Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - Five Ways to be Less Distracted | Shaila Catherine

Episode Date: March 11, 2026

Practical Buddhist strategies to focus the mind.   Shaila Catherine is a dharma teacher and author of the book titled "Beyond Distraction: Five Practical Ways to Focus the Mind." She authored two additional books on the concentration practices called jhana and approaches to insight meditation. She has practiced for more than 45 years, including nine years, cumulatively, of silent retreat. Shaila has been leading meditation retreats for 30 years, and has developed an array of in-depth online courses offered through BodhiCourses.org.   In this episode we talk about: The Buddha's struggles with distraction Shaila's attempts to make the teachings of the Buddha accessible to contemporary minds The importance of getting to know your own thought patterns the counterintuitive strategy of "avoid it, ignore it, forget it," Replacing seduction with mindfulness Developing a flexibility of mind And why we're vulnerable to our own tendencies when we're not mindful Related Episodes: How to Focus | Shaila Catherine   Get the 10% with Dan Harris app here Sign up for Dan's free newsletter here Follow Dan on social: Instagram, TikTok Subscribe to our YouTube Channel   Additional Resources:  Shaila's upcoming course: Beyond Distraction Shaila's books Insight Meditation South Bay This episode is sponsored by: LinkedIn Ads — Reach the right professionals with precision targeting. Spend $250 and get a $250 credit at http://www.linkedin.com/happier Quō — The smart business phone system with AI call logging and summaries. Try free + 20% off your first six months at https://www.quo.com/happier Rosetta Stone — Language learning that's immersive and intuitive. Start learning at https://www.rosettastone.com/happier Northwest Registered Agent — LLC formation, registered agent service, and free business resources at https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/Happier-free To advertise on the show, contact [e-mail] or visit https://advertising.libsyn.com/10HappierwithDanHarris

This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hello, everybody. How we doing? One of the most common and most insidious complaints of meditators, both new meditators and experienced meditators, is distraction. I cannot tell you how often people come up to me and say that they want to meditate, but they're bad at it because their mind is all over the place. You've heard me to use this term before, but I often call that the fallacy of uniqueness. People to believe that they have some sort of bespoke lunacy that only their mind is chaotic and cacophonous, but actually it's really just the human condition.

It's very common. And you can blame evolution. We were likely wired to have these racing minds that are constantly on the lookout for threats and food and mates. In any event, I'm not here to argue that distraction isn't real. It's very real, and it can be frustrating and difficult in meditation. It's such a common problem that the Buddha himself laid out some very detailed practices for dealing with it. And today we're going to talk to a master meditator about five strategies straight from the Buddha. And these tips are good not only for meditation, but also for the rest of your life, where for many of us, distraction is a massive issue.

Shaila Catherine is a Dharma teacher and the author of a book called Beyond Distraction. She has practiced for more than 45 years, including nine years cumulatively on silent retreat, long way of saying this is a person who has put in the work. Shaila also produces meditation courses, which you can access. through bodiecourses.org. I'll drop a link to that in the show notes. In fact, this summer, Shaila will be dropping a whole course on the subject of distraction. And again, there's a link in the show notes. In this conversation, we talk about the Buddha's own struggles with distraction. Shaila's attempts to make the teachings of the Buddha accessible to contemporary minds. We live in a very different context to state the obvious. The importance of getting to know

your own thought patterns, the counterintuitive strategy of avoid it, ignore it, forget it, replacing seduction with mindfulness. I'll let her unpack that. The power of developing a flexibility of mind. And why we are vulnerable to our own tendencies when we're not mindful. Real quick, two things to say before we dive in here. First, this episode actually first aired back in June of 2022. But as we occasionally do, we pulled a gem out of the archives to share it with you again.

Second thing to say is, if you want to meditate with me, I am running a five-day meditation challenge over on my new app, which is called 10% with Dan Harris. This challenge is inspired by a new audible original, an audiobook that I co-wrote and co-recorded with my great friend and the great meditation teacher, Seben A. Salasi. The book is called Even You Can Meditate. And so this challenge is kind of running alongside the release of the book. The challenge starts on March 23rd. It runs for five days. And alongside the daily meditations from Sebinay, we're also going to be doing two live meditation and Q&A sessions on video. Anyway, a lot going on.

You should come check out the app. You can join the challenge and get all the details by going to Dan Harris.com or just download the app wherever you get your apps. All right, we'll get started with Shaila Catherine right after this.

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Thank you. It's great to be back. Let's start on a kind of definitional tip here. The last time you were on the show, you talked about concentration in meditation, ability to focus following up on your two prior books on concentration. You've gone on to write a new book about distraction. Obviously, I know you believe these subjects are related, but how are they also distinct? Oh, that's a great question. I think people are surprised that I write a book on distraction after writing the more advanced, deeper books on deep concentration and liberating insights.

You'd think that would be the culmination of one's work. But they're very distinct in the sense that there are certain hindrances, certain obstructions that prevent one from deepening one's concentration and realizing deep and freeing insight. And that's primarily the restless mind. It's having a mind that just doesn't cooperate with our intentions. And as one deepens in one's meditation, we have periods where the mind really does cooperate as our samadhi is getting deep as our concentration is clarifying. but we also become more sensitive to the obstacles and have a lot of respect for those obstacles that persist. And I believe that it's the restlessness, it's the distracted thinking,

it's the habits of continuing to reach for various stimulation for sometimes what seems like almost no reason at all, just conditioning or just a little trigger for an experience, something kind of like the, I don't know why. maybe enliven the day. And yet the consequences very often are quite detrimental to what we really value about cultivating the mind. So I came to appreciate the, you could say the hindrances a lot more as my practice deepened and as I continued to work with students who were wanting to develop samadhi.

