CHAPTER ONE
What Is Happiness?
In June 2009 I emerged from a meditation retreat that had lasted four years. It was an intensive program alongside twenty other monks, in a remote old farmhouse on the Isle of Arran in Scotland. We were completely cut off from the outside world, with no phones, internet, or newspapers. Food was brought in by a caretaker who lived outside the walls of the retreat and we had a strict schedule of between twelve and fourteen hours’ meditation per day, mostly practiced alone in our rooms. This program went on in the same way every day for four years. We were allowed to talk a little to each other at mealtimes or in the short breaks between sessions, but things intensified in the second year, when we took a vow of silence for five months.
I had never attempted such a long retreat before, and it was incredibly hard. I remember thinking it was like having open-heart surgery with no anesthetic: you’re backed into the corner with your most painful thoughts and feelings, with no distraction or escape. This type of retreat is a radical method of meditation training, found in many Tibetan Buddhist monasteries. The completely immersive environment and intense schedule of long meditation sessions push the meditator to make friends with their own mind. At times, it was the unhappiest period of my life, yet in the end it taught me a lot about happiness. I learned that happiness is a choice, and something that we can tap into within ourselves.
The other monks and I had no idea what was happening in the outside world. Several things occurred during this period that have impacted upon our culture, including game-changing technologies such as the launch and widespread use of the iPhone, the arrival of YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook, as well as major historical events such as the election of President Obama, the financial crisis, and the execution of Saddam Hussein. Our retreat teacher would come in to check on us every few months, and did hint at some pieces of news: we were told there was this “thing called Facebook where people ask you to be friends with them, and you feel too guilty to say no”; hearing this, we simply stared in wide-eyed wonder.
When I came out, back into the “normal” world, one of the main things I noticed was the speed of things; everything and everyone moved so fast. Smartphones had become ubiquitous; the BlackBerry was now a dinosaur. Walking through London, I felt as if I had landed in a “zombie apocalypse.” It seemed people were wandering about in a hypnotic trance, their faces buried in screens. I also noticed that in the London underground train stations, the advertising posters lining the walls beside the escalators were now moving digital images, and I felt dizzy as they flew past me. People “out here” had maybe not felt the temperature rising, but my retreat and reemergence gave me a fresh perspective on how things had sped up. I also sensed a change in mood: most of the news now had a slightly hysterical tone, dominated by horror stories constantly invading people’s phones, leaving them with no escape. In the twenty-first century our relationship with information has completely changed; we know far too much. Even the way we consume information—in fleeting, bite-sized chunks through “scrolling” and “swiping”—has altered the landscape of how we process reality.
Emerging from the retreat, I was also struck by how people’s use of instant gratification as a means of feeling “happy” had reached new heights and how dissatisfied they were still feeling. As I started to interact with things, I got a strong sense that meditation was exactly what the world needed now, and not as a luxury but as a matter of survival. I became passionate about the pressing question of true, lasting happiness and what that really meant. So with a deeper sense of commitment, I immersed myself in teaching meditation in diverse environments, such as schools, universities, hospitals, drug-rehabilitation centers, and prisons, as well as in global technology companies and numerous highly stressed workplaces.
THE HAPPINESS “HIT”
I’ve found that many people seek a kind of happiness which is a fleeting sensation: a “high”—an injection-like bolt of energy to the heart. Yet this never seems to last, and when they no longer experience that high, they crave it again.
We live in times where there’s a lot of emphasis on feeling good. We look for some kind of “hit,” like a sugar rush, and so we lurch from one “buzz” to the next, concerned with having our senses stimulated and satisfied, sometimes all of them at once.
Much of the food and drink we consume creates an instant, false boost: sugar, additives, coffee, “comfort carbs.” We feel tired in the middle of the afternoon and so we grab a bar of chocolate and/or some caffeine to make ourselves feel better. There’s an advert for a particular brand of chips with the tagline, “Once you pop, you can’t stop”—and sure enough, the ingredients in the product can make us eat our way through an entire pack in one go. Do we ever find long-term satisfaction?
