Annoying Partners, Aging Parents, Impossible Coworkers: Buddhist Advice for Conflict, Communication, and "Patience with Teeth" | devon and nico hase

Which conflict style are you? Plus: avoiding the "trance of nice," walking the high wire, and an uber-hack for getting over irritation. devon + nico hase http://www.devonandnicohase.com/ serve as guiding teachers of the online dharma community Refuge of Belonging https://www.devonandnicohase.com/community. They teach at the Insight Meditation Society, Spirit Rock, and other centers, offer online and in-person retreats, and speak with students in one-on-one sessions. They are the co-authors of How Not to Be a Hot Mess https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/748275/how-not-to-be-a-hot-mess-by-nico--devon-hase-foreword-by-rhonda-v-magee/ and the new This Messy, Gorgeous Love: A Buddhist Guide to Lasting Partnership https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781649634375/thismessygorgeouslove/. In this episode we talk about: Why friction in relationships is a feature, not a bug The three directions of listening Why joy isn't a nice-to-have How contemplating death can dissolve everyday irritation Whether you're a volcano, a diplomat, or a dodger How to rupture like a pro Why real patience has teeth What it means to walk the high wire in a conflict Related Episodes: The Sex Episode https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/10-happier-with-dan-harris/id1087147821?i=1000536756593 Get the 10% with Dan Harris app here https://app.danharris.com/membership Sign up for Dan's free newsletter here http://www.danharris.com/ Follow Dan on social: Instagram https://bit.ly/3tGigG5, TikTok https://bit.ly/3FOA84J Subscribe to our YouTube Channel https://bit.ly/3FybRzD To advertise on the show, contact [email protected] or visit https://advertising.libsyn.com/10HappierwithDanHarris

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Dan Harris?

  Hello, everybody. Welcome to the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm your host, Dan Harris. In my opinion, having been alive on this planet for several decades now, one of the ultimate life skills is the ability to handle conflict. Interpersonal affairs are messy often, and conflict is inevitable. And if you can handle it smoothly, you are much more likely to have healthy relationships. And as we know, healthy relationships are the key, according to vast scientific literature, the key to a happy life. So I was very interested when I heard that a pair of Buddhist teachers who happened to be married to one another had written a book, a whole book, about how to manage conflict. The teachers in question are Devin and Niko

• 0:45Dan Harris?

  Haza, and they have a book called This Messy Gorgeous Love: A Buddhist Guide to Lasting Partnerships. And this is not just, I should be clear, not just about how to manage conflict in your romantic relationships, but also at work and beyond. A little bit of background on Niko and Devin. Niko, who's the husband, spent six years living in a monastery before he earned a PhD in counseling psychology and then became an insight meditation teacher. Devin teaches at the Spirit Rock Meditation Center in California, and also, starting in October, so very soon, she will be the teacher of the month on my meditation app, 10% with Dan Harris. This is Devin and Niko's second appearance on the show. Devin and Niko Haza, welcome back to the show.

• 1:28Speaker 01

  Thanks, Dan. It's so great to be back.

• 1:31Dan Harris?

  Let me just start by asking, it seems like one of the most treacherous relationship challenges one could ever imagine endeavoring upon is writing a book together. Did you guys ever plan some sort of homicide during the course of this?

• 1:51Speaker 01

  We tell all our conflicts. We tell all our secrets in this book, and so we're very happy to share our book process with you as well. You want to go ahead and explain some of that, Niko?

• 2:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, so actually, this is the second book that we have written together, and we worked out a lot of the kinks in that first book, which was called How Not to Be a Hot Mess. And we were on this podcast last time to talk about that book. So by the time we got to this book, we kind of knew what we wanted to do, and we had a whole process of how to do it, which was basically outlining in detail together. And then I wrote the entire manuscript in 30 days with no break, locked in an apartment, talking to no one. And then I handed the whole manuscript over to Devin, and she rewrote the whole thing while talking

• 2:41Speaker 02

  to everyone. Like, she rewrote by committee. And then we spent an entire month going through it together and hashing out all of the last details. And there were definitely tensions, but there was, there was no, no murder plans.

• 2:57Dan Harris?

  I consider that kind of a proof of concept, the fact that you were able to do this.

• 3:01Speaker 02

  We really worked with the principles in the book while writing the book.

• 3:05Speaker 01

  Well, and we tell stories in the book about our differences, you know, like Niko's, he's an introvert. He's very good at self-regulating, and he loves working alone. So that process where he just locked himself away and was so single focused on writing really worked for him. And I'm an extrovert. I'm all about relationships and people. And so I needed to write by committee. It was so fun to like, go to our, you know, communities and ask about their opinions, our stories, all these different, and it was crowdsourcing the whole time. And we had to balance that. I mean, we know our differences. And so we kind of crafted it in a way that we could each write according to our style.

• 3:44Dan Harris?

  Let me ask a foundational question before we jump into the ideas and practices in the book. The book is primarily focused on romantic relationships, your married couple. But this conversation, and I just want to check that we're all on the same page, this conversation really will apply to all sorts of relationships.

• 4:03Speaker 02

  That's the idea. So in writing the book, we were focused on partnership. But what we found out through writing was that the principles and the practices that we are offering in this book can be applied to any kind of relationship. So people who have kids have talked about how useful it has been to apply what's in the book to their parenting. And then people who are dealing with their aging parents, maybe, are talking about how useful it has been to apply with those relationships. We had one workshop participant just last weekend tell us that they were there with their partner, but they barely thought about their partner at all because they were so focused on a conflict that they're having

• 4:46Speaker 02

  at work. And it was incredibly useful to use the partnership workshop and all the things that we were saying to go back to work with a fresh set of eyes and figure out, how am I going to be in harmony? How am I going to work with this person? So it can apply across the board to any kind of relationship.

• 5:07Dan Harris?

  Great. So now that we've established that, let's, let's talk about the ideas in the book. And Devin, I'll start with you. One of the things you talk about is the Buddha's first noble truth and how that applies to relationships. Can you just start by explaining what the first noble truth is? And then, and then we can talk a lot about how it's relevant in this context.

• 5:30Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Yeah. So the very first teaching the Buddha ever gave was this framework of four noble truths. And the very first one he started with was, he calls it dukkha, the human condition, being alive, being a human, is dukkha. So dukkha is a Pali word, kind of ancient word, that has been traditionally translated as suffering. So in Buddhism, there's this widespread understanding, first noble truth is life is suffering. But we really think that's an unfortunate translation, because dukkha has so many different connotations. It really is looking at the whole span of like, really serious suffering. But all the

• 6:12Speaker 01

  way, it runs the gamut to like, just a little discomfort, right? The kind of agitation that runs underneath a lot of our experience. And so our first chapter, we call it Relationships Are Rough. We tell our stories about having been together almost 20 years and still finding conflict, still finding some of that dukkha, the sense of stress or unreliability, or realizing that relationships actually are a lot of work still. And when we start with that principle, to me, it's a very powerful sort of countercultural around this messaging that relationships should be easy, actually. Like, mostly, our culture emphasizes this happily ever after thing,

