Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 96: Jaimal Yogis, A Surfer's Quest for Zen

Episode Date: August 30, 2017

Being out on a surfboard, when it's just you and the ocean, is "a meditative space," Jaimal Yogis said, "There's a certain amount of solitude that's just built into the experience." The longtime surfer and meditation teacher talks about his first memoir, "Saltwater Buddha," a coming-of-age story about running away at 16 and buying a one-way ticket to Maui to surf, joining a monastery and almost becoming a Zen monk and then launching a journalism career, and his second memoir, "All Our Waves Are Water," which is out now. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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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. As I record this, I have been spending some time at the beach and I actually go to a beach where there are a lot of surfers. A lot of surfers there. I am not one of them, although I'm kind of toying with the idea of getting my creaky body up on a board. And I've been thinking a lot about our guest this week because Jai Mall, Yogus, is, he writes about the intersection of Buddhism and surfing.

He wrote a book a couple years ago called Saltwater Buddha it is a new one called All Our Waves Are Water. And I get it, even though I've never surfed, I can see from my limited standpoint how the two would intersect in a really fascinating and satisfying way. And I always, I've been even though I've been going to this beach for more than a decade, I always assumed I would never do anything except watch the surfers and maybe watch some day my now two-year-old learn how to surf. I'm actually after this conversation starting to think more about doing it myself. And maybe you will too.

Here he is, Jim Alliogas. For ABC, this is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Welcome to the show, man. Thanks. Really enjoy reading your book. And for those who haven't looked at any of your work, can you give me some backstory of how you came to practice?

Yeah, I was a little bit born into the meditation cult. My dad was Catholic, my mom Jewish, they both kind of in the 70s were exploring new ideas and ended up with yoga and meditation. You by the way go out of your way to point out early in the book that your name sounds like you might be of Eastern descent, but you are not. I'm not. So, yoga says Lithuanian. My parents named me after Boba Jamal Singh, who was a teacher in the lineage of yoga they were studying in the 70s. My dad wanted to call me Boba Jamal, my mom thankfully convinced him to drop the Baba. But anyway, meditation was around the house and we had everything from Freud to the Bhagavad Gita. And we would kind of pretend to meditate within when we were little. And then I totally forgot about it

and was just into being a kid. And then in high school, I ran away from home. So I was... How old were you when you ran away from home? I was 16. Wow. Really ran away? I really ran away.

So... Like on milk carton type of thing? Like a one-way ticket to Maui. That's what I did. And your parents know you were going or did, or know where you went or were you in a good, truly missing child. I briefly, I was a missing child. I was a one-way ticket.

I left a note saying, I'm somewhere in the world and I'll call you when I get there. And I wasn't an unhappy kid. I was getting into some trouble. Like, you know, I got an I get there. And I wasn't an unhappy kid. I was getting into some trouble like, you know, I got into D.U.I. And I wasn't the bad kid. I was just the one who always got caught. And anyway, I felt like I was spiraling. It was a little bit melodramatic to say that I was.

But you know, it could have gone. We were experimenting with drugs and stuff. It could have gone a bad way. And where were you? Where did you grow? melodramatic to say that I was, but you know, it could have gone. We were experimenting with drugs and stuff. It could have gone a bad way. And where were you? Where did you grow? I was in Sacramento.

We'd moved around a lot. My dad was in the military. Anyway, I had these. We lived on an island in the Azores when I was little. My dad was stationed there. I'd gotten the Ocean Bug and I was having in the midst of this turmoil in high school. I was having these dreams about islands and I thought that's where I'm going. I'm going to go learn to surf in a Maui. I bought a one way ticket. I went there. Long story short, it only lasted

a few weeks that I was alone. My dad came over convinced me to come home, finish, and that I could run away legally. And they sent me a broad of France, my senior year of high school. But while I was in Hawaii for the first time, thinking Hawaii was going to solve my problems and surfing was going to be the remedy, it was really hard. I was by myself alone with no money. And I think you have to come full-frontal with suffering to really wanna do something like meditation.

And I think because I'd been exposed to it as a kid, I thought, well, maybe I should try it. And I picked up a little Tick-Not-Hon book. And I should say who he is, a Vietnamese Zen Master. Yeah, Vietnamese Zen Master who writes in a very simple way and just teaches things like, you know, mindfulness of breathing. So I tried it on the beach and felt really bad at it, but I was also learning to surf and getting beaten down by the waves.

