The High Vibe Guide
You can feel happier! You can feel more positive, and it's so much easier than you think.
Whether you're a seasoned venturer or just starting out on your journey to radiating a more positive energy, my episodes will provide a wealth of inspiration, tools and wisdom to guide you in creating a more vibrant and positive life. It is possible. I have lived and breathed this journey. Let me explain how you can do it too.
The High Vibe Guide
30. From Troubled Youth to Buddhist Monk: The Transformational Journey with Tom Shanti
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Have you ever been curious about the personal journey of a monk? Maybe not! But when I met Tom, my curiosity was certainly piqued. Join me today as I chat with Tom Shanti, to uncover his remarkable journey from a chaotic adolescence to a life enriched with spirituality, sound healing, and meditation.
Tom's fascinating story, beginning with a tumultuous youth and evolving into a deeply spiritual existence, is a testament to the power of inner transformation. His calming presence and deep-seated wisdom were a highlight of my summer Yoga Retreat this year, and I’m thrilled to share his insights with you.
This episode is brimming with wisdom and practical insights for anyone on a spiritual path, making it an unmissable guide to achieving a fulfilling and enlightened life.
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@thehighvibe.guide
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Welcome to the High Vibe Guide, the podcast where I demystify the concept of raising our vibration. I'm Jenna, a yoga teacher, mum of three and passionate advocate for helping others to just feel happier. Let me explain to you how we can all live more contented and fulfilled lives, and how it's so much easier than you think. Today I have a very special guest conversation for you guys. I recently had the pleasure of chatting to the wonderful Tom Stacey, or Tom Shanty. Many of you might know him as Earlier this year, when I was planning my summer retreat, I was asking around for a practitioner in sound healing or sound therapy.
Speaker 1:I knew that I really wanted to incorporate sound meditation, especially a gong bath, into my retreat, and a friend of mine recommended Tom to me. So I went along to one of his sessions and after this experience I just knew I had to ask him if he would like to come along and retreat with me, and I am so very glad that I did so. Tom is a trained gong practitioner and an incredibly experienced meditation guide, and he's widely known throughout Shrewsbury and the surrounding areas for this and his sound healing sessions. But he's also a Hatha and a Kundalini yoga teacher as well as Tai Chi. He just has so much under his belt and he's such an asset to the yoga community and I'm just so very glad to have had the opportunity to spend some more time with him. I'm just so very glad to have had the opportunity to spend some more time with him.
Speaker 1:What really stands out most with Tom when you're in his company is that you just feel compelled to listen. You're almost lulled into this pure state of receiving, and I believe this is down to his life experience and his spirituality. Meditation's been a consistent part of his life for more than 30 years now and from the knowledge that I'm gaining from the benefits of meditation long-term benefits benefits you can really see this in Tom, in his demeanour, his energy and the way his mind works, how he shares concepts and ideas with you. And it was during my first few encounters with Tom that I learned that he used to live as a Buddhist monk and it all then just made sense. There is this real light within Tom, and one you can see that he just wants to share with the world.
Speaker 1:So when I asked him to come on the podcast, I asked if he would mind sharing some of his experiences as a monk, some of the reasons that led him to the monastery in the first place, but subsequently the reasons for entering back into normal life. And he shared a few details on retreat with us after our sound session there, which is what prompted this train of thought for me, because throughout the evening on retreat all of us were thinking of more and more questions that we wish we had asked him. So when he agreed to come on here, I was just so happy because I knew we could get the answers to a few more of these questions that we had been dying to ask, not just just because we're nosy well, obviously partly but also because we were so captivated by his words and his delivery of the Buddhist teachings that we were all just left wanting more. So here you go, guys. Just for you, here is the conversation I had with Tom last week. Enjoy, tom, welcome to the high vibe guide.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for coming on and talking to me it's fine it's a pleasure, good, like I said to you before I, obviously you came on, retreat with us and delivered the wondrous sound session with you and Sarah. You did agree afterwards just to spend half an hour or so. We opened up a bit of a Q&A session, didn't we? Yeah, and, like I said to you before, everyone was just so, I think, enthralled by you because of your life experience, your spirituality. I'm enthralled by you because of your, obviously, your life experience, your spirituality. There's a little bit of innate wisdom there. Not trying to? A little bit, yeah, not much a little bit.
Speaker 1:It's definitely a little bit, but it's. But how long ago was it that you spent time as a monk now?
Speaker 2:going back quite a way now. I think it was I was 20 years old when I became a monk and I was.
Speaker 1:I was there till I was 25 okay, so a good amount, a good chunk of time yeah, so seven, seven years.
Speaker 2:I was actually in the center, five years actually wearing the robes oh, wow, okay because this is in the days before facebook and you know smartphones and, yeah, I've only got one picture that I can access and that's me oh wow, I'm gonna try and screenshot this and share it with the listeners. That's amazing this lady in the shot is actually a member of a local buddhist sangha or community yeah different tradition and we just happen to be oh really she lives in Telford, yeah, oh, wow amazing in Yorkshire, so yeah, oh, thanks for that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but what was your life like before you joined the monastery?
Speaker 2:well it was. It was a little bit sort of chaotic, really, to be honest. Uh, I didn't have the best start in life and, uh, it was a bit uh, let's say a bit uh fruity, a bit hairy.
Speaker 1:I like the description. But had you discovered things like yoga, yet I'm assuming you hadn't.
