A Monk's Guide to Happiness - with Gelong Thubten

[Music] thank you thank you very much for the introduction and thank you everyone for coming out this evening oh this not too hot and it's great to meet you all tonight's talk is about meditation which of course often is called mindfulness these days I'm also going to talk about the theme of happiness and the idea of developing compassion so my story with meditation started 26 years ago through profound unhappiness and very dangerous levels of stress that's basically what drove me to a monastery before I became a Buddhist monk I had no interest at all in Buddhism or any kind of spirituality but what happened was a very dangerous burnout at age 21 I was living in New York and I was living a very extreme lifestyle I wasn't looking after my health I was going to parties all the time I was drinking too much I was smoking I was really unhealthy and my lifestyle but mainly also in my mind I was completely unable to understand my own emotions I was having panic attacks quite regularly and these built up like a crescendo and developed into what was almost like a heart attack so I it was very dramatic I woke up one morning unable to move and my heart was jumping out of my body I went from Doctor to doctor and they said you have atrial fibrillation then another doctor said you have a piece missing in your heart that's made you weak and susceptible to stress other doctors said you just need to slow down and you just need to learn how to deal with your mind so I was in bed for about four four or five months very very ill and it was during that time that I started to read books about meditation my mother was looking after me she also lived in the States at the time and she gave me these books about meditation which I started to devour and I started to really get quite turned on to this idea that your mind is something you can train and develop and you don't have to suffer you don't have to the way you think you are now is not your ultimate nature these are the clouds these are the weather there is the sky behind that there's something deeper so this idea started to really obsess me and then at that time you know how everything just comes together at the right time an old school friend of mine told me about a Buddhist monastery where you can go for a year to be a monk and this idea can felt completely outrageous but somehow right so I went with my friend to this monastery we both enrolled she became a nun I became a monk with the plan to just stay a year in fact I arrived and after four days I was in the robes with a shaved head and sort of blinking in the sunlight saying what have I done and I remember I just was sort of not sure what to do with myself but I went to a friend and I said well well how do you meditate because in those days Samael in which is the monastery I belong to was very experimental nowadays it's much more strict and disciplined but in those days was very experimental in that it opened its doors to lots of young people quite wild with wild energy and just opened themselves up and said come here and we'll help you and you kind of find your own way so I remember wandering into the into the meditation room after having been a monk for a few weeks and I thought maybe I should actually learn meditation and I said to a friend okay so how do you do this thing and she said well you just sit there so I just sat there like a sack of potatoes and just wasn't sure what to do and then I went to one of the group meditation sessions it was two hours long and you couldn't move because you're in public can you're a monk you're supposed to look all kind of in a serene and posh and all of that and they're all looking at you and you're sitting there thinking what do i do what do i do how do what do i do what do I do and then slowly over time I started to get teachings and instructions it was very good for me to be thrown into the deep end and then find my way and slowly I started to trust the teachers a kong rinpoche who is my teacher who was in charge of the monastery at that time really took me under his wing and started to gradually teach me the stages of meditation training which got me really into it I mean I really started to think of staying longer than a year and that's of course what happened in my second year of being a monk I went into why I decided to you know try another year and I went into a nine-month long solitary retreat and do everyone thought I was crazy and that I would go crazy but I tried it and it seemed to help because during those nine months I started to study and meditate on the notion of compassion and I'm not saying it made me into a suddenly compassionate person but it made me ask questions it made me start to ask questions well what are we here for what are we what are we doing on this planet what am i what's my role what could I do and I started to realize that if I stayed a monk and learnt more about the mind I might be able to help other people with their minds particularly because I'd had such a struggle myself with very severe anxiety to this disorder and depression I thought well maybe I can work through this and and then show and help others to do the same I didn't imagine myself going around giving lectures or writing books or anything like that I just thought in a simple way maybe I can be of benefit and so after that retreat I decided to take the vows to be a monk for my whole life and that was 26 years ago Here I am and what happened was my monastery asked me to start giving classes and giving courses and this was way before the sort of big trend in mindfulness I was a little bit adventurous I went into prisons and hospitals and drug rehab centers and just started giving classes and people seemed to benefit and my own practice was starting to grow I mean I was learning while teaching I still still am learning and then I worked like that for about 12 years and then decided to go again into retreat through the advice of my teacher and through my own inclination and that's when I did that more extreme retreat that you heard about in the introduction the four four year long retreat in Tibetan Buddhism there's a very traditional retreat that lasts for three years three months and three days but in my monastery we follow two lineages of Buddhism so putting them together we have a four year retreat so it was four years on a remote Scottish island with twenty other monks you can't speak to each other much and in fact in the second year you take a vow of total silence for five months and the main thing about the retreat is that you really are in retreat I mean you have no contact with the outside world at all there's no we didn't even have it have electricity we had a generator that came on at night so we could see our way around but basically there was nothing no no contact with the outside and very very intensive meditating all day it was probably the most unhappy period of my entire life because what happened to me was all of that panic and anxiety came back full force I'd sort of suppressed it for 12 years and now I'm standing in a corner backed into the corner with my own mind and it was horrible I started to have panic attacks again and I started to oscillate between very extreme panic and very very very deep depression and I felt like a complete failure because I'd been a monk for 12 years and now I'm in this sort of so-called advanced retreat and supposed to be I don't know levitating or whatever and actually I'm just crying so the first two years of that retreat the first half was extremely painful but what happened during the the retreat was I had another meltdown these meltdowns are quite good for you actually because what what happened to me was I completely broke down in the middle of the retreat and got to this stage where I thought I'm gonna have to leave or if I stay I'm gonna have to somehow resolve this and so through enormous ly strong help from my retreat master Lama Yeshe I managed to stay and managed to learn how to give compassion to that part of my mind that was so tormented and there was a kind of energetic shift in that the revulsion and-and-and-and the horror towards myself started to change into acceptance I was using the meditation now in a much more effective way I think I'd used meditation to run away from myself before and I know many people do that and I can understand why but it doesn't look it doesn't work at some point you catch up with yourself and that that's