Dharma Lab · Episode Transcript

Born to Flourish

Dr. Richard Davidson & Cortland Dahl

Sections

1. Welcome & Opening
2. CJ and the Seeds of Buddha Nature
3. Born to Flourish: The Science
4. Buddhist View: Identity, Suffering, and the Blind Spot
5. Why We Notice the Negative
6. The Peak-End Rule
7. Causal vs. Fruition: Two Ways of Practicing
8. Bringing It Into Daily Life
9. Seeing the Buddha Nature in Others
10. Closing

1. Welcome & Opening

Richie [00:00:00]

I would say it's probably more important today than at any other time in my life to really affirm this statement: that we are born to flourish. And it also is a hopeful message, but it's not vacuous hope. It's actually hope that is grounded in practice and in science. There is a growing body of scientific literature that speaks to this issue, and one of the ways that scientists have discovered that we're born to flourish is by looking at very, very young babies -- before our young ones have had the conditioning of their cultures and society.

And in that early period, in the first six months of life, the evidence clearly suggests that babies have an innate propensity to be kind, and this is part of the qualities that enable human flourishing.

Cortland

Welcome everyone to another episode of Dharma Lab. I am Cortland Dahl. I'm joined by Dr. Richard Davidson, who nobody incidentally calls Dr. Richard Davidson -- we all know him affectionately as Richie. And we are today going to discuss one of the key topics in a new book that we are just about to publish in a few months. The title of the book is Born to Flourish.

Before we dive in, we will, as we always do, hear a little bit about the science. We'll hear about some important meditative principles that underlie this idea -- that we're born to flourish, that we all have innate capacities to flourish. And we'll also discuss some very practical tips, the kind of things you can build into your daily routine to tap into this potential we all have.

2. CJ and the Seeds of Buddha Nature

Cortland

Before we get there, I wanted just to share a little story from my own life that brought this to life for me -- an experience I had with my son when he was very little.

My son CJ is 20 years old now. He's in college. But when he was a little kid, I had this routine with him where we would actually meditate together. It started when he was three years old. I'd love to say I was a masterful meditation teacher with my son, but the vast majority of it was trial and error -- probably a 99% error rate.

But there were a few things that really resonated with him, and one in particular will always stick with me. I had this idea that he should just see me meditating. So I started shifting my meditation practice in the evening to doing it at the foot of his bed. I would read him his nighttime story, and then I would just tell him, "Okay, you go to sleep. Don't pay attention to me. I'm just gonna sit here and do my meditation practice." Kind of like reverse psychology, because I knew he would of course want to pay attention.

But occasionally he would perk up and ask me questions. I would say things from time to time about compassion or awareness or what I was doing, and he would just ask me little questions. And there was one time where I was reminded of this principle from Buddhism called Buddha Nature -- the idea that our true nature is fundamentally pure, whole, and good; that we're kind of all Buddha by nature. We just need to learn to recognize that.

So I said that to him. I said, "You know, you're actually a Buddha. You have Buddha Nature. That's who you are." And he was like three -- of course he doesn't understand what that means. But there was something in that that just brought this joyous response out of him. He started giggling. I remember he was literally rolling around in his bed, laughing. And it always has struck with me, because there's something in us that just wants the wholeness and the goodness in us to be seen -- and we want to see it for ourselves.

The book that we've written together is really all about that. It's about these innate capacities, what they are, how we can get in touch with them. This is so desperately needed in a world where we all feel broken and the world feels broken -- we need to find a way back to the part that isn't broken.

So, Richie, that's just an opening story. It's one of my sweetest memories.

Richie

Beautiful story. I love that story.

Cortland

I'll never forget it.

Richie

I start giggling when you talk about it.

Cortland

Honestly, I have goosebumps even remembering it. His response was just so precious, and he was so little and darling. But let me kick it over to you and we can free-associate a bit here. Would you like to kick this off?

3. Born to Flourish: The Science

Richie

I remember when we were noodling around the title of the book and landing on Born to Flourish. In many ways it's a kind of radical statement, particularly in today's world. I've heard many people say, "How can you say something like that when the world is falling apart? There's such evidence for violence and hatred and divisiveness and polarization. How can we say that we're born to flourish?"

