Free Your Mind to Be Happy

by His Holiness Gyalwang Drukpa, Jigme Pema Wangchen

Your mind can be your prison or your mind can set you free; it is mental habits and patterns that so often sabotage your chances for happiness. This chapter considers, therefore, how you might begin to break the ties in your mind and allow thoughts to go more freely, no longer so attached to or weighed down by limiting beliefs that you may have about yourself or others..

BEYOND EGO

Before you can begin to loosen the invisible but very strong bonds that are created and then reinforced every day by your mental habits, we need to look a little more closely at the concept of ‘ego’. As we saw earlier, the ego is made up of all the beliefs we have built up over time concerning who we think we are and how the world should be. These become so strong over the years that we believe them to be truths. We identify ourselves with our egos because we don’t realise there is something deeper and authentic beneath the surface and really the ego exists only in the surface of our minds – it is like a blanket that covers up our inner nature and wisdom. 

The ego is a web of stories that begins in childhood: the moment we are given a label – ‘naughty’ or ‘shy’ or ‘chatty’ – the seed of ego is sewn. Gradually, over time, we build up a picture of ourselves and the world around us. And it makes sense that we do this – we are subjective rather than objective beings, after all. But the problems begin to arise because we are so unaware of how the ego is really based on perception; it is not the absolute truth that we assume it to be.

The ego is very concerned with ‘me’ and ‘my’; it is very opinionated and likes things to be a certain way for us to then feel secure and happy. But, as we have seen, the ego also very often keeps us trapped in suffering because of its clinging nature, either to the things or people we believe make us happy today or the things or people we believe we still need, so that we might be happy tomorrow. Ego is strong, but not very flexible, and so it is quite brittle and easily hurt. Think of the stinging nature of just a single word of criticism or when you feel looked down upon by another person; but then think of how easily your ego falls into the trap of criticising others or making judgments about people according to your own ways of seeing. Attachment to wanting things to be a certain way is very understandable – we all have dreams and desires that we hope will be fulfilled. But it is the grasping nature of the attachment that can be the cause of so much mental suffering.

For example, you might go to work one day, determined to keep in a positive frame of mind and not let your boss or colleagues get to you, whatever challenges may arise. Then, your boss criticises you in front of everyone. You feel a stinging, burning sense of indignation or perhaps shame; you are embarrassed and wonder why you bothered to go to work with good thoughts when there’s nothing you can do to stop your boss from humiliating you like this. You feel helpless and wish you could just give up your job, but you’re trapped because you need to earn a living to pay for your house and everything else.

There are many emotional and mental habits at play here. Despite your intentions at the beginning of the day, as soon as your boss goes off the script you find yourself reverting to the same old ways of reacting that end up ruining your day. Even your body gets in on the act and teams up with your mind to create that burning sensation. But the good news is that with a bit of practice you can begin to develop the tiniest sense of space around your reactions, so that while you might still feel it was unnecessary for your boss to criticise you in front of everyone, you don’t need to cling on to the indignation or embarrassment all day. By developing your awareness, or practising mindful behaviour, you can begin to notice and observe your mental habits, which is the first step towards being able to transform them.

FOLLOWING THE SAME OLD PATTERNS

How do mental habits build up over time? They are the servants of our ego and, in some ways, they appear almost seem to make life easier because we feel we know who we are and how we react to situations; it can be a comfort of sorts to think we know where we stand. Habits allow our minds to become lazy, though, so that negative and painful emotions, like shame or anger or jealousy, rise up without us even noticing and consume our minds in the moment.

Some people cling to mental habits or patterns as a way of discouraging themselves from making changes or taking chances. They take refuge in their habits: ‘I’m not the sort of person who likes to travel to new places’ or, ‘I am always attracted to the wrong type of men’. These are beliefs that we have about ourselves that cover up our confidence, and therefore our happiness.

Limiting self-beliefs

Here are some of the ways in which self-beliefs may present themselves in our minds – the kinds of thoughts that seem to get stuck on replay:

I can only be happy if I am an extra-good person, all the time. 

I’m never going to be good enough, so I’ll just have to grab happiness where I get the chance.

I must have approval before I can be happy.

I’m not sure I deserve happiness.

If I let myself be too happy, I’ll be disappointed in the long run.

I can only be happy if I am an extra-good person, all the time

As teachers, we have a phrase that we say to Buddhist practitioners that is ‘not to make a big fuss’. We say this to try to help people to relax a little more into their own nature, to know that not one of us is perfect; if we were, then we wouldn’t need to walk the path as we’d already have reached enlightenment.

