TED Talks Daily - How to tap into your awareness -- and why meditation is easier than you think | Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

Episode Date: September 2, 2026

Meditation asks you to slip into a state of serene presence. But why does something that sounds effortless often feel so difficult? In this lighthearted invitation, spiritual leader Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche shares three steps to help you accept the ebb and flow of your emotions and learn to meditate anytime, anywhere.(This episode originally aired in 2022.) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. Meditation sounds like it should be the easiest thing in the world. Just sit still, breathe, and be present. So why does something that sounds so effortless often feel so hard? Spiritual leader Yonghe Minger Rinpoche says it's because most of us misunderstand what meditation actually is. It was never about emptying your brain. mind or forcing yourself to feel calm.

We don't need to stop thinking. We just need to connect with awareness. In this talk from 2022, Yong'i shares three simple steps to accept the natural ebb and flow of your emotions. He came to meditation not as a naturally calm master, but as a kid who struggled with panic. Growing up in the Himalayas, his panic attacks followed him like a shadow. When he was nine, he asked his father, a meditation teacher, for help.

and what his father told him changed how he understood his own mind. Awareness is like sky in the mountain, and the panic is like storm in the mountain, like cloud. And no matter how storm is, it doesn't change the nature of sky. He reveals the surprising place all of this eventually led him. Once he stopped fighting the very thing he most wanted to get rid of, that's coming up right after a short point. break. And now our TED Talk of the Day. So I would like to discuss about meditation, what we call the essence of meditation is awareness.

And what is awareness knows what you're thinking, feeling, doing, seeing, hearing. That's all. So actually, meditation is very easy. But many people found difficult. Why? There are two misunderstanding about meditation. So the first is, many people think, meditation means think of nothing. Stop thinking, concentration, I'm meditating, keep quiet. So the more when you try to stop thinking,

what happens, you will think more. So we will do small experiment, okay? Now, please don't think about pizza. No pizza? No pizza? What happened? Did you think about pizza or no? Yes, raise your hand.

I know. So, actually, we don't need to stop thinking. We just need to connect with awareness. And another misunderstanding about meditation is what we call blezing out. Looking for peace, calm, joy, relax. The more you feel relax. then peace comes joy, relics, and run away. So, let me share you my own experience.

When I was young, I had panic attacks. Although I was born in the right middle of the Himalayan mountain, the area, the village, wonderful, but panic followed me as like shadow. And I have so much fear for strangers. I cannot go out and meet people. And a lot of storms in the Himalayan mountain, thunderstorm, snowstorm, snow, These storms died me crazy.

And when I was nine years old, I asked my father to teach me meditation. Luckily, he was a great meditation teacher. And the first thing, what he said is, don't try to fight with panic. Don't try to get rid of panic. And actually, he said, you don't have to. Why?

Awareness is like sky in the mountain, and the panic is like storm in the mountain, like cloud. And no matter how strong, storm is, it doesn't change the nature of sky. So sky is always present, pure, calm. Similarly, our fundamental quality of mind, awareness is always present, pure calm.

But the problem is we don't know how to connect with awareness. What we see, only thought, emotion, that's all. So he said there are three steps of practice to connect with awareness. The first one, we have to use an object, support, to connect with awareness. So this is one of my first meditation technique what I learned from my father. So you can join and you can relax your muscles in your body. If you cannot relax, also okay, aloud. And close your eyes and please listen to sound.

And when you hear the sound through ear and mind together, that is the meditation. And let panic come and go. Let pizza come and go. And maybe two pizza, three pizza, ten pizzas. As long as if you remember the sound, you can have pizza.

Okay, how was it? Did you hear the sound? Great. That is the meditation. Very easy. Just here, that's all. You don't have to do anything. So if panic comes, let panic come and go, don't care, just listen to sound. Monkey mind comes blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Let it come and go, just listen to sound. So I did that. But I have a big problem. The problem is lazy.