what happened so I started to see how the meditation practice could help me to engage compassionately with this part of myself that I'd always found repulsive and always wanted to get rid of and so the second half of the retreat was very different I I really started to get into it and I started to really discover how you can train in happiness as a skill it's a skill of the mind and for me I'm not saying it's like this for everybody but for me it was very much about learning to engage with the parts of yourself you don't like the fear the anxiety the horror and you and using a meeting that in a loving way happiness starts to grow because the resistance drops away so when they came out of that retreat in 2009 I came to London and really noticed how unhappy people seemed not in the sub judgy way I wasn't going around saying that everyone's miserable but I just was sort of getting into working again teaching talking to people and I started to just see how people have become more impatient with their own feelings and of course technology has a big part to play in that when I came out of retreat everybody's face was glued to an iPhone that smartphone revolution happened during those four years and also all the social media networks were invented during that time so I came out to a very different landscape and one of the things I noticed most strongly was that people are feeling well invaded by information all the time we used to have a different relationship with information we could we could go towards the information now it comes to us and so the news feeds are basically stoking everyone's cortisol levels and making people more anxious oh and then I noticed that when you get on a train now the first thing they say is if you see a suspicious if you see something suspicious phone this number so as soon as you arrive somewhere you're immediately told all the things that are going to horrible things that are going to happen and then we also have this huge rise in political movements that use fear to win votes we all know what that is about and so there's a huge level of anxiety in our culture now that I don't think it's ever been so strong before and so that of course made me much more committed to my work which is all about teaching mindfulness to people very much outside of a religious environment I'm not interested in converting people to Buddhism or anything like that I'm interested in helping schools and colleges and businesses and all kinds of people from all walks of life learn to practice meditation techniques but one thing I noticed really strongly when I started to teach pee again was that they their impatience became a problem in the meditation training in that they people meditate and then are waiting for something to happen immediately and and that's worse than it's ever been it's very interesting how when somebody decides to learn meditation they make this shift from external to internal in that they make that decision that happiness is really a mind state it's a state of being it's something within so if we meditate we're learning to stop grabbing onto the happiness around us and instead finding it within that's a very interesting shift but what then happens is the person starts to look for happiness in the meditation we didn't find it outside so now let's find it inside so we start to look for it in the meditation and then we get more unhappy because we're grabbing on to a feeling all the time and I think this is another thing that's been exacerbated by our use of technology is that nowadays we're very obsessed with instant feelings we want to have our senses stimulated constantly that's how the TV programs we watch manipulate our senses the movies the the social media that we scroll through it's very much about exciting the senses and we've got into a state where we think something is only working if we feel something from it we have to feel something all the time so then of course people learn meditation and they try and feel something in their meditation let me tell you my own story with this is that when I first became a monk I definitely got into that in that I was meditating and actually getting more unhappy the more meditation I did I remember in the first year of being a monk I would do a lot of meditation I really got into it and I would do it all through the day I would I would be working in the monastery but then I'd keep sitting down and meditating throughout the day and I started to go around with this curse sinking feeling in my heart oh it's almost as if the more meditation I did the more miserable I became and the more letdown I started to feel and I went to my teacher and he said well it seems to me that you're meditating like a drug addict and this was quite a shocking thing to hear but it really rang true because I realized that what I'd been doing was sitting down to meditate and then thinking okay I've done ten minutes when am I going to get get a buzz when am I going to get a hit from this when am I going to come up on my meditation because that's all I'd known in terms of happiness these little hits of pleasure so I assumed now meditation should give me a little hit of pleasure and the problem is the more you're looking for that hit of pleasure the more you are creating the absence of pleasure because the the mind that thinks I want to be happy is the mind that thinks I am not happy the more I want to feel happy the more I'm telling myself I lack that feeling and because everything in our mentality is a habit that perpetuates more of its own nature that just grows the more I want happiness the more I'm building a feeling of lack of course this is a part of human psychology that advertisers know how to manipulate they always make us feel there's something else out there we'll never truly be happy and of course that's become more and more prevalent now because of the nature of how we're invaded by constant advertising on our phones so I think more than ever we're in that state of wanting to feel something all the time and I meet many people who meditate and they say well it didn't make them feel good they didn't get anything from it so what changed for me was when I learned how to not do that in the meditation I learned how to link the meditation practice with two major things one is acceptance and the other one is compassion so and I'm still learning of course but what was a shift for me was learning how to meditate without well meditate badly basically just think I'm just gonna do it doesn't matter I don't need to do it well I'm just gonna do it that's what I call I mean meditate badly what I mean is don't put too much pressure on yourself for it to go well just do it and what also what also I found very transformative is learning to meditate when I felt ill or when I felt unhappy and of course this was a major thing for me and the four-year retreat as well as learning to be with discomfort in a in a meditative way because then you're not always striving for a good feeling you're just learning to be with the moment whatever that is so I think that's a very important thing to explain and promote in the world of meditation and mindfulness because many people tend to be Craver tend to crave that sensation of well-being which means they're maybe just creating the absence of well-being so this is the question what what is happiness if we're making this shift from okay it doesn't come from outside it's a state of mind you know the famous phrase happiness comes from within what is it what does that mean so if it's not about having a great feeling what is it well I think it's very much about being less tormented by our thoughts I think happiness is the same as freedom being free from having a tempestuous relationship with our own mind so then another problem arises if you say that to people they say oh okay so meditation means clearing the mind so let's get rid of all those thoughts let's just sort of vacuum them up and throw it throw them away and that's another problem which comes up a lot in meditation is people try to do it in a race of mind clearing way where they sit down and just try and blank out their thoughts and then it's enormous ly frustrating because the more you try to steal your thoughts the louder they shout the more you push something away the more invasive it becomes so this notion of trying to clear the mind is really problematic ok so what is it then it's about changing our relationship with our thoughts this phrase inner