Joseph Goldstein on How to Train Your Runaway Brain

Key Takeaway

Getting lost in thought and starting over isn't a problem—it IS meditation. When your mind wanders during meditation, the moment you notice is critical. Instead of self-judgment, simply say 'just begin again' with gentleness. This coming back, again and again, is how you actually train your mind. Like training a puppy to sit, eventually it learns. You're not failing at meditation; you're doing it correctly.

Episode Overview

Dan Harris interviews meditation teacher Joseph Goldstein about key phrases and mental hacks for meditation practice. They explore foundational concepts like 'just begin again,' relaxed alertness, detecting rushing, and recognizing when you're 'more or less mindful.' The conversation emphasizes approaching meditation with humor and gentleness rather than self-criticism.

Full Transcript

Transcript of Joseph Goldstein on How to Train Your Runaway Brain from 10% Happier. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hello everybody. Happy New Year. Welcome to 2026. to 2026. to 2026. We've got a fantastic pair of episodes to kick off this new year. both of them featuring my guy Joseph Goldstein. So, let's get right to it. Uh, you may have noticed uh that your mind is often out of control. It's populated by racing thoughts, habitual neurosis, ancient grudges. I could go on. So, what can be done about this? Today, as mentioned, I'm going to talk to one of my favorite people, also one of the most prominent meditation teachers in the West, Joseph Goldstein, about how ridiculous our minds are.

And by the way, that's a word he uses a lot to describe the mind. Ridiculous. So, we're going to talk about how ridiculous the mind is, and we're going to talk about some very compelling ways to train these unruly minds. Let me give you a little bit of context for what we're going to do here. I uh managed to convince Joseph to co-author a book with me. This book will not be out for several years, but it's going to be a compilation of the phrases that Joseph uses while he's teaching meditation and Buddhism.

These are pathy, catchy phrases that are, as Joseph says, kind of like hacks for working with your mind. I've been studying with Joseph for more than 15 years, and I've made a list of, I think, close to a hundred of these phrases, each of which has been incredibly helpful for me in my own life and in my own practice. Some of these phrases are designed to help you with meditation. Some of them are just to help pull your head out of your ass when you're stuck in useless anxiety or you're in the grips of an unwise desire, etc., et, etc.

So, I've been conducting a series of interviews with Joseph about these phrases, these Buddhist earworms, and these interviews will form uh the spine of the aforementioned book project. And as I record these interviews, I'm going to release them here on the podcast. So, this is the first one I'm releasing. There's another one coming out this coming Sunday, January 4th. And then many more will start dribbling out over the next year or so. Just to give you a little taste, here are some of the phrases we'll be covering in today's episode.

Just begin again. Sit and know you're sitting. Relaxed, not casual. More or less mindful. The thieves of meditation. Mara, I see you. The mind has no pride. And the mind is the forerunner of all things. These might not make any sense right now, but you will hear Joseph explain each of the phrases where they came from and how to use them in your life. Speaking of Joseph, uh he will be leading our free 7-day New Year's meditation challenge, which will be running from, uh January 5th through the 11th.

You can sign up by downloading my new app, 10% with Dan Harris. You can download it at danharris.com or wherever you get your apps. This challenge is incredible. In it, Joseph gives a kind of master class, an on-ramp to Buddhist meditation. And it's good for beginners and for experienced meditators. I was in the room with Joseph meditating along with him as he recorded the sessions. And I got a ton out of it myself. So go to danh harris.com, download the app. There's a free 30-day trial.

So if you sign up now, that free trial will cover the challenge. Okay, we'll get started with Joseph Goldstein right after this. The best B2B marketing often gets wasted on the wrong people. I can't tell you how often I'm scrolling and I get served ads for stuff I have no interest in. So, when you want to reach the right professionals, use LinkedIn ads. LinkedIn has grown to a network of over a billion professionals, including 130 million decision makers. And that's where it stands apart from other ad buys.

You can target your buyers by job title, industry, company role, seniority, skills, company revenue. So, you can stop wasting budget on the wrong audience. It's why LinkedIn Ads generates the highest B2B return on ad spend of all major ad networks. Seriously, all of them. Spend $250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn ads and get a $250 credit for the next one. Just go to linkedin.com/happier. That's linkedin.com/happier. Terms and conditions apply. I think as an overarching question, why have phrases become such an important part of your teaching?

So mostly these phrases have come up when I've been on retreat myself in doing my practice and somehow it just comes as a I [snorts] don't know if this is the right expression exactly a little hack that gets me unhooked from whatever I might be dealing with in the moment. And just over these many years, there've been a lot of really helpful phrases that come to mind that have a very impactful [snorts] influence on my practice in terms of unhooking from someplace where I've been caught.

