Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 70: Clair Brown, Economist, Author of 'Buddhist Economics'

Episode Date: April 5, 2017

Clair Brown, an economics professor at UC-Berkeley and a Tibetan Buddhist, was teaching an introductory course when she asked herself, "How would Buddha teach Econ One?" Brown went on to write the book, "Buddhist Economics: An Enlightened Approach to the Dismal Science," and advocates for a more mindful approach to how we contribute to society, for example, that as consumers, we should work to simplify our lives by focusing on what matters most to us, buying less and reducing our carbon footprint. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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the questions that are in my head. Like, it's only fans only bad. Where did memes come from. And where's Tom from MySpace? Listen to Baby, this is Kiki Palmer on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcast. So we're breaking a rule on this week's podcast. We've only broken this rule once before, which is that I'm going to interview somebody who's not actually with me in the studio. I like to be in the room with a person. We did this once before with the guys from the minimalists. And we're doing it again with Claire Brown, who's a economist at UC Berkeley in California.

She wasn't going to be in New York City anytime soon, and I really wanted to get her on because she has this very interesting new book called Buddhist economics which comes out at a very interesting time in our politics and in our economy. And she really tries to imagine what would the economy be like if the Buddha was running the thing. She's fascinating. She's going to say things that you may disagree with, but hear her out because she's definitely thought this stuff through. Here we go.

Here's Claire Brown. From ABC, this is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Thanks for doing this, really appreciate it. I'm happy to join you. How did you become a Buddhist economist? I was teaching Econ One at UC Berkeley to 800 students with my 20 graduate student teachers. And we taught free market economics

because it's so simple. It's so easy to learn and it's pretty powerful. But I was out walking my gray hand. I was a practicing Tibetan Buddhist. And we like looking at each each other and I'm thinking, you know, how would Buddha teach Econ one? Because it really matters how incomes distributed. Equity is really important.

Sustainability, we have to care so much about global warming, somehow we aren't covering that well. So we should rethink it. How would Buddha teach introductory? Introductory economics. And so it started from there. Talk me through the process of you actually becoming a Buddhist. Because it's not like you are a lifelong Buddhist. No, not at all then.

I didn't have one major event like you did that got you meditating. Instead, I tried different forms of Buddhism or spiritual practices over the years, but nothing really clipped for me. And then one day, a Tibetan llama moved not far from my house in my neighborhood, and opened a meditation hall in an old episcopal church, and I thought, oh my gosh, I used to be a Piscopalian. And now it's Tibetan Buddhist meditation. Let me go try it. So my husband and I tried it and we really thought our teacher was just terrific

on a Thumbkin. And so we started practicing with him. And I'll mind you, this is like a 10 minute walk for my house. It's like my neighborhood. And I started sitting, meditating every day, and practicing. And it was just fantastic. I had that same reaction you had of, wow, this is a terrific improvement in my life.

And so you're being an economist predated, you're being a Buddhist. How big a shift in paradigm did it require to start applying what you were learning and Buddhism to what you'd been studying for so many years as it pertained to the economy? It was a major shift, although many economists, including Nobel laureates, have been making that shift, such as Amarty Asin, where he looked at people's capabilities and their quality of life. And the major shift in the paradigm goes from what's human nature. So in free market economics, we assume people are selfish.

They're egotistical. They only care about themselves. They're not altruistic. And all they care about is consuming, and more is always better. So the whole focus in life is consumption. Filling up your closet, full of stuff, shopping, and going out and buying things, and getting more and more income.

And it's a win-law situation. When one person doing better and consuming more is somebody doing less well. Well, if you think about Buddhism, one of the things I love about it is that you, first of all, you think human nature is kind and altruistic. And that's your inner Buddha. Everyone has an inner Buddha that's kind and loving and altruistic. Now, we may cover it up. We may not be in touch with it.

