What Buddhism can teach us about happiness

0:04 This is Crappy to Happy and I am your host, Cas Dunn. I'm a clinical and coaching psychologist. I'm mindfulness meditation teacher and of course author of the Crappy to Happy books. In this show, I bring you conversations with interesting, inspiring, intelligent people who are experts in their field and who have something of value to share that will help you feel less crappy and more happy. Hello and welcome to another solo episode of Crappy to Happy. Thank you so much for being here. This week, I had an email from somebody who I have worked with in the past, and she just happened to mention in this email that she has heard me refer to the crossover between Buddhism and psychology, or that I have sometimes mentioned that the Buddhist approach or a Buddhist philosophy kind of informs my approach to psychology and mental health and coaching and all sorts of things. And she asked me if I would be interested to explain that a little bit more, because it's something that she's interested in. And it occurred to me that actually, I have never really talked about that in much detail, So if that is something that is of interest to you, But I would just briefly outline today what some of the aspects are of Buddhism and Buddhist philosophy that I feel are really relevant and practical and useful as applied to improving your mental health and happiness and your well being and your experience of life generally.

1:39 So I'm not Buddhist, but I obviously have been practicing mindfulness and meditation for a very long time, and mindfulness is a big part of Buddhist practice. And I guess also through that process of learning and practicing mindfulness, meditation and also some of my psychology studies, I came to look at Buddhism a little bit more deeply and to study it and understand the relevance of it to psychology a bit more. And it's interesting that some of my clients who I have seen over the years, even in my clinical practice, when I have introduced them to mindfulness and meditation and some of these ideas around acceptance and non attachment which are fundamental to Buddhist philosophy and teachings, they have actually themselves gone off and gone down a path of really exploring Buddhism a lot more deeply. Because it resonated so strongly with them, and they found it so helpful. So as I say, I'm not Buddhist, but I find it aspects of the philosophy really useful and relevant.

2:36 So let's just start from the very beginning. The foundation of Buddhist philosophy is founded upon the four Noble truths, what they call the four Noble truths, And what those four noble truths are is number one. In life there is suffering. It's called the truth of duka. Duka is the Pari word for suffering. In fact, a more accurate translation of duka is satisfactoryness. So not struggle necessarily, but just this general feeling of discontent. So this is a fundamental truth of the human experience that we are generally discontent, that in life there will be suffering. In life, there will be struggle. It is the truth of the fact that to try to avoid that is futile. We're all going to experience suffering and struggle. So I think that that's kind of just useful from the get go, just having an expectation that in life we are going to have some rough times, and so to expect to avoid that is unrealistic and Therefore, if we can have a more balanced to approach and mindset and attitude about that when it does happen, that can in itself can be helpful.

3:48 So the second noble truth is that because of suffering is attachment, not like attachment theory in terms of relationships between people and others and children and intimate partners, etc. But attachment as in attachment to an outcome, attachment as in needing or wanting things to be a particular way. So first truth in life, there is suffering. Second truth, the cause of suffering is our attachment, our expectation that things should go our way, that we want things to stay the same if we are very happy with how things are, or we get very attached to an idea that things should somehow be different if we're not happy with how things are. So just this idea of attaching our happiness or our contentment or our peace of mind to things needing to be a particular way. And it could be an attachment to a relationship, it could be an attachment to material possessions and wanting to have lots of nice things. But it's also just an attachment to other people's behavior or expectations or the way that we want to live our lives, or the way we want other people to be, or the way we want our selves to be. Getting too fixated on that needing things or people to be a particular way or not be a particular way is ultimately going to cause us suffering.

5:11 And that is founded on another really fundamental idea in Buddhism, which is the idea of impermanence. Impermanence is essentially that everything is changing all the time, nothing is ever going to stay the same. So people live and they die, Circumstances change, jobs come and go, relationships come and go, our health comes and goes. So this idea of impermanence is pretty fundamental and really intricately tied to the idea of attachment. So when we have attachment to things needing to be a particular way, or we're only happy when things are a particular way, then the truth of impermanence is that they're not always going to be a particular way.

5:52 So this is why if we want them to stay the way they are, then we get upset about that, and that is suffering. The third noble truth is that there is a path out of suffering, and the fourth Noble truth is that the way out of suffering, the path out of suffering is the Noble Eightfold Path, which is another kind of foundational teaching in Buddhist philosophy. And I'm not going to go into the Noble Eightfold Path except to say that it is basically these eight aspects of life and living which if done well, will lead to us having more peace of mind. And they are listed as for example, right livelihood, so making your living from doing something that is ethical and good, not ripping people off, scamming people. Right thought as in how you approach your the way you think about certain things, ethics, right concentration, right mindfulness, So mindfulness appears as one of eight in the Noble Eightfold Path. We see mindfulness and meditation and mindfulness practice as being kind of really foundational and really a big crucial aspect of Buddhi's philosophy and practice.

