Happier Summer Series Part 5: How Serving Others Actually Makes Us Happier and What Compassion Can Teach Us with Bill Belanger

What do the happiest people in the world have in common?

According to psychotherapist and meditation teacher Bill Belanger, it’s probably not what you think.

In this episode of the Happier Series, I sit down with Bill to explore what both Western psychology and Buddhist philosophy teach about happiness, suffering, and compassion. Bill is the founder of Healbright and has spent more than twenty years studying meditation and Buddhist psychology, including training in monasteries in Bhutan, Nepal, and Thailand.

Together, we explore why so much of our suffering comes from trying to hold onto things that are constantly changing—our children growing up, our parents aging, relationships evolving, and seasons of life coming and going. We also discuss why happiness built on external circumstances can feel so fragile, and how compassion may offer a more reliable path to wellbeing.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why Buddhist psychology views suffering as a normal part of the human experience
• The difference between empathy and compassion—and why it matters
• How compassion can increase happiness and reduce burnout
• Why meditation plateaus are normal and what to do when they happen
• A simple compassion practice you can start today

If you've ever wished you could hold onto a moment forever, or found yourself wondering why happiness can feel so fleeting, this conversation offers a powerful and hopeful perspective on what it means to live well. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Those early experiences, if we have a part of us that thinks everything has to be hard to be valuable, if we sense a way to do something that's different or that's easy or effortless, that other part is going to start to protest because it doesn't feel safe or it doesn't feel valuable. So again, we can get into that internal tension where we're having a battle, or we can just be really kind to that part that has that belief and listen to it and show it love. And it usually can relax a little bit.

Ryann 0:25

Guess what the world's happiest people have in common? It's not perfect circumstances, endless free time, or even a life without stress. Today, psychotherapist and meditation teacher Bill Belanger is joining me and he is sharing why the happiest people may be the ones who practice compassion and how caring about the well-being of others can actually make us happier too. We're talking about the root of suffering. We're talking about what compassion actually is, and we're even scratching the surface on parts work. So we are all made up of many varied different parts. And when one of our parts is in conflict directly with another one of our parts, life can feel really hard, or we can feel stuck, or we can feel like we're plateauing at something. And so this conversation is so rich in context and how we can move through that with grace and ease. All right, let's dive in to the summer happier series. Hi, Bill. Welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_02 1:34

Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_01 1:35

Yeah, thanks for being here. You've spent years studying both Western psychotherapy and Buddhist psychology. And I'm curious how you came to find the through line for both of those and really married those into the philosophy that you teach now in the work that you do.

SPEAKER_02 1:55

I don't think there's a single through line. I think for me, it's like a dialogue that is continuous between the two traditions. So a lot of that has just been trial and error, working with other teachers. A few teachers in particular were really influential in helping me kind of integrate those two perspectives. And I think that the through line more than anything is that they both are focused on reducing suffering and working with the mind. So they come at it from very different angles. Um, but I think that's kind of what unites two traditions fundamentally.

SPEAKER_01 2:24

Yeah. So do we all suffer? Are we all walking around suffering in some form or fashion?

SPEAKER_02 2:31

So it depends which tradition you ask. So I would argue yes. The Buddhist tradition would say yes, that that's kind of one of the fundamental pieces of our experience. The the Pali translation is dukkha, which I prefer the term reactivity, but it means suffering. So it's more of like on an existential deep level that we realize that things are always changing, there's this sense of impermanence, and our mind kind of has this baseline uneasiness about that, where we're trying to hold on to things that we like, we're trying to push away things that we don't like. Um, and so it's that fundamental reactivity which makes us suffer. So the Buddhist understanding kind of operates at that level. Whereas the Western understanding, going all the way back to Freud in Civilization as discontents, says that psychoanalysis is meant to get people from neurotic suffering to ordinary suffering. So, in that sense, more of you know, anxiety, depression, PTSD are emotional hangups, therapy can be really good at dealing with that. But arguably, the Buddhist tradition is much better at that more fundamental level of suffering than just part of being a human being, essentially.