And I instantly made the connection with, you know, hey, these waves of thought that are kind of coming through are a lot like waves in the ocean. And when you're getting held down by a wave in the ocean, if you struggle against it, it's a lot worse. And so that was kind of my intro to Zen was like surfing in Zen and that's why I continue to explore that metaphor. But yeah, that's how it all began. And then I got really into it

and went and lived in a Zen monastery for a year and thought I was gonna be a monk and then I was kinda back and forth between the world and not being a monk and trying to figure it out and went to college. And you know, now here I am talking to you. So you went to the monastery before college. You know, now here I am, uh, talking to you. So you went to the monastery before college.

So yeah, I, um, so went to France, my senior year of high school, where that guy took not Han the Vietnamese and master lives. Lumb village. And village. Yeah. So I was, I was in France, I have an adventure, but I was getting more into Buddhism. And I think being in a different culture completely and it plays with your identity, because everybody knows who you are in your high school in America and then you go to a different place where you don't speak the language and it's like, so that was perfect place to study Buddhism, because I was having all these questions about identity.

Went to Plum Village on spring break, called my mom and I was like, I'm gonna be a monk here. This place is perfect. It's what I wanna do. And she's like, Jamal, you got it. Like, finish high school, buddy. You know, I don't just stay at the monastery. We've been through this.

But I planted a seed and I went, when I got home to California, I found a Buddhist monastery that also was a Chinese Zen chaon. And I lived there for a year, planning to ordain, and doing the monk's schedule. But it was that a tradition was very serious when you ordain your day for life. And my abbot said, hey, you know, try college first. And then you can always give up all your possessions.

There's no hurry, you know, try college. And if you still want to do it, and I did, I went out and I, you know, I fell in love and got my heart broken. And I thought this is really hard out here in the world, but there's also things I want to explore and learn. And I never went back to the monastery, but I's also things I want to explore and learn. And I never went back to the monastery, but I continued to practice in that tradition. But you definitely live a life very much in the world.

I do. I mean, I have been doing a journalism career. I went to Columbia here in the city and went into magazine writing, and then that led to doing books and now I kind of am doing journalism, doing these books that are somewhat about, that are memoirs, and also teaching some meditation. So I'm, you know, I'm living this sort of... And you have kids and a wife. And I have three kids under six and a wife, so... So I think the reason I write these books is because you have these experiences in the

monastery where everything's contained. Everything's like, this is set up for meditation. You have your meals taken care of, even if you're going to do some work, you're sweeping the floor. It's like meditative work. And so you are able to, as you know, from retreat, have some different states of mind that you can't encounter as easily in the hustle and bustle. And so the kind of that happens in the monastery and you are open to this new world of the mind. But then you decide to live in the world and all the great masters say, hey, it's everywhere, this awareness that you can find in the temple, it's in the diner too.

I think that's been my mission, is just to be able to use the challenges of the world to broaden my practice. And it's hard. As you know, and as you've written about so well, I love your book. Thank you. And so, you know, I think the narrative, you know, writing about that integration, it helps me to integrate. Well, I'm going to ask you about the integration on a number of levels. You write a ton about surfing, obviously.

From a very basic standpoint, and I'm sure there's a ton to say about this, but what is the top line on the connection between meditation and surfing? I mean, yeah, I've written a lot about it, so there's many levels you can approach it. But, you know, at the basic level, I think there's the fact that we are, we feel like separate

entities, you know, it's like you're over there and I'm over here. But there is some connection between us, some sort of all this reality that we're operating in is united in some way, like waves are to ocean. And that's been something that great meditation teachers and yogis and saints of all philosophers have come back to that, like, we are more like waves on the ocean than we are sort of like individual rocks out there. And that when our sort of self-obsessive stories stop that keep us contained in feeling separated, we can feel more of sort of our oceanic selves, our oceanic nature. And it sounds abstract, but that basic metaphor, which is sort of the foundation for what these non-duality schools are about, like Zen and Advaita Vedanta are these meditation schools that are