7:10 An actual fact, it is really like it's one of eight in terms of the Noble Eightfold Path. So that in itself for Noble truths Noble Eightfold Path, as you can see immediately, it's pretty relevant. It's pretty relevant to just practical ideas about how we can live our life and have more peace of mind and a more balanced approach. When we start digging into that, like basically pretty much all of the Buddha's teachings and all of his whole philosophy about how to be free from suffering and achieve what they call enlightenment, whatever that is, it's all pretty much wrapped up in this eightfold path in terms of how we live, how we interact with other people, how we think, how our relationship with our emotions being balanced, it's all kind of wrapped up in there, and it's all based on this foundation of, like I said, non attachment.

8:03 So in psychology we talk about mindfulness and acceptance. So to dig a little bit into that, Obviously, mindfulness is this way of being with your experience. That it is about being fully present to what's happening as it's happening, whether that be something happening in your outside world or something coming up within you, your own thoughts and feelings, and being able to be present to that without needing to change it or fix it or avoid it or run from it, but also without being completely overwhelmed by it. So mindfulness, mindfulness and acceptance is acceptance is allowing things to be as they are, which is interesting. People kind of get put off by that idea because they think that means to throw your hands in the air and be defeated by circumstances or not try to actively change something that is that is making you unhappy, And that's really not what it's about. It's not resignation or defeat necessarily.

9:00 All it is in this context is not trying to run or avoid the way things are, not being completely overwhelmed by things when they're uncomfortable. If you've just had a relationship breakup, if you've just lost somebody, you've just lost your job, something terrible's just happened, you've just had a terrible diagnosis. It's the willingness to be present to the discomfort of that and the reality of that, without trying to necessarily run from it or avoid it, or bury your feelings or numb yourself out with alcoholic food or drugs or something, without going into denial pretending it's not happening, but also not being completely overwhelmed and derailed by that experience. So acceptance is the willingness to just allow things to be as they are and to stop, I guess trying to convince yourself that if only things were different than you could be happier. Because what that leads to, we want to go back and talk about psychology, but that leads to is a lot of rumination, a lot of obsessive thinking, a lot of wanting to control things, controlling people, trying to manipulate outcomes, going into like I said, avoidance denial, you know, taking your anger out onto other people, being completely defeated by circumstances. So it's this courage to just be present and balanced in the face of something that might be difficult. So again I think that's kind of a useful idea, but it is also about then taking action to do things you know, to take in

10:32 control where you can, if there are things that you can do, or if there is an impact that you can make, or something you can do to change the situation. That It is absolutely not saying that you shouldn't do that. It's just saying that you take that action and you deal it with the right intention, and you don't allow your happiness to be contingent or your peace of mind, or your wellbeing or you know, your mental health to be contingent on things being different. It's like you know you've probably heard the saying the thing that messes you up most in life is the picture in your head of how things are supposed to be. I always say, have always said to my clients, the cause of all of your suffering is the gap between how things are and how you want them to be. It's not how things are, it's the gap between how things are and how you would prefer them to be. And allowing yourself to become really emotionally thrown and dysregulated and all of the rest of it because things are not as you would prefer them to be. So acceptance is just the allowance and the letting go of the need to control, letting go of the need to dictate and absolutely wanting things to be in a particular way in order for you to have peace of mind. Useful right, It's a useful idea, and I guess that's also you know. The term equanimity is one that's also fairly central to Buddhism and Buddhist philosophy, and equanimity is really just refers to this ability to maintain your composure, to be emotionally calm and balanced, to be kind of steady in the face of things that are difficult or painful or uncomfortable. So

12:03 when life is throwing you curveballs, equanimity is this ability to kind of be cold your mental composure, to retain some sense of balance. And it's not about being robotic and like never getting upset about anything. Ever, of course you're going to get upset about things in life. In life, they're suffering. I think it is about just being able to maintain that mindful awareness of being able to be present to your feelings, let yourself feel your feelings. Absolutely, you need to feel your feelings. Trying to bury them or pretend they don't exist is not the way out of suffering. But it is about being mindful of how much you allow them to dictate your behaviors, your actions, and about being mindful of not getting too caught up in the story and allowing yourself to become kind of obsessive and ruminating on how bad everything is. And again, if you go back to the non attachment, then you can see that when you start to be less have less expectation, or be less fixated and the idea that things need to be be a particular way, then you're more able to be have this equanimity, this balance. When things aren't going the way that you would want them to go, you can kind of maintain that sense of composure because everything is temporary, this two shell pass. The thing is we love that saying this too shell pass when things are really shit, like when things aren't going well,

13:33 Oh this two shell pass, like things will get good again. We don't so much like this too shell pass when things are going really well, and that that's going to end as well. So equanimity is like being able to maintain that sense of balance and be neutral and be composed when things are going well and when they're not going well. And that's the tricky thing, right. I had a conversation with somebody the other day about how she is really scared about raising her rates. So what she does is she charges her fee for a service, and she's really worried about increasing her rates. This comes up a lot with women that I work with. This is why this is going to be the focus of my next round of the Beyond Confidence program, because I really want to get women to start charging what they're worth.

