Buddhist Gelong Thubten on The Diary Of A CEO Podcast (Transcript)

Well, I think we’d all say that religion used to be very much the center of the table and it sort of gave everybody a sense of their place in the universe. And the question of Purpose was never such an issue because everything was in context according to one’s religious belief.

And of course, now we’re in a post religious culture and it’s much more about the individual. And there are good things about that, of course. But what happens then is we become very obsessed with our purpose. And the word purpose itself suggests, I want something, what do I want?

And in Buddhism, we look at that wanting mind and see how insatiable it is and how the more you want, the more you’re going to want. And so from a Buddhist perspective, we’re all looking for purpose, but maybe externally, because we get what we want and then want something else. And maybe what we’re actually looking for is something deeper within, but we don’t know how to access it.

STEVEN BARTLETT: So is it wrong then to be in search of purpose? Is it a misguided pursuit?

GELONG THUBTEN: No, I wouldn’t say that. But I would say what’s misguided for us is that we are obsessed with the idea that happiness comes from the outside and on the other side of the coin, suffering too. So I will be happy if I get this or get that or this situation or that situation, and I will be unhappy if this or that happens to me.

So we become at the sort of receiving end of life, what life is going to do to me next, how will I handle it? So there’s not much strength there. And I think the message of meditation is that you become your own purpose and you become the generator of your own experiences because you learn how to take hold of your own mind.

STEVEN BARTLETT: In this conversation, do you think you can teach me how to do that? Because I very much feel like in my life I’m on the receiving end of life.

GELONG THUBTEN: Well, I’d love to show you how, maybe help you to see that meditation is easier than you thought or more applicable to daily situations than you thought.

The Paradox of Material Comfort and Emotional Discomfort

STEVEN BARTLETT: When we think about the state of well being in the Western world, everybody knows these stats around suicidality. If we look at the US for example, they’ve slipped further in the unhappiness rankings than ever before. The US fell to 24th place in 2025 in global happiness rankings. In 2011, the US had been 11th place and now they’re 24th.

And the UK followed the same pattern. The UK dropped to 23rd in global happiness rankings, which is its lowest position in a long time. But then more sort of horrifically, the suicide numbers in the UK, the US are tremendously alarming. In the UK, suicide has reached its highest level in many, many decades. Something is going on here.

GELONG THUBTEN: Absolutely. So we have developed the most materially comfortable culture in history. We are materially more comfortable than ever and yet emotionally more uncomfortable. So something hasn’t added up. You know, we’ve created a comfortable, to a certain extent, outer world for ourself and we can achieve high levels of material comfort. And somehow the more of that we have, the more emotionally uncomfortable.

And I think this is all to do with the mechanisms of desire. So when we are in a culture that is constantly promising us the next piece of enjoyment, the next hit, the next buzz, the next thing, we’re caught in a sort of cycle of wanting more. I always describe the search for happiness, that the problem in that is the search itself, because searching is a habit that will lead to more searching.

So we’re always looking for the next thing. So we get what we want. Not always, but sometimes. And then very soon we want something else. So the more we’re wanting, the more we’re feeling we don’t have. So we end up possibly with a lot, but feeling quite empty inside.

And then we’re back to this question. What is my purpose? What’s it all for? I’ve reached the goal I wanted to reach. But I still feel empty. I still feel something is missing. We’re told something is missing all the time. Because to keep a consumer message going, you have to tell people they’re lacking in something. And the insistency with which that message is fed to us through our phones, basically, and through the media that we consume is going to affect us.

The Psychology of Pursuit and Dopamine

STEVEN BARTLETT: I think 90% of people listening right now would say that their meaning in life comes from the pursuit of something, the journey towards something. It might not come from the attainment of it being successful, being on the podium, but they would say that the meaning they experience, the joy, the thing that gets them out of bed, is in the pursuit of something, whether it’s building a business or, I don’t know, becoming an athlete or building a charity. Are they misguided in that thought?

GELONG THUBTEN: No, it’s just that we could look deeper into our own internal psychology and see how well the word pursuit is everything. So we’re always in pursuit of something. And the chemistry of our body in the state of pursuit is that chemical dopamine. The interesting thing about dopamine is it falls away just before you get what you want.

So the chase is much more exciting than the having or the getting. And so we’re locked into this constant chase. And what is the next thing? When will I get the next thing. And I think the reason why we feel so empty or disappointed is because what we get is never enough. And meditation comes into this conversation to show us that actually what we were looking for was already there inside. That’s the key point.

STEVEN BARTLETT: What were we looking for?

GELONG THUBTEN: We were looking for freedom. If you think about how it feels when you get what you want, you know, there’s the chasing, the wanting and then there’s the getting. There’s a kind of relief, isn’t there? It’s a feeling of, oh, the wanting’s gone away. It’s like hunger. You feel hungry, you eat a sandwich, the hunger’s gone away.

I mean that’s a metaphor for everything in that when you get what you want, there’s this relief, the wanting, the needy feeling that oh, when will I get it has gone and there’s a relief. So actually what we’re momentarily, well, momentarily and then it kicks in again. We’re looking for the next thing. But what we’re looking for is the absence of wanting. That’s the happiness we achieve when we get what you want is a kind of freedom from wanting.

So the problem is that we’re caught in a cycle where we then just want something else. So I’m not suggesting let’s all go and sit on a mountaintop and meditate and not have lives and not have careers, not at all. I’m simply suggesting that we put our focus very strongly on material things. And I think there needs to be also a focus on the mind. And I think that’s how we can learn to free ourselves.

A Personal Journey Through Suffering

STEVEN BARTLETT: You learnt this the hard way through your own experiences. Can you talk to me about how you learnt these lessons?

GELONG THUBTEN: Well, I definitely became a monk through extreme suffering. I wouldn’t describe myself as having been a kind of, you know, a spiritual seeker. And I went to a monastery with a kind of open, glowing heart, wanting to find the answers. I went to a monastery in a completely broken state because I had been living in this kind of ambition cycle.

Wanting, wanting, wanting and really not looking after myself. I had a very self loathing and unhappy mind, a lot of depression, a lot of anxiety. And I went to that monastery feeling completely at rock bottom. 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.

STEVEN BARTLETT: If I was a fly on the wall in your life on that day when you showed up at that monastery, what would I have seen?

GELONG THUBTEN: So I was very ill and I arrived at the monastery really needing help. So I was living in London and New York. I was trying to become an actor. My mother’s an actor, so I sort of wanted to follow in her footsteps. And I got into a really kind of dangerous kind of party, really wild and burning the candle at both ends. I basically made myself ill. I had a very, very dramatic burnout.

Living in Brooklyn and waking up one morning in my apartment thinking I was having a heart attack. I went to. I didn’t have medical insurance, but I managed to find some kind of, like, cheap ECG place. And they checked my heart out and they said, you have a heart condition. What have you been doing? And, you know, I really had to stop in my tracks. And I was very ill after that for a few months.

STEVEN BARTLETT: What age was this?

GELONG THUBTEN: 21.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Wow.

GELONG THUBTEN: And during that time of being horrendously ill, I had to question everything I was doing with my life.

STEVEN BARTLETT: But that illness is a symptom.

GELONG THUBTEN: It’s a symptom of unhealthy living, but also an unhealthy relationship with my own mind.

Childhood Trauma and Its Lasting Impact

STEVEN BARTLETT: And where did that unhealthy relationship with your own mind stem from?

GELONG THUBTEN: So I think things that happened in my early life, traumatic things, difficult things. And then me not knowing how to deal with those and just bottling them up and pushing through, pushing forward and not looking at myself. I had this very sort of escapist way about myself. I think that’s what all the partying was about, to kind of get out of my head.

And so when I had that burnout, I think it was a combination of physical stress and mental stress that just exploded very, very suddenly, literally overnight.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Did you have an abusive childhood? Because I was reading some of the things that you had said, and it suggested to me that there was things that happened when you were young that left imprints on you that you had to work through.

GELONG THUBTEN: Yeah, yeah. I would say things happened in my teens that were troubling. You know, when I was quite like, 13, 14, I started to run with a much older crowd. So I had a kind of double life. I was at school and very studious and very quiet. And then outside school, I was in a rock band with much older people.

When I was 14, I started to actually work as a jazz pianist in wine bars across London, pretending I was 21. And the people I was running with at that time were much, much older than me. And, yeah, there were some situations where the relationships turned, I would say abusive, and I would say I was a victim of. At the time, maybe I thought I knew what I was doing, but looking back, definitely not. And I think that left imprints and I think it made me frightened of myself and frightened of other people.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Are you comfortable talking about this?

GELONG THUBTEN: Yeah.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Was this sexual abuse?

GELONG THUBTEN: Yeah. From one of the people I was in a band with. Yeah.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And when you sort of trace the steps of the behavior that you then saw in your early 20s, the sort of escapist behavior, the sort of self medicating behavior.

GELONG THUBTEN: Yeah.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Is that the connection? Is that where that originated from? The sort of processing of that and the dealing with those?

The Origins of Self-Destructive Thoughts

GELONG THUBTEN: It’s really hard to make a very specific, direct connection, isn’t it? And that’s what we always want to do. We want to say this happened because of this and there’s this, you know, this happened and therefore I went off the rails in a way that’s too easy because I think there’s a mixture of many, many elements that can send one off the rails.

You know, my parents are incredibly loving people. I mean, they really loved me and brought me up very well. But they split up very, very suddenly when I was 17. My dad literally ran off with one of my mum’s friends and it was a very huge explosion in the family and we were all very broken by it.

And so there are many, many things, many factors that came together in my teenage years that I think sent me off the rails. I got into Oxford University and that was a big prestigious thing. But I fell apart in Oxford. I started to get horrendously depressed and I actually got expelled. It’s actually quite hard to get expelled from Oxford.

STEVEN BARTLETT: I didn’t. I’ve never met anyone that got expelled.

GELONG THUBTEN: Exactly. My mother was delighted. She said, oh, that’s like Lord Byron, Shelley. Those are the, you know, very hard to get thrown out of Oxford. You have to, you know, do something pretty horrendous. But I think in my case they threw me out because I was just not functional.