peace is used a lot isn't it become almost like a bumper sticker it's very common this phrase inner peace and I used to think inner peace meant silence I thought it meant just everything should go away but actually my definition of it has changed over the years which is it's not about an inner silence it's about being at peace with one source so meditating is not about having an empty mind that you could you could put yourself into an unconscious state by banging your head against a wall if that's what it is but it's not it's not about unconsciousness or trance or disappearing it's about changing the relationship with the thoughts and emotions which means to be less driven by them it means to be able to step back and observe it's very much about becoming the observer of the thoughts and emotions in in Buddhist texts they use metaphors a lot for this around the sky and clouds are very very kind of common examples used which is that the mind is like the sky and our thoughts and emotions are clouds in the sky and of course the the presence of those clouds doesn't affect the sky the sky is bigger than the clouds in the same way our mind is bigger than its thoughts and emotions when we can become when we can take the position of observer being able to see and just let the let the clouds go by or almost like letting traffic go by on a road just imagine you're standing at the side of a busy road and all these cars going by well trying to stop the traffic just creates a pileup there'll be a crash but letting the cars go by choosing not to get in them would be a very different experience and nobody says that's how we should live I'm not saying we're supposed to live a life for our thoughts just go by and we never engage in them it's just an exercise for fifteen or twenty minutes a day but it will change our relationship with our thoughts so that we can be less controlled by what goes on internally I think we're all far too controlled by our thoughts and emotions so even though as a as a culture we've fought so hard for external freedom we don't have internal freedom because even if we are completely in control of our lives we're not really in control of our minds in that our minds often go to places we don't want our mind to go anyone who's who's meditated for five minutes knows that you know how if you sit down and try to focus on your breathing within about three seconds the plan fails because we start writing shopping lists or emails or planning revenge or whatever it is you know the mind just goes and it's quite humbling to see how little control we have so why is that a problem it's because when we are suffering our mind is locked into the suffering when we're distracted our mind is locked into the distraction when we're angry when we're fearful when we're sad there's nothing wrong with feeling these things it's very healthy to feel our emotions but to be driven by them and to end up saying and doing things based on those emotional reactions that we then regret that's the problem and in fact all of our social problems stem from that one source people not being in control of their minds so back to the meditation technique what is it well it's about learning to step back and not engage so in such a sticky obsess SIV craving way but that's quite hard it's hard to just step back so we need something to hold on to that's why we use an object in meditation as beginners we use a focus so you could use any focus but the most easy one is your own breathing there's many others physical sensation or just the body or the breathing or actually any of the senses you could use sound you could use visual objects you can use any any focus but one focus and the whole idea is your key or your focusing your mind on that so breathing for example you'll focus in your mind on your own breathing and then the plan fails doesn't it we fail in that the mind wanders but is it failure that's the question is that failing you see I think many people see it as failing and I would question that so the classic situation is somebody sits there meditating and they're trying to focus on their breathing and then they realize that they go somewhere else very interesting how that happens by the way it's not that we are focusing on our breathing and then we see our mind go for a walk and end up somewhere else it's not like that it's more that we're focusing on our breathing and then we kind of blank out we kind of go a bit unconscious and then we wake up five minutes later skiing in the Alps or whatever it is we wake up somewhere else and then we think oh where was I am supposed to be meditating and that's when we feel we failed because we lost the meditation but I would question that I would question whether that really is failing I would say actually that moment of realizing that you got lost is meditation you you are back with the awareness so it's not a moment of failure it's a moment of success and then one brings one's attention back to the breath gently just returning to the breath and then we're off again and then we bring it back and then we're off again that quickly coming back easily a long time and then we come back but that strengthens us that strengthens our ability to be less controlled because what we're doing is every time we generate awareness and then come back to the breath we are thinning down that mental glue that keeps us locked into those distractions and emotions we're training ourselves in well if you read Buddhist books they talk a lot about this phrase non-attachment and people think that means you're not allowed to eat chocolate cake or have friends that's not true non-attachment is exactly what I'm talking about here which is not being so attached to the thoughts and emotions so actually a typical meditation session with the breathing for example consists of three parts which are repeated again and again throughout the session and that's all we have to do is these three things one part is the part or the phase or the time when we're with the breath that's the part we all think is the meditation that's that's what's you know in the textbook focus on your breath so that's one part the time when we are with the breath but there are two other parts the second part is the moment when we realize we got lost so we were lost in thought kind of unconscious and then suddenly we we wake up inside our thoughts you know that feeling where you suddenly realize oh where was I that's part two that's also meditation because you've found your awareness again you've refound the regained you've found the awareness you're back so that's part two phase two part three or phase three is the coming back to the breath so the first part is being with the breath the second part is realizing you got lost and the third part is returning I call these three phases breathing noticing and returning breathing noticing and returning and a meditation session will be made up of those three things again and again and practicing those three phases makes us stronger over time just like exercise but the really interesting thing is that if you realize that it's those three things that you're training in then you start to have a different relationship with your thoughts and emotions because you start to see that the thoughts distractions and emotions are the very thing that enable those three things to happen we look at it this way if if you're supposed to be coming back to the breath where you've got to have somewhere to come back from so the distraction enables you to come back to the breath so it's not such a bad thing after all so realizing this revolutionizes people's meditation practice it no longer needs to be a harsh journey of failure and self-criticism and constant stress think you know I keep doing this wrong I'm not doing it properly instead it becomes a very gentle and very accepting because when you your mind wanders and you you see oh you realize you you're back you know oh where was I and you use that's not failure it's a moment of success you start to have a compassionate inner environment our inner landscape is often quite harsh I know mine used to be incredibly harsh where I would walk around with this constant inner monologue of self disgust and then when I started meditating my inner landscape was very much about I'm doing this badly I've got too many thoughts I'm rubbish at this I wish those nasty thoughts would go away but when we do the practice in the way I've described which is just noticing and