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- [00:00]
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- [00:19]
Rachel Martin
Just a heads up, this episode does have some strong language. What do you enjoy complaining about?
- [00:26]
Dan Harris
My own mind. My favorite thing I ever wrote was the first line to my first book, which was, the voice in my head is an asshole. And I think that is true. I think it's true for many people.
- [00:40]
Rachel Martin
I'm Rachel Martin and this is Wildcard, the game where cards control the conversation. Each week, my guest answers questions about their life. Questions pulled from a deck of cards. They're allowed to skip one question and to flip one back on me. My guest this week is Dan Harris.
- [00:58]
Dan Harris
The next time you're in a spiral of anxiety, ask yourself this question. Is this useful? We often and very quickly cross the line between constructive anguish and useless rumination.
- [01:11]
Rachel Martin
Dan Harris and I have been on parallel tracks for much of our career. We both covered faith and spirituality as reporters. We were colleagues for a while at abc. And then several years later, we both ended up leaving our news jobs. I started this very show and Dan created the incredibly successful podcast 10% Happier, based on his book of the same name. He's generous and wise and the only Buddhist I know who can drop the F word into a mantra. And somehow it works. I'm so happy to welcome Dan Harris to Wildcard. Hi.
- [01:42]
Dan Harris
I love that. That's my innovation. That's your innovation in the worlds of the dharma.
- [01:47]
Rachel Martin
That's your value add to the dharma. We're just gonna start with memories. First three cards, I hold three up and you pick randomly. One, two or three, two, two. Feeling two. At what point in your life did you spend the most time alone?
- [02:12]
Dan Harris
Well, there was a strange twist in my life that you made a reference to, which is after decades of being a hard charging news anchor, I got interested in meditation. As a result of that, I now every year do a 10 day silent meditation retreat. And in fact, this year I'm going to do, on the urging of my teacher, I'm going to do 14 days. So that is a lot of alone time and in silence. And it's challenging. A lot of people focus on the silent aspect of silent retreats. Not talking isn't a huge problem for me. It's loneliness. And there's a way in which it kind of brings up this primordial sadness like a homesickness. And even though I am homesick for my actual home, it's kind of. I don't know, it's deeper than that. I think one of the psychological trends for me in looking back at my life is a fear of feeling unmoored, alone, adrift. And some of the earliest traumas. And this may be a small T trauma for me. I've had a very charmed life. But going to summer camp as a kid was incredibly hard for me. And I used to have these really intense, gnarly bouts of homesickness. I have a very clear memory of sitting in the back of my dad's shit brown Plymouth Valiant and weeping in his lap on visiting day. And I would be bereft every summer for a period of time, and then I would recover.
- [04:06]
Rachel Martin
So loneliness is a root of sadness for you?
- [04:10]
Dan Harris
Yeah, yes, loneliness, yes, but it's loneliness. But it's also this kind of yearning for some connection or stability, like it was. Homesickness feels like a better word for it, but like a much, much bigger than wanting my actual home, wherever that happens to be in the moment.
- [04:32]
Rachel Martin
But why? What do you get out of putting yourself intentionally in that position? I mean, 10 days is a long time. Now you're gonna do 14 days silent retreat. No people hardly. What I mean, I guess it's exposure therapy. I don't know.
- [04:49]
Dan Harris
Well, a couple things to say about this. The perfect question. I'm laughing because it's perfect. One of the immense sources of power in mindfulness meditation is that you see that some poet said this. Maybe Rilke. I can't believe I'm the kind of guy who quotes poetry now. But anyway, that no feeling is final. Everything changes all the time. And so when you get really quiet and your mind is tuned up because you're doing this exercise of trying to focus on one thing at a time. Usually the feeling of your breath coming in and going out, and then every time you get distracted, you start again and again and again. What it helps you see is how quickly the mind is working. All the time we're moving, we're like, as my meditation teacher says, throughout the day, we're kind of like a bee in a jar, moving up through excitement or interest and then down through loneliness or anger or fear or whatever. We're just cycling through these thoughts and emotions and urges so quickly all the time. And what happens on retreat is you start to. And this can happen in a daily practice too. You just start to see how wild and chaotic the mind is. And as a result, you're not so owned by it. And so I do go through a period of Time, loneliness or homesickness, usually in the first couple of days of retreat. But the power is seeing. Oh, yeah, I can be with this. And it's going to change.
- [06:22]
Rachel Martin
And you can be with you. Right. This is also, like, I'm just going to sit with myself and all that myself contains. Not all of it's awesome.
- [06:32]
Dan Harris
Yes. And this is a little out there, so you may want to cut it. But then you start to see, like, what is this thing I'm calling a self? How solid is that? And that's a very interesting, sometimes a little scary, but ultimately liberating thing, because then you don't take your emotions, your anxiety, your anger, whatever, so personally, and you're able to work with them in a more fluid and sophisticated way. And so it's a long way of answering your question, which is, why do I put myself through this retreat? Well, why would you put yourself through a vigorous workout? That sucks, too, but it has many, many benefits.
