Is It Possible to Uproot All Anxiety and Anger? Steve Armstrong Says Yes.

10% Happier with Dan Harris

10% Media, LLC

Health & Fitness, Mental Health

4.6 • 12.2K Ratings

🗓️ 14 December 2025

⏱️ 69 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Meditation can be gorgeous… and it can be absolutely bewildering. If you've ever wondered, "Am I doing this right?" or "Why does this feel so intense?", this conversation is for you.

In this vintage conversation from 2016, Dan sits down with legendary dharma teacher Steve Armstrong for a clear, compassionate walkthrough of the progress of insight—including why meditation sometimes gets harder before it gets easier, how to navigate the so-called "dark night" phases, and how to keep going without getting lost in the weeds of self-doubt.

Steve has guided thousands of students through the twists and turns of practice with uncommon precision, humor, and heart. And now, the community has the chance to support him in return. Steve is currently living with a brain tumor, and he and his wife Kamala Masters (a formidable dharma teacher in her own right, who has also been a guest on this show) are facing significant medical and caregiving costs. If you feel moved, you can find the GoFundMe at this link. Our company has also made a significant contribution to support Steve and Kamala.

In this episode, you'll learn:

Why meditation can sometimes trigger emotional turbulence
How to understand the "stages" of insight (without clinging to them)
Practical ways to stay steady when your practice feels chaotic or confusing
How to distinguish between a genuine opening and plain old overwhelm
Why equanimity isn't passive—it's powerful

Steve has spent decades helping people wake up. This episode is a chance to receive that wisdom—and, if you're able, to reflect it back with your support.

Related Episodes:

Get Happier Without Losing Your Edge | Kamala Masters

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris.
0:07.8	Hello, everybody. If you listen to this show with any regularity, the odds are incredibly
0:24.4	high that you are interested in finding ways to get happier. Today, we're going to talk about
0:29.6	an ancient technology not only for getting happier, but for becoming 100% happy, imperturbable,
0:36.5	no matter what's happening. In other words, we're going to talk about
0:39.8	how to get enlightened. Let me step back here. When I first got interested in meditation, I just wanted
0:47.5	to be a little bit less stressed, to not be so owned by the voice in my head. But the deeper I got into
0:53.2	the practice, the more I started to hear
0:55.3	about enlightenment, which of course, even who I am, I initially wrote off as religious bullshit.
1:02.6	Over time, however, I have become way more open to the possibility of enlightenment while, of course,
1:07.8	maintaining skepticism, given that I can't pound the table for the existence of something that I have not personally experienced.
1:14.6	Anyway, my guest today knows what he's talking about on this score. He has helped translate an influential text called the Manual of Insight, which is basically the operator's manual for how the mind works when you do
1:29.3	high doses of meditation. What I find incredibly fascinating is that according to this tradition,
1:35.3	the Burmese strain of Theravada Buddhism, if you meditate enough and in the right ways,
1:40.6	your mind will pass through a predictable series of stages, including bliss,
1:45.4	rapture, existential freakouts, and then allegedly Nirvana. Yeah. My guest is Steve Armstrong,
1:53.6	who's a longtime meditation teacher, who in his earlier years spent five years as a Buddhist monk
1:58.4	in Burma. This conversation was recorded nearly 10 years ago back in 2016.
2:04.7	In fact, it was the 13th episode of this podcast.
2:08.4	Just for context, we're now over a thousand episodes.
2:12.1	So actually, at the beginning of this conversation, you'll hear a much younger, much less patient
2:16.7	version of your host,
	...

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