Speaker 1: Pushkin. One of the biggest lies our minds tell us
Speaker 1: is that happiness will be ours if we can just
Speaker 1: get the next thing we really want. That if we
Speaker 1: only got that new promotion, or that new love interest,
Speaker 1: or that new outfit, then we'd finally be eternally happy.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's true that all of those things will
Speaker 1: give us some joy, but the effects are more fleeting
Speaker 1: than we think. Many things we yearn and strive for
Speaker 1: are fragile. Dresses, rip companies, fold, lovers leave, or die.
Speaker 1: That means we end up grieving for the happiness we've
Speaker 1: lost and thirsting for something new. Yet again, there are
Speaker 1: good reasons rooted in evolution for all this constant striving,
Speaker 1: but it comes at an emotional cost, and it's the
Speaker 1: root of lots of heartache and suffering. So in this
Speaker 1: final episode of our historical minis, we're reaching way way
Speaker 1: back in time to a thinker who recognized the sadness
Speaker 1: that hunger, yearning, and loss can bring, and one who
Speaker 1: also offered us a way to deal with the pain. Today,
Speaker 1: we're turning to the Buddha. Welcome back to happiness Lessons
Speaker 1: of the Ancients with me, Doctor Laurie santos oh Man.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I can do a quick Buddha
Speaker 1: one oh one. I love telling and retelling the story
Speaker 1: of the Buddha. This is Liz Angowski. She's a fellow
Speaker 1: in my residential college here at Yale and also one
Speaker 1: of my really close friends. But more pertinently, she's also
Speaker 1: an assistant professor of Religion at Earlham College. Liz teaches
Speaker 1: an introductory course on Buddhism. For her. Particular areas of
Speaker 1: expertise are the men and women who really mastered the
Speaker 1: Buddhist teachings. I'm interested in why particular figures can both
Speaker 1: inspire and kind of profoundly unnerve people by being too good.
Speaker 1: A friend of mine described me as somebody who studies
Speaker 1: Buddhist overachievers and the trouble they cause. Buddhism is a
Speaker 1: vast subject, but I really wanted to laser in on
Speaker 1: one aspect, in particular, how the Buddha came to understand
Speaker 1: that life is full of unavoidable disappointment and suffering. We
Speaker 1: don't have information about the Buddha that is contemporaneous with him.
Speaker 1: We think he lived between the sixth century BC and
Speaker 1: the fourth century BC and he was born in Limbidi,
Speaker 1: which is now modern day Nepal. The tradition holds that
Speaker 1: he was born the son of a king, or at
Speaker 1: least we think, a wealthy clan leader, and his upbringing
Speaker 1: was one of total opulence. He was born and raised
Speaker 1: in a palace, and he never had to leave that palace.
Speaker 1: He never had to see the outside world at all.
Speaker 1: And when he is born, a seer or susayer was
Speaker 1: brought in to predict his future, and the seer reports
Speaker 1: to the Buddhist father Suddodana the Buddha will either be
Speaker 1: a chako artin so an emperor of the whole world,
Speaker 1: or a dropout who was referred to as Ashramana. So understandably,
Speaker 1: Suda wants to keep the Buddha in the palace. He
Speaker 1: wants to ensure that his son will grow up to
Speaker 1: become a king, maybe even one that's more successful than
Speaker 1: he is. And so he surrounds him with everything anyone
Speaker 1: could possibly want. He has all of the archery equipment
Speaker 1: he could possibly need, the finest horses, etc. And then
Speaker 1: you know, one day he kind of overhears a song
Speaker 1: about how beautiful the parks in this city are you know,
Speaker 1: I haven't seen these parks. I should probably go out
Speaker 1: to these parks, these pleasure groves and see what's happening
Speaker 1: out there. His father's apprehensive about this, and he decides
Speaker 1: that I'm going to let him go out. However, I'm
Speaker 1: going to I'm going to clean up the streets. I'm
Speaker 1: going to remove all undesirable things, older people, sick people, etc.
