Is It Possible to Uproot All Anxiety and Anger? Steve Armstrong Says Yes.

This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hello, everybody. If you listen to this show with any regularity, The odds are incredibly high that you are interested in finding ways to get happier.

Today we're going to talk about an ancient technology not only for getting happier, but for becoming 100% happy, imperturbable, no matter what's happening. In other words, we're going to talk about how to get enlightened. Let me step back here. When I first got interested in meditation, I just wanted to be a little bit less stressed, to not be so owned by the voice in my head. But the deeper I got into the practice, the more I started to hear about enlightenment, which, of course, given who I am, I initially wrote off as religious bullshit.

Over time, however, I have become way more open to the possibility of enlightenment, while, of course, maintaining skepticism, given that I I can't pound the table for the existence of something that I have not personally experienced. Anyway, my guest today knows what he's talking about on this score. Uh he has helped translate an influential text called the Manual of Insight, which is basically the operator's manual for how the mind works when you do high doses of meditation. What I find incredibly fascinating is that according to this tradition, the Burmese strain of Theravada Buddhism, if you meditate enough and in the right ways, your mind will pass through a predictable series of stages, including bliss, rapture, existential freakouts, and then allegedly nirvana.

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