Anxious? Confused? Powerless? A Four-Part Recipe for Staying Centered From a Buddhist Nun. | Ayya Anandabodhi

28:29Like, what does it get you? What's the payoff? And then once the mind is attuned to the suffering of our habitual modes of handling difficult emotions, it might be more receptive to what I keep calling this sort of counterintuitive, but healthy move of pausing, feeling your feelings, and then doing something saner on the other side? Kind of. What I'm really saying is, I'm not really encouraging you to just go out and do those same old things. But if you have to, then do them. Sometimes we can't help it. But if you can not do that and experience something and try a different way, it's much better.

29:10But sometimes we can't. And we're just going to do that same old thing. But then yes, if you have to do it again, watch it watch the whole process see where it leads and see what it takes you to but you might be able to think of a past process and not have to you know do that one extra right

29:30coming up Aya Ananda Bodhi talks about the importance of pausing how to break out of old patterns we do a deep dive but a very quick one into the four noble truths and we talk about centering versus equanimity what's the difference

29:49This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your home and auto policies. Try it at Progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states. Imagine you've got a free day out of town. You're about to enjoy a nice lunch when you get the alert that a window's been broken at home and you're miles away. These are the wake-up calls that remind us in one second everything can change.

30:25ADT's security systems are built for those moments. They help keep your home safer with 24-7 monitoring. Nobody wants to feel unsafe at home or vulnerable when you're away. And with ADT, you won't. Their systems can be professionally installed by trained technicians, so you can trust them to watch out for your home from day one. ADT has the most company-operated monitoring centers in the country, and the ADT Plus app lets you keep tabs on your home from anywhere you have service. You'll get the alerts that matter about your home's safety. Don't wait to prepare your home for an emergency. When every second counts, count on ADT.

31:02Visit ADT.com or call 1-800-ADT-ASAP.

31:11When Marissa asked you in reading this document that you and Marissa prepared in collaboration, you were explaining to her in the course of this document the importance of pausing when you're pissed. And Marissa asked what I asked. I basically copied Marissa. She asked you, you know, like, well, I know this. Marissa's a serious Dharma student. And she's heard this a million times, but I keep forgetting to do it. And one of the things you said to her was, this can be a motivation to practice with more zeal. The technical term in the language of Pali, which is the language in which the Buddhist teachings were written down, is chandra.

31:49It's kind of like a positive version of desire to practice. First of all, am I recapitulating that correctly? And second, would you be willing to expand upon it? So yeah, chandra or chanda in Pali, chandra in Sanskrit, is this energy to transform the old patterns, to get out of the old patterns. There's a quote again from the Buddha, it says, get yourself out of this mess, like an elephant would haul itself out of the mud. And I think that's kind of summed it up. It's like, just imagine it, you know, the elephant stuck in the mud, it's not gonna just get out easily, it's gotta work at it, it's gotta really try really hard.

32:28and we're gonna make a lot of noise in the meantime, but eventually it's gonna get out. So get yourself out of this mess, like an elephant hauls itself out of the mud. So once you kind of know you're in the mud, this is a key element. I guess if you don't really know you're stuck in the mud and you just, you don't have any great chanda or inspiration to practice, you're just like, yeah, it's comfortable, it's warm, you know, it's okay. But once you recognize, oh God, I'm stuck in this mud and I want to get out, I want freedom, I don't want to be pulled in here all the time. That is an incentive for that chanda to arise, that zeal, that energy.

33:06And then that energy motivates, you know, I was going to say motivates your practice, and I'm a little bit cautious to use that word practice, because I think sometimes people think, oh practice, that means I'm going to sit on a cushion and look really zen and be really peaceful and centered in the equanimous. And sometimes practice is very intense. It depends what you're working with at any moment. But there's the practice to be present with what is arising, to bring in tools, skillful means to meet what is arising and to endure what is difficult so as not to keep on repeating it over and over again so we can go in a different direction.

33:49I like this concept of deconditioning. We have all this habit energy to respond as if we're the sock puppet of our ego. And what you're recommending and what the Buddha recommended of this, this kind of radical move of like sitting with these feelings that we're spending so much time running from, it creates new conditions. It deconditions the habit energy and creates the new condition of I have this superpower, which is inside of me to be able to sit with this stuff that I've told myself I can't sit with, but actually I can. Exactly. Yes. Yeah. And it does become a superpower. Yes. And then as time goes by, you know, I think when I first started to practice, I imagined that as you deepen in the practice, just less difficult things happen.