Speaker 1: But what happens is the Bodhisatta he goes out and
Speaker 1: the gods manifest first an old man. They decide that
Speaker 1: the Bodhisatta should see what Samsara the cycle of existence
Speaker 1: does to people, people age, and the Buddhistafta he's totally
Speaker 1: shocked by this, you know, and he asks his chariot tear,
Speaker 1: what is going on here? Like? What is wrong with
Speaker 1: that man? Is it a trick of the eye? Is
Speaker 1: that going to happen to me? He cannot really process
Speaker 1: what this being is. So the charioteer explains to him,
Speaker 1: you know, that's that's an old man. This charioteer is.
Speaker 1: He's hipped everything he knows. And then they return to
Speaker 1: the palace and the Buddhisfta can't stop thinking about the
Speaker 1: old man, so He's like, I need to go back
Speaker 1: out there. I need to kind of figure this out
Speaker 1: and see. So he goes back out and he sees
Speaker 1: a sick man, and then again we repeat this process.
Speaker 1: He sees a corpse and the cherio tear. You know,
Speaker 1: just this is a part of life. We age, we
Speaker 1: get sick, we die. Eventually he goes out, he sees
Speaker 1: one of these kind of stramaa guys. He's a set
Speaker 1: x who's dropped out and he looks peaceful. The Buddhisatta
Speaker 1: is like, you know, I want to be like this guy.
Speaker 1: So the dad didn't do such an awesome job by
Speaker 1: like the God's intervened to sort it out for Buddha
Speaker 1: to see that all this stuff, But it sounds like
Speaker 1: this suffering really had a huge effect on him. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The idea that the Buddhisatta would have made it into
Speaker 1: his thirties without ever having gotten sick himself or realize
Speaker 1: that people are aging is kind of a, you know,
Speaker 1: surprising idea to most people who read these accounts. You
Speaker 1: have to take this with something of a grain of salt.
Speaker 1: But eventually he asks to be allowed to leave the palace.
Speaker 1: His father says no. His father doesn't want to part
Speaker 1: with him. It's actually a very moving part of the
Speaker 1: Buddha Charta, the life of the Buddha. There's an emotional
Speaker 1: scene between them in which the Buddhisatta says, you know,
Speaker 1: if you can guarantee me that we won't part in
Speaker 1: this life because of death, then I'll stay. And because
Speaker 1: his father can't really guarantee him that, you know, there's
Speaker 1: this moment of realization that the father cannot provide really
Speaker 1: everything that he wants, which is an answer to this
Speaker 1: huge problem of not only death, but death and rebirth.
Speaker 1: Something I have to frequently emphasize for folks are unfamiliar
Speaker 1: is that, you know, karma keeps bringing you back. It's
Speaker 1: not just death, it's redeath. It's not just birth, it's
Speaker 1: rebirth right. And so eventually he's able to leave the palace.
Speaker 1: He escapes the palace, and then he's well on his
Speaker 1: way to becoming the Buddha. Just a detail that I
Speaker 1: think about a lot is that the horse that was
Speaker 1: leading the chariot that brought him out several times to
Speaker 1: see the sites, the old man, the sick man, the corpse,
Speaker 1: the horse Kantika. He brings the Budhisada out for the
Speaker 1: eventual escape, and then he dies of a broken heart
Speaker 1: because he's so sad to leave his owner. People just
Speaker 1: love the Buddha. I mean, everyone loves the Buddha. The
Speaker 1: sadness around him leaving is really profound. And so the
Speaker 1: Buddisafa now goes out and he says, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: going to find a teacher, someone to help me figure
Speaker 1: this stuff out. One of these traumaas. After having tried
Speaker 1: out different paths, He's like, I can neither go the
Speaker 1: way of hedonism nor the way of total self mortification.
