← 10% Happier with Dan Harris
10% Happier with Dan Harris
How To Stay Open and Curious Even When You're Exhausted or Annoyed | Sarah Ruhl
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- [00:00]
A
Few things feel better than knowing someone's looking out for you. That is the spirit behind the ATT guarantee. Staying connected matters. That's why AT&T has connectivity you can depend on, or they will proactively make it right. That's the AT&T guarantee, because connection should be dependable, especially in the moments that matter most. Terms and conditions apply. Visit att.comguarantee for details. @ and T connecting changes everything this is the 10% Happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hello my fellow suffering beings. How we doing today? It is so easy if you're not careful, to lapse into a kind of boredom and autopilot, where the world seems flat and gray, where you're cut off from the mundane glory of this whole being alive thing. Today we're going to talk about one way out of this rut to approach the world as a perpetual student to learn from everything and everyone. My guest is Sarah Rule, who's an award winning American playwright, author, essayist and professor. She's got a new ish book called Lessons from My Teachers From Preschool to the Present. In this conversation we talk about how to orient lives not only as students but also as teachers, unpacking the moment when the student becomes the master. What it means to have a meditation teacher being open to synchronicity or signs from the universe. Which is a bit of a stretch for me, as you can imagine, but it was interesting nonetheless to talk about it. And then we tackle this question, is everything magic? I am surprisingly bullish on this one. We also hit what Sarah has learned from the venerable psychiatrist Dr. Mark Epstein, what it means to quote unquote, leave an emotion alone, and much more. Just to say this whole conversation jives with an ancient Zen concept known as beginner's mind. And if you want to learn how to practice that mindset, there is a guided meditation designed specifically to accompany this podcast. It's a kind of chaser. It comes from our teacher of the month, Sebene Selassie. If you want to listen to it, sign up@danharris.com Subscribers also get weekly live video meditation and Q and A sessions every Tuesday at 4 Eastern. I'll be doing the next one solo on November 4th. One other thing to say very quickly before we dive in here, if you want to meditate with me irl I have got a live taping of this podcast coming up on November 18th in New York City. My guest will be the comedian Pete Holmes. It's a benefit for the New York Insight Meditation Center. There's a link in the show notes. If you want to sign up, you should sign up. Okay, we'll get started with Sarah Rule right after this. You know those moments when someone just takes care of something for you? That's what ATT is doing. With the ATT guarantee, staying connected matters. That's why AT&T has connectivity you can depend on, or they will probably proactively make it right. That's the AT&T guarantee. Because staying connected isn't optional, it's essential, and ATT wants you to feel that somebody's got your back. Terms and conditions apply. Visit att.comguarantee for details. @ and T connecting changes everything this show is sponsored by BetterHelp. Shorter days do not have to be so dismal. It's time to reach out and check in with those you care about and to remind remind ourselves that we're not alone. As seasons change and the days grow shorter, it can be a really tough time for many of us. This November Better help encouraging everybody to reach out, check in on friends, reconnect with loved ones, and remind the people in your life that you're there. Just as it can take a little courage to send that message or grab coffee with somebody you haven't seen in a while, reaching out for therapy can feel difficult too, but it's worth it. And it almost always leaves people wondering, why did I not do that sooner? I'm really in the habit of when somebody pops in my head who I haven't talked to in a minute, just sending them a text. Actually, literally as I'm saying this, I'm remembering I haven't talked to my buddy Michael in a second, so I'm going to text him as soon as I shut up and end this. Advertisement It's a great practice. It is, like many of my best ideas, something I stole from my friend Joseph Goldstein, the great meditation teacher who talks about the fact that if you have a thought to be generous in any way, just do it before the second doubts kick in. And texting or reaching out to somebody you've been thinking about, even if it feels a little weird, is a great example of this practice. And the same is true with your therapist. Granted, it's a little different than an old friend, but I love talking to my therapist and working through my problems, asking him whether he thinks I'm crazy. Sometimes I am. It's really, really helpful, especially at the time of year when things can get a little gloomy. With over 30,000 therapists, BetterHelp is one of the world's largest online therapy platforms, having served over 5 million people globally. And it works with an average rating of 4.9 out of 5 for a live session based on over 1.7 million client reviews this month. Don't wait to reach out. Whether you're checking in on a friend or reaching out to a therapist yourself, BetterHelp makes it easier to take that first step. Our listeners get 10% off their their first month@betterhelp.com happier. That's betterhelp.com happier. Sarah Rule, welcome to the show.
- [05:48]
B
Thanks for having me.
- [05:49]
A
It's a pleasure to have you here. So if I understand this, I'm going to try to recapitulate the backstory to this book in brief, and then you can tell me if I've said it correctly and then maybe expand on it.
- [05:59]
B
Okay.
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A
But it sounds like you found yourself, especially during the pandemic, sucked into technologies, most specifically your phone. And you were learning some things from your phone. Many of them were exacerbating your mental health. And that started you thinking about the importance of flesh and blood teachers.
- [06:20]
B
Yes, I think that's very good. I mean, I would say it was probably a lot of things that combined to make me feel a little bit in despair about the world, what was going on politically. My health was falling apart. There were a lot of things, challenges I was facing. And I think I found myself looking for answers on my phone and thinking, oh, the opinion pages of the New York Times will tell me, or, oh, I can find out about this spiritual crisis on this app. And then I thought, no, I need my teachers. And I teach a class at Yale called Lessons from My Teachers, and it's a playwriting class. So I already had in mind this idea of teaching legacy and trying to teach not just the content of what my teachers had taught me, but also the way they taught. And in thinking about that, I really started reflecting on how teaching is in time and space. Often it's a relation and how when we learn things from the Internet or AI or Masterclass or whatever it is, the relation is the one thing that's totally removed. And yet when you think of the impact great teachers have had on you, it's usually something very tangible.
- [07:36]
A
I have a million questions, and you don't have to answer this one if you don't want. But when you say your health was falling apart, what was going on?
- [07:42]
B
So I have three kids, and after I gave birth to twins, I got Bell's palsy, which is paralysis on the side of my face, and it wasn't going away. Usually it's three months, and mine just wasn't going away. Wasn't going away. And then I had all these other weird symptoms I would chase down fatigue, neurological symptoms. And it turned out I had Lyme disease. And it took 10 years to get the diagnosis.
- [08:04]
A
Oh, that sucks.
- [08:06]
B
It did suck. And writing a book, bizarrely, was what got me a diagnosis.
- [08:10]
A
Huh.
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B
Well, how so? I wrote a memoir called Smile about the experience of not being able to smile for a really long time. And a doctor read it and called my husband's voicemail. My husband's a doctor. He tracked it down and he said, forgive me for the intrusion, but I think you have late stage neurological Lyme disease. And I was a little taken aback, and I said, that's not possible. I've had testing, you know, like, the blood work. The paperwork shows I don't have it. And he said, you didn't get the right tests. So I got more tests. I got a spinal tap. I did indeed have it. And so then I shoved a port. Well, I didn't do it myself. Doctors put a port into my arm, and I got IV antibiotics, and I was so much better.
- [08:54]
A
Really? Yeah. But the Bell's palsy is still with you?
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B
Yeah, I think that's sort of as good as it's going to get.
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A
Got it.
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B
Yeah.
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A
So my great grandfather, Benjamin Harris, had Bell's palsy, and I never met him, but I've heard tell of how annoying it was for him.
- [09:11]
B
It's a deeply psychological illness, actually, and no one tells you that. And I think partly they don't tell you that because they just hope you'll get better quickly, but when you don't, they don't really know what to tell you. But because your emotional life is also a social life.
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A
Yes. Yes.
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B
If you can't smile or evince joy or show joy in your face, it's really hard. So it took all my wherewithal to kind of get through that.
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A
That's really interesting. So Bell's palsy, as I understand it, is one side of your face you lose agency, like you cannot move.
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B
Yeah. It's a cranial nerve that gets sort of cut, and it basically has to grow back. They say either it grows back completely or it partially grows back. They don't really know why. It's idiopathic. Lyme disease can affect it. Childbirth can affect it. So because I had childbirth, no one really looked deeper. But in fact, my husband and I had been in Long island in a sort of shack in the woods right before onset, and he'd gotten the classic bullseye and I.
- [10:17]
A
From the tick bite.
- [10:18]
B
From the tick bite. And I didn't.
- [10:20]
A
I've had that bullseye.
- [10:21]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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A
But just what you said about how happiness and human psychology is definitely not. And this is actually a huge cultural misunderstanding. It is not a solo endeavor. It is a social endeavor. I never thought about this before, but having restrictions on your ability to express emotions can't have multiple, really complex ramifications.
