Why Trying to 'Fix Yourself' Is Making You Worse | Ayya Santacitta

Hey everybody, welcome to the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Today we are going to talk to a very wise and very funny Buddhist nun whose name is Aya Santachita. We're going to talk about what we're getting wrong about self-improvement, the upside of having your heart broken, dropping our self-limiting stories, the fact that patience is not, as she says, for old ladies, how to tolerate uncertainty, tuning into never-enoughness as a way to turn insufficiency to your advantage. As you can tell, it's a wide-ranging and really interesting and really useful conversation. Just a little bit more about Aya Santachita before we dive in. She's a Western Buddhist nun who trained in England and in Asia, primarily in the lineage of a Thai master named Ajahn Chah. She lives and teaches from the Aloka Earth Room in San Rafael, California. She's written a book called What Are You Waiting For? Aya Santachita, welcome to the show. Thank you, Dan, for inviting me. I'm so glad you said yes. I have a bunch of things I want to talk to you about, but I'm just curious, just to get us started here, how, why, when did you become a nun? I became a nun in 1993. It all began in 1988 when I met my first teacher in the forests of South Thailand. I got really increasingly more interested and then ended up becoming a novice in an international monastery north of London in the UK in 1993, where I trained for about 15 years and then came here in 2009 to the US together with a colleague nun to start a monastery for nuns here. We began in San Francisco in 2009. I'm just curious, it's a huge life decision to shave your head and put on robes and leave the quote-unquote regular world. What inspired that? I think what inspired that was, on the one hand, a real strong need for some kind of guidance or some kind of direction for my life, because I had done all of the things I really always wanted to do. I worked in avant-garde dance theatre. I studied cultural anthropology. Those were the two things I always really wanted to do in my life, but then still, I didn't feel I had arrived at a direction which I wanted to stay with, because it didn't feel very stable to me. Then when I was 28, my mother suddenly died from a horse riding accident. Then after that, I felt a very strong need to understand what this is all about. That's how I found my first teacher, through a chain of so-called coincidences, which probably weren't, but I stumbled into that monastery. It was about four hours north of the Malaysian border, and there was this teacher. He was in his mid-80s, and I immediately understood upon seeing his presence and the way how he conducted himself that he could teach me something really important. Then at one point, I started to feel a calling to become a nun and was really scared of that. Then I quickly got married, because I thought that would help me to not have to ordain. It wasn't a very good choice. It was a bit haphazard and quick. Then one and a half years later, I ended up in the monastery anyway. I didn't want to train in Thailand. I wanted to train with people from a similar culture than my own, and that took me then to England. The abbot in that monastery was actually from Washington. He was from Seattle, Archangel Sumedho, quite a well-known teacher. I learned the trade in his monastery and then left later on, because there was not the opportunity for women to have full ordination. We were perpetual novices at that monastery, and I didn't really like that after a certain time. Now I'm a fully ordained Buddhist nun, what's called a bhikkhuni in the Pali language. David Well, I'm glad you're fully ordained. I have a lot of negative feelings about the lineages that do not fully ordain women. I want to go back and also just note that I'm sorry to hear about what happened with your mother and sorry about the divorce. It sounds like there was a lot of stuff in there. There was something you said in the middle of your answer, though, that struck me as perhaps significant. You used the word unstable, I think. I'm wondering whether that might have been at the heart of your desire to spend your life in deep engagement with the dharma, in other words, to become a nun, because the death of your mother really spoke to life's instability, the fact that you had achieved what you wanted to achieve in your studies and in the world of dance and yet weren't fully satisfied also speaks to instability and unsatisfactory, the unsatisfactory nature of existence. I'm wondering if there's something in there that is worth mining. Anna When I think back on my times in the theater, it was a very successful avant-garde dance theater, and we really made beautiful productions where people got a lot of uplift for their heart and a lot of beauty, a lot of magic, you could say. But then when people go home, there wasn't a practice to continue to have the heart in this open state, which could connect with the beauty of life, building on that experience, which art was able to instigate in people. Also, studying cultural anthropology, I traveled very early in my life with my parents to Africa several times and saw people on ancestral lands, how they were, how they walked, how they conducted their lives, and it gave me that deep feeling that my culture had lost a groundedness on the earth, which was a very significant loss. And then I went to universities and found out that they didn't really answer those questions, so there was something deeper. And then when I met my first teacher, Arjun Buddhadasa, I had a feeling immediately he knows what I'm searching. And then as I started to learn about Buddhism, it became clear to me that there were a lot of layers of conditioning, assumption, expectations, desires, and fears, which were kind of warping my experience. Well, thank you for humoring me while I explored your biography. Let me turn to our agenda, such as it is for today. In preparation for this conversation, you've had some conversations with Marissa Schneiderman, who's our senior producer, and I want to read back to you one of the lines that leapt out at me. Most of the self-improvement conversation asks the same question, how do I become a better, calmer, more effective version of myself? And your point is that that's the wrong question. What I also see from teaching retreats, you know, and then having conversations with people who are mentors, that at the beginning of the path, people often have the idea that this is all about gaining more, becoming more informed, to know more, to improve yourself. Whereas my experience is actually it's about letting go. It's about letting go of conditioning which doesn't serve us. Conditioning which keeps us limited and has a limiting effect on the way how we experience the world and how we experience ourselves. So it's very much more about, you know, finding some kind of a guidance in order to slow down enough so we can see how our mind is basically projecting unacknowledged patterns