Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 344: How to Handle Anger, Uncertainty, and Self-Loathing | Mushim Patricia Ikeda

Episode Date: May 5, 2021

When somebody wrongs you, what is the wise way to handle your anger? Is forgiveness possible? What about friendliness? My guest today has a lot of thoughts about how to handle anger and how to respond to people who mean you harm. It might surprise you to hear from a Buddhist teacher who actually isn’t utterly disparaging of anger. In fact, she is proud (somewhat facetiously) of having been called “the original Angry Asian Buddhist.” Her name is Mushim Patricia Ikeda, and she is my kind of Buddhist. She self-describes as “snarky,” and, as you will hear, she loves to laugh. She has doable, down-to-earth strategies, and she makes a compelling, if counterintuitive, case for the pragmatism of sending goodwill to people who want to harm you.  Mushim is a core teacher at the East Bay Meditation Center. She is a writer, activist, and diversity consultant. She has trained for decades as both a lay and monastic Buddhist. Aside from anger, we also discuss how to handle uncertainty, and what Mushim calls a “pandemic of self-loathing” in our culture. But we begin with some candid talk about the trauma of being an Asian-American during a time of rising violence against the AAPI community.  This is the second in a two-part series on the uptick in anti-Asian violence -- a trend that should be particularly worrisome for this audience, given the Asian roots of meditation and many of the other happiness-producing modalities we talk about on this show. If you missed it, go check out Monday’s episode, where we explore the history of anti-Buddhist and anti-Asian violence in America (which started decades before the pandemic), and the hurt felt by many Asian-American Buddhists about how they can be overlooked by other American Buddhists, including, sometimes, me. Two other items of business: first, are you interested in teaching mindfulness to teens? Looking to carve your own path and share this practice in a way that feels real, authentic, and relevant in today’s world? Our friends at iBme are accepting applications for their Mindfulness Teacher Training program - catered towards working with teens and young adults. The last round of applications are due May 15th and scholarships are available. For more information and to apply, check out: https://ibme.com/mindfulness-teacher-training/. And second, we want to recognize and deeply thank mental health professionals for all you do. For a year's FREE access to the app and hundreds of meditations and resources, visit: https://www.tenpercent.com/mentalhealth. Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/mushim-patricia-ikeda-344 See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Before we jump into today's show, many of us want to live healthier lives, but keep bumping our heads up against the same obstacles over and over again. But what if there was a different way to relate to this gap between what you want to do and what you actually do? What if you could find intrinsic motivation for habit change that will make you happier instead of sending you into a shame spiral? Learn how to form healthy habits without kicking your own ass unnecessarily by taking our healthy habits course over on the 10% happier app. It's taught by the Stanford psychologist Kelly McGonical and the Great Meditation Teacher Alexis

Santos to access the course. Just download the 10% happier app wherever you get your apps or by visiting 10% calm. All one word spelled out. Okay on with the show. to Baby, this is Kiki Palmer on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcast. From ABC, this is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. When somebody wrongs you, what's the wise way to handle your anger? Is forgiveness possible? What about actual friendliness?

My guest today has a lot of thoughts about how to handle anger and how to respond to people who mean you harm. It might surprise some of you to hear from a Buddhist teacher who actually is not utterly disparaging of anger. In fact, she is proud, somewhat facetiously,

of having been called the original angry Asian Buddhist. Her name is Mushim Ikeda and she is definitely my kind of Buddhist. She self-describes as snarky, and as you will hear, she loves to laugh. She has a ton of doable, down-to-earth strategies, and she makes a compelling, if counterintuitive, case for the pragmatism of sending goodwill to people who want to harm you. Mushim is a core teacher at the East Bay Meditation Center, which is in California.

She's a writer, activist, and diversity consultant. She has trained for decades as both a lay and monastic Buddhist. Aside from anger, we also discuss how to handle uncertainty and what Mushim calls a pandemic of self-loathing in our culture. But we begin with some really candid, bracing talk about the trauma of being an Asian-American during a time of rising violence against the AAPI community. This is the second in a two-part series we're doing this week on the uptick in anti-Asian violence, a trend that should be particularly worrisome for this audience, given the Asian roots of meditation and many of the other happiness-producing modalities we talk about on this show.

If you missed it, go check out Monday's episode where we explore the history of anti-Budist and anti-Asian Violence in America, which started way before this pandemic. And we also talk about the hurt felt by many Asian American Buddhists about how they can be overlooked by non-Asian American Buddhists, including sometimes me. Okay, having said that, here we go now with Mushim Ikeda. Okay, Mushim Ikeda, thanks very much for coming on. Thank you, Dan. I'm delighted to be here.

Let's start with the hard stuff. You and I chatted a little bit before we started recording here. I just want to signpost for the listeners that this is a difficult topic. Can you just describe a little bit for you how this last year or so has been given the really horrifying uptick in anti-Asian violence? Thank you for asking that question, Dan. I am a third generation Japanese American. And what that means in Japanese American definition is that all four of my grandparents, my mother's parents, my father's parents all came from Japan to the United States. They were the Isae means one. My parents were the Nisei, that means second generation. So they were actually

the first generation born in the United States. And my generation are the sonsay or third generation Japanese-American, second generation to be born in the United States. So my family has been here for quite a long time in the United States and Hawaii in Indiana all over the United States. And at the start of the pandemic in which the shelter in place order here in Oakland, California went into effect on March 16, 2020. A couple of months later, I began seeing news in the New York Times and the Washington Post and other major media, as well as local media, about attacks on people of Asian descent, Asian Americans, and Asian immigrants. Many of them people around my age or older, I turned 67 this year highly traumatizing and revived the multi-generational trauma in the Japanese American community resulting from the World War II,