- [10:46]
B
Yes. So how one feels about the self and what the range of your emotional life is, I mean, it's like you sort of feel like you can have joy internally, but if you can't show it, what is the experience of the joy? These are the questions that were sort of keeping me up at night. And I had these two little babies, and I really wanted to smile at them. And I'd read literature on how if you don't smile at your babies, it fucks them up. You know, there are these, like, studies of like, quote unquote, cold mothers who don't have affect and don't smile at their babies. And I was like, oh, my God, I can't smile at them. It took me years to process the thought that we're always making changes. We're always resilient in some way or another. And I realized, oh, I was showing them love with my voice. They got the love. It's okay.
- [11:36]
A
Right? But do you find that people outside of your children where you have an intense relationship, where you walk into a party and somebody might make an assumption about your mind state based on something you cannot control?
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B
Yes, but they wouldn't say it because they're too polite. So you don't know. I mean, no one kind of remarks on what's going on with someone's face because it's so deeply personal. So they probably clock it and you don't know what they think. I mean, I definitely. My own mother, who had had Bell's palsy herself. But it got better more quickly when was at a play opening of mine and she was sitting on the side of me, and she kept looking at me nervously during the first few days.
- [12:12]
A
She was sitting on the side with the bells?
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B
Yeah, the bells. And finally she said, what's wrong? Are you not pleased? I was like, mom, I have Bell's palsy. I can't smile. And so I thought, if my own mother, who knows I have this condition, can't read my affect, God knows what strangers think. Another funny story is my daughter, one of my twins, is named Hope. And I couldn't Say my P's at first. So I'd go to a party, and if it was loud, it was especially hard to say my piece. And they'd be like, oh, you had twins. What are their names? I'd be like, oh, William and Ho. And they're like, ho, Ho. You know?
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A
Yeah, yeah.
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B
So people thought I'd named my daughter as a whore.
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A
I mean, I clock it when I walk in because I have been reading in your book, and the tone is joyful. And then I walked in, and I didn't know if you were joyful. And I knew about the Bell's palsy, but I kind of thought it had gone away based on what I had read in the book. And, yeah, I didn't take it too far, but it definitely. I clocked it.
- [13:15]
B
It's subliminal. It's really subliminal. If I go to the doctor for something else, say at some point during the visit, they'll say, are you aware that you have Bell's palsy? And I'll say, yes, it's been 15 years.
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A
Fifteen years. Oh, okay. Well, I've taken.
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B
But you can tell I'm smiling now, right? Like, you can tell that I had a positive reaction to what you were saying.
- [13:40]
A
No, I read that as friendly grimace, meaning more like that you were echoing back to me and reflecting my commiseration.
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B
Oh, interesting.
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A
That's what I read it as.
- [13:51]
B
Well. Not to go too much into the Bell's policy, but one thing that's really annoying about it is if your nerves grow back the wrong way, you get synkinesis, so they recruit the wrong muscles.
- [14:03]
A
Oh.
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B
So this side is trying to smile, and this side is, like, doing some other thing.
- [14:07]
A
Oh.
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B
And it can look like a grimace.
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A
Okay. I don't know if I'm using the word grimace correctly.
- [14:11]
B
No, you're using it exactly accurately.
- [14:13]
A
Okay. Yeah, I took it the wrong way, but I didn't take it in a bad way.
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B
Yeah, it can look like I'm commiserating.
- [14:20]
A
Yes. That was a smile.
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B
Yeah.
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A
That I read right there.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Yeah. Okay. I did take us down a little bit of a digression, because that's fine. The last book was about smiles, and this one's about teachers. And there were a million, like, little stories in the book that I want to talk about. But just to stay on a high level, I think what you're saying to people is there's a way of orienting to the world so that you're always being taught.
- [14:48]
B
Yes, absolutely. I mean, I think at the end of the day. It's about being in the position of a student and enjoying that position of curiosity. And when you go down the garden path of some Buddhist teachers, they'll say even the most annoying person you should be grateful to because they're teaching you something and they're helping you work on your patience. That was a revelation to me when I read that. I think there was a particular annoying person in the Buddha's life. Some attendant or something. I forget his name.
- [15:22]
A
Well, he had a cousin who tried to kill him with a drunken elephant. Yeah.
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B
And was he grateful for him because he taught him something?
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A
I can't remember. I can't remember. I'm sure he was the Buddha. Right.
- [15:33]
B
How not to get killed by a drunken elephant.
- [15:36]
A
He might have been a drugged elephant, but they gave the elephant something to make him go mad and directed him toward the Buddha. This is the question with which this show is generally obsessed with how. How do we orient? And we should talk about the why, too. And you can take it in whatever order you want, but how do you have this attitude toward the world of openness and willingness, eagerness to learn?
- [16:03]
B
That is a really good question. I mean, I think there was something for me in the process of writing the book that just becoming aware of who your teachers have creates a shift in you and makes you feel really grateful. Or at least it made me feel really grateful, because I realized I had these extraordinary teachers, from my mother to preschool teacher, to Paula Vogel, a playwriting mentor, to neighbors to my own children to my husband. And as they piled up, I acquired more and more gratitude. And I do think there's something about the place of gratitude that helps you find and value your teachers. Another thing I learned when talking about the book after I'd written it, I would say, oh, I'm working on this, and what teachers have affected you? And I would find out who of my friends and family had profound mentors and who felt they didn't actually. And that conversation was interesting because it was like, what are the conditions to invite a teacher into your life? I remember talking to my sister about this, who she's a doctor, and she didn't feel maybe like she had mentors she was very close to in medical school. And she was talking about how you need a certain amount of vulnerability and bravery to kind of raise your hand and say, I want your mentorship outside the classroom. So that was interesting, too, realizing it's not just about the teacher appearing. You know, there's some kind of sages that say, when you're ready the right teacher will appear. And I at first had attributed that to Buddhism, and then I found out that it was like a misquote and it was maybe Madame Blavatsky or something.
- [17:46]
A
Who's that?
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B
Theosophical Society.
- [17:48]
A
Oh, right, the British occultists in the 1800s.
- [17:52]
B
So who knows who said it? But I do think there's a sense in which that's true. But then there's the sense in which you have to raise your hand and say, and furthermore, I'm open enough to be taught. I have the time to be taught. I have the openness, I have the bravery that you won't reject me if I open myself to your teaching.
- [18:15]
A
I have a little substack community I created within the last year, and I was teaching on a video site. We do these live guided meditation things and I was teaching loving kindness meditation. Had a bit of an imposter feeling because I'm not technically a teacher, but.
- [18:32]
B
I'm right there with you. I understand.
- [18:34]
A
Yeah, well, and you talk about that in the book and we'll get to it eventually. But becoming a teacher does provoke, for many people, you say it directly, an imposter sensation. Anyway, so I was teaching in air quotes or not. Loving kindness meditation, which involves envisioning a series of beings and then sending them phrases like maybe happy, etc. Etc. And one of the categories of people that you're sending these good vibes to is. Is a mentor or a benefactor. And I heard from some people, like, I don't have one of those. I don't know who to fit into that category. I think what you're describing is not uncommon, that people may feel bereft of teachers.
- [19:12]
B
Yeah. And it's so sad, really. And I think if they reorient maybe towards expanding their idea of what a teacher is, they will find one eventually in their life. Because you can't learn to tie your shoe without having a teacher in this life. I mean, we're such dependent creatures. From the time we're born. We would just die if we didn't have teachers. Mothers, fathers, uncles, someone.
- [19:40]
A
Does it have to be flesh and blood like you, meaning that you're in their physical presence? Or can I My parasocial relationships with our listeners, where sometimes people say, I feel like I know you. And my answer is, yeah, you kind of do. If you've listened to the show. We've got 700 episodes. Like, you do know me. I'm not playing a role on the show. Can I. Or the teachers who are on the show. Probably more importantly Be teachers in that way, or is it actually. No, there's a. You have to be in their presence.
- [20:12]
B
I think it's still a teaching. I think it's like a book. I mean, I think I've had books that are incredible teachers where the person is dead. And I feel like they impacted me hugely. But I think there's still a qualitative difference when there's a person reflecting back at you. And I think that's why a therapist can be good. You know, it's a real person in real time reflecting back to you and being a mirror. And I think a really good teacher does that. And you don't get that reflective energy from a book or a podcast. It's unidirectional.
- [20:46]
A
But many of us are doing therapy on the phone or in zoom.
