Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 403: This Episode Will Make You Stronger | Sister Dang Nghiem

Episode Date: June 7, 2023

It’s hard to be a human. No matter how good things are for you, being alive is still hard. Whatever your life circumstances are, we’re all subject to impermanence and entropy. This episode dives into a five-part Buddhist list for being stronger in the face of whatever life throws at you. Sister Dang Nghiem, who goes by Sister D, is a nun in the Plum Village tradition and a disciple of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh. She was born in Vietnam during the war, and is the daughter of a Vietnamese mother and an American soldier. Sister D experienced an unfathomable amount of loss before relocating to the US, where she became a doctor and later, after experiencing more loss, became a nun. She’s written several books and her most recent is Flowers in the Dark.In this conversation, Sister D shares her story, and then walks us through The Five Strengths of Applied Zen Buddhism which include trust, diligence, mindfulness, concentration, and insight.Content Warning: This episode covers difficult topics including death, mental illness, and sexual abuse. Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/sister-dang-nghiem-403-rerun See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hey gang, I know I'm not breaking any news here, but you may have noticed that it is sometimes hard to be a human. No matter how good things are for you, being alive can still be hard. Whatever your life circumstances were all subject to impermanence and entropy. Today we're going to dive into a five-part Buddhist list for being stronger in the face of whatever life throws at us. And the person who's going to be walking us through this list has an enormous amount of standing to talk about the issue of strength. Her

story is extraordinary. In fact, one of our producers, the amazing DJ Cashmere, yes, that's his name, which is also amazing. DJ was on the line for this conversation and said it was the first time he openly wept while listening to one of our interviewees. My guest is Sister Dong Kim, although she goes by Sister D. Sister D is a nun in the Plum Village tradition and a disciple of the Zen Master Ticknot Han. She was born in 1968 in Vietnam during the war, the daughter of a Vietnamese mother and an American soldier.

I don't want to tell too much of her story because I want you to hear it directly from her, but in brief, she experienced an unfathomable amount of loss and then ended up in the U.S. where she became a doctor and then later after experiencing more loss became a nun. She's written several books. Her most recent is called Flowers in the Dark. In this conversation, you're going to hear her tell her story and then walk us through a list called the Five strengths of applied Zen Buddhism, which include trust, diligence, mindfulness, concentration, and insight. A heads up that we do touch in this interview on some sensitive subjects, including war, death, mental illness, and sexual abuse. I do want to go on a brief digression, though,

one item of business here before we dive in with Sister D. I just want to remind you that the anti-diet challenge featuring the intuitive eating expert, Kristi Harrison, has begun and today is the last day to join. The stuff Kristi is teaching this challenge has made a huge difference for me to join the anti-diet challenge just download the 10% happier app wherever you get your apps or go to 10% that's one word I'll spelled out, .com. If you already have the app just to open it up and follow the instructions to join and if you're not already a 10% happier subscriber you can join us by starting a free trial that will give you access to the challenge and everything else on the app. A writing will get started with sister D 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. Sister Dee, welcome to the show. Thank you. There are so many things to talk about, but if you're comfortable, I would love to start with your story, which is extraordinary. Your story of how you became a Buddhist nun.

Can you share that? In the Buddhist teaching, there's a teaching on interbeing. This is because that is, since I was eight years old, my grandmother told me, when you grow up, please make sure to take good care of your brother, raise him, and also get a higher education and then become a nun. I thought there was such a strange advice, especially the third one. The first one I understood because my parents passed away since I was a child, so I had to take care of my brother at a very early age. And I loved him. So taking care of him, raising him was something that was familiar to me.

Getting a higher education, I also had that aspiration. So I did, I came to the US, I finished high school, I got scholarships to go to college, I got scholarships to go to medical school, but to become a nun was something that seemed odd to me. And especially when I came to the US and we have everybody seems to have the ambition to succeed, to achieve the American dream. So I didn't really think I would become a nun. But while I was in medical school and I had a partner, he was very spiritual, very kind, loving.

He was my soulmate. And he died suddenly in an accident. He went swimming at half moon bay in San Francisco. And he died. And I just woke up to this reality that somebody who was there the day before and the next day he wasn't there anymore. And I just touched very deep suffering in me because he was somebody very spiritual, happy, peaceful, and when he died, to be honest, I didn't regret it for him. But the question was for me, will I be able to say I have lived my life if I were to die in the midst of the day? Will I be able to say I had peace in my life? And the answer was unfortunately a resoundingly no. And I just have to face the decision

whether to continue with medicine or to pursue a spiritual life where I may be able to cultivate peace or even I face the question should I even live anymore. And fortunately three weeks before John died, I had met our teacher, Zen Master, Tanya Kahn and the Prominent Village community at the retreat. And in particular, I met the mindfulness practice.

