BITESIZE | How to Become Happier Today | Master Shi Heng Yi #501

So much of our happiness seems conditional. “I’ll be happy when...” I get the job, the relationship, the money, or simply a sunny day. But when our wellbeing relies on external, fleeting things, it’s on a shaky foundation. When we tie our sense of happiness and contentment to getting or achieving something externally, it feels constantly out of reach. Feel Better Live More Bitesize is my weekly podcast for your mind, body, and heart. Each week I’ll be featuring inspirational stories and practical tips from some of my former guests. Today’s clip is from episode 426 of the podcast with Master Shi Heng Yi. He belongs to the 35th generation of Shaolin Masters and began practising Kung Fu at the age of four. In the 36 years since, he’s acquired a wealth of knowledge in Chinese martial arts and Zen Buddhism. In this clip, we explore why so much of our happiness seems conditional, the true meaning of freedom, and how to deal with life’s ups and downs. Thanks to our sponsor https://www.drinkag1.com/livemore Support the podcast and enjoy Ad-Free episodes. Try FREE for 7 days on Apple Podcasts https://apple.co/feelbetterlivemore. For other podcast platforms go to https://fblm.supercast.com. Show notes and the full podcast are available at drchatterjee.com/426 DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to constitute or be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or other qualified health care provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Rangan Chatterjee?

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• 1:20Rangan Chatterjee?

  See all details at drinkag1.com/livemore. Welcome to Feel Better, Live More Bite Size, your weekly dose of positivity and optimism to get you ready for the weekend. Today's clip is from episode 426 of the podcast with Master Shuheng Yi. Shuheng Yi belongs to the 35th generation of Shaolin masters and began practising Kung Fu at the age of four. In the 36 years since, he's acquired a wealth of knowledge in Chinese martial arts and Zen Buddhism.

• 2:02Rangan Chatterjee?

  In this clip, we explore why so much of our happiness seems conditional, the true meaning of freedom, and how to deal with life's ups and downs.

• 2:16Speaker 01

  If my happiness and if my freedom has conditions, it is not free. So I am happy because I have a job. I'm happy because I have a relationship. I'm happy because I have a lot of money on my bank account. I'm happy because the sun is shining. But all of these things, ultimately, they are not in your hands. If your employer fires you, you don't have the finance anymore and you don't have the job. And if your partner leaves you, you also don't have a relationship anymore. And if the weather starts to change, you also don't have sunshine anymore. So what happens in that moment when these things fall away?

• 3:01Speaker 01

  Your happiness that was related to it would also fall away. And this is a type of basing your life quality on something which by nature already does not make sense. Because it never stays sunny.

• 3:21Speaker 01

  It's not happening.

• 3:25Speaker 01

  It doesn't make sense to place your well-being on something that is eternally changing.

• 3:35Rangan Chatterjee?

  It makes me think of where we started this conversation, talking about self-mastery. The only thing we can ever master is ourselves. And if we're dependent on those externalities, those externalities are always going to change. And so many of us are reliant on our job, on the car that we drive, on our status, on the weather, whatever it might be, in order to feel good. When everything is going just the way we want it to go, we feel good. And when something changes, as it always does, we then feel low and depressed and we struggle.

• 4:19Speaker 01

  The main point is to actually figure out for yourself how much and to what are you attached in your lifetime?

• 4:29Speaker 01

  And everything you are attached to is what makes you happy.

• 4:38Rangan Chatterjee?

  Everything you're attached to is what makes you heavy.

• 4:42Speaker 01

  Makes you heavy, meaning makes you

• 4:48Speaker 01

  become unmovable. You can't move, you cannot proceed, you are stuck somehow. If you are, if you are stuck, you can't move. The problem is, the whole universe and this life is about moving on.

• 5:05Speaker 01

  And the best way, how to continuously move on is to not have too many attachments in your lifetime.

• 5:15Speaker 01

  Everybody has different attachments, it's always the same structure.

• 5:21Speaker 01

  The more you are attached, the more difficult it is to move on. That is the general pattern. At least in our tradition, I can only talk about what our emphasis is, okay?

• 5:34Speaker 01

  Whether it's left or it's right, in a way, you are fine with the left way and you are fine with the right way.

