Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - How To Catch Unhelpful Thoughts Before They Take Over With Bhikkhu Bodhi Staff Picks

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

We're bringing you some of our favorite gems from the archives, as chosen by our staff. This week, we're hearing from Buddhist scholar and teacher Bhikkhu Bodhi, as chosen by Tara Anderson, one of our podcast producers. We're getting a little meta today, as Dan and his guest talk about paying attention to what your own mind is doing. Full Episode:  The Mental States That Steal Your Calm | Bhikkhu Bodhi   Join Dan's online community here Follow Dan on social: Instagram, TikTok Subscribe to our YouTube Channel   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. Hey, happy Friday to you. All this month on Fridays, we are highlighting some of our favorite moments from past episodes as selected by members of the team here at 10% Happier. I have wanted to call this feature staff infection, but my staff doesn't think that's funny. I think it's funny. Anyway, last week, you heard a little bit of our 2024 interview with Bill Hader, the comedian. That little chunk of Bill's interview was introduced by our digital media manager,

Hayden Broome. Today, we're veering into straight up Dharma with the venerable Bikubodi, a Buddhist monk and teacher who was on the show back in 2022. You'll hear a short introduction from our producer, Tara Anderson, why this interview had such an impact on her. And then you'll hear the moment from the interview that she is specifically referencing. Before we do that, though, I just want to tell you that if you sign up over on dan harris dot com. You will get bespoke companion meditations that now come with every Monday and Wednesday episode of this podcast. And Don Maricio is our teacher of the month. She is crafting meditations for all the Monday Wednesday episodes.

We'll announce our teacher of the month for next month very soon. But in the meantime, head on over to Danharis.com to sign up for those guided meditations. Coming up after a quick ad break, we're going to hear from Tara, one of our producers, then Bikubodi. Keep it here. This is Tara Anderson. I'm a producer on the podcast team, and I want to share part of an interview with Bikou Bode. This episode came out in September of 2022 when I had just started my job with 10% happier, and I was asked to listen to a chunk of it for a quality check. That's the last step we go through before publishing an episode just to make sure everything sounds okay. I didn't know anything about the guest, but I did know a little bit about the topic. The Four Foundations of Mindfulness. This episode was part of a series on those four foundations, and this one was about mindfulness of mind, which is being aware of what's going on in your mind itself, which is meta as hell,

and can be pretty confusing. The first thing I noticed about B. Koo Bodie was that he sounds just like Christopher Walken. Turns out they're around the same age, and they're both from New York City, so it makes sense. It made me smile to think of Christopher Walken wearing monks' robes talking about these Buddhist concepts. The second thing I noticed was how clear and precise his words are. He uses a few Buddhist terms, but he's quick to define them so anyone can follow. And Dan, as usual, does a great job of restating and summarizing for the audience. I was only supposed to listen to a small part of this episode for quality purposes,

but I ended up listening to the whole thing because I was so interested. I learned a lot, and I was also really psyched that listening to this kind of material was my job now. Nearly three years later, I get to keep learning, and I'm really happy to play a part in bringing this kind of conversation to our listeners. Hope you enjoy. Thank you so much, Tara. All right, now let's hear the part of the interview with Bikubodi that Tara is referencing. He starts by explaining the definition of mindfulness of mind, and then he goes into the actual how-to of it all. So how do you learn to get more resolution on your mind states, which tend to change throughout the day?

Yeah, well, within the actual practice of Saty Batana, the practice of mindful observation, the task is not so much to make an effort to control the state of mind, but simply to note and to observe what state of mind has arisen. though of course mindfulness has to work together with right effort so that one is not indulging those states that arise but part of the right effort here is the effort just to note whatever mind state has arisen and to note it clearly and then to drop it to let it go and then it will be followed by other mind states will arise but this is where the observation of individual states of mind starts as it builds up

momentum, then it starts to turn into a continuous and consistent observation of what is taking place within the mind. So that the mind states are occurring, you know, not as solid blocks which control and dominate the mind, but just like little flickers of mental states, which just pop their head up for a moment, and then when they are recognized and identified, then they fall away. Yeah, I came up with a certain assembly to illustrate how this process takes place if I could relate that. Please. I compare this to, like, we have a shop

in which are goods for sale, and there are no mirrors, you know, in the corners to observe the rows, and there's no inspector on the floor. Okay, so we have a kleptomaniac comes into the shop, and he looks around, that he sees that there are no mirrors, no observation mirrors. And so he's able to take some goods, put it into his pocket, and then maybe dispel any suspicion.

