Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 118-minute teaching, Venerable Jamyang opens with a student’s real struggle: heartache and the difficulty of sitting with pain during medication withdrawal. She unpacks healing as a harmony between mind and body—a contentment deeper than pleasure or excitement. She then explores how our senses systematically deceive us, trapping us in false images of permanence while reality constantly changes. She traces illness to karma and delusions, illustrating with stories of nuns whose conditions demonstrated different karmic patterns. She explains that the mind exists from beginningless time and that each action plants seeds that ripen unpredictably as future consequences. By taking responsibility for our own mind rather than blaming external circumstances, we gain genuine power to heal. Compassion, she emphasizes, is the deepest healing force available.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2006 01 27 mind healing 2-1.mp3
UUID: 7cd5c43f-4113-4bdc-a195-3301cc7c203d
Teacher: Ven Jamyang
Collection: Jamyang Mind Healing (Ven Jamyang)
Date: 2006-01-27
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 118.1 minutes
Words: ~11,509
Is it working? Is it working? Yes. Can you hear me talking actually through it? Okay.
Just for the recording. Nothing else? So you did a breathing meditation? Thank you. Later, I thought, oh, you could have done the impermanence, but Oh.
That’s alright. We’ll do that. Hello? Hi. Come in.
How’s everybody going? Good. Heartache. Heartache? You finished your detoxing?
Are you still doing that? It’s very hard for the mind to sit with pain, isn’t it? Okay. Because automatically, you wanna get away from it all the time. So you have this constant it’s like a constant agitation that you get in the mind.
The emotional stuff too, though. Well, it triggers the emotional stuff. It’s like you can never ever can you relax? I can’t cry. I can’t sleep.
I I was having attacks or breathing everything. Uh-huh. So you stopped your medication? Yeah. So I stopped that.
And then I’m on the withdrawal meds. Mhmm. And then you’re off everything. Hi. Come in.
And you don’t wanna hear me? You’re so sick of me. But I actually your colds and your Tantric stuff and stuff like that. I can try. This one You yeah.
It’s this. These, isn’t Yeah. Yeah. This these. Yeah.
Which ones? No. These ones. Yeah. Office employer.
You check. You have to check. You have to check. I I turned it off, but you have to check. Pushed that in.
But it was pushed in when when you came in, so I turned it off. It’s out. But you checked. You use that one, you could still on the That works. Yeah.
That Okay. How are you, Elena? Good. Good week? Good.
Good. How are you? Good. You still hear me? I don’t know.
I’ve tried that last week, and I know that it didn’t work, and I don’t know how to make it work. You just have to put in your earplugs or go home. I don’t need it. I need I need a microphone. She’s very kind.
Sorry. You alright? Not sure about that one. Not sure. Mhmm.
The one is that’s why you’re here. Yeah. It’s emotional. Uh-huh. Uh-huh.
If I was to tell you the process, you have to promise me that you’re not gonna be embarrassed. So, I say, you have to talk to me before you come in. But you’re alright. I know you. And and also after after this is the third time.
After four times, I wanna say no. No one knew people coming in because it’s very difficult to keep on connecting with new people while you are in the process. Yeah. So you know that Rachel is away for a couple weeks? Yeah.
Yeah. We’re taping for her. Yes. And Judy rang up that something oh, she had to do take care of her granddaughter and Jane something happened for her. So they will be back.
Yeah. Not many today. No. But that’s alright. We can go very deep where you guys want to go.
So I’ll go very short about what we have been doing so far. So this is the third class. And in the first week, we have been talking about what is what is healing? What do we mean when we talk about that we would like to heal? And that healing is much more than just becoming physically okay or just becoming happy.
It’s it’s more like finding place in your mind where you feel that your mind and your body are in harmony, are in balance, are content. And you can call that happiness. So when I talk to happiness in the relationship to health, I’m not meaning excite excitement. I’m not meaning pleasure. What I’m meaning is that happiness that we feel that that happiness is almost a too happy word for that.
It’s it’s well, it’s it has the aspect of tranquility, but there can be a lot of joy in that too. There can be if I feel that I say I am really happy, but it’s not a happy of I’m so happy because I got this, you know, it’s it’s just con yeah. For me, there’s a lot of contentment or or just joy out of nothing, you know, just happy because of nothing. It is peaceful, that’s also an aspect of it. So that happiness is, I think happiness is not really covering the load of what that is, but I find it difficult to find another word that describes all of that.
But if we agree that if we talk in relationship to health about happiness, that that is what we mean with that, you know, then I’ll just leave it with happiness. So, normally, what we do is we all have this striving that we would like to be happy. Every living being wants to be happy. There are different reasons for that. One is that we all have feelings, and somehow when we have pleasurable feelings, we crave for that.
We like to have more. We feel like, oh, yeah. This is this this is what I want. And if we have negative feelings or unhappy feelings or dissatisfaction, then we try to get away from it. We try to find a place in the mind where we are happy.
Buddhism also says because we have all this striving for happiness that must mean that we have the potential to be perfectly happy. If that potential wouldn’t be there, it would be really strange that we ascension beings would all have that tendency to do that. That must come from somewhere. That must somehow relate to our true nature that we are doing that. You know, so striving for happiness is trying to connect with that true nature or with that Buddha potential.
Or so we never stop doing that because it’s like that is what’s gonna show us the way. Right? Buddhism is not about stopping wanting to be being happy with your suffering. You know? It’s not like that.
We are really trying to become happy. But we might redefine the happiness or we have to find other tools that is gonna bring us happiness. Because so far, if you look at how we look for happiness, we mainly want a pleasure we wanna satisfy our sense organs. We’re looking for sensory pleasures, or we’re looking for pleasure that we find that are very much depending on external conditions. Whatever we have in the terms of wealth or friends or work or happiness comes from there.