34:40Things just get easier and nicer and the people you're with get nicer to be with. But it isn't like that. It's just your capacity to be with things as they are is greater. So there's less suffering. And it's not like the world suddenly becomes all nice, you know, lotus flowers are blossoming everywhere you walk or anything like that. it's just like you're okay. Or not okayness, there's a certain acceptance of the world is like this. You know, the world is like this, and what am I bringing to it? How can I meet it in a way that's not adding to the chaos, the misery, the confusion? That's another way of turning towards, and it's another thing of the First Noble Truth that you keep pointing to.

35:25It's like turning towards things as they are, rather than the very high ideals of how we wish they were or how we wish we were. It's like, okay, let's just start from where we are. Just for the uninitiated, the first noble truth, according to the teachings, after the Buddha got enlightened, he spent a while by himself, and then the first public utterance came when he was addressing some fellow spiritual travelers, mendicants, renunciates, and he explained the four noble truths. the first of which is life is suffering, which... Not quite, not quite. Well... The first of which is there is suffering.

36:06Ah, okay. Well, it's often translated as life is suffering. Yeah, it's not quite correct. Yeah, well, that's what I was just going to say, which is that, first of all, you're saying it's not life is, it's there is, and then suffering, I think, is also a bit of a mistranslation because it's really kind of like unsatisfactoriness. It's a whole spectrum, actually. Yeah, unsatisfaction is covered as a broader spectrum, but it's from like the slightest little kind of meh to out-and-out suffering. It's that whole spectrum. So it's not saying life is suffering, but there is dukkha, the word is dukkha, and that's like, it's a little bit off.

36:45It can be a little bit uncomfortable or it can be like out-and-out suffering. I'm actually really enjoying hearing you speaking about it, so I'd like you to carry on. I don't know. At this point, I have nothing else to say. I mean, there are three other noble truths, but we don't necessarily need to go into them. I think we should, actually, but yeah. Okay, we can. I'll say a bit, and you please, I really appreciate how you gently correct me when I run afoul of the truth. The second noble truth is the source of suffering is tanha, which I believe is the Pali word, roughly translate into thirst.

37:19often we translate it as desire but that's uh it's a bit of a tricky word because the buddha's not saying you shouldn't want anything i don't think but thirst is a kind of like a clinging uh grasping craving so when we are in a world that is non-negotiably the influx and entropy. And if you're clinging to things that are not going to last, that is going to produce suffering. The third noble truth is there's a way out of this elephant in the mud. And the fourth is the cookbook, the recipe, the, it's a list within a list. It's the eightfold path that kind of divided up into sort of a cognitive stuff about right view, you know, the right way to see the world and meditative advice around like right mindfulness, right concentration, right effort, and then ethical stuff around right speech, action, and livelihood.

38:21How am I doing? Yeah, good. Very good. Yes. I have good teachers. Yes, you do indeed. So each of those Noble Truths have three aspects. And so the first Noble Truth there is dukkah. The words dukkha, let's call it unsatisfactionness or discomfort or however you want to call it, or suffering. The next piece is dukkha should be understood. And then dukkha has been understood. So this is what we're pointing to. It's like, okay, here it is. And then the knee-jerk reaction is to get away from it somehow quick, you know. Blame it on somebody else or self-medicate or spin out or whatever it might be.

39:01And dukkha should be understood. And my teacher in England, Ashton Samedo, he used to say, stand under it. Stand under dukkha. Let it rain on you. Let it just feel it. Let yourself be drenched by it. It's okay. And then that leads to understanding what causes it, letting go of the cause. And then it can shift in the moment, but it's kind of a life path, really. Yes. It just changes as we go along. Let me ask a clarifying question. So we started this conversation talking about centering, and then we went through four techniques for centering, being in nature, bringing your attention to your feet or some part of your body that is always in the present moment rather than spinning off into the past or the future, taking deep breaths, and then pause.

39:51I asked before, right at the beginning of the conversation, well, what's the difference between centering and equanimity or calm? Not very helpfully, I did not define either of those terms. But your answer in the moment was, well, the centering is kind of a necessary step on the path toward being calm and being equanimous. You can think of equanimity as like an okayness in the face of whatever happens, at least that's the way I think about it. And so can you just say a little bit more about this trajectory from centering to equanimity? So centering in the body, in the present, so the body is always in the present.

