Buddhist Practices for Busyness, Overwhelm, and Burnout | Brother Chân Pháp Hữu

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Buddhist Practices for Busyness, Overwhelm, and Burnout | Brother Chân Pháp Hữu"

Title: 10% Happier with Dan Harris
Host/Author: 10% Happier
Guest: Brother Phap Hu
Release Date: July 2, 2025

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Introduction

In this enlightening episode of 10% Happier with Dan Harris, host Dan Harris engages in a profound conversation with Brother Phap Hu, a Zen monk and Abbot of Plum Village's Upper Hamlet. Brother Phap Hu brings his personal journey of experiencing and overcoming burnout, shedding light on Buddhist remedies that can help listeners navigate busyness and overwhelm in today's fast-paced culture.

Understanding Busyness and Burnout

Dan opens the discussion by addressing a common misconception: Zen monks cannot experience burnout. He clarifies that while some monks focus solely on meditation, many, including Brother Phap Hu, engage in substantial responsibilities such as managing monasteries and conducting retreats. This balance between meditation and active service can lead to burnout, mirroring the experiences of many in modern society.

Brother Phap Hu asserts, “[00:58] We are definitely in a society of running right now, and with all the technologies increased, it hasn't shown us that we can connect deeper. It's actually allowed us to do more.” This highlights the paradox of technology: intended to connect us, yet often contributing to increased busyness and stress.

The Premature Hero and False Hero Concepts

Dan introduces a poignant quote from Thich Nhat Hanh, which speaks about the dangers of premature heroes or false heroes—individuals who stay perpetually busy to cope with fears and insecurities.

Brother Phap Hu explains, “[10:15] The premature hero has to stay busy all the time. The destructive capacity of nonstop busyness rivals nuclear weapons and is as addictive as opium. It empties the life of the spirit.” He elaborates that true heroism involves nurturing inner qualities like meditation, artistry, and compassion, rather than succumbing to the addictive cycle of constant activity.

Steps to Address Busyness and Burnout

Brother Phap Hu outlines a three-step approach to managing busyness and burnout:

1. Recognition and Acceptance
   Acknowledging one's state of busyness and stress is the foundational step. “[25:22] Acceptance of busyness is first of all an act of kindness to oneself, acknowledging that.”

2. Embracing Burnout
   Contrary to avoiding burnout, Brother Phap Hu emphasizes embracing it to understand its roots. “[31:22] When you can accept your sadness, your burnout, you give yourself a pathway to healing.” This acceptance fosters self-compassion and clarity.

3. Giving Yourself Permission to Rest
   Allowing oneself to rest is crucial. Activities such as walking in nature, connecting with friends, or practicing total relaxation are recommended. “[54:56] Total relaxation is an art of learning to really be there for yourself.”

Practical Techniques

Total Relaxation

Brother Phap Hu introduces total relaxation as a method to reset and rejuvenate. This practice involves:

• Mindful Breathing: Anchoring the mind on the breath to foster presence.
• Body Scanning: Systematically relaxing each part of the body, acknowledging tensions, and releasing them.
• Embracing Stillness: Learning to sit still and do nothing, countering the societal emphasis on constant activity.

He shares a personal anecdote, “[54:56] I can come back to my breathing, listen to what is being shared, and embrace the healing energies present.” This technique not only alleviates physical tension but also calms the mind, enabling a deeper connection with oneself.

Nature Walks

Spending time in nature is another practical tool. Brother Phap Hu highlights the importance of immersing oneself in natural environments to find refuge from the stress of urban life. “[25:22] Allow yourself to just go for a walk in nature, like just to allow the trees, allow the sounds of the birds, allow the whole cosmos to just hold you.”

Healthy Boundaries

Setting and maintaining healthy boundaries is essential to prevent burnout. Brother Phap Hu discusses:

• Saying No with Kindness: Learning to decline requests without fostering resentment. “[63:36] Clarity is kindness. When you can be clear, that can be an act of kindness when somebody asks you to do something.”

• Recognizing Limits: Understanding and respecting one’s own capacity to avoid overcommitment. “[66:00] Learning to say no, learning to know my limits, learning to be with people when I'm not strong enough.”

He shares a personal experience, “[63:39] There was a request for our community to do something... I offered a kind 'no,' and though it was met with disappointment, I maintained my boundaries with compassion.”

Protecting Against Toxic Environments

Dealing with toxicity involves:

• Seeing Potential in Others: Even in toxic settings, recognizing the inherent potential for growth and compassion in others. “[70:54] I have to see that in them. We cannot label someone as an enemy; instead, we recognize their capacity for transformation.”

• Maintaining Inner Peace: Keeping a calm and compassionate stance to diffuse negativity. “[70:54] I was able to share and acknowledge that person, reinforcing non-judgment and understanding within the community.”

• Using Mindfulness as a Tool: Applying mindfulness practices to navigate and transform toxic interactions. “[65:55] Our teacher has a poem... man is not our enemy. Our enemy is the ignorance, the wrong view.”

Contemplating the Five Remembrances

A significant part of the discussion revolves around the Five Remembrances, a mindfulness practice that involves contemplating impermanence and mortality to gain perspective on life’s busyness and burnout.

Brother Phap Hu outlines the Five Remembrances:

1. We are all of the nature to grow old.
2. We are all of the nature to get ill.
3. We are all of the nature to die.
4. Everything we cherish is impermanent.
5. The way forward is our truest belonging through our actions (karma).

He explains, “[45:11] These remembrances teach us about impermanence and help us appreciate the present moment, fostering a deeper connection with life and reducing the fear of burnout.”

Conclusion

The episode concludes with Brother Phap Hu highlighting the importance of integrating these Buddhist practices into daily life to combat busyness and burnout. He encourages listeners to explore his book, "Being with Zen: Ways to Transform Overwhelm and Burnout," and engage with the Plum Village podcast, "The Way Out Is In," for continued guidance.

Brother Phap Hu imparts a final thought, “[77:51] Our way of being is a Dharma in itself, the way we show up, the way we are kind to each other.” This encapsulates the essence of the conversation: nurturing inner peace and compassion as remedies to the pervasive challenges of busyness and burnout.

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Notable Quotes:

• “[00:58] We are definitely in a society of running right now, and with all the technologies increased, it hasn't shown us that we can connect deeper. It's actually allowed us to do more.”

• “[10:15] The premature hero has to stay busy all the time. The destructive capacity of nonstop busyness rivals nuclear weapons and is as addictive as opium. It empties the life of the spirit.”

• “[31:22] When you can accept your sadness, your burnout, you give yourself a pathway to healing.”

• “[63:36] Clarity is kindness. When you can be clear, that can be an act of kindness when somebody asks you to do something.”

• “[70:54] I have to see that in them. We cannot label someone as an enemy; instead, we recognize their capacity for transformation.”

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This episode offers a compassionate and practical exploration of burnout through a Buddhist lens, providing listeners with actionable strategies rooted in mindfulness, acceptance, and self-compassion.

