Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 591: Michael Imperioli (From The Sopranos and White Lotus) Knows a Shitload About Buddhist Meditation

Episode Date: May 1, 2023

Actor Michael Imperioli is best known for a string of memorable onscreen performances that include Goodfellas, The Sopranos, and most recently on The White Lotus. What you may not know is that he has a deep Buddhist practice and has actually grown into something of a meditation teacher. In this episode we talk about:The classic celebrity life crisis that brought Imperioli to Buddhism The importance of consistent practice as a way to get familiar with your mind so that your thoughts and emotions and urges don't own youThe specific Tibetan Buddhist tradition Imperioli practices and what his daily practice looks likeWhether meditation helps him be more creativeHow acting and meditation are similarWhether getting older affects our ability to grok impermanenceWhy Imperioli started teaching meditation onlineHow to meditate off the cushion in daily lifeFull Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/michael-imperioli-591 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. Hello, I cannot tell you how impressed I was by Michael Imperial. Actually, I can't tell you. I I was by Michael Imperiali. Actually, I can tell you, I'm not telling you right now. It's a ridiculous expression. Anyway, I've been watching Michael Imperiali for decades in good fellows on the sopranos and most recently on White Lotus. I vaguely knew that he was interested in Buddhism,

but it wasn't until I sat down with the guy face to face that I realized what a deep, deep practitioner he really is. He's actually grown into something of a meditation teacher. In fact, in this conversation we talked about the classic celebrity life crisis that brought him to Buddhism. The importance of consistent practice as a way to get familiar with your mind so that your thoughts and emotions and urges don't own you. The specific Tibetan Buddhist tradition in which Michael Imperiality practices, what his daily practice looks like,

whether meditation helps him be more creative, how acting and meditation are actually pretty similar, whether getting older affects or does not, your ability to grok impermanence, why he started teaching meditation online, how to meditate off the cushion in daily life, and the two most common things, Michael hears from people who are just starting to meditate. I should say this is the first in a series of big name interviews we're going to be doing

this month. It's a new series we're calling boldface. Every Monday in May, we're talking to a celebrity who has the guts to spill their guts. Stay tuned for Mike D and Neil deGrasse Tyson coming up. And then on Wednesdays this month, we're going to do some deep Dharma. We've got a bunch of Buddhist teachers on the show to break down a classic Buddhist list, the eightfold path. We're kicking it all off in two days with the teacher Dora Williams.

I think you're going to like it. We're going to weave throughout the month of May, which by the way is mental health awareness month. Mondays we've got celebrities, Wednesdays deep Dharma. Let us know what you think. Just a little bit more to say about Michael and Pearyoli before we dive in here. As some of you may know, he played Christopher MultiSanti

on the sopranos for which he won an Emmy award for outstanding supporting actor and a drama series. In the early part of his career, Imperial Lee starred as spider in Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas iconic albeit brief role. He also had supporting roles in films including Jungle Fever, Bad Boys, The Basketball Diaries, Sharktail, and The Lovely Bones. Imperial Lee also co-wrote the screenplay for Summer of Sam with Spike Lee and wrote five episodes of the sopranos. He also wrote and directed the feature film The Hungry Ghosts. Most recently he starred in the second season of the outstanding HBO drama series The White Lotus,

which by the way I hear is going to be set in Asia in season three and it involves some themes of Eastern spirituality. So Mike White, brighter creator director of The White Lotus, if you're listening to this, I'd love to have you on the show. Anyway, today it's Michael and Peary Oli, it's a great conversation. 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. I'm a new podcast, baby, this is Kiki Palmer. I'm asking friends, family, and experts. 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. Michael Imperial, you're welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me, Dan. It's a pleasure. I've been a fan since your spider days and all the way up through White Lotus so I followed your career. I kind of vaguely knew you were into Buddhism but it wasn't until my producer, Gabrielle, put together this research packet on you that I saw.

I was kind of blown away, you've really dedicated a lot of time and energy to this. Yeah, you know, it's a kind of thing that over time has become a bigger and bigger part of our lives. My wife, Victoria and I, we went to our first teaching in 2007 here in the city. Oddly enough, it was only a few blocks from where we were living and we had no idea. There was that East West books, which was that time on Fifth Avenue.

It's like a, you know, new age book store, whatever. And we saw a poster and we went. And when we walked in, we realized in the 80s, it was a very decadent nightclub, like sex drugs and rock and roll joint, that both of us had been to before we met, you know, late crazy night place. And now it was at Tibetan Buddhist Center. It was run by a guy named Gellik Rinpoche, who was a wonderful Tibetan Buddhist teacher. He became Alan Ginsberg's teacher after Chugum Trump Rinpoche died,

who was Ginsberg's first Tibetan Buddhist teacher. He had a wonderful center in Tribeca. He passed away a few years ago, and he had a center in Ann Arbor, and in 2010, I lived in Detroit for about nine months, and I would go see him on the weekends. But he was a wonderful, wonderful llama and that was the first teachings we started going to

and it really made an impact, you know. What motivated you to seek this out in the first place? Mm-hmm. Misery, dissatisfaction, depression, I guess. I mean, I don't know, I don't know if clinical depression, but just kind of disillusionment. You know, I spent my 20s pretty much, you know, working. I used to produce a lot of theater when I was my 20s and a lot of independent movies.

