Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 76-minute session from the Jamyang Mind Healing course, Ven Jamyang explores how disturbing emotions like anger, attachment, and anxiety arise in the mind but are not intrinsic to it. She guides practitioners in recognizing anger without identifying with it, understanding attachment as exaggerating positive qualities of people and objects—and how this differs from genuine, unconditional love. She addresses fear and anxiety by distinguishing helpful fear (realistic, protective) from destructive anxiety (rooted in a false sense of self), then walks through practical antidotes: contemplating impermanence and death, recognizing the emptiness of a solid “I,” and redirecting attention toward benefiting others. Delivered conversationally with deep audience engagement, the teaching integrates Buddhist philosophy and psychological insight.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2007 12 04 jamyang – session 1 41207.mp3
UUID: 9127a1e3-591d-4435-b217-a7a2318031d7
Teacher: Ven Jamyang
Collection: Jamyang Mind Healing (Ven Jamyang)
Date: 2007-12-04
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 76.4 minutes
Words: ~10,500
Can really say, if you go there, could you turn the sun a little? I think you’re right that every group has its own needs. Yeah. And I had thought to go over more topics. And this course started in Melbourne at Tārā Institute with Lama Zopa Rinpoche.
When he once visited Melbourne, he asked the people from the center to, you know, to look for people who were interested in doing a course and he was looking for really sick people. He did a course, I think it was over a week, but then full time. So very, very intense. And then after that, he told the people there to run a course weekly. So they set up a course like this, run over twelve weeks.
They have the same amount of time but they have about twenty people. And I think, how do they do that? And what they’re doing is that what the one of the people who runs the course is has been connected with Ian Gowler. Gowler? Yeah.
Yeah. So he’s the first hour of the course, he’s he’s doing a lot of talking, not specific about Buddhism, but about I’m not actually sure. The nun who works says he talks about anything. So is Golo. And he had cancer.
He had cancer and he healed himself with mindfulness meditation. He is missing one of his legs. And he’s not doing anything more than just mindfulness meditation, but for whatever reason, he became quite famous with it. And he has his own foundation and has his own courses. He writes books and yeah.
He had quite a negative attitude to start with. He must have. You know? The cancer must have samsarace. Yeah.
He cured himself, you know? And he has set up a program like he says that if you practice three hours a day mindfulness meditation, you heal your cancer. Okay. Yeah. If you do it an hour, you can you you prevent it, I think, from growing Yeah.
But you cannot completely remove it. But if you do three hours a day, he has that worked out really precisely. So he’s quite famous and this guy who works in Tārā Institute, he has worked with Ian for many, many, many years and now he’s doing that course. So they do first the hour, hour, he’s talking. And then they have a half an hour break and then the nun is talking only half an hour.
And then we do half an hour meditation and I think how can you cover all these topics? And half an hour, I can’t. If we really address questions, you just need time. If you feel like you want to know more, feel happy to join next time or other courses where you can next year, we will have, I hope, more on the program in the weekends. Yeah.
Mainly in the weekends. So if you feel a need to know more about certain topics, you know, you can do either that or do another course. So I will work on that and I want to have your feedback too and what you would like to see more, what you have been missing, and maybe we do that at the end of today. What do you wanna do next week? You know, what is something that you feel you really wanna know?
And I haven’t discussed that yet, so we can do that next week. So what you know, like, when you said you have the Corsican in February, would you prefer to have all new people rather than some people revisiting it? No. I don’t mind. Oh, it doesn’t matter.
Okay. No. Wrong. No. There are quite some people who have shown interest in you know, that they wanna come next year.
You never know how many are gonna come, but I don’t know. I’ll just putting up the ad in some of the old publications? Tried. I went I I I went with my post ers everywhere. It’s not really encouraging.
You know? You come in as a Buddhist nun and they think, oh, what a strange person. That’s the first thing. So at some places, I think in one hospital, they were really like like looking like this. So then you have to ask, you know, you ask the question if they wanna hang up the posters and you don’t see any posters at all there and they they feel like you’re doing something weird because you look weird and so next time, I will send a layperson.
But, you know, that it’s it’s hard. I think yeah. Only when you really know people who work there, you can do something like that. But even Catherine, she works in oncology. Right?
Yes. She she can’t anything with this. She can’t talk to the patience about this. She yeah. So we are a little bit limited.
People are very shut down. They only see Yeah. I think I put that in in on the poster. It’s not about curing. Although cure might happen, it’s not about that.
It’s about how do I deal with my sickness and how do I find a space in my own mind that I feel happy despite the effects of everything that happens to me. And sometimes the body heals, sometimes not. You You don’t know. Yeah. That’s been very much.
You feel it helped? Work. Oh, yeah? Because, yeah, the the my friend that’s actually employed there that I go out and do home visits with her, and she’s very interested to hear about this course and everything. So I’m sure that even some of the staff that work there, they often work part time two or three or four days a week.
So I’m sure I could put a Okay. Great. Yeah. I’ll give you one. Yeah.
I think you’re very old. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it’s a very old place, but the staff’s lovely there, and they don’t get as much publicity as Mary Potter. Yeah.
They’re trying. Trying fundraise. Mhmm. Good. I’ll do that.
So today, now a day about disturbing emotions. Maybe it’s good before we start to remember that the mind itself is that which is clear and knowing. Mind itself is like space. Right? No color, no shape, you can’t see, you can’t touch it, you can’t really.
But how we access the mind is through anything that pops up in the mind. All our experiences, our feelings, our thoughts. That is what we feel is our mind. In Buddhism we say that there are things that arise in the mind but that’s not the mind itself. The mind itself is like space where all these things arise in.
