GUIDE TO HAPPINESS: How To Hack Your Brain's Default Mode With MEDITATION | Dan Harris

this is the lever that the data suggests is most important to pull if you're trying to get healthier and happy from my perspective the amount of stress we have our diet which by the way is a biological stressor sugar actually creates high levels of adrenaline and cortisol and it makes you feel like you're running from a tiger or want to attack somebody uh all these things

are driving us away from you know a sense of of being able to actually connect with somebody or relate to somebody in a loving way or to to sort of have those positive behavior changes and but so we we kind of have this ideal but how do we access that and and this is where I think you know your work around meditation is so important because

we you know we we have a lot of science around how to you know fix our body right right diet exercise sleep but how do we fix our mind can you talk about how you actually can train your brain and how that works and what happens over time because you know happiness okay doesn't just happen right love doesn't just happen ability to be compassionate or to

be altruistic doesn't just happen automatically if we're living this sense of separateness and disconnection and isolation um and I want you to talk about that and and I think one of the things that's really interesting is when you look at the minds of meditators who meditate for a long time they're very similar to the the states of mind that you see with with psychedelics which actually

suppress this area of the brain that makes us feel separate and disconnected called the default mode Network so it's kind of interesting that we have this psychedelic Renaissance now which may may be kind of a shortcut how do we sort of bring together you know the sort of sort of the need to retrain our brain with sort of the sort of the massive obstacles that are

aren't a way to do that well I think it's so amazing here is you know we now have a couple decades of data about what short daily doses of meditation will do to your brain and the rest of your body and the results are really intriguing that it can lower your blood pressure boost your immune system and literally rewire key parts of your brain that are

associated with stress and self-awareness with compassion and and if to whittle it all down to like a headline a really I think Earth shattering headline honestly is that happiness which I think a lot of us assume either consciously or subconsciously is dependent on EX you know exogenous factors external factors like the quality of our childhood or quality of our work life or our marriage all of

those by the way are very very important however what the science is showing us is that truly happiness is a skill that you can take responsibility for and practice via meditation so what we know now is the we used to think that the the brain stopped changing after 25. that was the received wisdom in Neuroscience now we know that's not true hi it's Dr Mark Hyman

now today's podcast with Dan Harris explores the importance of mindfulness meditation for our well-being and happiness and as part of our discussion we talk about in the recent trip to dharms Hall India to meet with the Dalai Lama as well as this free online 10-part series on meditation and Buddhism now after this podcast was recorded a widely watched viral video The Dalai Lama was released online

that was highly disturbing to many who watched it now I've seen the short video which is an excerpt from a much longer video that was initially published online by a Tibetan journalist now the excerpt taken out of context was widely promoted and distributed on Chinese social media platforms now maybe a listing may know I majored in Buddhism at Cornell and has spent much time in Tibet

in India with Exile Tibetans and I like to provide a little context and an explanation of the events that day and the underlying meaning that was lost in cultural translation you see the event depicted in the video is a ceremony in India for graduates from a private school to receive a blessing from the Dalai Lama now during the full video which wasn't shown online the little

boy a child of one of the employees of the school asked the Dilemma for a hug which she gave and then the Dilemma gave a talk and after the boy asked for another hug which he gave and then he asked for a kiss which he gave and then after the Q a he asked for yet another hug that was the moment when the Dalai Lama stuck

out his tongue and said eat my tongue which sounds sexual and inappropriate and weird however this phrase quote eat my tongue which some people translate as suck my tongue must be understood in the context of the Tibetan culture while it is so true that Many religious leaders of sexually abused children and this is why the incident was so disturbing so many the true meaning of this

is quite different it's a common phrase used by grandparents in the Tibetan culture when children keep asking for more and more as this little boy did they jokingly stick out their tongue and say essentially what I've given you this and I've given you that and I've given you this and I'm giving you that what do you want eat my tongue at this point the Dalai Lama

stuck out his tongue laughed and then pulled his head back it wasn't a real request the tongue is not considered sexual Tibetan culture and sticking your tongue is often used as a greeting we saw that in the Seven Years in Tibet with Brad Pitt the video is Amplified by the Chinese to discredit the Dilemma it worked in the west but for two beds who live inside

China who understood the cultural reference this attempt backfired see the Tibetans have been prohibited from seeing a photo of the dalama for over 60 years and they were Overjoyed actually at being able to see image of him again and I hope this brief background helps provide context for the misinterpretation of the event shown in the video I know personally that this is deeply saddened Alama who

has dedicated his life to the benefit others and it's my hope that you can now enjoy my conversation with Dan Harris Dan let's talk about um your recent trip to dilemma because you went for two weeks to see him in India and you turned your conversation with him into this incredible documentary series called the dilemma's guide to happiness which everybody should watch I watched it and

and I wondered what you sort of took away as the key take away from your visit with evalama about happiness let's start there let me try out a thesis on you I'm I'm um this visit to the Dalai Lama coincided with the with the a book that I've been writing for many years it's not going to come out for many years but I'm so I'm still

in the process of unlike you I can't write books quickly I I've got this will probably take me seven years to write this book that I'm working on now and so I'm kind of honing my thesis and I think my thesis is also the same is also the answer to your question which is what was my takeaway from my my time with the Dalai Lama so

