Anxious? Confused? Powerless? A Four-Part Recipe for Staying Centered From a Buddhist Nun. | Ayya Anandabodhi

Reclaim your power from the news, booze, shopping, or denial. Ayya Anandabodhi https://parayanavihara.org/monastic-community/ is the spiritual director of Pārāyana Vihāra https://parayanavihara.org/, a monastic residence in Port Townsend, WA. She was raised in Wales, in the UK, and first encountered Buddhism in her early teens and began training as a nun at age 24. You can listen to some of her Dharma talks, here https://dharmaseed.org/teacher/379/. In this episode we talk about: What centering means – and how to do it in the midst of chaos or calamity (Including some very practical tips) The difference between centering vs equanimity How to break out of old patterns The power of pausing How anger is justified, but it doesn't help A quick but deep dive into the Four Noble truths, a foundational Buddhist list We tackle the tricky topic of "true nature" We talk about the vital role of that treacly and often misunderstood term, compassion Join Dan's online community here http://www.danharris.com/ Follow Dan on social: Instagram https://bit.ly/3tGigG5, TikTok https://bit.ly/3FOA84J Subscribe to our YouTube Channel https://bit.ly/3FybRzD To advertise on the show, contact [email protected] or visit https://advertising.libsyn.com/10HappierwithDanHarris

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

• 0:04Dan Harris?

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

• 0:19Dan Harris?

  Hello, my fellow suffering beings. How are we doing? In these chaotic times, it is so easy to lose your center of gravity, to outsource your equilibrium to the gyre, to the miasma, to the phone in your hands. So today, I'm talking to a brilliant Buddhist nun, Ayya Ananda Bodhi, about four simple ways to reclaim your center. You literally cannot hear this stuff enough. I think of this as mindfulness 101. And instead of running away from your difficult feelings, like self-medicating with booze, or shopping, or doom-scrolling, or denial, the move, and this is counterintuitive, but the move is to feel your feelings fully,

• 1:02Dan Harris?

  to let them pass, and to make a sane decision on the other side. Respond, not react. It's one of the venerable meditation cliches, and a cliche I actually like. And it's a decent recipe for becoming at least 10% happier. Aya Ananda Bodhi is the spiritual director of the Pariana Viehara, a monastic residence in Port Townsend, Washington. She was raised over in Wales in the UK. She first encountered Buddhism in her early teens and started training as a nun at the age of 24. In this conversation, we talk about what centering means and how to do it when you're in the middle of a tough situation. And she'll have some very practical tips on this score. We'll talk about the difference between centering and equanimity,

• 1:47Dan Harris?

  how to break out of old patterns in your life, the power of pausing. She has this great thing, which has really stuck in my head, about how anger can be justified, but not helpful. I love that. Think about that. Justified, but not helpful. We'll do a quick but deep tour through the Four Noble Truths, which is a foundational Buddhist list, perhaps the foundational Buddhist list. We tackle the tricky topic of our true nature from a Buddhist perspective. And we talk about the vital role of that tricky and often misunderstood term, compassion.

• 2:23Dan Harris?

  If you want to get better specifically at the radical skill of pausing, of learning to respond instead of react, we have a guided meditation for you specifically tailored to this conversation. And you can get it over at danharris.com. It is the final meditation from our teacher of the month, Dan Mauricio. Our teacher of the month for August will be the mighty Kyra Juulingo, herself a former Buddhist nun. As a reminder, we're putting out bespoke companion meditations to go along with all of our full episodes, the ones that come out on Monday, Wednesday. You can get them over at danharris.com. And if you sign up, you also get live video sessions with me, where I do a guided meditation and take your questions. You also get ad-free versions of this podcast and much more.

• 3:08Dan Harris?

  We'll get started with Aya Ananda Bodhi right after this.

• 3:13Speaker 01

  Still waiting in line? Again? That's time you'll never get back. Save time and money with stamps.com. Over four million businesses have skipped the line with stamps.com. Join them to save up to 90% off carrier rates from your computer or phone right now. Print postage for certified mail, registered mail, and packages in seconds. Then schedule a pickup right from your home or office. For a limited time, go to stamps.com and use code PODCAST for a free welcome gift. Taxes and fees apply.

• 3:43Speaker 02

  We work with veterans every day. Caring about people isn't the same as knowing how to help. Safeguard Veterans gave our team free online on-demand training to better understand military culture, recognize when someone may be struggling, and connect veterans to support and resources. It's practical, flexible, and our staff actually use what they learned.

• 4:02Speaker 03

  Get started at safeguardveterans.net. Click on Community Organizations. Safeguard Veterans is a 2026 pilot research program funded by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

• 4:15Dan Harris?

  Ayah Nanda Bodhi, welcome to the show.

• 4:17Speaker 04

  Thank you, thank you, Dan.

• 4:19Dan Harris?

  Pleasure to have you here. Just to give listeners a little peek behind the curtain here, very frequently when we have a guest and the guest doesn't have a book that we can draw from, one of our producers, in this case, Marissa, the mighty Marissa Schneiderman, reaches out to you and you guys had a conversation, "What would you like to talk about?" And then Marissa writes me up, a memo. I was reading the memo and it says right away that your chosen subject, what you wanted to talk about was centering in difficult times in what I would call a shitstorm, but probably not a dharmic term. It may be slightly obvious, but why did you pick centering?

• 4:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think centering because we have people who come to practice meditation together and discuss Dharma and then there's time to talk about what's going on and how people are bringing their practice to their lives. And of course, you know, what's going on right now in the US is very chaotic and stressful and there's quite a lot of fear. People not really know what to do with themselves, how to stay centered and grounded in the midst of this. And what I found was people's center of gravity was in the news. They were leaning into, you know, it's just like, "What's next? What's next? And now what's happening? And now?" And so they were losing their centeredness and losing connection with their own body, their own agency, really, and being pulled into this

• 5:42Speaker 04

  kind of vortex of chaos that was coming through the news. It is still coming through the news. And it was kind of an aha when I heard that. I was like, "Ah, if your center of gravity is, you know, between yourself and the screen or just in the news, you're kind of groundless and that makes you weak." And I feel one of the really important things at this time is that people don't lose their power and agency. This is what we all need to keep and rediscover. So I wanted to talk about centeredness because there are ways that we can center in our body, in the present, that reconnect us with our own strength and our own power, our own agency. And that's what we need to do right now, always really, but especially now.

• 6:28Dan Harris?

  Yeah, that's a really interesting concept. It's like we're outsourcing.

• 6:33Dan Harris?

  Our, as you call it, center of gravity to the miasma of social media and the news.

• 6:41Speaker 04

  And then people feel powerless, confused, powerless, anxious. And then when you're in that place, in some ways, it seems to me that that's, there's an intention. That's what is wanted, that people do feel powerless, that people do feel that they don't have agency. But actually, we do have agency, we're human beings.

• 7:03Dan Harris?

  I'm interested in your choice of language. So you chose the word centering. Is that synonymous with words like calm or equanimity, to be a little bit more Buddhist about it? Or are there distinctions?

