Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Ven Jamyang opens this 100-minute teaching with a memory of wind moving through a garden, birds scattering, and ants—a natural entry into exploring compassion as the source of healing. Returning to last week’s theme, he distinguishes self-grasping (a confused view of reality) from self-cherishing (our habitual self-focus), showing how we can shift our attitude toward others now, even while our fundamental views develop gradually. Genuine compassion requires connecting with our own suffering rather than running from it. The session includes a guided meditation on cultivating universal compassion, followed by Buddhist analysis of three types of suffering—pain, the dissatisfactory nature of pleasure, and the involuntary cycle of attachment and aversion that keeps us bound.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2009 03 03 jamyang – mind healing and meditation 030309.mp3
UUID: cd862bc4-a9e4-4fad-95a9-5cbd9232e883
Teacher: Ven Jamyang
Collection: Jamyang Mind Healing (Ven Jamyang)
Date: 2009-03-03
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 100.0 minutes
Words: ~10,658
Hello? Hello? Sorry? I don’t know. I don’t know anything.
I don’t know what’s happening today. All these people are appearing, and they all wanna talk. Sometime in Holland before the wind comes, the children go a little bit mad. I’m not sure if the same is happening for you guys. The rain.
The rain. Is it right? My energy lifts in the red one Uh-huh. Good. North wind is different, but it’s when it keeps okay.
Uh-huh. But rain is a bit rainy. Right. Oh, it’s wonderful. And this morning had down at Aldgate, I just came outside of the house with a roast duck coffee and I was sitting in a chair watching the garden.
Suddenly I heard the whole garden was full of birds and suddenly the wind came through and all the different greens in the garden, all the leaves and all the boughs swayed and all the birds seemed to get to a crescendo and then the wind passed out over and then everything was quiet. And I was sort of there thinking this is my environment. Mhmm. So there was a sense of, I belong to this. You know?
It was it was amazing. Oh, beautiful. Nice experience. Yeah. And then all after the rain, all these funny little insects appeared with their wings.
Mhmm. And they were everywhere, rising up from trees, gardens, and everywhere. I’m not sure what they were. They couldn’t have been flying flies, but they were just little insects with little long wings. Oh, these are flying ants.
They’re flying ants. Well, I’m not very fond of ants at the moment because they’re gonna fit But they’re not they’re only they’ll only live for one day, I think. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I walked through them and thought, isn’t this mom?
It’s the ant that bit me on stand down. Sorry. Have to be I went I I’m sorry. I failed. Is that true?
Supposed to say that. I had five ant butts, and I couldn’t take it anymore. So what did do? What did you do? You you chased her away.
Oh, it went like that. Yeah. Then did she die, or did she just crawl? I didn’t try to follow her. You didn’t look.
I let I let everybody down. Why? Well, I just, you know, I’m just leaving You could have seen. If you brush it off, it’s not a problem. You don’t yeah.
That’s not a problem. Also, when a mosquito comes, you can make wind and brush them off. It’s not a problem. You just make sure that you don’t kill them in process. No.
Okay. Or you try. You know? You do not have to let them invade your space. You can still clean your house.
You can still say, no. No. No. This is my body. Please look for something else to eat.
I used to. Thank god. Oh, really? I can’t rejoice in that. I know.
We I’m not rejoicing, you know, because I’m laughing. Sorry. That’s how we do, isn’t it? Yeah. No.
No. No. I’m not upset. It’s just it’s just, you know, we we laugh about these things, but then it’s like, where is that a rejoicing? So rejoicing is rejoicing and killing rejoicing and I don’t do that.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I’m happy to rejoice in that. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That’s that’s good.
And I’m not gonna make perfect. You’re not gonna make perfect? No. You’ve got wisdom there, Bill, and that’s well on the way. That’s well on the way.
Also, Judy, when something like this happens, you know, it never ever applies to me or any living being. You know? Yeah. Only yourself. I’m not sure if this works. It looks like you hear it?
Yeah. The reason why we say stop killing is because we realize that the law of cause and effect works. So, the fact that we kill, that karma or the result of that action will one day come back to us. And we do not want to suffer. We do not want to experience, you know, what an end experience if somebody says just go away you.
We do not want to have that experience. So, we say sorry to ourselves that we have created the causes for that suffering to occur somewhere in the future. And then we can, if we regret the action, we can actually start to purify the action so that a result cannot ripen. Cool. Right?
So that’s what we’re trying to do. It has nothing to do with anybody else except you. You. Stop. Full stop.
You. Nobody else. Not even the ant. And is it true that if we if we do it, then we say, we say, is that is that true? Is it, like, your expectation?
I don’t think it is. No. Om Ah hum means that it’s like a transformation mantra, but it is you really have to know what you’re doing and do that in your mind, you know. It’s like just saying a mantra is not gonna do But if you’re saying it and regretful Oh, just having regret is enough. And just having regret Yeah.
No. It’s not enough. That’s the first bit. And then And then there there are you Robina talked about those four opponent powers. Oh, yes.
So all of that Yeah. Mozzie. Wow. For any negative action? Just don’t use the mozzie.
Yeah. That’s easiest, actually. Yeah. Exactly. But if you start purifying that mozzie, you can do that mozzie, I was going to say.
If you do that mozzie, you can do the Aussies that you did before, you can do them too. You can purify them all together, you know. So then it becomes easy. You use that one mosquito to think, I must have done that more times before. I can’t remember many, many, and I must have done it many, many more times that I can’t remember, and you purify them altogether.
Before we’re taking off to a completely different I’m gonna bring you back to where we left off last week. Were you here, Lily? Yeah. We talked about compassion last week. Right?