Watching films and television programs made today compared with those from the past, one of the main differences you see is that the modern style of filming tends to use exciting, fast-moving imagery which stimulates the senses. Films, television programs, commercials, and music videos can have hundreds of different frames squeezed into two minutes, and much of this is because we’re highly distracted and addicted to having our senses ramped up. An old black-and-white movie, where the camera lingers for a long time on one shot, seems boring; we now call that “art house,” it’s not the mainstream. We are drawn nowadays to a jumpy and excitable experience, which reflects how we live.
Social media has enabled a huge sense of connection but at the same time deep isolation. Lost in our screens, we scroll through images of other people eating their lunch while we eat ours, and we find it more and more boring just to sit still and be in the moment. It’s hard for us to have simple experiences anymore; instead we crave the multiple inputs of eating while watching television or looking at social media and listening to music. We quickly find things dull, and so we constantly grab at the next experience, yet we never seem to fully arrive at it. We’ve become addicted to “likes,” to the latest shiny material object or to anything that we think might bring us a pleasant feeling. We feel tired, our systems running on the stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline. Our bodies become overloaded with toxic chemistry, which we keep feeding, making us exhausted, unwell, and wanting more. Craving leads to more craving as we perpetuate an endless habit, whereby nothing is actually satisfying because the mind has already jumped over it in pursuit of the next thing. It’s like an endless hunger, where we are constantly asking, “When is it all going to happen for me? When am I going to feel fulfilled? What’s the next thing?” Is this happiness?
The main brain chemical involved in that kind of happiness “hit” is dopamine, and interestingly this hormone surges before we get what we want and then it drops away. When we are about to have the bite of cake, or when we’re getting ready for the party, we are caught up in the excitement of the chase, and when we actually eat the cake the dopamine drops away; and so our lives are about anticipation. Animals get a big dopamine hit when they think they are about to get fed; “about to happen” is always the exciting part. “When I am rich”; “When I meet the right person”; “When I achieve the body I want.” We never actually get there, as the anticipation leads to a habit of looking for the next thing, which means we never feel we truly arrive. There is always an “if,” “when,” or “because” to our happiness.
TRUE, ENDURING HAPPINESS
A myth we have believed throughout our lives is that we have to “get” happiness, and if we can just get the external details of our lives right, we will be happy. This is not happiness, it is a form of enslavement.
We seem to assume that happiness, and suffering too, come to us from “outside.” Surely, however, it is our thoughts and reactions that are the real defining factors. Furthermore, if it’s the case that two or more people don’t always find that the same things make them happy or unhappy, then it means we are talking about a mental experience within us, not the things around us.
This book is about turning within and finding the source of happiness that lies inside us. Rather than being a random feeling we might be lucky enough to experience, I think happiness is a skill we can learn; I see it as a product of mental training, and I believe we are hardwired for it at a deep level. Through learning meditation and mindfulness, we can choose to be happy, no matter what. Without these tools, we may constantly find ourselves victims of what might or might not happen.
Of course, there are many people in this world going through extremely harsh times, where even the possibility of happiness seems incredibly remote. Perhaps all someone can do is try to survive, but once they have breathing space, meditation can provide them with powerful protection for when they are next in difficulty. This builds a mental resilience that can enable a person to get through even the most difficult situations.
HAPPINESS IS FREEDOM
What does happiness feel like? We are completely in the present, with no urge to hang on to the past or ruminate about the future; we are right here in the moment, feeling complete. There is a sense of freedom; when we are genuinely happy, we are free from desire and other conflicting emotions. We are free from wanting happiness. When we are searching for that happiness, there is a sense of hunger, of incompleteness; we are wrapped up in the expectation of getting what we want and the fear of not getting it; we feel trapped by uncertainty. We think we can only be happy when our goals are completed, which means that life is always about the future rather than the present moment.
