Pod Insights 10% Happier with Dan Harris An Antidote to Overwhelm and Anger | Father Gregory Boyle About this episode The attitude that can help you survive the Trump era.
Gregory Boyle https://homeboyindustries.org/our-story/father-greg/ is an American Jesuit priest and the founder of Homeboy Industries https://homeboyindustries.org/ in Los Angeles, the largest gang-intervention, rehabilitation, and reentry program in the world. He is the acclaimed author of Tattoos on the Heart https://www.amazon.com/Tattoos-Heart-Power-Boundless-Compassion/dp/1439153159, Barking to the Choir https://www.amazon.com/Barking-Choir-Power-Radical-Kinship/dp/1476726159, The Whole Language https://www.amazon.com/Whole-Language-Power-Extravagant-Tenderness/dp/B08WG336FH/?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_w=GPkL4&content-id=amzn1.sym.0fb2cce1-1ca4-439a-844b-8ad0b1fb77f7&pf_rd_p=0fb2cce1-1ca4-439a-844b-8ad0b1fb77f7&pf_rd_r=141-9976842-2413604&pd_rd_wg=W0IGJ&pd_rd_r=2d2cb105-5674-415e-93f2-24b3e3252820&ref_=aufs_ap_sc_dsk, and most recently, Cherished Belonging https://www.amazon.com/Cherished-Belonging-Healing-Power-Divided/dp/1668061856.
In this episode we talk about:
His unique understanding of God—one that even agnostics can get behind How to build communities that counteract polarization The practice of affectionate awe Father Boyle's antidotes to despair His own daily practice And much more
Related Episodes:
Can You Really Conquer Hatred Through Love? | Father Gregory Boyle https://www.danharris.com/p/can-you-really-conquer-hatred-through-4b1?utm_source=publication-search
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:04 Dan Harris? This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris.
0:19 Dan Harris? Hello, my fellow suffering beings. How are we doing today? These divided and polarized times in which we are living present some really thorny dilemmas. How not to fall into overwhelm and despair? How to stand up for what you believe in without coiling into toxic rage? How to have compassion without being a doormat? My guest today has had a massive impact on my own life, both as it pertains to the political figures with whom I disagree and also as it pertains to the people in my personal orbit with whom I have beef. Father Gregory Boyle is a Jesuit priest who argues that we should move past our reflexive judgments
1:01 Dan Harris? and past our reductive concepts of good and evil, and instead focus on whether the person whose behavior we are evaluating is healthy or not. Using that frame, he argues, you can learn how to resist without vilifying. Father Boyle is the founder of Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles. It's the largest gang intervention rehabilitation and reentry program in the world. In 2024, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which is America's highest civilian honor and which was richly deserved, in my opinion. Father Boyle has written several books, including Tattoos on the Heart, Barking to the Choir, and his latest, which is called Cherished Belonging. In this conversation, we talk about Father Boyle's unique understanding of God,
1:46 Dan Harris? one that even an agnostic like me can get behind, how to build communities as a way to counteract polarization. Side note, everybody talks about community. All the mental health folks talk about the importance of community. But how do you actually do it? And Father Boyle has some ideas. We talk about a practice called Affectionate Awe. We talk about his various antidotes to despair, his own daily practices. He's been deeply influenced by Buddhism. And much more. Two things to say, though, before we dive in. First, this was recorded back in April, and there's a brief mention of the fire that broke out at the home of the governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro. So that may sound slightly dated, but other than that, the content here is evergreen. Second thing to say is that this episode
2:31 Dan Harris? comes with a custom guided meditation. It's called an antidote to nihilism. It's all about how to stay engaged with the news without sliding into a fuck it mindset. And it comes from our teacher of the month, Dan Mauricio, who will be doing bespoke meditations for all of our Monday, Wednesday episodes this month. We'll be announcing the teacher of the month for August quite soon. To get these custom meditations, you got to sign up over at danharris.com. Paid subscribers also get this podcast without any ads. They get full transcripts, live video meditation and Q and A sessions with me, and much more. Sign up over at danharris.com. We'll get started with Father Gregory Boyle right after this.
3:12 Speaker 01 How do I recover from a friendship breakup? How come there's nowhere to hang out anymore? Why do I feel lonely when I can communicate with anyone and everyone through my phone? These are the questions that you're not alone in asking. And that's where our new podcast, Cornerpiece, comes in, to start small on life's biggest questions. I'm Taha, and with my friends Sabrina and Melissa, we're going to explore life's ungooglable questions on this new podcast with TED. Come hang out with us on Cornerpiece, with new episodes every other Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts.
3:47 Dan Harris? Father Gregory Boyle, welcome back to the show.
3:49 Speaker 02 Great to be here, Dan.
3:51 Dan Harris? It's always a pleasure to talk to you. Congratulations on your new-ish book. And as I understand it, you wrote the book because you wanted to address these divisive times. And sad to say, things have become even more divisive since you wrote the book. So I'd be interested in sort of like your emotional color around the book and its subjects as you and I sit down to do this interview.
4:16 Speaker 02 Well, you know, it was released on Election Dan. Since then, I think we have this notion that what is divided is that we have people who hold certain views and other people who hold other views. I'm more inclined at the moment to think that we all are held not by views, but by kind of an anguish that we share to varying degrees. And so, how do we soothe that anguish? How do we choose community? And how do we walk each other home to something that might resemble wholeness and health and well-being? But we do think it's about winning the argument in that somehow our division is about the
5:00 Speaker 02 views we hold. But I think if we get underneath things, then we see that it's really kind of indicative of something else and that something that needs a dose of tenderness and gentleness and extraordinary kinds of kindness to help people ease this anguish that's really so pervasive that everybody shares, even if it comes from different places. But it's not about the price of eggs. It's about a shared anguish that actually joins us together rather than separates us.