SPEAKER_01 3:34

Yeah. I was reflecting recently, my grandparents, who were both in their 90s and lived very full, just beautiful lives, passed away in the last couple of years, both of them, um, somewhat close to each other. And they have a home where I used to go visit and play on the beach and da-da-da. And I found myself in this space of going, like, oh, I'm never gonna go back to that beach again. And, you know, we're never gonna go to their house for this holiday again. And I'm like, and now my parents are the ones who are the grandparents and getting older, which means like I'm getting older. Like I had this, like, you know, like you said, existential reckoning of this thing that kind of made me feel pretty sad. So I think we all have this version of this in one form or fashion throughout our lives. Why are we so stuck to holding on to things that are ultimately impermanent?

SPEAKER_02 4:34

Well, yeah, I'd say that's a Buddhist tradition would say it's just a baseline misunderstanding of reality that we have it's almost like an optical illusion that we have this sense that we're separate from everything else and we think things will be permanent. And again, that causes this reactivity. So their way of dealing with that is more of training the mind with meditation, even with intellectual study of the Buddhist ideas. And it's it's ultimately kind of accepting that that feeling of sadness that you described is just unavoidable. And so in some ways, it's an intelligent reaction to the human condition because there it is always changing and there's really nothing that we can do. So the strategy is less about where I think some self-help strategies talk about trying to make the perfect set of life circumstances and having the perfect partner and being super healthy. The Buddhist understanding is that that's all on very shaky ground because it's ultimately all changing. So it's much more about basically cultivating the mind and having some acceptance that kind of transcends the ups and downs of ordinary life.

SPEAKER_01 5:38

So I have to ask you, because this is your wheelhouse. I'm on day 400 plus. I I don't know now. I lost track of a three-minute meditation that I've been doing in the morning. And I'm finding, like at first when I started doing it, I was so locked in and I was like, oh my gosh, my days are better. And I've hit, I guess, what I'm gonna call a plateau. And I'm finding myself fidgeting and I can't keep my uh can't. I'm, you know, having a harder time keeping my mudra. And I'm like, you know, stopping my mudra to like itch my head, and I'm like in my head about this isn't right, I'm not locked in, what's going on? What do you tell people when they hit a meditation plateau, or is it just me?

SPEAKER_02 6:23

No, it's definitely not just you. Um, well, I'd say one thing too is that meditation is a very broad term. It's almost like a category term. So I compare it to exercise or sports. So if somebody says, oh, I do I exercise every day or I play sport every day, there's a very big difference between boxing and swimming and yoga and cardio and weightlifting. So there might be certain types of exercise or sports that are really good for one period of your life and are not appropriate for another period of your life. And then certain people resonate with different styles of exercise. So meditation is the same. There's arguably at least thousands of different styles of meditation. So one of the things that I tell people is just to experiment. And, you know, one thing we could talk about more is more compassion meditation, is something that I'm I find very helpful. But I've gone through the same. I've been meditating for about 20 years, and I think it's pretty normal to go through cycles where certain practices are very helpful, and then I hit a plateau. And sometimes you have to work through the plateau, and sometimes you might just have to switch it up and trust your instinct.

SPEAKER_01 7:21

It's interesting. I was kind of doing this reckoning thing with myself of like, is it time to let this go? Did it serve its course, you know, its purpose in my life and has it run its course? And the more I'm continuing to do it and try and push through, the more that answer is becoming like this has served you. And now what next? Um so I love that you said that because it's kind of giving me permission to like not have to stick to it, you know, and you know, push through. But there is some elevat of that too, right? Like, how do you know when it's this is time to push through versus this is not for me?

SPEAKER_02 8:00

So I'm glad you said that. So the the language that I'm picking up on is this push through piece. Yeah. This is where I think Western therapy can really actually help our meditation practice. So there's a uh, I guess you'd call it a methodology. It's an evidence-based practice in therapy called IFS or internal family systems. So you're it sounds like you're familiar, how you're nodding. Um but essentially we have different parts of our psyche for the listeners who aren't aware of it. So it's it's a mistake when we think it's we're just one person. We uh we all have are made of very different parts. So we might have a part of us that's an overachiever, we might have a part that feels like an imposter or a wounded child or the wise parent, all these other parts. It's really interesting because these parts come up on the meditation cushion. And when I hear that language of push through, it's it often, and that's very common. It's usually one part is trying to dominate the other parts. And that part can usually be uh, and I'm saying this as someone who's experienced the same thing, more of a high achiever part, or I have to have this discipline, or I have to do it. But it creates this tension in the psyche because it sounds like one part of you doesn't want to do the practice and one part does. So I think even just stepping back and having awareness of that can be really helpful. And ultimately, using IFS, the language they use is self or self-energy, is kind of our highest potential. So it's it's almost like the mindful awareness that is beyond any part. So ideally, we want to be meditating from that. When we're we're meditating as a way, even if it's really subtle self-aggression, which is in this way of pushing away one part, I find that is less sustainable and um less beneficial. So sometimes I just for people who are having that experience with meditation, it's just to step back and really be honest about which part is in the driver's seat and which parts are protesting. And just doing some inquiry in that can be really helpful.

