This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris.

Hello, everybody. How we doing? Today we're going to talk about some Buddhist strategies for

reducing your everyday addictions, your phone, food, alcohol, and more. As always on this show,

and within a Buddhist context, when we talk about addiction, it doesn't just mean full-blown

addictions, although, of course, it does include those, but it also means, as I

referenced before, our everyday cravings. One technical definition of addiction is continued use

despite adverse consequences. How many things in your life fit that description? In this episode,

we've got a Buddhist nun and medical doctor who is going to use her combined

training to help us turn down the volume on our everyday addictions.

Sister Dongnyam, who also goes by Sister D.

Is a nun in the plum village tradition founded by the late great Zen master Tikna Han.

Sister D, and I'm grateful for this, has now become something of a frequent flyer on our show.

I'll drop a link in the show notes to her first appearance where she talked about her extraordinary personal story.

She was born in Vietnam during the war to a Vietnamese mother and an American soldier.

She lost her mother at the age of 12, immigrated alone to the United States where she lived in foster homes, but then was

able to get a medical degree from the University of California, San Francisco, and then she went on to

become a nun. Anyway, we're not going to get into all of that today, but if you want to hear her backstory,

you can go back and listen.

Today, we talk about Sister D's Buddhist version of the 12-step program, her argument that

willpower does not fit into the Buddhist understanding of working with addiction, how to change

addiction at its root, the practical applications of both mindfulness and self-compassion,

the importance of social support, her thoughts on our relationship to our phones, and much more.

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