And it's been really interesting because they're very intuitive. They just come by themselves. Oh yeah, that just gets it. Or I might read something in some of the text and there might be a phrase that just really seems to apply to the practice in a way that I hadn't thought of before. So that could be another source of them. But they're always practice related in ways that I found helpful. helpful. helpful. And [snorts] helpful specifically how that it it the phrase will surface in your mind at the moment when you need it.

it. it. Yes. So I'll give you an example and we may get into a discussion of this one later. So this goes back quite a few years but it was a phase in my practice where I was dealing [snorts] just with a lot of sensual desire and it was just coming up a lot and a lot you know and I [snorts] used all the familiar ways of relating. So I would be mindful of it. I would note it. I would realize this is not helpful. But nothing was unhooking because they were very pleasurable.

very pleasurable. very pleasurable. At least I thought they were pleasurable on a certain level. And so one of the phrases that came to my mind after going through these cycles endless number of times, just the little phrase dead end came to mind because I realized all of these fantasies, they were just dead ends. They weren't going any place. So I'd go down this road, come to a dead end, and then I have to come back and just start again. So I started using the dead end up front.

So as soon as the desire started, the fantasy, oh dead end, and it just helped me not have to go down the whole road. [snorts] So it's things like that. ways of seeing myself caught in a particular way and then something comes which helps free the mind and your experience as a teacher is that these phrases also work for your students students students for some I put it out because they've been helpful for me and then I think they have generally been helpful but people will use them or not depending on just where their own practice is and whether they happen to be useful but I think They're general enough [snorts] in terms of dealing with common problems that arise, that arise, that arise, but I think generally they have been helpful.

helpful. helpful. And I'll speak for myself, they've been incredibly helpful for me. And I notice that they really do spontaneously spontaneously spontaneously arise in my mind at moments when I need them. them. them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You've described it as like an inner dharma coach at times. That's what it feels like. And what I particularly like about them is the fact that they come intuitively. So I'm not sitting there trying to think of, oh, I wonder what would be helpful here. It just they just come into my mind.

I like the intuitive creative aspect of it. It just appears, oh yeah, that's that's right on. It really gets to the point. So it's not like you're in a room with a whiteboard trying to craft the perfect phrase. Correct. phrase. Correct. phrase. Correct. It just arises naturally. Correct. And to you that kind of gives it some freshness. freshness. freshness. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it actually kind of speaks to its power because it's not contrived. Correct. Correct. Correct. Yeah. I mean, I I just to reemphasize how useful the phrases have been for me.

I was able to come up with a list of about a hundred of them from memory. I know. I think that can be a little tricky in that we don't want to bombard people with too many moves you can make in meditation because it can get confusing. But I've been hanging around with you for a long time, so I've just accumulated that the lararseny of taking your stuff and using it in my own practice. practice. practice. Yeah. And fortunately, you have a better memory than I do, so you remember more of them than I remember.

I'm glad you have the list here. We we don't have cameras for this, but yes, Joseph is motioning toward a list that I have in front of me that I'm going to use during the course of this set of interviews. Okay. So, the first set of phrases we're going to talk about are specifically meditation phrases. And I think the granddaddy of them all is just begin again. I'm not sure whether that is the granddaddy of them all, but it's definitely a frequently used one. And it's really helpful because for almost everybody, even experienced practitioners, but particularly for people just starting their practice.

their practice. their practice. It's almost inevitable that people experience what we call the wandering mind. wandering mind. wandering mind. We've given the mind an object of attention. Simple could be the breath. What could be easier? Just stay with the breath. Be aware of the inb breath, the outreath. outreath. outreath. But what we find is generally that often within a very short period of time the mind hops on these trains of association and just takes us on a journey and then at some point we hop off.

hop off. hop off. And in that moment of hopping off which really means becoming aware that we've been thinking that we've been lost. That's a critical moment. And often people people people overlook it overlook it overlook it because there could be a tendency for that moment to express some self- judgment. Oh, lost again. And so then we think [snorts] think [snorts] think [snorts] we can't really do this. A lot of doubt comes into the mind. Forgetting that no, this is going to happen. This is just a natural part of the process.

And a much more gentle and useful approach would be to realize, oh, lost, just begin again with a real gentleness in the mind. And it's that coming back again and again and again each time we're lost which actually begins to train the mind. So it's a it's just a really simple reminder that both it's natural and we can be gentle with our own minds in the face of the wandering mind with that very soft reminder just begin again. So in a way I I see that as being very inviting.

You said that when you wake up from distraction and begin again, that's how you train the mind. Yes, it is the coming back with the intention. Okay, I'm going to just stay steady on the breath now. It's kind of like training a puppy. You want to train the puppy to sit. Okay, little puppy. Okay, kind of, you know, push your drum down. Sit. And of course, within five seconds, it's up and running around again. But you just sit up and running around. Sit. At a certain point, depending how smart the puppy is, it'll get the idea.

Oh, the point is to stay seated, you know, or in the meditation, the point is to stay steady on the object. In this case, it might be the breath. So it's the coming back is the training of the mind and reminding the mind the mind the mind okay the purpose of this stays steady but I think for many people especially at the beginning stages although I think this kind of um self-criticism can can linger in my experience for for years you start feeling like you're just a really dumb puppy because you you keep having to start over and over again.

So what do you say to folks who have that concern? concern? concern? It's really simple. We're all dumb probably in this context. There are some people who for whatever reason have a natural ability ability ability to be concentrated and they just settle in and their mind stays steady on whatever they're attending to. But that's pretty unusual for most people. It's a training process and for most of us it's like that puppy that just keeps getting up and running around that is more typical and I think just knowing it it's like normalizing it rather than thinking oh it's just me and I can't do this.

