Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 45-minute public talk at Buddha House, Khensur Rinpoche opens with a direct challenge to the audience: can you actually identify your own mental illness? He frames the Buddha as a skilled physician, the Dharma as medicine, and the sangha as nurses, then names the afflictive emotions — anger, attachment, pride, jealousy, ignorance — as specific illnesses requiring specific cures. A lively audience exchange tests whether anger qualifies as illness by Western clinical standards, and Rinpoche illustrates concretely how a single angry reaction disrupts sleep, appetite, and simple contentment. He then distinguishes love from attachment, introduces the Four Opponent Powers as a method for purifying past negative karma, and closes by framing Mahāyāna mind-training as the practical foundation of lasting happiness. Accessible to newcomers with no prior Buddhist background.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 04 1989 02 26 PT Topic Unknown.mp3
UUID: ee7646b6-de81-4e00-88d1-595552798720
Teacher: Khensur Rinpoche
Collection: Public Talks 1988-2003 (Khensur Rinpoche)
Date: 1989-02-26
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.1 minutes
Words: ~2,214
A long time to be cured, then we need some assistance. We need some help. This is, for example, like a nurse. And likewise, in the course of practicing the Dharma, making use of this medicine whereby to cure ourselves of our ills, we make use of assistance or guides along the way, and this is the members of our spiritual community. So through the assistance, the aid of a skillful doctor, medicines and nurses, that we ourselves as a patient can rid ourselves of the two types of illnesses that we might experience.
That is of the two types, that is physical illnesses and mental illnesses, that we can cure ourselves in this situation of physical illnesses. But in the case of the ills of our mind, the unskillful patterns that we’ve built up in our mind, the normal type of doctor isn’t going to help us, isn’t going to be able to cure us completely. In such a situation we need a more perhaps a type of physician who is skilled in the ways of the mind itself. In this situation, in the Buddhist context, rely upon the Buddha Śākyamūni who has, who is skilled in, has developed the skill of prescribing the various types of methods, that is the medicines, whereby to, to help us to go beyond unskillful states of mind and begin to cure the ills of our dissatisfactory quality of our life. What he prescribes is the Dharma, the various practices and the teachings.
And in dependence upon this, through the assistance of the spiritual community who act as nurses, then we can cure ourselves of our mental illnesses. So, in general, we have mind and body. And we experience illnesses of both mind and body. When we experience a bodily illness, the body is by nature material. It’s made up of matter, and so we use a material method whereby to cure ourselves of a material illness.
Likewise, we experience ills of our mind and the type of cure, the medicine that we must make use of to eliminate the sickness of our own mind must be in the same nature. They must be of a mental quality. They must be a mental type of medicine, not a material variety. So there’s a and just as in the on the physical plane, there we have extremely various, there are extremely varied types of physical illness that we can experience. Likewise, on the mental plane, there are a large variety of mental unskillful attitudes that we can develop which constitute mental illness, ills of the mind.
Each of these has a specific medicine which can be applied, a cure. Therefore, the type of medicine which is to be given must be very specific to our particular illness. Therefore, prescribing such a type of method to cure our mental ills, the physician must be extremely skilled in understanding the nature of the mind and the nature of the cures in applying them. And within the Buddhist context, we take as a skilled physician the Buddha himself. So if Rinpoche hadn’t, you know, he hadn’t mentioned this quality of mental, you know, mental illness or, would you have, would you be aware of the quality of that perhaps we are somehow ill within our mind?
That we are in some extent mentally ill? Does that make sense that we are in some way mentally ill? In terms of my tragedy, I guess. Yeah. He’s asking a question.
I mean, does it make sense that we are in some way mentally ill? So if Rinpoche were not to talk about what are the various illness, would you be able to identify your specific mental illness? Usually we can identify our physical illnesses quite readily. Know, for example, oh, I have a toothache or I have a headache or I have pain in my liver. We can identify our difficulties quite readily with their nature.
But are you able to identify the nature of your difficulties within your own mind? So do you know your particular mental illness? I go do it? Yeah. I mean, any answers?
Can you say what what what the illness of mine is? Talking about mental illness and what you’re talking about in terms of what is the definition? No. Just whatever whatever Okay. Whatever makes sense to you, you speak that way.
Do you have anger? Some some sometimes. No. Sometime. From time to time, do you experience anger?
So So sometimes do you have attachment? Do you experience attachment? If we the various illnesses from the point of view of mental various mental illnesses from the point of view of, in the Buddhist context, anger attachment, pride, jealousy, ignorance, etc. These are afflictive emotions. Afflict the piece of the mind.
Therefore, they’re said to be illnesses. We can take the simple example of having anger, that we’re sitting quite contently, happy, and then someone perhaps comes in the room and says a few unkind words, a few nasty words to us. Immediately we react. Anger may arise. We become red in the face.
Our blood pressure rises. We become upset. So immediately we’re experiencing unhappiness. We can’t sleep. We probably can’t eat, we can’t enjoy, even if we’re served delicious food.
We, even if someone tries to speak nicely to us, we can’t appreciate their kindness. So in this sense, in our mind, we are mentally ill. That’s if you’re saying that these conditions are chronic, then you’re ill. We have flashes of anger, flashes of contentment, flashes of attachment, but they’re not in momentary things. If you can recuperate and become to what’s called a normal level again pretty rapidly then I wouldn’t consider them as illnesses.
