Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 81: Sharon Salzberg, 'Real Love'

Episode Date: May 31, 2017

"I think people do things motivated by love, certainly more strongly sometimes, and more successfully, than when motivated by hate... I think love is actually the force that keeps us going," said renowned meditation teacher and best-selling author Sharon Salzberg. A regular on the "10% Happier" podcast, Salzberg talks about her new book, "Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection," out June 6, which explores how we can change the way we feel about having self-compassion, love for all beings and love for life itself. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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 can 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 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%.com slash playlist. That's 10% all one word spelled out..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, 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. Sharon Salzburg has the dubious distinction, I guess, of being the only person to have been on this podcast four times, but she deserves it because she is a pioneer. She is one of the people who helped bring meditation to the United States back in the 70s, after spending some time in India. If you want to learn more about her at points, wrenching, backstory, you should go back and check out episode eight where we really go through all

of that. But the reason why we're bringing her back on is just got a new book called Real Love. You'll hear me admit this early on in the interview because I've been so deep in my own writing for my own book that's coming out at New Year's. I've been a bad boy, a bad friend, and only read half of Real Love, which is excellent as everything she's written has been,

but I didn't get to read all of it, so I admit that to her, she, if characteristically, for somebody wrote a book about love, was quite understanding about it, but this book is really a way to redefine what love is as a skill or an ability. A lot of us think, and I definitely fell into this trap, that we have a certain amount of compassion and patience, and we're kind of stuck with that. It's our factory settings, but in fact, you can work on this. And Sharon is the foremost expert, I would argue, in the West, or at least one of them, in the skill of what's known as loving kindness or compassion meditation. So here she is, one of my favorite people, Sharon Salisbert.

[♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ From ABC, this is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ I've read half of this excellent book and then I got sucked into writing my own book. Full disclosure from the jump. And I know you won't get mad at me because you're the avatar of loving kindness. Shucks, I guess I can't get mad ever, ever, ever. Yeah, how is that ever like an issue with your friends and people you're really close with that you, you know, as the loving kindness proponent that you are that you can't like just be pissed off once in a while?

It sort of does come up or once I was having a conversation with a friend on the phone and we were being a little bit like unkind about somebody and then I thought better of it. I thought this doesn't feel good and I said, well, you know, I don't feel so good about the tone of this conversation and my friend said, you've been reading your own book. All right. Well, speaking of book, I should say we have interviewed you before. You're the most frequent guest on this podcast. So we're not going to get into your personal story as much on this podcast, but you have a new

book called Real Love and it follows on your previous book's Real Happiness, Real Happiness at work. And also you're really from my point of view, Seminole, book, Love and Kindness, early, early on, which I have made this joke before, but when I was reading it on airplanes, I used to cover it up, like it was a penthouse, because I didn't want anybody to see that as reading a book, Love and Kindness. So let's just start with the title. What do you mean by that? Well, as you know, I don't choose the titles of my books that often.

I was trying to make a distinction between the love as a commodity, you know, which is kind of the common thought. And it was very much, I realized my thought. I had a very profound experience doing loving kindness meditation intensively in Burma. And I think like many profound experiences, it may not sound like much in words, but it made a big difference for me. And up until that moment in time, I did think of love as like a commodity, which meant it was, it was like a package in someone else's hands. It was a thing and a certain kind of feeling tone, a certain range of emotion. And it was almost like if the UPS person was standing in my doorstep and changed their minds, I have no love in my life. You know, I'd

be completely bereft. So what I saw in Burma was love as a capacity, as an ability within me, as a potential. Within me, there are other people or situations that could certainly awaken and in live and or threaten, but it was mine. It was within me. And so that feeling of being completely dependent on an external source really did evaporate. So, can we define what you mean by loving kindness or meta, M-E-T-T-A, which is an ancient poly word?

Yes. I think both for loving kindness end for these days for love. I'm talking about a profound sense of connection, like a complete sense of presence and connection. It's not necessarily any motion. You know, that feeling tone that we look for and long for and invest in for love, I think is a particular manifestation. But love itself is not the commitment. It's not the structure that a relationship may take.

