Sebene Selassie On: Resiliency, Rewriting Your Patterns and Finding a Teacher Who Speaks to You

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

0:18Hey kids, happy Sunday to those who celebrate Sunday. Today we're going to talk to the great meditation teacher and a great friend of mine, Sabine Selassie. We're going to talk to her about resiliency in the face of physical and emotional challenges, something she understands very well. We're going to talk also about seeing your patterns and working to change them. finding a teacher who speaks to you, what it's like to be part of, in her words, the 10 % happier family, and much more. Many of you know Sabine, who has appeared on this show many, many times and also wrote a great book called You Belong.

0:51You're going to hear from her today because she is our Teacher of the Month over on danharris.com for the month of October. That means she will be crafting custom guided meditations to go along with all of our Monday, Wednesday episodes. The goal with these bespoke meditations, and you may have heard me say this before, but it bears repeating, the goal is to help you take the wisdom of the conversations you hear on the podcast and pound that wisdom into your neurons in an abiding way. It is so easy to hear a great conversation and then forget all about it because life just pulls you back into your habit patterns.

1:25These meditations are designed to counteract the forgetting. Seb will also, in her role as Teacher of the Month, be doing a number of live guided meditation and Q &A sessions only for subscribers over at danharris.com. We do these every week now on Tuesdays at 4 Eastern. The next one is October 7th. Sign up at danharris.com and join the party. Now, speaking of parties, if you want to meditate with me and Seb in person, we are teaching a weekend-long retreat from October 24th through the 26th at the Omega Institute, which is north of New York City. One of our subscribers over on Substack recently pointed out that I've mentioned meditation party and this retreat many times, but I have not given a lot of detail.

2:08So let me just say a little bit more. There are four chunks of teaching that we do throughout the weekend, one on Friday evening, the next on Saturday morning, then Saturday afternoon, and then finally Sunday morning. In these sessions, we do a mixture of meditation and conversation among the teachers and Q &A with the audience. And then there are opportunities for you guys to interact with each other, small group discussions with your fellow attendees. And then in between the sessions, there's plenty of free time. If you sign up, you get access to hiking trails on the beautiful 240-acre campus.

2:42You can play basketball, volleyball, pickleball, tennis. There are art bags and daily optional classes, including yoga, tai chi, and meditation. And then on Saturday evening, we do a dance party, which is voluntary, no forced attendance. So there's a link in the show notes. Sign up. Join us. We'd love to see you there. Okay. After the break, you're going to hear Sabine Selassie in conversation with the executive producer of the show, DJ Kashmir. Keep it here.

3:36appearance was nine years ago this month, which is just wild to me. Yeah. Just a lifetime ago. Yeah, really. I'm a little scared to listen and hear what I said. No, you were great. You were great. It was fascinating to hear. Yeah, it just felt like a time capsule from another era. But our most dedicated listeners have been along for the ride with you for quite a long time. And I wanted to take the opportunity today to kind of reintroduce you. Those who are following along with our teacher of the month meditations just started sitting with you this past Wednesday. Your first meditation for October dropped.

4:13And over the course of this month, you're going to be going live on danharris.com and you're going to be offering these meditations in the ad-free podcast feed every Monday and Wednesday. And so this just is an opportunity for those who know you well and those who are new to you to get reacquainted and to know who's taking them along this month. So I just wanted to tee you up with a really simple question, which is, how did you become a meditation teacher? Where does that story start? Oh, my goodness. Yeah, it sounds like a simple question, but it was a long road in a lot of ways. So, I usually start by thanking my brother for introducing me to Eastern spirituality, and he became what's known colloquially as the Hare Krishna when I was in high school.

4:55So he had already started reading all these texts and going to talks. So I tagged along. He's eight years older than me. So I really looked up to him. So I started getting interested quite young. I think I taught my first meditation class in an East Asian studies class in 11th grade. I'm glad there's no like recorded audio of that or footage because who knows what I was doing. But, you know, the interest was already picked then. And then by the time I got to college, I decided to major in comparative religious studies, and I studied Hinduism and Buddhism. Yeah, so I didn't really become a serious, more serious practitioner until my 20s and started looking for teachers and visited different centers, both in San Francisco, where I was in my early 20s, and then in New York, where I moved in my mid-20s, and then settled into a Zen practice.