onto experience. Projecting unacknowledged patterns onto experience. That sounds really interesting, but I'm not sure I understand what it means. Can you help me? Yes. You know, for example, I grew up in a small hotel in Austria when I was a little girl. And me and my brother, we were left alone quite a lot, you know, and I was the older one. So I always felt responsible, you know, for my brother. I felt responsible to take care of everything. And I was afraid of, you know, that my parents wouldn't come back and all of those things. So there was like an experience of abandonment, you know, which I had on a regular basis. And then later on, I projected that fear onto many things which happened in my life. I was a lot in community as a nun. So I had a tendency to take responsibility for a lot of things because I had grown up as the older sibling. You know, and it took me a while long time to actually really consciously see what I was doing and to let go of that habit more and more. I felt also not happy about that I was always taking care of everything, but I didn't really see for quite some time how I was actually making that, you know. Nobody made me do it, but I did it automatically without knowing it. So we have these experiences in our early lives and we start to see the world in certain ways and behave in certain ways and we carry those inappropriately into situations throughout our adult lives and that causes suffering for ourselves and others. Yeah. Until one day we see that, you know, and we also might sometimes need help, you know, from a therapist or for some kind of a mentor, you know, who helps us to see it. And then as we are slowly, you know, stepping out and consciously not enact the pattern, it releases like unacknowledged fears, you know, because not doing the same thing you always did, you know, produces some kind of fear because I didn't, you know, I took all this responsibility because I was afraid if I don't do it, nobody's going to do it. But nobody did it because I was always stepping forward first. Until you see that all of those things is a conditioned kind of a constellation, which if you put out one part, the whole thing collapses and then it opens up and then it might come back a few more times. But if you have seen it opening once, you know, you're never going to get caught in it again in the same way. And then slowly you step out of that, you end up in a bigger world, slightly bigger world, you know, and then that enables you to see the next filter and the next filter. And that is the practice, letting go of one filter after the next, not like with a sledgehammer, you know, but with a lot of mindfulness, with focusing and with a lot of kindness also, you know. Let me tell you about one of my little taglines because I use it all the time because I love it. Here it is. The world is insane, but you don't have to be. It may feel like the world is on fire in many ways it is. And in this scenario, a lot of us get this idea in our heads that it's somehow self-indulgent to take care of ourselves. But in fact, taking care of your own mind and, of course, your body is how you resource yourself, how you get your shit together to be fully engaged, to be a node of sanity in an insane world, which is why I'm very pleased to announce that two of my friends, two amazing meditation teachers, Sharon Salzberg and Andy Gonzalez, have created a course for my app, 10% with Dan Harris, specifically on this topic. It's an eight-part course. It consists of short talks from Sharon and Andy and then guided meditations also, as you might imagine, from Sharon and Andy. The course is aptly entitled Taking Care of Yourself So You Can Take Care of the World. And it's fully live now over on the 10% with Dan Harris app. You should sign up. I really mean that. You should sign up. We've got a growing community over there. We've got a full library of courses and challenges and guided meditations. You can come join the party by going to danharris.com. I love learning new languages, not just because it's fun for me, but there's actually some evidence in the research that it can be quite good for your brain. Rosetta Stone is a great place to learn a new language. I've played with it myself. It is really cool. Specifically, this new product called Rosetta Stone Sapphire, which is their biggest launch in over a decade, it's a brand new language learning app that uses the research-backed method Rosetta Stone is known for and adds fresh cutting-edge features, making it easier than ever to go from knowing a few phrases to speaking confidently about the topics you care about. What I love about Rosetta Stone is you're not just sitting there and memorizing vocabulary. You're learning entirely in the new language through visuals and audio, which helps you pick it up naturally. You're learning the language the same way you did as a kid, and the process is fun, intuitive, and totally immersive. One of their features is Sapphire Studio, which lets you personalize your learning based on what you actually care about right now. Say you want to be able to order like a pro at a taqueria in Mexico, Sapphire Studio can create taco ingredients, Spanish flashcards for you in seconds, or you can play a matching game with those words instead to help you remember. If you want to take your language skills to the next level, don't wait to try Rosetta Stone Sapphire. 10% happier listeners can get 20% off their Rosetta Stone Sapphire subscription when they sign up today. This gets you access to Rosetta Stone Sapphire in 25 languages. What are the tools that you would recommend for stepping out of the matrix, our self-created matrix? I would say, you know, what's called the Noble Eightfold Path, which is the core teaching of the Buddha. You know, mindfulness is one of eight qualities which need to be cultivated. So that path, you know, is kind of the blueprint from how we can slowly but surely become more conscious, you know, of what we are actually adding to experience. And then once the mind has really seen clearly, the mind wants to let go, you know, the mind really wants to let go, the mind wants to be free, it will respond with letting go. You know, letting go is not something we can make happen, but we can put causes and conditions in place by conducting ourselves in a certain way, by investigating, you know, by keeping ethics, for example, and not, you know, kind of wasting our energy in doing a lot of stupid things, you know, which keep us, get us into trouble. So it's a lifestyle which is dedicated to wanting to know more fully how we can unlock our potential. Let me just provide some context for the listener and viewer. I think actually the first teaching of the Buddha was the Noble Eightfold Path. It was actually embedded in another list. The Buddha liked to make lists. So the first speech he gave after he got enlightened was the Four Noble Truths and the fourth of the Noble Truths is actually a list within a list and that's the Eightfold Path and it's kind of a recipe for a good