Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 389: What the Buddha Taught About Friendship | Kate Johnson

Episode Date: October 20, 2021

Friendship was important to the Buddha. In fact, there’s a whole passage in the Buddhist scriptures, or suttas, about friendship, with seven strategies for friendship, some of which we will discuss in this episode, with Kate Johnson.Kate has been meditating for over twenty years and is a graduate of Spirit Rock’s four-year teacher training program. She is the author of a new book that has drawn praise from people like Lama Rod Owens, Jack Kornfield, and Ruth King. The book is called Radical Friendship: Seven Ways to Love Yourself and Find Your People in an Unjust World. In the book, and in this conversation, Kate draws on an ancient Buddhist text known as the Mitta Sutta to offer actionable strategies for realness, generosity, and other key ingredients for friendship. Radical Friendship is available on Bookshop, Indiebound, Barnes and Noble or AmazonTo practice cultivating radical friendship, check out some related meditations in the Ten Percent Happier app. If you're already listening to this episode in the Ten Percent Happier app, just scroll down to the "Related" section for meditations on friendship from Sebene Selassie, Oren Jay Sofer, and Joseph Goldstein. If you're not a subscriber, click here or download the Ten Percent Happier app wherever you get your apps and click on the "Podcasts" tab to get started.And while you’re there, be sure to listen to our new podcast, Twenty Percent Happier, available exclusively in the Ten Percent Happier app. Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/kate-johnson-389See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hello, hello. I get how maybe friendship might not seem like the most pressing psychological contemplative or geopolitical issue. Yeah, yeah, I have enough friends I'm doing fine. Just teach me out of meditate. Harris, if that is your attitude, just know that a guy named the Buddha disagreed. There's a whole passage in the Buddhist scriptures or sutas about friendship with seven strategies

for friendship, some of which we're going to discuss today. There's also a famous story where one of the Buddha's disciples came to him after a fascinating Dharma discussion with some buddies and exclaimed, friendship is 50% of the path. The Buddha corrected him and said, no, it's 100% of the path. These, by the way, are not exact translations. Anyway, friendship was super important to the Buddha, but it is clearly a dying art. The number of close friendships that Americans have has declined over the past decades. In 1990, 33% of Americans said they had 10 or more friends. In 2021, that is down to 13%.

In 1993, percent said they had no friends. Now it's up to 12%. My guest today is Kate Johnson. She's a former modern dancer who's been meditating for more than 20 years. She's a graduate of Spirit Rock's four-year teacher training program. She's the author of a new book that has drawn praise from some of the people whose names, longtime listeners might recognize, including Lama Rod Owens, Jack Cornfield and Ruth

King. The book is called Radical Friendship and In It, and in this conversation, Kate draws on an ancient text known as the Mita Suta to offer actionable strategies for realness, generosity, and other key ingredients for friendship. We talk about some of the Buddha's specific strategies, including give what is hard to give and the other challenges of generosity, do what is hard to do, and keeping secrets. We talk about what Kate means by a relational practice and what that looks like in real life.

We talk about what friendship has to do with enlightenment or liberation and how radical friendship can have societal ramifications. Before we dive in, one exciting order of business, meditation can often seem like a solitary practice. In the movies, when you see a character meditating, they're often sitting alone on a mountain top, wearing a loincloth, a wind blowing through their hair. My colleague, the meditation teacher Matthew Hepburn, says meditation is in fact a team sport. Mathieu has spent considerable time studying many millennia's worth of ancient wisdom teachings in community with other people.

Now he's here to help you learn how to make those teachings work for you by launching a new show, a new podcast, where he coaches meditators through real life struggles. His new show is called 20% Happier. On each episode of the podcast, you listen in on an intimate conversation between Matthew and a guest. Unlike on this show, the guests are not gurus. They're lay people, rank and file meditators. They meditate, yes, but their lives are probably a lot closer to yours than say the Dalai llamas.

Matthew helps each guest unpack what's going on in their practice, where they feel stuck, what's working or not working, thus leading them toward moments of insight that can really transform their lives, and hopefully yours as you listen in. I call this mindful eavesdropping. You're going to learn from Matthew and his mentees how to understand what is happening in your mind and what you're supposed to do about it.

The 20% Happier Podcast is available exclusively in the 10% Happier app, so to listen to 20% Happier, download the 10% happier app. So to listen to 20% happier download the 10% happier app, wherever you get your apps and then tap on the podcasts tab at the bottom of your screen. I know that's a lot of math, but I think you can figure it out. Anyway, we'll get started with Kate Johnson right after this. 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.

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

Listen to Baby This is Kiki Palmer on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcast. Okay, Johnson, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me down. It's a pleasure. Likewise. So give me a sense of why and how you came to this subject of friendship. Friendship is something I really care about.

