Surviving the News: Buddhist Strategies for Staying Sane, Engaged, and Not Completely Furious | Pascal Auclair

You don't get to choose what's thrown at you — only how you respond. Karma as a tool for agency, attention sovereignty as a political act, and what to do when you feel completely helpless. The news is a lot right now. And for most of us, the usual options — doom scroll until midnight, or unplug entirely — don't actually help. Meditation teacher Pascal Auclair joins Dan for a live community conversation on how to stay engaged with what's happening in the world without letting it wreck your nervous system, your relationships, or your sleep. In this conversation, Pascal Auclair and Dan Harris discuss: Why reading the news can be reframed as an act of love — and why that changes everything What Buddhism actually says about karma, and whether the bad guys get theirs How to balance staying informed with protecting your mental health The difference between passive equanimity and wise, engaged action How much news is too much — and why the answer is different for everyone Why attention itself has become a battleground, and how mindfulness is your best defense Pascal Auclair https://www.pascalauclair.org/?lang=en has been immersed in Buddhist practice and study since 1997. He was mentored by Joseph Goldstein and Jack Kornfield at IMS and Spirit Rock, where he now teaches retreats. He is a co-founder of True North Insight and one of its Guiding Teachers. Find more of his guided meditations in the 10% with Dan Harris app http://app.danharris.com/. Get the 10% with Dan Harris app here https://app.danharris.com/membership Sign up for Dan's free newsletter here http://www.danharris.com/ Follow Dan on social: Instagram https://bit.ly/3tGigG5, TikTok https://bit.ly/3FOA84J Subscribe to our YouTube Channel https://bit.ly/3FybRzD To advertise on the show, contact [email protected] or visit https://advertising.libsyn.com/10HappierwithDanHarris

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

• 0:02Dan Harris?

  Hey, hey, everybody. Welcome to the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm your host, Dan Harris. We're about a month out now from the midterms, the midterm elections here in the US. And a lot of us are feeling pretty stressed and anxious. So today, we're going to talk about how to stay engaged without losing your mind. We're going to be talking about this with the great Buddhist meditation teacher Pascal O'Clair, who is one of the teachers over on my meditation app, 10% with Dan Harris. And what you're about to hear is me asking Pascal questions, but also feeding him some questions that we got from subscribers to the 10% with Dan Harris app, including a question about karma and whether the bad guys will ever get theirs.

• 0:45Dan Harris?

  Pascal is very funny, and he has a way of talking that just relaxes your nervous system. And speaking of relaxing your nervous system, we here at 10% Happier are going to have your back through this election season. Sharon Salzberg, the great meditation teacher, will be appearing on the podcast closer to Election Day to talk about some great Buddhist coping strategies. And we'll be doing some live online events on Election Day and the day after the Election Day that are available to everyone, whether you're a subscriber or not. I'll guide a meditation on each of those days and then take your questions. We're doing all of this in the spirit of one of my favorite mantras, which is never worry alone. Just a little bit more about Pascal O'Clair before we jump in here.

• 1:29Dan Harris?

  He's been immersed in the Buddhist scene since 1997, and he's been mentored by great Buddhist meditation teachers like Joseph Goldstein. He is the co-founder of True North Insight and one of its guiding teachers. And as mentioned, he is one of our key teachers over on my app, 10% with Dan Harris. All right, let's jump in and get started with Pascal O'Clair. Pascal O'Clair, are you excited to talk about this very anxiety provoking subject?

• 1:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I am excited about this. It's very charged. I was reading some of the questions this afternoon, and that somehow it was opening my heart very kind of wide. Like, it was calling for compassion and care and listening and holding stuff together. It's good. We're together thinking about these things.

• 2:18Dan Harris?

  Yeah, well, one of my favorite expressions, and people will have heard me say this a million times before, but it literally is something that bears repeating. Never worry alone. We're in a crazy moment for the species, and it's really advantageous to go through it with a sangha, to use the Buddhist phrase for a community, to do it, as I often say, in the carpool lane. So as you noted, we've received a bunch of questions in advance from members of our community that we're going to go through. But we also have a lot of people listening along with us live and popping into the chat with their own questions. So I'll be bouncing back and forth between the pre-submitted questions and then the stuff that I'm seeing in the chat. So let's start with our first question, and it comes from Karen.

