Buddhist Strategies For Reducing Everyday Addictions (To Your Phone, Food, Booze, And More) | Sister Dang Nghiem

We're all hooked on something. Here's the way out, according to an MD who became a beloved nun. Sister Dang Nghiem, MD, ("Sister D") was born in 1968 in Vietnam during the Tet Offensive, the daughter of a Vietnamese mother and an American soldier. She lost her mother at the age of twelve and immigrated to the United States at the age of seventeen with her brother. Living in various foster homes, she learned English and went on to earn a medical degree from the University of California – San Francisco. After suffering further tragedy and loss, she quit her practice as a doctor to travel to Plum Village monastery in France founded by Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, where she was ordained a nun in 2000, and given the name Dang Nghiem, which means adornment with nondiscrimination. She is the author of a memoir, Healing: A Woman's Journey from Doctor to Nun (2010), and Mindfulness as Medicine: A Story of Healing and Spirit (2015). This episode is part of our monthlong Do Life Better https://www.meditatehappier.com/podcast-playlists/new-years-2025-do-life-better series. We talk about: Sister D's Buddhist version of the 12 step program, which is a combination of two canonical buddhist lists: the 4 Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path How willpower doesn't fit into the Buddhist path of understanding and working with addiction How to change addiction at its root Practical applications of mindfulness Self-compassion The importance of social support Her thoughts on our relationships to our phones And more Related Episodes: This Episode Will Make You Stronger | Sister Dang Nghiem https://www.danharris.com/p/this-episode-will-make-you-stronger-365 The Science Of Manifestation | James Doty https://www.danharris.com/p/the-science-of-manifestation-can-05e Sign up for Dan's newsletter here http://www.danharris.com/ Follow Dan on social: Instagram https://bit.ly/3tGigG5, TikTok https://bit.ly/3FOA84J Ten Percent Happier online bookstore https://bit.ly/46TZglY Subscribe to our YouTube Channel https://bit.ly/3FybRzD Our favorite playlists on: Anxiety https://spoti.fi/3Qa8kMT, Sleep https://spoti.fi/3MjtMxF, Relationships https://spoti.fi/3QvyA5J, Most Popular Episodes https://spoti.fi/3QxZASc Full Shownotes: https://www.meditatehappier.com/podcast/tph/sister-d-899 https://www.meditatehappier.com/podcast/tph/phap-luu-889 Additional Resources: Plum Village https://plumvillage.org/?gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAiA34S7BhAtEiwACZzv4ZHKdt8BUkirRTIJJsd_5Wwf01R6yVA7iXkumG9vlXUjDVgp2p-3dxoCsb0QAvD_BwE#filter=.region-na Deer Park Monastery https://deerparkmonastery.org/?gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAiA34S7BhAtEiwACZzv4cnlrDQPamfFh42DhEsJ-wnUtEe8M-5ylxMcY8A_qv3hkhsYnMVrfBoCiHIQAvD_BwE Deer Park Monastery YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/c/DeerParkMonastery For an exclusive offering related to this episode, go to www. DanHarris.com http://www.danharris.com/

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.

• 0:18Dan Harris?

  Hello, everybody. How we doing? Today, we're going to talk about some Buddhist strategies for reducing your everyday addictions to your phone, food, alcohol, and more. As always on this show and within a Buddhist context, when we talk about addiction, it doesn't just mean full-blown addictions, although of course, it does include those. But it also means, as I referenced before, our everyday cravings. One technical definition of addiction is continued use despite adverse consequences. How many things in your life fit that description? In this episode, we've got a Buddhist nun and medical doctor who is going to use her combined training to help us turn down the volume on our everyday addictions.

• 1:00Dan Harris?

  Sister Dang Niam, who also goes by Sister Dee, is a nun in the Plum Village tradition founded by the late, great Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh. Sister Dee, and I'm grateful for this, has now become something of a frequent flyer on our show. I'll drop a link in the show notes to her first appearance where she talked about her extraordinary personal story. She was born in Vietnam during the war to a Vietnamese mother and an American soldier. She'd lost her mother at the age of 12, immigrated alone to the United States where she lived in foster homes, but then was able to get a medical degree from the University of California, San Francisco, and then she went on to become a nun. Anyway, we're not going to get into all of that today, but if you want to hear her backstory,

• 1:44Dan Harris?

  you can go back and listen. Today, we talk about Sister Dee's Buddhist version of the 12-Step Program, her argument that willpower does not fit into the Buddhist understanding of working with addiction, how to change addiction at its root, the practical applications of both mindfulness and self-compassion, the importance of social support, her thoughts on our relationship to our phones, and much more. Just to say, this episode first aired back in January of 2025. We're bringing it back, though, because it's really good, as you're about to hear. Much more with Sister Dee, right after this.

• 2:22Dan Harris?

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• 3:05Dan Harris?

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• 3:48Dan Harris?

  is a great way to boot up and maintain a habit. I know I said a lot, but I do hope you'll come check it out. You can sign up at danharris.com. Again, that's danharris.com. There's a free 14-day trial if you want to check it out before you spend any money. We'll be right back after this.

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• 4:35Dan Harris?

  Sister Dee, welcome back to the show.

• 4:37Speaker 02

  Hello, Dan. Thanks for being there.

• 4:40Dan Harris?

  Thank you for being there. So, we're talking today about addiction. And it's interesting, because the way you talk about addiction, most of us, when we use the word addiction, we think of hardcore addiction. But you have argued that we're all addicted to something. Am I stating your position correctly?

• 4:59Speaker 02

  Yes, we are all addicted to something. And something that we have in common is that we're all addicted to suffering.

• 5:09Speaker 02

  Or at least, many of us are addicted to suffering. We have wrong views about suffering. We deal with it in a healthy way. We have negative coping mechanism unknowingly. And so, it inevitably leads to addiction. And addiction is not only to hardcore drugs, but addiction to suffering, to our emotions, physiologically, biologically, mentally. Also addicted to, you know, people, to shopping, to YouTubing, to electronics.

