A BUDDHIST MONK’S HONEST ADVICE ON LETTING GO & INNER PEACE

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:00]Anxiety is pointless completely, isn't it?

[00:00:03]Getting anxious about things.

[00:00:04]You know, if you've got a problem and you get stressed or anxious, it's not going to make it easier to deal with the problem.

[00:00:09]Whenever you're upset, you freeze it in time, don't you?

[00:00:13]All you have to do is let go of it.

[00:00:15]So what we need to do is to learn to let go of things.

[00:00:17]And as you let go of more and more of this, you just start feeling That happiness was there all along.

[00:00:28]Welcome Gen Kelsang Chokyong.

[00:00:30]Thank you for coming today.

[00:00:32]Yeah, hi Agnes And now I know that you're from Wales, right?

[00:00:36]Yes, but don't hold that against me.

[00:00:38]No, no, not against you.

[00:00:39]But uh how did you get into Dharma in Uh this is quite a funny story I uh I decided I wanted to uh study something without exams.

[00:00:50]This is backfired quite badly.

[00:00:53]So I s I started going to night classes and um The first one was poetry, which was okay.

[00:01:00]Philosophy I didn't like.

[00:01:01]Then I was coming home drunk.

[00:01:04]Um eating a kebab and it was raining so I sheltered in a butcher shop doorway and there was a flyer for Dharma classes.

[00:01:13]So I thought, well, I don't know anything about Buddhism Another nine weeks of this be quite nice.

[00:01:20]And uh I went to the first class and the teacher said, if you don't develop patience, you'll never be happy.

[00:01:26]And I thought Pooh, that's true.

[00:01:29]Just get angry.

[00:01:30]In the second week he said, if you like people they make you happy.

[00:01:33]If you dislike people they make you unhappy.

[00:01:36]If you love people they make you very happy.

[00:01:38]And if you hate people they make you very unhappy And I thought, why hasn't anyone told me this?

[00:01:44]And then I kept going to classes for a bit.

[00:01:47]And I was still going out drinking and eating kebabs.

[00:01:50]So uh I thought this has got to change somehow.

[00:01:53]So I moved to Tara Center. and um came under the care of Gen-la Kelsang Khyenrab.

[00:02:00]That's fantastic.

[00:02:01]And how many how many years ago that was?

[00:02:04]Twenty nine, yeah.

[00:02:06]Twenty-nine.

[00:02:06]And how did you nine weeks?

[00:02:11]Twenty-nine years later, you're still here.

[00:02:13]What kept you going?

[00:02:15]You know, uh I think one of the things that I found is you watch your friends going down different routes and you watch their lives being really unsatisfying and falling apart.

[00:02:25]And when I first got ordained my father didn't like it, and yet all these friends were successful children.

[00:02:32]But then they all got stressed, had nervous breakdowns, their marriages fell apart, and finally he said to me, I think you made a good decision But you look around the world, you know, on the surface it looks like there's a lot of things, but gradually you just watch it all fall apart. And I watched all these young people with wonderful careers and then you watch them getting old and sick and you think there's nothing out there.

[00:02:58]Well, Buddha says this and you don't believe him, you have to find out from your own experience.

[00:03:03]You have to mix your own life with what Buddha's saying.

[00:03:06]Just like in the play Buddha's father's cross and when he gets older he realizes the Buddha was right.

[00:03:12]And my father is the same.

[00:03:15]And what Buddha was right about?

[00:03:17]that there's nothing out there in this world that's gonna make you happy.

[00:03:21]And also you have to meditate, isn't it?

[00:03:24]I I I found that There's lots and lots of things blocking your happiness.

[00:03:28]One is judging people all the time, which we're doing all the time, getting irritated.

[00:03:33]And as you let go of more and more of this, you just start feeling that happiness was there all along.

[00:03:39]We just couldn't see it.

[00:03:41]But it's very, very alluring, isn't it?

[00:03:43]You see if you've got you've just come out of university, you've got a good job, it's very easy to get pulled into this So for years I struggled with this 'cause I liked my career and giving it up.

[00:03:55]And then I did something which was really useful.

[00:03:58]I meditated on what it would have been really like rather than what I was imagining.

[00:04:02]And I lost my attachment.

[00:04:04]What do you mean how well you start thinking oh I'll be great, it'll be fantastic, I'll I'll enjoy myself so much.

[00:04:10]Then you start thinking, no won't, I'll be waking up thinking, oh, I've got to go to work And you'd be sitting in a room with some people you don't particularly like eating your sandwiches and it's just very mundane and boring.

[00:04:21]But you know, in in your dreams and your imagination these bad, boring things don't happen.

[00:04:27]So you have to I uh again Gen Chodor from Canada he said to me, attachment doesn't see consequences.

[00:04:34]Mm-hmm and when he said that I was so chilled by that.

[00:04:37]I thought I have to put consequences in my mind. So what you do is you sit there and you think if I do this, this will be the consequence.

[00:04:44]And most people don't, they think, oh it'll be great.

[00:04:47]It it's never worked for anyone else, but it'll work for me. So you have to sit and think.

[00:04:52]And when you look at the consequences, you it's often quite easy.

[00:04:55]You just think, I'm not gonna do that because it's not gonna make me happy.