Many people who grew up with very critical parents or who were, perhaps, very good at school and therefore had high expectations placed on them at a young age hold the belief that they have to be extra-special or extra-good to be given permission to be happy. Taking myself as an example – I wasn’t very good at studies, but when I was recognised as the reincarnation of the Gyalwang Drukpa, as well as the Indian saint Naropa, I felt an enormous sense of responsibility and worry that I wasn’t good enough to look after the Dragon Lineage. These are beliefs that I have encouraged myself to let go of throughout my life; I have learned to trust in myself that I will always do my best. If I spend all my time worrying about whether I am good enough, I will be less helpful to others, as I will be fixated on myself all the time and paralysed by my fear of getting anything wrong.

I’m never going to be good enough, so I’ll just have to grab happiness where I get the chance

If a person grows up with the belief that they are somehow intrinsically flawed, they might think they don’t deserve the deep, peaceful, contented type of happiness and so will grasp instead for sensory, temporary happiness instead. They might spend a great deal of time chasing after this, burning up their money along with their energy. They are frightened of getting to know the real person they are underneath, and if they keep busy enough, they won’t have to ever sit still with themselves and do this. If you recognise this type of self-belief, I encourage you to be brave enough (which I know you are) to look into your heart as you read this book and begin to understand the beautiful person within.

I must have approval before I can be happy

As children, we soon notice approval – or lack of it – in our parents’ eyes. We do cartwheels, blow raspberries and jump into the swimming pool, crying out, ‘Look at me, look at me’. And as parents, people make sure to let their children know that they are doing a great job being themselves – growing and developing.

The trouble is that as we get older, we can develop a dependency on the approval of others before we allow ourselves to be happy. So one day we come home from work beaming from ear to ear because our boss said that we were really great at our job; then, the next day, we are upset when they criticise us for making a mistake. If we put our egos up on a pedestal, it can be pretty painful when they inevitably fall off. But if, on the other hand, we can be more accepting of ourselves, taking neither praise nor blame too much to heart, then these things won’t hold so much power over our peace of mind.

I’m not sure I deserve happiness

So many people in the world suffer from depression, where all self-worth has drained away, making it hard for them even to get up in the morning. When the mind is in a depression, however great or small, we miss out on life and all its wonders. We struggle in our connections and relationships with others, just when we need their support the most. We lose confidence in our abilities at work or in ourselves as human beings.

A sense of self-worth is an essential ingredient of happiness, but if we only perceive it through our own egos or through material success, then we are really limiting our capacity for happiness. If we develop our minds and, therefore, self-worth as a human being who is connected with others, then we create an amazing foundation of strength on which we can build happiness. It is like the strength of a great tree – with good roots that give us our grounding, but also flexibility and gentleness to be able to bend with the wind.

If I let myself be too happy, I’ll be disappointed in the long run

For some people, expecting the worst is a form of defence which they believe will protect them from experiencing too much pain: if they expect the worst, then they will appreciate the times when the outcome is better than they had imagined. Likewise, if they rock the boat, they might ruin whatever they already have.

I believe in being prepared for the worst – because the only certainty we have in this life is that we will die – but not to live in expectation of bad things happening. If we live this way, our minds spend all the time imagining what might go wrong in the future, rather than what is going right today.

WATCHING OUR MINDS

Awareness, or mindfulness, is an essential practice for helping to break the bonds of our ego – all the myths about ourselves which we believe so deeply to be true, all the prejudices that have built up over time and all the distortions. Mindfulness enables us to begin to understand the difference between pain and suffering; that even when faced with a very painful experience, it is our choice whether we add the suffering of afflictive emotions such as anger, fear or mental anguish to this pain.

It is when we begin to take better notice of how our minds operate that we begin to reconnect with ourselves and, therefore, with our happiness. We start to notice the times when we seem to choose the option of covering up our happiness out of habit, or perhaps because of fear of the unknown. We begin to realise that even though we know we’d like to feel happy for more of the time, we are concerned that if we let ourselves be happy, we’ll be setting ourselves up for a fall. And we see how we worry that we don’t deserve to be happy, that we might not be a good enough person to feel more than the odd glimpse of joy or that we haven’t really earned it.

Then, gradually, we begin to recognise that this is the ego at work: constantly talking and keeping us from reconnecting with our true nature, our fearless, wise, happy nature.

Using just very short periods of meditation and then developing your sense of mindful awareness during the day, you can begin to choose how you are going to react to challenging situations and people. Many people seem to find themselves dwelling on the negative things that happened during the day or in their life in general. Mindfulness encourages us to notice all things that happen, so we begin to acknowledge the good feelings we experienced today, for example, as well as that moment when we felt the sting of a difficult emotion.