5:37 Dan Harris? Do you think that anguish is perpetual in the human animal? Or that there's something unique and acute about the anguish now in our culture?
5:47 Speaker 02 Vivek Murthy, who is the Surgeon General under Biden and Obama, he said that, and has written a final document of his term as Surgeon General that I recommend, but he says that mental health is the defining health issue of our time. And I think that's significant. So if you look at a 300% increase in hate crimes, I don't know how else you explain that, except to say that mental health is the defining health issue of our time. Or adolescents who are hypnotized by their cellphones or locked in their rooms staring at a computer, or the rise in suicides, or fentanyl use and overdoses.
6:31 Speaker 02 In the last five years, I've done more funerals from gang members who have died of fentanyl overdoses than from gang violence. And the list is quite long, you know, 90 million people who could vote, didn't. And that's just extraordinary, and that has nothing to do with disaffection with politicians. That's a kind of a lethargy that indicates, again, that mental health is the defining health issue of our time. Even the other day on the weekend, when Governor Shapiro's house was firebombed and they have the perpetrator in custody, but they're talking about, well, they're not certain if the motivation was religious or political.
7:15 Speaker 02 I go, gosh, I was gonna go with mental health, because nobody healthy, well, or whole, has ever done such a thing in the history of the world. It's very confusing to me that people would say, gosh, I wonder what the motivation was? Like, there would be a rational motivation that would lead somebody to do such a thing. And all we do is we kind of shake our fists and we say, this is unacceptable. I go, well, of course, it's unacceptable. But what does it mean? It's not just the volume has been turned up and people are somehow led to do such acts
7:58 Speaker 02 of violence because of the rhetoric and the level and the velocity of it. It's another indicator that we're not whole, we're not well. So how do we get there? We don't get there by just shaking our fists at it and saying, isn't this awful? And this shouldn't happen, it's not okay. Well, nobody healthy thinks it's okay.
8:20 Dan Harris? Well, let me just pick up on that last thing you said, "nobody healthy thinks it's okay." By "it," I assume you mean sort of our political culture right now, or are you saying?
8:30 Speaker 02 Oh, that act of violence, but yes.
8:33 Dan Harris? That act of violence, yeah, both.
8:35 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, again, you know, "I will be your retribution" is the quote. But then you stop and you go, "Well, retribution is not the endeavor of a healthy adult, period, not ever. It just isn't." And then I heard Newt Gingrich say the other day, "But wanting payback is human, and it may well be human, but you couldn't make the case that it's healthy."
9:01 Dan Harris? Right.
9:02 Speaker 02 And so the goal is, how do we help each other become healthier tomorrow than we are today? We all could use that. That's the point of community. That's how people flourish, and in a community where they are cherished, they will start to move in the direction of wholeness and wellness. But it's not a moral quest, because the moral quest has never kept us moral. It's just kept us from each other. It's kept us from seeing that we could really choose to soothe and to be a calming, peaceful, kind presence to each other.
9:41 Dan Harris? All right, there's so many places to take this discussion. Let me start here. The first chapter is called "The Wild One," and it really a core concept of your book and a core concept of like how those among us who are healthy should handle the current situation is really wrapped up in your vision of what God is, or who God is. You come back to this phrase, "The Wild One." And I'd be interested to hear you explain what that means. And also, just to address, because I think a preponderance, if not 90% of this audience is interested in spirituality, personal growth, but might be wary of the G-word.
10:23 Speaker 02 Yeah, well, the wild one refers to Meister Eckhart, who was a theologian and a mystic many years ago, who was trying to kind of break the notion of the partial God that we've all settled for. The one that created in our own image leads us to be exacting and judgmental and puny. You know, he'll say things like, "It is a lie any talk of God that doesn't comfort you." So he was way ahead of his times in terms of trying to locate a more spacious expansive notion. And so people may or may not buy the notion of God.
11:03 Speaker 02 I dedicated one chapter so that I could somehow address a larger notion of it. So Saint Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, would say, "Always talk about the God who's always greater." So just when you think you've landed on some notion of who God is, we're led into this other more spacious place where it's always greater than our tiny, puny view. So to the extent, I mean, even in 12-step recovery, when people talk about higher powers, in any case, the hope is that your higher power, or whatever notion you have, gets larger and larger as you grow.
11:48 Speaker 02 None of us want to settle for a partial notion that limits our ability to delight in each other and to breathe in the spirit that delights in our being, and then to breathe it out into the world, because the world could sure use it, especially now.
12:05 Dan Harris? We talked about this last time you were on the show, but I think it's worth covering a little bit of the same ground. Would it be, and I'll speak for myself, as somebody who is a sort of open-minded agnostic, I don't use the word God much, if ever. What would be another word that would rhyme with what you're saying, so that we can have this conversation on verbal grounds, grammatical, linguistic grounds that we can both agree on? Would it be the universe, the mystery, or does it really have to be God?
