Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - Six Buddhist Practices To Stay Calm In A Tumultuous World | Kaira Jewel Lingo, Valerie Brown and Marisela Gomez

Episode Date: October 9, 2024

This stuff can be done by anyone, anywhere, anytime.Kaira Jewel Lingo, a frequent flier on this show, was an ordained Buddhist nun for 15 years. Now she lives in New York, writes books, and teaches meditation all over the world. Valerie Brown is a former lawyer and lobbyist who traded in her high-pressure job to teach the dharma. She also works as an executive coach. And Marisela Gomez is a physician, public health scholar and longtime meditator. All three guests come out of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh’s Plum village tradition. They also are the co-authors of the new book Healing Our Way Home: Black Buddhist Teachings on Ancestors, Joy, and Liberation. Related Episodes:3 Buddhist Strategies for When the News is Overwhelming | Kaira Jewel LingoHow to Keep Your Relationships On the Rails | Kaira Jewel LingoThe Medieval Executioner in Your Head | Valerie BrownSign up for Dan’s weekly newsletter hereFollow Dan on social: Instagram, TikTokTen Percent Happier online bookstoreSubscribe to our YouTube ChannelOur favorite playlists on: Anxiety, Sleep, Relationships, Most Popular EpisodesFull Shownotes: https://happierapp.com/podcast/tph/brown-gomez-lingoAdditional Resources:Download the Happier app today: https://my.happierapp.com/link/downloadSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to 10% happier early and ad free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. It's the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hey, gang. how we doing? Today, we're going to talk about six Buddhist practices to help you stay calm when it feels like the world's on fire. We are recording and releasing this episode in the middle of the contentious 2024 presidential election campaign in the United States.

But if you're listening to this in the future, just know that this stuff can be done by anyone, anywhere, anytime. We have brought in a trio of ace Buddhist teachers today. They are Kyra Jewel Lingo, who's a frequent flyer on the show. She was an ordained Buddhist nun for 15 years, and now she lives in New York and writes books

and teaches meditation all over the world. Valerie Brown is making her second appearance today. She's a former lawyer and lobbyist who traded in a high pressure job to teach the Dharma. She also works as an executive coach. And finally, Maricela Gomez, who's making her debut appearance here today. She's a physician and public health scholar and longtime meditator. All three of these guests come out of Thich Nhat Hanh's Plum Village tradition for the uninitiated. Thich Nhat Hanh was a great Zen master who died a

few years ago. He set up this great community called Plum Village and you may hear my guests refer to their teacher as Thai. That's what many of his students call him. I should also say that Kyra, Valerie, and Marisela have just put out a book called Healing Our Way Home Black Buddhist Teachings on Ancestors, Joy, and Liberation. We get calm with Kyra Julingo, Valerie Brown, and Maricela Gomez right after this. Before we get started, I want to remind you of all the good stuff we're doing over at danharris.com these days. You probably heard me announce that we've started a new community through Substack, which includes all kinds of perks for subscribers, such as the ability to chat with me,

and sometimes our guests, about each of the new podcast episodes, video ask-me-anything sessions, even live meditation sessions with me. Plus, you'll get a cheat sheet, which includes full transcript and key takeaways from every episode. Recently, we had my friends, Seben A. Selassie and Jeff Warren in the chat, and we've got plenty of other podcast guests who are gonna be hopping into the chat in the coming weeks, so stay tuned for that. We're having a lot of fun.

We'd love you to join us. It's eight bucks a month or 80 bucks a year, or free for anybody who can't afford it, no questions asked. Just head over to danharris.com. We'll see you there. Meanwhile, I wanna give you an update on what's happening over on the Happier app. As you know, I used to be involved with that app, I'm not anymore, but I'm gonna continue

to update you on their doings. They are very excited to announce something very cool. They have teamed up with two of the world's most renowned meditation centers, the Insight Meditation Society and Spirit Rock for an exclusive retreat giveaway. Two winners will receive a $1,500 credit to go on a retreat, a $600 travel credit, and a complimentary

four-year membership to the Happier app. The giveaway is from October 1st to October 14th. Enter now at happierapp.com slash retreat giveaway. That's happierapp.com forward slash retreat giveaway. I personally love Airbnbs. My friend Glenn and I just rented an Airbnb in Fort Lauderdale. We're gonna bring our families down

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My wife Bianca and I have been listening to many audiobooks as we drive around for summer vacations. We listen to Life by Keith Richards. Keith, if you're listening, I'd love to have you on the show. We also listen to Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. And Yuval, if you're listening to this,, I'd love to have you on the show. We also listened to Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. And Yuval, if you're listening to this, we would also love to have you on this show.