But one of the things with meditation, as you talk about in your book, over time when you meditate and sit, you actually become more compassionate. And so if you start assuming, oh, everyone's interdependent with each other and with nature, and that one of the things I want to do is actually overcome my ego and feel my connection and my compassion for other people, which is a wonderful improvement in the way you live. First of all, you end up doing a win-win. You no longer are competing with everybody in terms of who gets to buy this, or who gets that promotion, or who gets that promotion or who wins this game because when you help other people be better off you feel better off and

the neuroscientists have showed us if you want to be happy actually go out and help someone that makes you happier So so one of the biggest shifts in the paradigm is actually what you assume about human nature. And then the second shift is what do you assume about what makes you happy? So you move from a nautical person just focused on who they are and they get happy by shopping and consuming to human nature that's kind and altruistic and becomes happier by helping other people feeling connected to people, helping nature, enjoying nature, and also creating a meaningful life. So it's a major shift both in how you see the world and also how you think the economy

should be structured and performing. But so I consider myself a Buddhist but I'm not going to lie here. I like buying stuff. I like making money. So my bad Buddhist? No, no, no, no. Actually that's a great question because you aren't giving up caring about material possessions or doing well, but you are giving up. The important thing is to first of all not harm any people. So when you're making money or when you're going out and sort of getting ahead in the world, you don't do it on the backs of other people. You don't do it by lying and cheating and thinking you're the big deal maker and you'll do anything to get the deal.

So that's number one, don't harm. And then the second one is to not get attached to the outcomes. Don't get attached to all your possessions in your materialistic way of life. You want to stay detached. Otherwise you're too focused on materialism and you aren't really thinking about your human spirit and you aren't really thinking enough about how can I make my life meaningful? How can I actually help the world or help other people? So for your example, you actually, your book really helped a lot of people.

And you didn't write your book when you wrote it. You didn't hurt anybody. You were just presenting your story to the world in a way that really connected and made other people find more meaning in their lives. So it's all sort of how you do what you're doing and how you feel about it and you're willing this to share with others. Well, I appreciate that on one level and then that you're letting me off the hook. But I mean, if you re a close reader of your book will notice that you talk about the economy as a big global system where what we the decisions we make as consumers can actually harm people on the other side of the planet or animals in our very neighborhood or the whole planet

through the climate system. And so yeah, I wrote my book without hurting anybody that I know of, but I still fly on airplanes and I still eat meat. And I still, my wife and I sometimes make expensive purchases instead of just giving that money as you quote an economist, I believe it's like Peter Singer or something like that, it talks about the fact that every decision you make is there's an opportunity cost there because you could probably save a life. And yet we just bought a fancy chair for my kids' room. And I think about these things,

especially after reading your book. And I really do wonder whether it's a bad Buddhist, does that matter, maybe it's a bad human being. Yeah, I think what's important is when you're buying things, you're actually conscious of it. You think, is this causing harm? And I noticed your example was a nice chair for your child's room. It's like, hey, Dan, that's a nice chair for your kid.

It wasn't an extra pair of fancy boots that you threw in the closet along with your 12 other pairs of fancy shoes. And then you talked about flying and you know that actually flying has a terrible carbon footprint. That was one of my worst carbon footprints and I started, in fact, at UC Berkeley, I was working with a lot of engineers. I said, we're going to start doing conference calls. We're not going to keep flying everywhere. And they loved it. And it worked out. But it's like, you know, I only did that once I learned how bad my carbon footprint was from flying. And then you think about now when you go to buy a car, you really should buy a Tesla if you can afford it because it's so much better for the environment.

Or you can lease an inexpensive leaf car or a sparky V. But to right now go out and buy a gas gasoline car and drive it around is really a terrible idea. It's not good as Buddhist practice. It's not good any practice in fact because it's killing the earth. As Pope Francis said in La Dautosie, he was so clear about it. He said, look, if you put any carbon in the ear, you're hurting people, you're killing people. It's a sin, it's not moral. It's like, okay, he was very spot on.

So we should be very aware of what we're buying, how it's affecting the world, how it's sort of impacting on us as individuals. But the point is, you're aware, you're thinking about it, which is like what we should all be doing, right? Well, I'm thinking about it right now because I spent the last week listening to your book on tape, and it really got me thinking. And I go through these jags where I think about this stuff like vegetarianism or veganism or conscious consumption and then I forget about it and laps back into being a typical upper west side white guy.