[00:04:59]But we have to work at that because our mind It doesn't really want to see this.

[00:05:03]Yeah.

[00:05:04]It just wants everything to end happily.

[00:05:06]But uh how how did you make a connection with those consequences?

[00:05:09]Was it like natural for you that You just receive this instruction and all of a sudden you're doing this or take your practice?

[00:05:15]When Gen Chodor said this, it just chilled me.

[00:05:22]Uh, but I had been struggling thinking.

[00:05:25]I never struggled with the idea of being ordained, but I struggled with letting go of my career.

[00:05:29]And I thought, um When I started thinking about what it was really like, it was easy.

[00:05:35]You just start thinking, if you start living in reality, things are quite easy, but we live in fantasy world most of the time.

[00:05:42]And it doesn't help, does it?

[00:05:44]Denying the truth doesn't help because it's still there.

[00:05:48]It doesn't go away because you don't believe in it. So mean you mean that we are living in the contrast of what we would like l our life to be?

[00:05:56]Yeah.

[00:05:57]Creating the fantasy versus what the reality is.

[00:06:00]Yeah. I mean the classic one is uh people thinking that they're gonna find something that's gonna make you happy.

[00:06:07]Like, uh, I'm really miserable now, but never mind, in three months' time I'm gonna upgrade my phone and everything's gonna be fine then.

[00:06:14]And it's not. And the biggest one is relationship, isn't there?

[00:06:18]You're gonna meet someone and all these problems are gonna go away and they're not even if you meet the person you like, you're still gonna quarrel.

[00:06:26]You're still gonna get fed up.

[00:06:28]All my friends that are happily married have got to a point where the marriage is almost broken.

[00:06:34]And then later on they've settled down into a happy marriage.

[00:06:38]But um if you want to enjoy yourself, you've got to meditate and train your mind.

[00:06:43]Why is that?

[00:06:45]Because your mind's in a mess and what it's doing is just projecting a lot of nonsense onto the world and you believe in it.

[00:06:51]So what we have to do really is understand that If we meet the you know, in that first teaching I was telling about on patience, the teacher said, You see someone and you think you are horrible and if you weren't there I'd be happy.

[00:07:03]But one of the things I learned is there's lots and lots of things that can provoke me.

[00:07:08]It's not just that one person.

[00:07:10]And what's happening is my sensitivity and my mind. So the more sensitive I am, the more upset I'm gonna get.

[00:07:16]But people don't realise this.

[00:07:17]They think that I'm normal and you are behaving unreasonably.

[00:07:22]So we have to realise that it's our mind that's causing it And some people someone said to me before, I'm not sure who, that if you're very, very angry, you can't see this.

[00:07:32]You can't see that you've got a problem.

[00:07:34]All you can see is horrible, awkward people.

[00:07:37]Whereas if um if you've got a little bit of patience, you might start thinking, well, maybe I'm contributing to this situation a bit.

[00:07:44]And as you get more patient, you realise this is true.

[00:07:47]Uh it's only when you start shedding things you actually see just so much damage it was doing to your happiness and peace.

[00:07:56]And how our mind is doing this?

[00:07:58]Well, Buddha said we have delusions, which are distorted ways of thinking, and the delusion sits there until something triggers it.

[00:08:07]And it can be a person or a situation, something we don't like, and then we give it too much attention.

[00:08:13]He called it inappropriate attention.

[00:08:15]So, you know, you sit there.

[00:08:17]There was a wonderful story by Chekhov about uh a man sitting opposite someone on a l long boat journey And because the boat journey was so unpleasant, he was getting to hate this man more and more.

[00:08:30]He didn't know anything about this man.

[00:08:32]He was just getting very, very irritated and thinking it's you, it's your fault. And that's what we do.

[00:08:38]If our mind's unpeaceful, we find something to blame.

[00:08:41]Or we find something we think that's gonna rescue us.

[00:08:45]We think, Oh yeah.

[00:08:46]Like th this thing about the phone, isn't it?

[00:08:48]People really do think that when they upgrade their phone Everything's gonna be fine.

[00:08:53]It's just a bit of plastic.

[00:08:55]But it's inappropriate attention, isn't it?

[00:08:58]Thinking that that phone can provide more than it can.

[00:09:01]And also when we see something that annoys us, we think this person is evil.

[00:09:07]But the person's just maybe done something a bit irritating.

[00:09:10]Your mind's filled in a lot of this.

[00:09:13]But you know, we hear the teaching and it's quite good if you can see it in your own life.

[00:09:18]Yeah.

[00:09:18]Yeah.

[00:09:18]I thought 'cause when I heard that teaching, I was a student.

[00:09:22]And I watched all these professors shouting and screaming all day and I thought, this is what I heard in the Buddhist class last night.

[00:09:29]These people are supposed to be clever.

[00:09:31]And they I'm supposed to be modeling myself on these people, but no, they don't know how to make themselves happy.

[00:09:38]I think Geshe-la says that, isn't it?

[00:09:40]People don't know how to make themselves happy. So that's a lot what meditation's about is learning what's caught what's making you unhappy what and what you can do about it.

[00:09:49]So how how our mind works?

[00:09:52]Ooh, nice easy question then, isn't it?

