stuff thing to look at is like, why does it feel wrong? Like yeah, when pain and suffering happens to you, it hurts. It might be like, terrible, but why does it feel wrong? I don't know, maybe some subconscious assumption that this is suffering for other people,

the CNTV or whatever, but I shouldn't be touched by the reality of the world. Maybe. That's one good interpretation for sure, but that's a really good arising. That's a really good coming from you because those are the kinds of places where the suffering really is like, woo hoo, here we go.

Let's go down the rabbit hole with this. Whereas the challenges, the difficulty, the pain and suffering that you may have, that you may experience that may be in your sphere is actually an opportunity to be with this other component of living. I mean, I think us human beings, because all beings suffer. You know, maybe I should say all beings have pain, but maybe all being suffer too.

And speaking about our animal relatives and other realm that we sometimes forget we are a part of because we have language and higher order of thinking, but we are animals, human beings are animals. And because our animal brothers and sisters don't have language, like a lot of suffering exists or resides in the territory of language

and cognition, cognating. Yeah, so if we could not, I mean, that's what's gotten us, that's brought us a lot of the good stuff, too, you know, languaging and being able to intellectually configure and create and all that kind of stuff. So this is not a commentary on uselessness of that. It's, but in the process of raising that up, in the process of elevating that aspect of being and not remembering to bring parity with the heart, that's the places where we get into trouble. I think these times, actually, and even when you were talking about the suffering being

wrong, these times are almost demanding, maybe I've used the word demanding, but certainly calling for us to choose differently and to spend portions of our times cultivating other aspects of beingness that center in the heart. Yeah. Now I'm gonna go out on a limb here. Ha, ha, ha, ha.

Given that you are a successful white man in America that there may be something about that positioning That lends itself to the this is wrong Something's not right the this is wrong something's not right conversation so you know I mean for many of us that walk in different bodies I think you may have even heard this I

don't know among you know that three-week period or that month after the numerous deaths and murders of black bodies you might have heard from some of your colleagues or from other folks like, black people like weren't surprised. But when you exist in a particular reality, one's engagement with the world outside of oneself is determined by the positioning of that reality. So that might be another thing that might be an operation, might be operating and it may not an operation, might be operating,

and it may not be the answer to it all, but it might be one of those little threads in there that could lead to making that interpretation. I think to call it a little thread would be an understatement. Well, you know, I'm trying to think, so this is our first time in the majority of the, I want you to think about it. No, no, I think it's 100%. It was on my mind as the words escaped my lips. Yes. So I guess I had two responses to what you said. One is just a robust yes that somebody who has had the amount of luck that I've had, not only

who has had the amount of luck that I've had, not only pigmentation and gender-wise, but also coming from an upper middle class family of two loving parents who just gave me every opportunity in the world, I see in my own mind a certain unreasonable expectation to defy gravity or to defy the laws of the universe. So yes, 100% to that. I don't know anybody else's mind other than my own.

Is it the case you think that people that there are substantial numbers of people who when, you know, a very personal inconvenience or tragedy befalls them, say you get gout and your feet hurt a ton That do you think there are many people whose minds say oh, yeah, this sucks But that's just part of life and this happens. Why not me? I think there are some people that have that response And I think that there are some people that get to that response like it might not be the first response You know when there is suffering and it kind of is people that get to that response, like it might not be the first response, you know. When there is suffering and it kind of is,

it appears like it's permanent or that it's ongoing. There comes, again, not for everybody, there's always people that fall outside of the general way, but eventually you get to think about my mom with her arthritis and her body pain, she's in pain all the time. You get to a place where you surrender, like this is how it is.

And so, but there's a release or a freedom that comes because once that happens, then you can go about, well, is there anything to be done about this? And if there's nothing to be done about it, then you can go about, well, is there anything to be done about this? And if there's nothing to be done about it, then then you can get to, okay, well, let me get my mind right, to be able to bear, tolerate, move forward with conditions the way that they are. Just a few days ago, we posted an episode where I was speaking to Rochite Joan Halifax about one of the many, many Buddhist lists.

