The is the ten percent happier podcast dan Harris The people today Today we are gone right to the source. The point of origination for the stuff that makes unhappy and we're gonna learn how to disarm and disable the potential suffering right there before it metallic. ices and owns us here's how this works. everything that comes up in your mind, every site, sensation, thought etc. All of it is either pleasant, unpleasant neutral, in other words, with everything we experience. We either want it, dont want it or don't care. In buddhism. These are called feeling tones the aim aunt polly word is vague anna. so why does this matter? Why should I care about vain or feeling tones, because

If you are unaware of the pleasant, unpleasant or neutral, and you are controlled by it. In other words, a fridge Will you take some chocolate but because you're not seeing how the mind is grasping after the pleasant you reflexively apple a whole bunch of the chocolate, and you are and taking it for the record I am definitely not anti chocolate. I'm just pro tasting. The chocolate Similarly, if you are unaware that certain people or things provoke aversion, then you can thinkingly avoid or even be aggressive towards them in this We can be like puppets on a string just yanked around by greed or desire hatred. or aversion and numbness or delusion. So today, to talk about how to drill down on this embarkation point for our suffering, and added with mindfulness, which can stop the whole cycle. My guest is chris a feldman who was part of that whole generation of doormat teachers that began teaching here in the west bank in them The seventies

spending years, studying with the masters over in asia, she is a co founder of guy a house, a retreat centre in the uk as also served as a guiding teacher at the insight meditation society beginning in its early days. More recent, she's co, founder of body college, which is dedicated to the study and practice of the the teachings of the buddha and she's the author of a book called boundless heart and co author of the book called mindfulness ancient wisdom me. Modern psychology and this conversation we talk about why vader is often called. Ruler of consciousness, the king or queen of consciousness, how to practice with data and the benefits of doing so. Her quite lift louis description of the buddha as being very focused on understanding the architecture of distress. Her can engine that distress or unhappiness is not a life sentence. her definition of genuine happiness

What she means by the power of giving greater authority to intentionally rather than. mood or story and her personal- axis of setting life intentions. Every year I will get started with today's guessed right after this. If you love bucks can't seem to find the time to read. I have a little something I want to share with you, audible, audible, there's a huge selection of audio books across every genre. New titles are being added each month, so there's always something fresh and exciting. To discover no offense to book but the audible app is so much more convenient for my busy on the go life right now, I'm listening to the secret adversary by Agatha Christie. Ever since I visited greenway house her former home in devon, I've loved getting lost in her books and trying to solve mysteries along with our characters and the narrators truly bring the stories alive. Audible, help you discover new ways to laugh, be inspired or be entertained. Newman.

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I adore has over three hundred thousand buckle experiences to choose from and over a hundred ninety countries downward via tore up now and use code via eight or ten for ten percent off your first booking in via torres world of wonderful experiences via tour one site over three hundred thousand experiences. You'll remember this episode is to you by progressive, have you tried the I'm your price tool, yet it works that's the way it sounds you too. Progressive. How much you want to pay for car insurance and I'll show you coverage options that future budget. It's easy to start Oh and you'll be able to find a rate that works for you, it's just One of the many ways you can save with progressive get your what today a progressive dot com and see why four out of five new, auto customers recommend progressive, progressed. If casualty, insurance, company and affiliates price and coverage match limited by state law, christine, feldman, welcome to the show. Thank you. It's good to be her very

But I have your her. I've heard your name many many times in the dharmu scene and never actually met you. So it's a pleasure to to finally meet you, albeit virtually so Alright we're talking today about the second foundation of mindfulness vader, or feeling tone. Can you define that for us for us new bees. before I dive into vader? Specifically, I think it's good, to remind everyone to halt the big picture of the four ways of establishing mindfulness body in town mood and psychological emotional processes. Friend of mine refers to this as being like the four channels on a television and they're all broadcasting simultaneously, but our attention may be drawn intentionally or unintentionally to one of the ways of us

the shame mindfulness over the others, but it does mean that the others have stopped broadcast it. So today we are focusing on the second way of establishing mindfulness feeling tone. nor fade in there, we haven't left the body behind we haven't left moods behind. We haven't left process behind. In truth, all of this has evaded the town. All of this has a feeling, tat So this society, the head on a tone of experience as one way of presenting it, it's very important to distinguish between in what they deny is, and what emotion is in Budapest quality. Emotion is quieter, a complex construction, where's

they do now or feed in turn of experience is something much simpler in fact, so simple that people are often prone to over think it too over conceptualize it to think that there has to be more complicated in butter psychology. There is a tremendous amount of significance given to be mindful of faded. Now, if the buddha refers to vaginas that as being the ruler of consciousness, the king or the queen of consciousness, that this is the first building block of our moment to moment world of experience, and yet it can be so subtle, and there are so many evading the tones that were often very far down the road from the feeling town to Emma to move to reactivity there.