- [07:10]
Rachel Martin
Okay. There's so much in there I want to get back to, so maybe one of these cards will afford us the opportunity. Okay, next set of 3. 1, 2 or 3?
- [07:21]
Dan Harris
3.
- [07:22]
Rachel Martin
3. What's a moment with a stranger that made you feel loved?
- [07:31]
Dan Harris
Okay, you answer that first.
- [07:32]
Rachel Martin
Oh, flipping that one. Um, so I have talked about this before. I sort of live for those moments. Like, stranger moments. I love stranger kindness from the tiniest little things I like. I get weepy when someone waves to me when I've let them in on a lane of traffic or they have done the same for me. It, like, makes me so. Because there's so many jerks who drive. And when someone just acknowledges, I'm like, oh, yes. Thank you. The more profound story is that my eldest kid, during the pandemic, we went on a trip up to New Hampshire, and we were at these waterfalls that come cascade down all these rocks. And he fell down this waterfall. He slipped and he fell about 10ft and landed on his back on a rock. It was incredibly harrowing. It was very scary. We had to wait a long time for people to hike up the mountain with a stretcher on tires. It was wild. And there was just a woman there who was a nurse, and she was with her own kids and own family. And she was everything you want that person to be in that moment. And it's Covid. We're outside, but everyone's still wearing masks, So I couldn't even see her face, just her eyes. And she had the kindest eyes. And as a mother, she knew exactly what I was feeling.
- [09:03]
Dan Harris
And.
- [09:05]
Rachel Martin
And she gave me all her love and kindness and I just felt it so profoundly. It was such a gift to me in that moment. And we exchanged holiday cards for a few years and I just, I love the opportunity to repeat that story because we all have the capacity to touch people in moments of crisis like that. But in the most banal moments when you think a thing doesn't matter, like to reach out to a person from a place of compassion creates a story that that person might tell for decades. You know, so that's my story.
- [09:39]
Dan Harris
That's beautiful. It's really beautiful. Just to put some, a sheen of psychological research on top of this, you know, there's been a quite a bit of research into what the scientist Barbara Fredrickson calls micro interactions. And so we tend to move. I'll speak for myself as somebody who kind of wired as a frosty New Englander, I, for much of my life, in fact, you know, I kind of wince a little bit with embarrassment to recall that you met me in that we met each other in 2006, because I was very much in this mode at that time of just hurtling through the world in a sort of self centered, ambitious way and often really frankly rude to people. Not because of, I just thought you
- [10:33]
Rachel Martin
were super serious, very focused, a little tightly wound and just like very serious person.
- [10:40]
Dan Harris
Well, that's all true. And I, you know, I fear that it's a little generous, honestly. And you know, what I was doing was denying myself of a massive opportunity for well being. You know, we, life is a target rich opportunity for these little moments of happiness that Dr. Fredrickson calls micro interactions. You know, we're just constantly moving through the world and meeting other people. Baristas, the people you give your clothes to at the dry cleaner. Coming into NPR today, I met Summer, who's one of your producers. And these don't have to be long exchanges. It's just like a little chit chat. Summer grew up in Las Vegas and I was telling her about how I took my son to Vegas and he loved it. And you know, neither of us may ever ultimately remember this interaction, but it's a little hit of dopamine that is available to all of us as we move through the world. So let me answer your actual question about a stranger interaction that made me feel loved. Just to set this up a little bit, I, notwithstanding the fact that I'm allegedly some sort of happiness expert, you know, continue to.
- [12:00]
Rachel Martin
Only 10% happy.
- [12:01]
Dan Harris
Yeah, exactly. I thank God I called the book 10% happier. I have lots of Challenges, you know, and one of them is that I have really intense claustrophobia.
- [12:15]
Rachel Martin
Oh, yeah, I know this one.
- [12:16]
Dan Harris
It's gotten worse over the years, really. And I. So I struggle on elevators and airplanes. It's a. It's a. It's a real challenge for me. And there's a studio in New York City where I often record podcasts when I'm not recording from my home studio. And one day I showed up at the studio, and I was in the middle of this. I was at a. In a particularly bad place with my claustrophobia, and it was the first time I'd been there, and. And I saw. I looked at the elevators, and they looked really small and scary to me, and I kind of was panicking, and I had a suitcase and all this stuff with me, and the security guard looked at me and I said, hey, can I just. Can I walk up? And he was like, it's 16 flights, dude. You've got all this stuff. And he said. He got up from his desk, put his blazer on, and said, I. I'm gonna ride with you. He somehow knew what was going on with me. His name is Barry B A R I. And I see him all the time because I go to this studio, and he rode with. He said, I'll hold your hand if you want. And I didn't need him to hold my hand, but he just talked to me about where he's from and where his family lives, and we made it to the 16th floor. And even though I'm slightly more stable in my claustrophobia, having done a lot of what's called exposure therapy, every time I go to the studio, Barry rides the elevator with me. Oh, come on.
