In short
Buddhist “inexplicable magic” of meditation—how doing nothing can soften the heart, expand awareness, and lead to compassion, creativity, and insight; why boundaries are necessary despite increased “porousness”; and practical “mystic” actions (ritual, boundaries, cleaning up, dropping self-fixing agendas).
Guest backgrounds
Susan Piver is a Buddhist teacher and bestselling author; she discusses her ~35 years as a Buddhist practitioner and her long-term meditation practice. She frames her ideas as from Buddhist wisdom traditions and lineage.
Key claims
- Meditation trains mindfulness (attention on breath; repeatedly returning from distraction) but also expands “awareness,” which can’t be forced—only allowed.
- Compassion isn’t just a skill; it arises from direct contact with one’s heart and from seeing non-separation (“there is no you and me… only us”).
- “Open” spirituality without boundaries is harmful; boundaries protect depleted attention and vitality.
- During practice, drop the agenda to “fix yourself”; practice is curiosity and seeing what’s happening.
Notable examples
- A Zen practitioner’s humble East Village home felt “palatial” to Piver, suggesting her heart “went into the environment.”
- Piver’s ritual: candle, photos of inspiring Buddhist teachers, offering/requesting blessings, then dedicating merit.
- Boundary example: she needs lots of solitude in marriage (“don’t talk to me in the morning”).
- “Clean up after yourself”: don’t leave dishes overnight; also apologize for interpersonal messes (e.g., grumpiness at internet service).
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOUnderstanding Inexplicable Magic
0:45 to 2:00
Discussion on the concept of 'inexplicable magic' in meditation and its effects.
“So this magic is there are no wizard hats, there's no casting of spells, unless you're into that.”
The Mechanics of Meditation
2:00 to 4:00
Insights on how meditation practices train the brain and mind.
“It's you are doing a practice just the way if you go to the gym and you run on a treadmill or you systematically pick up and put down heavy things.”
Awareness vs. Focus
4:00 to 6:00
Exploration of the difference between focus and awareness in meditation.
“You notice things you had not noticed before.”
Cultivating Compassion and Openness
6:00 to 8:00
Discussion on how meditation can lead to greater compassion and emotional openness.
“ideas or opinions or you start to become more connected to the environment that you're in through your practice.”
The Mystery of Receiving
8:00 to 10:00
Exploring the idea that insights and creativity come to us when we are aware.
“It means being awake so you can see what's going on and be of benefit.”
The Role of Meditation in Compassion
10:00 to 12:00
Examining how meditation influences our ability to empathize and connect with others.
“And one of the great benefits slash difficulties of meditation is it puts you in direct contact with the contents of your heart.”
The Essence of Connection
12:00 to 13:45
Discussing the interconnectedness and the collective experience of compassion.
“when you see reality clearly, all that remains is compassion, not because you're super nice, although I believe you are, but because you see there is no separation.”
The Essence of Connection
15:11 to 16:15
Discussing the interconnectedness and the collective experience of compassion.
“Visit Square to get started because the right tools make all the difference.”
The Concept of Mysticism and Connection
16:23 to 24:51
Explore the idea of mysticism and its implications for our connection to the environment and each other.
“And I want to settle well in this house.”
Ritual in Meditation Practice
24:52 to 28:00
Understand the importance of ritual in meditation and how it enhances practice.
“reminders that turn the mind to the Dharma, the first being precious human birth.”
Show all 25 chapters
Transforming Meditation into Ritual
28:00 to 34:33
Learn how to elevate your meditation practice into a meaningful ritual through intentional actions and connections.
“mystics can include all of us, seven actions that you say mystics engage in.”
Transforming Meditation into Ritual
36:13 to 37:41
Learn how to elevate your meditation practice into a meaningful ritual through intentional actions and connections.
“I'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.”
Transforming Meditation into Ritual
37:46 to 38:03
Learn how to elevate your meditation practice into a meaningful ritual through intentional actions and connections.
“Now available in Canada and the UK, too.”
The Importance of Boundaries in Spirituality
38:03 to 42:08
Explore the significance of setting boundaries to protect your energy and attention in a demanding world.
“And that whatever comes along, you should be open to it.”
Setting Boundaries in Relationships
42:08 to 48:02
Learn how to establish and maintain personal boundaries in various relationships.
“But what about boundaries with other people and how can that, how can we set boundaries with other human beings in a tradition that emphasizes, you know, love and kindness and generosity, et cetera, et cetera?”
The Human Experience of Imperfection
48:02 to 49:35
Explore the importance of acknowledging our imperfections and messiness as part of being human.
“Because there's this idea that, oh, I'm a meditator now and everything should be perfect and I shouldn't be having, there should be no messiness in my life, etc., etc.”
The Human Experience of Imperfection
50:13 to 51:18
Explore the importance of acknowledging our imperfections and messiness as part of being human.
“If you're a loyal listener to this show, you know that I am an avid worker outer.”
The Human Experience of Imperfection
51:24 to 51:34
Explore the importance of acknowledging our imperfections and messiness as part of being human.
“Okay, so that brings us to another of the actions that you say mystics take.”
Cleaning Up After Ourselves
51:34 to 56:01
Understand the significance of addressing interpersonal messes and cultivating a mindful environment.
“And you referenced this earlier, we clean up after ourselves.”
The Importance of Letting Go in Meditation
56:01 to 57:24
Learn how setting aside the agenda of fixing oneself can enhance meditation practice.
“How many times have you walked out of a circumstance where you're like, why did they say that to me?”
Understanding Meditation Myths
57:24 to 59:13
Explore common misconceptions about meditation, particularly the need to stop thinking.
“But while you're practicing, it's good to set it down, because setting the agenda down widens the focus, widens the view.”
From Self-Aggression to Openness
59:13 to 1:01:22
Discover how self-focus and aggression hinder meditation and how to cultivate curiosity instead.
“He looks like he's in a bulletproof bliss bubble.”