Normally our minds don’t feel free. Thoughts and emotions create a storm inside us, and we easily become their slaves. Moment to moment we might find ourselves in an “argument” with reality, constantly wishing things were different. Happiness involves mastering our thoughts and emotions and embracing things just as they are; it means that we relax and stop trying to manipulate our circumstances. If we can learn how to rest deeply in the present moment, even when facing difficulties, and we train our minds not to judge, we can discover within us a tremendous source of happiness and satisfaction. We might start to notice how much we usually look for nourishment from “outer” things instead.
If we imagine someone in a perfect situation where they feel completely happy, and we examine what they are feeling, we can identify a state of mind where “complete” is the crucial term. That person has freedom. Those feelings of completeness, peace, no more striving, no fear, are mental states. As we’ve seen, we normally think “things” will make us happy, but if it’s an experience of the mind, why not simply “cut out the middleman” and go straight for the actual happiness?
MEDITATION AND HAPPINESS
I wrote this book because I am passionate about helping people realize they can choose happiness, and I wanted to show how this can be learned through the power of meditation. Meditation helps us to access what feels like a deep well within, filled with nourishing water that we can drink whenever we want.
Instead of feeling as if our lives are spinning out of control, with stress, loneliness, and dissatisfaction dominating our minds, we can become more connected within, more centered, even in busy situations. Our happiness and our problems both depend upon our state of mind, yet most of us go through life with very little insight into the mind and its true potential. If we are to make some sense of this world, we urgently need to understand our own minds. Meditation and mindfulness are powerful tools for a complete internal revolution.
MYTHS ABOUT MEDITATION
There are several misconceptions about meditation and mindfulness, which I hope this book will help to clarify.
“I would love to meditate but my mind is too busy.”
Many people think that meditation is about stilling or quieting the mind, and they feel their minds are too active and busy to even try. But the amount of thoughts we have makes no difference to our meditation; it’s not about clearing or blanking out the mind, or going into a trance—that will simply not work and has no real value. Meditation changes our relationship with our thoughts and emotions; it is not aimed at getting rid of them.
Some view meditation as a form of escapism, with very little to do with their busy lives. Or they simply see it as a way to reduce stress and to keep sadness at bay, like dieting or going to the gym to keep their weight under control. Some even feel that meditation is a totally selfish enterprise. These myths are perhaps based on lack of information or incorrect assumptions. Meditation is not a spa treatment: it is a way to connect with our essence and to become who we truly are. Mindfulness is how to bring that awareness into every situation. Our consciousness is the key to everything, and it now feels that the growth of interest in mindfulness in our culture reflects a new step in human evolution: life-forms evolve in response to their environment, and it seems our pressurized world is now pushing us to meditate for survival.
* * *
I too now have a smartphone and I travel for around three hundred days per year. I’m very much embedded in the fast pace of life, and if I didn’t meditate every day, I don’t know how I would manage. But more than that, meditation has helped me to understand something about happiness.
The aim of this book is to help you create happiness through bringing meditation into the heart of your daily life—not only to reduce stress and gain greater mastery over your thoughts and emotions, but also to discover your mind’s deep potential for unconditional compassion and freedom. Happiness is inside you, waiting.
CHAPTER TWO
Hardwired to Be Happy
According to Buddhist philosophy, we are programmed at a deep level for happiness; it is in our “hard drive.” The very reason we can be happy is because it is our true nature. This is why we feel things are in their rightful state when we’re happy; suffering feels like an intrusion into how things should be. Ultimately we are more than our problems and our pain, and perhaps the fact that you have picked up this book suggests that deep down you have a feeling you are able to tap into the happiness that lies within you.
FREEDOM WITHIN
As we saw in chapter one, genuine happiness is really a state of freedom. Being free is the one thing we humans care about most—we don’t want to be controlled by others, and we know that we deserve the freedom to do or be whatever we want; this is something we fight hard for, and as a society we have won some important battles. We live in a world of choices, where in many (unfortunately not all) areas of the world, we can dress, speak, and think however we want. It’s a “free society,” but are we ever truly free? We’d like to think we are “freethinking” individuals, but our minds are not really that free at all.
