E153 - Dan Harris: How to Conquer the Voice in Your Head

Retired news journalist and bestselling author, Dan Harris, explores the journey of transforming the mind through meditation. After experiencing a transformative on-air panic attack in 2004, Dan embarked on a journey that led him from the high-pressure world of network news to the forefront of the mindfulness movement. Drawing from his own skepticism and personal struggles, Dan shares how meditation became a practical tool for taming the relentless voice in his head and cultivating real happiness. To start your free trial with Wix: https://bit.ly/3SXG2qK Andrés Book Recs: https://www.knowthyself.one/books ___________ 0:00 Intro 2:56 10% Happier - Mindfulness for Everyone 6:37 Going Deeper with Contemplative Practices 10:12 Combining Western Knowledge & Eastern Wisdom Traditions 13:21 How Felt Experience Outweighs Intellect 18:55 Surrendering to Life’s Inherent Impermanence 26:45 Relative vs Absolute Truth 30:39 Understanding the True Nature of Self 32:49 Working With Denser Emotions 36:25 Ad: Wix 37:30 How to Notice & Separate Yourself From Desire 42:30 Fueling Your Life From Love, Not Lack 47:38 Awakening & Meeting Spiritually Minded Individuals 59:03 The Importance of Laughter 1:00:57 Where Mindfulness Industry Falls Short 1:06:00 The Future of Humanity is Community 1:09:40 His Daily Meditation Practice 1:15:53 Overcoming the Voice in Our Head 1:21:51 Conclusion ___________ Episode Resources: https://www.instagram.com/danharris/?hl=en https://www.danharris.com/ https://www.instagram.com/andreduqum/ https://www.instagram.com/knowthyself/ https://www.youtube.com/@knowthyselfpodcast https://www.knowthyself.one Listen to the show: Spotify: https://spoti.fi/4bZMq9l Apple: https://apple.co/4iATICX

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:59Speaker 02

  My job used to be to deliver terrible news. And now my job is to deliver a really good piece of news. You have an enormous amount of power to upgrade your own software. We all have this constant conversation happening in our head. This inner voice that chases us out of bed in the morning and is just talking at us all day. And when you're not aware of this nonstop conversation, it owns you. But with meditation, you're seeing the voice in your head. And in the seeing of the voice in the head, you're diminishing its power.

• 1:26André Duqum?

  What do you feel like the industry per se of mindfulness falls short?

• 1:31Speaker 02

  Well, first of all, the thing that I've seen is that the moment when some sort of urge arises and you don't like say the thing that's going to ruin the next 48 hours of your marriage or whatever it is, that is like incredibly empowering for people. When you have these moments where you're not so owned by your conditioning, it's really affirming.

• 1:58André Duqum?

  Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Know thyself. Our guest today is a retired news journalist and bestselling author of 10% Happier. He had a transformative live panic attack in 2004 that really opened his eyes up and towards the path of mindfulness, meditation, and through his books, through his teachings and his collaborations, he's really been a pioneer and leader in the space of introducing people to meditation and mindfulness and compassion. And Dan Harris, thank you for being here.

• 2:31Speaker 02

  Thanks for having me. Can I just say at the beginning-

• 2:33André Duqum?

  Yes.

• 2:33Speaker 02

  -that I, as you know, but your audience doesn't know, I somehow had a mix-up in my calendar and I showed up here two hours before the interview was supposed to take place at your home. And you were incredibly gracious in this very strange and awkward situation. And so whatever meditation you're doing is clearly working. Thank you.

• 2:56André Duqum?

  Yeah. Imagine, I just put a good show on for the podcast and I'm a dick the rest of my life.

• 3:03Speaker 02

  You know, it's interesting you say that because I've had moments in my own life, in my own career as a quasi-self-help guru, where it's been pointed out to me that there's actually quite a humiliating delta or gap between the stuff I say publicly and the way I behave privately. And that has been a huge source of growth for me. But it is humbling.

• 3:30André Duqum?

  The vulnerability in that acknowledgement, I feel like I just appreciate the sincerity of it. And yeah, man, I, there's so many exciting avenues and angles. I'm looking forward to diving in with you. Ben, how many years now since 10% Happier came out?

• 3:45Speaker 02

  11.

• 3:46André Duqum?

  11, okay. And you've been a great source of people getting introduced to the world of meditation and mindfulness. And before we dive deeper, perhaps you could say beyond 10%-

• 4:00André Duqum?

  I would just love for you to set the framework for 10% happier. What was like your positioning of not just why you named it that, but like how you kind of allow people to get into the gateway of mindfulness and contemplative practices?

• 4:13Speaker 02

  Well, the, I'll try to keep it somewhat brief, but the backstory, which I've told a million times is that I, and you referenced this, I had a panic attack live on ABC News on Good Morning America back in 2004. And that was caused by lots of factors, one of them being cocaine. And I wasn't, so I, just to be clear, I wasn't high on the air, but I had started using cocaine during a bout of depression, which was brought on by a lot of experience in war zones after nine 11. As a correspondent, as a journalist, I spent a lot of time covering war zones and it kind of messed me up.

• 4:53Speaker 02

  And I started to self-medicate with recreational drugs, never at work, but it was enough to change my brain chemistry and produce this rather embarrassing panic attack on the air. That kind of set me off on this little odyssey where I got interested in first therapy and then through therapy, started to poke around a little bit in meditation. And in the late aughts, so before meditation got cool again, so back when you were probably in junior high, it was, somebody mentioned meditation to me and at first I was really, really dismissive, which is one of my least attractive qualities and I'm still working on it. But I started to look around and see that there was a lot of evidence to show that meditation

• 5:38Speaker 02

  could reduce stress and it was really helpful for anxiety and depression and it could literally change key regions of the brain. So I started doing it and I got, it started to help me. Funny side note, I was at a party a few weeks after I started meditating and I overheard my wife say to one of our friends, yeah, Dan started meditating and he's less of a shithead. So I thought, okay, well, that's an interesting data point because it's often the people around you who notice it first. And I had this entrepreneurial kind of itch at the time where I was, I was reading a lot of books about meditation and they were really helpful, but also a little annoying. And they used a, you know, they, they weren't funny really. And

• 6:25Speaker 02

  And they they had used a lot of kind of language that I thought may be off putting to people. So I decided to write my own book and use the word fuck a lot and like tell the stories about me having panic attacks and doing cocaine and all this stuff. And and it was really aimed at skeptics because that's how I approached it. And so, yeah, it came out 11 years ago and everything about it was designed to get people to open their minds to meditation. What's interesting now is that the whole culture has changed. And in some ways, um, you don't have to be careful not to fight the last war. It depends on the audience. I do a lot of public speaking and if I'm in a place like Houston or Chicago,

• 7:10Speaker 02

  you know, I will encounter more skepticism, but on the coasts, you know, we're in LA right now and I live near New York. The world has really changed and I I don't have to position it for skeptics anymore.

• 7:23André Duqum?

  Thank you for sharing. What so since that point of you getting, you know, introduced to meditation, cultivating, experiencing the benefits in your own personal life, then writing a book and sharing those benefits with lots of people. From that point forward, what has been your deepening and contemplative practices? And what maybe once was feeling like having a better experience of life, maybe managing some sort of stress and anxiety to understanding self at a deeper fundamental level and diving deeper into the experiential wisdom traditions. What what's been your arc there?

• 7:58Speaker 02

  There's so much to say about this, so I I don't want to flood you with too much information.

• 8:03André Duqum?

  Flood away.

• 8:04Speaker 02

  Well, maybe I'll just say from the beginning that there are, I would say, at least what's coming to mind right now. It it would be two pretty big but related buckets of deepening. And maybe I'll mention one and then we can come back to it if you want and then and I'll I'll go with the with the other. So the one that we can maybe come back to is this idea of the self.

• 8:29Speaker 02

  And I did write about this in 10% happier, but I've gotten much more interested in pursuing depth on that score. I would say the easier to understand uh area of like.

