Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to 10% Happier early and ad free right now.Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts.I'm Dan Harris. Hey, hey, how we doing, everybody?
In my opinion, open-mindedness or intellectual humility is not valued nearly as highly as it should be in our culture. Look around you.We seem to reward people for conviction, even when they're dead wrong.
And when I hear people talk about the aspects of their personality that they want to improve, usually it has to do with anxiety or addiction or self-compassion or motivation.
Rarely do I ever hear anybody embracing the aspiration to reduce their clinging to their views and opinions. But the case for this is super strong.Open mindedness has been shown to reduce depression and anxiety and increase life satisfaction.
It can also mitigate conflict and create more highly functioning teams that produce better ideas.Studies have shown that curiosity and openness are the key to both successful startups and American presidencies.
The Buddhists have been making the case for open-mindedness, or what the Zen people call don't-know mind, for millennia.
So today we've got a trio of meditation maestros who are going to talk about the benefits of acknowledging when you're wrong and the skill of developing a mind that does not grasp so tightly at your opinions.
We will also talk about whether openness and decisiveness can coexist, which is a tricky question.
This is the third in a special series of episodes we're doing where my executive producer DJ Kashmir identifies an issue in his own life, in this case his struggles with being wrong, and then he goes out and talks to a bunch of teachers about how to deal with it.
If you missed the prior two episodes with DJ about how to handle anger and what to do when other people are pissed at you, we will put links in the show notes here. So the structure of this episode is a little bit different than our usual fare.
You're going to hear me in conversation with DJ, who is then going to play clips of his conversations with the teachers.
Those teachers are Kyra Julingo, a former nun in the Plum Village tradition started by the Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh, Vinnie Ferraro, who teaches at the Insight Meditation Society, Spirit Rock, and also in prisons.
and Matthew Brensilver, who teaches at many of those same retreat centers, and before that, many years working in the field of addiction pharmacotherapy.I really enjoy this format.
Would be curious, however, for your thoughts on whether it's working for you.Hit me up in the chat over at danharris.com.DJ will be in there as well.DJ Kashmir and our trio of Dharma maestros right after this.
One quick note before we get started here, if you're starting to think about holiday gifts for the meditator in your life, head over to the shop on danharris.com for a limited 15% off site-wide.Mark your calendar.
The sale runs from November 25th through December 2nd.Meanwhile, over on the Happier app, they've got personalized meditation practices that fit any schedule, which is especially relevant.
in the midst of the holidays and all of the stress that comes with it.From quick meditations to mindful cooking videos, Happier can help you stay grounded through the season.And now through December 6th, you can get 40% off a yearly subscription.
Go to happier.com slash four zero to get your discount. DJ Kashmir, welcome back to the show.
Thanks, Dan.We've been doing this a lot.It's fun to be here again.
So what are we doing today?Yeah, so today is the third in this four-part series of reported episodes that we've been running over the last month or so.
In each of these episodes, I'm tackling a challenge that I'm running into in my own life and in my meditation practice, asking a big question about that challenge, and then you know, going out and trying to answer it.
And the first episode was, what do I do when I'm angry?The second was, what do I do when other people are angry?And today it's, why am I wrong so much and what should I do about it?
Are you saying that you're wrong more than other people?I mean, I have a view on that, but go ahead.
I think what I'm saying is that we're all wrong a lot more often than we think.It is also entirely possible that I am on the above average end of the spectrum, but I'll let others be the judge of that.
My real question is, why is this such an important issue to you?
So it started for me about three years ago.I was on a retreat, and I was in a room doing some walking meditation.And I was the only person in the room.
There were some beautiful plants and sunlight streaming in, and I was just walking back and forth, you know, 10 or 12 feet, turn around, follow your breath. And a couple minutes in, someone else walked into the room.
I caught a glimpse of them out of the corner of my eye.And I'd been on retreat for a few days at that point, so I kind of had a sense of who was on retreat with me.And even though it's silent, you kind of build up these characters in your head.
You know, that's the person who always wears this.That's the person who always makes that kind of face.Whatever.That's the person who looks like so-and-so.
And so anyway, I caught a glimpse of this person out of the corner of my eye and I realized, I know who that is.And then I put it out of my mind and kept walking back and forth, back and forth.
And at some point, the period of walking meditation ended.I think there was a sound of a bell to call us back to the sitting meditation hall.
And I happened to look up just as this person who I'd been walking right next to left the room before me and got a much better look at them and realized it was a completely different person.Like I was 100% wrong about who it had been the whole time.
And This was really inconsequential.It didn't matter who I was walking next to, but because it was retreat and because things hit different on retreat, I just really had this moment of insight.
And as with many moments of insight, it sounds really obvious looking back, but the moment of insight was just, wow. I bet this happens a lot.I bet I'm wrong all the time.
And so I really started kind of trying to trace this through the rest of the retreat.And when I got home, and it's just something I've been keeping a close eye on, it's like, how often I'm wrong, which is way more than I realized.
And, you know, I'm obviously not the first person to To have this insight, the Buddha talked about the three root poisons that sort of lie at the bottom of all of our suffering, and the Buddha identified those as greed, hate, and delusion.
And so there it is right there on the list, delusion, right?Being wrong.And so again, not a new insight, but I really started to get curious about how often this was happening and how it was impacting my life.
A little while further down the line, I came across this Thich Nhat Hanh quote where he writes, quote, most of our perceptions are erroneous. And I was just so struck by that, like most is so many, it's more than half.
And it feels like if that's true, or if that's even close to true, then we should all be talking about this a lot more than we are.
Well, I definitely agree we should all be talking about this a lot more.And I've gotten on my soapbox on this issue on this podcast many times, perhaps too many times.
