Buddhist Monk: Why You Feel Lost In Life & How To Reinvent Yourself | Gelong Thubten

you've been a monk for 30 years if I look across Society what I see are a lot of people with low-grade addictions things like alcohol social media pornography online shopping and it seems to me that the root cause of a lot of these addictions is distraction now in your latest book you make the case that distraction or the pushing away of our feelings of pain of discomfort is actually the cause of many of our problems so I guess my first question is do you agree that we are a society that seems to be addicted to distraction and if you do what's the underlying cause I think we're definitely addicted to distraction and of course the the way we use technology has really fed into that so I I went away into a four-year long retreat in 2005 and when I came out of that retreat in 2009 everything had changed in the landscape of technology so during those four years the iPhone was launched and YouTube Facebook Twitter all of those things happened so when I came out of that retreat I was quite startled by how things had sped up because I'd been away from ordinary living and now I'm back and seeing the difference and so just noticing how everybody's face is buried in the phone and there's this sort of constant barrage this invasive nature to information um advertising social media all of that and so that's incredibly addictive and so yes we are all drowning in addictions of various sorts and they are all based on distraction what is it we're trying to distract ourselves from is I think we don't really know how to face up to our own feelings so we use things to food phones anything to kind of get away from ourselves yeah that's the quote and the introduction of your book um handbook for Hard Times which is Sublime I I genuinely mean that which I'd love to read to you because I think it really speaks to this in pushing away discomfort we usually don't see how the discomfort lies in the pushing it's our habit of chasing pleasure and running away from hardship that is the real problem and as any habit simply proliferates so we constantly Chase more and push away more reinforcing our sense of dissatisfaction yeah because there's a certain irony there where we're trying to use these activities acquire these things engage in these behaviors to avoid feeling what we're feeling but you're sort of making the point that actually doing that makes the problem worse so so why is that and also just to play devil's advocate for a minute what's wrong with people engaging in these behaviors there's nothing wrong with anything per se but is it making us suffer that's the question is it creating more suffering and I think it is because the more you run after something the more it seems elusive we never actually get what we want and that's because when we're engaged in running after that thing we're just building more of a habit to run after something so even if we get what we want we then find we want something else or a better version of it the wanting never seems to go away and in a way we're just feeding more wanting so the Mind wants more because it's creating a habit of wanting more so is it is it that we ever actually know what we want because we we may get it and then we think oh that wasn't what I wanted I want something else we never reached the end of it so the one team becomes an endless hunger and then on the other side of the coin the not one team becomes an endless process too because the more we push away discomfort the more we build a habit of needing to push away discomfort now if you've got that habit running in your mind there's going to always be something uncomfortable to be pushed away even if you lock yourself in an ivory Tower with no stress around you and everything just right because there's a habit of needing to push away discomfort we'll find something uncomfortable so we're sort of caught up in that chase running after something running away from something and we never find any kind of Peace there so so we are making the problem worse yeah it's like what we practice we get good at yeah so if we're practicing wanting we're always going to want we're experts at that yeah and I guess if I think about this through the lens Earth reactivity towards other people and other things if you practice being reactive and um feeling triggered by the comments of others and that also becomes a habit and if you change that habit and learn not to get triggered by the comments of others create that space understand that that may not be about you it may be about someone else or look at it with compassion try and have acceptance themes that you write about which we're going to discuss then actually that very quickly becomes a habit as well doesn't it yeah yeah you you can transform yourself in that way by uh instead of looking at the things outside yourself as the cause of your suffering or the cause of your happiness you look at your own mind and you start to work out what habits your your mind is running a little bit like computer programs and you can write new programs you change the programming and through doing that your life changes because you're starting to work with the Mind itself rather than the objects around you or the people around you you're working at your reactions I guess one of the central tenets then if what you're saying is that we have a lot more control or certainly choice over how we perceive things and how we see the worlds and until we realize that we're kind of locked in a pattern feeling that the world is happening to us is that what was happening to you in your early 20s when you were in New York that was definitely my experience so I was an actor I was living in London then New York and I was very ambitious I wanted to have a big career and I was just starting out as an actor but what was tripping me up all the time was I had a lot of um depression and anxiety and I didn't know how to deal with that so what I did was I got as busy as possible both in terms of work but also in terms of parties I became a real party animal I became an expert at partying but in a very sort of obsessive kind of vigorous way as if I was trying to run away from something in me and the distractions became my only place of Refuge but the distractions were making me ill so I reached a point where I just burnt that burnt out very very suddenly I mean you were very very sick weren't you extremely sick I woke up in this apartment in in Brooklyn with all the symptoms of a heart attack I I and I thought this is it and I I didn't have medical insurance I didn't have much money I found some guy who'd do an ECG for 50 or whatever and and they said yeah yeah your heart's really in trouble for another thousand dollars we can now give you another scan I didn't know what to do and I managed to get to my mum's place she was living in um San Francisco at the time and so I'm somehow managed to get on a plane lying down on the plane that somehow I ended up with three seats to myself you know you you that happens and then you lie down and I got to her place and I just collapsed and I was in bed for a few months and um having palpitations all the time heart palpitations and any any time I try to get out of bed my heart would just start racing I was so ill and it was very obvious to me that I'd had a complete total breakdown you were diagnosed with burnout weren't you yeah very very severe burnout yeah and how long would you say it took you to recover from that so the recovery involved becoming a monk because what happened was I I was um um at my mom's place and I was reading books she had books about meditation and I started reading these books and Buddhism had been there in the background as a family but I'd never really taken it seriously but then I'm reading these books and reading about how you are more than your thoughts you are not your pain you are not your suffering you are you are bigger than that and this this message I found very compelling and then at the same time an old school friend told me about a monastery in Scotland where you can be a monk for a year right and I thought oh I I want to do that that could that could be the kind of well it was like rehab that's the kind of rehab I'm looking for and I she was going there to be a nun I went with her and we both enrolled I mean four days after arriving at the monastery I became a monk but only for a year that was the plan and really quite soon after a few weeks my health really started to recover um the the um stress started to go down and also the Healthy Living of being a monk was incredibly supportive yeah so you say part of your recovery involves becoming a monk have you now recovered or are you still in recovery well there's this that that's a huge question because in a way we're all in recovery from the suffering of life you know and I've definitely recovered from that burnout and and that that happened quite quickly but in terms of the bigger picture of the the the in Buddhism we call it the suffering of samsara the nature of existence and how tense and difficult it can be we're all still in recovery aren't we yeah you said when you were recounting your life in your early twenties in New York and I think to many people certainly people who are teenagers that sounds like you were living the dream you're in one of the most happening cities in the world right there's a lot going on there's people from all over the world there's all kinds of opportunity you're an actor in New York going to parties I'm sure 12 year old rongan would have looked to that going wow this guy's on it he's made it that's what that's what I want when I'm older right as you were recounting that story you said I was running away from something inside of me what were you running away from I thought I was having a fantastic time I was the life and soul of the party I was the one always going out doing stuff but there was something underneath that that I wasn't I I wasn't comfortable with and and this was this sort of deep level of of stress and a sort of a suppressed feeling of depression anxiety I found it would come out at certain moments so part of the acting training I was doing was method acting where you really inhabit the role but you also use parts of yourself and your own experience to produce the the performance and I found that whenever I did that I would start going into panic and I would have palpitations because I was accessing parts of myself that I hadn't resolved and I wasn't facing and when they would come out I would get incredibly unwell and then I'd have to push that back down again and go out and have a drink and just forget about it so I on the one level I was having a great time on another level I was I was very unhappy and I I think that's that's the toxic mixture that created the burnout because in the moment you are having a good time in the moment at that party let's say you've had a few drinks and you're out with friends and whatever else might be going on we think in that moment we're having a good time and I think this is really important because on the face of it it can seem like well why does it matter if I just run away a little from my emotions and I spend two hours scrolling social media in the evening rather than dealing with my marriage or my feelings about myself or my depression whatever an individual may be struggling with but I think what you described about what happened to you in New York having severe burnout where you can get pretty much off the off your mum's bed for months that's the kind of in many ways that's the inevitable end stage if you don't deal with this stuff because it ain't going anywhere you either deal with it you you can't really put those emotions in a cage can you they will come out at some point and I'm grateful for that I feel grateful I feel grateful that I couldn't get away with it for much longer the running the running away my body stopped me with this illness and I at the time it was horrible and frightening but looking back I'm incredibly grateful that it didn't I didn't go on for much longer like that and had to stop and take a look at myself but you're grateful now now at the time no and that speaks to the entire book right um or the theme of the book a handbook for hard times how would you contrast this book with your last book which was on happiness because this is also really about happiness but coming at it from maybe a slightly different angle this book sort of does um build on the last one because the last book was about the nature of happiness and very much about how we seek happiness outside and that the searching