Transcript

[Dan Harris]

Foreign this is the 10% Happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hey gang. Today I'm talking to a Zen monk who burned out. And this monk is going to lift the curtain on some of the Buddhist remedies that he personally used to recover from his overwhelm and overwork and chronic busyness. Strategies that you can use too. This is crucial stuff in a culture that pressures us to constantly do more, get more and be more. Let me address the elephant in the room first here. You might be wondering right from the jump, how the hell can a Zen monk burn out? Aren't they just sitting around meditating all day? As I've learned in my many years hosting the show, there are many flavors of Buddhist monk. Some of them do sit around and meditate all day, but many others actually do quite a bit of work, including the guy you're going to hear from today who's done, of course, a non trivial amount of meditation, but also helps to run a bustling monastery. My guest is Brother Phap Hu, who's really an incredible person. He began training at the age of 13 with the legendary Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh, who was an author, activist and and founder of the Plum Village tradition. Today, Brother Phap Hu is the Abbot of Plum Village's Upper Hamlet and the co host of the Plum Village podcast which is called the Way Out Is In. He also recently co authored a book called Being with Zen Ways to Transform Overwhelm and Burnout. This is Brother Phap Hu's second appearance on the show and in this conversation we talk about why humans today are busier and more overwhelmed than ever, why monastics are not immune to burnout, how busyness is thrust upon us by the world, but it's also the result of us running from the shit we don't want to face. Practical tools for addressing busyness and burnout, why doing nothing is an art, the role of perspective, and how contemplating your own death can be a huge source of perspective. The practice of total relaxation. That's his phrase and he'll describe it. How to have healthy boundaries without armoring up. How to say no without pissing people off, or at least not pissing them off too much. How to protect yourself in toxic environments, and much more. Just to say before we dive in, this episode comes with a custom guided meditation designed to help you find some rest in this chaotic world. Said meditation is available only to subscribers over on danharris.com as you may know, we've got this new thing where every month we're hiring a meditation teacher to design bespoke meditations to go with every episode. And this month that teacher is Dawn Mauricio. So head on over to danharris.com to claim your meditations. We'll get started with Brother Phap Hu right after this Imagine you're a business owner who has to rely on a dozen different software programs to run your company, none of which are connected and each one is more expensive and more complicated than the last. It can be pretty stressful. 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I needed some nice pants and I go to Quint for that. That's not All I have for quints, I've got sweaters, I've got socks, those little socks that you wear with low top sneakers that you know, like look like you're not wearing socks. Quince makes those too. They've got lots of stuff. Stick to the staples that last with elevated essentials from quint Go to quince.com happier for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com happier to get free shipping and 365 day returns. I even get my underwear from Quint's quints.com happier brother Phap Hu, welcome back to the show.

[Brother Phap Hu]

Thank you Dan. Thank you for the invitation.

[Dan Harris]

It's a pleasure. Congratulations on your new book. Picking up on the themes of that new book, let me just ask you this question. Do you think we are busier and more burned out now than we've ever been?

[Brother Phap Hu]

Absolutely. I think our cultural change in society has shown that stress is much higher as well as our inability to relax as well as to be present. And when we can't be present, it means that our mind and our attention is leaning mostly towards the future or towards the past. So we are definitely in a society of running right now. And with all the technologies increased, it hasn't shown us that we can connect deeper. It's actually allowed us to do more. And the cultural tendency in our society has been to get more, to do more, to receive more. And last year in our summer retreat, one of the most challenging moment was actually I had an audience of just teenagers, 60 teenagers in a room and I was asked to address them and talk to them. And my first question to them is how many of you feel like you're not enough? And everybody raised their hand. And then the second was like, how many of you feel like you are being pushed to do something that you're not even sure about doing? And 80% of them raised their hands. And I said, how many of you would like to feel more at peace with just yourself in this very present moment? I would say 90% raised their hands. And so just speaking to the young people, I feel that they are very honest and there's no filter. So that was a good check in for me with their pulse. Like what is the present moment for them? So I do see this and I see it in myself also. As a monk, you see it in.

[Dan Harris]

Your I thought being a monk was to be immune from the pressures to be more, get more, do more, etc.

[Brother Phap Hu]

Yeah, that is Definitely a view towards it. But, you know, everything that happens in the world seeps into the monastery also. We also have emails, even social media, and like the technology of the times have also it has a particular energy that draws us to be very productive. So even the concept of being successful as a meditator is also very present now. So people come on retreat for a week, and sometimes I feel like they expect themselves to be enlightened, right? And I'm like, come on, like you are 50 years old and you have 50 years of habit. One week won't be able to allow you to become a fully enlightened person. And it's the same for myself. Just recognizing these qualities of wanting to be perfect, wanting to be successful, that has also seeped in. So there is this tendency to achieve. And I have recognized that as a practitioner in meditation, it's not too run away from busyness, it's not to cut off from the busyness. And it's not even to be afraid of the burnout, but it's how to be with the burnout, how to be with the busyness. And that is very alive, very real for me. And if anything, the practice and the training that I have been able to cultivate has allowed me to transform it in a more nonviolent way and a kinder way to oneself.

[Dan Harris]

We're going to go deeply into what you just discussed. You know, how to handle busyness in a meditative way, to transform it. But before we get to the medicine, let's just stay with the illness for a second. Your teacher, the late Thich Nhat Hanh, great Zen master, author, founder of the Plum Village tradition in which you are a monk, has a great quote that you include in your new book, and I'm going to read it to you. It uses a term that I'll need you to explain. The premature hero or the false hero. So I'll let you explain that on the back end. But just to give people a heads up that there's a term they may not be familiar with, here's the quote. To cope with fears and insecurities, the premature hero has to stay busy all the time. The destructive capacity of nonstop busyness rivals nuclear weapons and is as addictive as opium. It empties the life of the spirit. False heroes find it easier to make war than deal with the emptiness in their souls. Please unpack that for us.

[Brother Phap Hu]

The metaphor and the image that our teacher give is of a hero. And I think in all of us, there are moments that we probably have the aspiration to become someone that people can rely on, like a hero, to offer service or offer a presence. When we're still young and naive, our tendency is to just go outwards and not having the ability to really develop. The inner hero, the inner warrior. So in our tradition, our teacher speaks of three qualities that we can recognize in us. One is a meditator. A meditator is not something or someone who has to fully invest himself in spirituality, or even believe or belong to a religion. But the meditator is someone who has the ability to recognize that they have suffering and they want to take care of it. And they want to cultivate inner peace in order to offer peace. And then the second characteristic is the artist. We all have an artist inside of us that wants to share life in a miraculous way. To see the wonders of life, to transform our suffering, our grief, into music, poetry, even breathing is an art. Right? Everything is an art. And then there is the warrior side in us, where when we see injustice, we see something that is wrong. There is a side in us that we want to care and tend to, and we want to be able to help. That is the quality of love that is deep in each and every one of us. So the hero has to have the ability to not only cultivate the strength and the action, but has to cultivate a deeper inner mind of love and sacredness. When we see that our presence itself is sacred, and we can offer that sacredness just in presence. That is how we can show up for all of our action. And our teacher also always says that we are sources of energy, and our action depends on our energy. And if our foundation is the energy of love and understanding, then that becomes a source of fuel for the actions that we can offer to the world, offer to our loved ones, offer to ourselves.

[Dan Harris]

So I think what Thich Nhat, Hanh, your teacher, was saying is that if we want to be actual heroes and we want to cultivate these three qualities of mind, a pitfall would be to get addicted to and obsessed with and consumed by busyness.

