<p><em>New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.</em></p> <p>---</p> <p>A Buddhist psychiatrist (and one of the key players in Dan's meditation career) talks about the overlap between Freud and the dharma.</p> <p><br /></p> <p><br /></p> <p><a href="http://markepsteinmd.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Mark Epstein M.D.</a>, is a psychiatrist in private practice in New York City, is the author of a number of books about the interface of Buddhism and psychotherapy, including <em>Thoughts without a Thinker</em>, <em>Going to Pieces without Falling Apart</em>, <em>Going on Being</em>, <em>Open to Desire</em>, <em>Psychotherapy without the Self</em>, <em>The Trauma of Everyday Life</em> and <em>Advice Not Given: A Guide to Getting Over Yourself</em>. His latest work, <em>The Zen of Therapy: Uncovering a Hidden Kindness in Life</em>, was published in 2022 by Penguin Press. He received his undergraduate and medical degrees from Harvard University. He has been a student of vipassana meditation since 1974.</p> <p><br /></p> <p><strong>In this episode we talk about:</strong></p> <p><br /></p> <ul> <li>The insubstantial nature of thoughts </li> <li>Staying present through anything without clinging or condemning. </li> <li>Turning down the ego and focusing on others</li> <li>How you transform your neuroses from monsters to little shmoos. </li> <li>And whether 10% is the right number?</li> </ul> <p><br /></p> <p><strong>Related Episodes:</strong></p> <ul> <li><a href="https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-playlists/10th-anniversary" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><strong>Click here</strong></a> <strong>to listen to the previous episodes in our tenth anniversary series. </strong></li> <li><a href="https://www.tenpercent.com/tph/podcast-episode/sam-harris-2023" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><strong>Sam Harris on: Vipassana vs. Dzogchen, Looking for the Looker, and Psychic Powers</strong></a></li> </ul> <p><br /></p> <p><br /></p> <p><strong>To order the revised tenth anniversary edition of 10% Happier:</strong> <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/products/10-happier-10th-anniversary-dan-harris?variant=41074377523234" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><strong>click here</strong></a><strong> </strong></p> <p><br /></p> <p><strong>For tickets to Dan Harris: Celebrating 10 Years of 10% Happier at Symphony Space:</strong> <a href="https://www.symphonyspace.org/events/vp-dan-harris-10-happier-10-year-anniversary" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><strong>click here</strong></a></p> <p><br /></p> <p><strong>Sign up for Dan's weekly newsletter</strong> <a href="https://bit.ly/3QtGRqJ" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><strong>here</strong></a></p> <p><strong>Follow Dan on social:</strong> <a href="https://bit.ly/3tGigG5" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><strong>Instagram</strong></a><strong>,</strong> <a href="https://bit.ly/3FOA84J" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><strong>TikTok</strong></a></p> <p><strong>Ten Percent Happier online</strong> <a href="https://bit.ly/46TZglY" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><strong>bookstore</strong></a></p> <p><strong>Subscribe to our</strong> <a href="https://bit.ly/3FybRzD" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><strong>YouTube Channel</strong></a></p> <p><strong>Our favorite playlists on:</strong> <a href="https://spoti.fi/3Qa8kMT" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><strong>Anxiety</strong></a><strong>,</strong> <a href="https://spoti.fi/3MjtMxF" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><strong>Sleep</strong></a><strong>,</strong> <a href="https://spoti.fi/3QvyA5J" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><strong>Relationships</strong></a><strong>,</strong> <a href="https://spoti.fi/3QxZASc" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><strong>Most Popular Episodes</strong></a></p> <p><br /></p> <p><strong>Full Shownotes:</strong> <a href="https://www.tenpercent.com/tph/podcast-episode/mark-epstein-10th" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.tenpercent.com/tph/podcast-episode/mark-epstein-10th</a></p> <p><br /></p> <p><strong>Additional Resources:</strong></p> <ul> <li>Download the Ten Percent Happier app today: <a href="https://10percenthappier.app.link/install" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://10percenthappier.app.link/install</a></li> </ul> <p><br /></p>
Actionable Insights
1. Meditate to Manage Mind
Engage in meditation practice, as advised by the Buddha, to manage the ‘monkey mind’ or inner narrator that constantly pulls you into the past or future and often presents unhelpful ideas.
2. Relate to Thoughts Wisely
Understand that it’s not what’s happening in your mind, but how you relate to it, that matters. See critical thoughts as insubstantial and don’t let them run you, even if they keep coming relentlessly.
3. Practice Non-Clinging, Non-Condemning
Strive to stay present with everything without clinging, condemning, holding on, or pushing away. This approach mirrors a mother’s capacity to stay present and not retaliate or abandon, even in the face of aggression.
4. Cultivate Inner Warmth & Friendliness
Develop warmth, compassion, kindness, or friendliness towards the most difficult and sticky aspects of your personality. This allows you to relax, take yourself less seriously, and become more available for others and yourself.
5. Shift Focus: Less ‘I,’ More ‘You’
Develop skills to ’turn down the I’ (self-centeredness) and ’turn up the you’ (focus on other people). This can be achieved through practices like meditation, being a patient in therapy, or taking walks in nature.
6. Experience the ‘I’ to Release Clinging
To effectively turn down the ‘I,’ truly experience it and pay attention to it. This process helps release some of the clinging to its ‘I-ness’ and associated grievances.
7. Connoisseur of Your Neuroses
Instead of dismissing the content of your mind, become a ‘connoisseur of your neurosis’ by finding how you inflate or cling to it. Seeing the tragic humor in this process can lessen its hold over you, transforming ‘monsters to little schmooze’.
8. Utilize Loving Kindness (Metta)
Engage in loving kindness (metta) practice by envisioning beings and sending them phrases of well-being. This exercise helps develop warmth and compassion for the contents of your own consciousness and for others.
9. Apply Realizations to Real Life
Understand that realizations from meditation don’t automatically free you or miraculously transform your life. You must actively ‘work with it’ in real life to integrate insights and change your behavior.
10. Observe Self for Emptiness
Sit and watch yourself through mindfulness practice, as this naturally allows an understanding of ’emptiness’ (shunyata) to emerge. This realization shows that nothing exists in and of itself as an independent, isolated thing.
11. Identify Self to Find Selflessness
To truly understand selflessness, you first have to identify and deeply feel how you experience your separate self. You cannot simply dismiss the self as unreal without first finding where it seems to exist.
12. Hold Dual Realities Simultaneously
Learn to hold the paradox of conventional reality (e.g., a chair is a chair) and ultimate reality (e.g., on a subatomic level, the self doesn’t exist) simultaneously in your mind.
13. Recognize Self-Inflicted Pain
Listen to your heart and recognize the self-inflicted pain caused by your own mind, such as anger and blame. This profound realization can serve as a strong motivation for personal change.
14. Thoughts Are Barely Real
Realize that a thought is ‘just a little bit more than nothing.’ This understanding helps you to not take thoughts so seriously and to see their insubstantiality.
15. Persist for Lasting Change
Recognize that the true challenge of transformation lies in the persistence of insights. Strive to know these insights in an ongoing way so that they actually change your behavior over time.
16. Relax, Don’t Be Down on Self
Learn how to relax yourself instead of being so down on yourself. This approach, similar to early meditation teaching, helps to alleviate internal tension and self-criticism.