Three Buddhist Practices For Getting Your Sh*t Together | Vinny Ferraro

Practical advice from a straight-talking former criminal and occasionally profane Dharma teacher. Vinny Ferarro https://vinnyferraro.org/ has practiced insight meditation (vipassanā) since the mid-90s. He's the Guiding Teacher of the Big Heart City Sangha in San Francisco and has led a weekly sitting group for almost two decades. As a fully empowered Dharma Teacher through Spirit Rock/IMS, he has taught residential retreats at various centers and currently leads Spirit Rock's Year to Live https://spirit-rock.secure.retreat.guru/program/a-year-to-live-yl7t26/?lang=en course. This episode originally dropped in May of 2024, but we're re-posting it because it was one of our most successful episodes. In this episode we talk about: Alignment Vinny's concept of "flashing your basic goodness" Noting practice The deep satisfaction in not seeking satisfaction Redirecting awareness Being an "empathetic witness" for yourself When to opt for distraction Not taking what's not yours Vinny's ancestor practice What is the connection between seeing our family patterns and not taking what is not ours? How loyal have we been to our suffering? Related Episodes: How To Be Okay No Matter What | Kamala Masters https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-to-be-okay-no-matter-what-kamala-masters/id1087147821?i=1000680036412 Vitamin E: How To Cultivate Equanimity Amidst Political Chaos | Roshi Joan Halifax https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/vitamin-e-how-to-cultivate-equanimity-amidst-political/id1087147821?i=1000536756587 Non-Preachy Ethics | Jozen Tamori Gibson https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/10-happier-with-dan-harris/id1087147821?i=1000536756527 Get the 10% with Dan Harris app here https://app.danharris.com/membership Sign up for Dan's free newsletter here http://www.danharris.com/ Follow Dan on social: Instagram https://bit.ly/3tGigG5, TikTok https://bit.ly/3FOA84J Subscribe to our YouTube Channel https://bit.ly/3FybRzD Thanks to our sponsors: LinkedIn:  Spend $250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn ads and get a $250 credit for the next one. Just go to linkedin.com/happier http://linkedin.com/happier. Tonal:   Go to tonal.com http://tonal.com/ and use the promo code Happier for $200 off your purchase. Cozy Earth: Go to cozyearth.com/HARRIS http://cozyearth.com/HARRIS for up to 20% off! To advertise on the show, contact [email protected] or visit https://advertising.libsyn.com/10HappierwithDanHarris

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

• 0:04Dan Harris?

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

• 0:19Dan Harris?

  Hello, my fellow suffering beings. How are we doing today? My guest today combines two of my favorite things: a deep understanding of Buddhism, and a tastefully and judiciously foul mouth. We cover a lot of ground in this interview, but one of the concepts that really jumped out at me was how to become unfuckable with, sturdy and steady in the face of whatever happens. What an incredible North Star that is. I'm not saying I've achieved it, but I'm definitely working toward it, and this conversation absolutely helped. I had actually never met my guest, Vinny Ferraro, before this conversation, and I was, as you will hear, utterly taken by him. He has an incredible backstory. He grew up

• 1:03Dan Harris?

  in extraordinarily harsh conditions, then found the Dharma and turned his life around. And in the process, he has turned around the lives of scores of his fellow human beings. Vinny now teaches at the Insight Meditation Society and the Spirit Rock Meditation Center. He also teaches in prisons and many other places. The basic structure of this conversation is, we cover three Buddhist practices that Vinny personally uses to keep his shit together. And over the course of the chat, we hit a whole range of fascinating topics, including: alignment—I'll let Vinny explain what that is—Vinny's concept of flashing your basic goodness, noting practice—the deep satisfaction in not seeking satisfaction,

• 1:45Dan Harris?

  redirecting awareness, becoming an empathic witness for yourself, when to opt for distraction—that's an unorthodox suggestion—not taking what's not yours, Vinny's ancestor practice—the connection between seeing your family patterns and not taking what is not yours, and the question of how loyal have you been to your suffering?

• 2:09Dan Harris?

  Very quickly, before we dive in here, two things to say. First, this episode originally dropped in May of 2024, but we're reposting it because it was awesome and really one of our most successful episodes ever. Second thing to say is you should check out my new meditation app if you haven't already. It's called 10% with Dan Harris. You can get it by going to danharris.com. If you sign up, there's a free 14-day trial, so you can check it out before you spend any money. And by the way, if you can't afford it, you can just send a note to [email protected] and we will hook you up. The app is awesome. We've got a growing library of meditations. Also, it's where we do our weekly live meditation and Q and A sessions every Tuesday at 4:00 Eastern.

• 2:51Dan Harris?

  Okay, we'll get started with Vinny Ferraro right after these messages.

• 2:57Dan Harris?

  If you care about supporting independent media and if you care about being a node of sanity in an insane world, there are a few quick, easy, and free ways that you can support me and my team, which I would be really grateful for. One way to do it is to sign up for my newsletter, which comes out on Monday mornings. It's a little dose of sanity in your inbox at the beginning of a busy week. The second way to do it is to follow and subscribe to the show wherever you're listening or watching right now. That really helps. Three, share your favorite episode with a friend. This is a great and low-stakes way to connect with somebody in your orbit, and not for nothing, it also helps us grow. And all of these things take about 30 seconds, and they really do help.

• 3:38Dan Harris?

  You will be supporting me and my team and our mission, and I, as I said, would be immensely grateful. You can find everything we do at danharris.com. It's all right there. Thank you. I mean that seriously. We'll be right back with more show. If you care about supporting independent media and if you care about being a node of sanity in an insane world, there are a few quick, easy, and free ways that you can support me and my team, which I would be really grateful for. One way to do it is to sign up for my newsletter, which comes out on Monday mornings. It's a little dose of sanity in your inbox at the beginning of a busy week. The second way to do it is to follow and subscribe to the show wherever you're listening Whatever you're listening or watching right now, that really helps.

• 4:21Dan Harris?

  Three, share your favorite episode with a friend. This is a great and low stakes way to connect with somebody in your orbit. And not for nothing, it also helps us grow. And all of these things take about 30 seconds and they really do help. You will be supporting me and my team and our mission. And I, as I said, would be immensely grateful. You can find everything we do at danharris.com. It's all right there. Thank you. I mean that seriously. We'll be right back with more show. Vinny Ferraro, welcome to the show.

• 4:52Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me, Dan.

• 4:54Dan Harris?

  It's a pleasure. In preparation for this interview, my colleague, the mighty DJ Kashmir, who's a student of yours and who has been arguing for a while that we should have you on the show. DJ got in touch with you and asked a really smart question, which is, you know, sort of what, what are the tools and techniques that you as a Dharma teacher are using in your life these days to keep it together? And he then, DJ, passed along a list of these tools. And I thought I would just kind of march through them. Does that sound like a good agenda to you?

• 5:25Speaker 01

  Let's do it.

