Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 86-minute session, Ven Jamyang works through a case of an adopted child rejecting her adoptive mother to teach how to witness deep separation pain in compassionate meditation. He explains how protective walls children build after loss cannot be fixed from outside, only held with compassion. He then pivots to a major teaching on sickness: our resistance (“I don’t want this”) creates 90% of suffering while physical pain is only 10%; accepting karma means taking responsibility rather than victimhood; letting go of rigid preferences opens the heart. The session includes frank Q&A on medicines, cautions against judging spiritual practice based on illness, and homework: write down benefits from your problems, not abstract lessons. Grounded in practical Buddhist psychology with emphasis on self-compassion, it addresses practitioners already engaged in the work.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2007 10 23 jamyang – session 2 231007.mp3
UUID: fa9b6e15-4b63-4e73-ad51-e130b87c8715
Teacher: Ven Jamyang
Collection: Jamyang Mind Healing (Ven Jamyang)
Date: 2007-10-23
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 86.5 minutes
Words: ~9,230
Hard to deal with anger, wasn’t wasn’t it? That is hundreds of miles away. Bring that person in front of you when you meditate. Visualize that person because the mind doesn’t acknowledge any space or any any distance. So if you visualize that person in front of you and do you do your work from your side and then on top of that so seeing the suffering, making the connection, trying to feel the love, you know, and all the tools that you have for that in order to do that.
And then make prayers that that relationship might heal because that other person also has to do something. Can only do from our side what we can do. Sometimes you have to wait. That’s her child. Is she angry?
What about? Well, about the the whole. You couldn’t give her what she wanted? She was barely able to. Has she paid you back?
What what do you want from her? What do you what is your personal need? But what do you need? A mom. And she says, no, mom.
You’re not my mom. You don’t I don’t want you to be my mom. And she wants to get out of that. I think part of her does. And I think you have to acknowledge that first and let her do that.
And say, okay. I’m not your mom there. You know? Because part of it is like, you bought her the money and she couldn’t pay back and then they had to sell the house. Is that how I understand that right?
Mhmm. But she wants to be on her own. Somehow, feel like she wants to be the adult, and she says, mom, get out of you know, I wanna get out of the nest, But she’s kicking mom out of the nest instead of jumping herself. But part of her has been in the nest. Definitely.
And she has feel that care of you, you know. And I think adopted children always know. Adopted children are always as soon as a child gets separated, we talked about that separation pain, as soon as a child gets separated, no matter how small they are, that pain is there, very deep, unbelievable big. From that very moment that they get separated from the parents, even if they’re not aware of that, there is this whole protection system starts starts to work. That whole surviving mechanism starts to work.
And somehow, there is this wall buildup straight away that you can’t get through. I’ve treated many adopted children. I see a sort with all of them. It’s like, you’re not my mom. You’re not my mom.
That’s the message that they give to mom. And mom says they give them everything they want, and the child feels you’re not my mom. I would say, you’re right. That is not your mom. That is not your mom.
I’m not your mom. You are right. Your mom is somewhere else. Somehow I had to acknowledge that with these children. Your mom is somewhere else.
You feel that right. Your feeling is valid. Because these children feel that. You’re not my mom. We try to prove but I am your mom, I am your mom.
I’m taking care of this. No. You’re not her mom. Yes. And I take care of you and have the sincere wish to take care of you.
That’s true. But what I I don’t wanna say that what you did was not right or that you didn’t do that, you know. But for the child, the child has a huge need of something to get acknowledged because they are in a struggle themselves. And it has nothing to do with you are doing. That’s what I tried to say.
It has nothing to do with you are giving. Nothing. But it’s there. It’s her struggle. And it’s her feeling of not being you know, I don’t know.
There is this deep, deep feeling in these children of Being rejected. Being rejected and not being home and not being able to let that go somehow. You know? It’s a deep wound. Seeing that wound keep connecting with that wound.
And not in the sense of you can heal it, but if you acknowledge that, if you can see it in her, maybe just in your meditation, maybe that can help her ripen the seed and to create the environment that one day she can see it. Because it’s so painful. Anything that’s really painful is difficult to look at. As as long as the pain is too big, she can’t look at it and she might reject you. You know?
But it’s not that she’s rejecting you. It’s reject she’s rejecting the pain. It’s not about you. It’s not about you have been giving. And maybe you feel pain of rejection that she’s doing that, but it’s not about you.
And she’s probably experiencing that more since she’s an old child. And that makes you in a very difficult position, you know, because you only want that connection to be there. If you could make this bigger, you know, if you could make this this is like a universal thing. This is like a a problem that is everywhere in the world. If you see how many children are taken away from their parents.
And all these children are going through the same kind of pain. And what you are experiencing is not just your pain. It’s like it’s a big, big, big pain that is in the world. You’re experiencing a pain. It’s not just your pain.
