Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - A Buddhist Recipe for Handling Turmoil | Kaira Jewel Lingo

Episode Date: September 4, 2024

We all know that change is inevitable and impermanence is non-negotiable. But somehow it can feel surprising, maybe even wrong, when we personally hit turbulence. The Buddha had a lot to say about this, and so does our guest. Kaira Jewel Lingo is a Dharma teacher who has a lifelong interest in blending spirituality and meditation with social justice. Having grown up in an ecumenical Christian community where families practiced a new kind of monasticism and worked with the poor, at the age of twenty-five she entered a Buddhist monastery in the Plum Village tradition and spent fifteen years living as a nun under the guidance of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh. She received Lamp Transmission from Thich Nhat Hanh and became a Zen teacher in 2007, and is also a teacher in the Vipassana Insight lineage through Spirit Rock Meditation Center. Today she sees her work as a continuation of the Engaged Buddhism developed by Thich Nhat Hanh as well as the work of her parents, inspired by their stories and her dad’s work with Martin Luther King Jr. on desegregating the South. In addition to writing We Were Made for These Times: Skilfully Moving through Change, Loss and Disruption, she is also the editor of Thich Nhat Hanh’s Planting Seeds: Practicing Mindfulness with Children. Now based in New York, she teaches and leads retreats internationally, provides spiritual mentoring, and interweaves art, play, nature, racial and earth justice, and embodied mindfulness practice in her teaching. She especially feels called to share the Dharma with Black, Indigenous, and People of Color, as well as activists, educators, youth, artists, and families. Her newest book, co-written with Marisela B. Gomez and Valerie Brown, is  Healing Our Way Home: Black Buddhist Teachings on Ancestors, Joy, and Liberation.In this episode we talk about:waking up to what’s happening right nowtrusting the unknown (easier said than done) A Buddhist list called the five remembrances how gratitude helps us in times of disruptionAnd accepting what is (and why this is different from resignation or passivity)Please note: There are brief mentions of domestic violence, abuse, the suffering of refugees, and war in this episode.Related Episodes:3 Buddhist Strategies for When the News is Overwhelming | Kaira Jewel LingoHow to Keep Your Relationships On the Rails | Kaira Jewel LingoSign up for Dan’s weekly newsletter hereFollow Dan on social: Instagram, TikTokTen Percent Happier online bookstoreSubscribe to our YouTube ChannelOur favorite playlists on: Anxiety, Sleep, Relationships, Most Popular EpisodesFull Shownotes: https://www.happierapp.com/podcast/tph/kaira-jewel-lingo-390Additional Resources:Download the Ten Percent Happier app today: https://10percenthappier.app.link/installSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to 10% happier early and ad free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. This is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hey, hey, today it is a Buddhist recipe for handling turmoil. We all know change is inevitable, impermanence is non-negotiable, but somehow it can feel surprising, maybe even wrong, when we personally hit some turbulence. The Buddha had a lot to say about this and so does our guest today.

Kyra Joolingo is the author of We Were Made for These Times, 10 Lessons on Moving Through Change, Loss and Disruption. This is a rebroadcast of an interview we did with her in 2021 about that book. In this conversation, we talk about those 10 strategies for handling change that she mentions in her subtitle for the book, including waking up to what's happening right now, trusting the unknown, which is

easier said than done, a Buddhist list called the five remembrances, how gratitude can help in times of disruption, which sounds counterintuitive, and accepting what is and why this is different and this is important, why this is different from resignation. We start though with a personal story about an earthquake in Kyra Jewell's own life. She spent 15 years as a Buddhist nun and then decided to leave, which as you will hear caused no small amount of disruption for her.

So we'll get started with Kyra Jewell right after this. But first a few announcements. You might notice that the show art, the little image that pops up in your podcast player, changed after seven years. We figured it was time for an aesthetic refresh. Big thank you to my wife, Bianca, who's been leading the charge.

She has much better taste than I do. Before I go, I just wanna say something about the 10% Happier app. Many of you are familiar with the great teachings of Joseph Goldstein, the amazing meditation teacher. We've got six courses and more than 50 guided meditations from Joseph over on the app, including our free introductory course, The Basics.

