When you’re feeling stressed, burnt out, and anxious — when you’re striving and achieving but still finding yourself persistently dissatisfied with life — you might start looking for answers beyond what’s offered by contemporary self-help.
One ancient philosophy that can cast light on the sources of and solutions to our seemingly modern dilemmas is Buddhism. If you’ve ever been intrigued by Buddhism but admittedly only have a vague sense of what it’s all about, Brendan Barca — co-author of The Daily Buddhist: 366 Days of Mindful Living — will walk you through its foundational principles.
We begin our conversation with how Buddhism is similar to and different from other ancient philosophies like Stoicism, and Brendan offers an accessible introduction to the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path. In the second half of our conversation, we explore how Buddhist principles and practices can be applied to our everyday modern lives and help you deal with the anxiety created by living in an impermanent world, shift your perspective on daily challenges, and cultivate greater compassion and patience. We discuss different meditation methods, the real purpose of meditation, and how to get started with it as a beginner. We end our conversation with the Buddha’s final words and what it means to “strive with vigilance.”
Resources Related to the Podcast
- Shamatha Meditation
- Vipassana (Insight) Meditation
- Tonglen Meditation
- AoM Article: A Primer on Meditation
Connect With Brendan Barca
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Read the Transcript
Brett McKay: Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. When you’re feeling stressed, burnt out, and anxious, when you’re striving and achieving but still finding yourself persistently dissatisfied with life, you might start looking for answers beyond what’s offered by contemporary self-help. One ancient philosophy that can cast light on the sources of, and solutions to, our seemingly modern dilemmas is Buddhism. If you’ve ever been intrigued by Buddhism, but admittedly only have a vague sense of what it’s all about, Brendan Barca, co-author of The Daily Buddhist, 366 Days of Mindful Living, will walk you through its foundational principles. We begin our conversation with how Buddhism is similar to and different from other ancient philosophies like Stoicism, and Brendan offers an accessible introduction to the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path. In the second half of our conversation, we explore how Buddhist principles and practices can be applied to our everyday modern lives and help you deal with the anxiety created by living an impermanent world, shift your perspective on daily challenges, and cultivate greater compassion and patience. We discuss different meditation methods, the real purpose of meditation, and how to get started with it as a beginner.
We end our conversation with the Buddha’s final words and what it means to strive with vigilance. After the show’s over, check out our show notes at aom.is/Buddhism. All right, Brendan Barca, welcome to the show.
Brendan Barca: Thanks so much for having me, Brett. It’s great to be here.
Brett McKay: So you and your wife have a new book out called The Daily Buddhist, where you provide 366 daily devotionals based on Buddhist principles and philosophy. Let’s start with your story. How did you find your way into Buddhism?
Brendan Barca: Yeah, so my journey into Buddhism really began in my mid-20s. I was a sales professional in finance up in Boston and really grew up without a concrete religion or philosophy to help guide me, and I was experiencing a lot of burnout. I was like your typical, I don’t know, typical for at least for me in my environment, but type A person who’s striving and trying to do and accomplish and try to achieve and found that even after a few years of trying to just go too hard, I was stressed. I was burnt out and I was anxious. And so it led me to look for answers and look for ways to help cope with that. And I remember actually to this day, I was having brunch with a friend who was my age, so about 25, and she actually said that her psychic, I didn’t know she had a psychic, had told her to try meditation. And that was actually the first person I knew personally who was going to try meditation on their own. And to me, it kind of jumped out as a cool idea and something that could help me what I was going through in terms of that stress.
And so I went home that night and started meditating for the first time. And now 10 years later, I’ve never stopped. I don’t know if she continued, but I kept going. And that eventually led me to discovering different spiritual books, read some books by Eckhart Tolle, and then started to read some books that were more traditional Buddhists like Pema Chödrön’s work or Sharon Salzberg. And then eventually I moved to Brooklyn from Boston. I met my wife randomly at a bar. And one of the things we had in common was our meditation practice. And she was originally from Nepal and she grew up traditionally Tibetan Buddhist. And so that really carved the path for me to really take my mindfulness and meditation into Buddhist philosophy and practice and learn with her. And now seven and a half years later, we have made this really our life’s work. And that’s where the book comes from. So it started about a decade ago.
Brett McKay: As you learn more and more about actual Buddhist philosophy and principles, did you have any misconceptions about Buddhism that you later learned were wrong or misguided?
Brendan Barca: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I grew up in Massachusetts in the suburbs and was raised loosely Catholic. There wasn’t too much in terms of having to go to church on Sundays and all that. But I kind of when I heard about Buddhism or anything of these Eastern philosophies, I think one of the things that I had as a misconception was that to practice that, you had to like abandon your everyday life. Like let’s say you have to leave your career, move to the mountains, maybe in the extreme sense become a monk or something like that. But one of the things I’ve learned over time now, as I’ve really started to ingrain it into my life is you don’t have to follow that path. There’s a way to still practice mindfulness, practice meditation, Buddhist philosophy while living. And I do live right now in New York City. So really in the heart of it and I can use everyday experiences to practices. So I didn’t know that back then. And meditation can help to kind of create insight into my life, but it doesn’t mean I have to abandon everything and then move to like the mountains and practice there. So that’s definitely one thing I didn’t get back then.
Brett McKay: One misconception that I had about Buddhism, I think a lot of Westerners have about Buddhism, is that we kind of think of Buddhism as we think of someone sitting on a pillow and it’s just all about being relaxed and going with the flow and being calm. But if you really look at the philosophy and the different teachers of Buddhism, one of the things you take away is that Buddhism, and we’re going to talk about this in our conversation, there’s a discipline to it. There’s kind of a hardness that’s soft at the same time. It can be very bracing, which I think is interesting.