- [13:49]
Rachel Martin
This is a beautiful story. That's a beautiful story. I love that he just saw that and didn't make a big deal out of it. He was just like, this is what we're doing. I'm just gonna write up with you.
- [14:00]
Dan Harris
I got you.
- [14:02]
Rachel Martin
Last one in this round. One. Two or three. One you knew one, you're feeling one. When did you first find a group of peers who really understood you?
- [14:13]
Dan Harris
Oh, I remember the exact moment.
- [14:17]
Rachel Martin
Really?
- [14:18]
Dan Harris
Yes. So I had a really good group of friends in high school and also some good friends in college, but I was always jealous of my little brother who loved his college so much and really had this crew that just. He felt they were so smart, and he felt so embedded in it, and I never had that. All through my 20s, I was kind of moving around in television news from small market to small market. And I had friends, but I just didn't. I never felt like I had my crew. And then when I turned 30, or actually in my late 20s, I moved to New York City and started working at ABC News. And for the first couple of years, I was traveling so much. It was post nine. I was in war zones and I was just away for long periods of time. And I came home in 2003 after, I think, six months in Iraq, and I didn't have. I really. Just. The few friends I had in New York City had moved away and really didn't have. I felt very lonely who were coming back to this. And a guy from work, a guy I didn't even really like that much, invited me to a party. And at that party, I met a bunch of people I really liked. And one of them, who's still one of my best friends to this day, her name is Kayama Kiama, came over to me and said, we're having a party tonight. Tomorrow night, you should come. Don't bring that guy. She said, I like you. I don't like your friend, but you should come to this party tomorrow night. And at that party, I met another guy named Willie and Kayama and Willy. And now our massive, like, cinematic universe of friends are. That's. Those are my people. And it was. My life is like a before and after that weekend.
- [16:20]
Rachel Martin
So I have to ask you, what was it about those people in particular that made you feel understood in a way that you hadn't before? Why did those become your friends?
- [16:29]
Dan Harris
I really like smart weirdos. You know, I guess I come off as, you know, I was former anchorman. I kind of still talk like an anchorman.
- [16:37]
Rachel Martin
You don't present as weird, Dan. You don't present as weird.
- [16:40]
Dan Harris
Yes, that's what I'm saying. But I am weird. I mean, you know, I'm the guy who, like, needs help getting on an elevator and, you know, goes on silent meditation retreats. I'm definitely a weirdo. I'm part of why I'm so happy not to be in the news industry is, you know, I have a much more creative output these days. And there are. In our extended friend group, there are writers and artists and people who do all sorts of things, and that just makes life. And I'm married to a doctor. And so it's very diverse in every possible way. And that just makes life more interesting. Foreign.
- [17:29]
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- [18:01]
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- [19:30]
Rachel Martin
Before we start round two, I'm going to step back from the game and talk about your podcast and where you're at in your professional life, which I think is a good place from the outside it seems to be. And tell me if my math is right. Is this 10 years of doing your podcast? It is right. 10% happier. Congratulations.
- [19:48]
Dan Harris
Thank you.
- [19:49]
Rachel Martin
I mean you're a former news person. You know that we ascribe this meaning to these times, these anniversaries. But 10 years is a thing for better or for worse. It's a place where culturally we set a marker and we kind of look back. And so as you look back on the last 10 years, how's this show changed? What are you, what are you still trying to figure out in terms of how you learn and teach simultaneously, which is what 10% happier feels like to me.
- [20:19]
Dan Harris
I would say the biggest change is that when it started it was very meditation focused and while I'm still a huge believer and proponent in the practice, the show over time has really evolved into every aspect of doing life better we really think about it as drawing from modern psychology and ancient wisdom to, you know, all evidence based stuff to help you upgrade your life. And, and I'm just following my own interests here, you know, so I'm interested in how to sleep better, how to exercise without, you know, being driven by self hatred, how to, you know, improve your, your work life, how to improve your home life. I want to talk about all of these things because as discussed, I'm a bit of a mess myself. And so I'm just kind of using this the way many of the psychology researchers I interview talk about their own work is research is me search. And that's what's happening on the podcast?
- [21:19]
Rachel Martin
Yeah, for sure.
- [21:20]
Dan Harris
I mean, that's, I think that's what's happening in your work.
