1-3 Plus Subscribers can listen to 10% Happier early and add free right now. Join 1-3 Plus in the 1-3 App or on Apple Podcasts. This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hey, hey, today it is a Buddhist Recipe for Handling Turmoil. We all know change is inevitable, impermanence is non-negotiable, but somehow it can feel surprising, maybe even wrong, when we personally hit some turbulence.
The Buddha had a lot to say about this and so does our guest today. Kaira Jewel Lingo is the author of We Were Made for These Times. Ten Lessons on Moving Through Change, Laws and Disruption. This is a rebroadcast of an interview we did with her in 2021 about that book. In this conversation we talk about those 10 strategies for handling change that she mentions in her subtitle for the book, including waking up to what's happening right now, trusting the unknown, which is easier said than done.
A Buddhist list called the Five Remembrances, how gratitude can help in times of disruption, which sounds counterintuitive, and accepting what is and why this is different and this is important, why this is different from resignation. We start though with a personal story about an earthquake in Kaira Jewel's own life. She spent 15 years as a Buddhist nun and then decided to leave, which as you will hear, caused no small amount of disruption for her.
So we'll get started with Kaira Jewel right after this. But first some BSP or blatant self promotion. This week I did something big. I took a big step for me. I launched a new online community. If you sign up you'll be able to chat directly with me and sometimes with the people who come on the show.
I'll also be hosting live video AMAs, live meditation sessions, and more on the regular for full details head over to danherris.com and or check out Tuesday's episode where I explained what this whole thing is about. Coming up this Friday September 13th, I'm excited to have my close friends, Seven A.C. Alassi and Jeff Warren on the show.
And they're going to come on danherris.com and jump in the chat with me. If you want to virtually hang out with us, sign up at danherris.com or just search my name on substack. All three of us will be in there Friday afternoon, taking your questions and chopping it up. While I am now doing my own thing and I no longer work at the meditation app, which I co-founded, I'm still for a few months going to tell you what's happening over on the app.
Speaking of which, it is now called just happier and the happier team wants you to know that they have reimagined the app, reflecting the belief that no two journeys are the same and your meditation app should meet you where you are. Happier introduces new ways to meditate and updated features that bring mindfulness to you on and off the cushion. The app checks in with you monthly and adapts your needs and goals, whether you've been practicing for three minutes or 30 years.
Download the new happier app today to discover meditation that evolves with you. Hey 10% happier listeners. Have you heard that you can listen to your favorite gripping investigation podcasts add free? Good news for you with Amazon music. You have access to the latest catalog of ad free top podcasts included with your prime membership.
I was scrolling through their offerings the other day. They've got great stuff in there. Slow burn. I love that podcast, especially the episode they did on the Iraq War, which was so skillfully done and so infuriating. They've also got on assignment with Audi Cornish, a podcast and a host. I love the New Yorker radio hour, which I love. And of course, how I built this, which is a monster podcast.
We've got the host guy, Roz coming up on this show in a few weeks to start listening, download the Amazon music app for free or go to Amazon.com slash ad free true crime. That's Amazon.com slash ad free true crime to catch up on the latest episodes without the ads.
A friend of mine came over the other day with his eight month old. That kid was incredibly adorable and I really reminded me of how much fun it was to have a little baby around the house, which brings me to one of our sponsors of the podcast today. Huggy's little movers. Huggy's no babies come in all shapes and sizes and baby Toshis do as well. Huggy's has more curves and outstanding active fit.
No matter what the shape of your baby, huggies has you covered curved to fit all of your curves with 12 hour protection against leaks. I know back when we were in the diapers game, we used huggies quite a bit get your baby into the best fitting diaper, huggies, little movers, wet fit among branded open diapers. I was taking that an alternate title for your book could be, you know, for when the poop hits the fan.
And I don't want to I don't want to artificially narrow the audience for you because the poop is always hitting the fan given the non-negotiable love and permanence everything's changing all the time. And I'm curious why did you get interested in this subject personally? I really appreciated this message from Clarissa Pinkola Estes that when things get really tough and things don't feel like they're supposed to be happening. The way they they should be. That's exactly where we need to be.
