Interview with Suryacitta

Suryacitta, also known The Happy Buddha, began practicing mindfulness meditation in 1989 and started teaching in 1996.  

He now teaches mindfulness meditation in Leicester, the East Midlands and nationwide. He runs workshops and longer mindfulness retreats in the UK and Europe. He also leads events on loving kindness/compassion meditation.

His first book Happiness And How It Happpens: Finding Contentment Through Mindfulness was published in 2011 by Ivy Press. His latest book, also published by Ivy Press, is entitled Mindfulness & Compassion: embracing Life With Loving-kindness.

Suryacitta was interviewed by Jon Wilde by telephone in October 2015.

EVERYDAY MINDFULNESS: During your childhood, were there any obvious signs that you were pointed in the direction of a spiritual path?

SURYACITTA: I was born Malcolm Smith and brought up in the north-east of England, in Middlesbrough, in a very loving, very straightforward working-class family. I wouldn’t say I had any spiritual leanings as such. I was a very sensitive child. I was particularly sensitive towards other people’s feelings. I suppose I had a sensitivity towards the world but I never had any experiences of God or cosmic consciousness, nothing like that. I wasn’t drawn in any way to spiritual literature. Growing up, I mostly read books about Brian Clough and Winston Churchill.

EM: What was the big turning point for you?

S: In my late teens and early twenties, it started to dawn on me that life wasn’t quite as I wanted it to be. Also, I started to realise that the people around me (family members, friends, work colleagues) didn’t seem that happy. I started wondering why that was.

There was no major life event that brought me to meditation. It was more of a gradual process. One time I read a piece in the newspaper: 20 signs that you might be depressed. I mentally ticked off a few of those and it occurred to me that I might be heading down that road and that maybe I should do something to head it off.

But it wasn’t until my late twenties that I decided to do something about it. I realised that it wasn’t therapy I wanted. I knew it had something to do with my own mind. So, in 1989, I saw a poster in the local library that was advertising a transcendental meditation group. That sparked my curiosity and I went along.

EM: How quickly did you warm to meditation?

S: I was immediately hooked and, after a couple of weeks, I knew I would be meditating for the rest of my life. It was like I’d found the key. The TM group would meet once a month or so and was very sparsely attended. I quickly established a regular practice, meditating twice a day, which I’ve maintained to the present day.

After a while, I realised I needed more of a framework to my practice. At the beginning of the nineties, it wasn’t like Jon Kabat-Zinn, Mark Williams and Danny Penman were exactly household names. There was no internet. Nobody was talking about mindfulness.

But I did start learning about Buddhism. I was reading books about meditation and Buddhism kept being mentioned. In 1992 or 1993 I went to Glastonbury to see Van Morrison and the Western Buddhist Order were there. I learned there was a centre opening in Newcastle, forty miles north of where I lived. So I went along to their first ever evening and I never looked back. That led to me being ordained in 1999.

EM: You began teaching meditation in 1996. How did that come about?

S: For a long time I’d worked as a self-employed trader, dealing in alternative goods from Nepal and South America. Quite soon after I got involved with the Buddhist group in Newcastle they invited me to lead classes and devise courses.

In 2001 I moved into this small hut situated on a retreat centre in North Wales. I had no credit card, no money, no keys. It was wonderful. I lived for five years like that. When I wasn’t leading retreats I’d live a solitary life, which suited me perfectly. By this time I’d moved away from TM and more towards mindfulness meditation.

EM: Why did you choose happiness as the main theme for your first book?

S: It seemed like a logical place to start. Mainly through my studies of Buddhism I’d learned that happiness is not a permanent state. It’s not something we get, it’s something that we are. Unhappiness is what we do. What happens if we start noticing how and why we make ourselves unhappy?

EM: What prompted you to choose compassion as the main subject of your new book?

S: My view is that the heart tends to be left out of mindfulness. I wanted to bring that to the fore. I wanted to get away from the idea of mindfulness as a head practice and bring it back to the heart, the body. At the very start of the book, I make the point that how we relate to one thing is how we relate to everything. When we are compassionate towards ourselves, it follows that we will be compassionate towards others.

If we’re compassionate towards ourselves it’s as though a welcoming space opens up around us – including stuff we may not like. Clearly, this is not about having a nice, relaxing time on the cushion. Whether a meditation is pleasant or not, that’s irrelevant. Relaxation might be a consequence of regular meditation practice but it’s not the aim. The idea is to foster a willingness to face our experience in the moment. I hear people say that they’re mindful of the sound of birds, the wind on their face, the scent of a flower. Of course it’s great to be mindful of those things. But what about when the boss is yelling at you in the office? It needs to be applicable there as well.