Download the 10% Happier app today, wherever you get your apps and get started for free. I'll also link to it in the show notes. Listening to Audible helps your imagination soar, whether you listen to stories, motivation, expert advice, any genre you love, it's a great way to help you I'll also link to it in the show notes. Listening to Audible helps your imagination soar. Whether you listen to stories, motivation, expert advice, any genre you love, you can be inspired to imagine new worlds,

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commuting, you name it. My wife Bianca and I have been listening to many audiobooks as we drive around for summer vacations. We listen to Life by Keith Richards. Keith, if you're listening, I'd love to have you on the show. We also listen to Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. And Yuval, if you're listening to this, we would also love to have you on the show. So audiobooks, yes, audible, yes, love it. There's more to imagine when you listen. Sign up for a free

30 day audible trial and your first audiobook is free. Visit audible.ca. Audible Trial and your first audio book is free. Visit audible.ca, audible.ca. Alice and Matt here from British Scandal. Matt, if we had a bingo card, what would be on there? Oh, compelling storytelling, egotistical white men and dubious humor. If that sounds like your cup of tea, you will love our podcast, British Scandal, the show where every week we bring you stories from this green and not always so pleasant land.

We've looked at spies, politicians, media magnates, a king, no one is safe. And knowing our country, we won't be out of a job anytime soon. Follow British Scandal wherever you listen to your podcasts. I was thinking that an alternate title for your book could be, you know, for when the poop hits the fan. And I don't want to artificially narrow the audience for you because the poop is always hitting the fan given the non-negotiable law of impermanence, everything's changing all the time.

And I'm curious, why did you get interested in this subject personally? I really appreciated this message from Clarissa Pinkola Estes that when things get really tough and things don't feel like they're supposed to be happening the way they should be, that's exactly where we need to be happening the way they should be, that's exactly where we need to be. That we're actually right in the place that we need to be. And we have what we need to be in that place. And so that was

the inspiration for the title of the book. But I really was drawn to address how do we be with really tough times because it's something I felt I actually knew I could say something about that because I experienced going through some pretty tight spaces of kind of birth canal. I don't know if I'm going to make it, you know, particularly this transition from being a nun to being a layperson to leaving the robes. That was a pretty harrowing few years of my life where I really didn't know what was going to happen to me. And so to be on the other side of that, and to be able to look back and see, well, what was it that helped me move through such a really tough time? It was what I thought, well, I actually have personal experience of this.

I can stand behind this and say, this is what helped. This is where I found sustenance and stability. I'd love to hear more about that experience. If memory serves, from reading a little bit about you, you actually grew up in a sort of Christian semi-monastic or monastic style community that your parents raised you in. your own spiritual teacher and found Thich Nhat Hanh, who has the Plum Village monastery in Southern France, and you were a nun for 15 years, and what provoked you to leave, and why was that so wrenching? Well, it's good to go back to how I grew up,

because, you know, basically, pretty much my whole life until 40, I was in some kind of community. So I grew up in this residential community where my parents were living. It was a family religious order based on a monastic Christian structure where it wasn't a consumer lifestyle. You don't have a car. You don't have your private bank account. You're not looking after your own family and your own self. Whatever you earn, you give to the community and everyone would get a little stipend. We got hand-me-down clothes. We very occasionally got to go out to eat and we'd sign up on the community's car to get the car. It's that kind of super simple in terms of material living and, you know, in service to the poor and to, you know, urban communities, rural communities, slums, building wells and community

centers and schools and different places around the world. So I had this really communal experience. Then in college, I went right to the most communal living situations I could find, which were co-ops on Stanford's campus and where we all took turns cooking and cleaning. So those were the places I gravitated toward. And as soon as I got out of Stanford, it was, where can I find a spiritual teacher, a spiritual community? So basically what was so huge about leaving

the monastery at age 40 was I realized as I looked back, I had spent pretty much my whole life in community. And to give great credit to my monastic community in the Plum Village tradition, And to give great credit to my monastic community in the Plum Village tradition, nobody slammed me or judged me or kind of tried to guilt trip me about leaving when I really got clear that I needed to take a break and check it out from outside the monastery,

what my path was gonna be. But everybody was sad and really had a strong preference of what they would prefer me to do. So that was also what made that moment so kind of intense, was it was like I'd always done things that were sort of supported by the people around me or the you know the people I respected. And this was the first time I was stepping off the ledge without any real guaranteed place that I was going to land. A massive life change. Why did you want to do it? I think there was something I needed to complete and to break through that I could only do outside of the monastery. And it was this like, you know, like a piece of sand

starts to irritate the inside of an oyster. There was something that was just had gotten inside of me that was irritating and irritating and growing and growing this like, something has to give here. I think there really was a sense that I couldn't quite, you know, I couldn't see the whole picture, but there was just little pieces that I could see at a time that were telling me,

this isn't where you need to be anymore. Not because it's not a beautiful life and not because it hasn't been a really wonderful life for me, you know, every moment. It was a really precious experience, but I had to let it go because something else needed to come. And just on one level,

like the fact that I'd always been in community, there was this sense that I needed to individuate in some way and just, you know, meet the challenge of being in the world as me, like without the protective skin of the community, like go through what it's like to start to pay taxes for the first time and learn how to text and use the cell phone and like clean up my own apartment regularly, shop for myself, cook for myself. And I had lived my life being held in a certain way on many different levels.