That that were actually right in the place that we need to be. And we have what we need to be in that place. And so that was the inspiration for the title of the book. But I really was drawn to address how do we be with really tough times because it's something I felt I actually knew I could say something about that because I experienced going through some pretty tight spaces of kind of birth canal.
I don't know if I'm going to make it, you know, particularly this transition from being a nun to being a lay person to leaving the robes that was a pretty harrowing few years of my life where I really didn't know what was going to happen to me.
And so to be on the other side of that and to be able to look back and see, well, what was it that helped me move through such a really tough time was what I thought, well, I actually have personal experience of this I can stand behind this and say, this is what helped. This is where I found sustenance and stability.
I'd love to hear more about that experience. If memory serves from reading a little bit about you, you actually grew up in a sort of Christian semi monastic or monastic style community that your parents raised you in went off to Stanford. And then you were looking around for your own spiritual teacher and found Tick-N-Hon who has a plum village monastery in southern France and you were a nun for 15 years. And what provoked you to leave and why was that so wrenching?
Well, it's good to go back to how I grew up because, you know, basically pretty much my whole life until 40 I was in some kind of community. So I grew up in this residential community where my parents were living. It was a family religious order based on a monastic Christian structure where you wasn't a consumer lifestyle. You don't have a car, you don't have your private bank account.
You're not looking after your own family and your own self, whatever you earn, you give to the community and everyone would get a little stipend. And we got, you know, hand me down clothes. We very occasionally got to go out to eat and we'd sign up on the community's car to get the car.
And it was that kind of super simple in terms of material, living and, you know, in service to the poor and to, you know, urban communities, rural communities, slums, building wells and community centers and schools and different places around the world. So I had this really communal experience. Then in college, I went right to the most communal living situations I could find, which were coops on on standards campus and, you know, where we all took turns cooking, cleaning.
So those are the places I gravitated toward and as soon as I got out of Stanford, it was where can I find a spiritual teacher, a spiritual community. So basically what was so huge about leaving the monastery at age 40 was I realized as I looked back, I had spent pretty much my whole life in community.
And, you know, to give great credit to my monastic community in the Plum Village tradition, nobody slammed me or judged me or kind of tried to guilt trip me about leaving when I really got clear that I needed to take a break and check it out from outside the monastery, what my path was going to be.
But everybody was sad and really had a strong preference of what they would prefer me to do. So that was also what made that moment so kind of intense was it was like I'd always done things that were sort of supported by the people around me or the, you know, the people I respected. And this was the first time I was stepping off the ledge without any real guaranteed place that I was going to land. A massive life change. Why did you want to do it?
I think there was something I needed to complete and to break through that I could only do outside of the monastery. And it was this like, you know, like a piece of sand starts to irritate the inside of an oyster, oyster, there was something that was just get it had gotten inside of me that was irritating and irritating and growing and growing.
This like something has to give here. I think there really was a sense that I couldn't quite, you know, I couldn't see the whole picture, but there was just little pieces that I could see at a time that were telling me this isn't where you need to be anymore, not because it's not a beautiful life and not because it hasn't been a really wonderful life for me, you know, every moment it was a really precious experience.
But I had to let it go because something else needed to come. And just on one level, like the fact that I'd always been in community, there was this sense that I needed to individuate in some way and just, you know, meet the challenge of being in the world as me, like without the protective skin of the community.
Like go through what it's like to, you know, start to pay taxes for the first time and learn how to text and use the cell phone and like clean up my own apartment regularly shop for myself cook for myself.
And I had lived my life being held in a certain way on many different levels. And so to have that come apart, that was its own kind of initiation into, okay, this is what I've been teaching lay people all these years, but I haven't known the challenges of making it work and the loneliness of like coming back to my apartment and eating alone.
Like I had never eaten alone as a regular feature of my life growing up in community will always ate with other people living in coops on campus we ate together in the monastery. I mean, this beautiful practice of like you have people that you're attentive to as you eat. And that was like such a moment in the day of real and ache to just be there with my food by myself.
