Joseph Goldstein On How To Train Your Runaway Brain

You may have noticed that your mind is out of control. It's filled with racing thoughts, ancient neuroses and grudges, revenge fantasies… So why are we like this and what can be done about it? Today, we're talking to one of our favorite people and also one of the most prominent meditation teachers in the West, Joseph Goldstein, about how "ridiculous" our minds are – that's a word he uses a lot to describe the mind – and some really compelling ways to train the mind. Spoiler: having a sense of humor is crucial here. Just by way of context: this is the first in a series of episodes with Joseph, focusing on the phrases he uses while he's teaching Buddhism and meditation. Dan and Joseph are collaborating on a book that will be a compilation of these phrases and how to use them. This book won't be out for several years, but as Dan conducts a series of interviews with Joseph, we'll release them here on the podcast. There's another part coming out this Sunday, January 4th. Just to give you a little taste, here are the phrases we'll be covering in today's episode:   Just begin again Sit and know you're sitting Relaxed, not casual More or less mindful Thieves of meditation Mara, I see you. Ridiculous The mind has no pride Soundtrack The mind is the forerunner of all things. These might not make any sense right now, but you'll hear Joseph explain each of these, where they came from, and how to use them in your meditation practice AND in your daily life. Incredibly practical, bite-sized wisdom. 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 Thanks to our sponsor: LinkedIn:  Spend $250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn ads and get a $250 credit for the next one. Just go to linkedin.com/happier http://linkedin.com/happier. 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.

• 0:05Dan Harris?

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

• 0:19Dan Harris?

  Hello, everybody. Happy New Year. Welcome to 2026. We've got a fantastic pair of episodes to kick off this new year, both of them featuring my guy, Joseph Goldstein. So let's get right to it. You may have noticed that your mind is often out of control. It's populated by racing thoughts, habitual neuroses, ancient grudges. I could go on. So what can be done about this? Today, as mentioned, I'm going to talk to one of my favorite people, also one of the most prominent meditation teachers in the West, Joseph Goldstein, about how ridiculous our minds are. And by the way, that's a word he uses a lot to describe the mind, ridiculous. So we're going to talk about how ridiculous

• 1:02Dan Harris?

  the mind is, and we're going to talk about some very compelling ways to train these unruly minds. Let me give you a little bit of context for what we're going to do here. I managed to convince Joseph to co-author a book with me. This book will not be out for several years, but it's going to be a compilation of the phrases that Joseph uses while he's teaching meditation and Buddhism. These are pithy, catchy phrases that are, as Joseph says, kind of like hacks for working with your mind. I've been studying with Joseph for more than 15 years, and I've made a list of, I think, close to 100 of these phrases, each of which has been incredibly helpful for me in my own life and in my own practice. Some of these phrases are designed to help you with meditation. Some of them are just

• 1:47Dan Harris?

  to help pull your head out of your ass when you're stuck in useless anxiety, or you're in the grips of an unwise desire, et cetera, et cetera. So I've been conducting a series of interviews with Joseph about these phrases, these Buddhist earworms, and these interviews will form the spine of the aforementioned book project. And as I record these interviews, I'm gonna release them here on the podcast. So this is the first one I'm releasing. There's another one coming out this coming Sunday, January 4th, and then many more will start dribbling out over the next year or so. Just to give you a little taste, here are some of the phrases we'll be covering in today's episode.

• 2:26Dan Harris?

  Just begin again, sit and know you're sitting, relaxed, not casual, more or less mindful, the thieves of meditation, Mara, I see you, the mind has no pride, and the mind is the forerunner of all things. These might not make any sense right now, but you will hear Joseph explain each of the phrases, where they came from, and how to use them in your life. Speaking of Joseph, he will be leading our free seven-day New Year's meditation challenge, which will be running from January 5th through the 11th. You can sign up by downloading my new app, 10% with Dan Harris. You can download it at danharris.com or wherever you get your apps.

• 3:10Dan Harris?

  This challenge is incredible. In it, Joseph gives a kind of masterclass and an on-ramp to Buddhist meditation. It's good for beginners and for experienced meditators. I was in the room with Joseph, meditating along with him as he recorded the sessions, and I got a ton out of it myself. So go to danharris.com, download the app. There's a free 30-day trial, so if you sign up now, that free trial will cover the challenge. Okay, we'll get started with Joseph Goldstein right after this.

• 4:11Speaker 01

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• 4:39Dan Harris?

  I think as an overarching question, why have phrases become such an important part of your teaching?

• 4:48Speaker 02

  So mostly, these phrases have come up when I've been on retreat myself and doing my practice. And somehow, it just comes as a, I don't know if this is the right expression exactly, a little hack that gets me unhooked from whatever I might be dealing with in the moment. And just over these many years, there've been a lot of really helpful phrases that come to mind that have a very impactful influence on my practice in terms of unhooking from someplace where I've been caught. And it's been really interesting because they're very intuitive. They just come by themselves. Oh, yeah, that just gets it.

• 5:31Speaker 02

  Or I might read something in some of the texts, and there might be a phrase that just really seems to apply to the practice in a way that I hadn't thought of before. So that could be another source of them. But they're always practice-related in ways that I found helpful.

• 5:51Dan Harris?

  And helpful specifically how? That it, the phrase will surface in your mind at the moment when you need it?

