Gelong Thubten mindfulness and health part 2

so that's the point I'm trying to get at is that meditation will help us to find a more genuine happiness that's independent because I think in our in our life in our culture in our society we only know about happiness that is dependent dependent on outer things you know we don't know how to make ourselves happy we only know how to create a life around us that we think makes us happy do you see what I mean do you see the difference and some people are incredibly materialistic and they want lots of money and fast cars and entertainment some people aren't so materialistic but they're materialistic in a different kind of way because when I say materialistic I mean depending on the material whatever that material is for one person it might be a new fancy car for another person it might be going for a walk by the beach or eating organic food you know sort of so-called and non materialistic stuff it's still materialistic because we are depending on those things to make us happy so we're kind of missing the point what I'm trying to talk about here is independent happiness that comes from within rather than depending on what happens to us from outside so to go back a bit to what I was saying before if we do this meditation method we're going to be reducing our stress and increasing our mental clarity how does it reduce stress we've already established that it's not our boss that makes us stressed it's not our work that makes us stressed it's our reactions to our boss to our work or to our clients or colleagues or whatever so those reactions are the problem in meditation we're learning not to be served impulsively controlled by our reactions we're learning just to let go letting go is a skill isn't it it's something we'd all like to learn you know and you're in a bad mood and you want go or when you can't forgive some of you want to let go how do we let go we can't just force ourselves to let go but we can learn to let go we can train in the path of letting go through this method of breathing with awareness the mind wanders then you just let go of that and come back to the breath that is creating in us a journey of letting go we are learning that skill so then this will help us to be less stressed it will also help us to be more focused and that's why it's a very good skill for our work you know we can work harder with more focus and concentration without getting so tired because when you meditate you're learning to focus on the present moment it's actually building mental clarity I think generally we tend to go around with a mind that feels like it's full of fog or mist you know what I mean a little bit sort of confused and tired and I can only think of the word foggy in order me my foggy and meditation helps to develop the more clear perception because we are focusing on our breathing and we're training our mind to remain there so it means we're actually it's a kind of fitness for the mind we're strengthening our mind strengthening that sense of focus and clarity and this will really help us in our working life and our life in general and I think that's that's a very important thing to see how meditation reduces stress but also increases mental clarity and of course how does this impact on our health well I think there are if you'd like me to talk a bit about meditations effect on health I think there are two there are two levels to this on one level I'm sure you'll all agree that stress is a major contributor to illness so if we can reduce our stress obviously our health will improve because our stress levels sometimes are so huge and we don't even notice it and then at some point our body knocks on the door and says you better listen to this do you know what I mean so we get sick because our stress has become so out of control so yeah I think it's true to say that if we can deal with our stress better than our health will improve that's one aspect but another point I want to make is that we shouldn't think that meditation is going to cure us of all our illnesses because actually our body is designed to get ill we're not immortal we're all going to die we don't live forever this body is aging it's subject to all kinds of dangers from the environment we are going to get sick there's no point telling ourselves a lie and saying well if I do lots of meditation I'll be supremely healthier it's not true what is true however is that if you do a lot of meditation your attitude to sickness could change you could start to actually deal with it differently so I think that's the deeper message of what is healing now when people hear the word healing they think it means chase away all the illnesses that's not that's quite boring supreme health is actually quite a boring thing what's more interesting is if you are sick can you relax into that and accept it can you let that sickness increase your compassion then your sicknesses become your best friend because it's leading you into a deeper path of acceptance and compassion so I'd like to talk about physical pain I think physical pain is a very interesting thing and meditation and the relationship with physic pain is very interesting what I'd like to to say is that physical pain is actually still a mental experience yes we might have pain in our body maybe we've got pain in our leg we have a headache pain in our back but our mind is experiencing that pain and that's a very crucial distinction to make otherwise a corpse would experience pain if you stick a knife into my leg I will feel pain if you stick a knife into a corpses leg there's no feeling of pain so it sounds a bit stupid but what I'm trying to say is actually it's not the body that experiences the pain really because what's happening is when I have pain in my leg or my head I am experiencing it through a filter of dislike a filter of aversion or resistance so what actually happens is for example I've got pain in my back or my head and then I don't like it and I get tense that's double pain we make our pain a lot worse because we get tense I remember the year ago I had an endoscopy do endoscopy when they put a camera down your throat and they didn't they didn't knock me out totally they just gave me a very mild sedative which didn't work and so I was very conscious and as this tube it's it seems to be it's not actually that wide but it feels like it's a really wide to you as it's going down my throat