I'm so glad that I had a chance to touch that because otherwise I wouldn't have known what that experience is for so many people. Curious how's it going now how many years has it been since you left and are you still eating alone. I know you're not because you've been on the show before and you talked about having a partner so I don't know why I have that question, but how's it going? Yeah, yeah, well, I just robed in 2015 so I left them anastic path then so it's been six years.
You know, it's a huge change on one level and it's on another level. I feel like the core or essence of what I'm doing is not that different from when I was a nun in terms of how I feel about my connection to my teacher, Tick-Nah-Han and other teachers that I've studied with since leaving in terms of what I do with my day, which is practice, teach, mentor, you know, work with folks one on one or couples or groups.
So the most of what I'm doing throughout the day is supporting myself, supporting other people to be grounded in the present moment and to live our lives deeply and that's what I was doing in the monastery. I just had more people around me that were doing the same thing. So I mean, what's different now is one thing I really noticed when I left was how much faster life moved after I left the monastery.
There really is this buffer around you in the monastery. Things move slower. And when I left, I didn't have that buffer and so it was me meeting the world crash, you know, and I moved to DC, which right at beginning of 2016. So it was the campaign year of Trump and Bernie. So it was a hyper kind of external, you know, this collective consciousness in DC was a very intense energetic field.
And so then it was like, oh, I have to be checking email. I have to be creating a website. I have to be teaching does learning all the admin around, you know, being basically a self-employed meditation might mindfulness teacher. I'm trying to do online dating, trying to, you know, take care of my health, you know, connect with my family and everyone can contact me now.
And, you know, and also just like wanting to create new friendships, because that was something that was so wonderful in the monastery was you had beautiful spiritual friendships with monastics with laypeople who would come. So you're, you know, I'm trying to like recreate all these parts of my life in a setting that's moving it at a very different pace than what I was used to and with very different values.
You know, sometimes I felt like rip van winkle or something where I've been gone so much longer than it seems or there's all these things that have changed and there's all these ways I don't understand or just don't have the experiences other people have.
Yeah, so how it is now, yeah, I do have a partner who also has a very deep spiritual practice and kind of had some somewhat similar path to me not with vows, but he was working with homeless youth and started an organization to care for homeless young people and which is very dedicated to his spiritual practice and, you know, just become an episcopal priest.
And we really practice together like we meditate in the mornings, we do have busy times where it's harder to make our schedule stick, but that is our aspiration to really have a daily practice and we read spiritual books together Buddhist and Christian we want to have a group that we lead together Buddhist and Christian contemplative kind of mystical teachings practices.
Meeting him was like there was a clarity about how I'm going to manifest maybe more of what took me out of the monastery having met someone that shares the similar vision of service and also deep personal practice that what we do in the world is coming from this place of our own transformation.
So it sounds like if I understand it correctly, you learned a lot, you kind of battle tested the Buddhist recipe for handling change and disruption during this period of time and those lessons are now the spine of this book that you're coming out with.
And I want to dive into some of the lessons will probably won't hit all of them, but I think it's worth checking out as many as we can one of the first is I think you describe it as coming home, but you might also just describe it as waking up to whatever's happening right now, how is you know to use the cliched phraseology being in the present moment.
How is that helpful in a time of tumult when things are really tough, we tend to lose track of some really important perspectives and we can really get caught in the outer situation and not track what's happening inside of us or what our responses to the external situation are. And that can just feed that situation so that it gets even more out of control, even more overwhelming.
So this coming home is really about there are things happening even in the midst of tumult that we can be aware of and that can support us that can be a kind of anchor or thread connecting us to what we really know as we can forget what we really know. And so this being in the present moment is the simple act of taking a breath. You know, we can get so anxious right we can convince ourselves that we can't make it through whatever's happening or about to happen.
And just taking a breath in the midst of that fear or terror or panic, it allows space for more than that feeling to be there. And so feeling our feet, feeling our hands, noticing, holding on our skin. It's bringing more of us online so that we can take in, there's a lot of things happening, not just this strong emotion in this moment. There is that I'm still alive that I can breathe that I can notice the colors in my surroundings.