• 5:57Speaker 02

  Yes, so I'll give you an example, and we may get into a discussion of this one later. Though this goes back quite a few years, but it was a phase in my practice where I was dealing just with a lot of sensual desire. And it was just coming up a lot and a lot, and you know, and I used all the familiar ways of relating. So I would... Be mindful of it. I would note it. I would realize this is not helpful. But nothing was unhooking because they were very pleasurable. At least I thought they were pleasurable on a certain level. And so one of the phrases that came to my mind after going through these cycles

• 6:41Speaker 02

  endless number of times, just the little phrase dead end came to mind. Because I realized all of these fantasies, they were just dead ends. They weren't going anyplace. So I'd go down this road, come to a dead end, and then have to come back and just start again. So I started using the dead end upfront. So as soon as the desire started, the fantasy, oh, dead end. And it just helped me not have to go down the whole road. So it's things like that. It's ways of seeing myself caught in a particular way. And then something comes which helps free the mind.

• 7:24Dan Harris?

  And your experience as a teacher is that these phrases also work for your students?

• 7:29Speaker 02

  For some. So I put it out because they've been helpful for me. And then I think they have generally been helpful. But people will use them or not, depending on just where their own practice is and whether they happen to be useful. But I think they're general enough in terms of dealing with common problems that arise. But I think generally they have been helpful.

• 7:54Dan Harris?

  And I'll speak for myself. They've been incredibly helpful for me. And I notice that they really do spontaneously arise in my mind at moments when I need them.

• 8:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:06Dan Harris?

  You've described it as like an inner Dharma coach at times.

• 8:10Speaker 02

  That's what it feels like. And what I particularly like about them is the fact that they come intuitively. So I'm not sitting there trying to think of, oh, I wonder what would be helpful here. It's just, they just come into my mind. I like the intuitive, creative aspect of it. It just appears, oh, yeah, that's, that's right on. It really gets to the point.

• 8:36Dan Harris?

  So it's not like you're in a room with a whiteboard trying to craft the perfect phrase.

• 8:40Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 8:41Dan Harris?

  It just arises naturally.

• 8:42Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 8:43Dan Harris?

  And to you, that kind of gives it some freshness.

• 8:45Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 8:47Dan Harris?

  And it actually kind of speaks to its power because it's not contrived.

• 8:50Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 8:50Dan Harris?

  Yeah, I mean, I, just to reemphasize how useful the phrases have been for me, I was able to come up with a list of about 100 of them from memory. And now I think that can be a little tricky in that we don't want to bombard people with too many moves you can make in meditation because it can get confusing. But I've been hanging around with you for a long time, so I've just accumulated the larceny of taking your stuff and using it in my own practice.

• 9:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, and fortunately, you have a better memory than I do. So you remember more of them than I remember. I'm glad you have the list here.

• 9:32Dan Harris?

  We don't have cameras for this, but yes, Joseph is motioning toward a list that I have in front of me that I'm going to use during the course of this set of interviews. Okay, so the first set of phrases we're going to talk about are specifically meditation phrases. And I think the granddaddy of them all is "just begin again."

• 9:56Speaker 02

  I'm not sure whether that is the granddaddy of them all, but it's definitely a frequently used one. And it's really helpful because for almost everybody,

• 10:12Speaker 02

  even experienced practitioners, but particularly for people just starting their practice,

• 10:20Speaker 02

  it's almost inevitable that people will experience what we call the wandering mind.

• 10:29Speaker 02

  We've given the mind an object of attention, simple, could be the breath. What could be easier? Just stay with the breath, be aware of the in-breath, the out-breath. But what we find is generally that often within a very short period of time, the mind hops on these trains of association and just takes us on a journey. And then at some point, we hop off. And in that moment of hopping off, which really means becoming aware that we've been thinking, that we've been lost, that's a critical moment. And often people overlook it.

• 11:12Speaker 02

  Because there could be a tendency

• 11:16Speaker 02

  for that moment to express some self-judgment, "Oh, lost again." And so then we think, "We can't really do this." A lot of doubt comes into the mind, forgetting that, no, this is going to happen. This is just a natural part of the process.

• 11:34Speaker 02

  And a much more gentle and useful approach would be to really, "Oh, lost, just begin again," with a real gentleness in the mind. And it's that coming back again and again and again, each time we're lost, which actually begins to train the mind. So it's just a really simple reminder that both it's natural and we can be gentle with our own minds in the face of the wandering mind, with that very soft reminder. Just begin again. So in a way, I see that as being very inviting.

• 12:20Dan Harris?

  You said that when you wake up from distraction and begin again, that's how you train the mind?

• 12:29Speaker 02

  Yes, it is the coming back with the intention, "Okay, I'm gonna just stay steady on the breath now." It's kind of like training a puppy. You wanna train the puppy to sit. "Okay, little puppy, okay, kind of push it down, sit." And of course, within five seconds, it's up and running around again. But you just think, "Oh, sit, up and running around, sit." At a certain point, depending how smart the puppy is, it'll get the idea, "Oh, the point is to stay steed," you know, or in the meditation,

• 13:12Speaker 02

  "The point is to stay steady on the object." In this case, it might be the breath. So it's the coming back is the training of the mind and reminding the mind, "Okay, the purpose of this, stay steady."

• 13:28Dan Harris?

  But I think for many people, especially at the beginning stages, although I think this kind of self-criticism can linger, in my experience, for years, you start feeling like you're just a really dumb puppy because you keep having to start over and over again. So what do you say to folks who have that concern?

• 13:51Speaker 02

  It's really simple. We're all dumb puppies. In this context, there are some people who, for whatever reason, have a natural ability to be concentrated. And they just settle in and their minds stay steady on whatever they're attending to. But that's pretty unusual. For most people, it's a training process. And for most of us, it's like that puppy that just keeps getting up and running around. That is more typical.

