Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 541: Is Reincarnation Real? | Part 4 of The Dalai Lama's Guide to Happiness

Episode Date: January 5, 2023

One of the Dalai Lama‘s most challenging teachings, especially for secular western minds, is reincarnation. In this episode, His Holiness describes the Buddhist deity who he believes to be his “boss.” Dan then sits down with Richie again to discuss whether there is any scientific evidence for rebirth. The episode begins and ends with emotional moments, where members of our team respond with tears to being in the presence of the Dalai Lama.Want more of The Dalai Lama’s Guide to Happiness? Download the Ten Percent Happier app wherever you get your apps.Full Show Notes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/dalai-lama-guide-541Other Resources Mentioned:Healthy Minds InnovationsUVA research on reincarnationAdditional 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.

So this is security where we go check in. This is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Pretty soon they'll be bringing in a huge delegation of people who will have what's called an audience with his holiness. Every morning, except on Sundays, the Dalai Lama holds a public audience at his compound with fans and followers. These audiences are hushed affairs despite the bustle of the crowd.

Everybody's patiently working their way through the long line, and they approach the Dalai Lama in small groups and have their pictures taken and receive blessing. It's quite clear just from watching that these brief moments of contact are incredibly meaningful for these visitors, might be the most meaningful moment of their lives. And through it all, the Dalai Lama is his usual self-com and smiling as far as I can tell, utterly at ease. What strikes me most about this scene though is actually something that happens afterwards after we turn the cameras off.

Our photographer, Tommy, is an American guy I've known and worked with for 20 years back when I was at ABC News. Prior to this trip, he had no interest as far as I know in meditation or Buddhism or the Dalai Lama. But when we're done shooting this public audience, which is actually the first thing Tommy shoots when he arrives, he comes over to me, hugs me, and thanks me profusely for bringing him here.

And I have to say, Tommy is a guy that I have covered natural disasters with school shootings, wars, political campaigns. This guy's been around the world and he says he's never seen anything like this. In particular, he says he was moved just by the Dalai Lama's presence. Tommy is so moved in fact that he actually calls his wife, even though it's the middle of the night in New York City where she lives.

She tells him, why are you waking me up? And he says, I just wanted to talk about it before the feeling fades. You just described it for me. what it was like for you? It was the most emotional, one of the most emotional things that happened in my life. You just felt the love and you felt the emotion from the people and also the Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama just seemed so peaceful and expressed it to everyone around him, including me. I got very emotional and I was a little shaky afterwards. It was incredible. It was an incredible part, very spiritual. And I'm not very spiritual, but that was very spiritual to me. I spent roughly two weeks in Darum's Sala and had the chance to see his holiness,

the Dalai Lama, on many occasions. And one of the things that happens when you do this is that you notice a recurring pattern. Again and again, people have these really strong, emotional reactions to the man. They prostrate themselves, they fall to the floor, they weep, they wail, they call home. It can get really intense. I did not personally have any such moment. Maybe it's because I was in journalist mode

and so I was watching everything, including my own interactions at a bit of a remove. Maybe it's because I'm a skeptical guy. Maybe it's because I'm not super emotional. If I'm honest, I can definitely get in my head over my lack of reaction. But I will say in those moments where I was watching other people being moved, that really did move me. I've thought a lot since returning from India about

why the Dalai Lama elicits such strong reactions. Some of it is a mystery, some of it is to use Tommy's term spiritual. Here's my theory though. I think that some of it comes from something that is actually quite easy to understand. Compassion has been wired into us via evolution. It's one of our core capacities. It has enabled the survival of the species. And when you are confronted by an undeluted beam of it directed straight at you, when you are seen in that way, maybe for the first time ever, that can break you open. And that's what the Dalai Lama is really, an embodiment of compassion, a guy who has been practicing what he would call warm-heartedness for 80 years, or if you believe in the Tibetan notion of rebirth, for 14 lifetimes. So that's what

we're going to do in today's episode. We're going to look at the connection between the Dalai Lama's extraordinary capacity for compassion and his deep belief in a concept that could be pretty hard for some Westerners to reckon with rebirth. As we did in the last episode, we're going to play you snippets of my conversation with the Dalai Lama, then we'll get some guidance and color commentary from the inimitable Richie Davidson. Richie has known his holiness for 30 years. Back when they inimitable Richie Davidson. Richie has known his holiness for 30 years. Back when they first met, Richie was a conventional neuroscientist

