Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - Tara Brach Has A Counterintuitive Strategy For Navigating Tumultuous Times

Episode Date: September 25, 2024

A (potentially challenging) Buddhist recipe handling anxious times.Tara Brach, a legendary meditation teacher, psychologist, and frequent flier on this show. She is the founder of the Insight Meditation Community of Washington and has been active in bringing meditation into schools, prisons and underserved populations. She has also written several books including Radical Acceptance, Radical Compassion and Trusting the Gold. In this episode we talk about:A Buddhist tradition known as the Bodhisattva teachings… which are quite radical… and which Tara thinks can vastly improve your life… and the health of democracy. We also talk about: why some people might think this stuff is too soft4 practices to develop compassion A mindfulness technique known as RAINHow mindfulness can help you see what is beneath your angerLetting distress be a portal—and the amazing phrase, “action absorbs anxiety”How to get active when you have limited timeAnd how to counteract the tendency to numb outTara also recorded a guided meditation based on this conversation, which you can find on www.DanHarris.com.Related Episodes:The Dalai Lama’s Guide To HappinessVitamin E: How To Cultivate Equanimity Amidst Political Chaos | Election Sanity Series | Roshi Joan HalifaxA Counterintuitive Source of Hope | Sebene SelassieBest of the Archives: Making it RAIN | Tara BrachCan You Handle This? | Tara BrachHow to Stop the War Against Yourself | Tara BrachSign 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/tarabrach-833See 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. Hey, hey, today we are going to talk about some counterintuitive and maybe controversial Buddhist strategies for navigating anxious times. We are recording and posting this in the midst of a US presidential election, but I want to stress that the ideas here are evergreen and universal no matter when or where you are listening to this. My guest is Tara Brock, the legendary meditation teacher, psychologist, and frequent flyer on this show. She's the founder of the Insight

Meditation Community of Washington and has been active in teaching meditation in schools, prisons, and underserved populations. She's also written several books, including Radical Acceptance, Radical Compassion, and Trusting the Gold. In this conversation, we talk about a Buddhist tradition known as the Bodhisattva teachings, which are quite radical, and which Tara thinks can vastly improve both your life and the health of democracy.

We also talk about why some people might think this stuff is too soft. Four practices to develop compassion, a mindfulness technique known as RAIN, how mindfulness can help you see what is beneath your anger, letting distress be a portal and the amazing phrase action absorbs anxiety, how to get active when you have limited time and how to counteract the very natural tendency to numb out. Just to say before we dive in here, that Tara also recorded a guided meditation based on this conversation.

We'll post that on danharris.com. Tara Brock, right after this. You know, I'm never sure how long to keep up an announcement here on the show, because on the one hand, I don't want to bang to keep up an announcement here on the show because on the one hand, I don't want to bang you over the head with something you've already heard me say a million times. On the other hand, there's some evidence that you need to hear something about seven times

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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. In a quiet suburb, a community is shattered by the death of a loved wife and mother. But this tragic loss of life quickly turns into something even darker. Her husband had tried to hire a hitman on the dark web to kill her.

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Tara Brock, welcome back to the show. My pleasure, Dan, glad to be here. Always great to have you on the show. We're in a tumultuous moment in American public life and the life of the globe as well. I know you have been drawing strength from the Bodhisattva teachings. Can you tell us what that means? Tell us what that means. Yeah. Well, the word Bodhisattva means awakening being. And the teachings are really a path of understandings and practices that help us wake up our heart and mind. And it just feels like for the crises of these times, whether we are talking about the catastrophe that is going on to our planet, the slide into authoritarianism and equity, they all have their roots in the human psyche.

So I often think about Thich Nhat Hanh saying that, you know, man is not the enemy. The conditioning in our minds of greed and hatred and at the core this delusion that we're separate. And so the Bodhisattva teachings are radical because they go right to the root of that feeling of separateness and fear that actually are what's caused and perpetuates so much of the suffering on the planet. CB Just making a note of the man is not the enemy. That might bear some more unpacking. It's that humans are not the problem. It's mental toxins that make humans do shitty things, that's the problem. KS That's exactly right. We end up behaving in all sorts of violent ways, confused ways, that cause suffering, and there's these universal conditionings that have us act out. I always think of that quote by General Omar Bradley that we're nuclear giants

and ethical infants, that there's ways we have not evolved that end up keeping us at war. And it just feels so clear that if we're going to address the multi-crisises, we need to intentionally evolve consciousness. We need to act based on compassion. And so that is actually the training of the Bodhisattva path. It's to have us engage with our world out of caring, not out of greed, hatred and delusion. I don't believe what I'm about to say, but I can imagine some listeners saying, well, compassion doesn't seem rugged, sturdy, tough enough to meet the demands of this particular moment. It sounds a little soft. I hear you. And it would be soft if it wasn't that compassion actually leads to action. It's what gives it soul force actually, love and action. And so you get the image from the Bodhisattva path of

Kuan Yin, the Bodhisattva of compassion, responding to the cries of the world. But if we think of the actual examples of it in recent history, it's really the non-violence movements which were not at all soft. I mean I think about Indian independence, the civil rights movement. I love the example of sarvodaya which is a movement based in Buddhism in Sri Lanka. Think of anti-apartheid in South Africa. These aren't soft movements. But the outer actions that made them powerful required an inner kind of training. And you see the leaders of these movements doing those trainings. Gandhi took off a day a week and he said that total silence, just to go inward with prayer and meditation so that his actions would be aligned with his heart. And Desmond Tutu,

he was asked about his activism. I just read this down. I thought it was so interesting. Somebody said, How do you find time for prayer and meditation with all the work you're doing? And his response was, How do you think we could do any of this work without prayer and meditation? And then of course Martin Luther King, his whole life was grounded in prayer and contemplation. Nelson Mandela, when he was in jail, he was practicing a daily meditation dedicated to cultivating a sense of goodness in others. It's only soft if we stay on the cushion, if we actually let our hearts be touched by the suffering, if we feel an authentic compassion and then act from that compassion, that's the kind of alchemy for real transformation in the world.

