Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 45-minute talk, Ven Jampa Ignyen examines working with emotions through the law of cause and effect. All present feelings arise from our own past actions, never from others. He illustrates this principle through two classical stories: King Milinda’s question about discerning river sources in ocean water, and a deity’s puzzle about untangling emotional confusion. The Buddha classifies mental states as positive, negative, or neutral; the practice is to recognize which have value and follow them. Doubts inevitably arise: if ethics generates happiness, why do kind people sometimes struggle while seemingly unethical people prosper? The answer requires understanding cause and effect across lifetimes. He uses an investment metaphor—we guard money carefully but allow destructive emotional states to accumulate, creating debt far beyond this life. Central to his teaching: other people are never the true source of our unhappiness; they are messengers of our own past actions.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 01 Dealing with Emotions 2001 08 26.mp3
UUID: 6e888200-c8e4-491b-85fd-42a8b1eee64f
Teacher: Ven Jampa Ignyen
Collection: y Dealing with Emotions (Ven Jampa Ignyen)
Date: 2001-08-26
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.3 minutes
Words: ~4,853
Welcome to this Sunday afternoon. It’s really gonna be a something of a discussion on how to deal with the emotions. And, of course, this topic is something that we’re dealing with on a day to day basis. Our emotions are more or less ever present. Now, especially in Buddhism, understanding the emotions and working positively with the emotions is very important.
That’s in fact the area that we have to work with. In the spiritual path, our emotions are most important. And if our current emotions are not in a way incorporating a spiritual path, then it really doesn’t exist for us. So dealing with our emotions and finding a way in which we can convert our emotions into something positive is of supreme importance. Now, initially, when we talk about our emotions, we need to be clear on what we mean by emotions because we have various states of mind that arise from time to time.
Generally emotion, of course, means something which moves the mind, something which stirs the mind up either in a positive or a negative way. In brief, our practice is to accentuate what is positive and limit, decrease as much as possible what is is not positive. Here, what is positive is really that which brings us happiness. And in general, that’s how it’s defined within Buddhism. That that which is positive, here positive also meaning virtue, is that which downstream from it at some time in the future brings a level or a degree of happiness, either physical happiness or mental happiness.
And some of our emotions actually bring us happiness in future. It’s not always easy for us to discern what emotions later bring us happiness. But we can be sure that only the positive ones give rise to happiness in future. Positive emotion, in fact, gives rise to happiness at a later date. From a Buddhist perspective, a later date could be twenty years further on, or it could be a hundred years or a thousand years and so on.
And in fact, anything positive that we experience at present is really from our past positive emotions. So even in the present moment, what we whenever a pleasant feeling arises, something which is easy on the mind, light brings a certain degree of release from the heaviness of our thoughts and so on. These positive results are coming from past past emotion, past positive emotion. And then, on the other hand, anything in the present moment, our feelings in other words, the present moment, which are heavy or tend to be a little bit negative or worried or concerned and so on. All of these are coming from past negative emotional states.
And they may have occurred a long time in the past. It’s hard for us to really discern these things. In a sense, this is dealing with the internal nature of causation. That in fact, whatever we experience in the world, whether it’s physical or non physical, whatever we register with the senses, and in general, of the things we think about, it’s all connected with the law of cause and effect. It’s we simply observe and experience this continuous unfoldment of the law of cause and effect.
And in fact, what happens to us is simply a reflection of our actions of the past. There’s really nothing more than that. In fact, there’s nothing in our experience that is not associated with the law of cause and effect. And so even what we experience in the present, the feelings of the present moment are really an outcome of past causes that we ourselves have have generated, that we ourselves have enacted, accumulated, put into place. So initially, in terms of dealing with our emotions, it’s useful to think along these lines.
If we don’t think along these lines, then the emotions perhaps are more difficult to deal with, to think that our emotions just arise in the present and that we have no we ourselves have not been at the center or instrumental in generating them makes it very difficult for us to to quieten mind. Because here we tend to think especially the negative emotions are actually being caused by other beings. Everyone around us is potentially generating our negative feelings. So this we need to observe. Within Buddhism within the teachings of Śākyamūni Buddha, much is said about the nature of the mind and our day to day experience, just what we’re feeling in the present moment.
