Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 67-minute teaching, Ven Jamyang begins with a live questioner struggling to leave a successful career, using that dilemma to introduce a core Buddhist insight: no matter your life situation—married or single, wealthy or struggling—suffering is intrinsic to each. She explores self-cherishing (the belief your happiness matters more than others’), how a false belief in a permanent self perpetuates cycles of pain, and how compassion can replace endless self-focused pursuit. For Western practitioners especially, the spiritual path can feel isolating—yet that loneliness itself becomes ground for deeper connection. She offers three practices: write your own story without exaggeration, perform one conscious act of kindness daily, and train the mind through breath meditation. Pitched at newcomers serious about changing their relationship to suffering.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2009 08 01 1809 Mind Healing and Meditation.mp3
UUID: 025e2a73-dbad-4417-8f7b-cead252c5fe7
Teacher: Ven Jamyang
Collection: Jamyang Mind Healing (Ven Jamyang)
Date: 2009-08-01
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 67.2 minutes
Words: ~7,508
Otherwise, I’ll borrow it. Just I don’t know. Can you go back to work? I don’t want to. I just don’t want to.
I invested so much in it. And, I mean, I was at the top of my game at the I was in fashion editing for Vogue, and it’s the most vile, abusive, insipid, evil. It is. It is. And you invest so much for not a lot back.
It it’s really yeah. But I’m not I know I’ve got a lot of skills. I know I’m creative. I know I’m brilliant at organizing. And, In Buddhism we say, if you’re the only child, you suffer from the problems of being the only child.
If you’re one of many, you suffer from the problems of money of many. You know, if you are married, you suffer from the problems of being married. If you’re not married, you have problems problems of not being married. It’s like no matter what we experience, we experience problems. I’ve always taught myself Buddhism is the nicest way of saying get over it.
It really is. But get over it but in in a in a healthy way, you know, so that so that actually what you experience, you can you can use that as you can you can transform that rubbish into something really, really precious that you then give out in to the world you know and then starts to feed yourself. No. Life is suffering you know. I’m one of seven.
I love it to be on my own. Finally nobody around me. But it’s what I’m saying is it doesn’t matter. We all have problems. No matter where you come from, it all has its own own problems.
Because where we’re living, the world that we are living is in the nature of problems. It’s just its nature. No matter what we’re going to do we’re never going to be free of problems. We better embrace the problems and see them as a challenge or as a help on our path to become more grown up. Are you saying that your problems are bigger than somebody else’s problems?
Saying? I I have better problems than you have because you know? I know what you’re saying, though. I I spent a lot of my formal duties socializing with adults, and there was a sort of awkwardness with peers, I suppose. Yeah.
But that sort of turned around on itself in later years anyway because I was better at other things. I was more conditioned. I was more predisposed to handle things. So in that that regard, I think it is definitely a plus. And, certainly, as a child growing up, you you spoil rotten.
You know? You the But it has pluses and minuses, isn’t it? Plusses and minuses. True. Everything.
No matter where you are. How’s the school pool? All the problems that you’re going now through, you can say, thanks god I’m in Adelaide. That’s the plus of your problems. You know?
If you would live in Baghdad, it would be a very different story. Exactly. No matter what we experience, there is a plus and a minus and a maximum. You know? It’s it’s I mean, the sheer fact that we were born where we were is just mind boggling sometimes.
I mean, imagine how well, what what possibly could have transpired were we not born where we were in relatively, you know, some safe, comfortable socioeconomic conditions, you know, all relatively literate. You know? That’s pretty damn lucky considering the the mean average of the world. Yeah. I mean, I know it’s probably overly simplifying it, but it’s still And it doesn’t mean confident.
Yeah. And it doesn’t mean that your problems are not valid and that your problems are not worthwhile to talk about it. If we can see that everybody has problems and everybody has their own problems and our problems are very important for our own story, to look into how we have dealt with that problem and to look into what our part is in that problem because that’s the only thing that we can change in our lives. That is the only thing that can affect the rest of our lives. Right?
