Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 28: Oren J. Sofer

Episode Date: August 3, 2016

Oren J. Sofer, a former child actor turned longtime meditation teacher, was a 19-year-old college student in New York City when he said he felt things in his life were falling apart. "And I had heard about people going to India for study abroad and I had found out about a program where you wake up, 5am every morning, stay at a monastery, meditate twice a day, no drugs, no sex, no alcohol, and I just said, 'Sign me up,'" Sofer said. Fast forward to present day and now one of Sofer's specialties as a meditation teacher is showing people how to use Mindfulness to be better communicators. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It kind of blows my mind to consider the fact that we're up to nearly 600 episodes of this podcast, the 10% happier podcast. That's a lot of conversations. I like to think of it as a great compendium of, and I know this is a bit of a grandiose term, but wisdom. The only downside of having this vast library of audio is that it can be hard to know where to start. So we're launching a new feature here, playlists, just like you put together a playlist of your favorite songs.

Back in the day, we used to call those mix tapes. Just like you do that with music, you can do it with podcasts. So if you're looking for episodes about anxiety, we've got a playlist of all of our anxiety episodes. Or if you're looking for how to sleep better, we've got a playlist of all of our anxiety episodes, or if you're looking for how to sleep better, we've got a playlist for that. We've even put together a playlist of some of my personal favorite episodes. That was a hard list to make. Check out our playlists at 10%.com slash playlist. That's 10% all one word spelled out. Dot com slash playlist singular.

Let us know what you think. We're always open to tweaking how we do things and maybe there's a playlist we haven't thought of. Hit me up on Twitter or submit a comment through the website. I'm Dan Harris. I like to joke sometimes that my guests today, Warren Sofer, could engineer a mid-east piece. One of his specialties is teaching people how to use

mindfulness to be better communicators. He's so good at this that I've actually used him personally before a tough conversation I needed to have. As a long-time meditation teacher, he's got a lot of other areas of expertise as well and a really interesting personal story, all of which we're going to dive into. Hey, Lauren. Hey, Dan.

So I'll ask you the question I ask everybody, which is how, when, why, where did you start meditating? I started meditating when I was 19. I was here in New York, going to college. Columbia. Yes. And things sort of started falling apart in my life. Just a bunch of different circumstances all coming together at the same time and

I had heard about people going to India to study abroad and I found out about a program where I wake up 5 a.m. Every morning, state of monastery, meditate twice a day, no drugs, no sex, no alcohol, and I just said, sign me up. Really? Yeah. At 19, that was appealing to you? That was very appealing to me. I was doing a lot of drugs.

I was an actor in New York running all over the city, dating a lot, and it was just too much stimulation. And so I wanted to kind of clear the slate and start over. So how young did you start out? Were you like a child actor? I was a child actor. I started at about 12. Were you in movies, TV commercials, TV shows?

TV commercials. My first gig was laughing in a Skittles commercial, or some kind of candy, giggling in a candy commercial. commercial or some kind of candy? Okay. Giggling in a candy commercial. You don't remember which candy? I don't, it's not oddly enough. I'm sure my mom does. I think I can get ahold of that video tape. It's probably out there somewhere.

Really? You mean if I contacted your mother? It's probably in a box in her attic. How? With other VHS tapes. How mad would you be at me if I were to unilaterally? I would be delighted. I would enjoy hearing that again.

There's care free days of Skittles and Starburst. And so did you do dramatic acting as well? I mean, acting in movies and stuff. I did, actually. Yeah, the first real sort of thing I did was a NYU student film. I just had a lead role in that. And then I did some other commercials. I did some other student films, educational videos. I did a couple things on Nickelodeon. The sort of top, the highest I got in sort of acting career was on Law and Order.

I was actually the murderer on an episode. You were murder. I was. Yes. I think the episode was called passion. So I still get random emails sometimes from people saying, are you the same orange Asofer from are you afraid in the dark or for people who know me saying I was up late last night I couldn't sleep and I saw this episode of lawn order. Was that you? So I bet I would love to see the 19 year old or 18 year old, or in the killer, because anybody, I know you now,

you are really not homicidal in any way. So, I would love to see that. So, but just taking back to that 19 year old headspace for a second, because how bad could things really have been that celibacy and meditation and 5am wakeups really was appealing? You know, it was one of those times that

we all go through different times in our lives, where it just felt like everything came crashing in. I felt disoriented and lost and overwhelmed. A close group of friends of mine all sort of cut me off and stopped talking to me. The woman I was dating broke up with me. So it was, and then certain sort of emotional things for my family and past were starting to come up.

And so I felt like I had lost touch with myself who I was and yeah, I needed like a fresh start and I just wanted to get as far away as I could from everything I knew and really just start over. So you dropped out of school? I did not actually, I was fortunate enough that I got into the program, the study abroad program in India,

at a Buddhist monastery. And so I went and I did this program which changed my life forever. And then I took a semester off and stayed over there, did some meditation retreats traveled around. So how did it change your life? What about it spoke to you? I felt like the first time I heard the teachers talking about meditation and the practice

and the philosophy behind it, I felt as if things that had always made sense to meet intuitively, but no one had ever talked about or finally acknowledged. You know, that life's difficult and stressful, that we can't control what happens to us, that the more we have expectations and fight against what's happening, the harder we make things for ourselves, that well-being comes from within us, not from the world around us, or getting things we want. And I met people who exuded a kind of happiness, stability, and joyfulness that I hadn't quite seen or experienced before.

The monks. They weren't actually monks. Both of my first two teachers were laymen. Who were they? Anagarka Menendrji. Oh, yes, okay. And another man from Sri Lanka by the name of Godwin, Samararatna. So Menendrji is a familiar name me, because he was the teacher of my teacher and your teacher, Joseph Goldstein.