I would say it's probably more important today than at any other time in my life to really affirm this statement. And it also is a hopeful message -- but it's not vacuous hope. It's actually hope that is grounded in practice and in science.

In terms of the science, there is a growing body of scientific literature that speaks to this issue. And one of the ways that scientists have discovered that we're born to flourish is by looking at very, very young babies -- before we've had the opportunity to mask these qualities, before our young ones have had the conditioning of their cultures and society.

In that early period, in the first six months of life, the evidence clearly suggests that babies have an innate propensity to be kind, and this is part of the qualities that enable human flourishing to emerge. Just to give you an example of how this is done scientifically: there have been experiments done with six-month-old babies where a baby is held on his or her mom's lap, facing outward, and shown puppets that are playing together.

In one scenario, the puppets are behaving with kindness. One puppet is trying to get a toy out of a box -- the cover is very heavy -- and another puppet comes by and helps the first puppet lift the cover and retrieve this really cool-looking toy. In another scenario, the same puppets are playing, but the first puppet is trying to open the box and another puppet comes around and slams the box shut to ensure the first puppet is unable to retrieve the toy.

The question asked in these experiments is: which of these two scenarios do six-month-old babies prefer? And of course, you viewers should be thinking to yourself, "Well, how do you ask a six-month-old baby which it prefers?" There are ways of doing that. In the case of the puppets, they are color-coded. The kind puppet is one color, the mean puppet is another, and then the two puppets are held up to the baby. The question is: which one does the six-month-old reach for? That's how the six-month-old infant expresses its preference.

And the results of these kinds of experiments are astounding. It's not like 65% of the infants prefer the kind puppet and 45% prefer the mean puppet. [00:10:00] In many of these experiments, it's a hundred percent of the infants that show this preference.

Cortland

Which is like unheard of in scientific research. You almost never have something that clear.

Richie

Dramatic. You don't need to do statistics because the results are so absolutely crystal clear. And this is the kind of evidence that is really convincing and shows us that we come into the world with this predisposition.

Now, yes, we can learn all these negative things that mask these qualities. But our true nature -- our basic nature that underlies all this -- is one that is imbued with kindness, which is one of the key elements that we know is essential for human flourishing.

4. Buddhist View: Identity, Suffering, and the Blind Spot

Cortland

That maps perfectly onto the Buddhist view. As you know, Richie, one of the most important themes you find, especially in Buddhist psychology and Buddhist meditation, is this deep exploration of identity. The thinking is that we often get stuck in patterns that ultimately create and perpetuate our own suffering -- not just doing the same things over and over, but even thought patterns, the belief systems we carry around with us. And although we're unhappy or stressed out or burned out, we somehow find ourselves in these loops without any clear picture of how to get out of it.

The Buddhist analysis is that at the root of that is how we construct our identity -- usually a very basic misperception of who we are. The terms you used very much resonate with this idea, because it's our basic nature that we misconstrue. Out of that basic belief structure that gets created, we have this whole dance of aversion and attachment, the push and pull of experience that creates all of these patterns -- which are what cause our suffering.

At the simplest level, you could say: on the one hand there are the things we normally equate with our sense of self, and then there's the blind spot -- the stuff we don't really see. The things we usually equate our sense of self with are our history, our memories, our emotional patterns, our relationships, the roles we play in life. And of course, this is part of who we are -- it's not to say this has nothing to do with our identity. But the key point diagnosed in these meditative traditions is that all of these things are changing. Our thoughts are changing. Our relationships are changing. Our roles -- if you look from moment to moment, you play one role and then an hour later it's something different.

So all of this stuff is part of our experience, but it's changing. It's not fundamental. And yet it's like the flashy, bright objects of experience that our mind gets stuck on.

The blind spot is the stuff that's always there -- the stuff that is not changing. So as you were saying, Richie, awareness is the most basic thing. Even in a moment of distraction, it might seem weird to say that you have awareness. But if I were to tap you on your shoulder in a moment of distraction and say, "Hey Richie, what's going on? What are you doing?" -- you would be able to say, "Oh, I was just distracted." So there's some through-line of awareness that, even in those distracted moments, is still there.

And from this point of view, you could say things like kindness, compassion, wisdom -- these are not things we need to cultivate. These are actually who we are. They're the more fundamental parts of who we are.