Uh this is the process for almost everyone. When I first started meditation, I had zero concentration and I had studied philosophy college. So my mind loved to think about things. Went to India, began my practice. I would just sit and think for an hour and enjoy it. You know, I was entertaining myself and the hour went quickly but I wasn't getting any place. So I know from my own experience that if I could make some progress in steadying my mind, anybody can [snorts] and that it is a training and to know that is really helpful because sometimes people have the idea, oh I'm just not suited for this or I can't do this.

forgetting that it's like learning any other skill. You know, if you want to learn a musical instrument, you have to practice the scales or practice the basics again and again. And at first it doesn't sound right, but we keep practicing and we get better at it. It's really the same thing. I don't know how often you speak to like completely completely completely naive audiences, audiences where they've never really done much meditation or they've tried it once or twice in the middle of the meditation app craze or whatever.

I do that a lot. I've spent a lot of time traveling around the country and the world talking to people who are really beginners and I find myself saying the same thing over and over again, but it feels good every time I say it, which is and I I'm curious to hear whether you agree with this. The thing that is happening in your meditation that is leading you to tell yourself that you're a bad meditator is actually proof that you're doing it correctly. Getting lost and starting again is meditation.

It is not an obstacle to overcome on route to proper meditation. meditation. meditation. Yeah, I think that's a a helpful way of framing it which is another way of normalizing it. And it would be interesting just as you go around whether at different times you just find different ways or different expressions or different reminders [snorts] to help people realize yeah this is natural this is the training [snorts] and keep going. Yes. Yes. Yes. Meaning there would be better ways to say it. say it. say it.

No No No perhaps. No, no, just just to mix it up a little bit. Yes. I just notice the lights go on for people because I've given, you know, I've done [snorts] hundreds of these talks and when I point out, yeah, this getting distracted and starting over isn't a problem. That's meditation. People are like, "Oh, I can do this. I have been doing this." Okay, maybe this is the best way. Run with it. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Well, you never know. Um, okay.

So, let's let's move on to another phrase. And this this one you say this a lot. Sit and know you're sitting. What does that mean? that mean? that mean? I first heard this from my first meditation teacher ninja in India and he would say this just sit and know you're sitting. Actually, he had another part to the expression sit and know you're sitting. you're sitting. you're sitting. and the whole of the dharma will be revealed. revealed. revealed. So it struck me and what I liked about it was it was it was first it's a very simple instruction to begin with.

So it's not complicated. It's just sit and know you're sitting. And I think people can relate to that and and and actually begin to practice that simplicity quite easily. Just sit and know you're sitting. Nothing else to do. What makes it powerful is that when we sit and know we're sitting. So it just provides like a frame for whatever else may be arising within that frame. So we sit and now we're sitting and sitting and sitting and quite automatically quite automatically quite automatically we may become aware of the body breathing.

breathing. breathing. No, we're just sitting. We're sitting know sit and we know that we're sitting but part of that will be the body breathing breathing breathing and so quite naturally we become aware of that and then sit and know we're sitting and sounds occur. So we quite naturally become aware that we're hearing. So this phrase is just a very very very open easeful way of settling into this whole whole whole we could say practice or training in being aware and so we just start with something completely simple where there's nothing we have to do.

It's just we're sitting you know it's completely simple. So sit know you're sitting and then maybe a tagline which I have not used but it's just coming to my mind now sit and know you're sitting and see what happens [clears throat] you so my hope is that it suggests a very relaxed yet alert yet alert quality of mind and that combination of relaxed and alert is really the balance that we're aiming for in the meditation. Say more about that. Why is relaxed alertness so important? Because each of those terms is an antidote antidote antidote to a potential difficulty or challenge in meditation.

relaxed is the antidote to overeing. Even with something as simple as feeling the breath, very often for people and perhaps especially more in the beginning, there can be a tendency in our effort to be alert. alert. alert. efforting a little too much and manipulating the breath even in some subtle way pulling the next breath in rather than just letting it come in its own rhythm. So the relaxation is an as I say an antidote for the overefering or over striving. over striving. over striving. Alert is the antidote for spacing out because it could be easy to settle in to a relaxed mode and become so relaxed that we've lost the edge of mindfulness of really being connected closely to what's happening.

But when these two come together, when we're both relaxed and alert, the mind just finds that effortless balance effortless balance effortless balance where we can be aware of what's happening happening happening without overeing without overeing without overeing and without spacing out. But this is a delicate equipoise. I mean this is this is this balance between relaxed and alert in my experience which is limited. is limited. is limited. You kind of have to overshoot and undersshoot a bunch before you actually get to that nice balance. And of course like everything else that equoise is impermanent.

impermanent. impermanent. Yes. Although I've never done this. It's something I've read about a highwire a highwire a highwire acrobat in maintaining the balance. Not that they find the balance and then just walk on the high wire. They're continually They're continually They're continually adjusting the balance. Uh and I have this image in my mind of them sometimes carrying a a pole or something to help you know if they feel the body going a little to one side, they balance it by going to the other side. So that's a natural part of the process.