have hardly even noticed what debate in a tone is somewhat we talk about vague and now we're talking about the feline tone of sensory impression, so every sound every side, every taste every touch every smell every thought every mood has evades in a town, and this is preferable, we're not sitting back, wondering oh gosh, was that pleasant, or was that unpleasant? It's something that is so pre verbal, that sensory impression is imprinting on consciousness as being pleasant or as being unpleasant or as be neither pleasant nor unpleasant. So those are the three core they didn't tone so feeling tones of experience. So in every moment the cites, the sounds, the thought, the mood, the taste, the touches,

was swimming in this kind of sea aphasia one after another that are happening so quickly on consciousness and yet planes significant role in what happens next because not only is the feeling tone quite preferable. Many of our reactions are also quite preferable. We see ourselves so impulsively and so hastily moving towards the pleasant we find ourselves. So impulsively recoiling or moving away from the unpleasant, and that which is neither pleasant nor unpleasant? We ten just to ignore, or it becomes almost like a launch pad for craving some

is missing. Something is absent, there's something wrong! You know that there's nothing happening. I need to make something happen in order to more more alive, more interested. The buddha was quite passionate about stand in the architecture of distress and unhappiness and struggle he recognised or pointed out that unhappiness is not a life sentence. Distress is not a licence is that this is something that is created and re created, mostly unconsciously, on a map, went to moment level. He also pointed out that happiness or the end distress is not something? We have it's, not something that happens to us,

Happiness in the end of distress, freedom is something that is cultivated and practiced moment to moment. So in perhaps simpler terms according to buddha, psychology happiness is not. Something we have is something we cultivate. Unhappiness is not something we have is actually something were practicing, so he said we need to understand the eye. the texture of distress and the architecture of freedom, and to understand that we also need to understand the architecture of our own world of experience. How World of experience is being constructed and build moment to moment and in that constructive process they dinner, plays a very pivotal role We would all recognize that we don't live in the same world of experience, ilo

outside of my window, and I see quietude and a lot of silence and not many people. And I look up my window and I'm delighted. Another person would look at that. same window and feel oh there's so much missing, where's the excitement, you know, whereas the bars were see the stimulation. We live in very, very different worlds of experience and these worlds of experience are being constructed and built moment to moment. So. The buddha presented a very, almost kind, a very simple cognitive chain that we can track and trace in our own experience so as to

About a clear understanding of how our world is born and also to bring about the possibilities of choosing more freely what world of experience we are going to inhabit. So this cottage a chance, it is quite simple and I'll just go through it and then I'll unpack it a little bit. So it begins with contact the eyes meet the site. The ears meet the sound. The nose meets the sense that the tongue meets the tastes. The body meet sensation and the mind which in put psychology, is six cents to her. it's the world ever rising and passing thoughts and images and memories that meetings gather up the sense store and the sense of impression is called contact so in this chain, and the buddha says when there is contact there is fear,

in town. So there is a feeling in town in that meeting of something being sent to spain pleasanter unpleasant, as neither when there's feel in town. There is perception what we feel. perceive we begin to place a name or a label upon what is happening or that site is a bird singing It's a car, alarm gully, nor that sensation the body is in my I came back for me,

eighteen leg. That mood is thou, know that familiar visits have depression or sadness when there's contact this feeling in town. When this feeling tone there is perception what we perceive we think about. Why is this happening? Where did it come from what its history? What is its future? What we think about we proliferation pat and what we proliferate about this becomes the shape of our mind and the shape of our world. It sounds quite simple, is something we

hand track in our own experience. In reality, it is happening so quickly that we arrive at that face of our world being shaped. Our world of experience be shape that this is beautiful. This is ok. This is exciting and this is boring. I am like this. You are light that we arrive there so quickly, so that place of mindfulness is to begin to slow down that process. Viktor Frankl, who was a concentration camp survivor? This quote attributed to him where he says between stimulus and response. There is space and in that space lab It is our power to choose in our power to choose lies our growth and our freedom. So what we are endeavouring to do is to

more and more cultivate that's space between stimulus and respond so that there is the power to choose how we interface and how we interact with world around us. Vader is ethically neutral? It's not something we necessarily chew soon there will always be they from the town and liberation, nor freedom. Doesnt me The end of vision of the buddha had also swam in a sea of fate so then we would think for what really is a problem and the problem or the issue is the way that feeling tone taps into this. ground, were world of habitual reactions, habitual patterns, Let me just share and observation I had upon listening to you and I want to get into great detail about the wrong

a vague in our distress. I love that phrase, the architecture of our distress and practices, fur packing the slowing it down, but The first observation I found coming to my mind as I was you talk- is just the brilliance the buddha who was able to stare to the swarm of ceaseless. change in his mind the mind our minds and figure out that all of it actually is unfolding lawful, even though it seems chaotic to be able to put things in an order. Ok, contact leads to you know. Vader leads to whatever I forget the order, Just an incredibly impressive move among many on his part. It is, I am consistently by the genius of the buddha- and I often think of the buddhist being- a kind of map make her, then he could look

it his own mind and he could look at the mines of others and he could sense both the personal story. It also sends a universal story of how the mind works and then come forward with these maps almost. I think of them as map such charts that he could offer to people as tools unites us. I can do this, look at this. I can see this unfolding in this way and you can to and by looking at there is an understanding. Is you are actually going to find the same frazier that I've discovered in my invested patients come see for yourself. I believe that was one of his rally and cries. Invoke the buddha when you described vague and as the king. queen of cod business. It rules consciousness.