- [20:49]
B
That is true. But at least they're still reflecting back to you, not in real space, but in real time.
- [20:55]
A
Got it, Got it. I think what you're saying, for people listening who might think, I just haven't had teachers, actually, this is where gratitude can be useful. If you reflect back over your life, somebody taught you how to tie your.
- [21:08]
B
Shoe, how to eat with a fork. Yes. How to swim. Hopefully, yes.
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A
And you may not. Many of them might have been suboptimal teachers, but you still have had teachers. And there's something about reflecting on that that might make you more open going forward.
- [21:24]
B
I hadn't really put that together until now, but I like that. I think that's right.
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A
I'll take credit for it.
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B
Please do.
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A
But there's something else here that you're calling for, I think, which is. I don't know if what I'm about to say is two things or one thing, but you talk about teachers who are not your kid's nanny. Anybody crossing your path is essentially becoming a teacher. I'd be interested in hearing more about that. And then it's kind of goes back to the how. Like there is some sort of mental move that we have to make where we have a willingness to learn.
- [22:01]
B
Yes. I mean, just to talk about the example of my babysitter, because I think it's interesting. So my babysitter's name is Yang Zam. She's Tibetan. She's a Tibetan Buddhist. I have three kids and at one point I had three kids under the age of three because they had twins and a three year old. When I first had babies, I thought, oh, I need a little help when I'm writing or whatever. And then when I had three kids, I was like, I need A lot of help. And so Yang Zhen was there a lot. And I would be breastfeeding one twin. She'd be bottle feeding the other. We would switch. You know, it's very intimate. And she would be in the kitchen. I'd come and make tea, and she would talk. And basically, I realized at a point she was giving me Dharma teachings. And I knew she was one of the kindest, calmest people I'd ever met. And I became more and more curious about what the relationship was between what I perceived as her temperament and also all these teachings that she had access to and that she was born into and that she revered. So I learned a great deal from her and still do.
- [23:07]
A
Can you talk about some of the learnings?
- [23:09]
B
Oh, my God. I think one thing that was interesting about writing the book was that some of the teachings didn't seem reducible. Some of them seemed like I had to tell a story in time and place about the person, that part of the learning was their presence. So I was trying to create portraits of teachers and almost get a sense of their presence, because it wasn't like I would say, oh, Yang Zam taught me that about non attachment. Yes, she has. But when I think of her, it's the calmness when, you know, three kids are crying and she's not yelling at anyone, or it's. We are all vomiting, and she is bringing me a bowl of soup that she made, and she's not scared that I'm gonna make her sick. It's how the soup tastes, and it's how long she spent making it and what felt distilled into the soup. So I guess part of it is like, I kept trying to get at that fleshy particular of who the teacher was, as opposed to, like, a moral or. Or a content that they gave me.
- [24:20]
A
I mean, that, I think, goes to your core thesis, which is that teachers, there is something massively important about the flesh and blood presence of another human being from whom you can learn. Yeah.
- [24:32]
B
There's a wonderful friend of mine, Sarah Curtis, who's a kindergarten teacher, and she once said to me, teachers are always teaching explicitly and implicitly. So when you're teaching kindergarteners, you're theoretically teaching them, like, how to read, or you're reading a story on the rug, but you're also teaching them how to come sit on the rug. And you might not be telling them that, but that's part of what you're teaching them.
- [24:56]
A
I'm going to keep pressing on this because there is something about you that you may not know how to articulate to others. But there was something about you that allowed you to learn from your babysitter. Because a lot of us have babysitters or nannies or people in our lives who work for us, and we pay no attention to them at all.
- [25:13]
B
Right. We don't view them as teachers.
- [25:15]
A
Yeah. We may not even fully humanize them.
- [25:19]
B
That is true. And, you know, we were talking a little bit before the show about a mutual friend who seems very calm and wise, and you said, well, that's her temperament. She was born with that. So I don't know. Was I born with this position of being a student and being really revering teachers, or did I come to it later? My mom is a teacher. She was an English teacher, and she's still with us. She's an actress, too, and she was a great teacher. Was it that relationship that opened me in that way? But then I talked to my sister, who says she didn't feel like she had the confidence or vulnerability to go in search of a teacher. Same parents.
- [26:00]
A
Yes. But your point, if I'm understanding you correctly, is you don't actually have to have a formal mentor to be taught by anybody who crosses your path.
- [26:09]
B
Right. Yeah.
- [26:11]
A
You have some factory setting of openness, willingness to learn, or life is pounding enough at your psyche that you have no choice but to open.
- [26:21]
B
Well, maybe that is it. That's such a beautiful phrase. Life is pounding enough at your psyche that you don't have a choice but to open. Yeah.
- [26:30]
A
Yeah. Give me 15 years of Bell's palsy and I'll start learning from lots of folks.
- [26:34]
B
That is correct. And I think it's interesting that we started there and we didn't move on from there for a while, because I think that is true, and that is deeply what was going on in my life at the time.
- [26:44]
A
Right. So this is maybe one of those examples of things. And it's like, I. It pains me to even say this, where something shitty happens to you in the end. It's kind of good, too.
- [26:53]
B
Yeah, that is. That's right. And I think, you know, there's part of me, when I was writing Smile, that resisted that illness narrative, that. Because you never want to be like, oh, I'm so happy for my facial paralysis. But I was at this retreat in Ireland last week called Son Bera. Have you ever been there?
- [27:10]
A
No.
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B
Oh, my God. It's like the most beautiful place I've ever been. It's this Tibetan temple, middle of nowhere, Western Court, and the view is incredible. And they just built this Temple. And they're deer, you know, like golden deer outside the temple. Because deer is a symbol of meditation and Tibetan Buddhism. And I was thinking, oh, for a long time I hated the image of deer because I thought they gave me a tick that gave me Lyme disease, that gave me Bell's palsy. And I lost a bunch of my life to extreme fatigue and bizarre symptoms and the facial paralysis probably too. And I thought it also led me to meditation in a funny way. It's so nonlinear. I got a fortune cookie when I was pregnant with the twins and it said, bring forth what is inside of you that will save your life. And I thought I had a high risk pregnancy. I was terrified. And I thought, how will having these twins save my life? And it turned out also all of this incredible medical searching where the Bell's palsy wasn't getting better led me to discover I had celiac disease, which can be really terrible for your health if you don't treat it. And I never would have known I had it if I hadn't had the Bell's palsy. I wouldn't have known. My older daughter has it. Turns out my father had it and he died young of cancer. Didn't know he had it. So who knows? It's all nonlinear. And I do think it's hard for me to derive a moral from illness where it was all worthwhile because of some insight you have. I don't know why I resist that, because I also think it's true.
- [28:56]
A
Well, it's a little pat, maybe that's why. But I think what we can say is it taught you something. Yes, it was a teacher in and of itself. And there's a lesson in that for all of us. Yes, to me and you, you are somebody steeped in Buddhism, and so you probably know this, and this is a rap. I go on a lot on this show, but one of the original translations of the word that we now translate as mindfulness, the original word is sati. Sati, which I'm sure is familiar to you. One of the original translations of that is remembering. And part of why I'm so focused on the how on the show is like you're telling us something really important. We know from the data that, like, having an open mind is associated with less depression, less anxiety, better performance at work, better performance for presidents, better performance for startups. Like, it is really key attribute. Yeah, but how do you remember to do it? The thought that popped into my head was like, you should get a deer tattoo.
- [29:52]
B
I don't have any Tattoos.
- [29:53]
A
I got a tattoo. And this is another thing that my listeners might be tired of me talking about. But my wife and I got our first tattoos a couple of years ago. And this one is just a very off brand. And it's earnestness acronym that says ftb, oab and it stands for the Buddhist phrase of for the benefit of all beings. And it's super helpful. It's right next to my watch. It does look a little. Some of my friends, some of my Jewish friends, and I am half Jewish, have joked it looks a little Holocaust. So I. I've been trying to think about ways to like, brighten it up with some accessory tattoos around it. But from a purely utilitarian standpoint, it reminds me all the time, dude, like, what your job is to be useful. As somebody who's wired for selfishness, the key letter here is a all beings. I'm not. So it's not like a catastrophic altruism. It's a thinking of self interest within this broader perspective. We need reminders, I think, to live life as a student.
- [30:50]
B
Yes. And do you think meditation helped you do that? I mean, clearly you've always been really curious about other people because you were a journalist and you wanted to know how people worked. Right?
- [31:01]
A
Yeah. But I think that a lot of the curiosity previously was a kind of extractive curiosity. You know, I was good at getting people's stories out of them so that I had a good story.