The idea is not that we find the right balance and then we have it. It's a continual process of adjustment. One suggestion for people as they're exploring this exploring this exploring this is to begin to pay attention to the quality of the balance. So that awareness awareness awareness starts to be built in to the very practice of just being with the breath for example. So we're with it but we're also attending oh is it getting too tight? Is it getting too loose? And one might even ask that question every once in a while intermittently just as a reminder.

Oh that would be worth checking on. Coming up, we'll dig into the difference between relaxed and casual. And we'll talk about being aware enough to notice when you're rushing, even if you're moving slowly. Is there a phrase you have ever used or liked involving the words relaxed and alert? alert? alert? This is related. I'm trying to think of whether I'm remembering the whole phrase or this is just part of it. Well, this is the part that I remember and maybe it's the whole phrase. But often I'll remind people in their practice of mindfulness, because casual and this is related to another phrase which I use a lot of describing a certain mind state as more or less mindful.

And this is very interesting and really worth keeping an eye out for because it's so easy to easy to easy to be moving about kind of mindful. You know, we're not totally spaced out, but we're not feeling the experience closely. And so that's what I call being casual or more or less mindful. And it's very easy. I want to go for a long time in that state. But in that state, it's very easy then for there to be a lot of background noise in the mind because we're not really closely connected to the moment's experience.

So there's room. we don't have that intimate connection with what's happening. So then there's room for a lot of other mental activity to be happening. [snorts] [snorts] [snorts] So this is really to become aware of when we're in this casual more or less mindful state is a really helpful check I think on the quality of our attention. How does one become aware? Because it sounds like you could drift along for a while and more or less mindful. There are a few a few signals [snorts] that might that might that might remind us that we're in that state.

One is if at a certain point you realize yeah I've been present but also at a certain point noticing oh that the mind has been drifting off when a lot of background thoughts and if we just become aware that's happening happening happening that's an indication. Sometimes those background thoughts can lead the mind to become reactive about something. So So So if one pays attention to whether there's some level of emotional reactivity to something, that's an indication that oh, the mind has just gotten lost in some story that's creating this reactivity.

And because the reactivity is usually quite noticeable, quite noticeable, quite noticeable, even more than just the kind of general general general low-level thoughts that may be going on. Another useful Another useful Another useful re this is a really useful signal especially as we're moving about and that is to pay attention to even subtle feelings of rushing because just as we're engaged in our ordinary daily activities I can notice in myself it's so easy to fall into a slightly rushing mode. And it doesn't have to be that we're moving super quickly or doing something super fast.

It could be a really subtle just leaning into the next moment. I had an interesting experience of how subtle rushing, the feeling of rushing can be. I was on a retreat at IMS at our center center center at that time. I was doing very slow walking meditation, walking meditation, walking meditation, really slow, being aware just of the lifting of the foot and the moving forward and the placing. So, I'm doing this walking meditation [clears throat] back and forth and then the lunch bell rings [snorts] and I saw myself.

I was walking just as slowly, but I could feel energetically the inner energetics. energetics. energetics. I could feel myself leaning into the lunch line, lunch line, lunch line, you know, in anticipation. And it was it was so subtle because from the outside I don't think anybody could have seen but I could really feel it. And what that means what rushing means is that we're ahead of ourselves. As a reference I often make is to a line from a short story by James Joyce. I think it's in the Dubliners where he said Mr.

Duffy lives a short distance from his body. I love that. Yes, but we do that a lot just in the course of our daily lives and the various things we're doing. So that's that feeling of rushing even on a very subtle level is an indication that okay, we're more or less mindful. We're kind of aware of what we're doing but not in that really relaxed and balanced way. So a key point here is that rushing has nothing to do with speed. People think, oh, it means you're moving quickly.

moving quickly. moving quickly. No, rushing has to do with whether one is balanced and really back in the present, really grounded in the present at whatever speed. Just as an example of this, the my first teacher man, he was a very speedy guy. He moved quickly. I never saw him rush. He was so back in his body even as he was moving quickly. And in the example I gave, even when I was moving slowly, it I could feel that subtle sense of rush. So it's important to understand it has nothing to do with speed.

speed. speed. So just to reset for the listener, we're really spanning all the way from formal meditation seated to walking meditation to just walking around in your life. Yes. Yes. Yes. And this tributary of the conversation started because I asked, okay, if relaxed and alert is what we want to be aiming for, aiming for, aiming for, how do we know if we're more or less mindful and drifting? And you said one feedback that you can keep your eye out for is rushing. Yes. Yes. Yes. And this rushing is a feedback that we can look for in formal meditation but also throughout our lives.

But I you know one might think back to formal meditation. How could you rush if you're just sitting watching your breath? But actually, if you're paying attention, you can notice, and you use this verbiage a lot, a kind of toppling forward energy into the next breath. Even Even Even exactly. You're supposed to say, "These are the words I love to hear." Anybody who's ever listened to our many interviews, I'm always looking for the gold star. gold star. gold star. It's a lot of dopamine is released when it happens.

it happens. it happens. No, that's exactly it. And so this is another story which just illustrates that point. So one time I was just sitting and just feeling my breath. It's completely normal, natural, normal, natural, normal, natural, nothing special going on. Just feeling the breath. the breath. the breath. [snorts] And then a phrase popped into the mind which is used by one of the Burmese teachers. His name is Utaneir. He would often suggest that people ask from time to time in their meditation what's the attitude in the mind right now.