• 5:26Dan Harris?

  All right. So the first is alignment. What is alignment?

• 5:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, so when we start sitting, we see how much is going on inside us, right? There's just so much to choose from, right? So many parts of our experience, right? There's our conditioning, there's the thoughts, there's hopes, there's fears, there's the characteristics, the defilements, right? Everything is like one moment away. And so we get to choose, well, what do I actually want to give life to? What do I want to actually follow, right? If, if the two components of mindfulness are seeing clearly and responding wisely. So am I seeing clearly all these different parts of me that are up for grabs in this moment? Then I say, okay, if I'm walking this direction, where will that lead me, right? Is this wise? Is this kind?

• 6:15Speaker 01

  Is it generous, right? So it can have all of these different flavors. So are we aligning with that which is wise within us? That's, that's the short answer.

• 6:26Dan Harris?

  I want to encourage you to give long answers here.

• 6:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay.

• 6:30Dan Harris?

  But I'm going to prod you because I think this is fascinating. We all have just tons of stuff going on internally. If you just turn the laser beam of your attention inward, you will see, you probably won't like what you see. There's just a lot of chaos and random thoughts and homicidal urges and whatever, or desires, there's just lots of stuff in there. And there's beautiful stuff in there, too, of course. And you're saying, you, Vinny, are saying, I try to check in regularly and figure out of this whole menu, of mind states, which one do I want to go with? Am I restating you with some degree of accuracy?

• 7:09Speaker 01

  That's exactly right. Yeah, I mean, we get to decide with some mindfulness, with some practice, we can decide what we align ourselves with. Right? In the beginning, in my life, I was just, I received the thoughts as commandments, right? They had the power to animate me, right? My thoughts were my reality and they caused immense suffering. So then we get to decide with some practice, like, oh, well, what part of my personality is operating right now? You know, drawing out these marching waters. I don't know if you've ever seen the X-Men movies? You know those ones?

• 7:45Dan Harris?

  Of course, yes.

• 7:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So you remember Magneto? Magneto, so he has the power to completely control metal. So he can walk off a roof. And as he does, every one of his steps are supported, right? This is a perfect illustration of my understanding of the Dharma, right? How each moment is conditioned by the next. And so, you know, if I walk in the direction of the shadow worlds, they open up before me, right? And when I'm able to take refuge in maybe like more wholesome or more like the boundless qualities of the natural radiance of the unobscured heart is what the Buddha kind of called these Brahma viharas.

• 8:30Speaker 01

  When I walk in those beautiful directions, those energies inform the world. I'm kind of inhabiting and in some way co-creating. So that's what I'm saying when I say, well, what do we align ourselves with? It's like, what do I want to give life to? Does that make sense?

• 8:50Dan Harris?

  It does. It makes complete sense. Just to, you know, if anybody's new to the Dharma, when you talk about the Brahma viharas, it might be worth spending some time there. This is, you know, for people like me who just kind of have a anti-sentimentalist conditioning. I think both of us are probably Gen Xers and that was like the age of irony and we're nihilistic, sarcastic and all this stuff. So when our kind of, well, certainly for myself, when my kind of mind encounters an idea like the Brahma viharas, which translates, I think, into the divine abodes. And that kind of language often, traditionally, I've found that a little repellent, but it's really interesting, this idea, these divine abodes. There are four of them.

• 9:32Dan Harris?

  Loving kindness or friendliness, compassion, sympathetic joy, which is like the opposite of schadenfreude, just delighting in other people's happiness. And then finally, equanimity, which is just the ability to stay cool no matter what's happening. And, you know, if you can set aside some of this sort of grand language, what the Buddha's saying, and what you're now saying more recently, is that these are skills that can be developed. And I can see these capacities in my mind and like Magneto, create a pathway, a sturdy pathway, to go in that direction instead of the more noxious alternatives.

• 10:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, we've seen the limitations of the mind, right? I mean, I certainly have. I've seen the limitations of taking my psychology to be a reality, right? Because even though a lot of my stories are based in fiction, in this inner narrative, the suffering they deliver is real, right? So we have to take good care of like what we let the mind dwell on. You know, we have to have some kind of, maybe we can call it like, discipline or it's a better word for it. When you brush your teeth every day, right?

• 10:45Dan Harris?

  A habit, a practice.

• 10:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, a habit or a practice, right? So we can see, oh, thoughts on this inner judgment, right? The inner narrative is strong. And it comes factory stock, you know, with this biology that we've inherited, right? And if we look closely at that judgment, it doesn't really lead anywhere. And sometimes even as our awareness grows, we start to practice, the judgment grows. So it's like, wow, hold on a second. I know the subtle violence of self-improvement, right? I know about trying to hate myself into becoming a better person. Didn't really work.

• 11:29Speaker 01

  And maybe the problem wasn't like a lack of sincerity, but the limitations of anger, fear, or shame as far as like transformative, right? So the Buddha was, I believe, asserting that the know that comes from love, that comes from care is way more transformative than the know that comes from those other afflictive energies. So with that in mind, we, we kind of offer ourselves a pardon. We say, okay, however I am, I've come by it honestly. And that conditioning is actually not who I am. So the Buddha kept coming back over and over to this, what is I, me, or mine? What is I, me, or mine? And he was like, not this, not this, not this, not this.

• 12:15Speaker 01

  But he did say, and I like you used a word earlier, sturdy in terms of the refuges that these heart qualities, the reliable refuge, that they are a reliable way to receive experience, that even if it's painful, I can meet that with compassion, right? It's not some just pseudo spiritual bypass. Like, oh yeah, it's all love, it's all good. It's like, how would that ever contribute to wholeness? Which is what I think the Dharma invites us into is wholeness. So it has to hold all of it, the difficulty, the beauty, the generous in the equanimity that holds the whole thing in gear.

• 12:59Dan Harris?

  Say more about that, the equanimity holds the whole thing in gear?

• 13:02Speaker 01

  Well, you know, without equanimity, love and kindness can become very saccharine, right? That oversweetness, it's not actually authentic, it's not real, right? Or the compassion can just be kind of like a, you know, over sentimentality, right? So equanimity is, you know, near to all things. So I like that because it gives us that balancing quality so that we're not overly anything, right?

• 13:31Dan Harris?

  Near to all things, meaning it allows you to be up close with stuff that normally you'd armor yourself against?

• 13:38Speaker 01

  That's right, that's right. I mean, in the prison, we talk about it as being, you know, unfuckable with, unshakable, right? Like, you remember who you are, right? So you don't have to engage in every fight. You don't have to, you know, defend your honor in all these different cases. You remember who you are, right? So we talk about flashing our basic goodness, because that's the real danger when we forget our own goodness. At least it was for me.

• 14:11Dan Harris?

  Flashing your basic goodness, what does that mean?