SPEAKER_01 9:46

Yeah. So the part that I it's interesting, that push-through language. I love having these conversations because it's such a mirror. It is my overachiever kind of masculine. You have to be disciplined. You have to, you know, grow your discipline better. You know, like so yes, it's this achiever that's going, come on, you have to do this. And my other part is going, like, come on, this is just like I'm tired of this. Like, don't make me do it. And then so those two parts are obviously in conflict with each other.

SPEAKER_02 10:20

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's interesting.

SPEAKER_01 10:23

It is interesting. And I think a lot of people with us here right now can relate to that because so often in our lives, we're feeling this inner conflict of one part of us wants to do this and one part of us wants to do that. What comes to mind is like decision making, you know, the pros and cons list and what should I do? What's the right decision? You know, we kind of get in this like, you know, hamster wheel of what's the right thing. Do you think that's different parts of ourselves when we're in the decision-making process, for example, that are in conflict with each other?

SPEAKER_02 10:57

Oftentimes. Yeah. I I wouldn't I wouldn't say all the time, but yeah, I I think it's fairly common that the the question, I even just to back up, I think the the question, it's called a meg metacognitive question that people can ask is just to stop and pause and have some curiosity, which part is running the show right now. So, like we we said you could do that on the cushion when you're noticing a pattern. But I notice for me sometimes, I have a few business decisions I have to make and I'm getting into this endless internal conflict of, you know, option A or option B. It becomes kind of irresolvable if if I stay within that mode of thinking. And oftentimes it's only when I have to find some way to step out of that and kind of see what is this conflict going on in my mind. And for me, it's it can be very practical just getting outside for an hour or something and then just kind of watching the process. I can have a little bit of peace and and let it go. So yeah, I think oftentimes it is these internal conflicts that we can't ever really resolve because both parts of us are legitimate and they both have something important to tell us. So we kind of have a fantasy that we're gonna figure it out or we're gonna get rid of one part forever. But repression doesn't work long term. So it's much better to listen to both parts, give them a space and give it a little bit of room to breathe.

SPEAKER_01 12:14

Yeah. Part of me thinks I'm addicted, I don't love that word, but addicted emotionally to things feeling hard. Yeah. And that's what Yeah. Okay. That's what makes it worth it, right? If you work hard or if things feel hard. And I came across, I believe, probably very early on in my upbringing, that things had to be hard for them to be valuable.

SPEAKER_02 12:40

Yeah, yeah. Well, it's interesting because I can see that coming up in meditation too, because then it that kind of casts a light on everything. So meditation is a struggle and it's something we have to fight with. When really kind of the highest teachings within the Buddhist tradition are the opposite, where it's about totally letting go of any personal willpower and some language you could use is more about surrendering and being totally present. And so, yeah, it is interesting though, because those early experiences, if we have a part of us that thinks everything has to be hard to be valuable, if we sense a way to do something that's different or that's easy or effortless, that other part is going to start to protest because it doesn't feel safe or it doesn't feel valuable. So again, we can get into that internal tension where we're having a battle, or we can just be really kind to that part that has that belief and listen to it and show it love and it usually can relax a little bit. And the the creator of IFS, one of his books is called No Bad Parts. So I think that kind of sums it up. It's that part is none of these parts are bad, but sometimes their strategies are outdated or they're a little bit younger or immature. So it is almost like parenting with these parts that you don't want to have a huge fight with your two-year-old. It's kind of a losing battle. It's more about soothing and listening and having a relationship, even with the parts that are are very extreme.

SPEAKER_01 13:58

Sure. So it sounds like this is where compassion comes in, which is one thing you mentioned before. So let's get into compassion. It nobody, interestingly enough, has mentioned it in this series yet. The word compassion has not come up yet. So you are the first one. I know. Uh, gratitude has come up a lot. That's been a big um theme, but not compassion yet. So I want to know what is compassion. I have a feeling some of us might be getting it a little wrong. And then how do we access it?

