Buddhist Teacher: No One Is Talking About This Hidden Epidemic! The Western Lie Behind Depression and Anxiety

0:00:08 you hear that oh paid and done that’s the sound of bills being paid on time but with the bemo
0:00:16 eclipse rise visa card paying your bills could sound like this yes earn rewards for paying your
0:00:22 bill in full and on time each month rise to rewards with the bemo eclipse rise visa card
0:00:28 terms and conditions apply we’re all at the mercy of our own minds but the problem is is that in
0:00:32 modern life we’re constantly made to feel we’re not good enough something’s always missing and i will
0:00:38 be happy or unhappy if this or that happens to me so we become prisoners of life you learned this the
0:00:42 hard way yes when i was in a long retreat cut off from the world for four years and memories were
0:00:47 coming up from the past it would build into horrific amounts of depression anxiety and pain and i jumped
0:00:52 over the wall and tried to escape because of what happened to me when i was 14 are you comfortable
0:00:58 talking about this gerlong tupton is a buddhist monk who spent over 30 years helping hollywood
0:01:05 stars ceos and corporations stay in control within a world overloaded with stress addiction anxiety
0:01:10 and burnout here we go i became controlled by distraction controlled by negative thinking
0:01:16 what is life going to do to me next how will i handle it and things only changed when i hit rock
0:01:21 bottom i had spent so much effort trying to push that suffering away because it’s so disgusting and so
0:01:27 shameful but it was just making it worse so many of us run away from pain though but the reality is you can
0:01:32 run to the end of the earth and that thing that has been tormenting you will always trip you up and so
0:01:37 i went back into that retreat knowing the methods are there i just need to know how to use them and
0:01:42 i could learn to conquer this and that’s where meditation comes in do you think you can teach me
0:01:46 because i very much feel like i’m on the receiving end of life first of all chuck all those things away
0:01:53 there’s a lot of spiritual tat isn’t there i mean i said it i actually hated meditation when i first did
0:01:57 because there’s a lot of misconceptions and actually all you’re doing is these three things to be less
0:02:02 controlled by negative thinking and the beauty of this is that they can show in brain scans there’ll be
0:02:09 visible changes in your brain so let’s try this quick one before we get back to this episode just give me 30
0:02:14 seconds of your time two things i wanted to say the first thing is a huge thank you for listening
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0:02:41 make to you i’m going to do everything in my power to make this show as good as i can now and into the
0:02:45 future we’re going to deliver the guests that you want me to speak to and we’re going to continue to
0:02:50 keep doing all of the things you love about this show thank you thank you so much back to the episode
0:03:03 why is your work more important now than ever before why is your message more important now than ever
0:03:10 before i think uh because we’re now living in times where we need meditation more than ever because
0:03:16 of the speeding up of life obviously with technology and the way we live and also i think because
0:03:23 meditation has become more widespread there are loads of misconceptions about it so i do try to put
0:03:27 some effort into kind of clarifying some of those misconceptions when you look out into the world
0:03:34 and you perform your sort of own analysis on what the world the western world is getting right and
0:03:40 getting wrong what are some of your sort of big picture feelings thoughts and concerns well the way
0:03:45 we are all buried in our phones is quite something isn’t it and the way we interact with information has
0:03:53 changed so much so we we are kind of bombarded or invaded by constant flow of information which has a
0:04:01 lot of persuasive undercurrents to it and this is affecting our stress levels and also affecting our
0:04:06 confidence levels we’re constantly made to feel when something’s missing something’s always missing we’re
0:04:13 not good enough if you get this you’ll be okay if if and when this happens to you then and only then can
0:04:18 you be happy so we’ve kind of lost our power we talked a little bit about the word purpose as well
0:04:27 what is your perspective on the state of human purposefulness so i think um this issue around
0:04:36 purpose i think it it is connected to the breakdown of religion in that i would say well i think we’d all
0:04:42 say that religion used to be very much the center of the table and it sort of gave everybody that a sense
0:04:50 of their place in the universe and the question of purpose was never such an issue because everything
0:04:56 was uh in context according to one’s religious belief and of course now we’re in a post-religious
0:05:02 culture and it’s much more about the individual and there are good things about that of course but what
0:05:07 happens then is we become very obsessed with our purpose and the word purpose itself suggests i want
0:05:16 something i want what do i want and in in buddhism we look at that wanting mind and see how insatiable
0:05:24 it is and how the more you want the more you’re going to want and so from a buddhist perspective we’re all
0:05:30 looking for purpose but maybe externally because we get what we want and then want something else
0:05:37 and maybe what we’re actually looking for is something deeper within but we don’t know how
0:05:45 to access it so is it wrong then to be in search of purpose is it a misguided pursuit
0:05:53 no i wouldn’t say that but i would say what’s misguided for us is that we are obsessed with the idea
0:06:02 that happiness comes from the outside and on the other side of the coin suffering too so i will be
0:06:09 happy if i get this or get that or this situation or that situation and i will be unhappy if this or
0:06:16 that happens to me so we become at the sort of receiving end of life what life is going to do to
0:06:24 me next how will i handle it so so there’s there’s not much strength there and i think the message of
0:06:30 meditation is that you become your own purpose and you become the generator of your own experiences
0:06:36 because you learn how to take hold of your own mind in this conversation do you think you can teach
0:06:39 me how to do that because i very much feel like in my life i’m on the receiving end of life
0:06:46 well i’d love to show you how maybe help you to see that meditation is easier than you thought
0:06:55 or more more applicable to daily situations than you thought when we think about the state of well-being
0:07:02 in the western world everybody knows these stats around suicidality if we look at the u.s for example
0:07:08 they’ve slipped further in the unhappiness rankings than ever before the u.s fell to 24th place in
0:07:16 2025 and global happiness rankings in 2011 the u.s had been 11th place and now they’re 24th and the
0:07:23 u.k followed the same pattern the u.k dropped to 23rd in global happiness rankings which is its lowest
0:07:29 position in a long time but then more sort of horrifically the suicide numbers in the u.k the u.s
0:07:36 are tremendously alarming in the u.k suicide has reached its highest level in many many decades
0:07:46 something is going on here absolutely so so we we have developed the most you know materially comfortable
0:07:52 culture in history we are materially more comfortable than ever and yet emotionally more
0:07:58 uncomfortable so something hasn’t added up you know we’ve created a comfortable to a certain extent
0:08:05 outer world for ourself and we can achieve high levels of material comfort and somehow the more of
0:08:10 that we have the more emotionally uncomfortable and i think this is all to do with the mechanisms of desire
0:08:17 so so when we are in a culture that is constantly promising us the next piece of enjoyment the next
0:08:25 hit the next bars the next thing we’re caught in a sort of cycle of wanting more i i i was described this
0:08:31 that the search for happiness that the problem in that is the search itself because searching is a
0:08:37 habit that will lead to more searching so we’re always looking for the next thing so we get what
0:08:44 we want not always but sometimes and then very soon we want something else so the more we’re wanting the
0:08:50 more we’re feeling we don’t have so we end up possibly with a lot but feeling quite empty inside
0:08:56 and then we’re back to this question what is my purpose what’s it all for i’ve i i’ve reached the
0:09:01 the i’ve reached the the goal i wanted to reach but i still feel empty i still feel something is missing we’re
0:09:08 told something is missing all the time because to keep a consumer message going you have to tell people
0:09:14 they’re lacking in something and the insistency with which that message is fed to us through our phones
0:09:21 basically and through through the media that we consume is going to affect us i think 19 percent of
0:09:26 people listening right now would say that their meaning in life comes from the pursuit of something
0:09:31 the journey towards something it might not come from the attainment of it being successful being on the
0:09:37 podium but they would say that the the meaning they experience the joy the thing that gets them out of
0:09:42 bed is in the pursuit of something whether it’s building a business or i don’t know becoming an athlete or
0:09:49 building a charity are they misguided in that thought no it’s just that we we we could look
0:09:55 deeper into our own internal psychology and see how well the the word pursuit is everything so
0:10:02 we’re always in pursuit of something and the the the the chemistry of of our body in the state of
0:10:08 pursuit is that chemical dopamine the interesting thing about dopamine is it falls away just before you get
0:10:14 what you want so so so the the chase is much more exciting than the having or the getting and so
0:10:21 we’re in locked into this constant chase and what is the next thing when will i get the next thing and i
0:10:28 think the the reason why we feel so sort of empty or disappointed is because what we get is never enough
0:10:35 and meditation comes into this conversation to to show us that actually what we were looking for
0:10:45 was already there inside that’s the key point what were we looking for we were looking for freedom
0:10:54 if you if you if you think about how it feels when you get what you want you know there’s the chasing
0:11:01 the wanting and then there’s the getting there’s a kind of relief isn’t there it’s it’s it’s a feeling
0:11:05 of oh the wanting’s gone away it’s like hunger you feel hungry you eat a sandwich the hunger’s gone
0:11:11 away i mean that’s a metaphor for everything and that you when you get what you want there’s this relief
0:11:17 the the the the the wanting the the the needy feeling that oh when will i get it has gone and
0:11:22 there’s a relief so actually what what we’re looking at well momentarily and then it kicks in again we’re
0:11:28 looking for the next thing but what we’re looking for is the absence of wanting that’s the the happiness
0:11:33 we achieve when we get what we want is a kind of freedom from wanting so the problem is is that we’re
0:11:39 caught in a cycle where we then just want something else so i’m not suggesting let’s all go and sit
0:11:45 on the mountaintop and meditate and not have lives and not have careers not at all i’m simply suggesting
0:11:52 that we’ve put our focus very strongly on material things and i think there needs to be also a focus on the
0:11:59 mind and i think that’s how we can learn to free ourselves you learned this the hard way through your own
0:12:07 experiences can you talk to me about how you learned these lessons well i definitely became a monk through
0:12:13 extreme suffering i wouldn’t describe myself as having been a kind of you know a spiritual seeker and i
0:12:20 went to a monastery with a kind of open glowing heart wanting to find the answers i went to a monastery
0:12:29 in a completely broken state because i had been living uh in this kind of ambition cycle wanting wanting
0:12:38 and and really uh not looking after myself i had a very uh self-loathing and unhappy mind a lot of
0:12:45 depression a lot of anxiety and i was um i went to that monastery feeling completely at rock bottom
0:12:52 and i didn’t go to a monastery to live there forever i just kind of dipped my toe in but you know i stayed
0:12:57 if i was a fly on the wall in your life on that day when you showed up at that monastery
0:13:05 what would i have seen so i was very ill and i arrived at the monastery um really needing help
0:13:12 so i was i was living in london and new york i was trying to become an actor my mother’s an actor so i
0:13:17 sort of wanted to follow in her footsteps and i got into a really kind of dangerous kind of party
0:13:24 lifestyle really wild and burning the candle at both ends i basically made myself ill i had a very
0:13:32 very dramatic burnout living in brooklyn and waking up one morning in my apartment thinking i was having
