How To Stop Fixing Yourself | Ayya Santacitta

Buddhist advice on the feeling of "I'm not enough," the voice that says "if I don't do it, no one will," and tolerating uncertainty without impatience. Santacitta Bhikkhuni trained as a nun in England & Asia, primarily in the lineage of Ajahn Chah and has also received teachings in the Shechen lineage of Tibetan Buddhism. She is committed to Gaia as a living being and resides at Aloka Earth Room https://alokavihara.org/aloka-earth-room/, currently in San Rafael, California. She recently co-authored the book What Are You Waiting For? A Conversation about Buddhism between Two Old Friends https://www.windhorsepublications.com/product/what-are-you-waiting-for-pb/. You can find more of Ayya's teachings in audio https://dharmaseed.org/teacher/278/?language_filter=1 & video https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7dngzqwKbOTolRv0jRxP3A format, as well as ongoing events in-person & online https://alokavihara.org/aloka-earth-room-events/. In this episode we talk about: Why self-improvement might be the wrong goal entirely The upside of having your heart broken Why patience isn't just for old ladies How to actually tolerate uncertainty The difference between reacting and responding What waiting in line can teach you The devotional practice missing from Western Buddhism What it means to become part of the Earth's immune system 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 This episode is sponsored by: Rosetta Stone: Visit rosettastone.com/happier http://rosettastone.com/happier to redeem your 20% off Rosetta Stone Sapphire. Base44: Go to Base44.com/Happier http://base44.com/Happier and sign up through our link to get 30% off the Builder plan for your first year. Scribe: Learn more at scribe.how/HAPPIER http://scribe.how/HAPPIER and mention 10% Happier for your first month of Scribe Capture free on select plans. 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.

• 0:03Dan Harris?

  Hey, everybody. Welcome to the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Today, we are going to talk to a very wise and very funny Buddhist nun, whose name is Aya Santacitta. We're going to talk about what we're getting wrong about self-improvement, the upside of having your heart broken, dropping our self-limiting stories, the fact that patience is not, as she says, just for old ladies, how to tolerate uncertainty, tuning into never-enoughness as a way to turn insufficiency to your advantage. As you can tell, it's a wide-ranging and really interesting and really useful conversation. Just a little bit more about Aya Santacitta before we dive in.

• 0:45Dan Harris?

  She's a Western Buddhist nun who trained in England and in Asia, primarily in the lineage of a Thai master named Ajahn Chah. She lives and teaches from the Aloka Earth Room in San Rafael, California. And she's written a book called, What Are You Waiting For? Aya Santacitta, welcome to the show.

• 1:06Speaker 01

  Thank you, Dan, for inviting me.

• 1:08Dan Harris?

  I'm so glad you said yes. I have a bunch of things I want to talk to you about, but I'm just curious, just to get us started here, how, why, when did you become a nun?

• 1:17Speaker 01

  You know, I became a nun in 1993. And it all began in 1998, when I met my first teacher in the forests of South Thailand. And I got really kind of increasingly more interested and then ended up becoming a novice in an international monastery north of London in the UK in 1993, where I trained for about 15 years and then came here in 2009 to the US, together with a collegiate nun, to start a monastery for nuns here.

• 2:00Speaker 01

  And we began in San Francisco in 2009.

• 2:04Dan Harris?

  I'm just curious, it's a huge life decision to shave your head and put on robes and leave the "regular world." What inspired that?

• 2:15Speaker 01

  I think what inspired that was, on the one hand, a real strong need for some kind of guidance or some kind of direction for my life. Because I had done all of the things I really always wanted to do. I worked in Avant Garde Dance Theater. I studied cultural anthropology. Those were the two things I always really wanted to do in my life. But then still, I didn't feel I had arrived at a direction which I wanted to stay with, because it didn't feel very stable to me.

• 2:56Speaker 01

  And then, when I was 28, my mother suddenly died from a horse-riding accident. And then after that, I felt a very strong need to understand what this is all about. And that's how I found my first teacher, through a chain of so-called coincidence, which probably weren't, you know? But I stumbled into that monastery about four hours north of the Malaysian border. And there was this teacher, he was in his mid-80s. And I immediately understood upon seeing his presence and the way how he conducted himself, that he could teach me something really important.

• 3:38Speaker 01

  And then, at one point, I started to feel according, to become a nun, and was really scared of that. And then I quickly got married, because I thought that would help me to not have to ordain. It wasn't a very good choice. It was a bit haphazard and quick. So then, one and a half years later, I ended up in the monastery anyway. And then, I didn't want to train in Thailand. I wanted to train with people from a similar culture than my own. And that took me then to England. The abbot in that monastery was actually from Washington. He was from Seattle, Archim Someto, quite a well-known teacher.

• 4:19Speaker 01

  And yeah, I learned the trade in his monastery and then left later on, because there was not the opportunity for women to have full ordination. We were perpetual novices at that monastery. And I didn't really like that after a certain time. And now I'm a fully ordained Buddhist nun, what's called a bhikkuni in the Pali language.

• 4:48Dan Harris?

  Well, I'm glad you're fully ordained. And I have a lot of negative feelings about the lineages that do not fully ordain women. I want to go back and also just note that I'm sorry to hear about what happened with your mother and sorry about the divorce. And it sounds like there was a lot of stuff in there. There was something you said in the middle of your answer, though, that struck me as perhaps significant. You used the word unstable, I think. I'm wondering whether that might have been at the heart of your desire to spend your life in deep engagement with the Dharma, to, in other words, to become a nun.

• 5:31Dan Harris?

  Because the death of your mother really spoke to life's instability. The fact that you had achieved what you wanted to achieve in your studies and in the world of dance, and yet weren't fully satisfied, also speaks to instability and unsatisfactory, the unsatisfactory nature of existence. So I'm wondering if there's something in there that is worth mining.