I'll try it out with you and and please like take shots at it I I think for sure people listening to this podcast and I think most people are thinking a lot about how to be happier and healthier like we optimize for sleep we we obsess about what we're eating we we try to exercise maybe we meditate we're pulling lots of levers to to you know

get happier and healthier and look better in the mirror and have our CVS look better but the data that I've seen show that the the the most effective lever to pull for health and happiness it is and and I'm going to use a big and controversial word here but it's love the the quality of your relationships as the great Esther perel often says the quality of

your relationships will determine the quality of your life on on pretty much every level I'm not saying you don't need to eat healthy and exercise and sleep well but but you know if you look at the longitudinal studies it's people who have good relationships who live long prosper in the fullest sense of that word I think that's true I think it's something I learned as I

was exploring the research around longevity and went to visit the blue zones were a tremendous sense of connection belonging community and they you know Okinawa for example they have little groups that form as kids where they put people in little groups where they have four or five people who have their back throughout their whole life and go through the entire Journey with them and you know

last night I was on my men's group which was basically a group of guys who've known each other for 40 years since college and we just gather every week for an hour and a half on zoom and where we are drop in not everybody makes it every time but it's just it's an amazing feeling to have that sense of connection and and belonging and um I

know and Richard Davidson on on your um on your uh happiness program that you created the the uh the dilemma's guide to happiness he said you know being being lonely and isolated is a bigger risk factor for death than obesity and sometimes I've heard people say it's equivalent to smoking two packs a day loneliness is probably one of the biggest killer so social isolation is is

a huge issue so it's hard it's hard for people though to think about how do I build those relationships how do I create that connection and and in some ways there's a way of being that allows that to happen right and in some ways I think maybe you weren't fully um talking about this in your in your series but there's a sense that you know the

more you are able to show up and be present with somebody and give someone your presence the more you're able to pay attention the more you're able to connect with somebody the more you're able to do those things the Richer your relationships are and that being able to do that is predicated on you being connected to yourself and being aware of yourself and having a level

of you know own um sort of Happiness within yourself so instead of it's kind of like a double-edged sword in order in order to actually have Community Connection you have to actually be someone if you want to hang out with that question yes yes okay you you just put your finger on a lot of it can you do you give me permission to give like a

long-ish answer here because you just said so much go go go this is this is all about you well no I don't wanna I'm not this is not I'm not going to talk about myself I'm gonna I'm gonna just build on the ideas that you just I think it phrased in quite intriguing ways one is the the first idea is just in terms of why this

is home important is just think about Evolution think about how we are designed we did not as a species become the planet's apex predator for better or worse because we're the strongest we're not the strongest you know the elephants are stronger pillows are strongers so but what we what we're good at is cooperating communicating collaborating to to take down the stronger animals and eat them and

and and we have babies that require a ton of care they sometimes call it the fourth trimester after they've exited the womb we are designed to be in relationship with each other as I've heard one scientist say our very nervous systems are designed to be in communication with other nervous systems so loneliness on the Savannah and our evolutionary days was deadly because if you were outside

of the pack you were very vulnerable to being killed and eaten by somebody else and so our body now reacts very poorly to social isolation listeners may be thinking oh well I'm not lonely I I I've Got Friends uh it's some of you may not be thinking that we can talk about about how to address that but I think there are a lot of people who

you know might look around and say I'm I'm doing great I've got a social connection but you can actually be technically lonely and surrounded by lots of other people or you might not be technically lonely but the relationships in your life are afraid and not as strong as they could be and if you're an Optimizer if you're looking to get healthier if you're listening to the

Doctor's Pharmacy with an F you probably are and I'm saying this is the lever that the data suggests is most important to pull if you're trying to get healthier and happier okay that's my that's my No you're you're 100 right I think you know this is ancient hardware and stuff like we're a little little naked skinny human running around on a Savannah is going to survive

very long and I think there's a wonderful book you might have seen it called the social conquest of the Earth by EO Wilson where he talks about about our evolutionary drive for altruism and that we we have to be collaborative we have to be connected in order to survive from whether we're ants or whether we're humans right and I I think that's a really important thing

and it's not something our culture really prizes our values or prioritizes and and I think it's it really is a very important piece I think you know the uh in Buddhism and we talked earlier that I studied Buddhism in college there's you know three pillars of of Enlightenment right which is the the Buddha which is the symbol of someone who can be enlightened so the possibility

of waking up in this lifetime the second is the Dharma which is the teachings of how to do that and that those are the practices and meditation and certain you know structures of thinking and awareness and then there's the Sangha which is the community as the key pillar to hold you accountable and to be there for you to actually live a vibrant life so I think

those are really important for us to think about and I I personally am I you know prioritize this more and more in my life I've spent many years of my life working really hard raising a family running around the world trying to change the world change medicine and and in some ways I sacrificed a lot of of relationships um but now at this point in my

life it's it's I'm doubling down and I think it's important so you know when you when you were with a dilemma you're kind of hinting you're hinting at something now that you've kind of highlighted quite well in in the dilemma's guide to happiness which is this idea of of altruism um and and uh what's interesting is you kind of wrote this article in your times which

kind of seems like the opposite of altruism which is the benefits of wise selfishness so I'd love you to unpack what is wise selfishness and um how does that work and what is this all about because it doesn't seem that it's a good idea to be selfish if you want to be in community and connected right so this is why selfishness is one of in my

opinion for my money from uh from my perch as a western um extremely privileged uh guy one of the most useful Concepts from the Dalai Lama um now there are many people who might disagree with with that but for me why selfishness is what has had a huge impact on me and he you know just to say words like altruism and compassion or if you want

to get even more Buddhist about it loving kindness love to me those they they land in a kind of empty preachy way it's like the kind of Concepts that you see knit onto a throw pillow or used as a hashtag on Instagram or whatever and so it doesn't you know I'm an ambitious guy I'm I'm I'm a skeptical guy I like I like humor uh so

words like that don't really land with me and I also you know I think on some level and now it's quite conscious for me oh Dan you did you did start the podcast by saying the most important thing was love so I'm yes yes but I did it with like with some sheepishness you know it's like uh uh I mean like the the working title for

this book that I've been working on is is me a love story and it's just a joke um and but it's not a joke you know like I I I'm trying to reclaim love it sounds like a story about Trump I don't know yeah exactly exactly so it's a play it goes right to why selfishness it's a play on this binary that I think many of