studying mostly human pathology, the stuff that's wrong with us. But the Dalai Lama encouraged him to look at our healthy qualities, our positive emotions, and their relationship to meditation. That altered the course of Richie's life, and it transformed what we know about the brain. Previously, we considered the brain to be unchanging,

past our mid-20s, now in large measure due to Richie's research. We know that the brain can and does change throughout our lives. It's called neuroplasticity, and it's huge news, because it means we can train our brains and our minds. So today Richie is going to help me unpack some of the very memorable sound bites from his holiness on the subject of rebirth. You're going to hear a prominent scientist wrestle with concepts that go well beyond the bounds of established research. You're also going to hear the Dalai Lama talk about his own potential future rebirth and who he believes the boss of that process is.

I consider that day-dee. That's my boss. That and more coming up right after this. It kind of blows my mind to consider the fact that we're up to nearly 600 episodes of this podcast, the 10% happier podcast. That's a lot of conversations. I like to think of it as a great compendium of, and I know this is a bit of a grandiose term, but wisdom. The only downside of having this vast

library of audio is that it can be hard to know where to start. So we're launching a new feature here, playlists, just like you put together a playlist of your favorite songs. Back in the day, we used to call those mix tapes, just like you do that with music, you could do it with podcasts. So if you're looking for episodes about anxiety, we've got a playlist of all of our anxiety episodes. Or if you're looking for how to sleep better, we've got a playlist for that. We've even put together a playlist of some of my personal favorite episodes. That was a hard list to make.

Check out our playlists at 10% dot com slash playlist. That's 10% all one word spelled out dot com slash playlist singular. Let us know what you think. We're always open to tweaking how we do things. And maybe there's a playlist we haven't thought of. Hit me up on Twitter or submit a comment through the website. Hey y'all, it's your girl, Kiki Palmer. I'm an actress, singer, and entrepreneur. I'm a new podcast, baby'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. Richie, welcome back. Thank you. Great to be back down. So we're talking about the Dalai Lama's reincarnation here. And you're going to hear his holiness mention the name of a highly revered Buddhist

deity named Avaloki Teshvarra, who is said to be the embodiment of the compassion of all the Buddhists. Avaloki Teshvarra is also the patron saint of Tibet and is widely revered by Tibetans. So with that word in mind, Avalokiteshvarara, listen to this sound bite. Fergless speaking, I born on this planet under the guidance of Avalokitesudhisara. Truly, I consider that deity as my boss."

Here he says that he's going to proceed through the process of rebirth in the spirit of compassion which Avalokiteshvarara represents. At which point I jump in and say, I hope it's quite a while before this becomes a pressing issue. Can you tell me, I hope that's not for a long time. That depends on usefulness. At present, my life quite useful. So I'm hoping my life 110 years. So another 15, 20 years. Okay, so have you heard of his holiness talk about Avalokiteshvara as his boss before?

And what do you make of this? Yeah, no, I've never heard him put it quite in that way. And of course, Avalokiteshvara is the embodiment of compassion, the deity of compassion. I mean, my interpretation of what his holiness is saying is that the whole focus of his life, the reason he was born in a human form, the reason he is on this planet, is as an embodiment of compassion, an expression of compassion, a teacher of compassion. And so in whatever way he could be useful, again, where he will be reborn, to be useful as a servant of compassion.

So yeah, I mean, of course, this is all predicated on a world view in which reincarnation is understood to occur. And of course as a scientist, this is something that we cannot accommodate within the mainstream understanding of how the world is constructed. 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. And I do try to avoid the knee jerk reaction that most of my colleagues have, which is just to think of this as spiritual mythology. And yet there has been some research here. I mean, there's a guy at the University of Virginia

who goes out and studies these accounts of kids who say that they can remember their past lives. And I mean, that actually is the process by which the Dalai Lama was chosen. I mean, while I was in Darmsala, Seton, who is the Dalai Lama's press officer, he's a great guy. He gave me a book that the Dalai Lama wrote or dictated,

many, many years ago in which he talked about his earliest memories. And when he was two years old, a bunch of religious officials showed up at his house and remote to bed and put some artifacts on the floor. And the Dalai Lama was able to pick out the ones that belonged to his predecessor, the and the Dalai Lama was able to pick out the ones that belonged to

