Pod Insights 10% Happier with Dan Harris How To Get Past Your Past | Yung Pueblo About this episode Lessons learned from 12 years of serious meditation.
Diego Perez https://yungpueblo.com/ is a meditator and #1 New York Times bestselling author who is widely known by his pen name, Yung Pueblo. His writing focuses on the power of self-healing, creating healthy relationships, and the wisdom that comes when we truly work on knowing ourselves.
In this episode we talk about:
How to burn off your mind's conditioning The suffering that comes from clinging in a world characterized by relentless change What selfless listening is, and how to do it The liberation that comes from equanimity Some of the incredibly valuable lessons he's learned from 12 years of meditation How to make better decisions for your future self How to have boundless compassion without being a pushover Why being able to see perspectives outside of your own is a sign of intelligence and mental strength And much more Related Episodes:
Jack Kornfield & Yung Pueblo On: How To Meditate When You're Freaking Out, the Limits of the Thinking Mind, & Balancing Self-Interest with Compassion https://www.danharris.com/p/jack-kornfield-and-yung-pueblo-on-7c0?utm_source=publication-search The Dharma of Instagram https://www.danharris.com/p/the-dharma-of-instagram-yung-pueblo-315?utm_source=publication-search
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Transcript 13,508 words · 4 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:04 Dan Harris? It's the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris.
0:18 Dan Harris? Hello, everybody. How we doing? Today, we're talking about how to get past your past, how not to be owned by your personal history, and how doing so can have a massive impact on how you relate to other people. And a reminder, the research strongly suggests that the quality of your relationships is perhaps the most important variable when it comes to your happiness. So getting past your past and then relating more successfully to other people puts you on an upward spiral. So we're going to talk about that today. We're going to talk about lots of other things as well. My guest is the great Diego Perez, who you may know by the name Yung Pueblo. He's an extremely popular author and social media presence. We had him on the show back in 2025 to talk about a book he had just
1:02 Dan Harris? released at the time called How to Love Better. And we're bringing that episode back today because it's really good. And you can find him on Instagram and also on Substack. In this episode, we talk a lot about relationship skills, including avoiding blame, keeping an open mind, having compassion without being a doormat. We also take a deep dive into a fascinating list that Diego includes in his last book, a list of the 12 things he's learned after 12 years of serious meditation. I took a lot away from that part of the discussion. This is a guy who regularly does long meditation retreats, sometimes up to six weeks at a time. So he's really earned his place in the broader contemplative world. A few other things we'll talk about in this conversation, how to burn off your mind's
1:47 Dan Harris? conditioning. He'll explain what that means. The suffering that comes from clinging in a world characterized by relentless change, the liberation that comes from equanimity in the face of relentless change. Why being able to see perspectives outside of your own is actually a sign of strength and intelligence, and much more. A few things before we hear from our sponsors. We've got this awesome new series launching soon on my new-ish meditation app, 10% with Dan Harris. Many people ask me, how do I get started in Buddhism? How do I learn more about it? How do I go deeper? So we're now going to provide a solution. Every week this summer, for eight weeks, every Sunday, the great Buddhist teacher Sharon Salzberg is going to host a live session
2:33 Dan Harris? every Sunday at four, starting on July 12th at 4:00 PM Eastern, then running for eight weeks. And every week she's going to break down one aspect of the foundational Buddhist list, the Eightfold Path, the Noble Eightfold Path. This is the Buddha's cookbook for human happiness. It talks about how to get better at seeing the world clearly, how to get better at meditation, how to get better at dealing with other people, how to get better at work. It really is quite comprehensive. And like I said, it is a great way to dip your toe into Buddhism. Or if you've already learned quite a bit about the Dharma, this is a great way to go deeper. Sharon, during these eight live sessions, will guide a meditation, talk a little bit about one aspect of the Eightfold Path,
3:18 Dan Harris? and then take your questions. Of course, if you miss any of the live sessions, you can always watch them on demand. You can get all of this on the aforementioned 10% with Dan Harris Meditation App. If you want to get the app, it's at danharris.com. Again, that's danharris.com. There's a free 14-day trial if you want to try before you buy. I hope you'll come check it out. We'll get started with Diego Perez, AKA Yung Pueblo, right after this.
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4:16 Dan Harris? YoungPueblo/DiegoPerez, welcome back to the show.
4:20 Speaker 02 Thanks for having me, Dan. I'm really happy to be here.
4:23 Dan Harris? I'm happy you're here. So, in the beginning of this book, you tell a story that I'd love to have you retell a little bit here, which is that in the early days of your marriage, and this is not uncommon, things were a little stormy at times. Can you talk about that?
4:37 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, a little stormy sounds nice. It more so felt like a hurricane. It was an interesting,
4:44 Speaker 02 really powerful magnetic connection between my wife and I, where we really wanted to be together, but we just did not know how to care for each other. And we didn't even really know how to care for ourselves at the time either. So, we felt the strong pull to be with each other, but we had very little self-awareness between the two of us, very little emotional maturity. What we experienced was basically a constant blame game for over a six-year period where we were together off and on. And it wasn't until we started meditating that ever so slowly did we start developing our individual self-awareness. And we started seeing like, okay, this feeling to place this
5:24 Speaker 02 blame on you every single time that I feel some sort of discontent in my mind, it actually has a lot to do with me, and I need to start taking ownership over what I'm feeling. And that created a whole new chapter in our relationship.
5:38 Dan Harris? So, meditation made a huge impact on the sort of tone and tenor of the relationship. Can you say a little bit more about the exact mechanism for that?
5:47 Speaker 02 How meditating affected the relationship?
5:49 Dan Harris? Yeah, yeah.
5:51 Speaker 02 So, I think, you know, we both went into meditating because we were interested in our personal development. I was particularly interested in my own healing. I had come out of this sort of a number of years of just abusing drugs and alcohol, pushing my body to the edge, and doing that to really avoid sadness and anxiety that kept bubbling up inside of me. All of that led me to like a rock bottom moment where I almost lost my life from just overindulging in drugs and alcohol. And it-
6:24 Speaker 02 Was a wake up call and I had started changing my habits, put away all the hard drugs, started really, you know, taking steps forward into a new life. But it wasn't until I started meditating that I started seeing very significant changes in the way my mind felt, like my mind started feeling lighter. I started feeling a new ability to like, slow down and not just immediately react. And I went into meditating for my personal healing and my wife felt that same sort of like, internal push to go meditate as well. And what we didn't really expect was that it was going to have such a big impact on our relationship. I went into it for healing, but I had so many positive externalities from it.
7:08 Speaker 02 You know, not only creativity started coming up, but I started seeing, accepting that my relationships were quite shallow, like my relationship with my parents, my relationship with my friends, with my wife, they were very surface level and that was because I was really disconnected from myself. And once that connection started growing, the ability to like, listen to my partner more, the ability to really start owning the way I was reacting in my mind and realizing that it's not always her fault. You know, and so many other sort of emotional, the emotional skillset started building and it really began with just being able to close my eyes and sit with myself.
7:46 Dan Harris? What's coming up in my head as you're talking is, and I don't know if this will land for you, but I'm sure you're familiar with the Satipatthana Sutta in Buddhism. This is one of the most famous discourses of the Buddha where he, and now I'm not explaining this to you because you know what, I'm explaining it more to the listener. Some listeners may be unfamiliar with this speech the Buddha gave where he outlined four ways to be mindful. And I won't go into the list, except to say that there's this refrain that comes up over and over, which is that you establish mindfulness internally.