• 14:30Speaker 02

  And I think just knowing, it's like normalizing it. Rather than thinking, oh, it's just me and I can't do this. This is the process for almost everyone. When I first started meditation, I had zero concentration. And I had studied philosophy in college, so my mind loved to think about things. Went to India, began my practice. I would just sit and think for an hour and enjoy it. I was entertaining myself and the hour went quickly, but I wasn't getting any place. So I know from my own experience

• 15:12Speaker 02

  that if I could make some progress in steadying my mind, anybody can. And that it is a training. And to know that is really helpful. Because sometimes people have the idea, oh, I'm just not suited for this. I can't do this. Forgetting that it's like learning any other skill. You know, if you want to learn a musical instrument, you have to practice the scales or practice the basics again and again. And at first it doesn't sound right, but we keep practicing and we get better at it. It's really the same thing.

• 15:52Dan Harris?

  I don't know how often you speak to like completely naive audiences, audiences where they've never really done much meditation or they've tried it once or twice in the middle of the meditation app craze or whatever. I do that a lot. I've spent a lot of time traveling around the country and the world, talking to people who are really beginners. And I find myself saying the same thing over and over again, but it feels good every time I say it, which is, and I'm curious to hear whether you agree with this. The thing that is happening in your meditation that is leading you to tell yourself that you're a bad meditator is actually proof that you're doing it correctly. Getting lost and starting again is meditation. It is not an obstacle to overcome on route to proper meditation.

• 16:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think that's a helpful way of framing it, which is another way of normalizing it and.

• 16:46Speaker 02

  It would be interesting, just as you go around, whether at different times you just find different ways, or different expressions, or different reminders to help people realize, yeah, this is natural, this is the training, and keep going.

• 17:02Dan Harris?

  Yes. Meaning, there would be better ways to say it?

• 17:06Speaker 02

  No. Perhaps. No, no. Just to mix it up a little bit.

• 17:13Dan Harris?

  Yes. I just notice the lights go on for people, because I've given, you know, I've done hundreds of these talks. And when I point out, yeah, this getting distracted and starting over isn't a problem. That's meditation. People are like, oh, I can do this. I have been doing this.

• 17:30Speaker 02

  Okay, maybe this is the best way. Run with it. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

• 17:37Dan Harris?

  Well, you never know.

• 17:40Dan Harris?

  Okay, so let's move on to another phrase. And this one, you say this a lot. Sit and know you're sitting. What does that mean?

• 17:50Speaker 02

  I first heard this from my first meditation teacher, a ninjaji in India.

• 17:59Speaker 02

  And he would say this, just sit and know you're sitting. Actually, he had another part to the expression. Sit and know you're sitting, and the whole of the Dharma will be revealed.

• 18:13Speaker 02

  So it struck me. And what I liked about it was,

• 18:18Speaker 02

  first, it's a very simple instruction to begin with. So it's not complicated. It's just sit and know you're sitting. And I think people can relate to that and actually begin to practice that simplicity quite easily. Just sit and know you're sitting, nothing else to do. What makes it powerful is that

• 18:43Speaker 02

  when we sit and know we're sitting, so it just provides like a frame. For whatever else may be arising within that frame. So we sit and know we're sitting and quite automatically, we may become aware of the body breathing. Now, we're just sitting, we're sitting and know we sit and we know that we're sitting. But part of that will be the body breathing. And so quite naturally, we become aware of that. And then sit and know we're sitting. And sounds occur. So we quite naturally become aware that we're hearing.

• 19:27Speaker 02

  So this phrase is just a very open, easeful way of settling into this whole, we could say, practice or training in being aware. And so we just start with something completely simple where there's nothing we have to do. It's just we're sitting, you know, it's completely simple. So sit, know you're sitting. And then maybe a tagline which I have not used, but it's just coming to my mind now. Sit and know you're sitting. And see what happens.

• 20:08Speaker 02

  So my hope is that it suggests a very relaxed, yet alert quality of mind. And that combination of relaxed and alert is really the balance that we're aiming for in the meditation.

• 20:29Dan Harris?

  Say more about that. Why is relaxed alertness so important?

• 20:35Speaker 02

  Because each of those terms is an antidote to a potential difficulty or challenge in meditation. Relaxed is the antidote to over-efforting. Even with something as simple as feeling the breath.

• 21:00Speaker 02

  Very often for people, and perhaps especially more in the beginning, there can be a tendency in our effort to be alert,

• 21:16Speaker 02

  efforting a little too much and manipulating the breath, even in some subtle way, pulling the next breath in rather than just letting it come in its own rhythm. So the relaxation is, as I say, an antidote for the over-efforting or over-striving. Alert is the antidote for spacing out.

• 21:41Speaker 02

  Because it could be easy to settle in to a relaxed mode and become so relaxed that we've lost the edge of mindfulness, of really being connected closely to what's happening.

• 21:59Speaker 02

  And when these two come together, when we're both relaxed and alert, the mind just finds that effortless balance,

• 22:10Speaker 02

  where we can be aware of what's happening without over-efforting and without spacing out.

• 22:19Dan Harris?

  But this is a delicate equipoise. I mean, this is this balance between relaxed and alert, in my experience, which is limited. You kind of have to overshoot and undershoot a bunch before you actually get to that nice balance. And of course, like everything else, that equipoise is impermanent.

• 22:42Speaker 02

  Yes, although I've never done this, it's something I've read about. A high-wire acrobat in maintaining the balance, not that they find the balance and then just walk on the high wire, they're continually adjusting the balance.

• 23:03Speaker 02

  I have this image in my mind of them sometimes carrying a pole or something to help, you know, if they feel the body going a little to one side, they balance it by going to the other side. So that's a natural part of the process. The idea is not that we find the right balance and then we have it. It's a continual process of adjustment. One suggestion for people as they're exploring this is to begin to pay attention to the quality of the balance. So that awareness starts to be built in to the very practice of just being

• 23:48Speaker 02

  with the breath, for example. So we're with it, but we're also attending, oh, is it getting too tight? Is it getting too loose? And one might even ask that question every once in a while, intermittently, just as a reminder of that would be worth checking on.