He might buy a cheap item, and then he walks out, and he's taken the valuable items with him. Okay, so that is like the way the mind ordinarily works without observation. But when we have corner mirrors, which are reflecting the image of the hidden rows back to the cashier, or to somebody an inspector on the floor, then when the thief comes into the shop, then he'll look around and he'll see that he's under observation

that there are these mirrors reflecting him in every row, and then he'll just leave the shop empty-handed and maybe go to another shop. And so in this way, when the mind is not under observation, the way the mind ordinarily works, when these unwholesome or defiled mental states arise, we don't recognize them, and in that way, those states are able to gain power over the mind,

to gain control over the mind, and to dominate the mind. But it's when we use the power of mindfulness to simply recognize the state of mind that's arisen, identify it, and then drop it that the state of mind is able to pass without doing it, any damage to the texture of the mind. How do we know when we're actually being mindful? That's a good question, because so many times, I mean, I've sat thinking I'm being,

I've sat thinking I'm being mindful, and then I realize that I've been way back in the past or planning things for the future. But let us say that the defining characteristic of mindfulness, there are many ways to conceptualize mindfulness, but the way I would put it succinctly, at least with the kind of practice that one undertakes in the foundations of mindfulness, that mindfulness is keeping oneself under observation, keeping the, either observing things going on in the physical body, or keeping the mind under observation, the feelings or the mind. mind under observation.

So when one can recognize that one is sustaining that process of self-observation, then one knows that one is being mindful. But at other times, one can be sitting with the intention of being mindful, but the mind will drift away from mindfulness. And that's quite natural and normal too. But then when one realizes that the mind is drifted, and Well, that recognition that the mind has drifted is itself a function of mindfulness. This observation language you're using, I can see in my own mind, and I can imagine this happening in other people's minds,

a militants or a setting up of a sort of internal nanny state that can get compulsive rather than helpful. Yeah, that can happen. It depends on how one undertakes that. process of observation, the kind of attitude and mindset that one brings to the process of what I call observation. So it can be, as you said, something of a nanny state, if one maybe brings the wrong approach. But I would say that the healthy and fruitful approach is that one comes to the process of observation, keeping the mind soft, gentle, non-judgmental, but also curious to see and understand what is taking place.

I say it's primarily that sort of, what I call that, soft, gentle, relaxed, but diligent framework in which the contemplation or observation takes place that keeps it on the right track and prevents it from becoming a process by which one engages in self-blame, self-condemnation, and so forth. Just to go back to the practical here, as I understand it, nowhere in the Suta does the Buddha actually give detailed instructions on how to establish mindfulness of one's mind states.

But you've come up with some instructions. Would you mind walking us through them? Yeah, and this was interesting also, because in my own sort of experience of trying to practice, according to the method of the Satybatana Suta, when it came to the mindfulness of the mind, couldn't find what I would call clear, direct, systematic explanations

of how one undertakes the contemplation of the mind. So as I sort of reflected on this, I developed a method. I don't want to say that it's under copyright, patent registration or anything like that, but it just seemed to be an effective way to see what's going on in the mind. So what I did was to take as a focus point of observation

the word mind. And so to undertake this, I would have to build up a certain momentum of maybe mindfulness and capacity for concentration through the practice of a method like mindfulness of breathing so that the initial tendency of the mind to wander, to get overrun by thoughts and emotions and so on, settles down somewhat, and the mind becomes more quiet and sort of stabilized.

Then I would run through the mind, the word mind, and make the task just to observe within the mind, the word mind, as it's being mentally verbalized. And so when I'm doing this, it's not an automatic, process like reciting a mantra, but one is turning the mind back upon itself to watch the word mind as it is passing through the mind with each mental recitation of the word mind. And so mentally reciting the word mind keeps the mind focused upon itself. And so one is watching the word mind, mind, mind, passing through the mind.

But what inevitably happens is before long you've lost the word mind or I'm just reciting it without mindfulness and the mind is has wandered. It's strayed into any of the bypaths of mental activity. And so when that happens, what one does is to identify what is that mental state that has arisen. And that's where I found that I'm applying. the template that the contemplation of the mind section of the Satybatana Suta gives us. So if it's a mind, say, desiring things, say thinking about the meal is coming up, maybe it's the morning. If I'm in my room and then I get the smells coming from the kitchen, then I'm thinking, ah, craving for delicious food, mind with desire, mind with lust. If I'm thinking of somebody

did something wrong to me and I'm angry about it, then it's mind with hatred, mind with anger. If I'm just maybe engaging in some speculations or some doubts, then it becomes mind with delusion. And then also while I was doing this, I also noticed that in, I would have to say that the section on contemplation of mind in the Sati Batana Suta, even though it has these 16 pairs of contrasting mental states, but it's not all-inclusive for contemplating what is taking place within the mind. So then I found it's useful to use another template,

which I partly started to sketch, which is to see where is the mind dwelling? What is it dwelling on? And then I found that when the mind is not present, when it's not focused on the present, then it's gone in either of two directions. It's either gone back to the past or it's jumped ahead to the future.