• 5:50Speaker 02

  Now, we have electronic addiction, also known as eye addiction. You know, the small eye, like iPhone, iPad. So, yes, we are addicted to our views. Different kinds of addiction.

• 6:03Dan Harris?

  When you say addicted to suffering, can you say more about that? I don't quite get it initially.

• 6:10Speaker 02

  Well, I learned this through myself and through my interactions with many people. So, as human beings, inevitably, we, sooner or later, we are in certain situations that cause unpleasant feelings.

• 6:32Speaker 02

  Or excruciating pain physically or emotionally. And we try to cope with that. And we can share more deeply about the different coping mechanisms that are known, such as fight, flight, freeze, or fawn responses. So we try to cope with them. But many of us, because we are not equipped with the practices, so we try to cope as children, as young people, in such a way that actually it may help in the beginning to block out a certain experience, for example. But after a while, it becomes a habit and a personality.

• 7:15Speaker 02

  And for example, a person who has PTSD or have trauma or more severe PTSD, it's a reaction to the situation. But then as we rehearse those thoughts and those actions that we've been exposed to, we've been experienced directly or indirectly, now they become a part of our mind. And what was once an experience, now it becomes like a belief. And we keep thinking about that and we identify ourselves with the experience. So for example, I gave a consultation to a beautiful young woman.

• 7:58Speaker 02

  And she said, "I'm so ugly and I'm worthless." And I asked her, "What have you gone through in your life that made you think like that?" And she shared that as a child, her older cousins got her to play this game where they stripped her and, you know, touch her and did sexual things to her. But one of the cousins said to her, "You are so ugly, you are lucky that I even touch you." Now, it's very painful for a child to hear that, to experience all of that abuse. But now it has become a part of her. When she told me, "I'm ugly and worthless",

• 8:43Speaker 02

  she didn't say, "My cousin said, 'I am ugly and I'm worthless.'" It's, "I am ugly and I'm worthless." And it becomes entrenched in her thoughts, in her perceptions of herself, and thus in her behaviors towards her body and her relationships. And it's so convincing, it's so real, it's so true to her. And she will resort to that kind of thinking, self sabotaging, negative way of thinking, instead of getting out of it, thinking that, no, I am worthy, I am beautiful, and that was somebody else saying.

• 9:26Speaker 02

  So that is an addiction, because now it has become us, and we believe in it. And actually, we refuse to believe otherwise. Even if I try to tell her, no, you're very beautiful, she won't believe in it. It will take her a lot of time and practice to see it for herself, that she is beautiful and she is worthy.

• 9:52Dan Harris?

  I want to say a word to the listeners, and then I have a question for you, Sister Dee. The thing I want to say to the listeners is that some people get hung up on the term suffering, because in English generally, suffering, as I often say, we think, we hear that word, you think of something extreme, like you're tied to the rocks and crows are pecking out your innards. But in the Dharma and Buddhism, suffering is a much broader term that just is a reference to all of the ways in which we make ourselves unhappy day to day. But so my question, having said that to you, Sister Dee, my question is, so for for me, I don't have any trauma that I'm aware of, capital T trauma, that is. But let's say I have the habit of mind of ruminating on my resentments,

• 10:36Dan Harris?

  nursing my grudges. I can become addicted to that because I identify it as my anger. It becomes in some way a key part of my identity. Even if I don't like it, it's a part of my identity that I in some perverse way cling to. It becomes a habit of mine that is hard to break. So am I describing your conception of addiction to suffering accurately through that example?

• 11:01Speaker 02

  Yes, yes. Suffering, in the original term, the Buddha talked about dukkha. It's a sense of ill-being, of disease. And we translate as suffering. But modern terms can be known as stress, as trauma, as PTSD. You know, a different levels of severity. Yes, it's the addiction we usually think of something. We're addicted outside, but eventually we internalize it. And it haunts like all the different symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.

• 11:44Speaker 02

  There's that rumination, you know, that craving, that obsessive-compulsive element to the addiction, to a behavior, to a thought that keeps repeating itself. So, yes, no, it's not just an object that we're addicted to, such as drugs or alcohol, or, you know, to movies or pornography, et cetera. But whatever that is repetitive and intrusive and uncontrollable in us, it becomes a kind of addiction.

• 12:24Dan Harris?

  In your view, the steps one would take to break or reduce an addiction to something like alcohol or your phone or shopping, are those steps similar to the ones you would take in order to reduce your addiction to suffering? You know, my habit of ruminating on my resentments, for example? Is it the same path?

• 12:47Speaker 02

  Yes, I see that eventually it comes back to the mind. Because in the Buddhist practices, we see that everything originates from the mind. The mind is the painter. So the root of addiction, it comes from the mind. And whatever is perpetuated is the mind that perpetuates it. So we learn to be aware of the mind, of the working of the mind, so that we can learn to transform and heal the negative way of thinking or the wrong perceptions that we have. So, for example, in the Buddhist teaching, the Four Noble Truths.

• 13:29Speaker 02

  You know, the first noble truth is there's suffering. We need to acknowledge that. Many of us actually are in denial. And I learned that the word denial can be an acronym for don't even know I am lying. Yeah, so many of us, we are in denial. So it's very courageous to say, I am addicted to work, to sex, to my negative way of thinking, to the trauma of my childhood, to my resentment, to my jealousy, to my discrimination or biases, prejudices.

• 14:13Speaker 02

  So I am, I have rehearsed it so much that now it has become me. And the second noble truth is that there are causes and conditions to them. We didn't just were born addicted, except for the children who are born to, you know, they have alcoholic syndrome from the mother who use alcohol or cocaine babies. They are physiologically addicted when they are born, but that's through the consumption of the mother. But causes and conditions go way back in our own life, but also in our parents and ancestors and also society. For example, the eye addiction or electronic addiction

• 14:58Speaker 02

  now is most prevalent and is so socially acceptable. But it's like the hypodermic needles of our time and accessible to us 24 hours a day. And children from the age of one, two, up to the elderly, we can all be addicted, you see? So it's socially acceptable, but it's just as damaging, if not more invasive and addictive. So when I learn about the noble truths and the third noble truth is the way out, the cessation of suffering. So they go hand in hand with actually the doctor's diagnosis.