returning the the the atmosphere of our our psychology becomes quite gentle and quite kind and quite accepting because we're no longer at war with our thoughts and distractions our mind got lost we see it got lost we don't to push the thought away we just bring the attention back to the breath that is compassion because we're just leaving the thought in its own natural place and not trying to do anything about it I would define that as unconditional love I would describe that as unconditional love unconditional love towards a person means to love them just how they are without wishing to change them in any way whatsoever just let them be how they are you love them in that moment warts and all in all their glory so the inner atmosphere of unconditional love in relation to one's own mind is about this in that our mind wanders we realize it got lost we noticed we were thinking and we just leave that alone we don't need to chase the thought we don't need to repress the thought just let it be and come back to the breath so it's a total acceptance chasing the thought is a kind of non acceptance because when we see a thought or see but you know perceive a thought and then we want to make it into two thoughts we're almost saying this thought isn't good enough the way it is it needs to be a bit more juicy it's a little bit boring let's dress it up let's jazz it up two thoughts three thoughts four thoughts let's take it on a journey because in its own essence it's not good enough it needs to become more you know interesting so chasing the thought is a kind of aggression because we're saying this thought isn't enough I need two of them or three of them pushing the thought away is also aggression because we're trying to destroy it but just to leave it there and come back to the breath means you're just letting it be so this changes our interior landscape it does it starts to develop you into a person who's filled with self-acceptance and a kindness towards your own mind which of course then we'll naturally radiate out so so the compassion within will naturally become the compassion that radiates towards others and becomes action of course not just a feeling but action so I think that's a really crucial learning which is very very helpful is to learn to change one's relationship with one's thoughts what why is it beneficial with it obviously is beneficial because if we do this exercise again and again we're going to be less controlled by our thoughts and emotions but also have this gentleness inside which can start to grow and radiate so compassion is the essence of the meditation journey and also of course Buddhists talk about this a lot but also in the world of secular mindfulness it's so important people who practice mindfulness sorry compassion based mindfulness find it much more enriching and it really changes the game so I would say that compassion based meditation has two two aspects to it and I've described one of them so far which is that the interior the internal relationship with the thoughts and emotions is compassion and that grows but I think another thing is to think about why we're meditating why are we meditating it's about intention it's about the motivation so what I try to do myself and encourage other people to do is every time we sit down to meditate is to take a moment at the start of the session and generate compassion which doesn't mean sitting there waiting until you feel this kind of overwhelming love for all beings that that's you can't just kind of manufacture that but just an intention just an intention is a good start to generate the intention I am doing this for the benefit of not just myself but to through this practice may I benefit others and then at the end of the session closed down the session with a sense of dedicating the practice to the benefit of not just oneself but others too this means your frame in the practice your kind of book ending the session with compassion intention building in tension really exciting the research has been done in this particularly by Tania singer that neuroscientist - who has looked into use brain scanning brain imaging on people who practice meditation and especially people who practice compassion based meditation and what's been shown is that the motor cortex in the brain has been activated and and sort of trained or developed and the motor cortex is the part of the brain that deals with intentions and if we're literally building the intention again and again and again and it's activating those brain regions that will make us go out and do things well that's a very good thing because our compassion will cease to be just a feeling and become action and I think that the the fusee of the merging together of compassion and meditation is the key because without that our ordinary human experience of compassion can be very draining very draining and very a feeling of helplessness it's more like empathy empathy is a good thing it's a very beautiful quality of the heart as at least we feel something for others we're not just completely self-centered we see others suffering and we feel something that's a good thing but it's quite frustrating there's this notion of empathic distress where you see so much suffering in the world and you feel kind of helpless frustrated despairing angry [Music] overwhelmed all of those things and also the empathy it becomes almost as if as if we join we the object of our empathy in a state of misery they are miserable now I'm miserable too again back to the brain imaging they've shown that the when somebody's experiencing empathy the brain acts almost like a mirror the part of the brain that mirrors so if you see somebody in pain then the pain centers in one's brain start to activate you feel the pain - that's why we wince when we see somebody in pain somebody's suffering physically emotionally and we're kind of feeling it - just like a mirror and we become more and more drained and now two people are suffering so compassion you could say is this of upgrade where compassion becomes a trainable skill of the mind that becomes an action of the body a trainable skill of the mind that becomes an action of the body in that we're training in the wish and intention to help others and that's our regular training as I've described through through the meditation but also what is helping others mean yes of course it means get out there and feed those who are hungry and help those who are sick of course but that's never enough is it to really help others I think we we want to help them to understand why they suffer and understand how not to suffer which means to help others to transform their minds which doesn't necessarily mean going around teaching them meditation there are many other ways but it's about becoming the kind of person who can understand why and how people suffer and how to change that and helping them to do that because then you get into the roots of the problem not just the symptoms so this is built through daily a meditation practice daily meditation or mindfulness I mean I use the two words interchangeably daily meditation practice is building that intention to benefit others that then becomes who we are so there's two things going on there's building the intention and there's in the meditation itself that growth of gentle acceptance because we can't really be compassionate towards others if unless we are compassionate towards ourselves we can't if we're constantly judging ourselves harshly and criticizing ourselves that that that will project out all the time so though those two go together the intention building and the relationship with the thoughts become a compassion practice so should we try it I think let's really make this practical I'd like to guide you through a seven step meditation practice seven steps so if you want to join in please join in otherwise have a quick nap I don't mind you look the same so it doesn't bother me but it's quite useful to sit up straight that does help so if it's it's tempting to slouch in the chair and close ones eyes but actually it's more focused and alert to be sitting in a good posture so I would just you know sit up straight and have have a sense of symmetry and balance in the body the feet are parallel on the ground or I've crossed my ankles here cuz I'm on the lower chair so whatever feels stable your hands can be resting in your lap or palms down on your knees or the tops of your legs and actually having your eyes open is a very powerful