So audio books, yes, audible, yes, love it. There's more to imagine when you listen, sign up for a free 30 day audible trial and your first audio book is free. Visit audible.ca, audible.ca. visit audible.ca, audible.ca. Valerie Brown, Maricela Gomez, Kyra Jolingo, welcome to the show. Thank you.

Good to be here. I should say that for Valerie and Kyra, it's welcome back, Maricela, welcome for the first time. We're gonna talk about some practices that the three of you do to stay calm and sane in a topsy-turvy tumultuous world. I'm a bit picky at random here, but I was particularly intrigued by something called The Four Chairs and in reading the book found it kind of a little bit amusing.

Valerie, your story about almost kicking somebody's ass. So why don't we talk about what this practice is and maybe we'll get around to Valerie telling that story as well. Sure. So this was a practice that I learned through a couple different teachers in the Plum Village tradition, though it's based on a nonviolent communication practice. Peggy Smith put it together, and I learned it from Richard Brady when we were teaching a retreat together. But basically, the idea is to bring to mind an exchange

that you've had with someone that was painful, where you felt insulted, hurt, harmed in some way by someone's speech. And then to use both you know, both the practice of mindfulness but also the language of nonviolent communication, which is to understand the emotions, the needs behind something happening to kind of workshop that experience and to go back and sort of get a chance to respond differently than you might have. So there are four chairs and each time the harmful phrase or sentence is said to

you and you respond differently from each of the four chairs. So the first chair, you know, you respond back to the person just like they shared to you. So you share all your anger, all your upset, you blame them for everything. So if they've said, you know, in my case the example that I used in the book was a racial slur. I was on a train in Europe and so the first chair you just let them have it. You have a chance to say all the things that are terrible about this person and how could they possibly ever say something so whatever. You can release your pent up emotions

you didn't get a chance to share in the moment perhaps, but you are in touch with your anger and putting them as the problem. They are at fault. So you experience what that's like and then you do this again. The second chair now that you sit in is you hear them share this terrible thing that they said to you and then you put all the blame on yourself. So you then turn it inwards like, what did I do to be at fault for being spoken to in this way?

So you kind of direct your own blame or judgment or whatever, you know, emotional reactivity to what it is that you might have done that brought this about. And these are all just explorations. This isn't about actually taking the blame for something that we're not to blame for, but it's really to kind of make more extreme the things we do anyway in real life. So sometimes we do just put it all on the other person,

even when perhaps we do have some part to play in the conflict. There are other times when we put it all on ourselves. So it's just to explore that. This isn't about really harming ourselves in any way. Okay, so then you feel what does that feel like when you take all the blame? And maybe you find some little bit of truth of where you were somehow part of that situation contributing in some way. Then you move to the third chair.

The third chair is you offer yourself compassion. So the person says this terrible thing to you and instead of reacting to them or blaming or judging yourself, you turn towards what are the emotions that came about from them saying that to you and you feel the pain of that in you and you offer yourself compassion for that. You care for the emotional fallout of that exchange. So

you get in touch with maybe it's humiliation that you felt being spoken to in that way or rage or absolute shock and you take care of that feeling because maybe in the moment you didn't get a chance to take care of that feeling. So you slow it down, you go back and you revisit that past in order to kind of process it, to digest it, to excavate things that may have stayed buried and not really integrated. You do the work of caring for yourself and the pain that came up. And then the last chair is you do the same for the other person. So you again imagine them saying this terrible thing to you and then you reflect what kind of pain are they experiencing? Were they going through in this moment that led them to say that, the same compassion I just cultivated for myself, how can I extend that to them to

understand something deeper about what was going on for them and open my heart in some way to maybe to forgiveness, maybe to acceptance of just how crazy our world is and how many people are suffering from so many forms of systemic injustice and systemic confusion and delusion, and that they are also a victim somehow if they're saying these kinds of things that are so hurtful that they also have been harmed by whatever system has indoctrinated this belief or view in them. So it gives you a chance to really take a bigger view of that one moment. Yeah.

Just to put a fine point on this, this is a different kind of meditation than I think some people will have been used to, you know, where you sit and watch your breath and then every time you get distracted, you start again. This feels a little bit closer to loving kindness or meta METTA meditation. It's really using the thinking mind in a very directed way to help you train up certain kinds of inner emotional capacities.