Can you see that? Oh, definitely. So so I wanna hear if if we talk about about healing ourselves and about suffering and we’re gonna make that personal, I wanna talk I wanna ask you to talk about that personal suffering. But not in a sense of, oh, but my suffering is bigger or more important or worse or whatever than anybody else suffering because that is another problem that we have, that we think somehow we are special. We have this feeling all.
We all have this feeling. Right? We are special. I have the feeling that I want to be happy. Right?
Know that you also I’m so different. I’m so different. And the fact that I want to be happy, my happiness is much more important than anybody else’s happiness. You check what you’re doing. I just throw this in as a bump: every action we’re doing in life is focused on how can I be happy?
How can I avoid suffering? Even sitting here, you sit there because you want to support your back. That is for you is most comfortable. We’re constantly looking for that. If your back gets a little bit sore, you’re gonna move around because constantly your mind is looking how you can be more happy.
Right? We are completely obsessed with that. Completely. Every minute of the day, although we might not be conscious of that, subconsciously it’s always there. It’s always looking.
We’re always looking for comfort. We’re always looking how to get away from the discomfort. Constantly, completely obsessed. That’s the self obsession that we have. We believe that our comfort is more important than someone else’s comfort because we put ourselves always first.
I’m always taking care of myself first. Even if we think we’re taking care of others, if we’re really going to check why we do that many times there is an attitude behind that that we feel more happy if everybody else around us is happy. Some of you might not be there. Sorry, I’m there. I’m talking about myself.
I’m talking in general, right? If you have done a lot of work, that might have shifted. But if you haven’t, that’s just how we are. That is our nature. We can transcend that nature, we can change that.
But when we came into this life, we have this basic attitude. We all have that. And not only human beings have that. Every being that has feelings, every animal has that. In Buddhism there are more beings, you know, there are spirits and that kind of things.
They all have that same feeling. We are all driven by our feeling I want to be happy and I want to be free of suffering and I am more important than that than anybody else. That attitude is called self-cherishing attitude. We cherish ourselves more than we cherish somebody else. Well, who else has to take care of me if I don’t do it?
Nobody will take care of me, isn’t it? We can feel that. If we really don’t take care of ourselves, nobody will do it. Because everybody is so obsessed with themselves. That’s just how it is.
That’s not to judge. That is not as bad. That’s just the nature. Just as that when I throw the cup, let go of the cup, the cup will fall down. That’s the nature of the earth that there is gravity.
The nature of having a body, being a human being, is that we are self centered. The nature of being a living being is being self centered. And why is that? It’s because we have feelings arising in our mind. Every moment we have feelings arising.
We have pleasant feelings arising. We have unpleasant feelings arising. Many times neutral feelings but pleasant that arises. The fact that we discriminate between pleasant and unpleasant feelings makes that we have a preference for the pleasant feelings. And then, you know, we like to avoid these unpleasant feelings.
So the fact that we have feelings arising and this preference of being happy of course every time there’s a pleasant feeling we want to have more of that. So we try to think where did that come from? How did that happen? Was it the television? Was it the car?
Was it the front? What was that? I want to have more of that because I do want to have more pleasant feelings. So when unpleasant feelings arise of course we’re going to say I don’t want that because I want to be happy. So what you’re going to do is you’re to create all these tactics in our mind how we can avoid all these problems.
That’s our nature. Buddhism says we have the right to be happy. It’s very good to find that happiness. There’s nothing wrong with experiencing happiness. But the way we are doing that is a little bit unskillful.
And if we look back in our own way how we experience or how we look for happiness and what we really find, we have to make the conclusion that we haven’t found it yet. And we have been doing this at least this life but according to Buddhism we have done this many, many lifetimes and we still haven’t found happiness yet. There must be something wrong in how we are looking for happiness. We must make mistakes somewhere. Otherwise we would have found happiness already.