0:13:38 a heart attack um i went to i didn’t have medical insurance but i managed to find some kind of like
0:13:43 cheap ecg place and they checked my heart out and they said you’ve you have a heart condition what have
0:13:50 you been doing and you know i really it was a had to stop in my tracks and i was very very ill after
0:13:59 that for a few months what age was this 21 wow and during that time of being horrendously ill i had to
0:14:06 question everything i was doing with my life but that illness is a symptom it’s a symptom of of unhealthy
0:14:12 living but also an unhealthy relationship with my own mind and where did that unhealthy relationship
0:14:20 with your own mind stem from so i think things that that happened in my early life uh traumatic things
0:14:26 difficult things uh and then me not knowing how to deal with those and just bottling them up and
0:14:33 pushing through pushing forward and not looking at myself i had this very sort of escapist way about
0:14:41 myself i think that’s all the partying was about to kind of get out of my head and so so when i had
0:14:47 that burnout i think it was a combination of physical stress and mental stress that just exploded very
0:14:53 very suddenly literally overnight did you have an abusive childhood because i was i was reading some
0:14:57 of the things that you had said and it suggested to me that there was things that happened when you
0:15:05 were young that left imprints on you that you had to work through yeah yeah i i would say things happened
0:15:14 in my teens that were troubling you know when i was uh when i was quite like 13 14 i started to
0:15:21 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
0:15:29 quiet and then outside school i was in a rock band with much older people um when i was 14 i started to
0:15:37 actually work as a jazz pianist in wine bars across london pretending i was 21 and the people i was
0:15:45 running with at that time were much much older than me and um yeah there there were some situations where
0:15:52 the relationships turned i would say abusive and i i would say i was a victim of at the time maybe i
0:15:57 thought i knew what i was doing but looking back definitely not and i think that left imprints and
0:16:03 i think it made me um frightened of myself and frightened of other people are you comfortable
0:16:12 talking about this yeah was this sexual abuse yeah from from uh from one of the people i was in a band
0:16:18 with yeah and when you think when you sort of trace the steps of the behavior that you then saw in
0:16:23 your early 20s the sort of escapist behavior the sort of self-medicating behavior yeah is is that
0:16:29 the content is that where that originated from the sort of processing of that and the dealing with
0:16:33 those it’s really hard to make a very specific direct connection isn’t it and that’s what we always want
0:16:39 to do we want to say this happened because of this and there’s this you know this happened and therefore
0:16:44 i went off the rails in a way that’s too easy because i think there’s a mixture of many many elements
0:16:50 that can send one off the rails you know my parents are incredibly loving people i mean they really
0:16:56 loved me and brought me up very well but they they split up very very suddenly when i was 17 my my dad
0:17:02 literally ran off with one of my mom’s friends and it was a very huge explosion in the family and we were
0:17:09 all very broken by it and so there are many many things many factors that came together in my teenage
0:17:16 years that i think sent me off the rails i got into uh oxford university and that was a big
0:17:22 prestigious thing but i fell apart in oxford i started to get horrendously depressed and i actually
0:17:26 got expelled it’s actually quite hard to get expelled from oxford i didn’t i’ve never met anyone that got
0:17:31 expelled exactly my mother was delighted she said oh that’s like lord byron shelley those are you know
0:17:37 very hard to get thrown out of oxford you have to you know do something pretty horrendous but i think in
0:17:45 my case they they threw me out because i was just not functional and that then just led to my demise
0:17:51 and then on the one hand i was started acting and being in plays and and having this kind of um
0:17:58 almost like a glamorous persona and on the other hand crumbling inside i had this incredibly persistent
0:18:04 monologue of self-disgust you know like like a voice in the head that says you are disgusting
0:18:11 you are no good you are a failure i used to call it my devil voice but but it it’s obviously you know
0:18:17 part of me and and that’s something that later on when i started to do retreats became incredibly loud
0:18:25 in my head and i had to work hard on meditation to help not to get rid of that but to integrate it and
0:18:31 and learn to be at peace with it it’s definitely you know it’s gone away now where does that voice
0:18:35 originate from you’re not the first person that i’ve sat with here who’s talked to me about a
0:18:40 similar voice in their mind and i’m wondering is that a is that something from we inherit from our
0:18:44 environment uh something that happens a culmination of things that happen is it genetic or is it all of the
0:18:51 the above it’s many things because that’s very specific it’s many things and it’s i think in my
0:19:00 case it was because i became very good at suppressing my suffering because because i became very proficient
0:19:07 at pushing things down and just going to as many parties as possible and and trying not to suffer i
0:19:13 think the when you push something down the kind of volcano effect happens and then this sort of angry
0:19:22 voice comes up this this this uh pressure leads to a kind of backlash inside yourself and it’s an
0:19:29 internalized um anger that also is fed to us from our environment absolutely so you arrive at the
0:19:37 monastery yeah who told you to go to a monastery so my oldest childhood friend tara uh we grew up
0:19:45 together and um when i was completely falling apart with this heart condition at 21 she basically scooped
0:19:51 me up and took me to the monastery she’s the one who told me she said oh there’s a monastery in
0:19:57 scotland which it’s called samueling it’s a tibetan buddhist monastery and for the first time
0:20:06 ever they’ve opened their doors to people who wanting to be monks for a year one year and so she she said
0:20:11 let’s go and do it this could she wanted to do it too but she said this could really help you so she
0:20:17 basically pretty much carried me there what were you saying to her when she asked you how you were doing
0:20:22 or what your symptoms were i was lying in bed with with horrendous heart palpitations and any move i
0:20:28 made my body would be bathed in sweat i mean on we we were in california because i got sick in new york
0:20:33 i managed to get to california where my mother was living and tara was there and they looked after me
0:20:38 and then literally flying back to the uk i had to lie down on the plane she was almost carrying me it was
0:20:45 really really heavy but she she said look this place could help you it’s just a year it’s just a year
0:20:50 out of your life i i i thought okay i’m going to do that and then i’ll go back to new york i almost
0:20:55 sublet my apartment in new york but i didn’t in the end but there there definitely was a feeling in me of
0:21:00 okay i’m going to go to this buddhist retreat get myself straightened out and then go back to what i was
0:21:07 doing before so it didn’t feel too outrageous because it was only a year of course it wasn’t a year this is
0:21:11 30 years later i’m still there wow
0:21:18 and to give people like me who don’t understand what happens in a monastery a picture into the
0:21:24 what i would describe as incredible dedication and sacrifice that you’ve gone through over those 30
0:21:31 years can you can you share some of the practical things that you’ve done in those 30 years that most
0:21:36 people would think of as being just outrageous but do you know what you say sacrifice but to me
0:21:41 it didn’t feel like a sacrifice it felt like immediate relief because i yes when you become a
0:21:47 monk you you take vows to give up things certain things but the things i was giving up with the
0:21:53 things that made me ill so you you know you’re giving up intoxicants and you become celibate and you
0:22:00 uh i mean there are also kind of moral vows such as you give up telling lies and stealing and harming
0:22:05 others these are all you know good principles to follow but i suppose the two major things are no
0:22:11 intoxicants and celibacy and to me that was such a relief to to just kind of give all of that up
0:22:18 and be in almost like a kind of like a rehab situation and but i have to emphasize it didn’t feel
0:22:25 too heavy because i thought it was only going to be for a year so celibacy is sex yeah yeah yeah and
0:22:32 and and what i found is that you actually develop stronger relationships so people often think monks
0:22:36 must be very lonely but what i found was that then you’re in a community of people where
0:22:44 there’s the sexual um chemistry is off the agenda so you start having friendships that really are so
0:22:49 heart-based and you meet lots of people who are on the same path as you so i didn’t feel lonely at
0:22:57 all what is it about sex that is maybe a distraction yeah what is it that puts on the list it’s not it’s
0:23:03 not to say that that sex is wrong or evil or bad it’s not a sort of uh weird sort of moralistic
0:23:09 anti-sex thing at all it’s simply about where you’re putting your focus so when you’re when you’re a monk
0:23:14 you’re giving up family life you’re giving up sexual relationships you’re giving up romance you’re
0:23:22 giving up all of that so that you can focus very intent intensely on meditation practice with the
0:23:26 purpose that you can eventually help others it’s not a selfish thing as you’re doing this so that you
0:23:34 can be of more benefit to others but you want no distractions and also you you at a deeper level you
0:23:42 want to start to start to experiment with what happens when you don’t immediately run after a desire
0:23:51 you start to experiment with trying to not suppress your desire because that’s incredibly unhealthy
0:23:58 but watch your desire and observe it and find out that you are more than your desire
0:24:07 and so celibacy is an amazing environment to start doing that work and that also means no masturbation
0:24:14 and those kinds yeah yeah i mean it’s it’s really about working with desire rather than just when i say
0:24:22 working with i mean observing it and learning ways to transform it rather than just giving into it or
0:24:29 suppressing it and i wouldn’t say celibacy is for everybody but it suits a certain type of
0:24:37 person and you know in buddhism in general there are in in in the uk or america there’s you know
0:24:41 thousands and thousands and thousands of buddhists but maybe a small handful of monks who become
0:24:47 celibate it’s a very specific particular way to practice buddhism it’s not the only way i’m inquiring
0:24:50 about this subject because it’s actually because of a conversation i was having with a really good
0:24:56 friend of mine over new years who’s had some troubles in his life um has struggled in relationships
0:25:01 has struggled professionally has also struggled a little bit with purpose and meaning and has now
0:25:05 sort of started to investigate religion and one of the things he said to me because there’s a particular
0:25:11 stranglehold that his sexual desires has over him is that he was thinking about abstaining from
0:25:17 masturbation and sex just for a short period of time and i think actually the reason for
0:25:22 that is kind of what you’ve described there which is just to try and separate get back control from
0:25:30 desire he’ll need to meditate because just abstaining from the thing you want to the thing you’re desperate
0:25:37 to do and you’re abstaining almost like locking yourself in a cage and saying i won’t i won’t do that
0:25:45 thing then what what are you replacing it with or so so for example when i work in you know i often teach
0:25:51 meditation in drug rehab centers i talk a lot about how okay yes you’ve had to give up the drug that was
0:25:58 making you ill but that’s not the whole story that the rest of the story is what are you going to do about
0:26:03 the mind that is addicted to that substance and how are you going to resolve that how are you going to
0:26:11 fill the the hole inside that was craving something okay so with the meditation you’re not just giving
0:26:18 up something you’re learning to fill your fill your own spirit with something more positive for yourself
0:26:23 almost to heal from the thing that was having desire yeah yeah desire is such an interesting thing because
0:26:29 it’s we think we want something but what’s going on under the desire is a feeling of lack a feeling
0:26:37 of hopelessness a feeling i don’t have there’s something missing and so meditation is about filling
0:26:43 that with with light and with with love you know the deepest addiction we all have is the addiction to our
0:26:51 our own thoughts that that’s the that’s really the root of it all is that a wanting thought arises in