And so I really do have some, and I think you're hearing my voice, some guilt about this, and also on the other hand some skepticism about like you know how far do we take this thing? Every time I stop in a podega and buy a pack of gum should I be thinking about you know who made this thing and where and and so I guess I have a lot of questions you could start anywhere. Well I think these are difficult questions especially in the US especially in New York City where people always look good and they are all comparing each other. How do we look?

What are we doing? Where's your vacation? I mean, those comparisons are, well, Vellblin said, in videos comparisons. And it is really good, I think, when people start making some of these comparisons, if you ever can just stop and say, hey, you know what? This is an in videosideous Comparison. You see it to yourself, because of course you want to be kind, they're your friends, but you might even think about it and find a way to talk about it

in a way where you're no longer making the Envideous Comparison. And you might even, if you would thought about a mindful way to say, take your vacation, you could talk about that. Or if you're thinking about a less carbon-impacted way to get around town, which you can do in New York, you can talk about that, but you can talk about it in a way that actually tries to get people away from their sort of competitive materialism and to being more thoughtful about what they're doing. to materialism and to being more thoughtful about what they're doing. Now let's take meat. I agree with you that the meat issue is really, really important and I'm not a vegetarian. I actually would be if I lived alone, that my husband has some health problems and needs

to eat meat. But once I wrote this book and I saw the carbon footprint of beef and lamb, which was way worse than pork or eggs or cheese or chickens. You know what? We looked at each other and we said no more beef and lamb. We will stop. Now I got to tell you, I grew up in the South. I love lamb. It's my favorite meat. I haven't had it now for a few years and I don't miss it anymore. But it's like the carbon footprint of beef and lamb is so bad that one of the messages in the book is let's just stop beef and lamb or eat them just in a really rare instance. But then the next step is you don't need

to be vegetarian, but you know if you would cut your meat consumption down to like two ounces a day, you know you need more meat four ounces a day, but max. Like really cut back how much meat you eat. It would be an incredible improvement. It would cut the met thing one of our hottest greenhouse gases way back in the United States. It would cut the met thing one of our hottest greenhouse gases way back in the United States. It would stop a lot of the cruelty that we practice against animals, but mainly we would stop killing the earth and out by overheating it. So I think there's a lot we can do that are it's like

small steps but have big impact. I like that. I like that you're not a maximalist because I do think it makes it exponentially more doable. What are the other steps? You know, as a consumer, as a participant in the economy, what are the other steps? Well, let's personalize it to you. What else have you, what are the other change now

that you've become a Buddhist economist rather than a free market economist? What are the other big changes you've made in your own behavior? Right. Well, we talked about flying. We talked about eating. I definitely buy less. I make my clothes less longer and I try very well.

Okay, here's my true confession. I hate shopping. It was such a relief. Oh, good. I hate shopping. So a lot of people love to shop and some of us don't do it very well and we hate shopping. It was such a relief. Oh, good. I hate. So a lot of people love to shop. And some of us don't do it very well and we hate it. So that was actually somewhat a relief.

Oh, good. I now have a good reason to not have to shop so much. And the other things that become very important are our use of electricity. So the biggest greenhouse gas component in the United States was electrical generation, but now that's just been surpassed by transportation. So I think we each need to think seriously about our transportation, but also our energy use. So three years ago, I least a Spark EV. I had a Prius. It remained my backup car, but we got, at least a Sparky V, I had a Prius.

It remained my backup car, but we got a electrical little Chevy Sparky V. I hadn't been in a Chevy lot in decades. I loved going back to Chevrolet. Like, hey, this car built in Korea, sold through Chevy. Great little car. I loved an electrical vehicle. It was quiet, it was fun. The least ran out, and I had to give it back last month. And I really miss it, so I need to go find another electric car.