Because these things arise, the nature takes on the aspect of the things that arise. If anger arises, the mind takes on the nature of anger but the mind is not anger itself. Anger is not part of the mind. It’s like dirt that we get in our clothes. We never think that the dirt is part of our clothes.
We know it’s dirt. We know it can be removed if we use the right soap. So that’s the same for the mind. In Buddhism we say that the nature of the mind if we really realise the nature of a mind that is nature of the mind is love. The nature of the mind is compassion.
All the other things that arise in the mind are not in the nature of the mind. So if we remove all our disturbing emotions, somehow get control over them, somehow we’ll be able to not reinforce them again and again when they’re there, we actually would become more loving and compassionate people. That is how human beings are in nature. Somehow we identify more with the disturbing emotions than with the positive emotions. Isn’t it?
I’ve seen this I worked a lot with children so you can see from the beginning that a child is born. You don’t see these disturbing emotions that much, isn’t it? It’s like there is a purity or a bliss or a contentment unless the child is very disturbed because of something that has happened during the birth or straight after birth. But if you see a child that is in peace, very, very blissful. And we all want to touch it, especially when touch the crown, isn’t it?
Our hands go immediately there to the crown. What I say in psychology is that the child has, especially in the beginning, the feeling that doesn’t have the feeling of an own identity. It feels completely when it is in the womb but it’s one with the mother. It’s very difficult to distinguish what is me, what is my mother, what is my feeling, what is my mother’s feeling. A child doesn’t know how to do When a child is born, it starts to recognise itself as a separate entity when it has negative emotions.
When it’s really hungry, when it has a wet napkin, when it’s very tired. Tired then it starts crying and that crying makes it aware of the fact that it is a separate entity of something else. It is crying and then the mother comes and the mother comforts us and then it relaxes again. Then it feels like yeah, this is my mother. My mother gives me the relaxations.
I am the one who feels so upset. That is how we learn to know each other. So from the beginning we learn to identify ourselves by our negative emotions, not by the positive emotions. We experience wholeness or comfort when we can melt with somebody else. So our whole life we are looking for that.
We are looking for this perfect relationship that can can give us that. Isn’t it? True? So in Buddhism what we say is that wholeness, that is actually what we really are. Somehow from the beginning we only identify with these negative emotions.
We become this poor me. We become this person who is needing something. We are the needy person. That is where we identify with. We never identify with I’m this compassionate, loving, whole person.
Sometimes we have that experience but that’s only when somebody is with us. Or when we experience it on our own that’s really a spiritual experience. It’s not really us. It’s something that happened to us. Maybe there was another force that we’ve experienced, isn’t it?
We never feel that as me. But actually that is me. That is what we really are. So when we talk about disturbing emotions, what we do is we talk about it so that we can recognise them but they are not us. We have to recognise them because we identify so strongly with them.
We believe we are That. So first you have to see that we have to separate me from that disturbing emotion. And if you can separate that, then these disturbing emotions we don’t have to hold on to them. Somehow we believe if that emotion is not there, we don’t exist. If somebody threatens us and if anger wouldn’t arise, we feel we will be annihilated.
Isn’t it? There will be the danger that a person kills us and we don’t exist anymore. So we need the anger in order to defend ourselves. Right? From harm that comes from others.
Or fear? Or fear. Because sometimes you can be afraid but not angry. Yes. Yes, true.
Fear is the basis for anger to rise but fear is there first. In order to survive we need attachment. We need that drive for the sexual attachment. We need the attachment to food. Imagine that we would have no desire for food.
We would be horrified. I can’t live without any food. Somehow we nurture that. You know, it’s very hard for us to separate me from these kinds of attachments. So that’s why we look into the disturbing emotions, to know that we are not that.
Okay. So we did the anger. Did we think about that? Did we have a look at our own mind and recognize the anger better? Is it different than before we talked about it?
It’s just an emotion. You you can still have a bit more understanding of it, but just accepting emotions as emotions and not blowing them out to any more than just emotions. So you could take a little bit more distance? Yeah. Yeah.
Recognizing that you feel that way, you don’t feel confused. So Uh-huh. So does that change your reaction, your response? Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Get lots of practice in my life. It certainly slows down the response. Yeah. That’s good, isn’t it?
So you have a little bit of your wisdom can arise, so you can look at it and maybe you you don’t get that intense. You might think the same things, but you actually think the same things plus what we’ve learned. Yeah. Yeah. I think it’s still there.
I think it’s sort of innate, but you’re sort of It’s not innate. Change that. Change that. It is not innate. You can get rid of it.
But this is very good. You know? When when it comes up that there is this this observing thing is more rational and says, oh, this is my anger. This is not part of me. This is coming up in my mind.
When this arises, I’m going to harm others. I have to be careful. Blah. If that voice keeps on talking and you keep on doing that, your anger will go down in time. So keep on identifying with that voice that talks instead of that anger that wants to come out.
Oh, great. Fantastic. If that comes naturally, you must have worked very very hard. Normally it starts how Nick says it: Even anger comes but there is this other voice that comments. But the moment that it comes naturally, without any anger, is fantastic.
Then really something has shifted on a deep level. Otherwise, it’s not possible. It’s selfish because you couldn’t see? Fantastic. That’s how you should be selfish.
That’s healthy selfishness. That’s why selfishness. That’s good, you know, because you don’t serve anybody. That’s great if you can really see that. That’s great.
You know, you get so much space in your mind and you have a positive reaction and that can help your daughter to change too. Good. So then from anger we go to attachment. Anger is not the most easiest disturbing emotion to see because it can become so big. It can be so destructive.
