51 pages • 1 hour read
Dan Harris10% Happier: How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, and Found Self-Help That Actually Works
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2014A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 4-5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 4 Summary: “Happiness, Inc.”
Shortly after his interview with Tolle, Harris was asked to moderate ABC’s “Face-Off.” The topic was the existence of Satan, and the guests included Deepak Chopra, a popular spiritual guru who had written several best sellers. Filming segments to be spliced into the episode, Harris interviewed Chopra and asked him about Tolle’s ideas of the ego. Chopra dismissed Tolle’s writing but seemed to agree with the necessity of being present-minded. However, like Tolle, he did not seem to have a specific way to go about this. Instead, he told Harris, “Hang around with me” (74) and learn by example. Harris remained skeptical.
Harris was surprised by the popularity of his interview with Chopra, as was David Westin, the president of the ABC News division. When Westin asked Harris about his burgeoning interest in the ego, however, Harris couldn’t fully articulate why he felt it resonated with either audiences or himself. After talking with several other people—family, friends, and colleagues—and failing to put his thoughts into an understandable narrative, Harris wrote to Chopra. He asked if he could profile him for Sunday World News, a professional way to hang around with the guru. However, discovering that Chopra was a successful purveyor of alternative medical advice without the backing of any solid science only made Harris feel more reservations (79-80).
Subsequent interviews with proponents of The Law of Attraction by Ester Hicks and Jeremy Hicks, which discusses another popular philosophy that suggests positive thoughts attract positive results, only added to Harris’s wariness of certain strains of the self-help industry. New Age leaders like Joe Vitale and James Arthur Ray showed Harris that many self-proclaimed spiritual advisors were actually “a parade of the unctuous and the unqualified, preaching to the desperate and, often, destitute” (80). Nationally, Ray’s leadership was called into question when three of his followers died in a botched “re-birthing ceremony” (83) in Sedona, Arizona. Harris’s spiritual quest seemed to hit a standstill, as he lost enthusiasm for the self-help community.
Chapter 5 Summary: “The Jew-Bus”
At home in New York, Bianca suggested Harris read the books of Mark Epstein, an American psychologist and practicing Buddhist. Reading Epstein’s work, Harris found that the ideas he most admired most in Tolle had their roots in Buddhism: “In Epstein’s writings, it was all there: the insatiable wanting, the inability to be present, the repetitive, relentlessly self-referential thinking” (87). The books made Buddhist thought—which to that point Harris only had peripheral knowledge—accessible. The fact that the Buddha did not claim to be a god or prophet also appealed to Harris, as the likes of Chopra, Vitale, Ray, and others claimed to have the answers to life’s greatest questions.
Buddhism, with its clear directives and copious lists, appealed to the organizational and pragmatic side of Harris. He liked the terms for analyzing the mind: “comparing mind,” “wanting mind,” and “monkey mind.” In Buddhism, being aware that the mind constantly measures itself against others (comparing mind), is alive with desires (wanting mind), and needs to feed the agitated ego (monkey mind) is essential for growth. One, too, must understand the tendency toward prapañca, or the process of awfulizing our experiences to a final—but not necessarily accurate—outcome. After learning of the Buddha’s life and teachings—from privileged prince to the awakened one—Harris was able to synthesize his main lesson, or dharma, “that in a world where everything is constantly changing, we suffer because we cling to things that won’t last” (89). The only way to achieve happiness, therefore, is through an active embracing of this impermanence, an idea that resonated with Harris, although it only led him to more questions.
Harris’s quest, however, was put on temporary hold as he married Bianca, a decision he felt was completely right. However, when he returned to New York after his honeymoon, Harris saw his colleague David Muir anchoring the news, and his negative self-talk kicked into overdrive. He decided to call the author of the books Bianca had given him earlier, Epstein, and asked to talk. They immediately hit it off as Epstein proved to also be a pragmatist. He offered Harris the names of some practitioners of Eastern spirituality, a group that had the nickname, “Jew-Bus” (95), which was based on their common religious identity. He suggested Harris go to some of their seminars to find out their practices. He also suggested that Harris start practicing an “internal jujitsu move that was supposed to allow you to face the asshole in your head directly, and peacefully disarm him” (96). That move was meditation.