• 3:04Dan Harris?

  Here it is. "I would like to hear about the dance around outrage, action, frustration, depression, schadenfreude. This administration is driving me crazy. I focus on hopeful things, but sometimes that's just those rare times he's stopped while the tsunami of criminality continues, breathing." Pascal, what say you to that?

• 3:27Speaker 01

  Well, I love that Karen ends with breathing, because this is so kind of the instruction and teaching, you know, like this invitation to actually just come back here to this body, this breathing body. You know, in the Buddhist teaching, this is called the first foundation. That's where our attention is invited to land, back in the body, to be here. Why, I think partly is that when we come back to here, here now, you know, all these ideas, these news we're reading, and coming back to here now, we can actually discover that maybe there's not an immediate threat here in the living room.

• 4:08Speaker 01

  And this can help bring a little bit of space, a little bit of ground, a little bit of a breathing space. And so this, to me, is excellent practice, just breathing, just sick. Okay, there's all these ideas that are turning in my head, you know, and contracting my heart. And here's a body breathing here, and what's around here is space, maybe in this wherever you are room, living room outside, just to bring this back. After this, I would say two ideas comes to mind. One is the Buddha was not living in a different time than the time we're in. There was no democracy at the time of the Buddha. There was wars. There was all kinds of things happening.

• 4:52Speaker 01

  And he developed his practice, his wisdom, his compassion, his equanimity, his balance of mind, his amazing kind of honesty and non-denial and care in that kind of environment. So we're, in a way, we're in the right environment to develop amazing qualities. And so sometimes we think this is in the way. I've heard this many times from many people. This, maybe this is not in the way. This might be the way. This is excellent time to be alive, in a way, not what we would wish for, but it's excellent to actually nurture values, like to clarify, what are my values? What am I going to live by?

• 5:33Speaker 01

  So this is one thing that comes to mind. The Buddha was living in this exact same kind of environment, probably even more precarious and challenging. After this, the other thing that comes to mind is the need to balance things, to expose oneself to beauty. We can easily forget all this when we're fascinated, especially by phone screens these days. We can even, you know, the mind, the attention can get all sucked in like a vortex. So it's very skillful, very skillful to be able to change objective attention. There is another war going on, Dan. There's a war in attention going on. There's a tension sovereignty.

• 6:14Speaker 01

  I think I might have heard about this on one of your podcasts, one of your conversations. So I think to me, it's half of the practice is to actually be able to notice beauty, notice what is working, notice what brings joy. To me, it's not denial. It's skills. It would be denial if there was only this. But to actually be able to kind of titrate, go from one to the other, so that's skill. Also, I have to say, I really liked when Karen writes the dance of outrage, action, frustration, depression. Like, the idea of dance, to me, bring almost a sense of creativity and playfulness, which are qualities that are really important here if we're going to survive what's happened.

• 7:00Dan Harris?

  Just to reflect what you said there, one thing you said is that just doing this thing that we're already doing, but tuning into the breathing that's happening anyway can be really grounding in the face of the chaos of the news. You also talked about just the fact that we can achieve a degree of sovereignty over our attention and pay attention to the many beautiful things that are happening. The two things are always true, more than two things are always true, that the algorithms are designed to keep us anxious and angry,

• 7:39Dan Harris?

  because that's what gets us coming back. It's sticky. It preys upon our evolutionary vulnerabilities. But it doesn't show you the whole picture. There are many other things that we can also focus on that don't alleviate or obviate the difficult things that are happening in the world, but can put them in perspective. And I'm just looking at some of the things that people are saying in the chat here. Becky says, "Nature really helps me shift focus from the negativity." Liz says, "I've been focusing on my garden and noticing the beauty." And again, this is not to be in a state of denial. It's to see more fully what the picture is. But then the other thing you said that I want to hear more about

• 8:23Dan Harris?

  was about how the Buddha was alive in times like ours. Can you just say a little bit more about the things the Buddha experienced during his life and how he handled them?

