Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 33: Chef Eric Ripert

Episode Date: September 7, 2016

Chef Eric Ripert, of the famed Le Bernardin in New York City, is one of the world's best chefs, an Emmy-winning cooking show host and a cookbook author. But while Ripert was building a name for himself in the heat and the stress of a fine-dining restaurant kitchen, he also became a practicing Buddhist. The chef sat down with Dan Harris to talk about his daily meditation rituals, how he found Buddhism after being raised Catholic, and how he got to where he is today. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It kind of blows my mind to consider the fact that we're up to nearly 600 episodes of this podcast, the 10% happier podcast. That's a lot of conversations. I like to think of it as a great compendium of, and I know this is a bit of a grandiose term, but wisdom. The only downside of having this vast library of audio is that it can be hard to know where to start. So we're launching a new feature here, playlists, just like you put together a playlist of your favorite songs.

Back in the day, we used to call those mix tapes. Just like you do that with music, you can do it with podcasts. So if you're looking for episodes about anxiety, we've got a playlist of all of our anxiety episodes. Or if you're looking for how to sleep better, we've got a playlist of all of our anxiety episodes, or if you're looking for how to sleep better, we've got a playlist for that. We've even put together a playlist of some of my personal favorite episodes. That was a hard list to make. Check out our playlists at 10%.com slash playlist. That's 10% all one word spelled out. Dot com slash playlist singular.

Let us know what you think. We're always open to tweaking how we do things and maybe there's a playlist we haven't thought of. Hit me up on Twitter or submit a comment through the website. For ABC, this is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hey, we're coming to you from one of the best, fanciest, most prestigious, most expensive restaurants on planet Earth, Lubburn and Dan.

This place has four stars in the New York Times, three stars from Michelin. You cannot get any more stars, people. And the man in charge of making sure this place maintains its standards and its reputation is Eric repair. Not only is Eric one of the planets best chefs, not only is he a TV host and author, but he's also, as he described himself, a practicing Buddhist. Thank you very much for coming on. Thank you for being with us.

I've been here before a few times. I don't want to brag. I've been here a few times mostly for lunch because I'm cheap. But the food is like crazily delicious. You are doing something right. That's the same thing you bring out at the beginning. Oh yes, I could subsist in that role. That's the signature can appear when you come. It's convivial and it's to welcome you and make you at ease. And it's delicious, yes.

Absolutely. I'm biased. But I love it. So there are a million things I want to talk to you about. Oh, let me just say one thing, though. My only beef with you is one time I came here and you maybe put a blazer on. I was dumb enough to be honest.

Yes, we asked people to wear jackets. Because not necessarily for us, per se, but a lot of the other tables complain when someone doesn't wear a jacket. What you have to realize is that LeBernard and Kader for everyone of course and we have people who come for business, we have foodies, people who come for anniversaries, the celebrate, the ladies dress well, very often the gentlemen dress well for the ladies.

And then when they see someone coming with a t-shirt and they're like, what is that? I'm here to celebrate and you basically disrespecting that clientele and they complain to us. It's interesting. So we don't ask people to have a tie, but a jacket. No, I learn my lesson every time I've come back after that. We have jackets for you.

No, you brought me a very nice place. Yeah. It was a little big. I'm hard to fit because I'm a small man. But you can't show up like I'm dressed. Our listeners won't know this, but the viewers will know that I'm just wearing a regular shirt. You can't show up like this.

You got to have a... No, you can eat in the lounge without jacket The lounge is much more casual and it's fine but inside the dining room Jacket and if you wear a t-shirt you can eat out back out of the down With a t-shirt you can eat in a lounge. Oh really? Well, if you have a t-shirt, I mean it all depends, you know I mean the dress code is very difficult because it's very subjective Yeah, and some people think that coming with shorts and flip flops and a t-shirt is okay.

When you say, you know, the dress in good taste. I mean, I see where you're coming from. This is vastly off topic, but since we're on it, you're running one of the best restaurants in the world. It really has, that's not an overstatement. This is the reputation and deserved. And so you want to have a certain aesthetic? Yes.

I mean, the idea of fine dining is to create an experience. Today fine dining is not just about nourishing people with grid food. It's about creating an experience that is very unique to the place, so Le Bainardin, and being well-dressed is part of that experience. So now that I've taken you down this tributary, let's talk about Buddhism. You describe yourself as a Buddhist. How did that happen?

Well, when I was living France in 1989, you were leaving France to come to America, I found a book at the airport that was talking about Tibet and it had a little bit of Buddhist theories in that book that inspired me a lot during my trip. I had to read for eight hours. By the way, I read that you were actually looking for a playboy and you ended up taking the book about the bad, is that true?

It's true. I had enough money to buy playboy for the interview because they're great. Oh, yeah. Or the articles. Or the book. And after hesitating a lot, finally at the last second I took the book.