- [21:22]
Rachel Martin
Yes, 100%. No. I started this because I had my own questions and it's helpful to hear from other people if they're still in, if they're in the muck of those same questions and how they've managed their way out or conclusions or if they're just still swimming in the existential goo of it all. I mean, you talk about how the podcast has evolved to be, you know, let's just look at all of our life and different facets of it and how we can improve. But I do feel like this optimization culture can sometimes feel oppressive, like everything can always be better and so how do we make it better? In my sleep, and I got the rings and I got the apps that tell me the stuff and sometimes do you just want to throw it all up and be like on today's episode, how to just be cool with having things not be better than they are.
- [22:09]
Dan Harris
It's a huge theme on our show and it's a huge topic of discussion on my team. I have a really. Mixed relationship with this idea of optimization. I am naturally somebody who wants to, you know, track my sleep and count my steps and all that stuff. But it, I think it's, I think it's a really tricky thing to do without driving yourself crazy. There's a great expression, the subtle aggression of self improvement. I think, however, if you can switch the motivation to, and I'm going to use a loaded word, but if you switch the motivation to love, it just becomes simpler. So one of the things that I've gotten into the habit of saying throughout the day before I meditate or before I exercise or before I go to bed is this is a little kind of off brand in its earnestness. But I'm doing this fill in the blank Exercise, whatever, so that I can be stronger and happier, so that I can make other people stronger and happier. That tweak to my motivation. Yeah, it's not just, yes, it is about me. It's cool. Like, I think it's totally fine. To self love is really important. In fact, I think it's the unlock for a whole spiral of benefits. Because how we are with ourselves inexorably redounds to how we are with other people. And so if you can take care of yourself, that's not self indulgence and it's not weakness. So, yeah, that's kind of how I think about it. And on the show that the spirit very much is. Look, this is a menu, not a to do list. We're gonna explore all these things, but you should take what you want. Like, whatever works for you is cool. There are some of my brothers and sisters in the wellness space who are super prescriptive, and that's just not my style.
- [24:16]
Rachel Martin
So if there's a person listening or watching who has not had the opportunity to check your show out, I know this can be an annoying question, but tell me an episode that you would point someone to. Where do you send them?
- [24:29]
Dan Harris
Probably the most influential person for me in this whole space of whatever you want to call it, wellness, human flourishing, whatever, is a guy who's not famous. His name is Joseph Goldstein. He's. Yeah, he's my meditation teacher. Has been for a long time. And he's a very close friend. And he's 82 years old, does not, you know, wear robes or anything like that. He's a Jewish guy from the Catskills who wears khakis and buttons, downs. You know, doesn't. He doesn't present as a. As a guru, but he is a walking example of what can happen with sustained practice. He is funny and smart and other oriented and helpful and teaches using these very pithy phrases, just little, like one liners that are kind of like Buddhist earworms. They just, you know, wriggle their way into your mind stream and then surface when you need them the most. So I'll give you an example. The next time you're in a spiral of anxiety, maybe if you can catch yourself in one of these overthinking periods, ask yourself this question. And again, this comes from Joseph, is this useful? Like, some amount of worrying makes sense, but we often and very quickly cross the line between constructive anguish and useless rumination. And that little question of, is this useful or should I, you know, think about something else? Maybe even help somebody else that's an incredibly helpful little earworm. And so at the beginning of this year, 2026, I dropped two episodes with Joseph where we went through a bunch of these phrases, and you just get to hear this truly brilliant human being and who. I don't love this word inspiring, but it is inspiring in the true sense of that word because it gives you a sense of, oh, yeah, this is what's on offer if I follow this path.
- [26:47]
Rachel Martin
Thank you for that. I'm gonna go check it out. Everyone else should, too. We're back in the game. Round 2. Insights. 1. 2 or 3?
- [27:00]
Dan Harris
1.
- [27:02]
Rachel Martin
What do you enjoy complaining about?
- [27:07]
Dan Harris
My own mind. The first line. This. I may be my favorite thing. I don't love my own writing. Honestly, I think my writing is fine. But I, you know, and I write. I do write books. But my favorite thing I ever wrote was the first line to my first book, which was, the voice in my head is an. And I think that is true. I think it's true for many people. Like, we have this, like, nattering inner voice that, you know, is chasing us out of bed in the morning. And we're just constantly wanting stuff, not wanting stuff, judging people, comparing ourselves to other people. And when you're unaware of this, this inner conversation, it owns you. And this is like the. This is my mo. I think it's very useful to talk openly, especially. I've been blessed with this public platform. It's very useful, I think, to talk openly about all of my craziness. One of the most common words that Joseph Goldstein uses is ridiculous. And he uses it to describe the mind. It's ridiculous. We're just. We're always in the past or the future instead of right now. We're always comparing ourselves to other people. We're always judging other people, putting ourselves down. It's ridiculous. One of the little things he gets people to do is if you're in one of these periods of time where you're just totally down on yourself, count the judgmental thoughts, count the self judgmental thoughts, but by the time you hit 87, you just start laughing at it. You know, it just.
