Hey, hey one of the things we like to do on this path cast once in a while. To bring in somebody who's, practicing and or teaching that and in what you might consider to be a deeply inhospitable environment, this week, we'll get. Somebody is doing that in spades names just in VON Boy dash and day he teaches meditation. Rikers island, the infamous J all right here in New York City S got quite a story to tell here is for maybe see, the ten percent happier vodka in her. They should do this. Thank you. So how did you get into the meditation game? very early- and I must say I was in middle school. My parents introduced made a transcendental meditation aegis, Diff describe her.

What that is yeah, so transcendental meditation is style of meditation of developed by migration has yogi and the technique involves listening to resetting a mantra and which is like upset. Script syllable, usually yet a sound, younger, reciting, silently and at times you kind of loose. I commend him and when you notice that you do you bring her here awareness aspect of the moment and returned to the mantra And again, I must have been in sixth grade when I started that, like just before adolescence, where you are willing to take a wacky suggestion like that. Yeah I was a bit of a real, the gin and meditation nerd guerrilla, even at that after having been introduced to it, maybe even for you. My father is a painter and I grew up going others

museums and the city you grow up here in the city in city and so, and I really began to connect with Eastern thought at an early age through the art would spend, weakens the mat. I'd wander around and look around and see the asian art somehow that felt very natural comforting to me and, as I could get older and older, I would try and read as much psychic could about India about. Buddhism eventually and then about Tibet, and from there. By the time I got into high school, I was already very interested in Tibetan Buddhism and trying to practice it ass best. I could initially on my own and then slowly meeting people in practice Others do you made it leap from TM, which is essentially that derive from Hinduism to Tibetan Buddhism? That's right and it had. I go over there with your parents. Were they

carrying about GM or they no, no. No, they were. They were kind of thumb, groovy, experimental, nice people now I grew up in a big laughed and my mom at the time. He's too we have rugs so it her loom going over time and just experimenting with. Let us citizens back before Soho was an outdoor mall. Absolutely would there must have been. I dunno, eight kids in the neighborhood, all who had crazy parents yeah, I'm a friend who grew up in that neighbourhood and his parents. And I'm crazy to so ok, see by my high school year into Tibetans, Buddhism and like when you say you're into it. Will you mean better? Oh, like I I mean it's funny now, but you not play. I really wanted to get involved with a girl and I was very concerned because I also wanted to be a monk

Agnes I had any type of it. You can propose tantric sex. I didn't. I didn't know that much about it. Needless to say, I got an involved in the relationship and I I guess you could say I kind of struggle the little but with trying to find out how to connect deeper with further tibetan tradition, and it was an until I went to college that I went on a study, broad programme in Bulgaria, where the Buddha was enlightened events in India in India, the tray. Central India and there I had the opportunity to study the terrified and tradition which is completely earliest tradition. The came after the Buddha and then my on a tradition which developed as Buddhism, spread to South EAST Asia and China and Japan, and then a little bit the vagina tradition of and in everything, really clicked for me, invariant again to better better. Yet Tibet Baton, Nepal,

Mongolia, so what happened after the after having after he spent your ear- and I know that up to the millions of this programme is one of our previous guess, David Jealous, whose a your task reporter did this programme leave the when you're describing where you go to a guy and you get a kind of taste test area among the various teachers. The wool schools rather as a what happened to you. After doing so while I was there, I went on a study abroad programme to seek him, which is a state in northeastern India, which is primarily tibetan buddhist and there I met a nun who became my teacher, LA meditation teacher, spiritual teacher and She taught me a lot more than I thought I was learning at the moment and so I kind of going to die if Lee finish. My time in India came back to college

and really a while, I was finishing college, I really kind of kept coming back to I've. Gotta come back catacomb back so after college. I went back for a year and practiced with her and then she passed away and in the interim she hid it introduce meet one of her teachers who agreed before she died to take me. I'm has one of his students and he had a monastery in the digital era, which is also North Eastern India, leader not have actually been there a rate of doing a story, boats Never again, that's right go up into Darjeeling, it's a beautiful place. It is a beautiful place, and so did you ordain. As a monk knows, I never did Actually it was this none who saved me from that.

