Happiness is all in your mind Gen Kelsang Nyema at TEDxGreenville 2014

Alright guys, hello, I want to start with some questions and I know that many other presenters have already asked their questions and they have been difficult questions, but the questions that I am going to ask you are very, very simple and I promise you that you will be able to answer them well. Are you ready for the first one? Well,

your

first question is: you don't have to answer out loud. Are you having a good day? Well, now you have

your

answer. Well, my second question. for you it's why if you're having a good day why are you having a good day or if you're having a bad day why are you having a bad day so I have one more question for you this should be the easiest of all my last one. question is tomorrow, would you rather have a good day or would you rather have a bad day?

Do you have your answer for that? What happens the day after tomorrow? about Sunday, let's see, yes, that's right, tomorrow Saturday Sunday, how about Monday? I would like to have a good day or a bad day Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday at this time next week good day or bad day so the last question like I said is probably the easiest for us to answer because we know the answer to that ask. Don't we want to have a good day every day? Did anyone in the room answer yes, I want to have a bad day on Monday?

Of course not, we all want to have a good day every day so this really speaks to the kind of

happiness

we all want deep in our hearts we have a good day when we are happy and we want to be happy every day there is never a day when we don't want to be happy but whether or not we have good days or bad days really depend on how we answered the second question. Do you remember the second question? What was the second question? Why am I having a good day? Why am I having a bad day?

One thing my teacher says is that his name is Geshe Kell. yatza and says that much of the time our

mind

is like a balloon and the wind blows from here to there due to external circumstances. Do you know that feeling that says when things are going well when they go in our direction we feel happy but then if something goes wrong? For example, he says if we are forced to work with a colleague we don't like, but I'm sure none of you have colleagues we don't like, right, he says, if we are forced to work with someone we don't like or if we don't like something.

If we don't continue on our way, our feeling of

happiness

disappears, as long as our answer to the question of why am I having a good day or why am I having a bad day, because you know this is a question that people ask us, Like maybe when you get home today. someone will do well, so how was that with Ted? You had a good day? I will say yes, yes, I had it. There was this lady and she talked to us about how we should be compassionate to former inmates and there's this artist who did it. this amazing boxing thing B with his mouth and you know this person in that person, as long as our reasons why we had a good day are a list of external conditions, then we are not going to have the stable happiness that we all want.

That makes sense, my dear, because if our happiness depends on it because we cannot control people and circumstances every day, then our happiness will be in the hands of others, right? It will be at the whim of our circumstances, so if we really want to have a good day every day we have two things we must do, so the first thing we must do is stop outsourcing our happiness and our unhappiness to people and circumstances, to others. In other words, we must stop attributing our happiness to what is happening externally and we must stop blaming others, especially blaming others for our unhappiness, as long as we do that, as long as we make it the job of people and circumstances. make us happy or like As long as we are to blame for being unhappy, our happiness will be very unstable and elusive.

Our second job is to actively cultivate a source of peace and a source of happiness that arises from within our own

mind

, so here's something I want. to memorize, are you ready? This is another line from one of my teacher books where it says that happiness and unhappiness are states of mind and therefore they are real causes that cannot be found outside the mind, so if we have a peaceful state of mind , We will be happy regardless of people and circumstances, if our mind is restless or agitated, even if we have very good circumstances, it will be impossible for us to be happy;

In other words, it is not what is happening that makes us happy or unhappy, but what makes us happy or unhappy. How we respond to those things that determines whether we are happy or unhappy is how our mental state is that determines our happiness or unhappiness so how are we going to do this so that we can all understand this as if intellectually it is not a rocket? Science is that, it's not difficult to understand and maybe to some extent, as I tell you these things, you think: yes, I already knew that, I already knew that, but how do we really do it?

How do we cultivate this stable peace of mind? that we can rely on regardless of external circumstances, so this is really where meditation comes into play and I would say that I would need another TED talk track to really do justice to the topic of meditation, but for our purposes today we can say That meditation is a mental action, it is the mental action of concentrating on a positive and peaceful state of mind. If we do this, we concentrate on a positive and peaceful state of mind, then we can say that we are meditating. If that's so, right?

Actually, you don't. I don't know if I'm meditating or not because I might be thinking about my shopping list. It's only meditation if I'm really focusing on a positive and peaceful state of mind, but the trick is that I can do it like this. This is called formal meditation. but we can also learn to do this all the time in our daily life, so look, here is a perfect opportunity. We concentrate on a mine of patience. They don't bother us or make us unhappy. So why don't we try it now? You are ready? It's just a short meditation according to the clock.

I have three minutes left. This will be very short, but let's try it. Let's try to harness our own potential to achieve a positive and peaceful state of mind. So now I just ask you to sit comfortably and place your feet flat on the floor and your hands in your lap and then you can slightly illuminate your eyes and become aware of the sensation of your breath on the tip of your nose and as you exhale , you can Imagine that you are breathing out any agitation, any mental activity, any frustration or unhappiness in your life, exhaling it all like dark smoke, and as you breathe in, you can imagine and believe that you are breathing in a clear, bright light that is the very nature of the inside. . peace and you can imagine that this clear, bright light fills your entire body and mind and for a few seconds just enjoy this inner peace that comes from within and now when we are done, determine to carry this inner peace with you for the rest of your day. to benefit yourself and others so now we wake up from meditation thank you very much