Speaker 1: These are not the ways for me. Some accounts will say,
Speaker 1: you know, he has this memory of being at a
Speaker 1: fest of all that his father was throwing, and he
Speaker 1: sat under a shady tree and felt some calm, and
Speaker 1: so he decides to sit under a tree and just
Speaker 1: contemplate what it is to be alive, what it means
Speaker 1: to exist. And so then, so how did he go
Speaker 1: from that kind of under the tree moment of contemplation
Speaker 1: to like because he somehow gets to like full enlightenment. Right,
Speaker 1: Oh sure, So he you know, takes a seat under
Speaker 1: the tree and he starts to contemplate everything and he's
Speaker 1: learned up to that point and what he's seen, and
Speaker 1: then he goes through what are called the watches of
Speaker 1: the night. In the first watch, he can see everything
Speaker 1: that has happened to him in the past, as if
Speaker 1: he's reliving these past lives. Not just I know who
Speaker 1: I was in the past, but I now feel again
Speaker 1: whatever the suffering and pain was that I went through
Speaker 1: in that time. From there he sees all of the
Speaker 1: past lives of all other beings, and this moves him
Speaker 1: deeply to have compassion for all of their sentient beings. Finally,
Speaker 1: he comes to the realization that the element at the
Speaker 1: heart of all of this is suffering. Life is duca,
Speaker 1: so this idea that life is stressful at its most
Speaker 1: basic core. At first, when you mentioned duka, you translated
Speaker 1: it as suffering. But what I've heard is that it's
Speaker 1: not really suffering in the way we think of it
Speaker 1: as like kind of pain, right, you know, like kind
Speaker 1: of pain and suffering. It's kind of just like a
Speaker 1: deeper not being really satisfied, right right, that's right. Frequently
Speaker 1: with students all translate it as discomfort or unease. Suffering
Speaker 1: really evokes I think now for individuals the idea of
Speaker 1: physical pain and mental anguish, which which it also includes
Speaker 1: for sure. But the idea is that we're sufferings as
Speaker 1: a part of our fundamental being, you know, because largely
Speaker 1: because we can't accept that things change. Is there end?
Speaker 1: Once he figures out duca, he achieves nirvana, and then
Speaker 1: he became the Voddha. Yeah. I think that as he
Speaker 1: realizes that all things are pervaded by suffering, he also
Speaker 1: realizes there must be a cause for this, and that
Speaker 1: he concludes is tanha. This idea of craving. Sometimes we
Speaker 1: think about it as thirst My students now they love
Speaker 1: to translate it as thirsty, right, But the idea is
Speaker 1: that we continually crave things. And it's not just that
Speaker 1: we are craving central pleasures. We're craving, you know, experiences,
Speaker 1: We're craving even just the sense of stability. We feel
Speaker 1: some desire for things to stay the same, and fundamentally
Speaker 1: everything is impermanent. And so from there the Buddha comes
Speaker 1: to the conclusion that there has to be a way
Speaker 1: for this to stop, and that cessation is the total
Speaker 1: extinguishing of suffering. And how do you get there? What
Speaker 1: is the process by which you come to the total
Speaker 1: cessation or nirvana. Yeah. The reason I love the Buddha
Speaker 1: is that he's really nicely connected to a central topic
Speaker 1: that we talk about a lot on the Happiness lab,
Speaker 1: which is this concept of hedonic adaptation, right, or the
Speaker 1: hedonic treadmill. You can be really happy for a while,
Speaker 1: you can be satisfied in the short term, but then
Speaker 1: basically you just go back to kind of craving new
Speaker 1: stuff and you're kind of on this treadmill where you
Speaker 1: want more and more and more. And that kind of
Speaker 1: seems like this, at least the scientific version of this
Speaker 1: idea of duka, we're kind of never satisfied, in part
Speaker 1: because we have this craving thirstiness, as your students would
Speaker 1: call it, this tanha. Is that that's the word ta, Yeah,
Speaker 1: in part because we have this sort of thirstiness, this
Speaker 1: tanha that is constantly telling us to go for more,
Speaker 1: and so is that kind of what the Buddhist thought
Speaker 1: like is does that kind of fit with what the
Speaker 1: science is suggesting? Yeah, I think that. I mean the
Speaker 1: Buddha's father, Sododnas, you know, his answer to the problem
Speaker 1: of his son potentially leaving home and leaving him is
Speaker 1: you know, I'll just throw more wonderful, delightful things at him.