And how compassion is the power that heals. And we talked a little bit about why that is and looked into what makes us sick and literally, and I might not have said that before, what makes us sick is the three poisons and everything that comes from that. Our not knowing how things exist or our distorted knowing how things exist and then out of that not knowing or distorted knowing we react to things with attachment or anger. And from attachment and anger the envy and jealousy and the pride all that comes into existence. From that there are more delusions that can come, you know, like hate and resentment.
So, the poison that what makes really us sick is these delusions and these delusions that come into our mind because we are holding on to that I. We are holding on to that I that exists in a certain way. We believe, I am this and this and this and this. I need this and this and this. I expect this and this.
I want this and this. And because we generate these thoughts, we engage in actions. So from attachment and aversion, we engage in actions. And these actions normally are the cause for our future suffering. So, having these delusions in the mind, that’s the real poison, that is what really makes us sick.
And it’s all coming from that self centered mind that is cherishing ourselves more than others, that thinks my happiness is more important than somebody else’s happiness or my suffering is more important than somebody else’s suffering or just I am much more important than anybody else. My ideas are more important. And we all have that, you know, we can’t we can’t say, oh, I don’t have that. I’m very humble, you know, even even if you’re humble, there is still this feeling of I am more important, you know, if you have to choose between you and somebody else. It takes a long time before we’re going to choose for that other person, a long, long, long, long time.
If it really comes to it, it takes a long time. So we are self centered. We can’t change that. We are grasping at itself. We cannot straight away develop the wisdom that understands that is really a wrong conception and change it.
We have that self-cherishing, but that is what we can change, you know. As long as we do not have developed the wisdom yet that understands understands the nature of reality, we can change our attitude towards how we are in life. So, the self-grasping has to do with how we see things, with the view, with the nature of reality, and the self-cherishing has to do with our attitude, how we are standing in life, where we’re coming from, when we engage in actions. Do we get that? So we cannot change the view straight away.
In order to change our view, we have to do a lot of study, a lot of meditation, a lot of talking to teachers or with other students to and and with the teachers in order to get a good understanding. Then we have to do a lot of meditation to really see it perceptually. I think for me, that’s lifetime’s a good lifetime’s ahead. You know? So that’s not that’s gonna I can do a little bit of study, and I can do a little bit of contemplation this lifetime, but I don’t think I’m going to be finished with that enough to really penetrate the nature of reality.
But what I can do is I can change my attitude and I can work on that every moment in my life. And the more we do that, the less thick the delusions will become and the easier the wisdom can develop. So they both influence each other in a positive way. So if we talk about changing our attitude, we change our attitude from cherishing ourselves into cherishing others, which means that we’re going to make others more important, which means that we just as that we want to be free of suffering, we’re going to wish others to be free of suffering. Just as we want to be happy, we’re going to wish others to be happy.
Wishing others to be happy is love, wishing others to be free of suffering is compassion. You know, if we generate love and compassion in the mind and we need to do that combined with wisdom to really understand what love and compassion means. But the more we can do that, the more open our mind becomes, the less delusions will arise in the mind, the less poison we will generate in the mind, the more healing, the more whole we’re going to feel, and the easier we will start to learn about the nature of reality and to learn to understand how it works. So, compassion for ourselves, compassion for others. We talk always about compassion for others because if we start talking about I want to be free of suffering, we are so habituated with that natural tendency of grasping that we never do that with compassion, do we?
If I say I want to be free of suffering, I’ll generate compassion for myself. That’s not how I do it. I want to be free of suffering, I’ll push that whatever I think is causing me the suffering, I want to get rid of that. Right? So that’s why we don’t include ourselves when we talk about compassion for others.
You know? But others includes ourselves. So remember that. I’m I’m going fast now. Do you can you follow me?
I’ve said this all before, but I’m just jumping a little said we look after other people, we put them first. Others will be putting us first. So No. I’m not saying that because that might never happen. I don’t know.
You don’t wanna hear this. Well, I thought that was terrible. Yeah. Don’t deal with that yet. What I’m saying is that if we talk about generating compassion for others, that others includes ourselves.
So it’s not that we generate compassion for others and then expect others to take care of us. No. We take also care of ourselves. You know? We are part of that others.
Okay? I didn’t wanna be left out. What? It’s like the old golden rule. My mom used to say, But you but can you see what your mind this is actually very, very, very good rule.
You know? Treat others the way you would like to be treated because that includes compassion for yourself and compassion for others. But then what we do is we think that others one day are going to do that back to us and that’s not necessarily true. But in itself it’s a beautiful rule, you know, it’s very, very helpful to because we can be rude to people and if somebody would treat us like that, we would never, you know, we got into this reaction. But, when we keep on having that in mind, we actually are very compassionate toward others, but also we keep on thinking about ourselves, this is what I deserve, you know?
And the same time you’re giving that to yourself, isn’t it? Yeah. Is the not knowing. But if you combine that with the wisdom, you can use that as a fantastic fantastic rule. Yes.
And yet it’s how many women, young women have I heard say this? That they’ve been older than their younger brother. They do everything the mother says, every loving thing they can. And what do they get from the brother? They get a boot or something.
You know? The young brother is not gonna take he’s a boy, and he’s he’s different. And he could give them a slap punch or anything. So how do we adjust to that love for this lovely young brother that we are loving? And he goes, ah, back.
And it’s it’s it’s typical. It’s typical in family. It’s what young boys do. I know. I had four of them.
Oh, well then. You’ve been through it. And I’m gonna understand this. But what you have to yeah. Think only about yourself.
You know, what is gonna benefit you? Is it gonna benefit you that you’re gonna be angry with these boys, or is it gonna benefit you that you have compassion for these boys? Yeah. Well, of course, it’s it’s the maturity in this girl. Agree with the wisdom that that sort of teaching has given her.
