Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - I Just Did A 10-Day Silent Meditation Retreat With Joseph Goldstein. Here’s What I Learned

Episode Date: September 18, 2024

Meditation retreats are the object of much intrigue and even suspicion. So today, we’re going to take you inside a 10-day silent meditation retreat that Dan recently did with his teacher, Joseph Goldstein. You’ll also hear from Senior Producer, Marissa Schneiderman, who was fresh off a retreat of her own, with meditation teachers Alexis Santos and Andrea Fella. In this episode we talk about:The ups and downs of retreatsSome famous Buddhist listicles, including the five hindrancesThe importance of repetitionWe’ll hear snippets of Joseph answering Dan’s questionsWe find out what “cowboy dharma” isWhat it feels like to wear shit colored glassesHow to stop getting caught in a mind trapAnd lastly, we listen to voicemails and answer audience questions! Related Episodes:Joseph Goldstein On: How Not To Try Too Hard in Meditation, Why You Shouldn't "Waste Your Suffering," and the Value Of Seeing How Ridiculous You Are#377. A More Relaxed Way to Meditate | Alexis SantosEverything You Wanted To Know About Meditation Retreats But Were Afraid To Ask | Spring Washam (And Dan’s Close Friend, Zev Borow)#327 Uprooting Your Delusions | Andrea Fella How to Take Risks (an Experimental Episode) | Marissa SchneidermanSign up for Dan’s weekly newsletter hereFollow Dan on social: Instagram, TikTokTen Percent Happier online bookstoreSubscribe to our YouTube ChannelOur favorite playlists on: Anxiety, Sleep, Relationships, Most Popular EpisodesFull Shownotes: https://happierapp.com/podcast/tph/retreat-episode-829See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to 10% happier early and ad free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. This is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hello, my fellow suffering beings. How we doing? Meditation retreats are the object of so much intrigue and even suspicion. As I've mentioned in the past, the chapter I wrote about my first meditation retreat in my book, 10% Happier, is perhaps the most commented upon piece of writing I have ever produced.

People still ask me about it all the time. Even if you have not read that chapter or the book, you may have a ton of questions yourself about meditation retreats. Yeah, how do you stay silent all day? How do you meditate all day? What is the food like? What are the other people like?

Why would you do this in the first place? All very reasonable questions. So today we're gonna take you inside a 10 day silent meditation retreat that I recently did with my long time teacher, Joseph Goldstein. In this episode, you're gonna hear me in conversation with my colleague, podcast senior producer,

Marissa Schneiderman. I was fresh off my retreat with Joseph when we had this conversation. Marissa was fresh off of her own retreat with a different meditation teacher, Alexis Santos, who's been on this show many times, and in fact will be on again very soon. You'll hear us talk about the ups and downs of retreats. You'll also hear some snippets of Joseph answering my questions on the retreat we did. I recorded Joseph on my iPhone, so here are some of those snippets.

And we'll have some voicemails from you, from listeners, posing questions that Marissa and I will answer inside a meditation retreat right after this. But first some BSP or blatant self-promotion. Last week, I launched a new venture over on Substack. If you want to check it out, you can go to danharris.com or just go to Substack and search under my name. Uh, if this is new news to you, this new project, let me just briefly tell you what I'll be doing

over on Substack. I will be chatting directly with listeners. I'll be hosting live video AMAs or ask me anything sessions. I'll be leading live guided meditations and more on the regular. If you want full details, head on over to danharris.com or just check out last Tuesday's episode where I explained why I am moving away

from the meditation app I co-founded and striking out on my own. This week over on danharris.com, I'm looking forward to our first live AMA. I'll be online and on camera and you can ask me anything. It's gonna be at 11 a.m. Eastern, 8 a.m. Pacific. I hope you'll show up and ask me whatever's on your mind. I'm both nervous and excited to connect more

with all of you, the listeners of this show. I'm a little afraid nobody's gonna show up. So do me a solid, sign up and come over and hang out. Also, while I'm doing my own thing these days, I am gonna keep telling you about what's happening over on the meditation app that used to be called 10% Happier and is now called Just Happier. Even though I don't work there anymore,

I'm gonna keep updating you on their doings. The Happier team has re-imagined the app reflecting the belief that no two journeys are the same and your meditation app should meet you where you are to help you achieve more than you thought possible. Happier introduces new ways to meditate and updated features that bring mindfulness to you on and off the cushion. The app checks in with you monthly and adapts to your needs and goals, whether you've been

practicing for three minutes or 30 years. Download the new Happier app today to discover meditation that evolves with you. Listening to Audible helps your imagination soar. Whether you listen to stories, motivation, expert advice, any genre you love, you can be inspired to imagine new worlds, new possibilities, new ways of thinking. Listening can lead to positive change in your mood, your habits, and ultimately your overall well-being. Audible has the best selection of audiobooks without exception, along with popular podcasts

and exclusive Audible originals, all in one easy app. Enjoy Audible anytime while doing other things, household chores, exercising on the road, commuting, you name it. My wife Bianca and I have been listening to many audiobooks as we drive around for summer vacations. We listen to Life by Keith Richards.

Keith, if you're listening, I'd love to have you on the show. We also listen to Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. And Yuval, if you're listening to this, we would also love to have you on the show. So audio books, yes, audible, yes, love it. There's more to imagine when you listen. Sign up for a free 30 day audible trial

and your first audio book is free. Visit audible.ca, audible.ca. I'm Afua Hirsch. And I'm Peter Frankenbaum. And in our podcast, Legacy, we explore the lives of some of the biggest characters in history. This season, we're exploring the life of Marilyn Monroe. From a tough childhood growing up in foster homes,

she became one of the most famous and photographed stars of the 20th century. But off camera, the real Marilyn was shrewd, vulnerable and funny, and also full of surprises. Follow Legacy Now wherever you get your podcasts. Dan, hey, how's it going? Doing well, how are you? I'm really excited to have another

experimental episode with you. I feel like the last one was a hit. It was a lot of fun. Me too, I love these episodes. Yeah, so the reason why we're meeting here today is it became clear a couple of weeks ago that you and I would both be going on 10 day silent retreats at the same time,

which I thought was interesting. And it made me think about how I actually have no idea what you do on these silent retreats. There's this term Kalyanamita, spiritual friendship, friends on the path. Those are the people that after you do retreat, it's really nice to talk with them and share insights, learnings, and experiences and help grow in your practice together. And I realized, you know, working with you, I obviously know that you're interested in Buddhism, that it's a big part of your life.

I've read your book, I know how it's changed your life, but I never really have gotten the fresh impressions of what's going on with you after a retreat, what are you working with? And I thought, hey, maybe we could chat about it. That's a great idea. And I think people are really interested in retreats. We haven't done that much on the show.

We've done, I think, one full episode about meditation retreats, but it's such a bizarre experience. I think most people either don't have the time or the means or the inclination to do it, but there's a ton of interest about what happens on these things. So, no, I think it's a really good idea.

I agree. I feel like everyone has a different perspective too. Often people are like, wow, how nice and relaxing. And I'm like, if only it were. And obviously that's part of it, but it's not like we go away for 10 days with the TV and remote control and our favorite Netflix episodes and all the foods we want. It's really sort of a monastic time to be with the mind and heart, which we're often running away from

through distraction. Even just for example, on my first retreat I ever went on, it was really clear that I was addicted to music. And I say that in air quotes, but being like, wow, I'm constantly listening to music. And in a way that's pulling me away from my experience. So I think that different things can happen on retreat and we can learn about different things that are happening in our daily life as a result, thanks to being free from distraction.

Absolutely. Yes. These learnings are not often pleasant as Joseph Goldstein, my meditation teacher says, self-knowledge is always bad news. It's not like you're learning these wonderful things about yourself. You're learning hard things that then once you take it in, will make your life easier on the backside. Yeah, that's great. I'm wondering if it's worth talking about format and practice style. Like what are you actually doing for 10 days?