tool and I'll explain why in a minute I'll explain why afterwards but for now just go with me on this have your eyes open but not forced open and not looking around the room but just gently open which means that they're sort of not focusing on anything your your gaze is sort of lowered slightly but without your face tipping forwards that's something that happens if you're not careful to keep your head upright and your gaze is kind of angled downwards into the space in front of you blink whenever you need to don't hold your eyes open but just kind of leave them alone is if you're sitting on the tube and you see the face of the person opposite you your eyes are open but switched off okay we've just done step one which was to get in a good posture step two is to establish compassion which means just plant the seed of kindness and compassion by making a deep wish in one's heart may I benefit others may I do this practice for the benefit of not just myself but also others so we are included in that but may we help others may this practice give us the strength the knowledge the wisdom so that eventually we can help others create that train of thinking for a few moments okay step three is be aware of your body the easiest way to do this is to focus on the contact between your body and the furniture feel the chair under your body feel the chair through your body under you behind you just sense it sense the contact shift your focus now to your hands just feel how your hands feel resting on your legs notice the sensation of contact between your hands and your clothing as your hands rest on your legs or if you're wearing shorts then on your skin just notice the contact you're not really thinking about it you're just feeling it sensing it your mind will keep jumping into thoughts gently bring it back to the sense just gently pull your awareness back into the sensation move the attention up to your abdomen feel the waistband of your clothing against your waist feel how your shirt or your t-shirt just feels against your skin okay in the next step step four is feel how your body moves with your breathing you don't need to breathe deeply or differently just normal breathing but feel how it makes your body contract and expand in a gentle rhythmical way remember that your mind will go but all you need to do is notice and return notice you got lost and returned back to the body feeling the breath moving the body okay now the next step is more precise more focused closer to the breath focus on how the breath enters and leaves your nose or if your nose is blocked then how the breath enters and leaves your mouth feel the air brushing against the skin of the edge of your nostrils or your lips don't push the air just let it be keep returning to that place when your mind gets lost your mind will go into distraction or sleepiness that's okay it's all part of bringing you back back to the breath let's try another minute okay now to conclude the exercise the next step is focus on your body like we did before so sense the chair under you feel your hands different parts of your body or your body as a whole okay and then the final step is the compassion again so just a final moment of deciding or committing oneself to the path of compassion make the wish in your mind may I benefit others through this practice may I help myself but also help others in the deepest possible way okay stop there did you fall asleep too hot to fall asleep I've had rooms of people snoring in front of me so it's quite normal when you're a bit new to this you can feel really kind of drowsy if you're new to it or if you've done it before but you're not doing it every day the body sort of just goes into drowsy mode because that's all it knows either busy or asleep those are our two states so if you do this everyday actually the drowsiness wears off and you start to I mean you feel more refreshed you feel more on the on the ball on the button present focused aware so there are many different styles of meditation but breathing is the most common and I like to explain it in those different steps because it gives you a kind of warm-up main practice and warm down and of course we did a very short five minutes there but if you did 10 or 15 minutes a day it's really really good but then the key point is what you do with it and how do you how do you bring that meditation into action into reality and how do you how do you make it change your day and change who you are I mean how does it progress just doing 10 minutes a day and then the rest of the day nothing isn't going to do much but interestingly even if you just do 10 minutes a day but the rest of the day have tiny little drops or drip feeding it throughout the day that does make a difference so here I'm talking about practicing micro moments of mindfulness many times a day even while you're busy so it means you could be brushing your teeth you could be washing your hands you could be doing simple actions but bringing your attention into that sense mode you're sensing the moment feeling the toothbrush against your teeth feeling the water or soap against your hands if you're washing your hands I do this when I'm standing in a queue or waiting somewhere I'll feel the ground under my feet I'll be aware of my shoulders just in small moments I love doing this in busy situations standing in the queue at an airport or waiting in for a train or being in the tube in London hot uncomfortable can't get a seat you're standing there all like sardines well you can take a moment to just feel at the moment in your body and this is mindful it's a mindful moment but if you're building that throughout your day I feel it's almost like drip feeding it throughout the day so that it just becomes part of you and it means that your meditation enters your life it isn't something separate from your life I was very guilty of this when I started I used I I got to the state in in my early days of being a monk of doing two solid hours of meditation a day and thinking yeah I'm really you know top of the class doing it properly but no it was not working at all because the rest of the day I was just not bringing it into reality so it was wasted I was quite arrogant about the whole thing thinking yes two hours but it's not about counting the hours you've done and then giving yourself a gold medal it's about making it part of your life so it was actually only after a few years of being a monk that I discovered how to do those mindful moments and then that changed things it really helped me to become much more calm I used to be a very highly strung anxious speedy quite manic person and my body chemistry has changed I'm much more grounded and much more calm and relaxed as a result of simply doing these moments throughout the day and letting that become part of my system but there's a deeper reason for it it's also about learning to enjoy the present moment especially when it's a moment of discomfort so when I when I teach people this I often start them off with simple things such as brush your teeth mindfully wash your hands mindfully drink tea mindfully have little moments behind your desk where you feel the ground under your feet but then I try to encourage them after a while start deliberately going into a mindful state when they're stuck in traffic or when they're standing in a queue or whenever they feel themselves to be impatient waiting for something waiting is a really interesting phenomenon it's something we do many times a day and it's something we generally don't like because the notion of waiting means that you're not living you're waiting for the things happen that then you'll live and that seems to be our lives that we're always waiting for the next thing so when is the next thing because the next thing will then be waiting for the next next thing so in those waiting moments which are there's multiple of moments like that each day waiting for something in those moments we generally start going into a slightly stressy state the body starts producing cortisol adrenaline we go into that sort of stuck state or feeling of rushing or wanting to move forward if you practice a moment of mindful awareness in that moment so you're sitting behind the wheel of your car you're in traffic and you just really sense the chair on to you the car seat or you're waiting for a train or standing in the queue and you really sense the ground under your feet if you do that you are kind of reprogramming yourself because you're