• 24:10Dan Harris?

  Coming up, we'll dig into the difference between relaxed and casual, and we'll talk about being aware enough to notice when you're rushing, even if you're moving slowly.

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• 24:55Dan Harris?

  Is there a phrase you have ever used or liked involving the words relaxed and alert?

• 25:02Speaker 02

  This is related. I'm trying to think of whether I'm remembering the whole phrase or this is just part of it. This is the part that I remember, and maybe it's the whole phrase. But often, I'll remind people in their practice of mindfulness.

• 25:25Speaker 02

  Not to be casual.

• 25:29Speaker 02

  Because casual, and this is related to another phrase, which I use a lot, of describing a certain mind state as more or less mindful. And this is very interesting and really worth keeping an eye out for, because it's so easy to be moving about

• 25:56Speaker 02

  kind of mindful. You know, we're not totally spaced out, but we're not feeling the experience closely. And so that's what I call being casual, or more or less mindful. And it's very easy, I want to go for a long time in that state.

• 26:21Speaker 02

  But in that state, it's very easy then for there to be a lot of background noise in the mind, because we're not really closely connected to the moment's experience. So there's room. We don't have that intimate connection with what's happening. So then there's room for a lot of other mental activity to be happening. So this is really...

• 26:52Speaker 02

  To become aware of when we're in this casual, more or less mindful state is a really helpful check, I think, on the quality of our attention.

• 27:05Dan Harris?

  How does one become aware? Because it sounds like you could drift along for a while in more or less mindful.

• 27:16Speaker 02

  There are a few, a few signals that might remind us that we're in that state. One is if at a certain point you realize, yeah, I've been present,

• 27:32Speaker 02

  but also at a certain point noticing that the mind has been drifting off in a lot of background thoughts.

• 27:43Speaker 02

  And if we just become aware that's happening,

• 27:47Speaker 02

  that's an indication.

• 27:52Speaker 02

  Sometimes those background thoughts can lead the mind to become reactive about something. So if one pays attention to whether there's some level of emotional reactivity to something, that's an indication that, oh, the mind has just gotten lost in some story that's creating this reactivity. And because the reactivity is usually quite noticeable, even more than just the kind of general low-level thoughts that may be going on.

• 28:33Speaker 02

  Another useful, this is a really useful signal,

• 28:42Speaker 02

  especially as we're moving about,

• 28:46Speaker 02

  and that is to pay attention to even subtle feelings of rushing.

• 28:53Speaker 02

  Just as we're engaged in our ordinary daily activities,

• 28:59Speaker 02

  I can notice in myself, it's so easy to fall into a slightly rushing mode. And it doesn't have to be that we're moving super quickly or doing something super fast. It could be a really subtle, just leaning into the next moment.

• 29:20Speaker 02

  I had an interesting experience of how subtle rushing, the feeling of rushing can be. I was on a retreat at IMS, at our center.

• 29:32Speaker 02

  At that time, I was doing very slow walking meditation,

• 29:37Speaker 02

  really slow, being aware just of the lifting of the foot and the moving forward and the placing. So I'm doing this walking meditation back and forth.

• 29:47Speaker 02

  And then the lunch bell rings.

• 29:50Speaker 02

  And I saw myself.

• 29:54Speaker 02

  I was walking just as slowly. But I could feel energetically, the inner energetics. I could feel myself leaning into the lunch line. You know, in anticipation. And it was so subtle, because from the outside, I don't think anybody could have seen. But I could really feel it. And what that means, what rushing means is that we're ahead of ourselves. There's a reference I often make is to a line from a short story by James Joyce, I think it's in The Dubliners, where he said, "Mr Duffy lives a short distance from his body." I love that. Yes.

• 30:39Speaker 02

  But we do that a lot, just in the course of our daily lives and the various things we're doing. So that's that feeling of rushing, even on a very subtle level, is an indication that, okay, we're more or less mindful, we're kind of aware of what we're doing. But not in that really relaxed and balanced way. So a key point here is that rushing has nothing to do with speed. People think, oh, it means you're moving quickly. No, rushing has to do with whether one is balanced and really back in the present, really grounded in the present,

• 31:23Speaker 02

  at whatever speed. Just as an example of this, my first teacher, Maninji, he was a very speedy guy. He moved quickly. I never saw him rush. He was so back in his body, even as he was moving quickly.

• 31:44Speaker 02

  And the example I gave, even when I was moving slowly, I could feel that subtle sense of rush. So it's important to understand it has nothing to do with speed.

• 31:56Dan Harris?

  So just to reset for the listener, we're really spanning all the way from formal meditation seated to walking meditation to just walking around in your life.

• 32:06Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 32:07Dan Harris?

  And this tributary of the conversation started because I asked, okay, if relaxed and alert is what we want to be aiming for, how do we know if we're more or less mindful and drifting? And you said, one feedback that you can keep your eye out for is rushing.

• 32:25Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 32:26Dan Harris?

  And this rushing is a feedback that we can look for in formal meditation, but also throughout our lives. But, you know, one might think, back to formal meditation, how could you rush if you're just sitting, watching your breath? But actually, if you're paying attention, you can notice, and you use this verbiage a lot, a kind of toppling forward energy into the next breath even.

• 32:54Speaker 02

  Exactly. You're supposed to say, these are the words I love to hear.

• 33:03Dan Harris?

  Anybody who's ever listened to our many interviews, I'm always looking for the gold star. It's a lot of dopamine is released when it happens.