Okay. So just to give some context here I was on retreat at a place called the insight meditation society Which is in Barry, Massachusetts? Bar are e Massachusetts. It was co-founded many decades ago in the 70s by Three now quite prominent eminent teachers Joseph Gold Goldstein, Jack Kornfield, and Sharon Salzberg.

Jack later split off and started his own West Coast center called Spirit Rock, but Sharon and Joseph still live on the grounds of IMS. I'm quite close with both of them. In particular, Joseph volunteered years ago for reasons that I don't fully understand and that he might regret to be my teacher. So we've worked together for quite a while. I have this incredible luxury, which is he will let me come up kind of on my own schedule and stay not in the main retreat center where they're constantly running three, five, seven,

10 day long retreats on a schedule where they bring teachers in to run these retreats, Joseph will let me come up on my own schedule that I work out with him and stay in a cottage on the grounds and work one-on-one with him. And I generally do this now for the last couple of years. I've done it with two friends of mine, Josh and Stefan. They are two guys that I met 10 years ago. I met them independently, and both of them had interest in Buddhist meditation. So I kind of put us, the three of us together as a little sangha. That's a Buddhist term, S-A-N-G-H-A. It just means

like a group of fellow practitioners. And the three of us started getting lunch every month Then these relationships really deepened over time and now We do these retreats together and you'll hear some audio of it Just to say it's an incredible luxury that we get to do this together and get all of this one-on-one time with Joseph or three on one time sometimes It's an incredible opportunity and so none of us take it for granted. Does that set the scene well enough? Definitely.

So I think that's a very specific format. I call it retreat concierge in my mind. So like you sort of have that service and in a way you miss an entire fun element of suffering and self-learning which is being surrounded by other people. Jean-Paul Sartre, the existentialist writer said hell is other people, which is being surrounded by other people. Jean-Paul Sartre, the existentialist writer, said, hell is other people, which is true.

The worst hell, though, is loneliness. And so it's a kind of, it's the human curse, because we need other people. And as I often say, other people are a Titanic painting the ass. I would not recommend somebody dive in and do the concierge retreat. Not that it's widely available. I think it's better to do, especially as you're starting, to do one of these formal traditional retreats

where there's a schedule and, yes, you are with 50 or 100 or 150 other people kind of moving through the schedule every day and doing the same thing at the same time. And my first retreat was in 2010, and I remember really struggling with all of these judgments about the other people, which I still deal with honestly But over time I've sort of learned to take those judgments less seriously because what the hell do I know? I'm not even talking to these people. I'm judging them on like their

Apparel decisions, but that is a good thing to learn about yourself. You really just see how reflexively Judgmental we are based on very limited data as we move through the world. So you're right, Marisa, that is a learning that can happen on these retreats. I definitely do prefer now this style of setting my own schedule, but it does have some challenges that we can talk about.

Yeah, in terms of my retreat, so I've had the benefit of going to the IMS, the Insight Meditation Society, a couple of times, one time being a three-month silent retreat. So I sort of lived there for a bit. And this was a center that I went to in Santa Cruz, California called Insight Retreat Center. It was a totally new experience for me, first of all, because some of the places I've gone, they're normally larger groups, like 70 to 100 people. And this is only 40 people. So you actually really do get to know people and the entire center.

Everything is Donna based, which is the poly term for generosity and can be financial, but it also means donating your time. So every person that was working at the retreat, the cooks, the managers, they were all sitting on retreat. No one is paid even including the registrar who registered for me with the treat. Everyone is donating their time. So a big theme for me going on the retreat was trust fall. That was sort of the high level, because the fact that this place has been functioning for 12 years completely on donation, completely on the trust is a marvel. The other part of the trust fall for me was I was trying a different style of

practice that I am not accustomed to practicing. Typically, like Dan says, there's a schedule, sit, walk, sit, walk. The types of people that I was practicing with, who Dan is also familiar with and we'll talk more about it, they did not set a schedule. So my belief was, well, I have this undisciplined mind, I need to work it through the sit walk, sit walk schedule. And suddenly I'm in this center that's completely donation run. People working there sitting. And I also technically can do whatever I want because you're not forced to be in the hall at a certain time and that really created a sense of openness.

Yeah, it's a challenging format. I've done a retreat in that style. Let me just fill in some of the context there. First of all, just to say a little bit more about the traditional retreat schedule, which neither Marissa nor I followed on the retreats that just concluded for us, but generally speaking, the schedule is you get up at like 530 and the first meditation is like six in the morning and then you sit for 45 minutes and then you have an hour and

then there's breakfast and then a bit of a break. You do a yogi job where you're cleaning up after the breakfast or you're cleaning the bathrooms or whatever you get assigned a job. So then after the break, you do these rock blocks of, as Marissa said, sit, walk, sit, walk. So it might be 45 minutes of sitting followed by 30 minutes of walking meditation, which is not taking a walk. It's not as Joseph likes to say, it's not recess.

You are doing very slow walking generally, where you bring your full attention to the feeling of your body moving through space. And then every time you get distracted, you start again and again and again. You can vary the speed and vary the technique, but that's generally how it goes. So there's back to back sit walk, sit walk, sit walk all the way up to lunch. There's lunch and another break for yogi jobs or whatever. And then there's another big block of siwak, siwak, all the way up until they don't do dinner, they call it tea or supper.

There's a very light meal or some people don't eat dinner. This is a kind of a thing that I've gotten into my head over several times whether to eat dinner. And then there's more sitting and walking and then an evening Dharma talk usually at like seven o'clock, which a lot of people are surprised that these are incredibly meaningful and impactful because this is where one of the teachers will speak for an hour and and to have it placed within the intellectual infrastructure of Buddhism or the Dharma actually is very helpful. It inspires you, reminds you why you're there. And then there's more sitting and walking until about 10 o'clock at night and then people go to bed or stay up and keep practicing.

So that's the traditional schedule. Marissa was practicing with a couple of teachers, including Alexis Santos, who has been on this show and is a great friend. And Alexis trained under a Burmese master named Sayadaw Utajaniya. And Utajaniya, who I've never met, his style is really no schedule. It's much more intuitive. The meditation instructions are much, much looser. It can be a very interesting way to practice if you've gone through the formal schedule many times. I'm curious how it went down for you, Marisa.

Yeah, I also just wanna add one thing when you talk about the Dharma talk. It really is incredible how you can learn so much in those experiences. And sometimes it can feel like in the sitwalk, sitwalk boredom, it's like, can feel like the Netflix and chill period. Like, it's so interesting how much excitement can come after a day of sit walk, sit walk.

You're like, I'm going to learn something. So it's actually sort of amazing to feel primed to hearing something and have an open blank sleep for these wisdom morsels to land. But it's been very funny to notice on certain days the excitement that can arise that in a couple of hours, I'm going to learn something. In terms of the schedule, I was feeling really nervous about it, to be honest. But they really prepared us when you can go on a retreat with teachers that you trust and that really have done the practice. In a way, you can let go as much as possible and know that they've sat many, many retreats

and they are familiar with patterns of mind and they know what natural reactions will be. For example, if someone's meditating in the hall, often it's really easy to feel annoyed by your neighbor who's like coughing or swallowing hard or sucking on a cough drop, or we can be that person and feel like we're creating agitation. But the teacher, Andrea, she's like, I actually think it's kind of cozy when you're sitting and meditating in the hall

and someone nestles up to sit as well. And so I feel like there was already this kind of framing. And I think they spent two days really talking about bringing everything into the field of awareness, that nothing is a problem and that everything is an opportunity to be aware. So, and this comes from Sayadaw Tashania, they don't call it walking meditation. They call it walking with awareness, sleeping with awareness, moving with awareness, eating

with awareness. And it actually gives everything a whole new rebrand and it can actually allow things to feel a lot more relaxed. And also trust relaxation, which I think can be very, very hard in the Western psyche to think that it's okay to almost do what you want as long as there is awareness to it. And then you're trusting that like wisdom will arise in that moment so that you're not just like sleeping all day

or just like eating all day, but actually that you've built enough concentration and you're in a container where other people are doing the same thing, where you feel likely encouraged to maintain a thread of awareness. I'm curious if that feels too granular or that makes sense, Stan.