And that was the beginning. Then I called my mother in France and I said, please send me some books about Tibet or whatever you find. And I read the speech of acceptance of his solitude as the Dalai Lama when he got the Nobel Prize for Peace. That inspired me a lot. And then it has been a slow process, but I like the spirituality of Buddhism. I like the fact that it can be also proven, the theories of Buddhism can be proven in a secular way, in a scientific way.

It's something that speaks to me and a great inspiration in my life today. And I'm a practitioner. I have actually a Nepalese monk who comes once a week to my house. And I practice every morning with the rituals and meditations. And then obviously, I try to apply the principles of Buddhism into my life. I'm not trying to convert anyone at Le Biannardin or in a kitchen, but I try to inspire the cooks

to do the right thing, finding secular ways. So there are a million things in what you just said that I want to ask you more about. But let me just go back to the moment on the plane. You're leaving your life behind in France and you're coming to the US to start as a young chef. And something in that Tibet, that book about Tibet speaks to you.

Can you give me a sense of what it was that turned the lights on for you? Yes, it's, first of all Tibet has been a very close country before the invasion of China. We didn't know much about Tibet. The Western world didn't know too much about Tibet. Then as we know, China invaded Tibet and annexed Tibet to China.

And today Tibet is a province of China. And I was fascinated by the lifestyle of the Tibetan people in the Himalayas. I was in that book. the lifestyle of the Tibetan people in the Himalayas, I was in that book, I was fascinated by how important the monasteries are in the life of Tibetan people, how much the spirituality is passing from generation to generations. And I like the idea of the...

I mean, I like the idea that there is a Dalai Lama who was someone highly respected and loved and basically this kind of like beloved king who was also wearing the robe of a monk. It's a lot of things that I was interested also wearing the robe of a monk. It's a lot of things that I was interested because I think I am a spiritual person. I know today I am a spiritual person.

At that time, I was born Catholic. Catholicism didn't answer my questions. And I was not happy with Catholicism. Now, I'm not criticizing that religion at all. I believe all major religions have the same goal, which is to make people better people and potentially bring us to enlightenment. But Catholicism didn't speak to me. And I was young and I was curious. And I wanted to become a better person. I was an angry kind of teenager, old teenager. I wanted to be at peace.

I wanted to find a way. I wanted to find guidance in life. And Buddhism did that to me. Did you become a Buddhist right away or was it a process? It was a long process because I remember really starting to go to the teachings of his solitude in New York and having a collection of books that I didn't really understand well in the late 90s. So it took ten years of making a lot of mistakes,

because in Buddhism is no beginning and end, it's hard to grasp the philosophy like that when you don't have guidance. And I remember when his holiness was teaching at the big theater. The big theater, yeah. Well, sometimes he does it at the radio CD Hall, sometimes the big theater, mostly in New York.

I had the best nap in my life. I didn't understand anything. I mean, after five minutes, I was scratching my head, and I thought I knew a little bit about Buddhism. I was like, I have knowledge. I'm going to be comfortable in that room with 5,000 people. Nothing. I was lost and I was with a friend and actually last year he taught again.

It was at Radio City Hall and I was so proud in a good way to understand everything almost, everything he was talking about. Especially some topics that are very difficult to comprehend, like the theory of emptiness. We can talk hours about just the theory of emptiness, that everything is related. Basically, everything is one. It's no, whatever you conceive as a glass, it's not really a glass, and I can confuse you more.

I think there's so much there and you can argue about emptiness. Well, you can argue to a certain degree because today science, especially quantum physics is basically confirming the theory of emptiness coming from a spiritual religious point of view. The basic theory of emptiness, just for the listeners and viewers who may not know anything about this, but emptiness, I'm going to take a shot at this and I may fail. But the basic theory is that everything is empty of some sort of pure essence. In other words, there is no eric, some morsel of eric in your brain somewhere. In this glass, it may look solid to you, but if you look closely, it's made up of spinning molecules and spinning all sorts of subatomic particles, etc.

So everything can be broken down into smaller and smaller parts. Yes. So we walk around where this rubber hits the road on this, is we walk around thinking that there is some little dand and here's some little Eric up in your head. And that actually can be the source of a lot of our suffering of our war, our hatred, et cetera. For sure, yes.

You nailed it. OK, cool. Thank you. And also, the interpretation of the glass, I may think this glass of water is beautiful. C'est un peu plus important. Oui, vous avez l'air. Ok, c'est cool. Et aussi, l'interprétation de l'eau. Je pense que cette glass de water est beau. Et vous pouvez penser que cette glass de water est oubliée. Et quelqu'un qui peut penser que cette glass de water

peut être une bonne façon pour être à l'autre. Et donc, vous interprétez le fait que vous voulez. Mais, d'ailleurs, cette glass of water is made of sand that has been blown in a factory by people and so on. And the water is made of molecules, like you mentioned, and it's made of atoms. And in between the atoms, it's some huge spaces. And the smallest particle that today we have been able to identify scientifically is called course. And course is very interesting because it is matter, but if you observe it, it becomes radio wave. Right.

