Why meditating alone won't make you happy | Gelong Thubten

i was desperate to be happy i was incredibly unhappy [Music] so then what did i do i started to meditate in quite a kind of addictive way i started to meditate um to try and get happiness very understandable thing i mean here we go i'm looking at happiness now as a state of mind i'm trying to give up this idea that it should come from outside it should come from within so then i'm going to meditate to get happiness same problem arises the more i'm sitting there searching for happiness in my meditation the more depressed i become the more i start to feel it's not happening i'm not there yet when am i gonna get the buzz so i realized that i was meditating a little bit like somebody taking drugs always looking for a high because i i was programmed as i think many people are i was programmed to believe something's only working if you feel good as a result of it and that feel good has to be like a ramped up excitement in the body and mind oh then it's working because i felt something so then i'm sitting down meditating and when i first became a monk in my first year i would i was quite ambitious about the whole thing and i used to do a lot of meditation throughout the day i was living in the monastery and i was living this very kind of quiet life not like now where i'm traveling all the time and i was doing lots and lots of meditation during the day thinking i was kind of really into it you know i was quite uh ambitious about it i thought yeah i'm doing it i'm in the fast track i'm like you know mr hardcore monk here i go you know just you watch me i'm you know like that kind of feeling like ego basically um so but the meditation the more i did the more unhappy i felt and because of that wanting to feel something so what it means is that i'm sitting down to meditate and i'm waiting to get high waiting to get some kind of buzz from it so it means i'm telling myself i lack happiness i'm coming from a place of deficiency and i'm creating that deficiency again and again within my body and mind so i started to get more miserable the game changer for me was when my teachers i've been so fortunate to study with some of these incredible tibetan masters so my my teacher akon rinpoche told me you must meditate on compassion and that is that was the game changer is when i started to think oh okay i'm not going to do this for me to get the feeling out of it i'm going to widen out this this energy of meditation into something to do with helping people compassion kindness and then it starts to change because compassion okay let's talk about what compassion is in a minute but compassion takes the meditation journey from a self-centered graspy addictive kind of reality into something that is of service to the world and then you can let go and you just do your best and day after day you try to be kind to people and your meditation is giving you the fuel and energy to do that it just changes the whole picture from a kind of desperate search for internal happiness into a feeling that happiness is a shared experience because the world is a shared experience we all live together on this planet so surely the the happiness thing has to be connected to that that interdependence that community the community aspect okay but what is compassion i think we when we think of compassion we have all kinds of ideas about it but again we tend to think of it in terms of a feeling a sensation maybe like feeling sad when others are suffering feeling feeling pain when others feel pain that's the kind of compassion but it's more related to empathy and i think there's a difference between empathy and compassion empathy is is of course a good thing it's good to have empathy but empathy can be very draining because what happens when you experience empathy in terms of brain activity there's a sense of it's like a mirror mirroring occurs in the brain what i mean by that is you know how when you see somebody in physical pain supposing you see somebody break their leg you kind of feel it in your own body that is empathy somebody's in pain the brain the areas of the brain connected to pain also start to activate it's like a mirror we feel what they feel whether it's physical pain emotional pain whatever it is somebody is suffering and now i'm suffering too it's a little bit like somebody's drowning and i jump in to save them and now i'm drowning too we're both drowning so i don't know how much benefit that really has now two people are suffering really interesting thing they've done a lot of uh brain scans a lot of brain research on people who meditate and they've shown that people who practice compassion-based mindfulness have a very particular brain activity that starts to change the motor cortex in the brain starts to activate the motor cortex is the brain region connected with intention to act like any action you're going to have you have to intend it first even in a very simple way i want to cook dinner i have to have the intention and then i go and do it the motor cortex is the region which is all about intentions and actions so when you're practicing compassion-based mindfulness which i'll define in a moment you you're activating those intention areas of the brain which will lead to action so this will lead us to do things that benefit not just ourselves and others so our life starts to transform we start to want to help people we also through our mindfulness practice start to develop the wisdom and the skills through which we can help people because just wanting to help them yeah but then what how in what way how what do you do so so we're activating the wisdom and skills through through which we can genuinely help others so it's a it's a situation that has benefit so what what is compassion-based mindfulness what does it mean to practice compassion in the mindfulness and how does that relate to happiness so how do these seemingly separate subjects weave together okay so i think there are a couple of things for me one of the key points key key elements is whenever i sit down to practice mindfulness which we're going to do in a minute by the way this we are going to get practical this is not all theory and we're going to do some in a moment whenever i sit down to practice mindfulness even if it's 5 or 10 minutes of say focused breathing or whatever technique i'm doing i will always start and end the session by creating a moment of compassion as an intention so i'll sit and i'll remind myself i am doing this practice for the benefit of all sentient beings all beings so not just humans but animals all beings i am doing this for their benefit through this practice may i help others it's like an affirmation a prayer a wish a commitment there's many ways of doing this for some people they really resonate with prayer so they use prayer some people don't that's also fine you can just sit there and make a kind of decision i'm gonna do this for the benefit of the world it's just a decision that you make or like planting a seed at the start of your session then i do the session you just let go of that and do the session say 10 minutes or whatever of whatever technique you're practicing any any meditation any any mindfulness or meditation or any spiritual exercise of any kind there's no limits to the range of exercises that are available but the key point is why you're doing it so you do the motivation you do the session and then at the end of the session i always take a moment to re-energize that compassion by taking a moment to to just recommit i'm dedicating the fruits of this practice to the benefit of the world to the benefit of others

Channel: Mindvalley

Views: 9,224

Keywords: how to let go of the past, how to let go of anger, how to forgive yourself, how to get rid of self doubt, how to stop feeling pain, how to forgive someone, how to move on, how to get over someone, letting go, leave your past behind, letting go of the past, benefits of meditation, power of meditation, guided meditation for anxiety, meditation for stress and anxiety, stress relief meditation, mindfulness meditation, guided meditation for positive energy, meditation guided

Id: f1z0SrNuaD0

Length: 9min 22sec (562 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 10 2022