- [31:12]
B
Right.
- [31:12]
A
But now it's more like, well, how can I be useful?
- [31:16]
B
Yeah.
- [31:17]
A
I'm not taking this thing too far. It's not like I can't walk down the street because anybody who's in distress, actually, if somebody was in distress, I would help them. But I'm not paralyzed by compulsive compassion or anything like that. It's just trying to get myself out of the mindset of what's in it for me? Does this person like me? What are they thinking of me? Blah, blah, blah. All the time.
- [31:41]
B
Yeah. And I will say there was something about the Bell's Palsy that divided my life into before and after. In that. Before I got Bell's Palsy, I had a play on Broadway. It was up for a Tony Award. It was nominated for Pulitzer. Like, everything was going really well. There was a kind of sense of abundance. I had one kid, I had two more. I was in a happy marriage, blah, blah. And then I had the twins. I lost my smile in my mind. I also lost a kind of identity. And everything had to shift. And why I was writing plays, I think also had to shift and it was shortly thereafter that I became a teacher. But I think what you're talking about, you know, the making art or doing a job without thinking of how it might benefit others. There's always a danger of solipsism, I think in the writer's life.
- [32:36]
A
Yes. And again because I am pretty utilitarian on some level. Like my point is that this attitude. That's not my point. I'm stealing it from the Dalai Lama. This attitude is self interested.
- [32:49]
B
Yeah.
- [32:49]
A
Dalai Lama calls it wise selfishness. If you're thinking about other people's benefit, that you will be happier.
- [32:56]
B
Yeah.
- [33:00]
A
Coming up, Sarah Rule talks about how to approach your life not only as a student, but also as a teacher and unpacking the moment when the student becomes the master. Few things feel better than knowing someone's looking out for you. That is the spirit behind the AT and T guarantee. Staying connected matters. That's why AT and T has connectivity you can depend on or they will proactively make it right. That's the AT&T guarantee, because connection should be dependable, especially in the moments that matter most. Terms and conditions apply. Visit att.comguarantee for details. AT&T connecting Changes Everything I'm recording this from a hotel in Dana Point, California where I'm giving a speech and I'm spending a lot of time in the gym because I've got spare time here and I'm wearing my new Office Ultra sneakers during my workouts and these things feel great and look great. I think the other people in the gym are a little jealous. We all know that building new habits requires a strong foundation that starts from the brain and goes all the way down to our toes. And that's why I love Altra Running, because they actually have reliable, intentionally designed shoes that make every step feel supported. It's not just for hiking or crazy long distance runs, even though they work great for that. The Ultra Fit is designed to let your toes spread out naturally, which provides comfort, balance and strength wherever you are. When you're not bothered by cramped feet, you can get back to what matters. Building new, healthy routines free your mind and your feet with Ultra Running and the Ultra Fit Experience. Check them out now by visiting ultrarunning.com that's a L T R A running. And remember to stay out there. I don't know if this is a non sequitur or maybe it follows lightly on many of the previous strands, but you were talking about learning from your babysitter. We have a long time, 10 year long relationship with our nanny, my son's nanny. I have one kid, and her name is Eleanor, although he started calling her as a tiny child Nene, and now her whole family calls her Nene. Anyway, so Nene slash Eleanor said this thing to me early on when the kid must have been like one and a half or two. We were at a. You know, in New York City, they have all these, like, kids club things, and all the other nanny's children were coming up to Eleanor, and they weren't doing that with anybody else.
- [35:41]
B
Right.
- [35:41]
A
And I said, why is that? And she said, kids know where the love is. And I think about that all the time. And I think it's harder to become a vector of love if people can't see it on your face. And I don't have Bell's palsy, although it's in my family. But I have a resting bitch face. I really do it. I hear about it from my team a lot, and I hear about it from my wife. The scowl that just comes over my face. And I'm not even in a bad mood. There's something in here that feels important. Am I making any sense?
- [36:11]
B
Yes. And I think people know where the love is is a beautiful phrase. And there's so many ways we know. It's the attentiveness with which someone's regarding us. It's that they stop what they're doing and they listen. I learned to make more hand gestures or to kind of murmur when I was listening, so people knew I was listening because I couldn't mirror their facial expressions. So there are a million and one ways that we know.
- [36:37]
A
We've talked about learning to orient toward the world as a student, and I still think tattoos would be helpful in this regard. Actually, a couple weeks ago, right at this table, I interviewed Ezra Klein, and he has a tattoo, says, is that so? Which is a Zen expression. That's a great habit of mine. It is a student habit of mine.
- [36:56]
B
Is that so? That's very Ezra Klein.
- [36:57]
A
I like it. Yes, it is. Do you know him?
- [37:00]
B
No, but I listen to him.
- [37:01]
A
Yeah, he's great. So we've talked about approaching life as a student, but what about being a teacher or a mentor? We touched on it lightly. But you've gone through this process. Fifteen years ago, right after giving birth to your youngest children and being hit with this Bell's palsy, you started to teach at Yale. I'd be interested in hearing a little bit about that, but also to broaden it to, like, how can we all approach our lives? Not only as students, but also as teachers.
- [37:31]
B
Well, I started out as a substitute teacher, and it was interesting because my mentor, Paula Vogel, who was hugely influential and is sort of why I write plays, and she needed a sub. She was doing a play on Broadway called Indecent, and she called me and said, can you sub for me? And I was like, oh, I don't know. You know, I have these little kids. I'm just like, oh, there's a lot going on. And then I thought, I always say yes to Paula. If she needs me. The answer is yes. So I started teaching, and I loved it. I found it utterly delightful. And then Paula realized she loved having more time to write, and so she kind of kept taking a pause, and I kept teaching. But I tell a story in the book about a dream I had before that first class where I showed up to class, but Paula was also there, and Paula was talking, and I just couldn't open my mouth. I couldn't speak. It was a classic teacher anxiety dream. It took me a long time to realize that I have my own stuff to pass on and give that it wasn't all just funneled through Paula. But I think part of that was also being honest about the legacy I do have from her. And so teaching this class, lessons from my teachers. I would teach Paula's work. I would teach Maria Irene Fornas's work was an important teacher to me, Chuck Mee's work. And then I would sort of change things up. Sometimes I would teach a former student's work, because the more I taught, the more I saw students as potential teachers. And I think we're so obsessed with originality in this culture that we like to think writers are just kind of born in this, like, swaggering, like, you know, individualistic way. And for me, lineage is important in the same way that it is in the Buddhist tradition.
- [39:17]
A
What did you learn that might be applicable for the rest of us in terms of. You write about how you had these imposter feelings, and it showed up in your dreams as you were starting to teach. Most of us are not going to become teachers in a formal sense. Can we start to think about ourselves as having something to teach, and how do we make that shift, and what's the goal on either side of that shift?
- [39:40]
B
I love the question, can we think about ourselves as having something to teach? It's just a really beautiful question. And again, I think it presupposes some confidence. You have to have a certain amount of confidence to think you have something valuable to teach. And I'm Trying to think for myself what was in that reorientation. Because I had confidence as a writer. I had a certain amount of ego as a writer, but I didn't walk into the classroom being hugely confident that I had something of my own to teach and give that was separate from my teachers. And that just took practice, I think. So for me, it's partly a practice. Just do it. Just try it. I don't know. I'm flashing on when I first met Paula Vogel. It was at Brown, and my father had just died. He died of cancer when I was, I guess, a sophomore. He was diagnosed when I was a freshman, and I was having trouble writing and reading. I was distracted. And Paula asked me to coffee again, interesting, that is outside the classroom. And I said, I'm having trouble focusing. My father just died, and I was really close with him. And she said, you need to look at this grief indirectly. You need to not stare at it directly. And she said, write a play in which a dog is a protagonist. And I did. And it was about my father's illness and death through the eyes of the family dog, who was just sad that he didn't come home. And that was my first play. And so when I think of what allowed Paula to give me that gift, part of it was that her brother had died of aids. And she knew grief. She knew what I was experiencing, and she knew that for herself, she needed to look at it obliquely, not head on. And I do think there's a love that animates the willingness to teach. You know, that's why we have to have some boundaries around it, I suppose, because I do think love animates it. But it can also be a love for your art form, your love for what you do, wanting it to continue after you're gone. I don't know how conscious that is.
- [41:54]
A
I don't know that I would have used the word teacher. But I think about it in context of parenting and also running an organization. So I have a team of like, 12, I think maybe 12 people.
- [42:06]
B
Yeah.