• 8:35Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, I wasn't there and I'm not even in America. By the way, I'm in Canada, so it might be playing out in some ways. But we've lived enough to know there's so many things happening in a lifetime of a personal lifetime. So 2,600 years ago, there were conflict. Of course, there were, you know, I don't know the specifics, but we know there was wars and conflicts and, you know, like the views, there were so many views, kind of spiritual views. People would come to the Buddha and say, this is not how it is. This, it's like that. It's not like this. There might not have been the internet and the social media and people, but there was views flying around. People were debating and, you know, and of course there was disease, there was uncertainty,

• 9:20Speaker 01

  there was the unwanted. We, that's what the beauty of, of the Dharma, to me, the spiritual practice is that it brings something that looks personal and specific, brings another vista. It says, look, what's happening there? Like what seems personal, like you're facing the unwanted. It is personal, but there's also another view. It's not so personal. It was happening 2,500 years ago. It's happening to others. And so to me, that's what we do. We take a phenomena that we perceive as personal and then we say, has that ever happened in other circumstances, other time, other places? And so, yeah, we could think of the Buddha, but actually I think I don't know many of the specifics, but I know people hated him.

• 10:04Speaker 01

  People were in conflict with him, although he was, seemed to be a really nice guy, very wise. All kinds of things were happening. He had a bad foot. He had a bad back in the later years of his life. And you would think, you could think like, oh, maybe if things were different, I could practice and develop unconditional freedom. No, this was exactly where the unconditional freedom was developed. This was the field. There was not another field.

• 10:29Dan Harris?

  There's a great question that just popped into the chat. Speaking of the Buddha, Pamela says, do Buddhists believe in karma? That's a comforting thought. No. And I don't know exactly what Pamela is pointing at, but I suspect maybe she is pointing at the fact that those of us who disagree with the current administration might feel like they'll get their just desserts via karma. But my understanding is that's not necessarily how, how it works. And I think the Buddha said that understanding karma is very hard to do.

• 11:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. And there's something, there's such a powerful teaching around karma. So also I don't know exactly what is meant, but I know what my teachers, our teachers have taught us about karma. And it seems like the Buddha was, when he was talking about karma, he was talking about intentions, reactions, responses, like where the power lies is in my response. You know, I don't get to choose what is thrown at me exactly. What government is in power? What is in the news? I don't get to choose these things. But if there is agency, this might be one place where there's some playroom. And that's karma to me. That's my understanding of karma is what do I do with what is happening?

• 11:49Speaker 01

  It's not so much, like the focus is not so much on what is happening. Because if it was like my happiness was depending on what's happening, I'm in trouble. I depend on something outside. And here, the whole teaching of the karma is on what is your response? Cause what is your response now has an impact on now? It has an impact on your mind in the future? And it will have an impact in the, when the past tense, when later you look at what was your response? And so to me, that's what I was, I want to focus on. It's not so much in a way like fascinated and hooked on what's happening, but what is my response? How am I going to respond to this? What is possible here?

• 12:31Speaker 01

  So when I see people making wrong choices of how to treat others, I wanted to help nurture my values. Oh, I don't want to treat people like this. This is not what I want to see in my world. So what am I going to put out? It helps me become really clear about what I want to put out, how I want to respond. And to me, this is the teaching on karma that I've learned about this. Pascal, take great care of your response, cause your response will have a great impact on your own mind and your relationships later. And when you'll die, you'll be at peace, maybe because your response was a good response.

• 13:11Dan Harris?

  Most of us can remember being about 15 and feeling completely invisible, or worse, extremely visible, but for the wrong reasons. I remember one year when I was a teenager, I had a pimple in the crevice of my nose for the entire year. I didn't like that. Either way, even if we have painful memories of that age, most of us tend to soften it in memory and it was actually harder than we remember it now. That is the territory of Carrie, now streaming on Prime Video, the first ever television adaptation of Stephen King's Carrie. Eight episodes from Mike Flanagan with Stephen King as an executive producer. Flanagan had described this show as a tragedy.

• 13:55Dan Harris?

  It's about a girl who doesn't feel seen by anyone and about how small, everyday acts of unkindness compound into something nobody meant to cause, which happens now at a speed and scale that would have been unimaginable not long ago. What I really appreciate about the show is that the show takes Carrie seriously as a person rather than as some sort of symbol. And the season keeps circling around one major question. Are you watching the making of a hero, a villain? Or something more complicated than either of those options? Carrie is now streaming on Prime Video.

