A Monk's Guide to Happiness: Meditation in the 21st century

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What if the most courageous, compassionate thing you could do in life, was to learn how to be with yourself? It’s a powerful, perhaps surprising idea put forward by this week’s guest, the Buddhist monk, meditation teacher and author Gelong Thubten. A world pioneer in mindfulness meditation training, Gelong Thubten has lectured at his alma mater and for the UN, in addition to teaching at major companies such as Google and LinkedIn. The state of happiness isn’t something ephemeral—isn’t a hit of dopamine in the brain. The state of happiness, he says, is an enduring state of completeness, a state of peace, a state of no more striving and no more fear. That brings us to the second component of happiness, which is feeling anchored to the present. This means we don’t drift away into thoughts about the past or future, where we tend to get caught up in painful memories and anxiety-provoking uncertainties. For example, “I wish I hadn’t made that comment to my friend” or, “I wonder what she’ll say when I see her next.” Instead, we focus on the moment we’re experiencing.

Gelong Thubten's wonderful book provides a bracing challenge to our search for instant gratification and "instant" happiness, and a lucid, practical, step-by-step path to contentment and a genuine and lasting peace of mind.' Many people think that meditation is about stilling or quieting the mind, and they feel their minds are too active and busy to even try. But the amount of thoughts we have makes no difference to our meditation; it’s not about clearing or blanking out the mind, or going into a trance—that will simply not work and has no real value. Meditation changes our relationship with our thoughts and emotions; it is not aimed at getting rid of them. The reason is called hedonic adaptation, which, in layman’s terms, means that your brain takes the good things that happen to you for granted, and the bad states as aberrations. In other words, it only notices when something is bad.

Thubten talks about the absolute importance of Interdependence (depending on each instead of ourselves). How working as one improves the flow of Oxycontin. How empathy only gets you so far so practising compassionate behaviour is vital to improving all of our daily interactions. What you will be able to achieve if you learn to forgive yourself and others. Increasing your self confidence and your confidence in others too. Pulling all of these aspects into short (10-15 min) meditation sessions that will lower stress and give you more time to be happy. GT writing is genuine, with heart and understanding, and is a far departure from some of the condescending and basic run-throughs of meditation I have experienced in the past. Thubten showed me how simple it is to bring meditation into my life, clearing up the many misunderstandings and misleading information, and the endless possibilities for peace of mind and happiness that I would otherwise miss out on due to being the uptight worrier that I currently am. Taking away all the bell and whistles, breaking down the fundamental and important aspects of mediation and guiding me in steps about how to introduce such behaviour steadily into my daily routine. Yes you could argue that this is a self help book but upon finishing it, it is simpler than that and much more informative.

I love to reflect on the past so that I can learn from it. I also enjoy planning ahead for the future so I can use that knowledge to improve my life and the lives of those around me. And this state of uncertainty is overwhelming: it causes stress and discontent since we feel that our life at the present moment is not enough and that we can only be happy when our goals are completed.

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Vybavte si v mysli tri skutočnosti, za ktoré ste vo svojom živote vďační. Môžu to byť predmety, ľudia, situácie - čokoľvek. Dôkladne o nich premýšľajte - prechádzajte jednu po druhej - a skúmajte, prečo ste, alebo by ste mohli byť, za ne vďační. Precíťte ocenenie a vďačnosť. Usilujte sa pochopiť, že všetko závisí od všetkého ostatného. Naše prežitie závisí od mnohých faktorov, ľudí a vecí okolo nás. Ak si uvedomíte, akou láskavosťou vás zahŕňa svet, pocítite hlbokú vďačnosť. Ďalší krok je cítiť radosť zo šťastia iných." (str. 138) A Monk’s Guide To Happiness is exactly what it says on the tin. Within is a guide that is pragmatic and realistic in nature that offers beneficial and satisfying advice about both meditation and mindfulness (not the same thing) that can be brought into our lives in many different ways. Thubten has 25 years experience with meditation, using it as an advantage to see the world and its many interactions in new and interesting ways. Bringing together all of his knowledge and behaviour over the years as a monk, a speaker, a teacher and at the same time openly recognising his past choices and mistakes. There is the other argument of the Buddhists, who are concerned about the notion that we keep Craving – which is the problem that keeps us from achieving Nirvana as the nec plus ultra, the ultimate Joie de Vivre – but not in the French, epicurean way, which has no problem with it, indeed, it can be the catharsis we can achieve – the position in which we do not crave for anything anymore – and even when we are – let us say humanely, transitory, as mere mortals – happy, we fear that this will go away and thus we do not enjoy the benefits of what the Buddhists know and teach us – one of them being this monk – the problem being that even the peaceful Buddhists can go astray – I was reading recently about Myanmar, former Burma, and the Buddhists that have sided with the military junta and even worse, an important number of the supposedly peace loving monks have been involved in violence against the Rohinga, Muslim minority, because of religious conflicts, perhaps a touch of nationalism too. What does happiness feel like? We are completely in the present, with no urge to hang on to the past or ruminate about the future; we are right here in the moment, feeling complete. There is a sense of freedom; when we are genuinely happy, we are free from desire and other conflicting emotions. We are free from wanting happiness. When we are searching for that happiness, there is a sense of hunger, of incompleteness; we are wrapped up in the expectation of getting what we want and the fear of not getting it; we feel trapped by uncertainty. We think we can only be happy when our goals are completed, which means that life is always about the future rather than the present moment.