A Tibetan rinpoche points out the exit routes from our painful emotions

A boy cries a lot when he loses a toy. His father gets another toy for him but it makes no difference. "This isn't my toy!" the child weeps.

For adults it's much the same: This is "my" money, this is "my" fame, this is "my" family.

"The more you hold onto 'me', the more you suffer," says His Holiness Phakchok Rinpoche, the Vajra master of Ka-Nying Shedrub Ling Monastery in Kathmandu.

On a recent visit to Bangkok, the 26-year-old monk gave a lively talk on "The Great I", recalling his own childhood suffering.

Born to the title rinpoche as the grandson of the great Dzongchen master Tulku Ugyen Rinpoche, Phakchok was under a lot of pressure. He was expected to read more than others and practise the faith more devotedly.

The result was resentful anger, loneliness and a sense he'd been cursed.

At the time he couldn't perceive the root cause of his suffering, but once ordained, and having seen some of the world, he learned that the pain derives from identifying with "me".

"Physically, we look great with high-technology cell-phones and other modern comforts, but psychologically we get worse," Phakchok says. "We get angry easily, jealous and depressed."

Here's what he recommends when you're confronted with negative feelings: 

Do not try to express it or swallow it, nor run away from it. Just relax, and be consciously present.

Without rejection or suppression, identify where the anger is coming from, how it arises and at one point it ceases. Look for the source of specific thoughts and pinpoint who the thinker is and who the feeler is.

"Tame it where it arises" is a strategy on managing your emotions in the Buddha's Diamond Cutting sutra.

For more, visit www.PhakchokRinpoche.org