leads to more searching and how meditation can really get us in touch with our inner happiness and uh our sense of inner peace but I did end the last book by saying actually it's only when you learn what to do with your unhappiness that you can really break through and find stable happiness so then this book Builds on that message is the unhappiness is the key to a doorway yeah there's this lovely quotes of yours and again in the introduction our unhappiness is the most fertile grounds for the cultivation of inner strength resilience and compassion so although in the moment of that burnout you weren't grateful for it you now are because it led you on this different path and is that a theme you want us all to kind of take away when we're going through tough times as hard as they may be is that the goal to understand that there ultimately what are going to lead to Enlightenment and true happiness I think the goal is is to change uh change how we think about hard times and to start to see them as as I said fertile ground or something that can um benefit us in some way in terms of growing our compassion resilience strength Etc but what we really need is methods that we can apply in the moment because otherwise the hard times become toxic and destructive but I try to provide in the book um ways of thinking but also ways of meditating in the hard times that can help you to work with a sense of transformation in the moment otherwise it's always that you find out later that you are grateful you have a terrible time and later on you can think okay that was good for me I look back with gratitude which is good but wouldn't it be even more powerful to know what to do in the middle of the storm how when you are in the storm how to work with it so obviously when when I had that burnout when I was 21 I didn't know about meditation I found out later but now when I go through hard times I have tools that I can apply in the moment and the hard times are still hard times but there are ways of working with it as it's happening let's say someone is listening or watching right now and they're in the middle of a really difficult time what's one of the tools you'd recommend for them so what I what I recommend is that we start to work with the sensations in our body rather than the thoughts and if we're going through a difficult time there is the information about that difficulty I I lost my job I I lost a relationship or whatever whatever the thing is that that is troubling us those are the thoughts the storyline which is valid of course I'm not saying it it's sort of um pointless or anything I'm just suggesting that we go beneath the story and work with the sensations in our body right now so it in your body there is a discomfort there's a feeling of tightness a feeling of turbulence and you can use that as meditation the problem is that the mind then flies back into the story jumps into the story and gets lost in that he said this she did that why me why this why that and you've got to kind of keep going beneath the story Into The Sensation and when you can work with those physical Sensations through meditation they start to transform so you start to create a kind of alchemy inside yourself where the the misery becomes um a doorway into a deeper kind of peace because you're when you meditate on your suffering not the information but the feeling the suffering has to change now I'm on board with this but what if someone is thinking okay I get that I've just lost my job I'm really stressed about it I've got bills to pay I don't know if I can find another job I keep hearing these stories on the news which make me think I'm not going to get another job and you're asking me to sit there and feel where is this emotion in my body sure and let's say they do that and they find it it's in their stomach and their stomach feels tight and maybe their guts growling whatever it might be it doesn't change the fact does it that they've lost their job what it changes is their feeling about the situation so the more they do this meditation the more they can accept the suffering and be okay with the suffering and then they develop a kind of strength and from that place of strength they can start to find Solutions yeah they can start to to to find ways out of the the situation they're in or ways of changing their environment but from a place of strength rather than a place of panic and misery so I'm not suggesting a kind of passivity where you just kind of go in sit and meditate and just let your life fall apart I'm suggesting that you reframe the suffering as an opportunity and then doors open yeah to things you can do yeah I love that because it doesn't necessarily change the situation but it changes how you view the situation it changes how you relate to that situation and I guess one of the phrases that for me has been transformative over the last maybe five six years now and it kind of speaks to a subject of one of the chapters in your book which is one of compassion which will come to it shortly the phrases if I was that other person I'd be doing exactly the same as them it was really interesting I wrote about it in my last book I I've gone on stage and spoken about how transformative this phrase is for me because it it makes you lead with compassion if you think Hey listen if I was that person with their upbringing their childhood The Bullying they had um the toxic first boss they had I'd also view the world in the same way as they do I'd be acting in exactly the same way as they are and one of the common things that will come up for people is go yeah what does that mean I just need to let people walk over me and I will say very similar to what you decide which is no but if you if you have compassion as the energy behind it you're not getting emotionally triggered you're not going into stress States you're more open to possibility you're better able to change that situation because of your state so it's not as if if someone's Behaving Badly to you that you're necessarily going to tolerate it or accept it or put up with it but if you can actually change your energy in a much calmer and more rational way you can actually deal with the situation is that similar to what you're talking about definitely you you you are um not allowing people to abuse you you are not allowing people to walk all over you and of course there are some situations where you you should speak up or some situations where you have to get away from that person or the situation because it's toxic and dangerous but what is going on inside yourself in terms of blame upset anger cannot be transformed through forgiveness through compassion because then eventually you can have a different relationship with that person or the situation or your feelings about that situation by yeah sometimes putting yourself in the other person's shoes and I think meditation helps you do that because it helps you to see The Human Condition how it is everybody has Minds that are um somehow um influenced by habits and negativity that we don't seem to know what to do with and so when we see that about ourselves and others it creates more of a compassionate acceptance foreign New York to joining a monastery in Scotland and then still being a monk 30 years later seems to be quite an extreme way to deal with burnouts so would you say looking back on your life you have had a tendency to extremes like being the party animal in New York and then a few months later being a monk in remote Scotland and if so could we say that these extremes are potentially problematic and how we interact with life that's a very good question and many of my friends said to me well here we go again he's totally extreme he's now joined a monastery some of them thought I'd joined a cult and should they come and rescue me and then they researched it and found out it's not a cult but yeah I would say that there was this going from one extreme to the other I'm a party animal then I'm a monk and yes that that is a very extreme way to deal with burnout but what changed for me was once the burnout had been addressed in some way and I started to feel healthier and more calm there then was the question of should I now finish my year and then go back to New York and carry on with the life that I was living um but then I decided to try another year I thought I'll just I'll just I'll take vows for a second year and during my second year as a monk I went into a solitary Meditation Retreat for several months and it was nine months and it was during that Retreat that I started to really think about what Buddhism meant to me and what being a monk meant to me and this the philosophy of Buddhism was especially the compassion part the philosophy of compassion was starting to really get under my skin in a very good way and then the decision to stay a monk came from a very different place the decision to become a monk Came From A desperate broken place the decision to then carry on and eventually take Life Vows came from a place of feeling this this philosophy and this way of living really resonates for me at a very deep level at a cellular level and if I stay and do this long term I really got a feeling that this would help me and also give me the chance to help others so I think my motivation for what I was doing started to come from a deeper place and then it didn't feel extreme at all yeah and and being a monk doesn't feel remotely extreme and people when they meet me and they say oh you're a monk they often want to know what are you not allowed to do I think because they're they're their their Fascination is here's somebody who's chosen a life of celibacy for example and also I don't drink or smoke or anything and so maybe that's all they see of us oh he's not allowed to do certain things what maybe they don't understand and then they discover when they when they talk to me more is that it's a life that I find incredibly relaxing and freeing and uh healthy for myself but also it's given me a way to communicate with others I've always been a communicator I've always wanted to share some kind of message and here's a message I can share now so it doesn't feel remotely extreme yeah it's so interesting that the energy that got you to become a monk in the first place is different from the energy that got you to continue definitely and I I think a lot about human behavior initially through the lens of my patients you know why is it that people struggle to make change is a behavior let's say I don't know alcohol for example always bad is scrolling on social media always bad like where I've got to in my view on human behavior is that it's not necessarily the behavior where we can determine if it's problematic or not it's the energy underlying the behavior and and even saying problematic is possibly not the best word to describe it but I think the energy behind it for example like alcohol if if the energy behind you having a half glass of red wine is to connect you with your friends that you haven't seen for a long time and in that setting I think that's a very different situation than if you're using half a bottle of wine every night to numb the loneliness and frustration with your life I actually think that the effects on you is going to be very very different and so it's really interesting that maybe you needed that kind of running away energy to get you into the monastery but that wasn't going to keep you there you had to change that and also my my relationship with intoxicants I started to look at it at a more subtle level which is through giving up all intoxicants um I started to work with the idea that if you are using alcohol for example just to help you relax there's something in you loses the ability to do it for yourself it's too easy to to to give the power of relaxation away to an external substance and when you give all of that up you start to just discover more power in yourself you just start to discover places you can go to internally for and from there you can you can feel relaxed and happy so it gives you more autonomy and more strength what other intoxicants did you have to give up many what caffeine oh no I I I I do enjoy coffee because that's an intoxicant isn't it that's uh in some ways well it is a technically it's a psychoactive stimuli and I'm aware of this because when I went into a long retreat I was drinking coffee every morning and I started to because when you're in Retreat you you become much more aware of your your your physical and mental state and I started to see how a cup of coffee made my meditation better I thought okay this is a the caffeine is is a stimulant but also it's it concentrates the