And that, it's very interesting because you can basically create your path. So it means the takeaway really is that nothing is as solid as it seems. Exactly. And nothing has an interest-seq reality. I think you say interest-seq when it's... Interest-seq reality. Nothing exists by itself. It's all related. It's all, ultimately, it's all one. You see the water, for instance.

You don't see the cloud, but it was a cloud that created rain, that fell on the ground, and that was filtered and ended up in some ways in your glass. So that quantity of water, what you see is not really what it is exactly, it's the cloud and it's everything else, so it's all one, it's all related, including ourselves. You're making me thirsty. How does emptiness impact the way you actually live? Well, because when you start to understand emptiness, suddenly you detach yourself and have less desires and attachment. And as we know, attachment and desire are creating trouble in us, for us. Like, let's suppose you love your Ferrari so much.

Let's suppose you have a Ferrari. Not true. So I only can afford lunch at LeBernich Dam, but there's no Ferrari. But let's suppose someone has a Ferrari, and he loves this Ferrari, and he thinks that Ferrari is bringing him happiness, and he's about to buy the Ferrari,

and he's like, that's gonna bring me so much happiness I'm gonna have so much fun. It's gonna be amazing. Let's suppose he buys it and five minutes later he crashed in a wall Well, suddenly is gonna have a terrible terrible sadness probably cry and and and and be very unappered so Emptiness when you when you understand emptiness suddenly you you basically Donc, l'emptiness, quand vous vous indistez l'emptiness, vous en êtes en train de détailler. Même avec une famille, ce n'est pas possible que vous ne pouvez pas le faire de votre son,

de l'autre, de votre wife et de votre famille, de l'autre, mais vous détaillez de votre celles un peu. Parce que si vous vous détaillez, vous nez pas dans le monde, il va créer un pain. Et en la vie, dans le bout de l'Etat, you attach, you know down the line is going to create a pain. And life in Buddhism is pain. We live in samsara. Samsara is the cycle of death and life, and the idea is to free yourself from that basically cage made of four elements, which is the fire and the water and the wind and the matter. qui est le fil et le water et le win et le mâter. Quand vous entendez l'emptin,

vous aussi entend que l'compassion est très importante de être compassionnée avec les gens et de toute façon, il ne change pas de la façon que vous voyez des événements qui sont en votre vie et de la façon que vous êtes sur le monde. see events coming at you in your life and the way you are surrounded. And it brings a certain piece of mind and it develops for some reason, an act of compassion. And compassion is a word that is very strange for Westerners like us. You say, I love something, but you will never say I compassion something. It's not in our vocabulary really, but compassion is basically being sensitive to the pain of other sentient beings

and giving love. So basically you take the pain and you give love. You can do that in meditation, which is an exercise that prepares you to do that in real life is when you interact with other sentient beings. So a lot to understand intellectually, but as you said in order to allow it to have a visceral impact, you got to do this thing called meditation or you probably should do this thing called meditation, or you probably should do this thing called meditation. When did you start meditating within this chronology that we've been discussing?

How long after you bought that book into bed? I started to meditate in the mid 90s, and it was very difficult. You have two type of meditation, Samata and Vipassana. So one of them, we're not going to use the Sanskrit word. One of them will be single point meditation. Samata concentration.

So that basically is an exercise that helps your brain to stop thinking in a future or in a past. c'est de l'enverser, de l'enverser, de l'enverser, de l'enverser, de l'enverser, de l'enverser, de l'enverser, de l'enverser, de l'enverser, de l'enverser, de l'enverser, de l'enverser, de l'enverser, de l'enverser, de l'enverser, de l'enverser, de l'enverser, de l'enverser, de l'enverser, de l'enverser, de l'enverser, de l'enverser, de l'enverser, de l'enverser, de l'enverser, de l'enverser, de l'enverser, de l'enverser, de l'enverser, de l'enverser, de l'enverser, de l'enverser, de l'enverser, de l'enverser, de l'enverser, de l'enverser, de l'enverser, de l'enverser, de l'enverser, de l'enverser, de l'enverser, de l'enverser, de l'enverser, de l'enverser, de l'enverser, de l'enverser, de l'enverser, de l'enverser, de l'enverser, de l'enverser, de l'enverser, de l'enverser, de l'enverser, de l'enverser, de l'enverser, de l'enverser, de l'enverser, de l'enverser, de l'enverser, de l'enverser, de l'enverser, de l'enverser, de l'enverser, and makes you more at peace for some reason. The other one, it's basically guided meditation where you visualize, so you can visualize, for instance, let's suppose that you have anger issues or jealousy issues. So the anger could be visualized as a dark cloud. And then suddenly out of your brain comes a beam and you destroyed it out. Dark cloud. This is what you're doing in your meditation. In a meditation. You can do that and by