Let me keep pushing you on this softness thing. And to be clear, I agree with you, but I just want to put myself into the shoes or minds of the listener. I remember a couple of years ago I was in India, and this is a ridiculous name drop I'm about to do here, but I was in India with the Dalai Lama. I was not like hanging out with him, but I was there when he was meeting with a group of people. And he was actually meeting with a group of young activists. And there was this moment, actually, I'll drop it into the show notes

because we actually have the moment on tape. There was this moment where this fiery young Irish activist confronted the Dalai Lama and was like, look, you've been talking about compassion for decades, but the Chinese are still in Tibet. So where has it gotten you? And similarly, you can look back at some of the movements you pointed to, the nonviolent resistance in India, the civil rights movement here in the United States and say, well, look, India has profound problems to this day. So do black Americans to this day, still facing a lot of discrimination and inequality. So I would like to hear your response to this imaginary critic

who I'm conjuring for this discussion. Yeah, well, maybe I would start with the alternative which is to act from a non-compassionate place, to act with anger, blame, hatred. I mean if we want to look at what keeps perpetuating cycles of violence we can go right back to that now really famous phrase that hatred never ceases by hatred but by love alone is healed, that this is the ancient and eternal law. So if we say to that activist, what are you suggesting? There may be better strategies and I'm all for good strategies outwardly, but if they're rooted in hatred, anger, blame, they're just going to seed more of the same. So I think really the invitation or calling here is to have more and more of us engage and engage from a place of caring. And I know for myself, if I just take it very personally, when I pause And I know for myself, if I just take it very personally, when I pause and I actually take the time to go from let's say right now all of my reactivity that comes up when I

read the newspaper every single day, read the news, and if I pause and I take the time to examine what's under my reactivity and I sense that well under my anger and my taking sides and blaming, under that there's really a lot of fear. There's a lot of fear for not only the suffering that's already happening continuing but it getting worse. And if I stay present and open underneath that fear there's grieving, real sorrow for what's happening, and embedded in the grieving there's caring. It's really a gateway to compassion. I get in touch with what I care about. And when I then give a talk, I'm engaged with different activist initiatives and I engage from caring. There is so much more power to whatever we're up to, whatever I'm doing, than if I'm angry. I'm not going to have people be

receptive to me if I come right up against their defenses. But if I can come from my heart there's more chance that I'll reach hearts. So mostly the response to the activist is the alternative of anger and hatred is no go. It will just perpetuate violence. It's radical and revolutionary to have an inner practice that brings us to caring and then to act. We really have to act,

but have that action coming from an open heart. Yeah, and I think what's happening in the mind in particular of this young man who I saw confront the Dalai Lama, Ronan is his name, is a real focus on outcomes. You know, I need to see progress. And I get it, especially if you're younger than either of us, you've got to live on this planet for much more time than either of us probably has.

And so the outcomes feel really important. Like, what have you got to show for all this happy talk about compassion, et cetera, et cetera? I think as I've gotten older and I certainly have heard the Dalai Lama make this case, and I'd be curious to see what your response is, is to recognize that I'm not in control of the outcome. Only thing I'm in control of is what I do about it. So action is important. I'm not, and you're not saying just sit on the cushion and meditate it all away. No, meditate, take care of yourself,

figure out what is the cleanest burning fuel for you and then get up and act on it. And then on top of all of that, don't be attached to the results. Recognize we live in a chaotic, entropic universe and things are out of your control. So do what you can do and then bear in mind the serenity prayer. KS I think that's wise and good. And I would add that to the extent that the results continue to distress us, let the distress be a portal. Let it get us back to caring, not lock us into anger and blame. I'm coming back to why I feel like the Bodhisattva path is such a guide for our times. And I want to make clear that it's an archetype, the Bodhisattva,

of our full potential. And if we look at our evolutionary trajectory, it's a movement from us-them from feeling separate and having enemies and dehumanizing and so on, comes from perceiving separation, the limbic brain going into fight-flight-freeze, etc. but a movement from that to what's sometimes described as a whole integrated brain where we're full access to our frontal cortex and this capacity for empathy, compassion, mindfulness, what that results in is that we actually can feel our belongings. So we're going us-them-to-we. And that is the trajectory of evolution. I mean, the human brain has tripled in volume over the last several million years and a major cause has been those social capacities for empathy

and bonding. So I'm bringing this all up to say we can't control the outcome and we might not see the results we want on the timetable we want, but there can be a sense that there is an evolution in consciousness already going on. People say, well, how do you know that? I say, we don't know. But look at our own lives. Have we gotten kinder? Generally if we're on purpose paying attention we find we do get kinder over time. And if it's us it can be the world. And what else to do but be part of a kind of collective movement to raise consciousness. And this isn't particularly anchored to one religion either. I'm using the word Bodhisattva path but you can see the sense of wakening to interconnectedness as it appears whether it's indigenous traditions,