Brendan Barca: Yeah, and that’s definitely something now as I reflect back, I probably had too. You kind of see maybe people in the lotus position or sitting serenely on the mountaintop just in this tranquil state. And for anyone that’s first ever meditated knows that that’s not the case, right? When we sit down with our own thoughts for as little as five or ten minutes, it can be a whole whirlwind of things happening within us that are probably pretty uncomfortable. So there’s that. And then also when the philosophy itself, and maybe some of this we’ll get into later a lot of Buddhist principles are really trying to ground you in reality, and reality is not necessarily all rainbows and butterflies. What they’re trying to say life is suffering, and then what do you do from there? Well, that’s where the Buddhist path comes in. So there’s so many elements that I think I didn’t understand back then that have now made the practice or the philosophy feel much more grounded in everyday life versus kind of this element where it’s like really fantasy world, which it’s not.
Brett McKay: So you just referred to Buddhism as a philosophy. Sometimes it’s also considered a religion depending on how it’s approached and practiced. Either way, I think a lot of people, particularly in the West, just have kind of like a vague idea of what it’s all about. So let’s start off by making things a bit more concrete here. What’s the origin story of Buddhism?
Brendan Barca: So Buddhism really began with one person’s journey, and that is the person we now call today as the Buddha. His name was actually Siddhartha Gautama, and the story goes that he was a prince in what we now call India, and he had all the things that we would want as people, right? He had wealth. He was young. He was handsome, and he was very privileged, and yet as he reflected on this, and he was a curious individual, he felt and realized that even though he had everything one could wish for, he still suffered. He had negative emotions. He had discontentment, persistent dissatisfaction with life, and he also saw other people in his community suffering, whether it was becoming old or getting sick or people dying, and so he set off and left his life as a prince and at first became an ascetic. So he wandered, and he fasted and meditated like that, but he found that even as he deprived himself of those things, food, clothing, and money, he continued to suffer, and I think I can understand that. That sounds pretty difficult, and so he decided to try something different, which we now call the middle way.
So it’s a path that steers clear of extremes, and from this new perspective, he began experimenting with his mind and examining it, peeling back its layers, investigating both his inner reality and also his outer reality, and then the story goes that one day while meditating under what we today call the Bodhi tree, he unearthed the cause of his suffering, so his attachments, his ignorance, and then discovered a path out and achieved enlightenment, and this enlightenment or this moment led to his Four Noble Truths, which is his foundational teaching, and that’s now today really the core of Buddhism and Buddhist philosophy.
Brett McKay: What are those Four Noble Truths of Buddhism?
Brendan Barca: So the Four Noble Truths are first, we all experience suffering, and that suffering is woven into our existence, and there’s all different types of suffering. We can think of it as the suffering of change, so whether that’s having a breakup in our relationships or the suffering of a layoff if we lose our job or as we get older and our skin starts to age, suffering of conditionality is another one where let’s say you go on a fun vacation with your family, maybe you’re in Costa Rica, which we were there a couple years ago, then after it’s over, you’re back in the US, back at your job doing emails, and you’re dissatisfied with daily life because your conditions shifted, and there’s also just simple suffering like your ankle hurts or you have a backache or you have a heartache because someone offended you. These are all things that we all experience, so that’s the First Noble Truth, and the Second Noble Truth is about the cause of our suffering, and so it’s caused by our attachment to the different things in our lives, and even our attachment to ourselves, and this attachment stems to our ignorance of reality, and our ignorance in reality.
Misunderstanding is we think that things are going to be permanent, things are going to be satisfying, yet things are impermanent, right? They’re always changing, they’re not always satisfying us, and so we struggle from that breakup, not only because the person leaves us, but because of the suffering and the pain we add on top of that. We even suffer in our healthy relationships because the person we thought would make us happy forever maybe disappoints us here or there, so that’s the Second Noble Truth is about the cause, which is really our attachment, which is rooted in our misunderstanding of reality, and then the Third is really where it starts to get positive, and this is where we can end our suffering, so since there’s a cause, there’s also a possible solution, which brings us to the Fourth, which is the path to end our suffering, otherwise known in Buddhism as the Eightfold Path.
Brett McKay: All right, that leads to my next question. I think people might have heard of the Eightfold Path. What is the Eightfold Path?
Brendan Barca: So the Eightfold Path is a practical set of guidelines to achieve inner freedom or happiness, right? So if we are suffering, maybe a grasp on our own careers or relationships, our own emotions is out of control, and we’re failing to find happiness in that, the path is going to help us to be able to achieve that. So yes, there’s eight different elements of it. So just to kind of list them out, there’s one, right view, two, right intention, three, right speech, four, right action, five, right livelihood, six, right effort, seven, right mindfulness, and eight, right concentration. And within the eight parts of the path, there are three sort of core components. So a couple of them pertain to developing wisdom, which would be otherwise known in Sanskrit as prajna. And so that would be the right view and right intention where we were trying to understand reality with right view, but also the right intention, try to let go of our attachments and cultivate compassion. And then there’s also ethical livelihood, which is the second of the third key elements, and that’s in Sanskrit known as shila. And that has to do with right speech, right action, right livelihood.
So how we talk to people, how we act in the community, even what our work is as we try to make a living. And then finally, the third element is mental discipline, otherwise known as samadhi, and that has to do with right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration. So how we’re disciplined and taming our mind, awareness of our body and mind and feelings, and then concentration has to do with meditation. So that’s the high level version of the Eightfold Path.