And it's taking control of where we put our attention because yes, that situation is there and it's painful and it needs care. But it needs our attention in a wise way and knowing that other things are happening alongside that difficult experience is a wise place to put our attention because we can convince ourselves this is the only thing that's happening in this moment.
And it's just too much. So all the things that are happening in the present moment are kind of places that can provide us with some refuge, some kind of strength so that when we need to meet these intense experiences, we meet them with more wisdom, more of what's real. Much more of my conversation with Kyra Jule Lingo right after this. My wife and I are taking a trip to Portugal soon and I am going to be perusing the Viator app for some ideas about things we can do while we're there.
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I'd love to get your support and your feedback and a reminder that the 10% happier app is now called just happier and they've got personalized meditation plans and fresh ways to meditate on and off the cushion. Download the new happier meditation app today to discover meditation that evolves with you. It's interesting because anxiety is I think by definition future oriented and I believe your argument is that the best way to take care of the future is to take care of the present.
Yeah. And that's from from Ticknut Hanh a teaching that I really love that you know what is the future made of but this moment. So if we can care for what's happening right here, then the future is cared for. But we often sacrifice what's happening in the present to try to control or determine the outcome of the future and that doesn't serve us because we're missing what's happening now. So we'll miss what happens in the future.
I mean, I'm sure we've all experienced that what happens when we get into a rush. Like if we're late and we have to rush once we get to where we are, it takes a while to like come out of that spin.
And we can we can end up doing a lot of other things are officially rushed right because of that one experience of oh my god, I'm late. I got to get to work or got to make the bus or whatever like we get to that place and then we're like, you know, I mean, you act on our phones or doing stuff we don't need to do, you know, we can spin out.
And so then how have we by rushing by leaning into the future, how have we done ourselves a service really because we're when we get to the meeting or whatever it is, we're worked up or not our best self. But if we can, you know, be with the stressful experience in the moment and hold it and care for it and recognize what's going on in ourselves then for one thing we don't have the ability to control what's going to happen in the future.
So by actually paying attention to what's here, we realize, oh, well, this is what I do have some say over is what's happening in the present. And I can actually relate to that with wisdom by connecting fully to what this is and that is what becomes the next moment and the next moment and the next.
And so it's actually really important, you know, this kind of classic story of of tie of Ticknut Han teaching a student, you know, he saw the student rushing as he was washing dishes because he wanted to get back to the real stuff happening in the living room, which was conversation with Ticknut Han and the community.
And he's like, why are you washing the dishes? The student was like, why am I washing dishes? He was like, I think I'm caught by this is a question here. So he answered, I'm washing the dishes to get them clean. Ticknut Han said, no, you wash the dishes to wash the dishes. But this student said, this is a lifetime of practice to deeply understand this teaching. But the next thing I said was wash the dishes like you're bathing the baby Buddha like you're bathing the baby Jesus.
So he was saying, really put your full care and heart into this moment. That's the purpose of washing dishes. And so anytime I found that I disengage from trying to lean into the future and fully put my attention into whatever I'm doing, whether it's the very mundane feeding my dog or, you know, sweeping the kitchen or typing an email, whatever happens next is much more like the future that I want. Then if I'm rushing through what I'm doing because whatever is coming next is more important.
And I just had this experience yesterday where I was like, you know, I'm going to pray over my dog's food and I give her her food. I mean, not pray, but you know, I'm going to make an intention. So as I was giving her her bowl of food, I said, may this food really nourish you to be healthy, to be happy, to be strong, to have a great rest of your day.
I was a really different way that I was putting the food down than, than usual. It made me happy to think, well, every time I give her food, I can set an intention for how this food might support her. I had a bear that in mind when I groggily feed our four cats first thing in the morning after they've been howling at me to wake up.
My thoughts are a little less charitable yours. Let's go to the second, I think, of the lessons, which I it's kind of intriguing, maybe hard for people to grok, but it's this notion of trusting the unknown. That seems counter evolutionary, if we, we, I think evolved to really be wary of the unknown. Yeah, so much of the calibration of our nervous system rests on feeling that we can predict and know something, right, about what's coming.