0:26:59 my mind and then i jump on it and i want to get something to kind of alleviate that but it’s that
0:27:05 internal attachment buddhism talks a lot about non-attachment and i think this is widely misunderstood
0:27:10 people think it means you’re supposed to be you know detached and have no friends and be unattached it
0:27:16 doesn’t mean that at all it means how we’re so attached to our thoughts and our emotions and
0:27:21 they get into the driving seat and send our life in all kinds of directions we don’t want it to go in
0:27:27 how do we learn to transform that inner attachment to the thought itself and that’s obviously where
0:27:33 meditation comes in let’s talk about buddhism then so i said to you before we started recording that in
0:27:38 the last sort of 12 months or so i’ve got really interested in buddhism i started reading some books about
0:27:44 buddhism and i find it to be most aligned with it sounds like a strange thing to say but i’m gonna
0:27:52 say it anyway with almost like the medication that i need and i know it’s not a medication but it is a
0:27:59 deep medicine it’s a medicine it’s a science to me it’s not so much a religion it is more of a medicine or a
0:28:06 science yeah i’ve struggled with the religions i was christian growing up but i’ve struggled with
0:28:11 like deities and gods and these kinds of things because there’s like 5000 different gods through
0:28:14 history so i don’t really know which one’s real and there’s lots of books and i’m still on that
0:28:19 journey but when i found buddhism it wasn’t framed like the other religions i thought it was much more
0:28:25 compelling what is buddhism can you tell me where it’s come from is it a religion is there a god do
0:28:31 i have to worship do i go to hell heaven there’s there’s nothing to worship at all buddhism is a path
0:28:39 to to um in a internal understanding the word buddha means awake and yes buddhism has a history history in that
0:28:46 there was somebody called the buddha in india 2500 years ago who attained awakening and gave teachings
0:28:52 and buddhism you could call it that has come from there but actually this word buddhism is a modern
0:28:57 word ism it’s a modern word what in the original languages of buddhism such as sanskrit and tibetan
0:29:06 you find terms that are so different from religion you find terms such as the science of awareness
0:29:15 or the the um the examination of awakening the inner inner awareness it’s a path of mental
0:29:21 discovery it’s a science so it’s not a religion per se technically it is if you define a religion as
0:29:27 a group spiritual purpose and there are monasteries there are organizations within buddhism but it also
0:29:36 defies most categorizations around religion because it doesn’t believe in a creator it doesn’t believe
0:29:42 in somebody somebody to worship it but it’s really about the power of your own mind and is there a
0:29:49 hell and a heaven in buddhism they talk about hell and heaven as um uh states of mind they talk about
0:29:54 everything as a state of mind they say this is a state of mind buddhism is very much about exploring
0:30:02 the fabric of reality that this table this body this this so-called self ideas of hell heaven they say
0:30:08 these are all mental experiences everything is mind according to buddhism so you get to the monastery
0:30:17 yeah talk to me about your journey of healing so i was quite ill for a while in the monastery and
0:30:22 they kind of left me alone they let me rest a lot i did little like little bits of light work around the
0:30:31 monastery started to meditate um you know i i actually hated meditation when i first did it
0:30:38 this was a problem you know i i believed in it i grew up in a buddhist family there’s been this kind
0:30:44 of faith in buddhism as i grew up but i never actually did anything i never i never meditated then
0:30:52 i get to a monastery i become a monk and i read the small print you know you’ve got to meditate and i
0:30:58 hated it i really really hated it and i thought oh what am i going to do i really don’t enjoy this at
0:31:05 all i find it an enormous struggle so i struggled a lot with meditation in those early days days weeks
0:31:14 months even why did you hate it i hated it because i was doing it in a way that was making me more
0:31:23 stressed i would sit down i i thought that meditation is about clearing the mind i’d heard this phrase
0:31:29 clear your mind i thought that’s what you do so i sat there trying to clear my mind and the more i tried
0:31:37 clear my mind the louder it was was shouting and that particularly that negative voice i told you about
0:31:43 that you are no good you’re rubbish you’re you’re awful you’ll fail that became louder and louder
0:31:48 and so the meditation became incredibly stressful because i thought i i can’t do this i can’t i can’t
0:31:53 get rid of my thoughts of course now since now i’ve discovered it’s nothing to do with clearing
0:31:59 the mind but because i thought it was i struggled enormously what is it then it’s nothing
0:32:03 to do with clearing the mind it’s not about putting yourself in an unconscious state at all it’s about
0:32:11 working with your mind so it’s about learning how to be less controlled by your mind
0:32:16 but it’s not about getting rid of the thoughts in fact the thoughts are quite helpful
0:32:24 you know they actually help you to meditate you see what i was doing in those early days was i thought
0:32:30 okay just sit down and just push everything away and go into the kind of zen state
0:32:36 and of course that’s just like suppression isn’t it you’re just trying to suppress you’re trying to
0:32:43 push it’s like it’s like trying to get a small child to sit still in in their high chair while you’re
0:32:49 feeding them they’re gonna you know they’re gonna want to move around so it’s not about that pushing
0:32:55 away of thoughts i mean you’ve got to ask yourself if if that was the aim well why why would it be the
0:33:03 aim imagine if you could clear your mind so what you have 10 minutes of just being blank and then you carry on
0:33:11 on with your day where’s the where’s the journey what what journey is that you just passed out on
0:33:16 the floor for 10 minutes might as well sleep asleep or something yeah yeah and i can fully understand
0:33:22 that if if you’re if you’re really stirred up and miserable and stressed the idea of 10 minutes of
0:33:29 switching it off would be great but it’s not the solution it doesn’t work what is the solution so so
0:33:36 it is definitely about changing your relationship with your thoughts so okay so a typical meditation
0:33:43 practice is you sit and you focus on your breathing it’s it’s different from breath work you’re not
0:33:47 breathing in a particular way you’re not trying to breathe slowly deeply or anything you’re just
0:33:52 breathing normally you know just let the breath do its own thing and you’re focused on it
0:33:58 so on paper that sounds really clear and clean and simple focus on your breath
0:34:05 the reality is it’s really messy because you focus on your breath and within a few seconds
0:34:10 you’re thinking about shopping lists or food or sex or anything you know the mind just goes
0:34:16 that’s when the work starts because at some point you realize your mind has wondered
0:34:22 okay that’s when many people think they’ve failed you know they were they were meditating they were with
0:34:27 the breath and then they realize they’re thinking about emails they need to write or shopping or whatever
0:34:33 and then they think oh i’m i’m a failure and they very angrily bring themselves back to the breath
0:34:38 that’s just going to make you more stressed because you’re actually training in feeling like a failure
0:34:43 you know what i mean so so i can relate i mean it takes me seven seconds to drift off when i’m trying
0:34:51 to meditate so it’s not that at all it’s that you you’re with the breath and then your mind wanders it’s
0:34:56 not even that you see your mind wandering you kind of find out afterwards don’t you it’s not it’s not
0:35:01 like i’m with the breath and i can see my mind step away from the breath and then go to a thought
0:35:07 it’s more that i’m with my breath i pass out and i wake up the other side of town yeah that is the
0:35:14 meditation waking up inside your thoughts that is the definition of meditation so you haven’t failed at
0:35:19 all you are meditating because what happened was you’re with the breath you got lost you lost your
0:35:25 mind and then you found your mind again because you’re back you suddenly realize oh where was i
0:35:30 i’m supposed to be meditating so that is meditation you’re back with your awareness and then you gently
0:35:35 bring yourself back to the breath and actually all you’re doing is those three things throughout the
0:35:41 session either you’re with the breath or you’re noticing that you got lost or you’re returning
0:35:50 and it’s that that returning that makes you strong every time you return to the breath you are making
0:35:55 a very powerful decision that’s the attachment or the addiction to the thoughts the mind was lost in
0:36:00 those thoughts and you are recapturing your attention and bringing it back so you are choosing
0:36:08 where to send your mind and if you do this like an exercise almost like going to the gym and getting
0:36:15 strong day after day week after week you’re you’re teaching yourself how to choose to be happy
0:36:23 and how to choose not to suffer so such a simple technique on paper you know focus on your breath
0:36:32 come back when you get lost is actually profoundly transformative psychologically
0:36:38 because i think most people listening to this assume that they’re kind of strapped to their thoughts
0:36:42 and their thoughts are the car driving wherever it wants to go and we’re just strapped to the back of
0:36:47 it our ankles tied to the back of it with a piece of rope yeah absolutely and we just kind of suffer
0:36:52 hijacked hijacked by our thoughts yeah hijacked is a great great you know it’s stormed the like
0:36:57 pilot’s cabin and it’s flying us exactly wherever it wants to go exactly that’s kind of the experience
0:37:03 we have so then you meditation puts you behind the wheel of the car most people haven’t had the
0:37:09 experience you’ve had training yourself to sort of disassociate or realize that you’re not your
0:37:18 thoughts so as someone that’s on the other side of this practice how can you persuade me that my life
0:37:24 will be better if i listen to this like what’s the before and after i guess for you so i don’t think
0:37:29 everybody has to join a monastery and do extreme retreats and the kind of things i do it maybe that’s
0:37:36 my my kind of extreme nature i i have so many friends who meditate while they have families and
0:37:41 busy jobs and they they do 15 minutes a day or twice a day or whatever it can absolutely be done in
0:37:48 anybody’s lifestyle but the whole point is that you are learning to find your own inner freedom
0:37:54 you’re learning how to discover that you you are bigger than the pain and suffering that seems to
0:38:00 drive your life because what what i described earlier with the coming back to the breath is is that first
0:38:07 stage of learning to gain a bit more power around what your mind is doing and then what is so interesting
0:38:15 is when you start to think about okay when when i’m unhappy or when i’m angry or whatever
0:38:25 if i am observing myself being unhappy is the observer is the is the observer angry and if i feel
0:38:32 angry and i know i’m angry the part of my mind that’s looking at the anger cannot be angry because it’s
0:38:38 seeing the anger so so in buddhism they they they use a metaphor to describe this which is the sky
0:38:44 and the clouds the clouds can be heavy and rainy and all of that but the sky is always bigger than the
0:38:50 clouds so our awareness of our minds that that’s where we can find our freedom and when we talk
0:38:54 about seeking purpose and seeking what are we looking for in life i think that’s what we’re looking
0:39:00 for all the time in everything we do whether it be big life goals or you know drinking a cup of coffee or
0:39:08 water small moments in every moment we’re looking for release or freedom we think we’re looking to feel happy
0:39:15 or we think we’re looking for love or sex or or whatever it is but i think what we’re really
0:39:20 looking for is to free ourselves from from suffering and to free ourselves from need
0:39:27 and to to be free to be more in touch with who we really are i think that’s what we’re looking for and
0:39:35 when when you meditate and you step back and look at your mind that observational aspect is is key
0:39:43 to become the sky yeah to become the sky rather rather than the clouds and then i think it can
0:39:52 change your life because you you know when i first met my teacher he was quite a straight talking person
0:39:59 he he would he he wouldn’t you know say much and what he said was often could be sound sound a little
0:40:03 bit harsh but he said it with love and when i first met him i’d go on about all the stuff that was
0:40:08 happening with me or had happened with me or to me and he just said stop taking yourself so seriously