• 6:55Speaker 01

  like the search, you just have to find your partner. And there's a lot about, you know, the ups and downs of finding your other half. But then, once you do, it's kind of smooth sailing, right? And what the Buddha does, and what we want to do is actually dismantle that optimization. We want to say, actually, that's when the work starts. And this is true for any friendship, any long-term relationship, working relationship. It takes a lot of effort to be genuine and healthy in connection with others. And to me, it's like, when we don't expect things to be perfect, when we start with this principle of life is unreliable, life is inherently shaky, impermanence, too. All, all meetings actually are going to end

• 7:38Speaker 01

  in separation. So when we come to reckon with this, like, the nature of things being uncontrollable and just a little shaky, like a bumpy ride, then it changes our whole attitude around what it means to be in long-term relationship, whether it's in family, or working relationships, or siblings, whatever, partnership. So we talk about the etymology of dukkha, actually, is this really interesting image of a wheel that doesn't fit well on its axle. So if you don't, if you have a wheel that doesn't fit well, what's going to happen? It's going to be a bumpy ride. And it's that simple. That's what we want to say. It's like, relationships are a bumpy ride. Of course, they're beautiful, too. They're

• 8:23Speaker 01

  not all suffering. But it really takes this kind of clear-eyed honesty to realize, even in the best of circumstances, I'm going to have to put some effort into this thing. And we're not always going to see eye to eye, and maybe both of us are kind of bumpy wheels. So from there, then, we can do the work that actually makes relationships transformative, and perhaps even a path to awakening.

• 8:48Dan Harris?

  It's interesting what you said about the misconception, as our couples therapist often says, that we, we expect in our culture to go from one enchanted evening to happily ever after, and that, that's how we get in so much trouble. So I get that. But are you saying, and Niko, I'll go to you for this one, are you saying that dukkha or suffering is a feature, not a bug? Or are you saying this is just a thing to manage?

• 9:14Speaker 02

  We are saying that dukkha, that kind of rub, is a feature, not a bug. That no matter what kind of partnership you're in, or any kind of relationship you're in, there is going to be an underlying friction. And the more intimacy you have with another person, the closer in you are, the more likely there is to be that friction. So just taking partnership as an example, it's really wonderful to have a honeymoon period. Like, you fall in love, you see everything good about this person, then you load up some of your projections

• 9:54Speaker 02

  onto them that might not even be there. But pretty soon, maybe you move in together. Now you're sharing finances. Now you're sharing a dishwasher, and you're having an argument about whether the forks need to go into the dishwasher right side up, or do the spines go down? And it's like, insanely important that they do it the right way. And you start to get all of your edges and all of your cragginess, and they're bumping up against each other. What we're saying is that-

• 10:26Speaker 02

  Is the thing like that is what partnership is. That level of intimacy is going to bring out all of these parts of yourself that you would rather other people do not see. And it's going to bring all of the parts of your partner out that they have been able to hide until you got this close. Right? So if we can allow for that, if we can even accept that, it's not that relationships are suffering all the time. It's just that there's going to be this baseline of difficulty and friction. And we can make that a kind of Dharma practice, a meditation practice. We can use the rub for our own transformation.

• 11:10Speaker 02

  And that makes the same rub go from something like suffering to something like actually inspiring and interesting. We want to move closer to it and find out about it.

• 11:22Dan Harris?

  You have probably heard our mutual teacher, Joseph Goldstein. He often says, don't waste your suffering. And I think that's kind of what you're saying here in a relationship context.

• 11:34Speaker 02

  Precisely.

• 11:35Dan Harris?

  There's plenty of conflict. Most of it, I think, pretty healthy in my personal and professional lives. But it's not like fun. And sometimes I don't learn anything from it. I just soldier through it. So how do we use this as an opportunity to grow and learn?

• 11:54Speaker 01

  I mean, it turns out the Buddha was a really relational teacher. There's a sutta called the Satipatthana Sutta, which if you've been on a retreat, you probably followed those instructions where the Buddha is inviting us to be mindful of our body and then the different feelings and thoughts and emotions. And in the sutta, 13 times, he repeats, he's inviting us to be mindful internally, externally, and then being mindful internally and externally. So there's this three ways of being mindful, these three directions. And in the book, we translate mindfulness as listening. It's a simple listening practice. So when we're meditating, mostly we're going inside. We're listening internally.

• 12:38Speaker 01

  But also it's pretty important to learn to listen externally, you know, to anybody who we're connecting with. This external listening is a mindfulness training, the same way that we're training to know what's happening in us. And then the third one is really interesting. How do we listen both internally and externally? And we could talk a long time about what the Buddha meant by that. But in the book, we translate it as listening to our relationship itself, like listening to this connection. You know, what's the context for our relationship? If it's long term, it's probably going through all these different phases. There are different conditions and situations. So there's a kind of subtle refinement where we can be listening to all of these three different spaces

• 13:21Speaker 01

  and then responding in ways that are much more skillful. So we can see the conflict as information and then learn, okay, how do I want to be in this moment? What do I want to say that's onward leading? So this deep listening, and we have practices in the book where we do it just personally, and then we can do it as a relational meditation that has really transformed for me that sense of like, you know, assuming that everything should go smoothly and then also being kind of stuck and like, we're just having conflict. But like you said, you just buckle down and kind of get through it. It actually means I can learn a lot through these, you know, mostly for me these days is through friendships. Like, long-term friendships have so much potential for listening, you know, the different changing conditions, changing contexts.

• 14:06Speaker 01

  And then how do I want to be? How do I be a good friend in this particular context?

• 14:11Dan Harris?

  I think what you're saying is that there's a fundamental attitude shift of, let's look at the dukkha or suffering of relationships not as a thing to be soldiered through or a thing to resist, but as something to get interested and curious about because it's actually an opportunity to grow. So that's the fundamental attitude shift. But then you made reference to practices that would help us listen to ourselves, listen to other people, and then listen to the relationship itself. So maybe it's worth unpacking a little bit, like what those practices would be, really just so that the listener can walk away with something, or viewer now, because we're increasingly doing this on video, the listener or viewer can walk away with something

• 14:55Dan Harris?

  that she or he can operationalize, you know, right away in their own life.

• 14:59Speaker 02

  Absolutely. So the first meditation that we offer in the book, and essentially what Devin is talking about, these listenings, these are kind of meditations, is just to close your eyes if you feel comfortable or leave your eyes open and soften your gaze and just bring a warm awareness, a kind attention to your own feet. Right? And then bring that same attention after a minute or two to your hands. And then after a minute or two, bring that same attention, that listening, to your heart. And then spend a few minutes, three minutes maybe,

• 15:42Speaker 02

  really listening to your own heart. And this is a really profound and, in some sense, countercultural move. I mean, you know this so well, Dan. Just that turn of attention away from all of the shiny objects of the world that are constantly moving and distracting and changing and turning our attention back and just feeling my own heart and recognizing, oh, maybe I feel a little tense right now. Or maybe I feel afraid, or I'm actually really irritated, or whatever, there might be deep contentment that I find here. Sometimes it'll surprise you.

• 16:25Speaker 02

  That is the first level of just learning to listen. Once we learn to listen in that way, we really feel like we can eavesdrop on our own nervous system and sense that. When we have that deep listening, then we can extend it to another. And one way, but we talk about extending it to another in another meditation in the book, is you just imagine your partner. So you're in meditation for five minutes and you just imagine your partner, or you imagine a really good friend, or a parent, or a child, or a coworker. And you kind of bring them into your mental space and you hang out with your image of them and listen.