It's something I've always appreciated in my life. It's something that I've messed up at several times, you know, I learned from those mistakes, hopefully. And it's something that I was really excited to discover is actually an essential part of the the Buddhist path that I love so much and that I entered into through the doorway of meditation. And I started thinking about friendship as a tablet for this book in response to my experience in Buddhist meditation centers, where we were trying hard to think about how to respond to social justice issues and to become better the word that we're using the time allies to racial justice issues to environmental justice, and even getting approached by labor organizers kind of asking about, what would it look like for Buddhist medisheaters to show up on mass to support social justice issues, and the way that we have, for example, Black churches showing up in the state capital, to rally on behalf of labor, for example. And so there was this desire to

half of labor, for example. And so there was this desire to harness the energy that we were spending cultivating wisdom and cultivating compassion and turn it towards moving those principles into action. And at the same time, we were having some difficulty both internally in those communities, like showing up for one another in a really intimate authentic way. And then also some concern about, you know,

what does it look like for a predominantly white, predominantly privileged Buddhist meditation or mindfulness space to to show up for people who didn't look like that and have that experience and how could we do that in a way that wouldn't then replicate some of the harm that has happened, you know, in terms of the causes of the conditions that brought this wealth gap and racism about. So in that search for, how do we do this well? How do we do this better? How do we create the kind of authentic and meaningful

relationships that we want to have both within the community and also between communities? This Buddhist teaching on spiritual friendship seemed like a really amazing clue, this Buddhist teaching on virtual friendship seemed like a really amazing clue, you know, on how we might do that. It's some really fantastic pointers about what friendship means in a practical everyday sense and elevating this data, I think, a friendship beyond a nice to have kind of relationship to an essential relationship and one that can really move us forward on our path to liberation, you know, both individually and collectively. I was surprised in my early investigations of Buddhism to see how much there is about friendship as well. Because as you said, it does kind of seem like a nice to have maybe even sort of slightly whimsical subject, but the

Buddha took it very seriously. Do you remember like what struck you about that or what went on your learning about the Buddhist path you came across those teachings? The thing he said to his right hand man, slash cousin Ananda came to him and said, I'm paraphrasing here. I don't think I'm going to get the exact quotes here, but something him and said, I'm paraphrasing here, I don't think I'm gonna get the, I don't think I'm gonna get the exact quotes here, but something like, hey, I just had this great conversation.

It was awesome. It struck me and Nanda said to the Buddha that friendship is like half the path. And the Buddha said, no, it's 100% of the path. 100% yeah. Yeah, that was one that really moved me too. And one that felt mysterious, you know, like what do you mean? It's the whole holy path. Yeah, that was one that really moved me too. And one that felt mysterious, you know, like,

what do you mean? It's the whole, the whole path. Like, I thought it was meditating and ever greater, ever longer minutes of sessions, you know, and that would be progress. That teaching is something that also made me curious about the potential of friendship. I think it becomes even more important to me now

where I'm at in life as a parent of a young kid. I feel like the length of my own meditation sessions, dwindles and dwindles and dwindles in these days. And so any opportunity to practice in a way that's relational is just, I'm so grateful for those opportunities because it's really what I have now. And I know that many people can relate to that too. So what does that look like when you say to practice in a way that's relational?

What does that mean when the rubber hits the road? Ultimately, I think it means that every encounter with another being could be an opportunity to practice. And I love that you say when the rubber meets the road because I think there's a way that it's maybe easier to understand that conceptually. And there are many ways in the Dharma world that we point to that way of practicing or understanding.

You know, there's this many phrases are coming to my eyes. I imagine that every being you meet could be your mother or was your mother in a past life. You know, there's a notion that anyone we meet could be your mother or was your mother in a past life, you know, are there is a notion that anyone we meet could be our teacher. And it's our job to figure out how. There's the teaching on the three jewels, you know, the three areas of refuge that the Buddha offered us, you know, places where we can find comfort and support when things feel confusing or hard. And one is the first of the idea of awakening and the other is the Dharma, the teachings themselves. And then there's the Sangha, which is the community of practitioners, and depending on how we look at it, that could also include everybody. I think what it means is that it's possible to utilize and expand upon the qualities that we develop in our meditation practice,

including mindfulness of the body, including awareness of thoughts and emotions as they're advising, including wise reflection, and that it's possible also to use the values that we have as kind of navigation systems or compasses when we're relating with other human being. So if we prioritize and we value patients, we value generosity, we value truthfulness that in the chronocopia of, you know, sensations and experiences and emotions that can guide us, especially when things feel difficult relationships. You know, they're beautiful and they're enriched my life

and they're also sometimes hard. And when they get hard, that's the moment where I find it hard to practice. That's the moment where I don't feel my body. That's the moment where I forget that I know how to center myself. I'm laughing because my brother just moved to Philly and he was very fond of doing something that he knew would irritate me. And then when I got a rise that I made, he'd be like, oh, I thought you're a meditation teacher.