Covered it a little bit, but it's worth breaking it down, so what happens and of all restate this clumsily and you can jump in incorrect me, is something arises in our mind. We see something here something case, something think something feel something and then It has this flavour of pleasant or unpaid. Jordan, either, and that just sets us down a road that is often unconscious and it can lead to all sorts of a terrorist impacts. It's the embarkation point that sets off a certain trajectory of reactivity a vote? We ve been down a million times and yet off may might go down that road? We end up in very familiar places of struggle. Our fear, anxiety, you are we activity and because we have this sort of sense of bewilderment like how did I end up here, often followed by the word again as it

one of the great gifts or the great blessings of being able to track some of these processes is it. It takes a sense of b will I meant out of experience. We know how we ended up here, We know that yeah. We really experience that smell. Is me something so pleasant and then we remembered- oh yes, it's cool. the I really love and then before we know it we're moving towards the coffee shop. Find one? I saw a cup of coffee and then were busy in and then what kind of a over stimulated. We say. How did I end up here? Ok, Are we start to know how we ended up there and they bewilderment goes, and may be in that first smell, maybe We have the ability to pause for a moment and to ask: is this really what I want is really benefit? so to me, is this really helpful or

Maybe we are and do not in the coffee shop and we still able to pause and say well, maybe one cups enough Maybe I don't need that second or that third cup, and maybe in those moments were beginning to cultivate those choices rather than being held hostage to them, underlying passions of reactivity. I could feel like a technical, meditation, point, but the rim of occasions are profound, the huge there he is You said before, and I think it's worth just double clicking on this feeling tones are not to be confused with the popular vernacular of feelings or emotions.

Can you just say more about that just before we proceed with other questions, just so that we're super clear on what vatanen are feeling tones are and aren't. If you strout the back of your hand, basic impression this is quite pleasant. It's quite pleasant, that's not an emotion, it's just a very simple infant. Quite pleasant if he was sitting on a bus and a stranger struck the back of your head. What would the feeling tat? It would be unfair. now we can go from the pleasant to clean it up. Just quite pleasant happened. If I can now perhaps put myself in fur and my eyes, like a little bit more to assume our. Oh. No disagreement in may of my ex post, now you know who used to love to stroke, back in my hand, and I loved it so much another it's over it's gone and I was so heartbroken. That's the emotion. The emotion is that construction of the feeling.

How d memory system, the semitic experience thee Hence of wanting in or not wanting and all of the story and the narrative, that's the emotion Some man really happy I'm sitting on the bus and a stranger strokes back tobacco, my hand and that initial imprint is really unpleasant and how many seconds does it take before Actually in the emotion I hate this. They shouldn't be happening. Who is this person? I have to get off this bus nine freaked out. I'm scared, I'm out of here that sea, emotion, so the key player in slowing this down and not being carried away in this often a reflexive automatic, chain of reactivity. The key player is mindfulness, the keeper there is mindfulness, but I would also suggest that mindfulness

rarely enough in itself. Mindfulness is always part of a happy cooperative extended family. So it's not just the mindfulness have seen. Oh, yes, that's cool said or thus unpleasant. There may be a very many other family members cooperating with mindfulness in order to change and transform some of those patterns might be the custom of investigation. It might be that Has any other browser, the sister of committed intention analogy. It might be the has enough skilful effort, it might be the cousin of compassion, but mindfulness is never a stand alone. Quality so beginning point, but it invites other family members in in order to change the paradigm of reactivity.

So my voice, this clear, seeing of whatever is happening right now paired with the imf, to give culture of mind with compassion for your own suffering or that of others, and many of the other positive capacities of the human mind, can help it's getting there close to the embarkation point before we're all the way, the coffee shop or departing to bus. I mean, according to the figures, teaching the awareness of fate is the weakest link in breaking the chain of react. The two does not imply that before not mindful at the place of fade, another all is lost because mindfulness can kick in. you know along the chain of reactivity at different points, but it's the weakest link in the chain so

when we think about why such emphasis is given to asia its not because you know, as I mentioned before, you know what vaginas ethically neutral it's more about, how the different vegan towns are trigger a craving aversion and confusion and how it seems to be almost hot wired in the present seems to be almost hot wired into the craving. Wanting more more more pattern. The unpleasant since we almost wired into the aversion ill will fear, reactivity landscape and that which is neither present nor unfair since we hotwire due into the confusion landscape. I just don't know. What's going on,

although I and many other teachers really have ongoing questions about this third category of something being neither pleasant nor unpleasant and whether it's actually just what we're not really paying attention to around my office right now, the color of the walls doesn't immediately impressed me as being pleasant or unpleasant. You know my computer screen doesn't immediately impressed me as being pleasanter unpleasant, as so after my attention will drift away. I think, though, you know that's not worth attending to because it. Doesnt excite me. I don't have a particular story or history with it was actually. If I had the intention,