And so to have that come apart, that was its own kind of initiation into, okay, this is what I've been teaching laypeople all these years, but I haven't known the challenges of making it work and the loneliness of like coming back to my apartment and eating alone. Like I had never eaten alone as a regular feature of my life. Growing up in community, we always ate with other people.

Living in co-ops on campus, we ate together in the monastery. I mean, this beautiful practice of like, you have people that you're attentive to as you eat. And that was like such a moment in the day of real an ache to just be there with my food by myself. I'm so glad that I had a chance to touch that because otherwise I wouldn't have known what that experience is for so many people. Curious, how's it going now? How many years has it been since you left and are you still eating alone?

I know you're not because you've been on the show before and you talked about having a partner, so I don't know why I asked that question, but how's it going? Yeah. Well, I disrobed in 2015, so I left the monastic path then. So it's been six years. It's a huge change on one level and on another level, I feel like the core or essence of what I'm doing is not that different from when I was a nun in terms of how I feel about my connection to my teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, and other teachers that I've studied with since leaving in terms of what I do with my day, which is practice, teach, mentor, you know, work with folks one-on-one or couples or groups. Most of what I'm doing

throughout the day is supporting myself, supporting other people to be grounded in the present moment and to live our lives deeply. And that's what I was doing in the monastery. I just had more people around me that were doing the same thing. So, I mean, what's different now is one thing I really noticed when I left was how much faster life moved after I left the monastery, that there really is this buffer around you in the monastery, things move slower. And when I left, I didn't have that buffer.

And so it was me meeting the world crash, you know? And I moved to DC, which right at beginning of 2016, so it was the campaign year of Trump and Bernie. So it was a hyper kind of external, you know, this collective consciousness in DC was a very intense, energetic field. And so then it was like, oh, I have to be checking email, I have to be creating a website, I have to be teaching, thus learning all the admin around, you know,

being basically a self-employed meditation mindfulness teacher. I'm trying to do online dating, trying to, you know, take care of my health, connect with my family, and everyone can contact me now. And also just wanting to create new friendships, because that was something that was so wonderful in the monastery, was you had beautiful spiritual friendships with monastics, with lay people who would come. So I'm trying to recreate all these parts of my life in a setting that's moving at a very different pace

than what I was used to and with very different values. You know, sometimes I felt like Rip Van Winkle or something where I've been gone so much longer than it seems, or there's all these things that have changed and there's all these ways I don't understand or just don't have the experiences other people have. Yeah, so how it is now, yeah, I do have a partner who also has a very deep spiritual practice, and kind of had some somewhat similar path to me, not with vows, but he was working with homeless youth and started an organization to care for

homeless young people and was just very dedicated to his spiritual practice and has become an Episcopal priest. And we really practice together. Like we meditate in the mornings. We do have busy times where it's harder to make our schedule stick, but that is our aspiration to really have a daily practice. And we read spiritual books together, Buddhist and Christian. We want to have a group that we lead together, Buddhist and Christian contemplative kind of mystical teachings, practices. Meeting him was like, there was a clarity about how I'm gonna manifest maybe more of what took me out of the monastery,

having met someone that shares a similar vision of service and also deep personal practice, that what we do in the world is coming from this place of our own transformation. So it sounds like if I understand it correctly, you learned a lot. You kind of battle tested the Buddhist recipe for handling change and disruption during this period of time. And those lessons during this period of time and those lessons are now the spine of this book that you're coming out with. And I want to dive into some of the lessons. We probably won't hit all of them, but I think it's worth checking out as many as we can.

One of the first is, I think you describe it as coming home, but you might also just describe it as waking up to whatever's happening right now. How is, you know, to use the cliched phraseology, being in the present moment, how is that helpful in a time of tumult? You know, when things are really tough, we tend to lose track of some really important perspectives. And we can really get caught in the outer situation

and not track what's happening inside of us or what our responses to the external situation are. And that can just feed that situation so that it gets even more out of control, even more overwhelming. So this coming home is really about there are things happening even in the midst of tumult that we can be aware of and that can support us, that can be a kind of anchor or thread connecting us to what we really know, because we can forget

what we really know. And so this being in the present moment is the simple act of taking a breath. You know, we can get so anxious, right? We can convince ourselves that we can't make it through whatever's happening or about to happen. And just taking a breath in the midst of that fear or terror or panic, it allows space for more than that feeling to be there. And so feeling our feet, feeling our hands, noticing clothing on our skin, it's bringing more of us online so that we can take in there's a lot of things happening, not just this strong

emotion in this moment. There is that I'm still alive, that I can breathe, that I can notice the colors in my surroundings. It's taking control of where we put our attention because yes, that situation is there and it's painful and it needs care, but it needs our attention in a wise way. And knowing that other things are happening alongside that difficult experience is a wise place to put our attention. Because we can convince ourselves this is the only thing that's happening in this moment.