- [28:47]
Rachel Martin
Well, that's why I like the word ridiculous. Yeah. Because there's an element of just. It's silly. It's just. It's not worth it. Right. Like, it doesn't give it so much power and agency. It's just ridiculous. Just let it go. And that. That feels. That feels powerful in and of itself. Just the word. Okay, Your own brain. That's what you like to complain about. Next three 1, 2 or 3, 2, 2? When has envy been a problem for you?
- [29:19]
Dan Harris
Oh, man, all the time. I just deleted Instagram because it was just like, I have an amazing life. I have such an incredible life. But somehow, every time I looked at Instagram, I felt like I had a terrible life. Funny that. And it's such a reliable source of unhappiness for me.
- [29:36]
Rachel Martin
It really is.
- [29:37]
Dan Harris
And, you know, everybody's at a party I'm not invited to, or everybody's career is taken off in ways that mine is not, and so, deuces, I'm out.
- [29:49]
Rachel Martin
Isn't that part of your job? It's, like, embedded in your job, like the metrics. How many followers you have, how many subscribers you have, how many Instagram posts? Like, you do them. I see you walking down the street and you do them, and they're really good and powerful, but it's all on that same platform that is the source of so much angst and envy and sadness.
- [30:08]
Dan Harris
Yes. And I have a lot of problems with social media, so why then am I creating content for it? It's where the eyeballs are. And if I can be a little node of sanity, as, by the way, as are you. Because I see your stuff on social media, and in particular, you. And I texted about this offline, the Melinda French Gates clip that I thought you handled so beautifully. Thank you. So I think we can. I think it's possible to put little nuggets of goodness out there on social media, but it is largely a morass.
- [30:42]
Sponsor/Advertisement Voice
Yeah.
- [30:45]
Rachel Martin
One, two or three?
- [30:46]
Dan Harris
Three.
- [30:49]
Rachel Martin
What's something you thought about yourself that you had to unlearn?
- [30:55]
Dan Harris
Can I flip it again?
- [30:56]
Rachel Martin
No. I mean, yes, fine. Yes, you can. Yeah, you can. Yeah, you can. This is a hard one. Okay, so my answer to this question. Oh, it's kind of sad. It's not that sad. I thought that I was, like, a chill, relaxed person that was friendly all the time and, like, just like a chill person. This was how I thought of myself in my mind. And after many years of working on this morning news show, I got enough data back, I got enough feedback from other people I worked with to prove otherwise. And it was a shock for me when I heard, not directly, but almost more personal, I can figure out what you're communicating between the lines. And the feedback I was getting was, oh, you are not chill. You are not a chill person. Like, you're actually a super intense person, and your vibes can be intense, and it can kind of elevate everybody else. It's not chill. That was a hard thing. So I think at its core, the question tends to be about what's a thing, a negative thing you thought about yourself that you had to unlearn. But the thing that comes to my mind is like, I thought it was pretty great, and it turns out I was kind of a jerk. That was a revelation to me.
- [32:31]
Dan Harris
Have you ever heard the expression self knowledge is always bad news? No.
- [32:35]
Rachel Martin
That's so true.
- [32:39]
Dan Harris
Yeah, I had a story in my head that I didn't fully crystallize until a couple of years ago. And the story was that I'm a bad person. I think it has its roots in childhood and some of the kind of family dynamics. And yeah, I just got it in my head that, like, I was just irretrievably selfish and mean. I had a bullying incident when I was a kid where I was the bad guy. And I think that was a key moment where I just kind of internalized like, oh, yeah, I'm the bad guy. And I. That was just a big part of my operating system and was why I would get very defensive. Anytime I got tough feedback, I would. I would just overreact because it was triggering this thing that I didn't want to look at. And then over.
- [33:47]
Rachel Martin
Yeah. What shifted?
- [33:51]
Dan Harris
Well, lots of therapy and meditation and getting feedback and taking it in after periods of defensiveness. A friend of mine, a really smart friend of mine, her name is Dolly Chug, and she's a professor at NYU School of Business. And she has this expression, goodish. And that actually has been a key unlock for me. So many of us have a story that we're a good person or a bad person, but when we get feedback, we get defensive because it either reminds us that we think we're a bad person, or it challenges our core belief that we're a good person. And so that's the wellspring of defensiveness. If, however, you change your self concept to good ish, which, by the way, it just makes complete sense. We're all a mix of good and bad. But if you change your self concept to good ish, well, then when you find out you screwed up and you're not as chill in the hallways of NPR as you thought you were, well, then, okay, well, that's fine. It's not fundamentally threatening because I'm good ish. And so there's always room to grow. It's what the psychologists call a growth mindset. And so talking to Dolly about that was one of the things that really turned things around for me.