8:17 Dan Harris? Externally and both internally and externally. Long way of saying meditation can help you be more self-aware, but it also can help you be more other-aware as well. And so it can have, as you said, positive externalities. And am I hunting in the right direction here?
8:34 Speaker 02 I mean, absolutely. I love that you brought it back to the Satipatthana. That Polly line, Atapisa Pajano Satima is one that like, I'm always sort of leaning back on whenever, you know, when you're sitting there and you're meditating and whatever's coming up, it's like a line of clarity that can help you remember that, you know, you're coming back, back into the body, back into your awareness and trying to maintain that awareness as long as possible. But what's really interesting is that you can develop these skills to become more aware of yourself, but they're not just for you. You can take them and you can easily transfer them to other aspects of your life. And I think in
9:16 Speaker 02 the darkness of the meditation hall, sitting and meditating for hours, I started seeing that I was developing a new ability to just feel my own emotions, to be able to sit with whatever turbulence or disharmony or whatever sadness or anxiety would come up. And that same quality that I was developing, that resilience, I was then able to take that and have more patience whenever we would have arguments, right? Because I could sit there and hold not just space for my own turbulence, but a turbulent moment that we were having together. And I think that was just a massive gift that I didn't expect from this meditation journey.
9:56 Dan Harris? You're Mr. Meditation now, so am I, I guess. And I'm just curious, because I know the answer for me, but do you ever screw things up in conflict with your wife?
10:08 Speaker 02 Yeah, I have to apologize all the time. Yeah.
10:11 Dan Harris? Okay.
10:12 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah, no, no, I'm not, I'm not perfect. I'm not enlightened. I'm just, I'm just another person who's like, totally on the path. I love the path. I see the results. I'm really happy with the progress that I've made in the past 10 years. But, you know, I could use another 10,000 hours of meditation.
10:28 Dan Harris? Yeah, yeah. Same here. Just going back to something you said earlier about not
10:36 Dan Harris? Blaming the other person as much, I can't think that's the way you were saying, you know, you're in an argument and you're not. It reminds me, you know, I have these, I talk about these guys all the time. I have these sort of Buddhist inflected communications coaches. They come out of the same sort of meditative tradition. You and I are both Buddhist practitioners. You're more out of the Goenka school and I'm out of the Insight Meditation Society, which interestingly, they both have centers right near each other in Massachusetts.
11:07 Speaker 02 I think of them as like sister traditions.
11:09 Dan Harris? Yes, yes.
11:10 Speaker 02 Even in the time of Ubhakhan in Burma in the 50s, his center was very, very close to Mahasi Center. They were just, you know, in the same town. So it's funny seeing that that similarity continues.
11:26 Dan Harris? Yes. Just to put some meat on the bone for listeners who might be unfamiliar with all of this, but that back in Burma or now Myanmar, there were many famous teachers in the middle of the last century and Ubhakhan is one of them and he was the teacher for this guy, S N Goenka, who was an Indian guy who was in Burma, I think on business and was learning meditation from this great master. And Goenka then went up and founded all of these centers all over the world in which you ended up getting trained. Am I?
11:55 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah, that's, that's pretty correct. Goenka is Burmese of Indian descent. So he ended up growing up in Burma and he ended up hearing about, you know, Ubhakhan and then training with him and trained with him for, I think it was like 12 or 14 years. Another interesting thing to note too, is that these traditions are so well respected. So in Lumbini, in the birthplace of the Buddha, I got to go there about a year ago and there's a site where it said, you know, the place where supposedly the Buddha was born. And in this, I don't even know what to call it, but it's almost like a giant park. There are also a lot of different Buddhist traditions there and the Mahasi monastery and the Goenka Meditation
12:38 Speaker 02 Center are the closest. For some reason, the people in Lumbini, when they were setting up that park, they allowed those two centers to be closest to where, you know, supposedly where the Buddha was born. I think it's almost like a sign of like respect for these two lineages because they've just affected so many people positively.
12:56 Dan Harris? Yeah, yes. Just to pick up on that, so there was the Ubakhan, leading to Esang Goenka, leading to you. This sister tradition to then the Mahasi School, which is Mahasi Sayadaw, who is this incredible Burmese master, who then many of my teachers trained with that guy, like Joseph Goldstein and Sharon Salzberg. And then they set up the Insight Meditation Society, along with Jack Kornfield, who I know you're close with. And you've been on the show with Jack before. I'll put a link in the show notes to that. So anyway, there are these two traditions that there's a lot of discourse between these two traditions. And my communications teachers, Dan Klerman and Mudita Nisker, they're communications coaches, I should say.
13:40 Dan Harris? They both come out of the Insight. They're in that whole world. I met them through Joseph Goldstein. And one of the things they've taught me is that nobody makes you feel a certain way. You're the one making yourself feel. And so when you're in an argument with your spouse or anybody else, and well, you made me feel this, you made me feel this. No, you're attaching causality inappropriately. People's behavior may be objectionable, but they didn't make you feel a certain way. Does that land for you, based on the themes of your new book?
14:10 Speaker 02 You explained it so clearly. And I think what I would add to it too, is that the difficult thing is that someone can do something that's objectively harmful and wrong. But your perception and your reaction is happening in your own mind. And the intensity of that, of what you end up feeling, that turmoil, you know, very quickly, the mind likes to play games and the mind wants to figure out, how can I jump through these almost like illogical hoops to figure out how I can make this solely your fault and not accept it in responsibility? And granted, there are definitely times where you make mistakes and you should apologize. But what my wife and I started finding out when we started meditating was that anytime we would feel
14:55 Speaker 02 Sort of internal discomfort, we would try to pick up some sort of old argument that may have been resolved or find some reason to figure out how I can point the finger at you and make this your fault. And it was a real awakening moment for the both of us where it was like, wait, I'm actually not mad at you. I just didn't realize that I woke up and I didn't feel good. And my mind was looking for another reason to not only keep fueling that feeling of not feeling good, but trying to figure out, okay, how is this your fault? When really you have nothing to do with it. It's just my fault. I didn't sleep that many hours last night. I didn't take good care of my body because I was eating too much food the night before and I woke up not feeling well.
15:40 Dan Harris? What's the practice for when you experience a big bolt of rage in the middle of a conversation with, could be your romantic partner, could be a colleague, your boss, a friend, or whatever? How not to be owned by it?
15:53 Speaker 02 There's a few, a few things to understand. I mean, one, our understanding of the changing nature of emotions has really helped us not like fully identify with what's happening. So when we talk about, you know, I feel angry or I feel sad or I feel something, we don't really even use those words anymore. Now, when we talk between my wife and I, you know, I let her know like, oh, a lot of heaviness is moving through me. And sometimes it doesn't even have a name or a lot of sadness is moving through me or I feel, you know, something moving through as opposed to saying I am this. So one is understanding that, okay, anger has arisen, but it's not something that like you're always angry or you're always going to be X, Y, and Z.
16:38 Speaker 02 So one is contextually understanding that this thing is passing through you and it isn't, it isn't you. And then the other aspect of it is just slow down. Literally being able to slow down and feel what's happening as opposed to just fueling it and letting it take over your actions is incredibly helpful because then you can honor the reality of the moment, like honor what you're feeling, but then figure out, okay, am I going to sort of follow through on this? Do I need to speak about it? What do I need to do to address the situation? And just give yourself a little bit of time to act skillfully as opposed to just reactively.