And I felt the mindfulness practice was something very concrete, very scientific, not superstitious or devotional. I found some peace while I was at the retreat. I had this hope that if I were to pursue a spiritual life, I would be able to cultivate that peace, so that I could be able to live with myself for the rest of my life. And that brought me to the decision of leaving medicine and going to friends where our teacher was at the moment. And then I became an aspirant three months after John passed away and I ordained about eight months after he died. And it's been 21 years now that I've been in. So you never ended up working as a doctor?

I graduated from medical school. I was in residency. So yes, I started working as a doctor in the hospital. But you left all of that training behind and decided that the better use for your time on the planet would be training in mindfulness as a nut. Yes, because at that moment when John passed away, it was as if everything crumbled for me. All the suffering in my life, all the trauma, they all flooded back. And I just felt all my life, I tried so hard. I thought if I want to have a successful career, if I want to have a loving partner, then everything would be made up for. The success in my life would compensate the losses in my life. But I found out that here I was a doctor, here I had a very loving partner,

I had my youth, I had everything, and yet I was still suffering for my past. You see, when John was alive, there were times when I was depressed and he came to comfort me and I pushed him away. I didn't want him to be around. I would rather curl up with my own suffering, sadness and depression, then allowing him to comfort me and to be there for me. And so when he died, I just woke up to that reality, is that it doesn't matter the success that I have. If I didn't take care of my suffering, then it would haunt me for the rest of my life. And I'll never be really happy.

And I also learned that, you know, as I was a doctor, taking care of patients, and they kept coming back time after time with the same complaints, the same problems and I got so frustrated thinking, you know, I'm wasting my life and energy to take care of them and they're not even taking care of themselves, right? Like a young man came in with a severe abscess because he injected drugs into his arm. I tended him for two months, and then three months later he came back with another abscess on his abdomen.

And I reproached him, but then I also understood that I myself as educated as financially stable as I was, I didn't know how to take care of my own sadness and suffering. Here, this young man, he may be homeless or he may be in also emotional, psychological traumas. How can I expect him to take better care of himself. You see? So then I also saw that hopelessness, not only in myself and in my patients, and I couldn't blame them. So a spiritual life gave me that light, that hope that I would be able to take care of myself. And from that, I may be able to take care of others.

And that has been the case for me, as I embrace this practice over the last 24 years. I find that I can help so many people because of my life experience, because of the concrete practices that I have applied in order to transform and heal my own suffering in order to have peace and happiness in myself in my life day after day. It's been pointed out to me before that it's not a coincidence that the word meditation and the word medicine have the same root.

So in many ways you are still a physician, a healer. Before we get into these practices that have done so much for you and are doing so much for your students, if you're okay with it, I'd like to talk a little bit about, you've made a few references to your past, the past that had produced so much suffering and sadness and depression for you. Would you be comfortable telling that story? comfortable telling that story? I was born during the Vietnam War in 1968 that was at the height of the war, the death offensive, the communist almost had a chance, winning. And so I was during that time the country was in great turmoil and my mother left the countryside as 18 nature at the age of 15. She went to Saigon to find work to help her family and while she was there she worked for American GIs, young women who were

uneducated, who came from the poor countryside. When they ended up in Saigon, they ended up working for the American GIs. And many of them give birth to children like me and my brother, who are emigration, have Vietnamese, and have Americans. I never knew my father, my mother didn't talk about him. So I grew up without father, my mother continued to work in Saigon to help her family in the countryside, my grandma and her siblings. So actually my grandmother raised me in the countryside. And then when I was six, my mother decided to bring me to Saigon to live with her and also with my younger brother. And we lived at that time she had not officially a husband, but he was very kind to our family.

And so he brought my mom and my brother and me to his house. And we lived there. And during that time, my uncle also came to live in our house. And that's when I suffered from sexual abuse. I was nine years old. And my uncle was in his mid-twenties. And I never told my mother. As a child, I didn't know what it was.

I just knew it was wrong, and I was very frightened. But I couldn't escape, because he lived in our home. And then I really don't know how long it took place. My memory just blocked out. I just remember this repeated phrase in my mind, I don't want to go with him. I'm so scared. And during that time I pulled my hair, I actually caused a bald spot on my head.

