Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - The Episode You Need Today | Alexis Santos

Episode Date: November 6, 2024

How to get the practice into your molecules—not in some militaristic way, but in a way that feels easy and natural.Alexis Santos has been in the field of mindfulness and meditation since 2001. After graduating from Harvard University in 1995, he spent several years in medical school before leaving his chosen career as a doctor to seek out a different path. It was while traveling in India that he was introduced to insight meditation. Since that time, Alexis has practiced in many meditative styles and traditions, including with Sayadaw U Tejaniya, the Thai Forest tradition with Ajahn Sumedho, the Tibetan tradition with Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche and within the lay Western insight community where he continues to learn from the growing diversity of voices. Alexis's primary teacher has been Sayadaw U Tejaniya, from the Burmese Theravada tradition, and with whom he ordained as a Buddhist monk from 2003 - 2005. Sayadaw encouraged Alexis to teach in 2012. Alexis also completed the Spirit Rock/IMS four-year teacher training program with Jack Kornfield and others, including mentors Joseph Goldstein and Carol Wilson. ​Alexis teaches meditation at retreat centers around the world. He is featured on the Ten Percent Happier meditation app and is co-founder of Open Door Meditation Community in Portland, Maine where he is a guest teacher. Alexis's teaching style is natural and uncrafted. He brings a practical, intuitive and compassionate approach to the development of wisdom.***Want to study and practice with Alexis? Visit his website at alexissantos.io where you can join his freely offered online practice sessions.He will also be teaching at the Insight Meditation Society from March 5 - 12. When Awareness Becomes Natural: An U Tejaniya-style Insight Meditation Retreat Related Episodes:A More Relaxed Way to Meditate | Alexis SantosI Just Did A 10-Day Silent Meditation Retreat With Joseph Goldstein. Here’s What I LearnedSign up for Dan’s 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/alexis-santos-855See 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. Hello, everybody. How we doing? Here is something I hear from people all the time, guilt and self-criticism about allegedly not being sufficiently consistent about meditation. Side note, one of the amazing things about having started a new online community over at danharris.com is that I get to hear from you, the listeners, all the time. And this issue, consistency, comes back over and over.

So here's what I normally say about this. Don't worry about it. Habit formation is hard. It's super common to fall off the wagon. Nothing has been lost. If you have missed a day, a week, a year. Just start again. I stand by that answer, but today my guest is going to give an even better answer.

This, what you're about to hear, is an interview with one of my favorite Dharma teachers, somebody I have worked very closely with over the years, Alexis Santos. We're going to talk about, on a very deep level, mindfulness can really fix almost anything. And we're gonna discuss some very practical tips for how to stay mindful as consistently as possible throughout your day. To put it another way,

it's about how to get the practice into your molecules, not in some grit your teeth militaristic way, but in a way that feels easy and natural, in a way that is self-reinforcing, because it feels good and you want to keep doing it. Just to say before we dive in here, we are posting this on the day after the 2024 presidential election in the United States.

We spent a lot of time, my team and I, thinking about what to post on this day, which for many of you might be a moment of time, my team and I, thinking about what to post on this day, which for many of you might be a moment of uncertainty and angst. And this is the route we have chosen. However, I do want to say if you're listening at some other point in time or you're listening in some other country and you're not particularly concerned about the American election, this content is evergreen.

It's universal. A little bit about Alexis before we dive in. He's been in the meditation game since 2001. He went to Harvard undergrad, then spent a few years in medical school, and then to the chagrin of his parents. He dropped out and went to Asia, where he became a Buddhist monk.

For many years, he's now not in robes anymore. But while he was a monk, and to this day, his main teacher has been a fascinating Burmese monk by the name of Sayadaw Utajanea, who you will hear us discuss in this conversation. Alexis now teaches retreats all over the world, and he's the co-founder of the Open Door Meditation Community in Portland, Maine, where he is a guest teacher. Alexis Santos coming up right after this. Before we get started, as everybody knows, it's election day here in the United States,

and I suspect many of us are in our feelings about this. One of my favorite slogans is never worry alone. So I'm going to operationalize that motto with a live guided meditation every day this week. I'm going live every day at 11 a.m. Eastern, 8 a.m. Pacific. I'll be leading a 10 minute guided meditation followed by a Q and A.

It's open to everybody, as long as you're a subscriber, but it doesn't matter whether you're free or paid. However, you do need to download the Substack app. So head over to danharris.com to find out how, and if you can't make it live, you can watch the replay at danharris.com to find out how, and if you can't make it live, you can watch the replay at danharris.com. The Happier Meditation app just launched a new course called Unlearn to Meditate.

This course takes you deeper into the why behind mindfulness. It's a chance to start fresh and challenge what you think you know about meditation. The teachers involved are Devin Hase, Pascal Eau Claire, and Matthew Hepburn. Download the Happier Meditation app today to explore Unlearn to Meditate and rediscover your practice.

My wife and I were talking just last night about the fact that we need to plan some trips for the winter because she in particular really needs some warm weather to look forward to. She has seasonal affective disorder in a pretty intense way. So we've got some trips coming up. We need to plan them, but they're definitely coming up. And of course, one way to fund said trip or trips would be to Airbnb, our own home. No to selfish talk to her about that, whether you could use extra money

to cover some bills or for something a little bit more fun your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb.ca slash host. Listening to Audible helps your imagination soar. Whether you listen to stories, motivation, expert advice, any genre you love, you can be inspired to imagine new worlds, new possibilities, new ways of thinking. Listening can lead to positive change in your mood, your habits, and ultimately your overall well-being. Audible has the best selection of audiobooks without exception, along with popular podcasts

and exclusive Audible Originals, all in one easy app. Enjoy Audible anytime while doing other things, household chores, exercising on the road, commuting, you name it. 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. Yuval, if you're listening to this, we would also love to have you on the show. So audiobooks, 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 audiobook is free. Visit audible.ca. Audible.ca. Alexis Santos, welcome back to the show, my friend.