One of the Buddhist lists is called the Eight Worldly Winds. It's sort of four dichotomies, pleasure and pain, fame and ill-re, gain and loss, and praise and blame. And what I like about that, why it's coming to mind in the context of the discussion you and I are having right now is that simply by calling them wins, it depersonalizes them and puts you in a mind state that makes you more likely to be able to see, oh yes, suffering is part of life. I don't need to make it worse by getting into the why me of it all. Yeah, and like really believing,

so you know, we're in this conversation in relationship to Dharma and Buddhism, like really believing what the man said, the wholebuddhism is built around there is suffering Before any of the other lists before any of the other understandings before any other like the man came out of those years so Development coming out saying there is suffering There's a reason why there's something you could do about it and here's how you might do that. The whole philosophical underpinning of Dama is based on that. And so like I say sometimes when I'm teaching a retreat or whatever's like like, like, believe him, trying to, I really doubt.

No, I didn't know the man. I don't know. I don't come from a lineage that knows that man. But I can't imagine that anything that came out of his mouth came out of his mouth just because. Like, there was a lot of understanding, a lot of depth, and a lot of personal relationship to whatever it is that he might have been purporting.

When you look at any histories, that's a thread, that's predominant and clear all the way through. But a lot of our suffering is predicated on our intellectual misperceptions about life, about how we're living, you know? I'm sure that many, many, many years that I'm first generation out of poverty and as many people are at this time,

people that are children of immigrant, you know, like sometimes the suffering is around, like, can I pay my rent? Like, is there food I can have to eat? You know, am can I pay my rent? Is there food I've been able to eat? Am I going to lose my job? Sometimes the suffering is around those basic ordered things that we need to be able to exist in the society.

Sometimes the suffering is caused by mental distress or mental illness. But a lot of the suffering that's not kind of tethered to either a biophysiological piece or the necessity of having food, water, shelter in our life is basically, as you were pointing to, I think, made up. That second arrow, that's the terrible of the second arrow where you know there's um there's sorrow and suffering and pain you know this um I was walking through the woods and I didn't have on a bright orange coat and this hunter thought I was a deer and shot this shot and it got me in my leg and oh my my God, I'm glad I'm alive, but this is killing me.

And oh, if I had just remembered that I should have taken out the garbage before I went for this walk, the timing would have been off. And oh, maybe I need to put my finger down here. You know, like, what do you do that with your tooth? What you're talking to, and keep it, and every time you touch it, it hurt. We do that. We do that as is there's a unconscious fascination, I think,

with difficulty and challenge because we keep recreating it. So there's some addiction there. There's so I don't know what it is. This is actually occurring to me for the first time as I'm talking to you now. But there's something maybe, I don't know if it's neurological, I don't know if it's conditioning, like I don't know what it is. But there's something that keeps us creating, suffering for ourselves. For the uninitiated, the parable of the second arrow,

which Dora gave us a sort of updated version of is. Yeah, definitely. Guys walking through the forest, this is from the Buddhist scriptures or somewhere, but the guys walking through the forest gets hit by an arrow, and then it gets into a whole discussion in his head of, now I'm gonna be late for dinner.

Why am I always the guy who gets hit by an arrow, blah, blah, blah. That is the second arrow. That's it. Inserted voluntarily, and that makes a lot of the inevitable suffering of life even more unbearable. Yeah, I would agree with that. Much more of my conversation with Dara Williams right after this. Like the short, and it's full of a lot of interesting questions.

What does happiness really mean? How do I get the most out of my time, here on Earth? And what really is the best cereal? These are the questions I seek to resolve on my weekly podcast, Life is Short with Justin Long. If you're looking for the answer to deep philosophical questions like, what is the meaning of life? I can't really help you, but I do believe that we really enrich our experience here by learning from others. And that's why in each episode, I like to talk with actors, musicians, artists, scientists, and many more types of people about how they get the most out of life.

We explore how they felt during the highs and sometimes more importantly, the lows of their careers. We discuss how they've been able to stay happy during some of the harder times. But if I'm being honest, it's mostly just fun chats between friends about the important stuff. Like, if you had a sandwich named after you,

what would be on it? Follow Life is short wherever you get your podcasts. You can also listen to Add Free on the Amazon Music or Wondering App. Let me go back to gratitude for a second, just to wrap that part of our discussion up, because we began with you extolling the virtues of gratitude. I think, and I love, I think there's a lot of science that suggests that grateful people

are happier that gratitude has all sorts of benefits, and it's a really cool way to hack the negativity bias that evolution bequeathed us where we're always kind of looking for threats because there aren't really as many. We need to look for some threats, but there are not as many threats as our minds would have us believe. The problem that I suspect many people run into when they hear about gratitude as a practice is just remembering to do it, booting it up as a practice, because the other thing about evolution is that it bequeathed us in mind that isn't so good at creating healthy habits. So do you have thoughts about how we can start to knit gratitude into our lives?