But what about you? Me, my dear brother was But can you see that? Because we have this empty space somewhere in our mind that we expect things to come back. You know, we we have some wisdom lacking, I think, that we don’t completely see why why we treat others in a good way. Yeah.
Yeah. And what Buddhism is about is like, if you know the big picture, you can put off your happiness a little while, you know. And I think the more we can put it off, the more mature we get, the we can say, you know, what I’ve done from my side is a positive action. I kept my mind quiet. I reacted from love and compassion.
And if nothing come back, that has nothing to do with my action right now. It has something to do with actions I’ve done a long time ago, and I just have to swallow that and act again from love and compassion. And do not expect anything coming from there. Yes. Also, anything that we try to develop in good qualities, you know, and and we use them in dependence upon others, you know, and that kind others are very kind and we need others.
But what who grows is we. And we have the benefit of that. And the more benefit we have from that, the better people we will become and the more we can do for others. You know, but that’s very important. But with our mind, I think we have to really reflect why it is good for us because we have that distorted knowing about how we exist and what we expect from the world.
And, yeah, you do oh, I should not because I find that I learn things and I practice things, and then I have to do oh, look. I’ve come. Well, that’s because we we learn something new, and then we put them onto old habits. And then at a certain point, we look at them and we think, oh, that’s exactly the same as what I’ve been doing all the time. I just use now a new tool, but it looks still the same.
But I think is that what you mean or not? One day? Yeah. Like You missed it. It’s not like it’s new.
It’s You fell back to your old yeah. Yeah. And I have to and come back. Does that wear off? What wears off?
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That wears off. The more yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. The more you habituate yourself to the new habit, the more the other one will disappear. You know, it’s just that as today, we can have these very nice moments where compassion is naturally there, But then we do not know how to keep them or how to sustain them. We do not know how to keep them or how to sustain them.
But it’s all habituation. Habituation. I closed that door in the front. Didn’t I? Alright.
I saw her something too. No. I don’t know why she I don’t know. I’ll give her a ring. I thought she was just not coming for one day, but maybe she made a mistake or something.
Elaine that you’re talking about? Helen. Then but she’s not very well. Don’t know. Don’t confused.
You know? She Oh, is she? Mhmm. Yeah. I’m so sorry for her.
So if we talk about compassion, we first have to make sure that we are coming from a place where we have compassion for ourselves. And I think the two ways that we can normally react from should be careful how I say that we have the tendency to, when we want others to be free from suffering, to do that with an attitude that we feel not worthy enough. You know, we just want to serve because underneath we have this feeling of unworthiness. True? We want to help, we want to help, we want to help.
Because when somebody then says thank you so much, we get an acknowledgment for who we are. So if we do that, we are actually coming from a place of low self esteem. That is not a compassionate place. If we come from the place we cannot really generate compassion for others. And the other way how we do it is that we actually look down on people and say, oh, poor person, you know, I’ll help them.
I’ll have the money. I’ll give you something. But in that doing that, I actually look down. Your pride, yeah, the low self esteem and the pride are very, you know, I think that beings feeling inferior or superior are actually both labeled as pride in Buddhism. They’re just a different side of the coin.
And many times when you have the low self esteem you actually generate this feeling of superiority. And then sometimes, you know, you’re in the first and then sometimes you’re in the other one. Genuine compassion, we need to generate first a heart understanding our own suffering. We have to really connect with our suffering. And the more we do that, the more we can almost become friends with our suffering, the more we can react from a genuine feeling of compassion.
What we normally do is we run away from our suffering. How many people start helping others because they cannot deal with their own suffering? And they know that when I help others, at least have a feeling I’m doing something good. Know, when I’m home, I’m depressed and resolving in my own suffering, I’ll go out and help others. Then if you, you know it is like a band aid.
It can help on a temporary level but it’s not really addressing the problem that you have. In order to address the problem you have to look into what is really going on in my mind. What am I suffering from? How do I react to that? How do I deal with that?
And how can I do that differently? Right? So you need a courageous mind who says I’m going to look into my suffering. I’m going to embrace my suffering. Right?
We have what we say, oh, no. I don’t want that. We’re gonna say, yes. Come. I can learn a lot from this.
Right? So that’s the challenge. I’m gonna talk about that today. But first, I thought we could start with a meditation on compassion. Okay?
Just to make a little bit of a nice place to be in and that we can hear all these suffering stories. When I talk about suffering, you have to remember why we talk about suffering. Right? The only reason why we talk about suffering is because we want to learn to develop compassion. If we do not know what suffering is, how can we wish somebody to be free of that?
True, isn’t it? If compassion is I want you to be free of suffering, I first have to really understand what is your suffering. Because if I don’t, you know, it’s just a mere wish. It’s just some words. It’s not really really coming from from my heart.
Can’t. It’s not coming from my experience. True? Absolutely. True.
And you don’t have to be afraid, you know, we because suffering is there all the time. It’s not that we’re gonna look for it. It’s just that we’re gonna we’re gonna let go of of our aversion to it so that we can because as long as the aversion is there, we can never approach it. We can never really contact it. Healing means that we’re gonna connect with that, you know, because only then things can change.
If we run away it becomes this rigid thing, you know. If you have, you know, something like cancer and you completely run away from it and you have this aversion around it, how can you ever look into what is going on? You can’t or any problem. True? Problem.
True? So I I’ve seen many. I’ve seen many and and it’s heartbreaking. You know? Many on the verge even of healing.
And the last moment, the habit of running away is so strong. Oh, I prefer to die instead of facing what’s going on. That’s running away. Yeah. You you know these people or not?
Yeah. Yeah. It’s been on the phone. Oh, yeah. Is.