- [35:11]
Rachel Martin
I love the idea of good ish. It's interesting to try to teach your kids that. That's where I'm at right now. It's like talking about the good ish of human nature and that we're all good and bad. And it's a complicated concept actually to wrap your head around because so much of parenting and so much of like children's literature and storytelling is about the good and the bad and they are separate and distinct characters. And it's like next level to think about, oh, it lives in all of us and what do we choose to lean into and what is activated and what are our triggers for each of those components. But we all have that duality.
- [35:53]
Dan Harris
Well said. And I think it's a big problem in our news environment too, especially in this algorithmically driven news environment where you are being fed, you know, outrage porn all the time from your side and it's giving you a cartoonish version of the other side. So we're good, they're bad, there's no nuance. And, you know, that's a good way to destroy a civilization.
- [36:25]
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- [36:37]
Rachel Martin
The symptoms and experiences that women have in midlife, I think were underappreciated or possibly even trivialized. The changes of perimenopause and menopause create a broad spectrum of symptoms and can actually lead to long term health issues, but too few clinicians are trained in it.
- [36:54]
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I also want to add often the type of care that women are needing is very iterative. It requires trying different medications, learning about their body, and learning how to take care of themselves. And so what we've tried to do at Midi Health is create a new type of care system that is responsive to women's needs and helps them take care of themselves and stay healthy instead of just treating disease. Midi Health committed to helping women in midlife with perimenopause and menopause care. Accessible via telehealth visits@joinmidi.com this message comes from Redfin.
- [37:30]
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- [38:23]
Rachel Martin
Last round beliefs. 3 new cards. 12 or 3 1.
- [38:29]
Dan Harris
1.
- [38:31]
Rachel Martin
What's your best definition of the soul?
- [38:34]
Dan Harris
Well, in Buddhism, you know, the founding principle of Buddhism is that there is no soul. The Buddha came out of a Vedic or Hindu context, but then. And in Hinduism they talk about the soul, but the Buddha's concept was actually there is no soul. Actually, if you tune up the microscope of the mind, you see that everything's changing so rapidly that there can't be some solid, unchanging nugget of anything. And by the way, this goes back to my story about being a bad person. How could I be permanently bad when nothing is permanent, There is no bedrock. And this is, this is just intuitively true when you say it out loud, but hard, then when you apply it to something like a soul. And so the key to understanding this, again from a Buddhist context, which nobody has to believe if they don't want, is that two things are true at the same time. On the one hand, Rachel Martin is real. I'm looking at her, and if she looks at the mirror, she will see herself. And she's got a social media feed and she's got a podcast and a resume and all that stuff. And yeah, Rachel's real. However, if you close your eyes and look for some core nugget of Rachel, you won't find it. You'll find physical sensations, thoughts, emotions in a fluxing gumbo.
- [40:03]
Rachel Martin
That's what our self is, just fluxing gumbo.
- [40:06]
Dan Harris
There is no. It's like this chair I'm sitting in right now. Bring a high powered microscope to it. I would find mostly empty space populated by spinning subatomic particles. That's true at the same time as this chair. I trust it and I sit in it. And so Rachel's real and she's not real at the same time. Rachel doesn't have a soul, though, from this sort of high powered microscope perspective. Does that make sense what I'm saying?
- [40:35]
Rachel Martin
We're all just living in this weird social contract where we've just decided to agree that we all exist. And just by deciding, we make it thus.
- [40:46]
Dan Harris
Yes. And I think actually this is where this construct that I'm proposing to you via the Buddha starts to become practical. Because, yes, we do live in a consensual reality, or what the Buddhists call relative truth, as opposed to the ultimate truth, which is back to the spinning subatomic particles. And these two levels of reality speak to each other. So the next time you're stuck in some story about how Rachel's this way, she's not this way, life is going to this way or that way, you can switch into the ultimate perspective for a second. Okay, no, no. On some level, this is all an illusion. This is all like in a movie, a play of light and sound projected on a screen. There isn't solidity. It's just 24 frames per second. And then for people who tend to drift off into that kind of nihilistic space of, oh, and none of it matters. No, no, no, it does matter. Both things are true at the same time. Like, we are human beings and our ethical conduct has consequences, or lack of ethical conduct has consequences too. And so you want to hold. It's a paradox. Much of life is understanding and utilizing paradox. And this is the big one, in my opinion, that these two things are true at the same time. And can you toggle back and forth between them with some skill?
- [42:15]
Rachel Martin
How does that affect your idea of your feelings about being forgotten, about there being no remainder of you? I mean, I know you have a child, there's like a physical remainder of you, but how many generations before nobody remembers who Great Grandpa Dan was? Does that freak you out, or that's just part of the deal?
