George Saunders on: “Holy Befuddlement” and How to Be Less of a “Turd”

10% Happier with Dan Harris

10% Media, LLC

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

4.6 • 12.2K Ratings

🗓️ 19 October 2022

⏱️ 66 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

One of the great perils and problems of our age is that we sometimes become too entrenched in our views and attached to being right.

According to guest George Saunders, the antidote is something he calls “holy befuddlement.”

George Saunders is the author of eleven books, including Lincoln in the Bardo, which won the 2017 Man Booker Prize for best work of fiction in English. His most recent book, Liberation Day, is a collection of short stories that explore the ideas of power, ethics, and justice, cutting to the heart of what it means to live in community with our fellow humans.

In this episode we talk about:

How George Saunders creates “holy befuddlement” in himself and in his readers
How shaving down dogmatism can help us be, in his words, less of a “turd”
How to deal with heightened expectations we might have of ourselves
Healthy ways to enjoy praise
What it looks like to cultivate a relationship with our self, to the extent that the self exists
The importance of moral ambiguity in his work
The impact of meditating – or not meditating – on our creative work
And forgiveness and coming up short

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the 10% happier podcast.
0:06.8	I'm Dan Harris.
0:09.0	Hey, everybody.
0:11.8	I think we can all agree that one of the great perils and problems of our age is that we've
0:17.4	become too entrenched in our views, too attached to being right.
0:22.5	We're stuck in our information silos and convinced that the other side is monstrous beyond
0:27.1	repair.
0:28.2	We have a surplus of conviction and there are market supply chain issues when it comes
0:33.1	to cognitive empathy for people who are on the other side on any number of issues.
0:38.8	And this is true, not just at a macro level, but also in interpersonal relationships.
0:43.8	Think about it.
0:44.8	How often do you dig in during arguments with friends or family members and refuse
0:48.7	to budge?
0:50.2	The antidote, according to my guests today, the great writer George Saunders, is something
0:55.2	he calls holy befuddlement in Buddhism, a tradition by which Saunders has been deeply
1:02.1	influenced.
1:03.1	We might call it don't know-mind or non-attachment to views.
1:08.6	One of the reasons I love having George Saunders on this show, aside from the fact that he's
1:12.4	straight up delightful and aside from the fact that he's one of our greatest living writers,
1:16.5	is that he can talk not only about his extraordinary art, but also about our core subject here on
1:23.7	this show, which is how to do life better.
1:27.4	So today you're going to hear George talk about how he endeavors to create holy befuddlement
	...

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