• 33:11Speaker 02

  No, that's exactly it. So this is another story, which just illustrates that point. So one time I was just sitting and just feeling my breath. Completely normal, natural, nothing special going on, just feeling the breath. And then a phrase popped into the mind, which is used by one of the Burmese teachers. His name is Ute Janir. He would often suggest that people ask

• 33:47Speaker 02

  From time to time, in the meditation, what's the attitude in the mind right now? So that's just a phrase that he uses a lot, which I have begun to use. So I was just sitting, feeling the breath, and then that thought came to mind, "Oh, what's the attitude?" And the point of the question is not even really to find an answer. Simply by asking the question, as soon as I did that, "Oh, what's the attitude?" I could feel my mind settling back from the leaning forward that you were just mentioning. And it was a leaning forward I was not even aware was there until I asked the question.

• 34:32Speaker 02

  So it can be very subtle. It's just, we're with the in-breath in order to feel the out-breath. We're always leaning into the next moment. So this is a very common experience that people have in practice. It can be quite subtle. So it's just something to be increasingly aware of and to use prompts like "What's the attitude?" or "Relaxed and alert", or there could be many, many prompts that remind us of settle back.

• 35:13Dan Harris?

  I just want to say again that the notion of rushing as a sort of feedback, as a mindfulness bell, plus "What's the attitude in the mind", which I personally find very powerful, can be used, again, in formal meditation, but throughout your life.

• 35:29Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 35:30Dan Harris?

  I find that asking, and I've made this joke before, so I'm just gonna make it again, but I'm gonna own that I'm repeating myself, that when you ask the question, "What's the attitude in the mind", did you ever see that there were some very famous segments? On ABC News, where my former colleague Chris Cuomo went into a hotel room with a black light and shined this black light on the sheets and all the surfaces. It was disgusting. That's what happens for me when I ask, what's the attitude in the mind? I see, oh yeah, there's been this background static of wanting or aversion or just tuning out that I don't have to get tangled up in. But once I see it, I can let it go.

• 36:12Speaker 02

  Exactly. This is something you may already be doing in that example. But when you see through the black light, all the stuff that's there, what the attitude of the mind is in seeing it.

• 36:34Dan Harris?

  Yes.

• 36:34Speaker 02

  And so is it, oh, that's really disgusting? Or, oh, this just proves I can't do it? Or is the attitude, oh, I'm so glad to be seeing this? So how we frame our response to what we see is really important. And especially, and this took me some years of practice, to let go of the self judgment that would arise whenever I saw something that was unhelpful or unskillful or unwholesome. There would be an immediate self judgment in that.

• 37:18Speaker 02

  Until a certain point, where it all switched, oh, no, I'm glad to see you. Because I'd rather see you than not see you. And so it's really honoring the wisdom of the seeing.

• 37:33Dan Harris?

  That kind of, I think, brings us to another phrase, which is Mara, I see you.

• 37:38Speaker 02

  So Mara, of course, within the Buddhist framework, is the embodiment of ignorance and delusion. And often represented as a figure that would come to try to snare the Buddha or the other practitioners. But it's really the representation of some form of delusion in the mind.

• 38:06Speaker 02

  And that phrase, which is often found in the Buddhist discourses, where Mara is attempting to ensnare the Buddha or some monk or even layperson. And when they see what's going on, the phrase will be, "Mara, I see you." And then Mara just vanishes. I've found the same thing in many different situations, where some unwholesome pattern of mind, in Buddhist terminology, they're called the defilements. When we see one of those arise in the mind,

• 38:50Speaker 02

  and for a while we may get caught in them because they're generally very seductive. But then in the moment of recognizing what's going on, to say, "Mara, I see you," really affects the letting go of being identified with whatever it is. And then we just say, "Oh yeah, this is just another passing thought." So it's very freeing to do that. So I've sometimes altered that phrase a little bit, a variation on it. So there's "Mara, I see you," and then sometimes I call it wagging the finger at Mara.

• 39:33Speaker 02

  Like, the wagging the finger is the mudra, the hand gesture of "Mara, I see you." We're wagging the finger. "Oh Mara, you're not gonna fool me."

• 39:46Dan Harris?

  So the sense of humor is key.

• 39:48Speaker 02

  Yes, absolutely. It's really key. Our minds will do just so many crazy things. I'll just, a little sense of humor story.

• 40:07Speaker 02

  I was on this retreat with Sada Upandita, Burmese meditation master, very classical, very orthodox, very demanding teacher, and very skilled. So I was on retreat with him. It was actually in Australia.

• 40:25Speaker 02

  And because he was the kind of teacher he was, everybody was just trying to be as impeccably mindful as possible, and moving really slowly, and so there's a lot of stillness.

• 40:39Speaker 02

  We were online for lunch. I was second online.

• 40:44Speaker 02

  And people are walking very slow into the dining room.

• 40:50Speaker 02

  So the person ahead of me, the first person online, took the lid off the first pot of food that was on the table. And as he lifted the lid off, it slipped and fell to the floor, making this huge clattering noise in the midst of the silence. And the first thought in my mind, it just popped into my mind. It wasn't me.

• 41:20Speaker 02

  How can you not have a sense of humor about that? You know, where you see just all the things the mind will do unbidden. You know, and so not taking it too seriously is really helpful, because it creates space. So then we can see and not be caught on whatever it is, but with a certain lightness, a lightness of heart about it all. So I just find a sense of humor really helpful.

• 41:52Dan Harris?

  I don't know if what I'm about to say next could be fairly classified as one of your teaching phrases, but it is a word that comes up time and again, both in my interviews with you for this podcast and in the hours and hours of audio I've recorded of me complaining to you while on meditation retreat. The word is ridiculous. You use that word to describe the human mind all the time.

• 42:21Speaker 02

  I was not even aware that I used it that often, but it does resonate. So somebody, there was a meditator who once came into a meditation interview, and his great insight was, "The mind has no pride. It'll do anything, it does do anything." But what's helpful about this realization is that it's actually liberating. Because when we can approach our minds with that openness, and you're seeing all the things it does. Yeah, and there's a lot, of course. We're talking about the ridiculous aspects. There are also sublime aspects.