But then also on energy. And on California it's easier to do it. I'm going to tell you we did. We barely turn on our heater. And instead we have lots of blankets and sweatshirts that we hand out to people. And we have a super efficient wood burning stove that when we really need to feel more comfortable with guests we can burn a little wood from eucalyptus trees in our neighborhood. And so we use very, very little energy and we've tried to get rid of all the gas appliances in our house because using gas is very bad when you can get clean

electricity. So in our county we were had the option of buying 100% clean electricity and now in New York City people are getting that option to be able to buy 100 percent clean energy from wind and solar. So we signed up for that and then we tried to get rid of all the gas appliances and use a gas in our house so that we could use only electricity. And that's the future. We're all going to learn how to live from electricity only that hopefully is all clean, which means wind and solar. It doesn't mean gas. The idea, the gas company has really sold us a bill of goods. They taught us about so-called natural gas, which is methane. And methane in the first 30 years is 80 times hotter than just using petroleum.

And it's actually a little bit worse than some coal fire plants. So this idea that we're going to go from coal to gas, so-called natural gas, I just have to call it methane, is going to make it cleaner is a misconception that the gas companies have taught us. So we need to really push to say, no, we really do need to move to wind and solar and we need to do it quickly. And we need the government to continue helping with subsidies and infrastructure and so forth. Because right now we're subsidizing fossil fuel companies and that should stop. And we're thinking about investing in a lot of fossil fuel infrastructure that should

stop. But you can see I'm quickly moving from what do we as individuals do to what does a country do? Because our actions as individuals are shaped and formed by the government policy. Well, let me, let me stay on the individual level just for a minute because I suspect some people listening to this are thinking, you know, I'm just trying to survive. I'm, you know, I'm so busy, I've got kids, you know, I've got, maybe I've got a couple jobs, I don't have any time. So, like, how am I going to make the time to like investigate where my power is coming from, investigate where this next sweater I bought was stitched, make sure that I'm getting locally sourced, meat, and veg, all that stuff that would make me a proper Buddhist economist.

What do you say to that kind of pushback? Well, I'm sure that's how you become a so-called proper Buddhist economist. I think, first of all, if you buy less, you have a lot more time. And your life gets much simpler. And so that, and it have itself, gets rid of some of these problems you mentioned.

And then the other thing you really want to care about is, are you enjoying life? You really want to enjoy life. And how are you doing to enjoy life? You're right. Families like parents who are working and raising kids are so stressed out and have so little time that one of the most important things I think

is how can I simplify life? What can we do where if we simplify life if we buy less, if we just think a little bit harder about sort of what's important to us? Let's start focusing on that. And I think one of the most important things we learn to do as working parents, because I was a working parent for 20 years, I think we learned to say no. No to the things that we decide really aren't important to us, we don't have to do. And we say yes to more time with our kids, more time with our neighborhoods, more time

with things that we actually think are fun. And we end up sometimes saying no to things that we think, gee is that okay, is the boss gonna think it's okay? But I think the boss will say it's okay if you're real clear about why you're doing it. This is my, you know, I have to do this with my family. I'm doing this for my kids. And just be real clear about it, because we need to enjoy life. We're supposed to be happy.

We aren't supposed to feel just stressed out like, oh no. And I think, Dan, we would all feel a lot better if we step back and look how good our lives are. It's astonishing how good our lives are. And the next time we're feeling I don't have enough money or I don't have enough of this or that step back and say is that really true? What can I cut back on or what can I do that I really don't care about because I want to focus more on the things that really matter to me.

out because I want to focus more on the things that really matter to me. Now that's becoming a Buddhist economist. It's focusing on what matters to us and finding this space in our lives for it. Interesting. I mean, I agree with you about not taking things we're granted and seeing how good our lives actually are. I feel that way, although I'm aware that I'm enormously privileged and was born on third base and etc. I definitely think it's true. I wouldn't be careful personally, just myself, telling other people, because I don't know if other people's lives are as good, but I definitely agree with you for myself

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So you tried to steer the conversation earlier to sort of the larger structure of the economy and I derailed you, but I'm now going to put you back on the rails. How would America look different if we ran the economy as a Buddhist economy as opposed to a free market economy and i guess the the second part of that question is do you have any realistic hope that we will actually ever do that i have great hope that we will do that i i almost think the country was like in an alcoholic bench in some sense in that we we were just getting out of kilter. We let inequality just get out of hand.