If something shifts, something says something unkind, if something doesn’t work out the way we would like to have it, unhappiness is in our mind and we do not know what to do with that. We try to distract ourselves, we go shopping, we take painkillers, we do whatever in order to get that happy feeling back. And although we know that that is not working, somehow, you know, temporary it works. And also, I think we don’t have any other tools to do it, so it’s the only thing that we know. So we keep on doing it even if we know it’s not exactly giving us what we want.
So if we look into happiness, then we have to say, first of all, happiness that we, in terms of health, is not related to the sense organs, not at all. In order to really look the place where we’re experience that happiness, we actually have to withdraw from the sense organs. It’s better if we’re not so caught up in all that excitement that can arise in the mind. It’s better if we have some space, if we have some clarity, if we have some stillness, you know, to find that quality of happiness that we or well-being that we would like to have. The happiness that we are looking for is also not dependent upon external conditions.
Being dependent upon external conditions for how we feel makes that we are very vulnerable because external conditions are changing all the time. And we never know what is gonna happen. We never know if we’re gonna get what we want. We never know when we’re gonna get something that we do not want. It’s like we never know.
So looking for happiness inside us, which is not dependent upon the sensory organs, which depends it’s not dependent upon who we meet, what people say to us, our relationships, but depends upon how we what kind of qualities we can generate in our mind, how we think about ourselves in the world, how we act in that world, how we relate to others, a lot of that can give us happiness, but also can be because of suffering. If we know that we’re gonna look for the happiness there, we can stop a whole range of things that we are trying to do every day, you know, we can stop focusing on that and we can start looking at where we can really find it. Because no matter we all know that, isn’t it? No matter you. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be here.
So why why can we not find happiness? Why happiness? Why why do we feel not healthy? Why do we not feel happy? Why is it that we feel somehow disconnected over that we feel that something don’t go completely right?
Or Buddhism says that two things where we can go in the wrong. One is on the level of the view or in how we see reality, how we perceive reality. And the next one is our own attitude, how we from what kind of attitude our actions are performed, what our intention is behind our actions. To say it really rude, Buddhism says we all have blinkers on and we are very selfish. If we take off the blinkers and we give our selfishness away, we will be perfectly happy.
But that’s easier said than done. That’s just a shortcut. It’s maybe good to remember. You know? That’s that because that is what we constantly talk about.
How do we perceive things, and why is that not in accord with reality? Why and what happens when we see things that are not in in accord with reality? We believe very strongly that this is the only thing that exists. You know? We say, if I cannot see it, it doesn’t exist.
If it’s not in my world, it doesn’t exist for us. We might think, yeah, it can exist, but, you know, it’s not part of my world. So we don’t care about it. We don’t even think about it. We cannot think about how they can reach our own world.
If we look into how our sense organs work, they they don’t really tell us how reality works. You know, they actually cheat cheat on us. They they’re they’re very deceptive. If we look at how eyes work and the information that we get through our eyes, it’s completely deceptive. It’s not valid.
It’s not in accord with reality. So we’re sitting the whole day in this body with our eyes open, and the information that we get is not accurate, not in accord with reality. It’s very difficult than to be happy, you know. So if we want to train our mind, we have to tell ourselves constantly things are are not the way they appear to me. My eyes are actually deceiving me.
My eyes, which are my true, true, my very loyal friends who take care of me, who protect, they’re not telling the truth. It’s challenging if we have to do that. Challenging if we have to do that. Is that do I say something strange? Have I said that my eyes are not telling the truth?
Not strange. Not strange? You know that already? Yes. Where is it not telling the truth?
Sorry? Where is it not telling the truth? In our mind. I would say that Yes. Someone else would say that say the same thing in a different way.
Mhmm. Yes. That’s true. So we have a deception and a deception in that way. If we all look at a certain thing, we all see something different.
We all have the same experience, but we’re different. Yes. Yes. Yes. And you can all agree that Jamyang is sitting here, but you might see all a different aspect of me.
Yep. And you have different feelings coming arising from that. That’s one thing how how how we So what I’m seeing, I’m seeing through human eyes, not through other things that they’ve got. Yes. And that spectrum is only this big.
So we don’t know what is outside here. But somehow we believe that if we can’t see, that doesn’t exist, which is not necessarily true, which is definitely not true. Yes. You get a different perspective. Yes.
Yeah. Well, the ants, you know, that’s what they say. It’s like any objects, the ants do not perceive a table as being a table. Yeah. And I thought that might be the same object, then still they have a completely different perception of that.
And then another way where we this where our eyes are deceiving us is that we our eyes make things very permanent, very, very concrete, very solid. Also, yeah, that’s our eyes. We do not see the impermanence with our eyes. We can think about the impermanence if we see things over time, you know, we see how somebody looks when they’re very young and we see how somebody looks when they’re old and we maybe even see some growing, some people growing older. We can see that but we cannot somehow our eyes tell us when we see you know, if I see my mom after three years, think, oh my gosh.
Yeah. You’ve been you know? Where did you get so old? Where did that happen? I missed Somehow in our minds, we get stuck with a permanent image.
Images that we have from things are permanent in our mind. They do not change. Right? So when I see somebody, I have an image from that person in my mind and that person will never change in my mind. They do not grow older.
So when I see somebody after some time that doesn’t fit with my image anymore and I think, oh my god. What happened to you? Right? So then I get a shock all the time because things are changing all the time. But I can’t remember and I can’t see it and my my mind is doing nothing to keep up with that.
Another thing is that things are impermanent on a subtle level, you know, things are changing all the time. What actually exists is many, many, many molecules that somehow some stick a little bit better together than others. Or some maybe, you do something different when the light touches it, so they appear in a different way. But if you really look at how objects exist, it’s mainly space. And around that, there are lots of little particles that actually also only exist out of space that are constantly moving, and they give us this idea about things.
So you didn’t didn’t see them at all? Didn’t see them at all. So what will what would happen if you walk there? If you walk there. Yeah.
I mean, there are stones, and then with certain light, you don’t see them at all. So, normally, you would just walk them walk there. What if you would walk or touch them? Oh, like they were I’m talking about a display screen with, like, slippers That’s very strange because where we where we don’t see anything, we just we think it’s not there, isn’t it? And that’s how we behave.
