Thubten is able to explain meditation using clear language and an approach which really speaks to our modern tech-infused lives. With openness, humility and humour he delivers a deep message that will resonate in our modern culture. Compelling to read and full of profound wisdom, this book rationally describes how our mind functions and how we can cultivate the habit of happiness. I’ve found that many people seek a kind of happiness which is a fleeting sensation: a “high”—an injection-like bolt of energy to the heart. Yet this never seems to last, and when they no longer experience that high, they crave it again. Consequently, it is not at all surprising that all of us are constantly searching for happiness. But what if we’re looking for it at all the wrong places? The good thing is that these are all mental states, and that, consequently, all of them depend on you and you exclusively. No outside “things,” no circumstances you can’t control. Gelong Thubten is a Buddhist monk, meditation teacher and author from the UK. He ordained as a monk 26 years ago at Samye Ling Tibetan Monastery in Scotland, and he has spent over six years in intensive meditation retreats, the longest of which was 4 years long. He is now regarded as one of the UK's most influential meditation teachers, with pioneering work in providing non-religious mindfulness programmes to businesses, hospitals, schools, universities, prisons and addiction counselling centres. He works with major global companies such as Google, Accenture and LinkedIn, and has lectured at Oxford University and for the United Nations. Thubten teaches mindfulness to medical students at the National University of Ireland, and he trained Benedict Cumberbatch and Tilda Swinton in meditation techniques during the filming of Marvel's Dr. Strange.

After collaborating with Yale neuroscientist Ash Ranpura and Ruby Wax on How to Be Human, Thubten wrote A Monk’s Guide to Happiness, his debut solo book. The aim of this book is to help you create happiness through bringing meditation into the heart of your daily life—not only to reduce stress and gain greater mastery over your thoughts and emotions, but also to discover your mind’s deep potential for unconditional compassion and freedom. Happiness is inside you, waiting. No matter how good you feel, you’ll never be happy if you think of happiness in terms of external things and circumstances.One of the true joys of "A Monk's Guide to Happiness" is that Thubten structures the book in such a way that it really reinforces his own belief in starting with meditation simply and growing into it with discipline. As he writes about the various aspects of meditation, he ends each ch Our major problem is that we don’t recognize that awareness. We are lost in our thoughts and emotions; we’re lost in the clouds. Meditation helps us to connect with awareness, and it is not about getting rid of the thoughts, but about gaining a broader perspective. The fact that there is this part of the mind which can observe, suggests that our essence is freedom. And as we now know: freedom is happiness.

We live in times where there’s a lot of emphasis on feeling good. We look for some kind of “hit,” like a sugar rush, and so we lurch from one “buzz” to the next, concerned with having our senses stimulated and satisfied, sometimes all of them at once. Normally our minds don’t feel free. Thoughts and emotions create a storm inside us, and we easily become their slaves. Moment to moment we might find ourselves in an “argument” with reality, constantly wishing things were different. Happiness involves mastering our thoughts and emotions and embracing things just as they are; it means that we relax and stop trying to manipulate our circumstances. If we can learn how to rest deeply in the present moment, even when facing difficulties, and we train our minds not to judge, we can discover within us a tremendous source of happiness and satisfaction. We might start to notice how much we usually look for nourishment from “outer” things instead. Well, it’s nothing new: it’s merely our already existing awareness that there is a part of our brain which is constantly free.Whether it is through a new drink, a new shirt, or a new car—what all those ads you see while scrolling through Facebook or browsing through your favorite magazines are selling to you is nothing more but some mythical feeling of happiness. The reason is called hedonic adaptation, which, in layman’s terms, means that your brain takes the good things that happen to you for granted, and the bad states as aberrations. In other words, it only notices when something is bad. If there is one thing Gelong Thubten, a Buddhist monk from the UK, can’t understand, it is the extent to which the concept of happiness is misunderstood and misinterpreted by the majority of people. So, perhaps, that is a great place to start—with a clear and profoundly thought-out answer to the question: “what is happiness?”

And this state of uncertainty is overwhelming: it causes stress and discontent since we feel that our life at the present moment is not enough and that we can only be happy when our goals are completed.It’s important to remember that your mind is going to stray. When this happens, you simply need to recognize it without judgment. In ancient texts on meditation one often finds metaphors in which the mind is compared to the sky, and our thoughts and emotions to the clouds. The sky is limitless, vast, and without center or edges. Within the sky there are all kinds of clouds—heavy storm clouds, cotton wool–like clouds, thin, wispy cirrus clouds, and so on. These are all a natural part of the sky, but the sky is bigger. In a similar way, meditation teachings describe the pristine openness and spaciousness of the mind’s awareness, which is greater than the comings and goings of the thoughts and emotions.