But I find it endlessly fascinating that we're all walking around with these stories in our head about the way reality is.Many of these stories deeply informed by our biases, you know, for which we are evolutionarily wired.
And we are trying to communicate information from our little cosmos into other people's cosmos across like an unbridgeable divide in every conversation.
I sometimes think about that Anaïs Nin, I think I'm pronouncing it correctly, but she says, we don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
I find this fascinating and maddening because if you take it seriously, this idea that it's hard to get your footing.And the other part that's maddening is that not enough people are also taking this seriously.
And we are just like in a world where everybody is so certain all the time.
Yeah, totally. I see this everywhere I look.I mean, the most obvious place that it pops up right now in our collective psyche is in the political sphere, but I also just see it in my day-to-day.
I had an experience a few months ago where I sent somebody an email, and I was just slightly worried that it might land the wrong way.I wrote it really carefully. It wasn't a confrontational email.
I just had this idea in the back of my head, like, I'm not totally sure.This is a little sensitive.I hope this lands okay.And it was actually an email to a Dharma teacher.
And for the next, like, six, eight, ten days while I waited for a reply, I was nervous every time I checked my email. Every time I saw a new message pop up, I would quickly scan to see if it was from this person.
And the longer it went, the more I was convinced that I had totally screwed up this email, that I had messed up this relationship, this whole story.
Eventually, I got an email back, and it was just that this person had been on retreat and hadn't had a chance to check their email.And they took no offense.Everything I said landed super well.We were good to go.There were zero problems.
And it was just such a clear example of one of the many kinds of suffering we can inflict on ourselves when we believe what we think without holding out the possibility that we might be totally wrong.
Yep, that suffering is freely available.I have had my share of it.I suspect anybody who's listening knows exactly what you're talking about.What are we going to do today to help people?
Or I guess maybe the more pointed way to put it would be like, what have you gone out and learned that has helped you and that you're now going to tell us?
Basically, what I've done is I've gone out and done a bunch of research, talked to some meditation teachers—again, Matthew Brensilver, Vinnie Ferraro, Kaira Duolingo, some of my favorite teachers, some of the audience's favorite teachers—about this issue, and we're going to talk through
What is being wrong?Why do we fail to recognize it?What are the implications?And most importantly, you know, because this is 10% Happier and we try to be relentlessly practical on this show, what can we do about it?
So I'll be sharing a few passages from books that really helped me and also playing a bunch of clips from these teachers.And that's kind of how we'll move through this together.
I know you want to start with one of your favorite meditation teachers, Kyra Jewel Lingo.
But before we get to her, you wanted to let us know about something that her teacher once said on this issue, which we might call like open mindedness or not knowing or intellectual humility.
Her teacher is a legendary Zen master, Thich Nhat Hanh, who's no longer with us.And you're going to read us something that Thich Nhat Hanh said on this score.
So this passage comes from a book about Thich Nhat Hanh by a guy named Jim Forrest, who spent a lot of time with Thich Nhat Hanh.I'll just read this little story from Jim Forrest about Thich Nhat Hanh.
So he writes, a student of Buddhism whom we met in Santa Barbara, California, asked what it meant to seek the Buddha and what happens when you find him.
Thay, that's what Thich Nhat Hanh students call him, Thay answered, I am a Zen master, and as you know, Zen masters always reply incomprehensibly, so I will say that you only find the Buddha by killing the Buddha whenever you find him.
Then he laughed and said, but I am a nice Zen master, so I will tell you that the Buddha is truth, and the only thing that keeps you from finding truth is your conviction that you have already found it.
So whenever you find truth, you must recognize it as a lie, kill it, and go on in the search for truth.Becoming a bodhisattva, which means someone who is fully awake, is not reached via methods or ideologies or study or fasting.
Memorizing all the sutras is helpful but will not force open the door.You can sit a thousand hours on a meditation cushion and still be stranded. A diet restricted to green leaves will not assure your entrance into the pure land.
If you think you have encountered the Buddha, it is more likely that it is only a concept of the Buddha, an idol, an illusion.To encounter the true Buddha, we have to kill that illusion."
That quote just raises so many questions, like what?Killing the illusion?I don't even know where to start with that.
Yeah, it's a mind-bender.I mean, not least because Thich Nhat Hanh is universally known as this sort of icon of peace, and so to hear him using this language, kill the Buddha, right off the bat is really striking to me.
This phrase, kill the Buddha, has deep roots.It didn't originate with Thich Nhat Hanh.But yeah, I got curious too about What the hell am I supposed to do with that?
So when I actually found this passage for the first time, it was in a magazine, a Buddhist magazine called Tricycle, and I started looking through the issue to see if there was anything more about this idea, and there was actually an editor's note where the editor of Tricycle pointed out that
this idea of intellectual humility, of not knowing, of killing the Buddha, is actually a really central pillar of a lot of Thich Nhat Hanh's work.
So, for example, Thich Nhat Hanh actually created a list called the 14 Mindfulness Trainings, which is essentially his how-to list for living the enlightened life that's designed specifically for really serious practitioners.And
On this list of 14 things that he says you have to do to live life the right way, he dedicates the first three out of the 14 all to this idea of not knowing, of intellectual humility.
So the first training is about avoiding dogmatism and fanaticism and intolerance.The second one is about being forever open to letting go and learning new things and being wrong.
The third one is about never forcing other people, even our own children, to adopt our views. And so I asked Kaira Julingo about this.
She used to be a nun in Thich Nhat Hanh's tradition, and I asked her to help me make sense of this set of teachings because it's just like you.I found it fascinating and a little bit daunting.
So here she is talking a little bit about these trainings and about what he's pointing to with this idea of kill the Buddha.