It's a profound state of an ease when we don't know. And what I appreciated so much about the Vipassana practice, the silent retreats, as I was learning practice at IMS was in the silence in the many hours of just being attentive to my own mind without interruption for weeks months on end. Was this becoming more comfortable with not knowing I went into the retreat hoping I would come out knowing which way I was going to go with my life, but that didn't happen.
Any of the retreats I sat I didn't get an answer about what to do, whether to just rob or stay, but what did happen was this was this beautiful exchange I had with Joseph Goldstein where I was so upset about not knowing my life up until then had slowed pretty much according to how I thought there wasn't long times where I didn't know what I was going to do.
Very soon after college I went to Plumb Village and I knew I want to be a nun and while I was a nun I was like, oh, this is this is what I want to do and I could see myself doing it for my whole life. And then suddenly I was in this place where I was like, I have no idea what I'm supposed to do.
And I came to him in an interview like just so upset that I didn't know what was to come and he mentioned this book by Alan Watts, the wisdom of insecurity saying, you know, there's so many more possibilities in the unknown. Then, then there is, you know, when we've decided this is what it is, what we're going to do, there's just that one possibility. But when we don't know there's infinite possibilities. And so he was kind of saying you can see it as a plus, not a minus.
And that was very helpful to realize I really could be okay without knowing what was going to come and that the more I could let go of this need to know, which was also the need to control and, you know, the need to be able to construct who I am, my identity. That was what was so disturbing was I didn't know who I was or the first time in my life. I really was like, who am I, who am I going to be, how am I supposed to relate to people because I don't know where I'm headed.
But all of that time that silence and the teachings and the community were like, I was learning, I mean, it was really a time where you had to take refuge in every moment, moment by moment because there was so little to go on after that.
It was good in that way that I was really like all I have is right now I don't have anything else. You know, people who are facing terminal illness talk about the power of those kind of diagnoses making them really take refuge in the present moment like they never had before. So it became this like, well, I have my steps, I have my breath, I have the awareness of what's happening in this moment. That's, that's what I have to rely on. And that's enough.
I really learned that's enough. I can be happy. I can be at peace. Not knowing. I mean, we think about all the people in the world more and more in this very tortured human society that we live in. People in refugee camps, people in boats trying to get to some shore of safety, people in war. That's the experience of a large fraction of our human family is not knowing what the next moment is going to bring someone in a domestic violence situation or a situation of abuse.
It's something that we can find a way to rest in that very challenging space of not having security. When I lived in Sri Lanka, I made friends with someone who had left his country because it wasn't a safer viable place to live and he left on a fake passport and he got caught. And he got put in prison and he was able to get out and apply for asylum. He has a refugee status and is waiting to be received in the country where his family now lives outside of the country of origin.
I'm still friends with this person and it's amazing. Every time I talk to him, he never knows when he's going to be resettled. He is the most graceful and dignified and happy and loving person. He got married in the midst of all this. His beloved came. They married. They had a baby. She's now raising the child in this country waiting for him to finally be able to come and join her.
But they talk every day. They're managing to sustain a relationship long distance to raise a child together long distance. And he has this inner light of his own practice. He's Catholic. He's translating books into his language from English and I mean he's like every time I talk to him, he's not down. He's in a totally desperate situation, but he's not taking it as a victim.
He's seeing what he can do in that situation to support others, to care for others, to share his love, to lift up others. And so it's just an example that inspires me greatly of people in all kinds of limbo, liminal spaces where they're not quite here. They're not quite there. They don't have to maybe make that work for years, decades at a time. And they do it. And so it's possible to be okay when we don't know anything about what's going to happen next.
I like how that story and that your friend's posture seems to, you know, one of the ways he's surviving and thriving in its ambiguity is to have the posture of, you know, how can I help other people. And I think there's definitely a lesson in that. I want to move on to some of the other lessons in the book and this one goes right to the issue of impermanence. The five daily remembrances. We love the various Buddhist lists on this show. So here's one.
