Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - How To Communicate Effectively With Difficult People: When to Tell the Truth, When to Push Back, and Why Kindness Isn't the Same as Being Nice | Sharon Salzberg

Episode Date: July 8, 2026

Plus: the four questions the Buddha said you should ask before you speak, the truth about gossip, and what to do when compassion and honesty pull in opposite directions. Sharon Salzberg is a meditation pioneer, world-renowned teacher, and New York Times bestselling author. She is among the first to bring mindfulness & lovingkindness meditation to mainstream American culture fifty years ago.  In this episode we talk about: What the Buddha actually said about how to talk to people, and why almost none of us were ever taught it  The four questions to ask yourself before you open your mouth  Whether white lies are ever okay  The difference between being kind and being nice  Is it ever okay to gossip?  Why shame is the enemy of change, and what "right" in right speech actually means  How to remember any of this when you're mid-conversation with a difficult person 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 To advertise on the show, contact [e-mail] or visit https://advertising.libsyn.com/10HappierwithDanHarris Rosetta Stone – Get 20% off your Rosetta Stone Sapphire subscription when you sign up today. Visit rosettastone.com/happier  Square –   Get up to $200 off Square hardware when you sign up at square.com/go/happier #squarepod Leesa — Go to leesa.com for 25% off select mattresses, plus get an extra $50 off with promo code HAPPIER. OneSkin: Get 15% off OneSkin with the code HAPPIER at https://www.oneskin.co/HAPPIER  #oneskinpod  

Hey, everybody, welcome to the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm your host, Dan Harris. Today we're talking about Buddhist communication strategies. You've heard me say this before, maybe, but I think about it all the time. The fact that we're talking to each other all day, every day, most of us, and yet very few of us are ever taught how to have successful communications. Turns out the Buddha had a lot to say about this. And we're going to talk about the Buddhist communications. strategies with Sharon Salzberg. We're going to talk about such questions as, how do you deal with difficult people? Is it ever okay to gossip? How can you be kind without being a doormat? Are white lies ever okay, even if they're motivated by kindness? There's a lot of juicy stuff in here. Sharon Salzberg is a legend in the meditation community. She's one of the co-founders of the Insight Meditation Society, which is a very well-known, now 50-year-old Buddhist retreat center in Barry, Massachusetts. She's also written 13 books, including real happiness and her landmark work, loving kindness. And Sharon has very generously agreed to teach a live,

eight-week series on what's known as the eight-fold path, which is one of the principal and foundational Buddhist lists. She will be teaching this on my meditation app, the 10% with Dan Harris meditation app, starting on July 12th. And it'll be every Sunday, a live hour-long session over the course of eight weeks. And if you miss the sessions, you can always watch them on demand. Afterwards, these sessions, will be deep dives into the eightfold path by a true master. And on each session, she will guide a meditation and then talk a little bit about one aspect of the eightfold path and then take your question. So it's an opportunity not only to learn from, but also to be in dialogue with an incredible Buddhist teacher. All that said, we'll be talking to Sharon Salzberg about what's called right speech after this quick break.

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happier. Sharon Salzberg, welcome back to the show. Thank you so much. It's great to be with you. I think you may be one of, if not the most frequent guest on this show. So it's always awesome to have you. Thank you. Before we get into the Buddhist recommendations for communicating effectively with other human beings, let me just step back and ask you a broader question. This advice on effective communication is delivered as part of what's known as the eightfold path. What is the eightfold path? Well, the eightfold path is actually a framework. It's meant to be a practical, we would say actionable framework for moving from suffering to the end of suffering, moving from constriction and limitation to life that's more expansive and open. It's moving from, in a way, isolation to freedom and connection.

So those are lofty terms, freedom and connection. Yeah. How would they play out in a generic human life? Well, there are different aspects to the eightfold path. Like I think if you're experiencing loneliness, alienation, if you have a sense that your life is maybe built on a kind of cultural deception, like maybe all your life you thought endless accumulation would keep you safe. and keep change from happening, because that's in a way what we're conditioned to, what we're taught.

If you're brought up to believe it's a dog-eat-dog world and you shouldn't help anybody else because they're not going to help you. And if you're brought up to believe that strength is vengefulness and loving kindness or compassion are stupid and will make you weak or sentimental, then we need to unpack all that and realize, I do want to be happy. I want a fulfilled life. I want not to feel so burdened by loneliness and all of those things, but how? You know, and that's why even though the concepts are lofty, they're really meant to be like, let's experiment with this and let's try this and are you different? Are you better? Do you feel more fulfilled and so on?

So it's a very practical approach. Do you have to be a Buddhist to practice this aspect of Buddhism? No. In fact, one of the things I've enjoyed about the eight-fold. path and it's also embedded, as you know, in the Four Noble truths, that there's suffering in life. There's a reason for that. There are causes. There's an end, a possible end, or cessation, and there is the path, the eight-full path.

It's a marker of non-sectarianism, actually. Like I remember when at the Insight Meditation Society, years and years ago, we brought over kind of the patriarch of our lineage, Mahzzi, Siodov, from Burma. and people would ask him, you know, like, is it worth following this other teacher or this other approach or this other faith or, you know, what about going here and what about combining and what about doing this? And rather than saying, yeah, we got the goods and everyone else is inferior or anything like that, he would just say, look to see if the eight full path is there. look to see if it seems to you another mark of the eightfold path is that it's holistic. It covers like our inner life and disciplines like with mindfulness and concentration. It also covers things that are very practical in day-to-day like livelihood and the way we speak to one another.

So he would say, look to see if there's a genuinely holistic path there that's going to be integrated, that's going to have these different elements. And if so, it's good. And so it wasn't a sense of like, we're better or you've got to stay within the confines, the languaging of Buddhism or anything like that. So look for these elements and then you know it's okay. You mentioned the Four Noble Truth. Let me see if I can provide a little context here and then, but please fact check me because you know way more about this than I do. But the Buddha, after he got enlightened, you know, according to the legend, he got enlightened when he was 36 after spending his early life as a, as a, you're making a face about 36.