called non-dual schools, and they're basically saying, hey, on the ground, the basic Legos of existence, like there's something same there. And so even though there's a lot of differences in the relative world, there's some fundamental connection. And I like that metaphor a lot. I also like to surf. And that's why the book is called All Our Waves or Water because I wanted to get at that from many different perspectives

and surfing helps me do that because you're immersed in that metaphor. I mean, you're right there. And again, it sounds like high philosophy, but it's important and useful and very mundane ways too, because when you encounter something like sadness or fear and you want to push it away, and that's what we're trying to do, and when we go through our lives, which we're doing, if you see it as just a wave that is also water, like the fundamental nature of it is water, then it doesn't have to take on this sort of, you don't need to take on the aversion, like to that, you can just say, okay, well here I am, I'm in the wave, it's passing. It's another part of the sea.

And I've found that with emotions, and that's what we're dealing with in this life. If I can embrace them and feel them, it's a lot better than fighting against them and being held down by them. But just walk me through exactly how it works. When you're surfing, because you said a lot there, talking about perceiving the fundamental

connection between all of us, you also talked about the transient nature of emotions. So what's the connection between those two and then how exactly does surfing help you Understand those two big ideas and put them to practice in a mundane way. Yeah, yeah, yeah I know I'm getting out I'm getting into the big stuff before that. No, I like the big stuff Sort of the basics. No, no, no, nothing no no harm So two things. I mean one when, when you go surfing, you can't bring your cell phone. And so the water, in a sense, is a contemplative space because you go out there and there's a certain amount of solitude that's just built into the experience.

Because it's you in the ocean. The ocean is very dynamic. And so it brings you into the present. And you know, you look at someone in an FMRI when they're surfing and they have a pretty like spherical thinking they're not as caught up in the they can put somebody in an FMRI well surfing. Well, they've done, they've done stuff like that at more, more like in the water. And you can extend that to the surf. There's a more spherical thinking, you're not as caught in the sort of planning mind

because you have to be a little more present. So it's a meditative space, just like going to sit in the meditation room, but I think because I like these metaphors of thoughts coming through like waves, emotions coming through like waves, also the self or the sort of constructed self being also like a wave on the sea. So I'm using two, those are the two main metaphors I'm using. And then being out there, it's like I'm connected to those, to that teaching. And I also, I'm just loving being out in the ocean. Right, so there's a lot going on there.

So there's many levels. And I'm not thinking about these things every time I go out surfing, but I think it sinks in on an unconscious level. Yeah, get pounded into your neurons and without it in an unconscious way. No question about it. And for sure, the fact, actually, when you say I'm not thinking about these things, there's something key in there and that you're maybe doing less thinking overall because you're dealing with what's being thrown at you right now. Yeah, I mean the water.

Less thinking in the story sense and the planning and past sense and I think more thinking. And there's still a lot of brain stimulation I think out there, but it's like more of the relaxed brain stimulation. And interestingly, the psychologists when they've studied why people love to look at water and why be in the water, why it's rejuvenating to us, and they find that it is a lot of stimulation for the brain to look at water, but it's not, they call it soft focus.

So you can like stare at the waves for hours and kind of be entertained, but without a lot of the usual prefrontal cortex like planning, obsessing kind of mind. So comparing all that stuff. So yeah, I get it. I'm going to the beach on Sunday for a week

and I plan to do a lot of staring at the waves, not surfing, although we go to a great surf beach. I just am a little too old. But I have a two year old and I suspect he's gonna wanna get into it, which I would really like to watch. It's, you know, it's fun, but you can, I think, you know, surfing is just one way to engage with the water, and that's what it's really about for me. I was thinking as you were talking that I'll probably go out and just kind of lull around for a while in the water every day. And there is your brain slash mind switches into something else.

And I can't, I think you put your finger on it better than I'm able to, but there is something pretty magical about that. Yeah, I mean water is super-rejuvenating. We're just scratching the surface. I mean, I have been deep in my friend, Wallace J. Nichols' work who wrote all about the neuroscience of water.