Speaker 1: He wants to keep him distracted from what might be
Speaker 1: underlying the bigger problem. He wants to put all the
Speaker 1: band aids on the wound rather than addressing the wound itself.
Speaker 1: The Buddha in general is analogized to a doctor. A
Speaker 1: doctor's only really a good doctor if you can give
Speaker 1: a full account of what's on with someone. If you
Speaker 1: don't want to look at the symptoms and then treat
Speaker 1: the superficial symptoms, you want to treat the underlying disease.
Speaker 1: And so really, what is at the heart of it
Speaker 1: is the fact that we can't accept that even the
Speaker 1: most beautiful, wonderful things, the coin will flip and the
Speaker 1: other side of them will be dissatisfaction, suffering, impermanence. It's
Speaker 1: not that beautiful things don't make us happy or material
Speaker 1: things don't make us happy. It's that they don't stay
Speaker 1: and we don't stay happy with them. They change and
Speaker 1: we change our perception of them. I think one of
Speaker 1: the awesome things about the Buddha is that he in
Speaker 1: some ways was like a real early practitioner of self help.
Speaker 1: And you know, his path was like really one of
Speaker 1: the first I think for kind of enlightenment or kind
Speaker 1: of achieving flourishing. I mean, is he sort of thought
Speaker 1: of as a father of self help to a certain extent. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I frequently describe it to my students as a program
Speaker 1: designed to affect self transformation. We want to think about
Speaker 1: it as something that is designed to change your perceptions.
Speaker 1: You are in charge of this program. You take it up,
Speaker 1: and you execute it. Buddhism is an important global faith,
Speaker 1: with a culture and traditions built up over thousands of years.
Speaker 1: We can only scratch the surface of this in a
Speaker 1: single show, But after the break, I'll introduce you to
Speaker 1: someone who created his own program of self transformation using
Speaker 1: parts of the Buddhist teaching, and that transformation worked so
Speaker 1: well he even stopped hating the weeds in his yarn.
Speaker 1: The Happiness Lab will be right back. I don't actually
Speaker 1: call myself a Buddhist, partly out of respect for all
Speaker 1: of those in Asia, especially who means something very different
Speaker 1: by the term. But it's true that I practice certain
Speaker 1: important parts of Buddhism. This is Robert Wright. He's one
Speaker 1: of my favorite science writers and a respected expert on
Speaker 1: evolutionary psychology. Robert is someone you'd probably assume is pretty
Speaker 1: skeptical of the things you read in a religious text,
Speaker 1: but following a brush with Buddhist teachings, he saw that
Speaker 1: this philosophy totally meshes with everything evolution teaches us about
Speaker 1: how humans operate. An obvious example, as we overestimate the
Speaker 1: speed of large things approaching us, you know, better safe
Speaker 1: than sorry, So that's an inaccurate perception. But it's good
Speaker 1: at keeping organisms alive. So we have it. And you know,
Speaker 1: one of Buddhism's main claims is that, well, ay, we
Speaker 1: don't see the world clearly by nature and be that
Speaker 1: that is the source of our suffering and is also
Speaker 1: the reason we make other people suffered. It's an amazing
Speaker 1: claim when you think about it. If we could see
Speaker 1: things more clearly in certain important respects, we would become
Speaker 1: happier and we would become better people. That's like amazing
Speaker 1: if true, and I think it's basically true. Why Buddhism
Speaker 1: Is True is Robert's book on the subject, and while
Speaker 1: Liz Angowski looks at the cultural and religious significance of
Speaker 1: the Buddha, Robert explores the parts of the practice that
Speaker 1: are really supported by scientific research. There are other parts
Speaker 1: of Buddhism that are more in I would say, the
Speaker 1: supernatural or traditionally religious realm having to do with rebirth
Speaker 1: after death. But my book focuses on the naturalistic claims
Speaker 1: made by Buddhism, that is to say, the Buddhist conception
Speaker 1: of human psychology, the validity of human perceptions, this thing
Speaker 1: that we think of as the self. You know what
Speaker 1: is that Buddhism developed an incredibly rich literature which isn't
Speaker 1: all on point by any means. I mean, they have
Speaker 1: these dense psychological texts that divide the mind into a
Speaker 1: billion parts, and a lot of it I can't make