• 7:15Speaker 04

  I think it's not synonymous, it's the first step of approach to calmness and equanimity. So I think what happens is, say, there's a feeling of anxiety. You're looking at the news, it all feels really desperate. Maybe your life has been radically changed, or the life of people you know have been radically changed suddenly. And the trajectory feels dangerous and frightening. And so anxiety arises. If we're not able to just lean back a little bit and center, then that feeling of anxiety just moves us into, how can I get rid of this feeling? So maybe we watch something else, maybe we're just doom scrolling, you know? And, and so that sort of justifies the feeling.

• 7:56Speaker 04

  Or maybe we get into addictive habits, that something that eases that uncomfortable feeling of anxiety. When you can find a bit of centering in the belly, in the present, in the belly, in the body, then, okay, the anxiety is still there, can feel that anxiety, and it's really unpleasant. And it's like this, and you're not running. It's like this, and it feels like this, and I don't like it. And it feels like this, and, and I'm still here, and I'm still breathing, and I can feel my feet on the ground. And I still have my loved ones around me or whatever, and I still have,

• 8:39Speaker 04

  who knows what people are losing right now, but, you know, still have this moment, still have this body, still have this presence. So that gives a, a context within which to feel the uncomfortable feeling. And then as you come into alignment with it. It gives the potential, like I'm not saying it's always gonna happen because it depends on your history and so on, but trauma and various levels, but it gives the potential for that anxiety to start to just be energy, because it's all just energy essentially. That anxiety can start to turn into presence, strength, confidence, maybe even a certain excitement.

• 9:23Speaker 04

  Anxiety and excitement are very, very close to each other, actually. Anxiety has that leaning back fear, and then excitement has that same sort of trembling, but it's leaning forward into the possibility of what might come. So there are these ways that we don't have to get stuck, you know. But if we're not centered, we sort of relieve ourselves. We're somewhere else, you know, and the mind is somewhere else because the body's feeling these not very nice feelings, you know. So bringing body and mind together.

• 9:55Dan Harris?

  You literally cannot hear this enough. It is kind of Dharma or mindfulness 101, but in my opinion, you cannot hear this enough because it's so counterintuitive. We want, for justifiable self-protective reasons, to self-medicate with drugs, alcohol, shopping, scrolling, gambling, whatever it is. And yet, the greatest source of comfort is to do these supremely counterintuitive thing of feeling the thing you don't want to, that you're trying to escape.

• 10:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's very true. That's that first noble truth that the Buddha points to, the beginning of the transformation of the path, yeah. And also, what's really important is that what we're talking about is a feeling, a feeling. Feelings are so transient and ephemeral, and yet, they can feel so major and important and everything that we, you know, people can end up destroying their lives because they can't bear to feel a feeling. And if you think about, say, I don't know if you've ever had a, like a painful accident, something where you broke a leg or cut yourself or something, and it hurt, if you try and feel what that feels like now.

• 11:10Speaker 04

  So I broke my leg a long time ago. If I try and feel what that feels like, can't feel it. It's gone. It's finished. So we're afraid to feel, we're afraid to turn towards those feelings because they become so big in our minds. But if we turn towards them, there's, what is it? It's a sensation. It's unpleasant. It's changing. And it's going to end. Whether we run away from it or not, all of those things are the same.

• 11:37Dan Harris?

  It's reminding me of a process I've been going through recently. I have panic disorder. It gets touched off a lot in small spaces. I'm actually having dinner tonight. I not infrequently go have dinner when she's in New York City with Sharon Salzberg, amazing meditation teacher. Tonight, actually, it's a double whammy, a double bill with Sharon Salzberg and Sylvia Borstein, so it should be fun. Sharon has this diabolically small elevator. And so I've been thinking for a couple of days about this elevator. And often I take the stairs, which is the worst thing to do. You are teaching the brain to be scared. But I am not going to take the stairs tonight. It's like, okay, let it rip. Panic is also just a feeling. Set of feelings are incredibly uncomfortable.

• 12:23Speaker 04

  And I'm sure you've got lots of clever tricks up your sleeve to manage it, but it still does what it does, doesn't it?

• 12:29Dan Harris?

  Yeah, well, I have a pair of fast acting Klonopin tablets in my pocket. It's comforting to know they're there. I won't use them. But yeah, I've got all sorts of tricks. The trick.

• 12:40Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 12:43Dan Harris?

  Just let it in. It's like when my cat, you know, has his claw under the door to my bedroom and is rattling the door and wants to get in. And I hate the fucking cat in that moment. And then I let open the door and he comes in, sniffs a little bit and walks away. And it's kind of like that with our feelings.

• 13:03Speaker 04

  I must say, yeah.

• 13:05Dan Harris?

  Okay, so we've established quite a bit here, but the natural question.

• 13:11Dan Harris?

  Which hopefully your memo, the one that you and Marissa put together, answers, and so we will provide those answers to the listeners. The obvious question, in the face of everything we've just established, is how do you do this? And you list a number of very helpful and, yeah, I think very powerful suggestions. The first of which is nature. I mean, maybe the list was in a random order, or maybe not. How did nature get to the top of the list?

• 13:39Speaker 04

  It's probably a random order, it sounded a bit like that. Nature, yeah. So, we are nature, you know, our bodies are nature. We survive through eating what grows from nature, breathing the air, which is nature, drinking water, which is nature. So, we're nature, we're a part of nature. We've never been separate from nature. But we often live as though we are separate from nature. So, and that's got more and more so over the years. You know, I mean, to live in a city, a city is created from the ideas and imaginations and creativity and brilliance of humans. That's what creates a city. And then we might put a tree here and a park there, but basically it's designed by people.

• 14:23Speaker 04

  And then we live in buildings that are often made of man-made products that are designed by people. And then we're online and we're watching what people are creating. So, this is all sort of human stuff. And humans are part of nature, but we've sort of created our alternative world here, within the world of nature. And the more we go into that, the more disconnected we can become from our true nature, what we are. And true nature has different levels. So, there's the true nature of just like a human body, you know, what it needs to survive, and a human being. And then there's like the deeper true nature, which we may or may not go into, I don't know.

• 15:05Speaker 04

  But basically, because we are nature, and we are part of nature, and we belong to nature, if we go and spend time with a tree, or take our shoes off and stand on that earth, or just go outside for a minute and look at the sky. It changes us. So I don't know if you've ever tried, I don't know what your living situation is, but if ever when you're having a panic attack or when you're thinking about having a panic attack, you've ever gone and laid down on the ground and felt the support of the ground beneath you?

• 15:39Dan Harris?

  I love to lay down on the ground. My living situation is highly conducive to this in that we live in the country. However, most of the places where I get panic are very man-made airplanes and elevators, so it's not an option.

• 15:52Speaker 04

  Which is interesting, yeah. Okay.

• 15:55Dan Harris?

  Yeah.

• 15:55Speaker 04

  Yeah. So then remembering that we are nature, this body. So, okay, can't go outside and lay down on the ground, but the body is part of this, as the Buddha says, made up of the four great elements, earth, water, fire and air. So the body is made of, and it's not just a concept, this is reality. So what this is made of is the same as what the building is made of and what the earth is made of and the trees and the whatever. It's a simple way of putting it in the Buddha's time, those four elements, but it's very simple, but its simplicity helps us to find the truth a bit. So you can also come back here to this body. Say I'm feeling anxious or a bit afraid, and then I come back to my body and I'm feeling, oh,

• 16:39Speaker 04

  trembling in legs and my feet feel like there's little cushions of air beneath and they're not quite on the ground. And then I can recognize that and then, okay, where's the, where can I find some presence? So for me, feet is a really good one. So I used to feel like I had those little cushions of air, but now I can just say, okay, just feeling my feet in contact with the ground. And it's far from my head, so it's not, there's no thoughts in the feet and I'm not thinking about, I'm not up here thinking about my feet. I bring my awareness down into the feet. And I can feel the feet in contact with the ground and maybe they feel a little trembly. And then the ground feels pretty stable. And then I can invite more of a connection. You can even imagine roots going down if you like to.