practicing like that and doing that and I'm giving you a very simple exercise. But by going further and further, you actually create for yourself the qualities to fight those challenges like anger, for instance. Just in the simple exercise, so I've done some meditation but not this kind. So just to help me understand how visualizing the anger as a dark cloud and then. So then let's suppose you are in a situation where you are about to become angry. Something is frustrating you. First of all, if you understand emptiness, you understand this not exactly what you think it is. And then if you have been able in meditation to destroy that anger, you can apply it at the same time.

Like, let's suppose you are annoying me now, and I'm like about to lose the same theoretical. But let's suppose you are annoying now, right? And I'm like, my blood pressure is going up, and I'm about to explode. Like when I was challenging the dress code, for example. No. No.

But I may very well say, this is not real the way I perceive it. And all that anger that I have in me, I'm destroying it as now. As I talk to you, I visualize it, and I'm like, I'm not going to get angry. I'm not going to do that. I'm going to be at peace, and I'm going to let you do what you do. And then I'm going to, as a Buddhist, I will think that you're giving me the opportunity, actually, to act properly and to accumulate virtues. Right, I mean the dialogue I'm talking about, the dialogue I'm about, who's had, you know, whose country was invaded and has a lot of reason many believe to be angry at the Chinese for example, has talked about the value of having an enemy because they're your greatest

teacher. Well, if you have no challenge, vous ne pouvez pas progresser. Vous devez avoir de challenge dans le monde pour être testé et quand vous passez le test, vous êtes un peu plus personne. Donc, la solitude considère le chien qui est invadé à la chambre, qui est toujours pressuré les gens, les tibets d'un communiqué. who are still pressuring his people, the Tibetan community. He considers them brothers and sisters, and he has a lot of compassion towards them.

Of course, he's working to make sure that the Tibetan people are not prosecuted over there and deliver pili and so on. But he's thinking like that, yes. So anger is a big part of the cooking profession, at least by reputation. So if you walk into it, it's hot in the kitchen, and I've read that you were the kind of guy who was like throwing plates once in a while and you studied under as Joel Rubachon, is that so?

And I understand he kind of yelled at you once in a while. Although it was not someone, it was not a screamer and it was not violent. So at that time it was common practice in kitchens to see plates flying and pots and pans and being beat up. In a shoulder or so kicked in a butt or screamed at, dans les choulders, ou dans les bâtes, ou en ce qui est scrimé, J'ai bien vu que le roguetion était différent, mais il était toujours très rigoureux et très demandant et nous devons être extrêmement disciplinés et accès à ce qu'on était fait. Donc, est-ce que la récréation change la façon que vous appuiez dans la kitchen ? Oui, absolument. Je ne recalle pas le dernier temps que time I scream in my kitchen.

Not like I have bad memory. I mean, it's not that good. And the way I tackle the challenges and the way I interact with the staff, it's much different than when I started in 1991 at LeBernard. I'm trying to share with them my knowledge. I try to inspire them. I try to correct their mistakes without getting angry.

OK, but as we do this interview, it's in the afternoon on a Tuesday. Is it Tuesday? It's Tuesday, right now. I don't know. And we've just finished a lunch service. Yeah. You just finished a lunch service.

What if one of the guys in the line, one of your sous chefs made a sauce that tasted like crap? And you caught it on the way out. Yes. What would you do? I talk, if the IAASS sous chef in the kitchen, I talk directly to him. If not, I go to the highest sous chef. And I explain to him that the other one made a mistake, and it's really bad.

And we have to remake it, or we have to find solutions to not serve it to the client. And I do that. I go to the highest ranking sous chef because if I start to talk to the line cook, then I have to repeat it to another sous chef, then I have to repeat it to another sous chef. So I have to repeat myself four times. By going straight to the top, I do it once, and then he's in charge of making sure

that the message is distributed to the people that's supposed to get the information. How do you do that without anger, though, because I mean, you've spent years building your reputation, you've got these clients paying a lot of money. And if that bad sauce had made it to the floor, it would have been potentially damaging to all that. Sometimes I'm frustrated. When I am frustrated, I may not be happy, like I'm not like I said, I'm not a screamer, but I may be sarcastic when I'm addressing to you my critics, I may be very irritated. But what I do after when the incident is as passed, I go back and I apologize on the front of everyone.

I have no problem to apologize on the front of my staff for not behaving the proper way. And that I think, and I teach that to all the two chefs, or whether as responsibility and restaurant, as to do that. And I think it makes us stronger, because being angry it's a weakness. It's not a quality. Someone who's screaming and someone who's violent is not someone who's stronger than someone who's not. It's someone who has issues and someone who has not master himself.