Was I wrong with that? I'm checking. 35, I think. 35, okay. Yeah, my bad. No, I had to calculate because he left home at 29. Right, right. And he spent six years doing those other things. So up until 29, he was this, you know, this spoiled prince who lived this incredible life.

life and then he had a bit of a spiritual experience where he realized, you know, life is, is, you know, he is going to end in death and illness and old age and, um, and these things are non-negotiable. And so he goes off on a spiritual quest and he lives for six years and he like beats the shit out of himself. He does what's called self mortification. He doesn't eat. He like stands on one foot all day. Does all these crazy meditative practices until he realizes, well, no, there's, There's got to be a middle path between, you know, self-mortification and self-indulgence, and that's when he gets enlightened. And after he gets enlightened at age 35, not age 36, he goes and finds some of his former meditation buddies, and he delivers this diagnosis of the human condition called the four noble truths. The first is life is suffering, which is a bit of a mistranslation.

It just means life is bumpy if you're living it without wisdom. The second is the cause of the bumpiness, the cause of our sufferings is craving or thirst, wanting things to be a specific way in a world where everything's changing all the time. The third is there's a way out of this. And the fourth noble truth is actually a list within a list. And that's the eightfold path, which is basically the Buddha's cook. book or recipe for Enlightenment, aka a healthy life. So is all of that reasonably accurate? It is. And I don't know if you know, but I'm about to embark on writing a book on suffering in the end of suffering or duca and the end of duke. And I like the word bumpiness because the

the word duca and poly, it doesn't just mean suffering, although that's a very common translation. It's also insecurity, distress, unease. And the example they use, of course, as a chariot because they're all about chariots. And the axle and the wheel are not a line. So it is like a bumpy ride. So that's a great way of saying it. In your conversation with my colleague, our senior producer, Marissa Schneiderman, and she gave me notes on your conversation in order to prepare me for this conversation with you.

there was a line that she said that you like from the Buddha, something about abandoning the unskilful. Can you say more about that? I mean, that's another way of describing the eightfold path. It's like, what do we do to have a happier or more fulfilled life? Like, what do we actually do? And so this has long, long been one of my favorite passages from the Buddha where he said, abandon the unskilful.

And the unskilful or the unhulsome are those. habits, you know, that we get lost in. It's not just the appearance of the habits of mind, but it's the ways we get lost. We get overwhelmed by greed or anger or delusion, something like that. He said, abandon the unskilful. You can abandon the unskilful. If it were not possible, I would not ask you to do it. And if abandoning the unskilful were to lead to more limitation on unhappiness,

and disconnection, I would not ask you to do it. But because it leads to happiness and fulfillment, so I say, abandon that, which is unskilful. And then he went on to say, cultivate the good, which in our minds would be like loving kindness or compassion and generosity, cultivate the good. You can cultivate the good. If it were not possible, I would not ask you to do it. And then that last section as well, but I lived, as I told Marissa, I lived for a long. time, buoyed up by the Buddha thinks I can do it. If we're not possible, I would not ask you to do it. And I

took that so to heart in the midst of all of my uncertainty and insecurity and fear and everything I was really marked by, you know, in those days. And it's like, wow, he thinks I can do it. So step by step, let's put it into practice. You've told the story many times, but can you just give us a little bit more context on, you know, how you came. to Buddhism and you said you were marked by things like insecurity, et cetera, et cetera. I have to say, having known you for a little while, you came by it honestly. Yeah, I went to college when I was 16 and having skipped two grades is a product of the New York City public school system. And in my sophomore year of college, I took an Asian philosophy course because there was a philosophy requirement.

And I looked at that schedule and I thought, oh, that fits nicely. That's like on Tuesday or something. So I chose that one. And it totally changed my life in two ways. One was in learning about Buddhism, they talked about, of course, the foreign noble truths and the Buddha talking about suffering. And for many people, that's kind of a bummer of a message, you know. But for me, it was like so enveloping. It was so inclusive.

It's like I, like many people, had a very, very. traumatic and painful childhood. And like for many people, my family was one where this was never ever spoken about. And I don't know what to do with all of those feelings inside of me. And I heard that there is suffering in life. And it was like for the first time in my life, I didn't feel so alone. And I didn't feel so different and kind of cast aside, you know. And I thought, wow, I belong. You know, it's not just me. It's not that I'm weird. You know, this is this is part of life. And then I heard in the context of that class that there were practices and methods that if you wanted to do them, they're called meditation, you could be a lot happier. And I was going to college in Buffalo, New York, looked around Buffalo, couldn't see it anywhere.

This is 1969, 1970. And so I did this completely outrageous, almost unthinkable thing, looking back. I, you know, I'd grown up in New York City, went to college in Buffalo. I'd never even been to California. And I created an independent study project. I said, I want to go to India and study meditation. So they said, okay. And off I went.

I left in 1970, you know, the beginning of that fall semester. I looked around India. I didn't really find, I wanted something very practical. I wasn't interested in a belief system or becoming a Buddhist or assuming an identity or rejecting anything else. I wanted to know how to do it. how should I really put this into practice? And it took a long time to find, and it actually was in large measure because I heard Dan Goleman way back when give a talk in New Delhi at a yoga conference.

He at the time was a graduate student at Harvard studying meditation and psychology. And for some reason, he was invited to give a talk at this conference. And at the end of the talk, he said that he was going to go. go to this town called Bogaya, which is where the Buddha was enlightened. And he was going to do this 10-day immersive retreat in meditation that was considered a very practical, direct transmission of these tools. And I thought, that's it. That's what I'm looking for. And it was what I was looking for. So I followed him along with, you know, all these other people. We followed him to Bodhaya and did this intensive meditation retreat together.