life or a recipe for enlightenment and one of the entries in the Eightfold Path is mindfulness, but there's a lot of stuff in there about ethical conduct, right speech, right livelihood, and really one of the ideas there is that if you're not wasting your mental energy on keeping your lies straight or feeling regret for all of the bad things you've done, that you have more energy for exploration and enlightenment and letting go, etc., etc. It does bring me to a question. You, as you've said, have spent 35 years in intensive mindfulness practice, not just mindfulness practice, other forms of Buddhist practice, and that has allowed you to step out of your ancient patterns, but what about for the rest of us? How do we get a taste of this? It's like in anything in life, you know, how much you put in, that's what you get back, you know? So I think you have to just find out for yourself how much you want to invest, you know, of your life energy into this path, and then you get the returns, you know, from that. And also, in Buddhism, we speak about this is not our first birth, you know, we come here and we might have practiced at other lifetimes. So, you know, somebody might come and be already much further along than somebody else. So, you know, I have much more propensity to understand and respond to the teachings. So it really depends on where we are starting from, but it doesn't really matter, you know, you just do what you can. And as you are kind of connecting deeper with the benefits of the teaching, it will become more and more attractive, you know? Like what I know about you, Daniel, you had an experience, you know, which opened you up, which broke your heart in a way, open. In a conventional sense, it means, oh my God, this poor guy, you know, he had this bad experience. But in a spiritual sense, it's a great good fortune, you know? Like for me, when my mother died, was it a good thing or a bad thing? I mean, it was a bad thing in one way, but it was also for me, you know, I could say my mother gave birth to me twice. So, you know, in spirituality or in practice, you can't really look at it with the same measuring stick as you look at material things. This is why it's confusing for some people and hard to understand because most people are so stuck, you know, in the materialistic way of looking. So just to put a fine point on that, because I think this is an accessible teaching for anybody, whether they meditate or not. Heartbreak can have a very significant upside. Yeah. Breaking the heart open, you know, so that more life can land in us because, you know, a heart before it's broken is sometimes very kind of sure it knows how everything has to be. And then something happens, you know, which is so different and there's a breakdown, but it's also like an opening. And then we will take some time to heal from it. But I can say, you know, without any doubt that when I look back on all the heartbreaks I've had, you know, like romantic and otherwise, they were in the end of the day, they brought me closer to the way things are, you know, that the depths of the despair was a motivator, you know, to want to understand how this works, what is life, you know, how does it work and how can I position myself inside of it in a way which leads to greater wisdom and compassion. And in my case, you know, it took me to this rather extreme profession, you know, which I'm having now. And I had quite a struggle myself with it, you know, because I didn't want to do 150 percent, you know, dedication. I just wanted to do like 70 or something, you know. But then somehow, you know, I couldn't stop it. It basically sucked me in, you know. And then I always thought I'm going to, in two years I'm going to leave, in two years I'm going to leave. And I said that for 30 years or something. And now I just think, okay, that's it, you know, I'll stay with this, it's fine, you know. But, you know, life knows better than we do. And I have, meanwhile, you know, over the years, I have let go more and more. And now I allow life to show me the way, the energy shows me the way, the earth shows me the way. My experiences, you know, have delivered me into that kind of a trust, because it always worked out, you know. Even my mind was desperately thinking it would not, you know. Okay. Let me just pick up on something you said there, because I find it, and this is apparently characteristic I'm learning of you. I find so many of the things you're saying very, very interesting. You said something like having the trust to let life show you the way, and even the earth show you the way. Can you explain a little bit more what you mean by that specifically? One of the important qualities, you know, to be able to walk the Noble Eightfold Path, you were just mentioning, is what in the Buddhist jargon is called Sada. And we can translate that as confidence, trust, and faith. That there's something much bigger than ourselves, which we can listen into, which can show us the way. And in the context of the Buddhist teaching, it's called the Buddha Dharma or the Dhamma. And that's a Pali word. That's the language in which the teachings were laid down about 600 years after the Buddha's death. And Dharma can be translated as nature or laws of nature. So to really understand that we are part of nature, and we are also operating according to the laws of nature, and that we can listen into the process we are already part of for guidance. And the Buddha has given us a map, how to walk that path, and how to support ourselves so that we are maximally capable of listening into the Dharma. You know, and listening not just with our ears. The Dharma isn't talking to me and telling me, you know, Santa Chita do this, Santa Chita do that. But it's more like listening with the whole body into that which gives me life, you know. I love this idea of being able to listen more clearly to, you could call it the Dharma, or nature, the rhythm of life, to understand how to proceed. And I'm curious, again, for those of us who are lay people, how can we tune our instrument so that we can, you know, hear what reality is trying to tell us? Exactly. It's a very good way of saying it, you know, because it's an attunement process, you know. What's happening here, life, you know, it's like an orchestra of countless species, you know, performing together. And I think we are now at a threshold, you know, where we are starting to understand that this orchestra on this planet is not all about us, you know, about our Homo sapiens, the human species. But it's about all of us, the more than human world and the human world working together to sustain the great opportunity of living, you know, on this beautiful planet. And the Buddha has even been on record saying, you know, that the human birth, according to the Buddha, is the best opportunity for, quote-unquote, progressing on the spiritual path. Because, you know, according to the Buddha's teaching, he said, you know, there's different incarnations, you know, we can be born into either underneath