Speaker 1: heads or tails of. But central to a lot of
Speaker 1: these texts is I think, a fundamentally on target view
Speaker 1: of the mind, of the way it works, and maybe
Speaker 1: most important, of what to do about the fact that
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways it doesn't work very well
Speaker 1: if what you're trying to do is be a happy
Speaker 1: person and a good person. I mean, one thing I emphasized,
Speaker 1: the human mind is not designed necessarily to see the
Speaker 1: world clearly, those traits that are conducive to getting the
Speaker 1: genes underlying them into the next generation is the traits
Speaker 1: that we will have, and that includes mental traits. So
Speaker 1: if having a slightly deluded conception of yourself or an
Speaker 1: inaccurate perception of other people or things will help get
Speaker 1: genes into the next generation, then you know our species
Speaker 1: will be inclined towards certain kinds of thoughts and perceptions
Speaker 1: that aren't strictly speaking accurate. One of the things I
Speaker 1: like about Buddhism as a psychologist, and as a psychologist
Speaker 1: who's kind of interested in evolutionary theory, is that he
Speaker 1: kind of got a lot of human psychology right with
Speaker 1: these first few noble truths, right, And so I wanted
Speaker 1: you to dig into us a little bit, these first
Speaker 1: noble truths about this idea of duca or suffering or tanha,
Speaker 1: which is like this idea of criving. So the first
Speaker 1: sermon that he is said to have given after his enlightenment,
Speaker 1: he lays down the foreign noble truths. He asked, what
Speaker 1: is the source of suffering? His answer is just the
Speaker 1: fact that we always want something more right, and gratification
Speaker 1: doesn't last. And when you think about it from a
Speaker 1: Darwinian point of view, this makes total sense. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you imagine two animals, one of them have genes
Speaker 1: that keep the animal perennially restless. In other words, they
Speaker 1: have sex or they eat, they feel better for a
Speaker 1: little while, and that rewards the behavior they got them,
Speaker 1: the section, the food, but then they want more, you know,
Speaker 1: the happiness, the pleasure evaporates. You compare that to an
Speaker 1: animal whose genes provide just enduring contentment after a single meal.
Speaker 1: You're then talking about an animal whose genes are not
Speaker 1: going to get anywhere because the animal is not going
Speaker 1: to live very long or is not going to reproduce
Speaker 1: very successfully. So that's just an example of how one
Speaker 1: of the very first and most fundamental things the Buddha
Speaker 1: lays down makes total sense in light of a theory
Speaker 1: that did not exist when the Buddha laid the truth down,
Speaker 1: nobody knew about natural selection, but it makes sense. And
Speaker 1: also I think nobody knew about all these lovely data
Speaker 1: on hedonic adaptation. Psychologically, right with this idea that you know,
Speaker 1: we're always on this treadmill chasing more and more stuff,
Speaker 1: and even if you get these fantastic things in life,
Speaker 1: you know, you just go back to baseline. Even though
Speaker 1: we don't predict it, right. We have these incorrect theories
Speaker 1: about the fact that, you know, we could be happily
Speaker 1: ever after, we could get this wonderful thing, you know,
Speaker 1: we get a marriage, or get a wonderful circumstance, and
Speaker 1: we're good forever. The data simply suggests psychologically that that's
Speaker 1: just not the case, right, And that is an example
Speaker 1: of delusion in a certain sense. I mean, that's another
Speaker 1: example of how we're designed not to see the world clearly.
Speaker 1: We are designed to keep convincing ourselves that the next
Speaker 1: elevation of status, the next promotion, the next big material
Speaker 1: good is going to make us happier for longer than
Speaker 1: it winds up making us happy. The mind is designed
Speaker 1: to bring us happiness that's not high on natural selections,
Speaker 1: agenda understanding that is the beginning of seeking, you know,
Speaker 1: a more enduring kind of happiness. Even though the hedonic
Speaker 1: treadmill is a tough thing to get around, it really is,
Speaker 1: But a lot of Buddhist practice is designed to get
Speaker 1: around it. And I think that was one of the
Speaker 1: most fantastic things about Buddhist teaching, right, is that he
Speaker 1: didn't just leave us with suffering and craving and say
Speaker 1: that's it. The minds of design this way, we're stuck.