Where is the freedom when our minds go to places we don’t want, and don’t do what we want? We become enslaved by thoughts and feelings over which we seem to have very little control. We get lost in a mood, painful memories, or worries about the future; we would really rather let these things go, but we don’t know how to stop thinking about them. We find it hard to sustain focus as our minds constantly drift here and there, sometimes stuck in uncomfortable feelings. It often feels as if we are not really behind the wheel of the car, with our minds going all over the place.
However, it is important to note that we don’t experience any of these thoughts or emotions 100 percent of the time; there is an everchanging flow, in fact many thousands of changes per day. From the point of view of meditation, this is encouraging, as we can learn methods which help us consciously direct this flow. Our thoughts and emotions are really just habits, and so we can build new, positive ones and become less habituated to those that are negative.
Scientists have recently coined the term “neuroplasticity” to describe this phenomenon, which simply means the potential for mental change through training, such as meditation, leading to the creation of new neural pathways. We can imprint a multitude of new habits, unlearn negative ones, and achieve lasting benefits.
Personally, I’ve found that some of the most painful and destructive habits I used to suffer from have radically changed through meditation training. I used to experience extreme levels of self-hatred, for example, and this has pretty much gone away. I have also found it incredibly transformative to see that we can step back and observe what our minds are doing. I am learning how not to drown so much in that whirlpool of mental activity, and to find some space behind it all. If we can discover that our minds are bigger than our problems, we’ll see that deep down we all have the potential to be truly happy.
THE OBSERVER
I find it fascinating that we can observe our thoughts and emotions. As we go through our day, whenever we are angry, afraid, or sad, for example, we usually know that we are angry, afraid, or sad—we are experiencing how we feel. But if there is a part of the mind that knows we are angry, then surely that part is not angry—otherwise, how could it know the anger? And so there is an aspect of the mind that is always free.
When we are suffering (feeling emotional pain and facing difficulties), we usually completely identify with that painful state of mind; it becomes our entire reality. When we practice meditation, however, we can learn to identify with the part of the mind which observes that emotion; we can discover that the backdrop of all experiences is spacious and free. That awareness is far greater than the pain and suffering we so often find ourselves caught up in.
In ancient texts on meditation one often finds metaphors in which the mind is compared to the sky, and our thoughts and emotions to the clouds. The sky is limitless, vast, and without center or edges. Within the sky there are all kinds of clouds—heavy storm clouds, cotton wool–like clouds, thin, wispy cirrus clouds, and so on. These are all a natural part of the sky, but the sky is bigger. In a similar way, meditation teachings describe the pristine openness and spaciousness of the mind’s awareness, which is greater than the comings and goings of the thoughts and emotions.
Our major problem is that we don’t recognize that awareness. We are lost in our thoughts and emotions; we’re lost in the clouds. Meditation helps us to connect with awareness, and it is not about getting rid of the thoughts, but about gaining a broader perspective. The fact that there is this part of the mind which can observe, suggests that our essence is freedom. And as we now know: freedom is happiness.
I think many people see meditation as simply a way to reduce stress, but it is actually a method for connecting with our essence, which is complete freedom and happiness. One of the Tibetan words for meditation is “gom,” which literally means “to become familiar with,” and so we are making friends with our awareness, that ability to observe.
My meditation teacher often used to advise me to stop taking myself so seriously, and what he meant was to stop clinging to those clouds. They are not solid objects. Imagine you’re in an airplane; as you look out of the window, you see the clouds below you, looking like dense cotton wool, thick and solid. As the plane comes down to land, a child might think the plane will crash into those clouds, but of course we know that despite their appearance, they’re insubstantial. Similarly, as we experience our thoughts and emotions, we usually tense up in a kind of fear that we will crash into them, because we think of them as real, and so we react. Relating to our thoughts and emotions in this way is why we suffer.