Basically, we need to be happy. We need to be at ease in the present. And in fact, basically what we do is need to be able to relax fully and overcome all agitated states, every concern we really need to overcome. All these worries that we have in the present and the worries we have for the future and so on. We really need for our own benefit to go beyond those.
There’s some actual genuine reasons for concern and, you know, in our concern for others and their welfare and so on. But often we’re, what, affected by negative emotions in the present for no benefit. But what we do need in the present is to be as relaxed and happy as possible. So really, dealing with emotions within a Buddhist framework, it’s really learning how to deal with our emotions in the present in the most effective way we can. So this does require introspection.
This requires us investigating the nature of our mind, the nature of our feelings, the nature of how we look at things to see how our emotions do develop. Now, as the Buddha once observed No, actually, it wasn’t the Buddha. It was There was a king, a Greek king called Milinda who lived in this western region of India called Gandhara. And he was in fact he lived around the second century BC and he was put there. Ultimately, he inherited that post after the area was captured by Alexander the Great, when Alexander the Great traveled from Macedonia to India.
So there was this king of Greek descent called Menanda who had this he actually took a strong interest in Buddhism. And there was one monk called Nagasena whom he used to consult on various occasions. And on one occasion, he happened to ask Nagasena, Nagasena, what is something difficult that the Buddha has actually done? Which is actually a very good question. Okay.
At that time, there was a lot of talk about how one develops a path to liberation, how one generates actual happiness, true happiness. And the Buddha had spoken a great deal on this issue of what constitutes happiness and how one achieves happiness. And the king was asking Nagasena, what is something that’s really difficult that the Buddha has done? And Nagasena said to the king, king, if you consider this, into the Arabian Sea, there flows this great river called the Indus river. And into that river there flows other streams like the Sutlej and the Bias and so forth.
All these other rivers that come down through the Punjab from Tibet, basically. And he asked the king, king, if you went to the ocean and if you took a mouthful of water, could you tell by sipping that water where the water came from? So as to be able to say, oh, wait a minute, from that mouthful, a certain amount came down from the Bias river. But there was also a little bit from the Indus, a little bit from the Sutlej and so on. And he asked the king, could you actually do this?
And the king said, well, now this would be quite difficult to do. And it’d be quite difficult to taste the water and be able to discern that it came from here, it came from there. And then Nagasena said to the king, well, so too the Buddha has done something that’s been quite difficult to do. He’s been able to examine the mind itself and determine within the mind what the mind is made up of. What are the different states of the mind?
And in the current state of the mind, what’s a positive emotion? What’s a negative emotion? What’s the type of awareness that leads to happiness? What type of awareness doesn’t lead to happiness? So this of all things that the Buddha has done, this area of examining the mind and determining the different states of mind.
This is one thing the Buddha has done which is very difficult to do. And of course, that’s the case for us. It’s difficult for us to look into our current experiences and determine which minds are going to generate happiness in future for us. What are the different states of mind that we currently experience? Often, just have this a variety of experience that arises.
We have thoughts that come very very quickly one after the other with various objects. We remember this person. We remember that situation. We think about tomorrow and the next day. We’re listening to music or we’re seeing other objects and so forth.
But it’s not easy. And then in relation to all these thoughts, we have different feelings, different reactions. We generate some negative thoughts to some objects and we generate thoughts of attraction to other objects of our thoughts and so on. For us at present, is a vast, what, process of unfoldment that’s occurring moment by moment. And in a sense, all of that practice, our meditative practice or our practice as human beings centers on being able to discern what in the present is worth following, is worthy of following.
And in fact, in our present mind, what is of value? What has value in our present mind? What doesn’t have value? We tend to, just by habit, we tend to follow various things that arise in our mind without understanding whether there’s any value there or not. But this is an essential area for us to examine.
As there’s a story also of of a deity who once visited the Buddha when he was meditating. And this particular a divine being. And this being then asked the Buddha, now this generation talking about this generation, so this is two and a half thousand years ago. This generation is tangled within a tangle. In other words, beings in ordinary everyday, beings such as ourselves, beings who experience various states of mind tend to experience various types of emotion.
And their emotions are a little bit they’re hard to see. So it’s a little bit like a tangle, entangled within a tangle. And so this deity was saying, this generation is tangled within a tangle of emotions. Who in fact succeeds in disentangling the tangle? So this divine being posited this question to the Buddha.