And that then just led to my demise. And then on the one hand, I started acting and being in plays and having this kind of almost like glamorous persona. And on the other hand, crumbling inside. I had this incredibly persistent monologue of self disgust. You know, like a voice in the head that says, you are disgusting, you are no good, you are a failure.

I used to call it my devil voice, but it’s obviously part of me. And that’s something that later on, when I started to do retreats, became incredibly loud in my head and I had to work hard on meditation to help not to get rid of that, but to integrate it and learn to be at peace with it. It’s definitely, you know, it’s gone away now.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Where does that voice originate from? You’re not the first person that I’ve sat with here who’s talked to me about a similar voice in their mind. And I’m wondering, is that something we inherit from our environment, something that happens, a culmination of things that happen? Is it genetic or is it all of the above?

GELONG THUBTEN: It’s many things.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Because that’s very specific.

GELONG THUBTEN: It’s many things. And it’s I think in my case, it was because I became very good at suppressing my suffering, because I became very proficient at pushing things down and just going to as many parties as possible and trying not to suffer. I think when you push something down, the kind of volcano effect happens, and then this sort of angry voice comes up. This pressure leads to a kind of backlash inside yourself, and it’s an internalized anger that also is fed to us from our environment. Absolutely.

The Journey to the Monastery

STEVEN BARTLETT: So you arrive at the monastery.

GELONG THUBTEN: Yeah.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Who told you to go to a monastery?

GELONG THUBTEN: So my oldest childhood friend, Tara. We grew up together. And when I was completely falling apart with this heart condition at 21, she basically scooped me up and took me to the monastery. She’s the one who told me. She said, oh, there’s a monastery in Scotland, which it’s called Samye Ling. It’s a Tibetan Buddhist monastery.

And for the first time ever, they’ve opened their doors to people wanting to be monks for a year, one year. And so she said, let’s go and do it. This could she wanted to do it, too, but she said, this could really help you. So she basically pretty much carried me there.

STEVEN BARTLETT: What were you saying to her when she asked you how you were doing or what your symptoms were?

GELONG THUBTEN: I was lying in bed with horrendous heart palpitations, and any move I made, my body would be bathed in sweat. I mean, we were in California because I got sick in New York. I managed to get to California, where my mother was living, and Tara was there, and they looked after me.

And then literally flying back to the UK, I had to lie down on the plane. She was almost carrying me. It was really, really heavy. But she said, look, this place could help you. It’s just a year. It’s just a year out of your life. I thought, okay, I’m going to do that, and then I’ll go back to New York.

I almost sublet my apartment in New York, but I didn’t in the end. But there definitely was a feeling in me of, okay, I’m going to go to this Buddhist retreat, get myself straightened out, and then go back to what I was doing before. So it didn’t feel too outrageous because it was only a year. Of course it wasn’t a year. This is 30 years later. I’m still there.

Life in the Monastery

STEVEN BARTLETT: And to give people like me, who don’t understand what happens in a monastery a picture into the what I would describe as incredible dedication and sacrifice that you’ve gone through over those 30 years. Can you share some of the practical things that you’ve done in those 30 years that most people would think of as being just outrageous?

GELONG THUBTEN: But do you know what you say sacrifice. But to me, it didn’t feel like a sacrifice. It felt like immediate relief. Because, yes, when you become a monk, you take vows to give up things, certain things. But the things I was giving up were the things that made me ill.

So, you know, you’re giving up intoxicants and you become celibate. And you I mean, there are also kind of moral vows such as you give up telling lies and stealing and harming others. These are all good principles to follow. But I suppose the two major things are no intoxicants and celibacy. And to me, that was such a relief to just kind of give all of that up and be in almost like, kind of like a rehab situation. But I have to emphasize it didn’t feel too heavy because I thought it was only going to be for a year.

STEVEN BARTLETT: So celibacy is sex, giving up sex.

GELONG THUBTEN: Yeah. And what I found is that you actually develop stronger relationships. So people often think monks must be very lonely. But what I found was that you were in a community of people where the sexual chemistry is off the agenda. So you start having friendships that really are so heart based and you meet lots of people who are on the same path as you. So I didn’t feel lonely at all.

Understanding Celibacy and Desire

STEVEN BARTLETT: What is it about sex that is maybe a distraction? What is it that puts it on that list?

GELONG THUBTEN: It’s not to say that sex is wrong or evil or bad. It’s not a sort of weird sort of moralistic anti sex thing at all. It’s simply about where you’re putting your focus. So when you’re a monk, you’re giving up family life, you’re giving up sexual relationships, you’re giving up romance, you’re giving up all of that so that you can focus very intensely on meditation practice with the purpose that you can eventually help others.

It’s not a selfish thing. As you’re doing this so that you can be of more benefit to others, but you want no distractions. And also at a deeper level, you want to start to experiment with what happens when you don’t immediately run after a desire. You start to experiment with trying to not suppress your desire because that’s incredibly unhealthy. But watch your desire and observe it and find out that you are more than your desire. And so celibacy is an amazing environment to start doing that work.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And that also means no masturbation and those kinds of things.

GELONG THUBTEN: Yeah, yeah. I mean, it’s really about working with desire rather than just when I say working with, I mean observing it and learning ways to transform it, rather than just giving into it or suppressing it. And I wouldn’t say celibacy is for everybody, but it suits a certain type of person.

And, you know, in Buddhism in general, in the UK or America, there’s thousands and thousands and thousands of Buddhists, but maybe a small handful of monks who become celibate. It’s a very specific particular way to practice Buddhism. It’s not the only way.

STEVEN BARTLETT: I’m inquiring about this subject because it’s actually because of a conversation I was having with a really good friend of mine over New Year’s who’s had some troubles in his life, has struggled in relationships, has struggled professionally, has also struggled a little bit with purpose and meaning, and has now sort of started to investigate religion.

And one of the things he said to me, because there’s a particular stranglehold that his sexual desires has over him is that he was thinking about abstaining from masturbation and sex just for a short period of time. And I think actually the reason for that is kind of what you’ve described there, which is just to try and separate, get back control from desire.

GELONG THUBTEN: He’ll need to meditate because just abstaining from the thing you want to, the thing you’re desperate to do, and you’re abstaining almost like locking yourself in a cage and saying, I won’t do that thing. Then what are you replacing it with?

So, for example, when I work in, you know, I often teach meditation in drug rehab centers, I talk a lot about how, okay, yes, you’ve had to give up the drug that was making you ill. But that’s not the whole story. The rest of the story is what are you going to do about the mind that is addicted to that substance and how are you going to resolve that? How are you going to fill the hole inside that was craving something? So with the meditation, you’re not just giving up something. You’re learning to fill your own spirit with something more positive for yourself, almost.

STEVEN BARTLETT: To heal from the thing that had the desire.

GELONG THUBTEN: Yeah, yeah. Desire is such an interesting thing because we think we want something, but what’s going on under the desire is a feeling of lack, a feeling of hopelessness, a feeling I don’t have. There’s something missing. And so meditation is about filling that with light and with love.

You know, the deepest addiction we all have is the addiction to our own thoughts. That’s really the root of it all, is that a wanting thought arises in my mind and then I jump on it and I want to get something to kind of alleviate that, but it’s that internal attachment.

Buddhism talks a lot about non attachment and I think this is widely misunderstood. People think it means you’re supposed to be, you know, detached and have no friends and be unattached. It doesn’t mean that at all. It means how we’re so attached to our thoughts and our emotions and they get into the driving seat and send our life in all kinds of directions. We don’t want it to go in. How do we learn to transform that inner attachment to the thought itself? And that’s obviously where meditation comes in.

What is Buddhism?

STEVEN BARTLETT: Let’s talk about Buddhism then. So I said to you before we started recording that in the last sort of 12 months or so, I’ve got really interested in Buddhism. I started reading some books about Buddhism and I find it to be most aligned with this sounds like a strange thing to say, but I’m going to say it anyway with almost like the medication that I need. And I know it’s not a medication.

GELONG THUBTEN: But it is a 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 science.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah, I’ve struggled with religions. I was Christian growing up, but I’ve struggled with like deities and gods and these kinds of things because there’s like 5,000 different gods through history. So I don’t really know which one’s real. And there’s lots of books and I’m still on that journey.

But when I found Buddhism, it wasn’t framed like the other religions. I thought it was much more compelling. What is Buddhism? Can you tell me where it’s come from? Is it a religion? Is there a God? Do I have to worship? Do I go to hell? Heaven?

GELONG THUBTEN: There’s nothing to worship at all. Buddhism is a path to inner internal understanding. The word Buddha means awake and yes, Buddhism has a history in that there was somebody called the Buddha in India 2,500 years ago who attained Awakening and gave teachings. And Buddhism, you could call it that, has come from there.

But actually this word Buddhism is a modern word. Ism. It’s a modern word. In the original languages of Buddhism, such as Sanskrit and Tibetan, you find terms that are so different from religion. You find terms such as the science of awareness or the examination of awakening, the inner awareness. It’s a path of mental discovery. It’s a science.

STEVEN BARTLETT: So it’s not a religion per se.

GELONG THUBTEN: Technically it is if you define a religion as a group spiritual purpose, and there are monasteries, there are organizations within Buddhism. But it also defies most categorizations around religion because it doesn’t believe in a creator, it doesn’t believe in somebody to worship. It’s really about the power of your own mind.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And is there a hell and a heaven?

The Nature of Reality According to Buddhism

GELONG THUBTEN: In Buddhism, they talk about hell and heaven as states of mind. They talk about everything as a state of mind. They say this is a state of mind. Buddhism is very much about exploring the fabric of reality. This table, this body, this so called self, ideas of hell, heaven, they say these are all mental experiences. Everything is mind according to Buddhism.

STEVEN BARTLETT: So you get to the monastery.

GELONG THUBTEN: Yeah.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Talk to me about your journey of healing.