5:45And then I would say that just to kind of fast forward, because some of this story might be in other podcasts, but what really deepened my practice even more was being diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 34, with stage 3 breast cancer, and went on subsequently. that's part of the ride that I've been on that many listeners might know of stage four cancer, which I've lived with for the past 15 years. So there's nothing like a terminal diagnosis to make you deepen your practice. And I had already been attending weekly sits, been on a few retreats, but I really started to take my practice much more seriously.

6:23I'm very thankful that I had a practice to take seriously, but that's when I started to delve into leading sitting groups and then being invited into applying for a meditation teacher program. Yeah. I want to ask more about that story, but I just first want to pause and see how you're doing. I get notes from listeners like all the time, just how is Sebene? So I know a lot of people are wondering, we're recording this just a handful of weeks before air. And so, yeah, how are you doing today? Today I'm doing pretty good. You know, I've been struggling with a lot of pain this year. So I have different kind of manifestations of my cancer.

7:05And one is a lot of bone. And then because of that muscle and tendon and tissue problems that stem both from the cancer that's in my bones, but also from the radiation and other treatments that have weakened them. So yeah, today the pain is not so bad, which is a good day. And as far as my cancer goes, I'm still here. I think I'm a bit of a miracle even to my doctors. Some of them just say, whatever you're doing, just keep doing it because I have a unique history of illness. And that's both a good and a bad thing. Bad because illness is not fun, but good in the sense that I've defied a lot of odds.

7:45So I'm very grateful for that. I am too. And I know a lot of people listening are too. I'm glad to hear the pain's not too bad today. Thank you. So you have talked on the show in the past about how getting that stage three diagnosis at the age of 34 pivoted you from being a not so serious practitioner to a pretty serious practitioner. And you've talked a little bit about the ways that meditation has helped you through all of these ups and downs and all these physical trials that you've been through. I'm curious specifically, though, like why make the jump to teaching this stuff? Why not just stay in the realm of someone who's a meditator?

8:27Why become a meditation teacher? I didn't have a clear path to teaching. It wasn't something that I was striving to do in any way. At the time that I was invited into the Community Dharma Leader Program, which is the first step for a lot of teachers in the Insight world, which many of us who are part of the 10 % family are in, I was the executive director of New York Insight Meditation Center at the time. And I had it in my head that I was going into CDL just to learn how to be a better administrator. And I was sort of resisting the meditation teacher part of it. And my teacher at the time just was like, okay, whatever you think.

9:07And just humored me, but was inviting me to lead sits and give talks when she wasn't available. And I really enjoyed sharing that. And it was very in line with the non-formal education kind of path that I had been in. I'd been leading community-based programs for kids and then later mostly for teens as part of my professional path before this. And so it just, yeah, it was like a natural extension that I love teaching. I love leading groups. I love wisdom and awakening. And so to share that felt like a great honor. I'm struck by how resistant you were. It reminds me of something I've noticed many times working on this show, which is a lot of the people who turn out to be the very best guests are pretty reluctant to come on.

9:56Yeah, I don't know. I don't know if there's something deeper going on there, but something about, I don't know, maybe there's a humility there that's part of what it takes to do this well. Yeah, I think that could be true. And I don't want to veer into false humility either. I also had to recognize that I was getting positive feedback of people responding to my meditations or teachings. And that was a nice feedback loop for realizing that I also enjoyed doing it because it felt good to feel like I was having an impact. But yes, I've had a lot of issues with public speaking. Actually, Dan helped me with that and just acknowledging that he still has anxiety with sharing publicly sometimes.

10:39And just to recognize that these things that were holding me back from being more, let's say, extroverted were also things that I could get over in order to do what I wanted to do, which was share the teachings. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about the specific approach that you have to teaching. Each month, a new teacher brings a new flavor, a new perspective. And I wonder after all these years of teaching, like how you see yourself, what kind of teacher are you? Hmm. That's such a good question. There might be a core thread that's run all the way through that I can't quite pinpoint right now.

