A Radical Buddhist Antidote for Anxiety | John Makransky and Paul Condon

Combining modern science and ancient Buddhism to treat anxiety, anger, and impatience. John Makransky https://www.bc.edu/bc-web/schools/morrissey/departments/theology/people/retired-faculty/john-makransky.html is a professor of Buddhism and Comparative Theology at Boston College, AND ordained as a Tibetan Buddhist lama. Paul Condon https://paulcondon.org/ is an associate professor of psychology at Southern Oregon University and a research fellow at the Mind & Life Institute. Both are the authors of How Compassion Works: A Step-by-Step Guide to Cultivating Well-Being, Love, and Wisdom https://www.shambhala.com/how-compassion-works.html?srsltid=AfmBOorIV7fv7fIMcfadM5UfXUAKomN0gkqCEfPdmsJ9bh-oqmTO6mW8. In this episode we talk about: The sales pitch for compassion—even at a time when what most of us really want is for other people to be nicer The connection between attachment theory and compassion Why compassion is our natural state How Sustainable Compassion Training helps you access warmth without forcing it How to apply compassion practice to burnout, conflict, and difficult emotions 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.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:31Dan Harris?

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

• 0:46Dan Harris?

  Hello, my fellow suffering beings. How we doing today? My guests today are going to make a case that is both enticing and, I suspect for some of you, a little bit hard to swallow, at least initially, because my guests will present a radical antidote to the anger and overwhelm that so many of us feel these days. Potentially hard to swallow, though, because said antidote is compassion. Many people wince when you argue for compassion these days. I hear this all the time. You know, why should I develop my own capacity for warmth when what's truly needed is for other people to be nicer? My guests will argue convincingly, in my view, that a basic understanding of both modern science

• 1:28Dan Harris?

  and ancient Buddhism leads inexorably to compassion as the medicine for what ails you. It doesn't make you weak. It doesn't make you a doormat. It makes you happier and healthier. My guests are John McCrankey, who's a professor of Buddhism and comparative theology at Boston College, and he's also an ordained Tibetan Buddhist Lama, and Paul Condon, an associate professor of psychology at Southern Oregon University and a research fellow at the Mind and Life Institute. Together, John and Paul have written a book called How Compassion Works, in which they lay out how to practice what they call sustainable compassion training. There are lots of incredibly useful little nuggets in this conversation.

• 2:10Dan Harris?

  We talk about their sales pitch for compassion, even at a time when, as stated earlier, most of us really want other people to be nicer. The connection between attachment theory and compassion. Why compassion is your natural state. How their model helps you access warmth without forcing it. And how to apply compassion practice to burnout, conflict, and difficult emotions. I should say, if you want to learn more about how to apply compassion to your daily life, this episode comes with a bespoke guided meditation from our Teacher of the Month, Cristiano Wolff. If you sign up at danharris.com, you can access all of our companion meditations, and you can come to our weekly live meditation and Q and A sessions, which we do every Tuesday at 4 Eastern.

• 2:54Dan Harris?

  The next one is coming up tomorrow, Tuesday, November 25. Okay, we'll get started with John McCrankey and Paul Condon, right after this.

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• 3:31Speaker 03

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• 4:06Dan Harris?

  John Bukrinsky and Paul Condon, welcome to the show.

• 4:08Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 4:10Speaker 05

  Thank you, Dan.

• 4:10Dan Harris?

  I'll just kind of randomly start with you, Paul, but John, you can jump in on this. What is your sales pitch for compassion? I remember being in a meeting with a bunch of my advisors back in 2017, and I was at that time contemplating a how-to book on Buddhist compassion and loving kindness practices. And my brother, who's a venture capitalist and at the time was not very interested in the Dharma, said, "Why would anybody buy this book? We don't want to be nicer. We want other people to be nicer." How do you make this attractive to a skeptical, time-starved audience? I'm very curious.

• 4:47Speaker 05

  Yeah, good question. I think if we really pay attention to our experience and pay attention to when we feel good in our bodies and in our communications with other people, when those actions and communications have a kind of quality of kindness and gentleness or curiosity, if we're really honest with ourselves, we feel better when we are being kind and compassionate. The more time I think about this and explore into it and notice connections from various psychological perspectives,

• 5:27Speaker 05

  I think it confirms that, that compassion and kindness is a kind of natural state that human beings were evolved to be able to embody. It's a natural way of being.

• 5:43Dan Harris?

  What say you, John?

• 5:45Speaker 04

  Compassion is one kind of expression of our fundamental being or the depth of our being or the ground of our being.

• 5:55Speaker 04

  Whether we understand that as some concept of God as the ground of our being or whether we understand that as Buddha nature or the Tao or in different systems of understanding, compassion is closer to what we really are. Therefore, all I'm adding is that from that perspective, what Paul said makes tremendous sense. Of course, we would feel more at home when the power of compassion is active in us. And there's one other thing that I would add.