• 14:14Speaker 01

  Well, you know, in the prisons or even in schools, you know, you talk about flashing on people, and that means you're gonna flash some anger. So we talk about flashing our basic goodness. So that means that I remember there's goodness in here, and that I'm not determined by your thoughts of me. Actually, your thoughts of me, Dan, are none of my business. You know what I mean? So we stay rooted in that there's goodness here, that these four heart qualities that the Buddha laid out, they're immeasurable and they're boundless, and they're incorruptible and untarnishable. And it doesn't matter what happened to us or what we done, that those things are still there. And so I really like that as somebody

• 14:58Speaker 01

  that's gone through a lot in my life and really lost my own goodness, lost connection to it. And then, you know, all kinds of things come out of that desperation, right? That's the real danger.

• 15:12Dan Harris?

  Even after everything you've been through, and this is interesting to me, and I like asking people about this, do you believe that we all have the capacity for goodness? Or do you take it a step further to say that foundationally, we are all basically good?

• 15:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a very difficult question. I could only answer from my experience of myself, which believes that there is no part of me that's beyond redemption, that no matter how lost I get. And that's all I'm doing when I go to the prisons, right? I've been going into prison since 87 as a visitor. And, um, yeah, that was a bit different.

• 15:54Speaker 01

  Earlier on, but it's like all I'm doing is reflecting value. I don't give a shit whether they know what meditation is. I wanna go there and remind them of their value. Because I feel like that's the most important thing. And it's a very dehumanizing system. So it's meant to squash that out. And so when I go there, that's all I'm reflecting back. Everything is an excuse to connect. Right now, we're connecting. Oh, the premise is we're gonna talk about mindfulness or Buddhism. Cool, killer, doesn't really matter, right? So when I go there, that's what's on the forefront of my mind is, can I be in relationship with these fellows?

• 16:38Speaker 01

  And can I reflect their goodness back to them?

• 16:42Dan Harris?

  Let me go back to alignment. Again, just to reset, you know, you DJ reached out and said, hey, Vinny, what do you use to, you know, move through the world with some degree of sanity? And you listed a bunch of techniques that are important to you right now. One of them was alignment, which is basically having the discernment to see what mind states the wisest offerings on your inner menu and go in that direction instead of the temptations of greed or hatred or something like that. And you said something, you used the phrase, the subtle aggression of, or the subtle violence of self-improvement, which I love, I think about a lot. And there is a way in which we can learn something like the Dharma and immediately turn it into a weapon that we use on ourselves

• 17:26Dan Harris?

  for failing to be perfect at it. But I think at the root of what you're talking about here is something very empowering, which is even though it is guaranteed we're gonna fuck this up on the regular. In every moment, there is the option to make a choice that will condition the next moment in a way like Magneto that will be sturdy, at least for some period of time.

• 17:50Speaker 01

  Totally. And all we can do is take care of this moment. You know what I mean? That's all we're doing with the practice. You know, everybody, I just got off of teaching a retreat, you know, and everybody's like, ah, man, well, how do we take this into the real world? It's like, well, what have we been doing? What have we been doing? Like, we've been tending to each moment. Yeah, we're meditating, walking, sitting 16 hours a day. But we're just tending to each moment. And right now, you're asking me how to get to drop on next Thursday. Right? Because you don't trust that you'll be able to do it. Right? But really, you got a bottom line. What is it that we're doing? We're tending to each moment as it arises. Because it's pregnant with liberation. Every freaking moment. I mean, we don't experience it like that. Right?

• 18:35Speaker 01

  We experience it, the mind, like I said, factory stocked to turn the miraculous into the mundane. You know, same old shit. And it's like, oh, wow. I can see with the noting practice in particular, what I'm under the influence of. Right? What part of my personality is this? Oh, this is the East Coast. Okay, all right, I remember that conditioning. Does that seem like a direction I want to walk in? Maybe, maybe not. Right? That's the only way we break the trance and not mistaking it for reality is by seeing it. Right? It creates a little bit of a distance to noting practice. The only way illusion works is if I mistake it for reality. Right? So again, this is not I, me, or mine.

• 19:20Speaker 01

  This is just one of the menu options. Okay. And what sees all of this? What sees Mara? You know, these afflictive energies that are very naturally occurring for all of us. Wow, that awake part of me sees it. And we call that Buddha? Yeah, you can. So a lot of people are in the habit of saying, I see you Mara. But what the hell sees Mara is Buddha? So you shouldn't be saying, I see you Buddha. I see that awake quality in me. You know, I see it even when I'm off. It's like, well, what part of me knows I'm off? The part that's never been off. Right?

• 20:00Dan Harris?

  Do you mind if I go back and just define some terms for folks?

• 20:03Speaker 01

  Sure, sure, sure.

• 20:04Dan Harris?

  I'm enjoying this immensely, just to say.

• 20:06Speaker 01

  Cool.

• 20:08Dan Harris?

  We all have our demons, and it's actually in certain schools of psychology like IFS, Internal Family Systems, I encourage you to name different parts of your personality.

• 20:17Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 20:18Dan Harris?

  And the Buddha had his own demon, he called him Mara. And Mara is basically the, in the Buddhist view, the inner embodiment, if that's even a correct pairing of words.

• 20:30Speaker 01

  Inner manifestation, yeah.

• 20:32Dan Harris?

  Yes, thank you, inner manifestation of, of our more toxic qualities, including greed, hatred, confusion. And the Buddha would say, he actually, you can, in the scriptures, the Buddha will occasionally, even after enlightenment, Mara's still hanging around, and Buddha will say, "I see you, Mara."

• 20:50Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 20:51Dan Harris?

  And what Vinny is pointing out is that many of us get into meditation, and we get better and better at seeing our demons, Mara, and his various subcommittees. And we get focused on the seeing of the demons, but I think what you're saying, Vinny, is we should focus on that which perceives the demons, because that is, that's really interesting. What is in you that is awake enough?

• 21:18Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 21:19Dan Harris?

  To discern?

• 21:20Speaker 01

  That's exactly right, man. It gets, it becomes very exciting to me, that there's an awake part of me that's just watching this whole saga of Vinny Ferraro play out. And there's some discernment there. I don't know, man, for me, it's like, you know, you gotta ask yourself, who do you take yourself to be? Right, over and over. It's like, who is this character, Dan Harris? You know what I mean? Like, what the fuck's his problem? You know what I mean? You know what I mean? It's just like, you know, the Buddha asked us to really ask ourselves that question, like, you know, where is the real I here? Who's making these decisions? Who is awake? Who do you take yourself to be?

• 22:05Speaker 01

  Because, you know, for decades, I took myself to be this, you know, this clot of ailments. You know, a lot of self pity, a lot of frustration at the world that they didn't see me. And it's just like, man, you know, that's why so many of us have this imposter syndrome. It's like, that part of you is an imposter. That ego part of you is an imposter. But where is there some real wisdom? Where is the real knowing? And so when we start practicing, part of the teaching was, can you step back enough and be the awareness? And not what is passing through it? You know what I mean? If you're always, oh, this thought, this hope, this fear, this memory, this plan.