17:14 Dan Harris? Yeah, so you mentioned two things there. The second was just slowing down, slowing down the pace, the sort of toppling forward nature of the mind, especially when in conflict, inserting some breaks or space in there as a circuit breaker. And then the first thing you talked was about, and this is what I want to pick up on, is this kind of linguistic, it might be a little awkward linguistic shift, instead of saying, "I'm pissed," to there's a kind of heaviness moving through. And you know, this reminds me of something Joseph Goldstein, who we mentioned earlier, one of the co-founders of the Insight Meditation Society. He talks about this too, which is with any powerful emotion, if you can just switch from "I am," fill in the blank, "I am scared, I am pissed," whatever, to "there
17:59 Dan Harris? is anger," or "there is fear,"
18:02 Speaker 02 It's arisen.
18:02 Dan Harris? Then you take the "I" out of it.
18:04 Speaker 02 Right, because we're just like, we're so prone towards attachment and clinging that whatever we see, whatever we feel very strongly, we want to just grab it. We want to grab it, we want to be it. And you know, I've noticed from meditating that emotions have this interesting quality where they try to expand themselves, whether it's, you know, if you're feeling joy, if you're feeling happiness, you want to share that with others, you want to, you know, let your peace permeate. And the same thing when you're feeling angry, when you're feeling heavy, when you're feeling anxious, like that permeates outward and sometimes it may even become an invitation for someone to join you in your anger. Like,
18:46 Speaker 02 you know, either you say something that makes them upset, or you explain to them why you're upset, and you want them to also be angry on your behalf against another person. And I think it's quite difficult to just, you know, you want to feel your emotions, you want to honor the fact that they're there, because you don't want to be running away from yourself. But at the same time, you have to introduce yourself to subtlety. And there is the subtlety of being able to feel the emotion, observe the emotion, without just letting it dominate you.
19:15 Dan Harris? Yeah. There is something extra magical and powerful to taking the letter I out of the scenario, because as soon as it's not your anger, it's just anger as like a passing weather meteorological phenomenon.
19:30 Speaker 02 Totally. And it's just another thing. And that's something that the training, you know, for meditating has taught me is like, just embrace the truth of impermanence. Don't work against the universe. Work with it. Everything is constantly changing. Everything is changing at the atomic level, the biological level, the cosmological level, the whole universe is just flowing forward like a river. And if I cling, if I attach to things, then I'm working against the universe and things are gonna hurt. Because I'm, I'm literally moving against the flow. So I can control what I can control. And I can communicate as well as I can in a relationship. But yeah, there are still going to be difficult moments. And let me work with them. Let me be skillful, but let me not cling to the past.
20:13 Dan Harris? Yeah, I mean, I've, I continue to bump up against the same lesson in my own practice. And I can imagine somebody who maybe is a little bit newer to this saying, well, if you don't cling to the past. Well, there are two questions. One is, if you don't remember the past, are you going to be a doormat? Are you going to just be forgiving people for the unforgivable? And then the second part of this is, okay, yeah, you're right. Everything's changing all the time. And the Buddhists are always talking about non-attachment. Don't be attached. That's the source of suffering. But does that mean that I'm detached from the people I love? And how does love fit into all of this? So I asked you just two huge questions there. So I'll, I'll split them and hold them in my mind.
20:54 Speaker 02 Both of them have the same quality. And this is one of the values of these different, especially the Theravada practices, where you may enter into them and you start immediately seeing that the mind will initially be very black and white. It'll sway from extreme to extreme, where it's like, oh, if I can't have any attachments, does that mean that I can't have any goals in life? I can't do anything. I'm just gonna be passive. Like, no, it's not like that. What it's doing is that it's introducing you to subtlety. So for example, yes, you don't want to be controlling in your relationship because when you're very attached in a relationship, it will manifest through your actions as control. And if you're being controlling, then you're going to suck the life out of
21:38 Speaker 02 a relationship. Instead, what you want to do is try to approach things from a point of trying to create commitments, where both you and your partner are very clearly explaining to each other. This is how I like my happiness to be supported. And you do your best. You're not going to do it perfectly, but you do try your best to to show up for your partner in ways that are key and essential to them. But you're not always going to get it right. But at least that effort is there. And it's much more valuable to approach a relationship and try to design the foundation of the home of a relationship around commitments, as opposed to attachments and expectations. And especially when a lot of these expectations are quite silent. And it's almost like you're setting up these little traps that your partner eventually falls into, because they're not even fully aware of how you want to support them.
22:25 Dan Harris? I'm laughing just because that sounds familiar. I haven't been guilty of that myself. But just on this difference between love and attachment, like, I sometimes joke about, I have this magical ability to inhabit the mind of my listeners. I can imagine people thinking, well, are you saying I should be detached from my spouse or my kid that I wouldn't care if something bad happened to them, etc., etc.?
22:46 Speaker 02 No, I'm saying that the care is there, but it's more so compassion. It's an active compassion where you're trying to show up for them and you're trying to be there for them and support them, but you're not trying to control them. So that doesn't mean, you know, a lot of people, when they hear that, when they hear about like, love is freedom, they get scared because then I think, oh, does that mean that my partner can just sleep with whomever? And that there's no rules? It's like, no, that's not what we're talking about. There's still, you're still building your home around commitments. And we're here to be with each other. But what that really means is that you're allowing your partner to evolve, to change, for their preferences to change, so that you don't always feel forced to have the same interests, to eat the same foods, to you're
23:31 Speaker 02 letting each other just blossom in the way that feels natural and correct to each other. And you're still there. You're still moving side by side along each other. But you're moving in freedom, as opposed to trying to be the same person. You're more so just two rivers flowing alongside each other.
23:48 Dan Harris? My wife and I have occasionally worked with this really brilliant and also Buddhist-inflected marriage and couples counselor, Michael Vincent Miller. I've never had him on the show, but I want to. He's fantastic. And he talks about this tension in relationships between intimacy and individuality. This is a tension with parents, with romantic partners, that we have these seemingly competing desires for intimacy and for individuality. It feels to me that that's what you're nodding in the same direction when you talk about love as freedom?
24:26 Speaker 02 Yeah, and I think everything is hyper situational, right? Like, the way your relationship has harmony and the way your relationship struggles can be quite unique from anybody else's relationship. But I think that, especially with intimacy, with individuality, with moving forward and freedom, it just requires not hardened rules, but it requires consistent communication, so that you just know where your partner's at, and you know that, you know, you don't need to hide your truth. Like, as you're evolving, as your preferences are changing, because the way that, you know, your partner may have wanted their happiness to be supported last year, five years ago, 10 years ago, can be drastically
25:08 Speaker 02 different. I mean, my wife and I, we have this experience where, whenever we go away to a 45-day meditation retreat-
25:16 Dan Harris? Forty-five day?
25:17 Speaker 02 Yeah. Yeah, we've done a few. We've had two 45-days, three 30-days. But then, when we come out, it's like, I'm meeting a whole new person. You know, we come out, we don't know the way our preferences have shifted over that time, because you're just, you're burning so much conditioning so fast. And you come out, and the world feels very fresh, very new. And it takes almost like a month and a half to two months where we're like, getting to know ourselves and each other, and we're not holding this current version and comparing it to the old version. And we're just letting each other evolve. And it's happened so many times where, you know, we come out and like, we just have different priorities as individuals, you know, compared to what we wanted before, even like, down
26:02 Speaker 02 to like, our taste of what we want to watch on TV, or where we want to go on trips, or how we want to design our lives. And it's honestly just been a joyful moment, where it's like, you know, I want to get to know this person again, because they're fresh and new.