learning how to meet discomfort with acceptance and awareness which is a form of compassion because you're learning to forgive that moment but also you're learning how you're teaching yourself how to be happy against the odds how to be happy against the odds because normally our relationship with happiness tends to be about I need to be in the right situation and then I will be happy I need to lie on a beach I need to be having a bath with bath salts and candles and music I need I need a situation that makes me happy that's the normal approach to happiness but if you take this as your exercise what I've mentioned then next time you're stuck in traffic instead of feeling unhappy you'll you're you'll feel a kind of little energy in you of oh I can do that thing I can do that thing I learned about I'm going to do I'm going to do my practice so you're in a situation that would normally make you emotionally shut down and physically start to feel stressed but instead you're thinking bring it on this is helping me to go deeper it's a bit like going to the gym and lifting weights you're not going to lift feathers you won't get muscle you're going to lift big weights you'll get big muscle so you need the resistance to give you strength in a gym it's kind of like that with this exercise that you're standing in a queue or stuck in traffic and you're relaxing into the moment so you start to feel a sense of curious enthusiasm around the things that normally wind you up so this starts to develop as what I would call independent happiness independent happiness happiness that doesn't depend on a trigger happiness that you can produce within yourself even in difficult situations and of course you start with queues and traffic jams but it can become your habit that then builds into more difficult situations I mean for me I used to always be terrified of any kind of public speaking that was for me the most horrible horrific thing ever I was an actor before but that's very different being an actor is easy because you're not being yourself you're being completely somebody difference you can disappear behind that but anytime I had to present a college I had to do that a bit present to a group I would I would just start crying with fear and in my early days have been a monk when I had to give little lectures at the monastery I'd be terrified and what I started to learn to do was take that moment in do mindfulness in that moment so as I'm as I'm standing on a stage talking I'll go into a mindful state so I'm meeting the thing that normally is uncomfortable all in a mindful way and what that's done for me is for me now giving a talk is like having a massage it's like relaxing for my body towards the end I feel really kind of you know the more I do it the more and more I've more relaxed I become because I've made a connection in my mind between scary thing relaxed response put those together so how can this start to build well it could build into our relationships relationships with people at home or at work where we feel tense unhappy these kind of exercises create forgiveness forgiveness is again a trainable skill it's where you can teach yourself to go into a more calm more relaxed more present state in the face of somebody or when you think about somebody or you're with somebody who normally winds you up it doesn't make you into a doormat it actually makes you stronger so this is the final topic I wanted to mention tonight and then we're going to deal with questions and then we're going to finish so I want to say a few things about forgiveness and I've introduced the topic by talking about this very practical tool around relaxing and cues and traffic jams and believe it or not that changes our relationships because it trains you in being able to meet the thing that normally winds you up and meet it with peace and almost enthusiasm doesn't turn you into a masochist don't worry it just just makes you a little bit more open to the things that normally make you tense but I think forgiveness as a trainable skill is very much about two things one is that just by meditating regularly just the meditation alone even a simple meditation such as what we did with the breathing just that alone has a very powerful effect on training and forgiveness because what is it that makes us unable to forgive is how much our mind is tormented by hurt and anger and resentment so even though something happened with somebody either five minutes ago or five years ago what's happening right now is my mind is locked into a hurt a wound an anger a resentment whatever the feeling is is locked in and it doesn't know how to unlock itself we don't want to walk around feeling angry or hurt but here we are feeling angry and hurt so meditation obviously is going to loosen up that locked state because through doing the daily meditation practice we are learning to be less attached to our thoughts and emotions that glue that I talked about before so when you're doing meditation you may not be directly addressing the hurt that you feel it might be that you're just sitting there meditating and the mind starts planning menus or thinking what to have for dinner but that's the chance to then come back to the breath which means you're weakening the attachment your mind has to its thoughts so this will have a profound effect on our relationship with hurt and resentment because we are training and being able to I don't really like the phrase let go it's more about just leave it alone and not be bothered by it let it be do you see how that works is a it's a training in not being so controlled by mental habits so I said there were two things - two major steps in forgiveness training one is that just meditating anyway will help but the other thing is through reflection through what in Buddhism we call analytical meditation which is to think constructively about something so meditation isn't always about not thinking it's not always about the breath or letting go it's about sometimes analyzing or reflecting on a subject a topic the topic being this person who winds you up this person who hurts you or has hurt you or whatever it is somebody you know or don't you know somebody you resent and it's around starting to understand the human condition from a deeper perspective it's about recognizing that the human being is over controlled by one's thoughts and emotions and this is how we are and this is how everybody else is so that person who has said or done the thing that we find so difficult to deal with wasn't really out to get us even if it seemed as if they were it wasn't a deliberate planned thing even if it seemed like it was they are consumed by their own stress their own suffering their own ignorance their own negativity their own mental darkness that is a product of everything they've been through in their life we don't know what happened to them that brought them to this place but something will have happened and in this moment they are behaving towards us in a way that's not they're almost out of control because they're they're being driven by negative impulses in their mind it doesn't excuse or condone what they do but it helps us to understand it and maybe even see how there is a part of ourself that does the same this for me was a very important part of my 4 year retreat I spent a lot of time in the retreat at night I would turn the lights off after the daily program was over I would turn the lights off and I would do I would sit and do some compassion work around my relationship with my father we've always had a very difficult relationship and I've always felt very damaged and abused by him and all of that and what what I was doing in this meditations was I would sit there and I would think about him I would imagine him obviously myself and I would try to feel that I was breathing in all his sadness and all his suffering breathing it into myself and exchanging it for love sending out rays of white light into him and filling him with peace breathing in his pain breathing out joy and trying to trying to feel that I was taking away his pain and what was very interesting to me was I was then reflecting on his so-called darkness all the things he did or said that was so cold or aggressive and hurtful I'm thinking about those while I'm breathing them in and then suddenly one evening I thought and I it wasn't just a thought it was a feeling I suddenly thought and felt oh I do that too I do what he does and I suddenly realized that when I'm