Am I describing this correctly? Yeah, I think that's right. I actually don't know if this was introduced as a meditation, but more as an exercise't know if this was introduced as a meditation, but more as an exercise. But you could do it as a meditation. You could do it in a lot of ways, where you do it live speaking with someone else. You could do this out loud, like out loud meditation. You could do this as a written practice, or you could do this quietly reflecting interiorly what your responses might be in each of the chairs and

then what the feeling is in the body, what the experience is in the mind with each of these responses. So I know when I did it, it was actually very liberating to do the first step because I didn't give myself permission to do that first step of getting really angry at the person in real life. And I realized that this would happen decades ago. I was 18 when this happened. And I realized that anger, that genuine, true sense of being harmed, I hadn't been able to honor that until I did this exercise. So it wasn't about, you know, I'm going to go out and do something to this guy, So it wasn't about, you know, I'm going to go out and do something to this guy, you know, ever see him again. I'm sure he's very old now or passed away. But it was really about acknowledging, oh, wow, this thing really hurt me. And I never gave voice to this part of it. And actually doing

that first step allowed me to then do the other steps, which led to truly feeling a real healing came in this particular knot that I had from this encounter that had never been kind of massaged until I did this exercise. But getting to really let myself get in touch with the anger was a doorway to the other emotions that then could come in. You made a reference to going out and doing something to the guy who said this to you. So that kind of brings us back to Valerie.

Can you tell your story? Oh no. Well, yeah, again, thanks Dan for the opportunity. And it's truly a delight to be here with my spiritual friends and just people I truly, truly love. Yeah, so I can speak to an incident that happened maybe about a year or so ago that really is emblematic of the four chair practice that Cara Jewel just spoke to.

I have to say that a lot of this has to do with my conditioning. I grew up in Brooklyn, hence all of the conditioning started there. Every day I have this practice in the morning of going out for high intensity interval training. So I run up a very big hill that's close to my house and I run up as fast as I can. So I'm running up this hill, I'm going as fast as I can, I get to the top of the hill, and I'm totally out of breath. And so there's this woman who is coming toward me,

and she has a leash, but no dog. I'm panting, I'm at the top of the hill and she says, well, if you see a dog anywhere, it's mine. Between gasping for breaths, I said, well, I don't live up here. She turned to me and she said, well, okay. And then she used the B word. Okay, and then she used the B word. And it's as though every part on my body was like set on fire with a match. I mean, it was an explosion. I could feel my heart explode with anger, the kind of anger you were talking about, Cara Jewel. It was like a light was lit under my feet. All the anger and the rage that not

only was mine, but was like my dad's, my mother's, came right back to me in an instant. And it was like, I paused for like a zillionth of a second. And that pausing was part of a practice that I had been doing over and over and over and over again. In that moment, I noticed the flash of anger. And I was able to stop, not like slam her, not say something that would be harmful. But instead, I just was like stunned and she just walked away and I stood there and I was kind of like in shock. I was in shock partly because the practice worked. I could feel my heart. I could feel the anger. I could feel the liberation that I did not have to have her ugliness, her anger, my anger. I did not have to react out of enmity and violence or whatever was going on with this person. I could let her have what she had without it becoming mine. Honestly, I stood there for a moment and it was like relief and joy then came over me. I felt all tingly.

And I felt like, wow, this is what the practice is. I don't have to be enslaved to my automatic habitual patterns of reaction. The way I grew up, the violence, the poverty, the hatred, the whatever. I didn't have to be beholden to that. And so I kind of kept on with my walk. And as I walked a little bit, I then went into that kind of, that fourth chair courage that you were describing, where I could have a little bit of compassion for this person. And I thought, wow, I wonder what's going on for her. After, selfishly, I kind of took care of my own needs and my own feelings, because honestly,

a part of my pattern has been taking care of other people and putting my own needs last. And so I deliberately and consciously said, no, hey, what's going on for me calming myself down. And then after I felt more stable, more solid, more grounded, I could then extend some compassion to this person and say, yeah, she's probably having a hard time. It's probably a mess to lose the animal

that you really love. And that was it. I just wanna point out that in the book, you mentioned that when you say you're from Brooklyn, you are not from the currently gentrified part of Brooklyn that's now like filled with artisanal chocolatiers and things like that. It's a little bit more hardcore.

It's true. When you say you've been doing this pause practice, what are you referring to specifically there? Yeah, so in the Plum Village tradition, Thich Nhat Hanh Thay has offered lots and lots of teachings. And of course he's written more than a hundred books on mindfulness. And throughout

almost all of the books, many of the books, Thay has offered a couple of practices that I personally have found, well, more than a couple, many, but they're the practice of pausing or stopping is a very important practice. It's called shamatha. We practice taking a breath, turning down the radio, turning down the noise. We make a deliberate and conscious effort to create space. And so this for me was a really important practice because a good part of my life was about running. It was the opposite of stopping. It was really about running from one thing to the next thing, from poverty to undergraduate school and graduate school and law school and the big and important job.