Brett McKay: That’s really good. I think in our conversation, we’ll hit on some of these principles. But as you were listing the different parts of the Eightfold Path off and discussing the Four Noble Truths, I mean, it is surprising, or maybe I shouldn’t be surprised, you can find commonalities in Buddhism and other Western philosophies. For example, I’m a big fan of Aristotle. People who listen to the podcast know that I love Aristotle. And Aristotle has something kind of similar to the Eightfold Path. His goal in life is not enlightenment, but it’s human flourishing eudaimonia. And he says you can achieve that by first getting your metaphysics right, like understanding what the world is like. So that’s very similar to the idea of wisdom. And then once you understand the metaphysics, like what the social world looks like, what reality is like, then from that, you can derive ethical principles. And that’s where virtue ethics come from. And then he also provides practices on how to become more virtuous. I think another thing people will see similarities to in Western philosophy in Buddhism is Stoicism, I think has a lot of similarities. Have you noticed the similarities between Stoicism and Buddhism?
Brendan Barca: Yeah, and I’ve actually, I haven’t studied Stoicism like I have Buddhism, but I’ve read Marx’s Aurelius’ Meditations, for example, and I’m familiar with a lot of Ryan Holiday’s work. And a couple of things that I’ve learned over time as I’ve gone deeper into my Buddhist practice is there are some similarities, but also some key differences for people to be aware of. So some of the things that are similar, and you touched on some of these, is definitely ethics. We mentioned ethical livelihood in Buddhism, and there’s definitely some things that are similar there. They’re also both very practical, designed to help us with our daily lives, not just some abstract philosophy. The other two main things that I’ve noticed that are similar is they both have a lot of focus on impermanence. So really trying to internalize the fact, not only that we’re going to die, but also the fact that everything changes. And I’m sure you know the Stoic term memento mori, which is basically remember death. The Buddhists would definitely think that’s a good exercise. So those are some of the similarities I’ve witnessed. Some of the differences that I’ve seen.
One thing is about self. So in Buddhist philosophy, there’s a big emphasis on what we can call no-self, which is the idea that there’s no permanent self for us to cling on to. Whereas in Stoicism, at least the way I understand it, they do affirm a rational self or a soul. So for example, in a Buddhist context or from a Buddhist philosophy understanding, we can maybe think of an example with our physical bodies. And in fact, there’s been studies done that cells in our bodies are actually regenerating every seven years. So actually the person who you were 10 years ago, even from a cellular level, from a physical level, is completely different than the person you are today. And so a Buddhist philosopher would argue it’s the same thing with our mind, with our feelings, with our bodies, is that we’re changing all the time. There’s no one part of us that we could label as the self. Whereas I think maybe the Stoics would disagree with that. The other main thing that I’ve seen is the goal. So in Buddhism, the goal would be enlightenment or to be able to see through the illusion of the self and end our suffering.
Whereas in Stoicism, my understanding, and maybe you can help me clarify, is to live a life well lived through logic and virtue. So that’s some of the things I’ve noticed. I don’t know what else you’ve seen.
Brett McKay: No, I think those are the two big differences. I think you hit the nail on the head with that. Well, let’s dig into some of these principles that you discuss in The Daily Buddhist. And what’s great about this book, it’s like a devotional book. Each day, you just highlight a short little devotional that hits on a principle. So you don’t have to read this all in one setting. I did read the entire thing, but you have a schedule. Like February 13th has something you’re going to read. May 8th, you’re going to have something to read. It’s a really great way to get introduced to Buddhist principles. Let’s discuss some of them. Let’s talk about wisdom. We’re going to get a right, we’re going to work on that first path of the Eightfold Path, which is getting a right view of the world. And so in the first part of the book, you talk a lot about the impermanence of the world. Why start there?
Brendan Barca: Yes, we modeled the book, first of all, over how traditional Buddhist masters would almost train their students. And so from a specifically a Tibetan Buddhist perspective, where you would begin if you were a monk or even a lay person who is just trying to learn about Buddhism, it’s really important to start by trying to ground ourselves in the nature of reality. And that has to do with right view, as you mentioned, the Eightfold Path. So a big element of that is reflecting on and really trying to internalize, not just intellectually, but emotionally, that life and we are impermanent. So the problem is, and why we start there and why Buddhism starts there, is that we know intellectually that things change, right? That we will lose our job or that our family will eventually pass away or that even our skin will age. But the thing is, we don’t really live our lives with that understanding. So we might work in a career for 50 years and spend our time there, even though it doesn’t fulfill us. We might believe that our relationship is going to last forever when in reality it doesn’t.
And this denial of impermanence leads to a lot of our suffering. And that’s part of the reason why it’s so important to begin there is by accepting and internalizing permanence. When things do inevitably change, let’s say our kids go off to college or we’re retiring and our life is moving on, well, we’re going to be able to meet that with more acceptance and more grace and let go of our attachment to those things rather than cling too tightly and let ourselves suffer. So that’s why we begin the book with impermanence.
Brett McKay: Yeah, it’s a foundational principle. And I love that section you have about you have to understand things, not just intellectually, but emotionally. And I actually made a note as I was reading, it reminded me of Kierkegaard, the existential philosopher. He had this famous phrase, truth is subjective. And people are like, what does that mean? Does that mean that truth is whatever you want it to mean? It’s relative. And he was like, no, what I mean by that is he’s coming out from a Christian perspective and you say, okay, you can intellectually know that God is love. So it’s like an objective fact for you. It’s like, yeah, God is love. But if you don’t emotionally, like if you don’t subjectively know it, then it’s not going to transform you. And I think the same thing, you quote a Buddhist philosopher there, you have to like internalize that truth in order for it to have an effect on how you behave and interact with the world.