Then it becomes too much. So all the things that are happening in the present moment are kind of places that can provide us with some refuge, some kind of strength, so that when we need to meet these intense experiences, we meet them with more wisdom, more of what's real. Much more of my conversation with Kyra Jool Lingo right after this.

I'm Afua Hirsch. I'm Peter Frankenpann. And in our podcast, Legacy, we explore the lives of some of the biggest characters in history. This season, we're revisiting the life of Cecil Rhodes. From sickly child to diamond tycoon to leading colonialist in South Africa,

he was a bastion of British imperialism. Over the past few years, campuses around the world have been met by students chanting Rhodes must fall. His legacy has been completely transformed. It's unbelievable how relevant Rhodes still feels and how often his name is invoked by people contesting really polarizing parts of our contemporary life. But one of the questions about Rhodes is that he takes all the flak and therefore hides away all the other people who were responsible

for doing things that may be not quite so bad. That's why I think it's important to think not just about Rhodes and his own life, but about what that period of British and colonial history meant. And one of the things people often say is you have to judge these figures by the standards of their time. That's exactly what we're going to do, Peter, isn't it? So follow Legacy now from wherever you get your podcasts. Or binge entire seasons early and ad-free on Wondery Plus.

After Dark, Myths, Misdeeds and the Paranormal is a podcast that delves into the dark side of history. Expect murder and conspiracy, ghosts and witches. I'm Anthony Delaney. And I'm Maddie Pelling. We're historians and the hosts of After Dark from History Hit, where every Monday and Thursday we enter the shadows of the past. We set sail on Victorian ghost ships,

learn the truth about the Knights Templar, and walk the grimy streets of Victorian London in search of a serial killer. Discover the secrets of the darker side of history twice a week, every week, on After Dark from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. Looking too deep in your meditation practice with a dash of both wisdom and humor? Dive into the 10% Happier Meditation app, download it for free wherever you get your apps, and get started today. [♪ MUSIC PLAYING It's interesting because anxiety is, I think by definition, future-oriented. And I believe your argument is that the best way to take care of the future

is to take care of the present. Yeah. And that's from Thich Nhat Hanh, a teaching that I really love that, you know, what is the future made of but this moment? So if we can care for what's happening right here, then the future is cared for. But we often sacrifice what's happening in the present to try to control or determine the outcome of the future. And that doesn't serve us because we're missing what's happening now. So we'll miss what happens in the future. I mean, I'm sure we've all experienced that.

What happens when we get into a rush, like if we're late and we have to rush, once we get to where we are, it takes a while to like come out of that spin. And we can end up doing a lot of other things, artificially rushed, right? Because of that one experience of, Oh, my God, I'm late, I got to get to work or got to make the bus or whatever, like, we get to that place. And then we're like, you know, a maniac on our phones or doing stuff we don't need to do, you know, we can spin out. And so then, how have we by rushing

by leaning into the future, how have we done ourselves a service? really? Because when we get to the meeting or whatever it is, we're worked up, we're not our best self. But if we can, you know, be with the stressful experience in the moment and hold it and care for it and recognize what's going on in ourselves, then for one thing, we don't have the ability to control what's gonna happen in the future. So by actually paying attention to what's here, we realize, oh, well, this is what I do have. Some say over is what's happening in the present.

And I can actually relate to that with wisdom by connecting fully to what this is. And that is what becomes the next moment and the next moment and the next. And so it's actually really important, you know, this kind of classic story of Tai, of Thich Nhat Hanh teaching a student. He saw the student rushing as he was washing dishes because he wanted to get back to the

real stuff happening in the living room, which was conversation with Thich Nhat Hanh and the community. And he's like, why are you washing the dishes? The student was like, why am I washing dishes? He was like, I think I'm caught by this Zen question here. So he answered, I'm washing the dishes to get them clean. Thich Nhat Hanh said, no, you wash the dishes to wash the dishes, which this student said,

this is a lifetime of practice to deeply understand this teaching. But the next thing Thay said was, wash the dishes like you're bathing the baby Buddha, like you're bathing the baby Jesus. So he was saying, really put your full care and heart into this moment. That's the purpose of washing dishes. That's the purpose of washing dishes. And so anytime I found that I disengage from trying to lean into the future and fully put my attention into whatever I'm doing,

whether it's the very mundane, feeding my dog, or sweeping the kitchen, or typing an email. Whatever happens next is much more like the future that I want than if I'm rushing through what I'm doing, because whatever's coming next is more important. And I just had this experience yesterday where I was like, you know, I'm going to pray over my dog's food.

