Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 65-minute closing session, Ven Jamyang addresses students’ real struggles with anger and hurt through practical Buddhist techniques, highlighting a key turning point: seeing the person who harms you as a suffering being rather than an enemy. Rather than avoiding or suppressing difficult emotions, he teaches how to sit with them without causing harm, using impermanence and the non-solid nature of the self as tools. He illustrates with concrete examples: workplace bullying, spouse irritations, betrayal. The session also briefly addresses working with pleasure and attachment, and includes a guided meditation on equanimity. Pitched at newcomers to Buddhism.
File metadata (for organising)
File: Intro to Buddhism week 4.1.mp3
UUID: 30055342-33e4-41a7-bc61-f0b2bfde9892
Teacher: Ven Jamyang
Collection: Jamyang Intro to Buddhism (Ven Jamyang)
Date: 2009 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 64.7 minutes
Words: ~7,974
That should be better. Yeah. It helps if you press the button. How is everybody? Good.
Have there been things difficult to digest or things that brought up many questions? Yes. Things that you like to bring up? Or Oh, just all the things that we know just going through the head. Uh-huh.
Is that helpful? Yeah. Yeah? Yeah. Good.
So today is the last class, last introduction to Buddhism class, last of the four. And what we have been doing so far is going through the four noble truths, the first teaching of the Buddha. So we discussed the first three and today we’re going to the fourth which is the truth of the path, that there is a path leading to perfect happiness and how that path looks like. But maybe we first start with a small meditation just to calm the mind and to bring the mind here. And so make sure that you sit comfortable, your feet on the floor.
You can put your hands in your lap or on your knees or thighs, wherever they feel comfortable. Make sure that your back is straight. Your head is a little bit bent forward. Your tongue is touching the palate. And your eyes are closed, but allow a little bit of light to come in so that’s not completely dark.
And then be aware that just focusing on your body and bringing your body in the right posture for meditation feels already like a meditation. That’s like the first part of a meditation. It helps to bring the mind more inwards. And if we put the body in the right posture, after that we can stop thinking about the body. I can just focus on the mind.
Allow the mind to rest on your abdomen where you can observe the rising and falling every time when you breathe in and breathe out. Let go of all the chatter in your mind, all the busyness. Try to let go of whatever happened in the past. No matter how much we think about it, we will not be able to change anything. What happened happened.
And don’t allow your mind to go into the future worrying about what might happen. Try to bring your mind again and again to the present moment, to the movements of your abdomen. Allowing it to calm down. Allowing it to And if you notice that your mind is wandering off, you bring it gently back. Let it rest on the movements of your abdomen.
And then we can set a motivation that helps us to listen and that helps us that our listening becomes powerful powerful in terms of leading to a good result in the future. So try to think that whatever however you’re gonna listen today, whatever you’re gonna hear, whatever you’re gonna pick up, you’re not only gonna use that for your own benefit, but whatever goodness comes from this, you share that with each and every person you’re gonna meet, each and every being. You do that because you recognize that all the goodness that we receive comes from others. So when we receive goodness that comes from others, but others also completely depend upon us for receiving their goodness. And if we can share, that will help everybody to become more happy.
Can you hear that sound? There’s a very nervous sound there. Could you when you don’t hear it? I have to go and have a look. Looks like something’s So looking for the path that means looking for a way to find happiness, isn’t it?
That’s what Buddhism is about basically. What do we we have to follow to find happiness? Recognizing that the way we try to find happiness at the moment is not really successful. It hasn’t brought us so far what we try to achieve and we have been trying a long time and if we only look in terms of this life we have already been trying our whole life and we haven’t found it yet. But according to Buddhism we have been trying to do this since beginningless lifetimes and we haven’t found it yet.
So we have to change our method of finding happiness. Right? We have to change our method of avoiding suffering. Can you remember how we did that? That if we try to how we try to avoid suffering what do we do when we suffer?
What kind of actions do we engage in? Can you remember? Yeah. Aversion. And then when we have aversion, what do we do with others?