Yeah, and I mean, we also have a tendency to want to make things complicated or it's really simple, especially when you're first engaging with creating that connection, creating that automatic turn or remembering towards gratitude. Put the three by five card up on the mirror and the bathroom. First thing you're going to see when you go into morning can have a box by your bed in the morning, you know, can have a

box by your bed that you throw, you write down a gratitude thought and put it in that box and then every now and then you go pick one out and you read it. You know, the real kind of simplistic because it is until you take it on like a practice. Like once you take it on like a practice, it will become just a part of being this, but you know, there's steps and things that need to happen between now and there. So it's not that you will always necessarily have to have a box or a three by five card. One of the things that I really found helpful

in cultivating that practice is music. Like listening to music that really resonated in my body that brought forward that felt sense of gratitude and appreciation. So music is really because it really goes straight to the body of bypasses the mind. Being present, being present, actually supports being in gratitude. You know, like now you and I both live on the in the northeast, so the trees are absolutely gorgeous. And you can actually take gratitude on like a practice. You could take it on like a practice. You know, sitting or walking and setting the intention to remember, to sit in gratitude and let that infuse the body, let that infuse the heart, let that infuse the mind. So there's various, various practice, various things that one can do from the simple to

the more. I won't say complicated but involved maybe, that we have to employ and you know another thing in that's really a misnomer. I think that we cling to in this culture is that oh after I've done this for like ten times I should get it. You know but it's kind of like we take a shower every day or every other day to clean off. We always have to take a shower to clean off. It's not, you don't get clean unless periodically you clean yourself. And so this notion that there's some place to get where gratitude, any of the Brahmaparas's equanimity, joy, compassion or love is just

automatically going to because we're in the world, we're in the world, we have little to no control over what's happening externally. And we have a nervous system, we have a nervous system that biophysiological nervous system, which is going to react and respond to conditions and challenges. So we have to ongoingly, intentionally cultivate these states of heart and mind that are the medicine kind of, the medicine to these times to difficulty and challenges and not be surprised when they show up. Don't waste our time being surprised. Okay, hard day to day. Let me see what I can do to bring some balance there. Sometimes work. Sometimes work. Right. Right. Back to moderating expectations.

Yeah. There was so much in there in that answer about how we can start to actually get gratitude into our lives. I love the bit about music. I really see the fact that the more awake you are, the more accessible gratitude is because when you're lost in your own stories, the chattering mind doesn't tend toward gratitude. But if you're awake and aware, your beauty and delight is going to be on offer in ways that they never would if you're stuck in habitual storylines. And then I guess the question I wanted to ask is given that you referenced it as the fifth, you know, somewhat facetiously, I think, as the fifth brum of Iharah, do you think that, I think maybe we already intimated as much, but do you think that the cultivation of

friendliness, compassion, sympathetic joy, equanimity, some way that those culminate in some gratitude, a result in some gratitude as well. Yeah, I don't know if I'd use the word culminate, but I definitely would say that create the conditions for gratitude to manifest. Yeah, I just wanna go back and say one thing in relationship to the conversation we're just concluding or bringing to this place

that I mentioned, but I might not have mentioned that this definitively earlier, where I might have spoken a little bit about ancestry and how all of us have ancestors that navigated hard places and had to have navigated them even with whatever amount of difficulty there was, navigated them at least successfully enough that you and I are sitting here today. Whatever they had to manage to live, they did so that we're here today. Because a lot of people aren't here

because ancestors didn't make it. And so one of the places for me that brings immediate gratitude, like that just generates it in the heart and in the body, is to remember the people I come from, you know, not like living in the past and staying back there. And I'm talking about ancestry, but even in terms of like, like you, I come from two parents who did everything to set my life up to win. And pretty much that's the result they

got. I have to say I'm blessed and have a life that really is a tribute to their struggles and their intentions and their commitment to myself and my brother. And so whether it be my parents or my grandparents or even further back in terms of the ancestral line, the people I don't know their names or anything about them, but I know that they survived and did what they had to do long enough so that whoever the ancestor was, that became the ancestor, that became the ancestor, that became the ancestor, that led to my mom and dad and then me. And so that's kind of like an immediate way that I connect into gratitude. I just wanted to throw that in there because that might be useful for some of the people because there's a little bit, it's in some ways it's personal, but in other ways it's not personal.