Speaker 2:My mum was a yoga teacher.
Speaker 1:Oh really.
Speaker 2:It was in the house.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow.
Speaker 2:I didn't know that it was just sticks burning and you know she was coming up on little retreats and coming back thinking, well, what's all this drudgery, you know? But yeah, so I was always around yoga. Well, I say always, but it was in the background growing up, but I did get in with the wrong crowd, to be honest, was that?
Speaker 1:kind of in your teenage years.
Speaker 2:Teenage years. It was lots of people in my year that just really went off the rails. Quite a few of them are dead now, actually oh, that's sad yeah, one of my best friends, in fact, the friend that was my best friend as a, as a, you know, young teenager. He died when he was 25, I think oh my 25 of a drugs overdose wow in the quarry, you know, and another guy recently died and he'd become a sort of long-term heroin addict actually so there's lots of heavy, very low vibration sort of things going on talking about high vibes yeah you know, sometimes that can jolt you into some kind of awakening.
Speaker 2:You know, I remember going to a a wake of a funeral of the family several years ago and somebody I didn't really know, some sort of one of those annoying uncles that's not very tactful just came up and said weren't you the one that had the breakdown?
Speaker 2:oh nice yeah well, I call it a breakthrough, if you don't mind oh so is that when you decided to yeah, like, like, let's add something to enhance my life. It was literally let's find something that's gonna save me from going down into the abyss, basically wow young teenager, you know, with some very, very dark people and very, very, you know, troublesome and troubled people. Um, you know, we, we are influenced by our peer group more than anything else.
Speaker 2:So even the family can be as enlightened as you like, but if the peer group is, um, is very negative or is has bad values, if you like, or the wrong values. You can definitely go down a dark path. I'll say it on camera in case it helps anybody else. You know there's people might have drugs problems or alcohol problems. Yeah, uh, get into trouble with the law, you know, getting in into fights and things I mean my nose got broken, uh, quite severely, and I had two operations a few years ago to fix really when you're doing nadi uh, shidana, and yeah well, I couldn't really breathe properly through one side of my nose because it had all been smashed you know, wow, and it took you this long to get it fixed.
Speaker 2:One of these pub brawls, which I didn't start. But you know, when you're off your head and you're going into pubs in Shrewsbury, you can easily get injured. Yeah, they fixed it really nicely now.
Speaker 1:Amazing, they fixed it really nicely now.
Speaker 2:Amazing plastic and um, basically I can do anulone velone perfectly. Now I feel much more balanced. I don't get nearly as many colds and flus that's interesting good functioning of the nasal passages and so forth. Yeah, yeah, so it's meditation. You know yoga, it wasn't really yoga that I got into it. It was meditation when I was a teenager and actually one of the main transformational moments was when I went to see Ram Dass. Have you heard of Ram Dass? Yeah, I have.
Speaker 2:He's got some great books. He's passed away fairly recently, but he was one of the main consciousness expansion and sort of spiritual teachers of the last century. Really. Richard alpert became ramdas when he uh he lived in india for a while, yeah. So I went to see him at bristol there was a some kind of seminar read some of his books like be here now. That's a really good book I recommend. Uh, later on he wrote books like after the ecstasy, the laundry, that's another good one. Bliss out, and on all the spiritual vibes. You've got to come down to earth again. Sometimes the higher you go, then the lower you'll crash down again. So it's almost like you've got to, like you're saying, integrating things into daily life and yeah not going for for getting high.
Speaker 2:Like randas used to say, it's not about getting high, it's about getting free high for years, and even after he'd found his guru and after he was practicing meditation and yoga in a very profound way, he still would experiment with lsd and this type of thing, for many, many years actually, and even at one time he gave his guru the most powerful LSD and it didn't do anything to him.
Speaker 1:Really.
Speaker 2:No, he said, you know this yogi medicine. You know it only takes you a certain way. He'd expanded his mind so much that this. Lsd couldn't freak him out at all.
Speaker 1:That's amazing, isn't it the power of the mind, really? What was it like when you were? You said you stayed with the monastery for a longer period than you were actually a monk. What? How does it work? Because obviously you can live there, can't you without?
Speaker 2:oh yeah making vows or anything no, initially I went there as a lay person. You know, I went there with my partner at the time girlfriend and um well, she didn't last very long. She sort of decided it wasn't for her and went and lived in york. She, uh, she went off and left me and actually that's probably one of the factors of becoming a monk at such an early age, almost on the rebound to some extent. Well, women are terrible, not women are terrible.
Speaker 2:But you know, I've had a terrible experience with women and I'm not risking it again, you know yeah I'm going to become a monk at the age of 20, you know, very idealistic, but you know it takes time. You've got to live like a monk for a certain amount of time. Yeah. Which I could, I did do before. They'll actually let you get ordained and so forth. Partly that, and partly being very inspired by the spiritual teacher, the Tibetan Lama, that I actually was ordained by, you know. So it was the teachings of buddhism, really tibetan buddhism, that really got me off the sort of drinking drugs and got myself back together.
Speaker 2:Really, I got myself on a regular meditation practice, studying spiritual teachings, books, you know, scriptures, yeah, and getting all the wisdom that's out there that we can all access. You know we've all got access to, especially these days at the tip of our fingers, we don't have to find the right book, it's just all there on the internet. It's just kind of finding something that works for you, you know something that resonates with you.
