Fifteen Seconds Festival 2016 – Keynote Gelong Thubten, Kagyu Samye Ling Monastery

a lot of people think that meditation means you you sort of remove all your thoughts and feelings and they think would that be freedom that to me would not be freedom that would be like being unconscious or in a coma and we're certainly not meditating to put ourselves into a coma there are easier ways of doing that so let's not think that meditation means removing the faults it's really important to understand this because many people try meditation and then they say oh I can't do that because I thinking all the time I can't stop thinking so it's very different it's not like that what we do in meditation is we use exercises to focus the mind on the present moment we might use our breathing we might use physical sensations sounds visual objects visualizations as many techniques you choose one and you focus in your mind and then there is thinking the mind starts to wonder there are thoughts there are emotions there are distractions the mind goes here the mind goes there well that for a start shows us that our mind is not free because it's not doing what we wanted to do we want to sit there for five minutes or 10 minutes meditating and our mind is busy thinking what should I have for lunch so the mind is not doing what we want it to do and that's basically why we suffer in life because our mind goes to places we don't want it to go so we learn to train train the mind so what does that involve it involves focusing so maybe you're focusing on your breathing or sound or something like that and then the mind is thinking the mind is wandering and you learn to capture it it's like capturing and bringing it back very gently just capture the awareness and bring it back to the present moment and then it floats off again and then you bring it back and then it floats off again and you bring it back you kind of been patient working with this and of course you'll get better at it the more you do it it sounds really simple but it's very difficult but also it's very meaningful very profound because what we're doing is we are disempowering our thoughts and emotions so that we can learn to have more choice I think the essential thing to discover in life is that happiness is a choice happiness doesn't happen to us we have to make it you know if we live our life waiting for happiness to happen to us that's not going to work but if we realize that happiness is a choice meaning that we can train our mind to put our mind in the right state that's what meditation is going to help with so every time we bring our mind back to the breathing or whatever our meditation is we are developing that freedom because we're letting go of the thought whatever the thought is just a random thought letting go coming back drifting then coming back drifting then coming back the coming back strengthens our mind so this means that we are learning to be less controlled by the thoughts and emotions and of course the the effect of this in our life is that we can find greater levels of happiness and freedom but this whole notion of happiness it's so difficult for us to to get a handle on what that means because we're living in a culture that constantly tells us happiness is outside of ourselves happiness is in the objects around us or the people around us and if we get those objects or get those people then we'll be happy of course this isn't true it's a state of mind but then what often happens to people is they turn to meditation and then they want the meditation to make them happy so then there's a sort of like a trap people fall into which is they're meditating and then there's this sort of quest for a well-being experience because we also live in this culture of well-being feeling good wanting to feel good and so people start using meditation to try and get some kind of almost like getting a high or good feeling and this of course doesn't work because what happens when you're meditating like that is you're kind of telling yourself you don't have a good feeling I want to feel good I want to feel something so underneath that I'm telling myself I'm lacking so we're kind of coming from a prey a place of maybe like deprivation feeling there's something missing and then of course the more we meditate the more deprived we feel so people try meditation and they say oh it didn't make me feel good so I tried something else so the approach needs to change a little bit and this is a very important conversation to be having because mindfulness is hugely popular now which is great but the important conversation to have is are we just turning mindfulness into another trying to get a buzz you know trying to get something a good feeling it won't work we need to really look into the roots of mindfulness which of course are rooted in Buddhism but you don't have to be a Buddhist to practice it most of the people I teach are not Buddhists I don't I'm not interested in turning people into Buddhists at all but the roots of the Buddhist teaching tell us a lot because in there it tells us that real meditation is about acceptance and about compassion true unconditional love love towards ourself love towards others this involves learning to handle our darker sides not run away from them but actually learn to meditate on them and learn to transform them so actually the the more unhappiness we have the more struggle we have somehow that becomes more more fuel for developing a deeper understanding about ourselves and about our lives and by extension benefiting others so I think if we think about compassion maybe the word compassion is not the right word because sometimes that sounds like pity or looking down on somebody but maybe empathy altruism understanding I think the thing that generally makes us suffer the most in our life is when people say things or do things that we don't like and then we feel sort of wronged we feel angry we feel we can't we can't understand why they said or did what they said or did but if you meditate a lot then you're starting to really appreciate or understand that the human mind is very out of control we have people have so many reactions they don't want to have people feel things they don't want to feel and then they act on those feelings in a way they don't necessarily want to act if we understand this about ourselves and develop the kind of humility about that this can genuinely help us to to understand that about others so this is the kind of root of forgiveness a root of create the root of creating a more harmonious society it doesn't mean letting everyone walk all over you it just means learning to understand the suffering or the confusion or the pain or the insecurity that drives people to do and say what they do and say so I hope you are getting a sense from what I'm describing here that this path of meditation of course will help us to manage our stress but it's so much deeper than that I teach a lot of mindfulness in the corporate world in different companies and organizations as well as hospitals and schools and of course they initially are interested in this approach because they have a lot of stress they want to sort of manage their stress but if you start talking in the way I've been talking it helps them to open their mind up to a much deeper appreciation of this path so we can start by looking at just how to relax how to manage our stress how to calm the mind but then it has to go further into the realms of developing greater mental clarity greater awareness and also the compassion I've been talking about so I'd like to actually do some meditation with you now maybe guide you in a short session and what we're going to use is the present moment and what is happening in the present moment is there's a lot of noise generally when people meditate they don't like noise they think oh no there's noise I can't meditate actually noise can be the meditation so we're going to meditate on sound but we're going to learn to just accept and be present so if you could sit up nice and straight in your chairs and if we can just start by establishing a very deep wish for happiness for ourselves and happiness for all living beings this wish of compassion just create that intention or motive in your mind before we start and now just focus on your body become aware of the chair underneath you you're aware of the weight of your body on the chair become aware of your shoulders become aware of your hands your fingers resting against your legs and become aware of the ground under your feet and now just let your mind open to all the sounds that you hear the music the talking anything and just let your mind focus on that present moment without analyzing the sounds without labeling them without going into stories but just hearing very directly it's like a moment of very pure perception before labels and before ideas just work with that and let your mind focus there and when your mind wanders keep returning to the sound you notice how the mind wants to bounce around from one thing to the other you're just letting it stay present stay present stay present and using the sound to stay present okay now just relax back into the body sensations it's good to start and end the session with body awareness so again feel the weight of your body on the chair be aware of your shoulders notice those little micro sensations of tension in the shoulders and let them totally release and there's a lot of peace and even pleasure that arises in your muscles when you release the tension and then end by again making a wish or some people like to pray you can use prayer or wish or a sense of intention may I meditate for the benefit of myself and others may I bring peace to this world and stop there nice so I see we're reaching the end of my time but we have time for questions you

Channel: Fifteen Seconds

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Length: 14min 41sec (881 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 30 2016