So that's just a phrase that he uses a lot which I have begun to use. So I was just sitting feeling the breath and then that thought came to mind. Oh what's the attitude attitude attitude and the point of the question is not even really to find an answer. Simply by asking the question as soon as I did that oh what's the attitude I could feel my mind settling back from the leaning forward that you were just mentioning. mentioning. mentioning. And it was a leaning forward I was not even aware was there until I asked the question.

So it can be very subtle. It's just we're with the inb breath in order to feel the outreath. We're always leaning into the next moment. So this is a very common experience that people have in practice. It can be quite subtle. So, it's just something to be increasingly aware of and to use prompts like what's the attitude or [snorts] [snorts] [snorts] relaxed and alert or there could be many many prompts that remind us of settle back. I just want to say again that the notion of rushing as a sort of feedback as a mindfulness bell plus what's the attitude in the mind which I personally find very powerful can be used again in formal meditation but throughout your life yes yes yes I find that asking and I've made this joke before so I'm just going to make it again but I'm going to own that I'm repeating myself that when you ask the question what's the attitude in the mind did you ever see there There are some very famous segments on ABC News where my former colleague Chris Cuomo went into a hotel room with a black light and shined this black light on the sheets and all the surfaces and it was disgusting.

That's what happens for me when I ask what's the attitude in the mind. I I I see, oh yeah, there's been this background static of wanting or aversion or just tuning out that I don't have to get tangled up in, but once I see it, I can let it go. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. This is something you may already be doing in that example, [snorts] but when you see you see you see through the black light all the stuff that's there, what the attitude of the mind is in seeing it.

Yes. Yes. Yes. And so is it that's really disgusting or oh this just proves I can't do it or is the attitude oh I'm so glad to be seeing this. this. this. So how we frame our response to what we see is really important and especially and this took me some years of practice to let go of the self judgment that would arise whenever I saw something that was unhelpful or unskillful or unh wholesome. There would be an immediate self- judgment in that until a certain point where it all switched.

Oh, no. I'm glad to see you because I'd rather see you than not see you. And so, it's really honoring honoring honoring the wisdom of the seeing. [snorts] [snorts] [snorts] That kind of I think brings us to another phrase which is Mara I see you. So mara of course in within the Buddhist framework is the embodiment of ignorance and delusion and often represented as a figure that would come to try to snare the Buddha or the other practitioners but it's really the representation of some form of delusion in the mind and that phrase is which is often found in the Buddhist discourses where Mar is attempting to to to ins snare the Buddha or some monk or even lay person and when they see what's going on the phrase will be mara I see you and then mara just vanishes I found the same thing in many different situations situations situations where some where some where some unh wholesome pattern of mind in Buddhist terminology they call the defilements defilements defilements when we see one of those arise in the mind mind mind and for a while we may get caught in them because they're generally very seductive seductive seductive but then in the moment of recognizing what's going on to say Mara I see you really effects really effects the letting go of being identified with whatever it is and then we just say oh yeah this is just another passing thought.

So it's very freeing to do that. So I've sometimes altered that phrase a little bit of variation on it. So there's Mara, I see you. And then sometimes I call it wagging the finger at Mara. Like the wagging the finger is the the the mudra or the hand gesture of Mara. I see you. We're wagging the finger. Oh Mara, you're not going to fool me. So the sense of humor is key. Yes, absolutely. Yes, absolutely. Yes, absolutely. It's really key. Our minds will do just so many crazy things.

I'll just a little sense of humor story. I was on this retreat with Sida Upandita, Upandita, Upandita, Burmese meditation master, very classical, very orthodox, very demanding teacher and very skilled. So I was on retreat with him was actually in Australia [snorts] and because he was the kind of teacher he was everybody was just trying to be as impeccably mindful as possible and moving really slowly and [snorts] so there's a lot of stillness. We're online for lunch. I was second online online online and people are walking very slow into the dining room.

So, the person ahead of me, the first person in line, took the lid off the first pot of food that was on the table. And as he lifted the lid off, it [clears throat] slipped and fell to the floor, making this huge clattering noise in the midst of the silence. silence. silence. And the first thought in my mind, it just popped into my mind. It wasn't me. So So So how can you not have a sense of humor about that you know where you see just all the things the mind will do unbidden [snorts] [snorts] [snorts] you know and so not taking it too seriously seriously seriously is really helpful because it creates space so that then we can see and not be caught on whatever it is but with a certain lightness a lightness of heart about it all.

So, I just find a sense of humor really helpful. I don't know if what if what I'm about to say next could be fairly classified as one of your teaching phrases, but it is a word that comes up time and again both in my interviews with you for this podcast and in the hours and hours of audio I've recorded of me complaining to you while on meditation retreat. [snorts] [snorts] [snorts] The word is ridiculous. You use that word to describe the human mind [clears throat] all the time.

