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We're all at the mercy of our own minds. But the problem is is that in modern life, we're constantly made to feel
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we're not good enough. Something's always missing, and I will be happy or unhappy if this or that happens to me.
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So, we become prisoners of life. And you learn this the hard way. Yes. When I was in a long retreat, cut off from the
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world for 4 years. And memories were coming up from the past. It would build into horrific amounts of depression,
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anxiety, pain. And I jumped over the wall and tried to escape because of what happened to me when I was 14. Are you
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comfortable talking about this? Gerong Tupton is a Buddhist monk who spent over 30 years helping Hollywood stars, CEOs,
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and corporations. Stay in control within a world overloaded with stress, addiction, anxiety, and burnout. Here we
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go. I became controlled by distraction, controlled by negative thinking. What is life going to do to me next? How will I
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handle it? And things only changed when I hit rock bottom. I had spent so much
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effort trying to push that suffering away because it's so disgusting and so shameful, but it was just making it
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worse. So many of us run away from pain though. But the reality is you can run to the end of the earth and that thing
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that has been tormenting you will always trip you up. And so I went back into that retreat knowing the methods are
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there. I just need to know how to use them and I could learn to conquer this. And that's where meditation comes in. Do
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you think you can teach me? Because I very much feel like I'm on the receiving end of life. First of all, chuck all those things away. There's a lot of
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spiritual tat, isn't there? I mean, I said it. I actually hated meditation
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when I first did it because there's a lot of misconceptions and actually all you're doing is these three things to be less controlled by negative thinking.
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And the beauty of this is that they can show in brain scans, there'll be visible changes in your brain. So, let's try
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this. [Music]
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Galong Tupton, why is your work more important now than
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ever before? Why is your message more important now than ever before? I think uh because we're now living in times
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where we need meditation more than ever because of the the speeding up of life
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obviously with technology and the way we live and also I think because meditation has become more widespread there are
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loads of misconceptions about it. So I do try to put some effort into kind of
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clarifying some of those misconceptions. When you look out into the world and you perform your sort of own
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analysis on what the world, the western world is getting right and getting wrong. What are some of your sort of big
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picture feelings, thoughts and concerns? Well, the way we are all buried in our phones is quite something, isn't it? And
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the way we interact with information has changed so much. So we we are kind of
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bombarded or invaded by constant flow of information which has a lot of persuasive undercurrents to it. And this
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is affecting our stress levels and also affecting our confidence levels. We're
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constantly made to feel we're something's missing. Something's always missing. We're not good enough. If you
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get this, you'll be okay. I if if and when this happens to you, then and only then can you be happy. So we've kind of
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lost our power. We talked a little bit about the word purpose as well. What is
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your perspective on the state of human purposefulness? So I think um this issue around purpose
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I think it it is connected to the breakdown of religion
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in that I would say well I think we'd all say that religion used to be very much the center of the table and it sort
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of gave everybody their a sense of their place in the universe and the question
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of purpose was never such an issue because everything was uh in context
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according to one's religious belief and of course now we're in a post-religious culture and it's much more about the
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individual and there are good things about that of course but what happens then is we become very obsessed with our
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purpose and the word purpose itself suggests I want something I want what do
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I want and in in Buddhism we look at that wanting mind and see how insatiable
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it is and how the more you want the more you're going to want and so from a
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Buddhist perspect perspective. We're all looking for purpose, but maybe externally because we get what we want
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and then want something else. And maybe what we're actually looking
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for is something deeper within, but we don't know how to access it. So, is it
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wrong then to be in search of purpose? Is it a misguided pursuit?
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No, I wouldn't say that. But I would say what's misguided for us is that we are
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obsessed with the idea that happiness comes from the outside
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and on the other side of the coin suffering too. So I will be happy if I get this or get that or this situation
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or that situation and I will be unhappy if this or that happens to me. So we
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become at the sort of receiving end of life. What life is going to do to me
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next. how will I handle it? So, so there's there's not much strength there. And I think the message of meditation is
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that you become your own purpose and you you become the generator of your own experiences because you learn how to
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take hold of your own mind. In this conversation, do you think you can teach me how to do that? Because I very much feel like in my life I'm on the
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receiving end of life. Well, I'd love to show you how or maybe help you to see that meditation is easier than you
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thought or more more applicable to daily situations than you thought. When we
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think about the state of well-being in the western world, everybody knows these stats around suicidality. Um, if we look
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at the US for example, they've slipped further in the unhappiness rankings than
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ever before. The US fell to 24th place in 2025 in global happiness rankings. In
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2011, the US had been 11th place and now they're 24th. And the UK followed the same pattern. The UK dropped to 23rd in
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global happiness rankings, which is its lowest position in a long time. But then
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more sort of horrifically, the suicide numbers in the UK, the US are tremendously alarming. In the UK,
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suicide has reached its highest level in many many decades.
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Something is going on here. Absolutely. So, so we we have developed the most,
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you know, materially comfortable culture in history. We are materially
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more comfortable than ever and yet emotionally more uncomfortable. So, something hasn't added up. you know
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we've created a comfortable to a certain extent out outer world for oursel and we
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can achieve high levels of material comfort and somehow the more of that we have the more emotionally uncomfortable
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and I think this is all to do with the mechanisms of desire so so when we are in a culture that is constantly
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promising us the next piece of enjoyment the next hit the next bars the next thing we're caught in a sort of cycle of
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wanting more I I I was described this the the search for happiness that the problem in that is the search itself
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because s searching is a habit that will lead to more searching. So we're always
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looking for the next thing. So we get what we want. Not always but sometimes.
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And then very soon we want something else. So the more we're wanting the more we're feeling we don't have. So we end
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up possibly with a lot but feeling quite empty inside. And then we're back to this question. What is my purpose?
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What's it all for? I've I I've reached the the I've reached the the goal I wanted to reach, but I still feel empty.
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I still feel something is missing. We're told something is missing all the time. Because to keep a consumer message
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going, you have to tell people they're lacking in something. And the insistency with which that message is fed to us
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through our phones basically and through through the the media that we consume is going to affect us. I think 90% of
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people listening right now would say that their meaning in life comes from the pursuit of something, the journey
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towards something. It might not come from the attainment of it, being successful, being on the podium, but they would say that the the meaning they
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experience, the joy, the thing that gets them out of bed is in the pursuit of something, whether it's building a business or, I don't know, becoming an
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athlete or building a charity. Are they misguided in that thought? No,
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it's just that we we we could look deeper into our own internal psychology and see how well the the word pursuit is
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everything. So, we're always in pursuit of something. And the the the the
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chemistry of of our body in the state of pursuit is that chemical dopamine. The
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interesting thing about dopamine is it falls away just before you get what you want. So, so the the chase is much more
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exciting than the having or the getting. And so we're in locked into this constant chase and what is the next
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thing? When will I get the next thing? And I think the the reason why we feel
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so sort of empty or disappointed is because what we get is never enough. And
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meditation comes into this conversation to to show us that actually what we were
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looking for was already there inside. That's the key point.
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What were we looking for? We were looking for freedom. If you if you think about how it feels
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when you get what you want, you know, there's the chasing, the wanting, and then there's the getting.
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There's a kind of relief, isn't there? It it's it's a feeling of, oh, the wanting's gone away. It's like hunger.
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You feel hungry, you eat a sandwich, the hunger's gone away. I mean that's a metaphor for everything and that you
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when you get what you want there's this relief the the the the the wanting the the the the needy feeling the oh when
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will I get it has gone and there's a relief so actually what what we're well momentarily and then it kicks in again
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we're looking for the next thing but what we're looking for is the absence of wanting that's the the happiness we achieve when
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we get what we want is a kind of freedom from wanting so the problem is is that we're caught in a cycle where we then
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just want something else. So, I'm not suggesting let's all go and sit on a mountaintop and meditate and
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not have lives and not have careers. Not at all. I'm simply suggesting that we've put our focus very strongly on material
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things. And I think there needs to be also a focus on the mind and I think that's how we can learn to free
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ourselves. You learned this the hard way through your own experiences.
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Can you talk to me about how you learned these lessons? Well, I definitely became
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a monk through extreme suffering. I wouldn't describe myself as having been
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a kind of, you know, a spiritual seeker and I went to a monastery with a kind of
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open glowing heart wanting to find the answers. I went to a monastery in a completely broken state because I had
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been living uh in this kind of ambition cycle wanting wanting wanting and and
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really uh not looking after myself. I had a very uh self-loathing and unhappy
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mind, a lot of depression, a lot of anxiety and I was um I went to that monastery
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feeling completely at rock bottom. And I I didn't go to a monastery to live there forever. I just kind of dipped my toe
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in. But you know, I stayed. If I was a fly on the wall in your life on that day
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when you showed up at that monastery, what would I have seen? So I was very ill and I arrived at the monastery um
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really needing help. So I was I was living in London and New York. I was trying to become an actor. My mother's
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an actor, so I sort of wanted to follow in her footsteps. and I got into a really kind of dangerous kind of party
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lifestyle, really wild and burning the candle at both ends. I basically made myself ill. I had a very very dramatic
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burnout living in Brooklyn and waking up one morning in my apartment thinking I
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was having a heart attack. Um, I went to I had didn't have medical insurance, but I managed to find some kind of like
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cheap ECG place and they checked my heart out and they said, "You've you have a heart condition. what have you
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been doing? And you know, I really was had to stop in my tracks and I was very
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very ill after that for a few months. What age was this? 21. Wow. And during
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that time of being horrendously ill. I had to question everything I was doing with my life. But that illness is a
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symptom. It's a symptom of of unhealthy living, but also an unhealthy
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relationship with my own mind. And where did that unhealthy relationship with your own mind stem from? So I think
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things that that happened in my early life uh traumatic things, difficult
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things uh and then me not knowing how to deal with those and just bottling them up and pushing through, pushing forward
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and not looking at myself. I had this very sort of escapist way about myself.
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I think that's what all the partying was about to kind of get out of my head. And so, so when I had that burnout, I think
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it was a combination of physical stress and mental stress that just exploded very, very suddenly, literally
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overnight. Did you have an abusive childhood? Because I was I was reading some of the
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things that you had said and it suggested to me that there was things that happened when you were young that left imprints on you that you had to
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work through. Yeah. Yeah. I I would say things happened in my teens that were
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troubling. You know, when I was uh when I was quite like 13, 14, I started to
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run with a much older crowd. So, I had a kind of double life. I was I was at school and very studious and very quiet.