And I mean, there's so many levels but of why we feel good in the water. But one is that we're water ourselves. Brain is about 80% water. Our blood is basically the 98% genetically identical to seawater, the amniotic fluid that we bathe in when we're in the womb is very, very close to seawater. And so when we go in, there's something happening with like a kind of return to our origin sort of place. And so, yeah, when you're floating out there, it can feel, I think you can get back into

maybe some of those primal pre-identity, pre-story kind of places. I look at it as like a shortcut to some of, you know, when you can go on meditation or treat and you really need a lot of time to kind of get into a new space. And even though, you know, 20 minutes can also help too. But for me, with, with, I use both, but the water, it's like, I can jump in for five minutes and I get out and I'm renewed in some sense, so I like to combine them. Yeah. No, you're getting me thinking I need to be in the water more often.

I've definitely thought a lot about how I need to be in nature more often, but water specifically, definitely, it does it for me. I mean, everybody's different. How much time do you get to go surfing though? Because you got as you said three kids under six Well, I'll go on on professionally. How often are you able to do this? Yeah, we live across the street from the beach In San Francisco The good waves and there are really good waves there

I hopefully there are no servers listening so I don't get beat up for saying that Why because they don't want their secret exposed? Yeah, if the servers are very protective over their space got it right You don't want too much traffic. Yeah, exactly. You know, hey, that's your that's your time But yeah, so now I'm more on these surgical strike missions where you know drop the kids off at school I go to my writing. It's like I'm you know, I find myself where I drop the kids off at school, I go to my writing, it's like I find myself losing the creative juices and then I hop out across the street and go for a surf.

And I'm able to do it four or five times a week. That's pretty good. Pretty good for a dad of three. And I find myself being worse at it than I used to be. But the cool thing about being a dad is that, you know, you're never going to be cool again. So you just let go of that and just have fun. And it's just about being in the water for me. And I think I've opened up even more and just the state of play, which actually going back to what the original question about.

What's the connection between mindfulness and surfing? I think play is probably the most simple way to when you're playing, when you see your two-year-old son, it's like they're in the moment, you know? They're not, they're in what the scientist called flow. I mean, they're flowing. And we as adults forget to play. I mean, it's like everything including our mindfulness practice including our exercise, including our relaxation is like scheduled time.

You're so right about that. It's like, I feel it in my practice. Yeah. It's like, I've got my goal for the day. I've got to get this in. And there's a rigidity, a sort of militaristic, grim, deathmarch aspect to it that can see in if you forget the play aspect. I think so, yeah.

And the cool thing about the ocean and surfing is that no matter how old you get, you kind of get out there and you catch that wave and you're like, this is fun. I'm having fun out here. And you don't have to try to make it fun. And then you're present in a new way. And I think, oh, you know, I got to bring this back to the meditation cushion because it's not about getting somewhere, like getting that 20 minutes in and just, you know, bearing down on it and getting in a better, better

mind. It's about just being and, and, and the play state is a natural way to get there, you know, and it's one that I think we forget too much as we grow up. Celebrity feuds are high stakes. You never know if you're just gonna end up on page six or do-mo-a or in court. I'm Matt Bellesai. And I'm Sydney Battle, and we're the host of Wundery's new podcast, Disantel,

where each episode we unpack a different iconic celebrity feud from the buildup, why it happened, and the repercussions. What does our obsession with these feuds say about us? The first season is packed with some pretty messy pop culture drama, but none is drawn out in personal as Britney and Jamie Lynn Spears. When Britney's fans form the free Britney movement dedicated to fraying her from the infamous conservatorship, Jamie Lynn's lack of public support, it angered some fans, a lot of them. It's a story of two young women who had their choices taken away from them by their controlling

parents, but took their anger out on each other. And it's about a movement to save a superstar, which set its sights upon anyone who failed to fight for Brittany. Follow Dissentel wherever you get your podcast. You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or The Wondery App. What kind of meditations do you teach in practice personally? I mean, it depends on the teaching, depends on the group. I mean, often I'm just doing sort of a basic mindfulness,

following a breath and sensations, kind of a pasta style, my mindfulness. And I do that a lot on my own, but I have trained, I'm a little bit of a nut and then I've trained in Tibetan and Zen and Vipassana. And so depending on kind of what I'm up to, sometimes I do a mantra and some visualizations, sometimes I just do basic mindfulness of breathing and then other times I'll be doing like a compassion meditation, you know, thinking about suffering and wishing those suffering beings well and they all have different qualities and they're kind of like, you know, it's like you got, you don't always want to go for a sprint, sometimes you want to lift weights