0:40:14 and initially that could sound like a slap in the face i mean imagine if you went to a therapist and
0:40:19 they said what you’ve been through is peanuts you know stop taking yourself seriously but he didn’t
0:40:26 mean it like that what he meant was stop clinging to a kind of solidity stop making your your thoughts
0:40:31 and feelings and feelings and your past and make it so solid make try to be the sky instead of the
0:40:37 clouds try to step back and be less solid about everything buddhism is very much into this notion
0:40:45 that they call emptiness which isn’t emptiness in terms of a kind of vacuous void but more that things
0:40:50 are illusory things aren’t as real and solid and heavy as we think they are and i think meditation can help
0:40:56 us to think more in that way and find more happiness real happiness not not the happiness that depends
0:41:05 on i will be happy if i will be happy when i can only be happy because that’s a very limited happiness
0:41:10 but imagine if you could be happy no matter what is that what buddhism helps us to do i think buddhism
0:41:16 is about freedom and i think freedom is happy no matter what and i think more than that i think
0:41:22 it’s also about compassion i the way i’m describing it could sound like this is all just about one’s
0:41:28 own personal development and freeing oneself and becoming happier but the key point is we’re living
0:41:34 in a connection a world of connection and how can we genuinely help others i think through freeing our
0:41:41 minds and helping others to do the same can i be in that state of mind where i am the sky while also
0:41:48 being incredibly effective in my job as a ceo yeah i think this is this is possibly one of the
0:41:52 misconceptions you know this is something i came across quite early on in when i was teaching
0:42:00 meditation i started to give talks about meditation in the workplace like 25 years ago so before it became
0:42:07 very popular you know mindfulness is everywhere in the corporate world but when i started it was
0:42:13 quite unusual and i did come across a lot of misconceptions the funniest one was before i went
0:42:20 into a boardroom to talk to the the people in there about meditation their ceo took me to the side and he said
0:42:28 please don’t make them too relaxed i said what do you mean he said well i like what you do but i don’t
0:42:35 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
0:42:41 walk into there and sort of you know put everyone into a trance that’s that’s not what i do but it was
0:42:47 such an interesting conversation because it made me see that his view of meditation is that you would
0:42:54 become this kind of spaced out happy with everything don’t care and you’d lose your drive and it’s
0:42:58 absolutely not that at all because it’s about precision it’s about being present it’s about
0:43:04 being less controlled by distraction be less controlled by negative thinking and if you can
0:43:11 do that you can achieve more so if you are a ceo if you are trying to achieve something in your work
0:43:17 and you meditate it can make you can work much much harder and gets less tired and then also you can start
0:43:23 to think more deeply about why am i doing the things i’m doing and what am i really trying to achieve
0:43:29 here some of the most famous ceos in the world talk about their meditation practice and this is why i’ve
0:43:34 also been slightly compelled into it i think for me i’m the type of person that’s very influenced by
0:43:41 other people that i kind of look up to and so someone like steve jobs who i think had a deep sort of
0:43:45 spiritual practice which involved meditation which i also think he cites as being much of the reason he
0:43:51 was able to see around the corner and be more of a visionary was one of the big points of inspiration
0:43:57 for me to get more curious about buddhism and meditation do you have any examples of like very
0:44:05 high productive very successful people that have had tremendous benefits from meditation as it relates to
0:44:11 them being more successful in their missions their professional missions i mean i can’t i can’t think
0:44:17 of specific individual names but it’s it’s just generally very well known that if you meditate it
0:44:22 makes you more effective in your life because you are becoming your own boss i mean we talk about being
0:44:29 your own boss but how many of us are really really our own boss you know we can be the boss of other
0:44:35 people we can be the boss of our environment to a certain extent but to be to be the ceo of your
0:44:45 your own mind very very difficult and so people who can do that definitely become more effective
0:44:51 in the world but i think what also happens is they start to think about how they could be really
0:44:59 successful and then do some good with that success because they they start to think about well is it all
0:45:05 just about the success and the wealth or is there something i could do with that success and wealth because
0:45:11 meditation makes you more compassionate meditation makes you more ethical it makes you and not ethical
0:45:16 in a kind of you know the word ethics sounds so kind of victorian and so kind of restrictive but i mean
0:45:22 trying to make the world a better place and i think there are many examples of people who’ve
0:45:28 become enormously successful and used that success for the good of the world and i think meditation is
0:45:34 something key in their success i was just looking for a couple of examples and um ray dalio who
0:45:38 a lot of people know is one of the the best investors in the world who wrote the book principle said
0:45:43 meditation more than anything in my life is the biggest ingredient of whatever success i’ve had and
0:45:47 mark benioff who’s the ceo of salesforce a tremendously large company said meditation is the
0:45:52 most important thing i do each day oprah winfrey jack dorsey let’s say who’s the co-founder of twitter and square said
0:45:57 there’s nothing more impactful on my work than meditation and steve job said if you just sit
0:46:02 and observe you will see how restless your mind is if you try to calm it it only makes it worse but
0:46:10 over time it does calm and he practiced zen buddhism and was a regular meditator and he um says that his
0:46:16 minimalist design philosophy and focus were strongly influenced by his spiritual and meditative practices
0:46:25 you see i think the the um the thing that trips people up when they think about how meditation
0:46:31 could make you more effective is the word calm because they think oh well if i become calm i’m
0:46:37 going to be i’m going to miss i’m not going to be a workaholic i’m going to drop the ball yeah if i’m too
0:46:44 calm but i don’t think of calm in that way at all as almost like a tranquilized calm i think of calm as
0:46:51 being able to keep a cool head under fire and be really precise and really on the on the focus on
0:46:58 in the now and really hold on to your purpose and know why you’re doing what you’re doing and be less
0:47:05 influenced by the areas of your psychology that trip you up i’m hearing like clarity and emotional
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0:49:09 body starts with strong feet earlier on you said that in buddhism they talk about an emptiness which is
0:49:17 kind of this realizing that life isn’t so solid solid and your identity is a mirage and all these kinds of
0:49:24 things it almost sounded like that’s the opposite of like victimhood because when we think about
0:49:29 victimhood it is i create an identity for myself and then i create a story around that identity which
0:49:35 has suffered some kind of injustice and then i kind of live out that injustice how does buddhism think
0:49:42 about victimhood and identity and trauma i guess so of course we identify incredibly strongly with our past
0:49:49 and we in so many ways are prisoners of what has happened to us in our past and it is totally
0:49:55 understandable of course but buddhism brings in a whole fresh perspective which is that you are not
0:50:01 your past i mean even on a physical level every cell in your body has changed and your mind has changed
0:50:08 you are you are right now in the present the past is is an illusion as is the future and we spend so much
0:50:15 time in the past and future or trying to manipulate the present whereas with with meditation you’re
0:50:22 learning to to be in the now and not be it doesn’t mean you don’t plan or don’t remember but you’re
0:50:29 learning to be to cling less to the past and future and you’re learning to cling less to or hold less to
0:50:33 the idea that things are really as solid as you think they are i mean it’s very scientific that
0:50:39 there’s a there’s a buddhist uh meditation which literally is about a table like you know here we
0:50:45 are with this table and they say if you if you take apart this table you’ll find it doesn’t exist
0:50:52 because the table as it seems right now is is a is a top with legs you you you take the bits apart
0:50:57 and now where is your notion of table you’ve got these bits of wood or metal or whatever it is
0:51:04 and you start kind of dissecting that further and further and further uh this is where buddhism and
0:51:09 and and particle physics become you know they’re talking a lot there’s a lot of conversation there
0:51:15 in that the the smaller and smaller you go into these these wood shavings and then particles and
0:51:21 can you find the smallest part that makes up all of reality and buddhists would say no because if it’s
0:51:29 a part it has parts there is no such thing as the partless particle because if it’s a particle it can
0:51:36 be further subdivided so we can’t find the smallest base that makes up all of matter
0:51:42 what we’re experiencing is more like a dream or an illusion and uh the reality we live in of course
0:51:47 it feels very solid you know if i if i throw this this cup at somebody it’s going to hit their head
0:51:52 and hurt them it’s no point saying well it’s all empty don’t worry about it but the idea behind
0:51:57 this philosophy of understanding things not to be as solid as they are is that we can learn to suffer
0:52:03 less because we spend so much of our energy constantly reacting to things as if they’re really solid and
0:52:08 really real and there’s nothing that can be done about them whether that be people or objects in the
0:52:15 world around us or our mind itself and if we can desolidify some of that we could become more free
0:52:20 we all carry so many burdens in this regard you know it could be grief it could be heartbreak it
0:52:25 could be a colleague at work that doesn’t dislike us a comment in our instagram page of someone some
0:52:29 something someone said about us how does one go about
0:52:41 alleviating ourselves from this kind of burden yeah so i for me it it’s very much about um dropping the
0:52:52 story and looking at the feeling okay explain that to me so for me this became a very very
0:53:00 important practice for me when i was in a long retreat so i went into a very long retreat for
0:53:06 four years i became a monk for a year and i stayed a bit longer stayed a bit longer it was after about
0:53:12 four years that i i decided to do this for life and i took lifelong vows and then i knew about these long
0:53:17 i did some short retreats but i knew about these long retreats but it wasn’t until 12 years later
0:53:23 that the opportunity came up to go into a long retreat uh four years long where you are really just
0:53:30 cut off from the world for that length of time no no nobody goes in or out and you are meditating many
0:53:37 many hours a day and it was the most frightening experience of my life because i i was in there
0:53:41 alone with with my own thoughts and emotions it’s not a completely solitary retreat there are other
0:53:47 monks they’re all doing their own meditation in their rooms so there is a kind of group but you are very much
0:53:56 alone as well and for me the whole thing was for the first two years was just horrific amounts of
0:54:04 depression misery pain anguish anxiety that would build into panic attacks i i was really really shocked
0:54:09 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
0:54:17 years and i’d already started to you know give a few talks about meditation and and maybe i thought i was
0:54:23 quite sorted but i wasn’t and i got in there and really fell apart but it was an amazing thing that
0:54:32 happened to me because that falling apart forced me after a while to to learn how to engage with what i’m
0:54:38 talking about which is looking at the suffering and working with that with meditation looking at the
0:54:46 suffering so for me during those first two years of the retreat i was completely obsessed with the story
0:54:54 because i i was experiencing these horrendous feelings of heartbreak and feelings of depression
0:55:03 anxiety just kind of a whole mass of suffering inside myself and i was i was trying to almost
0:55:07 do therapy on myself and think okay let’s you know thinking that memories were coming up from the past
0:55:13 and thinking about things that had happened in my past and is this why i’m suffering now and how do i
0:55:21 resolve that and the more i went down that road the worse it got and i found myself really disconnected
