A Radical Buddhist Antidote for Anxiety | John Makransky and Paul Condon

0:04This is the 10 % Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris.

0:18Hello, my fellow suffering beings. How we doing today? My guests today are going to make a case that is both enticing and I suspect for some of you a little bit hard to swallow, at least initially, because my guests will present a radical antidote to the anger and overwhelm that so many of us feel these days. Potentially hard to swallow, though, because said antidote is compassion. Many people wince when you argue for compassion these days. I hear this all the time. You know, why should I develop my own capacity for warmth when what's truly needed is for other people to be nicer? My guests will argue convincingly, in my view, that a basic understanding of both modern science and ancient Buddhism leads inexorably to compassion as the medicine for what ails you.

1:07It doesn't make you weak. It doesn't make you a doormat. It makes you happier and healthier. My guests are John McCransky, who's a professor of Buddhism and comparative theology at Boston College, and he's also an ordained Tibetan Buddhist lama, and Paul Condon, an associate professor of psychology at Southern Oregon University and a research fellow at the Mind and Life Institute. Together, John and Paul have written a book called How Compassion Works, in which they lay out how to practice what they call sustainable compassion training. There are lots of incredibly useful little nuggets in this conversation.

1:43We talk about their sales pitch for compassion, even at a time when, as stated earlier, most of us really want other people to be nicer. The connection between attachment theory and compassion, why compassion is your natural state, how their model helps you access warmth without forcing it, and how to apply compassion practice to burnout, conflict, and difficult emotions. I should say, if you want to learn more about how to apply compassion to your daily life, this episode comes with a bespoke guided meditation from our Teacher of the Month, Christiana Wolf. If you sign up at danharris.com, you can access all of our companion meditations, and you can come to our weekly live meditation and Q &A sessions, which we do every Tuesday at 4 Eastern.

2:27The next one is coming up tomorrow, Tuesday, November 25th. Okay, we'll get started with John McCransky and Paul Condon right after this. John McCransky and Paul Condon, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thank you, Dan. I'll just kind of randomly start with you, Paul, but John, you can jump in on this. What is your sales pitch for compassion? I remember being in a meeting with a bunch of my advisors back in 2017. And I was at that time contemplating a how-to book on Buddhist compassion and loving kindness practices. And my brother, who's a venture capitalist and at the time was not very interested in the Dharma, said, why would anybody buy this book?

3:10We don't want to be nicer. We want other people to be nicer. How do you make this attractive to a skeptical, time-starved audience? I'm very curious. Yeah, good question. I think if we really pay attention to our experience and pay attention to when we feel good in our bodies and in our communications with other people, when those actions and communications have a kind of quality of kindness and gentleness or curiosity, if we're really honest with ourselves, we feel better when we are being kind and compassionate. The more time I think about this and explore into it and notice connections from various psychological perspectives, I think it confirms that, that compassion and kindness is a kind of natural state that human beings were evolved to be able to embody.

4:11It's a natural way of being. What say you, John? Compassion is one kind of expression of our fundamental being or the depth of our being or the ground of our being, whether we understand that as some concept of God as the ground of our being, or whether we understand that as Buddha nature or the Tao or in different systems of understanding, compassion is closer to what we really are. Therefore, all I'm adding is that from that perspective, what Paul said makes tremendous sense. Of course, we would feel more at home when the power of compassion is active in us. And there's one other thing that I would add, is in a sense it is an expression of more of our true home or of our very being prior to the ways that we tend to get caught up in our socially conditioned reactions to everything along with everyone around us.

5:12It's more like ontologically, sort of like fundamentally prior to all that or more fundamental than all that is a kind of a home base that compassion is kind of calling us back to. So I think what you're saying there, I'm going to say a bunch of words and then you should fact check me because I may say stupid words. I think if I'm hearing you correctly, you're saying our factory setting is compassion, just by way of elaborating on that. I've heard studies about newborns given a choice between puppets, malevolent puppets or benevolent puppets like dangled in front of them. And a hundred percent of the time, I don't know if these are newborns or infants or whatever, but not 99, like a hundred percent of the time they go for the warm option.