• 14:34Dan Harris?

  Hey, it's Dan. I just want to tell you about something I'm really proud of. The new community we are building over on my new app, uh, which is called 10% with Dan Harris. Here's something I believe with no reservation. Taking care of your own mind is not selfish. It's actually essential if you want to show up for the world, if you want to deal with the various emergencies on the planet right now. There is in fact a geopolitical case for you to get your shit together. In other words, taking care of your own mind is good citizenship. I think about it like an upward spiral. You train your mind. That makes you happier and less reactive because you're steadier. That improves your relationships with everybody around you. And because relationships are crucial to human happiness, you get even happier, then

• 15:19Dan Harris?

  your relationships get even better and up you go. Our mission over at this new app is to guide you through this process with a growing library of meditations from world-class teachers like Sebene Selassie and Joseph Goldstein and on and on. Also ad-free access to our full podcast archive, exclusive live stream events where we guide meditations and take your questions. We do those every week and much more. Head on over to danharris.com. You can try it for two weeks free and if you cannot afford a subscription, we'll give you one, no questions asked.

• 15:51Dan Harris?

  This, I find karma to be such an interesting subject. Can I, Pascal, would you be okay if I just said a bunch of stuff from my, my level of understanding and then you can, as somebody who's senior in the Dharma, correct or expand?

• 16:05Speaker 01

  Yes, please.

• 16:07Dan Harris?

  So Pamela did confirm that my interpretation of her question was correct. And you took the answer in a direction that I think is very constructive, which is karma really is the law of cause and effect. This happens and therefore that happens. And so that actually can be very empowering for us as individuals, because we do have a certain amount of agency in terms of how we respond to things. And I think it was Abraham Lincoln who said, when I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. And we can use that as a North Star. As it pertains to Donald Trump, who I think is the elephant in the room, a lot of people are wondering, is he, because he's done so many things that I think we all believe are

• 16:52Dan Harris?

  corrupt and cruel, will he pay some sort of price for it? And the truth is, we don't know, but we can see in the laboratory of our own minds, what does it feel like when we're unkind? And from that, you can imagine what's happening in his mind, but at the end of the day, there's only one mind you can take responsibility for and it's yours. And so that's what we're here to do, to train this mind and hope for the best. How am I doing?

• 17:22Speaker 01

  Great. Yeah, yeah, that's a really good point. Maybe there's a kind of a parenthesis I want to make because we're talking about these times, it's so hard, it's so hard. Yeah. It crosses my mind, like, do we think things were great in the past? Like make America great again? That's that, to me, that's like, is that what we believe here? Because I was reading last night, I was reading Tana Hasi Coats, his last book, The Message. And he's saying, there's some of us here in North America who are not in shock. We've seen that it was crooked the whole time, that this whole nation was based on something crooked, you know, and exploitation. And it seems like for some of us, and maybe a bunch of white people, it's, we don't understand what is going on.

• 18:07Speaker 01

  Everything has fallen apart, but it was already pretty messy, maybe. I don't know. So anyway, I liked reading that last night. I was like, yeah, some people were already awake to the fact that it was pretty messy already.

• 18:21Dan Harris?

  I don't know much about the history of the founding of Canada, but I have been doing a lot of reading recently about the history of the founding of this country as we approach the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. And it's such, it's so interesting, like there.

• 18:40Dan Harris?

  To me, it's a teaching in the fact that nobody's all one thing. You know, when I was growing up, we lionized the founders as these great men, and they were just obviously, given the sexism of the times, they were the men were the ones in power. And then there was this backlash where in recent years, we've really focused on the fact that they were total hypocrites who were talking about all men created equal. And literally, Thomas Jefferson wrote, "All men are created equal" while being an enslaver. So massive hypocrisy. And I guess in, in doing some reading around the Revolutionary War and the founders, just really coming back to the center and seeing

• 19:24Dan Harris?

  that there was a true spark of genius there among these men around creating a republic based on ideals that were truly high minded, at the same time as they were, as I said before, complete hypocrites. George Washington, fighting the Revolutionary War, had an enslaved man with him at all times. Shocking to think about. And yet, had he not stepped down voluntarily at the end of his second term, like, we, we may not have a country right now. So the human animal really does contain multitudes. And these founders and this country is an

• 20:05Dan Harris?

  intertwining of the basest, human instincts and the highest. Anyway, that, that's my current view of the situation. How does that go down with you?