us have which is it uh either I take care of myself or I'm taking care of other people um that may not be a binary that we're conscious of but I think on some level like you're either selfish or you're selfless but what the dot the Dalai Lama's point is actually some level of selfishness is absolutely necessary you need to take care of yourself in order

to be useful to other people and the now here's where things get interesting if you're truly selfish if you're really wisely selfish you will understand how we evolved and that is to have good relationships so you will care about other people because that redounds to your benefit and so this is instead of being a binary this is I think I use this phrase like a beneficial

double helix you take care of yourself you have a good relationship with your own mind uh with your own body and that better prepares you to help other people which then redounds to your benefit and then your uh then that makes you happier and that makes you more willing and able to help other people and that is what I've often called the cheesy upward spiral I

mean and that is where you want to be in life and I'm not saying I'm not saying this from The Mountaintop as a perfect person yeah yeah because I still retain the capacity to be a schmuck in a million ways and I'm not talking about this like as some religious leader preaching at you I'm just saying look at how we're designed people yeah yeah and follow

that that that's really beautiful I think I think it it it's interesting when you look at the the neurobiology of altruism which is like doing something selflessly for others it actually creates a biological response of pleasure in our brain in the same center that is is reacting to heroin or cocaine or yes sugar right so you can either eat a sugar or you can do something

good for somebody else and it actually creates a positive effect and it's sort of it reminds me of Adam Brand's philosophy of how to get ahead right and I think it's it's what I followed most of my life which was collaborative sharing so people always ask me I'm not sure if I can do it I'll help you even if I don't directly get anything back from

it and what I've noticed is that this creates this virtuous cycle in my life where it just creates more and more goodness and as opposed to no I can't help you because it's competitive or it's you know you're I'm going to lose something by by sharing or giving it's actually it's actually not the way things actually work and there's a very bit of science about this

too which is pretty interesting it's beautiful and and uh I mean it's beautiful that you know there's so many problems with the human with humans right there's so many problems we can talk about but this at the core this is incredible feature not bugged to the human design which is that the best thing we can do for ourselves is to help other people that's incredible and

that's the way out of all of these Messes in my opinion that's not to say we don't need structural fixes for big problems like bigotry and inequality and climate change yes we do but I think the those structural changes are going to be brought about by people and I think we want people who are again to use a loaded term more loving a word I'm trying

to reclaim um and and make less cheesy um so yeah I mean it it you know what something something I often say to people is um pay attention in a moment where you hold a door open for somebody it's just a small thing you just hold the door open for something yeah we do this type of every day if you're paying attention that feels good that

feeling is infinitely scalable Dr Richard Davidson who's featured prominently in my podcast series and video series on the Dalai Lama who's a long time collaborator with the Dalai Alamos but one of the first people to really use neuroimaging to look at the brains of meditators show that that in fact what's actually true about our brains is something called neuroplasticity the brain changes it's the organ of

experience it changes based on our experiences and so if you are systematic about giving the brain positive experiences a workout in the form of meditation well you can change the brain and so these states that we want well at the end of the day all we really want at the most fundamental level is a positive or all we really want are positive mind States you know

we we do lots of things in our life we work hard we get married but yeah and and and those result in concrete um uh uh actions and and phenomena in the world but what we really want is to feel a certain way and these feelings of calm connection uh compassion uh Happiness joy uh generosity gratitude these feelings are not factory settings that are unalterable they

are skills that are trainable that is huge and so I've dedicated much of my life to spreading that I mean I quit my job at ABC News to like get more and more focused on that news yeah it's so it's such an important Insight that we actually can change the structure and the function of our brain and aren't you know sort of subject to its you

know fluctuations that cause us unhappiness and misery and and often help us to sort of screw up our life if we don't fix it you know it's just like you know and it is kind of a muscle i instead of an exercise I call it inner size how do we practice on your inner size and and and and train our brains and it's it's one of

the things that guides everything in our life and without it I think our our lives are poorer and our lives are more messy and are more unhappy and and the truth is they're really fixable um I I had a really interesting conversation with friend of mine the other day who has climbed every Peak on every continent who's skied across Antarctica by himself who rode a boat

across the Drake Passage with 40-foot seas in Antarctica I mean this guy's serious dude and uh he recently did a dark Retreat you know something that Tibetans have done for years and I've gone to these dark rooms for often a month or more at a time and meet their minds and he said you know after a week in there he felt the happiest he'd ever felt

the most at peace he's ever felt the most connected he'd ever felt and you know it just it just think about like being in a dark tree it's like the the forced ceasing of all the fluctuations that happened with our monkey mind and the settling of all that and I've done like 10-day meditation Retreats and it's just amazing to see what happens like after you know

12 hours of meditating a day for 10 days what happens to your brain it's like it's like whoa wow everything is like it almost was like taking psychedelics honestly yes have you ever done a 10-day Meditation Retreat I do them all the time all the time yeah yeah and don't you feel like you're on LSD or mushrooms not that you remember taking them but if you

were I'm total I mean all the drugs um I've been very open about that um so I yes I mean you brought up psychedelics before and I do think there's a connection here you know and that you can think of psychedelics as a as a shortcut but there are drawbacks well one of them is if you take psychedelics in the wrong setting it can be a

short cut to as my friend Sam Harris jokes that the summit of Mount shame uh and you can you know you can have all sorts of bad experiences if you're not doing them carefully the other thing is that since they're shortcuts it could be hard to integrate these big experiences into your daily life whereas with meditation um it is it is an exercise so you're just

constantly pounding the learnings into your neurons and that's a very compelling argument so I'm kind of yes and on all of that but having done lots and lots and lots of the 10-day meditation Retreats it does you know and I'm not saying you have to do meditation retreats in order to meditate I think you could do a couple minutes every day and you're good to go

but what's interesting about these Retreats and you know this uh Dr Mark is that is is that you get us two things you get a sense especially early on when you're struggling because you will struggle most likely uh that you get a sense of what your life is actually about like you think your life is about service or relationships or striving for excellence at work but

mostly your life is about what's for lunch do I need a haircut where do gerbils run wild it's like your your thoughts are chaotic and cacophonous and vast the vast majority of them are ridiculous and self-centered and you really on a Meditation Retreat get a deep sense of that and that's helpful because the more clearly you see the Ridiculousness of your own mind the less the