But yeah, it's easy in a moment of being reliant with another person to forget that we have access to all these tools. So I think that's what it means is that we can be in the practice of intentionally remembering. It's not uncommon. I'm doing some experience too. For the moments where you need to practice the most, you forget to do it. Yeah, I know I feel that way too. I feel like I didn't just start practicing, but I'm also like, I don't think

my journey's by but it means done. You don't want to turn to the my own practice. But I will say one of the ways that I feel myself maturing on the path is that I was going to say bring more and more into the Dharma, but I think what I mean is like allow the Dharma to expand and hold more and more of my experience. And I know that earlier on my path, it was more of a superficial relationship where I started on meditations centers in Perp because I wanted to meet other people who meditated. You know, when I thought that meditators were cool and would want to be friends with them actually.

And I know that earlier on, I related to my meditation practice and my even going to Buddhist retreats almost like an accessory, you know, it was like having a nice handbag or like a cool pair of shoes. It was something that helped me feel self-esteem and almost look good to myself, right? But it wasn't something that when you mentioned when the rubber hits the road or when I really, really needed it, I had a tendency to think, okay, I'm going to handle this myself. The Dharma can handle the smaller problems, but this big one, I got to figure this out on my own. I think the longer I practice, the less that makes sense, and the more I think in moments of being

really confused or really hurt or really angry or really sad, I noticed more and more willingness and ability to say, you may I see this moment as Dharma, I think when that happens in relationship, I think that's a radical friendship move, you know, to have the confidence that there is something to learn here. Am I willing to use my awareness to mine this experience for ways to become more free and to grow. You use the term radical friendship, which I know is the title of the book. Can you define that at least as you define it? Yeah. The book is really based on the the Buddha teachings of spiritual friendship, Kali Anamita. The reason why I call that radical friendship is really because of what I see as the implication of practicing this kind of friendship in our modern world.

That there's something about the commitment to show up for our own and other person's liberation that has a potential to help us grow not only spiritually, but I think also socially and politically and the hope that that kind of friendship is the kind that could help us Really bridge differences in a way that could allow us to stay together long enough to affect like truly radical social change And I think it's also the way that to practice these principles inside of a relationship might allow us to feel what it's like to be free together and to have this many experience of collective liberation even though we're not there yet. I don't think any of us can look around our world and say like this is a world that is truly free and this liberated from great hatred and delusion that has had the obstacles to our true nature

as human beings and our true humanity removed so that it's just we're not there yet. And I think it's radical that we might, inside of our relationships, develop liberated spaces where we can feel what it might be like, but on a small scale. And I think that that feeling can also be a compass, it can also be a way to navigate all of the conditions that would have to come into place for us to have that sense of liberation be more widespread in terms of policy and culture and I think of that nature. So it's not just about a practice that might be good for your own spiritual development and maybe even good for the well-being of the people around you, you see this as something that ladders up to

helping us have a more just society. I hope so, I think so. I think it's worth a try. I have this discussion with a Dharma friend who, you were just kind of calling the question, is it true that the Buddhist teachings about how we work with our own mind ladder up as you say scale up in a way that could inform how we think of how society gets liberated? And there's something in me that says yes, I think there's an information for us there.

I think it's probably not the only thing that we need, but yeah, I think it's worth to try. Much more of my conversation with Kate Johnson right after this. Raising kids can be one of the greatest rewards of a parent's life. But come on, someday, parenting is unbearable. I love my kid, but is a new parenting podcast from Wondry that shares a refreshingly honest and insightful take on parenting. Hosted by myself, Megan Galey, Chris Garcia, and Kurt Brownleur, we will be

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You can listen ad-free on the Amazon music or Wondering app. You can listen ad-free on the Amazon Music or Wendry app. You mentioned before the Mita Suta, this section of the Buddhist scriptures where the Buddha talks about friendship in great detail. And I know within there are seven strategies that you elaborate upon in the book, chapter by chapter. I'd love to start tackling some of these so people get a sense of, for a moment to moment, how can you actually do what you're talking about? Cool. Let's get practical and tactical. Practical and tactical.