No, it makes complete sense to me, basically. Instead of these forced marches of sitting and walking and sitting and walking, you are forced to figure out what you're going to do at any given moment. And it's not like the meditation is quarantined to certain chunks on the schedule. The whole thing is meditation. Can you be mindful, awake, aware, whatever you're doing? And it's a kind of interesting jiu-jitsu move. Yeah, and there's a lot of trust involved. Can I trust myself in

the decision I make? Can I trust that if I need to rest, it's okay to rest? Can I trust that it's okay to get up from the sit? For example, one tip they said is, if you're sitting and you want to get up, wait three times for the question to say get up. You know, so they sort of gave us some tips to like help connect with that trust, but things did naturally fall into place, which that has been my experience on retreat, which is very interesting. Especially the first couple of days there. I'm always like, why the hell did I do this? I really struggle with why the hell did I do this?

When is this going to end from a Buddhist perspective? Doesn't matter what you're perspective, doesn't matter what you're thinking doesn't matter what you're feeling. It's all something not to cling to. It's all something to be mindful of and not attached to and let it go. But these resistance thoughts that I have are particularly thorny and I wrestled with them in a huge way. People often say to me, you know, what's it like to be back in the world talking again, et cetera, et cetera.

And I'm like, I'm psyched. I am so glad that that experience is over. I know how impactful it has been for me. And I've done probably maybe 15, 10 day retreats and many, many more shorter ones. So I know the value of them intimately. And yet I really struggle with like, why the fuck am I here? And I need to get out of here.

And in some ways I wonder whether it's a little bit tied to my claustrophobia, which is pretty intense and this feeling of being trapped. And maybe brings me back to summer camp a little bit when I went to summer camp when I was little, which I didn't always compute as the most pleasant thing. Some of those psychodynamics are at play for me on retreat in a big way. And the bottom line is what I said earlier, which is it's all just something to practice with,

but some things are easier to practice with than others. Yeah, that's really interesting. Have you talked with Joseph about the psychodynamics of it, or do you also try to just widen the awareness and again, think of it more broadly as a feeling rather than getting lost in the specific content of it? I have talked to Joseph about this. I can't remember exactly what he said,

but he's really altered the way he has me practice over time, in part because he knows that I struggle with a lot of aspects of retreat. So what I for my first four or five years of doing retreats would be on the schedules and then I started coming up by myself to IMS and he would let me practice in a cabin by myself and I was getting super intense about it and tracking how much I was sitting and, you know, trying to get in a certain number of hours.

And I had some incredible experiences doing that, but I also was pretty miserable. Then I did a retreat with Alexis, who was one of your teachers in the retreat you just did, in this Tejaniya style, and I really liked it. And at the end of the retreat, Joseph came just to hang out and I remember kind of sheepishly telling him how much I like this looser format.

And he's like, dude, why didn't you tell me? It's totally fine. Like he's definitely altered the way he teaches with me now. So when I complained to him about retreats, he's like, look, you're not on a schedule. Do what you want. But the only options really are sitting and walking. And often I don't want to do those things.

What I do find though is if I can stop the thinking, not stop it, that's a little too hostile, but if I can let go of the thoughts and see them for what they are, which is quantum bursts of energy in the mind that are, as Joseph likes to say, little more than nothing, and that I can claim no ownership over. So in other words, they are, as the Buddhists say, empty, meaning empty of self. You know, anybody can do this exercise of notice the last thought you have and then go look for what was the substance, not the words or the meaning of the thoughts but like can you find that thing that not a thing called

a thought these little bubbles that pop up in the mind that we take very seriously and very personally and often act them out blindly and reflexively and so the move is to see them for what they really are which is again little more, little more than nothing. And so often, once I power through the resistance or just let the resistance come and go, and I'm in the practice, well, then it's kind of like nothing can touch you because you're seeing everything for what it is. That's one of the ways in which this practice is deliberation

because we're often so plagued literally by our thoughts and feelings and emotions and biases. And if you can drop back out of them and not be so yanked around by them, that is a huge relief. Yeah, it's so true. When Joseph said, why didn't you tell me? I think the first thing that came to mind was something that also feels really liberating is this idea that there's 84,000

Dharma doors. So basically there's a lot of different ways to practice. Someone might not feel good just sitting on the cushion looking at breath, but there's other ways. And that's, I think, also why Utasya Nia was so liberating because it just, one of the top lines is not a problem, that there's so many different ways to access it as long as you have awareness. And another great image that came to mind was something that the Buddha said about

the body being heaps of foam and the thoughts are like plantain trees, which you see a plantain but actually the trunk of the tree is hollow. We think they're these solid things that and their fruits are coming from them but actually there's no insight. There's really nothing to point to. Same with the body being foam. It feels very solid like I'm touching my hand right now against my finger but actually there's so many different processes that are happening. There's so much changes.

So the idea of slowing down and getting to watch these processes and somehow take a step back is extremely liberating. Yeah. I mean, I think about it like we walk around with this very solid sense of I am on a practical level you are. I mean, look in the mirror, you'll see your reflection and you need to show your driver's license when you go to the airport and all that. So you are you but on a deeper level, there's nothing to find. There is no core nugget of Marissa behind your eyes. Even though we feel like an isolated ego peering fretfully out at the world. But that isn't actually what's going on. It's much more complex internally. And I kind of think of these Buddhist teachings as putting this sense of self through a cheese grater. You know, it's like picking apart this seemingly monolithic sense of I am through this practice

where you're looking at your practice where you're looking at your thoughts, you're looking at your bodily sensations and not being attached to them, not clinging to them, letting them come and go over and over. And ultimately you see that what you're calling yourself is really, as Joseph likes to say, it's like a river of phenomena coming and going, thoughts, sensations, etc., etc., coming and going and coming and going, and we add on top of it this sense of self, but there isn't actually much there to find. And if you can drop that, there are many ways in which that is, to use the word again, liberating, because if you're not taking your thoughts and your emotions so personally,

then they're not owning you as much. So it's quite practical. It might sound esoteric, but it's actually quite practical. Yeah, something that was really nice kind of being a fly on the wall, listening to these sessions with you and Joseph. And again, you allude to this all the time is

he drops these wisdom bombs and slogans, and he really is trying all different experimental approaches to help us ultimately not cling and take a step back. And one of the instructions that he had given you and your friends was about saying, not I, not mine, not myself. Yes, although he corrected me.

It's not mine, not I, not myself. That's a refrain from the Buddhist scriptures. The Buddha is always telling people to look at everything as not mine, not I, not myself. So any thought that bubbles up, any emotion, any perception you have, any feeling that you own this body, which by the way, you're renting at best, if the body was truly yours, well, then you would make sure it never got sick in any way.