• 17:09Speaker 02

  It doesn't sound like anything much would happen, but in my own experience, I, this like, all of these projections that are unconscious and they're, they're all in the, in the space with me and there's all this friction and stuff going on. But after a few minutes, a lot of that settles down and I can just kind of hear what is going on for this person. Of course, it's limited. It's still my own perspective, but it's like a little better at just being like, oh, they're tired. They're so tired in their life right now. They're so busy in their life right now. A lot of the difficulty we're having, it's not even coming from them. It's even not their fault. And it's not my fault. It's just like, whoa, things are intense.

• 17:54Speaker 02

  And there can be a kind of like softening or a forgiving. And then doing that same meditation for the relationship itself, the history of the relationship, the context of the relationship, just sensing into that. So that's the three-way listening. And we go into much more detail in the book about how to do these practices. But you can make it an actual practice. You can do it as an exercise. And that's when it actually becomes transformative.

• 18:23Dan Harris?

  If I could simplify it and hopefully, hopefully not oversimplify it, learning to just get in touch with your own mind-body system, or as you said, to eavesdrop on your nervous system in meditation, in mindfulness meditation, can allow you to not be so yanked around by your emotions when you're in contact with another person. It can also allow you to extend that mindfulness to the mental and physical states of the person you are with in the moment. And then finally, to, to the, to the in-between, to the state of the relationship. So I know there's a lot to what you just described

• 19:07Dan Harris?

  in terms of the practices that are in the book, but on a very basic way of understanding it, it's, it's really just, if you do mindfulness, you're going to be able to apply it to relationships.

• 19:19Speaker 02

  Well said. Exactly it.

• 19:22Speaker 01

  And I think, I mean, it's been really fun to write and teach about this because it seems simple, sounds so obvious when we say it that way. But actually, we're not necessarily trained to do that. We're relational beings. You could say we're in relationship all the time, even if we're just talking about our relationship with the moment. And so the external listening and the in-between, listening to the in-between, seems like a territory for, in general, meditation culture, mindfulness practice now, as it's getting translated here. There's so much possibility and potential for really taking this seriously, just as much as we do as our daily meditation. But, you know, what would happen to our relationships if we brought this kind of depth and commitment to like, I really want to know what's going on for you.

• 20:05Speaker 01

  You know, like, tell me everything. And then same thing with the relationship itself. Like, there's a lot of potential here for not wasting the dukkha.

• 20:15Dan Harris?

  When I first started meditating, I got extremely lucky. I was able to meet and befriend some of the world's greatest meditation teachers, people like Joseph Goldstein and Sharon Salzberg. I know, of course, that that is not possible for most people, which is why I have created a whole meditation app designed to give you the experience that I've been lucky to have in person. On this app, we've collected some of the world's most amazing teachers, including Joseph and Sharon, but many, many others who are teaching courses and doing weekly live sessions. The app is really designed not only to give you all of the things you get on a normal meditation app, but also to give you community, direct access to me

• 20:59Dan Harris?

  and the teachers and our weekly live video sessions where we meditate and you can ask questions. Also, the opportunity to connect with your fellow users. We know from the science that social support, that's the term that researchers use, is one of the most powerful ways to create and keep up with a habit like meditation. Go to danharris.com and sign up for the app. It's called 10% with Dan Harris. There's a free 14-day trial if you want to check it out before you buy. danharris.com. Join the party. We'll be right back after this. Most of us can remember being about 15 and feeling completely invisible, or worse,

• 21:40Dan Harris?

  extremely visible, but for the wrong reasons. I remember one year when I was a teenager, I had a pimple in the crevice of my nose for the entire year. I didn't like that. Either way, even if we have painful memories of that age, most of us tend to soften it in memory, and it was actually harder than we remember it now. That is the territory of Carrie, now streaming on Prime Video, the first-ever television adaptation of Stephen King's Carrie, eight episodes from Mike Flanagan with Stephen King as an executive producer. Flanagan had described this show as a tragedy. It's about a girl who doesn't feel seen by anyone and about how small, everyday acts of unkindness compound into something nobody

• 22:24Dan Harris?

  meant to cause, which happens now at a speed and scale that would have been unimaginable not long ago. What I really appreciate about the show is that the show takes Carrie seriously as a person rather than as some sort of symbol, and the season keeps circling around one major question. Are you watching the making of a hero, a villain, or something more complicated than either of those options? Carrie is now streaming on Prime Video.

• 22:58Dan Harris?

  One of the knocks, and I think this is a fair critique of Western Buddhism, is it is too focused on the individual, either shooting for enlightenment or just plain old stress reduction. I have nothing negative to say about stress reduction or enlightenment, but if that's all you're focused on in a kind of solipsistic, individualistic way, it is missing a lot of what the Buddha intended to teach. You talk about using mindfulness to improve your relational fitness. There's also, of course, loving-kindness meditation, and just for the uninitiated, that's the practice where you sit, close your eyes, bring

• 23:40Dan Harris?

  to mind a series of beings, either envision them or generate some sort of felt sense in your body, and then you hurl phrases at them like, "May you be happy, may you be safe, live with ease," et cetera, et cetera. I'm being slightly tongue-in-cheek here. I've noticed just doing this practice at a reasonably high dosage for the last decade has just overall warmed me up. I often joke about how my factory settings are firmly at the frosty New Englander, and just doing the practice has boosted my friendliness quotient significantly. But adding my wife into the rotation has just boosted my warmth toward

• 24:23Dan Harris?

  her. And yeah, I just wonder what you think of this as a tactic.

• 24:28Speaker 01

  So good, so good. And I think we love teaching Metta. We love teaching all of these different heart practices, but actually, they're fairly advanced. You know, the ability to imagine our close ones and then to feel, generate these feelings, and then to offer phrases. What I find, offering them for beginners, is like, they need some basic, like, what does friendliness feel like, you know? And so I would say maybe what we're doing here is like, very, like, step number one, like, tiny little, like, practices for learning how to listen and feel that friendliness for us, you know, that curiosity of like, I want to know what's here. And then same thing, if we can just imagine another person and

• 25:10Speaker 01

  who they are and how they are in the world right now. That's kind of the preliminaries for then the Metta phrases and the Metta practice that you're naming. So, we love teaching all these different kinds of Metta, but I think the phrases in particular are like, take a lot of concentration and a lot of training to really get into. In the book, we do kind of like compassion, joy, or equanimity. You can look at your person through all these different glasses, right? You can really contemplate their suffering and get into the compassion side of it. Or we have a whole chapter on joy. You can think about this person and all of their strengths, right? What you love about them, what you celebrate about them, and often we forget to do that. So that feels like a pretty subversive practice

• 25:53Speaker 01

  in itself, to be like, oh yeah, I chose you for all these reasons, and then to celebrate that. And then same thing with equanimity, you know, really taking the whole person in, the strengths, the weaknesses, what really ticks me off, what I love about you. There's a kind of equanimity of like, yeah, and I'm in it with you, right? I'm here for it, that helps us kind of commit to that steady balance that is equanimity and connection. So I think, I love that you're bringing in the Brahma Vihara's, and I think these are all kind of like, little ways that we can scaffold in our heart practice so that it becomes like, yes, daily, you know, we can really build those muscles over time.

• 26:31Dan Harris?