The Struggle with Early Meditation

GELONG THUBTEN: So I was quite ill for a while in the monastery and they kind of left me alone. They let me rest a lot. I did little bits of light work around the monastery, started to meditate. You know, I actually hated meditation when I first did it. This was a problem, you know, I believed in it. I grew up in a Buddhist family. There’s been this kind of faith in Buddhism as I grew up, but I never actually did anything. I never meditated.

Then I get to a monastery, I become a monk and read the small print, you know, you got to meditate. And I hated it. I really, really hated it. And I thought, oh, what am I going to do? I really don’t enjoy this at all. I find it an enormous struggle. So I struggled a lot with meditation in those early days, Days, weeks, months even.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Why did you hate it?

GELONG THUBTEN: I hated it because I was doing it in a way that was making me more stressed. I would sit down, I thought that meditation is about clearing the mind. I’d heard this phrase, clear your mind. I thought that’s what you do. So I sat there trying to clear my mind. And the more I tried to clear my mind, the louder it was shouting. And particularly that negative voice. I told you about that. You are no good. You’re rubbish. You’re awful. You’ll fail. That became louder and louder.

And so the meditation became incredibly stressful because I thought, I can’t do this. I can’t get rid of my thoughts. Of course, now, since now I’ve discovered it’s nothing to do with clearing the mind. But because I thought it was, I struggled enormously.

STEVEN BARTLETT: What is it then?

Understanding True Meditation

GELONG THUBTEN: It’s nothing to do with clearing the mind. It’s not about putting yourself in an unconscious state at all. It’s about working with your mind. So it’s about learning how to be less controlled by your mind, but it’s not about getting rid of the thoughts. In fact, the thoughts are quite helpful. They actually help you to meditate.

You see, what I was doing in those early days was I thought, okay, just sit down and just push everything away and go into the kind of Zen state. And of course, that’s just like suppression, isn’t it? You’re just trying to suppress. You’re trying to push. It’s like trying to get a small child to sit still in their high chair while you’re feeding them. They’re going to. You know, they’re going to want to move around.

So it’s not about that pushing away of thoughts. I mean, you’ve got to ask yourself if that was the aim. Well, why would it be the aim? Imagine if you could clear your mind. So, what, you have 10 minutes of just being blank, and then you carry on with your day. Where’s the journey? What journey is that? You just passed out on the floor for 10 minutes, might as well asleep or something. Yeah, yeah. And I can fully understand that if you’re really stirred up and miserable and stressed, the idea of 10 minutes of switching it off would be great. But it’s not the solution. It doesn’t work.

STEVEN BARTLETT: What is the solution?

Changing Your Relationship with Thoughts

GELONG THUBTEN: So it is definitely about changing your relationship with your thoughts. So, okay, so a typical meditation practice is you sit and you focus on your breathing. It’s different from breath work. You’re not breathing in a particular way. You’re not trying to breathe slowly, deeply or anything. You’re just breathing normally. You know, just let the breath do its own thing and you’re focused on it.

So on paper, that sounds really clear and clean and simple. Focus on your breath. The reality is it’s really messy because you focus on your breath. And within a few seconds you’re thinking about shopping lists or food or sex or anything. You know, the mind just goes. That’s when the work starts.

Because at some point, you realize your mind has wandered, okay? That’s when many people think they failed. They were meditating. They were with the breath. And then they realized they’re thinking about emails they need to write or shopping or whatever. And then they think, oh, I’m a failure. And they very angrily bring themselves back to the breath. That’s just going to make you more stressed because you’re actually training in feeling like a failure. You know what I mean?

STEVEN BARTLETT: I can relate. I mean, it takes me seven seconds to drift off when I’m trying to meditate.

The True Definition of Meditation

GELONG THUBTEN: So it’s not that at all. It’s that you. You’re with the breath, and then your mind wanders. It’s not even that you see your mind wandering. You kind of find out afterwards, don’t you? It’s not like I’m with the breath, and I can see my mind step away from the breath and then go to a thought. It’s more that I’m with my breath, I pass out, and I wake up the other side of town.

That is the meditation. Waking up inside your thoughts. That is the definition of meditation. So you haven’t failed at all. You are meditating because what happened was you were with the breath. You got lost. You lost your mind. And then you found your mind again because you’re back. You suddenly realize, oh, where was I? I’m supposed to be meditating. So that is meditation. You’re back with your awareness, and then you gently bring yourself back to the breath.

And actually, all you’re doing is those three things throughout the session. Either you’re with the breath or you’re noticing that you got lost, or you’re returning, and it’s that returning that makes you strong. Every time you return to the breath, you are making a very powerful decision. That’s the attachment or the addiction to the thoughts. The mind was lost in those thoughts, and you are recapturing your attention and bringing it back.

So you are choosing where to send your mind. And if you do this like an exercise, almost like going to the gym and getting strong, day after day, week after week, you’re teaching yourself how to choose to be happy and how to choose not to suffer. So such a simple technique on paper, you know, focus on your breath, come back when you get lost, is actually profoundly transformative psychologically.

Breaking Free from Mental Hijacking

STEVEN BARTLETT: Cause I think most people listening to this assume that they’re kind of strapped to their thoughts, and their thoughts are the car driving wherever it wants to go. And we’re just strapped to the back of it, our ankles tied to the back of it with a piece of rope.

GELONG THUBTEN: Yeah, absolutely.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And we just kind of suffer consequences.

GELONG THUBTEN: Hijack. Hijacked by our thoughts.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah. Hijacked is a great. It stormed the pilot’s cabin and it’s flying us.

GELONG THUBTEN: Yeah, exactly.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Wherever it wants to go.

GELONG THUBTEN: Exactly.

STEVEN BARTLETT: That’s kind of the experience we have.

GELONG THUBTEN: So then meditation puts you behind the wheel of the car.

The Sky and the Clouds

STEVEN BARTLETT: Most people haven’t had the experience you’ve had training yourself to sort of disassociate or realize that you’re not your thoughts. So as someone that’s on the other side of this practice, how can you persuade me that my life will be better if I listen to this? Like, what’s the before and after, I guess, for you?

GELONG THUBTEN: So I don’t think everybody has to join a monastery and do extreme retreats. And the kind of things I do, maybe that’s my. My kind of extreme nature. I have so many friends who meditate while they have families and busy jobs and they do 15 minutes a day or twice a day or whatever. It can absolutely be done in anybody’s lifestyle.

But the whole point is that you are learning to find your own inner freedom. You are learning how to discover that you are bigger than the pain and suffering that seems to drive your life. Because what I described earlier with the coming back to the breath is that first stage of learning to gain a bit more power around what your mind is doing.

And then what is so interesting is when you start to think about, okay, when I’m unhappy or when I’m angry or whatever, if I am observing myself being unhappy, is the observer unhappy? Is the observer angry? And if I feel angry and I know I’m angry, the part of my mind that’s looking at the anger cannot be angry because it’s seeing the anger.

So in Buddhism, they use a metaphor to describe this, which is the sky and the clouds. The clouds can be heavy and rainy and all of that, but the sky is always bigger than the clouds. So our awareness of our minds, that’s where we can find our freedom.

And when we talk about seeking purpose and seeking what are we looking for in life? I think that’s what we’re looking for all the time in everything we do, whether it be big life goals or, you know, drinking a cup of coffee or water. Small moments in every moment, we’re looking for release or freedom. We think we’re looking to feel happy, or we think we’re looking for love or sex or whatever it is. But I think what we’re really looking for is to free ourselves from suffering and to free ourselves from need and to be free to be more in touch with who we really are. I think that’s what we’re looking for. And when you meditate and you step back and look at your mind, that observational aspect is key.

STEVEN BARTLETT: To become the sky.

Finding Freedom Through Non-Attachment

GELONG THUBTEN: Yeah, to become the sky rather than the clouds. And then I think it can change your life because you. You know, when I first met my teacher, he was quite a straight talking person. He wouldn’t, you know, say much. And what he said was often, could be. Sound. Sound a little bit harsh, but he said it with love.

And when I first met him, I’d go on about all the stuff that was happening with me or had happened with me or to me. And he just said, stop taking yourself so seriously. And initially that could sound like a slap in the face. I mean, imagine if you went to a therapist and they said, what you’ve been through is peanuts. Stop taking yourself seriously. But he didn’t mean it like that.

What he meant was stop clinging to a kind of solidity. Stop making your thoughts and feelings and your past and make it so solid. Try to be the sky instead of the clouds. Try to step back and be less solid about everything. Buddhism is very much into this notion that they call emptiness, which isn’t emptiness in terms of a kind of vacuous void, but more that things are illusory, things aren’t as real and solid and heavy as we think they are.

And I think meditation can help us to think more in that way and find more happiness, real happiness, not the happiness that depends on I will be happy if I will be happy when I can only be happy, because that’s a very limited happiness. But imagine if you could be happy no matter what.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Is that what Buddhism helps us to do?

Freedom, Compassion, and Connection

GELONG THUBTEN: I think Buddhism is about freedom, and I think freedom is happy no matter what. And I think more than that, I think it’s also about compassion. The way I’m describing it could sound like this is all just about one’s own personal development and freeing oneself and becoming happier. But the key point is we’re living in a connection, a world of connection. And how can we genuinely help others? I think through freeing our minds and helping others to do the same.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Can I be in that state of mind where I am the sky while also being incredibly effective in my job as a CEO?

Misconceptions About Meditation in the Workplace

GELONG THUBTEN: Yeah, I think this is possibly one of the misconceptions. You know, this is something I came across quite early on in, when I was teaching Meditation. I started to give talks about meditation in the workplace like 25 years ago, so before it became very popular. Now mindfulness is everywhere in the corporate world, but when I started, it was quite unusual and I did come across a lot of misconceptions.

The funniest one was before I went into a boardroom to talk to the people in there about meditation. Their CEO took me to the side and he said, 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 want them to become too relaxed. I said, I’m not some kind of stage hypnotist. I’m not going to walk into there and sort of put everyone into a trance. That’s not what I do.