mind and now my meditation is better because I've had a cup of coffee and I didn't want that so I gave up coffee during the retreat because I thought I want to do this for myself I don't want anything like a crutch to to do it for me because I want to find that concentration and stability without needing anything and that's the kind of for me that's one of the real points of this work and your teachings you know I started off this conversation asking you about these low-grade addictions that many of us are struggling with and it's about it's about Outsourcing our own inner well-being and our ability to be happy and calm to these externalities that's the problem because then we're dependent on them if they are not present right if they if they go look I had a patient once honestly who would get stressed out she told me this um the story once about you know she she got into walking you should always listen to music or a podcast and then one day her I think her Bluetooth headphones weren't working and it stressed her out because she could no longer enjoy her walk listening to music or podcasts or whatever it might be and I understand that because if you're used to that if that's your norm and you're dependent on that external input into your ears to enjoy that walk I can see why someone would become anxious and worried but if you stand back and go wow this is quite incredible that 100 years ago 50 years ago this technology didn't even exist where you can actually listen with earbuds to anything even you know pre-sony Walkman right whereas Now by having that we're now many of us are dependent on it to feel good we're overly reliant on these things so I feel that one of the reasons why too much of these low-grade addictions alcohol social media pornography online shopping whatever it might be it's problematic it's because we give up our own personal strength our power our sovereignty to make sure you're taking action after watching this video I've created a free guide to help you build healthy habits we can all make short-term change but can those changes become a fundamental part of our life often they don't and that's why in this free guide I share with you the six crucial steps you need to take that really really effective if you want to get hold of that free guide right now all you have to do is click the link in the description box below and actually as you have discovered yes caffeine was enhancing your meditation on that retreat but it's like yeah but I need that what if the coffee delivery doesn't come what if I'm out right then does that mean you can no longer access that well no because you gave it up and I guess you found a way to access that same level without the caffeine I like what you say about Outsourcing it we do seem to Outsource our well-being and we lose our own power we give the power away to to the external things and I think there's another level that goes on too which is that um the way we are influenced by um advertising uh by the messaging we receive through our phones through through the media Etc telling us to to to have certain products in our life telling us you need this you need that there's a there's an undercurrent there of a message to the consumer that you you are not enough unless until you have this product your life is incomplete unless you buy my product I mean that's a very crude way of advertising things and obviously it can be dressed up to make it seem more subtle but that's the driving force what's going on is you are incomplete without my product you need my product so this has become more invasive of course because it's in our phones now and it's just everywhere so we're going through life feeling there is something missing all the time so the more we want external things the more we rely on them for our happiness the more we're also telling ourselves I lack something I lack well-being I lack happiness I lack a sense of completeness I am incomplete and this becomes very pernicious this underlying message of you are not enough and so I found that when I went into those retreats that deep sense of inadequacy and incompleteness really started to to erupt into quite strong internal voices of self-disgust self-loathing in my in my first Retreats I would just sit there listening to this voice in my head saying you are terrible you're no good you're rubbish and I can see how that's part of my psychology but also fed from by the environment around us yeah a lot of this I think is driven by Society and you could really make the case I think that a capitalist Society requires us all to have a sense of incompleteness for it to survive and it's a Thrive that's what keeps the wheel turning yeah because without that you know we wouldn't be buying as many products consuming as many things right and really I guess you know if you want to talk about the environment or the climate like really the way to solve it or the way to address living in a more sustainable way is first of all to address ourselves you know why do we have a desire in the first place for so much you know one of the one of the most amazing things I discover every summer when I I go off social media for six weeks or so and I stop this podcast for six weeks and again I always say may not work for everyone certainly works for me I I've it certainly works in the context of my life and what it is today one of the powerful things I realized Tipton is just how much where constantly influenced by the world around us when you stop if you can have a few weeks and you're not going online and I know that may seem an outrageous thought these days and I appreciate some people won't be able to do that for work or whatever it might be it is incredible how much you start to tune into yourself again you went on Retreat right I've not done that I was with my wife and my children but I still found a heightened sense of calm and contentedness thinking I've I've literally got everything in my life that I want I I don't want anything there's nothing more I need and when you truly realize that or certainly speaking from my experience when I really realized that a few years ago I realized that it's all there I have enough I don't need more and it's very easy though to fall back into those Tendencies once you start exposing yourself again and so I'm very very intentional with what I consume how often I consume it you know my wife for many years will not watch negative documentaries or things that she perceives as negative I think I said this on a podcast recently that a few years ago I loved the Netflix show House of Cards I thought it was amazing she's I'm not watching it as dark energy and you know what she's right because if you infiltrate your mind with that stuff I feel that a lot of our our thoughts and ideas are Downstream of the content we're consuming and you say consume and that's a very important word isn't it so I'm not here to bash technology I mean it has many uses we're using it right now but there needs to be some sort of discipline there it's a little bit like food you can't just constantly eat sugar all day it'll make you ill but sometimes I feel we use our phones a bit like somebody constantly eating sugar we don't we don't seem to feel there needs to be any control it's just endless so wouldn't it be better to use technology in the same way as we use food as nutrition but in the right way in a balanced way in a way that will be healthy for us I think the connection needs to be made between the two things yeah and again I'm not against people enjoying their favorite documentaries on Netflix or wherever they might want to do that that's not the point of what I'm trying to say or I don't know what you're trying to say is is to be a bit more intentional about these things and you know for my wife for example she was just like I don't want that in my life anymore I don't want that great someone else may be able to consume that now and again in the evening okay yeah it's fine I get it it's fictional it's just a bit of switch off like a bit of sugar sure you know and I get that with balance with balance and and again this word consume so you mentioned the environment earlier and I think that this is this is the problem is that we are constantly addicted to consuming we need to consume things all the time because maybe we don't really know how to find happiness inside ourselves so we take it from outside and our our environment the planet it's not inexhaustible our desire seems to be inexhaustible and the the things we want are limited in their in their nature they are impermanent and they they have limits so the planet can't support our Limitless desire so so I think the the sustainability conversation needs to have a sense of what is sustainable happiness can we recycle our own internal happiness rather than just needing more and more from outside because otherwise the Trap will fall into is we'll look at what we're missing out on oh people are saying now because of the climate I can't do this I can't buy that right a bit like people ask you when you first become a monk or what can't you do you know what have you had to give up right so we're not looking at what you're gaining we're looking at what you can no longer do and you can look at the environment a bit like that as well I think but even that whole concept that whole idea that people will look at you go oh you can't do this anymore it's quite interesting because if you take a 30 000 foot View and go let's look at society today the race of mental health dysfunction are outrageously high now and they're getting higher yet we're okay with calling that normal this is normal you know we can do anything we want whenever we want we can consume what we want with whoever we want right that's normal so you going to a monastery and becoming amongst like oh man well you can't do this you can't have alcohol you know you have to be celibate it's sort of offensive to people yeah oh you've given up all these things how dare you you're giving them all these things that are making so many of us unhappy and how dare how dare you and and it's it's it's challenging to to think that you could find happiness from inside your mind and not need so much externally because that really is quite rebellious isn't it it's incredibly rebellious to say well I I'm going to find it within myself rather than from a product to a person or a place well it's a revolutionary Act in the current world I would say in the current capitalist World in which we live but maybe it wasn't a thousand two thousand years ago I don't know you know I wasn't around there so I can't speak to that sure and also I'm I'm not telling people oh everyone should be a monk it for me being a monk living in a monastery is a is that that's an important step I took for myself it suits me but the beauty of these meditation techniques is that anybody can practice them in any situation it's not so much about whether you're a monk or not a monk or in Retreat or not in Retreat is about what you do with your mind moment to moment and I I really like to share with people the encouragement that they can meditate even with very busy lives what are the main obstacles for people when they think about meditation the biggest obstacle is that many people have an assumption about meditation that's absolutely not true which is they they seem to feel you're supposed to clear your mind I hear this phrase a lot clear your mind and it's quite a damaging phrase damaging because when the person sits down to meditate and they try to clear their mind they can't the more you try to shut the Mind down the louder it shouts so then you feel really frustrated many people give up meditation because they sit there trying to silence their thoughts and the thoughts just get louder so there's sort of um a feeling of um being at war with yourself so so I find that um the struggle comes from a misconception about what meditation is so it's not about clearing the mind but it's about changing the dynamic changing the relationship between yourself and your thoughts which doesn't mean getting rid of them at all it means changing how you relate to them yeah I want to get really specific on meditation because I think it is a very helpful but very misunderstood practice before we do that though one thing that was really interesting to me in your book was I think it was in the chapter on acceptance and you were talking about this deep Retreat you went into where you felt a lot of shame because I think you said in that section you're a senior monk yet you were really really struggling someone if you just walk us through the timeline so you leave you leave