• 6:26Speaker 04

  In a sense, it is an expression of more of our true home or of our very being prior to the ways that we tend to get caught up in our socially conditioned reactions to everything, along with everyone around us. It's more like ontologically, sort of like fundamentally prior to all that, or more fundamental than all that, is a kind of a home base that compassion is kind of calling us back to.

• 6:53Dan Harris?

  So I think what you're saying there, I'm going to say a bunch of words, and then you should fact check me, because I may say stupid words. I think if I'm hearing you correctly, you're saying our factory setting is compassion. Just by way of elaborating on that, I've heard studies about newborns given a choice between puppets, malevolent puppets or benevolent puppets, like dangled in front of them, and 100% of the time, I don't know if these are newborns or infants or whatever, but not 99, like 100% of the time, they go for the warm option. And so it's like somehow being in a compassionate state, and we'll define what that is, but being in a compassionate state feels like home,

• 7:37Dan Harris?

  whether we're able to articulate that or not, there is a powerful pull in that direction. How am I doing?

• 7:44Speaker 04

  I think you're doing really well. I'm sure Paul will want to comment on that, and he's probably familiar with these studies. My first thought on that is, it's not just that compassion makes us feel more at home here. It's an expression of our true home. It's an expression of a kind of a primal expression of the very ground of our being.

• 8:06Speaker 05

  So from an attachment theory perspective, and also evolutionary psychology perspective, infants come into the world with a kind of inborn instinct to be in connection with a source of safety and comfort and security, usually a parent, caregiver, and their behaviors are attempts to maintain some kind of proximity to that source of care. And There's an interesting perspective. Famous developmental neuroscientist Michael Tommasello wrote that humans in particular compared with other animals or other primates,

• 8:50Speaker 05

  humans are specifically prepared to be in connection with multiple adults. So it's our sort of natural state or natural baseline to be in a caring, compassionate connection with more than just one caregiver. And the infant's instinct to prefer the pro-social warm puppet is some evidence of that. The infants seek out sources of comfort and safety in their environment. And our behaviors or capacity for pro-social behavior are actually rooted in that instinct to maintain proximity to compassion or proximity to care.

• 9:31Speaker 05

  So I think that the perspective in terms of Buddha nature or the ground of our being makes deep sense from this developmental evolutionary picture of humans as instinctually wanting to be near compassion.

• 9:47Dan Harris?

  Paul, what is sustainable compassion training?

• 9:52Speaker 05

  Yeah, so John and I have talked about this phrase quite a bit. In attachment theory, there's a concept called the secure base. And the secure base is, in that tradition or that perspective, an external caregiver that provides a source of safety or comfort that an infant returns to as needed. And then, once their needs are met, they can then go back and explore into the world. But what John and I have been doing in our work is trying to help people to identify resources or experiences from within their own life, in their own worldview, like a caring memory or a benefactor experience or a place in the world

• 10:37Speaker 05

  that feels comfortable and safe. And by reconnecting with that memory and visualizing it as if it's happening, it's helping people to reconnect with the

• 10:51Speaker 05

  Caring, loving qualities. And that's something we can repeatedly reconnect with as needed to then empower our own underlying capacities for care, well-being, simplicity, curiosity. And it's sustainable in that it's not something that we're trying to self-generate or create. It's something that we're learning to tap into or bring out from our underlying natural state, as we talked about in the opening. And so it's sustainable and it's an inner resource that we can repeatedly come back to as needed to then shape or empower our compassion for others.

• 11:35Dan Harris?

  So just want to clarify that, though, Paul, that as I understood it, there are many, many, many, many practices, both preliminary practices and then sort of progressive practices in the book designed to help us tap into this. But I heard you say, and I might be being obtuse, to use a fancy word here, that really it's all about summoning some image of a moment of a benefactor or what I think is sometimes unfairly derided as a happy place in common parlance. But my understanding going into this interview was that actually what you're describing the book is much more complex than that.

• 12:14Speaker 05

  Yeah, so the benefactor concept or a sort of external resource of care is an entry point or what we've described as a relational starting point. So as opposed to entering into a meditation practice with the mindset of learning to cultivate compassion and mindfulness and wisdom through my own individualized effort, which I think many of us in the modern sort of Western world learn things like that. Like we learn to ride a bike or play a piano sort of through a discipline and effort. What we're suggesting with this relational starting point is learning to tap into something

• 12:56Speaker 05

  with support, starting with support of an external resource with the sense that we are held in qualities of love and compassion. But then, as you said, that is a kind of starting point that initiates the potential for much more, much further kinds of practices that help deepen into qualities of love and wisdom.

• 13:20Dan Harris?

  So for people listening along at home might want to do this. John, let me turn to you. Can you describe this initial practice? Like, you don't have to guide us in it, but how would we do it if we're interested in tapping in?

• 13:34Speaker 04

  I think the easiest way is to just guide it for a couple of minutes. Be very brief. Just come down from the thinking mind into the body as best you can. If you're driving, just as best you can while driving. But just relaxing a bit. So you come down from the thinking mind and just settle a bit more into the body of letting the body unify you with it more and more, just by relaxing into it as best you can.

