Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - Buddhist Strategies for Suffering Less and Improving Your Meditation | Lama Rod Owens

Episode Date: November 1, 2023

Plus: Why Lama Rod is "no longer interested in being a good person," why we need to let go of perfectionism, and the selfish case for sainthood.Lama Rod Owens is making his fifth appearance on Ten Percent Happier. He describes himself as “a Black Buddhist Southern Queen” and is an authorized lama in the Kagyu School of Tibetan Buddhism with a Master of Divinity degree from Harvard. His new book is The New Saints: From Broken Hearts to Spiritual Warriors.In this episode we talk about:What Lama Rod means by “New Saint”Why he is “no longer interested in being a good person”Why it's so important to let go of the ideal of perfectionThe practices and characteristics of a New SaintThe questions you should ask yourself about your beliefsHis experiences with what he refers to as “unseen beings” and his exploration of the “unseen world”Related Episodes:Meditation Party: Magic, Mystery, Intuition, Tattoos, and Non-Efforting | Sebene Selassie and Jeff WarrenLama Rod’s first appearance on Ten Percent HappierFull Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/tph/podcast-episode/lama-rod-owens-new-saints/lama-rod-owens-new-saintsSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

How you doing, Lamarad? How's everything going? Good, you know, busy. Yeah. You know, trying to survive the apocalypse, you know, as many people are. So that takes up a lot of free time. This is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hello everybody, we got a piece of feedback recently that one of our listeners wanted

more Dharma on the show. So today we're delivering. Let me start by saying this. The word saint is a pretty loaded one. It conjures images of endless self-sacrifice, maybe even the wearing of hair shirts. Not only does it seem unfun, but also basically impossible. However, my guest today wants to reclaim this word. He's making the case for a kind of messy and also self-interested version of St. Hood. The self-interest has at least two levels. This kind of St. Hood will actually make you happier and it will also in the view of my

guest improve the world. Lama Rod Owens is a frequent flyer on this show. This is his fifth appearance. He describes himself as a black Buddhist southern queen who is an authorized Lama and the C Kagu school of Tibetan Buddhism with a master of divinity degree from Harvard. He often comes on the show during moments of crisis, like the murder of George Floyd, or the 2020 election. This time he came on, though just to specifically discuss his new book, which is called the New Saints. That said, while we recorded this conversation before the recent and horrifying events, in the Middle East, the wisdom, I think, contained in this conversation will be well-timed. In this conversation, we talk about what Lamar Rodd means by new saint, why he is, and I'm

quoting here, no longer interested in being a good person. Why it's so important to let go of the ideal of perfection, the practices and characteristics of a new saint, the questions you should ask yourself about your beliefs and his experiences with what he refers to as unseen beings and his exploration of the unseen world. So yeah, we get pretty far out in this one. I have to say though, if you're a skeptic like me, stick with it, it's fascinating. Okay, time for a feature we're now calling BSP, blatant self promotion. Here we go. Over on the 10% happier app, we are releasing two brand new meditation collections on some of your most requested topics. Those include meditations about coping with chronic pain from Sharon

Salzberg, as well as meditations for people with ADHD or other flavors of neurodivergence from Jeff Warren. Download the 10% happier app today wherever you get your apps and tap on the singles tab. Also want to tell you about a couple of events I'm doing, coming up on November 6th. I'm doing something with my longtime executive coach, Jerry Kallona, who's got a new book coming out. We'll put a link to the live stream in the show notes. Also on November 14th I'm doing something that will be available both

in-person and online. It's an interview with the great meditation teacher Leslie Booker. It's a benefit for the New York Insight Meditation Center. You can find a link for that in the show notes as well. Go Sanrio. At least as a journalist, that's what show notes as well. including the most recent inhabitant who says she was visited at night by the ghost of a faceless woman. And it gets even stranger. It just so happens that the alleged ghost haunted my childhood room might just be my wife's great grandmother. Who was murdered in the house next door by two gunshots to the face. From Wondering and Pineapple Street Studios comes Ghost Story, a podcast about family secrets, overwhelming coincidence and the things that come back to

haunt us. Follow GoStory on the Wondry app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes ad-free right now by joining Wondry Plus. Hello, I'm Hannah and I'm Suryte and we are the hosts of a Red Handed a Weekly True Crime Podcast. Every week on Red Handed we get stuck into the most talked-about cases. But we also dig into those you might not have heard of, like the Nephiles Royal Massacre and the Nithory Child Sacrifices. Whatever the case, we want to know what pushes people to the extremes of human behavior. Find, download, and binge Red-handed wherever you listen to your podcasts.

Lama Rado and welcome back to the show. Yes, nice to be back. DJ, one of our producers, reminds me that this is your fifth time on the show, which is awesome. Yeah, you know, I'm the crisis commentator. You are the color commentator for the apocalypse. Yes. I like that. Awesome. Well, you're starting us off on a chipper note and let's stay there. What is a new saint? What does that mean? Yeah, I mean, that means so many things, you know, but for me, it is an attempt What do we need to become? What do we need to upgrade into to meet the challenge of a really unsure future? Right? And so I always turn to the saints, the saints traditionally have been a source of inspiration. They've modeled a way of being, particularly modeling a way of connecting to something higher, a much more

divine or sacred. And when I say divine or sacred, I'm not just talking about God or emptiness or something, but I'm talking about tuning into something that's about trying to be of help and trying to be of benefit. So that selflessness, you know, that isn't about pushing aside the sense of what we need, but actually putting our needs alongside the needs of others and figuring out how to get everyone's needs met. And so this idea of the new saying started coming about during the quarantine in 2020, when so much

was happening, including a pandemic, you know, as well as the murder of George Floyd, right, which we talked about that year. And in that moment, I said, okay, what is my contribution to this work now, right? Because love and rage had just come out, which is my last book. And I said, okay, what is my contribution to this work now? Because love and rage had just come out, which was my last book. And I said, okay, what's next? And this idea of a new saint hood, like a new understanding of saint hood

based on the Buddhist understanding of saint hood, which is called the Bodhisattva tradition or the Bodhisattva ideal, right? And how could I make that much more contemporary and straightforward, right, and honest, you know, for folks really needing inspiration right now? I like this idea a lot, and I just want to emphasize for the selfish people listening, I like to represent the selfish people because I am a selfish person that, you know, a bodhisattva, a Buddhist saint dedicates their life and their actions to the benefit of all beings.

