Hi, it's Andy here and welcome to Radio.

Hi, it's Andy here and welcome to Radio Head Space and to Friday morning.

So given that it's the end of the week, I thought it might be nice to focus on the

lighter side of looking after the mind, training the mind, finding a greater sense of fun and joy and maybe taking ourselves a little less seriously.

And as I was thinking about this this I was reflecting on the journey of

training in many different kind of monasteries and the different types of teachers

that I met along the way had a good fortune to meet along the way.

And the impact of those different approaches, because there are lots of different approaches to

training the mine.

Some are very serious, I think they can almost appear from the outside as I mean I've heard them

described as worthy and pious and almost ritualistic in nature and there are

other ones that kind of seem to take a broader expanse and look each of us needs to find our own way

I know when I set out I was looking for something quite strict I wanted that sense of

discipline I wanted that sense of discipline I wanted that sense of seriousness but that

was more of a wanting to control the mind and I thought that if I could find that

externally then you know that would naturally lead to internal control as well.

And again, this works differently for everybody, but what I found was that actually was

it was quite exhausting actually. It's quite a tiring sort of way of looking at things and actually it didn't bring about a lot of joy.

You know it brought about a lot of attention, brought about a lot of awareness, and it brought about a sort of a conceptual understanding of things like loving

kindness and joy but not really the feeling of it. You know that was obviously more from my own inability to take those

teachings and incorporate them into my practice rather than the style

necessarily but I feel like it was a style in those monasteries and the teachers presenting

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