Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - Impermanence Is a Key Buddhist Insight. Here’s How to See It. | Bonus Meditation with Jessica Morey

Episode Date: September 17, 2023

Everything good must come to an end. Noticing endings teaches us how to savor the good in life, and even find courage to be with the hard.About Jessica Morey:Jess Morey is a lead teacher, cofounder and former executive director of Inward Bound Mindfulness Education which runs in-depth mindfulness programming for youth, and the parents and professionals who support them across the US, and internationally. She began practicing meditation at age 14 on teen retreats offered by the Insight Meditation Society (IMS), and has maintained a consistent commitment to meditation since. Diving head first into meditation at such a key developmental stage makes the revelatory perspective of mindfulness & compassion her natural home turf, and gives her an easy, conversational teaching style anyone can relate to.To find this meditation in the Ten Percent Happier app, you can search for “As Things Change.” See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Ghosts aren't real. At least as a journalist, that's what I've always believed. Sure, odd things happen in my childhood bedroom. But ultimately, I shrugged it all off. That is, until a couple of years ago, when I discovered that every subsequent occupant of that house is convinced they've experienced something inexplicable too. Including the most recent inhabitant who says she was visited at night by the ghost of a faceless woman. And it gets even stranger. It just so happens that the alleged ghost haunted my childhood room might just be my wife's great-grandmother. It was murdered in the house next door by two gunshots to the face.

From Wondry and Pineapple Street Studios comes Ghost Story, a podcast about family secrets overwhelming coincidence and the things that come back to haunt us. Follow Ghost Story on the Wondry app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes at free right now by joining Wondry Plus. This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hello, everybody. Happy Friday, time for a bonus meditation.

Impermanence is one of the key insights of Buddhism. A Buddhist master was once asked how he would sum up the Dharma as succinctly as possible and his answer, and I hope I'm remembering this correctly, but his answer was something like, everything changes. That's it. Why is this so important to see? Because if you ignore the fact that everything is changing all the time, you are likely to cling to things that will not last, like your looks, your health, your body, your money,

whatever. And that, that clinging, is a very successful route to suffering. So today we have a meditation designed to key you into a very specific aspect of impermanence, one that many of us miss, the endings of things. We miss the endings of things often because we're often lurching forward to whatever's coming next. Our teacher, Du jour, is the great Jess Mori. She's a lead teacher, co-founder and former executive director of Inward Bound Mindfulness Education, which runs in-depth mindfulness programming for young people, their parents, and the professionals who support

them across the United States and internationally. She's also been part of the leadership team at 10% happier. Here we go now with Jess Mori. Hi, this is Jess. We often miss the endings of everyday experiences because our minds are already on to the next thing. And when we miss the ending, we can miss the reality that everything is constantly changing. In this meditation that I first learned from Shins and Young, we'll focus on noticing the endings of sounds and the breath. Let's give it a try. You can allow your eyes to close or rest them softly on the floor in front of you and take a few deeper breaths inviting your body to settle.

And now shift your attention to the sounds around you. Just receive the sounds as you notice them. Allow your tension to be moment when the sound you're noticing ends. If you hear a sound that doesn't seem to end, listen closely and notice all the shifting vibrations or tones that make up the sound. Each changing vibration has an ending. If it's helpful, you might make a soft mental note to yourself, and, or gone, when you notice that the sound has ended. Explore this on your own for a bit. And I invite you to shift your attention to the sensations and the exhale. And notice any space between the end of each inhale, feeling to whatever extent you can, the very moment of ending. If it's helpful, you can note to notice the ending of each exhale as well as the ending of each exhale as well as the ending of each inhale.

And keep practicing like this on your own for a time. And when you're ready, open your eyes, orient back to the space around you. Thank you for your practice. See you next time. Thank you, Jess. You can find more meditations like this one, over on the 10% happier app. Just download the app wherever you get your apps

to get started. We'll see you right back here on Monday for a brand new episode with the amazing and incredibly thoughtful and also incredibly funny comedian Duncan Trussell. Hey, hey prime members, you can listen to 10% happier early and ad free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Or you can listen early and ad free with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts. Before you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondery.com slash survey.

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