• 43:06Speaker 02

  I don't want to leave that side out. But particularly with the more ridiculous things the mind does, this spaciousness and the sense of humor is actually an effective way for not being caught by it. So it has a liberating function to not take oneself so seriously with regard to what the mind is doing. It's really helpful and just makes it a lot more useful. And of course, very often we forget this, when the mind will be carrying on with something ridiculous

• 43:50Speaker 02

  and perhaps even painful, and will be caught in it for a while until we see. But with practice, we get to see the humor of things more quickly.

• 44:05Dan Harris?

  Yes. "The mind has no pride" is another key phrase, in my view. I've even thought that maybe, and we'll discuss this over the years before we publish this book, that it might even be a good title for the book. Do you have a thought, do you have any theory? Why are our minds so ridiculous? Why, how do we end up in this situation?

• 44:29Speaker 02

  So that question, the response to that question could be a whole book. So I'll just frame it in a couple of different ways. I'm not quite sure how it all fits together yet.

• 44:44Speaker 02

  One thing which I've come to appreciate more and more over the years, and has really helped recalibrate, in a way, how I frame the practice. And it has to do with the idea that we have all established in ourselves certain habits of attention, habits of the quality of our attention. And it could be on, for different people, very different levels. Some people may have cultivated a habit

• 45:27Speaker 02

  of really being very attentive. And that's just their habit, that's their default. In some way or other, they have trained themselves to be really carefully mindful. For most people, without some formal training, our habits of attention are not at that level. Our habit of attention is more like more or less mindful, or casual. Where we're attentive, but not closely attentive.

• 46:09Speaker 02

  So if the habit of attention is casual, where we're just being more or less mindful, there's a lot of space in the mind then for the habituated patterns of desire and greed, or restlessness, or aversion, or the things that create some kind of...

• 46:40Speaker 02

  Unease in our lives. There's a lot of space. When our habit of attention is not really close and careful. There's just a lot of space in the mind for those

• 46:56Speaker 02

  deeply conditioned tendencies to manifest. So the all the different kinds of thoughts that we have. And everybody knows who's really watched their minds at all. We've all just have different habituated patterns. Maybe there's a lot of self judgment, or a lot of fantasizing, or a lot of planning. There are certain thought patterns that each of us really unknowingly have just habituated in our lives. So those are the patterns that are going to manifest

• 47:33Speaker 02

  in that space when we're not fully present.

• 47:40Speaker 02

  And that's why as the meditation gets steadier and the power of our mindfulness gets stronger. Where we really are one with the moment's experience.

• 47:57Speaker 02

  There's much less of that because our mind is fully engaged in the moment's experience. But it's not to say that even for very experienced practitioners.

• 48:13Speaker 02

  The mind becomes completely silent. Because there's another phenomenon which is very common. And it's called the undercurrent of thoughts. Where just through the day.

• 48:31Speaker 02

  These very light thoughts keep going through the mind.

• 48:36Speaker 02

  And sometimes they're problematic in some way and sometimes not. Sometimes they're just ordinary thoughts.

• 48:43Speaker 02

  But the problem is that because they're light and quickly passing,

• 48:50Speaker 02

  we for the most part are unaware of them. And so for those minutes or moments that we're lost in them, the mind is really lost. We're not aware of what's going on. And it's reconditioning those particular habit patterns of thought.

• 49:11Speaker 02

  So this is just another level of paying attention

• 49:19Speaker 02

  to when we're being more or less mindful.

• 49:25Speaker 02

  And then another gradation is we're coming even closer to the experience, but there's still this very subtle undercurrent. And then we start practicing, really trying to be aware of the undercurrent. And so then we drop to an even deeper level of presence of mind with what's happening. So there's a whole spectrum here. It's not just either or. This kind of practice I find incredibly useful and helpful, particularly as I'm going about my daily life, even more so than in the formal setting where

• 50:11Speaker 02

  we're really giving attention to all this in a very intentional way. But when we're just going through our day, doing all the things we do,

• 50:23Speaker 02

  that's when it becomes really interesting to watch how often the mind has dropped in to the undercurrent of thought. I find it fascinating.

• 50:34Dan Harris?

  Coming up, Joseph and I endeavor to answer the question, why are we like this? And he finally gives me the gold star I've been chasing for as long as I've known him.

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• 51:17Dan Harris?

  You just had a bunch of things that I want to follow up on. Very interesting. The undercurrent of thought is really important. We've spent a lot of time talking about it privately. But I just want to go back to this question of like, why are we like this? Why do we have these minds? If I, you dropped a few breadcrumbs. I'm going to see if I can articulate them and maybe expand on them a little and then you can tell me where I run afoul.

• 51:39Speaker 02

  Or have gotten it exactly right.

• 51:44Speaker 02

  See, it's a little pattern.

• 51:45Dan Harris?

  Okay, you can tell me how great a job I did once I'm done. And this pattern actually is completely apropos to what I'm about to say, which is that a fundamental view in Buddhism or the Dharma, the teachings of the Buddha, is causes and conditions, perpetual change. Everything that's happening right now is the wave cresting on an ocean of an unfathomable gumbo of prior conditions. And so of course, your mind is the product of all of your prior experiences, but also whatever causes and conditions happened in the minds of your forebears, perhaps.

• 52:27Dan Harris?

  Whatever conditioning your parents are carrying into this realm. And if you are not mindful, you're just carried along by your habit patterns. What mindfulness allows you to do, and you use this word, decondition. So am I in the right zone and what more needs to be said?

• 52:48Speaker 02

  I'm going to retire then.

• 52:51Speaker 02

  It's all yours. Take it away.

• 52:54Dan Harris?