That's a big part of what we try to do here. The first strategy is give what is hard to give. That doesn't sound like a ton of fun, but tell us what you think the Buddha meant and where you go with it in your own mind as you contemplate it. To me, it points to the teachings on generosity of which there are also many in the Dharma

and which the Buddha said to have taught people even before meditation as the practice of generosity because it helps liberate the clinging mind when we give. And I think that part of what this is also saying is that we can also act our way into the right state of mind by giving what's a little bit difficult for us to give or getting at the edge of our comfort zone. In the book, I talk about three of my own kind of hard to give

is because the Buddha doesn't tell us what that is for us. He, I think, is encouraging us to consider what's true for each of us. So I talk about money, giving of resources. And as a practice, I talk about time, giving time, taking time, and how we might relate to that as a spiritual practice also with our friends. And I talk about the giving of unconditional love in the form of attention. It's not a limited resource like the other two, but it can feel like that.

Those three are, or ones you've struggled with personally. Oh, definitely, yeah. Listen, with money, for me often, it's just not feeling like I have enough. And certainly I have more than most folks when you look at the grand skin of things. And also, there are a lot of people who are really visible to me who have much more.

It's hard because I haven't talked about this. I'm just going to talk about it and think it through at the same time. But I was talking to an amazing organizer who I really admire. And she was asking me my rates, but I charged to work with organizations. And so I gave her a rate. And then I said, but look, I really wanna work with her organization.

So whatever you guys can do is awesome. It's fine for me. And she was like, do not say that ever again. I was just gonna say that too. I was like, what do you mean? She was like, well, you know, it's worth it to me. There's a lot of value in working with you. And she said, Kate, she was like, you and I are black women.

People feel entitled to our labor. She's like, let other people enter the gift economy first. We'll bring up the rear. It's like, oh, God, you know? I think that she did you a solid there. She did you a service. and I'm glad she said that because it was the first thought that came to my mind. Even the mentoring work that I have the good fortune to do

mostly within the journalism world, a lot of my mentees are women. And it's the type of thing I hear women, whether they're women of color or not, say quite frequently. The phrase that often comes to mind for me is a book that was written by Mika Burjinsky who's the co-host of Morning Joe on MSNBC and she wrote a book called

Know Your Value for Women about negotiating their salaries and negotiating the workplace generally. At once, had it pointed out to me that the modern workplace was created by men for men. And so I think knowing your value is just incredibly important. Yeah, yeah. I think the practice of generosity is both, you know, giving and receiving, and knowing when, which is appropriate. One of my aspirations is to be able to give, like, 10% of my income to people on causes I really care about. And that is kind of a stand-in for, I guess what people used to do, or some people still do, or churches or other places of worship. They just set aside 10% to give to their spiritual community.

In terms of time and the giving of time, I think it's so related to money, especially in a hypercapitalist society, right? Yeah, it's another resource I often feel like I don't have enough of. And yeah, I just, I think so many people that I meet feel that way, you know, like I ask how someone is and they're like, I'm so busy, you know, and I saw a me-month social media the other day that said adulthood is saying things are really still down next week, every week forever. I feel a lot of grief actually even in this moment, just thinking about the the frenzied activity that can be a day and how dehumanizing it is, you know, to have

the day so filled with activity that even if we might be interacting with people all day long, we don't actually have the time to really you know ask them how they're really doing and listening to the answer. Actually there's a Buddhist meditation teacher who I know and really admire. My name is Maria Selagomas and we connected. I said you know I want to actually let it talk to you again. I'm sure really busy but we can find a time you know I was kind of making all these excuses for her about why she wouldn't have time to talk to me and she she said, oh, I have time to talk to you. I actually set aside periods of time in my calendar just for connecting with friends. And I was like, you do? She's like, yeah, you know, that's a part of what I see as my spiritual practice is

making sure I have time to connect and to just go for tea or to call on the phone. And that's her way of being a spiritual friend. So it's a practice I'm, I wouldn't say I'm a woman every week, but I try, you know, to keep blocks of time that are just for having fun or being together with people. And also notice when I feel the pressure of time, I feel like I don't have time to be a friend in the way that I want to be, I try to ask myself is that really true.

And then in terms of attention, there's something that I think is really radical about recovering the capacity to choose where we attend. You know, I have a eight-month-old, almost eight-month-old child at home, and also a 12-year-old. And I find that for them, attention really is one huge way they receive my love. And I have learned that if one of my kids is fussing, there's like some anxiety or some tension. And I am not fully present because I'm annoyed, then it just kind of continues at low level, kind of grabby-ness.

And if I actually am willing to just put the dish down, turn my full body towards the kid and say, tell me again, how was that for you today? Like, really turn my full body. It seems like they received that and they take it in and then they're good. So that's also been a huge teaching for me and parenting, just how simple it is actually and how it doesn't take so much time to help someone I love, feel my love for them by giving them my full presence.