It's always what's the next always, what's the next thing? What's the next thing? So the practice of stopping is to pause, to take a breath, to maybe move a little bit slower, to notice what's happening. Together with that practice of stopping, pausing. There's the practice of looking deeply, Vipassana. Like I notice, I stopped when I got up to the top of the hill.

I stopped, I didn't habitually react to this person, to my own conditioning. And then I could look deeply. I could see the flash of anger coming up. I could see that if I said something, it was not going to be good. And then after a while, I could see that I needed to take care of my own emotions.

I needed to meet my needs to provide for myself. And then after a while, extending some empathy and compassion for that person. So when I say pausing, I mean physically stopping, taking a breath. And that may sound like not a big deal, but with so much conditioned behavior, so much reactivity, this is a push-pull environment polarized. It's so easy to just respond, not even respond, to react out of habit. And so to be able to pause and not respond from these conditioned patterns is really, this is the practice. And I know lots of people can talk about this from a neuroscience perspective of being triggered

with the amygdala being triggered, being hijacked, or being able to speak and react from a place that's more grounded and stable from our so-called window of tolerance or prefrontal cortex or any of these kinds of things. But from the perspective of Buddhist and particularly Plum Village practice, it's shamatha and papasana. That's very helpful.

So we've got two practices we've hit on. One is the four chairs, the second is pause. I want to get to you, Marisela, for a third of what I hope will be many practices that we'll talk about in the course of this conversation. You in the book offer up a practice called mindful listening when people are polarized, which seems

painfully relevant right now. Can you describe that practice, please? Sure. Thank you, Dan. This practicing when things are polarized, it's a simple practice of coming back home again. And the practice is first pausing. So that might be taking some breaths in and out. For some it might be sensing into their body. And so you're initially calming, you're doing that pause. And then what happens during the deep looking? So we're also looking deeply. In this case, what we're looking at is maybe something that has really been sticking with us, something that might have happened if we're by ourselves. We're sitting quietly, we pause, we're breathing. We might feel a little calm.

And in that calm, there's more spaciousness, right? Things are settled. It's like the water is settled down. It's not as rough. So now you can actually see deeper. And then we're going to visualize and bring into mind something that just happened. Somebody said something that was triggering for you, racial slur. In the case of what Valerie mentioned, maybe she's sitting and taking care of that. So she's visualizing what happened.

And instead of perseverating on that racial slur, she's going to actually bring into mind in her heart something that makes her happy, something that makes her feel good about herself. So that's the watering of the seeds of joy. That place we need to always come back to, we have to have a foundational joy so that we can hold the difficulty. Because if we can't hold the difficulty then we can't take care of it. So we bring whatever has polarized us, whatever has caused upset into mind, and we remind ourselves of our beauty, we remind ourselves of things that we're happy with,

our ancestors and the joy of our ancestors and what they transmitted to us. And then we can actually bring into mind the other person after we've done that and sort of settled in, or maybe it's an occurrence, maybe something we heard, and bring into mind something good about that person is invited to bring in there. So we can actually invite that in ourselves, in our visualization, that person sharing something, a happiness about who they are. Or we can ourselves bring that to mind. It's really the intention is to try to not get overcome by the differences, the polarization, the polarization, and to come back to the things that are actually positive and beautiful about this very situation, this very, very situation that's causing harm and that has

caused harm. And then out of that, it reduces this sense of separation and it maybe helps us to see that, just like Valerie said, that Fort Chair is where we're going now to recognize the compassion. And in that way, we kind of get to know a little bit and the other person gets to know a little bit of who we are, besides that stereotype, that myth that is now occurring, triggered by or activated by something that

was said. So it's really a way to get deeper to understand what else is there besides this thing that was triggering. And then through this practice, we have touched this bigger self, this wisdom, this kinder self, and then we make changes. Because the practice is not only to calm ourselves, compassion is something of taking care of what needs to be taken care of. The stopping and the pausing allows us to take care

of what needs to be taken care of from a place of depth, from a place of freedom, from a place of freedom, from a place of love and understanding instead of from a reactionary posture of the habitual patterns that Valerie reminded us of. Thanks, Marisela. Coming up, Kyra Joolingo, Valerie Brown, and Marisela Gomez talk about how to be mindful

with your phone. We'll also talk about something that we haven't yet talked about much on this show, journal. Being a part of a royal family might seem enticing, but more often than not, it comes at the expense of everything, like your freedom, your privacy, and sometimes even your head. Even the Royals is a podcast from Wondery that pulls back the curtain on royal families, past and present, from all over the world to show you the darker side of what it means to be royalty,

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or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge even the royals ad free right now on Wondery Plus. What's up guys, it's your girl Kiki and my podcast is back with a new season and let me tell you, it's too good. And I'm diving into the brains of entertainment's best and brightest, okay?

