Design company uses Buddhism to create happy place to work

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Newport, Wales (UK) -- You Buddha believe it!

This group of Welsh workers are meditating away the stresses of office life with Buddhism – and they hope their practices will make their company reach a state of Nirvana.

The Newport web and development agency Mettaengine was established in June last year by three kindred spirits, who met at a Buddhist centre.

Creative director Graham Shimell said: “We usually try to meditate together every morning – it’s a good way to start the day.”

The staff meditate three times a day in a specially-adapted shrine room, which contains a statue of Buddha, along with candles, incense and a singing bowl.

“We strike the bowl before we start meditating. The vibrations are calming and fade into silence, which helps us to get into the right mindset,” added Graham.

“I try to focus on my breathing and become present in the moment, then I find I can be calm and let go of my worries.

“Meditation has made a huge difference to my state of mind. It has helped me to let go and not cling to certain wants and desires.”

Managing director William Elworthy said: “Sometimes, if things get a bit stressful, I go and meditate for a few minutes and when I come back into the office, I have a completely different perspective on things.”

The staff aim to bring Buddhist practice to the workplace by following a code of ethics based on Buddha’s five precepts, which include helping others, truthfulness and generosity.

William said: “We want to take meditation off the cushion and spread it into the workplace.”

Graham explained the principles translated simply into everyday life. “It all comes down to acting with kindness and working as a team,” he said.

The staff hope the company will counter negative perceptions of businesses.

“Hopefully we can be an inspiration for certain companies out there, especially following the recent problems created by the credit crunch,” said Graham.

The founders were inspired by a Cambridge-based all-Buddhist business called Windhorse Evolution, which grew from a market stall in the 1980s into a leading UK gift business with a multimillion pound turnover.

The web developers came to Buddhism from a variety of backgrounds – Graham by American Beat writers of the 1960s, while William developed an interest through martial arts.

Both started reading Buddhist texts and meditating, before joining the Cardiff Buddhist Centre about four years ago, where they met operations director John James.

William said: “We went on a retreat together and it became clear that we all shared the same vision. We have a good business dynamic.”

He became increasingly disillusioned with his previous working environment.

“I ran a business for six years, but it was taking over my life. It was too cut throat and the balance weren’t there. The vision of just making money wasn’t enough,” he said.

The staff have observed a growing demand for Buddhist teachings in Wales and believe the Welsh Buddhist community is growing.

Graham said: “There is a very materialistic culture in the western world, but some people have realised there is more to life than just desiring new items.

“Buddhism is about the internal rather than the external. It’s about realising there are more important things than just desiring the latest BMW to make you happy.”

The business is currently run by three members of staff, who are hoping to expand by offering training courses and apprenticeships.

“We would like to work with other Buddhists, but we would not want to be seen as excluding other people. The most important thing is that they are prepared to follow the ethical precepts,” said Graham.

Read more: Wales Online http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/2013/03/22/design-company-uses-buddhism-to-create-happy-place-to-work-91466-33039867/#ixzz2OSkH7Lcf

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Meet Mr Happy: French geneticist turned Tibetan monk

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As he grins serenely and his burgundy robes billow in the fresh Himalayan wind, it is not difficult to see why scientists declared Matthieu Ricard the happiest man they had ever tested, AFP reports.

Wisconsin, USA -- The monk, molecular geneticist and confidant of the Dalai Lama, is passionately setting out why meditation can alter the brain and improve people's happiness in the same way that lifting weights puts on muscle.

<< Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard sitting in a soundproof room and preparing for an electroencephalography (EEG) test. ©AFP

"It's a wonderful area of research because it shows that meditation is not just blissing out under a mango tree but it completely changes your brain and therefore changes what you are," the Frenchman told AFP.

Ricard, a globe-trotting polymath who left everything behind to become a Tibetan Buddhist in a Himalayan hermitage, says anyone can be happy if they only train their brain.

