Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - Your Mind Gets Stuck In Four Ways — Here's How To Break Free | Pascal Auclair

Episode Date: June 10, 2026

Why seeing yourself cling is the beginning of freedom — and other Buddhist insights that will stick with you. Pascal Auclair has been immersed in Buddhist practice and study since 1997, sitting retreats in Asia and America. He has been mentored by Joseph Goldstein and Jack Kornfield, who have both been previous guests on this show. Pascal is now a core teacher at the Insight Meditation Society (IMS) in Massachusetts. He is also a co-founder of True North Insight and one of its guiding teachers.  In this episode we talk about: What the Four Kinds of Clinging are — and why the Buddha thought this list mattered How clinging to pleasure actually makes pleasure harder to enjoy The "wrong views" that cause the most suffering — and how to hold your opinions less tightly Why clinging to rules and routines shows up in the most ordinary places (including who puts the onions in the pan first) What self-identification is, and why loosening it leads to less guilt, shame, and anxiety A simple bedside inquiry for getting underneath the concept of self Why catching yourself cling is a reason for joy, not self-criticism Related Episodes: 5 Ways To Get Over Yourself | Pascal Auclair Seven Buddhist Ingredients for a Happy Mind | Pascal Auclair Get the 10% with Dan Harris app here Sign up for Dan's free newsletter here Follow Dan on social: Instagram, TikTok Subscribe to our YouTube Channel To advertise on the show, contact [e-mail] or visit https://advertising.libsyn.com/10HappierwithDanHarris Thanks to our sponsors:  BetterHelp — Online therapy, matched to your needs. Get 10% off your first month at https://www.betterhelp.com/happier Quo – Try Quo for free, plus get 20% off your first six months when you go to quo.com/happier. Rosetta Stone – Get 20% off your Rosetta Stone Sapphire subscription when you sign up today. Visit rosettastone.com/happier

Hey, gang. Welcome to the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm your host, Dan Harris. Today, we're talking about one of the Buddha's lists. As you may know, the Buddha was an obsessive listmaker in his quest to help us upgrade our minds. He made all sorts of lists, the four noble truths, the seven factors of enlightenment. I could go on. Today, we are specifically talking about a list called the four kinds of clinging. These are ways in which our minds get caught up. So we're going to talk about these, these, these, these, four ways in which we get embroiled or caught up or entangled, and then some ways to unhook. My guest is the great Dharma teacher, Pascal O'Claire, who's been on this show before, and he has been studying and practicing Buddhism since 1997, so he's been at this for a minute. He's also a co-founder and guiding teacher of True North Insight. Pascal O'Clair, coming up. A few things before we hear from our sponsors. If you haven't already checked out my new issue,

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Money is on the line. Always say hello with Quo. Try Quo for free. Plus get 20% off your first six months when you go to Quo.com slash happier. That's QUO.com slash happier. Pascal O'Clair, welcome back to the show. Hey, Dan, so good to see you and hear you. Happy to be back.

It's great to see and hear you always. Yeah, before we dive in, like, how are you doing? What's new? I'm good. I'm good. Well, what's new? Nothing's new. Same old five aggregates.

Same old body sensation sounds going around. And, yeah, now maybe deepening of practice. I'm surprised at this. I shouldn't be, you know, but. But very slowly, I'm a slow learner, but I think I can see that I'm making progress every year. So these teachings are kind of getting slowly integrated more and more every month, and it feels good. It's good. Do you feel the same?

Well, episodically, I feel like some progress, but sometimes I feel the opposite of progress. You know, this conversation where you're talking about the fact that, whoa, look like I'm, actually it's it's penetrating my thick skull these these buddhist teachings uh that it's nice to see that it reminds me i i got a question recently uh from one of the subscribers to my app who was joking about the fact that she hears me say the same shit all the time like i'm just constantly saying the same things and so are all of the teachers on the app and on this show and yet she says every time she hears it even though she can predict what we're about to say she's glad we're saying it because she needs to hear it again because we just forget over and over and over

there's something about the human mind where we can take in wisdom via a podcast, a book, a meditation retreat, whatever. And it just, you know, we just, the next day, we're sucked back into TikTok. And so that's what's coming up in my mind as I listen to you talk very gingerly about your progress. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We need to hear this stuff a lot. It sinks in very, very slowly. And every time we hear it, never heard it now before. You know, it's always like news because it's, you know, we hear it now in this context, in this situation with this mind state. So, yeah, I'm exactly like you. I keep repeating myself. I know everything Joseph Goldstein is going to say. He says a couple of words that I know the whole next 10 minutes. And yet it's good to hear it to make it known now, just now,

this time. Yes, and what I believe you're saying is that if we stick with it, as you have since 1997, good things might happen. Yeah, yeah. And I like, I was hearing, I don't even remember who was talking about, you know, how it keeps unfolding. Like, how many times have I thought, you know, oh, I understand what is mindfulness now. Now I understand. I've been thinking this for 30 years. So it just, and I think it's never going to end. And somebody was saying, you know, this thing about the Buddha reaching enlightenment, that's very kind of patriarchal kind of orgasmic man orgasm, you know? Like I think it's going to be very different.

I think it's going to keep opening all the time, the meaning of things, the nuances, you know, that's the impermanence there at play. Like a flower that just keeps blooming to new levels over and over. Yeah, we'll see. We'll see. You mentioned right at the top when I said, how are you doing? You said, same old body, same old five aggregates. Just for people who don't know what the five aggregates are, you don't have to give a whole discourse. But just in case anybody bumped on that, what are you referring to there?