Had gotten really rigid and calcified kind of in the way I approached way. I'd had approached Buddhism at that point and this none on his on more really pointed that out to me and showed me that delta, yes, you could or Dana's a monk but you're pregnant, create problems for yourself. When you come back to the? U S, I can look at you, you're gonna be funny. They might make a big deal out of you. So it's better to just be yourself, and I could hear that a little bit and the parts of me they couldn't hear that just decided to say. I know she has more wisdom. The me I assume so listen and I decided not to do when you went on with your life. What does that mean so

That means I eventually became apparent. I came back to the states and for a while, I've been a contractor contractor hosting carpentry and stone work and stuff like that. Painting and I would work. Save money go to India, work, save money, go to India and between jobs, decide, ok, I'll, go for six months, this time and then all the while others practicing and studying more more deeply until I decided you know I kind of need to bring this together. I can't really have this be so separate. It feels a little strange to have, Give me that lives kind of in India while I'm not there and then have this part of me. That's here.

I decided to train to become a chaplain and thereby be able to take on a combined what they call the buddhist tradition, bright, lively, developer, right, livelihood, witches a livelihood and where you can be in harmony with your practice, premeditation practice have always trying to figure out whether that's the case with me. Sounds like you. Do good work on time so show you train is a chaplain you picked out of. Nowhere Oh you work now. I don't know where you were before this. Maybe was your first place, but eventually you landed in a what many people would. Would be a reasonably inhospitable environment for buddhist meditation, Rikers out so

How did I come about and how's it going? Well, oh answer the second question. First, it's going well, I came to wreckers from hospice. I had been a hospice chaplain and I'd worked in home, hospice covering Brooklyn part of queens and then home hospice units at Columbia, Presbyterian and corner, while medical center and I loved the intensity of it and I became very attuned to the dying process and found a lot of peace in this very, very difficult process for people I would never letting go so letting go of of one's on life, letting go of a story we might have about ourselves.

You're, they loved one of somebody who is dying its sometimes the terror of letting go of the person you love for. You may have shared your life with in others. This thing called terminal agitation that arises sometimes for people when they're at the end of life. I've seen it down, and so there's a lot of beauty and being able to be with people and help support them. Help provide a little bit of peace. A little bit of calm. I've been doing some hospice work myself. I get trained to do that through than European Centre for contemplative care and so sitting at the bedside when people are dying and- and I would say the same thing- that there is oddly enough he's in that

for sure it puts things in respect of certain my own life and put you in touch with the fundamental unshakeable on non negotiable reality. Witches were all heading in the same direction. Absolutely absolutely an interesting enough. I was in the first graduate and class from the nukes, an ok three reports that we have the same pay let thy wife and I did it go, and previous guests on the children coach. I, the amazing founders, who just got married recently, rob Kyoto Campbell and Cushion Paley Ellison too, then priests who originally got married? You could look it up in the near. My wife and I were there actually applauding and they, the centre and they ve been guess on this Picasso listeners go back and check them out of their amazing. Anyway, I interrupted you're. Still, it's ok, I'm so

I really really loved hospice work, and I still do I do don't, do it now, although it does overlap with some of the work that I do now, While I was doing that, I also ran a buddhist Temple in Brooklyn which has since closed and part of the work with that I would volunteer at Rikers, along with the group of people, sometimes anywhere between one extra person in six people. We will all go and provide meditation for the enemy population. Had time rose, I'm singer centre, which is their female. The study for a few moments and I loved that In the first time I went in there, this is amazing and over the course of about three years, really evidently study and then, when I was a beggar, I didn't do a lot of jails in prisons and I've never had

thought of. While this is amazing other then why does it amazing story? I would not like this is amazing. I want to be well that's that's why. You when I, when I arrived there, I met with the women who participated in the group. I want look this modification grow, they had imitation or blood the one that I started. He I say, ok and I would start off by checking him with them and just see now asking them to tell a little but their story, and it was really their stories that that I find very, very galvanizing. I tend to bristle at how intellectual American Buddhism is and that a lot of the bit functions in these circles that are very academic

They tend to be big universities and Mozilla. Great work being done there that have studied in a howl meditation minimum benefits us right, how our mind works and that's great and at the same time as this whole other group of our of society, that doesn't really have access to this And I think it really was, I'm gonna say, was growing up in Manhattan and the time that I did early eighties, that really. Made me naturally connect to the more common person behind New York City back in the early age.