  Yeah, I want to, let's, let's go deep on this, on the subject of joy, because I know you, you have a lot to say. For anybody who doesn't know what the Brahma Vihara's are, you know, Devin just talked about this, but I want to make sure it's super, super clear. Metta, or often translated as loving-kindness, that's, that can be practiced in the way that I just described earlier, where you envision a series of people and then send them these phrases like, "May you be happy," et cetera, et cetera. So, that's one of the Brahma Vihara's. That's the ancient term for four interrelated mind states that all can be trained through various forms of meditation. Brahma Vihara's translates into the divine

• 27:13Dan Harris?

  abodes. That sounds kind of grandiose and maybe out of reach, but essentially, these are innate capacities we all have that can be trained. So one of them is loving-kindness. I prefer to translate Metta, which is the ancient term, not as loving-kindness, but as friendliness, because that is actually, I believe, more accurate, and also just less gooey. The other three Brahma Vihara's are equanimity, which is just the ability to be with whatever and whoever is in front of you with some evenness. A third is compassion, which is the, and equanimity is very helpful in this regard, to be able to approach other

• 27:57Dan Harris?

  people's suffering with the attitude of, how can I help? And fourth, and these are not really in any particular order, but the fourth is sympathetic joy, or just the opposite of schadenfreude, the ability to take pleasure in other people's happiness. That lands us nicely on joy, which you brought up, Devin, so I'm just going to go with, with the flow on this. And Nico, I'll, I'll turn to you. I believe one of the arguments you're making in the book is that joy is not frivolous. It's not like an extra or a nice-to-have.

• 28:32Speaker 02

  100%. And we also say in the book, we're not great at that as a couple, you know? So it's been a real training for us to prioritize joy. And I think we joke in the book that we had, you know, three main things that we were really focused on for the first 18 years of our relationship. And the first one was get enlightened. The second one was find some way to make a living. And the third, way, way, way, way, way down on the list somewhere, was have some fun. And what we have noticed over the last couple of years

• 29:09Speaker 02

  is that we need to bring that fun, that shared joy, up the list a lot more. Now, what's interesting is that in true Buddhist fashion, in the book, we start our joy chapter by contemplating death.

• 29:29Speaker 02

  And I'll just give you an example. So Devon teaches at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in California, which is a very beautiful campus and beautiful buildings. And in the teacher village, each one of the rooms is made for one person. They're not expecting you to bring your partner along. But often I go with her to Spirit Rock and maybe I'm doing some teaching in California, too. And I'm hanging out in this room that is smaller than your average motel room. And I am a minimalist. When I travel, I travel with a small carry on, three pairs of pants, three shirts, not much else.

• 30:13Dan Harris?

  No underwear. You're just, you're just like commando all the time. Yeah.

• 30:24Speaker 02

  Devon is a maximalist.

• 30:27Speaker 01

  I definitely have all the underwear.

• 30:30Speaker 02

  She travels with this giant bag full of goodies. So one day, actually in the middle of writing this book, I had been in a writing session down in the offices at Spirit Rock. I came into the room that we were sharing. Devon was off giving a talk and I walked into the room and everywhere I looked was Devon's stuff. Like, the bathroom was filled with all these, I don't even know, cosmetics and creams and all these things. And there was a blender. There was literally a blender on the desk that she had carried with her. Papers everywhere. She's very neat, actually, but like clothes hanging from all these different places because there's not enough room in the closet. And I had

• 31:14Speaker 02

  this moment of irritation. Like, where am I even supposed to be here? And then, very quickly, on the heels of that moment of irritation, I remembered that we're gonna die. It sounds really strange, but in that moment of, oh, wow, what would it be like if I walked into this room and none of Devon's stuff was here? Because I don't know how much time I have in this life. I don't know how much time Devon has in this life. I

• 31:54Speaker 02

  don't know how long our connection will last. But one thing I know absolutely for sure

• 32:03Speaker 02

  is that it won't last forever. And in that moment of recognizing, just remembering, oh my gosh, we're going to die. It was like magic. All of my irritation kind of like popped like a bubble. And that kind of insight is really helpful for the strange, small things that annoy you about your partner. It requires the practice of remembering impermanence. And this is something we talk about in the final chapter of the book. We call it, "Death is the mother of beauty," which is a phrase that we're picking up from the poet Wallace

• 32:43Speaker 02

  Stevens. If you remember that everything is changing, if you remember that everything is not going to last, there's this kind of poignancy that brings you more intimacy, it brings you closer to the moment. And this is true in partnership, but this is very true in all of our relationships. My parents are now in their 80s. And I have wonderful parents, but sometimes, like every relationship, they do get on my nerves. If I can remember in those moments, well, I really don't know how much time we have together. It doesn't matter that they said the wrong thing, did the wrong thing, have certain personality

• 33:26Speaker 02

  quirks that I find challenging. And this is true for all of our relationships. So I think cultivating the awareness of impermanence, and in particularly remembering how short this life is, is not only a very, very, very Buddhist way to approach these things, it's also seriously effective for not sweating the small stuff.

• 33:52Dan Harris?

  Buddhists really know how to party. I put myself in the category. I think I do the five daily remembrances, you know, twice a day. I should explain what that is for people who are new to this. I've talked about it before on the show, just remembering twice a day, the five things, you know, this body is of the nature to grow old, this body is of the nature to get sick, this body is of the nature to die, I'm someday, this is the harsh one, I'm someday gonna lose everything and everyone I hold dear. And then finally, as our mutual friend Vinnie Ferraro says on the fifth remembrance, the Buddha kind of pulls the knife out. You know, the fifth thing to remember is that in this context of perpetual change, the only, the closest thing I have to real possessions are my actions.

• 34:37Dan Harris?

  And I think, actually, now that I'm saying these five remembrances aloud, that fifth remembrance in particular, seems like a real relationship takeaway.

• 34:49Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think this also is very subtle and complex, though, because another way that we try to address some of these misunderstandings, it's like, I think Dharma culture, given, you know, our contemplations of death, our work on the heart practices, our emphasis on kindness and patience and skillful speech, sometimes we can get a little conflict avoidant. And there's this kind of super ego identity that can come through Buddhist, Buddhist practice, where it's like, a good practitioner, a good Buddhist, wouldn't actually be having conflict in their intimate relationships and their friendships and at work, right? Like, a good Buddhist would be patient all

• 35:32Speaker 01

  the time. And there's different ways in the book we address this, but I do think this is a big shadow side of like, we're really trying to cultivate goodness, we're trying to do the right thing, we're taking responsibility for our actions, our karma. And I think it can lead to some overly simplified ideas about what long-term healthy relationship looks like, which we want to give conflict a good, big place in long-term healthy relationships. So we have a whole section, we call it rupture like a pro, because we want to bring in some of those skills in terms of normalizing conflict and then knowing this is also part of dukkha, and we don't want to waste it. So how do we do that skillfully?

• 36:13Dan Harris?

  I think this is so important. I want to hear a lot more. I've had guests on the show have talked about the difference between high conflict, which is what many of us engage in, where the ego gets involved and we get, you know, we dig trenches and fireshots from those trenches at the other person. And you see this in our politics in particular. And by contrast, healthy conflict, which is, which recognizes that, of course, there's, there's, it's inevitable when you're in a relationship with anybody, that there will be disagreement, but how are you going to manage it skillfully? And, and I believe there's, there's evidence, research to suggest that people who know how to engage in healthy

• 36:57Dan Harris?

  conflict are much happier. So with that framing, Devon, you brought up rupturing like a pro in the, in the context of rupture and repair, which is a commonly used phrase in psychological circles. How does one rupture like a pro?