• 5:55Speaker 01

  Then I think back, you know, on my times in the theater. It was a very successful Avant Garde Dance Theater. And we really made beautiful productions, where people got a lot of uplift for their heart and a lot of beauty, a lot of magic, you could say. But then, when people go home, there wasn't a practice to continue to have their heart in this open state, which could connect with the beauty of life, building on that experience, which art was able to instigate in people. Also, studying cultural anthropology,

• 6:36Speaker 01

  I traveled very early in my life with my parents to Africa several times and saw people on ancestral lands, how they were, how they walked, how they conducted their lives. And it gave me that deep feeling that my culture had lost groundedness on the earth, which was a very significant loss. And then I went to universities and found out that they didn't really answer those questions. So there was something deeper. And then, when I met my first teacher, Archim Buddha Dasa, I had a feeling immediately, he knows what I'm searching. And then, as I started to learn about Buddhism,

• 7:19Speaker 01

  it became clear to me that there were a lot of layers of conditioning, assumptions, expectations, desires, and fears, which were kind of warping my experience.

• 7:32Dan Harris?

  Well, thank you for humoring me while I explored your biography. Let me turn to our agenda, such as it is for today. In preparation for this conversation, you've had some conversations with Marissa Schneiderman, who's our senior producer. And I want to read back to you one of the lines that leapt out at me. "Most of the self-improvement conversation asks the same question. How do I become a better, calmer, more effective version of myself?" And your point is that that's the wrong question.

• 8:06Speaker 01

  What I also see from teaching retreats and then having conversations with people who I mentor, that at the beginning of the path, people often have the idea that this is all about gaining more, becoming more informed, to know more, to improve yourself. Whereas my experience is, actually, it's about letting go. It's about letting go of conditioning which doesn't serve us, conditioning which keeps us limited and has a limiting effect on the way how we experience the world and how we experience ourselves.

• 8:46Speaker 01

  So it's very much more about finding some kind of a guidance in order to slow down enough so we can see how our mind is basically projecting unacknowledged patterns onto experience.

• 9:06Dan Harris?

  Projecting unacknowledged patterns onto experience? That sounds really interesting, but I'm not sure I understand what it means. Can you help me?

• 9:16Speaker 01

  Yes. For example, I grew up in a small hotel in Austria when I was a little girl. And me and my brother, we were left alone quite a lot. And I was the older one, so I always felt responsible for my brother. I felt responsible to take care of everything. And I was afraid of that my parents wouldn't come back and all of those things. So there was like a... An experience of abandonment, you know, which I had on a regular basis. And then later on, I projected that fear onto many things which happened in my life. I was a lot in community as a nun. So I had a tendency to take responsibility

• 10:00Speaker 01

  for a lot of things because I had grown up as the older sibling, you know? And it took me quite a long time to actually really consciously see what I was doing and to let go of that habit more and more. I felt also not happy about that. I was always taking care of everything. But I didn't really see for quite some time how I was actually making that, you know? Nobody made me do it, but I did it automatically without knowing it.

• 10:30Dan Harris?

  So we have these experiences in our early lives and we start to see the world in certain ways and behave in certain ways. And we carry those inappropriately into situations throughout our adult lives. And that causes suffering for ourselves and others.

• 10:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, until we, one day we see that, you know? And we also might sometimes need help, you know, from a therapist or for some kind of mentor, you know, who helps us to see it. And then as we are slowly stepping out and consciously not enact the pattern, it releases like unacknowledged fears, you know? Because not doing the same thing you always did, you know, produces some kind of fear. Because I didn't, you know, I took all this responsibility because I was afraid if I don't do it, nobody's gonna do it. But nobody did it because I was always stepping forward first. Until you see that all of those things

• 11:32Speaker 01

  is a conditioned kind of constellation, which if you put out one part, the whole thing collapses. And then it opens up and then it might come back a few more times. But if you have seen it opening once, you know, you're never gonna get caught in it again in the same way. And then slowly you step out of that, you end up in a bigger world, slightly bigger world, you know? And then that enables you to see the next filter and the next filter. And that is the practice, letting go of one filter after the next, not like with a sledgehammer, you know, but with a lot of mindfulness, with focusing and with a lot of kindness also, you know?

• 12:17Dan Harris?

  Let me tell you about one of my little taglines. I use it all the time because I love it. Here it is. The world is insane, but you don't have to be. It may feel like the world is on fire and in many ways it is. And in this scenario, a lot of us get this idea in our heads that it's somehow self indulgent to take care of ourselves. But in fact, taking care of your own mind and of course, your body is how you resource yourself, how you get your shit together to be fully engaged, to be a node of sanity in an insane world, which is why I'm very pleased to announce that two of my friends, two amazing meditation teachers, Sharon Salzberg and Andy Gonzalez, have created a course for my app, 10% with Dan Harris, specifically on this topic. It's an eight part course.

• 13:01Dan Harris?

  It consists of short talks from Sharon and Andy and then guided meditations also, as you might imagine, from Sharon and Andy. The course is aptly entitled, Taking Care of Yourself So You Can Take Care of the World. And it's fully live now over on the 10% with Dan Harris app. You should sign up. I really mean that. You should sign up. We've got a growing community over there. We've got a full library of courses and challenges and guided meditations. You can come join the party by going to danharris.com.

• 13:30Dan Harris?

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• 14:13Dan Harris?

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• 15:02Dan Harris?

  What are the tools that you would recommend for being, for stepping out of the matrix, our self-created matrix?

• 15:11Speaker 01

  I would say, you know, what's called the Noble Eightfold Path, which is the core teaching of the Buddha. You know, mindfulness is one of eight qualities which need to be cultivated. So that path, you know, is kind of the blueprint from how we can slowly but surely become more conscious, you know, of what we are actually adding to experience. And then, once the mind has really seen clearly, the mind wants to let go, you know? The mind really wants to let go. The mind wants to be free. It will respond with letting go. You know, letting go is not something we can make happen, but we can put causes and conditions in place by conducting ourselves

• 15:56Speaker 01

  in a certain way, by investigating, you know, by keeping ethics, for example, and not, you know, kind of wasting our energy in doing a lot of stupid things, you know, which keep us, get us into trouble. So it's a lifestyle which is dedicated to wanting to know more fully how we can unlock our potential.

• 16:22Dan Harris?