Dan Harris, good to see you. So this is a bit of a funny episode because I figured I would just kind of put it all out there at the top of this episode for listeners so they got a sense of what we're thinking about here. We wanted to do an episode for the day after the US presidential election in 2024. However, I'm always thinking about, you know, with a podcast, you want it to be evergreen. So, you know, Marissa, who you know, senior producer on the show, she thought talking to you would be a great idea. I immediately agreed.

It's always a great idea to talk to Alexis Santos. But we're trying to come up with something that will meet people's needs on this morning. And obviously we're recording this in advance, but I suspect there are a lot of feelings on this morning. Probably. And we want to give something useful to people. But also I recognize that people will be listening to this episode in countries far afield

from the United States and chronologically, perhaps several years later. So we're trying to do two things at once. I said a lot there, but does that all land for you? I'm glad you named it because even though there's a lot of projection that I can do in terms of what the strength of the feelings, one way or another, that probably every person in the US and around the world are gonna feel,

it's just helpful for folks who are listening whether that probably every person in the US and around the world are gonna feel, it's just helpful for folks who are listening to know that we are in this moment before the election speaking. So you and Marissa did some chatting and came up with something that I actually think is really is perfect, honestly, which is talking about how to keep

our meditation practice alive. I'm aware that some people listening to this are aspirational meditators, and so this will be inclusive of you, if I'm describing you. But something I hear from people all the time is, I meditated for a couple of weeks or a couple of years, and I fell off the wagon, I feel guilty about it,

or I'm an inconsistent meditator, I'm a bad meditator. As you know, Alexis, I launched this subscription service recently and so now I'm hearing from a lot of the listeners to the show and every time we open up the chat to people to ask me whatever they want, this comes bubbling right up to the top. So in terms of our overarching emphasis today, it'll be about how to stay engaged in this thing.

So before I ask you any questions from a high level, does that sound right to you as an emphasis? That sounds great. I mean, we were just talking for a second before we started and I was letting you know that I had just finished teaching retreat here and outside of Stockholm, Sweden. And again, as it always is at the end of the retreat, it's the number one question,

which is how do I keep going? How do I, you know, after a week of, you know, getting some time to settle the mind and heart, there of course is a natural wish for some of this pleasant and wonderful, you know, experience to continue. And that's the question that we as Dharma teachers always hear at the end of retreat is, how do I keep this going? And that's true whether or not folks get a chance to go on a retreat or have their own practice at home. It's the same question. And it's one of the angles of practice that I personally do love, partly because of the

teacher that I had studied with as my main teacher, a monk in Burma named Sayadaw Utejaniya, and his emphasis was exactly in this domain or terrain, which really points to the possibility of bringing practice to life, regardless of what we are in, you know, in terms of the roles, responsibilities, everything we're going through, the intensity of experiences that we're bound to face, the bumpy times, the smooth times. So how do we do it? How do we keep going? And that's going to be, I guess, a lot of discussion.

Yeah, there's a lot to talk about here. We could not only fill this episode, but many, many episodes with this. For people who haven't heard you on this show before, we've talked about Tejaniya, the Burmese monk under whom you studied for many years and continue to have a very strong relationship with him.

He's an unusual chap. Maybe tell us a little bit about him and his emphasis in practice, which is a little bit different from many other teachers. Yeah, you could say a little bit different. And I think a lot of teachers do come around to this as well, but even though he is a monk and he now has been a monk for somewhere in the vicinity of 25 years, maybe a few years

longer than that, when he talks about his insights, insights meaning the things that he understood and the growth that he experienced, it is almost always referencing not times that he was on retreat, but actually times when he was at home with his very large family or at his family business that he was being asked to run. His family had a textile business and so he would be in the marketplace meeting customers and really busy, as you can imagine, kind of bustling scene. And he developed his practice in the midst of that.

And as a result, one of the things that he really tried to get across truly is that we can do this. He did it. He was doing it. And by the time he decided to stay a monk, it was at the request of his teacher and just a personal choice to really commit his life, to be available for folks to ask and learn

about these teachings, about the Dharma and meditation. So it's very personal to him in terms of why he teaches, could say a practice that feels available, the kinds of questions, the context in which he learned, but also he was getting a lot of meditators from, could say some other traditions that at that time, I think things have shifted a bit, but he was seeing a lot of folks really trying a lot harder than what he felt was sustainable as a practice. And if we are going to be trying to develop really an awareness that feels natural and sustainable,

we need to learn a relationship to it that is aligned with the quality of awareness. And it's difficult because so many of our habits of doing anything almost immediately begins with pushing or striving, expecting a result. And that is just a natural conditioning. It's difficult, in fact, to trust a quality like awareness that is soft, it's receptive, it actually is available at any time, but it's so easy to forget. It's difficult to trust that that momentum can build.

So what happens is for a lot of folks, they set a timer and they'll meditate for this amount of time and they go for it. And then as soon as the bell rings at the end of the timer, the first thought is I'm done rather than, okay, let's keep going. Some momentum was just built. Now how do I get up off the cushion? Very lightly feeling the body, for example. Whatever it is that one's knowing. So Tejaniya is, as we've established, a Burmese monk with whom you've studied, and he has this pronounced emphasis on being mindful

or aware all the time, in a gentle way, not in a militaristic way. And as you were saying, you know, there's this mindset that can take hold, especially among, you know, Type A Westerners of, I'm gonna ace it during my meditation practice, five minutes, 10 minutes, or whatever it is, I'm gonna kill it during this time, but then it's done.