Healing vs. Fixing: A Different Approach
1:01:22 to 1:04:10
Understand the distinction between healing and fixing one's issues and how meditation aids in healing.
“That again is an openness and a sense of discovering rather than a strong-arming something.”
The Role of Practice in Creativity
1:04:10 to 1:09:35
Learn about the relationship between meditation practice and the emergence of inspiration or creativity.
“It strikes me that there's an interesting balance required here, perhaps.”
Highlights from the Conversation
1:10:01 to 1:10:21
Susan Piver shares insights about her online community and resources.
“And my online community is called The Open Heart Project.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:03Hello, everybody. Welcome to the 10 % Happier Podcast. I'm your host, Dan Harris. Normally, given the fact that I'm a skeptical guy and an agnostic, when somebody uses the word magic, I get hives. However, when somebody I trust and respect uses that word with all of its metaphysical connotations, I actually get interested. Such is the case with my guest today, Susan Piver, who is a Buddhist teacher and a bestselling author and a frequent flyer right here on this show. Susan has a new book and it's called Inexplicable Magic. So what the hell is that about? Let's bring in Susan Piver. Susan, welcome back to the show.
0:41Thank you. I'm so happy to be back and it is so good to see you. I think the key word here is inexplicable. So this magic is there are no wizard hats, there's no casting of spells, unless you're into that. But I'm sure you can attest to this, Dan, or tell me if not. When you sit in meditation, basically what you're doing is nothing. At some point, however, you and I and countless meditators over the millennia have reported that they become more compassionate. The heart softens. You feel more. You become more permeable, more sensitive, more attuned. You see patterns, you have ideas, and you become more authentic.
1:23You become more courageous in being who you really are. And in Buddhism, these are called the three qualities of the awakened mind, compassionate, wise, and brave. Now, how does this happen? Dan Harris riddle me this from sitting there doing nothing. I don't fucking know. It's magic. It's magic. That's the magic. How does that happen? It just happens. And there's something about the doing of nothing, of being with yourself, that gives rise to this inexplicable magic. You've just said you don't want to hear this, but let me let me try it just for the skeptical listener that actually, you know, on some level, it's it's really exercise.
2:10It's you are doing a practice just the way if you go to the gym and you run on a treadmill or you systematically pick up and put down heavy things. You are exercising a muscle. In this case, it's your brain and by extension, the mind. And that gets a little mysterious and that may be where the magic lies. But you are training your brain and mind in systematic ways to pay attention to one thing. Usually it's your breath. Every time you get distracted, you start again and again and again. And it makes sense that if you did that, your attentional capacities would increase. Your ability to not be so yanked around by the voice in your head would also increase because every time you wake up from distraction, you're getting some visibility, some clear seeing to use your words into the machinations of your mind.
3:01And in that process, you're less owned by said machinations. So doesn't all that kind of make sense in a mechanistic way? Yes and no. It makes sense partially. I think what you're describing is called mindfulness. And that's one of the things that we cultivate in our practice. You place your mind, your thoughts, your brain, whatever it is, on an object of your choosing other than thoughts. In our case, it's the breath. And from that capacity to focus all the things you mentioned, being less yanked around, being more clear, seeing more precisely, happen. There's no question. We can study the data.
3:40All of that's good. But there's a second piece to the practice that is less frequently mentioned, and that is called awareness. Awareness expands through the practice. That is different than focus. It's a sense of having more intuition, perhaps, of your sense perceptions become more vibrant. You notice things you had not noticed before. That's not a function of focus. That's a function of awareness, according to this wisdom tradition. And while you can work at mindfulness, at focus, and you'll get better at it. You cannot work at awareness. All you can do is allow it. And the more one allows awareness to expand, so it's not something you work at, it's something you rest into, the more you see that what meditation does, among other things, is make you more aware.
4:39And this I find really interesting and exciting and inspiring and weird, that what you most long for from your practice, more patience or more insight or more creativity, whatever it might be, or in your life for that matter, these things do not come from you. They come to you when you're paying attention. So, in this sense, it's not a mystery that some of the world's greatest insights and inventions and ideas have come to people who are sleeping or showering or walking, there's an awareness expansion that also happens from our practice. And that I would say is the mystic aspect. What do you think?
5:20I don't know what I think. I have a bunch of questions. When you say awareness, what do you mean by that? So let's say you walk into a room where there's people you don't know. You get some feeling usually like, oh, something good not happening here, or this is weird, or this is uncomfortable. just these ordinary senses that we get when you walk into a room or when you see something placed over here and you think, well, actually it should go over there. There's a sense of receptivity and feeling into the space around you rather than trying to source from within you ideas or opinions or you start to become more connected to the environment that you're in through your practice.
6:11I don't know if that's a good answer, but that's what I got right now. So I think what you're saying, and you'll fact check me, is that we can work on building our attention, regulation, mindfulness, and in separate practices, we can work on building our compassion and friendliness through these techniques that have been studied in the labs. But there's this other piece, this mysterious awareness that you're using the word awareness, but you could also I think you also use the word like sensitivity. I kind of am hearing now I'm talking like a sommelier, but like I'm hearing notes of also interconnection and meshment with the environment, with the universe, that also happens if we don't understand why or how.
6:59Yeah, you become more permeable. You become more vulnerable through our practice. Although most of us, myself included, certainly, I adopted it to become less vulnerable, to be less upset, more relaxed and calm and all that, less affected by my life. But that's not what happens. You become more affected. You become more open. And that's where the compassion piece comes from. That's not something you can work on. I don't think you can study it. But it, according to this wisdom tradition, is your birthright. It is how you're wired. And it gets covered over, obviously, by all sorts of things that hurt and we don't want to look at.