SPEAKER_02 14:32

So I'm glad you asked to define it. So there's a lot of different definitions and a lot of different categories. The traditional Buddhist way of thinking in early Buddhism, there's four different types of compassion or love and kindness. So love and kindness is more of the wish for others to be happy. There's equanimity, which is more of having a balanced state of well-being, no matter what the circumstances. Another one, which I really love, is often translated as sympathetic joy. And that's more when we feel happy for the success of others. So that's something that our culture really has a hard time with. So that's if you see somebody got a promotion or successful, you try to cultivate happiness for them. And then compassion is wanting somebody not to suffer. Now, from the Western perspective, a researcher, Tanya Singer, found something really important doing brain scans with advanced meditators, is there's a difference between empathy and compassion. So empathy is more when we're feeling what somebody else is feeling, but compassion shows up very differently in the brain. And so what her research was showing that people who have burnout, so caregivers, parents, nurses, they're typically having empathy burnout. So there's this phrase compassion fatigue. It's technically incorrect. It's actually should be empathy fatigue. And it makes sense. So if you work, so my grandmother, for example, was an emergency room nurse for 20 years. It's it's exhausting because all day you're around suffering. And if you have you're somebody with high empathy, you're feeling, you're literally feeling what they're feeling. So it's just as it's not very sustainable. Compassion is, you might feel that a little bit still, but it's more on wishing well for that person, on sending love and kindness to that person. So there is, we can maybe this is a tangent, we can go into this later. And what the research showed for some of the advanced meditators, but they didn't have any of those experiences of fatigue. They actually had these enormous um experiences of well-being and happiness by doing compassion meditation. So it's more on just focusing on somebody else to be happy and not suffer rather than getting really caught in the difficult emotions that somebody else is feeling.

SPEAKER_01 16:38

I love that you referenced Tanya Singer's work because I referenced her work as well. Oh, good. Yeah. In an episode I did called The Neuroscience of Compassion. And I, one of her studies, I don't know if we're talking about the same one, is one of the ones that I found that was interested in it because I do feel like there are so many social emotional programs and culturally, like we're talking about we need to have empathy. We need to have empathy. And from my experience, especially as I consider myself like a highly sensitive person, I guess, it is exhausting to be feeling all the things with for all the people.

SPEAKER_02 17:14

Definitely.

SPEAKER_01 17:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:15

Definitely. Yeah. And again, so her the the the reason I'm aware of her work. So there's a Buddhist, I guess you would say author, teacher, um, Matthew Ricard, who is a, he basically was a PhD French molecular biologist, this really brilliant man, but he kind of put his academic career on the back burner, became a Tibetan Buddhist monk. And that's what he's done for decades now. But he went to do research um on the effects of compassion meditation. So at the University of Madison, Wisconsin, they have this meditation lab. And so they were studying his brain doing these compassion meditations. And he's someone who's an expert who's lived in the Himalayas doing this for decades. His brain waves were so abnormal, they literally thought the machines were broken. They had never seen anything like that. So he was having these gamma brain waves, which usually measured would be for a second or two. And he was having these long sustained gamma brain waves. So they they um again had never seen that before. And then also, I believe it was his left prefrontal cortex was abnormally large, and that's the part of the brain associated with positive emotions. So there was, I think it was Smithsonian magazine, dubbed him the happiest man alive. And he doesn't like that title because he thinks it's ridiculous. But so it's it's probably more the happiest man ever studied. But it kind of shows you that there's a lot of evidence that doing compassion meditation when you're doing it correctly, it's it's not only good for other people, it makes you extremely happy. Because basically, when you're doing it correctly, you're filled with positive emotions. So that's good for your physical health, it's good for your mental health. So, kind of coming back to this Buddhist understanding, if we're trying to get happiness from having the right perfect set of conditions in our life, it's it's like we're building a house on sand. It's never stable. We there's we ultimately can't control external circumstances. But from the Buddhist tradition, there's no situation where we can't cultivate compassion. It there's literally no matter what is happening, it that is always available to us. So some of these more advanced meditators are are really starting to prove that in the laboratory now. So yeah, I think it's fas it's very fascinating and underappreciated in our culture.