It’s a pain. It’s a worldly pain. It’s universal pain. And you cannot just fix it. You can just experience it and take it on.
Know that there are so many mothers who experience the same as you do. And there’s so many children who experience the same as Fiona is doing. And we can just maybe when we open up for that whole painful experience, her child somehow we can contribute that her child is not gonna experience the same. And when we can’t stop it there, we we are healing our own pain. We are healing Fiona’s pain.
But it’s much bigger than you. Yeah. But if you keep it for you, you know, my pain, then the pain stays if you open it up, it goes much deeper in your system. But also there is there is this possibility that you can that it that it dissipates, that it dissolves back into the mind. It’s like If you see that the root of your pain is coming from a universal pain, if they are really the root and you open up for that, then then it it will be able to shift somehow.
That’s alright. Don’t be sorry. It’s very first. Give it space. You know?
But somehow get it away from my pain. Because if it’s your pain, it’s very difficult for it to go. But if see that there are so many women like you and that you are happy to take that pain, to experience that pain for all of them, and maybe you can think if you can find a solution for that pain or if you can bear that pain and from that bearing that pain, the wisdom can arise. How to deal with that. You can also share that with everybody.
Them. You know? If you that is a role that you could take, isn’t it? And there is a big need in the world for that. So the dysfunctionality, is that part of you too?
Because with Fiona, I almost feel like she had a really good life and a very good structure. But underneath, there was that little part of dysfunctionality, and that somehow surfaced when this started to happen. With buying the house and blah blah blah. That starts to happen, that’s living itself out now. But that still is in her system.
It still has she has not removed that yet from her system because otherwise, she would have reconnected with you. So she’s experiencing that dysfunctionality. What if you connect with that part in yourself too? Like, what is that? It’s like a crazy part.
It’s like a part that wants to run away. It’s like a part that never wants to do what everybody anybody tells them. It’s a part that is wild somehow. You know? It’s it’s a in in panic.
Panic. It’s doesn’t know where to go. It’s what if you connect with that part in you and say, how do I what do I do with that one? What do I how can I feel love for that? How can I feel compassion for that?
How can I somehow pacify that energy and put yourself in front of you with that part and work also with that? I don’t know. Then you have more another angle that you can approach it with. It’s not gonna help. You know, can you give a big relief if you see your your real real mother or your birth But the pain is at separation.
The moment that it happens. And especially that happens early in life. You know, even if you see the the mother that gave birth to you, that does not fix that pain that you experienced when you were it can do something. But to really go it because I think it’s on on a different level than really on on the on the physical level. It’s it’s much much deeper.
And if you think about karma, you know, there is a karma to experience that. That karma has nothing to do with the body. That karma is beyond that. It’s it’s a it’s a much deeper pain than just our physical present on this earth. And so I I go deeper in it.
Go experience what that what that energy is behind that. Being separated. What happens if somebody gets separated? Who how wild and then panic do you get, and what kind of reactions do you have from that and connect with that part of you? And then first heal you in front of you, and then heal her in front of you, and then make your prayers that that you might reconnect.
And think about all the other mothers who experience the same. Yeah. Is that alright? Taking the pain on. Benefits of sickness.
Do we wanna talk about that? Or Yes, please. Benefits of sickness. Yes. Yes.
The last two weeks, we have been talking about you know, we all have somehow a defense mechanism that prevents us from really connecting with everybody else. And that sense make that that protecting mechanism comes in function when we get hurt. That comes in function because we believe that we have this I living inside here that we have to protect, that we have to take care for. But if you really look, that’s not really there. That’s like a misconception, we call that in Buddhism.
And because we have that wall, we have this feeling that and because we had a feeling of I, we had a feeling that there are things and people who can benefit us and there are things and people who can harm us. Every time when somebody does something that pleases us, we feel that person is benefiting us. Every time that something happens that harms us or gives us an unpleasant feeling, we have the feeling that somebody is harming us, that we have to protect ourselves. So from these feelings that arise on the basis of that feeling of I, we attract certain people that we think are helpful to us and we push people away that we feel are not helpful to us. That I and that reactive mechanism is the basis of all our problems.
It’s also basis of all our sickness. Can you remember that we talked about that? So when sickness comes to us or problems come to us, we have a feeling like, I don’t want this. And actually, the only reason why we call something problem is that we have this reaction of I don’t want it. Right?
If we would have I was thinking about if we would have a reaction with sickness that, Oh, this is really fantastic for me. Most of our suffering that comes with sickness is gone. Most of our suffering is, I don’t want it. And trying to find a way out of it. As long as we keep pushing away, that is the suffering.
The suffering from the real sickness is maybe ten percent. The main suffering is our resistance that we have it. You recognise that? Resistance. I don’t want it.