Speaker 2:I mean in buddhism. They say that buddhas appear in in all forms and in all different religions and no religions. There's enlightened wisdom in so many places, which can be just what we need. You know, buddha taught 84,000 teachings, apparently throughout his life until 81.
Speaker 2:And in that time he was teaching the whole time. So there's so many teachings. Time he was teaching the whole time, so there's so many teachings. The one of the interesting things about the tibetan tradition is that they compiled it into something called the lam rim. So 84 000 buddhist teachings. Where do you start? You know what do you do. So it was kind of condensed into what's called the stages of the path to enlightenment in books like uh meditation handbook by geshe kel, saying that's one book in a nutshell. So it kind of starts with what's called the initial scope, meditations, the intermediate scope, which talks about renunciation, which non-attachment, becoming the power of what we call greed, or grasping, or clinging, desire, energy that wants more, more, more. It's never, you know, like the rolling stones song about I can't get no satisfaction, but I try, but I try and we can never, we'll never be completely satisfied by worldly pleasure.
Speaker 2:It's a temporary fix and a high, but then we need more, and we need more and really to find it within. You know that that pleasure, there is pleasure within and there's pleasure in meditation.
Speaker 2:There's pleasure in art, there's pleasure in so many things, but ultimately they're still temporary. But there is this concept of like, ultimate bliss, if you like, or when we achieve some level of spiritual realization, we touch what's called the Anandamaya Kosha, which if you study some yoga texts, there's sheaths, isn't there? The physical body is one sheath and my kosher. Then you've got like the mind, the man of my kosher, the mind sheath got the, the energy sheath, which we call prana, my kosher, as in pranayama, vijnana my kosher, sometimes regarded as the intellect a bit more of a tricky one to explain that. But the main point is that the innermost one is the Ananda Myakosha and that's the bliss body.
Speaker 2:So if you can kind of work through those other bodies or sheaths or layers, you'll start touching on the Ananda Myakosha, which is the essence. That still isn't. That still isn't us, that's not me, that's not self, but that is the most essence. That still isn't. That still isn't us, that's not me, that's not self, but that is the most subtle sheath around, whatever we might think of as of as ourself, our atman in hinduism they say they call it buddhism, doesn't like the word soul, so they just talk about the mental continuum, but it's much the same in all the studies I've done.
Speaker 1:Why is it that Buddhism doesn't like the word soul?
Speaker 2:Soul, because it implies something permanent. The whole teaching of Buddha is that everything is impermanent, so it's like a continuum of consciousness. They don't like to give it a permanent structure and say this is the self. So you know I'm still working on why they don't like the word soul. But it's kind of like I don't know a raindrop.
Speaker 2:Think of a raindrop coming down and then it goes all the way to the sea yeah what's left of that raindrop, in a sense, when it gets to the sea and it just merges with the ocean I like that analogy.
Speaker 2:That's good yeah you have the path to enlightenment, you know being this little enclosed raindrop but eventually, if you, if you allow yourself to go down the path to enlightenment you know being this little enclosed raindrop but eventually, if you, if you allow yourself to go down the path, you'll, you'll merge with all the other raindrops and what's what's really left of the self of the raindrop then yeah, no, I like that.
Speaker 1:That's a good analogy that makes sense yeah that makes sense, because it's something I'm talking a lot about lately on the podcast and really to anyone that will listen, is the power of meditation. I've had a very on-off relationship with meditation for a long time, probably since I was quite young, because my mum's a big advocate of meditation and she always has been, so I was. I've known about it since I was very young, but it's only really been in the last nine, ten months or so that I've made it a a daily, an almost daily practice and I think I'm definitely experiencing what I describe as like medium-term benefits. But from what I can understand about the long-term benefits, like you know the veteran meditators, it's it's just what you were saying it's, and I kind of see it like it's a way of clearing the pathway inwards. We become very separate, don't we? We put on layers throughout life and it's almost like it just starts peeling back the layers and you can just start to see through and it's where this kind of amazing sense of clarity and calm kind of shines through. I'm just getting this little glimpse of it and it makes me very excited for next year and the year after.
Speaker 1:You know when I, if I keep at it and I think I just think meditation is so powerful and I try to break down to people a lot why people might be put off by meditation and I had a thousand excuses for why I never committed to it over my life. Mainly it was, you know, oh, I haven't got time. I've got three young kids, I haven't got time. Or I've tried, it doesn't work. I get a lot of that and people say it to me. It just doesn't work for me. I've tried, it doesn't work. I get a lot of that and people say it to me. It just doesn't work for me. I've tried it, it doesn't work for me. But what would you say to people anyone that's listening now, to those people that know that meditation's probably good for them. It's getting past that first barrier. Isn't it To start to feel the benefits, because it might take a little bit of time. You might not feel anything in the beginning. What would be your advice to those people?
Speaker 2:Well, one thing is that there's no such thing as a bad meditation. Yeah. Something to remember. Sometimes you think, oh, I had a good meditation, so I'll do it again.