America and you go to a monastery in Scotland so I'm interested in quite a lot about this this whole journey first of all what's your first day like as a monk and then I I'd love to really understand what happened in that first year because presumably you were finding it helpful you achieved a certain level of calm and contentedness but then when you go into a deeper retreat other stuff comes up which starts to lead you to feelings of Shame so perhaps you could talk me through that a little bit help me understand so I joined the monastery when I was 21 and immediately got into a daily schedule of meditation and study and also we all did a bit of work around the monastery to keep the place running and then it was in my second year that I wanted to go deeper so I went into a um a long a longish retreat it was nine months long on my own and that was quite difficult because that now I'm I'm sitting with myself with no distractions nobody to talk to and it was actually during those nine months that that decision to to stay a monk for life started to germinate that help me understand so the first year you're helping the running of the monastery you're doing what group meditations group meditation study reading about Buddhist philosophy attending lectures and I had my job was to uh do cleaning making beds uh very simple work just around the place um so the daily schedule was quite varied and we also had each other there were a lot of monks and nuns and we're all quite young and it was like a family feeling and within that you can also be quite distracted so you're still slightly running away from yourself until you really go deep into the meditation and presumably there are other people there who have also joined to run away from themselves and their lives there was a huge a huge influx of young people who'd kind of burned out somewhat some from like Rave scene and parties and some from careers that are just plummeted or whatever there's people or it's not always you know damaged people coming to a monastery there's also people who are seeking something seeking something spiritual but there was definitely a group of people who'd been through stuff in their lives and now come to this Monastery to meditate and get to grips with their minds and we talked to each other a lot and there was a real family environment and then when I went alone into a retreat the the horror began in that I was then backed into a corner with myself my own thoughts and my own feelings and in that first Retreat the the overriding um feeling was a sense of self-disgust there was this constant voice inside me you're no good you're terrible there's something wrong with you and my meditation was like a Battleground and I definitely had that misconception around meditation I I thought you have to silence that voice you have to get rid of your thoughts you have to focus focus focus and have nothing going on and I I was trying to I became really tense I was sitting in this Retreat completely tense because I was just trying to push everything away and really focus I remember staring at a spot on the carpet in front of me and just holding on to it for a dear life for hours on end I would do these long sessions four five six hours just to try and still the mind and the more I tried to do it the worse it got but it was a very very creative and um productive time because I was starting to discover how to meditate and else also how not to meditate and also the questions were coming up what am I doing with my life shall I stay a monk I I I'm finding it difficult I want to run away but actually I know it's good for me all of this conflict began and and I stayed a monk I after that Retreat is when I decided to really um go deep and take lifelong vows many people I think these days struggle with the big decisions in life they they may hear a podcast or acute Instagram meme about purpose and whatever it might be and then I feel a lot of people get paralyzed and they don't know what to do is one of the reasons that people struggle to make these big decisions this addiction to distraction the the kind of fact that when we are feeling or dealing with uncomfortable questions let's say instead of training ourselves to sit with those questions and see what comes up it's just much easier isn't it to open up an app or or watch something or pour yourself a glass of wine is that one of the things because it's it seems to me that you did this one year which was incredible with people you know you have a routine everything's variable you've got people to chat to and hang out with so it takes you to let's say level one but then when you have this nine months solo retreat as you beautifully put in the book it could be seen as an escape but it's actually quite the opposite you can't run away there's no more running away and it's quite a poignant part in the book where you said I realized how much I dislike myself hmm I I started to see how so much of what I've been doing was coming from a place of self-dislike being an actor was coming from a place of wanting other people to approve of me or love me or somehow um I couldn't love myself so I needed love on a large scale from an audience and then here I am alone in a retreat and it's just me and it was Agony that first Retreat because I I didn't like myself at all and I couldn't bear this voice in my head that was so negative and so violent and aggressive but I'm really glad I went through that because that's when the questions started to arise what shall I do shall I stay amongst I not and as you say we find it really paralyzing to make these decisions because we're so distracted and so busy and there's so many choices for me I was very lucky that I had that still quiet place from within which to make that decision and then it became after that Retreat it became really obvious to me that that's what I wanted and then when I took the vows for life it's a ceremony you go through where you decide to be a lifelong monk I I felt completely right in myself I felt all the cells in my body felt like they were in the right place do you know what I mean like everything clicked into place I'm not saying it was plain sailing from then on I still struggled but it just felt right I felt I'd write made the right decision at what point did you have to cut your hair off oh you cut your hair when you become a monk the first time so the first time in year one yeah and what's the thinking behind that oh it's it's all about renunciation letting go of your old way of life letting go of also looking a certain way dressing a certain way I mean I was very fashionable and I had nice haircut and clothes and all of that you get rid of all of that and you just become this you become a monk and you put the Monk's robes on you shave your head everybody looks the same you're sort of giving up that that uh need to have an image of a certain kind I mean I suppose you could say this is an image you you I look quite different but within Buddhism this is just a uniform for you're a monk yeah it's really interesting because how how many of us get a sense of identity from our looks or our clothes or what people are gonna say about us or our hairstyle right you know so many so many men really struggle uh when they start losing their hair because a huge part of who they are or who they perceive themselves to be is dependent on them having a full head of hair um I was at I made sweating recently and you know one of one of my old friends who haven't seen in ages has just had to shave his hair off but he said mate I couldn't I couldn't hold off any longer I kept trying to hide it but I just had to do it so that was out of the energy behind that was one of I guess desperation I'm I'm I can't hide the fact that I'm balding for much longer I've just had to do it but this is quite different isn't it this has been done out of choice to make it easier to go within because actually you're removing a lot of the externalities yeah you're you're removing the things that you're taking away the building blocks that you normally use in order to um bolster your your sense of who you are so you have to really strip that down into you and your mind and your thoughts and your your psychology you're taking away all of these externals so what's the Practical take home for someone who doesn't want to be a monk at least not yet and they go yeah well you know my appearance is a big part of who I am and that's fine that's absolutely that's fine of course everything's fine it's all about is this making you suffer is this not making you suffer and how can you change that so as I say I'm not here to try and persuade everybody to become monks it's just one way of doing it but I really want to persuade everybody to meditate even if that is only for 10 or 15 minutes a day because the more you meditate the more you start to find an inner sense of happiness and strength and these external Things become secondary rather than primary what is it about meditation that helps us to realize this do you think is that you you you start to um become less controlled by negative thoughts and feelings and you start to discover how you can cultivate positive thoughts and feelings so you you start to free yourself and you start to um tap into an inner happiness that you never knew was there you always thought it was outside so you you we got so obsessed with the externals and then you discover something inside yourself that's a deep kind of peace and contentment and the more you can tap into that the more um free you become the more happy you become and also the more you can give to others so your relationship with others starts to change and that's where compassion starts to enter the picture many people say tried meditation it's not for me my running is my meditation my surfing is my meditation my you know fill in the blank is my meditation what's your perspective on that I do have this um come up a lot when I'm explaining meditation and sometimes people say oh what you've explained is exactly what happens to me when I'm in the gym or when I'm doing yoga or running so why do you need me to now do something different and my answer to that would be well that definitely gives you a taste maybe of what meditation could feel like but you can't take that with you everywhere if you are running or in the gym or doing something and that sends you into that kind of calm balance state you can't then get the treadmill out in the middle of a meeting at work when you're stressed you you if you need the equipment then your meditation is is dependent on those situations meditation is something you take with you anywhere wherever you go without needing to be uh doing particularly think physical things so it's it's much more um it's portable yeah if I reflect on my own life I probably a few years ago may have also felt that yeah but this other activity is meditative for me but I but I really do think there's something quite special and uniquely powerful about the practice of meditation once you get over some of these humps or misconceptions and you can experience this kind of the way I put it and I'm I'm not a monk like you I've not had the years of experience meditating as you have in my limited experience comparatively to yours when I am meditating regularly I feel the way I interrupt the world is different it's calmer it's more intentional as you say you put that real distance between you and the thoughts and you know you don't have to buy into them and they can come and go but it's not always that easy for people to get to that point is it yeah and it's it again it's back to this problem of thinking I've got to clear my mind and so now I'm sitting down to meditate and then all these thoughts are coming up and I want to get rid of them and I'm terrible at meditation and I'm a failure and I'm gonna go and try something else that that's the pattern that often people go through whereas if you really start to understand that it's not about clearing the mind but changing the way you relate to the thoughts then the work can start to become quite interesting so what you start to do is you you meditate using at first you you you use something as a focus such as your breathing in some traditions they use Mantra or they use all kinds of things but breathing is the most common so you're focusing on your breathing and then thoughts come and that doesn't mean you failed it means now you have a chance to work with the thoughts so what happens is you're focusing on your breathing and then your mind wonders into distraction it's really interesting that you don't notice the Mind wandering you find out later yeah