Reading A Monk’s Guide to Happiness by Gelong Thubten 8 out of 10 as a personal experience, but perhaps 10 out of 10 for those who allow themselves to be inspired by the book

 Reading A Monk’s Guide to Happiness by Gelong Thubten

8 out of 10 as a personal experience, but perhaps 10 out of 10 for those who allow themselves to be inspired by the book

 

 

‘In this profound and inspiring book, Gelong Thubten shares a practical and sustainable approach to happiness…Thubten, a Buddhist monk and meditation expert who has worked with everyone from school kids to Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and Benedict Cumberbatch, explains how meditation and mindfulness can create a direct path to happiness…’ this is one way to look at this book, only this is a marketing quote, meant to make you buy the opus, which would not be a bad idea, given that the purpose of the guide to happiness is more than worthy it is ‘the purpose and ultimate goal in life is to achieve eudaimonia ('happiness')’according to Aristotle, who used logic when he said that we try to be happy, when we are not and once we are, we have achieved the ultimate state of grace – not in those words, of course, I have to at least try and make a personal contribution, make an interpretation here and there, try a little flourish and why not, even twist the words of some great sages…

 

There is the other argument of the Buddhists, who are concerned about the notion that we keep Craving – which is the problem that keeps us from achieving Nirvana as the nec plus ultra, the ultimate Joie de Vivre – but not in the French, epicurean way, which has no problem with it, indeed, it can be the catharsis we can achieve – the position in which we do not crave for anything anymore – and even when we are – let us say humanely, transitory, as mere mortals – happy, we fear that this will go away and thus we do not enjoy the benefits of what the Buddhists know and teach us – one of them being this monk – the problem being that even the peaceful Buddhists can go astray – I was reading recently about Myanmar, former Burma, and the Buddhists that have sided with the military junta and even worse, an important number of the supposedly peace loving monks have been involved in violence against the Rohinga, Muslim minority, because of religious conflicts, perhaps a touch of nationalism too.

Though we learn that Gelong Thubten has worked with Benedict Cumberbatch – and if the latter owes something to the monk for his wondrous performances, then we are to admire Gelong Thubten – and thus has acquired some glow, indirect fame, there is the issue of learning from the Buddha, Dalai Lamas – for there are works we can access of the brave, gentle, intelligent, open, even jocular one that is in office at present, though not for the brutal, increasingly despotic, menacing Chinese that have conquered Tibet decades ago, annexed it, flooded it with Han Chinese and impose their tyrannical rule there, while they seemingly prepare to invade Taiwan – which I defiantly, and uselessly recognize, praise and admire here – which was declared by The Economist The Most Dangerous Place on Earth – they had not anticipated the outbreak of an war between Israel and Palestine though

 

There are books by Matthieu Ricard and others that may take precedent over the less known Gelong Thubten…the former has worked as a translator for the Dalai Lama, and he had been trained as a top scientist, born in a family of respected French academics, he has taken part in some revealing experiments, that have shown how different the brain activity of those who mediate for hours each day is from the rest of us, common earthlings, and apart from the scanning of the brains, I am thinking of the test where they had the sound of a shotgun blasting near the Buddhist monks and others, Secret Service agents, police officers, used with the incredibly loud detonation…while Ricard would not move a muscle,  due to his – and those who mediate like him, possible Gelong – ability to control  his brain and body almost to perfection, those who train with guns could not help but move muscles in their faces and probably elsewhere…

 

Mediating has thus been proved by millennia of practice in the East to have spectacular effects and more recently, due to interest from the West, there have been experiments that revealed how the brain behaves for those who meditate versus the others that do not and it is also clear that the argument The Monk makes – together with so many others before him, starting with ancient luminaries, from Buddha to Socrates – that we need to retreat for the agitation, anxiety, febrility of the modern life makes a lot of sense, especially given that the tendency to get distracted is huge with a smart phone in the hand.

Here we can indeed accept the notion that Gelong Thubten has had experience, for he has been though at least one retreat, on an island in Scotland – which might be an independent new country in the upcoming years, member of the EU, but out of the UK – where they had their food brought by a person from the outside, they have been unaware that Barack Obama has become president and the world has been through a major, calamitous financial crisis – which blew our minds over here , unaware as we were of the teachings of the Monk that are easy to get now – and furthermore, they have taken a vow of silence for six months – or was it five – the only issue we may have is that we can sense a déjà vu.

 

It could be, but then we should encourage novelty and to keep to the affirmed classics, concentrating only on the Buddha, the established, recognized Dalai Lamas, could be like r4ading only Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Balzac, Flaubert and rejecting Bernard Malamud, Kingsley Amis or William Boyd, perhaps even Marcel Proust, stating that since we have the first mentioned giants, let us stop paying attention to others…true, we could not declare Gelong to be of the same magnitude as Somerset Maugham or Barbara Pym

The fact that many, perhaps most or even all the rules, suggestions, statements made by Monk Gelong Thubten are familiar and come from Aristotle, Buddha or some other illustrious predecessors – perhaps even contemporary luminaries – could detract for some from the ‘value added’, but it might also become an exercise in How to Become a Millionaire, only knowing the answers is much more important and this book could indeed serve as a guide, in the sense that you can go to it and find some definitions you know, rehearse the art of renouncing craving – which the stoics have long ago stigmatized…there is no end to wanting things, you experience what is called Hedonic Adaptation and after a brief period, you get used with things, be they big cars, jewels, and then carve for more…it is not money affluence, it is time affluence which matters and then “A man's satisfaction with his salary depends on whether he makes more than his wife's sister's husband’ says jesting, sage H.L. Menke…in conclusion, I would rather recommend another book on happiness, such as the miraculous Happiness – the Science Behind Your Smile by Daniel Nettle

http://realini.blogspot.com/2013/11/happiness-science-behind-your-smile-by.html