his predecessor, the 13th Dalai Lama. And there are researchers out there today doing similar work with children around the world. And some of the results are quite interesting. So, are you familiar with this work? Could you have a take on it? Yes, I'm familiar with it. I'm not an expert on the literature, but I've read a lot of it. You know, what I would say is that, first of all, it's enormously difficult to actually do this kind of research. I appreciate those who've tried and let me just say kind of diplomatically and respectfully that because it's such difficult research to do, it has a lot of methodological challenges and many alternative explanations. And so I don't think that it has penetrated the walls of mainstream science at all. I think it's had zero influence on mainstream science,

really because of the methodological questions that have been raised about this work. To be clear, the Buddha very directly stated that you do not need to believe in things like karma or rebirth or enlightenment in order to practice meditation. And yet, from the Tibetan perspective, reincarnation plays a huge role when we talk about the development of compassion. So can you explain how these two concepts, compassion and rebirth intertwine? Yeah, I think there are a number of ways in which compassion and rebirth intertwine.

But let me also, before I say anything about that, also remind listeners that I've heard the Dalai Lama say on many occasions that reincarnation is Buddhist business and there is so much benefit from cultivating compassion in this life and not worrying about any past life or any future life. There's just an enormous opportunity here right now to do this. In terms of reincarnation and compassion, there are a few things to say. One is that it provides a kind of long view, if you will, I mean a really long view. And so one of the things that we frequently experience as meditators and you've said this, Stan, in our conversation yesterday, you were talking about the imposter syndrome and talked about your own practice. And when we take the long view,

if we don't get it done in this lifetime, it's okay. And we can have more patience with ourselves, which is something that I think is a useful perspective, whether or not, you know, reincarnation actually exists. The belief in reincarnation is something that can help people, I think, cultivate patients. The second thing, which I think is really important, and here, there is a connection to mainstream, hard-nosed modern science. There is a science of epigenetics, which is the science of how our genes are regulated. And it turns out that we have, we being the field, some of it is our own work, some of it is work of others,

has clearly shown that certain kinds of meditation practices, including compassion practices, can alter our epigenetics. And this can be passed down for at least a few generations. And there's really hard-nosed scientific research to show this. And so by cultivating compassion in this lifetime, we can actually have benefit on our future generations. In this is in a real biological, mechanistic way. And one of the interesting extensions of this work that we're currently pursuing in our own center,

is kind of wild, but it's again, based on really hard-nosed molecular biology, and that is we're teaching these practices to pregnant women who were in their second trimester of pregnancy and looking at the impact not just on the women themselves, but on their offspring. And when the babies are born, we can actually get the blood from the umbilical cord. And through that, we can get an epigenetic snapshot of the fetus and actually see the impact

of the mother practicing compassion on the epigenetics of the fetus. And so fascinating. Okay, let me play you another clip. In this clip, the Dalai Lama talks about the goal of life and the goal of meditation. And he says a very high bar, one that probably cannot be vaulted in a single lifetime. So let's take a listen. You have said that I believe the purpose of life is to be happy. What do you mean by that?

That the purpose of life is to be happy? Actually, we, all follow Buddha. Our aim is to become Buddha. So that means permanent, most happy state is Buddhahood. So when we pray, I should reach Buddhahood. That means permanent happiness. We all have Buddha nature. We all have the ability or potential to become Buddha.

Okay, so he uses two terms there that I think are actually worthy of unpacking. One is Buddhahood and the other is Buddha nature. Let's start with Buddhahood. He's talking about this as sort of a perfect happiness and this is the goal of Buddhists. Do you think he's talking about this as a goal that is achievable in this lifetime or does this bring us back to the notion of rebirth? Well, first, I think he said permanent happiness. And I forget what term did you use?

Perfect. Happy. Yeah. I think he said permanent. Okay. And by permanent happiness, his sort of way of talking about bootahood, my understanding of what he means is not a conventional sense of happiness. We all commonly recognize that if there's a tragic loss that occurs, you go to someone's funeral,

it's not appropriate to be happy in the sort of conventional sense. And I think what he means by Buddha and by permanent happiness here is that there's a fundamental contentness and okayedness and a sense that anything can come down the pike, anything at all, and it'll all be okay. That is a kind of serenity, which is part of what it means to have bootahood, I think. And so you're asking whether this is achievable in our life. And I, you know, I don't know if an ordinary person like myself can achieve it, but, you know,

I have met people who I've never seen rattled ever at all any time. These are people that I've actually met them casually. I've traveled with them. I've been on planes with them. I've been in airports with them. I've experienced flights that are canceled with them and unflappable. I think that probably it is achievable

is my conclusion. I don't think it is commonly achieved, but I think that there are living exemplars on the planet today that help to establish that it is indeed achievable. Speaking of common, he also used this term, Buddha nature, which he would argue is universal, that we are all essentially good. Can you tell us what Buddha nature is and whether there's evidence for it? Yeah, so this is a really important question.

