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A Buddhist Monk's Honest Advice On Letting Go & Finding Inner Peace
Description
In today's episode, Gen Kelsang Chökyong - a Buddhist monk from Wales - shares the story of how he stumbled into a Dharma class while sheltering from the rain with a kebab, and never left. Drawing on nearly thirty years of practice and teaching within the New Kadampa Tradition, he explores why the mind - not external circumstances - is the true source of all our happiness and suffering. He explains the Buddhist concept of self-grasping ignorance and how this single delusion drives everything from daily irritation and relationship problems to the world's largest conflicts.
Gen Chökyong highlights how meditation and compassion gradually erode this grasping, revealing a natural peace that was always there. He shares life-changing insights into the nature of feelings - pointing out that most of what torments us is just a feeling, and feelings always pass. He concludes with a very helpful approach to making mistakes. Instead of turning on ourself, we can realize that without making mistakes it’s unlikely that we’ll learn and improve. Warm, funny, and deeply practical, this episode is a masterclass in how Buddhist wisdom applies directly to modern anxiety, relationships, and the art of letting go.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Finding Dharma
05:00 Seeing Through the Fantasy of Worldly Life
09:20 How the Mind Creates Its Own Suffering
15:00 Buddhism's Relevance for Modern Life and Young People
22:40 Confidence, Self-Image, and Letting Go of Comparison
27:20 Working with Difficulties
28:45 Feelings and the Power of Letting Go
33:55 Compassion and Learning from Mistakes
Book References
In this episode Gen Chökyong references:
How to Solve our Human Problems - https://kadampa.org/book/how-to-solve-our-human-problems
How to Transform Your Life - https://howtotyl.com/
Gen Chökyong is a senior teacher within the New Kadampa Tradition, an international Buddhist tradition with over a thousand meditation centers worldwide.
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https://kadampa.org/nkt-center-search/?lang=en
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