So this current book, Beyond Distraction, is really about that. It's about focusing on distraction so that we can move. it, like really looking at the forces that continue to distract us and to develop practical strategies for overcoming restless thinking, rumination, chronic worry, anxious thoughts, those sorts of things. Now, that's slightly different than my first book, which is focused and fearless, and that introduces the practices of concentration, how to stabilize the mind, how to develop conditions that conducive for concentration. And yes, overcoming distraction is one chapter in that book. But I felt like I

needed to go further with that one chapter. So it was like I took that chapter and expanded it into a whole book for this third book. The first book, Focused and Fearless, not only introduces concentration and provides exercises for anyone to develop and strengthen their capacity to focus, but it also introduces the four absorption states called Jonna, where the mind gets deeply concentrated and unified in meditation. It introduces the four formless attainments, where one takes as the object, infinite space and infinite consciousness. So that's kind of far out. And it introduces the relationship between concentration and insight. But then my second book, Wisdom Wide and Deep, That presents a complete path and a comprehensive path of deepening samadhi in concentration

and understanding the conditionality of body and mind and exploring insight practice. But from the perspective of my teacher, Powak Sayyadau, who presents a very detailed, very systematic approach that comes, It's like walking through the ancient meditation manual called the Vesudimaga. So my first book is a great introduction to deepening concentration and meditation. My second book is really an advanced book for people who want to look at details. And I do mean details. It gets pretty detailed and it's thick. And this third book is much lighter, more accessible to readers.

So I would recommend if anybody wanted to read my work, start with the third one, then go to the first one. The interesting thing, or at least an interesting thing about distraction to my mind, is that a major barrier for many people is what I call the fallacy of uniqueness. I hear from people, oh, I can't meditate because my mind is uniquely distractible and flitting all over the place. But you make the point in your book, in your new book, that even the Buddha, if you believe the ancient Buddhist scriptures or texts, even the Buddha, pre-enlightenment, was noticing that his mind was all over the place. Yeah, I think that's very believable to me. I don't think it was kind of false humility that he was saying, oh, yeah, that happened to me too. I think he genuinely did the work to awaken, which meant he had to recognize and work skillfully with the very same hindrances that all minds have. Do you have a sense of why? This is a question I get all the time. Why do we have these racing minds?

Yeah, I don't know. I mean, sometimes I like to say, well, eyes see and ears hear, so minds think that it's kind of what that thought. function does. The problem actually, though, isn't that we're able to think because really life would be a lot worse if we couldn't think. The problem is that our thoughts very often link up with, it's going to sound very pejorative, but it is, it's defilements. So we're thinking in a way that is infested with greed, or we're thinking in a way that is biased by anger, or we're thinking in a way that keeps putting selfishness at the center. And so we keep getting caught in those, in greed, hate, and delusion, basically, in Buddhist terms, the three poisons.

And our thoughts keep reinforcing those poisons, and then the poisons keep reinforcing the thoughts. So there isn't a problem with being able to think. In fact, it's really important that we learned to reflect deeply, that we learned to think clearly, that we can analyze fairly, that we can understand with wisdom and clear discernment what's actually happening. But can we take the defilements out, the greed, hate, and delusion, and not let that determine the nature of our thoughts, the direction of our thoughts, the character of our thoughts? Well said. In your new book, you run through five strategies for dealing

with distraction. If it's okay with you, I'd love to take a tour, a spin through these now. Great. Let's go on the journey. I love these strategies. And I'm one who loves lists. So it's nice to have a handy-dandy little list of five things to try. Sometimes people feel like, oh, I'm in that rut again. I can't do anything about it. Well, why don't you try strategy one and then strategy two? And if it doesn't work, go to strategy three. There are, things that we can do to alter our patterns, to change our habits, and to shift those tendencies of mind. And so I like the practicality of it, and I like that it's just a list of five. I can remember that many. And this is a list that comes right out of the aforementioned Buddhist scriptures.

Yes, it's in the middle-linked discourses. I wrote the book based upon discourse number 19 and 20, And the list of five is in a discourse called the removal of distracting thoughts, which is middle-linked discourse is number 20 in the Polycanon. So it's very accessible. People can go to the original source and make their own interpretations of how to understand those strategies as well. I include the sutas, a translation of the sutas in the book so people have the primary source. Because that's something I love to do in my own practice. I love the discourses of the Buddha.

I like getting that inspiration. And then I contemplate, how is this accessible and applicable to me now? You know, more than 2,600 years after the Buddhist life, we still have minds. We struggle with the same basic tendencies. But how does it apply to contemporary life with the kinds of things that I struggle with? And time and again, I keep finding that the Buddhist advice is still good. it still works. Sometimes we have to make a few tweaks.

Like if he's talking about a chariot, we might have to shift to, you know, our automobile in our minds. In these discourses, he might use similes that might not always address our daily lives. But there's something that's close by that we can interpret it with. And then we get a sense of practicing what the Buddha really taught, what he was teaching, somebody else. And I imagine that he taught a discourse like this because somebody came to him and said, oh, dear Buddha, my mind is torturing me. I keep thinking this and that. What can I do about it? And he says, well, try this and try this and try this and try this and finally try that.

Quick side note here, Shiley used the term sutas, that is the ancient term from the Pali language. That is, in Sanskrit you might say sutras, which is basically just a another way of saying the Buddhist texts or scriptures. Anyway, having gotten that out of the way, let's talk about these five strategies. The first is to replace unwholesome thoughts with wholesome thoughts. Say more, please. I know. It sounds, in a way, it sounds kind of obvious. If your mind is thinking thoughts of hate, then change those to something else. Maybe thoughts of loving kindness. If there's somebody that you really resent to the point that when you think about them, all you can think about are the things that you resent,

then really try to see something that you respect about them or that you're grateful for. If you have thoughts that are keeping you awake at night, having thoughts of, oh, I'm not going to be able to accomplish this, I'm not good enough, I can't meet this goal. People will think I'm a fraud. Then replace those thoughts. Think a different thought. like it'll be okay or something that produces a sense of confidence or trust in your capacity just

to do your best. First, we have to see that there is a tendency or a habit, kind of like a groove in the mind, that keeps taking us down a thought that is maybe affected by greed, hate, or delusion, or affected by some defilement, or is, you know, reinforcing an unwholesome state. And we see that those thoughts that we're thinking keep feeding that unwholesome state. So we try to do something. And one of the first things we can do is just change the thought. And the surprising thing is, is that often is enough. It often just shifts the energy so that that can help get us out of that groove in the mind. So are you talking here in this first strategy, are you talking about when you get distracted during meditation or when you're trying to fall asleep.