Emotional unintelligence, if you're just getting hijacked and screaming all the time. Yeah, so we shouldn't be proud of chefs who are screaming in their kitchen. And I'm always thinking about that TV show, Hell's Kitchen, or Kitchen Nymers, and that promote this behavior of screaming at people and insulting them and humiliating them.

This is not something that should be on TV actually. It's sending the wrong message. We have to fight that. Are you a kind of a lonely voice for a common compassion in the kitchen? I... I hope not. Do you find that other tap chat so you're taking yourself? I have a lot of friends, chefs who are thinking like me, but it's challenging. You know, it's challenging because a kitchen is not an environment that is easy.

It's very humid, it's very hot, it's very tight, it's a lot of sharp objects, it's a lot of action, it's a lot of stress. Sometimes the kitchen is designed to challenge you to stay calm. At LeBernard, we're lucky, we have a very big kitchen, a lot of staff, a lot of everything we need, so it takes a lot of stress from the staff. But some kitchens are very tiny, and the people in those kitchens are challenged because they have to serve 100 people with very little. So sometimes the conditions are really, really conducive

to become a scrimmer or to lose it. So do you think, do you have any hope that you could make some sort of cultural change by speaking out against the society? I believe I'm making some cultural change already when I talk to you, when I have the opportunity in every interview to talk about that, when I am with Anthony Bourdain and we have done some shows together actually called Good and Evil. He always gives me the opportunity to talk and I think I inspire people to at least think about itself. Maybe it's right, maybe it's screaming and being abusive is not the

right way to manage. Maybe a good leader shouldn't be like that. Hey there listeners, while we take a little break here, I want to tell you about another podcast that I think you'll like. It's called How I Built This, where host Guy Razz talks to founders behind some of the world's biggest and most innovative companies, to learn how they built them from the ground up. Guy has sat down with hundreds of founders behind well-known companies like Headspace, Manduka Yoga Mats, Soul Cycle, and Kodopaxi, as well as entrepreneurs working to solve

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You can listen early and add free on the Amazon or Wondery app. Well, let me talk about another part of handling stress and what kind of benefit you personally might derive from your meditation practice and your Buddhist practice play. So you, as I said before, you've had these seven stars, three from Michelin four from the New York Times for decades now. And keeping that up, I would imagine would be a source of stress every day. You never know when some critic is gonna sneak back in here

and catch you on a bad day. So is that stressful and is meditation useful in reducing the stress? Well, it can be stressful. Meditation definitely can be a weapon against that stress. Again, if you attach to the stars, and if you become obsessed with your stars, every morning you're going to wake up and you're

going to think about, you're going to rush your teeth and be like, and if I lose a star, what will happen? And if I lose, my way of dealing with that is that on the morning I'm thinking about my day, about what are we going to do today with the team? What are we doing in creativity? What are the challenges that I have to work on? Or what are the rewards today? I never think about the New York Times and the Michelin when I come to work.

I think about how we are going to be able to create an experience for the guest. If yesterday was challenging, how can we avoid another challenge today? I think about all of that and therefore is no space to have stress about losing stars. Now, it's true that maybe the night before the New York Times comes out, if we're going to get the review, it's true that, yeah, I'm attached a little bit to those two. But, you know, it's not an obsession that I have year after year. Let me try to get the flip side of that.

You have this peer group of top chefs uh... and a lot of these and the mostly men uh... they have empires you know restaurants all over the place so i had uh... your friend uh... uh... uh... why my spacing out is named Mario battale yes on the show we had him on

the show a couple weeks ago and he this guy's got restaurants all over the place. And you, as far as I know, have this place, and maybe a... One in Kemal Island. One in the Kemal Islands. Okay, so you don't have an empire. Maybe we consider this place to be an empire,

but you don't seem to have the expansionary impulse of a lot of your fears. And I tried. I tried at one point we had a restaurant in Philadelphia. We had Cayman. We had Philadelphia, Washington, of course, LeBanard. And it didn't satisfy me. It didn't make me happy. I was making money, of course, more money, much more money than I make today. But my lifestyle was not reward. I was not happy to be in a trainer in a plane or to worry about the manager who's quitting or is the food good or not good. So I decided not to develop and I said you know I have found my level of contentment I

make a lot of money to live well. I'm very lucky. I Have a good lifestyle. I want to see my son and my wife every day. How old is your son 13 now? Or maybe every day sometimes I need a break. Yeah, it's getting to that difficult age. Yeah, but anyway, I have time for myself, mostly on the morning, where I can do whatever I want, which is mostly studying, meditation, reading, whatever I want to do. Be lazy if I wish. Walk in Central Park.