or different tools for the mind and them. You know, it's like you got you don't always want to go for a sprint sometimes you want to lift weights or Different tools for the mind and I'm I think it's a really interesting point I was talking to my teacher Joseph Goldstein the other day It's often pointed out from listeners that I've never actually had Joseph on the podcast Which is weird he was actually supposed to come on a few weeks ago And I had to cancel it because of I was trying to finish my next book and it was it was just the timing He was actually supposed to come on a few weeks ago and I had to cancel it because I was trying to finish my next book and it was just the timing was gonna work out. Anyway, Joseph will eventually be on this podcast,

but he did say something interesting to me the other day and we're talking about, we have these like every month or two, we get on the phone for an hour and talk about my practice and we're talking about the notion of meditative cross-training, you know, the importance of, he's very ecumenical. He, we, lots of types of practice, in a practice. Not too many because it can get cluttered and confusing, but just a nice diversity.

And he said, do you think Steph Curry just trains by doing layups? Yeah. Yeah, it's a great point. And I mean, you, you do these practices for a little while. And I mean, I think in the beginning, it's just all like sitting there and getting out of your usual machine and being like,

hey, my knee hurts a lot. And how much longer is there in this sit, no matter what you're doing. But eventually you realize these things have, I mean, pretty quickly, you realize that these meditations have different qualities of mind, just like, yeah, shooting three pointers versus doing, um, doing layups. And, and you know, I've always liked that, uh, Bodhisattva teaching, a bodhisattva

being the sort of, uh, ideal of a compassionate being on the Buddhist path that they're learning all of it. They're learning all the tools because that because all of us have a different kind of suffering and though enlightenment is supposedly the simplest thing imaginable, it's like our diseases of mind and story are complex. And so about us up as someone who's going to learn all those tools. And so when they meet different people, they'll be able to say, hey, you know, you've got a lot of insecurity or anxiety. You know, here, this might, this practice might help you. And you've got like just ambition is sort of running you into the ground. And this practice might work for you. And so, you know, I think we're all very complex beings too who have all those

different sides of ourselves. So I think learning different practices to apply to different scenarios and different places that, you know, phases of life we are in is useful. But thank goodness that there's also just the basic mindfulness of breathing to come back to because it can quickly spin into like Oh, I practice am I gonna do today like you know, where am I at and I think I always just the mindfulness the breath is always there and it's always an anchor you come back to that and then After doing that for a while sometimes naturally, naturally I'll wanna do some compassion practice or something.

What do you do, I'm curious, like, these days? I'd say my mix is, it depends on, I always like a little of, like, when every time I sit down, I'm like, okay, what am I doing now? Not, usually not in a doubt-filled, anxious way, but it really depends on where and how much time I have. So I will do super short, you know, five, ten minute sits, depending if I've just got that kind of window of time where I'll do on an ideal day. I'll get up

in the morning, play with my son a little bit, go do a big workout, and then sit for like an hour, hour and 15, hour and a half. That ideal day doesn't come along too often. But if I'm going to, if I've got a big sit like that, which took me a long time to work up to, I'll start with a really slow series of body scans. Top of the head, feel that. Deliberately kind of softening forehead between the eyes, eyes, jaw and cheeks,

mouth, lips, throat back the neck, shoulders, chest, stomach, small back, tushy as I would call it with my son, hands connected, knees, feet. Right. And now do that like three times. Maybe that could take like 30, 40 minutes. Yeah. Just so enough. And then I'll sit under my nose like right where the top of the lip meets the base of

the nose, just feeling the breath coming in going out. That's a really hard sensation to isolate. They actually kind of really focus you, you have to focus. And I find that that can, I've had a big problem with concentration, which is totally common. My mind is very busy and most people's minds are busy, so this is not unusual. But this has really helped me get more concentrated over the time to take this volume of time and really dedicate it to these practices, or very concentration oriented. And I find that on some day

is actually produces very pleasant feelings, not dissimilar to when I used to do drugs, frankly, but less synthetic and jagged and unhealthy. What's crash? Yeah, yeah, less horrible on every level and actually quite positive. But if you read in the literature, in some ways can hires levels of this concentration that I'm describing, can literature, in some ways, can higher levels of this concentration