7:40But as we relax with ourselves as we are, which is what meditation is, our hearts soften. It just happens. I wish it didn't, if I'm being honest, but it does. And that openness is the seed syllable of compassion, which doesn't mean being nice. It means being awake so you can see what's going on and be of benefit. It's also where creativity comes from and love and insight and innovation. And these things that I think all of us, if not most of us, seek more than anything, what they have in common is they are things we receive. They're not things we can crank up. No matter how smart you are, you can't be like, I'm going to find love or I'm going to have a great idea today.
8:30They're things you notice. They're things that you see are in your awareness. And the more your capacity to be aware expands, the greater the chance of these wonderful things becoming visible. Your argument that through practice, we can't deliberately and almost mechanistically develop a sense of compassion the way we can with, say, focus or mindfulness. And you referred to this wisdom tradition, by which I assume you mean Buddhism. There are these practices where you can develop friendliness or loving kindness is sometimes the term that's used and compassion through, you know, envisioning people who are suffering and sending them good vibes or the wish for that they be free from suffering.
9:19And these practices have been studied in the lab. So why is that mysterious? I wouldn't say it's mysterious, but it's more easily accessed when we have a steady meditation practice. And I can practice loving kindness, I can practice do compassion practices and Tonglen practices and all sorts of things. and I can get to know and become more familiar with my gifts and obstacles when it comes to these practices. But none of that really shifts my state of heart. It helps to study loving kindness and so on, but what makes me more lovingly kind is feeling my own sorrow more directly. And one of the great benefits slash difficulties of meditation is it puts you in direct contact with the contents of your heart.
10:15To feel them directly opens us to other people. It just seems to be how we're wired. So yes, you can study compassion. There's data, there are practices. The practices are beautiful and brilliant. But there's some aspect of compassion that is beyond conventional thought and has less to do with relational capacity and more to do with ultimate realization, seeing reality clearly, waking up from the trance, which I have not done, so I can't really say too much more about it. But compassion isn't just a relational skill. It's a way of seeing the truth of who we are. So if we take it all the way back to your primary thesis undergirding the title of the book, Inexplicable Magic, I think your point is, yes, there are all of these practices we can do to tune up our ability to be focused and mindful and seeing the mind clearly and even to be more friendly and compassionate.
11:34But there's a there's a there's a last mile there. There's a mysterious leap that really allows us to feel connected with, sensitive to and responsive to the needs of the world that really we don't understand based on what we know about the practices themselves. I think that was really well said. And I appreciate that. when you see reality clearly, all that remains is compassion, not because you're super nice, although I believe you are, but because you see there is no separation. There's only us. There is no you and me. There is no us and them. There is just us. And when that is recognized on some profound level, not a conceptual level, there's only compassion.
12:25There's only us. And I cannot think of anything our world could use more right now than an overwhelming sense of us. That us-ness you're describing, do you think that's on offer for rank-and-file meditators or for folks who listen to the show and are simply aspiring meditators? I heard a friend of mine say that the other day that his meditation practice is talking about maybe practicing. We've got to start somewhere. Yes, of course, because it's how we're wired. but weirdly these profound notions or this great heart opening whatever one might call it they do not come from effort they do not come from study they do not come from ambition they happen when we relax that's also to be part of the magic is these are things we relax into.
13:23And P.S. Nobody, including you, Dan Harris, should take my word for anything at all. We can say things that maybe are of use, but anyone listening, rank and file or otherwise, we're all rank and file, P.S., has to consider these things through their own intelligence, because that's the ultimate teacher. A few things before we hear from our sponsors. I don't know if you know this, but I've been writing a newsletter for the last couple of years. I would love for you to come check it out. It's free. You can sign up at danharris.com. Every Monday, I drop into your inbox a little nugget of wisdom and sanity that you can operationalize in your life immediately.
14:04This is an actionable practice that I'm dropping into your data stream that really can color the rest of your day. I put a lot of time and effort into it, and I'd love for you to benefit from it. It's also, by the way, the place where you can get updates on the broader 10 % happier cinematic universe, including upcoming programming on my app, 10 % with Dan Harris, and upcoming IRL events. Again, you can sign up at danharris.com. I'd love to have you reading the newsletter. And we will be right back after this. Support for today's episode comes from Square, and they've got big news during Square's biannual releases event.
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16:23for just regular folks listening to this you you used another term before that i suspect many of us will not see ourselves in but i but you could perhaps get us there in ways that i think would be very interesting mystics i do love this word i have to say and i love that it's kind of confounding like you think you're going to wear flowing garments or something. So, we just moved to a new house. I'm in it right now. And I want to settle well in this house. I want to get a feel for what it's like to be in this house. That's not a weird thing, but it requires feeling into the environment in some particular way that is not just, oh, this would look nice over here, let's paint that wall white, but what wants to be here?
17:20Where should these things go? What is happening outside in the house and how can I enter this house with respect for the space within it and around it and some sort of quality of communication, which can sound weird, but I'll tell you a short story that illustrates this point, I think. This was long ago. I was in New York City where I lived. My husband and I were walking to visit an old family friend of his who lived in the East Village in a fifth floor walk-up and he hadn't seen her for many years. So anyway, we walk up this many flights of stairs and a central casting old lady opens the door and it's very humble and we sit down.
18:08How are you? How's your family? So on. And she goes in the kitchen to make us some tea and get some cookies and everything's threadbare and tidy, but there's nothing fancy in there. But suddenly I'm looking around and I'm like, something going on here. I should sit up straighter. I wonder if I should comb my hair. I suddenly started to feel this sense of, I'm not sure I'm good enough to be here. There's something beautiful and wonderful and magical happening here. And I kept looking for, where's it coming from? Because it's just, you know, normal furniture and so on. And we talked and I'm like, wow, this is the best tea I ever had.
18:47And it was like Lipton's or something. Anyway, as we were leaving, I learned that she was a longtime Zen practitioner. And so, I don't really know why her home seemed like a palace, but my supposition was that she had cared so much about the objects in her possession by dusting them and putting this here and fixing this when it was broken and arranging this so that the light was nice or whatever it is she did, I don't know. But at some point after decades of caring about her environment and her possessions, it felt to an outside observer such as myself that her heart had gone into the environment, into the objects, and it felt very uplifted and elegant while it was very humble.