• 37:14Speaker 01

  So there's lots of ways to talk about it, but I'll maybe give you an example of one of our biggest conflicts. This is also, it was very, you know, transparent, the way that we tell our stories, just trying to normalize. Like, we've been together for 20 years, we've been practicing for a couple decades, you know, or more. And still, this is what we do. So we, starting in 2019, we actually engaged in a non-traditional three year retreat guided by our Tibetan teachers. And that's a whole story in itself. But we were basically in solitude for those three years, working still a little bit, but definitely not seeing a lot of our friends or, you know, not traveling at all in that, in that period.

• 37:55Speaker 01

  And so this was now, we came out about three years ago. And the first thing we did was we bought a van. And this was kind of a life dream. Like, we're very nomadic. We thought it'd be great. Our van was kind of like our dream home. And we just figured, we set up all of these different teaching events and we got to go see our friends, you know, visiting around the country. And the very first place we went was Canada, because our, one of our teachers, our lamas, lives in Vancouver. And we had also gotten this handwritten letter, like dropped out of the sky in the middle of our retreat, from a benefactor offering us retreat land on Salt Spring Island. And it sounded ideal. It was like waterfront property. She's like, I want to help build this whole community, a retreat center. And

• 38:40Speaker 01

  so we thought, coming on a retreat, like, maybe this will be our next big thing. So we took our van up to Salt Spring. And we'd never been there before. And because it was a handwritten letter, this donor just gave us like latitude and longitude. She didn't even give us like an address. And she also said, you can't access it by road, it's a trail. So you basically have to like, go to this particular point on the waterfront on the other side of Salt Spring Island, and then walk to get there. So we're pretty, we're at a retreat, we're like fresh, we're confident, we've got our van, we're like, we're gonna go. So we get out the ferry, we're driving this huge van through like an idyllic little town, the ferry landing. And then the GPS, we could see on the map,

• 39:24Speaker 01

  the latitude and longitude was on the other side of the island. So basically, we just have to like, drive across the island, is what we thought. But pretty soon, the road gets very steep. And our van, all of our new possessions are rattling around in the van. And I'm very anxious, Nico's driving. And I say, maybe we should slow down a little bit. And he's like, if I slow down, we will not make it over this mountain. So he's gunning it. We're doing this like, kind of fishtailing a little bit. There's these like, switchback turns. We get up over the mountain. It's pretty steep on the other side, too. So we're like, kind of just gingerly going down, there's switchbacks. And then it looks like there's a straight shot, very steep, steep and narrow. The road gets very straight, heads right

• 40:06Speaker 01

  to this parking lot at the ocean. It's what it looked like. So we're like, great, we're just gonna head right there and then find the trail. But we end up finding this road just dead ends. There's no parking lot. It's just, we're sitting there, looking out over the open ocean, 20 feet above on a cliff. So I'm pretty anxious, got a lot of adrenaline going at that time. I was like, What do we do? We're stuck, right? We can't back up. It's too steep. We're just kind of new driving this van, this 20-foot-long van. And it's a cliff. And Nico, this is how he does, does that stress? He gets very calm. He says to me, oh, don't worry, we're fine. I'm just gonna swing a little K-turn. It's gonna be no problem.

• 40:50Speaker 01

  So, very confident. And I say to him, I don't think there's room to swing a K-turn. He was like, no, no, I'm just gonna drive up the cliff a little bit. You know, back it up, drive it up, back it up. So he starts, he starts driving up the one side and then backing up. And we can hear and we can see the camera. It's like beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. Really like, there's like red lights going on. And then we hear the back wheels drop off the edge of the cliff. They're new van. And at that point, you might think, like a good Buddhist, like me, would be like, I forgive you, I'm patient, it's okay. But in the moment, of course, that's not what I did. I was like, some expletives, I'm having a panic attack.

• 41:34Speaker 01

  I'm gonna get out of the car. I need some space. I'm gonna go for a walk. And to his credit, Nico was like, I get it. That's kind of my bad. I'm gonna call AAA. He was like, go take a break. I'm calling AAA. So it took us some time to actually resolve what had just happened, right? My beloved life partner had just almost driven our van over the side of a cliff. I was mad. I was mad about it. And so my practice in that moment was like, this is not good, right? Like, I need some space here. And he, I mean, luckily, the Canadian AAA are amazing. We have a video, actually, we could show you of them like pulling the van. It almost tipped, but it did not.

• 42:19Speaker 01

  Pulling it back, getting it turned around. So in that, you can kind of see, I mean, Nico and I are what we call volcanoes. There's different conflict styles which we can go through. That is kind of like refining what our knee-jerk reaction is to conflict. Do we explode? Do we get into it? That's volcanoes. Diplomats practice a lot of diplomacy. So if you have a diplomat conflict style, you're really into talking things out. And then the third conflict style is what we call dodgers. So dodgers dodge, right? They don't really like conflict. They know how to take space. So there's these different, like, you know, whether it's family conditioning or personality style, we have these different automatic reactions

• 43:04Speaker 01

  that we get into with conflict. None of them are better or worse than any other. And this is another kind of dismantling of a Buddhist idea. Because I think Buddhists might think, oh, it's about being really kind all the time or not really getting into conflict. But volcanoes exploding sometimes, that can be very dharmic, too. It's about understanding our conflict style and then training in the learning edge. Like, what new skill do I need to bring so that I can balance out my conflict style with whoever's in front of me?

• 43:36Dan Harris?

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• 44:18Dan Harris?

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• 46:09Dan Harris?

  That was all very interesting. I'm kind of stuck on the three-year retreat. And I'm, I'm just channeling. I often joke that I have this supernatural capacity to channel the, the thoughts of my listeners and viewers. I can imagine somebody watching or listening, thinking, wait, these guys did a three-year retreat.

• 46:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:35Dan Harris?

  Something I will never do.

• 46:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:38Dan Harris?

  And yet Nico retained the capacity to do some very stupid shit with his van. And Devin retained the capacity to panic and get pissed off about it. And so if I'm never gonna do a three-year retreat and these guys are still acting like dummies, what hope is there for me?

• 46:57Speaker 02

  This is an excellent question, Dan. It is, first of all, extremely true that despite having done tens of thousands of hours of meditation and literally years of meditation retreat, we both act like dummies at times. It's not only true for us, we now know essentially, I mean, we know many, many, many senior meditation teachers who have been practicing for decades, who are rightfully revered in their field, who sometimes act like total dummies. This is a fact. I'm so sorry to disappoint all of our listeners,

• 47:39Speaker 02

  but it turns out that meditation does not make you perfect. It actually just makes you even more human. And so the depth that you gain through meditation is not becoming some shining light who never makes mistakes, who never gets upset. But it makes you very much at ease with being imperfect, kind of silly sometimes. And that can make you very at ease with other people being imperfect and kind of silly sometimes. And the second thing I think that meditation does very, very well

• 48:23Speaker 02

  is help you bounce back from difficulty. So yes, Devin did have some panic and yes, Devin did have some anger. But 20 minutes later, she didn't have panic and she didn't have anger, right? And in that moment, yes, actually Devin just downplayed what I did. It was way dumber than what she just said. But, you know, in that moment of having driven our van most of the way off a cliff where it was teetering on the edge of the ocean, 20 feet above the ocean, I think it probably helped that I'd done all these many hours of meditation. I just felt like, oh, well, I'm an idiot. This was one of the dumber things I've ever done in my life, so now... What will we do next?