Isn’t it? If we know how to find it, we would have had it. We wouldn’t be in this course. We would have what we want. So we have to make the conclusion: there is something that we are doing which is not completely right.
In the sense of it’s not giving us the complete happiness or the complete satisfaction of the complete healing that we are looking for. There is still something missing. There is still something not completely right. Why is that? According to Buddhism, we have a body.
The body is created where do I go? I’m just gonna tell the story. We will go later in-depth into all these different things. I might use concepts that you think, Well, I don’t agree with that. That’s fine.
You don’t have to accept anything what I’m saying. But just think about it and reflect on it and we will go later in detail. Our body is created by the mind. In the sense of our body is created by karma and delusions. That’s what Buddha says.
karma means that we are doing actions every day. These actions lead to a certain result. Just as in the material world, every action that is done in the material world leads to a result. If I am going to smash the chair we can all predict what the result is going to be. True?
We all also know how to create a chair. We might not be able to do it ourselves but somehow we have an idea how a chair and what is needed in order to create a chair. We are very well experienced in how to create and how to destroy matter. We are very good in that. The mind works very similar.
The mind works very similar in the sense that everything that we experience has a cause. Everything that we are doing has a result. We just don’t know how it works which means that we constantly engage in actions that are going to lead to negative experiences that we actually don’t want to have. Having a human body and having the mind that we are is a result of karma and delusions. So somehow the actions of previous lifetimes created this body, have resulted in this body.
It’s not that the mind creates it but it’s the result of our actions that we have in our body. As a result of previous actions we also have certain delusions arising in our mind. We have certain tendencies, we have certain ways of thinking, we have certain ways of feeling, we have certain ways of experiencing the world. We see things in our own individual way. We are very unique in that.
These delusions are we have how to say due to past experiences what we normally do is that we experience something and react to that. That reaction leads to a new result in the future to which we react. So we go through waves experiences and reactions to that which have a certain similarity, which have a certain tendency. For instance, some people react with a lot of anger towards certain situations. Then every time something happens that they don’t like, the anger arises.
They try with that anger to get what they want. Maybe one day they succeeded in that which resulted in the belief that if I respond with my anger, going get what I want. The next time they are separated from what they would like to have, they react again with anger in order to get what they want. This is just an example, right? You get habituated to that way of reacting, of getting things what you want.
But then in the meantime you might feel not so you know, you might feel miserable, might feel down and low and not happy and discontent and you think where’s it coming from because, you know, I should be happy, I have everything what I want blah blah blah. But you might suffer from that underlying anger which is always there trying to get what you want. That is just an example. That is how we create certain tendencies. Other people might suffer more from jealousy.
As soon as somebody has something that they would like to have, they respond with jealousy. And then they have a certain reaction that might have been beneficial at a certain time but it’s not anymore. But they don’t see it. They’re in the habit of constantly bringing up this jealousy, jealousy, jealousy. Other people have more a tendency to react with desire so they follow that more.
So we we all have our own unique way of responding or reacting to situations which creates a certain tendency in our mind, creates certain delusions in our mind. So we have this human body due to past actions and in that body we experience delusions and these delusions have a certain tendency or have a certain pattern that is quite unique to us. It has also lots of similarities with others. karma is so precise. karma is so individual.
We are all different. We all have a completely different life. Even our bodies. We are all the same kind of race, all humans. We all look different.
It’s quite amazing. I think in the mind it’s the same. We are in the mind just the same as everybody else in the sense that we all want to have happiness, we’re all striving to get that happiness, we all want to be free from suffering, we all try to avoid suffering. We are very similar in that. But then if you look at the individuals, we all have a different tendency how to do that.
Just as we all have a different body. There There are three main delusions which are attachment, anger and ignorance. Ignorance is a not knowing or a distorted knowing. So when things happen to us we can respond with I want more of this which is like an attachment. And then there are many gradations in that.