And maybe you could speak to this, Richie, because the problem is actually the fact that they're ubiquitous. The blind spot is partly created because it's like the air we breathe -- when something is there all the time, our conscious awareness almost screens it out. Our mind is wired to notice the stuff that's different, that's aberrant, rather than the stuff that's the baseline.

Richie

Yeah, that's a super important issue.

5. Why We Notice the Negative

Richie

One of the reasons why people often question our focus on flourishing -- and say, "What about all the negative stuff?" -- is that they are fixated on the negative. And the reason why we get fixated on negative stuff, why media for example plays up negative kinds of events, is because they're actually more rare. Rarer events capture our attention more than processes which are more common, more continuous.

Even in situations that are challenging, there's a lot of activity during our day which is positive. We just tend not to notice it. We notice the negative stuff more because it's more surprising -- it's less frequent, and our brains are contrast detectors. They notice difference. And the negative qualities are more different than the positive qualities are, because the positive qualities are really our nature and they're more continuous. So we tend not to notice them.

Cortland

As an example of that: today there was a tragic shooting in Minneapolis. I'm from Minneapolis, as you know, Richie. It just struck home, because it's very close to where I grew up, and Minneapolis has just had such a rough ride these past few years. Everything that happened today -- I'm gonna remember that one thing, this horrific tragedy. But when I look at the course of the day, there are all these little moments: moments of cooperation, moments of connection, a million different little moments that I won't remember. I'll remember that one thing that stood out.

It's a perfect example. I'm gonna remember it: one, because it was emotionally salient -- it had an emotional charge. And two, because it was different. It was something that doesn't happen every day. But it's so easy for attention to naturally gravitate to those things. Even for memory, when we reconstruct our storyline -- here's the story of my life today, just one day -- those are the things that will stand out. It's like the peak-end rule. Some little blip on the radar, I'll remember that little blip. Not necessarily the baseline, not what was going on most of the day -- but I'll remember that little uptick.

6. The Peak-End Rule

Richie

You mentioned the peak-end rule -- let's explain that to our viewers. There are very few rules or laws in psychology, but this really is one of them. It was formulated by the late Daniel Kahneman. Danny was a psychologist but won the Nobel Prize in economics. He passed away about a year ago, and he was actually a good friend of mine, someone for whom I have enormous respect. He was the author of a major bestseller called Thinking, Fast and Slow.

He devised this peak-end rule, and basically what it's about is how we remember our experience. What the peak-end rule says is that we tend to remember the things that are at the peak of an experience, and we remember what happens at the very end of our experience -- and that's how we encode particularly emotional events.

So the way you describe your day: the peak may have been this horrific shooting in Minneapolis, but so much else occurred during the day. When you go to consolidate your memory for the day, it's gonna be dominated by what happened at the peak, and also by what happened at the end.

And it's helpful to think about that. If you know that a peak occurred which was disturbing, you can actually more intentionally plan your end. That's a kind of tip that is informed by modern science -- you can use any number of contemplative practices at the end of your day to really change the way you encode the memory of the day.

7. Causal vs. Fruition: Two Ways of Practicing

Cortland

This idea -- saying something like Born to Flourish, or the idea of Buddha Nature -- the idea that at [00:20:00] our most basic fundamental level there is something good, something wholesome -- it sounds like a nice idea. It sounds like a nice theory. It's not so helpful, however, as a theory. It's much more helpful as something you can take as a jumping-off point to explore and analyze experience -- something you can taste, something that's more than just a concept or a belief.

One way to look at this is that in some respects, this is the most fundamental thing that we bring into our personal journey, our meditative journey. Because there are kind of two ways you could enter into the process of working on your mind and exploring your inner experience, as we do in meditation.

One way is with an orientation and a set of assumptions based on flaws and shortcomings. Whether we think about this or not, the basic assumption is that there's something wrong -- things we don't like about our experience, about ourselves, about the world, about our relationships, stuff that could be better, maybe a lot better. And then we do the practice basically as an endless process of trying to fix and improve what's going on.

In Buddhist terms, we call this the causal approach. It's called that because the kind of process you're going through is usually unconsciously viewed as a process of setting in place the causes and conditions for some better experience to happen in the future -- whether that's awakening, or just being more content or happier or less stressed out. But in any case, the goal line is off in the future.