And it may not be that emotional. I feel like if I'm meeting a stranger and I'm completely present and I in a way find some of myself in them or I have that sense of what my youth used to call grogging, you know, like of actually feeling into, of connecting to, that's love. But there is a practice too. And when you say you went on a meta or loving kindness or treat, there's a practice that goes along with that. I mean, I think that in terms of loving kindness or love, probably the two greatest controversies, I find is first what you were talking about, the idea that it's a weakness, that it's sentimental, it's got a squishy, rather than a strength or a force. And the other, it's so peculiar to us the idea that this can be trained. You know, I don't know if we tend to think of love and compassion and things like that

as a gift, and you're either goddard or you don't, or we think it is a spontaneous, emotionally rupture or something, but, you know, from the point of a bit of psychology, certainly it absolutely can be trained because attention can be trained. That's what meditation is. And that sense of connection is based on paying attention differently. Not being so fragmented, not thinking about your email, for example, but really being fully present, being open, not being so burdened by assumption. I know all about that person. I don't need to listen. Or that person, that other person told me about this person.

Or that kind of person is not my kind of person. Or whatever it is. You know, there's so many filters and so many distortions to our perception. So if we clear away some of those and we're open and we're interested, that is the nature of the loving response. So, but is all that love is, is fully paying attention?

It's not just fully paying attention, it also involves what we pay attention to. You know, we may be fixated on, for example, with ourselves, what's wrong. The stupid thing we said this morning, we could have said that much better, the way we fail So it's a broader more inclusive sense of who we are and it also it very much involves Who we pay attention to who we just count who doesn't matter Who we objectify and it involves a kind of quality of attention That is it's kind of beneficent. It's like okay. what if we were on the same side? I see you're a mess, you know, and I don't really like you or your behavior, but what if

my wish wasn't so much that you be reduced to nothing, but that you see the error of your ways or that you, you know, it's realizing that the Kinds of mind states or forces or habits that probably led to your beings such a jerk can lead to me being such a jerk and that that's really That's a burden, you know to be living under the The sway of those states. So when you talk about love You're not just talking about romantic love or even parental love. It's much broader It's much broader and it it manifests in all these different ways. And I think it does manifest in all these different ways. Common question that people ask, things like, you know, I want to be like the Dalai Lama,

but I really kind of like my husband. Like, do I have to love everybody the way I love my husband? We don't, you know, it's like we have very particular relationships with particular people or beings, I say beings because we have cats, right? But the first group, I did a lot of groups with people for this book to try to hear their stories and learn from them. The very first group, this guy raised his hands and he said, most people think of a good relationship as 50-50. My dog and I were a hundred and a hundred. And I got all the way, like two years

later, I was finishing the book, I was in England, about to sit a retreat, and I was about to press send, and I thought, did that story make it all the way through? And I hadn't, so I put it back in, I pressed send. But it is a skill when you said an ability or But can you just walk us through how one generates that through meditation? Yeah, I mean that is the attention training. It's like first of all we realize in General our attention is pretty scattered world over the place. You know you meet someone who are parting You're not really listening to them or looking at the most likely, you're thinking about the email you need to write or the people

you'd rather be talking about and you recognize that you learn to gather your attention and then you lose it and you gather your attention. Even right there in the example I just used is a tremendous kind of love for oneself and compassion for oneself because just sit down to meditate and let's say you're just doing something like being with the breath. It's so unlikely. It's 9,000 breaths before your mind wanders. Usually it's one, you know, or two.

So how do you speak to yourself when you realize that, you know, do you then digress into another 45 minutes of judging yourself and emerge like feeling beaten up and so demoralized or can you say, blew it, let me start over, right, with some compassion for yourself. So right there there's a kind of training that leads to the sense of love. And then being able to see those assumptions, you know, not being caught by them. And you know, that person is all bad and always will be. Or I'm all bad and I always will be. Being able to listen more deeply. person is all bad and always will be, or I'm all bad and I always will be, being able

to listen more deeply. Having this is kind of vitality, I think there comes from mindfulness where we're not so lost in categories and on all these assumptions. And this means very fresh and alive and actually in that sense of being, being with ourselves in a different way or being with others in a different way. And this is all training. You know, that sounds cold, but it's just, it's realizing that's not how I grew up. You know, that's someone I'm used to. And it's a process that we can do that.

We can, we can be different. But there's mindfulness meditation where you watch your breath coming in and out usually. But then there's meta, M-E-T-T-A, or loving kindness meditation. What is that like? It is a different technique. It's a different method.

They're very supportive of one another, but they're distinct. We say mindfulness meditation allows us to see the difference between our direct experience and the story we weave around it. And then we have a choice. So I want to go forth with that story or join Wanna Let It Go. Whereas loving kindness meditation will change our default story. So if the story that tends to rush in right away is one of our unworthiness or about fear of others or a sense of alienation, what will happen over time is that the story becomes one of connection and that the kind of almost calcified rigid sense of self and other and us and them begins to dissolve and there's a much more profound sense of interconnection.