12:36 Speaker 02 I think what sustains you, so wherever you find your center, and where you find yourself grounded, however you talk about that, the sustaining spirit, the ground of being, and anything, and again, I don't do any kind of God that has a white beard and is male. I always say, "God protects me from nothing, but sustains me in everything." So it's the sustaining part that's kind of essential. So whatever you return to is the sustaining spirit and the core of your being. By returning it, and I always appreciate in you, your sense of practice,
13:19 Speaker 02 that you return in your practice to the ground, so you can be freshly grounded, you know, so you can be every day, return to the core. That sustains you, that allows you to receive people, and allows your heart to be altered by people. Otherwise, you're full speed ahead and you've lost your grounding. Sometimes, for me, just because I'm a Jesuit priest and I'm Catholic, I'm okay with saying "God" as shorthand for, I think, what we all hope for, which is the core of our being, the thing that you return to in your practice as a touchstone, that allows you to have this intentionality in your life,
14:04 Speaker 02 where you can say, "I'm about to receive somebody in my presence, and I'm gonna allow this person to reach me, and I'm gonna listen, and I'm gonna love." Whatever allows you to live from that place is your God, is your higher power, is your sustaining spirit. So whatever language, and we're kind of limited, probably, by how we articulate this anyway, but that's kind of where I am on it.
14:39 Dan Harris? I mean, that's a version of God that I can get behind. And as I was listening to you speak about what sustains you, I was, of course, and I'm sure everybody listening was trying to figure out for themselves, I was trying to figure out for myself. What's my answer to that question? And I think it's probably a Buddhist answer of wisdom and compassion being the two sides of the same coin. Wisdom, seeing the truth of non-separation and interdependence, and compassion arising out of that inexorably. You can also go from the other direction. But I think when I'm in that mode, I'm sustained, I'm open, I'm resourced, I'm not an asshole. And when I'm out of it, who knows?
15:22 Speaker 02 Yeah. And it's with every breath you take. It's not kind of once and for all. It's not even, I handled this in the morning and now I'm good to go. It's a way to touch it all the time.
15:35 Dan Harris? Yes.
15:36 Speaker 02 So that you can be beneficially present to the world and to the people who, especially here, you know, I'm in my office, every seat is filled out there in the waiting area. People come in and everybody's hair is on fire and everybody's stressed out. And so how can you be thoroughly anchored enough to be able to be present in delight and hold the mirror up and remind people of the truth of who they are? I think it's exceedingly hard to do, no matter how faithful you are to a practice that keeps you anchored. It's still hard because your homies here, they always talk about, don't let yourself be
16:21 Speaker 02 taken to that place. And everybody here knows what it means. Somebody pushes and you push back. As opposed to leaning in and being more curious about people's reactions to things rather than take things personally. It's a challenge. It's a good challenge. It's how we all want to, I was saying this morning, you know, that we have to choose to soothe. And that half our family here, who are, there are 800 of us, half of us on one day have their hair on fire. But the next day, the rest of us will have our hair on fire. So how do we choose to be a soothing presence
17:04 Speaker 02 to people who are carrying more burdens than they can carry? And often, whose dignity has been denied and people who are really struggling. I was reading a poem by Denise Levertov where she talks about, instead of the phrase, you know, they're driving me crazy. She's talking about, "Community drives us sane." And that's why that's important for us to be located in a place where everybody is supplying a dose of tenderness and kindness, driving us all sane. Which is to say, in Spanish, sane, you know, sanar means to heal. It's about health.
17:48 Speaker 02 It's not about reminding people of what is wrong or right. Governor Shapiro, when he was talking about this horrific thing that happened, again, it's his home, it's his family, I get it. But saying, "This is not okay." Well, yes, it's not, of course, it's not okay. But how do we understand when members of our human family act out in this way? People are in pain, find the thorn underneath. The homies always say that here, "Find the thorn underneath." Because you want to be able to understand that this is coming from a place, not of legitimate, rational, political, or religious perspective.
18:30 Speaker 02 It's coming from real wound, real brokenness. And how do we help each other heal? And how do we form communities where we can drive each other sane? And that's kind of essential. I think it's the only answer to the truth that mental health is the defining health issue of our time. If that's true, it's not about good and evil. It's about...
19:00 Speaker 02 Well, and not so well. For me, that softens it. So, nobody needs to be a villain, and nor is it necessary to demonize or scapegoat. It's let's just help each other. Knowing that love never fails. That's where our confidence is rooted, I think.
19:21 Dan Harris? Love never fails. I can imagine people listening to this thinking, "Well, I tried turning the other cheek a few times and I got my ass kicked," or "Some people are beyond my capacity to love." That's a sucker's game you're playing, Father Boyle.
19:40 Speaker 02 Well, I mean, obviously, I don't think so, because I really think in some level, you can look back and you go, "When did love ever fail?" Because if it's about results, or evidence-based outcomes, or I don't know what, or success, but that's not how you measure. When it comes to love, it's discovering truly that loving is your home, and then you discover that you're never homesick, and that's where the joy is. It's not about results. It's just a force that is so sustaining, and that in the end, it will always conquer.
20:22 Speaker 02 It's just we need to have more of it, and healthy people are loving people, and healthy people are holy people, and healthy people are inclusive and nonviolent, and have unconditional loving kindness, and are compassionately accepting. That's what a healthy person looks like. I read an obituary yesterday. I didn't know the woman. It was in the LA Times, and it said her overriding characteristic was that she had a moral compass. And then I thought about that. I go, "Well..." Any healthy person has a moral compass. It's not about a good person or a bad person, since we're all unshakably good.