it's not that you you see your mind leave the breath and go for a walk it's more that you kind of wake up five minutes later in your head somewhere else you're suddenly planning a menu or thinking of something you saw on TV yesterday or you're skiing in the mountains or whatever you know you're somewhere else and you you realize you've got lost that is meditation is noticing that you got distracted so you're now back in the awareness you're you're aware so can we say that the distraction is actually good because it helps you build the muscle yes so if you weren't getting distracted you would have no weight on the machine as it were you wouldn't have is that okay you've been meditating for what 30 years do you still get distracted during meditation yes yes and distraction is good distraction is good because distraction is what makes you stronger so your mind wonders you realize your mind has wandered it could be a while before you realize you know five ten minutes even and then you suddenly oh where was I but then you gently come back to the breath and that's what builds strength every time you come back to the Breath You Are gaining power over your thoughts because you're making a decision to to gently bring yourself back to the present moment so the thought that took you away is precisely what brings you back so instead of considering that a failure oh meditation's not for me I'm not doing it right my mind's not clear I'm thinking about my to-do list it's even reframing that and going no this is good because I've just noticed that I'm no longer on my breath I'm on my to-do list let me bring it back let me lift the weight in my mind back to the present moment back to my breath and the more often I do that the better I train myself to be more focused exactly and more present it's just like lifting weights you you every time you come back you are developing muscle so if coming back to the breath is what makes you strong you have to have somewhere to come back from so the thought that took you away is good because it's the thing you come back from yeah so this is very subtle and very powerful to to understand this means that you no longer feel that you're at war with your own mind when you meditate the thoughts and distractions that keep taking you away are part of the process and when somebody discovers this their whole relationship with meditation changes they no longer feel like a failure for having a Wandering mind I hear so many people say oh I tried meditation but my mind was too busy I was I was rubbish at it and I I want to take those people and say no that's not what it's about the the busier the better in a way it's almost it's almost like you had a better workout oh no I was lifting really heavy weights today because all I could think about was my to-do list and my emails and because as you say it's interesting we don't we don't realize when we leave the breath because otherwise we would be present and know that we were leaving the breath but we do realize at some points that in fact there's a really nice meditation in the book is it the breath counting one where you say start off so even get to seven and then over time build up could you just talk us through that was I think that's a really nice practical exercise that I think anyone listening or watching this if they were so inspired to do so could probably give this a go later on today or even tomorrow morning yeah yeah you you you are focusing on your breathing without changing the breathing you're not trying to breathe deeply or slowly or anything just breathe normally and you can mentally count the cycles of breath so in and out is one in and out is to and you will get distracted and you will lose count but you will and you know what I was in bed this morning and because I've been reading your book and I'm you know I knew you'd be coming to the studio I was in bed this morning when I woke up and you know I know somebody will say you shouldn't do this lying down but I was lying down I thought I'm gonna do this breath Counting and I I thought I wouldn't get distracted and somehow after five I did get distracted and I was really trying to concentrate to stay focused so it is incredible how much you do get distracted and that's why even trying to get to Seven it it sounds quite easy but you know we may be surprised how quickly our minds get distracted yes it's it's amazing and and the whole point is just to keep coming back to the breath and start the numbers again and you you start to get better at it and you start to get more focused but you're not feeling like a failure because the mind wandered the wandering mind is part of the thing that makes you strong because every time you come back to that Focus you are gaining strength and you're gaining authority over your thoughts and it's not just an exercise for the sake of mental gymnastics you know I can count up to seven or ten or whatever the the deeper benefit is that you're learning how not to suffer because suffering comes through our mind getting locked into a suffering state whatever is going on outside of us is secondary what's primary is how our mind reacts to that so stuff is going wrong in my life and I'm caught up in misery about it I'm caught up in a sense of um Despair and my mind is locked into that despair I don't know how to get out of it so I'm suffering so if I meditate every day I'm learning how to get myself out of the thought and back to the present moment thought or emotion I'm learning how not to let that thought or emotion swamp me or control me too much so then I'm going to start to suffer less it means that when I get locked into the suffering I can learn how to how to not be so um glued into it but also meditation teaches you how to work creatively with the suffering and it's not always about just let go and come back to the breath it's also about how to develop a relationship with your own pain and and that for me has been a key learning in my life and what I've tried to also Express in this book is how the the the horror that we sometimes go through emotionally can be incredibly transformative if you learn how to work with it differently and and that's what started to um become the main theme of my second Retreat so I talked about that first Retreat which was a few or nine months long and then years later I went into a much longer retreat um so so what happened to me was I became a lifelong Monk and um carried on living at the monastery but then I started to um the the the um teachers who run the monastery started to ask me to give simple classes in meditation and Buddhist philosophy I started to become more busy in that sense going around teaching a bit I even started to work in in hospitals and schools and prisons and all kinds of environments where I was taking kind of meditation teachings into those spaces um but there was always a sense in me that I wasn't really going deeply enough into my own training and I wanted to do more retreat so the opportunity came up to then disengage from all of that and go back into retreat um 12 years into being a monk and the opportunity came up to do a four year long Meditation Retreat in a group it's in a group but you're very much alone so 20 monks 21 I think we went into a kind of Farmhouse which had been converted into a retreat center on an island off the coast of Scotland and you each have your own room and you're you're meditating all day in that room and you only meet at meal times or there's some group meditations but it is a very solitary experience and it was during that Retreat that um I started to really suffer a lot and then start to learn how to work with that suffering yeah so fascinating as you were describing this sort of solitary retreats I remembered in my mind a conversation I had maybe three years ago now on the podcast with a chap called John McAvoy who you know he has a he has a fascinating story but essentially he was one of Britain's Most Wanted men maybe 10 years ago he was convicted with two life sentences he was then locked up in one of Britain's one of Europe's high security presence and I'm not necessarily saying this is a good thing but I remember one point he put himself into a solitary prison cell for a year because he wouldn't comply in his mind he wasn't going to give in to the prison guards and the system so according to his framework the framework through which he and his wider family saw life he was going to play that game so even in the midst of solitary confinement he had control over his mind he would he wasn't allowed outside or in the gym so he did a prison workout every day in his prison cell because I think he read in the Nelson Mandela book that Nelson Mandela when he was in jail would run on the spot for 45 minutes and I'm slightly going off topic but the point I guess I'm trying to make is even though then John transformed himself and is now free and now inspiring children and people all over the world with this incredible story it was amazing hearing from him even in solitary confinement if he could get his mind right he was still able to thrive according to what his definition of thriving was back then so it's not necessarily punishment for us if we can get our minds right does that make sense I mean you've been there and done this I haven't I wasn't in John's prison cell I've certainly not done these sort of deep Retreats it's interesting because before I went into my four-year Retreat I was teaching meditation in a prison in Cardiff right and I was going into the this prison and giving uh spending whole whole days there doing classes and it felt to me like a retreat it had the same kind of atmosphere and I said to the prisoners how long are you in here for and some of them said one year two years three years for I said well I'm actually about to voluntarily incarcerate myself for four years and they laughed their heads off and they thought I was completely crazy but then I explained longer more and I said I'm I'm doing this because it will help my meditation practice and it will help me to learn more about the mind so that I can eventually hopefully help others could you see your prison sentence as a Meditation Retreat could you take it that way you're in here anyway you may as well reframe the the the thinking about it and some of them were quite interested in that concept and we talked more deeply about it that they could use the environment to enhance their meditation and one of the main things I noticed in the prison was how noisy it was so in one sense it's like a retreat in that it's very enclosed of course and you're in one place but there's this constant noise of metal clanging against metal with the doors that there's all electric doors now no keys and so there's constant shutting of doors and I said to them that could be your meditation every time you hear the the sound of harsh sound of metal use that as a mindful moment and then you're reframing how you view the oppressed oppressive nature of that sound it becomes your meditation so anything can become a Meditation Retreat in that sense yeah I love that the power of reframing yeah I think yesterday I was watching a video on YouTube if you maybe at Google and you were recounting a story that perhaps you could share here if you can remember I think you just flown back overnight from America you had slight you were tired you're in London you're in the underground and it was hot and sweating and you had you had pain in your shoulder and do you remember that story because that is another powerful example of reframing yeah I was on the tube in London and I was tired and I was feeling grumpy and feeling stressed and so monks are allowed to feel grumpy and stressed yeah definitely and I caught myself in that moment feeling like that and I thought why don't you meditate right now and so I took a decision to be mindful in that moment and I decided to time it from stop to stop on the tube so from one stop to the next I would try and be mindful then I would just let go and let my mind wander and then it alternate with the next stop and what does that mean be mindful feel the ground under your feet relax your shoulders be aware of your body and and how does just simple basic question about how does that help someone to do that why should they think about being mindful when on the tube because you you are then um changing your relationship with stress so I was tired I would think I was late for an appointment I had aching shoulders but through being mindful I started to enjoy the moment so the feeling of the strap of the bag on my shoulder became like a feeling of massage pulling the shoulder down and