40:31Centering in the body in the present gives us a place from which we can experience what's going on. It's like an anchor, you could say. And so also what I've been pointing to, we've both been speaking about, seeing the repercussions of acting on difficult feelings. It's like it sets the whole thing rolling. So centering in the body gives us a place where we can feel those feelings, know them, and then we can reflect. We can reflect. If we can just be with, okay, my belly is feeling really tight right now and my chest is a little trembly, and then take those deep breaths, feel your feet on the ground.

41:11So you're countering the tendency to spin out, bringing your attention into a more stable place, and then you can reflect. So I think opaque, equanimity, I mean, it can come through meditation practice. You know, it's one of the things we can cultivate in meditation, and one can experience it in sort of more subtle states. But equanimity in the midst of the world is, You need to find a place of centeredness, sorry, I keep using the same word, but find a place of centeredness from which you can see the whole crazy mess of it all that we create. So the calm, and maybe calm is a little misleading because we can look for calm.

41:56We maybe want calm, but we're actually anxious. And if we're holding calm out as a carrot, then that can just create more and more anxiety. It can seem like endlessly far away. but it's more like the calm is found by being present, by being here, by being with things as they are. So it's like we're looking for something outside of ourselves where we really need to look is right here in this body and mind, in this body. So it's like centering in the actual experience that is going on here and now because that's more real than the thoughts that are going on in the mind, the projections in the future and the memories of the past.

42:36So what's going on right now is attuned with reality. And the more we're attuned with reality, the more we relax and the more happy we are, actually, even in difficult times. And the more we're misattuned to reality, we can be a happy delusional, actually. People who are very delusional can be very happy, but it's not leading anywhere beneficial. So yeah, the more we're attuned to the truth of the way things are, then it all starts to come into alignment. That word power comes back, there's a power in that. We'll feel it in our body. And then as well as for the mind, the mind starts to potentially, starts to see a greater reality, not just this narrow slice of reality that we see on the news, which is a bombardment of all of the terrible things that are going on and maybe one or two nice, funny things or nice things.

43:36But actually when we look at our life, is it actually like that? Or are there good people? Or even is there a tree nearby that's endlessly producing oxygen through the day and taking up carbon dioxide and producing flowers? leaves and maybe even fruits and that's a good thing so it's like the pika is getting out of the small story of well of me and mine in a way but the small story into a bigger picture of the nature of things of how things go just picking up on the thing you said about the tree and the bigger picture and there are actually a lot of things i want to come back to in your last set of paragraphs one of the things i want to just highlight from that do you remember in the 90s or the aughts, there was this very successful advertising campaign, I think on MTV, when MTV was, you know, something that young people actually watched.

44:34And it was an anti-smoking campaign. And instead of lecturing kids about how bad it was for you, which never worked, it was, they're trying to screw you. The big tobacco companies are trying to screw you. I was actually not in the US and in a monastery not watching TV so I didn't watch those but yes that's the way basically the message of the ads was you know you're being conned by there's this image that cigarettes are glamorous but actually you're gonna get lung cancer or whatever here's what your lungs will look like and I've thought like there's some version of that that we can do vis-a-vis the media and I say this as a person who comes out of the belly of the beast I was inside the box for a long time as a news anchor.

45:19But it's not just the news media, it's also the social media. Both the news media, which is a much smaller beast than social media, but both the people who do what I do and the algorithms on social media are trying to convince you things are worse than they are because fear gets you scrolling. They keep you engaged. and they blind you to the fact that there are good people quietly and with no attention whatsoever all over the place teaching kids in school cleaning up the streets holding the door open for people sending somebody a text just to say i'm thinking of you that shit is happening all around us all the time and there's nothing on social media about it i'm ranting at this point but do you see where I'm going?

46:10Yeah, totally. Yeah, absolutely. You know, it's an interesting one, isn't it? Because we're caught. Yeah, we're caught. It's obviously very distressing, the people I meet anyway, you know, very distressed by what's going on in the news and yet keep looking, keep looking, keep looking. I guess it's a biological thing. If there's danger, you keep alert and you stay connected. But there is so much goodness. There's so much goodness in the world. So many, and just simple little things. A mother taking care of a child and birds making nests right now in the springtime. It's just like it's going on everywhere.