26:16 Dan Harris? You used a phrase there that I want to have you unpack, burning conditioning. But just to stay on the subject, when you say love is freedom, you don't mean, means you can do whatever the hell you want and cheat on your spouse or violate any number of norms. It means that you're giving the person you love the freedom to grow alongside you.
26:41 Speaker 02 Yeah, exactly. To grow, to change, to like, just be who they want to be. And that can be something as small as like what they want to watch, what they want to read, like the hobbies that they want to do and the freedom to move about in the world. And you don't have to be plastered together all the time to be with each other.
27:01 Dan Harris? Okay, let's go back to that intriguing phrase. You're talking about within the context of being on a 45 day meditation retreat, you're burning conditioning. What does that mean?
27:10 Speaker 02 That's a lovely question. It's fun talking to you because you have so much context. So the mind has this quality where the moment that it stops producing any new reactions, right, the mind is no longer reacting because the mind is very equanimous, even though, even if it's for like a second or two seconds or five minutes where there's stable equanimity, stable awareness, the mind is really in tune with reality as it is. The mind isn't really creating more new conditioning that hardens and weighs down the mind. Instead, what happens is that the old conditioning that's there very quickly starts, a better term is just evaporating. It starts burning away because you're no longer feeding it.
27:51 Speaker 02 Similar to like, you know, the way that you have to charge your iPhone and you have to plug your iPhone in, charge it, and it has battery. The moment that you stop, you unplug it, you're no longer charging it. The battery slowly melts away. And when you're in one of these purification paths, like you're, you're literally purifying the mind of this hardened conditioning. And the moment that you stop reacting, the moment that you're actually equanimous, all that old stuff automatically starts burning away. And when you go away to these longer retreats, you know, I mean, in these retreats also, like it's people who, like my wife and I are usually the youngest people in the room. You know, a lot of people there have been meditating for.
28:32 Speaker 02 Forty, fifty years and you keep mentioning Joseph and the last retreat that we sat was with Barry and Kate Lapping. And Barry Lapping, he was roommates with Joseph. You know, they were roommates like in India for years and you know, really like still friends to this day. But he was a teacher of that course and there's something where, you know, we spend the first fifteen days just sharpening the mind with Anapana, with the natural awareness of the breath. And after fifteen days of being aware of the breath, the mind becomes so calm and so concentrated that the mind becomes quite powerful. It becomes like a canon. And the moment that you take that very sharpened awareness and turn it to the body,
29:15 Speaker 02 the truth of, you know, this law of nature, the truth of impermanence becomes starkly clear because the body doesn't feel solid. It looks solid, you can look in the mirror, but what you actually feel is almost like this rushing river of atoms, where it's just like bubbling up and changing at incredibly rapid rates. And when you're in tune with that for days and days, you know, for weeks, you delete so much conditioning and you come out and you're like, wow, I still feel sadness. You know, it was funny, the last time I went, I finished a retreat and then literally three days later, I'm at South by Southwest. I'm speaking in front of four thousand people.
29:55 Speaker 02 And as soon as I got up there, I'm like, oh, I should be feeling anxiety right now. But there was nothing, there was none. I was just like, it was so easy to just go into flow. And I think it was directly related to, in that particular course, I went up against a lot of fear, like this, so much fear kept coming up. You know, fear that was not triggered by anything, it was just fear that was stored in my mind. And, you know, fear and anxiety have this very deep relationship. So then I get on stage after the course is over and I was like, wow, I just could not believe how, how little anxiety I felt in that moment.
30:34 Dan Harris? Let me see if I can restate some of that, just to make sure I get it and by extension, the listener, as you're right, it is fun for the two of us to talk because we do share so much context and I just always want to be sensitive to any listeners who might have some trouble keeping up because they haven't been, you know, marinating in the Dharma as long as you and I have.
30:55 Speaker 02 Yeah.
30:55 Dan Harris? You know, a key aspect of Buddhist thought and practice is just seeing how everything is just this endless chain of cause and effect arising and passing away, causes and conditions. So every human, I sometimes, when I'm on my game, will look at every human as like having this vapor trail of incalculable numbers of causes and conditions that have led them to where they are in their body and in their mind right now, inclusive of their, you know, all the events of their life, but all the events of their ancestors' lives, you know, that leave a mark in the mind.
31:37 Dan Harris? And so we're operating on this with this incalculable gumbo of causes and conditions at our backs all the time. And what happens in practice, deep practice especially, is because you're just awake and aware in the present moment, you're not creating new causes and conditions in the same way, and some of the old ones start to run out of steam. And so you're not owned by some of your historical neuroses the way you would be if you weren't practicing. Mind the neighborhood?
32:11 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, you explained it beautifully and you use this sentence that I use all the time, too, "leave a mark on the mind." And I think that's something that, you know, these different Buddhist traditions have understood really well and that I think the Western world is understanding more so now than before, where the things that you feel very intensely throughout your life, whether it's in childhood or whether as an adult, if you feel something very intensely, some heartache, some anxiety, some whatever it could be, it leaves a mark on the mind. It shapes the mind. Mind and it affects the way that you're perceiving reality. It's like literally a thick lens with which you have to look through to try to see reality as it is.
32:54 Speaker 02 But you have all this conditioning there that's blocking your view. And it's challenging, but it's also, you know, one of the upsides is that the mind is quite malleable. So when I go away to retreats, it hit me that I'm just going to the mental gym. I'm literally just taking myself to the gym and I'm working on three specific qualities. I'm working on developing awareness, working on developing non-reaction, which is like my new favorite sort of like synonym for equanimity because equanimity is just like, that word is not that well used. And the third quality is compassion. And these are three qualities that every human being is born with, but they're not necessarily developed. They need strengthening.
33:35 Speaker 02 That's what I go to do and it's really radically changed my life, my choices, my behaviors, and the way I show up for my mom and my friends and my parents.
33:46 Dan Harris? Yeah, and your wife and everybody.
33:49 Speaker 02 Yeah.
33:52 Dan Harris? Coming up, Diego talks about what selfless listening is and how to do it. The liberation that comes from equanimity and some incredibly valuable lessons he's learned from 12 years of meditation. He made a list of the 12 things he learned after so many years of, of pretty hardcore practice. And we'll dive into that after the break.
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34:47 Dan Harris? So I'm gonna make a little bit of a pivot in this conversation that we talked about before I started rolling. But before I do that, I wanna put a little bit of a bow around the relationships aspect of this conversation, because you have this new book where you're really talking about the connection between meditation and love. Just as a reminder, the book's called How to Love Better. And I wanna make a pivot to sort of getting even deeper into your meditation practice in a second, but staying on the on the subject of love. If I've understood your latest writing correctly, one of the primary points you're trying to make is that love is not a feeling. It's not just a feeling, it's
35:31 Dan Harris? a practice. Am I right about that? And if so, can you just hold forth on it a little bit?