But a key word in there is all. And that doesn't mean you are excluded. It doesn't mean you're in a hair shirt and everything you do is sacrificial and you're a dormat. Your needs have to be in the mix. And just on top of that, the Dalai Lama, perhaps our most famous living Buddhist, talks a lot about why selfishness, that a true understanding of selfishness takes into account that not being a dick, having good relationships with other people, is what is going to make you the most happy. And so I guess what I'm saying is this same to it that you're proposing here is an attractive proposition.

Yeah. And what you also reiterate is that it's not a revolutionary ideal. This is just an innovation on an ancient, printable, and way of being, right? And I think that's really important for people, just to understand, it's like this isn't new. This is just a retelling from the intersections that I occupy. I appreciate that humility and just to say, we need the relanguaging. I mean, Buddhism started 2600 years ago and on the Indian subcontinent, as it's moved through the world, first through Asia and now through what we call the West,

it has adapted to each culture in very skillful ways and built on top of what was already there in a way that allowed it to penetrate the minds of the local folks. And so I think what you're doing is a valuable thing. Absolutely. Yeah, and that was the whole point, right? It's a retelling and a contemporary language, which is, I mean, I point that out really clearly in the book as well, because it's like, yeah, we can go to the store, pick up a book about the body software tradition, right? But it's more important that people who

look like us begin to relinquish this material so that speaks directly to us. So we trust it more. Right? And this is all I'm doing. This is how I have actualized the work of the Bodhisattva, which is getting free on behalf of all beings, because if I can't get free, how can I help others get free? And that's really the heart of the Bodhisattva tradition and the new saint's tradition is that, like, I can't teach you something

that I don't understand for myself, because if I try to teach you something that I'm not practicing, then more than likely that's going to end up leading to a lot more suffering and confusion. I want to go into great detail later in the interview on how we do this thing, how we become the new saints. But let's just say on a higher level for a second, and it's just to get some background. Who you mentioned the murder of George Floyd, that was the first time you came on this show. And you write in your book that part of this new book is inspired, maybe that's not the right word,

by some of your disappointment about what happened and after all of the fervor and ardor that we saw in the aftermath of that murder. Can you say a little bit more about that? Right. Yeah, there was such a strong reaction in what I call an intense reactivity, that felt really positive, that felt very different, but it slowly gave way to the same old performative goodness that people are so comfortable with doing, right?

But even more specifically, this reactivity to George Floyd's murder, you know, the marches, the organizing activism, all the social media campaigns, right? They kind of sprung up about how bad racism is. I just, in the middle of all of of it just felt like, oh, but this isn't getting to the issue. This doesn't get to the root causes of racial violence. That somehow all of this work will pass over and will come back to the same old kind of performed of goodness, or the kind of apathy from so many folks that's just really normal. This performative goodness is your distrust of that and fatigue with it. Is that what motivates your statement that you are no longer interested in being a good

person? Yes, absolutely. Because for me, goodness is a process. It's something that I'm always earning from second to second. It's never a place that I just land, right? Because if I become a good person, then it's really hard for me to see the times when I am not practicing good, right? But I want to even go deeper into it. For me goodness is what I'm doing to reduce suffering,

harm and violence for myself and for others around me. That's why I understand about goodness. That's something that I'm making a choice to do each second. Honestly, not every second, I make it. I don't make the right choice. Sometimes I escalate harm and violence. Absolutely, we all do, but I hope that most of the time I'm choosing to reduce harm in the violence.

And that, for me, is the active practice of, I would say cultivating goodness, right? But for a lot of folks, goodness is a way that they get validation from others. It's a way that we've learned to perform in order to get our resources met, right? So if I am not a good person, then how am I going to get what I need to survive, right?

Who's going to like me if I'm not performing goodness? But goodness doesn't mean, you know, particularly goodness in the way that I've just pointed out around reducing harm doesn't make you a popular person either. You know, which is also the struggle here. When I am practicing real goodness, then I will more than likely disappoint people. Because my practice of goodness isn't necessarily about making you comfortable. It's about reducing harm and violence.

And sometimes, you know, we have to disrupt the ways in which we enable people in harmful behaviors. And once we start setting the boundaries to disrupt that kind of engagement, then yeah, people are gonna be disappointed. And we boundaries to disrupt that kind of engagement, then yeah, people are going to be disappointed. And we have to hold that and fall into a deeper embodiment of what it means to practice goodness. Can you give me a sense of how, if I'm practicing goodness rather than just walking around with

the story of being a good person or performing goodness. How would that disappoint people? Because sometimes practicing goodness, as we talked about before, I'm also tuned into my needs, as well as the needs of others. And sometimes I may privilege other people's needs in a way that bypasses what I need. And that could create more suffering for me. And so that means that sometimes I have to say, you know what, I can't do this thing for you because I really need to take time for myself to meet my own needs. And you know, there are a lot of people who depend on us always being there and always being ready to help, right?

But then we say, well, I actually can't do that right now. And that creates a lot of disappointment, right? And that can really create some conflict in our relationships. When we're all of a sudden concerned about what we need, right? And this is important because if I'm not attentive to what I need, then more than likely I start reacting to this feeling of depletion, right? And I can take that out on people. Like, I don't feel like I'm getting what I need because I don't know how to set boundaries to create the space to gather the resources

for what I need, right? And then I get resentful when I can't do that and start taking it out on people that I'm supposed to be helping. And of course, you know, so much of this is about learning to articulate what we need and letting go of what many people feel as shame around understanding what our needs are and then discerning how to get those needs met

in a way that doesn't increase or reproduce certain forms of violence and tension and relationships that we're in. It's a relief for me to hear that sometimes you act out because your version of sancthood does not preclude continuing to be a fuck up. That makes it more approachable. Like I can still, it's not perfection what you're trying to get us to engage in here. Yeah, and I think perfection can be quite violent for us

because perfection is weaponized against us to try to actualize a way of being that's actually quite impossible. If you study the lives of different kinds of saints, you realize there's a lot of stories around saints being human, which is how saints start as human, and they continue as human, as long as they're embodied in the world. But we have to let go of this idea

of trying to achieve perfection. It's just a source of suffering. And how can you possibly engage in a path where the most ideal expression is this level of perfection that no human has ever actually achieved. Jesus was knocking over tables in the marketplace. The Buddha stepped on an insect. It's just like you can find examples where these great saints

and spiritual leaders did something that wasn't that saintly. This is a problem in a lot of contemplative or spiritual traditions where people venerate the teacher to the point of perfection and then the teacher lets them down and the whole thing crumbles. And it's inter and intra personal violence, I think, this idea of the affection. Yeah, because, you know, we get so wrapped up and wanting a teacher to be perfect because it helps us to bypass our own imperfections. And of course there are teachers who actually get off on that. They love it when students and people are just portraying them as perfect because that really enhances their authority over people.