Well, first, I was referring to a prior conversation we had a few years ago on the five aggregates because we did a whole podcast on that. So I was remembering this as I was seeing you. And five aggregates is one of the teachings from the Buddha, one of the lists. as you mentioned, you know. And it's a division of the human experience in two parts, you know. We could divide human experience into two parts. Maybe we could say, oh, there's the bodily stuff and there's the mental stuff.

Well, the Buddha divided, you know, the human experience in many ways, in six, six senses, in 32 parts of the body, but also in five aggregates. Five aspects of our experience in which we get often caught tight around or obsessive, upset about. or confused about. And yeah, that podcast I think might still be available. It's good stuff. It is available, and I'll drop a link in the show notes. People should go listen to it.

You just said the five aggregates are five ways in which we get caught. I described the list that we're going to talk about today, the four kinds of clinging, as four ways in which we get caught. So what is the difference? We get caught in so many ways. We get obsessed in so many ways. We get worked up in so many ways that the Buddha offered many different lists. And these are two of them.

The one that we're looking at today, I like because it seemed to me very applicable. That's what I like about it. You know, what I do mostly is teach retreat. People come on retreat. And often I want to give this teaching at the end of the retreat because I know people are going back home. And this is what they're going to meet tomorrow during the week at work, in a family life. in family life, at home, in relationships. So I like that list because to me it's very, very applicable.

The five aggregates is deep stuff, it's good stuff, as deep as what we're going to see today, but maybe more, a little bit harder to understand. The five ways we, the four ways we cling, what we're talking about today, I think is very applicable, very, people will recognize this, I think. As soon as we'll mention,

the different aspects, people were, oh yeah, I know that. I know that really well. Okay, well, let's dive in. Let's march through the list. The first way, the first, again, of four ways in which we cling, the first entry on this list is sense pleasure clinging. I think that's probably obvious, but unpack it, please. Yeah, first, there's a recognition in here that we're sensitive beings. We have senses. So we're constantly touched. We're constantly received. some data at the sense doors. We see things, we hear things, we feel things,

sensations in the body, we smell, we taste things, and we have emotions and thoughts, you know, and so there's instantly some stimuli happening at the sense doors. And the human nature is made in such a way that we're sensitive. It's not just a sound, it's not just a smell, it's a pleasant smell, it's an unpleasant smell. It's a good idea. It's an idea that brings fear.

It's an unpleasant idea. It's something we love seeing. It's something we find ugly. So we're sensitive in a very, very nuanced way. And so being sensitive as we are, it makes total sense that when something is pleasant, something heard. Somebody says something you want to hear. Oh, Dan, you're so amazing. Pascal, you're so.

It's amazing what you just did. You know, it feels good. And so it's very natural that we would tend to favor that. And that's where this verb comes in, this very important verb clinging. What is clinging, it's kind of, it means, you know, grasping. It means being thirsty for. So we want to see beautiful things. We want them to stay.

We want to hear beautiful things. It feels good. And the way we're not so well made, I think, the way we're very defective human beings. And you know, I'm presenting all this, and I would like the listener to really consider, is that true for me? Is that, do I recognize something? Like, I want us to bring our full intelligence here and check this out and just see for ourselves. Do I recognize something in there or not? And so what happened is when something is beautiful happens for us,

the way our mind is kind of defective is that instead of just rejoicing, you would think it would be obvious. You know, we would enjoy, appreciate, you know, get fed, nourished by beauty, you know. But often it's not what happens. Often what we do is we get a little uptight, you know. It's like we want to keep. We don't want to lose. We want more of.

We start kind of, don't touch this. This is mine now. I want to keep. We start to fear. Will I lose this? Will I be able to maintain this? And so this is the kind of thing that happened that makes it difficult for human beings to experience pleasure. Because then we start to project, anticipate, and fear and get anxious.

This is so weird. No, you would think we could just appreciate stuff. But I don't know. Do you recognize something in there for yourself, Dan? Dude, yeah, of course. I mean, the Buddha was really articulate about this, unsurprisingly. But he was not anti-pleasure, at least the way I understand it. But he was saying that there is, you know, this way lies danger.

I believe he described it to, and this is kind of a vivid simile, but he described it. He said it's like licking honey from the edge of a razor. So, yeah, like the honey contains. taste good, but it's tricky. And it just reminds me, and this is a story as old as time, but I was interviewing last night a guy named Jet Lee, who was a huge martial arts movie star, especially in the 90s. And he had everything. He had been a champion Chinese martial artist, and then he became a movie star. He got super rich. And he just like, it was never enough. I mean, by the way, this is, as you know, the Buddha's story himself. He was a wealthy prince.

and had everything, but it was not enough. He was still unhappy. And I think that's the razor that lurks under the honey. Yeah, yeah. And you're so right to say, like, the problem is not the fact that things are pleasurable or can be or sometimes are. It's really what we're,

and the list here looks at clinging. So that's what I find beautiful about this teaching is that it's asking us, like, is there another way to relate to this? Is there another way than clinging? And that's what we call maybe practice, meditative practice, or mindfulness is that by encountering pleasure and becoming aware of our relationship to it,

we can learn to react differently, to respond differently to what is pleasurable, and maybe learn to relax and feel and recognize, wow, this is good, this feels good, this is beautiful, this meeting of these people tonight. We got together, we're having fun, to really enjoy it and be able to actually soak it, to be really nourished by beauty.

And when I teach meditation on retreat, I invite people to go do walking meditation outside. And I say, like, you know, like notice we're often in retreats, we're in beautiful nature's, you know, countryside. And I invite people to actually notice beauty and see what the mind can do. Sometimes I go, oh, I need to move to the country, and why does I? I don't come so often.