[Brother Phap Hu]

Yes. And I think it's also the hero. When the hero is not mindful, it will be pulled away by the powers of fame, of recognition, the pleasures of the world to be seen. It's like opium. It's addicting. It's to be embraced in this quality that I am worthy. And the truest hero doesn't need others to see that they are worthy, but they have the insight that I am enough in this moment, that everything that I can offer to the world is in my Capacity in the very here and now. And we don't become trapped in this idea of professionalism, right? And the present moment is enough, because the present moment creates the future. And if we are always chasing for a future, which I have had this very naive idea, it's like, I can only be happy when I've transformed all of my suffering. There's this line that the Buddha always teaches us and we recite it. And the Buddha would say, well, one of the art of the Way of Buddhism is to learn to dwell happily in the present moment. And I was caught in the word happiness because I felt that, oh, if I can be happy and enjoy the present moment, that means I can't suffer. And I was, yeah, a victim to that view. And then later, as I continued to practice and see myself more clearly and understand that phrase is actually itself in the present moment. Even with suffering, even with the destruction, even with the chaos of the world and present moment, there is a lot of suffering right here, right now. But it is still our responsibility to be able to see the beauty in life, to see the joy and to cultivate happiness, the little things that can spark our creativity, our foundation of love. And we are not limited by suffering. We are potentials of so, so many offerings that we can give to ourselves and give to the world. So the present moment is so important to always come back to for us to reflect. It's like, am I being a victim even to the action of being a hero? Like being seen, being loved? I've touched that. Even in my community, even in Plum Village, sometimes I have this idea. It's like, oh, man, the community needs me. If I can't be like this, if I can't be strong, then who will be strong for the community? And I become more and more fake in a way. So I've learned to become more vulnerable. So the hero has to learn to be vulnerable also and ask for help.

[Dan Harris]

One of the most provocative aspects of that quote that I read is that our busyness, which we may feel is thrust upon us by the world. And to a certain extent it is. But our busyness may also be the result of us running from the shit.

[Brother Phap Hu]

We don't want to face 100%. When shit hits the fan, nobody wants to accept it. Like what I said at the beginning, I feel like there's a tendency to run away, to go towards an idea, an ideal of even peace. But when we see that the busyness itself is a way to escape, it's a way to run away from. Then we're Going to burn out. We're going to lose our joy of service. And about two years ago, I did meet burnout. And I was actually going to ask for a sabbatical in 2025, and the community actually gave me a sabbatical, but through 2024, as I was preparing to leave for a year sabbatical, by asking for help and by recognizing that I have allowed myself to be so busy because it was a way to escape the present moment and to feel enough. I was losing the joy of service. I was losing the joy of even offering the podcast that I was a part of, the way I was in. I was losing the joy of showing up for my loved ones, offering a retreat for the hundreds and thousands of people that come with the greatest intention. And I recognize that, oh, my goodness, I am pushing myself away from the joy of service because I can't embrace myself in this moment.

[Dan Harris]

Yeah, I've talked about this on the show before, so I apologize to anybody who finds this repetitive, but it may be new to many of the listeners. And also, even if you've heard it before, it's actually the type of thing that bears repeating. There was a study, a great research project done. I can't remember when or by who, but it was at a seminary. So future ministers, a Christian seminary, and they gather a group of these seminarians in a room and they give them a lecture on the Good Samaritan, the dude in the Bible who stops and helps somebody by the side of the road. And then as the seminarians leave, one by one, the researchers have a confederate, somebody who's part of the research team in the hallway, having fallen and hurt themselves. And the seminarians, who were told they had an appointment on the other side of campus, almost entirely avoided helping the hurt person, even though they'd just been given a lecture on the Good Samaritan. And so when you are busy, when you are rushing, a state in which I find myself all too frequently, your capacity to help out, to be empathetic, to be compassionate, it doesn't have to be somebody who's hurt. It can be just a colleague who maybe needs 15 seconds of more attention or a project you're working on that could benefit from a second revision or whatever it is, you lose something really important in the busyness.

[Brother Phap Hu]

Yeah, absolutely. You can't recognize what is in front of you. You can't recognize the wonders that are there. And it's an art, like the practice of coming back to the present moment and just to see the little acts of kindness that we can do is such a gift. And when we're too busy, we let go of these moments or these moments pass by with us even acknowledging it, even if our truest aspiration is to be of service too. Just think about your loved ones, your family. Like, how many times do we take it for granted to say hello and ask, how are you? How's your heart? Can you tell me today something that you're holding in your heart so that I can just know and be a support? And sometimes I think we. We always have this feeling. I do. I have this feeling, especially as a monk. It's like I should have answers for people. So if I ask people and they want answers, I don't have them, and then I feel inferior. So I've learned that actually showing up in today's time is more the capacity to just be there and to listen without judgment. I want to hear you. I don't want to hear my mind finding a solution for you. And most of us, we do that the moment we are in conversation. We hear somebody suffering or we hear somebody's even joy and happiness. And then your mind's okay. I have to also show up and say, I've done something well today. Oh, if you suffer, I also have to show off my suffering so that we can connect. Right. So it's a very interesting way that our culture has shifted us in relationship and connection.

[Dan Harris]

Yeah, that's been a real late life learning for me of when somebody in particular, like my wife or my child is. I'm going to use the word complaining, but I don't mean that in the pejorative, like describing an issue in their lives. To me, historically, I would go into, let me solve it. But actually that's not really what people want, at least not at first. They want to be told, oh, that sucks. Like your stress is. You know, I can validate it for you. I see it. And you know, what's the terminology that some people use? An empathetic witness. I think a lot about something that Rene Brown, the great writer and researcher, once said right here on the show that when her kids come to her with a problem, she'll often say, I can't solve it, but I can sit in the dark with you. And I think that's a really wise rendering of the right posture. Coming up, Brother Phap Hu talks about some practical tools for addressing busyness and burnout. He'll talk about why doing nothing is, in his view, an art. And we'll talk about the value of remembering your own mortality as a way to get some perspective, imagine you're a business owner who has to rely on on a dozen different software programs to run your company. None of which are connected. And each one is more expensive and more complicated than the last. It can be pretty stressful. Now imagine Odoo. Odoo has all the programs you will ever need and they're all connected on one simple, easy to use platform, giving you peace of mind that your business is always being taken care of from every angle. Odoo has user friendly open source applications for everything. We're talking CRM, accounting, inventory, manufacturing, marketing, HR and everything in between. Basically, if your business needs it, Odoo's got it. Odoo sounds pretty amazing, right? So stop wasting your time and money on those expensive disconnected programs and let Odoo harmonize your business with simple, efficient software that can handle everything for a fraction of the price. Doesn't get much better than that. So what are you waiting for? Discover how Odoo can take your business to the next level by visiting odoo.com that's o d o o.com o d o o.com odoo modern management made simple this is an ad by betterhelp. These days I am, I'm really leaning on my shrinks. I've got a psychiatrist who helps me and then an exposure therapist. Shout out to Paul. Paul and I have been taking flights together as I try to turn the volume down significantly on my claustrophobia related panic disorder. Paul has been a game changer for me, as has my psychiatrist who oversees or quarterbacks the whole situation. Long way of saying therapy can be really helpful. And for me, you know, this getting back on a plane thing is deeply tied to my livelihood because I need to fly in order to to give speeches. That's one of the things I do. So I really need my therapist for this. I should say. On this tip. Workplace stress is now one of the top causes of declining mental health, with 61% of the global workforce experiencing higher than normal levels of stress. To battle stress, most of us can't simply wave bye bye to work. But we can start small and focus on wellness. There are lots of things you can do, you know, taking more breaks during the day, starting a meditation, meditation habit, getting in little bursts of exercise. But having a therapist is, in my experience, incredibly helpful. And with over 30,000 therapists, BetterHelp is the world's largest online therapy platform, having served over 5 million people globally. And it works with an App store rating of 4.9 out of 5 based on over 1.7 million client reviews. It's convenient too. You can join a session with a therapist at the click of a button. Help helping you fit therapy into your busy life. Plus switch therapists at any time. As the largest online therapy provider in the world, BetterHelp can provide access to mental health professionals with a diverse variety of experience. Unwind from work. With BetterHelp, our listeners get 10% off their first month at betterhelp.com happier. That's BetterHelp. H E-L-P.com happier okay, so we're talking about busyness and burnout. You tried to bring us in a constructive direction earlier in terms of like, what do we do about it? And I stopped you and made you marinate in the problem with me for a little bit. But let's go. Let's go in a more constructive direction now. What do you recommend? On a very practical level, we can do with busyness and burnout?