And through that authority, they're able to get all their unmet needs met. And this is why for me, this book is so important because I don't write this book to look good. I think it's obvious. By the time you get to the end, I'm really not interested in you thinking that I'm perfect or a really great practitioner.

I'm really interested in you understanding that it's our humaneness, right? Our emotions, our sensations, everything that comes up for us, we're trying to develop a really spacious, fluid relationship to everything that arises for us. I'm not trying to control the thing. I'm trying to offer space to the thing so I can transform my relationship to it. Yeah, I have all kinds of thoughts coming up in my head, you know, and they're not always good. Especially right now, there are a lot of people that I would prefer not to be on this planet right now, right? Because they create harm for a lot of people. When you say right now, or you referring to the person you're talking to right now.

No. Who would ever have that kind of thought against you? I got a nervous when you said especially right now, I was like, oh, oh, but now like just in the world, just like, God, wouldn't it be great if so and so wasn't on the planet? I don't think that's a really great thought. But then again, I'm not trying to get rid of the thought. I'm just trying to say, you know what? I don't have to react to that thought actually. It can be there.

But I don't have to react to it. And for me, that is the heart of meditation, acknowledging, naming, and allowing, and then moving from reactivity to response. Yes. You know, instead of reacting, I'm going to respond and holding space as a response. Yep, that to me, I mean, that is the pitch for mindfulness and insight

that you can sit down close your eyes, watch the full catastrophe arise in your mind, all the desire for pringles, all the plans for selective homicides that you're going to commit. And all of that comes up and you don't have to engage with it, you don't have to deny it. You can sit with a sort of half smile on your face and watch it all come up and all of that, deconditions your habitual responses to external and internal stimuli and that's the value of the practice

or one of the big values of the practice. You mentioned your book, I do wanna talk about your book and maybe I get you to talk about a few specific points. I'm going to read this passage back to you and get you to respond because I do think it fits into the relanguaging that we talked about at the beginning here, that what you're trying to do is to take this ancient millennia old idea of the Bodhisattva or the Buddhist saint and put it in language that we can relate to with some humor and some self-disclosure. And again, listener, we are going to get to the how of this later, but humor me.

All right. So here's you talking in ways that I think are quite different from most books about the bodhisattva ideal. Quote. During my college years, I gave myself the nickname Slick Hot Chocolate Rod, Meltzen Your Mouth, Not In Your Hand. Actually, I considered the name to be much grander, like a Subur-K, with user instructions attached.

Although in my mind, the nickname was quite accurate, it did not survive my early 20s. These days, although I fantasize about going out to the clubs or having random hookups and engaging in wild, uninhibited group sex, there is nothing more exciting than a nice quiet dinner, a glass of sweet red wine, a few episodes of The Golden Girls, and a late-night pipe of tobacco. Sometimes I think I'm a modern-day hobbit.

I'm also a holy man, or more precisely Alama, Tibetan Buddhist title I earned after spending a little over three years in silent, cloistered retreat. Alama means teacher, but carries the connotation of spiritual heaviness, a profound gravitas. Supposedly, I am heavy with spiritual realization. When I tell people I'm Alama, they ask, Oh, like the animal, in my mind, I respond, No, like fuck you.

Maybe this response, though not voiced, isn't so spiritual. All right. So that's that's one of my favorite quotes from from the book. What do you think as I read it back to you? Me too. I mean, it's the truth. And when I started writing the book, particularly the prologue, I said, if I'm going to do this, I'm gonna tell the truth. I'm gonna tell the truth about how I'm showing up in this moment who I am.

I'm gonna tell the truth about how I'm tired of that fucking joke. You know, I guess, oh, now everyone, it's old. We get over it. But yeah, like, you have to know that I am like you and that you're like me. And this is a pivotal imperative point of this book. There can be no gaps, no valleys between us.

You should be able to reach out and touch me. And yes, I do have these deep in capacities because of years of meditation, right? I can do certain things which I talk about in the book, but that doesn't mean that I'm special. It means that I have done the work of learning about my own mind and body, which I talk about throughout the book, you know, as well. But yeah, like it's so important that we come into a multi-dimensional expression.

I'm not just a llama, I'm not just black, I'm not just queer, I'm all of this together, and this is what it looks like when I'm practicing all of these desires and identity locations together. I am a sexual being, you know, I have, you know, I can tap into a lot of the radical energy, just like many people can do that. And that energy and the practices and expressions of sexuality are also sacred

and holy as well. I have to name my desires in order to transform my relationship to them. As I say in the book, there's no liberation without telling the truth, right? And this is the truth, right? I will probably sit in front of the TV and watch the golden girls tonight

and have a glass of wine and a little pipe of tobacco, which is more as you will see, you know, reading the book as a spiritual practice, you know, that I've been taught, to offer tobacco to the land and to other unseen beings as well, but like that's who I am. And I put it up front, so you can make a choice as to if you're ready

to take this journey with me, you know, through this book because this is just the beginning. You know, the prologue is just, we're just making our way up to the top. It's like being on a roller coaster, like you have to make the climb up to get that momentum. So when you start going down the hill, you're speeding through the track,

and this is what the book is. So if you're going to hang with it, you have to be sure at the beginning, because I'm giving you all the data you need to trust me or not. I think you said something about, right there, but unseen beings, and that reminds me,

because in the book, there are all these references to the divine, to spirit worlds, other realms of existence, ancient magic, forgotten gods. So is that all poetic language, or do you actually know, okay, so tell me more? No, okay, so say tell me more. No, absolutely, I absolutely believe in everything. There's very little that's poetic in this book. I actually

mean what I say, but it can be hard if we're not coming from that kind of framework. For me, I live very closely with unseen beings. You know, my home is populated with spirits right now, they're around me right now, the land is populated with all kinds of beings. I talk about Confederate soldiers because I live in Atlanta, which is traditionally Cherokee, Muscogee, and Creekland, but I live around all these energies and these beings who are still connected to the land that I can feel in some cases see, but always interact with regardless. And this is part of, for me, a way to decolonize

so much of even Western Buddhism, including contemporary mindfulness, right? For me, remembering that it's not just me or us in this particular realm that we're a part of this, what I call a sacred or spiritual ecology. There are multiple beings arising around us and us, and that we've lost the vital connection to these beings, which I think partially has contributed to the kind of collective suffering that we're moving through, we've lost connection and belief. How do we get connection to these unseen beings and what do we do with the voice in our head

by that might be saying, well, this is religious folklore. Yeah. For some of us, that voice is part of the ways in which we struggle as colonized to people, as colonizers and as the colonized, right? To disrupt a belief in the unseen world is to limit one's agency because there is great agency and power if we connect to the unseen world, including our ancestors and deities and so forth. But when those voices are coming up and it had for me, you know, for many years, I just allowed myself to get curious. I was like, okay, what if this is actually true? How can I actually find data to support this?