And that was the beginning. I love that story. And just to say, Dan Goldman, who was referenced there, sometimes known as Daniel Goldman, went on to write the seminal book, Emotional Intelligence, and has been on this show many times. I can drop some links to his prior appearances in the show notes. But, you know, I just, that story and all of the karma and kismet and coincidence and happenstance that goes into it, you know, it's for me very consequential because without. you having taken a flyer and gone to India and then running into Dan Goldman and then going to Boat Gaya and where you met, you know, Joseph Goldstein and, you know, that that all led to, that was a big stream. There were many streams through which Buddhism arrived in America,

but that is a big one. And it is the form of Buddhism that that later, you know, ended up in on my desk and that spoke to me. And so, yeah, it's a, it is of a genuine, carmic moment, no question. Well, even when I said it was the beginning, I thought, well, maybe not for Joseph. He'd already been there for years, you know. But what are the key causes and conditions for what,

totally? For the massive, like, to use a type of word I don't normally use, but like the massive blessing of insight, meditation into into the American consciousness. Yeah. Just back to the eightfold path, Sharon. As I understand it, there are three kind of, and you referenced this a little bit earlier, but there are three kind of baskets of their, so there are eight entries in the eightfold

path, obviously, but they can be grouped into three distinct baskets. One is the kind of philosophical understanding. The other is an ethical conduct in the world. and the third is, you know, how you practice in your own mind. We chose right speech, which is what we're going to talk about today, and that's in the ethical conduct or sometimes in the language of Polly, in which the Buddhist teachings were written down. It's called SILA, S-I-L-A. And I'm interested in right speech or wise speech, depending on how you want to translate the way the... the Buddha talked about it. I'm interested in it because, and I'll probably have said this in the

introduction, but we spend most of our days in conversation. It is kind of like the principal unit of exchange for Homo sapiens. And yet, we're almost never most of us taught how to do it. And I find it endlessly fascinating that the Buddha had real advice for doing so. Yeah, and I should also say, I just came into my mind that my colleague, my friend Sylvia Borsi, I know you've recently spoken to close at the 8fold dot because it's a little bit circular. We think of a path as very linear. Like you start here and then you go to the middle place.

Then you're at the end. You never go back unless you're heading back. But on this path, you don't want to go backwards. But we revisit elements of it all the time. And so in terms of those three divisions, classically, it starts with, like right intention or right thought, right view. And that's considered almost like this is worth trying.

This is worth experimenting with. This cause and effect, this possibility of happiness here. But it's not like a clarified view like I really get in a whole different way how the universe works and what makes me happy and what doesn't. That comes much later. And in practical terms, when we see, speak about the path. Sometimes we do start with CELA because that's what we can do. Right now, we don't realize that we wouldn't even try. I mean, why would you, you know, think about,

let me try to be more truthful, you know, unless there was some inkling that, yeah, it's, it's so much suffering to feel, you know, like I told these lies and did I tell enough and did I lie to the right people? And what a burden. You know, maybe I want to clear a story. simpler way of being. And so it doesn't have to be fully formed, that kind of right view, but there's something that has us say, let's try this. Let's try putting this into action. And so often when the Eightfold Path is taught, people will start with those elements of CELA, because that's what we do. But traditionally, you actually start with right view. Support for today's episode comes from Square, and they've got big news during Square's bi-annual releases event.

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right speech. And like I said, I find I find that. That's why I chose this as the focus with you because I think it's so interesting that there's good advice on offer and that you can practice it. It's actually a set of skills. And as you like to teach it, there are really like four questions to ask yourself before you open your mouth. Let's start with question number one. What is that? Is it true what you're saying? But there are levels to that.

You know, I know you've also worked with Dan Kerman and Muditinisker, who are amazing communications experts. And I've seen that some of the even formulaic kind of tools of modern communication understanding really reflect this question of, is it true? So, for example, you know, when a communications person will suggest using eye language and not you language, not just being accusatory and laying all of one's response and reactions on the other person, I've actually seen Dan and Mudita work in that way with people, and it was very touching. They've come to the Insight Meditation Society in the past, worked with staff, and I saw one exchange that was something like a staff person saying, to another staff person. Basically, you're a terrible person, and you don't pay attention to others, and you're reckless and whatever.

And by continually having the person go back and use eye language, not as they would say, disguised you language, but eye language, it came to, I was so hoping to be closer to you. And when you walk by me, with lunch tray or something like that, and you didn't sit down and you didn't even look at me. I just thought, wow, you know, maybe it's not going to happen. And I was, like, so disappointed.

And as I was witnessing this whole exchange, I thought, wow, that's actually the truth of what somebody was going through. And it's not that in every context we want to be that vulnerable. But I thought, you know, truthfulness is not just the surface level of, not telling a blatant lie, it's really going deep within to see what's the truth of my experience in this moment and do I want to express it? So I really like that aspect of it. And of course, there is the more surface level as well, which is still very significant. I often do tell the story about once I was staying in a house in Western Mass and a friend of ours had gone to

India alone without her husband to do this retreat, but she didn't want her mother to know that she'd gone alone. And so she basically lied to her mother and said, I'm going with my husband, and we'll be back in this and that date. And here's a phone number you can call if you ever, you know, want to try to reach me. That was the phone number of the house I was in. So just a few days before our friend was returning, the mother called. And my friend, whose house it was, who answered the phone, forgot that he was supposed to lie. And so this woman said, have you heard from my daughter or her husband? And he said, oh, yeah, he was just here for dinner. And then he remembered. And so he quickly said, well, he went to India with her, and he didn't stay as

long, so he came back, and right away, she really felt she was not being told the truth. So everybody hung up, and then she called a neighbor and asked them to call us to see, you know, maybe we would tell her the truth, even if we wouldn't tell herself the truth. And so these strangers started calling us, and we had to lie to everybody else. And then we realized she was going to call around to other numbers she had. So we had to start calling people and saying, you know, this is this woman's going to call. You have to lie. And this is what you have to say.