It's done differently, you know, than say the breath, where we actually choose certain phrases that are the centering point for the awareness and the phrases become the conduit for paying attention differently. You know, so I think of friend, and rather than thinking about how they need to change jobs and have a perfect piece of advice for them, I wish them well. Like maybe happy, maybe peaceful, or whatever. Those phrases are it's considered a practice of generosity.

Because it's like generosity of the spirit. It's just offering. Like, you know, making things work out for you. May you have peace. May you have a sense of love in your life. Well, we should say that you teach an excellent introduction to this kind of meditation on the 10% happier app of, uh, and who are one of the guiding teachers on the app and basically one of the masterminds behind the whole darn thing. But just from a personal standpoint,

I've been doing on your direction, meta-meditation, notwithstanding my deep version to anything syrupy for about eight years now. How do I know if it's working? You know, I mean, I don't know if I'm any nicer and if I am nicer, maybe it's because I'm married well or I have a kid now and that makes everybody a little bit softer or I'm older and sometimes you get older. How do I know it's this thing you're having me do where I picture people and send them good vibes?

Well, I mean, I would never claim singular credit. You know, such a vast amount of happiness in your life way more than 10%. I bet. But I think it is a great question because I think we do want it out. You know, it's crazy to think we're just going to do something endlessly without a sense of accomplishment. But I wouldn't ever counsel somebody to look at the actual formal period of practice each day, however long that is, but look at your life, you know, look at your

marriage, look at your relationship, look at how you are with your kid, who's what, two or two things. Two, yes, yes. Yeah, so he's saying no or whatever kids do it to. Yeah, a lot more than no. Yeah, you know, so, which is the point, you know, we don't practice to become great meditators. This morning, by the way, he pointed to the other side of the room and told me daddy goes over there.

Whoa. That's the head daddy of naughty. We're trying to eat a bagel. Well, there you go. I interrupted you, sorry. No, no, no, no, that's good, all right. You know, we practice to have a different kind of life. And so that's the place to look.

And people often feel frustrated by that. They think they should have a great breakthrough experience while sitting and being golfed in this warm and blissful feeling, but maybe they're just better with themselves when they make a mistake, the more resilient. They can come back soon, or maybe they're different with their kid or their partner or their colleague or something like that. And you will be. And that's the place to look. But I might be different with my, my colleague or kid, though for

some of the other reasons that I listed before, it's just hard to for me to identify what's the source of, I think I am calmer and more compassionate than I used to be. I don't know if I could quantify that. But I, it's hard for me to know what the contributing factors are. Well, I mean, I think there's the art of life where we just do these different things and it's not good. And then there's the science where you can stop doing it and see what happens. You know, it's like if you're allergic to food and you try to figure out what it is.

You eliminate, you know, all these other foods and then you just stop doing meta and meta and start to see what happened to my attitude. Yeah I give it six weeks to see if I'm not going to do that but I think that's I think you're right. I start every sit with just may all beings be free from suffering which is I can't even believe I'm saying that so I'm so embarrassing when I say it allowed actually, it feels pretty good. It just connects you to something larger. People have this desire to get out of their own heads. And I mean, you hear that all the time. I mean, I find it's a really good, sometimes I have to do it three or four times before I connect to the sentiment at all. But there is a kind of spaciousness that can

be invited when you do that. Yes, absolutely. I mean One of the reason I like this book title is actually I think that is what we actually want We want a sense of love. We want a sense of connection That's why you know nobody who's dying says I'm like so glad that I know nobody who's dying says I'm like so glad that I sold that many books you know or whatever, unless it's in the context of I touch that many people I'm so glad my work, my life, you know, had some meaning for others but not in the sense of like look what I racked up you know like where does it go? We want, we want connection, I think most profoundly. So what did you learn in the course of this? Because you've written about love before 11 kindness, the book that came out a couple decades ago, and you've written

about compassion meditation within the context of real happiness and real happiness at work. So what's new and different about this book? That's kind of two questions that you can take them at your leisure. What's new and different about this book. That's kind of two questions you can take about your at your leisure. What's new and different about this book and what did you learn? I think one of the things that's new and different is because I'm new and different, you know, because I've been learning all along.