Or you can say I don’t like this. And we can respond with many different delusions with that. You have the aversion, the anger, the resentment, the envy, the pride, whatever. They can all come from aversion or from attachment. And then there is the third delusion which is ignorance, is a not knowing or a distorted knowing.
And Buddhism says that ignorance is the basis of all the other delusions that come up into our mind. The ignorance of not knowing how reality exists, the ignorance of not knowing how we exist. We make constantly mistakes and on the basis of these mistakes we create actions. We respond with delusions or we react with delusions. And the delusions is what really gives us the suffering.
And if we experience delusions and we experience that suffering and we try to get out of it, we engage in more actions which are going to lead to more suffering in the future. Do I go too quick? No? It’s a lot to take in, isn’t it? It’s a lot to take in.
But we’ll go over this again and again in more depth. It’s self-perpetuation. In Buddhism we talk about we exist in cyclic existence or in Sanskrit it’s called saṃsāra. We’re repeating again and again the same kind of thing. And sometimes we experience the highs.
We have lots of money, we have a good life, we have a fantastic career, fantastic friends and sometimes we experience the low and things don’t work the way we want to and we are frustrated and our body doesn’t work. But we go up and down, up and down, up and down. And the fact that we are in an up or in a down doesn’t mean we’re always going to be there. We naturally will go to the other side. Naturally.
You know, we cannot stay at an up. We can also not stay at a down. It’s not possible. So that’s cyclic existence. The core of cyclic existence is that ignorance, is that distorted knowing.
And the core of that is the fact that we believe that we exist it’s the fact how do I say that? We believe that we have this I inside here or this creature inside here or this person inside here that we label as an I and we believe that that exists in a certain way. And the way how we believe in that is completely distorted. The fact that we have that belief makes that we engage constantly in these actions that lead to suffering in the future. So the main thing in Buddhism is that you learn to understand how we believe that the I exists and how it doesn’t exist.
Buddhism doesn’t say that there is no I, there is an I because we can say I’m Jamyang or I’m Catherine but the I does not exist in the way we believe how it exists. We have this feeling somehow, especially if we get very emotional, then there appears this I here. We have this strong appearance. And that I appears to be real. It appears to be permanent.
How we have this feeling that it’s always there, that it’s not changing. It’s always me, it’s always me, it’s always the same. We have the experience that the I is a single entity. We have experience that the I is in control over the body and the mind and everything that happens. We have the feeling that the I is standing in and of itself.
It doesn’t need anybody else. Buddhism says that’s not how the I really exists. This is all a false appearance. Appearance that has nothing to do with reality. It comes up again and again and again.
And we follow that appearance constantly. We think we have to nourish it, we think we have to take care of it, we have to protect it, we have to cherish it. That is the self-cherishing attitude. We cherish that self again and again and again. According to Buddhism, the belief that we have How do I exist?
That’s a wrong belief. If we can stop, if we can penetrate, if we can cut through that belief, all suffering is gone. Everything is gone. But that’s not an easy job otherwise we would have already done that a long time ago. That is one thing that we’re going to do: learn, Okay, if we have this wrong belief then how do things exist?
If I’m not a permanent entity, then what am I? If I’m not one single entity, what am I? If I’m not this, what am I? So we’re going to look at that. We’re going to look at the view that we somehow have that comes naturally with us, that we instinctively have, that has served us many lifetimes, that saved our lives or that maybe even brought us in danger, I don’t know.
But we have a feeling that the eye always saved us, is always with us, is our best friend. We’re going to look at how do you really exist. That’s one thing. The other thing is that we are so obsessed about making that I happy, we are so obsessed with cherishing that I again and again and again. We’re going to learn what we can do to change that attitude in cherishing others.
Buddhism says main thing we are is because we have that self-cherishing attitude. So how can we change that cherishing of others without neglecting ourselves? Because that somehow comes in the Western world: Oh, I cannot cherish myself. We can cherish ourselves but not more than we cherish others. That’s healthy.