• 17:25Speaker 04

  But just to having a sense of connection to the ground. Another way is with the breath, taking a breath, taking a conscious breath. If we're stressed or anxious, then the diaphragm gets tight and then the breathing's up here. We're not really taking the full body. The full body isn't taking the breath, it's just like this. Put a hand on your belly, so you can breathe down into your belly. And breathe out. And the belly in the Chinese tradition is the belly center is known as the dantian. An energy center, just a couple of finger breadths below the navel and a little bit inside.

• 18:07Speaker 04

  I think in the Sufi tradition, they call it the calf and it's just like an energy center that's the place of grounding. So I think a lot of people, they're living up here, you know, it's all the center of gravity is in the head or outside the head sometimes. And so you want to bring that center of gravity down into the belly, into the, not just on the edge of the belly, but right inside. And then you find that it's like, oh, the pelvis starts to relax and there's more of a sense of connection and and the diaphragm starts to soften and so you can breathe more fully. So this is a place, you can actually use that as a meditation, if there's a technique, you hold, you have your hands, so maybe you hold that thumb.

• 18:49Speaker 04

  You hold the thumb of the right hand and you wrap the right hand around the left hand.

• 18:53Dan Harris?

  Okay, just for the listeners, you're holding up your left hand.

• 18:57Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 18:58Dan Harris?

  And then the thumb is dangling down and you use your right hand to wrap around the thumb.

• 19:05Speaker 04

  And then you wrap your right hand around your left hand so that they're just sort of holding each other.

• 19:09Dan Harris?

  Okay.

• 19:10Speaker 04

  And then you bring that down to your, to your dantian, to that, to that point, a couple of inches below the belly button.

• 19:18Speaker 04

  And then when you breathe, you imagine you're breathing into that spot there. Or you connect your breathing with that place. So your hands are resting right against the belly, don't imagine it, you can feel them. And then you're kind of breathing in connection with that place.

• 19:34Speaker 04

  Almost breathing into there.

• 19:37Dan Harris?

  It does feel good.

• 19:39Speaker 04

  And good, I'm glad it's helpful and that's, you can do that as a practice every day. You know, spend five minutes, 10 minutes, 20 minutes, 20 minutes is excellent. Cause then it really gets going and you're spending some time every day doing that practice, it builds on itself.

• 19:56Dan Harris?

  I buy that completely. Just to recap, you've gone through three techniques that we can use to center ourselves. And I want to click deeper on several of them. One was nature. As the kids say, touch grass. There's something about getting out in nature that is really centering. And I want to, that's the one I want to go deeper on in a second. But you also, just to recap, mentioned bringing mindfulness to your feet. And explain why that's powerful. And then taking deep breaths.

• 20:27Speaker 04

  Taking conscious breaths, yeah, conscious deep breaths, yeah. And pausing is also very good. So we've spoken about anxiety mainly so far. But I think also what comes up for people is anger. People get really angry. And then I get caught up in this anger because I feel powerless, frustrated, it shouldn't be like this, you know. It's all kind of justified, but it doesn't help. So if we're caught in anger and then we feel powerless, then what are we going to do, you know? So when there's a lot of anger, it's not very different actually. The actual techniques are similar. But when you're caught in anger, it's really important to take a pause, pause for a moment.

• 21:08Speaker 04

  I visited prisons earlier on in my monastic life as a Buddhist nun. And sometimes there were people in those prisons who were, I mean, their life circumstances were challenging. They had a lot of challenges. And they made a decision. They did something because they didn't pause for a moment. It's like if they'd known that they could actually just pause for a moment, feel a feeling, know a thought as a thought and not follow it, then they would have been in a very different situation. And it does again involve feeling this unpleasant feeling. That's just part of it. But you're empowering yourself to feel that and not act on it. And it's amazingly powerful and strengthening when, when there's that anger

• 21:53Speaker 04

  and then you kind of, you're not shutting it down. Shutting anger down doesn't work. It just explodes at some point or you get sick. But acting on anger doesn't work either. You create more and more harm, more and more chaos. And there's a beautiful simile in the Dhammapada in the Buddhist teachings where he says, one who

• 22:14Speaker 04

  Is able to control their anger or manage their anger is like a true charioteer. So in the Buddhist time, you know, there weren't cars and stuff. There were chariots or you walked. So you can just imagine like you're standing there, you've got these powerful horses and you're guiding them. And if you don't really know what you're doing, you end up in the ditch. But if you're skillful, you can use the power of those horses. You don't want to shoot those horses. You know, you want the power of those horses and then you guide it in the right direction. So you can guide it towards something beneficial. But you can only do that if you know how to be with that feeling and take a pause.

• 22:52Dan Harris?

  I just want to reemphasize that the word you used empowering. In my experience, which is limited, especially compared to yours.

• 23:02Speaker 04

  Different.

• 23:03Dan Harris?

  Okay, different. Thank you for the reframing. This uncomfortable, counterintuitive move of feeling whatever it is you don't want to feel, anxiety or anger. And realizing it doesn't kill you, it comes and goes is immensely empowering. I was doing a therapy session today with somebody who's helping me with the big panic stuff. And he knew I was going to Sharon's house to ride the elevator tonight. And as we were signing off, he said, go kick that elevator's ass.

• 23:33Dan Harris?

  Yeah, that might seem a little aggressive in a Buddhist context, but the spirit of it was.

• 23:37Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 23:38Dan Harris?

  It was like, let it rip, man. Like, you can handle these feelings that you've been running from. And that's the ass kicking.

• 23:45Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 23:46Dan Harris?

  Okay, so I'll go back to nature in a second, but since we're talking about anger. The natural question is, and this kind of goes back to what I said earlier, which is. This is Dharma 101 that we literally, in my opinion, cannot hear enough. In part because I've heard this a million times.

• 24:07Dan Harris?

  And I forget to do it all the time. And so, how do I stop forgetting to apply what I know is the most successful technique?

• 24:19Speaker 04

  Well, what I've found is to see what happens when you don't follow it. So, one of the things in a Buddhist path of teaching that I find really helpful is that he doesn't just pick out the nice bits. You know, it's not just like, oh, if you do this, you'll get a really lovely experience and then you're going to get enlightened. It's watch the whole process of something. So, say I'm feeling angry. Somebody does something and it triggers me and I'm angry. And then I just say something, I just spit out my anger at that person. Then that person's gonna receive that energy. They're gonna either gonna hate me for it or fear me or, or start fighting with me. You know, it's not gonna have any good results.

• 25:02Speaker 04

  I've been a nun a long time now, so I've had lots of opportunities to learn. But long ago, I would do those things and then I would experience the repercussions of it. Because the teaching is so much about knowing what's going on and watch the whole process. Then I'd see it like, oh, you do that, you say that, you get that result and you get into this complicated relationship. You really don't want to be in and it's really hard to get out of. And do I want to do that again? No, not really, you know? To look back at your life or look at what's going on now in your life and see what are the results of following that same old pattern? Is it leading you to more freedom? Or is it getting more entangled? Or are you moving more and more towards addiction? You know, that's another way that we avoid those feelings is, is to keep running after a pleasant feeling.