as it appears whether it's indigenous traditions, interconnectedness and connection, we see it in all the mystic traditions that we contemplate and open to it. This is human wisdom that's arising through the ages and that we just need to fast-track cultivating that understanding. The reason I draw a lot on the Buddhist tradition is because the Buddhists are really good at explicitly articulating the practices that actually wake up that part of the brain and the heart's experience of compassion and love. And we need to fast track that. Well, you've brought me right where I wanted to go, which is we've talked a lot about the Bodhisattva path, how do we actually do that? Good news is you have answers to that. And I believe there are four practices that you want to go through in terms of developing the compassion that we've been talking about. Yeah, there's a whole lot of different practices

on the path, but I'd say the grounding practice is mindful awareness that we have to have a capacity to arrive right here and now to see and feel fully what's arising moment to moment. Because if we do, if there's that presence, it reduces our identification with the different difficult emotions that are coming up and down, it reduces the reactivity. There's more equanimity, more balance, more access to our resources. Mindfulness also lets us learn to

feel our feelings and tolerate them. Feeling-feelings is really the grounds of compassion. We have to be able to touch and feel the suffering in our own bodies and in each other's in order to care and want to extend ourselves. So the first of the practices is cultivating mindful awareness. I would say the second is a real deepening of compassion. And let's say we find ourselves – and I'm bringing us back to our times which are incredibly divided and there's just a lot of sense of an enemy out there, a bad other – let's say we find ourselves locked in that sense of bad othering another person or a group, whatever, and we want to awaken compassion. How do we do that?

And there's really two steps that we see in the Bodhisattva path. And the first one is that we have to start with ourself and arouse more compassion towards whatever is going on inside us because that's what will then allow us to see the other with a wider deeper perspective. I'll give you an example because it helps just to sense how this actually can work. Somebody that I've mentored for a while, a woman, she's Jewish, she's had a long time, Buddhist practice, she's social activist, so she has many Jewish friends and she also has Palestinian friends, friends from Arab countries. She was horrified by October 7th, really devastating, and then even more horrified by the month after month massacre of innocent people in Gaza. And she found herself getting increasingly angry at her Israeli friends

or Jewish friends that condoned the violence and anger at Buddhist teachers for their silence. And she realized as we're talking here on the Bodhisattva path that anger and blame only creates more divides in a situation that is so marked by terrible, terrible animosity. So we talked. And her prayer, her aspiration was, There is so much hatred and violence. I don't want to seed more with my anger. I want to be part of the healing. Here is where we started. We started just sitting quietly together, mindful awareness, in order to deepen the inquiry to compassion you really need some quietness, some inner listening, breathing. And then we use the RAIN practice which is a really valuable way to awaken compassion.

And RAIN, the acronym many of your listeners are familiar, stands for Recognize, Allow, Investigate and Nurture. She invited all the different parts of her that were activated – the blame, the anger, the aversion – just to recognize it, to name it, let it be there. And allow is to fully let be what's here. Investigate. For her, when she investigated under all the aversion, she found powerlessness and fear about continued suffering. And it was really hard to stay with. She had to keep touching it and saying, Yes, yes, just let it be here. It became a very tender, intimate being with and allowing what was there. And in that tenderness there was the ocean

of grief. I mean she was sobbing. Then there was nurture, how to meet that grieving with kindness. And she put her hand on her heart that often many of us as a way of nurturing where compassion becomes more full just consciously offering care inside, sensing her heart which is basically saying, I love life, I want to protect life. And so she calmed down some. And after that rain practice, you know, she was resting in that much more caring, open, spacious field of awareness. And she had that sense of homecoming where open-hearted space was more the truth than any of her emotions, any of her blame, any of her stories. And so it was from there that she could begin to look at others and feel more compassion.

She brought to mind her friends in Israel, her Jewish friends here, and it became so clear to her the depths of their fear, of past trauma, of living with ongoing feelings of danger and insecurity. She was able to feel their vulnerability and be much more open. And then she was able to ask a question that I think is really important for all bodhisattvas on the path which is, What is love asking for me right now? That question I first heard from Franco Sosceschi, a wonderful teacher. And for her love was asking her to keep caring and to speak out for cease-fire, to stop the funding of weapons, humanitarian aid, talking with others, but most profoundly to just keep focusing on the preciousness

of all lives. So Dan, I just want to make a couple of comments about that and about compassion training because I really do feel like purposeful compassion training is the game changer here. It arises from a kind of dedication to feel feelings. There's a phrase I heard long ago in a movie that vengeance is a lazy form of grief, that when we get caught in our stories of blame and anger there's something more there. Under anger there's always something we care about, always. And if we can go through the anger into the grieving and feel what we care about then we can begin to be part of the healing. And then the other piece about compassion training is that it's really inclusive. It's not about sides or it's about recognizing sides and sensing

what's beyond sides. It's the capacity to see the vulnerability and the hurt of all and then to act from care, not anger, and to act strategically but to act not from blame and anger but from care. To be inclusive it means we really need to train in seeing the vulnerability in another being. I often think of Oprah famously pointing out that if somebody is misbehaving or causing harm the question is what happened to you? And then there is Ruby Sales who is a civil rights icon who when people are acting in ways, racist ways, whatever, where does it hurt? Where are you hurting? So that's a key, you know, if we really want to go deeper on this path, this bodhisattva path, it's like learning to look at another who might seem like the other side and say, Where does it hurt? If we want to train in