World War II, internment in the camps, at which time all of the Japanese immigrants and Japanese American citizens like myself, we were completely stripped of all of our rights. And this was something that I was aware of, that it caused me so much fear that even though I knew it was advised, at least get outside, walk around your block once a day,

get out in the full spectrum light, wear a mask, just do it for one's health. I realized after a short time that I was miserable. I was so stressed by walking around my own block in my own neighborhood that I realized it was counterproductive. I would rather stay inside, do some exercise inside, get some sunlight out on the back deck where there is a protected backyard. And I realized that for me, what it created was now an entire year

in which I've felt basically bunkered down. It sounds like a kind of siege mentality, said it, in my opinion, not unjustifiably. Completely siege mentality. The first story that I read was of an Asian-American woman around my age, I think waiting for a bus on a street full daylight in a major city. I forget which one it might be New York City,

minding her own business, and two young men walked up and set her on fire. Well, the rest of us can look at that and feel, and I'm gonna use this again, just feel this word again. We can look at that and feel horrified. For you, you look at that and you can say, well, that person looks like me. I mean, that could have been me, or could be me tomorrow.

Absolutely. Dan, what's most frightening about the attacks that and the anti-Asian-American violence that I've been reading about and hearing about, not only far away from me in the United States, but also near at hand in Oakland, San Francisco is that these attacks are not personal. In other words, if I can feel that I'm in a situation of conflict and hostility with someone with whom I've interacted, even briefly on the street, a passer by someone that is in a space where I've been shopping, someone I know in my community, then there's something that I can do to prepare myself. However, if it's a random attack based completely on my appearance, my ethnicity, my perceived race, then there is nothing I can do to prepare for that. And that for me is

what is most terrifying and emblematic about the anti-Asian-Asian-American violence in the United States right now is that it is a mirror reflection of systemic violence in our society, which is structural and not personal. If there's any good news here, and I use that term very lightly, is that you've gone into this horrible year plus period of time where you've felt under siege, not only because of this violence, but also because you're high risk for COVID. If there's any good news here is that you've gone into this period of time, highly, highly trained as a meditation teacher.

So I'm curious, how are you dealing with these difficult circumstances? I think it was two days before shelter in place orders took effect here in the Bay Area in California, maybe all of California, I can't remember. That would have placed it at March 14th, 2020. You can hear how specific this is, Dan. I had a genuinely religious experience. I am a Buddhist, and we're a global faith tradition, however non-theistic. However, I would describe this as a genuinely religious experience, and what happened is that I was terrified, I was confused, I was overwhelmed, probably like everyone else trying to think about what shelter-in-place would mean, how long this

pandemic would go on was unknown, and I am trained. I am trained. I entered into Buddhism through Zen Buddhist training in the Korean Zen tradition and also in some of the Japanese Zen lineages. And a big part of Zen training is developing the ability to say sincerely, not as sloughing something off, but to say sincerely an answer to a large question to say, I do not know. And to be okay with that, with all of the feelings of, I don't know, I have no way of knowing. This whole thing is, we have entered the unknown. And that's how I felt as the pandemic set in

in the United States and in California. It was all unknown. And that's a familiar feeling to me, and I can fully be with it. The experience that I had was so unexpected. I am not particularly a kind of sweet, kind, gentle person all the time. I've gone through a lot. I'm a very strong person. I can be extremely direct and the older I get, the more direct I am, I

have less to lose. And still, the Buddhist training worked, Dan, and I had this spontaneous experience, and I was flooded with this physical sensation of expansion, of warmth, and of relaxation. And the thought was, this may be so terrifying and so unexpected that right now I am going to forgive everyone, including myself for everything. That doesn't mean I won't take activist action against things that are abhorrent, that are unethical, that are injurious, it does mean I won't take it personally. I knew I was going to see huge amounts of mental illness. I knew that I was probably going to, all of

us were going to witness forms of violence, that would be escalated from what we'd seen, and maybe forms of violence that we be escalated from what we'd seen and maybe forms of violence that we hadn't seen. And so the spiritual remedy that came up again, so unexpectedly was this thought, forgiveness. I forgive everyone for everything in advance and that is going to protect me now. Is that kind of forgiveness available to us mere mortals who have not trained to the extent that you have? If you knew me better you would definitely know I am a mere mortal. So the answer is

unequivocally yes. And you probably have some experience yourself with the practices in Buddhism that are called the Brahma-Fiharis, translated as divine abodes, also called the four immeasurable. I just finished teaching a class series at East Bay Meditation Center in Oakland online on the Brahmavaharas. I love these practices and so many people do as well. You don't need to be Buddhist. So they're four practices and the first is usually called loving kindness. The second is compassion. The third is empathetic joy and the fourth is equanimity. The loving kindness practice is probably the most popular and the most well-known. And the significance of these practices for us mere mortals in which I myself included

is that we don't necessarily have to feel divine and we don't have to feel, wow, I've got this down, I can be loving and kind to all living beings, which is the trajectory of the practice. It is a practice. And we plant seeds as we go along, it consists of phrases such as may all beings be well and happy. I think we could say probably in neuroscientific terms, it's creating pathways in the brain. It's creating new pathways in the brain, even little ones. And little ones can get bigger, as my son said when he was little. He once said that he meditated when he had a headache. I said, did it help? And he said, yeah, it helped a little.