[Brother Phap Hu]

On a very practical level, I would say we have to have the ability to cultivate ourselves, to even recognize and acknowledge and accept that we are a very busy person. And we are stressed, like, is there tension in our body? Is our tiredness, like really, really not allowing us to be present? Right. So acceptance of busyness is first of all an act of kindness to oneself, acknowledging that. And then the other aspect is to see from everything that we're doing, like, what are the things that is bringing us joy and not bringing us joy. So like to identify it. That's the second noble truth that we speak about in Buddhism. It's like, what is the source of our dizziness, the source of our stress, our burnout, and to see and go, aha, that is where it's coming from. This is the root of it. And that already is action that is already very healing in itself, just recognizing and embracing it. And then on a very practical level, especially if we're living in busy cities and we're all around concrete or walls and windows, it's very fundamental. But if you can allow yourself to just go for a walk in nature, like just to allow the trees, allow the sounds of the birds, allow the whole cosmos to just hold you, just embrace you, we would speak in this kind of language. It's like, learn to take refuge in nature in this moment, not taking refuge in more of our stress, our over worrying, our own judgment to oneself. So that is something very practical that I still do today, like just yesterday, very busy meeting day. And after feeling quite overwhelmed, acknowledging it, embracing it. And of course we have different options, right? We can go on Netflix, we can even put on a good podcast, even maybe the 10% happier podcast. But is it a way to run away and to consume rather than acknowledge and accept? And then practically, we have to be more alive in those moments. And what I mean by that is to surrender to the healing energies that are present there. And sometimes it's also just hitting up a good friend, a good companion to share a moment of drinking tea or drinking coffee, to be re in touch with the qualities of life that is there, right? Because our mind, we're so good of doing, doing, doing, because the doing, we think we're pushing ourselves away from the stress, but it is just accumulation of more and more tension in us. So that is very practical, and that is something that we train in. And there's another art. And this is going to be maybe even more challenging if you give it a chance, if you allow yourself to rest. We do total relaxation, right? We can listen to an audio to allow us to really surrender to the ground, like just to lay down and to connect to our breathing, allowing our whole body to just be present, not tensing up our fists, our hands, our shoulders. It's like instead of an X ray, but it's a mindful ray that we're being aware of where the tensions are in our body. And if we look at our ancestors, right, our animal ancestors, when the animals are wounded, they know how to stop and rest. They're not going to hunt more, they're not going to look for a mate. They have the art of accepting the present moment, and they have the art of resting. And we are too good at bypassing that. We have built a quality in our society to keep doing. And we have lost the art of resting because our mind is like, if I'm laying there and resting, I am wasting time, right? This concept of time is money, Time is to do. And that's why in Zen, Zen masters have said, don't just do something, sit there, right? It's the opposite of what we hear in the world. Don't just sit there, do something. And here the Zen master is teaching us, don't just do something, learn to sit there. Because it's an art to sit still. It's an art to do nothing. It's an art to rest. So very concretely developing that quality of rest and try to bring it into your daily life, like little moments of resting. And there was this friend who is a producer. He's actually staying in the monastery for six months because he's burned out from producing and when he was in touch with our practice, he would listen to the audio of total relaxation or even guided meditation. And the only time that he can really practice it was when he would sit in a toilet, when nobody would interfere. Nobody would intercept him and ask him questions. And he said, I know it sounds funny and it sounds crazy, but that was my moments of resting and of my own spiritual practice. So even a toilet booth can be very holy.

[Dan Harris]

I want to see if I can restate that to you very, very simply, and then also drill down even further on some of it. So I'm hearing three steps there. The first step is pretty clear, although I'll restate it. The second two steps, I think could use a little bit more unpacking. Again, the question was, what do you do about this busyness and burnout? And at least if I understood you correctly, I heard a kind of three step recipe. First, accept it. Like, acknowledge. This is the deal in aa. They say the first step is admitting it. And I think that's true in many aspects of life. Second step, which I think we should spend a lot more time on, is you made a passing reference now several times to embracing it and transforming it. So I want to hear much more about that.

[Brother Phap Hu]

Yeah.

[Dan Harris]

And then the third step is like, give yourself permission to rest. So that could include a walk in nature. It could include sitting with a friend. It could include a type of meditation that you're referring to as total relaxation, which I also want to hear more about. So am I restating your recipe correctly?

[Brother Phap Hu]

Yes, you are.

[Dan Harris]

Okay, good. Gold star for me. All right, so let's start on step number two. When you say embracing burnout, I mean, I think that's deeply counterintuitive to most of us who don't want to embrace anything unpleasant.

[Brother Phap Hu]

Absolutely. So you have an option, right? It's either to not accept it. And that means to not accept yourself, not accepting your state of being in this very moment. And I've learned as. As an art of love. I think in our society, we think of love is to buy something, to give something, very generous. But if we turn inwards, like, can we be generous to ourself? And being generous to ourself, for me, has been learning to accept myself in every state, in every moment. And I think very concretely, I can speak about myself. Like, when I touched burnout, I couldn't accept it because I thought I was failing as a meditator, as a leader, as an elder brother. I've been practicing for 16 years. And why am I in a burnout? Situation now. And for sure, for the first year and a half of that burnout, I was just not accepting it. I kept pushing myself. I kept doing, doing and doing. And then I started to hate everything. I was so toxic. My relationship became so toxic. Not the outer relationship, but my relationship to eating breakfast, to seeing my friends, to offering a retreat, to being a teacher, to even being a monk. I didn't want people to see me as who I am because I wasn't accepting myself. And there was this moment when we were having a celebration. It's called the. It's the lunar new year in Asia. And in our tradition, it's the only time the monks, we would open our residence and we would allow everyone to come in to share tea in our private space. So it's very cozy, it's very intimate in this way. And it's the only time we open our monastic quarter to the nuns community, and they're our spiritual sister, so we get to be hosts. And I just had this moment where I was feeling like I don't belong here. I don't belong here because everyone is so happy, but I'm feeling so miserable. And that was a moment when I was like, okay, we all are sharing the same present moment, but it's very clear that I am miserable right now, and I can't fake it anymore. I can't. I can't just keep putting up a smile. I can't just telling people I'm fine. And it was that moment when I just saw myself so broken spiritually as well as, like, in this community, that the power was being vulnerable and just saying, I need help. I reached out to some of my siblings. I was like, can you share a cup of tea with me? And they're like, we've been waiting for this invitation because we see you miserable, but we didn't want to also push your boundaries. That practice of acceptance was very powerful for me because it allowed myself to. To have a pathway to healing, because I wasn't ignoring it anymore. I wasn't bypassing it anymore, and I wasn't faking it till I make it anymore. And I think all of us, we were very trained to not accept our weaknesses, to not see our tiredness, or even our grief or our sadness or even our despair. Sometimes we don't allow that to be even present. But as a human being, we know that that's all part of being a human. That's a whole package. When we're a human being, we have to suffer. We have to experience loss, we have to Experience failure. We have to experience impermanence. We have to experience getting tired. But at the same time, we also have the potential to also learn to adapt, to be flexible, to love, to be stronger in these moments. Stronger here is first of all, just accepting it. And that tenderness is a strength in its own way. So for me, when I say learning to embrace our burnout is starting to have the lens of a meditator, which is simply to stop running, to embrace it, and to look back deeply at it. Sometimes I see myself as like when I am in busyness and even burnout. It's like I'm in a fog, a deep fog, and I'm trying to look for the light. But if I just allow myself to be still and to let the fog just settle and the light will slowly come through instead of me, just keep even, creating more fog as I'm moving to look for a solution. So it's that second noble truth that we're talking about. The second step is to embrace it in order to see it clearly. And that for me, is when we're able to do that, that's also a transmission we give to our children, our companions. Because if I can accept my sadness, my burnout, and when I see somebody else burnout, I can see that they are not perfect because I'm not perfect. And there's an acceptance that is present there too. The more we're able to accept ourselves, it gives us the art to accept others also. That's what I've learned, and that's what I've discovered.