• 8:46Speaker 02

  Progress in growing insight for me as a practitioner post 10% happier has been around compassion. And like I said, these are linked. And I wrote about compassion and 10% happier. But I, you know, that was my understanding at the time. And one of the, and I'm sure you know this from your own practice. One of the, one of the things about practicing meditation or spiritual development is, you know, you're, you're always learning that you've been a complete idiot your whole life and up until six weeks ago, you know, it's like your, your, your software is completely, is continuously being upgraded. And so I understood a certain amount 11 years ago when I wrote 10% happier. And now I understand a little bit more.

• 9:28Speaker 02

  And I'm sure the me in 20 years will look back at the me sitting here talking to you and be like, what a moron. But compassion has become, and maybe compassion isn't even quite the right word. Maybe the right word would be love. As, as, as a term that would encompass everything from compassion to friendliness, to self-love, to equanimity. Like a love as a, as a basket of skills that can be trained. And that has made a huge difference for me in terms of not only my practice. There are lots of benefits to practicing this style, but also my life.

• 10:13Speaker 02

  You know, I, I mentioned that I, I got some feedback about my, you know, the occasional gap between what I preached and what I practiced. And one of the main things I really started to investigate more seriously after that feedback was, you know, how are my relationships? And how much time am I spending on that? And that has been a huge, huge area for me that I can. Go, I can go on for a long time, but I also want to be sensitive to not flooding you.

• 10:44André Duqum?

  Well, no, there's a lot of amazing offshoots that we can explore from the various different reasons as to why meditative practices kind of reduce the dial of egocentricity in our life and the byproducts of self compassion, compassion towards others, general increase of equanimity throughout our life, inherent recognition of impermanence throughout our life.

• 11:04Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 11:05André Duqum?

  But, uh, but when, I guess, start a little bit more foundational and then we can dive into some of these deeper topics. What was it about the overlap and conciliance between neuroscience literature and then what the eastern kind of wisdom traditions' promise was around meditation that felt compelling for you to, to start exploring? And then we can go, we can go deeper from there.

• 11:28Speaker 02

  I mean, I think it speaks to my bias and conditioning. You know, I was raised by atheist scientists in the People's Republic of Massachusetts. You know, like I grew up in right outside of Boston and my parents were at Harvard Medical School and, and I was not good at math, so I did not become a scientist or a physician, but I have a lot of respect for it. And so I found myself after the panic attack, knowing that my life was a little jacked up and I, and then I had an overabundance of anxiety and stress and conflict in my life and wanting to find a way to address it, but not wanting to get sucked into a cult or a religion that required metaphysical beliefs that I'm not capable of.

• 12:11Speaker 02

  And what I loved about Buddhism or the Dharma is that it has all of these practices. First of all, it has a philosophical infrastructure that is very compelling. And then it, and it, but it's not just philosophical. It's a body of practices that you can do and those practices have been studied extensively in the labs. And so it's kind of cool to see the pictures of how brains change when you do these practices. Honestly though, it's mostly for me, an evangelical tool. Like I can use the science to get other people interested, the way it got me interested. But once you start doing the thing, the science is interesting, but largely irrelevant because

• 12:54Speaker 02

  you see your life change and that's the only thing that really matters at that point. Does that, does that make sense, what I'm saying to you?

• 13:00André Duqum?

  No, absolutely. Yeah. I think you got to meet people where they are. And for a lot of people, the- The intellectual understanding is the gateway to the experiential practice.

• 13:11Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 13:12André Duqum?

  Which is where all the magic happens.

• 13:14Speaker 02

  Exactly, exactly. So you wanna, you know, it's hard to, you know, most of my life, my professional work is I use this term evangelist. And it's only semi tongue in cheek. Like, this is the thrust of my life's work is to get people interested, not only in meditation, but in all sorts of practices that can upgrade their minds. And, you know, it's a delicate dance, you know? You're talking about chocolate, but these are people who haven't tasted the chocolate. And so how do you get them in the mood to taste the chocolate? And science is really helpful. Also, my own personal story as an example, it can be helpful.

• 13:54Speaker 02

  It's really like, my whole career up until I wrote 10% happier was as a journalist and a storyteller and trying to think of creative ways to get people interested in world events or US political developments. And so I had a lot of background in speaking to large audiences and trying to understand like what would get people intrigued. And so I'm just channeling all of that energy now toward this.

• 14:20André Duqum?

  Yeah. When you think about the difference of the intellectual understanding in pursuit of wisdom versus the experience, the experiential understanding through these practices, I mean, it's been talked about and metaphorized in many different ways, you know, from the difference of reading a menu versus eating the meal. And I'm just curious, in a culture that largely puts the intellect as sort of the premier form of intelligence, what have you learned about the importance of the experiential side of things? And kind of subduing our unending need for the intellectual kind of concepts around it all?

• 15:04Speaker 02

  For me, first of all, I think your diagnosis is correct. And for me, it goes back to a term you used a few minutes ago about meeting people where they are. I think there are probably people watching this right now who are, and this is a very common phase in spiritual development, as far as I can tell. I bet there are people watching this who are just, you know, spending a lot of time reading books or watching YouTube videos and they've done zero practice. They're just kind of dancing around it, getting comfortable with it, satisfying their curiosity. And I think that's totally fine. Eventually, I think it's great to take little, you know, dips of the toes into the pool. The water's warm, but I think it's totally, you know, this is the culture in which we've come up.

• 15:48Speaker 02

  And that's okay. None of us, you know, none of us had a choice about what womb we exited from. And so I don't spend a lot of time scolding people. I mean, huge part of my brand is that, and this, and my personal style is I'm like dogmatically, non-dogmatic. You know, I like to, how old are you?

• 16:11André Duqum?

  28.

• 16:11Speaker 02

  28. Okay. So, uh, do you remember Seinfeld?

• 16:14André Duqum?

  I never actually watched it growing up, but it was like my, my older friends had it at their place. They were watching it.

• 16:21Speaker 02

  Okay. So in Seinfeld, I have a 10 year old son and he's actually watched a lot of Seinfeld. I think he has watched it from start to finish. So I recently have binged a lot of Seinfeld, although I did watch it in real time in the nineties. There's a character named Elaine who's very funny and she's like Jerry Seinfeld's sidekick. And she's talking about, she's single for most of the show and she's talking about attracting a man is kind of like talking to a squirrel in Central Park. You know, you hold your hand out with an acorn and no big movements. And I think about that style when I'm talking to people about meditation or spirituality or contemplative development. Like I don't want to scare people.

• 17:04Speaker 02

  I don't want to like push things on people or scold you or tell you, here's a thing you need to add to your to-do list in your already busy life. I like to present a menu of options and let people pick what works for them. And even if none of it works for them, I really have some confidence that I'm planting a seed. That, you know, when things get shitty, and they always get shitty, that you might remember, oh yeah, I heard this weird washed up anchorman talk about this thing on YouTube. And maybe I'll try it.

• 17:38André Duqum?

  Man, I think it's really important what you said to just double down on it because especially anytime somebody experiences the benefits of a new diet, a new meditation technique, whatever it is, there is almost this natural fervor to proselytize other people into it.

• 17:56Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 17:57André Duqum?

  And it's always, almost always antithetical because you like, the real change in my experience, and I'm sure you agree as you're speaking to it, is through the embodiment of that change, you become like a, you know, a light source in a dark room where people naturally, their curiosity innately is evoked from within them. And that's how real change actually happens. Anyways, it's got to come from within them. So.