I'm starting to panic and getting very tense and they're having to push this tube down because my throat has become so tight so actually the tube going down my throat is not painful what is painful is my reaction because I'm tense as this person the thing in my mouth my body turns into like you know rigor because I'm so tense and it really taught me something it taught me that I'm not a very good meditator but it also taught me how our reactions to pain are the key point not the pain itself so supposing you have pain in your leg and then you relax very deeply into that pain the pain changes it can even disappear or it can certainly get less and that proves that when you accept and relax into the present moment without judgment that's a key point without judgment you can actually deal with pain and sickness in a very different way so there's the sense of relaxing and accepting but there's also compassion because when you are a meditator you're working very very much on the path of trying to develop compassion a sense of wanting to connect with the sufferings of others you know the word compassion is very misleading because it sometimes sounds like just empathy or sympathy or pity but actually compassion in Buddhism means to genuinely genuinely connect with the sufferings of others from the heart it's like heart connection and to actually commit yourself to liberating others from their suffering so there's a path of compassion now if you are a compassionate trainer if you're training in compassion I mean if you're meditating in your training and developing compassion then your sickness becomes the seed for your compassion because as you are sick you start to think others are sick too in a small way I feel this I mean I do not have strong compassion but I do feel in myself I used to have very good health and then five years ago I got sick I got a kind of avalanche of sicknesses I got typhoid and my appendix burst and then my gallbladder went inflamed and I just was really ill one thing after and what I found is that during that phase and also now when other people are sick I feel more for them than I used to you know I feel I feel something and I I used to get quite irritated when people moaned about their health now I don't mind so much cuz cuz I moan to you so you feel a kind of connection with others and you know what it's like to suffer so when others are suffering you feel it more deeply so I feel that sickness can actually be a very useful thing enough even though it wasn't very pleasant actually what happened to me was a blessing that it helped me so do you see how the attitude of somebody who's meditating is a little bit different different to people who don't meditate it creates a willingness to use life in a more productive way so I was asked to say a few things about meditation I was also asked to say a few things about meditation and health and I want to make it really clear that it's more to do with acceptance rather than to do with perfect health does that make sense now I'd like to give you time to ask questions because I don't like just talking talking talking I want to converse with you and find out your ideas yes I don't understand your questions what's the question again oh s T as you when you meditate it four more years does it get easier you know it's a funny thing meditation doesn't work like a straight line you know it's not like you can make a graph ten five years 10 years 15 years 20 years getting like that it's not like that it's actually more so I don't think you can say that it's such that you just get better and better and better like going up but what does happen is you become more relaxed you become more kind of confident more calm I mean I I used to be a very tense nervous person I definitely think I'm a bit more relaxed now and I think that's been helped by meditation you're not letting it's more than it happens anyway okay if you sit now and focus on your breathing you'll find that after a few breaths your mind just automatically wanders you can't stop it but what you can do is then bring it back that's the training does that make sense okay anything else yes yes definitely I think we should look after our bodies we should eat healthy food we should exercise we should do all the right things but at some point we are going to get sick and we are definitely going to die even the most super healthy person dies so then the mind is the most important and if we did not train our mind then when these things happen to our body we fall apart we don't have to handle it so I think both should be practiced balanced physical health and mental health so a good thing to do is to exercise every day and yes this is a very important question needs to be understood that when you meditate you do two styles of meditation on the chair and off the chair so on the chair means well some people sit on the floor as well but sitting down and doing 15 minutes of session where you do the training with the breathing like I said and off the chair means in the daily life you keep trying to connect to the present moment when you're walking when you're talking when you're busy so you keep trying to let the meditation filter through into everyday life so that you are connecting throughout the day that's called mindfulness being mindful not so much the breath you know supposing you are really in a busy situation it's too hard to find your breath because there's a lot going on so then you would just use the present moment maybe your body maybe the visual objects around you you know I like to do this when I'm standing in a queue the airport then you know we get wound up we get tired whatever or you know you can't then necessarily find your breath but you can feel the ground under your feet you can feel the present moment like this phone is giving us a reminder of the present moment we can just listen to it happily or we can think turn it off turn it off how to do it's on so just listen to it anything else yes well I'd like to challenge your question a little bit because I don't think it's just about adapting our minds to the environment because what if you go into a retreat where there's nothing happening people do meditation retreats I was in a retreat for four years where we have no contact with the outside world maybe a letter once a month but there was no newspapers no TV no internet so you're just alone in your room with nothing