0:55:26 frustrated from buddhism and it was a really frightening experience because i i’m there in a
0:55:33 four-year retreat i’m a monk and i’m i was feeling completely alienated from the whole thing i
0:55:39 i kind of wanted to just get away from it i wanted to run away and things only changed when i
0:55:48 hit rock bottom like hugely in that i actually i climbed over the wall of the retreat to run away
0:55:55 i couldn’t take it anymore i at one morning i had the most immense panic attack i’ve ever had
0:56:02 and i just like saw red and just ran i legged it out of the retreat which is on it’s unthinkable you
0:56:06 know in a four-year retreat you’re not supposed to leave but i jumped over the wall and tried to escape
0:56:11 i say tried to escape as if i was in some kind of you know prison or cult it’s not like that people
0:56:16 do leave retreats but for me it was this kind of dramatic get out of there and run away and
0:56:26 i remember um like freaking out and running and running and running down this road in the rain
0:56:31 this was on a very you know remote area of a scottish island and then just stopping and thinking
0:56:36 what are you doing what what has happened to you and i just stopped and then went back
0:56:41 and i asked the leaders of the retreat if i could be let back in and they said well no you’ve left
0:56:47 but i really begged them because i i had such clarity in that moment i wanted to go back in and
0:56:52 they said okay the abbot of my monastery said okay stay stay in a little caravan on the edge of the
0:56:58 retreat boundary for a week for seven days and think about what you’re doing and then we’ll see if you
0:57:06 will let you back in and during that time i i thought really deeply and i really knew i wanted to go back
0:57:11 in because there was at that moment a thought of shall i give up being a monk should i give up the whole
0:57:18 thing i can’t do this it’s made me so miserable but i i really knew in that moment what what my purpose
0:57:25 was i knew i wanted to go back in and carry on but i also knew i’d been tormenting myself with my past
0:57:28 and that i hadn’t worked out how to
0:57:38 how to heal myself i i’d been sinking so badly and i if i was to go back in there i would have to try a
0:57:45 completely new approach why did you choose to go back in because i i really strongly believed that
0:57:52 it was what i want to do with my life and a part of me thought don’t give something up when you’re
0:57:59 freaking out because you will regret it if you’re going to give this thing up give it up from a place
0:58:03 of clarity knowing that there’s something better for you out there don’t give up because you’re having a
0:58:10 panic attack and you can’t take it that’s the wrong kind of timing to make a life change
0:58:17 because i do i i really do believe in what i’m doing i i i this is the life i’ve chosen for myself
0:58:23 and i want to do it but it got so difficult i couldn’t take it anymore why did you want to do it if
0:58:29 if something is painful and causing you because i because i felt that this this pain i’m going through
0:58:36 i’ve the met the methods are there i just need to know how to use them and i could learn to conquer
0:58:43 this i i this pain could be the breakthrough most people in in their lives when they think about the
0:58:49 things that give them anxiety or pain or fear you know we live as sort of discomfort avoiding humans so
0:58:55 we try and run to run to comfort or pleasure exactly so life is hard let’s run from it exactly
0:59:00 let’s get on a plane fly to another country yeah and try and just set up a new life somewhere it doesn’t
0:59:06 work because you go to your new life and the thing that has been haunting you like a shadow goes with you
0:59:15 you can’t run from yourself you can you can run to the end of the earth and that thing that has been
0:59:22 tormenting you is part of you and until you learn to integrate that it will always trip you up and
0:59:26 so i went back into that retreat knowing okay this is your last chance
0:59:35 if you don’t if if you mess this up again that’s it you know forget it so it was a real like make or
0:59:46 break situation and i went back in and i i um everything changed because i found i i had to
0:59:52 find a new a different way of dealing with that suffering what was that okay so i’m back in there
1:00:00 and it’s coming up again the depression the anxiety the the pain that to me it felt like
1:00:08 it it felt like like something like that was piercing me it felt like a it felt like there
1:00:14 was like a knife constantly twisting twisting and turning in my heart like in the middle of me
1:00:21 it was really painful and what i’d been doing up until that point was just trying to get that knife out
1:00:26 and also thinking why is it there is it because of what happened to me when i was 14 is it what happened
1:00:34 to me when i was 17 is it this is it that is it my my family what is it that’s the story i say story i’m
1:00:39 not i’m not belittling people’s stories i’m just saying it’s the narrative isn’t it
1:00:51 so i i decided to to use the knife as the meditation to to actually meditate on it
1:00:59 and and the the the whole thing starts to change when you do that because until that point you’ve
1:01:05 been if until that point you’ve been trying to get rid of your suffering or get rid of your pain but
1:01:13 if you turn your pain into your meditation you’re moving towards it and how can it hurt you if you’ve
1:01:20 decided to move towards it you you’ve made that choice so what i started to do was just focus on
1:01:27 the pain but try to bypass the judgments i don’t like this this is so terrible why am i depressed why am
1:01:35 i anxious and just feel the feeling and it’s a sensation in the body because one of the key um
1:01:43 instructions in meditation is when you focus your mind you focus it with less judgment this is good this
1:01:48 is bad you just focus so you’re focusing on that feeling without pushing it away without saying
1:01:53 why do i feel like this but just the feeling and you start it starts to change
1:02:04 it starts to change because you’re accepting it my teachers had always said to me they’d always go on
1:02:08 and on about acceptance and i just i just wanted to hit them when they said it because it sounded so grim
1:02:13 you know you’ve got to accept yourself or you’ve got to accept your suffering to me that sounded like
1:02:19 you’re going to for the rest of your life be dragging this bag of rocks up a hill you know acceptance is so
1:02:27 miserable and so boring i didn’t realize that what they meant was was compassion and self-acceptance at a
1:02:34 very very deep level so so i was i was focusing on that feeling in my body and trying not to go into
1:02:41 the stories about it or the hatred of it and just move towards it and and kind of become become one with
1:02:48 that pain and then you relax and something kind of releases and i mean i think it works on a chemical
1:02:53 level because basically when you’re when you’re trying to push pain away you’re creating enormous amounts of
1:02:58 uh cortisol in your body stress hormone when you relax the endorphins arise you start to feel happy
1:03:04 i mean it’s quite bizarre that the thing that has hurt you so much starts to turn into a kind of joyful
1:03:13 feeling and you start to think oh wow okay so happiness is nothing to do with somebody being nice to me or this
1:03:17 object or that thing happiness is about being okay with your suffering
1:03:27 and and and not just being okay with it but actually sending love into the place in yourself that you
1:03:35 hated so much so for for me um that what started to change was from from from having a feeling like
1:03:38 a knife twisting inside me and hurting me and wanting to get rid of it
1:03:47 i found ways to hold that with with love and i i started to have this image in my head of
1:03:55 as if i had found a like a frightened rabbit or a bird with a broken wing and i’m holding that in my hand
1:04:04 with tenderness i’d never been able to do that for myself i had never ever been able to be kind to myself
1:04:12 everything in my life until up until that point had been so harsh and so self self-hating
1:04:20 and and and i think you know in my teenage years when i was trying to become a a successful actor
1:04:25 i think that was the drive was i i hate myself so i better get loads of people to love me instead
1:04:30 because i can’t do it i’m not saying all actors are like that by no means but there is a kind of actor
1:04:38 who is like that we know that and that was me and then you know even as a as a monk and you become
1:04:43 celibate and you’re you know having this kind of more like looking after yourself lifestyle i develop
1:04:48 all these incredibly strong attachments with friends where i’d want them to be nice to me and i didn’t
1:04:53 want to be alone with myself i couldn’t spend time alone with myself and then in the first two years of
1:04:59 that retreat i’m hating myself and hating my pain and jumping over the wall and anything to kind of
1:05:06 jump out of my own skin and when i learned how to do this kind of practice with sending compassion
1:05:12 into that part of myself that i’d hated so much it it it was really transformative
1:05:20 you said it felt like holding a scared rabbit or a bird with a broken wing how did you come to feel
1:05:32 about that bird i felt um i felt love for that part of myself and for me that’s only possible when you
1:05:39 stop getting so distracted by all the history and the the the details of your past but you’re just
1:05:45 relating to the feeling in your body right now and i don’t know if it’s like this for everybody but
1:05:52 for me feeling it in the body is a really easy way to start because yeah it’s depression it’s anxiety
1:05:57 it’s trauma whatever it is if that’s quite kind of nebulous how do you find it and for me it was so
1:06:02 physical it was like this twisting of a knife in the heart or sinking feeling in the in the chest
1:06:09 and just to relate to that sensation with kindness taught me how to love myself but
1:06:18 in an accepting way you know not it’s not about you know becoming an egomaniac i love myself it’s more
1:06:24 have kindness for yourself how does this translate to things like grief because grief is one of the the
1:06:29 hardest things to get to acceptance on the sort of finality of life losing someone you love you’ve been
1:06:34 through this yourself you had a i think a best friend of yours who was well my teacher oh your
1:06:42 teacher well he was my best friend as well as my teacher he he was murdered he was in so 11 years ago
1:06:49 my teacher akon rinpoche who had been my everything for all those years you know he he was my teacher
1:06:56 my closest friend he i also i spent a lot of time with him i became his kind of assistant so when he would
1:07:03 travel i was with him all the time so we were very close he was tibetan and he was in charge of our
1:07:12 monastery in scotland and part of his his work was he would run a charity called rokpa which has um oh
1:07:22 that’s him um he would go to tibet every year and um look after projects there feeding orphans looking after
1:07:28 schools hospitals etc he was on his way to tibet one year and he was in chengdu in china and he was
1:07:37 um basically ambushed and stabbed killed and i mean this completely rocked the buddhist world it’s like
1:07:44 you know horrendous news but on a personal level for me i was one of the first people who found out i’d
1:07:49 i’ve been on the phone to him every day until then i was his assistant and very working very closely with
1:07:57 him so it complete my it completely like blew me apart i mean it blew me to pieces
1:08:03 i cannot describe how badly it blew me to pieces
1:08:13 but the meditation i’ve described to you saw me through
1:08:21 because because i at some point during that grieving process i remembered what to do
1:08:27 at first i didn’t because you know when you’re really in in it you you can’t think but then
1:08:33 so there was the whole aftermath you know he was killed and it was in all the press and then
1:08:38 as his assistant i was the one dealing with the media and in a way that
1:08:44 same busy when you’re grieving it kind of helps you to you know stay focused but then the nights
1:08:52 the nights was night time was when it started to hurt because at night i would just be tossing and
1:09:01 turning and feeling like feeling like i was on fire because i had a mixture of grief anger despair
1:09:08 it was a whole mixture of things we knew the killer the person who murdered him
1:09:14 had been a monk a tibetan he had been a monk in our monastery we knew him he actually had the same name
1:09:21 as me and we knew him quite well so there was all of that mixed in with what on earth happened to this
1:09:26 person that he did this thing and so all of that is consuming me at night and i’m just tossing and
1:09:33 turning feeling like i’m in flames and then at some point it kicked in the the meditation it just had
1:09:38 it just happened because i’d done it in retreat it had seen me through it had really really helped me
1:09:46 and at some point i just had to lie there and send love into the flames in me you know i had to send
