A buddhist monk on happiness

It’s remarkably simple – you just have to forget about yourself.

GEN KELSANG DORNYING is an engaging young Londoner, with a quick smile and a cheeky-chappy accent. He’s also a Buddhist monk and the resident teacher at the Kadampa Meditation Centre Melbourne. “I’d tried to find meaning and happiness in my career and partying when I was younger, but there was something missing,” Gen Dornying says. In search of answers, he bought a one-way ticket to Australia (“as a lot of pommies do”). In Sydney, he learned to meditate and found himself a regular at the Kadampa temple, and the penny dropped. “It was just, ‘yep, this is totally clear – it’s practical, it makes sense to me and I can see myself doing this for the rest of my life’... We say in Buddhism that all the happiness there is in this world arises from wishing others to be happy, and all the suffering arises from wishing ourselves to be happy. But if we try to love others and act to benefit them, a confident happy self will emerge automatically.” Dornying has some practical and simple suggestions to get started: “Close your eyes and reflect on all the people in the world who have the same problems as you, but perhaps to a greater degree. As soon as you do, you’ll feel better. If you’re sitting on the train, all of those people on the train have worries, fears, suffering, trauma and people that miss them. Take a few seconds to think, ‘I care about you.’ Don’t say it out loud because you’ll look like a nutter.” Kadampa Meditation Centre Melbourne,