I should come more often. And so this will kind of create turbulence in the mind. But there's another way possible. There's another way where there's a way to be kind of conscious about what's happening. Oh, there's this experience of beauty now, of meaning, of richness, of preciousness, something precious is happening. Let me actually be intimate with that, be there. instead of kind of projecting, anticipating it will end, just be there, be there. And I think that one thing that really helps with this is the kind of, in a way, the bad news is that

I think it can be helpful if we know very, very deeply that all these things, all these pleasure at the different sense doors are by nature ephemeral. It's their nature to come and go. the more we know this, the less we will cling. I want it to stay. No, I know it won't stay. That's not in its nature. That's not what it does.

But it can arise and be felt. And actually, in a way, I think of it as nourishing for the soul, you know. Nurshing. So, yeah, we can lick the honey. But there's an angle. You have to lick it out to knock on the razor. Well, okay, drill down on that. Very specifically, if somebody's listening to this and thinking, okay, how can I enjoy the many pleasures of being alive, a beautiful day, or maybe a rainy day, but I like a rainy day, or a great meal or a great social encounter, how can I enjoy it without clinging and thereby ruining it?

To me, the solution lies in what we call and you've heard so much about everyone listening, mindfulness. So mindfulness is that quality of presence that is not trying to acquire or keep anything. It's a quality of presence that is marked characterized by curiosity, by, it's very candid. It has candidness to it, you know? It's fresh.

It has freshness to it. Oh, what is that? What is that? What is beauty? You know, not I love beauty. I want to, like, what is the experience? of beauty. To me, the way out of the trouble is that kind of presence that is really curious about what is happening. Wow, human beings are sensitive and they get sometimes to

experience beauty as it's happening. I want to be curious about it. What is that beauty? What is that beauty? What is that meaning? What is that preciousness? So to kind of bring extra attention, like a very generous presence to what is happening, as if you're a very generous presence, as if you didn't know what it was. That's the kind of beginner's mind, the don't know mine. Instead of wanting to acquire, like, I like this, I want the recipe for this, how can I, like, what is, what is, what is deliciousness? What is, what is what is what I call delicious? So you see, like, this brings the attention in the event, in the, like, the mindfulness is like the water going in a sponge. The way I would say to play with this is to try to see if I can

come closer to this, if I can really experience this, not just like keep it going, but really know it in an intimate way. So to me, that's one of the way out of trouble around this is to come close, to enter into, to embrace, to dive in. In essence, use your ability to pay attention, use the innate curiosity we all have to savor experiences like a brownie or a great conversation with a friend at a party without toppling forward into the next thing or wondering how we can make this last or what we can how how can I get another brownie whatever and the mind will wander of course you'll those those thoughts will still come up but can Can you bring your attention consistently and gently back to what's happening right now as a way to be with it without the clinging?

Yeah. So very, very, very, I think of it as very, very vertical. It's very immediate. It's not timeline, you know, like always like watermelon. I wish there will be watermelon this summer, but it becomes very, very vertical. And that's what we call practice. That's what, you know, that's the aspect of mindfulness. I hear you bring forward here.

It's very, very immediate. And what I like about it also is, and it's so rich, things become palpable. It makes whatever is pleasurable, even more pleasurable, because we dive under concept. It's not the idea that I like that, I like that kind of music, I like that kind of situation. It invites me to dive in. It's really like the rock going down at the bottom of the ocean, you know, instead of the cork that stays at the, you know, floating on top of the water. water like, oh, I love this, I like, no, it's, it's much more like, it requires a lot of attention. It requires a diving underneath ideas, you know, to really experience.

And there's a freedom in that, because there's a freshness in this. I'm freed from my thoughts. I'm freed from my tendency to grasp and cling. I get to actually fully experience this. And in mindfulness, I think, in its most huge, a version, and it can be just a second, I don't mind, you know. But when it's real mindfulness, the timeline drops. I'm sorry, but there's no timeline. In mindfulness, when I'm really there with something, it's just now. It's just now. There's no, it's not conceived in the way of a timeline. It's just, this is the experience. I'm fully there for it. And the next moment, then we don't know what's going to happen. There might not be mindfulness. There might be

habits of mind of clinging, of course. And in those moments, when the mind swoops in and puts you back into the conventional timeline and the wanting of more and whatever, it's just about starting again and again and again. Yeah, and noticing the kind of ouch that we're caught again in like clinging, anxiety, fear of losing, which is absolutely natural. So, so natural. I'm talking to the listener here.

I don't want anybody to blame themselves for clinging for getting tight around pleasure or displeasure, by the way. It's so natural, very, very natural. Yet, and that's the whole path of the Buddha, as I understand it, it's somebody who's saying, thinking, there must be another way. There must be another way to relate to this that my mind won't get upset or fixated, you know?

Plus, I would say also, Dan, that there's a kind of particular joy that I think of as Vipasa joy or inside joy or meditation joy is that when we, like now we're going to talk about for like an hour or so about clinging the mind that

gets hooked up on take up something and obsess about it and we hear about it for all this time and then we go back to life and there's a particular kind of joy that comes up that is the joy of seeing when we get caught when the mind clings

we're going to talk about these four kinds of clinging. And then tomorrow you'll see one of them and you'll go like, oh, I got one. This is clinging. This is exactly. So the joy of seeing the teaching unfold. You know, so I cling

all the time, all day long, I cling to all kinds of things. But when I get to see it, I'm like, oh, Pascal, you just clung to this, this was pleasurable and you clung to it. Or this was unpleasurable. And now, you know, life has stopped. You know, there's just this,

just this thing that was said that I didn't like, and the whole dynamism of life has stopped now. I'm focused on this, and the whole world has stopped, and I'm going to, you know, chew on that bone for a while, you know. And then I can see, oh, Pascal, look at this. It's exactly as it's told in the Dharma, in the teachings, you know, this happens, of course. Yeah, seeing how ridiculous the mind is is one of the many Dharma delicacies for sure. And I want to underline one of the things that Pascal's saying here, which is that it is very helpful when looking at the more noxious tendencies of the mind to have a sense of humor, to be playful. And you can hear this coming through not only in Pascal's words, but in the way in which he says those words, there's a real sense of humor. There are the eyes are gleaming. And I have just found that maintaining that attitude has been essential. I was talking to a friend of mine the other day who's much younger than me. She was thinking a lot about how to keep her brain sharp. And so she was getting back into meditation.