And it just kept getting more and more and more complicated. And right in the middle of that, ironically, we started getting these anonymous obscene phone calls. And, you know, normally you might just say, well, I'm not going to answer the phone for a while. But in this case, we had to answer the phone in case it was someone we had to lie to. And then finally, whoever was talking to her couldn't bear it anymore. and she said, I'm going to tell you the truth. She went to India without him. She's fine.

She's coming back like tomorrow or something. You know, it's really okay. And the woman had been lied to so much. It's like she didn't know what to believe anymore. She didn't know what was true. And even stranger, it's like we hardly knew what was true anymore because we've gotten so engaged in this web of deception. So even on that blatant level,

I think the tool we have, which really is a blessing, is just self-reflection. Like, how does this make me feel? And what's the consequence of living in this way? And what would happen if I chose to skillfully tell the truth in these circumstances? Just to go back and underline I language, that is the letter I language. And so speaking in your own experience as opposed to, quote unquote you language, which is often accusatory, you're a dirtbag, whatever, I have trouble with you when you do X is often a much more skillful way to communicate. And as you pointed out,

really in a broad understanding of truth is a more truthful way to communicate. So, but, but then you went on to tell the story about how lying can be disastrous. Um, I completely, completely buy your argument, and I think everybody listening, will buy your argument that if you're even 3% mindful while you're lying, you'll see that it doesn't feel good. But are there not circumstances where a white lie makes sense? My wife, who always looks good no matter what she's wearing, but say hypothetically she was wearing an outfit that I didn't like. This has never happened, but just say she was wearing an outfit that I didn't like. And she asked me, me how she looked. What is wrong with me saying, you look great so I can get us out the door

and we're not late to the party? Well, there are questions of intention, you know, which is always a crucial kind of factor in looking at ethical conduct, which we can talk about. But there's also, you reminded me, and I was very amused by that. You know, I've had many conversations with friends where somebody may present their creative work to you, and you really think it's, you. terrible or not very good and what do you say? So we practice like someone told me once they say, I couldn't be more surprised or you must be very proud of that rather than saying, I don't know about that. But again, you know, context is also very important. It's like if someone is sincerely asking you for feedback, that's a different thing. And then saying it as much, you know, not like

you're a terrible writer, you know, but I found myself a, uh, a little bit of, uh, a little lost here. I wonder if there's a way you could say it or, you know, I so much yearned to know what your experience really was in this moment and what was going on inside. You know, there were ways of offering feedback that are a little more encouraging than, you know, this is a waste of time. But then there are just these sort of more detached things, you know, like you're not really being asked for feedback, you're being asked for praise. And maybe you can't get there, you know, in an honest way. But it's fun to imagine what you would say. And then if somebody said it to me, I thought I was thinking, huh, they didn't like what I did. I guess they're

just trying to, you know, find a way of cushioning the blow or something like that. I remember I sent my brother, who you also know and are friends with, I sent him a version of my forthcoming book several years ago that was so long and baggy and self-indulgent. And he wrote back, you put your full self into this. it's perfect that's great so but you said something before that I want to pick up on that

that intention matters here you know this is actually like become a contentious issue intent in in some progressive circles there the argument is it's impact that matters

not your intent I personally actually I'm not sure I fully agree with that but you know how would you think of one's intention in the context of right speech. Well, I had a great conversation once with Anu Gupta. I don't know if you know his work.

Yeah, he's been on the show. Yeah, yeah. So asking him that very question, because it's true in social justice framing, impact is much more important than intention. But you can't deny that in terms of classical Buddhism intention is really key. And he was, he readily reconciled. those points of view. And the framework I usually use is an action, something we do, something we say, something we hold back from doing or saying, which is also a kind of action, has different elements to it. And the first is intention or motivation. And that is a crucial distinction. You know, if I was

picking up an object and handing it to you, well, anybody sees my hand moving down and picking up something and moving and forward. But what is in my heart? What is the intention? You know, maybe I'm giving you to you because I like you and I want you to have it or maybe I don't like you and I think you're not going to be able to figure it out. You know, it's going to drive you crazy here. You know, so it's like the same smile and the same gesture, but it's coming from a totally different place. And so it's a potent, potent form of a seed that we're planting. But the next aspect of an action is, you could say, the skillfulness of the execution. It's mindfulness and context.

It's cultural context. It's cultural sensitivity. It's understanding like maybe I'm giving you this object out of a very good intention. I don't want to throw it to you or maybe I only have one and there are 50 people in the room. Maybe it's best done privately. We have to really pay attention to where we are and who we're talking to and what's the context. And that's sort of where the impact part. comes alive, you know, that we need that sort of sensitivity and awareness. And those two things

are not antithetical to one another. They're just different. And I often emphasize that difference because in teaching loving cleanness meditation so much a great fear. And it's a reasonable fear people express as well, were I to develop a more loving heart? Doesn't that mean I have to say yes. I have to give them more money. I have to let them move back in. I have to let them move back in. I have to let them keep hurting me. And the answer is no, you know, you can come from a very and genuinely compassionate motivation, but I call it your best guess of how to behave in that moment, in that context, most skillfully, could be a strong boundary or feeling or being kind of fierce, you know, and it might be gentle, it might be strong, you know, it just depends. And that's discernment

and wisdom, hopefully, and understanding. But that doesn't mean you're not coming from a compassionate place. And so that is a model I use endlessly in trying to describe like, yeah, loving kindness doesn't consign us, you know, to being a dormant. It frees us because we can use discernment how we think we should behave or speak or respond in a certain moment. And it's always good, I think, to know your intention. Then in the context of white lies, if your intention is to be compassionate, a lot of people think, well, then why can't I tell the white lie?