Oh oh, no. Yeah. The council’s always there. But, I mean, every problem that we have is always there. You know, we can’t go on a holiday, but we take our problems with us.
We take our mind with us. So everything is still there. It’s we never can run away in that sense. But our mind has a certain attitude towards what what is going on inside us, and we can change that. And that is what I call running away.
I’m sorry. But running away is like last week. Yeah. Yeah. That’s something else.
Yeah. But if you let go of death and go beyond that, you’re actually confronting everything. It’s the same. Same. But if you say, oh, I’ll die, that’s something different.
Can you see that? Well, you come from the aversion to what’s going on and you can’t deal with that. Our what what makes that we die is our delusions and all the actions that come from these delusions. That is what the causes of death, you know. They say, and that is also then the cause of our rebirth.
They say that when we understand reality and that moment a lot of our suffering is gone, and that moment we master our death and we master our birth. You know, and it’s not that we can say, oh, I’m just going to live forever. Yes, I do. At first one, it is complicated. And maybe next time we can talk about death more in-depth.
Let’s do the meditation. Yes, I’ll will do the meditation. Because it is complicated, and it’s completely reversing the the natural tendencies that we have. Yes. Because the idea is you don’t really know to that.
Gotta be able to not to die. That’s what we constantly do. And so does the medical profession. Does everything. I know.
So I say So Yeah. But what we’re doing not to die, give that up. We talked about that. You can remember. No.
I didn’t have. Well, I didn’t tell you. That’s me. You talked a lot about it. Yeah.
I do talk a lot. And then I Okay. We’ll do the meditation first. So just make sure that you sit comfortably. And then first, when we start doing meditation, we just start we try to generate a positive motivation.
Try to think that the purpose of my life is to free all sentient beings from their suffering and the causes of suffering. The purpose of my life is to bring all sentient beings happiness and the causes of happiness. And in order in order to be able to do this, I’m gonna develop the good heart, compassion in my mind. And then imagine that all sentient beings, all in human form, are sitting around you and extending beyond the horizon. The whole space is filled with beings.
And this and the space in front of you are all the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas who have great compassion. Their only purpose in coming to this world is to save other beings from suffering and to bring them only happiness. Then visualize that the compassion of all the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas enters your body in the form of white light. It purifies all your negativities and problems. It purifies all your past harmful actions and your potential to give harm in the future.
And visualize that your body gets more and more filled with that white light. Check that every part is connected and receives the light. And with that light coming into suffering and disease disappear out of your body and mind. Take time to feel your chest and your stomach, your head, your legs, your arms. And the white light is in the nature of love and compassion.
It is soft, warm, open, caring, soothing. All your pains disappear. All your negative thoughts disappear. You’re completely free of all suffering and the causes of suffering. Your body and mind are filled with the limitless love and compassion of all the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas.
Your body feels light and blissful, your mind peaceful and clear. Your mind is filled with universal compassion, which is compassion for every living being. Then contemplate on the suffering of your parents and other people who are close to you. Open your heart to the physical and psychological problems they are experiencing, and think that just like you, they want to be free of all suffering. Feel how wonderful it would be if they were free and could enjoy the peace and bliss of enlightenment.
Now think of the people that you don’t like or who have hurt you. Imagine their suffering, their physical pain and discomfort, their feelings of loneliness, insecurity, fear, dissatisfaction. Just like you, they don’t want problems, but they have no choice. As long as the mind is confused and ignorant of reality, it cannot find peace. Open your heart to these people for whom you normally feel irrit irritation or anger.
And think of the people that you have no particular relationship with. Imagine their suffering, physical pain and discomfort, feelings of loneliness, insecurity, fear, dissatisfaction. Just like you, they don’t want problems. But they have no choice. As long as the mind is confused and ignorant of reality, it cannot find peace.
Try to open your heart for these people for whom you normally don’t care. Expand your awareness. And then extend this compassion to every human being, all the people in the streets, shops, homes, restaurants, offices, and to every animal and insect. Contemplate that whoever has an uncontrolled mind necessarily has suffering. You feel compassion for every single living being, wishing them all to be free of all suffering and the causes of suffering which are in their minds.
And then we can make that compassion bigger by not just wishing others to be free from suffering, but to really think I will free them from suffering. I will take upon myself the responsibility for freeing every living being from suffering and for bringing them all happiness. And rejoice that you have generated that mind. That big mind that is willing and determined to take responsibility for others, for the happiness of others. Recognize that as a very virtuous mind, a very beneficial mind, A mind that is going to bring lots of happiness to yourself and to others.
And then dedicate the merits by thinking, due to all my past and future positive actions, and those done by others. May compassion, which is the source of all healing and happiness, be generated in my mind and in the minds of all living beings, especially those who are experiencing cancer, AIDS and other diseases. May compassion and wisdom be generated and may all diseases be immediately cured. Well, if they they they can’t you you open the door. They can ring the bell actually outside.
Oh, no. I didn’t hear a bell. But okay. When we talk about suffering how was that meditation? Nice.
You fall asleep when you meditate. Where do you start to fall asleep? Yeah. No. No.
No. It’s not yet a conditioned response. I don’t believe that. You have problems to sit more straight with your back? Yeah.
But but I think this is also fine. You must be tired. And if you’re really tired and you fall asleep, please do not worry about it. Well, if she’s really tired, I think she will fall asleep much quicker. I’m happy if you wanna try laying down or sitting on a chair where you have more support on your back.
Alright. So that’s why I sat on the on the ground. And what if you put more cushions under your bum so that you naturally straighten up? The door to outside is open. Yeah.
Door to the Yeah. Because I closed it. The door to outside is open. Yeah. The door to the Yeah.
I closed this door inside. Yeah. Oh, how funny. Okay. Let’s try to focus.