relaxing me the there's the stress in my stomach the kind of knotted up stomach started to relax I feel the ground under my feet I become aware of my breathing and I got off the tube feeling younger feeling more refreshed I literally felt 10 years younger when I was just changing your attitude yes because the the the situation I was in that was so automatically making me more tired and more stressed now becomes something positive yeah it becomes a training opportunity and then you start to look forward to traffic jams and being stuck on trains and standing in queues because they become training opportunities this is a very powerful way of using mindfulness in stressful situations so that you start to change how you view the stress it becomes quite interesting to you it becomes something that makes you grow rather than shuts you down yeah I really love that I'm thinking that talk you also said how you know in the tube you're hot and you're sweaty you know those people pay good money to have a sauna in their house or go to a sauna for that experience exactly how you see it is how it is yeah are you hot because you're in a sauna or why are you hot because you're in the tube in rush hour heat is heat what is your relationship with that heat and you can change that yeah or you're intentionally going into a deep four-year Retreat where you can't do this and you can't do that and you're going to be stuck in one room you can't talk or not out of choice because of something you've done which society deems unacceptable you're in a prison cell and I really don't think this is as far-fetched as some people may initially perceive it to be our perception is everything and you mentioned the word stress I'm very interested in how you view stress because I've my feeling on stress is that is anything inherently stressful well you could make the case that it's only really stressful if we choose to look at it as stress do you know what I mean a lot of it is created in inside our minds not maybe not all of it but maybe all of it on on it's very very deepest level stress is internally generated by our response to the situation I think yeah I would say stress is resistance there's a resistance to the the situation there's a feeling of I want this to go away I don't like this yeah and and the resistance creates more resistance because it's a habit that feeds itself and if you learn to um sort of um dismantle the resistance then where where is the stress you can start to be in conventionally stressful situations but be okay and then of course the fear comes up well would that make me passive would I become a doormat will people walk all over me I don't think so because I think you will start to make conscious healthy choices in terms of what you do with your life and what you do with your time but when stress comes at you and you there's nothing you can do about it you can change your mental attitude to it yeah and I think meditation teaches us that doesn't it as you say it helps change our relationship with our thoughts but it's not just for that 10 minute meditation is that you want that principle then to underpin the rest of your life yeah it's like exercise you if you go to the gym for half an hour you're you're building muscle you the muscle doesn't just deflate when you walk out of the gym door it goes with you especially if you're doing training every day so you do meditation every day and the idea is that it carries over into your daily life the strength that you build in meditation becomes the strength you experience throughout your daily life stress is resistance then it seems like the opposite of stress may be acceptance yeah you've written a whole chapter on acceptance in the new book what is acceptance so I always used to think acceptance was something incredibly grim and depressing my teachers constantly used to tell me you need to learn how to accept you need to accept yourself accept your emotions accept your pain and suffering and I thought what they were trying to tell me was you've got to put up with it I thought acceptance was a kind of grim resignation oh you just kind of miserably carry this burden forever and you just face it and then I started to discover actually during that long four-year retreat that acceptance is much more to do with um embracing the situation with compassion loving kindness and a sense of openness and then your relationship with pain starts to change the thing that you're pushing away and disliking and and finding oppressive you start to welcome it you kind of move into it and become very much okay with it it's a positive experience acceptance is an active rather than a passive State of Mind why do people struggle with exceptions because of our deeply ingrained habit of resistance resistant resisting pain resisting suffering which of course is as a natural part of the human biology is to resist pain and suffering but it's become much more elaborate in Modern Life and I think it's because partly you know we live in a culture that constantly promises us Comfort all the time all the products we buy all the things we've created are to increase our levels of comfort and that's made us more um unable to accept discomfort so we've got the temperature control just right in our house we've got the food just right we've got everything just how we like it and that's made us less resilient so any small amount of discomfort that comes along we find really uh repulsive we want to get rid of it and it's made us um more vulnerable you mentioned the word suffering quite a lot in this conversation and that is a word that many of us associate with Buddhism the idea that life is suffering you sort of raise the question in your book as to whether suffering is the best word because that wasn't the word that the Buddha used was it could you just help us understand when you talk about suffering which could be seen as quite a negative words like what exactly do you mean this is always something that's sort of misunderstood about Buddhism is that you read a Buddhist book and it says life is suffering and then you put the book down thinking well that I don't really want to read that Buddhism sounds incredibly pessimistic oh they're they're that's the the religion that believes everything is suffering that's not really true that's not how the Buddha described it the Buddha obviously didn't use the word suffering it's been translated from the words he used the more accurate term would be um there there is always something missing or is always a sense of in incompleteness about everything we experience we're always looking for something and never quite finding it there's a sense of dissatisfaction a sense of um discontentment uh not enough things aren't enough and they were so driven by that feeling that we're always looking for something and all the things we do seem to make us keep looking for more and then then of course we can have suffering which really feels like suffering there's there's physical pain emotional pain terrible things can happen in our life so there are many levels to suffering there's there's a more manifest suffering and the more subtle dissatisfaction that bubbles away underneath everything and the Buddha simply said this is something very inevitable in our lives but we don't have to suffer about it we don't have to we don't have to um we can sink or swim we can learn to work with it rather than be oppressed by it is it possible to transcend that that's the whole idea of Buddhism is that you start to work towards your own freedom and work towards helping other people find freedom freedom from what freedom from that sense of constant limitation constant sense of uh unease um uncertainty anything could go wrong our life is like a house of cards if one card is taken away the whole thing might collapse that vulnerability we can learn to transcend that through discovering the the beauty of our own minds the the strength of our own minds have you transcended it no no no I'm still on the path I'm still on the path I'm still very much on the journey I'm very much about day to day you know each day trying to just work on myself work on my mind the main thing is to try to become more compassionate to myself and to others and to try to be of help be of service it's an ever-evolving thing how does someone like you who it sounds as though many years ago in your early twenties were driven by external validation that feeling of lack inside LED you to engage in all kinds of different activities and there's probably a lot of ego involved that may maybe showed up in many different ways now what 20 30 years on you have your second book out you're being celebrated right the book people are writing rave reviews about your book you have some very famous people who have given beautiful testimonials and I can see why because it is a fabulous reads it really is so that could be a trap here whereby you went off to a monastery to make peace with things and work on your minds and you'd be doing that for a number of years how do you stop falling into the Trap that many humans do around book promotion and let's say your book charts really well and reaches a lot of people and you go on TV and you talk about it these things can be very very seductive and they can feed the human ego are you aware of this that you go into a promotion period is it something that's come up or do you feel you're sort of beyond that now I'm not beyond that I'm I'm a human being and of course there's ego and of course there's there's uh you you you you get a buzz when you when things are going well and you just have to be aware of that you just have to notice that in yourself and you know if I just wanted to be famous I wouldn't write books about meditation there are much much easier ways to do it um my subject matter is is very much about trying to help people and so the aim of the book is to give benefit to people and what really really excites me is when people tell me oh I read something in your book that has really helped me as a person to to meditate or to suffer less I get enormous pleasure from that sometimes people run across the street and say oh I've read your book or whatever and and it's really helped me and that's really really a beautiful experience I can't I get that and you can see from how many scribbles I've got all over your new book how much this one connected with me one of the bits that I've been thinking about a lot and I was actually discussing with my 10 year old daughter over dinner last night was the chapter on emotions so I'd first like you to explain how do you see emotions you know what is an emotion and then the idea that really has consumed my thoughts over the last 24 hours is this idea in Buddhism that you write about that there are only three real emotions fear anger and desire now that is incredibly interesting to me so I'd love to talk about that so emotions are um we sort of lump them together in terms of meditation thoughts or in thoughts and emotions you know when we're practicing meditation our mind might get distracted by a thought or a feeling or an emotion they're all just part of the same package which is the the distractions in our mind that the ma that we get locked into and we we get caught up in and the stories and all of that um but emotions are sort of thoughts with more energy with more with more power to them and we often get locked into those States those emotional states um traditionally in Buddhism we do talk about these three basic emotions which are um fear uh wanting and not wanting for your desire and anger um out of those come many other ones you know this sort of um they Branch out into jealousy hatred all sort of Downstream aren't there yeah they all kind of arise out of these three basic energies and um could we even make the case someone knows that fear really is the root emotion the anger and desire sort of this is what I was chatting about with my daughter last night was this yeah are they not all underpinned by the energy of fear that's the point I tried to make in the book is that it's all coming from fear we have this basic fear of not getting what we want or getting what we don't want and that drives us pretty much everything we do is based on I need to get something I need to get away from something and that's a kind of fear isn't it if I take a sip from this water from the from this cup of water I'm experiencing wanting the water and wanting to get away from my thirst and I'm I'm there's a fear there there's a fear of The Thirst I can't just sit with the thirst of course we need to drink water I'm not suggesting don't drink water and just sit sit with