You might be able to, you know? It's all so true, though, that sometimes those are consequential and you don't necessarily want it to unfold. It's like, what, if you told your wife she looked great and she went out and bought 15 more outfits just like that one? you know, depending, again, it's very contextual. You know, you might just say, yeah, you know, it's great, or you might say, wow, you know, it's good, but you know what I really liked was what you wore yesterday. I don't know, something like that. I've just really, personally, where I've, because I've done enough, I'm not,

I'm by no means an advanced meditation practitioner, but I've done enough practice to have a decent mindfulness quotient. It just feels so terrible when I, lie that I just tell the truth, but I try to tell the truth kindly. You know, like, you know what? I actually, I don't love that, but I, you know, I recognize that I'm not, I don't have sophisticated fashion taste. So if you like it, I'm good with it.

But, you know, I like the outfit you tried on right before it, you know. So there's, I think there are way, I think that personally, I think there are ways generally to avoid the white lie. Yeah. First of four questions, we've covered it. Is it true? What is the second of the four questions? Is it helpful?

You know, they say that to make a commitment to say that, which is true, doesn't mean that you want to blurt out everything that comes into your head, you know? And maybe somebody doesn't need to hear that, you know, you didn't think their book was great. Or, you know, maybe it's worth being restrained. maybe it's worth saying something later. Maybe it's worth not saying anything at all. Like if somebody is about to give a talk, a public talk, and you know they're pretty anxious about speaking,

you know, maybe that's not the time to say, you know, I heard this great talk by this other person, and that's going to be hard to beat. Not helpful. And again, it comes back to motivation. Like, what do you want? And that's something I've often said if I was going into an organization or a company to teach,

And I'd say before a major meeting, before a big conversation, something like that, ask yourself, what do I really want to see come out of this? You know, do I want to be helpful? Do I want a resolution? Do I want to mentor somebody? Do you want to grind them into dust? Do I want to be seen as right and superior? You know, take a look.

And that's one way of really coming back to see what your intention is. And if it is genuinely to be helpful, then that again kind of contours what we say or if we'll say something and how we'll say it. Your next-door neighbor and our mutual friend, Joseph. Joseph, he has this whole rap. He likes to deliver around the ancient poly term Sampapapapha, which is translated as useless speech. And we do this all day long, many of us, just say stuff for the sake of saying it. Social media has put this on steroids. And Joseph says if you're looking underneath the intention when you're about to say something useless, often it's, look at me.

That to me is like if you're asking us to look at our intentions before we speak, it can be a very humbling thing if we're willing to be honest with ourselves. Well, there's also, I think that's very, very true. And so there are also ways where if we have the inspiration, you know, we make some experiments. It's like when we started teaching in this country and the retreats we were offering, we're all still pretty much that way silent. You know, you speak to a teacher, which is pretty circumscribed. You know, you're not talking about the last movie you saw, hopefully. you're talking about your practice and your internal experience, and you may not speak to anyone else for that 10-day period. I sat with you Pandita-Saido, for example, in 1984 for three months. He was the only person I talked to. And so, you know, when you're about to embark in a period of silence, if you choose to, it might be, you know, two days, three days, seven days, whatever it is.

And often, as people come on to retreat, it's the single most, just quieting, you know, uncomfortable thing to think about. And people come and say, I don't know if I can be silent for two days. And my partner doesn't think I can be silent. Or once somebody came and said they're doing a bedding pool in my office because they don't think I can be silent. And almost always, really, at the end of the experience, it's one of the single most beautiful aspects of having been there.

It's like for once in our lives, we don't have to present. ourselves is interesting or amusing or disturbed or anything. We can just be with ourselves, but we're afraid in general. We're not, most of us brought up to be a friend of silence. And so sometimes that useless kind of speech is, it's just a way of filling in the gap so that we're not just being. Okay, so we've done, is it true? Is there more to say about, is it helpful? Or should we move on to the third question? Honestly, I was thinking about it. about the experience you described of having a 360 review. Yeah.

Which you can describe better than I. And so it's seen from what I've heard about it. What I've heard you talk about it is that it really provoked some great introspection and tremendous change. And I know that your next book is going to cover that in some way. but that would be an example of something, you know, that it's a little bit like embarking in a period of silence. It's having a certain kind of audacity, you know, to step outside of one's comfort zone and experiment with a different way of giving and receiving speech. So I don't know if you want to say anything about that. Well, very briefly, as you mentioned, I had a 360 review.

The first one I had was in 2018, so quite a while ago. But it was a very humbling experience. I actually remember sending the results to you because they were quite harsh. 39 pages. The first 11 pages were like positive stuff and the rest of it was just straight beat down. There were four major buckets of kind of emotional unavailability, a stubbornness, a dismissiveness, a kind of black and white thinking, overcommitment. I can't remember all the things. but those are the basic areas.

And I remember coming to your apartment and talking about it afterwards, I was totally distraught. But it, yes, it's an audacious thing to do to ask for that level of feedback. I don't actually think that it's for everyone. It's often used in a corporate context. And if you don't have good coaching to go with it, it can backfire. I happen to have good coaching and also just know a lot of really wise people like you who can help me with it. the 360 reviewers, the people, it's an anonymous survey of the people you work with. And in my case, I added in, like my wife and my brother and Joseph. And so it was like a personal and professional

360 review to get a panoramic sense of my strengths and weaknesses. And the reviewers, the people who were surveyed, they were actually engaging in right speech, even though a lot of what they said was some of it was harsh and maybe actually some of it crossed the line to wrong speech in that it was unkind, which we will get too soon. But it was certainly solicited. I was asking for their feedback and they were giving it. They weren't talking, you know, crap behind my back. They were, they were giving me feedback in a context where I asked for it. And so it was helpful in the end, right? Yes. Deeply, I would say, uh, right below. the birth of our son and our marriage as, you know, the most important thing that has happened to me as an adult. It provoked an enormous amount of change and drove me way deeper into your personal bailiwick, Sharon Salzberg, of loving kindness and, and a supporter of it, but I'd not as, it forced me to engage much more deeply with those practices, which has been just incalculable. And it's,

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So question number three, so again, just to reset, four questions to ask yourself if you're trying to engage in right speech, is it true? Is it helpful? The third is, is it timely? Is this the right time to say the thing? Yeah, and I think that's very connected to, is it helpful? It's like if you have a friend or an acquaintance who just got a really difficult diagnosis, and it may not be the time, and it may not be that helpful to give them advice, you know.