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And then outside school, I was in a rock band with much older people. Um, when I
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was 14, I started to actually work as a jazz pianist in wine bars across London,
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pretending I was 21. And the the people I was running with at that time were
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much much older than me. And um, yeah, there there there were some situations
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where the relationships turned, I would say, abusive. And I I would say I was a victim of at the time maybe I thought I
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knew knew what I was doing, but looking back, definitely not. And I think that left imprints and I think it made me um
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frightened of myself and frightened of other people. Are you comfortable talking about this? Yeah. Was this
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sexual abuse? Yeah. From from uh from one of the people I was in in a band
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with. Yeah. And when you think when you sort of trace the steps of the behavior that you
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then saw in your early 20s, the sort of escapist behavior, the sort of self-medicating behavior, is is that the
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cont is that where that originated from the sort of processing of that and the dealing with those? It's really hard to
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make a very specific direct connection, isn't it? And that's what we always want to do. We want to say this happened because of this and there's this, you
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know, this happened and therefore I went off the rails. In a way that's too easy because I think there's a mixture of
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many many elements that can send one off the rails. You know my parents are are incredibly loving people. I mean they
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really loved me and brought me up very well but they they split up very very suddenly when I was 17. My my dad
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literally ran off with one of my mom's friends and it was a a very huge explosion in the family and we were all
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very broken by it. And so there are many many things, many factors that came
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together in my teenage years that I think sent me off the rails. I got into uh Oxford University and that was a big
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prestigious thing, but I fell apart in Oxford. I started to get horrendously depressed and I actually got expelled.
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It's actually quite hard to get expelled from Oxford. I didn't I've never met anyone that got expelled. Exactly. My mother was delighted. She said, "Oh,
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that's like Lord Byron, Shel, those are, you know, very hard to get thrown out of Oxford. you have to, you know, do
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something pretty horrendous. But I think in my case, they they threw me out because I was just not functional. And
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that then just led to my demise. And then on the one hand, I was started
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acting and being in plays and and having this kind of um almost like a glamorous
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persona and on the other hand crumbling inside. I had this incredibly persistent
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monologue of self- disgust, you know, like like a voice in the head that says, "You are disgusting.
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You are no good. You are a failure." I used to call it my devil voice, but but it it it's obviously part of me. And and
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that's something that later on when I started to do retreats became incredibly loud in my head. And I had to work hard
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on meditation to help not to get rid of that but to integrate it and and learn
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to be at peace with it. It's definitely, you know, it's gone away now. Where does that voice originate from? You're not
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the first person that I've sat with here who's talked to me about a similar voice in their mind. And I'm wondering is that a is that something from we inherit from
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our environment? uh something that happens, a culmination of things that happen. Is it genetic or is it all of the above? It's many things because
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that's very specific. It's many things. And it's I think in my case it was
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because I became very good at suppressing my suffering because I
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became very proficient at pushing things down and just going to as many parties
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as possible and and trying not to suffer. I think the when you push something down, the kind of volcano
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effect happens and then this sort of angry voice comes up. This this this uh
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pressure leads to a kind of backlash inside yourself and it's an internalized
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um anger that also is is fed to us from our environment. Absolutely.
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So you arrive at the monastery. Yeah. Who told you to go to a monastery? So,
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my oldest childhood friend, Tara, uh we grew up together and um when I was
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completely falling apart with this heart condition at 21, she basically scooped me up and took me to the monastery.
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She's the one who told me. She said, "Oh, there's a monastery in Scotland
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which it's called Samuel Ling. It's a Tibetan Buddhist monastery, and for the first time ever, they've opened their
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doors to people who wanting to be monks for a year. one year and so she she said let's go
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and do it this could she wanted to do it too but she said this could really help you so she basically pretty much carried
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me there what were you saying to her when she asked you how you were doing or what your symptoms were I was lying in
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bed with with horrendous heart palpitations and any move I made my body would be bathed in sweat I mean on we we
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were in California because I got sick in New York I managed to get to California where my mother was living and Tara was
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there and they looked after me. And then literally flying back to the UK, I had to lie down on the plane. She was almost
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carrying me. It was really really heavy. But she she said, "Look, this place could help you. It's just a year. It's
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just a year out of your life." I I I I thought, "Okay, I'm going to do that and then I'll go back to New York." I almost
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sublet my apartment in New York, but I didn't in the end. But there there definitely was a feeling in me of,
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"Okay, I'm going to go to this Buddhist retreat, get myself straightened out, and then go back to what I was doing
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before. So, it didn't feel too outrageous because it was only a year. Of course,
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it wasn't a year. This is 30 years later. I'm still there. Wow.
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And to give people like me who don't understand what happens in a monastery a picture into the what I would describe
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as incredible dedication and sacrifice that you've gone through over those 30 years. Can you can you share some of the
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practical things that you've done in those 30 years that most people would think of as being just outrageous? But
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do you know what? You say sacrifice, but to me it didn't feel like a sacrifice. It felt like immediate relief because I
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Yes. When you become a monk, you you take vows to give up things, certain things, but the things I was giving up
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were the things that made me ill. So you you know you're giving up uh intoxicants and you become celibate and you uh I
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mean the there are also kind of moral vows such as you give up telling lies and stealing and harming others. These
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are all you know good principles to follow. But I suppose the two major things are no intoxicants and celibacy.
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And to me that was such a relief to to just kind of give all of that up and be in almost like kind of like a rehab
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situation. And but I I have to emphasize it didn't feel too heavy because I
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thought it was only going to be for a year. So celibacy is sex giving them sex. Yes. Yeah. And and what I found is
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that you actually develop stronger relationships. So people often think monks must be very lonely. But what I
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found was that then you were in a community of people where the the sexual um chemistry is off the agenda. So you
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start having friendships that really are so heartbased and you meet lots of
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people who are on the same path as you. So I didn't feel lonely at all. What is it about sex that is
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maybe a distraction, but what is it that puts on the list? It's not it's not to say that that sex is wrong or evil or
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bad. It's not a sort of uh weird sort of moralistic anti-ex thing at all. It's simply about where you're putting your
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focus. So when you're when you're a monk, you're giving up family life, you're giving up sexual relationships,
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you're giving up romance, you're giving up all of that so that you can focus very intent intensely on meditation
00:22:12
practice with the purpose that you can eventually help others. It's not a selfish thing is you're doing this so
00:22:17
that you can be of more benefit to others. But you want no distractions. And also you you at a deeper level, you
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want to start to experiment with what happens when you don't immediately run
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after a desire. You start to experiment with trying to
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not suppress your desire because that's incredibly unhealthy, but watch your desire and observe it and find out that
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you are more than your desire. And so celibacy is an amazing
00:22:54
environment to start doing that work. And that also means no masturbation and those kinds of things. Yeah. I mean it's
00:23:00
it's really about working with desire rather than just when I say working with
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I mean ex observing it and learning ways to transform it rather than just giving
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into it or suppressing it and I wouldn't say celibacy is for everybody
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but it suits a certain type of person. Mhm. And you know in Buddhism in general
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there are in in in the UK or America there's you know thousands and thousands and thousands of
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Buddhists but maybe a small handful of monks who become celibate. It's a very specific particular way to practice
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Buddhism. It's not the only way. I'm inquiring about this subject because it's actually because of a conversation
00:23:41
I was having with a really good friend of mine over New Year's who's had some troubles in his life. um has struggled
00:23:47
in relationships, has struggled professionally, has also struggled a little bit with purpose and meaning and has now sort of started to investigate
00:23:54
religion. And one of the things he said to me because there's a particular strangle hold that his sexual desires
00:24:00
has over him is that he was thinking about abstaining from masturbation and sex just for a short period of time. And
00:24:07
I think actually the reason for that is kind of what you've described there, which is just to try and separate get
00:24:12
back control from desire. He'll need to meditate because just abstaining from the thing
00:24:20
you want to the thing you're desperate to do and you're abstaining almost like locking yourself in a cage and saying I
00:24:27
won't I won't do that thing then what are you replacing it with or so so for
00:24:34
example when I work in you know I often teach meditation in drug rehab centers I
00:24:39
talk a lot about how okay yes you've had to give up the drug that was making you ill. But that's not the whole story. The
00:24:46
the rest of the story is what are you going to do about the mind that is addicted to that substance and how are
00:24:53
you going to resolve that? How are you going to fill the the hole inside that was craving something? Okay. So, with
00:25:00
the meditation, you're not just giving up something. You're learning to fill your fill your own spirit with something
00:25:08
more positive for yourself almost to heal from the thing that was had the desire. Yeah. Yeah. Desire is such an
00:25:14
interesting thing because it's we think we want something. But what's going on under the desire is a feeling of lack, a
00:25:20
feeling of hopelessness, a feeling I don't have. There's something missing.
00:25:25
And so meditation is about filling that with with light and with with love. You
00:25:32
know, the deepest addiction we all have is the addiction to our own thoughts.
00:25:37
that that's the that's really the root of it all is that a wanting thought arises in the my mind and then I jump on
00:25:45
it and I want to get something to kind of alleviate that. But it's that
00:25:50
internal attachment. Buddhism talks a lot about non-attachment and I think this is widely misunderstood. People
00:25:56
think it means you're supposed to be, you know, detached and have no friends and be unattached. It doesn't mean that
00:26:02
at all. It means how we're so attached to our thoughts and our emotions and
00:26:08
they get into the driving seat and send our life in all kinds of directions we don't want it to go in. How do we learn
00:26:14
to transform that inner attachment to the thought itself? And that's obviously where meditation comes in.
00:26:21
Let's talk about Buddhism then. So I said to you before we started recording that in the last sort of 12 months or so I've got really interested in Buddhism.
00:26:27
I uh started reading some books about Buddhism and I find it to be most aligned with this sounds like a strange
00:26:35
thing to say but I'm gonna say it anyway with almost like the medication that I need.
00:26:41
And I know it's not a medication but but it is a deep medicine. It's a medicine. It's a science to me. It's not so much a
00:26:49
religion. It is more of a medicine or a science. Yeah. I've struggled with the
00:26:54
religions. I I was Christian growing up, but I've struggled with like deities and gods and these kinds of things because
00:27:00
there's like 5,000 different gods that through history, so I don't really know which one's real and there's lots of books and I'm still on that journey, but
00:27:06
when I found Buddhism, it wasn't framed like the other religions. I thought it was much more compelling. What is
00:27:12
Buddhism? Can you tell me where it's come from? Is it a religion? Is there a god? Do I have to worship? Do I go to
00:27:18
hell, heaven? There's there's nothing to worship at all. Buddhism is a path to to
00:27:24
um inner internal understanding. The word Buddha means awake. And yes, Buddhism has a his history in that there
00:27:31
was somebody called the Buddha in India 2,500 years ago who attained awakening
00:27:36
and gave teachings and Buddhism you could call it that has come from there. But actually this word Buddhism is a
00:27:43
modern word ism. It's a modern word. Well, in the original languages of Buddhism such as Sanskrit and Tibetan,
00:27:50
you find terms that are so different from religion. You find terms such as
00:27:56
the science of awareness or the the um the examination of awakening, the inner
00:28:03
inner awareness. It's a path of mental discovery. It's a science. So, it's not
00:28:09
a religion per se. Technically, it is. If you define a religion as a group spiritual purpose and there are
00:28:15
monasteries, there are organizationals within Buddhism. But it also defies most
00:28:20
categorizations around religion- because it doesn't believe in a creator.
00:28:27
It doesn't believe in somebody to worship. It it's really about the power of your own mind. And is there a hell
00:28:34
and a heaven in Buddhism? They talk about hell and heaven as um uh states of
00:28:39
mind. They talk about everything as a state of mind. They say this is a state of mind. Buddhism is very much about
00:28:44
exploring the the fabric of reality. Th this table, this body, this this
00:28:50
so-called self, ideas of hell, heaven, they say these are all mental experiences. Everything is mind
00:28:56
according to Buddhism. So you get to the monastery. Yeah.