Ridiculousness owns you and that is the point of mindfulness meditation the second thing to say is once you once all of the the mental churn the volume of that goes down on a retreat you see what the mind is capable of which is actually dropping out of Habitual rumination about the past or projection into the future and seeing the extraordinary holy wowness of whatever's happening right

now no matter where you are it's just incredible that we're here at all do you know the causes and conditions that had to happen starting at the Big Bang in order for you to be alive right now the amount of people that had to meet in the right places on the number of continents and all of the atoms that have to be in the right spot

in order for you to be alive right now it's almost ridiculous and embarrassingly obvious to just say this but when you can take that into your marrow yeah it is incredible and that is quite similar to what happens uh on on psychedelics it's a miracle yeah you get you feel connected to everything uh in a way that is is hard to describe um the Buddhists talk

about you know being born in this Incarnation as a human is akin to being a turtle swimming in all the world's great oceans finding one little life ring you know like and popping its head up for a breath in that laughing once in every like thousand years or something like that so it's like it's not a common thing to get to be a human it's a

real blessing and we get you know this whole range of experience and often I feel like we kind of walk through it mostly asleep and what you're talking about Dan is is a as a methodology a practice a science and a whole sort of history of how to actually uh wake up right and not not walk through life in this sort of one-dimensional frame which you

know it takes us away from ourselves and from others so so basically meditation isn't to get better meditation it's not to get in a way it's not really to do that it's a get better at life right yes you're absolutely right you know the difference in your life uh from when you were you know hard driving news anchor who had a full-blown panic attack on live

National Television to the current the current the current Dan who um has a very different life and what what what was that because you were you were at the Pinnacle of what we see a success in our society not that you're not now but just that it was like wow like that look at that guy he's got it all and then you kind of came apart

at the seams and then you put yourself back together through this process of exploring meditation which as a sort of skeptical journalist you're like this is kind of woo-woo horse and you know actually found that it was there was gold in them their Hills so yes yes yeah you're exactly right I I um you know I think you and I have discussed this before so I

I won't I won't I won't spend too much time on the back story here but as you said yeah I for 21 years I was a correspondent at ABC News I um after 9 11 spent a lot of time in war zones and uh then I came home and got depressed after being in Iraq and Afghanistan and many other places and uh I did a very

dumb thing which is that I started to self-medicate with cocaine um and that led to a panic attack on Good Morning America which was pretty inconvenient um uh I wasn't high when I was on the air but my shrink um later explained to me that my ambient use of drugs changed my brain chemistry in ways that made it more likely for me to have a panic

attack um so uh so that uh that sucked and really changed my life and ultimately led me to meditation which as you said I was very skeptical of I thought it was hippie nonsense and but I was very lucky and I started to get interested in meditation before the current massive hype cycle around meditation so this was around 2008 2009 and uh there was a lot

of research that showed that meditation was really good for you but it hadn't been widely publicized yet so I I recognized that well this is a really good story and uh spent many years um really studying meditation and doing a bunch of Retreats and getting to know many of the most prominent teachers uh in the west and the East and then I put out a book

in 2014 called 10 happier which turned into a podcast and an app and all that stuff and ultimately in a life and a life right yes so this this is where I'm gonna start answering your I think what you really wanted me to talk about which is how what it has it changed for me how has it changed me you know that people sometimes say to

me especially meditators they're like well you undersold it 10 is you know it's much more than that and that's absolutely correct uh it's like an investment where the 10 compounds annually you know these are skills these positive mental States and you just keep getting better at them and they're not um it's not like physical skills where you're you're contending with laws of physics you know it's

uh you really you really can develop these skills pretty far are and I won't sit here and say that I'm enlightened whatever that means it's just that I have been very consistent about practicing for a long time and uh I'm a much happier person than I was back then and and I think it's multifactorial you know I I married well I'm more mature I have a

healthy eight-year-old son and all of those things um play into this we tend to get wiser as we get older and uh but I would say meditation and Buddhist practice generally has been a huge has provided a lot of benefits and to get granular on what they are one of them is mindfulness which we kind of reference without using that word but it's it's the self-awareness

that's generated through meditation that allows you to see your urges and thoughts and impulses without being owned by them necessarily so in meditation we usually sit and focus on our breath for a little while very quickly you get distracted and a lot of people think oh I've gotten distracted a million times as I'm doing this that means I'm a bad meditator but actually distraction it means

you're human and it means you're a successful meditator because the whole point is not to get into some bulletproof Bliss bubble where all thoughts evaporate that may happen at the deep end of the pool but for most of us it's a process of continuous humiliation where you're you're trying to focus on one thing usually your breath and then you get carried away by your ego over

and over and over again and the whole point is to start to see how ridiculous your ego is so that you're not owned by it in your daily life and that's mindfulness and so now when I'm hit by an urge to say something that's going to ruin the next 48 hours of my marriage or if I'm you know hit by an urge to eat a sleeve

of Oreos I'm way better at just letting that come and go it's not repressing it it's just seeing it arise and pass and that is a huge benefit of meditation another huge benefit is focus you know because this practice of trying to focus on one thing your breath and then getting distracted and starting over and over and over again every time you start over that is

and you reference this phrase before it's like a bicep curl for your brain and we see it changing the part of the brain that regulates attention and that part of the brain has been under assault for many many years via technology and specifically social media and so this is a great way to counter program against that and then finally I think there there's so much compelling

evidence and this is what I'm really spending a lot of time writing about these days so much compelling evidence that it can make you warmer more compassionate dare I say more loving and not only towards other people but yourself and of course the the the the line between you Dr Mark and the world we we feel like isolated egos fretfully navigating a hostile world but the

line between you and the world is porous you know we we're constantly taking in thoughts and food and air from the world and then putting stuff back out via noises coming out of our face and um and and we're in this dialogue with the world all the time and so getting more loving towards other people and yourself is again it can sound kind of shmoopy and

cliched but I I'm really my new mission is to is is really to kind of make this accessible and intriguing and attractive to all sorts of people specifically Skeptics I love this because you know the the the side effect of happiness is love it here happy you're just filled with more love and joy and you want to share it and it just creates this virtuous cycle