Don’t be embarrassed to celebrate all the great things in your life; by doing this you will gradually be able to let go of negatives states of mind more easily. They will still come – that is life – but you can allow them to go, rather than attaching too much meaning to them. Mindfulness allows you to see just how changeable your mind is, so that while you might be upset with someone in the moment, you needn’t set your mind in stone when it comes to what you think about that person. 

If you want to walk around without seeing what is really happening in your life, I am in no position to stop you. It’s completely up to you and what you are comfortable with. But if you are curious about the possibility of embracing a different way of seeing, without the usual filters and lenses you look through, then be prepared for more colour and surprises and spontaneity than you could imagine. When you open yourself up to your senses, rather than constantly assuming you think one way or another about a person, a place, a dish of food, anything, you delve into the actual experience.

Spend time with yourself

For some people, it is a good idea to get to know yourself better through experience, while for others, like Jigme Semzang, it is better to do very little so that you may let your inner nature begin to shine through:

The teachings have not only helped me to change mentally, but physically too. A few years ago I was overweight and I walked with a stick. I fell into the habit of either blaming others – for example, causing me stress at work – or blaming myself for not being good enough. I took my health for granted, eating whatever I wanted whenever I wanted it. I was successful at work, earned a very good salary and for many years I was just clinging on to a way of life that I believed gave me my sense of identity. It was as though my business card was my identity. I was always chasing the next promotion, but I was forgetting to take care of myself in the process.

To cut a long story short, I ended up on a Pad Yatra with His Holiness and the nuns from Druk Amitabha. I could hardly make it – I was so unfit and still walking with the stick. But one day His Holiness said to me that if I was slim, I would be strong in my body. That was the moment I began to turn things around and look at things differently. I became healthy and fit, both in my body and as I began to work on my mind. I stopped running away from myself and went to the retreat in Nepal. I remember asking what prayers or mantras I should do and His Holiness said, ‘Nothing. You need to do nothing just for a little while.’

 

At first, it was so hard to just spend all this time with myself, but very slowly I began to understand and my mind began to stop racing. I haven’t turned my back on wealth, but I am learning to put it to better use. The biggest lesson I have learned is in any situation to give your best and then leave it. One day I might even stop being such a chatterbox, but that’s going to take more practice.

Bees in a jar

Often, when times are challenging, it feels like there isn’t much room left for happiness after we’ve taken account of all the worries, the things we would like to change and the things we don’t like so much about our lives. The difficult parts of life seem to take up so much time and space that our minds constantly perpetuate a negative situation or feeling, like a bee trapped in a jar, circling endlessly. We know that somehow we need to change things, but there is no solution in sight and so we feel trapped and tight, with no room to breathe, let alone feel the warmth of happiness.

One of the greatest benefits of meditation is to create a bit of space in your mind. It won’t offer you instant solutions to your problems, but it will help to reveal where you have become caught up in negative thoughts that end up consuming the mind:

1. Sit for a few moments and bring your focus back to your breath.

2. Now imagine your thoughts as bees in a jar, buzzing around, bumping up against each other and the sides with nowhere to go. What’s on your mind?

3. Now unscrew the lid and open up the jar, allowing the bees, and therefore your thoughts, to go free as if in a meadow, about their business. See the blue sky; feel the warmth of the sun.

4. Your thoughts and emotions will come and go – they just have a little more space now.

FREE YOUR MIND FROM THE USUAL LABELS

When we aren’t paying attention, we cling to so many things with our minds that we tie ourselves up in knots, unable to move or think freely.

I always think, for example, about how attached people in different countries are to their labels of measurement: ‘But what is that exactly in miles?’ or, ‘I can’t understand you – can you tell me in pounds and ounces?’ Similarly, we break up time into things that we can measure – seconds, hours, days, years – but meanwhile, time just goes on its own way, completely regardless of how we might label it. And just like happiness, we will never pin it down.

When it comes to labelling ourselves and other people and then strongly believing in those labels, we create the possibility for tension and disagreements, both within ourselves and with others; there is a lack of harmony.

Remember all those limiting beliefs we talked about earlier – for example, believing that we have to be perfect before we can be happy? Not only do we set ourselves up for a fall with such thoughts, we tend to see faults in others that either consciously or subconsciously we fear are what is wrong with us too. If we are highly critical of ourselves, we will tend to be highly critical of others. We might convince ourselves that we have a highly developed sense of justice or of what is fair, but when looked at from an alternative angle this might be perceived as being highly judgmental and demanding of others. It’s the same behaviour, just a different label.

