Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - BITESIZE | A Monk’s Guide To Happiness & How To Thrive in Hard Times | Gelong Thubten #459

Episode Date: June 6, 2024

What if the most courageous, compassionate thing you could do in life, was to learn how to be with yourself? Today’s clip is from episode 387 of the podcast with Buddhist monk, meditation teacher and author of ‘A Handbook for Hard Times: A Monk’s Guide to Fearless Living’ - Gelong Thubten. In this clip he explains that when we distract ourselves by scrolling, overeating, or drinking for example, we’re pushing away emotional pain or discomfort – even if we may not realise it. But the discomfort is really in the pushing. If we can learn instead to sit with what’s making us uncomfortable, those emotions start to transform. Thanks to our sponsor https://www.drinkag1.com/livemore Support the podcast and enjoy Ad-Free episodes. Try FREE for 7 days on Apple Podcasts https://apple.co/feelbetterlivemore. For other podcast platforms go to https://fblm.supercast.com. Show notes and the full podcast are available at drchatterjee.com/387 DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or qualified healthcare provider. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website.

Today's Bite Size episode is brought to you by AG1, a science-driven daily health drink with over 70 essential nutrients to support your overall health. It includes vitamin C and zinc, which helps support a healthy immune system, something that is really important at this time of year. It also contains prebiotics and digestive enzymes that help support your gut health. It's really tasty and has been in my own life for over five years. Until the end of January, AG1 are giving a limited time offer. Usually they offer my listeners a one-year supply of vitamin D and K2 and five free travel packs with their first order. But until the end of January, they are doubling the five free travel

packs to 10. And these packs are perfect for keeping in your backpack, office, or car. If you want to take advantage of this limited time offer, all you have to do is go to drinkag1.com forward slash live more. Welcome to Feel Better Live More Bite Size, your weekly dose of positivity and optimism to get you ready for the weekend. Today's clip is from episode 387 of the podcast with Jilong Thubten, Buddhist monk, meditation teacher, and author of A Handbook for Hard Times, A Monk's Guide to Fearless Living. In this clip, he explains that when we distract ourselves with low-grade addictions, we're pushing away emotional pain or discomfort. But if we can learn instead to sit with what's making us uncomfortable, those emotions will start to transform.

If I look across society, what I see are a lot of people with low-grade addictions. Things like alcohol, social media, pornography, online shopping and it seems to me that the root cause of a lot of these addictions is distraction. You make the case that distraction or the pushing away of our feelings of pain of discomfort is actually the cause of many of our problems. Do you agree that we are a society that seems to be addicted to distraction? And if you do, what's the underlying cause? I think we're definitely addicted to distraction. And of course, the way we use technology has really fed into that.

I went away into a four-year-long retreat in 2005. And when I came out of that retreat in 2009, everything had changed in the landscape of technology. So during those four years, the iPhone was launched and YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, all of those things happened. So when I came out of that retreat, all of those things happened. So when I came out of that retreat, I was quite startled by how things had sped up. And so just noticing how everybody's face is buried in the phone, and there's this sort of constant barrage, this invasive nature to information, advertising, social media, all of that. And so that's incredibly addictive. And so, yes, we are all drowning in addictions of various sorts, and they are all based on distraction. What is it we're trying to distract ourselves from

is I think we don't really know how to face up to our own feelings. So we use things to food, phones, anything to kind of get away from ourselves. Yeah. There's a quote in the introduction of your book, which I'd love to read to you, because I think it really speaks to this. In pushing away discomfort, we usually don't see how the discomfort lies in the pushing. It's our habit of chasing pleasure and running away from hardship that is the real problem. And as any habit simply proliferates, so we constantly chase more and push away more, reinforcing our sense of dissatisfaction. There's a certain irony there where we're trying to use these activities, acquire these things, engage in these behaviors to avoid feeling what we're

feeling. But you're sort of making the point that actually doing that makes the problem worse. So why is that? And also, just to play devil's advocate for a minute, what's wrong with people engaging in these behaviors? There's nothing wrong with anything per se, but is it making us suffer? That's the question. Is it creating more suffering? And I think it is because the more you run after something, the more it seems elusive. We never actually get what we want. And that's because when we're engaged in running after that thing, we're just building more of a habit to run after something. So even if we get what we want, we then find we want something else or a better version of it.

The wanting never seems to go away. And in a way, we're just feeding more wanting. So the mind wants more because it's creating a habit of wanting more. So the wanting becomes an endless hunger. And then on the other side of the coin, the not wanting becomes an endless process too because the more we push away discomfort, the more we build a habit of needing to push away discomfort. Now, if you've got that habit running in your mind, there's going to always be something uncomfortable to be pushed away.