That's right. So, kind of like anybody who learns of Joseph, he was in the name Munindra a lot. Yeah. I've heard him describe in a bunch of different ways, but often I've heard that he was kind of, I think you might have used this term with me, oddball. Yeah. Bit of an oddball. He was a quirky man, definitely.

Yeah, but so full of love and energy and kind of a childlike wonder, enjoy. I remember sitting around a table once with some of the other students on the program and you know, he was just talking and he was asking each person, you know, who they were, where they were from and each person was gonna say their name and where they're from and then and then he kind of came around to him and he sort of looked and said, and I am Minindra and he started laughing. You know, just kind of the sort of this the humor of like him having a name and who he was. So, yeah. of this the humor of like him having a name and who he was. So yeah, even the most obvious things he was able to find some novelty in them. Yeah, yeah, enjoy. Yeah.

And so you did those three months and was it was it was a hard for you? I mean, as a 19 year old kid, you know, it was it was impossible. I was I mean, my friends who know me from, my high school friends, I was a nutcase. And I was, you know, I'm just really high energy, non-stop, go, go, go, really anxious. And yeah, I couldn't sit still. My mind is going, you know, a mile a minute. So yeah, it was definitely challenging.

It's so funny to hear you talk about yourself that way, because knowing you now, actually, just in the name of full disclosure, I just said, we've spent a reasonable amount of time together, because you've taught a couple of courses on the 10% happier app. So we've spent a bunch of days together really talking about practice.

And I have a really hard time imagining you being high energy, unable to sit still, a womanizer who does a lot of drugs, and like, not a, or a child actor, never mind, a murderer. All of this seems so out of the trajectory of what I know. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think that's one of the things that's so amazing about awareness and the cultivation of awareness is that it's transformative.

You know, it's not like I set out with some goal, like I am going to become calmer and more focused or more patient and kind. I didn't have some idea. I just knew that I was unhappy and confused and lost, didn't enjoy being with myself a lot of the time because of everything that was going on. And I just started following instructions and looking within. Does the old or an ever come out? I mean, you keep looking in the other room as we type this because you're... Yeah, when you said,

when you said, I'm so friend of here. When you said, I can't imagine Orrin who's, anxious and high energy, she's the role of rise and laugh. So yes, it does. Yeah, you know,

I mean, that's the process, the process I went through. So I went to India when I was 19. I had these very, very powerful experiences meditating and, you know, really dove in deep. And as I was saying to you the other day, when I came back, people didn't recognize me literally. And it was like a complete 180. literally. And it was like a complete 180. And it took, it took years for those very powerful experiences to be integrated. And so that the kind of aspects of my personality, from when I was 19, that got sort of out of balance and slightly off-kilter for those to come back into alignment with everything else that I had started learning and cultivating. And so, you know, for me, this is one of the interesting things about meditation practice, and people start practicing, they get really inspired, new ideas come online, and there can be a lot of confusion about our relationship with our

former self for aspects of our life. And there can often be this sort of swing from one extreme to another or rejecting parts of our self. And what I've seen in myself and other people I know is that there's a trajectory over a longer period of time towards more integration and balance, but it's not something that happens in a week or a month or even a year. Oftentimes, the process and the cycle can be years for all the different aspects of ourself to really come into balance and work together.

So I shouldn't feel badly if I've been meditating for seven years and I'm still a complete moron frequently. I don't experience here as a complete moron. Maybe we haven't spent as much enough time together. Well, if my wife was in the other room, she'd be laughing and rolling her eyes. So that's always the test and other person who lives with you. Yes. So at what point did you

know that you were going to make this into your career? It was, well, saying you know, that's an interesting question, because from one from one angle, I could say, I never knew that and it wasn't ever my intention to sort of make a career out of meditation. It's that's a very kind of even just sort of a new concept. The fact that there is even the possibility of, you know, making a livelihood through one's own meditation practice. So in that regard, it was not something that I ever said, okay, I'm going to make, you

know, a livelihood out of this. This is gonna be my life path. In fact, for many years, in my 20s, I experienced the sort of usual onks of that period of not knowing what am I gonna do? You're late, 30s now. That's right. So did you explore other more traditional career paths in your 20s? I did. I did. I'll answer that in just one second.

When I first got back from India, when I was at that point 20 years old, I was very clear though that I wanted to share this with other people. There was a very, very clear sense that I had of, this has been, this is so meaningful and so valuable I want to learn this well enough to be able to teach it and share it with others. So that was very clear from early on but there wasn't that sense of this is going to

be my career or this is how I'm going to support myself and my family. So that piece actually just came on more on its own, sort of naturally from my own practice and spending time with teachers and so forth. Other careers, I did a lot of work in alternative education, outdoor education, summer camps, working with inner city youth, doing job development. I worked in nonprofit finance and administration for a few years, connected

with meditation, the organizations I was working with were the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, the Mindbody Awareness Project, which teaches meditation to incarcerated youth, but I was more on the administrative side of those organizations. And so, it was sort of a slow transition to teaching more to the point where now it's in various forms what I do full-time. I work for another organization called Mindful Schools, which trains educators in mindfulness, and I help to develop their curriculum and write for their website and things like that. So you, one of your, as I said, at the top of the show, one of your areas of expertise is mindful communication. So, why did you become interested in this? I think our listeners are going to, this is something that people are going to be really interested in, how can you use mindfulness to not pop off

and say that dumb thing, or actually listen to the person with whom you're extensively talking, et cetera, et cetera. How did this become an area of interest for you? Why are you now teaching about it in such a robust manner? Again, it just kind of came about naturally, but I was living and working at the Insight Meditation Society, and we had, which is a meditation center in Barry Massachusetts,