And I move on to like racing through the rest of my life. Or if you're a more committed practitioner and you're on retreat, you push yourself really hard on retreat and then, you know, you're, you're right back onto the hamster wheel when you're done. And Tejaniya's emphasis is really on just being aware all the time. And so we keep coming back to this word awareness. And you describe it, you know, as this kind of natural, gentle, receptive quality. I can imagine people listening to this

and not knowing what you mean exactly by that word awareness. Yeah, so I'll use a few words and then maybe offer an example. So awareness, also mindfulness, knowing what's happening as it's happening. For some folks, listening, like an inward listening, so knowing what's happening, but the word that's easier is listening rather than up in the head knowing, which has oftentimes

an intellectual or thought-based quality. It's a direct experiencing of what is happening in the present moment. Noticing, if I didn't say that already. So all these words point to that quality of awareness. Okay, so Dan, I'll just do this with you since we can see each other through video. Maybe just go ahead and lightly put your hands together, your fingertips, your hands.

Want to just do that for a second to maybe those that are listening. And when you can feel the pressure or the temperature of your hands, maybe just give me a little nod. So you can, can you feel that Dan? Yeah. Is that hard to do?

No, it's effortless. Yeah, effortless. And do you know that you're feeling those sensations? Yes. Okay. And now can you feel your feet on the ground? Yes. Okay.

Hard to do? No. Right. Were you feeling your feet before I asked? No. Again, so now once you bring attention to there and there's a recognition that that pressure is being known or whatever it is that you're knowing about the present moment as it's happening, that's the quality of awareness. And why are we not able to do

that all the time? When I'm offering instructions to folks and they come on retreat, one of the things that I almost always ask is this question, is awareness hard? Are you able to be aware continuously throughout the day? And I was gonna ask you when we first said hello, at the beginning of this recording, I was going to ask you, Dan, so can I ask you a question? And if I had done a dramatic pause, you would have known what I was about to ask you because we have played this before. Are you aware?

Is the mind aware? So in retreat, as they get started, oftentimes I frame it in that way, is awareness hard and are you able to do it continuously in your life? By prompting it in that way, they say, yeah, it's hard. And what I really want to point out is we have this idea that it's hard, which then means when we bring that idea that it's hard, then we try. Rather than learning how to relate to the present moment, when we're trying to be aware that all that is needed is in some ways the intention or some reminder that again surfaces and we can feel our hands touching, or we can remember that for

those of you who have the working, we call the working ear door, meaning we can remember that for those of you who have the working, we call the working ear door, meaning we can hear sounds just by my mentioning that hearing is happening, even though we've been listening to the sounds of this podcast. Now maybe there's some recognition that hearing is happening. Is that happening for you, Dan? Hearing is happening, right? So we've been hearing again, the reason why this is, why it's difficult is because we forget and we don't have momentum. We don't have the habit of awareness arising when we hear sounds.

We tend to hear a sound and then we're already in the story and the meaning and everything else that comes along with it, which is natural and we need to do. So what we're trying to do in our practice is to really develop the quality of awareness as a habit that feels available, isn't tiring. We can do it at any time and it doesn't matter how stressful, how busy, how overwhelming an emotion is or how peaceful experience is, we can in fact recognize that it's happening when it's happening. And that's the quality of awareness.

The thing I was pointing to that my teacher in Burma, Sido Tejaniya says is a moment of awareness isn't difficult, but remembering, remembering is what's challenging. And so if we can have a relationship with awareness that has that kind of friendliness and ease, then instead of judging the experience, we begin to settle back and stay a little bit more on a easy relationship with, oh, I can actually be aware in this moment of something.

And that's how momentum builds. That's how the habit builds. But it's so easy to start feeling either some frustration or challenge with what we're experiencing, or it's difficult for the mind to trust that it's enough. I wanna draw a line under a couple of things you said there.

Awareness itself is effortless. It doesn't take any effort to know the sensations in your feet right now. Although I sometimes, there was a story, a friend of mine was teaching mindfulness. At one point she said to a room full of Marines, bring your attention to your feet. And every person in the room leaned over

and looked at their feet. Fascinating, I love that. I shouldn't say it's not easy then, because there is, for the body, oftentimes the body isn't in the beginning easy to feel, right? But you could start with something that we might easily recognize, which is, are you sitting or standing? And just the posture can be enough of just knowing.

Anyway, so I want to hear what you're about to say about that. You know, I appreciate everything you just said there. Um, my point is that there's no effort required essentially to just feel your hands right now or feel your feet. For some people, it's an unusual move and they're not used to doing something like that. But once you make the intention to feel whatever sensations are arising in your feet,

there's no effort required to receive that information. But as you were saying, the effort isn't the remembering. And that is our practice to remember over and over and over to wake up. And there are lots of ways to do this. And you made a reference to this a few minutes ago. One way to do this is to get in the habit of asking yourself the question that you were planning to ask me, which is, are you aware? And Tejaniya, your teacher, he teaches by giving people

phrases or little mantras they can drop into their mind frequently throughout the day. And the principal one, if I'm remembering correctly, is this little phrase of, are you aware? So maybe you could say a little bit about that. Yeah, you know, and I think we are all gonna be finding our own way into our practice, what works, what can feel annoying for some people,

just asking the question, am I aware or is the mind aware, can work for a little while and then it feels excessive. So how to do anything, you know, in a way that doesn't feel like a chore, but feels that it actually brings about the benefit that we want to have. And so I'll just jump ahead in terms of our discussion. Just one thing, as I was mentioning, one of the reasons why it's difficult to be aware, I find when people start to try to bring awareness into their normal activity is often that pause when we're caught up in the entanglements and the flow of our

now, just our, you know, of our life. What we often do experience is a sense of disease, of tension, of anxiety, of rushing, and that unpleasantness, I find, if it's not properly understood in terms of what is happening in that moment, can feel defeating as if it's going badly that we're noticing. And it's really important to shift the perspective

that the knowing is not the experience. The experience is already happening. When we drop in a moment of knowing, that is, as the Buddha pointed out, one of the most wholesome qualities of mind that can arise because when awareness is present, then you have a range of possibilities of other qualities like patience, pausing, kindness, self-compassion, wisdom. So again, easy to judge what's being experienced when awareness surfaces, when some knowing arises, but that experience is already happening. We just don't know or notice how entangled, how tense, how stressed we are. And then it's important if we can sense that tension or whatever it may feel unpleasant to just see, can it be brought down a notch just by recognizing

there's some tension in the shoulders or tension, you know, in the heart area by taking a deeper breath. And that cycle reinforces, you know, there's so much discussion these days about like dopamine and how we get that next hit. And this is in some ways offering the mind that benefit reminder that it is actually good to remember to notice. Because when I touch in and recognize how I'm feeling and then offer myself this moment of maybe softening because the tightening of the body and mental contraction, whatever's going on, when that's lightened a bit, that's really inspiring. That's encouraging that the mind can shift.