I was not even aware that I used it that often but it does resonate. So somebody there was a meditator who once came into a meditation interview and his great insight was the mind has no pride. It'll do anything and does do anything. But what's helpful about this realization realization realization is that it's actually liberating because when we can approach our minds with that openness and just seeing all the things it does. Yeah. And there's a lot of course we're talking about ridiculous aspects. there are also sublime aspects you know so I don't want to leave that side out but particularly with the more ridiculous things the mind does this spaciousness and the sense of humor is actually an effective way for not being caught by it so it has a liberating function to not take oneself so seriously ly with regard to what the mind is doing.

It's really helpful and just makes it a lot more easeful. And of course, very often we forget this [snorts] when the mind will be carrying on with something ridiculous and perhaps even painful and we'll be caught in it for a while until we see. But with practice, we get to see the humor of things more quickly. Yes, the mind has no pride is another key phrase in my view. I've even thought that maybe and we'll discuss this over the years before we publish this book that it might even be a good title for the book.

Do you have a thought? Do you have any theory? Why are our minds so ridiculous? Why how do we end up in this situation? So that question The response to that question could be a whole book. So, I'll just frame it in a couple of different ways. I'm not quite sure how it all fits together yet. One thing that which I've come to appreciate more and more over the years and has really helped recalibrate in a way how I frame the practice and it has to do with the idea that we have all established in ourselves certain habits certain habits certain habits of attention.

of attention. of attention. habits of the quality of our attention and it could be on for different people very different levels. Some people may have cultivated a habit of really being very attentive and that's just their habit. That's their default. In some way or other they have trained themselves [snorts] themselves [snorts] themselves [snorts] to be really carefully mindful. For most people without some formal training training training our habits of attention are not at that level. Our habit of attention is more like more or less mindful or casual where we we're attentive but not closely attentive.

So if the habit of attention is casual is casual where we're just being more or less mindful, mindful, mindful, there's a lot of space in the mind then for the habituated patterns of desire and greed or restlessness or aversion or the things that create some kind of unease in our lives. There's a lot of space when our habit of attention is not really close and careful. There's just a lot of space in the mind for those deeply conditioned tendencies to manifest. manifest. manifest. So the all the different kinds of thoughts that we have when everybody knows who's really watched their minds at all, we've all just have different habituated patterns.

Maybe there's a lot of self- judgment or a lot of fantasizing or a lot of planning. There are certain thought patterns that each of us [clears throat] really unknowingly have just habituated in our lives. So those are the patterns that are going to manifest manifest manifest in that space when we're not fully present. fully present. fully present. And that's why as the meditation gets steadier when the power of our mindfulness gets stronger where we really are one with the moment's experience. There's much less of that because our mind is fully engaged in the moment's experience.

experience. experience. But it's not to say that even for very experienced practitioners the mind becomes completely silent because there's another phenomenon which which which is very common and it's called the undercurrent of thoughts thoughts thoughts where just through the day these very light thoughts keep going through the mind and sometimes they're problematic in some way and sometimes not. Sometimes they're just ordinary thoughts, but the problem is that because they're light and quickly passing, we for the most part are unaware of them. And so for those minutes or moments that we're lost in them, the mind is really lost.

We're not aware of what's going on. and it's reconditioning those particular those particular those particular habit patterns of thought. So this is just another level of paying attention to when we're being more or less mindful. And then another gradation is we're coming even closer to the experience, but there's still this very subtle undercurrent. And then we start practicing really trying to be aware of the undercurrent. And so then we drop to an even deeper level deeper level deeper level of presence of mind with what's happening.

So there's a whole spectrum here. It's not just either or. This kind of practice I find incredibly incredibly incredibly useful and helpful, particularly as I'm going about my daily life, even more so than in the formal setting where where where we're really giving attention to all this in a very intentional way. But when we're just going through our day doing all the things we do, that's when it becomes really interesting to watch how often the mind has dropped in to the undercurrent of thought. I find it fascinating.

Coming up, Joseph and I endeavor to answer the question, why are we like this? And he finally gives me the gold star I've been chasing for as long as I've known him. You just had a bunch of things that I want to follow up on. Very interesting. The undercurrent of thought is really important. We've spent a lot of time talking about it privately, but I just want to go back to this question of like why are we like this? You know, why why do we have these minds?

If I you dropped a few breadcrumbs, I'm going to see if I can articulate them and maybe expand on them a little and then you can tell me where I run a foul or I've gotten it exactly right. See, it's a little pattern. Okay, you can tell me how great a job I did once I'm done. And this pattern actually is completely appropo to what I'm about to say, which is that a fundamental view in Buddhism or the Dharma, the teachings of the Buddha is causes and conditions, perpetual change.

Everything that's happening right now is the wave cresting on an ocean of an unfathomable gumbo of prior conditions. And so of course your mind is the product of all of your prior experiences, but also uh whatever causes and conditions happened in the minds of your forebears perhaps whatever conditioning your parents are carrying into this realm. And if you are not mindful, you're just carried along by your habit patterns. What mindfulness allows you to do, and you use this word decondition? So, am I in the right zone?