• 25:48Speaker 04

  And, you know, those pleasant feelings, they are pleasant for a few minutes or a few seconds or a few moments. And then, and then we're back with the original again. I see it as, as kind of clearing out the garage, you know? It's like it's, it's full of stuff. It's all cluttered up with all kinds of stuff that in here, in our, in our body and mind. It can be just full of all this stuff and, and we want to just like not open that garage and then just go to the nice sunny room. But there it is, you know? So if you actually go there and do the tedious work and maybe dirty work of clearing that out. Then you've got a nice space that's useful. So it's similar with our minds and hearts.

• 26:28Dan Harris?

  It's a really fascinating first step that you're advising here. Instead of, you know, in the context of you're looking at the news and you feel rage, or you're at the office and your boss is a dick, or whatever it is, like your advice, if I'm hearing you correctly, isn't wagging your finger and you must remember to pause. Actually, your advice is, yeah, you know what? Maybe as a first step, do what you normally do, but with this little tweak, be mindful of it as you're doing your habitual actions. Like, what does it get you? What's the payoff? And then, once the mind is attuned to the suffering of our habitual modes

• 27:11Dan Harris?

  of handling difficult emotions, it might be more receptive to what I keep calling this sort of counterintuitive but healthy move of pausing, feeling your feelings, and then doing something saner on the other side.

• 27:26Speaker 04

  Kind of.

• 27:30Speaker 04

  What I'm really saying is, I'm not really encouraging you to just go and do those same old things, but if you have to, then do them, you know? Sometimes we can't help it. But if you can not do that, and experience some, and try a different way, it's much better. But sometimes we can't, and we're just gonna do that same old thing. But then, yes, if you have to do it again, watch it. Watch the whole process. See where it leads and see what it takes you to. But you might be able to think of a past process and not have to, you know, do that one extra.

• 27:59Dan Harris?

  Right.

• 28:03Dan Harris?

  Coming up, Aya Ananda Bodhi talks about the importance of pausing, how to break out of old patterns. We do a deep dive, but a very quick one, into the Four Noble Truths. And we talk about centering versus equanimity. What's the difference?

• 28:22Speaker 02

  We work with veterans every day. Caring about people isn't the same as knowing how to help. Safeguard Veterans gave our team free online on-demand training to better understand military culture, recognize when someone may be struggling, and connect veterans to support and resources. It's practical, flexible, and our staff actually use what they learned.

• 28:42Speaker 03

  Get started at safeguardveterans.net. Click on Community Organizations. Safeguard Veterans is a 2026 pilot research program funded by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

• 28:54Speaker 05

  When you send a business gift, you're doing more than saying thank you. You're recognizing a moment, expressing appreciation, and making a statement about your brand. With Forimprint, that message lands with certainty. With thousands of customizable products from premium apparel and branded drinkware to smart tech bags and thoughtfully chosen office items, Forimprint helps your brand show up with the kind of care people remember. You can tailor every detail: your logo, your message, your look. And with thousands without a setup fee, it's easy to create meaningful moments without added cost. You'll also get expert support, dependable service, and their 360-degree guarantee, so you can be Forimprint certain your gifts arrive exactly as intended, on time and on

• 29:39Speaker 05

  brand. Because in a season built around appreciation, the right gift should say it all with confidence, care, and attention to detail. Explore gifting with certainty at forimprint.com.

• 29:51Speaker 01

  Forimprint, for certain.

• 29:55Dan Harris?

  When Marissa asked you, in reading this document that you and Marissa prepared in collaboration, you were explaining to her in the course of this document the importance of pausing when you're pissed. And Marissa asked what I asked. I basically copied Marissa. She asked you, you know, like, well, I know this. I, Marissa's a serious Dharma student. She's heard this a million times, but I, I keep forgetting to do it. And one of the things you said to her was, "This can be a motivation to practice with more zeal." The technical term in the language of Pali, which is the language in which the Buddhist teachings were written down, is chandra. It's kind of like a positive version of desire to practice. First of all, am I recapitulating that correctly?

• 30:39Dan Harris?

  And second, would you be willing to expand upon it?

• 30:41Speaker 04

  So, yeah, chandra or chanda in Pali, chandra in Sanskrit, is this energy.

• 30:49Speaker 04

  To transform the old patterns, to get out of the old patterns.

• 30:54Speaker 04

  There's a quote again from the Buddha. It says, get yourself out of this mess. Like an elephant would haul itself out of the mud. And I think that's kind of summed it up. It's like, just imagine it, you know, the elephant stuck in the mud. It's not going to just get out easily. It's got to work at it. It's got to really try really hard and probably going to make a lot of noise in the meantime. But eventually it's going to get out. So get yourself out of this mess. Like an elephant hauls itself out of the mud. So once you kind of know you're in the mud. This is a key element. I guess if you don't really know you're stuck in the mud and you're just, you don't have any great chanda or inspiration to practice. You're just like, yeah, it's comfortable, it's warm, you know, it's okay.

• 31:36Speaker 04

  But once you recognize, oh God, I'm stuck in this mud and I want to get out. I want freedom. I don't want to be pulled in here all the time. That is an incentive for that chanda to arise, that zeal, that energy.

• 31:50Speaker 04

  And then that energy motivates. You know, I was going to say motivates your practice. And I'm a little bit cautious to use that word, practice. Cause I think sometimes people think, oh, practice, that means I'm going to sit on a cushion and look really zen and be really peaceful and centered and equanimous. And sometimes practice is very intense, you know? It depends what you're working with at any moment. But there's the practice to be present with what is arising, to bring in tools, you know, skillful means to meet what is arising and to endure what is difficult. So it's not to keep on repeating it over and over again. So we can go in a different direction.

• 32:32Dan Harris?

  I like this concept of deconditioning. We have all this habit energy to respond as if we're the sock puppet of our ego. And what you're recommending and what the Buddha recommended of this, this kind of radical move of like, sitting with these feelings that we're spending so much time running from. It creates new conditions. It deconditions the habit energy and creates the new condition of, I have this superpower, which is inside of me, to be able to sit with this stuff that I've told myself I can't sit with, but actually I can.

• 33:10Speaker 04

  Exactly, yes. Yeah, and it does become a superpower, yes. And then as time goes by, you know, I think when I first started to practice, I imagined that as you deepen in the practice, just less difficult things happen. Things get, just get easier and nicer and the people you're with get nicer to be with. But it isn't like that. It's just your capacity to be with things as they are is greater. So there's less suffering. And it's not like the world suddenly becomes all nice, you know, lotus flowers are blossoming everywhere you walk or anything like that. It's, it's just like you're okay. Or not okayness, there's a certain acceptance of the world is like this, you know, the world is like this. And what am I bringing to

• 33:54Speaker 04

  it? How can I meet it in a way that's not adding to the chaos, the misery, the confusion? That's another way of turning towards, and it's another thing of the first noble truth that you keep pointing to. It's like turning towards things as they are, rather than the very high ideals of how we wish they were, or how we wish we were. It's like, okay, let's just start from where we are.