• 20:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so is Canada. So, you know, Canada, it seems like a beautiful kind of, that's what I learned at school, a beautiful project, beautiful vision, you know, but it's very messy when you, when you talk to indigenous folks, like, it's horrible, everything that happened. And so this is samsara. If I put it in even a bigger, the samsara is this realm that we are born in, where there's exploitation and disease and death and oppression and uncertainty and all this. And so that's why this very large context. So there's things, particular things happening with this government in the USA right now, but still, it's in the context of samsara. And that's something that you can't actually totally fix. You

• 20:57Speaker 01

  cannot think you're going to fix it, but you can respond appropriately. That's the whole idea of wisdom is that what do you, how do you respond? Respond appropriately? Respond wisely? Respond creatively? So what do you do when there's stuff happening? That so wisdom to me is a capacity to see what are the powers, what are the abilities, the skill, what is possible with this system, the amount of energy, et cetera, and to act from there. And that's, you know, I lead retreats. That's mainly what I do. So I invite people to come, be silenced and feel their body, feel their intelligence. And then, in order to go back to the world and respond, not to fix the world, we're not going to

• 21:40Speaker 01

  be able to fix the world. We don't have that power, but we can respond appropriately, say no here, create new forms over there, take care of our inner life. And here, plenty of opportunities these days.

• 21:56Dan Harris?

  You've led us nicely to the next question with your last answer there. This one's from Teresa. "I have a question for Pascal and Dan about our personal reactions to the news and about their role as teachers and public figures speaking about Buddhism. I worry that we use meditation to be aware of pain without acting for the material changes that are for the benefit of all beings. What's the connection between meditation and acting to help and protect? How do we and you guard against becoming passive observers on the cushion that don't use our power and influence to make change?"

• 22:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. So that's a little bit what I was saying. To me, meditation, mindfulness is there to actually read the situation better. Like, I want to dive under my preconceived ideas and go and really listen well to the environment, listen well to the body, the intuition, the guts, the, listen well to the ethical nature of things that I can feel at the skin level, in the guts, listen to intuition in order to be in relationship, to respond, to, to engage with the world. Sometimes there's this idea that Buddhists would only sit on cushion and receive the world with equanimity and maybe compassion.

• 23:15Speaker 01

  But that's not my understanding. My understanding is that we're developing kind of honesty, of courage, of patience, of non-denial, so that we can engage in the, yeah, in a wise way, accept what is to be accepted because don't have the power to change it, and creatively respond to what's happening. And for me personally, the ways I respond are different ways. Teaching meditation and retreat to me is a kind of a political thing to do, to actually help people gain their power back, their attention back, their power back, their creativity back, is something I do. But I also will write to my newspaper sometimes when I don't

• 23:58Speaker 01

  agree with the way something is presented. And I'll write to officials and I'll go to, how do you call that? Demo, demonstrations, walks, you know, and gatherings around stuff. I'm constantly educating myself. So I'm not somebody who stays away from news. I'll probably do a good hour and a half of news reading every day. I want to know what is happening. Last night, I finished the book, The Message from Tanasi quotes, very educative for me, very good reading. It felt very dharmic to actually listen to an intelligent voice that has a lot to say about the world and what's happening. And another thing that I

• 24:38Speaker 01

  do personally, maybe because of my sensitivity and background and stuff, is I spend a lot of time with arts. I go to art exhibits, I go to theater. I love to, as you said in the beginning, gather with other people and look at creative response to what is happening. I've seen amazing exhibit lately, exhibits. And these are a response to what is happening in the political realm and with the environment. And, and it gives me hope, it informs me, that the sense of community helps me catharsis, helps me move through, through the difficult times, gives me, yeah, hope and power, you know?

• 25:19Dan Harris?