Speaker 2:Or a bad meditation so I won't do it. But if you can just commit to sort of five minutes a day or ten minutes and have a limited amount of time as well, Like could be for a week, could be for a month, just be for like two or three days and then just see how you go, Just build it up gradually. Sometimes I do the 40 day sadhana, which is like you commit to doing yoga meditation for 40 days. The Kundalini yoga groups they have a lot of 40 days to dhanas that you can join with and you kind of commit at that point. I'm going to do 40 days and they tend to use the same meditation each day with slightly different yoga kriyas, Kriya or the asanas, but they tend to keep the meditation the same so you can gradually build experience and familiarity with that meditation yeah and at the end of that 40 days maybe you feel like doing something else or another meditation.
Speaker 2:But you know, just having realistic goals, I think if you say I'm going to meditate every day for the rest of my life, you'll most people won't be able to sustain that, and then they'll feel frustrated with themselves or I've failed or this or that. So it's better to have small successes rather than set yourself up for failure. There's no failure, it's all a process, and an action is never wasted is a Buddhist teaching as well. So every action of meditating is creating a cause to do it again. It's called the result similar to the cause. It's one aspect of karma.
Speaker 2:We always think about the effect similar to the cause. Oh well, I cut someone up on the road and then I got cut up the next day, or something, or someone bibbed at me too hard, you know, or we cat heaven forbid, I'd never do it, but karma, you know, and but there's the tendency similar to the cause as well, is part of karma. So everything we do creates a tendency to do that again. I just think if you've done it for a week, you've created the tendency to do it for another week yeah, I've never thought of it like that.
Speaker 1:Even like you say, like bad habits, like kicking a cat. You know you, you created the tendency to do it again. I've never thought of it that that, even like you say, like bad habits, like kicking a cat. You know you, you created the tendency to do it again. I'd never thought of it that way yeah, effects similar to cause.
Speaker 2:Tendency similar to the cause yeah, that's really interesting it's a law of, it's a natural law.
Speaker 1:You know, it's part of our mental ecology, if you like yeah, you don't think about it going the other way, like you always talk about, like you say, create a tendency to do something again, like even if you do a yoga practice or a workout or something, you're more likely to do it again. But obviously the bad stuff too. You're creating the beginning of a habit there, aren't you really?
Speaker 2:it's just a mass. The mind is a mass of habits. You know, it's just a yeah is it the wolf that you feed will be the the one that will keep coming back.
Speaker 1:Yeah, which one are you going to feed? Yeah?
Speaker 2:I forget the exact analogy, but you know the one.
Speaker 1:I know which one you mean. Yeah, I think it's a clip from a movie as well. They've put in. That's how I remember it, but it's. Yeah, it's which one you feed, basically, isn't it? It's going to keep coming back.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's great. They'll get stronger. If you feed the bad habits, they'll get stronger. Yeah, you know, simple as that, and we, we know really what what's wholesome and what's unwholesome in terms of our actions. But the good thing about buddhism that I like a lot of people like, is there's no judgment there's no, nobody saying you know you're a bad person or you know you're evil or this or that. If you do something which isn't wholesome or which is. In Buddhism there's a word unskillful. They say unskillful actions, which I always like. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Unskillful action and unskillful action. To sum up Buddhism in a nutshell, it says cease to do evil, learn to do good, control the mind through meditation and benefit others. That's it really Cease to do evil, evil.
Speaker 1:learn to do good, control the mind, benefit others yeah, that's what I love about about buddhism and, you know, living kind of a yogi way as well, living a yogi life and I think meditation is a huge part of that for me, and gratitude and kindness and all that kind of thing but I find that it it just enables you to start more naturally living. That way, your brain starts to just gain a different perspective and there's no judgment. That's what I really love about that way of living is that you look at something like Christianity or Catholicism there's. There's a shameful kind of aspect to it, like the ten commandments it's if you don't live up to them, something bad's gonna happen. I mean, you don't get that feeling with yoga as we say.
Speaker 2:Well, in buddhism they say you know it's, it's just the law of karma yeah you know there's nobody externally punishing you. If anything, you're just punishing yourself and that's it. And whatever we do to others, we're doing to ourselves.
Speaker 1:Ultimately yeah, but I really like how you said there's no such thing as a bad meditation. I like that, I'm going to remember, because there's definitely that in the beginning or someday, even with an established practice, that you feel it's not doing anything or that was a waste of 10 minutes, you know, because I wasn't concentrating well, my mind kept wondering. But there's no such thing as a bad meditation. But I think everyone's got a very stereotypical if you like for want of a better word view of what life is like as a monk. I mean, how often do you spend in meditation every day, for instance?
Speaker 2:It will vary, because there are obviously like there are periods of retreat where you're meditating all day pretty much, with with regular breaks. Wow, we'd have like a winter retreat of four to five weeks and it's like maybe eight to ten hours of meditation, including chanted meditation. It wasn't all silent. There's quite a lot of recitation of guided meditations, called puja as well, or chanted meditation, but all in all you'll be sitting in the gompa, so a tibetan word gompa means like a meditation hall right, I've not heard that before.
Speaker 2:I like that going to gomping tonight you know the Tibetans are the happiest people. I mean it just. It shows something about that philosophy, because when you meet Tibetan people, nine out of ten, they're just so happy. Despite what's happened, all the oppression, everything, they are still retained this kind of joyful, humorous nature in the face of whatever hardships have come their way.
Speaker 1:You know yeah, I've heard that from multiple people who've met tibetans. They just say they're so happy and they have nothing, but they're so happy yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:They're a real example of.
