How to tap into your awareness -- and why meditation is easier than you think | Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

0:03You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. Meditation sounds like it should be the easiest thing in the world. Just sit still, breathe, and be present. So why does something that sounds so effortless often feel so hard? Spiritual leader Yong-Gae Ming-Gur Rinpoche says it's because most of us misunderstand what meditation actually is. It was never about emptying your mind or forcing yourself to feel calm. We don't need to stop thinking. We just need to connect with awareness. In this talk from 2022, Yong-Gae shares three simple steps to accept the natural ebb and flow of your emotions.

0:48He came to meditation not as a naturally calm master, but as a kid who struggled with panic. Growing up in the Himalayas, his panic attacks followed him like a shadow. When he was nine, he asked his father, a meditation teacher, for help. And what his father told him changed how he understood his own mind. Awareness is like sky in the mountain. And the panic is like storm in the mountain, like cloud. And no matter how strong storm is, it doesn't change the nature of the sky. He reveals the surprising place all of this eventually led him, once he stopped fighting the very thing he most wanted to get rid of.

1:29That's coming up right after a short break.

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4:03And now, our TED Talk of the day. So, I would like to discuss about meditation. What we call the essence of meditation is awareness. And what is awareness knows what you're thinking, feeling, doing, seeing, hearing. That's all. So actually, meditation is very easy. But many people found difficult. Why? There are true misunderstandings about meditation. So the first is, many people think meditation means think of nothing. Stop thinking. Concentration. Shh, I'm meditating. Keep quiet. So the more when you try to stop thinking, what happens? You will think more. So we will do small experiment, okay?

5:00Now, please don't think about pizza. No pizza? No pizza? What happened? Did you think about pizza or no? Yes, raise your hand. I know. So, actually, we don't need to stop thinking. We just need to connect with awareness. And another misunderstanding about meditation is what we call bleasing out. Looking for peace, calm, joy, relax. Relax. The more you feel relaxed, then peace, calm, joy, relax, or run away. So let me show you my own experience. When I was young, I had panic attacks. Although I was born in the right middle of the Himalayan mountain, the area, the village, wonderful, but panic followed me as like shadow.

6:01And I have so much fear for strangers. I cannot go out and meet people. And a lot of storms in the Himalayan mountain, thunderstorm, snowstorm, These storms drive me crazy. And when I was nine years old, I asked my father to teach me meditation. Luckily, he was a great meditation teacher. And the first thing what he said is, don't try to fight with panic. Don't try to get rid of panic. And actually, he said, you don't have to. Why? Awareness is like sky in the mountain. and the panic is like storm in the mountain, like cloud. And no matter how strong storm is, it doesn't change the nature of sky.

6:51So sky is always present, pure, calm. Similarly, our fundamental quality of mind, awareness, is always present, pure, calm. But the problem is we don't know how to connect with awareness. What we see, only thought, emotion, that's all. So he said there are three steps of practice to connect with awareness. The first one, we have to use an object, support, to connect with awareness. So this is one of my first meditation techniques, what I learned from my father. So you can join and you can relax your muscles in your body. If you cannot relax, also okay, allowed. and close your eyes and please listen to sound.

7:41And when you hear the sound through ear and mind together, that is the meditation. And let pane come and go. Let pizza come and go. and maybe two pizza, three pizza, ten pizzas. As long as you remember the sound, you can have pizza.

8:25Okay, how was it? Did you hear the sound? Great. That is the meditation. Very easy. Just hear. That's all. You don't have to do anything. So a penny comes. Let penny come and go. Don't care. Just listen to sound. Monkey mind comes. Blah, blah, blah, blah. Let it come and go. Just listen to sound. So I did that. But I have a big problem. The problem is lazy. I'm a lazy boy. I love the idea of meditation, but I don't like the practice of meditation. So on and off like that for five years. When I was 13 years old, in India, there's traditional three-year retreat going to start. I thought I should join this because good for my laziness.