Yeah. It reminds me of, I apologized to any listeners if I've told this story before, but there was a time when I was volunteering in a hospice and I was talking to an elderly gentleman who obviously didn't have long to live and I was asking him about fear and he said, you know, the fear has kind of gone away. I've entered into kind of, and this is not a guy who I think had any spiritual practice. I believe he was a professor, really. He said he started to, and I hope this is relevant, it's just what came up in my mind as I listened to you talk about ancestors and then I started thinking about, you know, like where are some of these ancestors to?

This guy said to me, you know, I've just kind of started to view myself as part of nature. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's what I was saying before when I was reminding us that we're animals. We are nature. Like we're not outside of it, even though some of the things we're doing, we think we are like that.

We're like controlling it. If you just reside there, that's even a better word. If you just reside there with that awareness, that'll take you far in any of these domains and places that we're speaking about. Yeah. But I had asked you a question about the brome of Vihara's and you gingerly corrected me on culminate, but the cultivation of these brome of Vihara's in your view create conditions that are right for the horizon of gratitude. Did I hear you right on that?

Yes, you did. Absolutely. But I also don't think that it's necessarily hierarchically linear. I don't know if that's a word, but hierarchically linear. I think that it's more like you spoke about a helix before or more intertwining or more circular. That it's not that if you practice ABCD thing, then this thing will be the result of that. But that as you move back and forth, tending to the heart, cultivating and creating the

beingness that comes when one can really engage, clearly you're hearing that one of the domains of Dharma practice that I love and that I have incorporated as part of the mainstay of my practice is the bram of the horrors. So, you know, there's wisdom is good too and I'm in there too, but the thing that I, the place that I sit, what I fall into, what holds me is the brum of the heart. And so why? Yeah. I think it's because for me anyway, personally, the wisdom and the knowledge and the awareness sits here in the heart and not in the mind. Like this is a true place to me.

The heart is a true place that I cannot be fooled by. The brain, the mind can take me all kinds of places. But the heart is true when you can listen, when you can listen, when you can see, when you can see. And so I don't think it's necessarily that either or is more efficient or more getting me to the place where I might be, but I really, really, really do believe in the other piece that you were bringing forward in terms of the balance.

And for so long, there's been an imbalance where the, and I'm talking about, as it's manifested in our culture, I'm not talking about the practice of Buddhism in Asia, I'm not talking about the origination of the philosophy and the practices with the Buddha, but in our culture, there's been, it's starting to balance out, I think,

but there's been an absence of the feminine and there's been an absence of the heart. And that's what to keep singularly or solely cultivating the wisdom aspect of practice. It's almost like it's a house of cards. Like there's no, there's no foundation there in that. So that is purely my perspective. My colleagues and, and you know, I don't know what others would have to say about that. But there's an integration of the heart that

I think is one of the places where there's real hope for balance to come, real hope for being able to tolerate or be with the difficulties and the challenges in a way where we do know harm to ourselves. Yeah. Well, I see that some of my own practice. I don't know that I can speak for the Western Dharma scene overall, and whether it's, you know, it's been insufficiently female, although I suspect that that's true personally. But on say for grandma, I talk about my own practice. And in my own practice, I know I leaned too hard

on like understanding Buddhism and boosting my own concentration in my meditation practice and making sure I was noting the crap out of everything. And it was when I started, I did a couple years of quite intensive Brahmin Vahara work that it really changed the nature of my practice. Mm-hmm. Yeah, and the practices of, we don't know, right? The practice of concentration, the kind of more wisdom practices,

might have been very useful in setting the stage for what was to come out of the practices of the heart. I'm really talking about an integrated practice. And when I used the word feminine, I was actually, how I was using it, was in relationship, not so much in relationship to like the female, but the energetics of feminine in relationship to the energetics of masculine of which we all hold, even if we are someone that walk in a non-gendered place, those energetics still exist within all of us. And it's just been out of balance. So like the utilization or engaging with music, like engaging with nature, like these are things that these are places and ways and spaces that