What kind of actions do we if the aversion is very strong, if we have a lot of anger comes and when we are angry it’s very easy to harm others. And Buddhism says in actions where you harm others that suffering will one day come back to you. So our attempt to avoid suffering leads to us creating more causes for suffering basically, leads us to harm others and that leads to more suffering in the future. So the way that we deal with the suffering is not skillful. We try to avoid it.
So if that’s not skillful what will be skillful? This is your common sense, right? You have the wisdom already in there. So, there’s suffering what we do is we avoid. And in the avoiding we harm.
Right? And harmful actions lead to suffering so they come back later to ourselves in the form of suffering. So that’s not skillful. So what can we change? We don’t like this?
Turn it around. Turn it around. So what does that become? Suffering arises in the mind? No.
Suffering arises, then? What do we do with that? Oh, you have to be aware of the ways in which the mind deludes you. Yeah. Where does that start?
Acceptance in the body. Yes. So the healing starts, isn’t it? So we accepting, that’s the way? How would that be if we accept suffering?
Do we like that? It’s difficult, So we have to find a way that we can bear the suffering that arises, which means we cannot stop the suffering by trying to avoid it, trying to push it away. That’s not the way of stopping suffering. The way of stopping suffering is by stopping creating the causes for suffering. The way of stopping the suffering is by stopping the harm that we give to others.
But we give harm because we are in pain, which means that when the pain arises we have to sit with the pain. Can you see that? Can you see that that a different approach to pain than or to suffering than we are used to? And that that is hard, that we cannot our attachment to happiness is so big, isn’t it? Every moment we’re trying to get away from the suffering and then we have to say, I’m stop doing that. And everybody’s going to tell you, You are crazy.
It’s a bit like the way they teach you to deal with grief. Is that right? You can’t push grief away, you can’t bury it, you need to live through it. Yes. And there’s all phases of grief and you just need to understand that you’re going to go through all these and then you come out then hopefully accepting.
Yes, yes. So what are the four stages? Anger. So first is anger, but we already said try not to go there. Yeah, done.
Denial. Over the word. Thank you. Nine. Denial. Mhmm. Acceptance.
I think this is It’s the last one. Grief? Yeah. Yeah, grief. The grief.
So the anger and the denial, these are our terms to get away from it, isn’t it? To not feel it. So these kind of techniques they say you go through the anger and they let you live the anger. Buddhism says living the anger can create causes for suffering. So what they say is yes anger, you know, how to say that?
To me living the anger is more acknowledging its presence but not acting on it. Yes, that’s very skillful. Buddhism would agree with that one. So normally in the West what we do is like when we’re angry we have two ways of either we live it out, you know, we go to the beach and we scream or we punch on the cushion or we deny it and we say: No, I’m alright, I’m alright, nothing is wrong with me. Right?
So both are unhealthy according to Buddhism. One is pushing it away. When you push it away the anger will only push harder back. So the anger gets bigger and bigger. Then when you live it out you actually create a habit of being angry.
And when you live it out the first feeling that you get is: Oh, that was great, it’s gone. So what you create is you create a habit of that as soon as anger arises you have to live it out to feel good. Seductive. It’s very seductive. Yeah.
My daughter’s school they tell them to push a wall. If you’re angry, go and push a wall. So it’d be nice to know, tell her something differently. If you have always lived in denial, that can be a good beginning, but it’s not where you want to stop. Know, so where you want to end up is that you can just sit and that you allow the anger to arise and you do not act upon it, but you acknowledge it.
But, yeah, so that’s like an art in itself to do that for us, you know, we only know one of the two. And as soon as it comes up we do not how not to express that. Most of the time when we get sort of angry and they don’t really know why. So by understanding why then it’s easier then to accept. Yeah, so what are you saying?
Are you saying so it’s better to express the anger because then you can find out why you’re angry? No, no I’m just saying you must have told me you don’t understand why, so then it’s easy to just to act it out because you don’t really know what you’re angry, but you don’t really know why. Yeah. Just kind of, yeah, angry. You think you wouldn’t let it out?
So how can you then find out why you were angry in the first place? I say it actually doesn’t really matter why you’re angry. Anger is just anger. So anger, if anger is in the mind you can say there is some suffering in the mind. And it doesn’t really matter why you’re angry.