When you what, when I watch movies when I love watching movies that are set down because its raw, it's real, it's things are being hidden, we're still graffiti on the subway yeah, absolutely people urinating on the street, which they still do, but it knew no fat SAM. I yearn for those the Euro nation on the street. I was getting ready to come to workers. So I think that, really for me, part of my spiritual formation circles around being able to practice and Be available in the vernacular enough, so to speak so for Concord common person, whatever that means and so it was really being with these female inmates and listen to their stories and listening to us that they were hard story.

Sudden and a lot of them were sad stories, but there also stories that I could imagine myself in and it was very easy. It also see the humanity and these stories and the huge and wide range of emotion of being separated from your children coming too to jail because you feel safer than you might on the outside and all the things that we tend not to think about his we Buckram City, Eric

to every worker. Do whatever we do in the big guns, and so there was something that was very compelling for me in that and then simultaneously, as I did my hospice work meeting people in their homes and broken so deep, deep, deep Brooklyn in all of these different homes. All these different neighbourhoods of telling neighborhoods old, irish neighborhoods projects, different different parts of Brooklyn and really beginning under and that the democratic nature of suffering, and that damn does matter. We live, that's, what's he knows about happens and and yet, and also the beauty, and that when I worked in hospice,

specifically picked up that I love meditation, and so then all social workers would ask pit patients sooner did twenty two imitation and if the patient's consented than I would threaten, sometimes go out of my Mozilla on and go practice meditation with people at the end of life, and I had the chance to do this for very wealthy hospice patients and very poor hospice patience and everybody had the same fear sphere of no longer existing things. Idea round, saying goodbye to family, making sure that your loved ones gonna be ok, making sure the kids who can be protected It didn't matter how wealthy they were now, and so you started with volunteering and with this women's groups and now you're their full time. So you have sobered ended up happening was I was there

invited to start working with the young adult male population as they have been pushed increase services for the young adult male, because her depopulation Rikers that seems like a tough group having been a young adult male that sound I mean I wouldn't have been receptive. Yes and it was it was. Sometimes an and at the same time I quickly learned that in it's really how you can connect to people has a lot to do with how you're walking into the situation at present.

You yourself, and I think, with meditation, knew no people. Think of these again in a people who have the time who could afford the time to meditate people who can afford the ability to have a peaceful place to meditate, which is connected to economic strength, so very easily. You could walk into a sober. Can people be like you know, the houses guy in a what's. He don't owe you want meditation re. Ok, I need to meditate now you know right, I'm here in jail, and so I learn very quickly that it's about developing relationship. Ok, so yeah, I'm here to teach meditation, do you know what that is like now and then ok do not pieces like, and I have ever had that moment, even while you're here, I've had a moment where you feel like you get lower rust,

I appreciate the experience may be having you might be having right now and then you know you very easily. It would be yes or no man shut up were anything, but when I do with man shut up, I train redirect come background. I look, you know I get that. Let's try this year two minutes, then your scientists took check this out if it feels ok, you're not Workflow bet. I had an old man. That's you know this that I now united, it's not hard right. I can't be like enough hard and meditate. I won't see what about Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant exact. You can and you can, unless the lot allies and in work warrior cultures. The single point of concentration is an important thing to have the Samara So I ended up working with that

population and then as services increased and- and I was still frontier. I found myself spending more more time unlike his island, and then this position became available and it was a fastened it. Position because as of right now, I'm the first ever chaplain for staff for the new accede, The cracks also you're, not Morganium, that's right, and that was the hard thing for me. I had come very very attached to you know the work I've been doing there an end, yet time, I was invited to provide meditation for a group of officers in one jail facility from nine months, and really wasn't until I started working with the officers that I began to come to understand the complexity of incarceration and that their suffering on both sides.