00:29:02
Talk to me about your journey of healing. So I was quite ill for a while in the
00:29:08
monastery and they kind of left me alone. They they let me rest a lot. I did little light little bits of light
00:29:13
work around the monastery. Started to meditate. Um
00:29:19
you know I I actually hated meditation when I first did it. This was a problem.
00:29:25
You know I I believed in it. I grew up in a Buddhist family. There's been this kind of faith in Buddhism as I grew up.
00:29:32
But I never actually did anything. I never I never meditated. Then I get to a monastery, I become a monk and read the
00:29:40
small print. You know, you got to meditate. And I hated it. I really
00:29:45
really hated it. And I thought, oh, what am I going to do? I really don't enjoy this at all. I find it an enormous
00:29:52
struggle. So I struggled a lot with meditation in those early days, days, weeks, months even. Why did you hate it?
00:29:59
I hated it because I was doing it in a way that was making
00:30:05
me more stressed. I would sit down. I I thought that
00:30:10
meditation is about clearing the mind. I'd heard this phrase, clear your mind.
00:30:15
I thought that's what you do. So, I sat there trying to clear my mind. And the more I tried to clear my mind, the
00:30:22
louder it was was shouting. And that particularly that negative
00:30:27
voice I told you about that you are no good, you're rubbish, you're you're awful, you'll fail. That became louder
00:30:33
and louder. And so the meditation became incredibly stressful because I thought I I can't do this. I can't I can't get get
00:30:40
rid of my thoughts. Of course, now since now I've discovered it's nothing to do with clearing the mind. But because I
00:30:46
thought it was, I struggled enormously. What is it then? It's nothing to do with clearing the mind. It's not about
00:30:52
putting yourself in an unconscious state at all. It's about working with your mind. So, it's about learning how to be
00:31:00
less controlled by your mind, but it's not about getting rid of the
00:31:06
thoughts. In fact, the thoughts are quite helpful. You know, they actually help you to
00:31:12
meditate. You see, what I was doing in those early days was I thought, okay, just sit down and just push everything
00:31:20
away and go into the kind of zen state. And of course, that's just like
00:31:25
suppression, isn't it? You're just trying to suppress. You're trying to push. It's like it's like trying to get a
00:31:31
small child to sit still in in their high chair while you're feeding them. They're going to, you know, they're
00:31:36
going to want to move around. So, it's not about that pushing away of thoughts.
00:31:42
I mean, you've got to ask yourself if if that was the aim, well, why why would it be the aim? Imagine if you could clear
00:31:48
your mind. So, what? You have 10 minutes of just being blank
00:31:54
and then you carry on with your day. Where's the Where's the journey? What
00:32:00
What journey is that? You just passed out on the floor for 10 minutes. Might as well as sleep or something. Yeah.
00:32:05
Yeah. And I can fully understand that if if you're if you're really stirred up
00:32:11
and miserable and stressed, the idea of 10 minutes of switching it off would be great. But it's not the solution. It
00:32:18
doesn't work. what is the solution? So, so it is definitely about changing your relationship with your thoughts. So,
00:32:26
okay. So, a typical meditation practice is you sit and you focus on your
00:32:31
breathing. It's it's different from breath work. You're not breathing in a particular way. You're not trying to
00:32:37
breathe slowly, deeply, or anything. You're just breathing normally. You know, just let the breath do its own thing and you're focused on it.
00:32:45
So on paper that sounds really clear and clean and simple. Focus on your breath.
00:32:50
The reality is it's really messy because you focus on your breath and within a
00:32:56
few seconds you're thinking about shopping lists or food or sex or anything. You know the mind just goes.
00:33:03
That's when the work starts because at some point you realize your mind has wondered.
00:33:09
Okay. That's when many people think they failed. You know they were they were meditating. and they were with the breath and then they realize they're
00:33:15
thinking about emails they need to write or shopping or whatever and then they think, "Oh, I'm I'm a failure." And they
00:33:22
very angrily bring themselves back to the breath. That's just going to make you more stressed
00:33:27
because you're actually training in in feeling like a failure. You know what I mean? So, so I can relate. I mean, it
00:33:33
takes me 7 seconds to drift off when I'm trying to meditate. So, it's not that at all. It it's that you you're with the
00:33:39
breath and then your mind wanders. It's not even that you see your mind wandering.
00:33:44
You kind of find out afterwards, don't you? It's not It's not like I'm with the breath and I can see my mind step away
00:33:51
from the breath and then go to a thought. It's more that I'm with my breath. I pass out and I wake up the
00:33:56
other side of town. Yeah, that is the meditation. Waking up inside your thoughts. That is the definition of
00:34:03
meditation. So, you haven't failed at all. You are meditating because what happened was you were with the breath
00:34:09
you got lost you lost your mind and then you found your mind again because you're
00:34:14
back you suddenly realize oh where was I am supposed to be meditating so that is meditation you're back with your
00:34:20
awareness and then you gently bring yourself back to the breath and actually
00:34:25
all you're doing is those three things throughout the session either you're with the breath or you're noticing that
00:34:30
you got lost or you're returning and it's that that returning
00:34:37
that makes you strong. Every time you return to the breath, you you are making a very powerful decision.
00:34:44
That's the attachment or the addiction to the thoughts. The mind was lost in those thoughts and you are recapturing
00:34:49
your attention and bringing it back. So, you are choosing where to send your mind.
00:34:56
And if you do this like an exercise, almost like going to the gym and getting strong day after day, week after week,
00:35:03
you you're you're teaching yourself how to choose to be happy and how to choose not to suffer.
00:35:10
So it such a simple technique on paper, you know, focus on your breath, come
00:35:15
back when you get lost, is actually
00:35:20
profoundly transformative psychologically because I think most people listening to
00:35:26
this assume that they're kind of strapped to their thoughts and their thoughts are the car driving wherever it
00:35:32
wants to go and we're just strapped to the back of it, our ankles tied to the back of it with a piece of rope. Yeah. Absolutely. And we just kind of suffer
00:35:38
consequences. hijacked by our thoughts. Yeah. Hijacked is a great great you know it stormed the like pilot's cabin and
00:35:44
it's flying us. Exactly. Wherever it wants to go. That's kind of the experience we have. So then you
00:35:50
meditation puts you behind the wheel of the car. Most people haven't had the experience you've had training yourself
00:35:57
to sort of disassociate or realize that you're not your thoughts. So, as someone that's on the other side of this
00:36:03
practice, how can you persuade me that my life
00:36:09
will be better if I listen to this? Like, what's the before and after, I guess, for you? So, I don't think
00:36:15
everybody has to join a monastery and do extreme retreats and the kind of things I do. It maybe that's my my kind of
00:36:22
extreme nature. I I have so many friends who meditate while they have families and busy jobs and they they do 15
00:36:29
minutes a day or twice a day or whatever. It can absolutely be done in anybody's lifestyle. But the whole point
00:36:36
is that you are learning to find your own inner freedom. You're learning to how to discover that you you are bigger
00:36:44
than the pain and suffering that seems to drive your life. Because what what I described earlier with the coming back
00:36:49
to the breath is is that first stage of learning to gain a bit more power around
00:36:55
what your mind is doing. And then what is so interesting is when you start to
00:37:00
think about okay when when I'm unhappy or when I'm angry or whatever
00:37:08
if I am observing myself being unhappy is the observer unhappy
00:37:14
is the is the observer angry and if I feel angry and I know I'm angry the part
00:37:20
of my mind that's looking at the anger cannot be angry because it's seeing the anger. So, so in Buddhism they they they
00:37:27
use a metaphor to describe this which is the sky and the clouds. The clouds can
00:37:32
be heavy and rainy and all of that but the sky is always bigger than the clouds. So our awareness of our minds
00:37:38
that that's where we can find our freedom. And when we talk about seeking purpose and seeking what are we looking
00:37:44
for in life, I think that's what we're looking for all the time in everything we do. Whether it be big life goals or,
00:37:50
you know, drinking a cup of coffee or water, small moments, in every moment,
00:37:56
we're looking for release or freedom. We think we're looking to feel happy or we
00:38:01
think we're looking for love or sex or or whatever it is. But I think what
00:38:06
we're really looking for is to free ourselves from from suffering and to free ourselves from need and to to be
00:38:14
free to be more in touch with who we really are. I think that's what we're looking for. And when when you meditate
00:38:20
and you step back and look at your mind, that observational aspect is is key.
00:38:28
to become the sky. Yeah. To become the sky rather rather than the clouds. And
00:38:33
then I think it can change your life because you you know when I first met my teacher
00:38:42
he he was quite a straight talking person. He he would he he wouldn't you know say much and what he said was often
00:38:49
could be sound sound a little bit harsh but he said it with love. And when I first met him, I'd go on about all the
00:38:54
stuff that was happening with me or had happened with me or to me. And he just says, "Stop taking yourself so
00:38:59
seriously." And initially that could sound like a slap in the face. I mean, imagine if you
00:39:04
went to a therapist and they said, "What you've been through is peanuts. You know, stop taking yourself seriously."
00:39:10
But he didn't mean it like that. What he meant was stop clinging to a kind of solidity. Stop making your your thoughts
00:39:17
and feelings and your past and make it so solid. make try to be the sky instead of the clouds. Try to step back and be
00:39:24
less solid about everything. Buddhism is very much into this notion that they call emptiness which
00:39:30
isn't emptiness in terms of a kind of vacuous void but more that things are
00:39:36
illusurary things aren't as real and solid and heavy as we think they are. And I think meditation can help us to
00:39:42
think more in that way and find more happiness. real happiness not not the happiness that depends on I will be
00:39:49
happy if I will be happy when I can only be happy because that's a very limited
00:39:55
happiness but imagine if you could be happy no matter what is that what Buddhism helps us to do I think Buddhism
00:40:02
is about freedom and I think freedom is happy no matter what and I think but more than that I think it's also about
00:40:09
compassion I the way I'm describing it could sound like this is all just about one's own personal development and
00:40:15
freeing oneself and becoming happier. But the key point is we're living in a
00:40:20
connection, a world of connection. And how can we genuinely help others? I think through freeing our minds and
00:40:27
helping others to do the same. Can I be in that state of mind where I am the sky
00:40:32
while also being incredibly effective in my job as a CEO? Yeah, I think this is
00:40:38
this is possibly one of the misconceptions. You know this is something I came across quite early on in when I was teaching meditation. I
00:40:45
started to give talks about meditation in the workplace like 25 years ago. So
00:40:51
before it became very popular. You now mindfulness is everywhere in in the
00:40:56
corporate world. But when I started it was quite unusual. And I did come across
00:41:01
a lot of misconceptions. The funniest one was before I went into a boardroom to talk to the the people in there about
00:41:08
meditation, their CEO took me to side and he said, "Um, please don't make them
00:41:14
too relaxed." I said, "What do you mean?" He said, "Well, I I like what you do, but I don't
00:41:20
want them to become too relaxed." I said, "I'm not I'm not some kind of like stage hypnotist. I'm not going to walk
00:41:27
into there and sort of, you know, put everyone into a trance. That's that's not what I do.