But we all get sick, we all get older, we all die. So as Joseph says, the body is a process that is unfolding lawfully, but we don't make the laws. And the only way to relate to the body, into our emotions and our thoughts with some skills so that we're not swamped by all of this is to view it as not mine, not I, not myself. This is an attempt to undo some deep conditioning over several thousand years of evolution. It doesn't, for most of us, happen quickly,

but it is a really interesting practice to pursue. But just to step back for a second. So the way this works is Josh, Stefan, and I show up on a Friday night, get settled. Usually the three of us will have dinner and talk about our lives and our practice or whatever, do a little meditation that evening. The next morning, really try to drop into some sort of self-created schedule of sitting

and walking and meals. And then in that afternoon, Joseph pops in and the three of us sit with Joseph. He had just finished a few weeks prior his annual three-month solo retreat, which he does in his house, which is again on the grounds of the Insight Meditation Society. Joseph is always experimenting with different little techniques to help himself and others, as Marissa said, not cling to see everything is not mine, not I, not myself. And so he's always inventing these little meditative techniques and

hacks. And so when he sat down with Stefan and Josh and I, he was talking about these ideas that percolated for him and these little tests that he was running in his own practice on his three-month retreat and that he wanted to now test them on us. And so one of them was just to drop this phrase, which again is a phrase that the Buddha utters over and over and over in the Buddhist teachings, and the phrase is, not mine, not I, not myself, into your mind while you're practicing. And actually, here's a little snippet of Joseph explaining it himself. Yes, so I thought today just I'll share a couple of my ideas that came up during the retreat, as a frame for understanding the practice.

The first just has to do with some practical ways of deepening our understanding of selflessness, because that just seems so core. And the expression that's in the suttas, it's just repeated a million times, that everything should be seen with perfect wisdom, this is not mine, this is not I, this is not myself. The idea of mind comes through craving. This is mind. So to understand that the craving is the energy in the mind that leads to mine, and so not mine, is to cut through the craving.

And there are other ways as well. Not I comes from the factor of conceit, you know, the I am. And often in comparison, you know, I'm better, I'm worse, I'm equal. Thinking of I am over time. You know, I did this in the past, I'm doing this now. So all of that is the I am. And then the third, this is not mine, not I, not myself. The not myself is rooted in wrong view, which is just the belief in the view of self or the belief in self. And so the freedom really is in cutting through

those three things, craving, conceit, and wrong view, not mine, not I, not myself. A lot of this came up for me in walking. So in the walking, as different objects arose, I would just kind of have that phrase repeated in my mind, not mine, not mine, not myself, as my mind would become aware of different things.

And what I noticed was that with some kinds of objects, it was really easy. As an example, some walking and just, you know, the sensations in the feet and leg as moving. Oh, not mine, not mine. It's just really impersonal. And sounds, you know, sounds would come, not mine, not I, not myself.

And that was pretty easy, or what we see. So you might just play with that. It's not like a mantra, but I would just drop it in. I find it a very effective way of just dropping into the impersonality of those phenomena, just seeing or just hearing or just feeling. It wasn't hard to see the selfless nature of those objects. It got a little bit harder as I started paying attention to the sensations in my head. And that was just interesting to me.

It's the same body. So why should it be easy? Easy to feel the non-selfness of the sensations in the legs, but all of a sudden these are this is me with the sensations in the head. It took just a little extra attentiveness. Okay, not mine, not I. It's the same. You have to equalize.

So starting with what's easy, like sensation of the leg or sounds, the really easy sights, and then start applying that same thing to what's a little more difficult. So sensation in the head, and then of course thoughts and emotions are more difficult. So sensation in the head and then of course thoughts and emotions are more difficult because we tend to identify more with them. But to bring that same reminder,

not mine, not I, not myself, as you become aware of thoughts, that's kind of one little of thoughts, that's kind of one little exercise to do, which I found just a really good doorway into touching the experience of selflessness. Is this making sense? And so then what we do is we go off for a couple of days and do it. The first couple of days of retreat are often wretched. I often use this analogy that's like a plane that has lost its landing gear, so it's doing an emergency landing with no landing gear, and they foam the runway. You're the plane just hitting this foam.

You're going high speed and then everything just slows down. And so those first couple days of retreat for me are just really sleepy, really like filled with a lot of doubt about like, what am I doing here? I often get very lonely. I miss my wife and child a lot. Some of the sitting like I find myself like cantilevered over my lap halfway through because I'm, you know, falling asleep. And after a couple of days, you kind of get what's called samadhi,

which is the term of art for concentration in your mind. The volume of chatter goes down and your ability to stay focused on whatever it is you're trying to focus in your practice, your breath or the bodily sensations, it really starts to tune up. And I noticed over the first couple of days, as I was testing out Joseph's techniques, including not mine, not I myself,

that they have an interesting impact. And specifically on this one, the not mine, not I thing, walking along and the walking meditation was particularly, it seemed like the main event of this retreat. We walking along, bringing my attention to the sensations of my body. Every time I get distracted, I start again, start again. And I'd be thinking, I'm pretty mention the sensations in my body. Every time I get distracted, I start again, start again.

And I'd be thinking, I'm pretty mindful right now. But then I would drop in, not mine, not I, not myself, into my mind and realize, oh, actually there's a bunch of thinking or a background emotion that's happening here that I hadn't seen. That had actually been making me pretty unhappy. but now that I recognize that it's not mine It's just a conditioned arising. That's another Buddhist phrase in other words everything that comes up in your mind is the result of

endless causes and conditions back to Who knows when the Big Bang? And so given that fact it's impossible to claim it as yours. It's so multifactorial, everything that's happening. And so for somebody who's struggling with being on retreat and maybe has this background emotion of resistance, just to drop that phrase into my mind, I was like,

oh yeah, I'm not in it anymore. I'm out of it. I'm viewing it from some like non-judgmental remove in my mind from a place of mindfulness. And anyway, so now I'm truly rambling, but does that all land for you what I've just said? It does, but just to say to the listener that he might feel like, oh, okay,

and then fall into it two seconds later. Yes, that is key. And that is actually where things can get frustrating and where doubt can arise, because I think there are five hindrances, right? Boredom and restlessness, doubt, sloth and torpor, greed or wanting, and aversion or not wanting. And so my resistance to being on retreat,

it's just aversion. Just putting that label on it. Oh yeah, this is just aversion. It depersonalizes it. It's not my aversion. It's not my story. Oh yeah, I didn't like going to summer camp, boo hoo. And again, that's a little too dismissive. It's not like the Buddhists are mocking people

for having life stories, but I don't need to be so tied up in it. Anyway, so knowing about these five hindrances can be really helpful. Doubt is often described as trickiest of them all knowing about these five hindrances can be really helpful. Doubt is often described as trickiest of them all. And by the way, doubt can be a healthy thing in many circumstances.

As a journalist, doubt and skepticism were very helpful. But this doubt is a paralytic doubt that raises a bunch of questions about like, why am I here? What am I doing? Am I doing it right? That's a big one, I think probably for both of us. It's like quicksand.

And it sounds like Marissa, that's a challenge for you. Yeah, I mean, what helped me so much to learn about doubt is that it masquerades as wisdom. So yeah, it's definitely been something interesting to work with. I think doubt is one of the most interesting things to work with and to observe. So I don't see it as insurmountable.

The Buddha talked about it, what we know of what the Buddha might have said, that it's in a way the most dangerous of the defilements. Because with the others, like desire or a virgin, we're still in the ballpark of the present experience. We're just relating to it in a not-spillful way. So there's that aspect of it, and it was also described as the thorny mind, because it keeps jabbing, which is why it's so unpleasant. It's a powerful force. It keeps jabbing, which is why it's so unpleasant.

It's a powerful force. However, this is where, to me, it gets really interesting and even fun. It's still just a thought. That's all it is. But as you said, it comes disguised. It says that doubt comes masquerading as wisdom. We have these very wise sounding thoughts in our mind.

The fun part is really watching your mind and begin to see what doubting thoughts come by the most predominant. And to see it clearly enough so you could write it down. What doubting thoughts come by the most predominant? And to see it clearly enough so you could write it down, to be that precise in what the thought is saying, once you're really clear, then it's just sitting, keeping an eye out for it. I had this one thought that was so seductive, if I didn't catch it, I was gone for half an hour. You know. So when I finally saw what the thought was, that was the birth of Cowboy Dharma.

