How to Catch Unhelpful Thoughts Before They Take Over with Bhikkhu Bodhi | Staff Picks

We're bringing you some of our favorite gems from the archives, as chosen by our staff. This week, we're hearing from Buddhist scholar and teacher Bhikkhu Bodhi, as chosen by Tara Anderson, one of our podcast producers. We're getting a little meta today, as Dan and his guest talk about paying attention to what your own mind is doing. Full Episode: The Mental States That Steal Your Calm | Bhikkhu Bodhi https://www.danharris.com/p/the-mental-states-that-steal-your-66d?utm_source=publication-search Join Dan's online community 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.

• 0:04Dan Harris?

  This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris.

• 0:18Dan Harris?

  Hey, happy Friday to you. All this month on Fridays, we are highlighting some of our favorite moments from past episodes as selected by members of the team here at 10% Happier. I have wanted to call this feature a staff infection, but my staff doesn't think that's funny. I think it's funny. Anyway, last week, you heard a little bit of our 2024 interview with Bill Hader, the comedian. That little chunk of Bill's interview was introduced by our digital media manager Hayden Broom. Today, we're veering into straight up dharma with the venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi, a Buddhist monk and teacher who was on the show back in 2022. You'll hear a short introduction from our producer Tara Anderson, why this

• 1:02Dan Harris?

  interview had such an impact on her, and then you'll hear the moment from the interview that she is specifically referencing. Before we do that, though, I just want to tell you that if you sign up over on danharris.com, you will get bespoke companion meditations that now come with every Monday and Wednesday episode of this podcast. And Dan Mauricio is our teacher of the month. She is crafting meditations for all the Monday, Wednesday episodes. We'll announce our teacher of the month for next month very soon. But in the meantime, head on over to danharris.com to sign up for those guided meditations. Coming up after a quick ad break, we're going to hear from Tara, one of our producers, then Bhikkhu Bodhi. Keep it here. If you care about supporting independent media, and if you care about being a node

• 1:45Dan Harris?

  of sanity in an insane world, there are a few quick, easy, and free ways that you can support me and my team, which I would be really grateful for. One way to do it is to sign up for my newsletter, which comes out on Monday mornings. It's a little dose of sanity in your inbox at the beginning of a busy week. The second way to do it is to follow and subscribe to the show wherever you're listening or watching right now. That really helps. Share your favorite episode with a friend. This is a great and low stakes way to connect with somebody in your orbit. And not for nothing, it also helps us grow. And all of these things take about 30 seconds and they really do help. You will be supporting me and my team and our mission. And I, as I said, would be immensely grateful.

• 2:28Dan Harris?

  You can find everything we do at danharris.com. It's all right there. Thank you. I mean that seriously. We'll be right back with more show. If you care about supporting independent media and if you care about being a node of sanity in an insane world, there are a few quick, easy and free ways that you can support me and my team, which I would be really grateful for. One way to do it is to sign up for my newsletter, which comes out on Monday mornings. It's a little dose of sanity in your inbox at the beginning of a busy week. The second way to do it is to follow and subscribe to the show wherever you're listening or watching right now. That really helps. Three, share your favorite episode with a friend. This is a great and low stakes way to connect with somebody in your orbit.

• 3:11Dan Harris?

  And not for nothing, it also helps us grow. And all of these things take about 30 seconds and they really do help. You will be supporting me and my team and our mission. And I, as I said, would be immensely grateful. You can find everything we do at danharris.com. It's all right there. Thank you. I mean that seriously. We'll be right back with more show.

• 3:33Speaker 01

  Business Tara Anderson. I'm a producer on the podcast team and I want to share part of an interview with B. Kupodi. This episode came out in September of 2022, when I had just started my job with 10% happier and I was asked to listen to a chunk of it for a quality check. That's the last step we go through before publishing an episode, just to make sure everything sounds okay. I didn't know anything about the guest, but I did know a little bit about the topic, the four foundations of mindfulness. This episode was part of a series on those four foundations and this one was about mindfulness

• 4:12Speaker 01

  of mind, which is being aware of what's going on in your mind itself, which is meta as hell and can be pretty confusing.