It really doesn’t matter if it was a divine being or the butcher down the road or whoever, but the question is quite relevant. Who succeeds in disentangling our emotions? Setting them apart so that clearly we can see, oh, this has value. That doesn’t have value. If I follow that, I’ll only become unhappy.
But if I follow this, it will bring happiness and so on. So the Buddha answered this divine being saying, A being who follows ethics, concentration, and wisdom succeeds in disentangling the tangle. Although this seems obvious, actually because ethics itself is very difficult to discern what is ethical and what is not ethical. It’s not not so easy for us to practice. And basically, wisdom is this capacity to be able to, for instance, observe our emotions and see what is ethical or what is positive or what has value within our emotions.
And then we can just, if we’re able to discern that, what is of value, then we can simply practice that. Give up the rest and simply practice what is of value. So for our own benefit, in fact, this is precisely what we need to be able to do. Although, of course, as we look into our mind in the present, it’s not easy for us to, as yet, see what’s of value and what is not. At present, we tend to follow follow thoughts which don’t have any any real downstream profit for us.
It’ll be like we were, you know, investing money on the stock exchange all the time, and we’re always we tend to invest in things that are losing us money. But a skillful investor is gonna look at the stock market and then choose those investments that are gonna bring a return or that have got the most possibility of bringing a return to it. But here we need to be very practical Because as much as possible, what we do need is to have a degree of contentment in the present and to increase this. And also to decrease our unhappiness and to decrease the causes of our unhappiness in the present. Not to say that, you know, we necessarily are not reasonably happy at present, but we need to increase the happiness that we have.
And to do this, we as much as possible need to understand the causes for happiness. Those things of which are real value within our mental continuum. The Buddha himself, when investigating the emotions, decided to invest to what? Classify the minds in a certain way, in terms of positive states of mind and negative states of mind and neutral states. And so it’s the positive ones which are quite clearly set out for us that are the ones that we really should put energy into.
This practice of determining what’s positive, what’s a positive emotion and practicing that, of course, is something that will benefit us in the present and will continue to benefit us for the rest of this life. Also, it will benefit us into our next life. And there there’s greater meaning for us because this life is very short. And our next life may come we don’t know when our next life will appear. But discovering what’s of value within our own experience has implications not only for this life, but our future life and the life beyond that and the lives beyond that as well.
And this of course is something that we also need for our own benefit. We need to think about because as it As it said that just if we’re only focused on this life, then it’s really difficult for us to develop a religious or a spiritual practice. That really thinking simply of this lifetime, we don’t qualify as a practitioner of a spiritual path. So this is said in in various texts by various meditation masters in the past. And that we should also reflect on this point that we are impermanent and that we face death at any minute, at any moment.
And what is of value to us in our next life also should be something that we think about. We need to think about it now. So initially the Buddha talked about what’s what is a positive emotion? What’s a negative emotion? And then also he talked about how in fact to gain a state of happiness that goes beyond one life or many lifetimes.
But we need ultimately to attain a state of happiness that is beyond any possibility of ever degenerating. And at present, we exist in that situation where our happiness our current state of mind tends to flow along okay. And from time to time, we feel a bit of some depression, at times we feel some degree of happiness and then at other times we have various worries about today and the future. But then we do something we like doing and we gain happiness again and so forth. This process is still it’s unsatisfactory to the extent that even when we do experience a degree of happiness, that happiness changes.
It doesn’t survive for very long. But probably before we can really develop a sense or an understanding of that, we really have to contemplate the nature of the mind in present in the present. And examine what is of value. And by practicing that, give us the space and the clarity of mind to begin to examine our situation in the long term beyond this life, but examine what it means to actually exist in itself. What what is existence?
What is my current existence? What do I really seek? Anyway, whether we actually think about these issues or not, they will tend to come back to us time and time again. And in fact, these states, the state, for instance, of the unsatisfactory nature of our existence, comes up all the time in one form or another. We’re reminded of this all the time.
Things are not really satisfactory. However, we survive in the present and, you know, it’s okay. But still there’s a, there’s an aftertaste of the fact that it’s well, we still haven’t achieved what we want to achieve. That that is very important. That will only go away when we we attain pure happiness.