  Let me just provide some context for the listener and viewer. I think actually the first teaching of the Buddha was the Noble Eightfold Path. It was actually embedded in another list. The Buddha liked to make lists. So the first speech he gave after he got enlightened was the Four Noble Truths. And the fourth of the Noble Truths is actually a list within a list. And that's the Eightfold Path. And it's kind of a recipe for a good life or a recipe for enlightenment. And one of the entries in the Eightfold Path is mindfulness, but there's a lot of stuff in there about ethical conduct, right speech, right livelihood. And really, one of the ideas there is that if you're not wasting your mental energy on keeping your lies straight or feeling regret for all of the bad things

• 17:07Dan Harris?

  you've done, that you have more energy for exploration and enlightenment and letting go, et cetera, et cetera. It does bring me to a question. You, as you've said, have spent 35 years in intensive mindfulness practice, and not just mindfulness practice, other forms of Buddhist practice. And that has allowed you to step out of your ancient patterns. But what about for the rest of us? How do we get a taste of this?

• 17:34Speaker 01

  It's like in anything in life, you know, how much you put in, that's what you get back, you know? So I think you have to just find out for yourself how much you wanna invest, you know, of your life energy into this path. And then you get the returns, you know, from that. And also in Buddhism, we speak about, this is not our first birth, you know? We come here and we might have practiced at other lifetimes. So, you know, somebody might come and be already much further along than somebody else. So, you know, I have much more propensity to understand and respond to the teachings. So it really depends on where we are starting from. But it doesn't really matter, you know?

• 18:19Speaker 01

  You just do what you can. And as you are kind of connecting deeper with the benefits of the teaching, it will become more and more attractive, you know? Like what I know about you, Daniel, when you had an experience, you know, which opened you up, which broke your heart in a way, open. In a conventional sense, it means, oh my God, this poor guy, you know, he had this bad experience. But in a spiritual sense, it's a great good fortune, you know? Like for me, when my mother died, was it a good thing or a bad thing? I mean, it was a bad thing on one way, but it was also for me, you know? I could say my mother gave birth to me twice. So, you know, in spirituality or in practice,

• 19:01Speaker 01

  you can't really look at it with the same measuring stick as you look at material things. This is why it's confusing for some people and hard to understand because most people are so stuck, you know, in the materialistic way of looking.

• 19:17Dan Harris?

  So just to put a fine point on that, because I think this is an accessible teaching for anybody, whether they meditate or not.

• 19:24Speaker 01

  Right.

• 19:25Dan Harris?

  Heartbreak can have a very significant upside.

• 19:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, breaking the heart open, you know, so that more life can land in us. Because, you know, a heart, before it's broken, is sometimes very kind of sure it knows how everything has to be. And then something happens, you know, which is so different and there's a breakdown.

• 19:53Speaker 01

  But it's also like an opening and then we will take some time to heal from it. But I can say, you know, without any doubt that when I look back on all on the heartbreaks I've had, you know, like romantic and otherwise, they were in the end of the day, they brought me closer to the way things are. You know, that the depth of the despair was a motivator, you know, to want to understand how this works, what is life, you know, how does it work? And how can I position myself inside of it? In in a way which which leads to greater wisdom and compassion. And and in my case, you know, it took me to this rather extreme

• 20:40Speaker 01

  profession, you know, which I'm having now. And I had quite a struggle myself with it, you know, because I didn't want to do one hundred fifty percent, you know, dedication. I just wanted to do like seventy or something, you know. But then somehow, you know, I I couldn't stop it. It basically sucked me in, you know, and then I always thought I'm gonna in two years, I'm gonna leave, in two years, I'm gonna leave. And I said that for thirty years or something. And now I just think, okay, that's it, you know, I stay with this, it's fine, you know. But, you know, life knows better than we do. And and I have meanwhile, you know, over the years,

• 21:25Speaker 01

  I have let go more and more and now I allow life to show me the way. The energy shows me the way, the earth shows me the way. My experiences, you know, have delivered me into that kind of a trust because it always worked out, you know. Even my mind was desperately thinking it would not, you know.

• 21:46Dan Harris?

  Okay, let me just pick up on something you said there because I find it. And this is apparently a characteristic I'm learning of you. I find so many of the things you're saying very, very interesting. You said something like having the trust to let life show you the way and even the earth show you the way. Can you explain a little bit more what you mean by that specifically?

• 22:09Speaker 01

  One of the important qualities, you know, to be able to walk the noble eightfold path you were just mentioning is what in a Buddhist, the chagrin is called sada. And we can translate that as confidence, trust and faith. That there is something much bigger than ourselves, which we can listen into, which can show us the way. And in the context of the Buddhist teaching, it's it's called the Buddha Dharma or the Dhamma. And that's a Pali word. That's the language in which the teachings were laid down about six hundred years after the Buddha's death.

• 22:51Speaker 01

  And Dhamma can be translated as as nature or laws of nature. So to really, you know, understand that we are part of nature and we are also operating according to the laws of nature. And that we can listen into the process we are already part of for guidance, you know. And, you know, the Buddha has given us like a map. You know, how to walk that path and how to support ourselves so that we are maximally capable of listening into the Dhamma. You know, and listening not just with our ears. The Dhamma isn't talking to me and tell me, you know, Santa Chita do this, Santa Chita do that.

• 23:36Speaker 01

  But it's more like listening with the whole body into that which gives me life, you know.

• 23:44Dan Harris?

  I love this idea of of being able to listen more clearly to, you could call it the Dharma, the or nature, the the rhythm of life, to to understand how to proceed. And I'm curious, again, for for those of us who are laypeople, how can we tune our instrument so that we can, you know, hear what reality is trying to tell us?

• 24:08Speaker 01

  Exactly, it's a very good way of saying it, you know, because it's an attunement process, you know. What's happening here, life, you know, is like an orchestra of of countless species, you know, performing together. And and I think we are now at a threshold, you know, where we are starting to understand that this orchestra on this planet is not all about us, you know, about speak our homo sapiens, our the human species. But it's it's about all of us, the modern human world and the human world working together to sustain the great opportunity of of living, you know, on this beautiful planet.