So did the same level of Vienna initial emotional closure that both populations at face value when you first meet them, as an outsider, have long enforcement community? You don't really talk about your motions, much top up vulnerability and keep keeper armor on to protect

and it's very similar thinkers re population, so I found a lotta parallels and then I began to recognise a lot of the difficulties that arise from the officers and the department correction and that they have a lot of them. Have families and whole lives in a series of aspirations that they like to have come true of the course of a career, and yet they didn't be over worked, I feel they are and work in very unpredictable place place where it's not uncommon. For officers to be halted. You ve been a lot of controversy, as you know, but rankers alot chewing allegations rampant allegations of mistreatment,

by the staff. What's your view on that have now having spent some time her well again, I am highly started last September. Has full time chaplain there and I think you know my answer to that is that the human suffering everywhere and in other big policy issues and the chaplain- and I don't have the power, the ability to change anything, but I do have the power and the ability to help change the experience of the people and with the people I serve sell. My being here, Third, I believe was connected to this realisation that the administration understood that the officer population needs more support and I believe the reason I was

Hired was because they wanted somebody who would do more than just prayer chap more than just a religious person coming in offering religious support, but actually somebody who can come in and offer programming around meditation first, the officers will combine. Are you getting people willing to do? Yes, absolutely that were presented. His staff, you think, is actively meditating. Well, I mean you know its staff of thirteen thousand people and those me so work in progress, but it from the groups that I run. This is pretty good bye and that being said again, its process of creating relationship by a process of allowing people the space to be to get honourable and to share and too

their armour down a little and therein. I guess if they sign up for your group there willing to do that, for you there's a certain sort of selection by us. I would imagine in in that, if you eve sign up you're willing to do anything, but I dont know that if you walk into a meeting of the Union Hall with a thousand people that all them would be willing to do this right- and that's probably the case everywhere, yeah sure that in also yet to start somewhere and hope that they evangelize within the community right. There's that and so what I do is kind of you know. Meditation. That's taken from a number of traditions and kind of adapted to fit a wide variety of people who might becoming,

and at the same time, my rule also as staff chaplain allows me room to help develop programming that so maybe we could get a mind from this training program or were working on trying to get some function. Coppola to offer can lick breastwork meditation For the after population does love support of me by the administration and a lot of room to to develop programmes, so A lot of this is, in my hand, a buddhist tradition as this body a model, and so the body is this. A second pre Buddha who act out of compassion to train benefit beings and that's what I'm trying to do in a small way and in the midst of the heat of everything that's going on right now,

in our culture around mass incarceration and my view is my position allows me to be somebody who interacts with people in the direct way right. I've. I've never been the kind of person who can you know, organized and have friends who are very effective organizers, right and social justice Dixon, that's great. But for me it really is about being able to meet people where they are one on one and help soften the experience help allow them to be themselves in a place where they don't want you or maybe they ve fino. Typically, people will work in full twenty years and then retire. So what

you ve been working fifteen years and you ve just been hiding all of your motions of your anxiety and all of your fear and other socio was coming to work. It's it's locked in you. Is it safely be able to show a motion on the job I trying pre safe space. While we do this maiden, maybe now do an anomaly on the tears or honour what they let me add, or whatever the terminology is thereby, but we do you look yes with me. It's ok and I'm very careful if, if a group becomes very open and very soft with one another and people are able textual Express how their feeling express how hard things are right or express what's going on at home and in how hard that is and therefore makes work harder than I take great care to make sure people

not silly go right up to their posts from that place. People need a little bit of a non rap on we're so vulnerable, that's very difficult to modulate very quickly to a place where you need to sit up and take the view that they might take from the immense and what your sales pitch for lack of a better termed, I'm sure you don't like a firm. But what why? If you're talking to crises off- about why he or she should meditate. What's the argument, will it make a better job? Will it make you better able to handle this Is it the job? What would your argument so? Its many full the another primary ma hook, I guess you could say is stressed, reduction and

will. The reason why I use that is because that connects very easily to health and then physical health as well right, if your stressed out and worked really hard and may be doing double shifts in and not bringing the best food for you and not getting exercise, not take care of yourself, because you're you're stressed out your anxious, maybe you're, feeling shut down while bins is really what I signed up for or you know like what does just hard it affects your body and on the other side of my work, is provided experts on emotional support for officers who are sick, sigh visit them at home. I visit them when their hospitalized I visited you, know women when they die. I visit their families, I'm involved in their funerals.