Can you walk us through what these remembrances are and why they're useful. Sure. So yeah, these are five remembrances that the Buddha suggested we try to remember every day, even more often than every day. And the first one is, I am of the nature to grow old. I cannot escape growing old.
And as I am of the nature to get sick, I cannot escape ill health. The third, I am of the nature to die. I cannot escape death. And the fourth, everyone I love and all that is dear to me are of the nature to change. I cannot escape being separated from them. And the fifth is my actions are my only true belongings. They are the ground on which I stand. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions.
So they're helpful because it's a way of sensitization therapy where you bring up what you're afraid of and you learn to be with it so that in actual experience, it doesn't take you over the fear. And actually like front loading, you know, like let's look at all the things that we want to avoid and want to believe aren't going to happen to us. And let's really face them head on. Let's pronounce them out loud. I am of the nature to die.
There is no way I can escape death like every day because it is true that we have this kind of an exam and belief somewhere that it's not going to happen to us. It's going to happen to everyone else, but somehow we can distract ourselves from really fully taking in that truth. So seeing in our minds, I, what is it going to look like as I get older, as I lose some of my capacities, really visualizing what will it be like to be sick and not be able to care for myself.
And visualizing ourselves, taking our last breath. How do we want to take our last breath? It's important to think about that ahead of time. Do we want to be caught off guard like, oh no, I'm not ready. Or do we want to really have prepared well. One of the things I think our practice can be so helpful for is preparing to have a good death. And then, you know, seeing that the people we love, if we look back over our lives, we can see that they've changed.
You know, we couldn't avoid being separated from some of the people we were close to in the past, that those, you know, those relationships change and shift and people change and they leave us or we leave them, you know, like really taking that in that the people were who are in our lives today, they won't be around always.
And then this meditating on our actions as the only thing we get to take with us when we leave this, this form in this body, that there's nothing else that we can accumulate that gets to go with us, that it's, it's just what we do in this life. The actions that we take that are the things that we have to stand on, that's what carries over. For me, it kind of, it's a good reason that they're called the five remembrances, because they're so easy to forget or ignore.
It's very convenient to not think about those things, and then we start to get to do things that we regret in terms of the way we treat people or the way we treat ourselves or the way we treat our planet. But if those things are something that we're focused on regularly, then it really makes us ask ourselves, well, if this was the only day I had or the only moment I had, how would I want to live it?
And I offered this as a meditation, and I did this for teenagers, this was an IBMI retreat, and I wasn't sure if it would, you know, how it would be for folks of that age. And they said, this was hard, but it was really good.
They could see how it was good medicine, even if it was kind of bitter to not take things for granted. For me, it's like, you know, how in the winter when you go out of your house or apartment, whatever, there's this crispness to the air, this like, whoa, you know, it kind of hits you.
That's the quality of these five remembrances we can get into this sleepy kind of, oh, yeah, whatever happens today doesn't matter, and I'll have tomorrow, I'll have the next day, I'm going to live 200 years old, whatever. That's that kind of voice in the background telling us this moment doesn't matter. We don't need to be fully alive, we don't need to take full care of this moment, and then reading those five remembrances like that hit of like fresh air, like, oh, my God, wake up.
This is going to go by really fast, and what do I want to have to say about myself at the end of it all. And it matters right now what I do right now. Another lesson, this seems related in a way, at least in my mind, is gratitude, and I'm curious how does gratitude help us in times of disruption?
Yeah, I know how it helps me, whenever I have a low mood, if I remember, you know, what is there to be grateful for. There is this subtle shift, even if it's not a huge shift, even if whatever I'm upset about or, you know, down about, even if that doesn't change. There's more space, there's more, there's more lightness that I can embrace that difficulty with. And for me, it's a kind of protection or antidote when we're overcome by whatever difficulties or feeling the pressure, the intensities.
And more we've practiced looking for the good, seeing what we're grateful for under regular circumstances, the easier that is to access in those really difficult moments. And again, kind of like I was saying earlier, there is just this bigger perspective that becomes available when we see, okay, this is really tough. And there's still something that I can connect to that can nourish me right in the midst of this really awful time.
