#140: Ex Monk: The Hidden Secret To Accessing Peace

0:00Sam Yo, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. People think becoming a monk made my life peaceful, but the truth is the monastery didn't remove my struggles, it revealed them. And then it taught me how to sit with them without running away. Peace is not the absence of struggle, it's a different relationship with it. What does that mean? So when I got into the monastery, I realized that I had been hiding behind all these things. And peace didn't come to me straight away in the monastery. Actually, when I first sat still myself, my mind was so loud of all these things that I had put to one side or ignored, especially coming from the entertainment industry.

0:41And I got into the entertainment industry when I was 20, and I was whisked from training straight into the biggest stage in the West End. And physically, I repaired my body, but mentally, I hadn't done anything to my mind. And a lot of time we think we can train our bodies, but we don't realize that we can train our minds and go into that. And, you know, always feeling that I was disconnected from myself and my identity as well. These things just bubbled and bubbled and bubbled. And when I sat in a monastery, I had no choice but to really sit with myself. and you know peace what i learned was it's something that you escape to it's something you learn to carry and that was my whole journey in the monastery was learn to carry this peace within me would you say that sitting in silence is people's biggest challenge yeah i think i did i read this um about this uh study they did and they had a group of men and women and they gave them the choice to either sit in silence for themselves for like 10 minutes or sit or get a quick uh tiny electric shock and i think i think 70 of the men went for the shock and about 60 of the women went for the shock because they didn't want to sit themselves people would choose pain by sitting themselves rather than listening to their own pain yeah i think i've even seen a more extreme one of those around like sitting by by yourself alone in a room with nothing for x amount of time or killing yourself or something and there's even people like literally can't even sit alone it's crazy that it's crazy the the feeling of that and and i can resonate with it from when i first started the journey because as you mentioned right when you first got quiet it was the loudest yes oh do you think that's why people just go oh that's loud i'm going to turn away from this i'm not going to uh to listen i'm not going to sit in that silence i'm going to distract myself because it's quite confronting yeah well the problem is when it gets loud they don't know how to turn it down so we move on we move on and then it just gets loud every time it resonates back and for me like a lot of my identity growing up was confusing you know because i was a child between two worlds and i wasn't quite british enough and i wasn't quite tight enough.

3:06So I sought my identity through achievement and giving that my purpose. I was captain of the football team, I got a scholarship to the best dance school in Europe, and I was always trying to be the good son to my parents. So I was basing my identity on all these external things. And then eventually I realized that all that didn't really serve me. It was just disrupting my internal core. And it was when I was driving home from a show when I'd been on tour for two years and if you've been on tour, you're just going and going and going and movement it feels like meaning and then you get into autopilot and i lost control of my car and i couldn't really recount the last hour that because i was just an autopilot and i remember the car going like on two two wheels for a split second and then it fell down and when it fell down it wasn't i wasn't frightened of what could have happened i was more frightened of how i felt because for the first time in a long time, I was present with myself and that was so uncomfortable.

4:22And to feel uncomfortable in your own skin, it's terrifying.

4:31What did that make you realize? Like the first time you were present and it was confronting, did it give you an insight on the fact that things needed to change or what was the realization in that moment? So I question how much of my life have I really been a part of and how much of my life had been intentional and how much of my life had just been reacting to things. And I knew at the time, 20 years old, I was in the biggest stage of the West End, great money, lots of attention, lots of invitations to do things. and so in the outside it looked I looked very successful and you know from my friends who trained with me I knew there was a little bit of envy and jealousy so when I decided I needed to do something different to remove myself from the environment they were like why are you doing this like you're like going up and up you I got moved up to one of the roles I was a first a dancer and then the second year I got moved up to the features role so I was kind of moving up the ranks so very early and i just left it all behind i didn't know what i was gonna do i didn't know where i was gonna go but i just needed to know i needed to remove myself from that environment and you know that incident in the car that spit second when i literally felt i always get like goosebumps when i feel it i literally felt the car going two wheels i thought this is it this is it and that spit second i turned the wheel the other side i just pumped it down and that was it that was like you got to do something else you said you questioned how much of your life you have been a part of yeah what do you mean i had been very accustomed to adapt to myself to other people you know you know growing up having this kind of dual identity you know you learn to camouflage yourself to fit who's in the room so you know if i was with my english friends I would be more English, but if I were my Thai friends, I would be more Thai.