compassion when there is trauma, the wisdom is that we bring compassion to our inner life, perhaps those that are suffering like us, but not try right away to extend that compassion because we can't. It's like when there's trauma it shuts down some of the relational networks that would allow us to see the other that we feel is the cause with a compassionate heart. So we start by really bringing compassion to our own being and then when less traumatized we widen the circles. And I've been awed at the capacity of people to do it. I've taught a number of groups recently, leading groups in Israel, like in November of last year so you can imagine the level of trauma. One of those groups opened with a woman saying, Please pray for us. My child is three years old and is a hostage without his parents. And then at the end of the gathering

where people were offering more prayers one woman said, Please may we pray for all the children. And you could see that understanding that just swept through the group. It can be very beautiful the widening of circles but we start with the inner trauma. I saw the same thing doing some teaching facilitating some groups with Palestinian meditators. One woman at the end said, May I keep choosing love even when the forces of hatred are so great. We can widen the circles but we start with our own pain. Because if you can't feel your own pain fully, that's a shortcut to vengeance and lazy forms of grief. That's right. What we do is we bypass the grieving that actually embedded in grieving

is love. And then that lets us connect in a much bigger way. And one of the examples of this that has most inspired me, Van Jones has done a lot of work of bringing people that seemingly are on different sides together and he's a news commentator and activist in his own way. In one of the initiatives he brought together people from West Virginia, professionals dealing with the opid crisis there, with people from South Central LA dealing with heroin. And this is like really hugely different cultures, race, social history, bringing them together to see how they can learn from each other and grow. It started with that edginess you'd expect from the conditioning of you are other,

you are different, and often in some way you're wrong or bad. But this is what I want to tell you about. At one point he asked them each to bring out pictures of loved ones they had lost in the epidemic. And so one by one they each are bringing out these photos and sharing them with others and talking about the person and who the person was in their life. And one man said, the last conversation with his son, he said, You got yourself into this. You get yourself out. And that was his last conversation. You could see watching how people touching into the realness of their grief also touched into the realness of their shared space of heart. They were touching what they all cared about. And we need more of that because underneath

all our differences there are things we all care about. But it takes intention, it takes practice. It's almost like the Bodhisattva practices are what actually give us capacity for democracy, that we need ways to bridge divides. Right now we're in… Jonathan Haidt describes it as the collapse of the Tower of Babel, that God's punishment was that we all would be speaking different languages and here we are in our own siloed realities, we can't communicate with each other. And for democracy you have to have a capacity to communicate, to include difference and to be able to work with that and to have a basic respect, a basic valuing of life. Paul Farmer, he just says that the main thing wrong with our world is that some

lives are valued less. As long as that's the case, as long as we are in our silos and can't see the human that's there, we don't have capacity for democracy. Coming Up Tower goes deeper on how to cultivate these teachings in your own life. Hello, Matt and Alice here, the hosts of Wanderers podcast British Scandal. Our latest series, Peru 2, begins on the sandy shores of Ibiza. Michaela McCollum should have been having the summer of her dreams, but it all went wrong when she met the gorgeous Davy in a bar. Think less holiday romance, more recruitment for a drug cartel.

She agreed to team up with another young Brit, fly to Spain to collect a drugs package, then head straight back. However, only at 30,000 feet does Michaela realise she's not on the way to Spain. She's heading for Peru. And when they get there, they find out it's not a small drugs package, but 11 kilograms of cocaine. The summer holiday turns into a spell in a Peruvian prison and a story that becomes an international media sensation. To find out the full story, follow British Scandal wherever you listen to podcasts, or listen early and ad-free on Wondry Plus on Apple Podcasts

or the Wondry app. 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 feedback. And a reminder that the 10% Happier app is now called Just Happier and they've got personalized meditation plans and fresh ways to meditate on and off the cushion. Download the new Happier Meditation app today to discover meditation that evolves with you. Okay, so I hear, just stepping back to the question

that set us down the current path we're on right now. I was asking you, okay, well, the Bodhisattva ideal sounds great, but how do you do it? And I heard in your answer at least two things. One is developing mindfulness. Often this happens through basic meditation. Feel your breath coming in and going out. Every time you get distracted, you start again. And in the distraction, which a lot of people kind of vilify, you're actually learning something important, which is like what your mind is all about, what your life is all about. And you're developing this self-awareness about the machinations of your inner life. So being able to have a good or some sense of what's happening in your mind and then

to be able to sit with it allows you to see what you're feeling and then what's beneath those feelings. And it's hard and you have to keep saying yes to it or running away. But eventually you learn to settle into these uncomfortable feelings that we spend a lot of time trying to run away from.

And that is the doorway to the second thing I heard you recommending, which is compassion. Once you can be okay with your own stuff, you recognize that everybody's got something. You're dropping a lot of quotes, so I'll drop one too, which is, I think his name is Robert Bly, the poet who talks about how we all have a black bag. I think of it as like a shitty wedding train we're all carrying around with us, a black bag that's just filled with all of the stuff that we've gone through in our lives. And mostly we just see the current presentation, but actually like a way to develop compassion is to look at whoever's presenting themselves to you and then imagine their black bag. And no matter how awful deplorable their behavior is, if you just put the black bag there, you contextualize it.

We don't have to agree with it necessarily, but at least you have some context. Those are the two skills I've heard you discuss in terms of practicing like a bodhisattva, mindfulness and compassion. There are two others I see in my notes in preparing for this podcast. Marissa Schneiderman, one of our ace producers, spoke to you and gave me some notes that I'm looking at right now.

There are two other skills on this list that I'm looking at that might be worth saying a little bit more about. One of them is meta, M-E-T-T-A, which is often translated as loving kindness. I think a better translation for me, at least, is friendliness, just the capacity to see the good in others.