1:09:54 send that kindness into the place i was in despair i’m not saying that i then just became all right
1:10:03 no but it absolutely calmed things absolutely and it is it is it is all about love it really is you are
1:10:11 sending love into the pain you are experiencing and this helped me through the grief it helped me also
1:10:16 with forgiveness with the the guy we knew who did it it helped me on so many levels and i’m not saying
1:10:23 saying that it you know it’s it’s all okay but i have i’ve made peace with his death and
1:10:27 i mean he taught me this practice
1:10:36 he taught me how to do that and then he died and i had to do it that i i think of it as his last gift to me
1:10:47 and um i’m you know i i i’m i will be forever grateful when you talk about sending love into
1:10:54 the flames what is the the actual practice there is it certain sentences you’re saying no yeah i’m glad
1:11:01 you asked this because it is so much about going beyond the words and going into an experience of
1:11:08 oneness so so to make it really practical you know you’re feeling you’re feeling incredible
1:11:15 trauma in your body finding it physically is the easiest way to do it like your your body’s in flames
1:11:20 or you’ve got like a feeling of a knife twisting in your heart whatever it is there’s this feeling in
1:11:28 the body and first of all you just focus on that feeling so anybody who who meditates knows how to focus
1:11:33 on their breathing it’s the same thing it’s just where you’re focusing so you’re feeling the feeling
1:11:39 and you’re trying to bypass the thoughts of this is uncomfortable i want this to go away
1:11:42 why did he die what happened you’re just feeling the feeling
1:11:49 and then you pay attention to that feeling in a loving way
1:12:02 you you you flood it with love and the reason this is possible i mean this is touching upon a major a
1:12:09 major belief in buddhist philosophy which is that our minds are naturally compassionate we are not
1:12:19 these fight or flight killing machines that some people like to think the human being is we are our natural
1:12:27 state is to be kind it is who we are naturally deep down so when you clear away all the the words and the
1:12:33 the ideas and you just sit with the feeling and you send love into that feeling with your mind you’re just
1:12:39 loving that feeling holding it with compassion as if you were with a friend who was grieving and if you
1:12:45 if you were sitting with a friend who was freaking out or grieving or whatever you you’re not going to
1:12:51 slap them around the face and say snap out of it you will hold their hand and we all know how to do that
1:12:58 the question is can you do it for yourself and for me that was a huge challenge because i hated myself so
1:13:07 much for so many years i was my worst enemy so to hold my own hand internally in that sense that’s what i
1:13:12 mean by sending love into the feeling and what happens then is the feeling starts to change
1:13:20 it starts to melt the sharpness the sharp edge of his edges of it start to melt and you start to be okay
1:13:22 with being not okay and
1:13:31 it’s almost as if a kind of happiness starts to arise but it’s not like a it’s the kind of happiness you
1:13:39 you haven’t tasted before it’s the happiness of i can be okay with this it makes you immensely strong
1:13:46 you talked about forgiveness did you forgive the man that murdered your friend and teacher yes
1:13:57 quite quickly i mean in a way it was made easier because it became really clear that he was psychotic
1:14:03 and of course that’s no excuse or condoning or anything like that but somebody who is
1:14:09 really unable to control themselves i mean how can you hate them or whatever you know it’s
1:14:16 but that’s an extreme case but there are the practice of forgiveness it’s a hard one isn’t it
1:14:20 because we’ve all got people in our lives that we all have wronged us or done something to us
1:14:28 which has caused us pain and almost the way that we create our own perception of justice is by holding
1:14:34 the grudge yeah now now why do we do that that’s my that’s the question is do we think
1:14:41 do we think that if we let go of the grudge we have let the other person get away with it
1:14:46 that’s how it kind of feels right wouldn’t you say that by holding the grudge they’ve got away with it
1:14:59 because you’re holding on to that in buddhism there’s a teaching that says it’s like holding
1:15:06 on to a piece of hot metal or holding a hot coal in your hand and it’s just burning you so if i’m holding
1:15:11 the grudge they have absolutely got away with it because they are the thing they did which was one
1:15:20 thing maybe i am now constantly hurting and they are absolutely the winner so i wonder if we we assume
1:15:27 i think we do assume that forgiveness is a kind of giving up even the word forgive the give in the word
1:15:32 so it sounds like we’re taking a weaker position we’re giving up we’re sort of surrendering but i
1:15:39 think forgiveness is a strength or a power and it’s actually nothing to do with the other person they
1:15:44 might you’re not going to necessarily write them a letter and say i’ve forgiven you but you’re freeing
1:15:54 yourself you’re dropping your burden because that rage is toxic and that hurt is toxic it’s so hard to
1:16:00 let go of it and people can say let go and you just want to slap them in the face because what okay is
1:16:08 that easy i’m just going to let go you know it’s not that easy it’s bloody hard but meditation gives gives
1:16:15 you the tools partly because meditation anyway is helping to loosen up that kind of glue that we have
1:16:21 in our minds where we’re glued into those feelings that even just a simple meditation like coming back
1:16:27 to the breath is helping you to be less glued into those thoughts and reactions and feelings so
1:16:34 the feeling of rage can start to be less heavy for you you’ve been through several sort of traumatic
1:16:39 incidents you talked about being 14 being 17 sexual abuse parent parental divorce a little
1:16:43 bit of neglect it sounds like as well have you forgiven all of those people in your life
1:16:53 i don’t know i don’t know if forgiveness is a big huge massive moment or if it’s a process
1:17:00 i’m friends with all those people very close friends with all those people and i think
1:17:12 here’s what i think i’ve learned how to forgive the feelings that those incidents have gave rise to
1:17:22 that to me is much more important than forgiving the people and i think what’s also happened to me is
1:17:33 i’ve started to find that the suffering that i experience has some use because it is the thing that
1:17:36 you’re using for your mental transformation
1:17:44 rinpoche always used to say um suffering is like compost compost is made of rotten vegetables
1:17:50 people chuck it away or they know how to make the field grow and i think it’s like that
1:17:59 so with forgiveness um i would say yeah meditation but i would say also thinking thinking deeply about
1:18:09 about the situation you know what’s really helped me with with my dad and with other people
1:18:15 is to think about the suffering they were going through that kind of like propelled them to behave
1:18:21 the way they’ve behaved there’s always something isn’t there in somebody that has made them behave the way
1:18:25 they behave and there’s a part of us that gets very indignant and thinks how dare they
1:18:31 they should know better whereas the buddhist answer would be well what what do you mean they should
1:18:36 know better they know what they know they’re they are they are driven by their own confusion and their
1:18:42 own pain what why do you think they were out to get you why do you think they were deliberately out to
1:18:50 maliciously get you weren’t they just caught in their own suffering and you you were there but it’s not so
1:18:55 so much about you and i think that starts to lighten the burden a bit when you start to think about
1:19:00 you know there’s a meditation i sometimes do where you you swap places with the other person
1:19:06 in your mind you sit and you think about being them and looking at the world out of their eyes
1:19:11 the person that hurt you yeah so many people will be thinking about that person in their life
1:19:16 as you speak and they’ll be the challenge i guess they’ll face is they’ll continually come back to
1:19:21 this idea that this person is an yeah they you know it almost we all are though we are too we all are i
1:19:30 am we’re all because we’re all just confused we’re all at the mercy of our own minds if you meditate
1:19:36 regularly you realize how out of control you are because you’re trying to sit there with your breathing
1:19:42 and all you’re thinking about is shopping lists and you think wow the human mind is really pretty
1:19:49 messed up we can’t make it do anything we want it to do so this person that you think they’re so evil
1:19:53 and so terrible and how dare they do the thing they’ve done i’m not saying that we’re condoning it and
1:19:59 saying yeah you can do what you want i’m just saying lighten up a bit because people are just doing their
1:20:05 best and sometimes their best is really bad and that doesn’t have to become your problem
1:20:13 it’s not really about you we we obviously take things personally if something is done to you
1:20:18 of course you’re going to take it personally but meditation helps you look at the 360 degree
1:20:25 view of a situation rather than just from your perspective and very important here that we don’t
1:20:32 get into that kind of victim shaming reality where you think oh it’s all about me and poor them it’s
1:20:38 it’s not that at all it’s simply that you think we’re all we’re all messed up in various ways and
1:20:45 and that’s the human condition make sure you keep what i’m about to say to yourself i’m inviting 10 000
1:20:51 of you to come even deeper into the diary of a ceo welcome to my inner circle this is a brand new
1:20:56 private community that i’m launching to the world we have so many incredible things that happen that you are
1:21:01 never shown we have the briefs that are on my ipad when i’m recording the conversation we have clips
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1:21:33 description below or go to doaccircle.com i will speak to you there i’m gonna let you into a little
1:21:37 bit of a secret you’re probably gonna think me and my team are a little bit weird but i can still
1:21:43 remember to this day when jemima from my team posted on slack that she changed the scent in this studio and
1:21:48 right after she posted it the entire office clapped in our slack channel and this might sound crazy but
1:21:52 at the diary of a co this is the type of one percent improvement we make on our show and that is why the
1:21:58 show is the way it is by understanding the power of compounding one percents you can absolutely change
1:22:05 your outcomes in your life it isn’t about drastic transformations or quick wins it’s about the small
1:22:11 consistent actions that have a lasting change in your outcomes so two years ago we started the process
1:22:15 of creating this beautiful diary and it’s truly beautiful inside there’s lots of pictures lots of
1:22:21 inspiration and motivation as well some interactive elements and the purpose of this diary is to help
1:22:27 you identify stay focused on develop consistency with the one percent that will ultimately change your
1:22:32 life so if you want one for yourself or for a friend or for a colleague or for your team then head to
1:22:39 the diary dot com right now i’ll link it below many of us live trapped in the life we have i guess maybe
1:22:44 the word trapped isn’t the right word but held back in many ways because of fear and i wondered what buddhism
1:22:55 teaches us about fear in terms of fear of taking risks or you know going and becoming a buddhist monk or
1:23:00 starting a business or pursuing a passion or moving to bali many of us have these these
1:23:06 dreams these callings but we’re trapped in fear and would you also agree that the fear can be about
1:23:12 those bigger things but also it’s a moment to moment subtle anxiety that just like pervades everything
1:23:23 yeah it’s both to me this became hugely um like obvious when i came out of that four-year retreat
1:23:32 because i i came out that retreat was 2005 to 2009 when i came out of that retreat everybody had
1:23:38 smartphones during those four years the whole landscape of technology changed dramatically
1:23:43 smartphones social media the whole thing happened during that time and you hadn’t been on the internet
1:23:50 no no we had nothing before my retreat some people had blackberries and then that was it and then
1:23:55 suddenly it’s all different and i arrived in london and everybody’s walking around with their face
1:24:00 buried in phones and i i’m you know going up the escalator and the tube in london and the
1:24:05 little billboards of moving images that made me feel dizzy
1:24:14 but where i’m going with this is is i i i i i’m maybe because i’ve been in this unusual environment
1:24:21 and now i’m back in normal reality i see it with more of a shock and i started to think how much