• 15:39Speaker 02

  Because I was trained as a doctor. We also have the chief complaint as the first noble truth. I have an addiction, I have a problem. The second noble truth, their causes. A doctor would ask for a history. How long have you had it? You know, what are your symptoms, et cetera? And then the third one, is it curable? Is it treatable, right? And the fourth noble truth is that. And also the diagnosis. We need to come up as the third one. And the fourth one is the treatment. And we have the A4 noble path for that. So one day, as I was working on this and I saw all the four noble truths. We add with the A4 noble path. That's 12-step program for addiction.

• 16:23Speaker 02

  We have this 12-step program in the Buddhist approach. And they go hand in hand with the 12-step program for Alcoholics Anonymous and other kinds of addiction. So yes, Buddhist practices help us to heal and transform our addiction in the same way.

• 16:46Dan Harris?

  I want to talk about your brilliant 12-step program idea in a little bit more depth in a second. But one of the things you've said is that in the Buddhist concept of addiction, there isn't this idea of willpower as a way to break the addiction. The path is quite different. Can you say a little bit more about that?

• 17:05Speaker 02

  Well, when I read the 12-step program, it talks about we are powerless to our addictions. And also, we look to the higher power to support us, but also to remove our weaknesses and our habits. And that's the difference in Buddhism is that we see that higher power is innate, is within us. Like in the Noble A4 Path. It starts with right mindfulness, right concentration, which leads to right view and right thinking.

• 17:48Speaker 02

  For us, right view, you know, is that higher power. Right view is higher power to us. That wisdom, that insight. In Buddhism, we talk about Mahaprasna or Prasna Paramita, the heart of perfect understanding. And Mahaprasna, the great, is understood as the mother of all Buddhist. So our understanding, our insight into our condition, this is because that is.

• 18:21Speaker 02

  This addiction is because of all those causes and conditions. And this addiction is perpetuated because of certain social structure, system, you know, the cues, the context, the environment, perpetuate them. So when we learn to recognize all of those conditions, little by little, and that's we gain right view and right thinking. So to us, understanding is our high power. Because when we are lost in suffering, in addiction, in trauma, in PTSD, we lose wisdom. We become victims.

• 19:04Speaker 02

  We are victimized, forced by the perpetrators, but then by our own wrong views about ourselves, about what is. I see that's very liberating. So we are not powerless in that sense. But we just have not tapped in our true power of understanding, of insight. And through the practice of mindfulness, like right mindfulness as a part of the noble truth, right concentration instead of dispersion of paying attention to our other stimuli that are negative and destructive. We pay attention to what is more nurturing, more healing,

• 19:48Speaker 02

  transformative for us. And we slowly, we gain the right view and right thinking, which will help us to change our behaviors.

• 19:57Dan Harris?

  Let me see if I can restate some of this back to you, just to make sure that I get it. So, as you said before, you've kind of done a Buddhist version of the 12 steps. The first four steps are the four noble truths. There is suffering is number one. The second is a cause of that suffering, which is a kind of a thirst, a desire to cling to things that will not last in a universe that is characterized by impermanence. The third noble truth is there is a way out. And the fourth is the way out, the eight steps, what is called the Noble Eightfold Path. So those are the first four of your Buddhist Dharma 12-step, and then the eight actual folds of the path, which start with right view. And we will go through each of the entries on the Noble Eightfold Path. Those make up the rest of the 12 steps.

• 20:42Dan Harris?

  And so you made a reference to the fact that in a traditional 12-step program, there's this reliance on a higher power. And your argument here is that the first entry on the Eightfold Path is something called right view, which one could understand in part, and this is where you may need to correct me if I screw up here, but one can understand in part, right view is understanding that everything happens for a reason, not in the kind of rote cliche sense of that, but more that in a karma sense of it. It's the law of cause and effect. Everything that's happening right now rests on an ocean of prior causes and conditions that have all brought us to this moment. And if you can understand that your addiction, or addictions, because many of us have plural,

• 21:27Dan Harris?

  if you can understand that your addiction is the result of many, many deep causes and conditions, that in and of itself is the higher power that resides inside of you and can be the first step in starting to dismantle this addiction. Am I close to being able to accurately restate your view on this?

• 21:46Speaker 02

  That's wonderful. I can give like a concrete example. For example, I met this brilliant scientist, and it turned out that he's addicted to sex.

• 21:58Speaker 02

  And he watched a lot of pornography whenever he went on, you know, to conferences. That's what he did. But as I learned more about him, as a child, he witnessed a lot of suffering from his parents. And his parents had affairs, both of them extramarital affairs and all. And he saw one of his family members watch pornography. And he was just a child. And he was undergoing a lot of stress and confusion. So he learned to watch pornography as a young teenager. And that was his coping mechanism. How, you know, he was losing his parents. They were divorcing.

• 22:42Speaker 02

  There was a lot of confusion and disturbances in his family. So that was how he soothes himself, how he escaped the painful situation. But as he grew older, it became his way of life. And it brought into his relationships, you see. So now, if we look at him and we can judge him, oh, you are a prominent scientist and you are a sex addict. We can have a lot of judgment on this person. But if we have the right view, and not the right view here, I would like to emphasize is right view of interbeing.

• 23:21Speaker 02

  When you look at the yin yang sign, you know, like a circle, half of it is black, half of it is white. And half black has a white dot and a white half has a black dot. It explains in the black, there is the white. And in the white, there's a black. In this person's addiction, there's the suffering of his parents that he was exposed to as a child. So that's the right view is that he is not in a separate entity, but his parents and his, you know, the social condition, the upbringing brought him to that. So this is the yin yang view. You know, so we see this black dot is in the white half,

• 24:06Speaker 02

  and this white dot is in the black half, for example. So, so, yeah, so that's right view. Right view is, and it's about the right view of interbeing. This is in that, and that is in this. His suffering, his parents are in him. Their habits are in him. And now he manifests them, and he has rehearsed them over the years. And so, right view of interbeing can help us to not feel so isolated, to put judgment just upon ourselves, but to see where we are because our parents are, because our society is, because of all of these feedings

• 24:49Speaker 02

  that have nurtured, watered our seeds of suffering and of addictions.