These reactions to Sometimes sometimes sometimes sometimes sometimes Mhmm. The the the court So this is a reactive pattern in the sense of anger we are reacting, but is not to say that this is to be considered acceptable situation. Simply because it’s maybe normal. That in the cases of any type of negative action that we create, we can expect an equal and like reaction. We give off, if we enact negative activities, harmful activities, then we can expect a suffering result in all the various disharmonies that are created between, for example, a husband and wife, relatives within a country or an entire world is simply a result of the past negative activities of, for example, anger.
Even though this may be common, it may be normal, it’s not a desirable result in the Buddhist context, and it is a type of illness which is to be cured, to be eliminated. So, based upon our various mental illnesses, I don’t like to, I don’t know, find a better word than mental illness, maybe, I don’t know. Based upon the various mental illnesses, as a motivating force, we engage in various physical activities, negative types of destructive types of activities. In doing this, we create what is these actions. These are simply actions or what we call karma.
karma simply means action. We create negative actions, destructive actions, karma. This has a reactive effect in accordance with the type of cause that we create, that we will experience in dependence upon destructive or negative actions, experience states of suffering, dissatisfaction. And that it’s not others who are causing this suffering, it’s not the other people around us, the other situations, but it in fact the sources within our own mind, our own mental illness. So it’s from the point of view that not only are various types of mental illnesses bringing us suffering, dissatisfaction ultimately through these reactive patterns, these cycles of action and reaction, but also our mental illnesses prevent us acting as an obstacle to developing positive states such as love, affection, altruism, living in harmony with others, with yourself.
That these qualities are the basis of real happiness. But these afflictive emotions, our mental illnesses act as an obstruction. They block these and therefore we aren’t able to experience happiness on the one hand, but in fact we experience both physical and mental suffering on the other. So the, within the great vehicle, you know, within what we call the Mahāyāna Buddhism, great vehicle, there is the extensive training of the mind in these various positive states of love, affection, altruism. This is a way we can begin to train our mind.
So, maybe we can have some questions and answers. We’ll have a discussion. Do you have some questions? Uh-huh. They know how to speak Hindi, they don’t have any problems.
If they don’t, then they have problems. Do you think do you think anger is You do. Is is anger acceptable? Obviously, no. If we take I mean, from the from the western medical model, anger is acceptable.
Yeah. That’s why I said maybe mental illness. So, you know, one way we can differentiate between love and attachment is that attachment is a wrong consciousness. It has the quality of being mistaken with respect to the actual nature of its object. It has the quality of exaggerating, superimposing qualities upon that object, which in fact the object does not possess in reality.
Whereas love is in accordance with the actual nature of its object. Yeah. That’s because we quite often confuse love with attachment. So many relationships are fraught with suffering. It.
Things are neutral. Jampa. So they are different. Yeah. So, of course, we don’t want to interfere with our past constructive actions, karma that we’ve created.
But with respect to the negative actions, then we apply what is called the four opponent powers, or the Four Counteracting Agents, that we can make use of this method whereby to eliminate these past latencies of destructive actions. So, there’s this method called the Four Opponent Powers. Four Opponent Powers. The method of purifying, eliminating the effects of past negative actions. So, you know, roughly speaking, we if, for example, we were to kill something and considering that this is a negative action, and that because it’s a negative action, it’s going to have a result of a future suffering.
Looking at it this way that somehow this type of action is not to your best interest, that it’s wrong. Then developing a sense of regret. This is simply wishing I hadn’t done that action. And then, as best you can, determining not to repeat the action again in the future in a realistic fashion, and then applying an opponent power such as meditating on emptiness. And this way, we can completely eliminate the latency of that imprint of that past negative action.
Yeah. They set up. So these the various afflictive emotions, the mental illnesses that we talked about, these are tendencies that have come from the past. Have been habituated to these particular patterns of reacting, and so they perpetuate themselves. So they sort of, in this life, they came with us in this life.
And as far as the methods for eliminating them, then each of them has a, just as, each of them has a sickness, has a specific medicine. For example, in the case of anger, that we can make use of meditation, cultivating the state of mind of love, patience, as a medicine to cure the illness of anger. And when we were born, when we developed this body, our arm naturally came along in this complex. And likewise, these various illnesses came along with this complex, a mental complex. We get these come along with the body?
The various varieties of physical illnesses that we experience have two types of causes coming in conjunction with, coming together. The one was ultimately created by the mind through the creation of actions or karma and coming into contact with physical conditions which act as a cooperative cause. So, one’s karma and the physical conditions act as cooperative cause cause the various types of physical illnesses that we experience. So, Rinpoche appreciates and has enjoyed the opportunity to have this discussion with you. So, you know, we’ve talked about briefly some, the necessity to implement methods for finding happiness.
That in the basis, the foundation of mental happiness is the training of the mind. Just as, you know, we, in the case of physical health, we try to eat right, we try to take the proper medicines when we become ill, we consort a doctor. Likewise, we make use of these methods and we need a method to maintain our mental health, and this is through training of the mind. So one method of training the mind of finding mental health is through spiritual practice. Among the various types of spiritual practice, there is the Buddhist spiritual practice of the great vehicle, the Mahāyāna.
This is the type of tradition which is presented at Buddha House. So, in Buddha House we present the, we try to clarify what are the various types of illnesses that we experience mentally and the various methods of training the mind, and therefore, a method of finding happiness. So you’re quite welcome to investigate and do your research here. Yeah, I’m very good. So then, when, at the end, we have a prayer of dedication which is on the back of this sheet.