But it was such an interesting conversation because it made me see that his view of meditation is that you would become this kind of spaced out, happy with everything, don’t care, and you’d lose your drive. And it’s absolutely not that at all because it’s about precision, it’s about being present, it’s about being less controlled by distraction, be less controlled by negative thinking. And if you can do that, you can achieve more. So if you are a CEO, if you are trying to achieve something in your work and you meditate, you can work much, much harder and get less tired. And then also you can start to think more deeply about why am I doing the things I’m doing and what am I really trying to achieve here.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Some of the most famous CEOs in the world talk about their meditation practice, and this is why I’ve also been slightly compelled into it. I think for me, I’m the type of person that’s very influenced by other people that I kind of look up to. And so someone like Steve Jobs, who I think had a deep sort of spiritual practice which involved meditation, which I also think he cites as being much of the reason he was able to see round the corner and be more of a visionary, was one of the big points of inspiration for me to get more curious about Buddhism and meditation.

Do you have any examples of, like, very high, productive, very successful people that have had tremendous benefits from meditation as it relates to them being more successful in their missions, their professional missions?

Becoming the CEO of Your Own Mind

GELONG THUBTEN: I mean, I can’t think of specific individual names, but it’s just generally very well known that if you meditate it makes you more effective in your. Because you are becoming your own boss. I mean, we talk about being your own boss, but how many of us are really, really our Own boss. You know, we can be the boss of other people, we can be the boss of our environment to a certain extent. But to be the CEO of your own mind, very, very difficult.

And so people who can do that definitely become more effective in the world. But I think what also happens is they start to think about how they could be really successful and then do some good with that success. Because they start to think about, well, is it all just about the success and the wealth, or is there something I could do with that success and wealth?

Because meditation makes you more compassionate. Meditation makes you more ethical. It makes you and not ethical in a kind of. You know, the word ethics sounds so kind of Victorian and so kind of restrictive. But I mean, trying to make the world a better place. And I think there are many examples of people who’ve become enormously successful and used that success for the good of the world. And I think meditation is something key in their success.

STEVEN BARTLETT: I was just looking for a couple of examples. And Ray Dalio, who a lot of people know is one of the best investors in the world, he wrote the book Principle, said, meditation more than anything in my life, is the biggest ingredient of whatever success I’ve had. And Marc Benioff, who’s the CEO of Salesforce at a tremendously large company, said, meditation is the most important thing I do each day.

Oprah Winfrey, Jack Dorsey, let’s say, who’s the co founder of Twitter and Square, said, there’s nothing more impactful on my work than meditation. And Steve Jobs said, if you just sit and observe, you will see how restless your mind is. If you try to calm it, it only makes it worse, but over time, it does calm. And he practiced Zen Buddhism and was a regular meditator. And he says that his minimalist design philosophy and focus were strongly influenced by his spiritual and meditative practice.

Redefining Calm

GELONG THUBTEN: You see, I think the thing that trips people up when they think about how meditation could make you more effective is the word calm. Because they think, oh, well, if I become calm, I’m going to be. I’m going to miss.

STEVEN BARTLETT: I’m not going to be a workaholic.

GELONG THUBTEN: I’m going to drop the ball if I’m too calm. But I don’t think of calm in that way at all as almost like a tranquilized. I think of calm as being able to keep a cool head under fire and be really precise and really on the focus in the now and really hold onto your purpose and know why you’re doing what you’re doing and be less Influenced by the areas of your psychology that trip you up.

STEVEN BARTLETT: I’m hearing, like, clarity and emotional control.

GELONG THUBTEN: Yeah. Optimizing how your brain performs.

Buddhism and the Illusion of Victimhood

STEVEN BARTLETT: Earlier on you said that in Buddhism they talk about an emptiness, which is kind of this realizing that life isn’t so solid and your identity is a mirage and all these kinds of things. It almost sounded like that’s the opposite of, like victimhood. Because when we think about victimhood, it is. I create an identity for Myself. And then I create a story around that identity which has suffered some kind of injustice, and then I kind of live out that injustice. How does Buddhism think about victimhood and identity and trauma?

GELONG THUBTEN: I guess so, of course, we identify incredibly strongly with our past, and we, in so many ways are prisoners of what has happened to us in our past. And it’s totally understandable, of course, but Buddhism brings in a whole fresh perspective, which is that you are not your past. I mean, even on a physical level, every cell in your body has changed and your mind has changed. You are right now in the present. The past is an illusion, as is the future.

And we spend so much time in the past and future or trying to manipulate the present. Whereas with meditation, you’re learning to be in the now and not be. It doesn’t mean you don’t plan or don’t remember, but you’re learning to cling less to the past and future, and you’re learning to cling less to or hold less to the idea that things are really as solid as you think they are.

I mean, it’s very scientific. There’s a Buddhist meditation, which literally is about a table. Like, you know, here we are with this table, and they say, if you take apart this table, you’ll find it doesn’t exist because the table, as it seems right now, is a top with legs. You take the bits apart, and now where is your notion of table? You’ve got these bits of wood or metal or whatever it is, and you start kind of dissecting that further and further and further.

This is where Buddhism and particle physics become. You know, they’re talking a lot. There’s a lot of conversation there in that. The smaller and smaller you go into these wood shavings and then particles, and can you find the smallest part that makes up all of reality? And Buddhists would say no, because if it’s a part, it has parts. There is no such thing as the partless particle, because if it’s a particle, it can be further subdivided, so we can’t find the smallest base that makes up all of matter.

What we’re experiencing is more like a dream or an illusion. And the reality we live in, of course, it feels very solid. You know, if I throw this cup at somebody, it’s going to hit their head and hurt them. There’s no point saying, well, it’s all empty. Don’t worry about it. But the idea behind this philosophy of understanding things not to be as solid as they are is that we can learn to suffer less because we Spend so much of our energy constantly reacting to things as if they’re really solid and really real, and there’s nothing that can be done about them, whether that be people or objects in the world around us or our mind itself. And if we can desolidify some of that, we could become more free.

Dropping the Story, Looking at the Feeling

STEVEN BARTLETT: We all carry so many burdens in this regard. You know, it could be grief, it could be heartbreak, it could be a colleague at work that doesn’t dislike us, a comment in our Instagram page of something someone said about us. How does one go about alleviating ourselves from this kind of burden?

GELONG THUBTEN: Yeah, so I. For me, it’s very much about dropping the story and looking at the feeling.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Okay, explain that to me.

The Four-Year Retreat Experience

GELONG THUBTEN: So, for me, this became very, very important practice for me when I was in a long retreat. So I went into a very long retreat for four years. I became a monk for a year, and I stayed a bit longer. Stayed a bit longer. It was after about four years that I decided to do this for life. And I took lifelong vows.

And then I knew about these long. I did some short retreats, but I knew about these long retreats. But it wasn’t until 12 years later that the opportunity came up to go into a long retreat, four years long, where you are really just cut off from the world for that length of time. Nobody goes in or out, and you are meditating many, many hours a day.

And it was the most frightening experience in my life because I was in there alone with my own thoughts and emotions. It’s not a completely solitary retreat. There are other monks there, all doing their own meditation in their rooms. So there is a kind of group, but you are very much alone as well.

And for me, the whole thing was, for the first two years was just horrific amounts of depression, misery, pain, anguish, anxiety that would build into panic attacks. I was really, really shocked by what happened to me in there, because I think I thought I’d been a monk for 12 years and I’d already started to give a few talks about meditation and. And maybe I thought I was quite sorted, but I wasn’t. And I got in there and really fell apart.

But it was an amazing thing that happened to me because that falling apart forced me, after a while, to learn how to engage with what I’m talking about, which is looking at the suffering and working with that, with meditation, looking at the suffering.

Confronting the Story

So for me, during those first two years of the retreat, I was completely obsessed with the story because I was experiencing these horrendous feelings of heartbreak. And feelings of depression, anxiety, just kind of a whole mass of suffering inside myself. And I was trying to almost do therapy on myself and think, okay, let’s, you know, thinking that memories were coming up from the past and thinking about things that had happened in my past and is this why I’m suffering now? And how do I resolve that?

And the more I went down that road, the worse it got. And I found myself really disconnected from Buddhism. And it was a really frightening experience because I’m there in a four year retreat, I’m a monk, and I was feeling completely alienated from the whole thing. I kind of wanted to just get away from it. I wanted to run away.

The Breaking Point

And things only changed when I hit rock bottom, like hugely in that I actually climbed over the wall of the retreat to run away. I couldn’t take it anymore. One morning I had the most immense panic attack I’ve ever had. And I just like saw red and just ran. I legged it out of the retreat, which is unthinkable. You know, in a four year retreat you’re not supposed to leave.

But I jumped over the wall and tried to escape. I say tried to escape as if I was in some kind of, you know, prison or cult. It’s not like that. People do leave retreats, but for me it was this kind of dramatic get out of there and run away.

And I remember like freaking out and running and running and running down this road in the rain. This was on a very, you know, remote area of a Scottish island. And then just stopping and thinking, what are you doing? What has happened to you?

And I just stopped and then went back and I asked the leaders of the retreat if I could be let back in. And they said, well, no, you’ve left. But I really begged them because I had such clarity in that moment. I wanted to go back in.

And they said, okay. The abbot of my monastery said, okay, stay in a little caravan on the edge of the retreat boundary for a week, for seven days and think about what you’re doing and then we’ll see if you will let you back in.

And during that time, I thought really deeply and I really knew I wanted to go back in. Because there was at that moment a thought of, shall I give up being a monk? Shall I give up the whole thing? I can’t do this. It’s made me so miserable. But I really knew in that moment what my purpose was. I knew I wanted to go back in and carry on.

But I also knew I’d been tormenting myself with my past and That I hadn’t worked out how to. How to heal myself. I’d been sinking so badly, and if I was to go back in there, I would have to try a completely new approach.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Why did you choose to go back in?