And I certainly learned a lot from talking to all these people about this specific topic. I really saw for one thing, the difference between liking somebody and loving all beings. I saw what I really believe as kind of the bottom line of love as a power in a deeper and kind of a new way. It's a story that I tell that I've rarely, rarely ever told, but is about spending time with this man, Miles Horton, who founded this school called Highlander Folk School. At the time, it was called that in Tennessee, which was kind of a training school for a lot of civil rights workers. And later early environmental

workers, and like Rosa Parks was there before she, you know, stayed on the bus seat and stuff like that. And so it just happened that we spent a day together for some reason. And I said to him, knowing some of the history of the school and the terrestrial being in the South, it being an integrated facility and the pressure and the lawsuits and the threats and all that, I said, what do you do?

You must do something. So like get a break and not be lost in fear and stuff like that. And he said, well, I sit and look at the mountains. I just sit outside and see and look at the mountains. It's meditating. Yeah. And then I said, then we talked about loving kind of meditation because there's so much my thing. And he said, oh, Marty, Martin Luther King Jr.

He said, Marty used to say to me all the time, we've got to love everybody. And I'd say, no, I don't. I only have to love the people who deserve to be loved. And he would laugh. And he'd say, no, you've got to love everybody and I'd say no I don't, I only have to love the people who deserve to be loved. He would laugh and he would say no, I got to love everybody. And I realized me, I realized that when I, the few times I have told that story, almost always somebody raises their hand and says something like, well look what happened to him, he got assassinated as though they were causing effect there. You know, as though if he'd been vicious and hateful and whatever he would have been safe.

And while I've always kind of known that, that really hit home for me in a very different way, when I saw how we... It's almost like a degradation of the sense of love and what it could be in, really what's become of us, you know, and how atomized people are, how lonely people feel in this country certainly, and how powerless we feel, and how when we do talk about power and change, love doesn't often figure in the conversation, and I think it really should. When you say love is a power, what do you mean? I mean, I think people do things motivated by love more, certainly more strongly sometimes

and more successfully than motivated by hate. We think because outrage may be the way many people wake up, like, ooh, look at that, you know, and it may be a force for seeking change to begin with. I think love is actually the force that keeps us going. And, you know, when I think about the music during the civil rights era, for example, you know, people were connecting to something larger, right? Something that kept them going. It wasn't just a denunciation of like the sheriff's actions or something like that or the town council that was maintaining segregation. They weren't reciting the litany of the unfair laws. They were connecting to something much bigger and that's like a state of love.

I always know I was worried though talking about love is hard because it's easy for it to just get lost in empty platitudes. All we need is love and great song. But does it land? I know. I'm looking back over my work, you know, my writing. I realize that in a funny way, something I seem to have been seeking to do is to redeem words. It's like when I wrote the book Faith of All Things, you know, and like even my friends were saying, what are you on about? You know, like, why do

that? Because for so many people, the word meant being silenced and not being able to ask questions and being sort of reduced in terms of your self-respect and just taking for granted what someone else says is true. And I realized I wanted to help redeem the word because redeeming the word means redeeming the power of it and being able to use it differently. And I just thought the other day I thought, oh, I think I'm doing the same thing for love because of course it's it's used. You know, I love my trail mix. You know, I love, I love my sub-lad. You know, which I should do. But, you know, it took a sub-lad I've been there. Yeah, thank you. But, and if I lost it, I would be very sad. But, you know, is that sort of the biggest expression of love I could get?

I don't think so. So, do you love everybody? Sometimes I do, actually. Sometimes. Sometimes I do. I kind of do. I unpack that. I kind of do.

No, let me, let me replace it. Sometimes I do. What do you mean by that? I think there are moments when I feel I feel the interconnectedness of all of us and even I don't like some people and I feel very oppositional to kind of their actions and want to seek change or whatever. I still feel kind of poignancy, you know, like I feel it in different ways. I feel like, I think as human beings, we are capable of some real greatness. Each of us, in terms of love and connection and wisdom and so on. And I think there's a poignancy in having a really limited view of what happiness is

and power over others or vengefulness or something like that. I don't think those things really make us happy, except in a very temporal sense, and to see people devote their lives to it, I think it's kind of poignant. I think that I was teaching with Sylvia Borsin and she kind of drove me crazy at one point. She kept saying everyone's just doing the best they can and I think I'm not, you know, but I actually do think that if they could do better, they would do better.

I think it's absolutely true. They're doing the best they can. We made out a free on what their interpretation of best is or what the most skillful way to do your best is, but I agree with that. Yeah, no, she was right. She was definitely right. For all my reaction initially, it was like, well, they are.

