Buddhist Strategies For Reducing Everyday Addictions (To Your Phone, Food, Booze, And More) | Sister Dang Nghiem
6/12/20261 hr 12 min
We're all hooked on something. Here's the way out, according to an MD who became a beloved nun.
Sister Dang Nghiem, MD, ("Sister D") was born in 1968 in Vietnam during the Tet Offensive, the daughter of a Vietnamese mother and an American soldier. She lost her mother at the age of twelve and immigrated to the United States at the age of seventeen with her brother. Living in various foster homes, she learned English and went on to earn a medical degree from the University of California – San Francisco. After suffering further tragedy and loss, she quit her practice as a doctor to travel to Plum Village monastery in France founded by Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, where she was ordained a nun in 2000, and given the name Dang Nghiem, which means adornment with nondiscrimination. She is the author of a memoir, Healing: A Woman's Journey from Doctor to Nun (2010), and Mindfulness as Medicine: A Story of Healing and Spirit (2015).
This episode is part of our monthlong Do Life Better series.
We talk about:
- Sister D's Buddhist version of the 12 step program, which is a combination of two canonical buddhist lists: the 4 Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path
- How willpower doesn't fit into the Buddhist path of understanding and working with addiction
- How to change addiction at its root
- Practical applications of mindfulness
- Self-compassion
- The importance of social support
- Her thoughts on our relationships to our phones
- And more
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Full Shownotes: https://www.meditatehappier.com/podcast/tph/sister-d-899
Additional Resources:
- Plum Village
- Deer Park Monastery
- Deer Park Monastery YouTube channel
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Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsDan Harris· Host0:00
[upbeat music] This is the Ten Percent Happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. [upbeat music] Hello, everybody. How we doing? Today, we're gonna talk about some Buddhist strategies for reducing your everyday addictions to your phone, food, alcohol, and more. As always on this show, and within a Buddhist context, when we talk about addiction, it doesn't just mean full-blown addictions, although of course it does include those, but it also means, as I referenced before, our everyday cravings. One technical definition of addiction is continued use despite adverse consequences. How many things in your life fit that description? In this episode, we've got a Buddhist nun and medical doctor who is going to use her combined training to help us turn down the volume on our everyday addictions. Sister Dang Niem, who also goes by Sister D, is a nun in the Plum Village tradition founded by the late, great Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh. Sister D, and I'm grateful for this, has now become a, something of a frequent flyer on our show. I'll drop a link in the show notes to her first appearance where she talked about her extraordinary personal story. She was born in Vietnam during the war to a Vietnamese mother and an American soldier. She lost her mother at the age of 12, immigrated