6:00And so it's like somehow being in a compassionate state and we'll define what that is, but being in a compassionate state feels like home, whether we're able to articulate that or not, there's a powerful pull in that direction. How am I doing? I think you're doing really well. I'm sure Paul would want to comment on that, and he's probably familiar with these studies. My first thought on that is, it's not just that compassion makes us feel more at home here. It's an expression of our true home. It's an expression of a kind of a primal expression of the very ground of our being. So from an attachment theory perspective and also evolutionary psychology perspective, infants come into the world with a kind of inborn instinct to be in connection with a source of safety and comfort and security, usually a parent, caregiver, and their behaviors are attempts to maintain some kind of proximity to that source of care.

7:08And there's an interesting perspective. Famous developmental neuroscientist Michael Tomasello wrote that humans in particular, compared with other animals or other primates, humans are specifically prepared to be in connection with multiple adults. So it's our sort of natural state or natural baseline to be in a caring, compassionate connection with more than just one caregiver. And the infant's instinct to prefer the pro-social warm puppet is some evidence of that, that infants seek out sources of comfort and safety in their environment. and our behaviors or capacity for pro-social behavior are actually rooted in that instinct to maintain proximity to compassion or proximity to care so i think that the perspective in terms of buddha nature or the ground of our being makes deep sense from this developmental evolutionary picture of humans as instinctually wanting to be near compassion.

8:18Paul, what is sustainable compassion training? Yeah, so John and I have talked about this phrase quite a bit. In attachment theory, there's a concept called the secure base. And the secure base is, in that tradition or that perspective, an external caregiver that provides a source of safety or comfort that an infant returns to as needed. And then once their needs are met, they can then go back and explore into the world. But what John and I have been doing in our work is trying to help people to identify resources or experiences from within their own life, in their own worldview, like a caring memory or a benefactor experience or a place in the world that feels comfortable and safe.

9:11And And by reconnecting with that memory and visualizing it as if it's happening, it's helping people to reconnect with the caring, loving qualities. And that's something we can repeatedly reconnect with as needed to then empower our own underlying capacities for care, well-being, simplicity, curiosity. and it's sustainable in that it's not something that we're trying to self-generate or create. It's something that we're learning to tap into or bring out from our underlying natural state, as we talked about in the opening. And so it's sustainable and it's inner resource that we can repeatedly come back to as needed to then shape or empower our compassion for others.

10:06So I just want to clarify that, though, Paul, that as I understood it, there are many, many, many, many practices, both preliminary practices and then sort of progressive practices in the book designed to help us tap into this. But I heard you say, and I might be being obtuse to use a fancy word here, that really it's all about summoning some image of a moment of a benefactor or what I think is sometimes unfairly derided as a happy place in common parlance. But my understanding going into this interview was that actually what you're describing the book is much more complex than that. Yeah, so the benefactor concept or sort of external resource of care is an entry point or what we've described as a relational starting point.

10:56So as opposed to entering into a meditation practice with the mindset of learning to cultivate compassion and mindfulness and wisdom through my own individualized effort, which I think many of us in the modern sort of Western world learn things like that. like we learn to ride a bike or play a piano sort of through a discipline and effort. What we're suggesting with this relational starting point is learning to tap into something with support, starting with support of an external resource with the sense that we are held in qualities of love and compassion. But then as you said, that is a kind of starting point that initiates the potential for much more, much further kinds of practices that help deepen into qualities of love and wisdom.