And we never heard anybody who said, oh, I found something there that I can’t see, but there is something there. I feel it. It’s it’s strange, isn’t dust mites, I think. You know, whenever that’s Yeah. The light comes through and there’s this entire Uh-huh.
Be aware of that. And we breathe that in and put it in the lungs. And everything is all the time breaking down, isn’t it? That was a very, very wise conclusion. Melo thought it was very, very pessimist.
Yes. And it was very realistic, actually. But many times when people say something that is in in accord with reality, you know, then then it’s it is said, oh, you’re so pessimistic. Oh, when when you talk about death or when you talk about suffering or when you talk about it’s like, oh, no. Don’t talk about that.
You know? It’s like that’s just part of life. Just keep on focusing on the on the good things. Don’t think about the bad things. In my family, when my son died, we only spoke of it, like, barely, and then only for two days, and then it was not to ever be able to come again.
We can’t handle that part, isn’t it? And if we will be able to handle that part, there is actually it’s very freeing and so much life in there, isn’t it? It’s it’s and we just bury it and ignore it and so so many things that we don’t see. I have to write them down in order because it’s quite fascinating if you start thinking about it. It’s like, what do we know about the world?
If this is just our eyes, you know, let’s go to the other senses and see what what what is true in there. And and and I’ve never really thought about that. I thought the eyes is enough to really see how they see us. There is a different presence. Meaning.
Yeah. Yeah. From my. Yeah. Yeah.
If you would be there, a very young mother, they would praise you because you were so ripe. You know? And here, you’re a younger mother, and then they say, oh, now we’re gonna exclude you because yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
It’s all about whatever the. Yeah. Yeah. So we can create anywhere we can create this kind of I was gonna say problems or obstacles or beliefs or How do you know they’re not right? Well, that’s a big challenge.
That is that is that is a development of wisdom. It’s it’s and right and wrong in an absolute sense, I think that doesn’t really exist. And even correct and and for instance think you would have to use logic. If you’re going to think that spirits cannot enter because you have the louvres closed Buddhism says that spirits they have such a subtle body they can go anywhere where they like. We know there are gaps in the glass louvres anyway.
Also that, you know, they can come in there. Yes, but you’re talking about when can we see something that is real and which is not real, you know. So you have to listen to what makes sense for me and if you decide that you need louvres in order to keep the spirits out, you know, then what would happen to you if you go to a place where there are no louvers? You have a problem. You can’t stay there because, you know, you can create huge problems and then you can wonder is life really like that with so many problems?
Maybe not. You know? If spirits are spirits outside your house and not inside your house? Why is that? You know?
You left a door open just they might have come in. We don’t know. We can check. Oh, they only come. Why is that?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But if you start thinking logically, how Buddhism explains the world is all based on logic. There are reasons why they say this and not this. So these reasons are not just coming out of the blue. Oh you have to close the louvers because the spirits are only there at night.
They would say where is it written that spirits only come at night? Why is that? They would have a very logical reason and if you have beliefs where there’s no logical reason, many times we have beliefs in the logical reason we don’t know anymore, you know, but it doesn’t mean it’s not valid. But you yeah. We have to look for it.
We have to look for it. I don’t know. If you talk what is true and what is not true, I would say if it brings you benefit, benefit on the long term to make life easier, I would tend to think that’s more true than something that makes your life more difficult. I I I don’t disagree with you. No.
No. Oh, okay. I I was just I don’t share the view. Yeah. But if you think about Yes.
Yeah. Yeah. But I just heard your question. How do I know what is true and what is not? You mentioned that somewhere, and that’s why I said when something is of benefit to you in the longer term, it might be more likely to be true.
And when something causes problems, it’s more likely that it’s not true. But sit with that. So because we cannot perceive well, first of all, we talked about subtle impermanence in sense of the body is all things that exist are have subtle impermanence, the body has feel that, but also the mind has subtle impermanence. The mind changes all the time. And because we store our memories in permanent pictures, there is constantly attention because the mind, the bodies and the mind are all the time changing and we store it in permanent ideas, you know, so even how we think about ourselves is somehow a permanent picture.
And if we want change deep ingrained thoughts that we have about ourselves it’s very difficult because although we might know they don’t match with reality, you know, we have stored them so deep in our mind that we can’t even we know there must be somewhere because we’re acting in that way, but to redefine them and change them right there can be very, very difficult. So we talked also about health and our health is related to the elements and how the elements in the body are in balance. And we talked about a specific relationship that exists between the wind element and the mind. And the wind and the mind, they say they ride together. The mind rides on top of the wind.
So, time when the wind energy moves in our body that can cause a movement in our mind. When does that wind energy move or functions? It functions every time when something moves. So when we’re when when electrical impulses go through our nervous system, that’s like a movement. If we are very happy, that’s a very strong reaction that goes through our nervous system.
When the blood runs through our body, when we have eaten and we need to digest our food, when we go to the toilet to eliminate the food. All these things have to do with movement. That means that our body and our body is constantly changing and the mind constantly has to adjust to that to find its balance, to stay in balance. If we get too much movement in a certain way, for instance, even when it’s very windy outside or when we have a lot of stress in our life. Stress is like a movement.
It’s like the the the nerve system just gets more and more stimulated or maybe the blood gets pumped through the veins much stronger, or the heartbeat is higher, that will affect the mind, that will somehow wake up the mind first and then starts to agitate the mind and we all know that if we have been under stress for a long time we get agitated, we get angry, even those that we love just comes out because, you know, just one snap has to happen and we are straight away in the emotion. So a big thing that has to do with health is that wind element being out of balance. From that perspective, we can do a lot to bring balance back into our life if we help the wind element to restore. For that, we didn’t really talk about that. Maybe I’ll talk about that one day.
