Most Replayed Moment: Buddhist Monk Reveals How To Break Free From Pain and Anger!

Transcript from https://podmenti.com/t/3e397484bf764e20

Uh
Earlier on you said that
In Buddhism they talk about an emptiness.
Which is kind of this.
Realising that life isn't so
Solid. Solid and your identity as 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, 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.
And it's not a
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 you are right now in the present. The past is
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 with meditation you're learning to
To be
In the now and not

Uh it doesn't mean you don't plan or don't remember, but you're learning to be l 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. That there's a there's a Buddhist uh meditation.
Which literally is about a table, like, you know, here we are.
Yeah.
And they say if you if you take apart this table.
You'll find it doesn't exist.
Because the table as it seems right now is is a is a
Top with legs, you 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.
Uh th this is where Buddhism and and and particle physics become, you know, the talking a lot. There's a lot of conversation there.
In that the the smaller and smaller you go into these 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.
Yeah.
There is no such thing as the partless
Particle.
Mm.
Because if it's a particle it can be s uh s 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 uh the reality we live in, of course it feels very solid, you know, if I if if I throw this this cup at somebody, it's gonna hit their head.
And hurt them. 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 f 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.
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 someone some
Something someone said about us.
How does one go about
alleviating ourselves from
this kind of burden.
Yeah. So I for me it it's very much about um
Dropping the story.
And looking at the feeling.
Okay.
Explain it to me.
So
For me this became
very uh very
Yeah.
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 then I stayed a bit longer, stayed a bit longer. It was after about four years that I 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 twelve years later that the opportunity came up to go into a long retreat.
uh four years long where you are really just cut off from the world.
But
that length of time no no
Nobody goes in or out and you are
meditating many, many hours a day.
And it was the most fr frightening experience of my life.
because I I was in there alone with 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 I was really, really shocked by what happened to me in there.
Because I I I think I thought I'd you know, I'd been a monk for twelve years and I'd already started to
Yeah, give a few talks about meditation and and
Maybe I thought I was quite sorted, but I w 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 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. So for me, during those first two years of the retreat.
I was completely obsessed with the story.
Because I I was experiencing these
horrendous feelings of heartbreak.
And feelings of depression.
uh anxiety, just kind of a whole
mass of suffering inside myself.
And I was tr I was trying to almost do therapy on myself and think, okay, let's you know, thinking uh 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 I'm there in a
four year retreat, I'm a monk.
And I'm f I was feeling
completely alienated from the whole thing. I
I kinda wanted to just get away from it. I wanted to run away.
And things only changed when I
hit rock bottom.

Hugely.
In that I actually
I climbed over the wall of the retreat to run away.
I couldn't take it anymore.
I w a one morning I had the most immense panic attack I've ever had.
And I just s like saw red and just ran. I legged it out of the retreat.
Which is un 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 um
Like freaking out and running.
And running and running down this road in the rain.
remote area of the Scottish Island.
And then just stopping and thinking, What are you doing?
Wha 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 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 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
I thought really deeply and I re 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 I can't do this, it's made me so miserable.
But I I really knew in that moment what
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
Work out how to
How to heal myself.
I I w I'd been sinking so badly and I if I was to go back in there, I would have to try a completely new approach.
Why did you choose to go back in? Because I 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 gonna 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 do I I really do
believe in what I'm doing. I I
I
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.
If something is painful and causing you any gas, it's not a good thing.
This pain I'm going through
I've the the met the methods are there. I just need to know how to use them and I could learn to conquer this.
I I th this pain could could be the breakthrough.
Most people in 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. Exactly. So
W life is hard, let's run from it. Exactly on a plane.
Fly to another country.
And try and just set up a new life somewhere else.
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 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 don't if you if you mess this up again, that that's it.
You know, forget it.
So it was a real like make or break situation.
And I went back in and I I I um
Everything changed.
Because I found I
I had to find a new uh a different way of dealing with that suffering.
What was that?
Okay, so I'm back in there and it's coming up again.
the depression, the anxiety, the
The pain
That to me it felt like
it it felt like like something like w that was piercing me.
It felt like there was like a knife constantly twisting.
Twisting and turning in my heart.
Right in the middle of me.
It's really painful. And
What I've 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 fourteen? Is it what happened to me when I was seventeen? Is it this? Is it that? Is it my
My family. What is it?
That's the
story. I say story I'm not I'm I'm not belittling people's stories
I'm just saying it's the narrative, isn't it?
So I I decided to m to use the knife as the meditation.
to to actually meditate on it.
And and uh the the whole thing starts to change when you do that.
Because until that point you've been tr if
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 you 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 um
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 you start it starts to change.
It starts to change because
You're accepting it.
My my teachers had always said to me they'd always go on and on about acceptance and I just I just wanted to hit them when they said it'cause it sounded so grim.
Yeah, you've got to accept yourself or you've got to accept your suffering.
To me that sounded like you're gonna for the rest of your life be dragging this bag of rocks up a hill.
You know, acceptance is so miserable and so boring.
I didn't realise that what they meant was
Y was compassion.
and self acceptance at a very, very deep level.
So so I was I'm I'm focusing on that feeling in my body.
And try not to go into the stories about it or the hatred of it.
and just move towards it and and kind of become
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 when you're trying to push pain away, you're creating enormous amounts of uh cortisol in your body, 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
think happiness is about
Being okay with your suffering.
And I'm
And
not just being okay with it, but actually sending love.
Into
The place in yourself that you hated so much.
So for for me, um
that what started to change was
from m from 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
With love.
And I I started to have this
image in my head of uh as if I had found a
Like a frightened rabbit or 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 until the up until that point had been so harsh.
And so self
Self hating.
And and I think
You know, in my
teenage years when I w was trying to become a
uh successful actor.
I think that was the drive was I 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, you know, even as a as a
as a monk and you become celibate and you're you're you know, 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 ha 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 kinda jump out of my own skin.
And when I
Learn how to do this.
Kind of practice with
Sending compassion.
into that part of myself that I'd hated so much, it it
It was really transformative.
Sort of felt like
Holding a scared rabbit or a bird with a broken wing.
How did you come to feel about that bird?
I felt um 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 the the the details of your past
But you're just relating to the feeling in your body right now.
And f I 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 sinking feeling in the in the chest.
And just to relate to that sensation with kindness.
Taught me how to
Love myself, but