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This episode is sponsored by Better Help. For some people, summer is their favorite season. Travel picks up, kids are out of school, and adventure is the focus. For others, juggling it all can be tough and can lead to overwhelm and counting down the minutes until the kids are back in school. Many people worry they're wasting the days of sunshine, not feeling at their best. I get it. Actually, historically, summer has been a time where my depression would come back

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The second is clinging to view. What does that mean? view. Cling to views, to points of views, to the way we understand the world to be. So you can see this maybe on the bigger scene, you know, the international scene, you know, like religious views, spiritual views. So this can be very charged. I don't know when you hear this, how it land in you, but for me, I see like my, you know, the Buddha talks. about something like that our views and opinions should lead to calm and clarity. And when I hear this, it makes me laugh because my views and opinions usually lead me to be agitated and not worked up in all kinds of ways, you know.

So I can see that I have a lot of work to do around the views and opinions around that, especially, and that's a particular aspect of this that the Buddha highlights, and I'm so, so thankful for this, is that. says it's clinging to any view, right view, helpful view, unhelpful view, confused views is going to be painful. But clinging to wrong view is even more painful. And right in there, there's a few suggestions of things that we could look at, tendencies that we have to, you know, wrongly understanding what is happening, the nature of reality. And I can name a few, you want. Please. Well, the most

classic wrong view that we cling to, so we tend to project on things permanence. So the wrong view of permanency, solidity, stability, so we tend to very easily our mind

will make something permanent. I feel like shit, I'm going to feel like shit for the rest of my life, you know. I succeeded, it should continue, or I'm great, I'm great forever, or you know, this is good, this is a nice place, it's going to be nice forever, this is a good situation, it's going to be forever, this is bad, it's going to stay like this.

So our mind have the tendency to make things permanent solid in this way, and we don't question this, we just view this as reality, so that's a type of clinging. We buy into, we adhere to this view. At some point, we have a little bit of a shock. we could say, you know, like because something falls apart, a relationship, a situation, something start to not be so we give it less value, suddenly it changes. It changes in some ways. And so clinging to permanence, the view of permanence, the Buddha seems to say that's going

to make things really painful. When you know suddenly the aging starts to show in the face or health goes, you know, And often we are in shock. You know, we can't believe that this thing suddenly disappear is starting to crack, crumble, you know. And we're very shocked, but we shouldn't be because it's in the nature of things to be. So there's a lot of practice here to recognize that,

to let go of that, of clinging, adhering to that view. Okay, so that's one kind of wrong view. the view of impermanence? Are there others that we should be on the lookout for? Another one is the view of satisfying. That's very tricky. The view of like when we project on something, when we perceive in something, satisfaction,

like complete satisfaction, where there's no nuance. You know, we don't think it can be slightly defective or unstable or changing. And we do this, you know, we'll be just on the internet and we'll see a little something somewhere and we'll, oh my God, I need to get that, you know,

that's what Amazon lives on, you know, the fact that we'll project satisfaction. And what's the actual experience? You know, you actually get the thing the next day in the mail, you know, you open the box, and they're like, oh, okay, oh, well, well, that might be useful, you know, but it's not what I, you know, what I projected, like I thought it was. And so we can be awake to this.

We can be not so duped, not so fooled by that. And learn, by paying attention, we can learn that things are not exactly as we project, what we project on them. And it made me laugh because I was listening to somebody saying, you know, when I return an article that I bought online, you know, and they say, like, sometimes, I don't know if they still do, but, you know, why are you returning this? They're like, well, you know, I was drunk last night, feeling lonely at home, you know. And I bought a bunch of things, you know, trying to solve my problem, you know. And yeah, now I'm not so drunk anymore. And, you know, and I can see it's not that satisfying, you know. And so, and it seems like a bad news, you know, I'm saying things are unsatisfactory, you know,

and it would be good to see this for what it is, you know. seems like bad news, but actually when you're free from that kind of allure that you tend to put on things, you know, and that a lot of corporate stuff is trying to, you know, to have us buy and to satisfy the idea of satisfaction with things, you know. When we're freed from this, it feels so good. There's so much joy that we have access to. There's so much freedom. So when I say things can't satisfy us completely, relationship can't, come on, let's be honest, you know, in any situation and career can't.

And you see, you see people, you know, some of the richest people in the world, you know, they look miserable, you know. They have, they got everything they want, but they still, you know, they're not happy. And so we can be aware of this and not cling to the idea of satisfaction and in this way gain into joy and peace and inner freedom. It's a lot of good news in there. We're talking about the second way of clinging, which is clinging to views. We talked a little bit about the kind of wrong views that can be particularly painful to cling to. But if we think about clinging to view writ large as a way. way in which we suffer, what is the antidote?

What is practically, where is the good news? Yeah, with every one of these ways of clinging, I would think that I would like to suggest that becoming aware of how we're holding, how we're holding pleasure, how we're holding this pleasure, how we're meeting or holding a view can be really helpful. So to know that, you know, I might have views about what's happening in the world, you know, about, you know, different conflicts that are happening in the world or things that I care a lot about for my society, injustice and this. And I can get all worked up.