I don’t want it. You know, when we harm us, get a somebody cuts us with a knife and we have a big wound. Oh, this is really terrible, especially when you’re a woman, especially when you’re whatever. That’s not good. We scream, we want it to be fixed, we see the scarf, we wonder when it we want to have a beautiful body.
If you have Native Americans, if they have a cut, that’s fantastic. Hey, you’re a real man. You’re growing up. So when they hear themselves: Yes, I can prove I’m a real man. I don’t have to cry when something like this happens.
They welcome it. They say: Sorry, but the women wouldn’t. That’s a worry. I’m talking about the mind. As soon as the mind feels this is going to benefit me, there was no problem in getting it.
True? As we can see this is going to benefit me, the problem is gone. Even the pain that we experience in the body is not that much. But when we cut ourselves, that can hurt a lot until we see that it’s going to benefit us. If we see that that happens on the basis of the mind, if we can see something as beneficial, a lot of pain is gone.
If we see something as harmful, we experience more pain. If we really can see that, we have to look for reasons why having a problem, reasons why having a sickness or a disease is actually beneficial for us. As soon as we can really see the benefits of having sickness, big problem is gone. True? That’s sort of cynical mind.
The disease really gets worse? Yeah. Yeah. What do you see? What do you see in relationship to the disease?
What do you see if somebody accepts it and takes it as a a path? Yeah. That’s a normal thing, isn’t it? If a problem comes, we are a victim. We are a victim of things that happen to us.
If we could say, if we think about that karma, there is a reason why this comes to me that has to do with me. And I can either reject it or I can take it on. I can deal with that. Right? If I can see benefits of whatever comes to me, my experience will be very different.
And no matter if I’m going to die or if I’m going to become better or if I’m healing or not, it doesn’t matter. Whatever I’m going to go through after that will be determined by how I accept whatever happens to me. True. If somebody when you say the victim role, that is what we all do. Right?
If things happen to us that are unpleasant, we become the victim of that. If we are the victim of that, you said people are taking over by the disease. What happens is that we withdraw our energy or we hold in our anger as that you expressed it this morning. Somehow we withdraw that. We are not staying in our power.
It’s like I can’t help it. As soon as we say I created the causes for that or I have invited this or no matter what is going to happen in my life, I’ll take care of it. Then our attitude is different. Our energy behind it is different. We have somehow a power.
We don’t become this powerless person that is completely overwhelmed and overtaken by something. We somehow keep our own dignity or we keep our own acknowledge that we have a choice in what we do with that, what happens to us. We have a choice. We don’t have a choice if we’re going to die or not. We will all die.
We don’t have a choice in that. True? We’ve never we can choose how we’re gonna die. We cannot choose when we’re gonna die because we don’t know. Any of us can die tomorrow, can die this afternoon.
We have no choice in when we’re gonna die. But we can choose how we’re gonna die, how our mind is and how it looks like it. We also can choose how we live every minute of our life that we still have to go. Lama Zopa says, If you have cancer, you can die from He doesn’t even say you can die from cancer. But he says if you die, at that moment the cancer is finished.
The karma of the cancer is finished the moment you die. But if you have let the cancer take over and you become the victim and you go into this ‘Ah, poor me, poor poor me’ thing, that poor me thing you take with you in your next life. And you will experience the result of that. But if you you can while you have cancer, take your own responsibility and say I have created the causes for this and I’m going to use this to create causes for myself to achieve happiness. Maybe not in this life or maybe my life is not going be that long but there are going to be next life so I can create causes for happiness for that.
And I’m not only going to take care of myself, I’m also going to take care of others. If we can use whatever problem comes for that our next life will be happy. If we go and poor me, poor me, poor me, you know, even the cancer is gone when we die, we still have the poor me with us in our next life. I’m so sorry, it’s my phone. I always forget to turn it off.
So if we can see benefits in why things happen to us, we don’t go into the poor me thing. Poor me is the victim. Poor me is the one who cannot defend itself. Poor me is the one who thinks about me, me, me. I have to save myself and I don’t want to be harmed.
If you can drop that attitude and say it doesn’t matter what happens to me, we have no choice what happens to us. Things happen to us due to things that we created a long time ago. We don’t know what is gonna happen to us. We cannot get away from things that happen to us. We believe that we can but we can’t really.
So whatever happens to us we’re going to use in order to determine our future. We can’t change our past but we can change our future. So we cannot stop things that happen but we can stop reacting the way we are used to react to it. We can change that reaction. Instead of say poor me, poor me, we can say, okay.
How can this what happens to me be of benefit? And how can it be of benefit of others? What lessen the wall in? Yeah. That’s not a Buddhist concept.
Well, it has to be, but then you It’s not. To listen to drama. But if you change your attitude, then naturally these things won’t happen to you again. Isn’t that a lesson? No.