- [42:41]
Dan Harris
It doesn't freak me out that much. You know, about a year and a half ago, I was interviewing somebody on my show who was an amazing Buddhist teacher named Vinnie Ferraro, who has an incredible story which I'll tell very quickly, which is that he grew up in a very low income environment in Rhode island and was an addict and a criminal and served several stints in jail and prison. And during one of his terms, he was in there with his own father and got out, got sober, found the dharma, and has become this incredible teacher. He's the only teacher I've ever interviewed who throughout the whole interview will call me bro. He's very funny and very wise, and he got me interested in an aspect of Buddhism that a lot of people might be tempted to reject. And that's totally fine. It's hardcore. But the Buddha himself recommended that twice a day. You recall Five things. This body that I'm occupying is of the nature to grow old. It's of the nature to get sick. It will die. Here's the grimmest one. Everything and everyone I cherish will someday be lost to me. And the fifth one, where he kind of pulls the knife out a little bit. As Vinny says, the only true possessions I have in this context are my actions. And so that's where the kind of hope resides, which is. Okay, so, yeah, we. If you want to look at it, the truth of this reality that we inhabit is that it is relentlessly impermanent and chaotic and entropic, and very little is in your control. But you are in control of your actions to a large degree. And the karmic consequences of those actions will outlive you. And so if you take that seriously, it will impact how you behave.
- [44:39]
Rachel Martin
And that, to me, feels like a soul. Like, I guess when I use that word, it's just some kind of, what difference do we make? Who are we? And if we are the sum total of how we behave here, the choices we make and the actions we take and the consequences of those actions, that makes sense to me.
- [45:00]
Dan Harris
Makes sense to me, too. I'm totally cool with calling that a soul. I don't. You know, I have no desire to, like, police people's language. So soul is. It's certainly inoffensive to me, but from a Buddhist perspective, you know, it's not a thing.
- [45:15]
Rachel Martin
It's not a thing. Three more. One, two, or three two. Is there a religious practice or ritual that you're envious of?
- [45:28]
Dan Harris
The. I have this odd interest in something that simultaneously repulses me, which is devotional practice. There are aspects of Buddhism where you really. And other traditions as well, where you sort of. You bow to a statue of the Buddha, or it could be Quan Ying, who's. This is where my Buddhist knowledge is gonna run out of road. But I think she is, like, the avatar of compassion in certain schools of Buddhism. And so I don't know a ton about this devotional practice. I just know that I have some friends who've done it. And I see that my initial response to it is revulsion, like prostrating yourself
- [46:21]
Rachel Martin
in front of prostrations.
- [46:22]
Dan Harris
Literally prostrations. And when I have that kind of response, I always try to investigate it, like, all right, what's going on there? Because my life has just been a succession of things that I dismissed and was totally wrong about and later came to embrace. And so I'm just curious, like, huh, what's going on with that.
- [46:44]
Rachel Martin
It is interesting, that practice. And at the same time, I like. You see a person who can do that. And it feels also like a beautiful surrender. It feels like beauty and liberation in that kind of surrender.
- [46:58]
Dan Harris
In my first book, I wrote about how I was on my first retreat and everybody was bowing to the Buddha. And I thought it was like I really hated it. And then I wrote about how I started doing it, but only for a hamstring stretch. I think the way I've come to understand devotional practice, to the extent that I understand it at all, which is very limited, is that ultimately what you're bowing to is an aspect of the mind, of the human mind. So like compassion that we. That is papered over and sometimes cemented over by the world, by the world we live in, where we're just armoring up and hardened. But we have this. It is quintessentially human capacity for compassion, for love, to just, to put it in plain English, to give a shit about ourselves and others. Right. This is, you know, love is this panoramic inner capacity that we have.
- [48:00]
Rachel Martin
Yeah.
- [48:02]
Dan Harris
Bowing to the avatar of compassion is a way to. It's like a snake charming that you're doing on yourself to bring the. That aspect, that hidden aspect of the mind into greater salience.
- [48:17]
Rachel Martin
Last one. One, two or three.
- [48:21]
Dan Harris
Three.
- [48:23]
Rachel Martin
What's an experience you wish you could give every person?
- [48:27]
Dan Harris
I think most of us, consciously or subconsciously kind of think we're stuck with how we are. We have X amount of patience, X amount of generosity. But what we know from the science is that the brain, and by extension the mind, it's trainable, you know, doing what, what. The brain is the organ of experience. So how you arrange your life, the practices you do or don't do, that you're just constantly training your brain. You learn how to play violin, your brain's going to change. You see it on the brain scans, you learn how to meditate, your brain will change. You get better at social fitness, your brain changes. We are not stuck with the aspects of our personality that we may be struggling with. This change is possible. It's messy and marginal. And even people like me who have been meditating for a while and write books about it, I continue to be a schmuck in lots of ways, but, you know, the trajectory is the right one for me, and it can be for anybody.
- [49:39]
Rachel Martin
Right?