It’s like we have to take care of everybody, not just me. That is not a simple process. It’s not something that you can do overnight. Like I’m going to say to you: We’re all going to become fantastic athletes. It’s not going happen overnight.
We have to do some training. We have to do some stretching. We have to do some diet. Maybe we have to look at things in life, how we are more careful with what we allow to get in and how we digest things. So I’m going to ask you to be really kind to yourself in that process.
Not to say I’m doing it wrong again, I’m doing it wrong again. That’s not what it is about. It’s about learning learning to know yourself and learning to look in a different way at yourself and in a different way that leads to feeling better with where we are at now, with the conditions we have, the situations we are in. I think we talked in the break about that. Buddhism is you know, we experience many things in our life and then we have theories why it is like that.
We explain it. We have our own theories. We have theories that we got from childhood. We have theories that we have many lifetimes already where we believe in. We’re going to challenge all these theories and we’re going to look at them.
The only reason why we do that is because we see that the theories that we have at the moment are not serving our purpose which is wanting to be happy, wanting to be whole, wanting to be healthy. We have somehow agreed that some beliefs that we hold on to are not serving its purpose. If they would serve its purpose, we would feel better in the conditions where we are right now. So we have to check them. It’s not about we’re talking about is not Buddhism is right in the sense of that’s what we have to believe.
It’s not like Buddhism says you have to check up. You have to check again and again and again what you think about it. You have to check if it’s beneficial for you to adopt that. Buddhism is about how can achieve a perfect state of happiness. So while thinking about concepts you can think: If I adopt this concept is that going to lead to more happiness for me?
Is that going to lead to more well-being for me? Is that going to lead to a more healthy life for me? Can I let go of my old concept? Or do I still need that for something else? Why do I need my concept that I hold on to?
Maybe I can see it’s not really serving the purpose but I still would like to hold on to. We’re going to look at that gently. I think when you reflect about things then one day there comes an insight and you just know I don’t want to think like that anymore. I just want to do it like that. We wait for that.
We’re not forcing anything onto ourselves. We just go with the flow and go with what feels not just feels good. Sometimes Buddhism doesn’t feel good. Sometimes Buddhism really hurts here, in that I that appears to be there. But then we check and we use analytical ability to check with reasons.
Like, do I feel this hurt? Is that to hold on to the protection that I use to cover up myself? Sometimes we have to strip ourselves open to be honest and to really look at the truth. Going on that path of self discovery. Yeah.
It is an extremely lonely path Yeah. From when you’re coming from the west as as you would realize, and you suddenly find you’re a complete fish out of water. And who am I, and where do I belong? And I think the joy of coming to Buddha House is the fact that to listen to words that you’re saying is just truth. And it’s just really you feel feel like you’ve found a community.
And the plastic side of that artificial nonsense that we’ve been living to is now you’ve found a reality that your intellect can say this is real. So I just have to say that. Thank you. What we’re doing, you know, it’s like we are going against our inner nature for one’s sake. You know, it’s like this self-cherishing nature that we all have.
We’re going against that. Sometimes that is like surgery without anaesthetics. It can be very painful. But it’s like you also remove the dirt out of it and then the wounds can heal. You do start feeling better.
But you will also go against the normal tendency in society. People around you might say, You are crazy. Are you doing that? No, you no longer fit where you were. No, you won’t fit where you were but you will fit in another way.
Yeah, but you’ve got to find that way. That’s the hard Yeah. And in that meantime, yes, you might experience a lot of loneliness but we came alone in this life. We know we didn’t. I disagree with that.
I was with my mum. When you entered the womb you were on your own. Your mom does not know what you experienced. Your experiences we are completely on our own with our experiences. Yes, we like to know we like to think that we are very connected with others and we might be connected but no one can ever know us completely.