So somehow we can recognize, oh, yeah. This is we actually don’t wanna be angry. We don’t wanna harm others and we don’t wanna suffer ourselves from that feeling of anger. When it comes to attachment, it’s much more difficult because attachment really serves us. What we feel is like I am happy.
We’re all all looking for happiness. And when are we happy? When we get what we want. So desire’s attachment is that what helps us to get what we want. That is actually that what is telling us what we want.
I really want to have cup of coffee right now. That is attachment telling me. So I feel if I get a cup of coffee, I’m happy, I’m content, I feel nourished, I feel really good, I feel all these positive feelings that I’m longing deeply for. Attachment is telling me what to do. Then seeing the faults of attachment is very difficult because attachment is giving us the pleasures of this life.
That is what we believe. That’s not really true but that is what we believe. If I follow my attachment, I get pleasures. So looking at attachment is threatening your experience of pleasures or can give you the idea that your experience of pleasure is threatened. That makes it very difficult to look at.
Did you ever read through this? No? No. You have? Yeah.
Okay, good. So it’s very difficult to see the faults because of that nature of attachment. But if we really check if attachment and following our attachment gives us real satisfaction and gives us real peace, we also know we’re actually not. Even if I have the cup of coffee, even after the zip, there’s only one moment that I experience some satisfaction but straight after there is a dissatisfaction. Straight after, isn’t it?
If you really observe your mind, that moment is just one moment. After that, there is less pleasure. True? I don’t know as far as coffee is concerned. Okay, give me a lot of your tea.
Water. But you know what I mean. Any nice thing that we taste or that we feel, the first moment of the taste it’s there, the next moment it’s less there. That less means that whatever we find with our attachment is never going to give us the satisfaction that we’re actually looking for. We can still enjoy it.
But if we really know the nature, what we now believe is if I don’t get my coffee I can get really upset. You see the two year old girl who starts screaming, I wanna have this. I wanna have inside, we have all that girl that screams oh, boy that screams, if I don’t have my coffee, I’m not gonna be happy. You know? Or only when I have my coffee, I’m gonna be happy.
I’m not going to make you happy either. So if we see that nature, that it’s never going to bring us satisfaction, what we can do is we can stop screaming for that cup of coffee. That screaming voice, that is our attachment. Then when the coffee comes, we can still enjoy it. No problem with the enjoyment.
Right? But our craving for it and believing that if it’s there, it’s gonna give us that satisfaction. That is the attachment. So having a craving is actually a very good practice? I don’t know.
How do you mean that? It’s time to be smart. How do you mean that? Come on. Well, if I have a craving and I enjoy satisfying that, and then I give in too much and have not one cup of coffee before, I’m starting to feel sick.
Yeah. So I think there are lots of You can enjoy it. Right? Yes. I won’t go into what Buddhist said about alcohol.
No, no, no. That’s can’t get like you can’t cough. It doesn’t We can see the craving very easily when we talk about alcohol, when we talk about coffee, when we talk about sugar, when we talk about drugs. That is very obvious for everybody and maybe everybody has had that experience. If that craving comes up, it’s a very strong craving.
But attachment is more than that. That’s a very strong craving, a very gross craving. Attachment is also very subtle. For us, attachment and love for something go together. We cannot separate that.
So if we say I really love that what we mean is I’m attached to them. We don’t know because the nature of our mind, because attachment is in everything we’re doing, we don’t know what it is to be really free of attachment, love free of attachment, to experience what it is, to have love without attachment. We don’t know what that is. Right? If we really look at love, what we think I loved is, there is always something that says I want this or I need this.
I enjoy this. Real love means nothing for me and everything for somebody else. And in that for somebody else I experience even more love. Right? That’s love.
Love is a giving. Love is about somebody else. Attachment is about me. So everything that we love we are so self don’t even know what it is to love. True?
Can we see that? When somebody is really kind to us, when somebody is really benefiting us, we want that person to be happy too. We call that love. But that love is based on that person is benefiting me. Because the moment that person stops benefiting me, my love is finished.
I don’t want to have that person anymore, right? True? So our love is very conditioned. Conditionally. We cannot love unconditionally.
Our love depends on how much that person can benefit us or not. True? Real love means that I don’t care if that person is benefiting me or not, I want to benefit that person. That’s a very different feeling. In order to get to that feeling we have to practice that equanimity.
Because of our nature, everything that we experience is is this feeling I like this or I don’t like this. We are not equanimous in that. We are not stable in that. And because we are not stable in that we have this craving and this aversion. That is attachment.
Every form unlike that. Everything that we want is based on attachment. They sometimes say it’s like oil that is in your clothes. It’s very difficult for that to separate from each other because it’s in everything. It’s in all the cells, it’s in every action you’re doing.
Very, very difficult to distinguish what is really attachment, what is really love. But we can say if it is about ME there is always attachment. And everything is about ME, isn’t it? So we don’t have to beat ourselves up for that. We are all like that and that is just how we are.
But we suffer from that because we believe that we are that attachment. Because it’s so difficult to distinguish from what the nature of the mind really is, We constantly follow it and we constantly create causes for suffering for ourselves. We constantly engage in suffering actions because of that. Because of that and because we actually don’t wanna suffer, you just have to think about that. You sit down and you think about that with the with the actions that you’re doing.
For who is this actually? You know? What you did was really good. That was, I think, normally saying, oh, you know, they don’t want to they they don’t pick up the phone because they think it’s me or that’s me, me, me, me and now you just leave it with them and say well, they’re not home. Finished.