• 14:04Speaker 04

  And just try now to recall a simple caring moment with another person or a pet that makes you happy to recall,

• 14:13Speaker 04

  or feels heartwarming or kind of uplifting to recall. Try to do that right now. Try to remember a simple caring moment with another person or a pet.

• 14:26Speaker 04

  A moment when perhaps someone was kind of radiating some warmth to you or just happy to be with you or really listening or seeing you or could be a moment of snuggling with a child or a pet.

• 14:41Speaker 04

  Can you recall a moment like that? Kind of makes you happy to recall?

• 14:48Speaker 04

  If you can.

• 14:51Speaker 04

  Now bring this to mind, not just as a memory, but as happening right now.

• 14:57Speaker 04

  Right now, you are being seen and held in deep care, compassion, and acceptance and warmth beyond all judgments.

• 15:08Speaker 04

  That's happening.

• 15:10Speaker 04

  Just sense or imagine that that's happening.

• 15:14Speaker 04

  Feel it.

• 15:17Speaker 04

  You already know it. You've experienced it. Just inhabit that now and feel it.

• 15:25Speaker 04

  Relax into that.

• 15:28Speaker 04

  And steep in its loving energies and its tender qualities.

• 15:36Speaker 04

  And let them just infuse your whole being and your whole world.

• 15:45Speaker 04

  Every part of you and your world, loved in its very being.

• 15:52Speaker 04

  Just relax into that.

• 16:01Speaker 04

  And let these tender qualities embrace

• 16:06Speaker 04

  all of your body and mind.

• 16:24Speaker 04

  And just let everything be.

• 16:35Speaker 04

  So that was a short introductory meditation.

• 16:41Dan Harris?

  Thank you, John. Let me go back to you, Paul, because I think what you were saying is a distinction here. It struck me as perhaps being a distinction from the way compassion is normally taught, or at least the way I've understood how it's normally taught and have therefore taught it myself. Like you're developing a muscle. But we already have a muscle, like a bicep, and we can develop it through bicep curl. And in traditional loving kindness, or karuna, or compassion practices in the old school Buddhist Theravada tradition, it's often described as, or I've often heard it as, you're training up these innate capacities.

• 17:23Dan Harris?

  Here, it sounds like, yes, that is true, but it's also something about, it's less doing. It's less, at least as a starting point, less as you developing your capacity to be warm to other people and more tuning into your innate receptivity to this, to use John's phrase, ground of our being.

• 17:46Speaker 04

  Dan, sorry, but I don't usually do this, but I'd like to be the first to respond to that.

• 17:52Dan Harris?

  Oh, please.

• 17:52Speaker 04

  Because it's really referring back to the whole history of Buddhism.

• 17:55Dan Harris?

  Yeah, yeah. No apologies required. Go for it.

• 17:58Speaker 04

  The traditional way to cultivate, before you do anything else, such as cultivating.

• 18:05Speaker 04

  Metta, love, compassion, or mindfulness for that matter, before you do anything like that, traditionally, you would bring to mind the Buddha or other very saintly figures. Why are you doing that? It's called going for refuge before you do anything else. Going for refuge in what? In the power, actually, the embodied power of love, compassion, wisdom, and all associated qualities, which is what the Buddha represents and embodies. That's traditional. That's where everything begins. And that's where Paul and I are coming from. However, even though that in fact is the starting point through the whole history of Buddhism,

• 18:50Speaker 04

  and I would suggest the history of all other contemplative traditions for cultivating such qualities that I'm aware of, spiritual traditions. But here we're talking about Buddhism. Even though that is the traditional way to begin, that was edited out through a modernist lens that decided early on as practices of meditation were being adapted into modern Western cultures, that it would be hard for Westerners to relate to that, that most Westerners are not Buddhists. It would not be meaningful to bring to mind the Buddha in that way, that such practices were cultural artifacts and not essential, without, as far as I can see, ever asking the question,

• 19:36Speaker 04

  what did such practices as relating to the Buddhas, the Bodhisattvas, the saintly figures of Buddhism, how did they function? What functions did they serve for those who would then learn, following upon that first part of the practice, cultivating things like mindfulness and deep states of calm and insight and love and compassion? How did that going for refuge, that bringing to mind of embodiments of...

• 20:07Speaker 04

  You know, unconditional, all pervasive, unchanging powers of love, compassion, and wisdom. How did that, bringing that to mind before doing any of those other practices, function? What did it do for people? That was not asked. That was edited out. Paul and I have discussed this a lot, but early on, in my own attempt to practice what Buddhism was suggesting could be transformational in the possibility of generating much more unconditional care, love, compassion, and wisdom supporting them. As I attempted to do this practice, starting from almost 50 years ago,

• 20:49Speaker 04

  I found there were a lot of inner obstacles to it, a lot of difficulties in the way that they were being taught. And many, many other Westerners around me were having difficulties. And at some point, it dawned on me that part of that difficulty is that we did not begin in the right place. We began with an understanding of ourselves as autonomous, largely isolated individuals, taking up something like a self-help technique to try to remake ourselves, mostly by ourselves, into something better. And that that framework is not the framework that successful practitioners of the Buddhist teaching have had, ever.