What this idea is inviting us to consider is a totally different paradigm -- one in which the set of assumptions isn't that we're broken and we're gonna fix something. The set of assumptions is actually that we're fundamentally whole and we've just lost touch with that. And so the process, rather than fixing and improving, is a process of exploration and discovering the part that was never broken.

This is what we call -- as you know, Richie -- the fruition approach. Because the fruition, the endpoint, isn't in the future. It's actually here and now. And we're just learning to see and recognize something that's always present. It goes back to the idea of these qualities -- awareness, compassion, wisdom -- being innate. But that's not helpful as a belief system. It doesn't help you really to believe that, other than it might get you to look and to explore. The ultimate arbiter here is your experience -- we need to actually look and explore and analyze and see that for ourselves. And then it's a total game changer once we start to shift out of the problem mentality and into this "it's already here" mentality.

Richie

One of the really interesting corollaries of this kind of approach, I think for most people, is that it leads them to experience it as actually easier than we often think -- because we are this way to begin with. It's really about discovering this in ourselves, recognizing it, becoming more familiar with it. It's not about wrestling with our mind and trying to twist it in a different way. It's really just looking and discovering. It's a very different orientation, and it's more gentle. I think most people experience it as easier than they had imagined.

Cortland

Yes. It's one of the things you often hear: "It's so close, we don't see it. It's so easy, we don't believe it." We think it's gotta be more complicated than this. And sometimes when you do finally have an experiential taste, there's this feeling of, "Oh my God -- how did I not realize this? It's been right here." It's just out of focus, just on the periphery of vision, and we somehow just never tuned into it.

The challenge, strangely, is that it's almost so easy that we just make it more complicated. We're looking for something much more flashy when it's really this profoundness in a sense.

So maybe we could round this out with the more practical side, because this has been at the center of your practice and my practice and a lot of what we've worked with in our own lives. Why don't we explore a little bit of how we bring this into our day, into our own meditative journey. What have you found helpful when it comes to actually bringing this out of the realm of theory and into your life?

8. Bringing It Into Daily Life

Richie

It's a really important part of my life, and there are many different ways. For example, today I had the opportunity to meet a new person I had never met before -- the dean of the school of business here at the University of Wisconsin. And I wanted to meet him. In my morning meditation practice, I have this ritual: after I meditate, I go through my calendar and, in a very short period of time, just reflect on meetings I have upcoming and bring the person I'm meeting with into my mind and my heart -- just reflect on how I could be most helpful in that meeting, and also appreciate who this person is.

And then when I meet them -- this is something that happened today -- really at the very first moment of meeting, recognizing that here is a person who is just like me, who has Buddha Nature and has all these qualities within himself. Part of why I'm here doing what I'm doing is so that I could show up in a way that is most appreciative of his Buddha Nature, of his innate capacity to flourish. And that would lead to the most productive kind of interaction. It was a great meeting and I really had this very palpable sense of connection.

Other examples: eating. I always use a practice around eating. We eat several times a day -- it's a great opportunity to simply appreciate all the people that contributed to having food on the plate, and reflecting on how they're just like me in having these same qualities. And it's a real motivation for our practice -- that we can practice in order to be as helpful as we can, to help others discover their true nature, just like we're trying to discover our own. It really comes alive when you are interacting with people in this way.

9. Seeing the Buddha Nature in Others

Cortland

I love that. And you use this phrase "just like me," which is a whole practice unto itself -- something I find super helpful as well, especially in moments where someone might be a little on the neurotic side, because it's so easy to get fixated on the more toxic elements of experience. I've found that practice in particular so helpful, because in that moment, just remembering: "Oh, just like me, this person wants to be happy. Just like me, this person doesn't want to suffer." And just like me -- even though we don't want to suffer, even though we all want to be happy -- we still kind of get totally off the rails sometimes. We still do things that aren't so kind sometimes. None of us is perfect, and even though we all share these basic impulses, we're all kind of doing this human thing and making mistakes and self-correcting.

To me it just brings in a sense of common humanity. None of us is perfect. It doesn't excuse -- if somebody's doing something harmful, it doesn't rationalize that. It just brings a sense of common humanity back into it. And I find my mind is just more grounded and balanced when I reconnect with that.