If you acknowledge, Oh, there’s anger in my mind, there’s anger in my mind, it comes and it goes, it comes and it goes, then that’s basically all you have to do. If you start digging, you know, what, if you want to know why you’re angry you’re actually looking for a blame. You say, I’m angry because my mom, when I was young, and as the story comes, or the neighbour or my car or whatever. I’m looking for a blame. This is why I’m angry.
But looking for the source of anger in some instances, couldn’t that help you to learn how that particular situation is going to make you angry, so therefore when it occurs you understand, it’s the first reaction you understand, you can now let it go. Yeah. So how do you do that when you want to do it like that? Well for me it’s sitting with it. Yeah, sitting with it?
And just I felt angry. Wait until it passes and understand that that was what caused it. What is what caused it? At the moment for me I work with some horrible managers who are into bullying. So when they exhibit that kind of behaviour, it has helped these last four weeks coming here, when they exhibit that kind of behaviour now, I can sit there and I say to myself this has nothing to do with me, this is them.
And I choose not to participate. And that’s it, that’s what I do. So their bullying has nothing to do with you. You reacting to the bullying has something to do with you. So when you can stop that that’s very good.
They’re bullying, for instance they’re bullying and you get angry and you say I’m getting angry because they are bullying, then there is a blame. Can also say I get angry because I feel very powerless when people bully me. I feel powerless. Then it’s mine, right? But when I recognize that I’m powerless I maybe have power to change that.
That’s true because I feel very empowering not to be part of it. Uh-huh. It’s great when I can just go, oh well. That’s their stuff. Yeah.
Is doing it. But there are many levels in that to really find that place in the mind I think and maybe not everybody can go there straight away. But we all have the tendency, if you don’t study anything like Buddhism or psychology or whatever, there is always tendency to blame. As soon as suffering arises we want to blame. And the blame is always outside, it’s never inside.
True? Could you please explain what the process is to sit with, what do you mean when you get angry? So a normal reaction is blaming. Right? That’s a normal reaction.
Blaming something outside us. So the first one that you do is and then because of that we harm. So the first one you say is: It’s coming from me. I’m responsible for that experience. Right, so that be the first step which is a very big one.
Another thing that you can say, so there are many things that you can repeat in yourself. Anger is in the mind. I am not angry but anger is in the mind. I am not my anger. Yeah, when anger comes in the mind we feel like I am.
It’s almost we are that, but we are not that. The mind is like, I think that we talked about it the first time, the mind is like space and in that space anything can arise. And sometimes anger arises, but we are not the anger. It’s just something that arises in the mind and something that is unpleasant for us and for others. It’s human.
We won’t be able to stop that straight away. So there is no problem in itself that that exists, but it becomes problem when we think we are that and when we become that. Yeah? Then it has power. But if we say it’s just something that arises it doesn’t have that power.
So then when this becomes a little bit less you will see more the suffering. So I would say look for the suffering in the sense of try to recognise what the suffering is. Right? If you get angry try to think there must be some pain. What is the pain that I feel?
So pain and a normal reaction is that we avoid it or that we push it away. Let’s see the benefits of suffering. What can I learn from this? We don’t like this do we? You get used to it.
You get used to beginning it’s like: What benefits are there? I just want to get rid of it. But if you start training your mind in this, the mind gets used to that and the mind gets used to bearing the suffering, you know. It’s like we’re just not used to it. So our aversion is very strong.
So you begin with a little bit, you bear a little bit and you start looking at it and you say: How can I see benefits in that? The moment I can see benefits in the suffering my avoiding reaction is gone. True? I say there is something positive. Wow, give me more.
That’s where we want to end up. Give me more. This is what bodhisattvas do, Is it You know how last week and the week before we were talking about I doesn’t exist in the way you think it does. So that’s about yourself. So I think that in itself helps you to deal with suffering more, but also in understanding that that person doesn’t exist in exactly the same ways and that they also, from their perspective, don’t exist in the way they think they exist.