And what more needs to be said? I'm going to retire then. It's all yours. Take it away. The student has become the master. I love it. love it. love it. Yes. Yes. Yes. So, I would just add one, please. one thing to it. So the Buddha did talk about okay what's the root condition for all of this and he said the root condition is ignorance ignorance ignorance that's at the bottom of it all as long as there's ignorance in the mind and that ignorance has many manifestations right so this this is going to be a like a sheet of Buddhist teaching Because of ignorance, we're not necessarily on an experiential level just to the process of momentary change.

That impermanence of course happens on every time scale. can be macro, it can be micro. micro. micro. And in the meditation, we just begin to refine our perception of change, the changing nature of sensations, of thoughts that everything is just arising and passing very quickly. And as we focus the microscope of our minds through meditation and mindfulness, mindfulness, mindfulness, we begin to get a more and more refined perception of this flow of change. If we haven't done that, then one aspect of the ignorance is not understanding that and it's through understanding that the the very impermanent nature of things arising and passing.

It's that wisdom as opposed to ignorance which starts to decondition clinging and craving craving craving because we're seeing things are changing so quickly so quickly so quickly there's not even time to cling to it. So this is an example just one little example little example little example of how ignorance of that particular aspect aspect aspect will then condition all kinds of other thought patterns and clinging and desire and aversion because we're not seeing the impermanent nature of it all. So the ignorance is conditioning all of those patterns and it's that's just one little example of how ignorance is at the root of everything.

If we see everything with greater clarity in the in seeing the very nature of how things are happening. That's what begins to decondition a lot of the unh wholesome patterns, the unskillful patterns that arise in the mind. And you're reconditioning things like present moment awareness. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. And then And then And then compassion. compassion. compassion. Yeah. and steadiness of mind or just all the what in Buddhism are called the factors of enlightenment, the factors of awakening. I mean, the Buddha was so incredibly I'll use the word brilliant, but that it's not about an intellectual brilliance, although I think that was there too, but just a brilliance of understanding of what conditions what.

How ignorance conditions a whole run of unhelpful qualities of mind. how wisdom conditions conditions conditions a whole run of really helpful qualities of mind. He understood the mind so well and so deeply that a lot of the teachings are about unpacking the nature of our own minds to us. We tried to figure this out by ourselves. It's hard enough just following the breath three or four times in a row. And here's the Buddha who just had this profound understanding of how it's all working. working. working.

That enables us to see it with a greater degree of clarity. Oh, that's what's going on. going on. going on. So why are we like this? Because we're programmed for a kind of delusion, ignorance, blindness to what's happening right now. But in meditation, we can tune up our ability to see the machinations of the mind and that we don't have to be quote unquote like this, this, this, i.e. ridiculous, as much as we used to be. be. be. Yes, exactly, Dan. I'm really racking these up.

You are. You are. You are. Okay. So, but let's close one loop here before we end this session and go take a break. So there are a couple of phrases that are coming to mind on this very subject and I'm not sure which one we should use in the book. I'll just provide a fuse a lot of them for our discussion now. Quickly passing thoughts, the undercurrent of thoughts, the thieves of meditation, and dreaming yourself into existence all come to mind as phrases I've heard you use in this zone.

So can you unpack all of that? Yeah. So Yeah. So Yeah. So this phrase the phrase is the undercurrent of thoughts and the thieves of meditation actually comes from a Tibetan teaching that I came across and it just so completely resonated with my experience. I thought this is a perfect description. I read this after an experience I had previous to reading it. I was on a self- retreat and retreat and retreat and I was just going for a mindful walk outside. So, I wasn't doing the really slow walking meditation natural pace, but I was on retreat and really trying to be as mindful as I could.

could. could. And for whatever reason at that particular time I just started noticing these very quickly passing thoughts and they would come so frequently. I was surprised at how frequently they came. They were not dramatic. They were not particularly disturbing. particularly disturbing. particularly disturbing. They were just these quickly passing thoughts. thoughts. thoughts. But they reminded me of another experience which I think many people have people have people have of waking up in the morning. So you wake up and and then maybe you know at times you just drop back off to sleep for I don't know 5 minutes or however long a short period of time but in that short period of time we often drop back into a quick little dream state.

So we wake up and then we drop back into sleep few minutes of a dream and then maybe wake up and we're fully awake. fully awake. fully awake. I realized that when I would be lost in this undercurrent of thought or these quickly passing thoughts, passing thoughts, passing thoughts, it was just like going from the waking state where I was really alert and I knew what my experience was in the moment of being lost in a thought. We are not aware that we're thinking because we're lost in it.

And it just reminded me of that dream state. Mhm. You know, and then I had this further reflection. reflection. reflection. I realized that a lot of these thoughts, even if they weren't dramatic or even necessarily obviously problematic, many of them contain some kind of self reference. reference. reference. It could be something say like a memory I had of being at a certain place or maybe a plan or just ordinary thoughts but which constellate around the self. So when I realized that, this other phrase came to mind.