I bit my nails until they bled, until I mean every time I wash my hands because the nails were so stripped down that it felt like electric shock on the tips of my finger. Yet I couldn't tell anybody. And then when I was 12, my mother disappeared. She went to the market to sell clothes as she had been doing for a few years, but she never came back. And so my grandmother was there, she had been there, and she continued to take care of my brother and me.

So that's when I was 12. And then my mother had done the paperwork for us to go to the US because we were admiration children and the United States government were willing to sponsor admiration children. But when the paperwork came through, my mother wasn't there anymore and I was only 12 and my brother was only 8. So my grandmother kept us.

We didn't go. And then when I was 15, my grandmother told my aunt to do the paperwork again. And that went through. And so when I was almost 17, the paperwork went through and my brother and I came to the US together. We lived with foster parents. We ended up going through five different homes. My brother went through five homes and went through three homes because the first foster home we lived, the foster mother was kind, but she was a nurse.

And she walked at night. So in the daytime, my brother was left home with her son. I was walking at night during the summer to make money, to send to my grandmother to help my family. And one morning I came home and I saw the young boy, the foster mother's son, he was sitting on top of my brother. They were of the same age, but he was like one and a half times bigger than my brother. And he was beating my brother. You know, they were children. But when I saw that, I couldn't bear bear it and I told the agency, please take us out of this home. My brother grew up being beaten every day because he was a

enamoration. They called him Communist, they called him also as evil names and they beat him. And here we came to the US and now he's beaten again while they try to find a replacement, we ended up staying in many different foster homes. So those are some of the things that I went through in life, you know, losing parents of a very early age, your experiencing sexual abuse going to a new country with no language, with no family members, just living and

foster homes. And so I didn't know how to take care of all that suffering in me. So that would manifest frequently as my grain headaches, as bouts of depression, even though I was a very hard working person, very studious person, but I would face that nightmare again and again in my daytime as well as my sleep. It's just an incredible story. It's extraordinarily moving and it makes me think about two seemingly contradictory things. One, just the seemingly bottomless capacity for human cruelty. You just lived at the cross-currents of loss, sexual abuse, war. And then the other thing I was thinking about is the seemingly bottomless capacity for

some human beings to be strong and resilient in the face of seemingly whatever is thrown in their path and the fact that you were able to endure all of that come to a different country learn a new language, excel in your studies to the point where you became a doctor which requires, as we all know, an enormous amount of intelligence and persistence. Yeah, it's just an amazing story. And on top of all of that, you're willing to just describe the narrative. So clearly and openly and frankly, I am in awe. So I appreciate that very much for those who are listening, which is basically all of you. Sister D made prayer hands as thank you.

So having said all that, I do want to move to a question, which is, as you described earlier, you became a nun and learned how to take care of yourself. I'm curious, what does that mean? How did meditation teach you to take care of yourself? We learn that meditation is like a bird with two wings. One wing of meditation is stopping, and the other wing is deep-looking. Stopping means stopping the mind from running back to the past, getting lost in what's going on, or getting lost in the future, in our imagination, ambition, vision about the future. And also, the other way is to practice deep looking, to see the reality as it is, and to live our life as deeply as possible in the here and the now. I suffer most of my life, surely because of the circumstances that I had to go through.

And as a child, I really had no choice. I had no escape. But as I came to a spiritual life, I have learned that part of my suffering also results from my mind that was not capable of stopping, that was not capable of deep-looking. So my mind constantly went back to the past. Consciously I was thinking of certain things about the past and that made me sad. Something that happens in the day, what I see, what I saw, what I heard, what I felt also triggered certain memories that depressed me, that punched me into an episode of depression or at least some anxiety or sorrow. Subconsciously, my mind was also doing that because every so often I would have nightmares about being chased, being pushed down, about being lost, not knowing where I was, being

abandoned. And that caused me deep sadness as well when I woke up. So consciously and subconsciously, my mind was always at work. The migraines that I experienced, the tiredness, the fatigue of the body, the negative thinking, the negative view towards myself. Am I worthy? am I good enough? All of those things were at work constantly and they just impeded even if I had great capacity. All those negative thinking would affect me. But when I came to meditation, I learned, for example, to come back to the breath,

to have mindful breathing, to be aware of my in-breath, and out-breath, to anchor my mind in my breathing, to anchor my mind in my body, so that the mind is not free like a wild horse, mind is not free like a wild horse, that roams to the past, that gallops to the future, that is circling around. You see, I learn to be aware of my mind and bring it back to the present moment. By having the mind in the present moment, I also see that I'm no longer a victim. I'm not an ideal child who is sexually abused. I'm not a 12-year-old child whose mother just disappeared after the blow one day. But I am now a young woman, fully educated, fully in control of my life.

