The Diary of a CEOHow a Buddhist monk breaks the addiction to your thoughts
How meditation changes your relationship with thoughts instead of emptying the mind; pain and self-loathing become the practice, not enemies to escape.
CHAPTERS
- 0:00 – 10:00
Modern Mind, Consumer Culture, and the Illusion of External Happiness
Thubten opens by describing how modern life—especially technology and constant information—keeps us feeling not good enough and always lacking something. He links this to rising unhappiness and suicide rates despite historical levels of material comfort, and explains how consumer culture exploits our craving for the 'next thing.'
- •Phones and digital media bombard us with persuasive messages that we’re incomplete and need more.
- •The US and UK have dropped significantly in global happiness rankings while suicide rates have risen.
- •We have built a materially comfortable ‘outer world’ but an emotionally uncomfortable ‘inner world.’
- •The search for happiness becomes a habit of endless searching: each attainment leads to a new want.
- •Meditation offers a way to regain power by generating experiences from within, rather than living at the ‘receiving end’ of life.
- 10:00 – 24:00
Purpose, Desire, Dopamine, and the Buddhist View of Fulfillment
They explore the obsession with ‘finding purpose’ in a post‑religious culture and how it often reinforces external wanting. Thubten explains the chemistry of pursuit, how dopamine peaks during the chase, and why we feel empty even after hitting our goals.
- •Traditional religion once provided a shared context for meaning; now individuals shoulder the burden alone.
- •The word ‘purpose’ itself can reinforce a wanting mindset that is insatiable.
- •Dopamine spikes in pursuit and dips just before you get what you want; the chase is often more exciting than the having.
- •What we actually seek in getting what we want is the brief absence of wanting—a momentary freedom.
- •He doesn’t argue against ambitions or careers, but insists we must also focus on training the mind.
- 24:00 – 42:00
Burnout, Trauma, and the Road to the Monastery
Thubten recounts his early life: gifted musician, young jazz pianist in adult environments, sexual abuse, family shock, and academic collapse at Oxford. He describes his 21‑year‑old burnout in New York and how a heart scare and self‑loathing monologue pushed him toward a Tibetan monastery in Scotland.
- •As a teen he lived a ‘double life’: studious at school and in adult music scenes by night.
- •He experienced sexual abuse from an older bandmate and a chaotic family rupture when his father abruptly left.
- •He spiraled into depression at Oxford and was ultimately expelled, then chased acting with a wild party lifestyle.
- •A severe burnout and heart condition at 21 forced him to question his life; a childhood friend took him to Samye Ling monastery for a planned one‑year stay.
- •He describes a relentless internal ‘devil voice’ of disgust—“you are disgusting, you are a failure”—that meditation would later help him integrate rather than erase.
- 42:00 – 57:00
Becoming a Monk: Vows, Celibacy, Desire, and Addictions
He explains monastic vows—no intoxicants, celibacy, and ethical commitments—not as grim sacrifice but as relief from the habits that made him ill. They explore desire, sexuality, non‑attachment, and why simply abstaining (from sex, masturbation, or drugs) isn’t enough without working on the addicted mind.
- •Monastic vows include truthfulness, non‑harm, no intoxicants, and celibacy; for him, this felt like rehab, not deprivation.
- •Celibacy is not anti‑sex; it’s about removing distractions to focus intensely on mind training and service.
- •Without sexual tension, he found deeper, heart‑based friendships and community bonds.
- •Non‑attachment in Buddhism isn’t about having no relationships, but about not being controlled by thoughts and emotions.
- •In addiction recovery (including sex or substances), the crucial work is replacing the object of craving with practices like meditation that fill the inner sense of lack.
- •He calls the root addiction ‘addiction to our own thoughts’—impulsively grabbing at every wanting thought.
- 57:00 – 1:07:00
What Buddhism Is (and Isn’t): A Science of Awareness
The conversation zooms out into Buddhist philosophy. Thubten positions Buddhism less as a religion to be believed and more as a ‘science of awareness’ or ‘medicine’ for the mind, focusing on awakening rather than worship or a creator deity.
