How to Actually Be Present | Matthew Brensilver
10% Happier with Dan Harris
10% Media, LLC
4.6 • 12.9K Ratings
🗓️ 22 December 2023
⏱️ 67 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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Tackling one of the best known contemplative clichés: being in the present moment and "inhabiting the now."
Matthew Brensilver, MSW, PhD, teaches retreats at the Insight Retreat Center, Spirit Rock and other Buddhist centers.He was previously program director for Mindful Schools and for more than a decade, was a core teacher at Against the Stream Buddhist Meditation Society. Before committing to teach meditation full-time, he spent years doing research on addiction pharmacotherapy at the UCLA Center for Behavioral and Addiction Medicine. Each summer, he lectures at UCLA's Mindful Awareness Research Center on the intersections between mindfulness, science and psychotherapy. Matthew is the co-author of two books about meditation during adolescence and continues to be interested in the unfolding dialogue between Buddhism and science.
In this episode we talk about:
- What being present actually means
- What to do when Buddhist teachings or meditation instructions feel out of reach
- What to do when a memory arises in meditation, especially a difficult one
- The brain's, at times, exhausting, evolutionarily wired tendency toward constant prediction
- The benefits of going on meditation retreats
- Distinguishing between true alarms and false alarms
Related Episodes:
Why Self-Hatred Makes No Sense | Matthew Brensilver
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. |
| 0:18.5 | Hello, my fellow suffering beings, how we doing? Happy holidays. Today we're going to tackle one of the best known contemplative cliches, being in the present moment, inhabiting the now. This is one of those vaunted states we're exhorted to aspire to but are rarely given any practical information about how to actually achieve. |
| 0:40.4 | Now, obviously, there are lots of reasons why you should want to be in the present moment |
| 0:43.3 | because really that's the only time it ever is. |
| 0:46.5 | But my guest today is going to make a very specific argument for the utility of being in the now |
| 0:52.4 | in terms of your own psychological well-being. |
| 0:55.5 | It's a fascinating argument. |
| 0:56.8 | You'll hear him make it. |
| 0:58.6 | The hymn in question here is Matthew Grensilver. |
| 1:00.9 | This is his second appearance on the show. |
| 1:02.5 | He teaches retreats at Spirit Rock and other Buddhist centers. |
| 1:06.7 | In this conversation, we talked about what being present actually means, |
| 1:10.1 | what to do when the Buddhist teachings or meditation instructions feel out of reach, and then we start compulsively self-assessing against these teachings, which sounds familiar to me, what to do when a memory arises in meditation, especially a hard one. |
| 1:23.0 | The brain's at times exhausting and evolutionarily wired tendency towards prediction, the benefits of going on meditation retreats, and distinguishing between false alarms and real ones. |
| 1:35.2 | Just to say, before we dive in here, this episode is part of a two-week series we're doing. |
| 1:39.7 | We're calling deep cuts where we dip into our archive for some of the strongest and most popular episodes |
| 1:45.3 | that we think might give you a dose of sanity during the holidays. Before we dive in, just to say, |
| 1:51.7 | we've got some exciting things happening in the 10% happier universe. We are now offering bespoke, |
| 1:58.6 | guided meditations to go with every podcast episode. Those meditations |
| 2:03.7 | will be guided by a teacher of the month, all people who you know from the 10% |
| 2:09.7 | cinematic universe, people who have been on this podcast before. I like to think of the podcast |
| 2:14.3 | as the lecture and then the guided meditations as the lab. |
... |
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