And now I am a nun. I can take care of myself. You see, that's deep looking to see the reality as it is and not to behave as a victim, not to react as a victim anymore. When I learned the word soulmate in Vietnamese, I've known that word all my life, but when I realized it's literal meaning, it just shook me to the core. D.Gee are the words for so-made. D means to remember, to know, to master. Gee means oneself. A soulmate is who remembers, who knows, who takes good care of herself, who masters, her, his, their feelings and thoughts and suffering.

So in the spiritual life, I have learned, I continue to learn to be my own soulmate. And I feel that over the years now I can speak about my past without reliving the trauma because time alone doesn't heal us, time alone doesn't heal us, because I've lived this life. Now I'm 50 years old, but when I came to the practice, I was already 31. I was more traumatized than when I was 9 years old. Because over the years, I rehearsed the suffering. I relived it. And it became stronger in me. It became my personality.

It became my destiny. Because I didn't know how to care for my suffering. But during the past 20 years as a nun, I have learned to undo many of those neuro pathways, many of those habits, so that I don't have to cause myself suffering. I don't pull my hair, I don't bite my nails, I don't speak negatively towards myself.

I hardly ever have nightmares anymore. And when I have nightmares, which are very infrequent, but even in my dream, I see the situation. One of the first dreams that was so groundbreaking for me, a man was chasing me in this enclosed space and I was running up the stairs that was twisting like the seashell going up. And I hit the top and the glass door was shut and he was right behind me and I turned around and I just ran past him. And when I got to the very last step, there was a little door that was open. And in my mind, I thought, I can run through it, but you know what?

I stood right by the door and I faced him. And as soon as he got to the last step, he was running to the last step. He saw me and he was startled. And he stopped. And then he slowly walked out through that door. And I closed that door ever so slowly and gently. And I woke up bright in that moment. And I thought to myself, my whole life, I ran away in my day life and also in my sleep, I would always run away when I see something horrifying when somebody is chasing me. This was the very first time in my life I stopped running.

And it was so empowering for me. And that's what we do in our daily life as a practitioner. We learn to stop running. Stop running in our mind, stop running in our speech, stop running in our body reactions. We learn to dwell stably with clarity in the present moment and we respond to the situation as it is now. And we don't react through the lens of the past as a victim. Thank you, Dan. Thank you.

Also something else I think I heard in that story of the dream is you're describing dwelling stably in the present moment as things are no matter how they are. So you're turning toward the source of your suffering and the evolutionarily evolved coping mechanism is to fight it, run from it, or pretend it's not there, self-medicate with shopping or gambling or booze. And what you're saying is, no, we can be awake right now.

And whatever demon is running down the stairs at us, we can be awake right now. And whatever demon is running down the stairs at us, we can stare at it. And there's something about the way the mind works that tends to disarm the demon. Yes, then, I just want to thank you for being very sensitive, very compassionate, with your questions and also with your comments. It is true to me in that dream when I turned around and to look at that demon, I didn't see him as a demon. I didn't see him as something threatening. I just stood and looked at him. And that's what I've learned to do in my life. When we label something as frightening, threatening, demonic evil, it's something outside of us and it's something grander than us that we cannot take care of and so we're fearful.

But I have learned to see that the victim and the perpetrator are in each other. There's that nature of interbeing. You are in me and I am in you. I am because you are and you are not because I'm not. I've also become a perpetrator over the years. I live my life in such a way that I perpetuated that suffering. I look at myself negatively, I ran away from relationships, I brought suffering into the relationship, just like I told you, I would rather corp up with my suffering instead of allowing John to be there for me to comfort me. So in that way, our vases have suffered to some extent. And we usually run away from it. But if we look at the wound that we have, somebody who has Henson's disease, Leprosy, you may remember Leprosy is a bacterial infection, but it you may remember, the per se is a bacterial infection, but it damages the sensory nerves as well as the mortal nerves,

starting with the hands and the feet. And somebody doesn't have pain. You know, the person can just get an injury because it doesn't have pain. The person will ignore it. And the injury gets infected and eventually it may get amputated, the fingers, the toes, even the arm because of the severe infection, if we don't take care of it. Now, we need to bring that wisdom to ourselves.