1:24:28 have we been made to feel afraid all the time when news media becomes digitalized and monetized and
1:24:33 then you have to keep the person reading we know the tricks that people have to do we know we all know
1:24:38 about clickbait we all know about how the the headline of an article has to be shocking enough
1:24:43 to make you read the article and then you see the ads you don’t actually find out the information until
1:24:49 two-thirds way down you know we know that and we’re all wise to that on one level and then the other
1:24:55 level we are completely influenced by it so we’re now walking around in a world where we’re constantly
1:25:02 being told we are in danger i’m not i’m not here to you know i’m not anti-technology it’s great it can
1:25:08 do so many good things but it’s like food you’ve got to eat it in the right way if you if you overeat
1:25:13 you get sick if you’re not discerning about what you eat you’re going to get ill it’s the same with
1:25:21 technology and so yeah fear is now used in every every walk of life fear is used more than ever in
1:25:26 politics to to make us afraid so that we vote for people because of fear fear is used so much
1:25:32 now to make us go shopping hurry up while stocks last so what do we do about that when we live in a
1:25:41 world that is commercially driven or driven by power dynamics that mean that fear is just a great motivator
1:25:47 and a great way to influence i think we we have to protect our minds with meditation does this mean
1:25:52 like throw your phone away and don’t go outside what does it mean no don’t throw your phone away
1:25:59 don’t don’t go and run away to the mountains learn to face the fear learn to be fearless in a frightened
1:26:07 world and i think this is something very practical because i i do this through practicing my microscopic
1:26:14 moments of meditation in busy situations what does that mean so i might be standing in a queue and i’ll feel
1:26:21 the ground under my feet i might be in an airport queuing up and instead of going into that impatience
1:26:29 thing and the stressy mode or checking my phone i’ll i’ll do a moment of meditation something that’s
1:26:35 very important to me is to meditate every day sitting down and doing it kind of formally but also these
1:26:41 micro moments throughout the day tiny moments where you just become aware of yourself become aware of the
1:26:46 ground under your feet become aware of your shoulders drop your shoulders be aware of them become aware of
1:26:51 your breathing and i find this if you do this in queues and traffic jams it changes your entire reality
1:26:56 because what are you doing you’re re you’re re what you’re rewiring your own brain
1:27:07 you know how whenever we’re in a stuck situation like a queue or a traffic jam we are wired to respond with
1:27:15 tension and impatience but if you do a mic micro moment of mindfulness you’re changing the wiring
1:27:21 you’re teaching yourself that you can meet stress in a calm way you can be okay with being stuck
1:27:26 in in the traffic so what that does is it then makes you more fearless because you’re almost like
1:27:30 looking forward to the next traffic jam whereas most of us are just reacting to
1:27:36 instead of reacting you’re thinking bring it on there is a gap isn’t there between what happens
1:27:43 and how we react that’s the crucial gap the gap between impulse and action because so much is reaction
1:27:48 so so much i think we spend so much of our lives just reacting
1:27:57 in in in that i feel hungry so i eat somebody says hello i say hello but even on a moment-to-moment basis
1:28:03 how much are we consciously living and how much are we just reacting and so when we can find that gap
1:28:09 between the impulse and the action and make a different choice i think it’s almost like in
1:28:16 every moment where we’re standing at a fork in the road in every moment what one road is the road of
1:28:22 reaction and the other road is the road of response meditation helps you pause and see you could make a choice
1:28:28 i don’t have to get stressed out in traffic i could instead be mindful or i don’t have to get
1:28:33 i don’t have to my colleague at work is grumpy i don’t have to bite their head off and then regret it
1:28:40 i could i could hold back so you say meditation is the solution to many of the things we’ve talked
1:28:45 about today including the response versus reaction fork in the road yeah so if you were making a plan
1:28:50 for me from this day onwards on how to implement meditation in my life yeah um what would that plan
1:28:56 look like first of all chuck all those things away okay all this stuff on the desk paraphernalia okay so
1:29:01 on the desk i have like a sound healing bowl some incense and rings and little i don’t even know what
1:29:06 these are yeah so we’re going to chuck all the paraphernalia away in the bin okay we’re going
1:29:15 to bin all of it okay let me you know you don’t need any equipment there’s a lot of spiritual tat isn’t
1:29:26 there i mean you said it you know it’s about you and your mind it’s not about having little symbols and
1:29:33 incense and you don’t need it and okay what is the plan the plan is to start with 10 minutes a day okay
1:29:41 10 minutes a day when ideally morning okay simply because you’re starting your day right and your
1:29:46 cortisol level is highest in the morning when you wake up there’s a spike of cortisol bring it down with
1:29:52 meditation so i get up i check my emails check my whatsapp then meditate i’m joking if you want
1:29:55 no no tell me the optimal way you’re going to be my get up straight away and meditate
1:30:01 okay get up straight yeah because you’re starting your day right and 10 minutes is enough to start
1:30:07 with and the beauty of this is that you know they can show in brain scans that 10 minutes a day after
1:30:12 four days there’ll be visible changes in your brain so knowing that keeps you going because you think okay
1:30:17 this literally is like weight training i’m going to get muscle and what do i do so i sit down somewhere
1:30:25 you sit down and you’re going to focus on your breathing but what i find really crucial is that you are not
1:30:33 just launching yourself into it you are introducing a bit of compassion into the process and this is what
1:30:38 elevates the meditation from being just a kind of brain gym into being something that takes you to a much
1:30:44 more kind of like spiritual realm of it and and it connects in with what we were talking about earlier
1:30:51 about learning to be more compassionate to yourself and others so you start with that intention so you
1:30:56 start by just settling and sitting you know some people sit cross-legged on the floor but it’s also
1:31:01 okay on a chair but on the chair there should be some sense of posture so you’re sitting up straight
1:31:09 and you would start with setting the intention and i don’t mean an intention such as oh today i want
1:31:15 this i want that it’s the bigger intention why am i meditating i am meditating for not only myself but
1:31:22 for all living beings i’m doing this for me and the world and i’m not i’m not not trying to fool myself by
1:31:30 thinking if i do my meditation somehow wars will end or whatever no it’s more that if i do this this will
1:31:35 help me become more effective in the world and spread more love and compassion so that’s the reason so
1:31:41 you’re setting that intention with your thinking for a few moments and then you’re going to start to be aware
1:31:51 of yourself so okay so let’s just try this so take a moment to set the intention of compassion
1:31:59 making the intention that you’re doing the practice for yourself and others
1:32:12 and now just become aware of your hands maybe your hands are resting on your knees or your legs
1:32:18 and feel that there’s a lot of nerve endings in the fingers so it’s easy to start here
1:32:22 where you just feel the contact between your skin and your clothing
1:32:27 you’re aware of your hands resting on your legs
1:32:37 bring the focus up to your shoulders
1:32:43 most of us have tense shoulders because we’re on our phone or
1:32:49 behind a desk so as you’re aware of your shoulders the tension can just drop away
1:33:08 bring your focus to the front of your body
1:33:09 start to notice your breathing
1:33:19 the trick here is not to try to breathe or go into deep breathing but just let your breath
1:33:26 be natural
1:33:33 and focus on the rising and falling of your chest or your belly with each breath
1:33:39 and when you realize your mind has wandered gently come back to the breath
1:33:49 now you can make the focus more precise by feeling the air in your nose or your mouth if you can breathe
1:33:56 through your nose then do that otherwise the mouth and you’re sensing the air as it comes in and
1:33:57 out of your nostrils or your lips
1:34:03 you can feel the air brushing against the skin at the edge of your nose or your mouth
1:34:13 and then you’ll realize your mind has gone somewhere and you gently bring it back
1:34:22 okay and to end the session we’ll just do a short one for now take another moment to think about compassion
1:34:29 you’re dedicating your practice to
1:34:34 freedom compassion and happiness for yourself and all beings
1:34:37 and stop there
1:34:42 i mean that was short but it gives you an idea of the process
1:34:44 and one major warning
1:34:51 is you trip yourself up if you try and think well did it go well
1:34:56 partly because of the culture we’re in and how everything’s about sensation
1:35:00 i think we only think something’s working if it makes us feel something
1:35:07 and meditation is very different you know what when i start when i first started meditating
1:35:11 i described how i really hated it and found it you know really stressful one thing i remember that
1:35:14 happened to me was i started to do quite a lot of it because i thought okay i’m going to get into
1:35:20 this thing and do it and become like a pro and i was doing loads of it and finding it was making
1:35:25 me feel more unhappy and i was feeling this kind of sense of like sinking feeling in my chest and i
1:35:30 thought you know i’d struggled with depression anywhere i thought it’s making me more depressed
1:35:35 and i went to rinpoche my teacher and i said i’m doing loads of it it’s making me depressed he
1:35:42 says nothing to do with the meditation it’s it’s how you are he said you’re a junkie
1:35:49 you’re using your meditation like a drug i said what do you mean he said well i think you’re sitting
1:35:55 there waiting for it to kind of like come on you’re waiting for it to give you a high and it’s so true
1:36:00 because i realized i’d been sitting there like getting addicted to it and thinking okay i’m
1:36:06 going to do my meditation right i’ve done five minutes where’s where’s the bliss when am i going
1:36:12 to feel good and what he was trying to tell me is that if i’m trying to make myself feel good
1:36:14 i’m already coming from a place of lack
1:36:21 you know what i mean i’m already saying to myself i don’t feel good so i’m actually promoting
1:36:27 a sense of lack so how do we perceive the meditation then if it’s not at some just give
1:36:33 up judgment just do it just do it just do it and it’s not going well going badly i like it i don’t
1:36:44 like you just do it and try to let go of quality control i really need to start doing it my partner
1:36:48 she’s so great she does every morning for like 20 20 30 minutes so why didn’t you sit next to her
1:36:53 she said this to me what stops you and what stops me hmm
1:37:01 i mean it’s there on tap she’s doing it every morning what’s stopping you sitting next to her
1:37:04 i think
1:37:16 i think one of the things that comes to mind is how uncomfortable i feel in silence and
1:37:24 the idea of like silence and being because she’s there would you be okay better on your own then
1:37:28 no it’s just like silence with my own thoughts i spend a lot of time trying to kind of
1:37:38 not i spend a lot of time trying to distract myself don’t we all that’s welcome to the
1:37:43 modern world i’m pretty extreme are you yeah i’m pretty extreme so like if i go into the shower
1:37:46 yeah i have to have something playing something talking a podcast it could be the news it could
1:37:52 be youtube if i’m no matter where i am i always even when i go to sleep i have to be listening to
1:37:58 something so my i’ve like almost wired my brain in the opposite way where there’s always something
1:38:01 yeah i went through a phase where i couldn’t eat unless i was also watching something i mean yeah
1:38:06 i mean i do that i can’t multitask unless there’s something playing but that’s why meditation is perfect
1:38:12 because this is giving you a way to find a different way to experience yourself
1:38:24 yeah i mean you know you i’m sure you exercise yeah so you go to the gym yeah and you that’s
1:38:29 challenging yeah and you you’re you’re pushing your muscles and there’s a kind of like there’s an effort
1:38:35 required do you know what it is same thing same thing with the gym i know that if i go my muscles are
1:38:39 gonna grow i’m gonna be stronger i’m gonna be healthier happier all those things and because
1:38:43 i’ve never done meditation i don’t actually have evidence of the upside just have a brain scan after
