Surviving the News: Buddhist Strategies for Staying Sane, Engaged, and Not Completely Furious | Pascal Auclair

Hey. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the 10% happier podcast. I'm your host, Dan Harris. We're about a month out now from the midterms to the midterm elections here in The US, and a lot of us are feeling pretty stressed and anxious. So today we're going to talk about how to stay engaged without losing your mind. We're going to be talking about this with the great Buddhist meditation teacher Pascal Auclair who is one of the teachers over on my meditation app, Ten Percent with Dan Harris. And what you're about to hear is me asking Pascal questions, but also feeding him some questions that we got from subscribers to the Ten Percent with Dan Harris app, including a question about karma and whether the bad guys will ever get theirs. Pascal is very funny and he has a way of talking that just relaxes your nervous system. And speaking of relaxing your nervous system, we here at Ten Percent Happier are gonna have your back through this election season. Sharon Salzberg, the great meditation teacher, will be appearing on the podcast closer to election day to talk about some great Buddhist coping strategies, and we'll be doing some live online events on election day and the day after the Election Day that are available to everyone whether you're a subscriber or not. I'll guide a meditation on each of those days and then take your questions. We're doing all of this in the spirit of one of my favorite mantras which is never worry alone. Just a little bit more about Pascal Eau Claire before we jump in here. He's been immersed in the Buddhist scene since 1997 and he's been mentored by great Buddhist meditation teachers like Joseph Goldstein. He is the co founder of True North Insight and one of its guiding teachers. And as mentioned, he is one of our key teachers over on my app, Ten Percent with Dan Harris. Alright. Let's jump in and get started with Pascal Eau Claire. Pascal O'Clare, you you excited to talk about this very anxiety provoking subject? Yeah. Yeah. I'm... I am excited about this. It's very charged. I was reading some of the questions this afternoon, and but somehow it was opening my heart very kind of wide, like it was calling for compassion and care and listening and holding stuff together. It's good we're together thinking about these things. Yeah. Well, one of my favorite expressions, and people will have heard me say this a million times before, but it literally is something that bears repeating, never worry alone. We're in a crazy moment for the species, and it's really advantageous to to go through it with a sangha, to use the Buddhist phrase for a community, to to do it, as I often say, in the carpool lane. So as you noted, we've received a bunch of questions in advance from members of our community that we're gonna go through, but we also have …