9:10And I joined. The first month, wonderful, no lazy. Second month, lazy comeback. Now what happened? My lazy and my panic, they too become good friends. The life in the retreat become disaster. And I thought I should leave. But I feel embarrassed to leave because I told all my childhood friends that I can do the retreat, you know. I don't want to lose my face. But if I stay, almost three years to go, then I thought, what should I do? In the end, I decided to learn how to live with the planet. So now we have this second step, what we call, actually, we can meditate everywhere, anytime, with anything.

9:55So you can meditate with the panic. How to do that? Just like listen to sound, when you listen to sound, sound becomes support for your meditation. Now you can watch panic. If you see the panic, great. What we call, when you see the river, you're out of river. When you see the mountain, you're out of mountain. So now awareness becomes more than panic. More than depression, stress, monkey mind, whatever. Let them come, let them go. So that is the first benefit. And second benefit, what we call, there's a wisdom comes. So when you look at the panic, panic is not solid stone anymore. Panic become pieces.

10:38Frightened image, voice, background belief. And if you take one of these away, you cannot find panic. So what I call panic become like shaving foam. look like a piece of rock, but inside full of bubbles. Then three, what I call, this is acceptance, like self-kind, self-love, self-compassion. You let panic come and go, that's really acceptance, isn't it? So three in one, awareness, love and compassion, wisdom. Sometimes what I call, buy one, get two free. Big deal, right? And all this because of panic. So now panic becomes your teacher, your best friend. So I did this practice, and in the end, me and my panic become very good friends.

11:32And a few weeks later, panic is gone. I miss my friend. And I finished my retreat. My retreat went very well. And after that, I was very eager to share this wonderful technique to the world. So I taught meditation in many places, wrote a few books, became a bestseller. And then students and become abbot of your monasteries. And what happened? Kind of new ego emerged with me. I thought, oh, I have to watch out this. Then I decided to do something very special, what we call wandering retreat. Meaning you left everything behind, go on the street with nothing. So I decided to do that in 2011. I left my monastery, my student, my wonderful cozy bed, everything, and go on the street with only a few thousand Indian rupees.

12:25And that finished within a few weeks. I had to bake food, and I got food poisoning. Vomiting, diarrhea, I'm alone on the street. Now I'm going to die. Then I thought, what should I do? So now we have the third step, what we call open awareness meditation. Awareness be with itself. Sky be with itself. Now no need to have support. Just be awareness itself. So I did that practice. Then what happened? My body become decaying. I cannot see. I cannot hear. But my mind becomes so present, beyond, free. and I was in that state for a few hours. Luckily, I didn't die. I come back. So when I come back, the street becomes like my home.

13:16When I look at the tree, the tree becomes like a tree of love. And when it blows to my face, it becomes a joyful experience. And the rest of my retreat went very well. I learned a lot from my retreat. So I like to share this open awareness meditation, but it is very difficult to explain. but I want to do something drama. And this is what I learned from my father. So what we call this mala is the crazy monkey mind. And the open awareness meditation means you don't have to do anything. Just be.

13:58That's all. And you don't need to meditate. their sense of presence, being, but not loss. Be free, be present. Thank you very much.

14:20That was Yonghe Mingur Rinpoche at TED 2022. This talk was originally published in December of that year. If you're curious about TED's curation, visit ted.com slash curation guidelines. And that's it for today. TED Talks Daily is a podcast from TED. This episode was fact-checked by the TED Research Team and produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Lucy Little, Emma Taubner, and Tansika Sungmarnivong. Additional support from Daniela Ballarezzo, Christopher Faze-Bogan, Valentina Bohanini, Ban Ban Chang, Brian Green, and Lainey Lott. Learn more at podcasts.ted.com. I am Elise Hu.

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16:07How many hours a day are you staring at a screen? And what does that mean for your eye health? I mean, check out your screen time for the day, for the week. We're on them constantly and we're not taking the breaks that we should, both kids and adults alike. And that's really crucial at just maintaining eye health for young kids, limiting that amount of near work. That was ophthalmologist Dr. Rupa Wong, who joined me for an in-depth conversation about why taking care of your eye health is more important than ever in today's digital world. She shares the preventative value of regular eye exams, her hot takes on blue light glasses, and more as part of a special series on TED Health about your senses.

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