EM: In your new book, you use a block of ice as a metaphor for mindfulness. Could you explain that metaphor?

S: I use this metaphor when I teach. I tell my students that this is the metaphor they’re going to be living with for the next few weeks, months and years. I ask them to imagine a beautiful jewel inside a block of ice. We can’t always see the jewel but it’s always there. It might be covered with grime after years of neglect but all it needs is a little attention to shine again. Over time, very slowly, that ice is going to melt and the diamond is going to be revealed. But it requires patience to melt it. That’s mindfulness. Each week on the course, what we’re doing is looking at a different facet of this jewel, whether it’s trust, calming the mind, turning towards difficulty…As the weeks progress, we become intimate with the jewel.

EM: As a mindfulness teacher, what sort of preconceptions or obstacles do you observe people running up against?

S: Most of the people who come to my courses are suffering from stress. The busy mind is the modern malaise. Invariably, people come to mindfulness because they believe it’s a way of switching the mind off and stopping uncomfortable emotions. But, of course, we’re not trying to stop the mind or stop ourselves feeling emotions. That would be like trying to stop the weather. Many people come on a course and they’re looking for quick results. Mindfulness is a mirror that reflects back what is happening to us on the inside. A lot of people don’t want to look in that mirror. They want something that’s going to change them, immediately. But there’s a need to look in the mirror for a while before there’s any chance of change taking place. To look in that mirror takes a huge amount of honesty, courage, patience and gentleness. You need to have a modicum of those things before you even begin. For some people, there’s the danger that mindfulness will become yet another form of striving. We’re obsessed with how we feel. Am I more content than yesterday? Was today’s meditation better than yesterday’s? Did it feel good?

EM: What are the pros and cons of learning mindfulness through a book rather than with a qualified teacher?

S: There’s a limit to how far you’re going to be challenged by a book. How far is a book going to challenge your doubts and confusions? In a class you have an immediate rapport with the teacher. Even if all I’m doing is instructing someone on how to adjust their posture, I’m communicating something to them about mind and being. My impression of some of the books that deliver the eight-week course is that they give the reader too much information. There’s too much explaining going on. Mindfulness isn’t an intellectual activity. It’s about trusting your own experience. That comes with practice. Of course, for some people, learning from a book is the best option available. Right now, I’m thinking of writing a book that focuses on the eight-week course. That will probably be my third book.

EM: There appears to be a worrying trend now for people to buy into the idea that they can be mindful without going to the trouble of maintaining a meditation practice. Where do you stand on that?

S: To me, it’s a bit like hoping you’ll start growing muscles without bothering to go to the gym. But I’d like to draw a distinction. There’s mindfulness as a meditation-based practice. Then there’s mindfulness as a natural given for human beings. Everyone is mindful some of the time. What we want to do is take that innate quality and, in a sense, cultivate it. That’s not how it happens. In reality we have to practice in order to cultivate it. We do that by building up our capacity to sit and be with our thoughts and feelings.  It should be acknowledged that some people find meditation to be extremely challenging. But that doesn’t alter the fact that we’re cheapening things if we buy into the idea that we can be mindful without meditation.

EM: How important is it for someone learning about mindfulness to have a working knowledge of its Buddhist roots?

S: We need to be careful not to remove mindfulness too much from its original framework. Having some knowledge of Buddhism can be very helpful in terms of unpacking the ideas that make up mindfulness. As a teacher I intentionally bring the Buddhism into classes. I say, “I am a Buddhist. Mindfulness comes from Buddhism. If it’s OK with you, I’ll be drawing on Buddhism to explain certain points.” Nobody has ever had a problem with that. In fact, most people seem to be thirsty for knowledge about all that.

EM: What is your view on guided meditations?

S: I’m not a fan. In my opinion it’s a bit like joining a gym and asking someone else to lift your weights for you. When I run a course I don’t hand out CDs of guided meditations like many other teachers do. My website has links to some guided meditations and I do encourage students to use them. But I also encourage people to wean themselves off them. By the time we get halfway through the course I’d prefer it if people meditated by themselves, without the need for a supportive voice.

Even when I’m guiding a meditation in a class I prefer to take a sparser approach in terms of how much is actually said. I’m not there to provide an experience. I want them to look in that mirror.

EM: Finally, how would you sum up the difference mindfulness has made to your life?

S: It’s made me so more at ease with myself and the world. I’m fulfilled. What more could I ask for?

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For more information on Suryacitta: www.mindfulnesscic.co.uk