What kind of things that you can do So yeah. It has a lot to do with discipline every time doing the same. But but I’ll I’ll I’ll I’ll I’ll I’ll give you a more complete picture about that. So that’s what we care how we can take care of ourselves with the diet, with how we, you know, go to bed, how we get up, what we do during the day. We can do a lot there to help that wind element to restore.
If we can do that, that will naturally have an effect on the mind and the mind will calm down. Right? So, if we are in a stressful environment mentally, then we can still do a lot on a physical level in order for it not to that we don’t get so much out of control. So I will mention that one time, but won’t go into too much because I’m not an expert, and I also want to stay with the mind a little bit. So, just mentioned that if we look at where our problems come from, that’s because we have blinkers on and because we’re so selfish.
Another way Buddhism says that is that all problems, all sickness, all health related issues, even our birth and our death, they all come from karma and delusions. Do we have delusions? Because we do not know how reality exists. Because we have this self-cherishing attitude. That causes illusions to arise in the mind.
They disturb the mind and they disturb the body. If certain emotions are long time in, for instance, you are born in a situation where you never get what you want. I was born with many brothers and sisters and mom would always vote, you know, who wants that? And I always wanted to do something different. So, I’m growing up but I never get what I want because we always do what my brothers and sisters want.
It’s very frustrating and that builds up in time, know, and then the delusions get triggered all the time. It’s a hard one. Yes. Yes. And if I would say something, mom would say, you should be the wisest one.
I was never allowed to be the emotional one. No. Because you were the oldest? I don’t know. No.
I was the third. I wasn’t. So when my brothers would beat me up, and I would I would bear it for a long time and then I would and then she would say, don’t hit back. You’re the wisest one. Stop doing that.
So I don’t know why she said that. I don’t know. It’s flattering. It’s flattering. Maybe it’s that.
And maybe my pride accepted that and, you know, and then I suppressed all that I got. I don’t know how it works. But I do know that, you know, if you’re all the time in the same kind of emotion it builds up, it becomes bigger and bigger and bigger. And at a certain time it might look like this is just how the world is. And because you believe that that is how the world is, you relate in the world and the world keeps on bringing you the same kind of stuff.
Disturbing emotions. Another, it can make you sick, you know, if that is the same emotion happens again and again. And last time we talked a little bit about how anger is related to the liver and and the eyes and how fear is related to the kidneys. And what did we have for the attachment? Was that the spleen?
Oh, no. The intestines. Yeah. The gut. Yeah.
Yeah. I think it’s more subtle than that, but you can you can bring back your emotions to your body and see how what your sensitive spots are. And and if you have a sensitive spot already, you know, then you only need a little bit of these disturbing emotions to inflame your physical situation. Another way how you can get sick is or lose our health is because of karma. So karma and delusion and karma and disturbing emotions are the two main causes for sickness or for lack of health or but also for health.
karma means that any action that we are doing in the present moment has a direct effect on our environment, on ourselves, but also it will leave an imprint in our mind which will ripen in the future into a similar effect. If we have created causes to get a very sincere illness in this life, for instance, cancer, and it’s a very strong karma, you will get the cancer in a way that no matter what you try, cannot heal or, you will not find the doctor that can help you, or you will not be in time to get your medical help. It will hit you in a way that you no matter what you’re gonna try, you just cannot get around it. You know, then it’s very different karma. It’s like you have no choice.
Call that fixed karma, is that right? Fixed? I’ve never heard that. Oh. Yes.
But I only accept that when I really see somebody dying, not before that. I’ve heard somebody came once to me and said, I have this headache and she had it many, many times and terrible and it seemed that nothing could help. And I had a feeling that I knew what was going on. And somebody had told her this is fixed karma. You won’t be able to shift it.
And I started working with her, and I felt like we were going somewhere. And she suddenly decided that was fixed karma. And, you know, And come. You yeah. Yeah.
So I’m I’m always very you know, when there is somebody with a problem, I always in my mind, I will never go there and thinking this is fixed. But sometimes you see things happening and then afterwards you think, you know Once I met a nun in Nepal ten years ago and she was only thirty two and she had a little bit of a, you know, one leg was shorter than the other. She had some problems but I wasn’t really aware what was happening and she said: Oh, I have this pain in my shoulder and can you have a look and give me a massage? And I had this feeling, I’m not sure. And I’ve never ever as a physio had that, that I thought I’m not sure.
So I thought that’s strange that I have this. And she said, What you? What is your doubt? And I said, You know, know, if you have cancer, we might spread it. And she said, oh, do you think it is cancer?
And I said, I have no idea. You have to go to a doctor and ask for a diagnosis. And I said, what we can do is, like, if you want treatment, we’ll see if it works. You know, if it is really cancer, I will not be able to improve your situation. But if it’s not done so and after one message, improved and another message and improved and and I said, I still am not happy.
I want you to go to a doctor in Nepal, Kathmandu, Kathmandu, a nun. She she went to the hospital. She had to sit a whole day in the bus. Went to a hospital, and in the hospital, they made X rays. And I said to her, you have syphilis.
She had been a nun for twelve years. And what else did she have? Something else which was completely ridiculous. And she said, but I have a medical condition from when I was a child and, you know, I want you, you know, can it be cancer? And she said, no, no, no, no, it’s not like that.
You have syphilis and something else horrible. So she came back and she because she has been away for two weeks, she was in much more pain when she came back, and we started again. And her health went back, back, back. And I said, I’m not happy. I’m not happy.
You should go to a doctor. Oh, no. No. No. I have to work for Lama Zopa.
She have to do this. I have to do this. Please go and check your health. She refused to do that for weeks. Eventually, she had to sit up breathing, and she keep kept on calling me, kept give you a massage.
And I said, I I’m not gonna I want you to go to the doctor now. And I was late at night. She arrived at the doctor. The doctor was drunk. The best Tibetan doctor in town was drunk.
And he said, oh, you have all this fluid in your lungs. You know? So I give her medicine. And I think the next morning she start to realize how serious this was. Then she had to get a flight, then she needed to get a bus to the airport, then she before she was away, you know, leave the country, it was another week later.