• 4:23Speaker 01

  The first thing I noticed about Bikkupoti was that he sounds just like Christopher Walken. Turns out they're around the same age and they're both from New York City, so it makes sense. It made me smile to think of Christopher Walken wearing monks' robes, talking about these Buddhist concepts. The second thing I noticed was how clear and precise his words are. He uses a few Buddhist terms, but he's quick to define them so anyone can follow. And Dan, as usual, does a great job of restating and summarizing for the audience. I was only supposed to listen to a small part of this episode for quality purposes, but I ended up listening to the whole thing because I was so interested.

• 5:03Speaker 01

  I learned a lot and I was also really psyched that listening to this kind of material was my job now. Nearly three years later, I get to keep learning and I'm really happy to play a part in bringing this kind of conversation to our listeners. Hope you enjoy.

• 5:18Dan Harris?

  Thank you so much, Tara. All right, now let's hear the part of the interview with Bikkupoti that Tara is referencing. He starts by explaining the definition of mindfulness of mind, and then he goes into the actual how-to of it all. So how do you learn to get more resolution on your mind states, which tend to change throughout the day?

• 5:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, within the actual practice of satipatthana, the practice of mindful observation, the task is not so much to make an effort to control the state of mind, but simply to note and to observe what state of mind has arisen. Of course, mindfulness has to work together with right effort so that one is not indulging those states that arise. But part of the right effort here is the effort just to note whatever mind state has arisen and to note it clearly, and then to drop it, to let it go. And then it will be followed by other mind states will arise.

• 6:24Speaker 02

  But this is where the observation of individual states of mind starts as it builds up momentum. Then it starts to turn into a continuous and consistent observation of what is taking place within the mind. So that the mind states are occurring, you know, not as solid blocks which...

• 6:46Speaker 02

  Control and dominate the mind, but just like little flickers of mental states, which just pop their head up for a moment, and then when they are recognized and identified, then they fall away. Yeah, I came up with a certain simile to illustrate how this process takes place, if I could relate that. Please. I compare this to, like, we have a shop in which there are goods for sale, and there are no mirrors, you know, in the corners to observe the rows, and there's no inspector on the floor. Okay, so we have a kleptomaniac comes into the shop, and he looks around, and he sees that there are no mirrors,

• 7:30Speaker 02

  no observation mirrors. And so he's able to take some goods, put it into his pocket, and then maybe dispel any suspicion. He might buy a cheap item, and then he walks out, and he's taken the valuable items with him. Okay, so that is like the way the mind ordinarily works, without observation. But when we have corner mirrors, which are reflecting the image of the hidden rose back to the cashier or to somebody, an inspector on the floor, then when the thief comes into the shop, then he'll look around, and he'll see that he's under observation, that there are these mirrors reflecting him in every row, and then he'll just leave the shop empty-handed,

• 8:15Speaker 02

  and maybe go to another shop. And so, in this way, when the mind is not under observation, the way the mind ordinarily works, when these unwholesome or defiled mental states arise, we don't recognize them. And in that way, those states are able to gain power over the mind, to gain control over the mind, and to dominate the mind. But it's when we use the power of mindfulness to simply recognize the state of mind that's arisen, identify it, and then drop it, that the state of mind is able to pass without doing any damage to the texture of the mind.

• 8:59Dan Harris?

  ¿Cómo sabemos cuándo realmente estamos siendo conscientes?

• 9:02Speaker 02

  Es una buena pregunta porque muchas veces, quiero decir, he estado pensando que estoy siendo...

• 9:10Speaker 02

  He estado pensando que estoy siendo consciente y luego me doy cuenta de que he estado mucho atrás en el pasado o planeando cosas para el futuro. Pero déjennos decir que la característica definidora de la conciencia hay muchas formas de conceptualizar la conciencia, pero la forma en que lo diría succinctemente, al menos con el tipo de práctica que uno realiza en las bases de la conciencia, que la conciencia es mantenerse bajo la observación, manteniendo, o observando cosas que están pasando en el cuerpo físico, o manteniendo la mente bajo la observación,

• 9:53Speaker 02

  los sentimientos o la mente bajo la observación. Así que cuando uno puede reconocer que uno está sosteniendo ese proceso de observación de sí mismo, entonces uno sabe que uno está siendo consciente. Pero en otras ocasiones uno puede estar sentado con la intención de estar consciente, pero la mente se desvía de la conciencia y eso es bastante natural y normal también. Pero luego cuando uno se da cuenta de que la mente se ha desviado, y bueno, esa reconocida de que la mente se ha desviado es en sí misma una función de la conciencia.

• 10:31Dan Harris?