I give her her food. I mean, not pray, but you know, I'm going to make an intention. So as I was giving her her bowl of food, I said, may this food really nourish you to be healthy, to be happy, to be strong, to have a great rest of your day. It was a really different way that I was putting the food down than usual. It made me happy to think, every time I give her food, I can set an intention for how this food might support her. I had to bear that in mind when I groggily feed our four cats

first thing in the morning after they've been howling at me to wake up, my thoughts are a little less charitable than yours. Let's go to the second, I think, of the lessons, which it's kind of intriguing and maybe hard for people to grock, but it's this notion of trusting the unknown. That seems counter-evolutionary. We, I think, evolved to really be wary of the unknown. Yeah. So much of the calibration of

our nervous system rests on feeling that we can predict and know something about what's coming. It's a profound state of unease when we don't know. And what I appreciated so much about the Vipassana practice, the silent retreats, as I was learning this practice at IMS, was in the silence, in the many hours of just being attentive to my own mind without interruption for weeks, months on end, was this becoming more comfortable with not knowing. I went into the retreat hoping I would come out knowing which way I was going to go with my life, but that didn't happen. It didn't happen any of the retreats I sat. I didn't get an answer

about what to do, whether to disrobe or stay. But what did happen was this was this beautiful exchange I had with Joseph Goldstein where I was so upset about not knowing. My life up until then had flowed pretty much according to how I thought. There wasn't long times where I didn't know what I was going to do. Very soon after college, I went to Plum Village and I knew I want to be a nun. And while I was a nun, I was like, oh, this is what I want to do. And I could see myself doing it for my whole life. And then suddenly I was in this place where I was like, I have no idea what I'm supposed to do. And I came to him in an interview, like just so upset that I didn't know what was to come. And he mentioned this book by Alan Watts,

The Wisdom of Insecurity, saying, you know, there's so many more possibilities in the unknown than there is, you know, when we've decided this is what it is, what we're going to do, there's just that one possibility. But when we don't know, there's infinite possibilities. And so he was kind of saying, you can see it as a plus, not a minus. And that was very helpful to realize I really could be okay without knowing what was going to come. And that the more I could let go of this need to know, which was also the need to control and the need to be able to construct who I am, my identity. That was what was so disturbing,

was I didn't know who I was. For the first time in my life, I really was like, who am I, who am I gonna be? How am I supposed to relate to people? Because I don't know where I'm headed. But all of that time, that silence and the teachings and the community were like, I was learning. I mean, it was really a time where you had to take refuge in every moment, moment by moment, because there was so little to go on after that.

It was good in that way that I was really like, all I have is right now, I don't have anything else. You know, people who are facing terminal illness talk about the power of those kind of diagnoses, making them really take refuge in the present moment like they never had before. So it became this like, well, I have my steps, I have my breath, I have the awareness of what's happening in this moment. That's what I have to rely on. And that's enough. I really learned

that's enough. I can be happy, I can be at peace. Not knowing. I mean, we think about all the people in the world more and more in this very tortured human society that we live in. People in refugee camps, people in boats trying to get to some shore of safety, people in war. shore of safety, people in war. That's the experience of a large fraction of our human family is not knowing what the next moment is going to bring. Someone in a domestic violence situation or a situation of abuse. I mean, it's something that we can find a way to rest

that we can find a way to rest in that very challenging space of not having security. When I lived in Sri Lanka, I made friends with someone who had left his country because it wasn't a safe or viable place to live. And he left on a fake passport and he got caught. for a viable place to live and he left on a fake passport and he got caught and he got put in prison and he was able to get out and apply for asylum. He's now has a refugee status and is waiting to be received in the country where his family now lives outside of the country of origin. And I'm still friends with this person

and it's amazing every time I talk to him. He never knows when he's going to be resettled. And he is the most graceful and dignified and happy and loving person. He got married in the midst of all this. His beloved came. They married. They had a baby. She's now raising the child in this country, waiting for him to finally be able to come and join her. But they talk every day. I mean, they're managing to sustain a relationship long distance to raise a child together long distance. And he has this inner light of his own practice. He's Catholic. He's translating books into his language from English into his... I mean, he's like, every time I talk to him, he's not down.