46:45And again, nature, not that nature is all sweet and lovely. I mean, it isn't. Everything eats everything else, but there's a sanity to it. We seem to have lost that, the human race, to a large degree. But we are nature, so we can come back to it. And to be clear, I don't think either of us is trying to downplay the severity of what's happening in the world, the severity of the risks facing the species from political unrest to AI to climate. It's just that yes, and there's just a lot of other stuff. And I think it's important to say that because it's not about just, you know, look at all the lovely things in the world.

47:24But if we never look at those things, we lose our connection with our humanity in a way and with each other. And I think that's where the potential for change lies for the better. is in us really connecting with our own humanity and our connection with nature and, you know, recognizing we can do something, we can do good. One individual can do a little bit, but together we have much more potential. But if we stay frozen or powerless or hopeless through seeing what the media puts out, then we sort of, our chances are much less, I think, I said there were a few things that I wanted to go back to from your lovely soliloquy just a moment ago.

48:13One of the other things I just wanted to clarify is this connection between, I want to see if I can restate your assertion back to you and just make sure that I understand it and by extension that the audience understands it. So again, we started by talking about centering, which I think is really, really important. And I think what you're saying is centering is it's like finding some place safe to be instead of outsourcing our consciousness to the gyre of the media. So it can be in nature. It can be in your body. It can be in your breath, which, of course, is pretty much the same thing. It can be in a pause.

48:56that is the step toward equanimity because it allows you in fact i was thinking and i think this is true upekka which is the pali word for equanimity i think is roughly translated into like seeing over it's like uh seeing the bigger picture and so once you're centered you can conjure some wisdom was like oh yeah this is this is it and this is the um cycle of suffering that the Buddha described in the first noble truth, and you can relax into it. That doesn't mean you'd like it, but you can navigate it more sanely. So am I describing this process accurately? You know, I want to speak about centeredness, and then you're also bringing in opaika, or equanimity.

49:39And this is something that needs a little bit of care, I feel, equanimity, because the English word, it sounds like everything's supposed to be even all the time, and you're not supposed to feel anything much and you're not supposed to get moved by things. And that's not real, is it? Life doesn't line up with that. And so, yes, so that translation of a bird's eye view I find really, really good. Because the bird's eye view, so it's including the bird. So there's the bird that's seeing the bigger picture of things. And that could be on a time level. I find that one of the ways that it can be helpful to bring up a sense of opaque or evenness with things as they are is to look on like the level of time.

50:28Several people have said, yeah, this stuff's been going on forever. The Buddha gave these teachings because those things were going on then in the Buddha's time. Iron Age India, that's what was happening, and it's been happening ever since and it's still happening. We haven't had it so much on our doorstep, although we've been part of it in America for many years in other people's doorsteps, but now it's getting more real on our own doorsteps. But it's not anything new. This is part of what we do as people, as humans. So seeing it over that timescale can be helpful. And I've also found, you're in the countryside, whether you ever just go outside and look at the sky at night, and it's so vast.

51:08And then those little tiny dots and those tiny little stars, and it's like, well, those are suns. And the Milky Way, sometimes you can see the Milky Way, it's like, oh, that's like a slice of the galaxy. If you can allow your mind to open in that way, which is another, this is something that you don't see in cities, actually. When you live in a city, you don't see that perspective because all the light pollution, you don't see the sky in the same way. But if you can get out of the human-made environment for a minute and look up in that sky And then get a sense of, oh yeah, so those stars, they're like little suns up there, many of them.

51:45And then there's our sun, which is massive compared to our planet, and then there's our planet, and then there's this continent that we're on, and then there's this little tiny point on this continent where there's this little tiny person who's feeling so many feelings about what's going on. So I find that really helps. You know, it's just like, oh, it really puts things into perspective. Is it so serious? I'm not saying is the situation we're moving into so serious, but is the thing that we're fearing or thinking about or feeling, how does that measure up in the context of the cosmos? It gets wild when you start going in that direction.

52:26You talk about the galaxy and then there's like, now that they've discovered there's probably trillions of galaxies in the universe. It's like, it's impossible to even conceive that. And then there's this one little spot here with a feeling going on in it that we feel like we can't quite manage. Well, maybe we can. My teacher, Joseph Goldstein, talks about viewing what he calls the earthbound madness through the lens of Venus. Oh, that's beautiful. The perspective of Venus. Oh, that's lovely. Yeah.

