Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 540: Wise Selfishness | Part 3 of The Dalai Lama's Guide to Happiness

Episode Date: January 4, 2023

How can we get better at selfishness? That’s one of many fascinating topics we cover in this episode, in which we play snippets from Dan’s one-on-one interview with His Holiness, and then unpack it all with Dr. Richard Davidson, neuroscientist and founder of the Center for Healthy Minds. We talk to His Holiness about “wise selfishness,” how to handle our enemies, and whether he ever gets angry. Then Richie recounts a time when His Holiness exhibited a rare flash of anger— towards him, in fact.Want more of The Dalai Lama’s Guide to Happiness? Download the Ten Percent Happier app wherever you get your apps.Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/dalai-lama-guide-540Other Resources Mentioned:Healthy Minds InnovationsAdditional Resources:Download the Ten Percent Happier app today: https://10percenthappier.app.link/JoinChallengePodSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

He's already laughing. This is the 10% happier podcast. Dan Harris. Okay, so today is the big day. I've been in Durham, Seoul for over a week, and it is finally time for my sit-down with his holiness, the Dalai Lama. I have flown across the world for this one hour audience. So the stakes feel pretty high.

I will admit, I'm a little nervous. His holiness can be a bit of a tough nut to crack. On the one hand, he can sometimes fall back on his talking points instead of answering your questions directly. On the other hand, he's also been known to spontaneously feed people cake or tickle them so I have no idea what I'm going to get here. Good morning.

Hello, you're holding this. Good morning. Good morning. We're set up in a small wood-paneled room. The Dalai Lama walks in slowly attended by large monks guiding him on either side because of his bum knee. I'm standing next to Richie Davidson. We've already met the path-breaking scientist and longtime collaborator of the Dalai Lama's. I've actually known for a long time that Richie and his holiness were close,

but now I'm getting a sense of how close, as he's getting settled into his seat, his holiness gives Richie a sort of compassionate headbutt. A few minutes later we settle in and it's on. The interview gets rolling and it is remarkable. Over the course of a single hour, we cover a ton of ground. From a frank discussion of whether his holiness ever gets angry, to comments about his own reincarnation that he's apparently never made in public before, to a kind of magical mystery

tour of his own meditation practice, which left me both intrigued and confused. The conversation is fascinating, funny, rangy, and unpredictable. I honestly didn't catch all of it in real time. So we're gonna devote the next three episodes to unpacking the thing, and we've recruited a superstar. After we got back, Stateside,

I called up Richie to walk me through the choices clips from my conversation with his holiness. As you will hear, Richie is going to explain not only what the Dalai Lama is saying, but also how you can operationalize his holiness as wisdom into your real life right now. You can think of it like watching a movie with the director's commentary. The later episodes in the series, episodes four and five are gonna get way weirder, but in today's episode, we're gonna focus on the super practical stuff.

We'll cover some big questions. How do you deal with assholes? What does the Dalai Lama mean when he talks about the very intriguing notion of wise selfishness. And like any good DVD extra, we're gonna give you some incredible behind-the-scenes stories from Richie. Like the time he saw the Dalai Lama get angry at him in fact. And his holiness grabbed me by the arm,

and he, in a very angry way, he said, don't use my, just like that. We'll get started 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%.com. All one word spelled out. Okay, on with the show. Hey y'all, it's your girl, Kiki Palmer. I'm an actress, singer, and entrepreneur. On my new podcast, Baby This is Kiki Palmer. I'm asking friends, family, and experts, the questions that are in my head.

Like, it's only fans only bad where the 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. Hi, Richie. Hey, Dan. Great to see you. Likewise. All right, so let's dive right in here as you know because you were right there with me

when we sat down for that interview with His holiness the Dalai Lama even before I asked a question He launched into a whole riff about how warm heartedness or altruism or compassion is the ultimate source of happiness and her peace and inner strength and it was an argument that was very familiar you and I had both heard him say these words many, many times during the compassionate leaders summit. And it brought up a question for me about whether he has holiness can really sustain this kind of warm heartedness all of the time. So I put it to him directly. Here's the clip. Do you ever lose your sense of warm heartedness or your altruistic intent, do you ever find yourself feeling angry or selfish?