I think this rushing thing that you talked about a few minutes ago, I don't know if you used that word, but the sense of feeling time starved. I think for me that the feeling rushed and then not being attuned is in my life. That's been a huge challenge. An anecdote and then maybe a useful teaching, both involving Joseph Goldstein, the great meditation teacher who was just at our house this weekend. And it's about the weekend at our house. And this is as you mentioned Monday and he woke

up Monday morning and we had breakfast together. And this is, as you mentioned, Monday, and he woke up Monday morning, and we had breakfast together, and then he asked if I wanted to take a walk. And I did, happily, it was great to take a walk with him, and then he got his car to head home. And I remember so much of the time I was spending with him, I was thinking, well, now I'm behind. You know, my whole schedule for today is out of whack

and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's just totally getting in the way of what an opportunity to take a walk with Joseph Goldstein. And then the teaching also comes with Joseph Goldstein, which is he often tells people to see rushing as a kind of like mindfulness bell as a sign to wake up during the course of the day. I've heard him say this a million times. I rarely do it, but it seems like an incredibly good teaching in the times where I have done it.

It's like, oh, yeah, okay, I'm rushing. Something's going on here. I am missing something. Nothing good can come of this. It's just very helpful. I love that. I think that's so beautiful. Both of you got to hang out with Joseph for a weekend.

And this idea of the mindfulness battle and what's the suggestion or instruction when you hear that bell when you notice, like, oh, I'm rushing. What do you do next? And just wake up and pay attention to whatever you're paying attention, whatever's happening in your mind or in the world right now. Same purpose that a mindfulness bell would play on a meditation retreat, just to wake you up. You're probably missing something and it pairs directly as you have been arguing on the

issue of friendship or your relationships to other people because often you're too busy with the dish to turn your full body around to a 12-year-old who needs your attention and not just you, all of us. So yeah, I've found it to be helpful. I have not found that I have a profound ability to apply it. Yeah. Well, you know, comes in time, but I appreciate your humility. Yeah. I mean, I think the other truth is that time is limited and precious.

While our days are probably filled up with stuff that isn't as meaningful as we think it is, or isn't as urgent as we think it is, I think that's really big. You know, like this kind of manufactured sense of urgency in the way that it keeps us kind of humming. I heard from people who thought about getting this book and or have got it but not started reading it yet because they were like, well, I feel like I'm going to find out that I'm actually not that good of a friend. And like I don't want to feel bad about myself today. You know, like I even the title is kind of triggering like, oh my gosh, am I radical? Am I radical friend?

And I certainly didn't write this book so that people could like feel bad about themselves or compare themselves to somebody who's doing it better, because I think, Amen on the one hand, well, we're all doing best we can. No one's getting it perfectly right, no one's getting it completely wrong. But I think it's true that we can't give time to everything. So there are going to be people in our lives who won our time that we just can't give it to and then it's an opportunity to be honest. I think where it comes in as a practice and this goes back to the attention is like our ability to choose. You know, are we actually making meaningful choices about how we spend our time?

Are we responding to other people's sense of urgency and demand? I think that there's something really interesting happening now on the other side of COVID. I feel like we're in a labor movement that no one's really talking about. I'm like, or not, it's not no one. That's not true that no one's talking about it. Yeah, people are saying actually, I've managed to figure it out. And I'm not going to go back to a place that treats me like I'm not a human being. Let's go back to some of these seven strategies. We won't make it through all of them. And that's why people should buy and read the book. But let's see if we can get through a few of them because I love talking about and I think people really like to hear about what the Buddha taught.

So the second of the seven strategies for being a radical friend per the Buddha is do what is hard to do. So the first is give what is hard to give the second is do what is hard to do. What do you make of that? Again, I think the Buddha leaves us space to contemplate in our own life, what what is hard for us to do. I think it points to just in the doing to a quality of wise effort, which is of course one of the steps on the eightfold path to liberation.

It's also, it's an invitation to examine both what we apply our effort towards, like what is it that I'm efforting and service of, but also what's the quality of effort that I'm bringing to that, and that that can be equally rich from worrying like how are my efforting. So doing what is hard to do, I think sometimes could be, you know, doing more, I think it could sometimes also be doing less, you know, depending on what our proclivity and our habit patterns are. So in this section of the book, I talk about just how hard it can be to even, you know, touch in the first noble truth around friendship

that sometimes friendships are hard, that they can break our hearts. And that when we look at the ways in which friendships and relationships feel unsatisfactory, we can look both at the personal reasons for that. So our own tendencies to cling and to crave a certain kind of relationship or not being present, rushing, you know, like kind of the roots of suffering that are about my own body, my heart system, and the way that's been conditioned. So we can also look at relational patterns as a form of suffering, so that kind of what happens in the space between us. And we can also look at the causes of suffering that come from systemic forces, which I think is probably the hardest to perceive. The hardest to do is to kind of see how