I'm just dreaming myself into existence in all of these moments when I'm lost in the undercurrent of thought. And the fact that it happens so frequently, much more than we're aware of, it's almost like this underground stream that's flowing along. well hardly aware of it. So another analogy I use to describe this whole process is is is like the experience of going to the movies and being totally engrossed in the story of what we're seeing in the drama whatever it is and unaware and unaware and unaware of the background soundtrack of music because we're so engaged in the content of the story.

And yet it's that background unnoticed soundtrack soundtrack soundtrack that is totally manipulating our emotions as we're watching the story. The music speeds up and gets tense and all of a sudden we feel tense. The music mellows out and we feel mellow. mellow. mellow. And we can become aware of this of the impact of this just by muting for a while. while. while. It's a completely different experience. Completely different. Completely different. Completely different. This undercurrent of thoughts is like the soundtrack of our lives. And every time we're being lost in it, it's like having the soundtrack there and not being aware of it.

Every time we're lost in this undercurrent of thoughts, the thieves of meditation because they've stolen, they've entered unknowingly and have stolen our mindfulness. mindfulness. mindfulness. Each of these moments are reconditioning our mind in one way or another even to the point of unknowingly reinforcing unknowingly reinforcing unknowingly reinforcing this felt sense of I and self. You know, so it's it's really powerful to begin to notice these thoughts when you're taking a shower, you're washing the dishes, or you're just going about your daily business. business. business. It's there.

It's there. It's there. And I was just I was completely fascinated fascinated fascinated when I became really aware of this process. It was another whole dimension of mindfulness and meditation that I had not really been aware of even in deep practice. So it was it was kind of a new and exciting discovery. exciting discovery. exciting discovery. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The phrase I've I mean I've cuz I've heard you give this rap before both publicly and to me when wagging your finger at me about my meditation.

the the the phrase that I'll sometimes use is especially when I'm doing walking meditation or just walking around and I feel like I'm I'm more or less mindful, but I know there are these little kind of not supercharged somewhat subterranean thoughts happening. Soundtrack. Soundtrack. Soundtrack. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then I'm here. No, that that Yeah, that's why I like that analogy because it's so immediately recognizable. recognizable. recognizable. Yes. And Yes. And Yes. And it contains just within that word our understanding of the impact of it.

Yes. Yes. Yes. So instead of oh yeah these are just light thoughts that don't really matter by highlighting them we can see that they do matter in the sense that they are reconditioning our minds one way or another another another in ways that we have not been aware of. One of the things that I find so interesting about it, as I'm noticing this, just as I'm going through my day, as I notice them, I can feel how they contribute just a different kind of moods I'm in.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah. So there might be these undercurrent of thoughts of just some project that needs to be done you know and if I'm unaware of these thoughts going through my mind or when I do become aware of them maybe there's a slight anxiety oh do I have enough time to finish it and it's all really subterranean and yet it's having a really strong impact so I find that incredibly interesting and it's motivated me to really take interest and keep an eye out for them and I love it when I see them.

Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, it's really it has juiced up the practice a lot. I just want to highlight that because that because that because a st a st a st I don't want to name any names but his initials are Dan Harris might hear that instruction and think I've just got to work harder to see all these sub I've got to grit my teeth but shot through your comments as a playfulness a curiosity and interest that is the real tool here not a bearing down down down absolutely It you hit upon a word that for me has characterized my practice over all these years and that is interest.

interest. interest. The mind is fascinating. Now the first line of the dharmapata which is this collection of Buddhist verses the first line of the first verse is mind is the forerunner of all things. That's a profound statement. It's like everything we do and we feel and everything our whole life is experienced. It's the manifestation of our minds. And mind here just in the Buddhist sense does not just mean thought or intellect. In the Buddhist sense, mind could say consciousness or awareness which really includes the whole heart mind.

So it includes all emotions and different mind states. So mind mind is in a very expansive sense when it says mind is the forerunner of all things. So given that our whole lives are the manifestation of our minds. our minds. our minds. What could be more interesting than really exploring really exploring really exploring everything it's doing? You know, both from the point of view the mind has no pride in the ridiculous things it does to the sublime things it does to the ways we get taught to the ways we can become free.

It's incredibly interesting and it's this quality of interest that for me has sustained my practice for 60 years now. It's as interesting now as it was in the beginning. Yeah. So there's a lot of joy in doing it if one and one has to learn how not to get caught by overeing or overstriving and that's that's part of the process as well taking interest in that. Oh, this is not so helpful. Maybe that's a good place to leave it. Thank you, Joseph. You're welcome. You're welcome.

You're welcome. Big thank you to Joseph. We will have another episode of Joseph. And don't forget, we've got another episode with tons of Joseph's phrases coming up this Sunday, January 4th. And then on January 5th, we begin our free 7-day New Year's meditation challenge led by Joseph. If you want to sign up, just go to danharris.com, danharris.com, danharris.com, download my new app, which is called 10% with Dan Harris. The app comes with a free 30-day trial. So, that free trial will cover the New Year's meditation challenge.

And then after that, if you want to stay with us, that would be awesome. Finally, thank you very, very much to everybody who works so hard on this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson and Eleanor Vasili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our managing producer. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Cashmir is our executive producer. and Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.