happening so there's no environment creating any trouble but you're still having stress still there's stress there's upset there's the mind so it's more the internal environment and you start to understand that actually our inner world is the cause of everything so then the second half of your question was what if somebody is in an intolerable situation a situation that's incredibly painful and difficult well then your reaction to that depends entirely on your emotional psychological maturity and so if we are a very highly trained meditator maybe we can deal with it and stay in the situation and transform it if we're not then maybe we have to get away from the situation if we're in an abusive situation maybe we have to remove ourselves but what we have to do in that case is realize that the same situation will come up again until we've dealt with our mind because everything ultimately is to do with our reactions there are people in this world in horrendous situations of abuse and torment and torture all over the world and when so it's your question how would meditation help with that is that the question in that situation I've heard incredible stories about highly trained meditators who have been tortured and after that experience they've been told what was the worst part of it and one of them said the worst part was there was a moment when I was afraid I would lose compassion for my torturer I mean that is an incredibly high level of spiritual advancement but it's possible it's possible people have achieved that now ordinary people such as me and you we can't do that so if we're thrown into that horrible situation we will just react according to our reactions but what we can do is train in meditation every day so that one day when we are in a difficult situation we'll have a more healthy reaction anything else what Tigers can't see the clock what time we stopped you we have time we have time for more questions yes because then you are adding wondering - wondering you know what I mean your mind is wandering and then you're wondering about that so we're creating more the mind will wonder and it's crazy what it does you can be sitting meditating and one minute the mind is thinking shall I have spaghetti for supper and the next minute is thinking about a strong trauma and then you think why why spaghetti became that but it's just the way the mind is it just wanders yes yes well I give classes and I tell people to start with 10 minutes every day 10 minutes every day and then after a few weeks they expand it to 15 minutes but I also tell them throughout their day they need to train when they're picking up the phone when they're in a meeting when they're walking they need to train in mindfulness so that it's a full-time thing but in terms of time they don't have to take a big little time out of their day from others training from other to do through the process yes Oh training to teach yeah oh how long does it take to become a teacher yeah okay sorry it took me a while to understand that it's okay you know the course can be anything it depends on the situation I find if if you just if you have an hour or two you can teach people enough to start with but then it's good if they have follow-up a month later or something like that you know I find that you don't need a huge a holiday knowing conditional workshops and you know that's what I do and I go to companies or hospitals or places I go for an hour or an hour and a half I give a talk we do a session and then I go back the next month or a few months later and give a follow-up session because it sounds so simple yes well there are classes I mean if we our organization has classes here in this town and you can attend those you know maybe you can tell them about that there are there are classes here I mean I'm only here now on just for three or four for one week but we have resident teachers here who are giving classes around here maybe you can explain something about that yes yes I do I I teach in schools it's a little bit hard if they're very young because they don't really want to sit still three and four I did once do a class for four-year-olds it was difficult but I got them to move their fingers and toes with awareness but if people really want to train in the journey of meditation I think they have to be kind of over 12 maybe 13 14 I do classes in those in those situations yes well I think actually we all have hyperactivity this is a label there's some people they say they have hyperactivity with if you sit still for 10 minutes and try not to think I find the hyperactivity I can't sense but your mind you can be you can be walking you sucks you SAP anything here for one hour don't decide I'm hyperactive therefore I am sick I'm not sick but don't give themself that label you know I'm hyperactive so therefore I have a weakness and how can I meditate we're all hyperactive meditation is in the mind so you can meditate while walking you can meditate while running it's to do with focusing does that make sense okay one more question then we can stop yes yes okay yeah you know there's a joke it says that a buddhist person is either meditating or feeling guilty for not it's like exercise you know you should go to the gym or go swimming and then you stop and then you feel bad it's like that but the way to deal with this is to realize that if you take a break from meditation what does that really mean because meditation is you and it's your it's your your connection with who you are and you don't want to take a break from that you want to see that as a loving relationship that you want to be constantly involved it's like a marriage and married to your mind so when people find their meditation disappears and they they lose their motivation I tell them to think about meditation if you can't do meditation at least think about it why does it work why is it good what is it for that way you are persuading yourself about how good it is okay thank you thanks for listening I hope you enjoyed it I I didn't teach you a technique today because I really wanted to explain the theory but as you heard there are classes around in this city where you can learn those techniques but today I want to focus more on theory

Channel: Gunnar Friðriksson

Views: 37,344

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Id: m5JHGcX6kmg

Length: 27min 36sec (1656 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 01 2015