I see my family every day. And I am with my team. And I'm mentoring my team very closely like an artisan. And this is what I am. I am an artisan. I'm not a business guy. Some chefs have the qualities of being artisans and business people. Some chefs love the idea of traveling the world all the time and for them I'm probably

a very boring model. They don't want that. Ultimately we are all different, right? And Mario has been able to create an empire and it seems to be very happy and not overly stressed and me I'm different than Mario but I'm very happy in this life and I may not be able to retire ever but because I'm in money but I'm okay. So as it personally, as a, I evangelized for meditation, I tried to get everybody excited of meditating, especially skeptics. And one of the arguments you sometimes hear from type A, hard charging people about why they don't want to meditate is that they're worried it will make them lose their edge. Now, do you, is the story you just told,

which I find personally quite inspiring, do you think some skeptics would latch onto that and say, oh, well, this is what happens when you start meditating, you don't wanna conquer the world anymore? But I have, why do I wanna conquer the world? I don't wanna conquer the world. I wanna make the best black bass

in the kitchen downstairs with the team. And it's not about conquering the world, and I'm not thinking about I want to be the number one. I don't care about being the number one. It's about doing something that I have passion for and transmitting the knowledge and the passion to the people who are with me and making a living out of it. I don't need to be the number one in the world. But maybe I love that.

I mean, I feel the same way. And if you are someone who really wants to conquer the world and create an empire, and you can in meditation create that, they call that, I don't remember the name now, transcendental meditation, right? So they have a mantra and they visualize what they want. Meditation, it's not necessarily religious. Meditation is almost like going to the club,

exercise for the Muslims, but it's for the brain. So let's suppose you wanna be creating the biggest empire of restaurants in the world. Well, of course you have to work hard and you have to have the capabilities and you have to have a lot of components helping you but the meditation can help you to do that. You visualize your empire and you say you mantra you visualize your empire and and I know some business people who are doing that every afternoon in their office They do transcendental meditation and they visualize the tech over of this hotel and they visualize visualize until it happens

You just don't have that urge No No, I don't no to me, I just want to be happy No. To me, I just want to be happy. We all want to be happy. I mean, don't get me wrong. This is the nature of human beings, and this is where we are all equals. Obviously, we want to refute suffering, and we all want to be happy. But my way of being happy is a very simple way. It's a very humble way, in a sense. What does your daily practice look like now?

I wake up, I do my rituals. Rituals. Rituals, because I... So in my appraffement, I have a meditation room. Yeah, and I've read that the cat knows not to go in there. Even the cats don't go there. I have a meditation room, Yeah, and I've read that the cat knows not to go in there. Even the cats don't go there. I have a meditation room slash shrine slash temple basically. And I go in my in my room and I I say some mantras. I light some incense and I light candles and I do some prayers and I study je l'ai eu des sens et des candle et je fais des prayers et je suis étudiant et je médite. Comment?

C'est tout le monde, mais beaucoup de temps, c'est à l'heure de 2 h. Maintenant, si je dois faire une TV show à 7 a.m., il n'est pas d'adaptation. Je vais au lieu to the TV show. Or if I have some other things that are unusual, I will change my schedule. But out of 365 days, it's probably 300 something days that are like that. Going to my room, meditating, studying rituals, recitation of mantras. When you talk about rituals, what is it actually

involved? Well, it's one ritual that I do every morning. So, first of all, I light the candles and light incense and do my prayers. And then is a ritual that I do every morning. I have seven balls, empty, and I fill them up with water. And I offer them to Shakya Munibuda. After that, it's called a seven-limb meditation. offert-elles à chaque amour ni Buddha. Après ça, je fais, c'est le 7-le-le-le-meditation.

Donc, vous pouvez faire ça physiquement, qui je fais chaque jour, et puis, vous pouvez aussi faire ça en méditation si vous ne pouvez pas physiquement faire ça. Vous pouvez vous faire, vous vous êtes ravi, vous vous êtes en telle, vous ne êtes pas dans votre 7-le-le-moi et dans le statut de Buddha, vous faites ça mentally. Après ça, I do a confession of all my bad deeds.

Then I rejoice for all the good deeds that I have done. Then I ask to be lucky to have a long life and a good else to be able to practice bodhichitta and potentially to become enlightened. Then I ask, can you define bodhichitta and potentially to become enlightened. Then I ask, can you define bodhichitta just so you know? Bodhichitta is when you acknowledge that we are all equals and you understand that everyone potentially in your life was your mother and in a past life.

All sentient beings. This is by the way, bodhicitta mind is specific to Mahayana and to a certain other schools of thoughts in Mahayana. Not all Mahayana believes in bodhicitta. So Mahayana is just a school of Buddhism just to make clear. Yes, we have Terravada and Mahayana, which are two big schools of Buddhism. And inside those schools, you have many branches.