19:38So, there's a kind of mystic quality to the communication that we have with our bodies, with our environment, with the things that come into our purview. There's a quality of connecting with what is animate in our environment, whether it's human beings or plants or objects or just sense of space, that when we relate with things as though they were animate, whether we can prove it or not, a kind of loving quality comes into the communication between you and yourself, you and your space. And that's what I mean by mystic, is connecting with the living quality of the things that you connect with. And, P.S., for its great history, meditation, as far as I understand it, was never a way meant to be a way to retreat into yourself, to reorder, to rearrange the furniture or fix things, to become better at this or better at that.
20:43It was meant as a way to connect with other people and your environment and to feel your connectivity, your connection with the phenomenal world. In our time, that's called being a mystic. But for the great majority of history, that was just called being a dude, you know, just being an ordinary person that you want to take care of your environment and the people around you and the things that you possess. And life becomes more vital with such an approach. And anyway, that's what I would call mystic, is relating with people and objects as animate in your way, not my way. A sense that everything matters, everything and everyone matters?
21:29Everything and everyone matters, but not from a moral point of view. There's something post-moral about this point of view, And it has to do, perhaps, with what we were talking about earlier, the inseparable nature of you and me, of me and the house I'm in and the phenomena I encounter. So it's more like super good manners. Super good manners because you've had an insight into the underlying truth of existence, which is one word for that would be interconnection or non-separation is another phrase that people use. Oneness is another phrase. But again, I'm just going to come back to the regular person.
22:16And I'll speak for myself, for much of my contemplative career, that idea of oneness or non-separation, like, I didn't compute to me. I definitely felt like a bounded, separate entity. And I'm looking around at the lights in this little studio and I don't feel oneness with them at all. So, like, how can we make this concept that you're describing real and accessible to folks? Well, the good news and the bad news, I would say, is you can't. This is not a function of thinking. You cannot pierce this. You cannot have insight into it through thinking about it or studying it, because we are immediately in a dualistic situation.
23:05So, understanding of such profound notions is not a function of conventional thought. It's a function, I would say, of relationship to this idea. And the more you think about it, relate to it, study it, read about it, notice it when you do see it, notice it when you have no idea what it is, a relationship starts to develop between you and the deeper truths that are of interest, but thinking about it will not help. So, this is confounding. A place to start, however, with these ideas of non-separate and no-self and so on and egolessness even is you are not separate. Here you are, Dan, I see you, you're a separate person, but you don't have a separate identity from the things that gave rise to you.
24:05Your parents, their parents, whatever sandwiches they ate, whatever climates they grew up in, their genetic makeup, all of those things coalesce to be Dan. And if one of those things was different, you would not be here on some level. So, if you start to reflect on
24:29the inseparable nature of you from what came before you and gave rise to you, you could start to think, well, okay, I guess that's true. It's very hard in our culture, which emphasizes individuality and self-focus and self-aggression, but that's a place to start. I wouldn't be here without all that came before me. This also happens to be, maybe a side note, the first of the four reminders that turn the mind to the Dharma, the first being precious human birth. It's a miracle that you're here. You wouldn't be here without everything that came before you. It's funny, you said at the beginning that we can't realize interconnection or non-separation through thinking about it, but you've just given us a thought exercise that I, in my experience, does incline the mind toward this realization, just contemplating the fact that I feel like a separate entity, you know, as I often say, like peering fretfully out from behind my eye sockets, if I have sight, that's how I just intuitively feel.
25:42But if I just think it through one click deeper. Oh, well, but how separate can I be if my parents are living in me and all of their patterns and all the shit that I picked up from them, that's all living in me. And by the way, I'm living in my son and in my wife and anybody who listens to this podcast. So how separate can I be given that actually I'm more like a sieve? I share your thoughts and your conclusions. And it's one thing to go, yeah, that makes sense. And another thing to wake up, presumably, not having accomplished this myself, to wake up into that realization and to live within it, to be never separate from that realization in your being, not in your thoughts, but to live in that truth, something apparently essential about our separateness falls away.
26:36So are you saying then that a mystic, to come back to that term, is aspiring to understand what you're describing, aspiring to be sensitive to the environment and to feel permeable and compassionate? Is that enough to qualify as a mystic? Well, the real answer is, I don't know. but sure it's something that one that seems to be always 45 degrees away like most great truths most things that we're trying to intuit but everybody already is a mystic because everybody already has feelings everybody already can sense something in an environment everybody already feels connected to some things and not connected to other things.
27:27So awareness of what can be felt but not seen is as good a definition of mysticism as anything, I think. And we all have it. I have put you through your paces on definitions of terms like magic and mysticism. Let's get down to some of what the book really makes practical. We're not going to have time to get through the whole book. People should read it. Again, it's called Inexplicable Magic. But there are a bunch of actions that you say mystics, and in a broad and inclusive way, mystics can include all of us, seven actions that you say mystics engage in. One of them is ritual. What does that mean?
28:13Yeah, these are seven principles to keep your meditation practice in the realm of the spiritual, which doesn't mean in the realm of the woo-woo. So, ritual is just very simple. When you sit as something on your to-do list that you want to cross out alone, well, okay, but that's not really what is valuable about it. It's not a bicep curl. It's not, I mean, it is, but it's much more than that. So, how do you find the deeper possibility in your practice, and it helps if you approach it as a ritual rather than a to-do. So, a ritual just means you have a place where you sit, you have a certain time where you try to do it.
28:55I mean, I'm personally very inconsistent, but generally speaking, when I sit down, there are pictures on a little table of people that are inspiring to me. I've been a Buddhist for close to 35 years, so they're Buddhist teachers who have meant a lot to me, and I light a candle, and I look at them, I'm like, I hope I can, I don't know, dudes, help me out here. I'm connecting with you, with this mind, with what inspires me, whether it's a Buddhist teacher or an ancestor or a place, something that inspires me, that I long for, that's what I want to start my practice with. And I want to remember that I'm communicating with wisdom that is greater than what I have now and that I'm asking for help, for inspiration.