Brendan Barca: Yeah. And that’s one of the things with impermanence, like we might know this, right? But if we don’t think about it every day or maybe integrate it into our meditation or even the way we live, then we’re not going to live our life in a way that reflects. And I think that if we do keep impermanence top of mind, then it’ll help us in those moments to be more present with our loved ones. Like maybe we won’t be on our phone so much, or it’s going to help us to be able to be kinder to maybe a relative who’s not so kind to us because we can realize that these relationships will change. Our life is not forever. And then hopefully act accordingly, which I think is one of the best things about Buddhism and also Stoicism about why we reflect on impermanence so often.
Brett McKay: Are there any practices you recommend to help people truly understand and keep that idea of impermanence of life top of mind?
Brendan Barca: Well, one thing to do, and it’s part of the reason why we structured the book like that with 31 straight days on reflecting on impermanence, is start to just notice the changes that are happening all around you. You could use the seasons or you can see this with looking in the mirror and seeing how your face has changed from an old photograph. And then even just in a subtle day-to-day changes, like some clients come, some clients go there’s all these subtle things happening that we can start to notice. And if we can notice this both on like a mini level, but also understand like the big picture that this means that our life isn’t forever, then we can start to hopefully change our thought and our action around how we behave given these truths. And in fact, there’s like a Tibetan tradition where people try to treat each day as an entire life of its own. So they visualize when they wake up here I am waking up to my new life, and then they go through their day, which you can think of as a microcosm of your life.
And then at night, as they’re lying down, they’re visualizing themselves dying to that day. So that’s another helpful practical reflection that I try to do quite often.
Brett McKay: Yeah, I love that. I mean, something that I do is I just think about something that I was upset about that maybe happened a few weeks ago, and then thinking about it now and thinking, well, am I still upset about that thing? And the answer is probably not. I’m usually not upset about it. I mean, I was upset about it then, but now it’s not a big deal. And that just kind of puts things in perspective for me.
Brendan Barca: Yeah, I like to think will this affect me a week from now? Will it affect me a month from now? Will it affect me a year from now? Will it affect me five years from now? And then the answer keeps getting more and more like, absolutely not. So then the challenge, of course, of the practice is, okay, how can I not let affect me so much now?
Brett McKay: Related to the idea that all life is impermanence constantly changing is that all life is interrelated. Why is that an important concept in Buddhism?
Brendan Barca: So one of the things that we learn in Buddhism as we reflect on the nature of reality and try to continue to cultivate, as the Eightfold Path would say, that right view, is since all things are impermanent and so they’re always changing, all things are also what we would say is interdependent, or as you mentioned, interrelated, which is that everything is constantly in flux but also arises from various causes and conditions. So we are now you’re a podcaster and you have your own business, and I’m this author because of who we were before. So each step that preceded us has made us who we are now. So you can think of it as links on the same chain. And where we’ll go next has to do with who we are now, what we’re doing now. So Buddhism really develops that. You can think of that as cause and effect in a way, which is a term we’re used to talking about in the West. But this not only has to do with our lives and our careers, is what I was just saying as an analogy, but also has to do with our mental state or our emotions or our relationships or even our body.
Our backache might be there because we’ve been hunched over our computer for 10 years, or our relationship with our spouse might be falling apart because we haven’t been listening to them for five years. So it helps us to keep ourselves accountable because if we realize that everything’s interdependent, we can try to live in that ethical way, which is one of those elements of the Eightfold Path. That’s one part of it and why it’s helpful for us to reflect on interrelatedness or interdependence.
Brett McKay: We’re going to take a quick break for a word from our sponsors. And now back to the show. Let’s talk about the Buddhist understanding of how the mind works. We’re still trying to get an understanding of reality, a right view of reality. So what is the Buddhist understanding of the mind?
Brendan Barca: So in Buddhism, they talk about mind, nature of mind is how they talk about it. And really you can think about, although it’s not this simple, you can think about your mind with two, we’ll call them parts, even though it gets a little bit dicey when you start to even label these things. But in Tibetan terms, there’s two terms that maybe might be helpful to familiarize yourself with, which is rigpa and sem. And rigpa is what the Buddhist philosophers would call the true nature of your mind. You can think of this as your true essence. It’s clear, it’s spacious, it’s free, it’s light, it’s free from labeling, dualistic thinking, free from negative emotions. Maybe you can think of it like the feeling you might have after a really long run and you just finished and you’re just feeling so clear and all your problems have kind of fallen to the wayside. So that’s what the nature of mind is, what we are kind of aiming for. And someone who’s living in that all the time would be considered enlightened, which for most of us, we can say, okay, I probably either haven’t seen that lately or maybe just once in a while.
Whereas sem is what you can also translate as the ordinary mind. And so the ordinary mind is the one that we know very well. It’s like kind of our own internal enemy. It is the one that will plot and scheme and worry and overthink and overanalyze. And it’s the part of us that gets us into fights with our partner or our friends because it’s oftentimes confused. And you can think of it almost like our lesser selves. So from a Buddhist perspective, we’re constantly dealing with kind of those two major elements and working towards uncovering more and more of our nature of mind. And the Buddha would say that we all have that pure essence in us just waiting to be uncovered. And so our goal working towards enlightenment and working down the path is to get more and more of that so that we can live in that state of Rigpa. I mean, it’s definitely aspirational for most of us, but it’s a good way to strive to get towards.
Brett McKay: And meditation is part of the way you get there, correct?
