Mind over matter
Gelong Thubten on his transformational journey from hedonism to happiness, and how we can all train our brain for the better.
In a world consumed by the constant whirl of digital noise and societal pressures, the search for inner peace and happiness can seem like an ever-elusive quest. Amid this chaos, one individual's journey from the brink of self-destruction to a life devoted to mindfulness and meditation has not only transformed his own existence but is also making a profound impact on others. Meet Gelong Thubten, the British Buddhist monk, meditation teacher and author whose story of redemption begins first with his lowest moments. ‘My family had broken up in my teenage years when my parents painfully divorced, and after university I went into acting,’ he recalls in his second, recently released book, Handbook for Hard Times: A Monk’s Guide to Fearless Living.
‘I lived in London and then New York where I would go to wild parties that started at 3am in dark, underground clubs with their walls painted black and extremely loud music.’ Thubten thought he was being a rebel, having a great time: with hindsight, he realises that he was running away from himself. ‘I was beginning to suffer from depression, but threw myself wholeheartedly into a party lifestyle, running from my suffering by trying to get out of my head. Much of my behaviour came from a place of fear – looking back, I can see that I was driven by an almost constant anxiety and the fear of being alone. I was afraid of myself,’ he continues.
Then, things unravelled and he suffered a sudden extreme burn-out, literally overnight. He became seriously unwell with a toxic combination of depression, anxiety, stress and addictions. ‘It contributed to a frightening heart problem that stopped me in my tracks. I was unable to get out of bed for several months, with palpitations and panic attacks, my mind consumed by a sense of dread. I thought I was dying,’ he writes. His path to redemption became clear while recovering at his mother’s house where he picked up her books on meditation, sparking his initial interest in the subject.
A friend told him about the Kagyu Samye Ling Monastery and Tibetan Centre in Scotland which had recently opened their doors to people who wanted to be ordained for a year, so he went, knowing that he needed to do something radical to rescue himself, but only intending to stay temporarily. Three years later, after ‘a lot of soul searching’ he took a life-long vow. ‘It was all very extreme: I went from being a party boy to a monk in a very short space of time,’ he says.
Living in the monastery – along with an intensive four-year retreat on the Isle of Arran where the only news of the outside world came from one letter a month – he found the ancient teachings of Buddhism helped make sense of his unhappiness. ‘I don’t think I went into that retreat with much mental strength but I came out with a bit more. I had to sit with the anxiety and unhappiness that had been driving me for so long, which I had never addressed, and it felt like I needed quite a lot of courage and resilience to do that, to handle my mind,’ he recalls. ‘It was quite transformative because it gave me tools on how to deal with my emotions better and how to accept the parts of myself that I find difficult.’
It was during this time – long before mindfulness became a buzzword – that he began teaching meditation workshops in places such as prisons, drug rehabilitation centres and hospitals. ‘People think meditation is about clearing the mind but that is not true: the more you push your thoughts away, the louder they’ll shout,’ he explains of the common misconceptions around the practice. ‘When I started meditating thirty years ago, I assumed it was an escapist thing where you could block out the world and find a place of inner peace. Actually, it’s very much about learning to face up to your own problems and examine suffering under a microscope to understand it better.’
He has given seminars as part of the United Nations Development Programme in Peru around how Buddhist philosophy can play a part in the sustainability conversation (‘we need some level of mental training to help people understand how to reduce greed and egocentricity and increase compassion and a sense of community’); worked with actors including Tilda Swinton and Benedict Cumberbatch on the set of the film Dr Strange; and hosted sessions at corporate companies such as McKinsey and Google. ‘I try to help people understand that they’re never too busy to meditate. I emphasise micro moments of mindfulness, whether you’re standing in a lunch queue or stuck in traffic,’ he explains.
Kagyu Samye Ling Tibetan Buddhist Monastery - Dumfries, Scotland
These days, Thubten, who splits his time between London and Scarborough, is not a rebel in the traditional sense but his thinking, especially on the notion of happiness (the subject of his first book), is a refreshing push back in our social media obsessed society. ‘We are living in a culture that is so destructive to our levels of happiness because it constantly promises material happiness that will be everlasting and perfect,’ he says. ‘Advertising has become so persistent and insistent on our phones and screens that we’re constantly given these persuaders to attain more. It has made us more dissatisfied and anxious, so we generally feel bad about ourselves.’
The solution, he believes, lies in learning to manage our own minds. ‘What Buddhism has opened my eyes to, is that we’ve got to create our own happiness internally. It’s a trainable skill; you become less controlled by negativity and much more empowered. We need to be in the driving seat mentally and for that, we need meditation more than ever.’ At such an increasingly unstable time, mindfulness has never seemed so appealing.