SPEAKER_01 19:24

Yeah, that's really cool. So, do you think one would have to like be a monk on a mountaintop to be able to access those states, like the brainwaves, the gamma waves that they studied in this person you're talking about? Or can we get a little close as like busy, you know, overachieving uh people who are juggling all the things in modern day society who are carpooling and cleaning and cooking and all the things, right? Because when I think about it, I'm like, oh, it would be so easy to do that if I just like went into a cave and meditated.

SPEAKER_02 20:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:03

But like the work is to do it in the car line and in the, you know, grocery store. So what's your take on that?

SPEAKER_02 20:11

I feel like it's like a spectrum. So, you know, I'm not naive. It's we're not going to replicate what someone who spent tens of thousands of hours doing. We we're not gonna do that, you know, three, 10 minutes a day or something. But we can definitely get a lot of the benefits. And I and I do think that um that research lab at Madison, Wisconsin, Richard Davidson, who's the leader of it, he feels that compassion meditation people can make progress with much quicker than other meditation. So he that's kind of what the research has shown. So I think even five or 10 minutes a day goes a long way. I do think it's a practice. I do think it takes time. And, you know, as a parent, I even notice in myself how there's little opportunities to integrate that during the day. So the other day I was burned out, I'm tired, didn't sleep good, and we're trying to get our toddler ready to get out the door in the morning. And when I'm not mindful, I'm things kind of feel like a chore. I might even be a little bit grumpy. But when I can stop and I'm putting his lunch together and I'm saying, oh, like I really want him to have this lunch, I want him to eat good today, and it becomes more about giving and making sure that he feels okay, I just start feeling happier. So there's there's another piece of research where people were give it between five and twenty dollars, and one group spends it on themselves and the other gives it away. The people that gave it away are happier at the end of the day. So even the way that we frame things in our life can be really helpful. So again, as a as a parent, it's not realistic, I can't meditate for five hours a day. But I I do think some practice is important just to have that baseline. But I think it's also more in the daily activities, changing the frame of mind a little bit. Instead of doing it mindlessly, it's like, no, I actually want to do this. I want to take care of my son, I want him to be happy, or or the things. That we're doing at work, you know, sometimes they're a chore, but I'm doing this in service of something positive. It can, I think it can be much more of a sustainable source of happiness than, again, trying to find the right perfect set of conditions that is basically unfindable.

SPEAKER_01 22:15

Definitely unfindable. And I love this example so much. I resonate with it. And I know everybody here is like nodding their heads in their car on their walk because we all know when we're trying to get out of the house in the morning and we're in our heads and we haven't slept well. Like we all know what that feels like in some form or fashion. And um, I notice myself a lot getting caught up in I just need to get to the next thing. I just need to get to the next thing. And then suddenly my day just becomes about getting to the next thing. I'm like, what am I doing? So it's like we have it feels infinite, but there's like 86,000 something seconds in a day. And, you know, aside from when we're sleeping, hopefully well, but like, so you know, half that, whatever the number is, we have that many opportunities to come back to the moment. And you're saying not just come back to the moment, but focusing on giving love, giving compassion, service. Like, what exactly, if we could sum it up in a word or a few, what would that be? What are we giving?

SPEAKER_02 23:19

Yeah. So this is where I think it's interesting because mindfulness meditation is the most popular in the West. But in some ways, I think it's not really well suited to what Western culture needs. It can be a little bit dry. It can be a little bit like disembodied where we're just observing everything. And again, I think there's a little bit more juice with the compassion piece. It's it's a little bit more embodied, it's more emotional. So you can do it in a few different ways. The very simple meta, and so meta just means love and kindness practice. It's you're using phrases. So if you're wishing, you know, for example, with my son, it might be may you be happy, may you be free of suffering, or even just basic, may you have a good day. So where we all have this internal chatter, it's kind of replacing it with this different positive chatter. And you can say that to yourself too. And then the other is a little bit more emotional. It's just more sending this emotion or feeling towards other people, wishing that they're well. Or and some, again, it it's it's a combination of mindfulness in our daily life because the sympathetic joy piece, it might be that we heard something positive happen to somebody, even in the news, and we might be, oh, that's nice. And then we're on to the next thing. But just taking a minute and just really feeling good and setting that person love and feeling happy and pride for them. So I would encourage people to be creative too. The Dalai Lama has this phrase that he calls intelligent selfishness. So even if we don't care about any of these things, we don't care about making the world a better place, the research shows that being in these states is good for you. It makes you feel better. So it's just, it's just intelligent to do this. So even if you want to be selfish, it's paradoxical, but caring about other people, having compassion, wishing people well makes you feel better. So I think it depends on people's personality and their daily life. But I think there's a lot of different ways to accomplish that.