6:34And if I was with my parents, I would be the good son. And there were some rooms where growing up in East London, I didn't really accept people who looked like me at the time. So I would dim my light, so I would change how I was then. So for me, my identity wasn't really mine. It was from the perspective of people looking at me and you know i even went to dance school and training because my best mate was there i i you know i i was good at it but i didn't know if i loved it um and i auditioned i got a full scholarship so okay they think i'm good i'll go there so it wasn't really a conscious choice.

7:20Yeah. So you feel you were making decisions in your life, but they weren't actually aligned with potentially what you actually felt called to do. It was like a maybe stemmed from a level of external praise. Like if I do this, I'm going to get the praise or fit the mold of what the people around me are wanting or expecting of me. Yeah. To an extent, yeah. And it's seeking that validation that I belong. And that's a very dangerous thing because you end up somewhere eventually where you're standing and you think, hey, how did I get here? And I was feeling that I was getting to that point as well.

8:08as a very young man at 20 years I didn't really have a goal where I wanted to go in my life I just had to keep moving and I felt if I kept moving that would give me meaning and I was chasing this meaning I didn't know what it was or when it was going to come and when I left the show I didn't know where I was going to go what I was going to do but it was when I took my mom to the temple and I'd grown up going Sunday school and I was always kicking and screaming because I never wanted to go I wanted to play football with my mates I wanted to play arcades and street fighting with them but I was always taught by monks there so I always saw monks as this vessel of knowledge and understanding and they always seemed to be very

9:03intentional like even with their movements and their words and the way they listened. And when I was at the temple, I remembered this feeling of just feeling peaceful as well. And I was present with myself, but that fear wasn't there. So, yeah, I turned to my mom driving back home and said, Mom, I think I'm going to go to Thailand and become a monk. And she was like, well, you've been smoking? No, but she didn't say that. But You know, she was like, are you joking? You know, and to think that, no, this is so funny that my Asian mother thought that me playing dress up and make-believe on stage was more acceptable and within my realm than me going off to be a spiritual man.

9:49That's how far removed I was from that path at the time. So then shortly after that, you went to Thailand, became a monk at 23? 23, yeah. 23? Yeah. And then you decided to leave and go back home. What was missing in the monastery that made you want to return back into your Western life? So ironically, what was missing was what I was avoiding. And that was emotional connection. you know because when my parents divorced I I numbed myself from feeling disappointed and telling them how I felt I didn't want to burden them you know and that kind of had a ricochet on my relationships as well I couldn't really hold a relationship I wasn't really present with it so I missed that emotional connection that I had the privilege of having you know in abundance especially in the position I was in So when I got to the monastery, I had these connections, but they were more on a spiritual level.

11:04But then I think when my grandmother got ill, I realized how much I missed that commercial connection. I wanted to remove myself from the monastery, but I feared I would lose the practices and return to how I was before. So that was something I had to weigh up as well. And my mentor at the time, when I did tell him to leave, he said, no, you can leave, but the practice won't leave you. You find your way to work these into your life when you're outside. There's times you fall back into your old ways or anxiety or the pressure. And he said to me, just remember the calmest person in the room often carries the greatest strength.

11:51and whenever you feel that, you know, say to yourself, I am the calmest person in the room. I carry the greatest strength and I'll ground you in those moments. So let's unpack that a little bit more. We will get back to the episode in just one minute, but first I need to tell you about PodPro, my school helping podcasters grow. PodPro is the greatest podcast school in the world. And the reason I can say that with so much confidence is it's because it's the only one that has successful podcasters teaching you how to do it. ones that are actually walking the walk. If you are a podcaster that is struggling to grow or you're an aspiring podcast, you shouldn't be doing it alone.

12:28You should have experts helping you fast track that journey so that you can get to where you want to quicker. And if that sounds like you, then PodPro is for you. If you go to link in the description or the show notes below, or go to thepodpro.com forward slash apply and put in your details, my team can reach out to you to see if you are a good fit. I am so excited to slingshot you on your podcast journey, but let's get right back to the show. So let's unpack that a little bit more. You mentioned to your mentor that you were going to leave and you feared that he was not going to accept you for when you were telling him that you were going to leave maybe.

13:07And then when you mentioned it to him, you were pleasantly surprised in the way that he handled it, stating that, no, it's okay, you can leave and just remember this. Was there something freeing about that and the way that he handled that? Because for me, that feels quite monk-like in the way that he responded and dealt with it. I was like, no, it's okay, just remember this. And then starts to flip it back onto the lessons of the monks and what they actually teach. do you feel that gave you more confidence integrating back into the world of not realizing not fearing that oh I'm just going to slip back into my old life um it did me give me the confidence because the thing he said to me you know because I did it's strange enough I I felt like I was going to disappoint him so it's kind of the same feeling I had previously I felt like I was going disappointed if I left and he said well since when did I make you feel that you had to um live up to my standards.