14:15 But anyway, so she said she was concerned about people talking about her. She's concerned about negative feedback, judgment, criticism, people kind of saying, who does she think she is? If she raises her rates. Now, the thing is, we're not concerned about people talking about us if we think that what they're saying is good stuff. If we think they're saying, wow, she's killing it, she's really kicking goals like look at her go We're not so worried about people talking about us. It's only the idea that they might be saying not so nice things about us that upsets us. So this idea of equanimity and maintaining our composure, it's like it's needing to unhook from the criticism and the praise. We need to not let our happiness a composure out equal gibrium beer suayed. Whether things are going really well or going really badly, it's that impermanence. The wiel is going to keep on turning, the will of fortune keeps turning. And so we don't hold too tightly to how things are. We don't hold too tightly to things being really good. We just just allow it. We experience it in the moment. Mindfulness is being fully present, allowing ourselves to enjoy the good times, savor the good times, for sure, but without an expectation that it's going to always be good. Now, the tricky thing there is that people prone to anxiety or people with prone to worry that they don't actually let themselves experience the good times, either because they're so busy waiting for the other shoe to drop. They've learned kind of not to trust that

15:46 things will always go well, or they think that if things are going well that it's too good to be true, and so they're not only you know, really suffering when things are going badly, but they're not even allowing themselves to enjoy things when they're really good because they're kind of not trusting that it's going to last, and or they get fearful that it's all going to be taken away. So the key here is if things aren't going well, we can maintain our composure. We can understand this is temporary, we cannot be overwhelmed by our feelings. We can allow ourselves to be present to what's happening. When things are going well, we can also be present to that. We can also understand that we need to save this while it is good, because things may eventually go in the other direction. But we don't anticipate that everything's going to go badly to the point that we don't even allow ourselves to enjoy the good times. So all of this is very relevant, as you can tell to just general psychology and well being. You've probably heard there saying, oh, maybe you haven't if you don't know much about Buddhism.

16:42 But there's another saying in Buddhism, which is the middle way. So the middle way is about this not going to extremes. So the story of the Buddher just a little story time. The story of the Buddher, if you don't know, is that he was a prince. He was born into great wealth and his father kept him locked inside palace walls because his father never wanted him to witness the suffering that exists in the world. He lived inside this palace where he had all of his needs mad He lived this very opulent lifestyle, but he was dissatisfied. He wanted to know what was outside the palace walls, so he snuck out one day. I think he got to adulthood and he actually got married and he had a baby. He's a true person like he lived. He's not some fake, made up but mythological creature. So he went out one day and he came across for the first time old age sickness, illness, death, and he was really disturbed by this, but he also felt like he needed to go out and experience real life. Like he realized that he was not experiencing life being confined to this palace where he never had to experience any difficulty or hardship or discomfort in his life. So when he went out and left the palace, he joined a band of traveling like spiritual people, asthetics and really force forsake, forsook. He sacrificed everything, like he went without food, he went without sleep, He lived a very very meager lifestyle, and he realized that that also was not the way. He was sick and frail, and he realized that that also was not the way

18:14 to achieve any kind of freedom or liberation or enlightenment. Therefore, there had to be a middle way. So it's this not being too extreme with the wealth and the privilege and the luxury, and also not going down the other extreme of deprivation and sacrifice and suffering. It is finding a balance in life. So this idea of the middle way is really helpful as well when we're thinking about how we live our life. It's the idea of moderation. It's the idea of compassion for other people, but also compassion for yourself. It's the idea of, again like just being kind of balanced in terms of how you manage your emotions, finding that kind of middle path. I just really like the idea of the middle way in terms of you not going to extremes one way or the other, being able to kind of find this middle ground. It's also about finding a middle ground in terms of compromises with other people and different opinions, maintaining that kind of equanimity, that peace of mind, not having your own composure suede by things outside of you, which might include other people and their bad behavior or their opinions that you don't agree with, you know, being able to maintain some balance in the face of that as well. And Buddhist philosophy is kind of often represented by the image of a lotus flower, and if you know anything about the lotus flower, it is a beautiful flower that floats on the pond and it grows out of the mud. And one of my favorite sayings also is no mud, no lotus. So