and we had a in-service professional training on communication, and I was about 25. I'd never heard of communication training. I never knew there was such a thing as getting better at your communication. And so it kind of blew my mind because here I was meditating a lot and really sort of trying to cultivate these values of awareness and compassion and kindness and patience and my meditation. And then working in the kitchen there would be some kind of a disagreement with

a coworker or some difficulty. And I was finding it very difficult to actually come from those values when things got tense with another human being. So I got really interested as soon as I heard that there was this thing called, even communication training, and never knew that such thing existed. And so then slowly I started taking classes and just learning because it was just such an interest of mine to actually be able to translate the values and the principles of meditation into action into my life and communication seemed like a really useful way to do that. After a quick break, can I get weird if you don't say anything? I feel the need to sort of rush and fill every silence. Now you're looking at me not saying it.

After this. Hey there listeners, while we take a little break here, I want to tell you about another podcast that I think you'll like. It's called How I Built This, where host Guy Razz talks to founders behind some of the world's biggest and most innovative companies to learn how they built them from the ground up. Guy has sat down with hundreds of founders behind well-known companies like Headspace, Manduka Yoga Mats, Soul Cycle, and Kodopaxi, as well as entrepreneurs working to solve some of the biggest problems of our time. Like developing technology that pulls energy from the ground to heat in cool homes,

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Well, I think that the two most important aspects of the first is using presence and just trying to bring more awareness to the fact that we're communicating. A lot of us move through our lives and our relationships, our email, our texting, not actually making conscious choices about what we say or even the fact that we're speaking, that we're communicating. Half the time when someone's speaking to us, we're not actually even listening. We're planning the next thing we're going to say, or we're writing our grocery list, or whatever,, million other things move through our mind. So, you know, the first main area of training is just trying to bring awareness

to our interactions and our communication and just noticing, oh, I'm speaking right now, like, what am I saying? Why am I saying it? Where is this coming from? Do I want to be speaking right now? If someone's speaking to me, okay, can I just listen? I can actually just not do or say anything.

And that in and of itself is huge. Just being able to slow down enough to remember when I open my mouth, I'm making a conscious choice to speak and to put something in someone else's mind. And that's a really powerful action. That's the power of our words, is that we're actually creating something that goes into someone else's mind.

But so there are two parts of this though, because listening, which most of us don't do, or only do half-heartedly, is one thing. But then, and I can more readily imagine how you can use meditation, which helps you just be here to listen. But when you're speaking, it seems like a slightly trickier endeavor. Yeah, it's different for different people, interesting enough. I find many people listening is easier to bring presence to, but for some people it's the speaking part that's easier. It just takes practice.

It just takes practice. It's difficult or challenging because it's unfamiliar and we haven't actually done it. So yeah, bringing awareness to listening and to speaking is the first kind of basic training slowing down some, being able to take a pause, to have more choice. And in particular, noticing that at any given moment, we actually have a choice about whether to speak, listen, or just stay silent. And that's kind of one of the most basic, fundamental communication tools that's often the least practiced is actually to say something or not say something and to choose consciously about that.

Can it get weird if you don't say anything? I feel the need to sort of rush and fill every silence. Now you're looking at me not saying it. I feel the need to sort of rush and fill every silence. Now you're looking at me and not saying it. I think it's one of the great ills of our society that people don't appreciate silence. You know, it doesn't have to be some awkward, deep soul-searching stare. You know, that that's... But there's something quite lovely about being able to just be with another human being and not need to fill that space. And you know, there are different people in our lives based on our relationships with whom we can share that to varying degrees, right? So I'm not suggesting that everyone be silent all the time or anything like that. I'm just saying that recognizing that we don't always need to say something.

Somebody says something, it's enough to just go, mm-hmm. Instead of adding to the verbal diarrhea, that's just kind of everyone's just popping off all the time without any sense of awareness of what we're even saying or doing. How do you apply this stuff in acute situations when somebody's, you know, at work in a high stress environment, says something that's triggered you or you're in a relationship and somebody's, you know, said, ask you to do something you don't want to do or you realize they haven't done the thing you've asked them to do. How do you, in those moments when you're, when you're danders up?

Yeah, it, I think it takes training. One of the most useful things that I could share I think for people out there listening that you don't need to do weeks and weeks of training for is to come up with a few lines and memorize them that you can use in a pinch. Things like I think I'll have to get back to you on that. You know, or I'm not sure. I'd like to think that over. Could we talk about that tomorrow? You know, or, wow, you just said a lot.

I'm not sure how to respond. You know, these kinds of canned phrases that create more space in a conversation and a relationship for us to actually put like it's like a fire break. Yeah. And that gives us some space to keep from saying things that are going to complicate the situation which later we're gonna regret. Now, in order to be able to do that, not only do we have to come up with a few lines that feel authentic for us, that we can work. Oh, I thought she was. Not only do we need to do that, but we need to actually train ourselves

in the awareness to recognize when we're getting triggered, when we're getting activated by someone else, because that energy is so strong that we go into automatic to defend ourselves or to attack or to respond or to disagree right away. So, and that's where the meditation piece and the mindfulness piece comes in, is that in our meditation practice, we're sensitizing our nervous system to actually were sensitizing our nervous system to actually recognize the difference between being presence, clear and attuned, even just for a moment. We have that micro moment of just feeling a breath, being right there, knowing what's happening, and something inside registers like, oh, this is what it's like to not be a

basket case, right? And then, you know, half a breath later, the mind's back doing its normal thing, but now we actually have something to compare to. We actually have a reference point. And then our nervous system starts to learn and remember the difference between being driven, unconscious, over activated,

and even being a little bit more grounded and self-connected. One of the things you said repeatedly that I think is comforting is that this is a practice. We shouldn't expect, oh, we start meditating a little bit and we're never going to put our foot in our mouth. It's more that over time, once you make a decision that I'm going gonna try to not pop off as much and and Also to listen to people when they're speaking. It's just a bit of a radical act. You just it's just like meditation where you just Try and then get lost and start again, right? Yeah, and what you're talking about Dan is the second thing I wanted to say before when you're asking people What can people actually do without doing so the first thing was bringing more presence to our conversations