[Dan Harris]

Yeah, I mean, I think that's absolutely true. In my own experience, the cooler you are with yourself, or actually maybe even the warmer you are with yourself, it inexorably transfers to how you treat other people. And conversely, if you. You're kicking your own ass all the time, you tend to be quite unpleasant externally. Not all of us, but for me, for sure. But let me just get really technical with you when you say embracing burnout from a meditation, mindfulness, very practical standpoint, like, how do we do this?

[Brother Phap Hu]

So I would have to say we do have to start from the fundamentals, meaning we have to be able to. To establish the first wing of meditation. So when we speak of meditation, there's two wings, like wing of a bird to meditation. And the first wing is learning to stop. And stop being here is not just physically, but it is to come back to the present moment. And in our tradition, we train in the art of mindful breathing. The breathing becomes an anchor for our mind to have a Place for refuge. It's not to empty the mind, but it is to invite the mind to focus on, not on the thinking, the stress, but to be concentrated on the breathing. And so this art of stopping is establishing what we call the power of presence. Meaning we know how to show up. We know that I have a body, I have feelings, I have emotions. So the first practices that we train in meditation is acknowledging the body that we have, learning to relax the body. So in meetings, right, like, if we don't have this skill set, when there are things we listen to, we hear, we don't accept, our whole body tenses up. And to apply this into daily life, I do this all the time. Even in meetings, I can practice stopping my reactions, acknowledging, oh, I'm having a lot of tension. Having a particular reaction come up is in my body. So can I be present for that body and to just come back to my breathing, listen to what is being shared? So we have to learn to have this power of presence. So really, burnout may allow us to have a reckoning, like, oh, there is a training that I can develop to care for my burnout. Embracing. So we have to establish first the art of acknowledging, the art of being aware that we have a body, we have tension, we have feelings. So that is the first wing. And then the second wing of meditation is when there is calmness, there is stillness. We have the capacity to look deeper at a subject such as my thoughts. Why am I having all of these negative thoughts? It's because of these particular conversations that I had. And then seeing clearly, it gives you some insight, okay, that is of the past. In this present moment, do I have new views? Are there things that I can learn from that conversation? Or do I keep dwelling on that bitterness that I'm holding? So these are things that we have to develop in our practice of a meditator. And when we have this presence, this ability to be aware, then when burnout shows up for itself, instead of pushing it away, you can say, aha, I know you. You are burned out. You can call it by its name, right? Our teacher has this poem called Please Call me by My True Name. And I still think that it is such a beautiful poem that is almost like a sutra that I want to recite every day. Because there are so many things that show up in our present moment. But are we acknowledging it? Are we calling it by its name? And calling it by its name is, in a way, accepting it, acknowledging it, embracing it. So burnout, when it shows up, instead of being afraid of it, we can learn from it, right? When I was embracing my burnout, I had a deep discovery. I was doing research on my own patterns, my own habits, my own views that I was building up, cultivating my own tendency to be toxic in these areas and then the tendency to be over idealistic in these areas. And so like, it just allows you to see yourself more clearly. And then I think for myself what was clear when I recognized all this, I became more free. And one of my wonderful colleague last year in the spring, he looked at me and we were having a conversation. He said, fapu, you look so much more free. And I said, oh, thank you for acknowledging that. And he said, what did you do? And I literally said, I've accepted that I was in a state of burnout. And he said, huh, Maybe that is why you have been feeling so stuck, because you were neglecting it, you were pushing it away. But the moment you were able to see it and even to be with it, to be with burnout, feeling that exhaustion, and that exhaustion is in our language, it's like a bell of mindfulness. It's a moment to wake up. It's a moment to like take care of yourself. Like, how are you sleeping? Are you drinking enough water? Very fundamental things, right? Are you eating fruits? Are you walking in nature? You love exercising, Go back to that. Like sweat once a day. You love writing sweet messages to your loved ones, right? I became a monk since I'm 13 then, so my time with my family is very distant. And in the early days, like I remember once a week I would call my mother. And the more you grow up, the more responsibilities we all have, we forget of these very practical relationships to tend to, to cultivate too. So I started to just sending my mom a text or a photo, calling my sister, calling my father. Just a very fundamental things. And it sounds funny as I'm speaking, I'm acknowledging this. It's like when in chaos, come back to the fundamentals of the things that gave you so much joy and that gave you life in a way.

[Dan Harris]

Yeah, I appreciate you talking about this. I think a lot of people will find it remarkable that a monk, a Buddhist monk no less, can get burned out. And it's so useful that you're talking about it and also talking about ways that you fix it in ways that we all can. Very practically, when I hear you talk about recognizing and then embracing the burnout just from a, you know, if you're sitting in meditation, for me, it's like interest, interest in how is this showing up in My body, you know, what kind of thoughts am I having? You can make the burnout the object of your meditation. And in that way you're transforming it from a vexation to like a vehicle for learning.

[Brother Phap Hu]

Absolutely. And by transforming my burnout, our burnout, we don't transmit these tendencies, this habit, to our loved ones. Because I know that if I don't take care of this, somebody will have to take care of it for me.

[Dan Harris]

Yes. So in the book, you've got these little chapters where you talk about something very practical we can do vis a vis burnout and busyness. One of the chapters is on the five remembrances, which I'll have you remind us of what they are. It has to do with death, which, again, I'm going to use this word, counterintuitive. Contemplating death doesn't seem like the move that most of us would make in the face of busyness and burnout. And yet. And yet. So please say more.

[Brother Phap Hu]

