of the greatest living Tibetan Masters, the very venerable Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche. So,

when I first heard about the very venerable, I wondered to myself, how is it like to be

the guy who is only slightly venerable?

[audience laughing]

Ming: And then I realized that guy is me.

[laughing]

But joke aside. Mingyur Rinpoche is, I think, a great gem in the world. Rinpoche is a traditionally

trained Meditation Master with impeccable credentials. He spent many years of his childhood

in strict retreat, and at a tender age of 17, he was invited to be a teacher at an important

three year retreat. At the same time, Rinpoche speaks English,

he understands the modern world, and he has a life long interest in western science and

psychology. He volunteered himself as a test subject for cutting edge studies in neuroscience,

and for that he calls himself, I quote, a "short red guinea pig." That's very funny,

funny guy. Uh, Rinpoche is the author of a number one New York Times Best Seller, "The

Joy of Living", which is the book I recommend to all my friends. It is the best meditation

book that I know of. He's also the author of two other books, "Joyful Wisdom" and "Ziji:

The Puppy Who Learned to Meditate." In real life as you might have noticed by

now Rinpoche's very funny, and he possesses the rare ability to present ancient wisdom

in a way that is engaging and humorous. I think we are very lucky to have him, and with

that please welcome our friend the very venerable Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche.

[audience applauding]

Rinpoche: Thank you Ming. You're great introduction, you're very kind.

[audience laughing]

And good looking.

[audience laughing]

Rinpoche: Good looking, that's true. And, I'm very happy to be here. Welcome everyone

and hmmmm

Now I've forgotten my talk.

[audience laughing]

Rinpoche: No, joking. I'd like to begin with my own story about how I found meditation

and the meditation has helped for my life. Can you see me? Should I stand up? Doesn't

make change here.

[audience laughing]

Rinpoche: Little better. Okay, better? When I was nine, eight years old I was developed

panic disorder, panic. You know panic? Good. And then I was looking for solution to deal

my panic, to get rid of my panic. I hate my panic. I have panic of panic. And then my

grandfather and my father were great meditation teachers. Especially my father, so when I

look at him, wow, he's nice, meditating. Calm, peace, peaceful, and I want to learn meditation.

And one day I ran, I run from my house, and ran to the cave because near my house there's

cave. My village, my hometown in Nepal is northern part of Nepal, right middle of the

Himalayas, Himalayan Mountains. And we have many caves, I went in cave, and sit there

pretending meditate, and although I have no idea about meditation. And just sit there,

you know, sleep, you know, move around, you know. And my grandmother thought I lost, and

she's very worried. And she called the Village people and everybody now looking, looking

up, looking me. And then later she found me, she said, "Don't do that next time." I don't

listen to her. I did, And I ran to the cave again. And later I get permission from her.

But when I was nine years old I really wanted to learn meditation from my father, but I'm

very shy to ask him directly. Afraid, I have fear, shy to ask him, but I approach my mother.

My mom to ask my father on behalf of me, and my father was very happy. He kindly accept

my request and taught me meditation. But although I like the idea of meditation,

but I don't like the practice of meditation. I am very lazy boy. You know, I feel very

boring sit there, you know. And then that doesn't change my panic, because I'm not meditating.

And I have panic about strangers, you know strangers? And snowstorm, during the winter,

we have big snowstorm, and summertime we have thunder-thunderstorm. Thunderstorm? Then when

I was 13 years old I was in India place called, Palpung Sherab Ling Monastery, and there's

a traditional three year retreat going to start for three years, and I really wanted

to join in the retreat because then I thought I can meditate, because the retreat for three

years. And I joined three year retreat, the first-year of retreat my panic got worse,

stronger. And-because I'm lazy, not busy, but lazy. Then I thought okay, I'm so unhappy

because my panic gets stronger. And one day I asked question to myself, still I have two

more years to go, so do you really want to spend two more years like this unhappy with

the panic, or do you really want to learn meditation with my panic. And I make decision

that yes, I am going to learn, I'm going to practice meditation with my panic. And I sat

in my room for three days. It's in the retreat, the retreat for three years, you know.