Speaker 1: The teachings actually go beyond that to give us a
Speaker 1: path past this. Right, How did you go from being,
Speaker 1: you know, Robert Write, the Evolutionary Psychologist to Robert Write,
Speaker 1: The Buddhist Sympathizer. Well, in two thousand and three, somebody
Speaker 1: convinced me to go to a meditation retreat, like a
Speaker 1: seven day silent meditation retreat. You meditate intensively, like four
Speaker 1: and a half hours a day is sitting meditation, four
Speaker 1: and a half of walking meditation, maybe a little more.
Speaker 1: Why on earth did you say yes? I feel like
Speaker 1: you know, like like did you known about meditation like cures? Well,
Speaker 1: I guess I should admit to being something of a seeker.
Speaker 1: I was brought up religiously, lost my religion. Maybe that's it,
Speaker 1: But I had certainly flirted with meditation, tried to do it,
Speaker 1: you know, you hear about in college. Every once in
Speaker 1: a while I would try it. It It would never really work.
Speaker 1: I figured, what the hell, I'll try this crazy thing.
Speaker 1: The first couple of days were total hell. I just
Speaker 1: could not focus on my breath. I hated everyone there
Speaker 1: because I was sure they were doing it better. Then
Speaker 1: suddenly something clicked. I had had too much coffee and
Speaker 1: I had this jittery feeling in my jaw. And I'm
Speaker 1: sitting there thinking, God, you can't meditate with jittery feeling
Speaker 1: in jaw. And then suddenly I just had this feeling
Speaker 1: that wait, the feeling is down in my jaw. I'm
Speaker 1: up here, and I suddenly was observing in a way
Speaker 1: that completely neutralized it. And by the end of the
Speaker 1: week my consciousness was completely transformed. It was like magical.
Speaker 1: I mean, like I remember just to here. Beauty of
Speaker 1: things was amazing. I remember walking through the woods and
Speaker 1: seeing this weed called a plantain weed that I had
Speaker 1: spent a lot of time trying to kill because it
Speaker 1: had always infested yards I had had, And I just thought, wait,
Speaker 1: why have I been trying to kill this thing? It's actually,
Speaker 1: objectively speaking, it's as pretty as the other green stuff.
Speaker 1: That I would say is an apprehension of the Buddhist
Speaker 1: idea of emptiness. I had been seeing essence of weed
Speaker 1: in this thing, and that had given me an antagonistic
Speaker 1: feeling toward it. At one level, something trivial was going on.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously weed is an arbitrary label that certain
Speaker 1: cultures assigned to certain plants. Fine, we know that, But
Speaker 1: what was interesting was that I wasn't just being consciously
Speaker 1: aware of the arbitrariness. It was that I realized that
Speaker 1: my perception of the weed had been infused with this
Speaker 1: sense of essence of weed. And when that drops out,
Speaker 1: it's a totally different world. It's hard to describe, and
Speaker 1: the Buddhist concept of emptiness is a very subtle one,
Speaker 1: but I do think it has to do with the
Speaker 1: way that feelings suddenly inform not just our thoughts, but
Speaker 1: are very perceptions of things. And when some of that changes,
Speaker 1: it's amazing how radical your perceptions can change. It's one
Speaker 1: thing to talk about that for weeds, but it feels
Speaker 1: like that could be even more powerful when you're thinking
Speaker 1: about other negative sensations that evolution wants us to avoid,
Speaker 1: like pain or like judgments of people. I mean, you're right,
Speaker 1: it can transform your relationship to pain. It absolutely can,
Speaker 1: believe it or not. You can even look at pain
Speaker 1: and go that's kind of beautiful in a way. You
Speaker 1: can look at sadness and go that's kind of beautiful
Speaker 1: in a way. Again, these are things that are easier
Speaker 1: for me to do on retreat than they are at
Speaker 1: nine thirty am on a regular day, But they're possible,
Speaker 1: and you're right about that. But it's also true that
Speaker 1: you know the way you categorize people without thinking about
Speaker 1: it so much. First of all, I'm too friends and enemies,
Speaker 1: but also along more subtle gradations, sometimes in ways that's unhealthy,
Speaker 1: not good for you, not good for them. And so
Speaker 1: just as I was less judgmental of that weed, I
Speaker 1: found myself being much less judgmental of people by the
Speaker 1: end of the retreat. You know how humans are. They
Speaker 1: size people up on the base of very little evidence.