than I'm describing can be, in some cases, actually addictive in and of themselves. So then I'll do that for a while, and then what I'll do toward the end once I'm nice and concentrated and I'm comfortable. And by the way, I sit in a comfortable chair for this. I don't sit cross-legged. I don't have a terrible posture,

which I'm actually starting to work on now, but I sit in a comfy chair. And then I'm actually starting to work on now, but I sit in a comfy chair, and then I would say, again, this is an ideal sit. Toward the end of it, I'll open up and do open awareness, just sort of noting whatever arises in my consciousness. Anger, sadness, planning, tingle, itch, pressure, hearing, whatever, just noting everything that comes up. And then toward the end of that, I'll do one final move, which is to look for what is

knowing. So what is hearing? What is seeing? Well, not not seeing much, but maybe I'm seeing things by my eyes or I've got a mental image that's constructed. So yeah, seeing, hearing, feeling, who is that? Where's the Dan that I'm walking around embodying most of the time? And the interesting thing about that is there's nothing to find.

And the continually trying to find it, there's something there. It's actually the same thing you were describing earlier, it's just another way of getting at the idea of seeing through surfing that we are of getting at the idea of seeing through surfing that we are a wave, we feel like wave most of the time, but a wave is inextricable from ocean. And so there is some, it's hard to describe, but it's, there is some insolidity of self that you can see in there. So anyway, that's, that would be one sit. Another thing I would do is just if I, I'd meditate a lot in the back of taxi cab. So I'll, you know, I've got a be one sit. Another thing I would do is just if I had to meditate a lot in the back of taxi cabs, so I'll, you know, I'll go to a meeting after this, and so I'll have like 25 minute ride,

and I'll just do kind of an open awareness of hearing, whatever, hearing, feeling, moving, and then occasionally I'll just throw in that move of like, who is, who's taking all this in? Who's here to take delivery of these packages? And that's kind of just an interesting, and it took a while for that to start to work for me, and by work I put that in quotes, I don't even really know what that means,

but you can get a little hit as something. And then sometimes actually you get into frustration that you're not feeling the thing that you like to kind of feel when you're looking for this thing, and then you can just kind of notice the doubt or disappointment or desire that's there. So that would be a general description of my practice. Yeah, yeah, that's interesting. That overlaps a lot with what I do often start with a body scan, head to toes, and then kind of go into just breathing. And yeah, and riffing off what you were saying

about the drugs, I mean, there's a lot of dopamine and stuff that gets released from just being present. And it's interesting. I mean, turning off the inner news crawl. Yeah, it's interesting that that's pleasant, you know, that the body and mind secrete like a pleasure hormone from like just shutting up, you know. It's like, thank you. You know, a similar neurochemical to like eating an ice cream. And we should be clear that it's not like you're totally shutting up. I don't want to make it like I

Suspended all thought there's a ton of thinking going on. It's just that over time I'm actually getting much better at and this I would credit another teacher who's this guy who I'm writing my next book with The Sky Jeff Warren who's been on this podcast before really helped me loosen up about the fact you're going to get stuck in thinking all the time And he actually had me do this thing where You start to notice various inner neurotic programs that recur, and he actually had me name them. So with anger, I named after my grandfather, it was a really angry dude.

It's a little goofy, but actually over time, it creates this kind of inner congeniality, liberality about the fact that you are gonna wander. So there's no point struggling against it. It's just like, all right, welcome to the party. Back to the breath. Yeah, my favorite surfing quote is from this guy Suzuki Roshi, who founded Tasa Haran, a bunch of other Zen centers, that, you know, waves are the practice of ocean thoughts of the practice of mind. Waves are the practice of ocean thoughts of the practice of mind. And so, here he is, and Zen, and all the Buddhist jokes,

like, hey, there's nothing on TV, let's watch that. Or like, they all refer to blank mind, and it's misleading, that you're going for that, because I look at meditation now as like widening the bowl so that all of the waves are okay. It's like being okay with the waves, being okay with the thoughts, and being okay being a thinker. It's just the differences that you're not identifying so closely with the thoughts. It's like, you know, there's gonna be jealousy. There's gonna be anger, even, you know, I love in your book, you talk

about you interview the Dalai Lama and it's like, he Dalai Lama gets angry. You know, these thoughts are, and emotions are just a part of being alive. And just like we have storms in on the earth and nights days on the earth. And so, but you don't have to identify with them. It was the in this way where, and I like your just naming and noticing because it's like if you don't name it and say, oh, jealousy, interesting, there it is again, then it's you're just in the jealousy. And you're like, gosh, I'm such a jealous person. And why am I in this cycle?

