Jack Kornfield on How to Stay Sane in Insane Times

Hearing a voice can change everything. So AT and T wants everyone to gift their voice to loved ones this holiday season because that conversation is a chance to say something they'll hear forever. AT and T, connecting changes everything. This is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hello, my fellow suffering beings. How we doing today? This conversation is gonna make you feel better about the state of the world. At the very least, it made me feel better. I found it to be a massive dose of perspective. It helped me get in touch with something way more vast than the daily gyrations of the news cycle. My guest is the legendary Jack Kornfield, who trained as a Buddhist monk in the monasteries of Thailand, India, and Burma, then returned to The US where he became one of the leading voices in Buddhism in the West. He cofounded the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts with Sharon Salzberg and Joseph Goldstein. Then he went on to start the Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, California. He's written many books, including his latest, which is called All in This Together, Stories and Teachings for Loving Each Other and Our World. He also has a new online course he just posted called Stand Up for Compassion, which is all about staying steady in difficult times. In this conversation, we talk about his new book and his new course. We talk about the causes of happiness, the opportunities, and this is a counterintuitive notion, but the opportunities in all of the suffering we're experiencing today, how to stand up for what you care about while staying calm and steady, ways to zoom out and see the bigger picture, how to cultivate both courage and joy, how Jack gets consistent hits of joy in his own life, why intention is important, and how to cultivate healthy intentions, and many other survival strategies for these tumultuous times. If you're interested in learning more about how to meet the insanity of the world more effectively, there is a guided meditation that comes with this episode. It was designed by and delivered to us from our teacher of the month, my friend, Jeff Warren. You can access it by signing up at danharris.com. If you sign up, you'll also get invited to our weekly live meditation and q and a sessions every Tuesday at four. The next session coming up on Tuesday, December 9. One more thing to say before we dive in. If you wanna make a real difference this giving season, we've got something for you. We're joining something called Pods Fight Poverty, teaming up with dozens of podcasts, like the Happiness Lab with doctor Lori Santos and Hidden Brain with, the host Shankar Vedantam. We're teaming up with these guys to do something big. We're gonna try to lift three entire villages in Rwanda out of extreme poverty. Your donation will be delivered by give directly as cash straight into the …