19:47 the lotus flower represents the idea that we can actually achieve growth and beauty, you know, we can achieve good things out of the depths of murkiness and darkness and confusion and difficulty. So just that philosophy, just that metaphor of we can grow and we can thrive out of difficult, uncomfortable, painful experiences. I think that's really a nice representation too, of how the Buddhist philosophy also can apply to our experience of life, and how we can take lessons from that and use that idea to help us as we are navigating difficult experiences. I'm sure there is probably loads more than that. Like I said, I am not necessarily Buddhist, and I'm not an expert in Buddhism, but I think that those are probably the core principles, the core ideas that really resonate with me personally, and that I think that are really useful and practical as we all kind of navigate our own life and try to find some sense of inner peace and freedom from suffering, you know, when we live in these chaotic, confusing worlds and experiences where you know, things don't go to plan, upset and disappointment and rejection and pain and suffering and struggle, and so some of these ideas can be really helpful to help us to keep that peace of mind. And you know, it's not just ideas too, It takes practice, practicing mindfulness, sitting in meditation, really really digging deep to cultivate that

21:21 non attachment is really useful and can be difficult because we do get quite attached to liking things the way they are and wanting people to be a certain way, wanting ourselves to be a certain way. So letting go of attachment can be a really tough process, but a really useful one. I would also just say too, in terms of psychology and psychological approaches and approaches to therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy is probably the one that is most aligned in terms of a psychological model or an approach that therapists will use in terms of treatment of people experiencing depression, anxiety, whatever. Then acceptance and commitment therapy known as ACT. Like I have said before, never call an act that I like that it's act. It is based on this obviously, acceptance, which is what I've talked about already, and commitment. So if you look at the six core principles of ACT. They include mindfulness and acceptance, and they include in addition values. Now, values is at the core of Buddhist philosophy as well, if you go back to the noble eightfold fold path, right thought, right speech, right livelihood, Like that's all about living a life that is based on the core values of non harm, of kindness, of compassion, of living an ethical life. And so in ACT, what they do is they say, when you know what your values are, then you can take steps to live your life in a way that is aligned and committed to those values and be willing to tolerate whatever this

22:53 comfort comes up along the way, And how that kind of differs from previous approaches to therapy, like, for example, even cognitive behavioral therapy CBT was all about if you're feeling depressed, have a look at how you're thinking and change your thoughts, and then you'll feel less depressed. You know, like, change your thinking, change your mood, because there is an inextricable link between your thoughts and your feelings. Whereas ACT is more like, well, maybe the point is not to not experience suffering. Maybe the point is not about like getting rid of anxiety, getting rid of stress, or sadness or any of those things. Maybe instead of treating those things like they're somehow bad or wrong, Maybe instead of looking at difficult, painful emotions like there's something that need to be fixed, maybe instead we could consider them to be a core part of the human experience, and we could be more willing to tolerate those uncomfortable feelings knowing that that is in service of something that is meaningful to us, that matters to us. So if I'm living my life by my values and that means I've got to have a really hard conversation with a person and be really honest with somebody, then rather than me trying to not feel uncomfortable, maybe I can just know that my values are about honesty, integrity, telling the truth, and therefore I am willing to tolerate the discomfort that comes with that because it's important to me. And so the idea is that living a rich, fulfilling, meaningful life is not about the avoidance of suffering. It's not about just

24:24 feeling good all the time. It's about knowing what truly matters, having my own core sense of my own ethics and integrity founded on ideally things like kindness and compassion and doing good and living a meaningful life and contributing in some positive way to the greater good. And therefore I can tolerate the discomfort that goes with that. So it's acceptance. It's acceptance of my own internal experience that I feel uncomfortable. But I don't need to run from that. I don't need to hide from that. I don't need to try to fix that or drown it out or avoid doing something because it makes me uncomfortable. I can be willing to tolerate that. That's acceptance, and that's mindfulness, and that is Buddhist psychology. So there you go. I hope that little lesson is helpful. There's loads of other stuff that you can read about that. But if you've ever been curious, if you've ever wondered when I have referred to the overlap and the alignment between Buddhist philosophy and psychology, then that is it. Don't forget. If you enjoyed this episode, please do hit the plus button if you have not already, so that you never miss an episode. Please share the show with your friends. We're always looking to grow the show and attract new listeners, so please do spread the word.

25:32 Leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts that also helps, and send me in your questions. If there's anything that you're wondering about that you think would be a useful topic for a solo episode, head to my website cast done dot com. Come and give me a li like on Instagram or TikTok cast on Underscore XO and I can't wait to catch you on the next episode. I'm Cracky to happy Zo