What I love about those first three trainings is openness.That's really what I think is the most beautiful quality in our spiritual practice, is being open.Another teaching in this sutra says, a bodhisattva is always willing to learn
never thinking that I have figured this all out.And even Tai, as I studied with him as a nun, he was always willing to learn new things, and he loved learning new things.He loved
learning from the young people, and he was always reading and bringing in science and, you know, new discoveries into his deep teachings of Buddhism.So he never thought he had figured everything out, right?
And so that beautiful image he has of the ladder, that if we're climbing a ladder, if we think we know everything, then we can't ever go to the next rung. But there's like always the next rung.So we want to be open.
And that's part of this asking ourselves, am I sure?Can I see this differently?Can I learn?Can I be open to new information? And I think that can really be our orientation as soon as we wake up in the morning is, how can I see things with fresh eyes?
How can I see things newly in a way that I haven't seen them before?One of the best definitions I've heard from Thay of what the Buddha inside, our Buddha nature, is, as he says, it's our freshness.
This ability to be open, to be curious, to take in new information, to not think that whatever we have learned so far is, you know, the final word.
On the one hand, that sounds great, if only aspirational.On the other hand, I can imagine some people thinking, well, if I'm in reflexive reconsideration mode, if I'm forever fresh, am I going to get anything done?
I had the exact same thought.This is one of the places I was getting really stuck as I was reporting this out.And so I asked Kyra Jewell about this too.
Thich Nhat Hanh taught being relentlessly open, but he also, he got a ton done from coordinating aid during the Vietnam War to opening a global network of practice centers ordaining untold numbers of monastics.And so, this was not a wishy-washy guy.
This is one of the questions I asked her, how can we make sense of these teachings on openness alongside what was obviously a lot of decisiveness?And here's what she said about that.
not knowing or being open or questioning our perceptions, it's different from uncertainty.Like, I just want to be clear, like, doubt is a very different thing than openness, right?
Because that doubt or that confusion where we feel paralyzed or it's hard to take action, we don't want to equate them. And the ability to take action swiftly on many fronts, it actually is facilitated by
the deep clarity of mind in Ty's case right of just someone who had spent so much time seeing his own mind and clarifying the things that usually get us tripped up that's where that immediate action it came from that just deep clarity like just a little story
When I was a nun, we had a whole poplar forest, and there was an infestation of beetles that would kill the whole forest if we let them spread.
And so we were just discussing among the nuns, should we exterminate the beetles, which was against our precept of not killing, or not? right, which would mean the death of the whole forest of poplar trees.
And we actually were in quite a heated discussion, and we couldn't figure it out.And so we went to Thay, and we said, Thay, you have to help us.And right away, he said, well, if I had a bacterial infection, would you not give me medicine?
I would take the medicine, I would kill the bacteria so that I could survive."So he was basically saying, yes, you need to treat all these beetles, you need to kill them to save the forest.So we did that.
But he wasn't hesitating to respond to this question. Right?And you know, it's not that we took it lightly either.Like we really understood we were ending the lives of these beetles.There wasn't any other way that we could address this.
And so we did it with all of our reverence, you know, as much as we could.But just to say that he was super clear with us and we felt, okay, now we feel at ease taking this decision.
But I think we can always be open to new information, to learning, but it doesn't mean that we question our deep intuition, our deep clarity.That can still be operative and it can still take in new information, even
As we decide to take an action, if the situation changes, then we may bring in a new perspective, a nuance to the action we've already taken because of that new information.That's very adaptive.That's very important.Otherwise, we get rigid.
So the openness can exist alongside the clarity, the decisiveness, the effectiveness, right?
I think I get it.It is possible to be open in an adaptive way without being stuck or mired in paralytic doubt.But I do go back to the question I asked earlier and perhaps prematurely, which is how?How do we do this?What are the practices?
I know she actually has some concrete things we can do.
Yes, she does.She's gonna share here one practice that comes with a little story, and then on the back end of that we'll do another clip with three more practices, and then more from some of the other teachers.
This first strategy might not be the first one that would come to mind, but I think it's a really helpful place to start, which is We can humble ourselves and admit when we don't know, and we can humble ourselves and admit when we go wrong.
We can apologize.That's always on offer.And I think starting from that place of giving ourselves permission to do that can kind of take the temperature down and give us space to...
try out a whole bunch of other tools that we're going to get into in a minute here.So this is a clip of Kaira Jewel telling a story about apology, and there's just a little bit of context you'll need to make sense of it.
She's talking here about a retreat that happened.It was 20 years ago.She was on retreat with Thich Nhat Hanh and many others.
The retreat starts with this formal ceremony in which Kaira Jewel and the other monastics and practitioners are bowing to Thich Nhat Hanh. And he responds by doing something a little unexpected.
So you're going to hear her tell this story, and then she and I will chat briefly about it on the back end.Here she is.
And at the beginning of every winter retreat, we would all touch the earth three times and take refuge in Thai as our teacher, as part of this opening ceremony to begin the winter three-month rains retreat or winter retreat.
And this was the first time I saw him turn around and prostrate three times to us, his disciples. And he said, I'm also taking refuge in you just like you're taking refuge in me.
And he said, there are times when I've made mistakes and I really apologize for the times I have been unskillful.I need you to help me.I need you to tell me where I'm also wrong.And I was so moved.
I had never heard him or seen him do that in that way.So humble. and such a teaching of like this world-renowned teacher saying, I need to take refuge in you, my students also.
Beautiful.It's also smart because it's a gentle application of pressure in the other direction too.
Like grow up too, right?Yeah.
I agree with that.Apologies are not a bad way to move through life as long as they're sincere and not performative.I've been guilty of being on the wrong side of that.Okay, but you said she's got some other suggestions.
This clip, she's gonna rattle off three in quick succession, three simple practices that we can try, any of us.
These are all ways to help us remember the possibility that we might be wrong and to make it a little less likely that we'll act from that place of being wrong.So here she is.