to be quite aware and to choose and to those simple things in it about. Eighty percent of our experience in every moment is neither pleasanter unpleasant. If I should make the effort and have the intention to choose into this, it doesnt stay neither present nor unpleasant. It might become quite interesting, and I might find myself quite curious about it. I might become quite appreciative of it because mindfulness so has evaded at which is pleasant, so even just merely paying attention to something that may seem. Their pleasant, nor unpleasant, utterly irretrievably neutral merely attending to it carefully. Being mindful of it. Could in view it would some paused,

violence because mindfulness taste, good and others is stretching the conversation a little bit, but if you just kind of put the major towns the three vain natanz alongside, for example, the problem, the horror practice of kindness. I met her and how that is often taught in these categories. Dinner of friends, benefactors, pleasant, difficult people and sometimes ourselves unpleasant, and then this category of people who we see as being more neutral samuel the has a life intention. I made the life intention to not have any more neutral people in my life so it didn't mean I was going pursuing people with matter, but it I mean I've how many people passed in and out of my world on a daily basis that I don't actually see, because I have no personal history, no shared story,

no sense of shared meaning with them as such become neutral, which is again neither pleasant not unpleasant, and by bringing us I mentioned my life to have no more neutral people. I discovered it had. Quite as she transformed me. It means I see people you know when people pass me and the psychopath, I she see them. There's I wonder for tibetan teach in the says, wherever my gaze may fall may be filled with tenderness and respect, and I think of that has been said of the essence of practising kindness with people we see as being neutral, but house to say it has been the essence of practicing with this domain of fate that feels neither placid nor unpleasant, and what we see is that mindful has actually brings the world

life it enlivens, inanimate, so world. You go out on a walking past and we know that if our minds are fallen busy we can come. From a walkie meditation. I realized nothing has touched us and we go out say walking path in another moment where this far more wakefulness intentionally t presence and suddenly the world comes to life in the way, see the new and says the subtleties of either the light in the grass and on the trees. We hear the sounds that would normally we would just be background and mindfulness in that sense, really bringing about life coming up after the break, christina feldman planes exactly how to practice with vienna and the benefits of doing so after this. What is your family was the victim of a home invasion or you woke up in the more

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Season now, ad free by joining, wondering plus an apple part, casts or the wondering app. You brought us to the notion of practices, and I have some more ethical questions about how they did it works, but now that we're talking about a kind What to do about all this. Let's just stay here for a second imagine that there listen to the show, really very little experience with meditation and they ve heard you talk about this key, often overlooked, link in the chain of our distress, vade in our feeling tone, pleasant, unpleasant and neutral, I imagine people who are reasonably new to meditation might be wondering. Ok what to do about this. I urge you just talk about eliminating neutral people from your life. For that very interesting. But what do I do in my meditation practised and, by extension, my life to get a clear sense of vein as they arise, and so that

not so hoped by them. Capless suggestions. I would make first via the night. I would mention in my experience send in seeing how other people's practice unfolds, that we really can struggle and not do how much of a generalised intention reality either we convey in the morning and say well, I'm just going to be mindful today. Well, good luck! The intention is so generalized, just very probe beneath the surface of things, and I find this much greater benefit in having specificity of intention and allowing an exploration or investigation to really deepen until it's me more in our bones, and I think the contemplation of vagueness

is one of those intentions that benefits us hugely by being quite specific about it, MR for ways of doing that. First of all, we could start in the place where we often end up in the impulse, I'm moving towards something I'm moving away from This is often quite obvious to us and we know that it's so distress caused him to be a prisoner of the searches of craving turnover. to feel that we have no freedom. tommy. In that we're all that would just endless either pursuing are fleeing. So we could start on that level Let me get up in the morning and just have that intention. I'm just gonna tracks those impulses of craving, I'm just gonna tracks, these impulses of aversion or fear. I'm just going to get to know this territory

a little bit better. What is actually going on here, I'm learning, maybe I can begin to pause in the midst of those impulses that my hand is reaching out for my my screen. Ah baby, I can just pause for a moment what it's really pushing me here maybe I could just pause, and that moment where I find myself kind of in down because sundays unpleasant, and maybe I can just stay present, for just a few moments. Sanga really begin to send the landscape, the painful landscape of fear, and fashion, and maybe in those pauses I can begin to learn in a maybe little bit more resilience, maybe I can learn a little more about equanimity. Maybe I can learn a little bit more about freedom as it. This is a practice that we could benefit from stayed with for quite some time because for dealing with some of the kind of really core human patterns of