We all have problems with wandering off if you notice. So because because, you know, if we’re gonna see suffering as a big source of wisdom and compassion, knowledge of suffering is a big source for developing wisdom and compassion. If you see it like that, it’s like, you know, when I got confronted with huge suffering, somebody said to me, oh, this is very nice because now you can generate a lot of wisdom. And I just wanted to slap them and I thought, I do not care about this wisdom. I just want to get rid of this.
But, you know, now looking back I think, wow, you know, every time when I suffer, there is the learning moment because then I can see how my mind reacts, then I can see what’s really going on, then and it’s like layer after layer you just, you get more and more understanding. So, it’s still not that I think, yeah, suffering, absolutely not. I still have the same reaction like, No, I don’t want this. But, you know, quicker and quicker you can say, Okay, what is in there that I can learn? You know.
So, try to see it like that. It’s very beneficial to know about suffering. Life is full of suffering and we don’t like it, we don’t want to see it, we put it away. So, Buddhism has all these divisions about suffering. And I won’t go too deep, but I do want you to know.
So the first suffering is the suffering of pain or the suffering of suffering. So what would that be, you think? What is one of the sufferings of that what is this yeah. The suffering of suffering. The suffering of resent attachment.
So one suffering that we experience is what we know as suffering. What do we know as suffering? Give me an example. What do we suffer from? Illness, illness, yeah.
Unhappiness, that can be many things. Loss. So whatever say death or any loss. Any loss loss Yeah. Income Yeah.
So what am I gonna call that mental suffering so that we put the whole And I think we all have it. Yes. Yes. Absolutely. It’s almost as if we have a sort of sense We are touched somehow, isn’t it?
We are some pleasure out of it. I think it’s because it makes us feel alive. Yes. Because it’s better than nothing. It’s better than nothing.
Because that way we die. Yes. So there you that was your question from before the meditation. That was your question. You answered it.
Thank you very much. Illness, death, what else? Do we think birth is suffering? You have given birth? Giving birth or or being born?
Yes. Our other What about being born? What about being born? Yeah. I’m Buddhist, but how do we see it?
Well, I I have no idea. But I spoke with someone recently, and I can’t remember being born. But so when we see a child being born, what do we see? Yeah. We think it’s very beautiful, but what does a child experience?
Judy? Sorry? Come back. What does a child experience? And I’m gonna keep you now on track for a little while.
Five minutes. Five minutes. Yeah. No. It’s very painful, they say.
It’s very painful. For babies? For babies. It’s it’s excruciating pain. Because just look how big the baby is and how where they have to go through.
Yeah. You know? The the the canal for the baby. But not when they go through it. That that process itself is very painful.
Then painful for the mother. I know that much. Both. That final birth. Birth.
But what we normally think, oh, such a beautiful baby. And the baby, you know, oh, yes. They do cry, but we do not see that as they are suffering. We think, oh, they’re taking their first breath. How wonderful.
And I think they’re kind because we slapped them. We we Also? Yes. I agree with that. They come from a warm, safe place But we don’t feel when we see the the child or the child is suffering.
We do not we see the crying, but we do not say this is suffering, do we? We do not say, Oh, poor, don’t slap my baby. Do Because I think for the first breath. Because we don’t trust, The slapping is because the first breath closes the heart. You know?
Make sure that yeah. But couldn’t we do that with Massa? I don’t know. I don’t know. That would be too long.
The Massa might take too long. Need to put it quicker. But even if we can create a lot of less suffering around birth, birth itself is still a painful process. Getting into a new body is a painful thing, growing is a painful thing. Birth, illness, what else do we have?
Old age. That’s a very, very painful process. Things start hurting. Sorry? Things start hurting.
Things start hurting, but it’s like since we are eighteen. Since we are eighteen, from come back girls. From the moment we are, what they actually say is that this starts after conception? No. Anyway, in the Western science they say after eighteen you actually start to deteriorate, you know, your body starts to function as eighteen is the top.
We might feel when we’re twenty five, thirty, that’s actually really good, and after that we go down, you know, but it starts to happen from eighteen. So, we suffer and we all, you know, although I think when you get older, like seventy or eighty, you really see the deterioration in the body happening. But before that, there are many signs that we think, you know, I can’t do this anymore, I can’t do that anymore. Even when you’re thirty, when you’re thirty five, you start to feel like, oh, I can’t do this running anymore, and I can’t do this so intense anymore, and I can’t jump any you know, you feel that you start to lack things, and that just keeps on going. Yeah.
I know. It’s painful, isn’t it? Oh, what’s what is that? Oh my god. Very painful, isn’t it?
Especially what we’re doing at the moment with all the commercials. It’s getting more and more painful because, you know, if if you you don’t go to the doctor who gives you some Botox, you’re quite stupid that it’s almost like you’re stupid that you have wrinkles. You don’t need to have them anymore. And they’re actually part of a natural process. There we go.
We earn them. Yes. We should give them points. That’s true. Guys get points for their scars.
Yeah. Right. What kind of culture do we have? We have to change that. So walking through life, we know the pain is there, you know, we know it’s part of life and we try to go around it that it doesn’t happen to us and that we don’t get too much confronted with it, you know.
So ill people, when we somebody’s really ill, we put them into hospital. When we somebody’s really dying or getting old, we put them into a place where they can be just old people. And you if you go there, it’s really, really no. Yeah. But I think it’s because we don’t don’t like this.
We can see the suffering, and we don’t like it. We cannot bear, you know, seeing a mom and dad suffering like that. We do we we maybe also not prepared to really help them, you know, it’s a lack of compassion from our side. And we are too selfish and we say, no, no, no, I wanna work and I wanna have my career. And I’m very strong in that.