29:45And I don't know where it comes from or what it will look like even when it does. But my practice starts with connecting to the wisdom traditions that inspire me. And one can choose whatever they like for that initiating moment. But that's very helpful when you remember I'm connecting to something bigger than me. So there are ways you're saying to make the practice more than just an item on our to-do list. And one of them is having, I don't know if you use this word, but like some people have altars where they have pictures of people who are inspiring to them could be Buddhist deities. It could be great teachers.
30:26Sometimes people light some incense or light a candle to just make the thing feel like, oh, we're stepping into a different his zone now than the work a day. What else would help us turn our meditation practices into more of a ritual? Well, there's sort of three components to it. One is when you light a candle or an incense or just look at the pictures or whatever it is that you do at this table or wherever it is you sit, is to recognize that when you light the candle, let's just say that's what you do, it's an offering. It's like a gift. It's like I'm giving something to I don't even know what because I can't see it, I can't identify it, but I'm offering myself this light.
31:09Usually, the offerings on a shrine table evoke the sense perceptions, something that smells good or looks beautiful, and you could rouse a sense of I'm giving, giving something to my practice. Whatever that means to you, you have to figure that out and think about it, and it can be vague. that's fine. And then there's, in the traditional sense, the next step is called requesting blessings. But you're not saying, Gesundheit, or, you know, please help me get this or get that. There's more a sense of what I admire, in my case, Buddhist teachers, but in someone else's case, it could be math teachers or relatives.
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31:51I ask for your blessings. I am in your lineage. which means I'm connected to you because that's how I feel. This is what I aspire to. So therefore, I am connected to this lineage of whatever it might be, Buddhist teachers, activists, parents, people with no lineage. And I want to connect more deeply with that which inspires me. That's it. Then you do your practice, whatever it is. Five minutes, five hours, That's up to you. And then at the end, the final step is you do what is traditionally called dedicate the merit, which just means you rouse some aspiration that whatever you did on your meditation seat, even if you just fetched to yourself or cried or laughed or were bored, that there's some sense of I hope that this can benefit others.
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34:51I got a lot going on in my life. I'm sure the same is true for you. And if you live in a family with other members of Homo sapiens, it can get even more complex. In my home, I've got my busy schedule. I also want to know what my wife's up to at any given moment so that I can be sensitive to her needs and schedule. Then of course, I want to know what's happening with our son. But tracking all of these can add some cognitive layers that make me grumpy. Which brings me to one of our sponsors today, Skylight Calendar, which is designed to bring families together for more time. It's an all-in-one digital smart calendar that syncs seamlessly with Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, Outlook, and more, giving you customizable views for daily, weekly, or monthly planning.
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38:03Let me ask about what is perhaps the thing I most wanted to talk to you about from your book, which is you say that a mystic is boundaried that we that we set boundaries and that yeah that that really got me interested because we've we've just talked about porousness and so how do we square that circle and there's some sense i would say in spiritual circles buddhist or otherwise that real spiritual people are open. And, okay. And that whatever comes along, you should be open to it. You should be receptive. You should, and that's just bullshit. That is harmful, bad, terrible advice for all of us, but I'd say especially for my lady friends who may have been raised to think I have to make room for everyone and everything.
39:01although everyone in our culture has that. So, as you practice, as we've discussed, you become more porous, as you mentioned. You become more vulnerable, more sensitive, more raw. And that's the good news because that's where love comes from, including compassion. That's where creativity comes from. That's where insight comes from. So, we want to protect that space. We want to protect our energy. And we're in a world right now, and I don't have to tell you this, that is clawing for that energy, for that mind space, for your attention. And once you to think this and get angry about that and feel hopeful about this, okay, some of those things are very reasonable.
39:49But if we continually give our awareness, our attention away to whatever's on our screen or whatever other people tell us we should be paying attention to, we're effed. We have lost agency in our own minds. And these forces, whatever they are, clawing for that agency slash consumer dollars, do not have our best interests at heart. And the most radical, I would say, and rebellious thing that we can do, I don't think I'm full of it when I'm saying this, because I thought about it a lot, although I could be, is to retain sovereignty, agency in our own minds, what I choose to pay attention to, when I choose to withdraw my attention for my own reasons, usually because I'm tired, what I want to give my heart to and where I want to shut it down and hold it back because I'm depleted and exhausted.
40:48Meditation gives you the capacity to make those judgments. Sometimes you make their own one, but generally speaking, it gives you this lever of agency in your own mind. And boundaries are extremely important to support the fruition of the spiritual path because, as I'm sure I don't have to explain to you or anyone who's been practicing for more than a minute, it's really easy to get confused. So, boundaries are important and you make mistakes and your world will tell you that was the wrong boundary or you need more of that boundary. So, to be very clear about your own life force, your energy, what gives you joy, not so that you can be happy, although I want you to be happy very, very much and I want to be happy too, but so that You can be a benefit in this world because when we're depleted and exhausted, we cannot help our fellow beings.
41:46So we need to protect our vitality. That's what boundaries do. When I was listening to you talk about it, I got the sense that you were, and I could be wrong about this, Mostly referring to protecting your attention, like don't give away your life force to Mark Zuckerberg and his various social media platforms. But what about boundaries with other people and how can that, how can we set boundaries with other human beings in a tradition that emphasizes, you know, love and kindness and generosity, et cetera, et cetera? It's all predicated on knowing yourself. When you know yourself to whatever degree, you tune into, this gives me joy, this depletes me, this I don't want to do but I'm going to do it anyway because I'm choosing to.