And almost none. Almost none. Here his holiness makes a reference to the one exception, mosquitoes. Except getting nice sleep, mosquei to come. Zing. Otherwise, anger almost not come. Kitting aside, he does go on to say that he doesn't even get angry in the face of the decades-long conflict with China.

To the Chinese, they really suppress us and destroy the Tibetan culture. But I feel more sympathy, no anger, more sense of concern, or how bad they are thinking, very short-sighted, and a true must-satfish. Okay, so Richie, have you ever seen his holiness angry? I've seen his holiness angry on two occasions, and in both occasions, I clearly saw that his anger was in the service of an altruistic motivation. And I think it's best if I just talked about one of them because it was directed at me.

So I feel like I have the privilege of revealing this. That's the story I don't share very often, but since you've asked, I will share it. We used to have small meetings with his holiness in the US, where we brought a very small group of scientists who were studying meditation together with him so that he could be updated on the latest research that was going on.

And one year, it was decided that rather than have old folks like myself present to his holiness, we would have young people who are postdocs and young graduate students who are at the early stages of their career and who are really committed to this kind of research, present their work. And I was asked to moderate this. And one of the young people was someone who was a former graduate student of mine. And she was a great student and has done some really important research

on compassion. So when it came time for me to introduce her, I said that this is my student and she worked in my lab and went on about this and his holiness grabbed me by the arm and he in a very angry way, he said, don't use my, just like that. And it was a shock to my system and a wake up call. And then he started laughing. And it was a deep, deep teaching which I will never forget and affected me in a cellular way. And it lasted like a millisecond, but I clearly saw a flash of anger that was in the

service of being compassionate to me and helping me understand my own self involvement in this case. That's an incredible story and we all need, I mean, just so you don't feel picked on here, we all need to be jarred out of self involvement, some of us more than others. But let's just go back to anger for a second because most of us do get angry and not in a helpful way and quite frequently. So should we feel badly about ourselves because of that? And what is your research show about how best to manage this anger? Absolutely not.

I don't think we should feel bad about ourselves. The research shows that the practice of simple mindfulness and compassion meditation practices can be enormously helpful in not so much changing our anger initially or suppressing it or controlling it, but becoming aware of it. Sometimes people are really unaware that they're angry. And many of us, I think, have experienced that where someone raises her or his voice in a certain context and they're not really aware that they're doing it. And so mindfulness can really help a person be aware of it and having insight into it can help us understand what the causes of the anger might be and help us change our relationship to the anger so that we're

not completely fused with the anger. You know, we often use expressions when we talk about our own emotions. We say, I am angry or I'm sad or I'm depressed. And we can ask ourselves, really, is it all of us that is feeling anger? Every cell in your body is angry? I mean, what does it actually mean to say I am angry? What does that mean? And then we can really start to penetrate

what this eye is that is angry, and that helps to give us some distance from it. And over time, gradually, step by step, it begins to dissipate more easily. 100%. This shows up in the research, and it shows up in my own end of one laboratory having meditated for a while now that you can surf your anger instead of drowning in it, and that applies to all sorts of difficult emotions. However, the sort of next level of difficulty is when you're dealing with a truly difficult person or people, and I wanted to get some

practicality on that from the Dalai Lama, So I asked him about it specifically since he had referenced the Chinese. So let's listen to that. You mentioned that you're able to feel compassionate for the Chinese who invaded your country and put you into exile. How can regular people who are not monks feel compassion for difficult people? I think basically human nature, warmheartedness, because we are social animals. If we kept warmheartedness, then I think there should not happen

first world war, second world war, because you see, genuine sense of 1. World War, 2. World War, 1. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. World War, 2. we have to live together on this planet. So I remember being a little frustrated with that answer because I was hoping to get some practical advice, maybe even some meditation advice about how to deal with difficult people. And I heard him sort of go back to his talking points about oneness and brotherhood and social animals and 78 billion human beings. Why do you think the

