我們活在一個異常忙碌的世界。 不但生活步驟快，大腦時刻不停 而且我們總是在做些什麼。
在這樣的前提下，我希望你們花一點時間想想 你上一次完全放空是什麼時候？ 就算只是毫無干擾的十分鐘？ 當我說放空時，我的意思是真的什麼都不做。 沒有電郵、沒有簡訊、沒有網路、沒有電視、不說話、不吃東西、不看書、也不是坐在那裡回想往事 或是思考未來。 很簡單地完全放空。 我看到很多茫然的臉龐。（笑聲） 我猜，這可能是很久以前的事了 這很特別，不是嗎？ 我們的腦袋。 腦袋，我們最有價值、最珍貴的資源， 透過它，我們經歷生命中的每一刻。 腦袋讓我們感覺 開心、滿足、情緒穩定， 親切、懂事、顧慮到我們與別人的關係。 同一個腦袋讓我們 專心一意，創意無限，隨性發揮 讓我們把一切做到最好。就算如此，我們卻不曾認真花時間照顧它。 事實上，我們花更多時間照顧我們的車子、我們的衣服、我們的頭髮 ──或許頭髮不算，但你知道我的意思。 果不其然，我們當然感到壓力。 你知道嗎？腦袋就像一台洗衣機， 一直在各種困難、困惑的情緒中轉來轉去， 而我們卻不知道怎麼處理， 悲哀的事實是，我們分心到 沒有辦法活在當下。 我們錯過對我們來說最重要的事， 瘋狂的是大家以為 人
生就是這樣，所以我們就繼續這樣下去。 其實我們大可改變現狀。
我大約是十一歲左右 參加人生中的第一堂冥想課。 是的，它就像你想像的那樣： 盤腿坐在地上、香氛、草茶、素食者，應有盡有， 但我媽要去而我覺得很有趣，於是就跟去了。 我也看過一些功夫電影，私底下， 我甚至覺得我可以學會飛， 當然我當時年紀很小。 當時，我猜很多人和我一樣， 我以為那只是腦子用的阿斯匹靈。 壓力大的時候，就冥想一下。 我沒想到它是有預防效果的， 直到我 20 歲左右，幾件事情 很快地在我生命中發生， 一些很嚴重的事把我生活弄得天翻地覆， 我突然被情緒淹沒， 被我不知道該怎麼應付的負面情緒淹沒。 每當我壓抑了一個， 另一個就開始浮出。 那是一段壓力非常大的日子。
我猜我們應付壓力的方式都不一樣。 有些人會把自己埋在工作中， 很慶幸有事情可以分心。有些人會轉向朋友、家人來尋找幫助。 有些人喝酒、吃藥。 我處理的方式是成為一位僧侶。所以我離開學校，前往喜馬拉雅， 我成為一位僧侶，開始學習冥想。
人們常問我那段時間學到什麼。 恩，當然有改變事情。 讓我們面對現實吧！ 當一位禁慾的僧侶是會改變很多事的。 但改變是更多的。 它教會我，讓我更感激、更瞭解當下。 我是說不陷入自己的想法中， 不分心， 不被各種負面情緒淹沒、而是學著如何在當下存在， 如何集中注意力、如何存在。 我覺得當下常被忽略。 它聽起來很正常，但我們花在當下的時間之少， 讓活在當下變成一件很鮮有的事。 最近哈佛發表了一個研究， 說一個正常的腦袋平均有 百分之 47 的時間是迷失在思考當中。 百分之四十七。 同時，這樣的持續性的腦袋漫遊 是造成不開心的直接原因。我們在世上的時間並不長， 卻花了近一半的人生迷失在思考中 並且往往造成我們不開心，這難道不是一種悲劇嗎？ 尤其是我們明明可以作些改變， 有個正面、實在、可達成、也很科學的技巧， 讓我們腦袋更健康、更專注、更不容易分心。 而最棒的是雖然我們 每天只花十分鐘， 它能影響整個人生。 但我們需要知道怎麼做。 我們需要練習。我們需要架構 讓我們學習如何更專注。 這正是冥想的本質。 它讓我們更熟悉當下。 但我們需要知道用什麼方式接近它 才能達到最好的效果。 這就是這些東西的作用， 人們常以為 冥想是停止思考、驅離情緒、控制腦
袋， 事實上卻不是這樣。 它比較像是往後退一步， 更清楚地看思維， 以一個輕鬆、專注、沒有任何成見的腦袋 來看思維的來去、看情緒的來去。
舉例來說，現在， 如果我太專注在這些球上，我就沒有辦法放鬆 並同時跟你們講話。 同樣的，如果我過於放鬆來跟你們講話， 那麼我就沒有辦法注意球。球會掉。 在人生中和在冥想中，有些時候 我們會過份專注 然後人生就變成像這樣。 緊張、壓力大 是一種很不舒服的生活方式。 在其他時候，我們在油門上的腳可能又放得太鬆， 事情就開始變成這樣。 當然在冥想時 ─（打呼）─ 我們會睡著。 所以我們在找得是一種平衡，專注的放鬆， 讓我們的思想得以自由來去 沒有平常的那些干擾。
在我們學習專注的過程中 我們常因一個思緒而分心。 假設這是個令人焦慮的想法。 當一切正常，我們突然想到這件焦慮的事， 就像「喔，我竟不知道我正在擔心那個。」 你回想、再次對自己重複。「喔，我是擔心的。 喔，我真的好擔心。天啊，我好焦慮！」 在我們意識到之前， 我們正在為感到焦慮而焦慮。 這真的很瘋狂。我們卻常常這樣， 甚至每天都這樣。想想你最後一次 發現一顆動搖的牙齒。 你知道它在晃，你也知