Wow, you are so right. Death is not something that we even want to contemplate and we get scared of it. And when we talk about the five remembrance, which I will share with all of us now, the first remembrance is that we are all of the nature to grow old. None of us can escape growing old. The second remembrance is we are all of the nature to get ill. None of us can escape that. The third remembrance is all of us have to die. None of us can escape death. The fourth remembrance is everything that we cherish today. They're of the nature of impermanence. We will have to learn to let go. And the fifth remembrance is the way forward. It gives us an insight of continuation. And that is our truest belonging. Our legacies are our three karmas, which are action. Karma means action. And that is the thoughts that we produce every day. It is the words that we speak every day. And it is the action that we enact in our way of being. The way we show up, the way we open a door, the way we tend to someone, the way we care for our loved ones, the environment. They are all our truest belonging that will be transmitted and will, in a way, be passed down from generation to generation. So these are the five remembrance. When you reflect on them, it's teaching you about the art of impermanence. And that is a fact. We are all. Everything that exists in this moment are of the nature of impermanence. Nothing can stay the same. And yes, that sounds very scary. It can even be crippling, especially if you have a loved one. Right? You don't Want that person to be gone. You don't want to have to say goodbye. But this remembrance can also give you the wisdom and give you the power to not take for granted of the present moment. It is not to see that we are limited also from just this body. Our loved ones are not limited from just them who they are. But even if they are not here anymore, their kindness we have received from them and we are their continuation. So the fifth remembrance, it has this thread of what we, in our language we call inter being, meaning we inter are with everything that we exist and we respond to. We cannot be by just ourselves. We have to interbe with everything. We have our parents deep inside of us. We have the education, the teachers before us that have taught us how to love and understand, how to speak, how to write. The wisdoms are not even ours, right? Like what I share, I really feel sometimes I'm just passing it on. And because the wisdom have been passed down from generation to generation, all of these awareness can see that how life is so wonderful for us to even be here. There's so much many layers of conditions have to come together for us to even be alive, to be present, to be breathing. And then the knowledge that our action is our deepest continuation. It gives us responsibility and agency. Like if I want to be remembered for who I am in a way that can be a support for someone, there are actions that I can produce that they can learn from. Like in the Dharma. Dharma means in our spiritual world. We have a tendency to speak about the teaching Dharma or the written Dharma. But our teacher also shares that our way of being is a Dharma in itself, our non verbal Dharma, the way we show up, the way we are kind to each other, that is our belonging that we are giving when we meditate on death. And I have. It's very humbling because we are so little in this whole universe. And we can feel how precious this life is. And that will almost like a software update from time to time. Like I would do this death meditation for like a software update, to not take for granted of the present moment of the community that I'm a part of, as well as the loved ones that I have in front of me, beside me, or even far away from me. And in the monastery, every Sunday after lunch, we would read requests where people would write down by hand or type it out. And they would ask us to send our energy of compassion and love to their loved ones who are going through difficulties. And so many of the request that we always read is somebody going through treatment of cancer or somebody who has just received a diagnosis that they are on stage one, stage two, stage three, stage four cancer. I remember in the early days it was very shocking to me because I was so young and alive. And so to know that there are people getting sick every day can be actually very enlightening. Right? And it can allow us to touch life deeper, to have the agency to live deeply this moment and not to be afraid of impermanence. But knowing that we are of the nature of impermanence actually can give us so much power.

[Dan Harris]

I totally agree. I've tried to get into the habit recently of doing the five Remembrances first thing in the morning and right before I go to bed. And it, I mean, it's a huge dose. As my wife, the former doctor, would say, a bolus. That's the medical term for a big dose of perspective on your busyness, on your burnout, on everything, on your grudges, on all the stuff. Coming up, Brother Phapu talks about the practice of total relaxation. That's his term. We talk about how to have healthy boundaries without armoring up too much, how to say no without pissing people off too much much. And how to protect yourself in I spent quite a bit of time on the Airbnb app recently because I've been booking a house in Barrie, Massachusetts, where I'm going to stay with a friend while we do a meditation retreat. Even though we will be practicing at the Insight Meditation Society, where we usually stay in cottages on the actual property. Cottages were all booked up. So my guy Josh and I are getting an Airbnb in town where we will practice for several days and check in regularly with Joseph Goldstein. And Airbnb is just super easy. You just put in the dates, you find the place where you want to stay, and boom, you're done. And I realized belatedly that I needed to extend. I texted a little bit through the app with owner of the house is super friendly. I extended my stay. Really a big fan of Airbnb. And the cool thing is is you can use Airbnb as a customer but also as a provider while you're away on vacation. You can put your home up on Airbnb. You can make the most of your space, make some extra cash. Feels like a smart thing to do. It's like you get paid for going away. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how [e-mail] host Summer's now officially here, and my favorite part of this whole deal is having friends over and sitting by the pool in our backyard. These long languorous afternoons and early evenings with our friends. It's such a great way to get to know people. Hanging out in nature, watching our kids beat the crap out of each other in the pool. It's so much more intimate than what my friend Zev calls the dinner industrial complex. Not that I don't like going out to restaurants, but chilling in the backyard is huge. And of course while you're doing that, you want to be comfortable. You want to be sitting on a nice couch, you want a good grill. You want nice patio tables that are solid and can hold all the snacks that you're putting out. You want lounge chairs, day beds and umbrellas. And the place to go for all of those is Wayfair. They've got fast and easy shipping. It's never been easier to get ready to party. So how however you kick back outback, go to Wayfair for effortless entertaining and game filled gatherings. It's a great selection and the website is super easy to use. Get big stuff like patio sets, gazebos, hot tubs, outdoor dining sets and more shipped for free. Head to Wayfair.com right now to explore a huge outdoor selection that's W A Y f a I r.com w a y f a I r.com Wayfair Every style, every home Toxic Environments Just to reset this conversation, we're talking a little bit about the remedy for burnout. We've described three of the steps. The first is to recognize it. The second is to embrace it. The third is to start giving yourself permission to rest and can include a walk in nature. It can include calling a friend. It can include contemplating the five Remembrances, contemplating death. It can also include a practice that you've described as total relaxation. I'd be curious to get you to describe that practice so that we can do it on our own if we want.

[Brother Phap Hu]

Total relaxation is a gift that you can give to yourself in Europe. I'm not sure if in North America we have this habit. I learned it more when I was in France. All the stores would close from 12 to 2 o' clock. That was such a shock for me. When I moved to France, I was like, in North America, everything is open almost 24 hours a day and everybody would go into siesta, which is sleep. And that was when I discovered the power of naps, the power of relaxation. It's like it's a dosage of resetting yourself to move forward throughout the rest of the day. And so total relaxation is an art. You would Allow yourself to lay down. And if you are a skilled practitioner already, you can come back to your breathing. I would normally put my hands on my stomach and I would just feel the rising and falling of my breathing. I can see my mind, like very active, and it's like a fan. You know, when you turn off a fan, it doesn't stop right away, but it has to slow down. So from following my breathing with the feeling of it, I'm not thinking about the breath, but I'm feeling the breath. I can see my mind slowing down, coming home to the body breath by breath. And then when you feel you've established yourself in the body, then what we do is we would bring our awareness of mind from the tip of our head. Like being aware of our, our forehead if there's any tension there, and then being aware of the eyes. And we go through our body parts one by one. If we have a lot of time, we can go even deeper into our organs, our heart, our lungs. Our teacher would explain it. It's like we're using our mindfulness as a ray of care and presence. And just to be grateful. I still have good eyes, right? I can breathe, I can hear. Two years ago, I did discover that I was grinding my teeth at night. I never grinded my teeth then. And I think this is due to stress. This is due to all the doings that my mind was so active. And in the nights it continues. And I was at a doctor and he's like, do you know you grind your teeth? And I'm like, absolutely not. He's like, yeah, you need to get a, a mouth guard. And that was a, a moment of reckoning and accepting. And so after that realization, I start to see in the day when I get tense, I would bite down really hard, right? So it's almost like resetting and acknowledging habits that we have developed. So being with the body, you get to learn to relax the different parts of your body. And then you would just gently go from part to part. And if there are pain anywhere, you can spend a little bit more time there just to breathe with it. And you can even put your hands on the places where there's a lot of tension and pain. And this art of total relaxation has really established this art of being so present for the body that it has come into play for me and has been so helpful. When I had to go through surgery in 2024, I had an ACL surgery. It's not life threatening at all, but I was so present for my body then. And when I was going through all of the examination, even before surgery, like, you're in the hospital and there's so much going on, and your mind becomes so afraid because you're about to be opened, like they're about to cut you open, right? I even wrote on my right knee, like, not this knee, because I'm like, don't cut the wrong knee open. But your fear is so strong, right? And I can come back to my body. I can come back to my fear. One of the doctors were preparing me, and they had to inject some anesthetics to numb my whole leg, and they had to go through the back. And the nurse was asking me, do you want an anxiety shot to make sure that you're not so anxious? And I was like, no, I'm actually okay. And the nurse was. Because they don't know I'm a monk because I'm not in my robes. I'm in the hospital wares. The nurse was like, are you sure you're very young? And I said, I'm actually feeling very calm right now. And she's like, you are? Like, how are you doing this? And I was like, I'm actually a monk, and I've been a monk for 20 something years. It was thanks to not allowing my fear to take over and I can trust my body. And I was even in that moment of waiting for the doctors to come and to operate. I was having a relationship with my knee. And I was saying, dear knee, you're going to have surgery. They're going to take a ligament from your hamstring and to replace the acl. Da da da da. And it was this moment of, like, just deep relationship to the body. So this is one of the fruits I was able to put into action when I was very afraid of what can happen. So the total relaxation is an art of learning to really be there for yourself. And this is something that we all can do.

