484: Do You Want to Be Happier or Not? | Mushim Patricia Ikeda

10% Happier with Dan Harris

10% Media, LLC

Dan Harris, Health & Fitness, Mindfulness, Dharma, Mental Health, Meditation

4.6 • 12.2K Ratings

🗓️ 10 August 2022

⏱️ 63 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Oftentimes Buddhism can take a tough love, no nonsense approach to happiness by saying, if you want to be happier, sometimes you need to face hard truths.

In today's episode we’re going to talk about a Buddhist list called The Three Characteristics. These are the three non-negotiable truths about reality, which you have to see and understand in order to be happy. Granted, when looked at from a certain angle, these truths, or characteristics of reality can suck at times. But do you want to see the truth of things or not? Do you want to be happier or not?

Our guide through these three characteristics is the mighty Mushim Patricia Ikeda. Mushim has a background in both monastic and lay Buddhist practice and is a core teacher and community director at the East Bay Meditation Center in Oakland, California. This is her second appearance on the show.

Content Warning: This episode briefly mentions child loss.

In this episode we talk about:

The three characteristics, alternatively known as the three Dharma seals
Our conflicted relationship to change
Our brain’s tendency to focus on the negative
Practices that can help with handling change more effectively
How not taking your thoughts so personally can build your resilience
And why Mushim believes that universal non-discriminating love is synonymous with Nirvana

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/mushim-patricia-ikeda-484

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the 10% happier podcast.
0:06.2	I'm Dan Harris.
0:11.0	Hey gang, one of the things that has always attracted me to Buddhism is that it takes
0:16.3	a tough love, no nonsense approach.
0:19.3	As I understand their message, the Buddhists, I should say my fellow Buddhists, are not saying
0:25.6	you can solve all of your problems through the power of positive thinking.
0:29.1	They're also not promising salvation through some death denying dogma.
0:33.8	Again, as I understand it, what they're saying is that if you want to be happier, you first
0:38.8	need to face some hard truths.
0:41.7	To be clear, by happiness, I slash we are not talking about jumping up in the air because
0:46.8	you just won the lottery or you got a lot of likes on your most recent Instagram post.
0:51.5	Let's not confuse excitement for happiness here.
0:54.5	In my opinion, happiness, properly understood, is something like living a well-adjusted,
1:00.4	flourishing, meaningful, useful life in the world as it really is.
1:06.3	And step one is understanding the world as it really is, which brings us to today's
1:10.8	episode.
1:11.8	We're going to talk about a Buddhist list called the Three Characteristics.
1:15.6	If you listen to the show, you know, the Buddha made a lot of lists and we like to build
1:19.5	episodes, sometimes entire series of episodes around the Buddha's various lists, which are
1:25.1	all designed to help us do life better.
1:27.4	Anyway, the Three Characteristics are the three non-negotiable truths about reality, which
1:33.0	you have to see and understand in order to be happy.
	...

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