your sphere you die if you did that but it's an interesting uh metaphor for the everything we do in life is coming from a place of I I'm afraid I won't get what I want or I'm afraid I might get what I don't want and from there comes all of our different emotions and the point I try to make in the book is that emotions aren't there's nothing wrong with them uh sometimes people think oh Buddhism means you're supposed to just get rid of all your emotions and become this kind of blank canvas when I first became a monk I remember running to a phone box in those days there were no mobile phones run into a phone box and phoning my aunt and saying I've joined this Monastery and I'm a bit worried that they're going to take all my emotions away and I'm gonna become this kind of automaton this kind of robot I thought that's what you what you become if you meditate too much and she said don't worry you'll always have emotions and it was as I carried on practicing it became really obvious to me that we're not here to get rid of our emotions there's nothing wrong with them um but we do want to be less negatively influenced by them if we're so driven by fear or driven by wanting or driven by anger we're going to suffer then at a deeper level I would say the the the the Buddhist approach to emotions is to understand that they are they're masking something deeper emotions are some we use the word obscurations or uh veils they're like veils hiding something and they're they're they are distracting us from our true nature that when we're caught up in in desire anger fear Etc we're sort of distracted by some story and we can go beneath the emotion into our Essence and discover peace and happiness inside the emotions are almost helping us get there is that essentially one of the things that we realize through meditation that actually Underneath It All We are already calm and happy and peaceful to make sure you're taking action after watching this video I have created a free breathing guide that's going to help you reduce stress calm your minds and boost your energy in this guide I share with you six really simple breathing practices that work immediately even just one minute a day will start to make a big difference to receive your free guides all you have to do is click on the link in the description box below what is the these things sort of floats on the top and if we don't get too attached to those emotions and think that we are our thoughts and our emotions if we can sit behind it in meditation and see it and bring ourselves back to ourselves away from that emotion or that thought is that how meditation helps us here by putting that distance there it can be but I I'm wary of the word distance because it sounds a little bit like denial doesn't it and and we could get that wrong we could start to think I need to distance myself from my emotions and be sort of dispassionate and just be the Observer could the person then get stuck in denial suppression I think it's possible so I think we have to really be be careful about that and understand that sometimes you've got to use the emotion as your meditation and through doing that you will go beyond it so as you said earlier on feel and experience where is this emotion in my body and then what let's you know and then then over time as you say it's going to transform it's going to dissipate and I guess that's how you realize what it really is well that's that's definitely been a major part and still is a major part of my own practice is that when I am experiencing painful emotions um if I if I learn to work with them very directly they become transformative but only when we can do that and there are times we can do that in times we can't do that and in in my very long retreat I I spent two years unable to do that and suffered like crazy and then things started to change when I learned how to kind of move into the emotion rather than push it away you've been on a very deep and long journey with meditation for someone who's not interested in being a monk who's just struggling a little bit with their life and maybe has some of these low-grade addictions that we've been talking about how quickly can 10 minutes of meditation a day start to make a difference for them what I found very exciting was to hear from neuroscientists that when they do MRI scans on people who meditate they notice Visible Changes in the brain even after a few days of somebody doing 10 minutes of meditation a day when I heard that I thought that's incredibly valuable information because it gives us a lot of Hope and encouragement if you do 10 minutes of meditation a day after four or five days you're not necessarily going to feel different but to know that in a brain scan your brain will look healthier is very encouraging it's a little bit like exercise if you go to the gym or if you eat the right food you're not going to immediately lose weight or build muscle but you know it works because the science is there to back it it's the same with meditation so if you meditate every day it's not after four or five days but after a while you you will start to feel more calm less stressed more happy you start to find there's a place within yourself that you can go to where you can find the answers you can find the peace and happiness that you were looking for and the more you're connecting with that place the happier you become and also the more compassionate you become this is not just a kind of self-serving um exercises so that you can also open your heart to others and when you start to live from a place of compassion you start to feel your meditation has been worth it anger is one of these three core emotions and anger is something that we see a lot of around us in society you say in the book that we can only feel anger if we already have the potential for it inside of us and anger leads to more anger can you expand a little bit so in the book when I talk about anger the point I'm trying to make is that we often feel angry with somebody or about something and what's very important is to look at the anger itself rather than the thing or the person we're angry with or about because until we do that anger is just a habit that kind of proliferates and feeds into more and more anger and when I say anger I'm talking about a whole range of experiences anger dislike hatred but also just mild irritation and it can be with a person it can be with a thing it can be with a physical sensation in the body just a sense of dislike and it just creates more of itself and we never seem to find Freedom from it until we look at the anger itself so when I say we can only feel anger if we have the potential for it I mean there's the there's the capacity in us to feel anger and it's bubbling away and then things come along that kind of spark it or or or wake it up looking at the anger itself through meditation is where you take away the story I'm angry because he did this she did that and you meditate on the feeling in your mind which is often physical as well you feel a kind of rage and a burning inside you or a coldness inside you and when you meditate on that through focusing on it without trying to tell stories about it without trying to push it away but you just feel it as it is it will start to transform and start to dismantle start to melt start to move and that's how you find freedom within the anger some people will say that I have every right to feel angry because that person did this sure but then who's suffering the person has gone away they did what they did and yeah I could say I'm Justified I'm feeling anger but now who's suffering I'm suffering every time my mind sinks into the anger I'm re-traumatizing myself so forgiveness is not actually about the other person you're not giving them forgiveness forgiveness is you dropping the burden the Buddha described it as like holding a hot coal in your hand you just hold it and it burns you but if you put the coal down you won't be burnt so when you can let go of your anger it doesn't mean you've lost the battle or they've won or you've allowed them to abuse you it means that you're freeing yourself from from that Rage or that blame or that sense of Despair or why me it's lip it's liberating yourself from suffering whenever I feel a heavy emotion come up let's say anger for example I've trained myself to look at these things as opportunities which I think very much speaks to the content in the book that these are all opportunities for us to transform ourselves like had you not experienced that anger well there could be two things going on one you could be super Zen and calm and have trained yourself to reframe everything which I do believe is possible for some people I I really feel in my own life I've trained myself to to the point where lots of events that were triggering five ten years ago are no longer through consistent practice and seeing these as opportunities so that's one uh potential reason for that but it could also be that oh wow there's something I didn't know I had inside me that this situation now has brought up okay great I don't like it necessarily but this situation that's come up this social friction has given me a chance now to go oh what is this anger where has it come from what is underpinning it do you see it in a similar way that is really the message of my book is that the the hard times we go through are opportunities because they show us something about ourselves that we can work on and the things that make us suffering life we step back and see it's our emotion our reaction how we feel that's making us suffer and if we can learn to work with that we might feel a sense of gratitude that this thing that has happened has been awful but now I'm learning to work with it so the thing was quite useful you feel grateful for life's difficulties and that sounds like a very idealistic uh notion but it's a moment-to-moment thing in terms of meditation and kind of leaning into the pain leaning into the discomfort your your attitude towards it changes it becomes something highly useful it's also a more empowering way to live because it means then that you have huge sense of agency over your life because the alternative is that you're a victim to life right that your emotions the way you feel is dependent on everything going a certain way everyone treating you a certain way and that's a pretty vulnerable place to be I think incredibly vulnerable and I think many of us live in that place of hoping things go our way and trying to manipulate life so it will go our way it's much more liberating and Powerful to think well whatever happens I'm going to work with it I'm gonna I'm gonna use this in meditation uh in the book I use the example of compost compost makes your garden grow but what's compost made from it's made from rotten vegetables all the things you'd normally Chuck away you can use it as fertilizer for your field or your garden so all the things in your life that normally you would think I just got to get rid of this bring them together and use them as part of your meditation path that's how you grow through suffering and pain yeah that's a peaceful metaphor I definitely feel grateful for difficulties I've had because they've really really helped me to grow even when at the time it was just horrific you you when you use meditation in those moments the thing changes and then you look back and realize that that was your greatest strength was the the thing that feel felt like your deepest weakness and I found this very much when I went into that long four-year retreat is that 10 days into the retreat I crashed and that was a very shocking experience for me because I'd signed up for this four-year Retreat I was already I'd been a monk already for 12 years I was a bit more senior than the other people in there and then suddenly after 10 days I'm just totally falling apart I mean just crying all the time going into Panic going into deep anxiety then it kind of shifted into a a really horrible depression that went on for a couple of years I mean the two first two years of the retreat I was really not handling it at all and and at one point I thought I would have to leave I just couldn't take it anymore but what shifted for me was when it really reached rock bottom and there was nowhere else to go but up I found ways to stop fighting the suffering because I started to think this is the thing that has always tormented me is this fear and this habits of depression that were coming up again and again during my life it's what had been tormenting me as an actor and what led to the burnout then you become a monk you maybe suppress it a little bit but then