Practical Wisdom with Dr. Rick Hanson
Sep 9, 2026 · 42 min · 10 segments
Most of us know, at least in principle, that it’s good to have healthy boundaries. The hard part is actually setting them — and then holding onto them when other people push back, get upset, or simply…
Rick HansonHost
I'm talking last week and now this week about the topic of boundaries, and I want to enter into this topic and explore it in a way that I've never heard anyone approach that is particularly drawing upon the teachings of the Buddha, particularly in original-- his original teachings in early Buddhism.
So to begin with, we have the Buddha's own story, as best we can gather, that he lived around twenty-five hundred years ago.
And then as a young adult, probably sometime in his twenties, married with a child on the way or recently delivered, he walked away from it all.
And very often when people, well-meaning people included, talk about boundaries, they don't take into account privilege.
They don't take into account the ways that it's easier for various people who belong to certain categories in societies to establish boundaries, and a lot harder for other people to establish boundaries just by their position in those societies.
And then also if you think about the accumulating internalization of a person's positioning in societies, that can create understandable changes in neural structure and function, changes in your body that then you carry with you into the next situation with someone who wants you to do something you don't really want to do, or is treating you in a way that they would not dare to treat another person who did not look like you.
I sometimes wonder, what would the Dharma be like? What would we be doing today if the Buddha's wife, [laughs] if Siddhartha's wife had walked away, handed him the child, the son, whose name was Rahula, who-- which translates to fetter, [laughs] you know, Rahula, and said, "You got, you got Rahula.
You know, you deal with him." And she then went forth into homelessness, found an awakening, and founded a teaching and a tradition that we're in the middle of now, two thousand five hundred or so years later.
I mean, truth is truth, but the expression of the truth and the experiential practices that draw us more and more deeply into the way it actually is, which is the deep meaning of the word Dharma, you know, those are very shaped in-- by different kinds of people.
And I think in many ways Buddhism would have benefited, [laughs] you know, if the Buddha had been a she rather than a he.
In any case, here we are today, and we have in the Buddha's own life story the impact of privilege.
It's on you." And the Buddha lived in a time in which he knew that other people would rally around that child.
Like, "What? You left me with this kid?" But we don't really hear that side of it.
I'm talking last week and now this week about the topic of boundaries, and I want to enter into this topic and explore it in a way that I've never heard anyone approach that is particularly drawing upon the teachings of the Buddha, particularly in original-- his original teachings in early Buddhism.
So to begin with, we have the Buddha's own story, as best we can gather, that he lived around twenty-five hundred years ago.
And then as a young adult, probably sometime in his twenties, married with a child on the way or recently delivered, he walked away from it all.
And very often when people, well-meaning people included, talk about boundaries, they don't take into account privilege.
They don't take into account the ways that it's easier for various people who belong to certain categories in societies to establish boundaries, and a lot harder for other people to establish boundaries just by their position in those societies.
And then also if you think about the accumulating internalization of a person's positioning in societies, that can create understandable changes in neural structure and function, changes in your body that then you carry with you into the next situation with someone who wants you to do something you don't really want to do, or is treating you in a way that they would not dare to treat another person who did not look like you.
I sometimes wonder, what would the Dharma be like? What would we be doing today if the Buddha's wife, [laughs] if Siddhartha's wife had walked away, handed him the child, the son, whose name was Rahula, who-- which translates to fetter, [laughs] you know, Rahula, and said, "You got, you got Rahula.
You know, you deal with him." And she then went forth into homelessness, found an awakening, and founded a teaching and a tradition that we're in the middle of now, two thousand five hundred or so years later.
I mean, truth is truth, but the expression of the truth and the experiential practices that draw us more and more deeply into the way it actually is, which is the deep meaning of the word Dharma, you know, those are very shaped in-- by different kinds of people.
And I think in many ways Buddhism would have benefited, [laughs] you know, if the Buddha had been a she rather than a he.
In any case, here we are today, and we have in the Buddha's own life story the impact of privilege.
It's on you." And the Buddha lived in a time in which he knew that other people would rally around that child.
Like, "What? You left me with this kid?" But we don't really hear that side of it.
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