Yeah. So I think that really helps to understand that we’re all, I guess, going through the same battle to or process of dealing with our suffering and learning how to respond to it. And that we are also made up of so many different parts, you know, that nothing is as clear as it seems. And so one of the benefits could be that in knowing that it’s an understanding of, you know, just the way life itself works and that’s humbling. Well you say when the suffering is there you start contemplating on that the ‘I’ doesn’t exist in the way it appears and also for the other person it doesn’t exist.
So just that contemplation is for you a benefit. Is that what you’re saying? Yes. Your suffering is like an excuse for contemplating these things. Not so much, I think it’s just in one of the ways in looking at the suffering, look for suffering, I guess part of the suffering is that So yeah, you’ve got to investigate the I.
Yeah, the I. So what the I means to me. And so you feel like what’s happening around you is a personal affront. So understanding that that’s not what it’s about because that person, you know, or whatever it is that’s in front of you that is causing you to feel this suffering. Well, not causing, but you know what I mean?
Yeah. That’s how we see it, isn’t it? Yeah. They they don’t exist in the way that I think they do anyway. So, you know, don’t be surprised.
And that for they themselves, they don’t, you know, we all have the The human condition all has the same form of complexity that we have to deal And we all do not exist in the way we think we exist or in the way we appear to exist. We all under the influence of the delusions. We all, you know when we feel suffering we try to avoid it, we try to harm. So when somebody gives us harm and we experience a suffering if we can see that person is suffering just the way I do, that person is just to try to get rid of their suffering the way I do, you know then maybe have some compassion for the other person. If we stay obsessed with ourselves and our own suffering, Hey you make me suffer, you want to immediately start harming that person back.
And that’s how we normally keep on going around and around and around with each other and nobody steps out. So Buddhism gives many techniques of how to look at a suffering so that you do not react to it. So this is the reaction that we have when the suffering arises, right? I’m not saying just for clarity that if somebody abuses you that you should not avoid that person. I’m not saying that.
Yes. So if you know that a person has a problem and if you know that a person has a problem specific with you and has this tendency and that you suffer from that and when you suffer actually your mind gets really upset it is okay to avoid that person. But when the suffering arises in the mind that’s what I’m talking about and this reaction arises due to that, because of that you try not to engage in this. Right? So it is alright to protect yourself.
We’re not doormats. Buddhists are not doormats. So you have to learn to be wise and to discriminate in a proper way and to act wise. But when suffering arises then that is what you try to do. You try to find a way that you can bear the suffering.
We don’t like this, you know. But that’s why we talked about suffering in the beginning because when you know all the levels of suffering then you know how much suffering there is in life and then you know how much we are engaging in this. And if you can see that this is only going to bring us more suffering you know then there can be a tendency to trying to change that. You can imagine that the more we can bear the suffering what happens if you get to the level of acceptance of suffering? Comes.
So the human condition is that there is suffering. There is the gross suffering, the suffering of pain and the suffering of change which is the pleasures and then there is what we call the all pervasive suffering. What if you go through these levels and eventually end up in acceptance? What do you think you experience? And Calm and peace.
Then when a similar thing happens to you that happened before you think your mind is going to be upset again or you think: Well you know this and you know that you don’t have to react. So when you go through it one time you don’t have to do it again and again and again. True? So you can end up in a level of peace. Can you see that or not?
Yeah, I think in some cases of suffering I think you can do it the first time and it will go away but in some cases I think you have to keep going through It might be a long term suffering that you’re trying to deal with something. If you stop, I mean not going through the suffering Maybe I mean it a little bit different. For instance somebody that is very dear to me leaves me. I do not like that separation. So I try to avoid the hurt that comes from that.
And in order to do that maybe I’m not harming but I’m running away. I try to distract myself and I try to engage in all kinds of things. Then if I do not really dissolve that suffering or work with that suffering I might in a few years time meet somebody else that I feel attached to but I never really have the courage to open up that much and then maybe because of that that person leaves me suffering and I will have to go through exactly the same. I’m not talking about that because we do that already, right? What I’m talking about is that when somebody leaves me and experiences suffering I’m going to sit with the suffering.