those systemic forces are presenting themselves in our relationships, because oftentimes when we have relational tension that is systemic in nature, we experience it as interpersonal. So there's this feeling of like, well, why does this person have a problem with me? There may be interpersonal reasons for that, but there's also structural reasons for that, that can be coming into play that part of our practice can be to to extend our awareness in that direction and just to see, you know, does this suffering have a systemic root. And then the third no-walt truth in terms of relationship, in terms of friendship and radical friendship, I think is a practice of daring to explore and feel into what is actually liberate a relationship feel like. a practice of daring to explore and feel into what is actually

liberating relationship feel like. Have I ever experienced what it is to be free with another person, or a group of people? What does that mean for me? What does it mean in terms of how I move my body? What does it mean in terms of the parts of myself that I share, the parts of myself that I keep private the parts of myself that I keep private. What does that mean in terms of the quality of laughter between us?

What does that mean in terms of how I support one another? So, I think that there's some elements of freedom that we can all relate to, and I think that how we envision how we feel free might be specific to each one of us. And part of what I hope this part of the book will do is help each of us to start to articulate, what does that mean in terms of my own freedom and what freedom looks like within my current friendships or other relationships.

And also what would a liberated community be like? And to dare to dream back. And then the fourth notebook truth is, of course, where we get practical and tactical and talk about some of the concrete ways in which we might navigate our life in order to cultivate more freedom. So that's how I interpreted doing what is hard to do. Hard to do doesn't mean awful and painful and unpleasant the entire time. I think there's that hard to do. Hard to do doesn't mean like awful and painful and like unpleasant the entire time.

You know, I think there's like hard to like it can feel good to do this kind of work. And I just want to make a case for that in case anyone's feeling exhausted. Much more of my conversation with Kate Johnson right after this. When you say you talk about the notion of a liberated friendship, to me, that sounds a little like, I mean, attractive, but also hard to grasp. What does that mean for you? Do you have, have you ever tasted that and what did it look like? Well, I think one of the things that you're pointing to is like liberation to be hard

described. I won't say I have like any one relationship that's all liberation all the time, but I do have friendships in my life and certainly moments with my friendships where we feel free. And I've been in communities that also have their moments of like wow, we're in this moment. It has to do with I think a temporary kind of suspension of ill will, you know, so in moments where what you know what the Buddha called the three poisons are not activated and in that suspension, there's a fullness and richness of relationship that is the natural luminosity of who we can be together as human beings feels like it can flow, like it's unhindered.

I have a close friendship with someone. We were working on a project together and I noticed that whenever we had different ideas about the next step to take, they seemed kind of prickly, like very sensitive to almost like when I suggested taking a different approach to the work that we were doing, it seemed to me that they felt kind of personally offended by it. So there was this kind of like, I could see their jogging stiff and their throat may get a little tight because their words felt a little like, terse to me. And just because of my own kind of conditioning experience, I wouldn't say I'm conflict diverse, but I really hate it when people are mad at me. And I was feeling like, oh gosh,

this, I just wanted to avoid making this person upset. Or, you know, I also don't like making people feel bad. And I wasn't seeming to be able to communicate that, hey, this is not about you. This is about, you know, having a different idea and wanting to collaborate in this other way, where we're bouncing ideas back and forth. And when I noticed that I brought another idea and this person kind of recoiled and stiffened up, I stopped, I stopped bringing my ideas.

And so I kind of became like a yes person, like, oh yeah, that's great. Okay, we can do that. But I wasn't a full body guest and I wasn't, I wasn't bringing my whole self to the work anymore. And so as I became less engaged, they started to become a little bit more irritated and we're just kind of caught in this unhealthy pattern

together. And one day we were in a meeting and I could feel in my body this well and up and almost felt like a pressure, you know, and it kind of come from below. And this feeling like, I don't want my body this well-enough and almost felt like a pressure, and it kind of came from below, and this feeling like, I don't wanna do this anymore. And like, how can I get out of this, basically? And this is something I wrote about a little bit

on the principle of spiritual friendship of the Buddha said that when misfortune strikes, the spiritual friend won't abandon you. And so this quality of loyalty and not abandoning, and really noticing the tendency in me to when something's not feeling good, it's just being like, I don't want to do it. This is not for me, the desire to escape. And so when I felt that pressure, kind of rising up, and my flight response kind of coming in, like, how do I get out of this mass? It's just like, can I exit out of this project? And noticing that, I decided to say, hey, can we talk a little bit about how we're working