wouldn't necessarily fall inside of the construct of masculine in the same way. And so that's how I was using feminine, like as a balance in the circle, as a postula linear, which is room for both, but we've given value in the hierarchy of the masculine. And I misspoke before when I said female, I meant feminine. Having worked a little bit on the Brown and Vajaras, it feels right to me that developing those mental skills

would create fertile conditions for gratitude, but I am having trouble articulating why that would be. Particularly difficulty, why that might be. So then you're popping back up into the intellect, trying to figure it out as opposed to having faith that that is a natural organic occurrence that happens, that may not even have access to being able to put out there in words in the way in which you're searching to do. If you're saying that I have a tendency to pop back up into the intellect, I'm going

to second that. Not just seven days a week. It's some ways it's a good skill because it's gotten you where you are. So they're like, let's acknowledge that and have gratitude for that. And then let's look to see how you can, as you've been doing, I mean, I know you do this. I've listened to other podcasts that you've done with people and I know what, you know, a little bit about what you're a stand for. And so, you know, just bringing the integration or bringing the balance there is a good thing, but that's not a bad thing. We just, just the fact that

we think that that's the only truth, that's the bad thing, That we think that that's the only truth or that we give that value to that over other. Kind of like, I don't know if you remember many years ago, I don't know how long maybe 15, 20 years ago now, when the whole arising started being spoken into the culture about emotional intelligence, where up to for many, many years, you know, when you and I were little and they had IQ, like IQ, it was intellectual IQ. Then they started discovering, oh, there's actually some other things that are really important here. So I think we're kind of in that domain in terms of the balancing and the awareness of the Yin and Yangness working together to bring understanding, to bring ease or peace, to bring calm, to bring gratitude. Yeah.

I was talking to a fellow wealthy white male the other day. I won't name him because I didn't ask permission, but he used the phrase, and I'm picking up on what you talked about with emotional intelligence. He used the phrase that I really resonated with for myself because I felt like it described me too. He said, for much of his life, he had been an emotional imbecile. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. It was underdeveloped. But I bet he was really, really had lots of muscles in the domain of intellectual. Another thing that I've gratitude for, and he recognized that. And sounds like he's doing something about it. Yes, again, I won't name him, but he's doing a lot. Great. He's doing a lot. Great.

He's doing a lot. Great. And it's a worthy, you know, if you had said to me 15 years ago, hey, Dan, you want to work on addressing your emotional imbecility, I would have said, no, where's the closest bar? It just didn't seem like an attractive project. But yeah, it's just increasingly obvious to me that as much as you, those of us who tend toward the intellect might want to deny the reality of emotions, you ignore them to your peril because they're there operating, and you're either owned by them or you're going to develop some

intimacy warmth, friendliness, understanding, etc., etc. Yeah, and even maybe one step further and again, this is just occurring to me now, but even like emotions being another iteration or a parallel, that's a better word, a parallel iteration to thoughts because emotions can drag us into real sorrow, real challenge. And so I guess what I'm speaking to is the effort and conditioning or cultivation of those being states. Not anything that is like to me or for me, compassion, love, joy, equanimity are being states. They're not a thought and it's not an emotion. They're actually states of being. And when we can kind of hang out there more than not, because you know, we're all worth in progress, but when we can hang out there more than not, then all the emotions, all

the thoughts, all the feelings going back to what you had on this board in terms of the world the winds come and go. Come and go. And we can just engage like it's on the conveyor belt and you pick out what you think you want to do something with or you let it go by. Much more of my conversation with Darat Williams right after this. You mentioned that we're all works in progress. I want to ask you a question that I like to ask when I get an established esteemed teacher on the show.

Sometimes I like to ask this question, shout out to my colleague, Jay Michaelson, who is the one who gave me the idea to ask this question. But I'm curious for you, what is the edge or are the edges in your own practice slash life right now? Actually, I think the edge for me right now would be moderation and self-care in the swirl of turmoil in chaos. Like this heart really wants to be of help to whomever it comes in contact with, whomever. But one of the challenge,