If we have a difficulty, a conflict, if we have a trauma, a deep suffering, if we keep running away from it, pretending that it's not there, it's like we let the wound faster by itself. It will not go away, it will continue to faster. But if we tend the wound, tenderly, lovingly. This is my woong and I'll take care of it. Then it has a chance to be cleaned, to be dressed, and to heal appropriately. Each one of us has a great capacity to heal. The question is that do we allow ourselves to tend our wound, to dress our wound, to heal our wound, or do we allow it to fast the further with our unmindful consumption. When we run away, we learn that wherever you are, wherever we are, there we are,

we end up rehearsing it all over again. The situation ends up manifesting itself in our life again and again. And the wound worsens. It doesn't heal by itself. So the spiritual life enables us. Concrete practices like mindful breathing, mindful walking, daily sitting meditation, daily awareness of our thoughts and feelings, so that we can listen to them, to be our own soulmate, remembering, knowing and taking care of our body, of our thoughts and feelings. And by doing that that we heal moment to moment day by day and so time and

the practice will help heal anyone that we have as individuals and as a society. Much more of my conversation with SisterD 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 newest series is all about drag icon RuPaul Charles. After a childhood of being ignored by his absentee father, Ru goes out searching for love and acceptance. But the road to success is a rocky one. Substance abuse and mental health struggles threaten to veer Rue off course.

In our series Rue Paul Born Naked, we'll show you how Rue Paul overcame his demons and carved out a place for himself as one of the world's top entertainers, opening the doors for aspiring queens everywhere. Follow even the rich wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or the Wondery app. You use the term concrete practices, and I think it makes sense to dive into that. In your new book, there are a lot of concrete practices, but I thought in this conversation,

we would dwell if you're okay with it on the five strengths of applied Zen Buddhism. That's your term. Does that make sense to dive into those five strengths? Yes, my dear. Okay, so let's go through them one by one. The first of these strengths is trust. What does that mean? Yes, I addressed trust because that is an issue of those who have gone through difficult relationships and trauma. We lose trust. Children, we learn to develop trust with our parents, with our caregiver, and those who experience abandonment, physical, emotional, sexual abuse, lose that trust. And not only we lose trust in our parents, our caregivers, we also lose trust in those later on when we grow up in those that we make commitment to what worth or to love or to marry, it becomes a pattern of mistrust of distrust. And most devastatingly, I've discovered in myself that as victims we learn to distrust ourselves first and foremost. We perpetuate the trauma by abandoning ourselves, some of us abandon ourselves for work, for career, for money, for sex, for relationships, we distract ourselves from ourselves.

So, we don't trust that we are able to take care of ourselves, of our suffering, so we run away from ourselves in that way. And so, that mistrust towards ourselves is, to me, most devastating. In a spiritual life, we learn to come back, moment to moment to our breathing. Breathing in, I'm aware that this is an in-breath. Breathing out, I'm aware that this is an out-breath. In-breath. Out-breath.

It sounds so simple, but I guarantee most of us cannot do that. Because the mind is like a wild horse. It's like a monkey that jumps, that runs all the time. It's not able to come back to the body, to the breath. So, moment to moment as we train to come back to the breath, we are cultivating trust. That yes, I'm able to come back to myself, to my breath, to my body, to my own mind, I'm able to be here for myself. For what's going on right now, there may be pain in my back,

there may be pain in my chest, there may be sadness in me. I'm here breathing with that, tending that, addressing it, and it's incredible when you are able to do that little and little, you gain that trust that you can care for yourself, that you can love yourself, that you are your own soulmate. It is so empowering. That trust must be cultivated day by day, and so, ericence, stages of trust versus mistrust and development. It doesn't just take place when you are a child. It takes place throughout your life. And mindfulness practices help us to cultivate that trust. Are there specific practices within mindfulness training, you know, beyond the basic,

and this is in no way to diminish the power of basic mindfulness and meditation where you feel the breath coming in, feel the breath going out every time you get distracted, you start again. Are there other practices that you think listeners could do that would help them train up this trust that you're describing? Well, we have the formal practice of sitting meditation. 5.45 and every evening we sit at 4.30 and we sit for 45 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes in the evening. During that time you close your eyes so you are not distracted by the sight, outside. You sit quietly, you are not listening to music or conversation, you're not eating, you're not smelling whatever that is out there, your body is in a stable posture.