1:38:49 four days and you’ll see that’s why i asked you the question about you before and you after yeah what
1:38:55 is the difference and if whoever’s listening to this right now can you give them a before and after
1:39:00 picture of how their life will be practically different if they implement just 10 minutes a day meditating
1:39:06 okay so so i find it really inspiring to know that there there are visible changes in the brain scan
1:39:11 after four days you don’t necessarily feel those changes but knowing that gives you faith and
1:39:17 confidence just like you know if you eat healthy food your your you know your body will improve your
1:39:23 health improves so knowing that is a good thing in terms of seeing the results everybody’s different
1:39:28 there’s no you can’t draw a graph you can’t say if you do x amount of days you will reach this level of
1:39:35 calm or focus but what happens is as you start to meditate after a few days or weeks you just start to
1:39:43 feel you can handle stuff better so for me um the the practice my main practice is is very much connected
1:39:50 what i was talking about before with uh trying to sit with discomfort and stop pushing it away and
1:39:56 that’s a total revolution in my life i was always on the run always i think we failed to realize that
1:40:07 actually our entire human experience is just in our minds that does that make sense what i’m trying to
1:40:12 say there because i’m there asking you about like what’s the upside of this whatever but it’s it’s
1:40:17 falling into the trap of not realizing that everything i i will experience today is actually formed in my
1:40:23 own mind that’s the whole reason for meditation is to know that everything is dependent on your mind
1:40:29 the good and the bad everything so instead of being so obsessed with the details of what’s going on
1:40:36 go to the source yeah go to the source the the projector rather than the movie
1:40:44 go to the source and and change that and transform that and work on that so how has your projector
1:40:51 changed in the last 30 years i’m definitely a happier person i’m i’m definitely um more at peace with
1:41:01 myself that that negative voice doesn’t come up you know that that self-hatred has really kind of like
1:41:11 what’s the word kind of like uh yeah gone away and um i’m happier and i’ve got i i feel so so lucky to
1:41:20 have tools that i know i can use when i’m suffering you know for the last few years i’ve i’ve suffered with quite a lot of ill health because i had
1:41:26 really really really severe covid right at the start of the pandemic and it did something to my heart and
1:41:31 my lungs and since then i’ve had you could call it long covid you could call it heart lung damage
1:41:38 whatever so i i live with kind of levels of illness that are hard to deal with but this practice is
1:41:44 something i can do i can i can sit there with an ill body and send love into that body and feel kind of
1:41:51 okay so it’s made me stronger and i can i can function better than before but you know the other
1:41:56 thing is i don’t really care i don’t really care whether it’s working or not because i i trust it
1:42:02 and i’m just going to keep going and i’m in for the long game i’m just going to keep going you signed a
1:42:09 lifelong vow i did i’m i’m i’m i have i have taken vows to to be a monk for my life why when i put the
1:42:18 robes on i felt every i felt every cell in my body click i mean it sounds a bit weird but it just felt
1:42:25 like that i felt all my cells fall into place i just felt really this is this is this is really right for
1:42:34 me i think it’s what i’ve been looking for all along when i it is is a way of working with my mind i’m not
1:42:38 really interested in religion i’m not really interested in faith but i’m really interested in
1:42:43 the mind and being a monk has given me this opportunity to work on my mind but also an
1:42:51 opportunity to to be of some use in the world like some help to others so okay let me challenge this a
1:42:56 little bit in terms of how i imagine someone listening might might respond they go okay so you
1:43:02 went through this process you worked on your mind now you’ve worked on your mind no no working it’s not
1:43:07 over okay it’s a total work in progress and this is the miss this is part of the misconception is
1:43:11 someone will listen and say well you’ve worked on your mind now so go live now no it’s an ongoing
1:43:16 process i’m still a mess i’m still a mess but i’m okay with being a mess that is a huge difference
1:43:23 is that i i still get stressed i still get upset but i’m really gentle with myself in a way that i never
1:43:28 knew how to be i was always you’re so disgusting what’s wrong with you you should be ashamed of yourself
1:43:34 that’s gone now i’m okay with with myself and that that’s such that that is happiness that really
1:43:39 has made me happier so it’s for me it’s not about oh you’ve done it and now it’s so it’s ongoing
1:43:44 what is the most important thing we didn’t talk about that we should have talked about as it relates to
1:43:48 the suffering that my viewers are probably experiencing in their own life
1:43:56 you know what’s missing always is we can talk about this stuff but are we going to do it and
1:44:01 what’s really missing for so many people is they will listen to this episode or they will read a book
1:44:08 about meditation or see a video and it all sounds great but then we get busy and forget to do it what’s
1:44:15 what’s missing for everybody is the doing it how how do we jump from being interested in something to
1:44:20 actually doing it i mean there’s there’s a joke which is the definition of a buddhist is somebody
1:44:25 who’s either meditating or feeling bad that they’re not meditating and that is it isn’t it it’s a bit
1:44:33 like exercise we know we should be doing it so for me the the missing link is people try and force
1:44:38 themselves to meditate because they know it’s good for them and then it’s it’s a hopeless process they
1:44:45 won’t do it because it becomes another should on the to-do list i think the only way to become really
1:44:53 enthusiastic about doing it every day is to really think about it and realize that it will give you what
1:45:00 you were looking for anyway from the coffee the drugs the alcohol the sex the whatever it is you’re into
1:45:09 whatever we’re looking for out there meditation it it was happiness it was freedom it was release
1:45:15 the only place you can find that is in your mind because going down those roads is just taking you
1:45:21 further into needing more so so i think the the the thinking process that helps people meditate every
1:45:28 day is to think about how it will give you what you were looking for anyway and then you want to do it
1:45:34 then you then you feel like oh okay the the we have no sense of exhaustion when it comes to chasing our
1:45:43 addictions do we so imagine if we could meditate with that kind of energy i often i often think i
1:45:48 often think maybe i need to go do some kind of um meditation retreat as well just to get me sort of
1:45:55 started and just uh have someone there with me who can help me think through some of these things that
1:45:59 that can be a good thing just as just to get started it doesn’t have to be four years
1:46:05 yeah like a weekend three days five days two days that can be a good thing and that’s why buddhist
1:46:11 centers are good places because they offer that and there’s never a kind of you’ve got to sign along
1:46:17 the dotted line and say i’m now a buddhist we’re so not interested in converting people to buddhism
1:46:22 is yeah go to a retreat is buddhism growing yeah i imagine it is you know why it’s growing it’s because it
1:46:28 doesn’t try to attract followers and because of that it grows interesting and also because of
1:46:33 everything else that’s just going on in the world at the moment um with you know people feeling more
1:46:39 isolated lonely purposeless depression suicidality all these things we’re seeing a lot especially in young
1:46:45 men as well the stats around young men and their suicidal ideation and their feelings of purposelessness
1:46:52 and their loneliness stats are worse than women’s as well but i think yes the way the world is with all
1:46:59 of these challenges and negative things at the same time what’s hugely growing in modern culture
1:47:05 is people getting more interested in their own minds there are more and more people going for psychotherapy
1:47:10 counseling meditation any kind of discipline that helps us to understand our minds better that interest
1:47:17 is growing so we’re in a really exciting phase in history where people are wanting to transform their
1:47:23 minds wanting to take control of consciousness it’s because we’ve had something fail us maybe we’re
1:47:29 waking up to realizing that the system hasn’t worked for us we’ve created a kind of gilded cage for
1:47:36 ourselves this this beautiful material world that is also running out of resources so it’s not going
1:47:42 to be able to serve us much longer if we carry on abusing the planet so we have created our own prison
1:47:51 and now we’re looking for the way out turns out it wasn’t the individualism and the materialism um
1:48:01 after all maybe it was always there inside us that’s what buddhism would say that we we are we are buddha
1:48:09 within we all have a sleeping buddha within us and we we have potential we have great capacity for awakening
1:48:16 great capacity to help others it’s just like a crystal covered in layers and layers and layers of mud
1:48:21 and we need to clear the mud away we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest
1:48:27 leaves a question for the next guest not knowing who they’ve left it for and the question that has
1:48:33 been left for you what are the ways that you express your love and appreciation for people who matter to
1:48:44 you in your personal or professional life i don’t do this very well all the time but i try to be be there
1:48:50 for them when they’re going through a hard time right because i used to find it really scary and i’d run
1:48:57 away and i’d close down i try to in the same way as i try to move towards my own discomfort i try to be
1:49:03 there with other people when they’re uncomfortable and not judge i try that i’m i’ve i’m sure i fail a lot
1:49:10 but i try a friend of mine described that as sitting in the mud with them yeah yeah we often try and fix
1:49:16 and correct and yeah i i have a i see myself trying to do that give advice whatever it’s not about that
1:49:23 it’s about being with the person being being being with them without judging them thank you so much
1:49:27 what you do and you’ve got these incredible books which i’m going to recommend everybody check out
1:49:33 both sunday times bestsellers i believe and a monk’s guide to happiness meditation in the 21st century
1:49:39 and this book is called handbook for hard times a monk’s guide to fearless living i think that your
1:49:44 message is more important now than it’s ever been because there’s i mean much of the reason why i’ve
1:49:48 probably stumbled across buddhism is for the same reasons that many people are which is
1:49:52 it feels intuitively like that the answers we’ve been given in the way of life that we’re all
1:49:58 living is failing us in some way and we know that we can feel it inside ourselves but the answers that
1:50:05 we see to as antidotes to that feeling aren’t much better all the time and they’re again often they’re
1:50:11 about self or it’s about you know join this group of people that are doing this sort of thing over here or
1:50:17 there’s this religious you know group that you can join but actually buddhism offers us an alternative
1:50:24 approach which is to go inside ourselves and to alleviate ourselves from the suffering that we’ve
1:50:30 self-imposed by understanding that maybe the answers we’re looking for inside the whole time
1:50:35 and i’m so glad that people like you do podcasts like this because that you’re getting the message
1:50:40 out there into the world and it’s a message that i think is so unbelievably important and i think maybe
1:50:46 maybe just maybe maybe you’ve persuaded me today to just give it a shot yeah and that’s the hard thing
1:50:51 because it’s good it’s good enough and it’s all well enough knowing about something but then what will
1:50:59 i do tomorrow morning when you sit there tomorrow morning yeah and your mind starts racing whatever
1:51:05 you do don’t feel like you failed just remind yourself that the thoughts actually make your
1:51:12 meditation stronger because if coming back to the breath is what you’re trying to do you have to have
1:51:17 somewhere to come back from yeah the thought that took you away is exactly what brings you back
1:51:24 so bring it on the more thoughts the better okay thank you i’m so appreciative of you and thank
1:51:27 you for spreading the words that you’re you’re spreading because as i said you’re going to be
1:51:31 saving and uh saving a lot of people from a lot of pain and suffering but also um giving them a
1:51:37 an alternative approach to sitting with it with compassion so thank you thank you it’s
1:51:51 really lovely to spend time with you