• 34:19Dan Harris?

  Just for the uninitiated, the first noble truth, according to the teachings, after the Buddha got enlightened, he spent a while by himself. And then the first public utterance came when he was addressing some fellow spiritual travelers, mendicants, renunciates, and he explained the four noble truths, the first of which is life is suffering, which-

• 34:45Speaker 04

  Oh, not quite, not quite.

• 34:47Dan Harris?

  Well-

• 34:48Speaker 04

  The first of which is there is suffering.

• 34:49Dan Harris?

  Ah, okay. Well, it's often translated as life is suffering.

• 34:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's not quite correct.

• 34:54Dan Harris?

  Yeah, well, that's what I was just gonna say, which is that, first of all, you're saying it's not life is, it's there is. And then suffering, I think, is also a bit of a mistranslation, because it's really kind of like unsatisfactoriness.

• 35:11Speaker 04

  It's a whole spectrum, actually. Yeah, unsatisfaction is covers a broader spectrum, but it's it's from like the slightest little kind of meh to out and out suffering is it's that whole spectrum. So it's not saying life is suffering, but it's there is dukkha, the word is dukkha. And that's like, it's a little bit off. It can be a little bit uncomfortable or it can be like out and out suffering. I'm actually really enjoying hearing you speaking about it, so I'd like you to carry on.

• 35:35Dan Harris?

  I don't know. At this point, I have nothing else to say.

• 35:38Speaker 04

  Go on.

• 35:39Dan Harris?

  I mean, there are three other noble truths, but we don't necessarily need to go into them.

• 35:43Speaker 04

  I think we should, actually, but yeah.

• 35:45Dan Harris?

  Okay, we can. I'll I'll say a bit and you please, I really appreciate how you gently correct me when I run afoul of the truth. The second noble truth is the source of suffering is tanha, which I believe is the Pali word, roughly translate into thirst. Often we translate it as desire, but that's a bit of a tricky word because the Buddha's not saying you shouldn't want anything, I don't think. But thirst is a kind of like a clinging, grasping.

• 36:19Speaker 04

  Craving.

• 36:20Dan Harris?

  Craving. So when we are in a world that is nonnegotiable influx and entropy, and if you're clinging to things that are not going to last, that is going to produce suffering.

• 36:34Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 36:35Dan Harris?

  The third noble truth is there's a way out of this elephant in the mud. And the fourth is the cookbook, the recipe, the it's a list within a list. It's the eightfold path and kind of divide it up into sort of a cognitive stuff about right view, you know, the right way to see the world and meditative advice around like right mindfulness, right concentration, right effort, and then ethical stuff around right speech, action, and livelihood. How am I doing?

• 37:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, good, very good. Yes.

• 37:08Dan Harris?

  I have good teachers.

• 37:09Speaker 04

  Yes, you do, indeed.

• 37:13Speaker 04

  So each of those noble truths have three aspects. And so the first noble truth there is dukkha. The words dukkha, let's call it unsatisfactoriness, or discomfort, or however you want to call it, or suffering. The next piece is dukkha should be understood. And then dukkha has been understood. So this is what we're pointing to. It's like, okay, here it is. And then the knee-jerk reaction is to get away from it somehow, quick, you know? Blame it on somebody else, or self-medicate, or, you know, or spin out, or whatever it might be. And dukkha should be understood. And my teacher in England, Ashen Sumado, he used to say, "Stand under it. Stand under dukkha. Let it rain on you. Let it, just feel it. Let yourself be drenched, but it's okay."

• 37:58Speaker 04

  And then that leads to understanding what causes it, letting go of the cause, and then it can shift in the moment, but it's kind of a a life path, really.

• 38:09Dan Harris?

  Yes.

• 38:09Speaker 04

  It just changes as we go along.

• 38:12Dan Harris?

  Let me ask a clarifying question. So we started this conversation talking about centering, and then we went through four techniques for centering, being in nature, bringing your attention to your feet, or some part of your body that is always in the present moment, rather than spinning off into the past or the future, taking deep breaths, and then pause. I asked before, right at the beginning of the conversation, well, what's the difference between centering and equanimity or calm? Not very helpful. I did not define either of those terms. But your answer in the moment was, well, the centering is kind of a necessary step on the path toward being calm and being equanimous.

• 38:55Dan Harris?

  You can think of equanimity as like an okayness in the face of whatever happens. At least that's the way I think about it. And so can you just say a little more about this trajectory from centering to equanimity?

• 39:08Speaker 04

  So centering in the body, in the present. So the body is always in the present. Centering in the body in the present gives us a place from which we can experience what's going on. It's like a, it's like an anchor, you could say. And so also what I've been pointing to, we've both been speaking about, you know, seeing the repercussions of acting on difficult feelings, you know, it's like, it sets the whole thing rolling. So centering in the body gives us a place where we can feel those feelings, know them, and then we can reflect, you know, we can reflect. If you can just be with, okay, my belly is feeling really tight right now,

• 39:49Speaker 04

  and my chest is a little trembly, and then take those deep breaths, feel your feet on the ground. So you're countering the tendency to spin out, bringing your attention into a more stable place. And then you can reflect. So I think opaque equanimity, I mean, it can come through meditation place, you know, it's one of the things we can cultivate in meditation, and one can experience it in the sort of more subtle states. But equanimity in the midst of the world is, you need to find a place of centeredness. Sorry, I keep using the same word, but find a place of centeredness from which you can see the whole crazy mess of it all that we create.

• 40:33Speaker 04

  So the calm, and maybe calm is a little misleading, because we can look for calm, we maybe want calm, but we're actually anxious. And if we're holding calm out as a carrot, then that can just create more and more anxiety. It can seem like endlessly far away. But it's more like the calm is found by being present, by being here, by being with things as they are. So it's like we're looking for something outside of ourselves, where we really need to look is right here, in this body and mind, this body. So it's like centering in the actual experience that is going on here and now, because that's more real than the thoughts that are going on in the mind,

• 41:17Speaker 04

  the projections in the future and the memories of the past. So what's going on right now is attuned with reality. And the more we're attuned with reality, the more we relax and the more happy. We are actually, even in difficult times. And the more we're misattuned to reality, we can be a happy delusional, actually. I could, people who are very delusional can be very happy. But it it's not leading anywhere beneficial. So, yeah, the more we're attuned to the truth of the way things are. Then, I don't know, it all starts to come into a line. That word power comes back, there's a power in that. You'll feel it in our body.

• 42:01Speaker 04

  And then there's also the mind, you know, the mind starts to potentially starts to see a greater reality, not just this narrow slice of reality that that we see on the news. Which is a bombardment of all of the terrible things that are going on and maybe one or two nice, you know, funny things or nice things, you know. But actually, when we look at our life, you know, is it actually like that? Or are there good people, you know, are there? Or even is there a tree, you know, nearby that's endlessly producing oxygen through the day and taking up carbon dioxide and producing flowers, you know, leaves and maybe even fruits. And that's a good thing. So it's like the PK is getting out of the small story of

• 42:43Speaker 04

  well, of me and mine in a way, but the small story into a bigger picture of the nature of things, of how things go.

• 42:52Dan Harris?