And what I found is that it's not uncommon for correction officers have strokes when there and the early forties heart attacks on your mid fortys, and it's not really necessarily because so they ve got a bad diet or because they don't exercise since, in cases that is true, but that's also primarily a function of just having not very strong self care techniques and self care means self appreciation which means being open with hands off. When I was with a police officer, sergeant, Roger Johnson in ten P, Arizona and January writin, riding along with him talking about. I did the police department and Tempi the chief, whose also

I guess not by cast his really into meditation she's, trying to get it out to her her and that's why I was asking him about it and he was worried. He has not yet a meditative. He was worried that if he did, it would make him slower, and so, do the job and in that you be dangerous for him. Is that something bad The corrections other worry about, and should they were either

listen worry about it. They may worry about it, and I think, though, that that's a little bit of an assumption that meditation just mix, slow meditation increases awareness and an awareness can actually connected situational awareness, which is really important, especially in jail settings, because their at their closed areas right, there's not a lot of room, and that also means that things can happen very quickly. So if you may be, are less stuck in your head and more able to just be aware of your surroundings may be put down ones on irritation or frustration that dumb people yelling one's own,

irritation around not even wanting to be here right. This is my job, but man. I just can't take this right now right. We all feel that from time to time, and if we're able to be a little bit more aware of the fact that yes, I'm feeling that end, I have this job that I need to do. It is possible to be more attuned situationally to what's going on. It's very easy to say that meditation makes a soft makes. You lied, it makes you compassionate and it does right, but that doesn't mean that you can do the job do you know you grew up and so how? At a time when people urinating publicly, you still owes pretty prop privileged upbringing, but parents who were anchor. You know a painter in somebody who did some work and alone. Let me know pretty heavy, pretty supportive environment to inherit generator. Not having been there. I am speaking, is somewhat based on assumptions. Writing save assumptions.

Sure, but now you find yourself in rikers out. Imagine your you ve seen some things that you refer us I've trajectory of your experience. Can you give me a sense of some of the Moral wild moments, you vanillin experience in your time there well and how does meditation? How would you have me sure so? I'm gonna brings bring back to hospice first, because in a when I started in hospice, I was surrounded by death all the time and it was pretty sudden transition into that. Previously, I had been around people who do die, so I covered in a medical. I see you and there'd be a deaf occasionally in coming into hospice. I was surrounded by death and would have moments where I would have sometimes three or four patience spread out over a very large geographic part of New York City, actively dying at the same time

all of whom one at the chaplain and learning how to deal with my own anxiety that would arise, and that moment right. My desire to be an all four places at one time, but the knowledge that I can't get there and learn how to handle, even that you know the sense of ownership that happens in crisis right in crisis. Some, though, do we just want to make it ours and learn how to chill out, learn how to slow down and realise that this is not about me. Even I'm having these experiences, these responses, meditation. Really helped me with that even to me out so that in the in the midst of intense crisis, I can do what needs to be done so then, when I came to the city Department of correction, I was stunned by the violence, and it's not that

it's any more violent than any other place. Necessarily as far as I know, spreads jails go. But I had not dealt with people who were being brought to the e r because they ve been assaulted by an inmate or conscious. The number of times that might happen and do you witness any it is well known: I dont, while I

visit the jail facilities? I dont really necessarily visit people, often while there on post. I do sometimes, but I don't hang up on post trade because that's where they work and that's where they need to be alert and I'm very mindful nothing distraction in that way. That being said, I do tour facilities, chicken and see. What's going on in the ground, see what people need in again and in law enforcement people dont really share their feelings, so could be you ve had a couple family members pass away and your on post and it isn't until somebody comes media that you learn

and then they can provide some support some relief and help them work through that. But is really the response to my my coming to grips with what responding to those people who had been responding to violence brought up in me it was very hard and then to be totally frank, I'm a pretty liberal person, and so now I'm working alone Foresman, and there was a time when the previous commissioner had asked me to nowhere uniform fur in a formal occasions like funerals about nature? And I hold the rank of deputy warden, and so there was my own need to kind of