Dalai Lama is so repetitive? Is it possible that age is a contributor? I think he's repetitive because as he is nearing the later stages of his life, he's focusing on those things that he considers to be most important and really has less interest in things that are more peripheral to these really key issues. And I've known him now for 40 years, I think. And I've never seen him give at least in a public context for Westerners practical meditation instructions. He teaches from the insights that he gets from his own practice. And in the Tibetan tradition, it's the case that there are simple pointers that are given by a

teacher. And then you go off in practice. You don't get kind of handheld all the way. You gotta just do it and sort of discover it. And so I think he's at least in part reflecting that as well. When we were together as part of that visit to Darmsal, I was with him for about three and a half weeks and saw him many times over the course of this period. And I would say that his holiness is living mostly in a non-conceptual world these days,

because he spends so much time by himself, not interacting with others. And then when he is with others, he's really focusing on the things that matter the most, which are these points that he keeps coming back to. What do you mean by non-conceptual? For his holiness, compassion is not a concept. It is a lived experience so that when he sees you a lived experience so that when he sees you and when he sees me, he's actually seeing us as brothers. I mean, literally. And it's not just a phrase, it's not just a way of speaking.

It's a deeply embodied perceptual stance toward the universe. But that is the result of decades, and maybe if you believe in reincarnation, lifetimes of practice. You know, you say he teaches from the insights and doesn't do a lot of handholding, but I think the rest of us, at least in the West, do need some handholding. So I wonder if you could give us some and talk about what you've learned from your research and your practice about what we can do to develop compassion for difficult people. Yeah, so I really appreciate that question and also believe it's a super important question and it's probably much easier for people to do that by starting with people who are not the most difficult people,

people who are just sort of a little bit annoying, if you will, not the most problematic person in one's life. And it's something that can be gradually approached step by step. So there are a few things that the research has shown first. I'll speak about the research and then I'll speak about my own experience. One of the things that the research shows is that there are real behavioral consequences that are measurable when a person does this. And just to give you one example from our own research. And this is research with very young children who were taught these kinds of practices starting in preschool. We had photographs of every kid in the class and we asked the kids to pick out their favorite friend in

the class. You know, and they picked out from the photograph and we asked the kids to pick out their favorite friend in the class, you know, and they picked out from the photograph, and we asked the kids to pick out their least favorite person in the class. And then, after they went through these practices, we gave them a bunch of stickers, which is a very important currency for a four-year-old. And we asked the kids to distribute the stickers in envelopes according to how they wish to distribute them. And we had one envelope where there was a picture of themselves and another envelope that had a picture of their least favorite person in the class. And it turns out that kids actually distribute significantly more stickers to their least favorite friend in the class after going through this simple kindness training where they are taught to reflect on the feelings of another person, take the perspective of another person, and to appreciate that a kid may do something that may be annoying to you, but they don't necessarily

mean to hurt you by it. It's a byproduct of what they're doing. And so those kinds of lessons have these really important behavioral consequences. In my own life as a practitioner, you know, I do these kinds of practices as part of my daily practice. And then when I know I'm gonna have to be with a person who is difficult in one way or another, I specifically bring them into my mind and my heart.

I try to appreciate the fact that they don't mean to be difficult. It's just a product of their upbringing, as they say in the Buddhist tradition causes in conditions. But they have the same wish to be happy that I do. I haven't measured it, but I have certainly over the long course of my career, I've become much less angry myself, much less volatile, and much less perturbed by difficult people. Yes, me too. And just to put a fine point on it, there are these practices where you can train up your compassion muscle, you can find them on the healthy minds app or the 10% happier app or many other meditation apps and the research

that Richie and others have done shows that these practices have physiological, psychological, and even behavioral benefits. They can really help you deal with difficult people. That does lead to the question of why, you know, what's in it for me? Why do I need to be nice to these meanies? And I actually get to that in this next clip with the Dalai Lama where I asked him about one of my favorite of his concepts. What is Y's selfishness? Selfishness. Tinging more compassionate way to other is best way to fulfill your own interest. Now, for example, my own for practice always think other,

result I get benefit. Here his holiness sticks his tongue out at me. Here his holiness sticks his tongue out at me. So although not motivated, selfish, but it actually happened that way. Helping other sincerely, or then you get maximum benefit. So is there science to back up this self-interested case he's making for not being a jerk? Absolutely. I mean, the clearest is a sort of prototype experiment that is part of a whole cottage industry of research that has the following characteristic.

You can bring a group of people into the laboratory in the morning, assess their level of happiness. You then give them money, real cash. You tell them, please go spend the money on yourself. Everyone has things they wanted to buy themselves, but they can't really justify it. Here's a hundred dollars. Go buy yourself some gifts.