And like you, I think the relational part of it is super helpful. Another thing I love to do -- I think I've mentioned this in previous episodes -- is almost like seeing the Buddha Nature in the other person, like I did with CJ in that moment. Viewing them that way. And it's not some abstract principle -- it means very specific things. Seeing that this person has this open, expansive awareness that we all have and that we all completely lose touch with. This person has the seeds of kindness and compassion. They want to be happy and they want to be free from suffering -- again, just like me. They have this incredible wisdom. Look at all the things they manifest in their lives.

You don't even need to think that explicitly. It's almost just bringing to mind this [00:30:00] more expansive view of humanity and this potential we have -- and then just seeing it in the person who's right in front of me. And I find two things happen: it definitely shifts something in the relationship, something changes in the way you're relating to people, as you described in the meeting with the dean. In fact, I think we're going to discuss the idea that flourishing is contagious -- we'll get into that in a subsequent session.

But secondarily, it almost rebounds and reverberates back to me. When I'm seeing that in somebody else, it creates this little loop -- suddenly I see it more in myself, and then it's easier to see it in them, and it kind of builds on itself in a very positive way.

So relationships are clearly one very powerful way to do it. What about your more formal meditation practice -- do you work with this there as well?

Richie

There are certainly practices I do that remind me of our nature. The "just like me" practice that you were describing is actually something that is taught in the Joy of Living curriculum. There are times when I will do that very explicitly. And then there are other, more elaborate practices in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition that really remind us of our true nature -- they're accompanied by reflections and they've affected me deeply. I come back to them regularly, and they spontaneously arise during the day when I'm interacting.

Having that formal sit time on the cushion is really helpful in creating the causes and conditions that allow them to arise spontaneously -- particularly when there's friction during the day and when this perspective is really going to matter.

Cortland

I find that too. And I think for me, both in formal meditation practice and equally throughout the day, a lot of it is just remembering this inner orientation -- noticing how much of the time, my default, and probably for all of humanity, is the opposite. The default is to constantly be in this fixing mode where we're seeing the flaws, seeing the imperfections, always trying to get things better. We're fixing ourselves, fixing our relationships, fixing our partners, seeing all the flaws in the world. And we just totally miss this basic orientation to the stuff that's already here.

So for me, as much as anything, it's just clicking back into that. Noticing the orientation toward the problems and just shifting back into, "Let's not forget about everything else that I'm maybe not in touch with."

Richie

And one other element here: when a person is engaged in some kind of behavior that seems harmful to themselves or to others, the kind of practice we do helps us to see them as confused and maybe deluded -- but not fundamentally --

Cortland

Not fundamentally -- or evil or anything like that.

Richie

Exactly. Their action may be something you want to condemn, but it arises because they're failing to appreciate their true nature. And that engenders compassion. It really does. Even for public figures who I don't have to name -- who engender almost rage at times -- it really flips quickly. You see: "Wow, they are so confused. It's so sad that they're so disconnected from their underlying true nature." And that just immediately transforms the response into compassion.

Cortland

You can see the world is so in need of this perspective shift -- so we can start seeing the good in each other, even if we disagree, even if we're on opposite sides of the political divide or the religious divide or whatever the divides are, which seem to be so many these days. We need to find a way to come back to common humanity, to something good and wholesome that is there in all of us.

And what we're seeing here -- and certainly what we talk about in Born to Flourish -- is the how of that. How do you actually do that as a practice? So it's not a new belief system -- it's something that becomes how you actually see yourself, and see others, and see the world. So desperately needed in these times.

10. Closing

Cortland

Any final thoughts before we round this one up?

Richie

I think this has been great. I just want to echo what you said -- that particularly at this time, these really simple practices can be so helpful in turning down the volume and allowing us to overcome the divides that seem so insurmountable.

Cortland

Well, on that note, we will conclude this episode of Dharma Lab. We're going to have a series of discussions on the topics we cover in our new book. I think the next one we're going to talk about is how flourishing is actually contagious -- even at a biological level, strange as that might sound. In any case, we hope you enjoyed this and we look forward to seeing you soon on another episode of Dharma Lab. Take care.

Richie   Thank you.

Dharma Lab · Born to Flourish · Episode 1 · Transcript edited for clarity and readability.