A Four-Word Buddhist Teaching for Instant Calm and (Just Maybe) Lasting Peace | Bart van Melik
10% Happier with Dan Harris
10% Media, LLC
4.6 • 12.9K Ratings
🗓️ 27 February 2026
⏱️ 16 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
If you struggle with the terrifying reality that everything changes, this conversation is for you.
Bart van Melik is a meditation teacher, psychotherapist, and our Teacher of the Month for January. In this live session recorded on Zoom with subscribers to the 10% with Dan Harris app, Bart and Dan explore one of Bart's favorite teachings: "Keep calmly knowing change"—four words that supposedly distill all 84,000 of the Buddha's teachings.
We talk about:
-
Why attuning to the flow of things brings peace (even though change is terrifying)—and what the Buddha said on his deathbed about impermanence
-
How to introduce meditation to kids without making it seem difficult or boring
-
The three dimensions of mindfulness: internal (your own mind), external (noticing other people's breath on the subway), and relational (the field we're all co-creating together)
-
Whether connecting through venting and complaining is harmless or something to examine more closely
-
"Useless speech" (sampappalāpa)—the Pali term for saying stuff that doesn't really matter, and why the urge is often just "look at me"
-
Why Bart is still on this path after all these years: community
Bart closes with a beautiful dedication about coming home to the body and appreciating that we show up in community.
These live sessions happen every week in the app 10% with Dan Harris, where you can meditate with Dan and guest teachers and ask questions in real time. Get the app at danharris.com—there's a free 14-day trial.
Join Dan's online community here
Follow Dan on social: Instagram, TikTok
Subscribe to our YouTube Channel
Thanks to our sponsor:
LinkedIn: Spend $250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn ads and get a $250 credit for the next one. Just go to linkedin.com/happier.
To advertise on the show, contact sales@advertisecast.com or visit https://advertising.libsyn.com/10HappierwithDanHarris
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris. |
| 0:08.0 | Hello everybody, how we doing? Today I'm talking to a great meditation teacher named Bart Van Mellick. We're going to talk about a host of fascinating issues, how to get out of your head and into your body, whether it's okay from a Buddhist standpoint to connect with other people through complaining or bullshitting, how to introduce meditation to your children, |
| 0:39.7 | the immense power of practicing meditation with other people, and we talk about Bart's tagline, |
| 0:45.3 | which is keep calmly knowing change. He'll explain that. What you're about to hear is a live |
| 0:52.3 | conversation that Bart and I recorded during one of our weekly live sessions for subscribers to the 10% with Dan Harris meditation app. |
| 1:01.5 | Bart started us off with a guided meditation. |
| 1:04.2 | You won't hear this because we clipped it out so we can get right to the Q&A. |
| 1:07.1 | But the session began with Bart guiding us in a meditation. The theme of the meditation |
| 1:12.8 | was keep calmly knowing change, but we talk a little bit about what that phrase means during the |
| 1:18.4 | conversation. Before we get to the conversation, just quickly want to plug the app. If you sign up, |
| 1:23.2 | you can come to our weekly live sessions where we meditate and then chop it up together. |
| 1:28.5 | We also have a growing body of guided meditations from some of the best teachers on the planet. Plus, we have |
| 1:32.7 | community features that allow you to connect with me and our teachers and my team and one another. |
| 1:38.2 | So this meditation thing can be less lonely. Sign up at Dan Harris.com. There's a free 14-day trial. |
| 1:44.1 | If you want to check it out before |
| 1:45.3 | you spend any money. One last thing to say, though, before we dive in, starting in March, |
| 1:50.3 | we're going to go back to our regular cadence of episode drops. So we'll be dropping new episodes |
| 1:56.6 | only on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. You may have noticed that we've been dropping some episodes on Sundays recently, |
| 2:03.6 | but that era is coming to a close. |
| 2:05.8 | We're going back to three a week, which will, I think, be saner for everyone. |
| 2:11.2 | Okay, coming up after this, my conversation with Bart Van Mellick. |
| 2:17.0 | Let me ask you what may be an obvious question. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from 10% Media, LLC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of 10% Media, LLC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.