you were in Retreat and it comes up so I had to work with it and what really changed for me was when I learned how to give compassion to those feelings because at first there was a terrible sense of Shame I shouldn't be depressed I'm a monk I've already been teaching meditation here on here I am depressed how shocking how shameful I mean this is a cultural thing as well isn't it we have this terrible culture around shame around mental health there's something wrong with us and we shouldn't feel this way so there I am in Retreat depressed and feeling ashamed about the depression but then when I learned how to give a sense of compassion and love to those feelings it really started to shift and so what I would do is I would sit there on my meditation cushion and I would start to feel this this Darkness arise in me this Darkness the the depression and it was mixed with anxiety this Darkness mixed with panic I would start to feel it and it was a very physical feeling and I would I learned how to move move closer to it with with a sense of compassion to give compassion to that part of myself that I had hated so much and the more I did that the more it started to shift and change and relax and open up and this awful feeling inside me started to melt it's like the the pain starts to melt and then you start to feel that this is the work you're doing and this this misery this pain is is like compost that's making your field grow and the thing that you've always hated about yourself becomes your strongest Ally and so now I look back at those times of all those panic attacks and I think gosh they were they were like a an amazing opportunity and I'm grateful I am incredibly grateful for all of that suffering it's helped me so much and hopefully it's giving me knowledge and information that I can then pass on to others through these books could any part of that be seen as off-putting and and what I mean by that top 10 is you had already been a monk for so long at that point yet you still went into this in a world full of torment so instead of putting in the sense that wow I'm better off just scrolling on social media and having a bottle of wine every evening because if if it took you that long you left to be a monk you did all that meditation and then you're still struggling is there any hope that I will get to that point everybody's different everybody's different and I'm a very extreme case yeah I really have had a lot of mental torment in my life that has been knocking on the door inside me to to be addressed and I had to for myself go into these very long intensive retreats to work out how to address it but that's not the way for everybody I have many friends who who have very busy lives they have families they have jobs and they meditate every day within their own schedule for half an hour 20 minutes whatever and they're also evolving in their way it's not that one way is better than another or it's more that you find the way that's useful for you and I feel that my um my biggest habit has always been to run away and so in my kind of wild party days I was running away then I became a monk and I found a way to run away within that by just kind of skimming the surface and then when I went into Retreat I couldn't run away and I needed to retreat to learn how not to run away but other people don't have that kind of problem or they can they can develop into using different tools if we meditate regularly if we use a lot of the meditation practices that you outline in your book and we start to transform ourselves we transform our minds we get to a place where we're not as Reliant anymore on externalities we don't need to buy things acquire things acquire status have people treat us a certain way in order for us to feel content if and when you get to that point where you don't need things from outside to make you feel good how does that fit alongside the fact that we're social animals that we can't really live and exist and survive just by ourselves that we've always relied on others our tribe our community our family are those two ideas mutually exclusive or can they set alongside each other I think they support each other because I think the more strong we become inside ourselves and the more the more we can get in touch with our own minds the more we can express compassion and then our need for Community for tribe for being a social animal becomes the the the the the ground in which we can practice compassion we can connect to others with a with a deep wish to benefit them and to help them learn how not to suffer because compassion is not only about feeling sorry for people or picking them up when they fall down it's about really trying to understand what makes somebody tick and how to help them to develop themselves how to help them find ways out of their own pain and suffering so compassion is the the the key element in all of this otherwise it becomes just a kind of selfish exercise of well I'm going to free myself and I don't care about everybody else that would be Dreadful wouldn't it yeah no I love that I completely agree it's something you talk about in the book this idea that you're meditating for yourself and for the people and the world around you it's not actually separate and the way I see those two things I as I say I agree they're not mutually exclusive at all it's something I've been pondering for a few months now it's something I'm writing about actually at the moment and I also look at it in the in the view of how do we best contribute to our tribe to the people around us well we do it when we're stable and secure in ourselves when we're less needy right when we don't need them to always prop us up and give us something because we're lacking something inside so I kind of feel that we can become minimally Reliant ourselves on externalities but that then enables us to have other people rely on us and we also are better able to rely on others when we actually become more complete in ourselves I would say that if you change your relationship with yourself and and improve that and transform that that becomes the source for improved relationships with others the the compassion for yourself and compassion for others work together as a Unity yeah there was also this section in the book where you were talking about love I think it was when we talked about all these emotions and that if you love you have the capacity for hate that was really really interesting to me but that's not all forms of Love is it no I was talking about conditional love and there's such a difference between unconditional love and conditional love I mean the closest example we we have to Unconditional Love Is The Love between parents and children when you when you're a parent and you you love your child unconditionally no matter what you know it's not that you would stop loving them um at a certain point you that there's that pure love of not wanting something back but so often we get into love relationships where I love you because I love you if I love you when um there's the expectation that you need you need to love me back or or if you if you break the rules in some way I will stop loving you and and that kind of love turns to hate so easily it kind of oscillates between love and hate all the time where uh if my expectations have not been met I'm going to feel angry and I'm going to feel that the love I've done so much for you and what have I got back and that kind of almost like a business transaction and I think the unconditional love that people experience between parents and children could become a almost like a model for the love we could try to develop for all beings in Buddhism we always say mother sentient beings which is to say that all beings have been our mother Life After Life After Life or in in this life now we could try to see that the same way we would do anything for our own mother could we also have that relationship with other beings animals humans anywhere so that becomes the the sort of source for developing deeper and deeper compassion using unconditional love as the as the tool yeah it's so beautiful my wife and I were were talking last weekend about love for children love for our children and we both said that we we cannot imagine or fathom any situation at all where we would not still with all our hearts love our children yeah and I think many parents hopefully all parents but I think many parents know that feeling I'm not saying it's exclusive to parents no I I accept that many people these days choose not to be parents for a whole variety of different reasons and potentially can experience that love in in a different way I I I think that's absolutely possible but it would be nice wouldn't it if we could extend that and apply that to everyone so it's no longer oh just for our children could we could we approach everyone with that I mean that seems like pie in the sky from where we currently are in society I think it's a noble aim but it's also something that we can argue is an achievable aim I think it's a step by step I think we can use that feeling uh that we have for close relatives and then expand it out so in my book I give meditation techniques where you start by thinking of your parent or your child or your pet or somebody you would do anything for somebody where if you think of that person your heart just melts and opens you you have unconditional love you start by thinking of them and then once the the feeling of love Is Just naturally flowing you start to think of other people and send the love to them as well and eventually to strangers and even people you don't like or people you have difficulties with so you're you have the feeling of Love anyway as your potential because you experience it towards certain people and then you expand it out you build on it compassion for everything and everyone that's that's really the whole point of of meditation I love everything you're talking about everything you're writing about I think it's so so important I want to finish off with another one of your quotes from the book which is the most courageous and compassionate thing we can ever do is to learn how to be with ourselves now I know we've already touched on this but I really want to highlight this point many people want to meditate but they try and they give up you explained on multiple occasions in this podcast and in many other interviews I've seen you gave online why you believe meditation can be transformative I think for everyone so given that it's one of the most courageous and compassionate things we can do what are some of your words or thoughts for that person who's a bit skeptical or who has tried before and failed how would you convince them or maybe I'll say Inspire them to try again you can't fail at meditation because meditation is is where you just do nothing I mean you are literally sitting there doing nothing and that's the beauty of it is that you're not doing something in order to become a better person you're doing nothing and you're undoing all the things you normally do to run away from yourself and through doing nothing you get closer to your essence and you discover happiness so you're literally relaxing into what you already are so it's very hard to fail at that because you're just being you the sense of failure comes from thinking you need to do something and thinking you need to meditate in a very kind of aggressive manner of clearing the Mind pushing the thoughts away that's the doing it's all about undoing and I think that's the key message is just sit with your mind and just let it be don't try to make it different don't try to uh Chase it away just let it be and this is a sense of true compassion in the moment I love it I love your work I absolutely adore this latest book handbook for hard times and Monk's guide to Fearless living that's coming on the show thank you so much for more life-changing wisdom check out this conversation I had with sudguru you think you have a job you think you have money you think you have wealth you think you're a family no the only thing that you have is life you're just alive for a brief time so this brief time if you're still alive today

Channel: Dr Rangan Chatterjee

Views: 582,577

Keywords: the4pillarplan, thestresssolution, feelbetterin5, wellness, drchatterjee, feelbetterlivemore, ranganchatterjee, 4pillars, drchatterjee podcast, health tips, nutrition tips, health hacks, live longer, age in reverse, self help, self improvement, self development, personal development, motivation, inspiration, health interview

Id: lOZv5YZ0iUc

Length: 115min 54sec (6954 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 27 2023