• 21:31Speaker 04

  And that that might be part of the reason why we're facing so many obstacles in trying to cultivate compassion.

• 21:36Dan Harris?

  Very interesting. Paul, do you want to weigh in on any of that?

• 21:40Speaker 05

  Yeah, I'd like to speak about a perspective that I think responds to what your question was, Dan, and then adds to John's perspective. But there is some understandings of the way that the brain and mind works that comes out of cognitive neuroscience that adds to the conversation. So I think most listeners, most people will recognize this as embodied cognition. Some neuroscientists also refer to it as grounded cognition. And the basic idea is that when the mind and brain conjures up some image or some concept, it's not that we are...

• 22:21Speaker 05

  Representing that or experiencing it in the way that a dictionary would by like listing out the definitional features of something, but rather the brain is simulating the experience. So when we engage in these relational practices, like John was describing of calling to mind the Buddha, or adapting this to call to mind a resource of comfort and safety. What's happening within the brain is we're actually simulating the experience as if it's happening now. We don't have to work really hard to do that. The brain is constantly doing this. This is something that people in many different professions do.

• 23:05Speaker 05

  Professional athletes will do this. They'll visualize and imagine experiences. Piano players will do this, sort of visualize and imagine playing a piece without actually being in front of a piano. And it's stimulating the experience in the brain and throughout the body as if it's happening now. And so we're taking advantage of that in these relational forms of compassion training, of calling to mind whatever resource from your life and from your world that helps to embody a sense of comfort and safety. And what happens then too, and this is where it ties back into the Buddhist traditions that John and I are drawing from, is these moments of safety and comfort are interrupting

• 23:49Speaker 05

  our ordinary sense of the way we might operate in the world as an individual trying to do something. They interrupt that and help draw out these natural capacities for compassion that we have been instinctually born with that are our natural state. These relational moments are helping to bring that out. And then I think the muscle metaphor, the exercise metaphor that you're describing, like, you know, we do a bicep curl to increase the bicep. That still works. It still applies. The more we engage in the practice and the more repetition we do, the easier it is, the more familiar it is, and it's just can, it can just happen kind of quickly or on a dime, the more that we do it.

• 24:34Speaker 05

  Interrupting our narrow self-focused lens on the world and then help those capacities for compassion just come forth more effortlessly, more automatically.

• 24:46Dan Harris?

  Is there any research into what this practice, we've been talking about this receptive mode practice, into what the benefits might be for, it just strikes me as somebody who's had anxiety since sentience, that it might have some pretty powerful effects on anxiety.

• 25:05Speaker 05

  Yeah, so there's a field of research called attachment priming. And in this area of research, what researchers have done is have people call to mind a resource of security by looking at an image or visually imagining something, or even just like reading words related to the feeling of safety and security. And that method has been used in hundreds of studies, and it's been shown to have benefits related to increasing tolerance of negative emotion, increasing patience while listening to another person, increasing willingness

• 25:49Speaker 05

  to engage in action to help another person and help reduce another's suffering. And importantly, too, there was a meta-analysis a few years ago on this attachment priming technique, showing that the attachment priming method is more than just feeling good. It's more than just a positive emotion or feeling. It's actually establishing the sense of security and a sort of sense of self that feels at ease. There's something about the underlying narrative about ourselves beyond just feeling happy. So that method or that priming technique is a sort of very brief version.

• 26:29Speaker 04

  What we're doing within the meditation practices is trying to make it much more powerful through the meditation practice. And there's myself and others who are actively doing some research to further explore the potential effects of that meditation.

• 26:45Dan Harris?

  That's very cool. Because as I understand it, in your framework, we move from the receptive mode into what I think you call a deepening mode?

• 26:53Speaker 04

  Yes. And then from deepening mode into what we call inclusive mode. And all that becomes a basis for explicit practices of compassion.

• 27:06Dan Harris?

  Coming up, John McCrankey and Paul Condon talk about how deepening mode opens into awareness itself. They'll explain that. And then later, we'll talk about how to integrate compassion into your everyday life.

• 27:58Dan Harris?

  Let's start with deepening mode. Can you describe it?

• 28:00Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 28:01Dan Harris?

  And how, very practically, how we would access it? Or how do we inhabit it?

• 28:06Speaker 04

  How do we be entered into a process that's drawing us more and more into our depth? And what does that mean to be drawn more and more into our depth? I think it's almost automatically somewhat confusing if a kind of depth dimension of our awareness is alluded to in general, because we're not really brought up and educated by and large in modern societies to learn how to allow ourselves through some form of practice to be settled into deepening, we could say, levels or layers of consciousness. How to

• 28:45Speaker 04

  just gently settle into levels of consciousness or ways of being aware that are simpler than just thinking about everything and worrying about it.