- •‘Buddha’ means ‘awake’; Buddhism arose from the teachings of the historical Buddha in India ~2,500 years ago.
- •In classical languages, it’s described as the ‘science of awareness’ and the ‘examination of awakening,’ not an ‘ism.’
- •There is no creator god to worship in Buddhism; practice centers on exploring and transforming mind.
- •Heaven and hell are framed as states of mind and experience, not fixed external realms.
- •Buddhism deeply examines the nature of reality—how things we treat as solid (like a table, or the self) dissolve when analyzed, aligning with insights from particle physics.
- 1:07:00 – 1:31:00
Hating Meditation, Then Redefining It: From Suppression to Skillful Attention
Thubten admits he initially hated meditation because he tried to ‘clear his mind,’ which only amplified his negative thoughts. He then lays out a practical, de‑mystified model of meditation as a loop of attention and a way to become the ‘CEO of your own mind.’
- •His early attempts focused on suppressing thoughts and achieving a blank mind, which intensified his internal ‘devil voice.’
- •He reframes meditation as: (1) focusing on the breath, (2) noticing when you get lost, (3) gently returning—over and over.
- •The moment you ‘wake up’ inside a thought is meditation itself; you haven’t failed, you’ve just completed a rep.
- •Each return strengthens the muscle of choice, reducing the sense of being hijacked by thoughts.
- •He uses the ‘sky and clouds’ metaphor: awareness (sky) is larger than any passing emotion (clouds). The observer of anger, by definition, isn’t itself angry.
- •Meditation is compatible with high performance; it doesn’t make you spaced‑out, it makes you precise, focused, and less controlled by reactivity.
- 1:31:00 – 1:50:00
The Four‑Year Retreat, Rock Bottom, and Turning Pain Into Practice
Thubten describes entering a four‑year retreat after 12 years as a monk and being crushed by depression, anxiety, and traumatic memories. He literally fled over the wall in panic, then chose to return and radically shift his approach: stop chasing the story and start meditating directly on the raw feeling of suffering.
- •Four‑year retreat involved isolation, intense daily meditation, and minimal contact with the outside world.
- •First two years were filled with overwhelming sadness, panic attacks, and alienation from Buddhism itself.
- •He reached a breaking point, jumped the wall to escape, then realized mid‑flight that running wouldn’t solve anything.
- •Given a week in a caravan to reconsider, he chose to return and commit to facing his suffering differently.
- •Key shift: stop doing self‑therapy via narratives (“Is it because of what happened at 14?”) and instead make the pain itself the meditation object.
- •He began focusing directly on bodily sensations of pain (knife in the heart, sinking chest), dropping judgments and stories, and moving toward the feeling instead of trying to get rid of it.
- •Acceptance, previously a hated word, revealed itself as deep compassion and self‑acceptance rather than passive resignation.
- 1:50:00 – 2:10:00
Compassion Practice: Sending Love Into Pain, Grief, and Self‑Hatred
Building on his retreat breakthrough, Thubten explains how to work with inner pain and grief by locating sensations in the body and flooding them with compassion. He recounts using this method after his teacher was murdered, and how it enabled both grieving and forgiveness.
- •Technique: feel the painful sensation in the body, keep attention there, and intentionally relate to it with warmth and care.
- •Imagery: holding a frightened rabbit or a bird with a broken wing—representing your wounded inner part—in your hands with tenderness.
- •As you stop pushing pain away and instead accept and befriend it, the sharpness softens and a new kind of strength and subtle happiness emerges.
- •Buddhism teaches that our mind’s deepest nature is compassionate; when concepts quieten, this natural kindness can be directed inward.
- •After his teacher was stabbed to death, he experienced nights of feeling ‘on fire’ with grief and anger, then remembered to send love into the flames.
- •This practice didn’t erase grief but transformed it into something workable, making it his teacher’s ‘last gift’—a proof of the method.
- •He emphasizes: you learn to be okay with not being okay, which is a profound form of resilience.
- 2:10:00 – 2:26:00
Forgiveness, Victimhood, and Seeing Others’ Suffering
They explore victimhood, identity, and forgiveness—both for extreme harms and everyday hurts. Thubten argues that clinging to grievance is like clutching a hot coal: you think you’re punishing the other, but you’re really burning yourself.