I was involved in a New York indie scene and stuff, but also trying to get work, trying to get an agent, getting an agent, you know, trying to build a career. I was very, very, very driven to do that. Barely left the city unless it was for work or something and you know really wanted to be successful, not just work, I wanted to have a certain degree of success in this business. And when that finally happened, you know, it was gratifying on a lot of levels creatively and work wise, but there was a whole other piece of my life that wasn't addressed. I thought it would take care of everything because it meant a lot to me, I mean artistically, I don't just mean financially or success-wise,

artistically as well, it meant a lot. It was fulfilling in a lot of ways. I mean, I kind of mean around the sopranos when that started happening. But the same time it was a bigger picture, I think, that I was missing. You know, and I went to excess with particularly alcohol drugs and things like that, not unlike so many people, especially artists. Nothing outrageous or particularly romantic about it. And it was destructive. And I started seeking a lot of different spiritual paths. I started reading a lot of teachers like Krishna Murthy, Gherji of Uspensky, Suzuki, even kind of more out of the box stuff like Castaneda, I got really obsessed with for a while.

And some of cult stuff too, you know? Because I was interested in spiritual, but also kind of the more mystic aspects of it as well, mystic and esoteric aspects of spirituality. And some of them were more interesting to me than others. And some of them felt more true, path-wise, than others like someone like Krishna Murri to you, even Gurjiyav to some degree. But then none of them offered me a practice.

So I would read these books and I'd get kind of inspired and agree with all these things. And the book would be done. And I'd be back to the dissatisfaction that brought me there. And then we stumbled into Jewel Heart in Tribeca. would be done and I'd be back to the dissatisfaction that brought me there. And then we stumbled into Jewelheart in Trebekah. And the thing that set it apart for me was, eh, it was a living authentic tradition

and lineage that was still happening and still being offered and still being taught in a very authentic way. And it was open as much as you wanted to delve into it, you could. And there was absolutely a practice. I wound up taking refuge vows with a different teacher. Refuge vows and Buddhism is kind of officially becoming a Buddhist basically.

And this teacher said, OK, this is what you're going to have to do every day. And it was like 20 minutes basically. And I was like, 20 minutes a day. Are you out of your mind? I said, okay, this is what you're gonna have to do every day. And it was like 20 minutes basically. And I was like, 20 minutes a day. Are you out of your mind? I said, there's no way I'm gonna get up in the morning and do this practice for 20 minutes and then go about my day.

I said, this is probably gonna go by the way, so I'd like everything else. You know, slowly we started and it unfolded in a lot of different ways. And the events you met are current teacher,utsch and Rinpoche who really made all the difference in the world and our connection relationship to him. And you know, we're fortunate to live in an era where there are some amazing, if this kind of tradition appeals to you, there are some amazing authentic llamas teaching in a very meaningful, authentic lineage.

And because of the wonders of technology, you can have access to these teachings. And people have taken refuge vows through Zoom and online and stuff like that. People in the past used to go on foot for three months to take a vow with a great llama like that. You can do that by making that connection. It's just as authentic doing it online, you know, because it's about the connection and the intention and all that. So it's kind of amazing, I think. I agree. I was a long-winded answer to your first question. You're in a safe place for long wind. It's a podcast we're designed for a lot of wind.

All right. I'm in the right place. Okay. There's so much in what you said that I was kind of scribbling notes as you were talking. Just going back to the top of it how, I mean, this is just such a common story, but human beings have to learn this over and over again. You had everything. You were on the sopranos, arguably the best television show ever made. And it wasn't enough. Yeah, and it was really good. The work was really good. I loved every minute of it. I

loved the people I worked with. I loved the work I did. I loved the character. I loved the acting I did on that. I got to write for the show and do some producing on the show. And then we had a theater that my wife and I built where we ran and produced new plays that had never been done. We were both co-artistic directors there. I started making music with the band Zopa, who I'm still with today, and it was a very fruitful time creatively. I had kids, great friends, great family, all that. And yet, yeah, there was still something I felt. I had not tapped into and had not learned, had not learned, really. I think that's it. More than anything. I never really said that before, but I think so.

Learned, what do you mean by that? Hmm. Why is that a revelation at the word issues forth from your mouth? Because kind of the most important thing in Buddhism is the view of Buddhism and all the methods that come from what the view is about, are methods to bring you to the truth,

to what reality is and who we are and why we're here and all those things like that, right? So the view and Buddhism can be really broken down to like interdependence, impermanence, dependent arising, meaning we always have this illusion that everything is about our volition when things happen to us or things happening in a vacuum almost and that our true reality is non-dual, right?

the idea of I have my vision of from this subjective point of view and then there's this objective world that lives out there and I see it as two distinct things and the reality is it's not. so Buddhism offers methods to make that view, take root and blossom in your consciousness, if you will. So you're not just a victim of this ego-driven mind that seeks only to benefit itself all the time or benefit. The others in their immediate world that they deem worthy of benefit, that kind of thing. So learning that in a way, I mean, that's probably a many lifetime process to learn all of those things. But the goal is not to be a good Buddhist, right?

Buddhism is, well, like they say, the ship, right? That takes you across to that shore of truth, basically, and waking up from that delusion. And when you get there, you don't really need that ship anymore. It's a method. What I find very interesting about Buddhism, and I don't really see it like a religion because there's no God.

Buddha wasn't a God, he's not worshipped as a God. And it's more about your own mind, dealing with your own mind, how your mind works. There's no kind of creation myths that you have to believe that there's this super omnipotent creator that did everything and does everything and is pulling all the strings. I find that really appealing

because I had problems with more dogmatic kind of things. And Buddhism is not really interested in a lot of social structure. For instance, at least in art of art and Buddhistism, there's no Buddhist marriage ceremony. You know what I mean? Like my wife and I teach a meditation class that began to be more about basic Buddhism a little bit.