the human birth is more kind of difficult lives to lead, you know, like where there's a lot of suffering or above the human realms, in more heavenly realms, you know, where there's so much pleasure that there's not much motivation for practice. So the human realm is considered the perfect one, you know, with the perfect mix between pleasure and pain. So there's a motivation for practice because there's enough pain, you know, but there's also enough pleasure to be able to listen to a podcast like this or read a book, you know, or meditate. Just want to jump in and provide a little context there. What Ayasanta Chitta is talking about there is the Buddhist cosmology of these various realms of existence. So there's the animal realm. And given the nature of life as a golden retriever, there's a lot of good stuff to it, but it doesn't necessarily lend itself to meditation practice, although golden retrievers are very much in the in the present moment. And then there's the human realm, which we'll come back to. And then there are the heavenly realms where you apparently have these celestial creatures that live in states with a lot of pleasure. And so, as Ayasanta Chitta said, not a lot of motivation to practice. But in this in-between space where we are existing as humans, it's the right mixture of pleasure and pain that can motivate us to meditate and engage in other forms of mind training that can wake us up and get us back to seeing through our patterns so that we're not owned by them. How did I do there? Is that roughly correct? Yeah, right. Exactly. That's what I was wanting to point out. So again, just on a practical tip, in order to develop this attunement that you're talking about, let's talk about some tools. Obviously, meditation is one of them. Is there more to say specifically about meditation? Are there other tools that we should also talk about? I think meditation is one, and then ethics is one, because then you don't have to constantly clean up after yourself. Then you look after your health, after your body. Then also right livelihood is also important. To make the money you need to live, make it in an ethical way, as ethical as possible. I think that is, on a work level, the very important point. Then maybe find a teacher, find a guide who is a bit further along on the path than yourself, who can maybe help you to point out the way, and have maybe some mentor or some teacher to meet on a regular basis. Maybe join a group who meditates maybe regularly, because it's easier to do it if you have community. The Buddha talked a lot about this. I've been told that the story I'm about to tell is not quite accurate, but it is a story that gets passed around a lot. The Buddha one day was approached by his cousin and attendant, Ananda. Ananda was like his constant companion, but at some point, Ananda had been away hanging out with some other monks. He came back all enthusiastic to the Buddha and said, just hanging out with these other monks and nuns, it's so important. It's so enlivening. It's like half the path. The Buddha said, no, no, no. It's the whole path. Yeah, it's correct. That's what he said. Yeah. Because it can be that sometimes we come into dead-end roads or into some kind of a difficult situation. It's really that relationship with others can really help us to keep going until we are strong again and can continue. I have definitely experienced that in my life several times, where it was really a relationship to a friend, which kept me going when I was hardly capable to go. But at least I didn't turn back or anything because I could lean on to that or lean into the schedule in the monastery, for example. Monasteries are created in a way for that. If you have a little breakdown or you can't go on, then the schedule just carries you until you can get on your feet again. You can create something like that through friends and family members who give you that kind of care. What about for people who think, I don't actually have that many supportive people in my life and I I certainly don't have access to a great teacher or mentor. I think that's something we can look for. There's lots of sanghas. Sangha is the party word for community. To find a little community in your area, which meets either in person or if that's not possible, there's also online communities where they meet maybe once a week. I myself have a little online community. We meet on Wednesdays, for example. I think that's very, very valuable. And then going on retreats sometimes, which is a community thing as well. If somebody really wants to find a teacher, like after my mother died, I felt a very strong urge to find a teacher. That was like in 1988. That was almost 40 years ago. There was no internet. I was in Austria. I mean, I didn't know at all how to go about it, but I started to pray. I started to ask that I need to find my teacher and I ask for guidance. And one and a half years later, I found him. And I don't necessarily expect people to pray, but I mean, just put out the word and say, whoever is out here in this universe, I really need a teacher, please help. It's gonna happen. It's a very mysterious process, really. Once you have gotten a hint of the fact that this universe is intelligent and responsive, it's awesome. There's really a feeling of being part of something so much bigger than oneself and a sense of belonging, which is very energizing and exciting and awe-inspiring. And it's that kind of opening, which kind of is magnifying your aspiration. I'm just gonna press you on that again, because I love what you're saying. And I can imagine people thinking, I just don't feel it. I don't, I get intellectually, this is a majestic, mysterious universe in which we're living, but I don't feel it for myself. You know, and that's exactly, that takes us back to what you said then about the attunement, you know, because you can't feel it yet, because there's all of those filters and all of those expectations and assumption, how it needs to be in order to be something. We have all of those filters, our whole equipment, you know, is dull, and it hasn't been polished and sharpened, you know, for the time it needs to. It's like learning a different language, you know, if you learn a different language, I mean, it's not gonna be a one-day affair, you know, or even learn to drive a car or play an instrument. It requires to go through the frustration of thinking, I can't do this, I don't know how to do it, you know, it's so much work, all of that. It's not different from learning any other skill. It requires our input, our dedication. And this is why it's so important, you know, to have a teacher or a mentor who is already ahead of us, who has no more doubt, you know, it can be done, and who remembers how he or she was, you know, when the instrument wasn't yet tuned. And then he can say, just keep going, keep going, you know. That's what my teachers told me when I didn't know what I was doing, but I looked at them and I knew they spoke the truth, you know. That sounds right to