Like, who can I talk to? What do I need to read? And that was a process I began in my early 20s with the help and support of many people and thinkers and practitioners and so forth. And slowly I began to collect this data and how these experiences of really beginning to understand that I wasn't alone.

Right. That I was moving through this ecology with other beings and that we impacted one another. There were things that were happening in my life that really were the result of these unseen forces and beings around me. And the more I began to pay attention, the more I could disrupt some of this impact by developing a relationship with these energies and these beings. Learning how to set boundaries, learning how to have conversations, learning how to benefit to help in ways that I could, And that began to transform my life. And I became less afraid of living. And I felt like I could ask for help whenever I need it. And that of course, for me,

is the foundation of my practice, like deep devotion to ancestors and to deities and to other kinds of unseen beings as well. One of the things I like about the Buddha is he said, he talked about a lot of stuff. Some of it very straightforward, philosophical and contemplative exercises that you can do in your life for in your meditation practice. And some of it, mesoteric and metaphysical, superpowers, karma, rebirth, enlightenment, but he very clearly said, don't take it on face value just because I'm saying it comes see for yourself. That was his phrase, come see for yourself.

And so as I listen to you talk about these unseen beings and powers, I have not gathered that data, but I suspect what you're saying, but you'll correct me if I'm wrong, is that don't let your lack of data or lack of belief in or experience with these forces, beings, phenomena preclude you from following my advice about becoming a new saint. Yeah, because yeah, that's part of the path of becoming a new saint, this connection. But I really believe that the full actualization of the new saint is really rooted in developing

a relationship with the unseen. I think we have to die. You know, actually, I know we have to die, right? And that is an experience that is really a transition from the scene into the unseen. Is an energetic transfer, perhaps, there's one way we can talk about it. And I want to understand that now, instead of waiting to the moment of my transition, and to figure out what's happening with things that I'm not seeing, you know, or sensing. happening with things that I'm not seeing, you know, or sensing. But for me, it's always been important to know, right? You know, and I think that not knowing can really contribute

to a lot of suffering from many of us. We feel victimized. And that's exactly how I felt early on in my life. I felt deeply victimized by forces and an around me that I maybe wasn't getting all the tools and resources I needed to work with. And this is what led me into Buddhism actually. It was this treasure trove of methods and tools to figure out what's happening. But just to clarify something for me, because I can understand how you would feel victimized by unseen forces that are social, cultural, economic. But are you also talking about beings on other realms of existence and you are? Exactly.

Uh-huh. Okay, so how does one come to know, and again, I'm asking this from the question of a respectful, friendly, agnostic, you. You were talking about gathering data, coming to know these beings. How does one even begin that process? Well, you know, it's reading, first of all, about the lives of people who had deeper experiences with the unseen.

I was fortunate to start developing relationships with people who were mediums and psychics, right, and intuitives. And my relationship with them began to kind of highlight parts of my life that had always been confusing, but they began to like show me all these different forces working. And so I took that information, that data, and I began to test it out for myself, like what's actually happening? Who's here? And it literally, you know,

in terms of conscious beings around us, it just really began with like, openly and honestly talking, you know? Like that's really honestly where it began for me is like I just wanna have a conversation, like what's going on, what's happening? I can feel something. I can definitely feel something, but that's all I have right now.

And then slowly I learned how these conscious beings were communicating, particularly my ancestors, in my ancestors practice, right? And then I just like slowly from there, just built up more and more trust, that trust evolved into a deep faith. Yeah, would even say devotion to the workings of the unseen world. And because of that, over all these years of this practice, I just feel held. Like, I don't, I don't feel like I'm just in the world alone trying to figure out, suffering and violence. I feel like there are beings who are wanting to help. And now I'm much more open to receiving that help.

You know, and I talk about prayer in the book. I have a whole chapter on prayer, which is for me, a, the avenue through which I communicate with the unseen, in the same way the spiritual saints did. But you have to ask for what you need, right? Which is a core practice of mine. And that comes, you know, often in the form of prayer, this is what I need. And I let beings help me and assist me in gathering the resources for what I need. I wouldn't be here without a whole bunch of prayers and a whole bunch of help from the unseen world. I'm gonna talk to the listener for a second with you here.

It's a interpret. No, no, no, no, I'm not interpreting at all. That's above my pay grade. But more, just providing some context to listeners that Lamarad is, I think, just more open about something that a lot of his colleagues believe in and believe they've experienced, but don't talk about widely. Most, if not all, of the meditation teachers with whom I am close have a real conviction around what we might call magic.

In fact, in a recent episode of Meditation Party with 7A, Celacian, Jeff Warren, we talked a lot about that. I'll put a link in the show notes. But so many of the meditation teachers that I know consult mediums. And these are big names who have been on this show. They probably won't talk about a public item. I'm not going to out them, but they consult mediums. They believe in the Buddhist lore around superpowers that can it ease. That's the technical name that can be developed through the practice of certain forms of meditation.