• 22:48Speaker 01

  It's like, yo, but how about the awareness itself? How about that you're the presence that's present here? You know what I mean? Like when you can back up enough to see that, that there's enough room for all this shit. Doesn't land like, ah, man, this is a problem I gotta solve. It's like, we think that things are the problem. You know, I have thoughts. I have a 40 foot rope swing right here. And my son just turned seven and his birthday party and somebody pulled it down. Somebody pulled the swing down, trying to hang a pinata. A couple of days later, I was sitting here in my little office, writing my little Dharma talk. And a thought occurred. It's really peaceful.

• 23:32Speaker 01

  There's not a bunch of kids in my yard, which there generally is because it's the best swing in the neighborhood. And the thought occurred that maybe I don't have to put that back up. You know, I deserve a place to write. You know what I mean? I'm doing good things in the world, man. Don't I deserve a quiet place? And I got up and I hung the fucking swing. Because that thought just reminded me of who I don't want to be.

• 23:58Dan Harris?

  You're right.

• 23:58Speaker 01

  That was a selfish thought. It kind of caught me by surprise. I was like, oh shit. Now, I could have gone into like, whoa, I've been practicing 25 years. How am I still having these thoughts? Just by taking them personally? It's not personal. The Buddha never said, I had a thought. He used to say, a thought occurred. Ah, could that be in the service of an awakening in some way? It was for me. We think the thought is the problem. We think what's passing through is a problem, but it's really just because we're taking it so freaking personally.

• 24:33Speaker 01

  Everything, all of this that's happening internally can be taken so personally that you don't see the value in it. You're just trying to get away from these things. I just want, I just want to have better thoughts. I want to have good thoughts, all encompassing, loving thoughts. It's like, well, they're not the only thing that's happening. They're just the only thing you're paying attention to. So what else is on offer here? And when we open that space up, we see all kinds of stuff is on offer now.

• 25:08Dan Harris?

  I suspect a lot of people listening to this are thinking this, this sounds really helpful. But how do I remember to do it? And how do I actually do it? Even if I do remember, you referenced, and I didn't give you a chance yet to explain it, noting practice. And I suspect that may be one good answer to the question some people are, might be having right now.

• 25:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, the noting practice, it's been from the beginning, very helpful to me. Yeah, my therapist, after 35 years of seeing people, he was just like, you might be the most psychologically minded person I've ever met. And I was like, well, what does that mean? He was like, that's what it means, bro. Like you live in a very rich internal world, you know? Or in my case, poverty stricken internally, right? That's how I oriented toward my life and myself. But the noting practice, and we talked about these two components of practice, right? Seeing clearly, responding wisely. So part of that is just noting what is floating through this awareness of ours?

• 26:15Speaker 01

  Okay, I can see thoughts, memories, plans. I can feel sensations, there's, there's sounds, right? Okay, so when we begin noting, well, what sense doors, what sense gate are they coming through? Can this be in the service of awakening? This phenomenon that I'm in contact with, right? I'm having a memory, a plan, a thought occurred, whatever it is, right? So the noting practice creates a little bit of distance because the moment that I can note something, I'm not lost in it. And I'm no longer Jason Bourne running through the airport. There's that distance that I've woken up out of the dream.

• 26:55Speaker 01

  And I'm noting, oh, right, thriller, intrigue, espionage, whatever it is, right? So we can note what's arising and it breaks some of the identification with it. So we're not lost in the dreams as long. I want to know as early as possible what I'm under the influence of. So staying close to practice. You've interviewed a lot of luminaries and some of them are just like, "Yeah, well, you know, I don't really do formal practice. It's more like my whole life is a practice now." It's just like, "Oh, my God, what bullshit is that?" I have never seen the fruit of that practice.

• 27:39Speaker 01

  I've never seen the fruit of that practice, not once, not any of my teachers. Because it's really important to maintain that connection every day to the dimension that's deeper than thought. How else are we going to remember, right? If I'm taking myself to be my thoughts six days a week, how am I going to remember on Sunday or Tuesday or whatever day that, "Oh, wow, I'm not that." So the only way that I have seen at work, for me anyway, is to make time every day that I rest in a dimension deeper than thought. That's the only way we can really have that connection to our goodness,

• 28:23Speaker 01

  the connection to something deeper, that primordial awareness, whatever you want to call it, that awake quality that's not becoming, right? This whole world is just about becoming. My first instruction every time we sit is, "Don't meditate." Please, just don't turn this into the next becoming. Now I'm become a meditator. Okay, is this position spiritual enough?

• 28:51Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? It's like it's just the next game. Next thing to get good at, you know? It's the next electric guitar. And wait till my exes see me. It's like, oh, my God, dude.

• 29:06Dan Harris?

  Okay. So in answer to the question of how do we do this? I think what I heard you say was noting practice is really helpful. And I'll reflect a little bit more about that in a second. But the key is to actually get your ass on the cushion and meditate with some regularity so that you can really get it into your molecules that you don't have to take your thoughts, urges and emotions personally. And within that rubric, under that aegis noting, it's just like dropping, as Joseph Goldstein likes to say, like a soft mental whisper into the mind of,

• 29:42Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 29:43Dan Harris?

  Okay, anger, planning, hunger, fatigue. And you don't have to get persnickety about, you know, like thumbing through your mental thesaurus for the right word. It's just like make a little note. If it's close enough, move on. And I think what you're pointing to is it's helpful to have a consistent practice of, you know, whatever duration. And then you can take that noting out with you into the world as you're doing this alignment on the regular day to day.

• 30:11Speaker 01

  That's right. Listen, as long as it's an idea, as long as it's like, you know, the kind of a philosophy that's at an arm's length away. It's not, doesn't have the power to transform our lives. We're still getting our sense of reality derived from a compulsive movement of thought. We have to break that. We have to challenge that and say, okay, this is one reality. For me, it's like catch and release. Many, many times a day. And the only reason I even agreed to come on here is because I know you have a averse of mind, just like I do. Right? You know, it's clear.

• 30:55Speaker 01

  It's clear that that it's really easy to believe that there's something wrong with this moment. Like many, many times a day. And I can feel my resistance. I can feel it. You know, somebody doesn't use their freaking blinker or somebody cuts, you know, there's a thousand imaginary slights, right? You know, and there's stuff in the world as well, right? It's not like it's all just in my mind. But I can feel resistance arise in my experience many times a day. Okay. What happens when I do that? Oh, well, one thing that happens is we get a lot more sensitive to pain with practice. We don't become these bulletproof Buddhist that are just like walking around unfazed.