Ty says to put on the wall, are you sure?And to see it regularly, like every day, you're looking at that question.He would make a calligraphy of that for people to put up.
You know, one of the ways I try to practice this is to actually check my perceptions against others, to go to people I trust and be like, well, this is what I'm seeing.Is there any, is this at all the case?
Sometimes people will, well, maybe, maybe look at it a little differently or, you know, you're really off, you know, start over.But I think that's also a way to kind of cultivate humility, right?It's like,
We know we only are ever seeing things from where we stand, and there's always, you know, a 360 degree view of each thing, and we're only seeing it from one degree of that 360 degree, right?
Another way to try to get closer to the reality is to walk around that view, try to see it from other vantage points, to try to see it from other points of view that other people might have,
Let me go back over those because they went by reasonably quickly.The first is this idea, which comes from Thich Nhat Hanh, that you should put the words, are you sure, up on the wall so you see it all the time.
I was thinking like, that's not a halfway bad tattoo.Just to have constantly visible, you know, the way I have, as I've shared probably one too many times, a little tattoo that reminds me to, pull my hat out of my ass and not be so self-centered.
You know, the little tattoo that reminds me my goal is to benefit all beings.Are you sure?Or alternatively, you could say, get curious, which is not a bad tattoo.I really like that.
The second thing she mentioned was to check your perceptions with other people.
This actually is something that my friend Adam Grant, who wrote a great book about openness or intellectual humility called Think Again, recommends in that book, which is you should have a little kitchen cabinet, a committee.
That is something I absolutely do.I mean, I'm constantly asking friends and family members and mentors for advice and feedback.I usually don't like what I hear, but I think it protects me from making more mistakes than I otherwise might.
that's not to indicate that I don't make mistakes.
And the third is to make this concerted effort to see things from somebody else's point of view, which reminds me of that great Joseph Goldstein saying or phrase or mantra that he uses and that I've co-opted and use all the time, which is don't side with yourself.
You know, when you're in a moment of certainty or conflict, you might get in the habit of just reminding yourself, don't side with yourself.That doesn't mean you
automatically side with the other person, but it's just a nice little nudge to get you out of what could be a rut.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.I had an experience not too long ago where I was having some struggles in a particular relationship with a particular person and
I spent a lot of time talking to other people in my life that I really love and trust about what was going on, what I might not be seeing clearly, how I might be more skillful.
And then there came this moment where something came up in the relationship and I needed to respond to it pretty swiftly and in a way that was not wishy-washy, in a way that was not full of doubt.And
I responded like quite quickly and quite gently but forcefully.And it was one of those moments where I could imagine a world where I could have woken up a day or a week or a month later and really regretted how it went down.
But the more time has passed, the more confident I feel that I did exactly the right thing in that situation.And of course, there's still a possibility that I'm wrong.
But I think the fact that I had had these conversations with other people and yet done this sort of kitchen cabinet thing, this sort of like checking my perceptions and getting a little smarter with other people's perspective, that's actually what gave me the confidence to then respond really swiftly in the moment.
And that relationship is actually a lot better now than it was then.And I think it's because of that particular practice.
So the marinating and the not knowing and the not siding with yourself, even though it was uncomfortable, it somehow alchemically prepared you to take decisive action at the right moment.
Yeah, yeah.I'll share just one more really quick story where I did the sort of are you sure thing a little bit. My wife and I were sitting down and we had just finished dinner and the kids were playing in the living room.
And we were having this conversation about just basically how the rest of the night was going to go.And it was one of these rare nights where she had to do a little bit of extra work that she hadn't had a chance to finish during the day.
And there were just a lot of other things to get done to, you know, the bath time, the bedtime, the dishes, the laundry, like just all of it.And I was sort of pushing for us doing the evening in a very specific way.
I had an idea in my head of like, I wanted this person to do this, and this person to do this, and here was the schedule.
And she was resisting a little bit, and I was digging in a little bit, and we weren't fighting yet, but you could see it coming on.And I just had this moment pop into my head, this kind of are you sure moment.
And so I just said to her, I was like, hey, I know I have a lot of opinions about the right way to do stuff all the time. and I might not be right about this."And I wasn't giving in.
I still thought I was right about the way to do it, but it was just like this little attempt to take the temperature down a few notches and to signal that there was some part of my brain that knew that I might be wrong, even though I wasn't necessarily willing to say I'm wrong.
And that sort of had this alchemical effect of allowing us to get through the conversation and get through the evening without any conflict.And we found kind of a way to meet in the middle.
And it was a relationship move that I never would have made five years ago or even one year ago.And it worked.It 100% worked.We never got to a place of anger.We never got to a thing that we had to apologize for.
The kids were not exposed to some kind of like toxic energy. It's like we have these better angels that sometimes speak up a little bit, or this kind of like wiser voice somewhere in there.
And the reason that I'm steeping myself in these practices and talking to these teachers and meditating and thinking through all these strategies is that it's in the hope that like, as Matthew Brenn Silver would say, it's in the hope not that you can put out a fire, but that you can avoid a fire.
And this was one of those like, really, really just like awesome moments where like it actually like it did like it floated to the surface and we're able to avoid the fire.
And it wasn't that I'm at the point in my practice where I was able to be like, here's exactly what I'm wrong about.I'm seeing this with total clarity.It was nothing close to that.
It was literally just me being able to be like, I still think what I think, but I'm willing to say out loud. that I know I can be annoying and opinionated and stubborn.And yeah, it opened up just enough space that things didn't go south.
You mentioned Matthew Brinsilver.We're going to talk to him after this break.He's amazing.
Great meditation teacher, as you referenced, and has a lot of great practices and hacks and skills that we can easily knit into our lives to help us have this open mindedness, which can help us navigate life in a much more supple way.
