Nine life lessons from the happiest man in the world: from embracing tiny changes to not overthinking meditation
Stressed out, endlessly scrolling and never satisfied? Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, the Buddhist monk with off-the-charts levels of contentment, may have the answers …
By some metrics, Buddhist monk Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche is the happiest man on Earth. In brain scans, researchers noted that Mingyur’s neural activity showed off-the-charts levels of activation in the left prefrontal cortex, an area associated with positive emotions such as happiness, enthusiasm and joy. In other tests conducted when he was 41 years old, his brain reportedly “resembled that of a 33-year-old”. He also laughs a lot.
Can happiness be taught? I met Mingyur (Rinpoche is an honorary title meaning, roughly, “precious one”) to discover his strategies for a richer life.
Less convenience, more contentment
“As the Dalai Lama says, we have everything at the touch of a finger, and so when we start to feel lonely, incomplete, bored – we protect ourselves with whatever: eating ice-cream, our smartphone, coffee,” says Mingyur. “We try to get away from them, but those feelings are wisdom, in a way. The really important thing is to sit with them, embrace them as a path to explore.”
For instance, if you find yourself bored while watching a Netflix romcom and simultaneously scrolling on your phone, that’s a signal that ever more stimulation will never be satisfying (science backs this up: one recent study suggests flicking between videos on social media makes us more bored, not less). Take it as a sign to switch everything off, look inward and stop trying to fill the vacuum with superficial stuff.
Embrace changes (even terrifying ones)
In 2011, Mingyur left his monastery in the middle of the night with nothing but the clothes on his back, intending to live as a homeless yogi. About three weeks in, he developed severe food poisoning and spent days paralysed by exhaustion and pain – but he now sees this as the moment he started to truly understand the Tibetan Buddhist idea of relinquishing control.
Does he think it’s possible to experience that sort of thing without going through something quite so unpleasant? “Absolutely, of course. Especially nowadays – modern life is full of adventure. When you turn 18, start a new job, start a new relationship – each of those are opportunities for change.” But you don’t have to wait for these bigger moments: meeting a new group of people or taking up a new challenge can help increase your comfort levels with new things. Try implementing one small change every time you feel like you’ve spent a day just going through the motions: a new route home from work, or cooking with one ingredient you’ve never used before. Something I find helpful is to keep a little list of things I want to try whenever I come across them, then when things get stultifying, I’ve got a ready-made buffet to choose from.
You don’t need quiet to find peace
“I felt bored the first time I learned meditation,” says Mingyur. “I said, ‘Today is breathing. Tomorrow, again, breathing. The rest of this week, breathing. This is stupid.’ But for meditation, you need to know two things. One, you can make everything support for meditation – you can meditate anytime, anywhere, with anything. Second, you have to have some creative element with your meditation: everything becomes a friend to the meditation.”
To put this another way, if there’s traffic noise outside, or the person next to you is watching TikTok videos, the idea is to let that become a source of focus and calm. This is easier said than done. Mingyur suggests building up to it by listening to music, then waterfalls or birdsong, then loud conversations or construction. Eventually, he says, you should be able to meditate while a baby is crying (I won’t be trying this).
Use the ‘three pillars’
“We think about three things in Tibetan Buddhism: view, meditation and application,” says Mingyur. “View is the mindset: we believe that everybody has an inner sky, the qualities of awareness, love, compassion and wisdom. We practise meditation, and then we practise application – building new habits. So it’s easy to say: ‘Oh, people aren’t nice.’ But of course there are a lot of great qualities in a lot of people, and if you see that, it will manifest. But it’s a habit: you have to keep doing it, and doing it, and then you change.”
Mingyur suggests doing this in a small way every day. Maybe one day try appreciating your family, and the next, find positive things to say about your most annoying colleague.
Be grateful (for really specific things)
Yes, gratitude lists can feel a bit peak 2021, but one approach is to go from the incredibly general to the extremely specific. “I appreciate that I have senses, that there’s a roof above me, that I have at least one or two friends or family,” says Mingyur. “When you begin to appreciate these things, you start to appreciate the quality of your life and everything around you.”
This doesn’t necessarily mean you need to start a gratitude journal. After a few days, it can feel a bit too easy for your mind to scribble another ‘I’m grateful for my children’. Instead, the idea is to use little moments of downtime to notice how nice it is to be in the specific moment, whether you’re sitting in a comfortable chair or watching your child swing a stick around in the woods.
The sky doesn’t change, even in a storm
“I had panic attacks when I was young,” says Mingyur. “When I began to learn meditation from my father, I asked him how to fight them. He said: ‘Don’t fight.’ The first reason is that if you fight, panic becomes stronger. It’s like saying: ‘Don’t think about orange’ – suddenly it’s all you can think about.
And the second thing my father said is, there’s no need to push panic away, because it’s like a storm cloud in the sky. A storm cloud can’t change the nature of the sky – it comes and then it goes. You just have to connect with the inner sky.” To put this another way, whatever inner turmoil you’re going through, remind yourself that it isn’t actually changing anything fundamental in your brain: it will pass and things will feel better.
At times of extreme distress, this might feel impossible. In which case, Mingyur suggests we focus on physical sensations – the temperature of the room, the sounds around you – to help deal with the panic in that moment, rather than trying to tell ourselves everything is fine.
Breathe your way to lasting happiness
“Genuine happiness is when we let go of that feeling of dissatisfaction, incompleteness, that something is missing,” says Mingyur. “But if you only look for happiness, then you will get the opposite. People often think, ‘I’ll be happy if I make more money, or if I move to this new country or get this new job or win the lottery’ – but that just changes your happiness a little bit and then you go back to baseline, right? But if you practise breathing, love and compassion, you can move that baseline over time.”
To start, simply sit and breathe naturally, focusing on the rise and fall of your abdomen or the sensation of the air passing through your body. As you’re doing this, you might try mentally repeating a simple mantra (“May I be happy and free from suffering” is a common one) to cultivate love towards yourself, and then extending that compassion to loved ones, pets and, eventually, all the other people in your life.
Anger is like frost on the grass
“What we call awareness is like sunlight, and our emotional patterns are like frost on the grass in the morning,” says Mingyur. “When the sunlight manifests, the frost melts automatically – there’s no fight. I talk to some business leaders who are really stressed. They have to do so many things at the same time, so they build the habit of being stressed or angry all the time. They come to me and say: ‘My relationship is not good,’ or ‘There’s a problem between me and the boss.’ I say, ‘Just catch the anger. Be with the anger. Just for a second.’ Once you catch it, you have a choice, it can transform.”
To put this another way, when you’re momentarily furious at someone – at work or at home – you don’t need to meditate for 10 minutes; just avoid your autopilot response of snapping at them by noticing the fact that you’re angry, and then watching as the emotion melts away. From experience, I can say that this takes practice – but it’s definitely worth working on.
And it helps to help other people
“If you can really help others, you feel a different level of happiness from having an ice-cream or a coffee,” says Mingyur. We all know this, obviously – but how often are we actually doing it? Check in on a neighbour in need today