And they had to carry her out of the plane. She you know? And the cancer was so severe that I think she reacted positively on the on the chemo the first time just as on the massage, but then straight away, it came back in. And that was like obstacle after obstacle after obstacle after obstacle, you know. It’s like, it’s very strange.
And it was like, was nothing to save. There was nothing to and every attempt that you made just didn’t work out somehow, you know. Then I would say that’s definite karma. And I almost had a feeling that Lama Zopa put her in that position because after she was died, had died, I thought, now she’s very happy, you know. I think she was in a very nice place.
And I don’t know. One time, another nun I’ll tell you the two extreme stories that I know. Another nun, she Lama Zopa said suddenly to her, you have life obstacles. You have to do some practice. And then what he does is he gives you the practice to release animals and to do White Tārā practice and to do other kinds of practice that are related to generating better health.
And she started doing that and the centre in Singapore released lots and lots of animals for her and she still had to do a lot of the practice that Lama Zopa had given her. But one day, and she was in Dharamsala, she got pain in the stomach and she couldn’t get up and she was laying in her bed and for whatever reason her friend thought that day about her, and then she thought I have to go and check on her. So she went to see her, and she said, oh, I’m really sick and I can’t do this. Alright. We’re going to the hospital right now.
So they went to Dharmasala Hospital, which is not much. There was a surgeon from Delhi who is the best surgeon you can imagine, and he looked at her and he said, I do not know what you have, but I’m gonna cut you open right now. So they, you know, they did whatever was needed. He cut her open and a cyst burst open at exactly the same time. And, you know, if he had been ten seconds later, it would have been internally, you know, and she might have died from that.
So she had done exactly enough mantras. You know, she had just the merit to make it. So when is it definite? You know, it’s like, you never know till it’s time. So, never lose hope no matter how bad your condition is, you know.
At the same time, prepare. Prepare. And the karma’s always changing. Yes. Yes.
I think there’s this thing in the west or whatever the west is, but there’s something about I remember hearing a man a long time ago ago saying he happened to be a Catholic priest, but I think he was raised as a Hindu. He said, when the eye is unobstructed, the result is sight. Uh-huh. In other words, that health is it is about presence, but it’s about removal of obstruction. Yes.
Whereas I had come out of the thing about health is about what you put on your body or in your body or what you have to do. And that’s yeah. Like, an addition. And and maybe that’s true. Maybe there are things that you have to do that that aren’t additions, but that are ways of living.
But often it’s about health is about subtraction. So I feel like maybe less sugar. You know? Maybe maybe, you know, like, maybe less television. Like like, a lot of health for me has been about subtraction.
It’s been about removing Mhmm. Removing of food. You know? And that’s the removal of food. I think so.
You know? Like, is food So are you saying that you are doing that or are you saying that that is a good way of getting your health or are you saying I’m saying that that’s what I do and had to learn to do that because I was a hundred and twenty kilos two years ago. You’re kidding. No. But Uh-huh.
You didn’t give yourself the right nourishment. But if we talk about that health is related to karma and delusions or determined by karma and illusions, you know, if you see how the whole society works and how we are how we are we’re making an art out of generating delusions almost. Isn’t it? It’s it’s like and how can we do that as beautiful as possible? But it is all about delusions, what we are creating more and more and more and more.
So health is very in danger in this age. And although many people get older than a long time ago, like fifty years ago, at the same time, I think if you’re going to look at how old people are going to be which are now young, you know, we might not make it that long. These These people might actually be so healthy because the circumstances when they were born were much healthier. You know, we don’t know. We have to see what’s gonna happen with that.
But to be healthy in this age is very, very difficult because everything which is bad for us, you know, they’re putting the stuff in the food so that you generate more attachment, you know. Like we food is already so related to attachment, but then they use that attachment for you to eat more from their stuff. It’s sick, it’s sick making. And food already makes us sick, you know. Every time that we eat is a burden for the body.
Even if we eat healthy food, it’s like digestion is difficult for the body. One of my teachers once said that your body is as healthy as you enter the stains. So, the less that you put in it, the healthier it was, I’m not a really good example, but the healthier your body is going to be, the longer it will last, you know. With all the techniques that we have it’s very difficult. And then we have all the other distractions that we keep on, you know, our whole life is built around excitement.
How can I excite myself with food? It needs good color, needs good taste, it needs so it needs sugar and it needs weed and it needs all it’s very difficult to get away from it, isn’t it? Because when we do get away everything becomes so boring and so nothing. And you talk to friends and what are you doing? And you have nothing.
It’s like, it’s almost like your life is becoming flat and or and or you become a complete alien from the rest of the world when you’re gonna do that. Yes. Why are not being part of that? Yeah. But, yes, but you have to be pretty strong in knowing what you’re doing.
You know? Turning off the telly, it’s not an easy thing to do. Saying no to beautiful looking food is not an easy thing to do. Sorry? Not eating bread is not easy, especially when you’re from Holland.
I know. Yes. You’re definitely gonna be part of that whole degeneration. Make because it makes me much better in the world. Or If you feel that you eat so that you become a better person, you are more aware you are it’s easier to keep your diet than when you Yeah.
Is that what you’re saying? No. I’m saying that there’s a motivation that comes out of what is it? And Venerable Robina, she would say, it doesn’t really matter what you eat as long as you do it with a good motivation. Yeah.
So we she she met somebody who’s who starves herself to death sometimes. And she said: That’s fine, honey, as long as you do it with a good motivation. Yes. Yes. Yes.
And she said as long as your motivation is to benefit others, you do whatever you like, you know, you feel like. And I thought that was so profound, you know, because that completely disempowered the whole food thing in that instance. Yes. Yes. What are you doing?
On on your side. Yeah. Because normally, oh, no. You we we we do what you want so that you stay alive. And she said, I don’t care what you’re doing as long as you do it with a good motivation.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because that is how it’s many times used, isn’t it?
It’s Mexican chocolate. It’s what what is it? What is it? We did something with that. Alright.