If I cling to these things in an obsessive way, I'm going to lose sleep, I'm going to lose appetite, I'm going to lose hope, I'm going to lose vision. I'm going to get depleted in all kinds of ways. And this might be another way to hold these. views with care, with clarity. I find inspiration in the Buddha. The Buddha had a lot of views. He spent 45 years sharing his views about stuff, but he was not clinging to them. He was not getting upset about them. And so the way to work with this, I think, is to actually notice,

oh, Pascal, my love, you're getting all worked up about this. You're really very, very, very engage with this. Is there a way to maybe come back to the body, to feel the body breathing here, to maybe notice something else? You know, notice what's happening around, the space around, there's things around, and do a little bit of a titration, you know, like instead of like fixation, you know, to relax a bit. And to me, one of the ways I'll think about this is to think, is this, the way I hold this, is this leading me to freedom? Is this leading me to, is, is this leading me to engage or is this making me, you know, all worked up so that I'll be depleted later, you know? So to actually take note of the mind state, the way I'm relating to this,

you know, and bringing curiosity. I like that question. Is there another way to hold this? And I might be doing this in the middle of a conversation. You know, I'm with somebody and I want to speak over them, to convince them of something because I have a view about this. And if I notice this, Pascal, is there another way? And then I can relax my body, find my breath again, maybe hear the other person, and usually I find myself more intelligent because I have access to more information of what's going on. I'm a little bit more relaxed maybe so that my mind is more flexible. I can actually engage with the person at the right level instead of trying to kind of force or you know, control the other's point of view. You know, I can actually listen. Maybe I'll hear

some nuances that I haven't considered, you know. Maybe I'll get interested in the person. And there's, it seems like suddenly it's possible. There's possibilities. It's another field, you know. So I'll leave in a way conflict, you know. And so becoming aware of myself, my mind state, my body, and then I can, you know, reorient. It's possible. The minds have that capacity to re-er. We are not stuck with our mind states, you know.

There's a possibility when we become conscious to say, like, hey, there might be another way to go about this. Let's try. Let's try. Maybe I'll ask a question to the, I'll get interested in their point of view, you know, and I'll see what thread we can bring here, make or something like this. It's such good news that we can change the channel in our minds.

No question about it. That said, we live, as everybody knows, in the middle of a, in what a friend of mine has called a pandemic of certainty. A lot of people in this polarized environment find it threatening to say that we shouldn't be so attached to our views because the stakes seem so high. I had, you know, all of the fears about AI, possible authoritarian slide on and on. And I'm referring specifically there to the United States. What say you to folks who have that concern of like, yo, don't tell me to ease up on my views.

Like, my views are really important and righteous here. Yeah, everyone will, you know, do what they want with this, you know. So I'm totally okay with somebody not agreeing with any of this. and deciding to keep clinging to their views. That's an absolute possibility. I think that I come back to this same phrase here. I'm sorry, but it's like there might be another way. So I see some people who are activists, you know,

are fighting for things they value. And I can see that some of them are able to do this with vision, led by love, led by clarity, You know, and they can engage a lot of energy, a lot of time. But it's not in hatred. It's not in closing down. It's, you know, I was hearing somebody recently were saying, I'm going to keep speaking up because I know we can do better.

And I thought, this is so beautiful. It's not like you, other people, you're so wrong, and I hate you. And you're, you know, it's like this vision, this beauty and this. I don't know if you'll, somebody would make the difference. between the two, I do. To me, like I want to go about things like this with vision, with clarity, with love, with creativity. I want to, you know, I don't want to be eaten up inside by something.

I want to, yeah. And so I think that not clinging to a view doesn't mean that we're not going to engage a lot of energy into something that we care about. But it's a different way to go about it. And again, the Buddha taught for 45 years. It's not like he said, oh, I'm not going to cling to anything and just stay under a tree. He engaged in conversation and with people who didn't agree with him.

But he seemed to be saying all the time, I will never quarrel, I will never hate somebody, I will never cling to a view. I will have exchanges. I will spend a lot of time explaining my views. but yeah, so it's for everyone to see what's possible here. I have found personally that being open to other points of view as it pertains to our current domestic political scene here in the United States or on global issues like AI, being open to other points of view is, and this is a little counterintuitive and again maybe idiosyncratic. It's calming in some ways because I don't feel so locked in on one point of certainty. Okay. Let's talk about the third way of clinging in this list of four.

And this one, I'm not even sure exactly what's being pointed to here, but it is clinging to rights and rituals. What does that mean? Yeah. At the time of the Buddha, I wasn't there. So as I heard or understand or has been described to me, and that people would have rituals that they would perform thinking that the ritual themselves would liberate them. So standing on one leg and never putting the second leg on the floor would be a good practice to liberate the mind, you know, or that, you know, it could be all kinds of things. but really about ways to do things and not questioning what's happening in the mind,

not questioning nature of reality, for example, but just behaving in a certain way. Yeah, so this is where it seems to start from. And then it goes even further than this. The way I reflect on this, the way it touches me in a kind of contemporary way when we think about this to me is, I think of norms, clinging to norms, clinging to ways of doing things.

And you know, these four aspects, they can be close to one another, they can connect to one another, you know, like we make four kinds, but they kind of, there's a play between them, you know, because why do we cling sometimes to ways of doing things and norms? Because they're agreeable, they're comfortable for us there. You know, so it touches on the first list for the first. first aspect maybe. A lot of racism will be based around this, you know, like the way the norms that are established by a lot of the white people, you know, of ways to do things. We see this

and for me, I spend a lot of time in, you know, in the spiritual realm, in Buddhist realms, and retreat centers, you know, and there's a, there's a, in the, in the, in the west, you know, there's a kind of a white way to do things. And we're not willing to question this. We cling to this, you know. And I remember I was at a conference, and there was a woman who said, what's wrong with you?