14:11It's your standards you have to live up to. And that's what disappointment is. You can be disappointed with yourself. Someone else can't really be disappointed with you because they're looking from a different perspective. So that did give me the reassurance. But when I left the monastery, I was still doing the work. And I think the first month when I left the monastery, I didn't leave my aunt's house in Thailand. I stayed there because I was used to being in these walls where I had control of the relationship with my mind. And I remember my cousin, he said, you've been here too long, too long.

14:47And he took me out. And I don't know if you've been to Thailand, but I went to Bangkok. I went to MBK, which is the biggest shopping mall. And it's lots of tourists, lots of sounds. I just want you to stand there for 10 minutes. And he just left me and all these things going around. I was like, oh, it's just really like, you know, the way I kind of shifted back in, shifted to the monastery from all that, that, that noise into the science of the monastery, it was shifting me back. And, and, you know, it's the same thing. I was avoiding, I was avoiding the noise, but the difference this time is that I had more of the tools to control the noise.

15:24So the, the integration is, is realizing that it's not, you're not going to go back to your old ways these are kind of unlocks within that you learn from being in the monastery but i guess the thing and this is a big part about about your book is how do we it's not like you're telling people to be monks but you're telling them to be probably monk-like in nature in the way that they're operating in the current world in the world that they're actually living in so they can take the lessons from the monks and apply them into everyday life. So when you were getting out of the monastery, what was that transition like where you went, okay, like I've now learned these things, I've done the work, I've got these tools, I'm going to then use these to become a better man back home.

16:12What was that transition like? And yeah, I guess what was the key things that you took away to be able to make yourself ultimately a better person in the world? So the key thing is that you got to remember, but you can change yourself, but you can't change others. And one of the things I realized when I went into the monastery, coming from the entertainment industry, when you're always kind of top each other and be louder and tell the bigger stories, was that everyone outside is waiting to talk, but no one's actually actively listening. And what I learned in the monastery, that listening is an active practice.

16:50And I realized how much I never really listened before and just sat and in the book I describe it was just empty my cup. You know, because sometimes we go into conversations with a cup full and we want to respond before the other person's finished. So if we go into a conversation with a cup empty, we can imagine that when the other person's talking, they're filling our cup, filling our cup, filling our cup. So that way you hold not just the space for the conversation, but it makes the other person feel seen and connected. And I realized when I missed the monastery, that was a huge but very simple thing that I lacked.

17:30When I would talk to my mentor or monks who had been there more senior, they would always leave these pauses after I would talk or after they would speak. And at first I was like, okay, what's going on? Why are they paused? And Mai Tai is not great in a sense because I speak Thai with a British accent. So I thought, okay, I must have said something wrong. so i was always like second guessing what i said but it wasn't that they were just emptying their cup and just allowing that space to connect to me you know not just an audio level but on a spiritual level as well because and a lot of things are said and a lot of them a lot of the most important things are said in silence i feel that yeah i interviewed a guy when i was in Bali a couple months ago and we were so connected spiritually that he would answer questions that I was saying without even saying them.

18:25Like it was like the next thing that was coming through. And I feel that when I was thinking about it, the thing that it stemmed from was us being so present and so there that we like connected in a way that was beyond just the words. And so I was thinking something and it was almost like he was getting the notification on his phone of the question, but he wasn't, right? Yeah, yeah. And I think I've spoke to people that do the silent retreats and different things in Thailand and Indonesia and in a lot of places. And they get to a point where they're just looking at someone and it's like they're having a conversation.

19:05Did you have any moments like that or anything that kind of shocked you on that realm while you were in in thailand um being a monk what in conversation wise or so like i guess was there anything that hit you like that kind of you probably wouldn't expect to experience like for example i've heard stories of people that say i got to a point in the meditation where i looked at someone and he looked at me and we were having a conversation without words we were like talking and it was like a shocking, it was like a confusing thing I'd never experienced. I guess the thing that I'm just wondering is, was there any experiences while you were in the monastery that maybe caught you by surprise from spending so much time in quiet and being in that meditative, calm state for so long?

20:00Before I even told my mentor about the living, he said he kind of already knew.