It has nothing to do with you. So you don’t go into the poor me thing which gives you a lot of freedom. Isn’t it? It’s very, very difficult to do. Anybody.
Anything. Very, very difficult. And children, they are very close to you. In a you’re right, you know, because there is this ‘me’ is always involved. At the same time, let’s say, the moment we’re going to try to develop compassion and unconditional compassion, what we do is to try to develop a love that is similar than the love that a mother feels for her only child.
Because the love that a mother feels, a mother is very much willing to give up her own happiness for the child to be happy. That giving up is much bigger than you find in any other relationship. In a way, the children show how to do unconditional love and in a way there’s a lot of attachment involved. You have both. You can only experience that one if you have that one with her too.
So there is something good in the two. So what we have to realise is that what we think that we can find with somebody else or what we think we can find satisfying our senses is never going to give us what we’re looking for. The wholeness or the peace or the real satisfaction is only coming from ourselves. If we can experience that wholeness you think back about the little child, the mind of the child is in peace. The child looks very whole when we see the child in peace.
Absorbed in itself, content, very happy. Don’t know, do you recognise that when you see a child? There is something in the child that we maybe think we don’t have. The child has a purity. The child has An innocence.
The tainted thing is actually our own disturbing emotions. The children don’t have that so strong. They are untainted. They look like they are untainted. But I think they have much more connection with the nature of the mind, with what we really are.
We forget how to do that. Some people, if they look at animals, they have the feeling that animals are the same. Can follow their natural impulses without being limited or hold back. I think that nature, there is an innocence in it. There is not wondering, am I doing this right?
There is no judgement in it. We have all these mental events happening that actually limit us very much in how we feel and how we behave and how we move. So what we have to try to do is look at the emotions but at the same time know we are not that. We are not that emotion. We are actually that innocence.
If you look at the space, we are actually the space. Then in the space we can create anything. We can create a kitchen. We can create a bedroom. We can create here anything what we like.
Isn’t it? We can invite anger. We can invite attachment. We can invite jealousy. We can invite anything.
But that’s not really the space. The space itself is space. And we can create that the way we want to create it. If we know how to do it, you know, where to buy the right chairs, to buy the right furniture. Then we can let that appear in the space.
A little bit simplistic, but it is a little bit like that. So, what is attachment? The definition of attachment is that which exaggerates the positive qualities of an object. When we fall in love, that person is perfect. Yes, we know some it has some faults but we never think about that.
We only see the perfect appearance. We are so much in love. That person is completely fulfilling all our needs. Everything, isn’t it? And sometimes we might get upset but we forget that easily.
Somehow we are so focused on all these positive qualities. True? And we exaggerate them. We think this person is really the best and this and that and that. It’s the most beautiful, the most perfect, the most whatever whatever we can get, that is what we believe.
If we are not in love, we think: Oh, how could I? After half a year or something, when the first love settles down, we start to see the other things. We think why didn’t they see that before? That is the nature of attachment. And that’s with attachment to anything.
If you look at food, how beautiful looks food? How beautiful can they make it? And when does it ever really give you what it shows there? I don’t know. When I see food, I get this huge expectation, this huge projection that it must be so good.
But every time when you chase it, it’s not there. You have that? Well, at least you give yourself that treat. But that’s what we do. We project these qualities on top of it, isn’t it?
On persons, on food, on furniture, on our car, on anything that we that we, you know, or maybe even the meditation course is such a fantastic course, blah blah blah. But actually, when you look at it, it’s not there what we think is there. Because it’s not there what we think is there, there is always some kind of disappointment. Because we have too big the disappointment necessarily will come. Necessarily.
We cannot have anything that we are attached to without a disappointment coming. And disappointment can also mean the relationship ends or the person dies. If you see couples who have been married for a long, long time, the moment that other person dies, they’re completely hopeless. They’re missing half of them because of that strong attachment and never thinking about they would ever be separated. Never thinking about the possibility even.
No. Same as that we never think about that we’re going to die one day. It’s like somehow we create a strong belief that that good thing is always going to be there. And it’s very strange. We all know the pain of the separation.
We all know the pain of relationships that don’t work. At the same time as soon as we fall in love the complete expectation is there again. We forget all the pain and we go for it again, isn’t it? And we believe this time it’s gonna work. This time it’s really gonna work.
We fool ourselves. We fool ourselves. Yeah. And we do it again and again.
It’s If we remembered all the pain, we might be reluctant to Why don’t we remember? We don’t want to. Don’t Aversion. Aversion for the pain. Yeah.
But if if we remember that we may never step into something that could be good. Not true. Can you remember that we talked about that in Buddhism you meditate a lot on suffering? That’s because of that. Because we don’t remember the pain.
We don’t want to see the pain, we don’t want to feel it. This aversion like I don’t want to have any pain. So we believe in these creations that we make. Now everything is going to be wonderful. Because we do want to experience that comfort and that happiness and that we do want it.
So we look for it and we create it in our own mind and we believe it and we project all these expectations on other people. And then we’re disappointed when it doesn’t happen. And then we can’t deal with that so we deny that or we avoid it and we go for another trip. Isn’t it? There are people who go into relationships straight after each other.
Isn’t it? They finish one and then go into the other. Or maybe they don’t even finish one. They just go from I call that changing the face. It’s How do we do that?
But it’s too late. I’d like to be born with a medium. Yeah. You’re bolder than me. Meditating on suffering helps us to have no unrealistic expectations.
To know that when next time the child is going to be born, we know it’s going to be painful but we make the choice, it’s okay that it’s going to be painful. It’s not a problem that it’s going to be painful. I’m prepared to go through it. That makes us more realistic. That makes us that when it arises we’re not going into the shock like ‘Where is that coming from?’ Why didn’t I know realistic, you can enjoy more what you have.