Okay, when we come back, we're gonna find out what Joseph means by the phrase Cowboy Dharma. We'll also hear about the importance of repetition, what it feels like to wear shit-colored glasses, how to stop getting caught in a mine trap, and much more. Hey, it's Guy Raz here, and you might know me as the host of How I Built This. Well, did you know about my other show, The Great Creators? It's where I interview some of the most celebrated actors and musicians of our time about their life, their craft, and where they find their ideas.

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Joseph has this technique I have found to be incredibly helpful for hindrances that are like bird dogging you and dragging you down. And he used to call it cowboy dharma, although he doesn't use that term anymore because it has some unfortunate resonance given, you know, cowboys and Indians and mistreatment of the indigenous. But the basic idea is quite playful and I kind of think of it as like video game or gamer dharma, which is as these thoughts come up in your mind or these emotions are there, the antidote is mindfulness. It's clear seeing, sometimes referred to in the Dharma as Sampajana.

You can get into this mode where you're seeing the doubt or the aversion come back over and over and over again and so you can have this fun little game of pshh pshh pshh, like a kind of shoot-em-up. It's just like the aversion comes back, pshh. After a while, you're kind of happy to see it, pshh pshh pshh. This, by the way, is completely portable into daily life. Maybe self-judgment is your thing. And so you can just get into the habit of seeing it, smiling at it, and kind of shooting it with a Nerf gun, you know, which you don't want to have is that it gets aggressive.

And so actually, this kind of brings us to my first one-on-one with Joseph during the course of this retreat. So we had the meeting on Saturday, the three of us, Josh, Stefan, and I, and Joseph. And then he gives us a couple days to kind of practice on our own. And then he did a one-on-one with Josh on Tuesday, one with Stefan on Wednesday, and then me on Thursday. And in that session with Joseph on Thursday, I was talking about. Aversion and how I was struggling at being there.

And we talked about using gamer Dharma or cowboy Dharma, whatever you want to call it. And he said this thing of, you have to make sure that it's not coming from a place of aversion. This is very important. And I kind of cavalierly said, I'm not like I've got this. But the next day, I went into like a hole. I can't remember exactly what was bothering me, but I just felt awful. And I realized that I wasn't really allowing these feelings. And it was aversion. It's humbling and I also had to figure out a new way to work with them.

So actually let me bring in Joseph again, you can listen to a little bit of conversation with me and him. The only update from the last time I saw you is we were talking about cowboy Dharma and you urged me, you said, make sure it's not coming from a place of aversion. And I very cavalierly said it's not, that was wrong.

Cowboy Dharma is like when you're seeing something that's bothering you just to go, you have to do with a sense of humor. And I thought I was, and then I noticed the next day after we spoke that everything was kind of contracted and grumpy and I tried to investigate what was going on and it was really that. I was not okay with what was coming up so I had to go gentler.

And then what did you do with? I actually, I went back to your mantra of it's okay. It's like it's okay to feel. Lousy. Yeah, all of it. And that worked. And then there were more problems. Yeah, I loved hearing that. I thought that was hilarious when you're like, nope, I'm not doing that. And then the next session, you're like, okay, you were right. It was coming from a version.

But it's so relatable. And it just points to the subtlety of these deeply conditioned beliefs. But at the end of the day, when you see it, you have to smile as much as you can. And I think with the gamer idea, it also speaks to having some playfulness when you can. It's often not gonna feel playful. Like you said, sometimes it can feel like a death march and a slog, but actually having a little fun with it,

I think can be really helpful, especially when there's obsessive thoughts or rumination and you're actually being aware. It's like, oh my God, I asked myself if I could at least walk from one tree to the other tree that's two feet away and my mind already went back into rumination. But in a way there can almost be like a pleasure in seeing it. Yes. That I feel like was a big theme for me on my retreat, especially because of the awareness

to realize that it's not a problem. It's okay that fundamentally in that environment, I'm safe is really interesting because you know, life can be a problem. I'm making a problem out of all these different things, my likes and dislikes, it's an issue, it needs to be fixed and changed. And then said to be in an environment that you're like, wait, this isn't a problem, my thought can just go absolutely berserk and it's actually not a problem if I'm watching it. It actually takes away a little power from it.

1000%. That is the lesson I learn on every retreat. If I'm suffering in any way, it just means there's something I'm not mindful of. I arrive at this as the conclusion of every retreat. I have to learn it and learn it and learn it over and over. And so yeah, my aversion, my loneliness, my missing my family,

it's just another thing to be aware of. And as long as I'm aware of it, oh yeah, it's aversion or sadness or whatever it is, then it's not a problem. But we can easily get swamped because the ego or the thinking mind or conditioning, it's really clever. Yeah, and we can relate to it like it's a problem. Because it's like, Oh, no, this again. I think one thing I'll also say about retreats is with in terms of dance specific style,

often on retreat, it's encouraged not to use writing utensils, not to be taking notes, not to read. There's all these kinds of things that are encouraged. Some people do find that journaling is really useful or maybe recording their sessions, things like that. My sort of approach has been the Dharma Reign approach, which I think has been useful for my mind, which often is I need to know, and it very much wants to grasp onto the information and make sure I understand it. So it's been kind of an interesting experience to have this period where I'm going to just

receive the information and what I remember, what's useful, I'll take and the rest I'll let fall away. And then maybe it'll come back if it's useful. And I don't know if this happens to you on retreat, but I'll notice things that I had learned maybe years ago that have totally not even thought about it will suddenly arise again. Like with the rain, it's like we don't know what seeds are being watered. That's part of the trust piece, moving along and seeing different things. Yeah, I agree. So this year I did something different. I've always recorded my one-on-ones

with Joseph and then never really listened to them again. I don't know why I was recording them. Although I do have now like a vast archive of Joseph, but this time I, I did listen to them. And it's really helpful because you sit with a guy for 90 minutes and he's got so many ideas. And my friend Josh was saying that after his one on one session with Joseph, he had to like go. Have a, have a spoonful of honey because his blood sugar was so low. Your brain is hurting because this guy is so smart and so interesting and has so many ideas that he's throwing so much at you that it's hard if not impossible to take it all

in. And so I really started to listen to it afterwards in small chunks. I do a lot of stretching. It's very easy for me to get sore, especially sitting a lot. And so in the morning I'll do like 30 minutes of stretching and I would listen to a little bit of whatever the last conversation with Joseph was. And it would remind me of this stuff that these instructions he had already given me that I hadn't heard. For example, on the gamer or cowboy Dharma thing, he was saying, make sure there's no aversion there. And I didn't really hear it and take it in until the next morning when I was stretching and listening to it. And I was like, oh, that's the problem. I'm now really going to get into the

habit of doing that that it was like having the session with's the problem. I'm now really gonna get into the habit of doing that. It was like having the session with him and then listening to a little bit of it over the subsequent days. It was like having him with me the whole time. And more than that, I was actually, in the evenings, Josh, Stefan, and I would get together and listen to a Dharma talk from Joseph.

And then maybe even talk a little bit for like five or 10 minutes about our practice and what we learned from that. And then we would sit together and doing a lot of learning alongside the practice really is helpful. And then the other thing I would say is that for somebody who finds these retreats like desperately lonely experiences to have two of my closest friends there, and we've been doing this for a couple of years, but it's enormously empowering and comforting to know that like my guys are here and doing this

with me is very meaningful. I feel like you just rounded out the triple gem. These three crucial aspects of this is that you have the teachings of the Buddha, the Buddha himself, and then the Sangha, which you had alluded to, which is sort of a community of people, like how that can really strengthen walking on this path. How would you describe walking on the path? I feel like I'm falling into Buddha's terms of phrase

right now that- Yeah, I mean, the three jewels are, as you said, the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha, and we often under emphasize the last one because we live in an intensely individualistic society. So we're meditating on our own, on an app or whatever, and all of that is great. But this life really is a team sport.