The only requirement is that you cannot spend the money on anybody else. You just need to buy stuff for yourself. Another group comes into the lab in the morning, same thing. They are given the $100 and they say, please go buy gifts for other people today. The only constraint is you can't spend a penny on yourself. Just go buy stuff for others. And they come back at the end of the day and their level of happiness is assessed. And of course, all the listeners, I'm sure can guess which group by far is happier at the end of the day? By far, it's not like a a minor statistical result. It's a whopping effect. People are happier when they're benefiting others. It's very clear.

So, what is the line here, though, between helping people sincerely and helping people because you know it's good for you? And how do we know whether we're on the right side of this selfish, unselfish line? Yeah, that's a great question. And I would say that at the beginning, it doesn't matter. So that if you do something for someone else out of a selfish motive, that's okay. You're still benefiting them. You know, there's a very famous psychologist by the name of Gordon Allport. And he had this concept called functional autonomy. And what this concept means is that you can engage in a behavior initially for one motive

and then it changes over time. And we see this all the time. Often people do something because their friends are doing it. But then it takes on a life of its own and they begin to do it more out of their own intrinsic motivation. This is a case where I firmly believe that if a person started to do this for selfish reasons that gradually over time, this would change because this is really part of our nature. You know, here the Dalai Lama, I think, is onto something. And again, scientific research shows that humans are born to be kind. They're born to be altruistic.

And the data here are really clear. So that if you show, for example, a six-month-old infant, a puppet interaction, where the puppets are altruistic to one another and warm-hearted compared to selfish, and you ask which of these interactions do six-month-old babies prefer to look at? They clearly show a preference for the altruistic encounter. And again, it's not like 55% of the infants prefer the altruism and 45% prefer selfish, 100%, 100% of six month old infants prefer the altruistic. So there's no question.

Intellectually, I buy all of this, but I'm going to be a little self revelatory here and admit that these discussions of compassion often for me produce a kind of imposter syndrome because maybe a perverse impact of my mindfulness practices, I'm more keenly aware of my own selfish tendencies and I sometimes fear that they may not be of rootable. Help me Uncle Richie. Well, first let me say that I deeply appreciate and admire your honesty and your awareness. And having awareness of what's happening in your mind is really a necessary condition

for any form of change. And so that's wonderful. And that should be celebrated. And I think that your experience then is super common. I think most of us, including me, have those experiences at times. And I think that it really is a commentary on the culture in which we live.

Cross-cultural research shows that, for example, people who are raised in East Asian cultures don't have the same kind of individualistic tendency that we do. And so it seems quite clear that these are culturally acquired characteristics. So it does take a lot to uproot in a deep way these kinds of propensities that we have learned over time. And that's why we need to do these practices. I just want to add here in the name of clarity that the Dalai Lama does argue that you do need to be a little bit selfish in the traditional sense. Listen to that. does argue that you do need to be a little bit selfish in the traditional sense.

Listen to that. Autism does not mean you completely forget your own interest in the know. So we do need to look out for our own interests, which makes me feel a little bit better above my own ambition, I guess. And yet, compassion, focusing on other people has so many benefits, including physical benefits.

In fact, during our interview, when the Dalai Lama mentioned these physical benefits, I gave him a compliment on how those benefits have manifested for him, so let's listen to that. You look good. I said, you look good. Karsar. Karsar, you say K. Karsar, is that a good one?

Yes. My physical, now in a sprite, old age. Here, his holiness takes off his robe, not all of it, just kind of the top part, and shows off his bod to the amusement of everybody in the room. I really feel anger. Everybody in the room. I really feel anger, really in distress of your health. More compassionate mind, really helpful, your physical health.

It brings in a peace, peace of mind, anger, very bad for health. Piece of mind, compassion, really help to keep healthy body and nice smile. And here once again, he sticks out his tongue. Okay, I'm not sure there are dental benefits to compassion, but in terms of the rest of our physiology, Richie, what does the research say about developing our capacity for kindness, compassion and altruism? There is a growing body of serious scientific evidence on the biological consequences of training compassion, and there are some really exciting findings. So probably the most