Oh, well, I use this strategy anytime there's an unwholesome thought in the mind. Anytime, anytime, inactivity, in conversation, waking up, going to sleep, and in meditation. This kind of just raises a whole set of issues for me or create some confusion that perhaps you can help me alleviate. So I thought when in meditation, and I completely understand how the strategy would be useful for free range mindfulness, you know, when we're out in our day-to-day lives. But when you're in meditation,

I thought, okay, the goal is to notice a thought or an urge or an impulse or an emotion arise, but you don't have to do anything about it other than see it, hopefully with a little bit of warmth. But now I'm hearing you say, actually, no, maybe add in some thinking to counterprogram against whatever unwholesomeness your mind has just vomited up. I think it's an option to add an additional intention there and shift the pattern of your mind. Being mindful of a thought and recognizing, oh, the mind is thinking now and that's an angry thought or that's a hateful thought or that's a fearful thought or whatever the thought might be. That actually in itself has already done a kind of replacing in the sense that it is replaced being seduced into the thought

to now the mindfulness and discernment that recognizes there's thinking happening. So we're no longer seduced into the content, we're seeing the process. And we've had the first really clear insight that a thought is just a thought. That already actually has replaced the seduction with mindfulness. In some practices, we just watch that, and when we're not feeding a thought, it dissipates anyway. So some approaches to mindfulness will have us just do exactly what you said, and it'll work. We'll see the thought and we won't feed it anymore so it will change on its own. But there are sometimes a deep conditioning, a repeated pattern, a thought that keeps coming back. And we might want to do more.

We might want to bring in something more than mindfulness. We might want to bring in some discernment, some energy, some investigation, some contemplation, some reflection. And we might want to actively make a different choice to occupy the mind with something else. And there are times when we need to shift it and we're developing this flexibility of mind, this capacity to shift and we're convincing ourselves very clearly that we're not stuck in that pattern because as soon as we shift out of it, we know we aren't stuck in it. In meditation, sometimes we do just as you said. We see it and then it naturally ends or fades and that's enough. We don't have to do anything else. Some mindfulness practices encourage one to see that one is thinking,

to know that that's thinking, and then to redirect your attention to something more tangible in the present moment. Maybe the sensations of the body sitting or breathing, maybe hearing a sound appear and disappear, and help ground the attention and the present moment. So this is another approach. Now, in this particular discourse, the language of it does seem to imply that the meditator is replacing an unwholesome thought with a wholesome one. But nevertheless, I feel that what we're talking about in terms of seeing a thought as a thought rather than being seduced in the content, or shifting from the preoccupation with thinking to now directing the attention to the body sitting and breathing. I feel like it's in the same range of this

strategy. It's still accomplishing the same purpose. It's shifting from one pattern that's unwholesome, which if we continued it would deepen that groove and that habit, and it's shifting into a more useful one, grounding in the present moment, allowing things to come and go. So even if we're not picking up an explicit, discursive thought, we're still bringing in some thought of wisdom or understanding. And so I put that in the same category. I just wanted to share just the simile that the booty uses. And he uses the simile of a carpenter who wants to remove a peg from a block of wood, and he takes a smaller peg and pounds on the smaller peg, which dislodges the larger peg, which falls through the block of wood, but the smaller peg doesn't get stuck in the wood because

it's smaller. So in the same way, we are using thought and our capacity to think, whether it's a whole discursive thought of loving kindness or of a quality that we appreciate about somebody to dislodge of an angry view, or it's simply the thought of shifting attention to the body sitting and breathing, or recognizing this is just a thought. It's taking a much smaller thought that we're not going to get caught by. We're not going to get stuck in. That's a really useful simile. I mean, I am as far from a carpenter as you can find. I'm the least handy person in the world, but I get it, and I can see exactly how I could use it. Can you say a little bit more about, how you use it either on the cushion or off, this strategy that is. So you might be talking to

somebody and thinking, oh, this is literally the most boring person I've ever encountered. And you can just drop in one little thought that knocks out the larger peg. And what would that thought look like? Oh, I think it's helpful for people to actually recognize what their patterns are. And if there's a judgmental thought about somebody being boring, you know, already pre-write a few alternatives because we know our patterns. We know our little nasty thoughts. They're very rarely unique. They're usually the same ones that we apply to a whole bunch of different people. So everybody first has to get to know their own patterns and then develop some alternatives because we don't want, we've already thought that thought. We don't need to keep thinking it. And it doesn't

really help us or them. So I might replace it if I thought, oh, this person is really boring. I might actually try to understand their perspective about something. What are they finding interesting in the subject that I find so boring? Or I might look at my impatience because whenever I'm bored, I'm impatient. I think something else should be happening. I'm not actually present. So I shifted back to inquire, why am I disconnected and judgmental in this situation? Or I might just shift to loving kindness.

Just a thought of loving kindness. This is a human being who is presenting themselves in the way that they're presenting themselves. They have joys, they have sorrows, they have suffering. Let me just be present for the humanness of them instead of the degree of fascination I might have with the content of what they're talking about or their style of speech or whatever it is I'm judging them for. Just connect heart to heart moment to moment in that encounter. with the person. So all of these, they develop that flexibility where we shift. We see that there's something that's not helpful that's arising within my own mind, and I'm making a shift to some alternative. I'm looking. Is there another way to see this? Is there another way to meet this?

For anybody who's new to the show and hasn't heard the term loving kindness, the ancient word for that is M-E-T-A-M-E-T-A meta, which also translate into the less grand concept of just friendliness, which I actually prefer. And what I'm hearing you say there is you don't have to have a fully formed sentence in the mind, perhaps, that you're using to replace whatever nasty little thought, to use your phrase has arisen. It can just be this kind of wordless impulse toward basic goodwill when we're in a conversation or if we're facing somebody or something where we're having the opposite ill will.