  Just picking up on the thing you said about the tree and the bigger picture. There are actually a lot of things I want to come back to in your last set of paragraphs. One of the things I wanna just highlight from that. Do you remember in the nineties or the aughts, there was this very successful advertising campaign, I think on MTV, when MTV was, you know, something that young people actually watched. And it was an anti-smoking campaign. And instead of lecturing kids about how bad it was for you, which never worked. It was, they're trying to screw you. The big tobacco companies are trying to screw you.

• 43:32Speaker 04

  I was actually not in the US and in a monastery, not watching TV. So I didn't watch those, but yes, that's the way.

• 43:39Dan Harris?

  Basically, the message of the ads was, you know, you're being conned by the, there's this image that cigarettes are glamorous, but actually you're gonna get lung cancer or whatever, here's what your lungs will look like. And I've thought like, there's some version of that that we can do vis a vis the media. And I say this as a person who comes out of the belly of the beast. I was inside the box for a long time as a news anchor. But it's not just the news media, it's also the social media. Both the news media, which is a much smaller beast than social media, but both the people who do what I do and the algorithms on social media are trying to convince you things are worse than they are

• 44:20Dan Harris?

  because fear gets you scrolling, they keep you engaged. And they blind you to the fact that there are good people quietly and with no attention whatsoever, all over the place, teaching kids in school, cleaning up the streets, holding the door open for people, sending somebody a text just to say, I'm thinking of you. That shit is happening all around us all the time. And there's nothing on social media about it. I'm ranting at this point, but do you see where I'm going?

• 44:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, totally. Yeah, absolutely. You know, it's an interesting one, isn't it? Because we're caught, we're caught. It's obviously very distressing, the people I meet. Anyway, you know, very distressed by what's going on in the news. And yet, keep looking, keep looking, keep looking. I guess it's a biological thing. If there's danger, you keep alert and you stay, you stay connected. But there is so much goodness, so much goodness in the world, so many, and just simple little things, a mother taking care of a child and, you know, birds making nests right now in the springtime. You know, it's just like, it's going on everywhere. And again, nature, not that nature is all sweet and lovely. I mean, it isn't, you know, everything eats everything else. But there's a sanity to it.

• 45:36Speaker 04

  We seem to have lost that, the human race, to a large degree. But we are nature, so we can come back to it.

• 45:44Dan Harris?

  And to be clear, I don't think either of us is trying to downplay the severity of what's happening in the world, the severity of the risks facing the species from political unrest to AI to climate. It's just that, yes, and, there's just a lot of other stuff.

• 46:02Speaker 04

  And I think it's important to say that because it's not about just, you know, look at, look at all the lovely things in the world. But if we, if we never look at those things, we lose our connection with our humanity in a way and, and with each other. And I think that's where the potential for change lies for the better is in us really connecting with our own humanity and, and our connection with nature and, you know, recognizing we can do something, we can do good. One individual can do a little bit, but together we have much more potential. But if we stay frozen or powerless or, or hopeless through seeing what the media puts

• 46:44Speaker 04

  out, then we sort of, our chances are much, much less, I think, if doing well.

• 46:50Dan Harris?

  I said there were a few things that I wanted to go back to from your lovely soliloquy just a moment ago. One of the other things I just wanted to clarify is this connection between, I want to see if I can restate your assertion back to you and just make sure that I understand it and by extension that the audience understands it. So again, we started by talking about centering, which I think is really, really important. And I think what you're saying is centering is, it's like finding some place safe to be instead of outsourcing our consciousness to the gyre of the media. So it can be in, in nature, it can be in your body, it can be in your breath, which

• 47:35Dan Harris?

  of course is the, almost pretty much the same thing. It can be in, in a pause. That is the step toward equanimity because it allows you, in fact, I was thinking, and I think this is true, upaka, which is the Pali word for equanimity, I think is roughly translated into like seeing over, it's like seeing the bigger picture. And so once you're centered, you can conjure some wisdom, it's like, oh yeah, this is, this is it. And this is the cycle of suffering that the Buddha described in the first noble truth. And you can relax into it. That doesn't mean you like it, but you can navigate it more sanely. So am I describing this process accurately?

• 48:15Speaker 04

  You know, I want to speak about centeredness and then you've, you're also bringing in opaque, equanimity.

• 48:22Speaker 04

  And this is something that needs a little bit of care, I feel, equanimity, because the English word, it sounds like everything's supposed to be even all the time, and you're not supposed to feel anything much, and you're not supposed to get, you know, moved by things. And that's not real, is it? It's like life isn't, doesn't line up with that. And so, yes, so that's translation of a bird's eye view, I find really, really good.

• 48:48Speaker 04

  Because the bird's eye view says, so it's including the bird. So there's the bird that's seeing the the bigger picture of things, and that could be on a time level. I find that one of the ways that that it can be helpful to bring up a sense of opaque or evenness with things as they are, is to look on like a level of time. Several people have said, yeah, you know, this stuff's been going on forever. The Buddha gave these teachings because those things were going on then, in the Buddhist time, and, you know, Iron Age India, that's what was happening, and it's been happening ever since, and it's still happening. We haven't had it so much on our doorstep, although we've been part of it in America for many years, and other people's doorsteps, but now it's getting more real on our own doorsteps.

• 49:32Speaker 04

  But it's not anything new. This is part of what we do as people, as humans. So seeing it over that time scale can be helpful. And I've also found, you're in the countryside, whether you ever just go outside and look at the sky at like at night. And it's so vast, you know, and then those little tiny dots, and those tiny little stars, and it's like, wow, those are suns. And the Milky Way, sometimes you can see the Milky Way, it's like, oh, that's like, it's like a slice of the galaxy. If you can allow your mind to open in that way, which is another, this is something that you don't see in cities, actually. When you live in the city, you don't see that perspective, because of all the light pollution, you don't see the sky in the same way.

• 50:15Speaker 04

  But if you can get out of the human-made environment for a minute and look up at that sky, and then get a sense of, oh, yeah, so those stars, they're like little suns up there, many of them, and then, you know, then there's our sun, which is massive compared to our planet, and then there's our planet, and then there's This continent that we're on, and then there's this little tiny point on this continent where there's this little tiny person who's feeling so many feelings about what's going on. So I find that really helps. You know, it's just like, oh, it really puts things into perspective. Is it so serious? I'm not saying is the situation we're moving into so serious, but is the thing that we're

• 51:00Speaker 04

  fearing or thinking about or feeling, how does that measure up in the context of the cosmos? It gets wild when you start going in that direction. You talk about the galaxy, and then there's like, now that they've discovered, there's probably trillions of galaxies in the universe. It's like, it's impossible to even conceive that, you know, and then there's this one little spot here with a feeling going on in it that we feel like we can't quite manage. And we're like, well, maybe we can.

• 51:30Dan Harris?

  My teacher, Joseph Goldstein, talks about viewing what he calls the earthbound madness through the lens of Venus.

• 51:37Speaker 04

  Oh, that's beautiful.

• 51:38Dan Harris?

  Perspective of Venus.

• 51:40Speaker 04

  Oh, that's lovely.

• 51:41Dan Harris?

  Yeah.

• 51:45Dan Harris?

  Coming up, Aya Ananda Bodhi talks about the tricky and trippy topic of our true nature from a Dharma perspective. And we talk about how vital compassion is, even though it's often can be overlooked as an empty bromide.