11:51So for people listening along at home might want to do this, John, let me turn to you. Can you describe this initial practice? You don't have to guide us in it, but how would we do it if we're interested in tapping in? I think the easiest way is to just guide it for a couple minutes it'll be very brief just come down from the thinking mind into the body as best you can if you're driving, just as best you can while driving just relaxing a bit so you come down from the thinking mind and just settle a bit more into the body letting the body unify you with it more and more, just by relaxing into it as best you can

12:35and just try now to recall a simple caring moment with another person or a pet that makes you happy to recall or feels heartwarming or kind of uplifting to recall try to do that right now try to remember simple caring moment with another person or a pet a moment when perhaps someone was kind of radiating some warmth to you or just happy to be with you or really listening or seeing you or could be a moment of snuggling with a child or a pet can you recall a moment like that kind of makes you happy to recall

13:20if you can now bring this to mind not just as a memory but it's happening right now. Right now, you are being seen and held in deep care, compassion, and acceptance and warmth beyond all judgments. That's happening. Just sense or imagine that that's happening. Feel it. You already know it. You've experienced it. Just inhabit that now and feel it. and relax into that and steepen its loving energies and its tender qualities and let them just infuse your whole being and your whole world

14:16every part of you and your world loved in its very being just relax into that

14:31and let these tender qualities embrace all of your body and mind

14:55and just let everything be.

15:07So that was a short introductory meditation. Thank you, John. Let me go back to you, Paul, because I think what you were saying as a distinction here, It struck me as perhaps being a distinction from the way compassion is normally taught, or at least the way I've understood how it's normally taught and have therefore taught it myself. Like you're developing a muscle, but we already have a muscle like a bicep, and we can develop it through bicep curl. And in traditional loving kindness or karuna or compassion practices in the old school Buddhist Theravada tradition, it's often described as, or I've often heard it as, you're training up these innate capacities.

15:54Here, it sounds like, yes, that is true, but it's also something about, it's less doing, it's less, at least as a starting point, less as you developing your capacity to be warm to other people, and more tuning into your innate receptivity to this, to use John's phrase, ground of our being? Dan, sorry, but I don't usually do this, but I'd like to be the first to respond to that because it's really referring back to the whole history of Buddhism. Yeah, yeah, no apologies required, go for it. The traditional way to cultivate before you do anything else, such as cultivating metta, love, compassion, or mindfulness for that matter, before you do anything like that, traditionally you would bring to mind the Buddha or other very saintly figures.

16:51Why are you doing that? It's called going for refuge before you do anything else. Going for refuge in what? In the power, actually, the embodied power of love, compassion, wisdom, and all associated qualities, which is what the Buddha represents and embodies. That's traditional. that's where everything begins and that's where paul and i are coming from however even though that in fact is the starting point through the whole history of buddhism and i would suggest the history of all other contemplative traditions for cultivating such qualities that i'm aware of spiritual traditions but here we're talking about buddhism even though that is the traditional way to begin that was edited out through a modernist lens that decided early on as practices of meditation were being adapted into modern Western cultures, that it would be hard for Westerners to relate to that, that most Westerners are not Buddhists, it would not be meaningful to bring to mind the Buddha in that way, that such practices were cultural artifacts and not essential without, as far as I can see, ever asking the question, what did such practices as relating to the Buddhas, the Bodhisattvas, the saintly figures of Buddhism, how did they function?

18:16What functions did they serve for those who would then learn following upon that first part of the practice, cultivating things like mindfulness and deep states of calm and insight and love and compassion, how did that going for refuge, that bringing to mind of embodiments of unconditional, all-pervasive, unchanging powers of love, compassion, and wisdom, how did that bringing that to mind before doing any of those other practices function? What did it do for people? That was not asked. That was edited out. Paul and I have discussed this a lot, but early on in my own attempt to practice what Buddhism was suggesting could be transformational in the possibility of generating much more unconditional care, love, compassion, and wisdom supporting them.

19:15As I attempted to do this practice starting from almost 50 years ago, I found there were a lot of inner obstacles to it, a lot of difficulties in the way that they were being taught, and many, many other Westerners around me were having difficulties. And at some point it dawned on me that part of that difficulty is that we did not begin in the right place. We began with an understanding of ourselves as autonomous, largely isolated individuals taking up something like a self-help technique to try to remake ourselves mostly by ourselves into something better, and that that framework is not the framework that successful practitioners of the Buddhist teaching have had ever, and that that might be part of the reason why we're facing so many obstacles in trying to cultivate compassion.