  That all sounds great. What do I do? Pretty much everything you do. Let me answer that after I read a question that is, is very much linked to part of what you just said there, Pascal. And this one comes from Bruce. "What is the latest recommendation for how much news watching is too little and how much is too much?" So what do I do? And then what would I recommend in this regard? I do consume the news. I don't watch any real television news, which is weird since I worked in the industry for 30 years. I listen to a lot of podcasts and read a lot of newsletters, check the times once in a while. But I'm not compulsive or obsessive about it personally. And oddly, even though I was in the news business for a long time, I was never really a news junkie. I was an

• 26:03Dan Harris?

  experienced junkie. So I loved being a reporter who could fly to all of these incredible datelines and cover amazing things and meet incredible people. That was really what I was in it for. But I really try to balance my anxiety around the state of the world with being with my friends and family and being outside and meditating and doing work that I feel is useful for the world. We come back to this phrase so often in, in this group, action absorbs anxiety, just being useful. I, I hope that I've built this second career of mine around being useful in some way. And that is a great salve for the helplessness

• 26:47Dan Harris?

  and hopelessness that I can sometimes feel about the state of the world. In terms of news consumption, I think that's a very individual thing. And this is where mindfulness can help. You want to be aware of what your nervous system can handle. I'm pretty sturdy. I can, well, I'm not very sturdy in many ways, honestly. But as it pertains to the news, I'm pretty sturdy and I can handle spending an hour a day in it. But if it's freaking you out and you're finding that you're just getting obsessive and just being sucked into the vortex, I think the fact that you have this mindfulness practice and you can notice, oh, this is not sitting well with me. There is no reason why you need to know everything that's happening. I saw somebody note this in the comments.

• 27:31Dan Harris?

  Our mutual friend, Sabine Salassi, the amazing meditation teacher, has a policy of no news before noon. And she will often argue, she's not former President Barack Obama. She does not get a presidential daily brief. Nobody cares what she knows about the latest global news event. She goes a couple of days without reading the news. There are no consequences. So yes, on the one hand, we should all be engaged, says informed citizens. But if it's stopping you from sleeping, ruining your relationships, frazzling and fraying your nervous system, I would listen to that and titrate accordingly. What do you say to this one, Pascal?

• 28:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, that mindfulness is the big help for me to be able to assess what is enough. And something that became very clear to me a couple of years ago, I think is was watching short videos and getting, there's a bunch of words, expressions for this, like doom scrolling and sucked in. And I realized that that's very personal, but videos didn't add anything for me. So I decided not to look at moving images. So I'll read articles. I don't want to see moving images. For me, they add fascination and I get kind of hooked and stuck. And it's, it doesn't make me more intelligent in any way. So I'll read, so that's a personal choice. And sometimes I think I'm also good at, I'm able to take in a lot in a way.

• 28:55Speaker 01

  But I'll feel in my body at some point, it's like, oops, I'm getting a little dizzy here. Or it's playing on my mind state, or I can feel it in the body. And then I have to really take really good, good care, good care of this. Yeah, so for everyone to see what is the right form, what is the right time, all these things are really, they do count. And to me, I see it also, I have to say, Dan, as a practice, it's really a practice to me. I read the news on my phone. So when I do it, I had to get really intentional and really conscious about, oh, Pascal, you're lifting your hand, you're about to look at news. Do you know what you're engaging with? So I want to do this very consciously so that I'm holding the phone.

• 29:39Speaker 01

  I know I'm opening the app where I read some of the stuff I read. And I want to go in with good qualities. I don't want to go in with reactivity, impatience, fear. I want to be, to go in with honesty, with curiosity, with care. I care about what's happening for us. This is why I go read. What policies are we putting in place? How are we responding? What effects that is have on people? I want to understand the world I'm in. So I want to go in with curiosity, with care, with patience, with love, really. And so it's my responsibility how I show up when I read news and how I come out. What I read, it's really my responsibility.

• 30:21Dan Harris?

  That's a really interesting reframing around reading the news as an act of love. Love for yourself because you want to stay engaged, love for your community and the world because you care about what's happening. I think if that's the frame as opposed to I'm going to stare, I'm going to rubber neck at a car crash, it just changes the complexion of the experience. I wear a lot of T-shirts because I work from home and I'm a podcaster. And so I can be as casual as I want. And it's a nice little way to rebel against several decades in the news business when I had to wear a suit all the time. And anyway, the other day I was putting on a T-shirt and I thought, man, is this one of these? It looks really good.