SPEAKER_01 25:09

Yeah. It's interesting that you're like this mindful traditional meditation that we're all kind of grasping onto is a little bit of a buzzword or like a little buzzy right now. And it's interesting that you called it disembodied. I can see why you're calling it that. So am I hearing you say that we can do this compassion meditation throughout our day when we're packing the lunches, or do we have to actually sit down, be quiet, go within, close our eyes, or is and both?

SPEAKER_02 25:39

Ideally both. Um Yeah, I can give you a quick story that I find really interesting. During the 50s, the Tibet was basically invaded by China. It was a big tragedy where a million people died. And there's these fascinating stories, these biographies of all these Tibetan meditation masters that were thrown in prison in these really horrifying conditions. And there's one story in particular, the biography I just read, Gar Chen Rinpoche, who was this meditation master, and he just went through unbelievable trauma in prison. But a lot of them, they were able to reconnect with their meditation practice. And because the the Chinese government was with Mao Zedong and they felt religion was a poison, you could, it was illegal to practice anything within the prison. You couldn't practice meditation. So these Tibetan masters had to do it secretly. So they would do it when it looked like they were sleeping, or they did it when they were working. But some of the really amazing stories is these masters could basically do it 24-7 and nobody knew that they were doing it. They weren't sitting cross-legged. It was just totally integrated into their daily life, even in these horrific circumstances. So I think those types of stories are real, for me at least, inspiring. When I'm grumpy and I'm having a bad day, it's pretty silly usually. It's like these pretty petty things I'm upset about. Um, so yeah, again, I mean, I think for most of us beginners, grounding it, like you said, you have a morning practice. That's fantastic because I think it just gets your brain used to that. But yeah, ideally the the point of any of these things is to improve your life and to have less suffering. So I think balancing it and like I said, it's it is it is possible in any in any circumstance to to practice these.

SPEAKER_01 27:20

Yeah. I think it makes it more approachable because I feel like when people hear, well, you have to do a morning practice or you have to dedicate yourself and do this and do that, I feel like people are like, no, not one more thing. I can't add one more thing. Like I need to do less. And so approaching it from starting like when you're at a stoplight, or when you're dropping your kid off in the morning, or when you're on a walk with your dog, like doing these things. And I love that story that these monks were in just absolutely atrocious conditions and they still found a way to kind of go within. And and was it peace that they ultimately found? Is that what they were finding in these prisons?

SPEAKER_02 28:07

Yeah. I mean, so with Garchin Reprochet, when he first went in, he had lost his connection with his spiritual practice and he became really angry and resentful. He actually at one point wanted to commit suicide because it was so bad. And he survived all this. And then an older Tibetan Lama, Lama means teacher, came in and mentored all these young teachers. And he was kind of like harsh in a good way of like scolding them to practice and not to let their minds get like this. So over the course of many years, his mind became completely transformed. And he basically tells a story that he just totally stopped suffering entirely. He saw no difference between prison and normal life. He people, he said he was just a pleasure to be around. He called everybody darling, including all the prison guards. And he was in for 12 years and he had an opportunity to leave if he like ratted out these other people. And he didn't, didn't care. See, for another eight years, seemed totally unconcerned. And then when he got out, he basically has dedicated his life towards teaching and opening all these different meditation centers. So there's different practices that he was doing. One of them is called Tong Len, which is like a compassion style of a practice. But yeah, I mean, from his perspective, he literally said that he was in the worst form of hell before he began doing all this. And then after doing it for years, he claims he's basically never suffered again. So he still had the ups and downs and the aches and pains of everything, but his mind was just so focused on compassion. And this is not to set an unrealistic standard for us. These are like the Michael Jordans of meditation. It's more to show what is possible for people who fully dedicate themselves to these practices.

SPEAKER_01 29:42

Yeah. So for little old us who are like, yes, this compassion meditation sounds great. What is just like the one way to start? Is it to sit down for three minutes, like to set a timer? Is like what's that starting point, that easy entry point that feels accessible for us?