But the first thing that happens is we notice the object or the experience rather than that awareness is there. Now we're knowing and now there's some possibilities. So don't get discouraged if you start to develop this habit of asking yourself the question, am I aware? Don't get discouraged if what you're aware of feels unpleasant because there's

a move you can make after that. Exactly. Yes. And it's natural. And to remember that this is so human to feel entangled and sped up. And we're not getting the signals. I don't know if you are, but you walk around the world and the world doesn't have every like sign below it.

Like how are you feeling? Do you notice your feelings right now? Can you feel your breath? You know, if we live truly in a kind society, and it sounds so silly, but like we really lived in a loving, kind society, you know, that's what would be there with every message that we're getting. If it were really based in kindness and care and wisdom,

what is really important in our lives? Well, we all wanna be well. We all wanna feel safe, right? We all wanna feel at ease. And yet, how often do we get those messages in our society, right, in the culture that we live in? We have to go on these special retreats or join these amazing podcasts and other resources

and sign up for, you know, then we get the wonderful messages. But otherwise we're kind of left on our own. I love that. Mostly the world around us is trying to sell us stuff. Right. Or have us compare ourselves to other people. But what if all of the advertisements and signage around us

or some significant percentage of the advertisements and signage were alerting us to wake up or gently encouraging us to wake up. That would be a very different world. It would be. I can almost be somewhat sure of it. Then when people listen to this podcast and it's someone that has practiced a lot just by the conversation, the content, and then, you know, that we are

trying to have a probably somewhat mindful conversation that there is an impact of that. I know when I listen to Dharma talks or some kind of content like this, there's a settling, right? There is an ease that begins to rise. And why is that? What we miss is that we are constantly contacted at every sense door, the seeing, the hearing, our mind door. And that contact is constantly either bringing up some quality in the mind that

is distracted, you know, triggered, anxious, or kindness, compassion, love. Do we know what's getting activated moment to moment through all these experiences, which we call our life? And yet we miss that, and yet we go around a whole day experiencing this somewhat chaotic world that we're in. And then we wonder why it's so exhausting by the end of the day. And I rarely meet someone coming on retreat once they've really caught up with themselves after a day or two and they're no longer depending on the

overstimulation of the outside world but are now cultivating these qualities that are these internal qualities of the mind and heart that as they begin to brighten, this is when the mind really starts to feel awake is because now we have something that is coming from the inside, the qualities of the mind and heart. And people are often surprised,

like I didn't realize I was so tired, but part of it is that the mind is really only awake and alive when it's intense. And we don't have this kind of more subtle clarity and knowing that can arise naturally if we allow it to grow. And we do need to look after our minds because they are impacted all the time,

all the time, every moment. So just to pick up on that, we do need to make the time to take care of our minds. That takes us right back to the central question of this conversation, which is how do we keep our practice alive? How do we keep it going? One thing you referenced is listening to Dharma talks, listening to podcasts, reading great books.

Those are reminders. They are. And they're very powerful. Coming up, Alexis talks about how to keep your practice alive and the 010 method that he picked up from Syed Aoub Tajani. This episode is brought to you by Peloton. I'm always happy when Peloton sponsors this show because I'm authentically and organically a big, big, big user of their bike. But Peloton is much more than a workout bike.

Peloton has a variety of training programs. They've got Pilates, 5K, 10K, half and full marathon programs, strength training, boot camps. There are many, many ways to challenge yourself if you have Peloton. Workouts for every mood. If you're looking for an early morning run or a late night hike, Peloton has you covered no matter what you're in the mood for or whenever it is you want to move. Like I said, I use the Peloton bike all the time. I'm a big fan of Alex Toussaint, who's actually been on the show.

He does a weekly ride called Club Bangers that I really like. Peloton is a great workout. When I do a 45 minute spin, I'm pretty much tired the rest of the day, but in a good way, you know what I'm talking about? Anyway, check out Peloton, find your push, find your power with Peloton at onepeloton.ca.

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Shop the full Wow in the World toy collection today at Amazon.com slash Wondery Kids. Before we get started, as everybody knows, we're in the midst of an anxiety-provoking election week here in the U.S. One of my favorite slogans is never worry alone. So we're going to put that into action this week with live guided meditations every day. I will be going live each day at 11 Eastern, that's 11 a.m. Eastern and 8 a.m. Pacific. I'll do a 10 minute guided meditation and then I'll take questions. This is open to all subscribers, free or paid, but you do need to download the Substack app. So head over to danharris.com to find out how to do that.

And if you can't make it live, you can watch the replay at danharris.com. The Happier Meditation app just launched a new course called Unlearn to Meditate. This course takes you deeper into the why behind mindfulness. It's a chance to start fresh and challenge what you think you know about meditation. The teachers involved are Devin Hase, Pascal Eau Claire, It's a chance to start fresh and challenge what you think you know about meditation.

The teachers involved are Devin Hase, Pascal Eau Claire, and Matthew Hepburn. Download the Happier Meditation app today to explore unlearn to meditate and rediscover your practice. I'd be curious to hear more from you about what you do personally. Right. You're a professional meditator. How do you keep your practice alive? I'm just sitting with that term, professional meditator.