And if it helped a little, it could help a lot. So I've taken that up as my own motto and the power of the small cannot be disregarded. So even if once a day we just say to ourselves or allowed we say, may all beings be well and happy, may all living beings be free from suffering. Boom, we're done. That's a practice. Go on. Repeat. 365 days later, we've planted 365 seeds of loving kindness the same for forgiveness. Just as I wish to be forgiven for the many mistakes that I've made, I do wish to be accountable.

I wish also to be forgiven in terms of giving another chance to do it differently. I wish to extend that forgiveness to others and unexpectedly that practice blossomed on March 14th, 2020. So it's not like out of nowhere in March of 2020, you were able to pre-forgive people for coming transgressions, you know, add like a bolt out of the blue, it was the flowering of many years of seed planting. Absolutely. The reason it's called practice is because we're doing it incrementally. And I always compare it to learning a musical instrument. Unless one is a genius, one does not sit down at the piano or pick up a saxophone and say,

all right, I'm ready to play Bach already. All right, I'm ready to be a master at improvisation in jazz on the saxophone. Usually it's not going to happen. What does happen? We get lessons and we practice. I mean, what has always been, the word always is tricky here. What he's compelling to me about these Brahma Vihara practices,

and I will issue the caveat that the reason why I'm hesitating around the word always is that because I'm so sort of nihilistically sarcastic by nature, these practices struck me as pretty hard to swallow in terms of how sweet they are at the beginning, but once I got over myself and started, you know, looked at the science and saw how beneficial these practices are. What has struck me since then is that friendliness, kindness, love, compassion, caring, whatever you want to call it. These are skills.

You know, we have a tendency to think of ourselves as built one way. You know, I came out of the box with factory settings, low compassion, but because that's actually how I thought about myself. We're a pretty selfish guy, but these are things you can change and man, they can bear fruit when you really need it. Absolutely. To use a capitalistic metaphor, sorry, it's just like putting money in the bank. Doing these practices is like having a savings account in a certain way. And maybe we think, oh well, I just put in 15 cents

or oh well, my practice sucks. And so this was about a dollar 20 deposit. That's not gonna get me anything. That's not true. Because to use another metaphor that may be more pleasing to more people, I think it said in the Buddhist teachings that the way that we can fill up a vessel

is drop by drop by drop by drop by drop by drop and I think that we're probably feeling as we hear this like on one hand there's a frustration of why so slow why can't we go faster on the other hand we can also feel all right everything in adult life requires patience that's what what we need to teach to our children. I am a mother. I've worked with a lot of children. We need to teach patients as something that's not mute endurance. We need to cultivate patients that is dynamic, that's alive, that's juicy, that's creative,

that's fun. Like it's fun to be patients. It's fun to do these Brahmavahara practices. And I'm with you, I'm a pretty snarky person. And it's fine to do snarky Brahmavahara practice. I had two students in Chicago. Apparently the Chicago expressways are notoriously filled with aggressive drivers doing all kinds of jerk moves. And after

they learned the loving kindness practice, they would be driving along and someone would cut them off and they'd raise their fists inside their car and they'd shout, waving their fists. May you be peaceful. May you be happy, may you be free from suffering, you jerk. And then they would laugh and you hear how that lightens us up, it expands us, we relax, and when we relax, we relax into our humanity. Just to put in, just to back your call for a more exciting version of patients, I totally agree. Patience gets a bad rap. I think I've mentioned this before in the show, but I went growing up.

We had a nanny, my brother and I, Anita, and my brother and I were gigantic pains in the butt. And I remember Anita grasping the wheel of her yellow VW bug and saying patience is a virtue over and over to herself. So yes, it strikes us as like a gritted teeth, the renunciation practice, but in my life at least very few things that I've done that are any good came easy. They were long cons. They were, you know, like things that I worked for years

at and then became awesome at some point. And so if you want to do anything great, it's going to take some work that and it's not just going to happen. I think for most of us, most of the time, that seems true. Absolutely. And once we realize that the key for me is Dan, when you said, you worked at it for a long time, and then you became awesome at it. There's a payoff. Not always, it's not 100% because, hey, we're talking about 10% here when you say 10% happier and that's pretty good. It's not 100% and it does work. Children learn that. Adults learn that. Something that really struck me, someone gave me a copy of Harari's book, which is called, I forget, it's called something like

21 Lessons for the 21st Century. You all know a Harari, I believe. Correct, correct. And his conclusion, as I recall, and he's a very dedicated insight meditation practitioner. I think he practices an hour every day, and possibly maybe more. And one of his conclusions that I recall is that one of the top characteristics we need, all of us in the 21st century, is the ability to reinvent ourselves over and over and over again.

Because everything is changing so quickly and so significantly. And therefore, the ability to be a lifelong learner and to say, I remember the word for mindfulness in English, the original word for that in Buddhism is usually one of the words is Sati, S-A-T-I, that does not mean sitting around being in the present moment. It actually means to remind ourselves, to remember something that's important to us, our values for instance. So I remind myself and I remember every day, it is good to learn new things because, and now I'll quote you, as Dan Harris says, we can become awesome at it. I love when people quote me back to me, that's great. But let me get back to you for a second

because we're talking about the practice of meta or loving kindness or if you want to go for a real simple name, just friendliness in these difficult circumstances. And I'm just wondering for you or for your students or for anybody here listening who has been wronged or attacked or victimized by other people, is it a bridge too far to send meta to those people, to the people who have harmed you? That's always the first question that comes up. And usually, it's not a question. It's more like, hell no.