And very often people ask, what's Buddhism stance on this? Primarital sex. For instance, someone actually asked that. And it's like, Buddhism is not about stances so much? Like, this is bad, this is good. It's much more about like, well, your basic sanity tells you, if you're doing something that harms yourself or other people,

you probably shouldn't be doing it. If it's abusive, right? If you're victimizing someone, if you're in power and you're using that power to manipulate someone, or, you know, you're cheating and you're going to ruin your relationship or you're going to do something dangerous or it's not like this is bad, this is good. It's like use your basic sanity to walk some kind of spiritual path. There has to be some kind of basic ethical discipline. You can't just be screwing everybody over left and right and expect to have some kind of equanimity and peace

and compassion and all those things that we consider spiritual qualities like patience and generosity and kindness and all those things. And I like that about it. It's not so much about, you know, Buddha said this and you got to do that, you know, it's much more about working with your mind. Why meditation is important is you have to start to be really honest with yourself on how your mind works, what your mind is doing, what your mind is trying to do, what's it going after, and all these little decisions that we make during the day that we justify as well, this is a good idea.

This makes sense to me. Meditation can give you a little bit of objectivity to start to really go, oh, wait a second. I'm being very competitive here. I'm being impatient here because I feel like my thing is more important than this person's thing. And do I want to act from that place? A lot of it's about creating space, I find. You talked about the view, Buddhism, everything's changing all the time.

If you try to claim you're going to suffer and who is this you anyway? And how? You're going to suffer anyway. Well, right. Well, one could conceivably at the further edge of the shore not suffer much. Yeah, if Buddha. Yes, if you are able to see that this U is really an illusion. And so I guess what my question for you is how you doing with that?

How far longer you on this ship? Well, you know, I don't really know. I mean, that's a good question. I don't really try to gauge that. You know what I mean? I think the thing is just to keep doing it, you know, and keep practicing. But I find a lot more meaning. I find my exchanges with people, not even relationships.

Like, of course, friendships and family and colleagues, I find those relationships have a lot more meaning to me, or a lot more deer. But I find that just interacting with people in general. Especially the last year and the last couple of years, I interacted a lot of people, especially being in New York City because you're on the street and you're out and people come up and say hi and stuff. And I guess it's through practice and whatever teachings and stuff. I find a lot more meaningful exchanges with people and that's I think very lovely.

I see the same thing in my own practice. I wonder sometimes though if we're roughly the same age, you're just like a tiny bit older than me, would we have been able to do this in our 20s? Is the kind of equanimity and friendliness that sets in after a certain amount of practice? Is that also tied to getting older and realizing how quickly things are passing? I mean, do you think most people would get older, find that? I don't, I look around and see a lot of people who stay exactly the same. Yeah, that's fair point.

A lot of people I know doing the same exact thing, same very similar mindset. And the fact is we didn't do it in our 20s, you know, it's like they would say Buddhism wasn't our common to doing their 20s. I wish I did. I kind of feel like I wasted a lot of time. But, you know, I heard an interview with a very famous filmmaker, and I'm not gonna say who it is, because I don't like talking shit about people. But somebody I admire and he said,

he was getting on an age around this interview, he was probably mid to late somebody, he says, no, I'm old and I don't feel any wise at all. And it's like, because basically you're doing the same thing, sometimes too clever for our own good. Somebody like him, very, very, very smart, probably figured thought he figured it all out in his late 20s. And not a lot of, you know, maybe worldly things learn more about, but like these bigger questions, probably never pursued them. Probably was brought up in a traditional religion, and I know he was, and then moved away

from it, like a lot of us do. Never found any kind of other, probably contemplative practice, let alone spiritual practice. So why would you gain wisdom? Why just from, you know, from repetition? I don't know. I think there has to be something else that opens up. I'm not saying it comes from Buddhism or even meditation or something like that. Sometimes it can come from great upheaval, you know, great tragedy, great change, you know,

when whoa, the rug really gets pulled under and you really see that nature of impermanence and how, whoa, that is reality. You know, we have this illusion that we kind of got it all together, but we have no idea what's going to happen second by second. You know, that's really the truth. And I think if you have some space for that in your mind, life can become a lot more meaningful, you know, and maybe a little bit of your motivations can start to change a bit. I agree with basically everything you just said. On the age tip, though, I guess where I was going with that is that, you know, now that I'm in my 50s and I'm watching my parents get older,

it feels like I'm having a little bit more of a direct understanding of impermanence and mortality. I'm just curious, like, would I have been able to grok that in any meaningful way, even with high-dose Buddhism in my 20s? But the question is, knowing about impermanence, and seeing evidence of it, because as you get older, more people around you die, right? That's just what happens. Or you look in the mirror. You look in the mirror, and you know, but death is a very strong wake up about impermanence.

But it's, what do you do with that? So realizing impermanence is a fact and that death is unpredictable and the moment of our death is coming and we don't know what it is, well, what are you going to do with that? Sure, as you get older, you see the truth of that. But how do you integrate that? How does that change? How you do things? That's where I'm saying a lot of people don't. Yeah, they see it happening, but I don't know without either some kind of contemplative practice or spiritual path or like I said, some

great upheaval, some kind of thing that intervenes. I don't see how it really changes someone. I wish I did, but I don't. I just see it in people I know, people around me, people in my family. I think you make a powerful point about practice. You talked about this a little bit earlier that you were kind of doing all of this studying and traveling within, quote unquote, spiritual circles, reading all these books. And you'd read Christian Merdy and then be inspired, and then it just fizzles because our whole wiring

were programmed to forget this stuff. We're right back into our usual grooves that society is pushing us down, not all of them terrible necessarily, but individual achievement, purchasing stuff, getting the next hit of dopamine. And the only way I've found to really start to shave down on any of this stuff is to have a set of consistent practices.