I don't know if my parents will listen to this and they're like, this is what our son became. No, these days it's got some cache. So, you know, it's interesting. This has been a long journey. When I left, I did ordain for a couple of years with Sayadaw. Sayadaw means teacher.

So I say Sayadaw Utejaniya in Burma. So I became a monk there. I wasn't expecting to. I had left medical school in a kind of searching state of mind, searching for something. I didn't know what. It was so clear that basically I was searching how to understand the mind because honestly, it felt like there was a lot of confusion

and, and overwhelm in naturally in the system that I was embarking on. When I was there and had ordained by the time I was leaving Not many people get this opportunity, but I had a lot of time to develop basically a light moment to moment awareness without a lot of other responsibilities and distractions So I had a very unfair we could say advantage in terms of the lives that we live in our daily lives So even with that momentum, when I was leaving, the thought arose. I think I am done with any major suffering in this life. Wow.

I really think I am done. And what happened was, and I just want to warn people if they have that thought, just to hold it lightly because life will happen. True or not true, Dan? Does life happen? It does happen. It does.

So life keeps happening. And the beautiful thing about life is that it'll keep pointing back to ourselves, to our own hearts and minds. What have you still to learn? How to be with this, how to be with that, how to be with this loss and this emotion. And what I had done was I started coasting. Coasting meaning basically using the momentum

that I had built up as like a bank account. Rather than adding more to the bank account, I started drawing it down. And what happens if you keep drawing your bank account down without adding to it? What happens, Dan, are you listening? This is a chronic method. I didn't realize you were serious about that.

Oh yes, oh of course. You go broke. You go broke, yes. Well, the same way with. So yes, you go broke, you run out, it runs out. So because the mind is constantly being conditioned, we could say either there's awareness arising or there's not. And when awareness is not arising, what is being conditioned, the habit that's

being developed is the tendency of the mind to get entangled for the stories about I and me and the reactivity to grow. Every time awareness gets a moment to come up, that momentum gets established. But I really had thought my momentum was strong enough to basically, I guess, see me throughout the rest of this life. And it wasn't until I had, a year later,

suffered from my heart a pretty significant loss that I realized, oh, okay, I need to keep this going. And that's really when I took it to heart that this practice needs to be a living practice, right? Something that we can be trying to cultivate all the time, any time that we remember. So on a very practical level, one of the things that I started to do, and this was encouraged by Utaijaniyam, my teacher, he said, if you can just lightly notice as many times as you can throughout the day, this feeling, and I'm pointing right now to my kind of chest or heart area, because this is often where we feel these feelings, but if you can feel the feeling of being relaxed or tense, just that very light question, do I feel relaxed or tense? That feedback will

begin to guide you in terms of how you're doing in any given moment. And instead of waiting for the scale to get up to total burnout at eight, nine, ten, or anger storm, or whatever it is that we're going through in that moment, rather than it getting way up to that high, we could start to say, again, what your Tashanita describes as a zero, one, zero. Zero is balanced. One is we begin to sense something like the suffering of some experience.

And by the noticing of it, we begin to bring the mind and heart back into balance by a number of practices that we can explore. So as we notice our experiences, that's when our awareness, our wisdom in terms of trying to figure out and understand what is happening, what's being believed, what is being resisted that is causing this reactivity to grow and grow and grow. So seeing this pendulum swing throughout the day, if we again, have a moment of

noticing, tense or relaxed, that quality of awareness can be enough to start to drop in more moments of the day. What we want to do is not to think about having awareness and just holding onto it and stretching it because that is what we think about as effort. Let me just hold on to this quality and make it happen. What we want to think about in terms of awareness is when we remember to notice, let's drop that reminder in and then relax. So this step for me when I'm guiding folks is so important.

I think we've talked about this, Dan, maybe even on the other podcast recording that we did, the swing analogy of tapping the swing that we don't need to run with the swing, which would be exhausting. And that's what we try and do with awareness is try and hold onto the experience versus lightly knowing how we're feeling,

feeling our hands and then allowing the awareness swing to happen until we have to tap it again. Like pushing a kid on a swing. Exactly, and you had your interesting story to tell about that. Yeah. But just that, just that at the time, you told me this, this was like four years ago,

my son was four and a half or something. And I said that when I push my son on a swing, often, you know, I push him and he floats out and then he comes back and passes gas right in my face. Waking up to whatever's happening right now is often very unpleasant. Exactly. Yeah.

But I do pick up what you're saying that I see this in my own practice to this day. I was actually practicing last night, doing some walking meditation before bed and I was actually doing a side out Uttar Jnana thing where I was asking myself, what's the attitude in my mind right now? Just checking in like what's going on?

And I often joke that that question is a little bit like, and people have heard me say this before, so I acknowledge that I'm reverting to shtick here a little bit, but it's a little bit like shining a black light in a hotel room on the sheets. You'll see a lot of disgusting stuff if you do that. And same, if you ask yourself, what's the attitude in my mind right now? What's preventing me from being present right now?

And often for me, it's a leaning in, it's a striving, it's a wanting to win at meditation. And that is really helpful because as soon as you see that, ideally, you can relax a little bit, recognize this is just one little moment at a time. The way to make a longer string of moments is just to look at it like pushing a kid on a swing. You do the little push and then relax. Eventually the mind will get taken somewhere else, but then hopefully you'll wake up a little bit and push the swing

again. You're right. The pushing or tapping of the swing. And the important part there is to remember that, and this is really hard for the mind, our habits of mind to trust, is that as soon as we're noticing, or even the intention to tap the swing, it really is enough has already happened. Awareness is already back, just by the intention to be aware again.

And that's where the tension, the tightness, the judging, the kind of like all of those attitudes that begin to creep in and where this new relationship to awareness can begin to arise is that, oh, it's not hard to be aware. It's not hard to be aware, but these attitudes of striving and pushing sneak in behind the practice.