You know, that's a lesson I've learned later in my life. And I would say this is a prime example of it. Josh and Stefan and I will actually articulate that to each other, that it's meaningful to have you guys here with me and there's definitely a lot of love and gratitude for each other in this group. I find this to be a huge and often undervalued part of the practice and it makes everything easier

and better for me. Yeah. One other thing that you're pointing to that just feels useful to highlight is that we can't get it all at once. You know, you were listening to the recordings and I bet even with listening to those, you're missing something. And that's why, you know, Joseph was saying something that was so fascinating and I was like, I want to give this a try.

He's like, this might sound weird and boring, but when I do my home retreat, I will listen to the same suit to over and over and over again, because there's value in that repetition. I feel like our show sort of rests on that principle because there's always something to learn. And oftentimes, I don't know if this has happened to you, Dan, but maybe you've had an insight and you'll tell him and he's like, yeah, Bozo, I've said that 10 times to you. But it's like, suddenly you're primed to receive it. Yeah, just to fill in something there,

Marissa referred to a sutta or sometimes called sutra, which is it's just basically the Buddhist teachings. And the Buddha when he was doing his teaching, initially 2600 years ago, they weren't writing anything down. So there were like 300 years where the teachings were preserved through the oral tradition. And if you read the Buddhist teachings now, there's a lot of repetition in there. And the thinking I think is that that comes from having it be preserved through this oral tradition. And so Joseph, on the audio, you can hear him talk about how during his own self retreat, he was listening to on audible, you can get the Buddhist scriptures,

the poly canon, it must be like 72 hours, because these each part of the scriptures, like 1000 pages, they're incredibly repetitive, then they get to these nuggets of wisdom, like not mine, not I, not myself. And so Joseph was saying that listening to the repetition, it finally got in for him. Some of these things that he'd been hearing for years, it just finally landed for him. And that was the point you were making, Marisa, which is that, you know, we have thick skulls

and we just need to hear these things over and over and over again. And I remember when I started this podcast, Joseph said to me, like, how many episodes can you do? You know, like, you're just gonna kind of run out of shit to talk about. And I was like, no, this is one of the first times where he was wrong.

As he knows, the whole thing here, and we cover more than Dharma on this show, we do also a lot of modern psychology and personal stories, but you have to hear this over and over and over again. The biggest challenge in personal growth is forgetting all of the brilliant shit you read or heard or whatever. And so you just need to hear it over and over and over again. It takes a long time to get in and then it will leave you and you need to hear it again.

So that's a full employment act for us. That allows us to do this show forever. I actually feel like if I could say like my main insight from my retreat, it sort of relates to that. So you know, I've been practicing meditation for about 10, 11 years now. I went on my first retreat in 2013. There's this idea of the three root poisons that they talk about sort of that everything that stems that's not the wholesome, like joy or kindness, generosity, often stem from greed, hatred, and delusion. Greed can be like, Ooh, I need the fifth cookie to I need to do something violent related to acquiring. Hatred or aversion is also a similar

underlying idea that if you can push something away, you will be happier and greed, the underlying idea is if you can push something away, you will be happier. And greed, the underlying idea is if you can get the thing, you will be happier. And then there's delusion. Delusion often isn't talked about as much because it's a lot harder to grasp. And I've always identified as an aversive person, which is the first problem. Identifying with something isn't a great thing to do in these teachings. And so my kind of high-level thinking is, okay, as long as I push this thing away, I'll be happy, or this is why there's the judgment or these issues is related to aversion. And every other day, you're with a group of people, like four other people talking about your practice, which is really amazing. I mean,

similar to you being with your friends and hearing about what they're going through, it's really useful to both realize you're not alone and learn from them and hear what the teacher is telling them in response. I was telling Andrea something about a belief that I have not knowing it was a belief, just that I was saying a fact and she goes, that's delusion. In that moment, I had no idea. I was like, I think because aversion just masquerades as facts.

What it was, was that no one likes me. I was just going there and I was like, I just feel like no one likes me. Like I had this memory of sitting down for lunch, your mind is just proliferating and no one sat in the empty chair next to me. And so I told her that and she goes, that's delusion. And I was like, what do you mean?

She's like, that's delusion. It made me think of when you're just reading the newspaper and you only look at your horoscope or something, who cares about the other ones? I'd never even thought about delusion, never tried to understand what it means because I didn't have it. I felt like Andrea gave me a diagnosis.

I had no idea that I had delusion and it just unlocked something the whole retreat. I feel like delusion is about beliefs. I think that's why it's so hard to talk about because they're so deeply rooted. I think aversion and greed are much easier to see. It just was fun to suddenly be like, oh, that's delusion. I actually could have a joyous response. Yes.

But it also is an example of something that I'm sure I've heard, seen, learned about it for 10 years. And it took that exact moment for me to realize that I'm constantly wearing a pair of sunglasses. That's the attitude that I'm seeing the world through. I haven't been able to take the sunglasses off. Sometimes I can lift them a little off my face, but at least I know I'm wearing the sunglasses. This is a perspective and a view that I'm seeing the world through. Yes. Shit-colored glasses for sure.

And we keep coming back to that. That's one of the liberative aspects of this practice, which is these background stuff that's owning you, the aversion, the greed, the delusion. It's foregrounded. That is not an easy process. It's very annoying. First of all, you have to get your samadhi up. You have to sit and focus on your breath or whatever

for a couple of days so that you can start to see some of this stuff. And then when you start to see it, it can be upsetting. But when you cut through it with cowboy dharma or some teacher, you know, wielding the sword of wisdom and calling it delusion. It's like, Oh, what a relief. What a relief.

And then all that's left is the world, the bird song and the feel of the wind on your face and your body sensations moving through the landscape, the taste of the food. And that's where a lot of the real joy can come in the practice. And I think that's what keeps us coming back. It can be very brief moments, but suddenly this like ease and realizing how much is related to the attitude of the mind and how, when there's clarity within things outside look a little more clear and they're less laid in with the background, foreground bullshit.

And it's really interesting to just like taste into that. So I think that's sort of what keeps us going. I think that's where the faith comes in. Yeah. And faith, you know, is a loaded term, but it really is like trust or confidence. Well, there's that word again, trust. And it's a thing that Joseph, he often says, just surrender, surrender to the Dharma. You know, I'm sure you've heard me talk about this. At one point in my practice in India when I was just in the indulgence, and it just didn't seem to be going any place. The same thing over and over again. I was getting discouraged. And then I gave myself a little talking to. And Joseph, just sit and walk.

Just sit and walk, that's your job. Surrender to the Dharma. And it really worked. When I could just, okay, I'm doing my job, sitting or however it is, but I'm persevering in the practice. And then it all started moving. So not only did it work to get things flowing again,

it removed a lot of suffering. And so it's just learning about it. In a way, it's learning to trust. Yeah. You know, it's just trusting the don running. Yeah. It's just like, do the practice. Or as he says, just sit and walk.

Stop worrying about how you're doing. Stop playing what he calls the practice assessment tapes. And just do the practice. And that's where the faith or confidence or trust can come. It's like, all right, yeah, people have been doing this for 2,600 years. The technology works. There are brain scans that strongly indicate that it can have a lot

of positive impacts on us. So stop obsessing about your progress and just keep doing it. The absolute essence of the practice, which the Buddha expressed again, a million times is liberation to non-cleaning. That's where the freedom of the mind is. So it's just really important to keep that in mind because it's just super common to be practicing for an experience, which is a kind of craving. It's just a desire, even though it's in a meditative framework.

So we have to remind ourselves a lot that different experiences happen along the way, but the freedom is in not clinging to anything. Okay, so then it's through seeing selflessness and impermanence that actually deconditions clinging. That's why emphasizing those aspects are serving the purpose of not clinging. As soon as you see the nobody likes me lie, you're not in it anymore. You're dropped out of it.