I think it's beautiful I I think uh you know one of the things that that you know is so important is the actual practice like being in the gym right of and meditating it's not like going to the gym for your brain but there's also another piece to it which is is the framework with which we sort of understand the world and you know Buddhists you

know most people only Buddhism is a religion uh no and and it has become a religion but it really is is not a religion it's actually a description of how the mind works it's a phenomenology of the mind if you will it's a way of thinking about the nature of our perceptions the nature of our misperceptions about the nature of reality because things seem a certain

way but they're actually not like we seem separate but actually we're not you know like we're like you said very porous and you know all of our atoms and energies are all intermingling and in a very real and direct way that are measurable so you know I think the the challenge is how do we sort of bring in not just the simple practice but also the

the teachings which which help us sort of reframe the nature of our minds and I think you know one of the things for me that was one of the biggest insights I ever had was that stress is the pers is the perception and with the emphasis on the word perception of a real or imagined threat to your body or your ego so it could be you're

in a war zone and it's a threat your bomb's gonna drop on you and that's a real threat to your body or it could be that you think your wife's cheating on you you know because you came home 10 minutes late from work or something and that's just a total fabrication and it creates the same biological response in the body and so Buddhists really have a

very interesting framework of understanding uh that that our our mental states are determined by the interpretation of our world and so how does how does Buddhism help us reinterpret the world to kind of reset our our ideas of of the sort of otherness that we kind of typically live with I mean there's so many ways in in which Buddhism does that indeed you're right by the

way Buddhism is practiced as a religion in a quite beautiful Way by millions of people it's the fourth largest religion in the world and that's all amazing but the Buddha himself um from what we know about him I don't think he was setting out to create a religion per se the word Buddhism didn't even come up that word it was invented by Colonial scholars in the

1800s I believe who went to Indian and found some of the original texts the Buddha was creating the word you used before it's Sangha a community of people who were practicing uh this science of mind that he discovered by doing many many years of meditation and study uh and so what is this teaching this Dharma this science of Mind show us about how to re um

you know kind of view the world through a different frame there are a number of things I would say one easy concept for people to understand is impermanence uh we um we know everybody knows it's obvious that everything's changing all the time if you as my meditation teacher likes to say if you ask somebody on the street uh is everything changing they'll say yeah of course

but we don't act that way we are programmed for denial we don't live our lives most of us with the knowledge from uh um uh um really centered in our mind up front uh that we're gonna die and that everybody we know is gonna die and all the dramas of our lives are just absolutely fleeting to use a Buddhist expression like bubbles in a stream you

know it's like a um this is all going by very quickly and if you don't get comfortable with this uncomfortable reality you're gonna suffer and that's the other big concept that the Buddha there are three really main um uh tentpoles to Buddhist uh philosophy and one of them is impermanence the second is if you if you're acting as if things aren't going to change if you're

clinging to things that won't last in an impermanent and entropic universe you're going to suffer and by suffering it doesn't necessarily it's a that's a big and unpleasant word it's not like you're going to be chained to a cliff and some crows are going to Peck out your innards it's more like it's going to be unsatisfying if you think that every lick of an ice cream

cone is gonna do it for you that's not actually gonna work so instead we just are chasing dopamine hits all the time we eat more and more and more we get we shop more and more and more we gamble more and more and more we scroll more and more and more as as again to quote my meditation teachers a guy named Joseph Goldstein who likes to

ask people how many lattes have you sipped how many vacations have you gone on how many purchases have you made and are you done of course not we're insatiable and that is suffering in the Buddhist that's one aspect of suffering in the Buddhist uh worldview and then the final and this one is can get a little esoteric for people but it's it's it's um the idea

white guys with slightly graying hair and blue button-down shirts on it's ridiculous so I'm looking at you and I'm looking at myself and we are real on some level we're real but on some just the way the chairs we're sitting in are real but if you were to take a high-powered microscope to the chairs you would see that fundamentally it's all spinning subatomic particles and mostly

mostly right yes so there is no Core Essence of chair and there is no Core Essence of Mark and and you can start to see that when you put the Mind under the high-powered uh microscope of uh of meditation and so what is that that can sound hopelessly theoretical but so what does it mean in your actual life so the million practical benefits but let me

just give you one next time you get gripped by a strong desire or a big blast of anger look for who is experiencing that look for the solidity of the anger can you claim it as your own you can't it's like a weather system it's a coming together of atmospheric conditions there is no core nugget of hurricane that I can grab it's just a coming together

of conditions and then they will disentangle decompose and pass and that's a really useful way to see all of these things that dog us about our own minds is it's not necessary this anger that's coming through isn't my anger I don't need to view it as me it's just a passing weather system as one great monk has said to claim these emotions as yours is a

misappropriation of public property [Laughter] listen to what you're talking about it reminded me of this in a Victor Frankl and what he said about um you know the choice we have about how we feel and how we live our lives and you know as he's not a Buddhist he was a Jewish guy in the concentration camp who basically realized that he had a choice about how

to interpret his reality and he basically said you know in between stimulus and response their lies of pause and in that pause lies our freedom you know Eliza choice and that freedom in that choice lies our freedom and so I I think we're our freedom which is what we're talking about here freedom from suffering freedom from unhappiness freedom from all the best Institutes of being a