53:01coming up Aya Anandabody talks about the tricky and trippy topic of our true nature from a dharma perspective and we talk about how vital compassion is even though it's often can be overlooked as an Empty Bromide.

53:21I've been a fully adult human male for many decades, but I've never really focused on shorts as something you can wear and actually be stylish. I'm trying to up my shorts game, especially as my family and I have a big beach vacation coming up in the next couple of weeks. And one of my allies in this endeavor, my primary ally, is Quince. I was on the Quince website last night, and I was picking out some awesome shorts, some linen shorts to wear at the beach so I can look good and stay cool. If you listen to the show regularly, you know about Quince. They specialize in everyday staples that work harder, like their ultra-soft organic cotton tees and premium Mongolian cashmere sweaters.

54:07I have many of those. If you're still hanging on to the same worn-out basics, Quince makes it easy to upgrade. They have premium denim and tailored chinos from just$60 with the kind of perfect fit structure and high quality fabrics you would expect from a luxury designer brand. Everything at Quince is priced 50 to 80 percent less than similar brands. They work directly with ethical factories to cut out the middlemen. So you're paying for high quality, not brand markup. Upgrade your every day. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to Quince.com slash happier. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns.

54:45Now available in Canada and the UK too. That's quince.com slash happier.

54:56This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your home and auto policies. Try it at Progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states. I do want to go back to nature for a second because you said something when you were talking about nature as a source of centeredness. I made a note to follow up on. You keep using this phrase, we are nature, which I love.

55:31and I use it a lot in my own practice the way I often phrase it. And this is as I was taught by another teacher of mine, Alexis Santos, who's a student of Sayadaw Tejaniya. Yeah, and he has a phrase that he uses in his teaching. This is nature. Everything in this experience in my mind right now, everything I'm seeing, taking in, thinking, it's all nature. There's no separation. You said something about, you made a passing reference to our true nature and said, well, we may not want to talk about that, but, you know, our true nature. And I do want to talk about that. So can you go there, please?

56:07Tricky to talk about, isn't it? Yeah, what is our true nature? It's one of those things that you can't really define, actually. So as I was saying those words, I was thinking, uh-oh, probably shouldn't listen to that because it's hard to speak about. Yeah, what is our true nature? Is it this body, these feelings, you know, these perceptions, thoughts? sense experiences, you know, is that our true nature? It's tricky to go there, really. I'm not quite sure how to speak about it in this context of a podcast with people who maybe don't have a deep practice. Oh, many of these people do have deep practice.

56:46Yeah. Okay. Well, the Buddha does say that the true nature of the mind is luminous and bright. and it gets obscured by the obscuration. So that could be like clouds passing over the sun. So the nature of our mind is bright, luminous, open, compassionate, present. That's its true nature. and then we somehow forget that and we believe that we are the thoughts and the feelings and the body and the personality, the history, the story that we have. We mistake that for what we truly are and as long as we're holding on to that stuff, if I'm really identified with this body as being me, it's dukkha it's stressful because this body is doing what it's doing, it's changing, it's aging it gets sick, it gets well it's not necessarily the way I'd like it to look or as fit as I wish it was or flexible whatever it is, you know but it is what it is, this is just nature doing this arising and then the bodhiing over here right now, that danning over there, you know, so nature's doing that and then the habits and patterns of thought that we have, you know, that are conditioned.

58:22So when we come in as little babies, if you think of a newborn baby, it's just open. You know, it comes in with karma from a Buddhist perspective. It's not like, you know, every mother sees that every child is different. They come in with their own tendencies, but there's this openness. It's just like wide open. and then we learn things as we grow and we learn that we're not just openness and we can't just be open and at one with our mother and with everything. You start to notice that there's separation and that things don't always go our way and we have to sort of separate, individuate and that's part of the process of life.

59:05It's essential. And in that process, we create these protections which might be thoughts about our smallness or our greatness or they might be fears, contractions, it might be rage, it might be greed, you know, always trying to fill a hole, the hole in ourselves with something nice from outside. So we do all those things because we've forgotten our true nature and they kind of make it a little bit easier for a minute but only for a minute. It doesn't really work. So coming back to our true nature is what we find when we settle. Well, first of all, there is that clearing out of the garage that I was talking about earlier.