• 24:52Speaker 01

  And the Buddha has even been on record saying, you know, that the human birth, according to the Buddha, is the best opportunity for

• 25:03Speaker 01

  quote unquote, progressing on the spiritual path. Because, you know, according to the Buddhist teaching, it said, you know, there's different incarnations, you know, we can, we can been born into either underneath the human birth is is more kind difficult lives to to lead, you know, like where there's a lot of suffering or above the human realms in more heavenly realms, you know, where there's so much pleasure that there is not much motivation for practice. So the human realm is considered the perfect one, you know, with the perfect mix between pleasure and pain. So there's a motivation for practice because there's enough pain, you know.

• 25:46Speaker 01

  But there is also enough leisure to be able to listen to a podcast like this or read a book, you know, or meditate.

• 25:53Dan Harris?

  Just want to jump in and provide a little context there. What Iya Santhachita is talking about there is the Buddhist cosmology of these various realms of existence. So there's the animal realm. And given the nature of life as a golden retriever, there's a lot of good stuff to it, but it doesn't necessarily lend itself to meditation practice, although golden retrievers are very much in the in the present moment. And then there's the human realm, which we'll come back to. And then there are the heavenly realms where you apparently have these celestial creatures that live in states of with a lot of pleasure. And so you're there, as as Santa Chita said, that not a lot of motivation to practice. But in this in between space where

• 26:37Dan Harris?

  we are existing as humans, it's the right mixture of pleasure and pain that can motivate us to meditate and engage in other forms of mind training that can wake us up and get us back to seeing through our patterns so that we're not owned by them. How did I do there? Is that roughly correct?

• 26:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, right, exactly. That's what I was wanting to point out, yeah.

• 27:00Dan Harris?

  So again, just on a practical tip, in order to develop this attunement that you're talking about, let's talk about some tools. I mean, obviously meditation is one of them. Is there more to say specifically about meditation? Are there other tools that we should also talk about?

• 27:17Speaker 01

  I think, you know, meditation is one and then ethics is one, you know, because then you don't have to constantly, you know, clean up after yourself. Then you look after your health, you know, after your body. Then also right livelihood is also important, you know. To make the money you need to live, make it in a in an ethical way, as ethical as possible, you know. I think that that is like on a world level, you know, the the very important points, yeah. And then maybe, you know, find a teacher, find a guide who knows who's a bit further along on the path than yourself, who can maybe help you, you know, to point out the way

• 28:01Speaker 01

  and have maybe some mentor or some teacher to meet on a regular basis. Maybe I'm joining a group who meditates maybe regularly because it's easier, you know, to to do it if you have community.

• 28:16Dan Harris?

  Yeah, and the Buddha talked a lot about this. I mean, I've been told that the story I'm about to tell is not quite accurate, but but it is a story that gets passed around a lot, that the Buddha one day was approached by his cousin and attendant Ananda. Ananda was like his constant companion, but at some point, Ananda had been away, hanging out with some other monks. And he came back all enthusiastic to the to the Buddha and said, you know, just hanging out with these other monks and nuns, it's it's so, it's so important, it's so enlivening, it's like half the path. And the Buddha said, no, no, no, it's it's it's the whole path.

• 28:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, correct. That's what he said, yeah. Because it can be, you know, that sometimes we come into dead end roads or into some kind of a difficult situation. And it's really that relationship with others can really keep, help us to keep going, you know, until we are strong again and can continue. I have definitely experienced that in my life several times, you know, where it was really a relationship to a friend which kept me going, you know, when I was hardly capable to go, you know. But at least I didn't turn back or anything because I had that, I could lean on to that. Well, lean on into the the schedule in the monastery, for example, you know.

• 29:38Speaker 01

  Monasteries are created in a way for that, you know, that if you have a little breakdown or you can't go on, then the the schedule just carries you, you know, until you can get on your feet again. And you can create something like that through friends, you know, and of our family members who give you that kind of care.

• 29:58Dan Harris?

  What about for people who think like, I don't actually have that many supportive people in my life and I certainly don't have access to a great teacher or mentor?

• 30:06Speaker 01

  I think that's something, you know, we can, we can look for. There's lots of sanghas, you know, sangha is the Pali word for community. To find a a little community in your area, you know, which meets either in person or if that's not possible. There's also online communities where, you know, they meet maybe once a week. I myself have a little online community, we meet on Wednesdays, for example. I think that's very, very valuable. And then, you know, going on retreats sometimes, which is a community thing as well. If somebody really wants to find a teacher, like I, you know, after my mother died, I felt a very strong urge to find a teacher. That was like in 1988.

• 30:50Speaker 01

  It was almost 40 years ago. There was no internet. I was in Austria. I mean, I didn't know at all how to go about it. But I started to pray, you know? I started to ask for that I need to find my teacher and I ask for guidance. And one and a half years later, I found him. And I don't, you know, necessarily expect people to pray. But I mean, you know, just put out the word and say, you know, whoever is out here in this universe, you know, I, I really need a teacher, please help. It's gonna happen. It's, it's a very mysterious process, really. Once you have gotten like a hint of the, of the fact, you know, that this universe

• 31:32Speaker 01

  is intelligent and responsive, it's awesome. You know, there's really a feeling of being part of something so much bigger than oneself and a sense of belonging, you know, which is very energizing and exciting and awe inspiring, you know? And, and it's that kind of opening which kind of is magnifying your aspiration.

• 32:00Dan Harris?

  I'm just gonna press you on that again, because I, I love what you're saying. And I can imagine people thinking, I just don't feel it. I don't, I get intellectually, this is a, you know, majestic, mysterious universe in which we're living, but I don't feel it for myself.

• 32:19Speaker 01

  You know, and that's exactly, that takes us back to what you said then about the attunement, you know? Because you can't feel it yet, because there's all of those filters and all of those expectations and assumptions, how it needs to be in order to be something. We have all of those filters, our whole equipment, you know, is dull. And it hasn't been polished and sharpened, you know, for the time it needs to. It's like learning a different language, you know? If you learn a different language, I mean, it's not gonna be a one day affair, you know? Even learn to drive a car or play an instrument.