Brendan Barca: Yeah. So in Buddhist context, one of the most important things that we can do is to study our mind. And a lot of this, when we’re talking about nature of mind or interdependence and permanence, not only should we be thinking about these with our own minds, like journaling or just thinking about these when we’re on a walk, but we also would want to practice that in a more formal meditation. And meditation, there’s a lot of different meanings and definitions out there depending on how you practice or which tradition you follow. From Buddhist perspective, there’s a couple of different styles. So one thing that is a good starting place for many people is what’s called shamatha meditation. And that really translates as calm abiding. And the point of that is to focus on a single point, like the breath, for example, and to start to calm the mind. And what happens when we start to calm the mind is we start to remove those different parts of the ordinary mind or the sem, or not remove them, but see them for what they are and they start to kind of dissolve a little bit, like more than usual.
And then that’s where we can maybe start to peek into the nature of our mind and start to live both inside our meditation. And the idea is for it to spill over into real life too, with that more calmness, with that more ease and lightness. And so meditation is definitely a big key to working towards the path.
Brett McKay: There’s also vipassana. What is that? What kind of meditation is that?
Brendan Barca: So that would be called insight meditation, and you can practice these separately, but I would say is that for a beginner, we’d want to start with shamatha and then you could always transition into vipassana. So let me explain the two. So if shamatha is the calm abiding meditation, which is focusing on the breath and basically working to calm the mind, the idea is that if you do that for a couple minutes, like let’s say five minutes, and you notice that your mind starts to settle, it stops jumping around from thought to feeling to prediction, right? It stops doing that, at least quiets down, then there may be opportunity to transition to what they would call in Sanskrit vipassana, which is insight. And the idea with insight meditation is to start to perceive things more clearly. So it’s not to say you’ll have an insight in terms of a big idea that you’re gonna, I don’t know, use for your career endeavors, but more of like insight into the true nature of reality.
So the fact that our mind is always having fleeting thoughts, the fact that things are always changing, the fact that things are interrelated, these are all things, not necessarily you’ll have these in the meditation itself, but we’ve kind of worked towards by giving ourselves the space in a vipassana meditation. So instead of focusing on the breath, we would try to not focus on anything, which is quite challenging, but that’s how we would transition from one to the other.
Brett McKay: For someone who’s never meditated before, can you kind of give us a sample practice that they could start doing today to get a taste of what Buddhist meditation is like?
Brendan Barca: Yeah, and I think it’s important also to provide another definition in terms of how we can think about meditation. The Tibetan word for meditation is gom. So gom actually translates to being familiar with. So when we are sitting down to meditate, our goal, although it’s kind of a slippery slope to say goal when it comes to meditation, would be to be more familiar with ourselves. And that starts by studying and watching and sitting with our own mind. And so for a beginner, and I was a beginner only nine or 10 years ago, I think the most helpful thing we can do is first carve out the space for us to be able to meditate on our own. So if you have kids like I do, and like you do, Brett, what that might mean is before anyone wakes up in the morning or before they come home from school or at night when everyone’s in bed. And then when you have that space on your own, then to simply set like a, you can use an app, the Calm app or Insight Timer. Those are great free apps out there. And simply set like a bell that would go off for, and I would think five minutes is a great starting point for most people.
And then within that time, work on focusing on your breath. You don’t have to try to make the breath do any tricks. You don’t have to try to slow it down or speed it up, but just notice its natural rhythm and watch how your mind responds to this. And at first, when you’re new to this, if you’ve never meditated before, it’s going to feel maybe a little bit overwhelming, like all these ping pong balls are bouncing around in your mind. You might want to even get up, but I would encourage you to sit with it and just see that and notice things as they are. And even that awareness is going to be a really beneficial practice. And then after a few minutes, you will notice a little bit of a shift and that’s the practice. So you might want to start there and then think of it just like something that has to be practiced repetitively, just like we might exercise. We want to meditate consistently. Otherwise, if we do it once and wait a year, then the benefits aren’t going to be there. So it’s got to be consistent practice.
Brett McKay: How long does a session need to be?
Brendan Barca: So it varies, but I would think for most people, the most practical thing we can do is make it short. Three to five minutes would probably be where I would suggest people to start. It’s long enough for the mind to start to settle, for us to also watch it. But if we aim for 10 or 20 minutes, like there’s some practices that require like a 20 minute session in the morning and the afternoon, well, then the risk is that we don’t actually follow through and we drop the ball. So if we can integrate this into our busy lives with a short five minute session, then it becomes not only attainable, but it’s also beneficial. There’s been studies out there that just five minutes a day of meditation can reduce stress significantly. So I think that’s a good amount of time for people to aim for.
Brett McKay: All right. So the trick is just be consistent with it. So figure out a way to be consistent with it. How do you know if you’ve had a good meditation session or is that a bad question to ask?
Brendan Barca: So it is a bit of a, yeah, a bit of a tricky question because one of the things that we learn in meditation over time is that it’s not always going to be fun. And actually oftentimes it isn’t even after meditating now for 10 years, almost every single day, oftentimes I sit down and my mind continues to race and it doesn’t slow down. It doesn’t feel calm like I wish it would be. But I think one of the things that we can do to make it “successful” is use it as an opportunity to one, familiarize ourselves with our mind as we go back to that Tibetan word gom, but also to be able to create more awareness around our thoughts, create awareness around our emotions. Because if we’re aware of these things in our meditation, then we’re outside of it the next day or that afternoon, well, then we’ll have a little bit more insight into our mind and a little bit more control over our emotions. So if we start seeing, for example, that our calmness or our patience or our compassion in meditation starts to bleed into other parts of our lives, and that’s a sign that we’re progressing.
So that would be, I guess, a long-term success, but we can’t expect results right away.