00:41:32
But it was such an interesting conversation because it made me see that his view of meditation is that you would
00:41:38
become this kind of spaced out, happy with everything, don't care, and you'd lose your drive. And it's absolutely not
00:41:46
that at all because it's about precision. It's about being present. It's about being less controlled by
00:41:51
distraction, be less controlled by negative thinking. And if you can do that, you can achieve more. So if you
00:41:58
are a CEO, if you are trying to achieve something in your work and you meditate,
00:42:04
it can make you can work much much harder and get less tired. And then also you can start to think more deeply about
00:42:10
why am I doing the things I'm doing and what am I really trying to achieve here?
00:42:16
Some of the most famous CEOs in the world talk about their meditation practice and this is why I've also been
00:42:21
slightly compelled into it. I think for me I'm the type of person that's very influenced by other people that I kind
00:42:28
of look up to and so someone like Steve Jobs who I think had a deep sort of spiritual practice which involved
00:42:34
meditation which I also think he cites as being much of the reason he was able to see around the corner and be more of
00:42:39
a visionary um was one of the big points of inspiration for me to get more curious about Buddhism and meditation.
00:42:46
Do you have any examples of like very high productive, very successful people that have had tremendous
00:42:54
benefits from meditation as it relates to them being more successful in their missions, their professional missions? I
00:43:01
mean, I can't I can't think of specific individual names, but it's it's just generally very well known that if you
00:43:08
meditate, it makes you more effective in your life because you are becoming your own boss. I mean we talk about being
00:43:14
your own boss but how many of us are really really our own boss? You know we
00:43:19
can be the boss of other people. We can be the boss of our environment to a certain extent but to be to be the CEO
00:43:27
of your own mind very very difficult. And so people who
00:43:34
can do that definitely become more effective in the world. But I think what also happens is they start to think
00:43:41
about how they could be really successful and then do some good with that success because they
00:43:48
they start to think about well is it all just about the success and the wealth or
00:43:53
is there something I could do with that success and wealth because meditation makes you more compassionate. Meditation
00:44:00
makes you more ethical. It makes you and not ethical in a kind of you know the word ethics sounds so kind of Victorian
00:44:06
and so kind of restrictive but I mean trying to make the world a better place
00:44:11
and I think there are many examples of people who've become enormously successful and used that success for the
00:44:17
good of the world and I think meditation is something key in their success. I was
00:44:22
just looking for a couple of examples and um Ray Dalio who a lot of people know is one of the the best investors in
00:44:27
the world who wrote the book principle said meditation more than anything in my life is the biggest ingredient of
00:44:33
whatever success I've had. And Mark Benoff who's the CEO of Salesforce a tremendously large company said
00:44:38
meditation is the most important thing I do each day. Oprah Winfrey Jack Dorsey let's say who's the co-founder of
00:44:43
Twitter and Square said there's nothing more impactful on my work than meditation. And Steve Jobs said, "If you
00:44:48
just sit and observe, you will see how restless your mind is. If you try to calm it, it only makes it worse. But
00:44:54
over time, it does calm." And he practiced Zen Buddhism and was a regular meditator. And he um says that his
00:45:02
minimalist design philosophy and focus were strongly influenced by his spiritual and meditative practices.
00:45:09
You see, I think the the um the thing that trips people up when they
00:45:15
think about how meditation could make you more effective is the word calm. Mhm. Because they think, "Oh, well, if I
00:45:22
become calm, I'm going to be I'm going to miss I'm not going to be a workaholic. I'm going to drop the ball."
00:45:27
Yeah. If I'm too calm, but I don't think of calm in that way at all as almost like a tranquilized calm.
00:45:35
I think of calm as being able to keep a cool head under fire. and be really precise and really on the
00:45:41
on the focus on in the now and really hold on to your purpose and know why
00:45:48
you're doing what you're doing and be less influenced by the areas of your
00:45:53
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for 20% off. A strong body starts with strong feet. Earlier on you said that in
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Buddhism they talk about an emptiness which is kind of this realizing that
00:48:03
life isn't so solid and your identity is a mirage and all these kinds of things.
00:48:10
It almost sounded like that's the opposite of like victimhood because when we think about victimhood,
00:48:16
it is I create an identity for myself and then I create a story around that identity which has suffered some kind of
00:48:22
injustice and then I kind of live out that injustice. How does Buddhism think about victimhood and identity and trauma
00:48:29
I guess? So of course we identify incredibly strongly with our past and we
00:48:35
in so many ways are prisoners of what has happened to us in our past and it's
00:48:41
totally understandable of course but Buddhism brings in a whole fresh perspective which is that you are not
00:48:46
your past. I mean even on a physical level every cell in your body has changed and your mind has changed. You
00:48:52
are you are right now in the present. The past is is an illusion as is the future.
00:48:59
And we spend so much time in the past and future or trying to manipulate the
00:49:04
present. Whereas with with meditation, you're learning to to be in the now and
00:49:10
not be. It doesn't mean you don't plan or don't remember, but you're learning to be to cling less to the past and
00:49:16
future. And you're learning to cling less to or hold less to the idea that
00:49:22
things are really as solid as you think they are. I mean it's very scientific that there's a there's a Buddhist uh
00:49:27
meditation which literally is about a table like you know here we are with this table and they say if you if you
00:49:34
take apart this table you'll find it doesn't exist because the table as it seems right now is is a is a top with
00:49:41
legs. You you you take the bits apart and now where is your notion of table?
00:49:47
you've got these bits of wood or metal or whatever it is and you start kind of dissecting that further and further and
00:49:53
further. Uh this is where Buddhism and and and particle physics become you know
00:49:58
talking a lot. There's a lot of conversation there in that the the smaller and smaller you go into these these wood shavings and then particles
00:50:06
and can you find the smallest part that makes up all of reality and Buddhists
00:50:12
would say no because if it's a part it has parts. There is no such thing as the partless
00:50:18
particle because if it's a particle it can be further subdivided. So,
00:50:24
we can't find the smallest base that makes up all of matter. What we're experiencing is more like a dream or an
00:50:31
illusion. And uh the reality we live in, of course, it feels very solid. You know, if I if I throw this this cup at
00:50:37
somebody, it's going to hit their head and hurt them. There's no point saying, "Well, it's all empty. Don't worry about it." But the idea behind this philosophy
00:50:45
of understanding things not to be as solid as they are is that we can learn to suffer less because we spend so much
00:50:51
of our energy constantly reacting to things as if they're really solid and really real and there's nothing that can
00:50:56
be done about them whether that be people or objects in the world around us or our mind itself.
00:51:03
And if we can desolidify some of that we could become more free. We all carry so
00:51:08
many burdens in this regard. You know, it could be grief, it could be heartbreak, it could be a colleague at
00:51:13
work that doesn't dislike us, a comment in our Instagram page of someone some something someone said about us. How
00:51:20
does one go about alleviating ourselves from this kind of
00:51:26
burden? Yeah. So, I for me it it's very much about um dropping the story
00:51:34
and looking at the feeling. Okay. Explain that to me. So for me this became
00:51:42
very uh very important practice for me when I was in a long retreat.
00:51:49
So I went into a very long retreat for four years. I became a monk for a year
00:51:54
and I stayed a bit longer stayed a bit longer. It was after about four years that I I decided to do this for life and
00:52:00
I took lifelong vows and then I knew about these long I did some short retreats but I knew about these long
00:52:06
retreats but it wasn't until 12 years later that the opportunity came up to go into a long retreat
00:52:12
uh four years long where you are really just cut off from the world for that length of time. No, no, nobody goes in
00:52:19
or out. And you are meditating many, many hours a day. And it was the most
00:52:25
frightening experience of my life because I I was in there alone with with my own thoughts and emotions. It's not a
00:52:32
completely solitary retreat. There are other monks there all doing their own meditation in their rooms. So there is a kind of group, but you are very much
00:52:38
alone as well. And for me the whole thing was for the
00:52:44
first two years was just horrific amounts of depression, misery, pain,
00:52:50
anguish, anxiety that would build into panic attacks. I I was really really
00:52:55
shocked by what happened to me in there because I I I think I thought I'd you know I'd been a monk for 12 years and
00:53:02
I'd already started to you know give a few talks about meditation and and
00:53:07
maybe I thought I was quite sorted but I I wasn't and I got in there and really fell apart. But it was an amazing thing
00:53:14
that happened to me because that falling apart forced me after a while to to
00:53:20
learn how to engage with what I'm talking about which is looking at the suffering and working with that with
00:53:27
meditation looking at the suffering. So for me during those first two years of the
00:53:33
retreat I was completely obsessed with the story
00:53:38
because I I was experiencing these horrendous feelings of heartbreak
00:53:44
and feelings of depression uh anxiety just kind of a whole
00:53:50
mass of suffering inside myself and I was I was trying to almost do therapy on
00:53:55
myself and think okay let's you know thinking memories were coming up from the past and thinking about things that
00:54:00
had happened in my past and is this why I'm suffering now and how do I resolve that? And the more I went down that
00:54:07
road, the worse it got. And I found myself really disconnected from
00:54:13
Buddhism. And it was a really frightening experience because I I'm there in a 4-year retreat. I'm a monk
00:54:20
and I'm I was feeling completely alienated from the whole thing. I I kind
00:54:25
of wanted to just get away from it. I wanted to run away. And things only changed when I
00:54:32
hit rock bottom like hugely in that I actually
00:54:37
I climbed over the wall of the retreat to run away. I couldn't take it anymore. I I at one morning I had the most
00:54:44
immense panic attack I've ever had and I just like saw red and just ran I legged
00:54:50
it out of the retreat which is un it's unthinkable. you know, in a four-year retreat, you're not supposed to leave.
00:54:55
But I jumped over the wall and tried to escape. I say tried to escape as if I was in some kind of, you know, prison or
00:55:01
cult. It's not like that. People do leave retreats, but for me, it was this kind of dramatic get out of there and
00:55:06
run away. And I remember um like freaking out and
00:55:13
running and running and running down this road in the rain. This was on a very, you know, remote area of a
00:55:20
Scottish island. and then just stopping and thinking, "What are you doing? What what has happened to you?" And I
00:55:26
just stopped and then went back and I asked the leaders of the retreat if I could be let back in. And they said,
00:55:32
"Well, no, you've left." But I really begged them because I I had such clarity in that moment. I wanted to go back in.
00:55:38
And they said, "Okay, the abbot of my monastery said, "Okay, stay stay in a little caravan on the edge of the
00:55:44
retreat boundary for a week, for seven days, and think about what you're doing, and then we'll see if you will let you
00:55:50
back in. And during that time, I I thought really deeply and I re I
00:55:56
really knew I wanted to go back in because there was at that moment a thought of shall I give up being a monk?