It's related to compassion, but meaningfully different. So can you say a little bit more about it? Yeah, thanks for that. So where compassion tenderizes the heart by seeing the vulnerability of another, Metta awakens or brightens the heart by seeing the inherent goodness, seeing, well, everybody wants to feel loving and loved, everyone wants to feel safe, everyone wants to feel happy, feel the sentience that's shining through the other's eyes and so on. It's a very powerful way again to experience the truth of our interdependence, of our connection, of our mutual belonging. Very recently a friend of mine who is an elderly white man and he voted for Trump last time is voting for him again. He can

speak in really disparaging terms of everybody is a leftist and he doesn't do it so directly with me because we like each other. But just as we've gotten more divided as a society I find in my own heart I have more edginess in relating to him, I'm more quick to feel defensive or judgmental. So I've very much on purpose been practicing this metto with him and reflecting on his goodness. I think of… he was very kind to my mother when she was alive, always wanting to help her. He is generally kind and generous and friendly.

He is a really affectionate guy and so I watched him with his grandchildren and just how crazy it was for them. So I reflect on that kind of thing. And it warms my heart. Then it becomes so clear that my job is not to convince him but to keep the flow of caring open between us. And the reality is that when we see the goodness we bring it forward in others. So I can tell because

I'm appreciating him, he beams more. What about people in whom it is very hard to see anything good? Yeah. And that comes up a lot, especially when we see humans with a lot of power, the strong men leaders that are causing and can cause so much suffering, it's very, very hard to overcome the aversion to be able to somatically feel meta. And we might have an idea in our mind, well, they too want to love and be loved, but it's not in ourselves. So I think the first step, I'll speak personally, is to totally forgive myself for that. Like that's okay, that's natural. So there's a kind of quality of self-understanding and self-compassion because there's a reason that we're armored. In the meta-training,

the wisdom is not to start with them. Build up capacity by starting where it's easier, where it just comes more naturally to feel the affection with people that you can actually imagine when they're happy, when they're loving, you know, when they're awed, start there. And then as we move towards the more difficult people there's all sorts of so-called tricks but they actually help us to get more dimensionality, to imagine that person as a child. And often that's going to include their suffering as a child. So we have some of the compassion in there too, imagining them wounded in some way, imagining them on their deathbed, imagining them after they've passed away.

And the reason for that – and this, by the way, thinking about somebody after they've passed away is a very quick hack to sense spirit, to sense light, to sense tenderness. Something in us can do that. Something in us can kind of sense beingness when not burdened by the personality or whatever and sense more the truth of somebody's spirit and soul. That's the way we cultivate it. And again, it's to start where we can. In meta practice, because both meta or friendliness or seeing benevolence, whatever, and compassion, the Buddhist term of art for that is Karuna, both of these are meditation practices. As I'm not saying this to you, because of course you know this, but to the listener, there are associated practices you can do, which involve envisioning a series of people and sending them good vibes in the form of certain phrases.

If you're doing meta, you would say like, may you be happy, healthy, may you live with ease. And if you're doing compassion practice, you may say, may you be free of suffering. And often in this practice, when you're getting to a difficult person, usually you start with an easy person, then you move to yourself, a neutral person, then you get to a difficult person, often the advice is, like, don't start with Pol Pot. Don't start with Hitler. Let's start with a mildly annoying person. And because these are all muscles we're trying to develop, these are all practices, these are skills, let's start small and then maybe build our way up to whoever it is is most difficult. That's exactly right. And keep widening the circles because we tend to pull back where it's difficult. But if we look at today's

world, like what's happening, how we're descending into really the shadows of dividedness, world, like what's happening, how we're descending into really the shadows of dividedness, we have to have a way of bridging the divides. And these inner practices, what they do is they dissolve the sense of separateness. They actually reveal to our hearts a much more unified field of belonging. And right now I think our biggest problem, if I had to just name a problem, is a degree that we dehumanize and demonize and separate ourselves from each other. I mean it's really the collapse of the Tower of Babel. And if we look at human history, demonizing others has been the psychological fuel that drives warfare. So we can look at any violent conflict across the globe and we'll see othering. And it's not like we're not part of that because it happens in most of us in our personal relationships as soon as we feel dissed, we feel hurt, we feel overlooked, we feel offended in some way, the other becomes

a little more of an unreal other. There is a sense of badness or not like me. And often we slide – and this is particularly true when we think of our world – into perceiving some people as less moral, less valuable. And it takes a lot of honesty to investigate our own hearts and sense isn't it true that we have some on the other side and that we've diminished their value? Because if that's the case, even though we might feel like it's not acute with us, that is the mechanism, that dehumanizing, that actually it enables people to commit and rationalize killing, torture, genocide, pogroms, ethnic cleansing, the whole deal. So it feels like I can say for myself if I find that myself, it's so clear that I am participating in the violence of the world and it deepens my commitment to disarm my heart. And if I had to sum up the Bodhisattva path

inwardly, it's a disarming our heart so we can care again. And then manifesting that outwardly in our activity, our primary work, it's really the most compelling and sacred work of these times is to bridge divides. We really need to do it. Again, we can't have democracy, we can't have peace unless we do it. Let me ask one more question about disarming the heart vis-a-vis particularly obnoxious people or at least people we view as obnoxious.