We are the only persons who can know us. I think friendship and love are the greatest things, though. True. But you have your own specific way of experiencing things. You cannot share that with anybody.
You can share bits, you can share parts but not the whole we have so much information with us. You can never share all that. There is a loneliness. No. And you can find people who understand you and who are thinking in the same way as you and who are on the same path as you and you feel a connection there.
But we are completely on our own in our own experience. And that feeling is very painful because human beings are social animals. They want to be with others. They want to share with others. They want to feel connected.
And being in your suffering, you can feel very, very lonely. But if you stay in that and you stay in that and you stay in that, then at a certain time that suffering is going to change, it’s going to transform. And then you start to feel connected with others in a different way. At a certain point, the loneliness is not a problem anymore. It is in the beginning because it’s a pain.
It’s a pain of being separated. And we don’t want to be separated. We want to feel whole. In a certain way, we can feel that as the wound: I’m separated from my mother. I’m separated from this.
I’m separated from that. That feels like a wound. I think the separation from our whole Western basis of society when you do go on the spiritual journey, I mean, that’s something that the people that are already Buddhists wouldn’t have a clue about. But we’re totally fragmented when we sort of look at our whole whole way of life and go, well, this is crap. But any separation where there is a longing to be connected is painful.
Any separation. Even coming into the body, being separated from the more subtle layers of consciousness is painful. We don’t want to be separated. In that sense, dying is is very healing because you go back to that being whole. You know?
For many people, dying is going back to a state of consciousness where you experience wholeness. I don’t know. Sometimes I feel that when I’m really, really sick, it’s like your consciousness goes to another planet and in a way you feel really good. You said that with depression. There is a peace.
There is a stop of the fighting. There is a is a is letting go, there is a It is? Serenity, yeah. No. And I think death is the same similar kind of experience.
But in the meantime, as long as we are alive, we will feel separation. That’s part of life. That’s that’s one of the biggest sufferings in life. Feeling separated. But if we start being separated as I am separated from something else.
I and something else. The more we focus on that the more we will feel that hurt. But if we can experience our suffering that will be a resource to build up our compassion. And then the more we can build up our compassion the more we’re going to start feeling connected with others. So we will do lots of exercises how we go through that process.
And then when we feel compassion and connection with others, that the pain of being separated will slowly, slowly go away. You know? We don’t have to live with that. It’s not in our nature to feel that. We can feel something different.
But it will take time. We can’t let it happen tomorrow but it can be done. Buddhism says anything can be done. We can get used to anything. We can get rid of anything.
Anything. I’m not sure if we can do it in this lifetime but we can make a start. And every step that we make, that is not lost. We take that with us when we die. We can keep on continuing that after death.
I’ve got to look at the time because I do want to do meditation. It’s a quarter past. Sorry? So, I would like you to do, we’re going to do a meditation and I’m going to tell you how to do it. When you’re home, I would like you to sit down and just write your own story without any I don’t know if you how would you do that?
Yeah? Yes. You’re happy to do that? Write your own story without any understatements, without any exaggerations. Just this is my story.
Any what? Understatements. Without exaggerations but just your story. From day one? You can even start before that.
Wherever you want to start. You’re gonna write it for yourself. Right? If you wanna share things about that next time, we might have time for that, but I’m not sure. But what I want you to do is that you gonna use your own story in order to learn to understand the nature of your mind, to learn to understand the nature delusions, to learn to get more contact with that, connection with that.
So that we can the more connection we have with that, the more understanding we have with that, the more we can really do something with it. And sometimes just writing down your own story you can see, Ah, look, this is coming back again and again and again. We can get more hold onto what is really going on in the mind. Right? So, I don’t know, one, two pages or you don’t have to write If really want to write a whole book, you can write a book first.
It’s not a sort of academic thing and you just pour it out. It’s your book. Maybe you buy a journal and you just got to make your book. What I’m going ask you to do is because we have the self changing mind, me, me, me, me, I want to be happy. I would like you to think once a day, once a day you think, now I’m going to do something for somebody else, an act of kindness towards someone else.