• 33:01Speaker 01

  It requires to go through the frustration of thinking, I can't do this. I don't know how to do it, you know? It's so much work, all of that. It's, it's not different from learning any other skill. It requires our input, our dedication. And this is why it's so important, you know, to have a teacher, a mentor, who is already ahead of us, who has no doubt, you know, it can be done. And who remembers how he or she was, you know, when the, when the instrument wasn't yet tuned. And then he can say, just keep going, keep going, you know? That's what my teachers told me. I mean, I didn't know what I was doing, but I looked at them and I, I knew they were, they spoke the truth, you know?

• 33:45Dan Harris?

  That sounds right to me.

• 33:47Speaker 01

  Like when somebody asks, you know, how does chocolate taste? Ask somebody who already has eaten it. They can't really exactly explain, but they can say, it's so good, you need to try. You know what I mean? And then as soon as you get your hands on it, you try. And then, you know, for yourself. But first you need to take it, take their word, you know? You don't need to believe it, but to just not negate the possibility. And, and for that, we need a role model, you know, who talks to us because they kind of, there's an alchemy or something, you know? It couldn't be anybody. It has to be somebody who is, is the right one for you, you know?

• 34:25Dan Harris?

  Yeah. And if you don't have access to a great teacher, I mean, reading great books, listening to people like you on podcasts, signing up for online groups.

• 34:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 34:36Dan Harris?

  There are lots of options, options that didn't exist in 1988.

• 34:39Speaker 01

  Absolutely not. Yeah, yeah. And sometimes it can even be enough, you know, to just look at an image of someone, you know, who inspires you. And, and then if we are really giving ourselves to the, to the quest, you know, there is a response and we need to give up the idea, it's gonna be exactly the way we want it to be, because it might be completely different, you know? And that's what is so difficult for people, you know, who have had a lot of comfort and a lot of agency and control in their lives, because this is something you can't control. Because the whole spiritual path is about giving up control, you know? And this is like kind of, oh my God, you know?

• 35:23Speaker 01

  But that's what it is. And, you know, when you had your experience, you gave up control because you, you were forced to. And then afterwards, you know, you got a taste of something, you knew what you were looking for. And then it's just like feeling your way, you know?

• 35:41Dan Harris?

  Just, just to say for, for viewers and listeners who aren't familiar with every aspect of my backstory, the experience that you're referring to is the panic attack I had on television more than 20 years ago, which kind of set me off on, on the path toward meditation. And yeah, it sucked in the moment and I'm very glad it happened.

• 36:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. That's what I mean, you know? This is like the essence of the path is, you know, it sucked when it happened, but I'm very glad it happened because otherwise I would have stayed in that small world.

• 36:14Dan Harris?

  Yes, yes.

• 36:15Speaker 01

  Till I die, you know?

• 36:17Dan Harris?

  My meditation teacher, Joseph Goldstein, likes to say, don't waste your suffering.

• 36:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 36:24Dan Harris?

  I was giving a commencement address the other day to a bunch of 18 year olds and, you know, just making this case that life is not an escalator. It is, it is not gonna be an unbroken upward trajectory. It's gonna have these setbacks. But the key cognitive reframe is you don't have to enjoy the setbacks, but eventually wake up and see that they are opportunities.

• 36:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. You know, and there's a very beautiful saying of Achan Cha, who is the founder of the lineage I, I trained in. And he said, you know, there's two kinds of suffering, the suffering which leads in circles and the suffering which leads out of suffering. That's the approach we need to do, because there will always be things, you know, going quote unquote, wrong. But what we do with those things makes all of the difference, you know?

• 37:17Dan Harris?

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• 38:01Dan Harris?

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• 38:43Dan Harris?

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• 39:23Dan Harris?

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• 40:06Dan Harris?

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• 40:49Dan Harris?

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• 41:34Dan Harris?

  In the memo that you and Marissa Schneiderman prepared for me in order to get ready for this discussion, one of the things that I noticed that you wanted to talk about was patience. Why is patience such an important quality of mind?

• 41:53Speaker 01

  When I was like younger, you know, I always thought patience is something for old ladies, you know, who just like have given up on life, you know? And I'm just generally quite impatient compared with other people. And my father was also quite impatient. And then later on, you know, when I started to meditate, I understood how much fear under impatience is, how much fear of not being able to wait, you know, of wanting to know it immediately and not being able to tolerate not knowing, you know, uncertainty. And what a great asset that is in one's life if we can tolerate that, you know, if we can wait, if we can open up, if we can trust.

• 42:38Speaker 01

  It's a huge benefit to our lives, not interfering too quickly and allowing life to speak for itself.

• 42:46Dan Harris?

  What do you recommend as tools, here I go again, for training patience, for training tolerance and uncertainty?

• 42:55Speaker 01

  I think meditation is that tool, really. Because in meditation, we usually either sit or walk. And it's not about achieving anything, but it's more being with what is and not trying to change what is, but allowing it to fully show itself. And that requires, you know, slowing down, stopping, and observing habitual responses and not acting on them. But having the capacity to hold steady and experience the urges without necessarily reacting,

• 43:37Speaker 01

  but choosing to respond, but not being forced to react. And that's a vast difference, you know, reacting or responding, as you know. This all makes all of the difference in a meeting, in a relationship with your children, with your husband. It's always makes a huge difference, you know, if you can choose to respond after you've taken a breath or two and not immediately have to react because you can't hold the discomfort of the energy.

• 44:10Dan Harris?

  You know, there's a way in which meditation can feel either stupid or impossible because you sit, you try to focus on your breath, and then you're just ambushed by all of these distractions. That is the thing, being willing to sit with the fact that your mind is so unruly and having the grit and the perseverance to start again and again and again. That's not like a beginner practice, that is the practice.

• 44:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. A million times, two million times, to just come back to the breath or whatever your object is of meditation, yeah? You know, to have the capacity to come back to it again and again. And you know what we are training is, you know, letting go of those patterns and coming back and letting go and coming back. And it doesn't matter how often. But what matters is as soon as you're noticing that you're caught, you let go and you come back, you know? And that's it. It's, you know, and what I often say to people at the beginning of meditation, I say, you know, meditation isn't about having a different experience than from the experience you are having, but it's having it consciously.