I'm playing devil's advocate here. I think I know the answer and I agree with the answer, but I think some people worry that disarmament makes them vulnerable in a bad way that they confuse that with total acceptance or approval or lack of boundaries vis-a-vis difficult people, especially people in their world. You can have compassion and benevolence and friendliness towards somebody you're not in contact with. In other words, like I, if I have somebody in my family who I need to have a clear boundary with, I can set that boundary and have it not be from a standpoint of hatred. So I think there's a really important distinction between a verse of judgment, which is the blaming, the seeds, the hatred, and so on, and discerning wisdom. Just to play that out a little bit. Let's say there is an older child who is bullying your child. Really imagine that. That's what's happening. For those

that are listening you can expand this metaphor to a powerful country bullying a vulnerable group of people. It's the same idea. But okay, so let's say we get into aversive judging like letting that bully be the enemy, thinking of them as a bad apple, a bad person, moral, what does it do? It cuts off compassion, it dehumanizes, we won't be able to see that they've been bullied and traumatized so our heart's armored. But if your child is getting bullied it's crucial to have wise discernment that fully recognizes, okay, an older child is behaving in a harmful and unhealthy way and I have to take wise action to prevent more bullying and do whatever I can to take care of both children because that's real wisdom, that's inclusive compassion. What I'm suggesting here is mature compassion does not ignore harm. It creates – this is from

Roshi Joan Halifax, I think it's one of the best phrases ever – it gives us a strong back and a soft front. And so what I mean by that, the strong back, clear discernment, able to protect, act on behalf of the boundaries we need for ourselves, for others, that's a strong back. And the soft front is to keep our heart open so we're not bad othering, we're not seeding more violence, rather we're holding all with compassion knowing that the bully got bullied. It doesn't come out of an evilness of the human heart, it's conditioned and that ultimately unless we're seeking the well-being of all, we're going to be ending up in some way perpetuating the suffering of the current times.

Yeah, I'm saying this too much but I completely agree. I'm thinking about this language around the heart historically has been hard for me because it's just not the way I talk and that kind of language being conditioned as a straight white male never really landed for me. Just as a digression for my 50th birthday three years ago, my friend Seben A. Selassie, who's a great meditation teacher you may know. I think she worked with you or for you for years. Oh yeah. Seb's a very good friend. Yep.

Yeah. So Seb gave me a painting that she had commissioned by a friend of hers who I haven't met. But anyways, a very nice painting. It's hanging in my office at home. And I noticed as I was hanging it, the title of the painting is, My Open Heart Keeps Me Safe. And so initially there's a bit of a gag reflex there, it's like, what the fuck is this? Like, I don't like this type of language.

But I really took it on as a riddle, to put it in Buddhist terms like a Zen koan, like, what does that mean? And it's coming up in my mind as I'm having this conversation with you, because actually, counter-intuitively, having an open heart, meaning having compassion, understanding things in their proper context, is seeing things clearly which allows you to make better decisions which will keep you safe. Does that all land for you as I say it out loud? we lose the aliveness and immediacy of the moment if we're defending against the next moment. So,

yeah, it also has to do with trusting reality, that you can't experience reality directly if there's not a quality of trust and openness. And the more we trust reality, the more… It's not like we trust that we're not going to die, it's not like we trust that others won't hurt us, but there's even a deeper level of trust that allows us to draw on the fullness of our wisdom and of our care. Coming up Tara talks about more qualities of mind that fall within the Bodhisattva mindset and we talk about how to take action or get involved outside of your bubble when you feel like you're time-starved. Being a part of a royal family might seem enticing, but more often than not, it comes at the expense of everything, like your freedom, your privacy,

and sometimes even your head. Even the Royals is a podcast from Wondery that pulls back the curtain on royal families, past and present, from all over the world to show you the darker side of what it means to be royalty, like the true stories behind the six wives of Henry VIII, whose lives were so much more than just, divorced, beheaded, died, divorced beheaded survived.

Or Esther of Burundi, a princess who fled her home country to become France's first black supermodel. There's also Queen Christina of Sweden, an icon who traded in dresses for pants, had an affair with her lady-in-waiting, and eventually gave up her crown because she refused to get married. Throw in her involvement in a murder

and an attempt to become Queen of Poland, and you have one of the most unforgettable legacies in royal history. Follow even the Royals on the Wondery app, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge even the Royals ad-free right now on Wondery Plus. I don't wanna forget that there was a fourth skill

or quality of mind that is on my list here from you as it pertains to developing a bodhisattva mindset. And that is, and you did reference this before, but I think it's worth re-emphasizing, reflecting on your aspiration. What does that mean to you? Yeah, you know, the Buddha said that our whole life experience comes at the tip of intention.

So, yeah, we always have in any moment something we're wanting, something we're intending, something we're not wanting. The question is are we in touch with our deepest wants and longings and aspirations? So it's actually a practice in the Bodhisattva tradition to reflect on kind of the question what most matters. It's sometimes described as a prayer, you know, may whatever circumstances arise may they awaken wisdom and compassion. Sometimes it's kind of that kind of a prayer. But even under the prayer so that it's not just words, there's that inquiry of what do we really care about. What I've seen is that our day-by-day life can get very hijacked by less than our deepest aspiration, you know, we get hijacked

by wanting to control things or wanting certain outcomes to be a certain way or checking things off our list so we don't have to be anxious. It's such a nice way to resolve anxiety. our list so we don't have to be anxious. It's such a nice way to resolve anxiety. And so it becomes essential practice every day on some level after probably we've quieted some so that we actually can connect to sense what our deepest longing is, what really matters to us. And when we do, more and more of our actions get really guided by the compass of our hearts. To put a self-interested spin on this, you know, I think about it as what's the most effective and cleanest burning fuel?