Food is a big one for you too or not so? It would be great. I mean, I I was. Intolerant? Yeah.
But for me, that’s although my dog although I don’t eat a huge range of things, you know, but they’re still. Uh-huh. But now I’m quite relaxed. Good. Good.
What issues? It’s all in the mind? I’m still going through what we talked about before. Did we talk about where consciousness comes from? We touched on that.
We started on that. We talked about what the mind is, that the mind is that which is clear and knowing, that the mind, the clarity refers to the spacious aspect of the mind. The mind is like space, clear. You can’t see it, you can’t touch it, you can’t hold it. It’s just like space.
And the knowing means that everything that we experience we know because of the mind. It’s not if we only would have a body and no mind, we would still experience everything, but we would not know that we experience. And we cannot even imagine what that would be, you know, it’s like having a deaf person not knowing what it is to hear and the other way around. But I’m not even sure if it would function. I actually do not know.
Maybe just like plants, but then some people say, but plants have intelligence. Oh, let’s not go there. It’s gonna be too difficult. But mind is is mind is all the experiences we have, all the mental events that have, all the feelings, the emotions, all the thoughts and it is the process of actually knowing the objects that appears to it. Knowing doesn’t mean we have to know it consciously.
Right? Because also when we sleep we know objects. Even when we are asleep, somehow the body knows what to do. We turn around, we do not know what we’re doing but we know on another level what we’re doing. That is all the mind.
Where does the mind come from? In Buddhism they say everything has a substantial cause. Without that, things cannot exist. So if we, for instance, have an apple tree, then in order to get an apple tree, we need the seed, just a seed or a particular seed, the apple tree seed or the apple seed. Having an orange seed is not going to make the apple tree.
We need to have that seed that is in the whole line of growth of that apple tree, otherwise it’s not going to happen. And then on top of that we need many conditions to arise before the seed can really sprout. We can have a seed and if there are no conditions, the seed is just going to stay a seed. The mind works exactly the same. First of all, we need a substantial cause and then we need many conditions for mind to arise.
So, the substantial cause for the mind is, say, the previous moment of the mind. We cannot say this moment of mind is coming. They just cannot posit anything else than that. You know, and if you’re going to think about it, where would this moment of mind come from? Where would it come from?
If we see an apple tree then we can think, oh that apple tree comes from a little bit smaller apple tree from a little bit smaller apple tree and if there was a sprout and then it was a seed and that seed came from the previous tree and so you can keep on tracing that back until beginning this time but somehow it looks like that tree has a start with that seed. With the mind, you trace it back to the previous moment of mind just as that you trace the tree back to the previous moment of tree and the previous mind is exactly the same. But then you cannot find a seed somehow. We cannot find a seed that you say, Oh, from that seed came the mind. We can do that with the body and we can trace back from that semen and, how do say that, egg, the body started to arise.
With the mind, we can’t. So, that means that we cannot trace back that seed or the beginning of the mind. Which means, then what do you process, you know? So, Buddhism says the mind exists since the beginningless time. We cannot trace anything from which the mind can arise.
We cannot trace the beginning from where it could have started. So, that must mean an existence beginningless time. Yeah. That’s it. Which means that if you that means that my mind existed before my body came into existence because I can trace back my body to a certain point.
That means that my mind must have existed before this body came into existence. It must have been somewhere else or definitely with another kind of body, you know, definitely not with this body. So, that is how rebirth gets explained then from there. So, if the mind exists beginningless time and in the mind, I’ve said before that every action that we are doing places a seed in the mind, a seed which is similar than the action that we have performed. For instance, if I perform the action of generosity, then in my mind there will be a seed which is similar than it, which will have a similar result than it or which will have result that is in accord with what I’ve done.
So, what will come from that is that I will receive wealth at a certain point. If I plant a seed for generosity and that seed ripens, that can never grow into the experience of poverty. It’s not possible. We have them all, we have them all. So then, we have them all.
There are two things. First of all, we’re planting everyday seeds. So, by knowing that we can be more mindful in what kind of actions we are doing so that we plant good seeds for future. For the present moment we can say: Yes, I’ve done both. I have both things in my mind.
How can I create the right conditions for these good seeds to ripen? You know, what kind of soil, what kind of water, what kind of temperature does it need for that to ripen? So Buddhism says that every virtuous seed will be the nourishment for the next virtuous seed to ripen. If I can bring my mind in a state of compassion for myself, for others, similar seeds will ripen. If I bring my mind in a state of compassion it is very difficult for negative seeds to ripen.
It is very difficult to meet people who are negative to us, it very difficult to meet circumstances that are negative for us. Whatever seeds we’re planting today, whatever actions we’re doing today is the soil for the seeds that are already in our mental continuum. If I get really angry with something that anger can actually start to ripen a whole chain of seeds that might end, you know, it might end into a big misfortune. If I can step away from that anger, at least I do not ripen these seeds and I have more time to purify these seeds and to find a state of mind. When I do purification practice what happens is that the potential of the seeds weaken.
Right? So it’s best to find circumstances that help not to ripen the negative seeds so that we can do a lot of purification practice where we can purify the seeds. That’s what we can do with the seeds that have been planted, which has a similar effect for the seeds that we want to plant, isn’t it? It’s like compassion, love and compassion are the ones that make us happy. And some people, if we talk about when karma ripens, in Buddhism they said karma normally doesn’t ripen in the same lifetime.
So, people might think, then what’s use, you know, why would I work so hard now just for my next life that I probably don’t even remember, not even sure if I’m going to have it. But creating positive actions also ripens the positive seeds that we already have in our mind, which means that this life is going be better anyway because we’re doing that. But what we experience in this life, what is going to be better, is not ripening the seeds from this life. That’s ripening seeds from previous lives. Right?
So, doing virtuous deeds now does not only help us right now, but it also helps us in next lives. Is that alright with you or too complicated? No. It’s quite genius, isn’t it, Harakama does that. So, when you start practicing Buddhism then in the beginning it’s very important that you make sure that your conditions around you are okay.