So I have no evidence for any of this stuff. I'm not taking a stand at all. I have just, like I said before, a friendly agnosticism maybe maybe a little bit of skepticism too, but openness of doing my best to stay open. Anyway, that's the context I want to provide. Well, you know, we talked about this, you know, in one of our past sessions as well, episodes around the intellectualization of material like this. It's like it's a way to keep it keeps us safe. I'm not saying, you know, this is not argument, you know, but just like, just really thinking about my process around things because for me, for many years, I was like, I just want to, I just want

to keep things simple. Like this is the only thing, everything that I'm sensing is all I can deal with. If I can't see it, then I don't want to deal with it. You know, and that, of course, never worked out in terms of social issues. You know, there's lots of things that I don't see. They're definitely creating a lot of problems, right? But for me, when I started writing this book, I said, okay, I just have to be completely out about everything. I think for many years, particularly being a Dharma teacher, I felt very censored and policed, not necessarily by people, but by myself, like I was censoring myself. And that began my work publicly as a teacher in radical Dharma, you know, and that was really about racial justice. It was very clear. But after radical Dharma, I was like, no, I really want to talk about everything. You know, I want to talk about

ritual and ceremony and prayer and magic, you know, and how that deeply influences my relationship to this practice, influences my understanding of Buddhist mythology as well. And that's the true telling piece. It's like, yeah, this is who I am. I am also a deep reflection of the ancestors that I descend from. I come from people who were deeply connected to the unseen world, deeply connected to the land, right? And that's an orientation that's reawakening quite strongly in me right now. That honor that. But at the end of the day, like we take on these beliefs because this is how we begin to manage the

world, right? This is how we move through the world. And as I always say, I don't really care what you believe in. I'm much more interested in if your beliefs are reducing harm in the violence for yourself and for others. And if these beliefs are actually getting you free, from whatever you think you need to be free from. That's my only concern as a teacher. I don't really care about people being Buddhist,

you know, or practitioners in any way. I care about the reduction of harm in the Bible. More Lamar Raad Owens right after this. What a life these celebrities lead? Imagine walking the red carpet, the cameras in your face, the designer clothes, the worst dress list, big house, the world constantly peering in, the bursting bank account, the people trying to get their grubby mitts on it. What's he all about? I'm just saying, being really, really famous, it's not always easy.

I'm Emily Loitani and I'm Anna Le, being really, really famous, it's not always easy. I'm Emily Loitani and I'm Anna Lyong-Rofi. And we're the hosts of Terribly Famous from Wondery, the podcast which tells the stories of our favourite celebrities from their perspective. Each season we show you what it's really like being famous by taking you inside the life of a British icon. We walk you through their glittering highs and eyebrow raising lows and ask, is fame and fortune really worth it? Follow terribly famous now wherever you get your podcasts

or listen early and ad-free on Wondery Plus on Apple Podcasts or the Wondery app. I'm Rob Briden and welcome to my podcast, Briden and we are now in our third series. Among those still to come is some Michael Paling, the comedy duo Egg and Robbie Williams. The list goes on, so do sit back and enjoy. Briden and on Amazon Music, Wondery Plus, or wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget we've got a ton of new meditations over on the 10% happier app, including meditations on chronic pain and sleep.

Download the 10% happier app today wherever you get your apps and get started for free. Let's, as promised, get to the how here. How do we become new saints? You write in the book, the new saint has 10 characteristics. I'm going to list them and then give you the option to expand on whichever ones you want to expand on. How's that sound? Sure. Sounds good.

Grounded in radical Dharma, you reference that, but I haven't yet given you a chance to define it. Understands that this is a time of spiritual warfare. Works between and or in collaboration with the unseen world, embraces rather than bypasses the complexity of identity, speaks in the language of the times, not afraid of taking risks, not fearless, however, will not free everyone, but they will, if they are authentic, inspire others to do the work of liberation. Is a profit, which means that the new saint reveals what is happening right now and does work that is sacred? Lots of stuff there, yeah, you know, radical Dharma.

It means that like, yeah, we have to be as concerned with social liberation as we are with ultimate liberation. So everything that I do is about being first grounded in this reality, grounded, and aware of the systems and the institutions that create harm, and bridging that with an ultimate spiritual practice that's helping me to connect to the emptiness and the fluidity of the phenomenal world or the essence rather of the phenomenal world right and for me that's ultimate freedom

right to transcend form and return back to this ultimate liberated expression of who we are I liberated expression of who we are. I will tell you one of those points that holds a lot of energy for me actually is the point about spiritual warfare. It actually took me a little bit of effort to name that for myself and for others because for me there's a lot of fear around spiritual warfare and that goes back to some of my earlier comments around the unseen world. It's like, yeah, there's a lot happening in the unseen. And so if I name this period of spiritual warfare, that means I start taking the unseen world seriously.

And then I'm afraid I don't have what I need to be in relationship to the unseen world. Yes, there's political warfare, there's social warfare. We see that, particularly in this country, but many countries around the world right now, but underneath the political social, which I see as relatives, I see the spiritual warfare, which is an expression of the unseen.

And I had to really take a stand and say, yes, I am an activist, yes, I believe in disrupting systems of violence, but I also know that these systems are being perpetuated by these unseen forces. And I want to have an impact in the unseen world, right? I want to be in right relationship. I want to be in a balanced relationship with an unseen world. And that begins to create a more balanced experience, a grounded experience for us, you know, in the relative. So I think there is, you know, something in there about prophecy as well. Prophecy isn't about me telling the future, it's about telling the truth of what's

happening right now. And we can't stand prophets. Right? Honestly, right? You read the Bible. You know, in the Bible, the prophets are stoned the death because they get on people's nerves because they keep telling you the truth and you don't want to deal with the truth. And so we try to erase the prophets or we try to confuse the prophets. So what have you?

To tell the truth really costs, like is it going to cost something to mirror back to people the suffering that they're trying to avoid? It's better to erase the profit than to actually do the work of tending to our own suffering. And I think that's especially true of the anti-transgender legislation that's happening everywhere. That people would rather erase transgender folks instead of beginning to do the work of understanding that we can be free from binaries, that we can choose to embody a way of being that's much more fluid and open and more spacious, right? And so instead of doing that work to understand

that fluidity, we try to kind of erase people that are reminding us that there's a different way of being. You know, and for me, that's prophecy as well. There's a truth here. I just don't want to deal with it because it costs too much to take that truth seriously. I often say that too, that the new St. tradition is a pyramid scheme, which everyone hates when I say that, but I love it because it's so evocative. But what I mean by that is that I don't have to save the world. And that goes back to this idea of perfection.

It's like, I'm not trying to save everyone. The Buddha didn't save everyone. Jesus didn't save everyone. Dr. King didn't save everyone. You're in so forth and so on, right? But what this does mean is that I can inspire people. So again, the Buddha emerged and then over 2,500 years later, we're still talking about him, but more specifically,

his teaching. Right. And so the new saint is really about inspiring a couple of people to do something different. And then they inspire a couple of people and so forth and so on. So this tree, this pyramid scheme emerges, but the great thing about this is that no one loses. You know, like everyone gains from this. So to work more efficiently by really like focusing on people around us and really helping them and supporting them and just showing up in a really non-violent way is going to really deeply impact people.