I’m going to say there is some benefit in that this person is leaving me. The only goodness can come from that. But the goodness can only come when I really can feel this and I sit with it. And then I start to recognize all the layers of my own reaction that I normally would have. And I start to understand what it means to be alone and how loneliness feels and I have the courage courage to be lonely and to feel that my heart is ripped open and raw and even if I engage with other people I do not try to close my heart to prevent that suffering from happening again.
I’m talking about that. To really see all the levels of human suffering in your own suffering. And when you do that, if you have gone through really the loneliness that comes from separation that you feel there and you have peace with that, next time will be, you are a different person then. So then when you engage in a relationship you will be different. And then even when that person leaves you, you will not have to go through that same levels of loneliness again because you already have made peace with that.
And maybe that person touched you deeper so you have to go through deeper levels. True or not? The more you go through the same suffering process it’s diluted. While you’re learning to follow this path, that’s a good thing. The occurrence will happen again but the effects will be diluted because you’ve got more skills.
Not necessarily the same deal. So by sitting with this you get skills. You’re not going to cure it like that. No. It’s going to take a long time.
Yes. And lots and lots and lots of practice every second of every Yes. So this is also something that we build up over lifetimes and it is true that you cannot with one experience you can just go through the whole lot. That will be too simple. Then there will be many more people who are free of suffering if that was the case, you know?
Wouldn’t they? Yeah, yeah, I think every time that you go again through a suffering there is you see it from another angle. It’s like you never have to do the whole thing again. Never have to but you go through similar processes. That’s true.
You’re saying that when you have a negative situation, whatever that is, I know I’m labeling this, but you look for the positives. That in a simplistic way? If you experience something as negative, your natural tendency will be to have aversion to that. If you can see benefits from that situation, you can’t enact your avoidance. Which means that you will experience less suffering.
Right? We have a pain in our life and we react with avoidance. The avoidance creates most of the time more pain than the pain itself. The story, I’ll say it like this, something happens to us, the story that we create from that upsets us more than what really happened. Right, my friend says something rude to me.
I feel hurt. I cannot deal with the hurt so I’m going to avoid the hurt and what I’m to do is I rang up ten other friends and I tell my story Can you believe this? And the story gets bigger and bigger and I fuel my anger more and more in order to avoid my suffering, my pain. And to blame. To blame.
The blame is an avoidance of pain. That’s what we’re doing. So creating that story creates actually much more suffering than sitting with the hurt itself. So saying: I’m not calling anybody. I’m going to sit with it and I’m going to feel it.
Avoided by speaking to the person and just saying, I feel hurt. Yep. But we don’t do that. No. That’s a big step missing out of what I do.
And I think it shortens that process if one was able to. Yeah, it would avoid a lot of suffering, isn’t it? In a proper way. So yes you can say I feel hurt but it’s not even needed to do so. Sometimes it can yeah.
You have to judge yourself if you need to do that or not. And is it okay too? Like, sort of talking to friends and be like, don’t know if you meant it that way, I was really hurt. Yes. Sure.
And then they will be like, oh, and then that causes them suffering. Is that Yeah. Is that not really because you would is that not making them feel Feel bad. Bad. Because they might not have actually meant it that way.
But then they would say that, oh my god. I’m so sorry. I didn’t meant it like that. You know? Give them the power I said.
And then I guess you both feel good then. Yeah. Then you can hug. So this is one way, everybody can follow this? I’m going to say the same thing in a different way.
Okay? So the more you can look at it from different angles the more maybe you can grasp it. So if I work on this level I’ll say it in a different way. Why do we make mistakes in or why are we unskillful and trying to avoid suffering or trying to dissolve suffering or trying to deal with suffering? There are two reasons for that.
One is that we cannot see the eye in the way it exists. So our view of reality is not real. The view of reality It’s not in accord with reality. So, when the suffering arises we can use this in order to counteract what is happening to us. When we feel pain, normally it feels like this pain is never going to go away.
Know our best friend leaves us that pain feels like never ever is this going to go away. But in reality everything is impermanent. So saying well everything is impermanent also this is impermanent and although it appears like it’s going to be there forever I know that feelings are impermanent so one day it will subside, one day it will go away. Any feeling that arises is impermanent. It has to go away.