• 28:59Speaker 04

  So unless we're introduced to some kind of a contemplative or prayerful, I include like prayerful practices, or there are also ritual practices, or contemplative practices of learning to allow the mind to settle into more and more simple and grounded, or you could say intrinsically more calm or peaceful dimensions of awareness. Unless we're introduced to a practice like that, then it can just seem like, "What the heck is that that is we're talking about? That doesn't exist." All that I know of that exists, and all the people I talk with are pretty continually talking and thinking about and worrying about this and that,

• 29:42Speaker 04

  and that's the only kind of consciousness that I'm familiar with. There can't be any other kinds of consciousness, could there? And if there are, isn't that kind of like a very esoteric, or abstract, or mystical kind of thing, using the word mystical, like something that has nothing to do with me? But no, actually, it might not be that difficult to begin to learn how to relax the grip on our usual worrying, reacting mind, and allow it to begin to settle into simpler, more intrinsically tranquil states of mind that are kind of prior to all that worrying and reacting. In the little meditation exercise that I just led,

• 30:25Speaker 04

  we actually began to touch in on that direction of possibility at the very end of it. You might remember, and I was saying, "Just kind of relax and steep in that experience of tender qualities, however that is for you. Every part of you and your world loved in its right being. Let yourself just kind of relax more and more right into that, deeply allowing that, and then just explore letting everything be." And it's at that point that I was actually signaling toward the deepening mode, letting these qualities just help the mind and body to start to relax and settle so deeply that another kind of level of consciousness just naturally starts to emerge, not by trying to force ourself into another state of being or consciousness,

• 31:09Speaker 04

  but just allowing it to naturally kind of emerge more and more, and that starts to become deepening mode.

• 31:15Dan Harris?

  Yeah, I'm just wondering, how much luck do you have getting beginners to get to that state? What I hear you saying is, in my own meditation practice, there are times when I just allow sensations of the breath or sensations of the body to be there, I will then, of course, get distracted a million times, start again, tap into a kind of non-interfering awareness of whatever objects are arising in my mind, either thinking or physical sensations, and then again, get distracted, start again. Is what I'm describing, at least coming close to what you're describing in terms of deepening mode?

• 31:57Speaker 04

  Of course, it absolutely sounds related to me, but there is a difference. Notice you're still maintaining this self-help kind of frame of mind, like, I will then do this, and after that, I'll do this, trying different things. And there's a lot of self-discipline involved in meditation. I don't, Paul and I don't want to pretend that that's not the case, of course there is. However, this becomes part of the receptive mode. But what happens when you get distracted? Like, all kinds of parts of your mind come up that are just pulling you away. Or it's, okay, a part of your mind comes up and says, time to really plan what I'm going to be doing tomorrow. And you're off for a while before you even realize that's happened. You're familiar with that.

• 32:32Dan Harris?

  Very.

• 32:33Speaker 04

  Or part of your mind might come up, and in the case of here, you're just settling into qualities of warmth and care and love and compassion, and ones you've experienced before, so you know them. But just exploring, re-inhabiting that experience, and the thought may come up, but I don't deserve this, I don't deserve love, or I'm a caregiver, I should just be taking care of others, I shouldn't be experiencing love like this, that's not even morally right, I shouldn't be doing that. So all kinds of parts of us will actually be triggered. And the fundamental instruction becomes, we learn how to allow them themselves to be embraced in the process itself. So whatever sense of self and thought and reaction is coming up, we learn how to, within the context of now you are experiencing these qualities of warmth and allowing and love and acceptance.

• 33:19Speaker 04

  So as those very parts of your mind are coming up, notice them. And now just let them include themselves. They've come up. Let them include themselves in this embrace of warmth and acceptance. Let this process make you into a great holding environment for all the reactions that come up. So rather than identifying with reactions as they're coming up, you are the healing, holding environment in which they're embraced in warmth and acceptance and deep allowing. And that's the direction we go with it. So it's very much along the lines you actually just raised, Dan. It's just, again, the framework is different because we start in a different place.

• 33:57Speaker 05

  Dan, I'd like to chime in. I think there's some ideas that I've brought into our conversations and teaching and also is there in the book to kind of make some connections between what's John's talking about and ways of understanding and cognitive psychology. So there was a study that some researchers did in the 1960s on visual perception. And they put infants on a table. Half of it was covered with a checkered cloth and the other half was a glass top. And the infants would crawl up to the edge where the checkered cloth stopped and the glass begins. And they would stop right there.