Coming up, we talk about how delusion can feel like the truth, the science of being wrong, the practical implications of certainty, and some more tips on relating to being wrong.
Lots cooking over at danharris.com, including live guided meditations and ask me anything sessions.Would love to have you over there.Meanwhile, over on the Happier app, they're offering 40% off the yearly subscription.
Now through December 6th, go to happierapp.com slash 40. Okay, we're back with DJ Kashmir.We're talking about how to avoid the siren call of certainty, which is a huge problem, especially these days.
And we heard in the earlier section from the great teacher, Kyra Jewell-Lingo, about some techniques she uses.We're back now with DJ, who's going to tell us about what he learned from another meditation teacher, Matthew Brensilver.
We're going to structure this a little bit similarly.
I'll tell you a little bit about sort of how Matthew thinks about being wrong, some turns of phrase and mindsets and teachings that I felt really useful, and then we'll move towards some of his practical suggestions.I should say that Matthew's
probably the first teacher who really helped centralize this question for me, this question of, what do we do about the fact that we're often wrong?
A while back, I was on a retreat with him and he gave a Dharma talk and it was the first time I'd ever heard him give a Dharma talk.And he went on this riff about the three root poisons, greed, hatred, and delusion.And he said, greed feels like
a hole in the heart and hatred feels like a fire in the heart.And then he said, but what does delusion feel like?Delusion feels like the truth.And the way I remember it, it was like there were audible gasps in the meditation hall.
Like it was just this aha moment for so many people.I think it was a brilliant turn of phrase, but it was also, it was true.You know, the problem isn't that we're wrong.The problem is that being wrong feels just like being right.
I mean, absolutely.That is absolutely true, at least in my experience.No audible gasps here, but internally gasping.
I want to share one other phrase of his that I go back to as kind of a touchstone.Much more recently, Matthew gave a Dharma talk entirely about kind of knowing and not knowing and being wrong.And I wasn't there in person, but I found it online.
And he had this one line in the talk that you and I have talked about multiple times, actually, Dan.And the line is, to forget the permanent possibility of being wrong, that's the first step in the movement towards violence.
So again, just sharing that phrase because I love it.I keep coming back to it.I know it resonated for you too when I shared it with you the first time.
Absolutely.You know, it kind of reminds me of what Vinnie Ferraro said, and I know we'll get to Vinnie later, but he said this to you in a recent podcast episode that
walking around trying to get everybody to see things your way is like, that's the beginning of fascism.
Yeah, exactly.Exactly.So I asked Matthew about this.What do we do about this?What does it mean to walk around trying to remember the permanent possibility of being wrong?And so here's him riffing on what that might mean.
The deeper we get into this practice, in a sense, the more faithful we are, but the more lightly we hold all views.That doesn't mean we cannot take decisive action.
That doesn't mean we're living in a state of bewilderment and indecisiveness, and we never know what to do.That itself is a hallmark of delusion.We're working with the best model that we have, but we're radically open to revision.
And we're radically open to revision, not merely on the little questions, but the very big ones.Who am I?What is life about?What is the good life?We're open to renovating the answers that we give to that.
and that leads us to a state not of paralysis or uncertainty and decisiveness, but a sense of openness, of light.Everything is teaching us, Ajahn Chah says.Are we available to learn?Are we available?
And at what point do we close down shop and just get wedded to this model?The dharma is a kind of cycle of getting comfortable in a particular understanding, and that's good.We hit a cruising altitude, we can't always be changing,
but then the rug will get pulled out from under us.And if it doesn't, we stagnate and our practice grows stale.
And so, we have to be going through these cycles of a certain kind of personal revolution where the models we had of self, of other, of dharma are partially or fully collapsed, and then we grow into a deeper, richer understanding of that.
And the goal is not to arrive, to my mind, at some final understanding, but it's to be more and more radically willing to perceive in a new way, to not allow the kind of karmic, egoic investment in stasis to deform possibilities of new learning.
And I don't ever wanna give up a sense of curiosity.You know, Katherine Schultz in the book that sparked a lot of this, you know, being wrong adventures in the margin of error, She says the default assumption is that we're basically omniscient.
And it sounds so silly, but it's like, yeah, we don't discern our delusion from our wisdom because they're indiscernible.If I knew it were delusion, I would give it up, right?
And so, this is not just about oneself or about the one's narrow circle of people.This is about cultural humility.This is about the ways in which we can never see the back of our head, as is said.And so,
our perspective is determined by where we stand and we can never exactly perfectly see where we stand.And so we must be continually informed by the wisdom of others.It's like our wisdom is a function of the group at some level.
It can never be merely a property of myself.So there's this kind of openness in the system and life lived as a kind of feedback loop.
Yeah, it's like a perpetual discomfort in some ways, but it's actually less uncomfortable than the subtle but very real pain of dogmatism, of thinking you know when you don't.
It also kind of reminds me of a joke that I've made on the show many times, which is that if you're doing personal development or self-improvement correctly, then you should feel like you've been an idiot your whole life up until six weeks ago, always.
earlier today before we started recording this, I was just kind of like going through this topic in my mind in preparation, and it struck me that it was initially really destabilizing to start to examine the possibility that most of my perceptions are erroneous, and that slowly what has started to happen is that
I'm clinging a little bit less because I'm a little less sure that I'm right.And that actually, like the world feels like a little bit more chill and a little bit more spacious because I'm holding it all a little less tightly.
Obviously, that's not always true, but I'd say the net effect of trying to be with this experience of being wrong really mindfully over the last two or three years is just a little bit of releasing the grip.
I'm glad you said that because I'm not trying to say that this is all discomfort.
I mean, it is uncomfortable to constantly be reassessing or to the best of your ability to be reassessing, but it's actually a more easeful way to live because you're aligning with the truth, which is that we are all limited in our capacity to understand and updating is required on the regular.