We have religious center and 15 of us together, and everybody has individual room, and every

day we join together practice together for two-three hours, group practice. And I didn't

join for group practice, today. My room alone for three ah three days. And after that my

panic was gone. Why? I try to make friends with my panic. And I use my panic as support

for my meditation. What I found is there's two ways to make your

panic bigger and stronger. And no matter what I call "yessir" and "Hey, get out." Do you

know "yessir"? What is the meaning of that "yessir"? Yeah/No? How many of yes? Raise

your hands?

[audience laughing]

And "Hey, get out"? You know that; if so raise your hand? Good.

[audience laughing]

Rinpoche: Okay, anyway. The meaning is "yessir", the meaning is you believe-I believe in my

panic. What about panic, tells you message, you say, "yessir." Problem? yessir? terrible?

yessir? Here's problem, there's problem, everywhere is problem. Miserable. Terrible. yessir. yesir.

And you totally believe. And second "Hey, get out" is you don't like

your panic. And you have panic of panic, fear of panic. You try to fight with the panic.

If you say "yessir" to panic, and the panic become your boss, bad boss, not the good boss.

Maybe some of boss are here, you know, I'm not saying all the boss are bad. I decide

if the panic become your boss then you're not in peace. If you hate panic, if you try

to reject the panic, fight with the panic, panic become your enemy. As it becomes your

enemy or your boss both cases not sort of nice, yeah, do you think so? And do you have

any other possibility? Do you have any third option? Do you think of any anyway? You can

say anything. Make friends with your panic. Do you agree? How many of you agree? Hmm,

that's good. How? How to make friends?

Pardon? Talk to it. Talk to panic? Have conversation with panic: hello, how are you? What are you

doing?-something like that?

[laughing]

Would you like tea and coffee?

[laughing]

Rinpoche: Okay, yes you can make friends, no problem. But how to make friends you have

to know the right method, the right technique. How to make friends. Just thinking that I

have to make friends with my panic doesn't work, you know. I have to make friends with

my panic, FRIENDS.

[audiencelaughing]

Rinpoche: And that makes another stress sometimes, you know. But just having idea that I want

to make friends with my panic, only the idea, it helps a lot for you. You begin to accept

the panic. Okay. How to make friends with panic for me is meditation.

Okay, I will tell you good meditation the next session. Um, this way, because of my

meditation and I make friends with my panic, and panic become one of the best friend for

me and one of the best teacher for me. But unfortunately after three days later the panic

was gone. So now I miss my friend, but one of my best friend's gone, but I have some

other friends, you know. I have plenty of friends.

There's not panic, but there's another problem, another obstacles, and another problems. So

you can find friends everywhere, because problems are everywhere. They are international. They

don't have any visa to come, and they don't have to need any special obligation, they

are transparent everywhere they can go this way. What I found another problem...

[audience laughing]

I press yes, okay, okay. And uh. What I found is any other problem

I can make friends through meditation. You can, make, you can use air support for your

meditation become your friends and then I feel very happy. But my happiness is not like-he-he-he,

you know, some kind of that style, I mean that kind of happiness, but more like, how

to say it, contentment. More like joyful. It's continued, especially when I facing problem

that makes me more happy. Everything is good; everything is under control, no problem, no

obstacle, no meditation. Mind lost, here and there, but soon as there's a problem, challenge,

and good for me. I can, I can meditate. I met one time in Yosemite Park. You know

Yosemite Park, near here, yeah? There's one rock climber and he'd been to Nepal climb,

climb the rocks. And when he saw me because I wear the robe he said namaste. I said namaste.

Namaste is Nepali-Nepali language to say "Hi." And he say are you Buddhist Monk? I say yes.

And I ask him how you know namaste? He said I went to Nepal and climb in the mountains.