• 31:05Dan Harris?

  And I was wondering, is this one of these expensive T-shirts that I got for my birthday, that my wife got for me? And then I realized, no, this is a T-shirt from Quince, which did not cost me much money at all. And by the way, is much nicer and more comfortable and better looking than all of the expensive T-shirts that I recently got for the aforementioned birthday. You know those pieces in your closet that you find yourself wearing on repeat? The sweater that goes with everything, the perfect pair of pants or the tee you somehow always reach for first? Those are the pieces that make getting dressed easy, and that's what Quince does best. Quince focuses on high-quality wardrobe staples made with premium materials like 100% Mongolian cashmere, organic cotton and merino wool.

• 31:48Dan Harris?

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• 32:19Dan Harris?

  Not long ago, my wife had an interior design dilemma. She's been researching a book for a while. And in order to do the research, she's been ordering a lot of books that she is then reading. But then the question became, what do I do with all these books? She didn't want to throw them away or give them away because she wants to be able to refer to them for her research. So she found a great solution via one of our sponsors today, Wayfair. Through Wayfair, she got these really beautiful translucent bookshelves. They're not even waist high. And she has lined her office with them and filled them with books. And the net effect is it looks quite beautiful. It's an elegant solution. And that is what Wayfair can do for you for many of your interior design

• 33:04Dan Harris?

  and also outside backyard furniture solutions as well. And now they have something called Wayfair Verified. Wayfair helps you create a home that stands up to real life with quality products, great value and trusted reviews. Products that you see through Wayfair Verified are hand-vetted by product specialists using a 10-point quality inspection. Find pieces made for real life and get even more value with Wayfair Rewards. Join Wayfair Rewards today to get 5% back on every purchase. Head to wayfair.com to shop all things home. That's W A Y F A I R dot com.

• 33:39Speaker 02

  Wayfair, every style, every home.

• 33:42Dan Harris?

  You're listening to this podcast, so I know you've got a curious mind. Here's a helpful fact you might not know yet. Drivers who switch and save with Progressive save over $900 on average. Pop over to progressive.com, answer some questions, and you'll get a quick quote with discounts that are easy to come by. In fact, 99% of their auto customers earn at least one discount. Visit progressive.com and see if you can enjoy a little cash back. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. National average 12-month savings of $946 by new customers surveyed who saved with Progressive between June 2024 and May 2025. Potential savings will vary.

• 34:22Dan Harris?

  Speaking of news consumption, there is a great question here from B. That's the name showing up in the chat here. B says, curious about how much of the news you listen to is from opposing views and/or not speaking to your own POV. I find we're in an echo chamber with self-selected news, which further entrenches this sense of the other. B, yes, a million percent yes. I, I do not, as a practice, I try not to use the word should. So everybody should make their, their edit, I said, I said should there. Everybody can make their own decisions on who they want to consume from. But for myself, I have made the decision to consume from people with whom I disagree thoughtfully.

• 35:07Dan Harris?

  I'm not listening to Steve Bannon or Tucker Carlson or Groypers or, you know, folks who are on the super, super far right. I don't watch Fox News, but I do listen to center-right thinkers. Specifically, I listen to the editors of the National Review. There's a podcast called The Editors. I read Andrew Sullivan on Substack. I listen to the Commentary podcast, and there are a few others. I listen to Ben Shapiro sometimes. I really disagree with a lot of what these folks are saying. And so that, that can be provocative for my news, for my nervous system. And sometimes I don't, I'm just not up for it, so I don't do it. But I do find it soothing actually, because

• 35:49Dan Harris?

  if you are, as the Buddha warned against, if you are attached to your views, as the Buddha repeatedly warned against, then the world can seem like it's governed by illegible actors. But if you actually take the time to understand the way other people see the world, you can disagree, but from a position of accuracy and non-ignorance. And so I find for me, that is very helpful. What about you, Pascal?