59:54If you've got a lot of regrets, done a lot of harm, then you've got to start repairing that. So when I first moved to the monastery, I was in my early 20s, I recognized I'd have done quite a few things I kind of don't feel great about. And I've left some things with people that I, relationships in bad repair. So I took time to repair those things. As though I actually kind of went into that first year of monastic life as though, okay, I've only got this year of my life. And I don't know what's going to happen after this. So I just want to sort out as much as I can. And so I wrote to people and acknowledged and apologized.

1:00:31And those who I didn't, I couldn't contact. I just did it in my heart. Acknowledged my fault and apologized. So there's the clearing out of things that we might be carrying that we have remorse over. And then there's the patterns of protection that we've created that is kind of a large part of the work really, is finding them, discovering what they are, feeling them, learning how to transform them, like you're doing with the elevator, and then ultimately letting them go. And with those big fears, what's the biggest fear of all? Death. Mm-hmm, death. So if we can embrace death, if we can acknowledge we're going to die, this body's going to die, and there's no way around that, that's going to happen sooner or later, there's no way around that.

1:01:30So if we can befriend that truth and know that this body will have to die, and this personality will die along with it. And from the perspective of the spiritual path, the consciousness or the presence or awareness, it doesn't die along with you. This is where we get into tricky territory, because for a fully enlightened one, you get into kind of rebirth and consciousness and letting go. So from the Buddhist perspective, for an Arahant or a fully enlightened being, they lay down the khandhas or the aggregates, the components of a person. They lay it down. When they pass away, there's no more like looking for something else.

1:02:22But for those of us who haven't really fully let go of identification and craving, which is probably most of us here, then that craving carries on, that identification. It looks for something to take birth in. And we can experience that in a day, in a week, and wake up in the morning, and immediately as you wake up, the mind might just be open. And then, oh, there's me, and there's my schedule, and there's what I'm supposed to do. So we quickly fill that up with who we are, and what we're doing and where we're going. And it's kind of similar on a level of the mind's doing that and that kind of carries on.

1:03:00But if we can befriend death, then there's nothing to fear. And it's not only having nothing to fear, but also because being fearless can be a little crazy, you know, if it's not balanced. But there's also the fact that, you know, we're human and every other human being on this planet is human and people have got different levels of clarity and lostness. And yet we share this same basic humanity and also same potential for awakening. Everybody has it. We're part of every living being on this planet. Every creature that's breathing, we're sharing the breath. Every plant, every plant is breathing.

1:03:46Without plants, we wouldn't be breathing. So we're breathing together with everything all the time. So we're part of everything. So there's like death at the end of our life, and then there's losing oneself in the allness of everything right now, which is such a wonderful relief. And we don't have to be this person, alone, isolated, struggling through life. And I think we fear that if we let go, we won't be able to function properly. we won't know what to do and how are we going to, I think that the head is very much, I know, the intellect, the ego as well, you know, it's like, oh, but I'm really important.

1:04:24You know, without me, it's not going to work. But, I mean, most of what's going on is beyond us. I mean, do we know how we digested breakfast this morning? I don't know how that happened, actually, but it's happened. Could you pick your pancreas out of a lineup? Probably not. How is, this is all happening. is it's nature. And the truth is when we really let go into our true nature, then true nature is living through us. And true nature has the qualities of presence, clarity, compassion, wisdom. So that is able to live through us more fully rather than all of the stuff, the little person story.

1:05:09I'm going to do my little thing of checking to see if I have understood you. I'm going to add in some of the way I think about this, but with the caveat that I am not a Buddhist scholar, I'm not a nun or a monk, and so I may be making all sorts of cognitive and spiritual errors here, but in the Dharma, they talk about the three marks of existence, these three things that are true about the universe, and part of practicing meditation and practicing the Dharma is to come into a relationship with these three marks of existence. One is impermanence. We talked about it a lot. Everything's changing all the time.

1:05:46The second is suffering that, you know, if you're constantly trying to gather all of your loved ones and the abs you had in your 30s and your bank account into your bosom, it's going to be really frustrating and stressful because those things are changing and your body's changing and it's a fool's errand in many ways. And if you can relax into those two marks of existence, you might see that beneath it all, beneath the things that obscure our clear view of what's happening is that it's all nature. There is no self that we need to build up and defend. Yes, it's true that we both have ID cards and Instagram accounts or whatever it is like we do exist on one level but on a fundamental level there is no core nugget of dan or aya ananda bodhi and there's a an enormous amount of rest and peace in having that experience either as a little glimpse or as a kind of upgrade of the software that is a more abiding understanding of that so that's kind of my bootleg version of what you said would you say i'm close Yes, very much so.