In order to eliminate that, we need to achieve a state of absolute purity in which there is no fault whatsoever. But attaining that state of purity is really a long term goal. It’s something that Although we try and achieve it in the present, even in this lifetime, no matter what we’ve done, we still have not eliminated that sense of dissatisfaction or that sense of of, in a way, disappointment. There’s an element of disappointment always with this existence that we have. So initially, in order to increase our ordinary happiness, we need to comprehend what’s of value within our mental continuum.
What states of mind, what types of emotion are gonna help us, protect us, give us greater stability, give us greater peace of mind and ease and so forth. Help us to function more clearly and so on. These we need on a day to day basis in the present. This taste of disappointment, like the salt in the ocean that seems to pervade everything, That we also need to deal with, but on a longer term basis. In order to begin to deal with that, even in the present, need the mind to be as flexible, pliable, happy, joyful as we can establish our mind to be.
But that’s possible because all of these states are impermanent. Having a joyful mind is impermanent. So therefore it has a cause. And that cause we can establish in the present. Happiness is impermanent.
Happiness is a mental feeling. It’s impermanent, but it has a cause. By understanding the causes of mental happiness, then, and those things are real, of real value to us in the present. Those things we should concentrate on and establish them. Put them to work for us.
A little bit like in, you know, having a bit of money, we put it in the bank, but we look around and get the best interest on them. So our actions are just like this. Our actions are like having money. They have value. Potentially, they have value.
Positive emotions have value. It’s like putting money in a bank and they will tend to generate future happiness for us. But it’s funny, things like money we really are careful with. We try to be as careful as possible. But the mind, our mind as it is at present, we’re not so careful.
We allow all sorts of negative emotions to arise. Almost as if we think, well, actually I’m gonna get some sort of satisfaction out of them in future. And so we’re not so careful. We tend not to be careful enough with the types of thought that we find ourselves thinking. And even when we understand, oh, it’s probably a negative thought, but even when we understand that we tend to let them go on as if it’d be like, you know, having a, I don’t know.
We’ve got we’ve hired something, you know, and it’s costing us fifty dollars a day to hire it out, but we think, oh, well, I’ll just leave it in the lounge room for another month. While it’s there, it’s, you know, taking look at this bill, you know, being accumulated because of this thing. Having negative states of mind is just like that. Having negative emotions is like putting us in a situation where we’re going into debt all the time. We’re generating emotional debt.
We’re generating emotions in the present that are going to make us unhappy in future. We’ll experience unhappiness from them in future. But just as we try to be careful so that we don’t run ourselves debt financially, even more important is our state of mind. In a sense, it wouldn’t matter if we financially went into great debt, even they put us into prison. If we were happy, it wouldn’t really matter.
We just sit back in the prison anyway. Like your food’s not too bad these days and you get a television set and it’s okay. On the other hand, we tend to be more concerned with money, not going into debt, paying our bills and so on, but less concerned about the state of our mind in the present. In fact, we spend many years training ourselves to get a good job so we get enough money so we can buy the things we want and not go into debt and have all these things. We train ourselves for ten years or twenty years to do that and we think nothing of it.
On the other hand, in terms of our emotions, we allow ourselves to run up huge debts that we may pay up for the next thousand lifetimes and not even think twice about it. In a sense, if we were really practical and we should be practical, we need to investigate this issue very closely. Because if we want to become wealthy financially, we have to make good investments and so on. If we want to become happy, we have to make good emotional investments in the present. Making a good investment emotionally is really focusing on the positive emotions in the present.
And by establishing positive emotions in the present, it’s like what we’re doing is we’re accumulating merit. The more merit we have, the more we’re able to achieve whatever we desire to achieve. As the Tibetans say, and also which means they also say, A person who possesses merit will achieve whatever they want to achieve. In other words, with merit we achieve happiness. Now, of course, doubts arise about this.
Is it really true? If we have a merit, do we actually get happiness from it? If I practice a positive emotional state, do I actually get happiness from it? Not easy for us to discern these issues. The Buddha himself said from generosity comes resources, from ethics comes happiness.
So in other words, by practicing generosity, we become rich. We become wealthy. We have all the resources we need. Having resources only comes from generosity. Being happy only comes from ethics.