And as soon as you name it, it doesn't always loosen, but at least you have just even 10% more distance from it. Well, and I was thinking, I'm thinking, let's sitting here talking to you, that there are so many ways to get at this unhooking from emotion, right? So this morning, I woke up kind of brooding over some professional disappointments.

And my son and I were playing what we call hall ball, which is what it sounds like we go into the hallway and kick the ball around We have some very understanding neighbors and I was lost the whole time He was flowing as you said before and he was looking at Dorley These like ridiculous like we'll look short pant The jama-zon, you know like they didn't go all the way down to his ankles and And really just into it. But I was gone. Just gone. Little moments

of just noticing how cute he was or into it. But mostly just gone off. And eight years of meditation just didn't matter. You know, I think it mattered a little bit. I was able to wake up a little bit from the little storm. But interestingly, sitting here with you talking about all this stuff, now I'm actually just, I've unhooked from it a little bit. I can see it more as a wave rather than just being stuck in it. And so I just think that points to something interesting about, so you can't just look to the seeded meditation practice to be the panacea, the thing that unhooks you

from whatever unpleasant or even pleasant emotion in which you are just lost. Also having human connection with other people who are practitioners is a big part of the practice. By the practice, I mean in the largest sense. In fact, there's a quote from the Buddha himself who said to his henchman Ananda who had just come back from a invigorating discussion with some fellow practitioners, you know, like he said to the Buddha, it's like, that was great discussion.

It's like having good friends like that is a half half the path and he said, no, no, no, the whole thing. And so I just, this is a bit of attention, but it just powerfully impressed upon me just by the simple act of sitting here talking to you. And this is what I think would be useful to a lot of listeners that hanging out with other people who take this pursuit seriously is another way of practicing and reducing your own suffer. Absolutely. I think what we're doing now is another form of meditation, of reflection on the mind pointing out

being aware of our own minds, and you can do it in dialogue. And I love that quote, the 100% of the path quote, and it's really helpful to know that other people are going through the same thing, and that we're kind of all saddled with this biology, that when you get gripped and hooked by an emotion, it doesn't just go away, you can't just snap your fingers and be like, I'm done, I'm not disappointed anymore because I started meditating.

And realizing that, I think, is catholic, there's a basic connection there that says, hey, he's not perfect, I'm not perfect either. Like that's, that's liberating. But then, yeah, there's something also that happens in the talking about it that I think is how therapy works, too. Interestingly, I mean, with like disappointment and trauma of any kind, often when we go, when we have it, it's like, it connects back to other memories of those, other disappointments and like, and then that becomes like a self-story about like,

oh, I failed again. I'm always a failure. I've always been a failure. I'm gonna continue failing. That's me. And what I, kind of cool neuroscience thing is they've realized that when you remember one of those old dramas, you actually like contact that same real estate in the brain every single time and it's restructured. So the memory changes. And if you're changing it with the, oh yeah, I'm always a failure, then it's kind of like that compounds. But when you're talking about it, like you just did, like, hey, I had this

hard morning and we're kind of having a good time here, like pretty relaxed in your studio. And you just contacted that memory again and you restructured it with the sort of joviality of, you know, a good conversation. And it's cool to me to know that just talking about it, laughing about it, like being at the beach and reflecting on it instead of being in a whatever stressful situation, it's like you're changing that memory, you're healing it a little bit. We have successfully and perhaps annoyingly to you made it almost 40 minutes without talking about your book. So let's talk about your book before in the remaining moments here because it's really

engaging yarn and the character who sticks out the most to me other than you is this unlikely friendship that you strike up with a young Tibetan monk in Durham, solid India when you were a young dude who just had his heart broken by a girlfriend and and where you were there just kind of bumping around. Just tell me a little bit about him about that friendship about what he's doing now, et cetera, et cetera. Well, his name is Sonon and I think he still lives in New York and I actually use the book as I'm looking for him The book is in New York. He does now I think and I'm actually some this is shout out that if anyone knows Sonom long-do he was living in Queens

I'm looking for him anyway. I did meet him as you say when I was heartbroken Been planning a trip to India for three years with my then-girl friend first love who is Indian-American and we're going to go live there for a year. Month before the trip, she finds another dude and I'm just flattah. I mean, it's like humans are not meant to suffer like this kind of a feeling, you know, and I'm wandering the subcontinent, trying to do journalism and just wanting her. And I go up to the mountains eventually and I encounter this monk through English tutoring who turns out to be heartbroken too. And he's looking for his family. And he left them to ordain when he was 11 and then loses touch with them.