Every episode, I bring on a friend and have a real conversation. And I don't mean just friends. I mean the likes of Amy Poehler, Kel Mitchell, Vivica Fox, the list goes on. So follow, watch, and listen to, baby, This Is Kiki Palmer on the Wondery app, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Don't forget to check out all the stuff we're doing over at danharris.com for all the new episodes. future podcasts. On the Happier app, they've teamed up with two of the world's most renowned meditation centers for an exclusive retreat giveaway. Two winners will receive a $1,500 credit to go on a retreat along with a $600 travel credit. To check it out, go to happierapp.com forward slash retreat giveaway. Cara Jewel, let me go back to you because you offer in the book a practice I think will be immediately resonant to everybody listening, which is something about being mindful with your electronic devices.

So it's like co-opting this vector of distraction and turning it into something a little bit more positive. Can you talk about that? Sure. When I was leading teen retreats, we would do this with them. They had to give up their phones for the week and it was quite a traumatic thing at times for them. I mean, for all of us, right? But I saw it firsthand, this difficulty of parting with this, it feels like an extension of our own bodies, right? We really wanted to take care at the end of this week-long mindfulness retreat for young people,

we had a collective meditation of turning our phones back on together after, in this case, we'd actually been in the wilderness for 10 days, hiking, backpacking through the wilderness. We passed everyone's phones out and we just held them for a little bit, off, backpacking through the wilderness. We passed everyone's phones out and we just held them for a little bit off. They were all off. There was mindful guidance. Let's breathe, let's notice. Notice right here before you even turned your phone on,

what are the drives? What are you excited about? What are you worried about? Craving or comparing mind? Already start before we've even turned it on, right? And then it was, okay, now we all turned it on together. And then we didn't look at the screen. We just felt it, the weight of the phone,

the feel of the phone in the hands. And again, pause. The key word in this session is pause, right? Just feel, notice. Notice all the things that jump. It's like a hundred horses inside, raring to go as soon as you turn it on, right? There's your mind wants to go in so many different directions. But the pause allows you to hold that, just to notice it, to notice all the ways we're being pushed. And then we all looked at our phones together. We noticed where were our eyes drawn? Where did we first want to click? Was it messages? Was it an app? Was it Snapchat? Whatever. And then we all did one thing on our phones together. So we all either opened a chat or an

email or checked one thing. And then we stopped again and we noticed and people were sharing out loud what was happening for them in their bodies and their minds. So it was a very powerful group practice of what are the drives? What are the things that can just come up from the depths that we're not even aware of and suddenly we're in their grips, we're totally identified with these things. Any of us can do this as a practice to just slow things down. This can be when you wake up in the morning, do whatever you do. For many of us, it is reach for the phone first thing, but whatever it is that you do first, if you do something before you pick up the phone, come to your phone with intentionality. So you can pick it up if it's off or even if it's on, you can not look at it yet, but just feel the

weight of it in your hand. Notice your body before your mind gets sucked into the mind of this device, like to actually notice what are your motivations, what are your intentions. I shared with a friend who has this practice of before she reaches for her phone, she tries to get in touch with what is motivating me to do this. And it's amazing how often she shared its boredom or loneliness or some wish to escape something unpleasant that's arising. So even right in this practice to just before we even engage with the phone, just to notice what's driving us. Do we want to check the news?

Are we wanting to check in with someone that we love? Or is it something more distracted? Just look at it. So we can really, with the pause with just holding the phone, already a lot can be triggered. So we can just be with that and then we can note that, recognize it, and then kind of make a decision. Well, is this what I want to reward this motivation? Is this really what I want to be feeding?

Or do I want to come to my phone out of some other different intention? So then we can interact with the phone, turn on whatever it is that we want to see and try to do that slowly enough that we are tracking what's coming up. I know this is so hard for me to just do one thing on my phone. One thing leads to the next thing to the next thing or I get distracted. I'm, oh, this thing's showing up. Let me attend to this. But actually now I've forgotten the whole reason why I wanted to use my phone to begin with, right? So just noticing all that, maybe having that as a challenge. Like if you have the idea, I'm just going to answer this one email or I'm going to send

this one text or I'm going to check the weather, just do that and put it down. Notice how the urge is to then, oh, I'm checking the weather. Why don't I also look at my calendar? It's not that any of these things aren't helpful, useful things to do throughout the day, but just to notice the way that push we've all been talking to, that way that we get pushed by our habit energy, by the whole wave phones and social media and everything online has been created precisely to grab our attention and pull us out of ourselves, to literally pull our attention out of ourselves, out of our own experience, to notice that, to be present with that, and to reclaim our attention for ourselves and for what we want to put our attention on, not where capitalism, our culture of constantly doing

and buying and consuming wants us to put our attention on. These practices are all countercultural, radical, really. Or as the Buddha said, you know, against the stream. Let me go back to you for a second, Valerie. This is not an explicit practice within the book. Doesn't have its own section. But I do see a recommendation throughout the book doesn't have its own section, but I do see a recommendation throughout the book, which again is called Healing Our Way Home, to journal as part of meditation practice.