• 18:24Speaker 02

  Yes. Well, I have to be clear, like all of, almost all of my wisdom, to the extent that I have any, is earned through fucking things up. So like, when I got interested in meditation, I was incredibly boring. I, I would talk about it all the time, particularly with my wife, who as a result, never, you know, recently has started to get interested in meditation. But we're talking 16 years after I started getting interested in meditation because I was just, you know, bombarding her with unsolicited suggestions. There was a cartoon that ran in The New Yorker many years ago that I love. It has two women having lunch and one of them says

• 19:05Speaker 02

  to the other, "I've been gluten free for a week and I'm already annoying." And that is true for meditation and lots of other forms of spirituality. And, and as you said, the, the best way to proselytize is, who said this? There's a teacher, his name I'm forgetting, who talks about the soft sermon of your pores. Just like. Or another way to say it is better to be a Buddha than a Buddhist. You know, and so just let the changes happen in you. Move through the world and let people come to you because they get interested.

• 19:43André Duqum?

  Yeah, I have a friend who says the best form of activism is attractiveness.

• 19:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:46André Duqum?

  And yeah, that's right on the nose. Part of becoming that change that is naturally inspiring for others, I think, is when you experience somebody's general sense of inner freedom, and that can be manifested in many forms. But I think predominantly this understanding of recognizing the inherent Impermanence nature of life and being at ease with uncertainty. I think when you experience that in others, it's it evokes a lot of awe and curiosity because in recognizing that, you see how futile it is to continually claw and control at our external reality to arrange it in a way that is going to be our ideal life, in a sense.

• 20:30André Duqum?

  So as you've deepened your practice, what have you learned about acknowledging the reality that life is impermanent and the freedom that arises from that awareness?

• 20:42Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, you could almost call that the foundational insight. And in some ways, it's not that deep. You know, in some ways, it's like just totally obvious.

• 20:55Speaker 02

  As my meditation teacher, Joseph Goldstein, often says, you know, if you stop somebody in the street and ask them, do things change? They would be like, yeah, things change. But we don't live our lives as if we have a molecular understanding of this obvious fact. And so that's where it gets deep. So yes, it's obvious that everything's changing all the time, but we, our lives are kind of designed around building up and clinging. But that's just, you know, building a sandcastle, right? It's just, it's, you know, I'm not saying we shouldn't try to do stuff. You've built this studio and this audience, and that's beautiful. But can you do it with the understanding that it's already broken at the end of the day?

• 21:40Speaker 02

  Actually, not even at the end of the day, right now. You know, like, it's all, it's all built on a very fragile foundation. And so if you.

• 21:51Speaker 02

  If, you know, this is where practice comes in. You know, if you sit in meditation and you really start to understand on a cellular level, like everything's changing all the time. Right now, I'm having a thought. Oh, now I'm having a sensation in my tush. Or now I'm having a powerful emotion. I'm seeing something, I'm hearing something. You start to see how fast everything's moving. You know, this seemingly solid reality is actually like a film of 24 frames per second. And it's not as seamless and monolithic as it seems on the surface. It's really changing very rapidly.

• 22:34Speaker 02

  And so one of the things that happens in meditation is you tune the mind up to start to see impermanence on a really momentary basis. And that can inform how you live your life. However, it's important to say, the power of forgetting, of denial in the human animal is incredibly strong. And so you can do a lot of meditation and then, you know, you don't get enough sleep or some ancient neurosis is triggered and you start clinging again and you forget. And I think a big part of the practice is waking up over and over and over to these things that you learn on deeper and deeper levels.

• 23:19Speaker 02

  But then you just have to give yourself permission to screw up.

• 23:22André Duqum?

  I think it's a really important insight to like the analogy you gave of a role of film, you know? And there is this illusion of continuity in our experience of life, just much like a film where it's actually a series of 24 images within a second that looks like a continuous video. And much like our sensory experience of life gives us this perception of continuity between separation and solidity outside of us. And I think the more that you have the experience of breaking that illusion, you know, and you can see the ever-changing, like, of course, everyone thinks, yeah, things are always changing. But to like, get it down to your bones and to like, really experience that.

• 24:06André Duqum?

  It uh, yeah, I'm curious how it's oriented your own clinging and attachment to, to control and throughout your life.

• 24:16Speaker 02

  It's reduced it, but not erased it, you know, like our conditioning is deep. You know, my uh, late-stage capitalistic upbringing is, you know, has a lot of habit momentum in my nervous system and in my mind. And uh, you know, I grew up watching, there was a TV show before your time called Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. And you know, just the, the water I was swimming in as a, as a kid was, you know, all of, and my parents were quite ambitious. My dad is like first or second generation immigrant family. Um, and uh, was really focused on, not so much on accumulation of wealth, but just on, on a achievement.

• 25:00Speaker 02

  Um, and you know, so that, that, that's really in me. And I can definitely get triggered around that stuff. Oh, how's my podcast doing this month? Or uh, you know, are we, are we growing on Instagram or whatever the fuck? Just like stupid shit like that. And I, and I don't want to totally dismiss it because it does matter. And my team's livelihoods matter and getting my message out matters. But it also doesn't matter at the same time. And you want to kind of hold these two realities in your mind simultaneously and let them inform one another that yes, this movie, you know, it is real on one level, you know? And uh, when somebody shows up to your house two hours early,

• 25:43Speaker 02

  you want to be kind and polite as you were. But you also want to recognize that uh, the movie is just a movie. It's just light and shadow playing out against a screen and it's all an illusion. And so you're, you're tempering, I find that it's important. And, and this is not an original insight, but it's important to hold these two truths in the mind simultaneously. It's a paradox and to let them inform each other. So if you get too much into. Everything's an illusion, then you become nihilistic, nothing matters. But does matter. And if you get too much into it mattering on this movie here that we're in, you forget that, you know, we're all gonna die. Nothing's permanent.

• 26:27Speaker 02

  Essentially, we're all connected. You can forget these deeper truths. And so I find it's about, and again, not an original insight on my part, but it's about practicing with the interplay between these two. And so for sure, on the, on a, on a day where, as I said before, I haven't slept well, or, you know, my ancient anxieties are triggered, yeah, I can be an asshole. But I think the, the big part of this game is, by game, I mean, life, is to, you know, turn the volume on that down consistently over time.

• 27:07André Duqum?

  Yeah, it could be easy to swing into the other camp and say, oh, everything's an illusion, forgetting to realize that it is the illusion that we're here to play in many ways. And this interplay between relative reality and absolute reality, and understanding that, like, life is still to be lived and that the content of our experience can be put in a bigger context of awareness. But that doesn't mean that the content of our experience isn't important or should be dismissed. But it's, uh, yeah, getting to create some spaciousness between us and what we perceive, I think is powerful.

• 27:45Speaker 02

  Exactly. Dude, your, your, your audience will understand the difference between relative truth and absolute truth.

• 27:55André Duqum?

  I think vast majority of them would, but maybe if you'd like to elaborate your perspective, I'll not would look to hear.

• 28:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, with the, with the caveat that I'm not a Buddhist scholar. So this is just one dude's understanding. But the relative reality is what we're in right now. Andre and I sitting on chairs, you're over there, I'm here.

• 28:18Speaker 02

  Like it's the consensual reality in which we all operate. Absolute reality, or the ultimate truth, is that if you're really paying attention on a fine-grained level, this is all like just a rapid series of arisings and passings away, passing away, passings away, passing aways.

• 28:42Speaker 02

  The sound of my voice, some ambient noise from outside the house, various physical sensations in the body, rapid, rapid thoughts through the mind. One way to think about this is that this chair, in the level of relative truth, is a chair. I didn't second guess it as I sat down and released my whole body weight into it, but if you took a high-powered microscope, it's mostly spinning subatomic particles. So there is no essence of chair here. And both of these things are true at the same time. And so if you hold them in your mind as a paradox as you move through the world, it's actually just really useful.

• 29:24Speaker 02

  And yes, they seemingly contradict one another, and that's the nature of a paradox. But they're just two things that are true at the same time. And there's a lot of healing and calming that can be done, like the kind of pacifying of the mind that can be done if you can just get comfortable with these two things being true at the same time. And it's like, part of how it works is you have to be comfortable with screwing it up. You know, like there are times when, you asked me before, like, "You understand impermanence to a certain extent, Dan, but are you still a dick sometimes?" And yeah, you didn't say that, but I'm admitting, yes, I am sometimes. But less so, because I'm less fooled, I'm less caught.