21:06 Speaker 02 It's just a matter of, do we know this, or do we not know this? And we belong to each other. Every healthy person is a holy person who has a moral compass. I don't think our current president has a moral compass, but that's not because he's bad. It's because he's quite ill. And so I don't need to demonize him. I just have, actually, I have huge compassion, because nobody chooses to be that ill. I think illness, however we explain it, can choose. But we don't choose illness, it happens.
21:46 Speaker 02 And because that's the part of our human family, then how do we help people walk home to wholeness? So then there's no moral overlay. You can certainly say, it's not okay to throw a Molotov cocktail into the governor's house. That goes without saying. But you want to kind of get underneath it. You want to understand where's this coming from, so that we can be helpful to people who are inclined to throw a Molotov cocktail. That's why, you know, for 40 years, I worked with gang members. And you've had a lot of politicians and a lot of law enforcement people who are tough on crime.
22:28 Speaker 02 And I always knew that if you said you were tough on crime, it just meant that you weren't serious about actually reducing it. Because there was no desire to get underneath and understand what this is about, so that you could address root causes, I suppose. We kind of cut to the chase. We name things incorrectly, and we, our diagnoses are really quite skewed and off, because we're kind of mired in this sense of what's right and wrong. And it's why we don't make progress. And I'd love to make progress. And I think love never fails, inasmuch as that always makes progress, always.
23:12 Speaker 02 Whether people can perceive it or not. It's always making progress and the more you can remind people of their true selves in loving, the closer you get to actually advancing where there is peace and there's justice and people tolerate and love each other.
23:33 Dan Harris? Just to put a fine point on the love never fails and playing devil's advocate, maybe that's a loaded phrase in this context and saying you're playing a sucker's game that some skeptics or cynics might say that. I want to be clear, you have a little phrase that I like a lot and you've kind of hinted at it in this conversation up until now. And it's this, that you can resist without demonizing. Now I'm going to use my own language and you may or may not agree with this, but in my view, you can take quite strenuous action from a place of love, caring, compassion. In fact, you could probably do many of the same things you would do from the standpoint of anger or hatred, but it has a very different quality if it's motivated by caring and loving for the doer. It's a much cleaner burning
24:18 Dan Harris? fuel. It's much less likely to burn you out. And I think it's much more likely to contribute to successful, caring action. Okay, I said a lot of words there. Agree or disagree?
24:32 Speaker 02 I think, how do you kind of measure your response to things? To the extent that you demonize or make somebody a villain, then you know you're on the wrong track. It doesn't mean that you're any less clear about actions that are unjust and not respectful of due process and all the things that we're going through right now. But the us against them just creates the division. Whereas you and I would both agree that
25:05 Speaker 02 Separation is an illusion. And so, how do we remind ourselves that there is no us and them, there's just us? And if you can cling to that, and especially to the notions that everybody's unshakably good and we all belong to each other. Once you dispel of that notion that separation is bound to happen, then you can roll up your sleeves. And so cherishing love is love with its sleeves rolled up. It's really active, it's connective tissue. It's really trying to get people to a place where they feel more and more inhabiting the truth of who they are. And so, systems change when people change and people change when they're cherished.
25:49 Speaker 02 And I see this here all the time. Folks who come in here and they start here and they're belligerent and they're really difficult. They're in your face and you're trying to cherish them and it's a challenge. But you know that in the end, it's so remarkable that that kind of dosage that people get, it's so compelling that they always come back, even if they disappear for a while. Even if they have a relapse of either violent behavior or drug involvement. They always come back because it's so compelling to have been cherished. But you watch it happen, you watch people are transformed because they were shown kindness.
26:34 Speaker 02 I believe in it fully, that we don't need to limit where the healing comes. I used to think if healing is primary here, then people need to be doing therapy. And we have therapy and we have anger management, we have all these classes and groups. But because everybody embraces the spirit of cherishing and acknowledging and welcoming, that's what's compelling. All the other stuff is good and necessary. But because it's a constant, everybody is applying a dose to each other. And it's a bombardment of cherishing love.
27:17 Speaker 02 It really wins the day, even if you see kind of bumps in the road where people are having difficulty. In the end... It's what conquers the hate. I mean, nobody healthy as hate hates. And so gang members come in here and they're filled with hate. Hate for their parents, or hate for their baby mamas, or hate for rival enemy gang members. And it all dissolves, once you're in a community that drives you sane. It all goes away eventually, and you can kind of take that to the bank.
28:02 Dan Harris? Coming up, Father Boyle talks about how to build intentional communities to counteract polarization in the world. And yes, I know, everybody talks about the importance of community. How do you actually do it? We'll talk about that with Father Boyle. He also talks about a practice he does called affectionate awe, and how to catch yourself when you're in a judgment spiral.
28:26 Dan Harris? I listened to this, and I can imagine others listening to this and think, that sounds amazing. How do I, and how do we create communities that drive us sane?
28:36 Speaker 02 Part of it is trying to fashion someplace, even groups. I mean, we're so isolated and insular. You know, we really live solitary lives, and people have written books about all of this, and we're kind of bowling alone, you know? And you gravitate to anything, from a book club, to a church, to a school, to a classroom, to a community like we have here, which is the primary focus here. We'll help people get their driver's licenses, and their social security card, and their legal matters cleared up. And the list is long of concrete things that people need to address.