So I always think about how one of the original translations of the word, saati, which we often translate as mindfulness, is actually recollection or remembering. Just kind of remember to do this stuff. Remember the view that you talk about. Yeah. And to batten the word for meditation is gom, which means to habituate to get familiar with with your mind. Yeah. I mean, just because I practice these things, this doesn't, you know, I'm still subject to all these petty little human emotions that we all go through. I know me and conquered these things. But there's definitely a bit of an altered view of things

from my point of view, you know, and how I look at what I'm doing in the world, and I'm happy for that. To be honest, now I can't imagine life without the Dharma. Because then it becomes like, what are you doing here? Is it the next job and you know more success a bigger house you know your kids get old and then why am I here you know they they talk about now it's like in 50 years people are going to live to 180 well what are they going to do from 80 to 100 to those 100 years they better have stuff to do you know and everyone thinks that's

going to be so great we're going to live that's like, well, I hope we're really useful if we're going to live that long and not just be consuming stuff and like watching TV and scrolling through Instagram and stuff like that. I don't know, but I'm incredibly grateful and indebted to these teachers that have kept these traditions alive. How does it impact your craft of acting? I just finished watching you in the White Lotus. Your fantastic. The show was fantastic.

By the way, how cool is it that you're on in this course of your career? Two of the most iconic and critically-lotted shows. Yeah, that's luck, I guess. I mean, White Lotus came out of nowhere, kind of for me. It was really fun and very meaningful. You know, Mike is a very spiritual guy. I mean, he did the show in Lenten and he studied various Eastern trains of thought.

And if you look at the white lotus, there's people who have all this, they're wealthy, they have whatever they want, they have this comfort, they have success and, and yet they're miserable. Everybody. Everybody. Yeah. And it's an interesting, interesting point. How has it affected my work? You know, I don't, I don't really know. Definitely the themes of the stuff that I do, the more personal work like songwriting or fiction writing or screenwriting stuff that I'm Working on you know acting like on the white lotus. I'm

Using someone else's words, but stories that I'm creating Absolutely Buddhism has an effect there, you know and turning towards Themes that relate to it as an actor technically. I'm not really sure I mean, I imagine meditation is helpful for concentration, but you know the true point of meditation is so much more important than just doing a good job on a TV show. Really? It's kind of like you know driving a Ferrari down the corner to go pick up the milk at the corner store you know. But still I guess at its best it should influence everything in one's life. You know, Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trug Trugum Trug Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Trug Trugum Trugum Trugum Trugum Tr holder. And he was very interested in Dharma art. When Naropa opened in the 70s, he encouraged a lot of artists like Alan Ginsburg and Ann Walman started the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied

Poetics there because he felt, you know, his goal was to create an enlightened society. And he planted the flag of Dharma and planted all these seeds and there's shambhala centers that he started that are in different parts of the country and the world, and this university and his books that keep coming out, he's been dead for 30-something years, and every year a new book comes out because there's all these transcripts and recordings that he made and died very young

in his 40s. His vision was to an enlightened society where there's enlightened doctors and enlightened firemen and enlightened teachers or at least those on the road to enlightenment, but he felt a lot of that movement and shift needed to come from the artists first. So a lot of Neurope's programs were art and psychology a lot too. A lot of his students were hippies, you know, like in the 60s and early 70s and I've met a bunch of them. A lot of them want to be becoming artists and therapists. So I think the intersection of Buddhism, not just Buddhism, but any kind of contemplative practices and art are very vital ones. And I think I've noticed, for some reason,

Buddhism is less intimidating to a lot of young people. You know, people are not intimidated by the concept of Buddhism. I think they feel like there's kind of a user-friendly thing to it. And I think a lot of younger people are very suspicious of organized religion and theism, God. And I think that when they start to realize that Buddhism is not a theistic religion, it peaks a lot of interest, you know, because younger people is where our future is for real, you know, and I mean, we're at a very strange place in history where technology is so advanced

in our minds are so busy and occupied all the time, so different than a hundred years ago. I mean, just like, I guess we have to have some hope. And I have a lot of hope for the younger generations. I really think there a lot more open-minded than my generation certainly was. A lot more tolerant of differences and people. That gives me a lot of hope. Just back to the acting thing, your point is well taken about how art is so important in terms of changing the world really. Just on a very tactical level, though, I can imagine how having a meditation practice could put you right there in the moment in a way

that would be helpful for acting, maybe boost your spontaneity, et cetera, et cetera. I guess so, but to be honest, I started training at 17. I went to the Least Dressbrook Theatre Institute, which came out of the Actors Studio, which is right, a block away from here, actually. Actors Studio was really the beginning of the great American film acting tradition started out of that,

because that's where Brando and James Dean and those great actors came from. And the first thing you do is you do relaxation exercise. I mean, you sit in the chair and you let all the tension in your body go and you breathe. And you try to be aware of wherever there's tension in your body and really start to relax and breathe and then maybe make a sound like, ah, that's the first thing that you do. Before you do anything else, I mean, that's pretty damn similar to meditation. And the a's like a mantra or a home or whatever.

I mean, it's extremely similar. And what that does is, you know, because you're letting your tension go. And then the next thing you do is add like a thing to concentrate your attention on. So you'll create, sensorally say a coffee cup. That's the first exercise they do at Strasbourg. And you pretend, they don't like to say pretend, you kind of recreate the sensorial experience of holding a coffee cup and really try to

feel the heat, smell it. So now you're focusing all your senses and all your awareness on this object. So your concentration isn't all like, oh my god, you know, the class is looking at me and the teachers would know your concentration is just here on these things. And you really try to hone in on this object through the use of your imagination, your senses, your concentration, and your will. Very, very similar, you know. So I can't say meditation is so different than that. Maybe it's another aspect of that, but I don't isolate meditation from the teachings of Buddhism. And a lot of people do and get great benefit

from that. I'm not diminishing that. Same for me. I don't really separate it as a thing into itself. Like in the class that Victorian I teach, we say, we're not trying to be good meditators. We're trying to be good people. The goal is not to be, it's not like, you know, I'm gonna be really good at the treadmill, you know, the goal is to be healthy. That's why you're on the treadmill, all right? The goal is not to be, I'm a great meditator.