And a lot of people who are feeling that kind of vulnerability and, you know, everything, the fear and everything that goes with that kind of situation. Often tell me they feel a little bombarded, you know, by advice. And I use the example in something I'd written of Ram Dass, who was also at my very first retreat in 1971, and I've been a friend ever since. And after his stroke, which was a very, very significant stroke, I remember he was in the rehab hospital,

and then he was still living in California, and I went to visit him in California, and his living room was piled high with things people had sent, and it was beautiful. It was really a gesture, you know, based on how much he had given the world and how he was held in the kind of regard he was held. But sometimes there would be these notes that accompanied the whatever,

and it would say, like, take 15 drops of this, and you'll definitely be walking. again. And I could feel his internal experience of that was pressure. And it sort of translated into, like, will you still love me if it doesn't work? Will you still be here with me? Or will you see me as having failed you in some way? And when I was there visiting him, one of those arrived. And it was a bottle of Ganges water, water from the Ganges River. And I had a note that said something like, take 15 drops of this and you'll be okay within two weeks. And I said, don't drink that.

Whatever you do, don't drink that. You'll get cholera if you drink that, you know, like for God's sake. You know, so it's the way, you know, like when someone seems to be in their most vulnerable spot, is that the time? Or is that going to be helpful in the end to impose that kind of pressure, which is really just about you, you know, like I saved you in some way. So again, it's really important to look at intention and to look at context to try to figure that out. Just for context on Ram Dass, for people who don't know who he is, he's a great spiritual teacher and writer.

He is perhaps most famous for his book Be Here Now, but there are some documentaries on him that are on Netflix that are worth watching. And he did have a stroke and really handled it with uncommon grace. In terms of timeliness, there's another tool from the aforementioned Dan. Clerman and Mudita Nisker, who are great communications coaches in the Buddhist tradition, that I found really helpful. You know, when I'm talking to somebody who is in, you know, extremists, there's something big going on. They've gotten a diagnosis or they've made a big mistake and they feel under siege. Instead of, or they're just anxious about something, instead of moving into advice,

which is generally is not generally what people want. What generally, what I think people want and what I certainly want in these moments is just to be seen and heard, validated. A tool that I learned from Dan and Mudita is reflective listening, where you simply listen to what somebody's saying and then repeat back the bones of what they've said to you, the kind of headline version in your own words. and that really is just giving people this incredible gift of a feeling like they're seen and heard. So anyway, does that feel like an appropriate thing to say in this context?

It does, I think very much so. And I tell a story somewhere, which was also from a million years ago, you know, it's like living in India, there's just this array of spiritual gurus and perspectives and methodologies. And somebody came to me once this young man, and he said, I'm thinking of bringing my father to India to meet this one particular guru, whom I'd also met, and he said to me, what do you think? And I said, well, you know, it's sort of like a hard place. It's a hard city.

It'll be incredibly hot. There'll be bugs. He may not like the food. He might get sick. And anyway, guru is a little weird, you know? It's like the scene is strange, and it might not work, but he didn't listen to me, and he went and did it anyway, and it turned out the father fell totally in love with the guru and became like a disciple of the guru and became a teacher in the guru's lineage.

And like, I couldn't have been more wrong. And I thought back to that moment, you know, where I was like, why was I, you know, lacing my view, my experience instead of, as you said, just listening, saying, well, what is it you hope for, you know, and what's he like, you know? is he the kind of person that you think would would take offense at this? Or, you know, just like actually having a genuine communication, I just sort of laid out, well, my experience was, you know, like this, and I'm sure it won't be okay.

Why do you think it is that we rush to advice or rush to fix or rush to pontificate in these moments? Is it some unease that we're covering up for? Well, no doubt. You know, and I think we're also, we tend to be rather self-preoccupied rather than connecting. You know, it's like we meet somebody and largely what's going on in our minds is, what do they think of me? You know, the day they like me, do they like me more than they've ever liked anyone before? I know.

I said something stupid. They hate me. You know, instead of actually, in a way, kind of emptying and being there and taking them in and noticing. And one of the detriments to being so self-preoccupied is that we lose the capacity to be surprised by people, you know, and just to have that kind of, oh, that's interesting. And, boy, that's unexpected. I wouldn't have thought that. And, you know, because there's not necessarily genuine connection going on. So, I mean, I think in the case of just kind of reciting advice, you know, it's about being seen as right, you know, and having the correct opinion.

you know, maybe being remembered as the one who warned you off against doing that thing or whatever. And it's a pretty lonely way of being in the end because we're not actually connecting in a genuine way. Fourth question is, I think, the thorniest in some ways. So just to reset again, is it true? Is it helpful? Is it timely? The fourth is, is it kind? So I have a million questions for you about this, but what do you just set the table? Well, I would go back to that model that I was talking about of the intention behind an action and then our best guess of what's most skillful in that moment in time as a way of expressing something

because we can look at what our motive is. It's like, do I want to be seen as right? Do I want to try to be helpful? do I want to extend some compassion? This person's going through something really hard, you know, and do I just want to acknowledge that in terms of, you know, is that my intention, is to say you're not so alone in some way? You know, so the kindness is embedded in the intention.