You know, it’s like it’s it’s, you know, when I when I grew up, that was just what you do. And when you grow up, probably too. But if now I think, oh my god. That’s really ugly what we’re doing. I think you run away because you see that’s the place you’re going to be working.
Yeah. But the moment that you can make friends with that, it’s not such a problem. If you’re too young. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That’s really old. No.
It is a wonderful time. It is wonderful So we know there’s a suffering, and we can see our aversion to that and we can see how we work really hard not to see it and not to feel it and not to be part of that. That’s just the most coarse form of suffering in Buddhism, right? So then we’re going to talk about other layers of suffering because that’s not all, you know. Buddhism says you have the suffering of change and the suffering of change refers to all the pleasurable They say the pleasurable experiences are in the nature of suffering because they never last.
And by nature they are dissatisfactory. You know, as if I eat some chocolate, by nature straight after that I have the feeling of dissatisfaction, I want more. It’s never that I eat chocolate and I think, Oh, that was really nice. Now I’m completely satisfied, never. It’s very, you maybe Uh-huh.
Never ever enough. No, it’s never enough. And that’s the nature of chocolate, it’s never enough. Yes, we like it. And yes, we have pleasure, but the pleasure is not satisfaction, it’s not real happiness, it’s not, you know, there is always and how do you recognize that it is never satisfactory.
You know, when we have a house, we want to have a bigger house, we want to have some changes, or we want to have more colors or different colors or another door here, or there’s always something that can be done to improve. All these things that can be improved are in the nature of suffering because they change, they change, you know, by nature. Anything, anything, anything that we can find in our environment that gives us pleasure, that pleasure is dissatisfactory by nature. No, never ever. Never.
It’s always disappointing. Yeah. No, we’re not going to talk about the chocolate that we eat because then we might believe that chocolate is going to if you have that special one, if you have the special one and then you eat a chocolate and you want some more and you want some more and you keep on eating, if chocolate gives you really pleasure or really real happiness, then the level of happiness would grow the more chocolate you eat. Yeah, we usually feel sick because you eat too much. Yeah.
So, what normally happens is then it goes like this and then it goes down again. Right? So it gives us some kind of pleasure and then it goes down again. That is the changeable nature of anything that we can find in the world. Why is that?
Because it changes. You know? As soon you know, we have a nice piece of we have some chocolate cake in the fridge. I don’t know who it is, but if I have a piece of chocolate that looks really, really, really yummy, the moment I put it in my mouth, you do not wanna have it anymore. It’s one second difference.
What’s the difference, really? You know? But you don’t wanna have it anymore because suddenly this chocolate has changed into something else. Right? Also that but it’s chocolate, yeah, with with, you know, with food, we create this this oh, if we’re gonna eat this, then this and this and this, and we we taste it, and the taste is never as good as we actually make it up.
I think it’s true on every level of what you are craving for, not just for anything. Yeah. Got it. Okay? So I know Yeah.
It’s never giving. You’re not happy This is not It’s very transitory. Yeah. Like with your shoes, you know, you buy the shoes and then what? That so this is I buy the shoes and then you go down.
No pleasure. When you before you buy it, you have this yeah, you have this thought, oh, this is really going to be is make me happy. Then you have them and it’s gone. Happiness does not come from outside. Happiness is a state of mind.
So when we’re looking forward to that, something that looking forward can generate some happiness, some expectation, you know, then we get it. That never fulfills what is inside. Alright, the happiness that we feel by thinking of something is inside us. And then we think when I get it, then I will really feel like that. That’s just the whole creation of the mind.
How can something that comes from outside make me inside happy? My thoughts about having something can make me happy. My thoughts of having something can make me feel miserable, you know. Oh, I would really like to have a new house, a big house. So I buy a big house and I realize, oh my god, I have to do all these renovations.
And then when I’ve done the renovations I need to have an insurance and then I have to be careful that I lock all the doors at night because, you know, I’m here in this house alone and people can’t come in and and and if I’m going away, have to make sure that everything’s locked because and then still I need an insurance because people can come in and steal and rob and they might even smash things, and the worry is going to come. Anything that we have, the happiness is never coming, really, is it? Or do you? It’s not. So that is what the Buddha calls suffering of change.
It looks like, oh, this is really going to make me happy, and we have to, and it’s not there. So it’s like we’re always deceived somehow, or deceived. What do I say? Is that to say? Deceived.
So we can experience pleasure, you know, but what we think is if I have that I’m going to be happy, so I’m attached to whatever I think is going to make me happy. That attachment makes that we go over the same kind of things again and again and again and again, right? And we believe that one day it’s going to happen. Buddha doesn’t say do not enjoy pleasure. Buddha said enjoy pleasure as much as you can.
But don’t believe that the pleasure is happiness. Don’t believe that the pleasure is, you know, we need pleasure. We need to feel happy in order to keep on going, because getting too enlightened is very hard job. Developing our mind is hard work. So, yes, some pleasure on the way, it’s good.
Also, pleasure is the result of having something, done something really beneficial for others. So when when that comes back into our life in the form of pleasure and happiness, we should enjoy that. But knowing that as soon as they’re going to grasp at that pleasure, it’s gone. You know, I love to see beautiful food, so I love to go to bakery and just look. But I know that as soon as I would buy it and eat it, I get pain in my stomach, you know.
So that for a long time, I thought, no, I can’t even look. I can’t look. But now I think, no, I’m gonna look because my eyes like it. But I just shouldn’t buy it because I’m gonna be I I will feel hurt. Right.
So enjoy the pleasure. Go, Because it’s bad for you? It hurts. It really hurts. It hurts your tongue.
Yeah. No. I have no pleasure if I eat it, you know. I have the pleasure till here. Hello.