Just trying to be more aware of the speaking of the listening of the space between those the second thing is what you were just mentioning Which is our intention? And actually being conscious of our intentions in communication, you know, where am I trying Where am I coming from here? Where am I trying to nudge things? Or why am I engaging right now? Am I trying to make myself look good? Am I trying to win? Am I trying to dominate the other person?

Am I trying to make them feel bad? Am I genuinely interested? Am I trying to understand something? Am I trying to connect? Am I trying to make this person feel good about themselves? There's this whole range and spectrum of intentions that are constantly operating behind the scenes. And for most of us, most of the time, it's mixed.

It's a mixed bag of intentions. But when we actually start to recognize that those intentions are driving our conversations and our life, then we start to be aware of them and we can begin to have a little bit more choice about what direction we're aiming in with our life. And so for communication, in particular, one of the most powerful intentions that I've found, in which I emphasize in my teaching, is the intention to understand and to connect.

And I say that that's one intention because they're really two sides of the same coin. When we try to understand each other, that's leading to more connection. Or if we're just, if I'm just trying to connect, just have that sense of being here with you as another human being, that's going to bring up more understanding. And so all of the other default motivations that come up in our relationship and conversations, sometimes when it's just too complicated, there's so much going on, if we train ourselves

to just come back to that core intention of curiosity and care, that can be a guide, and it's really transformative. Yeah, although I think most of us, when we think our intention and communication is just to get our point across, and make sure that people do what we're asking that they do or understand why we're doing what we're doing, et cetera, et cetera.

What you're talking about is pretty wholesome motivation. I don't know that the extent that any of us has ever really examined our motivations in communication. And it seems like a pretty big leap to get there for that being my motivation for all of my communications. Well, I don't think it needs to be the motivation for all of our communication. It's not about becoming a saint, although, hey, if that happens great. It's more about having choice about our intentions and recognizing what's actually in our best interest. And trying to get people to do what we want,

I think one has to look at, well, not only what do I want someone to do, but what do I want their reasons to be for doing it. And when we only focus on what we want someone to do, we'll use, sometimes we'll use any means possible, manipulation, coercion, threats, blame. But when we actually look a little bit deeper and say, okay, well, I don't know, just what I want that person to do, but why do I want the, why do I want their reasons to be for doing it?

Then we actually recognize, oh gee, you know, I want them to do this because they value this, or they see how it's going to help the situation or they care about me or they care about this particular project. And I want them to do it for the right reasons. And then when we see that, then our angle will be very different in how we approach the conversation. And I don't think you mentioned most of the time I'm just trying to get my point across. I think that's a perfectly wholesome motivation.

That's about understanding. It's about trying to feel heard and understood in ourselves. So I see nothing wrong with that. The question then becomes like, how skilled are we at helping others understand us? And it really being able to communicate clearly so that we can get that understanding. And when that's not happening, when there's some blockage in the way, are we able to say like, okay,

maybe I need to put my piece down for a few minutes and find out what's going on for them so that they feel understood and that block can kind of settle. And now, oh, all of a sudden, now there's space for them to hear me because I've sort of showed up and listened to their side of things. People, I mean, I've found, just as I don't know if this is from meditation, which is getting older and less stupid, especially in interpersonal relationships, it's really important for people

to feel heard and validated. You know, even if I disagree with my wife on something, but if I say, I understand what you're saying, and I understand why you feel that way, that actually can just defuse the situation not magically and not 100% of the time or 100% of the way, but it goes a long way. It does, and I like that word you used magically because it is. It's like, sometimes it's like magic. Sometimes, yeah.

There's this thing that happens when we actually see one another and understand one another that the conflict transforms. Instead of us fighting about something, butting our heads, all of a sudden we're actually looking at the situation together, or we can be on the same side problem solving, rather than having this blockage between us that we're fighting over. Yeah, and I think one of the common... rather than having this blockage between us that we're fighting over. Yeah, and I think one of the common, you see how I love this silence there. Yeah, you did. That was great, Dan. I really appreciated that.

I did. You could see, you know, there was another thing that came through my mind that felt important that I wanted to share. I think one of the, one of the barriers to doing this that a lot of people find is that there's a misunderstanding that often we believe that understanding where someone's coming from, understanding what matters to them and their side of things means that we agree with it. And that's actually not true. There's a difference between empathy and agreeing. So I can understand where somebody who has drastically different views than I do. I can understand where they're coming from or what's behind their views,

what they're trying to accomplish, right? But still completely disagree with how they're going about it and the ideas they have about, you know, what's gonna make that possible. But I can still understand where they're coming from or what matters to them. Now, if we called Evan in here, your girlfriend, who again, as we said, is in the control room or watching us, would she say that you practice what you preach most of the time, all the

time? She's nodding and shrugging and saying yes. And when you said all the time she shook her head now But but the most of the time got it got it got it got an honest yes So some so even for you it's a practice. Oh completely. Yeah completely you know, I've I've been training in this long enough that For most situations It's where I go as my default.