me. Like when somebody asks, you know, how does chocolate taste? Ask somebody who already has eaten it. They can't really exactly explain, but they can say, it's so good, you need to try, you know what I mean? And then as soon as you get your hands on it, you try, and then you know for yourself. But first you need to take it, take their word, you know, you don't need to believe it, but to just not negate the possibility. And for that, we need a role model, you know, who talks to us because they kind of, there's an alchemy or something, you know. It couldn't be anybody. It has to be somebody who is the right one for you, you know? Yeah, and if you don't have access to a great teacher, I mean, reading great books, listening to people like you on podcasts, signing up for online groups. Yeah, yeah. There are lots of options, options that didn't exist in 1988. Absolutely not, yeah, yeah. And sometimes it can even be enough, you know, to just look at an image of someone, you know, who inspires you. And then if we are really giving ourselves to the quest, you know, there is a response, and we need to give up the idea it's gonna be exactly the way we want it to be, because it might be completely different, you know? And that's what is so difficult for people, you know, who have had a lot of comfort and a lot of agency and control in their lives, because this is something you can't control, because the whole spiritual path is about giving up control, you know? And this is like kind of, oh my God, you know? But that's what it is. And, you know, when you had your experience, you gave up control because you were forced to. And then afterwards, you know, you got a taste of something, you knew what you were looking for. And then it's just like feeling your way, you know? Just to say for viewers and listeners who aren't familiar with every aspect of my backstory, the experience that you're referring to is the panic attack I had on television more than 20 years ago, which kind of set me off on the path toward meditation. And yeah, it sucked in the moment, and I'm very glad it happened. Yeah, that's what I mean, you know? This is like the essence of the path is, you know, it sucked when it happened, but I'm very glad it happened, because otherwise I would have stayed in that small world. Yes, yes. Till I die, you know? My meditation teacher, Joseph Goldstein, likes to say, don't waste your suffering. Yeah, exactly. I was giving a commencement address the other day to a bunch of 18-year-olds, and, you know, just making this case that life is not an escalator. It is not gonna be an unbroken upward trajectory. It's gonna have these setbacks, but the key cognitive reframe is you don't have to enjoy the setbacks, but eventually wake up and see that they are opportunities. Yeah, exactly. You know, and there's a very beautiful saying of Achen Chah, who is the founder of the lineage I trained in, and he said, you know, there's two kinds of suffering. The suffering which leads in circles, and the suffering which leads out of suffering. That's the approach we need to do, because there will always be things, you know, going wrong. But what we do with those things makes all of the difference, you know? Here's something I've learned about running a company. The most important know-how often lives in one person's head. When that person is out sick or moves on, everybody else is left guessing. That isn't anybody's fault. The most valuable workflows are usually the hardest to write down because they involve people, systems, and judgment calls. 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And I've been having Base44 build me something that I've talked about on the show before, an app where anybody can go on and find a meditation retreat in the part of the world that's most convenient for them, on the dates that are most convenient for them, and in the style that is most attractive to them, and then go sign up. And here's the cool thing. All of this stays yours. You can use it, change it, add what's missing, and keep sharing it as things grow. The site, the app, and the workflow behind it can all live in one place. Go to base44.com slash happier, and sign up through our link to get 30% off the builder plan for the first year. That's base44.com slash happier. This episode is sponsored by ADT. It is that time of year again. The kids are back at school. We're all back at work after the summer. We're back to the routine. ADT wants to help you get back to home. Enjoying little moments with friends and a family is easier when you have one less thing on your plate. 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When I was younger, I always thought patience is something for old ladies, who just have given up on life, and I'm just generally quite impatient compared with other people, and my father was also quite impatient. And then later on, when I started to meditate, I understood how much fear the impatience is, how much fear of not being able to wait, of wanting to know it immediately, and not being able to tolerate not knowing, uncertainty. And what a great asset that is in one's life if we can tolerate that, if we can wait, if we can open up, if we can trust. It's a huge benefit to our lives, not interfering too quickly, and allowing life to speak for itself. What do you recommend as tools, here I go again, for training patience, for training tolerance in uncertainty? I think meditation is that tool, really. Because in meditation, we usually either sit or walk, and it's not about achieving anything, but it's more being with what is, and not trying to change what is, but allowing it to fully show itself. And that requires slowing down, stopping, and observing habitual responses and not acting on them. But having the capacity to hold steady and experience the urges without necessarily reacting, but choosing to respond, but not being forced to react. And that's a vast difference, between reacting or responding, as you know. It makes all of the difference in a meeting, in a relationship with your children, with your husband. It always makes a huge difference if you can choose to respond after you've taken a breath or two, and not immediately have to react, because you can't hold the discomfort of the energy. You know, there's a way in which meditation can feel either stupid or impossible, because you sit, you try to focus on your breath, and then you're just ambushed by all of these distractions. That is the thing, being willing to sit with the fact that your mind is so unruly, and having the grit and the perseverance to start again and again and again. That's not like a beginner practice. That is the practice. Yeah, exactly. A million times, two million times, to just come back to the breath or whatever your object is of meditation, yeah? You know, to have the capacity to come back to it again and again. And you know, what we are training is, you know, letting go of those patterns and coming back, and letting go and coming back. It doesn't matter how often, but what matters