[Dan Harris]

I mean, this is where the list comes full circle. Because, you know, if the first step is admitting it and the final step is giving yourself permission to rest, well, total relaxation, or what sometimes is referred to as a body scan, you know, where you're sweeping through the body mindfully, that boosts your capacity to know when you're too busy or when you're rushing or when you're burned out. And that's crucial because the body is the early warning system. And if you're not listening to it, things can really get out of control. I do want to say that the first book really dwells on busyness. And the countermeasures of rest. Part two is about healthy boundaries. And I'm curious, you could have written a book about busyness and burnout without talking about boundaries, but you decided to. Why?

[Brother Phap Hu]

So there's many factors. And one of the insight of learning to rest is learning to have boundaries, right? Learning to say the sacred. No. Right. That has been very enlightening for me. It's almost become a mantra that I would use a lot now. I'm sure, Dan, you have a lot of invitation and you get a lot of rest requests. And if you don't have boundaries, if you don't know where your limits are and you don't know how to care and protect yourself, you can be eaten up by the world, by the demands of the world, by the needs of the world. Even sometimes it is the noblest request. But we have to also honor our limits and our capacity. So the boundary I have discovered from my own journey of burnout is learning to say no, learning to know my limits, learning to be with people, loved ones, and even environments when I'm not strong enough to be in a position of facilitating because I'm limited right now. And these are boundaries that if I can be clear to myself, that's like one of my good friends, my soul mates, she was a nun with me and she's not a nun anymore, but we're still very close. And she says that clarity is kindness. When you can be clear, that can be an act of kindness when somebody asks you to do something. And I have a habit of people pleasing, and I'm still working with this. I want to be there for everyone. I want to show up for everything. And there's so many times that I had to show up. But I couldn't even give my full presence. I couldn't even give my full joy and love. And I wasn't really in service for anyone. I was almost like just feeding my ego or feeding my inferiority complex of like, if I don't show up, what would they think of me? Learning to have clarity for oneself and the clarity of limits and capacity and not to see that the limit is there. And it's always going to be like that, but not in this present moment. This is my limit. But the future, tomorrow, the week after, the year after, I may have more strength to show up. I may be more flexible in offering my time and space. So these are the boundaries that I feel. It can be very enlightening for oneself to see ourself, to know our limits and our capacity.

[Dan Harris]

How do you Set these boundaries. How do you issue a sacred no without pissing people off?

[Brother Phap Hu]

I think that we're always going to piss somebody off.

[Dan Harris]

That's the truth.

[Brother Phap Hu]

Recently, okay, this just happened a few days ago, so I can. It's still so alive for me. So there was a request for our community to do something, and it was a very beautiful request. It was even very noble from a lot of generosity. And in the meeting, the brothers, the monks, we felt we're out of our capacity right now. We're limited in strength in numbers, and we're doing so much already in 2025. And so I wrote, I think one of the kindest no I can say I offered that reply. And then the reply back I got a day after was, thank you so much for looking into our request. But I have to say, I'm very sad and I'm very disappointed. And maybe we can talk about it, but thank you. I was taken aback, like, I was feeling sad, too. When we have to say no, there's a sadness that I feel, but the word disappointed kind of left a thorn in me. I'm like, wait, wait, wait, wait. It's a request. Of course we can say no, but you're disappointed because we can't take on your offering. I felt, huh, somebody's not happy, right? But my practice now is not to water more of that seed. So I replied back, and I said, thank you so much for sharing your feelings. And honestly, I also feel very sad. But my practice is I take refuge in my community. I'm just one member, even if I'm the Abbot. I was very enthusiastic about the requests, and I said, well, I did prepare them, like, be prepared to receive a no also. But who knows? But then I can always turn back and take care of my inner feelings and my inner judgment. At that time, I was being very judgmental, too. My mind was like, on Year five, I'm like, why are you disappointed? You don't have a right to be disappointed. And then that's out of my control, right? So the boundary is like, there are some things that are just out of your control. And what you can do is to acknowledge what is your inner podcast, your inner radio station, which is your mind, what is it producing in that moment? And that's going to be a leakage of energy. So how do you plug that leak right away?

[Dan Harris]

You have a chapter called Don't Let Boundaries Become Barriers. What does that mean?

[Brother Phap Hu]

So it speaks about our potentials. Maybe as a novice, I had a lot of boundaries. We are instructed to be Very mindful of our surroundings. Like, I would barely go into the cities in the early days because the stimulation from the cities can make my mind so busy. So my boundaries was to stay in the property of our monastery because it's very protective to my beginner's mind, to my training, to my young sprout of aspiration. But as I continue to develop, my stability and my faith to the path became stronger so I can open my boundaries wider and not allowing it to be an obstacle for me to engage. And now as a monk, I travel so much more where I am now in my monastic life as a dharma teacher and as an abbot. Sometimes I have to go to conferences, I have to go to places that are not the environment of a monastic. But my inner clarity is. Is very firm, so that doesn't become an obstacle for me to engage anymore. So our boundaries at the beginning can be a safe haven that we curate to protect ourselves, to nurture, to develop the strength we need to. But when that strength is there, we can start to keep opening our path of service, of engagement, of being present for. And that is where we have to have non duality in our practice, right? There are moments that the boundaries are guards, but then there are moments when we have to be open for. I give an example whenever I go home, TV is turned on every night. You know, in the monastery, we don't have that. But I'm not going to go home and tell my parents, a monk is here. Turn off the tv. No, no, no. I see that that's very rude. So my boundaries have to be more embracive, have to be very open. And I have learned that no matter who we become in life, a podcaster, a speaker, a monk, when you go home, you're still a child. You're still your mom's son, and your mom is still your mom. Your dad is still your father, your sister is your elder sister at home. I'm not a monk, I'm a son. And that was a new opening for me because I would go home in my early years and I would try to be very mindful and try to get everybody engaged with like, eating in silence. And then it became so awkward for me, and I was just like, okay, this is so not productive in my family time. And then when I was opening myself up more, like, my mother loves the NBA. She loves watching basketball. Like, our team is the Toronto Raptors, right? My mother would know all the players of the Raptors team. And my way to connect to her was when we were watching together The NBA every night when I was home. And my mom is hard worker and I would find a way to connect to her because my mom is also a very shy person, maybe introvert by nature. And it's very hard, especially in the older generation, to open up right, to have a conversation heart to heart. Besides the how are you? Have you eaten? That's the love language of our mother. But I remember I just started to massage the shoulder of my mom and I said, mom, would you like me to massage your shoulder? She's like, oh yeah. I have so much tension. And as we're watching TV and I'm massaging my mother's shoulder, I had some of the best conversations because I can ask her how her day was like when she was young, what was her joy? And she's a refugee and she had to leave Vietnam after the war. And I was like, what was the job career that you had to change? Coming to Canada, not having an education, not being able to speak English, the early days, working two jobs a day. And suddenly I can enter into a very intimate space with my mother. So our boundaries don't allow them to be the fences, the barrier for deeper connection. So the boundaries can be used to care and to hold, but then you can keep opening them up.