And Tibetan Buddhism is Vajrayana, but is divided in four different schools, again, major schools. So anyway, you acknowledge that even potentially, because we don't believe time exists the way we perceive it, we believe time is infinite. So potentially everyone could have been my mother and could have given me a lot of love and compassion. And therefore I will practice and give love and compassion to all sentient beings that I encounter in my life. This is practicing bodhicitta. to all sentient beings that I encounter in my life.

This is practicing bodhicitta. Thank you for that. But I interrupted your morning flow there that you were talking about. So, yes, so I asked to have the privilege to have a long life and a healthy life. Then I asked for Buddha to stay in this world in different ways. To teachers, so Buddha will stay in this world to teachers and potentially help us to free ourselves from some Sarah. And ultimately at the end, I offer my good karma from my previous life and this life to Buddha to distribute to all sentient beings that are in need. So this is a practice that is very religious, that it's something that I do

every morning. And is there time there for... By the way, when I fill up the glasses of water, I have a mantra. And basically, right after that, I visualize giving Buddha a lot of offerings. Food, foods, clothes, medicines, incense, whatever you wish to imagine. I'm visualizing that on the front of him life. As if he were right there in the room. If he was there in the room.

And is all what you described as that a preliminary to meditation or is that the meditation? It's preliminary. This is the first thing that I do on a morning. And then you do a seated practice. Yes And what is when you do your seated practice? What is that practice? Consistive it depends I mean it's it's changed all the time, but I do a little bit of a single point meditation So basically if sometimes my back hurts so I I do not sit on the lotus position I sit comfortably on the chair.

But if not, I sit on the lotus position because I believe the posture helps the energies in a body to circulate better. What I visualize is that when I inhale is the energy coming from the lower back, going up through the spine and coming up here. And when I exhale it goes back down. Some people focus on inelling and exelling. But for me I focus on those energy. It's where I can be the most focus. And I do that sometimes it's five minutes, sometimes it's 10 minutes, and sometimes it could be more,

but I do not put my watch and look at the watch because it's no competition. I'm not competing with anyone. It's no win or no loser. If I have a lot of thoughts and I'm distracted, I stopped a little bit. If I have a couple of thoughts, I acknowledge them, and then I go back to my focus. Then I do guided meditations, like I mentioned, un petit peu, si j'ai un peu de temps, je ne l'ai pas parlé de ça et puis je vais aller à ma focuse.

Puis je fais de la méditation, comme je me sens une bonne méditation pour vous. Vous pouvez visualiser un peu de l'amour, un peu de l'amour qui est très très close à vous et le pain est le temps de l'anglais, en Tibetan-Bouddhisme. Vous visualisez le pain, c'est en train de prendre le temps, c'est en train de prendre le temps, c'est en train de prendre le temps, c'est en train de prendre le temps, c'est en train de prendre le temps, c'est en train de prendre le temps, c'est en train de prendre le temps, c'est en train de prendre le temps, c'est en train de prendre le temps, c'est en train de prendre le temps, c'est en train de prendre le temps, c'est en train de prendre le temps, c'est en train de prendre le temps, c'est en train de prendre le temps,

c'est en train de prendre le temps, c'est en train de prendre le temps, c'est en train de prendre le temps, c'est en train de prendre le temps, c'est en train de prendre le temps, c'est en train de prendre le temps, c'est en train de prendre le temps, c'est en train de prendre le temps, c'est en train de prendre le temps, c'est en train de prendre le temps, c' peut pas. Vous êtes vraiment potentiellement hâte, si vous avez hâte, dans vous-même, qui vous serez à l'autre, mais vous avez besoin de vous et vous faites le même exercice. Vous repeatz et vous repeatz. L'autre, vous créez l'inside, une transformation,

qui va vous aider à être compassionate pour l'accentienne de l'Etat. inside a transformation in you that will help you to be compassionate to world sentient beings. I think there's not I mean I do this practice myself and I think there's science that suggested it really works. Yeah you you were saying before that you do guided meditations do you when you do mean that you listen to somebody guiding you or I have a teacher who comes is a is a Gayshe which is like a Tibetan PhD yes he is from Nepal is from Nepal is Tibetan and Nepal is and he comes once a week in my house I have also tapes of his solitude the Dalai Lama and I have different ways to get guided meditation but one-on-one is very powerful

so when he comes do you does he ask you to tell him about your practice and he tells you where you're going wrong or is it more just you do amazing? No, he's teaching me, like for instance we can talk about the fornable truth and yes he may evaluate me and say, so let's talk about the forenobled truth. What do you know about it? So is that a Buddha's principle pronouncements, the forenobled truth? Yes, acknowledging that in life it's suffering and suffering as an origin, a root. And that you can, if you go to the root of suffering, of that specific suffering and cut it,