frightened I become quite cold when I'm nervous or frightened I tend to block people out I tend to I become scared and III I lose my gentleness and I become quite and they might feel rejected I'm not trying to reject them but they probably do I hope I don't do this so much now but I definitely used to a lot and it was really really a moment when I thought over the enemy my father the so-called enemy is in me and what I'm finding so abhorrent in him is the very thing in myself that I I knew I now know I do and I don't like about myself so this is the the two-way street of compassion is forgiving them and forgiving yourself so I just wanted to leave you with that thought at the end of this talk and I hope some of what I've said has been useful and practical for you and thank you very much [Applause] so if any of you have questions we have time now and there are some microphones roaming around our friends in green are holding microphones so hello hi and thank you for that I don't know about anybody else but I really needed that this week it was it was really I fell karma I feel relaxed and with some things to go home with and one of the things that I wanted to ask was about the distinction between meditation and mindfulness if there is a distinction so I think probably in my sort of basic understanding I understood what you meant by said when we meditate and the the sort of cloud metaphor your thoughts are going and eventually like a sieve they'll just start to settle and you'll get more clarity and be sort of more peaceful inside and then mindfulness I always thought was really just being in the moment of what you're doing so whether you're washing up you're driving a car but not necessarily sort of looking at these thoughts and coming and going they might achieve the same outcome but I think in my mind I'm not sure if there is a distinction it feels like there is but you've interchanged the two it's a very complex discussion because nowadays some people do separate them and there's this obviously very popular modern movement around mindfulness which in some ways is a kind of rebrand it's a more first for many people it's a more neutral term maybe the word meditation has too many people suggested Eastern philosophy Buddhism too much and so a clean slate would be to call it mindfulness the technique is the same I mean if you have somebody sitting watching their breath and saying they're doing meditation and somebody next to them doing mindfulness are they watching their breath in a different way No so in many ways it's the same thing and I tend to use the two words interchangeably but if you want to get really technical there are many two ways of defining mindfulness and one of them is that it's the thing you do in meditation when you to bring yourself back to the moment is the action of returning the the action of bringing your attention back into the moment is is the action the work of mindfulness and it also refers to those moments in daily life which I talked about before the micro moments but it's very it's very complex these definitions they forget it just do it you know it's just about doing it and don't worry what you're calling it but do it thank you who's next anyone who's near a microphone just go for it there's a gentleman at the front right okay what come to you in a minute I wonder if you see a difference between and non-striving and kind of having dreams and having goals yeah this is confused about this is always this is a question that comes up regularly so it's obviously an important one which is in in the world of meditation and mindfulness and Buddhism we talked about you know not striving and not not and just accepting and letting go and then would you just become like a kind of just nothing there's nothing just nothing to achieve or nothing to attain well actually it's more about what you're doing in the meditation session in the meditation session there's a funny combination of goal and no goal the goal part is that we are starting our session with that moment of I want to benefit others so that's the sense of goal isn't it but then you let go of that and the meditation itself is I'm not going to I'm not striving for a particular outcome or experience or feeling just let it be however it is total acceptance of what it is that's not going to take away our ambition in life or our sense of purpose it might in fact clarify our purpose because I think many people have very messy purpose not actually sure what they want but they're still striving for something so I think the more you meditate the more your your mind becomes more or refined and clear about what you want and whether it's actually what you need and whether it's actually something that will benefit you and others so people who meditate a lot tend to become quite precise about what they think is important in life and they tend to be more motivated by compassion and they can strive a lot I have friends who meditate a lot and they're very busy starting charities helping people serving the world in whatever way they can so there is a maybe strivings a bit of a harsh term but sort of there's a there's a energy of aspiration and action does that help it does a lot thank you who's next hello hello hi I liked how you described massaging regular meditation into yourself and I liked how you described the three stages and where when you bring yourself back you waken up as it were in your own bed and but could you unpack a little bit if there's a difference between thoughts and emotions you speak of thoughts and feelings and emotions is it simply a matter of degree the difference between them or can you say something about that please I think emotions well in in in Buddhist texts about the mind they they they talk about mental activity as a huge a huge range of experiences thoughts emotions distractions memories anything actually in fact in the deeper aspect of Buddhist philosophy they say that the entire universe is mental activity because we're perceiving it with our mind so it gets quite complex but but I when I talk when I whenever I'm teaching about meditation I'm thinking in terms of mental activity and I would say thoughts and emotions are just all within that category emotions there may be thoughts which have more more charge and that stronger for thoughts which have more more thoughts with shout louder or thoughts which last longer or thoughts which become a mood that emotions are very useful because you can feel them quite strongly in your body and that's what I was doing in retreat where I was feeling this horrible sadness and anxiety and locating it physically and then learning to give compassion to that physical feeling was I was quite glad I was having emotional states that were so juicy and so strong so I would say that emotions can be very useful in that sense okay okay good thank you anything else who's next you've been you've been had your hand up for a long time so definitely coming to you next after this person hi would you describe a difference between feeling compassion towards oneself and feeling sorry for yourself how would you define them when you say feeling sorry for yourself do you see that as a bad thing as a good thing what's your what do you mean by that do you mean it's a feeling to feel sort of answer what do you mean when one gets it yeah do you mean that one you're kind of going around feeling poor me and you're just so yes almost just stuck in that well I would say compassion for oneself is about a very direct loving relationship with one's thoughts and emotions particularly the ones that hurt so it's so so you're having a very direct sense of kindness and acceptance towards those parts of your mind that you normally would want to get rid of so that's quite dynamic you're not so sloshing around in the misery feeling poor me you're you're really dying Nampally training to make friends with that part of you that you weren't friends with thank you thank you can we pass the mic just over to the front here yeah thank you well first of all thank you for sharing your story and knowledge I think I have a little bit different question for the rest which is just curious I have actually two sets of questions okay based on your experience so first yeah to enter the monastery yeah do you have to wear robes and shave your hand depends if you're gonna be a monk or not money wants to be if you want to be a month yeah unfortunately it's the uniform you have a terminal let me make one