- [42:06]
A
And you know when you're a boss, and I'm sure you've noticed this, if on productions you've been a part of, like, everybody. And this kind of goes back to Bell's policy, everybody is scrutinizing every movement of your face all the time.
- [42:17]
B
Right.
- [42:18]
A
And they're keying off of you. Like, one of the things we talk about all the time is the old cliche about the fish rotting from the head.
- [42:24]
B
Like, yes.
- [42:24]
A
When there's a problem within the organization, my Instinct is like, all right, well, how am I contributing to this?
- [42:29]
B
Right.
- [42:29]
A
You know, and so just being aware that as you move through the world, especially as a parent or a boss.
- [42:35]
B
Yeah.
- [42:35]
A
You are teaching all the time, whether you like it or not.
- [42:37]
B
Yep.
- [42:38]
A
So how do you want to do it? Do you want to do it with some love, or do you want to do it the way I did it for most of my life, which is completely, mindlessly.
- [42:47]
B
I totally agree. And, you know, it's like when you're with your children, say, and you're at the store and someone's being a dick to you and you're irritated and you're fed up and your instinct is to react and to be rude back to the person, say. But then you have these two kids in tow and you maybe stop for a moment. And part of it's like creating that pause to think, okay, what am I teaching? What am I teaching my kids? If I yell at this person, do I want my kids to learn that? And so again, I think it's about, like, investigating those pauses.
- [43:19]
A
You touched on this earlier. That. And you write about it. One of the things you've noticed as a teacher is there are these, you know, when the student becomes the master moments where the student starts teaching the teacher. Can you say a little bit more about that?
- [43:34]
B
Yeah. One of the most dramatic examples I have of it is my student Max Ritfo, who was an astonishing poet. And he walked into my classroom, he was 20 at Yale, and he was so wise. Not just brilliant, but wise. And that's brilliant. Bizarre in a 20 year old. And then I learned that he had Ewing sarcoma, which is a pediatric cancer. And he had a recurrence when he was my student and we became really close. He went back to Columbia to get his MFA in poetry. He sort of said, I want to write with all the time I have left. And he did. And I learned so much from him in that short time about how to write up against a terrifying illness that he had, how to love demonstratively and freely and boldly with the time he had left, and how to be. How to be open. Max died when he was 25, and we worked on a book of letters that we'd written back and forth. And then I made it into a play after he died. And part of what the play explores is when that friendship changes, you know, when. When it goes from teacher student to friends to teacher student swapped. I've always been very moved by those stories in Tibetan Buddhism where the teacher dies and the student of the master goes looking for the reincarnation of the teacher and a baby so that there's this unbroken lineage. There's some trouble, I suppose, with that system, but I still can't help but find it beautiful, the idea of it, that the student becomes the teacher, and it just keeps going in this infinite loop.
- [45:23]
A
But again, it comes back to openness. Like, I imagine there are some teachers who just are so embedded in their identity as the imparter of wisdom that they would never have allowed Max to teach them anything.
- [45:34]
B
That's really true. But interestingly, Max had a bunch of teachers who he flipped into students like pancakes. I mean, it was like me, Louise Glick, Lucy, Brock Broido. I think many of us had the same experience. There was something undeniable about who he was as a writer and his wisdom that you just thought, oh, yeah, you're a colleague. Okay, show me. He would also ask to read your manuscript. He asked to read my poetry. And at that time, I didn't share my poetry with anyone. That was, like, separate. It was my secret hobby, away from playwriting. That was mine alone. I didn't publish. And Max was like, I know you have poems, and I want to read them, and you should publish them.
- [46:17]
A
One of the questions you dwell on in the book is, can you be your own teacher? Where did you land on that?
- [46:22]
B
I decided that you can't. It's interesting. Someone asked me the question, and my first impulse was, oh, yes, of course you can be your own teacher, because look at all the autodidacts and look at books. And then I thought about it and I thought, no. The whole point of my writing, these sketches of teachers is that we require the other. If knowledge is a social phenomenon, you need another person. Go and find another person.
- [46:49]
A
I'm just trying to think about how I feel about that. I mean, I think, yeah.
- [46:52]
B
How do you feel about it?
- [46:53]
A
Well, I don't know. I'm going to think out loud. I mean, there is a thing where, you know, as you meditate, you are learning from yourself.
- [47:00]
B
Yeah.
- [47:01]
A
I also think one of the most electrifying pieces of wisdom for me in the last couple of years has been learning that my ability to be a mentor for others is something I can channel toward myself. So if I'm in extremis, like, I don't like the elevators in this building where we're doing this, I can, you know, yo, you got this. I don't know if that's properly a teacher, but it is a relationship to oneself that is supportive.
- [47:28]
B
It seems like something about meditation and observing one's own mind. You start to develop a little inner teacher person that you can be in relation to.
- [47:40]
A
Yes, I think that's right. And then, of course, it raises the question, like, okay, then, who are you anyway? If there's a part of you that's talking to another part of you, where's the you? Is there some core you? And as you know, the Buddhist proposition is that's a mystery. And that there's a lot of healing to be had in just knocking on the door repeatedly and checking it out.
- [48:03]
B
Maybe that's what enlightenment is, is when you get to the point where you. You are deeply your own teacher. And so maybe for me, it's just feeling like, yeah, no, I'm still mucking around. I still need a teacher. I mean, also feels like the little inner teacher person you're talking about, who you've internalized, in a way. It's internalizing your own teacher.
- [48:25]
A
Yeah.
- [48:25]
B
So you still get. Got it from somewhere.
- [48:27]
A
All the words that just came pouring out of you are to me pointing toward porousness. Even if you're enlightened. You said, maybe if you're enlightened, you are your own teacher. But the you goes into scare quotes through that sentence, because an enlightened person is aware that there is no core nugget of themselves, and so what they are doing is opening up and being in relationship to reality.
- [48:50]
B
Yeah, that's beautiful.
- [48:53]
A
I'm just making it up. I don't even know if I'm right. So, like, you're talking to, like, a guy who slept at a Holiday Inn last night.
- [48:59]
B
You did?
- [48:59]
A
No, I didn't. But you know those old commercials where the guy's performing brain surgery and they're like, are you a doctor? And he's like, no, but I slept at a Holiday Inn last night. Coming up, Sarah talks about what it means to have a meditation teacher, what she's learned from the venerable psychiatrist Dr. Mark Epstein. We talk about synchronicity or signs from the universe. We contemplate whether everything is magic, and we brainstorm some book titles for my upcoming memoir. I'm really struggling with those titles. I'm recording this from a hotel in Dana Point, California, where I'm giving a speech and spending a lot of time in the gym because I've got some spare time here. And I'm wearing my new Ultra sneakers during my workouts, and these things feel great and look great. I think the other people in the gym are a little jealous. We all know that building new Habits requires a strong foundation that starts from the brain and goes all the way down to our toes. And that's why I love Altra Running. Because they actually have reliable, intentionally designed shoes that make every step feel supported. It not just for hiking or crazy long distance runs, even though they work great for that. The Ultra Fit is designed to let your toes spread out naturally, which provides comfort, balance and strength wherever you are. When you're not bothered by cramped feet, you can get back to what matters. Building new healthy routines free your mind and your feet with Ultra Running and the Ultra Fit experience. Check them out now by visiting ultrarunning.com that's a L T R a running dot com. And remember to stay out there. I've got a busy fall. Like I am traveling all the time. I was just looking at my calendar, trying to make some time for a friend on a weekend and I realized I did not have a free weekend until mid November. And then after that I have no more free weekends, I think until the holiday. So a lot of travel coming up. And one of the things I've been thinking about while traveling, especially when all of us are on the road, meaning my wife, my son and I are all out of the house and on the road together, is that there's a great way to make some extra cash while we're traveling. In other words, to get paid to take a vacation, which is to put our home up on Airbnb to host other people while we're traveling. This is an option you yourself might want to consider. You put so much time into making your home beautiful and comfortable. So when you're not in the home, why not help somebody else feel comfortable and taken care of while they're traveling? If you host your home on Airbnb while you're traveling, it's a great way to offset some of the costs of your trip. Whenever we travel, our place is just empty. So it's really like leaving money on the table not to put it up on Airbnb and see if somebody's interested in staying there. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much@airbnb.com host another thing you talk about is finding a meditation teacher. And I hear about this all the time. In fact, reading this section of your book got me thinking about this idea that I've had for a long time, which is I want to create some sort of free online service that connects people to meditation teachers.
- [52:30]
B
Oh.
- [52:30]
A
Because there is no service for that right now. It's like all just happenstance. But can you tell your story of finding a teacher?