And so if you can be reminding yourself frequently throughout the day, like, what do I care about? What actually matters? That helps with performance. That's absolutely true. So in a way, you're adding on, say, care about, what actually matters, that helps with performance. That's absolutely true. So in a way you're adding on, say, to reflect on aspiration and then sense what actually

serves this aspiration the best, which helps to anchor it in day-to-day life even more. I just noticed this in my own life because I love what you were saying about the to-do list. I'm a compulsive list maker and checker offer, and it's all based in anxiety, of course. And I have, along with my straight white male conditioning, capitalist conditioning, and so I, and I'm not trying to vilify any of that, it's just part of the makeup,

but it's very easy for me to get hijacked in any number of ways. And to the extent that I can remember what I actually care about, my anxiety in those moments goes down and my effectiveness goes up. I just see it over and over again. And it's not complicated really. It's like, what do I care about? Okay, I know what I care about. It's being useful, right? In the simplest, most plain English. And as long as I'm in that mindset, everything's okay. I'm right there with you as I'm in that mindset, everything's okay.

RK I'm right there with you. I'm the same. Even before I do interviews or do anything, if I can remember… If I get sincere, it's really actually a felt sense. And it helps me even say the word because right now I feel myself, oh yeah, sincere, that matters. Fear goes away. the word because right now I feel myself, oh yeah, sincere, that matters. Fear goes away. It really does make sense because we know from neuroscience that when we're feeling connected to our heart, when we're feeling any of those love feelings or care feelings, what goes along with it is a quieting of some of the limbic activity and it stimulates the learning centers in the brain. I've noticed that, that I actually take in information more. There is more of a flow-through where I can take in more of what's going on, I

can listen better and I can offer out from a cleaner place. So there's a lot of power to remembering what most matters. The Zen masters say the most important thing is remembering the most important thing, which I really like. I'm writing it down. What you just described is a case study in the open heart keeping you safe that when you're feeling compassion, you can see it on a brain scan, it reduces anxiety. Yeah. So I would think even for you, although I think you hold onto the story of straight

white guy, not into some of the soft language, I think that you've been cellularly transformed since I've met you years ago. I truly, I say that sincerely. And it does help that science kind of confirms this stuff, doesn't it? Yes. Well, for me, for sure, given the conditioning, and I agree with you. I mean, some of it is like shtick at this point, but the conditioning is there. And also I haven't been meditating that long, but 15 years of it is non-trivial and it does compound. A long way of saying I totally agree with you. And putting it in science terms, given said conditioning, really does help me and I think it helps a lot of other people too.

Yeah, it kind of brings my mind as we're saying this back to the core teaching of the Bodhisattva path which is interconnectedness. And science, it's like there isn't one branch of science that doesn't say the same thing whether you're talking about biology, what we are biologically, or whether you're talking about quantum physics, this is a relational universe, that there's this web of aliveness that we are inextricably a part of, that's influencing us, that we are influencing, and to pay attention to that in a way that's not abstract – and this is the hard thing – when we hear the word interdependence it's usually an abstract concept. So to get the felt sense of it is life-changing. Whether we do it through meditation, psychedelics, feeling love with another being, feeling absolutely intimate

with nature, the felt sense of it changes everything. And I often think of Thich Nhat Hanh saying that we will not save the earth unless we fall in love with the earth. And he talked about how we really need to feel the cries of the earth inside our hearts. And to me that's such a beautiful example of how crucial it is that we actually have a lived experience of our interdependence with this living world because that's what motivates us to act. We will not act on behalf of the earth unless we love the earth. And that's the same thing with each other. It's the same thing with animals, you know. It's so easy because we are so conditioned to hierarchy. And I come back to Paul Farmer saying some lives being valued less is what's

wrong with our world to consider non-human animals as less valuable, less worthy of care. And what it's led is the cruelty to billions of animals each year and also something that's not sustainable on the earth, which is the way we consume meat. So on all fronts, science says it, the great spiritual traditions say it, we belong to each other, and the more quickly we wake up to that, the more chance we have at creating the world that we believe in. Well said. Let me go back to anxiety for a second, because this is also in this document that

Marissa put together for me in preparation for this interview. One of the other things that you recommend in terms of getting through this tumultuous period of time with minimal fear and outrage and bad behavior on our part is to not do it alone, to have other people that we're going through it with. Can you talk about that? Yeah. You know, if I had to say what's most important in dealing with the fears that we all feel, having a nervous system means that we are sensitive to the decline of our larger body, the earth, and we're sensitive to

all the suffering that's around us, we might numb ourselves. I mean one of the big ones for many of us in the United States right now is I on November and a huge amount of fear as to what's going to happen. And for me it's woken me up at night so I know it inside out, a real sense of trepidation. So of course as we've been talking all along, Dan, the first piece is we need to do the inner meditations, know how to quiet our mind, know how to breathe, know how to down-regulate the intensity and also know how to get in touch with the caring. That's huge. Let me toss in another quote that I really love which is… Bill Hooks said, The moment we choose to love, we begin to move towards freedom, to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others. So meditation helps us to remember

that love matters, to choose love. The second part of responding to all the fear that we have about our world is to act, to engage. There's a whole sense of, as Angeles Arrian says, that action absorbs anxiety. I would go beyond that and say compassionate activism seeds the world that we long for. So action does absorb anxiety but we could be very busy just like caffeinated squirrels just checking things off our list and think we're a little less anxious but it doesn't really uproot but compassion-based activism is the beginning of uprooting. And then we go to what you are just bringing up, do it with each other. And in Buddhism the triple jewel of what awakens us is Buddha-Dharma-Sangha, is Buddha's awareness, sensing the awake awareness that's our source, the dharmas are these practices,