00:56:01
Shall I give up the whole thing? I I can't do this. It's made me so miserable. But I I really knew in that
00:56:07
moment what what my purpose was. I knew I wanted to go back in and carry on. But
00:56:12
I also knew I'd been tormenting myself with my past and that
00:56:18
I hadn't worked out how to how to heal myself. I I I'd been sinking
00:56:26
so badly and I if I was to go back in there, I would have to try a completely new approach.
00:56:33
Why did you choose to go back in? Because I I really strongly believed that it was what I want to do with my
00:56:40
life. And a part of me thought, don't give something up when you're freaking out because you will regret it. If
00:56:48
you're going to give this thing up, give it up from a place of clarity, knowing that there's something better for you out there. Don't give up because you're
00:56:54
having a panic attack and you can't take it. That's the wrong kind of timing to
00:57:00
make a life change because I do I I really do believe in what I'm doing. I I
00:57:06
I this is the life I've chosen for myself and I want to do it. But it got so difficult I couldn't take it anymore.
00:57:13
Why did you want to do it? If something is painful and causing you anxiety because I felt that this this pain I'm
00:57:20
going through I've the the meth the methods are there. I just need to know how to use them and
00:57:26
I could learn to conquer this. I I this pain could be the breakthrough. Most
00:57:33
people in in their lives when they think about the things that give them anxiety or pain or fear, you know, we live as
00:57:39
sort of discomfort avoiding humans. So we try and run to run to comfort or pleasure. Exactly. So life is hard.
00:57:45
Let's run from it. Let's get on a plane, fly to another country and try and just set up a new life somewhere else. It
00:57:51
doesn't work because you go to your new life and the thing that has been haunting you like a shadow goes with
00:57:57
you. You can't run from yourself. You can you can run to the end of the
00:58:03
earth and that thing that has been tormenting you is part of you. And until
00:58:09
you learn to integrate that, it will always trip you up. And so I went back into that retreat knowing, okay, this is
00:58:17
your last chance. If you don't if if you mess this up again, that that's it, you know, forget
00:58:24
it. So it was a real like make orb breakak situation. And I went back in
00:58:29
and I I I um everything changed
00:58:35
because I found I I had to find a new a different way of dealing with that
00:58:41
suffering. What was that? Okay. So, I'm back in there and it's coming up again. the depression, the anxiety, the
00:58:49
the pain. Like to me, it felt like
00:58:54
it it felt like like some something like that was piercing me. It felt like a it felt like there was like a knife
00:59:01
constantly twisting twisting and turning in my heart or like in the middle of me. It was really
00:59:07
painful. And what I'd been doing up until that point was just trying to get that knife out and also thinking, why is
00:59:14
it there? Is it because of what happened to me when I was 14? Is it what happened to me when I was 17? Is it this? Is it
00:59:20
that? Is it my my family? What is it? That's the story. I say story. I'm not
00:59:26
I'm I'm not belittling people's stories. I'm just saying it's the narrative, isn't it?
00:59:34
So I I decided to to use the knife as the meditation
00:59:40
to to actually meditate on it and and the the whole thing starts to
00:59:47
change when you do that because until that point you've been if until that
00:59:52
point you've been trying to get rid of your suffering or get rid of your pain. But if you turn your pain into your
00:59:58
meditation, you're moving towards it. And
01:00:03
how can it hurt you if you've decided to move towards it? You you you've made that choice. So what I started to do was
01:00:10
just focus on the pain, but try to bypass the judgments. I don't like this.
01:00:16
This is so terrible. Why am I depressed? Why am I anxious? And just feel the feeling. And it's a
01:00:22
sensation in the body because one of the key um
01:00:28
instructions in meditation is when you focus your mind, you focus it with less judgment. This is good, this is bad. You
01:00:35
just focus. So you're focusing on that feeling without pushing it away, without saying why do I feel like this, but just
01:00:42
the feeling. And it you start it starts to change.
01:00:47
it starts to change because you're accepting it. My my teachers had
01:00:54
always said to me, they'd always go on and on about acceptance and I just I just wanted to hit them when they said it cuz it sounded so grim. You know,
01:01:01
you've got to accept yourself or you've got to accept your suffering. To me, that sounded like you're going to for the rest of your life be dragging this
01:01:07
bag of rocks up a hill. You know, acceptance is so miserable and so boring. I didn't realize that what they
01:01:13
meant was was compassion and self-acceptance at a very very deep
01:01:19
level. So, so I was I'm I was focusing on that feeling in my body and trying
01:01:25
not to go into the stories about it or the hatred of it and just move towards it and and kind of become become one
01:01:33
with that pain and then you relax and something kind of releases.
01:01:38
And I mean, I think it works on a chemical level because basically when you're when you're trying to push pain away, you're creating enormous amounts
01:01:44
of uh cortisol in your body, the stress hormone. When you relax, the endorphins arise, you start to feel happy. I mean,
01:01:50
it's quite bizarre that the thing that has hurt you so much starts to turn into a kind of joyful feeling and you start
01:01:58
to think, oh wow, okay, so happiness is nothing to do with somebody being
01:02:03
nice to me or this object or that thing. Happiness is about being okay with your suffering
01:02:11
and and and not just being okay with it, but actually sending love into the place
01:02:17
in yourself that you hated so much. So for for me um that what started to
01:02:23
change was from from from having a feeling like a knife twisting inside me and hurting me
01:02:29
and wanting to get rid of it. I found ways to hold that with with
01:02:35
love. And I I started to have this image in my head of as if I had found a like a
01:02:42
frightened rabbit or a bird with a broken wing and I'm holding that in my hand with tenderness.
01:02:48
I'd never been able to do that for myself. I had never ever been able to be kind to
01:02:55
myself. Everything in my life until up until that point had been so harsh and so self
01:03:02
self-hating and and I think you know in my teenage
01:03:08
years when I was trying to become a a successful actor I think that was the
01:03:13
drive was I I hate myself so I better get loads of people to love me instead cuz I can't do it. I'm not saying all
01:03:19
actors are like that by no means but there is a kind of actor who is like that. We know that and that was me. And
01:03:25
then you know even as a as a as a monk and you become celibate and you you're you know having this kind of more like
01:03:32
looking after yourself lifestyle. I developed all these incredibly strong attachments with friends where I'd want
01:03:38
them to be nice to me and I didn't want to be alone with myself. I couldn't spend time alone with myself. And then
01:03:44
in the first two years of that retreat I'm hating myself and hating my pain and jumping over the wall and anything to
01:03:50
kind of jump out of my own skin. And when I learned how to do this kind of
01:03:56
practice with sending compassion into that part of myself that I'd hated
01:04:01
so much, it it it was really transformative. You said it felt like holding a scared
01:04:08
rabbit or a bird with a broken wing. How did you come to feel about that bird?
01:04:14
I felt um I felt love for that part of myself. And for me, that's only possible
01:04:23
when you stop getting so distracted by all the history and the the the the
01:04:28
details of your past, but you're just relating to the feeling in your body right now.
01:04:35
And I don't know if it's like this for everybody, but for me, feeling it in the body is a really easy way to start
01:04:40
because yeah, it's depression, it's anxiety, it's trauma, whatever it is that's quite
01:04:46
kind of nebulous. How do you find it? And for me it was so physical. It was like this twisting of a knife in the
01:04:51
heart or a sinking feeling in the in the chest. And just to relate to that sensation with kindness
01:04:59
taught me how to love myself but in an accepting way you know not it's not
01:05:05
about you know becoming an egoomaniac like I love myself. It's more have
01:05:10
kindness for yourself. How does this translate to things like grief? Because grief is one of the the hardest things
01:05:16
to get to acceptance on the sort of finality of life, losing someone you love. You've been through this yourself.
01:05:22
You you had a I think a best friend of yours who was Well, my teacher. Oh, your teacher. Well, he was my best friend as
01:05:28
well as my teacher. He he he was murdered. He was in so 11 years ago. My
01:05:34
teacher Akon Rimpiche who had been my everything for all those years, you know, he he was my teacher, my closest
01:05:41
friend. He I also I spent a lot of time with him. I became his kind of assistant. So when he would travel, I
01:05:48
was with him all the time. So we were very close. He was Tibetan and he was in
01:05:54
charge of our monastery in Scotland. And part of his his work was he would run a
01:06:00
charity called Rockpa which has um oh that's him. um he would go to Tibet
01:06:07
every year and um look after projects there, feeding orphans, looking after
01:06:13
schools, hospitals, etc. He was on his way to Tibet one year and he was in Changdu in China and he was um basically
01:06:21
ambushed and stabbed, killed. And I mean this completely rocked the
01:06:27
Buddhist world. It's like, you know, horrendous news. But on a personal level for me,
01:06:33
I was one of the first people who found out. I I'd been on the phone to him every day until then. I was his assistant and very working very closely
01:06:40
with him. So it complet my it completely like blew me apart. I mean it blew me to
01:06:48
pieces. I cannot describe how badly it blew me
01:06:54
to pieces. But
01:07:00
the meditation I've described to you saw me through
01:07:07
because I at some point during that grieving process I remembered what to
01:07:12
do. At first I didn't because you know when you're really in it in in it you you
01:07:18
can't think but then so there was the whole aftermath you know he was killed and it was in all the
01:07:24
press and then as his assistant I was the one dealing with the media and in a way that you stay busy when you're
01:07:31
grieving it kind of helps you to you know stay focused but then the nights
01:07:36
the nights was nighttime was when it started to hurt
01:07:41
because at night I would just be tossing and turning turning and feeling like feeling like I was on fire
01:07:50
because I had a mixture of grief, anger, despair. It was a whole mixture of things.
01:07:56
We knew the killer. The person who murdered him had been a monk, a Tibetan.
01:08:02
He had been a monk in our monastery. We knew him. He actually had the same name as me and we knew him quite well. So
01:08:09
there was all of that mixed in with what on earth happened to this person that he did this thing. And so all of that is
01:08:16
consuming me at night and I'm just tossing and turning feeling like I'm in flames. And then at some point it kicked
01:08:21
in the the meditation. It just had it just happened because I'd done it in retreat.
01:08:27
It had seen me through. It had really really helped me. And at some point I just had to lie there and send love into
01:08:34
the flames in me. You know, I had to send send that kindness into the place I
01:08:41
was in despair. I'm not saying that I then just became all right. No, but it absolutely
01:08:48
calmed things. Absolutely. And it it is it is it is all about love. It really
01:08:54
is. You are sending love into the pain you are experiencing.
01:08:59
And this helped me through the grief. It helped me also with forgiveness with the the guy we knew who did it. It helped me
01:09:06
on so many levels. And I'm not saying that it, you know, it's it's all okay, but I have I I've made peace with his
01:09:13
death. And I mean, he taught me this practice.