• 34:38Speaker 05

  And it was evidence that infants had this capacity to perceive depth. It was an innate capacity and they stopped out of the fear of the edge. But the researchers did a second part and they put the infant's caregiver, usually their mother, on the other end of the table. And when the mother expressed some curiosity or joy, the infants would crawl into the glass plate or the glass slide of the table. We've used this as a kind of metaphor for how the receptive mode or these relational practice has helped to support sort of wading into the deepening mode of meditation experience that is

• 35:22Speaker 05

  Beyond our ordinary conceptual understanding of the world is like crawling into the glass plane. So when we crawl into the glass plane or into the deepening mode, we're leaving behind our ordinary conceptual structures or familiar sense of myself and the world into what is called in our tradition, a non-dual experience or a kind of an experience that is prior to the construction of a self and an other, prior to that sort of me and the world as separate. And that can be frightening to abandon our ordinary conceptual structure, our ordinary narratives of ourself that have been a source of safety

• 36:07Speaker 05

  and a source of protection into a kind of space of being that is non-conceptual, which the deepening mode is helping us to tap into or become more familiar with. But from our perspective, that non-conceptual space is actually more safe or more secure than anything else. It's to get back to the beginning of our conversation. It is our most natural state. And if we really learn to connect with it and learn to trust it, then that can be a sort of ultimate experience of safety or ultimate security.

• 36:46Speaker 04

  And also the ground of many qualities. It's actually in the systems that we're drawing from in spiritual traditions, particularly Tibetan Buddhism, but also others. It's also the ground or source of qualities of love, compassion, and so forth. We're actually, which are actually prior to me trying to be loving toward you or you trying to be loving toward me. Prior to those structures of thought and reaction, as Paul was just saying, prior to all that is actually a non-conceptual, basic simplicity in which the powers of love and compassion are more freely available. So that's also part of the reason why we learn in the deepening mode to just relax into that ground more and more.

• 37:29Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 37:30Dan Harris?

  It's interesting you raise the word simplicity or diminutive, simple. We have spent hours on this show talking about nondual awareness. There's a percentage of the audience that continuously finds it very frustrating. I actually love practicing in a nondual way. My teacher, Joseph Goldstein, has been deeply influenced by Zokchen. And it hasn't been hard for me to move in this direction, at least that's the story I'm telling myself. However, we bump into a lot of frustration from listeners because for some people, it's just hard to grok.

• 38:06Speaker 04

  It'll be a lot less frustrating if we hold in mind pretty firmly that what nondual experience basically refers to, at least in the traditions that I draw from, is foundational simplicity. If we actually learned how to allow ourselves to become simpler and simpler. By the way, that is the direction of Zokchen and Mahamudra, which Joseph sort of touches in on. If we learned how to let ourselves become simpler and simpler by becoming more receptive to the power of simplicity coming more from the depth of our being. But don't worry about all those words.

• 38:49Speaker 04

  If we learned how to let ourselves be drawn into greater and greater simplicity. It's a good way to phrase it. We are then beginning to access what's referred to as a nondual way of experiencing. And we don't have to try to think hard about it because that'll just take us further away from it. Because that's not simplicity. But if we keep the word simplicity in mind, as you raised it up, that could really help a lot.

• 39:13Dan Harris?

  That's been my experience. The harder you look and the more you think about it, the further away it goes.

• 39:22Dan Harris?

  Coming up, John and Paul talk about how to integrate compassion into your everyday life, handling frustration and conflict through awareness rather than reactivity, and the role of compassion in addressing burnout and emotional exhaustion.

• 39:41Speaker 06

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• 40:13Dan Harris?

  Perhaps the best use of what remains of our time would be to talk a little bit about how all of this redounds to our daily lives. What kind of practices can we knit into our daily lives to boost our compassion quotient?

• 40:27Speaker 04

  We need some kind of a starting point. It needs to be a starting point into a process that brings us more and more home as we experience what home means. Home in a kind of a deep sense. Then from that home, we can start to welcome others more home in a way that can also relate to them more in their own home base, which to some degree overlaps with ours. But that starting point is maybe different for different people. I think for many people, or most that I've worked with, this kind of relational starting point of something like the receptive mode is pretty welcoming because

• 41:11Speaker 04

  you can bring to mind whatever it is that actually makes you happy to bring to mind. And that feeling of happiness or being uplifted or inspiration or warm-heartedness is already the beginning, the starting point of experiencing loving qualities. And that's actually a big deal. Your question was about what practices could weave into our daily lives. Well, first, you have to take up some kind of a practice that you, as Paul said earlier, repeat a lot. They become very familiar with and gives you more and more access to these kinds of loving qualities and powers of your being. And then from there, you can engage.

• 41:53Speaker 04

  In your own best way, the other modes of practice, which visually mirror those modes in the various contemplative traditions, deepening more and more into your home base. And then from there, sensing others more and more as more than your habits of thought about them, or even their habits of thought about themselves, sensing them more in their very being, not just their habits of thought about themselves, or your habits of thought about them. That comes from the receptive and deepening mode. So in while we're another, I mean, just entering into these modes, but it could be your simplest and best ways to access them. And for many people, that starts with their best way to access the receptive mode. Then, once you become really familiar with it in some kind of meditation practice,

• 42:38Speaker 04

  like first thing in the morning, then you weave it into your day. You touch in on it again, many, many times in your day, the practice that's most connecting for you right now, out of all those, one, practice. And you do it a lot throughout your whole day in little breaks, little moments, while waiting for you to ask the next question. Settle into it for a minute. And then that'll start to be like thousands, thousands of times that you've been touching in on those qualities. And then those qualities will start to empower you for further practice.