I mean, if they could do better, they would do better. They could do me, you know. Hey, I'm Aresha, and I'm Brooke. And we're the hosts of Wundery's podcast, Even the Rich, where we bring youha, and I'm Brooke. And we're the hosts of Wondery'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.

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You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or the Wondery app. So when you say sometimes, I love everyone. Does that mean sometimes through the practice that you described earlier of sending good, well wishes to all beings, which is usually the last move in a cycle of meta-meditation where you try to... What's the word I'm looking for? Generate some sort of imagery of all beings, you know, like the earth or the universe or something like that, just send out whatever you got. In those moments you feel like, or do you feel like in your

everyday walking around life, you can generate a love for everybody. They're not disconnected I think it's but I think I really lay it all at the practice. It's because I do the practice that at times when I'm you know walking around or I'm just countering clerk in the supermarket or hearing about somebody you know in this world hearing about somebody in this world that I feel it really does happen in that way. And I think it's not everyone's job to, as a funny way of saying it, but if you've been really harmed by somebody, I don't think your first obligation is to try to generate compassion for them. More likely it's to generate compassion for yourself and find your way. But I think that those people who devote themselves and devote their life energy to getting back

at somebody, for example, or being defined by the actions of others in some way, they suffer, you know, and I suffer or any of us suffer in that position, and we don't need to stay there. So how do you deal that psychologically if there is somebody out there, you think is directly harmed you or is just a noxious presence in the world? How do you generate loving kindness for them? It's like a form of play, you know, like, first you have to really check the degree of loving kindness for yourself because it's not a matter of giving up or giving in.

Ever, you also have to check your understanding because the generation of loving kindness for someone doesn't dictate a certain kind of action, which is another thing people are very afraid of that. I'm going to have to give them money. I'm going to have to say yes. I'm going to have to not have a strong boundary or I'm going to have to give up competing or whatever it is. And the loving kindness doesn't, the cultivation of loving kindness doesn't dictate the action. It reforges the motivation for action. But you might side in a certain situation that a real kind of tough love is what's best called for,

very fierce compassion. That's like discernment. That's looking at the situation. That's important, even to remind yourself again and again. This doesn't mean I have to have Thanksgiving dinner with them. You know, it doesn't mean whatever. And it's a form of play like some in the Buddhist texts they say with this difficult person.

Is there a way you can imagine them? Imagine them being an infant, being so helpless and subject to the actions of those around them, imagine them dying. You know, not like with Glee, but, you know, look at this. We carry on in this life and we hold grudges and we get consumed with whatever and look at that. In the end, we all have to let go of everything.

You know, so you kind of use active imagination to picture this person. So what happens then? And remember, you're not looking for these engulfing waves of feeling. You're looking for some kind of sense of connection. Our lives are really tied together. We extrapolate from that. Is there a way you can imagine this person? And people say all kinds of things like, you know

My difficult person was on this island and there was no boat They had plenty of food, you know the way it was started death. They were fine, but they couldn't reach me and Then you know what then I could do it You talked about competing And this is something I always come back to with you because I'm in a competitive job. Not only competitive job, but I have an app in a competitive space. Well, we have an app in a competitive space where we're competing against other apps and I publish books as do you in a competitive marketplace.

And one of the most challenging concepts that comes out of Buddhism, but you talk about it quite a bit, is Mudita, MUDITA, which is defined as sympathetic joy, I mean, taking pleasure in the successes or happiness of others. How would one employ Mudita when one has a competitive job? I would start well before Mudita, you know, actually of those four qualities that usually talked about together of loving kindness and compassion and sympathetic joy, drawing the happiness of others and then equanimity or balance of mind. These are the four capacities that are often talked about.

The classical Buddhist, they call them divine abodes. Yeah, yeah. You don't have to make too much of that. I'm not a big divine boat guy. But again, they are compassion, which is being able to desire to help people who are in need or suffering, loving kindness, which is just sort of love and well-wishing for people, equanimity, which is a balance of mind in the face of everything,

and moodita, which is again, sympathetic joy. So, but a lot of people think moodita is the hardest. Yes, a lot of teachers will say, we do just the hardest hard, doesn't mean impossible, but it's hard. One of the things with sympathetic joy practices that we usually take a step back and we see

what makes it so hard. Because those assumptions are those concepts are very interesting to look at. Even though there is a kind of market share, there is a certain competition. Sometimes we go way beyond that. As though happiness itself were a limited commodity in this world and the more someone else has, the less there's going to be for me. But we fall into this kind of like I have nothing and I will forever. And you, you have everything and you will forever. Well, certainly nothing is forever. So it's one problem. And it's so unlikely we have absolutely nothing. You know, maybe my book did not start at as number one in the New York Times bestseller list.