Certainly, yes. I don't think it has to be an articulated sentence in the mind, but it can be, especially for patterns that we repeat all the time, to have a clear intention to shift to. But I would say probably most of the time it's not a full sentence or a fully formed thought. It's just a kind of wordless shift in my own. encounter with the experience. So towards love and kindness, sometimes I just feel like there's a kind of contraction into like me and my territory, me and my thoughts, me and how I think things

should be. And there's a softening. I can shift to a softening that just opens and receives, just receives that. And that also is a shift that I would put generally in this strategy of replacing. We're recognizing a problem and we're asking, is there another way to be in this? Is there another more useful, more wholesome, more helpful way of encountering this? And we're allowing that shift to happen. We're doing something in the way that we meet our own patterns of mind so that we stop reinforcing the habit. Let me run by you a strategy that I have found supercharges strategy you're advancing here, which is to tune into how good it feels when whatever greed or hatred,

whatever variety of greed or hatred has had you in its grip, whenever it ends, how good it feels when it has passed. Just as a quick example, last night, my wife and I went to see a concert. It was great. We're really enjoying it. And at some point, for reasons that I don't fully understand, I just got carried away with several songs worth of rage about something completely disconnected from the concert.

I was just thinking about something that's happening in my life. And I just fully went there. I started thinking, let's just go. I'm tired. Let's just leave. And no mindfulness was mustered during this time. It was only later when I woke up and realized, oh, I'm not feeling this anymore.

And I saw just what a vast relief that was. And then the mindfulness came in. Like, oh, yeah, that was just a temporary. mind state. That doesn't need to blot out the sun. Anyway, I raise this because I feel like for me, there's tuning into that relief, you can sometimes use that when you're caught to jar you out of it because you already know once I see this as temporary and not a juggernaut, there's nothing I can do anything about. It can be a useful tool to interrupt. Anyway, I'm rambling here, but does that make any sense to you? It makes a lot of sense, but I would tend to put that more in the second strategy.

I've jumped ahead. Well, what is the second strategy? You've jumped ahead? Yes, yes, yes. These aren't hard and fast. Like I said, somebody can read the discourses and read these strategies and kind of place them maybe and interpret them maybe slightly different than I do. But they're nevertheless, I think, is a progression. And I think that slides into the second strategy, which is described as examining the danger in those thoughts. And we pick up the second strategy, usually when we've tried. the first one and it hasn't worked. We're still obsessed by it. We're still caught by it. And so we then realized, well, what is the danger here? Where is this leading? And you know, you were recognizing not only did you miss some of the concert because of the obsession with those thoughts, but it made you want to leave. It made you want to take action and do things based upon that anger. And actually, you were probably sitting in a fairly comfortable seat and you could have been enjoying yourself. So even in a situation like that, there's certain dangers where we're not

seeing the situation clearly. We're missing the present moment. We're reinforcing anger and hate. It could lead to speaking or acting based upon the hindrance or the defilement, which it's usually better to act on wisdom than on anger and hate. So we can recognize and contemplate those dangers. We can also see that we're stewing on something. And sometimes we stew on things a lot longer than the actual situation is. So we're perpetuating it. So when we contemplate the danger, we start to see all the unwanted consequences of that habit. And it builds the desire and the dispassion to get free of it. It helps us want to let it go. It helps us want to shift out of it.

And the Buddha often talked about seeing the gratification, the danger, and the escape, this three-part investigation or understanding. So this discourse emphasizes the danger. But to me, they're linked. We are perpetuating that habit, that pattern in this case, of ruminating on something that stimulates anger. What are we getting out of it? You know, what, did you feel like you were getting anything out of it?

Was it stimulating something? Plans for revenge, sure. Yes, but why would you want to pay for a concert ticket and then sit in that seat planning revenge? There are other things we seemed to get out of plans for revenge. Sometimes it builds an essence of energy and stimulation like we feel really alive. Sometimes it entertains us if the concert wasn't particularly exciting. Or sometimes it builds a sense of energy and stimulation. a sense of self, where we can feel stronger or we can feel more confident because we're angry.

Sometimes we seem to get something out of even painful states. There's a reward in there sometimes. And seeing the danger to me implies that we need to see the reward and recognize that's really not that rewarding. It's a deceptive reward. In order to see the danger, though, don't you need to see that you're caught? I mean, as I mentioned, I spent several songs, my apologies to the band who was playing The Strokes, Love the Strokes, shout out to them. But I spent several of their excellent songs completely distracted. And I didn't know I was distracted. So how would I have been able to muster thoughts about the dangers if I was just completely caught?

In the moment, if you're completely caught, you can't do anything. These strategies you can only apply when there's already been enough recognitions to realize that you're lost in thought. So there are big chunks of time you're saying a couple of songs worth when all we have to do is say, oh, well, just miss that because you can't do anything if you're totally lost. But there does come a time when you reconnect with the present moment for whatever reason. And that's the moment when you can consider these strategies. I also think they're useful to apply even hours later so that we build our understanding of it, because this contemplation of the dangers builds a dispassion for that pattern. It allows us to let go more easily in the future.

It allows us to see that, though that groove seems deep, it's deep because we think we're getting something from it and we're not. And sometimes we have to see the danger of the pattern, many times kind of in reflection after we've gotten caught in order to want to do something different. So it's interesting just to play this through then. I actually told actually I made everything worse because I beat myself up for having been lost for a couple of songs. But perhaps if I'm hearing you correctly, a more constructive way to approach it would have been, or one possible more constructive approach would have been to reflect skillfully on,

huh, I was lost in anger there about a situation where I was clearly getting some energy from my anger. That was the little not very rewarding reward that I was chasing. But maybe it's worth thinking about how I am way less likely to achieve a positive outcome to the situation about which I was perseverating. If I'm acting out of the anger that had caught me as opposed to seeing that anger as a temporary state that doesn't need to own me and govern my actions going forward. That sounds very wise to me. And there's no needs to beat ourselves up about it. It's really a wise reflection.