The only way that it can stay is if we hold onto it. I’m hurt, I feel hurt so much, I feel hurt so much, I feel hurt so much. The more we repeat that the more concrete it becomes. The longer it will stay in our mind. So the more we can see the impermanence even when we do meditation if we can really see that feelings are impermanent and that they do come and go, you know.
We have the tendency when they come up and we don’t like it, we hold on to it. In an attempt to get rid of it, we hold on to it. So then saying I have to step back and allow them to be there and then they can go away. Sometimes we hold on to them because we cannot bear to feel it completely, you know, so we stop them somewhere halfway. But by doing that they can never really rise and they can also never subside.
Sometimes we hold onto it and there we start making our story. That also means that it cannot subside. We just create more of it. So stepping back and saying yes there is hurt, it really hurts and it’s okay that it hurts. It’s quite an art to allow feelings to arise and let them dissolve again.
But you can practice that in meditation, sitting with your feelings, seeing how they come and go. And you can do that in your body and you can do that with any feelings that arise in your mind. So you can train that before things happen. Right? It’s difficult when you start training when there’s really a lot of hurt in your life.
Then it’s not a good time to start training your mind. You train before that so that you have some tools when things happen. Impermanence is one thing that you meditate upon. Impermanence. And the other thing that you can meditate upon is how things exist.
So in the sense of the ‘I’ exists as it appears. And when you are in pain you can view it’s almost like you are the pain. The pain is so strong you are the pain. And then you can say, Am I the pain? Is that true?
It appears at a moment like that, but am I the pain? I’m not the pain. The pain is arising in my mind. I am not the pain. And that I that experiencing pain is that really so independent?
Is that really so permanent? Is that really so concrete? The I doesn’t exist like that. So you start reflecting on how the I does exist. So that’s in terms of the view and then you can think about suffering in terms of attitude.
So our normal attitude is that we blame and that we avoid. And then what you can do is to try to see benefits of the suffering and try to see how you can use that to benefit others. And there are many, many ways of looking. For instance if somebody, if you feel that somebody is causing your suffering, somebody does something that really hurts you, there are ways of looking at that other person. So you can for instance think, oh that other person, the only reason why they hurt me so much is because they are suffering themselves.
They are coming from a place of suffering and what they’re trying to do is they actually try to be happy and they do not have other tools than to harm others. That’s their attempt to become happy. And I know that they are not going to be happy from that. They actually create a cause for more suffering. But they haven’t heard about Buddhism, they haven’t heard about changing their attitude.
That is just the way human beings do that. So at the moment you can see that person’s suffering, you can see their pain, I think compassion will arise naturally in your mind. If you keep that person, if you see that person as the one who’s hurting you, anger arises. If you can see that same person as somebody who’s trying to get rid of their pain compassion arises. True?
So it depends where your focus is. If you’re going to feel compassion or if you’re going to feel suffering. Or where you’re to feel compassion or where you’re going to feel anger. True? Normally when we feel hurt our self obsessed mind comes up and we’re only worried about me.
That’s our tendency. So to change that into concern for the other person that takes training. That doesn’t come from today to tomorrow. But not being concerned with yourself but really seeing where the other person is coming from is a technique to avoid your own suffering in a skillful way. You’re not suppressing anything, you’re not sitting with stuff that you can’t deal with, it’s just not that it can’t arise in the mind.
The moment somebody hurts me and I think I have this feeling you are my enemy. You’re somebody who is hurting me. The moment I can see that you’re a person. So the moment I can see you as my enemy I want to hurt you. I want to harm you.
At least I want to get rid of you. I want to not be where you are. The moment I can see you as somebody who is suffering and trying to get rid of that suffering I can feel compassion. The moment compassion arises in my mind I want to help you to be free of suffering. I want you to be free of suffering.
When you harm me and I can only feel my harm, I want to harm you back. I want you to suffer at least as much as I suffer. The moment I can see your suffering, I want you to be free of that suffering. Completely opposite attitude. We have a choice there.
Compassion and anger towards the same person cannot arise in the mind at the same time. It’s not possible. If I want you to be happy, I cannot at the same time think, but I want you to suffer. Not possible, you know. So I have a choice.