  Este lenguaje de observación que estás usando, puedo ver en mi propia mente, y puedo imaginar esto sucediendo en la mente de otras personas, una militancia o una configuración de una especie de estado de nana interno que puede ser compulsiva en lugar de útil.

• 10:47Speaker 02

  Sí, eso puede pasar. Depende de cómo uno realiza ese proceso de observación, el tipo de actitud y mentalidad que uno trae al proceso de lo que yo llamo observación. Así que puede ser, como has dicho, algo de un estado de nana, si uno tal vez trae el enfoque equivocado. Pero diría que el enfoque saludable y fructífero es que uno llega al proceso de observación manteniendo la mente suave.

• 11:23Speaker 02

  Gentle, non-judgmental, but also curious to see and understand what is taking place. I say it's primarily that sort of, what I call that, soft, gentle, relaxed, but diligent framework in which the contemplation or observation takes place that keeps it on the right track and prevents it from becoming a process by which one engages in self-blame, self-condemnation, and so forth.

• 11:58Dan Harris?

  Just to go back to the practical here. As I understand it, nowhere in the Sutta does the Buddha actually give detailed instructions on how to establish mindfulness of one's mind states. But you've come up with some instructions. Would you mind walking us through them?

• 12:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, this was interesting also because in my own sort of experience of trying to practice according to the method of the Satipatthana Sutta, when it came to the mindfulness of the mind, couldn't find what I would call clear, direct, systematic explanations of how one undertakes the contemplation of the mind. So as I sort of reflected on this, I developed a method. I don't want to say that it's under copyright or patent registration or anything like that, but it just seemed to be an effective way to see what's going on in the mind. So what I did was to take

• 12:59Speaker 02

  as a focus point of observation, the word "mind." And so to undertake this, I would have to build up a certain momentum of maybe mindfulness and capacity for concentration through the practice of a method like mindfulness of breathing, so that the initial tendency of the mind to wander, to...

• 13:25Speaker 02

  Get overrun by thoughts and emotions and so on. Settles down somewhat and the mind becomes more quiet and sort of stabilized. Then I would run through the mind, the word mind, and make the task just to observe within the mind, the word mind as it's being mentally verbalized. And so when I'm doing this, it's not an automatic process like reciting a mantra, but one is turning the mind back upon itself to watch the word mind as it is passing through the mind with each mental recitation of the word mind.

• 14:10Speaker 02

  And so mentally reciting the word mind keeps the mind focused upon itself. And so one is watching the word mind, mind, mind, passing through the mind. But what inevitably happens is before long, you've lost the word mind or you're just, or I'm just reciting it without mindfulness and the mind is, has wandered, it strayed into any of the bypaths of mental activity. And so when that happens, what one does is to identify what is that mental state that has arisen. And that's where I found that I'm applying the template

• 14:53Speaker 02

  that the contemplation of the mind section of the Satipatthana Sutta gives us. So if it's a mind, say, desiring things, say, thinking about the meal that's coming up, maybe it's the morning. If I'm in my room and then I get the smells coming from the kitchen, then I'm thinking, ah, craving for delicious food, mind with desire, mind with lust. If I'm thinking of somebody did something wrong to me and I'm angry about it, then it's mind with hatred, mind with anger. If I'm just maybe engaging in some speculations or some doubts, then it becomes mind with delusion.

• 15:38Speaker 02

  And then also, while I was doing this, I also noticed that in, I would have to say that the section on contemplation of mind in the Satibhutanasutta, even though it has these sixteen pairs of contrasting mental states, but it's not all-inclusive for contemplating what is taking place within the mind. So then I found it's useful to use another template, which I partly started to sketch, which is to see where is the mind dwelling? What is it dwelling on? And then I found that when the mind is not present, when it's not focused on the present, then it's gone in either of two directions.

• 16:21Speaker 02

  It's either gone back to the past, or it's jumped ahead to the future. And so we have mind dwelling on the past, which will be remembering the past, either accurately or inaccurately. And then when the mind dwells on the past, it could be dwelling on the past either with, you might say, the sorrowful emotions, that is, with sadness, maybe with grief, with distress, regret, remorse, guilt. Or it could be dwelling on the past with happy states, happy memories, joyful memories,

• 17:04Speaker 02

  nostalgia, fondness for the past. So that would be mind dwelling on the past. And then we could have mind projecting, on the other side of the tracks, mind projecting into the future. And then the mind can be projecting into the future with imagination, with desire, craving, hope, and expectations. Or with, on the other negative side, with fear, worry, anxiety. Or, so those would be rooted in aversion. Or it could be projecting into the future in ways that would be based on delusion,

• 17:46Speaker 02

  with idle imaginings, with idle expectations, and so forth. Probably you could expand these lists still further. But these were some of the types of mental activity that I sketched, on the basis of my own lived experience in trying to practice contemplation of the mind.