Speaker 1: I remember at the beginning of the retreat seeing this
Speaker 1: guy with a Juilliard T shirt on it, thinking, oh, Juilliard, Well,
Speaker 1: aren't we special like you know? And by the end
Speaker 1: of the retreat I was much less judgmental, and in fact,
Speaker 1: that guy at the end, when the silence is broken,
Speaker 1: he raised his hand and asked a question, and he
Speaker 1: was this shy, insecure guy, exactly the opposite of the
Speaker 1: way I had stereotyped him. Needless to say, by the
Speaker 1: end of the retreat, I was sold. So give me
Speaker 1: a sense of how meditation actually does that. Because it
Speaker 1: sounds awesome to kind of get control over your feelings
Speaker 1: and deal with your thoughts. But how is sitting there
Speaker 1: and focusing on your breath for ten minutes a day
Speaker 1: actually help you do that? Well, if you can make
Speaker 1: a lot of progress in ten minutes a day, then
Speaker 1: God bless you, and some people can. People's mileage varies.
Speaker 1: You know. I meditate longer than that, and my practice
Speaker 1: still has its ups and downs. But there's an irony
Speaker 1: about meditation, which is that if you quit running away
Speaker 1: from bad feelings and just accept them and kind of
Speaker 1: be with them, get closer to them, you can get
Speaker 1: a more objective perspective on them. Like I recommend it.
Speaker 1: If you're feeling sad, just sit down, close your eyes
Speaker 1: in a quiet room, observe the sadness. I mean, normally
Speaker 1: we try to get away from sadness. We try to
Speaker 1: think something that will make it go away. We try
Speaker 1: to talk to somebody who will pull us out of
Speaker 1: or we just eat something that will help, or take
Speaker 1: a drug. But just sit down and go, Okay, I'm sad.
Speaker 1: What is this thing? Like? Where in my head is
Speaker 1: the feeling or elsewhere in my body, Where are the feelings,
Speaker 1: what are their contours, what are their shapes? You know,
Speaker 1: I predict it before long, you'll find that, oddly, although
Speaker 1: you're closer to the feeling, you have a more objective
Speaker 1: perspective on it. You're in a certain sense more detached
Speaker 1: and closer at the same time. And that is the
Speaker 1: beginning of liberation from a feeling and getting that kind
Speaker 1: of objective purchase on it is the beginning of deciding
Speaker 1: whether you're going to let it govern your thoughts and
Speaker 1: life and the rest of your day. When I've had
Speaker 1: a chance to kind of watch my feelings in the
Speaker 1: way you're talking about, kind of sit with my sadness,
Speaker 1: it seems like it also teaches me this other Buddhist
Speaker 1: ideal of sort of impermanence, right. You know, sometimes when
Speaker 1: you're sad, it can feel like I'm just going to
Speaker 1: feel this way forever. But if you kind of sit
Speaker 1: with it and hang out with it, you know, those
Speaker 1: things go away in this weird sense. So, Yeah, my
Speaker 1: daughters went to teen meditation retreats. One thing the teachers
Speaker 1: emphasize with them is like, think of feelings as like
Speaker 1: the weather. Yeah, it's a storm or whatever, it's high humidity,
Speaker 1: but it'll be gone tomorrow. And yeah, that can be
Speaker 1: a helpful thing, just to think, regardless of whether you're meditating,
Speaker 1: just remind yourself this too shall pass. I know you
Speaker 1: talked about this lot in the book, But have these
Speaker 1: practices helped you? Oh? I think so. People say they
Speaker 1: noticed the difference. I mean, my wife says she notices
Speaker 1: the difference, and she's probably the most reliable witness. When
Speaker 1: I came back from my first meditation retreat, all I
Speaker 1: had to do was call her and start talking. Before
Speaker 1: she was glad I had gone. Literally, it was just
Speaker 1: a tone of my voice, she said, just the way
Speaker 1: I was talking was like, oh, yeah, this guy would
Speaker 1: be much easier to live with than the guy who
Speaker 1: left for this retreat. And you know, meditation retreats give
Speaker 1: you a taste for how radically different your everyday consciousness
Speaker 1: could be. They condenced me that that state of consciousness
Speaker 1: would be much more conducive to happiness, would make me
Speaker 1: a much better person, and would bring me a clearer
Speaker 1: view of the world, a literally clearer view of the world.