• 30:10Speaker 02

  But also don't want to be so focused on the absolute or ultimate truth that you neglect this realm.

• 30:23André Duqum?

  Yeah, I think it goes back to that, just placing that relative experience in the larger context of your awareness, which always encompasses whatever passing and arising and passing away phenomena occurs. But you spoke to like how there is the apparent reality of like, objects in space and time. There is a chair here, it's useful to sit in, it has its purpose. From the absolute reality, it's largely empty space. Similarly, we can examine and probe, what is the nature of the self? Because we experience in our day to day life, from the apparent reality, that we have a solid sense of self, kind of this locus of energy somewhere around our head, and we move through the world with

• 31:07André Duqum?

  the sense of, I am Dan, I had a panic attack on live TV, I started, I created a book that helps people get into meditation, I live in this 3D meat suit, you know, even though maybe it isn't articulated like that. And, and that is, that persistent illusion of continuity of the sense of self, is what you could say, the predominant underpinning of all of our calamities and sufferings in life. And so, when you start to probe deeper into the nature of the self with this understanding, what has been your deepening in that understanding?

• 31:47Speaker 02

  It's kind of episodic. You know, for me, it's not like I have an unbroken, bone level, understanding of the illusion. I think there are stages, well, the way the Buddhists talk about it is, and I believe this is true in Hinduism too, that there are stages of enlightenment, where this understanding, your software gets upgraded, and the understanding is just permanent. You can forget it for a minute, but you really understand that the self is an illusion. I have not achieved that. I have practices that I find really valuable, that we can talk about if you want, that helped me see through the seeming solidity

• 32:32Speaker 02

  of Dan. And they, it's really helpful. First of all, it's just super interesting, you know, it's really trippy to recognize that like, there's nobody home.

• 32:48Speaker 02

  And it's practical because

• 32:53Speaker 02

  my anger or my fear becomes much more workable when it's no longer mine. It's just a meteor, a set of meteorological conditions, creating a passing storm. I don't need to identify with it too much. I can get curious about it, let it come and go, take saner action from the other side. So this isn't just like esoteric murmurings from ancient scrolls. It's like actually quite useful in the here and now.

• 33:26André Duqum?

  Yeah, it's gotta be, right? I think what is maybe experience in this on a meditation cushion of like the experience of no self or of emptiness. When this rubber hits the road, you get the bountiful opportunities of living life in our relational dynamics to put it into practice. And you spoken to as any emotion arises and you experience anger. I'm curious, as you've grown on your journey, because in many ways, the spiritual yardstick for growth could be called like your degree of equanimity through life. As you've seen that grow in your own personal practice and the way that you understand it,

• 34:10André Duqum?

  how has your relationship to anger and these arising of emotions and difficult denser energies you might call? How's the relationship changed?

• 34:19Speaker 02

  One thing, and this kind of brings us back to love or compassion, is that I have, I think early in my practice, I was able to notice anger, or I would say my two main demons are kind of anger and self-centeredness or greed. It maps nicely onto the way it's discussed in the Dharma where they talk about the three poisons, greed, hatred, and delusion, which is just confusion, often confusion about the fact that you're in the throes of greed or hatred. And so for me, those, my principal unconstructive modes are greedy or self-absorbed and angry or, you know, irritable and.

• 35:06Speaker 02

  What I've found is very helpful is moving from this kind of clinical observation of it in my practice, like, oh, that's anger. I was able to see it in my mind, but there was an unseen aversive flick to it. Like, I was seeing it, but I didn't want it to be there. And then turning up the volume on practices that flood the mind with warmth allowed me to see that these demons, or poisons, to put it in a Buddhist term, it's really just the organism trying to protect itself, you know? And that's actually a phrase from Jack Kornfield, who's a great teacher.

• 35:49Speaker 02

  And so I've learned to kind of like high five my demons when I see them in my mind. And this actually, you know, you see this in the Buddhist texts where the Buddha will say occasionally Mara, who he had one demon who wrapped up all the poisons and he called them Mara, say Mara, I see you. It's like, but it was there, I'm maybe reading into this, but there's a kind of playfulness to that. It's like, yeah, I see you. I got you. And I don't need to feel shame about the fact that I have greed or anger. I just need to like, give it a high five, welcome it to the party, give it a seat at

• 36:32Speaker 02

  the table, and not take its terrible advice, you know? And to me, the radical disarmament here is viewing my own, the uglier aspects of my personality with some warmth, not as a way to indulge it, but as a way to kind of like pacify it. Because if you're resisting it, they just get stronger. And so now in my saner moments, when I'm in a bout of, I'm getting irritable because I'm scared of something, you know, I can just talk to myself, talk to myself a little bit more skillfully, like, all right, dude, you know, this is, you're worried, but actually you're gonna be fine. It's all good. Like, and you don't need to like.

• 37:17Speaker 02

  I use this term metaphorically because I don't have a dog, but you don't need to kick the dog. You know, you don't need to be mean to the people around you.

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• 38:25André Duqum?

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• 39:08André Duqum?

  If you're ready to create your own website, go to wix.com. That's wix.com to start building your website today. Thanks to Wix for sponsoring our show. Back to the episode.

• 39:20André Duqum?

  What you said resonates in how the watching of desire and these things without the close identification to it, like it's moving from insanity to sanity in many ways.

• 39:33Speaker 02

  Yes, well said. Absolutely. Yeah, because you're most of my life, like I would, the desire would arise and I would know it was desire or anger or whatever it was, but I was just in it and totally owned by it. And there's a way which mindfulness allows you to step out of the chaos and to see it with some nonjudgmental remove. And for me, it's been about that mindfulness plus love or compassion or specifically loving kindness meditation that has allowed me to work with my stuff more skillfully. And then if you add in a sense of there being no self fundamentally, well, then the whole

• 40:17Speaker 02

  thing becomes much more playful. And again, the caveat, you're going to get caught up sometimes. Like, that's just, that's just, unless you're enlightened, which I'm not, you know, you're just going to have bad days or bad moments. But it's like, can you just get, you know, use these tools to work with it all in a more supple fashion? I mean, am I describing something that's similar to the way your mind is working these days?

• 40:43André Duqum?

  For sure. I think it's so useful just to see how the mirror watching of these things coming up and out, like any impression that was left upon our subconscious mind needs to come out in some form. And, and so it's like by viewing the inevitable times which a challenging experiences, you know, experience arises and we get to watch it and, and not be, not be owned by it and not suppress it either. It like, these are just repeat opportunities to continue to be more and more liberated throughout our life.

• 41:16Speaker 02

  And, you know, just kind of takes us back to what you were asking before about how there are people who, you know,

• 41:24Speaker 02

  Just spend a lot of time reading books or hopefully watching YouTube with you and, and, and, you know, they, they're not tasting the chocolate. They're not actually doing or having the experience. And the thing that I've seen as a, as a evangelist for these past 11 or so years is that the moment when some sort of urge arises and you don't like say the thing that's going to ruin the next 48 hours of your marriage or whatever it is, you don't eat the sleeve of Oreos just because you're bored. That, that is like incredibly empowering for people.

• 42:04Speaker 02

  Like, oh, this practice really works, you know? It might feel stupid kind of to sit on a cushion or a chair and watch your breath for a couple of minutes every day. But when you have these moments where you're not so owned by your conditioning, it's really, it's affirming.

• 42:22André Duqum?

  It's also just so empowering to see how it subsides just by watching it from letting it hang out for a bit, you know?

• 42:29Speaker 02

  Yes. I keep referencing Joseph Goldstein. I probably will reference him a lot because he's just a huge figure in my life. He has this little practice, super practical for anybody watching or listening is, is to let, the next time you have a desire, it's probably 30 seconds away. The next time you have a desire, let it pass. Just whatever it is, I'm gonna, I'm gonna take a sip of this tea that Andre so kindly gave me. I'm gonna, I'm gonna go scroll on my phone or whatever next desire you have. Just instead of acting it out, just check it out. And what's so interesting, and you just said it, is if you just sit with it, it will come.