35:36 Speaker 02 Yeah, we can even break it down between there's a difference between feeling the love for something that you care about, right? Like, love, you can use it to describe anything that's extremely important to you. Like, I love this, I love that. But what's really important in the relationship is that it takes time to learn how to care for someone. Like, learning how to care for them compassionately, trying your best to understand, you know, their emotional history, understanding how they like to be supported. Like, these are things that you're developing over time, and they don't just happen. It's not like your relationship's supposed to be easy all the time and exciting. Like, this is stuff
36:19 Speaker 02 that was fed to us by, you know, clever storytelling for romantic comedies, where, like, you meet someone, and then you have one sort of problem that you have to overcome, and then you're happily ever after. Life is not like that. The same way that you have ups and downs as an individual, you are going to have ups and downs in your relationship. And there are clever ways to try to deal and face those ups and downs. I mean, one of the biggest points is really, especially in the moments when you're having arguments. Doing your best to not strive to win the argument, but instead putting your energy into trying to understand each other. Like, one of the sentences by Thich Nhat Hanh that has really inspired the chapter,
37:04 Speaker 02 "The Art of Arguing" in the book, is "Love is understanding." And it's absolutely 100%, like, it just couldn't be said more clearly. But how do you get there? How do you get to that point? And that's where I talk about selfless listening. That's where I talk about taking turns describing the series of events and how things moved for each person and doing your best to see where your partner's coming from. And in the act of seeing each other, the tension slowly starts melting away. And it's something that is, you know, it's hard because we're really wired for defensiveness whenever we feel threatened. But we have to train ourselves to understand that, like, oh, like, I don't need to win this. Actually, my goal should be to try to understand, like, why is this happening? And let's talk it out.
37:51 Dan Harris? Well, you said a lot in there. I want to come back to "Love is Understanding" in a second. But I think as a top-line notion, and this is very similar to what the aforementioned Michael Vincent Miller talks about, that we're sold this idea that we're going to go from, and this is me quoting here, "One enchanted evening to happily ever after."
38:10 Speaker 02 Yeah.
38:11 Dan Harris? But in fact, as Michael says, you know, love is not like, you know, we talk about falling in love as if it's actually like a passive in some way.
38:20 Speaker 02 Yeah.
38:21 Dan Harris? But it is an active thing that you're building with somebody. And your reframe that love is a practice, not a feeling, is, I think, really helpful. The second thing, though, you talked about, after mentioning the Thich Nhat Hanh, who, just for the uninitiated, is a great Zen master who passed away a couple of years ago. And he talks about how he views love as understanding. And within the context of you talking about that, you mentioned selfless listening. What is that and how do we do it?
38:50 Speaker 02 A long time ago, I read this essay by Jiru Krishnamurti. And he was talking about being able to just see something where if you're looking at a tree, you're just looking at it, you're not projecting onto it, you're not thinking about something else, you're just fully taking in that moment. And this was around 2013, when I was first starting my meditation journey and I was experiencing some of that on my own. So when I read this, I was like, oh, he's giving words to the things that I'm experiencing. And when we started bringing that quality into the way that we handle our arguments, where in a moment, okay, we're having an argument, but we have to understand that,
39:35 Speaker 02 one, the person that I'm arguing with is not my enemy. This is someone that I love. This is my partner, my roommate, my best friend, someone who's very important to me. So let me approach this argument without intensity and just do my best to try to listen selflessly. And what that really means is, in this moment, when I'm listening to my wife's story and hearing how things moved for her, I'm not thinking about how to retort, I'm not thinking about how to jump in, I'm literally doing my best, even though it's quite challenging, I'm doing my best to listen to how things moved for her, to try to understand where she's coming from, like, how did she land into this moment? And then I can also, after that, share how I landed in this moment.
40:17 Speaker 02 And we have found that so many times, like, one of us may need to do some apologizing, but when we can really see each other, when we can really see where each other's coming from, the tension does melt away.
40:28 Dan Harris? It's the opposite of what has sometimes been called predatory listening, where you're just listening for the weaknesses in their argument so that you can exploit them, you're not really seeing them.
40:38 Speaker 02 Oh, my gosh, I've never heard that term. It sounds so scary, predatory listening. That sounds great.
40:44 Dan Harris? I heard it first from a Dharma teacher, I believe it was this teacher Winnie Nazarko, who was giving a Dharma talk and I was listening to it and that's what she said. I don't know if she coined the phrase, but one technique that's really helped me, this goes back to these communications coaches I referenced earlier, Dan and Mudita, that because I'm not naturally very selfless, I'm naturally selfish. And that's my conditioning. So there's this technique called reflective listening. I'm sure you've heard of it where you, somebody says something to you, your wife or anybody, and you repeat back to them in your own words, the headline.
41:21 Speaker 02 Mm hmm.
41:22 Dan Harris? And so it forces you to listen in a kind of journalistic way so that you can repeat back to them the bones, as Mudita says, the bones of their message. And it's incredibly gratifying for the other person. And I play this little game where I try to see how many times I can get people I'm talking to to say back to me the word exactly. Because I've summed up their argument over and over well enough that they say exactly.
41:50 Speaker 02 That's really nice because you're, you're really, really honing in and training yourself to listen. I think that was one of the things I really struggled with too, was just listening growing up. And I found that mistake and how it was like aggravating situations in the relationship. And it was clear, like, okay, that's the power of being in a relationship. You do that mirror is so stunningly clear. You're so deeply in proximity to another human being that what you're good at and what you're not good at is stunningly clear. And hopefully you have the time to work on it.
42:22 Dan Harris? This is an escalation and amplification and elevation of this notion that love isn't just a passive state that you fall into. It is a relationship you actively make. And it's like a dojo, talk about a gym. I mean, this is crucible in which you can really, it's a massive opportunity to develop as a human being.
42:43 Speaker 02 Yeah, I've been using the terminology, what you're doing in a relationship is you're designing a home. And we think about it in terms of the material aspects so often, but it's like you're designing a home of like, what is this place going to feel like between the two of us? Like, how do we show up for each other? How do we handle arguments? How do we make sure that our nervous systems are calm in front of each other so that you don't feel like you're like, you know, you don't have to have your guard up around me in any way. But it is like, I think there being in relationship, the combination of like, and this is totally right for, for me as an individual, but the combination of. Being on this quest of meditation and simultaneously having a long-term relationship
43:25 Speaker 02 has been the two greatest points that feel like simultaneously they're helping me grow because my wife is also my comrade in wisdom. Like she is so serious about her own growth and I trust her perception is quite clear. So it just helps me see like, you know, where I'm at and we're honest with each other, you know, without being like petty or giving unnecessary feedback. But when a truth needs to be told and I hear it from her, it really means a lot. And usually it's coming from a place where, you know, she really wants what's best for me. And I think it's just so helpful. So I see myself, she sees me and, you know, we help each other grow.
44:06 Dan Harris? Yep.
44:08 Dan Harris? Okay, so you have this new book, it's called How to Love Better. And we just talked about some of the primary points you're trying to make in that book. Within the book, there's a list that really stuck out to me that I was thinking that maybe in the second half of this conversation, we can focus on. We're not going to get to all of the 12 points in the list. You're such a good Buddhist, you make lists.
44:30 Dan Harris? The Buddhists love lists.
44:31 Speaker 02 I know, after you read the Sutras enough, it's everything's in a list.
44:34 Dan Harris? Yeah, exactly. So you have this list, 12 lessons from 12 years of serious meditation, which I just found really interesting. We're not going to get to all 12, but I just was gonna maybe take through a few of these and, and hear what you have to say. The first lesson is pain spreads through the web of humanity. Can you say more about that?
44:55 Speaker 02 Yeah, that became really clear to me in the earlier years. So I came from a background in nonprofit organizing. So I spent a lot of time being a part of movements and like just organizing people to make change like in their cities or in their schools. And I would see how much the world could be a better place. And like that in combination with my love for history and just like reading about all these struggles that human beings have gone through. It's clear to me that we're often in this massive web together as human beings because we're so communal that.