If you have your shoes, maybe just like looking at the shoes, you know, could give you a lot of pleasure. But do you need to buy them? What if you don’t buy them? What would happen? You could try and say, oh, these are nice, these are nice, but don’t go to the next step, you know, just enjoy them for being there.
There was a lama in Chenrezig Institute in Queensland. He he would go shopping in a shopping there was in the Chenrezig course, have this huge shopping mall. He would go there shopping. We don’t know why he liked that shopping so much, some people said because there are so many beautiful things and he would just imagine that he would give them away to us, you know. That was his practice.
So, you can look at shoes and say, oh, I give them to this person who has no shoes or to this person or to that person, and then you can actually get not just, you know, you won’t have this experience, but your whole level of happiness might actually increase. And then you think, how wonderful if everybody would have these shoes and could enjoy it just as I do. And can you try? Yeah. Window shopping.
Window shopping can be you know, and especially when you do it for others, it’s fantastic. It’s a fantastic Yeah. Act of generosity. And you can indulge whatever you want. Yeah, yeah, because that is the happiness that comes from giving, which is real happiness.
Yeah. So, this is one of the most difficult things because what I say then, if you really want to be free of suffering, you have to let go of the pleasurable, your attachment to the pleasurable experiences, which feels for us as I have to give up my happiness. And there is a bit that’s very, very, very difficult because we have a grasping so strong for happiness. So then the third suffering that Buddhism talks about, which is even more subtle, is the all pervasive suffering. And the all pervasive suffering refers to the fact is that when we see or hear or, you know, perceive something with our sense organs, we have this feeling of I like this or I don’t like this.
And if I like it, immediately the attachment can come in my mind to grasp for it. If I don’t like it, immediately the aversion is in my mind. That attachment and aversion are the start of my actions, or actually they are actions in itself, you know, the moment that arises, that is a thought, that is an action according to Buddhism. That action, we have no control over that. It just happens like that.
It happens in a split second. That That action will have a result which is similar to the cause. So if I have aversion to something, something similar will come back to me later. Right. Moment because it’s quite easy to have an aversion to somebody.
I mean It’s very easy to have aversion. It’s very easy to have attachment. We have it all the time. Every moment, it’s in our mind. But if that aversion to somebody or something is in your mind that you don’t use that aversion, you’re aware that I’ve I’ve you know, I don’t like that person.
I have an aversion to that person. If you don’t do anything to harm that person Mhmm. Surely, that is not a harm. That is it is not you’re not committing any harmful action to that person, but you still have aversion in your mind, and you will still create a habit of having aversion to people who are like that. Very happy.
And you are unhappy when you have aversion in your mind. It is impossible. We are unhappy when we have aversion. True? Because when you’re with that person, you’re not happy.
And we think it’s because of that person, but it’s actually our aversion to the person that makes us really unhappy. So you get people out of it? That’s one option. What I’m saying is that we have this mechanism that as soon as we feel something nice, we want it. As soon as I feel something that is not nice, I don’t want it.
Right? That instant reaction, we have no control over that. That reaction is the source from where all the karma comes from, where all the delusions come from. No. A karma, we no choice.
No. No. No. No. But if I choose if I choose to break the table No.
I have karma from that? No. Every action we’re doing is karma. Yeah. Every action.
Every word I say, every thought I have, every movement I make is karma. I create karma. In every moment of mind we have an intention. That intention is karma. Understand how I involuntary and that’s voluntary.
I choose that. But I don’t choose Well, you think you choose that, but I I argue that. Oh. Oh, okay. You think I have the free choice to do that.
But most people who destroy something, do they really have free choice? Somebody who gets angry, do they have choice? Do they? Yeah. We think they can stop.
So when we are angry Yeah. And somebody says, no. You stop. We can we can just turn it off? Oh, we can choose what we do with this.
Uh-huh. The emotion is yes, So if we would do nothing, you know, if we had no awareness thinking about what am I doing, do I have a choice, if we have no training like that, if we do not know anything about that, if we would just live, right, then when aversion comes, then maybe anger comes, then I want to destroy or I want to harm. That is what we normally do, isn’t it? Right, so if we look, there are many steps in that process. There was first the intention and then the aversion or the attachment gets bigger and then from there I’m going to engage in actions, Right?
So then what we learn through our life is that, oh no, you shouldn’t go there. This reaction to our feelings, we have no control over that. True? Do we?
Tell me. Sorry? You haven’t met anyone yet? Right. But we’re talking only about the mind, and the mind is using the body as a vehicle, but it’s not the body.
No. I agree with that. So what I would say when I hear this, I would say from some things, you have enough space in your mind to create some distance between you and your action. And then the other, you do not have that space and you just engage instinctively. I feel that’s training and that’s training from a very young infant age by very good parents.
That’s I wanna go deeper. And then school training. I wanna go deeper. I wanna go much deeper. You’re sitting here.
You see something nice. Attachment arises in your mind. Or you see something that you do not like, you know, immediately aversion is there. And yes, we are civilized people, so we think, oh, you know, just push it away, just push it away, don’t do anything with that, Right? But the attachment in the aversion arises like that.
And then when it’s strong enough, it can come out. But that is always there. Right? That is what is the beginning of the karma, the intention that arises from there. That is karma.
Alright. I’ll I’ll wait. That is karma. karma means intention. But is that involuntary?
It is. Okay. So Completely. But hang on. Just let me ask.
If it’s involuntary, how can you say it’s intention? Oh, that is how it’s called. We think intention is I have power, but intention means I direct my mind. So if I see something that I do not like, I direct my mind to that aversion and to that that not liking quality that I see. So an aversion could come from.
We are feeling beings. We are feeling beings. Go Go go to a to a level that you would you have no go to more subtle level. We are feeling beings. Every moment of a consciousness, feelings arise.