He's in a totally desperate situation, but he's not taking it as a victim. He's seeing what he can do in that situation to support others, to care for others, to share his love, to lift up others. And so it's just an example that inspires me greatly of people in all kinds of limbo, liminal spaces where they're not quite here, they're not quite there, and they have to maybe make that work for years, decades at a time. And they do it. And so this, it's possible to be okay when we don't know anything about what's going to happen next. I like how that story and that your friend's posture seems to, you know, one of the ways he's surviving and thriving amidst ambiguity is to have the posture of, you know, how can I help other

people? And I think there's definitely a lesson in that. I want to move on to some of the other lessons in the book. And this one goes right to the issue of impermanence. The five daily remembrances, we love the various Buddhist lists on this show. So here's one. Can you walk us through what these remembrances are and why they're useful? Sure. So yeah, these are five remembrances that the Buddha suggested we try to remember every day, even more often than every day. And the first one is, I am of the nature to grow old. I cannot escape growing old.

The second is, I am of the nature to get sick. I cannot escape ill health. The third, I am of the nature to die, I cannot escape death. And the fourth, everyone I love and all that is dear to me are of the nature to change. I cannot escape being separated from them. And the fifth is my actions are my only true belongings. They are the ground on which I stand. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions.

So they're helpful because it's a way of desensitization therapy where you bring up what you're afraid of and you learn to be with it so that in actual experience it doesn't take you over the fear. So it's actually like front loading, you know, like let's look at all the things that we want to avoid and want to believe aren't gonna happen to us. And let's really face them head on.

Let's pronounce them out loud. I am of the nature to die. There's no way I can escape death, like every day. Because it is true that we have this kind of unexamined belief somewhere that it's not going to happen to us. It's going to happen to everyone else, but somehow we can just, you know, distract ourselves from really fully taking in that truth. So seeing in our mind's eye, what is it going to look like as I get older, as I lose some of my capacities? Really visualizing what will it be like to be sick and not be able to care for myself? And visualizing ourselves, taking our last breath.

How do we wanna take our last breath? It's important to think about that ahead of time. Do we wanna be caught off guard like, oh no, I'm not ready. Or do we wanna really have prepared well? One of the things I think our practice can be so helpful for is preparing to have a good death and then, you know, seeing that the people we love, if we look back over our lives,

we can see that they've changed. You know, we couldn't avoid being separated from some of the people we were close to in the past, that those relationships change and shift, and people change and they leave us, or we leave them, like really taking that in, that the people who are in our lives today, they won't be around always, we won't be around always. And then this meditating on our actions as the only thing we get to take with us when we leave this form in this body, that there's nothing

else that we can accumulate that gets to go with us, that it's just what we do in this life. The actions that we take that are the things that we have to stand on, that's what carries over. For me, it's a good reason that they're called the five remembrances, because they're so easy to forget or ignore. It's very convenient to not think about those things. And then we start to get to do things that we regret in terms of the way we treat people or the way we treat ourselves or the way we treat our planet.

But if those things are something that we're focused on regularly, then it really makes us ask ourselves, well, if this were the only day I had or the only moment I had, how would I want to live it? And I offer this as a meditation and I did this for teenagers. This was an I be me retreat. And I wasn't sure if it would, you know, how it would be for folks of that age. And they said, this was hard, but it was really good. They could see how it was good medicine, even if it was kind of bitter, to not take things for granted.

For me, it's like, you know, how in the winter, when you go out of your house or apartment, whatever, there's this crispness to the air, this like, whoa, you know, it kind of hits you. That's the quality of these five remembrances. We can get into this sleepy kind of, oh yeah, whatever happens today doesn't matter. And I'll have tomorrow, I'll have the next day.

I'm gonna live to a hundred years old, whatever. That's that kind of voice in the background telling us this moment doesn't matter. We don't need to be fully alive. We don't need to take full care of this moment. And then reading those five remembrances, like that hit of like fresh air, like, oh my God, wake up.

This is going to go by really fast. And what do I want to have to say about myself at the end of it all? And it matters right now what I do right now. Another lesson, this seems related in a way, at least in my mind, is gratitude. And I'm curious, how does gratitude help us in times of disruption? Yeah, I know how it helps me whenever I have a low mood. If I remember, you know, what is there to be grateful for,

there is this subtle shift, even if it's not a huge shift, even if whatever I'm upset about or, you know, down about, even if that doesn't change, there's more space, there's more, there's more lightness that I can embrace that difficulty with. And for me, it's a kind of protection or antidote when we're overcome by whatever difficulties or feeling the pressure or the intensities. The more we've practiced looking for the good, seeing what we're grateful for under regular circumstances, the easier that is to access in those really difficult moments.