[00:09:55]Yeah.

[00:09:56]Well your mind and your brain are different things.

[00:10:00]And um I found the more you look at your mind, the more you can see that it's different to your brain.

[00:10:05]Mhm.

[00:10:06]When you start working with your mind, it's quite surprising because we have this delusion called self grasping ignorance.

[00:10:12]We grasp at ourself.

[00:10:14]I'm sorry, sorry, I'm try I'll tell you why I'm laughing in a minute, because uh we grasp at ourself as supremely important and fixed and we can't change. And it means that because we think we're so important, we think everything we do is right and everyone else is wrong.

[00:10:29]And that's why I'm laughing, because this is what you come up against.

[00:10:32]with yourself and other people.

[00:10:34]So we need to erode this delusion.

[00:10:37]It causes all our suffering.

[00:10:39]Grasping tightly, getting angry, getting upset, blaming other people.

[00:10:43]And um we can do something about it.

[00:10:46]But you have to start showing yourself that it works.

[00:10:50]Doesn't it?

[00:10:50]You know, it's But what's the point of letting go of that?

[00:10:53]Because you're letting go of suffering.

[00:10:55]Say for instance, um, I said to you, uh say I called you a stupid name.

[00:11:00]I s I I think you're horrible at something like this.

[00:11:03]And you sit there thinking, what a horrible person.

[00:11:06]I hate you.

[00:11:07]I'm really upset.

[00:11:08]I'm really damaged.

[00:11:09]You can just think I don't have to listen to this.

[00:11:13]Chokyong's an idiot.

[00:11:17]Or you can hold on to it and cause yourself immense pain.

[00:11:20]And this is where wars and everything comes from.

[00:11:24]People get a bad feeling.

[00:11:25]They grasp onto it as inherently existent and then they don't feel they can change it.

[00:11:31]All quarrels upset.

[00:11:33]Whenever you're upset, you freeze it in time.

[00:11:36]all you have to do is let go of it.

[00:11:38]So what we need to do is to learn to let go of things.

[00:11:41]That lots of our courses are called learning to let go.

[00:11:44]Mm-hmm and sometimes people say this outside Buddhism.

[00:11:48]They say you need to let go of this You can see that this is the big problem, isn't it?

[00:11:52]People can't let go of things.

[00:11:54]If someone upsets you and you can let go of it, it's only a minute.

[00:11:57]If you can't let go of it, it can be the rest of your life.

[00:12:00]I knew a man once and um he quarreled with his brother because his brother didn't come to the mother's funeral and they never made friends and they're both dead now.

[00:12:11]It's very sad, isn't it?

[00:12:13]Mm-hmm.

[00:12:13]And also in in marriages is where a lot of the tension comes.

[00:12:17]I'm right and you were wrong.

[00:12:19]And there can be these simmering resentments for years and years.

[00:12:23]And I I find it really sad.

[00:12:24]If you're gonna marry someone and live with them for twenty years, it's a terrible shame if you hate them but you still live with them.

[00:12:31]So it's just understanding that we can make our life much better.

[00:12:34]We don't have to get perfect people.

[00:12:36]We need to change our mind.

[00:12:38]Mm-hmm.

[00:12:40]So by chang by changing our mind we're letting go of suffering.

[00:12:44]Yeah, you're changing people as well.

[00:12:46]Mm-hmm.

[00:12:46]When when I started teaching the book how to transform your life, this man came up to me after and he said I love that book, How to Transform Your Wife The silly thought I'd said.

[00:12:57]And I said, Well, you can transform your wife.

[00:12:59]If you're bad tempered, you'll have a horrible wife, and if you've got a caring, compassionate mind, you'll have a nice wife But what we're thinking is that this wife is fixed from their own side, isn't it?

[00:13:12]They're horrible and I have to change them.

[00:13:14]I have to shout at them until they're forced to comply with my wishes.

[00:13:19]Yeah.

[00:13:19]But it's just not understanding that your mind is involved in this process.

[00:13:24]That's one of the greatest things I found the Buddha said.

[00:13:27]You know, you can change these situations by how you view them.

[00:13:32]But isn't then letting go in this way um allowing people to mistreat us?

[00:13:38]Well you can let go and then tell them off You know, um one of the things you can do is with a calm, peaceful mind, you can say no.

[00:13:46]Which is what parents do all the time, isn't it?

[00:13:48]Their children think that they're angry, but they're telling them to stop misbehaving because they don't want them to suffer. And what I find is that when you tell people off and they can see you're not angry, they respect you.

[00:14:02]When you're angry, people don't respect you when you do this.

[00:14:06]And if you realize you have to improve yourself to be happy, you won't want to let other people misbehave.

[00:14:12]You'd be thinking what you're doing is gonna cause you suffering.

[00:14:15]So instead of being annoyed with you I need to tell you to stop doing that because I don't want you to suffer.

[00:14:21]So you get the same result, but you don't get upset.

[00:14:24]Mm-hmm.

[00:14:25]I mean, one of the things you find is the happier you are, the harder it is for people to upset you. If if you know if you're tense and anxious, whoever you're with is going to trigger that.

[00:14:37]But if you're happy, it's much harder to upset a happy person.