If I’m focus on myself which will cause me to think I want you to suffer or if I’m going to focus on you and I’m going to think I want to help you to be free of suffering. That’s my choice. We are so used to being self obsessed, you know, that it doesn’t — in the beginning it’s not like a choice in the sense like oh I have two things on the shelf I can just choose. That self obsessed mind is going to tell you, you have to listen to me. That’s not just going to let you do this, you know.
It takes time and it takes a lot of thinking and a lot of reasoning how to change that around. And maybe we can do after a break a meditation on how we can start looking in a different way at others from which we receive help and harm and to see that know why people become friends and why people become enemies it’s basically on how they make us feel. And if they do today this and tomorrow that you know our mind changes very very quickly. What was today our friend is tomorrow our enemy. And by seeing that that so easily can change we might not believe so strongly in our own beliefs that you are my enemy.
You are my friend. These are changeable things. Here? I’m not going too quick. No?
So are there any questions so far? This is what we do with the suffering. We can have a look at what we do with the happiness. Is that clear? Or clear enough?
Most likely when I wipe it out you think, What was that? I can’t remember. Or when you walk away I can’t remember. You have to do this again and again and again because our mind is so trained in going one direction that even when you hear this Oh yeah, this is so logic. And then it’s gone and you think you can’t even bring your mind there sometimes.
I hope you can though, but Yes. That’s very honest of you. No. If you have the chance to go, you go. I’m sweating a lot. No, I shouldn’t quit my job this week.
But we not always have the chance to go. So then we are in a situation that this is gonna arise. And if I’m gonna avoid that and I’m gonna upset myself every day that I have to go to my work, you know, then I’m gonna suffer a lot. So then maybe there are other things that you can apply in order to make your suffering less as long as you have to stay with that person. Yeah?
If your husband is doing something that you don’t like, he has this one thing that he does every morning when he wakes up and it drives you mad and you’re focus on that, you know? Oh, I’m sure he’s almost going wake up. I can see it. I can hear it. I’m sure he’s going to do that.
And you’re already winding yourself up. You’re going through hell, you know. But if you find a way to see that there nothing wrong with that or maybe it’s even going to help you in some ways, you know, then you don’t have that reaction. Then you feel more happy. Right?
It’s about you that you have a choice to create your own happiness. It’s changing the mindset from a negative into a positive all the time. Yeah. Because we just tend to always dwell on the negative. Yeah.
Just turn it into a positive. Yeah. And look it from another angle. I’ve tried that this week, it’s amazing how things just turn around. Is that right?
Yeah. It’s hard to do. It takes a lot of self talk or whatever, but it does work. And the self talk will get easier, you know, the more you do it, it will get easier. Yeah.
That’s good. Yeah. At a certain point you can’t even understand why you ever dwell on the negative. No. It’s like, why don’t we ever do that?
It’s so strange how we do that. Is. Yeah. It takes a lot of energy, but it does work. It makes it easier.
I’m still struggling a little bit with, like you said, you’re not a doormat. How are the practical ways of dealing with, like if someone’s blaming you for something that clearly is not your fault but what do you just go okay do you just take the blame or do you how do you effectively deal with things like that? I don’t think I can give them one answer. Sometimes you can take if you it depends on the wisdom that you have developed. If you for instance are a person that has suffered from a lot of abuse, right, and then somebody is abusing you and I tell you just take the blame that will trigger your whole past experiences you know.
So maybe not the right timing to do that. So depending on your own experiences in life you know there are ways that you move through that and that you train your mind. You want to strive to a place that develop your mind in a way that you can take the blame eventually and that it doesn’t matter anything. You do it from wisdom and you do it from a place of compassion. If you don’t have the wisdom and compassion yet it can be very damaging.
But it’s okay to maybe gently explain to the other person. If you haven’t done anything wrong you say: I’m sorry that I come across like that. And that’s okay? Yes, please. Yes.
Keep on using common sense. You know? And, yeah, just use common sense. You don’t have to accept anything like that. But what you’re not going to do is you’re not going to fight.