And again, kind of like I was saying earlier, there is just this bigger perspective that becomes available when we see, OK, this is really tough. And there's still something that I can connect to that can nourish me right in the midst of this really awful time. I've seen it over and over. I share about it in that chapter on nurturing the good in the book

with young people, with children, that it really works. It shifts the way we feel in our bodies. It shifts our emotions. It shifts what we see is possible. And it's not that those difficult experiences need to be pushed away. It's not about, oh, don't suppress something that's painful.

But it's like before surgery, you have to be strong enough to get surgery. It's like reflecting on what is good is a kind of resourcing, is a way of getting strong enough to look at, to care for, to be with what's painful, what's difficult. Much more of my conversation with Kyra Joolingo right after this. I'll have to keep my voice down because right now I'm between the actual bedsheets of some

of history's most famous figures. Want to know more about what Hitler might have been like in the sack or Julius Caesar or our very own Billy Shakespeare? You wouldn't believe the details I'm able to uncover here on Betwixt the Sheets, a podcast by History Hit. Because sexuality explored through a historical lens can reveal a surprising amount about the human I'm able to uncover here on Betwixt the Sheets, a podcast by history hit. Because sexuality explored through a historical lens can reveal a surprising amount about the human experience. What's in all, if you'll excuse the pun. And we don't just stop at sex. Expect outrageous scandals throughout the centuries, as well as probing into everyday issues, the nitty gritty of human life that really connects us to all people throughout history. Join me, Kate Lister, every Tuesday and Friday on Betwixt the Sheets to find out more.

Listen wherever you get your podcasts. Right, time to slide out of here and avoid the bedpan. Are you listening to this podcast in your car or on your commute to work? Maybe where you're dropping the kids off at school? I'm Dan Snow and on my podcast Dan Snow's History Hit, I transport you to somewhere a little more exciting. To the places where empires rose and fell. Explorers made the discoveries of a lifetime.

I take you to where history happened and tell you the story while I'm there. Check out Dan Snow's History Hit for in-depth series and storytelling that unravel the mysteries of the Inca at Machu Picchu. Follow in the footsteps of Howard Carter to Tutankhamun's tomb and hunt down Shackleton's expedition to Antarctica. Join me on Dan Snow's History Hit for historical adventures and escapism every week, wherever you get your podcasts. Let's do one more lesson before we close out here. This is a tricky one because it's easy to misinterpret it, but it's accepting what is. The reason why I say it's easy to misinterpret that is

sometimes people can hear this as resignation or passivity. So the alternative just doesn't work. When we don't accept what is, it creates tension, it creates stress, it creates frustration, and a difficult situation becomes worse. Like calling EZPass, which is notorious for being a frustrating experience. You're on the phone for an hour before they get to you and then they can't help you and they say, okay, we're going to switch you to someone else and you're on

the hold for another 30 minutes. Substitute anything, right? Any kind of call center. I've actually had some good experiences with EasyPass, so not to bad talk them, but getting mad and yelling at the person. and this should not be happening attitude, it doesn't feel that good, right? I mean, maybe there's some sense of like, ah, I told it to them and they're, you know, but they're not the ones in the end usually who are really responsible for whatever we're

upset about and they have families to go back to, and they have to take these calls all day long. Anyway, it just, when that's happened to me, and it has when I've gotten really upset, I leave that experience thinking that that was not useful. That's not how I wanna be. That's not how I wanna show up. Yes, they're, you know, whoever this company is, is doing something that's very frustrating I want to be. That's not how I want to show up. Yes, whoever this company is,

is doing something that's very frustrating and shouldn't happen. But my reactivity to it doesn't get things to happen the way I want them to in general. I found that when I actually listen, when I'm patient, when I say what I need to say, and I can be firm and I can say, no, you're at fault, or this shouldn't happen this way.

But when I don't let that take me over, but I just am accepting, okay, this is the situation, how can we resolve it? Then my energy goes towards something that's actually useful for me and hopefully for others. And I leave the situation unscathed. And so not accepting doesn't tend to be a useful strategy for me.

Accepting what is doesn't mean that we get walked on like a doormat. It doesn't mean anything goes or that we don't stand up for ourselves or for others or for those who are being oppressed. But if we can look deeply to see what's the root of this situation, which is usually not the way we look at things, and we don't usually see the many complexities that are there. If we're in opposition to someone or something and we look to see, well, why is that happening?