Re examine this identity that I hold onto or held on two very tightly and say: look like you know. I'm doing this to benefit people, and maybe the closer matter go back a second. You talk about what what what violent brought up in you. What did it bring avenue anxiety? I hope thus in the sense that you know like an existential, hopeless, psych and people are going through this? Are they going through this, and it wasn't even really did amount of violence just facing officers in I'd. I'd see the reports of what was happening in made an inmate eyed and then,

and then you know you can't help but dumb project and try again in a play. These stories out in your mind that, while you know eyes people who are incarcerated, throb and violence, they see us right. They work in a really intense atmosphere and they have families, and sometimes they they come from the same communities that then the incarcerated detainees come from some. I say no you know it's it's the level of of complexity that exists benign again, because only New York City and just the way our communities work and don't work is astounding. What's your daily practice, look

So my daily practice is primarily a combination of two things. One is in the tibetan tradition. We do a lot of visualization sorts, visualization practices, visualize myself as perhaps a particular Buddha. The recitation of the mantra of this kind of sound collection of, sounds that path, necessarily have literal, meaning? Sometimes it does and using that is a way to focus the mind and then, at the same time, not doing the same session, though than theirs night conceptual meditation, like you find an ends and tradition where you just focus on trying to maintain awareness of what is happening in the mind someone's thoughts

ones, emotions and in a way you could say it's a little bit like watching clouds, and sometimes the sky get stormy, sometimes minded stormy. How can you walk from what position do you watch your thoughts and emotion? So I tried to create the space in the experience of meditation so that its as objective as possible, which means that I'm not looking at this from the perspective of my body right. Trying to allow the things to come and go. But how do you did elegantly without getting distracted due to some attention the breath for a little while other than gather? Then you open up and look at whatever happened yet typically, with these kinds of meditations use, the breath you can use mantra. Silent

you can use mantra allowed as well, just as a way of kind of bringing your back to some element of stability of mind then you just can't it's a little bit like or growing above and you know you have paddle paddle you paddle, then you liquor sent away it's a little bit like TM, except the goal. If there, if you can say, there's a goal, is to just build a rest, naturally, and the moment right through your it's hard right and you're here, hopefully just resting in awareness. Is this a bit but he to know what's happening without thinking about letting the thoughts happened, don't get too wrapped up and carried away by them, but just watch them come and go right there. I think Tibetans, expression alike, set up a spy came in your own minders then which, as you know, the issue just kind of like.

I know what's going on without getting caught up in the stories exactly in their there some can it really interesting descriptions of of what it's like in and this one that site its? Second, I try to watch itself, so it's like does make sense and that an end because kind of conceptually it doesn't right. It's not like this spike. That's placed right on the identity of Dan. Never, where is the you that's watching the stuff, so the you that's watching stuff is not something that you try and orient yourself around the whole idea of the me. There were just trying to be we're trying to rest without any particular point orientation the whose doing arresting Justin, but just an isn't something that is right here.

That I am really worried about this moment in a there's. Some element of relaxation there needs to be present. When, when my mind becomes agitated or just very active right, it comes back to Justin and Justin story right intestinal boy. You know I really need to do x, Y and Z, or you know my phone goes off because there's an alert I need to go to a hospital or something Kind of really brought back into this point of orientation is just an, but in the moment of this meditation you just try and let go. I had an