• 18:07Dan Harris?

  So let me just see if I can state these meditation instructions back to you. The first is to repeat the word mind silently in your own mind at a decent clip. Mind, mind, mind. And that has the... Well, actually, I missed a step. The first is, you may want to get calm, concentrated, collected by sitting and focusing on the breath for a while, which can create some level of focus in the mind. Then you bring in this kind of mantra of the word mind within your own mind.

• 18:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, but I don't want to use the word mantra.

• 18:45Dan Harris?

  Right, because you're not... It's not quite a mantra.

• 18:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's not like a mechanical recitation.

• 18:51Dan Harris?

  What's the difference between your suggested use of this repetition of the word mind? What's the difference between that and what you are calling a mechanical repetition?

• 19:01Speaker 02

  I guess the mechanical repetition, you're just reciting it without... Well, let's say the point, the way I use the word mind, the point is to turn the mind back upon itself in order to observe the mind by running the word mind through the mind.

• 19:22Dan Harris?

  So as I'm saying this word mind, it's reminding me to look at the machinery of this thing, or not a thing, called the mind.

• 19:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 19:36Dan Harris?

  And inevitably, then, I will get distracted. And at that point, when I wake up from distraction, I can see, oh, what is the state of mind in which I've been dwelling during this distraction? And I can make a note of it. And then I'm starting to get into this habit of seeing the mind states that grip me.

• 19:56Speaker 02

  Exactly. And I should also add to this, that at a certain point, when one develops the, let us say, the skill in observing the mind by using the word...

• 20:09Speaker 02

  Mind as a reminder to turn back and observe the mind. Once one develops a certain skill and momentum with that, then what I found in my practice, that then I can then drop the word mind and then I just remain focused on that constant, we call it the flux of mental activity. And so at that point, one is seeing what's going on within the mind, occurring at very, very rapid pace, just kind of rapid arising and vanishing of thoughts, feelings, emotions, and so on, just coming almost instantaneously.

• 20:51Dan Harris?

  Is that achievable off of retreat? Because I've had a few moments on meditation retreat, day seven or whatever, where I click into this state of dramatically reduced mental chatter and am much more on top of whatever's happening in my mind, the things coming in through the ear and the eye and the physical sensations and the random thoughts, urges, and emotions. I'm right on top of it in a way that I'm not in my daily life. So this kind of sustained mindfulness that you're describing, is that something we can expect in our daily 10-minute meditation?

• 21:29Speaker 02

  I'd say very difficult in a 10-minute meditation, even in a 45-minute meditation. I could sort of get into that state pretty much only in a retreat setting or after doing like several hours of meditation a day in a stretch. In the day-to-day, like, regular practice, I would do the contemplation of mind, but I'm almost reliant on using the word mind as a focal point for turning back on the mind. But to get into that, sort of just the unverbalized observation of the constant rapid flux of mental events, that takes place. To pick up the momentum for that, it pretty much requires, for me, a retreat setting.

• 22:14Speaker 02

  Maybe somebody who has sharper faculties can do it just with a regular daily practice. But I have rather... I'm a slow, a bit of a slow boat, yeah.

• 22:26Dan Harris?

  Well, you're in good company or bad company, as the case may be.

• 22:31Dan Harris?

  Thank you to Bucubodi and thank you to Tara for suggesting that excerpt. She has great taste. We'll put a link to the full episode if you want to hear it in the show notes. Don't forget to head on over to danharris.com to become part of our little community where we're now serving up guided meditations that go with every Monday, Wednesday episode of this show. We also have live guided video meditation sessions with me. I take your questions. You also get ad-free versions of the show. There's a lot going on. Go check it out. DanHarris.com. Finally, thank you to everybody who works so hard to make this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson, Caroline Keenan, and Eleanor Vasili. Our recording and engineering is

• 23:11Dan Harris?

  handled by the awesome people over at PodPeople. Lauren Smith is our managing producer. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Cashmere is our executive producer. And Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.

• 23:31Speaker 03

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