dressmaking. We could also begin to take the contemplation of feeling in town itself as something that we stay with the site, the sound and begin to really noticed made that impression unconsciousness less preferable. And more in the field of awareness. That's pleasant. Ah, that's unpleasant. Maybe we begin to see it in this over a period of time that were actually stepping out of that chain of feeling perception. Liberation, craving aversion clinging, maybe we're just making those spaces a little bit bigger and naturalizing them, I'm beginning to find that choice of freedom is in truth in our hands, but it out four intention, now that your ass for mindfulness, it asked for care and asked for some commitment,

have awareness to actually understand the processes we find ourselves in two Second monsieur proposed, here. Are you saying that, in our formal meditation practice we might set the intention to just look at the feeling tone. We think that arises in the mind or you saying in our walkin around life. We should look for us both I'm even in our walk around life. Of course, this is all happening so quickly. I can feel overwhelmed me to begin to track the feeling tonnes, but in our more formal meditation practice when the activity If I send stores is a little bit more restricted and protected, we cannot shattering begin much more to notice that body sensation pleasant emphasis that thought pleasant. I'm pleasant. They can begin to slow down those processes, much more which it is. In truth,

trade in fire lives, and it does raise some bigger and more profound questions. We imagine that feeling town is implicit in sensory, impression, events and experience. We have the perceptions. This is it recently appeared before this is implicitly ugly. This is implicitly lovely. You know this is implicitly fearful in the absence of awareness we ten, two externalize vader tones into experience, events, people situations now, from the perspective of the book,

his teaching, there are certainly realms of experience universally that hold that implicit, unpleasant experience, a broken leg. We don't enjoy. No one's going to say this is pleasant. Grief certainly has universally, as well as personally very painful tones depression. No one enjoys depression. This is a percentage of experience. The rest of it were kind of makina, because when we see the vaid in a town as being implicit in experience, that is the basis of craving of wanting have the sense of insufficiency when we say the unpleasant, as implicit in sight or a sound or an event, that's the root of a version of ill will of fear, and yet we see when we begin to really look. We see it's actually not implicit, something that we have experienced

in quite pleasant in our lives. The piece of chocolate cake, try it on the tenth slice, something that we may have experience in our life, and I imagine that this implicitly horse power to meet me unhappy that parson an event. Has the power to make us unhappy. We discover in developing some resilience, some curiosity, courage or wise protection. We say it doesnt actually hold the power to make me unhappy and yet the huge implications of investing in the simplistic feeling how next sperience the implications of that we normally use all of the things I void, and my follows the things I feel I have to have in order to be happy also I have to avoid the so I'm not going to be unhappy. This makes us as the buddha projector hostage to the world of conditions.

and in other, but I recognise that we were all vulnerable to the world of conditions and need to be vulnerable and to be touched by the world conditions, but we don't need to be hostage to the world of condition. What do you mean by the world of conditions all sides of the events of the experiences The sounds all the sum africa everything that happens to us in a single life. This is a world of conditions. We live in every man when it rains today its sunny tomorrow. You know the grass grows. We have a drought, we have pleasant people in nice. We have difficult people in our lives. This is the world of conditions, and if you're here, judge to it. You can never self generate happiness, europe on a string, all the time, you're, honest thing, all the time: marcus, aurelius thinkers, the past even said we can

dance like puppets sue our lives on the ends of the strings of our impulses. I think this is not very clear. Description of freedom. or or happiness. What's the alternative? Well, we can move from the activity to responsiveness, and I think this is actually the heart of the buddhist teaching is to move from this kind of, like habitual automatic reactivity of wanting, and not wanting pursuing and pushing away to a life of responsiveness. We appreciate the pleasant we celebrate the pleasant way savor the pleasantry get touched by it deeply without holding without needing to make it mine. We will experience the unpleasant in life and there is a great deal of it. Then we can ask the question of

what does this need? Is it more resilience? Is it more compassion? Is it more space, sometimes it's more boundaries, but we can respond to the unpleasant rather than fearing it or fleeing from. There is also a way in which sir through the illusion of inherent pleasantness or inherent unpleasantness, are inherent neither nor can and I believe this is an argument. You make an ip be interested to hear you say more about a candle of relieve us from some shame and blame- and oh this is my fault yeah, you think about someone who lives with their chronic pain or chronic illness. It is unpleasant, its implicitly unpleasant and yet the unpleasant can be so compounded by the reactivity by the blame, the shame the fee

I've done something wrong. If I was a better person, this wouldn't be happening to me, you think of us. Someone living with depressive relapse its unpleasant, and yet it's made so much more unpleasant and difficult by the amount of judgment that decided to it that, if I were a better person. I wouldn't feel this way. I wouldn't experiences the buddhist story The two arrows is so partner to this in others, stories somebody being shot an arrow and it hurts. It would hurt anyone and then the way that, the second arrow is in a hurry, that era. What is that our own made of? Where did it come from? Why did they shoot that arab? Why does happen to me? Things are always happening to me. We can see the second