• 24:59Dan Harris?

  Coming up, Sister Dee will keep digging into the Eightfold Path. Keep it here.

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• 26:44Dan Harris?

  That all makes complete sense to me, and I can imagine people listening and saying, "Okay, well, that sounds like a good first step to understand why this has arisen and not to be so judgmental of myself, to see that it's the result of causes and conditions, including my interbeing with my parents and the larger culture." But that will only get me so far, which brings us to the next seven steps in the Eightfold Path, which are the final seven steps in Sister Dee's Twelve Steps. So after right view, there's right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration. Let's walk through these and maybe you can spell out how these can help us be less addicted to whatever we're struggling with.

• 27:30Speaker 02

  Traditionally, it starts with right view. But through my practice, I see that it starts with right mindfulness. Not everybody will come with right view right away. So we learn, and we also have wrong or right. In this sense, we can also translate as unbeneficial, because we are all mindful, by the way. But what are we mindful of? We are mindful of what's really going on in us and around us, or are we mindful of more of negativity in us and around us? You see? So it's important what we are aware of and we pay attention to.

• 28:12Speaker 02

  And when I was reading this book about, it's called Magic Mind by Dr. James Doty. And he talked about the default mode network. So in our brain, that is circuitry, that is an inner critic. It criticizes itself, us. You are ugly, you're worthless, you fail, you're just an addict, you're nobody. It keeps going like that. If we are aware of that and we feed it, that's also mindfulness, but that's unbeneficial mindfulness. So in our practice, when we have mindfulness, we learn to be aware of what is.

• 28:55Speaker 02

  Not the judgment, aware that I have my eyes, I can still see, aware that my body is still healthy. I can still walk, that I still have loved ones who try to help me, for example. That's right mindfulness. And as we learn to pay attention to our breathing, to our steps, we are more in touch with our body. That's right mindfulness, you see? It will bring to right concentration. We are constantly bombarded by information. And in this book, Magic Mind, Dr. Doty, he talked that every second, the brain is bombarded

• 29:35Speaker 02

  by six to 10 million bits of information. Six to 10 million bits of information every second. And yet, the brain can only consciously process fifty five zero bits of information. So that goes ninety nine point nine nine nine five percent of the information that we are bombarded. We are not aware of, you see? But whatever that we are aware, actually, we are aware of the negativity that's going on in our mind. And that's like a lens. That we look at the world through that lens of negativity.

• 30:21Speaker 02

  So to practice right mindfulness and right concentration will help us reduce all of that noise going on inside of us all the time, self judgment and all. And to be able to touch life as it is in this moment. There are birds singing, there are children smiling, laughing, their loved ones around us. And that will bring to right view, right view about interbeing. You see, I'm still alive and that my suffering is not my own, but also the suffering of my parents, of my society, of many people around me. So when I take care of myself, even to sit still, to say loving,

• 31:06Speaker 02

  you know, to direct love towards myself and encouragement towards myself, I'm also doing that for others in me and around me. So that's right view. When we see that, it will lead us to right thinking. Right thinking like instead of thinking I'm ugly, I'm worthless. Say, no, I'm beautiful. I have one, for example, I have this Chinese character too, I want to show you. This Chinese character is for enough, okay? You see, this is a mouth, or it can represent a head. This straight line down, vertical line, can stand for the body. The horizontal line, that's the arm. And then these two legs at the end.

• 31:51Speaker 02

  Most of us, many of us suffer from this not enoughness, illness. I'm not enough, I don't have enough. That's wrong view, at least the wrong thinking. I'm nobody, you see? But if we are mindful, we have right mindfulness and right concentration. I ask the teenagers, the children, do you have a head? Yes. Do you have a body? Yes. Do you have an arm? Yes. Do you have two legs? Yes. Then are you enough? And they say, yes. I say louder. They say, yes, I am enough, I have enough. You see? So when we learn to be aware of what we have, not what we have not or what we have lost, but what we still have,

• 32:37Speaker 02

  we feel wow, we are so rich. We are so blessed and that helps us to have the right view and right thinking. More positivity, more encouragement, more positive attitude towards ourselves, about ourselves and others. And that will lead us to right speech instead of saying things like, "I'm not good enough. I can't do it." Then we can say, "I love you. Thank you for being still alive." I tell that to myself every so often. I use loving speech and deep listening to myself. And I say, "Thank you. I'm still alive. Thank you for all the efforts you've made all your life.

• 33:20Speaker 02

  Thank you for being here with Dan Harris." For example, this morning I wasn't feeling so good. Usually after breakfast, my blood pressure is a bit low. So then after a meal, I feel even more tired. So I just lay down on my bed, scan my body, part by part, and just say, "I love you. I love you. Thank you. Thank you for trying every single day. Thank you." You see? And that's love, that right speech, right speech to myself. And if I can practice right speech like that, very simple words, "thank you" or "I'm sorry.

• 34:05Speaker 02

  I'm sorry I hurt you," with my negative thoughts. "I'm sorry I hurt you," by thinking, behaving, and speaking so harshly, so cruelly to myself. That heals. It heals a lot. The wounded inner child in us heals little by little when we are able to express appreciation and regrets like that, you see? So I just share about right speech. And then the next one, the sixth noble on the A4 path, the sixth one is right action.

• 34:47Speaker 02

  When we have the right thinking, the right view, it will lead to right speech, right bodily actions. Some of us, when we are stressed, when we are in pain, we may practice cutting, especially young women would cut our wrists, the ankles, or we consume drugs. We just consume different things to numb our pain, to escape our pain. But those actions will accumulate to even more, more trauma in our life. It cripples us.