Breaking the illusion

As we develop our awareness that we all create labels based on our own perceptions and experiences, we realise that we don’t need to cling to any of them or take up such a defensive stance when somebody’s opinion is different from ours. So it’s ok if my friend is perfect to me, but not perfect to you. Why should we get angry at each other? Let’s respect our differences and understand that there is no need to hold on so tightly to our beliefs that we never have the flexibility to bend with the wind. And then let’s have a cup of tea and talk about something happy.

When we begin to understand this, we see that differences don’t matter. We set ourselves free from what is ‘mine’ and what is ‘yours’. These are the kinds of tools that may be used to cut yourself free; to cut the bonds of your ego and set your mind free.

No fixed concept

It is very good to hear from people like Lee who are putting things into practice from the teachings and seeing how they work for them – or not – in the hustle and bustle of real life:

After attending a retreat in Hong Kong almost seven years ago, I can still remember very clearly His Holiness’s teaching on ‘no fixed concept’ resonating in my mind whenever I am stuck with a problem: that if we let ourselves, we may always have the ability to look at a problem from a better angle. I find this teaching very powerful as we have so many fixed concepts of ourselves, and society also imposes many concepts on each and every one of us. This has brought about a great transformation for myself as the fixed concept of self creates a lot of obstacles of ‘me and mine’ in our daily lives and brings pain and suffering not just to ourselves, but also to our loved ones.

In the workplace, we also have many fixed concepts of how things should be executed, but have no time to spend listening to our colleagues and opening our hearts and minds to embrace others into our lives. If we have no concept of ourselves, we are always open to comments and we will be able to transform comments to something positive. We will be able to check ourselves and learn something positive from every situation. When we are joyfully working on a project, we will naturally project positive energy and attract like-minded people to us. This brings about not only great joy in working, but also positive energy to the entire atmosphere and we will be able to execute anything effortlessly as the mind is light, relaxed and joyful and will be an inspiration for others too! This brings about the concept of ‘we’ and not ‘I’!

Whenever I am stuck in a situation, I am reminded of ‘living in the moment’, as we are always projecting our minds forward, worrying unnecessarily about everything and anything that comes into our minds and missing the moment and getting angry and frustrated. I take a breather and check whether I am practising ‘no fixed concept’ and then I will feel rejuvenated and continue working joyfully moment by moment.

WITH A FREE MIND WE CAN EXPERIENCE AUTHENTIC HAPPINESS

Authentic happiness should be experienced right now. Sometimes, we come across temporary happiness – a piece of cake might give you this type of sensory, pleasure-based happiness or completing a race, giving a speech, passing a test … Happiness is definitely there, but it is short-term. It is a surface type of happiness; it is something that comes, but then burns out quickly.

We need to begin to understand our own minds – our motivations, wants and needs. For example, we might contemplate why have we become such voracious consumers? Why do we go out constantly and buy new things that we don’t need but have a craving for? It is a distraction, a sticking plaster that keeps our minds occupied. Of course, there is the temporary feeling of light relief, of giving ourselves a bit of a treat or improving our comfort, but the trouble is that when we try to find comfort or relief through ‘things’ we tend to end up needing more of them just to sustain the feeling. We have wardrobes full of clothes we hardly ever wear, we throw away food uneaten. Sometimes it feels as though we have replaced ‘people’ with ‘things’.

There is nothing wrong at all with wanting to have nice things, to look smart or attractive. But when we attach emotions to these possessions or somehow identify ourselves with the things we have we are more likely to feed dissatisfaction rather than happiness. We get caught up in the cycle of striving for more when perhaps we might even benefit from less.

You will no doubt have heard this many times, but no person ever cared very much about their possessions once they were on their deathbed. So as you begin to reflect on how your life is shaping up and what you would like to prioritise in the precious time you have, consider how attached you are to being a consumer and whether it brings you the same kind of happiness as the loving relationships in your life or being fulfilled by what you do.

Authentic happiness is deep and lasting, it is always there, but we just don’t see it. It is easy to perceive this type of happiness as something we may experience in the future, but that right now we aren’t ready for it. Don’t think that you have to walk miles and miles down the road to find this happiness; you can experience it right now. Many people misunderstand this and believe there must be a very difficult journey, and then when you reach your destination you will be happy. Why not enjoy the journey, why not be happy with every step? This is your chance to be happy, from this moment every day and every minute of your life.