What's amazing to me when I do, that is everything kind of just slows down and stress and anxiety and worry and agitation just as to be cleared, you ve done a ton of practice. As compared to save the folks who may be listening for me. There's nothing that says that somebody can walk in off the street and just do yes or no, in her. I have I have done more than twenty plus years, and I also don't like to really look at it as something that you have to have put the twenty plus years into to have that experience in. I come back often when I teach meditation to trying to teach it from the perspective of making art, and I think a lot of this has to do with growing up with parents. Too

in our very creative, and that you know there there's something about the experience of meditation that has a lot less to do with actively doing anything in a wilful way and more just kind of relaxing into some kind of experience, from which, for example,

Inter might paint what is an everyday experience that ever we ve all had. That would be some approximation, facsimile microcosm of what you described before about you are what you are experiencing a benefit. So maybe you go for you. Gopher run so here you jogging, and you exercise your whole body rate and you're feeling kind of tired, and you find a nice patch of grass and you just lay down that sense of stillness that sense of relief that sense of these factors and meditation instruction in the twin tradition. That says, when you rest your mind, you should rest it the same way. A workman, would rest sit down and rest at the end of a hard day to stillness. I get that I get that part of it, but that doesn't necessarily give you this Mehta awareness this, what I often travel behind.

The waterfall experience where you're not caught up in the river of thoughts and emotions, but your actually out of the traffic in watching it with some non judgmental remove. How do you get there? So by suddenly first settling and then went up not settling in then it happens. So when you set off so can be fast right same way,

jogging. You lay down phone, you know, there's a chance. It's it's all about recognizing the space in the changes right, so thoughts come, I can be in the sexually. I only do in the car right, I'm right about to drive across the city and then I'm about to go into a hospital and I'll just take a moment, focus on my breath and try and allow, in that moment of stillness everything to just stop and in that place just rest the mind. So it's not it's not forceful right, you're, not trying to repress anything you're just trying to let it exhaust itself and it does, and it's a beautiful thing. The mind is always changing, and this is the thing that I've enjoyed time to see houses. You know if we just had the

said over and over again, we will go insane. You know if I could just had you know like. I got irritated her agitated by somebody, and all I was was agitation for four days. I will probably go crazy, but luckily our mind is concentrated changing the beauty of that means that many many many many many different points their space and is all about developing relationship to actually what's hang on, I even in the normal. So you know in your life, which I measured over frenetic their space in that some, those the beauty and the art really is being able to appreciate touching it doesn't have to mean that you're doing it for twenty minutes. It could just mean that you're doing it for a minute, and then you go The next task has been great sitting you're talking to you. If people want to learn more about you and what you do, how could they can? They did

I've done some writing for lions, roar, which is a Buddhist online parent periodical, and a little bit for Buddy Dharuma, I'm working on a book manuscript right now, which I hope to have published and teach at a variety of places in New York City, I used to run it up his temple, but I dont anymore, more, the you teach at present. I'm occasioning teacher broken then, and then over group upstate, that's kind of this informal tibetan group and then different places, Philly Boston at this point China. Be so great start you here! Thank you. Ve come back when the becomes absolutely ok. Ok, that does it. Other edition of the ten percent happier podcast. If you liked it, please take a minute to subscribe rate, us all

you wanna suggests topics, you think we should cover or guests that we should bring in hit me up on twitter at Danby. Harris importantly, I want to thank the people who produce this paragraph. Lauren Efron just go ahead and the rest of the folks here at a b c, who helped make this thing possible. We have tons of other projects, you can check them out at ABC. New type casts dot com. I'll talk to you next Wednesday, there's, not a person in Amerika who hasn't been impact it in some way, the corona virus pandemic, but it every community there are pockets of people who are sitting up every day. This is my my day last day of the cylinder stretch of proteins for one of our ten, and these are America's essential workers, the people who are keeping moving. I turn into a home school mom and now in a new plants from Ebay, see news you going

from damaged and even worse. I she went back to my office inside crying because it's not fair hearing here, making sorry that our community smiled faintly moraine. This is essentially inside the from the urgency by the police cruiser to the czech outline. You hear what this pandemic sounds like the people putting themselves No one's way, there's always a risk that I could breathe is home to my kids. Are my husband or my parents? Listen to the essentials inside the curve on Apple podcast revision, podcast him.