it's kind of like my biggest challenge right now is really being mindful and committed, not just being mindful, but placing it in the domain of an intention and a commitment to manage commitments, responsibilities, time in such a way that I'm at the end of the day used up, but not fatigue. And so I'm doing better. And actually, I think that this is one of the byproducts for many of us when we take a look or when we take a look a couple of years from now to be able to mine, mine, and mine, what was seen as helpful or useful coming out of these times. The pandemic have fought it for me personally, an opportunity to reset. Because I was flying here, flying there, flying everywhere, teaching. I'm also a therapist, I have a therapy practice, just a lot, lot, lot, lot, lot. There was constant and perpetual fatigue. And so that's antithetical to the practice that I'm engaged with, to what I teach, right? So it might not have been doing harm to others, but it was certainly

doing harm to me, to be in that state. And so really looking at both the day to day kind of daily kinds of ways that I need to guard some possibility for pause and space, but also, and that's like a literal pause in space, but also the psychological and emotional pause and space. Because when I do that, when I take the space, when I take the pause, it actually supports me in being more present when I then move forward again. Or, you know, yeah. So I think that's the most challenge. I've been like you when things took a turn. I made the, I came to the understanding and conclusion

very early that I really needed to take on equanimity practice. Like that was going to be the thing that supported me in moving through difficult times. And that was pivotal for my practice in terms of really bringing that into existence for me. So I'm fortunate, I'm fortunate, I have a lot of gratitude, that I don't have a lot of places in my life that are disturbed, that are where there is ill-easiness about it, and except for this one. And part of that also is predicated on acceptance, you know, looking at some of the earlier things we talked about today is like things come and go. Days are

up and down. And not judging that. Like when I have a day with like yesterday, yesterday, I was on nine Zoom calls and done that in a little bit. And at the end of that, that's okay, we're not going to do this again. And to make that statement, we're not going to do this again, calls for me taking a stand for how I schedule stuff and really being forthright and direct with people like, and I've started verbalizing that like one of my commitments is to create spaciousness and a little bit of freedom for myself. So you know, I'll get back to you in three days as opposed to the next hour. Yeah, so that's what I'm working with. That's what I'm working with in terms of talent, which in the scheme of things isn't too bad, maybe. No, I can see it's an issue, but I can see why you would have gratitude that there aren't

more, you know, painful issues. But nonetheless, balance is a huge issue for so many of us. And so just to get detailed, you talked about practicing equanimity. Was there a particular kind of meditation you were doing that you could describe that people that could then do in their own practice? Yeah, you know, that's the question that's asked of me all the time. So I'm going to have to actually, I'm not going to do it now in our time, but I'm actually going to have to sit down and dissect that for myself. But the way that I talk to people about that time period, it really was a combination of so you know, a lot of the ways that Ramavahara practices taught is to use verses or statements

that clarify and bring forward the energetics of the particular Brahma Vahara was equanimity that has never been so helpful for me, like that has not engendered for me the Brahma Vahara is and in particular the equanimity practice. And so I guess I'd say the two ways that I worked with equanimity practice myself, it may appeal to an other mind, a mind that isn't so structured and finding it useful words. Sometimes I don't find words useful. So the two things that I did

that I would do is to really be checked in and ground it with what's happening with the body, you know, which is one of the practices. So what's happening in the body and relationship to some circumstance, some situation, some individual? What is the bodily response to that? And assess it if it's a bodily response, which is on the scale of not helpful, not skillful, unwise, then actually sensing into a sense of balance, and again, using the body.

So I guess the answer to your question is really bringing forward engagement with the body and reading the energetics at any given time. And then also paying attention to using the thoughts as a guidepost and noticing when these thoughts of a version might be present, thoughts of basically anything that might fall under the rubric of a version, which could be anything from annoyance and frustration to outright rage in relationship to any circumstance condition or person and then intervening or engaging with that thought without judgment and without assessing that something's wrong and looking to see both the connection or

component to the body was there with that thought, and actually intervening and almost like plucking a weed out, like that thought of a version, that thought of imbalance, plucking that out, and kind of reasserting or reinserting a thought of equanimity and balance. It's not, I'm trying to because here I get I'm in the domain of non-word because it's really a felt sense. There I go. It's a felt sense that gets created in relationship to that thought. But then after working with that, a little bit, it wasn't even about plucking that thought out and re-asserting or inserting a felt sense of balance,

but it was actually dropping down underneath that thought to see what might be there. And sometimes it was just totally a reaction. Sometimes it was like not anything else. It was just the body's reaction to a circumstance or a reaction. Sometimes it was like not anything else. It was just the body's reaction to a circumstance or a situation. But sometimes it was some other thoughts that I needed to address that were underneath there and then engaging with that. Now there are words. There are verses that can be used with equanimity practice, but they don't work for me.