• 43:15Speaker 02

  It might get uncomfortable for a second. I really want to do this. But then it will subside. But the half-life of a desire is, you know, probably 30 to 90 seconds. So it will come and go. And then afterwards, it's like you've been released from the jaws of a tiger. It's like, wait a minute, I don't have this jangly energy anymore. The desire is gone. And then that's the moment of sanity. And then you can, you can check. Am I actually hungry? Yeah, if I am, then I should eat. Or do I really need to check my phone right now? I think you could start integrating this into so many aspects of your life. It just, it's eminently scalable.

• 43:58André Duqum?

  Yeah, it's like a spectrum from compulsiveness to consciousness. And the more that we implement like a practices of what you just mentioned, the more we're raising our consciousness. And then we also switch the sort of fuel source in which we're operating from life. And it's fascinating to see what are the byproducts of doing that? When we're not so compulsive and we're not wasting so much mental energy, being in resistance to desires. And I'm curious, what have you experienced mentally, physically, spiritually? As you kind of switched your fuel source, even if it's just 5, 10%. It seems like there's a more available energy as we're not wasting it.

• 44:42André Duqum?

  And being unmindful with it so much.

• 44:44Speaker 02

  Well, I think a lot about fuel source, actually. Because, and I was at a dinner the other night with a bunch of, I put together a little dinner of guys around my age, so oldsters, you know, like in their late 40s and early 50s,

• 45:01Speaker 02

  who are professionally successful, but interested in the Dharma. And one of the big fears I kept hearing is, you know, like if I move, if my motivation, if my fuel becomes love or wisdom, will I lose my edge? Will I, you know, it's terrifying. Like I've used my demons to fuel this whole thing, like the house that my family lives in. And I'm worried about not having that anymore, even though I know it's not healthy. And in my, in my experience, in my experience, that you can switch your motivation.

• 45:47Speaker 02

  To love, and it's actually a much cleaner burning fuel. And it doesn't mean you are resigned, or a palooka, or a doormat. You can do many of the same, you can make many of the same strategic moves from a place of love that you would from a place of fear or greed.

• 46:10Speaker 02

  It's just the motivation is different. So a great example of this is the Dalai Lama.

• 46:17Speaker 02

  He's a wily political operator who's managed to keep the Tibetan cause in the headlines for 60 years, even though they're up against a massively powerful regional, ruthless regional superpower in China.

• 46:33Speaker 02

  And, and yet, he's, he never talks trash about the Chinese. He's constantly talking about love. And I believe, and I'm just taking it from having interviewed the guy four times, that he, he is motivation is the benefit of all beings everywhere. His motivation is benefiting the Tibetans, benefiting himself, benefiting the Chinese, because being a colonizer is not good for your, your, your psychology. And using that instead of bloodlust to motivate his actions gives him an enormous amount of energy. And just on the level of human physiology, we know that when the brain is in a state of

• 47:18Speaker 02

  greed or fear, you're releasing all these unhealthy hormones into the brain. But when the brain is in a state of love, or altruism, or compassion, it, the nervous system is relaxed. You are, as the Dalai Lama says, accessing, accessing the, the full brilliance and potential of the human mind. You can make much smarter moves. Your, your peripheral vision is quite literally broadened when you're in an altruistic state of mind. And so I actually think you, you can be completely successful in conventional.

• 47:54Speaker 02

  Terms with a altruistic motive motivation. In fact, after I went to interview the Dalai Lama for my podcast a couple of years ago, and afterwards I came home and I got this little tattoo, which I talk about all the time. I don't know if you can see it, but it's just, I need to put a little art around it because it looks a little Holocaust-y as it is right now. But I'm Jewish, so just before anybody gets offended, FTBOAB, which stands for for the benefit of all beings, which is a little off brand for me because I'm, you know, it's a little earnest for because that's not really how I roll. But and I put it right next to my watch, which

• 48:37Speaker 02

  I've taken off. But I put it right here because I look at it all day long. I'm always looking at my watch and it just reminds me, yeah, what it was my job. My job is to be of benefit to all beings. And that doesn't mean I don't need to pay my mortgage. I mean, in fact, the the last letter here is A, all beings. But I'm part of that, you know? So I take care of myself. I take care of my family. But I do that by taking care of everybody to the best of my ability. It doesn't mean I have no boundaries. It doesn't mean I'm, you know, completely porous. I can operate in the world like a normal quote unquote

• 49:19Speaker 02

  person. But what's what's the cleaner burning fuel for all of that? Is it my my demons of greed and hatred? Or is it the in a capacity we all have to be, you know, to give a shit, really?

• 49:34André Duqum?

  It also seems like it has a big impact. It has a big transformation on what the actual impact is that we have in the world, depending on which fuel source we're pulling from. That informs the consciousness of which we're doing any action, you know? So like, we could do two identical things in how they appear in the physical world. But because they're coming from two different places, they can have two different effects. And I'm curious your thoughts on the sort of natural byproducts, fragrances, consequences of awakening as an individual. And being around being around individuals who exude that sort of fragrance naturally, that it's like being in the presence of that and cultivating that within yourself is,

• 50:18André Duqum?

  in many traditions, talked about the most important thing we can do in our lifetime, outside of any other actions which might be great and useful for the ecology around us and humanity. Why do you think, why do you think that is?

• 50:32Speaker 02

  Well, I hear two things in what you're saying. One is that, you know, you can do the same action, but motivated by different things. So you could do whatever it is you do in your daily life. And if it's motivated by greed or hatred, it has a different, to use your term, fragrance than if it is motivated by love. And I just see that it really, the more I've been able to move the dial toward a kind of altruistic mind state, and I want to be super clear that I don't live there all the time. There's a reason why I'd have a tattoo. Like, I need to be pushed in that direction. I need to push myself in that

• 51:12Speaker 02

  direction. But the more I'm there, it's just the flavor of the day, the way people respond to me is really different. I, my son is 10. When he was really little, he had a nanny, Eleanor. And I remember being in a little like kids' center, you know, he was like one or two, and they have these kids' clubs all around Manhattan where we lived at the time. And there were lots of nannies there because these were all working parents and the nannies would take them to the kids' club. But occasionally, I would, I worked in the area and I would drop in and just check in on my son. And I would notice that

• 51:51Speaker 02

  all the other kids would come up to Eleanor, even though she wasn't their nanny. And no, that wasn't happening with any of the other nannies. And I asked her, I was like, why, why are all the kids coming to you? And she said, well, kids know where the love is. And people know where the love is, you know? And it's if you move through the world, you don't have to advertise it, you don't have to be super schmoopy or gooey or sentimental about it. But if people have a sense that you're a vector of warmth, it's going to change the way people respond to you.

• 52:26Speaker 02

  And so that's just one thing to say, based on your question. The second thing to say, and this is the second time you've brought it up, and I didn't respond to it directly the first time. But there's something really powerful, if you're interested in this stuff, let's call it spirituality, personal growth, contemplation, meditation, whatever you want to call it, to be around other people who are interested in this stuff. And in particular, to be around people who've spent decades practicing it and are now adepts or masters or teachers.

• 53:01Speaker 02

  I've, this is, it can be a frustrating thing to hear because it's not so easy to do. And if you're watching this and you live in a place where you don't have access to this, I'll have a few things to say about how you can operationalize this advice. But the, if you can be in the presence of great meditation teachers, and it doesn't mean you have to be like, I'm incredibly lucky. I got to fly to India and I've interviewed the Dalai Lama, as I said many times. I'm a very privileged person. I've been able to do that. But, you know, if you're able to, you know, there are great meditation teachers all over the world. And if you're able to go, especially if you live in a major city and hear somebody speak

• 53:45Speaker 02

  and maybe ask them a question, there's a contact high that is incredibly valuable. It kind of goes back to that phrase before the soft sermon of your pores. It's like, I spent a lot of time, because of my job, you know, interviewing great masters. You and I essentially have the same job, although today you're not interviewing a great master. But, but, you know, the, the, the kind of positive peer pressure that I experienced, and I suspect you do too, of being around people who have spent decades putting the sense of self through a cheese grater is really, really powerful. And it's hard to get that.