• 35:30Speaker 02

  We cannot function normally in our family, in our relationships, in our society, at work, etc. So when we have the right thinking and right view, it will lead to right action. We will learn to care for ourselves, simply like by instead of sitting there and watching pornography or doing drugs, even if you just go for a walk in your backyard.

• 36:01Dan Harris?

  So I think we were at right action and you were going to continue with the rest of the Eightfold Path?

• 36:09Speaker 02

  Yeah. And after the right action, we have the seventh treatment. It's the right livelihood. It's how we, our profession, our work, that makes it right livelihood. And a lot of time when we are heavily influenced by our circumstance, by our addiction, it will hurt, it will affect our livelihood. Are we able to hold a job? Are we able to get a job? So in that way, we may compromise and do some other work

• 36:52Speaker 02

  that actually perpetuate our suffering and addiction. Because we're not able to to find the right kind of work, the right livelihood, that will bring about positive support and self-confidence and a meaning in our work. And I want to add that because in the noble A4 path, we don't have right living condition. So maybe under the right livelihood, we can add to that. Right living environment is very important, especially for us, for those of us with addictions. For example, just electronic addictions. If our bedroom, you know, we have our computer,

• 37:35Speaker 02

  our iPhone, our iPad, all of these electronics in our room, we cannot really rest in that room, right? For sleep hygiene in your bedroom, there shouldn't be those electronic gadgets. Should be peaceful, should be non-distracting, so that you can just simply rest. So those cues will make you, oh, you're just lying down and you hear the sound of the notification, you immediately check your iPhone. So then your sleep is really disturbed. So that's a very practical example. But for those of us who do hard drugs, who have others,

• 38:19Speaker 02

  so living in the ghettos, you know, living in the poor and the negative environment, that would just perpetuate our addictions. Even if we have a desire to get out of that hole, you're pushed into that hole again and again by yourself, by your own craving, but also by others around you. They remind you of your addiction. So in that way, to have a positive or right living environment is also very positive. And I think that requires a lot of help, a lot of courage from us to ask for help, but also a lot of patience and compassion

• 39:02Speaker 02

  from our loved ones, but also society need to help. For me, it's so disturbing that we can spend trillions of dollars to support a war.

• 39:15Speaker 02

  So quickly and so easily, promptly. And yet, we don't invest enough or much at all to education, to rehabilitation, elevate people who suffer from racial and economic inequalities. And so in that way, they're put in a hole, they're born into that hole. And it's so hard for them to find the right living environment. They are not equipped to get the education or to get the good job, to get out of their environment. And I'm speaking this from my direct experience working at Youth Guidance Centre in YGC,

• 39:59Speaker 02

  Youth Guidance Centre in San Francisco. When I was trained as a medical student, I volunteered there. And I knew the kids who were born in the ghettos. This young man, Eric, at nine, he already learned to pump gas, to make money, to feed himself and his little sister. And one day, he saved five dollars. And while he was sleeping, his mother stole that five dollars from him to get her fix, you see? So very soon, when he was eleven, he delivered drugs for somebody so he can get more money, you see? And then he did a little more, a little more. He ended up in Youth Guidance Centre since he was eleven or twelve year old.

• 40:44Speaker 02

  So that is a life that many of us are also condemned to. Because of course, the conditions immediate, but also from social conditions that is very hard to get out of. So we need a lot of help from that. So we have the right livelihood, but also right living environment. And the last one is right diligence. And of course, you were saying that right effort. And in our tradition, we translate as right diligence. Again, we are all diligent. Watching movies all day long, that's diligence, but it's very unbeneficial. Checking your iPhone all the time, that's definitely very diligent,

• 41:26Speaker 02

  but it's so distracting and stress-producing, right? So how to have beneficial?

• 41:35Speaker 02

  Diligence. And in Buddhism, we actually have the four kinds of diligence under this right diligence. The first two deal with positive seeds. If they manifest, try to keep them there. If you feel happy, be aware that you're happy. Look around you, see the conditions of happiness. So that you can strengthen that seed of happiness in you, of gratitude in you. And if that seed has not manifested, bring it up. Say, oh, I still have a body and I can still walk, I can still talk, I can still do work. Yeah?

• 42:19Speaker 02

  So you bring it up. So that's the second kind of diligence. Invite the positive seeds to arise in you. And the fourth diligence, deal with the negative seeds. If they arise, well, don't water them. Bring them back to your store consciousness or your subconscious. For example, if you're watching a movie and you see people doing drugs in the movie or having violent scenes or sexual scenes that prickle you, remove yourself from that environment. Walk out of that room, walk away from that situation, from that conversation. So you don't water the seed of craving in you, of addiction in you. You see?

• 43:02Speaker 02

  If you see a negative seed arises in you, saying you, why try? Because you're gonna fail again. Well, breathe and smile, let go of that thought and give rise to gratitude. I'm still here and I still want to take good care of myself, you see? So, don't water the negative seeds. And the last one is that the negative seeds that have not manifested, don't invite them up. The things that we do, the things that we expose ourselves to are the billboards, the notifications, the pop-ups.

• 43:38Speaker 02

  Many of them actually, they carry negative messages of violence, of craving, of fear, of hatred, discrimination. Don't bring them up, don't water them. And those are the ways to be diligent that can help heal our habits, our addiction.

• 43:59Speaker 02

  Our personality, because you see, an action that is rehearsed, it becomes a habit, AKA addiction, if it's so entrenched. And that habit or addiction becomes our personality. I'm an addict. That's who I am and the way I behave. And that personality will lead to a destiny. So when we learn to change our behaviors, our thoughts and our views, little by little, we can change the addiction at its roots. Our personality, the bright, the shining, the positive person in us,

• 44:40Speaker 02

  the innocent child in us can shine more and more each day, which will change our destiny. We don't just have to be an addict for the rest of our life.

• 44:53Dan Harris?

  Coming up, Sister Dee talks about how exactly these 12 steps can change addiction at its roots. Specific mindfulness practices to help with this and her thoughts on phone addiction.

• 45:10Dan Harris?

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• 47:08Dan Harris?