And the benefits are many, you know, I mentioned this in the intro, but we just know that people who are more open-minded have better mental health and that organizations, even individual players within organizations, are more successful if they are more open-minded.
So there's way more upside than downside here.But let's talk more about Matthew Brentsilver, because I know he had other interesting things to say about this subject.
He did, yeah.So one of the things that I love about Matthew, and one of the reasons I think he resonates with a lot of our listeners, is he's got a science background and he likes to bring in science to his teaching a lot.
And in this recent Dharma talk that he gave about knowing and not knowing, he read this passage that I was curious to get your take on, Dan.It's from a book called The Experience Machine.
The subtitle of the book is How Our Minds Predict and Shape Reality, and the book is by this professor named Andy Clark.It's a book about a relatively new scientific theory of the mind.
Of course, as with all scientific theories, we don't necessarily know if it's exactly right, but it's fascinating.The theory is called predictive processing.
Predictive processing basically argues that reality as we experience it is built from our own perceptions much more so than it is built from some objective external reality.
So this is the passage that Matthew shared, and Dan, I'd be curious to get your take on this.So again, this is from Andy Clark.
For much of human history, scientists and philosophers saw perception as a process that worked mostly from the outside in, as light, sound, touch, and chemical odors activate receptors in eyes, ears, nose, and skin, progressively being refined into a richer picture of the wider world.
The new science of predictive processing flips that traditional story on its head.
Perception is now heavily shaped from the opposite direction, as predictions formed deep in the brain reach down to alter responses, all the way down to areas closer to the skin, eyes, nose, ears, the sensory organs that take in signals from the outside world.
Incoming sensory information helps correct errors in prediction, but the predictions are in the driver's seat now.This means that what we perceive today is deeply rooted in what we experienced yesterday and all the days before that.
Every aspect of our daily experience comes to us filtered by hidden webs of prediction, the brain's best expectations rooted in our own past histories.
I mean, that makes me think that delusion, there's just no bottom to this.Well, yeah, we're in a hall of mirrors and you could do your best, but there's no real getting out.
Yeah, yeah.That might be it.Or at least, you know, no getting out until nirvana or something.Matthew related this passage to this very famous line from the Buddha, all experience is preceded by mind, led by mind, made by mind.
And it's always interesting and kind of fun when modern science seems to be maybe catching up to something that was said thousands of years ago.
And so, basically, what Matthew did in this talk, which I found fascinating, is he sort of intertwined these arguments and basically said, look, we might think we're looking at the world, but in fact, we're looking at our minds.
We might think we know things, but our knowing is always colored by our experiences, by our predictions, by our fear, by the things that we want.
And so, when I spoke to him recently, I asked him, what is the implication of that for how we're supposed to live?If that's true, what do we do with that fact?
Maybe the upshot of that is that, indeed, we can never stop being curious about delusion.We can never stop being curious.We live alongside the permanent possibility of being wrong.
And in a certain sense, we have to hedge appropriately in the way that an investor hedges or something like this.We have to hedge appropriately.And this means that we become deeply suspicious of those certain mind states.
We become deeply suspicious of fundamentalism.We become deeply suspicious of models of self and world where there is an incredible amount of emotional investment in them, including to our religious faith, our Buddhist practice, or whatever it may be.
And so there's a kind of openness around revision in all of this, and that kind of epistemic humility is foundational to a free life in my mind.
This is what I'm hearing, but you just tell me if you think I'm hearing it correctly.
One practice you might be sort of implying here is that when you notice a feeling of certainty, you can use that as like a mindfulness bell, a wake up to get curious.
Yeah, exactly.I think that's exactly right.It's like, if you're sure It's a good time to check yourself.
Actually, I had the thought earlier today that my wife is really good at this in a really specific way that I've copied from her, which is, it became really clear when my daughter was pretty young that she was a little bit of a daredevil, but also pretty strong and pretty physically capable, like running, jumping, swinging.
And there was an instinct that we both had very, very early on to just grab her and stop her from doing things.And like, you know, when she's on the playground, stop, be careful, that's not safe, get down, you know?
And certainly there are times when you just have to grab your kids so they don't run into traffic, for sure, when it's objectively unsafe.
But what we started realizing was there was this huge middle ground where it was like we felt like maybe she wasn't safe, but we weren't actually sure.
And she was often kind of overperforming our expectations and had a lot more, you know, body awareness than we realized.And so what my wife started doing was instead of like yelling at her to stop or saying, be careful,
she would just say, do you feel safe right now?
And it was sort of this way of like signaling our care and our concern, but also like giving our daughter a little bit of a say and also sort of training her to check in with herself and her safety instead of deciding for her what's safe and what isn't.
And I think one result of that is she's still developed so quickly on the playground and in gymnastics in ways that I'm not sure would have happened if we had held on to our certainty about what was and wasn't safe.
And sometimes we're right, but sometimes we're wrong.And it's just one small example of these ways that we can train ourselves to short-circuit our certainty and still act, but act from a place where we're a little less sure.
Your wife is an enlightened being, clearly.I know you've got one more quote from Matthew.What else does he have to say on this score?
One of the things he said is that because our knowing and our wanting are so intertwined, one way we can know more clearly is if we can start to practice putting down our wanting.
It's a lot easier said than done, of course, but he makes this case, he explains this here in a pretty relatable way.You'll hear him relating his argument here to that feeling we all had the very first time we tried to meditate.So here's Matthew.
to be asked to pay attention to the breathing, for example, in the first day of meditation, the first day of an introduction to meditation class, the wanting so thoroughly infuses the quality of attention to the breathing.