human being that you know make us miserable and we basically torture ourselves with it really has to do with the how we how we see our world and what I hear you saying Dan is that meditation and the practices that you're you're sharing and that are in this beautiful Dalai Lama's guide to happiness which is really a beautiful 10 part guided meditation practice with a bunch

of editorializing around which was really fun with you and Dai Lama and Ritchie Davidson and Joan Halifax which are uh meditation researchers and meditation uh teachers um you actually um can come up with a very different sort of way of feeling and being without without having to sort of sort of go off the deep end but it's actually a very powerful sort of nugget that you're

sharing yo I have to say you do so much of a better job promoting my stuff than I do yeah I appreciate that I'd like to get really excited to talk about it I love talking about like esoteric Buddhist ideas and then really like trying to help people apply them in their lives but thank you I appreciate that uh you know you know I I do

I think um I I do want to address something that I can imagine listeners thinking right now Mark can you tell me if if I'm if I'm on something here I want to be clear that you you look at somebody like the Dalai Lama and you think okay well that guy's you know always laughing and smiling and he even though he's suffered so much in his

life but that that's not accessible to me you know I'm I don't know what enlightenment is per se most people don't I mean uh I'm I'm voicing I think a skeptical the thoughts of a skeptical listener right now I don't you know what is Enlightenment to I don't even care but it's not gonna happen for me I got these daily problems and I've got I got

to deal with and all of this can sound super theoretical and fluffy that I do come back to the notion of 10 happier Perfection is not on offer here I retain the capacity I really do retain the capacity to be a schmuck in millions of ways and I have lots of problems in my life and we can talk about some of them I've had I have

you know I still deal with panic you know I so but but but you can get marginally happier and better and you can compound those gains over time and that that's the news here that I really am excited to share whether it's producing you know a course with the Dalai Lama or a podcast um on which I've interviewed you um and and I'm about to interview

for which uh I'm about to interview you again um whatever medium I'm working in or doing television whatever it is uh writing books I'm really just trying to get out that message that there are mental skills that you can there are meant simple practices you can integrate into your life um both you know formally in meditation and informally in your in your walking around life that

that will increase your happiness or reduce your misery and that you can continue to build on these in in ways that I think really do lead if not in a steady hockey stick um unbroken um uh rise up to the right it's it's more just like a a gentle sloping lots of zigs and zags because life is filled with vexations and vicissitudes but like an overarching

uh trend line toward more happiness as you get older that that I think is very possible for people I think that's a that's a beautiful message I think I think you kind of want to lean into thinking about you know what are the practices and tools we can use in our own lives to actually move that needle and that's I think I'd just encourage people to

check out the dialogue's guide to happiness as an app it's beautiful it's simple it's fun it's easy and I I really loved it honestly I was it was so accessible and not woo-woo and it really gave people a road map to to get started which is often what people wonder okay this sounds great I want to be more compassionate I want to love myself more I

want to love others better I want to not have my monkey mind running my life I want to not be constantly Buffet out by the world you know what do I do and and this is a the answer to what do I do and it's a beautiful Doorway to to help people to actually get access to that uh knowledge that's really ancient but it's really you

know we're so good at outer technology right in the west but but Tibetans were a sealed off culture for thousands of years plus and developed a massive inner technology and that's really what we're talking about and the science around it is so powerful that you know the work of Richard Davidson to document the biology and and the physiology and the neurobiological states of happiness and meditation

is is amazing and there's a book actually that I'm sure you're aware of called altered date Altered States but yeah yeah Richard and Dan Goldman who's a friend and basically you know Maps out for those Skeptics you know how this actually works like you know if you if you do an actual bicep curl on regular enough basis you're going to build your muscle same thing with

these practices and and they're not and they're not inaccessible to us the one thing I did I did want to talk about which is sort of I think about a lot which is you know people have really struggle with severe trauma or issues that are seem to be sort of Beyond meditation and and I'm not sure if you're familiar with the work of a guy named

Dan Brown from Harvard who recently died who was a psychologist but he was also a Buddhist scholar he spoke flu in tibetan you know he understood Both Worlds and you know he realized that some things you just can't meditate your way directly out of and he created a model for people with severe personality disorders people have been you know sexually abused traumatized really horrible things people

with addiction people with you know really complex trauma and with with the personality disorders which in in from my world as a doctor are untreatable right so this is a narcissistic personality or the social personality or borderline personality disorder these are things that just seem really recalcitrant when it comes to any kind of medical intervention and yet he found a model that incorporated meditation but you

use sort of a whole series of steps to to break through those things so you know I just wonder how what when do people kind of need to go beyond just meditation to kind of work through some of those really deeper things that we suffer from because as a giant pool of us are mostly just neurotic and screwed up but then there's ones who are you

know really really damaged and and have really suffered um I think your own something really important here and I think you know early on in this conversation I was saying I'm not a meditation fundamentalist that I don't think it's the only thing you can or should do to boost your happiness and there are so many people who've I'm not one of them I'm happy to say