and the third and the fourth and the fifth hours flowing our way and then we're lost, then we feel very lost, or we can come back to that first hour, I'd say: yeah, sometimes, life hurts. Sometimes life is lovely, sometimes that first hour was very painful. and I can respond to that paid for this. I can care for that wound without added second and the third and fourth and fifth wounds I have inserted many areas voluntarily or at least of the truly. Let me ask something about the pleasant feeling tone and this a harking back to your invocation of the buddha around not being hostage to the world of conditions, but are you saying that we shouldn't enjoy chocolate cake. We should definitely enjoy a cake. There is so much in the world that is lovely unpleasant in the world of

so world of nature, the world of relationship. There is so much that is lovely and fastened and latin sire mind and, in truth, in the voters, teaching this cultivation of appreciation and joy. For this is what resources us inwardly to be able to meet the difficult in a clearer and more balanced way that appreciation and that celebration of the lovely is certainly not ruled out and put his teaching, and that is something that is incorrect We can appreciate, we can celebrate, we can be touched by the lovely and gladdened by it without adding second, the need more of fair, sir. Where did this come from? How do I make it last week, say see already that the moment that appreciation moves centre craving our clinging the appreciation itself is already quite substantially. Muted. We ve moved into a different world

where there is distress. I think there's something about seeing the pain from this having seen the loveliness of appreciation and the difference between those two you ve said? Pleasantness is often sabotaged by craving, because craving is paid. Sometimes we have a memory of the pleasantness, but not the pleasantness itself. Right. So were on the seventy fifth oreo, because we have this memory of the dopamine from the first. Exactly. How do you practice with this I think food or all the other pleasant things in the world. Our capacity for addiction can kick in. Really quickly, how do you recommend we practice with this really seductive pleasant feeling tone? One of the similes to describe mindfulness is see image of the wise gatekeeper learning to be

eyes gatekeeper, wise, gatekeeper in the image, is used in mind for the stands at the gates of the city and welcomes in all of the visitors who mean to serve the city well and recognises, but doesn't welcome in supper tours and in many ways. I think we learn to be a wise gate, keeper of our own hearts and minds of knowing, when those that movement from appreciation into insistence craving knowing member chasing stimulation. Where were chasing sensory contact impressed and in the search of feeling more alive. The buddhist teaching is yes appreciate, the lovely of life in the world, but recognise a true happiness is inwardly generated so perhaps you do we learn to be a wise gatekeeper of knowing when were into those place, Where were either you do. Indeed,

gino entertaining the savage tours of well being or when we pursuing the inner. I need more good visitors. I need a population of good visitors when we're pursuing that learning to be a good k, keep her I'm an and realise that kind of using multiple images here, but one of the images you see and business our work is it shows a house with five open windows on an open door and the five in windows represent the five traditional sense stores. The icy is tastes, touch smile and the open door of the house represents a sense star of the mind. and through the open windows and the open door flows is endless stream of sensory impressions without too many choices about that. Although we can learn to pass a bit more restrained sense, the

but through the open windows and doors flows, this world of sensory impatience and out through the open window in the door flow? Something and it see they're going to be our habitual passion so crave in innovation, confusion flowing out through the windows and doors, or it's going to be the qualities of heart and mind that we can cultivate in terms of restraint and kindness and compassion and mine from this, that she flows out to those open windows and doors and in the artwalk or or in this image. What we do is we seek mindfulness upon the window, sills and the door cell, so we're quite a tune. sensitive, thus to what is flowing then, but also to what is flowing out, and this is

So, in another way of seeing the wise gatekeeper is that mine, from seated on the window cells and the door cells, that we have choices. After the break, christina Feldman answers the question: what is genuine happiness, shelter, about what she means by the power of giving greater authority, intentionality, rather than to mood or story, and she shares her personal practice of setting life intentions every year. Keep it here. the That's something! You said a few minutes ago you calling the buddha you were here both of you use the words genuine happiness, so what genuine happiness. If it's not, you know, unlimited ice cream. I think it's very easy to mistake happiness with classification as much of our trade

pain is driven by an intercultural deficit of insufficiency. I dont enough, I'm not enough, I'm not good enough, and so we of the world in early proud, a world of censure impressions tat. We have it's a pleasant baden there too, and it's not a genuine happiness. We can have moments of success by mr gratification in a moment's association with a girl You know what got what I wanted, but it's not ensuring its not lasting. It's a hit. It's a ahead of traffic asian another when the buddhist speaks about genuine happiness, it doesn't have anything to do with gratification. It has much to do with

in a well trained mind and heart said the source of happiness lies within our own hearts and minds. Developing cultivating a heart of mind. Where is the sense of collective, agnes alive nurse wakefulness connected this com this? This is actually the cultivation of ensuring happiness, its interest in down a powder one day. You know most loved early teaching says the better. It says. True, joy is born of a disciplined heart and discipline doesn't mean shouting at ourselves or scolding or controlling. It means cultivating that which really contributes to a much more ensure hand, trustworthy well being and happiness in the midst of

the things not just in the the good moments of our lives or the easy moments of our lives, but in the midst of the challenging and the difficult and the uncontrollable to have that heart and mind, that's not bound by fear and aversion, sweetie rooted in this deep sense of collective agnes gathered in us com, spacious. For me, this is the new sure of genuine happiness and it's not about elation are high or the peak moment. So the peak experiences it's something quieter, but rely. This is a tremendous freedom. You know in getting in the morning and not looking at the old insane. Make me happy So what are you looking at the world and saying you lookin at the world