So all you have really is your mind to come back to your body and the thoughts and the feelings. And that has trained me to be still and to be with myself. Literally, I cannot talk, I cannot turn on the music, cannot go to the internet, I sit with the community and learn to be my own soulmate, scan through my breathing, scan through my body, quiet down everything, and just listen to the thoughts that arise in me and breathe with them, not being swept away by them, not running away from them,

but to just listen to them, just like a third person listening to two people talking. And most of us are not able to listen to ourselves, and most of us are not able to listen to ourselves. So, to be able to be there for the inner child, the wounded child in us, the person that is suffering inside, and to breathe and say, I'm here, it's okay, I would like to listen to you. I would like to get to know your pain, tell me that it's very empowering. So we do that every day. But the mindfulness practice is wonderful to me because it's carried outside of the form of sitting meditation sessions. Many people in our society nowadays think, where do I find that luxury of time to sit for 30 minutes

and 45 minutes? Ironically, we can spend five hours, eight hours in front of a screen, right? For work, for entertainment, for social connection, et cetera. But 30 minutes or 45 minutes, we cannot afford it for ourselves. So mindfulness practices can be carried throughout the day. When you are driving, you can come back and breathe while you are driving.

And in that way, your mind is not carried away because you can drive automatically. You can be on automatic pilot as you are driving, as you are cooking, as you are working, then your mind is free to muse, to rehearse, thoughts that are unpleasant, that are negative. The mind is free to roam back to the past, roam for the future, get lost, in all sorts of things. Then suddenly, you find yourself getting angry or reactive and you wonder why. It's because the mind has been unchecked. You see? So, when we have the mindfulness of the breath, of the body, of the steps, throughout the day, the mind is in the present moment.

And whatever that arises, you know, and you can correct yourself if you have a negative thought towards somebody, or somebody appears and you already immediately because of that person's appearance, the color, the height, the, you know, the facial features, you hear yourself thinking that person is dangerous. I don't like that person. If you are there to recognize that thought, you can breathe and smile and relax your body

so that you are not automatically in self-defense, you see? But you know, oh, that's just somebody who triggers my memory of somebody else who had been unpleasant in the past. Then you are fair towards that person and not reactive to that person. You see, awareness in our daily life helps us to respond to people and situations appropriately, instead of reacting through the lens of the past, which can cause a lot of damage in the relationship, can cause a lot of discrimination and

mistreatment of others and ourselves. Let's talk about the next strength, diligence. What do you mean by diligence? Diligence, what we invest ourselves, what we invest in our daily life. Many of us spend five, eight, 10 hours in front of a screen. We spend a lot of time interacting with people or doing work, etc. So even those who watch movies throughout the day, that's still diligence. It's just what's the outcome of that. What if we invest as the input, what comes out of it as the output. So diligence here, we're talking about right diligence. We invest our time and energy in something that will bring understanding, that will bring empathy, that will bring healing and transformation. That's right diligence.

So, when we learn to come back to the body and quiet the mind while we're waiting for a phone call, inquire the mind while we're waiting for a phone call, instead of texting, of surfing, the internet, seeing what's new, the two different choices that we have. One is to busy the mind all the time and to say that we have no time for ourselves, or every moment we get, we just close our eyes or just sit quietly and just check in with our body and quiet our mind. The right diligence helps us to rest throughout the day. To quiet the mind, to see where the mind is and to take care of it immediately. When some strong emotions arise, when some negative views arise, we can take care of them right away. That's right, diligence. And it helps us to respond to situations in the present positively, proactively, effectively. And it also helps us to see when the past is manifesting in the present,

because whatever that took place yesterday or 10 years ago or 40 years ago, it's still a part of us, and it affects the way we think, the way we speak, the way we behave. And many of us mistakenly say, no, that's just the way I am, the way we behave. And many of us mistakenly say, you know, that's just the way I am. That's how I think, that's how I thought. I speak, that's how I behave. But if we give ourselves time and look deeply, we know we are a product of our past.

And the past is still very alive in us this moment. So when we are aware of all that, then we can choose, oh, instead of saying, this which will cause people to be offended or to be hurt, I can choose to breathe and to not say anything, or to smile, or to say it in a different way so that people are more open to receive my comment or feedback. So, all instead of hitting, pushing, running, getting in the car and driving away, I can also choose to breathe and just sit down and not say or do anything. So, it gives us that self-dignity, that self-control,

that's true diligence, and it's undoing the habits that we have accumulated over the years. We have many different coping mechanism. In some situations, we will fight. Not that a person will fight all the time. Some situations, we will fight. the time. Some situations will fly. And in some other situations, we will freeze. An example, there was a teenager in a coma.