I don't feel lucky to be able to say that I don't have severe trauma either childhood trauma or otherwise um but there are so many people who do and for them I think meditation can be very very helpful but I think from what I can tell and I'm not a mental health professional but I interview mental health professionals for a living um from what I can

tell if you do it within the setting of highly qualified therapists then it can be just another tool another arrow for your quiver and uh it's not going to fix everything but it can really be a key part of whatever you're doing to feel better to get better but again to have it embedded within you know I'm I'm all for when when it's when you're working

with qualified people therapy medication if if it's indicated um you know as you talk about so much and so helpfully uh working on on issues around what kind of food you're taking in and I as I mentioned before obviously sleep nature the power of your relationships there this all kind of adds up to what I sometimes refer to as a Pantheon of no-brainers and the we

should all be pulling all of these levers whether we're just you know the sort of worried well the the garden variety neurotic or we've got real trauma that we have to work through um it's uh these tools are available to all of us and it's about figuring out what works best for you yeah right well there's two other things I want to talk to you about

uh now because they were highlighted in your in your series uh the dialysis Dalai Lama's guide to happiness and one was and they're kind of related one was self-criticism and the other is Judgment of others basically and you know what they do to our biology and how in certain practices like meditation can help us work through them because you know if we were to actually say

out loud what our inner I call it our inner animals saying to ourselves you know people would think we're crazy or if we said it to our friends as if it were them we wouldn't have any friends yeah we do that all the time to ourselves and that has real consequences and it actually you know there's a I don't know if you know the word Abracadabra

obviously but you know where that word comes from no it's it's Hebrew and and it means I create the world through my words basically I speak the world into being in other words you say this to yourself and you actually you know reinforce it uh so so talk about that sort of self aspect then I want you to talk about you know all the people in

your life who drive us crazy and and and how they can actually be a seed for for good in our lives and uh teachers one of the biggest most powerful and impactful changes in my life has come over the last five years I would say so I you know I started meditating in 2009 it wasn't really until 2018 or 19 that I started to get into

something called self-compassion which can sound I don't know either masturbatory or boring but but self-compassion is a very interesting field of study right now and the the yeah I I think you could even use the word self-love which is even more annoying but but uh you don't okay good well I I do because I'm a jerk um but so I've never liked terms like self-compassion or

something wait a minute isn't that just self-criticism I'm a jerk did you just do that yes although I used to say things like that and mean it you know actually so this this goes to the this goes to my answer to your question the the the the I I was intensely self-critical and still am and I think this is very common especially among ambitious people um

and we think we have I think this assumption again either conscious or otherwise that we need an inner drill sergeant an inner cattle prod in order to get anything done but the work of the Pioneers in self-compassion uh including um uh Kristen Neff and Chris germer the work of these two Geniuses has shown that actually if you can uh gently escort the inner drill sergeant off

the stage and replace them with an inner coach you are more likely to succeed and in her coach who has your back but is and is completely willing to point out when you've messed up but is not running you down and telling you you that you're worthless every time and you can't there are many many practices for self-compassion including specific forms of meditation or just deliberately

trying to talk to yourself the way you would talk to a good friend or from in my case you know noticing the difference between I the way I talk to my eight-year-old son and the way I talk to myself and then trying to talk to myself in ways that are close much more close much closer to that than my habitual self-laceration by the way you can

accompany talking to yourself in a supportive Way by like putting your hand on your chest or on your heart which I long rejected as irre deemably goofy but but actually again a ton of data to support that this can really help and so if you can develop this self-compassionate skills you're more likely to be um effective in your life and achieve your goals and happy and

this goes to the second part of your question uh Dr Mark which is um what does this have to do with other people and it has everything to do with other people because we live in this constant exchange with the world and this feedback loop what I've learned is that all the ways in which I'm making myself miserable show up in my relationships with other people

I'm too hard on them I'm snarky I have this kind of serrated humor I'm emotionally guarded and and as like a knife yes that's what I mean um uh as I've got as my inner weather has gotten bombier my relationships have improved and then my inner weather gets even nicer in my relationships improve even further and that's the cheesy upward spiral I was talking about before

and you can apply this to very very annoying people and it doesn't mean you're going to be a doormat or you have to invite these people over for dinner or accept the things they're doing that are unacceptable it just means you don't have to walk around saddled with rage and resentment which is not going to help you anyway as as is often said uh that kind

of attitude in the mind is like taking poison and hoping the other person dies you have a gradual resentment it's like that yeah you think you're you're making something bad happen to them but actually you're just causing harm to yourself absolutely and so we want to be able to take a affirmative action in the world we want to be able to be useful and helpful in

the world and stand up for things that we care about but what mind state do you want to be operating out of fear rage uh stress or caring for yourself and others even the people you disagree with you can see that um you know you might be able to see and increasingly I've been able to see that if I came out of that womb and was

subject to the conditions of the the life the of the person with whom I disagree I might be doing the exact same thing and so I I don't have to agree with them but I don't need to demonize them which only just adds extra weight uh into my pack which I don't want to carry um and so that I found is is all of this I've

found is really helpful just having a better relationship with myself improving my relationships to other people all of this and I'm not perfect at this but it's very beneficial when I can practice it and the beautiful thing about it is free you know to buy supplements you don't have to get a gym membership you don't understand anything I mean you know your online app I think

is free I I write the whole thing was free online right I I the Dalai Lama thing is totally free if you want to go deeper uh we'll we'll charge you but not that much and my podcast like your podcast is totally free and so yeah this doesn't need to cost it shouldn't cost you much money and it can be totally free um and and uh

you know that's uh like many of the best things in life it's beautiful okay so so how how um how's your practice changed in meditation over the years and then I I want to talk about your experience being with the Dalai Lama uh and what what actually is his secret what are his practices and honestly you get to be the way he is because he's very

funny and he's really always full of joy and always happy and you know despite having his culture smashed and destroyed by the Chinese it just seems like he's fully Joy he is for it it's it's and I'm such a died in the world skeptic you know my whole training is you know a skeptical newsman and question everybody and so I come into the whole I mean