Maybe somebody came up to me and said, your book saved my life. Why isn't it enough in that moment? You know, and what if it's never enough? What does that mean about our values or our life, our life? So we just take a look at all of these things. And sometimes there's a kind of competition or there's this feeling of resentment, which is completely irrational. Like as though the New York Times truck was running around looking for a bestseller, and they had my address, and they came, they were heading right to my neighborhood, and they were close to their new hijack,

and you took it away, and say, for your book on on, and mine didn't, and if your book had not mine would have, whereas really, there's not that kind of correlation at all, right? And we feel so undone by that. Like we've been ripped off. You know, we've been betrayed. But it's just life. And so we look at all those assumptions, you know, because they do limit us and they make us so unhappy.

And they fly in the face of reality. You know, reality is that so many conditions come together in any moment for anything to rise. Some we can affect, some we can't. And that's just the nature of things. And it's so lonely, and it's so relentless, that's the sense of comparison. Because it has no natural end.

You can compare yourself endlessly to everyone on this new network. What about them? And then they're pioneering. That's really scary. You know, and then, oh, no, no, we're, you know, now this, you know, all the others. And then it just goes on and on and on and on. And so out of compassion for oneself, you think, I don't want to just live that way. But I don't think the consequences of giving that up are losing your edge or the sense of wanting to be excellent at what you do and wanting to be recognized. I mean, we just human beings. We want to be recognized, but how much do we want to be recognized? And you know, somebody told

me a story the other day of a friend of theirs who was in the front row at some game, I don't know, basketball or something like that. And the front row is the one that was most visible on TV. And some massive celebrity sitting in the second row kept saying, I need to change seats with you because no one's going to see me. You know, it's going to be like a downfall for me. I thought, really? You know, I'm going to be like a downfall for me. And I thought, really? You know, really?

That's what I mean by poignancy, because it's like, when does that end? And how does it end? And what happens when does it end? When does it end? I mean, it doesn't. That process only ends when we see the mind state for what it is.

And we say, i'm not going there what about love in the age of political polarization you know we are in a country where we can't even agree on the basic facts do you have any hope that love can can swoop in and uh you if not save the day at least improve it i think it can improve it i think it has to improve it i i mean that's part of. I've always wondered. I've always wanted love to be part of these conversations. Yeah, but do you really think that's going to happen? I don't think it's going to be easy. I think we need to take like 30 steps back there.

You know, and really not only talk to one another, talk to one another doesn't mean agree with one another. I mean, I'm not somebody who really believes in moral relativism, for example, you know, I think there are actions and beliefs that are extremely harmful. And it's not just a question of mutual respect, you know, it's a question of facts or are looking at the real consequences of certain kinds of choices or certain kinds of actions. But this sort of basic sense of otherness and be littleing of someone else has got to

stop and maybe has to stop with us, you know, with any one of us and go on from there rather than hoping for this kind of widespread. What do you do when you get strong feelings about the current political situation? I try to find a different, first I try to find a different kind of balance. I monitor my input. You mean how much Twitter you're consuming? That Twitter is my bottom line. I'm always on Twitter. But yeah, I know how do you do that?

No, not always on Twitter. You're on Twitter quite a bit though. I want to Twitter a little bit. Actually, Twitter is good for me because it's a brief. And I only have to pursue something at greater depth if I want to instead of having it appear in front of me. So, and then it's Facebook, which I was,

that's why I know that he's on Twitter, because I'm on Facebook. And I, you know, I try to have a certain perspective, I think outrage and anguish and all of that are, you know, understandable feelings. And I think the most important thing is if I feel them to take some action, like a kind of loving action, like I am, as you may know, maybe we talked about it before, I'm extremely passionate about people voting.

And it's not partisan, it's not, you know, suggesting who somebody should vote for, but I think that sense of participation is as close to the Dharma as an action can be. It's like everybody has innate dignity, everybody has a right to a voice and a point of view. They have the right to express that, the right to express that is equal. And thwarting that or stopping that is really demeaning somebody's basic humanity. I think that's completely wrong. And so, rather than freaking out and retweeting or just carrying on and being in a really

upset state, I think it's time to do something. Let's see about registering people to vote. I think it's my thing. Great advice, because, let's see about registering people to vote. It's my thing. Great advice, because a lot of people on both sides of the political spectrum feel hopelessness and helplessness, especially if the power of their side of the argument is ebbing at that particular moment. And actually volunteering and doing something,

and you've made this point before on this show, is a great antidote Back to real love the art of mindful connection Talk me through the DNA of the book. Well, how did you come up with this idea? Why did you want to do this book? Why now and then how what was the process of writing it like and gathering your editorial Eggs for the basket. I Think why now is partly that passion I've had for a long time, like can't love be part of this conversation too, and how about this conversation too, and seeing my own development.