And when they're not noticed, then we call them a hindrance, let's say, right? They hinder the practice because they're going unnoticed. As soon as they're noticed, then it's just another experience that we can be learning about. And the more we have that wisdom view, that it doesn't matter what the experience is, but that we're knowing it and we're knowing it, we could say with some wisdom, some understanding that this is a natural process.

When we really take that in, we really take that in, it really does take a while for people to hear that, but it doesn't matter what the experience is. What the experience is, it doesn't matter. It is another set of conditions coming together and there will be forever weather patterns, sunny days, rainy days, boring days, exciting days, and the same with moments. So the less that we get focused on the experience and trying to control the experience and the outcome and the more that we understand that it's in the meaning of it, first recognizing if we're aware and then learning about how we're relating to it, that's

the practice. Then really the whole life becomes available in terms of learning all the time. Learning learning. But this awareness needs to get some momentum first. Okay. Well, so in terms of building that momentum, when I asked you earlier, how do you keep your practice going, you told the whole story about how, well, you'd gotten a little cocky, and then, you know,

life came at you, and you came back to this very simple instruction from your teacher to get into the habit of checking in with your chest. Sometimes think about E.T. You know, in that movie, E.T., like the color in the alien's chest always, like, signaled what his emotional state was. So you got in this habit know, in that movie ET, like the color in the alien's chest always like signaled what his emotional state was. So you got in this habit of checking in with the chest,

and that was really helpful. You didn't say anything about formal meditation practice. And so how do you think about people getting in their five, 10, one minute daily-ish of practice within the context of keeping overall mindfulness or awareness alive. I say, great. Really, and this may sound a little contradictory,

even though I love to emphasize the potential of being aware naturally in any experience. At the same time, why do we always need to be occupied and busy? Do we really need to fill up every minute? And so if you do have a minute that's available or five minutes or half an hour, why not just put things down and put the entire, you know, orientation or intention of the mind

onto remembering to notice the present moment and developing that momentum. So yes, having some formal moments that really kind of bring us back into our practice, that we reconnect with awareness. Wonderful. As many moments as you can. Some people like, you know, we're just sharing on this retreat here in Sweden, they use the bathroom as their little time to have a few minutes to check in

every time they go to the bathroom. It's their time for practice. People were offering different places that they, you know, how do they support themselves? Because at the end of retreat, everyone's trying to figure out, so how do we keep going? So finding formal time, wonderful, but not having the idea not having the idea that awareness depends on the body in a certain posture, the eyes being closed or things being peaceful. Because that idea often blocks the awareness from maturing. What we want to do is have the awareness mature to grow up, meaning it can start to receive more and more experiences. How do we begin to notice when we're talking, how we're feeling?

Like, you know, right now, Dan, as we're talking, you know, so for me, I'm talking, my hands are moving and there's now a habit of noticing just lightly when my, when I'm talking to notice something about my body, to notice how I'm feeling. But until I started bringing awareness and interest to the speaking, I had no familiarity of how to do that. So again, my teacher basically said, well, see where you're not good at awareness and try to bring it there. And so people might say, well, I'm not good at being aware at all anywhere, which is often

how we feel, right? When we're caught up in things, but we start exactly right now, right now. So whatever is going on, you know, for us right now, we feel the body taking a deep breath. And then after this podcast is over listening, then we try to remember. So no one can do this for us, but the more that we're inspired,

and for me, hearing a teacher tell me that he did it in his busy work life, basically was an inspiration for me to say, okay, I can do this. It is doable. What are some of the ways? And reminding myself as many times as I can that it makes a difference this moment.

That this moment makes a difference of awareness. Because we often assume that a single moment of knowing that we're breathing is insignificant, it doesn't do anything. But that's how habits build. So what I'm basically trying to do right now is just to empower, inspire whoever's listening to not underestimate a moment of awareness.

It does grow. It does grow. And the more moments of the day that awareness can come in, in a very natural way, you don't have to be like, you know, precious or looking like you're meditating or anything. It's just knowing something about yourself in the direct experience. And that's a moment of knowing, great, great. And then when's the next moment, right? It doesn't interfere with what we're doing

and the activity and the speed. It's more that we're bringing now awareness with us into those activities. ... Coming up, Alexis talks about how the practice can help us stay sane in tumultuous times and how he's been handling all of the election anxiety and how we can apply the practice of mindfulness to especially painful life situations, which never stop, even if you've

been a Buddhist monk. Alexis is going to talk about a breakup he recently went through. I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondry Show American Scandal. We bring to life some of the biggest controversies in US history, presidential lies, environmental disasters, corporate fraud. In our latest series, the Houston Astros shock Major League Baseball by going from last place to winning the World Series in just four years. This remarkable turnaround seems to vindicate Astros shocked Major League Baseball by going from last place to winning the World Series in just four years. This remarkable turnaround seems to vindicate Astros' general manager,

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Start your free trial today. I want to ask a little bit more about how you apply these teachings in your own life. Let me start with the election since we're recording this in the midst of a nail-biter of an election and then we're posting it the day after the voting. I have a memory of you telling me once that one of your little habits that you struggle with is a compulsion to check the news. I don't know if that's still with you, but I'm curious, like, how and when and whether you are able to apply your practice

to the cultural, political, social tumult we are living through now. Yes, yeah. I would say I have, since we talked those years ago, the habit of checking news has improved. I would say during an election season, the checking of the polls can be relentless for what my mind is curious about.

And so it's really just to accompany myself, to notice that that is what the mind is wanting to do. You know, my tendency now to practice when I'm with being myself and my natural living process is basically to notice what's happening without trying to control and push too much. I just have so much momentum of practicing in that way that I trust as long as the mind isn't wanting to do something that is going to cause harm and is skillful. If it's not in that terrain, that basically I just allow what's happening, but I bring interest rather than trying to shut it down and to judge it. The mind is already doing something, so the awareness is there.