I've seen it over and over, I share about it in that chapter, I'm nurturing the good in the book with young people, with children, that it really works. It shifts the way we feel in our bodies, it shifts our emotions, it shifts what we see is possible. And it's not that those difficult experiences need to be pushed away. It's not about, oh, don't suppress something that's painful.
But it's like before surgery, you have to be strong enough to get surgery. It's like reflecting on what is good is a kind of resourcing, is a way of getting strong enough to look at, to care for, to be with what's painful, what's difficult. Much more of my conversation with Kyra Jule Lingo right after this. What is better than taking a vacation as I record this ad? In fact, I'm about to take a two week vacation, escaping from the everyday and laying on a beach.
In my opinion, nothing beats that. But then, bam, it's over and you're back in the real world and whatever good vibes you may have generated can dissipate. Double quick. Not, however, I'm told with a trip to Aruba because unlike other destinations, Aruba offers a special kind of Caribbean relaxation.
You will not find anywhere else. You'll sink into soft cool, white sand and float in healing blue water. You'll meet the warmest, most welcoming people and you will feel incredible under Aruba's endless sunshine. And yes, your trip will eventually come to an end. But here's the kicker that floaty warm happiness you feel every day and Aruba makes the trip home with you. It's called the Aruba Effect.
And it's what brings people back to one happy island year after year. I have actually never been to Aruba. But as I say these words, I'm starting to think that's a major hole in my cultural literacy. So take yourself on a rejuvenating vacation to Aruba and take home a happier, more relaxed version of yourself. Book your trip today at aruba.com. Let's do one more lesson for close out here. And this is tricky one because it's easy to misinterpret it. But it's accepting what is.
And the reason why I say it's easy to misinterpret that is that sometimes people can hear this as resignation or passive. The alternative just doesn't work. When we don't accept what is it creates tension, it creates stress, it creates frustration. And a difficult situation becomes worse, like calling easy pass, which is notorious for being a frustrating experience. You're on the phone for an hour before they get to you.
And then they can't help you. And they say, OK, we're going to switch you to someone else and you're on the hold for another 30 minutes. Substitute anything, right? Any kind of call center. I've actually had some good experiences with easy pass. So not to bad talk them. But, you know, getting mad and yelling at the person.
And this should not be happening attitude. It doesn't. Doesn't feel that good, right? I mean, maybe there's some sense of like eyes. I told it to them and they're, you know, but. They're not the ones in the end usually who are really responsible for whatever were upset about and they have families to go back to and.
They have to take these calls all day long. Anyway, it just when that's happened to me and it has when I've gotten really upset, I leave that experience thinking that that was not useful. That's not how I want to be. That's not how I want to show up. Yes, they're, you know, whoever this company is is doing something that's very frustrating and shouldn't happen. But my reactivity to it.
I don't get things to happen the way I want them to in general. Like I found that when I actually listen when I'm patient, when I say what I need to say and I can be firm and I can say no, your fault or this shouldn't happen this way. I don't let that take me over, but I just am accepting. Okay, this is the situation. How can we resolve it? Then my energy goes towards something that's actually useful for me and hopefully for others.
I leave the situation unskathed and so not accepting doesn't tend to be a useful strategy for me, accepting what is doesn't mean that we get walked on like a dorm at it doesn't mean anything goes or that we don't stand up for ourselves or for others or for those who are being oppressed. But if we can look deeply to see what's the root of this situation, which is usually not the way we look at things and we don't usually see that the many complexities that are there.
If we're not positioned to some under something and we look to see, well, why is that happening? Where does this come from? What has brought this about? That's a perspective that allows us to see I'm connected to this person. Their life matters to me. My life matters to them. And so where we come from in addressing the difficulty, it's coming from a deeper place and it has more impact.
It's more effective because I'm seeing, okay, this is your full situation, not just a little bit of it that I choose to focus on. So then if I see your full humanity, then how am I going to engage in this situation that is really difficult for me. So I think this accepting what is is also, it's a acknowledging we don't have all the answers. We don't see what, for instance, one person's trajectory is in their life.