• 43:07Dan Harris?

  Yeah, I can imagine that changes the complexion of your entire day.

• 43:11Speaker 05

  Dan, something I'd like to add in terms of like a kind of a take home or takeaway. Once we've learned about this basic formula, the concept of a caring moment or benefactor, once we have that conceptual framework introduced to us, we can start to discover that so much of our life, this has already been happening in little ways. And we can start to pay attention to that, those kinds of experiences or memories more and more. As we've been talking about through the conversation, we might begin by first, and probably for quite a while, looking into specific caring memories or relationships with benefactors that help

• 43:55Speaker 05

  us to feel that sense of comfort and safety. But as we pay attention more and more, we just start to notice how there are these little benefactor experiences happening all the time where just something very simple, and this gets to the simplicity point, something very simple can just help us to feel at ease and relaxed. Like when I come to work and open the blinds in my office and just look at the sky. It's kind of like a experience that feels very relaxing and ease. And that's kind of like a doorway in to that way of being. Or I sometimes share a story of one time I was feeling kind of stressed and I was trying to meditate.

• 44:39Speaker 05

  I was having just a really busy day and I was having a hard time getting into the meditation. And after about 10 minutes or so, my neighbor's table saw turned on. And the sound of the machine is really loud and it just totally interrupted what was going on in my mind. And then just like that, I was right there in my body and could relax into the meditation. So it's like the table saw was functioning like a benefactor in that moment by interrupting my mental stream of thought and allowing me to then just feel at ease. We can start to notice these little experiences more and more in our world that can be a basis for

• 45:23Speaker 05

  the process that's described in the book.

• 45:26Dan Harris?

  Paul, I imagine you, like all of us, have people in your life, either in your immediate orbit or who you see on the news, who you find really fucking annoying. Very practically, how does the repetition of this practice help you, if at all, when you're dealing with somebody frustrating, either virtually or in front of your face?

• 45:47Speaker 05

  Well, I think it helps us to be more honest, to notice that, okay, this situation or this person is really pissing me off right now and I can be honest and say that in my life or sort of be aware of that process that's happening. And then as we talked about, and as John was talking about with the inclusive mode, what it can help us see is we can sense that that person who's pissing me off. That's not their entire being. That's not all that they are. There's a sort of deeper story to that person than just that simple action.

• 46:21Dan Harris?

  Hmm.

• 46:21Speaker 05

  And also, as we establish this idea of a holding environment, which John was describing, a kind of embodied stance of warmth and stillness and rest in which all of our own mental patterns can rest in a space of care. We become compassionately present to our own anger, our own frustrations. We're in a way automatically becoming more caring, more curious, and more compassionate towards these others that are connected to our emotions.

• 46:57Speaker 04

  I can actually put that in a slightly more jarring way, just for fun.

• 47:02Dan Harris?

  Yeah, go for it.

• 47:03Speaker 04

  This is part of the message of Buddhism in particular. Other people do not bother us. What bothers us is the feelings in us that are triggered by them. They're not directly bothering us. No one else bothers us.

• 47:18Dan Harris?

  Yeah.

• 47:18Speaker 04

  It's the feelings in us triggered by them or by their ways of acting or whatever. So in a sense, what's bothering us is our own feelings. Not just in a sense, actually, that is what's bothering us. And that brings us then back to more of the power of what Paul was starting to raise. What if we could be profoundly healing, holding environment for all of our feelings as they're arising? Well, that's what we're learning in these meditations. That's part of the receptive mode. What if we were learning to be that kind of a holding environment for all of our feelings? What if we were doing that right now in this conversation, Dan?

• 48:02Speaker 04

  Well then, how would that affect the quality of our presence to each other?

• 48:06Dan Harris?

  I think you point this out in the book, but I can also imagine this being really helpful in terms of burnout.

• 48:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, absolutely. This does not do away with. The need for institutional changes where they're really necessary. That is, burnout is also partly the product of institutional dysfunctionality. Right? We've all experienced that. It's not just me individually burning out, but the institutional man in has situated the way we're working together in ways that become just impossible for a human being to really endure. But nevertheless, that we could find some empowerment by becoming more of a holding environment for all of our feelings that could empower us to challenge what needs to be challenged also in our institutions, but without so much reactivity and with more

• 48:55Speaker 04

  of a sense of sensing the humanity in everyone involved, including our institution's administrators, who are also human beings and maybe also very caught up and desperately trying to work out what to do. Well, maybe we could be more of a healing power in that situation and not just a reactive kind of power within it that might be more effective.

• 49:16Dan Harris?

  Couple of years ago, I was in India and at a meeting with the Dalai Lama and there was a young firebrand activist, Irish guy, very smart in the room. And he, after a couple of days of listening to the Dalai Lama talk about the power of compassion and altruism, kind of had enough and was like, look, the Taliban are back in control in Afghanistan. You still don't have control of Tibet because the Chinese have it. The climate is teetering on the edge. The darker forces on the planet seem to be prevailing and you're telling us to have compassion. And through a series of explanations, it was going through a translator, but the Dalai

• 49:59Dan Harris?