Brett McKay: Something I’ve noticed when I’ve done meditative practices, I’ll do really well for like a month because when I start meditating, I’m like, oh wow, I’m feeling calmer. This is great. I’m noticing these benefits. And then after a month of meditating, you don’t get the same sort of, you don’t notice it as much. And then you’re like, oh man, I’m not noticing any changes. I don’t feel any calmer. This is dumb. I’m just going to stop doing this. But I’m wondering if I should just stick with it. And like you said, you got to be disciplined with your meditative practice, even if you don’t feel as calm as you did when you first started.
Brendan Barca: Yeah. Meditation is one of those things that even if you’re not feeling like in the session itself, that calmness or that benefit, whatever it is that you’re looking for, we don’t want to let ourselves give up and think that it isn’t working. One of the studies we point to in the introduction of our book was they were putting an fMRI machine around some of these prolific Buddhist monks who have meditated for tens of thousands of hours. And one of the things that they found from that level of practice and that commitment was that they were, from a scientific perspective and psychological perspective, they were less stressed, more happy than the average human. They had ways of measuring that. So if we want to experience these things and we want to use meditation as one of the vehicles to get us there, then we can’t necessarily rely on our experience of meditation because as you mentioned, that’s when we give up. But rather think of it as like just something that we need to do to be able to keep our mind stable, be able to progress on the path, as they would say in Buddhism, and treat it like a ritual that’s needed. Not always fun, but something that’s necessary for our well-being.
Brett McKay: It’s like brushing your teeth.
Brendan Barca: Yeah. And not even as fun as that.
Brett McKay: Yeah. Brushing your mind. That’s what you’re doing when you’re meditating. And so that leads me to my next question I want to discuss because you have this section, there’s just filled with reflections on patience and diligence. What insights from Buddhism can help us cultivate more patience with others, with ourselves, with our goals to be better?
Brendan Barca: So let’s stick on the topic of meditation as being one of the important tools in Buddhism. And one of the benefits of meditation, although it might not be calming and peaceful all the time, is that by understanding our own mind, and we can inevitably do that if we sit with it for long enough, then it’s going to help us to better understand both ourselves and others. So when we sit with ourselves and we start seeing, oh, wow, I just had this distracted thought. Oh, wow, I just thought about some random high school memory. Oh, I just thought about something that’s going to happen or not happen in 10 years. Or I just noticed a thought of agitation or anger or envy, whatever it is, then we not only understand that we experience these things, but we look out the window and we know, oh, wow, there’s 8 billion or so other people out there that are going through these things too. So when we start to have that right view, then we can start to, the idea is, and the practice is, starts to develop patience for both ourselves and others. Because if we see that our mind is really this crazy, and it doesn’t mean all these thoughts are necessarily ours.
In fact, Buddhists would argue that they’re not. Oftentimes thoughts are just kind of coming into our minds versus actually being things that we’re originating. That’s another important point. We can be more patient with ourselves, but also with other people who are going to have their own afflictive emotions, or as they say in Buddhism, defilements that are hurting them. So then when we’re, for example, in line at the coffee shop and someone’s taking forever to pay, we can be a little bit more patient with them because we can understand, okay, maybe they’re having a rough day or they can’t find their wallet or whatever it is. So that’s one of the ideas of where we can develop patience for others. And I think for ourselves, being in meditation helps us to hopefully develop more self-compassion. And that’s going to help us to be more patient when we make mistakes, when we fall on our face and help us to be able to pick ourselves up again. So I think those are some things that can help with patience specifically.
Brett McKay: One of the things I love about Buddhism, and you do a good job in the book with this, is highlighting all the different ways Buddhism talks about dealing with negative emotions. So anger, frustration, sadness, anxiety, even envy. What does Buddhism say about how we can better manage these, what you said Buddhism calls defilements.
Brendan Barca: So one of the things that we can first start to understand that these are emotions and feelings that are happening across all of humanity. So everyone out there, ourselves included, are dealing with negative emotions like anger, anxiety, and envy. And so this is part of the human condition and part of the condition of suffering, which goes back to the first noble truth. But what the Buddhist perspective that would help us to kind of start to deal with these is if we can not only through meditation, but also through what you would think of as mindfulness, which is watching our mind, let’s say when our partner says something that triggers us and we get angry and we start to react in a negative way. If we have started to cultivate some mindfulness, which means being alert, which means being aware, then we can begin to, instead of just react haphazardly or react too quickly, we can start to respond in a more intentional manner. So think of meditation and mindfulness as a way to almost create a gap or a space between our emotion and our reaction to it. And that could be outwardly towards someone else or even internal self-loathing.
So when we get angry or we get anxious or we get sad, we can start to almost create a space between us and those feelings. And one of the things that I like to think about, and I use this all the time, is we tend to label ourselves as our feelings. How often do you hear someone say, I am anxious or I am sad or I am angry? So we’re literally saying, I am this. But the truth is we aren’t those emotions. Those emotions are things that are passing through us. Those are things we are dealing with at a practical level, but they aren’t us. So one thing we could do to reframe that is think, I am feeling anxious. I am feeling sad. I am feeling angry. And it already creates a little bit of that space between us and the emotions themselves.
Brett McKay: I love that. I also think too, just thinking about those noble truths about the cause of suffering, that life is impermanent and we get attached to things, really coming to understand that emotionally, not just intellectually, can go a long way to staving off those negative emotions. Because you’re like, wow, why am I getting angry about this? There’s no reason to get angry about this. Of course, the vacation got canceled. That’s just part of life. And then you just learn how to roll with the punches.