Speaker 1:You know the benefits of of that philosophy but you've obviously, you've obviously had meditation in your life for a very long time, even before you went to live with the monastery. What would you say, maybe? What would your life look now without meditation? Do you think? Now that's been part of a life, your life for so long. What have you gained the most out of it, do you think?
Speaker 2:I think it just gives you a ref. It gives you a refuge actually, and you know that I mean anxiety can only go so far because you know there's a safe refuge within withdrawal back to, because you've had so much experience of that that even if you get lost in all the kind of craziness of the world, providing you can just get back to your meditation seat, you can just meditate and you can find refuge within you know the buddha said become a light unto yourself and it gives you a certain confidence and it reduces kind of panic.
Speaker 2:We can all have a bit of panic, anxiety, fear, which we might suppress, but it's there, it's bubbling away. You know, it's kind of like finding that ground of being that is is by nature peaceful and, like many yogic cultures say, our true nature is peace, is peacefulness. It's our natural state. You know, like uh, one of the rinpoche said rest in natural great peace, the rest to rest, to find, rest, you know, within, and when you just fully rest, you know you can just let go of everything in that state and that is rejuvenating, it's balancing, it's harmonizing and you can come out of that and get back to the madness of this world and do what you can to try and help or cope with it.
Speaker 2:Maybe you can't help, maybe you just don't make it worse. That's a good start, you know.
Speaker 1:Don't add yeah, yeah, but it's. I guess it's like. I use the word anchor quite a lot. It's like having an anchor, isn't it? So it can be as crazy and messed up and chaotic on the surface as you like, but your meditation just gives you that anchor, so you can still operate on a pretty good level you get blown about by the, the winds yeah. So what was it, tom, that made you think one day that you'd had enough of being a monk?
Speaker 2:oh, the dreaded question. It's better to you know, to be open and honest, I think. Just say I think I wasn't really ready to become a monk for the rest of my life. I mean, I did it when I was 20 years old and had a great time, you know, five years of real kind of protection. Yeah, basically it's like putting like blinkers on and just not getting distracted by the myriad, you know, distractions of this world. You know, and you can really focus, you can really meditate, you can really study, you do all these retreats. But still I was a 20, a young in my early 20s, you know, and there was lots of lovely girls coming in.
Speaker 2:A bit of an experiment, a bit of an expert social experiment, what it wasn't quite a monastery and actually I think maybe there's quite a reason for monasteries being men only. Yeah, probably time in most cultures, but we had this interesting mix. But it's a bit of an experiment really. Let's have monks and nuns and let's also have lots of late, young, very attractive lay people all living together right, okay that's challenging for a young 20 year old.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I can imagine I thought it's better to to jump before I was pushed, basically, but it wouldn't have been that long before something might have happened which might have brought I won't say shame, because we don't really do shame, but no yeah wouldn't have been a good example for the, for the sangha, you know yeah I needed to have a relationship. But you know, I was getting very strongly drawn into that resisting and resisting, but it was creating a lot of conflict within me, you know yeah eventually that that's causing too much um disturbance and it's affecting my meditation.
Speaker 2:I actually would have been better off, or was better off than being a lay person or being a non.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And in most traditional Buddhist cultures, you know, you have to be what's called a brahmacharya, you have to go around in white for quite a long time and live like a monk or a nun and then eventually you become a fully ordained monk or nun. But it would be many years, you know, and it was a bit of a social experiment really to allow all these young people in their early 20s to become monks and nuns. And most of them are not there now. The majority left, you know.
Speaker 2:I think it's a shame actually it's because, um, they don't always tend to come back would you ever go back? I've been back several times, but only as a visitor. You know, they might have kept me longer if they hadn't allowed me to become a monk quite so quickly oh really, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:But you, you mentioned the word protection earlier when you were there and I think that that kind of stuck for me. I could imagine, like you say, the the hard times you'd had, and it must have felt like this protective bubble for you, a safe and nurturing space.
Speaker 2:I always say it was a bit like going into quarantine and just basically, you know, almost like a kind of sterile environment where you can let all your clashes, all your kind of strong delusions, as we call them, settle down and just settle, settle, settle you know, in a protected environment where the distractions are cut down.
Speaker 2:It's a bit like going you know where the distractions are cut down. It's a bit like going, you know, we, we might go on retreat, we might do a few days retreat and we're just not going to be thinking I'm looking for a partner, or? And if that would be a distraction, wouldn't it we?
Speaker 2:don't want that retreat. You know we want to be able to look within. We need to cut off some of those distractions, uh, but sometimes it happens on retreat you end up fancying it's happened to me subsequent to being a monk and you can't speak to the. I've done a 10-day retreat in america with jack cornfield not come out of being a monk.
Speaker 2:I went to america and did a sort of dharma taught sort of dharma center crawl, if you like, instead of a pub crawl buddhist centers and yoga centers and um, and I remember ending up at spirit rock in california. And then I heard there was a 10-day retreat in the deserts of southern california. One of the top buddhist teachers and authors of of this time, you know, jack cornfield, who's a psychotherapist, who had been a monk himself, a Thai forest tradition monk in his early 20s and you know again decided to become a layperson and trained in psychotherapy and he's got the two aspects together. I learned a lot from that retreat and one thing I learned was that you have to be kind to yourself. You haven't really not so much in the Tibetan tradition, although it is there.