20:07Because most of the time in the class I wouldn't talk so much, I would let the other people answer questions and so he would observe me a lot. So he would listen to me by just observing me. So when I did tell him that I was going to leave the monastery, he said, yeah, I know. I think I knew before you did. So he had come to the conversation before I had, just because he was just observing me. And it wasn't anything said in words, it was just said in presence. So whenever he was with me, he's always present, he's always there, he's never kind of doing something else. And if there's people in the room and he's talking to someone, he'll finish talking to that person first and then direct all his attention to the next person.

20:54And I think a lot of the time, especially what we do in the modern world, we'd like here, there, here there yeah notification phone post this swipe this and we're like our attention is scattered and the um the irony is that we're so connected but we're so disconnected isn't it yeah yeah yeah i i feel i mean at least maybe i'll ask you this do you feel like we know that we know the presence plays a role we know there's people in our life where their presence shift and we kind of know the answers, but we avoid them. Like we know that our partner has potentially fallen out of love, or there's a lack of connection going on there.

21:37We know that the friend that's not responding to our texts is probably getting a little bit disinterested. We know that maybe our diet's a little bit off and we're seeing that reflect in the way that we look. Like we know a lot of these things in our life, but we're actually just avoiding them. We're not facing the problem. Maybe we're filled with so much noise in our life that we can be aware of it. But again, just like we can't sit in silence in our own thoughts, we can't face the thoughts front on. We can't face the confrontation, whether it's personally or to someone else in our life front on.

22:11So we just kind of kick the can down the road and avoid them. Do you feel that like, as you're explaining your mentor knew that you were on your way out, a lot of us in our everyday life feel that with a lot of different things, but we just push it down and avoid the inevitable truths that we're facing yeah i mean i love it starts with awareness and you know in the book i wrote you know we we live in these four dimensions of mindfulness there's the body so it's our physical health how we take care of our body how we nourish it and there's the the mind so that's our mental state how we manage our mental state the thoughts that drift in our mind, the negative thoughts, it's trying to dust them away.

22:56And what do we actually do to do that? And then there's the heart, it's the emotion. It's how do we emotionally regulate ourselves? The best place to be emotionally regulated is to talk to people, but a lot of time we hold it in. And the last one is spirit, it's purpose, it's something greater in yourself that you're moving towards. And a lot of times we can feel that one of those things are off. So you can feel like your body, you haven't been looking after it. You know that. And I would describe this four legs of a chair. So you're sitting on the chair, it feels uncomfortable and it rocks. And the natural and easy thing to do is just to move to another chair.

23:39And then that chair, you're rocking. It's exactly the same thing. You're like, okay, what's going on? I've moved to a different chair, this should feel better. And then you move to another one. So eventually, if one of the dimensions are rough, it puts pressure on the other. So then two legs are starting to wobble. And then you move again. And eventually you keep moving and avoiding until one day all four of the legs collapse underneath you. And I think we know when we're with someone and that they're emotionally not there or we're not emotionally not there, but we're avoiding fixing that chair.

24:18And we know that when we're not looking at our bodies, when we're maybe having too much takeout food and not doing any steady-state cardio, but this leg is a good word, but we know that. But we keep moving because it's easier. Yeah. I wonder because easier now would be a thing but I wonder if it's easier later and and if it's a better life I wonder like is there some lessons that you've learned inside the monastery and inside your time being a Buddhist monk that can help enlighten people that maybe are not living a life in alignment with them and they're struggling to take those actions and maybe have that hard conversation and change the thing in their life that's going to make them be more aligned with what they truly want to do.

25:14Is there anything that you learned in there that would help these people that might be a little bit stuck with, yeah, maybe not living in alignment with what they are and not doing the hard things that they feel they need to do to get them closer to a life they want to live? I think the problem with the people who are in that situation is that they're waiting to be motivated. And if you base your lifestyle around motivation, it's highly unreliable. Because as you know, motivation changes every single day. So if they want to be consistent with something they want to change, they've got to find something they connect with or emotionally connect with.

25:55And when they're doing it, they ask themselves the question, who am I becoming as I'm doing this? And that will help you stay more consistent. If you want to eat better or move more, or if you want to emotionally regulate yourself a bit more by talking to someone, or if you want to look outside yourself to find something more purposeful. A lot of people are very successful, but they're just doing it because it's a habit, and there's no really an end destination. They're just going to keep going, keep pushing, keep pushing and what's going to make you happy? And that's different for everyone. What brings me joy?