There's no way. There is no way. There's no way that I, as a black indigenous person of color, someone who self-identifies as BIPOC, there's no way I should. I would. I would ever want to extend. I like your translation friendliness. Tonnesaro Biku, Jeff DeGraf, Translates, Mita, as good will. There's no way. Why would I extend good will toward the racist person who has injured me, who has injured my entire family, who is an injury to my community, that politician, that person in the position of power, my neighbor, who's making my life into a living hell.

That's very understandably almost the first thing that comes up for members of the lesbian gay bisexual transgender intersex queer questioning to spirit community. The first thing, of course, that will come up is hell no. Why would I wish goodwill to someone who's homophobic, to someone who is transphobic because of the immense violence against those communities. And for people who are willing to give it a try, who are willing to say, I am skeptical and I'm open to this, I'm willing to give it a try. I wonder if there's something for me here.

I wonder if there's something to help ease the suffering, the fear, the anger, the hatred that I feel because my communities have been ravaged by this violence. What I generally say is we can think about it this way. Number one, But I generally say, we can think about it this way. Number one, as a teacher, my rule is don't force anything. That's ridiculous. Don't grit your teeth and say, all right, you racist person, may you be happy, may you be peaceful.

That to me is an act of self-violence. Go for the easy stuff. If you think of your second grade teacher who's still around, who was very kind to you, start with what is easy, because practices grow. Even if we don't think they're growing, even if we don't see them growing, they grow, they have the potential to grow. They're alive.

These seeds are living, generative, germinating, little chunks of consciousness, which resonate in ways that we don't need to understand. I don't know if we actually even can understand it. However, if we're willing to give it a try, then at some point we may realize, at least for me, is that in wishing good will, to those who have harmed us, this is not for them. It is for us. So that we do not carry a St. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, so that we do not carry the burden of hatred. And if we even think of hatred at least for myself and what it feels like in the body. It's a terrible feeling. My stomach is churning, my heart is beating fast.

I'm starting to feel fearful and panic. I'm looking around as to who might be attacking me and how I can kill them first before they kill me. Do I want to live my life like that? I do not. If I need to defend myself, I'd like to do it from a place of stability, not of panic. So it's what you hear me saying is, I think it's actually utilitarian in a very funny and yet logical way. It is utilitarian to do this practice of goodwill and friendliness, and also these are not magic spells. Therefore, us, not to control or fix other people,

and if it should so happen, that my enemy does realize the need for nonviolence or less violence, that my enemy does have an awakening of consciousness of our interdependence, then that is going to benefit me. I always say in the end, these are very selfish practices because they have the potential to benefit me. Yeah, it's in light and self-interest or what the Dalai Lama calls wise selfishness. If you're gonna be selfish, which most of us are wired to be,

you might as well do it right. And as it turns out, doing it right, good greed involves friendliness and having good relationships with other people. And I wanna be clear, or I wanna help make your point clear to doubters out there. Just because you're developing some good will toward people who are hurting you, doesn't mean you're inviting them over for dinner, doesn't mean that you're condoning what they've done, doesn't mean you won't defend yourself. Absolutely.

Absolutely. Absolutely. That's the major misunderstanding that most people have, is that wishing someone who has behaved violently and injuriously, wishing them well, that equals condoning their behaviors, it absolutely does not. I want to have one of those giant equal signs with a diagonal slash through it. Like a mathematical formula does not equal. Instead, what it equals is getting yourself into a common up place so that you can respond, as you said before, with some balance instead of panic to whatever is happening right now. You've got some perspective, your 10-care of your own mind, and then you're doing what needs to be done.

Absolutely. An analogy that might be made in my very limited understanding, Dan, would be, say, in the martial arts. That training is not to be able to go out, go into a state of hatred, and beat people up in a state of excitement, and possibly panic. So much of that training is about physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually,

being able to be grounded, to be centered, to be able to pivot and move quickly, to be able to match, to match the force that may be coming at us with the ability to step to the side, or to know what our own resources and capacities are so that we can respond in the most skillful manner possible with the least harm and the best effect. It's actually quite tactical. And and and. I think this is related, but maybe it's not.

From what I understand, you're also somebody who's talked quite openly about the role of anger in a human life and in a meditation practice, I believe you've been called the original angry Asian Buddhist. Can you tell us why you were called that and then maybe talk a little bit about the role of anger in our practice and in our lives. Thank you for sure. I was called, in fact, I have it in writing, on the back of a postcard, the original Increation Buddhist as it was an homage actually from the Increation Buddhist blogger, who blogged anonymously until bless him his death, very premature death from cancer a few years ago.

His name was Aaron Lee. He wrote under pseudonym, and I had the good fortune to meet him. He didn't live in Oakland. He lived in Southern California, I think. However, he came to the meditation center where I mainly teach East Bay Meditation Center in Oakland to an evening where I was teaching. And he came up at the end afterwards. Sometimes people come up and they say, thank you, which is really nice. And he waited until everybody else had begun

to disperse a little. And then he came up, he was dressed in a business suit, which is not usual for people who come to our center because he'd been doing some work that day, professional meetings in Oakland. And he didn't say his name or maybe he said I'm Aaron and I didn't know that was his name since he wrote under pseudonym and he began talking and after a little while I got a feeling and I said to him, are you the angry Asian Buddhist? And he actually turned to the left and to the right and he looked around and he said,

yes, I am. I just kind of figured it out. So we developed a wonderful friendship and I did mentor him until his death and he wrote me a card and he said, I really regard you as the original angry really regard you as the original angry Asian American Buddhist. And this is because I have been as an Asian American, as a Buddhist practitioner and teacher and activist, I've been raising some of the points that have caused the anger and frustration for Asian American Buddhists for so many years. I've been raising these points in various activist circles for years and years and years. Not often because I don't want to sound

like a broken record and if the situation is not open to hearing and responding in a positive way, I'm going to again plant my seeds and move on. It's going to be a waste of my time. And it has caused me frustration and anger when I have not felt heard or seen. Because the form of racism that Asian Americans and speaking for myself, for myself as an Asian American, the form of racism that I experience most often as a citizen, having been born in the United States, raised in the United States, is being invisibleized.