- [52:39]
B
Please do that first. That's so good. I mean, I had this insane experience where I had been working on a play, the Oldest Boy at Lincoln Center. And it was about a story Yang Zheng told me where she knew people who had restaurant in the States. They had a little boy, and someone came from India and said, we think your child is a reincarnation of a high lama or teacher. And I said, oh, my God, what did they do? And she said, well, they sent him to the monastery in India to be educated. And so I thought about what would happen if it were a mixed marriage between a Westerner and someone brought up in this culture where that would be. You could freely give that without just falling to pieces. So anyway, we had a lama come visit us at Lincoln center to talk about reincarnation, give us some context. And then a year later, I ran into him at Penn Station. And I had been reading the Asian journals of Thomas Merton, and I was on this very particular page, and I kind of glance up, and there's Lama Pema standing in his robes. He said, oh, hi. And I said, oh, hi. And he said, what are you reading? And I said, oh, the Asian journals of Thomas Merton. He said, funny, my teacher's handwriting is in that book. He's like, yeah, this Patreon. This is my teacher's handwriting. Thomas Merton met with him when he was in India, I guess. And I thought, that is incredibly strange. It felt like, okay, so I clearly should be learning from this person somehow. He was just deposited into my life at a train station. And then we took this ride together. He was going to a teaching. He was teaching in Vermont, and I was going to New Haven to teach. And I remember him saying to me, and he didn't ask me about the Bell's palsy, but as we talked about, it's, you know, it's this implicit thing. And he just kept saying to me, it's always possible to smile. You know that, right? And in my head, I'm kind of thinking, no, it's not. Not for me. But he was saying, it's always possible to smile. You'd think with a kind of mystical experience like that, I would be sitting at the Islamist feet, like, every. To absorb whatever I could. Well, no, actually, I wish that that was the story. But, no, it's like, yeah, when he does a teaching, I'll come and I've done meditation with him, but I don't see him that often, as often as I should. But it was an incredible coincidence. And kind of act of grace that I ran into him again.
- [55:02]
A
At this point, do you not have a formal Buddhist teacher?
- [55:06]
B
It depends how you define it. I suppose I took refuge with a teacher, Jetsuma.
- [55:10]
A
Can you explain what taking refuge is?
- [55:12]
B
So taking refuge is really simple. It's just taking refuge in some precepts that most of us would agree are good, like not killing anyone. Have you read this teacher's book or any of her books? Jetsuma Palmo. Tenzin Tenzin Palmo.
- [55:27]
A
I think she's been on the show. She's a Westerner who lived in a cave in Tibet.
- [55:31]
B
She's been on the show. Oh, my God. I just find her incredible. And she was giving a teaching in New York, and I'd read her book. So I just went to the teaching and she was like, would anyone like to take refuge? And I hadn't been planning to, but I was like, oh, I would. So then the teacher just cuts a little piece of your hair and that's all that's involved. But she's not formally my teacher because she lives in India at a nunnery. I read her books and I listen to her talks when I can.
- [55:57]
A
I mean, it is an interesting question of what does it mean to have a teacher, a meditation teacher? I mean, in a way I could imagine if you squint like what you're describing with the gentleman you saw at the train station, he is your teacher. Like, you go to his teachings when you can, and you, I'm sure you read or listen to his public utterances or writings or whatever. And so you have a mixture of asynchronous and real time teaching from him. And so you could, I think, fairly call him your teacher. I have a teacher, Joseph Goldstein, with whom I have a much more sort of integrated relationship. He's part of my life on a regular basis. But that was just sheer luck from. Or karma or whatever you want to call it. And so I think there are probably gradations here. Somebody listening to this might consider any number of the teachers who come traipsing through this show. You know, Vinnie Ferraro, 7A Selassie, Jeff Warren. They may consider them their teachers because they go to their retreats every other year and make it a habit to read their newsletter or whatever it is. So I think there are lots of ways to configure this.
- [57:07]
B
And I feel like traditionally, what seems really useful is having a teacher who you're in touch with. Like, that's amazing that you're in touch with Joseph Goldstein on a regular basis. And you can say, oh, I was meditating, and this thing happened, and what do I do? And then they can tell you what to do. I mean, traditionally, that seems great.
- [57:24]
A
Yeah. Well, I mean, traditionally, I think people, like, lived with their teacher, and so it was super intense. They were an attendant for the teacher.
- [57:31]
B
Right.
- [57:31]
A
I'm sure Joseph would love me to be, you know, fetching his slippers. If he were here, he would make that joke. But we don't live in that world. Most of us don't live in that world. We're not at a nunnery or.
- [57:44]
B
Well, and that seems like an important point to make because these classical relationships with Buddhist meditation teachers were, like, for monks and we're householders and we're secular and we have our jobs and we're trying to absorb the wisdom that we can. But they're not these dyads that are in a monastery.
- [58:05]
A
Yeah, I think that's true. And then there are ways to fit it into your life. If you live in a big city, like we're in New York City right now, you can join the New York Zen center for Contemplative Care and learn from Koshin and Choto, or if you are in la, you can join Insight LA and sit with Christiano Wolf once in a while. And so there are options for us. And if you don't live in a place, or if you don't have the time to do that, or you don't live in a place where that's an option, then, you know, see if you can find. This is the tool I want to build. See if you can connect with somebody who can talk to you over zoom, or clear out a couple days every year to go on a retreat with somebody. There are lots of ways to find a teacher in this regard, I think.
- [58:40]
B
Which leads me back to the question of presence, I guess, and what a quicksilvery thing it is. But, you know, there's these classic texts where a Zen master or these other masters, it would be their presence that would cause enlightenment or the contemplation of their face, even. Speaking of faces like. Or I've talked to people who've been in the presence of the Dalai Lama who say things like, oh, and his sheer presence, you know, the compassion that he evinced, did a thing.
- [59:08]
A
Yes.
- [59:09]
B
I don't know. Maybe you find that talking to these.
- [59:11]
A
People on your show, there's an expression. I think it comes from an American teacher whose name I'm forgetting, who's a Zen teacher, something about the soft sermon of your pores. And I think that that's really true. Hanging out with Joseph.
- [59:28]
B
Yeah.
- [59:29]
A
Makes a big difference for me. I just see how he handles stuff.
- [59:33]
B
Yes.
- [59:34]
A
I was in distress like a 18 months ago. I was having a. I was in the middle of a really protracted business divorce, separating from the meditation app that I started. And I had a lot of insomnia and anxiety and stuff. And I was at a really low point. And Joseph came to stay with us. He stays at our house once in a while and I stayed up late talking to him about it and I just felt totally better.
- [60:00]
B
Yeah, it's amazing. I listen to him sometimes when I have insomnia on some kind of app. Not the divorced app, the Waking up app or something.
- [60:09]
A
Oh, Sam Harris's waking Up app. Yeah. I'm increasingly kind of moving over to working with Sam.
- [60:14]
B
It's good.
- [60:15]
A
Yeah, it's really good. It's a really good apple. Sam. Joseph and I just recorded an eight hour series on the noble Eightfold path that now lives on the Waking up app. So next time you can't sleep, put that on. Yes.
- [60:26]
B
It's great. And Joseph Goldstein had this one bit of advice I found so useful about certain negative thought patterns. And he said something like intervening with just enough.
- [60:36]
A
Yeah. Or yes.
- [60:37]
B
Dead end.
- [60:38]
A
Dead end. So dead end. I find really, I. In fact, when I was in this situation where I was separating from my business partners, Joseph, one of his key pieces of advice was when you're perseverating about it, dead end, just drop that phrase into your mind because there's no more thinking that's going to be helpful. You've thought this through. At this point, you're just wasting your time. And I will say, just. It's not just Joseph, because I have this incredible job where I interview hundreds and hundreds of Dharma teachers either on Zoom or in person. And they're a big part of my personal life. I hang out with them. There's a kind of positive peer pressure that takes place where I'm just learning all the time, like, don't be a dick.
- [61:28]
B
Yeah. Don't be a dick. Yeah. And in my world, it's don't work with assholes.
- [61:34]
A
Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. I'd imagine in entertainment you're in a highbrow corner of the entertainment industry, but yeah, there's probably not a few assholes. Yeah.
- [61:45]
B
I mean, it's interesting because theater is. I think of it as here's theater. And there's poetry on one side, which is where I started, and there's show business on the other. Side and theater's somewhere in the middle of poetry and show business and there can be assholes on either end. But yeah, I'm sure there's to avoid.
- [62:03]
A
I'm sure there are poets who are dicks.