No, the goal is to be better a person, you know, a happier person, you know, happier in a way that's not just about the self-serving, selfish happiness that includes others and ultimately all beings, like in the Mahayana tradition of Buddhism. Coming up, Michael Imperial, he talks about what his daily meditation practice looks like,

what he means when he talks about praying, why he started teaching meditation online, and the significance of his Buddhist name and why after dismissing it for years, it's actually now become central to his practice. Life is short, and it's full of a lot of interesting questions. What does happiness really mean? How do I get the most out of my time, you're on Earth? And what really is the best cereal? These are the questions I seek to resolve on my weekly podcast, Life is short with Justin Long.

If you're looking for the answer to deep philosophical questions, like, what is the meaning of life? I can't really help you. But I do believe that we really enrich our experience here by learning from others. And that's why in each episode, I like to talk with actors, musicians, artists, scientists, and many more types of people about how they get the most out of life.

We explore how they felt during the highs and sometimes more importantly, the lows out of life. We explore how they felt during the highs and sometimes more importantly, the lows of their careers. We discuss how they've been able to stay happy during some of the harder times. But if I'm being honest, it's mostly just fun chats between friends about the important stuff. Like, if you had a sandwich named after you, what would be on it? Follow Life is short wherever you get your podcasts. You can also listen to ad free on the Amazon music or wonder yeah. Having just heard you say that you don't separate the practice from the Buddhist tradition, I'm curious though like what your practice is like and do you do retreats and

on retreats what kind of meditation you're doing there. Well in the Vajrayana tradition to Tibetan Buddhism which is a bit more of an esoteric tradition that has a lot of different methods that incorporate liturgical, you know, sodnas, which are like liturgies, you know, and practices, visualization practices. Those all have to be given through a teacher. And there's a kind of a formal ceremony called an empowerment, where basically the teacher is offering you the connection to the lineage, these teachings that have been handed down. It's a formal ceremony to make a connection to this lineage. So the teachings, not just you learning this method, but it's you learning this method

in the context of this lineage and being a part of this. It's tantric Buddhism. tantra means connection. So it's your link to the prior teacher going all the way back to the Buddha basically. So there's times where I'll do a practice that my teacher has given me in that tradition. There's times that I'll just do basic mindfulness meditation,

but the important thing, usually Buddhist practice has three parts. The first is setting your intention, making aspirations. So you're setting your intention that when you do this practice, it's not just for you. And we say something called the four measurables, which is male beings have happiness and the causes of happiness. Male beings be free from suffering and the causes of suffering. Male beings not be separated from the happiness that is never known suffering.

May they rest in equanimity free from attachment, anger, and aversion. That's the first thing you say. Not just saying it by rope, but really trying to create some kind of altruistic motivation to your practice. That is not just for you to feel good, it's not for you just to feel distracted from the day or whatever. There's a bigger picture. Yeah, it is for you as well, because you're among these beings, but that there is a bigger

picture. And maybe it's that practice, or maybe it's just sitting, you know, mindful meditation. Sometimes I also do certain prayers for people who have passed, and it might be that kind of thing. So, that's the meat of the practice, per se. That's second component of the practice. And then the third is dedication. So, when you do some kind of

practice, because if you have these positive intentions, you gain a certain degree of merit, basically you're kind of creating positive karma or something. And then what you do is you dedicate that merit to the benefit of all beings. And we say this prayer by this merit, may all beings obtain the omniscient state of enlightenment and conquer the enemies of faults and delusions. May they be liberated from the socean of samsara and it's pounding waves of birth, old age, sickness and death. That's the closing dedication prayer. As those beginning and endings are very, very important because it's almost like if you don't dedicate the merit, the merit gets used up very easily. It's almost like if you don't dedicate the merit the merit gets used up very easily

It's almost like you get a little credit and you'll burn that But if you take that credit and you put it in it's like this great cosmic hedge fund We're all you know you're putting you taking a drop of water and putting it in the ocean So now that drop of water becomes the ocean. That's kind of the theory But there's always an aspect pretty much always an aspect of just quiet mind meditation. When you're just like really instillness and if a thought comes in letting it go and let it dissolve and there's always an aspect of that even if you're doing some kind of Vajrayana practice or something like that. You use the word prayer a couple times in there. When a Vajrayana Buddhist

uses the term prayer, in my understanding, it's quite different from the way, you know, a Catholic or a Jew might talk about prayer where you're asking a higher power to intervene or intercede in some way. Yeah, that's a tricky thing in Buddhism because, well, if non-duality is one of the views of Buddhism, well, who are you asking?

So, it's not so much supplication per se and asking for intervention, but it's more acknowledging, I left this out, this is very important, and Buddhism, all sentient beings, not just people, have Buddha nature, which means the enlightened nature is already in us. It's not something we get from outside. What we do is uncover it and how we do that is clear away the obscurations of the self, the mental constructs, the habitual patterns and negative ideas about things and all that. So we're kind of honoring that, that Buddha nature. When you take refuge, you take refuge in the Buddha, but ultimately you're kind of by saying you take refuge in the Buddha, in some ways you're also saying I'm taking refuge

in my own true nature, which is Buddha. We started the meditation class during the pandemic online, you know, on promoted it through Instagram and it's free. You just signed up for the Zoom invite through my bio and Instagram. But it started out just a secular meditation. I asked my teacher, I said, a lot of people are writing me on learn how to meditate. Should I teach them? He said, yeah, if you have the intention to benefit people, then go ahead and teach meditation. So we started teaching completely secular, mindful, shamata meditation. We'd have a Q&A and people were really interested in things like reincarnation and karma. There's always a lot of the first things people have questions about are interested.