You don't dance your Dharma, you know? And I was like, oh, yeah, look at this. You know, like, look at how, like in that milieu, you know, this is what the Dharma, what the meditation or spiritual practice looks like, and it's not danced. you don't dance it, you know, or you don't sing it with gusto, you know? And so, and I think it can be so enriching for us to question these.

And, you know, other ways that I see this is about how to do things. Like at work, for example, oh, no, that's not how to do this. The step one is this, the step two. You know, like it's as if there's no space for creativity or how to raise a kid. You have kids. You'll know what I talk about. you know, like people will tell you, like, this is the way to raise a kid. This is the way to, you know, to, I do that.

Sometimes I, you know, I have this in my house with my partner, you know, it's like we start to make a meal and I'm like, no, the onions go first. You know, that's why I want to bring this list here today, because I think it's very applicable. I'm like, oh, why do I suffer in my relationship? Because I cling to rights and rituals. I cling to the way we're going to do this meal. and I don't seem to care about the relationship for a few moments here.

I care about the way, the order of the vegetables going in the pan, you know, and I'm miserable, and I make the other miserable, and there's another way, there's another way, you know. And becoming aware of this, I'm like, oh, maybe I can let go a bit of my, you know, clinging to ways of doing things here. And maybe I'll find some joy and connection, you know. there's so many ways this is applicable in my mind. You know, that's a very rich field. Do you think I should start telling my wife that she should stand on one leg? If she puts the onions first.

Before the meat. I don't think any of that would go over well in my house. Yeah, no, I think I like this a lot. And especially as it pertains to an organization, I say this as a small business owner, like the most dangerous phrase. is, yeah, but we've always done it this way. And that kind of calcification can be like the enemy of growth. As a business owner and someone who works from home,

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Visit Spectrum.com slash business to learn more. restrictions apply, services not available in all areas. I'm going to move on to the fourth because this is the biggest, in my opinion, maybe I'm clinging to view here, but in my opinion, this is the most interesting part of the list. So with your permission, I'm going to move on to the fourth way of clinging, which is, it's going to sound a little technical, but it's to self-doctrine or just clinging to the self. please hold forth. I love that fourth aspects of experience, fourth way of clinging.

I love to study this. I find it very, very juicy. I find it very kind of demanding, profound, counterintuitive, and so rich in the possibility of freedom and joy and love and compassion. And so it's just the Buddha saying, Look, I'm going to add a fourth chapter here. I'm going to give it its own chapter because it's very rich. The Buddha agrees with us, Dad, and he's saying, you know, there's a particular way we cling.

There's a particular way we fixate. There's a particular way we get, we take up something. And it's this very usual, habitual, very common way that is identification. when we take something to be me or mine. As soon as we make something me in an absolute way, this is me. The Buddha says this happens a lot and a lot of our suffering, trouble,

and being away from the experience of freedom lies there in that little movement of mind. And in all these ways, it's interesting to notice that this is a movement of mind we're talking about. Clinging is something that happens in the mind. And it seems like not clinging brings freedom. And so what I hear in that is that the freedom lies, the absence of freedom or the freedom lies into some mental activity.

That is amazing to think of. Like it's something that happens inside of me. It's not something outside. If it's something outside, I'm in deep trouble. because it's the outside world that will, you know, define if I'll be free or not. And in these teachings, it says, no, it's an internal event, and there's something to do about it. And in that particular aspect here, it's that equating something to be. So something is happening, and I make it mine.

I make it me. I make it in me. I view it as inside of me, or I'm inside it. And in any of these views, if we made them too solid, not relative, relatively mine, if we made them absolute, we're going to suffer. So, for example, the body, let's just take this, the body. So the body, if I make mine, me, it's me,

right away there's going to be, I think, fear of death. You know, because if this is my body, what's going to happen to it at the time of death? And in spiritual practice or meditative practice or kind of the inquiry we're doing here, we're actually questioning this. And I feel that we're in a way we're just bringing back a little sanity here. It's not that far out. It's not esoteric. It's just a simple recognition that this body is made of physical element.

you know, it's made of the stars, you know, it's made of, you know, if we put it in an archaic way, I would say, it's made of water, fire, earth, and air, you know. And so it's mine, yes, it's mine, but it's not absolutely mine or me, you know, it's relatively mine. Yes, I want to decide who touches this body, it's mine, you know, in this way. but of course it came to be, it was offered by nature, made by nature, and will be taken back by nature. And in this way of reflecting,

I'm making peace with the world. Oh, yeah, I'm not mistaken, you know. Yeah, of course it came to be. Of course it's subject to disease, you know. There will be a disease. Let's not, you know, kind of be in denial here.

It will age. You know, the different senses will, you know, lose their sharpness, you know, in some ways. It doesn't have to be a problem. But it's not mine. This face is not exactly mine, you know. It will change. It is actually day by day. You know, there's something natural about this body. It will naturally change. And so releasing some of the holding here, some of the equating or appropriating, you know. I have a little cabin in the woods, where I go often, it's by a lake, and it's a little piece of land just a few hundred feet this way and that way, you know, by the lake. It's my cabin, it's my land, and it's not, you know.