• 31:40Speaker 01

  It's like, oh, no, wow, that resistance hurts. This kind of sucks. And so then you, you kind of turn toward it and you release it. It's like, is there anything actually wrong right now? You know, like, can I check in with like a fundamental okayness? Can I feel my feet on the floor? Yeah. You okay? Actually, I am, despite my thoughts, despite my fears and hopes and everything else that's running through, are you actually okay? And it's just like, holy shit, I am. So weird. It's so, you know, you know, Ajahn Amaro, one of my first teachers, he said it so clearly. He said, I discovered a deep satisfaction in not actively seeking satisfaction.

• 32:26Speaker 01

  It's just like, oh dude, it's been here the whole time? I was so busy arguing, closing arguments that I, I missed it. You know, the thousand masks of Mara of like, you know, what's wrong? Well, everything. Okay. But really, what's wrong? You know, Joseph actually said it so clearly because every time I look for a problem, I can't find one.

• 32:52Speaker 01

  You know?

• 32:53Dan Harris?

  Reminds me of something that Eckhart Tolle, who I've made fun of with gusto, but nonetheless, I think he's actually, he's on to many things. He has this little question. He asks people is like, what is preventing you from being in this moment? And that just came to mind as I was listening to you talk. There is, there is a kind of satisfaction, it might not be conventional satisfaction.

• 33:17Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 33:17Dan Harris?

  The way the world defines it, that's available pretty much whatever's going on.

• 33:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that's what I meant by saying that each moment is pregnant with liberation, right? That's a very poetic way to say it, right? From a thousand years ago, I think, oh, man, may have said that. But it's like, do we trust that what's found in presence can't be found anywhere else? You know what I mean? Like, where else might satisfaction or contentment or peace arise? Does it matter if I'm peaceful or content next week? You know what I mean? This whole, the whole movement of life is leaning towards some other moment. So it's just like, of course, we're gonna do that in our practice, too. It's like, oh, no, this is like a Rocky montage, and I'm getting better at this every day, you know? There's gonna be more and more, and it's just gonna continue.

• 34:08Speaker 01

  It's like, what leads you to believe that?

• 34:15Dan Harris?

  Coming up, Vinnie Ferraro talks about redirecting awareness, becoming an empathic witness for yourself, and when to opt for distraction.

• 34:34Speaker 02

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• 35:32Dan Harris?

  As I listen to you speak, it strikes me, and maybe there's some projection going on because, you know, I've sat through not a few meditation retreats myself and tried to apply it on the daily, but what you're describing as your approach to life sounds deeply sane and like a lot of work.

• 35:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. What else is there to do, Dan? I mean, every time I look at my suffering, most of it has my fingerprints all over it. Right? So it's like, okay, dude, we get it, bro. It's really, really hard to have a mind and to have these nervous systems and I made my life so much harder than it needed to be, bro. You know, losing people. We're not taught how to tend to that which is difficult to bear. You just get over it, man. Keep moving. Next thing you know, you're strung out because, you know, basically all drugs are painkillers, right? We're all running from something and, you know, it can be shopping or eating or sex.

• 36:40Speaker 01

  You know, it has a thousand faces, right? The avoidance. And I just haven't seen it bear the fruit, right? When I see Joseph, bro, I'm like, that's a cat that's been sitting for, you know, over five decades. Is there fruit on that tree? Goddamn right. That's a pretty free character, man. And that dude, you know what I mean? So when I see something like that, I'm like, that's where I want to go. That's where I believe. And how do we do that day by day and stop postponing awareness or arrival for some time where the party's going to get better? It's going to be killer.

• 37:20Dan Harris?

  I think we might have touched on this a little bit, but I'll emphasize it here and hang a lantern on it. The second of the three. Techniques that you have said that you've been using for yourself in your practice to keep it together, generally to do life better. The first was alignment. The second is something you call redirecting awareness. What do you mean by that?

• 37:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I suffer sometimes my whole life with anxiety. It's what really brought me to the Dharma. You know, a real difficulty, sometimes accommodating that energy. You know, it can come in the form of self-incrimination. It can come in many forms, but it's like, it's kind of scary to be inside here. So it's like, okay, how can I accommodate this experience? How can I meet that experience? And so through some trauma training, they really teach you that you can direct awareness to, you know, especially if the mind is not offering up anything helpful.

• 38:29Speaker 01

  Can you redirect it to a different part of your experience? It's like, oh, yeah, okay. Like I mentioned earlier, the fundamental okayness I feel in my feet, touching the ground, it's not a story, it's a direct experience. It's like, okay, all right. Most of the time when I feel anxious, I feel it in my trunk, sometimes in my throat, you know, but it's generally contracted feeling of my trunk, my belly. Is it in my feet? Not so much. Oh, okay. So that means that I can titrate my awareness a bit. I can locate awareness very specifically anywhere I want.

• 39:09Speaker 01

  And not through the mind, not through thinking about it, not imagining my feet, but actually, oh, I can direct awareness and it kind of turns on awareness in my feet, where my feet are touching the rug. It's like, okay.

• 39:25Speaker 01

  Okay, so anxiety is not the only thing happening right now. Well, that's, that's good news. Okay. Are you okay down here? It's like, yeah, okay. Do you want to dip back into the anxiety to see if you can tend to it? To see if what we can discover about this thing I'm calling anxiety? Right? So is there a center? Is it throbbing? What are its characteristics? Are there edges, right? And are there places that it's not? That way I can tend to it with care. I'm not, we're not being asked to cannonball into these overwhelming experiences. We're asked to, to tend to them with some care.

• 40:09Speaker 01

  And so I can do that if I redirect my awareness where it's not overwhelmed. Does that make sense?

• 40:16Dan Harris?

  Yeah, I mean, this seems like a pretty deeply complementary practice to alignment. With alignment, you're looking at the full menu of options and then picking the healthiest option and using your commitment to it to condition future moments. With redirecting awareness, it seems like maybe a different take on the same idea, which is, okay, I have these unpleasant sensations in my trunk and my throat that I'm calling anxiety, but I'm gonna pick something else to focus on right now. Maybe it's the feeling in my feet. And is that okay? Is that better? Let me go with that. Am I restating this correctly?

• 40:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it's a, it's a good way to put it. I mean, basically, we're trying to figure out how to open the closed fist of the mind, right? When I am activated, let's say, right? With the anger or anxiety or something that's hard to bear. I've lost access to my clearest thinking. I'm gone, dude. You know, I'm in that fight, flight, freeze, fall, right? So, so the animal, the animal body that I, I'm in, I don't have access to that clear thinking because I'm afraid whatever is happening. Anxious, angry. I mean, you, you have a kid. You know, when my son is like wilding out, reason and logic ain't gonna reach him.

• 41:38Speaker 01

  I can't, you know, just reassure him again that there's nothing under the bed, that there's, you know what I mean? Like, bro, bro, bro, you can't, nothing in this room wants to hurt you, bro. It's, it's just gonna fall on deaf ears. What does he wanna know? Oh, he wants to know that, uh, he's not alone, and he wants to be helped. He's like, okay, I can do that. Okay, they say, the experts, the traumas, say that trauma happens with the absence of an empathetic witness, right? So we can be that empathetic witness, even to ourselves. So it's like, okay, I'm having anxiety. I have a place to lay down, I wrap myself up with warmth and affection, same as I would anybody I love. And I say, all right, I'm, I'm right here.

