10% Happier

by Dan Harris

The Buddha embraced an often overlooked truism: nothing lasts—including us. We and everyone we love will die. Fame fizzles, beauty fades, continents shift. Pharaohs are swallowed by emperors, who fall to sultans, kings, kaisers, and presidents—and it all plays out against the backdrop of an infinite universe in which our bodies are made up of atoms from the very first exploding stars. We may know this intellectually, but on an emotional level we seem to be hardwired for denial.

Unlike many of the faiths I’d come across as a religion reporter, the Buddha wasn’t promising salvation in the form of some death-defying dogma, but rather through the embrace of the very stuff that will destroy us. The route to true happiness, he argued, was to achieve a visceral understanding of impermanence, which would take you off the emotional roller coaster and allow you to see your dramas and desires through a wider lens. Waking up to the reality of our situation allows you to, as the Buddhists say, “let go,” to drop your “attachments.” As one Buddhist writer put it, the key is to recognize the “wisdom of insecurity.”

That phrase—“the wisdom of insecurity”—really struck me. It was the perfect rejoinder to my “price of security” motto. It made me see my work worries in an entirely different light. If there was no such thing as security, then why bother with the insecurity?

The Buddhists called this prapañca (pronounced pra-PUN-cha), which roughly translates to “proliferation,” or “the imperialistic tendency of mind.” That captured it beautifully, I thought: something happens, I worry, and that concern instantaneously colonizes my future. My favorite Buddhist catchphrase, however, was the one they used to describe the churning of the ego: “monkey mind.” I’ve always been a sucker for animal metaphors, and I thought this one was perfect. Our minds are like furry little gibbons: always agitated, never at rest.

But there was something else at work here, too. My consumption of Buddhist books was paying off. Throughout the weekend, I made a deliberate effort to pause, look around, and savor things while they lasted. There were little moments, like running errands for Bianca—for example, putting her carefully curated gift bags in people’s rooms—and actually enjoying it. Or when I babysat my adorable, big-eyed baby niece Campbell in my room while everyone else was out having lunch. She sat on my lap and cooed contentedly while I ate a cheeseburger, trying not to drip ketchup on her head.

This incident again crystallized all of my nagging questions about Buddhism. Doesn’t competitiveness serve a useful purpose? Is the “price of security” simply incompatible with the “wisdom of insecurity”?

He thought this was hilarious. “Absolutely not,” he said, laughing. “Your personality and mine are really different. When I’m thinking about it, it’s from a much more introverted place. You’re talking from an extroverted place. There’s an energy there, an enthusiasm there, a rambunctiousness there.” Buddhism, he said, could be helpful for both personality types.

As I madly typed notes into my BlackBerry for future reference, it was impossible not to notice that nearly all of these names were Jewish: Goldstein, Goleman, Kornfield, Salzberg. “This is a whole subculture,” he said. The little cabal even had a nickname: the “Jew-Bus.”

I wanted to be his friend, but what I really wanted was to figure out how to get what he appeared to have. Not some self-conscious, allegedly unbreakable equanimity, but a quiet confidence, an easy charm. There was no denial of his neuroses; he seemed to find them amusing rather than enervating.

Mark, however, had a very explicit prescription. This is where the Buddhists diverged quite dramatically from self-help: They had an actual, practical program. It wasn’t expensive gimcrackery. No spendy seminars, no credit cards required. It was totally free. It was a radical internal jujitsu move that was supposed to allow you to face the asshole in your head directly, and peacefully disarm him. Problem was, I found what they were proposing to be repellent.