So they can go out and start impacting people around them. I think one other piece here, another point is the fearlessness. That's another misconception. Like I think that fear is always present. Fear is always present for me. Every time that I take a stand, every time I say something really bold, there's a lot of fear. And so the new saint isn't fearless.

In fact, the new saint is full of fear, but we know how to respond to fear that doesn't limit how we show up in the world. We don't erase it. We don't push it away. We say, there you are. And you offer your self permission to feel that fear. And to say, yes, and I'm still going to make a certain choice that I know is the right choice to make. Because I know also that my practice will be able to negotiate or to hold the consequences of this action. And that's, you know,

that's what training that I received as an activist, right? Like we never went into a situation leaving that we could leave or we would leave without consequences. There are always consequences for setting boundaries, for setting up for yourself, right? But I can hold that. I can deal with that. There are two practices you talk about that are central for this new stature. One is awakened care and the other is responsiveness. Can you teach us about both of those? Yeah, absolutely.

So awakened care is a retranslation of what we call bodhicitta, which is translated as the awakened mind or the awakened state. And the bodhicitta is what the bodhisattva is training in to open one's heart, to have a decentralized way or view of relating to others. So bodhicitta for me is wanting to get free only because you want others to be free. So it's not just me wanting to be free, it's not just you wanting to be free, but it's us wanting to be free together. And I'm doing my part to embody that.

In the new saint, I reinterpret bodhicitta as awakened care. And awakened care really has three main parts, which is compassion, love, and joy, but all that arises within the element are at the state of emptiness. Right? So emptiness is like the fourth part of this. But for me to do the work of helping people, I wanted to be full of compassion, which is an attention or an attunement to suffering and discomfort. I wanted to be loving, which is a deep wish for people to be free, right, from that suffering.

And not only that, a deep practice of just holding space for what's arising, right. And then the joy is directly from my ancestry, like to do hard work has to be held in joy. And for me, joy is also an expression of gratitude. So I am grateful to be able to choose to do this work of awakened care, like I am so happy for that, that I can care and help people in the way that I'm doing.

That's the awakened care. Of course, the other piece for me is moving from reactivity into responsiveness, which is coming directly out of contemplative practice. Particularly, mindfulness is that I want to develop a sense of agency with whatever arises for me in my body, in my mind or within the world around me. So I want to notice and name things and then choose how I want to respond.

And if I can just name things, then I can say, okay, there you are. And so how am I going to, as I often say, tend to what's arising. And for me, tending is an expression of awakened care. Like, how do I take care of what's happening? How do I reduce the suffering that may be arising for me? And how do I choose a liberation from the causes and conditions of suffering in this moment? And those are the, what I call the two magics are the two kind of weapons of the new saint, right?

Awakened care and responsiveness. I mean, maybe a simple, but hopefully not over simplified way to think about it is a combination of compassion or love and mindfulness and awareness. Yeah, sure, that's what it is. Right, and for me, compassion and love were so intertwined. And that's why Awakened Care emerged. Like it wasn't compassion and love separately.

They were always together for me. So I wanted to create this kind of like practice that just really just poured everything together and said, here you are. But I think joy is one of the main innovations here. A joyful mind, as we would often say in traditional Buddhist circles, like a joyful mind, what does that mean?

Well, it's a mind that recognizes it's innate spaciousness. It's innate fluidity and to allow that state of joy to hold the hard work of getting free. But I think what people will begin to tune into, and of course I stayed it. And the book is that so much of this work is influenced by my ancestors, my ancestors who survived My ancestors who survived, Chattel's slavery, right on the land that I'm on now. They survived this hundreds of years of this and gave the world and their liberation struggle so many resources. Like we shaped the world through our work of getting free and joy was part of that gift that we not just gave the world,

but it's the gift that we held on to to manage the intensity of racial trauma, you know, and intergenerational and trans-disrupal trauma, right? And I think many communities who have survived this kind of genocide and, you know, in situations like this have had to rely on joy and gratitude as much as possible to manage the brutal reality of annihilation. Things feel very heavy right now for many people in the world. How do we operationalize this exhortation towards joy? Like, what practices can we have in our lives that would give us joy in the face of everything

that's going on? Well, I think first going back to gratitude, like what am I grateful for? There are so many things that I'm not even thinking about that I have or that I have access to and I just want to remind myself that no matter how dark it is, there are things that are still important for me.

That can be family and relationships. It could be art. I mean, it can be so many things, right? It could be for me beauty. I talk about beauty in the book. Like I can just go outside and connect to nature or beautiful poem or a song. like that for me is foundational. And also I think about all those who've come before me who have themselves struggled

through really impossible situations. Again, I think about the saints, right? But there are so many people who have struggled to, as I say, make a way out of no way. And I just think about them often. I think about Harriet Tubman born into slavery, but who decided to leave slavery, and on top of that decided to go back and forth to liberate people, to bring people off of the plantations. Like for me, Harriet Tubman found this potential in liberation work, right? Yeah, it may seem small.

Like a small thing, she may be rescued, maybe 70 people. But she changed the lives of 70 people, right? And who can say that about their lives? How many people have we rescued from really dire intense situations in their lives. I mean, and ultimately as a practicing Buddhist, yeah, I know and understand that this world is a dream, that this world is just an experience, and it's just an experience because I will die.

Everyone has died. You know, that's the core teaching of the Buddha. Everything that is born must die. If this were like a solid, tangible experience, there would be no change. But there is change, and so for me, there's hope. Like there is another experience that I can have that isn't so constricting as this one, right?

But again, I don't have to die to have that experience through my meditation practice. I can connect to the experience of space and fluidity and all of these other energetic elements like compassion, joy, gratitude, and so many others, right? And that keeps me moving through this period, right? But one thing that I will share, you know, is just that like my ancestors remind me that they survived a lot more than this. You know, and that actually keeps me going. Like every day, like my ancestors survived a situation that people weren't supposed to have survived and many didn't.

