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A Monk’s Guide to Happiness

The best non-fiction book I’ve read in 2021.

I’ve often read reviews about books that changed readers’ lives and had always wondered whether one day that would happen to me. Well, I found it, this is the one.

I’ve read it twice this year and I’m sure I’m going to go back to it many other times.

It’s a well-organised and inspiring book with lots of practical examples and exercises that will help you integrate meditation and mindfulness in your busy life with a natural attitude and not as another thing added to the to-do/should-do list

The best lesson that I got from this book was that happiness is a choice, a skill to be developed through the training of your mind. Also, the concept of “wanting implies that we don’t have” is just revolutionary for me and especially for my lifestyle.

Some people pay a significant amount of money to go on a meditation retreat making it seem like meditation, and in general, mindfulness, are a luxury. Instead, with this book, I’ve learned and felt directly in my experience, that they are a necessity if we want to be happy.

In fact, meditation is free and you don’t need any of all the nice fancy stuff you see online, like candles, incenses, rainforest music, cushions or even the guided app.

What you need is free and you already have it, it’s your mind because it’s how we react to the thoughts that make us unhappy and the aim of meditation is not to get rid of our thoughts but to change our relationship with them

If you’re going to read only one book this year, make it this one.

From Goodreads:

What is the secret to being happy? Does happiness come from outside us or do we need to look within? Can meditation help?

Gelong Thubten has worked with everyone from Silicon Valley entrepreneurs to Ruby Wax and Benedict Cumberbatch. In his warm and engaging debut book he explores the nature of happiness and explains how to bring meditation into our busy 21st-century lives with simple yet effective exercises.

Gelong Thubten, Buddhist monk, meditation teacher and author, has always been fascinated by the question of happiness. In his youth he tried to find it through living a wild and extreme lifestyle as an actor in New York. This only led to more unhappiness. Desperate for solutions, he found himself at a Buddhist monastery where he became a monk. After training his mind in intensive retreats he now helps many thousands of people worldwide, showing them how to find inner happiness and a greater sense of freedom.

His book can help you:

  • Learn practical methods that help you to choose happiness
  • Develop greater compassion for yourself and others
  • Learn how to meditate in micro-moments during a busy day
  • Discover that you are naturally ‘hard-wired’ for happiness

In this profound and inspiring book, Gelong Thubten presents a practical and sustainable approach to happiness, and how meditation and mindfulness can help us get there.

Thubten helps to bust the myth that our lives and minds are too busy for meditation. Reading this book could revolutionise your relationship with your thoughts and emotions.

Watch this fascinating chat between the author of the book and a neurologist + neuroscientist
Watch Gelong Thubten explaining how to develop a daily mindfulness practice