• 52:05Speaker 06

  I'm Jake Stauk, co-founder and CEO of Serval. We built Serval to automate the IT work that slows companies down. Onboarding, password resets, access to applications, my laptop stopped working. While employees wait for help, their real work is put on hold. IT desperately wants to automate this work, and that's why they need Serval. You just tell Serval what you want to automate in plain English, and it's built. No drag and drop workflows, no expensive consultants. Employees get unblocked and IT teams go from drowning in tickets to building what actually matters. With Serval, IT becomes the AI engine powering the entire company. This is a new way to run IT. We guarantee you'll automate

• 52:48Speaker 06

  50% of all tickets, and we'll prove it to you in a free four-week pilot. Go to serval.com/tickets. That's S E R V A L dot com slash tickets.

• 53:05Speaker 02

  We work with veterans every day. Caring about people isn't the same as knowing how to help. Safeguard Veterans gave our team free online on-demand training to better understand military culture, recognize when someone may be struggling, and connect veterans to support and resources. It's practical, flexible, and our staff actually use what they learned.

• 53:25Speaker 03

  Get started at SafeguardVeterans.net. Click on "Community Organizations." Safeguard Veterans is a 2026 pilot research program funded by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

• 53:37Dan Harris?

  I do want to go back to nature for a second because you said something when you were talking about nature as a source of centeredness. I made a note to follow up on. You keep using this phrase, "We are nature," which I love, and I use it a lot in my own practice, the way I often phrase it, and this is as I was taught by another teacher of mine, Alexis Santos, who's a student of Sayadawu Tajaniya. And he has a phrase that he uses in his teaching, "This is nature." Everything in this experience, in my mind right now, everything I'm seeing, taking in, thinking, it's all nature, there's no separation. You said something about, you made a passing reference to our true nature and said, "Well, we may not want to talk about that, but, you know, our true nature."

• 54:22Dan Harris?

  And I do want to talk about that, so can you go there, please?

• 54:25Speaker 04

  Tricky to talk about, isn't it? Yeah, what is our true nature? It's one of those things that you can't really define, actually. So as I was saying those words, I was thinking, "Uh-oh, probably shouldn't listen to this because it's hard to speak about." Yeah, what is our true nature? Is it this body, these feelings, these perceptions, thoughts, sense experiences? You know, is that our true nature?

• 54:52Speaker 04

  It's tricky to go there, really. I'm not quite sure how to speak about it in this context of a podcast with people who maybe don't have a deep practice.

• 55:02Dan Harris?

  Oh, many of these people do have deep practice.

• 55:05Speaker 04

  Do they?

• 55:05Dan Harris?

  Yeah.

• 55:06Speaker 04

  Okay. Well, the Buddha does say that the true nature of the mind is luminous and bright.

• 55:14Speaker 04

  And it gets obscured by the obscuration. So that could be like clouds passing over the sun. So then the nature of our mind is bright, luminous, open, compassionate, present. That's its true nature. And then we somehow forget that. And we believe that we are the thoughts and the feelings and the body and the personality, the history, the story that we have. We mistake that for what we truly are.

• 55:59Speaker 04

  And as long as we're holding on to that stuff. If I'm really identified with this body as being me, it's dukkha, it's stressful because this body is doing what it's doing. It's changing, it's aging, it gets sick, it gets well. It's not necessarily the way I'd like it to look or as fit as I wish it was or flexible, whatever it is, you know. But it is what it is. This is just nature doing this, this arising, this. And then the bodhiing over here, right now, danning over there. So nature's doing that. And then the habits and patterns of thought that we have, you know, that are conditioned.

• 56:40Speaker 04

  So when we come in as little babies, if you think of a newborn baby, it's just open. You know, it comes in with karma from a Buddhist perspective. It's not like, you know, every mother sees that every, every child is different. They come in with their own tendencies, but there's this openness. It's just like wide open. And then we learn things as we grow. And we learn that we're not just openness and we can't just be open but one with our mother and with everything. It doesn't, you start to notice that there's separation and that things don't always go our way. And, and we have to sort of separate, you know, individuate. And that's part of the process of life, it's essential.

• 57:25Speaker 04

  And in that process, we create these protections.

• 57:30Speaker 04

  Which might be thoughts about our smallness or our greatness. Or they might be fears, contractions, it might be rage. It might be greed, you know, always trying to fill a hole, the hole in ourselves with something nice from outside. So we do all those things because we've forgotten our true nature. And they kind of make it a little bit easier for a minute, but only for a minute. It doesn't really work. So coming back to our true nature is what we find when we settle. And well, first of all, there is that clearing out of the garage that I was talking about earlier.

• 58:11Speaker 04

  You know, you've got to, you know, if you've got a lot of regrets, done a lot of harm, you know, then you've got to start repairing that. So when I first moved to the monastery, I was in my early twenties. I recognize I've done quite a few things I kind of don't feel great about, you know. And I've left some things with people that I, relationships in bad repair. So I took time to repair those things. As though I actually kind of went into that first year of monastic life as though, okay, I've only got this year of my life and I don't know what's going to happen after this. So I just want to sort out as much as I can. And so I wrote to people and acknowledged and apologized. And those who I didn't, I couldn't contact, I just did it in my heart and acknowledged my fault and apologized.

• 58:56Speaker 04

  So there's the clearing out of things that we might be carrying, that we have remorse over. And then there's the patterns of protection that we've created. That is kind of a large part of the work really is of finding them, you know, discovering what they are, feeling them, learning how to transform them, you know, like you're doing with the elevator. And then ultimately letting them go. And with those big fears, what's the biggest fear of all? Death. Mm hmm, death. So if we can embrace death. If we can acknowledge we're going to die, this body is going to die.

• 59:41Speaker 04

  And there's no way around that. That's going to happen, sooner or later, there's no way around that. So if we can befriend that truth, and know that this body will have to die, and this personality will die along with it.

• 1:00:00Speaker 04

  And from the perspective of the spiritual power, the consciousness or the presence or awareness, it doesn't die along with you. This is where we get into tricky territory.

• 1:00:15Speaker 04

  Because for a fully enlightened one, you get into kind of rebirth and consciousness and letting go. And so from a Buddhist perspective, for an Arahant or a fully enlightened being, they lay down the kandhas or the aggregates, the components of a person, they lay it down. When they pass away, there's no more like looking for something else. But for those of us who haven't really fully let go of identification and craving, which is probably most of us here,

• 1:00:48Speaker 04

  then that craving carries on, that identification, it looks for something to take birth in. And we can experience that in a day, in a week, and wake up in the morning and immediately as you wake up, the mind might just be open. And then, oh, it's me, and then it's my schedule, and it's what I'm supposed to do. So we quickly fill that up with who we are, what we're doing, where we're going. And it's kind of similar on a level of the mind's doing that and that kind of carries on. But if we can befriend death, then there's nothing to fear.

• 1:01:25Speaker 04

  And it's not only having nothing to fear, but also because being fearless can be a little crazy, you know, if it's not balanced. But there's also the fact that, you know, we're human, and every other human being on this planet. Is human and people have got different levels of clarity and lostness. And yet we share this same basic humanity and also same potential for awakening. Everybody has it. We're part of every living being on this planet. Every creature that's breathing, we're sharing the breath. Every plant, every plant is breathing. Without plants, we wouldn't be breathing. So we're breathing together with everything all the time. So we're part of everything.