Their survival created the causes and conditions for me to be here, right, and for my family and my community and so forth. And therefore, it is part of my moral obligation to continue this liberation work, not just to survive, but to thrive right now, right, and I thrive by connecting to all these energies and states of mind that I just mentioned. And yes, I will die, and I'm not so afraid of that anymore. But I think people are filling a lot of tension because of how climate change and, you know, and theocal unrest and war and so forth really speeds us up towards this experience of death and dying, right? And so it's like you're pushing away death

and dying but it's coming every day, right? And that creates a lot of tension that can result in a lot of English, a lot of anxiety, of course, intense fear, right, rage, anger, disappointment, despair, all of that. I've been slightly interrupted by this feline that is on my lap here. But if I'm hearing you correctly, one practice we can do is to tune into the fact that several things can be true at one time. We can be in the

middle of a climate catastrophe and the existence of cats is undeniable and you need to tune into the positive stuff in order to deal with the difficult stuff. Exactly. It can't be one or the other, it has to be both together, because that is the truth. That more than one thing is happening at once. Coming up with more Lamarad right after this. The End Bosch Legacy returns now streaming. Maddie's been taken. Oh God. His daughter. Maddie!

He's in the hands of a madman. What are the police have been looking for me? But nothing can stop a father. We want to find her just as much as you do. I doubt that very much. From doing what the law can't. And we have to do this a by way. You have to.

I don't. Bosch Legacy watched the new season now streaming exclusively on FreeV. What other practices do you specifically recommend for people to engage in in order to pursue this kind of eminently doable version of st.hood that you've laid out for us. I think a big thing for me is returning to the natural world. And I have a chapter in there about the earth where I present this practice that's really about how do we start tuning back into the earth and to trees and to plants and so forth

into the wind, into the water and to fire. Like, we establishing a relationship to the elemental worlds are the natural worlds, knowing that the natural world can actually help us, can support us quite a bit. Not just to feel better, but I believe that a reconnection to the natural world is an antidote to climate change because we begin to become more sensitive again to the expression of the natural world to the elements. We live in such a disjointed relationship with the natural world, particularly earth. We don't feel the earth as living or as vital, but we see it as a resource to dominate. Right?

And that's just another expression of colonialism. The natural world, the phenomenal world, is there to be dominated by those who have the capacity to dominate, to start to disrupt that and to move into a much more harmonious relationship with the natural world that has always been maintained by many indigenous communities and cultures around the world. So for me, it's been like, yeah, I want to feel the earth. I want to feel the wind. I want to feel the warmth of the fire Like I want to feel like I am living in community

But the natural world instead of seeing the natural world as something inconvenient or something that's there solely for me to dominate and to manipulate Right and for me that's returning back to a deeply indigenous way of being, which we're so far away from mostly, you know, in many countries, particularly here in the United States. What is SNOEL? So snow.

Sometimes pronounced snow L, but snow L is only pronounced during the holidays. But those are the two primary pronunciations, but snow is just my method of working with sensation and material in my mind and in my body, right? And I first introduced this in Love and Rage, my previous book, but I wanted to bring it back as a tool because we all need a gimmick, right? You know, but snow for me means to first see, you know, I want to see. And then the end is to name. Right. So it's coming into an awareness, you know, what's arising. And then, oh, you know, is to own. And for me, owning is really taking

responsibility for what I am naming and seeing. Yet this is a rising. This is happening. Right. And of course, experiencing the E for me, it's like, yeah, I want to get curious about the sensations of this. I want to feel this, right. And then the Ls, right? So letting it go is the first cell and the second L is letting it float. So for me, I want to develop an agency to let go, to let go of fixating on things and to just hold space to let this material just kind of float within my mind, within my body and feeling as if I don't have to react to it, but just allowing

it to be there. It's getting us to this point of holding space for whatever arises so that we can therefore practice clarity and choose how to respond to what's arising. So do you recommend snow or snow? Well, I imagine it's both something you can do on the cushion while you're meditating and in your free range life. Exactly. I do it all the time. I think we are doing it all the time to an extent. I think we're seeing things recognizing it, you know, trying to figure it out, trying to let it go and doing all of that, you know, but I just wanted to create just a step-by-step approach, like rain for a lot of folks practice

rain. But snow came out of working with activists, actually. So it wasn't something that I created on my own, but it came out of working with activists who were trying to adopt contemplative practice into their work. So see it is just notice anything that's coming up in the mind, naming it as giving it a label, owning it is accepting that this is what's here right now, experiencing it is, you know, allowing yourself

if it's fear, anger, whatever it is to just, to actually be with whatever's coming up. Letting it go is, well, that's where I could use some help, the difference between letting it go and letting it float. Traditionally, letting it go is not reacting in our habitual modes of grabby-ness, revulsion, or denial. And then letting it float, just as continuing that. Like, so letting it float is just a reminder.

And that's for me really important, because I can let something go then all of a sudden I'm right back on top of it. Yeah. You know? So then I tell myself literally, okay, just let it float. Like clouds passing through the sky,

let it float. You know, let that anger float there. And that's going to get me into really experiencing the hurt beneath the anger. As I talk about in love and rage. Okay, so you have this, you have this new book and you're urging us all towards this ancient but revivified, hopefully ideal to live what you might just call the good life. A really wise of the good life it's not about accumulation alone it's about being useful to yourself and others being helpful how optimistic are you that people are gonna do this and that enough people will do it in order to avoid so many of the calamities that seem to be hurtling toward us, what's your prognosis,

I guess, for humanity? Yeah. I mean, this book isn't going to stop anything. Like I said, before my only goal is to just help as many people as possible, you know, and inspire people. That's really all this book is for, but one of the things that we have to negotiate is that, yeah, there are things that will happen, right? There are things spiraling towards us that will actually land. And how do I make sense of that? And how do I actually understand

that this is this world, this life is just one experience. That there are all these other experiences, and we know that primarily because we will die, you know, and transition into a whole other experience. We do what we can, but also understanding that there are things that have been sent into motion that I will not be able to prevent. But I do, and we all can actually develop a practice to hold space for what's arising and what's happening. And that in itself will begin to disrupt the greater impact of these issues. But I do absolutely believe that we're entering a new age. Like I think

that there are things that are being shared. There are truths about how we've chosen to be together as a collective on this planet that are changing, that are shifting. There are so many, so many more people really engaging in new ideas of community that I'm really excited about. I see so many young people with such a deeper awareness about the world than what I had

or what any of my friends had at their age. Like I just, there's so much hope. And that's another piece for me. I'm a very hopeful person. And that's not something that's taught in Buddhism. Hope takes us out of the present moment. But for me, because things are always changing, I am a hopeful person.

Like if I really engage with showing up in the moment and making choices to reduce harm and violence, then the future will change. Right? And the more of us who are engaged with that, the more we'll see a collective change as we move into the future. But everyone has to do their part. So this is my little piece.