We are contributing way too much carbon emissions and causing a lot of global warming. Per capita per GDP, we have the highest carbon emissions of any of the major countries. And so we were things we're really getting out of hand and we weren't really doing the job We should be doing on our two biggest challenges, inequality and global warming. And so it's like we we elected Donald Trump And it's like we've hit rock bottom. It's like okay

So now he's really going full speed ahead on on the fossil fuel industry He's going full speed ahead on getting more income for rich people and rich companies. And so it's like, oh, okay, we've clearly hit rock bottom. So, all we can do, in my opinion, from here is go up. And so then you say, oh, okay, well, what would a Buddhist economy look like? That's exactly the right question for me. So we know, we know from George Stiglitz and I'm already a sin and Tony Atkinson, some of our very best economists on inequality that a country chooses its level of inequality and they've demonstrated that and we know the policies that will reduce inequality and

and make a more just economy. And so Joe Stiglitz takes us through it in his book Tony Ackinson gives us 15 policies Robert Reich gives us a slew of policies. These are policies that are known to reduce inequality and make people better off. Make the country better off improve well-being. Are you talking about higher taxes here? Well, we're talking about not necessarily higher taxes, more progressive taxes. We're talking about less consumption of the rich

for more consumption for those in need. So economic growth has gone disproportionately to the rich 2%. So in the last recovery from the recession, the top 1 to 2% of the population, the richest, took 95% of the fruits of economic growth. It's like, what? No, no, that's not right. And we don't want to do anything that increases income of the rich while we're hurting the poor. So we want to do the opposite. One of the nice things about Buddhist economics is because of people's interconnection and people being altruistic at their core, that when you take money from the very rich,

so that they may be spend it less on exotic vacations or a new yacht and give it to families towards the bottom. They're buying better food, better education, safer housing. Their families are much better off. So those are the kinds of policies that economists who care about and equality tell us work. We know they work. Higher minimum wages, decent jobs, restructuring workplaces, so people have more time off for children and for taking care of sickness.

We have lots of ways to make the economy better in terms of improving well-being and making it more equitable. And let me just go one other step to our other major challenge that I work on a lot, which is sustainability or global warming. Economists also get to choose the amount of carbon emissions that our economy puts into the air. So, we know we have to decouple the economy from the fossil fuel industry. And in Europe, they're doing a pretty good job of going forward on this. And in California, we're starting to finally go ahead on that. And the US was starting

to decouple the economy from carbon emissions until the price of gasoline went so low and then consumers all started training their pre-assasses to get SUVs and pick up trucks. So, so that was unfortunate that we let the price of gasoline go low and we didn't slap on a carbon tax, but we didn't. And consumers took us back a step. But we we can go forward again. It's our choice. As a country, it's our choice how many carbon emissions we put in the air. as a country is our choice how many carbon emissions we put in the air. And we know the policies that in fact would stop that. We have two roadmaps, Mark Jacobson, it's Stanford, and the Deep Decorponization Plan of the UN shows how all the countries around the world can reach the Paris Agreement

2% or 2 degree temperature razor less, by the technology we have. And in the United States, that technology to go to 80% clean energy by 2050, according to Mark Jacobson at Stanford, would cost us only 1% of our GDP, which is nothing. So it's like, we have these choices. We know the policies, we have the technology, we just need to really push ahead on it. We're learning, we're going to understand that this, we really do want to create a much more meaningful life with more equity and less global warming.

If we look at your policy prescriptions in in total uh... in terms of what it would take to make us a Buddhist economy as opposed to uh... free market economy what's the pushback if we had a hard-nosed free market economist on this podcast right now what would she or he say to you to debunk your claims. I think they would say, look, people are selfish.