- [49:40]
Dan Harris
And so you can be this little node of sanity in a chaotic world. And so that's the experience I want people to have. Like, you can improve Your life. And it matters like it, it is a political act. It's not self indulgent. It doesn't make you a doormat. It. It, yeah, it really matters. And so that kind of hope, not gaslighting you and telling you everything's fine, because everything's not fine, but you do have more power than you think to improve your own mind and by extension, the world.
- [50:12]
Rachel Martin
Thank you for that.
- [50:14]
Dan Harris
Now I'm on a fucking soapbox. Sorry.
- [50:15]
Rachel Martin
Oh my God, I love a soapbox. I love it. Dan Harris. We end the show the same way every time with a trip in our memory time machine. In the time machine, you revisit one moment from your past. It is not a moment you would change anything about. It's just a moment you'd like to linger in a little bit longer. What moment do you choose?
- [50:43]
Dan Harris
Oh my God, there's so many to choose from. The moment that's coming to mind is I had this completely random experience the summer after my junior year in high school where I had been a total screw up my whole high school career, had a thriving weed business, just like, really just a. Not a good student. And I kind of was starting to get it together. And I ended up getting into the summer school at Harvard, which isn't like getting into Harvard, not at all, because I was not. I didn't get into Harvard. I was never going to get into Harvard. But you can apply to the summer school and be a mediocre student and get in. And so I. But I was surrounded by all these smart kids and I had a great summer. And I was sitting on a warm Cambridge night on the front stoop of the dorm where I was living, and I just kind of entered into this calm elation. And it comes back for me once in a while on a meditation retreat of just like, I would say the underlying feeling is, everything's okay. And for an anxious person, that is delicious.
- [51:58]
Rachel Martin
What a lovely thing.
- [52:00]
Dan Harris
Where would you go?
- [52:02]
Rachel Martin
Oh, in my memory time machine. I mean, I'm grateful that I'm the host of the show and that I don't have to answer the memory time machine question because it's hard to narrow it down.
- [52:16]
Dan Harris
Yeah, it's hard to narrow. Do you want to say the birth of your children and all that stuff?
- [52:19]
Rachel Martin
Of course. But. But it's also like what comes up. It's like right now. Okay, so part of what the memory time machine is is you just let whatever come up come up. And like. So right now the thing that is coming up, I have no idea why is driving with my mom. My mom's been passed away a long time ago. But driving with my mom like in high school in Idaho Falls, my hometown in Idaho, through one of those coffee shacks. Like Idaho Falls didn't have proper coffee shops when I was growing up. So it would be like in a strip mall, there'd be a coffee shack and it was like a new thing. And she would have her little punch card and we would just, she would look at me like with such glee, like, let's stop for a coffee. And we would pull up, oh, I'm getting weepy. I don't know what's significant about that. That's just what came up. And I would love to sit in the car with my mom and get a drive through coffee from the coffee shack in front of the Safeway in Idaho Falls. I did not expect to do that.
- [53:31]
Dan Harris
Dan Harris, well, it's totally beautiful. And yeah, you said something like, well, I don't know why this is coming up. Well, it's a moment of love.
- [53:53]
Rachel Martin
Dan Harris is the host of the wildly successful podcast 10% happier, the author of many books, and I'm so glad to talk to you. Thank you.
- [54:05]
Dan Harris
Huge pleasure. Always. Thank you.
- [54:14]
Rachel Martin
Thank you so much for listening. If you like this conversation, I would suggest going back and checking out my episode with the actor Jesse Eisenberg. He's got this kind of anxious wisdom that feels very honest and hard earned. You can watch that episode and many more on our YouTube page. It is NPRWildcard. This episode was produced by Mitra Arthur and Lee Hale. It was edited by Dave Blanchard and mastered by Josephine Nyonai. Wildcard's executive producer is Yolanda Sangweni, and our theme music is by Ramtin Arloui. You can reach out to us@wildcardpr.org we'll shuffle the deck and be back with more next week. Talk to you then.
- [54:58]
Sponsor/Advertisement Voice
This message comes from Midi Health CEO Joanna Strober shares the personal experience that led her to start a virtual care platform for women in perimenopause and menopause. I was having anxiety. I had gained weight. I wasn't sleeping. And my primary care doctor never once said that perhaps I was in perimenopause and that all these things could be related to my hormones. So I had a really tough time for quite a while and a friend recommended that I try a concierge doctor. She prescribed hormones for me, a combination of estrogen, progesterone and testosterone. And I felt very relieved that I had this care. And I also had a lot of sadness that I had spent such a long period of time going through this and not getting the right care. And so essentially what we really want to do at MIDI is democratize access to this type of care. MIDI Health committed to helping women in midlife with perimenopause and menopause care Accessible via telehealth visits@joinmidi.com this message comes from Cachava.
- [56:00]
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