20:08Very interesting. Paul, do you want to weigh in on any of that? Yeah, I'd like to speak about a perspective that I think responds to what your question was, Dan, and then adds to John's perspective. But there is some understandings of the way that the brain and mind works that comes out of cognitive neuroscience that adds to the conversation. So I think most listeners, most people will recognize this as embodied cognition. Some neuroscientists also refer to it as grounded cognition. And the basic idea is that when the mind and brain conjures up some image or some concept, it's not that we are representing that or experiencing it in the way that a dictionary would by listing out the definitional features of something, but rather the brain is simulating the experience.

21:05So when we engage in these relational practices, like John was describing of calling to mind the Buddha, or adapting this to call to mind a resource of comfort and safety, what's happening within the brain is we're actually simulating the experience as if it's happening now. We don't have to work really hard to do that. The brain is constantly doing this. This is something that people in many different professions do. Professional athletes will do this. They'll visualize and imagine experiences. Piano players will do this, sort of visualize and imagine playing a piece without actually being in front of a piano.

21:47And it's stimulating the experience in the brain and throughout the body as if it's happening now. And so we're taking advantage of that in these relational forms of compassion training of calling to mind whatever resource from your life and from your world that helps to embody a sense of comfort and safety. And what happens then too, and this is where it ties back into the Buddhist traditions that John and I are drawing from, is these moments of safety and comfort are interrupting our ordinary sense of the way we might operate in the world as an individual trying to do something. they interrupt that and help draw out these natural capacities for compassion that we have been instinctually born with that are our natural state these relational moments are helping to bring that out and then i think the muscle metaphor the exercise metaphor that you're describing like you know we do a bicep curl to increase the bicep that still works it still applies.

22:54The more we engage in the practice and the more repetition we do, the easier it is, the more familiar it is. And it can just happen kind of quickly or on a dime the more that we do it, interrupting our narrow self-focused lens on the world and that help those capacities for compassion just come forth more effortlessly, more automatically. Is there any research into what this practice we've been talking about, this receptive mode practice, into what the benefits might be? It just strikes me as somebody who's had anxiety since sentience, that it might have some pretty powerful effects on anxiety.

23:37Yeah, so there's a field of research called attachment priming. And in this area of research, what researchers have done is have people call to mind a resource of security by looking at an image or visually imagining something or even just like reading words related to the feeling of safety and security. And that method has been used in hundreds of studies, and it's been shown to have benefits related to increasing tolerance of negative emotion, increasing patience while listening to another person, increasing willingness to engage in action to help another person and help reduce another's suffering.

24:26And importantly too, there was a meta-analysis a few years ago on this attachment priming technique showing that the attachment priming method is more than just feeling good. It's more than just a positive emotion or feeling. It's actually establishing the sense of security and a sort of sense of self that feels at ease. There's something about the underlying narrative about ourselves beyond just feeling happy. So that method or that priming technique is a sort of very brief version. What we're doing within the meditation practices is trying to make it much more powerful through the meditation practice.

25:08And there's myself and others who are actively doing some research to further explore the potential effects of that meditation. That's very cool. Because as I understand it, in your framework, we move from the receptive mode into what I think you call a deepening mode? Yes. And then from deepening mode into what we call inclusive mode. And all that becomes a basis for explicit practices of compassion.

25:38Coming up, John McCrackensky and Paul Condon talk about how deepening mode opens into awareness itself. They'll explain that. And then later we'll talk about how to integrate compassion into your everyday life.