• 54:29Speaker 02

  If you're not interacting with these folks. And it's like, you know, we're about, we're on the cusp of, I think, incalculable change in the era of AI. But it's just going to make real intelligence much more important.

• 54:44André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 54:45Speaker 02

  Because the machines can't do this. And so what do you do if you, if you have no access to humans like this? I mean, I do think as a second best, the parasocial relationship with somebody on YouTube or on a podcast is a real hit. You know, that's a real hit. You're starting to, you know, people come up to me all the time and say, I feel like I know you because I read your book or I listened to your podcast and like, actually you do kind of know me. There isn't much, there isn't really a line between me talking to you right now and me talking to you outside of the studio before, like I'm the same, I try to be the same person.

• 55:23Speaker 02

  And so I do think surrounding yourself with these influences through book, through podcasts, if you can go in person, that's great. And even perhaps most importantly is finding a community of like-minded people with whom you can practice. The flesh and blood of being around people who take this stuff seriously is incalculably beneficial. And we live in this kind of lonely individualistic culture where people take spirituality as a, like a personal solo endeavor. And I think it's much better practiced in the carpool lane.

• 56:02André Duqum?

  I agree. Yeah, it's, we live in such an unprecedented era where we can cultivate those parasocial relationships and what we lack for an immediate physical contact and community, we can create the, create that sense of environment, although it's not the same fully, you know? It is, it is a step in the right direction.

• 56:21Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and then you can consider making a big change in your life, you know? If you can, you know, maybe you move, you know, or. You take a trip to be in the same room with a teacher. And it does, again, it doesn't have to be some like a famous teacher. I mean, there are, you know, lots of great Dharma or spiritual teachers all over the world. And, you know, you can, they, they, these guys lead retreats. And by guys, I mean, I use that in a unisex term. They're amazing women and men who lead retreats and give public talks. And, you know, can you do your best to see if you can engage with them?

• 57:03Speaker 02

  Or even just be simply just being in the same room is, is really powerful. I do want to point out something you do just to your listeners and viewers. That's very skillful in terms of like interpersonal skills. You, I don't know if you know you're doing it, but there's, have you ever heard of reflective listening? Do you know what that is? Is that like nodding a head and stuff? No, it's a, you will often repeat back the essence of what I've said in your own words to demonstrate that you've understood it. And I think sometimes even to signal to the audience, like,

• 57:39Speaker 02

  you're kind of like putting a fine point on what I've said and making sure that they understand it. And that is actually a thing, that's a great technique to use in all of human affairs. Like as you're moving through the world, just to, you know, people say things to you to repeat it. You don't have to do this on everything they say. Yeah, you don't want to parrot too much. You don't want to parrot too much, but to repeat it back in your own words. You're actually not even parroting. You're just paraphrasing and demonstrating that you've understood. This is, is the most effective and benevolent manipulation technique I have ever found. Because people will eat out of the palm of your hand if you give them what they want most,

• 58:22Speaker 02

  which they're not even really aware that it's what they want. But we all want to be seen and heard. That's, well, look at social media. That's all it is. People just, look at me, look at me, look at me. And you can, you can, I used to have this friend, I have, I still have this friend, this woman, Rupika. And she used to.

• 58:41Speaker 02

  She used to walk around her office with a tray of cupcakes and just hand the cupcakes out. That's what reflective listening is. You can just hand out cupcakes to people all the time because you're just giving them this huge, meaningful dopamine hit of like being understood. And so I think you do a very good job of that.

• 58:58André Duqum?

  Thank you. Thank you. I feel like we all yearn for that sense of connection with others. And sometimes we perceive the ways to do that as being like an interesting person people will want to connect with, as opposed to being an interested person. And, you know, the Swedish word in the English dictionary is someone's name, you know. And so, you know, just, I think, I think in a world where there is a pervasive, enormous, abundant amount of individuals trying to get the attention for themselves, what does it look like to flip it on its head? And I would say as a podcast host, I mean, that's kind of the

• 59:38André Duqum?

  whole shtick, right? Is, you know, genuine, sincere curiosity into the world that is you and your life. And this has been, this has been great, man.

• 59:48Speaker 02

  It is. I just want to say it's enlightened self-interest. Because I called it a benevolent manipulation tool. And it is. I mean, you are, it's both, I mean, you're not really manipulating anybody, but it's benevolent. You're giving people what they want, and then they like you. And, and there's nothing wrong with that. You know, like, this is, there's, it's, it's somehow the case that being altruistic is beneficial to you. And for all the terrible things about the human operating system, all the bugs that we see resulting in war and income inequality and the climate crisis and whatever the hell's

• 1:00:29Speaker 02

  gonna happen with AI, for all those bugs, the feature in the human operating system is that when we do good, it feels good. And as I often say, I think if there's salvation on offer for the species, it's in that direction.

• 1:00:42André Duqum?

  Yeah, it's been spoken in many ways that what you don't give will not be given. And like in the act of offering altruistic, you know, and living, imbibing those virtues.

• 1:00:56André Duqum?

  It's like we want to receive a lot and by giving it, we all like the giver and receiver collapses in many ways. I'm curious because you've spent time with great teachers and like the Dalai Lama, and there seems to be the overlap and through line between individuals who have some sort of degree of awakening, however you want to gauge it, that there is a depth of laughter that is pervasive.

• 1:01:22Speaker 02

  That's totally true.

• 1:01:24André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:25Speaker 02

  Well, I think it goes back to the self. You know, it's like Joseph, who I've talked about a lot, says that, you know, enlightenment, which is a fraught term, but one way you can think about enlightenment, which is enlightenment is kind of confusing to people. And but one way you can think about enlightenment in his view is lightening up. It's like you, when you look at the mind

• 1:01:55Speaker 02

  over time, like you just see how ridiculous it is, you know, and you stop taking it and yourself so seriously and you stop taking it so personally. It's just like these thoughts, they're just nature, you know, you know, they're they're they feel bespoke Dan, you know, but it's really just an obviously just another expression of the universe. So I don't need to take it so seriously. I don't need to take myself so seriously. And so what you see among what I've seen among these great practitioners that I've interviewed, and it's clear that you've seen it too, is there's this extraordinary capacity for laughter and for compassion. You know, it's

• 1:02:37Speaker 02

  like, there's less of a self there. So they're more available to respond to your needs and also

• 1:02:46Speaker 02

  they're not taking themselves as seriously. And so therefore, they're just kind of laughing at themselves. And yeah, I mean, that I think is a real north star for me.

• 1:02:56André Duqum?

  It's such a gift that we live in a time where there's more access to these types of conversations and explorations more than ever. And yet, there are faults to what you could say is some mindfulness industry where it's been captured by all sorts of people and interests. And being in this space for so long and getting to meet a lot of individuals throughout your journey. What do you feel like the industry per se of mindfulness falls short? And yeah, what shortcomings do you see there?

• 1:03:25Speaker 02

  Well, I totally agree with you. I mean, anytime you put humans together for any kind of endeavor, even if it's, you know, a seemingly wholesome one, like mindfulness and meditation, like your greed and hatred will seep in and politics will seep in and I'm certainly not immune. So yeah, let's just stipulate that there are problems with this industry, even even as beneficial as it aims to be. I would say, I actually don't think the profit motive is a huge, as huge a problem as some people think it is. Of course, it can be a perversion.