42:44This I don't want to do, I'm not going to do it. and our practice creates that self-knowledge not in a psychological sense but I see my wiring I see my rhythms I see this thing that happened when I think about it makes me feel terrible or this doesn't and there's no particular good reason or bad reason it just is so you see your own patterns and rhythms more clearly and that gives you the ability to set boundaries with other people. And that's obviously really hard. So, I'm a teacher and one of my boundaries, this is an easy one, so I'm not bragging or anything, is I love to teach, I'm very happy to teach, but I don't like to work one-on-one with people.
43:33It's not like there's crowds of people begging me to work with them one-on-one, but I just realized that I don't like that, So I'm not going to do that. And okay, that's easy. That's in my work life and my Dharma life, in my personal life with my partner and loved ones and so on. It's a game that's always in process. And I learn when the boundary's been crossed after it's been crossed in either direction. And then I try to repair, whether it's my boundary was crossed or I crossed someone else's. Then I repair, I try to, and then I try to learn. But it's never going to be neat. It's always going to be messy to some degree.
44:22And for some reason what comes to mind to say when boundaries are crossed, when I'm the boundary crosser, I apologize. I'm sorry. That doesn't make it like it didn't happen. but to acknowledge the messes, which is kind of another theme in the book, we clean up after ourselves, to acknowledge the messes that you make and to do your best to clean, tidy them. This is especially important when it comes to boundaries, which are always moving. It's important when it comes to boundaries, when you've trespassed against somebody else, for sure you want to get good at apologizing. But I'm really most curious, how do you set a boundary kindly with somebody who's overstepping with you?
45:16When it comes to my teaching life, I feel I've got to pat myself on the back here. I'm just very aware of when someone's trying to get too close to me or, you know, push me off my seat. I'm so far so good on that. it's been 15 years, so not that there haven't been problems, but in my marriage, for example, and I've been married for almost 30 years, a really long time, my boundary is I need a lot of solitude. For the first 10 years, something, I was like, I'm sorry, I need a lot of solitude. And the second 10 years, I was like, F you, I need a lot of solitude. And now in the third 10 years, I'm like, this is how it is, dude.
45:58This is how it is. And I say, don't talk to me in the morning. Just don't. I'll see you at dinner. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't. But this is the people that need a lot of alone time tend to partner with the people that need a lot of together time. Okay, whoever designed the system, please go back to the drawing board. but what has helped me with this particular situation and this is about me personally so apologies or yay or whatever that might invoke I have come to respect in my partner what he's trying to have is more connection with me and I'm trying to have less and both of those things are really important in an intimate relationship there needs to be a balance of togetherness and separateness, and he's representing one of those pieces, and I'm representing the other.
46:57Now, there are times where it's just, oh, get the hell out. I told you a million times, don't do this, and you just did it. So, then we get in a fight, and then we work through it. It doesn't get repaired. That doesn't seem to happen, but we start to love each other again through hanging in there with the difficulty of not understanding each other. So, that's a little bit of a departure. That's more in the relationship sense. But I think the idea that we can set boundaries that other people will adhere to, you know, good. Maybe if you get like the 80-20 on that, you're doing really good. But how do you repair when the boundary is crossed?
47:39Or how do you say, I'm not in your life anymore? Whether you say to yourself or to them, But you make a choice. I'm not going to be in this anymore. That's a very powerful thing to do. I always find it really comforting when I hear from a Buddhist teacher that they get into a fight with their spouse. Seriously. Because there's this idea that, oh, I'm a meditator now and everything should be perfect and I shouldn't be having, there should be no messiness in my life, etc., etc. But that's bullshit. And so every time, you know, somebody like Joseph Goldstein or Sharon Salzberg or you or whatever tells me about, you know, intramural squabbles or professional disappointments or, you know, Jack Kornfield, the great Buddhist teacher, he got divorced.
48:28I'm not happy that these things happen, but I am happy that my own failings and failures don't disqualify me as a Buddhist. You are evidently qualified. I will say I am too. And the problem is when you act like you're not a human, then it should become very, very, very untrustworthy. And then there are people who sort of virtue signal with their marital squabbles or other problems as a kind of, look, I'm just a person just like you. Well, that's also bad. But being real, being human, and countering the mess is central to the journey, not perfecting it. I'm so happy that our son is now back from summer camp.
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51:33Okay, so that brings us to another of the actions that you say mystics take. And you referenced this earlier, we clean up after ourselves. And now are you referring there to after we've made an interpersonal mess or to our housework or both? Yes, both. That's my favorite one. I love this one so much. If you, yeah, so let's start with your house. Don't leave dishes in the sink overnight. doesn't mean you're a great saint if you do the dishes or anything, but there's something that bothers you, that niggles at your mind space when you leave messes. First of all, it's just unpleasant and uncomfortable.
52:15And second of all, you're leaving it for someone else. That's the main thing. Don't leave your messes for someone else to clean up. That's a very clear, ordinary, doable expression of compassion. I'm not going to leave this for someone else to clean up, not because I'm a great person, but because I care about what the people that come after me in this whole situation at my kitchen sink does not begin and end with me. I'm thinking of the other people who may want to eat food or may come into this room or who may want a dish that's clean to eat off of. It's a thoughtfulness that is weirdly powerful.
52:56And in addition, it feels one way to walk into a room that is not perfect or things are in their place and something's broken and you fix it, you feel like, oh, this is good. Interestingly, in my training, suggestions were made on how to develop real confidence like true confidence not based on today I feel good about myself today I don't and the first suggestion was clean up your room and this teacher said the chance that you'll become enlightened if you pick up your dirty sweats off the floor put them on is diminished so I don't really know if that's true and I may be paraphrasing but there's some sense of caring for the environment as with the example of my husband's parents' friend who cared about her space so much that it was palpable.
53:50And we think, well, I want to be more confident. I want to be more, whatever, happy and balanced. And I need to find how to be that by fixing myself or discovering those qualities within myself. But in this theory, which is also a little bit on the mystic tip, you draw confidence from the environment. You draw happiness, you draw balance from an environment that is balanced. It's not rocket science, I don't think. The other day, I mean, this is a silly example, but I just took everything out of my closet because it was bothering me and I put everything back, you know, and I ironed things. And for the rest of the day, I walked in the closet, I was like, yeah, this is good.