01:09:20
He taught me how to do that. And then he died and I had to do it. That I I think
01:09:26
of it as his last gift to me. And um
01:09:32
I'm you know I I I I'm will be forever grateful. When you talk about sending love into
01:09:38
the flames, what is the the actual practice there? Is it certain sentences
01:09:43
you're saying? No, it's thinking. Yeah, I'm glad you asked this because it it is so much about going beyond the words and
01:09:51
going into an experience of oneness. So, so to make it really practical, you
01:09:56
know, you're feeling you're feeling incredible trauma in your body for
01:10:03
finding it physically is the easiest way to do it. Like you your body's in flames or you've got like a feeling of a knife
01:10:09
twisting in your heart, whatever it is, there's this feeling in the body and first of all, you just focus on that
01:10:14
feeling. So, anybody who who meditates knows how to focus on their breathing. It's the
01:10:21
same thing. It's just where you're focusing. So, you're feeling the feeling
01:10:26
and you're trying to bypass the thoughts of this is uncomfortable. I want this to go away. Why did he die? What happened?
01:10:32
You're just feeling the feeling. And then you pay attention to that
01:10:39
feeling in a loving way.
01:10:44
You you flood it with love. And the reason this is possible, I mean
01:10:50
this is touching upon a major a major belief in Buddhist philosophy, which is
01:10:56
that our minds are naturally compassionate. We are not
01:11:02
these fight orflight killing machines that some people like to think the human
01:11:07
being is. We are our natural state is to be kind. It is who we are naturally deep
01:11:15
down. So when you clear away all the the words and the the ideas and you just sit
01:11:20
with the feeling and you send love into that feeling with your mind, you're just loving that feeling, holding it with
01:11:26
compassion as if you were with a friend who was grieving. You know, if you if you were sitting with a friend who was
01:11:32
freaking out or grieving or whatever, you you you're not going to slap them around the face and say snap out of it.
01:11:39
You will hold their hand and we all know how to do that. The question is, can you do it for yourself?
01:11:46
And for me, that was a huge challenge because I hated myself so much for so many years.
01:11:53
I was my worst enemy. So to hold my own hand internally in that sense, that's
01:11:59
what I mean by sending love into the feeling. And what happens then is the feeling starts to change.
01:12:05
It starts to melt. The sharpness, the sharp edge of it, edges of it start to melt. And you start to be okay with
01:12:11
being not okay. And
01:12:17
it's almost as if a kind of happiness starts to arise, but it's not like a it's a kind of happiness you haven't
01:12:23
tasted before. It's a happiness of I can be okay with this. It makes you
01:12:29
immensely strong. You talked about forgiveness.
01:12:35
Did you forgive the man that murdered your friend and teacher? Yes.
01:12:40
Quite quickly. it I mean in a way it was made easier because it became really clear that he
01:12:48
was psychotic and of course that's no excuse or condoning or anything like that but
01:12:54
somebody who is really unable to control themselves I mean how can you hate them or whatever
01:13:00
you know it's that's an extreme case but there are the
01:13:05
practice of forgiveness is a hard one isn't it because we we've all got people in our lives that we think might have
01:13:10
wronged us or done which has caused us pain and almost the way that we
01:13:16
create our own perception of justice is by holding the grudge. Yeah. Now, now
01:13:22
why do we do that? That's my that's the question is do we think
01:13:28
do we think that if we let go of the grudge we have let the other person get away with it? That's how it kind of
01:13:34
feels, right? Wouldn't you say that by holding the grudge they've got away with it?
01:13:40
because you're the one suffering. They've really won. They're winning in each moment because you're holding on to
01:13:47
that. In Buddhism, there's a a teaching that says it's like holding on to a piece of hot metal or holding a hot coal
01:13:54
in your hand and it's just burning you. So, if I'm holding the grudge, they have absolutely got away with it because they
01:14:00
are the thing they did which was one thing maybe I am now constantly hurting
01:14:07
and they are absolutely the winner. So for I I wonder if we we assume I think
01:14:12
we do assume that forgiveness is a kind of giving up even the word forgive the give in the word. So it sounds like
01:14:19
we're taking a weaker position. We're giving up. We're sort of surrendering but I think forgiveness is a strength or
01:14:25
a power and it's actually nothing to do with the other person. They might you're not
01:14:31
going to necessarily write them a letter and say I've forgiven you. But you're freeing yourself. You're dropping your
01:14:38
burden because that rage is toxic and that hurt is toxic.
01:14:44
It's so hard to let go of it. And people can say, "Let go and you just want to slap them in the face because what?
01:14:51
Okay, is it that easy? I'm just going to let go." You know, it's not that easy. It's bloody hard.
01:14:58
But meditation gives gives you the tools. Partly because meditation anyway
01:15:03
is helping to loosen up that kind of glue that we have in our minds where we're glued into those feelings. It even
01:15:10
just a simple meditation like coming back to the breath is helping you to be less glued into those thoughts and
01:15:17
reactions and feelings. So the feeling of rage can start to be less heavy for you. You've been through several sort of
01:15:25
traumatic incidents. You talked about being 14, being 17, sexual abuse, parent parental divorce, a little bit of
01:15:31
neglect, it sounds like, as well. Have you forgiven all of those people in your life?
01:15:39
I don't know. I don't know if forgiveness is a big huge massive moment or if it's a process. I'm friends with
01:15:46
all those people, very close friends with all those people. And I think
01:15:55
here's what I think. I think I've learned how to forgive the feelings
01:16:00
that those incidents hap gave rise to. Mhm. That to me is much more important
01:16:07
than forgiving the people. Mhm. And I think what's also happened to me
01:16:13
is I've started to find that the suffering
01:16:19
that I experience has some use because it is the thing that you're
01:16:25
using for your mental transformation. Rimpache always used to say um suffering
01:16:32
is like compost. Compost is made of rotten vegetables. people chuck it away or they know how to
01:16:38
make the field grow and I I think it's like that. So with forgiveness um I would say yeah
01:16:47
meditation but I would say also thinking thinking deeply about
01:16:52
about the situation. You know what's really helped me
01:16:58
with with my dad and with other people is to think about the suffering they
01:17:03
were going through that kind of like propelled them to behave the way they've behaved. There's always something isn't
01:17:10
there in somebody that has made them behave the way they behave. And there's a part of us that gets very indignant
01:17:16
and thinks how dare they they should know better. Whereas the Buddhist's
01:17:21
answer would be well what what do you mean they should know better? They know what they know there. They are they are
01:17:26
driven by their own confusion and their own pain. Wh Why do you think they were out to get you? Why do you think they
01:17:33
were deliberately out to maliciously get you? Weren't they just caught in their own suffering and you you were there?
01:17:41
But it's not so much about you. And I think that starts to lighten the burden a bit when you start to think
01:17:46
about, you know, there's a meditation I sometimes do where you you swap places with the other person in your mind.
01:17:53
You sit and you think about being them and looking at the world out of their eyes. The person that hurt you. Yeah. So
01:18:00
many people will be thinking about that person in their life as you speak and they'll be the challenge I guess they'll face is they'll continually come back to
01:18:07
this idea that this person is an Yeah. They you know it almost we all are though. We are too. We all
01:18:13
are. I am. We're all because we're all just confused. We're all at the mercy of our own minds.
01:18:20
If you meditate regularly, you realize how out of control you are because
01:18:25
you're trying to sit there with your breathing and all you're thinking about is shopping lists and you think, "Wow,
01:18:31
the human mind is really pretty messed up. We can't make it do anything we want it to do." So this person that you think
01:18:39
they're so evil and so terrible and how dare they do the thing they've done. I'm not saying that we're condoning it and
01:18:45
saying, "Yeah, you can do what you want." I'm just saying lighten up a bit because people are just doing their best and
01:18:52
sometimes their best is really bad. Then that doesn't have to become your problem. It's not really about you.
01:19:00
We we we obviously take things personally. If something is done to you, of course you're going to take it
01:19:05
personally. But meditation helps you look at the 360°
01:19:10
view of a situation rather than just from your perspective. And very
01:19:16
important here that we don't get into that kind of victim shaming reality where you think, "Oh, it's all about me
01:19:22
and poor them." It's it's not that at all. It's simply that you think we're all we're all messed up in various ways
01:19:30
and and that's the human condition. Make sure you keep what I'm about to say to yourself. I'm inviting 10,000 of you to
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01:20:24
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01:20:30
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01:20:42
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01:20:55
about the small consistent actions that have a lasting change in your outcomes.
01:21:00
So two years ago, we started the process of creating this beautiful diary and it's truly beautiful. Inside there's
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01:21:12
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01:21:18
that will ultimately change your life. So if you want one for yourself or for a friend or for a colleague or for your team, then head to the diary.com right
01:21:25
now. I'll link it below. Many of us live trapped in the life we have. I guess
01:21:31
maybe the word trapped isn't the right word, but held back in many ways because of fear. And I wondered what Buddhism
01:21:36
teaches us about fear in terms of fear of taking risks or, you know, going and
01:21:44
becoming a Buddhist uh monk or starting a business or pursuing a passion or
01:21:49
moving to Bali. Many of us have these these dreams, these callings, but we're trapped in fear. And would you also
01:21:56
agree that the fear can be about those bigger things, but also it's a momentto- moment subtle anxiety that just like
01:22:02
pervades everything? Yeah, it's both. To to me this became hugely
01:22:10
um like obvious when I came out of that four-year retreat because I I came out
01:22:18
that retreat was 2005 to 2009. When I came out of that retreat,
01:22:23
everybody had smartphones. During those four years, the whole landscape of technology changed
01:22:29
dramatically. Smartphones, social media, the whole thing happened during that time. And you hadn't been on the
01:22:35
internet those that No, no, we had nothing. Before my retreat, some people had Blackberries and then that was it.
01:22:41
And then suddenly it's all different. And I arrived in London and everybody's walking around with their face buried in
01:22:47
phones and I I'm walk, you know, going up the escalator and the and the tube in London and the little billboards are
01:22:53
moving images. Mhm. That made me feel dizzy.
01:22:59
But where I'm going with this is is I I I I'm maybe because I've been in this
01:23:05
unusual environment and now I'm back in normal reality, I see it with more of a shock. And I started to think, how much
01:23:12
are we being made to feel afraid all the time? When news media becomes digitalized and
01:23:18
monetized and then you have to keep the person reading, we know the tricks that people have to do. We know we all know
01:23:25
about clickbait. We all know about how the the headline of an article has to be shocking enough to make you read the
01:23:30
article and then you see the ads. You don't actually find out the information until two/ird way down. We know, we know
01:23:37
that and we're all wise to that on one level and on the other level we are completely influenced by it. So we're
01:23:44
now walking around in a world where we're constantly being told we are in danger. I'm not I'm not here to, you
01:23:51
know, I'm not anti-technology. It's great. It can do so many good things, but it's like food. You got to eat it in
01:23:58
the right way. If you if you overeat, you get sick. If you not discerning about what you eat, you're going to get
01:24:04
ill. It's the same with technology. And so yeah, fear is now used in every
01:24:09
every walk of life. Fear is used more than ever in politics to to make us afraid so that we vote for people
01:24:15
because of fear. Fear is used so much now to make us go shopping, hurry up while stocks last. So what do we do
01:24:22
about that when we live in a world that is commercially driven or driven by power
01:24:29
dynamics that mean that fear is just a great motivator and a great way to influence? I think we we have to protect
01:24:36
our minds with meditation. Does this mean like throw your phone away and don't go outside? What does it mean? No.