That lesson means that the fact that things are a lesson is like somebody’s giving you the lesson. It’s also I always feel like, yeah, well, you have to learn a lesson from this. I I feel always a little bit like, you don’t have to learn a lesson from it. If I wanna make the mistake ten times again, it’s my own choice. You know?
I’m welcome to do that. There’s nobody who’s gonna punish me except my own karma. It will ripen again and again and again in the same kind of misery. Isn’t it the lesson that if I don’t change this, my karma is going to ripen again in the next life? Yes.
The idea is the same. It’s just plain. In different words. But I always feel like if there was somebody who’s gonna teach me a lesson, it’s like I’m there’s still a kind of a victim in it or there’s still a little child in it who’s teaching me. And there’s still a journey of lessons.
The wisdom is that what can free us from suffering. So if we develop our wisdom and if we, with that wisdom, apply different ways of skillful means, then that will free us from suffering. And then I think in essence, essence, we agree, but I just don’t wanna use these terms because there’s this person appearing here who’s teaching me this lesson, and that’s not there. Your age, please. From your age.
But it’s also the concept of God is still there. And is it? I didn’t mean it to sound like that. But Calvinistic is very much like that, isn’t it? Yeah.
Don’t forget. Yeah. Yeah. So that triggers that in in Helena. I think the power of of Buddhism is that you take responsibility yourself.
We have created it, and we can change it. There’s nobody who’s teaching us a lesson. We don’t have to learn a lesson for anybody except ourselves. We are only benefiting others very selfish. We’re only benefiting ourselves.
Life is a learning experience. That’s why we Life is an experience. Learning experience. It’s an experience. That’s it.
It’s an experience. And we can change that experience. However we want. This is hot. This is cold.
I don’t want to touch the hot one. It’s a lesson. It’s not a lesson. It’s like if you really don’t want to turn the hot, you go for the cold one. But some people like the hot and they stay there.
And some people don’t realize that doing that is creating that. They don’t get it. That’s all good. It really doesn’t matter. Then I wonder why they get cancer.
It’s not up to us to do that. If If we would think, you know, oh no wonder that you have cancer it’s just due to your self-cherishing mind that’s really bad if you’re going to say that. Never go there. Many people have that tendency, you know, in Buddhism. I had many years of pain, I think, I said at someone in the teaching.
And I know that once I was at Tārā Institute, and somebody said, how are you? And I had a really bad day, and I said, I have so much pain today. And she says, oh, great. I thought, that’s not what I wanna hear. Oh, you know, you still wanna have compassion.
You still wanna you wanna say that people say, oh, I’m so sorry for you or, you know, what can I do for you or whatever, but not great? I rejoice that you have someone. It’s like that that is not the warm heart that we wanna develop. We still want the other person to be free of suffering. If somebody has cancer, we don’t know where it’s coming from.
The high lamas who die from cancer, you know. They go to the hospital, they go through all the surgery, they go through all the treatments. We cannot say, ‘Alright, that’s your self-cherishing mind’ because we also know that they don’t have that you know. So what is the reason that the cancer grows? They say that’s past negative karma.
Sometimes even if you have a completely blissful attitude you cannot stop the cancer from growing. We cannot see the attitude that is behind it, you know? Also, and only the person themselves can say it’s my self-cherishing attitude that is creating this cancer. Only the person themselves, Please don’t ever go there. Don’t ever go there.
It’s so painful if we do that. Sarcastic. Yes. But I know that many people hear it like that. And we can only look into our mind and see where we are coming from and where our disease is coming from.
But we can never judge about what the other person’s experiencing and why. You know? We might end up with the same. And having the knowledge doesn’t mean you can change it. You know?
And there are also other causes of disease like somebody once wrote a book. She had MS, and that was in the New Age time. You know? And people were saying, you know, nowhere in that MS comes from. That’s from this and this and this.
And you just do this and this and this, and then the MS is gone. And and her with her, she couldn’t do anything. She felt completely like And then she felt like just because I cannot heal, people are blaming me that I’m not practising the teachings. And that was not at all the case. And she said, I feel I’m very, very sensitive for everything that happens in the world, you know, very sensitive for color, for you know, it’s like what we are doing.
We are fucking up the whole world with all the artificial stuff that we bring in the food, with all the the the poison that we put on our food, with the way that we deal with our mind, with how we expose ourselves to all kinds of of of stimuli. And she was like she felt that she was one of the very sensitive persons who took all that on and her system just got destroyed by all that. And she felt like she couldn’t change that no matter what she practiced. But there was these new age people who were saying, you’re not practicing. You’re not doing and she said, you she felt really excluded and she talked about when people go in the mine, they take a little bird to see when there is going to be gas and if there’s going to be gas the bird is going to die and she said I feel like I’m one of these birds And I’m just dying, but all these other people around, they don’t feel it yet.
You know? But I’m already dying. And, yes, that was a very strong request like, don’t judge. We never know what is causing that person to experience that. And it’s more than just changing your attitude.