the pathways to freedom. The sangha is our interdependent, interrelated, loving connection with each other, we need to take refuge in that. Just to speak personally, over these last months I've been very involved with a number of people who are just working on initiatives to save our democracy. And it has helped me immeasurably to actually reduce anxiety to just feel other people caring, you know, just to feel the care and then to sense there's people all over the planet that care. And there's something if you just pause and sense there are people who care all around the globe, there is this larger belonging, we are not alone and there is this movement of caring humans. It doesn't matter the outcome in particular, there is something in just remembering

that that soothes and opens our heart. And it feels to me that if we do the inner work, the meditating, if we act because we need to engage and if we act together we can more and more realize that the caring is all-inclusive, we are not just caring about my side winning kind of thing. I sometimes think about the great-grandchildren of people we might call the other side. I mean our heart has to break for everyone and care about and value everyone. And that's when there's a real sense of peace, belonging and freedom. I love that phrase, action absorbs anxiety. When it comes to action, I think a lot of people, and I actually feel this way a little bit too, feel, do I have time? I've got my own shit going on, what can I do when it comes to getting involved politically or on the climate or whatever?

KS Yeah, I feel like it's an important question because most of us feel already over the top and activism has the kind of… comes with a sense of a should or a moral obligation. I heard a phrase called slacktivism which I thought was really good. It's a new word for minimal output through the Internet. I wish I hadn't heard it because I can relate, you know. But it means doing what's convenient. So what can I do? It starts with just that practice of deep aspiration that you know you want to be useful. So there's a part of you that gets in touch with that and then just ask that question, What is that longing or aspiration calling for right now and let that be the compass. The other piece that

really helps is to get a bit more proximate with where suffering is. And what I mean by that is with others in our close circle just leaning in a little so that we actually let ourselves be touched because if we want to engage we have to get touched. I have a Jewish friend over fifty years we have been together and just my heart was crushed by what's going on in Gaza. Part of getting more proximate for me was we talked and I really listened to how for her because of anti-Semitism she has never felt safe in any situation that's always been in the background and to let that in. If we're wanting to get more involved with racial justice, for me it's really helped to just be… I was involved for several years with a very diverse group

where we listened to each other. And I'll just never forget I had a teenage son, another woman did. She described how – and she lived in her city here in this area – every time her son would go out she was absolutely panicked that he wouldn't come back. It's like, get proximate. What's it like for others? Because that actually will help us sense some level of engagement to ask, you know, what really is love asking from us? And then in terms of if we're really busy, do what we can, whether it's write a postcard or talk to others. One of the big things that feels important, Dan, that I am working on and I have a long

way to go is to communicate with those who really have difference in their view. We tend to get much more comfortable and stay in our silos. I mean it's much more fun to talk with you and have you say, you know, I agree with you on that one too but I need to ask, you know. That's a lot more fun. But I think of how to widen it. John Paul Letter talks about conflict transformation and he says, I think the difficult work of peace building is to create a quality of relationships among people who don't think alike. Think of the elections in the United States. It's not like somebody wins and the other side disappears. If we really want a more just,

compassionate world we have to find a way to open up those silos and talk to each other. So that's just another… When you say, what can the everyday meditator who is really busy do, is just stretch somewhere, get more proximate with the suffering, bridge some divides wherever possible, see whatever resonates with your heart to do and know that you'll actually feel better, you'll feel much more connected to the world and much less fearful. There's kind of a fearless heart that opens up when we engage. Every time you come on it's great, this is no exception. Is there something you were hoping

to talk about that we didn't get to? A little bit about how we talk in the world. Again, I feel like the work of our times is bridging divides and our words and our language matter. It's always, but especially in this moment when there's a lot of fear and animosity and so on, it's so easy to feel that exceptions or justifications can be made for just saying what we want to say, but it's actually just the opposite. These are the moments that our words can actually mostly lead to more violence. They feed violence if they're othering, bad othering. So to use our words responsibly, to not dehumanize others, to really ask, does this serve wisdom, does this serve love, does this serve healing.

So that feels just really important to say because I feel like the power of the Bodhisattva path – and again I mean it in the broadest terms – is that it just keeps on inviting us to reground in presence keeps on inviting us to reground in presence and in caring. And what we start discovering is that we're not alone, that we're in it with others and that just knowing that belonging is really what helps to free up the world. If people want to learn more from you, about you, can you recommend some of the books or all of the books you've written and also let us know what your website is? My website is tarabrock.com. Probably the book that most will be relevant to what you and I are talking about is Radical

Compassion. But, to be clear to listeners, that's just one of many books. So go to the website, check out her other books. She also has a podcast. Yeah, so… There are many talks on the podcast that touch on this in different ways. So if anybody wants to go deeper you can just scan the topics on the podcast list and find them you remind us of the name of the podcast If you go to my website, you'll find it I'm not good at that

It's probably something to do with my name Yeah, if you search Tara Brock in what your favorite podcast there you'll find her show Tara. Thank you again. This is Fascinating and also just really fun to do you'll find her show. Tara, thank you again. This was fascinating and also just really fun to do. Thank you. Oh, totally my pleasure. I'm grateful to do it with you. Thanks again to Tara Brock. Always great to talk to her. I'm going to drop in the show notes some links to similar episodes. If you want to go deeper on this. We've got an interview with the Dalai Lama, with the Zen Master Roshi Joan Halifax, with Sibene Selassie, and some of my past conversations with Tara, all of which I think can be super helpful if you want to go deeper on these subjects.

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 band Islands wrote our theme. Island's Ropar feed. 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.