And that's it's a huge relief. This is not an esoteric experience. This is not something you need to be on a retreat for at any given moment. You can be mindful or drop a phrase into your mind like not mine, not I, not myself. This is absolutely doable at any time. And what Joseph was really trying to encourage me and Josh and Stefan to do was to kind of take a mental snapshot of those moments

when the mind is not clinging. Meaning again, that the mind is not fooled or identified with whatever thoughts and urges and emotions and sensations are coursing through at any given moment. Savor that and then use it as a north star to come back to throughout the day. So even right now, can I just for a second,

just focus on the raw data of my physical sensations? What's coming in through my eyes, ears? What's the feeling of my butt on this chair. For those few nanoseconds, I'm not clinging. The mind is not embroiled in a painful way with anything. I'm just receiving what's coming up. And it's hard to sustain that, and you get better at sustaining it on retreat.

But the more you learn to recognize those little moments that are happening throughout the day, per Joseph, the more you learn to recognize those little moments that are happening throughout the day, per Joseph, the more you can access them. And there's just enormous relief and power in that. Yeah, it really is. I think for me, the instruction I got was caught, not caught. So this idea of when are you caught in a story? Yes.

And then just trusting the instructions. And I'm like, wow, it's kind of cool. I'm on a walk right now. I'm walking and I'm not caught in a story. I'm just, I'm here. And then when we are caught, we might not be realizing, and then we suddenly wake up and have a moment and say, wow, I'm repeating this story that hurts me and makes me hurt other people.

And then just saying caught. And that's all. It's actually maybe there's not so much to do. It's like we're nine scientists. What's the job function of the delusion? Maybe it's trying to keep me safe. Yeah. Being naturalists of our own mind and all of the different emotions and habit patterns.

There's something useful there. Well said. Here's another moment from the retreat. Did I ever send you any of my poetry? Yeah. Yeah. There's one poem, I mean send you any of my poetry? Yeah, yeah. There's one poem, I mean, I can't remember all of it, but the sirens, like in Greek mythology, say, be more than you are, be everything you're not.

The sages say, be less than you are, everything you're not lightens the burden. Delighting without hope, the desiring heart or the clamoring heart, something like that. So it's like, it's a big relief. Sylvia Boersing once said about other teachers teaching some similar stuff to her. And she said, I'm so glad they're teaching. Now I don't have to. Being less, everything is still there, but we don't have to do anything about it. Everything is still there, but we don't have to do anything about it. That's the piece in meditation that I think is just so easy to forget that it's not about getting.

It's not about wanting. It's just the opposite. Coming up, we're going to listen to your voicemails, your burning questions answered, including the best and worst days on retreat, if there's a minimum threshold for trying a retreat, how to overcome aversion to meditation after a retreat, and this is a key one, are meditation retreats only for the elite? So we have some voicemails that some listeners sent in. We have one that will play right now.

Let's do it. Hello, this is Marcelo from London. So, something I was wondering is if by knowing that you're going to share your insights after the retreat, if that won't affect how your meditation at the retreat develops. So, I'm imagining you, Marissa, sitting there meditating and any kind of insights that come out, a new sensation that comes up or a new experience that comes up, you might immediately imagine yourself sharing that. And if that wouldn't affect the experience itself.

Well, he put that one to you, what do you say? I think actually it was more risk for the mill, which I think is a Joseph term. What's so cool again about gatherings concentration and having things be a little quieter is you really get to notice sort of active planets that are in your orbit. And a big one for me that I noticed is I often having future conversations with people.

Yes. It kind of became hilarious when I wasn't just miserable. I was tearing my hair out. I'm like, why am I doing this? And so this was one of the future conversations. And it was so interesting because I would say, okay, just walk five meters. And now that I'm having this conversation, it's absolutely nothing like what I had predicted. And I knew that, and actually that became part of the caught, not caught.

But it did take a while for me to not get frustrated with myself. But it was actually really interesting because I don't know if I noticed how often I did that. I am constantly in the future having imaginary conversations with people which is extremely bizarre. So this was definitely one of them,

but in a way I'm grateful because it was cool to be like, wow, I keep doing this, caught, caught, trying not to get lost in the contents. But I was also sort of excited to know that we would eventually have it pretty shortly. And that I think would almost contribute to the wisdom of like why this isn't a useful endeavor. So that's sort of what was happening for me. I don't think it was impacting insights, I think in the way maybe it helped them, because

this got to be something that I could look at. Yes, that's totally my experience. I have worried that being somebody who writes about and talks about all of this stuff that it might pervert it somehow, but it's just another thing not to cling to. Yeah. And now we have a voice memo that will tee up about overcoming aversion to meditating after a retreat.

Hey, Dan, my name is Patrick from West Michigan. I hope you have a good 10 day retreat. I have a question about how to overcome aversion to meditating after retreat. So I went on a loving kindness retreat in February and had the traumatic experience emotionally. And I found that I'm really adverse to sitting back down on the cushion again. And it's been two months and I don't know that I've meditated maybe more than once or twice. So a little bit of guidance about the rebooting after some tough realizations or a tough meditation experience would be would be awesome. Thank you.

hear that. Loving kindness meditation retreats or meta meditation retreats are notoriously tough. I've done a couple and they can, it's definitely, it's a workout and mine were pretty mild. I've heard reports of people having, you know, really hard experiences. I think they're great things to do. I'm a huge fan of that style of practice and that's a part of my daily practice. But just to normalize your experience, having big emotional experiences on loving kindness retreats, that is not unusual as I understand it. And so I can understand how you might not wanna go back to that place.

I wanna be careful not to be too prescriptive, A, because I don't know you, and B, because I'm not a fully trained meditation teacher. But just a couple of thoughts that are coming up in my mind. One is, it might be interesting to try a different form of meditation if meta or loving kindness is going to put you back in that space and you're worried about going back there. Maybe just do straight mindfulness.

And the second is, I always like to tell people to pay attention to what's's your inner weather like when you're not meditating when you've fallen off the wagon. My experience, if I miss a few days, the inner weather is stormier and just seeing that provides a lot of intrinsic motivation to get back on the cushion. Then it's not a thing you should be doing. It's a thing you want to be doing because your molecules are screaming in its absence. Just to say finally, I finished my retreat on Sunday. We're recording this on Tuesday. I did a little bit of meditation Sunday night. I didn't think I did any yesterday and I haven't done any today. I probably will do a little bit later today, but I definitely have some aversion to doing it

because I've just been macro-dosing it. So I think that in the short term is normal. I certainly have some aversion to doing it because I've just been macro dosing it. So I think that in the short term is normal. And in your case, I understand fully why you're gun shy. I think you want to step gingerly given that you had a very intense experience. Hopefully those two ideas are worth exploring. One, trying a different form and two, just trying to explore like what's in your mind not practicing as much and maybe that incentivizes you to get back on the cushion.

Yeah, and I love to add one other thing but agree that we don't know the full story. We're not psychiatrists. So a lot of caveats there. But after my three month retreat, it was very hard for me. I like wanted to quit. It was just a very difficult aftermath. I got some really amazing advice from Susa Tallinn, who you've worked with before. She said about going back on retreat, she goes, you can sleep, eat, and sometimes meditate. And I think that kind of speaks to the wider, like we need to forget that relaxation is actually very important to the whole project. I think sometimes it's really easy to get tight and think about meditating and getting

the job done. But actually just being in the field of people meditating and relaxing, getting to know the experience again, and being around a peaceful setting like that, for me felt like a good returning. Again, and not to say that retreats, some retreats might not even be right for people. There's a lot of different things to consider, and you should talk to a teacher and someone that knows your practice, but there's no right way. Yes. So our colleague also had a question about the best and worst days of retreat.

Hi, Dan and Marissa. It's Caroline, your colleague who works with you on the podcast. I have never been on a retreat. So I did want to ask you guys a question. I was wondering if you could describe your best and worst day on your retreats. Does it work like that?