Neuroscientist Richard Davidson wired up Ricard's skull with 256 sensors at the University of Wisconsin four years ago as part of research on hundreds of advanced practitioners of meditation.

The scans showed that when meditating on compassion, Ricard's brain produces a level of gamma waves -- those linked to consciousness, attention, learning and memory -- "never reported before in the neuroscience literature", Davidson said.

The scans also showed excessive activity in his brain's left prefrontal cortex compared to its right counterpart, giving him an abnormally large capacity for happiness and a reduced propensity towards negativity, researchers believe.

Research into the phenomenon, known as "neuroplasticity", is in its infancy and Ricard has been at the forefront of ground-breaking experiments along with other leading scientists across the world.

"We have been looking for 12 years at the effect of short and long-term mind-training through meditation on attention, on compassion, on emotional balance," he said.

"We've found remarkable results with long-term practitioners who did 50,000 rounds of meditation, but also with three weeks of 20 minutes a day, which of course is more applicable to our modern times."

Not always on enlightenment path

The 66-year-old, accompanying other senior Tibetan monks at a festival in the remote Nepalese Himalayan region of Upper Dolpa, has become a globally respected Buddhist and is one of the religion's leading western scholars.

But he has not always been on the path to enlightenment.

Ricard grew up among the Paris intellectual elite as the son of celebrated French libertarian philosopher Jean-Francois Revel and abstract watercolour painter Yahne Le Toumelin.

"All these people used to come around, most of Paris intellectual life. We had all the French painters and I was myself interested in classical music so I met a lot of musicians," he said.

"At lunch we'd have three Nobel Prize winners eating with us. It was fantastic... Some of them were wonderful but some could be difficult."

By the time he got his PhD in cell genetics from the Institut Pasteur in Paris in 1972 he had become disillusioned with the dinner party debates and had already begun to journey to Darjeeling in India during his holidays.

Eschewing intimate relationships and a career, he moved to India to study Buddhism and emerged 26 years later as something of celebrity thanks to "The Monk And The Philosopher", a dialogue on the meaning of life he wrote with his father.

"That was the end of my quiet time because it was a bestseller. Suddenly I was projected into the western world. Then I did more dialogues with scientists and the whole thing started to spin off out of control.

"I got really involved in science research and the science of meditation."

A prominent monk in Kathmandu's Shechen Monastery, Ricard divides his year between isolated meditation, scientific research and accompanying the Dalai Lama as his adviser on trips to French-speaking countries and science conferences.

He addressed the World Economic Forum in Davos at the height of the financial crisis in 2009 to tell gathered heads of state and business leaders it was time to give up greed in favour of "enlightened altruism".

His other works include "Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill" and several collections of photographs of the landscape, people and spiritual masters of the Himalayas.

Ricard donates all proceeds of his books to 110 humanitarian projects which have built schools for 21,000 children and provide healthcare for 100,000 patients a year.

He was awarded the French National Order of Merit for his work in preserving Himalayan culture but it is his work on the science of happiness which perhaps defines him best.

Ricard sees living a good life, and showing compassion, not as a religious edict revealed from on high, but as a practical route to happiness.

"Try sincerely to check, to investigate," he said. "That's what Buddhism has been trying to unravel -- the mechanism of happiness and suffering. It is a science of the mind."

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Don’t worry, be happy

A spiritual leader expounds on his ideas for finding true contentment in life.

HAPPINESS has to come from within us. When a jolly monk says this, people tend to listen.

Gharwang Rinpochea, a Tibetan Buddhist monk from Sikkim, India, who heads the Zurmang Whispering lineage, was in Malaysia recently to talk about joy and how to achieve it in our busy modern lives.

In an interview after the talk, he jovially declares: ?I?m happy with who I am now, with my life. I try my best every day, give my best shot and have low expectations.?

Jolly monk: If you want to be happy, look within, advises Zurmang Gharwang Rinpoche.

So when things turn out better than expected, he says, ?I rejoice. I feel so happy! It?s better than I expected.?

The Rinpochea, 46, shares how the small nation of Bhutan was once one of the happiest countries on earth.