And I’m not going to tell I’m going to do that. It doesn’t have to be somebody that you know. It might be a complete stranger. Consciously you’re going to think: How can I make that person happy? You know?
You could put I know that at some stage people started putting coins into parking meters for others without telling them, oh, if I don’t do that they might get a fine. I’ll put some money in it. One, just try to do one thing. Okay? A very little thing.
Or you hold on the door, you open the door for somebody or you very consciously give that other person a smile and a nice hello or you one act. Okay? And I know all do many acts of kindness. It’s not about that but it’s about an awareness of if you set out for that and you do that, what happens in your mind? I want you to observe that.
What happens? How do I feel? And then the last thing I want you to do is do some meditation. We’ll do today one to see how we’re going to start with that. Meditation is not easy.
Meditation is not something that you learn from one day to the other. It’s like talking to your own mind. It’s like working with your own mind and that can take many many many years to get to really how to say it? It’s like with every art. You know that you’re an artist.
Know that. It’s like every time that you try to do it you perfect at the same time your artistic quality. Like meditation is the same. Every time you do it you create something but you also perfect your technique or you perfect your way how you’re doing that. Meditation means becoming habituated.
So if we agree that we have certain views, certain beliefs, certain ways of thinking, reacting which are not so useful, it means means that we have to habituate ourselves with different ways of reacting, of looking at things, of checking things out. That is what we do when we meditate. There are many ways of meditating. One way is that we concentrate on one object. If we look at the nature of our mind, our mind runs everywhere, isn’t it?
This pops up in the mind and we follow it. We indulge in a story. Then this pops up in the mind and then we indulge in that story. Then we think about what happened three weeks ago and then we think about what happened ten years ago and then we think about what happens maybe it’s going to happen tomorrow and then we think about how we’re to deal with that in three years’ time. Then we think about our mind runs all over the place.
Anything that pops up takes us away. Isn’t it? That’s how the mind works at the moment. So while we run after that and while we keep on thinking about that, we fuel that habit. We fuel it by running after it.
So what Buddhism says is like and it’s not just if you focus your mind on something that is here right now, you stop that habit of the mind of running after things. If we run after things, it’s about things that have happened to us or things that might happen to us. Our mind does not run about what is going on right now. Does it? So, if we focus our mind on what is going on right now, all that crazy talk can slow down, can calm down.
Can we see that? Naturally. Just focus on one thing. So we can focus on the body. We can focus on the breath, which is more subtle.
Then we can focus on emotions and thoughts that arise in the mind. And we can focus on the nature of the mind. Like the space in which all the thoughts and feelings arise. We can look at that. The simplest, the two simple ones or more easy ones, are the body and the breath because they’re not so subtle.
So what we’re going to do is that you go sit down, you try to find a posture that is suitable for the meditation and you’re going to focus we’ll start focusing on the stomach where you can feel your stomach going up and down when you breathe. And we just stay with that. We’re just going to try to focus our mind on that. What will happen naturally is that we have two seconds focus on the breath and then the mind is off into something else. We do is we’re going to be aware, Oh, now I’m thinking about that.
No, I want to bring my mind back. As soon as you recognize it, you bring your mind back, focus again on your stomach, then your mind jumps up again. When you realize it, you bring your mind back. Then your mind jumps up again, you bring it back. That’s training.
That’s like an athletic person training. You do it again and again, you bring your mind back. In that bringing back we have to be careful that we don’t beat ourselves up. I did it wrong, I didn’t do it again, you should do this better, you should that. It’s not like that.
We are aware that we have this habit. Since many, many, many lifetimes we cannot change it like that. We try to do it with love and kindness. We feel love and kindness for ourselves when we bring the mind back. We are gently with ourselves and say, Oh, there was again my old habit.