And you're doing your piece as well through this platform. And so many of our colleagues are doing their piece. And that's the best that we can hope for. Again, I'm not here to try to become as influential as like Dr. King, you know, or Jesus? Like, I think when we talk about saints, we keep going to these people who create this intense, like sweeping change

for so many of us, but I'm not gonna be that, but I can be someone taking responsibility for my own practice and for reducing the violence that I cause and hopefully inspiring others to do the same thing when they see me doing it. That's all I'm hoping for and praying for as well. Let me finish on you with one last excerpt here.

The salt eaters, this is a quote here, the salt eaters are novel by Tony Cade Bambara, hopefully I'm pronouncing that correctly. Centres around two women named Velma Henry and Mini Ransom. Velma is a long time activist, but has recently succumbed to the years of stress accumulated between her activism, marriage, and job, and has been hospitalized for attempting to take her own life. Mini is probably the most gifted healer in the community and is called to the hospital

to heal Velma. However, Velma seems to be resisting. She wants no part of it. Many eventually ask, Velma, are you sure, sweetheart, that you want to be well? Just so's your sure sweetheart and ready to be healed because wholeness is no trifling matter. A lot of weight when you're well. I hear many asking me these questions right now asking if I'm ready to get more than just

healed, asking if I'm ready to get free. It seems like my whole life has been an answer to this question. And though sometimes I'm confused about what freedom feels like or if I'm as free as I think I am, I know this for sure, I consent to this sacred work. I consent to the brokenness, the rage and the hopelessness as well as the joy, the gratitude and the hopelessness as well as the joy, the gratitude, and the care, I consent to the weight of being healed and the responsibility I choose to get others well and free. This has been the only choice for me in this life. Would the help of the saints, both old and new, I keep moving on.

Yeah. Yeah. Of course, that's a quote that won't leave me. So that's been in my previous two books as well. That quote from the Salt Eaters. And for me, that has shaped so much of how I do work because it is a responsibility to come into the present moment, to stay in presentness means that I'm always negotiating all the distractions. They're trying to take me out of the present. Into fantasies about how much better it could be and so forth and so on, but to be here in this

moment, to hold space for both the joy and the rage and to always choose this moment, there's a tremendous responsibility, but that's the only way forward. Like this is the only door into liberation that's available is through the present moments. I can't get free in the past nor will I get free in the future. I can only get free right now. Right. And the second itself as it arises. Yes, and your declaration there at the end that you're going to keep moving on, there is a desire, I feel at some times, to or a temptation to tunnel into yourself, to put your head in the sand like an ostrich, to take ultimate refuge in Netflix and polypharmacy, et cetera, et cetera.

You are basically saying, yeah, I'm going to keep, I'm going to, what is that, what's that quote, somebody said it on the show, I'm going to keep, I'm going to what is that? What's that quote? Somebody said it on the show. I'm going to forget to participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. That's what I took from what you said there. Yeah. But I don't have that privilege to bypass the world because the world is always trying to get me. So I said, you know what? I'm going to actually stand up to the aggression of the world by just saying, yeah, I'm going to be present. I'm going to negotiate and to disrupt all the ways that I'm being told that I don't belong here. And it is from people like this, the great saints, both spiritual and activist saints, that we learn how to do this work because they did it.

They said, I'm just going to show up and this is what I'm doing and the world isn't going to erase me. I'm going to continue caring about myself, caring about people, and connecting to these higher states of being. I think that's incredibly important. Yeah, a lot of folks are hiding out, but incredibly important. Yeah, a lot of folks are hiding out, but a lot of folks will. And I think that's why many of us, we have the capacity to do a lot of labor, even on behalf of those who aren't doing the labor right now. It would be easier if more of us were doing it. But I think that we do this work because we know that there are people who may not have the capacity to do it. And that's part of the new things tradition, as well as the body-sought for tradition.

Let me try out an idea. I don't know if it's gonna work. You said before I do this work, because I have no, I don't have the privilege to hide out, because the world's always trying to get me. Speaking on the other side of the spectrum, as a person who I often joke, I got all the advantages, all the privileges.

I, an unearned way, got them all. So I guess I could hide out and I think a lot of people have that temptation and do, do it because they feel like that's the path to being like as safe as possible. But I actually think that's an illusion. We were not designed for safety and isolation. That, as I often say, a lonely human in the evolution days was a dead human. And so actually, that you're safer engaged than you are withdrawn. Does that land free? What, no matter how privileged you are? Yeah, absolutely. And I point this out in the beginning of the book,

collective survival, collective struggle, collective care. That's what we have to be really working in. Like it's about us working together to bring about a more liberated future. And I can't do that alone. This is why I always say that like I'm not trying to save everyone. I'm just trying to inspire people, inspire others around me so they can inspire others around them and so forth. That's collective liberation. We're inspiring each other to work together. Can you remind us all of the name of the book and also just list any other resources that you've put up into the world that you want people to go check out?

Absolutely. So the new saints from broken hearts to spiritual warriors. And you can visit my website, LamaRod.com, for many other resources. And you can follow me on social media, Instagram, LinkedIn, and so forth for more resources as well. And I provide and offer lots of live sessions monthly of live sessions, monthly, from mindfulness to DED practice. And I think there's a space for everyone to get involved. But just to say this, everything that I do is about social and ultimate liberation together.

So if you're not about justice, then I may not be the one for you. Well, I'm a huge fan and I'm grateful to you for coming on so many times and congratulations on the new book and thank you again. Yeah, I think I should get a t-shirt that says repeat return or something. That's a deep Buddhist nerd joke right there. Just just just people who don't know that the the the old school the form of Buddhism that Lama Rod does not practice the old school of Buddhism. There are several levels of enlightenment. One is

stream enter the next is once returner than there's non-returner and then our hot, which is allegedly fully enlightened and and yes, I should get you a repeat returner. our haunt, which is allegedly fully enlightened. And yes, I should get you a repeat returner. T-shirt, we could, we could both celebrate your appearances and diss the terravadans at the same time. Thank you again, Lamarad, appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks again to Lamarad. Love that guy. So cool to have him on the show so many times. Thank you to you for listening, go give us a rating or a review that really helps. Also go check out all the stuff I'm doing on social media that also helps.

Thank you most of all to everybody who works so hard on this show. 10% Happier is produced by Justin Davy, Gabrielle Zuckerman, Lauren Smith, and Tara Anderson. DJ Kashmir is our senior producer, Marissa Schneiderman is our senior editor, Kevin O'Connell is our director of audio and post-production and Kimmy Regler is our executive producer, Nick Thorburn of Islands, wrote our theme.

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