There's this longing to get concentrated.There's this longing to solve my problems.There's this longing to calm down.There's this longing to see the truth.There's all of this longing
And the suggestion is that that longing actually obscures what's here rather than informs it.
And so we begin to experiment with changing the motivational state, namely beginning to let go, to relinquish, to make this radical peace with the imperfection of the moment And then what do I appear as?What does the world appear as?
So let's just go over that one more time because this is not obvious and I'm not personally sure I'm grokking it.What he's saying is much of the time we're walking through the world consciously or subconsciously wanting stuff.
If we're meditating, we wanna get more concentrated, we wanna feel a certain way.If we're just walking through the world, we want ice cream or we want the car in front of us to move more quickly, whatever it is.
if we can get into the habit of noticing these desires that are percolating, bubbling, looping, fizzing all the time and just letting them go, which is to say just notice them, don't fight them, let it pass, what is the connection between that, which is a basic mindfulness skill, and delusion or not seeing clearly?
I think it's this idea that if we aren't clinging so tightly to what we want all the time, if we're a little more okay with things being what they are, if we're a little less adamant about, you know, never being uncomfortable, then we can sort of see things with a little bit more clarity and move through the world with a little bit more
If the number one thing that's driving most of our actions is always trying to get the next thing, the next promotion, the next ice cream, whatever, it's not that it's bad to get those things, but if we're holding really, really tightly to those things, it can sometimes be hard to see clearly what's happening, what's right in front of us, the ways that we might be making things harder on ourselves than they need to be.
I'll offer one really practical example of this that you and I are both really familiar with, Dan, which comes up on our little team that makes this podcast really often, which is we have endless conversations about whether to book a certain guest, whether to do a certain series, what a certain series should be called, etc.
What often happens in our editorial meetings and in the editorial conversations we have on Slack and email and those sorts of things is that there's always this opportunity for people to kind of dig in and be like, it has to be this person.
It has to be this title.We got to do it.And I've had those moments before where it's like, I find a guest. I'm sure that they're going to be a great fit.
And I just I push and push and push and I get really wrapped around a need for that person to get on the show.
And usually what has happened most of the time when I've done that is that either I fail and they don't make it on the show or they do make it on the show, but it doesn't wind up being as great as I hoped that it would be.
And slowly, I've learned to put down a little bit of my wanting in these editorial conversations.And I learned this in part from Samuel Johns, who used to run the show a few years ago and is still a friend.
And he, among others, would often use this phrase, lightly held, right?And so he would say, like, this is lightly held, but here's my view on whether or not we should book this guest.
And I've taken this and used it often, and I often preface a lot of the messages that I write on Slack and a lot of the things I say in the editorial meetings with some version of that.
This is lightly held, I'm not sure if it's right, that sort of thing.
It's not that I'm any less interested in getting to the right answer, but it's just a signal to myself that if I can grab a little less tightly at what I think the right idea is, it's going to be a little more likely that we collectively arrive at the right idea.
I want to go back to his core point, but let me just address your thing there.I totally agree with that.And, you know, signaling to people that here's a thought, but I'm not overly attached to it.It can be really helpful.
A pitfall or a trap that I have encountered is that it is one pointed out to me that in the past I had a hiccup of saying I could be wrong, but dot, dot, dot.And that was actually a signal to everybody around me that,
I was unmovable and I actually truly believed I was right.And so you have to, you know, I mentioned this earlier with apologies.These can't be just performative.You actually have to believe it.In your case, I do believe it.
But just to get back to this connection between letting go of desire and being more open, I think what he's pointing to is that if we want things to be a certain way, well, we're not actually in touch with reality.
If I'm walking around all day long, you know, wishing things were otherwise, then I'm not actually cool with the way things are, and that in and of itself is a kind of delusion.
Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right.We spend so much time at war with reality to one degree or another because we want things to be other than they are.And it makes it harder to see what's really going on.
You know, like for me, it's like, it's time to brush my son's teeth.He's 20 months old.He's having a really hard time with teeth brushing right now.And if I go into that
wanting really badly to get it done in 30 seconds, we're gonna have a terrible time getting through the teeth brushing.If, however, I put down a little bit of my desire for it to be quick and efficient and perfect, and I just meet him where he's at,
It allows me to see more clearly, like, oh, maybe he needs to try it standing up today.Maybe he needs to try it sitting down today.Maybe he needs a little more patience.
And we can't take 10 minutes to brush his teeth every time, but I can start earlier and I can be more gentle.
And every time I let go a little bit of how I want it to be, that tends to correspond quite directly to me seeing it more clearly and navigating it more skillfully.
Well said.So just to recap for the kids who are keeping score at home, here's a brief list of what we've learned so far about how to access open-mindedness, intellectual humility, don't know mind, whatever you want to call it.Apologize.
Put the words, are you sure, on the wall or tattoo it on your body if you're into that kind of thing. Test your perceptions with other people.Ask other people for feedback.Try to get into the habit of exploring other people's points of view.
I like the phrase don't side with yourself as a reminder on this score.When you feel certain, let that be a signal to you to get curious.Be suspicious of your certainty.Try to develop that muscle.And then finally, you know, letting go.
The more we can sort of let go of our desires for controlling how the world is, the more clearly we'll see how it actually is.All right, so we're doing great.
By the way, if you're a subscriber to danharris.com, you'll get all of these in a cheat sheet, but there's more to come.
And when we come back, we're going to hear from the inimitable Vinnie Ferraro, one of the most hilarious meditation teachers that there is.And he's got some ideas.Well, first of all, he's got some great stories.
And then he's also got some ideas about, you know, how we can make this stuff true for ourselves.Keep it here. Coming up, we talk about some of my own personal beliefs around what it means to be wrong, and Vinnie Ferraro shares a very funny story.
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We're back with DJ Kashmir, and we've got one final teacher we want to bring in on this subject of open-mindedness.It's Vinnie Ferraro.DJ, what'd you learn from the man?