29:19 Speaker 02 But because we're here together, we're surrounding each other. You know, I was sharing this morning in our morning meeting about yesterday, we had an earthquake in San Diego and I could feel it in Los Angeles. And they had this clip at the San Diego Zoo where the elephants, the adult elephants, gathered when the earthquake hit, they gather all the young'uns, they put them all in the middle and they formed this circle around them. And it was called an alert circle is what the zookeepers called it. They move into this formation where they're surrounded by a calm and soothing presence. And you can see the younger elephants in the middle of the circle become palpably
30:03 Speaker 02 calmer because they're surrounded. And then when the danger seems to have disappeared, the circle opens again and they resume whatever elephants do, you know? I thought, that's what we do here. We surround each other. And you choose, it's kind of our intentionality is to soothe people. So again, anyone who walks through our doors here comes barricaded behind a wall of shame and disgrace. And the only thing that can scale it is tenderness. And so in as much as they come with a disorganized attachment where mom was frightened or frightening
30:46 Speaker 02 and truly you can't calm yourself down if you've never been soothed, you have to be retaught that. You have to learn it for the first time even. And so it's kind of how we surround each other here. So to the extent that you can create intentional communities where you can be surrounded and you can engage in that activity of surrounding the others, I think there are a million ways to do it.
31:17 Dan Harris? Listening to you speak about the elephants, I was thinking that
31:22 Dan Harris? That surrounding is soothing for the babies. But I would imagine soothing for the grownups too. There's something about soothing somebody else that is soothing for the soother.
31:34 Speaker 02 Absolutely. That's a key insight because that's part of the engagement, you know? Because where is the joy? You know, Jesus talks about my joy, yours, your joy complete. And the joy is in being able to surround people. And to be a source of delighting and safety and protection. And the joy is in being seen, but also be the person who sees. That's a key thing. Saint Ignatius of Loyola has a meditation where he says, see Jesus standing in the lowly place. And it's not Jesus indicting. He's not pointing.
32:19 Speaker 02 He's not saying, get your ass over to the lowly place. It just says, see him standing in the lowly place. And it's evocative because it makes you think, why is he standing there? What's he looked like? Is he peaceful? There's something about him being in the lowly place, choosing that in all humility, that is life giving for him. And so, though he's not beckoning you, all you are seeing is him there. And then pretty soon you kind of have this, I'll have what he's having. I want to go over to that place because I think it's where the joy is.
33:02 Speaker 02 Which is the important part about being a soothing presence in the world, exactly as you say, is that you are soothed. That it's exactly the thing that pulls you out of your own self-absorption that keeps you always reminded that loving is your home. And then you go, wow, I am not homesick at this moment. I'm not missing anything. There's nothing missing here, which is a kind of a key insight as you kind of move out of your own self-absorption into the concern of somebody else who's perhaps distraught or in anguish.
33:44 Dan Harris? Yeah, I've just seen that play out in my own life. It's one of my little jokes, and it's not really a joke, is that if you're doing self-improvement or personal development, spiritual growth, if you're doing it correctly, you should feel like you've been an idiot your whole life until six weeks ago, always. And so in that spirit, I'll say that for most of my life, I've lapsed too frequently into selfishness. The more in my later years that I've learned occasionally to be the soother, the happier I've become, which is counterintuitive, because you would think the route to happiness is accumulation, achievement, acquisition, et cetera, et cetera. In fact, while some of that is necessary,
34:29 Dan Harris? it seems in my experience to be about, to be a little grandiose about it, being a beacon, being a source of comfort and safety, you know, when you have the resources to do it.
34:40 Speaker 02 Yeah, and use the word selfish, and I try to stay allergic to, like selfish is kind of an indictment, as opposed to self-absorption, which is kind of just a human, you know, if you're attentive to how you are being self-absorbed, then you're also attentive to how you are sad, how you're stuck. I'm not a big sin person because I don't think it helps as a notion. It keeps us from progress, just as evil does, and certainly just as hell does. None of it is helpful. It really keeps us from progress.
35:20 Speaker 02 So in the same way that selfish is a kind of a, it denotes you've done something bad, as opposed to you slipped into some, a concern about yourself, which is natural. But the joy is on the other side of that. You know, if you can move quickly from self-concern, like, will I have enough and what about me?
35:47 Speaker 02 And then instead you move to, does she have what she needs? Is he receiving all that he needs at the moment? Suddenly, you're in the realm of joy. That's where the joy is. But we don't know that and we forget that, which is the key to our own practice, is to remind ourselves with every breath we take, that that's where the joy is. Would that that insight was once and for all? Because it should be nice, if you could just decide that like a switch and turn it on, and it never goes off, but it's a constant.
36:26 Dan Harris? Yeah, you can set it as a north star, and it helps to have practices, as you said. So let's talk about that. I believe, and please correct me if I'm wrong, but one of the practices that you recommend in your new book is, I think this is either a Spanish or Portuguese word, acatamiento, which translates as affectionate awe. Can you unpack that and also talk about how we can practice it as a way to get some of what Jesus has in the lowly place?
36:53 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's a word that Saint Ignatius uses in acatamiento, and it's Spanish. And it comes from the word acatar, which means to look at something with attention. Again, it gets, as you say, it was, is translated as affectionate awe. And though it was born, no doubt, as a result of some mystical singular moment between Ignatius and his God, I would like to think that Ignatius hoped it would be a disposition, a stance at the margins. So if the idea is to go to the margins and stand there, that's the only way that they actually get erased, is if we stand out at them.