And that actually is not something I've seen much of in the meditation books that I've looked at. Generally, journaling isn't connected to a meditation practice that explicitly, which maybe that's just something I've missed in my time in the meditation circles. And so I'd be curious to hear you say a little bit more about how we can mix meditation and journaling.

Yeah, so that's a great question. Several things come to mind. Part of the practice of mindfulness is to alleviate suffering. And so what we're pointing to are practices, resources that we can do that help to alleviate suffering. What mindfulness can also do is help us toward a greater clarity, greater discernment. And so the practice of journaling, or some people call it mindful writing, is really a practice of discernment, which is strengthening

a human faculty that we all have to not just should I turn left or should I turn right? but asking bigger and deeper questions about one's values sense of life purpose life meaning we're in a time of tremendous polarization tremendous transition People are asking themselves a lot of questions. How should I vote? Who is being truthful?

What is truthful for me? And so part of the practice of, first of all, creating the space and time to ask oneself these big questions of how do I feel, what is important and meaningful. This practice is hugely important in developing a sense of one's own discernment, so that we are led not by what's the latest thing, who's speaking at the moment, but as the theologian Howard Thurman has said, our own inner authority, our own sense of grounded stability. And so that is created by a kind of purposefulness. I'm not talking about taking even a half hour to do this. One of the practices that I like to do in the morning is three or four or five minutes. I might read something that's inspiring, even if it's a sentence or two. And then I'll ask myself, what am I feeling?

What's coming up for me? By being able to connect with my own good or to be of service in this day and kind of sets a compass and sets a direction before we get thrown off course with the hundred thousand things that come up in the course of a day. So it's really pointing to what Cara Jewell and Marcella have said. It's about reclaiming our sense of attention in an attention deficit economy, and it's moving from these habituated reactionary patterns. I was reading something the other day that said that something like 70% of all the behavior that we enact

in the course of a day, 70%, maybe it's higher than that, is habituated, brushing your teeth, drinking coffee in the same way, taking the same walk, all of these things. When we interject these moments, these tiny little practices, these little resources, they're a way of reclaiming our own individuality, our own humanity, and saying, okay, this is the direction that I want to go in today. And again, I'm not talking about even taking a half hour to do it. Just a few minutes, I think can be really beneficial. Do you recommend journaling, pairing it with your meditation right before, right after?

I can imagine journaling right before meditation would help you get some of your discursive or anxious thinking out of your head and onto a page and maybe clear up a little bit more bandwidth for your practice. I can imagine doing it after meditation would help process whatever came up for you during the session. Are any of these words coming out of my face hole making sense to you? Yeah. I mean, I think this is quite an individual thing, and maybe a neuroscientist might have a different perspective on that. But I think the most important thing is setting aside the time of saying this is the time and being intentional about it. That's what's most important. Whether it comes before or after, I think is almost incidental. For me personally, what I have found to be beneficial is to read something inspiring, like a fragment of a poem that I find inspiring, and then asking myself or reminding myself more importantly,

what is it? How do I really want to be on this day? Here's a bit of vulnerability because this is not fully worked out. One of the things that I'm working on is showing my vulnerability, showing my emotions more. For much of my career was as a lobbyist and a lawyer and I took on that kind of rugged individuality, get it done and just legacies of my parents and all of that. One of the things that I'm really working on is how can I be a more vulnerable person today? What does that look like?

Sometimes that means saying, you know, I really don't know. Really sitting with that. Or saying, I really need to talk with somebody, would you have time? That's like super vulnerable for me. But there's a part of me that knows that that is the place of growth and healing for me. How do I know that? That has come through this process of discernment, of taking a few moments several times a week to ask myself these questions, which is something that we often just don't do.

Well said. Coming up, Kyra, Valerie, and Maricela talk about more practices to help you stay calm. And they also talk about something they call the inner Chad, which I found hilarious. Maricela, let me get back to you because there's another practice you talk about in the book. It hadn't really ever occurred to me before it's called reflecting on your early spiritual influences by the way just to say that in the book you explicitly recommend that this be paired

with journaling so can you just say a little bit more about that the early spiritual influences is something I think that's near to me and probably to many because many of us are Buddhist converts in the West. We're not born in countries where this was the cultural foundation. And so just coming back into where did we first touch spirit? So asking ourselves that reflecting when we first heard the word spirit, what conjured up?