• 49:08Speaker 02

  So the fruits of meditation are real. Like, it is so useful to have done so much meditation, but they're not really necessarily what you would expect.

• 49:20Speaker 01

  It's humbling. I mean, isn't it? It's so humbling to just get to know your mind so well. And I think, you know, this three-year retreat is a whole story. We dreamed about it for years and years and saved up and had all these plans. And my sense is, we always talked about writing a book, you know, that would be about our retreat. And I thought it would be about esoteric wisdom shared from the mountaintop, right? Like, all the ways we got enlightened. And this, this is our product. Our humble product was how we learned to live together through those years. We got kind of sticky. There were stuff that we had to work out, you know, in retreat together. But we really did have like a deep training in how to be a human being.

• 50:04Speaker 01

  And that's what we're writing about here. It's like all the stuff we discovered about each other, also about being in relationship as a relational being, and then how we use that to get enlightened, which is not what we expected it would be.

• 50:18Dan Harris?

  So you feel like you did get enlightened?

• 50:21Speaker 01

  It might be a verb. I feel like now I have a lot of confidence in how it works. Like, it feels freer. You know, there's more spaciousness. Still, a lot of dumbness, stupidity, mistakes, for sure. But the attitude about them, like, I have a sense if we just keep going in this attitude of spaciousness, of like grace, of friendliness for ourselves and others, I could see by inference where it goes to. So it's certainly not arrived in any way, like, but it's baby steps. And I can really feel a lot of confidence, like, okay, if it just keeps going this way, that's, I think, what the Buddha is talking about in terms of freedom.

• 51:00Dan Harris?

  Spaciousness is an interesting word because it gets used a lot in Buddhist circles. And I worry that people aren't going to know what it means. But I understand spaciousness to be, just if I'm channeling you, Devin, in the moment when your husband's being a ferocious dumbass with your new van,

• 51:21Dan Harris?

  you, you experience anger, you experience panic, but you're actually, you have some ability to watch it come and go. And so that's the space around it. Instead of being totally engulfed by the emotion, you're like, I sometimes describe it as the difference between being dragged by your head by a motorboat as opposed to being on water skis. And the latter would be spaciousness. How am I doing? Am I in the right neighborhood of what you're trying to describe?

• 51:56Speaker 01

  I love that. That's a great metaphor. I love the water metaphors. The one I use a lot is like, I'm an amateur surfer. And so like, getting all churned about by the waves sucks, right? Like, that's when we're completely in the turn and the push and the pull and the reactivity, and there's no control. But if we are learning how to stay on our board, you know, how to like stay with some balance, understand the rhythm of the waves, that's exactly what we're talking about. I mean, in the first, first chapter, I tell the story about how I was also kind of dumb. Also, on our van trip, same like kind of season, we were staying with friends. We were super tired. We were teaching way too much. And we were in Vermont at peak season for pictures. So we had to take these like headshots, right, for our new website.

• 52:40Speaker 01

  And I was really grumpy. I did not want to take these pictures. And we got into a whole tangle about it because Nico's like, we gotta have the headshots. It's a perfect day. Our friend Isabella is this excellent photographer. And I just felt like a big old hot mess. And I said, no, I'm not going to do them. And we had this argument. But in the middle of that, I could see, this is what I mean by spaciousness. There was some space between what was happening in the fight and my observation of it. Like, I could see, oh, I'm just making all these kind of dumb choices along the way. But at any moment, I could actually turn. I could make that turn. And I did. I said, okay, let's pause, right? Without too much time going by, we paused together.

• 53:24Speaker 01

  And that was the turn that mattered, right? We were able to then breathe together a bit, didn't take too long to recognize what was happening, was I was just really tired. And when I named that and apologized for some of my moodiness, we were able to settle. And then, of course, we did the photos anyway. And that's actually what's all over the internet, those like glowing photos that we took that day. It was like preceded by a big old, you know, argument, conflict. So I think you're right on. I think what I mean by space is like, there's a little bit of ability to see with more perspective what's going on, and then agency to choose differently. The more we understand what's happening, we can make a different turn, make a different choice.

• 54:07Dan Harris?

  You don't have to apologize for being booty. I'm sure Nico was in the, in, you know, at fault here. He probably wasn't even wearing underwear, so don't worry.

• 54:16Speaker 01

  He probably wasn't. You're right, Dan.

• 54:18Speaker 02

  I mean, that's half the problem.

• 54:19Speaker 01

  All through that retreat.

• 54:20Dan Harris?

  Exactly. That's spaciousness. So, sorry.

• 54:27Dan Harris?

  I'm glad I'm no longer regulated by the FCC on this program.

• 54:34Dan Harris?

  I kind of knocked you off trajectory a couple of times here. Several minutes ago, you, Devin, were talking about how we can know our conflict style and use that to our advantage. So Nico, do you want to say a little bit more about how to do that?

• 54:53Speaker 02

  This has been so helpful for us. So Devin already named these, but I'll go through them again a little more slowly. There are three conflict styles. And this is us drawing from the work of John Gottman and then kind of making it our own. So the first conflict style we call volcanoes. Volcanoes explode. That is the nature of being a volcano. The great thing about volcanoes is you never have to wonder what they're thinking. Devin is kind of a volcano, and it's great. She will always tell me what she's thinking, sometimes in a loud voice, right? I'm also a volcano.

• 55:37Speaker 02

  I will always tell you what I'm thinking. The disadvantage of being a volcano is that it creates rupture sometimes. And so if you are a volcano, you need to get really good at repair. The art of the apology. So the second kind of conflict style is we call diplomats. There are a lot of diplomats in Buddhist culture. Those are the people that you know that have taken the nonviolent communication course, and they've taken like insight dialogue, or they're doing some kind of check-in practice, or they just, diplomats are really good at talking through conflict and using all of their skills.

• 56:20Speaker 02

  The problem with diplomats is that they can talk until the cows come home, and it gets so exhausting after a while. And what diplomats need to learn to balance out their strength is to let it go. Like, we've talked about it enough. We don't need to get to the bottom of every single thing tonight. We can leave something for later, right? And then there's the Dodgers, and the Dodgers dodge, right? So they're the one, these are the ones that avoid conflict. Dodgers kind of disappear. Like, they may even stay in the room with you, but you have the sense that they're not there anymore.

• 57:01Speaker 02

  Or they will actively physically leave the room rather than engage in conflict. And there's a lot of wisdom to being a Dodger, to knowing when it's just not the right time to have this conversation. What Dodgers could learn is to come back and to make sure that they address all of the issues that need to be addressed, or else a lot just gets swept under the rug. And friends, partners, coworkers can end up with this sort of simmering resentment and this lack of intimacy. So each one of these three conflict styles has their own strength, has their own weakness.

• 57:46Speaker 02

  And the most important thing is probably to not try to change your conflict style. There's so much pressure on us to try to change our conflict style, but it really, it doesn't work that well. And also, it doesn't work that well to try to change my friend's conflict style, or my family's conflict style. What works a lot better is to just notice, oh, well, this person is a dodger. So they're going to dodge. How can I work skillfully with this person who is a dodger? Or knowing, okay, well, I'm a diplomat and I've got strengths as a diplomat, but it's not necessarily the only way to do things, or even the best way to do

• 58:30Speaker 02

  things. So just knowing these categories and being able to lightly, sort of non neurotically, place ourselves and others in these categories of how we approach conflict is really enlightening for how we can stay close and intimate, even though we have differences.