Speaker 2:There's this very strong emphasis in the Thai tradition of metta bhavna, which comes from the Thai or the Theravada tradition. That thing about loving kindness starts with yourself First of all. You've got to have that loving kindness for yourself and then for other people, especially in meditation, every thought or desire or feeling that comes up, you attend to it with a sort of loving kindness. It's like you're nurturing yourself in that way I'm thinking, oh, I'm bad, I shouldn't have these thoughts, you know, or push it down, push it down, you know, trying to kill these delusions, and it can have like the opposite effect. You know, I learned a lot about self, you know, healthy self-love, self-compassion, on that retreat.
Speaker 1:I think that's something that us, as a human race, we're not always very good at. Speaking kindly to ourselves, kind thoughts directed inwards it's, I think it very quickly as well, becomes a programmed habit again, doesn't it, that we're not aware of, and it's through yoga and meditation that we can then create that level of self-awareness. You stop, and because you, I think you need that self-awareness for any kind of development or growth forwards. If you don't have that level of awareness, then I don't think you can make any change for the better, can you?
Speaker 2:having the same love that you'd have for your dearest child. Having that for yourself may be happy. May I be healthy, may I not suffer. You know, just like you'd wish that for your beloved person. But we, we tend to have the opposite attitude to ourselves, especially if we're religious. I mean religious people are famous for beating themselves up, you know. And there's that real emphasis of literally whipping yourself, sometimes Literally, I mean, that is a practice.
Speaker 1:I find that mad, I find that crazy.
Speaker 2:You're stuck for all the sins that you think you've done. You know, yeah, so, but mad, I find that crazy. All these sins that you think you've done, you know, yeah, so, but I've got a lot of time. There's some great things in catholicism, so the cat and nine tails is one of them.
Speaker 1:But before before we do finish up, tom, I do want to ask you about the concept of non-attachment. We did touch on it in on retreats and people were intrigued by it, I think I think I'm so interested again in talking to you about it because it's something that I think I'm still working through. I understand the concept, but it's really applying it to daily life. Would you mind just explaining a little bit about what it is and then how we can apply it to our daily life?
Speaker 2:So in Buddhism there's three root delusions there's ignorance, there's attachment and there's anger, or we might say aversion. So they're two sides of the same coin aversion and attachment. You either want to push something away that you don't like, or you want to get something that you do like. That you don't like, or you want to get something that you do like. So attachment is like a clingy mind, and sometimes it's spoken of as like oil in a cloth. Anger is actually easy to get out of your mind. Attachment is much harder.
Speaker 2:You know, aversion, anger, hatred even, can be washed out of your mind more quickly. Attachment is much more subtle and it's almost seeped in to the very fabric of our being. And it's sometimes the analogy of oil in cloth. So you might have to wash that cloth several times to get the oil out. There's a Taoist saying from the Tao Te Ching the great way is easy for those who have no preferences. The great way is easy for he or she who has no preferences. But Ram Dass adds to that it doesn't mean you don't have preferences. Everyone has preferences. It's natural.
Speaker 2:We're not Taoist masters. When we become a Taoist master which is the same as a Zen master or an enlightened mystic or whatever you want to call it, then you develop this equanimity and you see that everything's one, everything is of the same taste, everything has that same essence. So you don't differentiate in the same way as we do when we're in duality. We're lost in this duality, but on a basic level, you know. You know, just just reducing our attachment is healthy. You know, because we're less, we're less dependent on external objects for our happiness.
Speaker 2:Actually, if we, you know, are less attached to external objects when, when we lose them, that could be a person, it could be a relationship, it could be a pet, it could be a possession, it could be a car. You know you get the perfect lamborghini and then someone scrapes it up. You know you get it's wrecked, you know, and how, how hurt you feel. That's to an external object, and we all do it, but you know it's um, it's just about being practical, sensible and realizing that. You know happiness comes from within and if it's always dependent on external objects, you'll always be at risk of suffering how do you take that, that concept, though, and that belief?
Speaker 1:what, like you say I know it could be about a lamborghini or a pet, obviously is. It's just as upsetting. But say, a child or a parent, a spouse, how, how?
Speaker 2:again, that's something that is just so difficult and what happens, you see, is love and attachment get kind of mixed up together so we can't really differentiate the two. There's two different things love, just that pure wanting someone to be happy, and just feeling that you just want someone to be, get, have everything they want, and just that that good feeling of love, uh, is then also mixed with attachments, like what can I get out of you? Or what can you do for me to separate them out and say, well, I want you to be happy and I wish you happiness, but, um, I'll let you go. You know, there's a saying, isn't that to love someone is to let them go?
Speaker 2:doesn't mean literally let them go, but you stop grasping and trying to make them into something they're not to fit in with what you want.
Speaker 1:I find it's just such a a complex issue to think about, but it's interesting and I always come back to it because I do. I find it something that's just difficult to wrap your head around, but like I like that's a great way of explaining it, like the difference between love and attachment. That does make sense.
Speaker 2:People think that being non-attached means you're kind of aloof and you're unfeeling. Talking about the Tibetan people, they can be some of the most even the monks and nuns as well incredibly loving, incredibly joyous, and they might really enjoy a nice meal as well, and they're quite flexible, but they're always practicing non-attachment. So they're an example of not you don't have to be this austere kind of you know, unfeeling robot. You can actually be a human being with all the passions of being a human being, whilst at the same time working on reducing, clinging and grasping. Ultimately, it all comes back to what's called ego grasping or self-grasping. You know everything is.