• 1:02:10Speaker 04

  So there's like death at the end of our life. And then there's losing oneself in the alness of everything right now, which is such a wonderful relief. And we don't have to be this person alone, isolated, struggling through life.

• 1:02:29Speaker 04

  And I think we fear that if we let go, we won't be able to function properly. We won't know what to do and how are we gonna? I think that the head is very much like the intellect, the ego as well. You know, it's like, oh, but I'm really important, you know? Without me, it's not gonna work. But, I mean, most of what's going on is beyond us. I mean, do we know how we digested breakfast this morning? I don't know how that happened, actually, but it's happened.

• 1:02:57Dan Harris?

  Could you pick your pancreas out of a lineup?

• 1:03:00Speaker 04

  Probably not. How is, this is all happening, it's its nature. You know, the truth is when we really let go into our true nature, then true nature is living through us. And true nature has the qualities of presence, clarity, compassion, wisdom. So that is able to live through us more fully and rather than all of the stuff, you know? The little person story.

• 1:03:27Dan Harris?

  I'm gonna do my little thing of checking to see if I have understood you. I'm gonna add in some of the way I think about this, but with the caveat that I am not a Buddhist scholar, I'm not a nun or a monk. And so I may be making all sorts of cognitive and spiritual errors here. But in the Dharma, they talk about the three marks of existence, these three things that are true about the universe. And part of practicing meditation and practicing the Dharma is to come into a relationship with these three marks of existence. One is impermanent. We talked about it a lot. Everything's changing all the time. The second is suffering that, you know, if you're constantly trying to gather all of

• 1:04:12Dan Harris?

  your loved ones and the abs you had in your 30s and your bank account into your bosom, it's gonna be really frustrating and stressful because those things are changing and your body's changing and it's a fool's errand in many ways. And if you can relax into those two marks of existence, you might see that beneath it all, beneath the things that obscure our clear view of what's happening is that it's all nature. There is no self that we need to build up and defend. Yes, it's true that we both have ID cards and Instagram

• 1:04:55Dan Harris?

  accounts or whatever it is. Like, we do exist on one level, but on a fundamental level, there is no core nugget of Dan or Aya Nanabodi. And there's an enormous amount of rest and peace in having that experience, either as a little glimpse or as a kind of upgrade of the software that is a more abiding understanding of that. So that's kind of my bootleg version of what you said. Would you say I'm close?

• 1:05:24Speaker 04

  Yes, very much so. Yeah, it's lovely to hear you say those. And with the third one, so I think the first two are relatively easy to understand, and the third one can be a little bit hard to understand. Another way I would put it would be what we take to be me and mine is a process, an ever-changing, interrelated process.

• 1:05:43Dan Harris?

  Yes. Yes, in this way, the three marks of existence fold back in on one another and help you understand.

• 1:05:51Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:05:51Dan Harris?

  You can understand this brain-breaking concept of not-self through the lens of impermanence.

• 1:05:58Speaker 04

  Yes. They're like three lenses to the same truth.

• 1:06:01Dan Harris?

  Yeah, yeah. For me, and everybody kind of, to the extent that anybody ever gets to understand any of this, everybody's got their own way. But for me, it kind of goes in that order of impermanence, suffering, not-self. But for some people, like, just to have an intuitive sense of this nonduality, there is no separation between you and nature, you are nature, and then they hit on the other marks of existence from there.

• 1:06:29Speaker 04

  Yes, yes. Different people have different avenues. That's right, yeah.

• 1:06:34Dan Harris?

  Let me ask you my two habitual final questions. One is, is there something you were hoping we would get to that we didn't get to?

• 1:06:43Speaker 04

  I think we've covered a lot of good ground.

• 1:06:45Dan Harris?

  Even though it's all groundless.

• 1:06:49Dan Harris?

  And then the final question is, if people want to learn more from you, how can they do so? Do you have a website that people can go to? Do you have Dharma talks that are recorded that we can listen to?

• 1:06:59Speaker 04

  Yes, I have Dharma talks on Dharma Seed, which people may be familiar with already. I have a website, it's parayana bihara.org.

• 1:07:12Dan Harris?

  I'm going to drop links to Aya Ananda Bodhi's Dharma Talks on this excellent website, Dharma Seed, which collects hours and hours of Dharma talks from brilliant teachers all over the world. And I will also drop a link to her website.

• 1:07:27Speaker 04

  Thank you, and I actually do want to come back to your first question.

• 1:07:30Dan Harris?

  Sure.

• 1:07:30Speaker 04

  I have touched on this in our conversation, but I think one piece that I haven't really emphasized is the importance of compassion.

• 1:07:38Speaker 04

  Compassion for oneself and for others, and to really understand the struggles, you know, of being a human being. And even those people in power who may be really difficult to feel compassion for, if you look at what they're doing on a, from a big perspective, they're deeply lost. It's a very sad situation to be so far from one's basic goodness, like wanting to help people in trouble, or support poor people, supports inclusivity. And, you know, to be so far from that is, deserves a certain amount of compassion. Because we're all part of the same arising here.

• 1:08:23Dan Harris?

  Well, it won't surprise you to hear that I totally agree. This gentleman from a different tradition, the Jesuit tradition, Father Gregory Boyle, who I was turned on to actually by Joseph Goldstein, has been on this show before. He once said here on the show, "I don't believe in evil, but I do believe in bad behavior." That bad behavior is usually the result of trauma, or mental illness, or whatever.

• 1:08:49Speaker 04

  Right, yeah.

• 1:08:49Dan Harris?

  Thank you very much. It was a total pleasure to meet you, albeit virtually, and to listen to your paragraphs.

• 1:08:56Speaker 04

  Thank you too, Dan.

• 1:09:01Dan Harris?

  Thanks again to Aya and to Bodhi. Great to meet her. I strongly suspect she'll be back on the show at some point. As you heard, we talked a lot about pausing and how powerful that can be. So we've crafted a guided meditation to teach you how to pause. And it comes from our Teacher of the Month, Dan Mauricio. It's available over at danharris.com. And if you sign up, you'll get our bespoke guided meditations that are now coming with all of our Monday, Wednesday episodes. You'll also get live video sessions where I teach meditation and then we chop it up. You'll also get ad-free versions of the show and much more. Check it out, danharris.com. Before I let you go, I just want to thank everybody who worked so hard to make this show.

• 1:09:43Dan Harris?

  Our producers are Tara Anderson, Caroline Keenan, and Eleanor Vasili. 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.

• 1:10:08Speaker 02

  We work with veterans every day. Caring about people isn't the same as knowing how to help. Safeguard Veterans gave our team free online on-demand training to better understand military culture, recognize when someone may be struggling, and connect veterans to support and resources. It's practical, flexible, and our staff actually use what they learned.

• 1:10:28Speaker 03

  Get started at safeguardveterans.net. Click on "Community Organizations." Safeguard Veterans is a 2026 pilot research program funded by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

• 1:10:39Speaker 07

  Most home fire and carbon monoxide fatalities are preventable with the right safety products, including smoke and carbon monoxide alarms that can alert you when a hazard has been detected. Teach kids that when they hear beeps that last, they need to get out fast. Join KITA in highlighting the importance of fire and carbon monoxide safety preparedness in homes across the country, so our families, and especially our children, can always feel safe. To learn more, get involved, and help us spread the word about the importance of fire and carbon monoxide readiness, visit causeforalarm.org.