I I've I first met him back in 2010 and I know you've spent time with him too but the first time I met him I went in there thinking oh this is the guy with the goofy laugh and everybody gets all sentimental around him and uh and he's a religious figure and I'm an agnostic and so I I came in pretty skeptical and I always every

time I come back to interview him I always come back with a little bit of that you know journalistic remove that I you know my conditioning uh often pushes me in the direction of approaching everything that way and every time I'm like no this guy's incredible and it's not like he's in denial about this pain and suffering of the world or the pain of suffering he's

endured I mean remember this is a guy who was driven out of his own country by a Chinese Invasion and um has watched his people you know get traumatized in some profound ways and is very tuned in to to the all of the world's ugliness um and yet is just really like light-hearted and rubbery uh when you're around them and so how how does he do

that and I think the answer is from what I can tell is this counter-intuitive magic of compassion you know what is compassion we we and it's a psychological term and technically the way it's thought of at is empathy which is feeling other people's feelings this is naturally wired into us we have these mirror neurons in the brain that help us feel what uh the feelings of

other people around us however if you do that in the wrong way unless you're a social doubt well right exactly those guys they tend to look at people as objects but most of us are not sociopaths or Psychopaths and and so we we feel other people's feelings but if you do that in the wrong way you can get burned out or you can shut yourself down

because it's painful but compassion is empathy Plus the desire to help and this is a skill so when you add on the desire to help it puts you in an enobling empowered position even if there's nothing you can do to help it's just the desire to see the suffering of people around you alleviated and so compassion is a skill that can be generated through meditation uh

where you do practices where you just Envision the people around you are suffering and you repeat phrases like may you be free from suffering maybe free from Pain maybe free from anger and if this may sound like a forced and somewhat trickly exercise but it is another kind of bicep curl for your brain and it's the kind of practice that the Dalai Lama has been doing

since I don't know age seven or eight uh so 80 years now and when you're around him you can tell something is different and I you know was really struck and you can you can uh you can see a little bit of this in the video series we produced but you actually hear quite a bit more in the Companion podcast that we produced for my podcast

where you really hear people around the Dalai Lama while we were with him we spent about two weeks in his orbit you hear people like losing it in his presence um and I'm not talking about just Tibetan followers of his I'm talking about people on my team my cameraman who I've worked with for 20 years and covered school shootings with and wars and political campaigns Tommy

K the Irish guy from Delaware never even didn't know anything about the Dalai Lama first day we spent with the Dalai Lama and you can hear all of this in the in this little podcast series we did he's shooting with the Dalai Lama the Dalai Lama is doing a public audience where he's greeting people locals who were coming by to get a blessing from him and

Tommy is standing there just shooting it for a couple of hours and when he's done Tommy this inflappable cameraman who's seen it all puts the camera down and comes over to me is shaking and crying and gives me a hug and says thank you for bringing me I've never seen anything like this and that was just one story and I think that it goes back to

the thing we talked about right at the top here which is that we are wired for compassion it is the central feature of The Human Experience Compassion or love or whatever just the capacity to give a we are wired for that and when you're around a pure beam of it when you're around somebody who's been practicing for 80 years and if you believe Tibetan uh Faith

uh 14 lifetimes it can undo you and it's very powerful and it's a thing we may not realize we need but this fundamental human need to be seen understood cared about when you're around somebody who is just that good at it it's remarkable and so like the Michael Jordan of happiness you know he is and just fully answer your question I promised the last thing I

was going to say is that how does that how can you be happy in the midst of that suffering it's because you're doing the empathy plus the desire to help and that's compassion and that allows you to be with the suffering of the world and feel okay because you are you are you're training the Mind toward altruism not shutting down and um and by the way

that also leaves you more open to the many awesome things about being alive like the Dalai Lama likes little cakes and tea and he likes this big big breakfasts and he makes jokes about going to the bathroom and so it kind of opens you up for all of it yeah well it's interesting to anyone you're talking about with compassion because you know as a doctor um

it really it is it is what I do every day is you know yes be with the suffering of others and get it and try to help them uh the most profound experience I think I've ever had of just Bliss and it sounds crazy to say this and and really deep profound happiness was when I went to Haiti after the earthquake uh we were the first

medical team on the ground in the main hospital and part of Prince were you know they were 300 000 dead 300 000 wounded the scale was just unimaginable far more than any War you could imagine I think I don't know how many how many people died in all the wars and in the U.S history I think it's like 600 000 or something this was like 600

000 in like a day and I got there and you know we just had to dive in and start to help people and we're working 20 hours a day and it was horrific you know people had lost everything and lost their homes their limbs their lives families um but just getting out of my little Mark world and being in service and helping others you know I

I was a weird experience of being in this horrific environment and yet feeling a deep sense of joy and happiness and peace and it was kind of a weird Paradox because even to say it sounds strange like what are you talking about how do you go to a place like that and feel good it was it was really because I just I was just sort of

immersed in the act of helping and serving and being compassionate and and having these beautiful moments with people and um it was just so it was just so moving to me um and to see how humans respond in that way and how they helped each other and uh it's sort of what life's about and I think you know you started we started the podcast talking about

love I think we ended talking about love because at the end of the day you know um as as uh John Lennon and Paul McCartney said love is all there is you know right you know I I used to have a I mean I'm a huge Beatles fan I used to be super skeptical about that like love is all you need what do you mean you

need to go to the dentist too and you know like there's lots of other things we need but actually going to the dentist is an act of love it's a self-love you're taking care of yourself love is all you need if you understand love properly and um what you said about Hades beautiful I was there too as a journalist and um it was horrifying but I

can see exactly how that worked for you because in uh heightened acts of service there's no room for the existential crisis there's no room for the mark neuroses you're just healthy people and it goes back to what we were talking about before it's like this incredible we talk about all the bugs in the human design but this incredible feature which is what is good for us

is good for other people and what is good for other people is good for us and that's why selfishness and uh that's why there you go and I think I think uh next time reach for that cookie or that cigarette or the bottle alcohol just think that maybe you should stop and do something good for somebody else and that might give you the same joy and

pleasure without all the harmful side effects if you loved that last video You're Gonna Love the next one check it out here but it's never just anxiety right and it's never just one thing right right so that's the other thing is you know we often sort of are reductious in our approach in traditional medicine we go well you have anxiety that's what's causing you to feel

anxious no that's just the name