practice, but they don't work for me. And I can't even say them to you correctly. So I won't without going and getting them. But there are for people that that's a more viable way of engaging. And I think the reason that the words for the equanimity practice didn't work for me other than the fact that it was more verbiage for me to engage with and utilize was also that it didn't feel to me. I'm not saying that this is true, but it didn't feel to me like relational. And for the most part, equanimity practice is about relationship to something, whether it's a person or a situation or a circumstance or even some material thing. It's about that relationship that something in the relationship in the in-between is causing the imbalance or the aversion.

Just to repeat it back to you, it sounds like what I was asking you how to practice equanimity you were saying, look, in many of the classical brom of the horror practices, we use phrases. So for example, with meta or loving kindness, it's maybe happy, maybe safe, healthy, liberties, corona or compassion. It's maybe free from suffering and modita, may your happiness increase, et cetera, et cetera. There are phrases that go with equanimity practice, but for you, they don't really work. So you listed two ways in which you practice equanimity. One is just being aware of the

body as a feedback. And the other is to see your thoughts to the best of your ability as there arise and to not drown in them so much, but to catch them before they produce a bunch of emotions that might be the opposite of Aquanimus. Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh. Yeah, that's a good feedback. There. I think I mentioned this in a recent episode where I was on a meditation retreat just a couple weeks ago we're really encouraged to view whatever was coming up in our mind as nature. This is a point we've already hit in this discussion,

but for me, that just the viewing it as nature, all the tiny, but very personal seeming horrors of my own mind, just a view, oh yeah, me trying to do a mortgage calculation of my head or me trying to plot revenge on some colleague or whatever, that's just nature, the results of causes and conditions. For me, just that produces equanimity. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and the non-judgment of that nature. Just, well, seeing it as nature, yes, is Lax judgment. Right. You remove from the cycle of the judgment.

It's like, oh, this is of course. Yeah, yeah, and then and that's just how it is. That's just how it is. And then it has no it doesn't get any stickiness It doesn't get any energy on it. You know, so you can just let it be Or again, ascertain whether there's some further inquiry or anything that needs to happen there with that thought. Right, because it's like the Kavarabell analogy used before. Some of the things that passed by us on the Kavarabell, we do want to pick up and act out. We do what to use our natural wisdom to discern some of this stuff is, isn't just something we just are passing show we want to let go of. Actually, we do want to pick up and act on it.

But viewing it with some non-judgmental remove, some warmth, some perspective is what allows you to interact with a conveyor belt skillfully. Yes, exactly. Is it been such a pleasure to have you on the show? And I hope it's not the last time. Is there something I should have asked, but fail to ask? I hope it's not the last time. Is there something I should have asked, but failed to ask? Hmm. Nothing comes to mind in terms of something you should have asked or failed to ask.

And I think maybe not so overtly, but just to underscore that in our being together, there was quite a bit of the Brahma Vahara's operating. You know, so I just, who you are, and what you're up to and who I am, and I'm sure this is so with many of your guests, many of the teachers that you engage with, but that's really, that is it in action.

Like that is the practice there, right there. So that's the only thing I would underscore. That might have been the best moment of my day. Ha, ha, ha. Well, very good to have been a contribution to that. If people want to learn more about you, and I suspect they will, how can they do that? Unfortunately, I have not entered fully the world of social media.

I'm working on it. But the best way right now is can Google me or get me through insight meditation society where I teach retreats or New York insight. Those are the two best places to find me. But just put in Dora Williams and I seem to pop up. So yeah. Dora, thank you and I'm sending you love. Thank you, Dan. Take good care. This has been really a pleasure. Thanks again to Dora. Thanks as well to everybody who works so incredibly hard on this show.

10% Happier is produced by Gabrielle Zuckerman, DJ Cashmere, Justine Davey and Lauren Smith. Our senior producer is Marissa Schneidermann. Kimmy Regler is our managing producer and our executive producer is Jen Poient, scoring and mixing by Peter Bonaventure of Ultraviolet Audio. We'll see you all on Friday for a bonus. adventure of ultraviolet audio. We'll see you all on Friday for a bonus. 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-replus in Apple Podcasts. Before you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey

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