01:24:42
Don't throw your phone away. Don't don't go and run away to the mountains. Learn to face the fear. Learn to be fearless
01:24:50
in a frightened world. And I think this is something very practical because I I
01:24:56
do this through practicing microscopic moments of meditation in busy situations. What does that mean? So, I
01:25:04
might be standing in a queue and I'll feel the ground under my feet. I might be in an airport queuing up and instead
01:25:11
of going into that impatience thing and the stressy mode or or checking my
01:25:16
phone, I'll I'll do a mo moment of meditation. Something that's very important to me is to meditate every
01:25:22
day, sitting down and doing it kind of formally, but also these micro moments throughout the day. Tiny moments where
01:25:29
you just become aware of yourself, become aware of the ground under your feet, become aware of your shoulders,
01:25:35
drop your shoulders, be aware of them, become aware of your breathing. And I find this if you do this in cues and
01:25:40
traffic jams, it changes your entire reality because what are you doing? You're re
01:25:46
you're rew you're rewiring your own brain. You you know how whenever we're in a
01:25:52
stuck situation like a queue or a traffic jam, we are wired to respond
01:25:58
with tension and impatience. But if you do a mic micro moment of
01:26:04
mindfulness, you're changing the wiring. You're teaching yourself that you can meet stress in a calm way. You can be
01:26:12
okay with being stuck in in the traffic. So what that does is it then makes you more fearless because you're almost like
01:26:18
looking forward to the next traffic jam whereas most of us are just reacting to situations instead of reacting you're
01:26:23
thinking bring it on. There is a gap isn't there between what happens and how we react. That's the
01:26:29
crucial gap. the gap between impulse and action because so much is reaction.
01:26:35
So so much of I think we spend so much of our lives just reacting
01:26:41
in in in the I feel hungry so I eat somebody says hello I say hello but even
01:26:47
on a momentto- moment basis how much are we consciously living and how much are we just reacting
01:26:53
and so when we can find that gap between the impulse and the action and make a different choice
01:26:59
I think it's almost like in every moment we're we're standing at a fork in the road In every moment, what one road is
01:27:07
the road of reaction and the other road is the road of response. Meditation helps you pause and see you
01:27:13
could make a choice. I don't have to get stressed out in traffic. I could instead be mindful or I don't have to get I
01:27:20
don't have to my colleague at work is grumpy. I don't have to bite their head off and then regret it. I could I could
01:27:25
hold back. So you say meditation is the solution to
01:27:30
many of the things we've talked about today including the response versus reaction fork in the road. Yeah. So if you were making a plan for me from this
01:27:37
day onwards on how to implement meditation in my life. Yeah. Um what would that plan look like? First of all,
01:27:44
chuck all those things away. Okay. All of this stuff on the desk. Paraphernalia. Okay. So on the desk I have like a sound healing bowl, some
01:27:50
incense, some rings, some little I don't even know what these are. Yeah. So, we're going to chuck all the
01:27:55
paraphernalia away in the bin. Okay, we're going to bin all of it. Okay, let me You know, you don't need any
01:28:02
equipment. There's a lot of spiritual tat, isn't there? I mean, I said it,
01:28:12
you know, it's about you and your mind. It's not about having little symbols and
01:28:17
incense and you don't need it. And okay, what is the plan? The plan is to start
01:28:24
with 10 minutes a day. Okay. 10 minutes a day. When? Ideally morning. Okay. Simply because
01:28:31
you're starting your day, right? And your cortisol level is highest in the morning. When you wake up, there's a spike of cortisol. Bring it down with
01:28:37
meditation. So, I get up, I check my emails, check my WhatsApp, then meditate. I'm joking. If you want. No,
01:28:44
no. Tell me the the optimal way. You're going to be my Get up straight away and meditate. Okay. Get up straight away and meditate because you're starting your
01:28:50
day, right? And 10 minutes is enough to start with. And the beauty of this is that you know they can show in brain
01:28:55
scans that 10 minutes a day after 4 days there'll be visible changes in your brain. So knowing that keeps you going
01:29:02
because you think okay this literally is like weight training. I'm going to get muscle. And what do I do? So I sit down
01:29:08
somewhere. You sit down and you're going to focus on your breathing. But what I find really
01:29:15
crucial is that you are not just launching yourself into it. you are introducing
01:29:21
a bit of compassion into the process and this is what elevates the meditation from being just a kind of brain gym into
01:29:28
being something that takes you to a much more kind of like spiritual realm of it and and it connects in with what we were
01:29:35
talking about earlier about learning to be more compassionate to yourself and others. So you start with that
01:29:40
intention. So you start by just settling and sitting. You know, some people sit
01:29:46
cross-legged on the floor, but it's also okay on a chair. But on the chair, there should be some sense of posture. So
01:29:52
you're sitting up straight. And you would start with setting the intention. And I don't mean an intention such as,
01:29:59
oh, today I want this or want that. It's the bigger intention. Why am I meditating? I am meditating for not only
01:30:06
myself, but for all living beings. I'm doing this for me and the world. And I'm
01:30:12
not I'm not not trying to fool myself by thinking if I do my meditation somehow wars will end or whatever. No, it's more
01:30:19
that if I do this this will help me become more effective in the world and spread more love and compassion. So
01:30:25
that's the reason. So you're setting that intention with your thinking for a few moments and then you're going to
01:30:32
start to be aware of yourself. So okay. So let's just try this.
01:30:40
So take a moment to set the intention of compassion
01:30:47
making the intention that you're doing the practice for yourself and others.
01:30:58
And now just become aware of your hands. Maybe your hands are resting on your knees or your legs.
01:31:05
And feel that there's a lot of nerve endings in the fingers. So, it's easy to start here where you just feel the
01:31:11
contact between your skin and your clothing.
01:31:17
You're aware of your hands resting on your legs.
01:31:27
Bring the focus up to your shoulders. Most of us have tense shoulders because
01:31:33
we're on our phone or behind a desk. So, as you're aware of your shoulders, the
01:31:39
tension can just drop away.
01:31:50
Bring your focus to the front of your body.
01:32:00
Start to notice your breathing.
01:32:05
The trick here is not to try to breathe or go into deep breathing, but just let
01:32:10
your breath be natural
01:32:20
and focus on the rising and falling of your chest or your belly with each breath.
01:32:27
And when you realize your mind has wandered, gently come back to the breath.
01:32:33
Now you can make the focus more precise by feeling the air in your nose or your
01:32:39
mouth. If you can breathe through your nose, then do that, otherwise the mouth. And you're sensing
01:32:46
the air as it comes in and out of your nostrils or your lips.
01:32:51
You can feel the air brushing against the skin at the edge of your nose or your mouth.
01:33:02
And then you'll realize your mind has gone somewhere and you gently bring it back.
01:33:07
Okay. And to end the session, we'll just do a short one for now. Take another moment to think about compassion.
01:33:19
You're dedicating your practice to freedom, compassion, and happiness for
01:33:24
yourself and all beings. and stop there.
01:33:31
I mean, that was short, but it gives you an idea of the process. And one major warning
01:33:38
is you trip yourself up if you try and think, well, did it go well?
01:33:45
Partly because of the culture we're in and how everything's about sensation. I think we only think something's working
01:33:50
if it makes us feel something. Mhm. And med meditation is very different. You
01:33:56
know, when I start when I first started meditating, I described how I really hated it and found it, you know, really stressful. One thing I remember that
01:34:03
happened to me was I started to do quite a lot of it cuz I thought, okay, I'm going to get into this thing and do it and become like a a pro and I was doing
01:34:09
loads of it and finding it was making me feel more unhappy and I was feeling this kind of sense of like sinking feeling in
01:34:16
my chest and I thought, you know, I' I'd struggled with depression anyway. I thought this making me more depressed
01:34:22
and I went to Rimpiche my teacher and I said medit I'm doing loads of it it's making me depressed he said it's nothing
01:34:28
to do with the meditation it's it's how you are he said you're a junkie
01:34:35
you're using your meditation like a drug I said what do you mean he said well I think you're sitting there waiting for
01:34:41
it to to kind of like come on you're waiting for it to give you a high and
01:34:46
it's so true because I realized I'd been sitting or like getting addicted to it and
01:34:51
thinking, okay, I'm going to do my meditation, right? I've done 5 minutes. Where's where's the bliss? When am I going to
01:34:58
feel good? And what he was trying to tell me is that if I'm trying to make myself feel
01:35:03
good, I'm already coming from a place of lack.
01:35:08
You know what I mean? I'm already saying to myself, I don't feel good. So, I'm actually promoting
01:35:14
a sense of lack. So how do we perceive the meditation then? If it's not at some just give up judgment. Just do it. Just
01:35:20
do it. Just do it. And it's not going well, going badly. I like it. I don't like it. You just do it. And try to let
01:35:27
go of quality control.
01:35:32
I really need to start doing it. My partner, she's so great. She does it every morning for like 20 20 30 minutes.
01:35:38
So why didn't you sit next to her? She said this to me. What stops you? What stops me?
01:35:44
Hm. I mean, it's there on tap. She's doing
01:35:50
it every morning. What's stopping you s sitting next to her?
01:35:55
I think
01:36:01
I think one of the things that comes to mind is how uncomfortable I feel in silence and
01:36:09
the idea of like silence and being because she's there. Would you be okay
01:36:14
better on your own then? No, it's just like silence with my own thoughts. I spend a lot of time trying to kind of
01:36:22
not I spend a lot of time trying to distract myself. Don't we all? That's Welcome to the
01:36:29
modern world. I'm pretty extreme. Are you? Yeah, I'm pretty extreme. So like if I go into the shower, I have to have
01:36:35
something playing, something talking, a podcast. It could be the news. It could be YouTube. If I'm no matter where I am,
01:36:41
I always even when I go to sleep, I have to be listening to something. So my I've like almost wired my brain in the
01:36:47
opposite way where it's there's always something. Yeah. I went through a phase where I couldn't eat unless I was also watching something. I mean, yeah. I
01:36:53
mean, I do that. I can't unless there's something playing. But that's why meditation's perfect for you. Yeah, I
01:36:58
know. Tell me about it. This is giving you a way to find a different way to experience yourself. M
01:37:08
Yeah. I mean, you know, you I'm sure you exercise. Yeah. So, you go to the gym.
01:37:14
Yeah. And you That's challenging. Yeah. And you you're you're pushing your muscles and there's a kind of like
01:37:20
there's an effort required. Do you know what it is? Same thing. Same thing with the gym. I know that if I go, my muscles
01:37:26
are going to grow. I'm going to be stronger. I'm going to be health healthier, happier. All those things. And because I've never done meditation,
01:37:31
I don't actually have evidence of the upside. Just have a brain scan after 4 days and you'll see. That's why I ask
01:37:37
you the question about you before and you after. Yeah. What is the difference? And if whoever's listening to this right
01:37:43
now, can you give them a before and after picture of how their life will will be practically different if they implement
01:37:50
just 10 minutes a day meditating. Okay. So, so I find it really inspiring to know that there there are visible
01:37:56
changes in the brain scan after 4 days. You don't necessarily feel those changes, but knowing that gives you
01:38:02
faith and confidence just like you know if you eat healthy food your your you
01:38:08
know your body will improve your health will improve. So knowing that is a good thing in terms of seeing the results.
