10% Happier with Dan Harris

And also you're really from my point of view seminal book of Loving Kindness early on which I have made this joke before that when I was reading it on airplanes I used to cover it up like it was a penthouse because I didn't want anybody to see that reading the book of Loving Kindness.

I'm Loving Kindness was my first book at Kibab 1995 when I started working on Loving Kindness I didn't even have a computer

And he and there was one book on the shelf which was not by Mahasthi and it was The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Saguya Rinpoche which and just to say I know Saguya Rinpoche is a controversial figure and that book is quite an amazing book.

much of it is that was that spoke to me was this this totally different approach which is that there's nothing to get there's nowhere to go.

One of the points you've made publicly runs counter to something that I've been saying for a long time which is when young people come to me and say what should I do with my life I often say well think about the thing you would pay to do and see if you can get paid to do it like in other words follow your passion and you say that's terrible advice.

And you can find instructions in this and his very simple and wonderful book Practical Insight Meditation my favorite Dharma book of all time by by by my society and this strangely simple technique creates in some people who do it well in high enough dose some very very powerful effects that were kind of surprising to me.

This guy read Real Magic by Dean Raidham our adin yes he just Daniel by the way I just recommended that to me over lunch which preceded the taping of this podcast.

And Lodro has also written a bunch of books including The Buddha walked into a bar which is a funny book designed to make Buddhism relevant to young people.

So you really kind of burst onto the scene with this book The Buddha Walks Into A Bar

you wrote The Buddha Walks Into A Bar and then a bunch of sequels really as a way to make Buddhism accessible to 20 somethings.

It's called In Love with the World, it's just out.

He initially, as she tells the story, he initially wanted to write pretty much all about his near death experience and talk about what he saw there to break it all down.

I have to say that the beginning of the retreat and his whole reason for leaving was a much bigger hook for me than anything that came after us.

So I think in that there's something about what you're asking that letting go has to do with letting go of the attachment and of the attachment to seeing the attachment itself as what causes the problems not what your activity is.

he does experience the world as an enormously loving space a space that he loves the space that loves him the space of total complete acceptance and in a very in a way that's very radical for him but he had never known such a degree of comfort in the world complete absence of self consciousness embarrassment.

my colleague Dr. Jen Ashton who was on the show a couple of weeks ago, she's just written a book called Life After Suicide about what she and her family went through after her husband or actually they'd been divorced for two weeks.

How to Love Yourself and sometimes other people which is obviously completely different but it is this notion we are just talking about sort of the befriending yourself as you are just learning to meditation as a practice to actually learn to be kind to yourself to actually learn to love yourself.

She also, before her most recent book she wrote a book called Zen in America Profiles of Five Teachers.

It's a profile of teachers of American teachers.

Foundational practices of Tibetan Buddhism that was published by Shambhala so that was the first book we did.

Oh I can barely take care of myself and the other one's called, I know what I'm doing and other lies I tell myself.

I can barely came out 2013 and the other one came out last year. And then paperback just came out.

And I have a new book called I know what I'm doing another life I tell myself just came out in paperback so they can get that at all there amazon indiebound.org where everything want to go

The Generosity Network is a book that we Jennifer McCray and myself co-wrote and we have as a class at Kennedy School at Harvard now it's about this transformational experience between donors and doers when you do something together your life is transformed it's not money going one way or the other it's about the transformational opportunity

we do have a site called The Generosity Network as well

But then we get into his latest book which is called The Seven Practices of a Mindful Leader and by leader he does not mean some helicopter using CEO.

The title is Seven Practices of a Mindful Leader and the subtitle is lessons from google and to zen monastery kitchen.

My first book that drew me in this direction was Abraham Maslow Toward a Psychology of Being.

I discovered that book kind of woke me up to how asleep I was reading about that this concept of self-actualization and this idea that certain people were more emotional, were happier, were sadder, were more comfortable in their own skins.

and even a book about Zen Alan Watts The Way of Zen came my way and all of this was like wow like this is amazing stuff this is so much more interesting relevant than the courses I was taking at Rutgers University in New Jersey.

while I was in San Francisco I someone handed me a book called the Tasa Hara Bread Book and the Tasa Hara Bread Book is a book about baking bread that happened to come out of a Zen monastery called Tasa Hara which was part of the San Francisco Zen Center and this book it not only was it about baking bread but it was about studying yourself and going beyond yourself through the practice of baking bread.

he's got a bunch of great books including Wherever You Go There You Are which is a classic in the meditation world.

And the way I framed it in you know my second book wherever you go there you are.

the famous book Zen mind beginners mind uh where where Suzuki Rishi famously says right in the in the experts mind there are very few possibilities right in the in the beginners mind there are many possibilities.

The book that I that has done the best um of mine is a book called Less the subtitle is accomplishing more by doing Less.