GELONG THUBTEN: Because I really strongly believed that it was what I want to do with my life. And a part of me thought, don’t give something up when you’re freaking out because you will regret it. If you’re going to give this thing up, give it up from a place of clarity, knowing that there’s something better for you out there. Don’t give up because you’re having a panic attack and you can’t take it.

That’s the wrong kind of timing to make a life change because I really do believe in what I’m doing. This is the life I’ve chosen for myself and I want to do it. But it got so difficult, I couldn’t take it anymore.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Why did you want to do it if something is painful and causing you anxiety?

GELONG THUBTEN: Because I felt that this pain I’m going through, the methods are there. I just need to know how to use them and I could learn to conquer this. This pain could be the breakthrough.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Most people in their lives when they think about the things that give them anxiety or pain or fear. You know, we live as sort of discomfort avoiding humans, so we try and run. To run to comfort or pleasure.

GELONG THUBTEN: Exactly.

STEVEN BARTLETT: So life is hard. Let’s run from it.

GELONG THUBTEN: Exactly.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Let’s get on a plane, fly to another country and try and just set up a new life somewhere else.

GELONG THUBTEN: It doesn’t work because you go to your new life and the thing that has been haunting you like a shadow goes with you. You can’t run from yourself. You can run to the end of the earth. And that thing that has been tormenting you is part of you. And until you learn to integrate that, it will always trip you up.

And so I went back into that retreat knowing, okay, this is your last chance. If you mess this up again, that’s it, forget it. So it was a real make or break situation. And I went back in and I. Everything changed because I found I had to find a different way of dealing with that suffering.

STEVEN BARTLETT: What was that?

The Breakthrough: Using Pain as Meditation

GELONG THUBTEN: Okay, so I’m back in there and it’s coming up again. The depression, the anxiety, the pain that to me, it felt like. It felt like something that was piercing me. It felt like. It felt like there was like a knife constantly twisting, twisting and turning in my heart or like in the middle of me. It was really painful.

And what I’d been doing up until that point was just trying to get that knife out and also thinking, why is it there? Is it because of what happened to me when I was 14? Is it? What happened to me when I was 17? Is it this? Is it that? Is it my family? What is it? That’s the story. I say story. I’m not belittling people’s stories. I’m just saying it’s the narrative, isn’t it?

So I decided to use the knife as the meditation to actually meditate on it. And the whole thing starts to change when you do that, because until that point, you’ve been trying to get rid of your suffering or get rid of your pain. But if you turn your pain into your meditation, you’re moving towards it and how can it hurt you? If you’ve decided to move towards it, you’ve made that choice.

So what I started to do was just focus on the pain, but try to bypass the judgments. I don’t like this. This is so terrible. Why am I depressed? Why am I anxious? And just feel the feeling and it’s a sensation in the body. Because one of the key instructions in meditation is when you focus your mind, you focus it with less judgment. This is good, this is bad. You just focus.

So you’re focusing on that feeling without pushing it away, without saying, why do I feel like this? But just the feeling and it starts to change. It starts to change because you’re accepting it.

Understanding True Acceptance

My teachers had always said to me they’d always go on and on about acceptance. And I just wanted to hit them when they said it because it sounded so grim. You’ve got to accept yourself or you’ve got to accept your suffering. To me, that sounded like you’re going to, for the rest of your life be dragging this bag of rocks up a hill. Acceptance is so miserable and so boring.

I didn’t realize that what they meant was compassion and self acceptance at a very, very deep level. So I was focusing on that feeling in my body and trying not to go into the stories about it or the hatred of it and just move towards it and kind of become one with that pain. And then you relax and something kind of releases.

And I mean, I think it works on a chemical level because basically when you’re trying to push pain away, you’re creating enormous amounts of cortisol in your body, the stress hormone. When you relax, the endorphins arise, you start to feel happy. I mean, it’s quite bizarre that the thing that has hurt you so much starts to turn into a kind of joyful feeling.

And you start to think, oh, wow, okay, so happiness is nothing to do with somebody being nice to me or this object or that that thing. Happiness is about being okay with your suffering and not just being okay with it, but actually sending love into the place in yourself that you hated so much.

Learning Self-Compassion

So for me, what started to change was from having a feeling like a knife twisting inside me and hurting me and wanting to get rid of it, I found ways to hold that with love. And I started to have this image in my head as if I had found like a frightened rabbit or a bird with a broken wing. And I’m holding that in my hand with tenderness.

I’d never been able to do that for myself. I had never ever been able to be kind to myself. Everything in my life up until that point had been so harsh and so self hating. And I think, you know, in my teenage years when I was trying to become a successful actor, I think that was the drive was I hate myself so I better get loads of people to love me instead. Cause I can’t do it. I’m not saying all actors are like that, by no means, but there is a kind of actor who is like that. We know that. And that was me.

And then, and even as a monk and you become celibate and you’re having this kind of more like looking after yourself lifestyle. I develop all these incredibly strong attachments with friends where I’d want them to be nice to me. And I didn’t want to be alone with myself. I couldn’t spend time alone with myself.

And then in the first two years of that retreat, I’m hating myself and hating my pain and jumping over the wall and anything to kind of jump out of my own skin. And when I learned how to do this kind of practice with sending compassion into that part of myself that I’d hated so much. It was really transformative.

STEVEN BARTLETT: You said it felt like holding a scared rabbit or a bird with a broken wing. How did you come to feel about that bird?

GELONG THUBTEN: I felt love for that part of myself. And for me, that’s only possible when you stop getting so distracted by all the history and the details of your past. But you’re just relating to the feeling in your body right now.

And I don’t know if it’s like this for everybody, but for me, feeling it in the body is a really easy way to start. Because yeah, it’s depression, it’s anxiety, it’s trauma, whatever it is. That’s quite kind of Nebulous. How do you find it? And for me, it was so physical. It was like this twisting of a knife in the heart or a sinking feeling in the chest.

And just to relate to that sensation with kindness taught me how to love myself in an accepting way. It’s not about becoming an egomaniac. I love myself. It’s more, have kindness for yourself.

Applying This to Grief

STEVEN BARTLETT: How does this translate to things like grief? Because grief is one of the hardest things to get to. Acceptance on the sort of finality of life, losing someone you love. You’ve been through this yourself. You had, I think, a best friend of yours who was.

GELONG THUBTEN: Well, my teacher.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Oh, your teacher.

The Loss of a Teacher and Friend

GELONG THUBTEN: Well, he was my best friend as well as my teacher. He was murdered. So 11 years ago. My teacher, Akon Rinpoche, who had been my everything for all those years, you know, he was my teacher, my closest friend. I also spent a lot of time with him. I became his kind of assistant. So when he would travel, I was with him all the time. So we were very close.

He was Tibetan, and he was in charge of our monastery in Scotland. And part of his work was he would run a charity called Rockport, which has. Oh, that’s him. He would go to Tibet every year and look after projects there. Feeding orphans, looking after schools, hospitals, et cetera.

He was on his way to Tibet one year, and he was in Chengdu in China, and he was basically ambushed and stabbed, killed. And, I mean, this completely rocked the Buddhist world. It’s, like, horrendous news. But on a personal level, for me, I was one of the first people who found out. I’d been on the phone to him every day until then. I was his assistant and working very closely with him. So it completely, like, blew me apart. I mean, it blew me to pieces.

I cannot describe how badly it blew me to pieces, but the meditation I’ve described to you saw me through, because I. At some point during that grieving process, I remembered what to do. At first I didn’t, because, you know, when you’re really in it, you can’t think. But then. So there was the whole aftermath. You know, he was killed, and it was in all the press. And then as his assistant, I was the one dealing with the media.

And in a way that staying busy when you’re grieving, it kind of helps you to, you know, stay focused. But then the nights. The nights was. Nighttime was when it started to hurt, because at night, I would just be tossing and turning and feeling like. Feeling like I was on fire, because I had a mixture of grief, anger, despair. There was a whole mixture of things.

We knew the killer, the person who murdered him, had been a monk, a Tibetan. He had been a monk in our monastery. We knew him. He actually had the same name as me, and we knew him quite well. So there was all of that mixed in with what on earth happened to this person that he did this thing. So all of that is consuming me at night, and I’m just tossing and turning, feeling like I’m in flames.

And then at some point, it kicked in the meditation. It just happened because I’d done it in retreat. It had seen me through it. It really, really helped me. And at some point, I just had to lie there and send love into the flames in me. You know, I had to send that kindness into the place I was in despair.

I’m not saying that I then just became all right. No, but it absolutely calmed things. Absolutely. And it is all about love. It really is. You are sending love into the pain you are experiencing. And this helped me through the grief. It helped me also with forgiveness, with the guy we knew who did it. It helped me on so many levels.

And I’m not saying that it’s all okay, but I’ve made peace with his death. And, I mean, he taught me this practice. He taught me how to do that. And then he died, and I had to do it. I think of it as his last gift to me. And, you know, I will be forever grateful.

The Practice of Sending Love Into Pain

STEVEN BARTLETT: When you talk about sending love into the flames, what is the actual practice there? Is it certain sentences you’re saying, thinking.

GELONG THUBTEN: Yeah, I’m glad you asked this, because it is so much about going beyond the words and going into an experience of oneness. So to make it really practical, you know, you’re feeling incredible trauma in your body. Finding it physically is the easiest way to do it. Like your body’s in flames, or you’ve got, like, a feeling of a knife twisting in your heart. Whatever it is, there’s this feeling in the body.

And first of all, you just focus on that feeling. So anybody who meditates knows how to focus on their breathing. It’s the same thing. It’s just where you’re focusing. So you’re feeling the feeling, and you’re trying to bypass the thoughts of. This is uncomfortable. I want this to go away. Why did he die? What happened? You’re just feeling the feeling, and then you pay attention to that feeling in a loving way. You flood it with love.

And the reason this is possible, I mean, this is touching upon a major belief in Buddhist philosophy, which is that our minds are naturally compassionate. We are not these fight or flight killing machines that some people like to think the human being is. We are. Our natural state is to be kind. It is who we are naturally, deep down.