• 42:24Speaker 01

  Now, I have my own way of dealing with that, right? So first, it's like, I stop taking it very personally, right? That's the first part of it, because it manifests as something that's wrong with me. But I hear the Buddha's voice, 2,600 years echoing through time and space. What if it wasn't about you? Like, just for a second, I know that it's hard to imagine, but what if it was, just for a second, right? And so when I'm not taking it personally, when I'm not making it my flaw, that eases up some of the blame and some of the loneliness that suffering often comes accompanied by, right?

• 43:06Speaker 01

  Now, like, okay, is this mine? Is this I, me, or mine? No, I'm not the origin story of anxiety. I didn't give birth to it on this planet. It's like, okay, do other beings know this? How many other beings know this feeling? Countless. Oh, okay, so now I'm in the presence of sangha. Right? Now I'm in the presence of community. And how many of my ancestors may have struggled with these energies? You know, stress, anxiety, self-forgiveness, so just buckling under the pressure of trying to meet their family's needs. I mean, both of my grandfathers were dead before 45 of heart disease. They didn't have access to these healing modalities that we do.

• 43:51Speaker 01

  I mean, sometimes I'm just trying to, just trying to touch into the compassion to the one who's being judged so harshly. But there's a compassionate response.

• 44:03Speaker 01

  And this can be a way that we can break the cycle. Things tend to get bigger the more I run from them. So when we turn and say, okay, anxiety is here. Difficulty is here, grief is here. It's like, okay, what is this thing? And so by directing our awareness toward it, and if we feel too overwhelmed away from it, we can even look at the validity of a path. We can say by, well, what delivers me to a moment? What delivers me from it? Right? You know, sometimes I need to be delivered from it. Right? Sometimes redirecting awareness is like, you know what? I'm gonna take a walk. I'm gonna distract myself. I'm gonna just kind of let this pass, man.

• 44:45Speaker 01

  You know, I don't actually have the inner resources right now to, to meet it. You know what I mean? We have to be honest about ourselves because there has to be that willingness. If there's not willingness, we're just, it's like a get out of jail free card we're looking for. We're gonna outmaneuver it. You know what I mean? Through meditation, we're gonna, you know, somehow outsmart suffering. So silly. I mean, even when the Buddha, right? So, so we don't need these energies, whatever it is, to just, to somehow disappear. Right? That's not what happened to the Buddha. When the Buddha became enlightened, Mara continued to arise. But he just, he wasn't perceived as a problem. Right? Because it's not the thought.

• 45:30Speaker 01

  It's not the afflictive states that are the problem. It's our relationship to them. It's taking them for who we think we really are. I am this problem. I am this anxiety. I've always been like this. I'm always going to be like this. So in some way, redirecting awareness for me has become a superpower of, of being able to tend to this and not, not even be afraid. And in 10, 15 minutes, I can usually feel that kind of golden honey sunset light, you know, because we can imbue awareness with qualities, just like we... imbue it with fear or anger or frustration. We can imbue it with this wish for all beings to be free. And I get to be included in that.

• 46:15Speaker 01

  Right? Every time we sit, it's not just for Vinny. That would be like some Sisyphus over and over and over. But when we're able to hold it, that these energies are not me and not I and not mine. Even the precepts, right? You you familiar with the precepts, Dan?

• 46:34Dan Harris?

  Yeah, just for folks who may not be. It's basically these promises that we make to ourselves and others in a Buddhist context to behave in a certain way. What I like about Buddhist ethics, you know, the precepts may be like not taking other people's stuff, not killing or not harming, those kinds of things. What I like about the Buddhist version of the commandments is there's more elasticity and no promises of eternal damnation.

• 47:05Speaker 01

  That's right. Yeah, I mean, the second one is the one that really moves me. You know, the second precept is not taking what's not ours. Well, we can think about that quite literally, right? In terms of property, right? Not stealing. Okay, but we can also expand that to include, how do we not take things personally? How do we not take the suffering of our families on that are not ours? When I see the cycles of intergenerational trauma, right? And my family of addiction, incarceration and violence. I've been conditioned to take that on. How do I keep this precept in mind?

• 47:45Speaker 01

  You know, is it okay to be free when somebody is suffering in my family? It's like, I don't know. Am I taking what's not mine? Am I taking, you know, like I said, taking things personally? There's a lot of ways that that particular precept delivers freedom.

• 48:05Dan Harris?

  Just to say, that's the third of the techniques that we were going to talk about today. The first being alignment, the second being redirecting awareness, and the third, not taking what's not mine. Can you just elaborate down on that a little bit? Like especially as it pertains to, and I know you've gotten more interested in ancestor practices, ancestor worship even. So how does that connect to not taking what's not yours and not taking things personally?

• 48:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:32Speaker 01

  You can see how they roll into each other, yeah? Yeah, these topics, you know, they kind of arise pretty seamlessly with some, even a little bit of practice. But the ancestor practice for me, it's like I really felt alone in the world. Like, you know, I was a homeless teen, strung out, locked up, you know, all that stuff. I didn't feel like there was anybody pulling for me, you know, at a certain point in my life. Like, I turned my back to the world and kind of lost my sense of belonging. You know, I felt very exiled. That led me to some very scary places that sense.

• 49:13Speaker 01

  Because the thing is, Stan, belonging is not enough. You have to know it. You know, the knowing of it is as important as the bond. Because, you know, when did I really not belong? It's so strange. I found myself in ninety-five.

• 49:34Speaker 01

  You know, I'd made some really big commitments to go to India, to meet the Dalai Lama, to see, to see if this was real, or if this was just another hustle. You know, my whole life was a hustle, bro. The family, the neighborhood, the drugs, it was just like, oh, another thing.

• 49:54Speaker 01

  And so I made a commitment. And I was like, okay, I'm gonna go look in this guy's eyes. And if I see some side eye, you know what I mean? If I see some slickness, I'm gonna snap this dude's elbow. I could get close enough to him, I'm nice with hands, I could do this. And this is how afraid I was, bro. This is how afraid I was that there wasn't anything in this world worth living for. Right? This is what was at stake. And so I, you know, I got a chance to meet him and I just wailed. And, oh my God, an ocean of tears because of the love he looked at me with, right? A week later, I'm sitting in a cave in Nepal. This hermit monk been there.

• 50:35Speaker 01

  And he's doing his puja and I've been staying there for two, three days, just sleeping on the floor. He's giving me a little bit of food. I don't understand any Tibetan. He spoke even less English. So it wasn't in his words, but there was something about it, bro. He's up there praying for all beings. And there was some admittance back into the garden for me. There was just tears flowing down my face and I realized I've never been alone. This guy been up here for twenty six hundred years. You know what I mean, that lineage? So when I talk about ancestry, I look back on this like this idea that like all my ancestors are behind me.