is as soon as you're noticing that you're caught, you let go and you come back, you know? And that's it. You know, and what I often say to people at the beginning of a meditation, I say, you know, meditation isn't about having a different experience than from the experience you are having, but it's having it consciously. It's a very ordinary. thing. You know, it's not about wonderful, you know, experiences. Even sometimes it can happen, you know. But that's not the reason why we meditate. We meditate in order to be less caught in those patterns, you know. Yes, because if you sit and watch your mind and all of its ridiculousness and glory, after a while you just don't take it as seriously and you develop the capacity to withstand it when, you know, the thought pops into your mind, like, to say or do something horrible. You just can, after a while, just notice, oh, it's just a thought. I can let it go. And all of that power comes from doing this very ordinary thing of sitting and trying to focus on your breath and getting humiliated over and over. And in the beginning, you know, we might hear people saying what you just said and I just said, but we can't believe it because we think it must be something much more special than that, you know. But it is. It's so ordinary. And because it's so ordinary, it's hard to explain the power it has. Because the power lies in the capacity to no longer identify with those patterns and to choose to just let them go. Let them do their thing. They're like the clouds in the sky. We don't need to grasp the clouds. We can just give it the space they need. They're just going to come and go. None of my business, you know. And we said this earlier, but I think it bears repeating at this juncture that this practice of meditation, which really anybody can do, is not, you know, for nuns and monks or for podcasters. It really is for everybody. Over time, what happens as you are less caught by your thoughts is you can attune, which is where we began this conversation. This is how you can start to, you know, and this sounds kind of highfalutin, but like listen to the Dharma, listen to the world, listen to reality. Yeah, exactly. That's how it is, yeah. Because there's more space, you know, and we don't need to get involved with every little thing. And then there is the capacity, there's the spaciousness to listen to something much bigger than yourself and feel a sense of belonging and even a sense of guidance, you know, if you want to use that word. In your conversation with Marisa, one thing you said that is often, you pointed out that one of the missing pieces in the West for people interested in self-improvement, personal growth, spiritual development, whatever you want to call it, is devotion. What does that mean, devotion? You know, when Buddhism was exported, quote-unquote, you know, like 30, 40 years ago with Joseph Goldstein and Jake Hohenfeld, Sharon Salzberg, and others, you know, who brought it from Asia. And my teacher, Chan Sumedho, brought it from Asia to the West. In order to be able to land it at IMS and at Spirit Rock and other centers, it had to be stripped from folklore, so to say, you know, because people had no tolerance for that. And they didn't want to learn about, you know, the more traditional ways, the religious forms, you know, from Asia. They only wanted the meditation. And there was the understanding that, you know, if you meditate really hard, then you're going to get enlightened and then you're going to be done. But then, you know, people were meditating for 20, 30 years, and it became clear, you know, there is more needed than just following the meditation instructions, because we need also to take care of our heart. And devotional practices and a devotional approach to that which is much vaster than ourselves can give us the buoyancy, you know, to stay engaged with the practice and to open to that which is difficult to meet in ourselves, you know. And also like a sense of lineage, you know, that we are part of a lineage which has been transported, you know, from Asia to the West and is over 2,600 years old. And a sense of, you know, the ancient ones, the ancestors, those who have passed down the teaching over the centuries. And, yeah, and a sense of respect and reverence for that, too. So what does a devotional practice look like? There's formal devotional practices like chanting, bowing, making offerings, reciting certain prayers, and that's like a more formal practice. But it can also be like a general practice of gratitude, you know, for everything which gives us life and which enables us to practice. And at this day and age, I would also say, you know, to recognize the earth as the foundation of that which gives life to our bodies, you know. The modern human world, you know, is a very important source of intelligence in this day and age, you know, where we start to see more and more clearly that the human species is one of the youngest species on this planet and quite immature, you know, very self-obsessed. And it's all about us. What can we get out of this, you know? And we have kind of maneuvered ourselves into a cul-de-sac, you know, I feel. There's a need for the humility which is necessary to understand that, you know, we are dependent on all other species for everything. We have everything we are. We constantly eat, drink, and breathe the planet, you know. And we never cut the umbilical cord to the planet. Without this biosphere, you know, we cannot live. This is not a stage on which we are walking around taking what we like and throwing away what we don't like. But we are participants, if we like it or not, you know. And it's time for us to wake up to that truth, I think. And in terms of waking up to that truth, is it as simple as spending more time outside? No, I think it's not that simple. I mean, that's definitely very helpful, you know. But already when I was a child and I was really interested in indigenous ways of looking at life that brought me later on to study cultural anthropology and so on. And at this day and age now, you know, I feel that Western cultures can learn a lot from indigenous ways of looking at life, you know, who see the earth as a living intelligent being we belong to, like cells, you know, inside of a big body. And the cell doesn't need to know, you know, what it's doing. It just attunes to the bigger orchestra of that vast body. And that's what I work with at this time, you know, that the Buddhist teaching has given me a lot of capacity, you know, to work with my mind. But the Buddhist teaching was also transmitted to us inside of patriarchy, you know, inside of the worldview of domination and the assumption of what I call human supremacy assumption, you know, that thinking this is all about us here, this planet with all of its beautiful and terrifying things relating it all back to us, you know, very human-centric way of looking. And I like to orient myself inside of a more indigenous way of looking, which is about relating to the earth as a living intelligent