So in the process of writing this book and our dialogue, we each reflected on what was our early spiritual teachings, if you will. And so coming back to that, it's a nice practice to bring us forward and to see the interconnection, the non-separateness of all the spiritual teachings. So the practice is really to just notice what's influencing us now, what influenced us then.

And in the process of building that, we'll see, just like I came to see that connection in where I first know the spirit, and that it stayed with me. And then when I could reconnect with that again, now through Buddhism, right, now through these practices and these teachings, so then I follow that. And who knows, you know, maybe in 20 years, the way I reconnect with that will be a different spiritual tradition. So it's really not getting caught in the ideology, As the Buddha said, you're going to even have to put down these teachings at some point to get free. Journaling is similar to what Valerie shared.

It's really continuing that and noting that and using whatever means is at your disposal. Some people connect with things through writing more easily. For some, it's through moving their bodies. They move out the teaching. They breathe out the teaching. For some, it's write out the teaching or they sing out the teaching or they play an instrument out the teaching. And so we can't disconnect from anyone and their way of being. It's a real beautiful way. I think that the teachings can be spreaded because it's really not about getting people to be a Buddhist.

It's really about helping people figuring out what's their path of freedom from that suffering. Kyra, Jewel, let me come back to you for one last practice to discuss. And there's a practice that you guide in the book called A Meditation for Loving Our Own Skin. And maybe this is a good time to talk not only about that practice, but also about some of the genesis and goal of this new book, which again, just to remind everybody is called Healing Our Way Home Black Buddhist Teachings on Ancestors' Joy and Liberation.

Sure. Well, really this book was Valerie coming to us and saying, you know, we really need to write a book together. And our voices need to be heard as black Dharma teachers in this tradition. And I think she was really pointing to the need for folks of all backgrounds, of all races, of all genders who haven't heard these voices enough, voices like ours. A big focus of the book is to really help these teachings be more accessible to more folks of color, to BIPOC folks and many other groups

that haven't been as welcomed or haven't seen themselves represented in Buddhist teachers, Buddhist institutions. We also wanted to let folks in to our experience to be part of the kind of explorations we were having together around our various forms of identity and family backgrounds and spiritual backgrounds and what has shaped us. So the Loving Our Skin meditation really came from the same place. Maricela and I both lead a BIPOC weekly meditation group. We take turns leading. It's been going since the beginning of the pandemic pretty much,

so four years almost now, every Thursday. It just came one day as I was leading the group, as we were exploring what is the biological kind of physical experience of having skin, like really appreciating all the ways that skin has changed, how it first started forming in our mother's womb and how it grew with us and changed and how it heals when there's a wound, how there's so much intelligence in our skin. Then it just began to evolve to really meditating on the ways our skin comes from our ancestors and the messages that our ancestors have been given, that we have been given in our society, that there's something wrong with our skin, whether it's too dark, too light, too hairy, somehow that there's something that's not okay with our skin. I mean, that's just such a

fundamental area of our Western culture where really we have classified people according to their skin color and phenotype. And so much harm, so much suffering has come about because of our skin. And so then it just became a meditation on what messages have we received, have our ancestors, parents, grandparents received because of what our skin looks like, because of its color, because of its texture. And then to really hold whatever behold whatever emotions were there very, very lovingly, very compassionately, this recognition of all that our ancestors have endured because of racism, because of white supremacy, because of colonialism, the wounds that have been passed on. And so to really just be with those in a deeply present way and then to claim for ourselves the truth that there's absolutely nothing inferior,

nothing divergent about any of our skin. It's this incredibly beautiful human reality, and to really honor it, to honor all that our ancestors have endured and passed onto us through our skin, to honor the wisdom in our skin, to honor the creativity, resilience, power of our skin, to really claim that we can feel fully at ease in our own body, that we can feel good in our skin to just open up that possibility. Because I think one of the great gifts of meditation is it flushes out what's unconsciously ruling us from below. I say below, but it's really a metaphor, right?