Do you have best days and worst days? Thank you. Caroline's new to the show. I've been working with her for years. She's been helping me with my never ending book project. Hopefully that book's finally coming out next year, but she's a star. So you'll be hearing more from Caroline

as time progresses. I find that, and I think you agree with this Marissa, that it's weird to think about retreats in terms of days because it's really good moments, bad moments, and maybe some good sits and bad, quote unquote, bad sits rather than good days and bad days. Having said that, the first couple of days are often very hard as we've discussed,

but really it's things change quickly. And that's the whole point. Seeing how quickly things change quickly. And that's the whole point. Seeing how quickly things change is really one of the main points of the practice. And you know, Joseph has a great rap about the fact that we get very attached to a quote unquote good sit or quote unquote bad sit. But that's delusion, calling it good or bad. It doesn't matter if you're sleepy or you're in a lot of pain or you're experiencing a lot of restlessness. It doesn't matter what you're feeling as long as you're not clinging to it. That's the point. Yeah. So just to call it good or bad, that's not, it's delusion,

it's greed, it's aversion. It's not seeing things clearly. Things get really granular and it really is about moment to moment so it doesn't feel like it's in a 24-hour cycle that's for sure. We have another question from Shelly that I wanted to read. She said, where can I go on a retreat that isn't prohibitively expensive? Answer, there aren't any, which makes me wonder if this all isn't just for the elite. And I think something that I just want to say is time is a precious resource. So a lot of people might not have the time to take off 10 days or a certain amount of days. So I think that's something to acknowledge, not just because of financial,

but also maybe they have to care for children or pets or a family member. So that is a bar in a sense. But I do think from there, like I said, I went to a center that's completely donation based all of it. They often have scholarships, work trades at a lot of these places. There's also residential retreats often. So you can still sleep in your home and you can attend a center for the day and go home, or you can do retreats

online. So I do believe that there are ways to access the retreats, but the time obviously is an important factor. That's a great answer that you just gave. Just to say you don't have to do 10 days. You can do a weekend. You can do five days. You can do seven days.

There are lots of ways to slice this up and you can do it at home. And, you know, many of these centers take very seriously giving access to people no matter what their financial situation. And if you go on a retreat, I don't think you'll sense that you're with the elite. It's not like, you know, you go in the parking lot. It's not Lamborghini's. It's regular people. One more question for you from Mike Taylor from Logan, Utah. Can you develop a meditation tolerance like drug use that you need more and more to maintain the benefits of meditation?

Huh. That's really interesting. I don't think it works that way. In my experience, you may want to do more. You may be able to do more in that you can concentrate for that period of time, but I don't think the benefits diminish, think about it this way, do you develop a compassion addiction, a kindness addiction where it starts wearing out, I've only run into three

burning buildings today and saved babies, god damn, I need a fourth. I don't think it works that way. There are some sources of pleasure and meaning that are different from ice cream and cocaine, where you achieve some sort of tolerance or at some point you get sick. You wouldn't want ice cream for five days nonstop, but you could probably handle something like generosity or compassion or mindfulness five days nonstop

because it's much easier on the system. It's a different kind of pleasure. And in the Dharma actually they talk about wholesome worldly pleasures versus unwholesome worldly pleasures. And I do think meditation is on the wholesome side, maybe on the annoying side too sometimes, but definitely wholesome. Thanks. So Dan, is there anything else you'd like to share before we close out the conversation? Well, I think it might be worth exploring

just in the final minutes here, re-entry. For you, is it hard to go back into the regular world of talking and doing and all of that? Of any retreat I've ever been on, this has been the softest landing because of the practice style. I feel like when I've been in much more formal retreats, it can feel a little sort of jarring. But because this is so much about awareness in every moment, it just feels like such a liberating teaching. I know I keep saying that word, but I feel like a lot of the noise quieted down and there's something that feels so good about it.

A lot of people struggle with reentry. It is not something I have ever struggled with because I'm so happy to get back into mindlessness, which is in and of itself worrisome. Yeah, so I am delighted for the retreat to be over. I mean, I love coming home and being with my family. So we had one last session with Joseph on Saturday, so that was day nine of the retreat. And then Josh, Stefan, and I went out for dinner that night and had a talking meal where we talked

about our practice and then went back into retreat a little bit. And then Sunday, Josh had to leave really early, but Stefan and I drove from the retreat center to my house. His daughter, who was at the time in school in New York City finishing up college she took the train up and met us and we spent the whole day with my family and his family and. and all this stuff with my family. And so we really kind of debriefed on all of it. And so for me, the re-entry is a very soft re-entry and I'm excited to get back to, I actually, you know, I miss my phone a little bit.

But I feel like you demonstrated incredible aftercare. You didn't just go to like the Empire State Building, you know, you were like connecting with family and friends and you were really orienting toward what matters. So obviously you still had your phone and maybe it's different when you're in a smaller group, but you probably must have felt this going out to dinner and then going home is we feel the energy rise, rise, rise. We can feel the contrast and it kind of goes away. I mean, I even feel that when I do a healthy habit for a long time and I think I could never not do this and then I don't do it for a week and I have absolutely no memory of what

that felt like the switch is interesting. We are, as I said before, working with millennia of evolution here that are driving us toward distraction and forward momentum and wanting and getting and doing, and you can do a little bit of retreat and it's really helpful, but the old patterns reassert themselves. And hopefully you just are relating to all of it a little bit more skillfully, but I think it takes a long time to, if ever,

fully get yourself into perpetual mindfulness or something like that. That's where you start getting into these claims around enlightenment. And I think I can pretty safely say that for myself, that has not happened. Yeah, I can agree with that. On my behalf?

Yeah. And I'll just say too, like one last benefit, I think though, is that we come away with these little takeaways that we get to put into the laboratory of our daily lives. Like now I have, I think two big things I get to work with from retreat are seeing delusion and seeing where I'm experiencing conversations

that haven't happened yet. I'm like, that's awesome. I did 10 days. Some people would pay millions of dollars in therapy over years to do this. I came away with these two really interesting things to look at and now I get to look at them. So it's a gift.

I love it. It was your idea to do this episode. Great idea. Thanks for making it happen. Thank you, Dan. We will leave you here with some final words from Joseph. You definitely wanna have fun. You can do all this stuff,

but we can also hold it lightly, in terms of what we're doing. It's no different than, I mean, each of you probably, whether it's music or sport or whatever, in training, practicing anything, it just takes time. You know, you just practice, you hit all the wrong notes, but just keep doing it, and then you get better at what you're doing. One thing that Indra mentioned, I think I mentioned to you guys, it was really a helpful reminder.

He said in spiritual practice, time is not a factor. Time is not a factor. So if we let go of that, we're just practicing, you know, and letting it unfold. Thank you to Marissa. She's the best. I also want to thank Eleanor Vasili, who was integral to producing this episode, and also Joseph Goldstein, who gave us permission to use those audio snippets. I'm posting a bunch of further listening in the show notes,

some episodes that you can listen to that might take you deeper into this subject. If you're interested, I've got some links to episodes from Joseph Goldstein, also Alexis Santos. Just to say Alexis will be back on the show the day after the election to help us process, so stay tuned for that. I'm also posting an episode we did several months ago called Everything You Want to Know About Meditation Retreats

But Were Afraid to Ask, where I talk to Spring Washam, a great meditation teacher, and also my close friend, Zef Barrow, who's just coming up with his first retreat. Thank you, finally, to everybody who worked so hard to make this show a reality. Our producers are Tara Anderson, Caroline Keenan, and Eleanor Vasili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our production manager. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer.

DJ Kashmir is our managing producer. And Nick Thorburn of the Van Islands wrote our theme. If you like 10% happier, and I hope you do, you can listen early and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. Prime members can listen ad free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at Wondery.com slash survey.