And it can be humbling, not in a false way, in a real genuine way. It can actually inspire us to want to practice more mindfulness because we can see that we're vulnerable when we're not mindful. We're vulnerable to our own tendencies. Coming up, Shaila Catherine, on when to deploy the counterintuitive strategy of avoid it, ignore it, forget it, how and why to get over ourselves, and the opposite of clinging to the story of self. After this, if you've got some travel coming up, spring break, summer vacations, wedding abroad, international work trips, imagine arriving actually understanding the

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They've got this technology called True Accent, which gives you real-time feedback on pronunciation. It's like having a personal coach. Rosetta Stone fits your lifestyle with flexible on-the-go learning. You can access lessons from your desktop or via their mobile app, whether you've got five minutes or an hour. Ready to start learning a new language this spring? Visit rosettastone.com slash happier today to explore Rosetta Stone and choose the language that's right for you. Go to Rosettastone.com slash happier right now and start your language. learning journey. Okay, let's do strategy three, which is counterintuitive. Really, it's quite

counterintuitive. It is avoid it, ignore it, forget it. Isn't that fun? Most people think, oh, but I'm practicing mindfulness. I'm supposed to always face everything, right? I'm supposed to always deal with everything. I'm supposed to confront my issues and patterns and see what my mind is doing all the time. But sometimes we just have to turn away. We have to turn away. We have to to withdraw the energy from it. Because there are times when if we keep giving attention to the angry pattern or to the lustful pattern or to the arrogant pattern that we're feeding lust, anger and arrogance. And so sometimes we just have to step back, let it go and kind of go on with our lives. People do this sometimes with grudges, where sometimes we hold grudges for a long time.

and there's a reason why we're holding the grudge. You know, somebody did something really terrible to us. So there's a lot of justification that we can stir up within our own minds around it. But there comes a time when there's just no benefit to that. And we just have to step back, move on, let it be in the past, and we bring our attention to the present moment. So I do think that there is value for forgetting it. And one of the fun things is,

in this strategy is sometimes that means we get to distract ourselves from distraction. And distraction can be valuable. Anybody who's had kids knows that when the child is crying, and sometimes you don't know why the child is crying, they've been fed, they've been changed, they have what they need, they're warm, you know, they've got their blanket on, but they're still crying. You've coddled them. You've, you know, taken care of their needs. Sometimes you just have to distract them from whatever is disturbing them.

and you pick up like a set of keys and shake it in front of their face, and then all of a sudden they forget what upset them. And now everything's fine. And there are times when we see our own minds having a little temper tantrum, and we don't really have the wherewithal to investigate it very deeply. Any attention we give to it we sense it's just going to get us deeper in the morass. And so we find some way to step out of it, to withdraw our energy from it, or to distract ourselves from it. And that can be a very useful strategy.

And I love that the Buddha included such kind of simple, ordinary strategies. And everybody knows this one, right? You're upset about something. And a friend says, hey, let me take you out to the movies. Or let's go play a game of tennis or something. Get your mind off of it. and we do that ordinarily with our friends. But there are times when we have to be able to be a friend to our own mind.

And if we're really caught in something, just get your mind off of it. Shift, change, pull away. And in this sense, it's kind of similar to the first strategy, right? I'm saying, get your mind off of it, shift. I was talking about that with replacing. And so it's very related to the first strategy. but this pulling the energy away is now strongly based on having just seen the danger of getting caught in that. And so we're not pulling away with like avoiding all our problems or denying them or repressing them.

We're pulling away because we're pulling our energy away from that pattern. And so at this point it can be a very skillful retreat or withdrawal. from that pattern. Would it be safe to say that you're not disavowing the oft-voiced Buddhist-slash-mindfulness teacher refrain of, you know, we should learn to look at what is hard to face and process it and metabolize it. But sometimes it's too much and it's good to distract yourself and come back to it later. Yeah, where we learned to set something aside and then work with it.

at a time when we have the inner resources or maybe we need external support of some kind. So again, it's another strategy in which we have an option to do something other than just get caught in it. Strategy number four, investigate the causes of distraction. Yeah, this is a really important one. And it's the one that I think many meditators in the West do very well. The only problem is sometimes people do it too soon. And so they end up just thinking about their thinking

and constructing analytical ideas and coming to views and opinions about their mental habits. So they're caught in the realm of thought. But a meditative investigation that's done after we've developed the flexibility to shift. So we know we're not caught in the thought, we can replace it with something else. We've seen the danger of it, so we're committed to not be attached to that pattern, to not really identify that pattern as necessary or who we are in our lives, because we see it's a problem.

So we're motivated. We've already been able to withdraw the energy, so we see that we are feeding it with our energy. So now we need to understand some more of the mechanisms that keep this repeated pattern recurring, coming up again and again. again. We don't have to investigate everything because one of the earlier strategies would have already been sufficient and that nasty thought would have come and gone. That greedy thought would have come and gone and we don't need to investigate it. We investigate the repeated ones. And then we see how, what happens when that thought arises? How do I feel in the body? How does it affect my senses? How does it affect the thoughts that link up to it? We already saw from examining the danger where it leads. What is it rooted in? What is it coming out of? How do emotions and thoughts

and sensations all interlock to keep that pattern intact? And it's kind of like spiraling inward. I might use a kind of series of questions that I ask myself, oh, what's happening with the body in this moment? And what's my feeling in relationship to the body and what emotion arises with that? and I might do a kind of a literal investigation, follow a series of questions that I pose a sense of curiosity, wanting to understand. And as I investigate what's feeding that thought, what's keeping the pattern intact, what are the causes that give rise to that thought or that pattern? I almost always come to a very deep desire to construct myself in some particular way, to be seen a certain way, to present myself a certain way, to become a certain kind of person. This investigation, when it goes deep, almost always comes to this sense of identification, identity, the thoughts of self. And so it's very interesting to get to the root of selfing through any pattern that we're working with.

Now, sometimes just a few investigations of feeling the anger in the body or sensing how it links up to emotion and thought and emotion and thought and how those kind of feed each other. Sometimes that's it and we go on. But if I really look closely, I'll see the root of delusion in any. unwholesome pattern and it can be very insightful very freeing and can lead to a profound insight into emptiness let's just hang here for a second because this concept of a self or it's opposite I guess emptiness in other words that there is no core essence of Shaila somewhere between your ears no core essence of Dan somewhere behind my eyes it can be it's it's really in my opinion one of, if not the hardest Buddhist concepts to Grock.