In how far is Buddhism the maximum degree of realism that we can obtain? Nihilism? Why do you think it’s nihilism? Say that again. Why is Buddhism says if you can see reality as it is, you don’t experience suffering.
No, but I find that to be pleasingly true. What we have is this veil. And that veil helps us that we can’t see reality. We have all these expectations and ideas about reality which are not true. That makes that we suffer.
That’s the cause of all our suffering. First of all, we believe there is this I who is really there. Isn’t it? We have this feeling of I and the stronger the emotions are that arise in our mind, the stronger that feeling of I arises in our mind. If we really look what is there, there’s nothing there.
Nothing. No I there the way we feel it arising in the mind. There is an I there but not like that. This feeling that feels absolutely true. Me.
How dare you to harm me. Isn’t it? That strong feeling. We all have that. That is not true.
And on the basis of that I we have attachment and aversion to things. And the more we cultivate that, the the thicker that veil becomes and the more we set ourselves up for suffering. So seeing reality that I is not even there. What am I worried about? These people are just not home.
It’s not that it’s about me. Things just arise the way they arise and they disappear again in the way they disappear. It’s not more than that. So when you become more realistic, you don’t have false expectations of whatever happens in your life. And the more realistic you are, the less suffering there is.
If you really know and knowing is more than knowing intellectually. Right? If you really can feel in your body, experience in your body that one day you’re gonna die or one day every day that we experience, we move one day closer to death. That this day is the only thing we have. We don’t even know if there’s gonna be next day.
The more you can feel that, the more you can take the essence of today. The more you can make conscious decisions: This is what I want to do with this day. Isn’t it? You’re not making all these stories about what might happen if But painful to remove the veils because what we’re doing is we remove all these dreams and fantasies of what might happen, how wonderful our life might become if. It’s a kind of self imposed camouflage.
Yes. True. Usually, we look at it. It’s horror. Yeah.
You can’t take the horror. Yes. So when you take the horror, you don’t need the camouflage. And when you really take the horror, the horror is not a horror anymore. That’s right.
If you can take the moment you can take it, it’s not horror anymore. Yeah. I’m finding it out very slowly. Fantastic. Fantastic.
It’s all a big joke. Well, that’s when you have experience that horror is not horror, then it’s a big joke. But that’s hard to say. So when you have attachment, what a very good thing to counteract attachment is reflecting on impermanence. Right?
Everything is impermanent. Also, pleasure is impermanent. If you know how impermanent the pleasure is, you’re craving for it or you’re grasping for it, you don’t take that so seriously. You can tell yourself when you feel the grasping for coffee, you’re like it’s not going to bring me anything. That pleasure that you’re going to feel is only one moment.
Why do you feel that craving so much? The craving in itself is a suffering. Why do you feed it so much if you know it’s only gonna be one moment of pleasure? You can also let go of that moment of pleasure. Just let it go.
No. It’s serious, Vivian. I I fully agree with you. I’ve almost in my own little bit of insight now, anointed a cup of coffee as my allowed kind of indulgence in that kind of thing. And I celebrated this.
And I love it. So I’m I’m just now just openly loving it. We need happy experiences. Right? Buddhism Buddhism is not about you’re not allowed to have happiness or you want to cut your happy feelings.
Not at all. In order to have have this positive mood, you know, the more happy we are, the more we can bear. If we are really happy and somebody abuses us I know. We say, you know, oh, he must have a bad day. But if we feel shitty and somebody abuses us for days, we’re out of isn’t it?
So happiness is very important. And pleasure because we are in the nature we are pleasurable feelings contribute very much to happiness. So we need them in order to be able to bear the sufferings that come with practicing your spiritual path or even just living. There is a lot of research done about happy feelings and what people are willing to do for us and I think we talked about it in the first few times. If we feel happy we are much more willing to help others.
If we get a little bit more money from our boss we are very willing to help more. Isn’t it? If our boss is stingy, we are stingy or not? Because you have to be. Especially if you have four kids at home.
What I’m saying is it’s good if you take care of yourself. If coffee gives you a pleasant feeling, if coffee makes you optimistic, give it yourself because that helps you to go to the next day to the next day and to take whatever comes on your path and transform that into your spiritual path. Another thing about attachment how we can counteract it is that we meditate on death. If we have this strong attachment to this person one day you have to separate from this person. If you keep on cultivating that strong attachment then you know that the moment you’re going to separate from that person you’re going to experience unbelievable pain.
Counteract it in your life. That doesn’t mean don’t enjoy that person but counteract your attachment. Contemplate, you know, today he or she is here with me and I really enjoy this but this might be the last day and that’s okay. Because we are impermanent and this person has this body just only in this life, in the next life that person has a different body. There are many ways how you can think about that to counteract your attachment.
Another way that we counteract attachment is by thinking about the negative aspects of an object. I’ll tell you the one that the monks use. And this only because in Tibet, for many hundreds of years, the monks were the ones who got the education, not the nuns. Right? If you became a nun, you were less worth than anybody else, less worth than a married woman.
You were nothing. You didn’t get any education. Nothing. I can’t give you the example for what the nuns would do but I’ll give you the example for the monks. So if a monk would fall in love, they’re going to think about the negative aspects.
So they think about what is this person really? What you have is this compilation of flesh, bones and blood and it is all held together with a beautiful skin. But just imagine that you take that skin off. What is there? You really want to have sex with that.