[00:14:40]I know that sounds obvious. But it's not obvious to most people, isn't it?

[00:14:44]But how can we how can we become that person?

[00:14:46]Because you know, some people are not born with the predisposition predisposition to be happy.

[00:14:52]No, well that's why we train our mind.

[00:14:54]I mean the wonderful thing about your mind is you can put things into it that aren't there, like compassion and love, and you can take out bad things.

[00:15:03]So I remember, you know, my sister bought a house and she did the house up and I thought, well it's the same with your mind, isn't it?

[00:15:09]Mm-hmm.

[00:15:10]I don't like that bit, so I'll take that bit out.

[00:15:12]I'll build a new bit here.

[00:15:14]It's hard for us to believe this because we grasp strongly at ourselves.

[00:15:18]We think this is me and I can't change.

[00:15:21]And I think people only really believe this when they see themselves change. So do you think is Buddhism relevant to modern society?

[00:15:29]Oh yeah.

[00:15:29]It's getting more relevant by the minute because modern society people are getting more and more anxious.

[00:15:36]I even had people come into the meditation class saying I was enjoying that meditation until in the middle I got anxious that I was gonna lose the nice feeling.

[00:15:44]You know, peop you know, anxiety is pointless completely, isn't it?

[00:15:49]Getting anxious about things.

[00:15:51]Uh one of the things I learnt uh straight away about not getting anxious is that it makes things worse.

[00:15:56]You know, if you've got a problem and you get stressed or anxious, it's not going to make it easier to deal with the problem.

[00:16:02]Mm-hmm.

[00:16:03]So it's good, isn't it?

[00:16:04]'Cause a lot of people don't know this. they think if I get stressed it'll help.

[00:16:09]So it's really lovely to have that pointed out to you that it'd be better not to.

[00:16:13]And I found people like this and say, you know When things are going wrong, you need your wits about you.

[00:16:18]You need not to be stressed and anxious.

[00:16:21]And um well that that just that line itself is gonna change people's lives.

[00:16:26]So we have to have this drill into us a bit You know, we have to meditate.

[00:16:31]You can't just tell people this.

[00:16:32]You know, we've got to actually assimilate it deeply into our mind.

[00:16:37]Because we do what our mind says, and if we put something deep in our mind and it talks to us, we listen.

[00:16:44]But what my mind says, I listen to it, however stupid it is.

[00:16:49]So we've got to put things in there that are worth listening to really.

[00:16:52]And that that that's effectively to me what meditation means really.

[00:16:56]Yeah.

[00:16:57]And uh how, for example Is is Buddhism relevant to young people these days?

[00:17:05]Well, I would say that it's probably critical because you know when you're young and your mind's quite plastic and you're growing up you can get yourself into re you know, like most young people are anxious now and they're very, very affected by the world.

[00:17:21]So they need this more than anything.

[00:17:24]And loads of parents phone me up and they say, Can I bring my children to the class?

[00:17:28]And they often bring the children 'cause the children are quite disturbed or they've um Got a lot of anxiety.

[00:17:35]You know, people are so worried about what other people think.

[00:17:38]And it's quite nice to have teachings just to realize that other people aren't thinking about you.

[00:17:45]Uh oh, and things like this.

[00:17:47]So th the problem is attracting the young people, but um I think, you know, that they that's the best time to get it really, isn't it?

[00:17:55]Mm.

[00:17:55]Before you start getting these big problems come in.

[00:17:59]And how how would uh Buddhist teachings help?

[00:18:04]Well, I remember once these this school came to the Buddhist center and they were all about to go to university.

[00:18:10]So I gave this talk and in a piece.

[00:18:13]And the teacher said, Well that wasn't much use.

[00:18:15]They're all going to go to university.

[00:18:16]They don't want inner peace.

[00:18:17]So he said, Can you give me something in a nutshell?

[00:18:20]So I said, Well if you train your mind you'll make better friendships.

[00:18:23]If you could concentrate, it'll be easier to pass your exams And you won't get so stressed.

[00:18:27]And he said, Oh, that was great.

[00:18:29]So, you know, I wasted about an hour talking to these kids.

[00:18:33]But I think you've got to actually understand what makes them tick.

[00:18:37]There's a monk lives here called Norbu and we did back-to-back teachings and my first teaching in the school was on in a piece and they weren't interested. And then his teaching was fantastic.

[00:18:48]He came out and he said, You all like to be cool, don't you?

[00:18:51]Mm-hmm. And they all said yes.

[00:18:52]And he said, Well there's nothing cool about getting angry and getting upset. And he taught them in a piece through coolness.

[00:18:58]And they were all I was sitting at the back of the class and they were all on the edge of their chair watching him.

[00:19:03]It's just trying to make them realise it's what they need.

[00:19:07]'Cause some people come to classes say, I I don't this isn't for me, it is for everyone.

[00:19:13]It's just you've got to help people realise it's for them.

[00:19:15]Mm-hmm.

[00:19:16]Because when they say it's not for them, they're wrong.

[00:19:18]Why?

[00:19:19]Well, one woman came to the class and she said, This inner peace and compassion isn't for me.

[00:19:25]Well, inner peace is for everyone, isn't it?