And part of Buddha nature is the common aspiration that we all be happy, that everyone shares this common wish to be happy. That I think is kind of face validly true. I mean, people come to you, Dan, and are interested in your 10% happier app. Can you imagine a program that says 10% angrier? How many people do you think you would get for that? People are not going to sign up for that. I think this is part of our nature. That's why people are interested in it. And the research really does show that as I talked about

yesterday, the research shows that in infants, when infants come into the world, they show a strong propensity for altruism, for basic goodness, for pro-social behavior. And this is what Buddha nature really means. But the way I think about Buddha nature is it's kind of like language. Every human being is born with a biological capacity for language. This is part of what it means to be human. But we know that for this capacity to be expressed, it needs to be cultivated. There are actually case studies of kids who are raised in the wild, like feral children,

and they don't develop normal language. And similarly, if a child was raised in an environment where none of the qualities that constitute our Buddha nature were cultivated, that would, I think, result in a failure to thrive, if you will. And so I think, saying we have Buddha nature, acknowledges that we come into the world with this propensity, but it needs to be cultivated in order for it to be realized.

Let me go back to a comment from the Dalai Lama that addresses rebirth very directly. Now this comment I just want to warn you and the listeners, it's a little bit off mic. It happened at the end of the interview when his holiness was talking directly to you Richie about bringing you with him to the next life. Let's take a listen. Thank you.

When I really, I feel, when I reach the standby step to Buddhahood, all my friend is the I will lead. That's good news for you. There's no question. I was sitting there like, I'm sitting right here. So he's saying that he will lead all of his friends to Buddhahood. I assume that has something to do with, you know, taking you with him to the next life.

But I don't know, maybe you can unpack what he's saying and what it felt like for you to hear that. Yeah, well, you know, one of the things I often try to do is not to immediately interpret what his holiness says to me, but to just let it sort of sit and not to concretize it in any kind of literal way. I mean, his holiness has shared comments with me in the past about us having been connected in previous lives. And you know, again, I don't know what to do with that. And it's not something I immediately dismiss.

And it's also not something that I sort of embrace and advertise. I mean, I'm actually sharing these kind of reflections publicly for the very first time since you've asked about it. And because of our encounter together. You know, the Dalai Lama has been a powerful force in my life. I first met him in 1992 and as my friend John Kabatzin put it, my life went through an orthogonal rotation

as a consequence. He really oriented me in a different direction. And for that, I am just so deeply appreciative. And I don't really know what I did to deserve this kind of relationship. I am doing my very best to make the most out of it and to use my life. I mean, I really feel like I'm on the planet now to be a person that harnesses the power of scientific research to help people recognize their Buddhahood and to promote human flourishing. And this is what I

think about every day, and it's really why I do what I do. And so I really feel like I'm a partner with his holiness, and I bring a very different lens, but I really have the same aspirations that he does. I appreciate your candor on this and your desire not to concretize it kind of by contrast. I don't know if you've ever seen that movie Caddy Shack where Bill Murray is talking about how he wants caddy for the dollar Lama on a golf course who didn't give him a tip but did promise him total consciousness when he dies and he finishes his solidically by saying, so I've got that going from me, which is nice. So you're not doing that.

You're just letting it wash over you. I personally have long rejected outright in a sort of reflexive skepticism, the notion of rebirth. And I don't know what's happening to me. The more I practice, the more I hang around people like you and the Dalai Lama and all my other teachers, Joseph Goldstein, Sharon Salisberg, I definitely wouldn't claim that I have evidence

for rebirth, but just on some subverbal level, I feel this creeping suspicion that maybe there's something there. And so I just, before I let you go on this episode, I want to play one last moment. During the course of our time in Durham, I saw so many people have these emotional reactions to the Dalai Lama. I was a little bit beating myself up for not really getting that emotional myself. But when I heard the following moment, I did have a bit of an emotional reaction.