So when you clear away all the words and the ideas and you just sit with the feeling and you send love into that feeling with your mind, you’re just loving that feeling, holding it with compassion as if you were with a friend who was grieving. If you were sitting with a friend who was freaking out or grieving or whatever, you’re not going to slap them around the face and say, snap out of it. You will hold their hand. And we all know how to do that. The question is, can you do it for yourself?

And for me, that was a huge challenge because I hated myself so much for so many years. I was my worst enemy. So to hold my own hand internally in that sense, that’s what I mean by sending love into the feeling. And what happens then is the feeling starts to change. It starts to melt. The sharpness, the sharp edge of his edges of it start to melt.

And you start to be okay with being not okay. And 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 haven’t tasted before. It’s a happiness of, I can be okay with this. It makes you immensely strong.

The Path to Forgiveness

STEVEN BARTLETT: You talked about forgiveness. Did you forgive the man that murdered your friend and teacher?

GELONG THUBTEN: Yes, quite quickly. I mean, in a way it was made easier because it became really clear that he was psychotic. And of course, that’s no excuse or condoning or anything like that. But somebody who is really unable to control themselves, I mean, how can you hate them or whatever? You know, it’s. That’s an extreme case. But there are. But the practice of forgiveness is a hard one, isn’t it?

STEVEN BARTLETT: Because we’ve all got people in our lives that we all know have wronged us or done something to us which has caused us pain constantly and almost the way that we create our own perception of justice is by holding the grudge.

GELONG THUBTEN: Yeah. Now, why do we do that? That’s the question is, do we think. Do we think that if we let go of the grudge, we have let the other person get away with it?

STEVEN BARTLETT: That’s how it kind of feels, right?

GELONG THUBTEN: Wouldn’t you say that by holding the grudge they’ve got away with it because you’re the one suffering? They’ve really won? They’re winning in each moment, because you’re holding onto that. In Buddhism, there’s a teaching that says it’s like holding onto a piece of hot metal or holding a hot coal in your hand and it’s just burning you.

So if I’m holding the grudge, they have absolutely got away with it because they are the thing. They did, which was one thing, maybe I am now constantly hurting. And they are absolutely the winner. So I wonder if we assume. I think we do assume that forgiveness is a kind of giving up. Even the word forgive, the give in the word. So it sounds like we’re taking a weaker position. We’re giving up. We’re sort of surrendering.

But I think forgiveness is a strength or a power, and it’s actually nothing to do with the other person. You’re not going to necessarily write them a letter and say, I’ve forgiven you. But you’re freeing yourself. You’re dropping your burden, because that rage is toxic and that hurt is toxic.

It’s so hard to let go of it. And people can say, let go. And you just want to slap them in the face because what? Okay, is it that easy? I’m just going to let go, you know, it’s not that easy. It’s bloody hard. But meditation gives you the tools, partly because meditation anyway, is helping to loosen up that kind of glue that we have in our minds where we’re glued into those feelings.

Even just a simple meditation like coming back to the breath is helping you to be less glued into those thoughts and reactions and feelings, so the feeling of rage can start to be less heavy for you.

Forgiving Past Trauma

STEVEN BARTLETT: You’ve been through several sort of traumatic incidents. You talked about being 14, being 17, sexual abuse, parental divorce, little bit of neglect. It sounds like, as well. Have you forgiven all of those people in your life?

GELONG THUBTEN: I don’t know. I don’t know if forgiveness is a big, huge, massive moment or if it’s a process. I’m friends with all those people, very close friends with all those people. And I think. Here’s what I think. I think I’ve learned how to forgive the feelings that those incidents gave rise to. That, to me, is much more important than forgiving the people.

And I think what’s also happened to me is I’ve started to find that the suffering that I experience has some use because it is the thing that you’re using for your mental transformation. Rinpoche always used to say, suffering is like compost. Compost is made of rotten vegetables. People chuck it away, or they know how to make the field grow. And I think it’s like that.

So with forgiveness, I would say, yeah, meditation. But I would say also thinking deeply about the situation. You know what’s really helped me with my dad and with other people is to think about the suffering they were going through that kind of like propelled them to behave the way they’ve behaved. There’s always something, isn’t there, in somebody that has made them behave the way they behave.

And there’s a part of us that gets very indignant and thinks, how dare they? They should know better. Whereas the Buddhist’s answer would be, well, what do you mean they should know better? They know what they know. They are driven by their own confusion and their own pain. Why do you think they were out to get you? Why do you think they were deliberately out to you to maliciously get you? Weren’t they just caught in their own suffering and you were there, but it’s not so much about you.

And I think that starts to lighten the burden a bit when you start to think about. You know, there’s a meditation I sometimes do where you swap places with the other person in your mind. You sit and you think about being them and looking at the world out of their eyes.

Understanding Human Nature

STEVEN BARTLETT: The person that hurt you. Yeah, so many people will be thinking about that person in their life as you speak. And they’ll be. The challenge, I guess they’ll face is they’ll continually come back to this idea that this person is an asshole. Yeah, it almost.

GELONG THUBTEN: We all are though. We are too. We all are. I am. We’re all. Because we’re all just confused. We’re all at the mercy of our own minds. If you meditate regularly, you realize how out of control you are because you’re trying to sit there with your breathing and all you’re thinking about is shopping lists and you think, wow, the human mind is really pretty messed up. We can’t make it do anything we want it to do.

So this person that you think they’re so evil and so terrible and how dare they do the thing they’ve done? I’m not saying that we’re condoning it and saying, yeah, you can do what you want. I’m just saying lighten up a bit. Because people are just doing their best and sometimes their best is really bad.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And that doesn’t have to become your problem.

GELONG THUBTEN: It’s not really about you. We obviously take things personally. If something is done to you, of course you’re going to take it personally. But meditation helps. You look at the 360 degree view of a situation rather than just from your perspective. And very important here that we don’t get into that kind of victim shaming reality where you think, oh, it’s all about me and poor them. It’s not that at all. It’s simply that you think, think we’re all, we’re all messed up in various ways and, and that’s the human condition.

Fear in the Modern World

STEVEN BARTLETT: Many of us live trapped in the life we have. I guess maybe the word trapped isn’t the right word, but held back in many ways because of fear. And I wondered what Buddhism teaches us about fear in terms of fear of taking risks or you know, going and becoming a Buddhist monk or starting a business or pursuing a passion or moving to Bali. Many of us have these dreams, these callings, but we’re trapped in.

GELONG THUBTEN: And would you also agree that the fear can be about those bigger things but also it’s a moment to moment, subtle anxiety that just like pervades everything?

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah, it’s both.

GELONG THUBTEN: To me this became hugely like obvious when I came out of that four year retreat because I came out that retreat was 2005 to 2009. When I came out of that retreat, everybody had smartphones. During those four years the whole landscape of technology changed dramatically. Smartphones, social media, the whole thing happened during that time.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And you hadn’t been on the Internet?

GELONG THUBTEN: No, no, we had nothing. Before my retreat some people had blackberries and that was it. And then suddenly it’s all different. And I arrived in London and everybody’s walking around with their face buried in phones and I’m you know, going up the escalator and the tube in London and the little billboards, moving images that made me feel dizzy.

But where I’m going with this is maybe because I’ve been in this unusual environment and now I’m back in normal reality. I see it with more of a shock. And I started to think how much are we being made to feel afraid all the time when news media becomes digitalized and monetized and then you have to keep the person reading.

We know the tricks that people have to do. We all know about clickbait. We all know about how the headline of an article has to be shocking enough to make you read the article and then you see the ads. You don’t actually find out the information until 2/3 of the way down. You know, we know that and we’re all wise to that on one level and on the other level we are completely influenced by it.

So we’re now walking around in a world where we’re constantly being told we are in danger. I’m not here to, I’m not anti technology. It’s great, it can do so many good things. But it’s like food, you got to eat it in the right way. If you overeat, you get sick. If you not discerning about what you eat, you’re going to get ill. It’s the same with technology.

And so, yeah, fear is now used in every walk of life. Fear is used more than ever in politics to make us afraid so that we vote for people because of fear. Fear is used so much now to make us go shopping, hurry up while stocks last.

Protecting Our Minds Through Meditation

STEVEN BARTLETT: So what do we do about that? When we live in a world that is commercially driven or driven by power dynamics that mean that fear is just a great motivator and a great way to influence.

GELONG THUBTEN: I think we have to protect our minds with meditation.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Does this mean, like, throw your phone away and don’t go outside? What does it mean?

GELONG THUBTEN: No, don’t throw your phone away. Don’t go and run away to the mountains. Learn to face the fear. Learn to be fearless in a frightened world. And I think this is something very practical because I do this through practicing microscopic moments of meditation in busy situations.

STEVEN BARTLETT: What does that mean?

GELONG THUBTEN: So. So I might be standing in a queue, and I’ll feel the ground under my feet. I might be in an airport queuing up, and instead of going into that impatience thing and the stressy mode or checking my phone, I’ll do a moment of meditation.

Something that’s very important to me is to meditate every day. Sitting down and doing it kind of formally, but also these micro moments throughout the day, tiny moments where you just. Just become aware of yourself, become aware of the ground under your feet, become aware of your shoulders, drop your shoulders, be aware of them, become aware of your breathing.

And I find that if you do this in queues and traffic jams, it changes your entire reality, because what are you doing? You’re rewiring your own brain. You know how whenever we’re in a stuck situation like a queue or a traffic jam, we are wired to respond with tension and impatience. But if you do a micro moment of mindfulness, you are changing the wiring.

You are teaching yourself that you can meet stress in a calm way. You can be okay with being stuck in the traffic. So what that does is it then makes you more fearless because you’re almost like looking forward to the next traffic.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Jam, whereas most of us are just reacting to situations.

GELONG THUBTEN: Instead of reacting, you’re thinking, bring it on.

The Gap Between Impulse and Action

STEVEN BARTLETT: There is a gap, isn’t there, between what happens and how we react?