26:41What brings you joy without the external things that you have to attach yourself to find it? Yeah, that's an unlock. Yeah, you said people didn't come to the monastery because they were lost. They became because everything looked fine but still didn't feel right. Yeah, that was me, like, in a nutshell. I was very successful at 20 years old. I got into this show while I was training, so I was 19, and on my 20th birthday was the first week. So I had the whole of this cast sing Happy Birthday to me. And in the cast, the leading lady of West End was Elaine Page. She was well famous. So she's singing Happy Birthday to me.

27:27And I have all these gorgeous dancers singing Happy Birthday to me. And I'm like a 19-year-old young man. I was like, wow, this is great. And then the guy who played the King in The King and I, the show, was Jason Scott Lee. I don't even remember him. He played Bruce Lee in The Bruce Lee Minute years ago, and I idolized him. I was obsessed with that movie, and I was obsessed with him. And I even drew this artwork, like a silhouette of him with a dragon behind, for one of my art pieces, and he was singing Happy Birthday to Me. so I thought wow I had made it you know and um externally you know it was brilliant but internally it just didn't feel right and for me you know I was fortunate I guess that my car like tipped on those two wheels you know I kind of feel like it was a blessing because if it didn't and it just kept going I don't know where I would be now because I know friends who had struggled later on with things and some of them are now like 15-20 years sober you know some of them went off had no um eating disorders some of them were not here with us anymore because we were kind of on this kind of path together and you know in the book you know i i kind of kept them out because it's about my story and that's their story to tell but I could see from some of my peers where they were going because they were like maybe two or three steps ahead of me where I was.

29:02You mentioned you idolized certain people. Is there anything in the teachings in the monastery that maybe explain that idolizing or pedestaling people could be a problem in itself? or is there nothing in the in the in the teachings around around you know pedestalling and putting people on different levels and idolizing it's not so much idolizing individuals idolizing um and putting in those practices that align with you so certain practices will align more with you than they would with me so you know that's more in a sense idolizing but individuals you know there's no like pop stars or rock stars in the monastery in that sense um but as it comes to different practices, then I guess you can say that.

29:50Yeah. I guess I'm fascinated to know, what's the main goal for monks? Like when they look at life mastery and what does success look like for a monk, what is it? So traditionally, like the main goal for monks is to reduce suffering in the mind. way back to me, suffering is in the Dharma, it's translated as suffering. But for me personally, being in the monastery and now living out in the modern world and doing what I do now, it's not so much suffering, it's friction. It's removing friction from your mind. How do I remove friction from my mind? What things can I do to remove friction from my mind?

30:43And being a monk is not about controlling the world. And being a monk is coming outside, it's about learning how to control your thoughts within the world. Do you see what I mean? Mm-hmm. And a lot of time we want to control things, but it's not about that. It's about controlling your thoughts within the world. Can you give me some examples of friction? Friction, it can be like anything. Friction can be, let's go to when I was acting, a lot of friction you have is validation. You constantly want to be validated. And that friction with your self-worth, that someone else has to give you your self-worth.

31:30um you know and you know there's this friction with what we were talking about earlier about maybe starting a workout routine you know there's always little moments of friction you know and in dharma it's like suffering so people think it's like suffering and pain but it's it's friction and friction is everywhere you know we we encounter these little moments of friction throughout the day. Yeah. And the key thing that rang home there is friction with the mind. And it just makes me be reminded of the fact that most of our battles are internal. Most of them are the ones within ourselves. And we perceive it to be and manufacture these thoughts that it's someone else, that these people are affecting you because of them, this rule or this thing is affecting you because of them, and it's always pointing externally.

32:27And then we wonder why we can't have the answers, but that's because it's actually internal. The battle that we're facing is the one within us. And if we fill our mind with noise and we fill our life with noise, We can't even create any space to be aware of what's within. And then after being aware, having the courage to then act on that and move through that and not just push it down and deflect it is probably the key. Because friction, I love that word. And a big priority for me is even with my relationships in my life is like, how can I just build relationships in my life that are not adding more friction into my life?

33:11Yeah, exactly. like the friction that makes things just harder. It's like makes when you're pushing something a whole lot harder to push. Like what are those things in your life that are, instead of trying to like push from A to B, how about we try and clear the path so that it's easier to push? Is that right? It's like we're trying to cut down the tree. We've got an hour. Let's spend 50 minutes sharpening the axe. That's, yeah. You know? And I just think this reigns home because... Most of our battles are internal and all of the challenges that we have, if we actually look within and we look at why they are affecting us, we'll probably find that we're the problem.