There can be overt prejudice discrimination by us. I've been called an effing in my own neighborhood by two guys who were writing unbicycles when I was driving by. That's more rare for me. More common is that if I say something in a meeting, if I'm standing in line pre-pandemic in a store that when I come to the front of the line or after I've said something that it says though I haven't said anything or that I'm not there, the person may look to the person, non-Asian person in in back of me and say, may I help you. They'll actually look over my head. I have become a non-person.

I've become a non-entity. I'm invisible. I'm voiceless. And that, of course, is a very damaging experience. It does make us angry and for myself as a Buddhist practitioner. I've been practicing Buddhism now since 1982 and so I've done a lot of deep, deep work on anger of deep, deep work on anger. And I'm not averse to anger at all. I think it's natural to be angry. I think it's part of our strength as human beings. It's part of our vitality. It can help us to be in touch with anger towards injustice that can help to fuel our movements and our positive actions. It also has another side to it that is injurious, that is toxic, that is the fire that can burn

up our personal relationships, our professional standing that can damage our own communities when we turn on each other in internalized oppression. And therefore, for me, anger is not to be suppressed, it's not to be repressed. On the other hand, it needs to be expressed skillfully in a way that reflects practices that help to transform anger into energy. Can't do a full accounting of our respective lives right now, perhaps even ever, but I'm just going to guess that I've encountered a lot less discrimination than you have. And yet, I have experienced a lot of anger in my life just for mostly dumb reasons, you know, self-centered reasons or self-pity reasons or whatever. I still have trouble figuring out what a skillful expression of that anger would be. So where have you landed here? Where I've landed is, I would say in two places. And those two places are number one,

I really value a sense of humor. If I'm completely exhausted and sick and nauseated by what's gone on in terms of the news that I'm receiving from the United States or other parts of the world at the end of a day, and I've had it. and watch some skits from Saturday Night Live. Trevor Noah, people who are skilled and groups of creatives who are skilled at taking real life, very frightening, injurious, toxic material, and making it digestible to our consciousnesses so that we don't forget we need to work on these issues, making it digestible through humor, through caricature, through you were saying I think that you're a sarcastic kind of person, through sarcasm, through satire. These are all artistic forms that are tried and true. You can go back to the ancient Greeks.

There's a lot of snarky stuff there with the choruses chiming and so on. And we can see that this is a basic human creative and generative ability to be able to take very serious life-threatening, horrible, horrible, violent material, and to lighten it up through forms that involve humor. And what humor does, it is it brings perspective. It brings a sense of being able to move back, to distance ourselves enough to see a broader picture, to distance ourselves enough to see a broader picture, to see ways that even it can be regarded as funny in a serious way, because idiotic behaviors can be very, very funny in ourselves and in others. And then that perspective and that distance

can help to bring us more into a state of, all right, again, being tactical. What positive actions can I take? What resources do I have? What groups can I network with? And then we're moving forward from a place of strength and not weakness. So humor number one, the second is, as I said,

to be able to feel anger in the body. Anger is a word. It could mean a lot of things from mild annoyance all the way up to full, blown, incredible rage and everything in between. There's a slider on there. There's a spectrum. And when we go into our bodies, what is it that I'm feeling? What am I feeling in my body?

Then we can feel it as pure energy. Once we're directly in contact with that pure energy, then we can make a conscious choice and say, I'm going to channel this. I'm going to go into my kitchen in a rage. And I am going to wash more dishes than I've ever washed before, clean out a couple of shelves, and I will come out victorious. I'm in an incredible rage. All right, I have so much energy. Number one, I'm going to realize I don't want to burn myself out. So I'm going to eat a good lunch first. And then I'm going to go online

I'm going to find the top three organizations that can advocate for my interests and my communities interests I'm going to give them some money and I'm going to see what their platforms are. I will empower myself And just to amplify what seems to me to be a key point among many very powerful points, but in particular, I just want to amplify this moving out of your head and into your body, which again, can slip easily into the realm of cliche, but there's so much evidence to support this move. Get out of the swirling stories in your head, the noxious sort of narratives that we can get into when we're angry, whether justified or unjustified, dropping into the body and seeing how it is energy that's moving

through your body, different types of energy depending on where you are in the slider between irritation and full on rage. That gives you some perspective on your anger and you might make some decisions like oh well i'm gonna get on the peloton bike right now i'm gonna walk around the block and practice. Well if you feel safe walking around the block i'm gonna walk around the block and practice and expletive field speech and i'm gonna deliver to my boss, but I'm actually not going to deliver it. I'm going to do any number of things that don't harm anybody, including myself, but it's easier to make that move once you've dropped south of the cerebral cortex into your body. Am I saying that correctly? Absolutely. In the key, I think Dan and what you said are, I think I heard you say the noxious stories, the narratives that are swirling around in that swirling around what I deduce and what I experience is

they're cyclical. They keep recycling the same material over and over and over and over again. We're not getting something new. They're digging in deeper and deeper and deeper and we're getting matter and matter and matter and matter. And if we can step back and say, you know what? I'm kind of tired of the same story. Can't I at least have a new story It's like watching the same episode of a TV show over and over and over again. We really do want the next episode usually. What is the next episode? Give us something new. And that's an indication when we're able to look at it is we're stuck. We're stuck in one particular story. And therefore dropping down into the body sensations and you're entirely right,