It was so good to talk to Vinny, as always.I feel really lucky to have him in my life just a little bit.And I've got two clips for you from Vinny.The first one is a super practical suggestion to add to our list of practices.
And then the last one is just a great story.He's such a great storyteller.And I think it's a nice way to sum up what we've been talking about here.So this first tip. that you'll hear.
It's a very, very Vinny tip, and it has to do with exploring what being wrong means to you specifically.What are your personal beliefs about being wrong?Here's Vinny.
There can be so much historical significance, right?What would it mean to be wrong in my house, in my class, in my neighborhood?You know, so it's like, oh shit.Okay, so I'm still acting
I'm in these situations where I was much younger, so unsure of myself, so uncertain that I'm thinking, oh no, it's going to be the same cost.This cost is love will be withdrawn.I'll be exiled.I'll be fired.
Now all of a sudden, so those are sometimes the stakes that were somehow holding in our minds when that's not the truth.So first there's just the knowing of our own patterning.What do I make being wrong mean?
How did I do it historically and has that changed?So there's that.Again, lots of me, me, me, me, me, right?When suffering visits us, usually it's true that very personalized story of suffering.
Sounds right.Sounds right.
Yeah.I'm gonna offer up one more clip from Vinny here, and this is a story, and there's no context needed, so here's Vinny.
My teacher used to tell this story, Ajahn Sumedho, and he would tell it about Ajahn Chah, who was the head of the lineage of the Thai forest tradition of Wapananachat in the monasteries out there in Thailand.
You know, the story is that there was a nun there, that was really good with the villagers.So they would meet every day, and she'd kind of like hold court, and she was really good at explaining things.
Well, somehow, a bunch of missionaries showed up, Christian missionaries.And she was in the habit of holding court, and so they started talking to her, and they're going back and forth, back and forth.A couple of weeks into it,
She shows up and hands her robes in.She's like, you know, I'm gonna hang with these cats.What they're saying makes a lot of sense, and I wanna check it out.And so she disrobed, or de-robed, and went to hang out with the missionaries.
A couple weeks later, a bunch of the monastics show up at Ajahn Chah's kuti, his little hut.They're like, yo, man, you go get your girl, bro.She's out there converting people to Christianity.These people have been sitting with us for decades, man.
You got to talk to her, bro.You got to do something about her. And he just turned and he was just like, what if she's right?
It's just the best story ever.It's so flexible.He'd been in the jungle for 50 years meditating every day on the Buddhist teachings.
No attachment at all that he is right or she was wrong.Just like, what if she's right?I mean, imagine having that flexibility of mind. Wow, it's possible.You know what I mean?
That's what that shows me, that it's possible to be completely committed without attachment.Yeah.
I love it.In terms of my own mind, I'll believe it when I see it, but I like knowing what may be available at the deep end of the pool.
Yeah, it's good to have North Stars to inspire us now on that.
So we've done three of these episodes where you go out as a correspondent and identify some sort of problem in your life and then talk to smart people about how to fix it.
We did two on anger, one on like how to handle your own anger, another on how to handle other people's anger.Now we just did this one on open mindedness.We have one left.What's that on?
Yeah, so it's coming up in a few weeks, and it's all about letting go.How do we accept what is happening at any given time, even when it sucks?Like we were talking about earlier, how can we avoid being at war with reality?
Practicing surrender, but in the best sense of the term, not giving up, not being complacent, not becoming nihilistic, but just accepting what is and acting skillfully.
And this is just a huge question for me in my life, something I've been thinking about and practicing with really actively for say about four years now and got some incredible stuff from the teachers and excited to explore it with you.
All right, I'm looking forward to it.One last question for you, which is, I suspect people listening might be curious about these teachers we keep talking to, and I know all these teachers put out books and Dharma talks and stuff like that.
Anything else to direct people to if they want to learn more about these specific teachers?
Yeah, for sure.We'll put a bunch of links in the show notes.Matthew Brenn-Silver does a weekly online sangha where he gives a mini Dharma talk and leads a guided meditation on Wednesday nights.
It's great and it's free and easily available on YouTube.
We'll also link to the Dharma talk he gave recently on knowing and not knowing that we referenced earlier, and folks can hear more directly from him about what he means by putting down your wanting.And of course, we'll put up his website as well.
For Vinny, he also teaches and leads a weekly sangha, and we'll put up his website so folks can learn more about that.And he also teaches this great year-long class called A Year to Live via Spirit Rock, which is taught on Zoom.
I took it not too long ago.It was awesome, and we'll link to the sign-up for that in the show notes if folks want to learn more. Cara Jolingo is an author.She wrote a book called We Were Made for These Times and talked about that on the show.
She's also the co-author of a book called Healing Our Way Home, which she talked about quite recently on the show.We'll put links to those episodes and her website online.And then lastly, her and her partner are in this really cool situation.
They got gifted a monastery and they're trying to raise money to pay off the property taxes and renovate it and turn it into a practice center for folks.
So if anyone wants to support that, we'll make sure that you can find that as well in the show notes.
Nice.Great job, DJ.Thank you.Thanks, Dan. Thank you again to DJ.We'll put links in the show notes to DJ's other appearances on this show.Also, we'll link to some episodes we've done where I go one-on-one with Vinny and Matthew and Kyra Jewell.
Don't forget to head over to danharris.com where we will be chatting about today's episode.DJ will be in there chopping it up with all of you.We want to hear from you on all the good stuff we talked about today.
Before I go, I want to thank everybody who worked so hard on this show.Our producers are Kara Anderson, Caroline Keenan, and Eleanor Vasili.Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People.
Lauren Smith is our production manager, Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer, and DJ Kashmir is our executive producer.And finally, Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.
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