25:59Let's start with deepening mode. Can you describe it? and very practically how we would access it or how do we inhabit it. How do we be entered into a process that's drawing us more and more into our depth and what does that mean to be drawn more and more into our depth? I think it's almost automatically somewhat confusing if a kind of depth dimension of our awareness is alluded to in general because we're not really brought up and educated by and large in modern societies to learn how to allow ourselves through some form of practice to be settled into deepening, we could say, levels or layers of consciousness.

26:45How to just gently settle into levels of consciousness or ways of being aware that are simpler than just thinking about everything and worrying about it. So unless we're introduced to some kind of a contemplative or prayerful, I include like prayerful practices or there are also ritual practices or contemplative practices of learning to allow the mind to settle into more and more simple and grounded, or you could say intrinsically more calm or peaceful dimensions of awareness. Unless we're introduced to a practice like that, then it can just seem like, what the heck is that that we're talking about?

27:33That doesn't exist. All that I know of that exists and all the people I talk with are pretty continually talking and thinking about and worrying about this and that, and that's the only kind of consciousness that I'm familiar with. There can't be any other kinds of consciousness, could there? And if there are, isn't that kind of like a very esoteric or abstract or mystical kind of thing, using the word mystical, like something that has nothing to do with me? But no, actually, it might not be that difficult to begin to learn how to relax the grip on our usual worrying, reacting mind and allow it to begin to settle into simpler, more intrinsically tranquil states of mind that are kind of prior to all that worrying and reacting.

28:23In the little meditation exercise that I just led, we actually began to touch in on that direction of possibility. At the very end of it, you might remember and i was saying just kind of relax and steep in that experience of tender qualities however that is for you every part of you in your world loved in its very being let yourself just kind of relax more and more right into that deeply allowing that and then just explore letting everything be and it's at that point that i was actually signaling toward the deepening mode, letting these qualities just help the mind and body to start to relax and settle so deeply that another kind of level of consciousness just naturally starts to emerge, not by trying to force ourself into another state of being or consciousness, but just allowing it to naturally kind of emerge more and more, and that starts to become deepening mode.

29:16Yeah. I'm just wondering, how much luck do you have getting beginners to get to that state? What I hear you saying is in my own meditation practice, there are times when I just allow sensations of the breath or sensations of the body to be there. I will then, of course, get distracted a million times, start again, tap into a kind of non-interfering awareness of whatever objects are arising in my mind, either thinking or physical sensations. and then again get distracted start again is what i'm describing at least coming close to what you're describing in terms of deepening mode of course it absolutely sounds related to me but there is a difference notice you're still maintaining this self-help kind of frame of mind like i will then do this and after that i'll do this trying different things and there's a lot of self-discipline involved in meditation i don't paul and i don't want to pretend that that's not the case of course there is however this becomes part of the receptive mode but what happens when you get distracted like all kinds of parts of your mind come up that are just pulling you away or it's okay part of your mind comes up and says time to really plan what i'm going to be doing tomorrow and you're off for a while before you even realize that's happened you're familiar with that or very part of your mind might come up and in the case of here you're just settling into qualities of warmth and care and love and compassion and ones you've experienced before so you know them, but just exploring, re-inhabiting that experience.

30:46And the thought may come up, but I don't deserve this. I don't deserve love. Or I'm a caregiver. I should just be taking care of others. I shouldn't be experiencing love like this. That's not even morally right. I shouldn't be doing that. So all kinds of parts of us will actually be triggered. And the fundamental instruction becomes we learn how to allow them themselves to be embraced in the process itself. So whatever sense of self and thought and reaction is coming up, we learn how to, within the context of now you are experiencing these qualities of warmth and allowing and love and acceptance.

31:20So as those very parts of your mind are coming up, notice them, and now just let them include themselves. They've come up. Let them include themselves in this embrace of warmth and acceptance. Let this process make you into a great holding environment for all the reactions that come up. So rather than identifying with reactions as they're coming up, you are the healing, holding environment in which they're embraced in warmth and acceptance and deep allowing. That's the direction we go with it. So it's very much along the lines you actually just raised, Dan. It's just, again, the framework is different because we start in a different place.