You’re not going to try to harm that person. That is our normal. You try not to blame that person because that is all going to come back to you one day. Because it’s going to harm you, yeah? Because you harm by getting angry at someone else and you harm them but it also harms yourself.
You harm yourself. Most of the time it just makes you feel worse even though you feel beaten. It just makes you feel worse. Does. Anger is not a nice place to be with.
The blame is story. The blame is their story, yeah. If you can hear their story without getting involved, you know, and you can say: Wow, if you feel it like that I’m really sorry that you feel it like that, that I come across like that. I never meant it to be like that, you know. But if we take it personally then it’s very difficult not to get into the blame fight.
But it’s, you know, it’s not something that you do right away. And I think with Buddhism you learn something and you think about it and you sit with it and you apply whatever you can and all the rest you just are who you are. Right? Don’t try to become perfect because we can’t. Don’t try to Do everything all at once.
No absolutely not, no. Some people, I’ve met some Buddhists you know and they would say, How are you today? And they say, Oh I have such a pain in my back. And I said, fantastic. I’m like, I don’t wanna hear that, you know, I wanna have some compassion.
And I said, no, no, it’s fantastic. You purify your karma. And I, you know, that’s not how we try to become. Right? You can’t so you try to become more compassionate.
You try to become more wise. That’s what you try. If your reactions are different than that you might have not understood exactly what Buddhism means. So if we look at when we experience happiness or pleasure, maybe I should say pleasure, and we can do this very quickly. What do normally do?
We react with, can you remember? Grasping. And what’s the result of that? Immediate and in the long term. So how can we change that?
Don’t get attached to pleasure. How do you do that? It’s not going to last. Yeah, see the impermanence. It’s like the saying enjoy it won’t last.
Impermanence of pleasure. So enjoy the pleasure but see that it won’t last. Just seeing that can be enough not to grasp. What else, what can we do? Our pleasure or our happiness.
For instance if I see an ice cream and I think, Oh wow, I would really like to have But I know that when I eat the dairy I actually going to get sick. So the immediate impulse is like I want to have it. But then I have to think: Oh no, but when I take it I actually going to suffer from that. So I’m not going to take it. Which is like I can’t get a temporary happiness but I know that I will be I feel better during the day when I can let go of this temporary pleasure.
True? That’s difficult for us isn’t it? I want it now and I want everything. And saying: know what I’m not going to buy these new curtains because when I buy them I will be constantly anxious because I have this big debt and I don’t know how to pay it off and you know what I’m just going to leave them there and at least my mind is going to be calm from not having such a big debt. So I postpone a certain happiness or I postpone the immediate pleasure or I do not grasp for immediate pleasure.
And I think about the long term. So how do I feel tomorrow when I do this right now? Even thinking like that. For instance, you know. Maybe you have to stop after one glass and don’t take that second one.
It’s true. So that’s what we can do with the happiness and pleasure. I’m not sure if you want to know this. If you fall in love with somebody, you fall in love with somebody this of course comes. So what Buddhism then does is starts to think about the body, you know, and how the body what you’re actually in love with, you know.
They say, It looks so nice in this package. But what if we take off that outer layer of skin? What do you see? Or what if you start thinking about what actually goes on inside us? You know, you’re kissing but what are you actually kissing?
If you really start thinking about it a lot of pleasure has already gone. So that’s the antidote. Oh, and that’s going to come back now. So maybe we can have a quick cup of tea, and then we have some some people ask me to talk about where people ask to talk about what we can do at Buddha House. I can do the meditation with you on what we call equanimity to see our reactions to friend and enemy that actually causes a lot of suffering we have that, and how you can change that.
Is that alright? We look forward to suffering. As long as there is suffering there is displeasure, right? Never like displeasure is suffering. Displeasure we never like that in the sense of but by seeing the benefits the dislike reaction becomes less.
So you cannot say: I like suffering because as soon as you like it it’s not suffering anymore. True? So as long as there is suffering there is a dislike and you don’t have to change that. But at the moment you can see the benefits, the dislike will become less. Don’t say I love pain, you know.
Some people do that but that’s not what it is about to change that. Okay, have a quick cup of tea.