I'm tired of all the cliched stuff about embodied this and embodied that myself. It's become a buzz word. The good part of that is it's pointing towards something that is entirely real, is entirely necessary and valid, which is to be in touch with our body sensations, where we are in space, where our center of gravity is so that we can not knock things over, not be injured. And when we're able to drop down out of those stuck and swirling and circular narratives, then the possibility, the potentiality for something new to arise. It might be a new story. However, it might be a penetrating insight that zooms backward throughout our entire lives.

And everything we've been through that has made us mad as wet chickens. And it can also seem forward through the rest of our lives with a massive insight of, oh, all right, I get it. This is the nature of anger. This is how I can get it unstuck. This is how I can metabolize anger. And this is how I can transform it. It's almost like an alchemical process. This is how I can transform it into something that will be so creative. I am going to write Dan, I can say I'm a poet. I am going to write the best anger poem of my life. I'm going to get it published, and I'm going to win a prize for it.

Much more of my conversation with Mushim Ikeda right after this. Hey, I'm Aresha, and I'm Brooke. And we're the hosts of Wunderys Podcast, even the rich, where we bring you absolutely true and absolutely shocking stories about the most famous families and biggest celebrities the world has ever seen. Our newer series is all about drag icon RuPaul Charles. After a childhood of being ignored by his absentee father, Ru goes out searching for love and acceptance, but the road to success is a rocky one. Substance abuse and

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you get your podcasts, you can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or the Wondery app. I was struck by something you said at the top of the show about all of your practice and you began practicing in a Zen Buddhist context of getting into the state of not knowing or beginner's mind, being okay with uncertainty, and that that was helpful for you. If I heard you correctly, as we entered into the pandemic, and I imagine still given all the open questions about where this pandemic is going, where the world's going, it's probably still helpful for you. How can the rest of us practice so that we can be at least marginally more okay with uncertainty. I love that question and I'm not separated from you or the rest of anyone. So the question for me is how can we practice so that we're more okay with uncertainty?

Have I heard you correctly? Yes. How can we practice so that we're more okay with uncertainty? Here's my answer to that. It doesn't need to be some spiritual thing. However, it does require the ability to contemplate and to reflect. And I hope we can hear these words as not belonging to any spiritual tradition, to any religion, it's a human ability. Do we have the ability to be able to clear our minds, to drop out of whatever technique we use, to just set aside, say, I'm going to set aside my to-do list, the fact that I need to prepare for my taxes,

my worries about this, my conflicts with my children. I'm going to just make a conscious decision to set it down to enter a space that we might call contemplative or reflective, and then I'm going to ask myself this question, how much do I really know about the universe? And of what I think I know, how much is actually scientifically proven to my satisfaction and entirely settled when I reflect that it wasn't that long ago in human history that people thought that the sun circled around the earth. They knew it because they could observe it. It was very, very logical and they were certain of it. So in that way, we can reflect and say, well, I think I'm certain about these things, but really, how much do I know?

And the answer for me is not much and it's always going to change. And if that seems to abstract the universe, we could even in referring to one of the great Buddhist teachers and spiritual teachers of our century, Tiktok Han, the Vietnamese, Zen Buddhist master, and great teacher. And he has said over and over and over again that we can realize the universe and also the unknowns, the unknowns and the unknowns by picking up anything. So looking at a piece of paper, looking into our coffee cup, our microphone. It doesn't matter. You just name something. Piece of cloth, your kitchen sponge, and looking at it and saying, where did you come from? And how did you come into manifestation, into

existence? If we really think about it in a logical way, that piece of paper does contain in it. It's made from trees and the trees were grown on the earth with the sun and the rain and other conditions had to be favorable nutrients in the soil, other trees supporting it on and on and on. The forest needed to be a whole collective entity. And the matter in that tree, in this piece of paper, in this coffee cup, in this microphone, it doesn't matter in this pen, whatever, human being. The matter that comprises these objects, these beings,

if we really think about it, we can go backward in time from what we know of science or at least in my point of view, what I know of science and say, it stretches infinitely back and so much of it is totally unknown. Not knowing is not something to be achieved. It's not a practice to achieve anything. It's a practice of relaxing into the reality of what is. Unless you know something I don't

know. Are you an omniscient person? I think I was in a call today expressing some strongly held opinion, actually a weekly held opinion, but delivering it in my usual anchor man style. So it seemed like I held it more strongly than I did. I think I said something like, you know, I actually don't really know if what I'm saying is true. And there's a lot of historical precedent to my being wrong. So take that with everything I'm saying

with a grain of salt. So no, I'm not, I'm missioned. But let me ask you this question. Is there something about the meat and potatoes? I say this with apologies to all the vegans out there or vegetarians out there? Is there something about meat potatoes, mindfulness practice? You know, sit, watch your breath.