[00:19:27]Unless you particularly want to just be bad tempered for the rest of your life.

[00:19:32]Isn't it?

[00:19:33]You know, happiness.

[00:19:34]It's like saying happiness is not for me.

[00:19:36]You know, it's um but you know it's it's it's a problem that most people have, particularly in consumer society, a lot of people are worried about getting bigger cars and better houses and things and they think that's gonna make them happy.

[00:19:52]The wonderful thing.

[00:19:53]I I I'm convinced now that that's not true.

[00:19:56]I'm happier than I've ever been and I have very little compared to what I had before. Mm-hmm.

[00:20:01]And this is what's missing in the world.

[00:20:03]People are going on Facebook, seeing other people who appear to be more successful than them and thinking I'm dreadful, I'm useless.

[00:20:12]that's something we can really help young people with.

[00:20:15]Yeah.

[00:20:15]You know, just comparing themselves to other people and making mistakes, isn't it?

[00:20:20]You know, there's some horrible things on Facebook.

[00:20:22]I saw something the other day, uh a newspaper article prettiness up.

[00:20:28]You get this up and it tells you how pretty you are.

[00:20:30]No way.

[00:20:31]So you're 70% pretty but your chin's too small and your overall face symmetry is bad. And these twelve year old girls have got wish lists for plastic surgery.

[00:20:41]But at the age of twelve, no wonder your chin's too small, it hasn't stopped growing.

[00:20:45]Mm-hmm.

[00:20:46]But people believe this.

[00:20:48]What we need is to have some confidence to think I am fine, but that doesn't mean there aren't bits of me that need sorting out.

[00:20:55]You know, yeah.

[00:20:56]So you mean to identify with the idea, confident idea that I'm fine, but there are things that I have to work on.

[00:21:03]Yeah, that's right.

[00:21:04]Yeah.

[00:21:04]I mean, if if you find some faults in you, you can think Buddha points these faults out and you might think, Oh, I'm so dreadful but Buddha pointed this out two thousand six hundred years ago.

[00:21:16]So he's not targeting me.

[00:21:20]Everyone people were like that then, so you can just think I'm just like another person.

[00:21:24]So I don't need to blame myself, but also I've got these techniques for sorting it out.

[00:21:29]So I'm like everyone else, so there's no point comparing myself or worrying, but I can fix it.

[00:21:36]Instead of thinking I'm mortally damaged, there's nothing I can do.

[00:21:39]I'm such a dreadful person, which is what people do all the time, isn't it?

[00:21:43]You know, they imagine all sorts and you know you think nobody likes me.

[00:21:49]Nobody's thinking about you.

[00:21:50]There was a thing in the newspaper for new students.

[00:21:53]They could write into the newspaper and say what they were scared about.

[00:21:56]And one of them said, I'm scared nobody will like me. And the journalist said, Nobody will be paying any attention to you.

[00:22:02]They'll all be worrying about whether people like them.

[00:22:04]And this is the world, isn't it?

[00:22:06]And one of the things that I found I come from South Wales and people from South Wales talk a lot and they just go up to anyone and talk to them.

[00:22:15]So as a monk, that's what I do.

[00:22:17]I just go and talk to everyone. And I've just found that all you have to do for people to like you is be nice to them and don't show off.

[00:22:25]But all these people are trying to impress people by showing off and worrying about what people think.

[00:22:29]All you have to do is be nice to people And um people really don't like show ups.

[00:22:36]So Buddhism is true.

[00:22:38]Yeah.

[00:22:39]Yeah.

[00:22:39]Yeah.

[00:22:40]But we've got to find that out.

[00:22:41]It was true when I discovered it, but I didn't believe a lot of it was true.

[00:22:45]You know, uh Geshe-la says that Buddhism can't be separate from your life.

[00:22:50]I think you have to mix it with your life and you learn a lot of things through your own experience.

[00:22:55]You know, just being told it isn't enough, but you learn it.

[00:22:58]And you learn a lot by your mistakes as well.

[00:23:01]Yeah.

[00:23:02]Have you ever made the mistakes?

[00:23:05]I'm continuously making mistakes, yeah.

[00:23:07]Do you have any examples?

[00:23:09]Um ones that I can use in this podcast.

[00:23:13]Well, I mean the the general the general mistake of thinking that I'm right and other people are wrong, thinking it's right to get angry, it's right to be jealous.

[00:23:21]Um this is just like daily it's like breathing oxygen, isn't it?

[00:23:26]At some level Our job really is not to worry too much about the mistakes, but actually to identify them and do something about them.

[00:23:34]Mm-hmm.

[00:23:34]The biggest problem is if we don't think they're mistakes, that's a much bigger problem.

[00:23:39]Making mistakes is fine 'cause What I found is making mistakes is one of the things that's helped me develop.

[00:23:46]Um, when I make a mistake and I think I'm not doing that again, I can't possibly s upset someone like that again.

[00:23:53]And it's very positive.

[00:23:54]If you think I'm a bad person because I've upset this person, it's not very useful.

[00:23:58]But if it stops you doing it again.

[00:24:01]Uh it's very and that's why we need some confidence.

[00:24:04]We need to think, I messed up then, but I'm gonna learn from it.