And he had been physically abused by his own biological father for many, not a number of years. So he was put in another foster home. And then he was, again, physically abused by the foster father. And when this doctor put the clothes of his biological father in front of the nose of this teenager who was in a coma, his heart rate totally decreased. His body just became flasks.

And then a few minutes later, the doctor put in front his nose, the close of his faster father, his heart rate totally increased. And his body tensed up. In a coma, this boy reacted differently to the smells of the clothing. Because when he was a boy trapped, he could not run away. He froze. He became withdrew. He checked out of his body. So that's why in a coma when he smelled the clothes, his heart rate just decreased. Just checked out state, our body experience in some people. But when he grew older and he lived with the foster father and he beat him, he will try to fight back.

You see? And so then he had this fight response even in his coma. So in that way, all of us, we have adapted different coping mechanisms depending on the situation, but they are really reactive and they become habits for us. And sometimes we fight when it's not necessary to fight. We run away when it's really not necessary to run away anymore or to freeze and dissociate when we really need to be there for the situation because the situation now is different from then. But if we behave as if we are the same situation, we just live as a victim. We never have a chance to live fully our lives. You

see? So the trust and the diligence are important to cultivate in our daily life so that we have a chance to really live and to fully realize our potential. So that's trust and diligence. Much more of my conversation with Sister D right after this. Mindfulness, concentration and insight are the other three factors. Now mindfulness in the Chinese character, the upper character is game, means now, and the lower character is tam, which means heart or mind. So mindfulness is the mind, the heart that is in the now, the now mind. It's not wonderful, mindfulness is the now mind. Now, my mind that is here and now, that knows what's going on in the body, in the thoughts, in the feelings of oneself. The mind is aware of what's going on in the body, the thoughts and the feelings of the

person in front of him, of her, of them. That's a now-mind. And we respond from a now-mind and not from a past-mind, the future-mind, but a now-mind. So mindfulness gives us that power to be in the here and the now. And we have all of the practices. When you are practitioner, you really don't float on the cloud or walk on water. You do everything like everybody else. But you are doing it with awareness.

You do one thing at a time, because we think multitasking makes us effective, but multitasking is a myth. Your brain cannot do two things at once. So it does this and it jumps back to A, it goes from A to B, and B back to A, and A to C, and C to D, and back to B. You see, it just jumps. And so it's never really attentive to anything and we make mistakes and then we have to redo it.

And we have to regret it. But our now mind allows us to be very aware what's going on. And then to focus, that goes into the concentration. That's the fourth factor that we are capable of as human. It's when you are aware of something, and that awareness is sustained, it's called concentration. Just like a necklace that is made of the beads, one bead, another bead, another bead. But if you string more beads together, it becomes slowly, it forms anaclas. So concentration just means the beads of mindfulness strong together, little by little. Today you may be mindful of your breath only once or twice.

But 21 years later, for me, when I do sitting meditation, I'm able to follow my breathing more or less the whole way through. Before, I couldn't be aware of more than one breath at a time. Now I can consider, and if I count, it will be 600 breaths during my sitting meditation. So you see, mindfulness becomes concentration and concentration serves like this energy that helps us to pierce through what we need to understand. When I was a child, maybe you did this too, that I would use a piece of saran wrap and wrap it on my pen.

And it would get really hot. And then I had already torn paper into little tiny pieces and then put that saran wrap over the pieces of paper it would attract the paper, like a magnet. Or you put a magnifier over the piece of paper and the sunlight is shining on the magnifier, you can actually burn the piece of paper when it's so concentrated. The light is directed towards the piece of paper Concentration has the capacity to do that to draw things together To burn the piece of paper to help us to see

What I had gone through in my life There was not just a long incident But it was in the setting of a Vietnam War. In the setting of a war-torn country, the poverty of the family, I saw my uncle, I saw my mother, I saw my American GI father, they were all victims of the Vietnam War, of the social dynamics. So then, when I saw it like that, I came empathy for all that are involved. Those that I know, those I don't ever know in my life, they still affect me very deeply. You see, that brings understanding, that brings love, empathy. And from that, it burns my wrong view, that I did something wrong.

That's my penance, that's my karma, my punishment, or I hate my uncle, I want him to go to hell, for example, because those views only perpetuate further suffering. But the right view, the inside the wisdom helps me to release that hatred towards myself, towards others, helps me to gain love and compassion. You know recently, when what happened to the Afghans people, and I saw photographs of Afghans people especially at the military base and how they try to get out of the country.