54:34I just felt settled in a particular way. But that's not, you know, we clean up after ourselves with our interpersonal messes too, with a spouse or a family member. It's complicated, obviously, there's a lot. But in a sense, it's easier because we know them and we have experience with them. But the messes that I tend to make anyway are more with strangers. You know, I get grumpy with technical support or someone cuts me off in traffic and I'm like, I would like to murder you. You know, I'm like, okay, that's bad. Don't, no, I don't, don't, don't, don't do that. Don't do that. But, oh, I just thought it.
55:14So, what do I do? So, if it's someone that I'm encountering and we just moved to a new house, we've had endless hijinks ensue around getting internet service. Occasionally, I will say I got grumpy, often because for whatever, stupid reasons, but I apologize. I say, I'm sorry. I got grumpy with you, and I'm sorry. My favorite line is, there are many big problems in the world today, and my internet service is not one of them. So, let's just dial it back, and I'm sorry. And try to keep it very simple, not like, oh, please forgive me, but I'm sorry. So, those little messes, first, they matter a lot to everyone.
56:02They matter a lot. How many times have you walked out of a circumstance where you're like, why did they say that to me? And then you think about it for the next 18 years or something. So, we want to just put those things away for everyone's benefit. So, environment is very important. And the mystic attunement, meditative attunement is not just to self, it's to environment. Again, that all makes complete sense to me. I want to pick up on something you said in there that I think will lead us to another of the actions. I believe this is something you've kind of touched on several times throughout this conversation.
56:36There's a way in which we can come to meditation or self-improvement writ large with an agenda to fix ourselves. And I believe one of the arguments you're making in the book is that we should stop trying to fix ourselves. Sure. You try to fix yourself. No problem. If you try to get rid of that, then you're trying to fix that. So you're just piling on. I want to fix that. I want to fix myself. You're back in Palookaville at that point. So just while you're practicing, if you can let that go. I hope this is working. I don't know if it's working. When is this going to fix me? I'm still a jerk. When am I going to stop being a jerk?
57:13Okay, cool. Those are thoughts. Let them go while you're practicing. In your post-meditation practice, which is the rest of your life, pick your agenda back up, examine it, no problem. But while you're practicing, it's good to set it down, because setting the agenda down widens the focus, widens the view. instead of going, I'm doing this because I want this result, you're saying, let me see what is happening. That's called curiosity, openness, awareness. And that is more instructive than trying to make your agenda work, which I'm sure it's a good agenda and all that, but not while you're practicing.
57:51So, I've listened to a couple of your recent podcast episodes of great joy. It's been a delight to listen because we haven't talked for a while. I want to catch up with the vibe and stuff. And I noticed that you have spoken to some really, really smart people who have said, I can't meditate. And you sort of go, wait a minute, what do you mean? And I appreciate the way you handle it. And you try to say, well, let's unpack that. Let's look at that. And they say, well, I can't stop thinking or I have a monkey mind or whatever. And you in some very spacious way say, well, actually that's not necessary.
58:29You don't have to stop thinking. And, but there's an agenda there that is very hard to separate a person, a prospective meditator from, a thought that I have to stop thinking in order to do this. And this is sort of adjacent to your question about agendas and fixing yourself. But I'm curious, what do you think is at work there? And what do you think would be useful in explaining that that's not what you have to do? Well, I mean, I think there are a lot of things at work. I mean, partly it's just that meditation has a PR problem, in part because of the iconography, you know, the Buddha statues.
59:13He looks like he's in a bulletproof bliss bubble. And so people think that that's what is required to meditate. The other thing is, I think it comes back to your point here about don't try to fix yourself. If you go into meditation with this kind of subtle self-aggression of, I need to clear my mind, I need to grit my teeth and achieve meditative bliss, that's counterproductive. And I suspect that's part of the problem. I noticed an interesting parallel in one of your recent interviews. One of your guests said about the longevity culture is that it involves a lot of self-focus and self-aggression.
59:58And those are problematic in the wellness industrial complex, I believe is how it was phrased. And as I was hearing that, I was like, yeah, that is exactly right. Self-focus and self-aggression in the mindfulness industrial complex are equally problematic. And when we sort of go, well, what else you got besides the self-focus and self-aggression, fix you, stop that, be another way, you open immediately into the mystic. Can we say more about that? Well, there's some sense of when I can let go of I am the problem that needs fixing, a different view of the world comes alive. One that is characterized less by self-aggression and more by openness and curiosity.
1:00:48Curiosity is the superpower, by the way, in my opinion. and they are obstacles, self-focus. Well, if you don't have self-focus, if that's an obstacle, let's just say for the sake of conversation, then there's expanded focus. That's not different than a definition of mysticism. If there's self-aggression, which is the killer, and we think, well, I'm not going to use this as a weapon. I'm not going to make my meditation practice just be a constant recitation of you better shut up, which is often how people approach it. But I'm going to listen instead. That again is an openness and a sense of discovering rather than a strong-arming something.
1:01:36And the world opens up in a different way. And if I could do one thing in my life as a teacher or a human really, it would be to lay to rest this biggest misconception about meditation is that in order to do it, you have to stop thinking. There's only one thing you have to stop thinking, and it's that, because there's no off switch. It's like eyeballs, ear balls, they're all mind and Buddhist thought as I was trained as a sense perception, just like eyes and ears, and as such, there's no off switch. So, it's fine. can we relate to these sense perceptions in some other way that's my mission just go back to what you said about how expanding the focus is the connection to the mystic like when we stop trying to fix ourselves that's kind of a window into something larger can you just say that and um just put some put some words to that that will make it really graspable for a dummy like me.