And then other things about Buddhism. And I went back to my teacher, I said, asking a lot of questions about the Dharma. What should we do? He said, you can talk about it, but keep the focus on the mind, because Buddha is not the name of a man, it's the name of mind. So this Buddha nature that I'm talking about that we all innately have is exactly the true nature of our own mind. There's everything we do, everything we experience. We do it through the mind, right? Every impulse we have, it first stems from the mind. Every stimuli that comes in, we take it into the mind,

we translate it through the mind, we react to the mind as like the operating system or whatever of us. And that true nature, when it's in its essence, when it's without the, like we said, these habitual tendencies and these conditioning and this impulses and the selfish input, when it really is resting, that's Buddha nature, you know? And that is enlightenment and that is Buddha. The way I think about it when I'm

Wishing for all being to be free from suffering. It's not, man I personally don't use the word prayer But that may be just because I don't know enough yet But I more think of it as a training for myself to get better at having an altruistic intention I think that's exactly right. I think it's the same thing. That's what I'm saying. Exactly.

Because we need a lot of training. At least the people at this table. 99.9% of us need a lot of training. Absolutely. Exactly what you said. Yes, that's exactly right. And it's an incredible concept that we are trainable in this way, that we're not stuck with factory settings that are

unalterable. You know, you can work on this four pound or whatever pound globule of cells in between your ears. That's incredible news. We're not stuck and we're not frozen and we're not doomed to a certain mindset. No, no, no. No, not at all. You know, and transformation is possible. Yeah. Absolutely. That's the beauty of learning these things.

Going back to you and your path here, as I understand it, when you were going through one of your earliest ceremonies of becoming a Buddhist, you got a Buddhist name. You'll remember it, I won't, but I remember the translation of the name is Patience. And that word and that concept, that capacity has become increasingly important for you, why. Yeah, when you take refuge, you get a Buddhist name and my Buddhist

name is Kanchuk, Zopa Sonam. So Kanchuk is the family name that my teacher's lineage and that his students get. And Sonam means auspicious. And Zopa means patience. It's also the name of my band. But when I took refuge with Karthian Ruppeshe, he said, is your name a Zopa? Because when you lose your patience, you lose your love. Now, when I heard that, whatever, 15 years, 14 years ago, you know, it sounded very pithy, you know, very like hallmarked car fortune cookie. You know what I mean?

Like, oh yeah, when you lose your patient, you lose your love, right? And I never really gave it all a thought. Although patience is one of the parametives, you know, one of the spiritual qualities that we, you know, try to cultivate or that arise when you clear out the junk. But at some point, I started thinking about it. I said, he gave me this name deliberately. And he said this to me, and the day I became a Buddhist and it became his student, maybe you should think about this a little. And maybe patience is really the key to my practice.

Maybe I just kind of glossed over it, like something very kind of pretty, you know, and pithy and not essential. Chugum Trump or Impa-Shay also referred to patients. Often we think of patients as like four barons, and he called it, especially if you're a Buddhist, an obligation. If you're a practitioner, patients is not being generous per se

for bearing some kind of hardship or something. It's an obligation. When I heard that, something really shifted. For instance, so if you're online at the coffee shop and the person in front of you is taking a ridiculously long time to figure out what they want, to order what they want, to pay for what they want, and you're in a rush.

And every impulse you have said, this person's an asshole, it's a coffee shop, they should know what they want, they should have their money ready, they, you know, every impulse, because you have somewhere to go. The obligation, if you're a practitioner, is that your thing is not about you. So you're about kind of opening to this situation, opening to this situation, saying, this person's going to take whatever time it takes for them to do it, right? And how does that shift my experience of this moment? Because if you can go there, something else starts to happen.

Rather than you just looking at your watch, when this person is going to go, you know, making all this judgments about, because the judgment about the person is kind of irrelevant, it's about you and what are you doing with this situation? And what happens? What energy is getting expended? What positive and negative thoughts are arising? So this, everything starts to become an opportunity for practice.

One thing we tell the people in our class, time and time and time again, being a Buddhist is not about being a doormat. This practice of patience doesn't mean you let people abuse yourself or others. You may often be in a position where it's inherent and important for you to intervene in a situation

where someone's being abusive or abusing others, you can't be on the subway and watch somebody abuse another person like, well, I'm a Buddhist and I'm in my mindful, whatever the hell, you may have to get in there and help, but patience. Yeah. So think of it as an obligation. You know, and listen, I get impatient all the time. I mean, lots of times, but if you start to take these things seriously and try to find ways of working with them in life, things happen, you know, life becomes a little bit more spacious. And the connection to love is interesting because I like you.

I think if I had heard that not too long ago, I would have thought, okay, well, it's kind of an empty bromide. I used to have a nanny when I was a little kid, we need a, and when I have my brother and I were being a pain in the ass, she would grip the steering wheel of her yellow VW bug and say, patience is a virtue. And yeah, just like virtue. And like that. Yes, just like that, probably louder. And so I just never really thought about the word beyond something that we need to

might say, but I had an experience a couple of years ago, it was a very tough moment for me, or I had just gotten a bunch of very negative feedback about how, like, just kind of being a jerk. I had done what's called a 360 review where the people in my life gave me feedback on how I was doing. Did you ask for it? I did. Oh, okay. I really asked for it in every sense of that phrase. Absolutely. So I was on my way after reading it to talk to my executive coach who's an active Buddhist and was on the board of Naropa University. So he's a very interesting guy. He's named it Jerry Colona. And on my way to C. Jerry, I was late. And I was taking the subway.

It was July, it's well-termink hot. And this is a tiny little moment when I was running up the stairs to get to Jerry to talk to him about becoming a more compassionate person. And I jostled a woman, not in any significant way, but I kind of hit her purse a little bit. Normally, I would have turned around, so I'm so sorry. But I didn't have time for that.

I just kept going. And Jerry, to his credit, really just honed in on that move. He saw it. He didn't, but I told him about it. And he just came back to that over and over as a metaphor for like, when you're in your own shed, when you're rushing, when you're hurried, you just don't have the bandwidth to give a shit about other people. And that's what I hear when your teacher said, when you lose your patience, you lose your love. And you can justify being in a rush, being impatient, all you want, and be probably really correct. But do you want to be right, or do you want to be free? Coming up, Michael talks about bringing mindfulness into your daily life.