[Dan Harris]

Yes, I like that a lot. Because creating boundaries can be healthy and if you take it too far, it can be armor self protection in a sometimes not the best way. Let me go back to boundaries though, because in our remaining moments I'd love for you to talk a little bit about protecting ourselves from toxicity in the environment. You've got some chapters on transforming toxic food feedback and protecting yourself against toxicity and abuse. I'd be curious to hear, like if you have any practical advice on how we can do some of that.

[Brother Phap Hu]

Wonderful question and I'm just reflecting on my practice right now. So yeah, to let everyone know, in the monastery we also have moment of toxicity manifesting when people are just not kind. Even in our deepest aspiration of learning to be kinder, there are moments people's inner demons come out, even my inner demon come out. Those moments can be. It can disrupt and it can divide the whole community. And how do we handle it? It's the biggest offering. And what comes to my mind right now is I do a lot of facilitating of meetings and from time to time we will have a very large body of monks and nuns meeting. And there is from the eldest to the youngest in it. And there was a topic that we were discussing and a monastic offered a view and this Monastic was quite senior in our community. And the view was, in a way, very narrow and can even be seen as toxic. And I was facilitating. And I can feel the whole room, the energy getting suffocating. It was suffocating. Like the breathing was heavy because everybody is going inwards to take care of their emotions that are coming up. And after the sharing, nobody spoke. So when nobody speaks, that means, you know, there's a lot going on. Like this senior monastic has shared something and there is fear of offering back a response. And my practice was as a member of the community, I'm still going to see that monastic as a human being, as a member of my community. So I'm equipping myself that this is still a member of my community. I'm not going to label this person as an enemy. I'm not going to give this person a label. And we all practice giving people labels all the time, right? And we cut them off from our life. We cut them off from our inner circle. And when I was able to equip myself with that insight, that this person, even though this person have shared this view, but this person is still somebody who has potential for understanding, whether that's true or not, I have to practice to see that in them. And then when I was able to see that, I was able to share and I acknowledged that person sharing. And I said, thank you for offering your view, and I would like to offer my view to the community. And I was very proud of myself because in that moment of speaking, I was still able to smile. Not a smile of like, I'm better than you, but a smile of just recognizing that I'm living in a very diverse community and we all have the rights to have views. And I was able to take care of that toxic fear. I think for me, it's more the fear when I see toxicity, because I have more fear towards that. Because in toxic environment, there's a power dynamic that goes on, and I become very afraid of that. And when I was able to acknowledge and embrace and to see that that person still has the potential to be a Buddha, that person still has the potential to be a compassionate person, I can speak to them, to the heart and speak to the community, to the heart beyond what was just shared. And that is a practice that I continue to do. So when there is toxic people, and there are numerous toxic people in this world, as a practitioner, I still have to see the potential of love and understanding in them. And our teacher has a poem, and it's in the book, it's called Recommendation. And Thay wrote it during the war of Vietnam, the American war, or the Vietnam War. Thay said in that poem is that man is not our enemy. Our enemy or what we are facing is the ignorance, it's the wrong view, it is the discriminative view, it is the anger, the frustration, it is the misunderstanding. That is what we are facing. It is not the man, it is not the human. So that is a practice that I still apply today to toxic environment. I still have to see the lotus in the mud, right? This is quote in our tradition, no mud, no lotus, meaning the lotus can only manifest from the thickness of mud. And so even in a toxic environment, you can still see some gems there. And I know it sounds idealistic, but if you give yourself the chance and the ability to see the potential in people, you may be able to touch something quite deep in them. We talk about peace a lot, but peace is not so present or not never enough. But have we given peace and opportunity? Have we ever given the toxicity, an opportunity to transform? And I have to believe in transformation. So that is my, in a way, my resilience that I build in our times. We have to develop that resilience.

[Dan Harris]

You said it sounded idealistic, but I just want to back you up and say that it's actually very practical in my view, for a number of reasons. One, as you stated, if you're approaching problems not from a standpoint of hate and otherizing and violence, but from a standpoint of to be super gooey here. Love, compassion, warmth, seeing that everybody has innate goodness, even if it's. Even if there's a lot of mud preventing the lotus from reaching the, the light of day. Well, actually it gives you a resource because operating out of that stance as opposed to anger, it's a much cleaner burning fuel. When you're in that mode, it boosts the odds that you're going to be able to reach the other person. Because if they sense that you're approaching them with openness and warmth as opposed to hatred or violence or whatever, they're going to be more receptive to your ideas. I'll stop there, but just a long way of saying I really agree with you. And it could be dismissed as idealistic, but in my view, it's actually anything but.

[Brother Phap Hu]

Thank you. Thank you for confirming that.

[Dan Harris]

Before I let you go, let me just ask the two questions I ask at the end of every interview. One is, is there something you were hoping to get to that we haven't gotten to?

[Brother Phap Hu]

No, I think we went deeper than I thought we would go.

[Dan Harris]

I'm glad to hear that. And the final question is just can you remind everybody of the name of your new book and anything else like your podcast, anything else that we should know about that you're making that we can go check out?

[Brother Phap Hu]

Thank you, Dan. The book is called Being with Zen Ways to Transform Overwhelm and Burnout and it's co author with myself and my podcast partner, Joe Confino. Me and Joe Confino, we also offer a Plum Village podcast called the Way out is In. So if you are interested in Zen approach to daily concerns and daily topics, please feel free to check it out. And I talked about total relaxation and some of the practices that can help ground ourselves. We also have a Plum Village app and everything is free. There's no advertisement. Feel free to explore. It's called the Plum Village App and there's a lot offered there and some from myself. But there is a multitude of monks and nuns as well as lay practitioners that offer meditations, conversations and so on. And a lot from our teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, which you may not have heard of or you may have heard of. He is the founder of our tradition and my podcast partner would call him the famous Zen master you never heard about if you haven't heard about him. But please feel free to explore. And Dan, thank you so much for having me on the podcast as well as all of my other brothers and sisters that I also get to hear from their conversation with you, which is such a delight. And thank you for bringing the monastic into this space, allowing us to show up.

[Dan Harris]

It's a pleasure. I love the Plum Village tradition. So more.

[Brother Phap Hu]

I'll take more and from time to time I may have to say no.

[Dan Harris]

That'S fine, I will. I will not be disappointed in you.

[Brother Phap Hu]

Thank you.

[Dan Harris]

Thank you again to Brother Fapu. Always great to talk to him. Don't forget that there is a bespoke custom guided meditation to go with this episode designed to help you experience some relaxation in a chaotic world. That meditation is from Don Mauricio. You can get it over on danharris.com as I mentioned at the the top, we're now doing this thing where every full length episode, every Monday and Wednesday episode will come with a guided meditation from the Teacher of the month. And the Teacher of the Month this month is Don Mauricio. Before I let you go, I just want to thank everybody who worked so hard to make this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson, Caroline Keenan and Eleanor Vasily. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great people over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our managing producer, Marissa Schneider is our senior producer, DJ Cashmere is our executive producer, and Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.