You know, a tree can fall on my little cabin, you know, it can burn. At some point, something might happen that I'm, you know, I'll have to sell it or, you know, things can happen. And so it's not absolutely mine. It's relatively mine. I think what you're pointing to here is crucial for people who struggle with this brain-breaking Buddhist notion that the self is an illusion. A lot of people, as I often say, like come to Buddhism for stress release and then just wash up on the rocky shores of non-self, as it's often called. And I think what's for me, at least, what's crucial, the unlock that allows me to understand this very counterintuitive notion that the self is an illusion, you know, because we live in this world where we build everything around ourselves, you know, like my body, my Instagram page, my career, et cetera, et cetera. The crucial unlock is understanding that it's a paradox. Two things are true at the same time.

your house by that lake is yours legally. But on a deeper level, it's all just a manifestation of nature. And if you took a high-powered microscope to the house, you would see that it's not as solid as it seems. It's actually mostly subatomic particles spinning through empty air. And that is, I think, what the Buddha is talking about. How am I doing? Yes. so true, so right, exactly, the paradox, the kind of two-level, you could think conventional

reality and ultimate reality. Like, it's not ultimately mine. So we're just bringing it a little nuance in, you know, we're like, hey, honey pie, be careful, because if you totally buy into totally, you're going to suffer. So it's good to bring a little wisdom here. It's not totally yours, you know. And this with the body and physical things, and also with the rest. So I teach meditation. I see this all the time, this gradual letting go. It's not even, to me, it's like a regular thing that I see all the time. And you know, what happens is and see if you recognize this, but we start meditating. We go to a first class meditation class or something like this. And it seems like everything is referring back to me.

It's my breath, my body, my posture, my mind is agitated and why is my mind like this? and everything, we take everything to be mine. And it doesn't take so much time, a few months of practice. And people report this all the time. They probably don't even notice so much, you know, but I notice because the way they reported, they'll say, like, you know,

oh, I don't make a story so much out of it that the fact that my mind doesn't stay on the object, like the breath, for example. I used to make it a really personal thing, you know. But now I don't, it's natural that it does that, Pascal. I won't be able to stay on the breath for an hour and a half. You know, it's not possible. You know, so do you see it's a little bit less personal.

It doesn't refer back. It becomes a wider view. It's another vista. I love this. So it's not like, oh, my mind, my thoughts. It's like, oh, there's a lot of thoughts in here. There's a lot of emotional life happening in this system, you know? And, you know, yeah, at the beginning, I think my breath,

and then later I think, oh, the breath is a little, you know, congested or, contracted, you know, or the breath is, the breathing is happening easily today, you know. It's not so much referring to me. And in an experiential way, also, people will be sitting, you know, and at the beginning you might feel my hands, my hands are resting on my lap, you know, and at some point, very naturally, you're like, ah, it's just a field of tingling, you know. So it's just a slight different view. It's not suddenly the hand disappeared, you know, but it's experienced slightly differently,

not as the concept of my hand, the idea of my hand, but a little field of heat or a little field of tingling, you know. And it's so beautiful when this, there's some release around emotion, because my fear and my agitation and my aversion and my

hatred and my impatience and oh, Pascal, there's a lot of impatience. There's a lot of, you know, a lot of anger running through the system right now, that opening, that not being so fused and identified, it's so, it really has a taste of freedom. And it's not like it's not happening. So it's not the extreme of denial. It's not the extreme of totally identified. It's the middle path of recognizing what is there. Oh, you know, there's a body. It's important to take

care of the body, to love the body. There's a mind, it's important to take care of it. And the same with thoughts, you know, at the beginning, I'm thinking about this. And at some point, it has a lot of things to say in there. It keeps commenting all the time while I'm meditating. You know, it's not so personal anymore. And, you know, joy appears and more ease appears, you know, and less guilt, less shame, less anxiety, this selfing, you know, this activity of owner-owning, appropriating leads to all these things. Guilt, arrogance, shame, greed, hatred. This is, you know, it leads to obsession.

That's a direct path to obsession. And I'm so happy these teachings are there and these invitation to go question this because, yeah, we're in the world now of like self-promotion, self-made, I'm self-made. You know, everything I can say like, this is all me saying this. Yeah, it's all me, Pascal, saying this. But thank you, Joseph. Thank you, Dan's podcast. Thank you.

You know, like, I'm totally related to all the people who have taught me. Like, I'm not separate in this way. Yeah, so interconnection, less separation in that view, you know, that we can, you know, discover for ourselves. When Marissa, who's producing this episode, reached out to you to ask you to come on the show and to talk to you about being teacher of the month on the 10% app, she asked you, like, what's up in your practice?

Like, what are you thinking about the most in your practice? Where are you focused? And you mentioned this non-self concept as being the thing that was really like on your mind. How does it play out in your life where the rubber hits the road? Practice. So meditation for me is the field of research. It's a very particular field in a way it's protected environment, you know, where I can actually go more minute and see what's happening in the mind and the body

and see how this clinging happens, how this definition of self happens. So that's in the field of practice. And I'll give you an example just to highlight this before we go to the rubber that hits the road. I heard your question. But the other day, I think it's a good example of this. Maybe, we'll see. I was teaching in a retreat, you know, and it was the lunchtime break, and I'm lying on the bed. And I'm resting my hands on the, so I'm laying down on the bed, and my hands are resting like this.

I'm just, you know, waiting to go back to teach more or sit with people. And I'm sitting there and I was thinking like, oh, where is this, you know, this identification thing happening? Like, where's the eye? How is the eye happening if it's happening? And then I was like, well, I'm lying down. No, actually the body is lying down. This is the body that's lying down. But these are my hands.

These are my hands, you know. And then I just paid attention a little more. and I was like, no, there's these sensations there, you know, they're not mine exactly, you know. And then I was like, yeah, but this is me, this is my face, you know. And then I stayed there, just attentive to that. I was like, oh, no, there's particular sensations that I felt, you know, like lips sensations and sensations. And I tend to make this mind, you know, to, but these are just sensations of heat or, you know, and voila. And then I was like, but I'm aware of this.