• 1:04:06Speaker 02

  But we do exist in a capitalistic environment. And there are aspects of capitalism that can be healthy in that you really become very sensitive to the needs of your customers. Because if you're not, they take their money and spend it elsewhere. And so you can, I think you can start to develop products and services that do really, to go back to the term that we started with earlier, meet people where they are. However, sometimes what people will pay for isn't actually the best thing for them. And so it can be, it's really a truly a double edged sword. I think the one of the biggest missing pieces of the, well, first of all.

• 1:04:53Speaker 02

  I think there are lots of really well-intentioned people in the space. And then there are people who are over-promising. You know, I have a particular beef with the whole power of positive thinking crowd, the manifestation crew, who tell you that you can use your mind to get a diamond necklace or cure your cancer or whatever, and I just don't think that's true. I would say on the more wholesome end of the spectrum, like my little world of Buddhists or Buddhist-adjacent folks who are operating meditation apps and stuff like that, I don't see a lot of Craven stuff there, but I do think that one thing that we are missing is community. You know, like, how can we give people... You know, in the time of the Buddha, the Buddha himself talked about the three jewels

• 1:05:39Speaker 02

  of the practice. So the Buddha, which is slightly immodest, but he was basically saying, "I am an avatar of the possibility of enlightenment." The Dharma, which is the teachings of the Buddha, and the third was the Sangha, the community. And that third aspect of spiritual development is really de-emphasized in our culture. And I don't see, in the mindfulness revolution that I've been a part of in the last 10 or so years, with all these apps popping up and books and various companies, I don't think there's enough emphasis on getting people together and all the benefits that can come from that. And another little beef, I would say, is that there's been an enormous amount of influence, and I would put my...

• 1:06:22Speaker 02

  I would say that I'm part of the problem here, is there's an enormous emphasis on mindfulness, which is just one capacity that we've plucked out of the Dharma or Buddhism. But mindfulness, it was never meant to be practiced on its own. It was always supposed to be practiced alongside, you know, deep wisdom and inquiry into the nature of the self, and of course, a huge emphasis in our ancient wisdom traditions on both love and compassion and also ethics, which seemed to me to be related to that.

• 1:06:58Speaker 02

  And so we've plucked this one really amazing human capacity out of a rich tradition, and I think there's something that's been lost in that. And so for me and my work going forward, I really aim to try to emphasize the whole enchilada.

• 1:07:17André Duqum?

  Yeah, it's an interesting balance to try to walk the modernization and making meditation and these different contemplative practices accessible to the modern world without losing its essence, because you find that throughout all culture, whatever, whenever a society spends more time exploring one area of life, they develop a larger catalog of language to describe that thing. And so in the West, we have like meditation is like the word for meditation. And in the East, there's eight to over a dozen different types of words that describe different meditative techniques.

• 1:07:54Speaker 02

  Yes, yes.

• 1:07:55André Duqum?

  And so, yeah, it's an interesting, it's an interesting thing, but I think, I feel, I feel like we have a very promising decade ahead.

• 1:08:03Speaker 02

  I hope so.

• 1:08:04André Duqum?

  With, of course, various possible pitfalls along the journey. But I'm curious, when you project out in the next 10 years, what do you see coming to be transformed in this space? Of course, you spoke to the importance of Sangha and building more in-person community and the advent of AI and rewriting our relationship to what is intelligence. I think that's just going to be reshaping our thoughts around a lot of these things.

• 1:08:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08:31André Duqum?

  So yeah, where are you placing your bets and kind of the changes to come in the next 10 years?

• 1:08:36Speaker 02

  I'm really thinking about two things. One is moving away from just focusing on secular mindfulness and being much more Buddhist forward in my work. And the second thing I'm thinking a lot about is community, both digital and IRL. So I used to have a meditation app, went through a quite painful divorce from my co-founders, and so I'm gonna build another app right now.

• 1:09:10Speaker 02

  My work is mostly on Substack and I've been experimenting on Substack with doing like live guided meditations where people can ask me questions and creating chat groups where people can interact with each other and the response has been really good. And so I'm thinking that I'm probably going to build an app that really focuses on that. But I would love to go even deeper over time and create in-person experiences. I've done a few live events over the last two years where, you know, either like an evening in a major city or a weekend at a retreat center and I really am heartened by the response. And so I'm interested in moving

• 1:09:53Speaker 02

  that direction too. And I do a lot of in my personal life, like non-publicly, I organize a private meditation retreat with my brother. And I also throw dinner parties occasionally where, you know, it's centered on the Dharma. I invited you to one tonight, actually, right here in LA. And it's interesting, you know, this has nothing to do with like, I'm not getting paid for this at all. And I just have a like, I'm noticing after a couple of years of doing it that I have like an inexhaustible energy to do it. And I really like building the community that I want to be part of. And so now I'm thinking, okay, well, maybe I can go bigger

• 1:10:33Speaker 02

  than, I'll keep doing the private pro bono stuff, but maybe I can, you know, build it into my professional life. And I don't know exactly what it looks like, but especially, you know, in a lonely, divided, tech saturated era where, and I, and I think it's only going to get more like this as the robots take over. I think, you know, giving people an opportunity to, to engage with the way evolution wired us, you know, there's something so, so, there's a lot of pathos when you think about what we were like these naked. Hairless apes, you know, shivering together on the savannah.

• 1:11:15Speaker 02

  That's how we survived because even though we were prey animals who eventually moved to the top of the food chain, the way we got there is because we have this ability to work together. And everything about modern life is militating against that. And so seeing if I can use whatever time I have left to kind of restore that aspect of the human repertoire, I, to me, that feels like a good use of my time.

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• 1:12:40André Duqum?

  In terms of your own personal practice and how you're using your time, I'm just curious, what are, what are like your, what's your practice day to day like now? And yeah, just as we start to head towards wrapping up, I just want, want to hear about your practices and then also your own relationship to down regulating, I suppose, the, the addiction to the voice in the head. And let's start there.

• 1:13:04Speaker 02

  Well, when I'm at home, I work from home, my day usually goes like this. I get up around seven, seven thirty. And usually the first thing I do is work, by which I mean write. So the, the, I'm working on my next book and the most creative time for me is that first thing in the morning. So I'll do about 90 minutes of that and then I'll sit and meditate. And usually it's 30 or 45 minutes. If I had total control of my schedule and less work, I'd sit for a full hour. But it's usually 30 or 45 minutes and then I'll work a little bit more, about an hour. And then I will exercise, which I, I find to be a really important part of my overall kind of like, use the word down regulate. It's really helpful for me.

• 1:13:49Speaker 02

  And often, again, if I have time after I exercise, I will sit in a sauna and meditate for another 15 minutes. And then in the afternoon, I do my podcast interviews and meetings and enter emails and things like that. And often I will sneak in a little bits of practice throughout the afternoon, you know, five, 10 minutes if I can. And then the evenings, family or friends. I'm really, really, really focused on not only family, but social life. I do a lot of like seeing my friends. I'm a extra extrovert. So I really like to see my friends who had a lot, a lot of dinners, standing dinners with friends that like we,

• 1:14:34Speaker 02

  you know, different groups where every couple of months we get together and have a dinner.

• 1:14:39Speaker 02

  And then I meditate again before I go to bed and I usually do walking meditation. I, I don't know why, as I've gotten older, one of my biggest problems with sleep is I get very physically restless. And so I find that walking meditation is a really good way to kind of get the ants out of my pants and help me fall asleep. And, and very frequently I will do 10, 15, 30 minutes of walking meditation. If I get into bed and can't sleep, I'll get up again and do it more. So I get a lot of practice during the day. It's kind of dipping in and out throughout the day, doing different styles of practice. To say a little bit more about when I sit in the morning, I usually start with loving kindness meditation for

• 1:15:22Speaker 02

  15, 20 minutes, and then I do an open awareness practice. And this is like kind of a contemplative cross-training for me. So the loving kindness practice boosts your.