And so we have mind dwelling on the past, which will be remembering the past, either accurately or inaccurately. And then when the mind dwells on the past, it'll be dwelling on the past, either with, you might say, the sorrowful emotions, that is with sadness, maybe with grief, with distress, regret, remorse, guilt,

or it could be dwelling on the past with happy states, happy memories, joyful memories, nostalgia, fondness for the past. So that would be mind dwelling on the past, and then we could have mind projecting, on the other side of the tracks, mind projecting into the future, and then the mind can be projecting into the future with imagination, with desire, craving hope, and expectations, or on the other negative side, with fear, worry, anxiety, or, so those would be rooted in aversion, or it could be projecting into the future in ways that would be based on delusion.

with idle imaginings, with idle expectations, and so forth. Probably you could expand these lists still further, but these were some of the types of mental activity that I sketched on the basis of my own lived experience in trying to practice contemplation of the mind. So let me just see if I can state these meditation instructions back to you. The first is to repeat the word mind, silent, in your own mind, at a decent clip, mind, mind, mind.

And that has the, well, actually, I missed the step. The first is you may want to get calm, concentrated, collected by sitting and focusing on the breath for a while, which can create some level of focus in the mind. Then you bring in this kind of mantra of the word mind within your own mind. Yeah, but I don't want to use the word mantra. Right, because you're not, it's not quite a mantra. Yeah, it's not like a mechanical recitation. What's the difference between your suggested use of this repetition of the word mind?

What's the difference between that and what you are calling a mechanical repetition? I guess the mechanical repetition, you're just reciting it without, let's say the point, the way I use the word mind, the point is to turn the mind back upon itself in order to to observe the mind by running the word mind through the mind. So as I'm saying this word mind, it's reminding me to look at the machinery of this thing or not a thing called the mind. Yeah, yeah. Inevitably then I will get distracted.

And at that point, when I wake up from distraction, I can see, oh, what is the state of mind in which I've been dwelling during this distraction, and I can make a note of it, and then I'm starting to get into this habit of seeing the mind states that grit me. Exactly, yeah. And I should also add to this that at a certain point,

when one develops the, let us say, the skill in observing the mind by using the word mind as a reminder to turn back and observe the mind, once one develops a certain skill and momentum with that, then what I found in my practice that then I can then drop the word mind, and then I just remain focused on that constant, you call it the flux of mental activity. And so at that point, one is seeing what's going on within the mind,

occurring at very, very rapid pace, just kind of rapid arising and, vanishing of thoughts, feelings, emotions, and so on, just coming almost instantaneously. Is that achievable off of retreat? Because I've had a few moments on meditation retreat day seven or whatever where I click into this state of dramatically reduced mental chatter and am much more on top of whatever's happening in my mind, the things coming in through the ear and the eye and the physical sensations and the random thoughts, urges, and emotions, I'm right on top of it in a way that I'm not in my daily life. So this kind of sustained mindfulness that you're describing, is that something we can expect in our daily, you know, 10-minute meditation?

I say very difficult in a 10-minute meditation, even in the 45-minute meditation. I could sort of get into that state pretty much only in a retreat setting or after doing like several hours of meditation a day, in a stretch. And the day-to-day, like regular practice, I would do the contemplation of mind, but I'm almost reliant on using the word mind as a focal point for turning back on the mind. But to get into that sort of just the unverbalized observation of the constant, rapid flux of mental events, that takes place to pick up the momentum for that. It pretty much requires, for me, a retreat setting. Maybe somebody who has

sharper faculties can do it just with a regular daily practice. But I have rather I'm a slow, a bit of a slow boat, yeah.

Well, you're in good company or bad companies, the case may be. Thank you to Bikubodi and thank you to Tara for suggesting that excerpt. She has great taste. We'll put a link to the full episode

if you want to hear it in the show notes. Don't forget to head on over to Dan Harris.com to become part of our little community where we're now serving up guided meditations that go with every Monday, Wednesday episode of this show. We also have live guided video meditation sessions with me.

I take your questions. You also get ad-free versions of this show. There's a lot going on. Go check it out. Dan Harris.com. Finally, thank you to everybody who works so hard to make this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson, Caroline Keenan, and Eleanor Vassili. Our recording and engineering is handled by

the awesome people 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.