45:34 Speaker 02 It's almost like the hurt that someone has felt, they may intentionally or unintentionally pass it on to someone else. And like that, we keep passing on hurt in some form of another to each other. And that lesson felt really important to mention at the top because I do think that we live in this very precious historical moment, even with all of the chaos and all of the ups and downs and the political changes and whatnot. It feels like there's never been a time before, other than the time of the Buddha, where there are literally millions of people meditating. There are millions of people in therapy, millions of people who are actively helping
46:17 Speaker 02 themselves come out of past pain, come out of serious trauma, who are trying to heal themselves in some way or another. And what's really interesting is that I think historically, we do pass on pain to whomever is in proximity to us. But we have this opportunity now where people who are equipped with these tools, whatever we know, whether it's meditating or not, they're equipped with these tools that can help them transmute that pain. So if they do receive pain from others or receive pain in their childhood or whatnot, they can figure out how to deal with that, how to process it, and how to let it go so that those that they're around, they don't pass on that pain to others. And inspires me a lot and gives me a lot of hope.
47:02 Dan Harris? Yeah, more people burning their conditioning than probably at any point in human history. It is a hopeful sign. I'm not a Christian per se. I'm half Christian, half Jewish, but I'm not religious. But there is that thing Jesus said on the cross, forgive them. They know not what they do. Hopefully, I'm not mangling that because I really did go to temple more than I went to church.
47:24 Speaker 02 Yeah.
47:25 Dan Harris? But I do think about like if you just, there's this pathos to the human condition where all of these. Traumatized people, all of us, big T or little t, trauma with untrained minds, most of us, walking around, passing our pathology on to others, banging up against each other like pinballs. And that's the pathos of the human pageant, really.
47:51 Speaker 02 Whenever I think about someone who's fully enlightened, and I think about these archetypes like the Buddha or Jesus, these are beings that were so fully in unconditional love. Like, that was their existence. Like, that's the way, the framework of their mind. You know how we live through ego? As you continue burning that conditioning, like we mentioned, your framework slowly starts shifting to become much more compassionate, compassion for yourself and compassion for others. And I think it is possible to take it to the ultimate level where you just exist in a framework of compassion. And what that
48:33 Speaker 02 means is when you look out onto the world, you don't see anyone as your enemy. No one is your enemy. There's just this flowing love. But even so, you know, there is, I think, that line that you were mentioning with Jesus on the cross, it just points out to ignorance. People just don't know what they're doing.
48:51 Dan Harris? Yes. The second of your 12 lessons from 12 years of serious meditation you've just brought us to nicely, ego and the sense of self are not fundamentally real.
49:01 Speaker 02 I know. That's my favorite one. It's interesting. Sometimes people have a really tough time with that one, and it trips them out. And I can understand it on an intellectual level, because it might point towards like nihilism or something like that. But that's not really what we're talking about here. It's just that when you just really cultivate the mind and train the mind and basically turn your mind into a microscope. There are times where, you know, when I'm in meditation retreats, it feels like I'm sitting at the edge of the universe. And I'm just really studying minute, studying like, how is reality structured? Like, how is this bound together? And, you know, you pointed at this earlier, where you were talking about individuals and the causes and conditions that got them
49:46 Speaker 02 here. But you can also see that internally, they are a set of causes and conditions, that they're literally this bundle of- Mental and physical phenomena that have come together and are moving in these incredibly rapid speeds that create this sense of I, it makes you feel like, oh, I exist. But when you really sharpen the mind and you point that lens inward, it becomes quite clear that it isn't even that there's an observer. Even the observer itself starts melting away. And you start seeing that that which is observing also has a quality of arising and passing away, that your consciousness is arising and passing away. The way that you react is arising and passing away.
50:31 Speaker 02 So these components that come together to create the sense of I, they fluctuate just like everything else. They're also unsubstantial. And personally for me, that experience is quite liberating because I can let myself change now. I'm like, I am changed. Like, understanding that I am changed has been so helpful and just like, I don't have to stick to this idea of Diego. Diego doesn't have to be this one thing all the time. I can just keep letting myself flow, letting myself evolve, making sure that I'm existing within the confines of trying to not harm myself and not harm other people. But then other than that, I'm free to do what I want. I think it's been very freeing to just let my identity evolve.
51:10 Dan Harris? I love what you said about sitting on the edge of the universe. You've done way, way more retreat time than I have, to the extent that I've had maybe one or two moments of what you might call like real equanimity. And it does feel like you're just getting a glimpse into the gearworks of the universe. Like, you are just seeing everything arising and passing so quickly.
51:35 Speaker 02 So clearly.
51:36 Dan Harris? And I'm aware that for me, like, that was a big moment, but for like experienced meditators, that's just a Tuesday. You know, it's like, I don't want to make too much of these experiences on my side, you know, because I, I am a real baby in this realm. But it's a thrilling and freeing thing when you recognize, yeah, this whole world that seems so solid, like a real movie, is actually 24 frames per second. And yeah, it can be scary and also really cool.
52:04 Speaker 02 Yeah, and also very Liberating and that feeling like I like I like I mentioned before, I'm not enlightened or anything like that. But when you think about the Buddhist teaching, it points to nirvana, the unconditioned, the truth that exists beyond mind and matter and this experience of total freedom. And when I think about those terms like beyond mind and matter, as I've kept meditating, even though I haven't experienced it per se, I can feel like, oh, this is where this leads. This is totally heading towards like, because to me, beyond mind and matter means outside of the universe, because we're there are so many levels of existence and mind and matter are literally the descriptor of this universe that we exist in. But I think
52:48 Speaker 02 you can just make the mind sharp enough that eventually it pierces right through.
52:53 Dan Harris? Okay, so now you've you've got a some sort of molecular suspicion that the metaphysical claim, the core metaphysical claim of Buddhism, which is that nirvana is achievable and that nirvana is this experience, as you said, essentially outside of this universe, or at least not part of the universe that we generally have access to in our conventional lives. Your sense is even without having experienced it, the Buddha is pointing to something.
53:19 Speaker 02 Oh, totally. Yeah, yeah, it's it's really clear. And it feels like it's just, you know, what happens next? Because you can literally feel like the way time starts slowing down, the way everything becomes so incredibly tranquil that the filaments, I don't even know what to call them, but these these things that are binding together, the universe are ever so lightly melting away. And to me, it's like, I think at the beginning, when I first started meditating, that idea was so exciting, like, oh, wow, the potential to like be fully free and all that. And now I've learned to just like, that's the point of the practice. The point of the practice is to achieve ultimate liberation. But I'm not going to rush anything.
54:03 Speaker 02 I'm just going to keep practicing. Whatever happens, happens. I think it's become pretty clear, you know, to see that, yeah, I've traveled enough of this path to know where it leads.
54:13 Dan Harris? Interesting. Well, you just picked up on something. I don't know if this is on your list of 12, but it's a core lesson for me and has been the relief of a lot of suffering that can come with practice. Early on in my meditative career, I would hear all this talk about Nirvana, or sometimes called Nibbana, or whatever. And then I would get ambitious.
54:35 Speaker 02 Yeah.
54:36 Dan Harris? And ambition, you know, often doesn't feel very good. It's got a strivy, wanting, sweaty
54:41 Speaker 02 Yeah.