The things that they need to do to learn what they need to learn on this journey that they're on. So it's a bit of humility of saying, okay, this is the way this situation is. This is the way this person is. I would like it to be otherwise. But there may be some bigger logic here that's playing out that actually has a reason has an importance that I can't see.
And can I let go and still advocate for what's important for me and live the way I need to live and stand up in the ways I need to stand up. But at the same time, give space for the mystery that I can't conceive of that's also operating in this situation. I mean, there's so many amazing stories. I'm sure many of us know in our world of enemies reconciling where there was this ability to see much deeper than they could see in the beginning.
I saw a film recently. I really love this film. It's called The Best of Enemies. It's really a good film, but it's, you know, the ability to see beyond the surface, to see the humanity of someone who we're diametrically opposed to. On all levels of our being and seeing that humanity and acting from that place of acknowledging the humanity of our enemy creates enormous possibilities that weren't there before. But that only happens because we're accepting the situation as it is.
And then we can do this deeper work of, you know, it's actually it's a kind of, hold on or paradox that by accepting what is we actually can alter it in ways that we can't when we resist what is there's this Jedi move of softening into this. But we don't understand what we can't know. And then that shifts us that shifts the situation and then these things become possible that weren't possible when we were stuck in an idea of how it should be and resisting how it is.
Just in closing here, I want to loop back all the way to the beginning of this conversation when you politely laughed at my alternate title for your book about the poop hitting the fan and the actual title is we were made for these times. Can you just, you know, bring us home here by talking a little bit more about what you mean by that title. If taking care of this moment is the best way to take care of the future, then we have what we need right now.
We don't have to wait for something to come in the future. And that's one of the characteristics of the Dharma is it's outside of time is a Calico is the word that these teachings you don't have to practice them for years and years for them to have an effect. They can have an effect immediately their stories of in the Buddha's times someone listened to a teaching and was immediately enlightened not having practiced a second before hearing that teaching. So it's not bound by time.
So whatever we think we have to do to become who we need to be it's not the case that who we need to be is somewhere in the future master Lin Chi founder of the Rinsai tradition of Zen my school of Zen. Says we already are what we want to become so all of these are different ways of saying what this wonderful teaching of Clarissa pinkola sd is this profound.
Latina sorry teller and author and change maker and this was in a letter she wrote to a young activist she said we were made for these times. We were made for this exact plane of engagement. We have everything we need all the things we've been doing up until now have prepared us for this moment so as we look at our world and the extreme challenges we're facing which no generation of humans has had to face the climate crisis and.
And the racial and political and economic crises wealth disparity each of us has what it takes right now to show up and to be a force of transformation right now and so I think for me I I chose that title for this book because we can get very intimidated by what we're facing. And feel that this you know this isn't going to end well or we don't have what it takes but.
In us is everything that has come before and all the components that are needed are already here so this image I use in the book of a caterpillar that dissolves in the chrysalis. And the assembles into this butterfly but how scary that process of dissolving is all the elements to make a butterfly are already there in the caterpillar they just re position and shift and time and space you know is a factor too but all that we need is already here.
And the sense that we don't need to see ourselves as drowning in this very tough situation that our whole species is facing but that we need to go with this flow we need to swim we need to stay with our heads above the water and move with this and we can move with this. And do this we don't know what it's going to bring but we can meet what this is if we can meet this moment right here right now if we can care for ourselves care for each other.
Right in this moment then that is what the next moment will be made of. Thank you very much for coming on. Thank you for having me. Thank you to Kyra Jewel Lingo and also want to point out that she has a new book out called Healing Our Way Home Black Buddhist Teachings on Ancestors Joy and Liberation which she co-authored with Marisela B Gomez and Valerie Brown. Valerie Brown has actually been on the show before and all three of them will be on the show a couple of weeks.
Thank you for listening and thanks to everybody who worked so hard on this show our producers are Tara Anderson, Caroline Keenan and Eleanor Vasilie are reporting and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our production manager Marissa Schneidermann is our senior producer DJ Kashmir is our executive producer and Nick Thorburn of the Great Man Islands wrote our theme.
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