Brendan Barca: Yeah. The Buddhist monk and great teacher Thich Nhat Hanh once said, when someone makes you angry, picture them in 300 years and then picture yourself. What will become of them? What will become of you? Ash. The idea is that that’s going to help to dissolve your anger because we all have the same end. So it’s a little bit humorous, but also true. And every time I think about that, it kind of zooms out because we’re always too zoomed in to our own lives, our own problems, thinking that all these things are going to get fixed one day and all of a sudden we’ll wake up happy. But in reality, if we don’t work on our own minds, first of all, if we don’t try to have more patience to ourselves and others, then we’re going to continue to be upset or be suffering no matter what we’re going through.
Brett McKay: You mentioned that compassion, developing compassion for others and for ourselves can be an antidote to a lot of these negative emotions. How is compassion defined in Buddhist philosophy?
Brendan Barca: So the word for compassion in Sanskrit is karuna. And the definition for that is having a genuine wish to alleviate the suffering of others. So we can think of that, and I would also expand the definition. When we say others, it can also and it should also include ourselves. But we’re pretty good, most of us are pretty good at giving ourselves a break, being compassionate towards ourselves, being generous towards ourselves. I think there’s some exceptions to that. But one of the things that we’re not so good at doing is extending that not only to our loved ones who we do have some attachment towards, who we do want to help, we do want them to succeed, but then layers or steps beyond that. So to our friends, to our neighbors, to our colleagues, to strangers. And the idea with compassion, with karuna, is to be able to have a genuine heartfelt compassion for other people. And that is one of the pathways or one of the things we can use. The more we cultivate compassion, the more we mature our mind and start to see that, first of all, we are all struggling, so all of us deserve that compassion, but then also help to change our action so that we actually do want to help other people. Not just necessarily being altruistic, although that’s one form of compassion.
But even by, let’s say our partner or our friend gets angry with us and gets us upset, well, how can we be compassionate in that moment and be there for the other person? Because we can see or we should start to see that they’re suffering and they actually need us now in that moment more than ever. So they need compassion. They don’t need us to get angry too.
Brett McKay: And there’s actually, you highlight this in the book, there’s like a meditation you can do to help develop compassion.
Brendan Barca: Yeah, so one of the meditations you can practice is called Tonglen meditation, and that’s a Tibetan Buddhist idea and exercise. And how Tonglen meditation would work, or when you could use it, is first you could use it when someone you know is suffering. So actually the first time I was introduced to this, I didn’t know Buddhism well at all at the time. I had kind of stumbled across this. It was one of my friends was dealing with a gambling problem and was an addicted gambler. And I remember when I heard about Tonglen, which is trying to wish for the other person’s suffering to end, it was a helpful meditation to try. And so you can use it when a friend is suffering or when you’re suffering. Let’s say you get sick or you’re dealing with something difficult, you can use it for yourself. And how it would work is basically you would do like a seated meditation, and you would still want to be doing your breathing, which obviously we’re doing all the time, but more intentional breathing. And what you want to practice is when you’re breathing in, visualize taking in the other person’s suffering, the other person’s pain.
And then as you breathe out, visualize breathing out that purified air. So to send them relief, to send them comfort. And so what we’re doing is we’re not taking in their pain and feeling it ourselves, we’re almost purifying it and sending it back to them. And what you find through this meditation practice is that yes, it can actually help the other person, but the other thing too, and you’ll notice this if you try it, is it also boosts you up because in that moment you’re acting out of pure compassion and you’re at kind of a new heightened level in your mind. So that’s called Tonglen. And yeah, I encourage people to try it if either they’re in pain, or someone they know is.
Brett McKay: One compassion meditation that I’ve done, and maybe it’s related to this, but I got this from Rick Hansen. We’ve had him on the podcast before. He’s a psychologist, written a couple books about meditation, particularly Buddhist meditation. And he suggests a meditation where you wish someone well with a mantra like, may you be safe, may you be happy, may you feel strong. And he says, when you’re starting off with this meditation to kind of get a toehold into it, is you want to start off with someone who you naturally feel warm towards. So like your wife, your kids. Of course, you’re just going to naturally have compassion for them. So it’s kind of easy to do that. And then he says, once you’ve done that for a bit, then you move on to a more neutral person, someone you neither really like or dislike. And then to really challenge yourself, you pick someone you don’t like and then try that same compassion meditation where you wish them well. So you repeat the mantra, may you be safe, may you be happy. And that’s hard to do. So you do that for a while. And then once you’ve done that, you direct the meditation toward yourself.
And I found that really useful. And I actually still do that occasionally.
Brendan Barca: Okay, yeah. So actually now I know what you’re referring to. That’s like the loving kindness meditation.
Brett McKay: Yeah, loving kindness.
0:43:41.1 Brendan Barca: Okay, yeah. So maybe that’s what Rick was referring to. We do have that in the book too. So another great practice. And you definitely walk people through the steps very clearly. So that’s another great one to cultivate compassion for yourself and others.
Brett McKay: So we started our conversation talking about how people in the West, we typically think of Buddhism as a contemplative philosophy, which it is. There’s the meditative practices that you’re doing to help you understand reality. But it’s also, it’s very action oriented. And you have a whole section of reflections about how to put into action these Buddhist principles. So what role does action play in Buddhism? And what does Buddhist action look like?
Brendan Barca: So one of the key parts of the Eightfold Path, as we were mentioning earlier, has to do with ethics. And with ethics, when we talk about it from a Buddhist perspective, has to do with a couple key elements such as right speech, right action, and right livelihood. And all of those are examples of action. With speech, it’s are we speaking truthfully? Are we speaking kindly? Are we avoiding lies and gossip? With right action, are we making sure that we’re not harming others through our actions? Are we trying to help people? Or at least if we’re not helping them, let’s make sure we don’t harm them. And then for livelihood, it’s more about are we earning our living in an ethical way? So while everything we do starts in our mind, right, and how we perceive the world, also how we determine what our actions are, we have to make sure that we then follow through. Because if we just have a thought that, let’s say, we want to donate to a really great charity, but then if we don’t follow through on that and all of a sudden our life gets in the way, things get busy and we don’t do it, then our generosity, even though we had the feeling in it, isn’t complete.