  The student has become the master. I love it.

• 52:58Speaker 02

  So I would just add one.

• 53:00Dan Harris?

  Please.

• 53:00Speaker 02

  One thing to it.

• 53:03Speaker 02

  So the Buddha did talk about, okay, what's the root condition for all of this? And he said, "The root condition is ignorance." That's at the bottom of it all, as long as there's ignorance in the mind, and that ignorance has many manifestations, right?

• 53:26Speaker 02

  So this is gonna be like a crypt sheet of Buddhist teachings. Because of ignorance, we're not necessarily attuned on an experiential level just to the process of momentary change. That impermanence, of course, happens on every timescale. It can be macro, it can be micro. And in the meditation, we just begin to refine our perception of change, the changing nature of sensations, of thoughts, that everything is

• 54:11Speaker 02

  just arising and passing very quickly. And as we focus the microscope of our minds through meditation and mindfulness, we begin to get a more and more refined perception of this flow of change. If we haven't done that, then one aspect of the ignorance is not understanding that. And it's through understanding that, the very impermanent nature of things arising and passing, it's that wisdom, as opposed to ignorance,

• 54:53Speaker 02

  which starts to decondition clinging and craving. Because we're seeing things are changing so quickly, there's not even time to cling to it. So this is an example, just one little example, of how ignorance of that particular aspect will then condition all kinds of other thought patterns, and clinging, and desire, and aversion, because we're not seeing the impermanent nature of it all.

• 55:29Speaker 02

  So the ignorance is conditioning all of those patterns. And that's just one little example of how ignorance is at the root of everything. If we see everything with greater clarity, in seeing the very nature of how things are happening, that's what begins to decondition a lot of the unwholesome patterns, the unskillful patterns that arise in the mind.

• 56:09Dan Harris?

  And you're reconditioning things like present moment awareness?

• 56:12Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 56:13Dan Harris?

  And then compassion?

• 56:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, and steadiness of mind, or just all the, what in Buddhism are called the factors of enlightenment, the factors of awakening. And the Buddha was so incredibly, I'll use the word brilliant, but it's not about an intellectual brilliance, although I think that was there too, but just a brilliance of understanding of what conditions what? How ignorance conditions a whole run of unhelpful qualities of mind? How wisdom conditions a whole run of really helpful qualities of mind?

• 56:55Speaker 02

  He understood the mind so well and so deeply, that a lot of the teachings are about unpacking the nature of our own minds to us. We tried to figure this out by ourselves. It's hard enough just following the breath three or four times in a row. And here's the Buddha who just had this profound understanding of how it's all working. That enables us to see it with a greater degree of clarity. Oh, that's what's going on.

• 57:34Dan Harris?

  So why are we like this? Because we're programmed for a kind of delusion, ignorance, blindness to

• 57:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:41Dan Harris?

  what's happening right now. But in meditation, we can tune up our ability to see the machinations of the mind. And that we don't have to be quote unquote like this, i.e. ridiculous, as much as we used to be.

• 57:56Speaker 02

  Yes, exactly, Dan.

• 57:58Dan Harris?

  I'm really racking these up.

• 57:59Speaker 02

  You are.

• 58:02Dan Harris?

  Okay, so but let's close one loop here before we end this session and go take a break. So there are a couple of phrases that are coming to mind on this very subject. And I'm not sure which one we should use in the book. I'll just provide a fusillade of them for our discussion now. Quickly passing thoughts, the undercurrent of thoughts, the thieves of meditation, and dreaming yourself into existence. All come to mind as phrases I've heard you use in this zone. So can you unpack all of that?

• 58:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, so

• 58:39Speaker 02

  this phrase, the phrases, the undercurrent of thoughts and the thieves of meditation actually comes from a Tibetan teaching that I came across. And it just so completely resonated with my experience. I thought this is a perfect description.

• 58:57Speaker 02

  I read this after an experience I had previous to reading it. I was on a self-retreat and I was just going for a mindful walk outside. So I wasn't doing the really slow walking meditation. I'm on a natural pace. But I was on retreat and really trying to be as mindful as I could.

• 59:25Speaker 02

  And for whatever reason, at that particular time, I just started noticing these very quickly passing thoughts.

• 59:37Speaker 02

  And they would come so frequently. I was surprised at how frequently they came. They were not dramatic, they were not particularly disturbing. They were just these quickly passing thoughts. But they reminded me of another experience, which I think many people have, of waking up in the morning. So you wake up and then maybe, you know, at times, you just drop back off to sleep for, I don't know, five minutes or however, a short period of time. But in that short period of time,

• 1:00:22Speaker 02

  we often drop back into a quick little dream state. So we wake up and then we drop back into sleep, a few minutes of a dream, and then maybe wake up and we're fully awake. I realized that when I would be lost in this undercurrent of thought or these quickly passing thoughts, it was just like going from the waking state, where I was really alert and knew what my experience was. In the moment of being lost in a thought, we are not aware that we're thinking, because we're lost in it. And it just reminded me of that dream state.

• 1:01:05Speaker 02

  And then I had this further reflection. I realized that a lot of these thoughts, even if they weren't dramatic or even necessarily obviously problematic, many of them contain some kind of self-reference. It could be something like, like a memory I had of being at a certain place or maybe a plan or just ordinary thoughts but which constantly lie around the self. So when I realized that, this other phrase came to mind. I'm just dreaming myself into existence.

• 1:01:48Speaker 02

  In all of these moments, when I'm lost in the undercurrent of thought. And the fact that it happens so frequently, much more than we're aware of. It's almost like this underground stream that's flowing along, well, hardly aware of it. So another analogy I use to describe this whole process is like the experience of going to the movies and being totally engrossed in the story, what we're seeing in the drama, whatever it is, and unaware of the background soundtrack of music.