Speaker 2:That's the root of all delusion, according to buddhism grasping is like this sense of self, which is why they don't like you to use the word soul, right, the sense of being separate, you know. So, if we can, just, it's just like unclenching on on a very deep level, just like you're holding a bar of soap and you just, you can still hold it without if you grip it too tightly it's going to slip out, isn't it wet? Think about a wet bar of soap and if you grip it too tightly it's just going to slip out.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's so true, lightly like that, just holding that bar of soap, and if you grip it too tightly, it's just going to slip out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's so true. Lightly like that, just holding that bar of soap, so you don't have to let it go, just like you don't have to let go of any relationships, but just have a light grip on it. Don't grip too tightly, because whether you lose it literally or at some other level and when, the more you attach to someone, the more you push them away, it's one of those awful realities of and the more you're attached to someone, the more you push them away. It's one of those awful realities of life is the more we need someone, the more they step back. Oh, I don't need that.
Speaker 2:It's too needy, you know. It doesn't mean that you push them away in any way. In fact, they're more likely to want to be with you the less attached you become yeah so interesting.
Speaker 1:They also think a complication can come where if you're trying, if I guess, if you're new to practicing on attachment, then you can also get mixed up with pushing away the good, almost, and just expecting the basic, not the bad necessarily, I think. No, I can't get it too attached to the good, so I'm not gonna look for it or be open to it. You know, it's such a, it's such a fine balance really, isn't it? Again, I think you're. You're grasping then, though by doing that, aren't you grasping onto one thing and not just lightening your grip, are you?
Speaker 2:you can enjoy this world more the less attached you are. Your grip are you. You can enjoy this world more the less attached you are. You enjoy all the pleasures of this life. You know that are you know within reason. You know, yeah, uh, in a sensible way, and you know that's one of the aspects. Also, buddhism, called tantra which we probably haven't got time to go into now, but that is an integral part of tibetan buddhism is tantra yeah actually it's kind of like completely different to the sutric teachings or the sutras sense of um.
Speaker 2:It allows you to enjoy worldly pleasure and to transform it, transform it into bliss, and also to see everything as pure, to see all beings as pure beings. To see everything as pure, to see all beings as pure beings, to see yourself as almost like a deity. In the meditations you generate yourself as a deity. I was doing that on retreats for weeks and weeks. It's become an amazingly blissful being in this blissful, pure land and lots of lovely enjoyments and everyone else is like frolicking and they call them Dacus and Dakinis. They're called All the heroes, yoginis, dacus and Dakinis. To all of you I make this request you have the characteristic of the liberation of great bliss. Do not say that liberation can be gained in one lifetime through various ascetic practices, having abandoned great bliss, but that great bliss resides in the center of the supreme lotus. And then, ahia alaho, ahia raleigho, may the assembly of stainless dakinis look with loving affection and accomplish all deeds.
Speaker 2:That's just one little pooja is the chants that we used to do and we'd all have this little party. It'd be like this party. We'd have lots of food, we'd offer it to the buddhas and deities. We generate ourselves as deities. We do these kind of self-initiation rituals with, like kumkum powder and certain things and, according to tradition, uh, and then we'd enjoy that, those worldly pleasures which have been transformed um, by offering them up. So you've let go of them. Yeah, your own body. You've actually vision in meditation. You've cut up your own body and put it into a, into a skull cap as you do it's all very sort of a gory varanasi stuff.
Speaker 2:You know you might see in varanasi the yogis, but you know you've done it all in meditation. You've kind of purified all what's called your contaminated aggregates and you've you've let go of all attachment to your body. You generated a new body which is a blissful body made of pure light, and then you're enjoying, you know, land where do I sign up? Tom sounds great it's great, and that's one thing I do miss actually is is the the tantric uh ceremonies that we used to have yeah people in the west. They do misunderstand.
Speaker 2:They think tantra and sex you know, people were not encouraged to actually have sex with each other. Just just to be clear, if people were in relationships and they were already in that sexual relationship, then they could transform that, uh, as part of everybody's practice and it was a standard thing. You know, um, just like you transform all your other enjoyments, like food, like we spend the moment just looking at the food, and then we'd we'd sort of do a few mudras to that mudra like this, and we'd kind of transform that food into nectar and then we'd offer it to the the deities dwelling within our body, you know, or to ourselves generated to the deity. Wow, so that's completely different to the whole. So we're practicing sutra, the buddhist teachings, the standard buddhist teachings, equally, but we're also developing the tantric teachings yeah, I love it just just one, one fundamental, fundamental principle of tantra is called um bringing the future result into the path.
Speaker 2:Future result is us as an enlightened being, a blissful enlightened being, and rather than sort of thinking well, maybe one day in many lifetimes I might get there. You think right? I'm going to imagine I've already done it. It's like the secret? Isn't it that sense of manifesting?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was going to say manifestation, visualization. It's very powerful.
Speaker 2:So you imagine it's actually happened. Whatever you really want in life and whatever is the most beneficial thing, you imagine you've already got it, without being crazy and unrealistic. You know it's just a meditation, but it has an effect, bringing the future result into the path it's like it creates space within you for that to kind of come forwards, doesn't it?
