How to Suffer Well – So You Can Suffer Less | Brother Pháp Dung

10% Happier with Dan Harris

10% Media, LLC

Dan Harris, Health & Fitness, Mindfulness, Dharma, Mental Health, Meditation

4.6 • 12.2K Ratings

🗓️ 26 March 2025

⏱️ 75 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Brother Pháp Dung discusses the life and teachings of Vietnamese Zen master, peace activist, poet, and author Thich Nhat Hanh.

In January 2022, Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Zen master, peace activist, poet, and author passed away. He was the founder of the International Plum Village Community of Engaged Buddhism. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called him “an Apostle of peace and nonviolence” when nominating him for the Nobel Peace Prize. Thousands of people came out for his funeral.

Brother Pháp Dung is making his second appearance on the show to talk about Thich Nhat Hanh. If you missed it last time he was on, Brother Pháp Dung has an incredible personal story. He was born in Vietnam in 1969 and came to the US at the age of nine. He worked as an architect/designer for four years before becoming a monk. He was very close personally with Thich Nhat Hanh, who he refers to as “Thây,” or teacher, and is now a Dharma teacher himself in Thich Nhat Hanh’s Plum Village tradition.

This episode was first published in March 2022.

This episode explores:

The life of Thich Nhat Hanh: his path to Buddhism in the 1960’s and his exile from Vietnam for opposing the war.
The meaning of “wrong view” or wrong perception.
What non-separation and inter-being is.
Thich Nhat Hanh’s view that birth and death are only notions.
Grief, and why learning how to suffer will help you suffer less.

Transcript

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0:00.0	It's the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris.
0:19.9	Hello, my fellow suffering beings, how we doing?
0:22.9	I've been thinking a lot lately about individualism and how deeply ingrained, for me at least, the notion is.
0:29.8	There is so much emphasis in our culture on individual achievement, winning, acquiring, getting known, etc.
0:36.1	It can even extend in a kind of warped way to meditation,
0:39.7	which personally I've often subtly misconstrued as some sort of solo athletic endeavor.
0:46.6	I'm not trying to say all individualism is bad. I'm not giving up on trying to publish successful
0:52.9	books or grow my podcast or my substack community,
0:57.5	blah, blah, blah.
0:58.2	But all the data shows very clearly that this is really not a winning strategy for deep
1:04.3	and abiding happiness.
1:05.5	So today we're going to talk about a towering modern figure who offered what my guest calls medicine for individualism.
1:15.2	This person who will be discussing was a proponent of a concept called interbeing, which I can only
1:21.0	fleetingly understand on a molecular level. So just to make this super clear, we're going to be
1:26.5	talking today about a guy named
1:27.8	Tick Nhat Han, who's a Vietnamese Zen master, peace activist, poet, and author. He was the founder of
1:35.1	the International Plum Village Community of Engaged Buddhism. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called him
1:41.2	an Apostle of Peace and Nonviolence when nominating him for the Nobel
1:45.0	Peace Prize. Ticknan Han died in January of 2022, and thousands of people came out to the funeral.
1:52.9	I'll admit, with some embarrassment, that I had been sleeping for many years on Tick Nathan,
1:57.5	meaning I'd never really taken a deep dive into his work, and I never had a chance to interview him here on the show, in part because by the time I launched this show, he was already in failing health. Either way, we are going to remedy that, at least partially, today. My guest today is making his second appearance on this show. He's a Dharma teacher in Ticknodhan's Plum Village tradition.
2:20.0	If you missed it, the last time he was on this show,
	...

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