which could be attachment, you will not suffer not suffer but ultimately to free yourself from some Sarah You have to follow the path of Buddha. That's the eightfold path. This is the fourth noble truth It gets very mathematical, but it makes a lot of sense. Well Yeah, the eight eight are you call it eightfold? Path, yeah path. It's it's a will right that is designed and it's to help you to C'est un jeu qui est designé et qui s'est de l'appuyer à l'appuyer. Donc, vous avez besoin d'être en train de l'appuyer et de l'appuyer. Et puis, quand vous avez cette éducation, vous avez besoin d'autres pensées, vous avez une bonne pêche, et puis de bonnes actions,

puis de l'autre job qui n'est pas inconfliquée avec les étudiants. Comme si vous faites le mafier, je ne sais pas si vous pouvez être buddhiste. to have a job that is not in conflict with the teachings. Like if you work at the Mafia, I don't know if you can be Buddhist. Then you have to make the right efforts every morning or every day in your life to become a better person. Then you have to develop concentration. And before mindfulness, yes, mindfulness before concentration. So how important is it to have this Nepalese monk drop and buy once a week? Is that, does that's what you practice on the next level?

Yes, of course. He's helping me a lot. He's coming now to my house for about a year, about about a year, and yes, I helped me a lot, yes. You wrote a book recently which I'm embarrassed to admit, I haven't yet read because I just found out about it, but it's a memoir and it came out couple of months ago. Couple months ago, yes. It's called 32 Yokes from my mother's table to working the line, and now I admit that I haven't read it, which again I'm not proud of, but you... Oh, that's okay. But I like the ones of people that haven't read it.

But when I have a guest on it, I pride myself on reading their actual books. So this is not a good exception to that rule. But in the book, I've read about the book. And you do talk about some painful incidents from your past in the book, including your parents' divorce. Yes. And physical abuse from your stepfather. And also being

abused by a priest. Can you tell me a little bit about that and also whether this practice has helped you in any way? Yes. So I had a great life in a 70s in Centrope, which you know, Centrope, 70s, Copols, it's a challenge. I see. So my parents were very successful.

My hours turned out very good looking and therefore, it ended up in a divorce. I guess temptation was too much at that time. My mother remarried, my father remarried. My stepfather was very abusive in terms of beating me and verbally because I was a very difficult child. I was at war with him.

I ended up going to a boarding school, a Catholic boarding school. I couldn't come back to my house every weekend. I had to stay sometimes. So one priest Said to my mother, you know, if you want I can take him to see movies. I can take you know I can take him outside the school He can go walking down and and and so my mother said, yeah, it's fine So that Catholic priest tried obviously to I'm not obviously, but he tried to To abuse me sexually.

I mean, then my mother came and I was out of that school. And then my life was still not easy, I had other challenges, but I ended up being a very angry teenager that led into a very angry young man and with different issues as well linked to anger. And ultimately I had, I think, a certain spirituality in me. And until I discovered Buddhism, I was kind of lost. Lost in a sense that I was trying to be a good person, and I couldn't succeed at the level of where I wanted to be, and Buddhism was for me a revelation. We're almost done. I'm sensitive to the fact that I'm holding you back from the bustling operation beneath us down there. That's a vacation, actually, an hour vacation.

Are there things that I should have asked you about that I didn't ask you about other things you want to talk about before I let you go? No, I think I mentioned during our discussion that I'm not trying to convert everyone to Buddhism. And again, I want to reiterate that I'm really trying to be, I am in a position of leadership. Therefore, I'm trying to educate people around me who are working with me to do the right thing in a very secular way. And I think this is very important not to try to convert people. Have you had anybody complain? No, nobody complained because I do not try to convert them. I never do that.

But I apply the good principles. I mean, I try to apply the good principles the entire day. And what I do actually is that on the morning I look at myself in the mirror and I'm like okay I'm gonna have a day with challenges and today I'm gonna be the best I can and let's see if tonight I will be happy when I look at myself in the mirror it's always a little bit of a discrepancy. I know the feelings. Yeah I know the feeling but as you said before the trick is where there are discrepancies, you can just be better at going back and apologizing.

Yes, absolutely. It's been a pleasure to sit and talk with you, chef. Thank you very much. It was a pleasure too. please make sure to subscribe, rate us, and if you want to suggest topics we should cover or guess we should bring in, hit me up on Twitter at Dan B. Harris. I also want to thank Hardly, the people who produced this podcast and really do pretty much all the work, Lauren,

Efron, Josh Cohan, Sarah Amos, Andrew Calb, Steve Jones, and the head of ABC News Digital Dan Silver. I'll talk to you next Wednesday. Hey, hey, prime members. You can listen to 10% happier early and add free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Or you can listen early and add free with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts. Before you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondery.com slash survey.