?The Bhutan government declared that the Gross National Happiness (GNH) index, not the Gross Domestic Product index, would be the measure of success in their country.

?In an attempt to preserve GNH, the government restricted tourism and didn?t even allow television or Internet services. For a long time, happiness levels were very high.?

In 2000, Bhutan?s king allowed television and Internet services into the country and the Bhutanese discovered an entire world they had never known before.

Since then, says the Rinpochea, happiness levels in Bhutan have declined severely as the people continually compare their meagre existence with the materialistic lives of people in more developed nations.

It?s unrealistic to have high expectations, he says, to impose a lot of standards in your life and compare your situation with other people?s.

?That?s the biggest problem. It will always make us unhappy because someone, somewhere, will always be better off than us.

?There are people who do not have anything, they have nothing ? and they?re happy.

?When you visit workers from Nepal and India (the Rinpochea visited some construction workers at his monastery) at night, you find that they?re singing, drinking and dancing.

?They are enjoying their life so much. They don?t have high expectations, they are living for today and from moment to moment.?

Besides, having a lot of things isn?t guaranteed to bring you contentment. Says the Rinpochea, wealth, power and fame contributes only a fraction, ?5%?, towards happiness: ?In the United States, salaries have steadily increased since the 1940s but the happiness level hasn?t.

?Wealth doesn?t bring happiness. Happiness comes from within you,? he repeats.

And you can find that joy inside by learning to love yourself: ?When you truly love yourself, you don?t want to be anybody else. You stop comparing with others. You will be happy at any income level and you will have true confidence without narcissism.

?When you truly love living, you?re able to find beauty and happiness in even the smallest moments. You?re able to enjoy life on a moment-to-moment basis.?

And when you truly love others, the Rinpoche adds, it comes through in your words, your actions and your smile.

?People will naturally like to be around you and forming social connections is easy.?

This in turn will further feed your own happiness.

All this advice comes from hard-earned experience ? for Gharwang Rinpochea himself had to learn to accept his lot in life and love who he is.

He was born into an aristocratic family in Gangtok, Sikkim. His mother was Princess Sonam Peden Namgyal, but he was recognised as the next reincarnation (the 12th) of the Zurmang Gharwang lineage while in his mother?s womb.

The Rinpochea thinks his mother was not happy when she learnt that she had to give up her son to the monkhood.

?When I was seven days old, my parents reluctantly surrendered me to the monkhood,? says Rinpoche, who recollects that he was sent to live with his paternal uncle.

He still had a regular childhood and could play with his uncle?s five sons. But he also had a ?personal trainer monk?. When he was 11, Rinpoche entered the monastery; at 15, he took his vow of celibacy as a novice monk.

He went on to study under many great Buddhist scholars and travelled extensively in Asia, America and Europe, expounding on Buddhist teachings. He was awarded the keys of the city by the governor of Los Angeles in recognition of his works in promoting harmony and humanity.

In 1992, Gharwang Rinpochea founded the Zurmang Kagyud Buddhist Foundation, a non-profit international charitable organisation that has been involved in setting up homes for the aged and building roads, schools and clinics in deprived areas. The foundation has also established various Buddhist centres such as institutes for higher learning, retreat centres, monasteries and nunneries. Over the years, Rinpochea has set up centres in Singapore, Hong Kong, Taipei, Kuala Lumpur and (in Indonesia) in Jakarta, Medan, Surabaya and Pekan Baru.

Rinpochea also writes in his free time. He has authored 10 books, including Seven Points Mind Training (on meditation), Essence Of The Buddha, Opening The Door To Dharma and Teaching On Bardo (teachings on living and dying).

Currently, while lecturing in America, he is taking an intensive English Language programme at Harvard University in preparation of eventually gaining a degree either in comparative religion or environment studies ? yes, the monk is green! He plants ?a few thousand trees every year? and educates the monks at his monastery on not throwing garbage everywhere, using less plastic, and saving trees.

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