Speaker 1: I really believe that those three things can align, and
Speaker 1: that is the Buddhist promise, and it's not easy to
Speaker 1: keep them aligning as thoroughly and as magically as they might.
Speaker 1: At the end of a nine day retreat, you know
Speaker 1: once you're back in the real world, but once you've
Speaker 1: seen that, it's an incentive to keep practicing on a
Speaker 1: daily basis and to hang on to at least part
Speaker 1: of that consciousness. The story of the Buddha is one
Speaker 1: that I just had to include in this mini season
Speaker 1: on Happiness Lessons of the Ancients. It encapsulates so much
Speaker 1: a privilege. Young man realized that life is impermanent, and
Speaker 1: that even the richest king couldn't build palace walls high
Speaker 1: enough to fight off the sadness that this impermanence brings.
Speaker 1: The Buddha tap that the best way to deal with
Speaker 1: all this suffering is to sit with it, to it
Speaker 1: and experience it. I know very few of us can
Speaker 1: go on long meditation retreats, but all of us can
Speaker 1: bring a bit more mindfulness into our daily lives. It
Speaker 1: can be as simple as noticing the sensation of being
Speaker 1: in your bed, or how the soap and water feel
Speaker 1: as you wash your hands. I personally try to fit
Speaker 1: in ten minutes of meditation a day. I do it
Speaker 1: right after I exercise, when I'm already feeling a little
Speaker 1: bit more in tune with my body. I just PLoP
Speaker 1: on the floor, close my eyes and try to focus
Speaker 1: on my breath. And while that sounds really simple, it's
Speaker 1: surprisingly hard. A previous guest on The Happiness Lab said
Speaker 1: that sitting with his thoughts during his first meditation was
Speaker 1: like trying to wrestle alive fish. But trust me, it
Speaker 1: gets a lot easier. I'm no Jedi master, and I
Speaker 1: have lots of days when I don't even get in
Speaker 1: that ten minutes, but even my patchy meditation practice makes
Speaker 1: me feel a lot better. I'm even starting to come
Speaker 1: to terms with the sad fact that nothing is permanent
Speaker 1: and that all good things come to an end, including
Speaker 1: this mini season. So with that, I'd like to share
Speaker 1: some gratitude. Thank you so much for listening to these shows,
Speaker 1: which we've really enjoyed making, and never fear. The Happiness
Speaker 1: Lab will be back with some special episodes as well
Speaker 1: as a new season in January, where we explore how
Speaker 1: other old school happiness lessons are also backed by modern science.
Speaker 1: Until then, stay safe and stay happy. The Happiness Lab
Speaker 1: is co written and produced by Ryan Dilley. The show
Speaker 1: was mastered by Evan Viola and our original music was
Speaker 1: composed by Zachary Silver. Special thanks to the entire Pushkin crew,
Speaker 1: including Mia La Belle, Karli Migliori, Heather Fine, Sophie Crane, mckibbon,
Speaker 1: Eric Sandler, Jacob Weisberg, and my agent Ben Davis. The
Speaker 1: Happiness Lab is brought to you by Pushkin Industries and
Speaker 1: meet doctor Laurie Santos.