You know, for instance, you have to be mindful of how you use the television or you are mindful of who you’re going to meet and who you’re going to go out with and you are mindful about, I don’t know, any meeting anybody who can trigger your anger or your negativities, especially if you know that you do not have any control over your mind. Go to that boring, nice, quiet state where everything is peace and love and compassion. A problem for some of us might be that if you have had some exciting life, you know, and you like that excitement and you like that drama, the moment you start practicing that it’s like, nothing’s happening anymore. What is this? And you come into this different realm and things start to go well and you think, I’m not sure if I can trust this.
So, sometimes just because you can’t deal with it, I heard a guy saying, Oh no, I can’t, I stop this meditation because my emotions get so flat, you know, and it’s not exciting for me anymore in my life. And he felt like, No, that’s not me. I am the one who has these dramas. I am the one. He decided to hold on to that because that was the only way he could identify with himself.
So that can happen to us. If I’m not gonna go and see someone, and that’s their approach to to with me to they don’t talk about it. They just do it dropping the drama. Uh-huh. And when in my They ring you up and then they Oh, no.
Release. I don’t see someone, you know, regularly. I’ve done the healing entirely. It’s I can smell that from it. Treatment would be about dropping the drama.
Right. And it’s so painful. Yes. Uh-huh. Your dramas don’t work anymore, and then you’re gonna see them for what they are.
Because you’re left with them because he ain’t gonna be infected by them. So is he affected by something or not? So you see all these games that you have built up. It’s a whole structure in your mind, isn’t it, that you have been building up, and it’s now unwinding. And now it’s unwinding, but, you know, just realizing and then coming to put a house and then it’s that I was gonna get what I wanted.
So the seeds the seeds of your drama are not watered anymore? Not with him? Yes. Yes. What are restrictions?
So if I want to go back to the morning because I never get through my stuff. What time is it? I have the feeling it is it is What time is it? That’s Three. Three o’clock?
Yeah. It’s okay. Okay. That means we need a cup of tea. Just very short about about how I wanna to make sure that you understand how the seeds are planted.
The seeds are planted in a mental consciousness. If we look into the consciousness we have an eye consciousness, an ear consciousness, a taste consciousness, a smell consciousness and a touch consciousness or a body consciousness. And then we have a mental consciousness and that mental consciousness is the consciousness that creates all these thoughts that we have all these constructions where we identify ourselves with. And that has different levels of subtlety. And every action that we are doing, the seed of that action, which is in accord with that action, is planted into our mental continuum.
And one day that will ripen. When the right causes and conditions arise, that seed is going to ripen. Because the mind exists since beginningless time, that means that we are carrying seeds with us that have been there since beginning of this time. What we normally do is when we meet good circumstances somehow we identify with that, you know. We must have been special or we must have been good or we must have been we somehow feel that we deserve that.
And if negative things happen to us, we actually feel like, well, I haven’t done anything wrong. How can this happen to me? Or Or we think we deserve that. Oh, we think we deserve that. Yes.
Yes. But it might be that something ripens that we have done ages and ages and ages ago that we cannot remember, that we cannot identify with. Sometimes you see good people and they get shot in the middle of the day and you think what have they done? These were good people. Well, know, maybe they were not always good people.
Probably not. Probably we they say we had all done everything. Right? So don’t get shocked when something happens because we all have the seeds for that in a mental continuum. It’s just that for some, the cause and conditions arise in this lifetime.
Where was that? You’re kidding. That’s karma. And probably if you know his story, had no other choice than being in the traffic light right there, you know? He might have thought, Shall I take this way or that way and I’ve chosen for that way?
Or, you know, sometimes when something happens to you, there have been things where you made a decision that makes that you end up right there. Okay? Yeah. And even if yeah. It’s for avoiding.
Yes. Same. Exactly the same. Exactly the same. Yes.
Yes. And you never know exactly, what and why. If you’re going to go into that, you’ll go completely mad, I think. But we all, I don’t know, if you have events in your life where you made a decision that prevented you from experiencing something, that you realize, I could have been there, or that brings you actually somewhere where you otherwise would never have ended up, just because you make that one decision. I was in my car at the post office this morning and I wanted to throw and I thought, Where are my car keys?
No, actually I think I had already closed my door but I left one open. And I thought, I won’t say what I actually thought about myself, but I did think I could have left my car keys inside. You have to be so careful that you don’t do this. And then the next time I did it, I did exactly the same, but now I close both doors and, you know, it was like it was already happening during the day. Wasn’t mindful enough and I wasn’t taking enough notice and it just happens.
So, that’s karma that we plant in our minds, we never know where it comes from. That also means that whatever happens to us, you know, it’s not coming from outside. Even if if somebody says something to us and it hits us, it hurts us or we get angry, if you really check your mind, normally there is already a proceeding moment of agitation, anger, too much stress, something and we just use that person to say, Hi, dear, you just say that to me! Right? If you’re going to really slow down the mind and you’re to look it up, there are already conditions in our mind for that anger to arise.
If our mind is full of love and compassion, the person can say the same thing and you think, what a silly person, and nothing happens in your mind. Is that true? Can we see that? And I think it’s even, they did at a certain point looking into who gets an accident with a car, you know, what kind of people are that? And they found that both the person who causes the accident and the victim of the accident both have the the the percentages of people with a car accident that had some emotional drama happening in their life just before the accident is in both sides.
Those who are hit and those who hit, you know. Somehow these emotions are there and I don’t know if you can’t see clearly enough, if you are too hurried, if you are I don’t know what it is, but somehow that invokes accidents. You know? So when you see yourself in the car like that, be very aware. I’m actually having much bigger risk at getting an accident.
You know? How have I managed to do another car? What? How have I managed to do car? How lucky you are.
There must be one part of you that’s pretty healthy, girl. Thank you! You have to start looking at that one. If we can say, that was already in my mind, you know, we take the blame off that person. We stop blaming.
