How you doing a lot more right? How's everything going?

Good, you know, busy, busy, you know, trying to survive the apocalypse, you know, as many

people are. So that takes up a lot of free time.

This is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris.

Hello, everybody. We got a piece of feedback recently that one of our listeners wanted

more Dharma on the show. So today we're delivering. Let me start by saying this. The word

saint is a pretty loaded one. It conjures images of endless self-sacrifice, maybe even the

wearing of hair shirts. Not only does it seem unfun, but also basically impossible. However,

my guest today wants to reclaim this word. He's making the case for a kind of messy and

also self-interested version of sainthood. The self interest has at least two levels.

This kind of sainthood will actually make you happier and it will also, in the view of

my guest, improve the world. Lama Rod Owens is a frequent flyer on this show. This is

his fifth appearance. He describes himself as a black Buddhist southern queen who is an

authorized Lama in the Kagyu School of Tibetan Buddhism with a master of divinity degree

from Harvard. He often comes on the show during moments of crisis, like the murder of George

Floyd, or the 2020 election. This time he came on, though just to specifically discuss

his new book, which is called The New Saints. That said, while we recorded this conversation

before the recent and horrifying events in the Middle East, the wisdom, I think, contained

in this conversation will be well timed. In this conversation, we talk about what Lama Rod

means by new saint, why he is, and I'm quoting here, no longer interested in being a good

person, why it's so important to let go of the ideal of perfection, the practices and

characteristics of a new saint. The questions you should ask yourself about your beliefs

...