  Lama and his allies had a really good explanation or case to be made, which is we're maximally effective. I believe the words the Dalai Lama used are, we have access to the full brilliance of the human brain and mind when we are not in the grips of hatred. And it doesn't mean you can't be strategic. It doesn't mean you can't take affirmative action in tons of ways. You just don't need the hatred on top of it. So does all of that rhyme with what you've been arguing for?

• 50:31Speaker 05

  I think my thought on it is kind of simple in that.

• 50:36Speaker 05

  When we're not so fully identified with our emotional reaction, because of this idea of a holding environment and our anger, or fears, or anxieties, or stressors, when those reactions are allowed to rest in a space of warmth and safety and curiosity, we're not so fully identified with those reactions. So we have more agency. We can be aware of the anger and aware of the oppressive conditions. But like you said, Dan, like the Dalai Lama's response, we can then take more advantage of our own powers and our own capacities to then show up and respond to others and do things with more effectiveness.

• 51:20Speaker 05

  We can still draw upon the information of our reactions and emotions, but they're not so controlling of us.

• 51:28Speaker 04

  I would just add, again, just to be a little bit provocative. You're mentioning about the forces of darkness that were being brought up in that meeting with the Dalai Lama, and all these different things that are going wrong. And I'll say it, that I think, if we're going to put it in a simple way, sexually related to what Paul just said, then fundamentally, what's going wrong is that most people don't know how to be with their feelings. And therefore, they get absolutely caught up in all kinds of ways of reacting from their feelings and in fear of their own feelings, which they interpret as other people and other communities, that they're afraid of them. But actually, they're afraid of their own feelings,

• 52:11Speaker 04

  feelings triggered for them within their context by their thoughts of all these other people or what they're doing. And so, so many people in the world don't know how to be with their feelings. They only know two ways to be with them. Either to reject, deny, suppress, try to press down, which is absolutely not what we're saying at all. The second way is to fully identify with, rationalize them and act upon them. And that also won't work because in both of those ways, we're still totally under their power, profoundly subject to them and lack freedom. We lose our agency. But there's a third way to be with feelings that neither suppresses or denies them.

• 52:55Speaker 04

  Quite, in fact, the opposite, allows much more intimacy with them, gives them profound permission to fully be here and also does not fully identify with them or react from them. And that is to become a profoundly healing, holding environment for them. But we need help with that. It'll involve some practice. And that practice is inspired by others who have practiced before us and around us and learned to do that so that we know it's actually possible. Like the Dalai Lama that you brought up and like Tupten Jyipa, who I'll bet you anything was in that meeting and also articulated some things with the Dalai Lama for you. I'm telling you, I think they're exemplars. And I think they're examples,

• 53:39Speaker 04

  not just of superior human beings or something like that, not at all. They're examples, as I think they would say, of what's readily possible for a human being if we take a strong enough interest in just learning to become more of a healing environment for all, starting with all of our own feelings. And from there, everything. I'm hoping people who are listening to this don't get the impression that this new book we put out, How Kabashin Works, because we do draw heavily on areas of Tibetan Buddhism and also areas of psychology and cognitive science. But to that first point, this is not just a book for Buddhists. We drew on it, but in a way in which we're seeing the analogous patterns

• 54:24Speaker 04

  in the other deep contemplative traditions, like those of Christianity and Judaism and Islam and Hinduism and on Chinese religions as well. It is for people from any religious or spiritual worldview and with the support of these areas of psychology and cognitive science that Paul so beautifully brought in and correlated so profoundly, it's also for scientists and it's for people from secular worldviews and people who didn't think they were interested in religion, but it turns out, maybe they are interested in some of the things that have come from religion, which in fact are grounding a lot of how we think and a lot of possibilities for the future as well.

• 55:05Dan Harris?

  Again, the book is called How Compassion Works: A Step-by-Step Guide to Cultivating Well-Being, Love, and Wisdom. We've been speaking with the authors, John McCrankey and Paul Condon. John and Paul, thank you very much.

• 55:16Speaker 04

  Thank you, Dan.

• 55:17Dan Harris?

  Thank you, Dan.

• 55:23Dan Harris?

  Thanks again to John McCrankey and Paul Condon. Don't forget to check out their book. Also, don't forget to check out the guided meditation that comes with this episode. It's designed to help you take everything you just learned and pound it into your neurons. It comes from our Teacher of the Month, Dr. Christiana Wolf. You can get it over on danharris.com. If you sign up, you'll also get invited to our weekly live meditation and Q and A sessions every Tuesday at four. Christiana and I will be doing tomorrow's Tuesday, November 25th guided meditation session together.

• 55:54Dan Harris?

  Finally, thank you so much to everybody who works so hard on this show. Our producers are 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 band Islands wrote our theme.

• 56:21Speaker 07

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