The two most common things he hears from people who are just starting to meditate, and why he encourages meditation curious people to find a teacher from an authentic lineage. So there's a book called 37 Practices of a Bodhisattva. So there's a book called 37 Practices of a Bodhisattva. I want to ask you about a couple of the 37 Practices, but can you just describe for people what a Bodhisattva is? A Bodhisattva is someone whose primary focus, and this is my definition,

I wish I had the more accurate one, but primary focus in their life, primary motivation, intention is to be a benefit to all beings. And in the Mahayana tradition of Buddhism, we take a bodhisattva vow, you are committing to returning in your subsequent lifetimes to come back, rather than just reach enlightenment and be in some kind of Nirvana state for eternity. You're going to come back in whatever form human, you know, animal, whatever, whatever

form you're coming back in to be of benefit to others, to help them towards enlightenment and you will not stop that until all sentient beings become enlightened. That's a true bodhisattva. So, if we think of Buddha nature as this capacity that is obscured for most of us, at least partially, for unbridled compassion, a bodhisattva has removed all those obscurations and is purely altruistic. Yes, or they're on the way to that. I don't think all body softwares are necessary completely enlightened and have kind of like really eliminated every aspect of kind of volition and things like that, but they make a serious commitment to that path.

And you know, they make a very authentic commitment towards that's what they're going to dedicate their life to. So if we're interested in moving some or part of the way or all the way toward being a bodhisattva, these practices are of interest. And number 36 is wherever you are, whatever you do, always examine the state of your mind. Because that's where everything happens. You know, it's like Because that's where everything happens. You know, it's like, you can't trust that your impulses are always going to be correct or beneficial to others. So you have to use your mind, your mindfulness to look at those.

We can just define all a lot of things that are selfish, that are, you know, self-serving, that are not with the benefit of others in mind. So you have to look at your mind and see what it's doing. I mean, that's what meditation offers. I sometimes say in the class, it's like, you know, in radio or television, they have a seven-second delay, right? So there's seven seconds they have before it goes out on the airwaves, if you're doing live TV or live radio. So if you say some horrible profanity, it doesn't have to go all the way out on the airwaves, if you're doing live TV or live radio. So if you say some horrible profanity, it doesn't have to go all the way out into the world. Meditation does that a little bit. It gives you this little delay that normally we wouldn't necessarily have. You know,

you can say, okay, how do I want to respond? You know, because the emotion arises, somebody does something, makes you angry and the emotional arises and then are you going to act out of that anger and then compound the anger and compound that situation that's happening. Are you going to find a way to diffuse it, not engage with it, you know, find another angle of interaction? There's a Burmese teacher I've never met, but I incorporate some of his teachings into my own meditation practice. And one of his little, one of the little mantras he recommends to students is to ask yourself regularly, what's the attitude in the mind right now?

And it's like shining a black light on a hotel sheet. You know, it's like you see all these terrible fluids when you ask yourself that question. And it's just useful. You can see my acting right now out of desire to commit a homicide of mine, acting right now out of, you know, a desire to hoover up somebody's, you know, Oreos, whatever.

And it can wake you up. It's the seven second delay. Yeah, and if you are doing that, no matter where you're at, that's amazing. Because they use this analogy. It's like, if you turn a light on in a room that's been closed up and dark for 3,000 years, once you put that light on, there's light in that room. So you could have a mind that's been like the size of a postage stamp for lifetime after

lifetime. And somehow you get the benefit of someone giving you some teachings and you have this moment where you actually look at the mind and have a little spaciousness, you have spaciousness at that moment or a piece of spaciousness. It's like we talk about this in the class again, meditation is not just for the cushion. Again, you're not just meditating to be a good meditator sitting on the cushion.

You're trying to bring whatever you're this awareness, mindfulness that you're cultivating while on the cushion while doing these practices. You're trying to bring that into life, sitting on the cushions, you know, it's not easy, right? I mean, it's meditation is difficult, especially when you're just starting, but even if you've been doing it a long time, it's difficult. But having that kind of spaciousness and working with the thoughts and the mind and stuff, on the cushion, it's one story.

Doing it on the subway and rush hour is a whole other thing, but that's really why you're doing this. Yes. You're not doing it just to be good on the cushion. I've met people where they're on that cushion like I've been in retreat situations and you see people seeing other cushion in perfect kind of posture and stillness and for hours and then they'll complain to the chef about the food and the cafeteria or something like that.

Like, where do that mindfulness go? And I'm sure done the same thing myself, you know, but I'm saying it's like that's, you know, it's not just on the cushion. Yes, we don't meditate to become better meditators, although that's, you know, it's not just on the cushion. Yes, we don't meditate to become better meditators, although that's good. We meditate to better at life. Yeah, and that's the point.

But I try not to, in teaching it, I try to steer people away from this past fail, good, bad. Yes. You know what's really interesting? Everybody says the same thing about meditation. Everybody always says, I've tried to meditate and I have a particularly busy mind and I can't meditate. It's like, so thinking that the people who meditate are

these people who are already very kind of serene meditators and that's why they're able to do it. Everybody's mind is busy. Everybody, especially if you haven't done this practice. The mind thinks that's what it does and I hear that time and time again from people who at least they tried or they didn't try. They don't think they can, especially like creative people who think, that's my thing, I'm creative, I'm always thinking, it's like you're no more special

than anybody else. We're all a bunch of thinking too much monkey mind people. We're all the same. And the other misconception is that people think meditation is about not thinking, which is a horrible negative thing. You know what I mean? It's like, I can't just not think this.