together? And I did my business and center my intention to not to avoid this person being a set with me, you know, but to demonstrate my care for our relationship and that whether or not we were able to continue to work together, that was something that was really important to me. And they listened and they totally surprised me. It's still mysterious to me how this happened

because I was really bracing for you, my friend, to say like, well, I'm not gonna do this with you. And I anticipated they would be really resistant and they were really not. And they were able to share with me some of the ways in which I was communicating that I wasn't aware of, namely that sometimes I have a way of communicating when I'm excited about something that makes it feel like there's not room for anyone else to to share what they're excited about, you know, I'm just like, okay, let's do this

this way, you know, love it. And they were also able to really take responsibility for their own reactivity. But on the other side of that conversation, there was so much more breath and there was so much more space. And there was room to play and enjoy each other and our creativity. There's room for creativity again. It was like a huge burden had been lifted. And so I think, you know, I think really a friendship can be practiced in lots of different ways. But for me, that seems to be one that's coming up often like a huge burden had been lifted. And so I think, you know, I think, really cool friendship can be practiced in lots of different ways. But for me, that seems to be one that's coming up often for me lately is that there's something

that I know needs to be said. And I'm worried that it's saying it will cost me the relationship. But what I'm discovering is that if I'm honest, and if I lead with love, that doesn't have to be the case, that it doesn't have to be the end of our connection, that it can be the beginning of a different kind of depth with one another. And what feels like liberation for me inside of that is that I'm actually able to show

up fully and say what I actually think, you know, and be real with another person, you know, hopefully not in a way that dismisses their humanity or doesn't, you know, doesn't see them as a person too, but I can really be myself. And I hope that makes space for them to be themselves too. And most of what I feel, when I know it's happening, it's a, it's like a visceral sensation. It really feels like I suddenly had, let's like, my jaw releases, there's more space under my armpits.

It's like my belly spreads out. Like it really feels like, you know, in the Wizard of Oz when suddenly the world becomes color again, that's what stepping into a moment of radical friendship feels like for me. Yeah, it's a great description. You definitely made what could be gauzy, very real. I hope so.

I think it takes a lot of words. Yeah, but it was worth it. And it sounds like both of you guys did what was hard to do. Both of you. And then the payoff was that you were both able to be real with each other and that redoubted to the benefit of your relationship to you as individuals and to the benefit of the project. Yeah, I know that for me there's something, there are fewer things that feel lonelyer,

that being in a relationship, being in a space with someone else, where I don't feel seen, I don't feel hurt or known, and I can tell they're holding back too. And certainly like there's kinds of relationships where it's it's a gesture of friendship to allow the relationship to develop over time. You know you don't just meet someone for the first time and go like right to the depth of like you're you know exposing your deepest childhood wounding to one another and you know like that would be an appropriate. However I feel like that's something that I wish for myself for

all of us, and especially within like spiritual spaces where I think there can be so much pressure to perform a kind of like nothing bothers me. It's all good. We're all want, you know, like this kind of placid like benign affect. I would love for us to be able to be a real with one another, even if that means being messy, because that's what freedom feels like to me, it doesn't feel like being a controlled, you know, politeness. It feels like being full, being full in our range of expression, being full in the way we move our bodies, being full in how we allow ourselves in each other to show up.

And there's room for that within what we call the spiritual world. I agree. I definitely agree. In our remaining time, let's hit one more of the Buddha's principles for radical friendship. I'm going to skip down the list a little bit to something that I think is kind of intriguing, which is keep secrets. What did the Buddha mean by the keep secrets and how do you interpret that? Well, the one before that is that the spiritual friend tells you their secrets and then they keep your secrets. And in this book, I talk about secrets, not only as the details of our personal lives,

and I think we started to get into this a little bit like how I really feel, what I really think, how I really am, and also the ability to expose truths about our real lived experience and about things that need to change. One of the secrets that I think often gets capped in the communities that I'm a part of is like when we've experienced harm in some way, especially when that harm is related to, abuse is a power, privilege,

there can be a sense of shame if we've gotten hurt. Oh, maybe I should have seen it coming and averted it or been tougher so that when I've hurt my feelings, I've been more exceptional so that it didn't affect me. Yeah. And so I think that as radical friends keeping of secrets is like, well, how do we actually respond when someone's sharing their truth with us? And it's actually not easy sometimes to hear when someone's been hurt or especially when someone's been hurt by

us, you know, that happens to be the case because you know, we're talking about radical friendship, of course, be care about another person. We don't want to be hurtful. We don't want to be the kind of person who hurts other people. Oftentimes, it was unintentional. We didn't know. And even we might find ourselves coming to the limits of our capacity for compassion, meaning our ability to of our capacity for compassion, meaning our ability to allow our open heart to be touched by our own or someone else's suffering,