Even if you lock yourself in an ivory tower with no stress around you and everything just right, because there's a habit of needing to push away discomfort, we'll find something uncomfortable. So we're sort of caught up in that chase, running after something, running away from something, and we never find any kind of peace there. Instead of looking at the things outside yourself as the cause of your suffering or the cause of your happiness. You look at your own mind and you start to work out what habits your mind is running, a little bit like computer programs. And you can write new programs. You change the programming.

And through doing that, your life changes because you're starting to work with the mind itself rather than the objects around you or the people around you. You're working at your reactions. rather than the objects around you or the people around you. You're working at your reactions. I guess one of the central tenets of what you're saying is that we have a lot more control or certainly choice over how we perceive things and how we see the world. And until we realize that, we're kind of locked in a pattern,

feeling that the world is happening to us. Is that what was happening to you in your early 20s when you were in New York? That was definitely my experience. So I was an actor, I was living in London, then New York, and I was very ambitious. But what was tripping me up all the time was, I had a lot of depression and anxiety, and I didn't know how to deal with that. So what I did was I got as busy as possible, both in terms of work, but also in terms of parties. I became a real party animal, but in a very sort of obsessive kind of vigorous way, as if I was trying to run away from something in me. vigorous way as if I was trying to run away from something in me. And the distractions became my only place of refuge, but the distractions were making me ill.

So I reached a point where I just burnt out very, very suddenly. I thought I was having a fantastic time. I was the life and soul of the party. I was the one always going out, doing stuff. But there was something underneath that that I wasn't comfortable with. And this was this deep level of stress and a sort of suppressed feeling of depression, anxiety. I found it would come out at certain moments and then I would have to push that back down again and go out and have a drink and just forget about it. So on the one level, I was having a great time.

On another level, I was very unhappy. And I think that's the toxic mixture that created the burnout. I think this is really important because on the face of it, it can seem like, well, why does it matter if I just run away a little from my emotions and I spend two hours scrolling social media in the evening, rather than dealing with my marriage or my feelings about myself or my depression or whatever an individual may be struggling with. But I think what happened to you in New York, having severe burnout where you couldn't get pretty much off your mom's bed for months. In many ways, that's the inevitable end stage.

If you don't deal with this stuff. You can't really put those emotions in a cage, can you? They will come out at some point. And I'm grateful for that. I feel grateful. I feel grateful that I couldn't get away with it for much longer. The running, the running away. My body stopped me. Unhappiness is the key to a doorway. It's only when you learn what to do with your unhappiness

that you can really break through and find stable happiness. Yeah, there's this lovely quote of yours. And again, in the introduction, our unhappiness is the most fertile grounds for the cultivation of inner strength, resilience and compassion. I think the goal is to change how we think about hard times and to start to see them as, as I said, fertile ground or something that can benefit us in some way in terms of growing our compassion, resilience, strength, etc. But what we really need is methods that we can apply in the moment. Because otherwise, the hard times become toxic and destructive. But I try to provide in the book, ways of thinking, but also ways of meditating in the hard times that can help you to

work with a sense of transformation in the moment. Otherwise, it's always that you find out later that you are grateful. You have a terrible time and later on you can think, okay, that was good for me, I look back with gratitude, which is good, but wouldn't it be even more powerful to know what to do in the middle of the storm? When you are in the storm, how to work with it. So obviously, when I had that burnout when i was 21 i didn't know about meditation i found out later but now when i go through hard times i have

tools that i can apply in the moment and the hard times are still hard times but there are ways of working with it as it's happening let's say someone is listening right now and they're in the middle of a really difficult time. What's one of the tools you'd recommend for them? So what I recommend is that we start to work with the sensations in our body rather than the thoughts. And if we're going through a difficult time, there is the information about that difficulty. I lost my job, I lost a relationship or whatever the thing is that is troubling us. Those are the thoughts, the storyline,

which is valid, of course. I'm not saying it's sort of pointless or anything. I'm just suggesting that we go beneath the story and work with the sensations in our body right now. So in your body, there is a discomfort, there's a feeling of tightness, a feeling of turbulence, and you can use that as meditation. The problem is that the mind then flies back into the story and gets lost in that he said this, she did that, why me, why this, why that. And you've got to kind of keep going beneath the story into the sensation and gets lost in that he said this she did that why me why this why that and you've got to kind of keep going beneath the story into the sensation and when you can work with those