I'm loving kindness was my first book at Kibat in 1995, and when I started working on loving kindness I didn't even have a computer, cutting and pasting, getting a pair of scissors. Literally, you know, cutting out the paragraph and moving it up and down the page and getting a roll of Scotch tape and then taping it where you wanted it to go. I did have a computer before the end. I tell that story in the book actually about the visit to the Insight Meditation Society of a 94-year-old Sri Lankan monk who mentioned he was learning how to use a computer. I thought if he can do it in

94 maybe I can too. And so part of it is how much I thought about it and learned about it and taught and learned from people and so I kind of wanted to go on and say well what about this And I have a very different sense of referencing, I think I quit James Baldwin more than the Buddha. I love the Buddha. And he's not a white male, in fact. But I think that's kind of right for our time, so I think it's a very contemporary expression of some of those same ancient principles. And

there's there was a whole process, you know, like, because there's no inherent structure. Like if I was doing loving kindness as a book, I have the structure of the meditation, you know, you start with yourself, and you move. And so I just really had to try to think deeply, okay, what do I see as the flow? And that was the whole first section, it was about love for oneself, and how that's not narcissism or selfishness, but really, the cultivation of the kind of inner wherewithal that will allow us to give and care and so on. The second section is love for another, whether that's a partner or a child,

a parent, a pet, you know, whatever it might be. And the third section is it actually there were two sections originally and it became one. was it's sort of like love for all beings and Love for life itself, and it's a really the bigger picture and I saw how you know people were amazing. They were they were so generous in giving me the stories and offering their life experience and and how many people are really struggling in some way. At one point my editor said to me, you know, anybody who's partner doesn't have a disease and I thought, and I thought, I guess not, you know, like, you know, and how I also saw

and wrote a little bit about sort of the breakdown of the normal mechanisms of community, like that book bowling alone, you know, like, and how people are really trying to create some sense of community. And I just did an interview about how an app can do that. Talk to me about self-compassion, love for oneself. We talked about moodita being tricky, but having love for oneself is really tricky for many people, even though I'm a narcissistic newman, it's a misspecial hurt for me in the process of meditation, because when I get lost, which happens a lot, as it does for anybody

who actually sincerely tries to meditate, I'm all over myself. So hold forth to your heart's content. I know we've joked about my distaste for the word heart. To your heart's content about self-compassion and what the value is and how we generate it. You might be happy to know we're looking at the book cover right now. One of the first things I said to them is no hearts. Please no hearts.

Thank you. Yeah, I was really happy. I mean, the first... It's beautiful cover, actually. Thank you very much. So first iterations, all had hearts. And interestingly enough, every heart was broken. Oh. And given that the subtitle is the art of mindful connection,

I said to my publisher, your art department has a very interesting relationship with the word connection. Yeah. Everything's broken. Yeah. Look at that. Or maybe they bunch of sad people in there. I don't know.

Maybe every art department, I don't know. Perhaps. Maybe everybody in publishing. Maybe everybody, everybody't know. Perhaps. Maybe everybody in publishing. Maybe everybody. Everybody. Yeah, true. I think that is the basic confusion. You know that it's somehow being selfish

to cultivate some love for oneself. But I often think of, in quote, Barbara Fredrickson, and who's a researcher at the University of North Carolina, who studies positive emotion. And even though I'm saying, I don't really think of love loving kindness, compassion as an emotion. That's the common way of referring to it, so I'd say positive states. So states like compassion, gratitude, and so on. And her theory is called the broadening

bill theory that, first of all, when when we cultivate these states our perspective broadens. Like there's a sense of expansiveness and openness. That makes sense because when I think about the opposite like fear and anger and greed and so on, when we are lost in those states the world collapses, right? We get tunnel vision and we have no sense of options and we feel caught, you know, we're just in his eyes. And so it makes sense of the opposite, we're just like open us up. So that's the first consequence of cultivating these states. And then the second part of the theory is built. So it's about building inner resource, not feeling so