It's not a good thing. Could that be annoying though? Cause sometimes you just want, you know, I don't, sometimes you just want to see somebody, you know, feel something. I feel things. Yeah, I get upset. But it's just how I choose to express that. It's, you know, using these tools doesn't mean

that we don't feel anything or that we're somehow, you know, sweet and nice all the time. I was teaching a course recently and, you know, at the beginning, I often asked people, you know, what's your intention? Why are you here? What are you hoping to get at this? And someone said, you know, I just, I just want to be a nicer person. And I said to the participant, I said, I don't think I can help you with that. I'm not interested in people being nice. I'm interested in them being more real. And being more genuine and honest.

If that's something that interests you, I can help you with that. Because I don't think being nice generally serves anyone. What I understood underneath that, I was playing with her a little bit obviously, but what I understood underneath that was she was saying, you know, I want to come from a place of care and be respectful of other people and engage in a way that doesn't cause harm. That's something I can also help someone with. But being nice has that sense of putting on an air and pretending. And so using these tools doesn't mean that we somehow all of a sudden don't feel

emotions or don't express them quite the opposite. I think actually we have more access to our emotions and are able to express them more fully and authentically, but the way that we do that is constructive. Yeah, I think what people want, or at least I'll just speak for for myself is just not to mess it up so much. You know, because this is an area where we just screw up all the time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

And, you know, the, I think the tragic part is that those mess-ups are, they're just convoluted expressions of things that don't need to be so confrontational and divisive. Yes. Yes. But we don't know how to say it. It comes across the wrong way. And then the other person reacts and gets defensive. And then we don't know how to backtrack.

It's, you don't know how to backtrack. You don't know, wait, that's not what I mean. So then we end up kind of embroiled in this. There's an expression that the Buddha used. I've now made jokes about this, become the kind of person who quotes the Buddha, which is weird. But there was an expression between the Buddha and his son, Ruhula, where the Buddha says, correct me if I'm wrong about this, because I'm worse than being the type of person who between the Buddha and his son, Ruhula, where the Buddha says,

and correct me if I'm wrong about this, because I'm worse than being the type of person who quotes the Buddha, I'm probably the type of person who misquotes the Buddha, but the Buddha said as a rule of thumb, try to say that which is true and that which is useful. And that's a pretty good rule of thumb. I try to stick to that.

I don't usually don't succeed, but that's a pretty good rule of thumb. I just stick to that. I don't usually don't succeed But that it's it's a really good fallback. It is it's great actually and it's It's there actually four things that the Buddha said that one should check in with before you speak to see and whether it's true Is one of them you know, this is actually correct this information. What I'm about to say, is it useful? Is this gonna be helpful? And then, but then there are two more. The third is, is this coming from a place of goodwill? Is this kind? Sometimes I have to say things that aren't easy to hear,

that might be disagreeable to someone else. From something as simple as like, hey, you got some spinach in your tooth, right? But it's coming from a place of kindness, right? So is this even if it's something that's hard to hear, is it coming from a good place inside? That's the third. And the fourth is, is this the right time? Because we can have something to say that's true, it's helpful, it's useful, it's coming from a good place, it's just not the right time, right? So one wants to look at all,

all four of those factors and try to balance them. I mean, he was smart, dude. So let me ask you some general practice questions. Yeah, please. So what does your daily practice look like? I sit. I don't do some, I don't do movement every day. But a few times a week I'll do even if it's just a few minutes of yoga or some chigong just to try to relax the body, open the body up. How much sitting do you do?

It varies. Usually I aim for at least 20 minutes if it's a busy day or things are happening, but sometimes up to an hour and morning. What are the nuts and bolts of your practice once you're on the... Sure. Sure. Sure. So, the beginning of my practice, generally I don't do anything. I find that my life, there's, I'm using my mind to do things all day long.

Whether it's talking with someone, you know, figuring out how to get from point A to B or, you know, working, writing, planning. So often the first part of the sitting, you know, might be five minutes, ten minutes. I'm consciously trying, just allowing my mind and my body to shift into a space of being, of not, of non-doing. When you do that, don't you find that you're getting super distracted? Whenever I try to, like, consciously not do something, I end up, you know, having an argument with somebody in my head or planning something or whatever. We have a pretty good base of concentration after all these years, so I would imagine this is easier. You know, concentration isn't one of my strengths

in practice, actually. So I wouldn't say that I am an easily concentrated practitioner. I have a good base of embodied awareness. So it... Define that. Just being able to feel my body, just very simple rudimentary. It's a fancy expression,

but it just means that I can sit here and feel my body without too much effort, you know, and can stay connected to that experience. And that sounds pretty like, well, so what, but it's actually huge, because the body doesn't go into the past Because the body doesn't go into the past, the body doesn't go into the future, the body doesn't lie.

It's just here, very directly and simply. So in those first five to 10 minutes, I'm often just giving the mind space to do whatever it needs to do, unwind, even kind of wander off a little bit. But there's a frame of feeling the body sitting. And so then I'll also often in that space just come back to the sense of the weight, the heaviness of the body feeling it's sitting and using that contact and the sense of gravity as a ground, as sort of like a baseline,

and then allowing the rest of the body and the mind and the emotions to just sort of knock around on their own, and it's like letting it come into alignment or letting it come into balance. Sort of like if you imagine you had like a big, a big sort of soft bed with some various marbles around and you put something really heavy in the middle and just held that point down and other things would just naturally start to roll down into that middle. So that's sort of the first period of my practice.