You know? It’s we do it’s not just like that. And, yes, but that’s the only thing we can do now. And that’s the only thing that we can do now to make us feel better with whatever happens. I’m a judger.
You know? I’m I’m You feel me? Yes. But but I might might tell the story for me. It’s very easy to do.
And I mean, when I see people in cancer, they see all day, you know, it’s everyone’s so different. So there’s no way you cannot judge anyone. It’s a completely different age. So But you at the same time you say this tendency that if somebody gets you know goes poor poor me poor me poor me they get completely overwhelmed by the cancer and taking over. Yeah So these things happen at the same time.
So you have to be very careful with that. You know that people don’t believe that that is always the case like that or that are also different levels of truth at the same time happening? But it’s in in reality, it’s the same. But I know it’s different. Yeah.
Yeah. That’s one of the Buddhist techniques what you’re now saying is that if you experience a problem, you’re going to look around to people who have a much bigger problem. And then suddenly your problem is like, what am I complaining about? Sometimes I catch myself in a complaining mood and then I think and it’s like, it’s it’s nothing. It’s actually nothing.
But if we really feel it and we think about it, it’s getting bigger and bigger and bigger in our mind. But then if you look at others, it’s like, it’s nothing. And as soon as we can drop it, somehow it can move away. You know? It but if we can keep it feeding it and holding on to it and believing in it, it’s it’s just growing and growing.
And it starts taking us over. It’s having its own life. Isn’t it? And I think that’s what we that’s that’s what is about if you talk about a self-cherishing attitude and wanting to change that attitude. What you wanna do is we all have the tendency when tendency when something happens to us that is not nice, that we don’t like, we go into this mindset that wants it to get away.
And if we experience pain or sickness, which is all the time with us, that triggers the mind that all the time is finding a way to get away from it. If we do that, it’s like our self-cherishing mind, that mind that is taking care of ourselves, you know, we that gets constantly triggered. And with that, it gets bigger and bigger and bigger. We believe in it. We somehow cut ourselves off from others.
We somehow that tendency is naturally there. That happens when we are sick. That that happens when we are grieving, when we are in pain. That is a natural thing. Me, me, me getting bigger and bigger and bigger.
You know? And then the bigger that gets, healing comes from letting go of that. But if you’re sick it’s very difficult to do that because it’s consuming you so much. So getting into the mindset that says I step back from it and I can just see it coming and going very very difficult. So you need many techniques in order for that mind to let go because the mind naturally wants to fixate and say I don’t want this.
So seeing somebody who has a much bigger problem or seeing the child, you get overwhelmed by compassion, which gives you immediately space from your own self absorbed mind. That is the healing. It’s very funny. As soon as we can do that, this can shift and this can heal. As long as we stay here, it can’t heal.
It gets somehow blocked. It gets somehow stagnated. As soon as we can step back, a natural healing can take place. Right? It’s like having a wound and we keep on scratching.
That’s what we’re normally doing. Keep on scratching. We keep on agitating the mind. As soon as we absorb by something else we forget that it can heal. Same happens for the mind.
So as soon as we can find a way for the mind to think in a different way we somehow give it space. We step away from that attitude that is fixated on that disease. Taking that step away gives that disease the ability to heal. Yep. Yeah.
In order to heal, we need space. In order to heal, we get away have to get away from our self obsession. In order to heal it’s also when we have a problem. When we have a problem or somebody has harmed us or whatever, we keep on thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking, and it gets bigger and bigger and bigger. But it keeps on as soon as something else catches our thoughts and we think about it, then suddenly they can just disappear like nothing.
Isn’t it? It’s gone. Because everything has a natural comes into the mind and dissolves in the mind. If we can allow that process to happen naturally, nothing will stay in the mind. The only reason why things stay in the mind is because we catch it.
And we believe in it and we turn it over again and again and again. That person harmed me. We can say yes, the person harmed me. That’s alright. Let it go.
I’m not going to worry about that. But if you say that person harmed me and how dare you? Bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. And then every time you see the person, the person becomes more ugly and you see more negative aspects. And then the next time, you know, you think about it and then you you find another negative aspect and then you fight isn’t it?
And then you have this whole negative appearance. That’s what we do. But if we can just say thank you very much and I can let it go and I can keep on focusing on your positive qualities, that won’t appear at all. That negative, big negative person with all these awful characteristics is not going to appear. I don’t allow it to come up, you know.
Or I don’t feed it. It’s not a not allowing because it’s not there. I just don’t feed it. I don’t feed my own natural tendency to reinforce again and again the negative side of something. It is because we have the habit to do that.
And we have the habit we know each we know ourselves like that. We know that if we keep on repeating these negative things, we know we are with me. You know? This is me who is doing that. That is how we know ourselves.