01:38:13
Everybody's different. There's no you can't draw a graph. You can't say if you do x amount of days you will reach this
01:38:19
level of calm or focus. But what happens is as you start to meditate after a few
01:38:24
days or weeks you just start to feel you can handle stuff better. So for me um
01:38:31
the the p my main practice is is very much connected what I was talking about before with uh trying to sit with
01:38:38
discomfort and stop pushing it away. And that's a total revolution in my life. I
01:38:43
was always on the run always. I think we failed to realize that actually our
01:38:49
entire human experience is just in our minds.
01:38:56
That does that make sense what I'm trying to say there? Because I'm there asking you about like what's the upside of this whatever but it's it's falling
01:39:04
into the trap of not realizing that everything I I will experience today is actually formed in my own mind. That's
01:39:10
the whole reason for meditation is to know that everything is dependent on your mind. The good and the bad.
01:39:16
everything. So instead of being so obsessed with the details of what's going on, go to the source.
01:39:24
Yeah. Go to the source, the the projector rather than the movie.
01:39:30
Go to the source and and change that and transform that and work on that. So how
01:39:35
has your projector changed in the last 30 years? I I'm definitely a happier person. I'm I'm definitely um more at
01:39:43
peace with myself. that that negative voice doesn't come up, you know, that
01:39:49
that self-hatred has has really kind of like what's the word? Kind of like uh
01:39:56
yeah, gone away. And um I'm happier. And I've got I I feel so so lucky to have
01:40:03
tools that I know I can use when I'm suffering.
01:40:08
You know, for the last few years, I've I've suffered with quite a lot of ill health because I had really really severe COVID right at the start of the
01:40:15
pandemic, and it did something to my heart and my lungs. And since then, I've had you could call it long COVID, you
01:40:21
could call it heart, lung damage, whatever. So, I I live with kind of levels of illness that are hard to deal
01:40:27
with. But this practice is something I can do. I can I can sit there with an ill body and send love into that body
01:40:35
and feel kind of okay. So, it's made me stronger and I can I can function better
01:40:40
than before. But, you know, the other thing is I don't really care. I don't really care whether it's working or not
01:40:46
because I I trust it and I'm just going to keep going and I I'm in for the long game. I'm just going to keep going. You
01:40:53
signed a lifelong vow. I did. I'm I'm I'm I have I have taken vows to to be a
01:40:58
monk for my life. Why? When I put the robes on, I felt every I felt every cell
01:41:04
in my body click. I mean, it sounds a bit weird, but it just felt like that. I felt all
01:41:11
my cells fall into place. I just felt really this is this is this is really right for me. I
01:41:18
think it's what I'd been looking for all along when I is is a way of working with
01:41:24
my mind. I'm I'm not really interested in religion. I'm not really interested in faith, but I'm really interested in
01:41:29
the mind. And being a monk has given me this opportunity to work on my mind but
01:41:35
also an opportunity to to be of some use in the world like some help to others.
01:41:41
So, okay, let me challenge this a little bit in terms of how I imagine someone listening might might respond. They go,
01:41:47
"Okay, so you went through this process. You worked on your mind. Now you've worked on your mind." No, no, working.
01:41:53
It's not over. Okay. It total work in progress. And this is the mis this is part of the misconception is someone
01:41:58
will listen and say, "Well, you've worked on your mind now, so go live now." No, it's an ongoing process. I'm still a mess. I'm still a mess, but I'm
01:42:06
okay with being a mess. That is a huge difference is that I I still get stressed. I still get upset, but I'm
01:42:11
really gentle with myself in a way that I never knew how to be. I was always, "You're so disgusting. What's wrong with
01:42:17
you? You should be ashamed of yourself." That's gone. Now I'm okay with with myself. And that that's such that that
01:42:24
is happiness that really has made me happier. So it's for me it's not about, oh, you've done it and now it's it's a
01:42:30
it's ongoing. What is the most important thing we didn't talk about that we should have talked about as it relates to the
01:42:36
suffering that my viewers are probably experiencing in their own life? You know
01:42:41
what's missing always is we can talk about this stuff but are we going to do
01:42:47
it? And what's really missing for so many people is they will listen to this episode or they will read a book about
01:42:53
meditation or see a video and it all sounds great but then we get busy and
01:42:59
forget to do it. What's missing for everybody is the doing it. How how do we
01:43:04
jump from being interested in something to actually doing it? I mean there's there's a a joke which is the definition
01:43:11
of a Buddhist is somebody who's either meditating or feeling bad that they're not meditating. And that is it, isn't
01:43:16
it? It's a bit like exercise. We know we should be doing it. So for me the the the missing link is
01:43:24
people try and force themselves to meditate because they know it's good for them and then it's it's a hopeless
01:43:29
process. They won't do it because it becomes another should on the to-do list. I think the only way
01:43:36
to become really enthusiastic about doing it every day is to really think
01:43:41
about it and realize that it will give you what you were looking for anyway
01:43:47
from the coffee, the drugs, the alcohol, the sex, the whatever it is you're into.
01:43:52
Whatever we're looking for out there, meditation, it it was happiness, it was
01:43:59
freedom, it was release. The only place you can find that is in your mind because going down those roads is just
01:44:06
taking you further into needing more. So, so I think that the the thinking process that helps people meditate every
01:44:13
day is to think about how it will give you what you were looking for anyway
01:44:18
and then you want to do it then then you feel like oh okay the we have no sense
01:44:24
of exhaustion when it comes to chasing our addictions do we? So imagine if we could meditate with that kind of energy.
01:44:32
I often I often think I often think maybe I need to go do some kind of um
01:44:38
meditation retreat as well just to get me sort of started and just uh have someone there with me who can
01:44:45
help me think through some of these things that can be a good thing just to just to get started. It doesn't have to be four years like no like a weekend, 3
01:44:53
days, 5 days, 2 days. That can be a good thing. And that's why Buddhist centers are good places because they offer that.
01:45:00
And there's never a kind of you got to sign along the dotted line and say, "I'm now a Buddhist." We're so not interested
01:45:06
in converting people to Buddhism. But yeah, go to a retreat. Is Buddhism growing? Yeah, I imagine it is. In the
01:45:12
world, you know why it's growing? It's because it doesn't try to attract followers and because of that, it grows.
01:45:18
interesting and also because of everything else that's just going on in the world at the moment um with you know
01:45:24
people feeling more isolated, lonely, purposeless, depression, suicidality, all of these things. We're seeing a lot
01:45:30
especially in young men as well. The stats around young men and their suicidal ideation and their feelings of
01:45:36
purposelessness and their loneliness stats are worse than women's as well. But I think yes the the way the world is
01:45:43
with all of these challenges and negative things at the same time what's
01:45:48
hugely growing in modern culture is people getting more interested in their own minds. There are more and more
01:45:54
people going for psychotherapy counseling meditation any kind of discipline that helps us to understand
01:46:00
our minds better. That interest is growing. So, we're we're in a really exciting phase in history where people
01:46:06
are wanting to transform their minds, wanting to take control of consciousness. It's because we've had
01:46:13
something fail us. We maybe we're waking up to realizing that the system hasn't worked for us. We've created a kind of
01:46:20
gilded cage for ourselves. This this beautiful material world that is also
01:46:26
running out of resources. So, it's not going to be able to serve us much longer if we carry on abusing the planet. So,
01:46:32
we have created our own prison and now we're looking for the way out. Turns out it wasn't the individualism
01:46:39
and the materialism um after all.
01:46:46
Maybe it was always there inside us. That's Buddhism would say that we we are
01:46:52
we are Buddha within. We we all have a sleeping Buddha within us and we we have
01:46:58
potential. We have great capacity for awakening, great capacity to help others. It's just like a crystal covered
01:47:06
in layers and layers and layers of mud. And we need to clear the mud away. We have a closing tradition on this podcast
01:47:12
where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest, not knowing who they've left it for. And the question
01:47:18
that has been left for you, what are the ways that you express your love and appreciation for the people who
01:47:24
matter to you in your personal or professional life? I
01:47:31
don't do this very well all the time, but I try to be be there for them when they're going through a hard time. I
01:47:39
because I used to find it really scary and I'd run away and I'd close down. I try to in the same way as I try to move
01:47:46
towards my own discomfort. I try to be there with other people when they're uncomfortable and not judge. I try that.
01:47:53
I'm I've I'm sure I fail a lot, but I try. A friend of mine described that as sitting in the mud with them. Yeah.
01:48:00
Yeah. We often try and fix and correct and Yeah. I have a I see myself trying
01:48:05
to do that, give advice, whatever. It's not about that. It's about being with the person, being being
01:48:12
with them without judging them. Thank you so much for what you do. Um you've got these incredible books which I'm
01:48:17
going to recommend everybody check out. Both Sunday Times bestsellers I believe. And a monk's guide to happiness,
01:48:22
meditation in the 21st century. And this book is called Handbook for Hard Times,
01:48:27
a monk's guide to fearless living. I think that your message is more important now than it's ever been
01:48:33
because there's I mean much of the reason why I've probably stumbled across Buddhism is for the same reasons that
01:48:38
many people are, which is it feels intuitively like the the answers we've been given in the way of life that we're all living is failing us in some way.
01:48:46
And we know that we can feel it inside ourselves. But the answers that we see to
01:48:51
as antidotes to that feeling aren't much better all the time. And there again, often they're about self or it's about,
01:48:58
you know, join this group of people that are doing this sort of thing over here or there's this religious, you know,
01:49:05
group that you can join. But actually, Buddhism offers us an alternative approach, which is to go inside
01:49:10
ourselves and to alleviate ourselves from the suffering that we've self-imposed by
01:49:18
understanding that maybe the answers we were looking for were inside the whole time. And um I'm so glad that people like you do podcasts like this because
01:49:25
that you're getting the message out there into the world. And it's a message that I think is so unbelievably important. And I think maybe maybe just
01:49:32
maybe maybe you've persuaded me today to just give it a shot. Yeah. And that's
01:49:37
the hard thing because it's good. It's good enough. It's all well enough knowing about something. But then what
01:49:42
will I do tomorrow morning? When you sit there tomorrow morning. Yeah. And your mind starts racing.
01:49:50
Whatever you do, don't feel like you failed. Just remind yourself that the thoughts
01:49:56
actually make your meditation stronger. Because if coming back to the breath is
01:50:01
what you're trying to do, you have to have somewhere to come back from. Yeah. The thought that took you away is
01:50:07
exactly what brings you back. So bring it on. The more thoughts, the better. Okay.
01:50:13
Thank you. I'm so appreciative of you and thank you for spreading the words that you're you're spreading because as I said, you're going to be saving and uh
01:50:20
saving a lot of people from a lot of pain and suffering, but also um giving them a an alternative approach to
01:50:26
sitting with it with a compassion. So thank you. Thank you. It's really lovely to spend time with you.
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