37:34 Speaker 02 And not to rescue or save or fix the folks on the margins, but to go there so that the folks on the margins change me, alter my heart. And that's when things become exquisitely mutual between anyone going to the margins and anyone at the margins. But it's a disposition, it's a stance, it's how ought we to stand at the margins. Not as saviors, not as people who will transform lives, but with affectionate awe, where you can receive people and allow your heart to be altered and to be reached by people. Because just that stance alone
38:19 Speaker 02 is able to remind people of the truth of who they are. And so everybody entering in a mutual way into that sense of truth and well-being and inhabiting the core of their own being, the ground of their being. So, yeah, it's a practice and it's an intentionality. How can we stand in awe at what the poor have to carry rather than in judgment at how they carry it? But that's not just for the poor and the folks at the margins. It's learning a practice that can lean in and be curious about what's going on rather than
39:04 Speaker 02 exacting and wrathful and judgmental and all the ways that we had images of God that really have never been helpful. So it's a way of being in the world that can receive people. We're always going to be judging, but we can move from it being a moral judgment to kind of a health assessment. Where there's no sense of this is a good person or a bad person, but a sense of yes, this person's in pain. This person is broken. This person is wounded. And so in the process, you are welcoming your own wound.
39:47 Speaker 02 Otherwise, you will be tempted to despise the wounded. And despising the wounded is kind of where we are in our country at the moment, because that's the greatest symptom and indicator that mental health is the defining health issue of our time, is that we despise the wounded. The immigrant, the gang member, the drug addict, the homeless person. The list is long. And the reason we can be tempted to despise the wounded is because we haven't welcomed our own woundedness, which requires humility and vulnerability and an acknowledgement
40:30 Speaker 02 of the pain that we all have to carry and the anguish that we struggle with.
40:35 Dan Harris? This does not sound like a simple. I mean, on one level, it is simple, but it's not easy, this practice. So how can we put it to work in our own lives and make sure that we're consistent with it?
40:49 Speaker 02 Well, things cannot be easy, but they can also be clear. There's a kind of a clarity to it.
40:55 Dan Harris? Yes.
40:56 Speaker 02 I'm kind of a stickler on the thing about everybody's good. So once you get that out of the way, then you never have to judge whether somebody is good or bad. You can say, well, people are relatively healthy or not so healthy. You know, if you can say, today I wasn't that healthy because I was short with people and I was, I didn't listen. And I wasn't anchored in a desire and a longing to listen and to love. And that's not about sin. That's just self-absorption won the day. But it doesn't have to. And none of us are well until all of us are well. So how do we inch our way to that place?
41:38 Speaker 02 But in the end, what are we to do except to put one loving foot in front of the next? I don't know what else to do. Otherwise, you get caught up in sort of global. Concerns that keep you from action rather than spur you on. And so, again, it's like Mother Teresa says, it's not doing great things, but small things with great love. And then it becomes doable. Then you're kind of just in the moment. And what's the next tender, loving thing I can do?
42:17 Dan Harris? That in particular, that last thing you're saying seems very practical. Just to hold the question in your mind throughout the day and try to come back to it as a mantra. Or what's the next? I mean, this is a recovery phrase. What's the next right thing? What's the next loving thing? As a North Star, it seems pretty solid.
42:40 Speaker 02 Yeah, I think it is, you know? And the right thing, again, keeps us in the binary right and wrong part. But if it's the next loving thing, you're not toppled by whatever behavior you're encountering. This is a silly example, but I was in Glasgow, Scotland with two homies, Caesar and George. They'd never flown across the Atlantic and never had to need passports. But we were speaking at a conference and we were in a hotel. Every morning I say, I'll meet you at eight and we'll walk to the conference where we spoke. They were always on time. They were always waiting for me. They were sitting in the lobby in these big plush chairs.
43:22 Speaker 02 And as soon as they saw me very loudly, they'd say, hello, governor. And I was, I was mortified. And I was texting my staff at home. I was going, how do I get them to stop saying hello, governor? And they said it out in public and, you know, they'd see it, an impressive architectural, whatever, a building or a castle. And instead of saying, wow, they would kind of survey it and say, hello, governor. And it's funny how it bothered me. I was embarrassed and people are looking and of course, nobody speaks like this. And then I just made a decision. I remember I said, lean in, be curious about this.
44:08 Speaker 02 And in no time, I had moved from my own kind of weird embarrassment mortification, where I knew what it was. We were speaking to a church at one point during our trip, and George, who is very even keel, is never excited about anything. He said very calmly to this audience, "I cannot contain my excitement in being here in Glasgow." Well, you could have fooled me. He didn't seem excited, but that's what it was. They were just positively out of body giddy to be there and for us to be there together. Pretty soon, I just
44:48 Speaker 02 wasn't bothered. It was my issue. It wasn't their issue. Because I had leaned in and I was curious about something that was bothering me in their behavior, I realized that I had entered into this whole other understanding. I was comprehending something. It seemed silly, but it was really kind of a, it was instructive to me, because comprehension means to get underneath it. What does it mean when somebody says that or does that? And pretty soon, that just is so expansive. And then you're kind of, it's like you have
45:29 Speaker 02 a mystical lens, where you can look at behavior and you go, "What's that about? What pain is that representing? What wound is being excavated in this person's insistence on something that you're finding annoying?" But then you move beyond it, and it's really old dog and new tricks, you know? I really, this old dog learns something new. And it's sort of stayed with me, and I've tried to kind of utilize it. There's something there. We're always judging. Our feet hit the floor out of our bed, and we start judging immediately.