  How exactly can these 12 steps change the addiction at its roots? That's the phrase you use. You just told us about a lot of steps we can take. How does all of that add up to the uprooting of this craving that so many of us deal with, whether it's shopping, or having too many glasses of wine, or whatever?

• 47:29Speaker 02

  Well, all of these steps inter are. They are not separate. Like I was saying, if you have right view, it will lead to right thinking. It will lead to right speech, right actions, and you will find a better environment for yourself.

• 47:46Speaker 02

  And you will be more diligent in a beneficial way. So, like that. So, they enter our, first of all. And also, how does the practice of mindfulness? And so then, it will lead to all these steps in the Noble Eightfold Path, help heal their addiction. Again, the roots of our addiction come from our wrong perceptions, our wrong views about the situation. And from that, we have the negative coping mechanism that is perpetuated over time, you see? So, I have right here, the Chinese character. I love these when I discover them,

• 48:28Speaker 02

  because they eloquently express the teaching and also in a very succinct way. So, this is the Chinese character for perception. And it has three smaller characters. On the upper one, there's the Chinese character for tree. Next to it is the Chinese character for eye. So, you see a tree standing next to the eye. The eye or the eye looks at the tree. That's the sign of a tree, right? So, when you look at a tree, the sign is the tree. But underneath these two characters is the character mind or heart,

• 49:13Speaker 02

  which makes the whole thing perception. Your eye look at the tree. But if in the past, you had a positive experience with this tree, then you say, "Oh, it's a beautiful tree. How lovely it is." And you have a positive feeling towards that tree. But now, in your mind, you remember that there was a branch that fell on your head, almost killed you, or somebody, it hurt somebody in your family. Then, when you look at that tree, you think, "That tree is very dangerous. We should cut it down."

• 49:51Speaker 02

  You see, so perception is the tree. But one person sees it as a beautiful tree. Another person sees it as a dangerous tree. It's the state of mind will determine what we see. The view about ourselves, our worldview, how to approach life. That state of mind, all the experiences we went through, what we were taught in school by our parents, what we were exposed to will come to these views. So everything, the foundation of our actions, of our addiction specifically, based on wrong view.

• 50:34Speaker 02

  I'm just an addict, I'm unworthy. So when we practice these noble eightfold path, starting with right mindfulness, we start to change that view. We start to see reality more and more as it is. And when a perception is changed, the thoughts, the speech and the bodily actions will change. So this is why we say we change it at the root.

• 51:03Dan Harris?

  And what is the correct view of addiction? So we know wrong view is I'm just an addict. What is right view of addiction?

• 51:13Speaker 02

  Interbeing, again. This addiction is the tip of a branch. What is the root of my suffering? What has brought me to this day? What has come to be? What has fed it? What is perpetuating it? So we see all these causes and conditions entangled, enmeshed and strengthened over the years. So we need to see these conditions and causes more and more clearly through meditation, through mindfulness, and unravel them little by little. And to breathe with them breath by breath,

• 51:56Speaker 02

  to walk with them mindfully step by step, so that we... Don't rehearse these negative, wrong views. Because the more we rehearse them, the stronger they become. And we literally have neural pathways, neural networks in our brain. When you see something, for example, if I'm a drug addict, I just see a needle. My brain, my mesolimbic circuit will be triggered. Dopamine will be released instantly and the craving becomes very, very intense.

• 52:35Speaker 02

  So we have neural pathways in our brain that are very strong and easily activated. So when we learn to see things as they are and we breathe, we avoid the situation. But when we see, immediately we just breathe, come back, close our eyes, relax the body. May you be well, may you be safe, may you be free and you remove yourself. If you just do a little bit of that every day, you build a new neural pathway, a new neural network. It's more mindful, it's more kind, more true to your aspiration.

• 53:19Speaker 02

  And if you water, you rehearse these mindful neural pathways more and more. They will become strong. And if you don't tread the old neural pathways of addiction, then they will also become less strong. Like a trail can become a freeway, you see? So addiction is now a freeway in us. But mindfulness trail can also become a mindfulness freeway. And you can override the addiction trail.

• 53:55Dan Harris?

  What I was gonna ask, and it really just builds on what you were saying right now, is about specific mindfulness practices we can do to help us follow this eightfold path, or the 12 steps, inclusive of the Four Noble Truths. In your talk on this, you mentioned things like mindful breathing, body scan meditation, loving kindness meditation. I don't think we have time to talk about all three, but maybe talk a little bit about, pick one of these practices and talk about how it can help.

• 54:22Speaker 02

  Right there, we can do enough. I am enough meditation, okay? Do it as often as you can throughout the day. Wherever you are, when you're in a toilet stall, driving, or lying in bed, just scan through your body. I still have a head. My mind is still clear. I can still think. I can still be aware. I still have eyes. Hello, eyes. I'm grateful for you. Even if I have to wear glasses, I'm grateful for my glasses and for my eyes, you see? Do I have a body?

• 55:05Speaker 02

  Yes, I have a body, and I'm very grateful. I don't just have one arm, like in the Chinese character. I have two arms and 10 fingers. Yeah, I have two legs. I am enough. I'm more than enough. Because besides that, I have liver, heart, yeah? Spleen, all the internal organs that are there, still functional. Some may be sick, yeah? Some are not fully functional, but they're still there, doing their best. So, I am enough meditation, actually, I think can be very self-empowering for us.

• 55:50Speaker 02

  And it involves body scanning. And we practice mindful breathing as well. And I love the Chinese character for mindful breathing, for breathing also, because...

• 56:05Speaker 02

  The upper case is the character for "tuk", or for, which means "from" or "itself", and the lower character is "mind". The breath, Chinese character for breath, means the breath is from the mind, or the breath is the mind itself. So mindful breathing is very scientific because you learn to see that your breathing pattern reflects your emotions, your state of mind. When you're angry, you breathe differently. When you're sad, when you're craving, when you're sick, you have all different breathing patterns that corresponds to your state of mind.