From the depths of our consciousness, that there are all these things that are operative, but meditation shines a light on them so that we're not in their grips. We're not unconsciously living out some harmful story. So the meditation is an attempt to get us to that place of seeing, are there things that I believe deep down about my skin or that my ancestors have passed on to me that was forced on to them? Beliefs about inferiorities, superiority, what belongs, what doesn't belong, what's okay, what's not okay. And to really hold that, honor that, work through that, and to be able to be at peace with exactly with who we are, whatever our society may tell us, whatever the media and images and predominant narratives are, but to actually feel that right in this moment. There's nothing wrong

with who I am and with how I look from the inside to feel that we so often look at ourselves in the mirror from the outside. What do other people see? But to actually claim that from within, that all is well right here. We were talking before we started the interview that one of the pieces of feedback that you've gotten from people who read your book is that, and this is from non-BIPOC people, you were saying that it's very interesting to be able to listen in on a conversation that people who look like me don't often get to be included in I Definitely got that from the parts of the book that I looked at and there was one and Valor

I'm gonna throw this at you. There was one term that I believe you used That I thought was hilarious in it in a kind of searing way the inner Chad Yes So good you picked up on that one. Yeah. So the story behind the Inner Chad, I facilitate a monthly group of women of color who are in big law, meaning they are partners law, meaning they are partners or senior associates in international law firms. So by virtue of this job, it's extremely stressful. And so every month we get together for like an hour and a half, something like that, and we talk about the skills of how to be a corporate lawyer

hold this identity as a woman of color in a dominant world of big law that was not designed for women of color. It was actually the structure of many of these big international law firms were designed by people that do not look like them. And actually was formed based on an outdated model of this is going to be quite gendered. So I'm just signaling that where you had a one stay at home spouse, maybe a woman, and you

had one person that went out and was the breadwinner, so called, and earned the money and somebody else stayed home and took care of the kids and took care of the house. That model really doesn't exist for many, many people. One of the participants was talking about how frustrating it was to really trying to communicate to many partners, many lawyers who didn't look like them, where they didn't share maybe boating or yachting or playing golf or playing tennis or some of these things.

And so how could they find the same confidence that their colleagues that didn't look like them, And so how could they find the same confidence that their colleagues that didn't look like them, where could they find that in themselves? And so this one participant, this woman of color said, well, you have to develop your inner Chad. You know, it's like your inner white boy, quite frankly, and you just have to develop that. And you got to show them your inner white boy, quite frankly, and you just have to develop that. And you got to show them your inner white boy, your inner Chad.

And I said, yeah, yeah, that's what we all have to develop. We describe it in the book as I think ontological expansiveness. I know that's a big term for saying like, take up the space, right? Claim the space. And so it became a running joke in our group that we each have to find that inner Chad within ourselves. To the point of Cara Joule and Maricela, whether we identify as a person of color, an Indigenous person,

a white person, an Asian person, whatever our ethnic background, our race, our culture, we all need to develop that sense of inner okayness, inner solidity, inner love, inner self-confidence. These practices, these resources, this path that we're talking to is really a way to do that. It's the building blocks of mindfulness that lead to a kind of inner concentration that then manifests in insight. We then realize, oh yeah, I remember who I am. I remember why I'm here.

I know which direction I'm going. Speaking as a Chad, as somebody who has an abundance of unearned confidence, I felt very seen. And I also feel like it's the inner Chad is quite different from what you're talking about, which is like a real wisdom and a confidence that comes from something really truly earned wisdom, the capacity to pause, the capacity to understand, to see things clearly, and yeah, it just seems worth noting that difference.

Yeah, it just seems worth noting that difference. Yeah, and you know, Dan, we can often sabotage that. You know, we can second guess ourselves. I believe that that is innate, that we have that capacity. This is the beauty of mindfulness. We don't have to go to the store and buy that. We come built with that, but it's all the construct, it's all the systems and structures that cast doubt. And then we sabotage that. And so part of the work is reclaiming.

It's an excavation. Kyra Juelingo, Mar Sala Gomez, Valerie Brown. Great to have you, all three of you on the show. Again, that book is Healing Our Way Home, Black Buddhist Teachings on Ancestors' Joy and Liberation. We will put a link to that in the show notes and we'll put links to the websites and other resources that our three guests today have put out into the world. Thank you again for coming on. You're quite welcome. Thank you. Thanks so much for having us. Thank you to Kyra Juolingo, Valerie Brown, and Maricela Gomez. Great to talk to all

of them. Don't forget to go to danharris.com. If you sign up you'll get a cheat sheet for this and every other new episode we do that will give you a transcript and also time coded highlights and some simple takeaways so you can remember all the good stuff you're learning here. Finally, I want to thank everybody who worked so hard on this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson, Caroline Keenan, and Eleanor Vasili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our production manager. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer.

DJ Cashmere is our executive producer, and Nick Thorburn of the band Islands. We're darkening. ["Darkening"] If you like 10% happier, and I hope you do, you can listen early and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. Prime members can listen ad free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at Wondery.com slash survey.