Floating on self-awareness
The Buddhist monk teaching one million Twitter followers tells Rachel Cocker that fulfilment can be found in a long supermarket queue
THERE is a long-standing theory in the science of happiness that we each have a set point that we return to; a happy medium, however high the highs or low the lows are that come in between.
This “hedonic adaptability” means that even as we achieve our dreams – finding true love, starting a family, making a million – our expectations rise in tandem, resulting in no permanent gain in happiness. This, perhaps, explains the trope of the unhappy lottery winner.
More recent theories suggest we can beat the odds: while our genes may influence about 50% of the variation in these personal landmarks, and our circumstances (being born in a wealthy Western country, say, versus a war zone) another 10%, that still leaves as much as 40% that’s shaped by our own choices.
According to Haemin Sunim – the “mega monk” author of a multimillion-copy bestseller on the subject, The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down – there is no happier habit that we can cultivate than that of taking our time.
In fact, the only thing Sunim, whose thoughtful social media posts have earned him more than a million Twitter followers, seems to do at speed is smile – so frequently during our Facetime call from his study in South Korea that it is impossible not to reciprocate.
Slow-thinking seems anathema to our current cult of busyness and the modern climate of rolling news, social media storms and neverendums: where decisive, definitive action is constantly called for and cogitation is dismissed as dithering.
But it is also, in many ways, a synonym for mindfulness – a term now so overused to peddle everything from smartphone apps to adult colouring books that it is easy to forget that it is a medically respected route of enhancing mental wellbeing. The largest analysis of research on the subject last year found mindfulnessbased cognitive therapy helped people just as much as commonly prescribed antidepressant drugs.
Last week in the UK it was announced that children as young as eight will be taught mindfulness techniques in school, in an attempt to counter the fact that British children are among the unhappiest in the developed world (second only to Japan’s youngsters).
“Mindfulness itself does not have any particular form,” says Sunim, acknowledging that few would be happy starting their day, as he often does, with a 3am meditation session, and many get stressed just at the thought of getting it “wrong”.
“Becoming aware of that thought is mindfulness,” he explains. “That’s it. Having self-awareness. You can be waiting in line in the supermarket, listening to somebody behind you being really annoying. Realising, ‘Oh, I am annoyed’. That is mindfulness.”
Perhaps more of us are masters than we think. “I can imagine someone wondering, ‘ What is so great about observing? Isn’t it just avoiding reality?’” he writes in the book. “The answer is quite the opposite: you are not avoiding it, you are actually staring straight into it.”
The key, he says, is to recognise that negative emotions are not a fixed reality and they will naturally release
their grip, if you give them the space to do so: “Regard them as a passing cloud, instead of identifying with them as a defining part of yourself.”
Raised just outside Seoul, 43-yearold Sunim – whose name means “nimble wisdom” – was curious about Buddhism from a young age, but it was only when, as an 18-yearold, he arrived in the hard-partying college culture at the University of California, Berkeley, in the US to study film that his interest really took root.
Taking refuge in a local Zen centre, he found himself enjoying the early starts and daily meditation practice and switched his major to religious studies, going on to pursue his master’s at Harvard Divinity School and a doctorate at Princeton.
After receiving formal monastic training in Korea, he taught Buddhism at a small liberal arts college in Massachusetts before returning to his homeland to set up group therapy programmes for young people. It was here, when frequently asked for advice on dealing with life’s daily challenges, that he took to social media to share his answers.
He received an outpouring of responses to his tweets and Facebook posts in return. As he swiftly amassed followers from around the globe, publishers took note and he was able to take his pick in order to compile his advice into a book.
What could have simply been a collection of homilies, instead read like haikus (bar the odd “life is like improvised jazz” aphorism you might find on a fridge magnet), sparingly but beautifully illustrated by Korean artist Youngcheol Lee.
“I am much better at condensing my message and putting it into four or five different sentences,” he says. “Nowadays we have a very short attention span. So people actually like that.”
They do: the book has now sold more than three million copies worldwide after topping the bestseller list in his home country for 41 weeks.
Published in English in the UK and the US at the end of last month, but not yet released in South Africa, it is currently being translated into a further 16 languages, from Swedish to Russian.
Why does it resonate so widely? “The news,” he exclaims. “It’s just so intense. We want to take a break, to come back to our own body, our own emotions, and to the people who are sitting in front of us. I heard that sometimes it’s easier for parents to attract their children’s attention by texting them. We are really connected but at the same time desperately lonely. This book is a gentle reminder to get back in touch with our own being ... and then get in touch with the people around us, face to face.”
The irony of using social media to spread his message is not lost on him. “I think, like anything else, it can be good or bad. It just depends on how you use it,” he says. “A knife can be very dangerous to a violent person, but to a doctor it’s very useful.
“I wanted to tweet something beautiful, something that really touches our heart, or calms us, so that it becomes a little bit like a little oasis, a refuge, in the middle of all this intensity.”
Could Donald Trump, say, use a few of his techniques in his life? “Anybody can,” he smiles. “Especially politicians.”
His advice is already sought by the great and good; he relates the story of a famous (“well, semi-famous”) South Korean actress, whose own popularity was causing her angst.
“She told me, ‘Oh, I’m so selfconscious about my looks and how other people think about me, so I rarely go out’. I told her the truth: ‘We really don’t think about you that much’.”
Did she find that liberating? “Yes!”
That people may notice you, but then move on? “Or, a lot of the time, we don’t [even] notice you,” he smiles again. “We worry about things we don’t have to worry about.” And is he happy? “Yes, I am generally quite happy,” he beams, belying the true moderation of a monk. “Sometimes I feel very tired and realise I am not as happy ... but when I wake up, the next day, I am usually back.” — The Daily Telegraph