1:02:42Yeah. I'll speak from my own experience as a dummy, such as myself. When I primarily focus on what is wrong with me, I become very claustrophobic within myself. Everything's very narrow. I did this well, I did it poorly. That was good. That was bad. My inner world shrinks. When I can let go, even for a moment or whatever, of how am I doing, my world expands and becomes more spacious and relaxed. And then it goes away because just whatever, normal person. And then I try to remember, well, if I keep trying to fix myself, if I police my inner world, which is what self-help often is, although I've written self-help books, I love self-help, I need a lot of help.
1:03:37But it's about policing yourself in some way and then punishment reward. Well, that's a very small world. And the actual world, our actual experience is so much bigger and more vibrant and more magical and more beautiful and horrifying and shocking and what than that. But when the focus is limited constantly to the self-focus and the self-aggression that come with it, the whole world shrinks and then we're dead. It strikes me that there's an interesting balance required here, perhaps. Because I don't have any issue with what you just said, that if all of our self-care is predicated on the notion that we're a problem to be solved, well, that just, you know, kind of, it's a, what's the technical term?
1:04:38An involution, like where you are just a snake eating its own tail. It really just becomes navel-gazy and solipsistic, and there's no room left for other people in the logical extension of that approach. However, sometimes there are aspects of our behavior and of our minds that really could require some attention. And so how can we have a both and approach here without, you know, falling off of either edge? Yeah, we all have our issues and things that need healing. But I'd say healing and fixing are somewhat different. and much of the advice we get is how do I fix this but how do I heal it to me is a more interesting question and luckily there are people like Gabor Mate and you know great thinkers on deep healing but I'll give you a personal example if I may feel free to ignore this but I grew up feeling very not at home where I grew up as a child.
1:05:56And I didn't know where I was and the things that I was interested in were not of interest. So, I ended up with this habit of, I would get under my desk in my room, my childhood bedroom, and pull the chair in so that no one could see me. And I would read and I would write in my journal and do the things that I still like doing? And I would be very attentive to like, is anyone coming? Because if anyone sees me, it's not going to work out. There's blah, blah. This is not a reasonable way to spend time. Okay. My parents, by the way, were very wonderful people, but this was a chemistry issue between us.
1:06:30Anyway, I still do that, you know, a thousand years later. I still, and we moved into a new house, so I'm trying to be aware of where am I trying to build my hiding place? Where am I trying to replicate that under the desk, pull the chair in where no one can see me, because I am. I totally see that I'm trying to do that, and I can feel it, and I'm trying to browse some sense of, can I expand to fill this space? I don't know how to do that, but let me see how to do it. And that's a thing for me to heal, and I don't really know how to do it, but I'm no longer thinking, well, this is a problem I have to fix.
1:07:16This is a wound that needs love, not someone's love or my love, but just space. So I would say that's different than fixing. And meditation really helps with healing. It really helps. There's data, of course. And then there's anecdotal data of as I have practiced, as one practices, people with problems being impatient may on some days be more patient. People that have bad tempers become on good days somewhat less bad tempered. That's also magic. How does that happen, Dan? Don't answer that.
1:08:06I'm going with magic. We are almost out of time. So let me give you the two, ask you the two questions I tend to ask at the end of the interview. The first is, is there something you were hoping to get to that we have not managed to get to? I don't think so. I said this early on, but this principle of what we most seek does not come from us. It comes to us. that's the central conceit of the mystic practice so i hope that was clear we did get to it but it sounds different now than it did an hour ago yeah no i'm glad you're coming back to it so what i hear when you say that is that we can do these practices to prepare the mind we can live in um you know in as in as immaculate a way as we can uh muster but in the end as i said before Or like that last mile, that's where the magic comes in because it's something visiting us from outside of us that happens.
1:09:08We can do all the work. You know what it reminds me of? There was some great painter, and I can't remember who was Chuck Close. Maybe it was Picasso. Somebody who said, the muse will visit, but she has to find you working. Exactly. That's perfectly said. That's the principle. And our practice is the work. The muse finds you working when you're practicing meditation. Final question then. Can you just remind us of the name of your new book? And while you're at it, please plug your previous books and anything else you want us to know about. That's so nice. Thank you. Yes. Inexplicable Magic, Meditation for Mystics is the current book.
1:09:51and I also wrote a book called The Buddhist Enneagram, which we talked about, which is also out there in the woo-woo realm, but not to me. And that was just reissued. So that came out. And my online community is called The Open Heart Project. And we practice together every day over there. I will put links to all of those in the show notes and I will put a link specifically to our conversation about the Enneagram. Susan, always great to see you. Thanks for your time. Dan, ditto and ditto. Thank you so much to everybody who works so hard to make this show. 10 % Happier is produced by Tara Anderson and Eleanor Vasili.
1:10:33Our 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 great indie rock band Islands wrote our theme. Also, one last thing before you go. Remember to sign up for my new app, which is called 10 % with Dan Harris. You can sign up over at danharris.com. On the app, you'll find a growing library of meditations from world-class teachers, ad-free access to the full expertise of our podcast guests, meaning you'll get this podcast with no ads, exclusive live stream events, which we do weekly, sometimes twice a week, robust discussion threads to connect you with our team, with our teachers, and with one another.
1:11:16There's a free 14-day trial if you want to try before you buy. Peace.
From the publisher
Plus: Why you're a "mystic" even though you don't know it, how to find the "magic" in meditation, and the power of simple apologies (and cleaning the dishes).
Susan Piver is a 30 year student of Tibetan Buddhism, New York Times bestselling author, and founder of The Open Heart Project, an online meditation community with close to 20,000 members. Her latest book is Inexplicable Magic: Meditation for Mystics.
In this episode we talk about:
- Why meditation's real payoff can't be explained
- The crucial difference between mindfulness and awareness
- Why you can't think your way into oneness
- The seven daily habits of a modern "mystic"
- Why boundaries are essential to a spiritual life
- Susan's unglamorous trick for building real confidence
- Why trying to fix yourself backfires
- The secret to attracting inspiration
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