And he said tomorrow I'm going to climb this mountain, and I asked him how long take? Five-six

days. Wow and how you do that? He said I have to bring the tent, some kind of narrow tent

with the waters, food. And I ask him is it danger? He said yes, maybe. I may die on the

way if this bad storm comes. And I ask do you have fear? He said yes, but I like fear.

I thought wow.

[laughing]

That's good; anyway, that's why the idea here is once you can make really friends with problems,

then the problem become support for your meditation, your awareness, your happiness. But it not

sort of easy, yeah. It's easy to say, but difficult to done. But anyway, um, there's

way to do that. Okay, let's finish about how I come to meditation,

and how meditation help for my life. Now, I want to say little bit about being

guinea pig. As Ming told you that I am guinea pig, yeah. And normally I say I'm a red guinea

pig. Have you saw guinea pig? How big? This big, yeah? It's white, white color, yeah?

But I'm red. Maybe you also little red.

And I have been to different universities like Berkeley, Berkeley University, Harvard,

and especially in Madison, University of Wisconsin. And they have study about what they call "Long-term

meditator's brain". They study about that, and I'm one of the first guinea pig. And not

only me, so far they study with 21 long-term meditators, those who meditate 10,000 of hours,

you know. That's what they call long-term meditators and they put me in the big machine.

Machine what they call FMRI, it's very big. Normally I describe it as like, shape of white

coffin.

[audience laughing]

Rinpoche: And inside the temperature is very cold. It has to be cold and there's very strong

magnetic power, you know. If you have some iron with you then you just fly, boom. You

have to take out everything. And there's some kind of tongue coming out. Machine like my

head, you know, very big. it shape of white coffin there's some kind of tongue coming

out. And I have to lying down on the tongue and pretend it's like corpse. You know, corpse.

Corpse not cups. Because I can not move my body, I have to remain still, and they put,

what they call, some kind of foam here and bite guard. Something which is, I had to chews

in my mouth, and they put in cold-water become freeze, yeah. Become hard, and I chews again

and screw up with the machine, screw-screw to. Because I cannot move my head, I have

big earphone here. And then they put me inside the machine. Looks like you're going into

the tunnel, tunnel. Dark, cold tunnel, you know, very noisy, like siren, siren. Du-du-du-du-du-du

very noisy, and then I have to spend inside the machine two hours, one and a half hours,

something like that and I have to meditate. And there's three meditation techniques, what

they call: open present, concentration, loving kindness and compassion meditation. Three.

And the scientists in the next room having coffee, you know.

Eating hamburgers and they have microphone-microphone. And through microphone they say-please meditate

on compassion for 90 seconds.

[audience laughing]

Rinpoche: Stop compassion. Meditate compassion again. Say-on and off. Compassion- not compassion-compassion-not

compassion, and then while I'm meditating they send terrible noise, baby crying, and

children screaming. And show bloody image also the operation, the image, makes you more

fearful. And then open present again, you know, 90 seconds. And concentrate.

First machine was very narrow, no-good. But now they got better machine, every five year

they update the machine. First machine was very narrow, I've been there four, four times,

you know. And they say concentrate on something. I can not find focus and I cross my eyes.

And one of the biggest problems is sometimes I get itchy, you know itchy. And I can not

scratch, you know, because my hands are here and what I do is just like this, you know.

I don't know what the result in the machine, you know. And should I tell you the result?

It's depressing. They told me I'm totally crazy, and I was so depressed for three years.

No-no, I'm just joking.

They didn't told me I'm crazy, but they told me first they thought something wrong with

the machine, because behaved in the brain is very high something like that and they

change the how do the calculates style. I've been there so I have to go again and again

and not only me there's 20, 20 other meditators. And what I found is by being a guinea pig,

a discussion with the scientists. I found three important things,

First, is what they call neural plasticity. Have you heard of neural plasticity? If so

raise your hand. Good. The meaning of neural plasticity is your brain has capable of change