health relevant finding is that this kind of training seems to decrease inflammation and molecules that promote inflammation in the body. So there are these molecules that are called pro-inflammatory cytokines, which are molecules that play an important role in many chronic illnesses where inflammation is a significant accompaniment. These illnesses are very, they can be cardiovascular illnesses, theses, are theses, are theses, are theses, are theses, are theses, are theses, are theses, are theses, are theses, are theses, are theses, are theses, are theses, are theses, are theses, are theses, are theses, are theses,

are theses, are theses, are theses, are theses, are theses, are theses, are theses, are theses, are theses, are theses, are theses, are theses, are theses, are theses, category of chronic illnesses that really exact a toll in our society. And so, you know, I think it's important for listeners to appreciate that compassion is not going to cure any illnesses. We're not saying that. But what compassion will do is it will change the symptom profile of illnesses, it will decrease the severity of illnesses, and it will generally lead to better health. When you look at large-scale epidemiological research, that kind of research clearly shows that happier people are healthier, physically healthier.

happier people are healthier, physically healthier. It doesn't mean though that this applies to everyone. There are certainly people who are happy and who have chronic illnesses. There are also people who are unhappy and who may be physically healthy. But this is kind of the law of averages. If you look at large populations, you see this general trend. And it invites the possibility that cultivating compassion and other qualities that are important for our well-being will actually have a beneficial effect on our physical health. Before we wrap up this episode, one last clip.

And this is a comment, a very short one from the Dalai Lama that I know struck you when we were in the room. So I want to play it to you and then hear on the backside why it struck you. At the time of my death, I meditate on altruism. So he said this many times throughout the course of the interview, but when you and I were chitchatting right afterwards, you really singled that out as something that struck you. Why? You know, when a person is facing his or her death, there are innumerable things that they could be focusing on. And to be focusing on altruism is kind of remarkable.

And what it says to me is that even in the last moment of his life, he is committed to focus on the welfare of others. And it just is inspiring to me to see the depth of his commitment. Agreed. And now you mentioned the D word death. We're gonna talk about life after death and claims of reincarnation and rebirth in tomorrow's episode. In the meantime, Richie, thank you very much

and we'll see you back here tomorrow. Wonderful, thank you, Dan. In the Dalai Lama's view, there's actually a very deep connection between compassion and reincarnation. So how does this work exactly? And so as I said, that is where we're heading in tomorrow's installment of the Dollar Lama's guide

to happiness. We're gonna dig into the mechanics of reincarnation with Dalai Lama's Guide to Happiness. We're going to dig into the mechanics of reincarnation with the Dalai Lama himself, and here's some revealing comments which he apparently has never made in public before about the deity who he believes will play a crucial role in his own rebirth. And of course, I will ask Richie whether there's any evidence for this and how those of us with Western scientific world views should process it all. What's the right intellectual stance when somebody so clearly brilliant, like the Dalai Lama, believes in something that you are not really sure about? And so when I hear all of this, I, you know, I have spent years cultivating what I call respectful, not knowing and humility and just sort of throw up my arms.

So that's coming up tomorrow. Before I let you go though, I do want to say that if you are interested in starting to train your mind, to give a shit about yourself and other people. Again, that's probably not the Dalai Lama's favorite verbiage, but nonetheless, we here at 10% happier are launching a free meditation challenge called the Dalai Lama's Guide to Happiness. It will kick off over on the 10% happier app

on January 9th, but you can join right now. Here's how it works every day for 10 days. You'll get a short video featuring the Dalai Lama, Richie and Rochi Joan, followed by a guided meditation to help you pound all of the lessons from that video and from this podcast into your neurons. So go check it out.

[♪ Music playing in background, 10% happier is produced by DJ Cashmere, Gabrielle Zuckerman, Justin Davie and Lauren Smith are supervising. Producer is Marissa Schneiderman, Kimmy Regler, who I have to say has been the driving force behind this series and is amazing.

Thank you, Kimmy. Kimmy is our managing producer and our executive producer is Jen Poient. Audio services are provided by ultraviolet audio with scoring mixing and sound design by the great Matt Boynton and we had additional engineering by Peter Bonavent. Nick Thorburn composed our theme, check out his excellent band,

Islands. And there are a lot of other folks I want to thank from the wider TPH universe and beyond. They include Liz Levin, Jade Weston, Gemma Vardy, Conor Donahue. I also want to thank Richie Davidson and the whole team at Healthy Mind's Innovations. As collaborators on this course, you can find out more about them in our show notes.