I'm lazy boy. I love the idea of meditation, but I don't like the practice of meditation. So on and off like that for five years, when I was 13 years old, In India, there's traditional three-year retreat going to start. I thought I should join this because good for my laziness. And I joined. The first month, wonderful, no lazy. Second month, lazy come back. Now what happened?

My lazy and my panic, they two become good friend. The life in the retreat become disaster. And I thought I should leap, but I feel embarrassed to live because I told all my childhood friends that I can do the retreat, you know. I don't want to lose my face. But if I stay, almost three years to go, then I thought, what should I do?

In the end, I decided to learn how to live with panic. So now we have this second step, what we call? Actually, we can meditate everywhere, anytime, with anything. So you can meditate with a panic. How to do that? just like listen to sound, when you listen to sound, sound becomes support for your meditation. Now you can watch panic. If you see the panic, great.

What we call? When you see the river, you're out of the river. When you see the mountain, you're out of mountain. So now awareness become more than panic, more than depression, stress, monkey mind, whatever. Let them come, let them go. So that is the first benefit. And second benefit, what we call, there's a wisdom comes. So when you look at the panic, panic is not solid stone anymore.

Panic becomes pieces. Frightened image, voice, background belief. And if you take one of these away, you cannot find panic. So what I call panic become like shaving foam. Look like a piece of rock, but inside full bubbles. Then three, what I call, this is acceptance, like self-kind, self-love, self-compassion. You let panic come and go, that's really accepting, isn't it? So, three in one, awareness, love and compassion, wisdom.

Sometimes what I call, buy one, get two free. Big deal, right? And all this because of panic. So now panic, become your teeth. your best friend. So I did this practice, and in the end, me and my panic become very good friend, and a few weeks later, panic is gone. I missed my friend.

And I finished my retreat went very well, and after that I have very eager to share this wonderful technique to the world. So I taught meditation many places, wrote few books, become bestseller, and then students, and become abbot of your monasteries. You know what happened? Kind of new ego emerged with me. I thought, oh, I have to watch out this. Then I decided to do something very special,

what we call wandering retreat, meaning you left everything behind, go on the street with nothing. So I decided to do that in 2011. I left my monastery, my student, my wonderful cozy bed, everything, and go on the street with only few thousand Indian

And that finished within a few weeks. That I have to bake food. And I got food poisoning, diarrhea. I'm alone on the street. Now I'm going to die. Then I thought, what should I do? So now we have the third step, what we call open awareness meditation. Awareness be with itself. Sky be with itself. Now no need to have support. Just be awareness. It's just be awareness. It's So I did that practice. Then what happened? My body become decaying. I cannot see, I cannot hear,

but my mind becomes so present, beyond free. And I was in that state for a few hours. Luckily, I didn't die. I come back. So when I come back, the street become like my home. When I look at the tree, tree becomes like tree of love.

And wind blows to my face become joyful experience. And the rest of my retreat went very well. I learned a lot of my retreat. So I like to share this open awareness meditation, but it is very difficult to explain. But I want to do something drama. And this is what I learned from my father.

So what we call this malay is the crazy monkey mind, blah, blah, blah, yara. And the open awareness meditation means you don't have to do anything. just be, that's all. And you don't need to meditate their sense of presence, being, but not lost. Be free,

be present. Thank you very much. That was Yonghe Minger Rinpoche at TED 2022. This talk was originally published in December of that year. If you're curious about Ted's curation, visit TED.com slash curation guidelines.

And that's it for today. TED Talks Daily is a podcast from TED. This episode was fact-checked by the TED research team and produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Lucy Little, Emma Tobner, and Tonzica, Sungmar Nivong. Additional support from Daniela Ballereseo, Christopher Faisi Bogan, Valentina Bohanini, Ban Ban-Chang, Brian Green, and Lainey-Lott. Learn more at podcasts.com. I am Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feet.

Thanks for listening.