- •We often equate forgiveness with letting someone ‘get away with it,’ so we cling to pain as our only sense of justice.
- •From a Buddhist perspective, you are not your past; both body and mind are different now, and past and future are mental constructions.
- •He sees forgiveness more as forgiving the feelings and burden inside you, rather than performing forgiveness for the other person.
- •A thought experiment: mentally swap places with the person who hurt you—looking out at the world from their eyes to sense their confusion and pain.
- •People’s harmful actions are driven by their own suffering and ignorance; they are often not deliberately targeting you as personally as you think.
- •He stresses this is not victim‑blaming or condoning harm, but a way to loosen the self‑centeredness of hurt and lighten its grip.
- 2:26:00 – 2:36:00
Fear, Technology, and Becoming Fearless in a Frightened World
The discussion turns to societal fear: how digital media, politics, and marketing routinely trigger fear to capture attention and drive behavior. Thubten suggests meditation as mental armor, enabling you to live in the world without being ruled by its fear signals.
- •On exiting his four‑year retreat, he was shocked by the ubiquity of smartphones and moving digital ads, and sensed a new baseline of anxiety.
- •Clickbait and monetized news keep us engaged by making us feel in danger or outraged.
- •He’s not anti‑technology; rather, he compares it to food: health depends on how, how much, and what you consume.
- •Meditation, especially micro‑moments of awareness, lets you practice meeting stress with calm, thus rewiring your default responses.
- •He describes the crucial ‘gap’ between impulse and action: meditation expands this gap so you can respond rather than react.
- •Every moment is a fork in the road between reaction and response; mindfulness makes you notice the fork and choose.
- 2:36:00 – 2:54:00
A Practical Meditation Plan: 10 Minutes a Day and Micro‑Moments
Thubten designs a simple, realistic plan for Stephen: 10 minutes every morning plus brief mindfulness injections throughout the day. He emphasizes stripping away spiritual ‘tat’ and focusing on the core mechanics of practice—intention, body awareness, breath, and non‑judgment.
- •Discard reliance on props: bowls, incense and symbols are optional; what matters is you and your mind.
- •Optimal timing: first thing in the morning, before phone or emails, when cortisol peaks.
- •Step‑by‑step: set an altruistic intention; feel your hands; relax shoulders; notice front of body; rest attention on natural breathing; refine to feeling air at nose or lips.
- •Key instruction: don’t try to breathe in any special way; don’t chase sensations or ‘bliss’; just keep returning when you notice distraction.
- •End by re‑dedicating the session to compassion and freedom for yourself and others.
- •He warns against using meditation like a drug—waiting for a ‘high’—because that reinforces a sense of lack.
- •Research shows measurable brain changes after as little as four days of 10‑minute daily practice, even if you don’t subjectively feel different yet.
- 2:54:00
Results of Practice: From Self‑Disgust to Peace With Being a ‘Mess’
In closing, Thubten reflects on his own ‘before and after’ and situates meditation as an ongoing, never‑finished process. He outlines how his relationship to illness, self‑talk, and life purpose have shifted, and why the real missing link for most people is not knowledge but actually doing the practice.
- •Over decades, his inner ‘devil voice’ of self‑disgust has largely fallen silent; he feels more at peace with himself.
- •He now lives with long‑term health issues from severe COVID but uses compassion practice to sit with physical discomfort.
- •He insists he’s still a ‘mess,’ but now he’s kind to the mess—that shift in stance is his definition of happiness.
- •Taking lifelong monastic vows ‘clicked’ for him, aligning every cell of his body with a life focused on mind training and service.
- •He stresses that Buddhism is not about conversion; many people attend retreats or meditate without becoming Buddhists.
- •The biggest gap in the modern interest in meditation is execution: people read, listen, and agree, then don’t practice.
- •His remedy: deeply contemplate that meditation offers the same freedom we chase through coffee, sex, drugs, or work—but more sustainably—until you genuinely want to sit down and do it.