I relived the experience of the fall of Saigon all over again. All over, it was exactly that in 1975, 40-something years ago, it took place in Vietnam when the Americans left Vietnam and what we were left with, you know, all of us, children and adults. And now what happens in Afghans? History is repeated itself because we, as peoples, we have not learned our lessons. And so we will cause suffering to ourselves, our own people, and other people in the world again and again. If we do not learn that war is not the answer.

If we do not learn that retaliation and punishment, they're not the answer. And so there will be children. Unfortunately, in Afghans, who face their lives just like what my brother and I have faced our lives with. That the Vietnamese people have faced this past 40-something years. And many American GIs, the Vietnam vets, that they are still facing in their daily life, those who are still alive, who survived the Vietnam War, many of them are still suffering right now. History repeats itself again and again because we have not learned to stop and look deeply individually and collectively,

and we need to do that. So, the practices of trust, of right delusions, right mindfulness, right concentration, and insight will help us not to repeat history in a negative way. It will help us to care for each other better as a human family. It will help us to care for the planet Earth as our mother in a better way, so that the larger generations have a chance, have a place to live and to grow. Well, that was a fantastic and I think deeply useful summary of these five practices, these five qualities that can be trained together to make us all stronger.

And as you said, there are kind of geopolitical consequences to getting your own self together. This is about making yourself stronger and happier, but you're contributing to society all over the planet and ideally this kind of strength and insight and compassion that you're talking about here can be scaled up. And I believe many people are worried that this, you know, the clock is ticking. We need to get ourselves together before the pace of climate change and war gets unstoppable. Before I let you go, let me just ask you a question. I ask a lot of our guests, which is, is there something I should have asked, but failed to ask? Today, I commit any journalistic malpractice here today.

You are very compassionate. Listen now. You have deep wisdom in yourself then. And thank you then in DJ for doing what you are doing. I am very grateful. And I noticed that your program called 10% Happier? I promise you, when we have more awareness in our daily life, we are 10% happier every time we can release a wrong view, a view of hatred and discrimination. We are definitely 10% happier every moment when we can send love to ourselves, when we can be kind to our body and thoughts and feelings. We are definitely 10% happier and healthier

when we are able to look at others with the eyes of understanding and compassion. Just every moment is not 10% happier in a big scale. Just do it just every single moment that we are able to recognize things as they are, to take a mindful step, to give rise to a positive thought, we are more than 10% happier in that moment. And, three or two, and we don't have to be imprisoned by the past, definitely don't have to be imprisoned by our own thoughts and feelings. We can be a soulmate to ourselves and to each other. And that makes us infinitely freer and happier as a people.

And we will take better care of other species of Mother Earth when we are happier, when we are miserable, who cares about other people, right? You want to do damage, you want to revenge, you want to hurt, you don't care, but you know the moment you feel happier and lighter and more peaceful, you just care and you just do simple things, but they help others. So yes, we all of us need to be 10% happier and more in each moment so that we can take better care of the world. Thank you, DeJ. Thank you, Sister De. She's also thinking, DeJ, Kashmir, the producer of this episode. And before we go, I just want to read off,

again, the names of SisterD's books, the latest is Flowers in the Dark. They was preceded by Healing, a woman's journey from Dr. to None, and also mindfulness as medicine. So go check out those three books. SisterD, thank you again. Thank you, my dear brother. You are so wonderful. I'm so glad you're out there in the world. I feel the same way about you. Thank you. Bless you. Thanks again to Sister D and thanks to everybody who worked so hard on the show. They include Samuel Johns, Gabrielle Zuckerman, DJ Kashmir, Justin Davie, Kim Baikama, Maria Wartelle, and Jen Poient. We get audio engineering from our friends over at Ultraviolet Audio. We'll see you all on Friday for a bonus.

In fact, I do want to say that this week's bonus is extra special. You may have heard me talk a little bit about the new podcast, 20% happier hosted by my friend and colleague Matthew Hepburn. We're going to drop a whole episode in the feed coming up on Friday before we've dropped snippets of episodes, but we're going to actually drop a whole one so you can really come up on Friday before we've dropped snippets of episodes, but we're gonna actually drop a whole one so you can really hear what it's all about. It's quite powerful.

You're gonna hear Matthew and a meditation student by the name of Saeed Ressel with a very resonant issue for me and for many people, which is how do you balance ambition with happiness or peace of mind? So that's coming up on Friday, check it out. Hey, hey prime members, you can listen to 10% happier early and ad free on Amazon music. Download the Amazon music app today. Or you can listen early and ad free with 1-3 plus in Apple

podcasts. Before you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondery.com slash Survey.