It's not about
You know.
becoming an ego maniac. I love myself. It's more
Have kindness for yourself.
How does this translate to things like grief?
Because grief is one of the the hardest things to get to acceptance on, the f sort of finality of life, losing someone you love. You you've been through this yourself.
You you had a I think a best friend of yours who was Well my teacher.
Oh, your teacher. Well
He was my best friend as well as my teacher.
He he he was murdered.
He was in so eleven years ago, my teacher Akon Rinpache
who had been my everything for all those years. You know, he he was my teacher.
My closest friend
I also I 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

His work was he would run
A charity.
called Rockpa, which has um
Oh, that's him.
Um
He would go to Tibet.
every year. And um
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 um
Basically ambushed and stabbed.
Killed.
And
I mean this completely rocked the Buddhist world. It's like r you know, horrendous news, but on a personal level for me
I was one of the first people who found out. I'd I'd been on the phone to him every day until then. I was his assistant and very working very closely with him.
So it complete my it completely th 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
Describe to you.
saw me through.
Because I
At some point during that grieving process
I remembered what to do.
At first I didn't,'cause you know when you're really in it in it, you
You can't think but then
So there was the whole aftermath, you know, he was killed and it was in in all the press and then
as his
assistant, I was the one dealing with the media and in a way that

when you're grieving it kinda helps you to
you know, stay focused. But then the nights
The nights was night time 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's a whole mixture of things.
We knew the killer.
The person who murdered him had been a monk.
uh Tibetan, uh 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 and
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 the meditation, it just ha it just happened because I'd done it in retreat. It had seen me through it had 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 send that kindness into
The place I was in despair.
I'm not saying that I then just became all right. No, but it it
Абсолютні.
Calmed things. Absolutely.
And it it is it is 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 the guy we knew who did it. It helped me on so many levels.
And I'm not saying that it w you know it's it's all okay.
But I have I 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.
Yeah.
I I think of it as his last gift to me.
And um
I'm you know, I I
I'm I will be forever grateful.
When you talk about sending love into the flames.
What is the the actual practice there?
Is it certain sentences you're saying? No. Thinking.
I'm glad you asked this because it it is so much about
Going beyond the words.
And going into an experience of oneness.
So so to make it really practical, you know, you you're feeling
you're feeling incredible tr trauma in your body for
Finding it physically is the easiest way to do it. Like your 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 who meditates
knows how to focus on their breathing.
It's the same thing.
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 you flood it with love.
And the reason this is possible, I mean that this is
Touching upon
A major a major belief in Buddhist philosophy, which is that our minds are naturally
Compassionate.

These
Vight 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

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.
And if you if you were sitting with a friend who was freaking out or grieving or whatever,
You will hold their hand.
And we all know how to do that.
Mm.
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 the happiness of
I can be okay with this.
It makes you immensely strong.
You talked about forgiveness. Mm-hmm.
Did you forgive the man that murdered your friend and teacher? Yes.
quite quickly.
I 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
The practice of forgiveness.
It's a hard one, isn't it?
Because we we've all got people in our lives that we think might have wronged us or done something to us which has caused us pain.
And almost the way that we
Great.
Our own perception of justice is by holding the grudge.
Yeah.
Why do we do that? That's my 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.
That's how it kinda feels, right?
Wouldn't you say that by holding the crush 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 on to the
In Buddhism there's a
Teaching that says it's like holding on to a piece of hot metal.
Or holding a hot coal in your hand.
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're absolutely the winner.
So for I w I wonder if we we assue I think we do assume that forgiveness is a kind of giving up.
Even the word forgive, the give
Yeah.
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. They might you you're not gonna 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 gonna let go. You know, it's not that easy.
It's bloody hard.
But meditation gives gives you the tools.
Partly because meditation anyway is
is helping to loosen up that kind of glue that we have in our minds where we're glued into those
Feelings that
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.
You've been through several sort of traumatic incidents. You talked about being fourteen, being seventeen, sexual abuse, parent parental divorce, a little bit of neglect, it sounds like as well. Have you forgiven all of those people in your life?
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 learnt how to forgive the feelings.
that those incidents happen.
gave rise to.
Mm-hmm.
That to me is much more important than
Forgiving the people.
Mm.
And I think what's also happened to me is I've started to
Find that the suffering
That I experienced
has some use.
Because it is the thing that you're using for your
Mental transformation.
Mm-hmm.
Rinpoche always used to say, um, 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 I think it's like that.
So with forgiveness, um
I would say, yeah, meditation, but I would say also thinking thinking deeply about
About the situation.
You know, what's really helped me
With 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 answer would be, Well what what do you mean they should know better? They know what they know. There
They are
They are driven by their own confusion and their own pain.
Wha why do you think they were out to get you?
Why do you think they were deliberately out to maliciously get you?
Weren't they just caught in their own
suffering and you 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 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.
The person that had 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.
They that you know, it almost 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 realise how out of control you are.
Because you're 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.
W I'm just saying
lighten up a bit because people are just doing their best.
And sometimes their best is really bad.
What you just listened to was a most replayed moment from a previous episode. If you want to listen to that full episode, I've linked it down below. Check the description. Thank you.
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