And then, you know, the actual bulk of the meditation, depending on what I'm focusing on in my practice, might vary. So, at different times, I've done more meta-practice, more loving kindness. So, using the phrases, cultivating. Just for people who don't know, the phrases are meta, which we've talked about on the podcast before,

but other people might, this may be your first. Timeless METTA meta Practice is where you systematically envision people or animals and send them Good vibes through phrases which usually are maybe happy, maybe safe, maybe healthy, may you live with ease So that's anyway, that's just explaining what you're talking about. Yeah, yeah, thanks. Yeah, it's You know, it's it's not as fluffy as it sounds. Sharon was on once and I described it as Valentine's Day with a machete to your throat. Yeah, she, she, she probably laughed.

She laughed, yeah, there's a little bit of, there you go again and in the laugh. But yes, I agree. It does sound super fluffy, but it actually has a lot of value. Yeah, it's just that sense of recognizing that we have the capacity for good will and for basic warmth. And then it's accessing and touching that capacity again and again and through that process strengthening it. So I've done that for periods of my practice. Often times just

using the breath as a way of cultivating calm and concentration. Other times if there's for a period of the sitting if there's something going on that I'm wanting to look at or something difficult or challenging, and then I might call that situation to mind and use kind of a reflective investigation to examine what's happening there in my life and using using both the clarity of the meditation and the skills of attention to uncover what's driving something in my life, you know, some difficulty, some problem, or if I have a decision to make that I feel conflicted about, I'll sit, you know, let the mind get quiet, do some practice, and then bring that situation up. And it's not like analyzing it or thinking about it. It's more a sense of listening for, you know,

how does this feel? How does this feel to me if I think about going, you know, in direction A, and then just kind of feeling it out, you know? Well, it kind of feels a little unsteady or something tightens inside, you know, I feel a little bit anxious. I don't really know why, but that's what's going on there. And then let that settle and then take option, be, how's that feel?

Ooh, I kind of feel everything kind of relax. I feel it's kind of like a relief. Well, that's interesting. I don't realize that. Huh. You know, and so there's just a different way of getting information. And then later on, I might actually think about it intentionally and say, well, what am

I actually about there? Why does it feel like such a relief? So I use the tools of meditation in different ways based on what's needed. I don't know how much of a... You said concentration isn't your strong suit, so maybe this is still an issue for you, but you wrote a really good blog post recently about the moment where you wake up from distraction.

And that's just a huge problem for, especially beginning meditators, but I would venture to say almost every meditator. It's just a big part of practice, which is we're gonna get lost a million times and you have to start again and again and again. And your argument is really to try to reframe it as a win. Yeah, it's not even, I mean, you could call it a reframe.

I think it's an accurate understanding of what's happening, that it is a win, right? It's we're practicing awareness, so any time awareness returns, that's a good thing. But isn't a bad thing that awareness has gone away? You know, I don't think of it that way. Is it a bad thing that the win blows? Is it a bad thing that you hear sounds? It's just natural.

But isn't the goal of... I'm playing devil's advocate here, but when the goal of meditation is to stay focused on what you're trying to focus on, and so it's hard not to see getting lost and just in the very phrase getting lost, we see it as a sort of a derivation from the goal. The goal of meditation, as I understand it, is not to get focused or stay focused on an object. That's a tool that we use to strengthen the ability of the mind as we clearly. The goal of meditation is to understand what's happening in our mind. And that comes through observing it. One of the things that's happening in our mind

is that it's wandering. When we understand that process, that's the goal of meditation. So, I get how when you say, and I don't think this is your term per se, but your argument is that we ought to look at that moment of waking up with some delight. But if it just keeps happening over and over and over and over, when rapid succession it can get pretty, you can get, it can become weirysome, you know, just to have to wake up again

and again and again. And one, one does not, you know, it seems, for me at least I often start, even if I can make those first two or three moments of waking up a little, involve a little self-flagulation after while it gets old. I mean, this is a really important point in exploration. And the big picture level is that feeling discouraged, feeling weary, feeling disappointed, feeling frustrated. All of those experiences and responses are feedback. experiences and responses are feedback.

And they're indicating that something is off in our practice. So that's the first point is to actually start to recognize when those emotions and emotional responses and tones are coming up. What it means is that something's off. It's a kind of a friction, and that means that the parts aren't perfectly aligned. What could be off? So what's off is there's a certain expectation and an idea. We're trying to hard. We want something.

That's another part. So, yeah, trying to hard, wanting something. And the ideas that we have about the meditation. So, one idea that you have that's very embedded, it seems, from the conversations we've had, is this idea that being focused on one thing is the goal. And if I'm not doing that, then I am somehow failing and the meditation isn't working. I understand that.

I get that completely. I have suffered a lot over that. I remember one meditation retreat I was doing going to one of the teachers and tears and saying like, I don't understand, if to really make progress and have insight, I'm supposed to be concentrated, but every time my mind goes bonkers and is getting on this emotional roller coaster, you

know, I'm not being concentrated and therefore I'm not doing well and I'm not getting to the place that I'm supposed to, right? And just being so tied up in knots around this idea of what's supposed to be happening and how it's supposed to look and what I need to do in order to get to this imagined result that I'm looking for. And it's taken years for me to actually initially just first to understand and to actually like, well, you know, it's actually, that's actually not quite right, that the process is going to involve getting lost. And that's not a detour. That's actually part of it is allowing yourself to get lost and understanding that process.