and to do so in a way that we can remain upright and responsive to that suffering. All of those things I see is in the domain of what it means to keep secrets. Like how is it that we receive each other's truths? How is it that we're able to listen to one another? And in that chapter, I think I talk about some common ways that we are natural capacity

to receive one another, natural capacity for compassionate listening becomes hindered or blocked. So I think part of the practice is noticing where the blocks are, bringing our living attention there, and seeing if it's possible to dissolve them and return to the state of openness that I believe are all born with. Do you think the Buddha meant and do you talk about? Because when I hear keep secrets, what comes to mind immediately for me is just being trustworthy. Somebody that people can divulge

their secrets too and know that you won't be passing it along, Willie Milley. That's true. I mean, I think that's the very straightforward interpretation, you know, to be trustworthy. And I think that developing the capacity for a compassionate listening is part of what makes us trustworthy, you know, like, beyond knowing that we're the kind of person that's not going to blab your business all around town, like knowing that I'm the kind of person that can actually gonna blab your business all around town, like knowing that I'm the kind of person that can actually hold whatever you're gonna bring to me

and that you're not too much and your life is not too much and your feelings are not too much. I don't admit, they're just enough and I welcome them. And again, we're all working with capacity issues. Can we all do that all the time for a single person? Probably not.

But is it something to aspire to? And is it something we could probably do more of than we currently are if we practice, I think so. And I think what happens when we're able to better receive our friends' truths, when we're better able to hear what's important to them, what they care about, then we are better equipped to respond in a skillfully meaningful way. So when we look at the practice of radical friendship at a larger scale and a societal scale, I think what keeping secrets, what having a practice of compassionate

listening and deep listening can really do is allow us to listen in a way that informs our response in a way that it's most effective and most meaningful. So oftentimes, you know, we learn about an injustice. There's this, you know, sense of like outrage. How could this be? You know, can you believe this? Like, we don't do something right now. And that we need to do something right now.

I think is more an expression of my own discomfort than it is a clear seeing about the, what is my unique leverage point for change here? And if I can, as a listener, as a radical friend, hear what's happening and allow it to touch me and allow it to even break my heart, without making it about me, and to stay there in that moment, I think on the other side of that deep listening experience,

there can be a clear seeing of what the next right move is. For me, that would be most useful in this moment, both in service of my friend, who's sharing this with me, and also in service of whatever communities being impacted by, you know, whatever this friend is sharing, that there's for each of us, I believe, a right role in societal transformation, probably many right roles, you know, and deep listening, compassionate listening, receiving each other's truths in a, as a practice, I think, can clue us into what that is for us. I think can clue us into what that is for us. Because we're not all going to be on the very front lines,

chaining ourselves to trees. And we're not all going to be on Capitol Hill, lobbying for policy reform. We're not all going to be in the boardroom making decisions that help people live with dignity in a business. We each have our own role to play. And I think that if we can learn to listen better, we can listen not only to our friends, but we can also listen into that. What is my work to do here? And how can I use my unique position in this world

to generate more liberation for everyone? Well said, I like to induce often not very self-promotional meditation teachers to promote their books and anything any other resources you're putting out into the world just as a closing shot here. So I read a book it's called Radical Friendship, seven ways to love yourself and find your people in an unjust world, it's available wherever books are sold. And most of my work right now is doing stuff like this and teaching from that book and I'm spending a lot of time taking care of my kid. So not doing a whole lot of public teaching now, but I am hoping to do a longer course around the cultivation of radical friendship, starting probably in the new year. So thinking something like something between like a book club

and like a lab. If people can experiment with practices from the book in their own lives, come back, reflect with the people who are also practicing in that way. So if you're interested in something like that or just knowing what I'm up to, you can check out my website and send it for my mailing list. And that's where I usually let people know

what's coming next. Kate, thanks very much for coming on. Appreciate it. Thank you for having me. Thank you for all it can do. Thanks to Kate, I should say, to practice cultivating radical friendship, you can check out the related meditations

for this podcast episode in the 10% happier app. If you're listening to this podcast in the app already, just scroll down to the related section of this episode to play the meditations on friendship from 7a Salassi, Orange Asofer and Joseph Goldstein. If you're not already a subscriber, download the 10% happier app wherever you get your apps and then click on the podcast tab to get started. The show is made by Samuel Johns, Gabrielle Zuckerman, DJ Cashmere, Justin Davy, Kim Baikama, Maria Wartelle, and Jen Poient with Audio Engineering from our friends over at Pultrviolet Audio. We'll see you all on Friday for a bonus meditation from Anushika Fernanda Poli. Hey, hey, prime members.

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