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

Hey, hey, we're tackling some thorny Dharma questions on the show today. This is stuff that can

trip a lot of us up pretty badly, actually. For example, how do you love somebody without

being attached? Or how do you love yourself when the self is allegedly an illusion? We're going to

get into these questions and much, much more with my guest today, who's a repeat customer. His name is

Kevin Griffin. The first time Kevin was on this show, we talked a lot about

the nature of craving and addiction. I enjoyed that conversation immensely. Apparently,

you did as well because the numbers were awesome. So we're bringing them back on. Kevin,

for the uninitiated, is both a longtime Buddhist practitioner and also a 12-step participant. This time he's back

with a semi-sceptical take on loving kindness, that venerable, if somewhat misunderstood, Buddhist

concept and practice. Our conversation really is going to center around a book that Kevin

wrote called Living Kindness, Buddhist

teachings for a troubled world. Kevin's book is actually being re-released this month with a slightly

new title, Living Kindness Meta Practice for the whole of our lives. So we thought it would be a great

time to share this episode again right here on this feed. In this conversation, we talk about the

difference between loving kindness and living kindness. The dangers of modern loving

kindness practice. He argues that if it stays on the cushion, it's focused on a feeling,

and feelings are, of course, impermanent. We also talk about the idea that you don't have to

feel love all of the time, but you can still seek to handle situations with this, and this is very

much a non-malifluous Buddhist way of saying it, but non-ill-will. And we talk about a Buddhist

text called the Meta Suta.

I do want to note that the interview does include brief references to addiction.

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