Where does this come from? What has brought this about? That's a perspective that allows us to see, I'm connected to this person. Their life matters to me, my life matters to them. And so where we come from in addressing the difficulty, it's coming from a deeper place and it has more impact, it's more effective because I'm seeing, okay, this is your full situation, not just the little bit of

it that I choose to focus on. So then if I see your full humanity, then how am I going to engage in this situation that is really difficult for me? So I think, you know, this accepting what is, is also, it's like acknowledging we don't have all the answers. We don't see what, for instance, one person's trajectory is in their life, the things that they need to do to learn what they need to learn on this journey that they're on. So it's a bit of humility of saying, okay, this is the way this situation is, this is the way this person is, I would like it to be otherwise, but there may be some bigger logic here that's playing out

that actually has a reason, has an importance that I can't see. And can I let go and still advocate for what's important for me and live the way I need to live and stand up in the ways I need to stand up, but at the same time give space for the mystery that I can't conceive of that's also operating in this situation. I mean, there's so many amazing stories, I'm sure, many of us know in our world of enemies reconciling,

where there was this ability to see much deeper than they could see in the beginning. I saw a film recently, I really love this film, it's called The Best of Enemies. It's really a good film, but it's, you know, the ability to see beyond the surface, to see the humanity of someone who we're diametrically opposed to on all levels of our being and seeing that humanity and acting from that place of acknowledging the humanity of our enemy creates enormous possibilities that weren't there before. But that only happens because we're accepting the situation as it is. And then we can do this deeper work of, you know, it's actually, it's a kind of ho-on or paradox

that by accepting what is, we actually can alter it in ways that we can't when we resist what is. There's this Jedi move of softening into this what we don't understand, what we can't know, and then that shifts us, that shifts the situation, and then these things become possible that weren't possible when we were stuck in an idea of how it should be and resisting how it is. Just in closing here, I want to loop back all the way to the beginning of this conversation when you politely

laughed at my alternate title for your book about the poop hitting the fan and the actual title is We Were Made for These Times. Can you just bring us home here by talking a little bit more about what you mean by that title. Sure. If taking care of this moment is the best way to take care of the future, then we have what we need right now. We don't have to wait for something to come in the future. And that's one of the characteristics of the Dharma is it's outside of time. This

akaliko is the word that these teachings, you don't have to practice them for years and years for them to have an effect. They can have an effect immediately. There are stories of in the Buddha's time, someone listened to a teaching and was immediately enlightened, not having practiced a second before hearing that teaching. So it's not bound by time. So whatever we think we have to do to become who we need to be, it's not the case that who we need to be is somewhere in the future. Master Lin Chi, founder of the Rinzai tradition of Zen, my school of Zen, says we already are what we want to become. So all of these are different ways of saying what this wonderful teaching of Clarissa Pinkola

Estes, this profound Latina storyteller and author and changemaker, and this was in a letter she wrote to a young activist. She said, we were made for these times. We were made for this exact plane of engagement. We have everything we need. All the things we've been doing up until now have prepared us for this moment. So as we look at our world

and the extreme challenges we're facing, which no generation of humans has had to face, the climate crisis and the pandemic and the racial and political and economic crises, wealth disparity, each of us has what it takes right now to show up and to be a force of transformation right now. And so I think for me, I chose that title for this book because we can get very intimidated by what we're facing and feel that this

you know, this isn't gonna end well, or we don't have what it takes, but in us is everything that has come before. And all the components that are needed are already here. So this image I use in the book of a caterpillar that dissolves in the chrysalis and reassembles into this butterfly. But how scary that process of dissolving is.

All the elements to make a butterfly are already there in the caterpillar. They just reposition and shift, and time and space, you know, is a factor too. But all that we need is already here. And so the sense that we don't need to see ourselves as drowning in this very tough situation that our whole species is facing, but that we need to go with this flow. We need to swim. We need to stay with our heads above the water and move with this. And we can move with this. We can do this. We don't know what it's going to bring, but we can meet what this is. If we can meet

this moment right here, right now, if we can care for ourselves, care for each other right in this moment, then that is what the next moment will be made of. Kyra Jewell, thank you very much for coming on. Thank you for having me, Dan. Thank you to Kyra Jule Lingo. And I also want to point out that she has a new book out called Healing Our Way Home, Black Buddhist Teachings on Ancestors' Joy and Liberation, which she co-authored

with Maricela B. Gomez and Valerie Brown. Valerie Brown has actually been on the show before. And all three of them will be on the show in a couple of weeks. Thank you for listening. And thanks to everybody who worked so hard on the show before and all three of them will be on the show in a couple of weeks. Thank you for listening and thanks to everybody who worked so hard on this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson, Caroline Keenan, and Eleanor Vasili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our production manager, Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer, DJ Cashmere is our executive producer, and Nick Thorburn of the great band Islands wrote our theme. If you like 10% happier, and I hope you do, you can listen early and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts.

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