There’s no other cause of happiness other than ethics. And what is ethics? Ethics in brief is just not harming other beings. Not only physically and verbally, but mentally. Not harming other beings mentally.
The reason why we get, we tend to get depressed in the present is harmful intent in relation to others. So we really need to eliminate negative emotions, negative thoughts towards others because it’s only through that that happiness arises. Anyway, this this is not easy for us to see. We’ll have various doubts about this. But no problem.
The doubts that we have can be very useful, very beneficial. So fundamentally, happiness is coming from not harming others. And in general, we may think, well, wait a minute. I’m not really harming other beings, but why am I unhappy in the present? Or even if I try to help other beings, do I experience unhappiness in the present moment?
I’m doing pretty well at home. I, you know, I practice some patience. I practice some generosity. I practice some love and compassion and I do my best, but still I get depressed. I wake up in the morning and I feel terrible.
It seems that, you know, even practicing positive emotions even gives rise to a negative result. It sometimes appears that way, doesn’t it? It appears at times when we look in society that people who are not very ethical, who steal from others actually get rich from stealing from others. This is how it appears to us. So doubts arise about this.
And this comes down very much to this question of king the question put by king Milinda. That what is a difficult thing that the Buddha has done? And the answer being to be able to look at the mind and differentiate the various states of mind that we as sentient beings experience and to be able to able to determine, these are the positive ones. These are the negative ones without any doubt. And these negative ones give rise to negative results.
The positive ones only give rise to positive results. And that if we have a degree of confidence in the law of cause and effect, then we can develop the perseverance necessary to practice what is positive. But of course in the present moment, doubts arise, especially in regards to ourselves. Sometimes sometimes for no reason we feel happy, we can’t understand why. Similarly, at times we are unhappy and when we look at the conditions that surround us, we think, oh, you know, I shouldn’t feel this unhappy, you know, because I can’t see anything in the present that might have caused such a negative feeling to arrive.
This often happens. Actually, also, we do commit negative actions and we feel unhappy. Can also probably pinpoint, oh, maybe that’s why I’m feeling so unhappy. Maybe it’s this other reason that I’m feeling unhappy. We have suspicions about this.
Our ongoing experience is so centered on our feelings. Our experience really is our feelings in the present. But from a the perspective of the Buddha, whatever we feel present is coming from a cause similar to the feeling. That if it’s a positive feeling, it’s coming from ethics. If it’s a negative feeling, it’s coming from unethical acts, our negative acts in the past, whether they be that are coming from negative states of mind in the past.
Whatever feeling arises, our feeling in the present moment is coming, in other words, from our own past actions. And this is all there is. Just as we go through our existence, whatever we experience moment by moment is coming from our past actions. And the positive feelings are coming from positive past actions. Negative feelings are coming from negative past actions.
Although it appears our feelings are being generated by other beings or instigated, initiated by the words of other beings or their actions and so on, our feelings actually are arising from within us due to past causes beyond our understanding, beyond our recollection. As is said in a poem, one poem written by a Chinese monk, like dust in a dusty tunnel, what arises in the heart settles in the heart. And that really is our situation that whatever settles in the heart, meaning whatever we experience in the present, whatever sort of feeling, positive feeling, bored feeling, uncomfortable feeling, neutral feeling, pleasant feeling, that settles in the heart because it was initially generated in the heart. Like dust in a dusty tunnel. If we stir the dust up, you know, it floats around for a while and it settles back down again.
Our heart is similar to that. Whatever’s whatever’s raised or whatever is generated in the heart eventually comes to rest again in the heart. And if it’s something positive, then it’s from a past positive action. And if it’s something negative, then it’s from a negative action. And it’s not actually coming from outside of ourselves.
This is a particular, as one Tibetan lama said, Lama Yeshe, that this is a particular view of the Buddha himself. That everything that we experience is coming from our past actions and other beings are simply conditions by which our past actions mature. And if we ever get annoyed with anyone else, we’re really shooting the messenger of our past actions. If ever we get angry at another being because of our negative feelings, then we’re placing the blame in the wrong place. Other beings can never be the root cause of our feelings.
And we have a tendency though to blame other people for our negative feelings and then put a great load on them to generate positive feelings for us as well. And in general, this load other people, of course, they can’t carry it because they other beings could never