• 56:49Speaker 02

  So when you learn to be aware of your breath, you can be more aware of your mind. Suddenly, you feel you're like, you're breathing heavily, you're, you have short of breath, or you're uncomfortable. Maybe there are certain social cues or contacts that are triggering, you're activating your craving, and you come back to your breath. You look down or close your eyes, you breathe, you can actually calm your mind. You can self-regulate. So that instead of being swept away by the craving, you come back and self-regulate, calm down your heart rate, your breathing rate, relax your body,

• 57:33Speaker 02

  and your mind becomes clear. Then you can walk away from the situation as soon as possible, you see? So mindful breathing helps. Body scanning, you can learn to be more aware of what's going on in your body and take care of it promptly. Because most of us, when we suffer from addiction, or from depression, or from anxiety, we are not aware, but the body shows everything about our situation. But the thoughts, the craving, can be so overwhelming that we are poor under. But if we can focus on the body, that's something more concrete, you see? If you feel you have shortness of breath,

• 58:17Speaker 02

  you can put your hands on your chest. You feel the rise and fall of your chest or the rise and fall of your abdomen. That's something you can concentrate on. And just take your mind away from that craving that is arising or that is very strong in your mind. Or you can hold your own hand or you can massage your feet, you know, your head. So being more in touch with the body will help remove you from those negative thoughts or thoughts of craving.

• 58:56Dan Harris?

  Another thing you talk about as being helpful in terms of dealing with our many, many addictions is self-compassion. Can you say a little bit more about that?

• 59:06Speaker 02

  Yes, I have learned to be much kinder, more accepting and loving to myself. Growing up without parents, coming to the US, living with foster parents, and I suffer a lot of trauma in my life. Verbal abuse, physical abuse, and also sexual abuse. So I had this inner critic in me that always put me down, always thought the worst of myself. But as I learned to be more mindful of what I still have and to be grateful,

• 59:49Speaker 02

  then now I can confidently say that I never say or think anything negative towards myself. If I do something not so well, I can acknowledge it. Oh, I can do better. I'm sorry, I thought that. Or I did that to somebody or even to myself. I'm sorry, I can do better. That's what I would say. But I would never say, "You're stupid. Why did you do that again?" You know, it's just hopeless. I never think like that about myself anymore. You see, I learned to say, "Thank you.

• 1:00:33Speaker 02

  I'm sorry, and I love you throughout the day." That's self-compassion, my dear.

• 1:00:41Speaker 02

  And every little thing you do to help yourself in that moment, even to hug yourself, to massage your face, to go for a walk, to pray, please help me to heal, please help me to live a life that I can be at peace with, that I can be proud of. You say that to yourself, the God in you, the Buddha in you. That's compassion, right there. And all of that is right view and right thinking, my dear, because I have practiced the past twenty-four years to heal myself. And you know what? The mother in me,

• 1:01:25Speaker 02

  who disappeared when I was only twelve, who verbally and physically unkind to me when I was a child, she also heals in me. I can think of my mother now with so much gratitude and understanding that I didn't have before. I make peace with my mother, even though she passed away thirty-something years ago, so we can make peace with the ghosts in our life. They are in us and they haunt us. And that's why we do things that are destructive. Somebody hurt us and now we have become the perpetrators. We continue to hurt ourselves

• 1:02:10Speaker 02

  and our loved ones and many others out of pain. Hurt people, hurt people. When we are hurt, we hurt others. And if we see that interbeing, we don't judge ourselves harshly or each other so harshly, but we see all their causes and conditions and we do our best to help ourselves and each other heal from that. That's compassion, true compassion. And it all comes from again, from that deep understanding of interbeing. This is because that is. This is in that and that is in this. And this is not because that is not. You see? That is the mother of all Buddhist,

• 1:02:55Speaker 02

  understanding inside wisdom. And it helps free us little by little. It's the guiding light for us to have right thinking, right speech and right bodily actions.

• 1:03:10Dan Harris?

  That's beautiful. Let me ask you about one last practical technique for managing our addictions from a Buddhist perspective. And this is very much backed by evidence from modern psychological science as well. And that is the notion of social support. Can you talk about that a little bit, please?

• 1:03:30Speaker 02

  Thank you for asking that. We very much believe in the collective energy. Social support, community, family. We need that because through the power of interbeing, the energy of interbeing. As a community, for example, we sit together. I've been a nun for more than 24 years. But when I sit with the community, that's how I learned to sit also. Actually, I never really practiced meditation before I became a nun. I sat next to my partner, but just to wait him, wait for him to finish his meditation session. And he was a meditator. Bless you, dear John.

• 1:04:13Speaker 02

  I'm grateful for his practice now that he passed away already. But his practice continues to be in me and I continue him, you see? But to be with the community, to sit with the community in mindfulness, to do walking meditation with the community, the energy is strong because we are all energy fields. You say you walk in a room and if you see somebody peaceful, that person doesn't have to say anything, but you also feel the peace in the room and in the person, and you feel more at ease. You walk into a room and you see somebody all red and all, you know, angry. Your nervous system registers that.

• 1:04:58Speaker 02

  You feel that person's anger in your own body. So we are all energy fields. We very much feel each other's emotions. And that is why each one of us, as we practice, we affect each other. We affect those around us, those who know us and those who don't even know us, who don't even talk to us, just the way we move, the way we sit, the way we talk. Can affect each other. I love that the 12 step program have all these meeting groups. And friends will go every week or even every day. I know friends who go to, you know, Alcoholics Anonymous groups every single day.

• 1:05:40Speaker 02

  For example, that gives us the support, feeling we are not alone. Because of the nature of interbeing, we're not ever alone. But when we suffer, we always think, the wrong view is that I'm all alone. I'm the only person who suffers this, but it's not true. Many, many people suffer very similar situation that we were going through. And also, it's important that that support group has practices so that we can uplift each other. We can look at the problem, but we also see the way out, you see? And that's important. And that brings to my writing, the four books that I've written.