it's insane. We are interconnected. We we are interrelated. I am touched by you, you are touched by me and how are we touching each other today? You know this person. I meet the situation this event that I am a power we touching each other today. That's me is very different, then saying me happy? Are you saying that you're practice has helped you be happy, no matter. What happens regardless of conditions depends again depends how we use the word happiness in the terms of how I just skype happiness. I have found that the practice has been transformative and hugely helpful in meeting life's difficulties without panic and without fear, my had never really could understand whenever I did, but they for sure every time they were too you know

surgery, I'd illness? Who do we call? We call on you because you're, the one who brings com, you know you're, the one who doesn't panic, you're the one who can show up an inner not fail in particular to brag about tat but the reality of being able to meet the difficult, I think without being overwhelmed and were asked to do that not arrives I'll be interested to hear a little bit more about how exactly you do that. Let me give you an example from my own life, because I I can see this chain that we've talked about the map, the chart that the buddha made that includes as a key link vaadin. Playing out my own life. Many years ago, I dunno thirteen fourteen years ago had and surgery on my face, which is, if you know, invokes and feelings of precarious iii. Among People like me or tv anchors, so surgery on my face to remove eight non lethal form of skin answer basil cell carcinoma have a look.

scar, that's very hard to see kind of amazing because it was a huge cut. They took out of my face, but now all there is is a little scarpa right in the middle of that little opaque scar. There's this red dot. That has peered. In the last couple of days, my wife was a physician tell him. It's probably nothing, but I can see this whole chain, as is an unpleasant thing, to see my base and go down? This is metastatic melanoma. So how would your mind as opposed to my untrained, mind or relatively untrained. Mind greet a data point such as this that I might have thus thoughts, but I'm not feel obliged to believe in them too much. I might know that this is a very human response because of the pain associated with what has happened in the past I might recognize that area is throwing me right back into something has gone by. I might have those thoughts, I don't know, but I don't believe you,

with that. I would be tempted to give them too much authority. I would be tempted to call my daughter and say, look something is going on here. I don't know what it is. do you know what did it because they might Phyllis? asian and my anxiety Cheese and my story, italian, is that she is not going to be helpful here. So that's classic respond, not react back to the victor friend a quote before so. The stimulus, questionable red dot and this peace is ok, I can bring mindfulness investigation compassion to bear and spot wisely to this, rather than freaking out blindly. Yet that is optional. That faking outline do that's actually option. and I think that you know when we start to recognise how quickly our world is built on the feeling town of that went out. You know how you could.

Oh down, that road and end up an intermediate really terrible places a mostly psychologically you could also say, ok I've gone down that road a bit. You know I can, as she feel some compassion for the human face of that, but I actually don't need to give authority to those saw patterns. One of the biggest shifts I ever see people make in practice is when they give greater authority, to intense analogy rather than to mood or story, I'm not sure I understand, can you say more about what you mean by that were enemies for that, you just gave you can see how much authority who could give to the house, emotional world that arose. It means this

it'd be like this. You know, oh, and I really believe in these thoughts. You know they're going to govern how I am just now they're going to you know what I do that's giving authority to mood. How often people say well, I feel like doing something. So it's true, it's valid it's authentic. It may not be. It may be far kinder to ourselves to give much more authority to the intentions. We have to heal and to understand and to liberate, rather than to the past mood of the moment. That's the reactivity par in there. We give authority to move, This is what I feel I feel really angry, so it's totally legitimate for major. Shouted at you, you could be brought from inside my skull just to get after the shift that you describe seeing among your students my deal mode is not what you do described. I feel this way, some justified in doing whatever I want my default mode,

the place I refer to is will my intention is actually to not take every thought. flip through my mind as a dictator that I have to act out and that's what I hear. or two more often than not. Let me pick up on this third intention, because in your conversation with one of the producers for the show, you had a conversation with one of my producers and then I read the note from that and that's how I prepared to talk to you and in our conversation you talked about life intentions and cushion intentions and I'd like to get you to talk about what those phrases mean and then me He also be quite specific about how we could apply it to vienna on a yearly basis. I commit a life intention, something that I will wake up in the morning with that. I would remind myself of several times in a day that I will return to, and I will give it the space of a year

for to really naturalism. For me to really understand the landscape. That's involved for example, one year I had the intention to give up hurrying. That was my life intention. I was gonna, give up hurrying. clearly seen that I could move quickly without hurrying. That hurrying was really a state of mind, so making that intention to give up hurrying didn't mean, like I moved through my life like a tortoise, I could still move quite effectively when needed, but I was giving up that state of mind of her, which was always have a nice about leaning forward into some