• 58:50Dan Harris?

  If you're working with or in a relationship, a romantic relationship with somebody who's conflict avoidant, how do you handle that?

• 58:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, I would say tread carefully. So the thing with dodgers is that they get, they get scared pretty easily and they kind of shuffle away. So you probably need to let them shuffle away to some extent. And it depends on the level of intimacy, how you are going to engage with them. So if you're in a partnership with somebody who is a dodger, then you're going to have lots of opportunities for when they come back. And a soft approach, like a soft entry into the next conversation, so that they feel secure and they feel okay and they feel safe is probably going to be really useful. With a coworker, there's less intimacy, probably than with a partner. So you're going to have less opportunity

• 59:42Speaker 02

  to really be deeply honest. I mean, this is one of the things that we talk about all the time is that in sort of human potential movement, culture, or wellness culture, there's this idea that we should be honest with everybody all the time, no matter what. And I don't think that's really very functional. But basically, understanding another person's conflict avoidance can help you navigate that conflict avoidance. So coming in a little softer is usually the first step.

• 1:00:15Speaker 01

  And I think, you know, these other practices we're offering, like the three listenings, we have a partner practice, relational practice, we offer called checking in, which is just what it sounds like, seems really simple. We've probably all done them, maybe even in work meetings, or, you know, it's basically just agreeing to take time to share what's going on and doing it in a kind of more formatted way. So you have a timer and you kind of take turns checking in. That can be a way for somebody who's conflict avoidant to feel safe enough to kind of name what's going on for them, without it heading into a big fiery thing. Because there's agreements about how you're going to listen, you're not going to interrupt them, right? You might not even comment on what they say. So also

• 1:00:57Speaker 01

  rain, we talk about rain. I know you've had Tara on the podcast. We do her version of rain, which is a really beautiful meditation for working with emotions. So the rain, it's an acronym for recognize, allow, investigate, and nurture. You can do it journaling. You can do it as a mindfulness meditation. But you can also do partner rain, which is sort of Tara's innovation. And then we just discovered this in our retreat, actually, and did it daily. And it was such a helpful way to kind of be in relationship while we're recognizing our feelings, allowing our feelings, you know, kind of together in that. So I think for conflict avoidance, there's softer ways, like Nico saying, to use

• 1:01:39Speaker 01

  these tools, you invite them into some communication without it being too scary.

• 1:01:43Dan Harris?

  The Tara in question here is Tara Brock, just, and I'll drop some links in the show notes to the many times that Tara's been on the show. There's a term you use, patience with teeth. What does that mean?

• 1:01:55Speaker 01

  Maybe I'll start, and then maybe you can add some, Nico. I think this is, again, we're talking about some of the shadow sides of Dharma, of Buddhist culture. And so I think the chapter is actually, it's called Patience is for Amateurs. We can get into this thing called, we call it the trance of nice, which really comes from my own experiences, like as a people pleaser, you know, and I loved all those teachings on the beautiful qualities that we cultivate in meditation. We cultivate this kindness that we've been talking about. We cultivate patience. We cultivate a kind of selflessness. You know, there's this kind of encouragement to foster all of these qualities without understanding that true patience, I

• 1:02:37Speaker 01

  think, in the Buddhist context, actually has a kind of ferocity to it. So it's not a trance of nice. It's not a passive, like this too shall pass, I'm just going to hang out and wait for my partner to get over their anger, right? A little bit like the, you named in the beginning, we have all these conflicts and sometimes we just double down and we just like live through them, which is a kind of waste of dukkha. That's the kind of dumb patience that we're talking about, patience that's for amateurs. But patience with teeth, it's a little bit like what we were practicing in the van episode. It's like, I'm in it with you. I can be patient with my own anger, right? Nico's okay with that I'm having a panic attack. He's like in it. He's going to call AAA. We're having this big

• 1:03:22Speaker 01

  altercation and we're in it. We're not collapsing. We're not like character assassinating. We're not like doing the good Buddhist thing, leaping to apologize. We're being real with each other. And that's a lot of like that honesty, that kind of getting real is what this book is about. Like, let's not gloss over in some Buddhist super ego kind of way, that I'm like always a patient person. Sometimes I'm not. But patience with teeth knows that and can be with impatience, right? It can be with all of my own foibles. It can be with all of my partner's difficulties. And I'm not actually using the practice as a subtle form of violence, or a subtle form of like, I'm just going to wait this out until, you know, goes under the rug, or something changes. So it's another

• 1:04:07Speaker 01

  way, I think, to talk about Joseph's saying of not wasting our suffering, like being really honest about it and being willing to be uncomfortable for as long as it takes, because that's what intimacy really looks like.

• 1:04:20Dan Harris?

  More to say on that, Nico?

• 1:04:21Speaker 02

  I thought that was so beautifully said. No more to say.

• 1:04:24Dan Harris?

  It's a great term, and it was well, well described. Thank you. Let me just go one click deeper, though, on patience with teeth. When you're in a conflict and you want to, both, you know, have some compassion and equanimity and friendliness and kindness toward the person you're in conflict with, and you want to have some self-respect and stand up for yourself, how do you speak clearly without being overly volcanic and without being avoidant?

• 1:05:01Speaker 02

  Well, you're pointing to something that is extremely important to us, that we call walking the high wire, which we talk about in depth in the book. And there's a whole story around it. But walking the high wire is basically, if you imagine yourself as an acrobat on a high wire, walking, you, you would maybe think that a really professional acrobat who's walking a high wire is just in balance. But actually, if you talk to somebody who does this for a living, who's a professional acrobat, what they will tell you is that they are constantly coming into balance, that walking that high wire, they're falling a little to

• 1:05:46Speaker 02

  the left and then they're coming back. They're falling a little to the right and then they're coming back. And the continuous process of coming into balance is what the middle way looks like, right? The middle way being one of these really important Buddhist terms of not falling too far into, say, self indulgence, or not falling too far into self denial. But you're continually falling a little bit into self indulgence, or a little bit into self denial. And then you're noticing it and you're coming back and you're noticing it and you're coming back. And this brings us right back to the beginning of our conversation around that deep listening. So your body will often tell

• 1:06:28Speaker 02

  you what is true. If you can really deeply learn to listen to your own nervous system, to your own body, your own heart, your own mind, you can notice like, oh, I'm starting to drift into self righteousness. I'm just getting caught up in my own perspective. I just have my own idea. It'll feel tense and uncomfortable in your body when you drift in that direction. Likewise, if you fall, you find yourself falling into a kind of self-effacement, "I don't matter, my needs aren't important," you, if you're paying attention, you're going to feel that physically. There is a contraction that happens around that, you know, self-denial.

• 1:07:12Speaker 02

  So, so much of the key of this is learning to pay attention physically, to listen deeply to what is happening in your own body, at your own heart, your own mind, and then come back into balance, come back into balance, and then come back into balance again.