• 45:22Speaker 01

  It's a very ordinary thing, you know? It's not about wonderful, you know, experiences. Even sometimes it can happen, you know? But that's not the reason why we meditate. We meditate in order to be less caught in those patterns, you know?

• 45:38Dan Harris?

  Yes, because if you sit and watch your mind in all of its ridiculousness and glory, after a while, you just don't take it as seriously and you develop the capacity to withstand it when, you know, the thought pops into your mind like to say or do something horrible. You just can, after a while, just notice, oh, it's just a thought, I can let it go. And all of that power comes from doing this very ordinary thing of sitting and trying to focus on your breath and getting humiliated over and over.

• 46:13Speaker 01

  And in the beginning, you know, we might hear people saying what you just said and I just said, but we can't believe it because we think it must be something much more special than that, you know? But it is, it's so ordinary. And because it's so ordinary, it's hard to explain the power it has, yeah? Because the power lies in the capacity to no longer identify with those patterns and to choose to just let them go, you know? Let them do their thing, they're like the clouds in the sky. We don't need to grasp the clouds. We can then just give it the space they need. They're just gonna come and go, none of my business, you know?

• 46:55Dan Harris?

  And we said this earlier, but I think it bears repeating at this juncture, that this practice of meditation, which really anybody can do, it is not, you know, for nuns and monks or for podcasters. It really is for everybody. Over time, what happens as you are less caught by your thoughts is you cannot tune, which is where we began this conversation. This is how you can start to, you know, and this sounds kind of highfalutin, but like, listen to the Dharma, listen to the world, listen to reality.

• 47:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. That's how it is, yeah. Because there's more space, you know? And we don't need to get involved with every little thing. And then there is the capacity, there's the spaciousness to listen to something much bigger than yourself and feel a sense of belonging and even a sense of guidance, you know, if you want to use that word.

• 47:53Dan Harris?

  In your conversation with Marissa, one thing you said that is often, you pointed out that one of the missing pieces in the West for people interested in self-improvement, personal growth, spiritual development, whatever you want to call it, is devotion. What does that mean, devotion?

• 48:11Speaker 01

  You know, when Buddhism was exported, quote unquote, you know, like 30, 40 years ago with Joseph Goldstein and C. Kornfeld, Sharon Salzberg and others, you know, who brought it from Asia, and my teacher, John Sumedo, brought it from Asia to the West. In order to be able to land it at IMS and at Spirit Rock and other centers, it had to be stripped from folklore, so to say, you know? Because people had no tolerance for that and they didn't want to learn about, you know, the more traditional ways, the religious forms, you know, from Asia. They only wanted the meditation. And there was the understanding that, you know,

• 48:56Speaker 01

  if you meditate really hard, then you're gonna get enlightened and then you're gonna be done. But then, you know, people were meditating for 20, 30 years and it became clear, you know, there is more needed than just following the meditation instructions because we need also to take care of our heart. And devotional practices and a devotional approach to that which is much vaster than ourselves can give us the buoyancy, you know, to stay engaged with the practice and to open to that which is difficult to meet in ourselves, you know? And also like a sense of lineage, you know, that we are part of a lineage which has been transported, you know,

• 49:41Speaker 01

  from Asia to the West and is over 2,600 years old. And a sense of, you know, the ancient ones, the ancestors, those who have passed down the teaching over the centuries. And, yeah, and a sense of respect and reverence for that too.

• 50:00Dan Harris?

  So what does a devotional practice look like?

• 50:03Speaker 01

  There's formal devotional practices like chanting, bowing, making offerings, reciting certain prayers. And that's like a more formal practice, but it can also be like a general practice of gratitude, you know, for everything which gives us life and which enables us to practice. And at this day and age, I would also say, you know, to recognize the earth as the foundation of that which gives life to our bodies, you know? The modern human world, you know, as a very important source of intelligence in this day and age, you know, where we start to see more and more clearly

• 50:48Speaker 01

  that the human species is one of the youngest species on this planet and quite immature, you know, very self-obsessed. And it's all about us, what can we get out of this, you know? And we have kind of maneuvered ourselves into a kilted sack, you know, I feel. There is a need for the humility, which is necessary to understand that, you know, we are dependent on all other species for everything. We have everything we are, we constantly eat, drink and breathe the planet, you know? And we never cut the umbilical cord to the planet. Without this biosphere, you know, we cannot live.

• 51:31Speaker 01

  This is not a stage on which we are walking around, taking what we like and throwing away what we don't like. But we are participants, if we like it or not, you know? And it's time for us to wake up to that truth, I think.

• 51:45Dan Harris?

  And in terms of waking up to that truth, is it as simple as spending more time outside?

• 51:50Speaker 01

  No, I think it's not that simple. I mean, that's definitely very helpful, you know? But already when I was a child and I was really interested in indigenous ways of looking at life that brought me later on to study cultural anthropology and so on. And at this day and age now, you know, I feel... That Western cultures can learn a lot from indigenous ways of looking at life, you know, who see the earth as a living intelligent being we belong to, like cells, you know, inside of a big body. And a cell doesn't need to know, you know, what it's doing.

• 52:32Speaker 01

  It just attunes to the bigger orchestra of that vast body. And, and that's what I work with at this time, you know, that the Buddhist teaching has given me a lot of capacity, you know, to work with my mind. But the Buddhist teaching was also transmitted to us inside of patriarchy, you know, inside of the worldview of domination and the assumption of what I call human supremacy assumption, you know, that thinking this is all about us here, this planet with all of its beautiful and terrifying things, relating it all back to us, you know, very human centric way of looking.

• 53:16Speaker 01

  And I like to orient myself inside of a more indigenous way of looking, which is about relating to the earth as a living intelligent being, which has been able to sustain life for almost five billion years, you know, without anybody telling her how to do it. It's an inbuilt intelligence. And I think, you know, this is for me, a new way how I understand the Dhamma to present itself. Because, you know, the teachings, the core teachings of the Buddha Dhamma are timeless,

• 53:56Speaker 01

  but they are passed on inside of a packaging which is historical, you know, and we are now at the threshold where we are basically stepping out of a dying paradigm, you know, industrialist, capitalist, patriarch, patriarchal paradigm of domination into a new way of understanding ourselves as being part of a living intelligent earth.