So can you just say a little bit more about how investigating the causes of our distraction can help us see through the illusion of the solid self? How does that work? And why is that important? This is something that we don't necessarily understand intellectually. But the experience of letting go of that content. way of constructing self through our encounter with everything, to impose a view of self upon so many experiences that we have in the world, and then to keep ruminating about it so that

we keep creating the self-story again and again and again and again. That habit is absolutely exhausting. And the experience of seeing that habit as just a habit and letting it go brings such relief, such great joy, a sense of spaciousness, a sense of allowing this process of this mind and body, my mind and body, to occur in conjunction with everything else that's happening in the world. My story doesn't need to be the center of the universe. And having even just a glimpse of the way that the self-story is constructed, the way identification is formed and reinforced through reaction and anger and greed and craving and clinging and delusion and ignorance, the way that it binds us to a fantasy of who we are, that we then keep trying to assert in myriad ways in our lives. It's just such a relief to drop it. We don't disappear as individuals.

We still have to pay our taxes. We still have to go to work in the morning. We don't get confused as to whose cat we have to feed and who our family members are and which car we drive when we go out into the parking lot. We know who and what we are in this world. But it's not the center of the universe. It's not an eternally existing self that needs to be reinforced through stories. It's an unfolding process.

And it lightens the load tremendously. So it's not about denying that an individual is an individual. Of course we're individuals. And we have our individual loves and responsibilities and preferences and quirks and idiosyncrasies and limitations and skills and genius and I mean all kinds of things we're each unique that doesn't need to be the basis for obsessing about our self story needing it to be heard and confirmed and recognized by everybody and if they don't like it we change our story or we get angry at them because they didn't see us the way we wanted to be seen and we let go of all that distraction and and rumination and

irritation that comes just because the fantasy of ourselves that we created in our mind wasn't bought into by somebody else. And if we could just lighten up a little bit on that, I'm not suggesting that somebody has to immediately abandon all sense of self. But we can see that it's a kind of crazy process that we invest a lot of energy in. And maybe we could relax a little bit. Get over ourselves. Yeah. Keep it simple. And when we look at our experience, we don't find a self. That's the thing. You know, we find thoughts, we find feelings, we find moods, we find emotions, we find plans, ideas, sensations, aspirations, values. We find processes. And those processes are continuously changing. So we don't really need to cling to any particular story of self. That reminds me of something I was going to try to get you to amplify earlier, which is that, when we talk about investigation here, I think we in the West are very good at psychological

investigation. Like, why am I always getting so angry? Oh, that's because my mother said this thing when I was four, and I've never been able to process it. But the investigation you're talking about is on a sort of the level of sensation, I think, you know, when I get distracted by anger or greed or whatever, how is this showing up in my body? And then when I sort of drop below the level of thought and see what are the raw data of my senses in the, these moments, well, first of all, that I'm no longer so caught in thought. And second, I might see what you just were pointing at, which is that there's no solid me here having and receiving these thoughts anyway. Yeah, but more than sensations. I would agree it's in the present moment. It's a

meditative investigation. We're looking at present responses. We're not trying to blame society or our genetics or our upbringing or our parents or our school system for our patterns. Because the patterns, they could be one pattern or another, doesn't matter. We're looking at how we're relating to this present experience. You know, how do we get lost in this thought of lust or this thought of anger or this rumination about a conversation we had yesterday or this anxiety about a meeting we're going to have next week? What is the kind of entanglement in this?

So we're not really looking for, oh, I'm this kind of person from my past, because, you know, that's clinging to a story of self. And this happened to me because so-and-so did it to me. That's a story of blame. It's very helpful, I think, to ground the attention in the present experience, which can be sensation or it can be present thought or present emotion. The simile that the Buddha used for the, this investigation was of somebody who was walking fast might choose to walk slowly. Somebody who

was walking slowly might choose to sit down. Somebody who was sitting down might choose to lay down. So one is substituting for each coarser condition, a subtler one. So one is basically investigating not at the surface of experience, but is, looking deeper. There's a sense of just looking at what's subtler than this, what's underlying this, what are the causes for this? I want to just read what the language of this Suta is. So the description that the discourse of the Buddha uses in this step is not really called investigation. That's my interpretation of it. The discourse says, one gives attention to stilling the thought formations of those thoughts. So when I heard,

heard thought formations of those thoughts. You know, I wonder, what does that mean? And this happens a lot when we read the ancient scriptures, because the language is different than we use. The words might be different than we use. I think this is a pretty good translation for it, but it causes us to think, what are they talking about? And I think that's a great thing, is that we stumble over something in the ancient discourses. And we wonder, well, what are they talking about? The simile then is of the person who is walking fast, might walk more slowly, and then on to the subtler experiences. So I interpret that and understand it to mean that one is not looking at the superficial level of the thought or the content of this thought, but one is looking at what's subtler and underneath it, exploring what the causes are for those thoughts. What is keeping it as a repeated habitual pattern that is disturbing our lives and obstructing the deepening.

of our concentration. So an interesting thing is to learn to develop meditative investigation, which occurs when the mind is very still, when we're looking at different facets of an experience. What are the conditions that make this habit reoccur? And it's very different than looking into a self-story of our childhood. Coming up, Shaila talks about when to say no. practical exercises for working with distraction and ways to shift from the intellectual

to a kind of lived experience. That's right after this. Okay, so let's talk about the fifth and final strategy here. Apply determination and resolve. Well, that's what I called it, applying determination and resolve. But just for fun, I want to describe, say the language from the discourse of the Buddha.