• 5:44Speaker 01

  What we would like to develop is, if you go left,

• 5:49Speaker 01

  anyway, since you decided already, you put all your commitment, you put all your energy into the left way, without crying about the middle way and the right way. If you take the, the right way, you should also be able to hundred percent commit to the right way. But it doesn't make sense to still carry the suffering and the regret of what everything you, you did not do in your lifetime. That doesn't make sense, because you can't change it anymore.

• 6:24Speaker 01

  And this is the point where, sometimes, you give yourself no choice.

• 6:32Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 6:34Speaker 01

  No choice, because if you have no choice, this is like what one of my masters also used to teach us and used to tell us, and it makes perfectly sense. If you have no choice, there is no other way than putting everything that you can do, all your energy into this path.

• 6:58Rangan Chatterjee?

  I love the way you talk about that. I love the fact that you talk about this idea of restriction is a way of helping people get rid of those externalities. I mean, for someone who's listening, master, and is thinking, look, I am someone who's dependent on these things for my well-being. How can I start developing that inner self-awareness and that inner reliance as opposed to the external reliance without coming to your temple for 12 months? You know, what are some of the ways that they can start to do that?

• 7:42Speaker 01

  Now, prior to answering this question, one very, very important thing.

• 7:50Speaker 01

  I am not saying people should get rid of all of the things that brings them joy and happiness. This is not what I said.

• 8:02Speaker 01

  If you like to be in a relationship, what I'm saying is enjoy it even more as long as it is there. If you like to dress nicely, if you like to have nice watches, if you like to collect cars, build cars, drive cars, do it as long as you can, even with more joy, but don't take it as granted.

• 8:33Speaker 01

  But at the same time, I'm saying, don't attach to these things.

• 8:40Speaker 01

  Right now,

• 8:43Speaker 01

  you have this great chance in experiencing all of this. So experience to the fullest. But in the moment it's gone, and which is going to happen, soon or later, it's going to happen. Learn at the same time to not get attached to it. This is the whole process.

• 9:03Rangan Chatterjee?

  Hmm.

• 9:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, we humans are finding ourselves in this lifetime. It's a constant up and down of having and losing, of rising and falling. This is what makes like human life, human life. That that is the structure of our world. The sun rises, the sun sets. The day comes, the night arises. We are inhaling, we are exhaling. This is human life. Okay?

• 9:33Rangan Chatterjee?

  Hmm.

• 9:35Speaker 01

  And this, this type of pattern, I think it makes sense to embed this a little bit into your reality. This type of pattern of up and down, in and out, left and right, having and losing, success and failure. Maybe you will realize that this type of pattern

• 9:58Speaker 01

  is found from birth to death.

• 10:04Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 10:05Speaker 01

  And if then the question arises, is that all? Is this now life? The constant change of left and right, up and down. Well, if this question starts to come, then there are other perspectives. Then there are other possibilities that maybe for you can start to open up. See? And this is the point where now in the ancient traditions, sometimes in the Buddhist teachings, it is said, don't live in the extremes. Don't live in the extreme high, don't live in the extreme low. So not here and not here.

• 10:49Speaker 01

  Buddhism in a way is called the middle way.

• 10:54Speaker 01

  The Taoist teachings, known for the Yin and Yang symbol. So what's the emphasis on Yin and Yang? Of understanding that there is a pattern also. And also that Yin and Yang, they both are dependent on each other. And

• 11:17Speaker 01

  what's the point of understanding this? Because it gives you a better understanding that there is something else which we call harmony, which we call peace, which we call balance. So there is nothing which is fluctuating so much anymore. Always return back to balance, harmony, peace, stability, something that cannot be shaken.

• 11:48Speaker 01

  And this can only be found in something, I can make it super simple now, it is something mind related.

• 11:59Speaker 01

  It cannot be physically related, it cannot be matter related, it is mind related.

• 12:07Speaker 01

  Discovering yourself, this is where it's related to.

• 12:11Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, thank you.

• 12:14Rangan Chatterjee?

  What are some of your favorite practices that enable your students or the wider public to do that self-investigation and go inward to learn?

• 12:29Speaker 01

  Something that is really useful for the beginning.