And if that’s not enough then you’re going to think about what happens all in the body. And if you really think about what happens in the body You don’t have no sex anymore. You don’t. So that’s that’s where they indulge in. If they, you know, counteract it if they find themselves in a situation that have desirous attachment, then they start thinking like that.
I mentally skin them. Yes. What happens I think what you have to be careful is that you don’t create aversion towards the object. Aversion is also based on attachment. Aversion is based on I don’t like this so I don’t want it.
It’s also not like that. It’s more trying to see how things realistic If you go into an aversion and you think, oh, these women are so disgusting and never want to be around them, that’s also not really realistic. Isn’t it? Because you’re just as disgusting as that other person in a certain way. And then if all that doesn’t help, check your reality.
Believe if there is this fantastic person appearing for us, this person is going to give us all the happiness we need. All the happiness we were always craving for. All the happiness that all these previous partners had not been capable of giving us, not even a mother, not even a father this person is going to do that. If you get that feeling, check if that is really true. Check.
It will come naturally but just check yourself and be realistic and see that big bubble that you are in. You can enjoy the bubble but no, this is not realistic. This is just a feeling arising in This is just a feeling arising my mind. Yes, you can be with that person. Yes, you can love that person but the feeling that that person is going to give you everything you need is not realistic.
Okay. Not from anything else saying somebody’s perfect puts incredible pressure on them. Unbelievable. Yeah. Yeah.
Mm-mm. It’s not fair to that other person too, isn’t it? And then you put somebody on that pedestal which also makes it very difficult to really have an equal love. One day they will have to fall off. They have to.
Okay. That’s about attachment. Then fear and anxiety, we’ll do that before the break. Fear, anxiety, then we have depression, and then we have jealousy, and then we have pride. So it’s still lot to come.
Fear and anxiety. Fear there are two kinds of fear. One fear is a positive fear. A fear that helps us. A fear that tells us run away, you know, a fear that says, hey, this is really dangerous.
And then the or a fear that for instance, in Buddhism, if you start if you start how to say yeah there is a fear that has to do with reality. For instance, if there is a deep black hole there and if I will look into it I might be afraid that I’m going to fall into that. That fear is realistic. I should follow that fear and look for a place where I can find refuge. Right?
That’s a good fear. Then there is a fear that I’m just walking on the street and I’m scared that somebody’s going to hit me on my back. That’s a fear that’s not really there. That’s a fear that’s based on nothing. That’s a fear that is based on delusions.
That can become a paranoia. So in a way, fear can help us to think about if are afraid of suffering, what we normally do is we run away from that. If we make it realistic, we actually look at the suffering. Then when we look at the suffering, we might feel that, wow, my death is really going to come one day and I really have to make sure that this and this happens and it might come with a feeling of fear. Following that fear is going to help you, is going to benefit you.
That’s a good fear. Any fear that really benefits you on the long term is a good fear. True or not? Think about If we stop engaging in negative actions because we fear from it in next life or in this life. That’s a good thing.
It’s a fear that is going to help us to create more happiness for ourselves. Maybe I should say that. Something that helps us to benefit us, something that helps us to become more happy, that is what I call a good fear. Maybe I should say that. Originally, when you do the same thing with the fluency, you’re not aware of any other way of doing it.
Can you be more clear? Now when you were young I’m forced to try. Sorry. My my mind won’t take it in. That’s okay.
We can it can come back. Normally, when fear arises in the mind, when real when strong fear arise arise in the mind, our mind can get very disturbed and it can overwhelm our mind and we can get in a panic. And out of the panic we start doing things. That is what we’re not trying to do. That is a fear that is not really contributing to a positive state of mind.
That’s just creating more and more disturbances in our mind. That is like the anxiety, isn’t it? When anxiety really arises it’s there and it’s always there and it’s not going to go away. And we have the feeling that if I have to do this and this and and this this and even if everything is done, then there might be a new reason why we have to keep on going. That fear is very much about me around the I.
And that fear is very much about I’m in danger or I’m in too much pressure or I am It’s about that I. That I becomes very strong. Right? That fear is not a constructive fear. That is a fear that is only disturbing us.
When that fear arises in the mind, we try to counteract it in the sense of and I think I don’t know. What I’ve experienced is the main useful is that you feel that fear, but you are not that fear. Right? So by, for instance, thinking about the nature of the mind, thinking about that space that we actually are, and the fear arises in it. I’m not the fear.
Normally, I’m sitting on top of the fear. And it goes around like that. Isn’t it? But if I step away from that and I just see the fear arising, wow, there’s something that’s really triggering me. What is it that is too much pressure?
What are maybe the expectations that I have of myself that I can’t live up to? What is underneath that? Then you start analyzing it and then that fear might lose its power. Or I can think about: Am I really this fear? I believe I am this or I believe that something is threatening me.
How real is that me? Is there really a me that can be so threatened? Especially if you look at when you’re in your work and you’re under too much pressure, that me can become very big, you know. And you have the feeling that everybody is is putting pressure on you. But does that me really exist in the way you feel it?
What is the worst thing that can happen to that me? And if you really gonna look into that me you can see it’s just a bubble that you hold on to. There is nothing that people can really put pressure on. There’s nothing there. It’s only because you believe there is something or you have that feeling that there is something.
And because that feeling arises you hold on to that feeling that you feel it. But if you could let that go, there’s nothing that people really, you know, they can say things and they can push you in directions but there’s nothing really that they can threaten. True? That’s my big thing, fear and anxiety. Is it?
When I, yeah, when I meditate, it’s not very rarely anger. It’s all anxiety. What will happen? What’s going to happen? Uh-huh.