like overcome, and tenuous, and fatigued, and all those things, you know, you have a sense of where with all inside. So, that's really, those are all positive things, not only for ourselves, like to feel better, but as we manifest in the world, it's like if your kid needs something and you're exhausted and you're just like, you can't bear it, you know, it's not that easy to get there, whereas if you have more of the sense of where with all inside, it is much easier to really get there. And so that's what it's about. You know, it's not about being selfish and self-procupied and pleased with yourself, you know, but building the sense of inner, certainly, sufficiency and maybe abundance. When we did this cross country meditation tour not long ago, one of the, the whole idea

was we were going to sort of systematically taxonomize and tackle the various impediments to meditation. And one of the big ones that we hit, and this was a big one for my wife, interestingly, is the idea that meditation generally is self-indulgent. And especially for my wife, who's a doctor and a mom, and she really, her whole mindset is of helping other people and that idea of doing something for herself

was she really struggled with it. What do you say to folks who struggle with this? That I understand the struggle and that I find it kind of ironic, you know, that if any of us were told here's this thing, if you did it for 20 minutes a day, it'd really help your friend. We do it. But the idea that it really help us, it just feels wrong. But how do we keep on helping our friend? You know, it's like even though it's such a terrible cliche at this point, it's such a great example. You know, if you're on the airplane and the oxygen mass descend, put your own on first. And it seems I actually was talking to a writer

friend and I said, you know, I can't even use that anymore. Everyone uses it. And it's so cliched. And then she said, Oh, I was just on an airplane and they made that announcement and the woman in the seat next to me said, I could never do that. I could never put my own mask on first. And I said, Oh, maybe I can use it. Yeah. It's still like provoked. I use it too. I mean, great. I love it. It's also so relatable. Yeah. I should have asked you this at the beginning, but in a new you may I can't expect you to remember this all chapter in verse, but could you give us a walkthrough of like what the science is showing us about the benefit what the benefits may be of specifically love and kindness meditation where you're again, you're sitting there and sending yourself and others and difficult people and everybody. Good vibes. What is science telling us about

what kind of effect this has on physiology and behavior? Well, the science, you know, is a lot newer than the mindfulness itself is new, but it's just more likely that a study will have been done on mindfulness than on loving kindness. But I understand that some of them are the same benefits. There's certainly a benefit in things like self-efficacy, a feeling of confidence. I was just reading about a study where it looked like loving kindness played a strong role not surprisingly, and undermining bias, you know, and assumptions. They always come back to that sense of assumption.

You know, how do I see this other person that I'm with? There's a growing, they did this one study out of Emory University in the foster care system of Georgia using loving kindness practice and that had also a lot to do with self-confidence and sense of belonging and so on. I think a lot of the physiological studies have had to do with vagal tone and... Are vagus nerve V-A-G-U-S not V-E-G-A-S? which I guess connects the brain to the rest of our body. And that, just like a few minutes of loving kindness, meditation seems to have a very profound effect on vagal tone, which is a good thing.

And also out of Richie Davidson's lab, they did some studies on neuro-economics, the effect of neurological changes on behavior, economic behavior, and they found things like more active generosity coming from even just a few minutes of loving kind of, so I think it was last time I saw Richie Davidson. I was in Milwaukee. Who I should say is a preeminent neuroscientist, old, old friend of yours and a previous guest on this podcast.

Yes. Carry on, sorry. We were both in Milwaukee. He of course lives in Madison and I was visiting and it was at a dinner and somebody said something about how difficult it was to maintain a meditation practice. And Richie said that study, and he said it with a chuckle for me, because I'm, you know, so identified with loving kindness, practice. He said studies should show that only nine minutes of mindfulness, that nine minutes of

mindfulness a day and only seven minutes of loving kindness a day would change your brain. So there you go. If you're looking for the faster route, Sharon, you're the best. Thank you. I love you. How about that? I love you too. Thank you very much for coming on. Congratulations on the new book. Where can people find out more about you? I guess SharonSolesbrick.com. We'll have it all.

And also on Twitter and Facebook.com will have it all. And also on Twitter and Facebook. That's right. Okay. Perpetually. Perpetually, not really. But kind of. Thank you Sharon.

Appreciate it. Thank you. Okay, there's another edition of the 10% Happier Podcast. If you liked it, please make sure to subscribe, rate us, and if you want to suggest topics we should cover or guess we should bring in in hit me up on Twitter at Dan the Harris I also want to thank Hardly the people who produced this podcast and really do pretty much all the work Lauren F. Ron Josh Cohan Sarah Amos Andrew Calp Steve Jones and the head of ABC News Digital Dan Silver. I'll talk to you next Wednesday

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