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

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What if the most courageous, compassionate thing you could do in life, was to learn how to be with yourself? It’s a powerful, perhaps surprising idea put forward by this week’s guest, the Buddhist monk, meditation teacher and author Gelong Thubten. The good thing is that these are all mental states, and that, consequently, all of them depend on you and you exclusively. No outside “things,” no circumstances you can’t control. The easiest way to practice the first step is to anchor your mind to your breath. I learned from the Headspace app that it helps to count the breaths up to 10, then start over.

In conjunction with all of this, we also feel a sense of freedom. This is the third component of happiness. We don’t become captivated by the negative emotions and disquieting desires that come with dredging up the past, anticipating the future or wishing the present were different. Instead, we feel liberated from all of these sources of unhappiness. Last week was tough. I felt mentally drained and disappointed in myself. But this morning, all of that is gone. What happened? I took time to be mindful. Examining my feelings without judgment, I could see where I was too hard on myself. It almost felt like at the flip of a switch I found peace. I’m not always this good at being mindful, but when I do it, life gets better almost instantly. What if you too could h ave this superpower to feel calm in any circumstance? Thubten insists that you can’t fail at meditation, because it really just means ‘being you’. The more we meditate, the less we run away from hard times and fear, and the more we become our true, contented selves.

In fact, one of the Tibetan words for meditation is gom, which literally means “to become familiar with.” What stops us from experiencing that true happiness? It is our tendency to grasp at things, even at our thoughts and emotions. This propels us into suffering and stress. We are too focused on seeking happiness and a sense of feeling complete, by searching in the outside world. What we can learn through meditation is that this wholeness has been within us all the time: deep down we have always been completely free and happy.

After collaborating with Yale neuroscientist Ash Ranpura and Ruby Wax on How to Be Human, Thubten wrote A Monk’s Guide to Happiness, his debut solo book. The nature of this liberation will become clearer in the following blinks, where we’ll map out the mental prison from which we’re trying to break free. Then, with our map in hand, we’ll figure out an escape plan. If deep down, the mind is more than just its thoughts and emotions, this signifies freedom, which is complete happiness. As we gain familiarity with that, we might begin to discover that the mind is essentially good—underneath all of our problems we are okay. That is the meaning of Buddha. Buddha means basic innate goodness, the purity within us. You may think this is something you’re not aware of, but, trust us—you are. Whether you want it or not, you can constantly observe your thoughts and emotions. You are not only feeling anger or sadness, but you also know that you are angry or sad. To avoid the pitfalls of grasping and pushing things away, we need to develop the skill of neutrally observing them.The fact that many, perhaps most or even all the rules, suggestions, statements made by Monk Gelong Thubten are familiar and come from Aristotle, Buddha or some other illustrious predecessors – perhaps even contemporary luminaries – could detract for some from the ‘value added’, but it might also become an exercise in How to Become a Millionaire, only knowing the answers is much more important and this book could indeed serve as a guide, in the sense that you can go to it and find some definitions you know, rehearse the art of renouncing craving – which the stoics have long ago stigmatized…there is no end to wanting things, you experience what is called Hedonic Adaptation and after a brief period, you get used with things, be they big cars, jewels, and then carve for more…it is not money affluence, it is time affluence which matters and then “A man's satisfaction with his salary depends on whether he makes more than his wife's sister's husband’ says jesting, sage H.L. Menke…in conclusion, I would rather recommend another book on happiness, such as the miraculous Happiness – the Science Behind Your Smile by Daniel Nettle It could be, but then we should encourage novelty and to keep to the affirmed classics, concentrating only on the Buddha, the established, recognized Dalai Lamas, could be like r4ading only Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Balzac, Flaubert and rejecting Bernard Malamud, Kingsley Amis or William Boyd, perhaps even Marcel Proust, stating that since we have the first mentioned giants, let us stop paying attention to others…true, we could not declare Gelong to be of the same magnitude as Somerset Maugham or Barbara Pym

Thubten manages to explain his points perfectly with a combination of nature, technology, psychology and science which surprised me for a monk. Thubten’s incorporation of neurological and psychological issues made me respect him so much more. It made the weight of his words feel more considered, unbiased and genuine. Words are nice but action provides better results and Thubten sees happiness not as something to be bought or searched for externally but to be found within our minds. Allowing us the chance to change our perspective on what happiness truly is. Training our minds like a muscle to be more resilient to negative and unhelpful thoughts and learning to keep the mind from wandering resulting in lost focus and harmful distraction. To help us be more present and less influenced by the past, the future and the unknown. Allowing us to maintain a more substantial state of happiness and stopping unnecessary surges of adrenaline and cortisol from ruining our life experiences. I loved Thubten’s view on waiting for example. How waiting for something doesn’t have to be a stress inducing inconvenience but instead a moment to pause, time to just be until it is time to re-engage with your day and hurry off. We live in times where there’s a lot of emphasis on feeling good. We look for some kind of “hit,” like a sugar rush, and so we lurch from one “buzz” to the next, concerned with having our senses stimulated and satisfied, sometimes all of them at once. Whether it is through a new drink, a new shirt, or a new car—what all those ads you see while scrolling through Facebook or browsing through your favorite magazines are selling to you is nothing more but some mythical feeling of happiness. The more you practice mindfulness, the more it will become your default state of mind – not just during mindful moments and meditation sessions, but also when you’re experiencing difficulties. You’ll then be able to tap into this internal source of inner peace whenever, and wherever you are.

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Put into perspective, if we haven't gently trained our mind to be aware in the present moment, all these other things are more or less escapist in nature. What does happiness feel like? We are completely in the present, with no urge to hang on to the past or ruminate about the future; we are right here in the moment, feeling complete. There is a sense of freedom ; when we are genuinely happy, we are free from desire and other conflicting emotions. We are free from wanting happiness. What Makes Us Unhappy?