And they were in Tibet, which as we know is not a, it can be a tough place for followers of the Dalai Lama or the devout Tibetan Buddhist because it's controlled by the Chinese now and he had escaped as many to it as, have to Darmseller India nearby. That's right. So he can't get in touch with his family. He's worried that something might have happened to them and not keep patient, et cetera, because their followers are the Dalai Lama. As our friendship moves on, I realize that he's

heartbroken, I'm heartbroken, he's doing it differently. And the sort of pivotal moment came when we were climbing up in the mountains as we did every day, we'd hike and he picks up some snow and he goes, India snow, Tibet snow, many same same, many thinking my my family very sad and he's crying a little bit I'm put my arm around them and I say so numb. I'm really sorry that you can't find your family I want to help you and he he laughs and and Really a striking laugh like I'll take in a back a little bit by my gesture and he goes, Jama, you funny. This very sad no problem. And it was so I'd never heard that before.

It was such a easy thing to say. And it became like a mantra to me because I was very much, I think, using all of my mindfulness and yoga to be like, I don't want to be sad anymore. I just get me out of this pain as fast as possible because I can't take it anymore. And I was like, I don't know, very sad, no problem. Like, you know, what does that really mean?

And then- Well, it does it really mean. You know, I had to explore it. It became kind of a co-on for me. And I could get down- A co-on, by the way, is this in riddle that one explores until one's mind explodes. I'm going to use that as a definition.

I knew intellectually that he meant hey this Zen idea that like embrace you know the now whatever the now is but then I was like but he's really embodying it like he laugh he's he's able he really did embody happiness and yet he was clearly sad. And I was like, he's holding both of these at once and I'm not. They're made to me, they're like, I'm either into the despair because the future looks trying

or I'm happy because it looks bright. And he's doing it both. So how's he doing it? And it was then I go on meditation retreat and do a 10-day Vapassana and Long story short, I ended up sobbing through a lot of that retreat and it was thanks to him and I think I It was the first time I realized that meditation Can kind of put you in touch with your emotions and then

Feeling those emotions doesn't have to be bad. Like actually feeling sadness when you're sad can be incredibly pleasant almost to really be sad and really feel it. And I realized I didn't have enough space in my life to actually feel the trauma, the heartbreak, but then I realized I basically had like, you know, sediment layers of things that I'd never grieve my parents' divorce and stuff, and I go into that in the book, but, you know, I won't. I'll let the readers go into that part, you know, I don't want to talk about the whole thing. That's a good tease, as we say in in the business of my business. Such a pleasure to sit with you. You put me in a better mood. Really a pleasure to be here and yeah, your

work continues to inspire me. So thank you. Thank you. And very quickly, people want to learn more about you. How can I do that? Jamal Yogas. I'm on all the social sites, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and JamalYogas.com. But the spelling is J-A-I-M-A-L, right? It looks like jimalyogis.com. Okay. But another easy way to find me is all our waves of water as the name of the new book. And if you Google that, you'll find me. Awesome.

Alright. Thanks, man. Appreciate it. Good job. Thank you. Okay, that does it for another edition of the 10% happier podcast. If you liked it, please take a minute to subscribe, rate us. Also, if you want to suggest topics, you think we should cover or guests that we should bring in. Hit me up on Twitter at Dan B. Harris.

Importantly, I want to thank the people who produced this podcast, Lauren Efron, Josh Cohan, and the rest of the folks here at ABC who helped make this thing possible. We have tons of other podcasts. You can check them out at ABCnewspodcasts.com. I'll talk to you next Wednesday. Hey, hey, prime members. You can listen to 10% happier early and ad-free on Amazon Music.

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