thing clear the Buddhism and also the whole world of meditation and mindfulness you don't have to be a monk monks are very very specific role within Buddhism many people practice Buddhism and have ordinary lives with families and jobs and all of that monks are just a very specific tradition within Buddhism to be a monk you have to do all this stuff okay no I understand that and then so you forgive a wall so here's Tillamook sorry you've given ball so you promise to be monk yeah you take a vow for your whole life and you follow you follow rules there are 253 vowels Wow okay and if you keep the vine so now the question is then based on what you've just told me how does this balls both alright well sorry yeah okay now I notice yeah how did this boss and you know the way you have to look serves you to bring this knowledge to people well it's a choice so I'm not saying everyone should do it no of course but for me personally it take keeping these vows has given me the freedom to serve others because I'm quite an intense obsessive person so if I'm gonna have a relationship and a family I'll be I'll be very obsessive about that and to the exclusion of everything else so with my kind of mind I I feel a life of celibacy and not working in the normal way that other people work and having cars and houses and Families I feel that giving up all of that has opened me up to being able to serve others and it's made me incredibly happy it's not a restrictive life of abstinence I have a great time yeah I I you know I I believe this but at the same time it makes me think that you know when you have rules they they help but isn't that you know very simple comparison if you're like learnt a lot right bicycle mmm at first you know you're really bad at that mmm and you you have this like you know third wheel oh yeah and you you get betting that you know and maybe you have four wheels and then you know you put one off and you have three and then you have you know and even better than that you're even more confident and then you put all of them and you just right so now being constrained by some rules which you believe in will help you oh but you're suggesting constraint I'm suggesting there isn't a constraint there's a clarifying of focus okay but why do you need to wear you know roles to - because I want to I guess you mean I don't need to but I want to all right okay I understand so this is for us the first one I'm sorry I mean I've if you know if I took a lot of time just talk me and just take Michael for me let's go for it why so the second one you know you're coming from the west to the east to learn Buddhism well no I went to Scotland my honest reason Scott all right you understand Scotland steel doesn't matter it's you know it's coming from the east you know our region's right so now there is like big conception that Western world is all about more about science and knowledge King and you know logically you think through and you know a lot of scientists Albert Einstein Stephen Hawking's and all these famous people hmm usually come from Western culture hmm at the same time Eastern more perceive like wisdom you're on the clock by the way so let's speed this one up all right I think that I think this is so at the other side like you know there's a wisdom in in East Yod and we can see a lot of Chinese people if they want to learn sign to go to West like you asked I never think but a lot of west people if they want to learn a little bit of wisdom they try to go east but is it that have you seen these dynamics or having them and you noticed that at the end it's all about the same well to me Buddhism is a science it's the science of awareness I'm not so interested in rockets and and microscopes I'm interested in exploring consciousness and the reason I love Buddhism is because it is incredibly scientific it's not a religion or belief system it's a tool for examining what is the mind so that to me is pure science okay thanks yeah thank you well the clock I think we need to stop I think that's it oh okay it's up it's up to you okay hi okay hello oh hello and yeah I guess I'd like to say thanks as well as some of the other people have said just because so meant so much of what you've been saying has really struck a chord with me I've been scribbling away all of the things that have been meaningful for me and I've got pages here great and say thank you can I borrow them for my next I think the main thing that's really struck me was your view of what compassion is because I think I've been I realize I've been kind of beating my head against the wall in terms of considering compassion as a feeling that I have to have a warmth of positivity right towards myself right so whenever I come up against something that I don't like about myself I think to myself I must feel warm about myself I must feel as if as soon as you say must you use a lot of the Compassion's out the window yeah yeah exactly yeah so I think you saying leaving it alone and just allowing it to be has really been a click in my mind I think that's made an awful lot of sense great hang on thank you very much oh no I can go home now thank you I I'm kind of not hundred percent sure the question is to be honest but the hell yeah I think the I think one of the fears that I have is that if I just leave it be and I don't try and fix it yeah then the problem will go unsolved and I will continue living with this this problems or so it there's that fear there that stops me from just letting it go and leaving it be but isn't it about learning to solve a problem from a higher level of consciousness than the one that is the problem belongs to isn't so it's about being able to step back leave the problem alone step back be like the sky and from that spacious awareness the wisdom that's inherent in our mind that's our natural state will start to give us good ideas I think it's probably like that but I'm not sure okay is that they're not sure over anything I've said yeah thank you very much thank you thank you thank you very much ladies and gentlemen thank you so much for being here this evening I found that incredibly helpful and but especially moving at the end with that that focus on forgiveness I thought what you shared about your relationship with your father was really moving I was reminded of a quote that often stayed with me which is something on the lines of the people who are in need of the most love show it in the least loving of ways there's something about if we can actually empathize empathize with the anxiety and trauma that others experience that helps us understand their behavior more so I'm very grateful for you sharing all of what you shared this evening folks do take a chance to check out Tipton's wonderful book and there's more you can find out about his work and thinking online will send as we always do a follow-up email to people afterwards and they'll have some links back to where you can find out more just before we show our thanks one more time just to let you know that we're now taking a break from these events they're normally monthly we're going to have a sort of a break in August so I hope you all have a lovely summer break our next event is actually sort of very much building on this theme with another very wise Buddhist inspired thinker master Yorick are too many of you will be familiar with so much air will be with us in September and 1st of the fifth back in this same room so we'll share details about that as well and really building on the wonderful ideas of compassion and mindfulness that we've been talking about this evening so just finally if you could and there's also details of a wonderful compassion workshop by another friend of ours Jim pur who is going to be in the UK as a rare visit in September so if you'd like to take one of those leaflets away please feel free to but if not if you could bring any spare leaflets to the back and indeed any sort of rubbish from this evening cups banana skins whatever we really help our team to sort of clear those away so all it remains we'd say is have a wonderful summer thank you for all your support and please join me in giving tips and one more thank big thank you to the season perfect [Applause]

Channel: Action for Happiness

Views: 982,252

Rating: 4.797524 out of 5

Keywords: happiness, mindfulness, meditation, wellbeing, action for happiness, compassion, kindness

Id: c1gY7RWE48U

Length: 87min 2sec (5222 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 19 2019