• 54:27Dan Harris?

  It's interesting. I, I sometimes think, I'm not sure whether the paradigm is dying, but if it doesn't die, we will die.

• 54:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is dying. If we look at it with the mind of the old paradigm, it all looks impossible. But I also like to quote, you know, Albert Einstein, who is on record for saying, you can't solve a problem from the same level of consciousness which created it. So, you know, if you look at all of what's happening from the dominator paradigm, that you have to fix it and you look at it, it looks impossible. But if I look at it in a way like, I would like to volunteer, to become part of the immune system of the earth. And then I don't need to, it's not up to me to fix all of this, you know? I don't think human beings are per se bad or have done something wrong.

• 55:23Speaker 01

  It's just immature, you know? Our species is like maybe in a toddler stage, you know? That's all about me and if I don't get it, I'm gonna throw a tantrum. Like the president of the United States is a toddler, you know, on the world stage and it's rather embarrassing. But, you know, he drives it really home how immature we are, you know, that somebody like that can be, keep holding such an important office and nobody can stop him. That means it's all really right out of control right now. And I think this is a really big teaching moment. You know, more and more cracks in the old paradigm are showing up.

• 56:07Speaker 01

  And rather than trying to glue those cracks together again and keep on going with the old ways of doing things, to listen into the cracks and see what wants to be born. And listening and making ourselves available, attuning to that, that's what I try to do these days, you know?

• 56:30Dan Harris?

  I wear a lot of T-shirts because I work from home and I'm a podcaster and so I can be as casual as I want. And it's a nice little way to rebel against several decades in the news business when I had to wear a suit all the time. And anyway, the other day I was putting on a T-shirt and I thought, man, is this one of these, it looks really good. And I was wondering, is this one of these expensive T-shirts that I got for my birthday, that my wife got for me? And then I realized, no, this is a T-shirt from Quince, which did not cost me much money at all. And by the way, is much nicer and more comfortable and better looking than all of the expensive T-shirts that I recently got for the aforementioned birthday. You know those pieces in your closet that you find yourself wearing on repeat? The sweater that goes with everything?

• 57:13Dan Harris?

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• 57:55Dan Harris?

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• 58:38Dan Harris?

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• 59:22Dan Harris?

  So I look at Trump and, you know, I find myself kind of daily refreshing the New York Times Trump approval rating tracker and find it incredibly disturbing that I think as of this recording, he's at 38%. But given everything he's done, the attacks on the rule of law, the pardoning of all the January 6 folks, the, you know, lurching into war clearly without having thought about it, this sort of casual cruelty toward our most vulnerable, I could go on. The unhinged social media posts, the tsunami of lies. And 38% of Americans are cool with this, like they approve.

• 1:00:07Dan Harris?

  And that makes me impatient. I also get impatient when I think about the state of the planet. And in light of all the things you said about the fact that we kind of need to evolve or potentially perish. And I feel impatient. And so I'm just wondering, how do you hold these views about the potential for change while imbibing all of the evidence to the contrary?

• 1:00:39Speaker 01

  Just what you said, I also feel impatient, you know? But I'm not gonna kind of act from that place, you know? I also feel impatient. I also feel kind of uncertain how it's gonna work out. But I try to channel my energy in a way which is most effective to be part of the change I wanna see, you know? To become part of the immune system of the earth. I do what I can and then I need to let go, you know? And you, you obviously do what you can. And if everybody do, do what they can, that's how it's gonna happen, you know?

• 1:01:19Dan Harris?

  Do what you can and then let go.

• 1:01:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:23Dan Harris?

  That seems like a recipe for sanity. It's like you have agency, you're taking action and you recognize like, most of this shit is totally out of my control.

• 1:01:33Speaker 01

  But you know, but if, let's say if, if everybody would see it that way, we would be living in a much more sane world. But obviously, you know, there's lots of people who are still so caught in the paradigm that there is some big man who is gonna fix it for us. You know, because this is, you know, this is the old paradigm. It's written all over the Bible. It's written all over the Patrick. He, the unwillingness to take responsibility, to be accountable, being here on this planet, you know?

• 1:02:05Dan Harris?

  I do want to reference something that came up in the prep document that you, that Marissa prepared for me. You actually did have a very practical idea in terms of cultivating patience that we can do the next time we find ourselves waiting in line.

• 1:02:20Speaker 01

  You can train yourself in patience in very ordinary circumstances, waiting in line at the checkout at the supermarket. And, and then waiting in line wherever you need to wait in line. And rather than seeing that as, oh, my God, you know, I'm wasting my time. You can say, no, I'm using that now to train my capacity for patience, you know? And, and I really have had very lovely experiences waiting in the line in the supermarket. And it's not very often that there's impatient people. I've had very, you know, really good experiences and so lot of kindness

• 1:03:03Speaker 01

  being enacted in this way. It's a great human quality. And once you have seen it, you know, how good it feels if I observe other people who do that in a, in an elegant way or in a respectful way. I wanna be like that, you know?

• 1:03:20Dan Harris?

  Yeah, you see it in parents, good parents are, are patient. Many of the dumbest things I've done emerge out of rushing.

• 1:03:29Speaker 01

  And rushing comes from the inability to hold steady, the, you know, the contracted energy because it's kind of painful. And it feels like there's not enough space, you know, in me to allow it to just arise and cease, you know? But then when you have done it a few times, you know, it's, it's not true. It's just, it's just an idea. And this is so much, isn't it part of a consumerist culture? It's all about immediate gratification. It's so much part of the paradigm. You know, we need to train ourselves consciously, yeah?

• 1:04:06Dan Harris?

  Speaking of training, there was something else I noticed that you recommend, tuning into the feeling of longing in your heart.

• 1:04:13Speaker 01

  You could say, you know, the GPS for the path, that, that the longing, because the heart already knows, you know, that we belong to something so much bigger than ourselves. And, and there is this longing which gets often kind of sidetracked in consumer culture, you know, about shopping more and getting this or getting that and then feeling satisfied probably for a moment. But then the longing keeps on going because the longing wants something much more sophisticated than just buying the next thing.