We take responsibility for our own action and that also means that we have the power to change that. We do not have any power about changing what is happening around us. No power. Even if we scream and we think we have the power. It’s not really doing anything, is it?
It’s like, it’s but we do have the power to change our own mind. If we can make our mind more loving and more compassionate, things will happen more our way, you know, our body will be more healthy, we will meet people who are more kind to us, but at the same time if somebody is not so kind, we are able to deal with that in a proper way. Right, everything will just move into the more wisdom we develop, the more we understand how reality works, the easier it is to develop that love and compassion. Because there are so many reasons to create or to feel love and compassion. But because we have that obstruction of reality, we have expectations that are not in accord with reality.
So, that means that we become agitated and we go into that negative mindset. But the more we really see how things happen, there’s no need to be angry, you know, there’s no need. It can’t even arise when you really see reality. So, we work on both sides. The more we understand about karma, karma is very, very, very subtle.
We will never be able to see karma unless we are a Buddha. karma is much more difficult to see than emptiness, than reality itself. karma is, they say karma is so subtle that only the Buddha can see that. In the sense that if something had, you know, you get sick today, only the Buddha can see what the real causes were for that sickness to arise. We cannot see that.
We can only see this. We cannot even see a previous life. We cannot even imagine what we have done. We can’t even remember our birth and whatever we have done in our childhood, you know. So, can’t see karma like that.
We don’t have that big vision. That doesn’t mean that we cannot use karma, you know, because if you start to to train your mind in developing more virtuous deeds or deeds that are beneficial for yourself and for others, you will notice that your life will change and you will notice that your mind will change. So, then that is the kind of a proof for karma, but you cannot see it in the sense that you can exactly say this is happening to you because of this. So, when somebody comes and says, well, I just got a car accident, you know, then it’s not up to us to say, well, must have caused something like that to somebody else, you know, because we do not know what somebody has done to get that car accident. We as Westerners, we are very arrogant, we are very in the sense that we are trained by knowledge.
We have so such good access to knowledge and we are all quite knowledgeable up here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But because of that we believe somehow that we are the superior beings in the world and that we can see all these things. So when we start hearing about karma and things happen to people, I mean, I’ve been to the end and probably still, you know, you say, oh, that person must have. And you start judging that or filling it in or but actually we do not know.
The way, and we’ll talk about that karma works in a certain way and because it works in that way something very big can come from something very small and also something very small can come from something very big. There are many conditions that are involved that we can never, never see. Sometimes, you know, I said, somebody said, How are you? And I said, Oh, my back is hurting so much. And she said, so fantastic.
It’s your negative karma ripening. And I I just wanted to punch her on the phone. I do not wanna hear this. My back is hurting so much. I need somebody who says, oh, what happened?
And, you know, put your hand there or whatever. Do something that for me. What? Come on. Rescue me.
You know? But not just rescue. It’s like it’s like just showing compassion. You know? It’s it’s if you go to a therapist, go for another reason.
But in the normal day to day life, it’s very good, especially for Buddhists, to be compassionate, you know, and not say if something happens to somebody, Oh, well, you know, it’s just their own karma, they should get over it. Because we need compassion when we suffer. Compassion is the biggest healing quality that we have. It is what heals you, and it heals what it is what heals others. You know?
So easy to misunderstand too, though. Did this big part. With karma? Yeah. With with what something you said you said about Oh, that way I kept on thinking why is she staying away?
Oh my god. And I just thought just come because I wanna give you my compassion. No. And I was thinking, who am I to harm? What if I No.
You can’t know that. And I didn’t I couldn’t work it out, and it just was worse. Yes. Because you use it to reinforce your guilt, and it’s not meant like that. No.
I know. Eventually, but it took a while. And so I felt very lonely. And I sometimes dropped an email in the hope that you would respond and I just felt like, oh no, she doesn’t want to. It’s not your fault.
It’s my misunderstanding. Yeah. But I have to be more careful. Anyway, I’m past it, but that’s what happened. Yeah.
We do feel that shame because when we hear about karma and then something happens to us, I do have the same reactions, you know. I feel like, what are other people gonna say? Yeah. If I talk about my own suffering, I think what are people going to think? Yeah.
And at the same time, you know, we are innocent in the sense that we are not innocent, but we are all the same. We are all in the same boat and we as Westerners use that judgment to say, oh, you are stupid or you’re lazy or whatever because you experience this. And actually, we can’t help it. Nobody can help it. We are all everything.
Yeah, Yeah. So knew that before then, and I know it again now. But in that patch Oh. I couldn’t couldn’t access that at all. No.
No. Okay. Yeah. And and probably I must have knew to do it. But Mhmm.
Yeah. You went through it on your own. It’s very difficult to hear this in the right way, you know. It’s very, very, very difficult. And I think that’s wanna get to you.
Be so careful how you treat others and yourself, you know, when this happens. Because nobody wants suffering. And any seed can happen any moment for us. We do not know what happens to us when we’re old, isn’t it? Your memory starts to fade.
And you don’t know, you don’t know that when you’re fifty or sixty that that is what is going to happen to you. It wasn’t supposed to. You don’t even think that it can happen. No. Helena. When you were younger you were very, very bright, intelligent.
And you’re still intelligent but your memory is going. So, it’s hard if people haven’t known you to know how you were before that. Isn’t it? And people just see you the way you are now. But Hillary from the shop knows Helena for many years and they are very good friends and she she can see the difference.
And she tells me, like, oh, Helena’s so bright. And she talks about how you had a job at university, didn’t you? What? But you did much more than that. You did much more than that.
I can’t remember what Hillary was saying. We need to have Hillary for that. Next next time, we ask Hillary. Yeah. Ask Hillary.
Did you do organ organization organizing things? I organized things. Think the planning was a big thing. You’re a very good planner. And languages, I mean, have to have them Oh, dear.
It’s awful. I mean, that’s Let’s have a cup of tea. A dialect at hand. Yeah. I don’t even speak Dutch properly.
So where I come from, I I come from the south in Holland. And there was