[00:24:08]And I I've learned a lot from my mistakes.

[00:24:11]In fact I think without mistakes I wouldn't have learned very much at all Do you think there is a pressure on you, uh being a Buddhist monk, not to make mistakes?

[00:24:20]Depends on whether you p uh the pressure's coming from yourself.

[00:24:22]I'm not a p I'm not prepared to let people put that pressure on me.

[00:24:25]If they want to do it, they can go off and do it to someone else.

[00:24:28]It's nonsense.

[00:24:29]But I think some of the teachers, some of the Gen-las have said that when people leave Buddhism and things or they get stressed, they're usually doing it to themselves.

[00:24:38]Mm-hmm.

[00:24:38]You know, people say to me often that I've got so much compassion that it exhausts me.

[00:24:47]I remember one day I was I was really tired.

[00:24:50]I it was a mandala retreat.

[00:24:52]I had my practice, the mandala retreat and all these other things.

[00:24:55]And someone said, Will you do these prayers for someone who's died?

[00:24:57]And I thought, Oh, not another thing to do today And they showed me a picture.

[00:25:02]It was a little boy six years old with a floppy head with a big teddy bear.

[00:25:06]I took one look at the picture and I wasn't tired anymore. What's tiring me is just thinking about myself.

[00:25:12]You know, um and this is what we do.

[00:25:14]We think I'm so stressed, I'm so busy.

[00:25:16]If you stop doing this, you can do incredible things. So one of the things I do in the Buddhist center is I've realized if I ask people to do things, they say I can't, I'm too busy.

[00:25:26]So I make them laugh for ten or fifteen. fifteen minutes before I ask them.

[00:25:29]And then they go away and do two or three times as much as you ask them.

[00:25:33]It's it's just stopping them grasping.

[00:25:35]This grasping is everything.

[00:25:37]Grasping itself is causing everything.

[00:25:40]Yeah.

[00:25:41]Everything bad.

[00:25:42]It's not causing anything good, yeah.

[00:25:44]Yeah.

[00:25:45]Mm-hmm.

[00:25:45]Yeah.

[00:25:47]And how does it how does it look like in your daily life, re realizing that about your mind?

[00:25:51]Well, it gives you a lot of freedom You know, I mean one of the things, if you stop grasping, you relax and you're happy.

[00:26:01]And you know, when we talk about inner peace a lot, this is what stops it. grasping at everything, grasping at what people think about you, grasping at you look at something, you know, I don't like you, I don't like this.

[00:26:12]We stop doing all this.

[00:26:13]There's natural peace.

[00:26:14]We're naturally peaceful, but all this grasping Because you can understand, can't you, when when you're happy you're not grasping.

[00:26:22]This is why humor works, isn't it?

[00:26:24]You're upset.

[00:26:25]Something makes you laugh and you let go and you're happy.

[00:26:28]But every level, so there's strong grasping where you're maybe clinically depressed or shouting, but all the time there's grasping going on. It's good when you come to a Buddhist festival because you're out of your bedroom and straight away you think, I don't like this room.

[00:26:44]There's nowhere to put my clock and then a day or two later you've got used to it and you're fine, but your mind is checking everything out and how it's gonna affect you.

[00:26:52]And it's only when we stop doing that we can just do anything.

[00:26:57]And what about uh problems that are lingering for a little bit longer than just like daily daily troubles?

[00:27:04]Well, I don't know, you there was a film years ago, it wasn't it, called Groundhog Day?

[00:27:08]And I think this is really good, isn't it?

[00:27:10]'Cause you have a chance at doing something, it doesn't work, and then you have another chance.

[00:27:14]So say for instance you work with someone that you hate, uh, you can go in one day and try something, it doesn't work and you can have another try.

[00:27:21]The main thing is you've got to want to do it, isn't it?

[00:27:24]Yeah.

[00:27:25]Gen-la Jampa said something that I loved.

[00:27:27]He said that when you develop a mind of attachment, you say, no, I'm fine.

[00:27:31]I don't need this.

[00:27:32]I'm happy as I am.

[00:27:34]Uh that that really struck me because so many times I think I'm gonna go and get a bar of chocolate and I don't need one or want one and I'm quite happy. But, you know, we're we're just taking more and more control.

[00:27:45]But in the beginning your mind just sort of beats you senseless.

[00:27:48]So lots and lots of Buddhist meditations around determinations.

[00:27:52]You actually d understand and acknowledge there's something wrong. and a determination to do something about it.

[00:27:59]And um if you're determined, it's easy.

[00:28:02]You know, it's easy to do things when you're determined.

[00:28:05]But if you're not determined That's when it becomes a big battle.

[00:28:08]Mhm.

[00:28:09]I learnt this a long time ago 'cause I used to smoke cigarettes and when you want to stop it's very, very easy.

[00:28:16]It's uh when you want to stop.

[00:28:18]Yeah, when you you've decided you made Well we haven't decided it's very, very difficult.

[00:28:23]Another thing I learned which was very, very useful for me, I wanted a cigarette once, what this is thirty-five years ago, and uh someone started talking to me and distracting me And the feeling went.

[00:28:35]And I didn't know that at the time.

[00:28:37]I thought the only way to get rid of this feeling is to have a cigarette.