We usually feel as if thoughts and emotions are coming into our heads. We often use the phrase “something popped into my head.” From where? Are we downloading thoughts and feelings from a virtual hard drive somewhere? Of course not. To explore how mental activity arises, we can consider another metaphor often used to portray the mind—where the mind is compared to the ocean. The ocean represents the mind, and the waves the thoughts and emotions. The ocean’s waves are an integral part of it, they come and they go. We could learn to leave things alone and rest in the awareness—the ocean—rather than being thrown around by the waves. This is what meditation practice is all about. When a wave rises in the ocean, does it separate off from the rest of the water and hang in midair? No, the wave is just the natural expression of the ocean, and in the same way our thoughts and feelings are simply part of the mind. If we could “be” the awareness, like “being” the ocean, life would feel very different. Otherwise, we fall prey to the tossing of the waves and find ourselves controlled by whatever’s happening in our minds.
OUR ESSENCE IS FREE
The heart is luminous, but it is obscured by veils which are not of its nature.
—Buddha
The essence of the mind is sometimes described in meditation texts as being like a crystal covered by layers of mud. No matter how thick the mud, the crystal is always there. The mud simply represents the stains of our negative thoughts and emotions. Through meditation, we can wash away the mud so that our crystal can shine.
If deep down, the mind is more than just its thoughts and emotions, this signifies freedom, which is complete happiness. As we gain familiarity with that, we might begin to discover that the mind is essentially good—underneath all of our problems we are okay. That is the meaning of Buddha. Buddha means basic innate goodness, the purity within us.
THE SCIENCE OF THE MIND
Our deep potential for happiness and freedom also exists at a physical level. It is no longer seen as a mystical belief, but is being discussed within neuroscience; it is now regarded as neurological fact. The work of late neuroscientist Candace Pert was particularly interesting in this field. Pert was the pioneer who discovered opioid receptors and endorphins (the body’s natural chemicals used to free us from pain), which led her to famously state: “We are hardwired for bliss.” Our natural state is to feel good—we are built for happiness.
I frequently collaborate with Yale neuroscientist Ash Ranpura, who describes how when things are going well, the brain simply ticks over in its default state, but if we are about to trip and fall, for example, it generates an “error signal” which kicks into gear. I find it interesting that our brains are programmed to notice what’s wrong, not what’s right. To me, this points to the fact that our natural state is positive; we only need to pay attention when we are in danger of moving away from that state. Simply put, when we are walking in a park on a glorious sunny day, and we have a toothache, we take the sunshine and beauty for granted, but tend to focus on the painful tooth. We are primed to notice what’s wrong, as it feels like an intrusion into our natural state.
As babies, when we are placed on our mother’s body and she feeds us, both mother and child are filled with the natural chemistry of happiness, love, and security, which is called oxytocin, and this puts us back into the calm state where we feel most natural. We cry when we are separated from that happiness. We all have a natural biology of contentment, which our bodies know how to generate; when we move away from that state, our bodies are programmed to reestablish it.
This may sound counterintuitive, but any time we feel a negative emotion, it can actually be seen as proof that our true potential for happiness is limitless. What I mean by this is that when a negative emotion arises, it’s because we are in some way feeling frustrated and are looking for something that will make us feel better. The reality, however, is that nothing will be good enough for us, as our desire is boundless. Instead, what we need to do is tap into the true happiness, which is only possible when we are in harmony with our real potential for freedom. Nothing in this world can ever match the “hardwired bliss” which is within us.
What stops us from experiencing that true happiness? It is our tendency to grasp at things, even at our thoughts and emotions. This propels us into suffering and stress. We are too focused on seeking happiness and a sense of feeling complete, by searching in the outside world. What we can learn through meditation is that this wholeness has been within us all the time: deep down we have always been completely free and happy.
Copyright © 2019 by Gelong Thubten.