11:24Maybe self-deprecation.

11:29But currently, my teaching is really about my own experience. So there's a way, especially with the Buddha Dharma, the Buddhist teachings, they're so profound. and they're such incredible maps of the mind and of human experience that they can almost become didactic in a way that you sort of name these lists and these aspects and these truths. And I'm trying to let go of that, not that I don't love these lists or these teachings deeply, but to really speak from my own experience and how these have impacted me and how they manifest rather than speaking from any sense of like objective authority.

12:16So I think that's something that maybe has been in my teachings all along, but has become more and more pronounced as I realize one, how much I still have to learn and understand and grow to awaken. And also that I can't know what's right for anyone else. I can work with them and communicate in a way that hopefully people find their own truth in what I'm sharing. But there is no objective reality or one way, let's take meditation as an example, that's going to work for everyone. And that's become much more apparent to me as I've matured in my own practice. I love when you said the 10 % family a few minutes ago.

12:56And I think one of the things that's true about a lot of the very best teachers in this 10 % family is that they present as such beautifully distilled versions of themselves. And they're so different from one another. Chira Jolingo and Vinnie Ferraro are very different human beings. And when they speak from their own specific experience, it's actually like the specificity, I think, sometimes that helps people connect. That's something that I've noticed in other professional spaces, too. I remember when I was a teacher looking around and it seemed like the very best teachers around me were also very different from each other.

13:36But they had this one thing in common, which was they had transmuted their suffering and were comfortable in their own skin and were teaching from their own unique perspective. And there was just something unshakable and magnetic about that. Yeah, and I'm just, I'm curious if that, I'm curious how that lands for you. Yeah, totally. That resonates strongly. Also, because I feel like I recognize in myself and others that there's such a personal quality to freedom, that it's not going to look the same in everyone. a teacher of mine for many years ago, and she had traveled to Southeast Asia and had met four Arhans, so like awakened practitioners.

14:25I think two of them were teachers and two were not. And all that I remember from her description of these four different people is how different their awakening felt. Now, were they truly awakened or fully awakened? I don't know. But for her, they were the most awakened people she had met, and she's met a lot of teachers in her life and practitioners. And that just really struck me as so beautiful that it doesn't have to look in one particular way, but that there's almost a quality of freedom that we can pick up on regardless of its particular flavor or color, that we can feel freedom in someone and it's uniquely theirs.

15:06People who have been tuning in on Sundays might know that I have this somewhat annoying habit of quoting Matthew Brensilver all the time. But he did a talk pretty recently about this exact thing. And he basically argued that suffering looks more or less the same on everybody, especially the more suffering that you encounter. Anxiety, fear, depression, they have a lot in common in the way they manifest across different people. But he basically makes this argument that like freedom is very distinctive and free versions of people can look very, very different from one another. And I just, I don't know, I think that's fascinating.

15:44And there's something sort of liberating to this idea that we don't have to aspire to be exactly like the most awakened people that we've seen, that the most awakened version of ourselves is going to be entirely unique. I love that. That's so great. I've never, I've thought about it in terms of freedom a lot, but I never thought about the opposite in terms of suffering. That's brilliant. Yeah. So I guess the question that's coming to mind for me is like, when I think about the people who I've encountered who feel extremely free, when I think about people like you, or when I think about people like Sister Dang Niem from the Plum Village tradition, who's been on the show a few times, one common thread is a history of pretty serious amounts of suffering that they've transformed.

16:32And I wonder sometimes if there's like a correlation between how much suffering someone has had to transform and how free they've been able to become. And I guess I'm just curious, you've been through so many years of physical ailments and different kinds of very intensive treatments and a lot of diagnoses that I know were just utterly terrifying. And that's just starting in your 30s. You've been through plenty of other things in your life, too, other kinds of suffering. You've talked on the show, for example, about how your dad just disappeared and became a guerrilla fighter in the Eritrean revolution for a few years while you were growing up.