I'm aware of this. And then I just relaxed and stayed there like, and then I was like, no, this is known. There's a knowing happening. There's a knowing of hands, knowing of breath. This doesn't have to be me, but it still is happening, you know. So this is the field of, you know, exploration, you know, questioning, going underneath the, you know, the preconceived ideas. Like, I think this is my hands. Let's see, what's that?

Oh, it's just tingling that is happening. And so this is the field of research. And then I go back to my life. And then I don't know, you know, somebody's talking and I can't interrupt them. Because of whatever the situation is, you know, I have to let them talk. And I don't agree. You know, and it's good that I can't stop them because I notice what's happening, you know. And I'm like, you know, I go from their annoying with their view, you know, this is wrong.

is not the way, you know, I want to correct this. This is not true, you know. I want to, like, they're wrong to, oh my God, I'm very agitated here. I'm very agitated. And if I stay with this, I'm like, oh, there's a lot of agitation here. There's a lot of agitation. And then something relaxes in that. And then they can be, care can arise. That's what I see, you know, either joy, like, it's not that important, you know, it's like I don't have to be so identified. They're saying this to me and, you know, there's just this happening and there's relaxation, some space can open up, maybe joy or compassion, like, oh, it's a difficult situation, you know. And what I see is the mind can become more creative. It can be more creative and appropriate. Instead of barging in, you know,

or like, it'll be more, it'll remember, it'll remember the values, it will remember respect, it will remember that things are, that I don't have control, you know, that I cannot control the other's view, the other's words, you know, but I can engage, that's a possibility, you know, that there might be the possibility of contribution or participating, but not control, you know. And so by just releasing some of the self-identification and just recognizing what is happening, so it's not like it changes everything. There's still, you know, the person is still saying what they're saying. but I'm not like totally fused with this.

This is happening to me, about me, referring to me. You know, it's a different vista again. It's a different view. Events are not about me, for me, referring to me. It's a whole different view. It's, oh, there's a conflict happening or there's something happening that is delicate. You know, somebody's saying something that is not agreed upon, you know? So it's a delicate situation.

So that's the best I can do with this just now. I want to click on the practical elements of what you were saying there, specifically to build on the investigation you described of lying in bed and just kind of looking for the self and in the many ways it might instantiate in your mind. And then as soon as you look, you see, well, I can't call that self. That I think would make a great meditation. maybe you'll it will get you to guide one in that spirit for us on the app but another practical way to explore this idea of non-self until like get it into your molecules in a in a deeper way and this is this is really non-esoteric is just to get better at generosity that you can you know if the buddha talks about letting go well generosity is that

Yeah, that's so right. And you know what I think immediately about? Because I've been watching the Artemis, the Orient, the astronauts, you know, in April that were flying in the sky around the moon and stuff. And, you know, to me it was a kind of a whole teaching on not self in this way, you know, because, you know, they kept talking about with, how is it called, the overview effect? That's an amazing thing. You know, and there were all kind of reporting on this in different ways, the four astronauts. And like seeing, I think it was Christina, one of the astronauts called Christina, she was saying like the kind of the sense of belonging, you know, like, oh, this is like a little raft floating in space, you know, this is a, and we're the crew, we belong to each other, you know, like we're, so that's the cutting of the separation, like we belong to each other. And when they landed at some point when I think the commander or the read, I think his name is, was saying, like, now we belong to each other. I can't remember what was the exact sentence, but we're linked together now forever, you know.

There was this understanding. And what happens is, if you watch, you know, as they were going around, there was a lot of joy, there was a lot of love being expressed, and a lot of taking care of everyone. You know, suddenly it was not me going around the moon and I did it. It was, we're doing it for us, you know, where we need each other. And there was less self and more generosity. There was more love. There was more joy.

There was more gratitude. It was releasing all this, the knowing that we belong to each other, that we have, we cannot be there just for ourselves here. You know, there's a common objective, Christida was saying, of surviving, you know, and we're a little capsule and this other guy, also this other, great astronaut Victor, Clover, I think Clover, was saying, we're a capsule, but you're also a capsule on Earth, you know, you belong to each other. So generosity can lead to less selfing, and less selfing will lead to more generosity.

They kind of play together in gratitude and joy and love. And so they're kind of expressions of each other. If there's less self, you know, there'll be more generosity. And if there is more generosity, it's a really good practical way to let go of, you know, self-referencing. You know, what about me? Will I have enough? Well, opening up, you know, to the other, to the other's point of view, need, etc. Yeah, I think it's a beautiful way to explore that generosity.

Interesting linguistically, in English we talk about self-lessness. as generosity. In Buddhism, we talk about selflessness as a reference to the fundamental illusion of the self, but in the end, they're both pointing to the same thing. I do want to say in closing, it's just always such a pleasure to talk to you.

You do such a great job explaining the Dharma. Thank you for, yeah, thanks for making time. Thank you so much. Really a pleasure to be having this exchange with you and knowing that people will consider some of this stuff and it might be helpful. And if people want to get it. get more from you.

Where can they find you? Yeah, so there's a website, a website, yeah, called pascaloeclare.org. And I think that's a good hub to find out opportunities for practice, you know, and things like this. And, yeah, I think I would invite people to go visit there. Okay, we'll put a link to that in the show notes if anybody wants to dig in a little deeper. But in the meantime, Pascal, you're the best. Thank you, you too for that. Thank you so much.

I want to thank everybody who works so hard to make this show. 10% Happier is produced by Tara Anderson and Eleanor Vassili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our managing producer. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer, DJ Kashmir, is our executive producer, and Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme. Also, one quick ask before I let you go. Head on over, please, to Dan Harris.com to sign up for my weekly newsletter.

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