• 1:15:33Speaker 02

  Your warmth, but also your concentration, because it is classically considered to be a great way to tune the mind up and get more focused. And then I move into an open awareness where I'm boosting my mindfulness, where I'm seeing the chaos and cacophony of my own mind and learning how not to get so caught up in it, but also not self. You know, that's the way the Buddhists would describe selflessness or nonduality, seeing that all of this noise essentially is just nature. It's not me, or to the extent that it's me, it's me as part of nature.

• 1:16:10Speaker 02

  And so, yeah, and I also find that the walking meditation is a particularly powerful way to get a glimpse of the nondual. Like, there's something about having the eyes open in moving through space where you, for me at least, I can really see, yeah, you can see that nobody's home. And I say this, I know it's gonna be frustrating for some people who can't access this insight, and it's totally fine. I'd say just kind of knock at the door gently over time and you might start to see it. I'll just describe briefly how I do it. This is taken directly from the aforementioned Joseph Goldstein.

• 1:16:51Speaker 02

  As I'm walking, I'll start to, I'll use thinking in a skillful way to frame my experience in the passive voice. So movement is being known, seeing is being known, hearing is being known. And then I'll ask, by what? Known by what? And that kind of turns the vector of attention instead of outward back in. Like, who's taking delivery of all of these sensory packages? And you don't want to look too hard. It's just like, just check it out. And then you might see when you do that, oh yeah.

• 1:17:32Speaker 02

  I feel like me, I feel like Dan, and I can see and hear and all this stuff, but I can't connect the seeing and hearing with this ghostly inner sense of Dan. Like, both of these things are existing. Actually, no. The sense of Dan is just another thing being known.

• 1:17:50Speaker 02

  And so, for some people, this will just land intuitively, and for some people, it will make no fucking sense. And it's fine. If it makes no sense, just play with it.

• 1:18:01Speaker 02

  And I have found that over time, it's just a great way to see something that's right there on the surface. It's not even like an esoteric, deep... It's very deep, but you don't have to go hunting for it. It's like, as they say in Buddhism, the not finding is the finding. The whole point is just to see, oh, yeah, I can hear, right now, you can hear the sound of my yammering, but can you find what's knowing the hearing? Just look really gently, and I think you might see that there's not much to find, and that's the point. So, I said a lot there, but did it come close to answering your question?

• 1:18:42André Duqum?

  Yeah, as it pertains to after your loving-kindness metta meditation, and whether it's through walking or seated open awareness, I think you said something along the lines of paying attention to who is receiving all these sensory packages in your awareness, and turning the gaze inwards, just the act of asking that question and having the inquiry internally, where the gaze turns inwards,

• 1:19:09André Duqum?

  it starts to create a deeper sense of space between you and the continual unchecked noise in your head that we perceive as ourself.

• 1:19:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:19:17André Duqum?

  So, when you think about the path of going from completely having the voice in your head rule your life unbeknownst to you, to having the practice every day where you're starting to watch it and become aware, and who is aware of that passing and arising, arising and passing with of those thoughts, to creating enough space to where you have a bigger context of awareness, and you start to see the ephemeral nature of thoughts, and therefore, they don't control you.

• 1:19:48André Duqum?

  I would just love for you to hear your thoughts on the voice in our head and how it really rules our life until we put it into proper understanding and relationship.

• 1:19:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, we all have this constant conversation happening in our head. This inner voice that chases us out of bed in the morning and is just talking at us all day and just like we're wanting stuff or not wanting stuff, judging people, comparing ourselves to other people, judging ourselves. And when you're not aware of this nonstop conversation, which if we broadcast aloud, you would be locked up. But when you can't, when you have no visibility into this nonstop nattering, it owns you. It's like you just, back to Joseph, he often talks about, like, we act out our thoughts as if they're tiny dictators. Oh, yeah, like, you know, say, say something that's gonna fuck up your marriage or, you know, eat something even though you're not hungry.

• 1:20:43Speaker 02

  You just do that, the little impish impulse arises and we just do it. But with meditation, and there are lots of ways in which, different forms of meditation that can work on this dynamic in different ways, but with mindfulness meditation, for example, where you focus on your breath, and then every time you get distracted, you start again. And a lot of people think, when they notice how distractible they are, that they're failed meditators, but actually, that is the magic moment. The whole point is to get distracted and start again because when you wake up from distraction, you're seeing the voice in your head. And in the seeing of the voice in the head, you're diminishing its power. Because then when it offers you up shitty ideas later in the day, you can be like, oh,

• 1:21:29Speaker 02

  Mara, I see you, you know? And so that's one modality. Another modality can be loving kindness meditation, where you're honing your capacity for warmth, this innate capacity we all have. And then when you see the voice in your head swoop in, you can smile at it. Another capacity is getting a glimpse, another modality is getting a glimpse of like, the fact that this whole voice is an illusion anyway. And so that helps you to take it less seriously. So I think of, you know, one way to think of meditation is just lots of different doorways to kind of disassembling.

• 1:22:11Speaker 02

  The power of the voice in your head, like the Wizard of Oz, like the is just the man behind the curtain, you know? Yeah, so that's how it works for me.

• 1:22:22André Duqum?

  Yeah, I think that's how it works for, it's gotta work for all of us, you know? There's, there's many different paths to be able to have that recognition, but without putting our thoughts into right relationship, like and, and perceiving them for what they are, we won't be able to, to explore our full potential in life because it's, we have that inner dictator like you're referring to, that's just narrating and, and making decisions from our life in our life.

• 1:22:47Speaker 02

  And the good news is you can cut the strings of this like malevolent puppeteer, you know, of your ego, you know, you don't, and the ego, it's not like you want to destroy the ego, that's hostile, that there's no point, it, it, there, there are aspects of the voice in the head that are useful.

• 1:23:04André Duqum?

  Who is the I that would destroy the ego in the first place?

• 1:23:06Speaker 02

  Correct, exactly, exactly. So just kind of like that, you know, just sit with that mystery and like that mystery is, is, is a way in which you start to diminish the power of the ego.

• 1:23:22André Duqum?

  Any closing thoughts you have? This was a great conversation. I know we touched on quite a few different points, but, uh, yeah, man, I just want to leave open for with the context of this conversation, anything else that feels alive for you?

• 1:23:35Speaker 02

  You know, I would just say, and I suspect this is just a restatement of something everybody who already is tuning into the show knows, but for me, like the animating insight of this whole second part of my career, you know, leaving journalism and doing this, whatever it is I do, um, full time is, is that like the mind and the brain are trainable, you know, that happiness, love, all the states of mind we want, they're not unalterable factory settings, they're skills. That's, my job used to be to deliver terrible news, and now my job is to deliver one really piece of, really good piece of news, and it's that, you know, like you have enormous

• 1:24:18Speaker 02

  amount of power to, as, as I keep saying, like upgrade your own software. That's, that's really cool. It's not going to change all of the difficult dynamics in the world, it's not going to undo your childhood, but it is something you can do, and it is something that can, you know, there is. I know the name of my book is 10% Happier. It's also the name of my podcast, but like that 10% compounds annually. You can get way more than 10% happier over time.

• 1:24:49André Duqum?

  Yeah, I love it, man. It feels, it's a pleasure to connect with you and it does feel like there is a deeper, especially I get to meet so many amazing people like you do on your podcast and through the industry that we're in. And it feels like there's this larger song of growing where we get to support each other, doing, you know, Dharma and the different ways. And so I loved all the different avenues in which you shared and it's cool to see the evolution of your journey throughout the years. And yeah, man, thanks for coming on.

• 1:25:18Speaker 02

  Pleasure. Yes, absolutely. I did. I did. Even the part where I was here two hours earlier was not bad.

• 1:25:26André Duqum?

  It was good. You got some meditation in, got some work done.

• 1:25:29Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:25:29André Duqum?

  Yeah. All right, man. Well, appreciate you and we'll leave links down below where people can stay connected with you and your work and your podcast. Yeah.

• 1:25:37Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:25:38André Duqum?

  Yeah. Everybody, thanks so much for tuning into this episode and I will see you next week. Be well.

• 1:25:58Speaker 05

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