And I have seen so many patterns and unskillful reactivities shift and be let go of as a result of that rather than trying to get out of it or to prevent something, but to actually bring awareness and a kindness, right? A non-judgmental attitude to it. But really, really doing that, not just saying that. So I let my mind for the most part alone and then to be aware. So am I checking the polls? Yes, because the mind finds it fascinating and deeply important, but so is everyone. And it seems like I'm on the whole spectrum of political views, and I find that very interesting.

So just to restate that, you don't fight the tendency to, if you notice like a zombie arm reaching for the phone and hitting refresh on the polling averages, you don't fight that, but you try to wake up as much as possible to notice it in a non-judgmental, even friendly way, interested way. Yeah, yeah. It's happening.

It's okay. It's not causing anyone harm. Then this is a little different. I have a lot of momentum of practice, so it isn't weakening my awareness when I do that. And is it the most skillful move the mind, the heart could make in that moment? You know, yeah, that'd be probably more skillful for me to just look at the phone and say, Oh, this is just another moment. It's not going to affect the outcome of I know what the

pulls are in this moment or not. And that happens sometimes, that wisdom can come in. I know I'm not the determinator of the, whether I know or not, it makes no difference to the world. And I'm also, I like a relationship to awareness that doesn't control. And again, that doesn't mean that there isn't times and frequently, as soon as awareness comes in, how I relate to it is very quick.

I'm just sort of building it up as a bigger thing, but there are plenty of times, of course, that once awareness shows up, it knows how to be in what we're in, in a more skillful way just by noticing, right? What is burning, what is agitating, you know, and the Buddha's reflections. This was in the train of wise speech, I think more than anywhere else, we're just sort of asking, is this useful? So when a wisdom phrase like that comes in, is this useful? Is this onward leading?

Is this leading to some sort of benefit? Then that for sure can steer us. And I just allow that to develop in a very organic way. But we want to know for ourselves, each of us, what helps us navigate the habits and different life experiences that we are bumping up against, when is it helpful to choose and steer our actions in a certain direction, and when is it helpful to simply learn about and in the learning, allow that to slowly develop

our wisdom, our insight. Yeah, it's interesting, this compulsion to check the news or the polls. How's it going for you, Dan? I actually, I have many compulsions. That's not really a huge one for me. Yeah, you were in it for so long. I spent so much time as a journalist that I'm kind of going through a detox, extended

detox period with information. But although I can imagine on the morning this is posting, I will be in the state of compulsively checking. Of course, right. And I'm just honing in on something you said before, because you have this relationship to awareness or mindfulness that you're not trying to control. And at the same time, the desire to check the polls, And at the same time, the desire to check the polls,

I think is based in some sort of compulsion to control, as if knowing what the vote count or the polling averages is gonna impact in any way what is actually objectively factual. Yes, that's totally fascinating. And that is what the mind is doing. That's how we learn about what the mind gets entangled in, what it thinks it's doing when it's checking. And so there's some emotional state

that is getting activated when we check something that will, when the release of that is really seen through, what will have happened is that the push of what is driving me to look at the pole would be some kind of anxious, wanting to get the outcome that I want. And when that is fully, thoroughly, completely understood, it would be meaningless to check the poll because there'd be no more energy in that direction because the wisdom at that point would simply know useless, not going anywhere, just another moment of the mind

picking up some data that is a snapshot in time that has very little anyways, probably true knowledge of what is going to happen a month from now. Well, has already happened in terms of this being listened to. Yeah. Yes. Although it's already happened, the voting has already happened, but the odds are we don't know the outcome. And we may not for days. So we're making our best guess collectively about how to serve you on this moment. Also bearing in mind that you may be listening to this, you know, in 2028 and we also want it to be useful

to you then. Well, just in our remaining time here, Alexis, talking, you know, in the spirit of, because I always loved talking to Dharma teachers or meditation teachers, not only about their instructions for practice for the rest of us, but also how they apply those instructions in their own lives.

And you've made reference to the fact that, you know, life keeps happening. You can ordain as a monk for as long as you would like, but shit's gonna keep happening to you. People are gonna die, relationships are gonna end, you know, that's where the rubber hits the road. It's been a minute since you and I have checked in and I know in that time you've gone through a breakup

with a long-term partner and that has caused some turbulence in your own mind. So I'd be curious, we obviously don't need to get into the details of the breakup, but more in terms of the ramifications in your own life, in your own mind and how you've been able to apply the practice. Are you comfortable talking about all of that? Sure, yeah, it's real.

It's real. And why I'm a Dharma teacher is cause, you know, I am interested in what's real, but with boundaries in terms of, you know, care and respect. Yeah, it was a very, it was a long-term relationship, 16 years, and it was a really painful experience in the ending.

As, you know, I think as anyone who has gone through a long-term relationship, almost all of them hurt in some way. It's a loss, right? There's something, you lose your best friend, you're no longer in the same routines, the same habits. My journey, it was a journey. You know, I had to go through grief, a lot of grief. I wasn't expecting that amount of grief. Wasn't expecting what got opened. I

think very, I think not even about the relationship. I think experiences often open up a portal in a way to deeper wounds, maybe very young, ancient things, but we feel like it's the particular experience that we're going through that's the cause, when in fact, if there was enough awareness and wisdom and compassion, it would just be a situation to handle. It would just be what it is, right?

There are some traumas that we still experience when we're older, but oftentimes there is some connection to maybe very young material. And I think that's what partly started to open up for me. Once I went through the initial big changes and life pattern changes, and then the grief of it all. Then I became really interested in terms of what is this opening up for me and seeing questions we could say of fundamentally do I belong in this universe? Am I separate or do I belong? That's a hard question to get at. And I think that's when I began to feel and could begin to bring some awareness too. But again, in terms of the, what did I do? I was watching the heart go through so much and the mind and watching the cycles of it

going from very intense for quite a while and then slowly settling and really being interested, really being interested in what my mind and heart would end up choosing to do. Cause it really did feel like that to me because I didn't know how I would be responding and what became interesting was to see the result of practice of all these, all these years of practice really emerge. So I have delighted in the way my ex and I have met each other during this time. We just taught a retreat together three weeks ago.