And understanding the mechanisms that that triggers the self-judgment. What's going on there to get interested in that? Wow, look at that. Man, I just really, you know, I just really put myself down. What's going on there, you know, or the frustration, you know, like, okay, where's that? You know, like, oh, wow, that's interesting frustration to include that in the meditation, to include all of it, to not make any part of it something gone wrong. make any part of it something gone wrong. So if you wake up on the cushion, realize you've spent 17 minutes thinking about, you know, the various plot twists in the Godfather,

part three, you, there is a huge sense of disappointment or failure. No, not anymore. I had one meditation teacher who said to me, and take this with a grain of salt because it can be misused, but she said, you know, after decades of meditation practice, I've learned to lower my expectations. And it's not to say that we don't try. It's not to say that we don't make effort, but we adjust our effort. We learn how to make effort in a different way, and that the effort we make isn't for a certain result. That's the counterintuitive paradox of meditation and why it's so different than everything else in our life because everything else in our life works following a very simple formula.

I am at point A, I want to get to point B, I make effort, I move towards point B, I get they're done. That program of goal, aim, energy, accomplish, that program doesn't work in the realm of spiritual practice, meditation, mental cultivation, whatever you want to call it. It works to a certain degree. But the effort that we make isn't to produce a certain result. The effort that we make is just to be here and understand, just to understand. It's the same effort we were talking about in the communication practice. And that's why communication and meditation for me are so similar, because it's the same fundamental, um, at the root, it's the same fundamental intention that's guiding

it. It's this shift from our habitual programmed default intentions to get what I want and make things go the way I want them to. Two, oh, what is this? What's going on here? What's that about? How's that feel? And what would it be like to just check this out? You know what, that's very different. It takes a certain kind of a letting go and it takes a willingness to be humble, to not know,

to make space, to allow, to be patient, right? Those are very different energies and intentions than we rely on in our day-to-day life. But what happens is, is two things. So one, the very process of turning towards an experience and being willing to understand it. That movement of the mind strengthens a whole host of qualities.

It strengthens energy, patience, calm, interest, honesty, integrity, care, kindness, all of those qualities come along in the process. And then, as those qualities strengthen, we actually start to see clearly, oh my god, I never realized that. And then insight arises. So that's why that moment of the mind wandering and then awareness coming back in that moment, the return of awareness is not something we do. So the fact that one is getting tired isn't about awareness returning is actually energizing. The tiredness comes from the way we slap ourselves afterwards and then struggle and fight. So we get curious about, okay, what's extra?

What am I adding after the moment of awareness returns? And then as we get curious about that, all of those other qualities and factors in the mind strengthen. So when I'm practicing and I wake up, and it's the 18th time I've had to wake up in 30 seconds, the move is just to get curious about the reaction that's happening in my mind naturally.

So just notice self-legilulation judgment. Yeah, yeah, notice it and actually feel it. The noticing it takes some of the defangs it a little bit. It's like, there's that sense of it. To being able to notice it, it's like unplugging it. So it stops having juice to keep going. That's the first step is to be able to step back from it in some way so that it's not still being fed.

Then there's often, there's still gonna be this kind of residual flavor, right? In the heart or some tightness in the body or even kind of the echo of the thought in the mind. So then it's to notice and get curious about that. I was like, wow, how's that feel? What's that like? Ooh, this feels awful.

And the more we see and really, really taste how awful it feels to judge ourselves for trying to meditate, you know. Something gets learned. It's like, why do I keep doing that? You know? Drop the hot cold. So last little avenue of discussion, it's not a little avenue, it's a big one, but curious. You talked a lot about goal, and mostly in the sense that sometimes we're goal oriented in the wrong way, but do you have a goal for your meditation? You're trying to get enlightened,

and what is your, how would you even define enlightenment? Big question. Yeah, big question. I do think that there's a goal and I do have goals for my meditation practice. So it's not it's not you know one of the There's sort of two extremes or two dangers in meditation practice on the one on the one hand We have a what you know, Chugam Trinpoorepusche called spiritual materialism, that we just transpose our cultures, emphasis on success and achievement onto our meditation practice and we get overly

goal oriented and we strive and we're trying to produce a certain results. That's one end of the extreme. The other end of the extreme is to have no goal at all. Well, enlightenment is here and now and there's no goal. And so it's all just about being present and relaxing and not doing anything. And that's actually not really true either from what I understand. There is, there is, you know, real work to be done. But it takes, it takes a balance of those two and being in the middle. So for me, I understand and articulate the goal to myself in different ways. And in the most kind of practical immediate way,

the goal is to be more aware and kind and to live with integrity, which means that I'm connected to what I value and I'm acting in the world based on those values. And for me, that's success. None of that is particularly mystical, however. No. But what about experiencing the unconditioned or becoming an arhond who doesn't experience greed hatred or delusion. These are the types of things that Buddhist talk about a lot that you didn't mention any of that. Yeah, I'll bring it on. Sign me up, yeah.

So that is a way that I articulate the goal for myself also. As I said, there are different ways that I conceive of it or think about it. And I think that they're different sides of the same coin. So if you ask yourself, well, what would it take to live a life fully connected to awareness and compassion, not driven by my own self-centered whims and really deeply connected with a sense of integrity and aware of my values and continually making choices based on those values without shame or fear. without shame or fear. What would it take to do that? Well, that would take a pretty radical transformation inside. That would take a pretty profound letting go. It would take a letting go of anxiety. It would take-in go of my ideas of who I am and wanting to be seen and perceived

in a certain way, it would take a let-in go of my distaste and aversion to things I don't particularly enjoy. So when one looks at it in that way, it's like, wow, you know, so, you know, when one looks at it in that way, it's like, wow, that would be huge, right? So for me, the result of deep awakening is being able to live in this way. And actually they can work in both directions?