54:42 Dan Harris? character to it. And so it's about holding two things in the mind at the same time. One is, yeah, there is, allegedly at least, because I don't have as strong a suspicion as you do, but there is allegedly a culmination to this path. And if you want it too much, you can't get there. So you just shut up and do your meditation.
54:59 Speaker 02 Exactly. The exact moment that you start craving it, the door closes. It's just not, just not even approachable.
55:04 Dan Harris? Yes.
55:05 Speaker 02 And it's funny because I've seen it happen to myself and I had to overcome that. And I've seen it happen to a lot of other people. But we learn and understand more of what the goal is. And then we start bringing this like Western capitalist, like productivity mentality to it. And it's like, how can I optimize? How can I get there faster? And this is the antithesis of that. This is like literally about how much can I just observe and allow my mind to be so utterly balanced that I'm letting these things unfold organically. And I think that's one of the hardest things because like, what's the Buddha really asking? He's just asking you to just observe. And that's like one of the hardest things for a human being to do.
55:43 Dan Harris? Yes.
55:47 Dan Harris? Coming up, Diego talks about how to make decisions for your future self, how to have so-called boundless compassion without being a pushover, and why being able to see perspectives outside of your own is a sign not only of intelligence, but also mental strength.
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58:04 Dan Harris? Number three on your list is something that I resonate with quite a lot. Surround yourself with people who have the qualities you want to develop.
58:13 Speaker 02 I think that's one of the reasons why I've like, you know, my wife and I, we live now in Western Mass where there's a lot of meditators out here and we've been living up here for four years and we lived in New York before that in New York City and it was just a wonderful time and it was interesting being around in New York City, being around a lot of people who wanted to help the world in different ways, but also had a lot of ambition to like make these big goals and make them happen. And I think it was really helpful for me to be in New York City, even like being in New York City, like I got to meet you for the first time when we did the seven minute thing that we made for your show in 2019
58:57 Speaker 02 and, you know, meeting Elena Brower, just meeting different people that kickstarted my writing career. And I knew that once the writing career got established and I was like, okay, I've made some good connections, made some great friends. I'm like, I really want to grow on the practice. So I had to kind of move up here and just surround myself with people that I could learn from because, you know, I've only meditated what like maybe like somewhere between 12,000 and 13,000 hours. And that's not indicative of wisdom. That's just more indicative of effort. But like, I know a lot of people have meditated like 40, 50,000 hours and like, these people are weapons, you know, like their minds are just so strong and they've never written a book, never been on a podcast. They're just like
59:39 Speaker 02 quietly, these beings of great wisdom. And I love being around people like that because they just, they help me grow.
59:46 Dan Harris? Yeah, I mean, the Buddha was not shy or subtle on this score. You know, when he talked about the three jewels, the three primary components of being a Buddhist, they were the Buddha, which is somewhat immodest, but he was basically holding himself up as an avatar of awakening, an example of the fact that this path does have a culmination and it is achievable. The second is the Dharma, which is the teachings of the Buddha. And the third jewel is the Sangha, the community. And it wasn't like... An asterisk, it was the third jewel, an equal part of the trilogy. And it's often overlooked in our individualistic age.
1:00:24 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's totally overlooked. Even with the monastics, the Sangha, we don't have as much understanding in the Western world about the like Buddhist Sangha. But there are times when I'm out here in Western Mass, I'm like, I see monks walking around up and down the hill. It's so cool. To me, it's like they've surrendered everything. They practice, they serve, and they have literally sort of donated their lives to the Dhamma so that they can help the continuation of the teaching, helping the teaching continue existing for future generations. And I'm like, dang, that's some power. That's so, so amazing. So super inspired by things like that.
1:01:07 Dan Harris? I'm literally sitting here thinking, should I be moving to Western Massachusetts?
1:01:11 Speaker 02 You gotta come hang out. It's cool. I went to your center a year and a half ago. Got to give dana to Biku and Halio and just check out the whole center and it was just awesome.
1:01:22 Dan Harris? It is, I wish it was my, well, it's definitely not my center. I know you didn't mean that, but
1:01:27 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah, the one you go to. Yeah.
1:01:29 Dan Harris? The one I go to, yeah. Insight Meditation Society, everybody should check it out. Dharma.org. While I'm at on the promotion tip, if people want to check out quote unquote your center, what's the website for that?
1:01:41 Speaker 02 That's so funny. It's Dhamma, Dhamma.org, D H A M M A dot org.
1:01:45 Dan Harris? Awesome.
1:01:46 Speaker 02 Yeah, so we stick to the poly.
1:01:48 Dan Harris? One, one typo can get you to one center or the next.
1:01:51 Speaker 02 I've seen it happen before with really cool results. Yeah, it's really awesome.
1:01:58 Dan Harris? So number four on your list is your future is created by your present actions.
1:02:03 Speaker 02 Hmm. Yeah, that's a big one. I think I've seen the way that even within one lifetime, right? Because it's hard to talk about like other lifetimes because it's, you know, you don't really have much proof of that other than a feeling. But even within a lifetime, I've seen that as soon as I started improving my actions, let's say the actions that I started taking in 2012, 2013, 2014, have totally created what my 2020, 2022 look like. And the moment that I started intentionally, because I think a lot of times I was acting quite passively unconsciously. I was just reacting and trying to, you know, move through life without a lot of intention.
1:02:45 Speaker 02 But the moment I started activating the intention and started cultivating my habits and bringing a daily practice into my life, making sure that I always have time in the year to do these longer meditation retreats. The results have been extraordinary. And a lot of it is just helping me make better decisions. It's not like it's some magic that like, oh, you know, you do this thing and then some random thing from the sky comes and blesses your life. It's not like that. It's just that my decisions and how I move about has just become a lot clearer. And that's helped so much with the creativity. It's helped with the writing. It's helped with all these facets of life. And all of it stemmed from the good actions that I've taken.
1:03:26 Speaker 02 So I think your actions that you put forward really set up your future.
1:03:31 Dan Harris? It's karma.
1:03:31 Speaker 02 Yeah, you're literally building it every action, one step at a time.
1:03:35 Dan Harris? Yeah, you're creating a new vapor trail.
1:03:39 Speaker 02 Uh huh.
1:03:40 Dan Harris? We have so much conditioning we can't control. And if you can, it's amazing to burn some off. But we can always start creating new conditioning right now.
1:03:51 Speaker 02 Totally. We always have that opportunity. Like Goenka, Sharon Salzberg, you know, all the good teachers, they say, start again.
1:03:57 Dan Harris? Yes. Number five, make your compassion boundless.
1:04:01 Speaker 02 I think that's the challenging one. Like we talked about that a little bit earlier about being able to look upon the world and see no one as your enemy. And people who don't cause harm, people who do cause harm, and understanding that even those who
1:04:17 Speaker 02 Do things that hurt others like they're struggling. They're really struggling in their mind because it's something that's happening in the mind that would even create a force of action in that manner that hurts another. So having that deeper sort of macro outlook on the human conditioning and being able to challenge yourself to make your compassion more boundless, to make your love. And this is, you know, we're talking about indirectly the practice of Metta where you're really doing your best to share your merits with all beings. Like, may all beings be happy, may all beings be peaceful, may there be, you know, no strife in the world. And you notice the, the connection between having no aversion towards people or trying
1:05:01 Speaker 02 not to have aversion towards people and wishing them the best and that deeply supporting your own inner peace because you're not sort of like channeling all that turbulence and harboring all of that. Instead, you're giving them love.