People have ego's, people care about having total freedom of choice. That's all they want. People want total freedom of choice. They don't care about what's happening to other people. That's not what makes them happy. They really do want to keep buying. And that's really what they care about what's happening to other people. That's not what makes them happy. They really do want to keep buying. And that's really what they care about. They love materialism. They aren't going to feel any better if other people are better off. They really aren't. They

don't care. I think they just push back on what's human nature and do people care about a meaningful life and other than buying, buying and consuming and sort of getting ahead in their own mind. So I think that's where a lot of the pushback is and you know there is a group of Americans that do feel that way and there's also a group of Americans where they say don't tell me what to do. I have my own idiosyncratic personality and I don't want you to touch it. Yeah, what do you say to them? I say to them that every single study of what makes people happy, in fact, fine people are happier when they're in a community

where they can help people and people are getting better off. And that it is true that there are these few outliers that are super competitive and don't touch my turf. But in fact, those people aren't happy. We have our inner nature. I am sure every single person at some level internally is kind and generous in loving. But we know how we can cloud that over and we can we can take on sort of an external view of the world where we all we care about is getting ahead

winning the game. We can take that on and it is true that I think winning the game, we can take that on. And it is true that I think winning the game, making a purchase, it does make you happier, but not for very long. And so the studies on happiness show that, in fact, there's this reversion back to your former level of happiness or unhappiness. So you have this constant need to keep going out and trying to overcome your pain or your unhappiness by once again going out consuming more, getting ahead, winning. And it's like an endless struggle. And so it's the insatiability. Yes, but it's endless. It's like it's not going to give you lasting happiness.

So I think you sort of need to separate out what gives you a big burst of happiness, euphoria, and what gives you meaningful happiness over your lifetime? Are you gonna end up with hedonic happiness where you just went quick pleasure, no pain, but it's here and gone. Or do you want the Aristotle in happiness of, hey, I want to create a meaningful worthy life.

I want to develop my full potential as a person. I want to be part of a community that I give to. But there aren't there a lot, I think there are a lot of conservatives who push back, who would accept that meaning is extremely important. You know, I'm part of a church, I'm part of a community, we serve others, we adopt foster children, etc., etc., but I don't want the government in my life in such an excessive way, taxing me, setting up rules that I have to buy, by making sure I buy a certain kind of car, etc., etc.

How do you respond to that? Well, I think the first thing you want to do is just start on sustainability and say, look, without the government, we are going to kill the planet. So with global warming, I think you can bring people together much more in an understanding of the role of the government. It's absolutely critical of governments around the world. We're all in this together and it has to be done fairly rapidly to bring down the carbon emissions so that we don't overheat the earth or more than we have.

Now when you get down to equity, I think you get into more disagreement. So for example, you talk to someone who thinks of themselves as a church, go or a Christian, and you talk about the starvation, the material starvation in, say, Southern Africa, Sub-Sahara Africa. And usually they'll admit that that's actually unfortunate, that maybe we should think about

that, but then they say, but you know, I'm already doing this or this or this or this. And that my answer to that is, you know, the UN and their Millennium Development Goals over a 15 year period brought down extreme starvation and extreme hunger enormously. And they did it by the countries, the rich countries coming together and having a public private plan. It's not just government, but it's a public private plan that targeted how to reduce extreme starvation in hunger. And they didn't totally wipe it out, but they put like they reduced it by like 80%.

They were also able at the same time to raise education, especially for women and girls, and to reach some other targets that really improved people's lives and made people much better off. And so now it's just a matter of figuring out how to work with the UN and all the other rich countries to do things in the world that most people would actually agree, yeah, actually those are good ideas. And in that respect, the role of the government isn't directly impacting on them. Right, but it is, you know, we are in an America first era right now, and the argument seems to go along the lines

of, we've got crumbling infrastructure here at home, why would we be sending money to countries overseas? Well, certainly we should spend money on helping countries overseas before we spend our new weapon systems. So it's not like we aren't, I agree that we need to rebuild the infrastructure, but once again, we don't need to rebuild the fossil fuel infrastructure. We don't need to build new weapon systems instead of helping impoverished nations, which would then actually help us abroad. It's like for foreign affairs, we know lots of ways that we could spend money in a much better way that would help us abroad in terms of countries helping us and people liking

us and undermining terrorists that are recruiting people with vows of revenge against the U.S. So it's like we know how to actually spend our money better than just more weapons systems. Or at the US, we don't want to think rebuilding the infrastructure is rebuilding a wall along Mexico. And we don't want to think rebuilding the infrastructure is building pipelines to carry oil all over the United States. For me, rebuilding a modern infrastructure is critical, but it means transit systems and