One of the things I'm sort of liking these days out of current maybe pop psychology is the distinction between being kind and being nice. You know, and so the nice part would have to do with that second aspect of action, which is the expression or the manifestation, the skillful or unskilledful manifestation of the intention in that moment. And so maybe there is a time when it feels most appropriate to be strong, you know, and not to just try to please the other person, but hopefully in a skillful way to say what we feel we have to say or whatever. have a strong boundary or to say no or whatever it might be. And the kindness is still there in that we're not trying to harm somebody. We're not trying to hurt anybody, perhaps. And yet, you know, what seems most appropriate is, is not saying yes and being sweet and being meek or something like that. There's another classic Sharon's story that's coming to mind that's not

fully apropos because it's not it's not on speech. It's not totally on point on the subject of speech, but I think it is illuminating in this context that you early on in your days in India and you were still young and new to the practice and you were listening to some teachers talking about the importance of kindness and you said something to the effect of like, what if I go out in the street and here in India and there are pick pockets all over the place? What do I do? I let them pick my pockets and. And the teacher said, you should very compassionately smack them with your umbrella. Okay, I'm going to tell you what really happened.

Okay, okay. Because that is one of my stories and one of my experiences. And it's so funny because we're talking about, you know, a long time ago, I mean, the Insight Meditation Society just celebrated its 50th anniversary, and we were in India before then, you know. So I hear this story, you know, and people say it in all kinds of different ways. So what actually happened was I'd gone to Baguaya and Calcutta, maybe six or seven hours away from one another by train.

So I'd gone to Calcutta for some reason with this friend of mine. We were heading back to Guyah, to Bogaya. And going to the train station in Calcutta, there was something going on in the street. There was some kind of riot. So we couldn't get a cab or something like that. And the only means of transportation we could find to get back to the train station was a rickshaw. And in Calcutta in those days, I don't know about now,

the rickshaws were not men on bicycles. They were men running. So you were in this carriage, and this guy was pulling you along running. So he's going down these dark side streets and alleyways, and this very large, very drunken man, came out of the shadows and stopped him and went to grab me to pull me off. And I thought, oh my God, you know, I'm going to be raped. I'm going to be murdered. And the person I was with, the man I was with, managed to shove him aside and got the guy to start running again. So we got to the train station, got, you know, after the train ride got back to Bud Gaya and went to see this teacher Minidra. And I was so very shaken up by it. And I told him the whole story.

And he said to me, oh, Sharon, with all the loving kindness in your heart, you should have taken your umbrella and hit that man over the head. So that's what happened And, you know, I knew you were going to tell that story, you know, in some fashion when you started speaking. And, you know, of course, a lot of times we hit people over the head and we think, well, it was coming from a loving place? But was it really? You know, so there we have the ability for introspection and for really self-reflection and see where we're coming from. But we don't, as you know, you know, that mistake is so fundamental that from, loving kindness, we're just going to be so doormat-like, you know, that it's just not the way it works.

Is it kind? The injunction toward kindness in our speech does not mean we shouldn't speak up for what we believe in in a political context online or IRL. We shouldn't go to a protest. We shouldn't have firm words with our spouse or our child or the proverbial obnoxious uncle. it's it's about like what is in your heart as you're doing this are you are you are you being firm and maybe even slightly harsh from the from a mind of of loving kindness exactly you know and what an amazing thing that we can look back hopefully without a lot of judgment um to see our intention you know if you're full of judgment and shame, and that's not going to really work either. But to understand, you know, we have lots of different kinds of conditioning and things will come up. We don't have to necessarily follow them out and live by them, but, you know, we can see them and abandon that,

which is unskilful and cultivate the good. And, I mean, what a breathtaking potential for a human life. Okay. Well, here's the really juicy question, though. Is it ever okay to gossip? Probably we will. I've heard people say that it's like a tribal ritual. It's good. You can find your people. But I think it's so interesting to look at not only the intention, but also the nature of the gossip. It's like I use the example sometimes of like you're about to say something about someone else that's really belittling.

It's true, but it's belittling. And sometimes, like I ask myself or we can ask ourselves, like, why? What would be the result of turning this person against this other person? Or, you know, what would be the good of this person knowing this about this other person? And sometimes we just practice restraint, but you don't have to be like holier than now or uptight or anything. You can be relaxed in your speech, but, or, you know, what would it be like if you said, something about another person and then they walked in the room like two and a half minutes later. Like, what would that feel like? And realizing just because something is ordinary or conventional

or familiar doesn't mean it brings us anything, you know, that's worth having in terms of our fulfillment or our happiness in life. So it's not bad to pay attention to those elements as well. But I do want to go back to something you said a moment ago and I didn't pick up on it and I want to pick up on it now, which is you didn't say this, but I'm going to say it because I'm pretty sure you will say it or would have said it. Nobody's expecting perfection here. The point is to bring some curiosity and introspection both in the moment when you can remember and ex post facto if you can, you know, bear it. But the point is not to shame yourself. You are, if you take this seriously, you are likely to see some things that are unfattering. But the shame is not going to help. As I once heard a great teacher whose initials are Sharon Salzberg say, the mind filled with shame cannot learn. And so I often call in my scatological way shame.