• 1:02:33Speaker 02

  Because we're so engaged in the content of the story. And yet, it's that background unnoticed soundtrack that is totally manipulating our emotions as we're watching the story. The music speeds up and gets tense, and all of a sudden, we feel tense. The music mellows out, and we feel mellow. And we can become aware of this, of the impact of this, just by muting for a while. It's a completely different experience, completely different. This undercurrent of thoughts is like the soundtrack of our lives.

• 1:03:17Speaker 02

  And every time we're being lost in it, it's like having the soundtrack there and not being aware of it. Every time we're lost in this undercurrent of thoughts, the thieves of meditation, because they've stolen, they've entered unknowingly and have stolen our mindfulness. Each of these moments are reconditioning our mind in one way or another.

• 1:03:49Speaker 02

  Even to the point of unknowingly reinforcing this felt sense of I and self. You know, so it's it's really powerful to begin to notice these thoughts when you're taking a shower, you're washing the dishes, or you're just going about your daily business. It's there. And I was just, I was completely fascinated when I became really aware of this process. It was another whole dimension of mindfulness and meditation

• 1:04:29Speaker 02

  that I had not really been aware of, even in deep practice. So it was, it was kind of a new and exciting discovery.

• 1:04:41Dan Harris?

  The phrase, I've, I mean, I've, because I've heard you give this rap before, both publicly and to me, when wagging your finger at me about my meditation. The, the, the phrase that I'll sometimes use is, especially when I'm doing walking meditation or just walking around. And I feel like I'm, I'm more or less mindful, but I know there are these little kind of not supercharged, somewhat subterranean thoughts happening soundtrack.

• 1:05:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:09Dan Harris?

  And then I'm, then I'm here.

• 1:05:11Speaker 02

  No, but, but, yeah. That's why I like that analogy, because it's so immediately recognizable.

• 1:05:17Dan Harris?

  Yes.

• 1:05:17Speaker 02

  And it contains, just within that word, our understanding of the impact of it.

• 1:05:25Dan Harris?

  Yes.

• 1:05:26Speaker 02

  So instead of, oh yeah, these are just life thoughts that don't really matter. By highlighting them, we can see that they do matter in the sense that they are reconditioning our minds, one way or another.

• 1:05:42Speaker 02

  In ways that we have not been aware of. One of the things that I find so interesting about it, as I'm noticing this, just as I'm going through my day, as I notice them, I can feel

• 1:05:56Speaker 02

  how they contribute just to different kind of moods I'm in.

• 1:05:59Dan Harris?

  Yes.

• 1:06:01Speaker 02

  So there might be this undercurrent of thoughts of just some project that needs to be done, you know? And if I'm unaware of, if I'm unaware of these thoughts going through my mind, or when I do become aware of them, maybe there's a slight anxiety, oh, do I have enough time to finish it? And it's all really subterranean. And yet it's having a really strong impact. So I find that

• 1:06:34Speaker 02

  incredibly interesting. And it's motivated me to really take interest and keep an eye out for them. And I love it when I see them.

• 1:06:45Dan Harris?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:46Speaker 02

  It's really, it has juiced up the practice a lot.

• 1:06:49Dan Harris?

  I just want to highlight that because

• 1:06:53Dan Harris?

  a striver, I don't want to name any names, but his initials are Dan Harris, might hear that instruction and think, I've just got to work harder to see all these, I've got to grit my teeth. But shot through your comments as a playfulness, a curiosity and interest.

• 1:07:12Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:07:13Dan Harris?

  That is the real tool here, not a bearing down.

• 1:07:17Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 1:07:19Speaker 02

  You hit upon a word that

• 1:07:22Speaker 02

  for me has characterized my practice over all these years. And that is interest. The mind is fascinating. Now, the first line of the Dhammapada, which is this collection of Buddhist verses, the first line of the first verse is, mind is the forerunner of all things. That's a profound statement. It's like everything we do and we feel and everything, our whole life.

• 1:07:54Speaker 02

  Is experienced, it's the manifestation of our minds. And mind here, just in the Buddhist sense, does not just mean thought or intellect. In the Buddhist sense, mind, you could say consciousness or awareness, which really includes the whole heart mind. So it includes all the emotions and different mind states. So mind is, in a very expansive sense, when it says mind is the foregone of all things. So given that our whole lives are the manifestation of our minds, what could be more interesting than really exploring everything it's doing?

• 1:08:38Speaker 02

  You know, both from the point of view the mind has no pride in the ridiculous things it does, to the sublime things it does, to the ways we get caught, to the ways we can become free. It's incredibly interesting. And it's this quality of interest that for me has sustained my practice for 60 years now. It's as interesting now as it was in the beginning. Yeah, so there's a lot of joy in doing it if one and one has to learn how not to get caught by over-efforting or over-striving, and that's part of the process as well. Taking interest in that.

• 1:09:21Speaker 02

  Oh, this is not so helpful.

• 1:09:26Dan Harris?

  Maybe that's a good place to leave it. Thank you, Joseph.

• 1:09:30Speaker 02

  You're welcome.

• 1:09:36Dan Harris?

  Thanks again to Joseph. We will have another episode with Joseph's. And don't forget, we've got another episode with tons of Joseph's phrases coming up this Sunday, January 4th. And then on January 5th, we begin our free seven-day New Year's meditation challenge led by Joseph. If you want to sign up, just go to danharris.com, download my new app, which is called 10% with Dan Harris. The app comes with a free 30-day trial, so that free trial will cover the New Year's meditation challenge. And then after that, if you want to stay with us, that would be awesome. Finally, thank you very, very much to everybody who worked so hard on this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson and Eleanor Vasili.

• 1:10:20Dan Harris?

  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.

• 1:10:39Speaker 04

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