- [62:04]
B
Oh, definitely.
- [62:05]
A
Speaking of being open, I have historically had a really closed mind about theater, specifically musicals. Oh, and you don't do musicals?
- [62:14]
B
I don't think I'm working on a musical with Sara Bareilles right now.
- [62:17]
A
Sara Bareilles, good friend of mine and has been on the show. I will drop some links to her, those conversations in the show notes. I love Sara Bareilles, really great person.
- [62:26]
B
But you were saying you had a closed mind in this.
- [62:29]
A
And I have a friend, a new friend who I met when I was at TED a couple of years ago, which is an obnoxious sentence to say, but she's quite a well known novelist. Her name is Maria Semple. She wrote where did you go, Bernadette? And we were seated near each other at a dinner during TED and we really hit it off. And then the next year at ted, she came back and we literally just spent the whole time together. We just did everything together. And then she later moved to New York City. And so she's really into the theater to the point where she, I think goes every night or she goes to something almost every night. And I've never really been in that habit. I lived, you know, 15 blocks north of theater district and never went. And so she has been gently bullying me into going and has taken me to a couple plays and she took me to a musical recently and I have historically really hated it.
- [63:18]
B
Yes.
- [63:18]
A
Any plot where they break into song, I just can't stay with it.
- [63:22]
B
What musical was it?
- [63:23]
A
So it was Sunset Boulevard, which won a Tony a couple of days before we were recording this conversation. And, you know, I had the same problems with it that I have with all musicals and I really did enjoy it. And part of it was being next to Maria, who I think has. She won't give me the exact number. It's like a person who collects too many cats. But it's more than 10 times she's been to the show, really? And she was so happy and she loved the show. And I. Yeah, there were. I don't know if you've.
- [63:52]
B
I haven't seen that particular show. Okay, so I've heard it's an amazing performance.
- [63:56]
A
There's a something that happens that I won't spoil at the beginning of the second act that is truly delightful. So there were moments in the show That I really, really enjoyed it. So, anyway, Maria is my teacher in this regard, but it required some openness on my part.
- [64:10]
B
I will have to get you two tickets to Eurydice before it closes.
- [64:14]
A
Yeah. So Eurydice, we're recording this. At this point, when people are listening to it, it will have been closed or moved. What is Eurydice about?
- [64:24]
B
It's the story of the Orpheus myth, told from Eurydice's point of view. So you follow Eurydice to the underworld, and in my version, she meets her father there, and at first they don't recognize each other because the idea is that you've forgotten language and memory in the afterlife, once you dip yourself in the river. And then somehow the father has held on to some language, and so he recognizes her and reteaches her language and memory, and they come to know each other again. And then by the time Orpheus comes back, Eurydice isn't totally sure whether to go with him. It's a modern retelling of that. Yeah.
- [65:02]
A
I key in on the fact that there's teaching that happens.
- [65:04]
B
There is teaching, and my father was a wonderful teacher for me, I will say.
- [65:08]
A
You mentioned fortune cookies earlier. You having a fortune that was resonant in some way of bringing forth that which is inside you that will save you. Your father in your freshman year at Brown, I think, good memory.
- [65:22]
B
Yeah.
- [65:23]
A
Got cancer. And it definitely stuck with me that I think he was my age, he was 53 or something like that. And you went out to dinner and he got a fortune cookie that was blank.
- [65:32]
B
Yeah, it was awful. He had just had this diagnosis and he took, you know, me and my college friends out, and he opened his cookie and it was blank. And we all just kind of looked away.
- [65:44]
A
I hear in your stories an openness to something else. If openness is a through line, if not the through line, you have a kind of openness to synchronicity or signs from the universe.
- [65:55]
B
Yes.
- [65:56]
A
Which is an area where I have some. I don't know. I mean, I have some openness. I'm moving from absolutely, don't make too much of coincidences to maybe there is something there. But can you say a little bit more about your openness in this regard?
- [66:11]
B
Well, I think most artists that I know maybe are more open to synchronicity and coincidence than scientists. And I'm married to a scientist who kind of goes, oh, he can always find an explanation for the amazing coincidences that I bring to him and share with him. But there's one story in the book about a dream I had. Sometimes dreams, I think are kind of portals into a time space shrinkage or tesseract, like in Wrinkle in Time. And I have a friend, Polly Noonan, who is a dear, dear friend, a collaborator. And I had an opera version of Eurydice that was happening at the Met and she was coming out with my mother to see see it from Chicago. And I had a dream that night that she gave me two $2 bills for luck. And we had a whole conversation in the dream about labor and friendship and luck and whether it was strange that she'd given me money for an opening. And we talked about inequality in terms of some artists making money, some artists not. It's a whole interesting conversation about it. And the next morning I said, paul, I had this crazy dream about you last night that you gave me two $2 bills for my opening. And she just texted back, what? And then she showed me a picture of the two $2 bills that she had gotten out of a bank in Chicago to give me. And I was like, oh, well, message received. And I don't know how to explain that precognition.
- [67:38]
A
Maybe your Buddhist practice has really progressed because allegedly you get superpowers. The more you're honing your ability to conflict trade.
- [67:45]
B
Oh, well, we don't really want them, do we? Because, gosh, there's so many things I don't want to know about. I'm happy to know about Polly's $2 bills, but I'm sure there's things on the horizon I don't want to know.
- [67:56]
A
Exactly, but there may be. There are things in the horizon that you'll be psyched if you learn too.
- [68:01]
B
That's true.
- [68:02]
A
I guess I. I don't know how to explain the $2bill dream. And I'm sure your husband would struggle to explain it too. I think where I've come from on this is that, like, looked at through the law of cause and effect, which seems non negotiable, like, yes, everything's that's happening right now is happening because of a huge ocean of causes and conditions.
- [68:25]
B
Yeah.
- [68:26]
A
Well, then everything's magic. And that it can't explain the two dollar bills, but it can wake you up.
- [68:33]
B
Yeah, that's beautiful. I love the idea that everything's magic. I also think about art, for example. I always thought, like showing a coincidence in a short story or movie was sort of silly because it's art. So of course you can have a coincidence because it's manufactured. And I remember feeling that very strongly as A kind of smug 22 year old or something like seeing, I don't know, maybe it's like a Raymond Carver short story that was turning into a movie and saying, I don't like it. It's based on coincidence. Of course they can have coincidence because someone's making it up. But now that I'm older and maybe more humble and maybe more curious, I think, oh, he's demonstrating a different kind of verisimilitude, which is what you just said about everything being kind of magical.
- [69:29]
A
I would be remiss if I let you go without talking about Mark Epstein, who you write about in a veiled way. Dr. Mark Epstein, for people who have never heard of him, is quite a well known Buddhist psychiatrist. Very hard to get in as one of his patients. But you managed to do that and you've seen him for about 10 years and you talk a little bit about what he taught you and there was the thing he said to you that really landed with me. I hope you'll know what I'm pointing at. Can you tell us?
- [69:55]
B
And Mark Epstein is just the most wonderful writer and psychotherapist. And I remember talking to him at one point about, I was saying something about why is it that there's so many Buddhist practitioners that seem to just get more and more angry like you think you practice meditation. Why are you so angry? And it doesn't seem to be helping. You're getting worse. He made some kind of joke about how one thing that psychotherapy and Buddhism have in common is that neither of them work. Some kind of joke like that.
- [70:29]
A
That's a very marked.
- [70:30]
B
Yeah. And I kind of said, oh, well, so what's the point then if neither of them work? And he said the point is lightness. That that was the goal of both. I thought that was so beautiful.
- [70:43]
A
It does undermine the assertion that they don't work.
- [70:48]
B
Yeah, it does. I mean, and I think about his teachings and one thing that he's taught me that I really didn't understand when I first met him was leaving an emotion alone or leaving a thought alone. I really didn't understand it. And when I'd done therapy in the past, there was like this excavation process. You just kept poking at something like poking at this wound, like poke, poke, poke, poke, poke. And I was like, it wasn't getting better. I just felt like I kept poking at it. And Mark had this amazing ability to kind of step away and not touch it. And when I first encountered this method, I thought, isn't that a kind of denial? And it Took me such a long time to be like, oh, right. It's sort of what you're doing in meditation when you have a thought and you acknowledge it and then you let it float away.
- [71:43]
A
Yes. I wonder if what Mark's teaching in that regard is a cousin of Dead End. Yeah, the lightness thing definitely resonated with me. And Joseph, who is also a teacher to Mark, talks about one way to understand this hard to understand concept, especially for beginners of enlightenment, is lightening up. And I thought about naming mine. I've been struggling a lot with, like, what am I going to call my next book? I have a wise ass title that I really like, but people hate it.