And every moment that feelings arise, I react to my feelings. If I have pleasant feelings, react with attachment. If I have unpleasant feelings, I react with aversion. If I have neutral feelings, I do not react with any particular way. Right?
That is where karma that is karma. Sorry? We have no control over that. We have not trained our mind so deeply deeply that we can control that. With that, most of us that’s unconscious all the time, with that we create our karma.
We are not aware of all the voices that we, you know, all the thoughts that we have during the day. Subconscious. Subconscious. You’re not unconscious. We have no control over what the western science calls subconscious.
According to Buddhism, they say that’s ignorance. You just don’t see it and because you don’t see it, you have no control. If you see how I go shopping, I go shopping. I think I’m gonna show I know what I’m gonna do. Right?
So I go shopping, and then, oh, I see something nice, and immediately my mind is distracted. I’m gonna look around. That is I have no control over that. My external condition completely determines where I’m gonna you know, not not just that, but what I like and what I don’t like determines where I’m gonna go. That we have no control there, and that sounds maybe horrible.
I’ll go there. Yeah. This is just a definition. Just so you get the definition. To Yeah.
So what because it is so ingrained and so deep and so on nature, that is called the all pervasive suffering, which is always there. And even if we try to develop our mind and try to be more aware and try to abstain from certain actions, you know, that is how we start training. But we’re not yet that we’re not there yet that we can tackle that intention where it starts. Right? We’re still still far off from that.
So in that sense, there are still a whole lot of actions or thoughts that we have which are completely involuntary. They just appear all the time. That is karma. That makes you the confusion. Yeah.
So the Buddha Buddha says because we have the body alright. What time you have to go? Five. Alright. That’s in five minutes in two minutes?
Yeah. I didn’t know that. But I couldn’t get the. Yeah. Right.
Right. Are you gonna pop in somewhere this week? Because I was gonna look at your CD. You’re living far away or not? No.
Okay. Shall I give you a ring when it’s ready? Yeah. Thank you. Okay.
I’ll do that. Good. Did you see the other one? I know you said that it didn’t work, but I tried to play it on the computer, and it worked. So I have to check the the CD.
What went wrong with it? You have a normal CD player or an m p three player? Yeah. You need an m p three. Oh.
Or the computer? Oh. Can you do it? Can. You have a computer?
I think it’s I put it on top of the yeah. Okay. Good. Good. Good.
So having this lack of choice this lack of choice in our actions, that that is called the all pervasive suffering because that keeps us going through the cycle of suffering again and again and again and again. And that makes that a dis also. It’s coming. Good. Not to you?
No? What do you see? So if somebody really and to see that, we gotta make it big. Right? Very extreme.
If some somebody does something really nasty to me, and I say, could kill that person. That thought comes in my mind and if I’m used to the thought, don’t even get scared of the thought because I’m so habituated to the thought and I think that’s normal to have thoughts like that. But if I’ve never had a thought like that, I might go in a shock. Oh my god. What did I think?
I wanna kill that person? And then I can so that is intention. That’s my phone. Turn off your phone. Intention.
I know. Yes, yes, yes. So then when we’re really going to engage in an action and we really do that, our intention is very obvious and very strong, right? But in Buddhism that is like everything that drives us, our motivation, that is called intention. Everything that is behind any thought, any action, what is it that does that?
You know, these are long term habits of aversion and attachment to certain things that keep on If I say motivation, is that different? But motivation, what I hear with motivation, I hear that it’s something that you are aware of. This is not necessarily what us, it would be normally intentionally very aware. You think without And motivation So Buddhism would say you did have an intention to kill him because you did it. And without an intention to kill, you can never kill somebody.
So that is taking responsibility. Right? But it’s at a level it’s at a conscious level where you actually made it But what we okay. Well, maybe it’s more than language. There are things that we are not aware that we’re doing that.
Right? That just happened to us. And for us, it’s very difficult to take responsibility for that. It’s like we are victim from our own body and mind. I don’t know why I did that, but it just happened, right?
If you talk about karma, that and you take full responsibility for everything that happens to you and what you’re doing, then you acknowledge that there is an intention, although you might not know what it is. There must have been a seed of intention and therefore we can do it. Yeah, and you say, you know, I do not understand why I killed that person, but I killed that person. I must have had an intention to kill it, although I do not understand where it comes from. This might mean yeah, but this might include taking more responsibility for your actions even if you do not understand what you’re doing.
I don’t know. This is just for the pickup now. It’s a word, you know. What I want you to understand is the dynamic and how we react to think. And because we have that lack of freedom, you know, because I have a body that I like to have nice things to see, nice things to hear, and for everybody it’s different.
But because I like that, you know, I have this sensory body, that’s what I’m after all the time. I have no control over that. That’s all pervasive suffering. Because I have no control, I keep on engaging again and again and again. Right?
I come home and I think, oh, it’s quiet here. I’ll put on the music. That’s intention. That is by following that without knowing what I’m doing, you know. If I would be free, I would have the choice right there.
Oh, how would that be for me if I listen to the music? What is my motivation to do that? Is that going to be beneficial for me now? Is it going to be beneficial next life? What is it going to help me in my mind?
If I can do that, I have a freedom to choose. If I just think I’m going to do that because I like that, then I do not really have a choice. But there is language in that, you know, you have to try to go beyond the language and see the lack of choice that we have. What you eat in the morning, you eat that because you have learned that that is what you like. You would never go up in the morning and think completely free and open.
So what shall I eat today? What will be most beneficial for my body to have today? Try it. Okay. And I’ll make you next the other one.
Yeah. Welcome. You’re alright. You can be here when you’re tired. Let’s have a tea, and then we can talk about that.
And I’m sorry if I can’t make it more