[00:28:40]And then I realized it was just a feeling and it would go.

[00:28:45]And then years later when I came across Geshe Kelsang Gyatso Rinpoche's book, How to Solve Our Human Problems, there's a lovely page, page 42 on feelings.

[00:28:54]And this is exactly what he says.

[00:28:56]It's just a feeling.

[00:28:58]And that's very revolutionary because so many of these things in our mind are just feelings.

[00:29:03]And we think this person's done this, this, but I've got to sort this up, but it's just a feeling And it's you can see how the world changes.

[00:29:10]You think my life is in ruins.

[00:29:11]There's nothing good about my life.

[00:29:13]And then next minute you're thinking, oh, I'm really enjoying myself.

[00:29:16]But these feelings, they just make a fool of us, isn't it?

[00:29:20]You know, people do all sorts of stupid things for feelings.

[00:29:23]Yeah, I think anyone listening to this podcast should get How to Solve Our Human Problems and read page 42.

[00:29:30]'Cause it's absolutely life changing, isn't it?

[00:29:33]Very very simple way to change your life.

[00:29:36]And to develop faith.

[00:29:37]'Cause every whenever I teach this, people email me asking me for the page number. And everyone I don't know whether they go away and do it, but everyone knows that it's true straight away.

[00:29:48]Mm-hmm.

[00:29:49]And how how did that impact your life realizing that Well he realized that um the real problem is my feeling.

[00:29:58]Whatever's happening outside, if I'm not feeling bad, it's okay.

[00:30:02]Mm-hmm 'Cause you think of it, you know, sometimes we went to a hotel uh in a Buddhist festival in new in New York and it was one of the worst hotels I've ever been in.

[00:30:11]But we were just laughing.

[00:30:13]I touched the wall and got an electric shock.

[00:30:15]Then it then I turned the light on and it caught on fire.

[00:30:19]And I was thinking, I can't wait for something else to go wrong.

[00:30:22]This is so funny.

[00:30:24]Or you can sit there and get really, really angry and think, right, I'm writing letters, I'm complaining, I'm suing the hotel.

[00:30:30]And it's feeling, isn't it?

[00:30:32]When you can start enjoying things going wrong, you're in your own sitcom, aren't you?

[00:30:37]Your your life can be like an episode of Faulty Towers.

[00:30:40]Uh sorry, that's probably a bit old.

[00:30:42]But you know, whatever your favorite sitcom is, we enjoy watching it. But because of our self-grasping, we don't enjoy being in it.

[00:30:50]But you can enjoy being in it.

[00:30:52]Yeah.

[00:30:52]Is that your way to also deal with the troubles of the world?

[00:30:57]I think so, yeah.

[00:30:58]You know, there's so much I don't want to get political, but the world's just ridiculous at the moment.

[00:31:03]You can either laugh or cry, can't you?

[00:31:05]Mm-hmm.

[00:31:07]Your choice would be to laugh.

[00:31:09]Well, it's an idea of thinking what can I change and what can't I change and um there's not much point getting really angry.

[00:31:17]Particularly about situations that are very complex.

[00:31:20]What happens with a situation?

[00:31:21]People think they know everything and get very, very angry.

[00:31:24]But all these situations depend on other things and they're very, very complex. And I won't mention any, but there was one that I studied quite a lot, one of these political things, and it's incredibly complex.

[00:31:35]And at the moment there's people shouting and screaming and ca causing all sorts of problems.

[00:31:42]And It's just too much attention to the wrong things.

[00:31:47]So one of the things that happens if you understand things are dependent related.

[00:31:51]It makes it harder to solve maybe, but what you find is you can't find someone to blame.

[00:31:56]Say for instance your boss shouts at you.

[00:31:58]You think, why did my boss shout at me?

[00:32:00]Because someone crashed into his car on the way to work.

[00:32:03]Why did they crash into his car?

[00:32:05]Because he was driving fast because he quarreled with his wife.

[00:32:07]Why did he quarrel with his wife?

[00:32:08]You know, and just goes back and back and back until it involves the whole world.

[00:32:13]And um So many times, you know, you pass a friend and the friend doesn't say hello and you think, What have I done?

[00:32:19]And you haven't done anything.

[00:32:20]The friend hasn't woken up properly or they've had in a bad mood. And we're doing this all the time.

[00:32:26]We're looking at these things and we're reading things into them and developing inappropriate attention because it's all about me.

[00:32:33]If you don't smile at me, waf I done.

[00:32:36]Mm-hmm.

[00:32:36]There's lots of things going in your life that's got nothing to do with me at all But you know, this is what this grasping at I it all comes back to this, grasping strongly at a sense of I, and this I that we're grasping at doesn't exist. We've created we have an eye that is very subtle.

[00:32:53]The one we're grasping at, this big fat person who can't do gymnastics, this horrible, stupid person that everyone hates.

[00:33:00]We just conjured this up out of our mind.

[00:33:04]So we need to start conjuring up pure things.

[00:33:06]And this is why Buddha taught Tantra, we can start imagining our purity developing into something really, really wonderful.

[00:33:14]So why why don't we do that?

[00:33:16]Yeah.

[00:33:16]You know, think I could be something great rather than thinking everything's gonna go wrong and everything's gonna hit me.