道它會痛。 然後你每20，30秒對自己重複什麼？ （喃喃自語）真的好痛。然後一直對自己這麼說， 反覆的說， 我們往往如此。唯有學著旁觀你的思考 才能讓我們學會放手 不再用過去的模式重複這些想法。 但當你坐下來並用這種方式旁觀你的思考模式， 你可能會看到許多完全不一樣的模式。 你可能會發現腦袋是非常不安份的── 隨時。 不要驚訝當你坐下來什麼都不做，想著自己什麼都不做時 你的身體會有些焦躁。 你可能會發現你的腦袋感覺很無趣、很無聊， 幾乎是機械性的， 就像是你每天起床、去工作、吃飯、睡覺、起床、上班。 或有可能就是有那麼一個擾人的想法 一直在那邊轉呀轉呀轉的。 不管是什麼，冥想提供的是一個機會， 可以後退一不從不同的角度觀看， 許多事並不是它們平日表現出來的那樣。 我們不能改變 生活中的每一樣小東西， 但我們可以改變我們怎麼感受它。 這是冥想、專注能帶來的。 你不需要香氛、也不需要坐在地上。 你只需要每天花十分鐘後退一步， 熟悉當下的時光， 讓你可以感受到一個更高層級 的專注、平靜、以及對生命的澈悟。 謝謝。（掌聲）
We live in an incredibly busy world.The pace of life is often frantic, our minds are always busy, and we\'re always doing something.So with that in mind, I\'d like you just to take a moment to think, when did you last take any time to do nothing? Just 10 minutes, undisturbed? And when I say nothing, I do mean nothing.So that\'s no emailing, texting, no Internet, no TV, no chatting, no eating, no reading, not even sitting there reminiscing about the past or planning for the future.Simply doing nothing.I see a lot of very blank faces.(Laughter) My thinking is, you probably have to go a long way back.And this is an extraordinary thing, right? We\'re talking about our mind.The mind, our most valuable and precious resource, through which we experience every single moment of our life, the mind that we rely upon to be happy, content, emotionally stable as individuals, and at the same time to be kind and thoughtful and considerate in our relationships with
others.This is the same mind that we depend upon to be focused, creative, spontaneous, and to perform at our very best in everything that we do.And yet, we don\'t take any time out to look after it.In fact, we spend more time looking after our cars, our clothes and our hair than we — okay, maybe not our hair, but you see where I\'m going.The result, of course, is that we get streed.You know, the mind whizzes away like a washing machine going round and round, lots of difficult, confusing emotions, and we don\'t really know how to deal with that, and the sad fact is that we are so distracted that we\'re no longer present in the world in which we live.We mi out on the things that are most important to us, and the crazy thing is that everybody just aumes, well, that\'s the way life is, so we\'ve just kind of got to get on with it.That\'s really not how it has to be.
