Banner photo credit: Dmitriy Frantsev
Gen Kelsang Nyema is an American Buddhist in the New Kadampa Tradition who on April 11, 2014 gave a TEDx talk titled “Happiness is all in your mind” in Greenville, South Carolina. At the time of this writing, her talk’s YouTube video has received over 8 million views.
In the comments on the video, hundreds of people post their appreciation, support, and joy at having heard her speak. Phuong Lana posted, “every time, when I feel depressed, hopeless, or stressed, I come to this video to listen. She really helped me to feel peaceful and calm. I promise myself to choose happiness every day.”
“I watch this every time I have a panic attack,” Zenia posts, “Truly life changing.”
Swarnava Roy enthuses, “She is simply amazing…. Her 15 mins TED Talk gave me the ‘wisdom’ which I hadn’t realized in over 40 years of my lifetime!!”
When asked about participating at TEDxGreenville, she said, “I agreed to participate in TEDxGreenville because I hoped it would show people that Buddhist teachings are mainstream, practical, and useful for everyone, Buddhist or non-Buddhist, religious or non-religious. I did the best I could with the 15 minutes I had. I hope it benefited, and continues to benefit, others. I hope it introduces people to Buddhist teachings in a way that’s more personal and meaningful than reading something in a book.”
We watched it and loved and now want to share it all with you so you too can benefit from it. We even made a transcript of it that is posted below for those who would also like to read it. Enjoy!
Transcript of Talk
Alright my friends, hello! So I want to start off with a few questions. And I know a lot of other presenters have already asked you questions, and they’ve been kind of hard questions. But the questions I am going to ask you are very, very simple and I promise you will be able to answer these. Alright, are you ready for your first one?
Your first question is – you don’t have to answer out loud: Are you having a good day?
My second question for you is: “Why?” If you are having a good day, why are you having a good day? Or if you are having a bad day, why are you having a bad day?
So I have one more question for you – this should be the easiest one of all. My last 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 one? What about the day after tomorrow? what about Sunday? Let’s see, yeah, that’s right, tomorrow is Saturday -- Sunday. How about Monday? Would you like to have a good day or a bad day on Monday? Tuesday? Wednesday? Thursday? Friday? This time next week, a good day or a bad day?
The last question, like I said, is probably the easiest one for us to answer because we know the answer to that don’t we. 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 is really speaking to the type of happiness that we all wish for in our heart of 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 depends upon how we answer the second question. Do you remember the second question? What was the second question?
“Why?” Why am I having a good day? Why am I having a bad day?
So one thing that my teacher says — his name is Geshe Kelsang Gyatso — and he says that much of the time our mind is like a balloon in the wind, blown here and there by external circumstances. Do you know that feeling?
He says, when things are going well, when they’re going our way, we feel happy. But then if something goes wrong, for example he says if we are forced to work for a colleague that we dislike – but I’m sure none of you have colleagues that you dislike, right? He says if we are forced to work with someone we dislike or if something doesn’t go our way, then our happy feeling disappears. So as long as our answer to the question “Why am I having a good day?” or “Why am I having a bad day?”…. ‘Cuz you know, this is a question people ask us, like maybe when you get home today, someone will go, “Well so how was that TED thing? Did you have a good day?”
And we’ll say, “yeah, yeah I did. There was this lady and she talked to us about how we need to be compassionate to former inmates, and there was this performer who did this awesome beat-boxing thing with his mouth, and this person and that person” As long as our reasons for why we had a good day is a list of external conditions, then we are not going to have the stable happiness that we all want.
Does that make sense to you? Because if that is what our happiness depends upon, because we cannot control people and circumstances every single day, then our happiness will be in the hands of others, won’t it? It will be at the whim of our circumstances. So if you really wish to have a good day every day, we’ve got two things we need to do.
So the first thing we need to do is we need to stop outsourcing our happiness and outsourcing our unhappiness onto people and circumstances. In other words, we need to stop attributing our happiness to what’s going on externally, and we need to stop blaming others – especially blaming others – for our unhappiness. So for as long as we do that, as long as we’re making it the job of people and circumstances to make us happy, or as long as we are making it their fault when we are 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 coming from inside our own mind. So here is something I want you to commit to memory. This is another line from one of my teacher’s books where he says, “Happiness and unhappiness are states of mind and therefore their real causes 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 unpeaceful or agitated, then even if we have very good circumstances, we’ll find it impossible to be happy.
So in other words, it’s not what is happening that is making us happy or unhappy, it is how we are responding to those things that determines whether we are happy or unhappy. It is what our state of mind is like that determines our happiness or our unhappiness. So how are we going to do this?
So we can all understand this intellectually. It’s not rocket science, is it? It’s not hard to understand and maybe to a certain extent, as I tell you these things, your like, “yeah, I knew that already. I knew that already.”
But how do we actually do it? How do we actually cultivate this stable peace of mind that we can rely upon regardless of the external circumstances? So this is really where meditation comes into play. And I would say I would need a whole other TEDtalk -- hint hint -- in order to really do the subject of meditation justice, but for our purposes today, we can say that meditation is the mental action of concentrating on a peaceful, positive state of mind. If we do that, if we concentrate on a peaceful, positive state of mind, then we can say we’re meditating. Whether that’s like this [she demonstrates a meditation pose with her eyes closed, feet flat on floor, and hands in lap.]
See actually you don’t know if I am meditating or not, because I could be thinking about my grocery list. It’s only meditation if I am actually focusing on a positive, peaceful state of mind. But the trick is I can do this like this, this is called “formal meditation,” but we can also learn to do this all the time in our daily life.
So see, here’s a perfect opportunity. We concentrate on a mind of patience, we’re not disturbed, not unhappy. So why don’t we try it now? Are you up for it? Just a short meditation. According to the clock, I’ve got three minutes left, so it’s going to be a very brief one, but let’s actually try it. Let’s try to tap into our own potential for a peaceful, positive state of mind.
So now I’ll ask you just to sit comfortably and place your feet flat on the floor and your hands within your lap. And then you can lightly close your eyes and become aware of the sensation of your breath at the tip of your nose.
And as you breath out you can image you are breathing out any agitation, any mental busyness, any frustration or unhappiness in your life – breathing it all out like dark smoke.
And as you breath in, you can imagine and believe that you are breathing in a clear, bright light, which is the very nature of inner peace. And you can imagine that this clear bright light fills your entire body and mind.
And for a few seconds, simply enjoy this inner peace coming from within.
And now as we finish, just be determined to bring this inner peace with you into the rest of your day, to benefit yourself and others.
So now we rise from meditation. Thank you very much.