1:07:08Yeah, it's lovely to hear you say those. And with the third one, so I think the first two are relatively easy to understand, and the third one can be a little bit hard to understand. Another way I would put it would be what we take to be me and mine is a process, an ever-changing interrelated process. Yes. Yes, in this way, the three marks of existence fold back in on one another and help you understand. Yes. You can understand this brain-breaking concept of not self through the lens of impermanence. Yes, they're like three lenses to the same truth. Yeah, yeah. For me, and everybody kind of, to the extent that anybody ever gets to understand any of this, everybody's got their own way.

1:07:51But for me, it kind of goes in that order of impermanence, suffering, not self. But for some people, just have an intuitive sense of this non-duality. There is no separation between you and nature. You are nature. And then they hit on the other marks of existence from there. Yes, yes. Different people have different avenues. That's right, yeah. Let me ask you my two habitual final questions. One is, is there something you were hoping we would get to that we didn't get to? I think we've covered a lot of good ground. Even though it's all groundless. And then the final question is, if people want to learn more from you, how can they do so?

1:08:36Do you have a website that people can go to? Do you have Dharma talks that are recorded that we can listen to? Yes. I have Dharma talks on Dharma Seed, which people may be familiar with already. I have a website. It's parayanavihara.org. I'm going to drop links to Aya Ananda Bodhi's Dharma Talks on this excellent website, Dharma Seed, which collects hours and hours of Dharma Talks from brilliant teachers all over the world. And I will also drop a link to her website. Thank you. And I actually do want to come back to your first question. Sure. I have touched on this in our conversation, but I think one piece that I haven't really emphasized is the importance of compassion.

1:09:19Compassion for oneself and for others, and to really understand the struggles, you know, of being a human being. And even those people in power who may be really difficult to feel compassion for, if you look at what they're doing from a big perspective, they're deeply lost. It's a very sad situation. To be so far from one's basic goodness, like wanting to help people in trouble or support poor people, supports inclusivity, to be so far from that deserves a certain amount of compassion. Because we're all part of the same arising here. Well, I won't surprise you to hear that. I totally agree. this gentleman from a different tradition the Jesuit tradition Father Gregory Boyle who I was turned on to actually by Joseph Goldstein has been on this show before he once said here on the show I don't believe in evil but I do believe in bad behavior that bad behavior is usually the result of trauma or mental illness or whatever right thank you very much it was a total pleasure to meet you albeit virtually and to listen to your paragraphs.

1:10:38Thank you too, Dan.

1:10:43Thanks again to Aya and Abode. Great to meet her. I strongly suspect she'll be back on the show at some point. As you heard, we talked a lot about pausing and how powerful that can be. So we've crafted a guided meditation to teach you how to pause. And it comes from our Teacher of the Month, Don Mauricio. It's available over at danharris.com. and if you sign up, you'll get our bespoke guided meditations that are now coming with all of our Monday, Wednesday episodes. You'll also get live video sessions where I teach meditation and then we chop it up. You'll also get ad-free versions of the show and much more.

1:11:19Check it out, danharris.com. Before I let you go, I just want to thank everybody who worked so hard to make this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson, Caroline Keenan, and Eleanor Vasili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our managing producer. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Kashmir is our executive producer. And Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.

1:11:50You're listening to this podcast, so I know you've got a curious mind. Here's a helpful fact you might not know yet. Drivers who switch and save with Progressive Save over$900 on average. Pop over to Progressive.com, answer some questions, and you'll get a quick quote with discounts that are easy to come by. In fact, 99 % of their auto customers earn at least one discount. Visit Progressive.com and see if you can enjoy a little cash back. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates, national average 12-month savings of$946 by new customers surveyed who saved with Progressive between June 2024 and May 2025.

1:12:25Potential savings will vary. Hey, Chicagoland. The Wayfair store is in your neighborhood at Edens Plaza and Wilmette. Finally, you can feel the fabric, sit on the sectionals, and even open the refrigerators. Plus, our in-store designers will help you bring it all together with free one-on-one design support for any project on any budget. Yep, we said free. Oh, and did we mention the cafe? So what are you waiting for? Come see all that's in store. Visit the Wayfair store today at Edens Plaza and Wilmette. Wayfair, every style, every home