• 12:33Speaker 01

  It can be the simple realization. When I wake up in the morning and then I, in the moment, I like start to open my eyes. In the moment, all the five senses start to become active. I wake up and automatically my awareness is being driven outwards. I'm looking for something outside of me to look at. I'm noticing all the sounds that are around me. From what I feel, let's say, on my skin to all the sensations of my body in the moment you are awake.

• 13:13Speaker 01

  Your awareness is being drawn outwards. It's a natural process, it's naturally happening.

• 13:22Speaker 01

  The first realisation is that

• 13:26Speaker 01

  there's also another area of watching, but not watching something outside of you. It's watching what goes on inside of the body. So, literally meaning, sometimes trying to figure out if you can watch inside yourself and let's say, then, what other areas of the body are you made out of? Meaning, the skeleton, the bones, the muscles, the tendons, the organs. So, then think what goes on inside of yourself. The same effect, listening, not listening to what it's like around you in terms of sound,

• 14:11Speaker 01

  but listening inside of you, what signals, if your body, yourself, what can you, what can you identify, listening inside of yourself? So, the point is, there are two ways where your awareness can spread to. Either you're losing your awareness with outside circumstances, or you can sometimes just catch back your awareness and bring it back to you, which is literally then sometimes called, well, that is mindful. You are mindful about what's going on about yourself. And this is the very, very first step

• 14:54Speaker 01

  of being able to differentiate. There is something that lies outside of you, obviously, but there's also another area, another perspective, how you can walk through the day, but still have your awareness

• 15:12Speaker 01

  with yourself.

• 15:14Speaker 01

  It doesn't mean one or the other is better. We need both, we live in both worlds. But it's the first realisation that to have proper adjustment,

• 15:27Speaker 01

  to really know which buttons do I have to turn? Or do I have to push in order to, to, let's say, improve my, my, my wellbeing? To improve my life? I think you need to know and have a picture of all areas that make our life, that make our existence the way we live. And this means it's a big part of who are you?

• 15:58Speaker 01

  Who are you? What are you?

• 16:02Rangan Chatterjee?

  For that person who is really struggling in their life, and there's something that they heard from you, they thought, yeah, I can make a change, I can transform myself. I don't want to live life the way I'm leading it today. But they don't know where to start. I wonder if you could provide some final words of inspiration for them, please?

• 16:32Speaker 01

  It's not going to be words of wisdom. It's going to be action.

• 16:38Speaker 01

  Sometimes we are just thinking too much. We are thinking too much. Okay? But remaining where you are and just thinking, thinking, thinking all the time is not going to make it better. So my very first suggestion would be, put in a new structure of the day. This can mean already, you wake up 10 minutes, 15 minutes earlier than you usually do. And in these 10 or 15 minutes, you put in any type of practice. It doesn't matter. This is the time that now I'm dedicating purely on myself.

• 17:22Speaker 01

  So therefore, I would say regardless of what type of exercises, what type of awareness enhancing exercise it is, it can be breathing exercise, it can be sitting meditation, it can be the combination of meditative practices combined with movement and breathing, which is like what nowadays people know as Qi Gong. Yeah. So any type of these methods is perfectly fine. But the main point is that in the moment you are starting these practices, your mindset also must fit. And that means you must really tell to yourself,

• 18:06Speaker 01

  this is my time now. It's very, very helpful to just put in directly some practice, some action, some doing, except for just dwelling thoughts in the mind, looking for the proper way of how to now start the transformation. The transformation already happens in the moment your daily structure starts to look different.

• 18:32Rangan Chatterjee?

  Hope you enjoyed that bite sized clip. Do spread the love by sharing this episode with your friends and family. And if you want more, why not go back and listen to the original full conversation with my guest. If you enjoyed this episode, I think you will really enjoy my Bite Sized Friday email. It's called the Friday Five. And each week I share things that I do not share on social media. It contains five short doses of positivity, articles of books that I'm reading, quotes that I'm thinking about, exciting research I've come across and so much more. I really think you're going to love it. The goal is for it to be a small, yet powerful dose of feel good to get you ready for the weekend.

• 19:14Rangan Chatterjee?

  You can sign up for it free of charge at drchattie.com/fridayfive. Hope you have a wonderful weekend. Make sure you have pressed subscribe and I'll be back next week with my long form conversation on Wednesday and the latest episode of Bite Science next Friday.