Yes, completely. Yeah, so, you know, I find well, if I'm making effort to live with awareness, to be kind, to be clear, to make choices based on my values, then every moment that I'm able to do that, I'm uprooting all of the things that prevent me from doing that. And, you know, depending on what metaphor you want to use, you could say, I'm moving closer to enlightenment or awakening, or one could say that I'm moving closer to enlightenment or awakening or one could say that I'm actually beginning

to embody that more and more. I'm allowing my mind to inhabit that space more and more because one of the things that Minindra said to me early on in my practice, I was asking him about enlightenment and how to get there. And you know, he said, enlightenment is not over there. It's not over there. If you're trying to get to enlightenment, you're going in the wrong direction. It's here. So it's something... I always find that very frustrating because if it's right here, then I'm completely idiot because I don't see it. That's hard.

Hard on myself. Yeah, yeah, well, welcome to being made. You ever try to, it's not just you. I mean, I'm hard on myself too, sometimes still. It's like, it's like seeing something that's always been here that we keep forgetting. And the problem isn't that it's so esoteric or mystical, it's that it's so subtle that

we keep overlooking it. We keep over shooting it, we keep moving past it. So the very effort of the mind to look for something is a movement away from it. So what is it? It's not a knit. It can't be conceived of or understood by the mind, by the conscious thinking mind. It's a different, you know, there's all kinds of analogies one can use. It's a different order of experience. It's like if you've never eaten a mango and someone says,

well, what does a mango taste like? Is it kind of like a banana? Is it kind of like a banana? Is it kind of like ice cream? You're like, well, yeah, it's sweet and it's smooth and it's a little bit tangy. It's kind of like a lemon. Well, not really. You have to taste it.

So, I mean, that's a little bit of a cop out. But, yeah, but it's very beautiful. I think, you know, it's very beautiful. I think, you know, the Buddha said it's peace. It's peace beyond understanding. Because understanding something is still in the realm of duality. It's still in the realm of something to be understood by someone. And it doesn't operate in those terms. And he also said, there is this, there is the unconditioned, the unborn, the unformed. If there were not this, there would be no escape from the condition, the born, the formed. But because there is this, the unconditioned, the unborn, the unformed, there is a release from this realm of insubstantiality

and change. I mean, I think it's all really cool and inspiring. I just don't, I mean, I guess you can't understand it until you've tasted it. And then I don't know that I can believe in anything to which I don't have currently of access. So it's like, and the beautiful thing is about it, is that one doesn't need to. Well, I don't think one needs to believe in any of it. Just keep practicing.

Just keep practicing. All kinds of experiences can unfold. And the process is just, is just keep showing up, being honest, and looking at one's experience. And as the mind gets quiet and still at different times, it sees and understands things differently. And, you know, the beauty, again, the beauty of it is that one doesn't need to be mystical and have a belief in that to practice, to look inside one's mind, and at the very process of practicing and just being curious and open brings about benefits.

And as those benefits strengthen and as the mind gets more clear, other possibilities open up. And so, you know, if I were to say anything, it would just be who knows. And just to keep an open mind, to just say, well, maybe, maybe not. I don't know, but why not look? I mean, for me, so going back to the, you know, that time in my, in my early 20s, when I first started meditating and practicing, I had been studying religion at Columbia and reading all of these different texts from different traditions, whether it's the Veda and the Upanishads or Sufi poetry or Jewish mysticism

or the Dow Day jing and other later Dowist poets or even the transcendentalists in American literature or the Buddhist literature, just reading and just hearing from so many different people through the ages, these accounts of experiences beyond what we can see and know ordinarily through our senses. And to me, when you know, it's not just like one quack out there writing about something, it's people from across all different traditions, all through time writing about other ways of experiencing being alive and a sense of deep peace and knowing and connection.

It's gotta be something there. It's gotta be something that people are actually touching into whatever you call it, and whether it's what this person wrote about is the same thing or different than what this person experienced, who knows, but there's something there. There's something, it seems like it would be impossible that all, you know, through the ages, people would be experiencing and writing about some deep level

of reality without there being some actual basis to it. And so that, that, and then meeting people who actually spoke directly, meeting people face to face saying like, no, this is possible. That's not no, this is possible. That's not the yes. This is real. And not only is it real, but you can know this for yourself. You know, that really inspired me to say, wow, gosh, you know, and not just, you know, Minindraji or Godwin who are, you know, these older Asian men who were white, you know,

South Asian men is saying, wow, you know, like meeting people like Joseph or Sharon or Steve Armstrong or Kamala Masters or Michelle meeting, you know, the senior teachers and the insight tradition here in the West, you know, speak of, speak of their own experience, you know, Joseph's in New York, too, you know, like it's just like if he can do it, you know, why can't I? And that's, that's, that's the energy. That's the sense of like, hey, this is, this is here for me too. It's not just for some, you know, amazing being somewhere far off on a mountain. It's like, this is something that anyone can experience if they, they receive the right instructions and they have the willingness to put forth the energy That was also well said. I think we'll just leave it at that. That was great

Where can people learn more about you if they want more information? The best place to end is my website, which is orangeaysofer.com O-R-E-N-J-A-Y-S-O-F-E-R dot com. And where can we get that Skittles Add again? My mom's Addic on the DHS tape. All right, I'm on it. Also, we should say that if you, your communication courses on 10% happier after all. That's right.

We just shot a course on emotions that's going to go up soon. Life savers. Life savers. Life savers. It was life savers. Life savers, not skittles. Okay, that's correct. Okay. Well, you're a life saver, my friend. Thank you very much for doing this.

It's a pleasure, Dan. All right, there's another edition of the 10% happier podcast. If you like it, I'm gonna hit you up for a favor. Please subscribe to it, review it, and rate it. I want to also thank the people who produced this podcast, Josh Cohan, Lauren Efron, Sarah Amos, and the head of ABC News Digital, Dan Silver. And hit me up at Twitter, Dan B. Harris.

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