• 36:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it's somewhat similar to you because I, like, I don't want people who's kind of, it seems like their intention is to stir a lot of emotions. And so I want to hear different arguments, different ways of thinking. And again, to me, by reading, it gives me more access to this. I want to hear different points of view, but I'm, I want to be careful about the source. And, and actually, when I say points of view, for me, it's, it'll be more left than me and more right than me. And like on, on every, both directions. And yeah, so the source and the intention of the writer, I think, is important to me. So I try to understand it a little bit. What is this person doing? Are they trying to just get clicks?

• 37:04Speaker 01

  Because I don't want, I don't want that. I want somebody who's thinking about stuff and reflecting. And it helps me understand better my own point of view. And again, maybe I'm going back to something we said earlier, but it's so important to me. Like, meditating for me is developing certain qualities of curiosity and calm. I think of the seven factors of awakening, if some people are interested in that. News reading requires for me the same qualities as meditation. Like, it's the same qualities. I want to be very curious, very open, very attentive, very equanimous, balanced in my heart. And yeah, to me, they're the same practice.

• 37:49Dan Harris?

  We're out of time because I need to run because I'm having dinner with a friend tonight, which is part of how I take care of myself. But I do want to very quickly address one comment that came in from Debbie Henley. Debbie asks how I can best support her husband, who's the general manager of a public radio station in the New York City metro area, and the producer of their network's national news. He's hyper vigilant every day, would only sleep about four hours a night if I didn't hound him about the importance of sleep. He gets pretty close to panic sometimes, especially when also responsible for fundraising in this environment of no federal funding for public radio. Any advice about how I can best support him? I just want to quickly say, thank you to your husband for doing this work. I think

• 38:33Dan Harris?

  journalists are, look, journalists are flawed. I know this from the inside because I'm flawed and I was a journalist for 30 years. We have all sorts of biases and we make all sorts of mistakes, but there's no democracy without journalism. And so I'm just grateful to journalists on all sides of the spectrum who do this work. What I would say to your husband, again, I'm not a fan of the word should, but I would say this to anybody who is running themselves ragged in service of their job, or in service of the world, or in service of anything. There is a misconception that to take care of yourself is somehow selfish and self-indulgent, but

• 39:14Dan Harris?

  you can't help the people you care about if you're a mess. Or let's, let me revise that and make it slightly more provisional. It's hard, or harder, to help the people you say you care about if you're a total mess. As the cliche goes, it's, you can't pour from an empty cup. So, your wife is, in my opinion, correct to encourage you to sleep. And if you get enough sleep and do a little bit of meditation and take a little bit of time for yourself, you're going to be even better at your job. And we need you to be good at your job because that's what a functioning democracy requires. So, thank you again for your work. Speaking of thank yous, Pascal, I love having you as part of this community. You're the best. Thank you for your time.

• 39:57Speaker 01

  Thank you. Thank you, Dan. I'm really happy to, every time we have a conversation with people today. And I'm not so good with the chat on the side of a Zoom, but I saw there was so much action. I hope I can read it at least after in some form, but that's beyond my capacity to take in.

• 40:15Dan Harris?

  No, that's my job to take it in. Your job is to drop wisdom bombs, which you did very successfully. So, thank you again, Pascal. And thanks to everybody for joining us for this, as we do every week. And as I say at the close, and I mean this sincerely, I love you guys. Thank you. Thank you very much for listening to the show. I really appreciate it. And if you enjoy listening to the show, if you get anything out of it, please do me a solid. Leave a rating or a review. I know every podcast host asks for this, but it really makes a difference. It helps boost the visibility of this show. We view this show as a mission to help people become nodes of sanity in an insane world. And so by taking a minute and giving the

• 40:58Dan Harris?

  show a rating or a review, you're really helping us out and helping us achieve our mission. Thank you again. And now on to the credits. Thank you so much to everybody who worked so hard to make this show. 10% Happier is produced by Tara Anderson, Barissa Schneiderman, DJ Cashmere, David Hart, and Hayden Broome. Host production is handled by the great folks over at Greenhorn Creative. And Nick Thorburn of the great indie rock band Islands wrote our theme. Thank you for listening. Deuces. Insurance is not one size fits all. That's why drivers have enjoyed Progressive's Name Your Price tool for years now. With the Name Your Price tool, you tell them what you want to pay, and they'll show you options that fit your budget. So whether you're picking

• 41:43Dan Harris?

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• 42:00Speaker 03

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