46:12 Speaker 02 But you can catch yourself, as my friend Pema Chodron says, you know, catch yourself being judgmental and then, and you do this ajary contra, which is what Ignatius talks about, go against your inclination to be mortified, go against your temptation to judge, go against this idea that you're going to disparage somebody because of some behavior. And then get underneath it, comprehend. We talk a lot about compassion and empathy, but then there's this whole other comprehension piece where you understand, oh, I see where this is coming from. And that's liberating.
46:58 Dan Harris? I think there's a French expression, to know all is to forgive all, or something like that. And so it feels very related, understanding the causes and conditions that lead up to somebody's current behavior. That is a form of of love. And I believe Thich Nhat Hanh talks about love being understanding, at least looked at from one angle.
47:21 Speaker 02 Yeah, I think that's exactly right. But we settle for our judgments because they're comfortable.
47:27 Dan Harris? Yeah.
47:27 Speaker 02 You know, it's clear and we're right and we're insistent. I remember we had a council meeting, which is a bunch of homies, and we're talking about our trainees. And one guy was complaining about one of the trainees. And he says, you know what his problem is? He thinks his shit don't stink. And another guy said, no, I think everything he smells stinks.
47:51 Dan Harris? Yeah.
47:51 Speaker 02 So it was a difference between somebody who had done the work and excavated his own wounds and was familiar, to somebody who was going to cut to the chase and say, here's the problem, all of you are naive. He just thinks his shit don't stink. And I go, yeah, I'm going to go with this other homie, who knows his own wounds enough to recognize that this behavior is a language. And it's indicating something that probably needs our attention. I like that better.
48:24 Dan Harris? I'm with you. And it really does show how self-love, self-compassion does inexorably, or at least can inexorably, lead to loving and being more compassionate toward other people, because it can help you get to this.
48:39 Dan Harris? New paradigm that you're suggesting, which is instead of judging, once you start seeing it through the health assessment, like what is going on for that person?
48:49 Speaker 02 Yeah.
48:49 Dan Harris? Because you've done it for yourself.
48:51 Speaker 02 I haven't figured this one out entirely, but I think it's that the health assessment is the opposite of the moral judgment. It takes out all this stuff about us and them, or bad, or good, or villain, or enemy. It insists there's no such thing as them, that really, truly, it's just us. And the only way to maintain that is to allow people to belong, to really imagine a circle of compassion, and then imagine nobody standing outside that circle. That's our insistence. We won't let anybody stand outside that circle.
49:34 Speaker 02 But you do get to a point where you just say, except this guy, he needs to be outside the circle. But you have to catch yourself, you have to say, no, that this is a kind of a truth.
49:47 Speaker 02 If you insist on it, then you really will do the work, which requires your steady practice. But you're really going to do the work to say, I will do everything I can so that this person feels welcome inside this circle. I don't ever want to reject them or send them elsewhere. And so you dismantle the barriers that exclude, which is the primary job of loving, is so that things become more inclusive tomorrow than they were today.
50:22 Dan Harris? Coming up, Father Boyle talks about some of his own antidotes to despair, his own daily practices, and how he's deeply influenced by Buddhism, and more.
50:36 Dan Harris? The book again is called Cherish Belonging, The Healing Power of Love in Divided Times. And you talk about creating a community of cherished belonging as an antidote to the polarization and hate and division we're seeing in the world right now, and in particular, in the United States. And I'm just curious, what's your level of optimism that things will improve, no less that will actually create a writ large a community of cherished belonging?
51:05 Speaker 02 I always say hopeful rather than optimistic, but I'm hopeful, I'm completely hopeful. Because being here, which is very sustaining for me, it's the front porch of the house everybody wants to live in. And so that's okay to be that simultaneously with helping people concretely, jobs, training, money in their pocket, recovery, all those things are concrete and helpful. And at the same time, we're the front porch of the house everyone wants to live in. So you want to hold up some kind of, you don't want to hide your light under the bushel basket. Put it out there where people can see it. And that's kind of important to me here
51:49 Speaker 02 because it's like the great John Lewis used to say, "We all live in the same house." And it was declarative, it wasn't aspirational. It was, "One day, we might live in the same house." No, this is who we are. We all live in the same house. You know, and it's not about some are in the basement and some are on the first floor. No, we all live in the same house. So the more you can kind of announce that with your lives, so people can see it and say, "Yeah, we need more of that." Or, "I need to find a way to do that in my own life," where we're intentionally inclusive
52:33 Speaker 02 and dedicated to soothing each other in our anguish. Because we don't really hold different views, we're just held by the same anguish. And so how do we intentionally move closer to the home that we're all invited to of wholeness and well-being and health?
52:56 Dan Harris? Did you ever see that movie, The Year of Living Dangerously? It came out in the 80s.
53:00 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah, yeah. Great movie.
53:02 Dan Harris? Yeah, great movie. Mel Gibson, before he lost his fucking mind.
53:10 Dan Harris? And there's a scene in there where he's talking to his co-star, whose name I've forgotten. And she says something to the effect of, he's bemoaning the state of the world, and what do you do about it? And, and she says, you know, you just add your light to the sum of light.
53:27 Speaker 02 That's right.
53:28 Dan Harris? And that seems to rhyme with
53:29 Speaker 02 Yes.
53:30 Dan Harris? with what you're saying today.