Every time you get distracted, start again. I'm guessing that a lot of our listeners do this or have done this at some point or aspire to do this practice with some regularity. Is there something about that practice that would prepare us to deal with uncertainty? Would put us in touch with the not knowing. Yes. The practice that you're describing is, I believe, called mindfulness meditation. Am I correct? I think so, yes. And it's important to realize that mindfulness meditation is only, it's a technique and it's only one meditative technique out of hundreds and thousands, out of probably hundreds and Buddhism and thousands in many, there

are Jewish forms of meditation, there are Christian forms of meditation, there are many indigenous forms of meditation. The practice that you're describing is called mindfulness or insight meditation or Vipassana meditation. And it does involve returning again and again to place our attention on physical sensations, on the awareness that thoughts are arising, on the awareness that emotions are arising, and that unless we're in danger, if we're safe enough, we don't need to react. We don't need to take any action. Instead, we develop the ability to be supreme observers and to watch these internal phenomena arising, arising, then they change, then they pass away. One moment, we have this horrible itch. And if we don't scratch it, we just watch it, watch it,

which is agonizing and horrible, by the way. If we're able to stick with it after a while usually, suddenly it's gone. And what happens? We're thinking about what's for lunch. Over time, what this gives us the opportunity to see and to realize over and over and over again, speaking for myself, is that in our human experience

everything is always changing, that it's not a product, it is a process. So in other words, a thought is not some kind of product. Exactly as you said, that it was going to be this strongly held object, it's this impenetrable thing. Now, it's a manifestation of the moment. And perhaps because as you he said, you're an anchorman, you have the ability to express it in a way that feels certain that conveys in human communication terms a kind of solidity, which is a power that can be used for the good to make a point.

It does not mean that it is an entity that is isolated from everything else and is somehow infinite and immortal, weird as that may sound. So when we really get this in our bones, in the marrow of our bones, in our blood, through our entire being, that we ourselves are a series of processes that are rising that were a flux that were more a river than anything that's solid. And a river is solid in its own way. It's just solid and that's fluid and it's moving. We're so we're fluid. We're moving.

We're constantly changing. We're a series of other processes that are also like streams entering into us and into our everyday existence. As soon as we can realize that, then we can understand that there are so many factors, some of which are known, some of which are unknown, many of which are unknown, and all of which are changing in how they interact with one another. That then we can have that basic insight into, oh, now I understand. So much of my life is mysterious. So much of what is around me is unknown. Let me seek the clarity that I can get in this moment

and maintain the humility of understanding. I don't know what a lot of is going on. I don't even have the capacity to know. Really well said. I was really intrigued in looking at the notes that are DJ, who's one of our producers, who's producing this episode. He sent me some notes before this interview. And in the notes, he mentioned that one thing you're seeing a lot from your students pre-pandemic

and now is self-loathing. In fact, you called it a pandemic of self-loathing. Can you tell me a little bit more about that? I'm happy to do so. In the past 15 and more years, most of the people who might call themselves my students in my capacity as a Buddhist teacher, and I do mostly serve underserved communities. However, I'm pretty sure it doesn't matter that in the United States, and I'll speak for myself, as a United Statesian, mostly serving people in the United States, not exclusively, that in the United States, there is what I would call a pandemic of perfectionism of a harsh inner critic and of

really awful self-loathing, self-hatred. This deeply held belief, which people, most people are really smart, so they'll say, I know this doesn't make sense and it's also true That I feel I am a shameful being I'm not a worthy being I am inherently shameful I Don't deserve happiness How could I deserve love? I'm not a good person.

And I'm no longer surprised by this. However, I feel so bad because this is a core issue which meditation, spiritual practices may not be able to help with in any timely way. They might be able to help with in any timely way. They might be able to help, however, I personally think that some form of psychotherapy, therapy, ritual healing, depending on the person's ancestry and culture,

that we need all of the tools from all of the areas of our lives, if in fact we have this inner conviction that we're shameful, we're not inherently worthy of love and respect and dignity. That doesn't mean that we're kind or good all the time or anything. It just means yes, I am a worthy being, I deserve human rights. I am a living being, and therefore I deserve to be treated with equality, with equity, with kindness, with respect, and with compassion, which is what, of course, I wish for everyone. So I have been seeing this, and it's always been puzzling to me, Dan, from the beginning because for whatever reason, my parents did an incredible job. I was their first child of three and I grew up feeling,

not like I was the best person or the smartest person in the world didn't need to be because that's another form of perfectionist. However, I felt grew up feeling like I'm intrinsically pretty great. I can achieve things. I can work hard. I can learn. I'm a creative person. I have my own kind of brilliance. And actually, I'm fabulous. I've raised one child. I raised him in the way I was raised. When he was in high school, I did a surprise Zen attack on him. He was making tea in the kitchen. I walked in and I said, do you like yourself? He said, yes.

I said, do you love yourself? He said, yes. And I said, do you think you'll ever meet anyone as well-loved as you have been? He said, unlikely. And he turned and he turned any what away. That's a great. I like that. Senateck. So it's interesting.

You don't think meditation. You think it's certainly not a quick route to getting underneath this insufficiency, this feeling of that word sort of irredeemable, the self-loathing you've described. That sounds like you're recommending for people in that situation and that maybe many of us listening to your words that you're calling for a sort of a multimodal approach, including therapy, meditation, and other avenues. Rachel Healing, whatever we need, whatever we can find, whatever we can get.

And I want to be clear that I feel that this self-loathing is not something at all inherent to the human condition. I feel it's a direct product of structural forms of oppression such as racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, classism, all of the forms of violence which create situations in which people are categorically, who belong to an identity category are made to feel not in small and insignificant ways, through whole legal structures in our society are made to understand that they are not worthy of the same rights as people with more privilege,

that they are not worthy of access to decent medical care and to housing that is clean, that's affordable, that provides a safe and nourishing home, that this is a direct result of forms of capitalism and white supremacy that need to be dismantled. You know, on capitalism, just to add to that, I don't consider myself to be anti-capitalist. And there may be people listening, including you, disagree with me. But on, I'm going to be critical nonetheless of capitalism. One of the noxious, emergent properties, or maybe it's actually just inherent to capitalism is that in order to sell things, you need to convince people that they need to buy them.