GELONG THUBTEN: That’s the crucial gap, the gap between impulse and action. Because so much is reaction. I think we spend so much of our lives just reacting in that. I feel hungry, so I eat. Somebody says hello, I say hello. But even on a moment to moment basis, how much are we consciously living and how much are we just reacting?

And so when we can find that gap between the impulse and the action and make a different choice, I think it’s almost like in every moment, we’re standing at a fork in the road. In every moment, one road is the road of reaction and the other road is the road of response.

Meditation helps you pause and see. You could make a choice. I don’t have to get stressed out in traffic. I could instead be mindful or I don’t have to get. I don’t have to. My colleague at work is grumpy. I don’t have to bite their head off and then regret. Regret it. I could hold back.

A Practical Meditation Plan

STEVEN BARTLETT: So you say meditation is the solution to many of the things we’ve talked about today, including the response versus reaction fork in the road. So if you were making a plan for me from this day onwards on how to implement meditation in my life, what would that plan look like?

GELONG THUBTEN: First of all, chuck all those things away.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Okay.

GELONG THUBTEN: All of this stuff on the desk, paraphernalia.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Okay? So on the desk, I have, like a sound healing bowl, some incense, some rings, some little. I don’t even know what these are.

GELONG THUBTEN: Yeah.

STEVEN BARTLETT: So we’re going to chuck all the paraphernalia.

GELONG THUBTEN: Away in the bin.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Okay. We’re bin. All of it. Okay. Let me.

GELONG THUBTEN: You know, you don’t need any equipment. There’s a lot of spiritual tat, isn’t there?

STEVEN BARTLETT: I mean, you said it.

GELONG THUBTEN: You know, it’s about you and your mind. It’s not about having little symbols and incense. And you don’t need it. And. Okay, what is the plan? The plan is to start with 10 minutes a day.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Okay.

GELONG THUBTEN: 10 minutes a day when ideally, morning.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Okay.

GELONG THUBTEN: Simply because you’re starting your day right and your cortisol level is highest. In the morning when you wake up, there’s a spike of cortisol. Bring it down with meditation.

STEVEN BARTLETT: So I get up, I check my emails, check my WhatsApp, then meditate. I’m joking, if you want. No, no. Tell me the optimal way you’re going to be My.

GELONG THUBTEN: Get up straight away and meditate.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Okay. Get up straight, meditate.

GELONG THUBTEN: Because you’re starting your day right, and 10 minutes is enough to start with. And the beauty of this is that they can show in brain scans that 10 minutes a day, after four days, there’ll be visible changes in your brain. So knowing that keeps you going because you think, okay, this literally is like weight training. I’m going to get muscle and what do I Do.

STEVEN BARTLETT: So I sit down somewhere?

The Meditation Process

GELONG THUBTEN: Yeah, you sit down and you’re going to focus on your breathing. But what I find really crucial is that you are not just launching yourself into it, you are introducing a bit of compassion into the process. And this is what elevates the meditation from being just a kind of brain gym into being something that takes you to a much more kind of like spiritual realm of it. And it connects in with what we were talking about earlier, about learning to be more compassionate to yourself and others. So you start with that intention.

So you start by just settling and sitting. You know, some people sit cross legged on the floor, but it’s also okay on a chair. But on the chair there should be some sense of posture, so you’re sitting up straight. And you would start with setting the intention. And I don’t mean an intention such as, oh, today I want this, I want that. It’s the bigger intention. Why am I meditating? I am meditating for, for not only myself, but for all living beings. I’m doing this for me and the world.

And I’m not trying to fool myself by thinking if I do my meditation, somehow wars will end or whatever. No, it’s more that if I do this, this will help me become more effective in the world and spread more love and compassion. So that’s the reason. So you’re setting that intention with your thinking for a few moments and then you’re going to start to be aware of yourself.

So, okay, so let’s just try this. So take a moment to set the intention of compassion, making the intention that you’re doing the practice for yourself and others. And now just become aware of your hands. Maybe your hands are resting on your knees or your legs and feel that there’s a lot of nerve endings in the fingers. So it’s easy to start here where you just feel the contact between your skin and your clothing. You’re aware of your hands resting on your legs.

Bring the focus up to your shoulders. Most of us have tense shoulders because we’re on our phone or behind a desk. So as you’re aware of your shoulders, the tension can just drop away. Bring your focus to the front of your body. Start to notice your breathing. The trick here is not to try to breathe or go into deep breathing, but just let your breath be natural and focus on the rising and falling of your chest or your belly with each breath. And when you realize your mind has wandered, gently come back to the breath.

Now you can make the focus more precise by feeling the air in your nose or your mouth. If you can breathe through your nose, then do that. Otherwise, the mouth and you’re sensing the air as it comes in and out of your nostrils or your lips. You can feel the air brushing against the skin at the edge of your nose or your mouth. And then you’ll realize your mind has gone somewhere, and you gently bring it back.

Okay, and to end the session, we’ll just do a short one for now. Take another moment to think about compassion. You’re dedicating your practice to freedom, compassion, and happiness for yourself and all beings. And stop there.

Avoiding Common Meditation Pitfalls

I mean, that was short, but it gives you an idea of the process. And one major warning is you trip yourself up if you try and think, well, did it go well? Partly because of the culture we’re in and how everything’s about sensation. I think we only think something’s working if it makes us feel something. And meditation’s very different.

You know, when I first started meditating, I described how I really hated it and found it really stressful. One thing I remember that happened to me was I started to do quite a lot of it because I thought, okay, I’m going to get into this thing and do it and become like a pro. And I was doing loads of it and finding it was making me feel more unhappy. And I was feeling this kind of sense of, like, sinking feeling in my chest. And I thought, you know, I’d struggled with depression. Anyway, I thought, it’s making me more depressed.

And I went to Rinpoche, my teacher, and I said, I’m doing loads of it. It’s making me depressed. He said, it’s nothing to do with. With the meditation. It’s how you are. He said, you’re a junkie. You’re using your meditation like a drug. I said, what do you mean? He said, well, I think you’re sitting 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, because I realized I’d been sitting there, like, getting addicted to it and thinking, okay, I’m going to do my meditation, right? I’ve done five minutes. Where’s the bliss? When am I going to feel good? And what he was trying to tell me is that if I’m trying to make myself feel good, I’m already coming from a place of lack. You know what I mean? I’m already saying to myself, I don’t feel good. So I’m actually promoting a sense of lack.

STEVEN BARTLETT: So how do we perceive the meditation then?

GELONG THUBTEN: If it’s not just give up judgment. Just do it.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Just do it.

GELONG THUBTEN: Just do it. And it’s not going well, going badly. I like it. I don’t like it. You just do it. And try to let go of quality control.

Overcoming Resistance to Silence

STEVEN BARTLETT: Quality. I really need to start doing it. My partner, she’s so great. She does every morning for, like, 20, 20, 30 minutes.

GELONG THUBTEN: So why didn’t you sit next to her?

STEVEN BARTLETT: She said this to me. What stops you and what stops me? Hmm.

GELONG THUBTEN: I mean, it’s there on tap. She’s doing it every morning. What’s stopping you sitting next to her?

STEVEN BARTLETT: I think. I think one of the things that comes to mind is how uncomfortable I feel in silence. And the idea of, like, silence and being.

GELONG THUBTEN: Because she’s there. Would you be okay? Better on your own then?

STEVEN BARTLETT: No, it’s just, like, silence with my own thoughts. I spend a lot of time trying to kind of not. I spend a lot of time trying to distract myself.

GELONG THUBTEN: Don’t we all? That’s. Welcome to the modern world.

STEVEN BARTLETT: I’m pretty extreme.

GELONG THUBTEN: Are you?

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah, I’m pretty extreme. So, like, if I go into the shower, I have to have something playing, something talking, a podcast. It could be the news, it could be YouTube. If I’m. No matter where I am, I always. Even when I go to sleep, I have to be listening to something. So my. I’ve, like, almost wired my brain in the opposite way where it’s. There’s always something.

GELONG THUBTEN: Yeah. I went through a phase where I couldn’t eat unless I was also watching something.

STEVEN BARTLETT: I mean. Yeah, I mean, I do that. I can’t multitasking unless there’s something playing.

GELONG THUBTEN: But that’s why meditation’s perfect for you.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah, I know. Tell me about that.

GELONG THUBTEN: Because this is giving you a way to find a different way to experience yourself.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah.

GELONG THUBTEN: I mean, you know, you. I’m sure you exercise.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah.

GELONG THUBTEN: So you go to the gym, and that’s challenging. And you’re pushing your muscles, and there’s a kind of, like, there’s an effort required.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Do you know what it is?

GELONG THUBTEN: Same thing.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Same thing with the gym. I know that if I go, my muscles are going to grow. I’m going to be stronger, I’m going to be healthier, happier, all those things. And because I’ve never done meditation, I don’t actually have evidence of the upside.

GELONG THUBTEN: Just have a brain scan after four days and you’ll see.

The Practical Benefits of Meditation

STEVEN BARTLETT: That’s why I asked you the question about you before and you after.

GELONG THUBTEN: Yeah.

STEVEN BARTLETT: What is the difference? And if whoever’s listening to this right now, can you Give them a before and after picture of how their life will be practically different if they implement just 10 minutes a day meditating.

GELONG THUBTEN: Okay? So I find it really inspiring to know that there are visible changes in the brain scan after four days. You don’t necessarily feel those changes, but knowing that gives you faith and confidence. Just like, you know if you eat healthy food, your body will improve, your health will improve. So knowing that is a good thing in terms of seeing the results.

Everybody’s different. You can’t draw a graph. You can’t say if you do X amount of days, you will reach this level of calm or focus. But what happens is, as you start to meditate, after a few days or weeks, you just start to feel you can handle stuff better. So for me, my main practice is very much connected. What I was talking about before with trying to sit with discomfort and stop pushing it away. And that’s a total revolution in my life. I was always on the run, always.

Understanding the Mind as the Source

STEVEN BARTLETT: I think we fail to realize that actually our entire human experience is just in our minds. Does that make sense, what I’m trying to say there? Because I’m there asking you about, like, what’s the upside of this? Whatever. But it’s falling into the trap of not realizing that everything I will experience today is actually formed in my own mind.