Yeah. What do you do when that when that arises in your mind? Sometimes it takes me ages to let it go. I let her go with it too much. You you are you are in it, isn’t it?
It it’s pushing you somewhere. Pushing you somewhere. Yeah. Yeah. So you try to step back?
Yeah. I try to, but it’s it’s a bad thing. It’s a Anxiety is my big thing. Yeah. Mhmm.
I have to work on it. Have to work on it. Yeah. But you know how you have to know how to do it. Yeah.
Well, it’s not really me. I’ve got to stand back and yeah. I don’t have to feel it. Yeah. I don’t have to feel it.
I don’t till I can recognize what’s happening but not have to feel it. Not have to be it? Be it. That’s it. The feeling is still there.
So we’re not trying to say, Oh, don’t need to be afraid. There’s no need to feel this anxiety. Anxiety is there. So you allow it to arise. That’s the first thing.
But then we’re not becoming it. We’re trying to step back from it and let the anxiety just arise in the mind so that it can dissolve back into the mind. Which is quite tricky to do that. Will do at the end we’ll do a meditation on the spaciousness of mind or the clarity of mind or the nature of the mind where you learn to identify with that nature of the mind and not with the anxiety. So you can go back to that place and then just see the fear arising.
Who was there on a Monday night when Robina was here? You were there. You were there. There was this lady that stood up and said, I’m so afraid of this person who comes into my house and will do this and this and this. She had this whole story happening in her mind.
That’s a little bit anxiety too, isn’t it? There is a strong anxiety. But if I hear you say, what will happen if this? What will happen if that? What will happen?
There is the same kind of thing, isn’t it? And maybe we think Oh, this woman was completely unrealistic but my fear is realistic. But in essence they are very similar. We have this thing happening Oh, what if I? So these are stories stories that happen in our mind, have no no real relationship to what happens in reality.
It goes back to labeling it as an emotion, doesn’t it? If it’s blind rage or incredible nervousness or tension or fear or Yeah. Grief. If if you sort of say, yes. It’s grief, but grief isn’t it.
Grief is an emotion that I’m feeling. Yes. To Yes. Break it down. Yes.
Exactly. Yeah. And if It doesn’t lessen the potency of the emotion but it’s an emotion. It’s not an all consuming entity. It’s not a state of being.
No. But the moment you can see that, it loses its power already. Yeah. Know? The power of the emotion is because you think you are it, because you feel you have the feeling that you have to solve that problem.
Or you’re feeling it so intensely. Yeah. Yeah. So you are it. If you’re talking about the fear, you just you just indulge in it or you’re overwhelmed by it.
That means that you cannot step back and say this is just a fear. If you can say this is just a fear, you can go back in a state of mind where you don’t have that feeling. Where you can say how to say You can separate them somehow. You can separate them somehow but it’s not an easy thing to do because we’re so used to identifying with it. We are so used to think that that is me, that it’s hard to find its place when it comes up.
Particular point? It’s almost as if you can get yourself into a position to watch yourself dealing with something. Yes. Definitely. Slightly above yourself watching it. Loudly..
Happen to you or yourself. Or But I’m not but I’m not trying to say go away in anxiety. Just allowing it to be there and figuring out why Explain yourself. Yeah. So stepping away from it.
Yeah. But you need a kind of safety in yourself in order to You have to go to another place in yourself where you can do that, isn’t it? You need to find somehow a place where you feel safe enough that you can say why is this actually arising in my mind? So that’s the most difficult thing I think. No, you don’t suppress it.
How do you find that space, that safe space? To go on board. Yeah. What is what is that? Because I cannot put a finger on it.
I know that this is work, somehow stepping back somehow. No. It was all just it was actually sheets and sheets of paper I had to fill in Mhmm. Every time I got into a situation that caused anxiety, and I could have named fifty And then breaking that down so that when I got into that situation, it was already in my head the tools to use. Yeah.
So it wasn’t a matter of finding a space Right. So you create a space before the situation arises. So that means that you do the meditation before the anxiety arises. And you meditate on it. And you try to imagine that if the fear arises next time, I’m gonna do this and this and this and this.
So you create that safe space before it is there. So you familiarize yourself. Yeah. That’s what but it’s also correct me if I’m wrong. It’s it’s really simple in that you do just go, why?
Is this freaking me out? Just the simple act of questioning it can be Definitely questioning shifting. Definitely questioning why why you’re feeling anxious, but all the time not trying to feed that anxiety. Just letting that anxiety you know, And if I really, really have to get away You can. I don’t have to run out the door.
I can just step out of the line, and I’m no longer trapped between two people. Mhmm. And just works. Mhmm. Before we before when you’re still captured captured in that fear, somehow believe that it’s really true, isn’t it?
That if the fear arises and that person is there behind me, something really horrible is going to happen. That’s very unrealistic. Think and this comes more from me doing regression therapy that has to do with experiences that you had maybe in this life when you were young, maybe in previous lifetimes, just before you die. These are very intense experiences. So you can have had the experience, I don’t know, maybe from a car crash in a previous life and every time when that happens you get similar reaction because these emotional reactions, we carry them with us from lifetime to lifetime.
So every time when you have died in a certain situation, you made a conclusion: I have to make sure that I’m not going to be in between these cars anymore or I So that makes the fear that arises plus your conviction that you have to make sure that you have to run away. These are not realistic events happening in our mind. So somehow you have to and I think it’s good when you’re not in the fear to look at them. What is actually going on? When does the fear arise?
What is it for? For what is gonna happen? What kind of stories do I tell myself? Are they really true? And the more you think about that, are they really true?
