Cow is their sacred, so there are cows all over the street just chilling and nobody bothers them.

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

And even McDonald's doesn't serve hamburgers here because they don't believe you should eat beef.

What are you doing, Dan?

Making a little video from my son who will be fascinated by the notion of sacred cows.

I think this cow is tired of being filmed.

Over the course of two weeks in Durham, Sala India, a guy like me is bound to encounter a lot of ideas that fall outside of my conditioning as a skeptical, agnostic journalist who grew up in a science-reveering, capitalistic western country.

As you've heard, it's not just sacred cows, it's also prayer wheels, thousand armed deities, and rebirth.

Each of which I would have met with kind of knee-jerk rejection not very long ago.

But over the last decade plus, as I've gone from reluctant meditator to a meditation evangelist, and as I've come to really identify as a Buddhist, I've softened on some of these notions.

It's not that I believe them per se, it's more like I'm less positive that my lack of belief is absolutely correct.

Or as I've been counseled by my meditation teacher, Joseph Goldstein, sometimes you have to engage in what the poet Samuel Collaridge has called the willing suspension of disbelief.

In fact, now when I hear meditation teachers talk about esoteric stuff, my response is mostly curiosity and interest.

For example, with the Dalai Lama, here's a guy who's such a huge believer in modern science, but at the same time he has all of these metaphysical beliefs.

That's just incredibly fascinating to me. How can these two things coexist? What's going on here? Are there things that the contemplatives know that science hasn't caught up to?

And here's the cool thing. There was a whole part of my interview with his holiness that got so esoteric that I could barely keep up.

It was when the Dalai Lama took me on an unexpectedly deep guided tour of his own meditation practice.

He went on for about 12 minutes and rarely have I ever felt so utterly intrigued and confused.

The good news is that on this, the final installment of our series, the Dalai Lama's Guide to Happiness, good old Uncle Richie is here to help us one more time.

The Richie in question is of course Richard Davidson, avid meditator, eminent scientist, and long time trusted confidant of his holiness, the Dalai Lama.

We're going to dive into the deep end today, people. His holiness is going to talk about gross and subtle levels of mind, ways to meditate during sleep that can double as preparation for the moment of death, and much more. And Richie will help us understand it.

This is where the edges of any reasonable attempt to bring modern scientific concepts to understanding these phenomena begin to separate.

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