• 1:04:54Speaker 01

  It's, it's a sense of purpose in life and, and a sense of belonging. Meditation, you know, I feel is, is a technology, you know, which can connect us with that. And as we are starting to sense into that, you know, it's like a, an intuitive knowing, you know, which, which can guide us. You know, things happen in our lives. A book falls into your hands, a friend sends you some information. There is a mystery to, to that guidance. You know, once you acknowledge the longing for that, it just responds, you know?

• 1:05:36Speaker 01

  It's, it's very hard to describe, but I have experienced it and I think you have experienced it too.

• 1:05:42Dan Harris?

  There's something about turning this nagging sense of insufficiency, this nagging sense of never enough to our advantage. That if you, if you really see it clearly, it's onward leading.

• 1:05:56Speaker 01

  Exactly. That's what I meant to say. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You know, because if you think it's all about, because of the way, you know, how we are informed in this culture is if you have that nagging sense of not enough, you haven't bought the right things, right? And then if you start to meet other people, you know, who have related to that nagging sense in a different way, like you or me or my teachers and so on, then you have a sense that there is something different. And then your capacity to look for that fulfillment opens up into other avenues of, of possibility.

• 1:06:40Speaker 01

  And that's what a teacher or a mentor is here, you know, for, to stretch your assumption, to stretch your expectations, to help you to open up some space for something new to enter your life. And I think that's what you try to do with your podcast, isn't it? To give people hints that there is other possibilities to meet that sense of not enoughness.

• 1:07:05Dan Harris?

  Honestly, a lot of what I'm doing on the podcast is reminding myself over and over of the things I need to not forget.

• 1:07:14Speaker 01

  You know, when you teach or in your case, you know, you teaching in a way by interviewing people, you actually learn so much through that, isn't it?

• 1:07:23Dan Harris?

  Yes.

• 1:07:24Speaker 01

  It is just, you know, that, that the willingness to try on something different and to trust the person who is introducing it enough that you are willing to try it on without immediately throwing it out the window if it doesn't work within one minute. That's all what's needed, you know? And some things won't be the right thing for a particular person. But if we keep going, it's, it's gonna come. I mean, there's so many different methods, so many different approaches, so many different traditions and practices. But they all are, you know, pointing towards the same direction. And some might speak to us much more loud than others, you know?

• 1:08:08Dan Harris?

  It's been such a pleasure to talk with you. Is, is, is there something you were hoping we would get to that we haven't gotten to?

• 1:08:15Speaker 01

  You know, what I'd like to say in parting is what's new about spiritual practice at this time is that we really have to question, you know, as a human beings, we have to question the old paradigm of the centrality of the human species on this planet and really take an interest in the biosphere, in all species working together to give us life and find the most beneficial place in all of this. The benefit is, is great, you know, not just for us, but for future generations. This is what gives me a lot of energy these days, you know,

• 1:08:59Speaker 01

  to find a way to bring the Buddha Dhamma into a new way of looking at spiritual practice for the 21st century.

• 1:09:11Dan Harris?

  Because that is what's needed right now, especially to get over this human, human centrism.

• 1:09:16Speaker 01

  I think that's most important, what's needed. And we can really, you know, lean into the Buddhist teaching as a scaffolding to hold us as we are going over this threshold because it's a rocky time, you know?

• 1:09:32Dan Harris?

  How would a, an individual human life change if, if one could get a toehold in what you're talking about? If I started to see myself instead of some sort of separate entity, you know, using the earth as a backdrop for my personal performance, instead move to like, as you said before, a cell that is a small part of a, a living, a larger living organism? How would my life likely change if I could really internalize that?

• 1:10:04Speaker 01

  You know, I can't really tell you that, you know? Everybody has to find out for themselves. And I think it's a, it's a multi-generational, you know, process. And we can begin that and see what happens. I can't really say it, but since I am taking more interest in that, you know, since about four years or so that I really work with that consciously, my life has changed in a way that I live now, you know, in a, in a small temple space north of San Francisco, which is called Dialoka Earth Room, which is a, it's a place where I'm weaving together Buddhism and Earth awareness. So, you know, my life has taken on.

• 1:10:51Speaker 01

  A different expression since that is more central to my practice. And, and I'm sure, you know, that for everyone it will express differently, but it will find a way, you know, because the earth has been finding a way to sustain life since almost five billion years without anybody telling her what to do. And it's more like I'm asking her, what can I do to use what I have and who I am at this point in my life to support the process?

• 1:11:27Dan Harris?

  If people want to learn more about you and from you, how can they do so?

• 1:11:30Speaker 01

  The people can visit my website and I have every Wednesday from nine to 10 a.m. Pacific time, I have an online community. We are meeting for practice for one hour and then there's 15 minutes for Q and A at the end. And then many other retreats and other opportunities online and in person you can find on my website. And I just recently, you know, brought out a book which is called, What Are You Waiting For? You can find all of that on my website.

• 1:12:03Dan Harris?

  Okay, we will put a link to that in the show notes. Well, you just said what I was hoping to say to you. Thank you. It was such a pleasure to, to meet you, albeit virtually. And yeah, I just, I'm really grateful for your time.

• 1:12:15Speaker 01

  Thank you, Dan. I'm also very glad that you invited me and, and thank you so much and all the best for your life.

• 1:12:24Dan Harris?

  Thank you. I appreciate it. I need it. And right back at you.

• 1:12:30Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:12:32Dan Harris?

  Also, a quick ask before I let you go. If you've got a minute, head on over to danharris.com and sign up for my newsletter. It drops in your inbox on Monday mornings, often a busy and stressful time for us. I try to write a short essay that has a little bit of wisdom, actionable, practical wisdom that you can immediately weave into your life on Monday mornings. A lot of people find them helpful and I hope you will too. You can sign up at danharris.com. It's totally free. Now to the credits. Thank you so much to everybody who works so hard to make this show. 10% Happier is produced by Tara Anderson, Barissa Schneiderman, DJ Kashmir, David Hart, and Hayden Broome.

• 1:13:12Dan Harris?

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