Most of the time they’re not true. But if we really believe in them, we might actually invoke them. Isn’t it? And then when we invoke them, say you knew I was right. We are looking for that.
But that’s not giving us what we really want. What we want is that we learn that that is not the truth. We want to step back from it and we want to give these emotions the opportunity to dissolve. Because as long as we suppress them and we don’t really can step back from them, they keep on arising in our mind. And now probably you have less trouble with anxiety.
One thing that we use in Tibetan Buddhism is that you think, you know, when the worry comes up, can I change the situation? If I can change it. Yeah. I know. That’s true.
Mhmm. Right? I mean, I I when I talk to my husband, I say, what if? What if? And he says, well, we’ll worry about that when it happens.
Just enjoy now. We’re sitting here by the beach. We’re having a cup of coffee. Enjoy now. Stop thinking about what if.
I’m doing. I’m trying yeah. I do. What if you would stop thinking about it? What would happen to you?
Nothing. Nothing’s gonna happen to me. And if something How would it change your life? What if you would stop thinking about it? What would how would it change your life?
Oh, I’d enjoy the now. Uh-huh. How would that be? Well, my husband would certainly enjoy it more if I enjoyed the now. But what about you?
Oh, yeah. I would too. You’re lovely. Because an hour is good. An hour is good.
Uh-huh. I’ve said I’ve had a fortunate life. Can you see the space that you have in the now? Yeah. Yeah.
I can. I’ve just retired from work this year. I’ve got time to do what I like and got time to look after my parents. I’ve got more time to do everything, but I still get anxious. Yes.
What is I’m gonna I’m gonna I’m gonna throw something in you. I’m not sure if it’s true. But Yeah. What if you are actually afraid of all that space? Oh, yeah.
That that could be it. Yeah. I’ve thought about that too. Yeah. So you have to hold on to that anxious feeling because at least that doesn’t confront you with the fear of the space.
Thought about that when Peter and I have talked about that. Yeah. Yeah. That’s right. Really allow that space to be there, you know, and then you open up completely.
Yeah. That can be very scary. Yeah. Yeah. I’m I’m aware of that, and that is that’s very true with me.
Yeah. And part of us is longing for it, and part of us is like, oh my god. And maybe you have even a feeling that you’re gonna lose your I. You’re gonna lose yourself. Yeah.
That’d be good. Well Well, your I is gonna fight about that Yeah. When you really have that feeling. Yeah. That’s very true.
I’m scared of that big space. I’ve got that big space now that I’ve always wanted. No. I’m more frightened to go in it. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. So I would focus on that. You know? Every time when the what if comes up, I would focus on the fear of the space because that’s your real fear.
Yeah. And as long as you you keep on thinking what if, what if, what if, you’re not really addressing the real problem. Yeah. True. That’s true.
So sit with the fear of the space. Okay. Uh-uh. Alright. I’ll do that.
Yeah. That can really dissolve because that’s a real fear. You know? That’s really there. All the rest is just a makeup to not to feel that what is really bothering you?
It is. So, again, when when we are afraid of change, loss, or death, you know, think about a permanence. Think about death. If you’re afraid of losing your money, you know, then think about death or think about death and losing it. What would happen if you really lose it?
What if you’re afraid of losing your house? Think about how it will be if you really lose your house. How many people don’t lose their house in their lives? You know, if look at Asia, how many people every year lose everything they have? They still are alive.
Somehow, losing everything doesn’t mean the end of your life even. If fear pops up, you can think about that we are in Samsāra, that because we are not enlightened and because we have this feeling of I, there were always things that we have the feeling that threatens the I. There will always be things that we experience as unpleasant. So if you think about the nature of life, the nature of life is just that unpleasant feelings arise. So then you don’t have to be afraid of that.
The nature of life is that things will end. That’s just the nature of life. Oh my god, how is that possible? My husband died. But that’s the nature of life.
The more you know it’s the nature of life, the more you can just let it happen. Fear is all based on me, me, me. Me is the center of all these emotions. So as soon as you can develop a motivation to benefit others, to be there for others, you counteract that feeling of me, me, me. If you can see that space that you have and you’re going to think, how can I use that space to benefit others?
That fear of, oh my god, what am I to do with that space?’ is gone because you’re going to use it to give it away. Give it away. All that space, you have to share. You know? You can share.
Yeah. That’s what I’m trying to do with my volunteer work in palliative care. I know you do. As I’m I’m trying you know, I’m aware of that. But make it in your mind like that.
Oh, okay. If you sit on the beach, you know, think about all that space and how you can give it away. Wow. I could do this and I could do that and I could do that. You don’t even have to engage in it.
But bringing your mind from that, oh my god. What do I do with that space? You give it a purpose that has nothing to do with you. So you take the the the attention away from me and just turning it around. The moment you turn it around, you you that whole fear or whatever the stuck emotion is there naturally subsides.
You can’t hold on to it because it’s all about me. Any disturbing emotion is about me. So as soon as we’re telling you think about others, it will subside. True? That’s just logic.
Meditating on that the I not really exists. Actually, the disturbing emotions have similar antidotes, isn’t it? I keep on saying the same. Think about impermanence. Think about death.
Think about that you are not that. Think about emptiness. Think about benefiting others. Think about you can counteract any disturbing emotion with that. True?
Good. Depression. Let’s have a coffee first. I’ve been waiting the whole morning for that. It keeps cropping.
It’s not true. It’s not true. I was waiting for the last for that one second. I don’t don’t even for that one second, but because actually when it does in the morning This is only fine. There’s only tea.
Fifteen minutes? Yeah. Okay. Yes.