Thoughts come in. It's like, that's what the mind does. It thinks it's not gonna stop thinking. We're working with the mind. We're working with the thoughts that's what we're doing those are two giant misconceptions that I get all the time from potential meditators or you know people who are starting to meditate. Amen to both of those points just leads me to a question we talked earlier about causes and

conditions and you know how everything that's happening right now, we're always on the crest of a wave of unfathomable ocean of causes and conditions way back to whenever. But as it's manifesting in you, it's very interesting that you have this public platform that you have because the universe puts you on all these incredible TV shows and movies. And also to have a clear, it's obvious, this is what I do for a living. I talk to meditation teachers, and you clearly have a real cellular understanding

of this stuff. That is awesome, just to have these two things simultaneously. And it leads me to my question, which is, do you consider yourself a teacher? I teach meditation. I don't consider myself a teacher of Buddhism. Although we do try to answer people's questions, but we do it more as fellow students, just talking about what I've been taught. But meditation is, I think, a very, very, very, very simple thing to teach,

and very kind of mechanical almost. I really, really encourage people who do the meditation class with us, that if they have any interest in this, to find a teacher from an authentic lineage, I think there's a lot of pop culture, watered down versions of things that are living traditions that are connected to the source.

If you're interested in this, rather than do some watered down new age-y kind of distillation, go to the source. You know, if you're interested in this, rather than do some watered down new age, kind of distillation, go to the source, it's still here. It may not be a hundred years from now, but it is now. There are teachers from these authentic lineages living amongst us,

and some of them have really made great attainments in, you know, working with the mind. I mean, so your thing about having kind of an understanding of stuff, my aspiration is that my actions of body speech in mind somehow kind of reach at least my theoretical understanding of what it should do, because there's still a large gap between those things. But boring himself some water.

But, sorry. There's a large gap, but like, look boring himself some water. But sorry. There's a large gap, but look, I think it's reassuring for me to hear and for anybody to hear that you retain the capacity to be a schmack. I mean, that's... Oh, yes. That part of it is that you don't want to over promise. This is marginal improvement over time. The path isn't like a hockey stick where it's unbroken progress up into the right forever.

It's up and down and up and down. Hopefully the overall trajectory is up into the right. Well, you know, I think being exposed to these teachings, it's like, what else am I going to do? I tried it the other way and it's not going to work, you know what I mean? I tried, you know, getting all my satisfaction out of material and some not material things, some things that had a lot of heart like art and family and things like that. But there's still other things that I need to learn.

And again, to your question about being a teacher, teaching meditation is like I teach acting so once in a while too, those things I can teach are very simple and acting is actually harder to teach some meditation to be honest. But Buddhism, again, encouraging people to find really authentic teachers is really important because that's how you really make the progress. My thing was, if people are asking for that and you have an opportunity to share that, I feel a responsibility to. It's not like I want to be a meditation.

If you told me, because the class has been going on two and a half years, if you told me two and a half years ago, you're gonna be teaching meditation and discussing Buddhism with people all, you know, kind of all around the world, because we have people tuning in from lots of different countries and lots of different spiritual traditions and stuff, Jews and Muslims and Christians and all, people who are interested in meditation

and maybe a little bit about Buddhism, whatever. But it was really because people were asking me. And I mean, if you can share these things, I feel an obligation to do that. It's not that I feel like I know these things and I should be teaching. I just kind of was in that position, you know, because I was on a TV show.

Many TV shows. Before I let you go, is there something I should be teaching, I just kind of was in that position, you know, because I was on a TV show. Many TV shows. Before I let you go, is there something I should have asked that I didn't, anything you wanted to talk about that I didn't tee you up to talk about? Well, you talked about all the good stuff. I mean, I don't get to talk at length about these things because, you know, most of the time people are not, you know, familiar with it, like you are with all these practices

and teachings and things like that. So it's really fun for me to talk about it. I will say that teaching meditation and discussing Buddhism with people who knew to it, some not knew to it and stuff like that, has really helped my practice because it forces you to really break down how you're doing it, by articulating it and breaking it down, it reinforces your own stability a little bit in the practice. And if you're going to be explaining some of these things to people, you better at least attempt to practice what you preach, if you will. No, I don't like to think of it as preaching, but at least make an attempt.

you will. Although I don't like to think of it as preaching, but at least making an attempt. I'm not saying pretend that you succeed and pretend that you've figured it out because Lord knows I have it, but you know, I have a lot of respect for these people who come online and do these things. Some of them have been with us for two and a half years now, and they really take it seriously, and they really ask very important questions and are vulnerable and really make an effort and putting their trust in you and something that's very important and precious and that's very humbling. Really is. I have a lot of affection for these people.

Not easy to do in this world, you know, and to be moved to that point, to want to do that. It's pretty pretty pretty amazing. Just in closing here are there other things you're working on that be worth reminding people about we've talked about the sopranos and White Lotus and Zopa your band and all the meditation teaching you're doing online anything else that we should just mention before I set you free. Well, not necessarily. I think you covered it. Well, I'm grateful to you for doing this.

I'm grateful that you brought me home. It was fun. It's really fun to talk about these things. Build my whole life around doing just that. You're lucky. I am lucky. I am lucky. Thank you again for doing this.

Thank you. Appreciate it. Super fun. Thanks again to Michael Imperiali. Thanks to you for listening. Right in and review us wherever you listen to your podcasts that really helps. Thanks most of all to everybody who works so hard on this show. 10% Happier is produced by Gabrielle Zuckerman, DJ Cashmere, Justine Davey, Lauren Smith,

and Tara Anderson. Our supervising producer is Marissa Schneiderman and Kimmy Regler is our managing producer, scoring and mixing by Peter Bonnaventure of Ultraviolet Audio and Nick Thorburn of the Great Band Islands wrote our theme. We'll see you all on Wednesday for an episode with Dora Williams, the first in our series on the Eightfold Pat. 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

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