I’m going to try to do a new habit. I’ll bring it back. Okay? So we do that. We’ll do five minutes, see what happens and see if it’s clear how to do it and then see if that is enough for you to go home and do these exercises and be ready for more next week.
A good posture for meditation is that we have a straight back. Are you okay? Relaxing your body at the same time. If we can make a straight back, it’s easier for the energy to flow in the back. But if we can’t do it, you know, you can still visualize that you have a straight back.
Isn’t it? You can still imagine I’m making a straight back. Your energy is not your body. If you can I don’t know? You can do that.
Another thing that is good is that you either sit in a cross legged position or you put your feet on the floor so that you feel grounded. You can put your hands on your lap. Or in Buddhism, you put a right hand on top of the left with the thumb slightly touching each other. Just do that if you feel comfortable. But if you don’t, just put them wherever they feel relaxed.
Try to relax your shoulders. Your head is a little bit bent forward. The tongue is touching the palate behind the teeth. And you leave a little bit of light coming into your eyes. If that distracts you too much, you can close your eyes.
If you close your eyes too strong, you might become sleepy. And then you just sit with yourself. And you observe what goes on. Observe it with the attitude of loving-kindness for your yourself. Anything that appears is good.
We don’t have to do anything with it. And then focus your awareness on your stomach where you can observe the rising and falling of your abdomen every time when you breathe in and breathe out. And then if you notice that your mind wanders off, just gently bring it back and focus it again on your breath. Give yourself permission just to be. Try to create a space where you feel safe, where you feel that you have time, where you feel that you don’t have to do anything.
You can just be. And if you notice that your mind jumps, wanders off, Bring it gently back. It’s like you give your mind a little break. You allow your mind to come to rest. And then relax your attention.
And when you feel ready, you can open your eyes. How did it go? Can you do something with that at home. So the main training is bring it back. Bring it back and observe.
You can also just sit down and just see what happens, you know. Be the observer and see how your mind floats around. Goes from there to there to there to there to there. And just observe. Don’t judge or but just see this is the nature of my mind.
This is what I’m constantly doing. And then train yourself and bring it back bring it back. The more we can train ourselves, the more calm our mind becomes, but also the more clean it becomes, the more space there is gonna be to reflect on certain things. It will take time, but I’m sure if you’re gonna look back after a month doing this, you will see a big difference in your mind. Right?
Things won’t be gone but things will definitely have lessened. What we’re going to do next time is I’m not sure where we’re going to start but I’m going to challenge every time, every session, I’m going to challenge the belief that we have. We’re going to talk about that and we’re going to talk about how Buddhism sees the things and what that can do for us in regard to our own feeling of well-being. Right? And then we’ll do a meditation with that.
And then you work at home with your own journal. What was the we had to write about ourselves. And what was the other paper? Here. I’ll give you it on a paper.
So if anything comes up for you that is difficult or you feel you need to talk or whatever, please ring Buddha House, and they will ring me and I’ll ring you, but I’ll make sure that I’ll give you my phone number next week so that you know. Just use it for that. What else do I have to say? Nothing? Questions?
Can we start reading the book? Yes, please start reading the book. The first chapter is about people who got healed very quickly by certain things. And it addresses like what is actually the source of healing? What is that which heals?
Read whatever you want to read. Reading this kind of books, we have to train our mind so well in changing it into something else. We have to feed it again and again and again, giving it the the other information again and again and again. So read whatever you like. You won’t have the feeling, oh, she’s telling the same.
You know? Every time when you hear the dharma, you hear something else even if it’s the same story. Somehow, our mind goes with that and You hear different things. You hear different thing. But it’s the same story, isn’t it?
It’s like yeah. Yeah. So please read whatever and I’ll go and get your book. Oh, you have one? Good.
Good. Alright. Good. Thank you so much for coming. I hope we are see you all next week.
Same time? Same venue? Have a good trip home. Thank you very much for coming. Thank you.