I often call it these psychic constipation. Like nothing can move. through if you're just stuck in a story of I'm a bad person. I, of course, I said that thing because my intention is to belittled and to self-aggrandize. So, yeah, just say a little bit more about why shame is not helpful. Yeah, there was actually a quotation from Eve Beckman, who said just that the brain filled with shame cannot learn. And it's really true, you know, like even some people going back to our initial conversation,

some people in describing the eightfold path don't like. that term right, you know, right speech, right action, right livelihood. And yet, that is the classical translation. They don't like right because of the likelihood of somebody then judging themselves and blaming themselves, and I'm all wrong, and it's so terrible. But right in the sense, just you could say it means onward leading, you know, rather than being stuck, you could say it means being in harmony with how things are. And there's nothing wrong with wanting to be happy, you know, because it doesn't mean wanting endless pleasure or domination over others. It means genuine kind of happiness. And when we align ourselves with the things that

will help bring it, first of all, our own happiness in that sense gives us resilience and an ability to help others, which we don't have if we just feel broken and overwhelmed and exhausted all of the time. So we work on those things that will build that capacity up. And it's good for us. It's good for others. And that's what's right, you know, is to orient ourselves toward that. And wanting that is not greed, which people often ask me, you know, isn't that selfish to want to be happy? And I say, no, it's not great. It's science. You know, if I have all this material goods and I never share anything, I feel I never have enough. You know, that's not a happy state.

And, you know, why not see that generosity produces happiness and then embark on a path? Or if I spent all my time just disparaging others, I really do think we live in a culture of disparagement in terms of speech where we're taught you will feel better about yourself if you just put others down. You know, we see it again and again. I don't watch much reality TV, for example, you know, but occasionally in someone's house, someone will have something on. And I remember watching this cooking show, and it was just terrible, you know, instead of somebody, you know, being dismissed with, you know, that was a really good souffle. But I think it could have made it more interesting with more spice or something like that. It was like, take your knives and go. And it was like, you don't deserve to be alive, you know.

And we call it an entertainment. So we've got lots of conditioning about what happens if you make a mistake. What happens if you're not number one? You know, how should you feel about yourself? And it's a lot of work, but it's the most liberating work of all to realize we can see these things within ourselves, not as bad or wrong, but painful. And out of compassion for ourselves, embark on a path that's more fulfilling, you know, and is happier. abandoning the unskilful.

Yeah. How do we remember right speech when we're in the middle of a conversation with a difficult person? Well, this is also practice. We can practice when we're not in the heat of a conversation with a difficult person. Because the more we practice any skill in a kind of boring, somewhat boring, ordinary time, it is a little bit like going to the gym and you're building up that strength so that when things they're harder, more complicated, more demanding, than it's more familiar. So I would suggest that, like, make it a habit.

So one of the things I decided in the beginning of the pandemic, you know, I was in Barry Mass, the center was closed, all my travel plans were dashed, and so I decided I was going to undertake these practices just to, you know, make it a more enriched and useful time. So one of the practices I decided on was that I wasn't. I wasn't going to write an email and just press send, because it is a medium of communication, which can so often lead to misunderstanding and confusion. It's so terse. And so I thought I was going to write an email, read it again, put myself in the position of the recipient, and then decide if I wanted to edit it or to send it. And, you know, this is all these years later. I still do that.

And most of the time I edit it, you know, because it's the nature of that. that sort of medium. So we can undertake practices of speech in one form or another and bring them to bear and just experiment with them. And then when you're in the heat, you know, of a conversation with a difficult person, the simplest thing usually as a mirror for our feelings is the body. You know, what am I feeling? What sensations are coming up? And that becomes our feedback system. So I also often and tell the story about a friend of mine who described herself as the kind of person who could basically never say no. She had a very hard time saying no in all these different situations. So she said like she'd be at work and she'd be asked to do things that really were not her

job, but she would feel like she had to say yes. And so in her meditation practice, in her meditation practice, one of the things she did was consciously bring up those kinds of situations. And she'd imagine somebody asking her something. And she really studied what happened in her body because the feeling, which is really panic, came up in her stomach before the thought, or maybe they won't like me anymore, if I say no. And so she studied that feeling and that became her feedback system so that when she was at work

and she would be asked that very kind of question, and she'd feel that very thing. That was her signal to say, I'll have to get back to you. And then once she had some space, she could actually say no. So the body will reveal a lot of things, and that can be our signal, like maybe don't answer right away, you know, or maybe say you need some time to think about something or to say, well, you know, I think of whatever you're proposing differently. Do you want to hear what, you know, my perspective is or something? You know, it'll just help guide us. This has been a great conversation. I'm completely unsurprised by that fact. Before I let you go, though, can you just talk a little bit about this event you're doing on the 10% app, this eight-week series of live events around the eight-fold path? I'm super excited and super grateful to you for doing it.

But yeah, talk a little bit about why you wanted to do it and what it will be. I am doing several things for that up. I'm doing that series. I'm ultimately doing a course with Andy Gonzalez from the Holistic Life Foundation, which is especially designed for people who care for other people. in some way. The eight-fold path is like our living legacy. You know, it is the actionable part of what we can do.

You know, it's one thing to feel a sense of dissatisfaction in your life or things could be better. And it's another thing to feel creative and that you have agency and that there are things you can experiment with and try out. So that's really the eightfold path. And that will be eight different sessions. Yes, eight different sessions, all live on Sundays through throughout the summer. And if you miss it, you can watch it on replay.

And we're going to turn it into a course on the Eightfold Path. Oh, that's great. Sharon Salzberg. But she's also creating another course with our mutual friend, Andy Gonzalez, around specifically meditation and content aimed at people who are kids. which honestly is most of us, whether you're a parent or you have an aging parent or you, as you move through the day,

you are many of us, there are moments where we are caregivers for friends who need help or maybe we're volunteers or, yeah, or we're in a caregiving profession. There are lots of use cases for this second course you will also be creating for us. Anyway, Sharon, you're the best. Thank you for doing this. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much to everybody who works so hard to make this show. 10% Happier is produced by 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 great indie rock band Islands wrote our theme. One last thing I want to say before you go, if you enjoy the show please do me slash us a solid follow the show and leave a rating and a review on whatever platform you watch or listen to us on it only takes a minute it's free and it really helps new people find us and spread the good news that the mine is trainable thank you sincerely i mean it

thank you