17:08I guess what I'm getting at is, is it true that our freedom is directly correlated to how much suffering we've transformed? And if we have a less dramatic story, is the door still open for us? I want everyone to have a less dramatic story and have that door open for them. I really don't know. I can't say if that's a truth or not. It definitely has been true for me that it's often through hardship that I'm able to see where I'm still clinging. And it's not in times of ease and lightness that I can see my patterns and change them. And so, yes, the suffering I've been through from my childhood trauma to physical trauma to emotional challenges or psychological ones, they've been crucibles.

18:01And sometimes it really feels grad school or PhD level suffering to get to it. But that has been true for me. And I can't say that's true for everyone. I mean, I know of stories of people who all their clinging falls away just sitting on a mountain or a beach and there wasn't a lot proceeding or following it. And yay them. Some sympathetic joy. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Listening to you saying what you were just saying, it just, it landed for me as a reminder that our suffering always has an opportunity in it. And I was thinking of something that you said to Dan a while back on the show about how when things go wrong in our lives, our knee-jerk response is to think like, that's a mistake, that it's not supposed to be that way.

18:55And of course, that flies directly in the face of the most basic teachings of the Buddha. Yeah, I just like, I'm just appreciating the reminder that there are different paths to what you might call waking up or what you might call suffering less. But one of them that's always on offer is just being with whatever the hardest thing is right now. And that's like, I don't know, that's such good news. Yeah, and being with what the hardest thing is and also what the best thing is, right? Right? So that, I don't know, sometimes I think that this whole path and teaching is really just learning how not to be in contention with reality.

19:38And that so many of these teachings, be it karma or awakening itself and liberation, is just being with the reality that's in front of us and having some measure of ease. And that doesn't mean there's no pain, but we don't have to be in contention with it and at suffering. And that, yes, includes the suffering that comes to our lives and to my friend La, I know who's been on the show before, every morning says this prayer, something to the effect of, grant me the appropriate amount of suffering today that will lead to the opening of my heart and awakening or something to that effect. And I love that, the appropriate amount of suffering.

20:19We know that life, this pact doesn't say there's no pain and no suffering at all. It says that we don't have to add suffering that leads to our diminishment and to the diminishment of our freedom. That feels like a good moment to talk about some of these just like such incredible meditations that you've put together for us this month. I was looking at the scripts that you wrote and there are meditations that are coming up for folks in these next few weeks that like I've just literally never seen anyone do before. and they're very cool. There's one that's about how to be with this tension between on the one hand, our desire for stability and security.

21:05And on the other hand, our ambition and our striving for meaning and purpose and how to sit with that tension. There's another one that's all about ways to think about difficult problems that aren't just thinking where you literally have us get up in the middle of the meditation. Anyway, I'm just fanboying at this point. So let me just pause and give you a chance to say a little bit about what you've put together for us this month. Yeah, it was so fun to create these because, you know, I tried to make sure there was a grounding and an awareness of this moment to start each one. But then they were these opportunities for, they're almost like meditative contemplations or contemplative meditations that we got to sort of explore all of these different topics and all really different from each other and find creative ways to practice with them.

21:56So it was a challenge and really fun challenge for me. I just honestly, genuinely, I'm excited about these and I'm excited to have you in my ears this month, along with thousands and thousands of other people. And just so glad that you're in this 10 % family and so glad that you decided to say yes to this particular iteration of the project. Yeah, thank you. Thank you for having me, DJ. It's a great honor. Thanks again to Seb and DJ. Great to hear them in conversation. Don't forget to sign up over at danharris.com so you can get all of the custom guided meditations that Seb will be producing this month.

22:32And also, if you sign up, you can come to our weekly live guided meditation and Q &A sessions, which we do on video. The next one is Tuesday, October 7th at 4 Eastern. We do these every Tuesday at 4 Eastern. Also, don't forget the meditation party retreat that Seb and I will be doing the weekend of October 24th, along with Jeff Warren and Ofosu Jones-Korte. It's going to be awesome. And finally, thank you to everybody who worked so hard on 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.

23:04Lauren 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.

23:17you