53:31 Speaker 02 That's so right and true, and I'm remembering that line. And otherwise, you get overwhelmed, and you think there's nothing you can do, and that will lead to a kind of despair. But we're hopeful, anchored in the ability of what I can do right at this moment, not even today. But what can I do right in this moment as I am breathing? That just puts it in its place, you know, where it needs to be, which is me doing the next loving thing that I can do. And being attentive, you know, because that spirit of acatamiento is from the word acatar,
54:14 Speaker 02 which means to look at something with attention. And so in my language, I suppose, I'd say, you notice the notice of God, and then you become that notice in the world. A homie ended an email with me the other morning, and we email every day. I call him my spiritual director. But he ended his email by saying, "Today, I will surrender into the arms of God, then choose to be those arms."
54:48 Speaker 02 And that's kind of the whole law and the prophets right there because it's about receiving the tender glance and becoming the tender glance. It's about noticing the notice of God and then choosing to be that notice in the world where you are looking at things with attention. It's the mystical lens. It's, it's how to see the world where you surrender to however you want to say it, to the core of your being, to the ground of your essence. And then choosing to be that spirit in the world, all at the same time. It's exhilarating, I think.
55:30 Dan Harris? It is, I can feel it in my body as you speak. I would just add one little potential tweak, which is use the word mystical. And maybe this isn't a contradiction, but it strikes me as very practical. You can acknowledge the mystery, the fact that none of us knows shit. And also decide that the smartest way to live in this confusing situation is to be as useful as possible. And all of that lines up with what we know from modern psychological research about how to be a healthy whole person in the world.
56:04 Speaker 02 Yeah, and we get tripped up by a word like mystical because it feels like it's not meant for me. But I, I recommend a book, Mirror by Star, Ordinary Mysticism. And she talks about how to connect this mystical view to ordinary living and how it is to be recognized in that. So it's not some other worldly sense, but it's only in this world and in the present moment, so.
56:36 Dan Harris? I may have asked you this question before, and you mentioned your long running friendship with Pema Chodron, which I, I believe we talked about the last time you were on the show. I'm curious, like for you personally, your life at Homeboy Industries is a practice. But do you have some sort of personal meditation or centering prayer or some sort of practice that allows you to stay anchored in a very demanding environment?
57:01 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, I get up really early, like 2:45 in the morning. It's ridiculous. But I spend my, a lot of time in, in that practice, along with having something to eat and. Checking emails, which is one I kind of do. And then I check in with my spiritual director every morning. Yeah, that's my practice. I mean, I have my little chair and my little altar and my little space. And then I try to do other ways to kind of reconnect my own breathing to the present moment to, if there's a lull in the action, which is rare around here, but
57:40 Speaker 02 when there is, if I'm walking to my car, I try to find the peace in every step that I take. And I always call it breathing in the spirit that delights in my being and then breathing it out into the world. It's like breathing, inhaling and exhaling. It's not meant to stay singular and with you. It's meant to always be exhaled out into the world. You know, with every loving step you take, how do you do that, you know? That's my practice is a kind of early morning thing, but I'm beyond the idea that there's a once and for all to your morning practice.
58:23 Speaker 02 God knows, because as soon as I'm all set to go and I'm walking into the office, suddenly you're bombarded with 93 unrealistic demands placed on your time and you're, and you can lose it. So you want to be able to carry that through the whole day. It's a challenge. Cherishing is not hard, but remembering to cherish is exceedingly difficult. And so you always want to remind yourself to remember.
58:52 Dan Harris? Yes. Yes, you probably know this, and this is one of my common riffs, and we can close on this, is that the word mindfulness, the original translation of that word in the ancient language of Pali, the word is sati, S A T I, in the Pali language, we translate it as mindfulness, but the original translation was recollecting, remembering. That's the practice.
59:13 Speaker 02 That's excellent. That's helpful.
59:15 Dan Harris? You are excellent and helpful, Father Gregory Boyle. Final thing I'll ask of you before we let you go. Can you just remind everybody of the name of your new-ish book? And then anything else you've put out into the world that we should know about?
59:26 Speaker 02 Oh, well, it's called Cherish Belonging. And you probably have the subtitle right there.
59:32 Dan Harris? I do. I'll say it. It's The Healing Power of Love in Divided Times.
59:37 Speaker 02 There you go. I knew it was something like that. I don't know. I love talking to you and with you and listening to you. And I'm a big fan. So, thanks for the invitation.
59:53 Dan Harris? That feeling is heartily mutual.
59:55 Speaker 02 Thanks.
59:56 Dan Harris? I really look up to you. And I just also want to recommend one of your previous books, which is Tattoos on the Heart, which was recommended to me by my meditation teacher, Joseph Goldstein, and everybody should look at and consider supporting the work of Homeboy Industries. Father Boyle, thank you again. And if it's okay with you, maybe the next time I'm in LA, I'll send you an email because I'd love to meet you in person.
1:00:19 Speaker 02 Oh, please come by and get the Cook's Tour of Homeboy.
1:00:23 Dan Harris? Okay.
1:00:28 Dan Harris? Thanks again to Father Boyle. I love that guy. I would love to meet him in person someday. And a reminder, head on over to danharris.com where you can get a guided meditation that is tailored to this podcast episode. The idea is we're going to help you get the wisdom from Father Boyle and pound it into your neurons in an abiding way. The meditation is called an antidote to nihilism. That's all about how to stay engaged as a citizen without losing your mind. It comes from our Teacher of the Month, Dan Mauricio. She's doing all the guided meditations for our Monday, Wednesday episodes this month. Head on over to danharris.com. Many other perks for membership over there. Finally, thank you to everybody who works so hard to make this show. Our producers are Tara
1:01:13 Dan Harris? Anderson, Caroline Keenan, and Eleanor Vassili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the awesome people 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 beat.
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