So I was about 11 when I went along to my first meditation cla.And trust me, it had all the stereotypes that you can imagine, the sitting cro-legged on the floor, the incense, the herbal tea, the vegetarians, the whole deal, but my mom was going and I was intrigued, so I went along with her.I\'d also seen a few kung fu movies, and secretly I kind of thought I might be able to learn how to fly, but I was very young at the time.Now as I was there, I gue, like a lot of people, I aumed that it was just an aspirin for the mind.You get streed, you do some meditation.I hadn\'t really thought that it could be sort of preventative in nature, until I was about 20, when a number of things happened in my life in quite quick succeion, really serious things which just flipped my life upside down and all of a sudden I was inundated with thoughts, inundated with difficult emotions that I didn\'t know how to cope with.Every time I sort of
pushed one down, another one would just sort of pop back up again.It was a really very streful time.I gue we all deal with stre in different ways.Some people will bury themselves in work,grateful for the distraction.Others will turn to their friends, their family, looking for support.Some people hit the bottle, start taking medication.My own way of dealing with it was to become a monk.So I quit my degree, I headed off to the Himalayas, I became a monk, and I started studying meditation.People often ask me what I learned from that time.Well, obviously it changed things.Let\'s face it, becoming a celibate monk is going to change a number of things.But it was more than that.It taught me -- it gave me a greater appreciation, an understanding for the present moment.By that I mean not being lost in thought, not being distracted, not being overwhelmed by difficult emotions, but instead learning how to be in the here and now, how to be mindful, how to be present.
I think the present moment is so underrated.It sounds so ordinary, and yet we spend so little time in the present moment that it\'s anything but ordinary.There was a research paper that came out of Harvard, just recently, that said on average our minds are lost in thought almost 47 percent of the time.Forty-seven percent.At the same time, this sort of constant mind-wandering is also a direct cause of unhappine.Now we\'re not here for that long anyway, but to spend almost half of our life lost in thought and potentially quite unhappy,dunno, it just kind of seems tragic, actually, especially when there\'s something we can do about it, when there\'s a positive, practical, achievable, scientifically proven technique which allows our mind to be more healthy, to be more mindful and le distracted.And the beauty of it is that even though it need only take about 10 minutes a day, it impacts our entire life.But we need to know how to do it.We need an exercise.We need a framework to learn
how to be more mindful.That\'s eentially what meditation is.It\'s familiarizing ourselves with the present moment.But we also need to know how to approach it in the right way to get the best from it.And that\'s what these are for, in case you\'ve been wondering, because most people aume that meditation is all about stopping thoughts, getting rid of emotions, somehow controlling the mind, but actually it\'s quite different from that.It\'s more about stepping back, seeing the thought clearly, witneing it coming and going, emotions coming and going without judgment, but with a relaxed, focused mind.So for example, right now, if I focus too much on the balls, then there\'s no way that I can relax and talk to you at the same time.Equally, if I relax too much talking to you, then there\'s no way I can focus on the balls.I\'m going to drop them.Now in life, and in meditation, there\'ll be times when the focus becomes a little bit too intense, and life starts to feel a bit
like this.It\'s a very uncomfortable way to live life, when you get this tight and streed.At other times, we might take our foot off the gas a little bit too much, and things just become a sort of little bit like this.Of course in meditation — (Snores) — we\'re going to end up falling asleep.So we\'re looking for a balance, a focused relaxation where we can allow thoughts to come and go without all the usual involvement.Now, what usually happens when we\'re learning to be mindful is that we get distracted by a thought.Let\'s say this is an anxious thought.So everything\'s going fine, and then we see the anxious thought, and it\'s like, \"Oh, didn\'t realize I was worried about that.\" You go back to it, repeat it.\"Oh, I am worried.Oh, I really am worried.Wow, there\'s so much anxiety.\"And before we know it, right, we\'re anxious about feeling anxious.You know, this is crazy.We do this all the time, even on an everyday level.If you
think about the last time, I dunno,you had a wobbly tooth.You know it\'s wobbly, and you know that it hurts.But what do you do every 20, 30 seconds? (Mumbling) It does hurt.And we reinforce the storyline, right? And we just keep telling ourselves, and we do it all the time.And it\'s only in learning to watch the mind in this way that we can start to let go of those storylines and patterns of mind.But when you sit down and you watch the mind in this way, you might see many different patterns.You might find a mind that\'s really restle and -- the whole time.Don\'t be surprised if you feel a bit agitated in your body when you sit down to do nothing and your mind feels like that.You might find a mind that\'s very dull and boring, and it\'s just, almost mechanical, it just seems it\'s as if you\'re getting up, going to work, eat, sleep, get up, work.Or it might just be that one little nagging thought that just goes round and round and round your mind.Well, whatever it
is, meditation offers the opportunity, the potential to step backand to get a different perspective, to see that things aren\'t always as they appear.We can\'t change every little thing that happens to us in life, but we can change the way that we experience it.That\'s the potential of meditation, of mindfulne.You don\'t have to burn any incense, and you definitely don\'t have to sit on the floor.All you need to do is to take 10 minutes out a day to step back, to familiarize yourself with the present moment so that you get to experience a greater sense of focus, calm and clarity in your life.Thank you very much.(Applause)