being, which has been able to sustain life for almost five billion years, you know, without anybody telling her how to do it. It's an inbuilt intelligence. And I think, you know, this is, for me, a new way how I understand the Dharma to present itself. Because, you know, the teachings, the core teachings of the Buddha Dharma are timeless, but they are passed on inside of a packaging which is historical, you know, and we are now at the threshold where we are basically stepping out of a dying paradigm, you know, industrialist, capitalist, patriarchy paradigm of domination into a new way of understanding ourselves as being part of a living intelligent earth. It's interesting. I sometimes think, I'm not sure whether the paradigm is dying, but if it doesn't die, we will die. Yeah, it is dying. If we look at it with the mind of the old paradigm, it all looks impossible. But I also like to quote, you know, Albert Einstein, who is on record for saying, you can't solve a problem from the same level of consciousness which created it. So, you know, if you look at all of what's happening from the dominator paradigm, that you have to fix it, and you look at it, it looks impossible. But if I look at it in a way like I would like to volunteer to become part of the immune system of the earth, and then I don't need to, it's not up to me to fix all of this, you know, I don't think human beings are per se bad or have done something wrong. It's just immature, you know, our species is like maybe in a toddler stage, you know, that's all about me, and if I don't get it, I'm going to throw a tantrum, like the President of the United States is a toddler, you know, on the world stage, and it's rather embarrassing. But, you know, he drives it really home how immature we are, you know, that somebody like that can be, keep holding such an important office, and nobody can stop him. That means, you know, it's all really right out of control right now, and I think this is a really big teaching moment. You know, more and more cracks in the old paradigm are showing up, and rather than trying to glue those cracks together again and keep on going with the old ways of doing things, to listen into the cracks and see what wants to be born, and listening and making ourselves available, attuning to that, that's what I try to do these days, you know. Not long ago, my wife had an interior design dilemma. She's been researching a book for a while, and in order to do the research, she's been ordering a lot of books that she is then reading. But then the question became, what do I do with all these books? She didn't want to throw them away or give them away because she wants to be able to refer to them for her research, so she found a great solution via one of our sponsors today, Wayfair. Through Wayfair, she got these really beautiful translucent bookshelves. 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Let me link your, I believe, incisive critique of the species at this moment with something you talked about earlier, which is patience. So I look at Trump and I find myself kind of daily refreshing the New York Times Trump approval rating tracker and find it incredibly disturbing that I think as of this recording, he's at 38%. But given everything he's done, the attacks on the rule of law, the pardoning of all the January 6 folks, the, you know, lurching into war clearly without having thought about it, there's sort of casual cruelty toward our most vulnerable. I could go on. The unhinged social media posts, the tsunami of lies and 38% of Americans are cool with this, like they approve. And that makes me impatient. I also get impatient when I think about the state of the planet and in light of all the things you said about the fact that we kind of need to evolve or potentially perish. And I feel impatient. And so I'm just wondering, how do you hold these views about the potential for. change while imbibing all of the evidence to the contrary. Just what you said, I also feel impatient, but I'm not going to act from that place. I also feel impatient. I also feel uncertain how it's going to work out, but I try to channel my energy in a way which is most effective to be part of the change I want to see, to become part of the immune system of the earth. I do what I can, and then I need to let go. You obviously do what you can, and if everybody do what they can, that's how it's going to happen. Do what you can, and then let go. Yeah. That seems like a recipe for sanity. You have agency, you're taking action, and you recognize most of this shit is totally out of my control. Let's say if everybody would see it that way, we would be living in a much more sane world, but obviously there's lots of people who are still so caught in the paradigm that there is some big man who is going to fix it for us. This is the old paradigm. It's written all over the Bible. It's written all over the patriarchy, the unwillingness to take responsibility, to be accountable, being here on this planet. I do want to reference something that came up in the prep document that Marisa prepared for me. You actually did have a very practical idea in terms of cultivating patience that we can do the next time we find ourselves waiting in line. You can train yourself in patience in very ordinary circumstances, waiting in line at the checkout at the supermarket, and then waiting in line wherever you need to wait in line, and rather than seeing that as, oh my God, I'm wasting my time, you can say, no, I'm using that now to train my capacity for patience. I really have had very lovely experiences waiting in the line in the supermarket. It's not very often that there's impatient people. I've had really good experiences and so a lot of kindness being enacted in this way. It's a great human quality. And once you have seen it, how good it feels if I observe other people who do that in an elegant way or in a respectful way, I want to be like that. Yeah, you see it in parents. Good parents are patient. Many of the dumbest things I've done emerge out of rushing. And rushing comes from the inability to hold steady, the contracted energy because it's kind of painful, and it feels like there's not enough space in me to allow it to just arise and cease. But then when you have done it a few times, you know it's not true. It's just an idea. And this is so much, isn't it part of a consumerist culture? It's all about immediate gratification. It's so much part of the paradigm. You know, we need to train ourselves consciously. Speaking of training, there was something else I noticed that you recommend. Tuning into the feeling of longing in your heart. You could say, you know, the GPS for the path. The longing, because the heart already knows, you know, that we belong to something so much bigger than ourselves. And there is this longing which gets often kind of sidetracked in consumer culture, you know, about shopping more and getting this or getting that and then feeling satisfied probably for a moment, but then the longing keeps on going. Because