So not the normal relationship breakup course that I think a lot of people take, which is, and we were even put in the same cabin. So we were, you know, we had our own little rooms, but we were cabin mates in this retreat. So to watch that a year and now a half later, that we were at that place and absolutely enjoying the process that we had undertaken,

which really was a result of being with the experiences, a lot of listening, fair dose of therapy, of course, always helpful if you can connect to someone that can listen and allow you to go through what you're going through. Mindfulness, awareness practices, they do, they work. It seems, I often, they do, they work. It seems, I mean, I often reflect to students, like, if you just describe the quality of awareness, like, how would you describe it? So people often describe like awake, clear, not lost, knowing what's

happening in the present moment. It's a subtle quality, the Buddha pointed out. happening in the present moment. It's a subtle quality, the Buddha pointed out. And yet here is the subtle quality that when it's developed can be so, so transformative if we bring it in into our ordinary moments so that more moments of our day are with awareness, right? Then without, and how do we do that? Again, it's not pushing the pause button.

Where do we push the pause button? And for most of us, it's going to be all the time. So what helps us to push the pause button, to turn it back on, to press play? Is it some moments of formal practice? Is it listening to, you know, Dharma talks and podcasts and reading? Is it finding certain activities like driving where we start to actually make it a priority? Let me try and be aware of just how I'm feeling as I drive. You know, how I'm passing people, am I cutting them off?

Am I allowing? Like, what is, how am I working? Like, what do I notice? And again, it doesn't have to be exquisite detail. Just some kind of knowing is enough. And again, the mechanisms there by which this simple awareness can be helpful. The mechanisms, I'm just trying to figure out how to say this aloud clearly. If people are wondering, how can just being mindful

as much as possible and building up that momentum, how can that help me endure a bad breakup or a tough election results or the uncertainty of any given situation? There are lots of mechanisms that I'm hearing you describe, but at least one of them is you're not as caught up in your habitual, often negative thinking patterns you're giving yourself a break and then more creative wholesome options can arise. Yeah and

basically knowing what's happening and remembering that it's okay that it's happening which is a bit of wisdom that it's okay to be feeling overwhelmed it's okay to be feeling heartbreak it's okay to be feeling heartbreak, it's okay to be feeling angry, right? So I did a lot of stomping around, a lot of dancing to pretty loud music, ACDC, which I'd never really listened to before became the top thunderstruck.

I just, I was needing something to match the emotions that I was in. And if I was like a precious Dharma teacher, I wouldn't listen. I mean, like, I mean, a precious, whatever it would be, but now it's real. So how do we be real with what's going on? That step one is to just, honest, I feel overwhelmed.

I feel scared and that's okay. That's what's here. That's universal. We all go through this. And by recognizing the universality of it, that it's okay to be feeling what we're feeling, that begins the relationship shifting. Instead of being caught and completely overwhelmed, we might be able to soften, right, soften

into it, take a deep breath, some sort of settling may be happening. And once we could say these qualities of awareness, of some sort of wisdom, some kindness, once those qualities have a foothold and they're strong enough, then they're able to meet the strength of what would otherwise, the strength of the experience that would otherwise overpower the mind. That's why when we feel overwhelmed, it's basically an imbalance of these two things, which is the strength of the experience and how reactive the mind is becoming and the qualities that we have available in that moment.

So when we're not rested, when we're already feeling flooded and anxious, then yes, we get really entangled and we do the best we can. We do the best we can at those times until we have, you know, we come out into the, some calmer waters and then we continue, we continue, right? To see how to, how to be in our lives in as skillful way as possible, which for me, one of the best ways is just by checking in very lightly. What can I know right now? And what we know is gonna be either the body or the mind.

One of the sense doors, seeing, hearing, the body breathing, or all the mental activity. So if we keep it really simple like that, then it becomes more and more accessible. Dude, I think it's incredibly helpful that, you know, to have a Dharma teacher like you then it becomes more and more accessible. Dude, I think it's incredibly helpful that, you know, to have a Dharma teacher like you, who's willing to talk about all of it,

instead of presenting some, you know, facade of impeccable equanimity. And I'm going to cherish the visual of you stomping around to ACDC for quite a while. I'll run on those fumes for a minute. One of the things that you've talked about, and I made a reference to this earlier, one of the things that you and I have talked about

in the past is an area of struggle for you is public speaking. It's not, you know, there's no judgment here. I'm the guy who, you know, freaked out on national television. So I have a lot of empathy for that. And so I just want to say in closing here, this was phenomenal. You were great and so helpful.

And exactly, I hope, what the doctor ordered at this moment in time for people. Yeah, so long way of saying thank you. Oh, Dan, it's a pleasure. And as you know, I do love to talk about the Dharma. And even though I can see on the video, I look kind of flushed. Maybe that's why you keep mentioning that,

trying to put me at ease. Yeah, I was just sharing to the retreat here. Oftentimes now one of the things that I do share, because it's shocking, it really is surprising people hearing the extent to which I was terrified, absolutely terrified before, during, and then all the shame and suffering that would come afterwards to actually point to the ability of the mind to change so that now, I mean, what used to be tsunamis are, you know, it's a nice sunny day at the beach. There's still some waves, but it's a totally different experience. Yeah.

Just to see the mind change is a wonderful thing. And the way it happens is we can't make it all happen. We can put in the conditions any moment. So, Dan, great to be with you. Yeah. To just restate everything you just said in much briefer and profane terms, this shit works in your great avatar of that. So thanks again for coming on and we'll put links in the show notes to your website so people can learn more from you.

Thank you. Great, Dan. See you soon, O'Call. Thanks again to Alexis. Always great to talk to him. I will post in the show notes some of his prior appearances on this show. Also I will be in the chat today on this very stressful day. So if you want to talk to me, come to danharris.com.

Before I go, just want to thank everybody who worked so hard to make 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.

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