it that hadn't happened or somewhere. I hadn't arrived. In fact it was so delightful to give up hurry and that I've I've never been tempted to take it up again. It's just one of those life shifts that you can make. As I mentioned, I've made the life intention to have no more neutral people in my life, and that was that shape and that I brought forward, I think a few years ago now, but it's been so refused as such transformative that I continue to stay with it and then on the cushion. I will make a meditative intention in my former practice that I was

hey with any, where between three and six months at a time in, I may make the intention to cultivate matter compassionate joyfulness unit for several months. At a time that will be the intention of my practice. I might meet the intention to cultivate more somebody more collected nurse, more here, more gathered ness, and I will stay with that intention for a period of time. I find it very beneficial in terms of deepening note in better psychology when the bitter speaks about wise in tension. It's a really shortlist, his kindness compassion and the third is often spoken of us- may not see asian, but you can actually interchange, renunciation, generosity, kindness,

hush generosity, not holding onto anything any speaks about three unwise intentions, craving ill will and clinging. We can bring those intentions into everything that we explore, including vader, including feeling in town to have the intention of us when we find ourselves. You know in the familiar loop, sorry, those last spaces to bring compassion and to bring generosity of non thing in you can always. make direct links between all of the pieces of the buddhist itself, but the wise intention is always important in everything that we do, because it's a foreigner via speech, our actions of our thinking with fake you couldn't bring vader into the field of intention reality to actually feel compassion to feel compassion for the painful nasa craven and a virus

You can bring their generosity the non clinging to our arson. Worries. I narratives that I bore of the agent imprints to make known in our generosity. At the heart of our lives is quite profound and much of our story telling in her so easily becomes the ground of our whole day in our world, shaping ourselves shaping If we were going to make an intention, a cushion intention or life intention around vatanen. Can you just say little bit more about you know pretty technically you don't to guide us in meditation per se, but how we could boost the salience of vainness say on the cushion and therefore, by extension, our lives it's easier on the cushion. It is easier on the cushion you actually when you sit down. You set that intention to be mindful of feeling, though, that that

she really important. This is not a kind of random mindfulness, it's not an action until mind from their set this. She set the intention to be mindful of fate at times now, you may still be continuing to be mindful of the breathing process of the body, and yet you will see that whenever your attention His drawn away, say from my philosophy that I might force of body is because there has been the imprint of a stronger fate in a town, a thought or body since action or sound, and in those moments when your attention is drawn away from your initial focus, so you start to see that your attention is beginning to kind of jump on something pause for a moment. What's the fate in a tone,

the feeling. Tat christina. You done a great job of defining way to helping us understand its key role in the architecture of our distress and suffering and then having us think about how and why the practice with it down the cushion and in our lives I'm sending your time so before I let you go. If people want to learn more from you. Can you just mentioned some of the books you ve written or other resources you ve put out into the world's retreats. et cetera unquiet in though I have been height involved in the contemporary. My from this world in life taught in a number of universities, training people to be my from his teacher. So my my last book was mindfulness. Ancient wisdom meets contemporary psychology. I have a couple of books out on the form of a harvest, the boundless heart compassion

in my past. Under my present, I've been very involved in the place of women, falsehood and dimas circles and socially. So I have a few books out on that. Most of my teaching at the moment happens through body college b, o d h, I college this is where I have the opportunity to teach my extended courses to dive into the early tax and to teach from those places and took out. He was people who either whoever was very skilled and learn it and engage sir. If you go on the body college website such a way, you see vaguely wine teach. You must cease days well. Thank you. teaching us about vienna and for sharing those resources for people who want to learn more, and thank you for your time today. It was a pleasure to meet you. Thank here. Dan is also a pleasure, enjoy thanks again

Stena, feldman greater finally meet her just to say I have been experimenting with the intention of not hurrying or rushing. Every morning. I just tell myself Today, I'm not going to hurry or rush, and of course I do but I am more prone, I think, to notice it. Having said that, tension and if it really interesting to me The russian rush in hand to write it rather than be owned by it. So anyway, thanks again to christina thanks as well to everybody who worked so hard on. This show temperature happier is produced by dj cashmere gabrielle, sacrament, justine, davy and lawrence smith or senior producer is moorish. Nitrogen gimme regular is our managing producer and out executive producer. Is jen point scoring and mixing by Peter bonaventure of ultraviolet audio. Was you on friday and by the way our series on the four foundations of mindfulness will continue on wednesdays, so coming up

on Wednesday, we're gonna talk to the great buddhist scholar pickle boating Hammond Take a little ask here if you like our show- and you want to support the work we're doing. There are some quick and very easy things you can do to help us out. First, please leave us a five star rating and review. Those are really helpful, there's a reason why podcast hosts ask for them all the time. Second, please fill out a short survey over at wondering dot com, slash service. These surveys really help us up our game, its incredibly useful for us to hear directly from you the listener. So if you have time, please feel that out and speaking of wondering, because we ve had some questions about our new deal with wondering just to say here, episodes of ten percent happier have always been available for free wherever you get your pod casts, and that is not changing, even though we have now signed up with wondering. However, if you wanna hear new episode one week early, you can download amazon music and get them there.

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