• 1:06:22Speaker 02

  Now, I studied in college and I got a degree in creative writing. But as I looked at my writing before, it expressed the suffering more. There was some aspiration, some desires to transform, but I didn't know how. But as I became a nun, I see there are specific practices such as I'm enough meditation, body scanning, deep relaxation of the tension in my body with mindful breathing, moment to moment, not just once in a while, but I do that throughout the day. You see? So there's healing.

• 1:07:01Speaker 02

  So in my writing, now I address the suffering, but I always share about the way out of suffering. As we practice and we see the way out and we do that moment to moment through our speech body, the actions, the behaviors and the thoughts, we regain the trust and confidence in ourselves. Because for those of us who succumb to a particular addiction or addictions, we feel helpless and we lose the trust that we Can take care of ourselves. That's the worst of all. I cannot be there for myself. That's why I have to escape, try to escape all the time. You see, I'm not worthless. I'm just an addict.

• 1:07:45Speaker 02

  Society condemns me and I condemn myself a hundred thousand times more frequently. So we lose that trust and confidence in ourselves. But as we practice mindful breathing, mindful walking, self-reflection, positive speech, loving speech, deep listening towards ourselves, we gain that self-confidence and trust. I can be there for myself. I can breathe through the waves of craving. I can relax my body. I can discern and see a situation and not enter it or walk away from it.

• 1:08:25Speaker 02

  I can speak up for myself. I can reach out for help. That is trust and confidence, very deep within. That's very empowering and it will help lead to other more positive behaviors.

• 1:08:42Dan Harris?

  Incredibly helpful, Sister Dee. You made reference to the fact that you've written four books. I do want to mention that you've got a new book of poetry that's out and we'll put some links in the show notes so that people can go check out your books if they're interested. Is there anything else that you wanted to mention before I let you go here?

• 1:09:01Speaker 02

  About electronic addiction. So I learned that an average American spends ninety-one waking days a year on our smartphones. That's three months of our waking hours. Because after twelve years, think about it, we already sleep a third of it. So we have only eight months. And we spend three months on our phones. So then we really have just five months to live. If you think it, are you really, out of that five waking months a year,

• 1:09:46Speaker 02

  how much of that time are you aware, mindful? Are you fully there for your life?

• 1:09:55Speaker 02

  If you say half of it, that's a lot of confidence. But actually, we're not mindful half of our time. So that's two and a half months, maximum. Out of twelve months a year. Two months, two and a half months at the maximum. So really, we don't live our life fully. And then, you know, we get lost in these addictions of negative thoughts, negative speech, negative behaviors. So on the one hand, we are so afraid of death. We will grasp for life.

• 1:10:37Speaker 02

  When we are diagnosed with an illness, when we are at deathbed, we will grasp for life. But really, we are losing life every moment. We don't live our life, so we don't know what it means to live and to die. We all constantly look for ways to escape and to distract ourselves, our mind. This dichotomy of afraid of living, but also being so afraid of death, causes us to really be in this limbo. It's very painful.

• 1:11:17Speaker 02

  So for me, to be able to live a life of practice, a spiritual life, not religious. I'm not religious in any way. I hope through my sharing, you don't see that I'm religious. But I'm a very practical, pragmatic person. But I see that I'm in touch with my life. I learn to live moment to moment as fully as possible. I learn to heal and transform my addictions to suffering, to negativity, so that I can be kinder, more generous, and free in my own life and help others to do that. We all can do that in our own capacity.

• 1:12:02Speaker 02

  Ten percent happiness, definitely. When you practice as a practitioner, you know how to generate happiness. Anytime, just give a thought, I'm still here. Thank you. Thank you.

• 1:12:19Speaker 02

  Or you should say, "I'm sorry, I didn't know that." That is already a great happiness, when you can say, "I'm sorry." Instead of waiting for somebody to say, "I love you," and you don't believe it, because you don't love yourself, how can you believe somebody who can love you, right? Just say it, "Help me to love you, my dear. Help me to heal you, my dear wounded child. I'm here for you. I love you. You are precious. You are beautiful." Learn to do it, like you do yoga, like you play basketball. You do it a long, many times, you get good at it. Addiction, because you have rehearsed it so many times now, it's strong in you.

• 1:13:04Speaker 02

  Now do it in a mindful way, in a beneficial way, in a loving, compassionate way, and you will also get good at it. And that 10% happiness is guaranteed, and it becomes a lot more than just 10%, okay? Every moment you are kind to yourself, encouraging to yourself, is a moment of happiness, and it's long-lasting and self-generating. That's what I really want to share with you, my dear ones. We are all together, okay? Your practice is for all of the rest of us, and I practice for you, and I love you, and I believe in you,

• 1:13:48Speaker 02

  because I have learned to love myself and to believe in me, so I have that confidence in you. Just do it step by step, okay? One step at a time. Do the 12-step as diligently as you can, okay?

• 1:14:05Dan Harris?

  Thank you, Sister Dee.

• 1:14:06Speaker 02

  Thank you for listening to this program, and I hope the Buddhist 12-step can really help you. And learn more about our practice. We do have many talks online. We have three monasteries in the U.S. that you can find out about our Plum Village tradition, and friends come to our monasteries. Throughout the year, and you can stay, you can come on a Sunday, or you can come for the whole week. So you deserve this investment, my dear. You deserve healing and transformation, and you do need help. So there are many of us out there who are doing that, and so you don't have to do alone. Okay. Thank you.

• 1:14:52Dan Harris?

  Great job, Sister Dee. Thank you.

• 1:14:58Dan Harris?

  I want to thank everybody who works so hard to make this show. 10% Happier is produced by Tara Anderson and Eleanor Vassili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our managing producer. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Cashmere is our executive producer. And Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme. Also, one quick ask before I let you go. Head on over, please, to danharris.com to sign up for my weekly newsletter. Every Monday, I drop a little bit of goodness into your inbox. Mondays, especially Monday mornings, can be super stressful, so that is when I drop in one useful nugget that you can operationalize

• 1:15:39Dan Harris?

  in your life immediately, either from ancient wisdom like Buddhism or from modern science. It's short, it's easy to read, it's worth it, it's free. Sign up at danharris.com.

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