• 1:07:29Speaker 01

  And I would say also, like, this principle of the middle way is another one of these deep Dharma concepts, so brilliant, that I think has a lot of potential for applying to daily life relationships, right? How does the middle way feel, as Nico's saying, in the body? And also, understanding, like, it's always a negotiation, you know? I loved, actually, the episode of you and Bianca, you know, you guys talking about your relationship together was like, yeah, there's knowing each other so deeply, you know each other's needs, but you also know your idiosyncrasies, the ways that we're not well-matched, you know? And in some ways, maybe enlightenment in this sense, the middle way is like, knowing all those things and having a sense of humor about it. Like, yeah, I have a tendency to

• 1:08:13Speaker 01

  be kind of a princess sometimes. It's true, right? Like, I'm a maximalist. It's taken years of training to admit that, because I'm also a Buddhist. But, you know, we have to kind of match our different styles. I prefer to live in a small town. Nico is urban. He wants to live in a city. Like, how do we compromise on that? It's this, it is walking this high wire. And we use the example of Philippe Petit, who trained to walk the, between the Twin Towers, the 1970s, amazing feat. But he trained for thousands of hours, tens of thousands of hours, to get that middle way right. And I think that's what we're doing too, in any of our relationships, is like, coming into balance, negotiating, compromising a lot. Like, that's what the middle way feels like, when it's in the nitty-gritty of our

• 1:08:57Speaker 01

  daily life. This applies to parenting, this applies to caregiving, to leading teams at work, to being a good colleague. I think it's all about this, kind of finding the middle ground, knowing what our needs, my needs are, what the other person's needs are, understanding they might not always match. And so, how do we find each other in the middle there?

• 1:09:15Dan Harris?

  I love all of that. And, but let me, let me just keep picking at the

• 1:09:20Speaker 02

  Please do.

• 1:09:21Dan Harris?

  the practical expression of walking the high wire in a moment of conflict, again, colleague, kid, spouse, whatever. Are you saying, look, you can listen, learn to listen to your body and to whatever signals you can pick up from the other person, and in between, you know, the, the state of the relationship, to get a sense of when to say what?

• 1:09:51Speaker 02

  Yes, that's exactly what we're saying. So, I'll give you an example from a student of mine, who recently came to the workshop, has this big conflict at work, and she was using all these principles, not with her partner, but with her colleague at work. And what she noticed during the workshop was that she was so charged up, and she was so defensive, that what, her only real intention, when she was honest with herself, was to convince him of how right she was. And, and the, the deep assumption was that if she

• 1:10:31Speaker 02

  could just convince him how right she was, then their relationship would smooth out, and they'd be able to work together, and things would be great. So, in that particular circumstance, she is drifting in the direction of, let's call it self-righteousness, in which she needed to understand for herself, this is not me saying what she needed to understand, this is her report of what she needed to understand, was how caught she was in her own perspective. And when she could listen to him in her own mind, just in meditation in the workshop, and she could see his perspective, and where he was sitting,

• 1:11:14Speaker 02

  and what his values are, and what he wanted from the situation, she was actually able to give him a lot of that. Like, he's not wrong. Let, what if I give a little here, and give a little here, and give a little here? When she did that on Monday, they had a completely different kind of conversation, and they were able to work with each other much more skillfully, much more smoothly. But there could be another example, when you went totally the other direction, where you're like, I'm not lost in my perspective, I'm just letting you say and do whatever you want, trample all over me, I'm a Buddhist doormat, I don't matter. And then it would be listening to yourself, and listening to

• 1:11:59Speaker 02

  the other, and then you probably are going to have to come to that conversation quite differently, where you begin to offer your perspective, where you begin to talk about what you are seeing in this situation, and what you think is needed here. So, it all depends on which side you are drifting toward in any one moment, and you're probably drifting toward different sides, depending on the moment, depending on the relationship, depending on what is happening. So, the way through is to pay granular, close attention, first to your own body, which is going to give you so much information, and then also to the other, and to the situation. That's where wisdom comes from.

• 1:12:43Dan Harris?

  To this point of being able to tap into other people's perspectives. I have an 11-year-old son, and sometimes he amazes me with his simultaneous capacity to be a total dumbass, and to be really brilliant and precocious. And this is a story of the latter. He taught me a new word recently, I guess he picked this up from some YouTube video, sonder, S-O-N-D-E-R. It is the realization that other people's lives are as vivid as your own. And this is so important, and for an 11-year-old to be able to grok this is really

• 1:13:23Dan Harris?

  impressive. But we, we're all in our own movies. And I think relating successfully to other people is to understand that they're, they've got, as, as the kids say, main character energy, the way we all do, because we're, we are the protagonists of our own movie, and it's very hard to break out of that. But if you can, even for a minute, just glimpse that other people have their own story, it just opens up a whole world of successful relationships and increased happiness that would otherwise be unavailable. Agree or disagree?

• 1:14:05Speaker 01

  So beautiful. I love knowing that word, Dan. We're going to use it now, maybe. Because I think, in some ways, that is the fruition of all this loving-kindness practice, all the heart practices that we named, those four qualities. That's what these practices allow us to do, is to kind of get out of our own story, and then have the perspective, have the sort of altruistic, and also the empathy, the interest, the curiosity, to have even like, a little sliver of experience of what it might be like in another person's movie. And if you can imagine what a gift that is to any connection that we're growing, like, I want to be in a relationship with people like that.

• 1:14:48Dan Harris?

  Devin and Nico, how's it? Always a pleasure to talk to you. Your first book, and I'll, I'll drop a link to this conversation in the show notes. Your first, your first book is How Not to Be a Hot Mess, and you came on this show back in 2020 to talk about that. And your new book is called This Messy Gorgeous Love: A Buddhist Guide to Lasting Partnerships. Yeah, thank you both for coming on the show. Great job today.

• 1:15:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, so good to be with you.

• 1:15:18Speaker 01

  What a delight, Dan. Thank you so much.

• 1:15:21Dan Harris?

  Yes, and just to say, for listeners, Devin will be teacher of the month on, on the 10% with Dan Harris meditation app, coming up in October. So, much more from Devin. Nico, we're excluding you.

• 1:15:33Speaker 02

  Well, thank you for telling me upfront.

• 1:15:37Speaker 01

  Very honest. We're getting real.

• 1:15:39Dan Harris?

  That's how we find joy. Thank you very much for listening to the show. I really appreciate it. And if you enjoy listening to the show, if you get anything out of it, please do me a solid, leave a rating or a review. I know every podcast host asks for this, but it really makes a difference. It helps boost the visibility of this show. We view this show as a mission to help people become nodes of sanity in an insane world. And so, by taking a minute and giving the show a rating or a review, you're really helping us out and helping us achieve our mission. Thank you again. And now, on to the credits. Thank you so much to everybody who worked so hard to make this show. 10%

• 1:16:22Dan Harris?

  Happier is produced by Tara Anderson, Marissa Schneiderman, DJ Cashmere, David Hart, and Hayden Broome. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People, and Nick Thorburn of the indie rock band Islands wrote our theme. Thank you for listening. Peace. You're listening to this podcast, so I know you've got a curious mind. Here's a helpful fact you might not know yet. Drivers who switch and save with Progressive save over $900 on average. Pop over to progressive.com, answer some questions, and you'll get a quick quote with discounts that are easy to come by. In fact, 99% of their auto customers earn at least one discount. Visit progressive.com and see if you can enjoy a little cash back. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. National average 12-month

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