It says, with his teeth clenched and his tongue pressed against the roof of his mouth, he should beat down, constrain, and crush mind with mind. It's very strong, very strong. And the simile, it says, the simile that the Buddha gives for this is just as a strong man might seize a weaker man by the head or shoulders and beat him down, constrain him, and crush him. So too, when with his teeth clenched and his tongue pressed against the roof of his mouth, one beats down, constrains. and crushes mind with mind, and the mind then becomes steadied, internally, quieted, brought to

singleness, and concentrated. Now, many Westerners, when they read this, think, oh, that's rather violent, that's kind of aggressive. That seems the opposite of being mindful and aware and non-judgmental and meeting life with tranquility and ease. I mean, it just doesn't sound very appealing. But there is a time for strength. And I interpret this to be the reflection that we are confident that our virtues are stronger than our defilements and that there comes a time when we say no to the defilements. But the timing is really important. And the mistake that many people make is they start out beating themselves up for their thoughts. The Buddha suggested this strategy, bringing in that determination, bringing in that confidence and that strength that says no to the pattern, only after

one has already done the previous four strategies. It's a sequence. So if one has done the previous four strategies, first of all, we will rarely need this kind of strength because most of the time, one of the other strategies will have worked. It's going to only be those few really persistent patterns that we fed for a really long time that is going to need this oomph added. But the first strategy will already have developed a flexibility, so we'll realize already it'll somehow be looser, but maybe the energy of the habit is still there. With the second strategy of examining the danger, we'll gain the motivation that we really want to be free from this. We really don't want to live a life that keeps feeding greed and

hate. We just don't want that. And so it strengthens that commitment because we see the danger of it. We've learned to pull the energy away because we've seen that there are ways that our minds feed on our attention. And so we've learned to give our attention to things skillfully, but also learned to pull that attention away sometimes. And we've understood, we've investigated, that there are causes. There are patterns that are in place because it's not who we are, these are conditioned patterns. There are causes for them. And those causes are maybe deeply rooted, but they're also impermanent. And so we've already had some glimpses of the impermanence of things, the emptiness of the experience. We've already had moments of being free from it, but the pattern keeps coming back. And so there comes a time at this point where it's not an aversion to those thoughts. We're not saying no, because we hate the thoughts or that we hate ourselves, we're saying no out of wisdom. Without a shred of aversion in the mind, we just are saying no, no more. I'm not going to give one more minute of my life

to that pattern of hate or that pattern of anger or that pattern of rumination. And we can only do this when we already have understood the dynamic. What if it doesn't work? Does that mean you didn't understand the dynamic? You just go through the cycle again. Okay, okay, got it. You try the other strategies, you know, and you keep working through it again and again. It gives you something to do, something to try, some alternative to just being lost in our thoughts.

And we've all tried being lost in our thoughts, and it usually doesn't lead to a concentration towards liberation. It really doesn't. So we keep working it, we keep practicing it. Although I must say that although I rarely employ this kind of strong no to a thought, when I have consciously applied it, it works. Sometimes I might have to do it a couple of times. Like in a retreat, maybe I can remember one long retreat where my mind was really, for the most part, quite concentrated and peaceful,

but there was one thing that was really bugging me. You know, something that was happening in the environment I was in, and it was really bugging me. And I had tried communicating about it. I had tried making some suggestions. I had tried letting it go. I had gone through these strategies. And finally, I just realized I really had to let this go.

It was the only same thing to do was to let it go. And yet my mind would, there would be a trigger for it, something I would hear every day and I would get caught in it again and again. And one day I just said, no, not out of hatred, but out of a kind of deep understanding and compassion that there was nothing more to do about this. The only person who was suffering was me and this mind. It was not going to lead to anything good. And so I said no. And then about maybe 30 seconds later, the thought came back. And so I said no. And, you know, maybe 30 or 40 seconds, the same thought came back. And I said, no, no more, no more. And that was it. That was it. It didn't come back again. So I do think it works because it had been obsessing, you know, it had been coming every time there was that sound. I'd have the same cycle of thoughts for days and days, for weeks in this retreat. And it took a determination to say no.

I think this is an example of what you're talking about. Joseph Goldsinoff tells the story about how he was on a retreat, he kept having recurring lust thoughts or desire thoughts. And after a while, I just started putting up what he calls a dead end sign. He would just say in his mind, dead end, dead end. And it sounds like what you're describing. Yes, because it's saying no with wisdom, not with self-hate. Right.

Even maybe a sense of humor. A sense of humor is great with this, yes. And the simile of the beating somebody down, it's a little bit too violent for my tastes as well, but I do think sometimes we underestimate our own strength. And I do feel that we can have confidence in the development of our virtue and our concentration and sometimes assert that as strength to say no to the defilements. So if I understand correctly, if we use these five strategies, you're not promising we will never be distracted again. You're just saying that over time, these will help us with the distraction.

And then perhaps over time, even more time, we might be teaching the mind to be more focused because we've given the mind a taste of what's beyond distraction. Yeah, I think these are practices that we have to employ whenever they're needed. So there's strategies that we use when we're lost in thought or distracted by something. That is unwholesome. So I do think that it's something that we shouldn't run through the strategies once and think, oh, yeah, that worked. I'm now free of them all.

Nor should we think, oh, I went through the strategies once. It didn't work. So I can quit. Actually, I do think there are processes and practices. But the Buddha offers us an interesting kind of promise. Maybe it's not a guarantee, or maybe there's just no timeline on it. But one of the lines in this discourse that really attracted me for decades, I've loved this line because it's a sense of possibility where he says, this is towards the end of the discourse. It says, one is then called a master of the courses of thought. One will think whatever thought one wishes to think and one will not think any thought, one does not wish to think.

That's pretty incredible, isn't it? Yes, yes. Pretty incredible. Yeah, most people that I know struggle with their minds because their minds are thinking things they don't want to be thinking. And it feels like the mind is out of control. But there's a lot that we can do to guide our own minds. And this sequence of strategies culminates in this comment that one can become the master of the courses of thought. One can think the thoughts we want to think and not think the thoughts we don't want to think. And when I heard that, when I read that a few decades ago, I thought, hmm, I'd kind of like that, you know. I kind of like that. If my own mind wasn't causing me trouble, then there'd be a lot less trouble I'd have to deal with. Not completely, no.

But the difference is remarkable. It's quite remarkable. Practice works. I'm not fully liberated yet. But there's no question that I would never want to go back to the mind that I was experiencing prior to practice. and that I do really believe that diligent practice is a great joy. And we experience, as you said earlier in our conversation,

the delight and the joy and the happiness that comes when we're not caught by the habits of the mind. It's very attractive to not just be entangled in those patterns. I had one teacher tell me, he said, if I think of thought five times and I'm no longer learning anything from it, I no longer think it. And I thought, wow. And I actually believe this guy could do it.

