BITESIZE | A Monk’s Guide To Finding Happiness & Thriving in Hard Times | Gelong Thubten #678
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Why do we turn to distractions like scrolling or overeating to avoid emotional pain?
Today's Bite Size episode is sponsored by The Way, the only meditation app with a single long-term pathway. Now, if you've tried other meditation apps before, I am certain that The Way will be the one that will finally help you develop a consistent practice. You see, one of the best things about it is that you are not going to get overwhelmed with different options. You simply open the app and do the next meditation, building up your practice step by step. After a few sessions, you will feel as if you've got your own personal meditation teacher, who of course is the wonderful Henry Schucman, who has appeared as a guest on this podcast. on two separate occasions. Now, I personally have been using this app for over six months now, and I absolutely love it.
In fact, I love it so much that I have invested in the company to join them in their mission to get more people meditating. For listeners of my podcast, The Way is offering 30 free days to establish your own meditation practice All you have to do is go to thewayapp.com forward slash livemore to get started. Welcome to Feel Better Live More Bite Size, your weekly dose of inspiration, insights, and practical ideas to help you live well and thrive. Each episode brings you some of my favorite moments, useful tools, and inspiring ideas from the many incredible conversations I've had on my podcast. Today's Bite Size is from episode 387 of the podcast with Geelong Tupton, Buddhist monk, meditation teacher, and author of the fantastic book, A Handbook for Hard Times, A Monk's Guide to Fearless Living.
Tupton explains that when we distract ourselves with low-grade addictions, we're pushing away emotional pain or discomforts. But if we can learn instead to sit with what's making us uncomfortable, those emotions can start to transform. If I look across society, what I see are a lot of people with low-grade addictions, things like alcohol, social media, pornography, online shopping. And it seems to me that the root cause of a lot of these addictions is distraction. you make the case that distraction or the pushing away of our feelings of pain, of discomfort, is actually the cause of many of our problems. Do you agree that we are a society that seems to be addicted to distraction? And if you do, what's the underlying cause?
I think we're definitely addicted to distraction. And of course, the way we use technology has really fed into that. I went away into a four-year-long retreat in 2005. And when I came out of that retreat in 2009, everything had changed in the landscape of technology. So during those four years, the iPhone was launched and YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, all of those things happened. So when I came out of that retreat, I was quite startled by how things had sped up. And so just noticing how everybody's face is buried in the phone and there's this sort of constant barrage, this invasive nature to information, advertising, social media, all of that. And so that's incredibly addictive. And so, yes, we are all drowning in addictions of various sorts and they are all based on distraction.
What is it we're trying to distract ourselves from is I think we don't really know how to face up to our own feelings.
How does the habit of pushing away discomfort create a cycle of endless wanting?
So we use things to food, phones, anything to kind of get away from ourselves.
Yeah. There's a quote in the introduction of your book, which I'd love to read to you because I think it really speaks to this. In pushing away discomfort, we usually don't see how the discomfort lies in the pushing. It's our habit of chasing pleasure and running away from hardship that is the real problem. And as any habit simply proliferates, so we constantly chase more and push away more, reinforcing our sense of dissatisfaction. Yeah. There's a certain irony there where We're trying to use these activities, acquire these things, engage in these behaviors to avoid feeling what we're feeling. But you're sort of making the point that actually doing that makes the problem worse. So why is that? And also, just to play devil's advocate for a minute,
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Why do we turn to distractions like scrolling or overeating to avoid emotional pain?
0:00–4:00
2
How does the habit of pushing away discomfort create a cycle of endless wanting?
4:00–6:37
3
What led Gelong Thubten to become a monk after experiencing severe burnout?
6:37–9:34
4
How can sitting with uncomfortable sensations transform our emotions?
9:34–12:07
5
What practical meditation technique does the guest recommend for people in crisis?
12:07–14:45
6
Why is the idea of ‘clearing the mind’ a misconception about meditation?
14:45–17:16
7
How does noticing and returning to the breath build mental strength like a workout?
17:16–19:20
8
What evidence shows that even 10 minutes of daily meditation changes the brain?
19:20–22:59
Speakers
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