So if we stop doing that, who are we? Litigation when you’re in a court case and you just can’t escape and you can feel your energy is draining, and then you’ve gotta constantly go back there. And some people get tied up for years, and it it’s the same. Yeah. Don’t go to the courtroom at all.
That’s what Buddhism says. Don’t even go there. Just pass it and ignore it. It didn’t happen. It did happen, you know, but there was a reason for that.
And the reason is not just with the other person. It’s also in you. Then it’s okay. Tomorrow is a new day. Let’s start fresh.
Let’s start again. You know, I think that’s that’s an art of living. Let’s let it go and start again. Let it go and start again. Every moment, we have new chance to start again.
Otherwise, you’re putting so much energy into something else when you’re it into more compassion or helping people transfer all that energy. Yeah. It’s a waste, isn’t it? If you really if you if you have experience how you can get away from it and then you look back you think that’s just a waste of energy because it’s not leading to anything it’s just leading to more problems, it’s leading to more suffering, it’s leading to more unhappiness. It’s not resolving anything.
It’s never coming isn’t it? If you step away from it and you can focus on something more positive, this can heal naturally. Then one day, with that positive mind, you can go back to that. You know, maybe? Or maybe you can go back to the same person with a completely different energy.
You give that other person also the chance to get away from it. Isn’t it? If somebody has harmed you, they know what they did. But if you keep on in your mind doing that, they’re not going to acknowledge that. It’s harder, isn’t it?
But if somebody walks away and stays in their own energy and puts energy and love and compassion, they think, Oh, that was not so nice that I did that. And then their process can happen. And then you give them the opportunity to restore that if they want to. So the more we can acknowledge that there are if we could see the benefits of sickness, if we can somehow feel that that is gonna give us something that is benefiting us, then a lot of our suffering might be able to dissipate. Right?
So what can we what can we learn from sickness? What is it that sickness is giving us? Now I’m coming to you. Lessons. What?
What? What is it teaching us? What can it give us? It gave me a lot of wisdom. Wisdom?
Insight. Insight. In what? Life. Growing up Uh-huh.
Learning the ways of the world Yeah. Not being gullible. I mean, I know it’d be very nice to walk out into the world like the fool and the tarot deck with, you know, your foot over the edge of a cliff and total faith in the universe. But to be in this world and to to note the games that people play and damage that they do, but to stand up at the end of the day as a wise person. You’re very nice.
What was the question? What is nice about having wisdom? Wisdom. Because they’re Being self empowered. Very good.
Benefits of sickness. Mhmm. Mhmm. How do you come to term talk with other people? What is it that you develop in your mind?
Uh-huh. Is that wisdom? If you say you like things to be done in a particular way, you have to let it go now, isn’t it? Because otherwise you would never find anybody who is going to take care of you. Liking things, Lama Zopa says, you know, if what we because we have this tendency of liking and disliking, we go, I like this.
I like this. I like this. So that from there, you cultivate a particular way of doing. Isn’t it? And the more you feed into that or buy into that, the more you need that in order to be happy.
So then he says, then at a certain point, there’s gonna be food and you don’t like it and you only get angry. And then there’s this and you don’t like it and you only get angry. If we don’t like it, we get angry. Being particular true, isn’t it? My mind like that.
I can only speak free because I have the same mind. Because we become more and more particular and that means that if it is not like that, anger arises in the mind. Which makes us unhappy. So sickness forces us to let it go. But that’s a benefit because what is going to happen is that it doesn’t matter anymore at a certain stage what people are going to do or not.
It’s not going to affect you anymore. That means that whole sense of me that was very important in the beginning, you have to drop that. And that is benefiting you. I don’t know if you can see that. In way, it can feel that you have to give things up from yourself.
You have to give it up. You have to give it up. But if you’re gonna see that what you’re giving up is just that feeling that you have in here that is directing, controlling, trying to control, but it’s actually that self-cherishing thought that is just worried about how I want to be. If you could say, it doesn’t matter how you’re doing it. Doesn’t matter how you’re doing appreciate everything you’re doing.
And you can let go of your own particular set. It’s not that you’re losing your eye, but it’s you’re actually opening your heart for the whole world. Isn’t isn’t it? And you might lose fear lose the feeling of self identity. Do you really?
But if you if you have let it go after that, do you feel that you are not you anymore or do you actually like the you better? I like the you better than the one that was particular. So the more you can let go, even if it feels like your own identity, the more you can let it go, the more you start liking yourself. Maybe you have to let go of that. Going to challenge you.
Maybe you have to let go of that. Understand that and this is this is a different thinking. Right? And you first have to practice that when you when you’re just sitting and not doing anything. You have to practice there.
Not when it happens and not when you feel the panic of I don’t want it like this. You have to happen that you have to practice practice this in a meditation. Okay? We first have to agree on that. So you’re not gonna if you feel at a certain point, I don’t want it to happen like that, you are free to express that.