This guy would recognize a thought. And, you know, he'd learn from it. He'd recognize it. He'd work with it about five times. And then after that, he'd bring in the strength that says, no, no more. And they wouldn't come again. And that's fair, too, because there are thoughts. We need to learn some things from our minds and our patterns.

But at some point we stopped learning, and there's not that much to learn. It's time to just free ourselves from the pattern, from the energy. Before I let you go, you wanted to mention that the book also has lots and lots of very practical exercises. Can you walk us through that aspect of your work? You know, I think the practical exercises are my favorite part of the book, because I include them in all three of my books, where there are these. little exercise boxes or reflection boxes to try to bring the maybe more structured teachings of the Buddha into an activity or a reflection that we do in our own meditation practice or we do in our daily interactions or activities. And many of them are simple reflections like taking a particular aspect

and focusing on it for a while. For example, we might just try to identify a couple of recurring themes. maybe just even one. Maybe there's a pattern of ruminating about something that somebody said to you. And so you just say, okay, I'm going to just work with this one. And prepare a few different strategies in advance so that you can apply them so that you can work with them. I think it's really helpful to connect with our intentions. And I have a number of exercises and reflections that help us identify what our intentions are, to catch the moment when we intend to say something, when we are about to do something, and to sort of insert a meditative and mindful pause there, so that we don't just speak or act on those thoughts and those intentions, but we take a

meditative moment to work with them. I think we just have to find ways of applying the teachings in our lives and in our meditation, because if we just read a book, well, it could be interesting, but it won't be useful. We have to find ways of applying them in our lives. And so I come up with little games, like with the initial exercises, is to determine which thoughts are helpful and which thoughts are harmful. You know, we were using the language of wholesome and unwholesome. So we sit for a while in meditation, and we imagine two little piles or, you know, some frisbys that we were. We were using the language of wholesome and We toss one direction in another.

And each thought, we kind of put in a pile and we put the thought in another pile. So we learned to identify the thoughts and make them into piles with just kind of mental games. I think it keeps it fun. It keeps it lively. We don't turn our entire meditation into that, but we might play with it for five minutes in a daily meditation practice to really be clear. Oh, that thought, it's a thought and it's an unwholesome one. Let's put it over here. And there are different things that we can do to help us kind of set boundaries around certain thoughts

and kind of crystallize our understanding. So I hope that as people read the book, that they'll really work with those exercises, not just read through them, but read through the exercise, then set down the book, pause for a moment, pause for five minutes, pause for ten minutes, do a mini meditation and try to see and explore that little facet of the, the experience, or get up and go wash the dishes and find that same pattern of mind while you're in an activity and try the little exercise that can give a different view on it. I just always am looking for ways to shift from an intellectual reading to a kind of lived experience. With these strategies, we're looking at our patterns. We're looking at the themes that characterize the way we experience life, that we see the world through, that we interpret things from that bias or that perspective of our conditioning, of our pattern. And it's just so important that people see the patterns of their own thoughts.

There's another quote I love from the Buddha from one of these discourses that I use to base this book Beyond Distractions on. And it says, whatever one frequently thinks and ponderes upon, that will become the inclination of one's mind. And it goes on to say, if we frequently think and ponder upon harmful thoughts, then that's going to become the inclination of our mind. And if we frequently think and ponder upon beneficial thoughts or skillful thoughts, then that will become the inclination. And when we realize how influential every moment of our thought is, it influences our patterns, it influences our perspective, it influences our perception. Then we really will want to see clearly the nature of our own thoughts, the character of our own thoughts, and work with them diligently. And much of this work is really done in daily life because that's where we live most of our lives in interactions and in activities. But it becomes extremely

important for a meditator who wants to strengthen their capacity for focused attention and for concentration. And until somebody is very serious, guilt with this movement of restlessness in the mind. Deep concentration like the experiences of Jana will be impossible. But this investigation also goes further than just developing concentration to support Jana practice or to support kind of a peaceful, calm state of mind. Because restlessness is one of the final fetters that keep us from experiencing awakening. So as we understand the forces that keep restlessness and distracting thoughts that keep us locked into those habits, we're loosening those habits. And we're actually freeing ourselves from the fetter of restlessness.

And that goes beyond the range of just calming and tranquilizing a distracted mind and puts us into the realm of insight. You've given us a lot here. just before we end. The new book is called Beyond Distraction. Can you also just remind us of your prior books? I believe one is called Focused and Fearless. And also maybe give us your website or other digital resources you've put out there. Thank you for inviting that.

Yes, I've written three books. I recommend Beyond Distractions to read first and focused and fearless to read second. And my third book, Wisdom, Wind and Deep, is for experienced meditators. and hopefully you'll get that far and enjoy all of them. You can find out more about where I teach. I teach retreats and online courses through my website, shyla catherine.com. And I'm affiliated with two organizations,

Insight Meditation South Bay, which is a meditation center in Silicon Valley in California, and Bodie Courses, which is an online DOMA classroom, where I offer my online courses. So if you go to shilacatherine.com, you'll find links to these other sites and find a schedule of my events. Shaila, thank you very much.

Thank you. It's a delight to talk with you. Likewise. Thanks again to Shaila. Always great to talk to her. Don't forget to join my meditation challenge. I should say our meditation challenge because I'm doing it with my team and also with the great meditation teacher, Seben A. Salasi.

Seb and I have a new Audible original, a new audiobook called Even You Can Meditate. So this challenge, which is also called Even You Can Meditate, is designed to celebrate the release of this new audiobook. The challenge is happening for March 23rd through the 27th, over on the app, which you can get by going to Danharth.com or by just going to your friendly local app store. And during the course of the challenge, we'll do two live meditation and Q&A sessions. So it's going to be cool. Come join us. join the party. And finally, thank you so much to everybody who works so hard to make this show, and they really do work hard. Our producers are Tara Anderson and Eleanor Vasili. Our recording and

engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our managing producer. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Kashmir is our executive producer, and Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.