the longing wants something much more sophisticated than just buying the next thing. It's a sense of purpose in life and a sense of belonging. Meditation, you know, I feel is a technology, you know, which can connect us with that. And as we are starting to sense into that, you know, it's like an intuitive knowing, you know, which can guide us. You know, things happen in our lives. A book falls into your hands, a friend sends you some information. There is a mystery to that guidance. You know, once you acknowledge the longing for that, it just responds, you know. It's very hard to describe, but I have experienced it and I think you have experienced it too. There's something about turning this nagging sense of insufficiency, this like nagging sense of never enough to our advantage, that if you really see it clearly, it's onward leading. Exactly. That's what I meant to say. Exactly. You know, because if you think it's all about, because of the way, you know, how we are informed, in this culture, if you have that nagging sense of not enough, you haven't bought the right things, right? And then if you start to meet other people, you know, who have related to that nagging sense in a different way, like you or me or my teachers and so on, then you have a sense that there is something different. And then your capacity to look for that fulfillment opens up into other avenues of possibility. And that's what a teacher or a mentor is here, you know, to stretch your assumption, to stretch your expectations, to help you to open up some space for something new to enter your life. And I think that's what you try to do with your podcast, isn't it? To give people hints that there's other possibilities to meet that sense of not enoughness. Honestly, a lot of what I'm doing on the podcast is reminding myself over and over of the things I need to not forget. You know, when you teach, or in your case, you know, you're teaching in a way by interviewing people, you actually learn so much through that, isn't it? Yes. It is just, you know, the willingness to try on something different and to trust the person who is introducing it enough that you are willing to try it on without immediately throwing it out the window if it doesn't work within one minute. That's all what's needed. You know, and some things won't be the right thing for a particular person. But if we keep going, it's going to come. I mean, there's so many different methods, so many different approaches, so many different traditions and practices. But they all are, you know, pointing towards the same direction. And some might speak to us much more loud than others, you know. It's been such a pleasure to talk with you. Is there something you were hoping we would get to that we haven't gotten to? You know, what I'd like to say in parting is what's new about spiritual practice at this time is that we really have to question, you know, as human beings, we have to question the old paradigm of the centrality of the human species on this planet and really take an interest in the biosphere, in all species working together to give us life and find the most beneficial place in all of this. The benefit is great, you know, not just for us, but for future generations. This is what gives me a lot of energy these days, you know, to find a way to bring the Buddhadharma into a new way of looking at spiritual practice for the 21st century. Because that is what's needed right now, especially to get over this human centrism. I think that's most important what's needed. And we can really, you know, lean into the Buddhist teaching as a scaffolding to hold us as we are going over this threshold, because it's a rocky time, you know. How would an individual human life change if one could get a toehold in what you're talking about? If I started to see myself instead of some sort of separate entity, you know, using the earth as a backdrop for my personal performance, instead move to like, as you said before, a cell that is a small part of a larger living organism, how would my life likely change if I could really internalize that? You know, I can't really tell you that, you know. Everybody has to find out for themselves. And I think it's a multi-generational, you know, process. And we can begin that and see what happens. I can't really say it, but since I am taking more interest in that, you know, since about four years or so that I really work with that consciously, my life has changed in a way that I live now, you know, in a small temple space north of San Francisco, which is called Dialoka Earth Room, which is a place where I'm weaving together Buddhism and earth awareness. So, you know, my life has taken on a different expression since that is more central to my practice. And I'm sure, you know, that for everyone it will express differently, but it will find a way, you know, because the earth has been finding a way to sustain life since almost five billion years without anybody telling her what to do. And it's more like I'm asking her, what can I do to use what I have and who I am at this point in my life to support the process? If people want to learn more about you and from you, how can they do so? The people can visit my website and I have every Wednesday from 9 to 10 a.m. Pacific time. I have an online community. We are meeting for practice for one hour and then there's 15 minutes for Q&A at the end. And then many other retreats and other opportunities online and in person you can find on my website. And I just recently, you know, brought out a book, which is called What Are You Waiting For? You can find all of that on my website. Okay, we will put a link to that in the show notes. Well, you just said what I was hoping to say to you. Thank you. It was such a pleasure to meet you, albeit virtually. And yeah, I just I'm really grateful for your time. Thank you, Dan. I'm also very glad that you invited me and thank you so much. And all the best for your life. Thank you. I appreciate it. I need it. And right back at you. Thank you. Also, a quick ask before I let you go. If you've got a minute, head on over to danharris.com and sign up for my newsletter. It drops in your inbox on Monday mornings, often a busy and stressful time for us. I try to write a short essay that has a little bit of wisdom, actionable, practical wisdom that you can immediately weave into your life on Monday mornings. A lot of people find them helpful and I hope you will too. You can sign up at danharris.com. It's totally free. Now to the credits. Thank you so much to everybody who worked so hard to make this show. 10% Happier is produced by Tara Anderson, Marissa Schneiderman, DJ Kashmir, David Hart and Hayden Broome. Post-production is handled by the great folks over at Greenhorn Creative and Nick Thorburn of the great indie rock band Islands wrote our theme. Thank you for listening. Deuces. Insurance is not one size fits all. That's why drivers have enjoyed Progressive's Name Your Price tool for years now. 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