Okay? You have to express that. Okay? If you know that pain arises in the body not due to what happens now but due to previous That what happens now is just a condition. Right.
What we’re gonna try to do is to purify that karma in a different way so that it cannot arise. Yes. But also letting go that fixation of if somebody moves me in the wrong direction, it’s gonna be worse. Because if you address that karma that is ripening, that cannot happen. So somehow you have to find the trust or the knowledge or the wisdom that if I’m gonna do this, I’m exhausting that karma.
That pain that might arise in the future can only arise if that karma is there. True? If The more you would think about karma, if you have somebody who really and I know how you think, you know, because that’s how we think. If I do this, then this is gonna happen. Buddhism says it has nothing to do with each other.
You know? We we have in a way, it does. You know. It’s like if you lived a hundred times or your whole life in the wrong way, yes there is a burden on your vertebrates. But even science has proved that the deformations that happen have nothing to do with the pain that people experience who have that.
Some people have very tiny deformations and experience huge pain. Other people have huge deformations and experience hardly any pain. Pain is not related to that. Still we have the assumption that it is related. Still we say if you do it like that you’re going to suffer from that.
So there is a correlation in that things are a condition for something to arise. But things are not a cause for something to arise. The cause is not in what people do. So you have to reflect on that. That might help you to let go a little bit of your tightness but not about you being careful.
Right? And you can feel, no, today’s not a good day to do that. But maybe there are a few days that it doesn’t really matter. And maybe you can loosen up in these days that you start feeling, not today, it doesn’t really matter. Tomorrow, I feel oh, no.
Today, we have to be very careful. Right? The more you can loosen that mind, you know, you still feel and you’re still very careful but the more you can loosen that mind the less frequent you need that particular treatment. Can you see that? So that is a very careful process of loosening your mind and then feeling if you can apply that looseness in how you judge what is needed.
Lama Yeshe, he died from from heart problems. He had he died when he was forty eight, but he should have died when he was thirty five. That that was how bad his heart was. And they say due to his compassion for us, he developed all kinds of veins in his heart that kept him alive. And then when he was in the last stage of his life, he said, you do whatever with me, what you normally do.
And so he got all these kinds of Western medicines. And they never complain. They never and I’m saying that you have to do this. You know? Just listen to the story and think about it.
I’m not doing it. You keep on following your own instinct. Okay? And he was so they gave him all these kind of medicines. And he what these people what these higher lamas do is they meditate in the death process, and there they transform their mind.
And he still did that, I think. But he wrote at the end of his life. So one side of him is like, just do whatever with me what you like. Trying to see, can I put my mind in a state where it’s not going to affect me? Then he wrote a last letter to one of his teachers in which he actually wrote, you have no idea how crazy my mind gets from these medicines.
I can’t focus anymore. I can’t practice anymore. I can’t do this anymore. And forgive me for this and I can’t do this anymore. You know?
And but but also with the compassion. You know? This is what Westerners are going through. Imagine you’re gonna die with a mind like that. How can you ever do even if you’re a good meditator, how can you ever do your meditation the moment you’re dying?
You know? But out of his love and compassion for us, he wants to go through that experience. Because he will take that experience with him and he will help us later how to deal with that. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. It is very difficult. You’re not in an easy position. No.
No. No. But you have a strong mind. You have a fantastic mind. I couldn’t believe the meditations that as far as antidepressants go, I mean, I I found that I took them all, and I had a violent reaction to all of them.
But I make you crazy. I don’t mean you do. There’s just no sanity. And, I mean, maybe it works for some people, but It does work for some people. But I I you know, again, it’s like some people really have benefit from it, and some people cannot live without it.
They need it in order just to get through their life. In my working with children, know you have all these crazy ADHD children? ADD children? As soon as they put them on the medication it’s like I lose a child, you know. Connect anymore with the child.
But sometimes that’s the only way that they can I always felt like, oh my god? You know? I just lose it. But then the parents can work with the child and I don’t know. In my heart, I just don’t want it.
You know? And I think I want to try everything else before I even go there. But sometimes that’s just the only thing we have. If it changes who you are, there’s no point in being here, really. But well, we want to change anyway the way we are.
We wanna But not not with drugs. I mean, if it if it makes you But sometimes that’s the only way that people can get through their life. And sometimes that’s what they first need, and then maybe that creates some other conditions that they can start looking at in life. And then maybe slowly, slowly, they get the tools, and then maybe slowly, slowly, they get rid of the medicine. But it’s very difficult.
I personally don’t like it. You know? But sometimes it’s beneficial. And some people feel actually that they feel more themselves. They feel connected with themselves.
I don’t know. The habit of anger. You know? You stay in it. You stay in it.