Speaker 1:you mentioned something like you said you missed. That's one thing you miss about the retreat you used to do. Is there anything that you miss about being a monk?
Speaker 2:yeah, it has a very special energy. I used to go out and teach, I used to give like public talks, wearing the, the saffron robes, and you become like a representation of the buddha representative, like a rep, a sales rep for bud, for Buddhism, but on a spiritual level, and you get a certain blessing, a certain energy that comes with that. You know, and it's something you can't replicate. I can never get that energy again and also, I don't know. It's just that constant reminder Dharma, dharma, dharma, dharma. You know spiritual wisdom, spiritual wisdom, and people are coming to you looking for that. So you have to constantly be studying and becoming a teacher, like we say in yoga, isn't it? Best way to learn is to become a teacher. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So that then, when people are coming to you looking for advice on yoga whether it's the physical yoga or whether it's the philosophy or whatever else psychology you've got to know your stuff, you know yeah, you've got to walk your talk yeah, the sangha. I missed the, the sense of being in community on a daily basis extent through online.
Speaker 2:I mean, I've been on a member of many online communities. Like I was saying, the 40-day sadhana in Kundalini yoga, you get the sense of a community and you're meditating together every day, but you're still in your little bubble and you know, and there's somewhere in different parts of the country or the world you know is a good thing, but there's nothing quite like being with a whole group of people in a gompa space, but for spiritual practice and meditation with everybody else and the Tibetans.
Speaker 2:Tibetan say, you know spiritual practice multiplied by the amount of people doing it at the same time, like pieces of straw that you put together to make a brush or a broom. It's traditional analogy. Before they had hoovers. You know, and you, just you can sweep all the dust away much more easily with it with a group energy than with an individual energy yeah time when you're very advanced, it's better to be on your own, like the yogis in the caves and what have you going to solitary retreat.
Speaker 2:But that's an advanced level, more basic level. We get so much from group energy that you can't replicate um on your own, but it's also. It'll give you a lot of energy and and blessing and just a boost yeah, the power of community, yeah absolutely so.
Speaker 2:That's one of the reasons for doing retreats and having these group gatherings, talking to which, if that's all right of course, you can go for it so I'm doing a well-being Walcott Hall, which is a beautiful stately home in South Shropshire, lidbury North, and it's 14th of September and we'll be doing gentle yoga, easy qigong, tai chi, a little bit of meditation enjoying the grounds and a gong bath meditation, sound healing journey at the end in the ballroom.
Speaker 1:Oh, fantastic, so fantastic.
Speaker 2:You know again that sense of a little bit, the tantric aspect of being in a beautiful place with beautiful people, beautiful environment. We used to meditate in a ballroom. I used to. Our Tibetan Buddhist center was, was a was a stately home. Really.
Speaker 2:It's very much like Attingham park, looked like attingham park and I used to live in between the pillars, you know, and I could look out on the ground so it's decided being in this pure land, and in the buddhist scriptures there's descriptions of countless beautiful pure lands where the dachas and dakinis and the beings they just frolic and they enjoy, but they're also learning spiritual wisdom they're not just enjoying, because that's another realm called the, just the God realm, like a small God with a small G.
Speaker 2:But you're just enjoying and eventually you you were what's the word? Use up all your good karma. Then you have to come back down and do the hard work again. Holiday and just like blessing and work hard, play hard different. You buddhist people are different. You enjoy and you learn and you meditate. So anyway, that's a little bit like we're going to do something meaningful in a beautiful place and we're going to enjoy it fantastic.
Speaker 1:Where can people go to book on or find out more information on the?
Speaker 2:walcott hall website, so just walcotthallcom, I think it is, or google it w-a-l-c-o-t. Walcott. And also I've got a website as well, tom shantycom, where I put on my gong baths and you know different retreats that I'm involved in, tom shanty with an I as in I'm shanty as in I'm shanty great.
Speaker 1:I'm sure that'll be absolutely amazing. I've been to a few of your sound just your sound bars now and they're absolutely incredible. But to round off, tom, thank you so much for coming and chatting to me. I really do appreciate it. It's always a pleasure. But if you could give just one piece of advice to anyone that's listening who wants to create more happiness, more joy in their lives, what would be that one piece of advice?
Speaker 2:my tibetan teacher used to have a saying try and don't worry. So whenever people go to him with problems and worries, he'd often just say try and don't worry. That was like the prescription panacea for everything try, do your best, don't worry. Now Huff and puff and make believe it all matters. But you know, merrily, merrily, row your boat gently down the stream. Life is but a dream. Hmm. One last thing if there's something you can do about a situation, why worry? And if there's nothing you can do about that situation, why worry?
Speaker 2:it's one of two either you can do something and then you don't worry, or you can't do anything, and then you don't worry yeah, but I love that about worry.
Speaker 1:Just worry is just so unnecessary. But we all do it. Yeah, learning that it's not necessary.
Speaker 2:I like that reggae as well, don't worry yeah, yeah, yeah, amali can't go wrong.
Speaker 1:Well, tom, thank you so much, an absolute pleasure, and I'm sure I will speak to you again on here very soon absolute pleasure. Thank you for inviting. Much for tuning in. If you enjoyed today's episode, please share with your friends and family to continue spreading that positivity. You can find me on instagram at the high vibe guide. Get in touch. I would love to hear from you. Thank you all so much for listening and I'll see you back here next time at the high vibe guide.