GELONG THUBTEN: That’s the whole reason for meditation, is to know that everything is dependent on your mind.

STEVEN BARTLETT: The good and the bad, everything.

GELONG THUBTEN: So instead of being so obsessed with the details of what’s going on. Go to the source. Yeah, go to the source. The projector rather than the movie. Go to the source and change that and transform that and work on that.

Personal Transformation Through Practice

STEVEN BARTLETT: So how has your projector changed in the last 30 years?

GELONG THUBTEN: I’m definitely a happier person. I’m definitely more at peace with myself. That negative voice doesn’t come up, you know, that self hatred is really kind of like. What’s the word? Kind of like, yeah, gone away. And I’m happier. And I’ve got. I feel so, so lucky to have tools that I know I can use when I’m suffering.

You know, for the last few years, I’ve suffered quite a lot of ill health because I had really, really severe Covid right at the start of the pandemic. And it did something to my heart and my lungs. And since then, I’ve had. You could call it long Covid. You could call it heart, lung damage, whatever. So I live with kind of levels of illness that are hard to deal with, but this practice is something I can do. I can Sit there with an ill body and send love into that body and feel kind of okay.

So it’s made me stronger, and I can function better than before. But, you know, the other thing is I don’t really care. I don’t really care whether it’s working or not, because I trust it. And I’m just going to keep going. And I’m in for the long game. I’m just going to keep going.

The Monastic Path

STEVEN BARTLETT: You signed a lifelong vow.

GELONG THUBTEN: I did. I have taken vows to be a monk for my life.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Why?

GELONG THUBTEN: When I put the robes on, I felt every. I felt every cell in my body click. I mean, it sounds a bit weird, but it just felt like that. I felt all my cells fall into place. I just felt really. This is. Is. This is really right for me. I think it’s what I’d been looking for all along, is a way of working with my mind. I’m not really interested in religion. I’m not really interested in faith, but I’m really interested in the mind. And being a monk has given me this opportunity to work on my mind, but also an opportunity to be of some use in the world, like some help to others.

The Ongoing Journey

STEVEN BARTLETT: So, okay, let me challenge this a little bit in terms of how I imagine someone listening might respond. They go, okay, so you went through this process. You worked on your mind. Now you’ve worked on your mind. No.

GELONG THUBTEN: No working. It’s not over.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Okay.

GELONG THUBTEN: Total work in progress.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And this is part of the misconception is someone will listen and say, well, you’ve worked on your mind now, so go live now.

GELONG THUBTEN: No, it’s an ongoing process. I’m still a mess. I’m still a mess, but I’m okay with being a mess. That is a huge difference, is that I still get stressed, I still get upset, but I’m really gentle with myself in a way that I never knew how to be. I was always. You’re so disgusting. What’s wrong with you? You should be ashamed of yourself. That’s gone now. I’m okay with myself. And that is happiness. That really has made me happier. So for me, it’s not about, oh, you’ve done it, and now it’s ongoing.

STEVEN BARTLETT: What is the most important thing we didn’t talk about that we should have talked about as it relates to the suffering that. That my viewers are probably experiencing in their own life.

The Missing Link: From Interest to Action

GELONG THUBTEN: You know, what’s missing always is, we can talk about this stuff, but are we going to do it? And what’s really missing for so many people is they will listen to this episode or they will read a book about meditation or see a video, and it all sounds great, but then we get busy and forget to do it. What’s missing for everybody is the doing it.

How do we jump from being interested in something to actually doing it? I mean, there’s a joke which is the definition of a Buddhist is somebody who’s either meditating or feeling bad that they’re not meditating. And that is it, isn’t it? It’s a bit like exercise. We know we should be doing it.

So for me, the missing link is people try and force themselves to meditate because they know it’s good for them, and then it’s a hopeless process. They won’t do it because it becomes another should on the to do list. I think the only way to become really enthusiastic about doing it every day is to really think about it and realize that it will give you what you were looking for anyway.

From the coffee, the drugs, the alcohol, the sex, the whatever it is you’re into, whatever we’re looking for out there, meditation, it was happiness, it was freedom, it was release. The only place you can find that is in your mind, because going down those roads is just taking you further into needing more.

So I think the thinking process that helps people meditate every day is to think about how it will give you what you were looking for anyway. And then you want to do it. Then you feel like, oh, okay. We have no sense of exhaustion when it comes to chasing our addictions, do we? So imagine if we could meditate with that kind of energy.

Starting with Meditation Retreats

STEVEN BARTLETT: I often think maybe I need to go do some kind of meditation retreat as well, just to get me sort of started and just have someone there with me who can help me think through some of these things.

GELONG THUBTEN: That can be a good thing just to get started. It doesn’t have to be four years a weekend, three days, five days, two days. That can be a good thing. And that’s why Buddhist centers are good places, because they offer that. And there’s never a kind of, you’ve got a sign along the dotted line and say, I’m now a Buddhist. We’re so not interested in converting people to Buddhism. Yeah, go to a retreat.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Is Buddhism growing? Yeah, I imagine it is in the modern world.

GELONG THUBTEN: You know why it’s growing? It’s because it doesn’t. It doesn’t try to attract followers. And because of that, it grows interesting.

The Modern Mental Health Crisis

STEVEN BARTLETT: And also because of everything else that’s just going on in the world at the moment, with people feeling more isolated, lonely, purposeless depression, suicidality, all of these things. We’re seeing it a lot, especially in young men as well. The stats around young men and their suicidal ideation and their feelings of purposelessness and their loneliness stats are worse than women’s as well.

GELONG THUBTEN: But I think, yes, the way the world is with all of these challenges and negative things at the same time, what’s hugely growing in modern culture is people getting more interested in their own minds. There are more and more people going for psychotherapy, counseling, meditation, any kind of discipline that helps us to understand our minds better. That interest is growing.

So we’re in a really exciting phase in history where people are wanting to transform their minds, wanting to take control of consciousness.

STEVEN BARTLETT: It’s because we’ve had something fail us.

GELONG THUBTEN: Maybe we’re waking up to realizing that the system hasn’t worked for us. We’ve created a kind of gilded cage for ourselves, this beautiful material world that is also running out of resources. So it’s not going to be able to serve us much longer if we carry on abusing the planet. So we have created our own prison, and now we’re looking for or the way out.

The Buddha Within

STEVEN BARTLETT: Turns out it wasn’t the individualism and the materialism after all. Maybe it was always there inside us.

GELONG THUBTEN: That’s. Buddhism would say that we are Buddha within. We all have a sleeping Buddha within us. And we have potential. We have great capacity for awakening, great capacity to help others. It’s just like a crystal covered in layers and layers and layers of mud, and we need to clear the mud away.

Expressing Love and Appreciation

STEVEN BARTLETT: We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest, not knowing who they’ve left it for? And the question that has been left for you. What are the ways that you express your love and appreciation for people who matter to you in your personal or professional life?

GELONG THUBTEN: I don’t do this very well all the time, but I try to be there for them when they’re going through a hard time, because I used to find it really scary and I’d run 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 there with other people when they’re uncomfortable and not judge. I try that. I. I’m sure I fail a lot, but I try.

STEVEN BARTLETT: A friend of mine described that as sitting in the mud with them. Yeah, yeah, we often try and fix.

GELONG THUBTEN: And correct and yeah, I see myself trying to do that, give advice, whatever. It’s not about that. It’s about being with the person being with them without judging them.

Final Thoughts and Encouragement

STEVEN BARTLETT: Thank you so much for what you do. You’ve got these incredible books which I’m going to recommend everybody. Check out both Sunday Times bestsellers, I Believe and A Monk’s Guide to meditation in the 21st century. And this book is called Handbook for Hard Times, A Monk’s Guide to Fearless Living.

I think that your message is more important now than it’s ever been because there’s. I mean, much of the reason why I’ve probably stumbled across Buddhism is for the same reasons that many people are, which is it feels intuitively like the answers we’ve been given in the way of life that we’re all living is failing us in some way. And we know that we can feel it inside ourselves.

But the answers that we see to as antidotes to that feeling aren’t much better all the time. And again, often they’re about self or it’s about join this group of people that are doing this sort of thing over here, or there’s this religious group that you can join. But actually Buddhism offers us an alternative approach, which is to go inside ourselves and to alleviate ourselves from the suffering that we’ve self imposed by understanding that maybe the answers we were looking for were inside the whole time.

And I’m so glad that people like you do podcasts like this because that you’re getting the message out there into the world. And it’s a message that I think is so unbelievably important. And I think maybe, maybe, just maybe, maybe you’ve persuaded me today to just give it a shot.

GELONG THUBTEN: Yeah.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And that’s the hard thing. Cause it’s good enough. It’s all well enough knowing about something. But then what will I do tomorrow morning?

GELONG THUBTEN: When you sit there tomorrow morning and your mind starts racing, whatever you do, don’t feel like you failed. Just remind yourself that the thoughts actually make your meditation stronger. Because if coming back to the breath is what you’re trying to do, you have to have somewhere to come back from. The thought that took you away is exactly what brings you back. So bring it on. The more thoughts, the better.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Okay. Thank you. I’m so appreciative of you. And thank you for spreading the words that you’re spreading. Because as I said, you’re going to be saving a lot of people from a lot of pain and suffering, but also giving them an alternative approach to sitting with it with compassion. So thank you.

GELONG THUBTEN: Thank you. It’s really lovely to spend time with you.

Related Posts

• Transcript: Health Hacker Tim Ferriss on The Diary Of A CEO Podcast
• Transcript: How to Rewrite Your Negative Thoughts – Alain de Botton on Modern Wisdom
• Transcript: How to Use AI to Make Money, Save Time, and Be More Productive: Allie K. Miller
• Neuroscientist Emily McDonald on Jay Shetty Podcast (Transcript)
• Vulnerability Expert Brené Brown on Diary Of A CEO Podcast (Transcript)