• 51:19Speaker 01

  And I'm at the tip of the spear shooting through time and space, you know, because I'm alive right now. They're all pulling for me, but it's my time to see if I can break some of these cycles that my family and the world has been lost in. And so there's something about that that gives me strength. You know, that's like, I'm not just doing this for me. I'm doing this for all my ancestors that couldn't do it. And I'm doing it for my kid. So I don't pass on anything that's not helpful. Right? Yeah, so that's how the ancestor kind of worship or actually you just, you know, I

• 52:01Speaker 01

  burn stuff every day and I just try to keep it in mind that like, okay, I'm at the tip of the spear. They're pulling for me and that can be kind of like a resource.

• 52:12Dan Harris?

  A reflection and a question, the thought that I had as in listening to you is that, you know, I kind of glibly said at the beginning, we're going to talk about these three practices you use to keep your shit together, but really it's three practices. I mean, it's that and then on a, on a bigger note, it's these three practices you use to break cultural evolutionary familial patterns that have not worked well for your forebears and might not work well for your kid if you weren't in the middle there trying to show a different way of being.

• 52:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, I didn't want to have a kid, bro. You know, I wasn't raised in a conventional sense. So I didn't want to pass on things that were not helpful. And I didn't feel like I had anything to offer. I was just gonna do my best to be a good godfather, good uncle. And then I met a woman that I uh knew I needed to be with. And she was just like, this is what I'm doing. So I better get, get on board or, or bounce, you know? And I, you know, there was a lot of grief there. You know, a lifetime of never allowing myself to feel that feeling. You know, that excitement of like, well, maybe it's something I could allow myself to, to just consider. I had never let that happen.

• 53:33Speaker 01

  And, and then once you do it, you realize, oh my God.

• 53:39Speaker 01

  This was such an act of generosity. Oh my God, like thankless, you know what I mean? In some ways, you know what I mean? Like it has its own gifts, obviously, but it would call on me and I, I thought I was much further along on the path, to be quite honest.

• 53:58Speaker 01

  Real talk, man. I mean, talk of, you know, I'm back in therapy. That cat got me on the cushion every day. You know, talk of the cruel tutelage of Valentino, you know what I mean?

• 54:12Speaker 01

  He say, you know, the most beautiful thing I've ever seen, you know? And uh, you know, he, he really calls forth in me the most generous part of me. You know, and you realize that the barrel that you're surrounded around, you and your wife or you and your partner, that barrel is not you. This life is not your own anymore. So I had to sell my chopper. I had to, you know, if you sell the low riders, had to do the things that I could do to, to make that decision, that commitment to uh, something bigger than me. Something more important than me. You know, because you know what it's like? You have a child.

• 54:54Speaker 01

  That moment that they're birthed into this world. I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that I would die for him.

• 55:03Speaker 01

  Wasn't that he was funny? He didn't have some, you know, Gucci diaper, you know, he's just, he's just like, oh shit, wow. And that's where we can get in touch with like, at least what comes to mind for me. And we talked about, you know, the beauty of kids. It's like, I don't think babies are beautiful. I just think that the eyes that we look at are so blameless. It makes them beautiful. You know what I mean? If we bookend this thing and say, all right, one of the first things we talked about, it's like, is there any part of us that's beyond redemption? We know that we can see through those eyes. Now, whether we think we got that coming, that's

• 55:47Speaker 01

  another story. But we know beyond the shadow of a doubt, that baby's got a coming. So that's something they give us. They offer us that blameless, unconditional love. That's just like, I didn't know it was possible. There was always a reason. I loved my friends because he was funny. I loved her because she was beautiful. She was smart. You know, all these, there was always reasons to love. And then, then there was the unconditional that they bring into our lives and to our, then knowing in our hearts, you know?

• 56:19Dan Harris?

  I remember, uh, right after our son was born, I was, I ran into John Kabat-Zinn, the great Buddhist teacher.

• 56:29Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 56:30Dan Harris?

  The great meditation teacher. I don't know how Buddhist he considers himself these days, but I told him, I had a kid, and he said, oh yeah, the Dalai Lama just moved into your house.

• 56:40Speaker 01

  That's right. That's right.

• 56:44Dan Harris?

  Coming up, Vinny asks a very provocative question. How loyal are you to your suffering?

• 56:56Speaker 03

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• 57:29Dan Harris?

  So what is the connection between seeing our family patterns and not taking what is not ours?

• 57:40Speaker 01

  You know, so much of my life had been very intense and, you know, dramatic, very dramatic. Came home and found my mom passed away when I was a teenager. That was very dramatic. One of my family members had to take her life. Very dramatic. So I got to be there.

• 58:00Dan Harris?

  You had to take her life?

• 58:01Speaker 01

  No. Well, we had to pull the plug on my mom, but one of my family members, you know, she tried to take her own life.

• 58:09Dan Harris?

  Oh, okay, okay.

• 58:11Speaker 01

  So I was, you know, in the emergency room again and standing over her and realizing like, oh, wow, okay. And I talked her into letting them take her in, like, for real, right? Not just saying what you need to be said, then get out. And she was like, okay. And they started wheeling her away. And I was like, oh, wow, I remember this moment from my teenage years. And I was part of the problem. But now I'm like the helpful uncle. Okay, how real do you take these roles?

• 58:44Speaker 01

  That you're being cast into like just, okay, I was the pain in the ass teenager. Now I'm the helpful other. It's just like, wow. You start seeing the intergenerational trauma and then you start, you're able to start questioning how loyal I've been to my suffering. What am I pledging allegiance to here? Is this I, me, or mind? You know, and it's not just some spiritual bypass. It's a real question. I'm like, okay, what do I take myself to be? Obviously I care about this person deeply. There's compassion there, but how do I not take on more than is helpful? What's helpful and what's personal?

• 59:29Speaker 01

  What's the added layer? Sometimes we call the second arrow. It's just like, oh my God, what, when is this person ever gonna figure it out? And now I gotta figure out how to remind them of who they are. And it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa. So in a way, I guess it's like not making things harder than they need to be. There's already enough real suffering going on. We don't need the additional that comes with taking things very personally.

• 59:56Dan Harris?

  Let me test my own comprehension there and say it back to you. So as a teenager, you had this horrible thing happen to you where you found your mother deceased or near deceased and, and then had to bring her to the hospital and make a painful decision. Fast forward several decades, another really hard situation where a member of your family has tried to take her own life and you're trying to play as positive a role as possible. So there's already a lot of sort of non-negotiable suffering that's happening in both of these situations, specifically in the latter situation where you're, you've at this point been practicing meditation for a while.

• 1:00:37Dan Harris?