Let me just, before I play this clip, let me tee it up for the audience. There was a member of our team, well, I'm not going to name, who had a very, very emotional reaction in the room with the Dalai Lama after the interview was over while we were taking pictures. And it went on for quite a while, and the Dalai Lama was trying to console this person and in the course of that he said see you again. See you again life after life Till Buddha See you again Oh

Life I Don't know why I cannot account for it and I just kind of wanted to process it with you directly. You may not have any good answers either. But I found this really moving and comforting in some ways, the idea of, you know, somehow being with somebody amazing like the Dalai Lama in life after life until we achieve Buddhahood.

I don't do, do you resonate with any of these words that are pouring in a rather undignified way out of my mouth? First of all, I don't think they're undignified and I really appreciate your interest in kind of reckoning with them. And, you know, the way I think about it and reflect on it is appreciating how unlikely it is that the particular configuration of people who, for example, came together in the interview that

you had with His Holiness, the people who were in that room. We were all together and shared this really powerful experience together. And I often reflect on how these encounters have meaning, and that there is some connection that has somehow brought us together. You know, the Buddhists use the phrase causes and conditions. There are causes and conditions that have created these circumstances that are bringing us all together. And we can't pretend to understand all of those causes and conditions. But the fact is, and the reality that we can't deny is that we have all been brought together in this way. And maybe there is a higher purpose to that. And I think that these kinds of experiences invite that kind of reflection.

And again, I've worked a lot with myself to not immediately jump to one extreme or the other in terms of a conclusion from this, but rather to rest in both the uncertainty, but also the recognition that this is really rare and if nothing else, it is an opportunity for this deep humility and appreciation for something that just doesn't come along very often. And so that's kind of how I put my arms around it. Yeah, I agree. We don't know if rebirth is real or not, and maybe just to see if you can be in that uncomfortable space of not knowing, but also not shutting it down. And as two causes and conditions, if you think

about it, back to the big bang, and who knows, maybe even before we've got this massive, incalculable, unfathomable, rolling gumbo of events, this huge pool game, or as the British might say, snooker game of the balls bouncing off of each other, atoms and gases and shifting tectonic plates and evolution and, and then all of a sudden, we are here right now. And what did it take to get us to this moment and looked at through that lens? Well, then everything is kind of magic. And I don't think you need to believe in anything that's unprovable to take that view. Yeah, well put. So we're going to go even deeper and even stranger in tomorrow's episode because the Dalai Lama gave us this really interesting view into

his own meditation practice. I have no, in the moment, I had no way to understand what he's talking about, so I'm going to run it all by you and let you unpack it. Thanks for coming on. This episode rich, you will see you in the next one. Wonderful. Thank you, Dan. All right, let's just pause here and take stock for a moment.

So far on this journey, we have watched the Dalai Lama frustrate activists with a message as repetitive as it was profound, then take a risk by tickling one of those activists who was really suffering at the time and then have that risk pay off. We've talked about altruism and oneness, compassion, and wise selfishness,

Buddha nature and Buddhahood, and a whole slew of practices for increasing your happiness. But there is one thing we have not yet touched on with his holiness. And that is the one thing that actually got me here in the first place. Meditation. I've been told that the Dalai Lama goes to bed very early every day around five or six and then wakes up super early around one or two in the morning so that he can meditate and pray for hours before his daily audiences and meetings begin. Which raises the question, what does the Dalai Lama's meditation practice actually look like? What does somebody who began training with monks around 80 years ago actually do on the cushion. The answers it turns out are at once beautiful

and if you're anything like me, befuddling. Now, this is way beyond my pay grade. I have absolutely no idea from a scientific perspective what this is about. Tomorrow, we're going way into the deep end. Deeper, deeper, deeper, deeper. That's coming up in our final episode of the Dalai Lama's Guide to Happiness.

Before I let you go, just a quick note that you do not have to wake up at one in the morning to start a meditation practice that helps you get happier. 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.

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 this podcast and from the videos into your neurons. So I highly encourage you to go check it out. [♪ Music playing in background, 10% happier is produced by DJ Kashmir, Gabrielle Zuckerman,

Justin Davie and Lauren Smith are supervising producer is Marissa Schneiderman, Kimi Regler, who I have to say has been driving force behind this series and is amazing, thank you, Kimi. Kimi 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 Bointen and we had additional engineering by Peter Bonaventure. 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, Connor Donahue.

I also want to thank Richie Davidson and the whole team at Healthy Minds Innovations as collaborators on this course. You can find out more about them in our show notes. 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 in Add Free with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts. Before you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself

by completing a short survey at Wondery.com slash survey. Hey, I'm Aresha, and I'm Brooke. And we're the hosts of Wondery's's 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.

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