physical sensations through meditation they start to transform so you start to create a kind of alchemy inside yourself where the the misery becomes a doorway into a deeper kind of peace a doorway into a deeper kind of peace. Because when you meditate on your suffering, not the information, but the feeling, the suffering has to change. Now, I'm on board with this. But what if someone is thinking, okay, I get that. I've just lost my job. I'm really stressed about it. And you're asking me to sit there and feel where is this emotion in my body? Sure. And let's say they do that and they find it's in their stomach and their stomach feels tight and maybe their gut's growling, whatever it might be. It doesn't change the fact, does it, that they've lost their job? it doesn't change the fact does it that they've lost their job what it changes is their feeling about the situation so the more they do this meditation the more they can accept the suffering

and be okay with the suffering and then they develop a kind of strength and from that place of strength they can start to find solutions yeah they can start to find ways out of the situation they're in or ways of changing their environment, but from a place of strength rather than a place of panic and misery. So I'm not suggesting a kind of passivity where you just kind of go away and sit and meditate and just let your life fall apart. I'm suggesting that you reframe the suffering as an opportunity and then doors open to things you can do. The deeper benefit is that you're learning how not to suffer. Because suffering comes through our mind getting locked into a suffering state.

Whatever is going on outside of us is secondary. What's primary is how our mind reacts to that. So stuff is going wrong in my life and I'm caught up in misery about it. I'm caught up in a sense of despair and my mind is locked into that despair. I don't know how to get out of it, so I'm suffering. So if I meditate every day, I'm learning how to get myself out of the thought and back to the present moment. I'm learning how not to let that thought or emotion swamp me or control me too much. So then I'm going to start to suffer less. It means that when I get locked

into the suffering, I can learn how to not be so glued into it. Yeah, I love that because it doesn't necessarily change the situation, but it changes how you view the situation. It changes how you relate to that situation. What are the main obstacles for people when they think about meditation? The biggest obstacle is that many people have an assumption about meditation that's absolutely not true, many people have an assumption about meditation that's absolutely not true, which is they seem to feel you're supposed to clear your mind. I hear this phrase a lot,

clear your mind. And it's quite a damaging phrase. Damaging because when the person sits down to meditate and they try to clear their mind, they can't. The more you try to shut the mind down, the louder it shouts. So then you feel really frustrated. Many people give up meditation because they sit there trying to silence their thoughts and the thoughts just get louder. So there's sort of a feeling of being at war with yourself. You've been meditating for what, 30 years? do you still get distracted during meditation yes yes and distraction is good because distraction is good because distraction is what makes you stronger at first you you you use something as a focus such as your breathing so your mind wanders you realize your mind has wandered it could be be a while before you realize, you know, five, 10 minutes even,

but then you gently come back to the breath. That is meditation, is noticing that you got distracted. And that's what builds strength. Every time you come back to the breath, you are gaining power over your thoughts. It's just like lifting weights. Every time you come back,

you are developing muscle. So if coming back to the breath is what makes you strong, you have to have somewhere to come back from. So the thought that took you away is good because it's the thing you come back from. So to understand this means that you no longer feel that you're at war with your own mind when you meditate and when somebody discovers this their whole relationship with meditation changes they no longer feel like a failure

for having a wandering mind I hear so many people say oh I tried meditation but my mind was too busy I was rubbish at it and I want to take those people and say no that's not what it's about. The busier, the better in a way. You've been on a very deep and long journey with meditation.

For someone who's not interested in being a monk, who's just struggling a little bit with their life and maybe has some of these low-grade addictions that we've been talking about, as some of these low-grade addictions that we've been talking about, how quickly can 10 minutes of meditation a day start to make a difference for them? What I found very exciting was to hear from neuroscientists that when they do MRI scans on people who meditate, they notice visible changes in the brain even after a few days of somebody doing 10 minutes of meditation a day. When I heard that, I thought that's incredibly valuable information, because it

gives us a lot of hope and encouragement. The more you meditate, the more you start to find an inner sense of happiness and strength. And these external things become secondary, And these external things become secondary rather than primary. So you start to free yourself and you start to tap into an inner happiness that you never knew was there. You always thought it was outside. So we got so obsessed with the externals. And then you discover something inside yourself that's a deep kind of peace and contentment. And the more you can tap into that, the more free you become, the more happy you become, and also the more you can give

to others. And you can't fail at meditation. Because meditation is where you just do nothing. I mean, you are literally sitting there doing nothing. And that's the beauty of it is that you're not doing something in order to become a better person. You're doing nothing. And you're undoing all the things you normally do to run away from yourself. And through doing nothing, you get closer to your essence. And you discover happiness. So you're literally relaxing into what you already are. So it's very hard to fail at that because you're just being you. Hope you enjoyed that bite-sized clip. Hope you have a wonderful weekend. And I'll be back next week with my long-form conversation on Wednesday

and the latest episode of Bite Science next Friday.