- [72:16]
B
I'm good with titles.
- [72:17]
A
Okay, well, the wise ass title is Me A Love Story, which I think is funny. And when I say it to people, they tend to laugh because they're being polite or they're with me and I say it in a funny way. But it does carry the distinct danger of being misperceived as a book about narcissism, which is not. And I've thought about a subtitle that very clearly says, this is not a book about narcissism, which might solve the problem. But lightening up is also very much on point. It does capture the spirit of the book and that as you pull your head out of your ass, as you start taking yourself less seriously and personally, you are lighter, more available. And I think that's what Mark is pointing to in his comment to you.
- [72:57]
B
I like both titles. Yeah, I mean, Me A Love Story. I mean, I think the thing about lightening up in humor is humor doesn't end run around linear thinking. It's like something's funny. It's funny. And I do think there's a kind of philosophical undergirding of comedy for me that has to do with that. That you. When you see that something's absurd, it is a kind of not enlightenment, but it's delicious. And it's hard to teach, actually. But when you do see those great meditation masters, they are fucking hilarious.
- [73:35]
A
Yes, they are.
- [73:35]
B
And they're amused by life constantly. And it's like those Zen koans where you just go, oh. Like the juxtaposition is funny and absurd and you do a little tesseract between ideas. I like your MIA Love story, but it's snarkier than lightening up.
- [73:52]
A
Yes. Snarky is actually what I want because I want the title to have a wink, you know, because I think that is the only. I'm not a Teacher. Right. I'm not a proper teacher. And so for me, the value add is I can make you laugh.
- [74:05]
B
Yeah.
- [74:06]
A
So I lean toward titles like that, and it feels like the right title for this book.
- [74:10]
B
Yeah.
- [74:10]
A
But I could live with lightning up. I've also thought about Contact High. This is a book about love, so.
- [74:16]
B
Yeah, it's a book about love.
- [74:18]
A
Yes. All kinds of love. Not just romantic love, including self love.
- [74:22]
B
I see.
- [74:22]
A
You could call it a book about relationship to life. It's. It's actually not. There is a huge through line about openness, which is the through line of this discussion, I think, because we tend. And the Buddha talked about a lot, we contract around our views and ideas. And that cuts you off from real relationship with life. To me, that's what your book is. That's what comes screaming through in the parts of the manuscript I've read. It's like, how can you orient yourself to a world where you don't think you know everything?
- [74:56]
B
Yeah. I was at this teaching in Ireland, and it was on Meta, and the teacher said something that maybe you already know, but I thought was so useful in terms of that thing about how love fits into a meditative framework, that it's not cold and detached. And she was saying it's like how the sun has both light and heat. And she was saying, so, like, this practice is supposed to. You're supposed to get warm here. Then the light part is your understanding and your insight. But you're supposed to. And she went like that. And you're supposed to get.
- [75:30]
A
She put her hand on her chest.
- [75:31]
B
Put her hand on her heart.
- [75:32]
A
I'm writing that down because I had not heard it before, and I think that's exactly it. And I had some decent amount of clarity in my meditation practice, but no warmth or very little warmth. And so turning up the volume on warmth, it's totally changed my life.
- [75:50]
B
Yeah.
- [75:50]
A
Yeah. And that's an overused phrase. This changed my life or whatever. I hear it a lot in my line of work. This is a genuine change. Like, I would argue that this is.
- [75:59]
B
The thing to learn, which Sharon Salzberg, I think is very good at teaching also that part of meditation, she is.
- [76:10]
A
The master, and she's a huge influence on me personally. And without her, she was really the first to emphasize this aspect of the Buddhist teaching among Western teachers because it was really about, like, the light, the clarity, the seeing your own patterns with some mindfulness. And she was the one who really emphasized met m E T T a which is the ancient word for loving. Kindness.
- [76:33]
B
Yeah.
- [76:34]
A
One last thing I want to ask you about from the book. You talk about learning both from a teacher who rejected an idea of yours and also from critics who criticized your work. So basically seeing, and this goes back to the beginning of the conversation, obnoxious or difficult people as having something to teach.
- [76:56]
B
Yes. I tell a story about an art teacher, an elementary school art teacher who had this assignment where you're supposed to make a beautiful drawing. And I thought, I made a beautiful drawing out of crayon. He was a cranky man. And then he said, now he wanted everyone to paint black, paint over it and take a safety pin and make a pattern in the paint. And I was like, every part of my being was like, no, no, I like my drawing as is. I'm not doing your assignment. And I think he made me. He compelled me to draw black over it and then do his assignment. I hated it. And so for me, the lesson there was actually not to take an assignment that you hate. I suppose the non attached view could have been, oh, maybe you learned something from not being attached to your first drawing. But the already fairly strong ego in me as an artist was like, no, I reject your assignment. The tricky teachers, sometimes all we learn from them is how to get through and how to not have a toxic teacher ruin our enthusiasm and our joy for the task. And sometimes relying on your own resilience and well being while getting through the bad teacher is all you learn. But that's no small thing.
- [78:15]
A
No, I mean, I think you say quite directly the lesson you've learned from rejection is persistence.
- [78:21]
B
Yeah, well, and Paula Vogel had this amazing teaching on rejection that felt like an inoculation against rejection. And I tell students this all the time because being a writer is negotiating a relationship with rejection. And so Paula would say, okay, take all of your rejection letters and put them in piles. This was back when we had actual paper rejection rejection letters. And she'd say, okay, this one is a Xerox one. It acknowledges receipt of your work. That's one pile. Now the next pile is it has a signature. Now lick it and see that it's been signed. And she'd say, only let's say 10%, because it's your podcast. Only 10% get a signature. So that's really good if you get rejected in that way. So that's a good rejection. Then there's another letter that says it's signed and it says, we want to read your next play and we want you to come in and talk to us. She said, no one gets that that's really special. If you get that, that's like 1% or less. So if you get that, don't fixate on the rejection. Think instead of the gradations and actually that you're making progress. And that changed everything for me in terms of how I perceive rejection. And I started as a poet, and in a funny way, I think if someone like Paula had given me that sermon about rejection in poetry, I might have just stayed a poet and not crossed over into playwriting. But because Paula was modeling not just the content, but how to survive as a writer in the world, I felt like, okay, I can do this thing.
- [79:59]
A
Courage.
- [79:59]
B
Courage. Yeah.
- [80:01]
A
Two questions at the close. One, is there something we should have talked about that we didn't?
- [80:07]
B
Now, it's funny, I always say no to that question because I sort of think what we talked about was delightful and we didn't need to talk about anything else.
- [80:18]
A
Second question. Remind everybody of the name of your most recent book and any other works that we should know about. Some sort of website where we can get everything, social media, anything. Just plug everything, please.
- [80:30]
B
Okay, sure. The book is called Lessons From My Teachers From Preschool to the Present. I have a play, Eurydice, that maybe is running its Signature. Maybe it's not still running at Signature. I have a musical with Sara Bareilles I'm working on based on the Interesting that should be coming to you at some point.
- [80:48]
A
Based on the what?
- [80:48]
B
A book called the Interestings by Meg Wolitzer. I love this book. And what else am I supposed to say? Oh, I do have the horrible, dreaded Instagram. I am on Instagram. Instagram. I have a website www.sararuhlplaywright.com. yeah, I think that's it.
- [81:04]
A
Thank you for doing this.
- [81:05]
B
Thanks for having me.
- [81:06]
A
Pleasure. Thanks again to Sarah Rule. We mentioned my past conversations with Sarah Bareilles. I've put links to those in the show notes. We also mentioned Jetchen Ma Tenzin Palmo, with whom Sarah Rule took refuge. Huge. I put a link to my conversation with her as well. Don't forget, if you want to practice beginner's mind, we've got a bespoke guided meditation that comes with this podcast. It comes from our Teacher of the month, 7A Selassie. It's available for paying subscribers over on danharris.com. if you sign up, you get all of the guided meditations that we're putting out on Mondays and Wednesdays, plus our live guided meditation and Q A sessions, which we do every Tuesday at 4 Eastern. Also, as mentioned. I've got a live recording of this podcast coming up on the 18th of November with the comedian Pete Holmes. I'll put a link in the show notes if you want to come to that. Finally, thank you to everybody who worked so hard to make this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson and Eleanor Vasily. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our Managing producer, Marissa Schneiderman is our Senior producer, DJ Cashmere is our Executive Executive producer, and Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.
- [82:27]
B
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