SPEAKER_02 30:02

So I see there's a few, a few points. This is more logistical. In terms of the habit, I like the idea of habit stacking where you do a new habit on an existing habit because it's more likely to stick. So if you have your coffee at eight in the morning every day, no matter what, that's realistic to say I have my coffee and I meditate. Or if you brush your teeth before bed every night, I brush my teeth and then I meditate. So I think in terms of habit formation, that's one way. The other piece is more general, but it's getting back to this parts language that I hear a lot, or I have to meditate, or it's another thing. It becomes like one part forcing the other part. The reason I like compassion meditations is because they actually feel good if you do them well. So sometimes I'll feel run down or grumpy, and if I do one of them, I just feel better. So you don't really have to force yourself to do something that feels good. It becomes naturally habit-forming. So you you like doing it. There's some dopamine or serotonin that gets released. So you it gets much easier. It's a lot harder to do something if you don't like doing it. So on my website, I have a few guided meditations people can try, but they can find them anywhere else too. So meta or love and kindness meditations, Tong Len is another style. You and you don't even have to do a recording. You could just put your hand on in the center of your chest. And part of this is again, just so it's not disembodied because they're meant to invoke emotions. It's not just a thought process. And just wishing other people well and sending love to people. Traditionally, there's a few ways of doing it, but you often do it to somebody who's very easy to send love to. So if it's a child or a pet, or you mentioned your grandparents, it's really usually easy to sit and just visualize sending them love because our hearts are very open to them. Then we progress to somebody that's neutral. So it's somebody that might be, you know, the mailman or a clerk or somebody that we don't really pay much attention to. Then where it gets really interesting is sending it to people we don't like or we have big problems with. And this could be people in the news or political figures if there's no one in our life. And the perspective from this tradition, it's that those people are suffering too. So even the people that are causing great harm, we might want them to stop doing that and you know, certain people should go to jail or whatever the case may be. But on that ultimate level, we can still recognize their suffering and want them to be happy too. So I think that's using that example of that teacher Garchin Rinpoche, he had this enormous compassion for the people that imprisoned him. So it it is possible to overcome all of that.

SPEAKER_01 32:27

Yeah. It's interesting in society today, there's lots of like lock that person up. He should be punished. He, you know, there's lots of wishing people ill instead of wishing people well. And so if we can imagine, you know, that one figure or person in our families or whoever it is that we have a hard time with that really gets to us, if we can imagine wishing them well, like you said, like, I mean, is that something that the Buddhists believe change the world? Is that like the whole end goal of it? Or is it just inner peace and it ripples out from there?

SPEAKER_02 33:03

So a little tricky. I I guess it depends on the tradition. There's there's a lot of different Buddhist traditions, but generally speaking, Mahayana Buddhism is called the great vehicle. So the goal is to help everybody ultimately. So it really isn't just an individual practice. So that's something that I think with Buddhism in the West is is our I one scholar I know um basically claims it's the only time in the history of Buddhism that we are practicing it from such an individualistic perspective. So now it's like we have our own iPhone apps and we pay our monthly subscription, and this is my practice. And, you know, I do these things too. But it used to be in these different places, it's much more communal. You're you're with other people. It's that was kind of more understood. So we're so individualistic that even these practices get seen through a self-help lens when really it's it's kind of about getting beyond that. So the the ultimate perspective is more, again, using that teacher of of Garchin Rinpoche, it's that you're you're fully fully cultivated your capacity as a human being, where you're just emanating compassion, you're happy most of the time, you're serving other people most of the time. And ultimately that does help yourself, but it helps everybody because people like that are just a pleasure to be around, where they just you naturally want to go near them.

SPEAKER_01 34:16

Yeah, so true. And that's what I am hoping everybody is taking away from this conversation that we want to be those people who other people want to be around. We want to be those people that send out that very small ripple effect in our homes, in our communities, in our neighborhoods. And that's where that ripple effect starts.

SPEAKER_02 34:36

Yeah, absolutely. And it doesn't always have to be a huge, you know, big project or it can be very small. It can just be being nice to your neighbor, you know, being nice to your kids. I mean, that that stuff matters a lot.

SPEAKER_01 34:47

It does. It does. The little, the little things matter so, so much. Um, Bill, your work is amazing. I'm gonna link your website down below so people can get those meditations that you mentioned. Thank you for your work and for sharing your wisdom with us.

SPEAKER_02 35:02

Yeah, thank you so much for having me.