1:05:16 Dan Harris? This is timely discussion because I, and I'm sure you're getting a lot of this too, but I'm getting a lot of questions, you know, in the era of Trump, is compassion a viable strategy? I want to be clear as I ask this question, this podcast for everybody, whether you like Trump or don't like him. And I'm aware that I think the vast majority of people listening and the vast majority of the questions I'm getting along this line are from people who don't like Trump. But we're in an era of heightened polarization and division. And I am getting the sense that it's harder and harder to sell compassion. Maybe sell is not the right word, but to, to pitch people on compassion, I'm, I'm finding a lot of pushback on this.
1:06:00 Dan Harris? So what do you say when you are confronted with people who push back?
1:06:04 Speaker 02 Yeah, there's a subtlety there. There's a very important subtlety because compassion does not mean that you're a pushover. Compassion does not mean that you let people do whatever they want to do.
1:06:15 Speaker 02 What it really means is that you are doing your best to treat people well. And when you come across someone who is causing harm, you know, whether Trump or not, we're talking about any individual. When you come across someone who's causing harm, you do your best to stop them, but you do your best to stop them without hating them. You do your best to stop them out of compassion because they're harming others. And for the one getting harmed and the one doing the harming. And this is interesting because in the back in 2012. So I came into that first Goenka retreat with a very like, you know, social activist conditioning, quite left at the time. It was on day eight that Goenka talked about this exact thing that it just really deeply connected with me.
1:06:59 Speaker 02 He was like, you don't just let people harm others. You're not just going to stand there like a vegetable. You're not just going to let whatever happen, happen. Oh, that's all because of karma. It's not like that. When you come across something like that and it's in your direct line of sight, you do your best to speak up. You do your best to stop them if it's something that's on a very micro interpersonal level. But you make sure that you do that without hating the individual. You do it still with love in your heart. And the perfect example is like a small child. If you see a small child that is like really about to do something very dangerous and you have to scream at them to stop them, to get their attention. It's not because you hate the kid, it's because you love them. And you're doing that from a loving place and you have to speak harshly because you need to get their attention.
1:07:45 Dan Harris? I love that. The two like synonyms that I'm finding for compassion that I'm finding it go down a little easier with people. One is, goes back to the tick not hon thing as love is understanding. Compassion is just understanding that we all have our vapor trails. We all have our causes and conditions and. As Van Jones recently said to me, you know, it's not like anybody wakes up in the morning, decides to be a bad person.
1:08:12 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:08:12 Dan Harris? You know, it's where everybody thinks they're doing the right thing. And so that that's just the the raw understanding and in no way precludes you from taking decisive action in disagreement. And the second is, the second like synonym is non hatred.
1:08:26 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:08:26 Dan Harris? You know, it's a very Buddhist way of saying it. It's it just means that you you can take the same actions, they just don't have to be based in hatred, because hatred is not a clean burning fuel. It will burn you out over time. And so if you're drawing on the wellspring of compassion for yourself, for the people you care about, and even for the other person, because as you said earlier, a couple of paragraphs back, that people who are doing harm, like it's harming them, whether they're aware of it or not.
1:08:54 Speaker 02 Absolutely. Immediately. It was even harming them before they even committed the action, because they had to have this big burst of negative energy to even make that action happen. And it's creating these massive, deep, aversive imprints in their mind that are going to be with them for a long time. And I think one one last thing to add on this point that keeps coming up is like, I think all people, you know, wherever they are on the political spectrum, I think something that's important to work towards is not putting your views on a pedestal. It's just really, really important to understand that all views are imperfect. And this was one of the things that the Buddha warned the Sangha about before he died, where
1:09:37 Speaker 02 he talked about how attachment to views could lead to division. And it's exactly what happened.
1:09:42 Dan Harris? Yes, the Buddhist community fractured in some ways with some positive results. We now have these incredible.
1:09:48 Speaker 02 Totally.
1:09:48 Dan Harris? Schools of Buddhism, but it wasn't without turmoil.
1:09:51 Speaker 02 Mm hmm.
1:09:52 Dan Harris? I do want to say that what you just said right there is essentially a different way of saying what you say in number seven on your 12 lessons, which is being able to see perspectives outside of your own is a sign of intelligence and mental strength.
1:10:05 Speaker 02 I think that's been like, I used to be so combative and like, and argumentative about political topics, and especially when I was younger and, you know, really thought I had everything figured out. And what I've been learning over time is that I absolutely don't have everything figured out. And it would actually be quite beneficial instead of when I hear someone's view that I don't necessarily agree with, instead of fighting them on it, I've been leaning on
1:10:34 Speaker 02 Using these simple words, just tell me more. Like, I'm curious how you landed there. Like, just, you know, and without condescension, just with raw curiosity, like, tell me more. You know, you have to learn to pick your battles. Like, you don't need to fight every single person who has a different view from you. But in these moments where you do come across someone, just tell me more. You know, I want to understand how you got there. And I think that's been just so productive.
1:11:02 Dan Harris? Well, we made it halfway through your list, and this is probably a good place to leave it. I'm going to ask you two questions that I always ask at the end of a conversation. One is, was there something you were hoping we would get to that we didn't get to?
1:11:15 Speaker 02 No, I think this has been so fun, honestly. It's a breath of fresh air because it's a... I've been doing a lot of interviews to support the release of the book, but it's really nice having this Dharma context between the both of us to really kind of fully show where these lessons are coming from for How to Love Better.
1:11:34 Dan Harris? I totally agree. I share that sentiment a million percent. And, you know, I just notice over and over, I didn't sleep well last night. I can... That's neither here nor there in some sense, but I can be underslept or in a bad mood or busy, but if I'm talking Dharma...
1:11:48 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:11:50 Dan Harris? It's everything's okay.
1:11:52 Speaker 02 It's so fun, yeah.
1:11:53 Dan Harris? And so the second question I was getting... You kind of brought me to it nicely is, can you just remind everybody of the name of your new book and also of your past books and your Substack? And just please give us all of it.
1:12:06 Speaker 02 Yeah, sure. So, How to Love Better, it'll be available on Amazon, in bookstores, and it's my latest book. This one really focuses about relationships. It focuses on just developing harmony in relationships. Other than that, you can find me on Substack, youngpueblo.substack.com. It's one of my favorite places to really go deep on topics. Um, you know, I'm also sharing things on Instagram, Y U N G underscore P U E B L O on Instagram there, but a lot more of that is just short form and bite-sized reflection points. And I have a few other books, another nonfiction book called Lighter, and three poetry and prose books that are called the Inward Trilogy that people can get.
1:12:51 Dan Harris? Excellent. We'll put links to all that in the show notes. I'll drop some links to my prior encounters with Diego slash Yung Pueblo, so you can go deep. Thank you so much for making the time to do this. It was great to talk to you.
1:13:03 Speaker 02 Yeah, this was awesome. Thank you so much.
1:13:09 Dan Harris? Thank you so much to everybody who works so hard to make this show. 10% Happier is produced by Tara Anderson and Eleanor Vassili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our managing producer. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Cashmere is our executive producer. And Nick Thorburn of the great indie rock band Islands wrote our theme. One last thing I want to say before you go. If you enjoy this show, please do me slash us a solid. Follow the show and leave a rating and a review on whatever platform you watch or listen to us on. It only takes a minute. It's free, and it really helps new people find us and spread the good news that the mind is trainable. Thank you. Sincerely, I mean it. Thank you.
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