And one of the ways to convince people that they need to buy something is to make them feel insufficient or dysfunctional, unless or until they make the purchase. And so that can engender some of this self-loathing, perhaps, even among dominant groups who are not on the receiving end of structural racism. Does that land for you? Yes, for everyone. So it impacts some communities more than others, structural violence, and no one is spared in our country and in our culture because of the consumerist mentality that

you're talking about, that in order to sell certain products, which may be actually not necessary, that a market needs to be created for them. And the market is created by saying, you're lacking something. You'd look better if you had this hair product and then you would be able to attract more people, your professional life would go better, what the heck? You would even love yourself more. And to be able to make these promises

that sell these products. So I feel that you've hit that nail right on the head and this is something that meditation can be used to help unravel in the sense of mindfulness meditation. I'm not talking about other meditations necessarily. Mindfulness meditation, the goal is to help us see reality, to go underneath all of the delusion, all of the fake advertising, all of the fake news if we're going to have it. And to come up with what we might even call a critique, good critical thinking.

I'm not necessarily saying down with capitalism, I'm not saying necessarily down with any system. I do have strong critiques. I would like to see alternatives. Creative alternatives to capitalism. And as my old friend Zen master, American Zen master Robert Aiken who died some years ago said he was a democratic socialist. and he used to say, yes, as is said, democracy is the worst system except for all the others. In terms of just leaving people with a sense of the potential for agency in the face of the self-loathing that I agree with you, I think many people experience myself included. I'll just say for me what's been helpful and I I don't wanna act as if there's some sort of panacea

that I've found, but definitely therapy is helpful. Definitely having more open dialogues with people, having great relationships in my life professionally and personally, I'm having open dialogue with those folks is helpful. And then a combination of mindfulness meditation, which can help you see, oh yeah, this is just a story I'm telling myself. And loving kindness, in particular, sort of the friendliness you can direct toward

yourself, that cocktail that I just described has, while not eliminated self-loathing, has definitely taken the edge off, just to say. Yes, that is a potential of it, and that's why these practices are embraced by so many people, either in a secular context, schools, hospitals, governmental facilities, people can do mindfulness, they can also do goodwill, friendliness, loving, kindness, meditation in a way that is not representative of any religion or any spiritual tradition. Because once again, we're talking about the human potential to be able to heal the injuries that we've sustained.

This is the promise. This is the potential, and it's been fulfilled for so many people. We began this conversation talking about anti-Asian violence, and then we ranged over loving kindness and anger and uncertainty, and now to self-loathing. We've just been quite a range we've covered here. Is there anything though that I failed to ask that you really think I should have asked? It's been a long journey. It's been a good journey for us today, Dan, and I feel complete.

Thank you. Well, I really appreciate you coming on. It's been a real pleasure. One in order to make me feel complete, I would last one last thing, which is if you're comfortable with it, can you just plug yourself a little bit? If people want to find more from you,

anything you've written or listened to some of your talks or a website or, you know, attend any teachings you're putting on, where can they do that. I do have a website. It's my name Buddhist name, www.mushimikata and that's spelled m-u-s-h-i-m-i-k-e-d-a.com. However, it's maintained by a dear friend who's a volunteer. And so I doesn't list everything that I'm going to be teaching. I teach a lot at East Bay Meditation Center. Eastbaymeditation.org is a very good place to look for what I'm teaching. And then also And then also for my writing, you can Google me in two ways, Mushim, Ikeda, and also my secular name, which is Patricia,

Y, that stands for Yoshiko, Ikeda, and that is a name under which I first began to publish as a poet, and as a creative nonfiction and essay writer from a very long time ago. Mushim, thank you very much. Thank you. It's been a pleasure, Dan. Thanks again to Mushim.

I really, really enjoyed talking to her. Before I let you go, I do want to do a couple of items of business that I mentioned on Monday, but they bear repeating. Number one, do you want to teach mindfulness to teenagers? If you're looking to carve your own path and share this practice in a way that feels real to you and relevant in today's Topsy-Turvy world, our friends at IBNE are accepting applications for their mindfulness teacher training program.

It's catered towards working with teens and young adults. The last round of applications are due on May 15th. Scholarships are available. If you want some information to apply, check out IBne.com slash teacher training. We'll put a link, of course, in the show notes. Second item is, as you may know, May is mental health awareness month. Over the past year, mental health professionals

have not only had to cope with the effects of the pandemic in their own lives, but also to help their clients navigate this very difficult world. We wanna thank all the people doing this work and recognize the mental health professionals and offer up some support from our end. So if you fall into the category

of a mental health professional and you want a year's free access to our app where we've got hundreds of meditations and other resources go to 10% dot com slash mental health. And again, thank you. Speaking of thanks, I want to thank the folks who work so hard to make this show. Samuel Johns, DJ Cashmere, Kim Bycamumbum, Rier-Wertel, and Jen Plant. We get our audio engineering done by ultraviolet audio. As always, a big shoutout to my ABC News Comrades, Ryan Kessler and Josh Cohan, and we will see you all on Friday for a bonus. 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 1-3-plus in Apple Podcasts. Before you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondery.com slash Survey. www.serve.org