transportation systems, and livable cities, and efficient buildings, and clean energy to give us a modern infrastructure for a competitive economy. And then the U.S., who has been a leader in green technology, we make money from it, we can remain competitive globally and at home on clean energy. If we don't do that, if we go revert back to building an infrastructure for fossil fuel, then China is going to take over the leadership of green technology along with Germany and France. And we'll lose our position. So it's not like if you wanted to find what makes America great, to me,

it's being a leader in green technology, building a modern infrastructure so our economy moves to a competitive robust economy and a green energy era. And we can do that while we're improving people's well-being. It's like we know these policies, we have the technology, we can do it. But it's not building a fossil fuel economy or weapon systems. Before we close, I don't know if the right word here is theological or doctrinal. I don't know what the right word here is, but a question about Buddhism because you've

said repeatedly in our conversation and you say in your book that that Buddhism holds that people are essentially good. My understanding, and I'll admit right now that my understanding is not always the correct one, what some might argue rarely the correct one, my understanding is that's kind of a later Buddhist claim, like My understanding is that's kind of a later Buddhist claim, like something you would hear in Tibetan Buddhism, for example. I've not understood that to be a claim of kind of the old school Buddhism that I've studied, and it is a claim that's hard to prove. I mean, we can prove that humans have their better angels, for sure, but that we have some core Buddha nature.

I've always wondered about that. To me, the proposition that I at least as I understand it of Buddhism, of the kind of Buddhism that I've practiced, which is teravata Buddhism, which is as I've sometimes referred to as old school Buddhism, it's more that we have the capacity for all sorts of urges, wholesome and unwholesome. And we also have the capacity to train our minds and our brains to develop either or, so that through meditation I can train myself to be more compassionate or through not meditating

and indulging my less wholesome urges, I can get better at being a jerk. So I just wonder what your take is on the foregoing. Yeah, I think that I'm certainly not a Buddhist master by any means, but I do know what you just said, and I actually agree with it. I myself practice Mahayana, Mahayana, but when I was in India a little over a year ago, I spent quite a bit of time down with the Theravada, learned monks and talked to them about it.

And they said, actually, people try and make this differentiation, but it's really not there. Because, as long as we see the world in our place, and it is, people are all interconnected, we're interconnected with nature. And we all have terrible, terrible urges that we do need to tame. You know, we have our clashes, we have greed, we have moments when we're angry and misbehaved, we have all, we all go through, we're all human. And we, in our meditation, does help us to sort of see that and how to maybe deal with it better. But they said, don't spend too much time worrying about the differentiation between the various

branches of Buddhism because they all teach us not to harm and they all teach us to develop our good nature and the things that are they all teaches to develop compassion, loving kindness and caring for others and so it's like they convinced me. They said and actually at one point the two schools were together in the eight century they diverged and then they would start getting very technical on me. I said oh I can tell that this is more than I could ever learn and they would smile and they'd say, that's okay. The main thing is to know that we know how not to harm.

We know how to help. We know how to love and be compassionate. And we know that all these other clasers are bad urges we have, or things that we all continually work on overcoming. Makes sense to me. Claire, what a pleasure to sit and chat with you. I thought provoking very much very much so and both this conversation and your book. So thank you very much for your time. It's wonderful talking to you Dan and

thank you for your book and for your outreach to the world. Okay there's another edition of the 10% Happier Podcast. If you liked it please make sure to subscribe, rate us, and if you want to suggest topics we should cover or guess we should bring in, hit me up on Twitter at Dan B. Harris. I also want to thank Hardly, the people who produced this podcast and really do pretty much all the work. Lauren, Efron, Josh Kohan, Sarah Amos, Andrew Calb, Steve Jones, and the head of ABC News Digital Dan Silver.

I'll talk to you next Wednesday. Hey, hey, prime members. You can listen to 10% happier early and ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Or you can listen early and ad free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts. Before you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondery.com slash survey.