[세바시] Joy becomes you, 차드 멍 탄

"What is the happiest moment of your life?"

and Dalai Lama said, " Right now."

Right now is always happiest moment for him.

He was being a little bit naughty.

However, I think he is illustrating a very important point.

 which is a highly trained mind, is capable of accessing joy at any time. on the mind.


How do we access joy on the mind?

so there's good news. The good news is that the mind is highly trainable.

In that sense, the mind is like the body.

The body can train to become strong.

For example, if you take a heavy object and lift it up and down, you develop strength.

It is the same as the mine.

The mind can be trained with simple exercises to acquire qualities that are good for you and specifically for this talk.


I wanna talk about simple exercise to develop joy.

How do we do that?

There are three very easy exercises that I'm gonna share with you.

I guarantee you that if you do all these exercises, you will increase joy in your life.

This exercises are so simple even I can do it.


The way to train the skill set of the mind is something  called mindfulness.

Mindfulness is defined as paying attention in a particular way.

Paying attention in a way  moment to moment non-judgementally without judging yourself.

Anybody want to try a 10-second exercise?

For ten seconds I want to invite you  to bring attention to the breathing.

and then when the attention wanders away, bring it back. Easy right?

You may wonder, What good does this do for you?

How can that possibly do me any good?

The answer is, again, back to the original analogy.

Every time your attention wanders away, you bring it back.

It's like doing one of this.

Your muscles of attention becomes a little bit stronger.

so if you do a lot of this, the muscles of attention becomes so strong over time that you are able to set the attention on the breath for long time.

Thai is how it works.

This is how this simple exercise can help you learn the skill to settle your mind on demand.

This is only step one. There is two more to go.





The second practice is to attend to joy.

Pay attention to joyful experiences.

What good does that do? So let me give you some example

When you are eating delicious food, bring full attention to eating, okay?

When you are holding hands with your loved one, pay attention to holding hands.

When you are holding a baby is not crying of course, crying baby is a little different story.

Holding a baby, pay attention to this experience

When you are taking a walk in a park, pay attention to the experience.

Full attention. Why does that work?

The first thing if you do that, automatically you double your joy.

Why? Because you pay more attention to it.

That's all. The same experience you double the joy for no extra price.

It's the best deal on Earth.

But it gets even better than that.


The second thing is neutral experiences start to become positive.

Things that we thought were "eeh, it doesn't matter" They become the source of joy.


How does it work? Let me give you some example.

How many of you have a toothache right now?

How many of you, you didn't have a toothache before I asked?

Nobody notice. that I'm not in pain.

Freedom from pain,

If I am in pain, If I have a toothache
I wish to myself if I don't have this pain, I would be so happy.

and then after a while I don't have this pain anymore

What do I do? I forget to be happy.

Why do I forget to be happy? Because I take this experience for granted.

Freedom from the pain, Such a beautiful thing, I forget to rejoice in it.

Not freedom from the pain, everything else like the ability to walk

That's a miracle.

However, there is another miracle, walking on the ground. That is a miracle.

We are all experiencing a miracle all the time. and we forget to rejoice.

Therefor, by the simple experience of bringing attention to joy

We begin to see joy in what we though was neutral.

and then, eventually all those experiences become joyful experience.

and that is the second way to increase joy.

Homework for today, Any experience that is even slightly joyful 

You get food, for 10 seconds pay attention to food.

You are taking a walk, for 10 seconds bring attention to walking.

I mean joy of walking.

If you are sitting with your friend, for 10 seconds enjoy the friend fully.

So try that out 10 seconds, easy.

At the end if you do that a lot, I guarantee that it will change your life.

Because you will realize what a miracle your life is.




There's one more practice, even more powerful than the first two.

And that practice is kindness.

Kindness is intrinsically very rewarding.

But instead of just saying let me do an exercise.

Before the exercise, there is something very important about kindness.

which is, kindness can be framed as a mental habit.

Habit of mind.

And the habit of kindness is to look at a human being randomly.

and the first thought in your mind comes up because it's a habit

The first thought is  "I wish for this person to be happy."

You walk into a meeting room, you look at all those people in the meeting

You think "I wish for these people to be happy."

What happens?

You are reflecting the body language,

and unconsciously this is picked up by the other people.

and they all like you.

and they don't really know why.

And you think they all like you because you are good looking

That's why all they like you.

So, this is the first thing.

But the other effect is happiness.

I will tell you about that in a moment after we do an exercise.

Shall we do the exercise of kindness?

For 10 seconds, randomly identify two people in this room,

don't say anything, don't do anything, just think.

And think "I wish for that person to be happy." That's it.

How was the experience? Everybody is smiling.

When you are wishing for somebody to be happy, you yourself become happy.

It's amazing, right?

If what i say is true, then you just discovered an inexhaustible source of happiness.

All you have to do is randomly wishing for people to be happy.




So couple of months ago, I gave a talk. and I did this exercise.

And then I made a suggestion at the spur of the moment

because it was on Monday night.

I said, "Okay, tomorrow you are all going back to work. every hour for ten seconds,

you randomly identify two people in the office. and wish for this person to be happy.

and wish for the that person to be happy." Go back to work. That is it.

I didn't expect anything to come out of that.

so that was Monday. Wednesday morning, I received an email from a total stranger.

This person said, " I came to your talk on Monday, I hate my job. I hate coming to work every single day. and I did your exercise. and yesterday was my happiest in 7 years."

Kindness, my friends, It is good for your soul.

It is what God intends for you to do your fellow human beings.

and it increases your happiness.

Mind-blowing, right?

Anythings that are good for the souls of other people are good for you.

and even think about it, it's something even more powerful.

which is that all the qualities the saintly qualities

compassion, kindness, love, and so on, equanimity

They can all be framed as mental habits.

and mental habits are highly trainable because the way to create a habit is to do it a lot.

Therefore, if you just randomly wish for people to be happy a lot,

It becomes a habit.

The habit becomes you.

and you become a kind person.

and if it's the same for compassion, and every other good qualities saintly qualities


What does that mean?

It means that we can all become saintly people with training.

and training in ways that we all understand.

because it's just creating mental habits.

Mind blowing.

So, I hope you do that any of three exercises,

I hope you try all three of them everyday for a couple seconds a day.



and Three exercises are?

Settle the mind, Attend to joy and kindness.

That's it, I hope you start using these exercise starting from today.

and I hope that all of you will live happily ever after.

Thank you.