So what we want to do is not only be able to think compassionately, think generously, think and also in accordance with a way that’s true to the nature of reality, but we also want to make sure that we’re following through in living in a way that aligns with our virtues. And so in the three doors that we can use for that is going to be our thoughts, so what we think, our speech, and then also what we do. So those are some of the things that we can start to strive for in terms of Buddhist action.
Brett McKay: And I mean, you talk about this throughout the book, any point in your life or the day where you experience frustration, anger, things are just off kilter, instead of seeing it as this, just an annoyance, see it as a chance to get to actually practice this Buddhist stuff that I’ve been reading about and put it into action. So see life as practice, basically.
Brendan Barca: Yeah, we can think of it like everyday scenarios. If one of your colleagues gets you angry, we can think, oh, this person, I wish they weren’t in my life, or you can start to see them as your teacher, see them as someone that can help you to practice self-control and patience, because if we didn’t have difficult people in our lives or difficult situations, how would we ever practice these virtues? Our life would just be so smooth, we would never have self-control or patience. So I think that’s another way we can think about it in our day-to-day lives as we come up across new obstacles.
Brett McKay: Another practice to help people think about whether they’re put into action, these things they’re meditating on and reading about, you offer this nighttime reflection from a Buddhist philosopher. So I’ll just kind of read it here. How do you say his name? Patrul Rinpoche?
Brendan Barca: Yeah, Patrul Rinpoche.
Brett McKay: This is what he said. I like this. At night, when you go to sleep, do not just drop off into unconsciousness. Take the time to relax in bed and examine yourself in this way. So, what use have I made of this day? What have I done that is positive? Yeah, so it’s just a time to reflect. Like, hey, did I actually do the things I’m trying to live out, these principles? And it reminded me of Benjamin Franklin had a similar thing. He had this journal that he would keep, and he’d ask himself, what good have I done this day? I mean, it’s just a time to self-reflect. And then if you didn’t do as great, well, there’s always tomorrow.
Brendan Barca: Yeah, I think that there’s two huge benefits of that practice. One is that it’s important to redefine our measurements of success in that day. Like if, I mean, I speak for myself as someone who’s like kind of that type A sort of career-driven individual. One of the things I’m trying to rewire in my own brain is that like making that sale or finishing the book, whatever it is, aren’t necessarily like, yes, they’re markers of some success, but what’s more success is if I can create harmony in my household, if I can be kind to my neighbor who’s difficult with me, if I can maybe text my parents, not every day, but more often. Like these are markers of like true success and making sure I’m living virtuously. Then the other major benefit of that reflection is that the idea is as you drop off to sleep is that it’s going to encourage more of that behavior the next day as it kind of bleeds into, I don’t think your dreams, but into the next day. And then you can think, okay, how can I continue to be that person or change into the person I want to be.
Brett McKay: So let’s end with this. The final words of the Buddha were supposedly strive with vigilance. I really like that. So what did he mean by that?
Brendan Barca: So with strive with vigilance, the word that we’re translating from for vigilance is apra-mata. That’s the Sanskrit or Pali word. And there’s a couple of different variances to that word in English. So we can think of it, yes, as vigilance. Also, you can think of it as carefulness, alertness, mindfulness, even diligence. And what the Buddha was saying, or at least what we believe he meant by this based on all of our research is that, first of all, our mind is the root of our suffering, but it’s also the root of our freedom. So what we need to do, and he was saying this to his disciples at the time or his students, is that we need to have absolute vigilance at every moment. Because if we don’t have vigilance over our minds, then it’s going to go back into poor behavior. It’s going to go into reactive emotions. It’s going to lead us into a life of non-virtue. So if we can remain vigilant of our own minds, then we can start to alleviate our suffering and work towards the inner freedom that we want. Because if we want to practice compassion, if we want to practice loving kindness, whatever these things are and be there for ourselves and our family, it all is held together by vigilance. If we don’t have that, then everything else falls apart.
Brett McKay: Well, Brendan, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about the book and your work?
Brendan Barca: Yeah, thanks so much for having me. So people can catch us, and it’s me and my wife who wrote the book, Pema Sherpa, at thedailybuddhist.net to learn about the book and where to get it. And then we’re also on Instagram these days at daily.buddhist, and we post every single day on there too.
Brett McKay: Fantastic. Well, Brendan Barca, thanks for your time. It’s been a pleasure.
Brendan Barca: Thanks so much, Brett. Thanks so much for having me.
Brett McKay: My guest today was Brendan Barca. He’s the co-author of the book, The Daily Buddhist. It’s available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can find more information about the book at the website, thedailybuddhist.net. Also check out our show notes at aom.is/buddhism, where you find links to resources where you delve deeper into this topic. Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM Podcast. Make sure to check out our website at artofmanliness.com. We find our podcast archives. And while you’re there, sign up for our newsletter. We’ve got a newsletter for the Art of Manliness. It is free. We have a daily option and a weekly option. It’s a great way to stay on top of what’s going on at AOM. And if you haven’t done so already, I’d appreciate it if you’d take one minute to give us a podcast on Spotify. It helps out a lot. And if you’ve done that already, thank you. Please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member who you think is something out of it. As always, thanks for the continued support. Until next time, this is Brett McKay, reminding you to stay on my podcast, but put what you’ve heard into action.