You get a medicine that takes you out of it, and then you can I found found, though, that when you do take these massive antidepressants that you are so that all of those symptoms are so masked that you don’t work through your issues? Then Can be, but sometimes you sit above your issues. You know? The feelings go away. But for you it’s like, for you, the space from your feelings gives you the opportunity to work with that part of your feelings, isn’t it?
Your feelings are too overwhelming. Yeah. But then if you can see the benefits of the medicines, then you can really use it for your benefit, isn’t it? And you can say, I’m gonna use it for this and now I can do this and this and this and this. Fantastic.
I have the medicine. If you feel like, oh, the medicine make me really sick and I can’t do this, you don’t wanna have them. Yes. Isn’t it? And some people experience benefits, some people don’t.
It’s like karma. Some people find medicines, some people don’t. Well, finding the right medicine finding the right medicine is due to karma. Oh, it’s something. Right.
It’s a positive karma. It’s a karma. It’s karma if you find medicine that can help you, if you find a doctor that can help you. If you have a sickness and nobody can help you, that’s a result of negative karma. Maybe it’s just a pair of glasses.
A pair of glasses. Yeah. When is it happening? End of the month. Catherine is gonna get gla coloured glasses, and we think it might get at least have the problems away.
I know. I I walked my whole life like that. And the weird thing is that I think, you know, I look at everybody else I work with. You don’t have that problem. No.
But that’s karma. It’s like you’re you’re born with the kind of body that reacts in a certain way. And there is this huge sensitivity. And if you have a huge sensitivity, there is always this it’s too much. It’s too much.
It’s too much. So you get us into this defense again of you have to protect yourself. So that is constantly triggered which means that also your anger is constantly triggered somehow. Irritation and your that’s a karma. You know, experiencing the state of mind, that’s a karma.
And the anticipation too, knowing that if I’m going to work tomorrow I know what’s going to happen again. Know I’m working when I get home. The habit of that. But that will break as soon as the experience changes. That will break.
But that karma can finish like that. You know? That is that is you know, just as that you can’t find the right medicine, as soon as you find the right medicine, you also know that that karma is finished. So the fact that you experienced that that long in your life means that there was a karma. But that’s that’s people still don’t get.
Why is it like how does that relate to karma? What? The experience. karma means experience. Yes.
Because I yeah. I know But I I just don’t see that connection. You experience this not because you have good motivation today but because you did something a long time ago. There is the experience coming from. And you don’t have the merit.
You need merit in order to find the right medicine for that. So you don’t have the merit. But by today engaging again and again and helping others, helping others, at a certain point this karma has finished and you do have the merit to find the right medicine. They come all together and something appears in your life that suddenly it’s gone. Right?
So the only thing that we can do is create a merit so that we find it. But the fact that you experience it has nothing to do with what you’re doing today. It has something to do with what you did a long long time ago. Right? So it’s good that you kept on working there because that helps you to create a merit.
Helping sick people helps you to create a merit that you overcome your own sickness. It’s not a guarantee that it happens but it’s like you know we can only try now to do. Your homework is gonna be we we talked a little bit about the benefits. Now we know very well that if we know the benefits of sickness, that that will help us a lot, isn’t it, in experiencing the sickness and what we do with it. So I want you to write down this week what are the benefits from my problems.
What what benefit do I get out of it? Yeah. Not what lesson do I learn, but what benefit do I get out of it? Yeah. You already told a little bit about it, but maybe you can think more.
Try to make a list as long as you can. What is and if you don’t have a sickness, what? Try to think of one. You you have to come with at least one. What kind of this one did I have for?
My problems or my sickness or but, Janice, you can see that if you can see benefits, that it’s actually gonna help you suffer less. Yeah. So you gotta put some energy in finding at least one benefit. The fact is that it’s bought you to put a house and to build Shhh. They have to come with that themselves.
So that’s the benefit. If you feel it as a benefit, that’s the benefit. How can we ever meet with the teachings if we don’t suffer? Not possible. If we are always happy, we’re not gonna look for a solution for a problem because we don’t have them.
Oh, because you’re in paradise already. We’re in paradise already. So we need this in order to you know? So you already have one and you can extend that one. I already need that one.
Okay? And I would like you to keep on doing the thing about compassion, you know, especially compassion for yourself. Love and compassion for yourself. Yeah. I think that’s something that we miss very easily, that we step over very easily.
If we can really do that, the love and compassion for others will naturally come. Okay. It’s quarter to one. It’s ten to one. Really?
Yeah. I wish. My goodness. Yeah. I just thought, oh my god.
Twenty to one already. So we don’t do med meditation. Is that okay? Next time, we’ll do meditation again. To be at home.
Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Thank you very, very much for coming. Thank you.
I have the feeling that we went through the most difficult now. And from here, I think it’s just gonna be lighter and lighter. Thank you for putting all that work in it. It’s really fantastic. And then we won’t go to Disneyland.
No. We’re not.