[00:33:24]So how do you think we can improve our self-image?

[00:33:27]I think it's quite good to understand that you don't have to impress people.

[00:33:32]You know I found that um if you go out and you're just nice to people, you just realize you don't need any of this.

[00:33:39]I used to work for a pharmaceutical company and my boss was one of the kinder.

[00:33:44]He's one of the most intelligent people I've met outside Dharma and very very kind.

[00:33:49]And uh You'd have a a a meeting where everyone's shouting and screaming and the moment he said anything, everyone shut up and listened.

[00:33:57]You could see that presence, this person.

[00:34:00]Because a few people have said this to me in GP.

[00:34:02]They've said what happens in the boardroom?

[00:34:04]But nobody listens to people who are squawking and shouting against stress.

[00:34:08]This person, everyone would just stop and listen.

[00:34:11]So this is what I found in my working life.

[00:34:15]Integrity and calmness, people will listen to.

[00:34:19]You know, um because anyone can shout and scream.

[00:34:22]It's not it's not a sign that you're actually sorting a problem out, is it?

[00:34:26]It's a sign that you can't really deal with what's going on.

[00:34:29]So you can do this.

[00:34:31]It can backfire sometimes.

[00:34:33]I remember a girl I used to share a house with, um I was keeping calm while she was shouting at me and she just thought that I thought it was very funny.

[00:34:41]So you know, you can obviously it's not gonna work every time. She was thinking, You think this is really funny, don't you?

[00:34:46]Because she said, I'm upset, I'm upset, I'm upset, and I said, I can see that and that was the wrong thing to say completely So one of the things that helps if you're in that sort of situation is showing that you're concerned about their feelings.

[00:35:00]If you just look like you don't care, it will upset people.

[00:35:04]but to bring compassion in as well.

[00:35:06]You know, I'm sorry I've upset you.

[00:35:08]I can see you're upset.

[00:35:09]I'm sorry.

[00:35:10]And try to calm them down.

[00:35:12]The last thing you want to do is stir it up more.

[00:35:15]You know, we were told, um, if you can't help people, try not to make it worse.

[00:35:21]So if they're really upset, you should try and calm them down.

[00:35:24]And what you don't do is go along with these delusions.

[00:35:27]Like say your partner comes home from work and they're in a really bad mood about their boss.

[00:35:31]You don't say, Yeah, I think he's horrible too 'cause that's not doing anyone any favours.

[00:35:36]You know, it's uh Sometimes you can't say much, but you can say you can try and let go of this.

[00:35:44]This woman was shouting at me once and she was going redder and redder in the face. and she said, I'm gonna have to stop doing this.

[00:35:50]I'm gonna have a heart attack and I just she just realized that it wasn't doing her any good.

[00:35:55]A good friend of mine, but with a very violent temper.

[00:35:58]And um you can say, you know, this isn't helping you And all the you know, you've got to be careful, you know.

[00:36:05]You you you can't you we have to learn to be quite skillful with people.

[00:36:10]You know, people are very upset very easily.

[00:36:12]Yeah.

[00:36:13]It's a balance, isn't it?

[00:36:14]Trying to stop them doing things, but without being too full on.

[00:36:19]And a lot of this stuff we have to learn, isn't it?

[00:36:21]You know, we don't um We don't automatically get this from the books.

[00:36:25]We have to sort of develop some wisdom of our own uh our own experience.

[00:36:30]Yeah, yeah.

[00:36:31]And by making mistakes You know, I've learned I've said things and people have got really upset and I've thought I'm not doing that again.

[00:36:38]You know.

[00:36:39]One of the best ones, I did the precious human life meditation.

[00:36:43]And this woman ran out crying.

[00:36:45]So this really shocked me because I thought that's usually quite a safe one.

[00:36:49]So I said, what what upset you?

[00:36:50]And she's got a daughter with severe learning difficulties. So all through the meditation she was thinking, My daughter can't do this, my daughter can't do that.

[00:36:59]So when I do that meditation I say, Now this might sound hedonistic, but it's not.

[00:37:04]We're trying to get ourselves strong and confident So we can help people.

[00:37:09]Later on we go compassion meditations, but you forget about this now.

[00:37:13]You're just thinking, I'm so lucky, I'm so lucky.

[00:37:15]But I would never have thought of doing that without making a mistake.

[00:37:19]So th this is useful, isn't it?

[00:37:22]As a teacher, you can't predict some of the things that are gonna upset people.

[00:37:26]And uh the other day I upset someone to making fun of AI in the class and he was an AI engineer.

[00:37:33]So you know yeah you you learn from these things, you know, I think I'm gonna be more careful about this. But sometimes you can't predict these things, you know, but you learn from them.

[00:37:44]Yeah.

[00:37:45]You don't resign because you've upset someone, you just think, I'm not going to do that again.

[00:37:50]Hopefully.

[00:37:51]We learn and improve.

[00:37:52]Yes.

[00:37:53]Yeah.

[00:37:53]Well, thank you so much, Gen Kelsang Chokyong, for coming today and sharing with us your wisdom and your story.

[00:37:58]Yeah.

[00:37:59]Okay.

[00:38:00]Thank you very much.