  But you decline to add on the level of, oh, I'm part of this messed up family and these people can't get their stuff together and I'm never gonna get out of these patterns. And you know, I, me, mind, all of this. So you're not taking all of that as yours anymore.

• 1:00:58Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 1:00:59Dan Harris?

  As one great monk said, you're not misappropriating public property.

• 1:01:03Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 1:01:05Dan Harris?

  You're just focusing on what is actually here now instead of adding on a bunch of voluntary pain.

• 1:01:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, and what was there was incredible heart, a lot of compassion, just not that added layers. And that's like, okay, is this how we break the cycle? By seeing through? That I wasn't the pain in the ass teenager and I'm not the helpful brother. It's like, you know what I mean? Like, that was never me. That's just like the role. Okay, now I'll be this. It's like, how wholeheartedly can you hold these roles? When you see that you weren't the first one, you're not the second one, you're not going to be the third one. You're just a being here that cares deeply about this person. You know, I don't know, I don't know what it's like to be you.

• 1:01:54Speaker 01

  But I was really bred to take on that suffering, to make it my fault, to make it my problem, to figure out if you can't figure it out, then you failed. Right? And maybe it's different in all kinds of different families. But that's what I kind of grew up with. And so the, the deep failure of losing my mom, it was just like, hold on, it's already hard to lose your mom. She was like my best friend. But then there's like, it was your fault, you should have been there, she died alone. It was just like, whoa. Decades of, you know, trying to run from that, you know, a path, a life of destructive relationships based on those beliefs.

• 1:02:40Speaker 01

  You know, kids make everything their fault. Right? So, you know, I kind of saw through that in this instance, you know, the, the details were dramatic enough to wake me up out of that and see like, oh my God, it's just happening again. Wow. Okay, what am I in choice about here? How can this be in the service of awakening? This very confusing moment. What am I awakening to?

• 1:03:13Dan Harris?

  I don't know if this is a fair or useful question. I'll throw it out there and maybe, maybe we'll answer a different question. But how much confidence do you have after all these years of practice? That you're making progress on breaking the cycle?

• 1:03:26Speaker 01

  You know, it is a hard question to answer. I feel a lot less suffering. That's some kind of measurement. I tend to not stay in story as long. So that's another measurement. Because these stories can often be not generous, internally or externally. So it's like, okay, you know, that catch and release that I talked about. Right? It's like, oh, I can feel the resistance. We become a lot more sensitive. So when I wake up to that, that resistance that hurts every time, I'm usually able to release it fairly quickly.

• 1:04:08Speaker 01

  So there are some measurements that lead me to believe that there's progress being made. It's not perfection. But I can wholeheartedly say that there's just so much less suffering that I'm creating for myself.

• 1:04:24Dan Harris?

  I believe it. I do.

• 1:04:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I feel very lucky to have found the die. I feel like the luckiest person I know. Because I'm not even supposed to be alive. Like, there's nothing in my history that would lead you to believe that I would be alive at this age. And so the fact that I get to go into prisons, work with death and dying, do all this beautiful work in the world. I just never thought I had anything to offer. You know, I didn't know I could be a part of something good because of the world I was born into. So that hustle, that street, that survival mentality. And then, you know, growing up and coming into these more wholesome qualities. It was like, oh, my God.

• 1:05:10Speaker 01

  I'm so glad that I survived the first part so that I have something to offer in the second part and really find out more of who I was and not just, you know, be lost, you know, to the world.

• 1:05:24Dan Harris?

  I sincerely believe we are all lucky that you are alive.

• 1:05:29Speaker 01

  That's sweet, man. Thank you, bro. Yeah, you feel pretty lucky?

• 1:05:35Dan Harris?

  About my life? My life has been charmed from the jump. So I had every event. And so, yeah, I feel very lucky at baseline and then extremely lucky that even though I have attempted to sabotage all of my unearned advantages, I found the Dharma, you know, 14 years ago and have been awkwardly and unevenly applying it into my life ever since. So I feel lucky in several ways.

• 1:06:06Speaker 01

  That brings up something so tender for me because what is the Dharma? You know, what's the main premise here, Dan? Is it that conditions don't lead to suffering? Because that's a really big question for me. Because you talk about the difficulties in your life, right? As I just have. What sent me running into the arms of the Dharma but my difficulties? You know, I think it was Frankl that said, "Conditions don't lead to suffering or bondage." That it's only the attitude of the being that determine which way these things flow. What a radical proposition, you know?

• 1:06:51Speaker 01

  Radical invitation that conditions don't lead to suffering. My conditions were so intense at the beginning of my life, I couldn't imagine a happiness, couldn't imagine a freedom. Now I can see like, oh, you're standing in an emergency room. Okay, which direction do these conditions lead? Throw it on your back, throw it in the backpack? Sisyphus, back up the hill? Or is this how we break a cycle here? It's an interesting conversation to have with people that are incarcerated.

• 1:07:24Speaker 01

  You know, there's a lot of kinds of incarceration.

• 1:07:26Dan Harris?

  Right.

• 1:07:28Speaker 01

  Damn straight.

• 1:07:30Dan Harris?

  Vinny, before I let you go, do you have a website? If people want to learn more about you, how can they do that?

• 1:07:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I do. A friend of mine built me a website. It's vinnyferraro.org. You know, it's sparsely populated. I'm not so good at marketing and all these other aspects of teaching. But I do feel lucky to have a Sangha in San Francisco. And I've been their guiding teacher for about 20 years now. And so just to be witnessed, right? Just to see, you know, they've seen me through so many of the chapters. Yeah. And that's something that community really provides us. It's not just a place to compare hallucinations, but it's also this other part that's like, "Oh, wow, I'll remind you, you remind me when I lose my way."

• 1:08:19Speaker 01

  And so I've been really, really lucky to have a community that does that for me and with me.

• 1:08:27Dan Harris?

  Thank you for doing this. This was an absolute pleasure. I think it's going to help everybody who hears it. So, thank you again.

• 1:08:34Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me, Dan. I hope to see you again, bro.

• 1:08:37Dan Harris?

  I am...

• 1:08:40Dan Harris?

  You may regret saying that because I'm going to ensure that you see me again.

• 1:08:43Speaker 01

  Maybe so, bro.

• 1:08:48Dan Harris?

  Thanks again to Vinny Ferraro. Love that guy. He's amazing. We referenced a few past podcast episodes during the course of this episode. Kamala Masters on equanimity, Roshi Joan Halifax on equanimity, and Jozan Tamori Gibson on the precepts. I have put links to each of those episodes in the show notes if you want to go check them out. Speaking of checking things out, if you haven't already, you should check out my new meditation app. It's called 10% with Dan Harris, and you can learn all about it by going to danharris.com. There's a free 14-day trial. So come check it out, join the party. Finally, thank you to everybody who worked so hard to make this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson and Eleanor Vasili.

• 1:09:32Dan Harris?

  Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our managing producer. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Cashmere is our executive producer. And Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.

• 1:09:59Speaker 04

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