A Buddhist Antidote To Fear And Anxiety | Devin Berry
Listen to the original audio · Transcribed with NVIDIA Parakeet · Timestamps stay in sync with the live audio
This is the 10% happier podcast of Dan Harris. Hello everybody, how are we doing? I have sometimes joked, and you may have heard me joke about this if you're a longtime listener, but anyway, I've sometimes joked about my unlikely conversion from skeptical, anti-sentimentalist to somehow becoming a vocal proponent of a supremely cheesy meditation practice known as loving kindness or metta, M-E-T-T-A. But today you're going to hear from a guy whose conversion on this subject has been way more dramatic than my own.
He self-describes as aversive, snippy, sarcastic, and scowling, and yet he has become a deep student, practitioner, and teacher of meta and other related practices. Just to say by way of context here, if you're new to this practice meta, it basically involves envisioning a series of beings, either people or animals, and systematically sending them good vibes via phrases such as, may you be happy, may you be safe, etc., etc. At first blush, for many of us, uh, this whole thing can seem, as I said, very, very cheesy, but the science here is incredibly compelling, in my opinion. It shows that this practice can have psychological, physiological, and even behavioral benefits. Also, in this age of anxiety, it's worth noting that this practice was originally designed, as you will hear my guests describe it, as an antidote to fear.
Said guest is Devin Berry. He's been practicing meditation since 1999. He spent many, many years of his life in silent, intensive retreats. He's a Dharma teacher at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. and also at the Insight Meditation Society where he's a guiding teacher.
We already have this episode, so unlocking it is cheap and permanent: the full transcript (71 minutes, 12,072 words), segment and word-level timestamps, and .txt, .srt, .vtt and word-level JSON downloads, as many times as you like, forever.
No account needed, we create one from your checkout email. With credits it is 1 credit; packs start at 10 episodes for $5, and monthly plans are cheaper still.